Victor, departing from the moderate policy of his predecessor Anicetus, thought the time had come for dealing more drastically with his opponents on the Paschal question, and sought to cut them off from the communion of the Catholic Church[145]. Victor’s attitude called forth remonstrances from various quarters, and was the occasion of a remarkable letter written by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, in the name of the brethren in Gaul, over whom he presided. He declares that the mystery of the Lord’s Resurrection should indeed be celebrated only on a Sunday, yet he strongly urges the impropriety of Victor’s cutting off ‘whole Churches of God’ because of differences on such a matter. He then adds that the controversy was not only on the question as to the day on which Easter should be celebrated, but also on the length and manner of the preceding fast, varieties as to which he recounts (see p. 79); and he goes on to remind Victor that bishops of Rome in former times, while strictly preserving their own usages, did not break the peace of the Church by excommunications directed against those who followed other ways[146]. Letters of similar purport were addressed by Irenaeus to various other bishops. The result of this intervention was that the Asiatic Churches were for the time left undisturbed in the practice of their traditional usages. How soon the Asiatic Churches fell into line with the majority is not apparent. But it seems evident that the change had taken place before the Council of Nicaea. We have seen that in the attempts to commemorate on the proper days the death and resurrection of the Lord, the Asiatics thought most of the _day of the month_, and the Westerns and those who concurred with them thought most of the _day of the week_. But the latter party had obviously to make some attempt to lay down a rule which would at least approximate the date of their Pascha to the time of the year when the Lord suffered. The vernal equinox was taken by them, and by the Church of Alexandria, as the fixed point to which the date of Easter should bear some settled relation.