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The order and ingredients of worship, that is, of the Christian liturgy, were rapidly becoming much more elaborate due to the enormous increase in Christian worshipers. By the end of the fifth century the practice of infant baptism had become the norm and the church had abandoned the attitudes of a discipline arcani because the greater majority of the civilized population of the Empire was now Christian. The Sunday Service of the Faithful, the one in which the Eucharist was celebrated, remained the central focus of worship throughout the church.
The influx of catechumens obviously increased even more in this period. The mass assemblies organized to instruct and inspire them were essentially preaching services. They were often scheduled morning and afternoon on station days (Wednesday and Friday) and sometimes on other weekdays. It is not surprising under these circumstances that some bishops such as Ambrose of Milan in the west and Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom in the east won great renown as preachers in this period. In these well attended sessions preaching and teaching was regularly complemented by Bible reading, prayer, and the singing of psalms and hymns involving both clerical choirs and congregational participation. Antiphonal singing became popular beginning at Antioch in the fourth century and eventually spread throughout the church.
By the middle of the fourth century the non-baptized catechumens and pagan visitors constituted a very large percentage of those in attendance at these frequent weekday preaching and teaching assemblies as well as the Service of the Word on Sunday. In the previous centuries it had been customary to usher out the few penitents, catechumens and visitors (all the non-baptized) before the Service of the Faithful where the Lord's Supper was celebrated. Although most communities multiplied the teaching and preaching services to accommodate the catechetical need, they eventually also had to incorporate more and more worshipers in a meaningful Service of the Faithful. As the incidence of infant baptism increased, the number of adult catechumens correspondingly declined by the end of the fifth century. Since the proportions of baptized to non-baptized in attendance at the service of the Word had almost completely reversed, it was no longer felt necessary to usher out the un-baptized. Some liturgies retained the dismissal as a formality; others dropped it completely.
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As noted in an earlier section Christians utilized artistic skills in depicting a wide variety of scenes and images to adorn their houses of worship and their tombs. They certainly continued such applications throughout this period.
Similarly, church architecture was developing under the pressure of the growing number of worshipers beginning in the fourth century. The basilica structures usually but not necessarily employing clerestory design with multiple aisles became common in both east and west during the fourth and fifth centuries. The height of some basilicas built during this period allowed mezzanine or gallery floors in the side aisles for yet additional capacity.
The altar table with its ciborium was located on a small raised platform (béma) at the front of the elevated apse floor. Sometimes a step below the front of the apse floor is another level (the solea) extending still farther into the nave.
The section of the nave surrounding the altar table was reserved exclusively for the clergy and called the Chancel, or the Sanctuary. This area was marked off with various types of physical barriers. Sometimes this was marked off by its higher elivation, sometimes other barriers were added. The worshipers stood (there were no benches) outside these chancel barriers in the nave and the aisles. There are some indications that by the fifth century the chancel barriers may have included removable draperies that protect the whole chancel from the gaze of the catechumens during the Service of the Word.
During that part of the fourth century when instruction and preaching had been the priority functions of the much larger basilicas in use after Constantine it became customary to erect an elevated rostrum called the ambô in the center of the nave measured from the entrance to the apse. It became customary to extend the barriers of the chancel along the sides of a narrow walkway leading from the chancel barrier to the ambô. By the sixth century that narrow walkway had been widened sometimes to the full width of the nave to accommodate the antiphonal choirs which stood facing one another in the space between the ambô and the chancel. Hence this part of the nave is called the choir and served to increase the distance between the lay worshipers and the sacred altar. Somewhere in this process it became customary to have two ambônoi, one at either side of the choir. For reasons not fully apparent the draperies obscuring the chancel seem to have now moved to enclose the choir, and in the east at least, not to have been removed even during the Eucharist.
In the east they experimented with more centralized cruciform floor plans with or without aisles. This may have been an alternate basilica type or a Christian innovation. By the sixth century they were experimenting with small domes and semidomes sometimes using them over the apse, and sometimes over the transcept, that is the intersection of the two rectangular floor spaces in the cruciform plan.
As noted in an earlier chapter, many of the earliest buildings emerged in connection with the tombs and relics of the martyrs. During this period this tendency continued as the tombs of still other earlier heroes of the Church were discovered sometimes by legitimate research and sometimes by dream visions. While the eastern churches were often willing to share the existing heroic bones with the newly erected churches in the fourth and fifth centuries, the Roman church could not be persuaded to share their local relics. Nevertheless, the translation of remains from one place of rest to another was a common occurrence. Constantinople, which did not possess a list of pre-Constantinian heroes of the faith, was soon able to venerate their very own relics of Luke, Andrew and Timothy.
