HISTORY OF THE DAY. 253 was in a fair way to be generally observed, as appears from the twenty-first decree of the Council of Cognac (A.D. 1254); whilst in England its celebration had already been ordained in the eighth statute of the Council of Oxford, which met at the summons of Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, A.D. 1222. The fortunes of the day in our own calendar-together with those of the festival of St. Barnabas, the other extraordinary member of the Apostolic College-form the subject of a lengthy and interesting note in Wheatly, which is as follows: St. Paul and St. Barnabas were neither of them inserted in the table of holy-days prefixed to the calendar, till the Scotch Liturgy was compiled, from whence they were taken into our own at the last review; nor were they reckoned up among the days that were appointed by the act in the fifth and sixth year of King Edward VI., to be observed as holy-days; though it is there expressly enacted that no other day but what is therein mentioned shall be kept, or commanded to be kept, holy. However, the names of each of them were inserted in the calendar itself, and proper services were appointed for them in all the Common Prayer Books that have been since the Reformation. And in the first book of King Edward they are both red-letter holy-days, though in the second book (in which the other holy-days are also printed in red letters) the conversion of St. Paul is put down in black, and St. Barnabas is omitted. But this last seems to have been done through the carelessness of the printer, and not through design, proper second Lessons being added in the calendar against the day. The reason of their being left out of the table of holy-days was, because if they fell upon any week-day, they were not to be observed as days of obligation, or by ceasing from labour, nor to be bid in the church. Their proper offices might be used, so they were not used solemnly, nor by ringing to the same, after the manner used on high holy-days. The reason why they were not high holydays, I suppose, was, because the Conversion of St. Paul did always, and St. Barnabas did often, fall in term-time; during which time and the time of harvest, i.e., from the 1st of July to the 29th of September, it was ordained in Convocation by the authority of King Henry VIII., in 1536, that no days should be observed as holy-days except the feast of the Apostles, of our Blessed Lady, and St. George, and such feasts as the King's judges did not use to sit in judgment in Westminster Hall. The days in the terms in which the judges did not use to sit were the feasts of the Ascension, of St. John the Baptist, of All Saints, and of the Purification. By the feasts of the Apostles, I suppose, the twelve only were meant; and, therefore, St. Paul and St. Barnabas were excluded. But as they are inserted now in the table of holy-days, which, with the whole Liturgy, is confirmed by the Act of Uniformity, they are both of them days of equal obligation with the rest.'* * Wheatly: Rational Introduction to the Book of Common Prayer. The book of the Acts of the Apostles enters so fully into the Christian activity of St. Paul, and he himself is so frequent in autobiographic passages throughout his various Epistles, that it is well to leave almost utterly untouched a life which is at once so accessible and so little susceptible of treatment at anything like a medium length. After the events recorded in the inspired narrative, it is related that St. Paul, having been restored to liberty at the end of his two years' imprisonment at Rome, prepared for the execution, in its widest sense, of his commission as the Apostle of the Gentiles. Whither he at first directed his course has not been made absolutely certain. During the interval of eight years which elapsed between his two appearances at Rome, he is said to have extended his labours to the utmost bounds of the Western world,' which would naturally include our own island. 'There is very good and sufficient evidence, built on the testimony of ancient and credible writers, with a concurrent probability of circumstances, that there was a Christian Church planted in Britain during the Apostles' times. Eusebius, a learned and inquisitive person, affirms, in his third book of Evangelical Demonstration, that some of the Apostles preached the Gospel in the British Islands. Theodoret, another learned and judicious historian, expressly names the Britons among the nations converted by the Apostles; and says, in another place, that St. Paul brought salvation to the islands that lie in the ocean (Tom. i. in Psal. 116). St. Jerome testifies that St. Paul, after his imprisonments, preached the Gospel in the Western parts (Hierom in Amos, c. 5), by which the British Islands were especially understood; as will appear by the following testimony of Clemens Romanus, who saith, St. Paul preached righteousness through the whole world, and in so doing went to the utmost bounds of the West' (Epist. ad Corinth.), which necessarily includeth the British Islands, as is plain to those who knew how the phrase, "the utmost bounds of the West" was used by the historians and poets of those times.