Readin', Writin', and Absolute Multitude. Academics 25 February 2025.

What's up with that?  Don't I mean 'Rithmetic?

Essay on the Anniversary of the University of Iowa, 25 February 1847.

When it's almost back-to-school time, along with all the sales in the stores, there's also all the usual stuff for sale too about the value of education. Trouble is, there's about as many ideas of what is an education, not to mention of what is its value, as there are kinds of pens, notebooks and clothes in the stores.

So let's start with the good old liberal arts education. We'll look at:

I. How and Where It Started

II. What the Seven Liberal Arts Actually Are

III. The Modern University

IV. How It Fell Apart

V. Where We Are Now

VI. Where We Could Be

and a little concluding note you might enjoy.

I. How and Where It Started.

These days, you may or may not hear that the ideas of liberal arts education, like those of democracy, originated in Greek antiquity.  What you really don't hear these days is that those ideas were not at all what we mean by them now.  In those societies, democracy didn't mean everyone participates, it meant that to participate in democracy, one must have an education adequate to do that, and to have such an education one must not be burdened by having to work; that was done by a slave class. Leisure, not work, is the basis of culture and society; "liberal" comes from the Latin for free, which translated the Greek for not what we think of now, but learning appropriate to the free and non-working class, not the slave class.

"Academy", "academic" and like words come from the school Plato founded in a sacred grove dedicated to Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, called the Akademia. Hekademia originally, actually. It lasted from about 387 BC to 83 BC. Its most famous graduate is a guy named Aristotle.

The Academy was refounded on Platonic philosophy in 410 AD and lasted until closed by the Roman Emperor Justinian I in 529. Well, Eastern Roman Emperor, but the Western Empire was gone, having collapsed in 476. Justinian was out to stamp out anything in the Empire but the state religion, the Catholic Church, which had been defined and established by the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius and the Western Gratian and Valentinian II in the Edict of Thessalonica on 27 February 380. Which he pretty much did, the Second Council of  Constantinople in 553 saying that nothing happens in the church without the emperor. For which reason the 529 closing of the refounded Academy is often called the End of Antiquity.

The scholars of The Academy sought haven in the Persian Sassanid Empire, then when the Persian and Byzantine empires made peace in 532, some of the scholars removed to Harran in what is now southeast Turkey. After the Sassanids lost to the Arabs, by then Islamic, in 651, Harran became the first great centre of Islamic learning as the knowledge of classical antiquity was translated from Greek to Syriac to Arabic.  Meanwhile Europe, where all this stuff came from, was a complete mess. So knowledge that began in Europe was forced out and wouldn't make its way back for a few hundred years.  Helluva guy that Justinian, huh. The Eastern Orthodox think he's a saint, which I suppose makes sense for what's left of his old state church, but unfortunately so do some of us Lutherans.

So The Academy. Its best graduate Aristotle in turn founded the Lyceum in Athens in 335 BC, right beside the temple of Apollo of Light, Apollo Lykeios, hence the name. The Romans trashed it in 86 BC, and at an unknown point thereafter it ceased to be. Its location was rediscovered in 1996, just east of modern downtown Athens. The word Lyceum survives in modern European languages for roughly what we call high school in the US.

Here's how these ideas passed from the end of the ancient world with the fall of the Western Roman Empire to later times in the West. First was a guy named Martianus Capella, who sometime after Alaric, King of the Visigoths (Germanic types), trashed Rome in 410, wrote a book called De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii et de septem Artibus liberalibus libri novem, which means "On the Wedding of Philology and Mercury, and the Seven Liberal Arts, in Nine Books". The first two books are an allegorical love story about how Mercury, the pursuit of learning, actually learns by way of Philology, communicated information, and the remaining seven are textbooks in each of the seven arts we will detail below. The books were largely based on existing ancient works, and the whole thing was pretty much an encyclopaedia of its time.  

Later, when the knowledge in that system began to show itself lacking, the system itself started to appear lacking, and scholars now routinely diss him, when what is needed then as now is separating the system itself from its content at any given time.

Which is pretty much what the rest of this post is trying to establish.

Second was a guy named Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, who lived shortly thereafter. His best known work is On the Consolation of Philosophy (De consolatione philosophiae), written while awaiting execution by the Arian Western Roman Emperor Theodoric for supposed treason with the Catholic Eastern Roman Emperor Justin. Boethius translated a bunch of ancient Greek works into Latin. In his rather free translation of Nicomachus' book on arithmetic he also set out the liberal arts, giving them the now-familiar trivium and quadrivium names. In his On Music set out the three-fold division of music we shall detail below. His books remained standard authorities in universities for hundreds of years, and the Consolation is one of the most influential books ever written. While not part of the church's general calendar, in some places he is commemorated as a saint, St Severinus, with feast day 23 October.

These days you might hear that the liberal arts were originally seven, the first three being grammar, rhetoric and logic, also known as dialectic, a three-part way known in Latin and consequently to the West as the Trivium (from which our word trivial comes, trivial matters originally being not minor details but what you learn in order to get on to the heavy lifting of reality itself), and the last four being arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy, the four-part way called the Quadrivium.

