Chrysostom, in the sermon referred to above, states plainly that, at the time when the attempt was being made to introduce the festival in the East, it was already celebrated in Rome. Our attention is thus naturally directed to Rome, and it will be interesting to learn how long it had been so observed there. This question we must now consider more fully.
John, Bishop of Nicæa, informs us that the Roman Church had begun under Pope Julius I. (337-352) to celebrate the birth of our Lord on the 25th December.[303] This pope, with the assistance of the writings of Josephus, had ascertained that Christ was born on the 25th December. John of Nicæa then recurs substantially to the reckoning which we have already produced from Chrysostom, according to which the appearance of the angel to Zachary in the Temple happened on the 23rd September and the Annunciation on the 25th March. From these data it followed as a matter of course that the 25th December was the day of Christ’s birth. John had gained this information from an alleged correspondence between Cyril of Jerusalem and Julius, from which he quotes. But this correspondence is certainly not authentic, as will appear from one of the facts quoted from it further on.[304] But the fact that it cannot stand the test of criticism does not prove the spuriousness of the treatise of John of Nicæa in itself, nor the incorrectness of everything else contained in it.
When we turn to the authentic evidence for the practice of the Roman Church on this point, our attention is at once arrested by one document which is quoted under very different names—Anonymus Cuspiniani, Catalogus Bucherianus, the Calendar of Furius Philocalus, or the Chronographer of 354. These different ways of quoting the same document are apt to lead to confusion. They are due to the fact that from time to time different scholars have published larger or smaller portions of the document, without ever placing it before the public in its entirety. The different portions of which it is composed are of a rather heterogeneous character, and, accordingly, as each student was interested in this or that portion, he published as much of it as concerned his own studies, leaving the remainder unnoticed. In order to form a correct judgment of the evidential value of this document, and the importance of the facts recorded in it, it will be well at this point to describe it more particularly, although to do so may lead us away from our main subject.
Briefly, we have to do with a collection of chronological data belonging to the time of Constantine, in which the unknown compiler collected together from official sources all kinds of chronological and historical notices, such as might be useful for people in official positions. His object was to supply them with a compendium of all that might be of practical assistance to them. John Cuspinianus (1473-1529) was the first to make use of this work, because he recognised that the list of Roman consuls contained in it is the most correct that has come down to us. In his Commentarius de Consulibus Romanis, published at Basel after his death, in 1552, a part of the work is printed.[305]
Other students then edited such portions as related to the special studies they had in hand, such as Onuphrius Panvinius, Ægidius Boucher, S.J.,[306] Lambeck, Henschen, Cardinal Noris, Eccard, Preller, and especially Roncalli. Finally, in the transactions of the “Akademie der Wissenschaften” of Saxony for 1850, Mommsen printed almost the whole of it with the exception of the later portions. A collection of the allegorical illustrations of the document, as far as they exist, has also been published,[307] and thus at length this remarkable document has been placed within the reach of all to whom it may be of interest.
The different sections therein contained are partly of ecclesiastical and Christian origin, and partly secular and heathen. Of purely ecclesiastical origin, in addition to the table for calculating Easter, are the Depositio Episcoporum, the Depositio Martyrum, and the list of popes. The remaining sections fall into two classes: they are either entirely heathen, or they have interpolations of a Christian and ecclesiastical character. This is especially the case with the lists of consuls. Up to 753 U.C. they contain merely the names of the consuls, with notices of the dictators; from 753 U.C. to 55 A.D. four ecclesiastical notices have been interpolated, but none from thence onwards. These four notices relate to the date of Christ’s birth and death, the arrival of the Apostles Peter and Paul in Rome, and their death there. These notices, naturally, did not originally form part of the lists of consuls. Who added them? Philocalus himself or someone else?
Since the list of consuls contains ecclesiastical interpolations, it is all the more remarkable that none have been added to the Calendar. Where else would we more naturally look for them, and where could they have been more easily introduced? Why did not Philocalus set down the birth of Christ here under the 25th December, the Natalis Invicti, since he considered it of sufficient importance to be interpolated into the lists of consuls, with which it is out of keeping?
But if, it is objected, the date of Christ’s birth is also given in the Depositio Martyrum, let us examine this document more closely. As the title indicates, it contains only the days of the death and burial of Roman martyrs and other martyrs venerated in Rome in the earliest ages, e.g. Cyprian, Perpetua, Felicitas. To these there are added two exceptions: VIII. Kal. Jan. (the birth of Christ at Bethlehem) and VIII. Kal. Mart. (the feast of St Peter’s Chair). Neither of these belong in any sense to a Depositio Martyrum, and on this account, De Rossi wished to change the title of the document to Feriale Ecclesiæ Romanæ. But in this he was mistaken. The MSS. have the title Depositio Martyrum alone, and to change it would be arbitrary. The two days mentioned above, the 25th December and the 22nd February, must rather be struck out as later additions which do not belong to the document.
That such entries do not appear in the Calendar is explained, in my opinion, by the fact that soon afterwards succeeding emperors forbade the games of the circus and energetically suppressed heathen customs. When this had been done, the Calendar would no longer be of any practical use, and so it would not be worth while to make alterations in it. The other chronological pieces, however, had a permanent value, and it naturally occurred to those who used them later on to adapt them to the altered circumstances of the time.