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Quartodecimani

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a name in ecclesiastical history for those Christians of Asia Minor who, in the first ages of the Church, annually commemorated the death of Christ at the 14th of Nisan, the time when the Jews celebrated the Passover, (See PASCHAL CONTROVERSY), and three days after the resurrection of Jesus, totally ignoring the regard for the day of the week usually taken as the one on which this event is believed to have occurred. This difference it was determined to adjust at the Council of Nice in A.D. 325, when it was decreed that the practice of observing Friday as the day of crucifixion (q.v.), and the following Sunday as the day of ascension (q.v.), should prevail. Those who refused to accept this decision of the council were denominated Quartodecimani, because of their contending for the fourteenth day of the first Hebrew month as the proper time for observing Easter, quartadecima lunae, on the fourteenth day of the moon. They are sometimes called Paschites. The Audaeans, Montanists, Novatians, and other sects were Quartodecimani. See Schaff, Ch. Hist. vol. ii; Riddle, Christian Antiquities; Waterland, Works, vol. vi.