is possible, now that their nation has been rejected, by a truer arrangement which
we have kept from the day of the Passion to the present, to extend the performing
of this observance into future periods also. Let there be nothing in common
between you and the detestable mob of Jews! (3. 18. 2)
For it is surely quite grotesque for them to be able to boast that we should be
incapable of keeping these observances without their instruction. How can those
people form a sound judgment,^102 when after that murder of the Lord, after that
parricide, they have taken leave of their senses...? Hence it comes about that in
this very matter they do not see the truth, so that nearly always they get it wrong,
and instead of the correct method,^103 they observe the Pascha a second time in the
same year.Why then do we follow those who are by common consent sick with
fearful error?We would never allow the Pascha to be kept a second time in the
same year (3. 18. 3–4).Various interpretations have been given, in this context, of the practice of
‘following the Jews’; these interpretations are not mutually exclusive, but some
are in my view untenable. Some scholars have interpreted Constantine’s letter
as aimed against the‘Quartodeciman’practice of observing Easter, at the same
time as the Jews, onluna XIV.^104 This is problematic on a number of counts.
Observance onluna XIVshould not have led to the celebration of Easter‘a
second time in the same year’, but to its celebration on weekdays other than
Sunday—which would have been very easy for Constantine to spell out
explicitly. Moreover, a polemic against observance onluna XIVwould have
been aimed most likely at the churches of Asia (i.e. Asia Minor), as the practice
is not attested anywhere else; and yet it is only some of the churches of Syria
that Constantine seems to be targeting, as he writes:
...a suitable arrangement exists which all the churches of the western, southern
and northern parts of the world observe, and also some of the churches in the
eastern areas...with one harmonious will in the City of Rome, in Italy and all
Africa, in Egypt, the Spains, the Gauls, the Britains, the Libyas, the whole of
Greece, the administrative region of Asia, Pontus, and Cilicia. (3. 19. 1)‘Someof the churches in the eastern areas’implies not all; and in the list of
provinces that follows, Asia is included whilst Syria is omitted.^105 That the
churches of Syria or the‘eastern areas’were the main dissenters, and thus
Constantine’s main target concerning the date of Easter, is stated explicitly by
Eusebius (elsewhere) and later by Socrates in hisEcclesiasticalHistory(mid-
fifth century).^106 That the practice, condemned at Nicaea, of‘following the
Jews’was practised by the Christians in the‘east’(which is unlikely, in the
(^102) Cameron and Hall (1999) translateçæïíåEías‘calculate’, again an over-interpretation.
(^103) Better than‘proper calculation’(ibid.) forKðÆíüæŁøóØò.
(^104) Mainly C.W. Jones (1943) 17–24.
(^105) See further Gerlach (1998) 263–4.
(^106) Eusebius,On theDate of Easter,8(PG24. 701); SocratesHE1. 8.
400 Calendars in Antiquity