The Quartodecimans: when Christian Easter followed the 14th of Nisan
The Quartodeciman controversy: the Churches of Asia and 14 Nisan, Polycarp and Anicetus, Pope Victor, Polycrates of Ephesus, Irenaeus and Nicaea's choice.
In the first centuries of Christianity not everyone celebrated Easter on a Sunday. Many communities in Asia Minor kept it on the fourteenth day of the lunar month of Nisan, the date on which the Jews slaughtered the Passover lamb, whatever the day of the week. For this reason they were called Quartodecimans, from the Latin quartus decimus. The dispute that arose was the first great Christian conflict over the calendar, and it shows how delicate the link with the Moon was.
Two traditions compared
The communities of Asia, with centres such as Ephesus and Smyrna, appealed to a tradition they traced back to the apostle John. For them Easter commemorated above all the passion and death of Christ, and the fast was broken on 14 Nisan. Rome and most other Churches instead celebrated the feast on the following Sunday, the day of the resurrection, keeping the link with the spring moon but not with the exact date.
The 14th of Nisan depended on the Jewish calendar and therefore on the Moon: it was the eve of the spring full moon. Celebrating on that date in effect meant entrusting the Christian feast to the reckoning of the Jewish communities, and it was precisely this aspect that in later centuries became one of the arguments most used against Quartodeciman practice by its opponents.
Polycarp, Anicetus and Victor
The historian Eusebius of Caesarea, in the fifth book of the Ecclesiastical History, preserves the main documents of the controversy. He reports, quoting a letter of Irenaeus, that around the middle of the second century Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna went to Rome and discussed the question with Bishop Anicetus. Neither could persuade the other, but they parted in peace, and Anicetus allowed Polycarp to celebrate the Eucharist in his Church.
Towards the end of the same century the bishop of Rome, Victor, tried to impose the Sunday custom and threatened to exclude the Churches of Asia from communion. Bishop Polycrates of Ephesus replied with a letter, also reported by Eusebius, defending the tradition received from the apostles. Irenaeus of Lyon intervened, urging Victor to moderation and recalling precisely the example of Polycarp and Anicetus.
The end of the controversy
In 325 the Council of Nicaea established a single date for Easter. The letter of the emperor Constantine to the Churches, reported by Eusebius in the Life of Constantine, insists on the advisability of not depending on the Jewish reckoning. From then on, those who continued to follow 14 Nisan were considered separated from the Church, and the Quartodeciman communities gradually dwindled until they disappeared.
The dispute left important traces. It pushed the Churches to develop independent Easter tables, based on their own lunar cycles, and thus to build up the astronomical knowledge that would become the medieval computus. At the same time it preserved, in the final rule, the original link with the spring full moon: Christian Easter remains a lunar feast, born alongside the Jewish one.
Even today the differences between Catholic and Orthodox Easter reopen, in another form, the old question of the Quartodecimans: who decides which Moon to follow. The answer of the early centuries was both theological and practical, and it shows that a calendar is never merely a technical matter. It is a pact between communities, establishing when, and with whom, to celebrate.