Passover (whenever it occurred, even before the equinox), which as far as we
know was specific, at least by the early fourth century, to Syria and the East. Its
late fourth-century adoption by Novatians in Asia Minor, which Socrates and
Sozomen refer to, perhaps legitimately, as‘innovative’, raises the possibility
that heretics, or Christians wishing to be identified as heretics, could opt in this
period for calendar deviance—and if necessary, generate innovative forms of
calendar deviance—as a way of asserting a separatist identity. This phenome-
non, for some reason, seems to have been prevalent in Asia Minor. The
Montanists of Asia Minor, whose identity as a heresy is considered problem-
atic by modern scholars (King 2008: 34–5), may have similarly sought, by
adopting an alternative date of Easter, a way of defining their heresy with
greater clarity. As to the Quartodecimans, the question must be asked whether
they were perpetuating an old Asian tradition—in which case, as we have
observed in the case of the Audians, the local custom was simply renamed a
‘heresy’—or whether their Easter observance was also, in some ways, an
innovation. Many scholars have assumed continuity between theluna XIV
observance of Polycrates in the 190s and of the Quartodecimans of the late
fourth–fifth centuries;^178 but on closer analysis, it is questionable whether this
practice had been preserved in Asia as a continuous tradition. Nothing is
heard of it, indeed, in the period of some two hundred years following the
190s.^179 Its sudden emergence in the late fourth century with, for thefirst time,
a name—Tessareskaidekatites—and its association with other, similarly
emerging Easter heresies, suggests a new and innovative phenomenon, per-
haps the revival of an older Asian custom, but driven by very different
motivations.
All this leads to the conclusion that calendar deviance in the late
fourth century was not necessarily a pre-existing tradition that caused
certain groups to be redefined, willy-nilly, as heretical. This may have been
the case of the Audians in Syria and the East, but not in Asia Minor, where
heretics such as Quartodecimans, Novatians, and Montanists were not
simply continuing inherited calendar traditions, but were deliberately adopt-
ing innovative Easter practices. To them, calendar deviance was a strategy
(^178) Millar (2004) 120–1, Mitchell (2005) 220–1.
(^179) Anatolius of Laodicea does state, in his work ofc.270CE(Mc Carthy and Breen 2003), that
‘until this day’(usque hodie) the bishops of Asia celebrate Easter onluna XIV(DeRatione
Paschali, 7, ll. 111–17; note also the present tense in 8, l. 136:quod nobis inuunt). But it is
debatable whether this short comment, by an author who had nofirst-hand experience of Asian
Christianity, could help to bridge the gap between 190CEand the late 4th c. An argument against
the continuity of Quartodecimanism in Asia Minor is that had it been still in practice in the early
4th c., Constantine would have sought to ban it at the Council of Nicaea (on the lack of reference
to Quartodecimanism at Nicaea, see above, after n. 104).
Sectarianism andHeresy 421