Chapter VI

FESTIVALS OF THE APOSTLES, THE EVANGELISTS, AND OF OTHER PERSONS NAMED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. OCTAVES AND VIGILS

In the Greek Church there has continued to the present day a Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles on the day following St Peter and St Paul (June 29); and in the West we find a commemoration of all the Apostles, connected with the festival of St Peter and St Paul, in the Leonine Sacramentary[87]. There is a _Natale Omnium Apostolorum_ with a vigil in the Gelasian Sacramentary. This festival may have preceded all separate commemorations. It would seem to have been observed close to the date of St Peter and St Paul.

With certain notable exceptions, feasts of the New Testament Saints came but slowly into the cycle of Christian solemnities. With some exceptions, more or less doubtful, there is no reason to think that the days of the deaths of the Apostles were known to those who gave them places in the Kalendars. It is highly probable in some cases, and not improbable in others, that the dates assigned for the festivals really mark some deposition or translation of the supposed relics of those commemorated, or the dedication of some church named in their honour. Considerations of the space at our disposal demand that the subject should be only lightly touched; but references are given to easily accessible works. And we deal only with the more notable festivals, or festivals of early appearance.

=St Peter and St Paul= (June 29). There is no question that at an early date this festival was celebrated at Rome. The belief was entertained by several ancient writers that these two Saints suffered death upon the same day of the month, but in different years.

We have seen already (p. 33 f.) that in the East at an early date there was a commemoration of St Peter in close connexion with the commemoration of the Lord’s Nativity. But at Rome in the earliest Western Kalendar (the Bucherian) we find two festivals that deserve consideration: (1) _Natale Petri de Cathedra_ at Feb. 22; and (2) _Petri in Catacumbas et Pauli Os[t]iense_, at June 29, to which are added the words, _Tusco et Basso Coss_. To deal first with the latter entry; as the consulate of Tuscus and Bassus marks A.D. 258, it has been not unnaturally conjectured that the record marks the date of some translation of the Apostles’ relics. But that conjecture does not absolutely exclude the supposition that the day chosen for the translation was the day which was believed to have been the day of their martyrdom. The translation, as Bishop Pearson[88] long ago supposed, was the removal, perhaps with a view to safety, of the remains to a place at the third milestone on the Appian Way, called ‘Ad Catacumbas,’ during the heat of the persecution under Valerian.

The observance of a commemoration of St Paul on June 30 (still so marked in the Roman Kalendar), has been accounted for by the fact that the bishop of Rome celebrating mass first at the tomb of St Peter, and afterwards on the same day having to go a long distance to the tomb of St Paul, there to celebrate again, it was arranged to observe the festival of St Paul on the day after June 29, with a view to avoiding the fatigue and inconvenience of the two functions on the one day.

=Cathedra Petri.= The entry cited above from the Bucherian Kalendar, _Natale Petri de cathedra_, ‘the Festival of Peter of the Chair,’ looks very like the record of the dedication of a church, where perhaps a seated statue of the Apostle was placed[89]. We are at once reminded of the large seated figure of Hippolytus discovered in 1551 on the Via Tiburtina. Or, as De Rossi supposes, the festival may have had to do with the actual wooden chair (as was supposed) which St Peter had used, and of which we hear in the time of Gregory the Great. But, whatever may have been the origin of the festival, it came at a later time to be regarded as marking the date of the beginning of St Peter’s episcopate; and there is some evidence that the festival was made much of as a Christian set off against the popular pagan solemnity of _Cara cognatio_ on Feb. 22, when the dead members of each family were commemorated.

Duchesne asserts, with something of undue confidence, that this was without doubt the ground for the selection of the date Feb. 22 for the Christian festival; but without committing ourselves to the acceptance of Duchesne’s view, we may say that it may well have been a reason why efforts were made to draw off the faithful, by means of the Christian solemnity, from the temptation to join in rites incompatible with their profession. The festival was unknown in the East, and, what is more remarkable, equally unknown in the Church of North Africa; but it appeared early in Gaul, and, as has been conjectured, with a view to prevent the festival falling, as would occasionally happen, in Lent, the date was pushed back to Jan. 18. At Rome it continued to be observed on Feb. 22.

