In Normandy the feast, whose celebration found in England precarious toleration in the retirement of the cloister, was already introduced by the secular clergy without encountering any opposition. This is stated by Osbert himself when he remarks in his letter to Anselm how, on the other side of the channel, the feast had been solemnly kept by some bishops.[539] If these words do not apply to Normandy, we should like to know of some other country on the Continent where the feast was then observed. It is certain that it was kept at Rouen under Bishop Rotricus (1165-1183), and placed on a level with the feast of the Annunciation.[540] Owing to the law that, in the province of Rouen, consisting of six dioceses, the daughter churches must follow in their ritual and Breviary the use of the metropolitan Church, this feast would soon be celebrated all over Normandy.[541] When the Corporation of Norman students at the Paris University chose it as their particular festival, it was not a mere fancy on their part, but must have had its origin in the ecclesiastical observances of their home. Still less must this fact have been the cause why the feast in the middle ages went by the name of the “Norman’s feast” (festum nationis Normannicæ). This name can only have come into existence because the feast had been zealously celebrated in Normandy for a long time, by all the people, before it was kept in any other country of the West. Henry of Ghent, a member of the Sorbonne, distinctly declares this to have been the case.[542] The Normans, however, could not have been the originators of the feast. Doubtless they got their knowledge of it in Lower Italy, where it had been observed for a long time, after they had begun to settle there. Those who are unwilling to adopt so rationalistic an explanation of the matter, draw attention to the fact that the two Anselms, the earliest known propagators of the feast in England, were not uninfluenced by other Eastern forms of showing honour to our Blessed Lady. This is shown not only by Anselm’s hymns on the Mother of God, in which the refrain, Ave sponsa insponsata, has been adopted from the so-called hymnus acathistus, but also by an entry in an Irish Calendar (upon which too much stress has recently been laid), in which Mary’s conception is put down on the 3rd May, in accordance with the ridiculous Greek legend,[543] that Mary was born seven months after her conception. Granting that this entry really belongs to the ninth century, it is only evidence of monastic learning, but affords no proof for the existence of the feast in Ireland. It only shows that the writer knew of the Greek fable in question, and made use of it for his Calendar.
It may be asked if the feast made its appearance in the West first of all in Normandy, and in England, which since 1066 had been politically united with Normandy, or had been observed earlier elsewhere? Could we believe Passaglia, it had been celebrated already in Spain in the seventh century.[544] If so, it is impossible to think it could have disappeared later on without leaving a trace behind. The genuine Mozarabic liturgy does not contain it, and in the oldest Spanish Calendars, e.g. that of Toledo of the tenth century, published by Morinus, it does not appear. The Jesuit Leslæus, who wrote the introduction to the Mozarabic liturgy, admits candidly that the feast came into Spain through France.[545] The two reasons which Passaglia gives for his opinion are worthless. He relies upon a spurious life of St Isidore of Seville, which contains later interpolations, while the genuine life written by Ildefons makes no mention of it, and upon a passage in the laws of the West Goths. But this latter passage has to be taken as referring to the Conception of Christ by Mary in accordance with the terminology then in use. When the same author wishes to make his readers believe that the feast existed in Cremona already in the tenth century,[546] it has to be borne in mind that Bishop Sicardus of Cremona,[547] in the thirteenth century, strongly opposed its introduction there.
It may be regarded as certain that the feast of our Lady’s conception was introduced into the Benedictine monasteries of England by the two Anselms at the end of the eleventh century. We must not, however, regard England as especially the home of the feast in the Latin Church, for both St Anselm and his nephew had received their training in Normandy, which was their second home. From thence they passed in later middle life to England, for William liked to fill the chief spiritual posts in England with foreigners.
When the author of the tract De Conceptione B.M.V. laments that the feast met with much opposition both from clergy and laity, his complaints were well grounded, for the names of a number of famous men are known to us at the present day as having strongly opposed both the feast and the doctrine which underlay it. For the most part they were men of importance. We can name Roger of St Albans, Bishop of Salisbury, and Bernard, Bishop of St Davids († 1147). The former was minister and adviser of King Henry II., the latter chaplain to Queen Matilda. In France the most famous opponent of the feast was St Bernard, the celebrated preacher Maurice de Sully († 1196), Bishop of Paris, and Peter of Celle, Abbot of Moutier-la-Celle, from 1181 Bishop of Chartres.[548] It is especially remarkable that the greatest liturgists of the middle ages, Beleth, Sicardus of Cremona, and Durandus of Mende, all opposed the feast.[549] In Germany, the monk Potho of Prüm may be named, although his views are obscure.