Nice to know, but doesn't tell you a damn thing about what this was all about, though it looks like it does, which is most of the problem understanding this stuff.

II. What the Seven Liberal Arts Actually Are.

Here is the structure of the Seven Liberal Arts.

The Three Part Way, the Trivium.

1. Grammar.

2. Rhetoric.

3. Logic (dialectic).

The Four Part Way, the Quadrivium.

4. Arithmetic. (Absolute Multitude)

5. Music. (Related Multitude)

6. Geometry. (Stationary Magnitude)

7. Astronomy. (Mobile Magnitude)

Again nice to know, but again doesn't tell you a damn thing about what this was all about, though again it looks like it does.  The words you recognise don't mean what we mean now, and what is this multitude and magnitude stuff?  

The Trivium was not grammar, rhetoric and logic exactly as we mean them now, nor even something one studied for its own sake. Rather, it was learning the tools by which one learns anything at all, just as a tradesman learns the tools of his trade before learning how to use them in the trade itself. Basically, Grammar was the study of how thought is written down in symbols (language), Rhetoric was the study of how thought is communicated from one person to another, and Logic was the study of how to think to reach supportable conclusions. Thus a person will be able to write down or speak his own thoughts rather than just let them rattle around in his head (Grammar), evaluate whether the written or spoken thoughts of others are well written down or written to hide or disguise things (Rhetoric), and evaluate his and others thoughts as to whether the content is supportable or based on unsupportable assertions and/or hidden assumptions which are deceptive (Logic).

Here's what the names of the liberal arts in the Quadrivium mean. Once you learned how to study anything at all, the stuff to be studied was divided into two big categories, things that are what they are as combinations of units, and things that are what they are as units that divide into further units. The former were called Multitudes, and further divided into those that are not applied to anything but abstract, which was called Arithmetic, and those that are applied to something, and that is called Music. The latter were called Magnitudes, and further divided into those that do not move, called Geometry, and those that do, called Astronomy.

Arithmetic then simply meant the study of number in the abstract, not applied to anything, just how numbers can be combined and used -- what is generally called mathematics to-day, not arithmetic as we use the word now. Music was using numbers to understand a phenomenon, and was further grouped into three areas: musica mundana, using number to quantify and understand the world outside ourselves, thus including what we generally call to-day physics, chemistry, and the like; musica humana, using number to quantify and understand the world inside ourselves, thus including what we generally call to-day biochenistry, psychology and the like; and finally and at the lowest level, musica instrumentalis, using number to understand the tones and combinations of tones produced by the instruments that produce them, including the human voice, which is all we generally now mean by music.  But, this is only understanding music, the actual making of this kind of music, the lowest, is simply a skill and not needed by an educated freeman but best left to the uneducated.  Ironic: from a skill left to the uneducated, these days, being able to strum a few chords on a guitar and belt out a few words seems to immediately confer that status of prophet, revelator, visionary, and authority on whatever one belts out about.

Education had nothing whatever to do with earning a living or getting ready to do so. When the idea began, work did not ennoble, it debased.  Work was done by a class that, precisely because it had to work, could not possibly have time to learn what one needed to know to participate in democracy or high positions. As the classic education ideas began to take hold in post-Roman Europe, something that is learned for the purpose of making a living, the trades for example, were learned in guilds, not universities, with the interesting twist that the guilds formed first, and universities began by borrowing their ideas of how to organise from them! So show a little respect to the repairman that shows up next time you need one.

So, the Seven Liberal Arts are a system, first for learning how to learn, then for classifying what is to be learned, in order to be educated to fulfill the responsibilities of democracy and high office.

III. The Modern University.

In the original universities, a person who had completed a course of studies in the Seven Liberal Arts, and passed final examinations by his masters (teachers), was awarded the degree Bachelor of Arts.

What does this mean? Not what you would think based on the ordinary current meanings of these words -- the same problem again. "Arts" does not mean painting or sculpture or whatever, but the Seven Liberal Arts. "Bachelor" does not mean an unmarried male, but comes from the Latin baccalaureus, and originally referred to the lowest class of knight, a squire, or apprentice, to a knight, or a knight in the service of another knight. The word itself seems to have come from baccalaris, a man employed on a dairy farm. Bacca was a variant of late Latin vacca, which still survives in Spanish as vaca -- cow. The progress is similar to that of learning a trade in a guild.

A Bachelor could then go on to further study, and then participating in and moderating disputations (disputationes). These were highly formalised debates on the truth of specific propositions, usually based on arguments from appropriate authorities, called argumentum ad verecundiam.  These are inappropiate to syllogistic logic, in which the syllogism is true or false based on its correct process and not who does it.  But they are common in informal logic, where, since no-one can be an expert on everything one relies on those who supposedly are experts on this or that thing.  This is the origin of the ad hominum (against the man), which is not name-calling at all, but refuting a statement on the basis that the authority cited is not a credible authority. On such further study and activity, a person would be awarded the degree Master of Arts, the Arts being the Seven Liberal Arts, and "master" deriving from the Latin magister, which looks like master but actually means teacher; one may now teach the Arts.

Luther's so-called "95 Theses" were an invitation to exactly such a Disputation.

