There is little doubt that at the close of the fourth century the churches of Asia Minor had festivals of St Stephen on Dec. 26, St James and St John on Dec. 27, and St Peter and St Paul on Dec. 28[49]. And in the West our earliest information shows us St Stephen on Dec. 26; but there are variations as regards the other festivals. The ancient Kalendar of Carthage shows us on Dec. 27 ‘St John the Baptist and James the Apostle, whom Herod slew,’ and Holy Innocents on Dec. 28[50].
The earliest Roman service-books show us only St John on Dec. 27, and he is St John the Evangelist[51]. Yet in the so-called Martyrology of St Jerome (which, though interpolated, contains many ancient features), we find at this day, together with ‘the Assumption of St John at Ephesus,’ ‘the ordination to the episcopate of James, the Lord’s brother, who was crowned with martyrdom at the paschal time[52].’ The Holy Innocents (Dec. 28) is known in the Latin books since the sixth century, and may well have been earlier; but Peter and Paul are found together on another day (June 29), the day of their martyrdom at Rome, as was generally assumed. Though we are not able to determine with precision on what day the Innocents of Bethlehem were commemorated in early times, there can be little doubt that there was some commemoration of those whom, as St Augustine says, ‘the Church has received to the honour of the martyrs.’
There are some reasons for conjecturing that the commemoration of the Innocents was at first in association with the Epiphany. In the second half of the fourth century the poet Prudentius has some pretty lines on the Holy Innocents as martyrs in his hymn on the Epiphany[53]. And Leo the Great in more than one of his sermons on the Epiphany has laudatory passages on the martyrdom of the Innocents. Yet in estimating the weight that should attach to such references it should be remembered that Herod’s slaughter of the children at Bethlehem is in the Gospel narrative so closely connected with the visit of the Magi that it would not be unnatural for both poet and preacher to touch on that striking story, although there were no intentional commemoration of the Innocents attached by the Church to that day. In the Byzantine Kalendar the Fourteen Thousand Holy Infants are commemorated on Dec. 29. In the Armenian Kalendar the Fourteen Thousand Innocent Martyrs are commemorated on June 10. It deserves notice that in the Mozarabic Kalendars we find ‘St James the Lord’s Brother’ at Dec. 28; ‘St John Evangelist’ at Dec. 29; and ‘St James the Brother of John’ at Dec. 30.
CHAPTER IV
OTHER COMMEMORATIONS OF EVENTS IN THE LORD’S LIFE. PENTECOST
The commemoration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was in the nature of things a natural and inevitable outcome of the religious beliefs and feelings of the infant Church. The fixing of days for the commemoration of other events in the life of our Lord came with thought and reflection; they belong to the period of constructiveness, and we have no evidence to show that their appearance was very early. Tertullian is silent about other days than Sunday (the Lord’s Day), the Pasch (including the Passion and the Resurrection), and Pentecost[54]; and Origen particularises the Lord’s Day, the Parasceve (perhaps in the sense of the weekly Friday ‘station’), the Pasch, and Pentecost, as being days specially observed by Christians[55].
The Circumcision is obviously dependent on whatever was regarded as the date of the Nativity, and is the result of reflection and ecclesiastical constructiveness. It is eight days after the Nativity on Jan. 1, with all Christendom, save the Armenians, who celebrating the Nativity (together with other Epiphanies of the Lord) on Jan. 6, naturally observe Jan. 13 as the day of the Circumcision. The day is not noted in the Bucherian Kalendar, nor in the Carthaginian. Baillet[56] comes to the conclusion that it appears first as appointed for general observance as a festival, about the middle of the seventh century, and in Spain, where servile work was forbidden on this day. But it would appear from the Canons of the Fourth Council of Toledo that the day was then observed with penitential features (canon 11). From the Sermons of Augustine we learn that in his time Jan. 1 was observed by Christians as a solemn fast, in protest against the licentious revelry and excesses of the pagans at this time of the year[57]. And as late as the Second Council of Tours (A.D. 567) it is enjoined that, while all other days between the Nativity and the Epiphany are to be treated (in regard to use of food) as festivals, an exception is to be made for the space of three days at the beginning of January, for which time the fathers had appointed litanies to be made ‘ad calcandam Gentilium consuetudinem.’ But it should be remarked that the canon (17) dealing with the subject has special reference to fasts to be observed by monks. It is therefore not impossible that the fast had by this time ceased to be observed by the general body of the faithful, but, in a spirit of conservatism, was regarded as proper to be maintained in the monasteries. The canon is interesting for another reason; it affords perhaps the earliest example of the use of the term ‘Circumcision’ as applied to this day, which appears in the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries simply as Octava Domini, i.e. the octave of the Nativity. In the Gelasian Sacramentary there is no emphasis in the service on the Circumcision, while the prayer called Ad populum distinctly points to a prohibition against partaking of the convivium diabolicum of the pagans. And a mass immediately following that for the Octave, entitled Ad prohibendum ab idolis, points in the same direction. The Gregorian Sacramentary shows no reference to the Circumcision in the prayers of the mass[58].
Even in the early part of the seventh century Isidore of Seville condemns the indecent gaieties indulged in on this day, and recalls the ancient injunction that the day should be observed as a fast[59]. The fourth Council of Toledo (canon 11) represents as the practice of Spain and Gaul the omission of the singing of Alleluia on the Kalends of January, propter errorem gentilium.
In the later Western service-books the thought of the Circumcision is given greater prominence, and intermingles with the thoughts suggested by the Octave. The feast of the Circumcision appears in the Greek Church in the eighth century[60].