When to celebrate Easter

Among the many controversies in the Early Church over the complex question as to how to settle the date of Easter (the Christian “Passover” or “Pasch”) were:

1) Whether Easter should be observed after the Jewish manner, on a fixed day of the lunar month (14 Nisan) or always on its following Sunday. The former practice was the ancient tradition in Asia Minor (Quartodecimanism).

2) The divergences arising from the Antiochene and Alexandrian (North African) methods of determining the “Paschal Moon,” the Antiochenes being content to accept the Jewish reckoning, whereas at Alexandria an independent calculation was made. According to Alexandrian practice, Easter was always settled after the vernal equinox. The decision at the first Ecumenical Council of Nicea in 325 favored the Alexandrian position, except for a small group of schismatics who did not accept the decision.

In these days, the two major theological schools, one in Alexandria and the other in Antioch, vied for prominence, theological orthodoxy, and increasing influence, which observers may note from studying the first four Ecumenical Councils of Nicea-325, I Constantinople-381, Ephesus-431 and Chalcedon-451. Eventually, this region followed Constantinople’s growing influence and direction rather than Rome’s, and resulted in a split that took place in 1054 between the Western and Eastern halves of the Christian world – a split that still exists today between the Eastern (Orthodox traditions) and Western (primarily Roman Catholic tradition) halves.

In the first four centuries, Rome developed its own ecclesiastical traditions and influence and indeed, until the 4th Ecumenical Council in 451, Rome and the Alexandrian and Antiochian schools were somewhat independent of each other. In fact, virtually no Roman pastors or theologians attended the first two of Ecumenical Councils above, and not many attended the third. Rome doesn’t even count the Ecumenical Councils in exactly the same way as ther Eastern churches do. So, it is no surprise that Easter and dating were calculated differently as well. This was just one of the places where their practices were varied.

3) Differences in the 4th and 5th centuries between the Roman and Alexandrian methods of computation, through the use of divergent “paschal cycles.” The Alexandrians favored the long and accepted Anatolian 19-year cycle, whereas Rome used an older 84-year cycle.

Furthermore, while the Alexandrians allowed Easter to be kept on the 15th of the month if a Sunday, it was never observed at Rome before the 16th century; also, the latest date for observing Easter at Alexandria was 25 April, but at Rome, the 21st was the latest date. We learn from Ambrose that Easter in 387 was observed in Gaul (France) on 21 March, in Italy on 18 April, and in Alexandria on 25 April.

From the 5th century, Rome increasingly followed the Alexandrian computation, which was adopted in the West by Dionysius Exiguus in 525; but as late as 455 there had been seven days’ difference between the Alexandrian and the Roman Easter.

In Great Britain, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, one of the differences between practices of the “Celtic Christians” and those of Rome, who came into the regions as missionaries, was the dating of Easter for the same reasons as described above. The Celtic Church celebrated Easter on a different day than did the Western Church. Instead of using the same calculation tables as the European Church, the Celts used an ancient set of tables (Celtic-84), first established by Jerome and not updated until the 6th and 7th centuries. In fact, Bede tells us in his Ecclesiastical History, based upon eye-witnesses who actually attended the Council of Whitby in 664, that as late as 651 Queen Eanfleda, who followed the Roman rule, was keeping Palm Sunday and fasting on the same day that her husband, King Oswy of Northumbria, was celebrating Easter. In three separate councils, the most important of which was the Council of Whitby in 664, portions of the Celtic Church exchanged the Western tables for their own calculations in order to conform to the same Easter Day celebrations as the West. Abbot Theodore did the same for all of England in 669. By 716, Iona finally did the same, the last stronghold for the older pattern.

4) Until the time of Charlemagne, leader of the Holy Roman Empire (c. 742-814), considerable uncertainty existed in Gaul (France) owing to the adoption of Victorius of Acquitaine’s Paschal Tables (drawn up on Rome in 457 but never much used in the city) with their cycles of 532 years.

Why did all of this matter?  And why all the disputes?  Because the Feast of the Resurrection of Christ was the greatest and oldest feasts of the Christian Church, with all of its accompanying liturgy that prepared the believer, through Lent, Passiontide, Holy Week, and Paschaltide (following the Resurrection), with prayers, special services, and masses. Some parts of the Church practiced baptisms just at Easter each year, and kept watches through the night until the breaking of dawn and the baptism service. Some kept similar vigils through the long night before Easter morning. Some illuminated their churches or towns to celebrate the Resurrection. Some celebrated the first service of Easter on the Saturday night-Sunday morning, and others waited until the morning of Easter to start the joyous bell-pealing.

Today, we can hardly imagine the difficulty of traveling pastors, laypersons, and shared leaders to conduct seamless ministry among the varied expressions of the Church calendars, not to mention the languages of Greek and Latin, in which the two sides conducted ministry. So . . . it was considered extremely important, particularly as written forms of liturgy were shared among the churches, to unify the Church so that liturgies, celebrations, and discipleship training, could be conducted with one heart, mind and calendar.

Unfortunately, this confusion over Easter’s observance is but one of the carryovers of a severed Church. 

 —Karen Bullock, professor of Christian heritage at the B.H. Carroll Theological Institute. Her response pulls together material from multiple sources, with particular reliance on the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, editors.