From
The Liturgical Year
by Dom Guéranger, O.S.B.
THE HISTORY OF SEPTUAGESIMA
The season of Septuagesima comprises the three weeks
immediately preceding Lent. It forms one of the principal divisions of the
liturgical year, and is itself divided into three parts, each part
corresponding to a week: the first is called Septuagesima; the second
Sexagesima; the third, Quinquagesima.
All three are named from their numerical reference to
Lent, which, in the language of the Church, is called Quadragesima, that is,
Forty, because the great feast of Easter is prepared for by the holy exercises
of forty days. The words Quinquagesima, Sexagesima, and Septuagesima, tell us
of the same great solemnity as looming in the distance, and as being the great
object towards which the Church would have us now begin to turn all our
thoughts, and desires, and devotion.
Now, the feast of Easter must be prepared for by forty
days of recollectedness and penance. Those forty days are one of the principal
seasons of the liturgical year, and one of the most powerful means employed by
the Church for exciting in the hearts of her children the spirit of their
Christian vocation. It is of the utmost importance that such a season of grace
should produce its work in our souls—the renovation of the whole spiritual
life. The Church, therefore, has instituted a preparation for the holy time of
Lent. She gives us the three weeks of Septuagesima, during which she withdraws us,
as much as may be, from the noisy distractions of the world, in order that our
hearts may be more readily impressed by the solemn warning she is to give us at
the commencement of Lent by marking our foreheads with ashes.
This prelude to the holy season of Lent was not known in
the early ages of Christianity: its institution would seem to have originated in
the Greek Church. Besides the six Sundays of Lent, on which by universal custom
the faithful never fasted, the practice of this Church prohibited fasting on
the Saturdays likewise; consequently their Lent was short by twelve days of the
forty spent by our Saviour doing penance in the desert. To make up the
deficiency, they were obliged to begin their Lent so many days earlier, as we
will show in our next volume.
The Church of Rome had no such motive for anticipating the
season of those privations which belong to Lent; for, from the earliest
antiquity, she kept the Saturdays in Lent (and as often during the rest of the
year as circumstances might require) as fasting days. At the close of the sixth
century, St. Gregory the Great alludes, in one of his homilies, to the fast of
Lent being less than forty days, owing to the Sundays which come during that
holy season. “There are,” he says, “from this day (the first Sunday of Lent) to
the joyous feast of Easter, six weeks, that is forty-two days. As we do not
fast on the six Sundays, there are but thirty-six fasting days… which we offer
to God as the tithe of our year.”
It was, therefore, after the pontificate of St. Gregory,
that the last four days of Quinquagesima week were added to Lent, in order that
the number of fasting days might be exactly forty. As early, however, as the
ninth century, the custom of beginning Lent on Ash Wednesday was of obligation
in the whole Latin Church. All the manuscript copies of the Gregorian
Sacramentary, which bear that date, entitle this Wednesday In capite jejunii, that is to say, the beginning of the fast; and
Amalarius, who gives us every detail of the liturgy of the ninth century, tells
us that it was, even then, the rule to begin the fast four days before the first
Sunday of Lent. We find the practice confirmed by two Councils, held in that
century. But, out of respect for the form of divine service drawn up by St.
Gregory, the Church does not make any important change in the Office of these
four days. Up to the Vespers of Saturday, when alone she begins the lenten
rite, she observes the rubrics prescribed for Quinquagesima week.
Peter of Blois, who lived in the twelfth century, tells
us what was the practice in his days. He says: “All religious begin the fast of
Lent at Septuagesima; the Greeks, at Sexagesima; the clergy, at Quinquagesima;
and the rest of Christians, who form the Church militant on earth, begin their
Lent on the Wednesday following Quinquagesima.” The secular clergy, as we learn
from these words, were bound to begin the lenten fast somewhat before the
laity; though it was only by two days—that is, on Monday, as we gather from the
Life of St. Ulric, bishop of Augsburg, written in the tenth century. The Council
of Clermont, in 1095, at which Pope Urban II presided, has a decree sanctioning
the obligation of the clergy to begin abstinence from flesh-meat at
Quinquagesima. This Sunday was called, indeed, Dominica carnis privii, and carnis
privium sacerdotum, that is, priests’ carnival Sunday; but the term is to
be understood in the sense of the announcement being made, on that Sunday, of
the abstinence having to begin on the following day. We shall find, further on,
that a like usage was observed in the Greek Church on the three Sundays
preceding Lent. This law, which obliged the clergy to these two additional days
of abstinence, was in force in the thirteenth century, as we learn from the
Council held at Angers, which threatens with suspension all priests who neglect
to begin Lent on the Monday of Quinquagesima week.
