Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/194

CALENDAR upon which it might fall, the Apostles appear to have settled, though in this we have very little positive evidence, that that Sunday was to be kept as the Christian Pasch which fell within the Azymes, or days of the unleavened bread, whether it occurred at the beginning, middle, or end of the term. This arrangement had the drawback that it made the Christian feast dependent upon the computation of the Jewish calendar. When the destruction of Jerusalem practically deprived the Jews of the dispersion of any norm or standard of uniformity, they probably fell into erroneous or divergent reckonings, and this in turn entailed a difference of opinion among the Christians. If it had been possible to ascertain in terms of the Julian chronology the day of the month on which Christ actually suffered, it would probably have been simplest for Christians all over the Roman world to celebrate their Easter, as later on they celebrated Christmas or St. Peter's day, upon a fixed anniversary. Yet this, be it noticed, would have interfered with the established position of "the Lord's day" as the weekly memorial of the great Sunday par excellence, for Easter, as a fixed feast, would of course have fallen upon all the days of the week in turn. However, though Tertullian declares without misgiving that Christ suffered upon 25 March, a tradition perpetuated in numberless calendars throughout the Middle Ages, this date was certainly wrong. Moreover it was probably quite impossible at that period, owing to the arbitrary manner in which the Jewish embolismic years had been intercalated, to calculate back to the true date. For the various phases of the disputes which first broke out in the second century and were renewed long afterwards in the British Isles we must refer the reader to the article. It will suffice here to say that a decision seems to have been arrived at in the Council of Nicæa, which, though it is strangely absent from the canons of the council as now preserved to us (Turner, Monumenta Nicæna, 152), is believed to have determined that Easter was to be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon which follows the spring equinox. According to this rule, which has ever since been accepted, the earliest day upon which Easter can now fall is 22 March, and the latest 25 April.

The Nativity of Christ.—A second element which fundamentally influences the Christian calendar and which, though less primitive than the Easter celebrations, is also of early date, may be described as the Nativity Cycle. Of the origin and history of the feast of Christmas, dealt with in a separate article, little need now be said. We may take it as certain that the feast of Christ's Nativity was kept in Rome on 25 December before the year 354. It was introduced by St. John Chrysostom into Constantinople and definitively adopted in 395. On the other hand, the Epiphany feast on 6 January, which also in the beginning seems to have commemorated the birth of Jesus Christ, is referred to as of partial observance in that character by Clement of Alexandria (Strom., I, 21), though a recently discovered discourse of Hippolytus for this day ( ) is entirely devoted to the theme of Christ's baptism. This last, in fact, is and has long been the primary aspect of the feast in the Oriental churches. But the feast of the Nativity is of importance in the calendar not only for itself, as one of the greatest celebrations of the year, but also for the other days which depend upon it. These are mostly of later date in point of origin, but are ecclesiastically of high rank. Thus on this supposition, however questionable as a fact of history, that the exact date of Christ's nativity was 25 December, we have first the Circumcision on 1 January, the eighth day, a festival greatly utilized in the attempt to divert the newly converted peoples from the superstitious and often idolatrous pagan practices which immemorial custom associated with the beginning of the year. The Mass for this day in the Missals is often headed Ad prohibendum ab idolis, and its contents correspond with that designation. At the same time other service books preserve conspicuous traces of a time when this day was treated as a festival of the Blessed Virgin. On the other hand, the eighth day before Christmas (18 Dec.) is kept as the feast of the Expectation of Our Lady, which was only added to the Roman calendar as lately as the seventeenth century, but represents an old Spanish feast of the Blessed Virgin. It was not, however, known in ancient times by its present designation of Expectatio partus.

Again, forty days after Christmas, following, as in the case of the Circumcision, the data of the Jewish law, we have the Presentation in the Temple. This, under its Greek name of Hypapante (, "the meeting"), was originally treated as a feast of Our Saviour rather than of His Blessed Mother. It is older than any other Marian feast—being mentioned c. 380 in the Pilgrimage of "Sylvia", i.e. the Spanish lady Etheria—though in Jerusalem at that date it was kept forty days after the feast which is known to us as the Epiphany (6 Jan.), but which, as we have seen, then commemorated the Birth as well as the Baptism of Christ. For some reason, of which no adequate explanation seems to be forthcoming, the solemn benediction of candles and the procession were attached at an early period to this feast. It was long known in England as Candlemas Day and in France as la Chandeleur. The Annunciation, or, as it was some times anciently called, the Conception of Our Lord, seems to be heard of in the East in the sixth century and to have been transported thence to Western Europe not long afterwards. Its connection with the Nativity is obvious, and it is even possible, as Duchesne and others have suggested, that the Incarnation of Our Saviour was assigned to the 25th of March because this day, as early as Tertullian, was believed to be the date of His Passion. If this were true, the 25th of December would have been determined by the 25th of March and not vice versa. But certainly the Annunciation as a feast is heard of considerably later than the Nativity. Still later in the year another early feast, already familiar in the time of St. Augustine (Serm., 307–308), meets us in the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. On 25 March, the Fathers calculated, St. Elizabeth had already been six months with child; its birth accordingly would have taken place exactly three months later. Neither does the 24th of June (instead of 25th) assigned to the Nativity of the Baptist present any difficulty, for in the Roman way of counting both 25 March and 24 June are equally octavo kalendas, the eighth day before the kalends of the next month. Yet another feast, the Conception of the Baptist, found in the Greek Church and in certain Carlovingian calendars on 24 September, hardly needs mention. It is chiefly interesting to us as paving the way for the feast of the Conception of Our Lady and hence for that also of her Immaculate Conception.

Saints' Days.—Another, and that the most substantial, element in the formation of the calendar is the record of the birthdays of the saints. It must be remembered that this word birthday (, natalis) had come to mean little more than commemoration. Already, before the Christian Era, various royal personages who were deified after death commonly had their "birthdays" kept as festivals; but it is very doubtful whether these really represented the day upon which they were born into this world (see Rohde, Psyche, 3d ed., I, 235). Hence we are not so surprised at a later period to meet in Christian liturgical books such phrases as natalis calicis as a designation for the feast of Maunday Thursday, or natalis episcopi, which seems to mean the day of a bishop's consecration. Anyhow, there can be no doubt that