§ 63. Pentecost.
Easter was followed by the festival of Pentecost. [360] 60 It rested on the Jewish feast of harvest. It was universally observed, as early as the second century, in commemoration of the appearances and heavenly exaltation of the risen Lord, and had throughout a joyous character. It lasted through fifty days--Quinquagesima --which were celebrated as a continuous Sunday, by daily communion, the standing posture in prayer, and the absence of all fasting. Tertullian says that all the festivals of the heathen put together will not make up the one Pentecost of the Christians. [361] 61 During that period the Acts of the Apostles were read in the public service (and are read to this day in the Greek church).
Subsequently the celebration was limited to the fortieth day as the feast of the Ascension, and the fiftieth day, or Pentecost proper (Whitsunday) as the feast of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the birthday of the Christian Church. In this restricted sense Pentecost closed the cycle of our Lord's festivals (the semestre Domini), among which it held the third place (after Easter and Christmas). [362] 62 It was also a favorite time for baptism, especially the vigil of the festival.
[360] Pentekoste (hemera), Quinquagesima, is the fiftieth day after the Passover Sabbath, see vol. I. 225 sqq. It is used by the fathers; in it wider sense for the whole period of fifty days, from Easter to Whitsunday, and in a narrower sense for the single festival of Whitsunday.
[361] De Idol. c. 12; Comp. De Bapt. c. 19; Const. Apost. V. 20.
[362] In this sense Pentecoste is first used by the Council of Elvira (Granada) a.d. 306, can. 43. The week following was afterwards called Hebdomadas Spiritus Sancti.
§ 64. The Epiphany
The feast of the Epiphany is of later origin. [363] 63 It spread from the East towards the West, but here, even in the fourth century, it was resisted by such parties as the Donatists, and condemned as an oriental innovation. It was, in general, the feast of the appearance of Christ in the flesh, and particularly of the manifestation of his Messiahship by his baptism in the Jordan, the festival at once of his birth and his baptism. It was usually kept on the 6th of January. [364] 64 When the East adopted from the West the Christmas festival, Epiphany was restricted to the celebration of the baptism of Christ, and made one of the three great reasons for the administration of baptism.
In the West it was afterwards made a collective festival of several events in the life of Jesus, as the adoration of the Magi, the first miracle of Cana, and sometimes the feeding of the five thousand. It became more particularly the "feast of the three kings," that is, the wise men from the East, and was placed in special connexion with the mission to the heathen. The legend of the three kings (Caspar, Melchior, Baltazar) grew up gradually from the recorded gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh, which the Magi offered to the new-born King, of the Jews. [365] 65
Of the Christmas festival there is no clear trace before the fourth century; partly because the feast of the Epiphany in a measure held the place of it; partly because of birth of Christ, the date of which, at any rate, was uncertain, was less prominent in the Christian mind than his death and resurrection. It was of Western (Roman) origin, and found its way to the East after the middle of the fourth century for Chrysostom, in a Homily, which was probably preached Dec. 25, 386, speaks of the celebration of the separate day of the Nativity as having been recently introduced in Antioch.
[363] he epiphaneia, ta epiphania, he theophaneia, hemera ton photon: Epiphania, Theophania, Dies Luminum, Festura Trium Regum, etc. The feast is first mentioned by Clement of Alex. as the annual commemoration of the. baptism of Christ by the Gnostic sect of the Basilidians (Strom. I. 21). Neander supposes that they derived it from the Jewish Christians in Palestine. Chrysostom often alludes to it.
[364] Augustin, Serm. 202, § 2.
[365] Matt. 2:11. The first indistinct trace, perhaps, is in Tertullian, Adv., Jud. c. 9: "Nam at Magos reges fere habuit Oriens." The apocryphal Gospels of the infancy give us no fiction on that point.