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On the Paschal Feast

De solemnitate paschali · Περὶ τῆς τοῦ Πάσχα ἑορτῆς

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Contents

Only the Greek fragments printed in Migne; the work is incomplete.

  1. 1Eusebius recalls the Hebrew Passover, with its lamb, blood on the doorposts and unleavened bread, as a type fulfilled in Christ, the paschal Lamb who takes away the world's sin.
  2. 2Eusebius explains that Christians, fed by Christ's teaching and marked by faith in his blood, keep a spiritual Passover, and that the feast fittingly falls in spring, the head of the year, when nature renews itself.
  3. 3Eusebius argues that the spring season of the Passover, the season of creation itself, was also the season of Christ's saving Pascha, the sun of righteousness who brought the spring of the Spirit's gifts to all nations.
  4. 4Eusebius describes the forty-day fast before Easter, after the example of Moses and Elijah, as preparation for the spiritual crossing to heaven, and Pentecost as the image of the kingdom, its first-fruit loaves foreshadowing the nations offered to God.
  5. 5Eusebius explains that during the fifty days of Pentecost Christians neither kneel nor fast, as an image of the rest of the resurrection ending with the Ascension, and that Christ suffered at Passover because the Jewish lamb was a type of him.
  6. 6Eusebius contrasts the yearly Jewish Passover with the Christian Pascha celebrated every Lord's day, when believers partake of the body of the true Lamb and keep a spiritual circumcision and unleavened bread.
  7. 8Eusebius reports that at the Council of Nicaea, under Constantine, the great majority of bishops from north, south and west outvoted the easterners on the date of Easter, so that one feast was kept by all, and he denies that the Gospel account of the Last Supper is a command to keep the Jewish date.
  8. 9Eusebius argues from John and Luke that Jesus ate his Passover with the disciples on Thursday, a day before the Jews ate theirs on the day of his death, so that the Christian Pascha is new and distinct from the Jewish one.
  9. 11Eusebius urges Christians to keep the Pascha with Christ every week in a spiritual way, with Friday as a fast in memory of the passion.
  10. 12Eusebius argues that the Gospels show the Jews ate their Passover a day after Jesus ate his, and that Christians keep the mysteries all year, fasting on Fridays and receiving Christ's body and blood every Sunday.

About this work

Author
Eusebius of Caesarea
Attribution
authentic · Excerpts from Eusebius's treatise On the Paschal Feast, addressed to the emperor Constantine; the Greek fragments were published by Angelo Mai from a Vatican manuscript, and the full work survives only in part (a Syriac version of more is known). Migne prints them with a Latin translation.
Standing
Not honoured as a saint or in a church calendar by the Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant traditions. Bishop of Caesarea, in communion with most of the East; sympathetic to Arius but signed Nicaea.
Date
ca. 325–337 (approximate) · Written for Constantine after the Council of Nicaea, which settled the date of Easter.
Written at
Caesarea, Palestine (probable)
Language
Greek
Genre
treatise
Reference system
chapter (Migne's chapters α΄–ιβ΄, here 1–12; chapters 7 and 10 are not marked in the scan and lie inside chapters 6 and 9)
SBL abbreviation
Pasch.Not yet checked
Clavis
CPG 3495 (not yet checked)
Text from
J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus, Series Graeca, vol. 24 (Paris, 1857), cols. 693–706, after Mai (1825–38) (Printed edition in the public domain; Greek text from the Internet Archive OCR of a library scan)
Critical editions
Angelo Mai, Nova Patrum Bibliotheca 4.1 (Rome, 1847), the Greek fragments; Michel Richard, Opera minora, Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), the fragments of Eusebius on the Pasch (not reproduced here) (cited, not reproduced)