eusebius of Caesarea Research Papers (original) (raw)

Quadragesima has long been famous as a highly problematic field of liturgical history: while the sources are abundant enough to indicate a multifaceted development, even the earliest evidence already is so complex as to raise the question of a possible prehistory, which is not documented by the extant testimonies. It is not merely matters of detail that have to remain open; the origins and early development of the Quadragesima as such are so obscure that substantially different scenarios have recently been proposed.
The purpose of the following pages is to present the main evidence on which they are based and to assess their import for a balanced presentation of the earliest history of the Quadragesima and its inherent problems. As the Quadragesima is quasi-universally attested by the end of the fourth century, this investigation will limit itself to those traditions in which there is evidence before the second half of that century, namely, in the putative historical sequence of the earliest testimonies, Palestine, Alexandria, and Rome.

This trial and review of facts and interpretations has a bearing both on the “traditional” convictions and also on the “modern” alternative: the origin and character of Quadragesima cannot be explained satisfactorily either in terms of a gradual growth of the paschal fast into a preparatory time of forty days, or by the theory of its originating independently of Easter.
(1) There is no proof for a successive growth from a one-week preparation before Easter to a period of six or seven weeks (the position taken by “traditional scholarship”). The week before Easter is of course clearly discernible, but one has to distinguish two phenomena that are different in origin as well as in character.
On the one hand, the casual extension of the paschal fast from one, two, or three days to a whole week can occasionally be observed from the third century onwards. At its beginning, it is an individual ascetic exercise; its institutionalization at a later stage does not as such lead to a liturgical arrangement. The paschal fast exists long before the occurrence of a Quadragesima; and later documents show that it maintained its identity after the latter had become established. The final coexistence of the two institutions (as testified, for example, by Athanasius and the liturgical sources of Hagiopolite origin) demonstrates that there is no genetic connection between them.
Holy Week as a liturgical institution, on the other hand, is a totally different phenomenon. It can only be observed much later, beginning with the later fourth century; it follows other—namely, liturgical—rules and is not primarily concerned with fasting. The special liturgical organization of the week before Easter either supersedes an already existing Quadragesima or shifts the latter a week back, thus demonstrating the genetic independence of the two phenomena. There is no proof that the Holy Week lectionary preserves a stratum older than Quadragesima; it may just as well be a special development of a more recent period of liturgical creativity.
(2) The theory that a Quadragesima originally independent from Easter was only secondarily moved to its later pre-paschal position (the explanation given by “modern scholarship”) is able to maintain the original integrity of the forty-day period (which seems crucial in view of its symbolic value, the latter not being otherwise explicable: Quadragesima per definitionem means basically forty days, however they be counted, and not a shorter period). In other respects, however, it rests on somewhat shaky foundations: the few documents relating to the transposition come too late and are too heterogeneous to provide reliable information on the early fourth century, especially since from that time and for centuries thereafter there is no hint of the existence of a Quadragesima after Epiphany. A causal nexus between the universal spread of the pre-paschal Quadragesima and the rise of Paschal baptism in Alexandria cannot be proven, even though from the middle of the fourth century onwards Quadragesima increasingly coincides with the intensive phase of baptismal instruction in many places.
(3) Thus, the appearance of a pre-paschal Quadragesima in the 330s—between 325 and 337 in Palestine, from 334 on in Alexandria, and perhaps distinctly before 340 in Rome—remains the only firm date in its early history; every reconstruction trying to lead further back must remain hypothetical. Hansjörg Auf der Maur was definitively right in one respect at least: “The real origins of Quadragesima are shrouded in darkness.” Nevertheless, it may be asked, what objection is there to understanding the Quadragesima as a pre-paschal period of forty days, introduced as such in the first half of the fourth century, most likely in Palestine or perhaps in Alexandria? It is neither necessary to assume a shorter antecedent, nor must its origin be sought independently of Easter. Quadragesima appears as a phenomenon sui generis. As its first witnesses (Eusebius and Athanasius) testify, its fundamental duration of forty days with their biblical symbolism is constitutive for Quadragesima to a degree that renders superfluous the search for any other explanation. Uncertainties in and differences between various practices only result from the concrete enactment of this principle.
The original reason for the introduction of Quadragesima remains obscure. To me, the most plausible theory would seem to be that the paschal fast may simply have been the hook on which to hang a period of fasting inspired by biblical prototypes and here or there practiced previously for other reasons (e.g., public penance)—to quote Eusebius, the first testimony available: “A period of forty days of preparation before the feast . . . , according to the example of the saints Moses and Elijah.” Speculation in medieval sources about a Quadragesima subsequent to the celebration of Christ’s baptism and the practice of a liturgical period of this kind in some traditions may well be late parallel phenomena rather than linear antecedents of the pre-paschal period of fasting, especially since such post-Epiphany fasts always occur in sources that already know several periods of fasting throughout the year.
(4) What, then, remains of Socrates’s presentation of a three-week practice, which is obviously wrong when taken in its actual wording, i.e., referring to the Roman practice of his time? One has to take into account the possibility that Socrates may here be just as ill-informed as he is in the second part of the same sentence, and in instances where he gives historical details of liturgical practice (for example when referring to Alexandrian liturgy of Origen’s time); it is also possible that pieces of information containing a reliable core were handed down by him in a mistaken context and/or interpretation. However, the phenomenon of three-week periods as such is attested in several places in the context of prebaptismal preparation, and it may well be the case that practices of this kind formed the historical core of Socrates’s account. Yet it does not seem necessary to regard them as anachronistic and relegate them to the, liturgically speaking, somewhat dark times before the later fourth century. The examples of both Rome and Jerusalem demonstrate that three-week periods need not necessarily be archaic institutions, but may also be the result of later systematizing tendencies (in Jerusalem, only the latest source—the Georgian Lectionary—gives a concrete liturgical arrangement for the catechetical lections, assigning them to the feriae of the last three weeks before Easter and integrating them in a liturgical framework previously unknown). Furthermore, one has to recognize, as has been underlined by Maxwell E. Johnson, that this three-week period of prebaptismal preparation is a phenomenon not only ideally but also historically independent from the pre-paschal Quadragesima as such; although it mostly coincides with the latter in terms of liturgical time, it may not be taken as a genetic root in terms of historical explanation. (As a result, at least for Rome, it seems that there is a need to review the complex stratigraphy of the liturgical sources codified only in the Middle Ages and to think about alternative models to the ever more complex hypotheses about the prehistory of the Roman Quadragesima that have been developed since Antoine Chavasse.)
(5) Finally, I would like to propose that the phenomena with a distinguishable history and character should also be differentiated terminologically, and that the term Quadragesima should thus be reserved for a period of basically forty days, for which the symbolism of the biblical number is absolutely constitutive. And one has to make a clear distinction between a “Quadragesima” and two other phenomena: firstly, pre-paschal one-week periods of different origins and character—the ascetic practice of the paschal fast, which certainly is earlier than Quadragesima and which only in some cases was extended to a whole week, and the liturgical arrangement of Holy Week, which is probably a more recent invention, but in any case follows different rules and interests; and, secondly, the three-week periods that occur in the course of baptismal preparation. The coexistence of these different phenomena, which accounts for the complexity of the liturgical orders as finally codified, is, rather, a secondary development involving various distinctive features; although interferences can be observed, I suggest avoiding the assumption of genetic dependence between institutions when their respective origins can be explained independently.