This usage, however, soon became obsolete; and in the
fifteenth century, the secular clergy, and even the monks themselves, began the
lenten fast, like the rest of the faithful, on Ash Wednesday.
There can be no doubt that the original motive for the
anticipation—which, after several modifications, was limited to the four days
immediately preceding Lent—was to remove from the Greeks the pretext of taking
scandal at the Latins, who did not fast fully forty days. Ratramnus, in is Controversy with the Greeks, clearly
implies it. But the Latin Church did not think it necessary to carry her
condescension farther, by imitating the Greek ante-lenten usages, which
originated, as we have already said, in the eastern custom of not fasting on Saturdays.*
Thus it was that the Roman Church, by this anticipation
of Lent by four days, gave the exact number of forty days to the holy season,
which she had instituted in imitation of the forty days spent by our Saviour in
the desert. Whilst faithful to her ancient practice of looking on the Saturday
as a day appropriate for penitential exercises, she gladly borrowed from the Greek
Church the custom of preparing for Lent, by giving the liturgy of the three preceding
weeks a tone of holy mournfulness. Even as early as the beginning of the ninth
century, as we learn from Amalarius, the Alleluia
and Gloria in excelsis were suspended
in the Septuagesima Offices. The monks conformed to the custom, although the Rule
of St. Benedict prescribed otherwise. Finally, in the second half of the
eleventh century, Pope Alexander II enacted that the total suspension of the Alleluia should be everywhere observed,
beginning with the Vespers of the Saturday preceding Septuagesima Sunday. This
Pope was but renewing a rule already sanctioned, in that same century, by Pope
Leo IX, and inserted in the body of Canon Law.
Thus was the present important period of the liturgical
year, after various changes, established in the cycle of the Church. It has
been there upwards of a thousand years. Its name, Septuagesima (seventy), expresses, as we have already remarked, a
numerical relation to Quadragesima
(the forty days); although, in reality, there are not seventy but only
sixty-three days from Septuagesima Sunday to Easter. We will speak of the mystery
of the name in the following chapter. The first Sunday of Lent being called Quadragesima (forty), each of the three
previous Sundays has a name expressive of an additional ten; the nearest to
Lent, Quinquagesima (fifty); the
middle one, Sexagesima (sixty); the
third, Septuagesima (seventy).
As the season of Septuagesima depends upon the time of the
Easter celebration, it comes sooner or later according to the changes of that
great feast. January 18 and February 22 are called the “Septuagesima keys,” because
the Sunday, which is called Septuagesima, cannot be earlier in the year than
the first, nor later than the second, of these two days.
_______________________________________
*The Gallican liturgy had retained several usages of the
oriental Churches, to which it owed, in part, its origin; hence, it was not
without some difficulty that the custom of fasting and abstaining on Saturdays
was introduced into Gaul. Until such time as the Churches of that country had
adopted the Roman custom, in that point of discipline, they were necessitated
to anticipate the fast of Lent. The first Council of Orleans, held in the early
part of the sixth century, enjoins the faithful to observe, before Easter, Quadragesima (as the Latins call Lent),
and not Quinquagesima, “in order,”
says the Council, “That unity of custom may be maintained.” Towards the close of
the same century, the fourth Council held in the same city, repeats the same
prohibition, and explains the intentions of making such an enactment, by
ordering that the Saturdays during Lent should be observed as days of fasting.
Previously to this, that is, in the years 511 and 541, the first and second Councils
of Orange had combated the same abuse, by also withdrawing from the faithful
the obligation of commencing the fast at Quinquagesima. The introduction of the
Roman liturgy into France, which was brought about the by the zeal of Pepin and
Charlemagne, finally established in that country the custom of keeping the
Saturday as a day of penance; and as we have just seen, the beginning Lent on
Quinquagesima was not observed excepting by the clergy. In the thirteenth
century, the only Church in the patriarchate of the west, which began Lent
earlier than the Church of Rome, was that of Poland: its Lent opened on the
Monday of Septuagesima, which was owing to the rite of the Greek Church being
so much used in Poland. The custom was abolished, even for that country, by
Pope Innocent IV in the year 1248.
(Images of the beautiful vestments in this post, courtesy Michele Quigley, who restored them.)
No comments:
Post a Comment