Observations on popular antiquities chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar customs, ceremonies, and superstitions / by John Brand.

  • John Brand
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Observations on popular antiquities chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar customs, ceremonies, and superstitions / by John Brand. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    64/858 (page 48)
    ASB WEDNESDAY. This, which is the first day of Lent, is called Ash Wednesday (as we read in the Festa Anglo-Romana) from the ancient ceremony of blessing ashes on that day, and therewith the priest signeth the people on the forehead in the form of a cross, affording them withal this wholesome admonition: “Remember, man, thou art dust, and shalt return to dust.” The ashes used this day in the Church of Rome are made of the palms consecrated the Sunday twelve months before ; or rather, the ashes which they use this day are made of the palms blessed the Palm Sunday before. In a Convocation held in the time of Henry VIII. mentioned in Fuller’s Church History, “Giving of ashes on Ash Wednesday, to put in remembrance every Christian man in the beginning of Lent and Penance, that he is but ashes and earth, and thereto shall return,” &c., is reserved with some other rites and ceremonies, which survived the shock that at that remarkable era almost overthrew the whole pile of Catholic superstitions. Lent was counted to begin, says Durandus, on that which is now the first Sunday in Lent, and to end on Easter Eve; which time, says he, containing forty-two days, if you take out of them the six Sundays (on which it was counted not lawful at any time of the year to fast), then there will remain only thirty-six days ; and therefore, that the number of days which Christ fasted might be perfected, Pope Gregory added to Lent four days of the week before going, viz., that which we now call Ash Wednesday, and the three days following it. So that we see the first observation of Lent began from a superstitious, unwarrant- able, and indeed profane conceit of imitating our Saviour’s miraculous abstinence. Lent is so called from the time of the year wherein it is observed : Lent, in the Saxon language signifying spring, being now used to signify the spring fast, which always begins so that it may end at Easter to remind us of our Saviour’s sufferings, which ended at his resurrection. (Wheatley on the Common Prayer). Ash Wednesday is in some places called “ Pulver Wednesday,” that is. Diespulveris. The word Lentron, for Lent, occurs more than once ‘ in the edition of the Regiam Majestatem (1774). [Lenscen-rme for spring, when the days lengthen, occurs in the Saxon Heptateuch, 8vo, Oxon. 1698. Exod. xxxiv. 18.] There is a curious clause in one of the Roman casuists concerning the keeping of Lent; it is, “ that Beggars which are ready to affamish for want, may in Lent time eat what they can get.” In The Festyvall (1511) we read : “ Ye shall begyn your faste upon Ashe Wednesdaye. That daye must ye come to holy chirche and take ashes of the Preestes hondes and thynke on the wordes well that he sayeth over your hedes, have mynde, thou man, ol asshes thou art comen, and to ashes thou shalt tourne agayne.” This Festyvall, speaking of Quatuor Temporum, or Ymbre Days, now called Ember Days, says they were so called, “ bycause that our elder fathers wolde on these dayes ete no brede but cakes made under ashes.”