HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH*
CHAPTER VII.
PUBLIC WORSHIP AND RELIGIOUS CUSTOMS AND CEREMONIES.
I. The ancient Liturgies; the Acts of Councils; and the ecclesiastical writers of the period.
II. The archaeological and liturgical works of Martene, Mamachi, Bona, Muratori, Pelicia, Asseman, Renaudot, Binterim, and Staudenmeier, of the Roman Catholic church; and Bingham, Augusti, Siegel, Alt, Piper, Neale, and Daniel, of the Protestant.
§ 74. The Revolution in Cultus.
The change in the legal and social position of Christianity with reference to the temporal power, produced a mighty effect upon its cultus. Hitherto the Christian worship had been confined to a comparatively small number of upright confessors, most of whom belonged to the poorer classes of society. Now it came forth from its secrecy in private houses, deserts, and catacombs, to the light of day, and must adapt itself to the higher classes and to the great mass of the people, who had been bred in the traditions of heathenism. The development of the hierarchy and the enrichment of public worship go hand in hand. A republican and democratic constitution demands simple manners and customs; aristocracy and monarchy surround themselves with a formal etiquette and a brilliant court-life. The universal priesthood is closely connected with a simple cultus; the episcopal hierarchy, with a rich, imposing ceremonial.
In the Nicene age the church laid aside her lowly servant-form, and put on a splendid imperial garb. She exchanged the primitive simplicity of her cultus for a richly colored multiplicity. She drew all the fine arts into the service of the sanctuary, and began her sublime creations of Christian architecture, sculpture, painting, poetry, and music. In place of the pagan temple and altar arose everywhere the stately church and the chapel in honor of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, of martyrs and saints. The kindred ideas of priesthood, sacrifice, and altar became more fully developed and more firmly fixed, as the outward hierarchy grew. The mass, or daily repetition of the atoning sacrifice of Christ by the hand of the priest, became the mysterious centre of the whole system of worship. The number of church festivals was increased; processions, and pilgrimages, and a multitude of significant and superstitious customs and ceremonies were introduced. The public worship of God assumed, if we may so speak, a dramatic, theatrical character, which made it attractive and imposing to the mass of the people, who were as yet incapable, for the most part, of worshipping God in spirit and in truth. It was addressed rather to the eye and the ear, to feeling and imagination, than to intelligence and will. In short, we already find in the Nicene age almost all the essential features of the sacerdotal, mysterious, ceremonial, symbolical cultus of the Greek and Roman churches of the present day.
This enrichment and embellishment of the cultus was, on one hand, a real advance, and unquestionably had a disciplinary and educational power, like the hierarchical organization, for the training of the popular masses. But the gain in outward appearance and splendor was balanced by many a loss in simplicity and spirituality. While the senses and the imagination were entertained and charmed, the heart not rarely returned cold and hungry. Not a few pagan habits and ceremonies, concealed under new names, crept into the church, or were baptized only with water, not with the fire and Spirit of the gospel. It is well known with what peculiar tenacity a people cleave to religious usages; and it could not be expected that they should break off in an instant from the traditions of centuries. Nor, in fact, are things which may have descended from heathenism, to be by any means sweepingly condemned. Both the Jewish cultus and the heathen are based upon those universal religious wants which Christianity must satisfy, and which Christianity alone can truly meet. Finally, the church has adopted hardly a single existing form or ceremony of religion, without at the same time breathing into it a new spirit, and investing it with a high moral import. But the limit of such appropriation it is very hard to fix, and the old nature of Judaism and heathenism which has its point of attachment in the natural heart of man, continually betrayed its tenacious presence. This is conceded and lamented by the most earnest of the church fathers of the Nicene and post-Nicene age, the very persons who are in other respects most deeply involved in the Catholic ideas of cultus.
In the Christian martyr-worship and saint-worship, which now spread with giant strides over the whole Christian world, we cannot possibly mistake the succession of the pagan worship of gods and heroes, with its noisy popular festivities. Augustine puts into the mouth of a heathen the question: "Wherefore must we forsake gods, which the Christians themselves worship with us?" He deplores the frequent revels and amusements at the tombs of the martyrs; though he thinks that allowance should be made for these weaknesses out of regard to the ancient custom. Leo the Great speaks of Christians in Rome who first worshipped the rising sun, doing homage to the pagan Apollo, before repairing to the basilica of St. Peter. Theodoret defends the Christian practices at the graves of the martyrs by pointing to the pagan libations, propitiations, gods, and demigods. Since Hercules, Aesculapitis, Bacchus, the Dioscuri, and many other objects of pagan worship were mere deified men, the Christians, he thinks, cannot be blamed for honoring their martyrs—not making them gods but venerating them as witnesses and servants of the only, true God. Chrysostom mourns over the theatrical customs, such as loud clapping in applause, which the Christians at Antioch and Constantinople brought with them into the church. In the Christmas festival, which from the fourth century spread from Rome over the entire church, the holy commemoration of the birth of the Redeemer is associated—to this day, even in Protestant lands—with the wanton merriments of the pagan Saturnalia. And even in the celebration of Sunday, as it was introduced by Constantine, and still continues on the whole continent of Europe, the cultus of the old sun-god Apollo mingles, with the remembrance of the resurrection of Christ; and the widespread profanation of the Lord’s Day, especially on the continent of Europe, demonstrates the great influence which heathenism still exerts upon Roman and Greek Catholic, and even upon Protestant, Christendom.
§ 75. The Civil and Religious Sunday.
Geo. Holden: The Christian Sabbath. Lond. 1825 (see ch. v.). John T. Baylee: History of the Sabbath. Lond. 1857 (see chs. x.-xiii.). James Aug. Hessey: Sunday, its Origin, History, and present Obligation; Bampton Lectures preached before the University of Oxford. Lond. 1860 (Patristic and high-Anglican). James Gilfillan: The Sabbath viewed in the Light of Reason, Revelation, and History, with Sketches of its Literature. Edinb. and New York, 1862 (The Puritan and Anglo-American view). Robert Cox: The Literature on the Sabbath Question. Edinb. 1865, 2 vols. (Latitudinarian, but very full and learned).
The observance of Sunday originated in the time of the apostles, and ever since forms the basis of public worship, with its ennobling, sanctifying, and cheering influences, in all Christian lands.
The Christian Sabbath is, on the one hand, the continuation and the regeneration of the Jewish Sabbath, based upon God’s resting from the creation and upon the fourth commandment of the decalogue, which, as to its substance, is not of merely national application, like the ceremonial and civil law, but of universal import and perpetual validity for mankind. It is, on the other hand, a new creation of the gospel, a memorial of the resurrection of Christ and of the work of redemption completed and divinely sealed thereby. It rests, we may say, upon the threefold basis of the original creation, the Jewish legislation, and the Christian redemption, and is rooted in the physical, the moral, and the religious wants of our nature. It has a legal and an evangelical aspect. Like the law in general, the institution of the Christian Sabbath is a wholesome restraint upon the people, and a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ. But it is also strictly evangelical: it was originally made for the benefit of man, like the family, with which it goes back beyond the fall to the paradise of innocence, as the second institution of God on earth; it was "a delight" to the pious of the old dispensation (Isa. lviii. 13), and now, under the new, it is fraught with the glorious memories and blessings of Christ’s resurrection and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Christian Sabbath is the ancient Sabbath baptized with fire and the Holy Ghost, regenerated, spiritualized, and glorified. It is the connecting link of creation and redemption, of paradise lost, and paradise regained, and a pledge and preparation for the saints’ everlasting rest in heaven.691
The ancient church viewed the Sunday mainly, we may say, one-sidedly and exclusively, from its Christian aspect as a new institution, and not in any way as a continuation of the Jewish Sabbath. It observed it as the day of the commemoration of the resurrection or of the now spiritual creation, and hence as a day of sacred joy and thanksgiving, standing in bold contrast to the days of humiliation and fasting, as the Easter festival contrasts with Good Friday.
So long as Christianity was not recognized and protected by the state, the observance of Sunday was purely religious, a strictly voluntary service, but exposed to continual interruption from the bustle of the world and a hostile community. The pagan Romans paid no more regard to the Christian Sunday than to the Jewish Sabbath.
In this matter, as in others, the accession of Constantine marks the beginning of a new era, and did good service to the church and to the cause of public order and morality. Constantine is the founder, in part at least, of the civil observance of Sunday, by which alone the religious observance of it in the church could be made universal and could be properly secured. In the year 321 he issued a law prohibiting manual labor in the cities and all judicial transactions, at a later period also military exercises, on Sunday.692 He exempted the liberation of slaves, which as an act of Christian humanity and charity, might, with special propriety, take place on that day.693 But the Sunday law of Constantine must not be overrated. He enjoined the observance, or rather forbade the public desecration of Sunday, not under the name of Sabbatum or Dies Domini, but under its old astrological and heathen title, Dies Solis, familiar to all his subjects, so that the law was as applicable to the worshippers of Hercules, Apollo, and Mithras, as to the Christians. There is no reference whatever in his law either to the fourth commandment or to the resurrection of Christ. Besides he expressly exempted the country districts, where paganism still prevailed, from the prohibition of labor, and thus avoided every appearance of injustice. Christians and pagans had been accustomed to festival rests. Constantine made these rests to synchronize, and gave the preference to Sunday, on which day Christians from the beginning celebrated the resurrection of their Lord and Saviour. This and no more was implied in the famous enactment of 321. It was only a step in the right direction, but probably the only one which Constantine could prudently or safely take at that period of transition from the rule of paganism to that of Christianity.
For the army, however, he went beyond the limits of negative and protective legislation, to which the state ought to confine itself in matters of religion, and enjoined a certain positive observance of Sunday, in requiring the Christian soldiers to attend Christian worship, and the heathen soldiers, in the open field, at a given signal, with eyes and hands raised towards heaven, to recite the following, certainly very indefinite, form of prayer: "Thee alone we acknowledge as God, thee we reverence as king, to thee we call as our helper. To thee we owe our victories, by thee have we obtained the mastery of our enemies. To thee we give thanks for benefits already received, from thee we hope for benefits to come. We all fall at thy feet, and fervently beg that thou wouldest preserve to us our emperor Constantine and his divinely beloved sons in long life healthful and victorious."694
Constantine’s successors pursued the Sunday legislation which he had initiated, and gave a legal sanction and civil significance also to other holy days of the church, which have no Scriptural authority, so that the special reverence due to the Lord’s Day was obscured in proportion as the number of rival claims increased. Thus Theodosius I. increased the number of judicial holidays to one hundred and twenty-four. The Valentinians, I. and II., prohibited the exaction of taxes and the collection of moneys on Sunday, and enforced the previously enacted prohibition of lawsuits. Theodosius the Great, in 386, and still more stringently the younger Theodosius, in 425, forbade theatrical performances, and Leo and Anthemius, in 460, prohibited other secular amusements, on the Lord’s Day.695 Such laws, however, were probably never rigidly executed. A council of Carthage, in 401, laments the people’s passion for theatrical and other entertainments on Sunday. The same abuse, it is well known, very generally prevails to this day upon the continent of Europe in both Protestant and Roman Catholic countries, and Christian princes and magistrates only too frequently give it the sanction of their example.
Ecclesiastical legislation in like manner prohibited needless mechanical and agricultural labor, and the attending of theatres and other public places of amusement, also hunting and weddings, on Sunday and on feast days. Besides such negative legislation, to which the state must confine itself, the church at the same time enjoined positive observances for the sacred day, especially the regular attendance of public worship, frequent communion, and the payment of free-will offerings (tithes). Many a council here confounded the legal and the evangelical principles, thinking themselves able to enforce by the threatening of penalties what has moral value only as a voluntary act. The Council of Eliberis, in 305, decreed the suspension from communion of any person living in a town who shall absent himself for three Lord’s Days from church. In the same legalistic spirit, the council of Sardica,696 in 343, and the Trullan council697 of 692, threatened with deposition the clergy who should unnecessarily omit public worship three Sundays in succession, and prescribed temporary excommunication for similar neglect among the laity. But, on the other hand, the councils, while they turned the Lord’s Day itself into a legal ordinance handed down from the apostles, pronounced with all decision against the Jewish Sabbatism. The Apostolic Canons and the council of Gangra (the latter, about 450, in opposition to the Gnostic Manichaean asceticism of the Eustathians) condemn fasting on Sunday.698 In the Greek church this prohibition is still in force, because Sunday, commemorating the resurrection of Christ, is a day of spiritual joy. On the same symbolical ground kneeling in prayer was forbidden on Sunday and through the whole time of Easter until Pentecost. The general council of Nicaeea, in 325, issued on this point in the twentieth canon the following decision: "Whereas some bow the knee on Sunday and on the days of Pentecost [i.e., during the seven weeks after Easter], the holy council, that everything may everywhere be uniform, decrees that prayers be offered to God in a standing posture." The Trullan council, in 692, ordained in the ninetieth canon: "From Saturday evening to Sunday evening let no one bow the knee." The Roman church in general still adheres to this practice.699 The New Testament gives no law for such secondary matters; the apostle Paul, on the contrary, just in the season of Easter and Pentecost, before his imprisonment, following an inward dictate, repeatedly knelt in prayer.700 The council of Orleans, in 538, says in the twenty-eighth canon: "It is Jewish superstition, that one may not ride or walk on Sunday, nor do anything to adorn the house or the person. But occupations in the field are forbidden, that people may come to the church and give themselves to prayer."701
As to the private opinions of the principal fathers on this subject, they all favor the sanctification of the Lord’s Day, but treat it as a peculiarly Christian institution, and draw a strong, indeed a too strong, line of distinction between it and the Jewish Sabbath; forgetting that they are one in essence and aim, though different in form and spirit, and that the fourth commandment as to its substance—viz., the keeping holy of one day out of seven—is an integral part of the decalogue or the moral law, and hence of perpetual obligation.702 Eusebius calls Sunday, but not the Sabbath, "the first and chief of days and a day of salvation," and commends Constantine for commanding that "all should assemble together every week, and keep that which is called the Lord’s Day as a festival, to refresh even their bodies and to stir up their minds by divine precepts and instruction."703 Athanasius speaks very highly of the Lord’s Day, as the perpetual memorial of the resurrection, but assumes that the old Sabbath has deceased.704 Macarius, a presbyter of Upper Egypt (350), spiritualizes the Sabbath as a type and shadow of the true Sabbath given by the Lord to the soul—the true and eternal Sabbath, which is freedom from sin.705 Hilary represents the whole of this life as a preparation for the eternal Sabbath of the next. Epiphanius speaks of Sunday as an institution of the apostles, but falsely attributes the same origin to the observance of Wednesday and Friday as half fasts. Ambrose frequently mentions Sunday as an evangelical festival, and contrasts it with the defunct legal Sabbath. Jerome makes the same distinction. He relates of the Egyptian coenobites that they "devote themselves on the Lord’s Day to nothing but prayer and reading the Scriptures." But he mentions also without censure, that the pious Paula and her companions, after returning from church on Sundays, "applied themselves to their allotted works and made garments for themselves and others." Augustine likewise directly derives Sunday from the resurrection, and not from the fourth commandment. Fasting on that day of spiritual joy he regards, like Ambrose, as a grave scandal and heretical practice. The Apostolical Constitutions in this respect go even still further, and declare: "He that fasts on the Lord’s Day is guilty of sin." But they still prescribe the celebration of the Jewish Sabbath on Saturday in addition to the Christian Sunday. Chrysostom warns Christians against sabbatizing with the Jews, but earnestly commends the due celebration of the Lord’s Day. Leo the Great, in a beautiful passage—the finest of all the patristic utterances on this subject—lauds the Lord’s Day as the day of the primitive creation, of the Christian redemption, of the meeting of the risen Saviour with the assembled disciples, of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, of the principal Divine blessings bestowed upon the world.706 But he likewise brings it in no connection with the fourth commandment, and with the other fathers leaves out of view the proper foundation of the day in the eternal moral law of God.
Besides Sunday, the Jewish Sabbath also was distinguished in the Eastern church by the absence of fasting and by standing in prayer. The Western church, on the contrary, especially the Roman, in protest against Judaism, observed the seventh day of the week as a fast day, like Friday. This difference between the two churches was permanently fixed by the fifty-fifth canon of the Trullan council of 692: "In Rome fasting is practised on all the Saturdays of Quadragesima [the forty days’ fast before Easter]. This is contrary to the sixty-sixth apostolic canon, and must no longer be done. Whoever does it, if a clergyman, shall be deposed; if a layman, excommunicated."
Wednesday and Friday also continued to be observed in many countries as days commemorative of the passion of Christ (dies stationum), with half-fasting. The Latin church, however, gradually substituted fasting on Saturday for fasting on Wednesday.
Finally, as to the daily devotions: the number of the canonical hours was enlarged from three to seven (according to Ps. cxix. 164: "Seven times in a day will I praise thee But they were strictly kept only in the cloisters, under the technical names of matina (about three o’clock), prima (about six), tertia (nine), sexta (noon), nona (three in the afternoon), vesper (six), completorium (nine), and mesonyctium or vigilia (midnight). Usually two nocturnal prayers were united. The devotions consisted of prayer, singing, Scripture reading, especially in the Psalms, and readings from the histories of the martyrs and the homilies of the fathers. In the churches ordinarily only morning and evening worship was held. The high festivals were introduced by a night service, the vigils.
§ 76. The Church Year.
R. Hospinian: Festa Christian. (Tiguri, 1593) Genev. 1675. M. A. Nickel (R.C.): Die heil. Zeiten u. Feste nach ihrer Entstehung u. Feier in der Kath. Kirche, Mainz, 1825 sqq. 6 vols. Pillwitz: Geschichte der heil. Zeiten. Dresden, 1842. E. Ranke: Das kirchliche Pericopensystem aus den aeltesten Urkunden dargelegt. Berlin, 1847. Fr. Strauss (late court preacher and professor in Berlin): Das evangelische Kirchenjahr. Berl. 1850. Lisco: Das christliche Kirchenjahr. Berl. (1840) 4th ed. 1850. Bobertag: Das evangelische Kirchenjahr, &c. Breslau, 1857. Comp. also Augusti: Handbuch der Christlichen Archaeologie, vol. i. (1836), pp. 457–595.
After the, fourth century, the Christian year, with a cycle of regularly recurring annual religious festivals, comes forth in all its main outlines, though with many fluctuations and variations in particulars, and forms thenceforth, so to speak, the skeleton of the Catholic cultus.
The idea of a religious year, in distinction from the natural and from the civil year, appears also in Judaism, and to some extent in the heathen world. It has its origin in the natural necessity of keeping alive and bringing to bear upon the people by public festivals the memory of great and good men and of prominent events. The Jewish ecclesiastical year was, like the whole Mosaic cultus, symbolical and typical. The Sabbath commemorated the creation and the typical redemption, and pointed forward to the resurrection and the true redemption, and thus to the Christian Sunday. The passover pointed to Easter, and the feast of harvest to the Christian Pentecost. The Jewish observance of these festivals originally bore an earnest, dignified, and significant character, but in the hands of Pharisaism it degenerated very largely into slavish Sabbatism and heartless ceremony, and provoked the denunciation of Christ and the apostles. The heathen festivals of the gods ran to the opposite extreme of excessive sensual indulgence and public vice.707
The peculiarity of the Christian year is, that it centres in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and is intended to minister to His glory. In its original idea it is a yearly representation of the leading events of the gospel history; a celebration of the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ, and of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, to revive gratitude and devotion. This is the festival part, the semestre Domini. The other half, not festal, the semestre ecclesiae, is devoted to the exhibition of the life of the Christian church, its founding, its growth, and its consummation, both is a whole, and in its individual members, from the regeneration to the resurrection of the dead. The church year is, so to speak, a chronological confession of faith; a moving panorama of the great events of salvation; a dramatic exhibition of the gospel for the Christian people. It secures to every important article of faith its place in the cultus of the church, and conduces to wholeness and soundness of Christian doctrine, as against all unbalanced and erratic ideas.708 It serves to interweave religion with the, life of the people by continually recalling to the popular mind the most important events upon which our salvation rests, and by connecting them with the vicissitudes of the natural and the civil year. Yet, on the other hand, the gradual overloading of the church year, and the multiplication of saints’ days, greatly encouraged superstition and idleness, crowded the Sabbath and the leading festivals into the background, and subordinated the merits of Christ to the patronage of saints. The purification and simplification aimed at by the Reformation became an absolute necessity.
The order of the church year is founded in part upon the history of Jesus and of the apostolic church; in part, especially in respect to Easter and Pentecost, upon the Jewish sacred year; and in part upon the natural succession of seasons; for the life of nature in general forms the groundwork of the higher life of the spirit, and there is an evident symbolical correspondence between Easter and spring, Pentecost and the beginning of harvest, Christmas and the winter solstice, the nativity of John the Baptist and the summer solstice.
The Christian church year, however, developed itself spontaneously from the demands of the Christian worship and public life, after the precedent of the Old Testament cultus, with no positive direction from Christ or the apostles. The New Testament contains no certain traces of annual festivals; but so early as the second century we meet with the general observance of Easter and Pentecost, founded on the Jewish passover and feast of harvest, and answering to Friday and Sunday in the weekly cycle. Easter was a season of sorrow, in remembrance of the passion; Pentecost was a time of joy, in memory of the resurrection of the Redeemer and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost.709 These two festivals form the heart of the church year. Less important was the feast of the Epiphany, or manifestation of Christ as Messiah. In the fourth century the Christmas festival was added to the two former leading feasts, and partially took the place of the earlier feast of Epiphany, which now came to be devoted particularly to the manifestation of Christ among the Genthes. And further, in Easter the pavsca staurwvsimon and ajnastavsimon came to be more strictly distinguished, the latter being reckoned a season of joy.
From this time, therefore, we have three great festival cycles, each including a season of preparation before the feast and an after-season appropriate: Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. The lesser feasts of Epiphany and Ascension arranged themselves under these.710 All bear originally a christological character, representing the three stages of the redeeming work of Christ: the beginning, the prosecution, and the consummation. All are for the glorification of God in Christ.
The trinitarian conception and arrangement of the festal half of the church year is of much later origin, cotemporary with the introduction of the festival of the Trinity (on the Sunday after Pentecost). The feast of Trinity dates from the ninth or tenth century, and was first authoritatively established in the Latin church by Pope John XXII., in 1334, as a comprehensive closing celebration of the revelation of God the Father, who sent His Son (Christmas), of the Son, who died for us and rose again (Easter), and of the Holy Ghost, who renews and sanctifies us (Pentecost).711 The Greek church knows nothing of this festival to this day, though she herself, in the Nicene age, was devoted with special earnestness and zeal to the development of the doctrine of the Trinity. The reason of this probably is, that there was no particular historical fact to give occasion for such celebration, and that the mystery of the holy Trinity, revealed in Christ, is properly the object of adoration in all the church festivals and in the whole Christian cultus.
But with these three great feast-cycles the ancient church was not satisfied. So early as the Nicene age it surrounded them with feasts of Mary, of the apostles, of martyrs, and of saints, which were at first only local commemorations, but gradually assumed the character of universal feasts of triumph. By degrees every day of the church year became sacred to the memory of a particular martyr or saint, and in every case was either really or by supposition the day of the death of the saint, which was significantly called his heavenly birth-day.712 This multiplication of festivals has at bottom the true thought, that the whole life of the Christian should be one unbroken spiritual festivity. But the Romish calendar of saints anticipates an ideal condition, and corrupts the truth by exaggeration, as the Pharisees made the word of God "of none effect" by their additions. It obliterates the necessary distinction between Sunday and the six days of labor, to the prejudice of the former, and plays into the hands of idleness. And finally, it rests in great part upon uncertain legends and fantastic myths, which in some cases even eclipse the miracles of the gospel history, and nourish the grossest superstition.
The Greek oriental church year differs from the Roman in this general characteristic: that it adheres more closely to the Jewish ceremonies and customs, while the Roman attaches itself to the natural year and common life. The former begins in the middle of September (Tisri), with the first Sunday after the feast of the Holy Cross; the latter, with the beginning of Advent, four weeks before Christmas. Originally Easter was the beginning of the church year, both in the East and in the West; and the Apostolic Constitutions and Eusebius call the month of Easter the "first month" (corresponding to the month Nisan, which opened the sacred year of the Jews, while the first of Tisri, about the middle of our September, opened their civil year). In the Greek church also the lectiones continuae of the Holy Scriptures, after the example of the Jewish Parashioth and Haphthoroth, became prominent and the church year came to be divided according to the four Evangelists; while in the Latin church, since the sixth century, only select sections from the Gospels, and Epistles, called pericopes, have been read. Another peculiarity of the Western church year, descending from the fourth century, is the division into four portions, of three months each, called Quatember,713 separated from each other by a three days’ fast. Pope Leo I. delivered several sermons on the quarterly Quatember fast,714 and urges especially on that occasion charity to the poor. Instead of this the Greek church has a division according to the four Gospels, which are read entire in course; Matthew next after Pentecost, Luke beginning on the fourteenth of September, Mark at the Easter fast, and John on the first Sunday after Easter.
So early as the fourth century the observance of the festivals was enjoined under ecclesiastical penalties, and was regarded as an established divine ordinance. But the most eminent church teachers, a Chrysostom, a Jerome, and an Augustine, expressly insist, that the observance of the Christian festivals must never be a work of legal constraint, but always an act of evangelical freedom; and Socrates, the historian, says, that Christ and the apostles have given no laws and prescribed no penalties concerning it.715
The abuse of the festivals soon fastened itself on the just use of them and the sensual excesses of the pagan feasts, in spite of the earnest warnings of several fathers, swept in like a wild flood upon the church. Gregory Nazianzen feels called upon, with reference particularly to the feast of Epiphany, to caution his people against public parade, splendor of dress, banquetings, and drinking revels, and says: "Such things we will leave to the Greeks, who worship their gods with the belly; but we, who adore the eternal Word, will find our only satisfaction in the word and the divine law, and in the contemplation of the holy object of our feast."716 On the other hand, however, the Catholic church, especially after Pope Gregory I. (the "pater caerimoniarum"), with a good, but mistaken intention, favored the christianizing of heathen forms of cultus and popular festivals, and thereby contributed unconsciously to the paganizing of Christianity in the Middle Age. The calendar saints took the place of the ancient deities, and Rome became a second time a pantheon. Against this new heathenism, with its sweeping abuses, pure Christianity was obliged with all earnestness and emphasis to protest.
Note. – The Reformation of the sixteenth century sought to restore the entire cultus, and with it the Catholic church year, to its primitive Biblical simplicity; but with different degrees of consistency. The Lutheran, the Anglican, and the German Reformed churches—the latter with the greater freedom—retained the chief festivals, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, together with the system of pericopes, and in some cases also the days of Mary and the apostles (though these are passing more and more out of use); while the strictly Calvinistic churches, particularly the Presbyterians and Congregationalists, rejected all the yearly festivals as human institutions, but, on the other hand, introduced a proportionally stricter observance of the weekly day of rest instituted by God Himself. The Scotch General Assembly of August 6th, 1575, resolved: "That all days which heretofore have been kept holy, besides the Sabbath-days, such as Yule day [Christmas], saints’ days, and such others, may be abolished, and a civil penalty be appointed against the keepers thereof by ceremonies, banqueting, fasting, and such other vanities." At first, the most of the Reformers, even Luther and Bucer, were for the abolition of all feast days, except Sunday; but the genius and long habits of the people were against such a radical reform. After the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century the strict observance of Sunday developed itself in Great Britain and North America; while the Protestantism of the continent of Europe is much looser in this respect, and not essentially different from Catholicism. It is remarkable, that the strictest observance of Sunday is found just in those countries where the yearly feasts have entirely lost place in the popular mind: Scotland and New England. In the United States, however, for some years past, the Christmas and Easter festivals have regained ground without interfering at all with the strict observance of the Lord’s day, and promise to become regular American institutions. Good Friday and Pentecost will follow. On Good Friday of the year 1864 the leading ministers of the different evangelical churches in New York (the Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Dutch and German Reformed, Lutheran, Congregational, Methodist, and Baptist) freely united in the celebration of the atoning death of their common Saviour and in humiliation and prayer to the great edification of the people. It is acknowledged more and more that the observance of the great facts of the evangelical history to the honor of Christ is a common inheritance of primitive Christianity and inseparable from Christian worship." These festivals" (says Prof. Dr. Henry B. Smith in his admirable opening sermon of the Presbyterian General Assembly, N. S., of 1864, on Christian Union and Ecclesiastical Re-union), "antedate, not only our (Protestant) divisions, but also the corruptions of the Papacy; they exalt the Lord and not man; they involve a public and solemn recognition of essential Christian facts, and are thus a standing protest against infidelity; they bring out the historic side of the Christian faith, and connect us with its whole history; and all in the different denominations could unite in their observance without sacrificing any article of their creed or discipline." There is no danger that American Protestantism will transgress the limits of primitive evangelical simplicity in this respect, and ever return to the papal Mariolatry and Hagiolatry. The Protestant churches have established also many new annual festivals, such as the feasts of the Reformation, of Harvest-home, and of the Dead in Germany; and in America, the frequent days of fasting and prayer, besides the annual Thanksgiving-day, which originated in Puritan New England, and has been gradually adopted in almost all the states of the Union, and quite recently by the general government itself, as a national institution. With the pericopes, or Scripture lessons, the Reformed church everywhere deals much more freely than the Lutheran, and properly reserves the right to expound the whole word of Scripture in any convenient order according to its choice. The Gospels and Epistles may be read as a regular part of the Sabbath service; but the minister should be free to select his text from any portion of the Canonical Scriptures; only it is always advisable to follow a system and to go, if possible, every year through the whole plan and order of salvation in judicious adaptation to the church year and the wants of the people.
§ 77. The Christmas Cycle.
Besides the general literature given in the previous section, there are many special treatises on the origin of the Christmas festival, by Bynaeus, Kindler, Ittig, Vogel, Wernsdorf, Jablonsky, Planck, Hagenbach, P. Cassel, &c. Comp. Augusti: Archaeol. i. 533.
The Christmas festival717 is the celebration of the incarnation of the Son of God. It is occupied, therefore, with the event which forms the centre and turning-point of the history of the world. It is of all the festivals the one most thoroughly interwoven with the popular and family life, and stands at the head of the great feasts in the Western church year. It continues to be, in the entire Catholic world and in the greater part of Protestant Christendom, the grand jubilee of children, on which innumerable gifts celebrate the infinite love of God in the gift of his only-begotten Son. It kindles in mid-winter a holy fire of love and gratitude, and preaches in the longest night the rising of the Sun of life and the glory of the Lord. It denotes the advent of the true golden age, of the freedom and equality of all the redeemed before God and in God. No one can measure the joy and blessing which from year to year flow forth upon all ages of life from the contemplation of the holy child Jesus in his heavenly innocence and divine humility.
Notwithstanding this deep significance and wide popularity, the festival of the birth of the Lord is of comparatively late institution. This may doubtless be accounted for in the following manner: In the first place, no corresponding festival was presented by the Old Testament, as in the case of Easter and Pentecost. In the second place, the day and month of the birth of Christ are nowhere stated in the gospel history, and cannot be certainly determined. Again: the church lingered first of all about the death and resurrection of Christ, the completed fact of redemption, and made this the centre of the weekly worship and the church year. Finally: the earlier feast of Epiphany afforded a substitute. The artistic religious impulse, however, which produced the whole church year, must sooner or later have called into existence a festival which forms the groundwork of all other annual festivals in honor of Christ. For, as Chrysostom, some ten years, after the introduction of this anniversary in Antioch, justly said, without the birth of Christ there were also no baptism, passion, resurrection, or ascension, and no outpouring of the Holy Ghost; hence no feast of Epiphany, of Easter, or of Pentecost.
The feast of Epiphany had spread from the East to the West. The feast of Christmas took the opposite course. We find it first in Rome, in the time of the bishop Liberius, who on the twenty-fifth of December, 360, consecrated Marcella, the sister of St. Ambrose, nun or bride of Christ, and addressed her with the words: "Thou seest what multitudes are come to the birth-festival of thy bridegroom."718 This passage implies that the festival was already existing and familiar. Christmas was introduced in Antioch about the year 380; in Alexandria, where the feast of Epiphany was celebrated as the nativity of Christ, not till about 430. Chrysostom, who delivered the Christmas homily in Antioch on the 25th of December, 386,719 already calls it, notwithstanding its recent introduction (some ten years before), the fundamental feast, or the root, from which all other Christian festivals grow forth.
The Christmas festival was probably the Christian transformation or regeneration of a series of kindred heathen festivals—the Saturnalia, Sigillaria, Juvenalia, and Brumalia—which were kept in Rome in the month of December, in commemoration of the golden age of universal freedom and equality, and in honor of the unconquered sun, and which were great holidays, especially for slaves and children.720 This connection accounts for many customs of the Christmas season, like the giving of presents to children and to the poor, the lighting of wax tapers, perhaps also the erection of Christmas trees, and gives them a Christian import; while it also betrays the origin of the many excesses in which the unbelieving world indulges at this season, in wanton perversion of the true Christmas mirth, but which, of course, no more forbid right use, than the abuses of the Bible or of any other gift of God. Had the Christmas festival arisen in the period of the persecution, its derivation from these pagan festivals would be refuted by the then reigning abhorrence of everything heathen; but in the Nicene age this rigidness of opposition between the church and the world was in a great measure softened by the general conversion of the heathen. Besides, there lurked in those pagan festivals themselves, in spite of all their sensual abuses, a deep meaning and an adaptation to a real want; they might be called unconscious prophecies of the Christmas feast. Finally, the church fathers themselves721 confirm the symbolical reference of the feast of the birth of Christ, the Sun of righteousness, the Light of the world, to the birth-festival of the unconquered sun,722 which on the twenty-fifth of December, after the winter solstice, breaks the growing power of darkness, and begins anew his heroic career. It was at the same time, moreover, the prevailing opinion of the church in the fourth and fifth centuries, that Christ was actually born on the twenty-fifth of December; and Chrysostom appeals, in behalf of this view, to the date of the registration under Quirinius (Cyrenius), preserved in the Roman archives. But no certainly respecting the birthday of Christ can be reached from existing data.723
Around the feast of Christmas other festivals gradually gathered, which compose, with it, the Christmas Cycle. The celebration of the twenty-fifth of December was preceded by the Christmas Vigils, or Christmas Night, which was spent with the greater solemnity, because Christ was certainly born in the night.724
After Gregory the Great the four Sundays before Christmas began to be devoted to the preparation for the coming of our Lord in the flesh and for his second coming to the final judgment. Hence they were called Advent Sundays. With the beginning of Advent the church year in the West began. The Greek church reckons six Advent Sundays, and begins them with the fourteenth of November. This Advent season was designed to represent and reproduce in the consciousness of the church at once the darkness and the yearning and hope of the long ages before Christ. Subsequently all noisy amusements and also weddings were forbidden during this season. The pericopes are selected with reference to the awakening of repentance and of desire after the Redeemer.
From the fourth century Christmas was followed by the memorial days of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr (Dec. 26), of the apostle and evangelist John (Dec. 27), and of the Innocents of Bethlehem (Dec. 28), in immediate succession; representing a threefold martyrdom: martyrdom in will and in fact (Stephen), in will without the fact (John), and in fact without the will, an unconscious martyrdom of infanthe innocence. But Christian martyrdom in general was regarded by the early church as a heavenly birth and a fruit of the earthly birth of Christ. Hence the ancient festival hymn for the day of St. Stephen, the leader of the noble army of martyrs: "Yesterday was Christ born upon earth, that to-day Stephen might be born in heaven."725 The close connection of the feast of John the, Evangelist with that of the birth of Christ arises from the confidential relation of the beloved disciple to the Lord, and from the fundamental thought of his Gospel: "The Word was made flesh." The innocent infant-martyrs of Bethlehem, "the blossoms of martyrdom, the rosebuds torn off by the hurricane of persecution, the offering of first-fruits to Christ, the tender flock of sacrificial lambs," are at the same time the representatives of the innumerable host of children in heaven.726 More than half of the human race are said to die in infancy, and yet to children the word emphatically applies: "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven." The mystery of infant martyrdom is constantly repeated. How many children are apparently only born to suffer, and to die; but in truth the pains of their earthly birth are soon absorbed by the joys of their heavenly birth, and their temporary cross is rewarded by an eternal crown.
Eight days after Christmas the church celebrated, though not till after the sixth or seventh century, the Circumcision and the Naming of Jesus. Of still later origin is the Christian New Year’s festival, which falls on the same day as the Circumcision. The pagan Romans solemnized the turn of the year, like the Saturnalia, with revels. The church teachers, in reaction, made the New Year a day of penance and prayer. Thus Augustine, in a sermon: "Separate yourselves from the heathen, and at the change of the year do the opposite of what they do. They give each other gifts; give ye alms instead. They sing worldly songs; read ye the word of God. They throng the theatre come ye to the church. They drink themselves drunken; do ye fast."
The feast of Epiphany727 on the contrary, on the sixth of January, is older, as we have already observed, than Christmas itself, and is mentioned by Clement of Alexandria. It refers in general to the manifestation of Christ in the world, and originally bore the twofold character of a celebration of the birth and the baptism of Jesus. After the introduction of Christmas, it lost its reference to the birth. The Eastern church commemorated on this day especially the baptism of Christ, or the manifestation of His Messiahship, and together with this the first manifestation of His miraculous power at the marriage at Cana. The Westem church, more Genthe-Christian in its origin, gave this festival, after the fourth century, a special reference to the adoration of the infant Jesus by the wise men from the east,728 under the name of the feast of the Three Kings, and transformed it into a festival of Genthe missions; considering the wise men as the representatives of the nobler heathen world.729 Thus at the same time the original connection of the feast with the birth of Christ was preserved. Epiphany forms the close of the Christmas Cycle. It was an early custom to announce the term of the Easter observance on the day of Epiphany by the so-called Epistolae paschales, or gravmmata pascavlia. This was done especially by the bishop of Alexandria, where astronomy most flourished, and the occasion was improved for edifying instructions and for the discussion of important religious questions of the day.
§ 78. The Easter Cycle.
Easter is the oldest and greatest annual festival of the church. As to its essential idea and observance, it was born with the Christian Sunday on the morning of the resurrection.730 Like the passover with the Jews, it originally marked the beginning of the church year. It revolves entirely about the person and the work of Christ, being devoted to the great saving fact of his passion and resurrection. We have already spoken of the origin and character of this festival,731 and shall confine ourselves here to the alterations and enlargements which it underwent after the Nicene age.
The Easter festival proper was preceded by a forty days’ season of repentance and fasting, called Quadragesima, at least as early as the year 325; for the council of Nice presupposes the existence of this season.732 This fast was an imitation of the forty days’ fasting of Jesus in the wilderness, which itself was put in typical connection with the forty days’ fasting of Moses733 and Elijah,734 and the forty years’ wandering of Israel through the desert. At first a free-will act, it gradually assumed the character of a fixed custom and ordinance of the church. Respecting the length of the season much difference prevailed, until Gregory I. (590–604) fixed the Wednesday of the sixth week before Easter, Ash Wednesday as it is called,735 as the beginning of it. On this day the priests and the people sprinkled themselves with dust and ashes, in token of their perishableness and their repentance, with the words: "Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and unto dust thou must return; repent, that thou mayest inherit eternal life." During Quadragesima criminal trials and criminal punishments, weddings, and sensual amusements were forbidden; solemn, earnest silence was imposed upon public and private life; and works of devotion, penances and charity were multiplied. Yet much hypocrisy was practised in the fasting; the rich compensating with exquisite dainties the absence of forbidden meats. Chrysostom and Augustine are found already lamenting this abuse. During the days preceding the beginning of Lent, the populace gave themselves up to unrestrained merriment, and this abuse afterward became legitimized in all Catholic countries, especially in Italy (flourishing most in Rome, Venice, and Cologne), in the Carnival.736
The six Sundays of Lent are called Quadragesima prima, secunda, and so on to sexta. They are also named after the initial words of the introit in the mass for the day: Invocabit (Ps. xci. 15), Reminiscere, (Ps. xxv. 6), Oculi (Ps. xxxiv. 15), Laetare (Is. lxvi. 10), Judica (Ps. xliii. 1), Palmarum (from Matt. xxi. 8). The three Sundays preceding Quadragesima are called respectively Estomihi (from Ps. xxxi. 2) or Quinquagesima (i.e., Dominica quinquagesimae diei, viz., before Easter), Sexagesima, and Septuagesima; which are, however, inaccurate designations. These three Sundays were regarded as preparatory to the Lenten season proper. In the larger cities it became customary to preach daily during the Quadragesimal fast; and the usage of daily Lenten sermons (Quadragesimales, or sermones Quadragesimales) has maintained itself in the Roman church to this day.
The Quadragesimal fast culminates in the Great, or Silent, or Holy Week,737 which is especially devoted to the commemoration of the passion and death of Jesus, and is distinguished by daily public worship, rigid fasting, and deep silence. This week, again, has its prominent days. First Palm Sunday,738 which has been, in the East since the fourth century, in the West since the sixth, observed in memory of the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem for His enthronement on the cross. Next follows Maundy Thursday,739 in commemoration of the institution of the Holy Supper, which on this day was observed in the evening, and was usually connected with a love feast, and also with feet-washing. The Friday of the Holy Week is distinguished from all others as Good Friday,740 the day of the Saviour’s death; the day of the deepest penance and fasting of the year, stripped of all Sunday splendor and liturgical pomp, veiled in the deepest silence and holy sorrow; the communion omitted (which had taken place the evening before), altars unclothed, crucifixes veiled, lights extinguished, the story of the passion read, and, instead of the church hymns, nothing sung but penitential psalms. Finally the Great Sabbath,741 the day of the Lord’s repose in the grave and descent into Hades; the favorite day in all the year for the administration of baptism, which symbolizes participation in the death of Christ.742 The Great Sabbath was generally spent as a fast day, even in the Greek church, which usually did not fast on Saturday.
In the evening of the Great Sabbath began the Easter Vigils,743 which continued, with Scripture reading, singing, and prayer, to the dawn of Easter morning, and formed the solemn transition from the pavsca staurwvsimon to the pavsca ajnastavsimon, and from the deep sorrow of penitence over the death of Jesus to the joy of faith in the resurrection of the Prince of life. All Christians, and even many pagans, poured into the church with lights, to watch there for the morning of the resurrection. On this night the cities were splendidly illuminated, and transfigured in a sea of fire; about midnight a solemn procession surrounded the church, and then triumphally entered again into the "holy gates," to celebrate Easter. According to an ancient tradition, it was expected that on Easter night Christ would come again to judge the world.744
The Easter festival itself745 began with the jubilant salutation, still practized in the Russian church: "The Lord is risen !" and the response: "He is truly risen!746 Then the holy kiss of brotherhood scaled the newly fastened bond of love in Christ. It was the grandest and most joyful of the feasts. It lasted a whole week, and closed with the following Sunday, called the Easter Octave,747 or White Sunday,748 when the baptized appeared in white garments, and were solemnly incorporated into the church.
§ 79. The Time of the Easter Festival.
Comp. the Literature in vol. i. at § 99; also L. Ideler: Handbuch der Chronologie. Berlin, 1826. Vol. ii. F. Piper: Geschichte des Osterfestes. Berlin, 1845. Hefele: Conciliengeschichte. Freiburg, 1855. Vol. i. p. 286 ff.
