Heortology

by K. A. Heinrich Kellner

17th Nisan, Sunday. The Resurrection.

In this way, these events could be annually commemorated on the same days in the Jewish Calendar, the day of the week, however, varying, as it does in the case of the Jewish passover. That this was actually done is recognised by Isidore of Seville, when he says,[111] “Formerly the Church kept Easter with the Jews on the fourteenth day of moon, no matter on what day of the week it fell.” But where the Julian, or even the Egyptian, Calendar was in force, if a man wished to proceed accurately in this way, without being tied down to fixed days of the week (i.e. Friday for the day of our Lord’s death, and Sunday for the Resurrection), he would nevertheless have to learn on what day of his own Calendar the 15th Nisan of the Jews fell in the year of our Lord’s death. For it was quite impossible for him to look for it at one time in March, at another time in April, according to his own Calendar.

Hence arose a striking divergence at the very beginning, which did not admit of being adjusted. Obviously, another method for fixing the date of Easter had to be devised for Gentile converts and for those districts where the Julian, or, at any rate, a non-Jewish, Calendar was in force. At the same time, it is also quite credible, because resting on clear proof, that in Syria and Asia Minor, the Apostles fixed the date of Easter on Quartodeciman principles, while at Rome and Alexandria another method obtained from the beginning. Granted that the Roman Church, during the Apostle’s lifetime, consisted only of converts from Judaism, still the Jews as a whole were such a small minority in Rome that they must have conformed to the Roman method of reckoning time, and were probably, most of them, unfamiliar with the Jewish Calendar. It was different in Asia Minor where the Jews were very numerous and free to follow their own customs, and where a Calendar closely allied to the Jewish was used by the native population.

When the Christians of Asia Minor claimed for this practice the ordinance of the Apostles, especially St John and St Philip,[112] their appeal is as much deserving of credit as the claim of the Romans to base their practice on the ordinance of St Peter. That they actually did so, we learn from the Festal Letters of St Athanasius,[113] who says: “The Romans lay claim to a tradition from the Apostle Peter, forbidding to go beyond the 26th Pharmuthi (the 21st April), on the one hand, and the 30th Phamenoth (the 26th March), on the other.” Here we have also the limits of the period within which Easter at that time fell, the 25th March being reckoned as the day of the vernal equinox.

The Churches which had never followed the Quartodeciman practice, surpassed the others in number and influence, so much the more as Egypt, where the Church had been organised by a disciple of St Peter, and also Greece, were among their number. When strife arose over this point, the numerically weaker party ought to have yielded, but rather than this, they separated from the Catholic Church under the form of Ebionitism. Irenæus traces the opposition of the Roman Church to the Quartodeciman Easter back to Sixtus I. (116-125). “The Roman Bishops,” he says according to Eusebius,[114] “neither observed the Passover in this way themselves, nor allowed those under their authority so to observe it.” Should the thought here arise in the mind that the Roman practice came into existence first under Sixtus, it is contradicted by the letter of Polycrates to Pope Victor where it is said that Rome appealed to the Apostles Peter and Paul in support of her custom.

The chief reason why the Jewish Quartodeciman practice of the other Churches finally succumbed, was that Christians desired to commemorate not merely the day of our Lord’s death alone, which was linked to the 15th Nisan, but also His Resurrection. The Resurrection had a close connection with His death in point of time, and its commemoration was already firmly established in apostolic times in the form of Sunday (see above, [p. 5]). It was thus impossible to pass over the Sunday, and so practically an entire week was occupied by the commemoration. The events of Holy Week given above could not be separated from each other; they must be kept in connection. The Jews, as Epiphanius[115] remarks in his polemic against the Audians, keep their passover on a single day, while the Christians required a whole week for their Easter commemorations. And so, although they took the date of the Jewish passover as the basis of their calculations, they nevertheless did not limit the duration of their feast to that one day. Finally, another point which had weight, was that the Christians of the fourth century had a fixed idea that the 14th Nisan must not fall before the vernal equinox.[116]

Along with this generally observed custom of commemorating in the Church the passion and death of our Lord, repeated attempts were made to discover and establish a fixed date for the solemnity. Already in the third century it was thought this had been successfully achieved, and in Tertullian we find 782 U.C. given as the year of Christ’s death, and the 15th Nisan identified with the 25th March. This date would be incorrect in any case, even if 782 were really the year of Christ’s death, for in that year, the Jewish passover could only have fallen on either the 19th March or the 17th April of the Julian Calendar. Nevertheless the 25th March met with no small acceptance, being accepted, amongst others, by Hippolytus, Augustine, and Perpetuus of Tours, who accordingly marked the 27th March in his Calendar as the true day of the Resurrection. It appears also in the spurious acts of Pilate. In the Carolingian period this date constantly occurs in the martyrologies, as, for instance, in the Gellonense of 804, in that of Corbie of 826, in Wandelbert of Prüm, in the different recensions of the so-called martyrology of Jerome, and others. Whether this day was liturgically observed, or had merely an historic interest, cannot be decided from the Calendars, but the former is probable.

Finally, it may not be without interest to observe how in subsequent centuries attempts were made to explain the fact that Easter, unlike other festivals, was movable. It is conceivable that in course of time, the true explanation, viz., the connection of the Christian with the Jewish feast and its consequent dependence on the Jewish Calendar, was forgotten, and attempts began to be made to account for the fact on other grounds, typical or otherwise.

After the observance had everywhere become well established, it must have struck people that the day of our Lord’s death was very differently commemorated in the Church from the day of His birth, viz. as a movable feast. Among the questions which Januarius submitted to St Augustine, there was one bearing on this point. Augustine[117] replied that our Lord’s birthday was merely a commemorative festival, while Easter had a mystical connection with the Jewish passover, as also its name is of Hebrew, not Greek, origin. Easter is the fulfilment of our redemption which consists in an inward renewal of mankind, and with this idea of renewal, the first month of the Jewish and ancient Roman year corresponds. Afterwards, however, Augustine forsakes this safe path and loses himself in the symbolism of numbers and in forced astronomical interpretations.

Shorter and more to the point is the explanation given by Martin, Bishop of Dumio (561-572), who died Bishop of Braga in 580. In his treatise De Paschate,[118] he says many people only add to the confusion by their unsuccessful attempts to explain why the date of Easter is fixed by the moon, after the Jewish custom. So, too, the attempts recently made by many bishops of Gaul to celebrate the Resurrection on a fixed day (the 25th March) cannot be approved. Now the passion of Christ is the redemption of the creature. The creation of the world took place in Spring (c. 4), and, consequently, the renewal of the world must also take place in Spring, in the first month of the year. Two things had to be taken into consideration with regard to this festival—the day of the week and the phase of the moon. In order to be right in both, ecclesiastical antiquity had appointed that Easter should not be kept before the 23rd March or after the 21st April (c. 7).