Chapter 18

(E. G.)

EPIMENIDES, poet and prophet of Crete, lived in the 6th centuryB.C.Many fabulous stories are told of him, and even his existence is doubted. While tending his father’s sheep, he is said to have fallen into a deep sleep in the Dictaean cave near Cnossus where he lived, from which he did not awake for fifty-seven years (Diogenes Laërtius i. 109-115). When the Athenians were visited by a pestilence in consequence of the murder of Cylon, he was invited by Solon (596) to purify the city. The only reward he would accept was a branch of the sacred olive, and a promise of perpetual friendship between Athens and Cnossus (Plutarch,Solon, 12; Aristotle,Ath. Pol.1). He died in Crete at an advanced age; according to his countrymen, who afterwards honoured him as a god, he lived nearly three hundred years. According to another story, he was taken prisoner in a war between the Spartans and Cnossians, and put to death by his captors, because he refused to prophesy favourably for them. A collection of oracles, a theogony, an epic poem on the Argonautic expedition, prose works on purifications and sacrifices, and a cosmogony, were attributed to him. Epimenides must be reckoned with Melampus and Onomacritus as one of the founders of Orphism. He is supposed to be the Cretan prophet alluded to in the epistle to Titus (i. 12).

See C. Schultess,De Epimenide Cretensi(1877); O. Kern,De Orphei, Epimenidis ... Theogoniis(1888); G. Barone di Vincenzo,E. di Creta e le Credenze religiose de’ suoi Tempi(1880); H. Demoulin,Épiménide de Crète(1901); H. Diels,Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker(1903); O. Kern in Pauly-Wissowa’sRealencyclopädie.

ÉPINAL, a town on the north-eastern frontier of France, capital of the department of Vosges, 46 m. S.S.E. of Nancy on the Eastern railway between that town and Belfort. Pop. (1906), town 21,296, commune (including garrison) 29,058. The town proper—the Grande Ville—is situated on the right bank of the Moselle, which at this point divides into two arms forming an island whereon another quarter—the Petite Ville—is built. The lesser of these two arms, which is canalized, separates the island from the suburb of Hospice on its left bank. The right bank of the Moselle is bordered for some distance by pleasant promenades, and an extensive park surrounds the ruins of an old stronghold which dominated the Grande Ville from an eminence on the east. Apart from the church of St Goëry (or St Maurice) rebuilt in the 13th century but preserving a tower of the 12th century, the public buildings of Épinal offer little of architectural interest. The old hospital on the island-quarter contains a museum with interesting collections of paintings, Gallo-Roman antiquities, sculpture, &c. Close by stands the library, which possesses many valuable MSS.

The fortifications of Épinal are connected to the southward with Belfort, Dijon and Besançon, by the fortified line of the Moselle, and north of it lies the unfortified zone called theTrouée d’Épinal, a gap designedly left open to the invaders between Épinal and Toul, another great fortress which is itself connected by the Meuseforts d’arrêtwith Verdun and the places of the north-east. Épinal therefore is a fortress of the greatest possible importance to the defence of France, and its works, all built since 1870, are formidable permanent fortifications. The Moselle runs from S. to N. through the middle of the girdle of forts; the fortifications of the right bank, beginning with Fort de la Mouche, near the river 3 m. above Épinal, form a chain of detached forts and batteries over 6 m. long from S. to N., and the northernmost part of this line is immensely strengthened by numerous advanced works between the villages of Dognéville and Longchamp. On the left bank, a larger area of ground is included in the perimeter of defence for the purposes of encampment, the most westerly of the forts, Girancourt, being 7 m. distant from Épinal; from the lower Moselle to Girancourt the works are grouped principally about Uxegney and Sarchey; from Girancourt to the upper river and Fort de la Mouche a long ridge extends in an arc, and on this south-western section the principal defence is Fort Ticha and its annexes. The circle of forts, which has a perimeter of nearly 30 m., was in 1895 reinforced by the construction of sixteen new works, and the area of ground enclosed and otherwise protected by the defences of Épinal is sufficiently extensive to accommodate a large army.

Épinal is the seat of a prefect and of a court of assizes and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a chamber of commerce, training-colleges, a communal college and industrial school, and exchange and a branch of the Bank of France. The town, which is important as the centre of a cotton-spinning region, carries on cotton-spinning, -weaving and -printing, brewing and distilling, and the manufacture of machinery and iron goods, glucose, embroidery, hats, wall-paper and tapioca. An industry peculiar to Épinal is the production of cheap images, lithographs and engravings. There is also trade in wine, grain, live-stock and starch products made in the vicinity. Épinal is an important junction on the Eastern railway.

Épinal originated towards the end of the 10th century with the founding of a monastery by Theodoric (Dietrich) I., bishop of Metz, whose successors ruled the town till 1444, when its inhabitants placed themselves under the protection of King Charles VII. In 1466 it was transferred to the duchy of Lorraine, and in 1766 it was, along with that duchy, incorporated with France. It was occupied by the Germans on the 12th of October 1870 after a short fight, and until the 15th was the headquarters of General von Werder.

EPINAOS(Gr.ἐπί, after, andναός, a temple), in architecture, the open vestibule behind the nave. The term is not found in any classic author, but is a modern coinage, originating in Germany, to differentiate the feature from “opisthodomus,” which in the Parthenon was an enclosed chamber.

