II. The Council of Nicaea and the Easter Controversy.
We may pass on now to the consideration of the determinations on this question arrived at by the Council of Nicaea.
The varieties of usage as to the dates of keeping the Pascha had disturbed the mind of Constantine before he issued his invitations to the bishops of the empire to attend the Council. His trusted adviser, Hosius, bishop of Corduba, had been sent by him to the East in the hopes that by his arguments and persuasion the followers of the Eastern practice might be induced to yield. But the mission was ineffective, and the matter was submitted to the great Council in A.D. 325. We have no record of any of the proceedings connected with the matter beyond what is to be found in a Synodical Letter of the Council, and a circular letter of the Emperor. We cannot help feeling some surprise that the Council did not enact any canon on the subject; but it was probably believed that the adoption of a rigid canon, with an attendant anathema, might have produced a formal schism, while a statement of the opinion of the Council could scarcely fail to be highly influential in eventually securing uniformity. The letter of the Council, preserved by Socrates[156], is addressed to the Church of Alexandria and the brethren in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis. It simply announces ‘the good news’ that, in accordance with the desire of those to whom the letter was addressed, the question had been elucidated by the Council, and that all the brethren of the East, who had formerly celebrated the Pascha ‘with the Jews,’ will henceforth keep it ‘at the same time as the Romans, and ourselves, and all those who from ancient times celebrated the day at the same time with us[157].’
The Emperor is more full. He says that it was thought by all that it would be fitting that the Pascha should be kept on one day by all; that it was declared to be particularly unworthy to follow the custom of the Jews who had soiled their hands with the most dreadful of crimes, and who are blinded with error, so that they even frequently celebrate two Paschas in one year. ‘Our Saviour has left us only one festal day of our deliverance, that is to say, of his holy passion; and he has willed that his Catholic Church should be one.’ How unseemly is it that some should be fasting while others are seated at the banquet! He hopes that every one will agree in this. It had been resolved that the Pascha should be kept everywhere on one and the same day[158].
There is nothing in these letters to show what rule had been established. All that is laid down is that the Pascha should be kept everywhere on the same day; and it assumed that the Roman and Alexandrian rules as to Easter were identical, and were well known. As a matter of fact, while the Churches of Rome and Alexandria were at one both in keeping Easter on a Sunday, and on a Sunday after the vernal equinox, they were not agreed in their methods of calculating the Sunday upon which Easter would fall. Hence, long after the Council of Nicaea, several instances occur in which a day was taken for the Easter festival at Rome which differed from the day which the Alexandrian experts had calculated to be the correct day.
It is worthy of observation that the Emperor in his letter reprobates what he assumes was the Jewish practice of frequently celebrating two Paschas in the same year. What is probably meant is that the Jews at that time (whatever their earlier practice may have been) did not think it necessary to keep the Passover after the vernal equinox. Now the vernal equinox was taken as the beginning of the tropical or solar year; and it might happen from time to time that the full moon of Nisan fell in one year after the vernal equinox, and in the following civil year before the equinox, which would give two passovers in the same solar year. If this interpretation of the words of Constantine’s letter be correct, it would imply that the Christian Pascha should always be celebrated after the equinox, which was certainly already the general practice. But no specific rule with reference to the equinox is laid down in express terms either by the Fathers of the Council or by the Emperor.
It will be observed that in the Letter of Constantine he states that the Lord has left us ‘only one festal day of our deliverance, that is to say, of his holy passion.’ The dominant thought connected with the word Pascha was still that of the Crucifixion. At a later period writers, for the sake of accuracy, made the distinction between the ‘Pascha of the Crucifixion’ (πάσχα σταυρώσιμον) and the ‘Pascha of the Resurrection’ (πάσχα ἀναστάσιμον); and eventually the thought of the Crucifixion disappears from the connotation of the word, which has given the name for what we call Easter to the French (pâques); the Italians (pasqua); and the Spaniards (pascua)[159].
After the Council of Nicaea, although the Quartodeciman practice lingered on among unorthodox sectaries, the differences among Catholics were in the main confined to such questions as, When was the equinox? and What Tables should be used for predicting the Sunday which should be observed as Easter Day? The Synod of Antioch in A.D. 341 (can. 1) could now make bold to advance a step beyond the Oecumenical Council, and enacted a canon pronouncing excommunication against any who acted contrary to the command of the great and holy Synod assembled at Nicaea regarding the Pascha[160]. In principle the Church was united; but there were differences in the application of the principle. In A.D. 444, and eleven years later, in A.D. 455, Pope Leo the Great was in perplexity as to the day upon which Easter should be kept. In A.D. 444 he wrote to Cyril of Alexandria on the subject. The answer he received was that the proper day was not March 26 (as the Latins would make it) but April 23. In A.D. 455 Leo was much moved by finding that the Alexandrian computists had given April 24 for Easter Day, while those at Rome had assigned the festival to April 17, a week earlier. The matter seemed to him of sufficient importance to justify his writing to Marcianus, Emperor of the East, whom he now besought to intervene, and direct the Alexandrians not to name April 24, declaring that so late a date was beyond the ancient Paschal limits. Leo also wrote on the same subject to the learned and once beautiful Eudocia Augusta, who, though now spending her old age in retirement and devotion at Jerusalem, was not without influence in church affairs. The Emperor had enquiries made among certain bishops of the East and communicated with the Alexandrians. The result was that the observance of April 24 was reaffirmed, and the bishop of Rome reluctantly submitted for the sake of peace[161].
The account of the matter lies in the fact that while the Alexandrians had long before adopted the Paschal limits that still continue to rule our Easter, that is, from March 22 to April 25, the Latins, though at this date accepting the prior limit, hesitated as to the later, because the Easter Tables then in use among them had placed the later Paschal limit on April 23.
The position of authority conceded to the Church of Alexandria on the question as to the date of the Pascha was due to the acknowledged learning and skill of the astronomers and mathematicians of that city in matters of chronology and the computation of time. It was the practice of the bishop of Alexandria, as early at least as the middle of the third century, to issue what were styled ‘Festal Letters’ or, at a later date, ‘Paschal Letters,’ commonly of the nature of a homily on the religious lessons of the Paschal season, with an announcement as to the date of the next Pascha. These letters were commonly issued by the bishop a year in advance, and were sent by special messengers to his comprovincial bishops.