allowed to follow the Jews even in public. The extent to which this canon really
legitimized calendar diversity would have been largely a matter of interpreta-
tion, which itself is likely to have been very diverse. Sabbatios’role—was he
really the instigator of protopaschism, when a whole council at Pazos had
preceded him, and when Easter deviance was already implicitly attributed to
the Novatians in the Councils of Laodicea?—and his motivations are also open
to anyone’s interpretation. Socrates, for his part, devotes a lengthy chapter
(5. 22) in defence of the indifferent canon, but not without criticizing covertly
the introduction of Judaizing‘innovations’.^170 He cites, as a paradigm, the
dispute between Victor and Polycrates of the 190s—the latter is here called, for
thefirst time,‘Quartodeciman’—and how it was settled by Irenaeus with an
agreement of mutual toleration (5. 22. 14–17). He argues that the date of
Easter is only a matter of custom, which should therefore not divide the
Church (5. 22. 1–29). But still, he criticizes the custom of following the Jews,
at least because of the unnecessary divisions it brought about among the
Novatians (5. 22. 73–82). This chapter exemplifies the ambivalence of a notion
such as‘indifference’. To some extent, Socrates is torn between tolerance
towards calendar diversity on the one hand, and loyalty to the Council of
Nicaea on the other.
In the course of their narratives, Socrates and Sozomen also supply infor-
mation about the other heresies. Running through the familiar list, Sozomen
explains that Quartodecimans observe Easter onluna XIVregardless of the
day of the week, Novatians follow the Jews but observe it on the following
Sunday, and Montanists (also known as Pepuzites or Phrygians) observe it on
a solar date, on 6 April or the following Sunday.^171 More important is Socrates’
reference to the persecution of the Novatians and Quartodecimans of Asia,
Lydia, and Caria (all in Asia Minor) at the hands of Nestorius, then bishop of
Constantinople, in 428CE, not long before hisHistorywas written (7. 29.
11 – 12). This reference to an event in recent history suggests that the Easter
heresies of Quartodecimans, Novatians, and others existed more than just
in the imagination of heresiologists or of church and imperial jurists (as might
have been inferred, perhaps, from the sources surveyed above).^172 It also
(^170) Hansen, Périchon, and Maraval (2004) 214–15 n. 3, pointing out also Socrates’
general sympathy towards Novatianism. 171
Sozomen,HE7. 18. 10–14. Grumel (1960) 177 interprets him as meaning that the
Novatians also celebrate Easter onluna XIVif it occurs on a Sunday. Sozomen attributes to
the Montanists a calendar of 30-day months starting from the vernal equinox, on 24 March;
so that 6 April, the date of Easter, corresponds to the 14th of thefirst month. The historicity
and significance of this original calendar is difficult to ascertain. However, 24 March is also
the New Year of the calendar of Asia (see above, Table 5.6); as in Cappadocia (above, n. 159),
the concern seems to have been the observance of Easter on the 14th of thefirst month of
spring in the local civil calendar (Talley 2003; I am grateful to Leofranc Holford-Strevens for
the reference). 172
Floëri and Nautin (1957) 38 question the existence of Quartodecimans in the late 4th c.,
but this is probably over-sceptical.
Sectarianism andHeresy 419