and “that none should hereafter follow the blindness of the Jews” (Socrates, H.E. i. 9). The correct date of the Easter festival was to be calculated at Alexandria, the home of astronomical science, and the bishop of that see was to announce it yearly to the churches under his jurisdiction, and also to the occupant of the Roman see, by whom it was to be communicated to the Western churches. The few who afterwards separated themselves from the unity of the church, and continued to keep the fourteenth day, were named Quartodecimani, and the dispute itself is known as the Quarto-deciman controversy. Although measures had thus been taken to secure uniformity of observance, and to put an end to a controversy which had endangered Christian unity, a new difficulty had to be encountered owing to the absence of any authoritative rule by which the paschal moon was to be ascertained. The subject is a very difficult and complex one (see also Calendar). Briefly, it may be explained here that Easter day is the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox. This, of course, varies in different longitudes, while a further difficulty occurred in the attempt to fix the correct time of Easter by means of cycles of years, when the changes of the sun and moon more or less exactly repeat themselves. At first an eight years’ cycle was adopted, but it was found to be faulty, then the Jewish cycle of 84 years was used, and remained in force at Rome till the year 457, when a more accurate calculation of a cycle of 532 years, invented by Victorius of Acquitaine, took its place. Ultimately a cycle of 19 years was accepted, and it is the use of this cycle which makes the Golden Number and Sunday Letter, explained in the preface to the Book of Common Prayer, necessary. Owing to this lack of decision as to the accurate finding of Easter, St Augustine tells us (Epist. 23) that in the year 387 the churches of Gaul kept Easter on the 21st of March, those of Italy on the 18th of April, and those of Egypt on the 25th of April; and it appears from a letter of Leo the Great (Epist. 64, ad Marcian.) that in 455 there was a difference of eight days between the Roman and the Alexandrine Easter. Gregory of Tours relates that in 577 “there was a doubt about Easter. In Gaul we with many other cities kept Easter on the fourteenth calends of May, others, as the Spaniards, on the twelfth calends of April.”
The ancient British and Celtic churches followed the cycle of 84 years which they had originally received from Rome, and their stubborn refusal to abandon it caused much bitter controversy in the 8th century between their representatives and St Augustine of Canterbury and the Latin missionaries. These latter unfairly attempted to fix the stigma of the Quartodeciman observance on the British and Celtic churches, and they are even now sometimes ignorantly spoken of as having followed the Asiatic practice as to Easter. This, however, is quite erroneous. The British and Celtic churches always kept Easter according to the Nicene decree on a Sunday. The difference between them and the Roman Church, at this period, was that they still followed the 84 years’ cycle in computing Easter, which had been abandoned at Rome for the more accurate cycle of 532 years. This difference of calculation led to Easter being observed on different Sundays, in certain years, in England, by the adherents of the two churches. Thus Bede records that in a certain year (which must have been 645, 647, 648 or 651) Queen Eanfleda, who had received her instruction from a Kentish priest of the Roman obedience, was fasting and keeping Palm Sunday, while her husband, Oswy, king of Northumbria, following the rule of the British church, was celebrating the Easter festival. This diversity of usage was ended, so far as the kingdom of Northumbria was concerned, by the council of Streaneshalch, or Whitby, in 654. To Archbishop Theodore is usually ascribed the credit of ending the difference in the rest of England in 669.
The Gregorian correction of the calendar in 1582 has once more led to different days being observed. So far as Western Christendom is concerned the corrected calendar is now universally accepted, and Easter is kept on the same day, but it was not until 1752 that the Gregorian reformation of the calendar was adopted in Great Britain and Ireland. Jealousy of everything emanating from Rome still keeps the Eastern churches from correcting the calendar according to the Gregorian reformation, and thus their Easter usually falls before, or after, that of the Western churches, and only very rarely, as was the case in 1865, do the two coincide.
Easter, as commemorating the central fact of the Christian religion, has always been regarded as the chief festival of the Christian year, and according to a regulation of Constantine it was to be the first day of the year. This reckoning of the year as beginning at Easter lingered in France till 1565, when, by an ordinance of Charles IX., the 1st of January finally took its place.
Four different periods may be mentioned as connected with the observance of Easter, viz. (1) the preparatory fast of the forty days of Lent; (2) the fifteen days, beginning with the Sunday before and ending with the Sunday after Easter, during which the ceremonies of Holy Week and the services of the Octave of Easter were observed; this period, called by the French the Quinzaine de Pâques, was specially observed in that country; (3) the Octave of Easter, during which the newly-baptized wore their white garments, which they laid aside on the Sunday after Easter, known as Dominica in albis depositis from this custom; another name for this Sunday was Pascha clausum, or the close of Easter, and from a clipping of the word “close” the English name of “Low” Sunday is believed to be derived; (4) Eastertide proper, or the paschal season beginning at Easter and lasting till Whit Sunday, during the whole of which time the festival character of the Easter season was maintained in the services of the church.
Many ecclesiastical ceremonies, growing up from early times, clustered round the celebration of the Easter festival. One of the most notable of these was the use of the paschal candle. This was a candle of very large dimensions, set in a candlestick big enough to hold it, which was usually placed on the north side, just below the first ascent to the high altar. It was kept alight during each service till Whitsuntide. The Paschal, as it was called at Durham cathedral, was one of the chief sights of that church before the Reformation. It was an elaborate construction of polished brass, and, contrary to the usual custom, seems to have been placed in the centre of the altar-step, long branches stretching out towards the four cardinal points, bearing smaller candles. The central stem of the candlestick was about 38 ft. high, and bore the paschal candle proper, and together they reached a combined height of about 70 ft., the candle being lighted from an opening above. Other paschal candles seem to have been of scarcely less size. At Lincoln, c. 1300, the candle was to weigh three stones of wax; at Salisbury in 1517 it was to be 36 ft. long; and at Westminster in 1558 it weighed no less than 3 cwt. of wax. After Whitsuntide what remained was made into smaller candles for the funerals of the poor. In the ancient churches at Rome the paschal candlesticks were fixtures, but elsewhere they were usually movable, and were brought into the church and set up on the Thursday before Easter. At Winchester the paschal candlestick was of silver, and was the gift of Canute. Others of more or less importance are recorded as having been at Canterbury, Bury St Edmunds, Hereford and York. The burning of the paschal candle still forms part of the Easter ceremonial of the Roman Catholic Church (see Lights, Ceremonial).
The liturgical colour for Easter was everywhere white, as the sign of joy, light and purity, and the churches and altars were adorned with the best ornaments that each possessed. Flowers and shrubs no doubt in early times were also used for this purpose, but what evidence there is goes against the medieval use of such decorations, which are so popular at the present day.
It is not the purpose of this article to enter on the wide subject of the popular observances, such as the giving and sending of Pasch or Easter eggs as presents. For such the reader may consult Brand’s Popular Antiquities, Hone’s Every-Day Book, and Chambers’s Book of Days.
Authorities.—Bingham, Antiquities of the Christian Church; Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England; Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer (London, 1901); Surtees Society, Rites of Durham, ed. J. T. Fowler (1903); De Morgan, Companion to the Almanac (1845); De Moleon, Voyages liturgiques (Paris, 1718). (T. M. F.)
