Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 7.djvu/748

 IMMACULATE

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IMMACULATE

with considerable solemnity. The existing evidence goes to show that the establishment of the feast in England was due to the monks of Winchester before the Conquest (1066).

The Normans on their arrival in England were disposed to treat in a contemptuous fashion English liturgical observances; to them this feast must have appeared specifically English, a product of insular simplicity and ignorance. Doubtless its public cele- bration was abolished at Winchester and Canterbury, but it did not die out of the hearts of individuals, and on the first favourable opportunity the feast was restored in the monasteries (Bishop, p. 30). At Canterbury, however, it was not re-established before 1328. Several documents (Ullathorne, 161 sq.) state that in Norman times it began at Ramsey, pursuant to a vision vouchsafed to Helsin or jEthelsige, Abbot of Ramsey, on his journey back from Denmark, whither he had been sent by WiUiam I about 1070. An angel appeareil to him during a severe gale and saved the ship after the abbot had promised to estab- lish the Feast of the Conception in his monastery. However we may consiilpr the supernatural feature of the legend, it must be admitted that the sending of Helsin to Denmark is an historical fact (Thurston in "Month", July 1904; Ullathorne, p. 164). The account of the vision has found its way into many breviaries, even into the Roman Breviary of 147.'i. The Council of Canterbury (1328) attributes the re-establishment of the feast in England toSt. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1109). But although this great doctor ^vrote a special treatise, " De Con- ceptu virginal! et original! peccato", by which he laid down the principles of the Immaculate Conception, it is certain tliat he did not introduce the feast anywhere. The letter ascribed to him, which contains the Helsin narrative, is spurious (Bishop, p. S). The principal propagator of the feast after the Conquest was Anselm, the nephew of St. Anselm. He was educated at Canterbury where he may have known some Saxon monks who remembered the solemnity in former days; after 1109 he was for a time .-Vbbot of St. Sabas at Rome, where the Divine Offices were celebrated according to the Greek calendar. When in 1121 he was appointed Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's he es- tablished the feast there; partly at least through his efforts other monasteries also adopted it, like Reading, St. Albans, Worcester, Gloucester, and Winchcombe (Bishop, 32).

But a number of others decried its observance as hitherto unheard of and absurd, the old Oriental feast being unknown to them. Two bishops, Roger of Salisbury antl Bernard of St. Davids, declared that the festival was forbidden by a council, and that the observance must be stopped. And when, during the vacancy of the See of London, Osbert de Clare, Prior of Westminster, undertook to introduce the feast at Westminster (8 December, 1127), a number of monks arose against him in the choir and said that the feast must not be kept, for its establishment had not the authority of Rome (cf. Osbert's letter to Anselm in Bishop, p. 24). Whereupon the matter was brought before the Council of London in 1129. The synod tiecided in favour of the feast, and Bishop Ciilbert of London adopted it for his diocese. Thereafter the feast spread in England, but for a time retained its private character, the Sj-nod of Oxford (1222) having refused to raise it to the rank of a holiday of obliga- tion. In Normandy at the time of Bishop Rotric (116.5-83) the Conception of Mary, in the Archdiocese of Rouen and its six suffragan dioceses, was a feast of precept equal in dignity to the Annunciation. .Vt the same time the Norman students at the University of Paris cho.^e it .as their patronal feast. Owing to the close connexion of Normandy with England, it may have been imported from the latter country into Nor- piandy, or the Norman barons and clergy may have

brought it home from their wars in Lower Italy, where it was universally solemnized by the Greek inhabit- ants. During the Middle Ages the Feast of the Con- ception of Mary was commonly called the " Feast of the Norman nation", which shows that it was cele- brated in Normandy with great splendour and that it spread from there over Western Europe. Passaglia contends (III, 1755) that the feast was celebrated in Spain in the seventh century; Bishop LHlathorne also (p. 161) finds this opinion acceptable. If this be true, it is difficult to understand why it should have entirely disappeared from Spain later on, for neither does the genuine Mozarabic Liturgy contain it, nor the tenth century calendar of Toledo edited by Morln (Kellner, op. cit., p. 254). The two proofs given by Passaglia are futile: the life of St. Isidore, falsely attributed to St. Ildcphonsus, which mentions the feast, is interpo- lated, while, in the Visigoth lawbook, the expression "Conceptio S. Marise" is to be understood of the Annunciation.

The Controversy. — No controversy arose over the Immaculate Conception on the European continent before the twelfth century. The Norman clergy abolished the feast in some monasteries of England where it had been established by the Anglo-Saxon monks. But towards the end of the eleventh century, through the efforts of Anselm the Younger, it was taken up again in several Anglo-Norman establish- ments. That St. Anselm the Elder re-established the feast in England is highly improbable, although it was not new to him. He had been made familiar with it as well by the Saxon monks of Canterlsury, as by the Greeks with whom he came in contact during his exile in Campania and Apuha (1098-9). The treatise " De Conceptu virginali", usually ascribed to him, was composed by his friend and disciple, the Saxon monk Eadmer of Canterbury (Kellner, op. cit., 446). When the canons of the cathedral of Lyons, who no doubt knew Anselm the Younger, Abbot of Bury St. Ed- mund's, personally introduced the feast into their choir, after the death of their bishop in 1240, St. Bernard deemed it his duty to publish a protest against this new way of honouring Mary. He addressed to the canons a vehement letter (Epist. cLx-xiv), in which he reproved them for taking the step upon their own authority and before they had consulted the Holy See. Not knowing that the feast had been celebrated with the rich tradition of the Greek and Syrian Churches regarding the sinlessness of Mary, he asserted that the feast was foreign to the old tradition of the Church. Yet it is evident from the tenor of his language that he had in mind only the active conception or the forma- tion of the flesh, and that the distmction between the active conception, the formation of the body, and its animation by the soul had not yet been drawn. No doubt, when the feast was introduced in England and Normandy, the axiom " decuit, potuit, ergo fecit", the childlike piety and enthusiasm of the simplices build- ing upon revelations and apocryphal legends, had the upper hand. The object of the feast was not clearly determined, no positive theological reasons had been placed in evidence.

St. Bernard was perfectly justified when he de- manded a careful inquiry into the reasons for observ- ing the feast. Not adverting to the possibility of sanctification at the time of the infusion of the soul, he writes that there can be question only of a sanctifi- cation after conception, which would render holy the nativity not the conception itself (Scheeben, " Dog- matik". III, p. 550). Hence Albert the Great ol> serves: "We say that the Blessed Virgin was not sanctified before animation, and the affirmative con- trary to this is the heresy condemned by St. Bernard in his epistle to the canons of Lyons" (III Sent., dist. iii. p. I, ad 1, Q. i). St. Bernard was at once an- swered in a treatise T\Titten by either Ricliard of St. Victor or Peter Comestor. Iij this treatise appeal is