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| Chapter II. Of the custom which is kept up in the Province of Egypt for signifying the time of Easter.
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Chapter II.
Of the custom which is kept up in the Province of Egypt
for signifying the time of Easter.
In the country of Egypt
this custom is by ancient tradition observed that—when Epiphany
is past, which the priests of that province regard as the time, both of
our Lord’s baptism and also of His birth in the flesh, and so
celebrate the commemoration of either mystery not separately as in the
Western provinces but on the single festival of this day,1660
| 1660 The observance
of Epiphany can be traced back in the Christian Church to the second
century, and, as Cassian tells us here, in the East (in which its
observance apparently originated) it was in the first instance a double
festival commemorating both the Nativity and the Baptism of our Lord.
From the East its observance passed over to the West, where however the
Nativity was already observed as a separate festival, and hence the
special reference of Epiphany was somewhat altered, and the
manifestation to the Magi was coupled with that at the Baptism: hence
the plural Epiphaniorum dies. Meanwhile, as the
West adopted the observance of this festival from the East, so the East
followed the West in observing a separate feast of the Nativity.
Cassian’s words show us that when he wrote the two festivals were
both observed separately in the West, though apparently not yet
(to the best of his belief) in the East, but the language of a homily
by S. Chrysostom (Vol. ii. p. 354 Ed. Montfaucon) delivered in
a.d. 386 shows that the separation of the two
festivals had already begun at Antioch, and all the evidence goes to
show that “the Western plan was being gradually adopted in the
period which we may roughly define as the last quarter of the 4th and
the first quarter of the 5th century.” Dictionary of Christian
Antiquities, Vol. i. p. 361. See further Origines du Culte
Chrétien, par L’Abbé Duchesne, p. 247
sq. | —letters are sent from the Bishop of
Alexandria through all the Churches of Egypt, by which the beginning of
Lent, and the day of Easter are pointed out not only in all the cities
but also in all the monasteries.1661
| 1661 The “Festal
letters” (ἑοταστικαὶ
ἐπιστολαί, Euseb.
VII. xx., xxi.) were delivered by the Bishop of Alexandria as Homilies,
and then put into the form of an Epistle and sent round to all the
churches of Egypt; and, according to some late writers, to the Bishops
of all the principal sees, in accordance with a decision of the Council
of Nicæa, in order to inform them of the right day on which
Easter should be celebrated. Cassian here speaks of them as sent
immediately after Epiphany, and this was certainly the time at which
the announcement of the date of Easter was made in the West shortly
after his day (so the Council of Orleans, Canon i., a.d. 541); that of Braga a.d.
572, Canon ix., and that of Auxerre a.d. 572,
Canon ii.), but there is ample evidence in the Festal letters both of
S. Athanasius and of S. Cyril that at Alexandria the homilies were
preached on the previous Easter, and it is difficult to resist the
inference that Cassian’s memory is here at fault as to the exact
time at which the incident related really occurred, and that he is
transferring to Egypt the custom with which he was familiar in the
West, assigning to the festival of Epiphany what really must have taken
place at Easter. | In
accordance then with this custom, a very few days after the previous
conference had been held with Abbot Isaac, there arrived the festal
letters of Theophilus1662
| 1662 Theophilus
succeeded Timothy as Bishop of Alexandria in the summer of 385. The
festal letters of which Cassian here speaks were issued by him in the
year 399. | the Bishop of
the aforesaid city, in which together with the announcement of Easter
he considered as well the foolish heresy of the
Anthropomorphites1663
| 1663 The
Anthropomorphite heresy, into which the monks of Egypt had fallen,
“supposed that God possesses eyes, a face, and hands and other
members of a bodily organization.” It arose from taking too
literally those passages of the Old Testament in which God is spoken of
in human terms, out of condescension to man’s limited powers of
grasping the Divine nature and appears historically to have been a
recoil from the allegorism of Origen and others of the Alexandrian
school. The Festal letter of Theophilus in which he condemned these
views, and maintained the incorporeal nature of God is no longer
extant, but is alluded to also by Sozomen, H. E. VIII. xi., where an
account is given of the Origenistic controversy of which it was the
occasion, and out of which Theophilus came so badly. On the heresy see
also Epiphanius, Hær. lxx.; Augustine. Hær. l. and lxxvi.;
and Theodoret, H. E. IV. x. | at great
length, and abundantly refuted it. And this was received by almost all
the body of monks residing in the whole province of Egypt with such
bitterness owing to their simplicity and error, that the greater part
of the Elders decreed that on the contrary the aforesaid Bishop ought
to be abhorred by the whole body of the brethren as tainted with heresy
of the worst kind, because he seemed to impugn the teaching of holy
Scripture by the denial that Almighty God was formed in the fashion of
a human
figure, though
Scripture teaches with perfect clearness that Adam was created in His
image. Lastly this letter was rejected also by those who were living in
the desert of Scete and who excelled all who were in the monasteries of
Egypt, in perfection and in knowledge, so that except Abbot Paphnutius
the presbyter of our congregation, not one of the other presbyters, who
presided over the other three churches in the same desert, would suffer
it to be even read or repeated at all in their meetings.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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