Easter‘with the Jews’: Quartodecimans, Novatians,
and other heretics in the late fourth–fifth centuriesThe decision at Nicaea to observe Easter on the same date did not automati-
cally drive all calendar diversity into the margins of heresy. For prudent
political reasons, as explained above, the substantial differences between the
Easter cycles, limits, and computational rules of Rome and Alexandria were
neither discussed nor raised at the Council of Nicaea, and accordingly never
led either side, through the subsequent century, to accusations or even in-
timations of heresy.
Not so was the custom in some Christian traditions of observing Easter
‘with the Jews’, i.e. on or near the same dates as the Jewish Passover, which the
Council of Nicaea specifically condemned. This had the immediate effect of
redefining this custom as‘heresy’; it also led, paradoxically, to the formation in
the late fourth century of new‘heresies’that adopted, as their primary defini-
tion, the observance of Easter onluna XIVand/or before the equinox, both
Judaizing practices. As we shall see, what was considered objectionable in
these practices was not their Judaizing identityper se, but rather that they were
considered to threaten the unity of the Church and the authority of Nicaea.
The consequences of Constantine’s condemnation of Judaizing Easter
practices became discernable almost immediately. Soon after the Council of
Nicaea, church leaders took the hitherto unprecedented measure of excom-
municating whoever persisted in observing Easter‘with the Jews’.^149 The
following ruling was issued soon after Nicaea, at the Council of Antioch of
c.327CE;^150 as at the Council of Arles, it appears in the Canons infirst position.
Constantine’s directive is now referred to as a formal‘decree’(‹æïò); but most
important to note is the threat of excommunication and the very real, social
separation that this sanction explicitly entails:
1.Whosoever shall presume to set aside the decree of the holy and great Synod
which was assembled at Nicaea in the presence of the pious Emperor Constan-
tine, beloved of God, concerning the holy and salutary feast of Easter; if they shall
obstinately persist in opposing its decrees, let them be excommunicated and cast
out of the Church; this is said concerning the laity.
But if any one of those who preside in the Church, whether he be bishop,
presbyter, or deacon, shall presume, after this decree, to exercise his own private
judgment to the subversion of the people and to the disturbance of the churches,
by observing Easter at the same time as the Jews, the holy Synod decrees that he(^149) Excommunication for calendar deviance is not attested until this period, except for
Eusebius’account of the Victor–Polycrates controversy in the 190s which, as I have explained
above, may be dismissed as anachronistic.
(^150) Earlier scholarly consensus attributed these canons to another council that was held in
Antioch in 341CE. See now Lejbowicz (2006) 52 n. 137.
412 Calendars in Antiquity