The celebration of Christ’s resurrection was the high point of the year for Christians everywhere. In Greek it became known as τὸ Πάσχα, the term used for the Jewish Passover, as Jesus’ death took place in conjunction with the Passover celebration, and his resurrection took place on the following Sunday. While it was easy for the early church to move its regular polis-wide worship service from the Sabbath to Sunday, and thus to celebrate the resurrection on a weekly basis, it was more complicated with the annual celebration as the Jewish Passover could fall on any day of the week, making it difficult to decide whether Easter should be celebrated three days later, or on the following Sunday.

As one might expect, the areas in the Eastern Mediterranean (Palestine, Syria, etc.) that were most influenced by Jewish customs and the Roman province of Asia where disciples of the Apostle John dominated the ecclesiastical hierarchy, tended to follow the Jewish system. Further West, an alternate system developed that always celebrated on a Sunday. This variation was seen by some to be a major issue by the mid-second century (Eusebius, Church Hist. 5.23-25). Eusebius records that many meetings of bishops took place to discuss the problem, but the disagreement persisted. Polycarp of Smyrna while in Rome discussed the matter with the Roman bishop Anicetus but amicably agreed to disagree and each to continue their own customs (5.24.15-17). Later in the century Victor of Rome was less tolerant, and threatened excommunication to everyone who did not follow the Western method. Irenaeus of Lyons and others pushed back against (or ignored) Victor’s decision, however, and multiple ways of celebrating Easter continued (5.24.9-13).

The controversy resulted in several literary works. In the 160s the famous Melito of Sardis wrote a two-part On the Passover and at the end of the century Clement of Alexandria wrote a treatise of the same name (4.26.1-4). About 230 Hippolytus of Rome wrote yet another work of that name, this time from the Western viewpoint (6.22.1). By this time there were also attempts to create calendrical cycles to assist in calculating future dates for Easter. Eusebius states that in his book, Hippolytus “sets forth a register of the times and puts forward a certain canon of a sixteen-years cycle for the Pascha, using the first year of the Emperor Alexander [Severus; i.e. AD 222] as a terminus in measuring his dates” (6.22.1). This notice is confirmed by the famous “chair of Hippolytus” in the Vatican, which has the cycle inscribed on its sides showing the calculated dates from AD 222 to 333. Several other competing cycles of 84 years are known from the third-century as well.

The chair of Hippolytus with his Easter cycle inscribed on the sides of the chair.

About 275, Anatolius, an Alexandrian mathematical scholar who later became first bishop of Caesarea, then of Laodicea in Syria, wrote our earliest surviving tract on the subject, De ratione paschali. The editors of the critical edition, Daniel Mc Carthy and Aidan Breen, 1 are convinced that despite long being considered a seventh-century forgery, the surviving Latin manuscripts have transmitted an accurate copy of the Greek original (as opposed to Eusebius’s inaccurate quotations in his Church History 7.32.14-15). In it Anatolius interacts with earlier works on the subject, such as those mentioned above and one by Origen (dating to c. 245). He explains how the Jews determined the date of Passover, and then showed why this was problematic for use in the church and had been replaced by different system. Finally he proposed his own solution and laid out a 19-year cycle that was synchronized with the Julian solar calendar and provided for Easter to always fall on a Sunday.

Anatolius’s innovative solution, however, did not gain universal acceptance.2 So, when Constantine became a patron of the church a half century later, he found this lack of unity over Easter as a major issue that needed addressing. It became one of the main topics to be discussed at the Council of Nicaea. The following documents speak to the discussion and its resolution.

The Council’s Letter to the Egyptian Church (Dok. 25)

Preserved by Athanasius in his On the Decrees of the Council of Nicaea, 36) this letter, surely written by participants at the council, describes it major decisions. After speaking about of the debates on Christology and the Melitians, it adds the following: 

We also have good news for you that we have harmonized our opinions on the subject of the most holy feast of Easter, which has been happily settled through your prayers. All the brothers in the east who have previously kept this festival when the Jews did have agreed with the Romans, with us, and with all of you who have kept Easter with us from the beginning, to follow the same custom we do (12).

Constantine’s Letter to the Churches (Dok. 30)

After the council Constantine wrote a letter to all the churches (Dok. 30), preserved in Eusebius’s Life of Constantine, in which the emperor stated that the council had discussed Easter and it had “resolved  by common consent that everyone, everywhere should celebrate it on one and the same day” (3.18.1) and asks that everyone “cheerfully accept that practice which is already observed with such complete unanimity of sentiment in the city of Rome, and in Africa, throughout Italy, Egypt, Spain, the Gauls, Britain, Libya, and the whole of Greece, in the dioceses of Asia and Pontus, and in Cilicia (3.19.1).

Eusebius, On the Observance of Easter

This short work of Eusebius of Caearea (often referred to by its Latin title De sollemnitate Paschali), perhaps written about the time of the council, traces how the Easter celebrations evolved from Hebrew Passover, yet “we celebrate the festival…every Lord’s Day” (12). He confirms that at Nicaea, after a lively debate, the custom of “three-quarters of the whole inhabited world prevailed by the large number of their bishops as they opposed those from the East”.  And so “a single festival of Christ came about.” (8)

Bibliography:

Barnes, Timothy D. “Eusebius, On Easter (De sollemnitate paschali),” in Constantine: Dynasty, Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014, 185-191; see also 123-136.

McCarthy, Daniel P. “The Council of Nicaea and the Celebration of the Christian Pasch.” In The Cambridge Companion to The Council of Nicaea, edited by Young Richard Kim, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. 177–201.

McCarthy, Daniel P. and Aidan Breen. The Ante-Nicene Christian Pasch: De Ratione Paschali : The Paschal Tract of Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002.

Mosshammer, Alden A. The Easter Computus and the Origins of the Christian Era. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Created by GLT

Last updated 2025-2-17 by JSW

  1. The Ante-Nicene Christian Pasch: De Ratione Paschali: The Paschal Tract of Anatolius, Bishop of Laodicea. Four Courts Press, 2002; text on pp. 45-53; translation on pp. 63-70
  2. His solution included the following features: 1) the equinox was defined as the 4-day interval 22-25 March; 2) Pasch was to be celebrated on a Sunday after 25 March and within luna 14-20 inclusive; 3) it used full 30-day lunar months and hollow 29-day lunar months aligned respectively with the Julian 31-day and 30-day months; 4) it had only two bissextile/leap years in the 19 year cycle. (Mc Carthy and Breen, p. 188).

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