The time of the Easter festival became, after the second century, the subject of long and violent controversies and practical confusions, which remind us of the later Eucharistic disputes, and give evidence that human passion and folly have sought to pervert the great facts and institutions of the New Testament from holy bonds of unity into torches of discord, and to turn the sweetest honey into poison, but, with all their efforts, have not been able to destroy the beneficent power of those gifts of God.
These Paschal controversies descended into the present period, and ended with the victory of the Roman and Alexandrian practice of keeping Easter, not, like Christmas and the Jewish Passover, on a fixed day of the month, whatever day of the week it might be, but on a Sunday, as the day of the resurrection of our Lord. Easter thus became, with all the feasts depending on it, a movable feast; and then the different reckonings of the calendar led to many inconveniences and confusions. The exact determination of Easter Sunday is made from the first full moon after the vernal equinox; so that the day may fall on any Sunday between the 22d day of March and the 25th of April.
The council of Arles in 314 had already decreed, in its first canon, that the Christian Passover be celebrated "uno die et uno tempore per omnem orbem," and that the bishops of Rome should fix the time. But as this order was not universally obeyed, the fathers of Nicaea proposed to settle the matter, and this was the second main object of the first ecumenical council in 325. The result of the transactions on this point, the particulars of which are not known to us, does not appear in the canons (probably out of consideration for the numerous Quartodecimanians), but is doubtless preserved in the two circular letters of the council itself and the emperor Constantine.749 The feast of the resurrection was thenceforth required to be celebrated everywhere on a Sunday, and never on the day of the Jewish passover, but always after the fourteenth of Nisan, on the Sunday after the first vernal full moon. The leading motive for this regulation was opposition to Judaism, which had dishonored the passover by the crucifixion of the Lord." We would," says the circular letter of Constantine in reference to the council of Nice, "we would have nothing in common with that most hostile people, the Jews; for we have received from the Redeemer another way of honoring God [the order of the days of the week], and harmoniously adopting this method, we would withdraw ourselves from the evil fellowship of the Jews. For what they pompously assert, is really utterly absurd: that we cannot keep this feast at all without their instruction .... It is our duty to have nothing in common with the murderers of our Lord." This bitter tone against Judaism runs through the whole letter.
At Nicaea, therefore, the Roman and Alexandrian usage with respect to Easter triumphed, and the Judaizing practice of the Quartodecimanians, who always celebrated Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan, became thenceforth a heresy. Yet that practice continued in many parts of the East, and in the time of Epiphanius, about a.d. 400, there were many, Quartodecimanians, who, as he says, were orthodox, indeed, in doctrine, but in ritual were addicted to Jewish fables, and built upon the principle: "Cursed is every one who does not keep his passover on the fourteenth of Nisan."750 They kept the day with the Communion and with fasting till three o’clock. Yet they were divided into several parties among themselves. A peculiar offshoot of the Quartodecimanians was the rigidly ascetic Audians, who likewise held that the passover must be kept at the very same time (not after the same manner) with the Jews, on the fourteenth of Nisan, and for their authority appealed to their edition of the Apostolic Constitutions.
And even in the orthodox church these measures did not secure entire uniformity. For the council of Nicaea, probably from prudence, passed by the question of the Roman and Alexandrian computation of Easter. At least the Acts contain no reference to it.751 At all events this difference remained: that Rome, afterward as before, fixed the vernal equinox, the terminus a quo of the Easter full moon, on the 18th of March, while Alexandria placed it correctly on the 21st. It thus occurred, that the Latins, the very year after the Nicene council, and again in the years 330, 333, 340, 341, 343, varied from the Alexandrians in the time of keeping Easter. On this account the council of Sardica, as we learn from the recently discovered Paschal Epistles of Athanasius, took the Easter question again in hand, and brought about, by mutual concessions, a compromise for the ensuing fifty years, but without permanent result. In 387 the difference of the Egyptian and the Roman Easter amounted to fully five weeks. Later attempts also to adjust the matter were in vain, until the monk Dionysius Exiguus, the author of our Christian calendar, succeeded in harmonizing the computation of Easter on the basis of the true Alexandrian reckoning; except that the Gallican and British Christians adhered still longer to the old custom, and thus fell into conflict with the Anglo-Saxon. The introduction of the improved Gregorian calendar in the Western church in 1582 again produced discrepancy; the Eastern and Russian church adhered to the Julian calendar, and is consequently now about twelve days behind us. According to the Gregorian calendar, which does not divide the months with astronomical exactness, it sometimes happens that the Paschal full moon is put a couple of hours too early, and the Christian Easter, as was the case in 1825, coincides with the Jewish Passover, against the express order of the council of Nicaea.
§ 80. The Cycle of Pentecost.
The whole period of seven weeks from Easter to Pentecost bore a joyous, festal character. It was called Quinquagesima, or Pentecost in the wider sense,752 and was the memorial of the exaltation of Christ at the right hand of the Father, His repeated appearances during the mysterious forty days, and His heavenly headship and eternal presence in the church. It was regarded as a continuous Sunday, and distinguished by the absence of all fasting and by standing in prayer. Quinquagesima formed a marked contrast with the Quadragesima which preceded. The deeper the sorrow of repentance had been in view of the suffering and dying Saviour, the higher now rose the joy of faith in the risen and eternally living Redeemer. This joy, of course, must keep itself clear of worldly amusements, and be sanctified by devotion, prayer, singing, and thanksgiving; and the theatres, therefore, remained closed through the fifty days. But the multitude of nominal Christians soon forgot their religious impressions, and sought to compensate their previous fasting with wanton merry-making.
The seven Sundays after Easter are called in the Latin church, respectively, Quasimodo-geniti, Misericordia Domini, Jubilate, Cantate, Rogate, (or, Vocem jucunditatis), Exaudi, and Pentecoste. In the Eastern church the Acts of the Apostles are read at this season.
Of the fifty festival days, the fortieth and the fiftieth were particularly prominent. The fortieth day after Easter, always a Thursday, was after the fourth century dedicated to the exaltation of Christ at the right hand of God, and hence named Ascension Day.753 The fiftieth day, or the feast of Pentecost in the stricter sense,754 was the kernel and culminating point of this festival season, as Easter day was of the Easter cycle. It was the feast of the Holy Ghost, who on this day was poured out upon the assembled disciples with the whole fulness of the accomplished redemption; and it was at the same time the birth-day of the Christian church. Hence this festival also was particularly prized for baptisms and ordinations. Pentecost corresponded to the Jewish feast of that name, which was primarily the feast of first-fruits, and afterward became also the feast of the giving of the law on Sinai, and in this twofold import was fulfilled in the outpouring of the Holy Ghost and the founding of the Christian church." Both revelations of the divine law," writes Jerome to Fabiola, "took place on the fiftieth day after the passover; the one on Sinai, the other on Zion; there the mountain was shaken, here the temple; there, amid flames and lightnings, the tempest roared and the thunder rolled, here, also with mighty wind, appeared tongues of fire; there the sound of the trumpet pealed forth the words of the law, here the cornet of the gospel sounded through the mouth of the apostles."
The celebration of Pentecost lasted, at least ultimately, three days or a whole week, closing with the Pentecostal Octave, which in the Greek church (so early as Chrysostom) was called The Feast of all Saints and Martyrs,755 because the martyrs are the seed and the beauty of the church. The Latin church, on the contrary, though not till the tenth century, dedicated the Sunday after Pentecost to the Holy Trinity, and in the later times of the Middle Age, further added to the festival part of the church year the feast of Corpus Christi, in celebration of the mystery of transubstantiation, on the Thursday after Trinity. It thus invested the close of the church year with a purely dogmatic import. Protestantism has retained the feast of Trinity, in opposition to the Antitrinitarians; but has, of course, rejected the feast of Corpus Christi.
In the early church, Pentecost was the last great festival of the Christian year. Hence the Sundays following it, till Advent, were counted from Whitsunday.756 The number of the Sundays in the second half of the church year therefore varies between twenty-seven and twenty-two, according to the time of Easter. In this part of the year we find even in the old lectionaries and sacramentaries some subordinate, feasts in memory of great men of the church; such as the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul, the founders of the church (June 29); the feast of the chief martyr, Laurentius, the representative of the church militant (August, 10); the feast of the archangel Michael, the representative of the church triumphant (September 29).
§ 81. The Exaltation of the Virgin Mariology.
Canisius (R.C.): De Maria Virgine libri quinque. Ingolst. 1577. Lamberertini (R.C.): Comment. dum De J. Christi, matrisque ejus festis. Patav. 1751. Perrone (R.C.): De Immaculata B. V. Mariae conceptu. Rom. 1848. (In defence of the new papal dogma of the sinless conception of Mary.) F. W. Genthe: Die Jungfrau Maria, ihre Evangelien u. ihre Wunder. Halle, 1852. Comp. also the elaborate article, "Maria, Mutter des Herrn," by Steitz, in Herzog’s Protest. Real-Encycl. (vol. ix. p. 74 ff.), and the article, "Maria, die heil. Jungfrau," by Reithmayr (R.C.) in Wetzer u. Welte’s Kathol. Kirchenlex. (vi. 835 ff.); also the Eirenicon-controversy between Pusey and J. H. Newman, 1866.
Into these festival cycles a multitude of subordinate feasts found their way, at the head of which stand the festivals of the holy Virgin Mary, honored as queen of the army of saints.
The worship of Mary was originally only a reflection of the worship of Christ, and the feasts of Mary were designed to contribute to the glorifying of Christ. The system arose from the inner connection of the Virgin with the holy mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God; though certainly, with this leading religious and theological interest other motives combined. As mother of the Saviour of the world, the Virgin Mary unquestionably holds forever a peculiar position among all women, and in the history of redemption. Even in heaven she must stand peculiarly near to Him whom on earth she bore nine months under her bosom, and whom she followed with true motherly care to the cross. It is perfectly natural, nay, essential, to sound religious feeling, to associate with Mary the fairest traits of maidenly and maternal character, and to revere her as the highest model of female purity, love, and piety. From her example issues a silent blessing upon all generations, and her name and memory are, and ever will be, inseparable from the holiest mysteries and benefits of faith. For this reason her name is even wrought into the Apostles’ Creed, in the simple and chaste words: "Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary."
The Catholic church, however, both Latin and Greek, did not stop with this. After the middle of the fourth century it overstepped the wholesome Biblical limit, and transformed the mother of the Lord"757 into a mother of God, the humble handmaid of the Lord"758 into a queen of heaven, the "highly favored"759 into a dispenser of favors, the "blessed among women"760 into an intercessor above all women, nay, we may almost say, the redeemed daughter of fallen Adam, who is nowhere in Holy Scripture excepted from the universal sinfulness, into a sinlessly holy co-redeemer. At first she was acquitted only of actual sin, afterward even of original; though the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin was long contested, and was not established as an article of faith in the Roman church till 1854. Thus the veneration of Mary gradually degenerated into the worship of Mary; and this took so deep hold upon the popular religious life in the Middle Age, that, in spite of all scholastic distinctions between latria, and dulia, and hyrerdulia, Mariolatry practically prevailed over the worship of Christ. Hence in the innumerable Madonnas of Catholic art the human mother is the principal figure, and the divine child accessory. The Romish devotions scarcely utter a Pater Noster without an Ave Maria, and turn even more frequently and naturally to the compassionate, tender-hearted mother for her intercessions, than to the eternal Son of God, thinking that in this indirect way the desired gift is more sure to be obtained. To this day the worship of Mary is one of the principal points of separation between the Graeco-Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism. It is one of the strongest expressions of the fundamental Romish error of unduly exalting the human factors or instruments of redemption, and obstructing, or rendering needless, the immediate access of believers to Christ, by thrusting in subordinate mediators. Nor can we but agree with nearly all unbiased historians in regarding the worship of Mary as an echo of ancient heathenism. It brings plainly to mind the worship of Ceres, of Isis, and of other ancient mothers of the gods; as the worship of saints and angels recalls the hero-worship of Greece and Rome. Polytheism was so deeply rooted among the people, that it reproduced itself in Christian forms. The popular religious want had accustomed itself even to female deities, and very naturally betook itself first of all to Mary, the highly favored and blessed mother of the divine-human Redeemer, as the worthiest object of adoration.
Let us trace now the main features in the historical development of the Catholic Mariology and Mariolatry.
The New Testament contains no intimation of any worship or festival celebration of Mary. On the one hand, Mary, is rightly called by Elizabeth, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, "the mother of the Lord"761—but nowhere "the mother of God," which is at least not entirely synonymous—and is saluted by her, as well as by the angel Gabriel, as "blessed among women;"762 nay, she herself prophesies in her inspired song, which has since resounded through all ages of the church, that "henceforth all generations shall call me blessed."763 Through all the youth of Jesus she appears as a devout virgin, full of childlike innocence, purity, and humility; and the few traces we have of her later life, especially the touching scene at the cross,764 confirm this impression. But, on the other hand, it is equally unquestionable, that she is nowhere in the New Testament excepted from the universal sinfulness and the universal need of redemption, and represented as immaculately holy, or as in any way an object of divine veneration. On the contrary, true to the genuine female character, she modestly stands back throughout the gospel history, and in the Acts and the Epistles she is mentioned barely once, and then simply as the "mother of Jesus;"765 even her birth and her death are unknown. Her glory fades in holy humility before the higher glory of her Son. In truth, there are plain indications that the Lord, with prophetic reference to the future apotheosis of His mother according to the flesh, from the first gave warning against it. At the wedding in Cana He administered to her, though leniently and respectfully, a rebuke for premature zeal mingled perhaps with maternal vanity.766 On a subsequent occasion he put her on a level with other female disciples, and made the carnal consanguinity subordinate to the spiritual kinship of the doing of the will of God.767 The well-meant and in itself quite innocent benediction of an unknown woman upon His mother He did not indeed censure, but He corrected it with a benediction upon all who hear the word of God and keep it, and thus forestalled the deification of Mary by confining the ascription within the bounds of moderation.768
In striking contrast with this healthful and sober representation of Mary in the canonical Gospels are the numerous apocryphal Gospels of the third and fourth centuries, which decorated the life of Mary with fantastic fables and wonders of every kind, and thus furnished a pseudo-historical foundation for an unscriptural Mariology and Mariolatry.769 The Catholic church, it is true, condemned this apocryphal literature so early as the Decrees of Gelasius;770 yet many of the fabulous elements of it—such as the names of the parents of Mary, Joachim (instead of Eli, as in Luke iii. 23) and Anna,771 the birth of Mary in a cave, her education in the temple, and her mock marriage with the aged Joseph772—passed into the Catholic tradition.
The development of the orthodox Catholic Mariology and Mariolatry originated as early as the second century in an allegorical interpretation of the history of the fall, and in the assumption of an antithetic relation of Eve and Mary, according to which the mother of Christ occupies the same position in the history of redemption as the wife of Adam in the history of sin and death.773 This idea, so fruitful of many errors, is ingenious, but unscriptural, and an apocryphal substitute for the true Pauline doctrine of an antitypical parallel between the first and second Adam.774 It tends to substitute Mary for Christ. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, are the first who present Mary as the counterpart of Eve, as a "mother of all living" in the higher, spiritual sense, and teach that she became through her obedience the mediate or instrumental cause of the blessings of redemption to the human race, as Eve by her disobedience was the fountain of sin and death.775 Irenaeus calls her also the "advocate of the virgin Eve," which, at a later day, is understood in the sense of intercessor.776 On this account this father stands as the oldest leading authority in the Catholic Mariology; though with only partial justice; for he was still widely removed from the notion of the sinlessness of Mary, and expressly declares the answer of Christ in John ii. 4, to be a reproof of her premature haste.777 In the same way Tertullian, Origen, Basil the Great, and even Chrysostom, with all their high estimate of the mother of our Lord, ascribe to her on one or two occasions (John ii. 3; Matt. xiii. 47) maternal vanity, also doubt and anxiety, and make this the sword (Luke ii. 35) which, under the cross, passed through her soul.778 In addition to this typological antithesis of Mary and Eve, the rise of monasticism supplied the development of Mariology a further motive in the enhanced estimate of virginity, without which no true holiness could be conceived. Hence the virginity of Mary, which is unquestioned for the part of her life before the birth of Christ, came to be extended to her whole life, and her marriage with the aged Joseph to be regarded as a mere protectorate, and, therefore, only a nominal marriage. The passage, Matt. i. 25, which, according to its obvious literal meaning (the e{w" and prwtovtoko" 779), seems to favor the opposite view, was overlooked or otherwise explained; and the brothers of Jesus,780 who appear fourteen or fifteen times in the gospel history and always in close connection with His mother, were regarded not as sons of Mary subsequently born, but either as sons of Joseph by a former marriage (the view of Epiphanius), or, agreeably to the wider Hebrew use of the term ;aj cousins of Jesus (Jerome).781 It was felt—and this feeling is shared by many devout Protestants—to be irreconcilable with her dignity and the dignity of Christ, that ordinary children should afterward proceed from the same womb out of which the Saviour of the world was born. The name perpetua virgo, ajei; parqevno", was thenceforth a peculiar and inalienable predicate of Mary. After the fourth century it was taken not merely in a moral sense, but in the physical also, as meaning that Mary conceived and produced the Lord clauso utero.782 This, of course, required the supposition of a miracle, like the passage of the risen Jesus through the closed doors. Mary, therefore, in the Catholic view, stands entirely alone in the history of the world in this respect, as in others: that she was a married virgin, a wife never touched by her husband.783
Epiphanius, in his seventy-eighth Heresy, combats the advocates of the opposite view in Arabia toward the end of the fourth century (367), as heretics under the title of Antidikomarianites, opposers of the dignity of Mary, i.e., of her perpetual virginity. But, on the other hand, he condemns, in the seventy-ninth Heresy, the contemporaneous sect of the Collyridians in Arabia, a set of fanatical women, who, as priestesses, rendered divine worship to Mary, and, perhaps in imitation of the worship of Ceres, offered little cakes (kollurivde") to her; he claims adoration for God and Christ alone. Jerome wrote, about 383, with indignation and bitterness against Helvidius and Jovinian, who, citing Scripture passages and earlier church teachers, like Tertullian, maintained that Mary bore children to Joseph after the birth of Christ. He saw in this doctrine a desecration of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and he even compares Helvidius to Erostratus, the destroyer of the temple at Ephesus.784 The bishop Bonosus of Sardica was condemned for the same view by the Illyrican bishops, and the Roman bishop Siricius approved the sentence, a.d. 392.
Augustine went a step farther. In an incidental remark against Pelagius, he agreed with him in excepting Mary, "propter honorem Domini," from actual (but not from original) sin.785 This exception he is willing to make from the sinfulness of the race, but no other. He taught the sinless birth and life of Mary, but not her immaculate conception. He no doubt assumed, as afterward Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas, a sanctificatio in utero, like that of Jeremiah (Jer. i. 5) and John the Baptist (Luke i. 15), whereby, as those two men were fitted for their prophetic office, she in a still higher degree was sanctified by a special operation of the Holy Ghost before her birth, and prepared to be a pure receptacle for the divine Logos. The reasoning of Augustine backward from the holiness of Christ to the holiness of His mother was an important turn, which was afterward pursued to further results. The same reasoning leads as easily to the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary, though also, just as well, to a sinless mother of Mary herself, and thus upward to the beginning, of the race, to another Eve who never fell. Augustine’s opponent, Pelagius, with his monastic, ascetic idea of holiness and his superficial doctrine of sin, remarkably outstripped him on this point, ascribing to Mary perfect sinlessness. But, it should be remembered, that his denial of original sin to all men, and his excepting of sundry saints of the Old Testament besides Mary, such as Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Isaac, Melchizedek, Samuel, Elijah, Daniel, from actual sin,786 so that pavnte" in Rom. v. 12, in his view, means only a majority, weaken the honor he thus appears to confer upon the mother of the Lord. The Augustinian view long continued to prevail; but at last Pelagius won the victory on this point in the Roman church.787
Notwithstanding this exalted representation of Mary, there appear no clear traces of a proper worship of Mary, as distinct from the worship of saints in general, until the Nestorian controversy of 430. This dispute formed an important turning-point not only in Christology, but in Mariology also. The leading interest in it was, without doubt, the connection of the virgin with the mystery of the incarnation. The perfect union of the divine and human natures seemed to demand that Mary might be called in some sense the mother of God, qeotovko", Deipara; for that which was born of her was not merely the man Jesus, but the God-Man Jesus Christ.788 The church, however, did, of course, not intend by that to assert that she was the mother of the uncreated divine essence—for this would be palpably absurd and blasphemous—nor that she herself was divine, but only that she was the human point of entrance or the mysterious channel for the eternal divine Logos. Athanasius and the Alexandrian church teachers of the Nicene age, who pressed the unity of the divine and the human in Christ to the verge of monophysitism, had already used this expression frequently and without scruple,789 and Gregory Nazianzen even declares every one impious who denies its validity.790 Nestorius, on the contrary, and the Antiochian school, who were more devoted to the distinction of the two natures in Christ, took offence at the predicate qeotovko", saw in it a relapse into the heathen mythology, if not a blasphemy against the eternal and unchangeable Godhead, and preferred the expression Cristotovko", mater Christi. Upon this broke out the violent controversy between him and the bishop Cyril of Alexandria, which ended in the condemnation of Nestorianism at Ephesus in 431.
Thenceforth the qeotovko" was a test of orthodox Christology, and the rejection of it amounted to the beginning or the end of all heresy. The overthrow of Nestorianism was at the same time the victory of Mary-worship. With the honor of the Son, the honor also of the Mother was secured. The opponents of Nestorius, especially Proclus, his successor in Constantinople († 447), and Cyril of Alexandria († 444), could scarcely find predicates enough to express the transcendent glory of the mother of God. She was the crown of virginity, the indestructible temple of God, the dwelling place of the Holy Trinity, the paradise of the second Adam, the bridge from God to man, the loom of the incarnation, the sceptre of orthodoxy; through her the Trinity is glorified and adored, the devil and demons are put to flight, the nations converted, and the fallen creature raised to heaven.791 The people were all on the side of the Ephesian decision, and gave vent to their joy in boundless enthusiasm, amidst bonfires, processions, and illuminations.
With this the worship of Mary, the mother of God, the queen of heaven, seemed to be solemnly established for all time. But soon a reaction appeared in favor of Nestorianism, and the church found it necessary to condemn the opposite extreme of Eutychianism or Monophysitism. This was the office of the council of Chalcedon in 451: to give expression to the element of truth in Nestorianism, the duality of nature in the one divine-human person of Christ. Nevertheless the qeotovko" was expressly retained, though it originated in a rather monophysite view.792
§ 82. Mariolatry.
Thus much respecting the doctrine of Mary. Now the corresponding practice. From this Mariology follows Mariolatry. If Mary is, in the strict sense of the word, the mother of God, it seems to follow as a logical consequence, that she herself is divine, and therefore an object of divine worship. This was not, indeed, the meaning and purpose of the ancient church; as, in fact, it never asserted that Mary was the mother of the essential, eternal divinity of the Logos. She was, and continues to be, a created being, a human mother, even according to the Roman and Greek doctrine. But according to the once prevailing conception of her peculiar relation to deity, a certain degree of divine homage to Mary, and some invocation of her powerful intercession with God, seemed unavoidable, and soon became a universal practice.
The first instance of the formal invocation of Mary occurs in the prayers of Ephraim Syrus († 379), addressed to Mary and the saints, and attributed by the tradition of the Syrian church, though perhaps in part incorrectly, to that author. The first more certain example appears in Gregory Nazianzen († 389), who, in his eulogy on Cyprian, relates of Justina that she besought the virgin Mary to protect her threatened virginity, and at the same time disfigured her beauty by ascetic self-tortures, and thus fortunately escaped the amours of a youthful lover (Cyprian before his conversion).793 But, on the other hand, the numerous writings of Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, and Augustine, furnish no example of an invocation of Mary. Epiphanius even condemned the adoration of Mary, and calls the practice of making offerings to her by the Collyridian women, blasphemous and dangerous to the soul.794 The entire silence of history respecting the worship of the Virgin down to the end of the fourth century, proves clearly that it was foreign to the original spirit of Christianity, and belongs among the many innovations of the post-Nicene age.
In the beginning of the fifth century, however, the worship of saints appeared in full bloom, and then Mary, by reason of her singular relation to the Lord, was soon placed at the head, as the most blessed queen of the heavenly host. To her was accorded the hyperdulia (uJperdouleiva)—to anticipate here the later scholastic distinction sanctioned by the council of Trent—that is, the highest degree of veneration, in distinction from mere dulia (douleiva), which belongs to all saints and angels, and from latria (latreiva), which, properly speaking, is due to God alone. From that time numerous churches and altars were dedicated to the holy Mother of God, the perpetual Virgin; among them also the church at Ephesus in which the anti-Nestorian council of 431 had sat. Justinian I., in a law, implored her intercession with God for the restoration of the Roman empire, and on the dedication of the costly altar of the church of St. Sophia he expected all blessings for church and empire from her powerful prayers. His general, Narses, like the knights in the Middle Age, was unwilling to go into battle till he had secured her protection. Pope Boniface IV. in 608 turned the Pantheon in Rome into a temple of Mary ad martyres: the pagan Olympus into a Christian heaven of gods. Subsequently even her images (made after an original pretending to have come from Luke) were divinely worshipped, and, in the prolific legends of the superstitious Middle Age, performed countless miracles, before some of which the miracles of the gospel history grow dim. She became almost coördinate with Christ, a joint redeemer, invested with most of His own attributes and acts of grace. The popular belief ascribed to her, as to Christ, a sinless conception, a sinless birth, resurrection and ascension to heaven, and a participation of all power in heaven and on earth. She became the centre of devotion, cultus, and art, the popular symbol of power, of glory, and of the final victory of catholicism over all heresies.795 The Greek and Roman churches vied throughout the Middle Age (and do so still) in the apotheosis of the human mother with the divine-human child Jesus in her arms, till the Reformation freed a large part of Latin Christendom from this unscriptural semi-idolatry and concentrated the affection and adoration of believers upon the crucified and risen Saviour of the world, the only Mediator between God and man.
A word more: respecting the favorite prayer to Mary, the angelic greeting, or the Ave Maria, which in the Catholic devotion runs parallel to the Pater Noster. It takes its name from the initial words of the salutation of Gabriel to the holy Virgin at the annunciation of the birth of Christ. It consists of three parts:
(1) The salutation
of the angel (Luke i. 28):
Ave Maria, gratiae plena, Dominus tecum!
(2) The words of
Elizabeth (Luke i. 42):
Benedicta tu in mulieribus796, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.
(3) The later
unscriptural addition, which contains the prayer proper, and is offensive to
the Protestant and all sound Christian feeling:
Sancta Maria, mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis.
Amen.
Formerly this third part, which gave the formula the character of a prayer, was traced back to the anti-Nestorian council of Ephesus in 431, which sanctioned the expression mater Dei, or Dei genitrix (qeotovko"). But Roman archaeologists797 now concede that it is a much later addition, made in the beginning of the sixteenth century (1508), and that the closing words, nunc et in hora mortis, were added even after that time by the Franciscans. But even the first two parts did not come into general use as a standing formula of prayer until the thirteenth century.798 From that date the Ave Maria stands in the Roman church upon a level with the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, and with them forms the basis of the rosary.
§ 83. The Festivals of Mary.
This mythical and fantastic, and, we must add, almost pagan and idolatrous Mariology impressed itself on the public cultus in a series of festivals, celebrating the most important facts and fictions of the life of the Virgin, and in some degree running parallel with the festivals of the birth, resurrection, and ascension of Christ.
1. The Annunciation of Mary799 commemorates the announcement of the birth of Christ by the archangel Gabriel,800 and at the same time the conception of Christ; for in the view of the ancient church Mary conceived the Logos (Verbum) through the ear by the word of the angel. Hence the festival had its place on the 25th of March, exactly nine months before Christmas; though in some parts of the church, as Spain and Milan, it was celebrated in December, till the Roman practice conquered. The first trace of it occurs in Proclus, the opponent and successor of Nestorius in Constantinople after 430; then it appears more plainly in several councils and homilies of the seventh century.
2. The Purification of Mary801 or Candlemas, in memory of the ceremonial purification of the Virgin,802 forty days after the birth of Jesus, therefore on the 2d of February (reckoning from the 25th of December); and at the same time in memory of the presentation of Jesus in the temple and his meeting of Simeon and Anna.803 This, like the preceding, was thus originally as much a festival of Christ as of Mary, especially in the Greek church. It is supposed to have been introduced by Pope Gelasius in 494, though by some said not to have arisen till 542 under Justinian I., in consequence of a great earthquake and a destructive pestilence. Perhaps it was a Christian transformation of the old Roman lustrations or expiatory sacrifices (Februa, Februalia), which from the time of Numa took place in February, the month of purification or expiation.804 To heathen origin is due also the use of lighted tapers, with which the people on this festival marched, singing, out of the church through the city. Hence the name Candlemas.805
3. The Ascension, or Assumption rather, of Mary806 is celebrated on the 15th of August. The festival was introduced by the Greek emperor Mauritius (582–602); some say, under Pope Gelasius († 496). In Rome, after the ninth century, it is one of the principal feasts, and, like the others, is distinguished with vigil and octave.
It rests, however, on a purely apocryphal foundation.
The entire silence of the apostles and the primitive church teachers respecting the departure of Mary stirred idle curiosity to all sorts of inventions, until a translation like Enoch’s and Elijah’s was attributed to her. In the time of Origen some were inferring from Luke ii. 35, that she had suffered martyrdom. Epiphanius will not decide whether she died and was buried, or not. Two apocryphal Greek writings de transitu Mariae, of the end of the fourth or beginning of the fifth century, and afterward pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory of Tours († 595), for the first time contain the legend that the soul of the mother of God was transported to the heavenly paradise by Christ and His angels in presence of all the apostles, and on the following morning807 her body also was translated thither on a cloud and there united with the soul. Subsequently the legend was still further embellished, and, besides the apostles, the angels and patriarchs also, even Adam and Eve, were made witnesses of the wonderful spectacle.
Still the resurrection and ascension of Mary are in the Roman church only a matter of "devout and probable opinion," not an article of faith;808 and a distinction is made between the ascensio of Christ (by virtue of His divine nature) and the assumptio of Mary (by the power of grace and merit).
But since Mary, according to the most recent Roman dogma, was free even from original sin, and since death is a consequence of sin, it should strictly follow that she did not die at all, and rise again, but, like Enoch and Elijah, was carried alive to heaven.
In the Middle Age—to anticipate briefly—yet other festivals of Mary arose: the Nativity of Mary,809 after a.d. 650; the Presentation of Mary,810 after the ninth century, founded on the apocryphal tradition of the eleven years’ ascetic discipline of Mary in the temple at Jerusalem; the Visitation of Mary811 in memory of her visit to Elizabeth; a festival first mentioned in France in 1247, and limited to the western church; and the festival of the Immaculate Conception,812 which arose with the doctrine of the sinless conception of Mary, and is interwoven with the history of that dogma down to its official and final promulgation by Pope Pius IX. in 1854.
§ 84. The Worship of Martyrs and Saints.
I. Sources: The Memorial Discourses of Basil the Great on the martyr Mamas (a shepherd in Cappadocia, † about 276), and on the forty martyrs (soldiers, who are said to have suffered in Armenia under Licinius in 320); of Gregory Naz. on Cyprian († 248), on Athanasius († 372), and on Basil († 379); of Gregory Of Nyssa on Ephraim Syrus († 378), and on the megalomartyr Theodorus; of Chrysostom on Bernice and Prosdoce, on the Holy Martyrs, on the Egyptian Martyrs, on Meletius of Antioch; several homilies of Ambrose, Augustine, Leo the Great, Peter Chrysologus Caesarius, &c.; Jerome against Vigilantius. The most important passages of the fathers on the veneration of saints are conveniently collected in: The Faith of Catholics on certain points of controversy, confirmed by Scripture and attested by the Fathers. By Berington and Kirk, revised by Waterworth." 3d ed. 1846, vol. iii. pp. 322–416.
II. The later Literature: (1) On the Roman Catholic side: The Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists, thus far 58 vols. fol. (1643–1858, coming down to the 22d of October). Theod. Ruinart: Acta primorum martyrum sincera et selecta. Par. 1689 (confined to the first four centuries). Laderchio: S. patriarcharum et prophetarum, confessorum, cultus perpetuus, etc. Rom. 1730. (2) On the Protestant side: J. Dallaeus: Adversus Latinorum de cultus religiosi objecto traditionem. Genev. 1664. Isaac Taylor: Ancient Christianity. 4th ed. Lond. 1844, vel. ii. p. 173 ff. ("Christianized demonolatry in the fourth century.")
The system of saint-worship, including both Hagiology and Hagiolatry, developed itself at the same time with the worship of Mary; for the latter is only the culmination of the former.
The New Testament is equally ignorant of both. The expression a{gioi, sancti, saints, is used by the apostles not of a particular class, a spiritual aristocracy of the church, but of all baptized and converted Christians without distinction; because they are separated from the world, consecrated to the service of God, washed from the guilt of sin by the blood of Christ, and, notwithstanding all their remaining imperfections and sins, called to perfect holiness. The apostles address their epistles to "the saints" i.e., the Christian believers, "at Rome, Corinth, Ephesus," &c.813
After the entrance of the heathen masses into the church the title came to be restricted to bishops and councils and to departed heroes of the Christian faith, especially the martyrs of the first three centuries. When, on the cessation of persecution, the martyr’s crown, at least within the limits of the Roman empire, was no longer attainable, extraordinary ascetic piety, great service to the church, and subsequently also the power of miracles, were required as indispensable conditions of reception into the Catholic calendar of saints. The anchorets especially, who, though not persecuted from without, voluntarily crucified their flesh and overcame evil spirits, seemed to stand equal to the martyrs in holiness and in claims to veneration. A tribunal of canonization did not yet exist. The popular voice commonly decided the matter, and passed for the voice of God. Some saints were venerated only in the regions where they lived and died; others enjoyed a national homage; others, a universal.
The veneration of the saints increased with the decrease of martyrdom, and with the remoteness of the objects of reverence. "Distance lends enchantment to the view;" but "familiarity" is apt "to breed contempt." The sins and faults of the heroes of faith were lost in the bright haze of the past, while their virtues shone the more, and furnished to a pious and superstitious fancy the richest material for legendary poesy.
Almost all the catholic saints belong to the higher degrees of the clergy or to the monastic life. And the monks were the chief promoters of the worship of saints. At the head of the heavenly chorus stands Mary, crowned as queen by the side of her divine Son; then come the apostles and evangelists, who died a violent death, the protomartyr Stephen, and the martyrs of the first three centuries; the patriarchs and prophets also of the Old Covenant down to John the Baptist; and finally eminent hermits and monks, missionaries, theologians, and bishops, and those, in general, who distinguished themselves above their contemporaries in virtue or in public service. The measure of ascetic self-denial was the measure of Christian virtue. Though many of the greatest saints of the Bible, from the patriarch Abraham to Peter, the prince of the apostles, lived in marriage, the Romish ethics, from the time of Ambrose and Jerome, can allow no genuine holiness within the bonds of matrimony, and receives only virgines and some few vidui and viduae into its spiritual nobility.814 In this again the close connection of saint-worship with monasticism is apparent.
To the saints, about the same period, were added angels as objects of worship. To angels there was ascribed in the church from the beginning a peculiar concern with the fortunes of the militant church, and a certain oversight of all lands and nations. But Ambrose is the first who expressly exhorts to the invocation of our patron angels, and represents it as a duty.815 In favor of the guardianship and interest of angels appeal was rightly made to several passages of the Old and New Testaments: Dan. x. 13, 20, 21; xii. 1; Matt. xviii. 10; Luke xv. 7; Heb. i. 14; Acts xii. 15. But in Col. ii. 18, and Rev. xix. 10; xxii. 8, 9, the worship of angels is distinctly rebuked.
Out of the old Biblical notion of guardian angels arose also the idea of patron saints for particular countries, cities, churches, and classes, and against particular evils and dangers. Peter and Paul and Laurentius became the patrons of Rome; James, the patron of Spain; Andrew, of Greece; John, of theologians; Luke, of painters; subsequently Phocas, of seamen; Ivo, of jurists; Anthony, a protector against pestilence; Apollonia, against tooth-aches; &c.
These different orders of saints and angels form a heavenly hierarchy, reflected in the ecclesiastical hierarchy on earth. Dionysius the Areopagite, a fantastical Christian Platonist of the fifth-century, exhibited the whole relation of man to God on the basis of the hierarchy; dividing the hierarchy into two branches, heavenly and earthly, and each of these again into several degrees, of which every higher one was the mediator of salvation to the one below it.
These are the outlines of the saint-worship of our period. Now to the exposition and estimate of it, and then the proofs.
The worship of saints proceeded originally, without doubt, from a pure and truly Christian source, to wit: a very deep and lively sense of the communion of saints, which extends over death and the grave, and embraces even the blessed in heaven. It was closely connected with love to Christ, and with gratitude for everything great and good which he has done through his instruments for the welfare of posterity. The church fulfilled a simple and natural duty of gratitude, when, in the consciousness of unbroken fellowship with the church triumphant, she honored the memory of the martyrs and confessors, who had offered their life for their faith, and had achieved victory for it over all its enemies. She performed a duty of fidelity to her own children, when she held up for admiration and imitation the noble virtues and services of their fathers. She honored and glorified Christ Himself when she surrounded Him with an innumerable company of followers, contemplated the reflection of His glory in them, and sang to His praise in the Ambrosian Te Deum:
"The glorious company of the Apostles praise thee;
The goodly fellowship of the Prophets praise thee;
The noble army of Martyrs praise thee;
The holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee;
The Father, of an infinite majesty;
Thine adorable, true, and only Son;
Also the Holy Ghost, the Comforter.
Thou art the King of glory, O Christ;
Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.
When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb;816
When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers."
In the first three centuries the veneration of the martyrs in general restricted itself to the thankful remembrance of their virtues and the celebration of the day of their death as the day of their heavenly birth.817 This celebration usually took place at their graves. So the church of Smyrna annually commemorated its bishop Polycarp, and valued his bones more than gold and gems, though with the express distinction: "Christ we worship as the Son of God; the martyrs we love and honor as disciples and successors of the Lord, on account of their insurpassable love to their King and Master, as also, we wish to be their companions and fellow disciples."818 Here we find this veneration as yet in its innocent simplicity.
But in the Nicene age it advanced to a formal invocation of the saints as our patrons (patroni) and intercessors (intercessores, mediatores) before the throne of grace, and degenerated into a form of refined polytheism and idolatry. The saints came into the place of the demigods, Penates and Lares, the patrons of the domestic hearth and of the country. As once temples and altars to the heroes, so now churches and chapels819 came to be built over the graves of the martyrs, and consecrated to their names (or more precisely to God through them). People laid in them, as they used to do in the temple of Aesculapius, the sick that they might be healed, and hung in them, as in the temples of the gods, sacred gifts of silver and gold. Their graves were, as Chrysostom says, move splendidly adorned and more frequently visited than the palaces of kings. Banquets were held there in their honor, which recall the heathen sacrificial feasts for the welfare of the manes. Their relics were preserved with scrupulous care, and believed to possess miraculous virtue. Earlier, it was the custom to pray for the martyrs (as if they were not yet perfect) and to thank God for their fellowship and their pious example. Now such intercessions for them were considered unbecoming, and their intercession was invoked for the living.820
This invocation of the dead was accompanied with the presumption that they take the deepest interest in all the fortunes of the kingdom of God on earth, and express it in prayers and intercessions.821 This was supposed to be warranted by some passages of Scripture, like Luke xv. 10, which speaks of the angels (not the saints) rejoicing over the conversion of a sinner, and Rev. viii. 3, 4, which represents an angel as laying the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne of God. But the New Testament expressly rebukes the worship of the angels (Col. ii. 18; Rev. xix. 10; xxii. 8, 9), and furnishes not a single example of an actual invocation of dead men; and it nowhere directs us to address our prayers to any creature. Mere inferences from certain premises, however plausible, are, in such weighty matters, not enough. The intercession of the saints for us was drawn as a probable inference from the duty of all Christians to pray for others, and the invocation of the saints for their intercession was supported by the unquestioned right to apply to living saints for their prayers, of which even the apostles availed themselves in their epistles.
But here rises the insolvable question: How can departed saints hear at once the prayers of so many Christians on earth, unless they either partake of divine omnipresence or divine omniscience? And is it not idolatrous to clothe creatures with attributes which belong exclusively to Godhead? Or, if the departed saints first learn from the omniscient God our prayers, and then bring them again before God with their powerful intercessions, to what purpose this circuitous way? Why not at once address God immediately, who alone is able, and who is always ready, to hear His children for the sake of Christ?
Augustine felt this difficulty, and concedes his inability to solve it. He leaves it undecided, whether the saints (as Jerome and others actually supposed) are present in so many places at once, or their knowledge comes through the omniscience of God, or finally it comes through the ministry of angels.822 He already makes the distinction between latreiva, or adoration due to God alone, and the invocatio (douleiva) of the saints, and firmly repels the charge of idolatry, which the Manichaean Faustus brought against the catholic Christians when he said: "Ye have changed the idols into martyrs, whom ye worship with the like prayers, and ye appease the shades of the dead with wine and flesh." Augustine asserts that the church indeed celebrates the memory of the martyrs with religious solemnity, to be stirred up to imitate them, united with their merits, and supported by their prayers,823 but it offers sacrifice and dedicates altars to God alone. Our martyrs, says he, are not gods; we build no temples to our martyrs, as to gods; but we consecrate to them only memorial places, as to departed men, whose spirits live with God; we build altars not to sacrifice to the martyrs, but to sacrifice with them to the one God, who is both ours and theirs.824
But in spite of all these distinctions and cautions, which must be expected from a man like Augustine, and acknowledged to be a wholesome restraint against excesses, we cannot but see in the martyr-worship, as it was actually practised, a new form of the hero-worship of the pagans. Nor can we wonder in the least. For the great mass of the Christian people came, in fact, fresh from polytheism, without thorough conversion, and could not divest themselves of their old notions and customs at a stroke. The despotic form of government, the servile subjection of the people, the idolatrous homage which was paid to the Byzantine emperors and their statues, the predicates divina, sacra, coelestia, which were applied to the utterances of their will, favored the worship of saints. The heathen emperor Julian sarcastically reproached the Christians with reintroducing polytheism into monotheism, but, on account of the difference of the objects, revolted from the Christian worship of martyrs and relics, as from the "stench of graves and dead men’s bones." The Manichaean taunt we have already mentioned. The Spanish presbyter Vigilantius, in the fifth century, called the worshippers of martyrs and relics, ashes-worshippers and idolaters,825 and taught that, according to the Scriptures, the living only should pray with and for each other. Even some orthodox church teachers admitted the affinity of the saint-worship with heathenism, though with the view of showing that all that is good in the heathen worship reappears far better in the Christian. Eusebius cites a passage from Plato on the worship of heroes, demi-gods, and their graves, and then applies it to the veneration of friends of God and champions of true religion; so that the Christians did well to visit their graves, to honor their memory there, and to offer their prayers.826 The Greeks, Theodoret thinks, have the least reason to be offended at what takes place at the graves of the martyrs; for the libations and expiations, the demi-gods and deified men, originated with themselves. Hercules, Aesculapius, Bacchus, the Dioscuri, and the like, are deified men; consequently it cannot be a reproach to the Christians that they—not deify, but—honor their martyrs as witnesses and servants of God. The ancients saw nothing censurable in such worship of the dead. The saints, our helpers and patrons, are far more worthy of such honor. The temples of the gods are destroyed, the philosophers, orators, and emperors are forgotten, but the martyrs are universally known. The feasts of the gods are now replaced by the festivals of Peter, Paul, Marcellus, Leontius, Antonins, Mauricius, and other martyrs, not with pagan pomp and sensual pleasures, but with Christian soberness and decency.827
Yet even this last distinction which Theodoret asserts, sometimes disappeared. Augustine laments that in the African church banqueting and revelling were daily practised in honor of the martyrs,828 but thinks that this weakness must be for the time indulged from regard to the ancient customs of the pagans.
