|
|
|
|
Easter controversy
|
| |
|
| |
The Easter controversy is a series of controversies about the proper date to celebrate the Christian festival of Easter. To date, there are four distinct phases of the dispute.
A question of no small importance arose at that time [i.e. the time of Pope Victor I, about A.D.
Discussion
Ask a question about 'Easter controversy' Start a new discussion about 'Easter controversy' Answer questions from other users |
Encyclopedia
The Easter controversy is a series of controversies about the proper date to celebrate the Christian festival of Easter. To date, there are four distinct phases of the dispute.
First phase
This was mainly concerned with whether Christians should follow Old Testament practices, see also Biblical law in Christianity. Eusebius of Caesarea (Church History, V, xxiii) wrote:
- A question of no small importance arose at that time [i.e. the time of Pope Victor I, about A.D. 190]. The dioceses of all Asia [meaning the Roman Province of Asia], according to an ancient tradition, held that the fourteenth day of the moon, on which day the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb, should always be observed as the feast of the life-giving pasch [epi tes tou soteriou Pascha heortes], contending that the fast ought to end on that day, whatever day of the week it might happen to be. However it was not the custom of the churches in the rest of the world to end it at this point, as they observed the practice, which from Apostolic tradition has prevailed to the present time, of terminating the fast on no other day than on that of the Resurrection of our Saviour.
Quartodecimanism, a word not used in Eusebius' account, refers to the practice of fixing the celebration of Passover for Christians on the fourteenth (Latin ) day of Nisan in the Old Testament's Hebrew Calendar (for example ). This was the original method of fixing the date of the Passover, which is to be a "perpetual ordinance". According to the Gospel of John (for example ), this was the Friday that Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem, the Synoptic Gospels place the Friday on 15 Nisan.
A letter of St. Irenaeus shows that the diversity of practice regarding Easter had existed at least from the time of Pope Sixtus I (c. 120). Further, Irenaeus states that St. Polycarp kept Easter on the fourteenth day of the moon, whatever day of the week that might be, following therein the tradition which he claimed to have derived from St. John the Apostle.
About 195, Pope Victor I attempted to excommunicate the Quartodecimans, turning the divergence of practice into a full-blown ecclesiastical controversy. According to Eusebius, synods were convened and letters were exchanged. The controversy seems to have died down after Irenaeus and other bishops reminded Victor of his predecessor Anicetus' more tolerant attitude.
Second phase
The second stage in the Easter controversy centres round the First Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325). Granted that the great Easter festival was always to be held on a Sunday, and was not to coincide with a particular age of the moon, which might occur on any day of the week, a new dispute arose as to the determination of the Sunday itself. Shortly before the Nicean Council, in 314, the Provincial council of Arles in Gaul had maintained that the Lord's Pasch should be observed on the same day throughout the world and that each year the Bishop of Rome should send out letters setting the date of Easter.
The Syrian Christians always held their Easter festival on the Sunday after the Jews kept their Pesach. On the other hand at Alexandria, and seemingly throughout the rest of the Roman Empire, the Christians calculated the time of Easter for themselves, paying no attention to the Jews. In this way the date of Easter as kept at Alexandria and Antioch did not always agree. The Jewish communities in some places, possibly including Antioch, used methods of fixing their month of Nisan that sometimes put the 14th day of Nisan before the spring equinox. The Alexandrians, on the other hand, accepted it as a first principle that the Sunday to be kept as Easter Day must necessarily occur after the vernal equinox, then identified with 21 March of the Julian calendar.
The Council of Nicaea ruled that all churches should follow a single rule for Easter, which should be computed independently of the Jewish calendar, as at Alexandria. However, it did not make any explicit ruling about the details of the computation, and it was several decades before the Alexandrine computations stabilized into their final form, and several centuries beyond that before they became normative throughout Christendom.
Third phase
The Roman missionaries coming to England in the time of St. Gregory the Great found the British Christians, the representatives of that Christianity which had been introduced into Britain during the period of the Roman occupation, still adhering to an ancient system of Easter computation which Rome itself had laid aside. The British and Irish Christians were not Quartodecimans, for they kept the Easter festival upon a Sunday. They are supposed (e.g. by Krusch) to have observed an eighty-four year cycle and not the five-hundred and thirty-two year cycle of Victorius which was adopted in Gaul, but the most recent investigator of the question (Schwartz, p. 103) declares it to be impossible to determine what system they followed and himself inclines to the opinion that they derived their rule for the determining of Easter direct from Asia Minor.
Fourth phase
After the promulgation of the Gregorian calendar in 1582, the Catholic and Protestant churches of the West came to follow a different method of computing the date of Easter than the one that had been previously accepted. Most Eastern Orthodox churches continued to follow the older practice and this difference has continued to the present time, despite several attempts to achieve a common method for computing the date of Easter. In 1997 the World Council of Churches proposed a at a summit in Aleppo, Syria: Easter would be defined as the first Sunday following the first astronomical full moon following the astronomical vernal equinox, as determined from the meridian of Jerusalem. The reform would have been implemented starting in 2001, since in that year the Eastern and Western dates of Easter would coincide. This reform has not yet been implemented.
See also
External links
|
| |
|
|