ÉPINAY, LOUISE FLORENCE PÉTRONILLE TARDIEU D’ESCLAVELLES D’(1726-1783), French writer, was born at Valenciennes on the 11th of March 1726. She is well known on account of herliaisonswith Rousseau and Baron von Grimm, and her acquaintanceship with Diderot, D’Alembert, D’Holbach and other French men of letters. Her father, Tardieu d’Esclavelles, a brigadier of infantry, was killed in battle when she was nineteen; and she married her cousin Denis Joseph de La Live d’Épinay, who was made a collector-general of taxes. The marriage was an unhappy one; and Louise d’Épinay believed that the prodigality, dissipation and infidelities of her husband justified her in obtaining a formal separation in 1749. She settled in the château of La Chevrette in the valley of Montmorency, and there received a number of distinguished visitors. Conceiving a strong attachment for J.J. Rousseau, she furnished for him in 1756 in the valley of Montmorency a cottage which she named the “Hermitage,” and in this retreat he found for a time the quiet and natural rural pleasures he praised so highly. Rousseau, in hisConfessions, affirmed thatthe inclination was all on her side; but as, after her visit to Geneva, Rousseau became her bitter enemy, little weight can be given to his statements on this point. Her intimacy with Grimm, which began in 1755, marks a turning-point in her life, for under his influence she escaped from the somewhat compromising conditions of her life at La Chevrette. In 1757-1759 she paid a long visit to Geneva, where she was a constant guest of Voltaire. In Grimm’s absence from France (1775-1776), Madame d’Épinay continued, under the superintendence of Diderot, the correspondence he had begun with various European sovereigns. She spent most of her later life at La Briche, a small house near La Chevrette, in the society of Grimm and of a small circle of men of letters. She died on the 17th of April 1783. HerConversations d’Émilie(1774), composed for the education of her grand-daughter, Émilie de Belsunce, was crowned by the French Academy in 1783. TheMémoires et Correspondance de Mme d’Épinay, renfermant un grand nombre de lettres inédites de Grimm, de Diderot, et de J.-J. Rousseau, ainsi que des détails, &c, was published at Paris (1818) from a MS. which she had bequeathed to Grimm. TheMémoiresare written by herself in the form of a sort of autobiographic romance. Madame d’Épinay figures in it as Madame de Montbrillant, and René is generally recognized as Rousseau, Volx as Grimm, Garnier as Diderot. All the letters and documents published along with theMémoiresare genuine. Many of Madame d’Épinay’s letters are contained in theCorrespondance de l’abbé Galiani(1818). Two anonymous works,Lettres à mon fils(Geneva, 1758) andMes moments heureux(Geneva, 1759), are also by Madame d’Épinay.

See Rousseau’sConfessions; Lucien Perey [Mlle Herpin] and Gaston Maugras,La Jeunesse de Mme d’Épinay, les dernières années de Mme d’Épinay(1882-1883); Sainte-Beuve,Causeries du lundi, vol. ii.; Edmond Scherer,Études sur la littérature contemporaine, vols. iii. and vii. There are editions of theMémoiresby L. Énault (1855) and by P. Boiteau (1865); and an English translation, with introduction and notes (1897), by J.H. Freese.

EPIPHANIUS, SAINT(c.315-402), a celebrated Church Father, born in the beginning of the 4th century at Bezanduca, a village of Palestine, near Eleutheropolis. He is said to have been of Jewish extraction. In his youth he resided in Egypt, where he began an ascetic course of life, and, freeing himself from Gnostic influences, invoked episcopal assistance against heretical thinkers, eighty of whom were driven from the cities. On his return to Palestine he was ordained presbyter by the bishop of Eleutheropolis, and became the president of a monastery which he founded near his native place. The account of his intimacy with the patriarch Hilarion is not trustworthy. In 367 he was nominated bishop of Constantia, previously known as Salamis, the metropolis of Cyprus—an office which he held till his death in 402. Zealous for the truth, but passionate and bigoted, he devoted himself to two great labours, namely, the spread of the recently established monasticism, and the confutation of heresy, of which he regarded Origen and his followers as the chief representatives. The first of the Origenists that he attacked was John, bishop of Jerusalem, whom he denounced from his own pulpit at Jerusalem (394) in terms so violent that the bishop sent his archdeacon to request him to desist; and afterwards, instigated by Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, he proceeded so far as to summon a council of Cyprian bishops to condemn the errors of Origen. In his closing years he came into conflict with Chrysostom, the patriarch of Constantinople, who had given temporary shelter to four Nitrian monks whom Theophilus had expelled on the charge of Origenism. The monks gained the support of the empress Eudoxia, and when she summoned Theophilus to Constantinople that prelate forced the aged Epiphanius to go with him. He had some controversy with Chrysostom but did not stay to see the result of Theophilus’s machinations, and died on his way home. The principal work of Epiphanius is thePanarion, or treatise on heresies, of which he also wrote an abridgment. It is a “medicine chest” of remedies for all kinds of heretical belief, of which he names eighty varieties. His accounts of the earlier errors (where he has preserved for us large excerpts from the original Greek of Irenaeus) are more reliable than those of contemporary heresies. In his desire to see the Church safely moored he also wrote theAncoratus, or discourse on the true faith. His encyclopaedic learning shows itself in a treatise on Jewish weights and measures, and another (incomplete) on ancient gems. These, with two epistles to John of Jerusalem and Jerome, are his only genuine remains. He wrote a large number of works which are lost. In allusion to his knowledge of Hebrew, Syriac, Egyptian, Greek and Latin, Jerome styles EpiphaniusΠεντάγλωσσος(Five-tongued); but if his knowledge of languages was really so extensive, it is certain that he was utterly destitute of critical and logical power. His early asceticism seems to have imbued him with a love of the marvellous; and his religious zeal served only to increase his credulity. His erudition is outweighed by his prejudice, and his inability to recognize the responsibilities of authorship makes it necessary to assign most value to those portions of his works which he simply cites from earlier writers.

