Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/747

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IMMACULATE

granted to the prophet Jeremias and to St. John the Baptist. They were sanctified in their mother's womb, because by their preaching they had a special share in the work of preparing the way for Christ. Consequently some much higher prerogative is due to Mary. (.\ treatise of P. Marchant, claiming for St. Joseph also the privilege of St. John, was placed on the Index in 1633.) Scotus says that "the perfect Me- diator must, in some one case, have done the work of mediation most perfectly, which would not be unless there was some one person at least, in whose regard the wrath of God was anticipated and not merely appeased" (Hunter, " Dogm. Theol.", 1895, II, 552).

The Feast. — The older feast of the Conception of Mary (Cone, of St. Anne), which originated in the monasteries of Palestine at least as early as the sev- enth century, and the modern feast of the Immac- ulate Conception are not identical in their object. Originally the Church only celebrated the Feast of the Conception of Mary, as she kept the Feast of St. John's conception, not discussing the sinlessness. This feast in the course of centuries became the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, as dogmatical argumen- tation brought about precise and correct ideas, and as the thesis of the theological schools regarding the preservation of Mary from all stain of original sin gained strength. Even after the dogma had been universally accepted in the Latin Church, and had gained authoritative support through diocesan de- crees and papal decisions, the okl term remained, and before 185-1 the term " Immaculata Conceptio" is nowhere found in the liturgical books, except in the invitatorium of the Votive Office of the Conception. The Greeks, Syrians, etc. call it the Conception of St. Anne (Si5X\t;^is rijs d7£as Kal dcoiTpOfi-^Topoi AvvtjSj " the Conception of St. Anne, the ancestress of God "). Pas- saglia in his " De Immaculato Deiparae Conceptu", basing his opinion upon the "Typicon" of St. Sabas, which was substantially composed in the fifth century, believes that the reference to the feast forms part of the authentic original, and that consequently it was cele- brated in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem in the fifth century (III, n. 1604). But the Typicon was inter- polated by the Damascene, Sophronius, and others, and, from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, many new feasts and offices were added (Toscani antl Cozza, op. cit. infra, XIV, 20). To determine the origin of this feast we must take into account the genuine docu- ments we possess, the oldest of which is the canon of the feast, composed by St. Andrew of Crete, who wrote his liturgical hymns in the second half of the seventh century, when a monk at the monastery of St. Salias near Jerusalem (d. Archbishop of Crete aljout 720). But the solemnity cannot then have been generally accepted throughout the Orient, for John, first monk and later bishop in the Isle of Euboea, aliout 750 in a sermon, speaking in favour of the propagation of this feast, says that it was not yet known to all the faith- ful ("' Kal nr] Trapa roh iracn yvoipl^eraL; De Meester, p. 7; Migne, P. G., XCVI, 1499). But a century later George of Nicomedia, made metropolitan by Photius in 860, could say that the solemnity was not of recent origin (P. G., C, 1335). It is therefore, safe to affirm that the feast of the Conception of St. Anne appears in the Orient not earlier than the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century. Allatius (Dissert, de lib. eccl. Graic, p. 44), Assemani (Kal. utr. eccl., V, 435), Kellner (Heortology, 242), Nilles (Kal. man., I, 349) hold this opinion.

As in other cases of the same kind the feast orig- inated in the monastic communities. The monks, who arranged the psalmody and composed the va- rious poetical pieces for the office, also selected the date, 9 December, which was always retained in the Oriental calendars. Gradually the solemnity emerged from the cloister, entered into the cathedrals, was glorified by preachers and poets, and eventually

became a fixed feast of the calendar, approved by Church and State. It is registered in the Calendar of Basil II (976-1025), and by the Constitution of Emperor Manuel I Comnenus on the days of the year which are half or entire holidays, promulgated in 1166, it is numbered among the days which have full sabbath rest. Up to the time of Basil II, Lower Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia still belonged to the By- zantine Empire ; the city of Naples was not lost to the Greeks until 1127, when Roger II conquered the city. The influence of Constantinople was consequently strong in the Neapolitan Church, and, as early as the ninth century, the Feast of the Conception was doubt- lessly kept there, as elsewhere in Lower Italy on 9 December, as indeed appears from the marble calen- dar found in 1742 in the Church of S. Giorgio Mag- giore at Naples (Martinow, "Annus grsco-slavicus ", 9 Dec). To-day the Conception of St. Anne is in the Greek Church one of the minor feasts of the year (De Meester, 5). The lesson in Matins contains allusions to the apocryphal " Proto-evangelium " of St. James, which dates from the second half of the second cen- tury (see Anne, S.unt). To the Orthodox Greeks of our days, however, the feast means very little; they continue to call it "Conception of St. Anne", indicat- ing unintentionally, perhaps, the active conception which was certainly not immaculate. In the Mensea of 9 December this feast holds only the second place, the first canon being sung in commemoration of the dedication of the Church of the Resurrection at Con- stantinople. The Russian hagiographer Muraview and several other orthodox authors even loudly declaimed against the dogma after its promulgation, although their own preachers formerly taught the Immaculate Conception in their WT-itings long before the definition of 18.54 (cf. Martinow, loc. cit.).

In the Western Church the feast appeared (S Dec), when in the Orient its development had come to a standstill. The timid beginnings of the new feast in some Anglo-Saxon monasteries in the eleventh cen- tury, partly smothered by the Norman conquest, were followed by its reception in some chapters and dioceses by the Anglo-Norman clergy. But the at- tempts to introduce it officially provoked contradic- tion and theoretical discussion, bearing upon its le- gitimacy and its meaning, which were continued for centuries and were not definitively settled before 1854. The "Martyrology of Tallaght" compiled about 790 and the "Feilire" of St. Aengus (800) reg- ister the Conception of Mary on 3 May (O'Hanlon, "Lives of the Irish Saints", V, 102; Thurston, "The Irish Origin of Our Lady's Feast of the Conception" in "Month", 1904', p. 61). It is doubtful, however, if an actual feast corresponded to this rubric of the learned monk St. Aengus. This Irish feast certainly stands alone and outside the Une of liturgical develop- ment. It is a mere isolated appearance, not a living germ (E. Bishop, " Origin etc.", p. 6). The Scholiast adds, in the lower margin of the "Feilire", that the conception (Inceptio) took place in February, since Mary was born after seven months — a singular notion found also in some Greek authors. The first definite and reliable knowledge of the feast in the West comes from England; it is found in a calendar of Old Min- ster, Winchester (Conceptio S 'ce Dei Genetricis Maria?), dating from about 1030, and in another calendar of New Minster, Winchester, wTitten be- tween 1035 and 1059 (Hampson, "Cal. medii ^vi", I, 433, 446): a pontifical of Exeter of the eleventh century (assigned to 1046-1072) contains a " liene- dictio in Conceptione S. Mariae"; a similar benediction is found in a Canterbury pontifical written probably in the first half of the eleventh century, certainly before the Conquest. These episcopal benedictions show that the feast not only commended itself to the devotion of individuals, but that it was recognized by authority and was observed by the Saxon monks