this issue. The complex astronomical calculations involved constituted the medieval
science of computus, on which many treatises survive.
By the 5th century, the fortieth of the fifty days, always a Thursday, was being
specially marked as the day of Jesus’s Ascension or return to Heaven (cf. Acts 1:3),
though earlier liturgies did not clearly distinguish the Ascension from the Resurrection.
b. Lent. Already by the 4th century in most places, Easter was preceded by a forty-day
Lent (Quadragesima), during which new converts (catechumens) were prepared for
baptism, Christians under penitential discipline (penitents) were expelled from the
church, and Christians in good standing practiced fasting and other penances. Because
fasting was not permitted on Sundays, however (and in some places also on Saturdays)
the actual method of calculating the forty days varied at different times and in different
places. The Gallican rite may perhaps have followed the most common custom of
beginning Lent on a Monday; by the Carolingian period, the Frankish kingdom followed
the Roman calculation of Lent, beginning on Ash Wednesday.
The Lenten period received much of its structure from the ceremonies that were held
for adult converts preparing for baptism on Easter. These included (1) lengthy readings of
the Scriptures with sermons expounding their meaning (apertio aurium); (2) the teaching
of the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and sometimes other texts that would have to be recited
from memory prior to baptism (traditio symboli); and (3) prayers and exorcisms to free
the converts from the power of evil (scrutinia). An early practice that was widely used in
the West, including at least parts of France, had three such services on the last three
Sundays of Lent, marked by Gospel readings with strong baptismal symbolism: the
Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:1–42), the blind man healed by washing in a pool
(John 9:1–41), the raising of Lazarus (John 11:1–44). But at Rome, these ceremonies
with their Gospel readings and parallel communion antiphons were shunted off to
weekdays by the 7th century, to make room for a new organizational principle in which
the readings and other liturgical texts focused on the patron saints or relics of the stational
church—the building (a different one each day) to which the pope and the Roman
populace went in procession to celebrate the eucharist. This reorganized Roman Lent was
the one adopted in the Frankish kingdom during the Carolingian period. But because each
locality had its own church buildings and its own ancient traditions, the choice of
stational churches and processional routes to them obviously had to be determined
locally.
c. Holy Week. The week leading up to Easter, Holy Week, commemorated in detail the
events of Jesus’s Passion, death, and burial. The classic medieval shape of this week
represents a hybrid of differing Gallican and Roman traditions. In the Gallican rite, as at
Jerusalem, the Sunday before Easter was Palm Sunday, commemorating the triumphal
entry of Jesus into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1–17). Holy or Maundy Thursday
commemorated the Last Supper with the institution of the eucharist and Jesus’s washing
of his disciples’ feet (John 13:1–20), reenacted in the Mandatum or Maundy. Good
Friday was the day of Jesus’s death, when Gospel accounts of the Passion were read and
relics or images of the Cross were venerated. Holy Saturday night was the time of the
great vigil service leading up to Easter morning, at which a candle was blessed with a
lengthy hymn of praise, twelve readings were heard, the catechumens were finally
baptized, and the eucharist was celebrated, all closely following the pattern of the
Jerusalem liturgy.
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