On the origin of votive lights

A while back I had a correspondence regarding votive lamps in early Christian churches.

This started with an enquiry regarding a text in II Enoch 45: “If anyone makes lamps numerous in front of the face of the Lord, then the Lord will make his treasure stores numerous in the highest Kingdom.”

I couldn’t shed a lot of light on this text, but more generally I observed that whereas lights are brought in for any Graeco-Roman meal lasting into the hours of darkness, thinking of Traditio apostolica and of Tertullian Apol. 39 inter alia, the burning of a perpetual light is something different.

I was able to cite a few texts; Tertullian (Apol. 35) didn’t think much of burning lamps during the day, and the same attitude persists in the Synod of Elvira c34 forbidding burning candles in cemeteries during the day: Cereos per diem placuit in coemeterio non incendi, inquietandi enim sanctorum spiritus non sunt. Qui haec non observaverint arceantur ab ecclesiae communione. Whereas this applies to cemeteries, and not churches, it does tell us that lights were burnt in cemeteries. This may relate to burial at night, (note that in the Acta of Cyprian the body is borne to the cemetery by the light of candles and torches) but may also indicate that lights were kept lit in the cemeteries beyond the time of burial and that burial might be accompanied by lights even during the day. The accompaniment of candles to the grave of Macrina (Greg. Naz. Vit. Macr. 994C) is less obviously taking place at night.

Things are much clearer towards the end of the fourth century. Paulinus refers to lights burning night and day (De S. Felice natal. 3) (PL61.467), and there is dispute between Jerome and Vigilantius (Jerome adv. Vigilantium) in part over the very issue of burning lamps in the martyria. This leads me to suspect that the votive lamp in churches originated in the martyria, and that this in turn originated from the custom of burning lights in the cemeteries. Dix (Shape of the liturgy, 419) states that “perpetually burning lights at the martyrs’ tombs are found before the end of the fourth century”, but gives no reference for this (unless he is mindful of Jerome, whom he cites in the following pages.) I would not put much confidence in the report of Anastasius Bibliothecarius that Constantine provided a massive pharum to burn before the tomb of Peter (PL127 1518-19), but it is significant nonetheless that this perpetual light is placed before a martyr’s tomb.

I was reminded of this reading an apocryphal Vita of Herakleidios from (6^th century?) Cyprus, where it is said that “The Father Mnason, arriving at the same time as us, prayed a great prayer, and taking oil from the un-extinguished (ἀσβέστου) lamp he put it on the father Heracleides and anointed him entirely (συνήλειψεν αὐτὸν ὅλον.)”

On this F. Halkin, “Les actes apocryphes de Saint Héraclide de Chypre, disciple de l’Apôtre Barnabé” Analecta Bollandiana 82 (1964), 133-170, at 165, comments: “Une lampe á huile qu’on n’éteint jamais, voila une attestation rare, sinon unique, de usage des « veilleuses » ou lampes du sanctuaire. Je ne trouve rien sur cet usage dans le Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ni dans le vieux Thesaurus de Suicerus, ni á l’article ἄσβεστος du Patristic Greek Lexicon.” Hopefully this goes some way to filling the void.

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Dixit Dix de Didache

Having unaccountably lost my copy of Batiffol’s edition of the Greek Syntagma doctrinae I looked online to see if a digital copy were obtainable (apparently, none is.)

However, I did turn up a curio from the history of scholarship, namely Dix on the question of whether Didache 1.4 which reads: ἐάν τίς σοι δῷ ῥάπισμα εἰς τὴν δεξιὰν σιαγόνα should include the word δεξιὰν. He suggests that this might not be the case on the basis of the citation of the text in Isaac of Nineveh’s Sententiae which omits the word. This is, he notes, the reading of the Diatessaron. The article is within the public domain and may be viewed at http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/jts/034_242.pdf.

Whereas Isaac may be a long way removed from the Didache (I recollect that, when preparing my book on the Two Ways, I decided that this text was too remote from the tradition to warrant inclusion) this was sufficient to suggest to Dix that the Didachist was indebted to the Diatessaron; this was in support of the theory (originating with Armitage Robinson and then in wide circulation) that the Didache was a product of the late second century. As part of this he has to argue that the sectio evangelica was part of the original Didache, and in this context grabs evidence from the Syntagma doctrinae which appears to cite the sectio evangelica of the Didache. On this basis, he concludes that the sectio was part of the original, and that the Diatessaronic reading is preserved by Isaac on the basis that he may have had an old text.

The basic argument of dependence on the Diatessaron and the primacy of the Two Ways Tradition as preserved in the Didache (as opposed to its representation in the Doctrina and in Apostolic Church Order) is not worth refuting. As to whether δεξιάν should be omitted from the text of the Didache at this point, quite apart from the Diatessaron, the witness of Isaac is interesting but hardly conclusive. Nonetheless, since I have just received a commission for an annotated bibliography of the Didache (to be blogged on a later occasion, I am just returning from an extended rest) it is interesting to find this curio to add to the collection, and to start the process.