The standard theory on the development of Epiphany in the West has been that in the second half of the fourth century East and West simply exchanged their ‘Nativity’ feasts of Jesus. The Eastern Churches now placed Jesus’ birth, together with the visit of the Magi, on 25 December, with the baptism of Jesus and the wedding at Cana on 6 January. Similarly, the Western Churches celebrated Jesus’ birth on 25 December, but now with the Magi, the wedding at Cana, and, in some places, at least, the baptism of Jesus on 6 January.1 The problem with this theory, however, thanks especially to the work of Connell, is that, as in the East, evidence for the feast of 6 January in the West outside Rome and North Africa actually pre-dates the acceptance and celebration of the 25 December Christmas in several different churches.2 And the themes of Epiphany celebrations outside of Rome and North Africa, as we shall see, included the baptism of Jesus, as well as the wedding at Cana, the transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor, and even the feeding miracle of the multiplication of loaves and fish.
Although Christmas may have already been established at Rome in 334, according to the Chronograph of 354, our first Western witness to Epiphany is in Gaul and refers to an event in Paris in 361, where the emperor, Julian the Apostate, according to the journals of Ammianus Marcellinus, entered a Christian church to worship the Christian god on Epiphany in the month of January. The twelfth-century Christian historian Zonaras narrates the same event, noting that what Epiphany celebrated then was the ‘birthday’ (Genethlia) of the Saviour. Hence, Connell is certainly correct in claiming that, in 361, 25 December had not yet been embraced in Gaul.3 Later Gallican evidence tends to support this hypothesis, since in the fifth century, after Christmas had surely been adopted, 6 January in Gaul included the visit of the Magi, the baptism of Jesus, and the wedding at Cana. In fact, various prayers assigned to Epiphany in the extant Gallican Missals of the eighth century, most notably the Missale Gallican vetus4 and the Missale Gothicum,5 contain abundant references to what will come to be called the tria miracula, the ‘three miracles’ of the Magi, Jesus’ baptism and his changing of water into wine at Cana. But, what is more, these same documents demonstrate that Epiphany itself either still was or had been a day for the conferral of baptism in Gaul,6 something possibly the case at one time also in Spain.7 And, as we shall see in the next chapter, preparation for baptism on Epiphany in the West may still be related to the origins and evolution of the Advent season.
In northern Italy as well, the themes of Epiphany are varied and it is clearly the case in some places that it is an older feast than Christmas. While some elements in the writings of Ambrose of Milan may suggest an early acquaintance with a 25 December Christmas, Connell has made a compelling argument based on Ambrose’s hymns and biblical commentaries that Christmas itself was not yet celebrated in Milan in his time. In particular, Connell draws our attention to the classic Ambrosian hymn, Illuminans altissimus, which many have taken to be a Christmas hymn but which Connell argues is an Epiphany composition, since all of the narratives employed therein are related to Epiphany.8
Not only does this hymn place Jesus’ baptism first in the sequence of Epiphany themes, but, as we saw above,9 Ambrose also witnessed to the enrolment on 6 January of candidates for baptism at Easter, thus underscoring the baptismal connotations of the feast, even if, by now, paschal baptism had come to dominate liturgically and theologically. What is of equal interest in this baptismal context is that the earliest Latin Epiphany sermon we have comes from Chromatius of Aquileia (338–407) and the focus of this sermon was specifically the baptism of Jesus by John in the Jordan, including references to Christian baptism, which may indicate that baptisms were conferred on this day. But at the same time in Turin, Maximus preached on both Jesus’ baptism and the wedding at Cana. And, like Ambrose, Maximus knew of the enrolment of baptismal candidates on Epiphany, rather than the conferral of baptism itself, which may have been the case also in Aquileia.10
Elsewhere in northern Italy the situation is somewhat similar with regard to a diversity of themes. So, for example, Peter Chrysologus in fifth-century Ravenna (380–450) refers to the threefold theme of Magi, baptism and Cana on Epiphany. Earlier at Brescia, in the late fourth century, Filastrius (385–91) refers only to the visit of the Magi as the theme of Epiphany in his church, while noting that ‘some’, by which he means ‘heretics’, celebrate the ‘Epiphanies’ of the Lord, namely, Jesus’ baptism and his transfiguration on the mount. But Filastrius here is deliberately downplaying Epiphany itself as a festival lesser in import than Christmas and it may well be that he is already reflecting the influence of Roman festal practice.11 Of course, in the light of the Christological disputes we encountered above in our analysis of Epiphany in the Christian East, it is tantalizing to speculate on the potential anti-Arian sentiments directed here against the ‘heretics’ who celebrate either Jesus’ baptism or transfiguration on 6 January, two events where the divine voice from heaven signals Jesus’ sonship!