The primary sources for the life are the church histories of Socrates and Sozomen, Palladius’sDe vita Chrysostomiand Jerome’sDe vir. illust.114. Petau (Petavius) published an edition of the works in 2 vols. fol. at Paris in 1622; cf. Migne,Patr. Graec.41-43. The Panarion and other works were edited by F. Oehler (Berlin, 1859-1861). For more recent work especially on the fragments see K. Bonwetsch’s art. in Herzog-Hauck’sRealencyk.v. 417.Other theologians of the same name were: (1) Epiphanius Scholasticus, friend and helper of Cassiodorus; (2) Epiphanius, bishop of Ticinum (Pavia),c.438-496; (3) Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia and Metropolitan of Cyprus (the Younger),c.A.D.680, to whom some critics have ascribed certain of the works supposed to have been written by the greater Epiphanius; (4) Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia in the 9th century, to whom a similar attribution has been made.

Other theologians of the same name were: (1) Epiphanius Scholasticus, friend and helper of Cassiodorus; (2) Epiphanius, bishop of Ticinum (Pavia),c.438-496; (3) Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia and Metropolitan of Cyprus (the Younger),c.A.D.680, to whom some critics have ascribed certain of the works supposed to have been written by the greater Epiphanius; (4) Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia in the 9th century, to whom a similar attribution has been made.

EPIPHANY, FEAST OF.The word epiphany, in Greek, signifies an apparition of a divine being. It was used as a singular or a plural, both in its Greek and Latin forms, according as one epiphany was contemplated or several united in a single commemoration. For in the East from an early time were associated with the feast of the Baptism of Christ commemorations of the physical birth, of the Star of the Magi, of the miracles of Cana, and of the feeding of the five thousand. The commemoration of the Baptism was also called by the Greek fathers of the 4th century the Theophany or Theophanies, and the Day of Lights,i.e.of the Illumination of Jesus or of the Light which shone in the Jordan. In the Teutonic west it has become the Festival of the three kings (i.e.the Magi), or simply Twelfth day. Leo the Great called it the Feast of theDeclaration; Fulgentius, of theManifestation; others, of theApparitionof Christ.

In the following article it is attempted to ascertain the date of institution of the Epiphany feast, its origin, and its significance and development.

Clement of Alexandria first mentions it. Writingc.194 he states that the Basilidians feasted the day of the Baptism, devoting the whole night which preceded it to lections of the scriptures. They fixed it in the 15th year of Tiberius, on the 15th or 11th of the month Tobi, dates of the Egyptian fixed calendar equivalent to January 10th and 6th. When Clement wrote the great church had not adopted the feast, but towardA.D.300 it was widely in vogue. Thus the Acts of Philip the Martyr, bishop of Heraclea in Thrace,A.D.304, mention the “holy day of the Epiphany.” Note the singular. Origen seems not to have heard of it as a feast of the Catholic church, but Hippolytus (diedc.235) recognized it in a homily which may be genuine.

In the age of the Nicene Council,A.D.325, the primate of Alexandria was charged at every Epiphany Feast to announce to the churches in a “Festal Letter” the date of the forthcoming Easter. Several such letters written by Athanasius and others remain. In the churches so addressed the feast of Jan. 6 must have been already current.

In Jerusalem, according to the Epistle of Macarius1to the Armenians,c.330, the feast was kept with zeal and splendour, and was with Easter and Pentecost a favourite season for Baptism.

We have evidence of the 4th century from Spain that a long fast marked the season of Advent, and prepared for the feast of Epiphany on the 6th of January. The council ofSaragossac.380 enacted that for 21 days, from the 17th of December to the 6th of January, the Epiphany, the faithful should not dance or make merry, but steadily frequent the churches. The synod of Lerida in 524 went further and forbade marriages during Advent. Our earliest Spanish lectionary, theLiber comicusof Toledo, edited by Don Morin (Anecd. Maredsol.vol. i.), provides lections for five Sundays in Advent, and the gospel lections2chosen regard the Baptism of Christ, not His Birth, of which the feast, like that of the Annunciation, is mentioned, but not yet dated, December 25 being assigned to St Stephen. It is odd that for “the Apparition of the Lord” the lection Matt. ii. 1-15 is assigned, although the lections for Advent belong to a scheme which identified Epiphany with the Baptism. This anomaly we account for below. The old editor of the Mozarabic Liturgy, Fr. Antonio Lorenzano, notes in his preface § 28 that the Spaniards anciently terminated the Advent season with the Epiphany Feast. In Rome also the earliest fixed system of the ecclesiastical year, which may go back to 300, makes Epiphany thecaput festorumor chief of feasts. The Sundays of Advent lead up to it, and the first Sundays of the year are “The Sunday within the octave of Epiphany,” “the first Sunday after,” and so forth. December 25 is no critical date at all. In Armenia as early as 450 a month of fasting prepared for the Advent of the Lord at Epiphany, and the fast was interpreted as a reiteration of John the Baptist’s season of Repentance.

