§ 78. THE EASTEK CYCLE. 403
the year, stripped of all Sunday splendor and liturgical pomp veiled in the deepest silence and holy sorrow ; the communion omitted (which had taken place the evening before), altars unclothed, crucifixes veiled, lights extinguished, the story of the passion read, and, instead of the church hymns, nothing sung but penitential psalms. Finally the Gkeat Sabbath,' the day of the Lord's repose in the grave and descent into Hades ; tlio favorite day in all the year for the administration of baptism, which symbolizes participation in the death of Christ." The Great Sabbath was generally spent as a fast day, even in the Greek church, which usually did not fast on Saturday.
In the evening of the Great Sabbath began the Easter Vigils,' which continued, with Scripture reading, singing, and prayer, to the dawn of Easter morning, and formed the solemn transition from the •rrda-)(a orravpooaLfjiov to the 'irda^a dvaard- (Tifiov, and from the deep sorrow of penitence over the death of Jesus to the joy of faith in the resurrection of the Prince of life. All Christians, and even many pagans, poured into the church with lights, to watch there for the morning of the resurrection. On this night the cities were splendidly illuminated, and transfigured in a sea of fire ; about midnight a solemn procession surrounded the chui'ch, and then triumphally enteied again into the '* holy gates," to celebrate Easter. According to an ancient tradition, it M'as expected that on Easter night Christ would come again to judge the world.''
The Easter festival itself' began with the jubilant salutation, still practized in the Russian church: "The Lord is risen!" and the response: "He is truly risen !" * Then tlie
Other etymologists derive it from carena {co.reme), i. e., fasting, or from kar {kiiren. tc rhoose), i. e., ifie chosen day ; others still from karo-parare, i. e., pyreparation-day, M4ya or ayiov (Td^^arov ; sabhatum magnnm, or sanctum.
* Rom. vi. 4-6.
' Viffilke paschales ; navvvxi^a-
* Comp. Lactantius: Inst, divin. vii. c. 19; and Hieronjinus ad Matt. xxv. 6 (t riL 203, ed. Vallarsi) "TJnde traditionem apostolicam permansisse, ut in die ■vigiliarum Paschse ante noctis dimidium populos dimittere non liceat, expectaniea adveip turn Christi."
* Festnm dominicte resurrectioms ; t oprri avatrr da- i/xoi, kv pia,Kii fn
* " Dominus resurrexit." — " Vere resurrexit."
404 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590,
lioly kiss of brotherliood sealed the newly fastened bond of love in Christ. It was the grandest and most joyful of th<i feasts. It lasted a whole week, and closed with the following Sunday, called the Easter Octavk,' or White Sdnday," when the baptized appeared in white garments, and were solemnly incorporated into the church.
§ 79. The Time of the Easter Festival.
Cuuip. the Literature iu vol. ii. | 62 ; also L. IcEiiER : Handbuch der Clironologie. Berlin, 1826. Vol. ii. F. Piper : Geschichte des Osterfestes. Berlin, 1845. Hefelb: Conciliengeschichte. Freiburg, 1855. Vol. 1. p. 286 ff.
The time of the Easter festival became, after the second century, the subject of long and violent controversies and practical confusions, which remind us of the later Eucharistic disputes, and give evidence that human passion and folly have sought to pervert the great facts and institutions of the New Testament from holy bonds of unity into torches of discord, and to turn the sweetest honey into poison, but, with all their eiforts, have not been able to destroy the beneficent power of those gifts of God.
These Paschal controversies descended into the present period, and ended with the victory of the Roman and Alexandrian practice of keeping Easter, not, like Christmas and the Jewish Passover, on a fixed day of the month, whatever day of the week it might be, but on a Sunday, as the day of the resurrection of our Lord. Easter thus became, with all the feasts depending on it, a movable feast ; and then the different reckonings of the calendar led to many inconveniences and confusions. The exact determination of Easter Sunday is made from the first full moon after the vernal equinox; so that the
' Octava paschce^ pascha clausum ; avTiirao-xa. Octave is applied in general to the whole eight-days' observance of the gieat church festivals ; then especially tc Ihe eighth or last day of the feist.
' Dominica in albis. Also Quasimodo^enitiy from the Iiitroit for public worehip, 1 Pet. ii. 2 ("Quasimodo goniti iufantes," "As new-born babes," &c.). Among th« Greeks it was called Kaiyr) KvptaKrj.