Dionysius Exiguus
Byzantine saint
b. c. 475 · d. 544
Dionysius Exiguus was a 6th-century Eastern Roman monk born in Scythia Minor and active in Rome. He was a member of a community of Scythian monks concentrated in Tomis, the major city of Scythia Minor. Dionysius is best known as the inventor of Anno Domini (AD) dating, which is used to number the years of both the Gregorian calendar and the (Christianised) Julian calendar. Almost all churches adopted his computus for the dates of Easter.
Works
Events
Commemorated
Places
- Scythia Minor birth
- Rome death
How we know
Recorded as a historical figure.
- On Easter, or the Paschal Cycle (Liber de Paschate) 2 claims — Dionysius dates the years from the Incarnation; Why there is no year zero
Glosses
- Why there is no year zero Reckoning the Easter tables in 525, Dionysius Exiguus refused to go on numbering the years by Diocletian the persecutor and counted from the incarnation instead — and he began at 1, because Roman arithmetic had no zero…
- Why Easter moves Nicaea ruled in 325 that the whole church keep Easter on one Sunday and stop taking its date from the Jewish calendar — but it fixed no arithmetic, and someone had to compute, every year and in advance, the Sunday…