In Antioch as late as about 386 Epiphany and Easter were the two great feasts, and the physical Birth of Christ was not yet feasted. On the eve of Epiphany after nightfall the springs and rivers were blessed, and water was drawn from them and stored for the whole year to be used in lustrations and baptisms. Such water, says Chrysostom, to whose orations we owe the information, kept pure and fresh for one, two and three years, and like good wine actually improved the longer it was kept. Note that Chrysostom speaks of the Feast of theEpiphanies, implying two, one of the Baptism, the other of the Second Advent, when Christ will be manifested afresh, and we with him in glory. This Second Epiphany inspired, as we saw, the choice of Pauline lections in theLiber comicus. But the salient event commemorated was the Baptism, and Chrysostom almost insists on this as the exclusive significance of the feast:—“It was not when he was born that he became manifest to all, but when he was baptized.” In his commentary on Ezekiel Jerome employs the same languageabsconditus est et non apparuit, by way of protest against an interpretation of the Feast as that of the Birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, which was essayed as early as 375 by Epiphanius in Cyprus, and was being enforced in Jerome’s day by John, bishop of Jerusalem. Epiphanius boldly removed the date of the Baptism to the 8th of November. “January 6” (= Tobi 11), he writes, “is the day of Christ’s Birth, that is, of the Epiphanies.” He uses the plural, because he adds on January 6 the commemoration of the water miracle of Cana. Although in 375 he thus protested that January 6 was the day “of the Birth after the Flesh,” he became before the end of the century a convert, according to John of Nice, to the new opinion that December 25 was the real day of this Birth. That as early as about 385, January 6 was kept as the physical birthday in Jerusalem, or rather in Bethlehem, we know from a contemporary witness of it, the lady pilgrim of Gaul, whoseperegrinatio, recently discovered by Gamurrini, is confirmed by the old Jerusalem Lectionary preserved in Armenian.3Ephraem the Syrian father is attested already by Epiphanius (c.375) to have celebrated the physical birth on January 6. His genuine Syriac hymns confirm this, but prove that the Baptism, the Star of the Magi, and the Marriage at Cana were also commemorated on the same day. That the same union prevailed in Rome up to the year 354 may be inferred from Ambrose. Philastrius (De haer.ch. 140) notes that some abolished the Epiphany feast and substituted a Birth feast. This was between 370 and 390.

In 385 Pope Siricius4calls January 6Natalicia, “the Birthday of Christ or of Apparition,” and protests against the Spanish custom (at Tarragona) of baptizing on that day—another proof that in Spain in the 4th century it commemorated the Baptism. In Gaul at Vienna in 360 Julian the Apostate, out of deference to Christian feeling, went to church “on the festival which they keep in January and call Epiphania.” So Ammianus; but Zonaras in his Greek account of the event calls it the day of the Saviour’s Birth.

Why the feast of the Baptism was called the feast or day of the Saviour’s Birth, and why fathers of that age when they call Christmas the birthday constantly qualify and add the words “in the flesh,” we are able to divine from Pope Leo’s (c.447) 18th Epistle to the bishops of Sicily. For here we learn that in Sicily they held that in His Baptism the Saviour was reborn through the Holy Spirit. “The Lord,” protests Leo, “needed no remission of sins, no remedy of rebirth.” The Sicilians also baptized neophytes on January 6, “because baptism conveyed to Jesus and to them one and the same grace.” Not so, argues Leo, the Lord sanctioned and hallowed the power of regeneration, not when He was baptized, but “when the blood of redemption and the water of baptism flowed forth from his side.” Neophytes should therefore be baptized at Easter and Pentecost alone, never at Epiphany.

Fortune has preserved to us among theSpuriaof several Latin fathers, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome and Maximus of Turin, various homilies for Sundays of the Advent fast and for Epiphany. The Advent lections of these homilists were much the same as those of the SpanishLiber comicus; and they insist on Advent being kept as a strict fast, without marriage celebrations. Their Epiphany lection is however Matt. iii. 1-17, which must therefore have once on a time been assigned in theLiber comicusalso in harmony with its general scheme. The psalms used on the day are, cxiii. (cxiv.) “When Israel went forth,” xxviii. (xxix.) “Give unto the Lord,” and xxii. (xxiii.) “the Lord is my Shepherd.” The same lection of Matthew and also Ps. xxix. are noted for Epiphany in the Greek oration for the day ascribed to Hippolytus, which is at least earlier than 300, and also in special old Epiphany rites for the Benediction of the waters found in Latin, Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Syriac, &c. Now by these homilists as by Chrysostom,5the Baptism is regarded as the occasion on which “the Saviour firstappearedafter the flesh in the world or on earth.” These words were classical to the homilists, who explain them as best they can. The baptism is also declared to have been “the consecration of Christ,” and “regeneration of Christ and a strengthening of our faith,” to have been “Christ’s second nativity.” “Thissecond birthhath more renown than his first ... for now the God of majesty is inscribed (as his father), but then (at his first birth) Joseph the Carpenter was assumed to be his father ... he hath more honour who cries aloud from Heaven (viz. God the Father), than he who labours upon earth” (viz. Joseph).6

Similarly the oldordo Romanusof the age of Pepin (given by Montfaulcon in his preface to the Mozarabic missal in Migne,Patr. Latina, 85, col. 46), under the rubric of the Vigil of the Theophany, insists that “thesecond birthof Christ (in Baptism) being distinguished by so many mysteries (e.g.the miracle of Cana) is more honoured than the first” (birth from Mary).

