Chapter III

THE LORD’S NATIVITY: THE EPIPHANY: THE FESTIVALS WHICH IN EARLY TIMES FOLLOWED IMMEDIATELY ON THE NATIVITY

It is certain that the assigning of the birth of the Lord to Dec. 25 appears first in the West; and it is not till the last quarter of the fourth century that we find it becoming established in some parts of the East. St Chrysostom in a homily delivered in A.D. 386 distinctly relates that it was about ten years earlier the festival of Dec. 25 came to be observed at Antioch, and that the festival had been observed in the West from early times (ἄνωθεν)[41]. At Constantinople the festival was kept on Dec. 25, apparently for the first time, in A.D. 379 or 380; and about the same time it appears in Cappadocia, as we learn from the funeral oration on Basil the Great pronounced by his brother, Gregory of Nyssa. At Alexandria this date was adopted before A.D. 432. At Jerusalem, however, the Nativity was observed on Jan. 6 not only in the time of the _Pilgrimage_ of ‘Silvia,’ but, if we may credit the Egyptian monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, even as late as at the middle of the sixth century. This writer relates that the people of Jerusalem, arguing from Luke iii. 23 (where, as he interprets the passage, Jesus is said to be _beginning_ to be thirty years of age at His baptism) celebrated the Nativity together with the Baptism on Jan. 6[42].

But when did the observance of Dec. 25 make its appearance in the West? It must have been a well-marked festival at Rome when it appeared in the Bucherian Kalendar in A.D. 336 (see p. 15). And about one hundred years earlier (as we learn from his commentaries on Daniel) Hippolytus was led to infer, partly from a belief (however it originated) that the Incarnation took place at the Passover, and partly by a process of calculation with the help of his cycle, that the actual Incarnation took place on March 25 in the year of the world 5500 (or B.C. 3), and consequently the Nativity on Dec. 25[43].

The Bishop of Salisbury (J. Wordsworth) offers an ingenious conjecture which may possibly point to the early Eastern practice of commemorating the Nativity on Jan. 6 having originated in a similar way. Sozomen, the historian, writing in the fifth century, states that the Montanists always celebrated the pascha on the eighth day before the Ides of April (_i.e._ April 6), if it fell on a Sunday, otherwise on the following Sunday (_H.E._ vii. 18). The Bishop thinks that the belief that April 6 was the proper day of the pascha ‘may probably have been an opinion quite unconnected with their [the Montanists’] sect.’ But he rightly admits that ‘actual facts are not yet forthcoming[44].’

Conjectures of this kind, though at present unsupported, are well worth remembering, if for no other reason, because students of early Christian literature are thus put on the alert to note any testimonies which make for, or else go to invalidate, the suggestion offered. I may add that the Montanist notion, as recorded by Sozomen, that the creation of the sun in the heavens took place on April 6, is of a kind that would well fall in, among fanciful speculators, with the notion that the Incarnation also took place on the same day[45].

Why this time of the year, late in December or early in January, was assigned for the Nativity is a question which it is not possible to answer with confidence. It is conceivable that the insecure and blundering argument alleged, among others, by Chrysostom may have had weight. He supposes that Zacharias, the father of the Baptist, was the High Priest, and that he had entered the Holy of Holies on the day of Atonement when the angel appeared to him. The day of Atonement was in September. Six months later (Luke i. 26) the Annunciation was made to St Mary; and after nine months the Saviour was born.

By others it has been suggested that the festival of Christmas on Dec. 25 did not originate in any such calculations; but was suggested by the pagan festival _Natalis Solis Invicti_ marked at that day. The solstice was passed. The sun was entering on its new increases. ‘The Light of the world,’ ‘the Sun of righteousness’ was to take the place of the sun-god in the heavens[46].

The Theophany, or Epiphany (Jan. 6), is, like its name, as characteristically Eastern in its origin as the feast of the Nativity (Dec. 25) is Western; but when it passed into the West it was in thought, either at the outset or certainly soon, separated from the Nativity; and eventually, while the baptism of Christ was not ignored, the main stress of liturgical allusion was on the visit of the Magi, so that the festival is not uncommonly designated simply as the feast of the Three Kings. In the East the dominant thought is the manifestation of Christ’s divinity at his baptism: and in the Basilian Menology the day is simply named ‘The Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ And it is to this connexion, baptism among the Greeks being known as ‘illumination,’ that has been attributed another name for the day, ‘the lights’ (τὰ φῶτα)[47].

It is not improbable that the feast of the Epiphany made its way to the West, through the churches of Southern Gaul, whose affinities with the East are recognised facts of history. At all events it is in connexion with Gaul that we find the first reference to the Epiphany in the West. The pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus, in his account of the Emperor Julian in A.D. 361 visiting a Christian church at Vienne, says that it happened on the day in the month of January which Christians call ‘Epiphania’ (_Hist._ xxi. 2).