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While Easter was oldest annual celebration par excellence other festivals of the Christian Year were appearing. We should not be surprised that these ancient Christians moved so steadily in the direction of developing a calendar of Christian observances. They were culturally conditioned by paganism to have the prevailing official religions reflected prominently in the local civic calendar. In the fourth and fifth centuries AD society was in the process of replacing a civic calendar full of pagan celebrations with a civic calendar equally full of Christian celebrations. Neither is it really surprising that some of the practices of pagan celebrations were captured and retained by the Christian celebrations that replaced them.
It is appropriate to note that in congregations of increasing proportions of semiliterate and illiterate believers who had little exposure to the text of the Scriptures aside from corporate worship experiences, the celebrations of the Christian Year were invaluable opportunities for what we would call religious education. In both the east and the west in this period the former pagan artistic traditions were employed by the Christians to illustrate and symbolize visually the message of the heroic figures and celebrate their actions.
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Based on Jesus' forty (Greek: tessarakosté, Latin: quadragesima) days in the wilderness (e.g. Matthew 4:2), Lent had become a standard part of the Christian year before the fourth century was over. Although it was celebrated differently in different regions of the Christian world for several centuries, it combined an extended
fast in preparation for Easter with the traditional period during which catechumens reviewed their instruction one final time before baptism. As the importance of the catechumenate diminished during in this period lent gradually assumed significance in the administration of penance. It is called Lent in English evidently because it was held during the Spring (Old English: lancten) when the days are lengthening.
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The development of special celebrations during the week leading up to Easter would eventually constitute the Holy Week calendar. Palm Sunday was being celebrated in late fourth century Jerusalem and had spread all the way to Spain by the end of the fifth. Thursday eventually came into focus as the first weekday of the Holy Week when the Eucharist was celebrated (in some cases more than once). Three streams of tradition converge in Maundy Thursday: the commemoration of the Last Supper, the reconciliation of penitents in anticipation of the Easter, and the consecration of the oils for anointing the catechumens at their baptism. Good Friday probably traces its origin to bishop Cyril of Jerusalem who in this period established a special commemoration of the Cross evidently based on relics of the "true cross" possessed by the Jerusalem church. This commemoration spread gradually to other parts of the Church. The practice of commemorating whatever local relics a church possessed had begun early and continued to be typical in the following centuries.
Holy Saturday was a day of fasting followed by a vigil of prayer and Scripture reading until about 3:00 A.M. Easter morning. In the afternoon it was customary to have the baptismal liturgy for the catechumens. Another fascinating part of the celebration of Holy Saturday in this period included a special liturgy to bless and honor the candle (light) used by the lectors during the vigil.
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Athanasius, in the early fourth century referred to the fifty days following Easter Sunday as the "great Sunday". During the first week of Pentecost in the fourth century there were special services daily for the newly baptized at which the Eucharist was celebrated. In the remaining weeks there were services for the faithful on Wednesday and Friday as well as Sunday. It was not until the fourth century that the celebration
of the Ascension was set on the fortieth day and the gift of the Spirit on the fiftieth.
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By the fourth century orthodox churchmen in the east seemed to have assumed that Jesus' baptism and his birth took place on the same day, January 6, thirty years apart. By the fifth century Augustine of Hippo would comment that Jesus was both conceived and executed on March 25, but born on December 25.
By the end of the fifth century the Church had agreed on celebrating both the Nativity (i.e., Christmas) and the Manifesting (Epiphany). The latter feast on January 6 had in the earlier period been associated by various groups both with Jesus baptism and his birth. The first secular record of the Christian's celebrating Epiphany dates from 361 describing activities in Gaul. The Armenian Christians in the east continued in this period to celebrate Jesus birth on Epiphany while the western churches by the fifth century celebrated the Adoration of the Magi, the Lord's baptism, and the miracle at Cana on that day. Other churches in the eastern regions celebrated Epiphany as a memorial of the baptismal manifestation--"Thou art my Beloved Son . . . ," Mark 1:11, etc.
From the fourth century in the east Epiphany became one of the chosen days to baptize catechumens, but we do not find this practice at Rome until the sixth century. Already in the fourth century Gaul seems to have been influenced by the east to baptize on Epiphany and to establish a three week preparation period of fasting and instruction leading up to it. By sometime in the fifth century the period of preparation was lengthened to a forty day period counted back from December 25 rather than January 6.