A degree was simply a step, in Latin gradus, to becoming a teacher or master, hence the term "graduate", a progression again similar to the trade guilds and still seen in the apprentice, journeyman and master structure of qualification in the trades. Since the masters were teachers, they were also called doctors, from the Latin for "to teach". Over time, since the three higher fields of study were Law, Medicine and Philosophy, masters who went into these fields earned a final doctor degree in them, and the doctoral degree in these higher faculties came to be regarded higher than the master teachers/doctors, eventually becoming the present Bachelor, Master, Doctor hierarchy, with later fields coming under the division of philosophy along with philosophy itself.

The story of the modern universities begins with the schools attached to monasteries, generally Benedictine, real monking monks, not just monked over, preserving some light against the darkness of the times, which times are known as the Dark Ages. Karl der Grosse, known to some as Charlemagne, who forged the first more or less unified state in Europe since the Roman Empire, was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800 at St Peter's Basilica (the old one; the current one is on the same site) to re-establish a Western entity against the still standing Eastern Roman Empire, and thus is considered the Father of Europe. Among his many accomplishments, he encouraged education. With the reforms of Pope St Gregory (died 12 March 604) for learning to include more than liturgy but also theology and canon law, bishops began to establish schools in their cathedral parishes to teach things beyond the monastery schools. Then, with demand far in excess of supply, plus the original town and gown tensions between students and townspeople, which were not pretty with rape and murder not uncommon and often protected by clerical immunity, schools gravitated to big cities.

The word university comes from the Latin phrase "universitas magistrorum et scholarium" which described and denoted these institutions, associations of students and teachers chartered by civil and/or ecclesiastical powers that be in their cities, with degrees granted by the institution itself, at bachelor, master and doctor levels, as distinct from licences or certificates from individual teachers as before, which adapted from the trade guilds the advancement stages of apprentice, journeyman and master onto a model drawn from the madrasahs of the Islamic world. (Notice how all this stuff, from Plato's Academy to the modern university, begins with schools attached to houses of worship? Hmm.)

The first of the modern degree-granting universities, growing out of existing centres of higher education, was established in Bologna (1088), followed by Paris (1160), Oxford (1167) and Cambridge (1209). The final step was recognition by papal bull of a university's autonomy from the city, the church, and each other, meaning non-interference from the state and/or the church (this is what "academic freedom" means, or originally meant) and also that a graduate from one could teach anywhere else jus ubique docendi, with no further examination.

In Bologna, the students ran things, hiring the teachers; in Paris, the church hired and paid the teachers who ran things, and in Oxford and Cambridge, the crown ran things. These differences had major consequences.  All four of the original universities are still around, but in different ways because of this.  Bologna was not a comfortable place for teachers and fell into decline; Paris became the leading university and really the great granddaddy of the modern university but was abolished as such in 1793 by the French Revolution centuries later as part of destroying the ancien regime, the old regime of government and church, though parts of it still survive with historical ties; government sponsorship of Oxford and the later Cambridge (1209) allowed them to survive the replacement of the church with the state Church of England.

Students entered the university at about age 15, and after a six year curriculum in the Liberal Arts, usually with an emphasis on logic, if they passed they graduated a Bachelor of Arts. Courses were not by subject so much as by the authoritative book studied, often from Aristotle, the Bible, or the Thoughts.  Huh, what's that?  It's often called the Sentences, from its Latin title Quattuor libri sententiarum, or Four Books of Thoughts, still reflected in the idea that a "sentence" should express a complete thought, by Peter the Lombard, who taught in the cathedral school at Paris. Having graduated from the Faculty of the (Seven Liberal) Arts one could go into the world, or continue in one of the three other, further, fields of Law, Medicine or Theology, which would take another 12 years or so.

IV. How It Fell Apart.

So what's the point of all this -- I'm into old stuff that isn't the way it is any more and think you should be too? No, and hell no. For as much "old stuff" as I post on this blog, I wouldn't consider any of it worth a ginger snap if it didn't do two things for us now: make where we are a little clearer and more understandable by seeing how we got here, and make where we are a little clearer and more understandable by seeing what was the idea of where we were supposed to be going in the first place.

Here's what happened. New knowledge did not replace invalidated knowledge in the system as it should have, but was confused with the system itself and brought the system itself down, and thus we have the start of our fragmented knowledge and view of learning to-day. This began when difficulties in reconciling Aristotle with Christian doctrine became more and more apparent, and the bishops of Paris issued a series of formal Condemnations, most notably those of 1277 by bishop Etienne Tempier, which had the effect of allowing scientific investigation to proceed without reference to Aristotle the great authority.

Beautifully ironic, especially in view of the nonsense peddled in so many contemporary universities -- scientific freedom from existing authorities in investigation resulted not in spite of the church and its doctrine, but from bishops responding to the inherent problems in expressing doctrine in terms of the prevailing science of the time.

That's great for science, also great for Aristotle too since he never thought he wrote the last word on everything, and would be the first to encourage further investigation into everything, but, it also had the effect of making everything previously held now seem possibly wrong or soon to be found out to be wrong, and the further effect of that was immense.