The Epiphany was observed in the African Church by the orthodox in the time of Augustine, but he tells us that the Donatists did not observe it, ‘because they love not unity, nor do they communicate with the Eastern Church.’ The latter expression falls in with the supposition that the West derived the festival from the East. In the ancient Kalendar called the Kalendar of Carthage (unfortunately of uncertain date) we find at Jan. 6 the entry ‘Sanctum Epefania’ (_sic_). In Spain, as we learn from the canons of the Council of Saragossa (can. 4), the festival was recognised as a considerable commemoration before A.D. 380. For Rome, we have to note the silence of the Bucherian Kalendar; but for the fifth century we have the testimony of Pope Leo, and we possess no fewer than eight sermons of his upon the festival of the Epiphany; in these the manifestation of Christ to the Magi is the truth upon which he chiefly enlarges. Elsewhere in the West we have references to other manifestations of the Deity of Christ, as at His baptism, and His first miracle at Cana. But generally, as in the East the baptism, so in the West the manifestation to the Gentiles is the leading note of preachers or theologians[48].

Among the Armenians the Epiphany is reckoned one of the five chief festivals: it is preceded by a week’s fast, and is followed by an octave. It is by them still reckoned as the day of the Nativity.

_The festivals of the days immediately following Christmas._

We see that in the Gregorian Kalendar the commemorations of St Stephen (Dec. 26), St John the Evangelist (Dec. 27), and Holy Innocents (Dec. 28), in the order with which we are familiar, were already established in the West. And long before the period of the Gregorian Kalendar we have evidence that in some parts of the East before the close of the fourth century a group of festivals commemorating eminent saints of the New Testament were celebrated between the feast of the Nativity and the first of January. Basil the Great died on Jan. 1 A.D. 379; and his brother Gregory of Nyssa delivered the funeral oration at his burial. In this discourse the preacher speaks of a group of feasts preceding the first of January, namely of St Stephen, St Peter, St James and St John, and St Paul. It may with some reason be believed that the dates of these festivals had no relation, real or fancied, to the days of the deaths of these saints of the Church’s beginnings.

As regards St James we know that he was killed at the time
of the Passover, so that the Hieronymian Martyrology makes
the day in December to be the day of his consecration to the
episcopate. Liturgists have said it was becoming that the
King of glory should come into the world accompanied by the
chiefs of his court. And it is not a wholly baseless fancy that
already there was a desire (of which at a later period we have
many illustrations) to connect a great festival with one or
more other commemorations associated with it in thought. The
memories of the age of the martyrs would naturally suggest the
name of the protomartyr; while the relations of the Lord to St
James, St John, and St Peter, and the eminence of St Paul may
perhaps sufficiently account for their appearance here.

There is little doubt that at the close of the fourth century the churches of Asia Minor had festivals of St Stephen on Dec. 26, St James and St John on Dec. 27, and St Peter and St Paul on Dec. 28[49]. And in the West our earliest information shows us St Stephen on Dec. 26; but there are variations as regards the other festivals. The ancient Kalendar of Carthage shows us on Dec. 27 ‘St John _the Baptist_ and James the Apostle, whom Herod slew,’ and Holy Innocents on Dec. 28[50].

The earliest Roman service-books show us only St John on Dec. 27, and he is St John _the Evangelist_[51]. Yet in the so-called Martyrology of St Jerome (which, though interpolated, contains many ancient features), we find at this day, together with ‘the Assumption of St John at Ephesus,’ ‘the ordination to the episcopate of James, the Lord’s brother, who was crowned with martyrdom at the paschal time[52].’ The Holy Innocents (Dec. 28) is known in the Latin books since the sixth century, and may well have been earlier; but Peter and Paul are found together on another day (June 29), the day of their martyrdom at Rome, as was generally assumed. Though we are not able to determine with precision on what day the Innocents of Bethlehem were commemorated in early times, there can be little doubt that there was some commemoration of those whom, as St Augustine says, ‘the Church has received to the honour of the martyrs.’

There are some reasons for conjecturing that the commemoration of the Innocents was at first in association with the Epiphany. In the second half of the fourth century the poet Prudentius has some pretty lines on the Holy Innocents as martyrs in his hymn on the Epiphany[53]. And Leo the Great in more than one of his sermons on the Epiphany has laudatory passages on the martyrdom of the Innocents. Yet in estimating the weight that should attach to such references it should be remembered that Herod’s slaughter of the children at Bethlehem is in the Gospel narrative so closely connected with the visit of the Magi that it would not be unnatural for both poet and preacher to touch on that striking story, although there were no intentional commemoration of the Innocents attached by the Church to that day. In the Byzantine Kalendar the Fourteen Thousand Holy Infants are commemorated on Dec. 29. In the Armenian Kalendar the Fourteen Thousand Innocent Martyrs are commemorated on June 10. It deserves notice that in the Mozarabic Kalendars we find ‘St James the Lord’s Brother’ at Dec. 28; ‘St John Evangelist’ at Dec. 29; and ‘St James the Brother of John’ at Dec. 30.