Church History (Vol.1-3). J. H. Kurtz
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.
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