A new direction in thought arose, best summed up in the maxim of the English Franciscan William of Occam, entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem, or, no more things should be thought to exist than necessary. This was a lex parsimoniae or law of parsimony that brought about a new way of thinking that was skeptical to agnostic.  This new way consciously saw itself as a new way and called itself such, the via moderna or modern way, as opposed to the trivium and quadrivium which became by default the via antiqua or old way. This turned up in every field, in music (as we use the term now) it was called the Ars nova, a term first used by the theorist Phillippe de Vitry in a book by the same name in 1322.

Music that was not monophonic chant but polyphonic, with secular themes being placed over a base of a piece of chant, music in duple time rather than triple reflecting the perfection of the Trinity, music written this way for religious purposes -- such things were utterly revolutionary, and part of the shift in the times that was happening from the arts to theology itself. What a modern irony that some to-day will perform the motets of Machaut, the greatest of ars nova composers, and be thought to be real fuddy duddys, but Machaut himself in his day was thought of as an affront to everything right and proper for worship!

It was into this world turned upside down and inside out that Martin Luther, having graduated from schools that focussed on the trivium, enrolled at 17 in University of Erfurt in the first year of the 16th century, 1501, graduated with a Master degree in 1505, and went on to the Law school following his father's wishes and the usual pattern. He soon dropped out. Questioning everything, positing as little as possible, and so on was all fine, but at what point did it yield reliable results, also known as answers, which is particularly upsetting regarding the claims of Christian doctrine which have some pretty extreme claims of salvation and damnation.

There being no answers, he sought one in what was available, the rigours of the actions of monastic life, to the extent that his superior, Johann von Staupitz, Vicar General of the Augustinian Order in Germany, had him continue an academic career in theology to take his mind off his own salvation, and also spoke to him about the Means of Grace and salvation through the death and resurrection of Christ, which, though von Staupitz was no Lutheran and lamented the later breaking of visible church unity, got him put on Rome's Index of Forbidden Books!

V. Where We Are Now.

Seems long ago and far away, but it is into exactly this same world turned upside down and inside out than we are born now, just with better means of communication. Each age along the way seems to think it has started a new age, a new way, a modern way, an Age of Aquarius, an Enlightenment, or whatever, all just simply repeating the confusion of the via moderna with better technology. Likewise our supposedly enlightened modern world, where graduates can't count back change in their minimum wage jobs, cannot reliably point on the map to where the people came from toward which they have been taught warm inclusive fuzzies, cannot hear a news report with an ear to whether or not it contains unexamined assumptions from which supposed conclusions are drawn or whether conclusions have been validly drawn.

Of the four original universities, three are still around right now, namely Cambridge, Oxford and Bologna.  Guess what, all three of them are routinely ranked as among the very best universities in the world now!  And two of them, Cambridge and Oxford, always rank in a superclass by anybody's rankings, always in anybody's top ten.  The other superclass members btw are Harvard, MIT, Stanford and U California-Berkeley.  Harvard has roots in Cambridge and is named for its original benefactor, John Harvard, a Cambridge alumnus.  The third, Bologna, regularly places in the #150-300 range.

The fourth, Paris, was abolished by the French Revolution, but a number of institutions with historical links to it survive that have structured and restructured since 1806 with Napoleon.  After its abolition in the French Revolution, Napoleon on 1 May 1806 centralised all its faculties as the University of France.  This, with some modifications along the way, lasted until the colossal social upheaval of the late 1960s, when amid student riots it was shut down.  President de Gaulle ordered yet another reorganisation, with thirteen successor universities being established.  Amid more unrest, in 2018 two of them (Paris IV and Paris VI) combined to form a new university with an old name, Sorbonne University, which nonetheless uses the date 1257, though it is hardly in any sense the College of Sorbonne founded by Robert de Sorbon, chaplain of King Louis IX in France.  On 20 March 2019 the French government reconstituted something under the name University of Paris, taking two more of the surviving parts of the old University of Paris, Paris Descartes aka Paris V and Paris Diderot aka Paris VII, along with the latter's IPGP, the acronym in French for what in English is Paris Institute of Earth Physics.  This is not a rebirth of the University of Paris in any sense.  Rather, it is the latest in a series of reorganisations of surviving parts of it.  At present then, there are eleven parts of the University of Paris surviving as separate institutions, and remarkably all of them are highly ranked though the University of Paris itself is long gone. 

In fact, there are even older continuously existing institutions which exist now as modern universities but were not founded that way.  Al-Azhar University, in Cairo, much in the news in recent years, was founded as a Shia madrasah by the Fatimid dynasty in 975, became Sunni under the Ayyubid dynasty (the great Jewish philosopher Maimonides taught there in the 12th century) and became a university in 1961 under President Nasser of Egypt.  Arguably the oldest degree-granting institution in the world is the University of al-Qarawiyyin (sometimes given as al-Karaouine) in Morocco, founded as a Sunni madrasah by Fatima (yes, a woman) al-Fihri in 859, when Europe was largely a bloody mess barely held to-gether educationally by the grand and glorious hard-working and uproarious Benedictines, but became a university in 1963 following the independence of the Kingdom of Morocco in 1956 (from France, but hey the Romans ruled it for about 400 years, under the name Mauretania, not the same as the modern Mauritania).

