Sabbatius Breaks with the Novatians

Many, however, paid no attention to these events and gave way to their own depravity. Not only did the Jews remain in unbelief after this miracle, but others too, who love to follow them, were shown to hold views like theirs. Among these was Sabbatius, whom I have mentioned before. He was not content with the rank of presbyter he had reached; from the beginning he had been aiming at a bishopric. He separated himself from the church of the Novatians, using as his pretext the keeping of the Jewish Passover. So he held schismatic meetings apart from his own bishop, Sisinnius, in a place called Xerolophus, where the forum of Arcadius now stands. There he dared to do something that deserved the severest punishment. One day at one of these meetings he was reading the passage in the Gospel where it says, “Now it was the feast of the Jews called the Passover,” and to it he added words that were never written and never heard of before: “Cursed be he who celebrates the Passover outside the days of unleavened bread.” [a]

When these words got about among the people, the simpler members of the Novatian laity were taken in by this trick and flocked to him. But his fraudulent invention did him no good, for his forgery ended in disaster. Shortly afterward he kept this feast ahead of the Christian Easter, and many flocked to him as they usually did. While they were spending the night in the customary vigils, a panic fell on them, as though caused by evil spirits: they imagined that Sisinnius their bishop was coming with a crowd of men to attack them. In such alarm as one would expect, and shut up at night in a cramped place, they trampled one another, so that more than seventy of them were crushed to death. Because of this many deserted Sabbatius, though some who shared his ignorant prejudice stayed with him. How Sabbatius later broke his oath and managed to get himself ordained a bishop, we will tell further on.