These homilies mostly belong to an age (? 300-400) when the commemoration of the physical Birth had not yet found its own day (Dec. 25), and was therefore added alongside of the Baptism on January 6. Thus the two Births, the physical and thespiritual, of Jesus were celebrated on one and the same day, and one homily contains the words: “Not yet is the feast of his origin fully completed, and already we have to celebrate the solemn commemoration of his Baptism. He has hardly been born humanwise, and already he is beingrebornin sacramental wise. For to-day, though after a lapse of many annual cycles, he was hallowed (or consecrated) in Jordan. So the Lord arranged as to link rite with rite; I mean, in such wise as to be brought forth through the Virgin and to be begotten through the mystery (i.e.sacrament) in one and the same season.” Another homily preserved in a MS. of the 7th or 8th century and assigned to Maximus of Turin declares that the Epiphany was known as the Birthday of Jesus, either because He was then born of the Virgin orreborn in baptism. This also was the classical defence made by Armenian fathers of their custom of keeping the feast of the Birth and Baptism together on January 6. They argued from Luke’s gospel that the Annunciation took place on April 6, and therefore the Birth on January 6. The Baptism was on Christ’s thirtieth birthday, and should therefore be also kept on January 6. Cosmas Indicopleustes (c.550) relates that on the same grounds believers of Jerusalem joined the feasts. All such reasoning was of courseaprès coup. As late as the 9th century the Armenians had at least three discrepant dates for the Annunciation—January 5, January 9, April 6; and of these January 5 and 9 were older than April 6, which they perhaps borrowed from Epiphanius’s commentary on the Gospels. The old Latin homilist, above quoted, hits the mark when he declares that the innate logic of things required the Baptism (which must, he says, be any how called a natal or birth festival) to fall on the same day as Christmas—Ratio enim exigit. Of the argument from the 6th of April as the date of the Annunciation he knows nothing. The 12th century Armenian Patriarch Nerses, like this homilist, merely rests his case against the Greeks, who incessantly reproached the Armenians for ignoring their Christmas on December 25, on the inherent logic of things, as follows:

“Just as he was born after the flesh from the holy virgin, so he wasbornthrough baptism and from the Jordan, by way of example unto us. And since there are heretwo births, albeit differing one from the other in mystic import and in point of time, therefore it was appointed that we should feast them together, as the first, so also the second birth.”

The Epiphany feast had therefore in its own right acquired the name ofnatalis diesor birthday, as commemorating the spiritual rebirth of Jesus in Jordan, before thenatalis in carne, the Birthdayin the flesh, as Jerome and others call it, was associated with it. This idea was condemned as Ebionite in the 3rd century, yet it influences Christian writers long before and long afterwards. So Tertullian says: “We little fishes (pisciculi), after the example of our great fish (ἰχθύν) Jesus Christ the Lord, are born (gignimur) in the water, nor except by abiding in the water are we in a state of salvation.” And Hilary, like the Latin homilists cited above, writes of Jesus that “he wasborn againthrough baptism, and then became Son of God,” adding that the Father cried, when he had gone up out of the water, “My Son art thou, I have this day begotten thee” (Luke iii. 22). “But this,” he adds, “was with the begetting of a man who is being reborn; on that occasion too he himself was being reborn unto God to be perfect son; as he was son of man, so in baptism, he was constituted son of God as well.” The idea frequently meets us in Hilary; it occurs in the Epiphany hymn of the orthodox Greek church, and in the Epiphany hymns and homilies of the Armenians.

A letter is preserved by John of Nice of a bishop of Jerusalem to the bishop of Rome which attests a temporary union of both feasts on January 6 in the holy places. The faithful, it says, met before dawn at Bethlehem to celebrate the Birth from the Virgin in the cave; but before their hymns and lections were finished they had to hurry off to Jordan, 13 m. the other side of Jerusalem, to celebrate the Baptism, and by consequence neither commemoration could be kept fully and reverently. The writer therefore begs the pope to look in the archives of the Jews brought to Rome after the destruction of Jerusalem, and to ascertain from them the real date of Christ’s birth. The pope looked in the works of Josephus and found it to be December 25. The letter’s genuineness has been called in question; but revealing as it does the Church’s ignorance of the date of the Birth, the inconvenience and precariousness of its association with the Baptism, the recency of its separate institution, it could not have been invented. It is too tell-tale a document. Not the least significant fact about it is that it views the Baptism as an established feast which cannot be altered and set on another date. Not it but the physical birth must be removed from January 6 to another date. It has been shown above that perhaps as early as 380 the difficulty was got over in Jerusalem by making the Epiphany wholly and solely a commemoration of the miraculous birth, and suppressing the commemoration of the Baptism. Therefore this letter must have been written—or, if invented, then invented before that date. Chrysostom seems to have known of it, for in his Epiphany homily preached at Antioch,c.392 (op. vol. ii. 354, ed. Montf.), he refers to the archives at Rome as the source from which the date December 25 could be confirmed, and declares that he had obtained it from those who dwell there, and who observing it from the beginning and by old tradition, had communicated it to the East. The question arises why the feast of the Baptism was set on January 6 by the sect of Basilides? And why the great church adopted the date? Now we know what sort of considerations influenced this sect in fixing other feasts, so we have a clue. They fixed the Birth of Jesus on Pachon 25 (= May 20), the day of the Niloa, or feast of the descent of the Nile from heaven. We should thus expect January 6 to be equally a Nile festival. And this from various sources we know it was. On Tobi 11, says Epiphanius7(c.370), every one draws up water from the river and stores it up, not only in Egypt itself, but in many other countries. In many places, he adds, springs and rivers turn into wine on this day,e.g.at Cibyra in Caria and Gerasa in Arabia. Aristides Rhetor (c.160) also relates how in the winter, which began with Tobi, the Nile water was at its purest. Its water, he says, if drawn at the right time conquers time, for it does not go bad, whether you keep it on the spot or export it. Galleys were waiting on a certain night to take it on board and transport it to Italy and elsewhere for libations and lustrations in the Temples of Isis. “Such water,” he adds, “remained fresh, long after other water supplies had gone bad. The Egyptians filled their pitchers with this water, as others did with wine; they stored it in their houses for three or four years or more, and recommended it the more, the older it grew, just as the Greeks did their wines.”

