The third and decisive stage in the progress was reached under Gregory IV. (827-844). A mediæval, but, in this case, well-informed writer states that a great number of pilgrims went annually to Rome for the Feast of all the Martyrs (13th May), and that, since the supply of provisions in Rome in spring was insufficient for the support of both pilgrims and inhabitants, Gregory IV. changed the feast from the 13th May to the 1st November.[690] Frankish writers of the same period inform us that this pope exhorted Louis the Pious to introduce the festival into France, and that Louis, with the consent of all the bishops of Gaul and Germany, accordingly ordered it to be observed throughout his empire in 835.[691]
Many writers on this account give this as the year in which the festival was instituted, and attribute its origin to Louis the Pious, but in this they are mistaken. Sixtus IV. (1471-1484) provided All Saints’ with an octave.[692]
The pious duty of prayer for the departed (2 Machabees xii. 46) finds expression in private and public devotions. The public prayers usually take place on stated days, i.e. the day of the death, the seventh and thirtieth days after death, and the anniversary; the observance of these devotions is left in the hands of the relatives and friends of the deceased. The religious Orders began at an early date to observe these pious customs with regard to their own departed members.[693] Besides this, for the last thousand years a particular day in the year has been set apart for the commemoration of all the departed in general; this was the 2nd November, or, if the 2nd fell on a Sunday, the 3rd. The impulse which led to its introduction into the ritual of the Church came from Cluny, for in 998 the Abbot Odilo issued an ordinance to this effect (the so-called Statutum S. Odilonis pro Defunctis)[694] to all the monasteries of his congregation. In this it was directed that in all monasteries of the Order on the 1st November, after vespers, the bell should be tolled and the office of the dead recited, and on the next day all the priests of the congregation were to say mass for the repose of the faithful departed.
This example found imitators without there being any legislation on the point. Other Orders speedily took it up, such as the Benedictines and Carthusians, etc.;[695] but it was longer before the secular clergy adopted this practice in each diocese. The date of its introduction varies greatly in different countries; it will be sufficient for us to give a few dates for which we have certain information, which have a special interest for us.
The first diocese to adopt All Souls’ Day seems to have been Liège, where it was introduced by Bishop Notker († 1008).[696] It appears in the martyrology of Besançon, called after Bishop Protadius, and compiled between 1053 and 1066; it is mentioned in the fourteenth of the Roman Ordos, which belongs to the thirteenth century; it is not found in the Cologne Calendar of the same century, nor in the more ancient one published by Binterim; it is also absent from a calendar put out in 1382.[697]
We have more detailed information respecting the Church of Milan. Bishop Otricus (1120-1125) had already introduced the observance of All Souls’ Day, but placed it on the day following the dedication of the cathedral, i.e. the 15th October. This arrangement continued to the time of St Charles Borromeo, who in 1582 adopted the Roman, or rather the original date.[698] In the Greek and Russian Churches the commemoration of the departed is kept on the Saturday before the Sunday “Apoecros,” which corresponds to our Septuagesima Sunday. The Armenians keep it on Easter Monday.
The existence of higher and purely spiritual beings formed part of the religious belief of the Jews; they are mentioned in countless passages of the Old Testament, but no worship was paid directly to them by the Synagogue. In the Christian Church the cultus of the angels, especially of St Michael, can be traced back to remote antiquity. In more recent times special days have been set apart in honour of the other two angels named in the Holy Scriptures, and also of the Guardian Angels; St Gabriel is honoured on the 18th March, St Raphael on the 24th October.
The first Christian emperor built a church in honour of St Michael on the headland called Hestiæ on the Bosphorus. It was built on the spot called Anaplus, distant from Constantinople seventy stadia by land and thirty-five by water. The place afterwards took the name of Michaelion, after the church. On the opposite headland on the Asiatic shore Justinian also erected a church of St Michael. Nicephorus makes Constantine the founder of both churches, but Theophanes speaks only of one built by him.[699] According to Du Cange, there is said to have been no fewer than fifteen churches and chapels of St Michael in Constantinople and the neighbourhood in the Middle Ages. Other towns also erected, at an early date, churches dedicated to St Michael, as, for example, Ravenna in 545. St Michael enjoyed special veneration at the same period at Chonæ in Phrygia,[700] an ancient and celebrated place of pilgrimage, and the chief centre in the Byzantine Empire of the cultus of the angels.
