poem from the 'Christian Year' is suggested by the text, Acts i. 21, 22: Who is God's chosen priest? He who on Christ stands waiting day and night From His Lord's cradle, patience from His Cross; Hath seen Him, and in glory; and in both In witness of his Lord, In humble following of his Saviour dear : What mortal-for this more than angels' task, But Thou hast made it sure By Thy dear promise to Thy Church and Bride, Thou art her only spouse, Whose arm supports her, on Whose faithful breast Thou, her unerring guide, Yet full of trembling, Messengers of God: Thou who didst seal by Thy descending Dove Else helpless found, to learn and teach Thy love. The Annunciation OF The Blessed Virgin Mary. MARCH 25. F the various theories which have been held concerning the origin of this festival were equally trustworthy, it might be credibly authenticated that it was instituted in every century from the third to the seventh, both inclusive. Benedict XIV., willing to believe in the genuineness of a Homily attributed to Gregory Thaumaturgus, and professing to have been written in the third century, claims for a feast so ancient the prestige of Apostolic tradition.* Hospinian, in like manner, accepting the genuineness of a Homily ascribed to Athanasius, favours the opinion that this festival was already in existence in the year 340. Of both these Homilies, L'Estrange roundly says that, 'in regard they are both impostures, the youngest being A.D. 600, he will not urge them.' Cardinal Baronius, in his Notes to the Roman Martyrology, points out an anachronism which forbids him to refer the latter of the two Homilies to Athanasius; for the author of that Homily disputes against Nestorius, who lived a long time after Athanasius. The Homily, therefore, is more colourably ascribed to St. Cyril, who, about the year 430, wrote in refutation of Nestorianism; or, again, to 'Maximus, or some other, after the time that the Monothelite heresy appeared in the world, which was in the seventh century.' The author of the Homily, *De Festis Beatæ Mariæ Virginis. + De Origine Festorum Christianorum: De Annunciationis B. Mariæ Festo. Bingham's Antiquities of the Christian Church. whoever he may have been, calls the Feast of the Annunciation the primary one, and very venerable; but expressly affirms—and this is a significant fact when speculating upon the probable origin of the Feast-that it was established as one of the festivals of our Lord, and not of the Virgin. Taking this as true, the possibility of the existence of the Annunciation as a Festum Dominicum in the fourth century is not destroyed by that decree-the fifty-first-of the Council of Laodicea,* which ordained that the Quadragesimal Fast should not be interrupted by the commemoration of Martyrs and Saints; and that, if these fell to be observed in Lent, they should be confined to the Sabbaths and Lord's days.' By such a decree, a Festum Dominicum would not be affected; and there is no proof that the Feast of the Annunciation did not even then exist in that character. If, on the other hand, it be maintained that it was from the beginning a Feast of the Virgin, then it follows that it must have been introduced at some time in the long interval between the Council of Laodicea and the Council in Trullo, A.D. 692, which, in its fifty-second canon, whilst renewing the aforesaid prohibition of Laodicea, does so with this difference, that it ordains the celebration, all through Lent, of the mass of the presanctified, except on Saturdays, Sundays, and the day of the Annunciation.' This decree shows, says Bingham, that by this time it had become a noted festival and, therefore, we may date its original from the seventh century.' But such a conclusion hardly savours of Bingham's accustomed sagacity: 'for the Council in Trullo,' as Benedict XIV. points out, 'speaks not of the institution of a festival, but presumes it to be flourishing, and to have been instituted long before.'+ Thomassin and L'Estrange go even beyond Bingham, inasmuch as they deny the existence of any trustworthy document about the Feast in question before the Council in Trullo, from which Bingham dates it. Mr. Riddle's account is more in the direction of both ingenuity and generosity. Augusti,' he says, 'thinks that this festival may have been observed in the time of the Council of Laodicea, only that it was observed as one of those which related to our blessed Lord, and not as a Saint's Day. It is, indeed, expressly called one of our Lord's Festivals in the Homily ascribed to Athanasius. It is probable that, after the fifth century, when the respect paid to the Virgin Mary greatly increased in consequence of what passed during the Nestorian controversies, this festival was expressly referred to the honour of that Saint, and its observance was fixed to the 25th of March. This arrangement was not adopted The date of this Council is disputed, and each of several years have been assigned to it from A.D. 314 to 399. In the Sacrosancta Concilia of Labbeus, it is put down, without question or alternative, for the year 320. Antiquities of