In connection with the new hero-worship a new mythology also arose, which filled up the gaps of the history of the saints, and sometimes even transformed the pagan myths of gods and heroes into Christian legends.829 The superstitious imagination, visions, and dreams, and pious fraud famished abundant contributions to the Christian legendary poesy.
The worship of the saints found eloquent vindication and encouragement not only, in poets like Prudentius (about 405) and Paulinus of Nola (died 431), to whom greater freedom is allowed, but even in all the prominent theologians and preachers of the Nicene and post-Nicene age. It was as popular as monkery, and was as enthusiastically commended by the leaders of the church in the East and West.
The two institutions, moreover, are closely connected and favor each other. The monks were most zealous friends of saint-worship in their own cause. The church of the fifth century already went almost as far in it as the Middle Age, at all events quite as far as the council of Trent; for this council does not prescribe the invocation of the saints, but confines itself to approving it as "good and useful" (not as necessary) on the ground of their reigning with Christ in heaven and their intercession for us, and expressly remarks that Christ is our only, Redeemer and Saviour.830 This moderate and prudent statement of the doctrine, however, has not yet removed the excesses which the Roman Catholic people still practise in the worship of the saints, their images, and their relics. The Greek church goes even further in theory than the Roman; for the confession of Peter Mogilas (which was subscribed by the four Greek patriarchs in 1643, and again sanctioned by the council of Jerusalem in 1672), declares it duty and propriety (crevo") to implore the intercession (mesiteiva) of Mary and the saints with God for us.
We now cite, for proof and further illustration, the most important passages from the church fathers of our period on this point. In the numerous memorial discourses of the fathers, the martyrs are loaded with eulogies, addressed as present, and besought for their protection. The universal tone of those productions is offensive to the Protestant taste, and can hardly be reconciled with evangelical ideas of the exclusive and all-sufficient mediation of Christ and of justification by pure grace without the merit of works. But it must not be forgotten that in these discourses very much is to be put to the account of the degenerate, extravagant, and fulsome rhetoric of that time. The best church fathers, too, never separated the merits of the saints from the merits of Christ, but considered the former as flowing out of the latter.
We begin with the Greek fathers. Basil the Great calls the forty soldiers who are said to have suffered martyrdom under Licinius in Sebaste about 320, not only a "holy choir," an "invincible phalanx," but also "common patrons of the human family, helpers of our prayers and most mighty intercessors with God."831
Ephraim Syrus addresses the departed saints, in general, in such words as these: "Remember me, ye heirs of God, ye brethren of Christ, pray to the Saviour for me, that I through Christ may be delivered from him who assaults me from day to day;" and the mother of a martyr: "O holy, true, and blessed mother, plead for me with the saints, and pray: ’Ye triumphant martyrs of Christ, pray for Ephraim, the least, the miserable,’ that I may find grace, and through the grace of Christ may be saved."
Gregory of Nyssa asks of St. Theodore, whom he thinks invisibly present at his memorial feast, intercessions for his country, for peace, for the preservation of orthodoxy, and begs him to arouse the apostles Peter and Paul and John to prayer for the church planted by them (as if they needed such an admonition!). He relates with satisfaction that the people streamed to the burial place of this saint in such multitudes that the place looked like an ant hill. In his Life of St. Ephraim, he tells of a pilgrim who lost himself among the barbarian posterity of Ishmael, but by the prayer, "St. Ephraim, help me!"832 and the protection of the saint, happily found his way home. He himself thus addresses him at the close: "Thou who standest at the holy altar, and with angels servest the life-giving and most holy Trinity, remember us all, and implore for us the forgiveness of sins and the enjoyment of the eternal kingdom."833
Gregory Nazianzen is convinced that the departed Cyprian guides and protects his church in Carthage more powerfully by his intercessions than he formerly did by his teachings, because he now stands so much nearer the Deity; he addresses him as present, and implores his favor and protection.834 In his eulogy on Athanasius, who was but a little while dead, he prays: "Look graciously down upon us, and dispose this people to be perfect worshippers of the perfect Trinity; and when the times are quiet, preserve us—when they are troubled, remove us, and take us to thee in thy fellowship."
Even Chrysostom did not rise above the spirit of the time. He too is an eloquent and enthusiastic advocate of the worship of the saints and their relics. At the close of his memorial discourse on Sts. Bernice and Prosdoce—two saints who have not even a place in the Roman calendar—he exhorts his hearers not only on their memorial days but also on other days to implore these saints to be our protectors: "For they have great boldness not merely during their life but also after death, yea, much greater after death.835 For they now bear the stigmata of Christ [the marks of martyrdom], and when they show these, they can persuade the King to anything." He relates that once, when the harvest was endangered by excessive rain, the whole population of Constantinople flocked to the church of the Apostles, and there elected the apostles Peter and Andrew, Paul and Timothy, patrons and intercessors before the throne of grace.836 Christ, says he on Heb. i. 14, redeems us as Lord and Master, the angels redeem us as ministers.
Asterius of Amasia calls the martyr Phocas, the patron of mariners, "a pillar and foundation of the churches of God in the world, the most renowned of the martyrs, who draws men of all countries in hosts to his church in Sinope, and who now, since his death, distributes more abundant nourishment than Joseph in Egypt."
Among the Latin fathers, Ambrose of Milan is one of the first and most decided promoters of the worship of saints. We cite a passage or two. "May Peter, who so successfully weeps for himself, weep also for us, and turn upon us the friendly look of Christ.837 The angels, who are appointed to guard us, must be invoked for us; the martyrs, to whose intercession we have claim by the pledge of their bodies, must be invoked. They who have washed away their sins by their own blood, may pray for our sins. For they are martyrs of God, our high priests, spectators of our life and our acts. We need not blush to use them as intercessors for our weakness; for they also knew the infirmity of the body when they gained the victory over it."838
Jerome disputes the opinion of Vigilantius, that we should pray for one another in this life only, and that the dead do not hear our prayers, and ascribes to departed saints a sort of omnipresence, because, according to Rev. xiv. 4, they follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.839 He thinks that their prayers are much more effectual in heaven than they were upon earth. If Moses implored the forgiveness of God for six hundred thousand men, and Stephen, the first martyr, prayed for his murderers after the example of Christ, should they cease to pray, and to be heard, when they are with Christ?
Augustine infers from the interest which the rich man in hell still had in the fate of his five surviving brothers (Luke xvi. 27), that the pious dead in heaven must have even far more interest in the kindred and friends whom they have left behind.840 He also calls the saints our intercessors, yet under Christ, the proper and highest Intercessor, as Peter and the other apostles are shepherds under the great chief Shepherd.841 In a memorial discourse on Stephen, he imagines that martyr, and St. Paul who stoned him, to be present, and begs them for their intercessions with the Lord with whom they reign.842 He attributes miraculous effects, even the raising of the dead, to the intercessions of Stephen.843 But, on the other hand, he declares, as we have already observed, his inability to solve the difficult question of the way in which the dead can be made acquainted with our wishes and prayers. At all events, in Augustine’s practical religion the worship of the saints occupies a subordinate place. In his "Confessions" and "Soliloquies" he always addresses himself directly to God, not to Mary nor to martyrs.
The Spanish poet Prudentius flees with prayers and confessions of sin to St. Laurentius, and considers himself unworthy to be heard by Christ Himself.844
The poems of Paulinus of Nola are full of direct prayers for the intercessions of the saints, especially of St. Felix, in whose honor he erected a basilica, and annually composed an ode, and whom he calls his patron, his father, his lord. He relates that the people came in great crowds around the wonder-working relics of this saint on his memorial day, and could not look on them enough.
Leo the Great, in his sermons, lays great stress on the powerful intercession of the apostles Peter and Paul, and of the Roman martyr Laurentius.845
Pope Gregory the Great, at the close of our period, went much farther.
According to this we cannot wonder that the Virgin Mary and the saints are interwoven also in the prayers of the liturgies,846 and that their merits and intercession stand by the side of the merits of Christ as a ground of the acceptance of our prayers.
§ 85. Festivals of the Saints.
The system of saint-worship, like that of the worship of Mary, became embodied in a series of religious festivals, of which many had only a local character, some a provincial, some a universal. To each saint a day of the year, the day of his death, or his heavenly birthday, was dedicated, and it was celebrated with a memorial oration and exercises of divine worship, but in many cases desecrated by unrestrained amusements of the people, like the feasts of the heathen gods and heroes.
The most important saints’ days which come down from the early church, and bear a universal character, are the following:
1. The feast of the two chief apostles Peter and Paul,847 on the twenty-ninth of June, the day of their martyrdom. It is with the Latins and the Greeks the most important of the feasts of the apostles, and, as the homilies for the day by Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, and Leo the Great show, was generally introduced as early as the fourth century
2. Besides this, the Roman church has observed since the fifth century a special feast in honor of the prince of the apostles and for the glorification of the papal office: the feast of the See of Peter848 on the twenty-second of February, the day on which, according to tradition, he took possession of the Roman bishopric. With this there was also an Antiochan St. Peter's day on the eighteenth of January, in memory of the supposed episcopal reign of this apostle in Antioch. The Catholic liturgists dispute which of these two feasts is the older. After Leo the Great, the bishops used to keep the Natales. Subsequently the feast of the Chains of Peter849 was introduced in memory of the chains which Peter wore, according to Acts xii. 6, under Herod at Jerusalem, and, according to the Roman legend, in the prison at Rome under Nero.
3. The feast of John, the apostle and evangelist, on the twenty-seventh of December, has already been mentioned in connection with the Christmas cycle.850
4. Likewise the feast of the protomartyr Stephen, on the twenty-sixth of December, after the fourth century.851
5. The feast of John the Baptist, the last representative of the saints before Christ. This was, contrary to the general rule, a feast of his birth, not his martyrdom, and, with reference to the birth festival of the Lord on the twenty-fifth of December, was celebrated six months earlier, on the twenty-fourth of June, the summer solstice. This was intended to signify at once his relation to Christ and his well-known word: "He must increase, but I must decrease." He represented the decreasing sun of the ancient covenant; Christ, the rising sun of the new.852 In order to celebrate more especially the martyrdom of the Baptist, a feast of the Beheading of John,853 on the twenty-ninth of August, was afterward introduced; but this never became so important and popular as the feast of his birth.
6. To be just to all the heroes of the faith, the Greek church, after the fourth century, celebrated a feast of All Saints on the Sunday after Pentecost (the Latin festival of the Trinity).854 The Latin church, after 610, kept a similar feast, the Festum Omnium Sanctorum, on the first of November; but this did not come into general use till after the ninth century.
7. The feast of the Archangel Michael,855 the leader of the hosts of angels, and the representative of the church triumphant,856 on the twenty-ninth of September. This owes its origin to some miraculous appearances of Michael in the Catholic legends.857 The worship of the angels developed itself simultaneously with the worship of Mary and the saints, and churches also were dedicated to angels, and called after their names. Thus Constantine the Great built a church to the archangel Michael on the right bank of the Black Sea, where the angel, according to the legend, appeared to some ship-wrecked persons and rescued them from death. Justinian I. built as many as six churches to him. Yet the feast of Michael, which some trace back to Pope Gelasius I., a.d. 493, seems not to have become general till after the ninth century.
§ 86. The Christian Calendar. The Legends of the Saints. The Acta Sanctorum.
This is the place for some observations on the origin and character of the Christian calendar with reference to its ecclesiastical elements, the catalogue of saints and their festivals.
The Christian calendar, as to its contents, dates from the fourth and later centuries; as to its form, it comes down from classical antiquity, chiefly from the Romans, whose numerous calendars contained, together with astronomical and astrological notes, tables also of civil and religious festivals and public sports. Two calendars of Christian Rome still extant, one of the year 354, the other of the year 448,858 show the transition. The former contains for the first time the Christian week beginning with Sunday, together with the week of heathen Rome; the other contains Christian feast days and holidays, though as yet very few, viz., four festivals of Christ and six martyr days. The oldest purely Christian calendar is a Gothic one, which originated probably in Thrace in the fourth century. The fragment still extant859 contains thirty-eight days for November and the close of October, among which seven days are called by the names of saints (two from the Bible, three from the church universal, and two from the Gothic church).
There are, however, still earlier lists of saints’ days, according to the date of the holiday; the oldest is a Roman one of the middle of the fourth century, which contains the memorial days of twelve bishops of Rome and twenty-four martyrs, together with the festival of the birth of Christ and the festival of Peter on the twenty-second of February.
Such tables are the groundwork of the calendar and the martyrologies. At first each community or province had its own catalogue of feasts, hence also its own calendar. Such local registers were sometimes called diptycha860 (divptuca), because they were recorded on tables with two leaves; yet they commonly contained, besides the names of the martyrs, the names also of the earlier bishops and still living benefactors or persons, of whom the priests were to make mention by name in the prayer before the consecration of the elements in the eucharist. The spread of the worship of a martyr, which usually started from the place of his martyrdom, promoted the interchange of names. The great influence of Rome gave to the Roman festival-list and calendar the chief currency in the West.
Gradually the whole calendar was filled up with the names of saints. As the number of the martyrs exceeded the number of days in the year, the commemoration of several must fall upon the same day, or the canonical hours of cloister devotion must be given up. The oriental calendar is richer in saints from the Old Testament than the occidental.861
With the calendars are connected the Martyrologia, or Acta Martyrum, Acta Sanctorum, called by the Greeks Menologia and Menaea.862 There were at first only "Diptycha" and "Calendaria martyrum," i.e., lists of the names of the martyrs commemorated by the particular church in the order of the days of their death on the successive days of the year, with or without statements of the place and manner of their passion. This simple skeleton became gradually animated with biographical sketches, coming down from different times and various authors, containing a confused mixture of history and fable, truth and fiction, piety and superstition, and needing to be used with great critical caution. As these biographies of the saints were read on their annual days in the church and in the cloisters for the edification of the people, they were called Legenda.
The first Acts of the Martyrs come down from the second and third centuries, in part from eye-witnesses, as, for example, the martyrdom of Polycarp (a.d. 167), and of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne in South Gaul; but most of them originated, at least in their present form, in the post-Constantinian age. Eusebius wrote a general martyrology, which is lost. The earliest Latin martyrology is ascribed to Jerome, but at all events contains many later additions; this father, however, furnished valuable contributions to such works in his "Lives of eminent Monks" and his "Catalogue of celebrated Church Teachers." Pope Gelasius thought good to prohibit or to restrict the church reading of the Acts of the Saints, because the names of the authors were unknown, and superfluous and incongruous additions by heretics or uneducated persons (idiotis) might be introduced. Gregory the Great speaks of a martyrology in use in Rome and elsewhere, which is perhaps the same afterward ascribed to Jerome and widely spread. The presentMartyrologium Romanum, which embraces the saints of all countries, is an expansion of this, and was edited by Baronius with a learned commentary at the command of Gregory XIII. and Sixtus V. in 1586, and afterward enlarged by the Jesuit Heribert Rosweyd.
Rosweyd († 1629) also sketched, toward the close of the sixteenth century, the plan for the celebrated "Acta Sanctorum, quotquot toto orbe coluntur," which Dr. John van Bolland († 1665) and his companions and continuators, called Bollandists (Henschen, † 1681; Papenbroek, † 1714; Sollier, † 1740; Stiltinck, † 1762, and others of inferior merit), published at Antwerp in fifty-three folio volumes, between the years 1643 and 1794 (including the two volumes of the second series), under the direction of the Jesuits, and with the richest and rarest literary aids.863 This work contains, in the order of the days of the year, the biography of every saint in the Catholic calendar, as composed by the Bollandists, down to the fifteenth of October, together with all the acts of canonization, papal bulls, and other ancient documents belonging thereto, with learned treatises and notes; and that not in the style of popular legends, but in the tone of thorough historical investigation and free criticism, so far as a general accordance with the Roman Catholic system of faith would allow.864 It was interrupted in 1773 by the abolition of the order of the Jesuits, then again in 1794, after a brief resumption of labor and the publication of two more volumes (the fifty-second and fifty-third), by the French Revolution and invasion of the Netherlands and the partial destruction of the literary, material; but since 1845 (or properly since 1837) it has been resumed at Brussels under the auspices of the same order, though not with the same historical learning and critical acumen, and proceeds tediously toward completion.865 This colossal and amazing work of more than two centuries of pious industry and monkish learning will always remain a rich mine for the system of martyr and saint-worship and the history of Christian life.
§ 87. Worship of Relics. Dogma of the Resurrection. Miracles of Relics.
Comp. the Literature at § 84. Also J. Mabillon (R.C.): Observationes de sanctorum reliquiis (Praef. ad Acta s. Bened. Ordinis). Par. 1669. Barrington and Kirk (R.C.): The Faith of Catholics, &c. Lond. 1846. Vol. iii. pp. 250–307. On the Protestant side, J. H. Jung: Disquisitio antiquaria de reliqu. et profanis et sacris earumque cultu, ed. 4. Hannov. 1783.
The veneration of martyrs and saints had respect, in the first instance, to their immortal spirits in heaven, but came to be extended, also, in a lower degree, to their earthly remains or relics.866 By these are to be understood, first, their bodies, or rather parts of them, bones, blood, ashes; then all which was in any way closely connected with their persons, clothes, staff, furniture, and especially the instruments of their martyrdom. After the time of Ambrose the cross of Christ also, which, with the superscription and the nails, are said to have been miraculously discovered by the empress Helena in 326,867 was included, and subsequently His crown of thorns and His coat, which are preserved, the former, according to the legend, in Paris, and the latter in Treves.868 Relics of the body of Christ cannot be thought of, since He arose without seeing corruption, and ascended to heaven, where, above the reach of idolatry and superstition, He is enthroned at the right hand of the Father. His true relics are the Holy Supper and His living presence in the church to the end of the world.
The worship of relics, like the worship of Mary and the saints, began in a sound religious feeling of reverence, of love, and of gratitude, but has swollen to an avalanche, and rushed into all kinds of superstitious and idolatrous excess. "The most glorious thing that the mind conceives," says Goethe, "is always set upon by a throng of more and more foreign matter."
As Israel could not sustain the pure elevation of its divinely revealed religion, but lusted after the flesh pots of Egypt and coquetted with sensuous heathenism so it fared also with the ancient church.
The worship of relics cannot be derived from Judaism; for the Levitical law strictly prohibited the contact of bodies and bones of the dead as defiling.869 Yet the isolated instance of the bones of the prophet Elisha quickening by their contact a dead man who was cast into his tomb,870 was quoted in behalf of the miraculous power of relics; though it should be observed that even this miracle did not lead the Israelites to do homage to the bones of the prophet nor abolish the law of the uncleanness of a corpse.
The heathen abhorred corpses, and burnt them to ashes, except in Egypt, where embalming was the custom and was imitated by the Christians on the death of martyrs, though St. Anthony protested against it. There are examples, however, of the preservation of the bones of distinguished heroes like Theseus, and of the erection of temples over their graves.871
The Christian relic worship was primarily a natural consequence of the worship of the saints, and was closely connected with the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body, which was an essential article of the apostolic tradition, and is incorporated in almost all the ancient creeds. For according to the gospel the body is not an evil substance, as the Platonists, Gnostics, Manichaeans held, but a creature of God; it is redeemed by Christ; it becomes by the regeneration an organ and temple of the Holy Ghost; and it rests as a living seed in the grave, to be raised again at the last day, and changed into the likeness of the glorious body of Christ. The bodies of the righteous "grow green" in their graves, to burst forth in glorious bloom on the morning of the resurrection. The first Christians from the beginning set great store by this comforting doctrine, at which the heathen, like Celsus and Julian, scoffed. Hence they abhorred also the heathen custom of burning, and adopted the Jewish custom of burial with solemn religious ceremonies, which, however, varied in different times and countries.
But in the closer definition of the dogma of the resurrection two different tendencies appeared: a spiritualistic, represented by the Alexandrians, particularly by Origen and still later by the two Gregories; the other more realistic, favored by the Apostles’ Creed,872 advocated by Tertullian, but pressed by some church teachers, like Epiphanius and Jerome, in a grossly materialistic manner, without regard to the sw'ma pveumatikovn of Paul and the declaration that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God."873 The latter theory was far the more consonant with the prevailing spirit of our period, entirely supplanted the other, and gave the mortal remains of the saints a higher value, and the worship of them a firmer foundation.
Roman Catholic historians and apologists find a justification of the worship and the healing virtue of relics in three facts of the New Testament: the healing of the woman with the issue of blood by the touch of Jesus’ garment;874 the healing of the sick by the shadow of Peter;875and the same by handkerchiefs from Paul.876
These examples, as well as the miracle wrought by the bones of Elisha, were cited by Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and other fathers, to vindicate similar and greater miracles in their time. They certainly mark the extreme limit of the miraculous, beyond which it passes into the magical. But in all these cases the living and present person was the vehicle of the healing power; in the second case Luke records merely the popular belief, not the actual healing; and finally neither Christ nor the apostles themselves chose that method, nor in any way sanctioned the superstitions on which it was based.877 At all events, the New Testament and the literature of the apostolic fathers know nothing of an idolatrous veneration of the cross of Christ or the bones and chattels of the apostles. The living words and acts of Christ and the apostles so completely absorbed attention that we have no authentic accounts of the bodily appearance, the incidental externals, and transient possessions of the founders of the church. Paul would know Christ after the spirit, not after the flesh. Even the burial places of most of the apostles and evangelists are unknown. The traditions of their martyrdom and their remains date from a much later time, and can claim no historical credibility.
The first clear traces of the worship of relics appear in the second century in the church of Antioch, where the bones of the bishop and martyr Ignatius († 107) were preserved as a priceless treasure;878 and in Smyrna, where the half-burnt bones of Polycarp († 167) were considered "more precious than the richest jewels and more tried than gold."879 We read similar things in the Acts of the martyrs Perpetua and Cyprian. The author of the Apostolic Constitutions880 exhorts that the relics of the saints, who are with the God of the living and not of the dead, be held in honor, and appeals to the miracle of the bones of Elisha, to the veneration which Joseph showed for the remains of Jacob, and to the bringing of the bones of Joseph by Moses and Joshua into the promised land.881 Eusebius states that the episcopal throne of James of Jerusalem was preserved to his time, and was held in great honor.882
Such pious fondness for relics, however, if it is confined within proper limits, is very natural and innocent, and appears even in the Puritans of New England, where the rock in Plymouth, the landing place of the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620, has the attraction of a place of pilgrimage, and the chair of the first governor of Massachusetts is scrupulously preserved, and is used at the inauguration of every new president of Harvard University.
But toward the middle of the fourth century the veneration of relics simultaneously with the worship of the saints, assumed a decidedly superstitious and idolatrous character. The earthly remains of the martyrs were discovered commonly by visions and revelations, often not till centuries after their death, then borne in solemn processions to the churches and chapels erected to their memory, and deposited under the altar;883 and this event was annually celebrated by a festival.884 The legend of the discovery of the holy cross gave rise to two church festivals: The Feast of the Invention of the Cross885 on the third of May, which has been observed in the Latin church since the fifth or sixth century; and The Feast of the Elevation of the Cross,886 on the fourteenth of September, which has been observed in the East and the West, according to some since the consecration of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in 335, according to others only since the reconquest of the holy cross by the emperor Heraclius in 628. The relics were from time to time displayed to the veneration of the believing multitude, carried about in processions, preserved in golden and silver boxes, worn on the neck as amulets against disease and danger of every kind, and considered as possessing miraculous virtue, or more strictly, as instruments through which the saints in heaven, in virtue of their connection with Christ, wrought miracles of healing and even of raising the dead. Their number soon reached the incredible, even from one and the same original; there were, for example, countless splinters of the pretended cross of Christ from Jerusalem, while the cross itself is said to have remained, by a continued miracle, whole and undiminished! Veneration of the cross and crucifix knew no bounds, but can, by no means, be taken as a true measure of the worship of the Crucified; on the contrary, with the great mass the outward form came into the place of the spiritual intent, and the wooden and silver Christ was very often a poor substitute for the living Christ in the heart.887
Relics became a regular article of trade, but gave occasion, also, for very many frauds, which even such credulous and superstitious relic-worshippers as St. Martin of Tours888 and Gregory the Great889 lamented. Theodosius I., as early as 386, prohibited this trade; and so did many councils; but without success. On this account the bishops found themselves compelled to prove the genuineness of the relics by historical tradition, or visions, or miracles.
At first, an opposition arose to this worship of dead men’s bones. St. Anthony, the father of monasticism († 356), put in his dying protest against it, directing that his body should be buried in an unknown place. Athanasius relates this with approbation,890 and he caused several relics which had been given to him to be fastened up, that they might be out of the reach of idolatry.891 But the opposition soon ceased, or became confined to inferior or heretical authors, like Vigilantius and Eunomius, or to heathen opponents like Porphyry and Julian. Julian charges the Christians, on this point, with apostasy from their own Master, and sarcastically reminds them of His denunciation of the Pharisees, who were like whited sepulchres, beautiful without, but within full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.892 This opposition, of course, made no impression, and was attributed to sheer impiety. Even heretics and schismatics, with few exceptions, embraced this form of superstition, though the Catholic church denied the genuineness of their relics and the miraculous virtue of them
The most and the best of the church teachers of our period, Hilary, the two Gregories, Basil, Chrysostom, Isidore of Pelusium, Theodoret, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Leo, even those who combated the worship of images on this point, were carried along by the spirit of the time, and gave the weight of their countenance to the worship of relics, which thus became an essential constituent of the Greek and Roman Catholic religion. They went quite as far as the council of Trent,893 which expresses itself more cautiously, on the worship of relics as well as of saints, than the church fathers of the Nicene age. With the good intent to promote popular piety by sensible stimulants and tangible supports, they became promoters of dangerous errors and gross superstition.
To cite some of the most important testimonies:
Gregory Nazianzen thinks the bodies of the saints can as well perform miracles, as their spirits, and that the smallest parts of the body or of the symbols of their passion are as efficacious as the whole body.894
Chrysostom values the dust and ashes of the martyrs more highly than gold or jewels, and ascribes to them the power of healing diseases and putting death to flight.895 In his festal discourse on the translation of the relics of the Egyptian martyrs from Alexandria to Constantinople, he extols the bodies of the saints in eloquent strains as the best ramparts of the city against all visible enemies and invisible demons, mightier than walls, moats, weapons, and armies.896
"Let others," says Ambrose, "heap up silver and gold; we gather the nails wherewith the martyrs were pierced, and their victorious blood, and the wood of their cross."897 He himself relates at large, in a letter to his sister, the miraculous discovery of the bones of the twin brothers Gervasius and Protasius, two otherwise wholly unknown and long-forgotten martyrs of the persecution under Nero or Domitian.898 This is one of the most notorious relic miracles of the early church. It is attested by the most weighty authorities, by Ambrose and his younger contemporaries, his secretary and biographer Paulinus, the bishop Paulinus of Nola, and Augustine, who was then in Milan; it decided the victory of the Nicene orthodoxy over the Arian opposition of the empress Justina; yet is it very difficult to be believed, and seems at least in part to rest on pious frauds.899
The story is, that when Ambrose, in 386, wished to consecrate the basilica at Milan, he was led by a higher intimation in a vision to cause the ground before the doors of Sts. Felix and Nahor to be dug up, and there he found two corpses of uncommon size, the heads severed from the bodies (for they died by the sword), the bones perfectly preserved, together with a great quantity of fresh blood.900 These were the saints in question. They were exposed for two days to the wondering multitude, then borne in solemn procession to the basilica of Ambrose, performing on the way the healing of a blind man, Severus by name, a butcher by trade, and afterward sexton of this church. This, however, was not the only miracle which the bones performed. "The age of miracles returned," says Ambrose. "How many pieces of linen, how many portions of dress, were cast upon the holy relics and were recovered with the power of healing from that touch.901 It is a source of joy to all to touch but the extremest portion of the linen that covers them; and whoso touches is healed. We give thee thanks, O Lord Jesus, that thou hast stirred up the energies of the holy martyrs at this time, wherein thy church has need of stronger defence. Let all learn what combatants I seek, who are able to contend for us, but who do not assail us, who minister good to all, harm to none." In his homily De inventione SS. Gervasii et Protasii, he vindicates the miracle of the healing of the blind man against the doubts of the Arians, and speaks of it as a universally acknowledged and undeniable fact: The healed man, Severus, is well known, and publicly testifies that he received his sight by the contact of the covering of the holy relics.
Jerome calls Vigilantius, for his opposition to the idolatrous veneration of ashes and bones, a wretched man, whose condition cannot be sufficiently pitied, a Samaritan and Jew, who considered the dead unclean; but he protects himself against the charge of superstition. We honor the relics of the martyrs, says he, that we may adore the God of the martyrs; we honor the servants, in order thereby to honor the Master, who has said: "He that receiveth you, receiveth me."902 The saints are not dead; for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not a God of the dead, but of the living. Neither are they enclosed in Abraham’s bosom as in a prison till the day of Judgment, but they follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.903
Augustine believed in the above-mentioned miraculous discovery of the bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, and the healing of the blind man by contact with them, because he himself was then in Milan, in 386, at the time of his conversion,904 and was an eye-witness, not indeed of the discovery of the bones—for this he nowhere says—but of the miracles, and of the great stir among the people.905
He gave credit likewise to the many miraculous cures which the bones of the first martyr Stephen are said to have performed in various parts of Africa in his time.906 These relics were discovered in 415, nearly four centuries after the stoning of Stephen, in an obscure hamlet near Jerusalem, through a vision of Gamaliel, by a priest of Lucian; and some years afterward portions of them were transported to Uzali, not far from Utica, in North Africa, and to Spain and Gaul, and everywhere caused the greatest ado in the superstitious populace.
But Augustine laments, on the other hand, the trade in real and fictitious relics, which was driven in his day,907 and holds the miracles to be really superfluous, now that the world is converted to Christianity, so that he who still demands miracles, is himself a miracle.908 Though he adds, that to that day miracles were performed in the name of Jesus by the sacraments or by the saints, but not with the same lustre, nor with the same significance and authority for the whole Christian world.909 Thus he himself furnishes a warrant and an entering wedge for critical doubt in our estimate of those phenomena.910
§ 88. Observations on the Miracles of the Nicene Age.
Comp. on the affirmative side especially John H. Newman (now R.C., then Romanizing Anglican): Essay on Miracles, in the 1st vol. of the English translation of Fleury’s Ecclesiastical History, Oxford, 1842; on the negative, Isaac Taylor (Independent): Ancient Christianity, Lond. 4th ed. 1844. Vol. ii. pp. 233–365. Dr. Newman previously took the negative side on the question of the genuineness of the church miracles in a contribution to the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, 1830.
In the face of such witnesses as Ambrose and Augustine, who must be accounted in any event the noblest and most honorable men of the early church, it is venturesome absolutely to deny all the relic-miracles, and to ascribe them to illusion and pious fraud. But, on the other hand, we should not be bribed or blinded by the character and authority of such witnesses, since experience sufficiently proves that even the best and most enlightened men cannot wholly divest themselves of superstition and of the prejudices of their age911 Hence, too, we should not ascribe to this whole question of the credibility of the Nicene miracles an undue dogmatic weight, nor make the much wider issue between Catholicism and Protestantism dependent on it.912 In every age, as in every man, light and shade in fact are mingled, that no flesh should exalt itself above measure. Even the most important periods of church history, among which the Nicene age, with all its faults, must be numbered, have the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels, and reflect the spotless glory of the Redeemer in broken colors.
The most notorious and the most striking of the miracles of the fourth century are Constantine’s vision of the cross (a.d. 312), the finding of the holy cross (a.d. 326), the frustration of Julian’s building of the temple (a.d. 363) the discovery of the relics of Protasius and Gervasius (a.d. 386), and subsequently (a.d. 415) of the bones of St. Stephen, with a countless multitude of miraculous cures in its train. Respecting the most important we have already spoken at large in the proper places.
We here offer some general remarks on this difficult subject.
The possibility of miracles in general he only can deny who does not believe in a living God and Almighty Maker of heaven and earth. The laws of nature are organs of the free will of God; not chains by which He has bound Himself forever, but elastic threads which He can extend and contract at His pleasure. The actual occurrence of miracles is certain to every believer from Holy Scripture, and there is no passage in the New Testament to limit it to the apostolic age. The reasons which made miracles necessary as outward proofs of the divine mission of Christ and the apostles for the unbelieving Jews of their time, may reappear from time to time in the unbelieving heathen and the skeptical Christian world; while spiritual miracles are continually taking place in regeneration and conversion. In itself, it is by no means unworthy and incredible that God should sometimes condescend to the weakness of the uneducated mass, and should actually vouchsafe that which was implored through the mediation of saints and their relics.
But the following weighty considerations rise against the miracles of the Nicene and post-Nicene age; not warranting, indeed, the rejection of all, yet making us at least very cautious and doubtful of receiving them in particular:
1. These miracles have a much lower moral tone than those of the Bible, while in some cases they far exceed them in outward pomp, and make a stronger appeal to our faculty of belief. Many of the monkish miracles are not so much supernatural and above reason, as they are unnatural and against reason, attributing even to wild beasts of the desert, panthers and hyenas, with which the misanthropic hermits lived on confidential terms, moral feelings and states, repentance and conversion913 of which no trace appears in the New Testament.914
2. They serve not to confirm the Christian faith in general, but for the most part to support the ascetic life, the magical virtue of the sacrament, the veneration of saints and relics, and other superstitious practices, which are evidently of later origin, and are more or less offensive to the healthy evangelical mind.915
3. The further they are removed from the apostolic age, the more numerous they are, and in the fourth century alone there are more miracles than in all the three preceding centuries together, while the reason for them, as against the power of the heathen world, was less.
4. The church fathers, with all the worthiness of their character in other respects, confessedly lacked a highly cultivated sense of truth, and allowed a certain justification of falsehood ad majorem Dei gloriam, or fraus pia, under the misnomer of policy or accommodation;916 with the solitary exception of Augustine, who, in advance of his age, rightly condemned falsehood in every form.
5. Several church fathers like Augustine, Martin of Tours, and Gregory I., themselves concede that in their time extensive frauds with the relics of saints were already practised; and this is confirmed by the fact that there were not rarely numerous copies of the same relics, all of which claimed to be genuine.
6. The Nicene miracles met with doubt and contradiction even among contemporaries, and Sulpitius Severus makes the important admission that the miracles of St. Martin were better known and more firmly believed in foreign countries than in his own.917
7. Church fathers, like Chrysostom and Augustine, contradict themselves in a measure, in sometimes paying homage to the prevailing faith in miracles, especially in their discourses on the festivals of the martyrs, and in soberer moments, and in the calm exposition of the Scriptures, maintaining that miracles, at least in the Biblical sense, had long since ceased.918
We must moreover remember that the rejection of the Nicene miracles by no means justifies the inference of intentional deception in every case, nor destroys the claim of the great church teachers to our respect. On the contrary, between the proper miracle and fraud there lie many intermediate steps of self-deception, clairvoyance, magnetic phenomena and cures, and unusual states of the human soul, which is full of deep mysteries, and stands nearer the invisible spirit-world than the everyday mind of the multitude suspects. Constantine’s vision of the cross, for example, may be traced to a prophetic dream;919 and the frustration of the building of the Jewish temple under Julian, to a special providence, or a historical judgment of God.920 The mytho-poetic faculty, too, which freely and unconsciously produces miracles among children, may have been at work among credulous monks in the dreary deserts and magnified an ordinary event into a miracle. In judging of this obscure portion of the history of the church we must, in general, guard ourselves as well against shallow naturalism and skepticism, as against superstitious mysticism, remembering that
"There are more things in heaven and on earth,
Than are dreamed of in our philosophy."
§ 89. Processions and Pilgrimages.
Early Latin dissertations on pilgrimages by J. Gretser, Mamachi, Lazari, J. H. Heidegger, etc. J. Marx (R.C.): Das Wallfahren in der katholischen Kirche, historisch-kritisch dargestellt. Trier, 1842. Comp. the relevant sections in the church archaeologies of Bingham, Augusti, Binterim, &c.
Solemn religious processions on high festivals and special occasions had been already customary among the Jews,921 and even among the heathen. They arise from the love of human nature for show and display, which manifests itself in all countries in military parades, large funerals, and national festivities.
The oppressed condition of the church until the time of Constantine made such public demonstrations impossible or unadvisable.
In the fourth century, however, we find them in the East and in the West, among orthodox and heretics,922 on days of fasting and prayer, on festivals of thanksgiving, at the burial of the dead, the induction of bishops, the removal of relics, the consecration of churches, and especially in times of public calamity. The two chief classes are thanksgiving and penitential processions. The latter were also called cross-processions, litanies.923
The processions moved from church to church, and consisted of the clergy, the monks, and the people, alternately saying or singing prayers, psalms, and litanies. In the middle of the line commonly walked the bishop as leader, in surplice, stole, and pluvial, with the mitre on his head, the crozier in his left hand, and with his right hand blessing the people. A copy of the Bible, crucifixes, banners, images and relics, burning tapers or torches, added solemn state to the procession.924
Regular annual processions occurred on Candlemas, and on Palm Sunday. To these was added, after the thirteenth century, the procession on Corpus Christi, in which the sacrament of the altar is carried about and worshipped.
Pilgrimages are founded in the natural desire to see with one’s own eyes sacred or celebrated places, for the gratification of curiosity, the increase of devotion, and the proving of gratitude.925 These also were in use before the Christian era. The Jews went up annually to Jerusalem at their high festivals as afterward the Mohammedans went to Mecca. The heathen also built altars over the graves of their heroes and made pilgrimages thither.926 To the Christians those places were most interesting and holy of all, where the Redeemer was born, suffered, died, and rose again for the salvation of the world.
Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land appear in isolated cases even in the second century, and received a mighty impulse from the example of the superstitiously pious empress Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great. In 326, at the age of seventy-nine, she made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, was baptized in the Jordan, discovered the holy cross, removed the pagan abominations and built Christian churches on Calvary and Olivet, and at Bethany.927 In this she was liberally supported by her son, in whose arms she died at Nicomedia in 327. The influence of these famous pilgrims’ churches extended through the whole middle age, to the crusades, and reaches even to most recent times.928
The example of Helena was followed by innumerable pilgrims who thought that by such journeys they made the salvation of their souls more sure. They brought back with them splinters from the pretended holy cross, waters from the Jordan, earth from Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and other genuine and spurious relics, to which miraculous virtue was ascribed.929
Several of the most enlightened church fathers, who approved pilgrimages in themselves, felt it necessary to oppose a superstitious estimate of them, and to remind the people that religion might be practised in any place. Gregory of Nyssa shows that pilgrimages are nowhere enjoined in the Scriptures, and are especially unsuitable and dangerous for women, and draws a very unfavorable picture of the immorality prevailing at places of such resort. "Change of place," says he, "brings God no nearer. Where thou art, God will come to thee, if the dwelling of thy soul is prepared for him."930 Jerome describes with great admiration the devout pilgrimage of his friend Paula to the East, and says that he himself, in his Bethlehem, had adored the manger and birthplace of the Redeemer;931 but he also very justly declares that Britain is as near heaven as Jerusalem, and that not a journey to Jerusalem, but a holy living there, is the laudable thing.932
Next to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and other localities of the Holy Land, Rome was a preëminent place of resort for pilgrims from the West and East, who longed to tread the threshold of the princes of the apostles (limina apostolorum). Chrysostom regretted that want of time and health prevented him from kissing the chains of Peter and Paul, which made devils tremble and angels rejoice.
In Africa, Hippo became a place of pilgrimage on account of the bones of St. Stephen; in Campania, the grave of St. Felix, at Nola; in Gaul, the grave of St. Martin of Tours († 397). The last was especially renowned, and was the scene of innumerable miracles.933 Even the memory of Job drew many pilgrims to Arabia to see the ash heap, and to kiss the earth, where the man of God endured so much.934
In the Roman and Greek churches the practice of pilgrimage to holy places has maintained itself to the present day. Protestantism has divested the visiting of remarkable places, consecrated by great men or great events, of all meritoriousness and superstitious accessories, and has reduced it to a matter of commendable gratitude and devout curiosity. Within these limits even the evangelical Christian cannot view without emotion and edification the sacred spots of Palestine, the catacombs of Rome, the simple slabs over Luther and Melanchthon in the castle-church of Wittenberg, the monuments of the English martyrs in Oxford, or the rocky landing-place of the Puritanic pilgrim fathers in Massachusetts. He feels himself nearer to the spirit of the great dead; but he knows that this spirit continues not in their dust, but lives immortally with God and the saints in heaven.
§ 90. Public Worship of the Lord’s Day. Scripture-Reading and Preaching.
J.A. Schmidt: De primitive ecclesiae lectionibus. Helmst. 1697. E. Ranke: Das kirchliche Perikopensystem aus den Ältesten Urkunden der röm. Liturgie. Berlin, 1847. H. T. Tzschirner: De claris Eccles. vet. oratoribus Comment. i.-ix. Lips. 1817 sqq. K. W. F. Paniel: Pragmatische Geschichte der christl. Beredtsamkeit. Leipz. 1839 ff.
The order and particular parts of the ordinary public worship of God remain the same as they were in the previous period. But the strict separation of the service of the Catechumens,935 consisting of prayer, scripture reading, and preaching, from the service of the faithful,936 consisting of the communion, lost its significance upon the universal prevalence of Christianity and the union of church and state. Since the fifth century the inhabitants of the Roman empire were now considered as Christians at least in name and confession and could attend even those parts of the worship which were formerly guarded by secrecy against the profanation of pagans. The Greek term liturgy, and the Latin term mass, which is derived from the customary formula of dismission,937 was applied, since the close of the fourth century (398), to the communion service or the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice. This was the divine service in the proper sense of the term, to which all other parts were subordinate. We shall speak of it more fully hereafter.938 We have to do at present with those parts which were introductory to the communion and belong to the service of the catechumens as well as to that of the communicants.
The reading of a portion of the Holy Scriptures continued to be an essential constituent of divine service. Upon the close of the church canon, after the Council of Carthage in 397, and other synods, the reading of uncanonical books (such as writings of the apostolic fathers) was forbidden, with the exception of the legends of the martyrs on their memorial days.
