xjumi
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LILIV8
mission for the reform. The treatise which Paul of
Bfiddelbuii; laid before the council is entitled: Pau-
lina sive de recta Paschse celebratione etc. (Fossom-
brone, 1513). He was against bringing the eauinox
back to 21 March, and opposed the idea of abandoning
the lunar cycle or putting Easter on a fixed Sunday
of the year. He proposedf, however, a change in the
^cle by reducing xhe seven cmbolismic months to five.
Emperor Maximilian charged the Universities of
Vienna, Tubingen, and Louvain, to express an opinion.
Vienna supported the first and thiru propositions of
Cardinal a'Ailly at the Council of Constance, viz. to
correct the Julian intercalation by omitting a leap day
every 134 years, and to abandon the lunar c^cle. Tu-
bingen was of the same opinion, and agreed with Bishop
Paw in leaving the equinox where it was.
Copernicus had be«n asked by the papal conmiis- mon in 1514 to state his views, and his decision was, that the motions of sun and moon were not yet sufficiently known to attempt a reform of the calendar. The commission was to make definite propositions in the tenth session of the council. Although this was post- poned from 1514 to 1515, no conclusion was reached. After the Lateran Council considerable progress was made. Copernicus had promised to continue the ob- Bervations of sun and moon and he did so for more thui ten years longer. The results laid down in his immortal work " De Revolutionibus Orbium Cceles- tium" (1543) enabled Erasmus Reiiihold to compute the Prutenic Tables (Wittenberg, 1554), which were afterwards made the basis of the Gregorian reform. The principal writers at the time are the following: Albertus Pighius, magister at the University of Lou- vain. who dedicated to Leo X, in 1520, a treatise in whi(m he supported Cardinal d'Ailly's intercalation, omitting a leap day every 134 years, out, on the other hand, recommended the retention of the lunar cycle. About the equinox he committed an error, reckoning it from the constellation of Aries and advising the omission of 16 days. The two Florentine monks, Joannes Lucidus and Joannes Maria de Tholosanis, may be mentioned in passing. The latter pleaded for cyclic reckoning but was opposed to changing the date ol the equinox. During the Council of Trent a num- ber of plans lime written and proposed to the council and to the pope. Cardinal Marcellus C-ervinus, presi- dent of the council, summoned to Trent the Veronese Girolamo Fracas toro, a physician and renowned as- tronomer, and had several conferences with him on the subject of the calendar. In 154S Bartholomscus Cali- ganus, a priest in Padua, offered a memorandum to the Bishop of Bitonto, wherein he based his plans on Paul of Midddburg^ otoefflcr, and Joaimes Lucidus. The Spanish Franciscan Joannes Salon, addressed a proposition to Cardinal Gonzaga, first president of the council under Pius IV. An abridgment of it he of- fered, immediately after the council, in 1564, to Pius IV, and, on the advice of Sirleto, also to Gregory XIIJ, in 1577* His memorandum is remarkable for the rea- sons he puts forth against an immovable Easter, and for the advice that a leap day should be omitted by the pope on the occasion of general jubilees.
Other memoranda were that of Begninus, a canon of ReimB, which' was handed to Cardinal de Lorraine on bis way to the council; that of Lucas Ciauricus, who aimed himself Episcopua Civitatensis, and based his "Cakndarium Ecclesiasticum " of IHS on Paul of ICiddelburg; that of the Spanish priest Don Miguel of Valencia, which was presented to Pius IV in 1564. If ore important than all these was a plan proposed by the Veronese mathematician Petrus Pitatus. Basing his ideas likewise on Paul of Middelburg he wanted the lunar Cyde retained and the equinox restored to Gaesar's date, by the omission of fourteen days, which for two years should be taken from the seven months having dl days each. His original idea, which took final effect in the Gregorian reform, was to correct the
Julian intercalation of the solar year, not eveiy 134
years, h^ut by full centuries. No earlier writer seems
to have called attention to the fact, that ajpplying the
rule of 134 years three times comes, within a small
error, to the same thing as omitting three leap days in
400 years. His " Compendium " was published and
offered to Pius IV in 1564. The Council of Trent was
the first since that of Nicsea that took a positive step
towards a reform of the calendar. In the last session,
4 December, 1563, it charged the pope to reform both
Breviary and Missal, which included the perpetual
calendar.
After the Council of Trent. — Pius V published a Breviary (Rome, 1568), with a new perpetual calen- dar, which was faulty and soon discarded. Gregory Xlll, the immediate successor of Pius V, charged Carolus Octavianus Laurus, lector of mathematics at the Sapienza, with working out a plan of reform. It was completed in 1575, and it again recommended the correction of the intercalations by full centuries. A certain Paolo Clarantc also composed a calendarium and offered it to the pope for examination. In 1576 the famous manuscript of the late Aloisius Lilius was presented to the papal Curia by his brother Antonius.
Whether Antonius acted in response to the pope's request is not known. Certain it is that Aloisius Lilius commenced his work before the accession of Gregory XIII to the throne and even before the publication of the new Breviarj', spending ten years on it. Gregory then organized a commission to decide upon the best
Elan of reform. During the many sessions the mem- ers of the commission changed several times. From the names of those who signed the report offered to Gregory XIII it may be inferred that its composition was intended to represent various nations, grades, and rites of the Church. Besides four Italians there was tlie French Auditor of the Hota Seraphinus Olivarius, the German Jesuit Christoph Clavius, the Spaniard Petrus Ciaconus, and the* Syrian Patriarch Nehemet Alia. Religious Orders were represented by Clavius, by the celebrated Dominican triar Ignatius Dantes and, for a while, by the Benedictine monk Teofilus Martins. The hierarchy we find represented by Vin- cent ius Laureus, Bishop of Mondovi, by the Patriarch of Antioch, and by Cardinal Sirleto. The laity was represented by Antonius Lilius, doctor of arts and medicine, and, as it seems, collaborator of his I^rother Aloisius in the reform. Auout the Spaniard Ciaconus or Chacon nothing seems to be known.
The first president of the commission, Bishop Giglio. did not succeed in securing a majority. He favourea the corrections suggested for Lilius's manuscript by the two professors of the Roman Sapienza, the mathe- matician Carolus Laurus and the professor of Greek, Giovanni Battista Gabio. The commission, however, condemned the corrections as false and addressed itself directly to Gregory XIII. Thomas Giglio, being pro- moted to the See of Piacenza in 1577, was superseded as president by the learned and pious Cardinal Sirleto, a native of Calabria like Lilius. Another disagree- ment was caused by the Sienese Teofilus Martius, who was mentioned above. He blamed the commission for the spirit of innovation and for lack of reverence towards the Council of Nicaja; he wanted the equinox restored to the older Roman date 24 or 25 March; he rejected the new cycle of Lilius, and wanted the old cycle corrected; he accepted neither the Alphonsine nor the Prutenic Tables and he desired a leap day to be omitted every 124 years or ten years sooner than the Alphonsine Tfables rccjuired. Teofilus put his dissent on record in a " Treatise on the Reform of the Calen- dar" (after 1578) and in a "Short Narration of the Controversy in the Congregation of the Calendar". This would seem to show that he was a member of the commission; at least for a time, for he did not sign the report of the latter to the pope. It was probably ow- ing to his objections that the new cycle ol "Fa^^sJv&^^a
