What are the origins of Easter?

Easter.

At the council of Nice was also determined the day on which Easter should commence. Although this would be considered by many a matter of small consequence, it had been hotly contested, and one bishop of Rome attempted to excommunicate whole districts for not observing Easter on the right day!

The word "Easter" occurs once in the Authorised Version (Acts 12:4), where the word is pascha, which is elsewhere translated "Passover," and is so translated here in the Revised Version. This shews that in the translators' minds Easter and the Passover corresponded. But the Passover is associated with the crucifixion: "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Cor. 5:7); and the Passover fell on the 14th day of Nisan, and might occur on any day of the week; whereas Easter is generally accepted to refer to the resurrection, and commences on a Sunday. The former mode of reckoning was mostly adopted in the east, and the latter in the west. At the council of Nice it was settled for the latter.

In general terms, Easter may be said to be the first Sunday following the fourteenth day of the so-called paschal moon, which happens on or first after the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox always falls on March 21, so that Easter may be March 22, but not earlier; or if the fifteenth day of the paschal moon falls on March 21, a full lunar month must pass before another fourteenth day can come, and this may be on a Sunday, and so Easter may be as late as April 25, but not later: it may, of course, fall on any day between these dates.

There is nothing in the New Testament respecting the keeping of Easter. Acts 12:4 simply refers to the Passover as a suitable time for Herod to deliver up Peter to destruction. Of course the Passover was observed by the Jews, and probably by the Jewish converts. The words sent out from the council were "that all the brethren in the east, who formerly celebrated Easter with the Jews, will henceforth keep it agreeably with the Romans and ourselves, and all who from ancient time have kept Easter as we." The crucifixion was observed on what is called Good Friday by fasting, etc.; the following Sunday commenced Easter as a festival.

Its observance began on the preceding evening by fasting, prayer in the churches, etc. Jerome assigns as a reason for the people being kept till after midnight, that "even as the paschal deliverance of Israel took place at midnight (Ex. 12:29) it was the expectation of the church, according to apostolic tradition, that Christ would return to accomplish the redemption of His church, and triumph over her enemies at the same hour. That hour being passed, the awe with which the Lord's coming was anticipated being relieved, the Easter feast was celebrated with universal joy." Lactantius also mentions the night being passed in watchfulness for "the coming of our King and God." How strange that the coming of the Lord should be looked forward to in awe instead of being the hope of the Christian!

Lamps and candles were lit everywhere in token of the festival. Gregory Nazianzen speaks of persons of all ranks, even magistrates and ladies of rank, carrying lamps, and setting up tapers both at home and in the churches, thus turning night into day. In later times a huge taper was solemnly blessed as a type of Christ"s rising from the dead to give light to the world! Easter eve was also the chosen time for baptising the converts, and the numbers were often great: "three thousand" awaited baptism when Chrysostom was deposed.

Gregory Nyssen (A.D. 372-394) gives a graphic description of the keeping of the festival: "All labour ceased, all trades were suspended, the husbandman threw down his spade and plough and put on his holiday attire, the very tavern-keepers left their gains. The roads were empty of travellers, the sea of sailors. The mother came to church with the whole band of her children and domestics, her husband and the whole family rejoicing with her. All Christians assembled everywhere as members of one family. The poor man dressed like the rich, and the rich wore his gayest attire; those who had none of their own borrowed of their neighbours; the very children were made to share in the joy of the feast by putting on new clothes."

67 But you mention two things in particular, which you say are founded on tradition, and which are not in scripture — Lent and Sunday. The apostles, you say, instituted the solemn fast of Lent. If they did, certainly it is not found in Scripture. But let us see what the facts are. I need only quote Irenaeus, a godly Father of the church, who had heard Polycarp, who had heard John. There was a dispute between Victor, the bishop of Rome, and the churches of Asia, as to the celebrating of Easter. Victor would have it on Sunday, and the Asiatic churches celebrated it (as did all the old British, till the sixth or seventh century, if I remember right) on the day of the resurrection, whatever day of the week it fell upon. For the Passover was computed by moons, and was held upon the fourteenth day after the new moon, and the resurrection was three days of course after, and this did not always fall on a Sunday. The Easterns went by the days of the month, the Westerns by the days of the week. Well, Victor refused to own them as Christians at all. Irenaeus agreed, it seems, with Victor in opinion as to the day it should be kept upon. But earlier than this, some thirty or forty years before, the aged Polycarp, himself a disciple of John, came from Asia to Rome, to confer with Anicetus, bishop of Rome, about it.

Ecclesiastical history, though miserably undiscerning as to the Lord's way and will, is forced to own, not only heterodox parties, some of them numerous and wide-spread, but the church of the west antagonistic openly and for a long while to that of the east on a trivial question, aggravated later by a graver dogmatic difference after the original breach was healed at the council of Nice in A.D. 325. For how utterly sad to make a public breach about the time of observing the Pasch (or, Easter, as it was called later)? But the saddest fact of all was the church's observance of it at any time, whether when the Asiatics celebrated it, or as the Romans did. It was a return, as Gal. 4 had ruled, to the beggarly elements of the world. In east or in west the church judaised beyond all recovery. At length came the Reformation, which gave occasion to national churches so-called, and subsequently to nonconformist bodies. No wonder that Augustine's idea of the invisible church revived and prevailed among Protestants.