There was as yet no obligatory system of pericopes, like that of the later Greek and Roman churches. The lectio continua, or the reading and exposition of whole books of the Bible, remained in practice till the fifth century, and the selection of books for the different parts and services of the church year was left to the judgment of the bishop. At high festivals, however, such portions were read as bore special reference to the subject of the celebration. By degrees, after the example of the Jewish synagogue,939 a more complete yearly course of selections from the New Testament for liturgical use was arranged, and the selections were called lessons or pericopes.940 In the Latin church this was done in the fifth century; in the Greek, in the eighth. The lessons941 were taken from the Gospels and from the Epistles, or the Apostle (in part also from the Prophets), and were therefore called the Gospel and the Epistle for the particular Sunday or festival. Some churches, however, had three, or even four lessons, a Gospel, an Epistle, and a section from the Old Testament and from the Acts. Many manuscripts of the New Testament contained only the pericopes or lessons for public worship,942 and many of these again, only the Gospel pericopes.943 The Alexandrian deacon Euthalius, about 460, divided the Gospel and the Apostle, excepting the Revelation, into fifty-seven portions each, for the Sundays and feast days of the year; but they were not generally received, and the Eastern church still adhered for a long time to the lectio continua. Among the Latin lectionaries still extant, the Lectionarium Gallicanum, dating from the sixth or seventh century, and edited by Mabillon, and the so-called Comes (i.e., Clergyman’s Companion) or Liber Comitis, were in especial repute. The latter is traced by tradition to the learned Jerome, and forms the groundwork of the Roman lectionary and the entire Western System of pericopes, which has passed from the Latin church into the Anglican and the Lutheran, but has undergone many changes in the course of time.944 This selection of Scripture portions was in general better fitted to the church year, but had the disadvantage of withholding large parts of the holy Scriptures from the people.
The lessons were read from the ambo or reading desk by the lector, with suitable formulas of introduction; usually the Epistle first, and then the Gospel; closing with the doxology or the singing of a psalm. Sometimes the deacon read the Gospel from the altar, to give it special distinction as the word of the Lord Himself.
The church fathers earnestly enjoined, besides this, diligent private reading of the Scriptures; especially Chrysostom, who attributed all corruption in the church to the want of knowledge of the Scriptures. Yet he already found himself compelled to combat the assumption that the Bible is a book only for clergy and monks, and not for the people; an assumption which led in the middle age to the notorious papal prohibitions of the Scriptures in the popular tongues. Strictly speaking, the Bible has been made what it was originally intended to be, really a universal book of the people, only by the invention of the art of printing, by the spirit of the Reformation, and by the Bible Societies of modern times. For in the ancient church, and in the middle age, the manuscripts of the Bible were so rare and so dear, and the art of reading was so limited, that the great mass were almost entirely dependent on the fragmentary reading of the Scriptures in public worship. This fact must be well considered, to forestall too unfavorable a judgment of that early age.
The reading of the Scripture was followed by the sermon, based either on the pericope just read, or on a whole book, in consecutive portions. We have from the greatest pulpit orators of antiquity, from Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil the Great, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, connected homilies on Genesis, the Prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the Epistles. But on high festivals a text was always selected suitable and usual for the occasion.945 There was therefore in the ancient church no forced conformity to the pericopes; the advantages of a system of Scripture lessons and a consecutive exposition of entire books of Scripture were combined. The reading of the pericopes belongs properly to the altar-service, and must keep its connection with the church year; preaching belongs to the pulpit, and may extend to the whole compass of the divine word.
Pulpit eloquence in the fourth and fifth centuries reached a high point in the Greek church, and is most worthily represented by Gregory Nazianzen and Chrysostom. But it also often degenerated there into artificial rhetoric, declamatory bombast, and theatrical acting. Hence the abuse of frequent clapping and acclamations of applause among the people.946 As at this day, so in that, many went to church not to worship God, but to hear a celebrated speaker, and left as soon as the sermon was done. The sermon, they said, we can hear only in the church, but we can pray as well at home. Chrysostom often raised his voice against this in Antioch and in Constantinople. The discourses of the most favorite preachers were often written down by stenographers and multiplied by manuscripts, sometimes with their permission, sometimes without.
In the Western church the sermon was much less developed, consisted in most cases of a simple practical exhortation, and took the background of the eucharistic sacrifice. Hence it was a frequent thing there for the people to leave the church at the beginning of the sermon; so that many bishops, who had no idea of the free nature of religion and of worship, compelled the people to hear by closing the doors.
The sermon was in general freely delivered from the bishop’s chair or from the railing of the choir (the cancelli), sometimes from the reading-desk. The duty of preaching devolved upon the bishops; and even popes, like Leo I. and Gregory I., frequently preached before the Roman congregation. Preaching was also performed by the presbyters and deacons. Leo I. restricts the right of preaching and teaching to the ordained clergy;947 yet monks and hermits preached not rarely in the streets, from pillars (like St. Symeon), roofs, or trees; and even laymen, like the emperor Constantine and some of his successors, wrote and delivered (though not in church) religious discourses to the faithful people.948
§ 91. The Sacraments in General.
G. L. Hahn: Die Lehre von den Sacramenten in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung innerhalb der abendländischen Kirche bis zum Concil von Trient. Breslau, 1864 (147 pp.). Comp. also the article Sacramente by G. E. Steitz in Herzog’s Real-Encyklopädie, vol. xiii. pp. 226–286; and Const. von Schätzler: Die Lehre von der Wirksamkeit der Sacramente ex opere operato. Munich, 1860.
The use of the word sacramentum in the church still continued for a long time very indefinite. It embraced every mystical and sacred thing (omne mysticum sacrumque signum). Tertullian, Ambrose, Hilary, Leo, Chrysostom, and other fathers, apply it even to mysterious doctrines and facts, like the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. But after the fifth century it denotes chiefly sacred forms of worship, which were instituted by Christ and by which divine blessings are mystically represented, sealed, and applied to men. This catholic theological conception has substantially passed into the evangelical churches, though with important changes as to the number and operation of the sacraments.949
Augustine was the first to substitute a clear doctrine of the nature of the sacraments for a vague notion and rhetorical exaggerations. He defines a sacrament to be a visible sign of an invisible grace or divine blessing.950 Two constituents, therefore, belong to such a holy act: the outward symbol or sensible element (the signum, also sacramentum in the stricter sense), which is visible to the eye, and the inward grace or divine virtue (the res or virtus sacramenti), which is an object of faith.951 The two, the sign and the thing signified, are united by the word of consecration.952 From the general spirit of Augustine’s doctrine, and several of his expressions, we must infer that he considered divine institution by Christ to be also a mark of such holy ordinance.953 But subsequently this important point retired from the consciousness of the church, and admitted the widening of the idea, and the increase of the number, of the sacraments.
Augustine was also the first to frame a distinct doctrine of the operation of the sacraments. In his view the sacraments work grace or condemnation, blessing or curse, according to the condition of the receiver.954 They operate, therefore, not immediately and magically, but mediately and ethically, not ex opere operato, in the later scholastic language, but through the medium of the active faith of the receiver. They certainly have, as divine institutions, an objective meaning in themselves, like the life-principle of a seed, and do not depend on the subjective condition of the one who administers them (as the Donatists taught); but they reach with blessing only those who seize the blessing, or take it from the ordinance, in faith; they bring curse to those who unworthily administer or receive them. Faith is necessary not as the efficient cause, but as the subjective condition, of the saving operation of the offered grace.955 Augustine also makes a distinction between a transient and a permanent effect of the sacrament, and thereby prepares the way for the later scholastic doctrine of the character indelebilis. Baptism and ordination impress an indelible character, and therefore cannot be repeated. He is fond of comparing baptism with the badge of the imperial service,956 which the soldier always retains either to his honor or to his shame. Hence the Catholic doctrine is: Once baptized, always baptized; once a priest, always a priest. Nevertheless a baptized person, or an ordained person, can be excommunicated and eternally lost. The popular opinion in the church already inclined strongly toward the superstitious view of the magical operation of the sacrament, which has since found scholastic expression in the opus operatum theory.
The church fathers with one accord assert a relative (not absolute) necessity of the sacraments to salvation.957 They saw in them, especially in baptism and the eucharist, the divinely appointed means of appropriating the forgiveness of sins and the grace of God. Yet with this view they firmly held that not the want of the sacraments, but only the contempt of them, was damning.958 In favor of this they appealed to Moses, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, the thief on the cross,—who all, however, belonged to the Old Testament economy—and to many Christian martyrs, who sealed their faith in Christ with their blood, before they had opportunity to be baptized and to commune. The Virgin Mary also, and the apostles, belong in some sense to this class, who, since Christ himself did not baptize, received not the Christian baptism of water, but instead were on the day of Pentecost baptized with Spirit and with fire. Thus Cornelius also received through Peter the gift of the Holy Ghost before baptism; but nevertheless submitted himself afterwards to the outward Sacrament. In agreement with this view, sincere repentance and true faith, and above all the blood-baptism of martyrdom,959 were regarded as a kind of compensation for the sacraments.
The number of the sacraments remained yet for a long time indefinite; though among the church fathers of our period baptism and the Lord’s Supper were regarded either as the only Sacraments, or as the prominent ones.
Augustine considered it in general an excellence of the New Testament over the Old, that the number of the sacraments was diminished, but their import enhanced,960 and calls baptism and the Supper, with reference to the water and the blood which flowed from the side of the Lord, the genuine or chief sacraments, on which the church subsists.961 But he includes under the wider conception of the sacrament other mysterious and holy usages, which were commended in the Scriptures,962 naming expressly confirmation,963 marriage,964 and ordination.965 Thus he already recognizes to some extent five Christian sacraments, to which the Roman church has since added penance and extreme unction.
Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Mystagogic Catechism, and Ambrose of Milan, in the six books De Sacramentis ascribed to him, mention only three sacraments: baptism, confirmation, and the Lord’s supper; and Gregory of Nyssa likewise mentions three, but puts ordination in the place of confirmation. For in the Eastern church confirmation, or the laying on of hands, was less prominent, and formed a part of the sacrament of baptism; while in the Western church it gradually established itself in the rank of an independent sacrament.
The unknown Greek author of the pseudo-Dionysian writings of the sixth century enumerates six sacraments (musthvria):966(1.) baptism, or illumination; (2.) the eucharist, or the consecration of consecrations; (3.) the consecration with anointing oil, or confirmation; (4.) the consecration of priests; (5.) the consecration of monks; (6.) the consecration of the dead, or extreme unction. Here marriage and penance are wanting; in place of them appears the consecration of monks, which however was afterwards excluded from the number of the sacraments.
In the North African, the Milanese, and the Gallican churches the washing of feet also long maintained the place of a distinct sacrament.967 Ambrose asserted its sacramental character against the church of Rome, and even declared it to be as necessary as baptism, because it was instituted by Christ, and delivered men from original sin, as baptism from the actual sin of transgression;—a view which rightly found but little acceptance.
This uncertainty as to the number of the sacraments continued till the twelfth century.968 Yet the usage of the church from the fifth century downward, in the East and in the West, appears to have inclined silently to the number seven, which was commended by its mystical sacredness. This is shown at least by the agreement of the Greek and Roman churches in this point, and even of the Nestorians and Monophysites, who split off in the fifth century from the orthodox Greek church.969
In the West, the number seven was first introduced, as is usually supposed, by the bishop Otto of Bamberg (1124), more correctly by Peter Lombard (d. 1164), the "Master of Sentences;" rationally and rhetorically justified by Thomas Aquinas and other scholastics (as recently by Möhler) from the seven chief religious wants of human life and human society;970 and finally publicly sanctioned by the council of Florence in 1439 with the concurrence of the Greek church, and established by the council of Trent with an anathema against all who think otherwise.971 The Reformation returned, in this point as in others, to the New Testament; retained none but baptism and the Lord’s Supper as proper sacraments, instituted and enjoined by Christ himself; entirely rejected extreme unction (and at first confirmation); consigned penance to the province of the inward life, and confirmation, marriage, and orders to the more general province of sacred acts and usages, to which a more or less sacramental character may be ascribed, but by no means an equality in other respects with baptism and the holy Supper.972
§ 92. Baptism.
For the Literature, see vol. i. § 37, p. 122; especially Höfling (Lutheran): Das Sacrament der Taufe. W. Wall (Anglican): The History of Infant Baptism (1705), new ed. Oxf. 1844, 4vols. C. A. G. v. Zezschwitz: System der christlich kirchlichen Katechetik. Vol. i. Leipz. 1863.
On heretical baptism in particular, See Mattes (R.C.): Ueber die Ketzertaufe, in the Tübingen "Theol. Quartalschrift," for 1849, pp. 571–637, and 1850, pp. 24–69; and G. E. Steitz, art. Ketzertaufe in Herzog’s Theol. Encyclop. vol. vii. pp. 524–541 (partly in opposition to Mattes). Concerning the form of baptism, on the Baptist side, T. J. Conant: The Meaning and Use of Baptizein philologically and historically investigated. New York, 1861.
The views of the ante-Nicene fathers concerning baptism and baptismal regeneration were in this period more copiously embellished in rhetorical style by Basil the Great and the two Gregories, who wrote special treatises on this sacrament, and were more clearly and logically developed by Augustine. The patristic and Roman Catholic view on regeneration, however, differs considerably from the one which now prevails among most Protestant denominations, especially those of the more Puritanic type, in that it signifies not so much a subjective change of heart, which is more properly called conversion, but a change in the objective condition and relation of the sinner, namely, his translation from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of Christ. Some modern divines make a distinction between baptismal and moral regeneration, in order to reconcile the doctrine of the fathers with the fact that the evidences of a new life are wholly wanting in so many who are baptized. But we cannot enter here into a discussion of the difficulties of this doctrine, and must confine ourselves to a historical statement.
Gregory Nazianzen sees in baptism all blessings of Christianity combined, especially the forgiveness of sins, the new birth, and the restoration of the divine image. To children it is a seal (sfragiv") of grace and a consecration to the service of God. According to Gregory of Nyssa, the child by baptism is instated in the paradise from which Adam was thrust out. The Greek fathers had no clear conception of original sin. According to the Pelagian Julian of Eclanum, Chrysostom taught: We baptize children, though they are not stained with sin, in order that holiness, righteousness, sonship, inheritance, and brotherhood may be imparted to them through Christ.973
Augustine brought the operation of baptism into connection with his more complete doctrine of original sin. Baptism delivers from the guilt of original sin, and takes away the sinful character of the concupiscence of the flesh,974 while for the adult it at the same time effects the forgiveness of all actual transgressions before baptism. Like Ambrose and other fathers, Augustine taught the necessity of baptism for entrance into the kingdom of heaven, on the ground of John iii. 5, and deduced therefrom, in logical consistency, the terrible doctrine of the damnation of all unbaptized children, though he assigned them the mildest grade of perdition.975
The council of Carthage, in 318, did the same, and in its second canon rejected the notion of a happy middle state for unbaptized children. It is remarkable, however, that this addition to the second canon does not appear in all copies of the Acts of the council, and was perhaps out of some horror omitted.976
In Augustine we already find all the germs of the scholastic and Catholic doctrine of baptism, though they hardly agree properly with his doctrine of predestination, the absolute sovereignty of divine grace and the perseverance of saints. According to this view, baptism is the sacrament of regeneration, which is, negatively, the means of the forgiveness of sin, that is, both of original sin and of actual sins committed before baptism (not after it), and positively, the foundation of the new spiritual life of faith through the impartation of the gratia operans and co-operans. The subjective condition of this effect is the worthy receiving, that is, penitent faith. Since in the child there is no actual sin, the effect of baptism in this case is limited to the remission of the guilt of original sin; and since the child cannot yet itself believe, the Christian church (represented by the parents and the sponsors) here appears in its behalf, as Augustine likewise supposed, and assumes the responsibility of the education of the baptized child to Christian majority.977
As to infant baptism: there was in this period a general conviction of its propriety and of its apostolic origin. Even the Pelagians were no exception; though infant baptism does not properly fit into their system; for they denied original sin, and baptism, as a rite of purification, always has reference to the forgiveness of sins. They attributed to infant baptism an improving effect. Coelestius maintained that children by baptism gained entrance to the higher stage of salvation, the kingdom of God, to which, with merely natural powers, they could not attain. He therefore supposed a middle condition of lower salvation for unbaptized children, which in the above quoted second canon of the council of Carthage—if it be genuine—is condemned. Pelagius said more cautiously: Whither unbaptized children go, I know not; whither they do not go, I know.
But, notwithstanding this general admission of infant baptism, the practice of it was by no means universal. Forced baptism, which is contrary to the nature of Christianity and the sacrament, was as yet unknown. Many Christian parents postponed the baptism of their children, sometimes from indifference, sometimes from fear that they might by their later life forfeit the grace of baptism, and thereby make their condition the worse. Thus Gregory Nazianzen and Augustine, though they had eminently pious mothers, were not baptized till their conversion in their manhood. But they afterward regretted this. Gregory admonishes a mother: "Let not sin gain the mastery in thy child; let him be consecrated even in swaddling bands. Thou art afraid of the divine seal on account of the weakness of nature. What weakness of faith! Hannah dedicated her Samuel to the Lord even before his birth; and immediately after his birth trained him for the priesthood. Instead of fearing human weakness, trust in God."
Many adult catechumens and proselytes likewise, partly from light-mindedness and love of the world, partly from pious prudence and superstitious fear of impairing the magical virtue of baptism, postponed their baptism until some misfortune or severe sickness drove them to the ordinance. The most celebrated example of this is the emperor Constantine, who was not baptized till he was on his bed of death. The postponement of baptism in that day was equivalent to the postponement of repentance and conversion so frequent in ours. This custom was resisted by the most eminent church teachers, but did not give way till the fifth century, when it gradually disappeared before the universal introduction of infant baptism.
Heretical baptism was now generally regarded as valid, if performed in the name of the triune God. The Roman view prevailed over the Cyprianic, at least in the Western church; except among the Donatists, who entirely rejected heretical baptism (as well as the catholic baptism), and made the efficacy of the sacrament depend not only on the ecclesiastical position, but also on the personal piety of the officiating priest.
Augustine, in his anti-Donatistic writings, defends the validity of heretical baptism by the following course of argument: Baptism is an institution of Christ, in the administration of which the minister is only an agent; the grace or virtue of the sacrament is entirely dependent on Christ, and not on the moral character of the administering agent; the unbeliever receives not the power, but the form of the sacrament, which indeed is of no use to the baptized as long as he is outside of the saving catholic communion, but becomes available as soon as he enters it on profession of faith; baptism, wherever performed, imparts an indelible character, or, as he calls it, a "character dominicus," "regius." He compares it often to the "nota militaris," which marks the soldier once for all, whether it was branded on his body by the legitimate captain or by a rebel, and binds him to the service, and exposes him to punishment for disobedience.
Proselyted heretics were, however, always confirmed by the laying on of hands, when received into the catholic church. They were treated like penitents. Leo the Great says of them, that they have received only the form of baptism without the power of sanctification.978
The most eminent Greek fathers of the Nicene age, on the other hand, adhered to the position of Cyprian and Firmilian. Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, and Cyril of Jerusalem regarded, besides the proper form, the true trinitarian faith on the part of the baptizing community, as an essential condition of the validity of baptism. The 45th of the so-called Apostolic Canons threatens those with excommunication who received converted heretics without rebaptism. But a milder view gradually obtained even in the East, which settled at last upon a compromise.
The ecumenical council of Constantinople in 381, in its seventh canon (which, however, is wanting in the Latin versions, and is perhaps later), recognizes the baptism of the Arians, the Sabbatians (a sort of Novatians, so called from their leader Sabbatius), the Quartodecimanians, the Apollinarians, but rejected the baptism of the Eunomians, "who baptize with only one immersion," the Sabellians, "who teach the Son-Fatherhood (uiJopatoriva)," the Montanists (probably because they did not at that time use the orthodox baptismal formula), and all other heretics. These had first to be exercised, then instructed, and then baptized, being treated therefore as heathen proselytes.979 The Trullan council of 692, in its 95th canon repeated this canon, and added the Nestorians, the Eutychians, and the followers of Dioscurus and Severus to the list of those heretics who may be received into the church on a mere recantation of their error. These decisions lack principle and consistency.
The catechetical instruction which preceded the baptism of proselytes and adults, and followed the baptism of children, ended with a public examination (scrutinium) before the congregation. The Creed—in the East the Nicene, in the West the Apostles’—was committed to memory and professed by the candidates or the god-parents of the children.
The favorite times for baptism for adults were Easter and Pentecost, and in the East also Epiphany. In the fourth century, when the mass of the population of the Roman empire went over from heathenism to Christianity, the baptisteries were thronged with proselytes on those high festivals, and the baptism of such masses had often a very imposing and solemn character. Children were usually incorporated into the church by baptism soon after their birth.
Immersion continued to be the usual form of baptism, especially in the East; and the threefold immersion in the name of the Trinity. Yet Gregory the Great permitted also the single immersion, which was customary in Spain as a testimony against the Arian polytheism.980
With baptism, several preparatory and accompanying ceremonies, some of them as early as the second and third centuries, were connected; which were significant, but overshadowed and obscured the original simplicity of the sacrament. These were exorcism, or the expulsion of the devil;981 breathing upon the candidates,982 as a sign of the communication of the Holy Ghost, according to John xx. 22; the touching of the ears,983 with the exclamation: Ephphatha!—from Mark vii. 34, for the opening of the spiritual understanding; the sign of the cross made upon the forehead and breast, as the mark of the soldier of Christ; and, at least in Africa, the giving of salt, as the emblem of the divine word, according to Mark ix. 50; Matt. v. 13 Col. iv. 6. Proselytes generally took also a new name, according to Rev. ii. 17.
In the act of baptism itself, the candidate first, with his face toward the west, renounced Satan and all his pomp and service,984 then, facing the east, he vowed fidelity to Christ,985 and confessed his faith in the triune God, either by rehearsing the Creed, or in answer to questions.986 Thereupon followed the threefold or the single immersion in the name of the triune God, with the calling of the name of the candidate, the deacons and deaconesses assisting. After the second anointing with the consecrated oil (confirmation), the veil was removed, with which the heads of catechumens, in token of their spiritual minority, were covered during divine worship, and the baptized person was clothed in white garments, representing the state of regeneration, purity, and freedom. In the Western church the baptized person received at the same time a mixture of milk and honey, as a symbol of childlike innocence and as a fore-taste of the communion.
§ 93. Confirmation.
Comp. the Literature of Baptism, especially Höfling, and Zezschwitz: Der Katechumenat (first vol. of his System der Katechetik). Leipzig, 1863.
Confirmation, in the first centuries, was closely connected with the act of baptism as the completion of that act, especially in adults. After the cessation of proselyte baptism and the increase of infant baptism, it gradually came to be regarded as an independent sacrament. Even by Augustine, Leo I., and others, it is expressly called sacramentum.987 This independence was promoted by the hierarchical interest, especially in the Latin church, where the performance of this rite is an episcopal function.
The catholic theory of confirmation is, that it seals and completes the grace of baptism, and at the same time forms in some sense a subjective complement to infant baptism, in which the baptized person, now grown to years of discretion, renews the vows made by his parents or sponsors in his name at his baptism, and makes himself personally responsible for them. The latter, however, is more properly a later Protestant (Lutheran and Anglican) view. Baptism, according to the doctrine of the ancient church, admits the man into the rank of the soldiers of Christ; confirmation endows him with strength and courage for the spiritual warfare.
The outward form of confirmation consists in the anointing of the forehead, the nose, the ear, and the breast with the consecrated oil, or a mixture of balsam,988 which symbolizes the consecration of the whole man to the spiritual priesthood; and in the laying on of the hands of the clergyman,989 which signifies and effects the communication of the Holy Ghost for the general Christian calling.990 The anointing takes precedence of the imposition of hands, in agreement with the Old Testament sacerdotal view; while in the Protestant church, wherever confirmation continues, it is entirely abandoned, and only the imposition of hands is retained.
In other respects considerable diversity prevailed in the different parts of the ancient church in regard to the usage of confirmation and the time of performing it.
In the Greek church every priest may administer confirmation or holy unction, and that immediately after baptism; but in the Latin church after the time of Jerome (as now in the Anglican) this function, like the power of ordination, was considered a prerogative of the bishops, who made periodical tours in their dioceses to confirm the baptized. Thus the two acts were often far apart in time.
§ 94. Ordination.
J. Morinus (R.C.): Comment. Hist. so dogm. de sacris Eccles. ordinationibus. Par. 1655, etc. Fr. Halierius (R.C.): De sacris electionibus et ordinationibus. Rom. 1749. 3 vols. fol. G. L. Hahn: l.c. p. 96 and p. 354 ff. Comp. the relevant sections in the archaeological works of Bingham, Augusti, Binterim, etc.
The ordination of clergymen991 was as early as the fourth or fifth century admitted into the number of sacraments. Augustine first calls it a sacrament, but with the remark that in his time the church unanimously acknowledged the sacramental character of this usage.992
Ordination is the solemn consecration to the special priesthood, as baptism is the introduction to the universal priesthood; and it is the medium of communicating the gifts for the ministerial office. It confers the capacity and authority of administering the sacraments and governing the body of believers, and secures to the church order, care, and steady growth to the end of time. A ruling power is as necessary in the church as in the state. In the Jewish church there was a hereditary priestly caste; in the Christian this is exchanged for an unbroken succession of voluntary priests from all classes, but mostly from the middle and lower classes of the people.
Like baptism and confirmation, ordination imparts, according to the later scholastic doctrine, a character indelebilis, and cannot therefore be repeated.993 But this of course does not exclude the possibility of suspension and excommunication in case of gross immorality or gross error. The council of Nice, in 325, acknowledged even the validity of the ordination of the schismatic Novatians.
Corresponding to the three ordines majores there were three ordinations: to the diaconate, to the presbyterate, and to the episcopate.994 Many of the most eminent bishops, however, like Cyprian and Ambrose, received the three rites in quick succession, and officiated only as bishops.
Different from ordination is installation, or induction into a particular congregation or diocese, which may be repeated as often as the minister is transferred.
Ordination was performed by laying on of hands and prayer, closing with the communion. To these were gradually added other preparatory and attendant practices; such as the tonsure995 the anointing with the chrism (only in the Latin church after Gregory the Great), investing with the insignia of the office (the holy books, and in the case of bishops the ring and staff), the kiss of brotherhood, etc. Only bishops can ordain, though presbyters assist. The ordination or consecraion of a bishop generally requires, for greater solemnity, the presence of three bishops.
No one can receive priestly orders without a fixed field of labor which yields him support.996 In the course of time further restrictions, derived in part from the Old Testament, in regard to age, education, physical and moral constitution, freedom from the bonds of marriage, etc., were established by ecclesiastical legislation.
The favorite times for ordination were Pentecost and the quarterly Quatember terms997 (i.e., the beginning of Quadragesima, the weeks after Pentecost, after the fourteenth of September, and after the thirteenth of December), which were observed, after Gelasius or Leo the Great, as ordinary penitential seasons of the church. The candidates were obliged to prepare themselves for consecration by prayer and fasting.
§ 95. The Sacrament of the Eucharist.
Comp. the Literature in vol. i. § 38 and § 102, the corresponding sections in the Doctrine Histories and Archaeologies, and the treatises of G. E. Steitz on the historical development of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper in the Greek church, in Dorner’s "Jahrbücher für Deutsche Theologie," for 1864 and 1865. In part also the liturgical works of Neale, Daniel, etc., cited below (§ 98), and Philip Freeman: The Principles of Divine Service. Lond. Part i. 1855, Part ii. 1862. (The author, in the introduction to the second part, states as his object: "To unravel, by means of an historical survey of the ancient belief concerning the Holy Eucharist, viewed as a mystery, and of the later departures from it, the manifold confusions which have grown up around the subject, more especially since the fatal epoch of the eleventh century." But the book treats not so much of the doctrine of the Eucharist, as of the ceremony of it, and the eucharistic sacrifice, with special reference to the Anglican church.)
The Eucharist is both a sacrament wherein God conveys to us a certain blessing, and a sacrifice which man offers to God. As a sacrament, or the communion, it stands at the head of all sacred rites; as a sacrifice it stands alone. The celebration of it under this twofold character forms the holy of holies of the Christian cultus in the ancient church, and in the greater part of Christendom at this day.998
We consider first the doctrine of the Eucharist as a sacrament, then the doctrine of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, and finally the celebration of the eucharistic communion and eucharistic sacrifice.
The doctrine of the sacrament of the Eucharist was not a subject of theological controversy and ecclesiastical action till the time of Paschasius Radbert, in the ninth century; whereas since then this feast of the Saviour’s dying love has been the innocent cause of the most bitter disputes, especially in the age of the Reformation, between Papists and Protestants, and among Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Calvinists. Hence the doctrine of the ancient church on this point lacks the clearness and definiteness which the Nicene dogma of the Trinity, the Chalcedonian Christology, and the Augustinian anthropology and soteriology acquired from the controversies preceding them. In the doctrine of baptism also we have a much better right to speak of a consensus patrum, than in the doctrine of the holy Supper.
In general, this period, following the representatives of the mystic theory in the previous one, was already very strongly inclined toward the doctrine of transubstantiation and toward the Greek and Roman sacrifice of the mass, which are inseparable in so far as a real sacrifice requires the real presence of the victim. But the kind and mode of this presence are not yet particularly defined, and admit very different views: Christ may be conceived as really present either in and with the elements (consubstantiation, impanation), or under the illusive appearance of the changed elements (transubstantiation), or only dynamically and spiritually.
In the previous period we distinguish three views: the mystic view of Ignatius, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus; the symbolical view of Tertullian and Cyprian; and the allegorical or spiritualistic view of Clement of Alexandria and Origen. In the present the first view, which best answered the mystic and superstitious tendency of the time, preponderated, but the second also was represented by considerable authorities.999
I. The realistic and mystic view is represented by several fathers and the early liturgies, whose testimony we shall further cite below. They speak in enthusiastic and extravagant terms of the sacrament and sacrifice of the altar. They teach a real presence of the body and blood of Christ, which is included in the very idea of a real sacrifice, and they see in the mystical union of it with the sensible elements a sort of repetition of the incarnation of the Logos. With the act of consecration a change accordingly takes place in the elements, whereby they become vehicles and organs of the life of Christ, although by no means necessarily changed into another substance. To denote this change very strong expressions are used, like metabolhv, metabavllein, metabavllesqai, metastoiceiou'sqai, metapoiei'sqai, mutatio, translatio, transfiguratio, transformatio;1000 illustrated by the miraculous transformation of water into wine, the assimilation of food, and the pervasive power of leaven.
Cyril of Jerusalem goes farther in this direction than any of the fathers. He plainly teaches some sort of supernatural connection between the body of Christ and the elements, though not necessarily a transubstantiation of the latter. Let us hear the principal passages.1001 "Then follows," he says in describing the celebration of the Eucharist, "the invocation of God, for the sending of his Spirit to make the bread the body of Christ, the wine the blood of Christ. For what the Holy Ghost touches is sanctified and transformed." "Under the type of the bread1002 is given to thee the body, under the type of the wine is given to thee the blood, that thou mayest be a partaker of the body and blood of Christ, and be of one body and blood with him."1003 "After the invocation of the Holy Ghost the bread of the Eucharist is no longer bread, but the body of Christ." "Consider, therefore, the bread and the wine not as empty elements, for they are, according to the declaration of the Lord, the body and blood of Christ." In support of this change Cyril refers at one time to the wedding feast at Cana, which indicates, the Roman theory of change of substance; but at another to the consecration of the chrism, wherein the substance is unchanged. He was not clear and consistent with himself. His opinion probably was, that the eucharistic elements lost by consecration not so much their earthly substance, as their earthly purpose.
Gregory of Nyssa, though in general a very faithful disciple of the spiritualistic Origen, is on this point entirely realistic. He calls the Eucharist a food of immortality, and speaks of a miraculous transformation of the nature of the elements into the glorified body of Christ by virtue of the priestly blessing.1004
Chrysostom likewise, though only incidentally in his homilies, and not in the strain of sober logic and theology, but of glowing rhetoric, speaks several times of a union of our whole nature with the body of Christ in the Eucharist, and even of a manducatio oralis.1005
Of the Latin fathers, Hilary,1006 Ambrose,1007 and Gaudentius († 410) come nearest to the later dogma of transubstantiation. The latter says: "The Creator and Lord of nature, who produces bread from the earth, prepares out of bread his own body, makes of wine his own blood."1008
But closely as these and similar expressions verge upon the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation, they seem to contain at most a dynamic, not a substantial, change of the elements into the body and the blood of Christ. For, in the first place, it must be remembered there is a great difference between the half-poetic, enthusiastic, glowing language of devotion, in which the fathers, and especially the liturgies, speak of the eucharistic sacrifice, and the clear, calm, and cool language of logic and doctrinal definition. In the second place, the same fathers apply the same or quite similar terms to the baptismal water and the chrism of confirmation, without intending to teach a proper change of the substance of these material elements into the Holy Ghost. On the other hand, they not rarely use, concerning the bread and wine, tuvpo", ajntivtupa, figura, signum, and like expressions, which denote rather a symbolical than a metabolical relation of them to the body and blood of the Lord. Finally, the favorite comparison of the mysterious transformation with the incarnation of the Logos, which, in fact, was not an annihilation of the human nature, but an assumption of it into unity with the divine, is of itself in favor of the continuance of the substance of the elements; else it would abet the Eutychian heresy.
II. The symbolical view, though on a realistic basis, is represented first by Eusebius, who calls the Supper a commemoration of Christ by the symbols of his body and blood, and takes the flesh and blood of Christ in the sixth chapter of John to mean the words of Christ, which are spirit and life, the true food of the soul, to believers.1009 Here appears the influence of his venerated Origen, whose views in regard to the sacramental aspect of the Eucharist he substantially repeats.
But it is striking that even Athanasius, "the father of orthodoxy," recognized only a spiritual participation, a self-communication of the nourishing divine virtue of the Logos, in the symbols of the bread and wine, and incidentally evinces a doctrine of the Eucharist wholly foreign to the Catholic, and very like the older Alexandrian or Origenistic, and the Calvinistic, though by no means identical with the latter.1010 By the flesh and blood in the mysterious discourse of Jesus in the sixth chapter of John, which he refers to the Lord’s Supper, he understands not the earthly, human, but the heavenly, divine manifestation of Jesus, a spiritual nutriment coming down from above, which the Logos through the Holy Ghost communicates to believers (but not to a Judas, nor to the unbelieving).1011 With this view accords his extending of the participation of the eucharistic food to believers in heaven, and even to the angels, who, on account of their incorporeal nature, are incapable of a corporeal participation of Christ.1012
Gregory Nazianzen sees in the Eucharist a type of the incarnation, and calls the consecrated elements symbols and antitypes of the great mysteries, but ascribes to them a saving virtue.1013
St. Basil, likewise, in explaining the words of Christ, "I live by the Father" (John vi. 57), against, the Arians who inferred from it that Christ was a creature, incidentally gives a spiritual meaning to the fruition of the eucharistic elements. "We eat the flesh of Christ," he says, "and drink His blood, if we, through His incarnation and human life, become partakers of the Logos and of wisdom."1014
Macarius the Elder, a gifted representative of the earlier Greek mysticism († 390), belongs to the same Symbolical school; he calls bread and wine the antitype of the body and blood of Christ, and seems to know only a spiritual eating of the flesh of the Lord.1015
Theodoret, who was acknowledged orthodox by the council of Chalcedon, teaches indeed a transformation (metabavllein) of the eucharistic elements by virtue of the priestly consecration, and an adoration of them, which certainly sounds quite Romish, but in the same connection expressly rejects the idea of an absorption of the elements in the body of the Lord, as an error akin to the Monophysite. "The mystical emblems of the body and blood of Christ," says he, "continue in their original essence and form, they are visible and tangible as they were before [the consecration];1016 but the contemplation of the spirit and of faith sees in them that which they have become, and they are adored also as that which they are to believers."1017
Similar language occurs in an epistle to the monk Caesarius ascribed to Chrysostom, but perhaps not genuine;1018 in Ephraim of Antioch, cited by Photius; and even in the Roman bishop Gelasius at the end of the fifth century (492–496).
The latter says expressly, in his work against Eutyches and Nestorius: "The sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, which we receive, is a divine thing, because by it we are made partakers of the divine-nature. Yet the substance or nature of the bread and wine does not cease. And assuredly the image and the similitude of the body and blood of Christ are celebrated in the performance of the mysteries."1019
It is remarkable that Augustine, in other respects so decidedly catholic in the doctrine of the church and of baptism, and in the cardinal points of the Latin orthodoxy, follows the older African theologians, Tertullian and Cyprian, in a symbolical theory of the Supper, which however includes a real spiritual participation of the Lord by faith, and in this respect stands nearest to the Calvinistic or Orthodox Reformed doctrine, while in minor points he differs from it as much as from transubstantiation and consubstantiation.1020 He was the first to make a clear distinction between the outward sign and the inward grace, which are equally essential to the conception of the sacrament. He maintains the figurative character of the words of institution, and of the discourse of Jesus, on the eating and drinking of his flesh and blood in the sixth chapter of John; with Tertullian, he calls the bread and wine "figurae" "or "signa corporis et sanguinis Christi" (but certainly not mere figures), and insists on a distinction between "that which is visibly received in the sacrament, and that which is spiritually eaten and drunk," or between a carnal, visible manducation of the sacrament, and a spiritual eating of the flesh of Christ and drinking of his blood.1021 The latter he limits to the elect and the believing, though, in opposition to the subjectivism of the Donatists, he asserts that the sacrament (in its objective import) is the body of Christ even for unworthy receivers. He says of Judas, that he only ate the bread of the Lord, while the other apostles "ate the Lord who was the bread." In another place: The sacramentum "is given to some unto life, to others unto destruction;" but the res sacramenti, i.e., "the thing itself of which it is the sacramentum, is given to every one who is partaker of it, unto life." "He who does not abide in Christ, undoubtedly neither eats His flesh nor drinks His blood, though he eats and drinks the sacramentum (i.e., the outward sign) of so great a thing to his condemnation." Augustine at all events lays chief stress on the spiritual participation. "Why preparest thou the teeth and the belly? Believe, and thou hast eaten."1022 He claims for the sacrament religious reverence, but not a superstitious dread, as if it were a miracle of magical effect.1023 He also expressly rejects the hypothesis of the ubiquity of Christ’s body, which had already come into use in support of the materializing view, and has since been further developed by Lutheran divines in support of the theory of consubstantiation. "The body with which Christ rose," says he, "He took to heaven, which must be in a place .... We must guard against such a conception of His divinity as destroys the reality of His flesh. For when the flesh of the Lord was upon earth, it was certainly not in heaven; and now that it is in heaven, it is not upon earth." "I believe that the body of the Lord is in heaven, as it was upon earth when he ascended to heaven."1024 Yet this great church teacher at the same time holds fast the real presence of Christ in the Supper. He says of the martyrs: "They have drunk the blood of Christ, and have shed their own blood for Christ." He was also inclined, with the Oriental fathers, to ascribe a saving virtue to the consecrated elements.
Augustine’s pupil, Facundus, taught that the sacramental bread "is not properly the body of Christ, but contains the mystery of the body." Fulgentius of Ruspe held the same symbolical view; and even at a much later period we can trace it through the mighty influence of Augustine’s writings in Isidore of Sevilla, Beda Venerabilis, among the divines of the Carolingian age, in Ratramnus, and Berengar of Tours, until it broke forth in a modified form with greater force than ever in the sixteenth century, and took permanent foothold in the Reformed churches.
Pope Leo I. is sometimes likewise numbered with the symbolists, but without good reason. He calls the communion a "spiritual food,"1025 as Athanasius had done before, but supposes a sort of assimilation of the flesh and blood of Christ by the believing participation. "What we believe, that we receive with the mouth .... The participation of the body and blood of Christ causes that we pass into that which we receive, and bear Christ in us in Spirit and body." Voluntary abstinence from the wine in the Supper was as yet considered by this pope a sin.1026
III. The old liturgies, whose testimony on this point is as important as that of the church fathers, presuppose the actual presence of Christ in the Supper, but speak throughout in the stately language of sentiment, and nowhere attempt an explanation of the nature and mode of this presence, and of its relation to the still visible forms of bread and wine. They use concerning the consecrated elements such terms as: The holy body, The dear blood, of our Lord Jesus Christ, The sanctified oblation, The heavenly, spotless, glorious, awful, divine gifts, The awful, unbloody, holy sacrifice, &c. In the act of consecration the liturgies pray for the sending down of the Holy Ghost, that he may "sanctify and perfect"1027 the bread and wine, or that he may sanctify and make "them the body and blood of Christ,1028 or bless and make."1029
IV. As to the adoration of the consecrated elements: This follows with logical necessity from the doctrine of transubstantiation, and is the sure touchstone of it. No trace of such adoration appears, however, in the ancient liturgies, and the whole patristic literature yields only four passages from which this practice can be inferred; plainly showing that the doctrine of transubstantiation was not yet fixed in the consciousness of the church.
Chrysostom says: "The wise men adored Christ in the manger; we see him not in the manger, but on the altar, and should pay him still greater homage."1030 Theodoret, in the passage already cited, likewise uses the term proskuvnei'n, but at the same time expressly asserts the continuance of the substance of the elements. Ambrose speaks once of the flesh of Christ "which we to-day adore in the mysteries,"1031 and Augustine, of an adoration preceding the participation of the flesh of Christ.1032
In all these passages we must, no doubt, take the term proskunei'n and adorare in the wider sense, and distinguish the bowing of the knee, which was so frequent, especially in the East, as a mere mark of respect, from proper adoration. The old liturgies contain no direction for any such act of adoration as became prevalent in the Latin church, with the elevation of the host, after the triumph of the doctrine of transubstantiation in the twelfth century.1033
§ 96. The Sacrifice of the Eucharist.
Besides the works already cited on the holy Supper, comp. Höfling: Die Lehre der ältesten Kirche vom Opfer im Leben u. Cultus der Kirche. Erlangen, 1851. The articles: Messe, Messopfer, in Wetzer u. Welte: Kirchenlexicon der kathol. Theologie, vol. vii. (1851), p. 83 ff. G. E. Steitz: Art. Messe u. Messopfer in Herzog’s Protest. Real-Encyklopädie, vol. ix. (1858), pp. 375–408. Phil. Freeman: The Principles of Divine Service. Part ii. Oxf. and Lond. 1862. This last work sets out with a very full consideration of the Mosaic sacrificial cultus, and (in the Pref. p. vi.) unjustly declares all the earlier English and German works of Mede, Outram, Patrick, Magee, Bähr, Hengstenberg, and Kurtz, on this subject, entirely unsatisfactory and defective.
The Catholic church, both Greek and Latin, sees in the Eucharist not only a sacramentum, in which God communicates a grace to believers, but at the same time, and in fact mainly, a sacrificium, in which believers really offer to God that which is represented by the sensible elements. For this view also the church fathers laid the foundation, and it must be conceded they stand in general far more on the Greek and Roman Catholic than on the Protestant side of this question. The importance of the subject demands a preliminary explanation of the idea of sacrifice, and a clear discrimination of its original Christian form from its later perversion by tradition.
The idea of sacrifice is the centre of all ancient religions, both the heathen and the Jewish. In Christianity it is fulfilled. For by His one perfect sacrifice on the cross Christ has entirely blotted out the guilt of man, and reconciled him with the righteous God. On the ground of this sacrifice of the eternal High Priest, believers have access to the throne of grace, and may expect their prayers and intercessions to be heard. With this perfect and eternally availing sacrifice the Eucharist stands in indissoluble connection. It is indeed originally a sacrament and the main thing in it is that which we receive from God, not that which we give to God. The latter is only a consequence of the former; for we can give to God nothing which we have not first received from him. But the Eucharist is the sacramentum of a sacrificium, the thankful celebration of the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross, and the believing participation or the renewed appropriation of the fruits of this sacrifice. In other words, it is a feast on a sacrifice. "As oft as ye do eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come."