It would seem to have been due to the anxiety of the early mediaeval Kalendar-makers and Martyrologists to comprehend in their lists everything in the way of church solemnities recorded in any Kalendar that we have the invention of St Peter’s Chair at Antioch. They found some Kalendars marking _Cathedra Petri_ at Jan. 18, and others at Feb. 22. Might not, they would argue, these double dates be accounted for by the old accounts that St Peter had exercised an episcopate at Antioch before he came to Rome?

Venerable Bede does not mark any Festival of St Peter’s Chair at Jan. 18, but at Feb. 22 writes ‘Apud Antiochiam Cathedra S. Petri.’ But in the Martyrology, known as _Gellonense_ (circ. 800), and in Usuard’s Martyrology we find at Jan. 18, ‘Cathedrae S. Petri Apostoli quâ Romae primo sedit,’ and at Feb. 22 ‘Cathedrae S. Petri Apostoli quâ sedit apud Antiochiam’ (_Gellonense_), ‘Apud Antiochiam Cathedrae S. Petri’ (_Usuard_). There continued to be a variety of use in different dioceses as to the day on which ‘St Peter’s Chair’ was celebrated; and it was not till as late as 1558 that Pope Paul IV settled the question by ordering that the feast of the Roman Chair should be observed on Jan. 18, while Gregory XIII restored Feb. 22 as the feast of the Chair at Antioch. This is not the place to discuss whether there was, properly speaking, any episcopate of St Peter at Antioch. It is significant that the churches of Greece and the East knew nothing of the feast of St Peter’s Chair at Antioch[90].

=St Peter ‘ad vincula,’= ‘St Peter’s Chains.’ The Eastern Church celebrates the festival of _St Peter’s Chain_ on Jan. 16; the Latin Church celebrates the corresponding festival on Aug. 1. Both festivals not improbably had their origins in the dedication of churches, where what were supposed to be a chain or chains which had bound Peter were preserved. The plural, ‘chains,’ in the Roman name is significant, and will be understood by reference to the 4th and 5th Lections for the feast in the Roman Breviary. The feast does not appear in Western Kalendars till the eighth century.

The seventeenth century building, S. Pietro in Vincoli, on the Esquiline, occupies the site of the church of the Apostles, reconstructed at the expense of the imperial family between A.D. 432 and A.D. 440, where the precious relics were deposited.

In connexion with this feast attention should be called to the fact that in the so-called Hieronymian Martyrology at Aug. 1, we find no reference to the chains, but there is the particularly interesting entry: ‘At Rome, dedication of the first church both constructed and consecrated by blessed Peter the Apostle[91].’

=St Andrew= (Nov. 30). The Martyrologies agree in giving Nov. 30 as the day of the martyrdom. The festival appeared early at Rome, and was given a place of high dignity[92]. In fact there is authority for the feast being kept at Rome in early times with no less solemnity than St Peter’s Day. It will be remembered that in the prayer _Libera nos_ in the Canon of the Mass Andrew is named together with Peter and Paul. The Sacramentary of St Leo has four sets of ‘propers’ for masses on this festival. It is a day of much importance in the Greek Church, as St Andrew, the Protoclete, is reckoned the apostle of Greece. St Andrew is the patron of the Russian Church[93]. Relics of St Andrew, said to have been brought by a monk named Regulus from Patras to Scotland, gave the name of St Andrew to the place in Fife previously known as Kilrymont; and St Andrew became the patron saint of Scotland. In the Aberdeen Breviary his day is a ‘greater double.’

Bishop Wordsworth remarks that St Andrew’s Day ‘is perhaps the only festival of an Apostle claiming to be really on the anniversary of his death.’ Nov. 30 is given as the day of his martyrdom in the apocryphal _Acta Andreae_, describing his death at Patras[94].

=St James the Great= (July 25), the son of Zebedee, does not appear very early. The day is not noticed in either the Leonine or the Gelasian Sacramentary, and made its way to general acceptance but slowly. In the canons of the Council of Oxford (A.D. 1222) it does not appear among the chief festivals for general observance in England, although in England it was certainly a _festum chori_ long before that date.