248 But here we begin to get into our old difficulties as to the succession. Optatus, Jerome, Augustine, and others put first Anicetus; next Irenaeus, Tertullian and others put Pius first. Not only so; it is disputed whether Hyginus sat four or twelve years. As Platina, an ancient secretary and historian of the popes, says (sub Pio), "In this place the times vary, as some put Pius, others Anicetus first. The histories also vary. However it may be in so remote a history and such great negligence of [our] ancestors, it will be better to get at the things themselves in some way, [though] done a little sooner or a little after, than pass them altogether" — a strange ground for certainty of faith. In his time arose the dispute of the East with Rome as to the observance of Easter. The East, alleging the apostles' authority, kept it on the 14th of the moon. Victor would have it on the Lord's day, and take the next one to the 14th. Polycarp had come to make peace during the time of Anicetus, but Victor refused communion with all the East, who alleged they followed John; and it remained in abeyance till the Council of Nice, which decided it should be on a Lord's day. So the day of the week carried it against the day of the month, and the church was not divided in spite of Victor.

It is a curious piece of history that the Scotch and British Christians, too, with the north of England, kept Easter as the Asiatics did; and it was centuries after, in 664, that the Roman practice prevailed after a conference in the north of England. It was the Scotch Christians of Iona, who were not subject to any bishop, but governed by presbyters, who evangelized Germany and Switzerland and the north, as far as it was done in early years, but it fell under the power of centralizing Rome. The British and Irish churches did not till long after. The Saxons were evangelized from Rome; and by the Normans, already in subjection to Rome. But this by the bye.

But you shall have, reader, a specimen from history also. After relating what we have stated as to the observation of Easter, and that the Quartodecimans (the Asiatics who kept it the third day after the fourteenth of the moon) alleged that John had taught them; and the Romans boast that they had received their way from Peter and Paul, but that neither could bring a writing to prove it (he does not seem to have valued oral tradition much), he goes on to speak of Lent. Socrates, lib. 5, c. 22. "For these who are of the same faith, the same differ among themselves in rites. It will not therefore be out of place to add somewhat about the various rites of the churches. First, therefore, those fasts which are kept before Easter you will find differently kept among different people; for those who are at Rome fast three weeks continuously, except the sabbath and the Lord's day (it is a question whether this does not apply to Novatians). Those who are in Illyria, and throughout Achaia, and those who live in Alexandria, fast six weeks before Easter, and call that the quadragesimal fast. Others, again, follow a different custom from that. They begin their fast the seventh week before Easter, and, fasting three only of five days with intervals, call the time nothing the less quadragesimal; and I cannot but wonder why, although they differ among themselves about the numbers of days, they still call it by the same name of quadragesimal."

72 "But of this appellation each different person, according to his own invention, gives a different reason: for not only in days alone, but also in abstinence from foods, they are found to differ. For some, indeed, abstain altogether from eating what has had life; others eat fish alone of such as have had life; some, with fishes, eat also of birds, affirming that they also are formed out of water, according to Moses; some abstain from fruit of trees, and from eggs; some eat only bread; others do not use even this. Some, fasting to the ninth hour, eat without distinction of every kind of food afterwards. There are other observances, again, in different nations, and innumerable causes are alleged for them; and since no one can produce a written precept concerning this matter, it appears that the apostles left to the choice and will of every one that each one might do what is good, neither from fear nor necessity." What a certainty of apostolical tradition we have here! Sozomen gives the same accounts. Lib. 7, c. 19. Cassian, too, tells us, as others state (I have not his works), the same thing. For a long time there were only thirty-six days' fast, even when six weeks or forty-two days were kept; because they never fasted on the Lord's day, till at last either Gregory the Great or Gregory II (in the close, that is, of the sixth, or beginning of the eighth, century, for it is disputed which) added Ash-Wednesday and the three following days to make it forty. Think of an apostolic tradition, arranged seven hundred years after Christ, and grown from forty hours to forty days, and all the original reasons gone!

The practice of the early Christians

"Not many days hence" was all that the Lord had said. Their waiting, therefore, would not be long. Yet why there was any delay, and when exactly it would terminate, were questions which very probably none of them could then have answered. But we know, and surely they must afterwards have understood, that the date in the ecclesiastical calendar had been fixed for well-nigh fifteen centuries, and fixed as definitely as that of the Lord's crucifixion. He, the true Paschal Lamb, suffered at the Passover on the 14th of Nisan. Then, as the antitype to the wave sheaf, the first-fruits of the harvest, His resurrection had taken place on the morrow after the Passover Sabbath. And now the full meaning of the introduction at the feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, of the two wave loaves baked with leaven, that new meat offering unto the Lord, was to receive antitypical elucidation, by the presentation to God, through the Gospel about to go forth, of believers from Jews, and also from Gentiles, as first-fruits unto Him (James 1:18). This was to be accomplished through the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, and not otherwise.

Pentecost. — "Not many days hence" was all that the Lord had said. Their waiting, therefore, would not be long. Yet why there was any delay, and when exactly it would terminate, were questions which very probably none of them could then have answered. But we know, and surely they must afterwards have understood, that the date in the ecclesiastical calendar had been fixed for well-nigh fifteen centuries, and fixed as definitely as that of the Lord's crucifixion. He, the true Paschal Lamb, suffered at the Passover on the 14th of Nisan. Then, as the antitype to the wave sheaf, the first-fruits of the harvest, His resurrection had taken place on the morrow after the Passover Sabbath. And now the full meaning of the introduction at the feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, of the two wave loaves baked with leaven, that new meat offering to the Lord, was to receive antitypical elucidation, by the presentation to God, through the Gospel about to go forth, of believers from Jews, and also from Gentiles, as first-fruits to Him (James 1:18). This was to be accomplished through the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, and not otherwise.

It is in the third century that we see the beginnings of an organization of the church above the local level. In the preceding century there had already been councils of bishops on a regional basis, debating about the Montanist crisis in Asia Minor and about the date of Easter. These councils became more and more usual.