as early as the year 325; for the council of Nice presupposes the existence of this season.' This fast was an imitation of the forty days' fasting of Jesus in the wilderness, which itself was put in typical connection with the forty days' fasting of Moses,' and Elijah,' and the forty years' wandering of Israel through the desert. At first a free-will act, it gradually assumed the character of a fixed custom and ordinance of the church. Respecting the length of the season much difference prevailed, rntil Gregory I. (590–604) fixed the Wednesday of the sixth week before Easter, ASH WEDNESDAY as it is called, as the beginning of it. On this day the priests and the people sprinkled themselves with dust and ashes, in token of their perishableness and their repentance, with the words: "Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and unto dust thou must return; repent, that thou mayest inherit eternal life." During Quadra. gesima criminal trials and criminal punishments, weddings, and sensual amusements were forbidden; solemn, earnest silence was imposed upon public and private life; and works of devotion, penance, and charity were multiplied. Yet much hypocrisy was practised in the fasting; the rich compensating with exquisite dainties the absence of forbidden meats. Chrysostom and Augustine are found already lamenting this abuse. During the days preceding the beginning of Lent, the populace gave themselves up to unrestrained merriment, and this abuse afterward became egitimized in all Catholic countries, especially in Italy (flourishing most in Rome, Venice, and Cologne), in the Carnival.'

1 In its fifth canon, where it orders that provincial councils be held twice a year, before Quadragesima (πpò tâs TEσσAPAKOσTĥs), and in the autumn.

2 Ex. xxxiv. 28.

' 1 Kings xix. 8.

Dies cinerum, caput jejunii, or quadragesima.

From caro and vale; flesh taking its departure for a time in a jubilee of revelLug. According to others, it is the converse: dies quo caro valet; i. e., the day on which it is still allowed to eat flesh and to indulge the flesh. The Carnival, or Shrove-tide, embraces the time from the feast of Epiphany to Ash Wednesday, or, commonly, only the last three or the last eight days preceding Lent. It is celebrated in every city of Italy; in Rome, especially, with masquerades, races, dramatic plays, farces, jokes, and other forms of wild merriment and frantic joy, yet with good humor; replacing the old Roman feasts of Saturnalia, Lupercalia and Floralia.

The six Sundays of Lent are called Quadragesima prima, secunda, and so on to sexta. They are also named after the initial words of the introit in the mass for the day: Invocabit (Ps. xci. 15), Reminiscere (Ps. xxv. 6), Oculi (Ps. xxxiv. 15), Lætare (Is. lxvi. 10), Judica (Ps. xliii. 1), Palmarum (from Matt. xxi. 8). The three Sundays preceding Quadragesima are called respectively Estomihi (from Ps. xxxi. 2) or Quinquagesima (i. e., Dominica Quinquagesimæ diei, viz., before Easter), Sexagesima, and Septuagesima; which are, however, inaccurate designations. These three Sundays were regarded as preparatory to the Lenten season proper. In the larger cities it became customary to preach daily during the Quadragesimal fast; and the usage of daily Lenten sermons (Quadragesimales, or sermones Quadragesimales) has maintained itself in the Roman church to this day.

The Quadragesimal fast culminates in the GREAT, or SILENT, or HOLY WEEK,' which is especially devoted to the commemoration of the passion and death of Jesus, and is distinguished by daily public worship, rigid fasting, and deep silence. This week, again, has its prominent days. First PALM SUNDAY,' which has been, in the East since the fourth century, in the West since the sixth, observed in memory of the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem for His enthronement on the cross. Next follows MAUNDY THURSDAY,' in commemoration of the institution of the Holy Supper, which on this day was observed in the evening, and was usually connected with a love feast, and also with feet-washing. The Friday of the Holy Week is distinguished from all others as GOOD FRIDAY, the day of the Saviour's death; the day of the deepest penance and fasting of

Septimana sancta, magna, muta; hebdomas nigra, or paschalis; ¿ẞdoμàs ueydan; Passion Week.

• Dominica palmarum; ἑορτὴ τῶν βαΐων.

Feria quinta paschæ, dies natalis eucharistiæ, dies viridium ; ǹ μeydλn réurty. The English name, Maundy Thursday, is derived from maunds or baskets, in which on that day the king of England distributed alms to certain poor at Whitehall. Maund is connected with the Latin mendicare, and French mendier, to beg.

• Dies dominicæ passionis; παρασκευή, πάσχα σταυρώσιμον, ἡμέρα τοῦ σTaupoû. In German: Char-Freitag; either from the Greek xápis, or, more probably, from the Latin carus, beloved, dear, comp. the English Good Friday.

the year, stripped of all Sunday splendor and liturgical pomp, veiled in the deepest silence and holy sorrow; the communion omitted (which had taken place the evening before), altars unclothed, crucifixes veiled, lights extinguished, the story of the passion read, and, instead of the church hymns, nothing sung but penitential psalms. Finally the GREAT SABBATH,' the day of the Lord's repose in the grave and descent into Hades; the favorite day in all the year for the administration of baptism, which symbolizes participation in the death of Christ.' The Great Sabbath was generally spent as a fast day, even in the Greek church, which usually did not fast on Saturday.

