Quartodecimanism - Legacy

Legacy

It is not known how long the Nisan 14 practice lasted. The church historian Socrates knew of Quartodecimans who were deprived of their churches by John Chrysostom, and harassed in unspecified ways by Nestorius, both bishops of Constantinople. This indicates that the Nisan 14 practice, or a practice that was called by the same name, lingered into the 4th century.

Because this was the first-recorded Easter controversy, it has had a strong influence on the minds of some subsequent generations. Wilfrid, the 7th-century bishop of York in Northumbria, styled his opponents in the Easter controversy of his day "quartodecimans", though they celebrated Easter on Sunday. Many scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries thought that the dispute over Easter that was discussed at Nicaea was between the Nisan 14 practice and Sunday observance. According to one account, "A final settlement of the dispute was one among the other reasons which led Constantine to summon the council at Nicaea in 325. At that time, the Syrians and Antiochenes were the solitary champions of the observance of the 14th day. The decision of the council was unanimous that Easter was to be kept on Sunday, and on the same Sunday throughout the world, and that 'none hereafter should follow the blindness of the Jews'". A new translation of Eusebius' Life of Constantine suggests that this view is no longer widely accepted; its view is that the dispute at Nicaea was between two schools of Sunday observance: those who followed the traditional practice of relying on Jewish informants to determine the lunar month in which Easter would fall, and those who wished to set it using Christian computations.

Laurent Cleenewerck suggests that the East-West schism could even be argued to have started with Victor's attempt to excommunicate the Asian churches.

Despite Victor's failure to carry out his intent to excommunicate the Asian churches, many Catholic theologians point to this episode as evidence of papal primacy and authority in the early Church, citing the fact that none of the bishops challenged his right to excommunicate but rather questioned the wisdom and charity of doing so. From the Orthodox perspective, Victor had to relent in the end and we see that the Eastern Churches never grant him presidency over anything other than his own church, his own synod. Cleenewerck points out that Eusebius of Caesarea simply refers to Victor one of the "rulers of the Churches", not the ruler of a yet unknown or unformed 'universal Church.' As the date of observance of the Resurrection of Christ as being on the day of the week Sunday rather than the 14th day of the month was not resolved by Papal authority it was only finally resolved by an Ecumenical Council.

The rejection of Bishop Anicetus' position on the Quartodeciman by Polycarp, and later Polycrates' letter to Pope Victor I, has been used by Orthodox theologians as proof against the argument that the Churches in Asia Minor accepted the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome and or the teaching of Papal supremacy.

Jehovah's Witnesses continue to celebrate the memorial of Christ's death on Nisan 14.