civil year was given by the establishment of a saries of prominent events in the life of Christ. Tk most ancient of these anniversaries were then «f !■ death and resurrection [see Easter] ; gradually w«« added to them those of his birth [see Christsias], ei the outpouring of the Holy Ghost [see Pesctkcost} of the circumdsion [see Epiphant], of the aso^acc [see Ascension Day]. Christmaa, Easter, and F^ tecost came each to be regarded as the centre of a crik^ the three cycles together embracing a commenxintna of every thing memorable in the life of the Bedeeme. When the worship of the Virgin Mary and of t^ saints was developed in the Church of Borne, a nua- ber of festivals commemorating events in tiie life of the Vu^ Mary, and the death-days of the apoetks, martyrs, and saints, were added to the ecclesasticsl calendar. This combination suggested to the writes of the Church the idea that the church-year is to o^ ebrate, within the compass of a civil year, the ooh memoration of all the memorable events in the life d the Church, from the birth of, or, rather, the amioixDce> ment of the birth of Christ to the death of the 1^ saint The habit of beginning this year with the iist Sunday of Advent is first found among the Nestorians and was only gradually adopted by the Chnrck c^ Rome. There are, in all, four Sundays of Advent, in- tended to prepare the mind for the proper celebntM» of Christmas (25th of December). Christmas, Hke Epiphany, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost, wen each followed by an "octave*' (commemorative ser- vices referring to the great festival daring eight dari, the chief festival itself being counted in), the Sundirr immediately following the festival being denominate the Sunday '* within the octave." The Sundays fel- lowing the ** Sunday within the octave of Eptphanr" were called the ** second, etc, Sunday after Efopb- any," until the Sunday Septuagesima began the Ems- ter cycle. It iraa followed by the Sundays Sexs- gesima, Quinquagesima, four Sundays of Lent, Pahs Sunday, and Easter Sunday ; Sunday within the oe- tave of Easter ("Low Sunday"), second, third, ete. Sundays after Easter, until iJie Sunday within tbe octave of Ascension forms the boundary-line betwesi the Easter and the Pentecost cycles. Whitsunday (Pentecost) opens the Pentecost cycle ; and tbe feUow- ing Sundays are called the first (festival of the "most Holy Trinity"), second, etc., Sunday after Ptotecost They run on until the dose of the church-year, wfaea the recurrence of the first Sunday of Advent opois the new year. The last festival which Rome added to her church-year was that of Corpus Christi (q. v.), to be ai annual celebration of the doctrine of transubstantia- tion. According to the importance attributed to tlie several festivals, the Church of Rome makes the dis* tinction of "simple," "semi-double," and "doubk* festivals ; the latter being again subdivided into *' double second class" and " double first class" (the highest festivals). The Church books, as Missal and Breviary, have special services for each particular fes- tival, and for each class of festivals. See Breviart and M188AL. Roman Catholic writers have oftea dwelt on a mysterious correspondence between tbe seasons of the church-year and those of the natural year (Christinas, the appearance of Christ in the lost world in winter, when nature appears to be dead; Easter, in spring, when nature seems to revive ; Pen- tecost, in summer, when every thing is in lUgbest bloom), entirely forgetting that this correspondence holds good only of the northern hemisphere. OOus writers have more reasonably traced in this corre- spondence an influence of pagan festivals, in whidi this kind of correspondence can be traced to a vwj large extent, upon the doctrines and institations of titt Church of Rome ; but although in some instances tbe influence is undeniable, it is difficult to say how fer it extended. The chief features of the chnrch-year wen frilly developed when w separation between the LstiB
CHURCH, JOHN HUBBARD 848 CHUSHAN-RISHATHAIM
and Greek chnrcheg took place, and there Ib, therefore, l>itt little diffsrence in the church-year of the two ohurches. The Greeks begin their year on the let of September^ and have, of coarse, none of the saints of tlie Boman Church who either lived or were canonized after the separation, while the Latins do not recognise the tew saints which the Greek Church has added to the catalogue of the ancient saints.
Luther and the Lutheran Church retained, on the ^whole, the Roman Catholic idea of the church-year. Tbey r^ected the Corpus Christi festival and the days of the saints, but retained most of the festivals of Mary as being based upon events mentioned in the Bible, and the celebration of the days of the apostles and the angels. In the conflict between High-Church and Xiow-Cburch Lutherans in the 19th century, the for- mer party strongly insisted upon retaining every thing to which Luther and the other fkthers of the Lutheran Church had not objected, and some leading men of the school even showed a disposition to strain every thing in common between the early Lutheran and the Bo- man Catholic churches as for as their membership in the Lutheran Church would possibly admit. This ten- dency shows itself also with regard to Church festi- vals and the idea of a church-year. The Beformed churches desired to return to the form of divine wor- ship as it existed iu the primitive service, and there- fore showed a tendency to reject the whole idea of a church-year. • In Geneva, at the time of Calvin, only the Sunday was celebrated, and the same habit pre- vailed in most of the Beformed churches of Switzer- land. In Germany the opposition of the Beformed to the church-year was not so thorough. In modem times the celebration of Good Friday has been introduced into most of the Beformed churches (in Geneva since 1820). In the Church of England, the High-Church party retained much more of the Latin church-year than was done by the Lutherans ; and in modem times efforts have even been made to conform the Anglican church-year in almost every particular to that of the Church of Bome. The Dissenting churches of Eng- land and the Protestant churches of the United States have generally rejected the idea of a church-year, with its system of peculiar festivals. Easter and Good Fri- day, however, are celebrated by church services in many of the Dutch and German Beformed and Meth- odist churches, and some others ; and in the German Beformed Church the idea of a church-year, as it was developed in the Latin Church of the Middle Ages, has fbund nuny defenders. See Herzog, ReajUEnqfldopa- die, vii, 643 sq. ; Wetzer u. Welte, Kirchm-LexilBtm^ vi, 161 sq. The most important Boman Catholic works on the church-year are Gretser, De Fetlis ChritUana- rum; Benedict XIY, De FesHs; Staudenmaier, GeiMi des CkrittefUhwnt ; Nickel, Die hkt. Zeken; Binterim, Denkwiirdigleeiten, Protestant works: Strauss, Dot tvcmgel. Kirchemahr (Berlin, 1850); Bobertag, Dot evat^. Kirchenjahr (Breelau, 1853).