Christian Texts

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. II: The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus.: Of Novatus and his Followers. The Novatians of Phrygia alter the Time of keeping Easter, following Jewish Usage.

Ecclesiastical HistoryNicene and Post-Nicene FathersSocrates Scholasticus

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

This is a chapter from an early Christian ecclesiastical history (in the tradition of Socrates Scholasticus's *Historia Ecclesiastica*), recounting the origins and regional variations of the Novatianist schism. The text explains how Novatian, a Roman presbyter, broke from the mainstream church in the mid-3rd century over the question of whether Christians who had apostatized under the Decian persecution could be readmitted to communion — Novatian argued they could not, while bishop Cornelius extended forgiveness. The chapter makes a distinctive ethnographic claim: that the Novatianist movement took particularly strong hold in Phrygia and Paphlagonia because the inhabitants of those regions were naturally more temperate, chaste, and morally rigorous than other peoples, making Novatian's strict disciplinary stance culturally congenial to them. A specific and notable development the chapter documents is a regional Novatianist synod at the village of Pazum, where a small group of bishops broke from standard Christian Easter reckoning and aligned the feast with the Jewish Passover calendar — a deviation that the major Novatianist bishops did not attend or sanction. The account relies partly on oral testimony from an elderly eyewitness, and closes by noting this Easter controversy would soon split the Novatianist church into two factions.

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol. II: The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus.: Of Novatus and his Followers. The Novatians of Phrygia alter the Time of keeping Easter, following Jewish Usage.

Related pages View as graph →