Fea revised, with notes, an Italian translation of J.J. Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst, and also added notes to some of G.L. Bianconi’s works. Among his original writings the principal are:—Miscellanea filologica, critica, e antiquaria; L’Integrità del Panteone rivendicata a M. Agrippa; Frammenti di fasti consolari; Iscrizioni di monumenti pubblichi; and Descrizione di Roma.
FEARNE, CHARLES (1742-1794), English jurist, son of Charles Fearne, judge-advocate of the admiralty, was born in London in 1742, and was educated at Westminster school. He adopted the legal profession, but, though well fitted by his talents to succeed as a barrister, he neglected his profession and devoted most of his attention and his patrimony to the prosecution of scientific experiments, with the vain hope of achieving discoveries which would reward him for his pains and expense. He died in 1794, leaving his widow and family in necessitous circumstances. His Essay on the Learning of Contingent Remainders and Executory Devises, the work which has made his reputation as a legal authority, and which has passed through numerous editions, was called forth by a decision of Lord Mansfield in the case of Perrin v. Blake, and had the effect of reversing that decision.
A volume entitled Fearne’s Posthumous Works was published by subscription in 1797 for the benefit of his widow.
FEASTS AND FESTIVALS. A festival or feast[1] is a day or series of days specially and publicly set apart for religious observances. Whether its occurrence be casual or periodic, whether its ritual be grave or gay, carnal as the orgies of Baal and Astarte, or spiritual as the worship of a Puritan Sabbath, it is to be regarded as a festival or “holy day” as long as it is professedly held in the name of religion.
To trace the festivals of the world through all their variations would be to trace the entire history of human religion and human civilization. Where no religion is, there can of course be no feasts; and without civilization any attempt at festival-keeping must necessarily be fitful and comparatively futile. But as religion develops, festivals develop with it, and assume their distinctive character; and an advancing civilization, at least in its earlier stages, will generally be found to increase their number, enrich their ritual, fix more precisely the time and order of their recurrence, and widen the area of their observance.
Some uncivilized tribes, such as the Juángs of Bengal, the Fuegians and the Andamanese, have been described as having no word for God, no idea of a future state, and consequently no religious ceremonies of any kind whatever. But such cases, doubtful at the best, are confessedly exceptional. In the vast majority of instances observed and recorded, the religiosity of the savage is conspicuous. Even when incapable of higher manifestations, it can at least take the form of reverence for the dead; the grave-heap can become an altar on which offerings of food for the departed may be placed, and where in acts of public and private worship the gifts of survivors may be accompanied with praises and with prayers. That the custom of ghost-propitiation by some sort of sacrifice is even now very widely diffused among the lower races at least, and that there are also many curious “survivals” of such a habit to be traced among highly civilized modern nations, has been abundantly shown of late by numerous collectors of folk-lore and students of sociology; and indications of the same phenomena can be readily pointed out in the Rig-Veda, the Zend-Avesta and the Pentateuch, as well as in the known usages of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.[2] In many cases the ceremonial observed is of the simplest; but it ever tends to become more elaborate; and above all it calls for repetition, and repetition, too, at regular intervals. Whenever this last demand has made itself felt, a calendar begins to take shape. The simplest calendar is obviously the lunar. “The Naga tribes of Assam celebrate their funeral feasts month by month, laying food and drink on the graves of the departed.” But it soon comes to be combined with the solar. Thus the Karens, “while habitually making oblations, have also annual feasts for the dead, at which they ask the spirits to eat and drink.” The natives of the Mexican valley in November lay animals, edibles and flowers on the graves of their dead relatives and friends. The common people in China have a similar custom on the arrival of the winter solstice. The ancient Peruvians had the custom of periodically assembling the embalmed bodies of their dead emperors in the great square of the capital to be feasted in company with the people. The Athenians had their annual Νεκύσια or Νεμέσεια and the Romans their Feralia and Lemuralia. The Egyptians observed their three “festivals of the seasons,” twelve “festivals of the month,” and twelve “festivals of the half month,” in honour of their dead. The Parsees, too, were required to render their afringans (blessings which were to be recited over a meal to which an angel or the spirit of a deceased person was invited) at each of the six seasons of the year, and also on certain other days.[3]
