tus, now or late bishop of the West-Saxons, and Wilfrid, 664. afterwards bishop of York 2. Having taken their places, king Oswy appointed Colman to speak first; who said, that the manner in which he observed the Easter festival was the same he had received from those who had sent him thither, and they from their forefathers, all men of great and unquestionable holiness; and that they had taken their pattern from the beloved evangelist St. John, who had taught that observance to the churches he had presided over. Colman having ended his discourse, king Oswy appointed Agilbertus to begin; but he, excusing himself by reason of his unskilfulness in the English tongue, desired that Wilfrid might speak the sense of his party. King Oswy readily admitted the excuse of Agilbert, and commanded Wilfrid to speak; and Wilfrid as readily obeyed, and said, "Our manner in observing Easter is the same with what we have seen at Rome, in Italy, and France, the same that Africa, Asia, Greece, and Egypt, and generally the whole Christian world observe, excepting the Britons and Scots and their followers" 3. 2. This controversy, how little soever it may appear, had given a great deal of trouble to some of the preceding ages of the church. The resurrection of our blessed Lord, as it consummated the evidence of his being the promised Messiah, and, in consequence thereof, the truth of the doctrines which he had delivered, so it had all the marks of veneration the importance of the thing deserved, and secms, from the day in which it was accomplished, to have been received as a festival of the Christian church; and both the annual and weekly commemoration thereof extended together with the pale of the church1. 2 Bed. Eccles. Hist. III, 25. [Bede does not mention the presence of Eanfled. Besides the two kings, "pater scilicet et filius", he says there were present on the Scottish side, "Colman cum clericis suis de Scottia", Cedd bishop of the EastSaxons "jamdudum ordinatus a Scottis", and "Hild abbatissa cum suis"; on the other side, Agilberct bishop of the West-Saxons, Agatho a presbyter whom he had brought with him, Wilfrid, Jacobus, a deacon 3 Bed. ibid. 1 [The earliest Christians appear to have had annually a solemn paschal supper, at which, like the Jews, they partook of a paschal lamb. In some of the eastern churches the practice continues to 664. But, as this festival was received by the consent, rather than any known command of Christ or his apostles, or any this day; in the west only the merest relics of the custom remain. The object of it was, to follow the example of our blessed Saviour, who partook of the passover with his apostles on the night before his crucifixion; to celebrate the institution of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which he then ordained; and, among the churches of the Lesser Asia at any rate, to keep the anniversary of his death. For these Asiatic Christians and others also of the east adhered closely to the Jewish rule, and had their paschal meal on the fourteenth day of the first month, whatever might be the day of the week on which it fell; and then on the third day afterwards, be the day of the week again what it might, they kept another feast in commemoration of the resurrection of our Lord: whereas the rest of Christendom not only deferred the paschal supper to the evening before the day on which they annually commemorated the resurrection, but also kept that annual commemoration always on a Sunday, thinking it wrong to celebrate their Easter festival on any other day of the week than that which the Lord had made peculiarly his own by rising on it from the dead. The Quartodeci mans, first and most properly so called, were these Asiatic Christians, who ate their paschal supper on the fourteenth day of the month, and kept their Easter on the third day afterwards, without regard to the days of the week. See this most lucidly and learnedly set forth by Mosheim in his treatise de Reb. Christ. ante Constant. Sæc. II, § 71, PP. 435-445. The dissensions and controversies concerning this subject were at length set at rest, and uniformity to a certain extent was established, by help of the Nicene council in the year 325. And from that time all Christian churches everywhere have had their Easter day on the first day of the week. But differences and disputes were not yet at an end. For, as the festival varied with the moon, it was by no means an easy thing to determine beforehand on what Sunday it ought to be