From what has been said, it will be apparent that, as the fourteenth day of the moon might fall upon any day in the week, the commemoration of the Resurrection, three days later, might also fall upon any day of the week. At Rome, and in various other places, the festival of the Resurrection was always observed on a Sunday, because it was on the first day of the week that the Saviour rose from the dead. The Asiatics laid stress on the day of the month—the lunar month—on which the Saviour suffered: the Roman Church insisted that the sixth day of the week, Friday, was the proper day for commemorating the Crucifixion, and that the following Sunday should be kept as the feast of the Resurrection. Those who made the fourteenth day of the moon to be necessarily the day for the celebration of the Pascha were known as ‘Quartodecimans[142].’
The dispute was further complicated by the difference with regard to the observance of the fast. The Asiatics terminated their fast on the evening of the day of the Crucifixion. The Romans continued it till the morning of the day of the Resurrection.
The Asiatics claimed St John and St Philip, the Apostles, as the originators of the usage which they followed; and at the close of the second century they were able to recite a long list of holy bishops and martyrs who had never deviated from the practice of their Churches.
It was some time about the middle of the second century that St Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, the personal disciple of St John, visited Rome, and conferred with Anicetus, the bishop of that city, on this and other subjects. On the Paschal question neither bishop was convinced by the other; but it was agreed that on such a matter it was not essential that there should be uniformity. The discussion was carried on with moderation, the two bishops received the Eucharist together, and Anicetus, ‘out of reverence’ for Polycarp permitted him to act as celebrant in his church[143].
The subject of the proper time for observing the Christian Pascha continued to excite discussion; and between A.D. 164 and 166, on the occasion of disputes at Laodicea, a defence of the practice of proconsular Asia came from the pen of one of the bishops of that region, Melito, bishop of Sardis. Unfortunately no remains of the work of Melito survive of such a kind as would help us to understand the writer’s argument, or to clear the difficulties which surround the attempt to form a well assured picture of the practice of his part of the Christian world. It has indeed been conjectured that the work of Melito was directed mainly against certain sectaries, perhaps Ebionites, who on the fourteenth day of Nisan feasted after the manner of the Jews upon a paschal lamb. This practice was so distinctly Judaistic, that it was rejected everywhere by the orthodox.
Of vastly more importance and significance, as affecting the whole Church, were incidents which occurred towards the close of the century. Victor, bishop of Rome, successor next but one to Anicetus, was a man of different temper; or, at all events, he attached a much higher importance to uniformity as to the time of observing Easter. Interest in the question was roused in various quarters. Councils of bishops (at the instance of Victor) discussed it in Gaul, in Greece, in Palestine, in Pontus, and as far east as Osrhoene beyond the Euphrates. By this time it was found that what, for convenience, we may style the Western practice was also largely followed in the East. The churches, however, of proconsular Asia still maintained their old position. A letter written by Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, to Victor on their behalf is preserved by Eusebius[144].
Victor, departing from the moderate policy of his predecessor Anicetus, thought the time had come for dealing more drastically with his opponents on the Paschal question, and sought to cut them off from the communion of the Catholic Church[145]. Victor’s attitude called forth remonstrances from various quarters, and was the occasion of a remarkable letter written by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, in the name of the brethren in Gaul, over whom he presided. He declares that the mystery of the Lord’s Resurrection should indeed be celebrated only on a Sunday, yet he strongly urges the impropriety of Victor’s cutting off ‘whole Churches of God’ because of differences on such a matter. He then adds that the controversy was not only on the question as to the day on which Easter should be celebrated, but also on the length and manner of the preceding fast, varieties as to which he recounts (see p. 79); and he goes on to remind Victor that bishops of Rome in former times, while strictly preserving their own usages, did not break the peace of the Church by excommunications directed against those who followed other ways[146]. Letters of similar purport were addressed by Irenaeus to various other bishops. The result of this intervention was that the Asiatic Churches were for the time left undisturbed in the practice of their traditional usages. How soon the Asiatic Churches fell into line with the majority is not apparent. But it seems evident that the change had taken place before the Council of Nicaea.
We have seen that in the attempts to commemorate on the proper days the death and resurrection of the Lord, the Asiatics thought most of the day of the month, and the Westerns and those who concurred with them thought most of the day of the week. But the latter party had obviously to make some attempt to lay down a rule which would at least approximate the date of their Pascha to the time of the year when the Lord suffered. The vernal equinox was taken by them, and by the Church of Alexandria, as the fixed point to which the date of Easter should bear some settled relation.
It is perhaps impossible to determine with precision when the rule came to be generally accepted that the full moon, which was to regulate the date of Easter, was the first full moon after the vernal equinox. We find that this is the rule which governs the Paschal Tables of Hippolytus (of which more will be said hereafter), and we find it expressly enjoined in that ancient collection of Church law which goes under the name of the Apostolic Canons. The Tables of Hippolytus can, with reasonable certainty, be assigned to A.D. 222. In the Apostolic Constitutions, the date of which it is impossible to determine with any close approach to certainty[147], the rule runs, ‘Observe the days of the Pascha with all care after the vernal equinox, that ye keep not the memorial of the one passion twice in a year. Keep it once only in a year for Him who died but once[148].’ The mystical reason assigned here also appears in the letter of the Emperor Constantine, announcing the decision to which the Nicene Council came upon the Paschal question[149]. Later on the reader will find what is probably meant by keeping the Pascha twice in the same year[150].
It would not perhaps be fitting to pass over in silence the attempt made in the early part of the third century by the Roman ecclesiastic, Hippolytus, to construct a cycle which would make it possible to predict the day on which Easter would fall in any future year.