fourth century, to mean Asia) is explicitly stated in another Nicene synodal
letter, not authored by Constantine, which Socrates cites in the same work.^107
If only Syrian or‘eastern’Christians were Constantine’s target, but not the
churches of Asia, he is unlikely to have meant observance of Easter onluna
XIV.
‘Following the Jews’, in the context of Nicaea, is more commonly inter-
preted as the observance of Easter in the same lunar month as the Jews, which
could often be before the equinox—even if Easter did not coincide exactly with
Passover, but was celebrated on the following Sunday.^108 This interpretation
goes back to the late fourth century, and has far more to commend itself.
Indeed, the tradition of determining the date of Easter Sunday on the basis of
the Jewish Passover (as opposed to following afixed Easter cycle) was still
widespread in Syria in the late fourth century, and regarded by Church leaders
as dissident from the Nicene creed.^109
In this context, however, Constantine’s concern is unlikely to have been
observance of Easter before or after the equinox, if only because the rule of the
equinox was still unknown to western computists in this period (see above,
n. 86). Moreover, Constantine’s reference to celebration of Easter‘a second
time in the same year’cannot be interpreted as meaning a breach of the rule of
the equinox without resort to an over-scholarly and far-fetched explana-
tion.^110 It would have been far more simple, if this really was Constantine’s
concern, for him to refer to the celebration of Easter‘before the equinox’,or
even just‘one month too early’.
As I have argued elsewhere, to keep the Pascha‘a second time in the same
year’would have had in fact a much more prosaic meaning, for Christians as
well as for Jews: it meant the festival being observed by different communities
at different times, and hence, every year, on at least two occasions (typically,
(^107) HE1. 9:‘so that all the brethren in the East who have heretofore kept this festival when the
Jews did, shall henceforth conform to the Romans and to us’. See also Athanasius,De Synodis,5
(PG26. 688B–C), andEp. ad Afros Episcopos,2(PG26. 1032C).
(^108) Duchesne (1880), E. Schwartz (1905) 104–21, Daunoy (1925), Grumel (1960), Gerlach
(1998). 109
Schwartz loc. cit., Grumel loc. cit., Stern (2001) 68–70. The tradition of observing Easter
‘with the Jews’was formally laid down in theDidascalia, a text written in 3rd-c. Northern Syria
that will be discussed below, n. 180.
(^110) This explanation, which goes back to a late-4th-c. retrospective interpretation of the
Nicene Easter resolutions by Epiphanius (Panarion70. 11. 5–6,Williams 1987–1994: ii. 414),
assumes that the year begins on the equinox, so that if Easter is observed after the equinox and
then, twelve lunar months later, before the equinox, it is effectively observed twice in the same
‘year’. However, it is completely unlikely that Constantine would have regarded the year as
beginning at the equinox; moreover, on this interpretation there will have been‘years’when
Easter was not observed at all (if it wasfirst observed before the equinox, and then thirteen lunar
months later, after the equinox), which arguably must have been worse than observing it twice in
the same year, and which should equally have been mentioned by Constantine. See in more detail
Stern (2001) 80–5, arguing further that Epiphanius’over-ingenious explanation does not seem to
have been shared by his contemporaries, even if it has become popular in modern scholarship.
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