Formerly this ceremony took place at midnight, with the church brilliantly illuminated: the baptism of catechumens followed, and each one took home a small phial of the blessed water, which, on the authority of St. Chrysostom, was said to remain pure the whole year. At present the Greeks bless the rivers and streams on Epiphany Day, and as soon as the blessing is over, men and women plunge into the river, and immerse themselves three times. The Latins have always included in the feast of Epiphany the adoration of the Magi, the miracle of Cana, and the baptism of our Lord; the Greeks, on the contrary, join the adoration of the Magi to the feast of Christmas. This usage is very ancient in the Eastern Churches, as may be seen from the writings of St. Ephrem.* Just as in the Latin Church, flesh meat is allowed when Christmas Day falls on a Friday, so, in the Greek Church, meat is allowed when Epiphany Day falls on either a Wednesday or a Friday.

In the Greek rite, on the day following each feast of our Lord and the Blessed Virgin, they celebrate the memory of the Saints who took part in the mystery of such feast. Thus, on the day following Epiphany is celebrated the commemoration of St. John Baptist; on the day following, the Purification, which they call Hypapante ("Meeting," because St. Simeon met our Saviour), is consecrated to St. Simeon. With the Greeks, as with the Latins, the greater feasts have their vigils with fast; but, in addition, the Greeks have, for the Epiphany and great solemnities, what they call Proertia, or ante-feast. The proertia of the Epiphany is kept on January 2nd.

The rites followed by the Greeks in the administration of the Sacraments may be seen in Goar's edition of the "Euchology." We could not enter into details without stretching our Article beyond bounds: we must confine ourselves to a few general observations. The Greeks baptize by immersion, and require triple immersion, which is not at all, though they have maintained it is, required for the validity of baptism; this Catholic theologians have long ago incontestably demonstrated. Directly after baptism, the priest, not the bishop, administers confirmation. The Greeks do not rank the sub-diaconate among Sacred Orders. Marriage is surrounded with touching ceremonies, and the tie is indissoluble; though they pretend that it may be dissolved for adultery. The difficulties they raised on this subject at the Council of Florence are well known. Pope Eugenius IV. refused to consent to legitimising divorces that had been granted for this motive.† Impediments to marriage from rela

*I propose shortly to publish the "Hymns" of this great Syrian writer on the feast of the Epiphany.

† Vide Harduin, "Collect, Concil." x., 430–431.

tionship are more numerous with the Greeks than with the Latins.

Canonical Discipline.—The basis of Greek Canon Law is still, at present, the Apostolic Canons; the Apostolic Constitutions; the Canons of the Councils of Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon, and of Trullo; of the particular Councils of Gangres, Laodicea, and Antioch; the Canonical Letters of the Bishops; the Council of Photius, and the Synodal Decrees of the Schismatical Patriarchs. All these documents, except the latter ones, equally form part of the Canon Law of the UnitedGreeks. Mgr. Pap-Szilagyi has given a methodical résumé of them in his "Enchiridion Juris Eccles. Orient." We have already touched upon several points of general discipline; we may add here something regarding the fast and feast observances of the people. The Greeks have numerous and very severe fasts; but they do not fast on Saturday, and formerly, under Photius (and later still), have blamed the Latins for abstaining on that day. Their reproach falls to the ground before an acquaintance with the reasons that urged the Western Church to abstain from flesh-meat on Saturdays; and this difference of discipline ought to have no weight whatever in preventing a union of the two Churches. Conformably to the 69th Canon of the Apostles, the Greeks fast on Wednesday and Friday of every week, with a few exceptions. They have Lent, as we have. They have also the "Fast of the Mother of God," from the 1st to the 15th of August; the fast of Christmas, from the 15th November to the 24th December; the fast of the holy Apostles SS. Peter and Paul, from the first Sunday after Pentecost to the 28th June, and various vigils. The fast of Wednesdays and Fridays, and that of Lent, resembles the Western fast of Good Friday. It includes a rigorous abstinence called by them zerophagia (popaysia);† the use of meat, fish, eggs, wine, milk, beer, cheese, oil, is rigidly forbidden. But wine and oil are often permitted when a feast falls on one of those days-fish more rarely. The other fasts are less rigorous.

In the Eastern, as in the Western Church, the faithful must sanctify the Sunday by assisting at Mass and by abstaining from work-that is, from what is called servile work. They must sanctify, in like manner, a number of other feasts: the

*All these documents are collected by Cardinal Pitra in his great work, "Juris Ecclesiastici Græcorum Historia et Monumenta," Rome, 1864. Only two volumes have appeared.

† "Concil. Laod.," can. 50:- Oportet totam quadragesimam jejunare vescentes aridis, δεῖνηστευειν ξηροφαγοῦντας.

Circumcision, Epiphany, Ascension, the second days of Easter and Pentecost, the Transfiguration, and Christmas; these feasts of our Lady-the Purification, Annunciation, Nativity, Presentation, the Immaculate Conception-which they call the conception of St. Anne, and the Assumption-the Nativity of St. John, the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul, of St. Elias, St. George, St. Michael, St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, and some others. But the number of feasts to be observed is not the same with the different nations of the Greek rite. There are other feasts on which it is obligatory to hear Mass, but work is permitted.

It remains for us to sketch, in a future Article, the history of the Russian Church, and to examine what are the general motives which separate all the Churches of the Greek rite from the Latin Church. T. J. LAMY.

