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Quartodecimanism

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See also: Easter controversy and Easter

Quartodecimanism (derived from the Vulgate Latin: quarta decima[1], meaning fourteen) refers to the custom of some Early Christians celebrating the Lord's Supper on the Passover on the same evening the Jews celebrated their Passover. The Passover lamb is slain at sundown on the 14thDeu 16:6Template:Bibleverse with invalid book) Passover falls on the evening of the 14th day of Nisan (14th of Abib in the Hebrew Bible's Hebrew Calendar, Lev 23:5), which at light of the first star, is said to be the beginning of the "LORD's passover", see also Wiktionary:Quartodeciman).

This Biblical law is said to be a "perpetual ordinance" (Exodus 12:14) but observance of Biblical law is disputed among Christians, see Biblical law in Christianity.

According to the Gospel of John (for example John 19:14, 19:31, 19:42), this was the Friday[2] that Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem. The Synoptic Gospels place the Friday on 15 Nisan, the first Day of Unleavened Bread (Lev 23:6). See also the Chronology of Jesus.

Background

Very early in the life of the Church, disputes arose as to which date Easter (called Pascha in Greek and Latin) should be celebrated. Disputes of this kind came to be known as Paschal/Easter controversies. The first recorded such controversy came to be known as the Quartodeciman controversy.

In the early period, Easter was always held a date near the middle of the Jewish month of Nisan. In the mid-2nd century A.D., the practice in the Roman province of Asia was for the pre-Easter fast to end on the 14th day of Nisan, the day on which the Passover sacrifice had been made when the Second Temple stood, and "the day the people [i.e. Jews and Jewish Proselytes] put away the leaven".[3] The Asian custom became known as Quartodecimanism among the Latins. Melito of Sardis was a notable Quartodeciman.

The practice elsewhere was to continue the fast until the Sunday following. An objection to the 14th of Nisan date was that it could fall on any day of the week. Outside of the Roman province of Asia, Christians wished to associate Easter with Sunday, which was the day of the week on which Jesus rose from the dead according to all the Gospels, and which had long been a Christian holy day.[4] According to the writings of Irenaeus, the Roman church had celebrated Easter on a Sunday at least since the time of Bishop Xystus or Sixtus I, 115-125 A.D.[5][6]

Irenaeus, who followed the Sunday custom, also stated, however, that bishop Polycarp of Smyrna in Asia Minor, a disciple of John the Evangelist, observed Easter on Nisan 14. Shortly after Anicetus became bishop of Rome in about AD 155, Polycarp had visited Rome and among the topics discussed was this divergence of custom. But, Irenaeus noted,

Anicetus could not persuade Polycarp to forgo the observance [of his Nisan 14 practice] inasmuch as these things had been always observed by John the disciple of the Lord, and by other apostles with whom he had been conversant; nor did Polycarp persuade Anicetus to keep it: Anicetus said that he must hold to the way of the elders before him.

Neither Polycarp nor Anicetus was able to persuade the other to his position, but neither did they consider the matter of sufficient importance to justify a schism. Indeed, Irenaeus also noted that "Anicetus conceded to Polycarp in the Church the celebration of the Eucharist, by way of showing him respect". (Eusebius H.E. 5.24.17).[7] Anicetus and Polycarp parted in peace leaving the question unsettled.[8]

Late 2nd century controversy

The controversy arose when bishop Victor of Rome attempted to declare the Nisan 14 practice heretical and excommunicate all who followed it.[9] It was on this occasion that Irenaeus and Polycrates of Ephesus wrote to Victor, Irenaeus reminding Victor of his predecessor Anicetus's more tolerant attitude, and Polycrates to defend the Asian practice.

