Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/195

CALENDAR the same word was used, and that from a very early period, to describe the day upon which a martyr suffered death. It is commonly explained as meaning the birthday which introduced him into a new and glorious life in heaven, but we cannot, perhaps, be quite certain that those who first used the term of a Christian martyr had this interpretation consciously present to their minds. We are fortunate, however, in possessing in the contemporary account written from Smyrna of the martyrdom of St. Polycarp (about 145) a clear statement that the Jews and pagans fully anticipated that the Christians would try to recover the martyr's body as a precious treasure to which they might pay cultus, and would institute a birth-feast, his honour. Here, then, we have the most conclusive evidence that the Christians already in the first half of the second century were accustomed to celebrate the feasts of the martyrs. Probably for a long time these celebrations remained almost entirely local. They were confined to the place where the martyr suffered or where a considerable portion of his remains were preserved over which the Holy Sacrifice would be offered. But in the course of time the practice of moving such relics freely from place to place enlarged the circle of the martyr's clients. All the churches that possessed these relics felt entitled to keep his "birthday" with some degree of solemnity, and thus we soon find martyrs from Africa, for example, obtaining recognition in Rome and eventually being honoured by all the Church. This seems to be, in brief, the history of the inclusion of saints' days in the calendar. At first the number of such days was very small, depending generally upon some special local tie, and rigorously limited to those who had shed their blood for Christ. But before very long the names of confessors also began to find a place in the lists, for confessors and bishops were already written in the diptychs and in those days the line between praying to a departed servant of God and praying for him was by no means so clearly defined as it is with us now. This was the process which was already being inaugurated in the fourth century and which has continued ever since.

—As feasts and Saints' days multiplied, it became desirable that some sort of record should be kept of them. We may divide the documents of this kind, roughly speaking, into two categories: Calendars and Martyrologia, both officially recognized by the Church. A calendar in its ecclesiastical sense is simply a list of the feasts kept in any particular church, diocese, or country, arranged in order under their proper dates. A martyrologium was originally, as its name implies, a record of martyrs, but it soon assumed a more general character, extending to all classes of saints and embracing all parts of the world. The entries which are included in a martyrologium are independent of the fact of actual liturgical cultus in any particular place. They follow the same orderly arrangement by months and days which we observe in a calendar, but under each day not one but many names of saints are given, while certain topographical and biographical details are often added. It will, however, be readily understood that it is not always easy to draw a hard and fast line between calendars and martyrologia. They naturally shade into one another. Thus the ancient Irish poem commonly known as the "Calendar of Aengus" is more properly a martyrologium, for a number of names of saints are assigned to each day quite independently of any idea of liturgical cultus. On the other hand, we sometimes find true calendars in the blank spaces of which the names of saints or deceased persons have been inserted whom there was no intention of commemorating in the liturgy. They have thus been partly converted into martyrologies or necrologies. Of early lists of feasts, the most famous and the most important is the information which it preserves, the so called "Philocalian Calendar", hardly deserves to be called by this name. It is, in fact, no more than the commonplace book of a certain Furius Dionysius Philocalus, who seems to have been a Christian interested in all kinds of chronological information and to have compiled this book in 354. There is indeed a calendar in his volume, but this is a table of purely secular and pagan celebrations containing no Christian references of any kind. The value of Philocalus' manuscript to modern scholars lies in two lists headed Depositio Martyrum and Depositio Episcoporum, together with other casual notices. We thus learn that a considerable number of martyrs, including among them Sts. Peter and Paul and several Popes, were honoured in Rome on their own proper days in the middle of the fourth century, while three African martyrs, Sts. Cyprian, Perpetua, and Felicitas, also found a place on the list. The only other fixed feasts which are mentioned are the Nativity of Christ and the feast of St. Peter's Chair (22 Feb.).

Not far removed from the Philocalian document in the witness which it bears to the still present influence of paganism is the "Calendar of Polemius Sylvius" of 448. This presents a medley not unlike a modern almanac. The days are indicated when the Senate sat and when the games were celebrated in the Circus, as also the times of those pagan festivals like the Lupercalia, the Terminalia, etc., which had become in a sense national holidays throughout the empire. But side by side with these we have the mention of certain Christian feasts—Christmas Day, the Epiphany, 22 February (strangely characterized as depositio Petri et Pauli), and four or five other saints' days. Very curious, also, is it to notice in such company the natales of Virgil and of Cicero. Next to this comes a document of the North African Church which is commonly described as the "Calendar of Carthage", and which belongs to the closing years of the sixth century. It presents a considerable array of martyrs, mostly African, but including also some of the more famous of those of Rome, e.g. St. Sixtus, St. Lawrence, St. Clement, St. Agnes, etc., with Sts. Gervasius and Protasius from Milan, St. Agatha from Sicily, St. Vincent from Spain, and St. Felix from Nola in Campania. We also find days assigned to some of the Apostles and to St. John the Baptist, but as yet no feast of Our Lady. Earlier in point of time (c. 410), is a compilation preserved to us in Syriac, of Oriental and Arian origin. It was first published by the English Orientalist, William Wright, and has since been edited by Duchesne and De Rossi in their edition of the "Martyrologium Hieronymianum" (Acta Sanctorum, Nov., vol. II). The Syriac document is chiefly important as witnessing to one of the main sources, direct or indirect, of that famous martyrologium, but it also shows how even in the East a calendar was being formed in the fourth century which took notice of the martyrs of Nicomedia, Antioch, and Alexandria, with even a few Western entries like Sts. Perpetua and Felicitas (7 March), and probably Xystus. Sts. Peter and Paul are commemorated on 28 December, which may be a mere error, Sts. John and James on 27 December, St. Stephen on 26 December, which is still his proper day. The month of December is partly lacking, or we should probably have found the Nativity on 25 December. The Epiphany is mentioned on 6 January.

Closely connected in certain of its aspects with this memorial of the Eastern Church is the so-called "Martyrologium Hieronymianum "already mentioned. This work, which in spite of its name owes nothing directly to St. Jerome, was probably first compiled in Southern Gaul (Duchesne says Auxerre, Bruno Krusch, Autun) between the years 592 and 600, i.e. at the same period that St. Augustine was preaching the Gospel to our Anglo-Saxon forefathers. As a

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