There is little evidence, however, to support the common scholarly view
that the prime motivation behind thefirst Easter cycles was to enable all
churches to observe Easter on the same dates, and thus to eradicate calendar
diversity.^80 That such a motivation existed is supported only by a statement
cited by Eusebius (HE5. 25) immediately after his narrative of the controversy
ofc.190CE, said to have been issued at the time by Palestinian bishops in
favour (it seems) of Sunday Easter observance. The statement mentions in
conclusion that in Alexandria the same day is kept as theirs, and that they
exchange letters with Alexandria so that the holy day is observed‘in harmony
and at the same time’. It is unclear whether these letters exchanged between
Palestine and Alexandria were advance notices of the date of Easter, such as
those that bishops had the custom of disseminating on an annual basis by the
fourth century (as we shall later see); there is certainly no reference to the use,
of this purpose, of Easter cycles. The context of Eusebius’narrative suggests
that the point of these letters was primarily to ensure the observance of Easter,
in Alexandria and Palestine, on Sunday and not onluna XIV.Whatever is
made of it, this lone passage is too vague to be used as anexplanationfor the
rise of Easter cycles in later decades.
Even if this explanation remains a possibility (and it certainly became
relevant in later centuries), there is no hint of it in the early sources. Pseudo-
Cyprian, for example, does not present his Easter cycle as a means of enforcing
uniformity of practice and eliminating diversity. He clearly regards his cycle as
true and divinely inspired—a cycle that had run uninterruptedly through the
whole of history, from the Creation to the Crucifixion and right until his own
day, as demonstrated in detail in the longest section of his work—and in this
sense he expects all his readers to accept it. But this is a matter of establishing
the truth and avoiding errors, not of unifying the Church and uprooting
heresy. In fact, there is no reference in the treatise to heresies or schisms
within the Church arising from the date of Easter. The treatise does empha-
size, in its concluding statement, that‘Passover according to the Jews is on
luna XIV, but according to us on the Lord’s day’(De Pascha Computus23, Ogg
1955: 19); but the reference is to Jews, not to deviant Christians, and this
statement can thus be interpreted as a further call for Christians to dissociate
themselves from the Jews (in continuity with the opening statement of the
treatise, above quoted), rather than as a veiled attack on Christian observance
of the 14th (which is nowhere mentioned in the whole treatise, although it
may be implicitly read here). Polemics on the date of Easter, in this treatise, are
extremely mild. Pseudo-Cyprian’s only target for criticism is an Easter cycle of
the date of Easter. The origins of this custom, however, are not well known; it might be argued,
on the contrary, that it is the rise of the Easter cycles that facilitate the development of this
custom.
(^80) As assumed by C.W. Jones (1943) 10–11, Mosshammer (2008) 52, 55.
390 Calendars in Antiquity