and that the Christians should break their fast on their Pascha—the Sunday that comes after the Jews’ Passover.

For, as we have already noted, whenever the Christians celebrated the Feast of al-Ḥamīm, that is, the Feast of the Baptism, they would begin the next day a forty-day fast and afterwards break it. When the Jewish festival came, they would celebrate Pascha together with the Jews, so the day of Pascha became for them the day on which they ended the fast.

They further ruled that no bishop may have a wife. From the time of the Apostles up to the Council of the 318, bishops did in fact have spouses: when a married man was chosen as a bishop, his wife continued to stay with him and was not separated from him. The patriarchs alone were excepted, for they had no wives, nor was anyone who had a wife ever made a patriarch.

He said: They departed honoured and favoured, and that was in the seventeenth year of Constantine’s reign.

He also said: King Constantine enacted three ordinances. The first was to smash the idols and put to death all who worshipped them. The second was that only the sons of Christians be entered in the state register and that they alone serve as commanders and officers.