A number of lesser feasts were calculated from Christmas. Already in the fourth century December 26 was given to honor Stephen the Martyr, December 27 to honor the sons of Zebedee (James and John), and December 28 to honor Peter and Paul. The feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple was celebrated by Cyril of Jerusalem on the fortieth day after Epiphany, i.e. February 14. Although not calculated from Christ's nativity, Augustine of Hippo reports that the birthday of John the Baptist was celebrated on June 24 as a replacement for pagan rites commemorating the summer solstice.
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The commemoration of the confessors and martyrs had generally been a very parochial activity with little geographic uniformity in the period before Constantine. This gradually changed beginning in the fourth century as the local celebrations began to become part of catholic or universal practice. The oldest existing lists of martyrs, the martyrologies, giving their dies natalis, date or martyrdom, appear in the fourth century. Moreover in place of a steady stream of terminal martyrs and confessors to remember soon the reclusive desert martyrs, virgins and beloved pastor-bishops began to enrich the list. Note that the days for remembering the confessors and other saints who did not die as martyrs usually commemorated some noteworthy event in their lives, not their death.
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The cult of the martyrs emerged in the fourth century with the almost unanimous support of the church. The popular interpretation of these historical events seems to have changed. Before Constantine the martyr's suffering had been viewed as something superhuman and Christ-like in his death. Now the martyr's suffering seems to have been the basis of a prevailing belief that the martyr had earned by his or her suffering the right to intercede miraculously in the lives of surviving members of the Christian community. While the martyr's soul was understood to be very
close to God as a result of his or her heroic "baptism of blood", the martyr's bones and relics remain close to man. Hence, it was commonly understood that each martyr provided something like an open channel of mystic communication between the place his relics lay and where his soul resided next to God. The martyr's bones and relics were in and of themselves recognized as potent reservoirs of special holiness and grace available to those who seek it. These ideas played out in the fact that every major church building would seek to have the relics or the residue of some martyr or saint stashed away beneath the altar. It is noteworthy, however that Augustine and others would attempt to remind average believers that the same grace that enabled and inspired the martyrs was available equally to them in their times of stress and sickness, their
daily opportunities to give witness to Christ. Care was taken to clarify that the liturgies and prayers including the Eucharistic sacrifice were offered to God in memory of the martyr presumably on the anniversary of the dies natalis. At least among the "properly instructed" prayer to the saints was restricted to the terminal martyrs alone by the end of the fourth century.
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After the Council of Ephesus in 431 vindicated the practice of referring to Jesus' mother, Mary, using the ancient pagan term theotokos, "she who gives birth to god," it was not long before Mary had a total of four liturgical feasts in her honor, all originating in the east. One of these, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, dates to the fourth century in Jerusalem. Two others (The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and The Assumption/Dormition) were also established in Jerusalem with the dedication of two basilicas in her honor. The Annunciation, while alluded to at Constantinople in the fifth century may not have been widely adopted until
later when it was celebrated in most areas at the spring equinox (March 25). Indeed the earliest day in the year assigned to Mary was January 1, but by the sixth century in some areas January 1 was celebrated as the day of Jesus' Circumcision. As pilgrimages to the land of Christ's nativity grew popular in the fourth century the practices of the Jerusalem Church enjoyed great influence. One result was the inclusion of certain Old Testament heroes, e.g. Job and Elijah, in the growing list
of saints.
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By the end of the fifth century Christian authors universally speak of three sacraments and often four or five. Anything that signifies the presence or action of God in the life of the individual can be thought of as a sacrament. The most important and salutary of the sacramental events were baptism, the Eucharist and Chrismation. Scarcely less important sacramental events were penance and ordination.
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Beginning very early in the Christian tradition baptism had been regularly associated with an anointing of the newly baptized. However, in the west the importance of the anointing had been distinguished from that of baptism as a result of the Novatian and Donatist controversies of the earlier period. It was historically significant for the west that the influential Augustine of Hippo carefully distinguished between them. Churchmen in both east and west speak of the Chrismation, the anointing of the forehead with oil in the form of a cross following baptism, as signifying the giving of the Holy Spirit while the waters of baptism signified the cleansing and regeneration work of the Holy Spirit.