And, topping it all off, Nanjing University was founded in China in 258 by the emperor Sun Xiu (Jing of Wu) as a school for the Confucian Six Arts (man am I tempted to go on about those in comparison/contrast to the Seven Liberal Arts!), and after a TON of bumps along the way became a university in the 20th century, and you know what, STILL hangs in there ranked among the top universities in the world by all major rankings!

"All major rankings" means the QS World University Rankings (QS), the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE), both British, and the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) from Shanghai, with US News & World Report lately jumping in with a revised QS ranking.

Recent decades have seen an astounding increase in the ability of thoughts and information to be communicated, starting with mass printing some centuries ago but exploding first with the coming of radio, then TV, and now the Internet and other forms of electronic digital media.  At the same time recent decades have seen an alarming decrease in the apparent ability of people to form, communicate and evaluate thoughts and information. Where the ability to smarten up exists to an unprecedented extent, the fact of dumbing down is seen everywhere.

Amid an unprecedented ability to communicate information, people seem to have less information and less ability to critically evaluate information than ever. And this largely not because people are any more smart or stupid than before, but because educators themselves have nearly totally overlooked that the magnificent increase in the media of communication does not invalidate but in fact makes more needed than ever the basic tools for forming, setting forth, and understanding what is communicated.

This general dumbing down of society is not new, it was noticed decades ago, but it has assumed warp speed as the very means of communication develop at warp speed too. One of the earliest, and still best, accounts of this, even more applicable to-day to the means that did not exist when it was written than ever, is an essay called "The Lost Tools of Learning" by Dorothy L Sayers in 1947. She was best known for her detective novels, a genre generally considered "low brow".  However she graduated MA from the Collegium de Somerville at Oxford (a couple other well-known alumnae, Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi), made a now-standard translation of Dante's Comedy, did other translations, was a published poet and playwright, a successful advertising copywriter, and wrote theological works of such quality that the Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple offered her a "Lambeth" (basically an honorary) Doctor of Divinity (she declined).  That such a magnificent and magnificently educated mind as hers should equally well write best selling detective novels and effective adverts exemplifies what this is all about.

Her essay is online now. You can read it here.

Another, and more recent, modern exposition of these tools of learning is by Sister Miriam Joseph of the Sisters of the Holy Cross at St Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana, called, guess what, "The Trivium". Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2002. Available through Amazon easily.

Added now to the dumbing-down is the idea that has gained hold in academia that it is not a dumbing down but a waking up.  To what?  To seeing the classic ideas and values not as the basis of our culture, society and achievements as previously thought but rather white, male arbitrary standards codified in a system imposed on others through nationalism, colonialism and imperialism resulting in systemic racism and misogyny.  Political correctness with a rationale.  Ironic in that the origin of the term "politically correct" was within the political left wing, where it was intentionally ironic, as for example Socialists critical of Communists for offering what they presented as correct Socialism, an orthodoxy, whereas truly correct Socialism was not Communist.  It is but a short step to a struggle for those who consider their orthodoxy to be truly correct and therefore not an orthodoxy, to being "woke" to the nature of those who are not correct, not accepting the correct orthodoxy, as systemically racist and/or misogynistic and therefore ought to be cancelled. ie, to apply punitive measures withdrawing support.

Thus in academia do differing ideas become not differing ideas to be discussed, debated, disputed etc. to arrive at the better ideas, but rather, become a correct orthodoxy to be enforced and any other ideas, not by any demonstration of the "correct" orthodoxy's correctness but by definition are incorrect, and, being woke to their true nature, an evil to be removed or at least suppressed. 

Exactly the opposite of what a university is supposed to be.  Thus we land precisely in the problem identified so long ago in the past from which we are convinced we have nothing to learn -- quis custodiet ipsos custodies?  Who is the custodian of the custodians?  Who guards the guardians?  Who watches the watcher?  Who corrects the correct?  Who establishes what is correct?  Who decides what is to be cancelled?  It's about power; what prevents the abuse of power even when the intent is good?  What prevents a university from becoming as rigid an enforcer of an orthodoxy as any religious school ever was?

"Woke" is appropriated from African-American Vernacular English, where it is commonly used instead of "woken" as the past participle of "wake".  Ironically enough, the use the idea of being awake to express one's socio-political positions comes from Republicans.  Yes Republicans -- in the 1860 campaign of Abraham Lincoln, when some store clerks in Hartford CT began a movement called Wide Awake to encourage voter registration for Lincoln's anti-slavery position.  More ironically, AAVE is often called Black English.  But, English-speaking blacks in England for example do not speak "Black English", so it is misnamed, it is not common to all blacks who speak English, thus in promoting AAVE as a signal of one's virtue against the "whiteness" of standard English, and in non-blacks culturally appropriating the usage "woke" from it, one falls into the very thing against which one is signaling one's virtue, ie, correctness.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?  Who guards the guardians, as we saw in the last post, for 22 February.    

