computus

The calculation of the date of Easter in the Christian calendar.

Noun

  1. The calculation of the date of Easter in the Christian calendar.
    • An elaborate bundle of techniques called computus therefore developed around Easter calculations. Computus formed the centerpiece of “scientific” education in the monasteries. - 2008, Ian F. McNeely, Lisa Wolverton,...
    • Bede's work, which remained in active use for half a millennium, stood at the very center of the university curriculum, because the mastery of computus included many different essential subjects such as astronomy,...
    • The technical problems faced by Western computists when it came to dating the day of Christ's Passion and the year of the world's creation were so persistent and perplexing that only a radical solution could restore the...
  2. A book of tables for calculating dates of astronomical events and moveable feasts.
    • 1987, Bruce Eastwood, 5: Plinian astronomical diagrams in the early Middle Ages, Edward Grant, John Emery Murdoch, Mathematics and Its Applications to Science and Natural Philosophy in the Middle Ages, page 149, This...
    • Prognostics have thus been discovered in computi, in volumes on science or medicine, and in miscellanies which present a host of different text genres. - 2007, László Sándor Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics,...

Origin

Borrowed from Latin computus. Doublet of conto and count.

Forms

computi compotus conpotus

Related

compute computist almanac