The Eucharist is moreover, as the name itself implies, on the part of the church a living and reasonable thank-offering, wherein she presents herself anew, in Christ and on the ground of his sacrifice, to God with prayers and intercessions. For only in Christ are our offerings acceptable to God, and only through the continual showing forth and presenting of His merit can we expect our prayers and intercessions to be heard.
In this view certainly, in a deep symbolical and ethical sense, Christ is offered to God the Father in every believing prayer, and above all in the holy Supper; i.e. as the sole ground of our reconciliation and acceptance. This is the deep truth which lies at the bottom of the Catholic mass, and gives it still such power over the religious mind.1034
But this idea in process of time became adulterated with foreign elements, and transformed into the Graeco-Roman doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass. According to this doctrine the Eucharist is an unbloody repetition of the atoning sacrifice of Christ by the priesthood for the salvation of the living and the dead; so that the body of Christ is truly and literally offered every day and every hour, and upon innumerable altars at the same time. The term mass, which properly denoted the dismissal of the congregation (missio, dismissio) at the close of the general public worship, became, after the end of the fourth century, the name for the worship of the faithful,1035 which consisted in the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice and the communion. The corresponding terms of the Orientals are leitourgiva, qusiva, prosforav.
In the sacrifice of the mass the whole mysterious fulness and glory of the Catholic worship is concentrated. Here the idea of the priesthood reaches its dizzy summit; and here the devotion and awe of the spectators rises to the highest pitch of adoration. For to the devout Catholic nothing can be greater or more solemn than an act of worship in which the eternal Son of God is veritably offered to God upon the altar by the visible hand of the priest for the sins of the world. But though the Catholic worship here rises far above the vain sacrifices of heathendom and the merely typical sacrifices of Judaism, yet that old sacrificial service, which was interwoven with the whole popular life of the Jewish and Graeco-Roman world, exerted a controlling influence on the Roman Catholic service of the Eucharist, especially after the nominal conversion of the whole Roman heathendom, and obscured the original simplicity and purity of that service almost beyond recognition. The sacramentum became entirely eclipsed by the sacrificium, and the sacrificium became grossly materialized, and was exalted at the expense of the sacrifice on the cross. The endless succession of necessary repetitions detracts from the sacrifice of Christ.
The Biblical support of the sacrifice of the mass is weak, and may be reduced to an unduly literal interpretation or a downright perversion of some such passages as Mal. i. 10 f.; 1 Cor. x. 21; Heb. v. 6; vii. 1 f.; xiii. 10. The Epistle to the Hebrews especially is often misapplied, though it teaches with great emphasis the very opposite, viz., the abolition of the Old Testament sacrificial system by the Christian worship, the eternal validity of the sacrifice of our only High Priest on the right hand of the Father, and the impossibility of a repetition of it (comp. x. 14; vii. 23, 24).
We pass now to the more particular history. The ante-Nicene fathers uniformly conceived the Eucharist as a thank-offering of the church; the congregation offering the consecrated elements of bread and wine, and in them itself, to God.1036 This view is in itself perfectly innocent, but readily leads to the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass, as soon as the elements become identified with the body and blood of Christ, and the presence of the body comes to be materialistically taken. The germs of the Roman doctrine appear in Cyprian about the middle of the third century, in connection with his high-churchly doctrine of the clerical priesthood. Sacerdotium and sacrificium are with him correlative ideas, and a Judaizing conception of the former favored a like Judaizing conception of the latter. The priest officiates in the Eucharist in the place of Christ,1037 and performs an actual sacrifice in the church.1038 Yet Cyprian does not distinctly say that Christ is the subject of the spiritual sacrifice; rather is the mystical body of Christ, the Church, offered to God, and married with Christ.1039
The doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass is much further developed in the Nicene and post-Nicene fathers, though amidst many obscurities and rhetorical extravagances, and with much wavering between symbolical and grossly realistic conceptions, until in all essential points it is brought to its settlement by Gregory the Great at the close of the sixth century. These points are the following:
1. The eucharistic sacrifice is the most solemn mystery of the church, and fills the faithful with a holy awe. Hence the predicates qusiva fobera;, frikth;, ajnaivmakto", sacrificium tremendum, which are frequently applied to it, especially in the Oriental liturgies and homilies. Thus it is said in the liturgy of St. James: "We offer to Thee, O Lord, this awful and unbloody sacrifice." The more surprising is it that the people should have been indifferent to so solemn an act, and that Chrysostom should lament: "In vain is the daily sacrifice, in vain stand we at the altar; there is no one to take part."1040
2. It is not a new sacrifice added to that of the cross, but a daily, unbloody repetition and perpetual application of that one only sacrifice. Augustine represents it, on the one hand, as a sacramentum memoriae a symbolical commemoration of the sacrificial death of Christ; to which of course there is no objection.1041 But, on the other hand, he calls the celebration of the communion verissimum sacrificium of the body of Christ. The church, he says, offers (immolat) to God the sacrifice of thanks in the body of Christ, from the days of the apostles through the sure succession of the bishops down to our time. But the church at the same time offers, with Christ, herself, as the body of Christ, to God. As all are one body, so also all are together the same sacrifice.1042 According to Chrysostom the same Christ, and the whole Christ, is everywhere offered. It is not a different sacrifice from that which the High Priest formerly offered, but we offer always the same sacrifice, or rather, we perform a memorial of this sacrifice.1043 This last clause would decidedly favor a symbolical conception, if Chrysostom in other places had not used such strong expressions as this: "When thou seest the Lord slain, and lying there, and the priest standing at the sacrifice," or: "Christ lies slain upon the altar."1044
3. The sacrifice is the anti-type of the Mosaic sacrifice, and is related to it as substance to typical shadows. It is also especially foreshadowed by Melchizedek’s unbloody offering of bread and wine. The sacrifice of Melchizedek is therefore made of great account by Hilary, Jerome, Augustine, Chrysostom, and other church fathers, on the strength of the well-known parallel in the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
4. The subject of the sacrifice is the body of Jesus Christ, which is as truly present on the altar of the church, as it once was on the altar of the cross, and which now offers itself to God through his priest. Hence the frequent language of the liturgies: "Thou art he who offerest, and who art offered, O Christ, our God." Augustine, however, connects with this, as we have already said, the true and important moral idea of the self-sacrifice of the whole redeemed church to God. The prayers of the liturgies do the same.1045
5. The offering of the sacrifice is the exclusive prerogative of the Christian priest. Later Roman divines take the words: "This do (poiei'te) in remembrance of me," as equivalent to: "This offer," and limit this command to the apostles and their successors in office, whereas it is evidently an exhortation to all believers to the commemoration of the atoning death, the communio sacramenti, and not to the immolatio sacrificii.
6. The sacrifice is efficacious for the whole body of the church, including its departed members, in procuring the gifts which are implored in the prayers of the service.
All the old liturgies proceed under a conviction of the unbroken communion of saints, and contain commemorations and intercessions for the departed fathers and brethren, who are conceived to be, not in purgatory, but in communion with God and in a condition of progressive holiness and blessedness, looking forward in pious longing to the great day of consummation.
These prayers for an increase of bliss, which appeared afterwards very inappropriate, form the transition from the original simple commemoration of the departed saints, including the patriarchs, prophets and apostles, to intercessions for the suffering souls in purgatory, as used in the Roman church ever since the sixth century.1046 In the liturgy of Chrysostom, still in use in the Greek and Russian church, the commemoration of the departed reads. "And further we offer to thee this reasonable service on behalf of those who have departed in the faith, our ancestors, Fathers, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Preachers, Evangelists, Martyrs, Confessors, Virgins, and every just spirit made perfect in the faith .... Especially the most holy, undefiled, excellently laudable, glorious Lady, the Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary .... the holy John the Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist, the holy, glorious and all-celebrated Apostles, and all thy Saints, through whose prayers look upon us, O God. And remember all those that are departed in the hope of the resurrection to eternal life, and give them rest where the light of Thy countenance shines upon them."
Cyril of Jerusalem, in his fifth and last mystagogic Catechesis, which is devoted to the consideration of the eucharistic sacrifice and the liturgical service of God, gives the following description of the eucharistic intercessions for the departed: "When the spiritual sacrifice, the unbloody service of God, is performed, we pray to God over this atoning sacrifice for the universal peace of the church, for the welfare of the world, for the emperor, for soldiers and prisoners, for the sick and afflicted, for all the poor and needy. Then we commemorate also those who sleep, the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, that God through their prayers and their intercessions may receive our prayer; and in general we pray for all who have gone from us, since we believe that it is of the greatest help to those souls for whom the prayer is offered, while the holy sacrifice, exciting a holy awe, lies before us."1047
This is clearly an approach to the later idea of purgatory in the Latin church. Even St. Augustine, with Tertullian, teaches plainly, as an old tradition, that the eucharistic sacrifice, the intercessions or suffragia and alms, of the living are of benefit to the departed believers, so that the Lord deals more mercifully with them than their sins deserve.1048 His noble mother, Monica, when dying, told him he might bury her body where he pleased, and should give himself no concern for it, only she begged of him that he would remember her soul at the altar of the Lord.1049
With this is connected the idea of a repentance and purification in the intermediate state between death and resurrection, which likewise Augustine derives from Matt. xii. 32, and 1 Cor. iii. 15, yet mainly as a mere opinion.1050 From these and similar passages, and under the influence of previous Jewish and heathen ideas and customs, arose, after Gregory the Great, the Roman doctrine of the purgatorial fire for imperfect believers who still need to be purified from the dross of their sins before they are fit for heaven, and the institution of special masses for the dead, in which the perversion of the thankful remembrance of the one eternally availing sacrifice of Christ reaches its height, and the idea of the communion utterly disappears.1051
In general, in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper the sacrament continually retired behind the sacrifice. In the Roman churches in all countries one may see and hear splendid masses at the high altar, where the congregation of the faithful, instead of taking part in the communion, are mere spectators of the sacrificial act of the priest. The communion is frequently despatched at a side altar at an early hour in the morning.
§ 97. The Celebration o f the Eucharist.
Comp. the Liturgical Literature cited in the next section, especially the works of Daniel, Neale, and Freeman.
The celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice and of the communion was the centre and summit of the public worship of the Lord’s day, and all other parts of worship served as preparation and accompaniment. The old liturgies are essentially, and almost exclusively, eucharistic prayers and exercises; they contain nothing besides, except some baptismal formulas and prayers for the catechumens. The word liturgy (leitourgiva), which properly embraces all parts of the worship of God, denotes in the narrower sense a celebration of the eucharist or the mass.
Here lies a cardinal difference between the Catholic and Evangelical cultus: in the former the sacrifice of the mass, in the latter the sermon, is the centre.
With all variations in particulars, especially in the introductory portions, the old Catholic liturgies agree in the essential points, particularly in the prayers which immediately precede and follow the consecration of the elements. They all (excepting some Syriac copies of certain Nestorian and Monophysite formularies) repeat the solemn Words of Institution from the Gospels,1052 understanding them not merely in a declaratory but in an operative sense; they all contain the acts of Consecration, Intercession, and Communion; all (except the Roman) invoke the Holy Ghost upon the elements to sanctify them, and make them actual vehicles of the body and blood of Christ; all conceive the Eucharist primarily as a sacrifice, and then, on the basis of the sacrifice, as a communion.
The eucharistic action in the narrower sense is called the Anaphora, or the canon missae, and begins after the close of the service of the catechumens (which consisted principally of reading and preaching, and extended to the Offertory, i.e., the preparation of the bread and wine, and the placing of it on the altar). It is introduced with the [Anw ta;" kardiva", or Sursum corda, of the priest: the exhortation to the faithful to lift up their hearts in devotion, and take part in the prayers; to which the congregation answers: Habemus ad Dominum, "We lift them up unto the Lord." Then follows the exhortation: "Let us give thanks to the Lord," with the response: "It is meet and right."1053
The first principal act of the Anaphora is the great prayer of thanksgiving, the eujlogiva or eujcaristiva, after the example of the Saviour in the institution of the Supper. In this prayer the priest thanks God for all the gifts of creation and of redemption, and the choir generally concludes the thanksgiving with the so-called Trisagion or Seraphic Hymn (Is. vi. 3), and the triumphal Hosanna (Matt. xx. 9): "Holy, Holy, Holy Lord of Sabaoth; heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Hosanna in the highest: blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest."
Then follows the consecration and oblation of the elements, by the commemoration of the great facts in the life of Christ, by the rehearsing of the Words of Institution from the Gospels or from Paul, and by the invocation of the Holy Ghost, who brings to pass the mysterious change of the bread and wine into the sacramental body and blood of Christ.1054 This invocation of the Holy Ghost1055 appears in all the Oriental liturgies, but is wanting in the Latin church, which ascribes the consecration exclusively to the virtue of Christ’s Words of Institution. The form of the Words of Institution is different in the different liturgies.1056 The elevation of the consecrated elements was introduced in the Latin church, though not till after the Berengarian controversies in the eleventh century, to give the people occasion to show, by the adoration of the host, their faith in the real presence of Christ in the sacrament.
To add an example: The prayer of consecration and oblation in one of the oldest and most important of the liturgies, that of St. James, runs thus: After the Words of Institution the priest proceeds:
"Priest: We sinners, remembering His life-giving passion, His saving cross, His death, and His resurrection from the dead on the third day, His ascension to heaven, and His sitting at the right hand of Thee His God and Father, and His glorious and terrible second appearing, when He shall come in glory to judge the quick and the dead, and to render to every man according to his works,—offer to Thee, O Lord, this awful and unbloody sacrifice;1057 beseeching Thee that Thou wouldst deal with us not after our sins nor reward us according to our iniquities, but according to Thy goodness and unspeakable love to men wouldst blot out the handwriting which is against us Thy suppliants, and wouldst vouchsafe to us Thy heavenly and eternal gifts, which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man what Thou, O God, hast prepared for them that love Thee. And reject not Thy people, O loving Lord, for my sake and on account of my sins.
He repeats thrice: For Thy people and Thy Church prayeth to Thee.
People: Have mercy upon us, O Lord God, almighty Father!
Priest: Have mercy upon us, almighty God!
Have mercy upon us, O God, our Redeemer I
Have mercy upon us, O God, according to Thy great mercy, and send upon us, and upon these gifts here present, Thy most holy Spirit, Lord, Giver of life, who with Thee the God and Father, and with Thine only begotten Son, sitteth and reigneth upon one throne, and is of the same essence and co-eternal,1058 who spoke in the law and in the prophets, and in Thy new covenant, who descended in the form of a dove upon our Lord Jesus Christ in the river Jordan, and rested upon Him, who came down upon Thy holy apostles in the form of tongues of fire in the upper room of Thy holy and glorious Zion on the day of Pentecost: send down, O Lord, the same Holy Ghost upon us and upon these holy gifts here present, that with His holy and good and glorious presence He may sanctify this bread and make it the holy body of Thy Christ.1059
People: Amen.
Priest: And this cup the dear blood of Thy Christ.
People: Amen.
Priest (in a low voice): That they may avail to those who receive them, for the forgiveness of sins and for eternal life, for the sanctification of soul and body, for the bringing forth of good works, for the strengthening of Thy holy Catholic church which Thou hast built upon the rock of faith, that the gates of hell may not prevail against her; delivering her from all error and all scandal, and from the ungodly, and preserving her unto the consummation of all things."
After the act of consecration come the intercessions, sometimes very long, for the church, for all classes, for the living, and for the dead from righteous Abel to Mary, the apostles, the martyrs, and the saints in Paradise; and finally the Lord’s Prayer. To the several intercessions, and the Lord’s Prayer, the people or the choir responds Amen. With this closes the act of eucharistic sacrifice.
Now follows the communion, or the participation of the consecrated elements. It is introduced with the words: "Holy things for holy persons,"1060 and the Kyrie eleison, or (as in the Clementine liturgy) the Gloria in Excelsis: "Glory be to God on high, peace on earth, and good will to men.1061 Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: God is the Lord, and he hath appeared among us." The bishop and the clergy communicate first, and then the people. The formula of distribution in the Clementine liturgy is simply: "The body of Christ;" "The blood of Christ, the cup of life,"1062 to which the receiver answers "Amen." In other liturgies it is longer.1063
The holy act closes with prayers of thanksgiving, psalms, and the benediction.
The Eucharist was celebrated daily, or at least every Sunday. The people were exhorted to frequent communion, especially on the high festivals. In North Africa some communed every day, others every Sunday, others still less frequently.1064 Augustine leaves this to the needs of every believer, but says in one place: "The Eucharist is our daily bread." The daily communion was connected with the current mystical interpretation of the fourth petition in the Lord’s Prayer. Basil communed four times in the week. Gennadius of Massilia commends at least weekly communion. In the East it seems to have been the custom, after the fourth century, to commune only once a year, or on great occasions. Chrysostom often complains of the indifference of those who come to church only to hear the sermon, or who attend the eucharistic sacrifice, but do not commune. One of his allusions to this neglect we have already quoted. Some later councils threatened all laymen with excommunication, who did not commune at least on Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost.
In the Oriental and North African churches prevailed the incongruous custom of infant communion, which seemed to follow from infant baptism, and was advocated by Augustine and Innocent I. on the authority of John vi. 53. In the Greek church this custom continues to this day, but in the Latin, after the ninth century, it was disputed or forbidden, because the apostle (1 Cor. xi. 28, 29) requires self-examination as the condition of worthy participation.1065
With this custom appear the first instances, and they exceptional, of a communio sub una specie; after a little girl in Carthage in the time of Cyprian had been made drunk by receiving the wine. But the withholding of the cup from the laity, which transgresses the express command of the Lord: "Drink ye all of it," and is associated with a superstitious horror of profaning the blood of the Lord by spilling, and with the development of the power of the priesthood, dates only from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and was then justified by the scholastic doctrine of concomitance.
In the Greek church it was customary to dip the bread in the wine, and deliver both elements in a spoon.
The customs of house-communion and after-communion for the sick and for prisoners, of distributing the unconsecrated remainder of the bread among the non-communicants, and of sending the consecrated elements, or their substitutes,1066 to distant bishops or churches at Easter as a token of fellowship, are very old.
The Greek church used leavened bread, the Latin, unleavened. This difference ultimately led to intricate controversies.
The mixing of the wine with water was considered essential, and was explained in various mystical ways; chiefly by reference to the blood and water which flowed from the side of Jesus on the cross.
§ 98. The Liturgies. Their Origin and Contents.
J. Goar. (a learned Dominican, † 1653): Eujcolovgion, sive Rituale Graecorum, etc. Gr. et Lat. Par. 1647 (another ed. at Venice, 1740). Jos. Aloys. Assemani (R.C.): Codex Liturgicus ecclesiae universae, ... in quo continentur libri rituales, missales, pontificales, officia, dypticha, etc., ecclesiarum Occidentis et Orientis (published under the auspices of Pope Boniface XIV.). Rom. 1749–’66, 13 vols. Euseb. Renaudot (R.C.): Liturgiarum orientalium collectio. Par. 1716 (reprinted 1847), 2 vols. L. A. Muratori (R.C., † 1750): Liturgia Romana vetus. Venet. 1748, 2 vols. (contains the three Roman sacramentaries of Leo, Gelasius, and Gregory I., also the Missale Gothicum, and a learned introductory dissertation, De rebus liturgicis). W. Palmer (Anglican): Origines Liturgicae. Lond. 1832 (and 1845), 2 vols. (with special reference to the Anglican liturgy). Ths. Brett: A Collection of the Principal Liturgies used in the Christian Church in the celebration of the Eucharist, particularly the ancient (translated into English), with a Dissertation upon them. Lond. 1838 (pp. 465). W. Trollope (Anglican): The Greek Liturgy of St. James. Edinb. 1848. H. A. Daniel (Lutheran, the most learned German liturgist): Codex Liturgicus ecclesiae universae in epitomem redactus. Lips. 1847 sqq. 4 vols. (vol. i. contains the Roman, vol. iv. the Oriental Liturgies). Fr. J. Mone (R.C.): Lateinische u. Griechische Messen aus dem 2ten his 6ten Jahrhundert. Frankf. a. M. 1850 (with valuable treatises on the Gallican, African, and Roman Mass). J. M. Neale († 1866, the most learned Anglican ritualist and liturgist, who studied the Eastern liturgies daily for thirty years, and almost knew them by heart); Tetralogia liturgica; sive S. Chrysostom, S. Jacobi, S. Marci divinae missae: quibus accedit ordo Mozarabicus. Lond. 1849. The Same: The Liturgies of S. Mark, S. James, S. Clement, S. Chrysostom, S. Basil, or according to the use of the churches of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Constantinople. Lond. 1859 f. (in the Greek original, and the same liturgies in an English translation, with an introduction and appendices, also at Lond. 1859). Comp. also Neale’s History of the Holy Eastern Church. Lond. 1850; Gen. Introd. vol. second; and his Essays on Liturgiology and Church History. Lond. 1863. (The latter, dedicated to the metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, is a collection of various learned treatises of the author from the "Christian Remembrancer" on the Roman and Gallican Breviary, the Church Collects, the Mozarabic and Ambrosian Liturgies, Liturgical Quotations, etc.) The already cited work, of kindred spirit, by the English Episcopal divine, Freeman, likewise treats much of the old Liturgies, with a predilection for the Western, while Neale has an especial reverence for the Eastern ritual. (Comp. also Bunsen: Christianity and Mankind, Lond. 1854, vol. vii., which contains Reliquiae Liturgicae; the Irvingite work: Readings upon the Liturgy and other Divine Offices of the Church. Lond. 1848–’54; Höfling: Liturgisches Urkundenbuch. Leipz. 1854.)
Liturgy1067 means, in ecclesiastical language,1068 the order and administration of public worship in general, and the celebration of the Eucharist in particular; then, the book or collection of the prayers used in this celebration. The Latin church calls the public eucharistic service Mass, and the liturgical books, sacramentarium, rituale, missale, also libri mysteriorum, or simply libelli.
The Jewish worship consisted more of acts than of words, but it included also fixed prayers and psalms (as Ps. 113–118) and the Amen of the congregation (Comp. 1 Cor. xiv. 16). The pagan Greeks and Romans had, in connection with their sacrifices, some fixed prayers and formulas of consecration, which, however, were not written) but perpetuated by oral tradition. The Indian literature, on the contrary, has liturgical books, and even the Koran contains prescribed forms of prayer.
The New Testament gives us neither a liturgy nor a ritual, but the main elements for both. The Lord’s Prayer, and the Words of the Institution of baptism and of the Holy Supper, are the living germs from which the best prayers and baptismal and eucharistic formulas of the church, whether oral or written, have grown. From the confession of Peter and the formula of baptism gradually arose in the Western church the Apostles’ Creed, which besides its doctrinal import, has also a liturgical office, as a public profession of candidates for baptism and of the faithful. In the Eastern church the Nicene creed is used instead. The Song of the angelic host is the ground-work of the Gloria in Excelsis. The Apocalypse is one sublime liturgic vision. With these belong also the Psalms, which have passed as a legitimate inheritance to the Christian church, and have afforded at all times the richest material for public edification.
In the ante-Nicene age we find as yet no traces of liturgical books. In each church, of course, a fixed order of worship gradually formed itself, which in apostolic congregations ran back to a more or less apostolic origin, but became enlarged and altered in time, and, until the fourth century, was perpetuated only by oral tradition. For the celebration of the sacraments, especially of the Eucharist, belonged to the Disciplina arcani, and was concealed, as the most holy thing of the church, from the gaze of Jews and heathens, and even of catechumens, for fear of profanation; through a misunderstanding of the warning of the Lord against casting pearls before swine, and after the example of the Samothracian and Eleusinian mysteries.1069 On the downfall of heathenism in the Roman empire the Disciplina arcani gradually disappeared, and the administration of the sacraments became a public act, open to all.
Hence also we now find, from the fourth and fifth centuries onward, a great number of written liturgies, and that not only in the orthodox catholic church, but also among the schismatics (as among the Nestorians, and the Monophysites). These liturgies bear in most cases apostolic names, but in their present form can no more be of apostolic origin than the so-called Apostolic Constitutions and Canons, nor nearly so much as the Apostles’ Creed. They contrast too strongly with the simplicity of the original Christian worship, so far as we can infer it from the New Testament and from the writings of the apologists and the ante-Nicene fathers. They contain also theological terms, such as oJmoouvsio" (concerning the Son of God), qeotovko" (concerning the Virgin Mary), and some of them the whole Nicene Creed with the additions of the second oecumenical council of 381, also allusions to the worship of martyrs and saints, and to monasticism, which point unmistakably to the Nicene and post-Nicene age. Yet they are based on a common liturgical tradition, which in its essential elements reaches back to an earlier time, perhaps in some points to the apostolic age, or even comes down from the Jewish worship through the channel of the Jewish Christian congregations. Otherwise their affinity, which in many respects reminds one of the affinity of the Synoptical Gospels cannot be satisfactorily explained. These old catholic liturgies differ from one another in the wording, the number, the length, and the order of the prayers, and in other unessential points, but agree in the most important parts of the service of the Eucharist. They are too different to be derived from a common original, and yet too similar to have arisen each entirely by itself.1070
All the old liturgies combine action and prayer, and presuppose, according to the Jewish custom, the participation of the people, who frequently respond to the prayers of the priest, and thereby testify their own priestly character. These responses are sometimes a simple Amen, sometimes Kyrie eleison, sometimes a sort of dialogue with the priest:
Priest: The Lord be with you!
People: And with thy spirit!
Priest: Lift—up your hearts!
People: We lift them up unto the Lord.
Priest: Let us give thanks!
People: It is meet and right.
Some parts of the liturgy, as the Creed, the Seraphic Hymn, the Lord’s Prayer, were said or sung by the priest and congregation together. Originally the whole congregation of the faithful1071 was intended to respond; but with the advance of the hierarchical principle the democratic and popular element fell away, and the deacons or the choir assumed the responses of the congregation, especially where the liturgical language was not intelligible to the people.1072
Several of the oldest liturgies, like those of St. Clement and St. James, have long since gone out of use, and have only a historical interest. Others, like those of St. Basil and St. Chrysostom, and the Roman, are still used, with various changes and additions made at various times, in the Greek and Latin churches. Many of their most valuable parts have passed, through the medium of the Latin mass-books, into the liturgies and agenda of the Anglican, the Lutheran, and some of the Reformed churches.
But in general they breathe an entirely different atmosphere from the Protestant liturgies, even the Anglican not excepted. For in them all the eucharistic sacrifice is the centre around which all the prayers and services revolve. This act of sacrifice for the quick and the dead is a complete service, the sermon being entirely unessential, and in fact usually dispensed with. In Protestantism, on the contrary, the Lord’s Supper is almost exclusively Communion, and the sermon is the chief matter in every ordinary service.
Between the Oriental and Occidental liturgies there are the following characteristic differences:
1. The Eastern retain the ante-Nicene division of public worship into two parts: the leitourgiva kathcoumevnwn, Missa Catechumenorum, which is mainly didactic, and the leitourgiva tw'n pistw'n, Missa Fidelium, which contains the celebration of the Eucharist proper. This division lost its primitive import upon the union of church and state, and the universal introduction of infant baptism. The Latin liturgies connect the two parts in one whole.
2. The Eastern liturgies contain, after the Words of Institution, an express Invocation of the Holy Ghost, without which the sanctification of the elements is not fully effected. Traces of this appear in the Gallican liturgies. But in the Roman liturgy this invocation is entirely wanting, and the sanctification of the elements is considered as effected by the priest’s rehearsal of the Words of Institution. This has remained a point of dispute between the Greek and the Roman churches. Gregory the Great asserts that the apostles used nothing in the consecration but the Words of Institution and the Lord’s Prayer.1073 But whence could he know this in the sixth century, since the New Testament gives us no information on the subject? An invocatio Spiritus Sancti upon the elements is nowhere mentioned; only a thanksgiving of the Lord, preceding the Words of Institution, and forming also, it may be, an act of consecration, though neither in the sense of the Greek nor of the Roman church. The Words of Institution: "This is my body," &c., are more-over addressed not to God, but to the disciples, and express, so to speak, the result of the Lord’s benediction.1074 3. The Oriental liturgy allowed, more like the Protestant church, the use of the various vernaculars, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, &c.; while the Roman mass, in its desire for uniformity, sacrifices all vernacular tongues to the Latin, and so makes itself unintelligible to the people.
4. The Oriental liturgy is, so to speak, a symbolic drama of the history of redemption, repeated with little alteration every Sunday. The preceding vespers represent the creation, the fall, and the earnest expectation of Christ; the principal service on Sunday morning exhibits the life of Christ from his birth to his ascension; and the prayers and lessons are accompanied by corresponding symbolical acts of the priests and deacon: lighting and extinguishing candles, opening and closing doors, kissing the altar and the gospel, crossing the forehead, mouth, and breast, swinging the censer, frequent change of liturgical vestments, processions, genuflexions, and prostrations. The whole orthodox Greek and Russian worship has a strongly marked Oriental character, and exceeds the Roman in splendor and pomp of symbolical ceremonial.1075
The Roman mass is also a dramatic commemoration and representation of the history of redemption, especially of the passion and atoning death of Christ, but has a more didactic character, and sets forth not so much the objective history, as the subjective application of redemption from the Confiteor to the Postcommunio. It affords less room for symbolical action, but more for word and song, and follows more closely the course of the church year with varying collects and prefaces for the high festivals,1076 thus gaining variety. In this it stands the nearer to the Protestant worship, which, however, entirely casts off symbolical veils, and makes the sermon the centre.
Every Oriental liturgy has two main divisions. The first embraces the prayers and acts before the Anaphora or Oblation (canon Missae) to the Sursum corda; the second, the Anaphora to the close.
The first division again falls into the Mass of the Catechumens, and the Mass of the Faithful, to the Sursum corda. To it belong the Prefatory Prayer, the Introit, Ingressa, or Antiphon, the Little Entrance, the Trisagion, the Scripture Lessons, the Prayers after the Gospel, and the Expulsion of the Catechumens; then the Prayers of the Faithful, the Great Entrance, the Offertory, the Kiss of Peace, the Creed.
The Anaphora comprises the great Eucharistic Prayer of Thanksgiving, the Commemoration of the life of Jesus, the Words of Institution, the Oblation of the Elements, the Invocation of the Holy Ghost, the Great Intercession for Quick and Dead, the Lord’s Prayer, and finally the Communion with its proper prayers and acts, the Thanksgiving, and the Dismissal.1077
§ 99. The Oriental Liturgies.
There are, in all, probably more than a hundred ancient liturgies, if we reckon revisals, modifications, and translations. But according to modern investigations they may all be reduced to five or six families, which may be named after the churches in which they originated and were used, Jerusalem (or Antioch), Alexandria, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Rome.1078 Most of them belong to the Orientalchurch; for this church was in general much more productive, and favored greater variety, than the Western, which sought uniformity in organization and worship. And among the Oriental liturgies the Greek are the oldest and most important.
1. The liturgy of St. Clement. This is found in the eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions, and, with them, is erroneously ascribed to the Roman bishop Clement.1079 It is the oldest complete order of divine service, and was probably composed in the East in the beginning of the fourth century.1080 It agrees most with the liturgy of St. James and of Cyril of Jerusalem, and may for this reason be considered a branch of the Jerusalem family. We know not in what churches, or whether at all, it was used. It was a sort of normal liturgy, and is chiefly valuable for showing the difference between the Nicene or ante-Nicene form of worship and the later additions and alterations.
The Clementine liturgy rigidly separates the service of the catechumens from that of the faithful.1081 It contains the simplest form for the distribution of the sacred elements: "The body of Christ," and "The blood of Christ, the cup of life," with the "Amen" of the congregation to each. In the commemoration of the departed it mentions no particular names of saints, not even the mother of God, who first found a place in public worship after the council of Ephesus in 431; and it omits several prefatory prayers of the priest. Finally it lacks the Nicene creed, and even the Lord’s Prayer, which is added to all other eucharistic prayers, and, according to the principles of some canonists, is absolutely necessary.1082
2. The liturgy of St. James. This is ascribed by tradition to James, the brother to the Lord, and bishop of Jerusalem.1083 It, of course, cannot have been composed by him, even considering only the Nicene creed and the expressions oJmoouvsio" and qeotovko", which occur in it, and which belong to the Nicene and post-Nicene theology. The following passage also bespeaks a much later origin: "Let us remember the most holy, immaculate, most glorious, blessed Mother of God and perpetual Virgin Mary, with all saints, that we through their prayers and intercessions may obtain mercy." The first express mention of its use meets us in Proclus of Constantinople about the middle of the fifth century. But it is, as to substance, at all events one of the oldest liturgies, and must have been in use as early as the fourth century; for the liturgical quotations in Cyril of Jerusalem (in his fifth Mystagogic Catechesis), who died in 386, verbally agree with it. It was intended for the church of Jerusalem, which is mentioned in the beginning of the prayer for the church universal, as "the glorious Zion, the mother of all churches."1084
In contents and diction it is the most important of the ancient liturgies, and the fruitful mother of many, among which the liturgies of St. Basil and St. Chrysostom must be separately named.1085 It spread over the whole patriarchate of Antioch, even to Cyprus, Sicily, and Calabria, but was supplanted in the orthodox East, after the Mohammedan conquest, by the Byzantine liturgy. Only once in a year, on the 23d of October, the festival of St. James, it is yet used at Jerusalem and on some islands of Greece.1086
The Syriac liturgy of James is a free translation from the Greek; it gives the Invocation of the Holy Spirit in a larger form, the other prayers in a shorter; and it betrays a later date. It is the source of thirty-nine Monophysite liturgies, which are in use still among the schismatic Syrians or Jacobites.1087
3. The liturgy of St. Mark, or the Alexandrian liturgy. This is ascribed to the well-known Evangelist, who was also, according to tradition, the founder of the church and catechetical school in the Egyptian capital. Such origin involves, of course, a shocking anachronism, since the liturgy contains the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan creed of 381. In its present form it comes probably from Cyril, bishop of Alexandria († 444), who was claimed by the orthodox, as well as the Monophysites, as an advocate of their doctrine of the person of Christ.1088 It agrees, at any rate, exactly with the liturgy which bears Cyril’s name.
It is distinguished from the other liturgies by the position of the great intercessory prayer for quick and dead before the Words of Institution and Invocation of the Holy Ghost, instead of after them. It was originally composed in Greek, and afterwards translated into Coptic and Arabic. It was used in Egypt till the twelfth century, and then supplanted by the Byzantine. The Copts still retained it. The Ethiopian canon is an offshoot from it. There are three Coptic and ten Ethiopian liturgies, which belong to the same family.1089
4. The liturgy of Edessa or Mesopotamia, or of All Apostles. This is traced to the apostles Thaddaeus (Adaeus) and Maris, and is confined to the Nestorians. From it afterwards proceeded the Nestorian liturgies: (1) of Theodore the Interpreter; (2) of Nestorius; (3) Narses the Leper; (4) of Barsumas; (5) of Malabar, or St. Thomas. The liturgy of the Thomas-Christians of Malabar has been much adulterated by the revisers of Diamper.1090
5. The liturgy of St. Basil and that of St. Chrysostom form together the Byzantine or ConstantinopolItan liturgy, and passed at the same time into the Graeco-Russian church. Both descend from the liturgy of St. James and give that ritual in an abridged form. They are living books, not dead like the liturgies of Clement and of James.
The liturgy of bishop Basil of Neo-Caesarea († 379) is read in the orthodox Greek, and Russian church, during Lent (except on Palm Sunday), on the eve of Epiphany, Easter and Christmas, and on the feast of St. Basil (1st of January). From it proceeded the Armenian liturgy.
The liturgy of St. Chrysostom († 407) is used on all other Sundays. It is an abridgment and improvement of that of St. Basil, and, through the influence of the distinguished patriarchs of Constantinople, it has since the sixth century dislodged the liturgies of St. James and St. Mark. The original text can hardly be ascertained, as the extant copies differ greatly from one another.
The present Greek and Russian ritual, which surpasses even the Roman in pomp, cannot possibly have come down in all its details from the age of Chrysostom. Chrysostom is indeed supposed, as Proclus says, to have shortened in many respects the worship in Constantinople on account of the weakness of human nature; but the liturgy which bears his name is still in the seventh century called "the Liturgy of the Holy Apostles," and appears to have received his name not before the eighth.
§ 100. The Occidental Liturgies.
The liturgies of the Western church may be divided into three classes: (1) the Ephesian family, which is traced to a Johannean origin, and embraces the Mozarabic and the Gallican liturgies; (2) the Roman liturgy, which, of course, like the papacy itself, must come down from St. Peter; (3) the Ambrosian and Aquileian, which is a mixture of the other two. We have therefore here less diversity than in the East. The tendency of the Latin church everywhere pressed strongly toward uniformity, and the Roman liturgy at last excluded all others.
1. The Old Gallican liturgy,1091 in many of its features, points back, like the beginnings of Christianity in South Gaul, to an Asiatic, Ephesian, and so far we may say Johannean origin, and took its later form in the fifth century. Among its composers, or rather the revisers, Hilary, of Poictiers is particularly named. In the time of Charlemagne it was superseded by the Roman. Gallicanism, which in church organization and polity boldly asserted its rights, suffered itself easily to be Romanized in its worship.
The Old British liturgy was without doubt identical with the Gallican, but after the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons it was likewise supplanted by the Roman.
2. The Old Spanish or (though incorrectly so called) Gothic, also named Mozarabic liturgy.1092 This is in many respects allied to the Gallic, and probably came through the latter from a similar Eastern Source. It appears to have existed before the incursion of the West Goths in 409; for it shows no trace of the influence of the Arian heresy, or of the ritual system of Constantinople.1093 Its present form is attributed to Isidore of Seville and the fourth council of Toledo in 633. It maintained itself in Spain down to the thirteenth century and was then superseded by the Roman liturgy.1094
It has, like the Gallican, besides the Gospels and Epistles, lessons also from the Old Testament;1095 it differs from the Roman liturgy in the order of festivals; and it contains, before the proper sacrificial action, a homiletic exhortation. The formula Sancta Sanctis, before the communion) the fraction of the host into nine parts (in memory of the nine mysteries of the life of Christ), the daily communion, the distribution of the cup by the deacon, remind us of the oriental ritual. The Mozarabic chant has much resemblance to the Gregorian, but exhibits besides a certain independent national character.1096
3. The African liturgy is known to us only through fragmentary quotations in Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine, from which we gather that it belonged to the Roman family.
4. The liturgy Of St. Ambrose.1097 This is attributed to the renowned bishop of Milan († 397), and even to St. Barnabas. It is certain, that Ambrose introduced the responsive singing of psalms and hymns, and composed several prayers, prefaces, and hymns. His successor, Simplicius (a.d. 397–400), is supposed to have made several additions to the ritual. Many elements date from the reign of the Gothic kings (a.d. 493–568), and the Lombard kings (a.d. 568–739).
The Ambrosian liturgy is still used in the diocese of Milan; and after sundry vain attempts to substitute the Roman, it was confirmed by Alexander VI. in 1497 by a special bull, as the Ritus Ambrosianus. Excepting some Oriental peculiarities, it coincides substantially with the Roman liturgy, but has neither the pregnant brevity of the Roman, nor the richness and fullness of the Mozarabic. The prayers for the oblation of the sacrificial gifts differ from the Roman; the Apostles’ Creed is not recited till after the oblation; some saints of the diocese are received into the canonical lists of the saints; the distribution of the host takes place before the Paternoster, with formulas of its own, &c.
The liturgy which was used for a long time in the patriarchate of Aquileia, is allied to the Ambrosian, and likewise stands midway between the Roman and the Oriental Gallican liturgies.
5. The Roman liturgy is ascribed by tradition, in its main features, to the Apostle Peter, but cannot be historically traced beyond the middle of the fifth century. It has without doubt slowly grown to its present form. The oldest written records of it appear in three sacramentaries, which bear the names of the three Popes, Leo, Gelasius, and Gregory.
(a) The Sacramentarium Leonianum, falsely ascribed to Pope Leo I. († 461), probably dates from the end of the fifth century, and is a planless collection of liturgical formularies. It was first edited in 1735 from a codex of Verona.1098
(b) The Sacramentarium Gelasianum, which was first printed at Rome in 1680, passes for the work of the Roman bishop Gelasius († 492–496), who certainly did compose a Sacramentarium. Many saints’ days are wanting in it, which have been in use since the seventh century.
(c) The Sacramentarium Gregorianum, edited by Muratori and others. Gregory I. (590–604) is reputed to be the proper father of the Roman Ordo et Canon Missae, which, with various additions and modifications at later periods, gradually attained almost exclusive prevalence in the Latin church, and was sanctioned by the Council of Trent.
The collection of the various parts of the Roman liturgy1099 in one book is called Missale Romanum, and the directions for the priests are called Rubricae.1100
§ 101. Liturgical Vestments.
Besides the liturgical works already cited, Comp. John England (late R.C. bishop of Charleston, S. C., d. 1842): An Historical Explanation of the Vestments, Ceremonies, etc., appertaining to the holy Sacrifice of the Mass (an Introduction to the American Engl. edition of the Roman Missal). Philad. 1843. Fr. Bock. (R.C.): Geschichte der liturgischen Gewänder des Mittelalters. Bonn, 1856, 2 vols. C. Jos. Hefele: Beiträge zur Kirchengeschichte, Archäologie und Liturgik. Vol ii. Tüb. 1864, p. 150 ff.
The stately outward solemnity of public worship, and the strict separation of the hierarchy from the body of the laity, required corresponding liturgical vesture, after the example of the Jewish priesthood and cultus,1101 symbolical of the grades of the clergy and of the different parts of the worship.
In the Greek church the liturgical vestments and ornaments are the sticharion,1102 and the orarion, or horarion1103 for the deacon; the sticharion, the phelonion,1104 the zone,1105 the epitrachelion,1106 and the epimanikia1107 for the priest; the saccos,1108 the omophorion1109 the epigonation,1110 and the crozier1111 for the bishop. The mitre is not used by the Greeks.
The vestments in the Latin church are the amict or humeral1112 the alb (white cope or surplice),1113 the cincture,1114 the maniple,1115 the orarium or stole1116 for the priest; the chasuble,1117 the dalmatic,1118 the pectoral1119 and the mitre1120 for the bishop; the pallium for the archbishop. To these are to be added the episcopal ring and staff or crozier.
These clerical vestments almost all appear to have been more or less in use before the seventh century, though only in public worship; it is impossible exactly to determine the age of each. The use of priestly vestments itself originated in fact in the Old Testament, and undoubtedly passed into the church through the medium of the Jewish Christianity, but of course with many modifications. Constantine the Great presented the bishop Macarius of Jerusalem a splendid stole wrought with gold for use at baptism.