VI. Conclusion. Where We Could Be.

So, again, the Liberal Arts are a system for first learning how to learn, the Trivium, then for classifying what is to be learned in order to be educated to fulfill the responsibilities of democracy and high office, the Quadrivium. What had happened was, as some of the knowledge taught within the system was later found to be either incomplete or just false, like what orbits around what, the system itself, and more importantly the overall unity of things which it expressed, also came into question.  Our point here is not at all about going back to the "Music of the spheres", in which the mathematical ratios in tones and in the orbits of the sun and planets around the earth were though to be the same.  It's not about going back to earlier social structures.  And it's not about reading Aristotle, learning Latin, and things like that, and least of all about thinking a glorified "humanities" curriculum largely devoid of the sciences is the liberal arts at all -- though there's good reason to read Aristotle and learn Latin.

In religion, the point of the Lutheran Reformation was not to create a new church or even split the one there was, but to bring back to front and centre the Means of Grace through which salvation is communicated and the message of salvation through the blood of Christ itself -- to paraphrase Luther, making the most clear things about the church what had become the most obscure amid the Roman Empire's confusion. The direction in which the later more general Reformation went, which began even in Luther's lifetime, was as opposed by Luther and Lutherans as the errors of Rome.

In education, perhaps another reformation is needed, not a religious but an educational one.  One where besides what one learns to earn whatever living one earns and to have whatever career one has, in order for society to function, ESPECIALLY a society where all and not just some classes participate, there is a skillset and a basic body of knowledge needed by all, where the tools of learning are actually taught (there's the trivium), where a person is then taught how to handle abstract operations, operations applied to things as they add up, how complicated things break down and how that is applied to things (there's the quadrivium).

In the words of the motto of Dorothy Sayers' alma mater, Donec rursus impleat orbem, which in Latin means Until it should fill the world again.

That would be education, the basics for participating in our society, open to all now, rather than the latest theories of what is "enlightened" this week, which are handed down as so modern, but amount to no more than secular articles of faith, handed down "ex cathedra" from an authority which, when it takes itself to be such an authority, violates the very parsimony and science it thinks it passes on, as it neither guarantees a correct conclusion nor prevents a false one, and may not even be applicable to a particular field, and, if applied to all fields as a universal principle, thus violates its very definition of parsimony and science!

Oh Yeah, an Addendum.

There was this second cousin of Martianus Capella, with a variant spelling of the last name, Antonius Cappella, who wrote thousands of pieces of music, in a wide array of styles but all vocal, that are still performed to this day. You can spot them easily. They are all identified by the way he signed his name, A Cappella.

OK, I'm just jacking around now. A cappella actually means "from the chapel" and was used to designate purely vocal Renaissance polyphony generally for the church from the later Baroque concertato style which featured alternating vocal and instrumental parts in a piece of music. Oddly enough, we now know those "vocal" motets were often doubled on instruments, but the first modern "musicologists" didn't know that, so singing "a cappella" has come to mean pretty much any music that is singing only, no instruments.

Except for a small school of hard cores, in a city named for its big reeds, Acapulco de Juarez in Mexico, who wouldn't use the reeds for instruments, so the style is also called singing Acapulco. OK I'm jacking around there too.

But for real, I'm happy to say my alma mater, the University of Iowa, from which I got my MA and PhD degrees, the last I looked ranked #160 in the USNWR rankings, in the 201-250 band in THE, 421 in QS, and in the 201-300 band in ARWU.  Not too shabby for a relative newcomer only organised 25 February 1847 in what had just become a U.S. state only 59 days before! It is also listed among the "Public Ivies", a list of 30 public US institutions considered to offer an educational level comparable to the "Ivy League" schools. And I'm also happy to say that Luther thought the plays of Terence, after whom I was named IRL, were excellent for children's learning.

And what's an "alma mater"? Hoo boy. It's Latin for "nourishing mother". In the Roman Empire it meant the Mother Goddess, Venus, the Roman version of Aphrodite, who was called Venus genetrix, Mother Venus. In the Roman Church this became adapted to Mary, Jesus' mother, as Mater dei genitrix. As an academic reference it has been used since the 1600s and comes from the phrase "alma mater studiorum", which means nourishing mother of studies. It's from this that we get the Latin term "alumnus" (male) or "alumna" (female), plural "alumni", meaning "one(s) who is/are nourished", as in educated.

In 2000 it was adopted as the motto of, guess who, the oldest modern university, the University of Bologna, right on the heels of the 1999 signing of the Bologna Declaration signed there by the ministers of education of 29 European countries, which while aiming at a greater standardisation of European higher education, seems to do so from the standpoint of corporations and the World Trade Organisation (WTO)-- cutting costs, getting a job. getting competitive -- meaning, winning against, or at least getting your slice of the pie with, other players , etc, exactly what education is not.

Oy.

Textual Note: This post is a complete revision of my original similarly titled one, incorporating additional material from 2009 and new material in 2010, then revised here and there in 2011 and 2013 - 2025.

What's A Gesimatide? 16 February 2025.

The Change From Christmas Season To Easter Season.

There's been some joyous events these last few weeks -- the birth of Jesus, his naming and circumcision, the first Gentiles to find him, and his baptism. On various dates and combinations, from place to place through the ages, the Christian Church has offered its members celebrations of these things in its church year.

