Holy Week

It's Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week for Christians, the most important religious period in the medieval calendar.  (The Orthodox church still calculates religious holidays based on the Julian calendar, so theirs comes along a little later.)

As I have noted before, Easter tends to be a relatively minor event in the modern world compared to Christmas, more of an excuse to celebrate Mardi Gras with raucous parties, buy a new spring outfit, and justify eating king crab (seafood for Lent!) than a real religious holiday.  Although around Christmas some people insist that one say "Merry Christmas" rather than "Happy Holidays," and some radio stations blast nothing but Christmas songs for a month, Easter doesn't get nearly as much attention.  No one goes around insisting that everyone say "Happy Easter," recording artists don't all feel compelled to issue an Easter album, and no radio stations play "Peter Cottontail" for a solid month.  And let's just say that chocolate eggs and bunnies are not a big feature of the Gospels.

But Easter was crucial for medieval people, the celebration of Christ's resurrection just at the time when spring itself is rising from the barren days of winter.  The forty days of Lent, the period leading up to Easter, were supposed to be devoted to prayer and fasting (sorry, king crab really doesn't count as fasting).  And you really weren't supposed to have a blow-out party (Mardi Gras) just before Lent started, to get in the mood.  Lent fell at a time when last fall's harvest bounty was starting to run out, which made it easier to give up certain things.

The days of Holy Week were tied to events in Jesus's last week of life as a mere mortal, as outlined in the Bible.  Palm Sunday (which is today) recalled Jesus entering Jerusalem, riding a donkey, greeted by crowds waving palm fronds.  He planned to celebrate Passover there, which is why Easter moves around with the moon, as Passover does.  In the Middle Ages, as now, churches tried to get hold of palm fronds to decorate the churches for Palm Sunday.  Obviously this was a lot easier for churches closer to the Mediterranean.

Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week didn't have a whole lot attached to them, but Wednesday was (and is) Ash Wednesday, a day for sorrowful penitence for all the things you did wrong during the last year and for confession of sins.  Ashes were rubbed on a person's forehead as a mark of penitence.  If last year's palm fronds were available, they were burned to make the ashes (but any ashes would do).

Thursday of Holy Week was Maundy Thursday.  In the Bible, Jesus washed people's feet, demonstrating his humility and service.  Washing feet frequently was a necessity in the ancient Near East, where people walked around on dusty streets in open sandals.  Medieval monasteries had poor people lined up to come in and get their feet washed.

Thursday was also the Last Supper in the Bible, when Jesus encouraged his disciples to eat and drink in his memory, the origin of communion.  Fun fact:  in the cathedral of Cusco, Peru, a painting of the Last Supper shows Jesus and his disciples with a guinea pig on a platter, because guinea pig is a celebratory dish in the Andes.

Friday of course was Good Friday.  Because it commemorates the Crucifixion, I used to be bothered by the term "good," thinking "bad" was a better description.  But it was considered good because Christ's sacrifice led to humans being redeemed.  For medieval theologians, everyone went to hell before this, and Jesus spent the time he was dead rounding up all the Old Testament patriarchs and getting them out of hell and into heaven.

Easter of course was the culmination of Holy Week, the celebration of the Resurrection.  Monasteries would put on a little play, where monks would dress up as the women who came to Jesus's tomb early Sunday morning, only to be told, "He is risen."  Easter service was the one church service a year that everyone was expected to attend.  In the late Roman Empire, all baptisms took place on Easter, though in the Middle Ages they might take place at any time.  Easter was also the time to start eating big meals again after the privations of Lent.

© C. Dale Brittain 2020

For more on medieval holidays, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.

Medieval Easter

Easter was always the principal holy day in the Christian calendar--even though, in recent years, it has gotten elbowed to the side in the US by Christmas and even Hallowe'en.  It is a so-called "movable feast" because it is celebrated on a different day every year, moving around in late March and April.

This is because its celebration is based on Passover, which, like all Jewish holidays, is based on phases of the moon.  According to the Gospels, Jesus had come to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover when he was crucified.  Both holidays are supposed to be the first sabbath after the first full moon after the equinox.  Because the Jewish sabbath (Saturday) and Sunday are different days of the week, they do not always occur together in the modern calendar, and exactly when the moon is considered "full" is open to interpretation.  A major dispute broke out in England in the seventh century between the Irish and the Roman versions.  In 2015, Passover and western Easter are on the same schedule, but Greek Orthodox Easter comes a week later.  Medieval monks made elaborate tables to calculate when Easter would fall each year.

Because many medieval calendars started the New Year with Easter, there could be years with two Aprils, if Easter was early one year and late the next.  Fortunately what year it was did not figure as significantly for medieval people as it does for us.

Medieval theologians all agreed that the Resurrection, the first Easter, occurred on March 27, because Jesus "of course" would have died on March 25.  This is because important people died on the anniversary of their conception, and they concluded that Mary would have conceived on March 25 because Jesus was born on December 25.  It all made sense.

Easter was by far the most important Christian feast day.  Coming after 40 days of Lent, where people really did try to give up at least some normal pleasures and follow a sparse diet (for one thing, most of the food stored away at harvest time was exhausted), Easter really was a feast day as well as a holy day.

As a holy day, it was the day that all Christians were supposed to go to church, even if they didn't the rest of the year.  (A lot of modern-day Christians seem to follow this same directive.)  A monastery might have a little play, in which monks wearing white robes represented the women coming to the tomb at dawn of the first Easter, finding it empty, and learning, "He is risen."

That women, rather than men, were the first to learn of the Resurrection and the first to see the risen Christ was one of the details that made medieval theologians agree that women were equal with men in the eyes of God, even if not in secular law.  (Click here for more on medieval women's position.)

Most societies have some sort of spring festival, celebrating renewal and rebirth, but medieval Easter celebrations kept the focus not on generic renewal but specifically on the Christian version.  Modern Easter, with its rabbits, eggs, and chocolates, to say nothing of new spring outfits, focuses on symbols that medieval theologians would have found deeply troubling.

For my further thoughts on Easter and Christmas, see my long essay, available as an ebook and in print from Amazon and other e-tailers.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015

For more on medieval holidays, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.