On Sat, 5 Jul 1997 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> I was reading in Golden Legend (c 1250) that the Catholic Church celebrated
> the feast of the Macabees during the Middle Ages, although it was also
> believed that, as Jews, the Macabees had certainly gone to hell.
Well, it's not true that Jews were all considered damned. Abraham, after
all, has had a mention in the Roman Canon since the 6th century (or is it
the 4th? I forget). I guess John the Baptist counts as Jewish and no-one
believed he was in hell.
As for the Maccabees, I'm not sure how widespread their feast was, but the
Carmelites celebrated them as martyrs on 1 August, as we know from the
Ordinal of Sibert de Beka (ca. 1312; ed. Zimmerman, 1910).
The Carmelites used the (Gallican) Rite of the Holy Sepulchre and adopted
numerous Palestinian and some Old Testament saints (including Abraham,
Isaac and Jabob - 6 October) into their sanctoral. The Maccabees, however,
don't seem to have been in the H.S. sanctoral and so must have come from
somewhere else. Kallenberg lists 37 mss. with the feast of the Maccabees
in Fontes liturgiae carmelitanae, Rome: Institutum Carmelitanum, 1962.
Maybe there's an article on the Maccabees in the Dictionnaire
d'archeologie chretienne et de liturgie.
--
Paul Chandler || Yarra Theological Union
[log in to unmask] || Melbourne College of Divinity
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