In the evening of the Great Sabbath began the EASTER VIGILS,' which continued, with Scripture reading, singing, and prayer, to the dawn of Easter morning, and formed the solemn transition from the πάσχα σταυρώσιμον to the πάσχα ἀναστάσov, and from the deep sorrow of penitence over the death of Jesus to the joy of faith in the resurrection of the Prince of life. All Christians, and even many pagans, poured into the church with lights, to watch there for the morning of the resurrection. On this night the cities were splendidly illuminated, and transfigured in a sea of fire; about midnight a solemn procession surrounded the church, and then triumphally entered again into the "holy gates," to celebrate Easter. According to an ancient tradition, it was expected that on Easter night Christ would come again to judge the world."

The EASTER festival itself began with the jubilant salutation, still practized in the Russian church: "The Lord is risen!" and the response: "He is truly risen!" Then the

Other etymologists derive it from carena (carême), i. e., fasting, or from kar (küren, to choose), i, e., the chosen day; others still from karo-parare, i. e., preparation-day.

Μέγα οι ἅγιον σάββατον; sabbatum magnum, or sanctum.

Rom. vi. 4-6.

Vigilia paschales; wavvvxídes.

• Comp. Lactantius: Inst. divin. vii. c. 19; and Hieronymus ad Matt. xxv. 6 (t. vii. 203, ed. Vallarsi): "Unde traditionem apostolicam permansisse, ut in die vigiliarum Pascha ante noctis dimidium populos dimittere non liceat, expectantes adven tum Christi."

• Festum dominica resurrectionis; ἑορτὴ ἀναστάσιμος, κυριακή με γάλη.

• "Dominus resurrexit."-" Vere resurrexit."

holy kiss of brotherhood sealed the newly fastened bond of love in Christ. It was the grandest and most joyful of the feasts. It lasted a whole week, and closed with the following Sunday, called the EASTER OCTAVE,' or WHITE SUNDAY,' when the baptized appeared in white garments, and were solemnly incorporated into the church.

$79. The Time of the Easter Festival.

Comp. the Literature in vol. ii. § 62 ; also L. IDELER: Handbuch der Chronologie. Berlin, 1826. Vol. ii. F. PIPER: Geschichte des Osterfestes. Berlin, 1845. HEFELE: Conciliengeschichte. Freiburg, 1855. Vol. i. P. 286 ff.

The time of the Easter festival became, after the second century, the subject of long and violent controversies and practical confusions, which remind us of the later Eucharistic disputes, and give evidence that human passion and folly have sought to pervert the great facts and institutions of the New Testament from holy bonds of unity into torches of discord, and to turn the sweetest honey into poison, but, with all their efforts, have not been able to destroy the beneficent power of those gifts of God.

These Paschal controversies descended into the present period, and ended with the victory of the Roman and Alexandrian practice of keeping Easter, not, like Christmas and the Jewish Passover, on a fixed day of the month, whatever day of the week it might be, but on a Sunday, as the day of the resurrection of our Lord. Easter thus became, with all the feasts depending on it, a movable feast; and then the different reckonings of the calendar led to many inconveniences and confusions. The exact determination of Easter Sunday is made from the first full moon after the vernal equinox; so that the

1 Octava paschæ, pascha clausum; àvτíwaoxa. Octave is applied in genera! to the whole eight-days' observance of the great church festivals; then especially to the eighth or last day of the feast.

* Dominica in albis. Also Quasimodogeniti, from the Introit for public worship 1 Pet. ii. 2 ("Quasimodo geniti infantes," "As new-born babes," &c.). Among the Greeks it was called καινὴ κυριακή.

Jay may fall on any Sunday between the 22d day of March and the 25th of April.

The council of Arles in 314 had already decreed, in its first canon, that the Christian Passover be celebrated "uno die et uno tempore per omnem orbem," and that the bishops of Rome should fix the time. But as this order was not universally obeyed, the fathers of Nicea proposed to settle the matter, and this was the second main object of the first ecumenical council in 325. The result of the transactions on this point, the particulars 、f which are not known to us, does not appear in the canons (probably out of consideration for the numerous Quartodecimanians), but is doubtless preserved in the two circular letters of the council itself and the emperor Constantine.' The feast of the resurrection was thenceforth required to be celebrated everywhere on a Sunday, and never on the day of the Jewish passover, but always after the fourteenth of Nisan, on the Sunday after the first vernal full moon. The leading motive for this regulation was opposition to Judaism, which had dishonored the passover by the crucifixion of the Lord. "We would," says the circular letter of Constantine in reference to the council of Nice, "we would have nothing in common with that most hostile people, the Jews; for we have received from the Redeemer another way of honoring God [the order of th days of the week], and harmoniously adopting this method, w would withdraw ourselves from the evil fellowship of the Jews. For what they pompously assert, is really utterly absurd: that we cannot keep this feast at all without their instruction. . . It is our duty to have nothing in common with the murderers of our Lord." This bitter tone against Judaism runs through the whole letter.

...

At Nicæa, therefore, the Roman and Alexandrian usage with respect to Easter triumphed, and the Judaizing practice of the Quartodecimanians, who always celebrated Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan, became thenceforth a heresy. Yet that practice continued in many parts of the East, and in the time of Epiphanius, about A. D. 400, there were many Quart

1 Socrates: Hist. Eccl. i. 9; Theodoret: H. E. i. 10; Eusebius: Vita Const. ii 17. Comp. Hefele, 1. c. i. p. 309 sqq.