Chonæ, the present Khonas on the Lycus, situated on a tributary of the Mæander in the ecclesiastical province of Laodicea, is the name given since the ninth century to the ancient Colossæ, to the Christian community of which city St Paul addressed one of his epistles, wherein he already speaks of the worship of angels. Even in the time of the apostles there existed a half-Jewish, half-Gnostic sect which disturbed the peace of the local church by teaching that Christ was inferior to the angels, who must be worshipped and invoked in preference to Him; St Paul (Colossians ii. 18) rejects this teaching as heretical, nevertheless, it did not die out, for in the fourth century the Council of Laodicea was compelled to censure this false worship of the angels in its thirty-fifth canon.[701] This was not a prohibition of the cultus of the angels in general, for at the same period St Ambrose and St Hilary in other parts of the Church exhorted the faithful to invoke them.[702] The true worship of the angels existed also in Colossæ, for Metaphrastes tells us that an apparition of the Archangel Michael himself took place there, in honour of which Manual Comnenus later on prescribed that the Festival of the Apparition of St Michael should be kept as a festival of the second class on the 6th September (Apparitio S. Michælis in Chonis).
The first church dedicated to the Archangel in Rome, or rather in its neighbourhood, seems to have enjoyed great veneration. The oldest Roman sacramentary, which goes by the name of Leo the Great, gives no less than five masses for the anniversary of its dedication; in three of them St Michael is mentioned by name in the prayers or prefaces. From the fact that in the other masses the angels in general are spoken of without special mention of St Michael, we must not conclude, as many liturgical writers have done, that they deal with the cultus of the angels in general. The church was situated, according to subsequent information, on the Via Salaria at the sixth milestone from Rome; but beyond this nothing further is known about it. These masses for the day of the Consecration of the Basilica of the Holy Angel in the Via Salaria[703] are placed on the 30th September in the Leonianum. As regards later Roman sacramentaries, the prayers for a mass in honour of St Michael are given in the Gelasianum on the 29th September. The Gregorianum gives on the same day the dedication of the basilica of St Michael without the addition “in via Salaria.”[704] It is probable that another church of St Michael is meant here whose dedication took place on the 29th and not the 30th September. The day of this church’s dedication has continued to our own time to be kept as the Festival of St Michael the Archangel.
In the city itself there was also a church erected in honour of St Michael, the date and founder of which are both unknown. Among the ecclesiastical buildings of Pope Symmachus (498-514) in the city of Rome, the Liber Pontificalis says that he enlarged and beautified the basilica of St Michael.[705] A church of St Michael was also built by a pope of the name of Boniface near the Circus Flaminius,[706] and, in the ninth century, the Church of St Michael in Sassia was also erected.
The Churches of the West accepted the Roman date, the 29th September, for the Feast of St Michael,[707] and in the Middle Ages it ranked as a holy day of obligation, especially in England, where King Ethelred in 1014 provided it should be observed with a vigil and a preparatory fast of three days.[708] In Germany the Council of Mainz (813) in its thirty-sixth canon established it as a festival; and the imperial banner, to be carried in battle, bore the figure of St Michael. In France the feast was established by the sixty-first canon of the diocesan Synod of Tours in 858. In Constantinople the feast was observed on the 8th November; it is marked in the menology as the Synaxis of the Archangel Michael, while in the Basilianum the same day is called only a Synaxis of the Archangel. In the later Coptic Calendar of Calcasendi, St Michael occurs no less than six times (7th April, 6th June, 5th August, 9th September, 8th November, and 8th December). In the Syrian lectionary he is set down in the 6th September.