Two centuries later Chrysostom, as we have seen, commends in identical terms the water blessed and drawn from the rivers at the Baptismal feast. It is therefore probable that the Basilidian feast was a Christianized form of the blessing of the Nile, called by Chabas in his Coptic calendarHydreusis. Mas‘ūdī the Arab historian of the 10th century, in hisPrairies d’or(French trans. Paris, 1863, ii. 364), enlarges on the splendours of this feast as he saw it still celebrated in Egypt.

Epiphanius also (Haer.51) relates a curious celebration held at Alexandria of the Birth of the Aeon. On January 5 or 6 the votaries met in the holy compound or Temple of the Maiden (Korē), and sang hymns to the music of the flute till dawn, when they went down with torches into a shrine under ground, and fetched up a wooden idol on a bier representing Korē, seated and naked, with crosses marked on her brow, her hands and her knees. Then with flute-playing, hymns and dances they carried the image seven times round the central shrine, before restoring it again to its dwelling-place below. He adds: “And the votaries say that to-day at this hourKorē, that is, the Virgin, gave birth to the Aeon.”

Epiphanius says this was a heathen rite, but it rather resembles some Basilidian or Gnostic commemoration of the spiritual birth of the Divine life in Jesus of the Christhood, from the older creation the Ecclesia.

The earliest extant Greek text of the Epiphany rite is in aEuchologion of about the year 795, now in the Vatican. The prayers recite that at His baptism Christ hallowed the waters by His presence in Jordan,8and ask that they may now be blessed by the Holy Spirit visiting them, by its power and inworking, as the streams of Jordan were blessed. So they will be able to purify soul and body of all who draw up and partake of them. The hymn sung contains such clauses as these:

“To-day the grace of the Holy Spirit hallowing the waters appears (ἐπιφαίνεται, cf. Epiphany).... To-day the systems of waters spread out their backs under the Lord’s footsteps. To-day the unseen is seen, that he may reveal himself to us. To-day the Increate is of his own will ordained (lit.hath hands laid on him) by his own creature. To-day the Unbending bends his neck to his own servant, in order to free us from servitude. To-day we were liberated from darkness and are illumined by light of divine knowledge. To-day for us the Lord by means of rebirth (lit.palingenesy) of the Image reshapes the Archetype.”

This last clause is obscure. In the Armenian hymns the ideas of the rebirth not only of believers, but of Jesus, and of the latter’s ordination by John, are very prominent.

The history of the Epiphany feast may be summed up thus:—

From the Jews the Church took over the feasts of Pascha and Pentecost; and Sunday was a weekly commemoration of the Resurrection. It was inevitable, however, that believers should before long desire to commemorate the Baptism, with which the oldest form of evangelical tradition began, and which was widely regarded as the occasion when the divine life began in Jesus; when the Logos or Holy Spirit appeared and rested on Him, conferring upon Him spiritual unction as the promised Messiah; when, according to an old reading of Luke iii. 22, He was begotten of God. Perhaps the Ebionite Christians of Palestine first instituted the feast, and this, if a fact, must underlie the statement of John of Nice, a late but well-informed writer (c.950), that it was fixed by the disciples of John the Baptist who were present at Jesus’ Baptism. The Egyptian gnostics anyhow had the feast and set it on January 6, a day of the blessing of the Nile. It was a feast of Adoptionist complexion, as one of its names, viz. the Birthday (Greekγενέθλια, LatinNataliciaorNatalis dies), implies. This explains why in east and west the feast of the physical Birth was for a time associated with it; and to justify this association it was suggested that Jesus was baptized just on His thirtieth birthday. In Jerusalem and Syria it was perhaps the Ebionite or Adoptionist, we may add also the Gnostic, associations of the Baptism that caused this aspect of Epiphany to be relegated to the background, so that it became wholly a feast of the miraculous birth. At the same time other epiphanies of Christ were superadded,e.g.of Cana where Christ began His miracles by turning water into wine andmanifestedforth His glory, and of the Star of the Magi. Hence it is often called the Feast ofEpiphanies(in the plural). In the West the day is commonly called the Feast of the three kings, and its early significance as a commemoration of the Baptism and season of blessing the waters has been obscured; the Eastern churches, however, of Greece, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Egypt, Syria have been more conservative. In the far East it is still the season of seasons for baptisms, and in Armenia children born long before are baptized at it. Long ago it was a baptismal feast in Sicily, Spain, Italy (see Pope Gelasius to the Lucanian Bishops), Africa and Ireland. In the Manx prayer-book of Bishop Phillips of the year 1610 Epiphany is called the “little Nativity” (La nolicky bigge), and the Sunday which comes between December 25 and January 6 is “the Sunday betweenthe two Nativities,” orJih dúni oedyr ’a Nolick; Epiphany itself is the “feast of the water vessel,”lail ymmyrt uyskey, or “of the well of water,”Chibbyrt uysky.

