Heortology : $b A history of the Christian festivals from their origin to the present dayKellner, K. A. Heinrich (Karl Adam Heinrich)
Religion
Heortology : $b A history of the Christian festivals from their origin to the present day
Kellner, K. A. Heinrich (Karl Adam Heinrich)
Church year; Fasts and feasts
twenty-four of the disciples of Jesus, with Maximinus at their head,
were sent by the apostles as missionaries to Spain and Gaul. St Mary
Magdalen joined them, and Martha and Lazarus followed her example, the
latter being at the time Bishop of Cyprus; they embarked unmolested,
and were carried by the south-east wind to the shores of Southern Gaul,
where Maximinus became Bishop of Aix in Provence. The other disciples
distributed themselves over the other provinces, of which there were
seventeen in Gaul and seven in Spain—twenty-four in all, just the number
of the disciples. As a matter of fact, Spain and Gaul did comprise this
number of provinces, not however in the time of Christ, but in the fifth
century, as the _Notitia Dignitatum_ shows. This betrays the late origin
of the legend. St Mary Magdalen is said to have lived at Aix with Bishop
Maximinus, and to have often preached there to the faithful. According
to other accounts, she is said to have passed thirty years in a life of
solitude and penance in the cave of the Ste Baume, near Marseilles, while
Lazarus is said to have been Bishop of Marseilles, where he died a martyr.
More trustworthy, though not so interesting, is the information which
we find in Greek sources concerning Lazarus and his sisters. From these
we learn no more than that the Emperor Leo VI. in 887 built a church in
his honour in Constantinople, and in 899 a monastery;[667] thither the
relics of Lazarus, but not those of his sisters, were translated from
Citium in Cyprus, where they had hitherto reposed. The menology of Basil
and the calendars of the Copts and Syrians show that St Mary Magdalen
was honoured in the Greek Church on the 22nd July. The resurrection of
Lazarus was specially commemorated in the Constitution of Manuel Comnenus
on the second Saturday before Easter.[668]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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