It would seem (Acts xii. 2, 3) that the death of James took place about the time of the Paschal commemoration; the Coptic Kalendar marks St James’s day on April 12, and the Syrian lectionary of Antioch on April 30, on which day also the Greek Church keeps a festival of St James, using for the Epistle Acts xii. 1, etc. The placing of the festival in the West so far from Easter as July 25, suggests that the latter date was connected with some translation of relics, or such like.

As we have already seen (p. 16) the ancient Syriac Kalendar edited originally by Wright, commemorates James together with his brother John on Dec. 27.

=St John, Apostle and Evangelist.= The principal festival on Dec. 27 is found in the fourth century in the East, where he was conjoined with James. Traces of this conjunction are to be found in the West. It is interesting to find in the Gothic Missal, printed by Muratori, a mass for the Natale of the Apostles James and John placed between St Stephen and Holy Innocents. And in the Hieronymian Martyrology we find at Dec. 27 ‘the ordination to the episcopate of St James, the Lord’s brother [a confusion], and the assumption of St John, the Evangelist, at Ephesus.’

The Greek Church commemorates the _metastasis_, or migration of John, on Sept. 26, and an important festival in honour of the holy dust (called _manna_) from his tomb at Ephesus on May 8.

=St John before the Latin gate= (May 6). The story of the caldron of boiling oil is as old as Tertullian (_de Praescript._ c. 36). But of the festival there is no notice before the closing years of the eighth century. The day of the month probably marks the date of the dedication of a church near the Latin gate[95]. It is characteristically a Western festival. In the Roman rite it was, about the thirteenth century, a semi-double: it was made a double by Pius V (1566-1572), and a greater double by Clement VIII (1592-1605).

=St Matthew= (Sept. 21): in the Greek, Russian, Syrian and Armenian Churches, Nov. 16: in the Egyptian and Ethiopic Kalendars of Ludolf, Oct. 9. The festival of Sept. 21 is certainly late in appearing. It is wanting in the Leonine, Gelasian, and Gallican Sacramentaries, and in Muratori’s edition of the Gregorian. It is found, however, generally in the martyrologies, which fact, of course, does not necessarily imply that there was any liturgical observance of the day[96].

=St Luke= (Oct. 18); and on the same day generally in the East. The day perhaps marks a translation of relics in the East, as is stated in the so-called Hieronymian Martyrology. St Luke does not appear in the older Sacramentaries; but in some manuscripts of the Gregorian we find a proper preface for St Luke on v Kal. Nov. (Oct. 28).

=St Mark= (April 25): on the same day in the East. The day is of late appearance, not perhaps before the ninth century. The great processional litanies on April 25 appear at Rome long before St Mark’s name was attached to the day. In their origin these litanies were distinctively Roman.

=St Philip and St James= (May 1). This was the day of the dedication of a church at Rome in their honour in the second half of the sixth century. The word _natale_ is applied at a later time to the day; which may have been in error, or, as can be proved by many examples, the word _natale_ came to be used loosely as equivalent to festival or commemoration. In the Greek Church St James, ‘the brother of God,’ is commemorated on Oct. 23, and St Philip, ‘one of the twelve,’ on Nov. 14. The Greeks celebrate Philip, the deacon, on Oct. 11, and he appears in Usuard’s Martyrology at June 6.

Why Philip and James should be associated we know not. The deposition of relics of both at the time of the dedication of the church at Rome may perhaps account for the conjunction of the names.

=St Simon and St Jude= (Oct. 28). Legend associates these two Apostles as having together laboured for thirteen years in Persia, and as there dying martyrs’ deaths. In the Sacramentaries they do not appear till they are found in a late form of the Gregorian. In the East the commemoration of these Apostles is divided and a day assigned to each. In the Greek Church Simon Zelotes appears at May 10, and Judas (Thaddaeus) at June 19.

=St Thomas, Apostle and Martyr= (Dec. 21); his Translation is marked at July 3 in the West. In the Greek Church St Thomas is commemorated on Oct. 6, a day also observed by the Syrians, who add a translation on July 3. In the fourth century there was a magnificent basilica of St Thomas at Edessa, and to this church the remains of the Apostle were translated (from India according to the legend) before the close of the century. St Thomas (at Dec. 21) is not found in the Leonine, and only in some texts of the Gregorian Sacramentary. He appears, however, in the Gelasian.

