CHAPTER V
FESTIVALS OF ST MARY THE VIRGIN
I. Western Kalendars.
The history of the origin of some of the following festivals is obscure; and it is impossible to be precise as to the dates of their first appearance. We speak with some reservation of the Festival of Feb. 2, known first in the West, as well as in the East, by the name Hypapante (i.e. ‘the Meeting’ of Simeon with the Lord and His Mother), and afterwards as the Purification of the Virgin. It seems at first in the West to have been a festival of our Lord rather than of the Virgin. In the propria for ‘Yppapanti’ (sic) in the Gregorian Sacramentary the allusion to St Mary is of the slightest. Hence at the time when it first appeared in the West it may be reckoned as having no special reference to St Mary. The Church of Rome does not appear (according to Duchesne) to have observed any festival of the Virgin before the seventh century, when it adopted the four following festivals from the Church of Byzantium.
1. The Purification (or, in early times, Hypapante). Its date (Feb. 2) is determined by counting forty days from Christmas (Luke ii. 22: compare Levit. xii. 2, 4).
A feast of much dignity and importance (cum summa laetitia, ac si per Pascha) commemorating the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple is noticed as celebrated (towards the close of the fourth century) at Jerusalem at the time of the pilgrimage of ‘Silvia.’ It was observed on Feb. 14 (the 40th day after the Epiphany, reckoned as the day of the Lord’s Nativity): but ‘Silvia’ does not appear to have regarded it as in any sense having special reference to St Mary. The words of the pilgrim simply record the incident in the Temple; and it looks as if the feast were only commemorative of a remarkable event in the history of the Lord.
It may be pointed out that the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple is still observed by the Armenians on Feb. 14, as they still celebrate the Nativity on Jan. 6.
The origin of the consecrating of candles and carrying them in procession which has given us the low Latin names candelaria and candelcisa, the French chandeleur, the Italian candelora, the German Lichtmesse, and our English name Candlemas, and which from early times formed a striking feature in the ritual of the Feast, has been conjecturally connected by some with a symbolical setting forth of the words of Simeon (Luke ii. 32); and by others with the ceremonial of the heathen Lupercalia. But the matter is still involved in doubt.
In the East the establishment of the festival throughout the Empire is generally assigned to Justinian in the year 542. The appearance of Hypapante in the so-called Gregorian Sacramentary is, it need scarcely be said, no proof that the festival was observed in the time of Gregory the Great.