The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity

by Bradshaw, Paul F.; Johnson, Maxwell E.

• ISBN13: 9780814662441
• ISBN10: 0814662447
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-02-15
• Publisher: Pueblo Books

Summary

The liturgical year is a relatively modern invention. The term itself only came into use in the late sixteenth century. In antiquity, Christians did not view the various festivals and fasts that they experienced as a unified whole. Instead, the different seasons formed a number of completely unrelated cycles and tended to overlap and conflict with one another. Drawing upon the latest research, the authors track the development of the Churchs feasts, fasts, and seasons, including the sabbath and Sunday, Holy Week and Easter, Christmas and Epiphany, and the feasts of the Virgin Mary, the martyrs, and other saints.

Author Biography

Paul Bradshaw is Professor of Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame, USA, an honorary canon of the Diocese of Northern Indiana, and a priest-vicar of Westminster Abbey, London, UK. He has written or edited more than twenty books on the subject of Christian worship, together with over ninety essays or articles in periodicals. A former president of both the North American Academy of Liturgy and the international Societas Liturgica, he was also Editor-in-Chief of the journal Studia Liturgica from 1987 to 2005. Maxwell Johnson is Professor of Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame, USA, and a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. His numerous publications are on the origins and development of early Christian liturgy as well as on current ecumenical theological questions, especially among Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans. He is the author and/or editor of fifteen books and over seventy essays and articles in books and journals. He is also a member of the North American Academy of Liturgy, Societas Liturgica and the Society of Oriental Liturgy.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. ix
Abbreviations	p. xi
Introduction	p. xiii
Sabbath and Sunday
The Lord's day in the Apostolic age?	p. 3
Continuing traces of the Sabbath in later Christian practice	p. 14
Sunday in the fourth century	p. 25
The Christian week: Wednesday and Friday	p. 29
Easter and Pentecost
The Quartodeciman celebration	p. 39
The date of the festival	p. 48
The development of the triduum	p. 60
Pentecost: the great fifty days	p. 69
Initiation at Easter	p. 75
Lent and Holy Week
The emergence of Lent and Holy Week	p. 89
Three weeks and forty days	p. 92
The development of Lent	p. 99
Calculating the forty days	p. 109
Holy Week in Jerusalem	p. 114
Christmas and Epiphany
25 December: two competing theories	p. 123
6 January in the East	p. 131
6 January in the West	p. 152
Advent	p. 158
Martyrs and other saints
The first martyrs and saints	p. 171
Mary: devotion and feasts	p. 196
Index of modern authors	p. 215
Index of ancient authors and subjects	p. 219
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