But a change is coming, one already present amid the joy. We know as we celebrate his birth that he was born for us so he could die for us. We know as his blood was spilt in circumcision, putting him under the Law, his blood would be spilt on the Cross, to redeem us from under the Law. We saw that the Gentiles who found him had to return by a different way, as the way of all who find him is different afterward. And after his baptism, Jesus will spend forty days in the desert before beginning his public ministry, wherein he will be tempted to make himself into the various false Messiahs into which Man so often makes him anyway. We will soon imitate those forty days for our own devotion with the season of Lent, on the way to the Cross, without which Easter is but another metaphor or myth for springtime rejuvenation.

A change is coming.

So the church provides a transitional time between the first and second of its three great seasons, between the joyous events from preparing for his birth through  his baptism (Advent-Christmas-Circumcision-Naming-Manifestation-Baptism) and the literally deadly serious reason why they happened, sin and our redemption from sin. Just like with the preparation seasons of Advent and Lent, this transition between them has taken various forms in various places and times but always within the same general pattern, and the universal practice of the Christian Church since ancient times (well, until 1960s Rome messed with it, but we'll get to that) has been to provide a transition from the beginnings of Jesus' earthly life to the end of it.

It's not just more Lent on top of Lent.  Nor is it pre-Lent.  That describes when it happens, but not what it is.  It's a transition, and for us Lutherans especially helpful in that its focus is what we call the "solas" -- by grace alone, by Scripture alone, by faith alone.  This time is called Gesimatide from the end of the Latin names for its three Sundays.  "The Gesimas" (that's  JAY-see-ma) for short.  It's also called Shrovetide, from its last day, Shrove Tuesday, the last day before Lent starts (why "shrove" in a later post).  That's also the last day to pig out, so its secular derivative is called Fat Tuesday, or Mardi Gras in French.

Yet, while the world's gross parody and perversion of this season, Carnival, continues unabated, the church these days often, where it has not chucked liturgy altogether, adopts a contemporary liturgy derivative of the Roman church's novus ordo from Vatican II that omits this longstanding transition.  Huh?  Let's take a look.

The Transition In The West And In The East.

The Western and the Eastern Churches calculate Easter, and thus the forty days before it, differently, but the overall pattern is the same, as is a transitional period between the Christmas season just past and the preparation for Easter.  In the Eastern Church this transitional period is framed by five Sundays, after the last of which Great Lent begins on Clean Monday; in the Western Church it is three Sundays, after the last of which Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. Either way, the pattern is there.

The Christmas related stuff and the Easter related stuff have an interesting timing since they are reckoned differently.  Christmas has a 40 days of purpose, shall we say, from Jesus' birth to a feast called Candlemas commemorating his mother's purification in the mikveh and his presentation in the Temple as prescribed in the Law of Moses. Those 40 days are fixed, being reckoned forward from Christmas which is fixed, from 25 December through 2 February. Candlemas is the last feast dated with respect to Christmas.  But Lent, the next 40 days of purpose, is not fixed, because it is reckoned backward from that to which it leads, Easter, which is not a fixed date either and is reckoned differently in the West and in the East. In the West, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, will never be earlier than 4 February, so that always works out even if by just two days after Candlemas.

But, the transitional period, Gesimatide, can overlap with the concluding Epiphany part of the Christmas season. For the West, adding roughly three weeks to forty days is approximately seventy days, and even with the earliest possible Easter will fall no earlier than 18 January, so Gesimatide will still always fit between the end of the Christmas cycle itself on 14 January, when the octave of the Epiphany and the Gospel portion relating the baptism of Jesus is read, and whenever Easter falls, early or late, in any given year.

What The Names Literally Mean.

Septuagesima is simply another word for seventieth, that's all. The modern English word is derived from Middle English, in turn from Old French, in turn from the actual Late Latin word septuagesima meaning seventieth. The septua- part is the same prefix for seven or multiples by ten of seven seen in other English words -- septet, an ensemble of seven; septuagenarian, someone in his 70s; the Septuagint, the translation into Greek of the Hebrew Scriptures by seventy scholars.  The -gesima part is the Latin -tieth suffix.

OK seventieth what?  Day, that's what.  So, Septuagesima is 70 Days, Sexagesima is 60 Days, Quinqagesima is 50 Days. Simple.

OK, so seventieth day of what, or until what?  Easter, that's what.  Except it's not exactly seventy days.  Don't freak, there's a reason behind all this, and it's simple too.  Like everything else about Christianity, it all stems from Easter.

Gesimatide is a transition to what we call Lent, but at first in English the word Lent just meant Spring, and what we now call Lent was called Quadragesima, Latin meaning forty days, the duration of Lent in the West.  Since Quadragesima always happens in Lent, over time Lent came to mean Quadragesima and another word, Spring, designated Lent.  The original name for Lent still survives in other languages more directly descended from Latin.  For example in Spanish the word for Lent is Cuaresma. Quadragesima (now Lent) is forty days from Easter -- the Western Church does not include Sundays in the count, since every Sunday is a "little Easter".  The Sundays in the Gesima season leading up to Lent just follow that pattern.