In the course of the sixth century a second Festival of St Michael began to be celebrated in the West, in consequence of an apparition near Sipontum on Monte Gargano which took place on the 8th May; the year, unfortunately, is not known, but the Bollandists place it in the interval between 520 and 530. Since Monte Gargano, like Chonæ in the East, became a famous Western place of pilgrimage, this local festival gradually came to be observed in other places in the West. The calendars and martyrologies frequently confuse it with the feast of the 29th September, as, for example, the two oldest recensions of the Hieronymianum, those of Metz and Weissenburg; and similar mistakes occur in other calendars.[709]
Gabriel and Raphael have no special commemoration either in the Hieronymianum or in other ancient martyrologies and calendars of the Latin Church, neither do they appear in the Greek menologies; it is only in the tenth and eleventh centuries that in a few instances we find them commemorated on special days.[710] Although Gabriel appears in the most ancient Coptic Calendar, it is doubtful whether the day chosen for his commemoration, the 18th December, is not in the first instance a commemoration of the Annunciation, and only secondarily and accidently a feast of the Archangel. In the same way, his name appears in the Syrian lectionary on the 26th March, the day after our Lady’s Annunciation.
A special festival in honour of the Guardian Angels was first celebrated in the sixteenth century in Spain on the 1st March,[711] and afterwards in France on the first free day after Michaelmas. Pope Paul V. permitted the whole Church to celebrate the Feast of the Guardian Angels (27th September 1608), and, at the request of the Emperor Ferdinand II., prescribed its observance throughout the imperial dominions. Clement IX. in 1667 placed the feast on the first Sunday in September, and provided it with an octave. Clement X. in 1670 made it a festum duplex of general obligation, and gave it a fixed place in the calendar on the 2nd October; the older date, however, still remains in Germany and in a part of Switzerland.[712] Leo XIII. raised it to a duplex majus.
The discovery of the true cross is ascribed to St Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great. Helena was born about 246 at Drepanum in Bithynia, of humble origin, having served as maid in an inn (stabularia) where Constantine Chlorus made her acquaintance about 273. From their union sprang the future Emperor Constantine, born on 27th February 274 at Naïssus, now Nisch in Servia. When Constantine Chlorus was raised to the rank of Cæsar on 1st March 292, he, like his colleague, had to separate from his wife (whether Helena or another is disputed), in order to form a more influential alliance, with Theodora, daughter of Maximianus Hercules, by whom he had three sons.
But in 306, when Constantine after his father’s death became the emperor’s colleague and Cæsar, he raised his mother to a position of honour and brought her to the court. When, in 311, he professed Christianity, Helena also followed his example, and at the age of sixty-four or sixty-five became a Christian. The misfortunes of her son’s family life disturbed her last years, and she was especially grieved at the death of her grandson Crispus, whom Constantine caused to be murdered in 326, at the instigation of his stepmother Fausta.[713] As a pious Christian she found consolation in the performance of good works, to which she devoted herself. She died in 326, and her body was buried at Rome in the Via Lavicana, but two years later it was taken to Constantinople.[714] In her honour Constantine changed the name of her birthplace to Helenopolis, and bestowed upon her the title of Augusta; on medals she is called Flavia Julia Helena.
