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Controversy over the Date of Easter: Difference between revisions
Controversy over the Date of Easter (view source)
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==Polycarp, Anicetus and Easter== | ==Polycarp, Anicetus and Easter== | ||
Polycarp was a well-known and venerable figure of the first half of the second century. From Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Eusebius we learn that he had listened at Ephesus to St. John the Apostle, who had appointed him bishop of nearby Smyrna. Polycarp was a man of more than eighty when a violent persecution broke out in Smyrna and finally engulfed him (A.D. 156)<ref>Francis X. Glimm, “The Letter of St. Polycarp To The Philippians,” in The Apostolic Fathers, trans. Francis X. Glimm, Joseph M.-F. Marique, and Gerald G. Walsh, vol. 1, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1947), 131.</ref> | |||
Irenaeus recounts the specific instance when Polycarp visited Rome in the time of Anicetus (ca. 155): “although they disagreed a little about some other matters as well, they immediately made peace, having no wish for strife between them on this matter” (5.24.16). Neither Polycarp nor Anicetus was able to persuade the other of the correctness of his own observance, but “under these circumstances they communicated with each other, and in the church, Anicetus yielded the celebration of the Lord's Supper to Polycarp, obviously out of respect, and they parted from each other in peace, for the peace of the whole church was kept by those who observed and those who did not.”<ref>Luke Timothy Johnson, Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2009), 244–245.</ref> | Irenaeus recounts the specific instance when Polycarp visited Rome in the time of Anicetus (ca. 155): “although they disagreed a little about some other matters as well, they immediately made peace, having no wish for strife between them on this matter” (5.24.16). Neither Polycarp nor Anicetus was able to persuade the other of the correctness of his own observance, but “under these circumstances they communicated with each other, and in the church, Anicetus yielded the celebration of the Lord's Supper to Polycarp, obviously out of respect, and they parted from each other in peace, for the peace of the whole church was kept by those who observed and those who did not.”<ref>Luke Timothy Johnson, Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2009), 244–245.</ref> | ||