Читать книгу Church History (Vol.1-3) - J. H. Kurtz - Страница 71

Though with the times of persecution martyrdom had ceased, asceticism where it was preached with unusual severity gave a claim to canonisation which was still bestowed by the people’s voice regarded as the voice of God. Forgotten saints were discovered by visions, and legend insensibly eked out the poverty of historical reminiscences with names and facts. The veneration of martyrs rose all the higher the more pitiable the present generation showed in its lukewarmness and worldliness over against the world-conquering faith of that great cloud of witnesses. The worship of Mary, which came in as a result of the Nestorian controversy, was later of being introduced than that of the martyrs, but it almost immediately shot far ahead and ranked above the adoration of all the other saints. The adoration of Angels, of which we find the beginnings even in Justin and Origen, remained far behind the worship of the saints. Pilgrimages were zealously undertaken, from the time when the emperor’s mother Helena, in A.D. 326, went as a pilgrim to holy places in Palestine and afterwards marked these out by building on them beautiful churches. The worship of images was introduced first in the age of Cyril of Alexandria and was carried out with peculiar eagerness in the art-loving East. The Western teachers, however, and even Gregory the Great himself, only went the length of becoming decoration, using images to secure more impressiveness in teaching and greater liveliness in devotion. In the West, however, still more than in the East, veneration of relics came into vogue.

§ 57.1. The Worship of Martyrs and Saints (§ 39, 5).172—At a very early period churches were built upon the graves of Martyrs (Memoria, Confessio, μαρτύριον), or their bones were brought into churches previously built (Translationes). New edifices were dedicated in their names, those receiving baptism were named after them. The days of their death were observed as special holy seasons with vigil services, Agape and oblations at their graves. In glowing discourses the orators of the church, in melodious hymns the poets, sounded forth their praises. The bones of the martyrs were sought out with extraordinary zeal and were looked upon and venerated as supremely sacred. Each province, each city and each calling had its own patron saint (Patronus). Perhaps as early as the 3rd century several churches had their martyr calendars, i.e. lists of those who were to have the day of their death celebrated. In the 4th century this custom had become universal, and from the collection of the most celebrated calendars, with the addition of legendary stories of the lives and sufferings of martyrs or saints (Legendæ, so called because they were wont to be read at the memorial services of the individuals referred to), sprang up the Martyrologies and Legends of the Saints, among the Greeks called Menologies from μήν, a month. Most esteemed in the West was the martyrology of the Roman church, whose composition has been recently put down, equally with and upon the same grounds as that of the so called Liber Comitis, § 59, 3, to the time of Jerome as the chief representative of Western theological learning. This collection formed the basis of the numerous Latin martyrologies of the Middle Ages (§ 90, 9). A rich choice was afforded by these catalogues of saints to those wishing names to use at baptism or confirmation; the saint preferred became thereby the patron of him who took his name. The three great Cappadocians in the East and Ambrose in the West were the first to open the floodgates for the invocation of saints by their proclaiming that the glorified saints through communion with the Lord shared in His attribute of omniprescence and omniscience; while Augustine rather assigned to the angels the task of communicating the invocations of men to the saints. In the liturgies prayers for the saints were now displaced by invocations for their intercession. In this the people found a compensation for the loss of hero, genius and manes worship. The church teachers at least wished indeed to make a marked distinction between Adoratio and Invocatio, λατρεία and δουλεία, rendering the former to God only. A festival of All the Martyrs was celebrated in the East as early as the 4th century on the Pentecost octave (§ 56, 4). In the West, Pope Boniface IV., in A.D. 610, having received from the Emperor Phocas the Pantheon as a gift and having converted it into a church of the most Blessed Virgin and all the Martyrs, founded a Festum omnium Sanctorum, which was not, however, generally recognised before the 9th century (1st Nov.). Owing to the great number of saints one or more had to be assigned to each day in the calendar. The day fixed was usually that of the death of the saint. The only instance of the celebration of a birthday was the festival of John the Baptist (Natalis S. Joannis). The 24th June was fixed upon by calculating from Christmas (acc. to Luke i. 26), and its occurring in the other half of the year from that of Christ afforded a symbolical parallel to John iii. 30. As an appendage to this we meet even in the 5th century with the F. decollationis S. Joannis on 29th Aug. On the second day of the Christmas festival the Feast of the Proto-martyr Stephen was celebrated as the first fruits of the incarnation of God; on the third, the memory of the disciple who lay on the Master’s breast; on the fourth, the innocent children of Bethlehem (F. innocentium) as the flores or primitiæ martyrum. The festival of the Maccabees (πανήγυρις τῶν Μακκαβαίων) leads yet further back as the memorial of the heroic mother and her seven sons under Antiochus Epiphanes. It was observed as early as the 4th century and did not pass out of use till the 13th. Among the festivals of Apostles that of Peter and Paul (F. Apost. Petri et Pauli) on 29th June, as the solemnization of their common martyrdom at Rome, was universally observed. But Rome celebrated besides a double F. Cathedræ Petri, for the Cathedra Romana on 18th Jan., and for the Cathedra Antiochena on 22nd Feb. For a long time a symbolical arrangement of the calendar days prevailed; the patriarchs of the Old Testament were put in the time before Christmas, the later saints of the old dispensation in the Quadragesima, and the Apostles and Founders of the church after Pentecost, then the Martyrs, next the Confessors, and finally, the Virgins as prototype of the perfected church.