The Catholic ritualists of course give to the various mass-vestments a symbolical interpretation, which is in part derived from the undeniable meaning of the Jewish priestly garments,1121 but in part is arbitrary, and hence variable. The amict, for example, denotes the collecting of the mind from distraction; the alb, the righteousness and holiness of the priests; the maniple, the fruits of good works; the stole, the official power of the priest; the mitre, the clerical chieftainship; the ring, the marriage of the bishop with the church; the staff his oversight of the flock.
The color of the liturgical garments was for several centuries white; as in the Jewish sacerdotal vesture the white color, the symbol of light and salvation, prevailed. But gradually five ecclesiastical colors established themselves. The material varied, except that for the amict and the alb linen (as in the Old Testament) was prescribed. According to the present Roman custom the sacred vestments, like other sacred utensils and the holy water, must be blessed by the bishop or a clergyman even appointed for the purpose. The Greeks bless them even before each use of them. The Roman Missal, and other liturgical books, give particular directions in the rubrics for the use of the mass vestments.
In everyday life, for the first five or six centuries the clergy universally wore the ordinary citizens’ dress; then gradually, after the precedent of the Jewish priests1122 and Christian monks, exchanged it for a suitable official costume, to make manifest their elevation above the laity. So late as the year 428, the Roman bishop Celestine censured some Gallic priests for having, through misinterpretation of Luke xii. 35, exchanged the universally used under-garment (tunica) and over-garment (toga) for the Oriental monastic dress, and rightly reminded them that the clergy should distinguish themselves from other people not so much by outward costume, as by purity of doctrine and of life.1123 Later popes and councils, however, enacted various laws and penalties respecting these externals, and the council of Trent prescribed an official dress befitting the dignity of the priesthood.1124
* Schaff, Philip, History of the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997. This material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended (according to the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society, Dallas, TX, 1998.
691 For a fuller exposition of the Author’s views on the Christian Sabbath, see his Essay on the Anglo-American Sabbath (English and German), New York, 1863.
692 Lex Constantini a. 321 (Cod. Just. l. iii., Tit. 12, 3): Imperator Constantinus Aug. Helpidio: "Omnes judices, urbanaeque plebes et cunctarum artium officia venerabili die Solis quiescant. Ruri tamen positi agrorum culturae libere licenterque inserviant, quoniam frequenter evenit, ut non aptius alio die frumenta sulcis aut vineae scrobibus mandentur, ne occasione momenti pereat commoditas coelesti provisione concessa. Dat. Non. Mart. Crispo ii. et Constantino ii. Coss." In English: "On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits; because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for grain-sowing or for vine-planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost. (Given the 7th day of March, Crispus and Constantine being consuls each of them for the second time.)" The prohibition of military exercises is mentioned by Eusebius, Vita Const. IV. 19, 20, and seems to refer to a somewhat later period. In this point Constantine was in advance of modern Christian princes, who prefer Sunday for parades.
693 Cod. Theod. l. ii. tit. 8, 1: "Sicut indignissimum videbatur, diem Solis ... altercantibus jurgiis et noxiis partium contentionibus occupari, ita gratum et jocundum est, eo die, quae sunt maxime votiva, compleri; atque ideo emancipandi et manumittendi die festo cuncti licentiam habeant."
694 Euseb. Vit. Const. iv. 20.
695 Cod. Theod. xv. 5, 2, a. 386: "Nullus Solis die populo spectaculum praebeat." If the emperor’s birthday fell on Sunday, the acknowledgment of it, which was accompanied by games, was to be postponed.
696 Can. xi. appealing to former ordinances, Comp. Can. Apost. xiii. and xiv. (xiv. and xv.), and the council of Elvira, can. xxi. Hefele: Conciliengesch. i. p. 570.
697 Can. lxxx.
698 Can. Apost. liii. (alias Iii.): "Si quis episcopus aut presbyter aut diaconus in diebus festis non sumit carnem aut vinum, deponatur." Comp. can. lxvi. (lxv.) and Const. Apost. v. 20. The council of Gangra says in the 18th canon: "If any one, for pretended ascetic reasons, fast on Sunday, let him be anathema." The same council condemns those who despise the house of God and frequent schismatical assemblies.
699 Comp. the Corpus juris can. c. 13, Dist. 3 de consecr. Roman Catholics, however, always kneel in the reception and adoration of the sacrament.
700 Acts xx. 36; xxi. 5.
701 Comp. the brief scattered decrees of the councils on the sanctification of Sunday, in Hefele, l.c. i. 414, 753, 760, 761, 794; ii 69, 647, 756; Neale’s Feasts and Fasts; and Gilfillan: The Sabbath, &c., p. 390.
702 See the principal patristic passages on the Lord’s Day in Hessey, Sunday, etc., p. 90 ff. and p. 388 ff. Hessey says, p. 114: "In no clearly genuine passage that I can discover in any writer of these two [the fourth and fifth] centuries, or in any public document, ecclesiastical or civil, is the fourth commandment referred to as the ground of the obligation to observe the Lord’s Day." The Reformers of the sixteenth century, likewise, in their zeal against legalism and for Christian freedom, entertained rather lax views on the Sabbath law. It was left for Puritanism in England, at the close of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, to bring out the perpetuity of the fourth commandment and the legal and general moral feature in the Christian Sabbath. The book of Dr. Bownd, first published in 1595, under the title, "The Doctrine of the Sabbath," produced an entire revolution on the subject in the English mind, which is visible to this day in the strict observance of the Lord’s Day in England, Scotland, the British Provinces, and the United States. Comp. on Dr. Bownd’s book my Essay above quoted, p. 16 ff., Gilfillan, p. 69 ff., and Hessey, p. 276 ff.
703 De Laud. Const. c. 9 arid 17.
704 In the treatise: De sabbatis et de circumcisione, which is among the doubtful works of Athanasius.
705 Hom. 35.
706 Leon. Epist. ix. ad Dioscurum Alex. Episc. c. 1 (Opp. ed. Ballerini, tom. i. col. 630): "Dies resurrectionis Dominicae ... quae tantis divinarum dispositionum mysteriis est consecrata, ut quicquid est a Domino insignius constitutum, in huius piei dignitate sit gestum. In hac mundus sumpsit exordium. In hac per resurrectionem Christi et mors interitum, et vita accepit initium. In hac apostoli a Domino praedicandi omnibus gentibus evangelii tubam sumunt, et inferendum universo mundo sacramentum regenerationis accipiunt. In hac, sicut beatus Joannes evangelista testatur (Joann. xx. 22), congregatis in unum discipulis, januis clausis, cum ad eos Dominus introisset, insufflavit, et dixit: ’Accipite Spiritum Sanctum; quorum remiseritis peccata, remittuntur eis, et quorum detinueritis, detenta erunt.’In hac denique promissus a Domino apostolis Spiritus Sanctus advenit: ut coelesti quadam regula insinuatum et traditum noverimus, in illa die celebranda nobis esse mysteria sacerdotalium benedictionum, in qua collata sunt omnia dona gratiarum."
707 Philo, in his Tract de Cherubim (in Augusti, l.c. p. 481 sq.), paints this difference between the Jewish and heathen festivals in strong colors; and the picture was often used by the church fathers against the degenerate pagan character of the Christian festivals.
708 This last thought is well drawn out by W. Archer Butler in one of his sermons: "It is the chief advantage of that religious course of festivals by which the church fosters the piety of her children, that they tend to preserve a due proportion and equilibrium in our religious views. We have all a tendency to adopt particular views of the Christian truths, to insulate certain doctrines from their natural accompaniments, and to call our favorite fragment the gospel. We hold a few texts so near our eyes that they hide all the rest of the Bible. The church festival system spreads the gospel history in all its fulness across the whole surface of the sacred year. It is a sort of chronological creed, and forces us, whether we will or no, by the very revolution of times and seasons, to give its proper place and dignity to every separate article. ’Day unto day uttereth speech,’ and the tone of each holy anniversary is distinct and decisive. Thus the festival year is a bulwark of orthodoxy as real as our confession of faith." History shows, however (especially that of Germany and France), that neither the church year nor creeds can prevent a fearful apostasy to rationalism and infidelity.
709 Comp. vol. i. § 99
710 . There was no unanimity, however, in this period, in the number of the feasts. Chrysostom, for example, counts seven principal feasts, corresponding to the seven days of the week: Christmas, Epiphany, Passion, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and the Feast of the Resurrection of the Dead. The last, however, is not a strictly ecclesiastical feast, and the later Greeks reckon only six principal festivals, answering to the six days of creation, followed by the eternal Sabbath of the church triumphant in heaven. Comp. Augusti, i. p. 530,
711 The assertion that the festum Trinitatis descends from the time of Gregory the Great, has poor foundation in his words: "Ut de Trinitate specialia cantaremus; for these refer to the praise of the holy Trinity in the general public worship of God. The first clear traces of this festival appear in the time of Charlemagne and in the tenth century, when Bishop Stephen of Liege vindicated it. Yet so late as 1150 it was counted by the abbot Potho at Treves among the novae celebritates. Many considered it improper to celebrate a special feast of the Trinity, while there was no distinct celebration of the unity of God. The Roman church year reached its culmination and mysterious close in the feast of Corpus Christi (the body of Christ), which was introduced under Pope Clement the Fifth, in 1311, and was celebrated on Thursday of Trinity week (feria quinta proxima post octavam Pentecostes) in honor of the mystery of transubstantiation.
712 Hence called Natales, natalitia, nativitas, genevqlia, of the martyrs. The Greek church also has its saint for every day of the year, but varies in many particulars from the Roman calendar.
713 Quatuor tempora.
714 Sermones de jejunio quatuor temporum.
715 Comp. the passages in Augusti, l.c. i. p. 474 sqq.
716 Orat. 38 in Theoph., cited at large by Augusti, p. 483 sq. Comp. Augustine, Ep. 22, 3; 29, 9, according to which "comessationes et ebrietates in honorem etiam beatissimorum martyrum" were of almost daily occurrence in the African church, and were leniently judged, lest the transition of the heathen should be discouraged.
717 Natalis, or natalitia Domini or Christi,hJmevra genevqlio", genevqlia tou' Cristou'.
718 Ambrose, De virgin. iii. 1: "Vides quantus ad natalem Sponsi tui populus convenerit, ut nemo impastus recedit?
719 Opp. ii. 384.
720 The Satumalia were the feast of Saturn or Kronos, in representation of the golden days of his reign, when all labor ceased, prisoners were set free, slaves went about in gentlemen’s clothes and in the hat (the mark of a freeman), and all classes gave themselves up to mirth and rejoicing. The Sigillaria were a festival of images and puppets at the close of the Saturnalia on the 21st and 22d of December, when miniature images of the gods, wax tapers, and all sorts of articles of beauty and luxury were distributed to children and among kinsfolk. The Brumalia, from bruma (brevissima, the shortest day), had reference to the winter solstice, and the return of the Sol invictus.
721 Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyassa, Leo the Great, and others.
722 Dies or natales invicti Solis. This is the feast of the Persian sun-god Mithras, which was formally introduced in Rome under Domitian and Trajan.
723 In the early church, the 6th of January, the day of the Epiphany festival, was regarded by some as the birth-day of Christ. Among Biblical chronologists, Jerome, Baronius, Lamy, Usher, Petavius, Bengel, and Seyffarth, decide for the 25th of December, while Scaliger, Hug Wieseler, and Ellicott (Hist. Lectures on the Life of our Lord Jesus Christ, p. 70, note 3, Am. ed.), place the birth of Christ in the month of February. The passage in Luke, ii. 8, is frequently cited against the common view, because, according to the Talmudic writers, the flocks in Palestine were brought in at the beginning of November, and not driven to pasture again till toward March. Yet this rule, certainly, admitted many exceptions, according to the locality and the season. Comp. the extended discussion in Wieseler: Chronologische Synopse, p. 132 ff., and Seyffarth, Chronologia Sacra.
724 Luke ii. 8.
725 "Heri natus est Christus in terris, ut hodie Stephanus nasceretur in coelis." The connection is, however, a purely ideal one; for at first the death-day of Stephen was in August; afterward, on account of the discovery of his relics, it was transferred to January.
726 Comp. the beautiful hymn of the Spanish poet Prudentius, of the fifth century: "Salvete flores martyrum." German versions by Nickel, Königsfeld, Bässler, Hagenbach, &c. A good English version in "The Words of the Hymnal Noted, " Lond, p. 45:
"All hail! ye Infant-Martyr flowers,
Cut off in life’s first dawning hours:
As rosebuds, snapt in tempest strife,
When Herod sought your Saviour’s life," &c.
727 ta; ejpifavneia, or ejpifaniva, Crist faniva, also qeofaniva. Comp. vol i. § 99.
728 Matt. ii. 1-11.
729 Augustine, Sermo 203: "Hodierno die manifestatus redemptor omnium gentium," &c. The transformation of the Persian magi or priest-philosophers into three kings (Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar) by the mediaeval legend was a hasty inference from the triplicity of the gifts and from Ps. lxxii. 10, 11. The legend brings us at last to the cathedral at Cologne, where the bodies of the three saint-kings are to this day exhibited and worshipped.
730 The late Dr. Fried. Strauss of Berlin, an eminent writer on the church year (Das evangelische Kirchenjahr, p. 218), says: "Das heilige Osterfest ist das christliche Fest schlechthin. Es ist nicht blos Hauptfest, sondern das Fest, das einmal im Jahre vollstandig auftritt, aber in allen andern Festen von irgend einer Seite wiederkehrt, und eben dadurch diese zu Festen macht. Nannte man doch jeden Festtag, ja sogar jeden Sonntag aus diesem Grunde dies paschalis. Daher musste es auch das ursprüngliche Fest in dem umfassendsten Sinne des Wortes sein. Man kann nicht sagen, in welcher christlichen Zeit es entstanden sei; es ist mit der Kirche entstanden, und die Kirche ist mit ihm entstanden."
731 Vol. i. § 99 (p. 373 ff.).
732 In its fifth canon, where it orders that provincial councils be held twice a year, before Quadragesima (pro; th'" tessarakosth'"), and in the autumn.
733 Ex. xxxiv. 28.
734 1 Kings xix. 8.
735 Dies cinerum, caput jejunii, or quadragesimae.
736 From caro and vale; flesh taking its departure for a time in a jubilee of revelling. According to others, it is the converse: dies quo caro valet; i.e., the day on which it is still allowed to eat flesh and to indulge the flesh. The Carnival, or Shrove-tide, embraces the time from the feast of Epiphany to Ash Wednesday, or, commonly, only the last three or the last eight days preceding Lent. It is celebrated in every city of Italy; in Rome, especially, with masquerades, races, dramatic plays, farces, jokes, and other forms of wild merriment and frantic joy, yet with good humor; replacing the old Roman feasts of Saturnalia, Lupercalia, and Floralia
737 Septimana sancta, magna, muta; hebdomas nigra, or paschalis; eJbdoma;" megavlh, Passion Week.
738 Dominica palmarum; eJorth; tw'n baivwn.
739 Feria quinta paschae, dies natalis eucharistiae, dies viridium; hJmegavlhpevmpth. The English name, Maundy Thursday, is derived from maunds or baskets, in which on that day the king of England distributed alms to certain poor at Whitehall, Maund is connected with the Latin mendicare, and French mendier, to beg.
740 Dies dominicae passionis; paraskeuhv, pavsca staurwvsimon, hJmevra tou' staurou'. In German Char-Freitag either from the Greek cavri", or, more probably, from the Latin carus, beloved, dear, comp. the English Good Friday. Other etymologists derive it from carena (carême), i.e., fasting, or from kar (küren, to choose), i.e., the chosen day; others still from karo-parare, i.e., preparation-day.
741 Mevgaor a{gion savbbaton; sabbatum magnum, or sanctum.
742 Rom. vi. 4-6.
743 Vigiliae paschales; pannucivde".
744 Comp. Lactantius: Inst. divin. vii. c. 19; and Hieronymus ad Matt. xxv. 6 (t. vii. 203, ed. Vallarsi): "Unde traditionem apostolicam permansisse, ut in die vigiliarum Paschae ante noctis dimidium populos dimittere non liceat, expectantes adventum Christi."
745 Festum dominicae resurrectionis; eJorth;ajnastavsimo", kuriakh;megavlh.
746 "Dominus resurrexit."—"Vere resurrexit."
747 Octava paschae, pascha clausum; ajntivpasca. Octave is applied in genera to the whole eight-days’ observance of the great church festivals; then especially to the eighth or last day of the feast.
748 Dominica in albis. Also Quasimodogeniti, from the Introit for public worship, 1 Pet. ii. 2 ("Quasimodo geniti infantes,"" As new-born babes," &c.). Among the Greeks it was called kainh; kuriakhv.
749 Socrates: Hist. Eccl. i. 9; Theodoret: H. E. i. 10; Eusebius: Vita Const ii. 17. Comp. Hefele, l.c. i. p. 309 sqq.
750 Epiphanius, Haer. l.c. 1. Comp. Ex. xii. 15.
751 Hefele thinks, however (i. p. 313 f.), from an expression of Cyril of Alexandria and Leo I., that the Nicaenum (1) gave the Alexandrian reckoning the preference over the Roman; (2) committed to Alexandria the reckoning, to Rome the announcing, of the Easter term; but that this order was not duly observed.
752 Pentekosthv. Comp. the author’s Hist. of the Apost. Ch. § 54.
753 Dies ascensionis; eJorth; th'" ajnalhvyew" .
754 Dies pentecostes; pentekosthv, hJmevra tou' Pneuvmato".
755 kuriakh; tw'n aJgivwn pavntwn marturhsavntwn. The Western church kept a similar feast on the first of November, but not till the eighth century.
756 So in the Roman church even after the introduction of the Trinity festival. The Protestants, on the contrary, as far as they retained the ecclesiastical calendar (Lutherans, Anglicans, &c.), make the first Sunday after Pentecost the basis, and count the First, Second, Third Sunday after Trinity, instead of the First, Second, etc., Sunday after Whitsunday.
757 JH mhvthr tou' kurivou, Luke i. 43.
758 JH douvlh kurivou, Luke i. 38.
759 Kecaritwmevnh(pass. part.), Luke i. 28.
760 Eujloghmevnh ejn gunaixivn, Luke i. 28.
761 Luke i. 43:JH mhvthr tou' kurivou mou.
762 Luke i. 28: Cai're, kecaritwmevnh:oJkuvrio" meta;sou', eujloghmevnhsu;ejngunaixivn. So Elizabeth, Luke i. 42: Eujloghmevnh su; ejn gunaixiv, kai; eujloghmevno" oJ karpo;" th'" koiliva" sou.
763 Luke i. 48: !Apo; tou' nu'n makariou'siv me pa'sai aiJ geneaiv.
764 John xix. 25-27.
765 Acts i. 14.
766 John ii. 4: Tiv ejmoi; kai; soij, guvnai; Comp. the commentators on the passage. The expression "woman" is entirely respectful, comp. John xix. 21; xx. 13, 15. But the "What have I to do with thee?" is, like the Hebrew &l;y; yLAhm' (Josh. xxii, 24; 2 Sam. xvi. 10; xix. 22; 1 Kings xvii 18; 2 Kings iii. 13; 2 Chron. xxxv. 21), a rebuke and censure of undue interference; comp. Matt. viii. 29; Luke viii. 28; Mark i. 24 (also the classics). Meyer, the best grammatical expositor, observes on guvnai: "That Jesus did not say mh'ter, flowed involuntarily from the sense of His higher wonder-working position, whence He repelled the interference of feminine weakness, which here met Him even in His mother."
767 Matt. xii. 46-50.
768 Luke xi 27, 28. The menou'nge is emphatic, utique, but also corrective, imo vero; so here, and Rom. ii. 20; x. 18. Luther inexactly translates simply, ja; the English Bible more correctly, yea rather. Meyer ad loc.: "Jesus does not forbid the congratulation of His mother, but He applies the predicate makavrio" as the woman had done, to an outward relation, but to an ethical category, in which any one might stand, so that the congratulation of His mother as mother is thereby corrected." Van Oosterzee strikingly remarks in his Commentary on Luke (in Lange’s Bibelwerk): " The congratulating woman is the prototype of all those, who in all times have honored the mother of the Lord above her Son, and been guilty of Mariolatry. If the Lord even here disapproves this honoring of His mother, where it moves in so modest limits, what judgment would He pass upon the new dogma of Pio Nono, on which a whole new Mariology is built?"
769 Here belongs, above all, the Protevangelium Jacobi Minoris, which dates from the third or fourth century; then the Evangelium de nativitate S. Mariae; the Historia de nativitate Mariae et de infantia Salvatoris; the Evangelium infantiae Servatoris; the Evang. Josephi fabri lignarii. Comp. Thilo’s Cod. Apocryphus N. Ti. Lips. 1832, and the convenient digest of this apocryphal history in R. Hofmann’s Leben Jesu nach den Apocryphen. Leipz. 1851, pp. 5-117.
770 Decret. de libris apocr. Coll Cone. ap. Harduin, tom. ii. p. 941. Comp. Pope Innocent I., Ep. ad Exuperium Tolosanum, c. 7, where the Protevang. Jacobi is rejected and condemned.
771 Epiphanius also, Haer. 78, no. 17, gives the parents of Jesus these names. To reconcile this with Luke iii: 23, the Roman theologians suppose, that Eli, or Heli, is an abbreviation of Heliakim, and that this is the same with Joakim, or Joachim.
772 According to the apocryphal Historia Josephi he was already ninety years old; according to Epiphanius at least eighty; and was blessed with children by a former marriage. According to Origen, also, and Eusebius, and Gregory of Nyssa, Joseph was an aged widower. Jerome, on the contrary, makes him, like Mary, a pure coelebs, and says of him: "Mariae quam putatus est habuisse, custos potius fait quam maritus;" consequently he must "virginem mansisse cum Maria, qui pater Domini meruit adpellari." Contr. Helvid. c. 19.
773 Rom. v. 12 ff.; 1 Cor. xv. 22. But Paul ignores here Eve and Mary altogether.
774 In later times in the Latin church even the Ave with which Gabriel saluted the Virgin, was received as the converse of the name of Eva; though the Greek cai're Luke i. 28, admits no such far-fetched accommodation. In like manner the bruising of the serpent’s head, Gen. iii. 15, was applied to Mary instead of Christ, because the Vulgate wrongly translates the Hebrew var *pÒYvyÒ aWh, ipsa conteret caput tuum;"while the LXX. rightly refers the aWh to [r'z, as masc., aujtov" and likewise all Protestant versions of the Bible.
775 Irenaeus: Adv. haer. lib. iii. c. 22, § 4: "Consequenter autem et Maria virgo obediens invenitur, dicens: ’Ecce ancilla tua, Domine, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum’(Luke i. 38); Eva vero disobediens: non obedivit enim, quum adhuc esset virgo. Quemadmodum illa virum quidem habens Adam, virgo tamen adhuc existens ... inobediens facta, et sibi et universo generihumano causa facta est mortis: sic et Maria habens praedestinatum virum, et tamen virgo obediens, et sibi et universo generi humano causa facta est salutis .... Sic autem et Evae inobedientiea nodus solutionem accepit per obedientiam Mariae. Quod enim allgavit virgo Eva per incredulitatem, hoc virgo Maria solvit per fidem." Comp. v. 19, § 1. Similar statements occur in Justin M. (Dial.c.Tryph. 100), Tertullian (De carne Christi, c. 17), Epiphanius (Haer. 78, 18), Ephraem (Opp. ii. 318; iii. 607), Jerome (Ep. xxii. ad Eustoch. 21: "Mors per Evam, vita per Mariam "). Even St. Augustine carries this parallel between the first and second Eve as far as any of the fathers, in a sermon De Adam et Eva et sancta Maria, not heretofore quoted, published from Vatican Manuscripts in Angelo Mai’s Nova Patrum Bibliotheca, tom. i. Rom. 1852, pp. 1-4. Here, after a most exaggerated invective against woman (whom he calls latrocinium vitae, suavis mors, blanda percussio, interfectio lenis, pernicies delicata, malum libens, sapida jugulatio, omnium calamitas rerum—and all that in a sermon!), goes on thus to draw a contrast between Eve and Mary: "O mulier ista exsecranda, dum decepit! o iterum beata colenda, dum salvat! Plus enim contulit gratiae, quam doloris. Licet ipsa docuerit mortem, ipsa tamen genuit dominum salvatorem. Inventa est ergo mors per mulierem, vita per virginem .... Ergo malum per feminam, immo et per feminam bonum: quia si per Evam cecidimus, magis stamus per Mariam: per Evam sumus servituti addicti effeti per Mariam liberi: Eva nobis sustulit diuturnitatem, aeternitatem nobis Maria condonavit: Eva nos damnari fecit per arboris pomum, absolvit Maria per arboris sacramentum, quia et Christus in ligno pependit ut fructus" (c. 3, pp. 2 and 3). And in conclusion: "Haec mater est humani generis, auctor illa salutis. Eva nos educavit, roboravit et Maria: per Evam cotidie crescimus, regnamus in aeternum per Mariam: per Evam deducti ad terram, ad coelum elevati per Mariam" (c. 4, p. 4). Comp. Aug. Sermo 232, c. 2.
776 Adv. haer. v. cap. 19, § 1: "Quemadmodum illa [Eva] seducta est ut effugeret Deum ... sic haec [Maria] suasa est obedire Deo, uti virginis Evae virgo Maria fieret advocata [probably a translation of sunhvgoro" or paravklhto"]. Et quemadmodum adstrictum est morti genus humanum per virginem, salvatur per virginem, aequa lance disposita, virginalis inobedientia per virginalem obedientiam." p 415
777 Adv. haer. iii. cap. 16, § 7 (not. c. 18, as Gieseler, i. 2, p. 277, wrongly cited it): "... Dominus repellus ejus intempestivam festinationem, dixit: ’Quid mihi et tibi est mulier?’" So even Chrysostom, Hom. 21 in Joh. n. 1.
778 Tertullian, De carne Christi, c. 7; Origen, in Luc. Hom. 17; Basil, Ep. 260; Chrysostom, Hom. 44 in Matt, and Hom. 21 in Joh.; Cyril Alex. In Joann. l. xii.
779 The reading prwtovtoko" in Matt. i. 25 is somewhat doubtful, but it is certainly genuine in Luke ii. 7.
780 They are always called ajdelfoiv (four in number, James, Joseph or Joses, Simon, and Jude) and adelfaiv (at least two), Matt. xii. 46, 47; xiii. 55, 56; Mark iii. 31, 32; vi. 3; John vii. 3, 5, 10; Acts i. 14, etc., but nowhere ajneyioiv; Mark a term well known to the N. T. vocabulary (Col. iv. 10), or suggenei'", kinsmen (Mark vi. 4; Luke i. 36, 58; ii. 44; John viii. 26; Acts x. 24), or uiJoi;th'" ajdelfh'", sister’s sons (Acts xxiii. 26). This speaks strongly against the cousin-theory.
781 Comp. on this whole complicated question of the brothers of Christ and the connected question of James, the author’s treatise on Jakobus und die Brüder des Herrn, Berlin, 1842, his Hist. of the Apostolic Church, 2d ed. § 95 (p. 383 of the Leipzig ed.; p. 378 of the English), and his article on the Brethren of Christ in the Bibliotheca Sacra of Andover for Oct. 1864
782 Tertullian (De carne Christi, c. 23: Virgo quantum a viro; non virgo quantum a partu), Clement of Alex. (Strom. vii. p. 889), and even Epiphanius (Haer. lxxviii. § 19, where it is said of Christ:Ou|tov" ejstinajlhqw'" ajnoivgwnmhvtranmhtrov"), were still of another opinion on this point. Ambrose of Milan is the first, within my knowledge, to propound this miraculous view (Epist. 42 ad Siricium). He appeals to Ezek. xliv. 1-3, taking the east gate of the temple, which must remain closed because Jehovah passed through it, to refer typically to Mary."Quos est haec porta, nisi Maria? Ideo clausa, quia virgo. Porta igitur Maria, per quam Christus intravit in hunc mundum." De inst. Virg. c. 8 (Op. ii. 262). So Ambrose also in his hymn, " A solis ortus cardine,"and Jerome, Adv. Pelag. l. ii. 4. The resurrection of Jesus from the closed tomb and the entrance of the risen Jesus through the closed doors, also, was often used as an analogy. The fathers assume that the stone which sealed the Saviour’s tomb, was not rolled away till after the resurrection, and they draw a parallel between the sealed tomb from which He rose to everlasting life, and the closed gate of the Virgin’s womb from which He was born to earthly life. Jerome, Comment. in Matth. xxvii. 60: " Potest novum sepulchrum Mariae virginalem uterum demonstrare." Gregory the Great: " Ut ex clauso Virginis utero natus, sic ex clauso sepulchro resurrexit in quo nemo conditus fuerat, et postquam resurrexisset, se per clausas fores in conspectum apostolorum induxit." Subsequently the catholic view, consistently, removed every other incident of an ordinary birth, such as pain and the flow of blood. While Jerome still would have Jesus born under all " naturae contumeliis,"John Damascenus says (De orth. fide, iv. 14): " Since this birth was not preceded by any [carnal] pleasure, it could also have been followed by no pangs." Here, too, a passage of prophecy must serve as a proof: Is. lxvi. 7: " Before she travailed, she brought forth,"&c.
783 Augustine (De s. virg. c. 6): "Sola Maria et spiritu et corpore mater et virgo."
784 Helvidius adduces the principal exegetical arguments for his view; the passages on the Lord’s brothers, and especially Matt. i. 25, pressing the words ejgivnwskeand e{w". Jerome remarks, on the contrary, that the knowing by no means necessarily denotes nuptial intercourse, and that till does not always fix a limit; e.g., Matt. xxviii. 20 and 1 Cor. xv. 25. In like manner Helvidius laid stress on the expression prwtovtoko", used of Christ, Matt. i. 25; Luke ii. 7; to which Jerome rightly replies that, according to the law, every son who first opens the womb is called the first-born, Ex. xxxiv. 19, 20; Num. xviii. 15 ff., whether followed by other children or not. The "brothers of Jesus" he explains to be cousins, sons of Alpheus and the sister of the Virgin Mary, who likewise was called Mary (as he wrongly infers from John xix. 25). The main argument of Jerome, however, is the ascetic one: the overvaluation of celibacy. Joseph was probably only "custos," not "maritus Mariae" cap. 19), and their marriage only nominal. He would not indeed deny that there are pious souls among married women and widows, but they are such as have abstained or ceased from living in conjugal intercourse (cap. 21). Helvidius, conversely, ascribed equal moral dignity to the married and the single state. So Jovinian. Comp. § 43.
785 De Nat. et grat. contra Pelag. c. 36, § 42: "Excepta sancto virgine Maria, de qua propter honorem Domini nullam prorsus,cum de peccatis agitur, haberi volo guaestionem ... hac ergo virgine excepta, si omnes illos sanctos et sanctas (whom Peligius takes for sinless] ... congregare possemus et interrogare, utrum essent sine peccato, quid fuisse responsuros putamus: utrum hoc quod iste [Pelagius] dicit, an quod Joannes apostolus" [1 John i. 8]? In other places, however, Augustine says, that the flesh of Mary came "de peccati propagine" (De Gen. ad Lit. x. c. 18), and that, in virtue of her descent from Adam, she was subject to death also as the consequence of sin ("Maria ex Adam mortua propter peocatum," Enarrat. in Ps. 34, vs. 12). This was also the view of Anselm of Canterbury († 1109), in his Cur Deus homo, ii. 16, where he says of Christ that he assumed sinless manhood "de massa peccatrice, id est de humano genere, quod totum infectum errat peccato," and of Mary: "Virgo ipsa, unde assumptus est, est in iniquitatibus concepta, et in peccatis concepit eam mater ejus, et cum originali peccato nata est, quoniam et ipsa in Adam peccavit in quo omnes peccaverunt." Jerome taught the universal sinfulness without any exception, Adv. Pelag. ii. 4.
786 Augustine, De Nat. et grat. cap. 36.
787 The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary was, for the first time after Pelagius, plainly brought forward in 1140 at Lyons, but was opposed by Bernard of Clairvaux (Ep. 174), and thence continued an avowed issue between the Franciscans and Dominicans, till it gained the victory in the papal bull of 1854.
788 The expression qeotovko" does not occur in the Scriptures, and is at best easily misunderstood. The nearest to it is the expression of Elizabeth:JH mhvthr tou' kurivou mou, Luke i. 43, and the words of the angel Gabriel: To; gennwvmmenon »ejk sou', de te, al. in te, is not sufficiently attested, and is a later explanatory addition] a{gio nklhqhvsetai uiJo;" Qeou', Luke i. 35. But with what right the distinguished Roman Catholic professor Reithmayr, in the Catholic Encyclop. above quoted, vol. vi. p. 844, puts into the mouth of Elizabeth the expression, "mother of God my Lord;" I cannot see; for there is no such variation in the reading of Luke i. 43.
789 The earliest witnesses for qeotovko" are Origen (according to Socrates, H. E. vii. 32), Eusebius (Vita Const. iii. 43), Cyril of Jerus. (Catech. x. 146), Athanasius (Orat. iii. c. Arian. c. 14, 83), Didymus (De Trinit. i. 31, 94; ii 4, 133), and GregoryNaz. (Orat. li. 738). But it should be remembered that Hesychius, presbyter in Jerusalem († 343) calls David, as an ancestor of Christ, qeopavtwr(Photius, Cod. 275), and that in many apocrypha James is called ajdelfovqeo" (Gieseler, i. ii. 134). It is also worthy of note that Augustine († 430), with all his reverence for Mary, never calls her mater Dei or Deipara; on the contrary, he seems to guard against it, Tract. viii. in Ev. Joann. c. 9. "Secundum quod Deus erat [Christus] matrem non habebat."
790 Orat. li. 738: Ei[ ti" oujqeotovkon th;n Marivan uJpolambavnei, cwriv" ejsti th'" qeovthto" .
791 Comp. Cyril’s Encom. in S. M. Deiparam and Homil. Ephes., and the Orationes of Proclus in Gallandi, vol. ix. Similar extravagant laudation had already been used by Ephraim Syrus († 378) in his work, De laudibus Dei genetricis, and in the collection of prayers which bore his name, but are in part doubtless of later origin, in the 3d volume of his works, pp. 524-552, ed. Benedetti and S. Assemani.
792 jEk Mariva" th'" parqevnon, th'" qeotovkou.
793 Th;n parqevnon Marivan iJketeuvousa bohqh'nai (Virginem Mariam supplex obsecrans) parqevnw/ kinduneuouvsh/. Orat. xviii de St. Cypriano, tom. i. p. 279, ed. Paris. The earlier and authentic accounts respecting Cyprian know nothing of any such courtship of Cyprian and intercession of Mary.
794 Adv. Haer. Collyrid.: jEn timh'/ e[stw Mariva, oJ de; Path;r ... proskuvneivsqw, th;n Marivan mhdei;" proskuneivtw.
795 The Greek church even goes so far as to substitute, in the collects, the name of Mary for the name of Jesus, and to offer petitions in the name of the Theotokos.
796 .These words, according to the textus receptus, had been already spoken also by the angel, Luke i. 28: Eujloghmevnhsu; ejn gunaixivn, though they are wanting here in important manuscripts, and are omitted by Tischendorf and Meyer asa later addition, from i. 42.
797 Mast, for example, in Wetzer und Welte’s Kathol. Kirchenlexikon, vol. i. p, 563
798 Peter Damiani (who died a.d. 1072) first mentions, as a solitary case, that a clergyman daily prayed the words: "Ave Maria, gratia plena! Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus." The first order on the subject was issued by Odo, bishop of Paris, after 1196 (comp. Mansi, xxii. 681): "Exhortentur populum semper presbyteri ad dicendam orationem dominicam et credo in Deum et salutationem beatae Virginis."
799 @Hmevra ajspasmou', or Caritismou', euvaggelismou', ejnsarkwvsew"; festum annunciationis, s. incarnationis, conceptionis Domini.
800 Luke i. 26-39.
801 Festum purificationis Mariae, orpraesentationis Domini, Simeonis et Hannae occursus; uJpapavnth, or uJpavnth, or uJpavnthsi" tou' Kurivou (the meeting of the Lord with Simeon and Anna in the temple).
802 Comp. Luke ii. 22; Lev. xi 2-7. The apparent incongruity of Mary’s need of purification with the prevalent Roman Catholic doctrine of her absolute purity and freedom from the ordinary accompaniments of parturition (even, according to Paschasius Radbert, from the flow of blood) gave rise to all kinds of artificial explanations. Augustine derived it from the consuetudo legis rather than the necessitas expiandi purgandique peccati, and places it on a par with the baptism of Christ. (Quaest. in Heptateuchum, l. iii. c. 40.)
803 Luke ii. 22-38.
804 Februarius, from Februo, the purifying god; like Januarius, from the god Janus. Februare = purgare to purge. February was originally the last month.
805 Festum candelarum sive luminum.
806 koivmhsi", or ajnavlhyi" th'" aJgiva" Qeotovkou, festum assumptionis.
807 According to later representations, as in the three discourses of John Damascenus on this subject, her body rested, like the body of the Lord, three days uncorrupted in the grave.
808 The Greek council of Jerusalem in 1672, which was summoned against the Calvinists, officially proclaimed it, and thus almost raised it to the authority of a dogma.
809 Nativitas, natalis B. M. V.; genevqlion, &c.
810 Festum presentationis.
811 Festum visitationis.
812 Festum immaculatae conceptionis B. M. V.
813 Comp. Acts ix. 13, 32, 41; xxvi. 10; Rom. i. 7; xii. 13; xv. 25, 26; 1 Cor. i. 2; vi. 1; Eph. i. 1, 15, 18; iv. 12; Phil. i. 1; iv. 21, 22; Rev. xiii. 7, 10, &c.
814 To reconcile this perverted view with the Bible, the Roman tradition arbitrarily assumes that Peter separated from his wife after his conversion; whereas Paul, so late as the year 57, expressly presupposes the opposite, and claims for himself the right to take with him a sister as a wife on his missionary tours (ajdelfh;n gunai'ka periavgein), like the other apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas. 1 Cor. ix. 5. Married saints, like St. Elisabeth of Hungary and St. Louis of France, are rare exceptions.
815 De viduis c. 9: "Obsecrandi sunt Angeli pro nobis, qui nobis ad praesidium dati sunt." Origen had previously commended the invocation of angels.
816 "Non horruisti Virginis uterum." The translation in the American Episcopal Liturgy has softened this expression thus: "Thou didst humble thyself to be born of a Virgin."
817 Natalitia, genevqlia.
818 In the Epistle of the church of Smyrna De Martyr. Polycarpi, cap. 17 (Patres-Apost. ed. Dressel, p. 404): Tou'ton me;n ga;r uiJo;n o[nta tou' Qeou' proskunou'men: tou;" de; mavrtura" , wJ" maqhta;" kai; mimhta;" tou' kurivou ajgapw'men ajxivw" , k. t. l
819 Memoriae, martuvria.
820 Augustine, Serm. 159, 1 (al. 17): "Injuria est pro martyre orare, cujus nos debemus orationibus commendari." Serm. 284, 5: "Pro martyribus non orat [ecclesia], sed eorum potius orationibus se commendat." Serm. 285, 5: "Pro aliis fidelibus defunctis oratur [to wit, for the souls in purgatory still needing purification]; pro martyribus non oratur; tam enim perfecti exierunt, ut non sint suscepti nostri, sed advocati." Yet Augustine adds the qualification: "Neque hoc in se, sed in illo cui capiti perfecta membra cohaeserunt. Ille est enim vere advocatus unus, qui interpellat pro nobis, sedens ad dexteram Patris: sed advocatus unus, sicut et pastor unus." When the grateful intercessions for the departed saints and martyrs were exchanged for the invocation of their intercession, the old formula: "Annue nobis, Domine, ut animae famuli tui Leonis haec prosit oblatio," was changed into the later: "Annue nobis, quaesumus, Domine, ut intercessione beati Leonis haec nobis prosit oblatio." But instead of praying for the saints, the Catholic church now prays for the souls in purgatory.
821 Ambrose, De viduis, c. 9, calls the martyrs "nostri praesules et speculatores (spectatores) vitae actuumque nostrorum."
822 De cura pro mortuis (a.d. 421), c. 16. In another place he decidedly rejects the first hypothesis, because otherwise he himself would be always surrounded by his pious mother, and because in Isa. lxiii. 16 it is said: "Abraham is ignorant of us."
823 "Et ad excitandam imitationem, et ut mentis eorum consocietur, atque orationibus adjuvetur." Contra Faustum l. 20, n. 21.
824 De Civit. Dei, xxii. 10: "Nobis Martyres non sunt dii: quia unum eundemque Deum et nostrum scimus et Martyrum. Nec tamen miraculis, quae per Memorias nostrorum Martyrum fiunt, ullo modo comparanda sunt miracula, quae facta per templa perhibentur illorum. Verum si qua similia videntur, sicut a Moyse magi Pharaonis, sic eorum dii victi sunt a Martyribus nostris .... Martyribus nostris non templa sicut diis, sed Memorias sicut hominibus mortuis, quorum apud Deum vivunt spiritus, fabricamus; nec ibi erigimus altaria, in quibus sacrificemus Martyribus, sed uni Deo et Martyrum et nostro sacrificium [corpus Christi] immolamus."
825 Cinerarios and idololatrae.
826 In his Praeparat. Evangelica, xiii. cap. 11, p, 663. Comp. Demostr. Evang. iii. § 3, p. 107.
827 Theodoret, Graec. affect. curatio. Disp. viii. (Ed. Schulz, iv. p. 902 sq.)
828 "Commessationes et ebrietates in honorem etiam beatissimorum Martyrum." Ep. 22 and 29.
829 Thus, e.g., the fate of the Attic king’s son Hippolytus, who was dragged to death by horses on the sea shore, was transferred to the Christian martyr Hippolytus, of the beginning of the third century. The martyr Phocas, a gardener at Sinope in Pontus, became the patron of all mariners, and took the place of Castor and Pollux. At the daily meals on shipboard, Phocas had his portion set out among the rest, as an invisible guest, and the proceeds of the sale of these portions was finally distributed among the poor as a thank-offering for the prosperous voyage.
830 Conc. Trid. Sess. xxv.: "Sanctos una cum Christo regnantes orationes suas pro hominibus Deo offere;bonum atque utile esse suppliciter eos invocare et ob beneficia impetranda a Deo per Filium eius Jesum Christum, qui solus noster redemptor et salvator est, ad eorum orationes, opem auxiliumque confugere."
831 Basil. M. Hom. 19, in XL. Martyres, § 8: ]W coro;" a{gio", w] suvntagma iJerovn, w] sunapismo;" ajrJrJaghv" , w] koinoi; fuvlake" tou' gevnou" tw'n ajnqrwvpwn (Ocommunes generis humani custodes), ajgaqoi; koinwnoi; frontivdwn, dehvsew" sunergoi;, presbeutai;dunatwvtatoi (legati apud Deum potentissimi), ajstevre" th'" oijkoumevnh", a[vnqh tw'n ejkklhsiw'n, uJma'" ouvc hJ gh' katevkruyen, ajllj oujrano;" uJpedevxato.
832 $Agie Efrai;m, bahvqeimoiv.
833 !Aitouvmeno" hJmi'n aJmarthmavtwn a[fesin, aivwnivou te; basileiva" ajpovlausin. De vita Ephraem. p. 616 (tom. iii.).
