occasions had been already customary among the Jews,' and even among the heathen. They arise from the love of human nature for show and display, which manifests itself in all countries in military parades, large funerals, and national festivities. The oppressed condition of the church until the time of Constantine made such public demonstrations impossible or unadvisable. In the fourth century, however, we find them in the East and in the West, among orthodox and heretics,' on days of fasting and prayer, on festivals of thanksgiving, at the burial of the dead, the induction of bishops, the removal of relics, the consecration of churches, and especially in times of public calamity. The two chief classes are thanksgiving and penitential processions. The latter were also called cross-processions, litanies.' The processions moved from church to church, and consisted of the clergy, the monks, and the people, alternately saying or singing prayers, psalms, and litanies. In the middle of the line commonly walked the bishop as leader, in surplice, stole, and pluvial, with the mitre on his head, the crozier in his left hand, and with his right hand blessing the people. A copy of the Bible, crucifixes, banners, images and relics, burning tapers or torches, added solemn state to the procession." Regular annual processions occurred on Candlemas, and on Palm Sunday. To these was added, after the thirteenth ceutury, the procession on Corpus Christi, in which the sacrament of the altar is carried about and worshipped. PILGRIMAGES are founded in the natural desire to see with one's own eyes sacred or celebrated places, for the gratification of curiosity, the increase of devotion, and the proving of gratitude. These also were in use before the Christian era. The 'As in the siege of Jericho, Jos. vi. 3 ff.; at the dedication of Solomon's temple, 1 Kings viii. 1 ff.; on the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, Matt, xxi. 8 ff. 2 The Arians, for example. Comp. Sozom., H. E. viii. 8, where weekly singing processions of the Arians are spoken of. • Litaniæ (Acravea), supplicationes, rogationes, oμoλoynσeis, stationes, col lectæ. • The antiquity of all these accessory ceremonies cannot be exactly fixed. Ist eingeweiht; nach hundert Jahren klingt Jews went up annually to Jerusalem at their high festivals as afterward the Mohanımedans went to Mecca. The heather also built altars over the graves of their heroes and made pil grimages thither.' To the Christians those places were most interesting and holy of all, where the Redeemer was born, suffered, died, and rose again for the salvation of the world. Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land appear in isolated cases even in the second century, and received a mighty impulse from the example of the superstitiously pious empress Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great. In 326, at the age of seventy-nine, she made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, was baptized in the Jordan, discovered the holy cross, removed the pagan abominations and built Christian churches on Calvary and Olivet, and at Bethany. In this she was liberally supported by her son, in whose arms she died at Nicomedia in 327. The influence of these famous pilgrims' churches extended through the whole middle age, to the crusades, and reaches even to most recent times.' The example of Helena was followed by innumerable pilgrims who thought that by such journeys they made the salvation of their souls more sure. They brought back with them splinters from the pretended holy cross, waters from the Jordan, earth from Jerusalem and Bethlehein, and other genuine and spurious relics, to which miraculous virtue was ascribed.* Several of the most enlightened church fathers, who approved pilgrimages in themselves, felt it necessary to oppose a superstitious estimate of them, and to remind the people that religion might be practised in any place. Gregory of Nyssa shows that pilgrimages are nowhere enjoined in the Scriptures, and are especially unsuitable and dangerous for women, and draws a very unfavorable picture of the immorality prevailing at places of such resort. "Change of place," says he, "brings 1 "Religiosa cupiditas est," says Paulinus of Nola, Ep. 86, "loca videre, in quibus Christus ingressus et passus est et resurrexit et unde ascendit." Euseb., Vita Const. iii. 41 sq., and De locis Ebr. s. v. Bethabara. • Recall the Crimean war of 1854-'56. • Thus Augustine, De civit. Dei, xxii. 8, is already found citing examples of the supernatural virtue of the terra sancta of Jerusalem. God no nearer. Where thou art, God will come to thee, if the dwelling of thy soul is prepared for him." Jerome describes with great admiration the devout pilgrimage of his friend Paula to the East, and says that he himself, in his Bethlehem, had adored the manger and birthplace of the Redeemer;' but he also very justly declares that Britain is as near heaven as Jerusalem, and that not a journey to Jerusalem, but a holy living there, is the laudable thing.' Next to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and other localities of the Holy Land, Rome was a preeminent place of resort for pilgrims from the West and East, who longed to tread the threshold of the princes of the apostles (limina apostolorum). Chrysostom regretted that want of time and health prevented him from kissing the chains of Peter and Paul, which made devils tremble and angels rejoice. In Africa, Hippo became a place of pilgrimage on account of the bones of St. Stephen; in Campania, the grave of St. Felix, at Nola; in Gaul, the grave of St. Martin of Tours (+397). The last was especially renowned, and was the scene of innu merable miracles. Even the memory of Job drew many pilgrims to Arabia to see the ash heap, and to kiss the earth, where the man of God endured so much." In the Roman and Greek churches the practice of pilgrimage to holy places has maintained itself to the present