** Upon St. Paul's return to Rome, about the eighth or ninth year of the reign of Nero, he is said to have drawn upon himself the fury of that cruel Emperor, either by joining with St. Peter in procuring the fall of Simon Magus, or by effecting the conversion of one of Nero's female favourites. The Apostle was apprehended, tried, and sentenced to death. As a Roman citizen, he might have claimed— unless his crimes were assumed to have been of a most heinous and aggravated kind-exemption from the preliminary torture of the scourge; although Cardinal Baronius relates that in one of the churches of Rome the pillars were long afterwards exhibited to which both St. Peter and St. Paul were said to have been bound whilst they were scourged. On his way to execution, the holy * Nelson's Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England. ASSOCIATION WITH ST. PETER. 255 Apostle was the means of converting no fewer than three of his guard; and these men, within a few days after, by the Emperor's order, became martyrs for the faith. The place of St. Paul's execution was the Aquæ Salviæ, at a distance of three miles from Rome, where, after some time spent in solemn preparation, he cheerfully gave his neck to the fatal stroke. As a Roman, he might not be put to the servile and opprobrious death of crucifixion; and he therefore suffered decapitation, which was considered a more noble form of execution. St. Paul was buried in the Via Ostiensis, about two miles from Rome; and over his grave, about A.D. 318, Constantine the Great, at the instance of Silvester, Bishop of Rome, built a stately church, which he adorned with superb gifts and enriched with noble endowments. The Emperor Theodosius, however, thought this church too mean for the memory of so great an Apostle, and caused it to be taken down, and another, more noble and magnificent still, to be erected on its site. As the Apostle of the Gentiles, St. Paul has naturally been very highly and very widely venerated. In the old English calendar, as still in the Roman, his Nativity as a martyr was observed, jointly with that of St. Peter, on the 29th of June; his Conversion being kept in them, as in the present English calendar, on the 25th of January. His association with St. Peter was based upon the supposed fellowship of the two Apostles in their death, which, say some writers, took place on the same day and in the same year; whilst others, cleaving to the identity of the day, interpose an interval of one or more years between the two martyrdoms. Certainly,' says Dr. Cave, if St. Paul suffered not at the very same time with St. Peter, it could not be long after-not above a year at most. The best is, which of them soever started first, they both came at last to the same end of the race: to those palms and crowns which are reserved for all good men in Heaven, but most eminently for the martyrs of the Christian faith.'* St. Paul offers many attractions to the Christian muse, whether we have regard to his character, which was so noble and so manifold; to his life, which was so picturesque and so eventful; to his boldness, which was so constant and so uncalculating; to his sympathies, which were so ready and so Catholic; to his sufferings, which were so numerous and so severe; or to his teaching, which was so powerful and so profound. Yet it remains that his conversion is the critical event of his life, as it is the theme of his festival for on his conversion depends all his succeeding exploits and experiences. As Innocent III. puts it, in the Epistle to which we have already alluded: 'The glorious passion of St. Paul would have been impossible, unless his conversion had first been effected.' We conclude our remarks upon a festival in honour of an event which * Cave's Antiquitates Apostolicæ; Life of St. Paul, to cultivated minds ranks among the dearest of the historical evidences of Christianity, with a poem on the 'Conversion of St. Paul,' by Dr. Monsell, in whose volume of 'Spiritual Songs' it occurs: Saviour, when our souls would trace Greater difference cannot be, Than in Saul and Paul we see ; He-who Christ and Christ's abhorred Lowly breathes, 'Who art Thou, Lord?' Trembling and astonished too, Sighs, What wilt Thou have me do?' Wins a martyr's palm and crown! | Such God's glorious power of old! That, which humbled to the knee, That, which pardoned all the wrong, The Presentation of Christ IN THE TEMPLE, COMMONLY CALLED THE PURIFICATION OF ST. MARY THE VIRGIN. FEBRUARY 2. T HERE have been celebrated, with more or less of universality, at least half-a-dozen festivals in commemoration of events connected with the Blessed Virgin. Of these, four are mentioned by Durandus, with the remark that a holiday in honour of Mary occurred in each of the four quarters of the year, to wit, her Annunciation, Assumption, Nativity, and Purification; to which list may be added her Visitation and Conception. The observance of the last-mentioned festival was of ancient date in the Eastern Church, and became obligatory in that communion about the middle of the twelfth century; although in the Western Church it required three hundred years more to advance to the same degree of universality. Its introduction into Britain has been inconclusively referred to St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, about the year 1150; whilst by the eighth statute of the Council of Oxford, A.D. 1222, its celebration, which occurs December 8th, was expressly left without authoritative sanction to the option of the faithful.* The Nativity of the Virgin, September 8th, was a festival unknown in the time of St. Augustine; although the Sacramentary of Gregory the Great (590--604) contains a special office for it. Its institution has been attributed to Servius, Bishop of Rome, about A.D. * 'Statuimus quod festa subscripta sub omni veneratione serventur, videlicet omnia festa Beatæ Mariæ, præter festum Conceptionis, cujus celebrationi non imponitur necessitas.'-Labbeus, Sacrosancta Concilia. |