§ 57.2. The Worship of Mary and Anna.173—The εὐλογουμένη ἐν γυναιξί who herself full of the Holy Ghost had prophesied: ἰδοὺ γὰρ, ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν μακαριοῦσι με πᾶσαι αἱ γενεαί, was regarded as the highest ideal of all virginity. All the reverence, which the church accorded to virginity, culminated therefore in her. Even Tertullian alongside of the Pauline contrasts Adam and Christ, placed this other, Eve and Mary. The perpetua virginitas b. Mariæ was an uncontested article of faith from the 4th century. Ambrose understood of her Ezek. xliv. 3, and affirmed that she was born utero clauso; Gregory the Great saw an analogy between this and the entering of the Risen One through closed doors (John xx. 19); and the second Trullan Council, in A.D. 692, confessed: ἀλόχευτον τὸν ἐκ τῆς παρθένου θεῖον τόκον εἶναι. Irenæus, Tertullian, Origen, Basil, Chrysostom, had indeed still found something in her worthy of blame, but even Augustine refuses to admit that she should be reckoned among sinners: Unde enim scimus, quid ei plus gratiæ collatum fuerit ad vincendum omni ex parte peccatum? Yet for a long time this veneration of Mary made little progress. This was caused partly by the absence of the glory of martyrdom, partly by its development in the church being forestalled and distorted by the heathenish and godless Mariolatry of the Collyridians, an Arabian female sect of the 4th century, which offered to the Holy Virgin, as in heathen times to Ceres, cakes of bread (κολλυρίδα). Epiphanius, who opposed them, taught: ἐν τιμῇ ἔστω Μαρία, ὁ δὲ Πατὴρ καὶ Υἱὸς καὶ ἅγιον Πνεῦμα προσκυνείσθω, τὴν δὲ Μαρίαν οὐδεὶς προσκυνείτω. On the Antidicomarianites, see § 62, 2. The victory of those who used the term θεοτόκος in the Nestorian controversy gave a great impulse to Mariolatry. Even in the 5th century, the festival of the Annunciation, F. annunciationis, incarnationis, ἑορτὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελισμοῦ, τοῦ ἀσπασμοῦ, was held on the 25th March. With this was also connected in the West the festival of the Purification of Mary, F. purificationis on 2nd Feb., according to Luke ii. 22. On account of the candles used in the service it was called the Candlemas of Mary, F. candelarum, luminum, Luke ii. 32. In consequence of an earthquake and pestilence in A.D. 542, Justinian founded the corresponding ἑορτὴ τῆς ὑπαπάντης, F. occursus, only that here the meeting with Simeon and Anna (Luke ii. 24) is put in the foreground. Both festivals, the Annunciation and the Purification, had the same dignity as those dedicated to the memory of our Lord. From the endeavour to put alongside of each of the festivals of the Lord a corresponding festival of Mary, about the end of the 6th century the Feast of the Ascension of Mary (πανήγυρις κοιμήτεως, F. assumptionis, dormitionis M.) was introduced and celebrated on 15th Aug.; and in the 7th century, the Feast of the Birth of Mary (F. nativitatis M.), on 8th Sept. The former was founded on the apocryphal legend (§ 32, 4), according to which Christ with the angels brought the soul of his just departed mother, and, on the following day, its glorified body, to heaven, and there united it again with the soul.—The first traces of a veneration of Anna around whom, as the supposed wife of Joachim and mother of the Virgin, the apocryphal gospels of the childhood had already gathered a mass of romantic details, are found in the 4th century in Gregory of Nyssa and Epiphanius. Justinian I. in A.D. 550 built a church of St. Anna in Constantinople. In the East the 25th of July was celebrated as the day of her death, the 9th Sept. as the day of her marriage, and the 9th Dec. as the day of her conception. In the West the veneration of Anna was later of being introduced. It became popular in the later Middle Ages and was made obligatory on the whole catholic church by Gregory XIII. in A.D. 1584. The day fixed was 26th July. Yet Leo III. in the 8th century had allowed a pictorial representation of the legend of St. Joachim and St. Anna to be put in the church of St. Paul in Rome.—Continuation § 104, 7, 8.