She obtained great honour after her death, and in Jerusalem especially her memory was held in veneration by the religious virgins of the locality;[715] St Ambrose calls her a woman of good and holy memory; St Paulinus of Nola had a high idea of her worth, and speaks of her as deserving all veneration, and Theodoret, although imperfectly informed as to the facts of her life, praises her exuberantly.[716] As to her admission among the ranks of the saints, this was effected only at a late date, and in a few instances. We find her name, indeed, in the eighth century in the menology of Constantinople set down along with that of her son on the day of his death (21st May). This shows that the author of the menology was ignorant of the day of her death, and also that no cultus was paid to her immediately after her decease; still, to both the term saint is applied in this document. No trace of her cultus appears in the West before the ninth century. The most ancient MSS. of the Hieronymianum do not contain her name; she is not to be found either in Bede or Ado; Usuardus has placed her in his martyrology under the 18th August,[717] and from him her commemoration passed into the Roman martyrology on the same day, but in the other liturgical books she has no place.[718] When we find “S Helena” in a graffito or in an itinerary, this cannot be regarded as a fact of much importance.[719]
Soon after he became sole emperor, Constantine decided to erect a church over the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. According to Eusebius,[720] the heathen had filled up the place with rubbish, raised the level of the ground, and built a temple to Venus on the site. This was now destroyed, the rubbish removed, and deep under the surface the cave of the Holy Sepulchre was discovered.[721] The emperor’s letter to Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem concerning the building of the church is given in full by Eusebius. The erection of the building was undertaken at once, and Eusebius has given us a full description of it.[722] At this point Eusebius begins to speak of Helena, and relates how she came to the East and visited the holy places, and on this occasion she gave rich presents to the churches which her son had built both in Bethlehem and on the Mount of Olives.[723] Whereupon Eusebius relates the death of Helena, but of her discovery of the Holy Cross he says not one word; it is only in his Commentary on the Psalms (lxxxvii. 11; cviii. 29) that certain mysterious expressions are found which may refer to it.[724] This silence is all the more remarkable since Jerusalem belonged to the ecclesiastical province of Cæsarea, and Eusebius must in any case have known of the event.
Later historians and writers, beginning with Socrates and Sozomen,[725] have a great deal to say upon the subject. According to them, the cross of our Lord, and those also of the two thieves, along with the title written by Pilate, were all found deep under the surface of the ground; but the cross on which our Lord suffered could not be distinguished from the other two. Bishop Macarius solved the difficulty by obtaining a miracle from God, in answer to his prayers; the three crosses were laid, one after another, upon a sick woman, in the belief that she must be cured when touched by our Lord’s cross. And so it happened, as the third cross touched her body, she recovered. This healing of a sick person has become in later writers, as, for example, in Paulinus of Nola,[726] a resurrection from the dead, showing in this, as in other cases, the development of the legend. In addition, the nails of the cross were also found, and these, along with half of the cross, were sent by Helena to her son in Constantinople; the other half was preserved in Jerusalem in a silver shrine in a chapel specially built for its reception.
Socrates, from whom these details are taken, places these events after his account of the Nicene Council; many writers place them in the year after the Council, but this is incorrect, since in that year Helena died; the Alexandrine Chronicle alone, which in such matters is very reliable, gives the day and the year for these events, i.e. 14th September 320.[727] Other authorities give a yet earlier date; indeed, a Syrian legend relates that a certain Protonika had discovered the Holy Cross during the reign of Tiberius.[728]
The day of the discovery of the Holy Cross was kept annually at Jerusalem with great ceremony, all the more as the consecration of the church was kept on the same day. The two principal churches in Jerusalem, the one on Golgotha, which bore the title of Martyrium and Ad Crucem, and the other, also built by Constantine, and called the Anastasis, were both consecrated on the same date, i.e. the 14th September.[729] Already in the fourth century numbers of pilgrims came to Jerusalem to celebrate this festival; they came from distant countries, from Mesopotamia and Egypt, and among them several bishops were to be found. The Gallic pilgrim, of whom we have so often spoken, was present at this festival, and has left an interesting description of it, and a later pilgrim, the penitent Mary of Egypt, was converted on the occasion of the festival. We have already related how the Holy Cross was exposed for the veneration of the faithful every year in Jerusalem on Good Friday.
