The Church Year and Kalendar

The Church of Christ, founded in Judaea by Him who, after the flesh, was of the family of David, and advanced and guided in its earlier years by leaders of Jewish descent, could...

In point of time the celebrations connected with the Pascha are the earliest to emerge of sacred days observed annually by the whole Church. But for reasons of convenience it ha...

It is certain that the assigning of the birth of the Lord to Dec. 25 appears first in the West; and it is not till the last quarter of the fourth century that we find it becomin...

The commemoration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was in the nature of things a natural and inevitable outcome of the religious beliefs and feelings of the infant...

The history of the origin of some of the following festivals is obscure; and it is impossible to be precise as to the dates of their first appearance. We speak with some reserva...

In the Greek Church there has continued to the present day a Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles on the day following St Peter and St Paul (June 29); and in the West we find a commem...

Advent, as the term is now employed, signifies a season, regarded as preparatory to the Festival of the Nativity of the Lord, including four Sundays and a variable number of day...

The word _Martyrology_ has been sometimes applied to mere records of names placed opposite days of the month, like the document which goes under the name of Liberius (see p. 14)...

The commemoration of the Pascha is the first annual Christian solemnity with which history makes us acquainted. And it will be well that the student should bear in mind that the...

The modern Kalendar of the Byzantine Church is here dealt with. The early Menologies (which corresponded pretty closely to the Martyrologies of the West) show the usual phenomen...