=St Bartholomew= (Aug. 24); and at Rome on Aug. 25. The Latin churches generally, including that of mediaeval England, observed Aug. 24. The Greek Church commemorates Bartholomew together with Barnabas on June 11, and a translation of the relics of Bartholomew on Aug. 25. In the West the introduction of the feast was late. There is no trace of it in the early forms of the great Sacramentaries[97].

=St John the Baptist, the Nativity= (June 24); so too in the Greek Church. The date was doubtless assigned on the strength of the inference drawn from the Gospels, that the birth of the baptist preceded that of the Saviour by six months. It appeared early, and was a recognised day in the time of St Augustine[98]. It has its masses in the Sacramentaries from the Leonine downwards.

=The Decollation of St John the Baptist= (generally Aug. 29). This festival is also early, but, so far as evidence goes, not so early as the Nativity[99]. It was known in Gaul before it was adopted at Rome. The Greek churches celebrate the day on Aug. 29[100].

=The Conversion of St Paul= (Jan. 25), was of late introduction. It does not appear in the correct text of Bede’s Martyrology, and in only late texts of the Gregorian Sacramentary. There is reason for believing that the day was first observed to mark the translation of relics of St Paul at Rome, for so it appears in the Hieronymian Martyrology, and the period of transition seems to be marked in the Martyrology of Rabanus Maurus (ninth century), where we find at Jan. 25, ‘Translation and Conversion of St Paul.’ It is not found in England in the Pontifical of Egbert, Archbishop of York (A.D. 732-766), but it appears in the Leofric Missal, in the second half of the eleventh century. It is unknown in the Greek Church.

=St Mary Magdalene= (July 22), who is identified in the West with the woman who was a sinner, and with Mary the sister of Lazarus, is distinguished from each of these in the Greek service-books which also mark her festival on July 22. Among the Easterns she is thought of as ‘the holy myrrh-bearer,’ one of the women who brought the spices to the tomb of the Lord. In various places in the West, though not at Rome, the day was a day of obligation in the middle ages. It appears in some service-books in the tenth and eleventh centuries, but not in missals, _secundum consuetudinem Romanae curiae_, till the thirteenth[101].

There was a festival of St Mary Magdalene (July 22) in the English Prayer Book of 1549. The collect and gospel (Luke vii. 36 to the end of the chapter) show that no English Reformers identified the Magdalene with the woman who was a sinner. The festival disappears in the Prayer Book of 1552.

=St Barnabas, the Apostle= (June 11). The Greeks commemorate on this day ‘Bartholomew and Barnabas, Apostles.’ The festival probably marks the supposed finding of the body of Barnabas (having a copy of St Matthew’s Gospel in his hand) in the island of Cyprus in the fifth century. Barnabas is not found at June 11 in the so-called Hieronymian Martyrology; nor in the Martyrology known as _Gellonense_, but it is noted in Bede (though there is some doubt whether the entry is not due to Florus), and in the later Martyrologies.

The Greek Church commemorates (many of them with proper names attached) the seventy disciples of Luke x. 1, called in the service-books ‘apostles.’

=Octaves.= The word Octave is used sometimes for the eighth day after a festival, sometimes (in later documents) for the space of eight days which follow the festival. It may be regarded as an echo or prolongation of the festival. In the Eastern Church what is known as the _Apodosis_ (see p. 135) in a measure corresponds to the Western Octave. It has not unreasonably been conjectured that they owe their origin to an imitation of the festal practices of the Hebrews (Levit. xxiii. 6; Num. xxviii. 17; Deut. xvi. 3). Octaves were originally few: they appear first in connexion with Easter and Pentecost, and, occasionally, with the Epiphany. In the eighth and ninth centuries Octaves became more numerous. Yet in the Corbie Kalendar (A.D. 826), assuming that the movable feasts of Easter and Pentecost had their Octaves, we find in addition only the Octaves of Christmas, Epiphany, Peter and Paul, Lawrence and Andrew. This falls in well with what is said by Amalarius (about the same date) who, after noticing the Octaves of Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost, adds, ‘We are accustomed to celebrate the Octaves of the _natalitia_ of some saints, that is, of those whose festivals are esteemed as more illustrious amongst us’ (_De ecclesiasticis officiis_, iv. 36). At Rome we find St Agnes having an Octave (Jan. 28) at a date earlier than that with which we have been dealing[102]; and even to-day in the Roman Missal and Breviary there is an interesting survival in the persistence of the old name, _Agnetis secundo_, and of ‘propers’ for the day. Liturgically, the ancient practice in the West was to insert a simple commemoration on the eighth day of festivals.

