Scenes of the same sort, though on a less ambitious scale, are witnessed among the Catholics of South America on the same day. In Brazil the mourning for the death of Christ ceases at noon on Easter Saturday and gives place to an extravagant burst of joy at his resurrection. Shots are fired everywhere, and effigies of Judas are hung on trees or dragged about the streets, to be finally burned or otherwise destroyed.[317] In the Indian villages scattered among the wild valleys of the Peruvian Andes figures of the traitor, made of pasteboard and stuffed with squibs and crackers, are hanged on gibbets before the door of the church on Easter Saturday. Fire is set to them, and while they crackle and explode, the Indians dance and shout for joy at the destruction of their hated enemy.[318] Similarly at Rio Hacha, in Colombia, Judas is represented during Holy Week by life-sized effigies, and the people fire at them as if they were discharging a sacred duty.[319]
The new fire on Easter Saturday in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.
But usages of this sort are not confined to the Latin Church; they are common to the Greek Church also. Every year on the Saturday before Easter Sunday a new fire is miraculously kindled at the Holy Sepulchre in [pg 129] Jerusalem. It descends from heaven and ignites the candles which the patriarch holds in his hands, while with closed eyes he wrestles in prayer all alone in the chapel of the Angel. The worshippers meanwhile wait anxiously in the body of the church, and great are their transports of joy when at one of the windows of the chapel, which had been all dark a minute before, there suddenly appears the hand of an angel, or of the patriarch, holding a lighted taper. This is the sacred new fire; it is passed out to the expectant believers, and the desperate struggle which ensues among them to get a share of its blessed influence is only terminated by the intervention of the Turkish soldiery, who restore peace and order by hustling the whole multitude impartially out of the church. In days gone by many lives were often lost in these holy scrimmages. For example, in the year 1834, the famous Ibrahim Pasha witnessed the frantic scene from one of the galleries, and, being moved with compassion at the sight, descended with a few guards into the arena in the chimerical hope of restoring peace and order among the contending Christians. He contrived to force his way into the midst of the dense crowd, but there the heat and pressure were so great that he fainted away; a body of soldiers, seeing his danger, charged straight into the throng and carried him out of it in their arms, trampling under foot the dying and dead in their passage. Nearly two hundred people were killed that day in the church. The fortunate survivors on these occasions who succeeded in obtaining a portion of the coveted fire applied it freely to their faces, their beards, and their garments. The theory was that the fire, being miraculous, could only bless and not burn them; but the practical results of the experiment were often disappointing, for while the blessings were more or less dubious, there could be no doubt whatever about the burns.[320] The history of the miracle has been carefully [pg 130] investigated by a Jesuit father. The conclusions at which he arrives are that the miracle was a miracle indeed so long as the Catholics had the management of it; but that since it fell into the hands of the heretics it has been nothing but a barefaced trick and imposture.[321] Many people will be disposed to agree with the latter conclusion who might hesitate to accept the former.
The new fire and the burning of Judas on Easter Saturday in Greece.
At Athens the new fire is kindled in the cathedral at midnight on Holy Saturday. A dense crowd with unlit candles in their hands fills the square in front of the cathedral; the king, the archbishop, and the highest dignitaries of the church, arrayed in their gorgeous robes, occupy a platform; and at the exact moment of the resurrection the bells ring out, and the whole square bursts as by magic into a blaze of light. Theoretically all the candles are lit from the sacred new fire in the cathedral, but practically it may be suspected that the matches which bear the name of Lucifer have some share in the sudden illumination.[322] Effigies of Judas used to be burned at Athens on Easter Saturday, but the custom has been forbidden by the Government. However, firing goes on more or less continuously all over the city both on Easter Saturday and Easter Sunday, and the cartridges used on this occasion are not always blank. The shots are aimed at Judas, but sometimes they miss him and hit other people. Outside of Athens the practice of burning Judas in effigy still survives in some places. For example, in Cos a straw image of the traitor is made on Easter Day, and after being hung up and shot at it is burned.[323] A similar custom [pg 131] appears to prevail at Thebes;[324] it used to be observed by the Macedonian peasantry, and it is still kept up at Therapia, a fashionable summer resort of Constantinople.[325]
The new fire at Candlemas in Armenia.
In the Armenian Church the sacred new fire is kindled not at Easter but at Candlemas, that is, on the second of February, or on the eve of that festival. The materials of the bonfire are piled in an open space near a church, and they are generally ignited by young couples who have been married within the year. However, it is the bishop or his vicar who lights the candles with which fire is set to the pile. All young married pairs are expected to range themselves about the fire and to dance round it. Young men leap over the flames, but girls and women content themselves with going round them, while they pray to be preserved from the itch and other skin-diseases. When the ceremony is over, the people eagerly pick up charred sticks or ashes of the fire and preserve them or scatter them on the four corners of the roof, in the cattle-stall, in the garden, and on the pastures; for these holy sticks and ashes protect men and cattle against disease, and fruit-trees against worms and caterpillars. Omens, too, are drawn from the direction in which the wind blows the flames and the smoke: if it carries them eastward, there is hope of a good harvest; but if it inclines them westward, the people fear that the crops will fail.[326]
The new fire and the burning of Judas at Easter are probably relics of paganism.
In spite of the thin cloak of Christianity thrown over these customs by representing the new fire as an emblem of Christ and the figure burned in it as an effigy of Judas, we can hardly doubt that both practices are of pagan origin. Neither of them has the authority of Christ or of his disciples; but both of them have abundant analogies in popular custom [pg 132] and superstition. Some instances of the practice of annually extinguishing fires and relighting them from a new and sacred flame have already come before us;[327] but a few examples may here be cited for the sake of illustrating the wide diffusion of a custom which has found its way into the ritual both of the Eastern and of the Western Church.
The new fire at the summer solstice among the Incas of Peru. The new fire among the Indians of Mexico and New Mexico. The new fire among the Esquimaux.