lunar year is longer by nearly nine hours than Hippolytus reckoned it, and this error made the cycle very soon to be obviously wrong. Calcu- lating backwards on this cycle, he fixed on Friday 25th March A.D. 29 as the day of the Crucifixion, and this computation, though quite erroneous, has ever since been the basis of a large part of the Church Calendar (see on Christmas below, § 3). The same date, March 25, is also found in the
Acts of Pilate, which probably was written after
'" ilytus, i ' .,,....
(Hcer. 1. 1, contra Quartodecimanos, lib. ii. torn. 1)
Hippol;
ndebted to him. Epiphanius
kept Pascha on March 25. These Christians, ■ thus anticipated a reform much desired in modern times, were not strictly Quartodecimans, for they abandoned 14th Nisan, although they observea Pascha on any day of the week, and so were separated from the Catholics. A slight modifica- tion on Hippolytus' system was made (c. 243) by pseudo-Cyprian in his de Pascha Computus (see Dr. Salmon's article, ' Chronicon Cyprianicum,' in Smith-Wace, Diet, of Chr. Biography).
The Alexandrian Church is thought by Dr. Sal- mon to have used the Metonic cycle of nineteen years, which, somewhat modified, is still in use. Anyhow, the Alexandrians and Romans frequently kept Easter on different days. Another source of error was the determining of the vernal equinox, which at Rome in the 3rd cent, was thought to fall on 18th March, at Alexandria from c. 277 A.D onwards on 19th ^larch (the calculation was made by Anatolius of Laodicea). The date was changed to 21st March (as it is now) in the reign of Dio- cletian.
The later disputes in Britain between the Colum- ban and Augustinian missionaries were due to the
as well as the day of the year, and he thus makes a cjcle of 16 years. But, as a matter of fact, the
former using a cycle which had been employed at Rome itself about A.D. 300, but had long been given up. The Columban missionaries were in no real sense Quartodecimans, though they professed to follow St. John.
(e) The fast before Easter — In the ancient litera- ture we find two aspects of this fast. In the first it is a preparation, whether for the paschal com- memoration itself or for baptism, whether (more- over) the former emphasized the Death or the Resurrection of our Lord. In the second it is designed to mark the sadness of Christians in the days when ' the Bridegroom is taken away '— namely, the days when our Lord's body was in the tomb. In this case it nmst be looked upon as a Good Friday fast, extended by ' superposition ' to the Saturday. As the normal time fur baptism was Easter, usually early on Easter morning,— a fact which the discovery of so many Church Orders has lately made abundantly clear,— it follows that the resultant fast would be the same, whichever account of its origin is the more primitive.
For the first aspect we have the Didache. This Church Order, as has been said, does not mention Easter. But it gives what seems to be an ex- haustive list of the fasts known to the writer at the beginning of the 2nd cent., and says (§ 7) : ' Before the baptism let him that baptizeth and him that is baptized fast, and any others also who are able ; and tliou shalt order him that is baptized to fast a day or two before.' It then prescribes the Wednesday and Friday firsts. We thus have the curious result that a fast of one or two daj's is mentioned earlier than the festival which at that time, or at any rate soon after, followed it ; and the fast is connected not with the death of our Lord, but with baptism. It i-; significant that in the Didache not only the baiitized and the baj- tizer fast, but alsu ' any others who are able.' And the silence of the' Apostolic Fathers and Justin Martyr about Easter makes it not impo^
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN
CALENDAR, THE CHRISTIAN 259
fast was emphasized more than the paschal festival Irenaeus also speaks of the fast before Easter Sun day in a way which seems to exclude the idea of a Good Friday fast extended to Saturday. His words are thus given by Eusebius (HE v. 24) : ' Some think that they ought to fast for one day, others for two days, others even for several, while others reckon forty hours both of day and night to their day. And this variety in its observance has not originated in our time but long before, in that of our ancestors' (. . . oi Si xai irXeidvas' oi 5^ Tfcro-apd- KOfTa (ipas r^/xepivds t( Kai vvKTcpivas avixy.(Tpov(n TT]y Tl)jJpav avTuv k.t.\.). Some have put a stop after Teaaapinovra (among others Rufinus, who trans- lated Irenceus into Latin), making the writer say that some fasted forty days. But a forty days' fast, as we shall see, was an invention of the 4th cent., and Eufinus is interpreting Irenaeus by the practice of his own day. Moreover, this punctuation makes no sense of the words that follow, for no one can suppose that there was an absolute fast, night and day, for forty days, and, if not, the reference to ' night and day ' has no point. Irenteus seems clearly to mean that the fast lasted, variously, for one day, for two days, for several days, while some made a continuous fast of forty hours. The words, especially ' several days,' seem definitely to determine his point of view, that the fast was a preparation for tne festi- val rather than an extension of Good Friday. The Church Orders definitely speak in the same sense. Baptism is described as taking place before the Easter Eucharist, and the directions for the paschal fast and solemnities generally follow immediately after the directions for baptism. The arrange- ment suggests that in the mind of the author of the lost ancestor of so many of these manuals, — for most of them are of one family and follow the same outline,— the preparation for baptism was the original object of the Lenten fast. The Canons of Hippolytits (§§ 150-152 ; but these are bracketed by Achelis as probable interpolations) speak of a baptismal fast of the newly baptized, and those who fast with them. In § 106 a fast of the candi- dates on the Fridays is mentioned ; on the Satur- day they are exorcized (§ 108) and keep vigil all night, and are baptized at cock-crow (§ 112). The Egyptian Church Order (Sahidic Eccles. Canons, § 45) prescribes a Good Friday fast. The Verona Latin Fragments are wanting in the parallel pas- sage, but make the fast a two days' one in a later chapter (Hauler, p. 116). The Testament of our Lord (ii. 6) says definitely : ' Let them fast both on the Friday and on the Saturday ' ; and this is not improbably also the meaning of both tlie Hippoly- tean Canons and the Egyptian Church Order. The latter, at least, in a later section (§ 55) speaks of the fast as a two days' one. Now the Egyptian Church Order and the Verona Fragments say that if a sick person cannot fast on the two days, he is to fast on the Saturday/. The Testament of our Lord (ii. 20) implies the same thing. But this puts the idea of a Good Friday fast extended over the Saturday out of the question. Even the Apos- tolic Constitutions, which exhibit a later stage and a longer fast, speak of the two days' absolute fast, and say that if any one cannot fast on tlie two days he is at least to observe the Saturday (v. 18). It is a characteristic of this last named Church Order to retain ancient features even wlien some- what inconsistent with its own later point of view. The other aspect, namely, of a Good Friday fast extended, is found in TertuUian. He speaks of the ' Psychics,' — i.e. the Church at large, from w hich he had now separated,— thinking that those diays were definitely appointed for fasts in which the Bridegroom was taken away. The same lan-