PREFACE
A it was done against the Jews: namely, in a certain sermon against the Jews, held in the month of September of the year 386, Chrysostom, rebuking a great number of the Christians of Antioch who fasted and celebrated Easter with the Jews, or at the time observed by the Jews, says: "For behold," he says, "the first day of Unleavened Bread falls this year on the Lord's Day, and it is strictly necessary that we fast for the whole week. And when the Passion has passed, and the Cross has arrived, and the Resurrection, we still remain fasting." And it often happens that after the Cross, after the Resurrection, the week not yet being completed, we observe the fast. From these words, furthermore, it is clear that those Christians who judaized in observing the fast and celebrating Easter, sometimes fasted when other Christians were celebrating Easter, and sometimes otherwise: they were, namely, fasting on the day of the Resurrection when the Jews celebrated Easter later than the rest of Christians; but they did not fast when the Jews observed the same feast earlier than Christians. In the sermon of Chrysostom mentioned above, and held in about the month of September of the year 386, the subject is undoubtedly the Lent and Easter of the year 387. But in that year, according to the paschal tables, Easter fell on the 25th of April, which is the latest date it can possibly occur. How then could those judaizing Christians have been fasting at Easter in that year, and celebrating Easter later, since Easter cannot occur later than the 25th of April, the day on which the other non-judaizing Christians were celebrating Easter that year, if one is to abide by the paschal tables? Truly a great difficulty, but one which, even by Tillemont's own admission, cannot overthrow the indications of the time by which we assign that homily against the Jews to the month of September of the year 386. For as we said in the same Monitum to the Homilies against the Jews, whether the Antiochenes always followed the calculation of the Alexandrians concerning the Lord's Easter by an invariable law, that is indeed not so fully known to us; and B even if they always followed it, can we affirm that error never occurred in the calculation? Certainly, men most learned in paschal calculations, whom I have consulted, admit that error sometimes occurs in calculations of this kind, and that it has not occurred only many years ago, nor is it always safe to place paschal marks before any other marks of time.
Tillemont, however, who noticed and examined this difficulty in his notes to the Life of Chrysostom, where he treats of the Homilies against the Jews, made no mention of it in his notes to the Life of the Emperor Theodosius, where he orders these homilies of Chrysostom to the people of Antioch as if Easter, as the paschal tables report, had fallen on the twenty-fifth of April. He therefore places the first homily shortly before the sedition; the sedition, indeed, on the twenty-sixth of February, ten days before Lent, which began at Antioch on the second day of our Quinquagesima, falling that year on the 8th of March. The second homily either on Thursday or Saturday before Lent, the 6th of March, the eighth day after the sedition. The third on the following Sunday, the 7th of March, or thereabouts. The fourth on the following Monday, the 8th of March. The fifth on Tuesday, the 9th of March. The sixth on Wednesday, about the 10th of March. The seventh on Thursday, the 11th of March. The eighth on Friday, the 12th of March. The ninth on the Monday of the second week of Lent, the 15th of March. The tenth a few days having passed thereafter. The eleventh, as being transposed, on the Monday of the fourth week of Lent, the 29th of March. The twelfth on the following Tuesday, the 30th of March. The thirteenth on the following Wednesday, the 31st of March. The fourteenth shortly after the one which is numbered tenth, C which was delivered on the fifth Sunday of Lent, the 5th of April. The fifteenth on the Saturday of the second week of Lent, or the 20th of March. The sixteenth on the third Sunday of Lent, the 21st of March. The seventeenth about the end of the fourth week of Lent. The eighteenth on the Sunday of the fifth of April or thereabouts. The nineteenth after the fourteenth, about the 11th of April. The twentieth on the day of Easter, the 25th of April. The twenty-first about the same time as the twenty-second following, which was delivered on the Friday after Passion Sunday, the 16th of April. In this way Tillemont attempts to restore the disordered series of these homilies with the utmost accuracy; to whom, as we agree in many points, in others we are forced to dissent. The order of the homilies as he determined it, we represent here at a single glance.
Tillem. 1. Edit. Front. Prima. Tillem. 12. Edit. Front. Decima sexta. 2. Secunda. 13. Undecima. 3. Tertia. 14. Duodecima. 4. Quarta. 15. Decima tertia. 5. Quinta. 16. Decima septima. 6. Sexta. 17. Decima octava. 7. Septima. 18. Decima quarta. 8. Octava. 19. Decima nona. 9. Nona. 20. Vigesima secunda. 10. Decima. 21. Vigesima prima. 11. Decima quinta. 22. Vigesima.
But before we discuss the individual homilies, and say a few words about both the order and the argument of each, it will be useful to note, from the title of the homily which was once numbered twenty-second, but is now numbered twentieth—which title exists in Fronto's notes and in our manuscripts—that this homily was pronounced D ten days before Easter, and likewise from these words before the end of this ho-