AND ANOTHER THING
An Easter tale of disputes, excommunications and a Petrine bar
PAUL JOHNSON
Rome Yu would think that Easter, being the anniversary of the resurrection of Christ and the greatest feast in the Christian Church, would promote peace, reconcilia- tion and charity, and all the other things which the preachers this Sunday say it does. Nothing can be further from the truth. Over the centuries it has provoked more bad temper, and even violence, among holy men and women than any other day of the year. Indeed it still does, because good Christians cannot agree when it is.
The earliest Christians followed the Jew- ish practice and celebrated the feast on a fixed day of the lunar month, 14 Nisan. Or did they? It was certainly the practice in Jerusalem, and thus of what the early Church called 'Asia'. But not in Rome, where they thought it inconceivable that it could be properly marked except on a Sun- day. St Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna and one of the greatest Christians of the 2nd centu- ry, stuck to the fixed date. He was highly orthodox too, fiercely persecuting such diverse heretics as the Marcionites and the Valentinians, and, when seized by the pagans, refusing to recant his beliefs, pre- ferring to be roasted to death, aged 86. He was promptly canonised. However, later in the century, Pope Victor not only opted for Sunday but insisted on excommunicating Bishop Polycrates of Ephesus for sticking to the fixed day. For this the Pope was soundly rebuked by Irenaeus, the first great Catholic theologian. As all these characters became saints they are still, presumably, i arguing it out in Heaven. At the time, the fixed-day people became heretics, known as the Quatrodecimans, and they in time quarrelled among themselves, engaged in mutual excommunications and were known as Ebionites and Johanneans.
Then there were rows about determining the paschal moon. In Antioch they all fol- lowed the Jewish reckoning; in Alexandria they always put Easter after the vernal equinox. The Council of Nicaea (AD 325) decided in favour of Alexandria, but some refused to follow this ruling, becoming schismatics under the name of the Audiani or Protopascites. There was a further dis- pute at the end of the century over whether to follow a 17-year or an 84-year computa- tion cycle. St Augustine complained that in AD 387 Easter was observed in Gaul on 21 March, in Italy on 18 April and in Alexan- dria on 25 April. This led to more rulings, more excommunications, more heretics. There were further disputes in Charle- magne's day about conflicting cycles, and for centuries the Celtic Church, which had a high opinion of its antiquity, had a quite different system of computation from Rome's. A suspicion that the Celts were still unsound over Easter was one reason why in 1155 Pope Adrian IV, in his bull Laudabiliter, urged the English to conquer Ireland and reform its Church. Thus, alas, began the Irish Problem, and if the Rev- erend Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams snarl at each other today, Easter has something to do with it.
Then there were rows about the name. The early Greek and Latin Churches all used the term Pascha. Justin Martyr derived it from the Greek paschein, to suf- fer. Tertullian laid down: 'It is the Lord's Passover, the passion of Christ.' Augustine denounced this as rubbish. He said it did not come from a Greek word at all, but a Hebrew one, pascha, which he said meant a passing over or transition. Later writers said there was no such word in Hebrew or, if there was, it meant something quite dif- ferent. They claimed the Greek pascha was taken from the Aramaic pisha, the equiva- lent of Hebrew pesah, the Passover. Syrian Christians, however, wrote the word in the form pesha, to rejoice. The Syriac lexicons give it as a verb, 'to celebrate Easter', though the Nestorians, even today, use it in the sense of 'Maundy Thursday'. There is thus dispute over whether Easter really means the Thursday, the Friday or the Sun- day of this week — the passion, the cruci- fixion or the resurrection.
Does it matter? Yes: if you really believe the Resurrection was the greatest event in history, and Easter the most important day of the year, it is — I suppose — important to know when to celebrate it and what exactly you are celebrating.
There is also the question of where best to celebrate it. Some prefer Seville in Spain, where the Holy Week ceremonies are marked by the most elaborate proces- sions, with splendid floats and gruesome figures dressed in what look like Ku Klux Klan uniforms. The hotels are packed and booked up months, even years, in advance, and there is much inappropriate eating of baby lamb and suckling pig and drinking of wine from those difficult bottles with tiny spouts, involving squirting a thin stream of wine into your mouth and getting it all down your front.
Some prefer Jerusalem, and with reason, for nowhere else are you taken back so directly to the earliest days of Christianity. The core of Jerusalem is still a golden city with a feeling not just of great antiquity but of religious conflict. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is in better repair than it used to be, and no longer the scene of unseemly disputes between disreputable bearded monks. But in its dingy recesses, where every inch is carefully demarcated between Latins, Orthodox, Armenians, Copts, Nestorians and the rest, it is still possible to conjure up a world in which saintly and obstinate men excommunicated each other because they could not agree on the chronology or etymology of Easter.
Or there is Rome, the city from which I am sending this despatch. Where Jerusalem is evocative, Rome is grand the Church regnant and militant — and the services of the season are conducted with exemplary splendour, especially in the great basilica of St Peter's. There has been a church on the site since Constantine built one some time before his death in AD 337, because he believed St Peter himself was buried there, after humbly asking to be cru- cified upside-down so as not to appear to rival his Master. More than 130 popes have been interred there since.
I think that, on balance, St Peter's is the place to be at Easter. That was certainly the view of my convivial friend John Raymond, a passionate Catholic convert. During one papal conclave, he discovered, quite by chance, that inside St Peter's there is, or was then, a regular bar, situated, I seem to remember, near the tomb of Pope Benedict XIV. It was for the use of sacristans and other employees of the vast edifice, to save them a long walk, but also open to the pub- lic. John became a habitué and, quite liter- ally, sang its praises. And, come to think of it, what better place to celebrate Easter than in the snug bowels of the greatest church in Christendom?
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