held; and the cycles by which people attempted in those times to adjust the courses of the lunar months and of the solar year together were so various, and all of them so inexact, that Easter was frequently kept a week or even a month sooner in some places than in others. And besides this cause of difference, resulting from the defect of astronomical science, there were some churches which kept the feast of the resurrection even as early as the fourteenth day of the first lunar month, when that day fell upon Sunday; while others deferred it in that case to the following Sunday, the twenty-first day of the month. In these latter churches Easter might fall on the fifteenth or twenty-first or any intermediate day of the month: the former, among which were the British and Scottish (or Irish), could not have it later than the twentieth, but might have it as early as the fourteenth; and on that account they were now branded, less appropriately, with the ancient name of Quartodecimans. These differences, throughout the western church at least, came gradually to a close; partly by the general reception of the rule, that the feast of the resurrection ought never to be celebrated on any earlier day than the fifteenth of the first moon; and partly by the adoption of an amended cycle, which, after several improvements had before been made by various men of science, was at length put forth by Dionysius Exiguus a Roman abbot in the year 527, and which remained in use from that time to the reformation of the calendar effected by pope Gregory XIII in 1582. But in the mean time the British isles had become severed, by a barrier more effective than the sea, from inter authoritative act of the church, so there was no time established for the annual celebration thereof. Hence the usages of the church became very different. And because the resurrection of Christ fell in with the Jewish passover, some Christians took their rule from that rule which God had given to the Jews for the celebration of the passover, and observed their Easter from the fourteenth day of the first month inclusive till the twentieth, without any regard to the day of the week on which it happened. And this, as Socrates observes, was the general practice of the churches of the lesser Asia: these from hence acquired the title of Quartodecimans; and, the better to justify their practice, these pretended to follow the tradition and example of St. John2. those of their There were others which, though they pretended to the tradition and rule of St. John, yet never observed their Easter but on the first day of the week. This was the case of the British and Scottish churches, and establishment amongst the English Saxons. the first day of the week from the fourteenth inclusive to the twentieth after the full moon following the vernal equinox3. Their rule was But the usage which was at this time more generally received, and here contended for, was that which was called the rule of St. Peter and St. Paul, and this was the first Sunday from the fourteenth day at evening till the one and twentieth of the moon following the vernal equinox. This, as Wilfrid pretended, was the rule established by the council course with the civilized world. First the Roman troops had been withdrawn, and then the Saxon invaders had thronged in, and England at least had been reclaimed to heathendom. The British Christians, retreating into Wales and Cornwall, were not less insulated than their Irish neighbours; and clung, all the more earnestly for their sufferings, to their ancient faith, and also to the customs and observances which had been handed down to them from their forefathers. Augustin, as we have seen in iii, 3, entirely failed to move them: nothing that came recommended by the patronage of the Saxon invaders could find favour in their sight: INETT, VOL. I. Н and it was not till late in the eighth 2 Socrat. Hist. Eccles. V, 22. 664. 