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
While the admission of foreign names is to be welcomed as a step in
advance, it may yet, on the other hand, be a source of confusion and give
rise to mistakes later on. We find, namely, in this menology, that the
names of foreign saints are not always given on the correct date, but
are arbitrarily placed on other days than those to which they belonged.
Later redactors, when they found the same name on different dates, may
have thought that different persons were meant, and this may have been
the cause of the repetition of the names of saints. This shows that in
admitting names of new saints, and the correct day of whose death had not
been transmitted, they acted according to their fancy. This was the case
with regard to the majority of the Seventy Disciples, many of whom appear
here for the first time. The same must have taken place also with feasts
of our Lord, as when the Flight in Egypt is given on the 26th December,
and so placed before the Circumcision and the Presentation. The admission
of foreign names was left to chance or opinion. Thus, _e.g._ the Western
saints Ambrose, Martin of Tours, and Hosius are admitted, but Hilary,
Augustine, Jerome, etc., are passed over.
The impression made by the entire document is that the principles which
were on the whole followed in its composition were not maintained with
sufficient care, but yielded more than was right to opinion and caprice.
In many cases, too, the necessary knowledge of history, and a sufficient
supply of literary material seems to have been lacking.
A useful document, especially for saints’ days, is a lectionary of the
orthodox Syrians contained in the codex xix. of the Vatican Library.
It was written in the monastery of Mar Mussa at Antioch in 1030, and
contains in the first section the lections for the ecclesiastical year,
in the second, those for saints’ days, beginning with the 1st September
as New Year’s Day. In it are given the martyrs of the Iconoclastic
controversy, several orthodox patriarchs of Constantinople, Nicephorus
(† 2nd June 828) being the last; then come many names from the old
Testament, and many feasts of apostles, the _Catenæ Petri_ on the
16th January being one of them, four feasts of St John the Baptist,
and six of our Lady. There are no Roman or Western saints with the
exception of St Lawrence. This document has been published by Count F.
Miniscalchi-Errizzo under the title _Evangeliarium Hierosolymitanum_ (2
vols. 4to, Verona, 1682).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account