The relative increase in the practice of infant baptism and the corresponding decline of adult baptism practices by the late fifth century may have had something to do with the growing separation between Chrismation and baptism in the western regions. In the East Chrismation continued to be administered immediately following the baptism. The custom among barbarian warriors in the West was to be baptized when their tribal or group leader was baptized and then familiarize themselves with Christianity's understandings and teachings afterwards. This probably also had something to do with the western Church's delay in the administration of Chrismation. By the end of the fifth century in the West they interpreted the Chrismation sacrament as strengthening or perfecting the Holy Spirit's work begun in baptism, hence the term "confirmation" which has since been the common name for this sacrament in the western Church.
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Since the sacramental rituals of heretics had been universally condemned as worthless, the issue of the uniqueness of the Christian sacrament demanded careful consideration. Ambrose of Milan emphasized that no sacrament would be efficacious if the participants did not express a Trinitarian faith. John Chrysostom and others made the point that the miracle did not depend on the churchman officiating, but on the will and action of God. He also identified both the use of Christ's words: "This is my body" and the prayer invoking the Holy Spirit (epiklésis) as significant.
Christ's presence in the Eucharist was spoken of in different ways. In both east and west up until the middle of the fourth century the typical explanation of the elements emphasized their role as symbols, types or figures of divine things. In the East beginning with Cyril of Jerusalem (348-386) and Gregory of Nyssa (372-395) the view begins to shift toward an emphasis on the miraculous conversion or change of the ordinary bread and wine into the very flesh and blood of Christ. Although Ambrose of Milan (374-397) seems to prefer the older symbolic interpretation he comes round to the new idea. Augustine of Hippo (396-430) also uses the symbolic language on occasion but he comes to insist that the elements became flesh and blood.
By the late fifth century it is evident that the whole church believed that Christ was miraculously present in the elements of the Eucharist. Differences remained unresolved as to that point in the Eucharistic ceremony when the miracle occurred it was understood universally that the Holy Spirit was the agent of this divine miracle. Churchmen gave several suggestions as to the exact point at which the sacramental miracle took place--when the wine was no longer just wine, when the bread was no longer
just bread, etc.
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And differences also developed in the explanation of the efficacy of the Eucharist. The Cappadocian Fathers (Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa) together with Cyril of Alexandria understood the Eucharist as a reenactment of the incarnation miracle in which Christ takes the bread and wine into union with Himself in a way similar to His taking human flesh. The believer in receiving the transformed elements receives a measure of the divine nature. This infusion of divine nature enables the believer to experience communion with Christ. The eastern churches followed the Cappadocians in the interpretation of salvation as a miraculous process of converting or transforming the human into the divine, a doctrine called theosis.
The western churchmen under the influence of Tertullian's legal analogies interpreted salvation as the restoration of right standing before God. From this point of view they interpreted the Eucharist as a reenactment of Christ's sacrificial death which once for all effectively satisfied the demands of divine justice and made right standing available graciously to all those believers who will accept it. Partaking of the elements, the
believer identifies himself with the dying Christ in order to share in the right standing the sinless Christ earned by his death. Despite the differences in interpretation with the East, the term
"communion" became the common term to designate the Eucharist by the sixth century in the west.
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The identification of penance as a sacramental event was among the phenomena of the second and third centuries as we reported earlier. Penance included all those actions taken under clerical supervision, witnessed by the congregation and the general public, to compensate and satisfy God for the damages done by sinful actions after baptism.
The Cappadocians suggested there were three categories of mortal sins: apostasy, adultery, and murder. The typical tariff for bigamy was one to four years penance; for abortion, ten years; for murder, eleven years.
Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) further elaborated on Tertullian's legal metaphor by distinguishing among three types of penance. First, he distinguished a pre-baptismal penance--which we would probably think of as repentance. This applied only to those who were not baptized as infants. In the second place he noted the continual post-baptismal penance such as fasting, prayer, alms giving, and acts of charity which were believed adequate to secure forgiveness for the lesser or venial
sins after baptism. Finally, the formal ecclesiastical procedure of penance was necessary for the forgiveness of mortal sins. In every case the public deeds of penance coupled with the contrite spirit and the confession of the sin offered satisfaction to God. Note that in case of formal penance the priestly mediator and the assembled congregation must
be present to hear the confession and witness the public reconciliation with the church and the imparting of the grace of absolution. It should be noted also that both Ambrose of Milan and Augustine defended the prevailing notion that penance for mortal sins was a one time opportunity and could not be repeated.
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