ART. III. THE APOSTLE OF IRELAND AND HIS MODERN CRITICS.

1. Confessio et Epistola Sancti Patricii.

Martii, xvii. p. 533. Antwerpiæ, 1668.

Acta Sanctorum

2. Triadis Thaumaturga seu divorum Patricii Columbæ et Brigida acta. Colganus. Lovanii, 1617.

3. Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres. Auctore Carolo O'Conor, S.T.D. Buckinghamiæ, 1825.

(a) Tigernachi Annales Hibernici.

Ex Codice Bodleiano.

(b) Annales Ultonienses. Ex Codice Bodleiano.

(c) Annales Quatuor Magistrorum. Ex ipso O'Clerii auto

grapho.

4. Essays on the Origin, &c., of the Early Irish Church. the Rev. Dr. MORAN. Dublin. 1864.

By

5. St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland. A Memoir of his Life and Mission. By JAMES HENTHORN TODD, D.D. Dublin.

1864.

6. Loca Patriciana. By the Rev. JOHN FRANCIS SHEARMAN. Dublin. 1879.

IN

N the mind of a Catholic devotion to the saints is a personal matter, and it is strong in proportion to his faith. People, therefore, who look on faith as nothing more than a formal adherence to a dead creed, introduced once for all and then left to take care of itself, are puzzled at our expressions of indignation when outrages are offered to the

memory of the saints, or when they are treated as so many lifeless ornaments of the Church, to be put up and taken down, or painted, according to fancy. But if nations are jealous of the honour of their poets and heroes, with much better reason may we be sensitive in all that regards the glory of the just made perfect, whose words and deeds are at once a revelation of our own supernatural destiny and the support of our efforts to attain it.

Besides these claims upon our love and gratitude which are common to all, there are others which are special and personal, such as the obligations each one is under to that Saint to whom he owes the inheritance of his faith. In the order of God's providence, the virtues and labours, the sufferings and endurance of one man continue to act upon countless generations. Perhaps in no part of Christendom is this more manifest than in Ireland. St. Patrick has had no successor in his apostolic office fourteen hundred years ago he contracted his mystical espousals with the Church of Ireland, and no union of pastor and flock has ever been more fruitful, or gives better promise of endurance. During those ages Ireland has been convulsed and torn by internal and external enemies-or rather, we should say, by invaders so persistent that they came to be regarded as one with her inhabitants. Centuries of savage wars with Danes were soon followed by others scarcely less savage with Normans and Saxons; so that for a thousand years Ireland scarcely tasted the blessings of peace. Then came a time more fatal still to the moral character of a nation, for religion and law were converted into vile instruments of corruption and oppression; when, in the words of Sydney Smith, "such jobbing, such profligacy, so much direct tyranny and oppression, such an abuse of God's gifts, such profanation of God's name for the purposes of bigotry and party spirit, cannot be exceeded in the history of civilised Europe."

At lengthin our own times peace was proclaimed in Ireland, and she had time to count her losses, and to estimate the ravages of those wars and social struggles which had all the deplorable consequences of civil strife.

She had much cause for mourning in the wild and lawless spirit of her children-the natural growth, in latter times, of their despairing surrender of all hope of even-handed legal justice. But at the same time she found a people second to none in the courage of its men and the purity of its women, those virtues by which nations live; and looking back into the dark and terrible past for the source of her life and the secret

** " Essays," p. 313.

of its endurance, she traced the preservation of hope, and of all that made life beautiful, to that religion which flowed like an unbroken river of light from the heart of the Apostle and Founder of her faith.

The clients of the Saint may therefore be pardoned if they find it hard to keep within the bounds of literary courtesy in dealing with those writers who, as we shall see, by their random and incoherent theories and flagrant misuse of ancient authorities, have tried to convert the history of St. Patrick into a theatre for the display of feats of historical legerdemain. For a long time Ireland has been deluged with such productions, which are an outrage at once to logic and common sense, to the Irish Church, and to the filial loyalty of the children of St. Patrick.

The work which we have set before us is to give our readers some idea of the character and value of the ancient acta, or records of St. Patrick, and of the evidence in support of the Catholic tradition regarding the Saint, as opposed to the Protestant view, which, we are sorry to say, has enlisted some Catholics amongst its supporters. Perhaps this will be done more satisfactorily if we consider, in the first place, the general objections which have been raised against the credibility of the records of the Saint. In this way, while our conclusions will come out more clearly, we may also hope to secure the attention of those who are at present inclined to regard the subject as hopelessly involved; and if our plan gives an appearance of vagueness to our preliminary remarks, it is to be hoped that this will be corrected by the conclusion.

We need not fear contradiction when we state that it is the common belief, not only in Ireland but all over the Christian world, that in the fifth century Ireland was rapidly and completely evangelised by St. Patrick, and that God, in sending him to preach the gospel, invested him with those supernatural powers which are usually attached to the plenitude of the apostolic office. Other saints, with less authentic testimony to their lives and work, reign in peace above our altars. Why is it, then, that controversy so rages around the name of St. Patrick? We unhesitatingly answer-because a host of modern writers have dealt with his life in a manner which, were it universal, would make short work not only with Saints' lives, but with a great part of secular biography.

The objections of the adversaries of the Catholic tradition be classified under three heads :

may

1. Discrepancies in the various lives and records of the Saint. 2. Number and character of his miracles.

3. His superhuman work.

In the first place, it is obvious that the more numerous