Our other evidence for Epiphany in the West comes to us from North Africa and Rome, usually dated during the pontificate of Damasus (366–84), and where, as at Brescia, the focus of the feast on 6 January is the adoration of the Magi, thus making Epiphany almost a doublet of Christmas. Even at Rome, however, according to the earliest lectionary evidence, the Johannine version of Jesus’ ‘baptism’ (John 1.29–34) is assigned to the third day after ‘Theophany’ (Feria III post theophania), and the wedding at Cana is assigned to the second Sunday after ‘Theophany’.12 While it is certainly true that it was only in 1960 (!) that the baptism of Jesus was given its own feast in the Roman calendar on the Octave Day of Epiphany (i.e., 13 January), and moved to the Sunday after Epiphany in 1969,13 the fact remains that the tria miracula of Magi, baptism and Cana made up the themes of Epiphany at Rome as well, even if the adoration of the Magi was to become the dominant focus on 6 January itself. Scholars have traditionally either ignored or not noticed this reference to the Johannine account of Jesus’ baptism so close to 6 January in the Roman liturgy and have instead focused on the relative uniqueness of Rome in limiting Epiphany to the adoration of the Magi. Hence, the question has often been raised as to why Rome receives an Epiphany that is focused on the Magi rather than on the baptism of Jesus, but the lectionary evidence suggests that, while the adoration of the Magi is the focus for 6 January itself, the baptism of Jesus is clearly not that far behind.
Nevertheless, it is the adoration of the Magi, complete with giving them names eventually (Caspar, Balthazar and Melchior) and venerating their relics (at Cologne), that will capture the Christian imagination about Epiphany throughout the West up to and including the present day. And theologically as well, it is the identity of the Magi as Gentiles that will come to dominate the meaning of the revelation or manifestation of Jesus’ identity on this day. Already in Augustine’s homilies on Epiphany this approach is clear:
On the day of his birth, our Lord was manifested to the shepherds aroused by an angel, and on that day, too, through the appearance of a star he was announced to magi in the distant East, but it was on this day that he was adored by the magi. Therefore, the whole church of the Gentiles has adopted this day as a feast worthy of most devout celebration, for who were the magi but the first-fruits of the Gentiles?14
The same approach is emphasized in the Epiphany sermons of Pope Leo the Great, whose Sermon 3 on Epiphany is still read in Vigils (or Office of Readings) in the current Roman Liturgy of the Hours on 6 January:
Now the Gentiles in their multitudes enter the household of our father and, as children of the promise, receive that blessing which Abraham’s fleshly children rejected. All the peoples of the earth, in the persons of the three wise men, adore their Maker, and God is known not only in Judea but throughout the world so that ‘his name might be great in Israel’ everywhere.
Now that these mysteries of God’s gracious favor are made known to us, let us rejoice on this day of our birth and of the world’s vocation; let us celebrate and thank our merciful God, ‘who has made us worthy to share the lot of the saints in light; who has rescued us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.’ This is the day, which Abraham rejoiced to see, when the children of his faith would be blessed in his offspring, Christ. This is the day of which David sang: ‘All the nations shall come and adore you, Lord.’ All these prophecies began to be fulfilled when the star led the three magi from their distant land that they might recognize and adore the King of heaven and earth. Their example urges us to be servants, as best we can, of the grace that invites all people to Christ.15
We might say, then, that it is the Canticle of Simeon (Luke 2.29–32), the Nunc dimittis, with its reference to Christ’s birth as ‘light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to [God’s] people Israel’, that supplies the hermeneutical key for Epiphany at Rome, and from Rome eventually throughout Western Christianity.
