As far as the East is concerned these two witnesses are sufficient, especially as they throw light on the date of the institution of the feast. As in other cases, so here the origin of the feast is doubtless to be sought in religious communities. They were the first to think of honouring this act of redemption. It was certainly the monks, to whom is due the development of the Church’s psalmody, who in their canonical hours celebrated Mary’s Conception, and appointed a special day for this purpose, the 9th December, which was always kept as such in the Greek menologies. In course of time the feast issued forth from the limits of the monasteries, and from the inner circles of the devout, and attained publicity. Preachers glorified it. It met with a sympathetic reception in ever widening circles, until it gradually attained the rank, if not of a feast of obligation, at any rate, of a simple feast of devotion, and, finally, it obtained both ecclesiastical and civil authorisation. The Byzantine Empire comprised during the whole of the period of which we have been speaking, Lower Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia. In the eighth century Byzantium was no longer able to retain its hold over the duchy of Rome and the Exarchate of Ravenna; at a still later date it lost Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, especially when the Normans settled in those parts. It retained its hold over the city of Naples longest of all; it was only in 1127 that Naples was taken by Roger II., who had himself crowned king of the Two Sicilies in 1130. The constitution of Manuel Comnenus of 1166 mentioned above was never promulgated in Naples, and had no force there, but the connection with Byzantium had lasted sufficiently long for the feast of Mary’s Conception to obtain an entrance into Naples. That it actually did make its way there is proved by the Calendar of the Neapolitan Church of the ninth century, engraved on marble, and showing traces of Byzantine influence, which was discovered in 1742 in the Church of San Giovanni Maggiore. Apart from the historical facts which we have mentioned, the name and date of the feast—_Conceptio S. Annæ_, and the ninth December—show a Byzantine origin. And so in respect of the history of this feast, Naples, along with Lower Italy and Sicily, must be classed with the Eastern half of the Catholic Church as celebrating a feast, of which at Rome no one had as yet thought.