§ 57.3. Worship of Angels.—The idea of guardian angels of nations, cities, individuals, was based on Deut. xxxii. 8 (in the LXX.); Dan. x. 13, 20, 21; xii. 1; Matt. xviii. 10; Acts xii. 15, even as early as the 2nd century. Ambrose required the invocation of angels. But when the Phrygian sect of the Angelians carried the practice the length of idolatrous worship, the Council at Laodicea in the 4th century opposed it, and Epiphanius placed it in his list of heresies. Supposed manifestations of the Archangel Michael led to the institution from the 5th century of the feast of Michael observed on 29th Sept., as a festival of the angels collectively representing the idea of the church triumphant.

§ 57.4. Worship of Images (§ 38, 3).—The disinclination of the ancient church to the pictorial representations of the person of Christ as such, and also the unwillingness to allow religious pictures in the churches, based upon the prohibition of images in the decalogue, was not yet wholly overcome in the 4th century. Eusebius of Cæsarea, with reference to the statues of Paneas (§ 13, 2) and other images of Christ and the Apostles, speaks of an ἐθνικὴ συνηθεία. He administered a severe reproof to the emperor’s sister, Constantia, and referred to the prohibition of the decalogue, when she expressed a wish to have an image of Christ. Asterius, bishop of Amasa in Pontus († A.D. 410), earnestly declaimed against the custom of people of distinction wearing clothes embroidered with pictures from the gospel history, and recommends them rather to have Christ in their hearts. The violent zealot, Epiphanius, the most decided opponent of all religious idealism, tore the painted curtain of a Palestinian village church in Anablatha with the injunction to wrap therewith a beggar’s corpse. But Greek love of art and the religious needs of the people gained the victory over Judaic-legal rigorism and abstract spiritualism. Here too the age of Cyril marks the turning point. In the 5th century authentic miraculous pictures of Christ, the Apostles and the God-mother (εἰκόνες ἀχειροποίητοι), made their appearance, and with them began image worship properly so called, with lighting of candles, kissing, burning incense, bowing of the knee, prostrations (προσκύνησις τιμητική). Soon all churches and church books, all palaces and cottages, were filled with images of Christ and the saints painted or drawn by the monks. Miracle after miracle was wrought beside, upon or through them. In this, however, the West did not keep pace with the East. Augustine complains of image worship and advises to seek Christ in the bible rather than in images. Gregory the Great, while blaming the violence of Serenus, bishop of Massilia in breaking the images, wishes that in churches images should be made to serve ad instruendas solummodo mentes nescientium. The Nestorians who were strongly opposed to images, expressly declared that the hated Cyril was the originator of Iconolatry.

