A MONTHLY MAGAZINE

Devoted to the Science of Religion, the Religion of Science, and the Extension of the Religious Parliament Idea.

VOL. XXXI (No. 12)

DECEMBER, 1917

Copyright by The Open Court Publishing Company, 1917

NO. 739

ON THE DAY OF THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.1

BY ANTON MARIA LUPI.

[TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.-Scholars are well aware that the birth of Jesus has been assigned to every month of the year; and reference is sometimes found (e. g., Encyclopædia Biblica, 3346) to an article in which the whole matter is canvassed, though in a work not easily obtained, and never translated into English. It has so much curious interest for the student that I offer a translation, endeavoring by both phrase and typography to reproduce something of the quaint formality of the original.

The author was celebrated in his time as a man of vast and varied learning. Born at Florence in 1695, he entered the order of Jesuits, and from 1733 till his death in 1737 he taught rhetoric in the Jesuit Collegio de' Nobili at Palermo. Here was also one of those academies so famous in the Italy of the Renaissance and later, the Academia dei Pastori Ereini (this fanciful name apparently signifies "Shepherds of the Eraei Mountains,” lying back of Palermo), of much repute in the literary life of the time. He was appointed to pronounce an academic discourse before this society on the festival of the Nativity in 1734, and again in 1735. On the former occasion he read a learned dissertation on the year of the Saviour's birth; and on the latter, the one given here. He planned a third on the same general topic, but his unexpected death prevented.]

HE year is now exactly fulfilled, most learned Coryphæus, most gentle Fellow-shepherds, the year, I say, is now exactly fulfilled, since I, chosen by You to discourse in this Assembly so renowned, and so learned, on the Mystery of that divine Manifestation, called to our minds by the Church in the present solemn Festival, undertook to examine in the most certain light of Chronology which was exactly the year, which the fortunate day, on which the Eternal Word, assuming our feeble frame, first vouchsafed to show

1 Translated by Earl Morse Wilbur.

2 Dissertazioni, Lettere, ed altre Operette del chiarissimo Padre Antonmaria Lupi Fiorentino. Faenza, 1785. I, p. 219.

himself amongst us. And as for that part of the question, which regarded the year of the sublime Nativity, I demonstrated (if I can not say the truth, yet I believe at least the probability) that the great benefit was conferred upon the World under the Consulate of Decimus Laelius Balbus, and of Caius Antistius Vetus, in the nine and thirtieth year of the Reign of Augustus, five years and seven days prior to that, which by us is reckoned as the common Era. But that part of the question, which must needs be made clear, determining the month, and the day of the divine Birth, was left undecided, awaiting the researches of more able Speakers, I being prevented by scantness of time from possibly undertaking at that time the difficult investigation. Now therefore, as your reverend commands require of me, that I return afresh to discourse of the great Mystery; methinks I can not forbear to complete that work, of which I had already planned the outline; and to set forth in clear light which one amongst all the days of the year that was, on which it pleased God, made man, to shed luster by his wondrous Birth at Bethlehem. We come however in our search into the midst of a very forest of opinions, various indeed, and conflicting; and though forsaken by the light of Astronomy, and of History, on which Chronology so much relies, we perceive at least what must seriously be maintained in harmony with Ecclesiastical Tradition.

I scarcely know, most learned Academicians, whether there be found in any of the periods renowned in Sacred Story less agreement among Writers, than in this, as to fixing, not the year only, but the month, and the day of the Virgin Birth from Mary. There is not a month in the year, unless perhaps July be excepted, that hath not found supporters, who proclaimed it as the Natal month; nor is there a day, so to say, in the months, that hath not been ambitious to be adorned with dignity so fair. January was amongst the first to have eminent supporters of its claim. John of Nicaea, an ancient Greek Writer, cited by Père François Combefis,3 an eminent Scholar of the Order of Saint Dominic, in the supplement which he published to the Library of the Greek Fathers, witnesseth, that it had been the opinion of Saint James the Apostle, that the Saviour was born on the sixth of January, whereon the Church celebrates the Mystery of the Epiphany. It may be said of a surety, that this conviction was very ancient; seeing that the Christians of Egypt celebrated the Festival of the Nativity on this day, as Cassian, a celebrated writer, recorded; and the Church at 3 Novum auctuaris, Vol. II, p. 297. 4 Collationes, X.