day. Protestantism has divested the visiting of remarkable places, con 1 Epist. ad Ambrosium et Basilissam. ' Adv. Ruffinum ultima Responsio, c. 22 (Opp. ed. Vall. tom. ii. p. 551), where he boastfully recounts his literary journeys, and says: "Protinus concito gradu Bethlehem meam reversus sum, ubi adoravi præsepe et incunabula Salvatoris." Comp. his Vita Paulæ, for her daughter Eustochium, where he describes the pilgrimstations then in use. Epist. lviii, ad Paulinum (Opp. ed. Vallarsi, tom. i. p. 318; in the Bened. ed. it is Ep. 49; in the older editions, Ep. 18): "Non Jerusolymis fuisse, sed Jerusoly. mis bene vixisse, laudandum est." In the same epistle, p. 319, he commends the blessed monk Hilarion, that, though a Palestinian, he had been only a day in Jerusa lem, "ut nec contemnere loca sancta propter viciniam, nec rursus Dominum loco claudere videretur." • The Huguenots in the sixteenth century burnt the bones of St. Martin, as objects of idolatry, and scattered their ashes to the winds. • So Chrysostom relates, Hom. v. de statuis, § 1, tom. ii. f. 59: Iva thy Kopria ἐκείνην ἴδωσι καὶ θεασάμενοι καταφιλήσωσι τὴν γῆν. Becrated by great men or great events, of all meritoriousness and superstitious accessories, and has reduced it to a matter of commendable gratitude and devout curiosity. Within these limits even the evangelical Christian cannot view without emotion and edification the sacred spots of Palestine, the catacombs of Rome, the simple slabs over Luther and Melanchthon in the castle-church of Wittenberg, the monuments of the English martyrs in Oxford, or the rocky landing-place of the Puritanic pilgrim fathers in Massachusetts. He feels himself nearer to the spirit of the great dead; but he knows that this spirit continues not in their dust, but lives immortally with God and the saints in heaven. § 90. Public Worship of the Lord's Day. Scripture- J. A. SCHMIDT: De primitivæ ecclesiæ lectionibus. Helmst. 1697. E. RANKE: Das kirchliche Perikopensystem aus den ältesten Urkunden der rom. Liturgie. Berlin, 1847. H. T. TZSCHIRNER: De claris eccles. vet. oratoribus Comment. i.-ix. Lips. 1817 sqq. K. W. F. PANIEL: Pragmatische Geschichte der christl. Beredtsamkeit. Leipz. 1839 ff. The order and particular parts of the ordinary public worship of God remain the same as they were in the previous period. But the strict separation of the service of the Catechu mens,' consisting of prayer, scripture reading, and preaching, from the service of the faithful,' consisting of the communion, lost its significance upon the universal prevalence of Christianity and the union of church and state. Since the fifth century the inhabitants of the Roman empire were now considered as Christians at least in name and confession, and could attend even those parts of the worship which were formerly guarded by secrecy against the profanation of pagans. The Greek term liturgy, and the Latin term mass, which is derived from the customary formula of dismission,' was applied, since the close 1 Missa catechumenorum, λειτουργία τῶν κατηχουμένων. • Missa fidelium, λειτουργία τῶν πιστῶν. • Missa is equivalent to missio, dismissio, and meant originally the dism.ission of the congregation after the service by the customary formula: Ite, missa cs' (eccle of the fourth century (398), to the communion service or the celebration of the eucharistic sacrifice. This was the divine service in the proper sense of the term, to which all other parts were subordinate. We shall speak of it more fully hereafter.' We have to do at present with those parts which were introductory to the communion and belong to the service of the catechumens as well as to that of the communicants. The reading of a portion of the Holy Scriptures continued to be an essential constituent of divine service. Upon the close of the church canon, after the Council of Carthage in 397, and other synods, the reading of uncanonical books (such as writings of the apostolic fathers) was forbidden, with the exception of the legends of the martyrs on their memorial days. There was as yet no obligatory system of pericopes, like that of the later Greek and Roman churches. The lectio continua, or the reading and exposition of whole books of the Bible, remained in practice till the fifth century, and the selection of books for the different parts and services of the church year was left to the judgment of the bishop. At high festivals, however, such portions were read as bore special reference to the subject of the celebration. By degrees, after the example of the Jewish synagogue,' a more complete yearly course of selections from the New Testament for liturgical use was arranged, and the selections were called lessons or pericopes.' sia). After the first part of the service the catechumens were thus dismissed by the deacon, after the second part the faithful. But with the fusion of the two parts in one, the formula of dismission was used only at the close, and then it came to signify also the service itself, more especially the eucharistic sacrifice. In the Greek church the corresponding formula of dismission was: àwoλúcσße èv eiphvy, i. e., ite in pace (Apost. Const. lib. viii. c. 15). Ambrosius is the first who uses missa, missam facere (Ep. 20), for the eucharistic sacrifice. Other derivations of the word, from the Greek μúnois or the Hebrew verb is, to act, etc., are too far fetched, and cut off by the fact that the word is used only in the Latin church. Comp. vol. i. § 101, p. 383 ff. 1 Comp. below, §§ 96 and 97. ? The Jews, perhaps from the time of Ezra, divided the Old Testament into seotions larger or smaller, called Parashioth (ni), to wit, the Pentateuch into 54 Parashioth, and the Prophets (i. e., the later historical books and the prophets proper) into as many Haphtharoth; and these sections were read in course on the different Sabbaths. This division is much older than the division into verses. • Lectiones, ἀναγνώσματα, ἀναγνώσεις, περικοπαί. |