15th Nisan, Friday. Condemnation and Death of Jesus.[110] 16th Nisan, Sabbath. The body of Jesus in the sepulchre. 17th Nisan, Sunday. The Resurrection. In this way, these events could be annually commemorated on the same days in the Jewish Calendar, the day of the week, however, varying, as it does in the case of the Jewish passover. That this was actually done is recognised by Isidore of Seville, when he says,[111] “Formerly the Church kept Easter with the Jews on the fourteenth day of moon, no matter on what day of the week it fell.” But where the Julian, or even the Egyptian, Calendar was in force, if a man wished to proceed accurately in this way, without being tied down to fixed days of the week (_i.e._ Friday for the day of our Lord’s death, and Sunday for the Resurrection), he would nevertheless have to learn on what day of his own Calendar the 15th Nisan of the Jews fell in the year of our Lord’s death. For it was quite impossible for him to look for it at one time in March, at another time in April, according to his own Calendar. Hence arose a striking divergence at the very beginning, which did not admit of being adjusted. Obviously, another method for fixing the date of Easter had to be devised for Gentile converts and for those districts where the Julian, or, at any rate, a non-Jewish, Calendar was in force. At the same time, it is also quite credible, because resting on clear proof, that in Syria and Asia Minor, the Apostles fixed the date of Easter on Quartodeciman principles, while at Rome and Alexandria another method obtained from the beginning. Granted that the Roman Church, during the Apostle’s lifetime, consisted only of converts from Judaism, still the Jews as a whole were such a small minority in Rome that they must have conformed to the Roman method of reckoning time, and were probably, most of them, unfamiliar with the Jewish Calendar. It was different in Asia Minor where the Jews were very numerous and free to follow their own customs, and where a Calendar closely allied to the Jewish was used by the native population. When the Christians of Asia Minor claimed for this practice the ordinance of the Apostles, especially St John and St Philip,[112] their appeal is as much deserving of credit as the claim of the Romans to base _their_ practice on the ordinance of St Peter. That they actually did so, we learn from the Festal Letters of St Athanasius,[113] who says: “The Romans lay claim to a tradition from the Apostle Peter, forbidding to go beyond the 26th Pharmuthi (the 21st April), on the one hand, and the 30th Phamenoth (the 26th March), on the other.” Here we have also the limits of the period within which Easter at that time fell, the 25th March being reckoned as the day of the vernal equinox.