| #### 1. THE EASTER CONTROVERSY |

| #### #### The actual date of the death and resurrection of Our Lord formed no part of the Church's traditional faith. From very early on, the different Churches followed each their own judgment in the matter. By the end of the second century the majority of the churches, Rome amongst them, had come to celebrate the Resurrection on the Sunday which followed the 14th day of the Jewish month of Nisan. The churches of the Roman province of Asia (Asia Proconsularis) celebrated the commemoration of Our Lord's death rather than His resurrection, and they kept it on the 14th of Nisan whether that day fell on a Sunday or not. This difference of observance was felt as a serious inconvenience; and, in 154, the pope of the time -- Anicetus -- made an effort to win over to the Roman, and more general, practice the bishop whose prestige might have brought in the rest of the Asiatics, Polycarp of Smyrna. St. Polycarp, invoking the great name of the apostle St. John as the source of the Asiatic tradition, would not be persuaded, and endeavoured in his turn to win over Anicetus. But Anicetus, too, had his tradition -- the tradition of his predecessors in the Roman See. There the matter rested -- the harmony of charity between the two bishops in no way disturbed. #### In 167 this difference of practice again came to the fore. The detail of the event is not known, but the Asiatic bishops are found in that year defending their own tradition, apparently against an attempt to introduce the more general custom. Twenty-four or twenty-five years later, however, the question came up once more, and it speedily developed into a crisis of the first magnitude. It is unfortunate that we know nothing of the immediate reasons for the action of the pope of the time, St. Victor I (189-198) and very little of the order of the events. What is certain is St. Victor's letter to the Bishop of Ephesus, Polycrates, in which he bids him call together the bishops of the province of Asia and secure their consent to the adoption of the Roman practice in the matter of the celebration of Easter. The pope reminds Polycrates of the apostolic origin of his see, and, presumably, of the authority thence deriving. Polycrates called the bishops together -- from his letter to St. Victor we gather such a reunion was without precedent, and only the fact that it was ordered from Rome could have justified him in the innovation. But the bishops of Asia preferred to keep their own tradition, and in the reply of Polycrates we have a curious testimony to the fact that the theories of church government to which St. Irenaeus gives expression are not any personal invention of his own. For Polycrates bases the refusal on the grounds of apostolic tradition. His practice is that of apostles too, St. Philip buried at Hierapolis and St. John whose tomb is in his own city. He makes the list of distinguished bishops and martyrs since then, and he pleads " the fixed rule of faith" which forbids innovation in the apostolic tradition. No threats, he declares, will terrify him. Greater men than he have settled the principle on which he must act "It is better to obey God than men." (Acts v, 29.) #### The issue is simple. Two traditions equally apostolic are in conflict. On what principle shall either prevail? Rome acted. St. Victor, apparently about the same time that he wrote to Polycrates, had written to other bishops also in the same sense. The letters of several councils of bishops in reply to his survive. They all express their agreement with Rome. "No threats will terrify me," the Bishop of Ephesus had written to the pope, referring no doubt, to some mention in the Roman letter of penalties in case of refusal. Now, by letters to all the churches, St. Victor declared Polycrates and his associates cut off and separated from the Church. It is the first recorded occasion of such disciplinary intervention on the part of the Roman Church, and its action has already all those characteristics which mark it ever afterwards. As against the Roman tradition not even apostolic traditions prevail, not even Philip nor John, since Rome is Peter and Paul. #### But the matter did not end with the excommunication of the Asiatics. In more than one church it was felt that Rome had used them harshly, and appeals for a more lenient treatment began to flow in to St. Victor. Among those who pleaded was St. Irenaeus himself. He urged that the difference of practice was not of those for which brotherly charity should suffer, and he recalled the previous discussion between St. Polycarp and the pope Anicetus and its happy ending. And he wrote to others beside the Bishop of Rome, rallying opinion to his view of the case. But nowhere is it suggested that the Roman bishop had outstepped his jurisdiction, that the right he was exercising, perhaps somewhat mercilessly, was not really his right. St. Irenaeus was as successful in his mediation as in his theology. The pope withdrew the excommunication, and the churches of Asia continued to celebrate Easter in the tradition of St. Philip and St. John. ####  |