In the majority of recorded instances, the religious feeling of the savage has been found to express itself in other forms besides that of reverence towards the dead. The oldest literatures of the world, at all events, whether Aryan or Semitic, embody a religion of a much higher type than ancestor worship. The hymns of the Rig-Veda, for example, while not without traces of the other, yet indicate chiefly a worship of the powers of nature, connected with the regular recurrence of the seasons. Thus in iv. 57 we have a hymn designed for use at the commencement of the ploughing time;[4] and in the Aitareya-Brâhmana, the earliest treatise on Hindu ceremonial, we already find a complete series of sattras or sacrificial sessions exactly following the course of the solar year. They are divided into two distinct sections, each consisting of six months of thirty days each. The sacrifices are allowed to commence only at certain lucky constellations and in certain months. So, for instance, as a rule, no great sacrifice can commence during the sun’s southern progress. The great sacrifices generally take place in spring, in the months of April and May.[5] In the Parsee Scriptures[6] the year is divided into six seasons or gahanbârs of two months each, concluding with February, the season at which “great expiatory sacrifices were offered for the growth of the whole creation in the last two months of the year.” We have no means of knowing precisely what were the arrangements of the Phoenician calendar, but it is generally admitted that the worship was solar, the principal festivals taking place in spring and in autumn. Among the most characteristic celebrations of the Egyptians were those which took place at the ἀφανισμός or disappearance of Osiris in October or November, at the search for his remains, and their discovery about the winter solstice, and at the date of his supposed entrance into the moon at the beginning of spring. The Phrygian festivals were also arranged on the theory that the deity was asleep during the winter and awake during the summer; in the autumn they celebrated his retiring to rest, and in spring with mirth and revelry they roused him from his slumbers.[7] The seasonal character of the Teutonic Ostern, the Celtic Beltein and the Scandinavian Yule is obvious. Nor was the habit of observing such festivals peculiar to the Aryan or the Semitic race. The Mexicans, who were remarkable for the perfection of their calendar, in addition to this had an elaborate system of movable and immovable feasts distributed over the entire year; the principal festivals, however, in honour of their chief gods, Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, were held in May, June and December. Still more plainly connected with the revolutions of the seasons was the public worship of the ancient Peruvians, who, besides the ordinary feast at each new moon, observed four solar festivals annually. Of these the most important was the Yntip-Raymi (Sun-feast), which, preceded by a three days’ fast, began with the summer solstice, and lasted for nine days. Its ceremonies have been often described. A similar but less important festival was held at the winter solstice. The Cusqui-Raymi, held after seedtime, as the maize began to appear, was celebrated with sacrifices and banquets, music and dancing. A fourth great festival, called Citua, held on the first new moon after the autumnal equinox, was preceded by a strict fast and special observances intended for purposes of purification and expiation, after which the festivities lasted until the moon entered her second quarter.
Greek Festivals.—Perhaps the annual Attic festival in honour of Erechtheus alluded to in the Iliad (ii. 550) ought to be regarded as an instance of ancestor-worship; but the seasonal character of the ἑορτή or new-moon feast in Od. xx. 156, and of the θαλύσια or harvest-festival in Il. ix. 533, is generally acknowledged. The older Homeric poems, however, give no such express indications of a fully-developed system of festivals as are to be met with in the so-called “Homeric” hymns, in the Works and Days of Hesiod, in the pages of Herodotus, and so abundantly in most authors of the subsequent period; and it is manifest that the calendar of Homer or even of Herodotus must have been a much simpler matter than that of the Tarentines, for example, came to be, of whom we are told by Strabo that their holidays were in excess of their working days. Each demos of ancient Greece during the historical period had its own local festivals (ἑορταὶ δημοτικαί), often largely attended and splendidly solemnized, the usages of which, though essentially alike, differed very considerably in details. These details have in many cases been wholly lost, and in others have reached us only in a very fragmentary state. But with regard to the Athenian calendar, the most interesting of all, our means of information are fortunately very copious. It included some 50 or 60 days on which all business, and especially the administration of justice, was by order of the magistrates suspended. Among these ἱερομηνίαι were included—in Gamelion (January), the Lenaea or festival of vats in honour of Dionysus; in Anthesterion (February), the Anthesteria, also in honour of Dionysus, lasting three days (Pithoigia, Choes and Chytri); the Diasia in honour of Zeus, and the lesser Eleusinia; in Elaphebolion (March), the Pandia (? of Zeus), the Elaphebolia of Artemis, and the greater Dionysia; in Munychion, the Munychia of Artemis as the moon goddess (Μουνυχία) and the Delphinia of Apollo; in Thargelion (May), the Thargelia of Apollo and the Plynteria and Callynteria of Athena; in Scirophorion (June), the Diipolia of Zeus and the Scirophoria of Athena; in Hekatombaion, hecatombs were offered to Apollo the summer-god, and the Cronia of Cronus and the Panathenaea of Athena were held; in Metageitnion, the Metageitnia of Apollo; in Boëdromion, the Boëdromia of Apollo the helper,[8] the Nekusia or Nemeseia (the festival of the dead), and the greater Eleusinia; in Pyanepsion, the Pyanepsia of Apollo, the Oschophoria of Dionysus (probably), the Chalkeia or Athenaea of Athena, the Thesmophoria of Demeter, and the Apaturia; in Maimacterion, the Maimacteria of Zeus; and in Poseideon (December), the lesser Dionysia.