664. : of Nice but in this he contradicts the authority of Socrates, who saith that that council did not determine, but recommend a general unity ; and Eusebius saith much the same thing, only adds, that it was there decreed that the Christians should not follow the usage of the Jews. And indeed, notwithstanding all the zeal of Wilfrid and those of his party to shelter their pretence under the authority of that council and the names of St. Peter and St. Paul and the first ages of the Romish church, it is very evident that the cycle and computation upon which this side of the controversy was grounded had its beginning from the Greeks, and not till after the council of Nice. Yet it must be confessed that that cycle was at this time generally received, and that the Britons and Scots were at this time singular in their observance of this festival. And so they might have continued, and in peace and charity too, had the spirit as well as the usages of the first ages descended to the present age: for Eusebius and Socrates have both observed, that, till the sour and peevish zeal of Victor bishop of Rome disturbed the quiet and peace of Christendom, every church sat quiet and undisturbed in the enjoyment of its own usages, and notwithstanding their different ceremonies a common spirit of peace and charity dwelt among them; and, when that undiscreet prelate interrupted it, Irenæus bishop of Lyons in France very justly and with great sharpness reproved him for it". 4 ["Et hoc esse verum Pascha, hoc solum fidelibus celebrandum, Nicæno concilio non statutum noviter, sed confirmatum est, ut ecclesiastica docet historia."] Bed. ibid. [See Euseb. Vit. Constantin. III, 18, 19; Socrat. I, 9, 10.] 5 [Οὗτοι γὰρ πάντες (all the Christians of Europe and Africa, and some of Asia,) тOÛTOV TOLOÛVTES τὸν τρόπον οὐδέποτε πρὸς ἑαυτοὺς διεφώνησαν· καὶ οὐχ, ὥς τινες ἐπεθρύλλησαν, ἡ ἐπὶ Κωνσταντίνου σύνοδος τὴν ἑορτὴν ταύτην παρέτρεψεν (the synod did not alter the feast, or turn it aside from its course). αὐτὸς γὰρ Κωνσταντῖνος τοῖς διαφωνοῦσι περὶ ταύτης τῆς ἑορτῆς γράφων παρῄνεσεν ὅπως ἂν αὐτοὶ ὀλίγοι ὄντες μμovтai тoÙS Tλelovas.] Socrat. V, 22. [The Nicene decision concerning the paschal feast is stated briefly in the synodical epistle of that council preserved in Socrat. I, 9; is spoken of as a decree in Constantine's letter, quoted in the next note; and was confirmed by the first canon of the council of Antioch, A.D. 341.] 6 Euseb. Vit. Constantin III, 18. [This chapter contains a large portion of the letter addressed by Constantine to the churches, beginning thus: "Ενθα καὶ περὶ τῆς τοῦ Πάσχα ἁγιωτάτης ἡμέρας, γενομένης ζητήσεως, ἔδοξε κοινῇ γνώμῃ καλῶς ἔχειν, ἐπὶ μιᾶς ἡμέρας πάντας τοὺς ἁπανταχοῦ ἐπιτελεῖν. And then the emperor goes on to argue against following the rule of the Jews, and in favour of uniformity of observance among Christians.] 7 Euseb. [Hist. Eccles. V, 24, where he quotes from the letter sent 3. Wilfrid had the more general usage on the side he pleaded for, and said all the controversy about Easter was capable of: but, if he had obliged the world with the history and foundation of the ecclesiastic tonsure, the second article. in this famous controversy, he had outdone the charity of preceding ages. St. Paul has told us, that if a man wear long hair it is a shame to him; and there is no doubt but this consideration and the general precepts of the gospel had introduced into the church a general modesty and decency of attire, especially among those who were to be examples as well as pastors to the church of Christ. But, beyond this, antiquity has given us no footsteps of the ecclesiastic tonsure; and Bede has left us in the dark as to the arguments on this subject 2; only the writer of Wilfrid's life has told us that the ecclesiastic tonsure was a cutting the hair of such persons as were to receive any holy function in the form of our Saviour's crown of thorns 3. If human nature had not a dark side, and daily experience taught one that the zeal of good men seldom bears true proportion to the sub by Irenæus to Victor.] Socrat. Hist. Eccles. V, 22. [Eusebius says that Irenæus admonished Victor in a fitting manner, роσηкóνтws, and that he did his best to verify his name by being a peacemaker. It is Socrates who attributes some severity to Irenæus, only saying however that he yevvaiws Kaтéopaμev Victor, μεμψάμενος μὲν αὐτοῦ τὴν θερμότητα, διδάξας δὲ ὡς κ. τ. λ. Victor I was bishop of Rome during 192-202.] [i Cor. xi, 14.] 2 [In his narrative of the proceedings at Whitby Bede certainly has reported none of the arguments on the tonsure, saying only, "Nam et de hoc quæstio non minima erat". Hist. Eccles. III, 26. But the letter of abbot Ceolfrith to Naiton king of the Picts, which Bede has preserved in V, 21, and of which he probably was in part the author, after discoursing largely on the paschal question, speaks at some length upon the tonsure also. That letter was written about the year 710 and the Roman party then affirmed that their style of tonsure, the circular, had come 3 Eddii Vit. Wilfrid. c. 6, coll. 664. |