RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Africa Agapetus
From the indications of the Syriac Didascalia and the Egyptian liturgical books, as well as the canons of the Councils of Gangra and Laodicea it may be inferred that the giving of these feasts and the inviting to them of widows and the poor was, in the East, one of the forms usually taken by the benevolence of the wealthier mem-
2. Final bers of the Church. The bishop and
Form of other clergy were invited, and, if they the Agape, appeared, were received with special honor and charged with the direction of the assembly. These feasts were given at irregular times and in various places, sometimes in the church itself. This was forbidden by the twentyeighth canon of Laodicea, at the same time that the fifty-eighth prohibited their celebration in private houses. Secular festivities in connection with the agapse, which brought upon them the condemnation of the ascetic Eustathians (against whom the Council of Gangra defended them), caused them to be regarded more and more among the orthodox also as incompatible with the dignity of divine worship, so that they gradually became entirely separate from it, and thus tended to fall into disuse.
How popular these feasts were in Africa, in the churches, in the chapels of the martyrs, and at the graves of other Christians, may be seen from the often renewed canon of Hippo (393), which forbids clerics to eat in churches except in dispensing hospitality to travelers, and commands them as far as possible to restrain the people from such meals. The same thing appears in Augustine's descriptions as well as in the great pains he took to repress grave abuses and, with reference to the practise of the Italian and almost all the other churches, to suppress the agapse altogether.
It is not clear what caused the disassociation of the agape from the Eucharist in the first half of the second century. It is a misunderstanding of Pliny's letter to Trajan (Epist., xcvi.) to suppose that in consequence of the prohibition of hetcerice (" brotherhoods'.") the Christians then abandoned their evening feasts and transferred the Eucharist to the morning; but it is very probable that the constant accusation of impious customs which recalled the stories of Thyestes and of CEdipus were the main reason for the separation of the Eucharist, which was an essential part of their public worship, from the connection, so liable to be mis- 3- Disasso- understood, with an evening meal
ciation of participated in by both sexes and all Agape and ages. The fact that at one time the Eucharist, two were connected is evidenced not only by Pliny, but about the same time by the Didache, in which, whatever one may think about the relation of the eucharistic prayers to the accompanying liturgical acts (chaps, ix.-x.), the opening passage of the second prayer (Gk. meta de toemplesthenai) shows that a full meal belonged to tHe rite there referred to. Just as here the Greek word eucharistia, which from Justin down is em- Ployed as a technical term for the sacrament, at least includes a common meal, which is found separated from the sacrament after the middle of tne second century, so Ignatius, with whom eucha-
tm ls a usual designation of the sacrament, also I.-6
employs agape and agapan to denote the same observance. It is accordingly safe to conclude that in the churches, from Antioch to Rome, with which Ignatius had to do, the so-called agape was connected with the Eucharist, as Pliny shows at the same time for Bithynia and the Didache for Alexandria. The same may be inferred of the two Scriptural passages cited above; and one is led further back by I Cor. xi. 17-34. While Paul distinguishes as sharply as possible the eating of the one bread and the drinking of the blessed chalice from common food and drink (I Cor. x. 3, 16; xi. 23- 29), he shows at the same time that in Corinth the two were connected in thought. While he rebukes the disorder of one drinking too much and another going hungry, so as to injure the dignity of the following sacrament, and lays down that eating for the mere satisfaction of hunger ought to take place at home and not in the assembly of the brethren, he is not disposed (as I Cor. xi. 33 shows) to abolish altogether the connection of the sacrament with an actual meal. This connection, then, existing into the first decades of the second century, forms the basis of the history for both Eucharist and agape which diverge from that time on. (T. Zahn.)
The agape or love-feast is practised at present by Mennonites, Dunkards, German Baptists of the Anglo-American type, and other religious bodies. For an able, but not wholly successful, attempt to prove that the Lord's Supper in the apostolic time was identical with the agape, i.e., that it was nothing but a social feast for the manifestation of brotherly love, consult Norman Fox, Christ in the Daily Meal (New York, 1898).
A. H. N.
Bibliography: See Lord's Supper.
AGAPETUS, ag"a-pi'tus: The name of two popes.
Agapetus I. : Pope 535-536. He was the son of a Roman priest named Gordianus, who had been killed in the disturbances under Symmachus. Six days after the death of John II. he was chosen to succeed him, probably by the wish of Theodahad, king of the Ostrogoths. He began his pontificate by reconciling the contending factions among the Roman clergy and annulling the anathema pronounced by Boniface II. against the antipope Dioscorus. His decision, induced by the decrees of the North African synod, forbidding the entrance of converted Arians to the priesthood, and his defense of this measure in a letter to the emperor Justinian show him to have been a zealous upholder of orthodoxy. In 536 he was sent to Constantinople by Theodahad to try to establish peace with the emperor, and was obliged to pledge the sacred vessels of the Roman Church to obtain money for his journey. He did not succeed in the ostensible purpose of his mission, but accomplished more for the orthodox cause. Anthimus, patriarch of Constantinople, a secret adherent of Monophysitism, had, by the aid of the empress Theodora, the patroness of the Monophysites, been allowed, in defiance of the canons, to exchange the see of Trapezus (Trebizond) for the patriarchal throne. Agapetus refused all communion with him, and persisted so strenuously in his attitude, in spite of
Agapetus
Agelli