834 Su; de; hJma'" ejpopteuvsi" a[nwqen i{lew", kai; to;n hJmevteron diexavgoi" lovgon kai; bivon, k.t.l. Orat. 18 in laud. Cypr. p. 286.
835 Parakalw'men aujta;", ajxiw'men genevsqai prostavtida" hJmw'n_ pollh;n ga;r e[cousin parjrJhsivan oujci; zw'sai movnon, ajlla; kai; teleuthvsasai: kai; pollw' ma'llon teleuthvsasai. Opp. tom. ii. 770.
836 Contra ludos et theatra, n. 1, tom. vi. 318.
837 Hexaem. l. v. cap. 25, § 90: "Fleat pro nobis Petrus, qui pro se bene flevit, et in nos pia Christi ora convertat. Approperet Jesu Domini passio, quae quotidie delicta nostra condonat et munus remissionis operatur."
838 De viduis, c. 9: "Obsecrandi sunt Angeli pro nobis, qui nobis ad praesidium dati sunt; martyres obsecrandi, quorum videmur nobis quoddam corporis pignore patrocinium vindicare. Possunt pro peccatis rogare nostris, qui proprio sanguine etiam si qua habuerunt peccata laverunt. Isti enim sunt Dei martyres, nostri prae sules, speculatores vitae actuumque nostrorum," etc. Ambrose goes farther than the council of Trent, which does not command the invocation of the saints, but only commends it, and represents it not as duty, but only as privilege. See the passage already cited, p. 437.
839 Adv. Vigilant. n. 6: "Si agnus ubique, ergo et hi, qui cum agno sunt, ubique esse credendi sunt." So the heathen also attributed ubiquity to their demons. Hesiodus, Opera et dies, v. 121 sqq.
840 Epist. 259, n. 5.
841 Sermo 285, n. 5.
842 Sermo 317, n. 5: "Ambo modo sermonem nostrum auditis; ambo pro nobis orate ... orationibus suis commendent nos."
843 Serm. 324.
844 Hymn. ii. in hon. S. Laurent. vss. 570-584:
"Indignus agnosco et scio,
Quem Christus ipse exaudiat;
—- Sed per patronos martyres
Potest medelam consequi."
845 "Cuius oratione," says he of the latter, "et patrocinio adjuvari nos sine cessatione confidimus." Serm. 85 in Natal. S. Laurent c. 4.
846 E.g., the Liturgies of St. James, St. Mark, St. Basil, St. Chrysostom, the Coptic Liturgy of St. Cyril, and the Roman Liturgy.
847 Natalis apostolorum Petri et Pauli.
848 Festum cathedrae Petri.
849 Festum catenarum Petri, commonly Petri ad vincula, on the first of August. According to the legend, the Herodian Peter’s-chain, which the empress Eudoxia, wife of Theodosius II., discovered on a pilgrimage in Jerusalem, and sent as a precious relic to Rome, miraculously united with the Neronian Peter’s-chain at Rome on the first contact, so that the two have since formed only one holy and inseparable chain!
850 Comp. § 77, volume 3
851 · Ibid.
852 Comp. John iii. 30. This interpretation is given by Augustine, Serm. 12 in Nat. Dom.: "In nativitate Christi dies crescit, in Johannis nativitate decrescit. Profectum plane facit dies, quum mundi Salvator oritur; defectum patitur, quum ultimus prophetarum generatur."
853 Festum decollationis S. Johannis B.
854 This Sunday is therefore called by the Greeks the Martyrs’ and Saints’ Sunday, hJ kuriakh; tw'n aJgivwn pavntwn, or tw'n aJgivwn kai; martuvrwn. We have a homily of Chrysostom on it: jEgkwvmioneij" tou'" aJgivou" pavnta" tou'" ejno{lw/ tw'/ kovsmw/ marturhvsante", or De martyribus totius orbis. Hom. lxxiv. Opera, tom. ii. 711 sqq.
855 Festum S. Michaelis, archangeli.
856 Rev. xii. 7-9; comp. Jude, vs. 9.
857 Comp. Augusti, Archaeologie, i. p. 585. Michael, e.g., in a pestilence in Rome in the seventh century, is said to have appeared as a deliverer on the Tomb of Hadrian (Moles Hadriani, or Mausoleo di Adriano), so that the place received the name of Angel’s Castle (Castello di S. Angelo). It lies, as is well known, at the great bridge of the Tiber, and is used as a fortress.
858 The latter is found in the Acta Sanct. Jun. tom. vii. p. 176 sqq.
859 Printed in Angelo Mai, Script. vet. nova collect. tom. v. P. 1, pp. 66-68. Comp. Krafft, Kirchengeschichte der germanischen Völker. Vol. i. Div. 1, pp. 385-387.
860 From divptuco", folded double.
861 The Roman Catholic saint-calendars have passed, without material change, to the Protestant church in Germany and other countries. Recently Prof. Piper in Berlin has attempted a thorough evangelical reform of the calendar by rejecting the doubtful or specifically Roman saints, and adding the names of the forerunners of the Reformation and the Reformers and distinguished men of the Protestant churches to the list under their birthdays. To this reform also his Evangelischer Kalender is devoted, which has appeared annually since 1850, and contains brief, popular sketches of the Catholic and Protestant saints received into the improved calendar. Most English and American calendars entirely omit this list of saints.
862 From mhvn month; hence, month-register. The Greek Menologies, mhnolovgiaare simply the lists of the martyrs in monthly order, with short biographical notices. The Menaea, mhnai'a, are intended for the public worship and comprise twelve folio volumes, corresponding to the twelve months, with the officia of the saints for every day, and the proper legends and hymns.
863 When Rosweyd’s prospectus, which contemplated only 17 volumes, was shown to Cardinal Bellarmine, he asked: "What is the man’s age?" "Perhaps forty." "Does he expect to live two hundred years?" More than 250 years have passed since, and still the work is unfinished. The relation of the principal authors is indicated in the following verse:
"Quod Rosweydus praepararat,
Quod Bollandus inchoarat,
Quod Henschenius formarat,
Perfecit (?) Papenbroekius."
864 The work was even violently persecuted at times in the Romish Church. Papenbroek, for proving that the prophet Elijah was not the founder of the Carmelite order, was stigmatized as a heretic, and the Acta condemned by the Spanish Inquisition, but the condemnation was removed by papal interference in 1715. The Bollandists took holy revenge of the Carmelites by a most elaborate biography and vindication of St. Theresa, the glory of that order, in the fifty-fourth volume (the first of the new series), 1845, sub Oct. 15th, pp. 109-776.
865 The names connected with the new (third) series are Joseph van der Moere, Joseph van Hecke, Bossue, Buch, Tinnebroek, etc. By 1858 five new folio volumes had appeared at Brussels (to the twenty-second of October), so that the whole work now embraces fifty-eight volumes, which cost from two thousand four hundred to three thousand francs. The present Bollandist library is in the convent of St. Michael in Brussels and embraces in three rooms every known biography of a saint, hundreds of the rarest missals and breviaries, hymnals and martyrologies, sacramentaries and rituals. A not very correct reprint of the Antwerp original has appeared at Venice since 1734. A new edition by Jo. Carnandet is now coming out at Paris and Rome, 1863 sqq. Complete copies have become very rare. I have seen and used at different times three copies, one in the Theol. Seminary Library at Andover, and two at New York (in the Astor Library, and in the Union Theol. Sem. Library). Comp. the Prooemium de ratione universa operis, in the Acta Sanctorum, vol. vi. for Oct. (published 1845). R. P. Dom Pitra: Etudes sur la Collection des Actes des Saintes, par les RR. PP. Jusuites Bollandistes. Par. 1850. Also an article on the Bollandists by J. M. Neale in his Essays on Liturgiology and Church History, Lond. 1863, p. 89 ff.
866 Reliquiae, and reliqua, leivyana.
867 The legend of the "invention of the cross" (inventio s. crucis), which is celebrated in the Greek and Latin churches by a special festival, is at best faintly implied in Eusebius in a letter of Constantine to the bishop Macarius of Jerusalem (Vita Const. iii. 30—a passage which Gieseler overlooked—though in iii. 25, where it should be expected, it is entirely unnoticed, as Gieseler correctly observes), and does not appear till several decennia later, first in Cyril of Jerusalem (whose Epist. ad Constantium of 351, however, is considered by Gieseler and others, on critical and theological grounds, a much later production), then, with good agreement as to the main fact, in Ambrose, Chrysostom, Paulinus of Nola, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and other fathers. With all these witnesses the fact is still hardly credible, and has against it particularly the following considerations: (1) The place of the crucifixion was desecrated under the emperor Hadrian by heathen temples and statues, besides being filled up and defaced beyond recognition. (2) There is no clear testimony of a contemporary. (3) The pilgrim from Bordeaux, who visited Jerusalem in 333, and in a still extant itinerarium (Vetera Rom. itineraria, ed. P. Wesseling, p. 593) enumerates all the sacred things of the holy city, knows nothing of the holy cross or its Invention (comp. Gieseler, i. 2, p. 279, note 37; Edinb. ed. vol. ii. p. 36). This miracle contributed very much to the increase of the superstitious use of crosses and crucifixes. Cyril of Jerusalem remarks that about 380 the splinters of the holy cross filled the whole world, and yet, according to the account of the devout but credulous Paulinus of Nola (Epist. 31, al. 11), the original remained in Jerusalem undiminished,—a continual miracle! Besides Gieseler, comp. particularly the minute investigation of this legend by Isaac Taylor, The Invention of the Cross and the Miracles therewith connected, in "Ancient Christianity," vol. ii. pp. 277-315.
868 Comp. Gildemeister: Der heil. Rock von Trier, 2d ed. 1845—a controversial work called forth by the Ronge excitement in German Catholicism in 1844.
869 Num. xix. 11 ff.; xxxi. 19. The touching of a corpse or a dead bone, or a grave, made one unclean seven days, and was to be expiated by washing, upon pain of death. The tent, also, in which a person had died, and all open vessels in it, were unclean. Comp. Josephus, c. Apion. ii. 26; Antiqu. iii. 11, 3. The Talmudists made the laws still more stringent on this point.
870 2 Kings xiii. 21 (Sept.): h{yato tw'n ojstw'n JElisaiev, kai; e[zhse kai; e[sth ejpi; tou;" povda"Comp. the apocryphal book Jesus Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) xlviii. 13, 14; xlix. 12.
871 Plutarch, in his Life of Theseus, c. 86.
872 In the phrase ajnavstasi" th'" sarkov", instead of tou' swvmato", resurrectio carnis, instead of corporis. The Nicene creed uses the expression ajnavstasi" nekrw'n, resurrectio mortuorum. In the German version of the Apostles’ Creed the easily mistaken term Fleisch, flesh, is retained; but the English churches say more correctly: resurrection of the body.
873 Jerome, on the ground of his false translation of Job xix. 26, teaches even the restoration of all bones, veins, nerves, teeth, and hair (because the Bible speaks of gnashing of teeth among the damned, and of the hairs our heads being all numbered!). "Habent dentes," says he of the resurrection bodies, "ventrem, genitalia, et tamen nec cibis nec uxoribus indigent." Augustine is more cautious, and endeavors to avoid gross, carnal conceptions. Comp. the passages in Hagenbach’s Dogmengeschichte, i. § 140 (Engl. ed., New York, i. p. 370 ff.).
874 Matt. ix. 20.
875 Acts v. 14, 15.
876 Acts xix. 11, 12.
877 On the contrary, the account of the healing of sick by the handkerchiefs of Paul is immediately followed by an account of the magical abuse of the name of Jesus, as a warning, Acts xix. 13 ff.
878 qhsauro;" ajtivmhto". Martyr. S. Ignat. cap. vii. (Patrum Apostolic. Opera, ed. Dressel, p. 214). The genuineness of the Martyr-Acts of Ignatius, however, is disputed by many.
879 Ta; timiwvtera livqwn polutelw'n kai; dokimwvtera uJpe;r crusivon ojsta' aujtou', Epist. Eccl. Smyrn. de Martyr. S. Polyc. c. 18 (ed. Dressel, p. 404), and in Euseb. H. E. iv. 15.
880 Const. Apost. lib. vi. c. 30. The sixth book dates from the end of the third century.
881 Comp. Gen. l. 1, 2, 25, 26; Ex. xiii. 19; Jos. xxiv. 32; Acts vii. 16.
882 Hist. Ecel. vii. 19 and 32.
883 With reference to Rev. vi. 9: "I saw under the altar (uJpokavtw tou' qusiasthrivou) the souls of them that were slain for the word of God," &c.
884 Festum translationis.
885 Festum inventionis s. crucis.
886 Festum exaltationis s. crucis, staurofaneiva.
887 What Luther says of the "juggleries and idolatries" of the cross under the later papacy, which "would rather bear the cross of Christ in silver, than in heart and life," applies, though, of course, with many noble exceptions, even to the period before us. Dr. Herzog, in his Theol. Encyclopaedia, vol. viii. p. 60 f., makes the not unjust remark: "The more the cross came into use in manifold forms and signs, the more the truly evangelical faith in Christ, the Crucified, disappeared. The more the cross of Christ was outwardly exhibited, the more it became inwardly an offence and folly to men. The Roman Catholic church in this respect resembles those Christians, who talk so much of their spiritual experiences, make so much ado about them that they at last talk themselves out, and produce glittering nonsense."
888 Sulpit. Severus, Vita beati Mart. c. 11.
889 Epist. lib. iv. Ep. 30. Gregory here relates that some Greek monks came to Rome to dig up bones near St. Paul’s church to sell, as they themselves confessed, for holy relics in the East (confessi sunt, quod illa ossa ad Graeciam essent tamquam Sanctorum reliquias portaturi).
890 In his Vita Antoini, Opera Athan. ii. 502.
891 Rufinus, Hist. Ecel. ii. 28.
892 Cyrillus Alex. Adv. Jul. l. x. tom. vi. p. 356.
893 Sessio xxv. De Invocat. Sanct., etc.
894 Adv. Julian. t. i. Orat. iii. p. 76 sq.
895 Opera, tom. ii. p. 828.
896 Hom. in MM. Aegypt. tom. ii. p. 834 sq.
897 Exhort. virgin. 1.
898 Epist. xxii. Sorori suae, Op. ii. pp. 874-878. Comp. Paulinus, Vit. Ambros. p. iv.; Paulinus Nol. Ep. xii. ad Severum; and Augustine in sundry places (see below).
899 Clericus, Mosheim, and Isaac Taylor (vol. ii. p. 242 ff.) do not hesitate to charge St. Ambrose, the author of the Te Deum, with fraud in this story. The latter, however, endeavors to save the character of Ambrose by distinguishing between himself and the spirit of his age. "Ambrose," says he (ii. 270), "occupies a high position among the Fathers; and there was a vigor and dignity in his character, as well as a vivid intelligence, which must command respect; but in proportion as we assign praise to the man, individually, we condemn the system which could so far vitiate a noble mind, and impel one so lofty in temper to act a part which heathen philosophers would utterly have abhorred."
900 "Invenimus mirae magnitudinis viros duos, ut prisca aetas ferebat, ossa omnia integra, sanguinis plurimum! " Did Ambrose really believe that men in the first century (prisca aetas) were of greater bodily stature than his contemporaries in the fourth? But especially absurd is the mass of fresh blood, which then was exported throughout Christendom as a panacea. According to Romish tradition, the blood of many saints, as of Januarius in Naples, becomes liquid every year. Taylor the miraculously healed Severus, by trade a butcher, had something to do with this blood.
901 "Et tactu ipso medicabilia reposcuntur."
902 Ep. cix. ad Riparium.
903 Adv. Vigil.c. 6.
904 Cum illic—Mediolani—essemus.
905 He speaks of this four times clearly and plainly, Confess. ix. 7; De Civit Dei, xxii. 8; Serm. 286 in Natali MM. Protasii et Gervasii; Retract. i. 13, § 7.
906 Serm. 317 and 318 de Martyr. Steph. Is. Taylor (l.c. ii. pp. 316-350) has thoroughly investigated the legend of the relics of the proto-martyr, and comes to the conclusion that it likewise rests on pious frauds which Augustine honestly believed.
907 De opere Monachorum, c. 28: "Tam multos hypocrites sub habitu monachomm [hostis] usquequoque dispersit, circumeuntes provincias, nusquam missos, nusquam fixos, nusquam stantes, nusquam sedentes. Alii membra martyrum, el tamen martyrum, venditant." Augustine rejects the pretended miracles of the Donatists, and calls them wonderlings (mirabiliarii), who are either deceivers or deceived (In Joann. evang. Tract. xiii. § 17).
908 De Civit. Dei, xxii. c. 8: "Cur, inquiunt, nunc illa miracula, quae praedicatis facta esse, non fiunt? Possem quidem dicere, necessaria fuisse priusquam crederet mundus, ad hoc ut crederet mundus. Quisvis adhuc prodigia ut credat inquirit, magnum est ipse prodigium, qui mundo credente non credit." Comp. De util. cred. c. 25, § 47; c. 50, § 98; De vera relig. c. 25, § 47.
909 Ibid.: "Nam etiam nunc fiunt miracula in ejus nomine, Sive per sacramenta ejus, Sive per orationes vel memorias sanctorum ejus; sed non eadem claritate illustrantur, ut tanta quanta illa gloria diffamentur .... Nam plerumque etiam ibi [in the place where these miracles were wrought] paucissimi sciunt, ignorantibus caeteris, maxime si magna sit civitas; et quando alibi aliisque narrantur, non tanta ea commendat auctoritas, ut sine difficultate vel dubitatione credantur, quamvis Christianis fidelibus a fidelibus indicentur." Then follows the account of the famous miraculum Protasii et Gervasii, and of several cures in Carthage and Hippo. Those in Hippo were wrought by the relics of St. Stephen, and formally confirmed.
910 Comp. Fr. Nitzsch (jun.): Augustinus’ Lehre vom Wunder, Berlin, 1865, especially pp. 82-45. (A very full and satisfactory treatise.)
911 Recall, e.g., Luther and the apparitions of the devil, the Magnalia of Cotton Mather, the old Puritans and their trials for witchcraft, as well as the modem superstitions of spiritual rappings and table-turnings by which many eminent and intelligent persons have been carried along.
912 As is done by many Roman Catholic historians and apologists in the cause of Catholicism, and by Isaac Taylor in the interest of Protestantism. The latter says in his oft-quoted work, vol. ii. p. 239: "The question before us [on the genuineness of the Nicene miracles] is therefore in the strictest sense conclusive as to the modem controversy concerning church principles and the authority of tradition. If the miracles of the fourth century, and those which follow in the same track, were real, then Protestantism is altogether indefensible, and ought to be denounced as an impiety of the most flagrant kind. But if these miracles were wicked frauds; and if they were the first series of a system of impious delusion—then, not only is the modern Papacy to be condemned, but the church of the fourth century must be condemned with it; and for the same reasons; and the Reformation is to be adhered to as the emancipation of Christendom from the thraldom of him who is the ’father of lies.’ " Taylor accordingly sees in the old Catholic miracles sheer lying wonders of Satan, and signs of the apostasy of the church predicted in the Epistles of St. Paul. From the same point of view he treats also the phenomena of asceticism and monasticism, putting them with the unchristian hatred of the creature and the ascription of nature to the devil, which characterized the Gnostics. But he thus involves not only the Nicene age, but the ante-Nicene also, up to Irenaeus and Ignatius, in this apostasy, and virtually gives up the unbroken continuity of true Christianity. He is, moreover, not consistent in making the church fathers, on the one hand, the chief originators of monkish asceticism and false miracles, while, on the other hand, he sincerely reveres them and eloquently lauds them for their Christian earnestness and their immortal services. Comp. his beautiful concession in vol. i. p. 37 (cited in the 1st vol. of this Hist § 46, note 2).
913 Comp. the examples quoted in § 34, p. 177 f.
914 The speaking serpent in Paradise (Gen. iii.), and the speaking ass of Balaam (Num. xxii. 22-33; comp. 2 Pet. ii. 16), can hardly be cited as analogies, since in those cases the irrational beast is merely the organ of a moral power foreign to him.
915 Is. Taylor, l.c. vol. ii. p. 235, says of the miracles of the Nicene age: "These alleged miracles were, almost in every instance, wrought expressly in support of those very practices and opinions which stand forward as the points of contrast, distinguishing Romanism from Protestantism ... the supernatural properties of the eucharistic elements, the invocation of saints, or direct praying to them, and the efficacy of their relics; and the reverence or worship due to certain visible and palpable religious symbols." Historical questions, however, should be investigated and decided with all possible freedom from confessional prejudices.
916 So especially Jerome, Epist ad Pammachium (Lib. apologeticus pro libris contra Jovinianum Ep. xlviii. c. 12, ed. Vallarsi tom i. 222, or Ep. xix. in the Benedictine ed.): "Plura esse genera dicendi: et inter caetera, aliud esse gumnastikw'" scribere, aliud dogmatikw'". In priori vagam esse disputationem; et adversario respondentem, nunc haec nunc illa proponere, argumentari ut libet, aliud loqui, aliud agere, panem, ut dicitur, ostendere, lapidem tenere. In sequenti autem aparta frons et, ut ita dicam, ingenuitas necessaria est. Aliud est quaerere, aliud definire. In altero pugnandum, in altero docendum est." He then appeals to the Greek and Roman classics, the ancient fathers in their polemical writings, and even St. Paul in his arguments from the Old Testament. Of interest in this connection is his controversy with Augustine on the conduct of Paul toward Peter, Gal. ii. 11, which Jerome would attribute to mere policy or accommodation. Even Chrysostom utters loose principles on the duty of veracity (De sacerdot. i. 5), and his pupil Cassian still more, appealing to the example of Rahab (Coll. xvii. 8, 17, etc.). Comp. Gieseler, i. ii. p. 307 (§ 102, note 17). The corrupt principle that "the end sanctifies the means," is much older than Jesuitism, which is commonly made responsible for it. Christianity had at that time not yet wholly overcome the spirit of falsehood in ancient heathenism.
917 Dialog. i. 18.
918 This argument is prominently employed by James Craigie Robertson (moderate Anglican): History of the Christian Church to Gregory the Great, Lond. 1854, p. 334. "On the subject of miracles," says he, "there is a remarkable inconsistency in the statements of writers belonging to the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth centuries. St. Chrysostom speaks of it as a notorious and long-settled fact that miracles had ceased (v. Newman, in Fleury, vol. i. p. xxxix). Yet at that very time, St. Martin, St. Ambrose, and the monks of Egypt and the East are said to have been in full thaumaturgical activity; and Sozomen (viii. 5) tells a story of a change of the eucharistic bread into a stone as having happened at Constantinople, while Chrysostom himself was bishop. So again, St. Augustine says that miracles such as those of Scripture were no longer done, yet he immediately goes on to reckon up a number of miracles which had lately taken place, apparently without exciting much sensation, and among them seventy formally attested ones, wrought at Hippo alone, within two years, by the relics of St. Stephen (De Civit. Dei, xxii. 8. 1, 20). On the whole, while I would not deny that miracles may have been wrought after the times of the apostles and their associates, I can find very little satisfaction in the particular instances which are given." On Augustine’s theory of miracles, comp. above, § 87 (p. 459 f.), and the treatise of Nitzsch jun. there quoted.
919 Comp. above, § 2 (p.25).
920 Comp. above, § 4 (p. 55).
921 As in the siege of Jericho, Jos. vi. 3 ff.; at the dedication of Solomon’s temple, 1 Kings viii. 1ff; on the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, Matt. xxi. 8 ff.
922 The Arians, for example. Comp. Sozom., H. E. viii. 8, where weekly singing processions of the Arians are spoken of.
923 Litaniae (litanei'ai), supplicationes, rogationes, ejxomologhvsei", stations, collectae.
924 The antiquity of all these accessory ceremonies cannot be exactly fixed.
925 "Die Stätte, die ein guter Mensch betrat,
Ist eingeweiht; nach hundert Jahren klingt
Sein Wort und seine That dem Enkel wieder."
926 "Religiosa cupiditas est," says Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 3 6, "loca videre, in quibus Christus ingressus et passus est et resurrexit et unde ascendit."
927 Euseb., Vita Const iii. 41 sq., and De locis Ebr. a. v. Bethabara.
928 Recall the Crimean war of 1854-’56.
929 Thus Augustine, De Civit. Dei, xxii. 8, is already found citing examples of the supernatural virtue of the terra sancta of Jerusalem.
930 Epist. ad Ambrosium et Basilissam.
931 Adv. Ruffinum ultima Responsio, c. 22 (Opp. ed. Vall. tom. ii. p. 551), where he boastfully recounts his literary journeys, and says: "Protinus concito gradu Bethlehem meam reversus sum, ubi adoravi praesepe et incunabula Salvatoris." Comp. his Vita Paulae, for her daughter Eustochium, where he describes the pilgrim-stations then in use.
932 Epist. lviii. ad Paulinum (Opp. ed. Vallarsi, tom. i. p. 318; in the Bened. ed. it is Ep. 49; in the older editions, Ep. 13): "Non Jerusolymis fuisse, sed Jerusolymis bene vixisse, laudandum est." In the same epistle, p. 319, he commends the blessed monk Hilarion, that, though a Palestinian, he had been only a day in Jerusalem, "ut nec contemnere loca sancta propter viciniam, nec rursus Dominum loco claudere videretur."
933 The Huguenots in the sixteenth century burnt the bones of St. Martin, as objects of idolatry, and scattered their ashes to the winds.
934 So Chrysostom relates, Hom. v. de statuis, § 1, tom. ii. f 59; iJna th;n korpivan ejkeivnhn i[dwsi kai; qeasavmenoi katafilhvswsi th;n gh'n.
935 Missa catechumenorum, leitourgivatw'nkathcoumevnwn.
936 Missa fidelium, leitourgivatw'npistw'n.
937 Missa is equivalent to missio, dismissio, and meant originally the dismission of the congregation after the service by the customary formula: Ite, missa est (ecclesia). After the first part of the service the catechumens were thus dismissed by the deacon, after the second part the faithful. But with the fusion of the two parts in one, the formula of dismission was used only at the close, and then it came to signify also the service itself, more especially the eucharistic sacrifice. In the Greek church the corresponding formula of dismission was: ajpoluvesqe ejn eijrhvnh/, i.e., ite in pace (Apost. Const. lib. viii. c. 15). Ambrosius is the first who uses missa, missam facere (Ep. 20), for the eucharistic sacrifice. Other derivations of the word, from the Greek muvhsi" or the Hebrew verb hc;[;, to act, etc., are too far fetched, and cut off by the fact that the word is used only in the Latin church. Comp. vol. i. § 101, p. 383 ff.
938 Comp. below, §§ 96 and 97.
939 The Jews, perhaps from the time of Ezra, divided the Old Testament into sections, larger or smaller, called Parashioth (t/Yvir]P'), to wit, the Pentateuch into54 Parashioth, and the Prophets (i.e., the later historical books and the prophets proper) into as many Haphtharoth; and these sections were read in course on the different Sabbaths. This division is much older than the division into verses.
940 Lectiones, ajnagnwvsmata, ajnagnwvsei", perikopaiv.
941 Lectiones, ajnagnwvsmata, ajnagnwvsei", perikopaiv.
942 Hence called Lectionaria, sc. volumina, or Lectionarii, sc. libri; also Evangelia cum Epistolis, Comes (manual of the clergy); in Greek, ajnagnwstikav, eujaggelistavria, ejklogavdia.
943 Hence Evangelistaria, or Evangelistarim, in distinction from the Epistolaria, Epistolare, or Apostolus.
944 The high antiquity of the Comes appears at any rate in its beginning with the Christmas Vigils instead of the Advent Sunday, and its lack of the festival of the Trinity and most of the saints’ days. There are different recensions of it, the oldest edited by Pamelius, another by Baluze, a third (made by Alcuin at the command of Charlemagne) by Thomasi. E. Ranke, l.c., has made it out probable that Jerome composed the Comes under commission from Pope Damasus, and is consequently the original author of the Western pericope system.
945 Comp. Augustine’s Expos. in Joh. in praef.: "Meminit sanctitas vestra, evangelium secundum Johannem ex ordine lectionum nos solere tractare. Sed quia nunc interposita est solemnitas sanctorum dierum, quibus certas ex evangelio lectiones oportet recitari, quae ita sunt annuae, ut aliae esse non possint, ordo ille quem susceperamus, ex necessitate paululum intermissus est, non omissus."
946 Krovto", acclamatio, applausus. Chrysostom and Augustine often denounced this theatrical disorder, but in vain.
947 Ep. 62 ad Maxim.: "Praeter eos qui sunt Domini sacerdotes nullus sibi jus docendi et praedicandi audeat vindicare, sive sit ille monachus, sive sit laicus, qui alicujus scientiae nomine glorietur."
948 Euseb. Vita Const. iv. 29, 32, 55, and Constantine’s Oratio ad Sanctos, in the appendix
949 . The word sacramentum bears among the fathers the following senses: (1) The oath in general, as in the Roman profane writers; and particularly the soldier’s oath. (2) The baptismal vow, by which the candidate bound himself to the perpetual service of Christ, as miles Christi, against sin, the world, and the devil. (3) The baptismal confession, which was regarded as a spiritual oath. (4) Baptism itself, which, therefore, was often styledsacramentum fidei, s. salutis, also pignus salutis. (5) It became almost synonymous with mystery, by reason of an inaccurate translation of the Greek musthvrion, in the Vulgate (comp. Eph. v. 32), and was accordingly applied to facts, truths, and precepts of the gospel which were concealed from those not Christiana, and to the Christian revelation in general. (6) The eucharist, and other holy ordinances and usages of the church. (7) After the twelfth century the seven well-known sacraments of the Catholic church. Comp. the proofs in Hahn, l.c. pp. 5-10, where yet other less usual senses of the word are adduced.
950 Signum visibile, or forma visibilis gratiae invisibilis. Augustine calls the sacraments also verba visibilia, signacula corporalia, signa rerum spiritualium, signacula rerum divinarum visibilia, etc. See Hahn, l.c. p. 11 ff. The definition is not adequate. At least a third mark must be added, not distinctly mentioned by Augustine, viz., the divina institutio, or, more precisely, a mandatum Christi. This is the point of difference between the Catholic and Protestant conceptions of the sacrament. The Roman and Greek churches take the divine institution in a much broader sense, while Protestantism understands by it an express command of Christ in the New Testament, and consequently limits the number of sacraments to baptism and the Lord’s Supper, since for the other five sacraments the Catholic church can show no such command. Yet confirmation, ordination, and marriage have practically acquired a sacramental import in Protestantism, especially in the Lutheran and Anglican churches.
951 Augustine, De catechiz. rudibus, § 50: "Sacramenta signacula quidem rerum divinarum esse visibilia, sed res ipsas invisibiles in eis honoari." Serm. ad pop. 292 (tom. v. p. 770): "Dicuntur sacramenta, quia in eis aliud videtur, aliud intelligitur. Quod videtur, speciem habet corporalem; quod intelligitur, fructum habet spiritalem."
952 Augustine, In Joann Evang. tract. 80: "Detrahe verbum, et quid est aqua [the baptismal water] nisi aqua? Accedit verbum ad elementum et fit sacramemtum, etiam ipsum tamquam visibile verbum."
953 Comp. Epist. 82, §§ 14 and 15; Ep. 138, § 7; De vera relig. c. 16, § 33; and Hahn p. 154.
954 Comp. the proof passages in Hahn, p. 279 ff. Thus Augustine says, e.g., De bapt. contra Donat. 1. iii. c. 10 (tom. ix. p. 76): "Sacramento suo divina virtus adsistit sive ad salutem bene utentium, sive ad perniciem male utentium." De unit. eccl.c.21 (tom. ix. p. 256): "Facile potestis intelligere et in bonis esse et in malis sacramenta divina, sed in illis ad salutem, in malis ad damnationem."
955 Hence the later formula: Fides non facit ut sit sacramentum, sed ut prosit. Faith does not produce the sacramental blessing, but subjectively receives and appropriates it.
956 Stigma militare, character militaris. To this the expression character indelebilis certainly attaches itself easily, though the doctrine concerning it cannot be traced with certainty back of the thirteenth century. Comp. Hahn, l.c. p. 298 ff., where it is referred to the time of Pope Innocent III.
957 Even Augustine, De peccat. merit. et remiss. lib. i. c. 24, § 34: "Praeter baptismum et participationem mensae dominicae non solum ad regnum Dei, sed nec ad salutem et vitam aeternam posse quemquam hominem pervenire." This would, strictly considered, exclude all Quakers and unbaptized infants from salvation; but Augustine admits as an exception the possibility of a conversion of the heart without baptism. See below. The scholastics distinguished more accurately a threefold necessity: (1) absolute: simpliciter necessarium; (2) teleological: in ordine ad finem; (3) hypothetical or relative: necessarium ex suppositione, quae est necessitas consequentiae. To the sacraments belongs only the last sort of necessity, because now, under existing circumstances, God will not ordinarily save any one without these means which he has appointed. Comp. Hahn, 1. c. p. 26 ff. According to Thomas Aquinas only three sacraments are perfectly necessary, viz., baptism and penance for the individual, and ordination for the whole church.
958 "Non defectus, sed contemptus sacramenti damnat." Comp. Augustine, De bapt. contra Donat. 1. iv. c. 25, §32: "Conversio cordis potest quidem inesse non percepto baptismo, sed contemto non potest. Neque enim ullo modo dicenda est conversio cordis ad Deum, cum Dei sacramentum contemnitur."
959 Baptismus sanguinis.
960 Contra Faust. xix. 13: "Prima sacramenta praenunciativa erant Christi venturi; quae cum suo adventu Christus implevisset ablata sunt et alia sunt instituta, virtute majora, numero pauciora."
961 De symb. ad Catech. c. 6: "Quomodo Eva facts est ex latere Adam, ita ecclesia formatur ex latere Christi. Percussum est ejus latus et statim manavit sanguis et aqua, quae sunt ecclesiae genuina sacramenta." De ordine baptismi, c. 5 (Bibl. max. tom. xiv. p. 11): "Profluxerunt ex ejus latere sanguis etaqua, duo sanctae ecclesiae praecipua sacramenta." Serm. 218: "Sacraments, quibus formatur ecclesia." Comp. Chrysostom, Homil. 85 in Joh: ejx ajmfotevrwn hJ ejkklhsiva sunevsthke. Tertullian called baptism and the eucharist "sacramenta propria," Adv. Marc. i. 14.
962 "Et si quid aliud in divinis literis commendatur," or: "omne mysticum sacrumque signum."
963 "Sacrimentum chrismatis, " Contr. Lit. Petiliani ii. 104. So even Cyprian, Ep. 72.
964 "Sacramentum nuptiarum," De nuptiis et concupisc. i. 2.
965 "Sacramentum dandi baptismum," De bapt ad Donat. i. 2; Epist. Parm ii. 13.
966 De hierarch. eccles. c. 2 sq.
967 According to the testimony of Ambrose, Augustine, and the Missale Gallicum vetus. Comp. Hahn, l.c. p. 84 f.
968 Beda Venerabilis († 735), Ratramnus of Corbie († 868), Ratherius of Verona († 974), in enumerating the sacraments, name only baptism and the Lord’s Supper; and even Alexander of Hales († 1245) expressly says (Summa p. iv. Qu. 8, Membr. 2, art. 1): "Christus duo sacraments instituit per se ipsum, sacramentum baptismi et sacramentum eucharistiae." Damiani († 1072), on the other hand, mentions twelve sacraments, viz., baptism, confirmation, anointing of the sick, consecration of bishops, consecration of kings, consecration of churches, penance, consecration of canons, monks, hermits, and nuns and marriage. Opp. tom. ii. 372 (ed. C. Cajet.). Bernard of Clairvaux († 1151) names ten sacraments. Confirmation was usually reckoned among the sacraments. Comp. Hahn, l.c. 88 ff.
969 No plain trace, however, of such a definite number appears in the earliest monuments of the faith of these Oriental sects, or even in the orthodox theologian John Damascenus.
970 Usually: Birth = baptism; growth = confirmation; nourishment = the Supper; healing of Sickness = penance; perfect restoration = extreme unction; propagation of society = marriage; government of society = orders. Others compare the sacraments with the four cardinal natural virtues: prudence, courage, justice, and temperance, and the three theological virtues: faith, love, and hope; but vary in their assignments of the several sacraments to the several virtues respectively. All these comparisons are, of course, more or less arbitrary and fanciful.
971 The Council of Trent pronounces the anathema upon all who deny the number of seven sacraments and its institution by Christ, Sess. vii. de sacr. can. 1: "Si quis dixerit, sacramenta novae legis non fuisse omnia a Christo instituta, aut esse plum vel pauciora quam septem, anathema sit." In default of a historical proof of the seven sacraments from the writings of the church fathers, Roman divines, like Brenner and Perrone, find themselves compelled to resort to the disciplina arcani; but this related only to the celebration of the sacraments, and disappeared in the fourth century upon the universal adoption of Christianity. Comp. also the treatise of G. L. Hahn: Doctrinae Romanae de numero sacramentario septenario rationes historicae. Vratisl. 1859.
972 A more particular discussion of the differences between the Roman and the Protestant doctrines of the sacraments belongs to symbolism and polemics.
973 The passage is not found in the writings of Chrysostom. Augustine, however, does not dispute the citation, but tries to explain it away (contra Julian. i. c. 6, § 21).
974 De nupt. et concup. i. 28: "Dimittitur concupiscentia carnis in baptismo, non ut non sit, sed ut in peccatum non imputetur."
975 "Parvulos in damnatione omnium mitissima futuros." Comp. De peccat. mer. i. 20, 21, 28; Ep. 186, 27. To the heathen he also assigned a milder and more tolerable condemnation, Contr. Julian. iv. 23.
976 Comp. Neander, l.c. i. p. 424, and especially Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, ii. p. 103. The passage in question, which is lacking both in Isidore and in Dionysius, runs thus: "Whoever says that there is, in the kingdom of heaven or elsewhere, a certain middle place, where children who die without baptism live happy (beate vivant), while yet they cannot without baptism enter into the kingdom of heaven, i.e., into eternal life, let him be anathema."
977 The scholastics were not entirely agreed whether baptism imparts positive grace to all, or only to adults. Peter Lombard was of the latter opinion; but most divines extended the positive effect of baptism even to children, though under various modifications. Comp. the full exposition of the scholastic doctrine of baptism (which does not belong here) in Hahn, l.c. p. 333 ff.
978 Epist. 129 ad Nicet. c. 7: "Qui baptismum ab haereticis acceperunt ... sola invocatione Spiritus S. per impositionem manuum confirmandi sunt, quia formam tantum baptismi sine sanctificationis virtute sumpserunt."
979 Comp. Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, ii. 26; Mattes, Ueber die Ketzertaufe, in the Tübingen Quartalschrift, 1849, p. 580.
980 Greg. Ep. i. 43, to Bishop Leander of Seville: "Dum in tribus subsistentiis una substantia est, reprehensibile esse nullatenus potest infantem in baptismate vel ter vel semel mergere: quando et in tribus mersionibus personarum trinitas, et in una potest personarum singularitas designari. Sed quia nunc usque ab haereticis infans in baptismate tertio mergebatur, fiendum apud vos non esse censeo, ne dum mersiones numerant, divinitatem dividant." From this we see, at the same time, that even in infant baptism, and among heretics, immersion was the custom. Yet in the nature of the case, sprinkling, at least of weak or sick children, as in the baptismus clinicorum, especially in northern climates, came early into use.
981 Comp. vol. i. p. 399.
982 Insufflare, ejmfusa/'n.
983 Sacramentum apertionis.
984 This was the ajpotaghv, or abrenunciatio diaboli, with the words: jApotavssomaiv soi, Satana', kai; pavsh/ th'/ pomph'/ sou kai; pavsh/ th/' latreiva/ sou. The Apostolic Constitutions add toi'" e[rgoi". In Tertullian: "Renunciare diabolo et pompae et angelis ejus."
985 Suntavssomaiv soi, Cristev.
986 JOmolovghsi", professio.
987 Aug. Contra liter. Petil. l. ii. c. 104 (tom. ix. p. 199); Leo, Epist. 156, c. 5. Confirmation is called confirmatio from its nature; sigillum or consignatio, from its design; chrisma orunctio, from its matter; and impositio manuum, from its form.
988 Crivsma. This was afterward, in the Latin church, the second anointing, in distinction from that which took place at baptism. The Greek church, however, which always conjoins confirmation with baptism, stopped with one anointing. Comp. Hahn, l.c. p. 91 f.
989 Impositio manuum. This, however, subsequently became less prominent than the anointing; hence confirmation is also called simply chrisma, or sacramentum chrismatis, unctionis.
990 The formula now used in the Roman church in the act of confirmation, which is not older, however, than the twelfth century, runs: "Signo te signo crucis et confirmo te chrismate salutis, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti."
991 Ceirotoniva, kaqievrsi", ordinatio and in the case of bishops, consecratio.
992 De bono conjug. c. 18 (tom. vi. p. 242), c. 24 (p. 247); Contr. Epist. Parmen. l. ii. c. 12 (tom. ix. pp. 29, 30). Comp. Leo M. Epist. xii. c. 9; Gregor. M. Expos. in i. Regg. l. vi. c. 3. These and other passages in Hahn, p. 97.
993 Already intimated by Augustine, De bapt. c. Donat. ii. 2: "Sicut baptizatus, si ab unitate recesserit, sacramentum dandi non amittit, sic etiam ordinatus, Si ab unitate recesserit, sacramentum dandi baptismum [i.e., ordination] non amittit."
994 On the character of the ordination of the sub-deacons, as well as of diaconissae and presbyters, there were afterward diverse views. Usually this was considered ordination only in an improper sense.
995 After the fifth century, but under various forms, tonsura Petri, etc. It was first applied to penitents, then to monks, and finally to the clergy.
996 Hence the old rules: "Ne quis vage ordinetur," and, "Nemo ordinatur sine titulo." Comp. Acts xiv. 23; Tit. i. 5; 1 Pet. v. 1.
997 Quatuor tempora. Comp. the old verse: "Post crux (Holyrood day, 14th September), post cineres (Ash Wednesday), post spiritus (Pentecost) atque Luciae (13th December), Sit tibi in auguria quarta sequens feria."
998 Freeman, l.c. Introduction to Part ii. (1857), p. 2, says of the Eucharist, not without justice, from a historical and theological point of view: "It was confessedly through long ages of the church, and is by the vast majority of the Christian world at this hour, conceived to be ... no less than the highest line of contact and region of commingling between heaven and earth known to us, or provided for us;—a borderland of mystery, where, by gradations baffling sight and thought, the material truly blends with the spiritual, and the visible shades off into the unseen; a thing, therefore, which of all events or gifts in this world most nearly answers to the highest aspirations and deepest yearnings of our wonderfully compounded being; while in some ages and climes of the church it has been elevated into something yet more awful and mysterious."
999 Rückert divides the fathers into 2 classes: the Metabolical, and the Symbolical. The symbolical view he assigns to Tertullian, Clement, Origen, Euseb., Athan., and Augustine. But to this designation there are many objections. Of the Synecdochian (Lutheran) interpretation of the words of institution the ancient church knew nothing." So says Kahnis, Luth. Dogmatik, ii. p. 221.
1000 But not yet the technical term transubstantiatio, which was introduced by Paschasius Radbertus toward the middle of the ninth century, and the corresponding Greek term metousivwsi", which is still later.