The conduct of St Bernard must be more closely examined. The opportunity of expressing his views was furnished by the circumstance that the Canons of Lyons commenced, about 1140, to celebrate the feast of our Lady’s conception, without having obtained the authority of the Holy See for this “novelty.” According to the then existing state of canon law, the bishops had the right of arranging by themselves the festivals to be celebrated within their respective dioceses. But St Bernard in his letter to the Canons makes no mention of the bishop. This is explained by the fact that the letter was written at a time when the Church of Lyons was without any recognised head, and when St Bernard was exerting himself with the Pope to obtain the confirmation of Fulco, the bishop elect.[550] It may well have been that in this matter the canons acted despotically. St Bernard, however, does not bring this charge formally against them in his letter, but lays all the stress upon objections to the inner significance of the feast. It was customary, he says,[551] to celebrate the day of our Lady’s birth, because she, like Jeremias and John the Baptist, had been sanctified before birth (fuit ante sancta quam nata). Mary could not be holy before she existed, but her existence began at her conception and that was not free from concupiscence. If her conception was to be regarded as holy, one must logically hold that her parents were already holy also. Christ our Lord was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and consequently His conception was holy and a feast of the Church (Annuntiatio). Before taking any steps in the matter, St Bernard concludes, the Apostolic See ought to have been consulted, to whose authority he commits the matter. The Roman Church, to which he appealed, was, however, in no hurry. More than three hundred years had to pass before she in any degree broke through her reserve on this question.
The effect of this letter is not known, but there is no doubt that during the twelfth century the feast made steady progress in France. Unfortunately we possess only a few data to illustrate its development, for the investigation into the ecclesiastical history of special localities requires to be more extensively taken in hand. In Rouen, the capital of Normandy, it was certainly observed at that period, as we have already seen. Next, its observance is prescribed by the statutes of Le Mans, in the Province of Tours, in 1247.[552] In Rheims it appears between 1261-1271. A more important fact is that the General Chapter of the Franciscans, held at Pisa in 1263, decreed that the feast should be celebrated throughout the entire order.[553] Although it did not attain to the rank of a feast of obligation for clergy and people, yet it became known throughout the world, and especially at the papal Court at Avignon, where Franciscan influence was strong. Finally the standpoint of the thirteenth century with regard to this feast is best summed up in the words of St Thomas Aquinas, “Although the Roman Church does not celebrate it, she allows other Churches to do so,”[554] and in those of St Bonaventure who justifies the keeping of a festival on the day of our Lady’s conception.[555] Accordingly the number of dioceses and provinces within which it was celebrated was constantly on the increase; for the fourteenth century we have Canterbury 1328; Treves between 1338 and 1343;[556] Paderborn 1343; Münster 1350;[557] Utrecht 1350; Brixen 1399, while other diocesan synods, e.g. Prague in 1355, did not yet adopt it. When it is asserted that the feast had been introduced at Liège under Bishop Albero II. († 1145), it must be urged on the other side that the list of feasts drawn up by the diocesan synod of Liège in 1287 makes no mention of it.[558] The synod of Cologne of 1308 does not mention it either, although it is contained in the Cologne Calendar of the same century. For Mainz we have the fact that this feast is employed for dating a decree of the year 1318.[559] In the province of Canterbury, the feast obtained official recognition only in 1328, i.e. two hundred and nineteen years after the death of those who had first exerted themselves in its favour.[560]
As far as Canon law and the liturgy are concerned, the feast of the Conceptio B.M.V. remained in the fourteenth century as incomplete as it had been in the twelfth and thirteenth. Generally speaking, however, each bishop had then the right of appointing the festivals for his own diocese, but this right was always restricted to the appointment of those festivals already recognised and permitted by the Church universal which he desired should be observed within his own diocese—as, for example, whether St Mary Magdalene should be kept as a holiday or not. But in this case it was not a question of a feast already recognised by ecclesiastical authority, and its opponents could always object with reason: Non est authenticum.
Important if not decisive steps were at length taken by ecclesiastical authorities in the fifteenth century. In the meantime, the doctrine, which had been defined and formulated by Duns Scotus was so widely accepted, except among the Dominicans, and enjoyed so much popularity among the people, who violently took sides on the question, that it was possible for the Council of Basel (which began by being ecumenical, but became schismatical after its quarrel with the pope), to state in its thirty-sixth session, on the 17th September 1439, in answer to the petition of the theological faculty of Paris, that the doctrine that Mary by a special gift of grace had never been subject to original sin was “pious and agreeable to the worship of the Church, the Catholic Faith, and the teaching of Holy Scripture.” The Council forbade the contrary doctrine to be taught. At the same time it renewed the decree in regard to the feast of “her Holy conception, which was kept on the 8th December both by the Roman Church and by others.”[561] Granting that the Council was ecumenical, all circumstances connected with the feast, with regard to both doctrine and ritual, were now formally settled. This decree was not without effect, as soon appeared from the fact that in the Mainz Breviary of 1507 the lections for the second nocturn of the feast are drawn from it. It also certainly influenced the further spread of the feast, as soon appeared from its being expressly authorized and received by a provincial synod at Avignon, held under the presidency of a papal legate in 1457.[562]
Although the fathers of the Council of Basel were of opinion that the feast was celebrated by the Roman Church on the 8th December, this was only partially correct. The fact is that at Avignon, with the full knowledge of the Papal Court, it had been already celebrated without meeting with any opposition from the authorities. So, too, in Rome it had been celebrated by religious in the churches of their monasteries. It can well have been that Alvarus Pelagius († 1340), as we are informed, preached on this day in Rome; this, however, does not prove that the diocese of Rome, or the Papal Court, had adopted the feast at that date, for that, it would have been necessary to include the day in question in the Calendar and treat it as a festival in the Missal and Breviary. And so it would appear that it was kept as a purely ecclesiastical holy day, and not as yet as a public official holiday with rest from servile work. Nevertheless there were those at Basel who maintained it was a festival of the Roman Church.