Jerusalem likewise so noted in its Calendars; the which is attested by an Egyptian Monk Cosmas, surnamed Indopleustes, by reason of the voyage that he made to India; as we have it in the Text of this Writer, brought to light, no long time since, by Père Dr. Bernard de Montfaucon, a celebrated Antiquarian of the Order of Saint Benedict; and many of the ancient Christians were of this persuasion, as to which authentic and undoubted witness is borne to us by Saint Epiphanius. The most ancient Heretics, followers of the fanatical Basilides, also themselves proclaimed January as the Natal month of Christ, as did the Churches in Egypt, in whose bosom they themselves were born; but afterwards disagreeing with the Catholics even in this, they kept as the anniversary of this Festival the tenth day of the aforesaid month. To this witnesseth Clement of Alexandria, a most ancient and authoritative Writer, in the first book of his Stromata.

There was none among the Ancients that had imagined, that the divine Word had wished to select for his Nativity the month of February. But there hath been found among the modern Critics beyond the Alps one that hath not hesitated to assert, that the Saviour was born about the middle of that frozen month. In favor of this view Johann Albrecht Fabricius in his Bibliographia, Chapter x, citeth Johann Christoph Wagenseil, but as I have not succeeded in finding the Works of this Writer, even so have I not so much as been able to learn what reasons determined him to this conclusion.

March hath on its side a Critic far more renowned and of greater repute than was Wagenseil, Samuel Bochart having declared himself for March in his Hierozoicon, a Man the most highly accomplished in the Oriental Tongues whom the Protestant party hath had. But this Author showed himself as weak in supporting this view as he had formerly been happy in many of his ingenious conjectures; wherefore on this point he hath remained singular, or at least without any adherents of repute.

And now, O most gentle Fellow-shepherds, we are come to the most delightful month of Spring. Certain unknown, and mayhap ignoble Innovators in Egypt would fain have acclaimed the month of April for its contribution to human joys, as witnesseth Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, I., wherefore they declared that

Haeres. 51. This opinion hath at length been called in question by Père Magnan in his Problema de anno Nativit. Christi, p. 328.

6 In Sota.

7 Liber. II, 44.

the 24th day, or the 25th of the month Pharmuthi, which correspondeth to the nineteenth, or the twentieth of our April, had been that happy day, on the which there blossomed forth the fair flower from the Root of Jesse. Yet this opinion, the untimely offspring of a disordered mind, rather than the child of sound Learning, died with its sponsors; so that during the course of fifteen centuries the memory of it scarce remained in history, save in the report of the renowned writer. But it is indeed true, that to our unhappy age hath fallen the miserable distinction of seeing bud forth afresh an opinion so ill rooted. One writer, in religion a Protestant, who concealing his own name, wished to be called Temporario, in a Work on Chronology, which he published, having placed the Incarnation of the Word in the hottest months of Summer, afterwards placed the Nativity in the season of Spring. More recently yet, that is in 1710, there issued from the press in London a little Work on the year, and on the Natal month of Christ, with the name of Peter Allix Professor of Theology. Now in this work an attempt is made to re-establish upon foundations slender, and ill constructed, the old and abandoned view that the Lord was born in April.

They have been more in number, but not more happy, nor of better repute, that have favored May. There hath shown himself inclined to May the modern Writer just now cited, Peter Allix; and the above-mentioned Clement of Alexandria relateth,' that certain, who were rather curious investigators of what is new, than wise discerners of the truth, had said, that on the twentieth day of May, amongst the roses and the flowers, the Great Nazarene was born. There held to this opinion with the passage of years, and for the most part embraced it, an unfortunate sect of heretics, precursors of Arianism; who, persistently denying the Eternal Word, were by the Catholic party called by the opprobrious name of Alogi. These Alogi then (as Saint Epiphanius stateth in his list of heresies, at the fifty-first Heresy) 10 divided into two factions: the one held that the Saviour had appeared amongst us on the twenty-second of May; the other party of them later celebrated the Nativity on the twenty-first of June. You could scarce decide,

8 Vide Memoir de Trevoux, ann. 1715, p. 1299.

9 Stromata, I, and also more recently Alfonso des Vignoles, Vol. II. Bibliothecae Germanicae, p. 71.

10 Haer. li. I am disgusted that so disgraceful and detestable a company should influence M. de le Nauze, who in a dissertation quoted in abridged form in volume v. of the Paris Royal Academy of Inscriptions, p. 149, Amsterdam edition, 1741, maintaineth that the Birth of J. C. fell on the 25th of May. See Père Magnan quoted above, p. 333.