1001 Comp. especially his five mystagogical discourses, addresses to the newly baptized. Cyril’s doctrine is discussed at large in Rückert, Das Abendmahl, sein Wesen u. seine Geschichte, p. 415 ff. Comp. also Neander, Dogmengesch. i. p. 426, and, in part against Rückert, Kahnis, Die Luth. Dogmatik, ii. p. 211 f
1002 jEn tuvpw/ a[rtou, which may mean either under the emblem of the bread (still existing as such), or under the outward form, sub specie panis. More naturally the former.
1003 Suvsswmo" kai;suvnaimo" aujtou'.
1004 Orat. catech. magna, c. 37. Comp. Neander, l.c. i. p. 428, and Kahnis, ii. 213.
1005 Of an ejmph'xaitou;" ojdovnta" th'/ sarki;kai;sumplakh'nai Comp. the passages from Chrysostom in Ebrard and Rückert, l.c., and Kahnis, ii. p. 215 ff.
1006 De Trinit. viii. 13 sq. Comp. Rückert, l.c. p. 460 ff.
1007 De Mysteriis, c. 8 and 9, where a mutatio of the species elementorum by the word of Christ is spoken of, and the changing of Moses’ rod into a serpent, and of the Nile into blood, is cited in illustration. The genuineness of this small work, however, is doubtful. Rückert considers Ambrose the pillar of the mediaeval doctrine of the Supper, which he finds in his work De mysteries, and De initiandis.
1008 Serm. p. 42: "Ipse naturarum creator et dominus, qui producit de terra panem, de pane rursus, quia et potest et promisit, efficit proprium corpus, et qui de aqua vinum fecit, facit et de vino sanguinem." But, on the other hand, Gaudentius (bishop of Brixia) calls the supper a figure of the passion of Christ, and the bread the figure (figura) of the body of Christ (p. 43). Comp. Rückert, l.c. 477 f.
1009 Demonstr. evang. 1, c. 10; Theol. eccl. iii. c. 12, and the fragment of a tract, De paschate, published by Angelo Mai in Scriptorum veterum nova collectio, vol. i. p. 247. Comp. Neander, l.c. i. 430, and especially Steitz, second article (1865), pp. 97-106.
1010 To this result H. Voigt comes, after the most thorough investigation, in his learned monograph on the doctrine of Athanasius, Bremen, 1861, pp. 170-181, and since that time also Steitz, in his second article, already quoted, pp. 109-127. Möhler finds in the passage Ad Scrap. iv. 19 (the principal eucharistic declaration of Athanasius then known), the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Supper (Athanasius der Gr p. 560 ff.), but by a manifestly strained interpretation, and in contradiction with passages in the more recently known Festival Letters of Athanasius, which confirm the exposition of Voigt.
1011 So in the main passage, the fourth Epistle to Serapion (Ad Scrap. iv. 19), which properly treats of the sin against the Holy Ghost (c. 8-23), and has been variously interpreted in the interest of different confessions, but now receives new light from several passages in the recently discovered Syriac Festival Letters of Athanasius, translated by Larsow, Leipzig, 1852, pp. 59, 78 sqq., 153 sqq., and especially p. 101.
1012 In the Festival Letters in Larsow, p. 101, Athanasius says: "And not only, my brethren, is this bread [of the Eucharist] a food of the righteous, and not only are the saints who dwell on earth nourished with such bread and blood, but also in heaven we eat such food; for even to the higher spirits and the angels the Lord is nutriment, and He is the delight of all the powers of heaven; to all He is all, and over every one He yearns in His love of man."
1013 Orat. xvii. 12; viii. 17; iv. 52. Comp. Ullmann’s Gregor. v. Naz. pp. 483-488; Neander, l.c. i. p. 431; and Steitz in Dorner’s Jahrbücher for 1865, pp. 133-141. Steitz makes Gregory an advocate of the symbolical theory.
1014 Epist. viii. c. 4 (or Ep. 141 in the older editions): Trwvgomenga;raujtou'th;nsavrkakai;pivnomenaujtou'to;ai|ma, koinwnoi;ginovmenoidia;th'" ejnanqrwphvsew" kai;th'" aijsqhth'" zwh'" tou'lovgoukai;th'" sofiva". Savrkaga;rkaiai|mapasa'nautou'th;nmustikh;nejpidhmivan [i. e., a spiritual incarnation, or His internal coming to the soul, as distinct from His historical incarnation] wjnovmasekai;th;nejkpraktikh'" kai;fusikh'" kai;qeologikh'" sunestw'sandidaskalivan, dijh|" trevfetaiyuch;kai;pro;" tw'no[ntwnqewrivanparaskeuavzetai. Kai;tou'to;ejstito;ejktou'rJhtou'i[sw" dhlouvmenon. This passage, overlooked by Klose, Ebrard, and Kahnis, but noticed by Rückert and more fully by Steitz (l.c. p. 127 ff.), in favor of the symbolical view, is the principal one in Basil on the Eucharist, and must regulate the interpretation of the less important allusions in his other writings.
1015 Hom. xxvii. 17, and other passages. Steitz (l.c. p. 142 ff.) enters more fully into the views of this monk of the Egyptian desert.
1016 Dial. ii. Opera ed. Hal. tom. iv. p. 126, where the orthodox man says against the Eranist: Ta;mustika;suvmbola... mevneiejpi;th'" protevra" oujsiva" kai;tou'schvmato" kai;tou'ei[dou", kai;oJratavejstikai;aJpta;, oi\akai;provteronh|n.
1017 Proskunei'taiwJ" ekei'nao[ntaa{perpisteuvetai. These words certainly prove that the consecrated elements are regarded as being not only subjectively, but in some sense objectively and really what the believer takes them for, namely, the body and blood of Christ. But with this they also retained, according to Theodoret, their natural reality and their symbolical character.
1018 Ep. ad Caesarium monach. (in Chrys. Opera, tom. iii. Pars altera, p. 897 of the new Paris ed. of Montfaucon after the Benedictine): "Sicut enim antequam sanctificetur panis, panem nominamus: divina autem illum sanctificante gratia, mediante sacerdote, liberatus est quidem ab appellatione panis; dignus autem habitus dominici corporis appellatione, etiamsi natura panis in ipso permansit, et non duo corpora, sed unum corpus Filii praedicamus." This epistle is extant in full only in an old Latin version.
1019 De duabus naturis in Christo Adv. Eutychen et Nestorium (in the Bibl. Max. Patrum, tom. viii. p. 703) ... "et tamen esse non desinit substantia vel natura panis et vini. Et certe imago et similitudo corporis et sanguinis Christi in actione mysteriorum celebrantur." Many Roman divines, through dogmatic prejudice, doubt the genuineness of this epistle. Comp. the Bibl. Max. tom. viii. pp. 699-700.
1020 From his immense dogmatic authority, Augustine has been an apple of contention among the different confessions in all controversies on the doctrine of the Supper. Albertinus (De euchar. pp. 602-742) and Rückert (l.c. p. 353 ff.) have successfully proved that he is no witness for the Roman doctrine; but they go too far when they make him a mere symbolist. That he as little favors the Lutheran doctrine, Kahnis (Vom Abendmahl, p. 221, and in the second part of his Luth. Dogmatik, p. 207) frankly concedes.
1021 In Psalm. iii. 1: "Convivium, in quo corporis et sanguinis sui figuram discipulis commendavit." Contra Adamant. xii. 3 ("signum corporis sui"); Contra advers. legis et prophet. ii. c. 9; Epist. 23; De Doctr. Christ. iii. 10, 16, 19; De Civit. Dei, xxi. c. 20, 25; De peccat. mer. ac rem. ii. 20 "quamvis non sit corpus Christi, sanctum est tamen, quoniam sacramentum est").
1022 Tract. in Joh. 25: "Quid paras dentes et ventrem? Crede, et manducasti." Comp. Tract. 26: "Qui non manet in Christo, nec manducat carnem ejus, nec bibit ejus sanguinem licet premat dentibus sacramentum corporis et sanguinis Christi."
1023 De Trinit. iii. 10: "Honorem tamquam religiosa possunt habere, stuporem tamquam mira non possunt."
1024 Ep. 146: "Ego Domini corpus ita in coelo esse credo, ut erat in terra, quando ascendit in coelum." Comp. similar passages in Tract. in Joh. 13; Ep. 187; Serm. 264.
1025 "Spiritualis alimonia." This expression, however, as the connection of the passage in Serm. lix. 2 clearly shows, by no means excludes an operation of the sacrament on the body; for "spiritual" is often equivalent to "supernatural." Even Ignatius called the bread of the Supper "a medicine of immortality, and all antidote of death" (favrmakon ajqanasiva", ajntivdoto" tou' mh; ajpoqanei'n, ajlla; zh'/n ejn Cristw'/ dia; pantov"¼ Ad Ephes. c. 20; though this passage is wanting in the shorter Syriac recension.
1026 Comp. the relevant passages from the writings of Leo in Perthel, Papst Leo 1. Leben u. Lehren, p. 216 ff., and in Rückert, l.c. p. 479 ff. Leo’s doctrine of the Supper is not so clearly defined as his doctrine of baptism, and has little that is peculiar. But he certainly had a higher than a purely symbolic view of the sacrament and of the sacrifice of the Eucharist.
1027 In the liturgy of St. Mark (in Neale’s ed.: The Liturgies of S. Mark, S. James, S. Clement, S. Chrysostom, S. Basil, Lond. 1859, p. 26): {Ina aujta; aJgiavsh/ kai; teleiwvsh/ ... kai; poihvsh/ to;n me;n a[rton sw'ma, to which the congregation answers: jAmhvn.
1028 In the liturgy of St. James (in Neale, p. 64): {Ina ... aJgiavsh/ kai; poihvsh/ to;n me;n a[rton tou'ton sw'ma a{gion tou' Cristou' sou, k. t. l.
1029 The liturgy of St. Chrysostom (Neale, p. 137) uses the terms eujlovghson and poivhson.
1030 Hom. 24 in I Cor.
1031 De Spir. S. iii. II: "Quam [carnem Christi] hodie in mysteriis adoramus, et quam apostoli in Domino Jesu adoraverant."
1032 In Psalm. 98, n. 9: "Ipsam carnem nobis manducandam ad salutem dedit; nemo autem illam carnem manducat nisi prius adoraverit ... et non modo non peccemus adorando, sed peccemus non adorando."
1033 So says also the Roman liturgist Muratori, De rebus liturgicis, c. xix. p. 227: "Uti omnes inter Catholicos eruditi fatentur, post Berengarii haeresiam ritus in Catholica Romana ecclesia invaluit, scilicet post consecrationem elevare hostiam et calicem, ut a populo adoretur corpus et sanguis Domini." Freeman, Principles of Div. Service, Introduction to Part ii. p. 169, asserts: "The Church throughout the world, down to the period of the unhappy change of doctrine in the Western church in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, never worshipped either the consecrated elements on account of their being the body and blood of Christ, or the presence of that body and blood; nor again, either Christ Himself as supernaturally present by consecration, or the presence of His divinity; neither have the churches of God to this hour, with the exception of those of the Roman obedience, any such custom."
1034 Freeman states the result of his investigation of the Biblical sacrificial cultus and of the doctrine of the old Catholic church on the eucharistic sacrifice, as follows, on p. 280: "It is enough for us that the holy Eucharist is all that the ancient types foreshowed that it would be; that in it we present ’memorially,’ yet truly and with prevailing power, by the consecrating Hands of our Great High Priest, the wondrous Sacrifice once for all offered by Him at the Eucharistic Institution, consummated on the Cross, and ever since presented and pleaded by Him, Risen and Ascended, in Heaven; that our material Gifts are identified with that awful Reality, and as such are borne in upon the Incense of His Intercession, and in His Holy Hands, into the True Holiest Place: that we ourselves, therewith, are home in thither likewise, and abide in a deep mystery in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus; that thus we have all manner of acceptance,—sonship, kingship, and priesthood unto God; an our whole life, in all its complex action, being sanctified and purified for such access, and abiding continually in a heavenly sphere of acceptableness and privilege.—Enough for us, again, that on the sacramental side of the mystery, we have been thus privileged to give to God His own Gift of Himself to dwell in us, and we in Him;—-that we thereby possess an evermore renewedly dedicated being—strengthened with all might, and evermore made one with Him. Profoundly reverencing Christ’s peculiar Presence in us and around us in the celebration of such awful mysteries, we nevertheless take as the watchword of our deeply mysterious Eucharistic worship, ’Sursum corda,’ and ’Our life is hid with Christ in God.’ "
1035 The missa fidelium, in distinction from the missa catechumenorum. Comp. 90 above.
1036 Comp. vol. i. § 102, p. 389 ff.
1037 "Vice Christi vere fungitur."
1038 "Sacrificium verum et plenum offert in ecclesia Patri."
1039 Epist. 63 ad Caecil.c. 14. Augustine’s view is similar: the church offering herself to God in and with Christ as her Head.
1040 Hom. iii. in Ep. ad Ephes. (new Par. Bened. ed. tom. xi. p. 26): Eijkh'/ qusiva kaqhmerinh;, eijkh'/ paresthvkamen tw'/ qusiasthrivw/, oujdei;" oJ metevcwn, i.e., Frustra est quotidianum sacrificium, frustra adstamus altari: nemo est qui participet.
1041 Contr. Faust. Manich. l. xx. 18: "Unde jam Christiani, peracti ejusdem sacrificii memoriam celebrant, sacrosancta oblatione et participatione corporis et sanguinis Christi." Comp. l. xx. 21. This agrees with Augustine’s symbolical conception of the consecrated elements as signal imagines, similitudines corporis et sanguinis Christi. Steitz, l.c. p. 379, would make him altogether a symbolist, but does not succeed; comp. the preceding section, and Neander, Dogmengesch. i. p. 432.
1042 De Civit. Dei, x. 20: "Per hoc [homo Jesus Christus] et sacerdos est ipse offerens, ipse et oblatio. Cujus rei sacramentum quotidianum esse voluit ecclesiae sacrificium, quae cum ipsius capitis corpus sit, se ipsam per ipsum offere discit." And the faithful in heaven form with us one sacrifice, since they with us are one civitas Dei.
1043 Hom. xvii. in Ep. ad Hebr. tom. xii. pp. 241 and 242: Tou'to ga;r poiei'te fhsi;n, eij" th;n ejmh;n ajnavmnhsin. Oujk a[llhn qusivan, kaqavper oJ ajrciereu;" tovte, ajlla; th;n aujth;n ajei; poiou'men_ ma'llon de; ajnavmnhsin ejrgazovmeqa qusiva".
1044 De sacerd. iii. c. 4 (tom. i. 467): {Otanijdh/'" to;nKuvriontequmevnonkai;keivmenon, kai;to;niJerevaejfestw'tatw/'quvmati, kai;ejpeucovmenon, k. t. l. Homil. xv. ad Popul. Antioch. c. 5 (tom. ii. p. 187): [EnqaoJCristo;" kei'taitequmevno". Comp. Hom. in tom. ii. p. 394, where it is said of the sacrifice of the Eucharist: Qusiva/ prosevrch/ frikth/'kai;ajgiav/_ ejsfagmevno" provvkeitaioJCristov".
1045 Freeman regards this as the main thing in the old liturgies. "In all liturgies," says he, l.c. p. 190, "the Church has manifestly two distinct though closely connected objects in view. The first is, to offer herself in Christ to God; or rather, in strictness and as the highest conception of her aim, to procure that she may be offered by Christ Himself, and as in Christ, to the Father. And the second object, as the crowning and completing feature of the rite, and woven up with the other in one unbroken chain of service, is to obtain communion through Christ with God; or, more precisely again, that Christ may Himself give her, through Himself, such communion."
1046 Neale has collected in an appendix to his English edition of the old liturgies (The Liturgies of S. Mark, S. James, etc., Lond. 1859, p. 216 ff.) the finest liturgical prayers of the ancient church for the departed saints, and deduces from them the positions, "(1) that prayers for the dead, and more especially the oblation of the blessed Eucharist for them, have been from the beginning the practice of the Universal Church. (2) And this without any idea of a purgatory of pain, or of any state from which the departed soul has to be delivered as from one of misery." The second point needs qualification.
1047 Th'" aJgiva" kai;frikwdestavth" prokeimevnh" qusiva", Catech. xxiii. 8.
1048 Serm. 172, 2 (Opp. tom. v. 1196): "Orationibus sanctae ecclesiae, et sacrificio salutari, et eleemosynis, quae pro eorum spiritibus erogantur, non est dubitandum mortuos adjuvari, ut cum eis misericordius agatur a Domino." He expressly limits this effect, however, to those who have departed in the faith.
1049 Confess. l. ix. 27: "Tantum illud vos rogo, ut ad Domini altare memineritis mei, ubi fueritis." Tertullian considers it the duty of a devout widow to pray for the soul of her husband, and to offer a sacrifice on the anniversary of his death; De monogam. c. 10. Comp. De corona, c. 2: "Oblationes pro defunctis pro natalitiis annua die facimus."
1050 De Civit. Dei, xxi. 24, and elsewhere. The passages of Augustine and the other fathers in favor of the doctrine of purgatory are collected in the much-cited work of Berington and Kirk: The Faith of Catholics, etc., vol. iii. pp. 140-207.
1051 There are silent masses, missae solitariae, at which usually no one is present but the priest, with the attendant boys, who offers to God at a certain tariff the magically produced body of Christ for the deliverance of a soul from purgatory. This institution has also a heathen precedent in the old Roman custom of offering sacrifices to the Manes of beloved dead. On Gregory’s doctrine of the mass, which belongs in the next period, comp. the monograph of Lau, p. 484f. The horrible abuse of these masses for the dead, and their close connection with superstitious impostures of purgatory and of indulgence, explain the moral anger of the Reformers at the mass, and the strong declarations against it in several symbolical books, especially in the Smalcald Articles by Luther (ii. 2, where the mass is called draconis cauda), and in the Heidelberg Catechism (the 80th question, which, by the way, is wanting entirely in the first edition of 1563, and was first inserted in the second edition by express command of the Elector Friedrich III., and in the third edition was enriched with the epithet "damnable idolatry").
1052 Though in various forms. See below.
1053 Or, according to the Liturgia S. Jacobi: [Anw scw'men to;n nou'n kai; ta;" kardiva", with the response: [Axion kai; divkaion. In the Lit. S. Clem.: Priest: [Anw to;n nou'n. All (pavnte"): [Ecomen pro;" to;n Kuvrion.—Eujcaristhvswmen tw'/ Kurivw/. Resp.:[Axion kai; divkaion. In the Lit. S. Chrys. (still in use in the orthodox Greek and Russian church):
JO iJereuv": [Anw scw'men ta;" kardiva".
JO corov" : [Ecomen pro; to;n Kuvrion.
JO iJereuv": Eujcaristhvswmen tw'/ Kurivw/.
JO corov" : [Axion kai; divkaion ejsti; proskuvnei'n Patevra, UiJovn, kai;
a]gion Pneu'ma, Triavda oJmoouvsion kai; ajcwvriston.
1054 Hence it is said, for example, in the Syriac version of the Liturgy of St. James: "How dreadful is this hour, in which the Holy Ghost hastens to come down from the heights of heaven, and broods over the Eucharist, and sanctifies it. In holy silence and fear stand and pray."
1055 jEpivklhsi" Pneuvmato" aJgivou, invocatio Spiritus Sancti.
1056 They are collected by Neale, in his English edition of the Primitive Liturgies, pp. 175-215, from 67 ancient liturgies in alphabetical order. Freeman says, rather too strongly, l.c. p. 364: "No two churches in the world have even the same Words of Institution."
1057 Prosfevromevn soi, Devspota, th;n fobera;n tauvthn kai; ajnaivmakton qusivan. The term foberav denotes holy awe, and is previously applied also to the second coming of Christ: Th'" deutevra" ejndovxou kai; fobera'" aujtou' parousiva", sc. memnhmevnoi. The Liturgy of St. Chrysostom has instead:Prosfevromevn soi th;n lofikh;n tauvthn kai; ajnaivmakton latreivan (doubtless with reference to thelogikh; latreiva in Rom. xii 1).
1058 !Exapovsteilon ejf j hJma'" kai; ejpi; ta; prokeivmena dw'ra tau'ta to; Pneu'mav sou to; panavgion, [ei\ta klivna" to;n aujcevna levgei:] to; kuvrion kai; zwopoio;n, to; suvnqronon soi; tw'/ Qew'/ kai; Patri;, kai; tw'/ monogenei' sou Uivw'/, to; sumbasileu'on, to; oJmoouvsiovn te kai; sunaivdion. The oJmoouvsion, as well as the Nicene Creed in the preceding part of the Liturgy of St. James, indicates clearly a post-Nicene origin.
1059 $Ina ... @agiavsh/ kai; poihvsh/ to;n me;n a]rton tou'ton sw'ma a]gion tou' Cristou' sou.
1060 Ta; a{gia toi'" aJgivoi", Sancta Sanctis. It is a warning to the unworthy not to approach the table of the Lord.
1061 According to the usual reading ejn ajnqrwvpoi" eujdokiva. But the older and better attested reading is eujdokiva", which alters the sense and makes the angelic hymn bimembris: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of His good pleasure (i.e., the chosen people of God)."
1062 Sw'ma Cristou' —Ai|ma Cristou', pothvrion zwh'".
1063 In the Liturgy of St. Mark::Sw'ma a{gion —Ai|ma tivmion tou' Kurivou kai; Qeou' kai;Swth'ro" hJmw'n. In the Mozarabic Liturgy the communicating priest prays: "Corpus et sanguis Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat corpus et animam meam (tuam) in vitam aeternam." Resp.: "Amen." So in the Roman Liturgy, from which it passed into the Anglican.
1064 Augustine, Epist. 118 ad Janua c. 2: "Alii quotidie communicant corpori et sanguini Dominico; alii certis diebus accipiunt; alibi nullus dies intermittitur quo non offeratur; alii sabbato tantum et dominico; alibi tantum dominico."
1065 Comp. P. Zorn: Historia eucharistiae infantum, Berl. 1736; and the article by Kling in Herzog’s Encykl. vii. 549 ff.
1066 These substitutes for the consecrated elements were called ajntivdwra (i.e., ajnti; tw'n dwvrwn eujcaristikw'n), and eulogiae (from the benediction at the close of the service).
1067 Leitourgiva, from lei'to", i.e., belonging to the lewv" or laov" public, and e[rgon = e[rgon tou' lewv or tou' laou', public work, office, function. In Athens the term was applied especially to the directing of public spectacles, festive dances, and the distribution of food to the people on festal occasions. Paul, in Rom. xiii. 6, calls secular magistrates leitourgoi; Qeou'.
1068 Comp. Luke i. 23, where the priestly service of Zacharias is called leitourgiva; Heb. viii. 2, 6; ix. 21; x. 11, where the word is applied to the High-Priesthood of Christ; Acts xiii. 2; Rom. xv. 16; Rom. xv. 27; 2 Cor. ix. 12, where religious fasting, missionary service, and common beneficences are called leitourgivaor leitourgei'n. . The restriction of the word to divine worship or sacerdotal action occurs as early as Eusebius, Vita Const. iv. 37, bishops being there called leitourgoiv. The limitation of the word to the service of the Lord’s Supper is connected with the development of the doctrine of the eucharistic sacrifice.
1069 Comp. Tertullian, Apolog. c. 7; Origen, Homil. 9 in Levit. toward the end; Cyril of Jerusalem, Praefat. ad Catech. § 7, etc.
1070 Trollope says, in the Introduction to his edition of the Liturgia Jacobi: "Nothing short of the reverence due to the authority of an apostle, could have preserved intact, through successive ages, that strict uniformity of rite and striking identity of sentiment, which pervade these venerable compositions; but there is, at the same time, a sufficient diversity both of expression and arrangement, to mark them as the productions of different authors, each writing without any immediate communication with the others, but all influenced by the same prevailing motives of action and the same constant habit of thought." Neale goes further, and, in a special article on Liturgical Quotations (Essays on Liturgiology and Church History, Lond. 1863, p. 411 ff.), endeavors to prove that Paul several times quotes the primitive liturgy, viz., in those passages in which he introduces certain statements with a gevgraptai, or levgei, or pisto;" oJ lovgo", while the statements are not to be found in the Old Testament: 1 Cor. ii. 9; xv. 45; Eph. v. 14; 1 Tim. i. 15; iii. 1; iv. 1, 9; 2 Tim. ii. 11-13, 19; Tit. iii. 8. But the only plausible instance is 1 Cor. ii. 9: Kaqw;" gevgraptai: a{ ojfqalmo;" oujk ei|de, kai; ou\" oujk h[kouse, kai; ejpi; kardivan ajnqrwvpou oujk ajnevbh, a{ hJtoivmasen oJ Qeo;" toi'" ajgapw'sin aujtovn, which, it is true, occur word for word (though in the form of prayer, therefore with hJtoivmasa", and ajgapw'siv se instead of ajgapw'sin aujtovn) the Anaphora of the Liturgia Jacobi, while the parallel commonly cited from Is. lxiv. 4 is hardly suitable. But if there had been such a primitive written apostolic liturgy, there would have undoubtedly been other and clearer traces of it. The passages adduced may as well have been quotations from primitive Christian hymns and psalms, though such are very nearly akin to liturgical prayers.
1071 In the Clementine Liturgy, all, pavnte"; in the Liturgy of St. James, the People, oJ laov".
1072 In the Liturgies of St. Basil and St. Chrysostom, which have displaced the older Greek liturgies, the diavkono" or corov" usually responds. In the Roman mass the people fall still further out of view, but accompany the priest with silent prayers.
1073 Epist. ad Joann. Episc. Syriac.
1074 On this disputed point Neale agrees with the Oriental church, Freeman with the Latin. Comp. Neale, Tetralogia Liturgica, Praefat. p. xv. sqq., and his English edition of the Primitive Liturgies of S. Mark, S. James, etc., p. 23. In the latter place he says of the ejpivklhsi" Pneuvmato" aJgivou: "By the Invocation of the Holy Ghost, according to the doctrine of the Eastern church, and not by the words of institution, the bread and wine are ’changed,’ ’transmuted,’ ’transelemented,’ ’transubstantiated’ into our Lord’s Body and Blood. This has always been a point of contention between the two churches—the time at which the change takes place. Originally, there is no doubt that the Invocation of the Holy Ghost formed a part of all liturgies. The Petrine has entirely lost it: the Ephesine (Gallican and Mozarabic) more or less retains it: as do also those mixtures of the Ephesine and Petrine—the Ambrosian and Patriarchine or Aquileian. To use the words of the authorized Russian Catechism: ’Why is this (the Invocation) so essential? Because at the moment of this act, the bread and wine are changed or transubstantiated into the very Body of Christ and into the very Blood of Christ. How are we to understand the word Transubstantiation? In the exposition of the faith by the Eastern Patriarchs, it is said that the word is not to be taken to define the manner in which the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of our Lord; for this none can understand but God; but only this much is signified, that the bread, truly, really, and substantially becomes the very true Body of the Lord, and the wine the very Blood of the Lord.’ " Freeman, on the contrary in his Principles of Div. Serv. vol. ii. Part ii. p. 196 f, asserts: "The Eastern church cannot maintain the position which, as represented by her doctors of the last four hundred years, and alleging the authority of St. Cyril, she has taken up, that there is no consecration till there has followed (1) a prayer of oblation and (2) one of Invocation of the Holy Ghost. In truth, the view refutes itself, for it disqualifies the oblation for the very purpose for which it is avowedly placed there, namely to make offering of the already consecrated Gifts, i.e., of the Body and Blood of Christ; thus reducing it to a level with the oblation at the beginning of the office. The only view that can be taken of these very ancient prayers, is that they are to be conceived of as offered simultaneously with the recitation of the Institution."
1075 On the mystical meaning of the Oriental cultus comp. the Commentary of Symeon of Thessalonica († 1429) on the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom, and Neale’s Introduction to his English edition of the Oriental Liturgies, pp. xxvii.-xxxvi.
1076 The Collects belong strictly only to the Latin church, which has produced many hundred such short prayers. The word comes either from the fact that the prayer collects the sense of the Epistle and Gospel for the day in the form of prayer; or that the priest collects therein the wishes and petitions of the people. The collect is a short liturgical prayer, consisting of one petition, closing with the form of mediation through the merits of Christ, and sometimes with a doxology to the Trinity. Comp. a treatise of Neale on The Collects of the Church, in Essays on Liturgiology and Church History, p. 46 ff, and William Bright: Ancient Collects and Prayers, selected from various rituals, Oxford and London, 1860.
1077 It is a curious fact, that in the Protestant Episcopal Trinity chapel of New York, with the full approval of the bishop, Horatio Potter, and the assistance of the choir, on the second of March, 1865, the anniversary of the accession of the Russian Czar, Alexander II., the full liturgy or mass of the orthodox Graeco-Russian church was celebrated before a numerous assembly by a recently arrived Graeco-Russian monk and priest (or deacon), Agapius Honcharenko. This is the first instance of an Oriental service in the United States (for the Russian fleet which was in the harbor of New York in 1863 held its worship exclusively upon the ships), and probably also the first instance of the celebration of the unbloody sacrifice of the mass and the mystery of transubstantiation in a Protestant church and with the sanction of Protestant clergy. The liturgy of St. Chrysostom, in the Slavonic translation, was intoned by the priest; the short responses, such as Hospode, Pomelue (Kyrie, Eleison), were grandly sung by the choir in the Slavonic language, and the Beatitudes, the Nicene Creed (of course, without the "Filioque," which is condemned by the Greek church as a heretical innovation), and the Gloria in Excelsis in English There were wanting only the many genuflexions and prostrations, the trine immersion, and infant communion, to complete the illusion of a marriage of the two churches. Some secular journals gave the matter the significance of a political demonstration in favor of Russia! One of the religious papers saw in it an exhibition of the unity and catholicity of the church, and a resemblance to the miracle of Pentecost, in that Greeks, Slavonians, and Americans heard in their own tongues the wonderful works of God! But most of the Episcopal and other Protestant papers exposed the doctrinal inconsistency, since the Greek liturgy coincides in au important points with the Roman mass. Unfortunately for the philo-Russian movement, the Russo-Greek monk Agapius soon afterward publicly declared himself an opponent of the holy orthodox oriental church, an d charged it with serious error. The present Greek church, which regards even the archbishop of Canterbury and, the pope of Rome as unbaptized (because unimmersed) heretics and schismatics, could, of course, never consent to such an anomalous service as was held in Trinity chapel for the first, and in all probability for the last time.
1078 Neale now (The Liturgies of S. Mark, etc., 1859, p. vii) divides the primitive liturgies into five families: (1) That of St. James, or of Jerusalem; (2) that of St. Mark, or of Alexandria.; (3) that of St. Thaddaeus, or of the East; (4) that of St. Peter, or of Rome; (5) that of St. John, or of Ephesus. Formerly (Hist. of the Holy Eastern Church) he counted the Clementine Liturgy separately; but since Daniel has demonstrated the affinity of it with the Jerusalem (or, as he calls it, the Antiochian) family, he has put it down as a branch of that family.
1079 It is given in Cotelier’s edition of the Patres Apostolici, in the various editions of the pseudo-Apostolic Constitutions, and in the liturgical collections of Daniel, Neale, and others.
1080 Neale considers the liturgy the oldest part of the Apostolic Constitutions, places its composition in the second or third century, and ascribes its chief elements to the apostle Paul, with whose spirit and ideas it in many respects coincides.
1081 Before the Sursum corda, or beginning of the Eucharist proper, the deacon says: "No catechumens, no hearers, no unbelievers, no heretics may remain here (mhv ti" tw'n kathcoumevnwn, mhv ti" tw'n ajkrowmevnwn, mh; ti" tw'n ajpivstwn, mhv ti" tw'n eJterodovxwn). Depart, ye who have spoken the former prayer. Mothers, take your children," etc. This arrangement is traced to James, the brother of John, the son of Zebedee.
1082 . The absence of the Lord’s Prayer in the Clementine Liturgy is sufficient to refute the view of Bunsen, that this prayer was originally the Prayer of Consecration in all liturgies.
1083 Neale even supposes, as already observed, that St. Paul quotes from the Liturgia Jacobi, and not vice versa, especially in I Cor. ii. 9
1084 JUpe;r th'" ejndovxou Siw;n, th'" mhtro;" pasw'n tw'n ejkklhsiw'n: kai; uJpe;r th'" kata; pa'san th;n oijkoumevnhn aJgiva" sou kaqolikh'" kai; ajpostolikh'" ejkklhsiva" .The intercessions for Jerusalem, and for the holy places which God glorified by the appearance of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Ghost (uJpe;r tw'n aJgivwn sou tovpwn, ou}" ejdoxasa" th'/ qeofavneiva/ tou' Cristou' sou, k.t.l.), appears in no other liturgy.
1085 Neale arranges the Jerusalem family in three divisions, as follows:
"1. Sicilian S. James, as said in that island before the Saracen conquest, and partly assimilated to the Petrine Liturgy.
2. S. Cyril: where used uncertain, but assumilated to the Alexandrian form.
3. Syriac S. James, the source of the largest number of extant Liturgies. They are these: [1] Lesser S. James [2] S. Clement; [3] S. Mark; [4] S. Dionysius; [5] S. Xystus; [6] S. Ignatius; [7] S. Peter I; [8] S. Peter II; [9] S. Julius; [10] S. John Evangelist; [11] S. Basil; [12] (S.) Dioscorus; [13] S. John Chrysostom I; [14] All Apostles; [15] S. Marutas; [16] S. Eustathius; [17] Philoxenus I; [18] Matthew the Shepherd; [19] James Bardaeus; [20]. James of Botra; [21] James of Edessa; [22] Moses Bar-Cephas; [23] Thomas of Heraclea; [24] Holy Doctors; [25] Philoxenus II; [26] S. John Chrysostom II; [27] Abu’lfaraj; [28] John of Dara; [291 S. Celestine; [30] John Bar-Susan; [31] Eleatar of Babylon; [32] John the Scribe; [33] John Maro; [34] Dionysius of Cardon; [35] Michael of Antioch; [36] John Bar-Vahib; [37] John Bar-Maaden; [38] Dionysius of Diarbekr; [39] Philoxenus of Bagdad. All these, from Syriac S. James inclusive, are Monophysite Liturgies
1086 There are only two manuscripts, with the fragment of a third, from which the ancient text of the Greek Liturgia Jacobi is derived. The first printed edition appeared at Rome in 1526; then one at Paris in 1560. Besides these we have the copies in the Bibliotheca Patrum, the Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, the Codex Liturgicus of Assemani, the Codex Liturgicus of Daniel, and the later separate editions of Trollope (Edinburgh, 1848), and Neale (twice, in his Tetralogia Liturgica, 1849, and improved, in his Primitive Liturgies, 1860).
1087 See the names of them in the preceding quotation from Neale.
1088 Daniel (iv. 137 sqq.) likewise considers Cyril the probable author, and endeavors to separate the apostolical and the later elements. Neale, in the preface to his edition of the Greek text, thinks: "The general form and arrangement of the Liturgy of S. Mark may safely be attributed to the Evangelist himself, and to his immediate followers, S. Amianus, S. Abilius, and S. Cerdo. With the exception of certain manifestly interpolated passages, it had probably assumed its present appearance by the end of the second century."
1089 There is only one important manuscript of the Greek Liturgy of St. Mark, the Codex Rossanensis, printed in Renaudot’s Collectio, and more recently by Daniel and Neale.
1090 The printed edition is a revision by the Portuguese archbishop of Goa, Alexis of Menuze, and the council of Diamper (1599), who understood nothing of the Oriental liturgies. Neale says: "The Malabar Liturgy I have never been able to see in the original; and an unadulterated copy of the original does not seem to exist." He gives a translation of this liturgy in Primitive Liturgies, p. 128 ff.
1091 Edited by Mabillon: De liturgia Gallicana, libri iii. Par. 1729; and recently in much more complete form, from older MSS. by Francis Joseph Mone (archive-director in Carlsruhe): Lateinische u. griechische Messen aus dem 2ten his 6ten Jahrlhundert, Frankf. a. M. 1850. This is one of the most important liturgical discoveries. Mono gives fragments of eleven mass-formularies from a codex rescriptus of the former cloister of Reichenau, which are older than those previously known, but hardly reach back, as he thinks, to the century (the time of the persecution at Lyons, a.d. 177). Comp. against this, Denzinger, in the Tübingen Quartalschrift, 1850, p. 500 ff. Neale agrees with Mone: Essays on Liturgiology, p. 137.
1092 Called "Gothic," because its development and bloom falls in the time of the Gothic rule in Spain; "Mozarabic" it came to be called after the conquest of Spain by the Arabs. Mozarab, Muzarab, Mostarab, is a kind of term of contempt for the Spanish Christians under the Arabic dominion, in distinction from the Arabs of pure blood. The word comes not from mixti and Arabes, nor from Muza, the Maurian chieftain who subjugated Spain, but from a participle of the tenth conjugation of the Arabic verb araba; therefore something like "arabizing Arab," or Arab by adoption, in distinction from Arabs of the pure blood. Comp. the distinction between Hellenist and Hebrew.
1093 Pinius (in a dissertation prefixed to the 32d vol. of the Acta Sanctorum) supposes that the Spanish liturgy came from the Goths, therefore from Constantinople; but Neale (Essays on Liturgiology, p. 130 ff.) endeavors to prove that it was contemporaneous with the introduction of Christianity in Spain, but afterward, by Leander of Seville (about 589), was conformed in some points to the Oriental ceremonial.
1094 The Spanish cardinal Ximenes edited from defective manuscripts the first printed edition at Toledo, 1500, which, however, is in a measure conformed to the Roman order. He also founded in the cathedral of Toledo a chapel (ad Corpus Christi), where the so renovated Mozarabic service is still continued daily. A similar chapel was founded in Salamanca for the same purpose. Neale, in his Tetralogia Liturgica, gives the Ordo Mozarabicus for comparison with the Liturgies of Chrysostom, James, and Mark. The latest edition is that in the 85th volume of Migne’s Patrologie, Paris, 1850, with a learned preface.
1095 On the Mozarabic pericopes comp. an article by Ernst Ranke in Herzog’s Encykop. vol. x. pp. 79-82. He attributes to them great intrinsic value and historical importance. "They even seem important," says he,"for the general history of the ancient church. With the unmistakable affinity they bear to the Greek on the one hand, and to the Gallican on the other, they evince by themselves an intercourse between the Eastern and Western regions of the church, which, begun or at least aimed at by Paul, further established by Irenaeus, still under lively prosecution in the time of Jerome, afterward ruptured in the most violent manner, is without doubt one of the most noteworthy currents in the life of the church."
1096 Neale has made the discovery, that the Mozarabic litanies were originally metrical, and attempts to restore the measure, l c. p. 143 ff.
1097 Missale Ambrosianum, Mediol. 1768; a later edition under authority of the archbishop and cardinal Gaisruck, Mediol. 1850. Comp. an article by Neale: The Ambrosian Liturgy, in his Essays on Liturgiology, p. 171 ff. Neale considers the Ambrosian liturgy, like the Gallican and Mozarabic, a branch of the Ephesian family. "All three have been moulded by contact with the Petrine family; but the Ambrosian, as it might be expected, most of all." He places it, however, far below the two others.
1098 Hence called also Sacram. Veronense.
1099 Sacramentarium, antiphonarium, lectionarium (containing the lessons from the Old Testament, the Acts, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse), evangelarium (the lessons from the Gospels), ordo Romanus.
1100 From their being written or printed in red.
1101 To which in general the Greek and Roman system of vestments is very closely allied. On the Jewish sacred vestments, see Ex. xxviii. 1-53; xxxix. 1-31, etc.
1102 Stoicavrion, sticavrion (by Goar always translated, dalmatica), a long coat corresponding to the broidered coat (tn,toK], citwvn,tunica, Ex. xxviii. 39) of the Jewish priest, and the alba and dalmatica of the Latin church.
1103 J@Wravrion (from wJra, hour of prayer), or wjravrion, corresponding to the Latin stola.
1104 Felwvnion, failwvnion, a wide mantle, corresponding to the casula.
1105 Zwvnh, girdle, cingulum, balteus, corresponding to the 'ab]xef
1106 !Epitrachvlion, collarium, a double orarion, a scapulary or cape.
1107 !Epimanivkia, on the arms, corresponding to the manipulus.
1108 Savkko", a short coat with rich embroidery, without sleeves, and with little bells.
1109 !Wmofovrion corresponding to the Latin pallium (and so translated by Goar) but broader, and fastened about the neck with a button.
1110 jEpigonavtion, also uJpogonavtionv, a quadrangular shield, reaching from the zwvnh to the knee, and signifying, according to Simeon Metaphrastes, the victory over death and the devil.
1111 @Ravbdo", sceptrum.
1112 The linen cloth which the priest, before celebrating, threw about his neck and shoulders, with the prayer: "Impone, Domine, capiti meo galeam salutis ad expugnandos diabolicos excursus." It is nowhere mentioned before the eighth century. It answers to the Jewish ephod.
1113 Alba vestis, tunica, camisia, the white linen robe which hangs from the neck to the feet. From the alb arose, by shortening, the surplice (superpelliceum, rochetturn; French: surplis; German: Chorrock), which is the ordinary official dress of the lower clergy.
1114 Cingulum, balteus, zona, a linen girdle for gathering up the alb.
1115 Manipulus, sudarium, fano, mappula, originally a napkin, hung upon the left arm of deacons and priests, afterward only of bishops, after the Confiteor.
1116 The stola is a linen vestment hanging from both shoulders. The pope wears the stole always; the priest, only when officiating. The council of Laodicea after 347 prohibited the wearing of it by subdeacons and the lower clergy.
1117 Casula, planeta, the mass-vestment, covering the whole body, but without sleeves, with a cross behind and before embroidered in gold or fine silk. From the casula arose the pluviale, a festive mantle with a hood (casula calcullata), used in processions and on other state occasions.
1118 So called from the place of its origin. It is an overgarment of costly material, similar to the casula, and worn under it.
1119 The pectorale, crux pectoralis, is the breast-cross of bishops and archbishops, and answers probably to the breastplate of the Jewish high-priest.
1120 The mitra, tiara, infula, birretum, is the episcopal head dress, after the type of the Jewish tp,n<x]mi (LXX.: kivdari", Vulgate: tiara, mitra), originally single, after the eleventh century with two points, supposed to denote the two Testaments.
1121 On the Jewish sacerdotal vesture and its symbolical meaning, Comp. Braun: Vestitus sacerdotum Hebraeorum, Amstel. 1698; Lundius: Die jüdischen Heiligthümer, pp. 418-445; Baehr: Symbolik des mosaischen Cultus, vol. ii. pp. 61-165.
1122 The prevailing color of the ordinary Jewish priestly costume was white; that of the Christian clerical costume, on the contrary, is black.
1123 "Discernendi a caeteris sumus doctrina, non veste, conversatione, non habitu, mentis puritate, non cultu." Comp. Thomassin, Vetus ac nova ecclesiae disciplina, P. i. lib. ii. cap. 43.
1124 Sess. xiv. cap. 6 de reform.: "Oportet clericos vestes proprio congruentes ordini semper deferre, ut per decentiam habitus extrinseci morum honestatem intrinsecam ostendant."
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