The prolongation of a festival for eight days may be found illustrated by the practice of the Church at Jerusalem in the fourth century, as recounted by ‘Silvia’ in her descriptions of the Epiphany, the Pascha, and the feast of the dedication of the churches known as the Martyrium and the Church of the Resurrection.

The great multiplication of Octaves in mediaeval times has been attributed to the influence of the Franciscans, who in the language of Kellner ‘provided an inordinate number of Octaves in their Breviary, and observed each day of the Octave with the rite of a _festum duplex_[103].’

The somewhat elaborate rules with respect to Octaves and their relation to the observance of other festivals, as enjoined in the modern Roman rite, can be found in such technical works as those of Gavantus and Ferraris. It must suffice here to observe that within the Octaves of Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, the Epiphany, and Corpus Christi, Votive and Requiem masses are prohibited.

=Vigils.= The origin of vigils is obscure. The proper service of each Lord’s Day was preceded in early times by what may be regarded as something like a vigil, a service before the dawn of day; and some think that this view may be deduced from Pliny’s well-known letter to Trajan. But in this there would seem, perhaps, to be a reading into the document of more than its contents warrant. However this may be, we find as early as Tertullian that there were among Christians ‘nocturnae convocationes,’ the solemnities of the Pascha being more particularly referred to[104]. The exact nature and object of these assemblies are not described. Evidence is more full at a later date for vigils of some kind, not only before the Lord’s Day but also before the Sabbath[105]. At the period when ‘Silvia’ visited Jerusalem the faithful seem to have engaged in services before the dawn on every Lord’s Day. And in Gaul in the fifth century, as we gather from Sidonius Apollinaris[106], the vigils were not all night-watches but services before day-break. About a century later than Tertullian, we find the Council of Elvira, near Granada, some time in the first quarter of the fourth century, enacting a canon (35), declaring that women should not spend the night-watches (_pervigilent_) in cemeteries, ‘because often under the pretext of prayer they secretly commit serious offences (_scelera_).’ There is no further explanation; and the probable conjecture has been offered that it may have been the practice to have vigils in the cemeteries on the night before the oblation was offered at the tomb of one of the martyrs. That there was in Spain at this date some kind of service in the cemeteries seems not improbable from the fact that the canon immediately preceding that which we have noticed forbids the lighting of wax tapers in cemeteries in the day time.

By the end of the fourth century, there is ample evidence for the observance of nocturnal or early morning vigils before the greater festivals in both East and West. Early in the fifth century Vigilantius protested against the scandals which arose from the nocturnal watchings in the basilicas, and for this, among other assaults upon the current abuses and superstitions of the time, he drew upon himself the violent and coarse invective of Jerome. Yet Jerome himself may be quoted for the fact that there were moral dangers attending these nocturnal vigils, for while advising the lady Laeta to inure her daughter, the younger Paula, to days of vigil and solemn pernoctations, he warns her that she should keep the girl close by her side[107]. To Pope Boniface I (A.D. 418-422) has been attributed the prohibition of nocturnal vigils in the Roman cemeteries.

With regard to the Paschal Vigil, Jerome expresses the opinion that it originated in the belief that Christ would come again in the night of the Pascha[108].

In process of time, the day before the feast (_dies profestus_) assumed the name of vigil, and was in the West commonly, though not universally, associated with a fast. Mediaeval ritualists, such as Honorius of Autun (who died a little after A.D. 1130), connect the change with the popular abuses of the nocturnal vigils.

There is an interesting letter of Innocent III (about A.D. 1213), laying down the rule in the Roman Church, which still prevails. The vigils of the Apostles are to be observed as fasts, with the exception of St John the Evangelist and St Philip and St James, the former occurring in the season of Christmas, and the latter in that of Easter[109]. Beside the vigils of the Apostles, the vigils of Christmas and the Assumption are fasts _de jure_, and by custom the vigils of Pentecost, the Nativity of the Baptist, St Lawrence, and All Saints. These rules were often locally modified by papal indults.