HOLY WEEK.
- Origins (§ 1).
- Palm Sunday in the East (§ 2).
- In the West (§ 3).
- Monday to Thursday (§ 4).
- Good Friday (§ 5).
- Holy Saturday (§ 6).
- Protestant Usage (§ 7).
Holy Week, that is, the week before Easter, was
originally called the "great week." The oldest
witnesses for this designation are the pilgrim
Egeria in the account of her travels, the
so-called
Peregrinatio Silvia (text and Eng. transl. in pub-
1. Origins
els of Egeria from the time about 385
we find a
detailed description of the rich
liturgical celebrations by which the "great week,"
beginning with Palm Sunday, was distinguished in
Jerusalem (in
CSEL,
xxxix. 78-92). From this
account two conclusions may safely be drawn:
(1) The liturgical usages, especially the custom to
celebrate solemnly this week before Easter, owe
their origin to the custom in Jerusalem; (2) at the
time when Egeria wrote, similar celebrations must
have been unknown in the Occident; the customs
in Jerusalem are evidently strange and new to her.
The great week in the East was distinguished in
the first place by strict fasting; but the custom
was not uniform; some fasted the whole week, others
only four or three, or even only two, days, namely,
Friday and Saturday. As early as the time of
Chrysostom all public amusements were forbidden,
all public offices closed, prisoners dismissed, slaves
benefited in every way, especially by their release,
and the poor were provided with plentiful alma.
The Occidental Church adopted the same name for
this week; for its official designation in the Roman
Church is still to-day
hebdomada magna
or
major.
It was called also
sancta.
It is mentioned in liturgical writings as early as the twelfth century.
The German expression
Karwoche (Karfreitag)
is derived from
karen, "to
wail, to mourn,"
hence denotes week of mourning or lamentation. With the Greeks the "great week" began
only with the Monday after Palm Sunday,
while in the Occident it commenced
with that
Sunday. Originally it was the same way in 'the
East.
2. Palm Sunday in the East
The oldest description of the liturgical celebration
of this day in Jerusalem in the fourth century is
given in the
Peregrinatio Silvi,as (CSEL,
xxxix. 82 sqq., Eng. transl. of
Palestine
Pilgrim's Text Society, pp. 57 sqq.).
The festival began at one o'clock in the
afternoon in the church upon the
Mount of Olives, with singing of hymns
and
antiphones and the reading of lessons. The
characteristic feature of the celebration was the
several processions from one church to another which
took place accompanied by the repeated acclamation
of the people, " Blessed is he that cometh in the
name of the Lord." Children held branches of
palms or olives in their hands and accompanied the
bishop, who represented the Lord and rode upon
an ass. Ephraem the Syrian (q.v.) testifies that
the same procession of palms took place as early as
the fourth century in Edessa. In the fifth century
the festival of palms had spread over the whole of
Palestine. It should be noticed that the oldest
testimonies for the procession of palms on Palm
Sunday are entirely silent concerning a consecration
of the palms, and these testimonies prove that
Palm Sunday was considered throughout as a day
of joy, not as a day of mourning; moreover, the
epistle read on this day was
Phil. iv. 4-9.
