Volume 1

A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood.

Date:: [between 1890 and 1899?]

Credit: A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

1014/1096 (page 994)

$xii. c. xl.). Some of the first churches even were, for the reason that we have indicated, built under ground. There is one still to be seen at Lyons, containing the remains of St. Ire- naeus, “ fort profonde et fort obscure,” which is believed to be “ one of the first churches in which the first Christians of Lyons used to assemble ” (De Moleon, Vonages Liturgiqnes, p. 71). Now there is every reason to believe that the necessary lights of this period became the ceremonial lights of the next. We do not know when they ceased to be necessary. Even in the 7th and 8th centuries, the station before the celebration of the Eucharist on high festivals still began at daybreak (^Ordo Horn. i. 4 ; ii. 1; iii. 3 ; Musae. Ital. tom. ii.). They could hardly be needed to give light at that time; but a mystic meaning, already attached to them, must have led to their retention. The following is a description of their use in a pontifical mass of that period. When the bishop left the secreta- rium, he was preceded by 7 acolytes, each bear- ing a lighted wax candle (Ordo .R. i. 8; ii. 5; iii. 7). As they catne near the altar, they di- vided, 4 going to the right, and 3 to the left, that he might pass through. When the deacon went to the ambo to read the Gospel two of the lights were carried before him in honour of the book which he bore in his hands (i. 11; ii. 8 ; iii. 10). Our earliest authority now quoted does not tell us whether the lights were extinguished at any part of the service ; but according to the next in date they were “ extinguished in their place after the reading of the Gospel” (ii. 9). This was clearly a reminiscence of their original use. From the first two we learn that after the Kyrie the acolytes set the candle-stands (cereo- stata) on the floor (i. 26 ; ii. 5 ; comp. v. 6). The second further tells us that they were put “ 4 on the right and 3 on the left, or (as some will have it) in a row from south to north ” (ii. 5). At a later period they were set “ so as to form a cross ” (vi. 5). After the Collect they were in the earlier age put “ in one line from east to west, in the middle of the church ” (ii. 6). In a later, we find them when extin- guished set behind the altar (v. 7)—a practice which, in conjunction with the need of light at an early celebration, in due time paved the way for the inti-oduction of altar-lights. The earliest document to which we have here re- ferred is supposed by Ussher, Cave, and others to have been compiled about the year 730; but it evidently did not create all the rites which it prescribes. We therefore assume that those now described were practised at Rome at least during the latter part of the 7th century. IV. To the same period we may, on the same ground.', refer the office of the Tenebrae in its first stage. It was celebrated on the night before Good Friday. One-third of the lights in the church were extinguished after the first psalm of Nocturns; another third after the second, and the remainder, with the exception of seven lamps, after the third. These seven were extinguished at Matins; the first on the right side of the church, when the antiphon before the first psalm was heard ; the second, on the left, at the end of the psalm, “ and so on either side alternately down to the Gospel, i.e. the Bencdictus; but at the Gosj)el the middle light is put out” {Ordo, i. 33 ; comp. App. § 2). V. The Paschal Light (Paschal Post, Cereus Paschalis) is heard of at an earlier period. We have an almost certain reference to it in the Liber Pontipcalis, where we are told (n. 42), that Zosimus, a.d. 417, “ gave permission for the b]r<sing of candles in the suburbicarian dioceses.” Some copies {Concil. Surii, Annul. Baronii) even read cereum Paschalem here, and the passage can hardly refer to anything else. This was the tradition of Sigebert of Gemblours : “ Zosimus the pope orders a wax candle to be blessed throughout the churches on the holy Sabbath of Easter” (ad ann. 417; Biblioth. PP. vii.* 1358. Similarly Leo Ostiensis, Chron. Cassin. iii. 31). Two forms for the benediction of the Paschal Light were composed by Ennodius, who became bishop of Ticino in 511. They are still extant (see his works by Sirmond, Opusc. 9, 10, p. 453). Gregory the Great, writing in 605 to a bishop who was sick, says, “Let the prayers which in the city of Ravenna are wont to be said over the wax candle, and the expositions of the gospel which are made by the bishops (sacerdotibus) at the Easter solemnity, be said by another ” (Epist. xi. 28, al. 33). From the first Ordo Fomanus (about 730) we learn that on Maundy Thui’sday, at the 9th hour, a light was struck from flint in some place outside the basilic at the door, if there was no oratory, from which a candle was lighted and brought into the church in the presence of the congregation. A lamp lighted “ from the same fire ” was kept burning until Easter Eve, and from that was lighted the wax candle which was solemnly blessed on that day {Ordo Rom. i. 32). Zachary, who became pope in 741, in a letter to BonifTice of Mentz, says that “ three lamps of great size (so lighted) placed in some more secret part of the church, burned to the third day, i.e. Saturday.” He adds that oil for them was collected from every candle in the church, and. that “ the fire for the baptism of the sacred font on Easter Eve was taken from those candles ” {Ep. xii. Labbe, Cone. tom. vi. col. 1525). It will be observed that lampas and candela are here synonymous. From the frag- ment of a letter of Hadrian 1. a.d. 772, to the monks of Corbie, we learn that the priests and clerks did not put on their stoles and planetae on Easter Eve “ until the new light was brought in that the wax candle might be blessed ” {Com- ment. Rraev. in Ord. Rom. Mabill. Mns. It. tom. ii. p. cii.). The blessing was pronounced by the archdeacon (Rabanus, de Instit. Cler. ii. 38). There are two forms of the Benedictio cerei in the Gregorian Sacramentary (Murat. Liturg. Rom. Vet. tom. ii. col. 143). The former of these is also found in the Missale Gothicum {Liturg. Gallic, p. 241), in the Missale Gallica- num {ibid. p. 357), and again in the Besan9on Sacramentary discovered by Mabillon at Bobio {Mus. Ital. tom. i. p. 321). This may be thought to prove that the rite was derived to France from Rome. In Gothic Spain and Languedoc, both the prayers and ceremonial differed from those of Rome. The clergy assembled, not on Maundy Thursday, but Easter Eve at the 9th hour in the processus, a chamber connected with the church, and in small churches identical with the sacrarium. There the deacons received 12$