CYCLUS MAGNUS. - Also called the Paschal cycle or annus magnus, since it results from the combination of the solar cycle of 28 years and the nineteen-year cycle, it constitutes a period of 532 years (28 x 19=532), after which the phases of the moon recur on the same dates and on the same days of the week. It was used by computists for determining Easter and the other movable feasts. Victor of Aquitaine, in 457, had counted its years from the Passion of Jesus Christ, which in his calculations corresponds to the year 28 of our era. Dionysius Exiguus, in 526, basing himself on the nineteen-year computation of the Greeks and Alexandrians, made the year 1 of our era correspond to the 2nd of the c. m.
The Victorian and Dionysian periods belong to the many chronological calculations devised to make Easter fall throughout the world on the same day, according to the
decrees of the Council of Nicaea. They no longer had value after the Gregorian reform of the calendar, which modified the solar cycle.