Easter controversy

The Easter controversy is a series of controversies about the proper date to celebrate the Christian festival of Easter. To date, there are four distinct phases of the dispute.

First phase

This was mainly concerned with whether Christians should follow Old Testament practices, see also Biblical law in Christianity. Eusebius of Caesarea ("Church History", V, xxiii) wrote: :"A question of no small importance arose at that time [i.e. the time of Pope Victor I, about A.D. 190] . The dioceses of all Asia [the Eastern Mediterranean] , as from an older tradition, held that the fourteenth day of the moon, on which day the Jews were commanded to sacrifice the lamb, should always be observed as the feast of the life-giving pasch ["epi tes tou soteriou Pascha heortes"] , contending that the fast ought to end on that day, whatever day of the week it might happen to be. However it was not the custom of the churches in the rest of the world to end it at this point, as they observed the practice, which from Apostolic tradition has prevailed to the present time, of terminating the fast on no other day than on that of the Resurrection of our Saviour."

Quartodecimanism refers to the practice of fixing the celebration of Passover for Christians on the fourteenth (Latin [http://www.vatican.va/archive/bible/nova_vulgata/documents/nova-vulgata_vt_leviticus_lt.html#23 "quarta decima"] ) day of Nisan in the Old Testament's Hebrew Calendar (for example