Robert Wagman

CHAPTER XXXI

Some Greeks, however, are convinced that on account of that light, as well as of the dead bodies which during those very days the earth ejects every year, Easter should not be celebrated on the day established by the Gregorian calendar, but on the date suggested by our elders in the Council of Nicea. Thus Christopher Angelus, De vita et moribus rectium Graecorum, ch. 42,

The third reason is the great prodigy which can be observed near the city of Cairo on the Nile, when corpses start sprouting from the earth. The region begins to eject dead bodies from the fifth day of the Great Week, when Lord Christ instituted the rite of the Last Supper, and continues to eject them daily until Ascension Day, when Christ ascended to heaven forty days after Easter. On the fortieth day after Easter it stops. Turks and Greeks alike advise those visiting these lands to go and watch the phaenomenon. Even the pilgrims who travel to Jerusalem to worship the tomb of Christ rush from there to that area to witness the prodigy. It is from them that we obtained our information. This event coincides with Easter as computed in the old, not the current, calendar. Twenty years ago the Greeks tried to celebrate Easter on the new date, but the ejection of dead bodies did not occur at all according to the new calculations. Likewise, the holy light did not come down from heaven on the new Easter date, as it had always done on the old one, when it descended every year on the tomb of Christ. So the Greeks decided to keep the old calendar and the holy light came down again, and the earth resumed ejecting corpses, as it had done every year. Then the Greeks celebrated Easter, saying, ‘There: God is showing us what true Easter is. Why concern ourselves with human calculations?’

But it is time to end this nonsense— even though, from time to time, we have combined it with some serious matters.

NOTES

Forthcoming