Authorities.—Gregory Nazianz., Orat. xli.; Suicer,Thesaurus, s.v.ἐπιφάνεια; CoteleriusIn constit. Apost.(Antwerp, 1698), lib.v. cap. 13; R. Bingham,Antiquities(London, 1834), bk. xx.; Ad. Jacoby,Bericht über die Taufe Jesu(Strassburg, 1902); H. Blumenbach,Antiquitates Epiphaniorum(Leipzig, 1737); J.L. Schulze,De festo Sanctorum Luminum, ed. J.E. Volbeding (Leipzig, 1841); and K.A.H. Kellner,Heortologie(Freiburg im Breisgau, 1906). (See also the works enumerated underChristmas.)

(F. C. C.)

1For its text seeThe Key of Truth, translated by F.C. Conybeare, Oxford, and the articleArmenian Church.2These are Matt. iii. 1-11, xi. 2-15, xxi. 1-9; Mark i. 1-8; Luke iii. 1-18. The Pauline lections regard the Epiphany of the Second Advent, of the prophetic or Messianic kingdom.3Translated inRituale Armenorum(Oxford, 1905).4Epist. ad Himerium, c. 2.5Hom. I. in Pentec.op.tom. ii. 458; “With us the Epiphanies is the first festival. What is this festival’s significance? This, that God was seen upon earth and consorted with men.” For this idea there had soon to be substituted that of the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.6See the Paris edition of Augustine (1838), tom. v., Appendix,Sermonscxvi., cxxv., cxxxv., cxxxvi., cxxxvii.; cf. tom. vi.dial. quaestionum, xlvi.; Maximus of Turin, Homily xxx.7Perhaps Epiphanius is here, after his wont, transcribing an earlier source.8The same idea is frequent in Epiphany homilies of Chrysostom and other 4th-century fathers.

1For its text seeThe Key of Truth, translated by F.C. Conybeare, Oxford, and the articleArmenian Church.

2These are Matt. iii. 1-11, xi. 2-15, xxi. 1-9; Mark i. 1-8; Luke iii. 1-18. The Pauline lections regard the Epiphany of the Second Advent, of the prophetic or Messianic kingdom.

3Translated inRituale Armenorum(Oxford, 1905).

4Epist. ad Himerium, c. 2.

5Hom. I. in Pentec.op.tom. ii. 458; “With us the Epiphanies is the first festival. What is this festival’s significance? This, that God was seen upon earth and consorted with men.” For this idea there had soon to be substituted that of the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles.

6See the Paris edition of Augustine (1838), tom. v., Appendix,Sermonscxvi., cxxv., cxxxv., cxxxvi., cxxxvii.; cf. tom. vi.dial. quaestionum, xlvi.; Maximus of Turin, Homily xxx.

7Perhaps Epiphanius is here, after his wont, transcribing an earlier source.

8The same idea is frequent in Epiphany homilies of Chrysostom and other 4th-century fathers.

EPIRUS, orEpeirus, an ancient district of Northern Greece extending along the Ionian Sea from the Acroceraunian promontory on the N. to the Ambracian gulf on the S. It was conterminous on the landward side with Illyria, Macedonia and Thessaly, and thus corresponds to the southern portion of Albania (q.v.). The name Epirus (Ἤπειρος) signified “mainland,” and was originally applied to the whole coast southward to the Corinthian Gulf, in contradistinction to the neighbouring islands, Corcyra, Leucas, &c. The country is all mountainous, especially towards the east, where the great rivers of north-western Greece—Achelous, Arachthus and Aous—rise in Mt Lacmon, the back-bone of the Pindus chain. In ancient times Epirus did not produce corn sufficient for the wants of its inhabitants; but it was celebrated, as it has been almost to the present day, for its cattle and its horses. According to Theopompus (4th cent.B.C.), the Epirots were divided into fourteen independent tribes, of which the principal were the Chaones, the Thesproti and the Molossi. The Chaones (perhaps akin to the Chones who dwelt in the heel of Italy) inhabited the Acroceraunian shore, the Molossians the inland districts round the lake of Pambotis (mod. Jannina), and the Thesprotians the region to the north of the Ambracian gulf. In spite of its distance from the chief centres of Greek thought and action, and the barbarian repute of its inhabitants, Epirus was believed to have exerted at an early period no small influence on Greece, by means more especially of the oracle of Dodona. Aristotle even placed in Epirus the original home of the Hellenes. But in historic times its part in Greek history is mainly passive. The states of Greece proper founded a number of colonies on its coast, which formed stepping-stones towards the Adriatic and the West. Of these one of the earliest and most flourishing was the Corinthian colony of Ambracia, which gives its name to the neighbouring gulf. Elatria, Bucheta and Pandosia, in Thesprotia, originated from Elis. Among the other towns in the country the following were of some importance. In Chaonia: Palaeste and Chimaera, fortified posts to which the dwellers in the open country could retire in time of war; Onchesmus or Anchiasmus, opposite Corcyra (Corfu), now represented by Santi Quarante; Phoenice, still so called, the wealthiest of all the native cities of Epirus, and after the fall of the Molossian kingdom the centre of an Epirotic League; Buthrotum, the modern Butrinto; Phanote, important in the Roman campaigns in Epirus; and Adrianopolis, founded by the emperor whose name it bore. In Thesprotia: Cassope, the chief town of the most powerful of the Thesprotian clans; and Ephyra, afterwards Cichyrus, identified by W.M. Leake with the monastery of St John 3 or 4 m. from Phanari, and by C. Bursian with Kastri at the northern end of the Acherusian Lake. In Molossia: Passaron, where the kings were wont to take the oath of the constitution and receive their people’s allegiance; and Tecmon, Phylace and Horreum, all of doubtful identification. The Byzantine town of Rogus is probably the same as the modern Luro, the Greek Oropus.

