. . It is om* duty to have nothing in common with the mm'derers of our Lord." This bitter tone against Judaism i-nns through the whole letter. At Nicsea, therefore, the Roman and Alexandrian usage with respect to Easter triumphed, and the Judaizing practice of the Quartodecimanians, who always celebrated Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan, became thenceforth a heresy. Ye.t that practice continued in many parts of the East, and in the time of Epiphanius, about a. d. 400, there were many Quarto- ' Socrates: Hist. Eccl. i. 9; Theodoret: H. E. i. 10; Eusebius: Yita Const, ii. 17. Comp. Hefele, L c. L p. 309 sqq. 406 THIRD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590. decimamaiis, who, as he says, were orthodox, indeed, in doc- trine, but in ritual were addicted to Jewish fables, and built upon the principle : " Cursed is every one who does not keep his passover on the fourteenth of N^isan," * They kept the day with the Communion and with fasting till three o'clock. Yet they were divided into several parties among themselves. A peculiar offshoot of the Quartodecimanians was the rigidly ascetic Audians, who likewise held that the passover must be kept at the very same time (not after the same inanner) with the Jews, on the fourteenth of l^isau, and for their authority appealed to their edition of the Apostolic Constitutions. And even in the orthodox church these measures did not secure entire uniformity. For the council of I^icaea, probably from prudence, passed by the question of the Eoman and Alexandrian computation of Easter. At least the Acts contain no reference to it." At all events this difference remained ; that Rome, afterward as before, fixed the vernal equinox, the terminus a quo of the Easter full moon, on the 18th of March, while Alexandria placed it correctly on the 21st. It thus occurred, that the Latins, the very year after the Nicene council, and again in the years 330, 333, 340, 341, 343, varied from the Alexandrians in the time of keeping Easter. On this account the council of Sardica, as we learn from the recently discovered Paschal Epistles of Athanasius, took the Easter question again in hand, and brought about, by mutual concessions, a compromise for the ensuing fifty years, but without permanent result. In 387 the difference of tlie Egyp- tian and the Roman Easter amounted to fiilly five weeks. Later attempts also to adjust the matter were in vain, until the monk Dionysius Exiguus, the author of our Christian calendar, succeeded in harmonizing the computation of Easter on the basis of the true Alexandrian reckoning ; except that the Galilean and British Christians adliered still longer to the ' Epiphanius, Haer. 1. c. 1. Comp. Ex. xii. 15. - Hefele thinks, however (i. p. 313 f.), from an expression of Cjril of Alexandria and Leo I., that the Nicaenmn (1) gave the Alexandrian reckoning the preference over the Roman ; (2) committed to Alexandria the reckoning, to Rome the announ-