=Pentecost.= This word as commonly employed by early Christian writers signifies the whole period of fifty days after the Resurrection. It is thus that the term is used by Tertullian in a passage (_de Idolat._ 14) where he compares the number of festival days among the pagans with the number of Christian festivals. The same is probably true where he speaks of Pentecost as ‘ordinandis lavacris latissimum spatium’ (_de Baptismo_ 19). During that period fasting, and kneeling at prayer, at least in the public assemblies, were forbidden: and _Alleluia_, which had been silent, was resumed. It seems, however, that once at least Tertullian had in view, in the use of the word, the day on which the period closed[70]. Origen in a similar way uses the word for the whole period, but also seems to distinguish between the general and more restricted signification of the word[71]. Earlier than either of these is the testimony of Irenaeus (if we may accept it as his) cited, as from his lost book _On the Pascha_, by Pseudo-Justin (_Quaest. et Respons. ad Orthodoxos_, 115), where Irenaeus speaks of not kneeling in Pentecost, as that time is of equal dignity with the Lord’s day, ‘Pentecost’ being here used evidently for a season. On the other hand, the compiler, whoever he was, of the _Quaestiones_, in which Irenaeus is quoted, in the same place speaks of not kneeling ‘from the Pascha to Pentecost,’ using the latter term in its restricted sense. In the newly-recovered _Testament of the Lord_[72] Pentecost is used for the fifty days between Easter and our Whitsunday (i. 28, 42; ii. 12). An interesting survival of the old signification of Pentecost is still to be found in the Greek service-books, where the term _Mesopentecoste_ is used for special festal observances mid-way between Easter and Whitsunday, commencing on the Wednesday following the third Sunday after Easter, and lasting for a week. In the forty-third canon of the Council of Elvira (A.D. 305) we have a clear example of the use of the word Pentecost for the fiftieth day. And after that date the word is widely used in that sense: while the festival itself assumes gradually more and more dignity and importance. ‘Silvia’ describes the elaborate ceremonial observed on this day at Jerusalem towards the close of the fourth century.