Differing Customs in the Churches

We have now described the various usages that prevailed in keeping the Passover. It seems to me that Victor, bishop of Rome, and Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, reached a very wise decision on the dispute that had arisen between them. The bishops of the West did not think it necessary to dishonor the tradition handed down to them by Peter and Paul, while the bishops of Asia insisted on following the rules laid down by John the evangelist. So they agreed together that each side should go on keeping the festival according to its own custom, without breaking communion with one another. They rightly and faithfully took it that those who agree in the essentials of worship ought not to separate from one another over customs. For you will not find traditions exactly alike on every point in all the churches, even where they hold the same beliefs. [a]

There are, for instance, many cities in Scythia, and yet they all have only one bishop; whereas in other nations a bishop serves as priest even over a village, as I have seen for myself in Arabia and in Cyprus, and among the Novatians and Montanists of Phrygia. Again, there are even now only seven deacons at Rome, exactly the number ordained by the apostles, of whom Stephen was the first martyr; whereas in other churches the number of deacons is left open. At Rome “Hallelujah” is sung once a year, on the first day of the festival of the Passover, so that it is common among the Romans to swear an oath by their hearing or singing of this hymn. In that city the people are not taught by the bishop, nor by anyone in the church.

At Alexandria the bishop of the city alone teaches the people. It is said that this custom has prevailed there ever since the days of Arius, who, though only a presbyter, put forward a new doctrine. Another strange custom also prevails at Alexandria, which I have never seen or heard of anywhere else: when the Gospel is read, the bishop does not rise from his seat. In that city the archdeacon alone reads the Gospel, whereas in some places it is read by the deacons, and in many churches only by the priests; while on great days it is read by the bishops, as at Constantinople, for instance, on the first day of the festival of the resurrection.

In some churches the period called the Forty Days, which comes before this festival and which the people give to fasting, is made up of six weeks. This is so in Illyria and the Western regions, in Libya, throughout Egypt, and in Palestine; whereas at Constantinople and in the neighboring provinces as far as Phoenicia it is made to cover seven weeks. In some churches the people fast on three alternate weeks within a period of six or seven weeks, while in others they fast continuously for the three weeks just before the festival. Some, such as the Montanists, fast for only two weeks.

Assemblies are not held in all churches at the same time or in the same way. The people of Constantinople, and those almost everywhere else, gather together on the Sabbath as well as on the first day of the week, a custom never observed at Rome or at Alexandria. In several cities and villages of Egypt, contrary to the usage established elsewhere, the people meet together on Sabbath evenings and, although they have already eaten, share in the mysteries. The same prayers and psalms are not said, nor the same readings read, on the same occasions in all churches. So the book called “The Apocalypse of Peter,” which the ancients regarded as wholly spurious, is still read in some of the churches of Palestine on the day of preparation, when the people keep a fast in memory of the Savior’s suffering. In the same way the work called “The Apocalypse of the Apostle Paul,” though the ancients did not recognize it, is still highly valued by most of the monks. Some people claim that the book was found during this reign, by divine revelation, in a marble box buried under the ground in Paul’s house at Tarsus in Cilicia. I have been told that this report is false by Cilix, a presbyter of the church at Tarsus, a man of great age, as his gray hair shows. He says that no such event is known among them, and he wonders whether the heretics did not make up the story.

What I have said on this subject must now be enough. Many other customs are still to be found in cities and villages, and those who have been brought up to keep them would think it wrong to abolish them, out of respect for the great men who began them and handed them on. Similar motives must be credited to those who keep different practices in celebrating the feast that has led us into this long digression.