From a unitary feast celebrating both Jesus’ birth and baptism, or his baptism as his ‘birth’ in the Jordan, in both Egypt and Syria, the 6 January feast of Epiphany or Theophany will become universally the feast of the revelation of Jesus’ identity through the use of differing narratives associated in the Gospels with Jesus’ ‘beginnings’. In the East, after the establishment of the 25 December Christmas, the focus of the Epiphany revelation will continue to be primarily on Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan on 6 January, with the birth narratives themselves moving to 25 December. In the West, while the adoration of the Magi, thanks to Rome, will become the dominant focus of the 6 January feast, other meanings of Epiphany, including Jesus’ baptism, are clearly part of the overall themes of the feast, especially in Gaul and northern Italy, where either the baptism of Jesus or some sort of baptismal connections (e.g., the enrolment of baptismal candidates on Epiphany in Milan and Turin) are clearly present. But even at Rome, as we have seen, the baptism of Jesus is still lurking in the background, though assigned to the third day after Epiphany itself, where it remained until the modern period.
Together with recent scholarship, then, we see every reason to agree with the original assessment of Talley on Epiphany:
In the light of the theological struggles prior to and just following the victory over Arianism in 381, the exclusion at Rome and in Africa of the baptism of Jesus from the themes of what had been the oriental epiphania, the celebration of the incarnation, is not difficult to understand. In Cappadocia, similar considerations led to the transfer of that title for the celebration of the new December nativity date, while at Alexandria we find that the old celebration of the baptism of Jesus on January 6 now came to celebrate the nativity as well. In the closing decades of the fourth century, theological development engendered a measure of embarrassment with the baptism of Jesus as the beginning of the gospel … Indeed, what seems to have been the oldest gospel assignment for the celebration of the nativity at Rome, the prologue of the fourth gospel, may also have been read at Ephesus in the beginnings of what would become the feast of the Epiphany. There we encounter the Grundtext of orthodox teaching on the incarnation, kai ho logos sarx egeneto, but the context of that declaration is the witness of a man sent from God, whose name was John.16
The only thing we would add is that at Rome the baptism of Jesus was not excluded from the mix, just relegated to a much lesser role within the Epiphany octave.
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1 See, for example, Adolph Adam, The Liturgical Year: Its History and Meaning after the Reform of the Liturgy (New York: Pueblo 1981), pp. 184ff.
2 Martin F. Connell, Eternity Today: On the Liturgical Year 1 (New York/London: Continuum 2006), pp. 168–79, upon which this section of our chapter is dependent. See also Thomas J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (New York: Pueblo 1986; 2nd edn, Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 1991), pp. 141–7.
3 Connell, Eternity Today 1, p. 169.
4 Leo Cunibert Mohlberg (ed.), Missale Gallicanum vetus, Rerum Ecclesiasticorum Documenta 3 (Rome: Herder 1958).
5 Leo Cunibert Mohlberg (ed.), Missale Gothicum, Rerum Ecclesiasticorum Documenta 5 (Rome: Herder 1961).
6 See Joseph Levesque, ‘The Theology of the Postbaptismal Rites in the Seventh and Eighth Century Gallican Church’ in Maxwell E. Johnson (ed.), Living Water, Sealing Spirit: Essays on Christian Initiation (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 1995), pp. 159–201.
7 See below, pp. 161–3.
8 Connell, Eternity Today 1, pp. 171–2.
9 See above, p. 81.
10 For references, see Connell, Eternity Today 1, pp. 173–6.
11 See Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, pp. 144–5.
12 See Theodor Klauser (ed.), Das römische Capitulare evangeliorum: Texte und Untersuchungen zu seiner altesten Geschichte 1, Liturgiegeschichtliche Quellen und Forschungen 28 (Münster: Aschendorff 1935), p. 14.
13 See Adam, The Liturgical Year, p. 148.
14 Sermon 199, On the Epiphany of the Lord; ET from Saint Augustine: Sermons on the Liturgical Seasons, trans. Mary Muldowney (New York: Fathers of the Church 1959), p. 71.
15 Sermon 3, On the Epiphany; ET from Maxwell E. Johnson (ed.), Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 2005), pp. 91–2.
16 Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, pp. 146–7.