Formerly it was taken for granted that Christ had actually been born on this day, and, accordingly, the learned were of opinion that the Church had observed it from the beginning as the day of His birth. Even at the present day, it will be difficult for many to give up this idea. But there is no Christmas among the Christian feasts enumerated by Tertullian, Origen, and the recently published _Testament of Jesus Christ_. On the contrary, there is clear proof that even in the fourth and fifth centuries it was unknown in some parts of the Church, where its introduction, at a much later period, can be proved historically. To this evidence we shall now turn our attention, beginning with Egypt. At the beginning of the fifth century the learned monk, John Cassian, betook himself to Egypt to study the observances of the monasteries there, and later on, between 418 and 427, he wrote down the result of his observations in his Collations. He informs us that the bishops of those parts at that time regarded the Epiphany as our Lord’s birth-day, and that there was no separate festival in honour of the latter. He calls this the “ancient custom.”[288] This old custom, although generally observed at that time in Egypt, had soon to give place to a new one. For under Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, Bishop Paul of Emesa, while on a visit to him, preached on the festival of our Lord’s nativity, and the date on which this happened was the 29th Chijak, or 25th December, in the year 432. Christmas, then, had been introduced into Egypt before this time, that is to say, between 418 and 432,[289] and from then onwards it was firmly established, as the existing Calendars of subsequent date show. The learned Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis lived in Cyprus at the end of the fourth century. In his answer to the Alogoi he gives the chronology of our Lord’s life, according to which the 6th January is the day of our Lord’s birth, and the 8th November the day of His baptism in Jordan. For him the Epiphany was plainly the festival of Christ’s nativity.[290] The old custom was still in force in Jerusalem about 385. Our Lord’s birth was celebrated there with great rejoicings, not on the 25th December, but on the 6th January. For according to the evidence of the Pilgrim from Bordeaux, the festival on which the gospel was read, giving the account of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple and His meeting with Simeon and Anna—Candlemas Day—was celebrated forty days after the Epiphany and not forty days after Christmas.[291] Epiphany must then have been the festival of the Nativity. In another passage, where the same pilgrim has reason to name the chief festivals of the year, she mentions as such only Epiphany and Easter.[292] And so at that time there was no special festival of Christmas observed in Jerusalem.