The intervention of Irenaeus in this dispute is of particular significance.
Irenaeus was thefirst great heresiologist in the Christian literary tradition, and
as such, afighter of heresy and champion of the Church’s unity. Yet in his
major work,AgainstHeresies, where heretical practices and doctrines are
exposed in considerable detail, not one mention is made of calendar deviance
or diversity, nor of differences regarding the date of Easter (Pagels 2003: 134,
King 2008: 35). This is not inconsistent with the conciliatory position he
adopted in the Victor–Polycrates controversy and where he preached—sur-
prisingly perhaps for a heresiologist—unity through diversity. To cite his
words again, as cited in Eusebius:‘the disagreement in the fast confirms our
agreement in the faith’. This demonstrates, perhaps more than anything else,
that in this period the calendar was not considered a heretical issue, nor was
calendar unity perceived as a necessary condition for Christian unity.
Heresiologists and computists
in early third-century RomeSome three decades after the Victor–Polycrates controversy, observance of
Easter on the 14th of the moon appears for thefirst time in two heresiologies,
and thus becomes associated, perhaps for thefirst time, with the notion of
heresy.^70 Thefirst of these, a short tract entitledAdversus OmnesHaereses
falsely attributed to Tertullian but now believed to have been composed in
Rome in the late 210s or early 220sCE, mentions in a brief paragraph how a
certain Blastus wanted to introduce covertly ‘Judaism’(which should be
interpreted as‘Jewish practices’) by demanding that Easter be celebrated
only on the 14th.^71 The context, a list of heresies, implies that Blastus should
be regarded for that reason as‘heretical’.
Nothing else is known about Blastus, except for an even shorter mention of
him in Eusebius (HE5. 15) as a‘heretic’(the term is used at 5. 14) who drew
some followers in Rome but eventually fell; according to Eusebius, he at-
tempted to make‘innovations in respect to the truth’—but Eusebius does
not explain what these innovations were. Further on, Eusebius attributes to
Irenaeus a tract against the same Blastus‘on schism’ (5. 20). Blastus is
positioned in Eusebius’history a little before the Victor–Polycrates controver-
sy, which suggests that he was active earlier on. It is possible that his activities
in Rome led Victor to instigate his controversy against the churches of
Asia—but this would depend on linking the accounts of Eusebius and the
(^70) Unless credence is given to Eusebius’account of Victor’s charging Polycrates with
‘heterodoxy 71 ’(see above).
Adversus OmnesHaereses8. 1 (Kroymann 1954: 1410).
386 Calendars in Antiquity