Of all the Roman festivals this is the only one which can be said with any truth to be still surviving. When the Italian priest leads his flock round the fields with the ritual of the Litania major in Rogation week he is doing very much what the Fratres Arvales did in the infancy of Rome, and with the same object. In other countries, England among them, the same custom was taken up by the Church, which rightly appreciated its utility, both spiritual and material; the bounds of the parish were fixed in the memory of the young, and the wrath of God was averted by an act of duty from man, cattle, and crops. ‘It was a general custom formerly, and is still observed in some country parishes, to go round the bounds and limits of the parish on one of the three days before Ascension-day; when the Minister, accompanied by his Churchwardens and Parishioners, was wont to deprecate the vengeance of God, beg a blessing on the fruits of the earth, and preserve the rights and properties of the parish[[502]].’
At Oxford, and it is to be hoped in some other places, this laudable custom still survives. But the modern clergy, from want of interest in ritual, except such as is carried on within their churches, or from some strong distrust of any merry-making not initiated by their own zeal, are apt to drop the ceremonies; and there is some danger that even in Oxford the processions and peeled wands may soon be things of the past. To all such ministers I would recommend the practice of the judicious Hooker, as described by his biographer, Isaak Walton:
‘He would by no means omit the customary time of procession, persuading all, both rich and poor, if they desired the preservation of Love, and their Parish rights and liberties, to accompany him in his Perambulation—and most did so; in which Perambulation he would usually express more pleasant Discourse than at other times, and would then always drop some loving and facetious Observations, to be remembered against the next year, especially by the Boys and young people; still inclining them, and all his present Parishioners, to meekness and mutual Kindnesses and Love.’
At Charlton-on-Otmoor, near Oxford, there was a survival of the ‘agri lustratio’ until recent years. On the beautiful rood-screen of the parish church there is a cross, which was carried in procession through the parish[[503]], freshly decorated with flowers, on May-day; it was then restored to its place on the screen, and remained there until the May-day of the next year. It may still be seen there, but it is no longer carried round, and its decoration seems to have been transferred from May-day to the harvest-festival[[504]].
MENSIS IUNIUS.
Kal. Iun. (June 1). N.
IUNONI MONETAE (VEN.)
FABARICI C[IRCENSES] M[ISSUS]. (PHILOC.)
On the name of the mensis Junius some remarks have already been made under May 1. There is no sure ground for connecting it with Juno[[505]]. The first day of June was sacred to her, but so were all Kalends; and if this was also the dies natalis of the temple of Juno Moneta in arce, we have no reason to suppose the choice of day to be specially significant[[506]]. We know the date of this dedication; it was in 344 B.C. and in consequence of a vow made by L. Furius Camillus Dictator in a war against the Aurunci[[507]]. Of a Juno Moneta of earlier date we have no knowledge; and, in spite of much that has been said to the contrary, I imagine that the title was only given to a Juno of the arx in consequence of the popular belief that the Capitol was saved from the attack of the Gauls (390 B.C.) by the warning voices of her sacred geese. What truth there was in that story may be a matter of doubt, but it seems easier to believe that it had a basis of fact than to account for it aetiologically[[508]]. There may well have been an altar or sacellum[[509]] of Juno on the arx, near which her noisy birds were kept[[510]]; and when a temple was eventually built here in 344 B.C., it was appropriately dedicated to Juno of the warning voice. From the fact that part of this temple was used as a mint[[511]], the word Moneta gradually passed into another sense, which has found its way into our modern languages[[512]].
One tradition connected the name of the month with M. Junius Brutus, who is said to have performed a sacrum on this day after the flight of Tarquinius, on the Caelian Hill[[513]]. This sacrum had no connexion with Juno, and the tradition which thus absurdly brings Brutus into the question shows plainly that the derivation from Juno was not universally accepted[[514]]. The real deity of the Kalends of June was not Juno, but an antique goddess whose antiquity is attested both by the meagreness of our knowledge of her, and the strange confusion about her which Ovid displays. Had Carna been more successful in the struggle for existence of Roman deities, we might not have been so sure of her extreme antiquity; but no foreign cult grafted on her gave her a new lease of life, and by the end of the Republic she was all but dead.