The 14th September was at first only a local festival at Jerusalem and in those other towns which possessed portions of the Holy Cross, such as Constantinople and Apamea; it spread afterwards to other places, and soon became universal in the East. It is called in the East the Exaltation of the Cross (ὕψωσις τοῦ τιμίου καὶ ζωοποιοῦ σταυραῦ, or τῶν ἁγίων ξύλων), from which is taken its Western name, Exaltatio Crucis, but the pilgrim Theodosius, who visited the Holy Land about 530, employs the correct term, the Finding of the Cross (inventio crucis).[730] According to the menology of Constantinople, the festival was preceded by a preparation of four days (10th to 13th September). On the three last days of Holy Week the court and all the high officials took part in the public worship of the Holy Cross, as we learn from a writer[731] of the seventh century. The Coptic calendars usually prolong the celebration during three days.
In the seventh century the relic of the Holy Cross was connected with an event of great importance. Chosroes II., King of Persia, began to make war against the Eastern Empire at the time when Heraclius ascended the throne; he captured the cities of Apamea and Edessa, and defeated the Greeks in several engagements; in June 614 his general Salbarus took Jerusalem with great slaughter. He laid waste the churches, and carried off to Persia, with the rest of the booty, the portion of the Holy Cross which was preserved there. The course of the war still remained unfavourable to the Greeks until Heraclius, having made peace with the Bulgarians, himself led the full strength of his army against the Persians in 621. The fortune of war changed, and the Greeks reconquered their lost territory, being aided in this by internal discord among the Persians. Chosroes was deposed and murdered in 628; his successor, Siroes, hastened to make peace with the Greeks, and restored to them the wood of the Holy Cross. At the end of the year Heraclius returned as victor to his capital, and at the beginning of the following year he set out for Syria, taking the Holy Cross with him. He brought it himself from Tiberias to Jerusalem,[732] where he handed it over to the Patriarch Zacharias on the 3rd May, if the traditional date be correct. Tradition further adds that, arrayed in his royal robes, he essayed to carry it upon his shoulders, but at the foot of the hill of Calvary he found himself unable to proceed further until, upon the advice of Zacharias, he laid aside his royal apparel. No festival in commemoration of the event was introduced in the East, although it was in the West.[733]
With regard to the spread of these two festivals throughout the Church, we must call attention to a remarkable fact; the day of the discovery of the Holy Cross by Helena (14th September) naturally existed as a festival from the first in Jerusalem, from whence it soon spread throughout the entire eastern half of the Church, but in the West, although the discovery of the cross was already well known in the fourth century, the festival in honour of the event was not adopted, at least not at once.
It was just the opposite with regard to the recovery of the cross by Heraclius; the grief at the news of its loss was equalled by the joy which the whole Christian world felt at its recovery. While in the East people remained content with the already existing feast, in the West the day of the recovery of the cross was kept as a solemn commemoration, and was placed in the calendars and martyrologies at an early date; we find it mentioned by the name “Day of the Holy Cross” (dies sanctæ crucis) in the lectionary of Silos, which belongs to about 650—probably the earliest mention of the festival. The ancient Gallic liturgies published by Mabillon, both the lectionary and sacramentary, contain the Festival of the Holy Cross in spring, but call it “The Finding of the Cross” (Inventio Sanctæ Crucis).[734] None of these service-books mention the feast of the 14th September. The Gregorianum has both feasts, so has the Gelasianum, at all events in Thomasi’s edition, but the second is a later addition.[735]
The way in which the Martyrologium Hieronymianum treats these feasts is worthy of notice. The Weissenburg Codex, written about 750, has both days; the Echternach Codex, which represents the oldest form of the text, has neither, and the Bern Codex, the latest of the three recensions, has only one, i.e. the 3rd May, which, in common with all Latin authorities, it calls the Finding of the Cross.[736] The authentic text of Bede has only the 3rd May, so too has the sacramentary of Padua, belonging to the first half of the ninth century.[737]
These notices might easily be increased, but they are sufficient to show how that in the West, when it was known that the Holy Cross had been recovered from the Saracens, the feast of the 3rd May was, in the seventh century, immediately introduced, but the feast of the 14th September only became known in the eighth century, and won its way to acceptance slowly and partially. In many churches it was received quite late, as for example in Milan in 1035.[738]