Polycrates (c. AD 190) emphatically notes that he was following the tradition passed down to him:

As for us, then, we scrupulously observe the exact day, neither adding nor taking away. For in Asia great luminaries have gone to their rest who will rise again on the day of the coming of the Lord.... These all kept the 14th day of the month as the beginning of the Paschal feast, in accordance with the Gospel.... Seven of my relatives were bishops, and I am the eighth, and my relatives always observed the day when the people put away the leaven[10]

According to Eusebius, a number of synods were convened to deal with the controversy. Most of them ruled in support of the Sunday practice[citation needed]. A Palestinian synod, under the direction of bishops Narcissus and Theophilus, issued "a lengthy review of the tradition about the Easter festival which had come down to them without a break from the apostles", that is, tradition of ending the pre-Easter fast on Sunday. Their "lengthy review" ended with the following words

Endeavor also to send abroad copies of our epistle among all the churches, so that those who easily deceive their own souls may not be able to lay the blame on us. We would have you know, too, that in Alexandria also they observe the festival on the same day as ourselves. For the Paschal letters are sent from us to them, and from them to us - so that we observe the holy day in unison and together[11]

Victor's excommunication of the Asians was apparently rescinded and the two sides reconciled as a result of the intervention of Irenaus and other bishops, who "very sternly Rebuked Victor."[12]

In the end, a uniform method of computing the date of Easter was not formally addressed until the First Council of Nicaea in 325, and even today, the date still varies between the West and East, see Reform of the date of Easter.

Legacy

It is not know how long the Nisan 14 practice lasted. The church historian Socrates knows of Quartodecimans who were deprived of their churches by John Chrysostom,[13] and Nestor, [14]bishops of Constantinople. This indicates that the Nisan 14 practice, or a practice that was called by the same name, lingered into the 4th century A.D.

Because this was the first-recorded Easter controversy, it has had a strong influence on the minds of some subsequent generations. Wilfrid, the 7th-century bishop of York in Northumbria, styled his opponents in the Easter controversy of his day "quartodecimans",[15] though they celebrated Easter on Sunday. Many scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries thought that the dispute over Easter that was discussed at Nicea was between the Nisan 14 practice and Sunday observance.[16] According to a new translation of Eusebius' Life of Constantine by Cameron and Hall, this view is no longer widely accepted.[17] The new view is that the dispute at Nicea was between two schools of Sunday observance: those who followed the traditional practice of relying on Jewish informants to determine the lunar month in which Easter would fall, and those who wished to set it using Christian computations.

References

  1. ^ "New Vulgate (Old Testament)" (HTML). Leviticus 23:5: "Mense primo, quarta decima die mensis, ad vesperum Pascha Domini est."
  2. ^ Meier, John P., A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Doubleday, v. 1, The Roots of the Problem and the Person, 1991, ISBN 0-385-26425-9
  3. ^ Eusebius, Church History 5.23-25.
  4. ^ Revelation 1.10 and Acts 20.7 may presuppose a custom of assembling on Sunday, though the passages do not explicitly so state. In the early to mid-2nd century, the custom of Sunday assembly is mentioned in the Didache and by Justin Martyr.
  5. ^ Eusebius H.E. 5.24.14
  6. ^ Irenaeus, letter to Victor, bishop of Rome, quoted in Eusebius, Church History, 5.24.
  7. ^ Irenaeus, Letter to Victor, supra.
  8. ^ Irenaeus, Letter to Victor, supra.
  9. ^ Eusebius, Church History, 5.24.
  10. ^ Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, letter to Victor, bishop of Rome, quoted in Eusebius, Church History, 5.24.
  11. ^ Narcissus of Jerusalem, Theophilus of Caesarea, Cassius of Tyre, Clarus of Ptolemais, and others, quoted in Eusebius, Church History, 5.25.
  12. ^ Eusebius, Church History, 5.24.
  13. ^ Socrates, Church History 6.11, in The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates, Bell and Sons, London, 1874, p. 318.
  14. ^ Socrates, Church History 7.29.
  15. ^ Eddius Stephanus, Life of Wilfrid 12, in D. F. Farmer, Ed., The Age of Bede, Penguin, London, 1988, pp. 117-118.
  16. ^ Charles W. Jones, Bedae Opera de Tempribus, Medieval Academy of America, Cambridge, 1943, p. 18.
  17. ^ Averil Cameron and Stuart G Hall, Eds., Eusebius: Life of Constantine, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1999, p. 260.

See also


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