Evidence shows that the feast of our Lady’s Conception arose in the Eastern Church, and had gained civil recognition in the Byzantine Empire at a time, when in the West, ecclesiastical circles were still debating whether or not its celebration ought to be permitted. In a constitution entitled, “Concerning the days of the year which are whole holidays and half holidays,” the Emperor Manuel Comnenus in 1166 recognised it as a public festival on which servile work was forbidden. Now it is a known fact that the civil authorities are slow to give recognition to ecclesiastical festivals, and accordingly festivals have often been celebrated by the Church for a long period before they received the recognition of the State. So it was in this case. The Calendar of the Church of Constantinople in which the feast of the 9th December is marked as the “festival of the Conception of St Anne, the mother of the Theotocos,” is a century and a half older than this constitution. It bears the name of the Emperor Basil, meaning the second of this name surnamed Porphyriogenitus (976-1025), and, accordingly, it follows that even then the festival had received some lesser degree of recognition from the State.[524]
Concerning the date of the introduction of this feast, we have detailed information in a sermon of John of Eubœa, who lived in the middle of the eighth century. He was first a monk and then Bishop of the island, and was contemporary with St John Damascene, whom he occasionally visited. John declares that there are ten points in the life of the Holy Virgin which must be commemorated, and these he enumerates in the tenth section of his sermon. The most of them are at the same time feasts of our Lord, the only ones entirely relating to our Lady being her Nativity, Annunciation, and Assumption. With regard to the feast of our Lady’s Conception, John hesitates. First of all, in the passage referred to above, he enumerates it among the feasts, but at the end of his sermon he states that it is not acknowledged by all,[525] but he speaks highly in its favour, and considers in conclusion that it ought to be celebrated. From this it is plain that in his time the feast was not yet generally accepted, and that he exerted himself to spread it. If Passaglia, who quotes this sermon as evidence for the feast, had noticed this passage, he would have learnt that in the eighth century the festival had not yet become generally popular in purely ecclesiastical circles, such as among the specially devout and the religious, and he would have avoided the mistake of throwing back the inception of the feast to the fifth century in reliance on an interpolated and much later Typicum S. Sabæ.[526] John mentions the 9th December as the day of the feast. The contents of this sermon of his are in other respects of no importance.
George of Nicomedia, who lived about a century later, is the second Greek preacher of whom we possess a sermon for this festival.[527] It bears the title, “Concerning the Conception of St Anne,” and was delivered upon a festal occasion (πανήγυρις), and the day is already distinctly called a feast (ἑορτή). George considered it no longer necessary to merely commend the acceptance of the feast, but regarded its adoption as a matter of course. He reveals, however, the comparatively late date of its institution, by saying that the day was not to be kept “as one only recently added to the Calendar, but as one adopted on the best grounds, since it naturally belonged to the course of the year and is prescribed by the nature of things. In doing so we become partakers of the joy it promises.”
As far as the East is concerned these two witnesses are sufficient, especially as they throw light on the date of the institution of the feast. As in other cases, so here the origin of the feast is doubtless to be sought in religious communities. They were the first to think of honouring this act of redemption. It was certainly the monks, to whom is due the development of the Church’s psalmody, who in their canonical hours celebrated Mary’s Conception, and appointed a special day for this purpose, the 9th December, which was always kept as such in the Greek menologies. In course of time the feast issued forth from the limits of the monasteries, and from the inner circles of the devout, and attained publicity. Preachers glorified it. It met with a sympathetic reception in ever widening circles, until it gradually attained the rank, if not of a feast of obligation, at any rate, of a simple feast of devotion, and, finally, it obtained both ecclesiastical and civil authorisation.
The Byzantine Empire comprised during the whole of the period of which we have been speaking, Lower Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia. In the eighth century Byzantium was no longer able to retain its hold over the duchy of Rome and the Exarchate of Ravenna; at a still later date it lost Apulia, Calabria and Sicily, especially when the Normans settled in those parts. It retained its hold over the city of Naples longest of all; it was only in 1127 that Naples was taken by Roger II., who had himself crowned king of the Two Sicilies in 1130.
The constitution of Manuel Comnenus of 1166 mentioned above was never promulgated in Naples, and had no force there, but the connection with Byzantium had lasted sufficiently long for the feast of Mary’s Conception to obtain an entrance into Naples. That it actually did make its way there is proved by the Calendar of the Neapolitan Church of the ninth century, engraved on marble, and showing traces of Byzantine influence, which was discovered in 1742 in the Church of San Giovanni Maggiore. Apart from the historical facts which we have mentioned, the name and date of the feast—Conceptio S. Annæ, and the ninth December—show a Byzantine origin. And so in respect of the history of this feast, Naples, along with Lower Italy and Sicily, must be classed with the Eastern half of the Catholic Church as celebrating a feast, of which at Rome no one had as yet thought.
From all this it follows that the feast of Mary’s Conception was known in the Byzantine Empire as early as the beginning of the eighth century, although under a different name from that which it now bears. Was the feast, in its essential idea, the same as ours? This question the reader may answer for himself. There is much doubtless in favour of an affirmative answer. Greek writers refer to our Lady in the highest conceivable terms, as can be amply proved from the lections of the office for the 8th December now in use. They exalt her not merely above all men, but absolutely above every creature. Moreover, the feast of the Conception has a meaning only when the conception is regarded as sinless, just as the Greeks celebrate a commemoration of the conception of St John the Baptist solely On the ground that John was sanctified in his mother’s womb. In all other cases, it is not the birthday of the saints which is kept, but the day of their death. All this tells in favour of the affirmative. But on the other hand, the fathers of the Eastern Church have never either used or even discovered the specific terms to designate the Immaculate Conception, nor have they ever proposed the question if our Lady was free from original sin.
It is indeed very difficult to maintain the former view in the face of the fact that the Greeks, at the present day, do not regard their feast of Mary’s Conception as implying this meaning, but among them it is a feast of little importance. Their Breviary contains the following notice of the feast: “God sent His angel to the pious couple Joachim and Anna, and announced to them that the barren would give birth, and so to prepare the way for the conception of the Virgin. Thus the holy Virgin Mary was conceived in consequence of an announcement, but by means of man and from his seed. For our Lord Jesus Christ alone was born in an ineffable manner of the holy Virgin Mary without the co-operation of man and his seed.”
This announcement by an angel is based on an apocryphal legend, which appears in Byzantine sermons on our Lady, belonging to the eighth and ninth centuries. Joachim, according to Jewish custom, desired to present an offering in the Temple, but was driven back and insulted by members of the tribe of Reuben because he was childless. This caused him so much pain that instead of returning to his home, he sadly betook himself into solitude. Anna, in her anxiety, prayed earnestly to God, and was informed by an angel she should give birth to a daughter richly endowed with gifts of grace. This legend derived from the Proto-evangelium of James, and propagated chiefly in the sermons of John of Eubœa and of Peter Siculus, was also known in the West, and figures largely in works of art; as, for example, in the beautiful picture in the cathedral at Augsburg, by Hans Holbein the Elder.