History.—The kings, or rather chieftains, of the Molossians, who ultimately extended their power over all Epirus, claimed to be descended from Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, who, according to legend, settled in the country after the sack of Troy, and transmitted his kingdom to Molossus, his son by Andromache. The early history of the dynasty is very obscure; but Admetus, who lived in the 5th centuryB.C., is remembered for his hospitable reception of the banished Themistocles, in spite of the fact that the great Athenian had persuaded his countrymen to refuse the alliance tardily offered by the Molossians when victory against the Persians was already secured. Admetus was succeeded, about 429B.C., by his son or grandson, Tharymbas or Arymbas I., who being placed by a decree of the people under the guardianship of Sabylinthus, chief of the Atintanes, was educated at Athens, and at a later date introduced a higher civilization among his subjects. Alcetas, the next king mentioned in history, was restored to his throne by Dionysius of Syracuse about 385B.C.His son Arymbas II. (who succeeded by the death of his brother Neoptolemus) ruled with prudence and equity, and gave encouragement to literature and the arts.To him Xenocrates of Chalcedon dedicated his four books on the art of governing; and it is specially mentioned that he bestowed great care on the education of his brother’s children. One of them, Troas, he married; Olympias, the other niece, was married to Philip II. of Macedon and became the mother of Alexander the Great. On the death of Arymbas, Alexander the brother of Olympias, was put on the throne by Philip and married his daughter Cleopatra. Alexander assumed the new title of king of Epirus, and raised the reputation of his country abroad. Asked by the Tarentines for aid against the Samnites and Lucanians, he made a descent at Paestum in 332B.C., and reduced several cities of the Lucani and Bruttii; but in a second attack he was surrounded, defeated and slain near Pandosia in Bruttium.

Aeacides, the son of Arymbas II., succeeded Alexander. He espoused the cause of Olympias against Cassander, but was dethroned by his own soldiers, and had hardly regained his position when he fell in battle (313B.C.) against Philip, brother of Cassander. He had, by his wife Phthia, a son, the celebrated Pyrrhus, and two daughters, Deidamia and Troas, of whom the former married Demetrius Poliorcetes. His brother Alcetas, who succeeded him, continued unsuccessfully the war with Cassander; he was put to death by his rebellious subjects in 295B.C., and was succeeded by Pyrrhus (q.v.), who for six years fought against the Romans in south Italy and Sicily, and gave to Epirus a momentary importance which it never again possessed.

Alexander, his son, who succeeded in 272B.C., attempted to seize Macedonia, and defeated Antigonus Gonatas, but was himself shortly afterwards driven from his kingdom by Demetrius. He recovered it, however, and spent the rest of his days in peace. Two other insignificant reigns brought the family of Pyrrhus to its close, and Epirus was thenceforward governed by a magistrate, elected annually in a general assembly of the nation held at Passaron. Having imprudently espoused the cause of Perseus (q.v.) in his ill-fated war against the Romans, 168B.C., it was exposed to the fury of the conquerors, who destroyed, it is said, seventy towns, and carried into slavery 150,000 of the inhabitants. From this blow it never recovered. At the dissolution of the Achaean League (q.v.), 146B.C., it became part of the province of Macedonia, receiving the name Epirus Vetus, to distinguish it from Epirus Nova, which lay to the east.

On the division of the empire it fell to the East, and so remained until the taking of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204, when Michel Angelus Comnenus seized Aetolia and Epirus. On the death of Michel in 1216, these countries fell into the hands of his brother Theodore. Thomas, the last of the direct line, was murdered in 1318 by his nephew Thomas, lord of Zante and Cephalonia, and his dominions were dismembered. Not long after, Epirus was overrun by the Samians and Albanians, and the confusion which had been growing since the division of the empire was worse confounded still. Charles II. Tocco, lord of Cephalonia and Zante, obtained the recognition of his title of Despot of Epirus from the emperor Manuel Comnenus in the beginning of the 15th century; but his family was deprived of their possession in 1431 by Murad (Amurath) II. In 1443, Scanderbeg, king of Albania, made himself master of a considerable part of Epirus; but on his death it fell into the power of the Venetians. From these it passed again to the Turks, under whose dominion it still remains. For modern history seeAlbania.

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