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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.
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