§ 57.5. Worship of Relics (§ 39, 5).—The veneration for relics (λείψανα) proceeded from a pious feeling in human nature and is closely associated with that higher reverence which the church paid to its martyrs. It began with public assemblies at the graves of martyrs, memorial celebrations and services in connection with the translations of their bones held in the churches. Soon no church, no altar (Rev. vi. 9), could be built without relics. When the small number of known martyrs proved insufficient, single parts of their bodies were divided to different churches. But dreams and visions showed rich stores previously unthought of in remnants of the bones of martyrs and saints. The catacombs especially proved inexhaustible mines. Miracles and signs vouched for their genuineness. Theodosius I. already found it necessary in A.D. 386, to prohibit the traffic in relics. Besides bones, were included also clothes, utensils, instruments of torture. They healed the sick, cast out devils, raised the dead, averted plagues, and led to the discovery of offenders. The healed expressed their gratitude in votive tablets and in presentations of silver and golden figures of the healed parts. A scriptural foundation was sought for this veneration of relics in 2 Kings xiii. 21; Ecclesiastic. xlvi. 14; Acts xix. 12. According to a legend commonly believed in the 5th century, but unknown to Eusebius and the Bordeaux pilgrim of A.D. 333, Helena, mother of Constantine, found in A.D. 326 the Cross of Christ along with the crosses of the two thieves. The one was distinguished from the others by a miracle of healing or of raising from the dead. The pious lady left one half of the cross to the church of the Holy Sepulchre and sent the rest with the nails to her son, who inlaid the wood in his statues and some of the nails in his diadem, while of the rest he made a bit for his horse. Since the publication of the Doctrina Addaei, § 32, 6, it has become apparent that this Helena legend is just another version of the old Edessa legend about the Byzantine saint, according to which the wife of the emperor Claudius converted by Peter is represented in precisely similar circumstances as having found the cross. To pious and distinguished pilgrims permission was given to take small splinters of the wood kept in Jerusalem, so that soon bits of the cross were spread and received veneration throughout all the world. According to a much later report a σταυρώσιμος ἡμέρα on 14th Sept. was observed in the East as early as the 4th century in memory of the finding of the cross. From the time of Gregory the Great a F. inventionis S. Crucis was observed in the West on 3rd May. The festival of the exaltation of the cross, σταυροφανεία, F. exaltationis S. Crucis, on 14th Sept., was instituted by the emperor Heraclius when the Persians on their being conquered in A.D. 629, were obliged to restore the cross which they had taken away.

§ 57.6. The Making of Pilgrimages.—The habit of making pilgrimages (pilgrim=peregrinus) to sacred places also rested upon a common tendency in human nature. The pilgrimage of Helena in A.D. 326 found numerous imitators, and even the conquest of Palestine by the Saracens in the 7th century did not quench pilgrims’ ardour. Next to the sacred places in Palestine, Sinai, the grave of Peter and Paul at Rome (Limina Apostolorum), the grave of Martin of Tours (§ 47, 14) and the supposed scene in Arabia of the sufferings of Job, as a foreshadowing of Christ’s, were the spots most frequented by pilgrims. Gregory of Nyssa in an Epistle Περὶ τῶν ἀπιόντων εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα most vigorously opposed the immoderate love of pilgrimages, especially among monks and women. In the strongest language he pointed out the danger to true religion and morality; and even Jerome so far gave way to reason as to say: Et de Hierosolymis et de Brittania æqualiter patet aula cœlestis. Chrysostom and Augustine, too, opposed the over estimating of this expression of pious feeling.