the Christian Church. De Festis Beatæ Mariæ Virginis. NAMES AND TITLES OF THE DAY. 279 at first by the Spanish and Oriental churches, but afterwards it became universal. If these views be correct, the history of the establishment of this festival is simply as follows: In early times it was celebrated as one of the Lord's festivals (opri dεσTOTIK)—in the fifth century it gradually assumed the character of a Saint's Day-and in the course of the sixth century it was universally observed under that character. For the antiquity of this feast, it is further claimed that it is mentioned in the Sacramentary of Pope Gelasius I. (492— 495); and that Sergius I. (687—701) is recorded by Platina to have appointed Litanies to be chanted yearly through the city on the day of Simeon and the Annunciation of the Virgin Mother.'† It may be mentioned that the Spanish Church, scandalized at the occurrence of a festival in Lent, and at the want of uniformity in several of the Spanish provinces, decreed, at the Council of Toledo, A.D. 656, 'that the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin should be fixed to the eighteenth of December, eight days before the Nativity of our Lord.' Amongst the ancients the day was variously designated. It was the Day of Salutation; the Day of the Gospel; the Day of the Conception of Christ, and of the Annunciation of Christ; the Annunciation of the Angel to St. Mary; and the Festival of the Incarnation. And it was in Rome, France, and England the first day of the ecclesiastical year; as it is now, under its vernacular name of Lady Day, one of the quarterly divisions of the year. We have no very precise or abundant information as to the mode in which the ancient Church celebrated the Feast of the Annunciation, which, perhaps, is the more remarkable from the fact that St. Bernard, speaking therein the mind of St. Chrysostom and other Fathers, entitles it Radix omnium Festorum, the Root of all Festivals; and Ivo Carnotensis, speaking of the day, says that it 'commemorates exordium nostra Reparationis-the beginning of our Redemption.' There are, however, many Homilies extant which directly take this day for a subject; and the Christian muse, from the time of John of Damascus and Cosmas of Jerusalem, has been almost continuously busy with its illustration. To the Christian artist its mystery and glory have never lost their attractiveness. In the old Greek pictures, and in the most ancient Western ones, both the Angel and the Virgin are depicted as standing; whilst in later representations the Angel genuflects before her, and she is either kneeling in prayer, or reading, with a large book open on a desk before her. From the mouth of Gabriel proceeds the angelic salutation, 'Ave Maria! Gratiâ Plena; and he bears in his hand a sceptre, a palm, an olive branch, or a lily, as if about to offer, along * Riddle's Manual of Christian Antiquities. with the salutation, the emblem of rule, of victory, of peace, or of purity. But it is the lily which is regarded as the peculiar emblem of the Annunciation, as symbolizing her innocence who must have been more than spotless before the event of the Day could have exhibited even the faintest approach to credibility. The consciousness in the mind of the Virgin of anything short of the purity of Heaven would have been a most just impediment to her becoming the Bride of Heaven. Without this, her heart dared not have whispered to itself, nor her lips have faltered to others, that she had becn selected from all generations of women for so unique and supreme a token of the Divine favour and approbation. The following, entitled 'The Virgin,' and forming one of Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Sonnets,' is devoted to an exposition special'y of the purity, with a glance at the honours generally, of the Mother of our Lord: Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost With the least shade of thought to sin allied; The particulars of the Annunciation are given in the first chapter of St. Luke's Gospel; but the narrative, which mentions Nazareth as the place, and points, at least, according to ecclesiastical inference, to the twenty-fifth of March as the day, leaves the exact moment undecided; on which account, as Pope Benedict XIV. mentions, the Church desired the faithful, at three different hours of the day, to recall this holy mystery; and ordained that at dawn, at midday, and at eventide, the bells should sound to admonish Christians to its due celebration.*** Another minor question, which the Evangelist leaves an open one, has respect to the age of the Virgin at the time of the Annunciation. Cardinal Cajetan arrives at the conclusion that she was twenty-seven, or twenty-four, or at least twenty-two years of age; whilst Catharinus contends that she was not more than fourteen or fifteen. The doctrine of the Day, so far, at least, as it is conversant about the Infant then announced and conceived, is substantially the same with the doctrine of the Nativity, of which it was the necessary anteDe Festo Sanctissimæ Annuntiationis Beatæ Mariæ. * |