Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/193

CALENDAR (see ), may have helped, later on, to produce the impression that the Christians had much in common with the worshippers of Mithras.

—The Easter Cycle.—The starting-point of the Christian system of feasts was of course the commemoration of the Resurrection of Christ on Easter day. The fact that for a long time Jews must have formed the vast majority of the members of the infant Church, rendered it impossible for them to forget that each returning Passover celebrated by their countrymen brought with it the anniversary of their Redeemer's Passion and of His glorious Resurrection from the dead. Moreover, as they had all their lives been accustomed to observe a weekly day of rest and prayer, it must have been almost inevitable that they should wish so to modify this holiday that it might serve as a weekly commemoration of the source of all their new hopes. Probably at first they did not wholly withdraw from the Synagogue, and the Sunday must have seemed rather a prolongation of, than a substitution for, the old familiar Sabbath. But it was not long before the observance of the first day of the week became distinctive of Christian worship. St. Paul (Coloss., ii, 16) evidently considered that the converts from paganism were not bound to the observance of the Jewish festivals or of the Sabbath proper. On the other hand, the name "the Lord's day" (dies dominica, ) meets us in the Apocalypse, i., 10, and was no doubt familiar at a much earlier date (cf. I Cor., xvi, 2). From the beginning the Sunday seems to have been frankly recognized among Christians for what it was, viz. the weekly commemoration of Christ's Resurrection. (Cf. The Epistle of Barnabas, xv.) It was presumably marked by the celebration of the liturgy, for St. Luke writes in the Acts: "And on the first day of the week, when we were assembled to break bread" (Acts, xx, 7); and we may infer from somewhat later ordinances that it was always regarded as joyful in character, a day when fasting was out of place, and when the faithful were instructed to pray standing, not kneeling. "Die dominico", says Tertullian, "jejunium nefas dicimus vel de geniculis adorare" (De orat. 14). In fact this upright position in prayer was, according to Pseudo (?) Irenæus, typical of the Resurrection (Irenæus, Frag., 7). But for a fuller account of this first element of the Christian calendar the reader must be referred to the article.

That the early Christians kept with especial honour the anniversary of the Resurrection itself is more a matter of inference than of positive knowledge. No writer before Justin Martyr seems to mention such a celebration, but the fact that in the latter half of the second century the controversy about the time of keeping Easter almost rent the Church in twain may be taken as an indication of the importance attached to the feast. Moreover the paschal fast of preparation, though its primitive duration was probably not forty days (Cf. Funk, Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen, I, 242 sq.), was constantly referred to by the Early Church as a matter of ancient and even Apostolic institution. In any case, all our earliest liturgical monuments both of East and West, for example the "Apostolical Constitutions" and the "Apostolic Canons", which are a still earlier document according to Funk and Harnack, are agreed in giving to Easter the place of honour among the feasts of the year. It is as the Roman Martyrologium describes it, festum festorum and solemnitas solemnitatum. With it have naturally always been associated the commemoration of the events of Christ's Passion, the Last Supper on the Thursday, the Crucifixion on the Friday, and on the eve itself that great vigil or night watch when the paschal candle and the fonts were blessed and the catechumens, after long weeks of preparation, were at last admitted to the Sacrament of Baptism. Data are lacking concerning these separate elements in the great paschal celebration as it was observed in the earliest times. It may, however, be noted that in Tertullian the word pascha clearly designates not the Sunday alone but rather a period, and in particular. the day of the Parasceve, or as we now call it, Good Friday; while in Origen a definite distinction is drawn between two kindred terms: (the Resurrection Pasch on Easter Sunday), and  (the Crucifixion Pasch, i.e. Good Friday); but both were equally memorable as celebrations.

Closely dependent upon Easter and gradually developing in number as time went on were other observances also belonging to the cycle of what we now call the movable feasts. Whitsunday (see ), the anniversary of the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, was probably regarded as next in importance to Easter itself, and as Easter was determined by the Jewish Pasch, there can be little doubt, seeing that Whitsunday stood in the same close relation to the Jewish feast of Pentecost, that the Jewish converts observed both a Christian Pasch and a Christian Pentecost from the very beginning. Ascension day, though determined in position by the fact that it was forty days after Easter (Acts, i, 3) and ten before Whitsuntide, was not superimposed on any Jewish feast. We do not, consequently, find it attested by any writer earlier than Eusebius (De sol. pasch., Migne, P. G. xxiv, 679). Lent, which all admit to have been known as a forty days' fast in the early years of the fourth century (cf. the various Festal Letters of St. Athanasius), had of course a fixed terminus ad quem in Easter itself, but its terminus a quo seems to have varied considerably in different parts of the world. In some places the understanding seemed to be that Lent was a season of forty days in which there was much fasting but not necessarily a daily fast—the Sundays in any case, and in the East Saturdays also, were always exempt. Elsewhere it was held that Lent must necessarily include forty actual fasting-days. Again there were places where the fasting in Holy Week was regarded as something independent, which had to be superadded to the forty days of Lent. The times therefore, of commencing the Lenten fast varied considerably, just as there was considerable diversity in the severity with which the fast was kept. (For these details see .) All that we need notice here is that this penitential season, which at a considerably later period was thrown back to the Sunday known as Septuagesima (strictly the Sunday within the period of seventy days before Easter), began earlier or later according to the day on which Easter Sunday fell, while the later additions at the other end—such as Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi, and in still more recent times, the Feast of the Sacred Heart—all equally formed part of the same festal cycle.

There can be little doubt that the early Christians felt as we do the inconvenience of this movable element in the otherwise stable framework of the Julian calendar. But we have to remember that the movable element was established there by right of prior occupation. Since the Jewish Christians, as explained above, had never known any other computation of time than that based on the lunar month, the only way which could have occurred to them of fixing the anniversary of Our Saviour's Resurrection was by referring it to the Jewish Pasch. But while accepting this situation, they also showed a certain independence. It seems to have been decided that the occurrence of the Resurrection feast on the first day of the week, the day which followed the Sabbath was an essential feature. Hence, instead of determining that the second day after the Jewish Pasch (17 Nisan) should always he counted as the anniversary of the Resurrection, independently of the day of the week