There's various theories as to why.  One says that the "seventy" was to represent the Babylonian Captivity (of the Jews, not the church).  It was actually Amularius of Metz (in modern NE France not too far from Trier!), a liturgist who died about 850, who said it in one of his books.  Another theory says the names were to give the Sundays an easily recognisable numerical order by tens.  Another theory says it came from a way to fudge on the Lenten fast but still have a fast -- if you exclude Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays in Lent from fasting but add them on earlier you get seventy days.  Personally, I'd bet on that theory -- probably some Benedictines scamming a way to fast but not make it so burdensome.  "Pastoral reasons" is the current Roman phrase for such efforts.

In any case it doesn't really matter which theory is correct, the important thing is, the Gesima season is not a numerical count but derives, name and all, from Lent, fka Quadragesima.  Simple.

BTW, how do you say these words?  In many places, what is called classical Latin or Ciceronian Latin is taught.  Classical Latin is a modern reconstruction based on research into phonemes of how Latin was pronounced toward the end of the Roman Republic.  Septuagesima is pronounced sep-tua-GAY-see-ma; hard g.  Thing is, Latin as used in the church took on various pronunciations influenced by local vernaculars, and among them the Italian version eventually predominated.  Septuagesima is pronounced sep-tua-JAY-see-ma; soft g.  So while there have been several "church Latin" or ecclesiastical Latin pronunciations, for one thing "Italian Latin" became standard, and for another thing, none of the Latin pronunciations later used in the church were the Latin of the late Roman Republic.  Thus, church Latin texts should be pronounced in church Latin, not in classical Latin.

Septuagesima Itself.

With the Seventieth Day, or Septuagesima, the change is apparent on various levels. The white vestments of Christmastime joy give way to purple or violet of repentance.  The joyful exclamation Alleluia and other joyful expressions like the Te Deum and the Gloria (there ain't no This Is The Feast) are not used.  The readings, especially if one follows the hours of prayer, the Divine Office, begin their way through the sorry history of Man, from his creation then fall then going forward, which the Holy Saturday liturgy will recapitulate.

On Septuagesima itself, the Gospel reading is Matthew 20:1-16, the  story of the workers in the vineyard, wherein we see Man the same as ever from the start in Eden, trying to impose his ideas of what is right on to God's, this time arguing over whether the same wage is fair for those who worked all day, those hired at the last, and everyone in between, as if we deserved anything from God at all and as if it were not his to give and not ours to presume or demand anyway. So we argue with God and each other over the denarius rather than taking it in gratitude from him who owed us nothing! Kind of the whole problem in a nutshell.  A labour dispute.  Works, not grace.

The Eastern Church uses the following on its five Sundays in the Pre Lenten Season: 1) the story of Zacchaeus, 2) the Publican and the Pharisee, 3) the Prodigal Son, 4) the Last Judgement, and 5) the Sunday of Forgiveness.

The World Has Its Own Transition Too.

The world, which has ever had its early Spring celebrations, has in many lands timed them on Lent too.  But this worldly pre-Lent attains a nature as opposite from its Christian meaning as the worldly gift buying and partying season before Christmas has become opposite from Advent. At the beginning of Lent, fasting in some form is observed, usually involving abstaining from meat, and the most likely origin of the the name for the worldly pre-Lent, Carnival, is a farewell to meat (flesh), from the Latin root carne- for meat or flesh (as in carnivore) and vale, good-bye (as in valedictory). In most but not all places, Septuagesima is also the start of Carnival season, which ends on the Tuesday just before Lent starts on Ash Wednesday, often known by its French name, Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday.  So, as the church prepares for the penitential season of Lent the world enjoys the flesh, in all senses of the word.

But now in the Western Church, if one follows the lead of the Great Whore, Rome, as unfortunately many have, this transitional pre-Lenten period has been abolished altogether! And not only is this important transition dropped, the period of time it formerly took is simply counted as Ordinary Time. That would be bad enough if ordinary here meant what ordinary ordinarily means. Ordinary here means the literal meaning of ordinary, which is, something that has no particular name or identity but is simply numbered. 

So in the Vatican II novus ordo this significant time of transition from the Christmas cycle to the Easter cycle simply ceases to exist, in numbered anonymity, in the face of nearly two millennia of Christian observance in varying forms, and in the continuing observance of those who do not follow suit. Well, when you're the Whore of Babylon, you do stuff like that, maybe even have to do stuff like that. Not a lead for the church of Christ to follow.  In adaptations of the novus ordo, such as ours, the season disappears as a numbered Sunday after Epiphany.

The world, though, is securely attached to its pre-Lenten traditions.  Carnival season endures, Rome and those following its lead ashcan the Gesimas.  Who knows? Maybe the next Roman council can get Ash Wednesday moved to the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, Ash Sunday, for "pastoral reasons" of course, like they jacked around the date of Epiphany, or move it to the Monday after and call it reclaiming our ancient Greek roots. No word yet on whether Rome can get languages like Spanish to quit calling Lent Cuaresma after a pattern it has abolished.

The Eastern Church still has its Pre Lenten Season.

The Start Of The Church's Transition East And West.

In the Western Church, the earliest Septuagesima can fall is 18 January and the latest 22 February. Join the Christian Church, East or West, in this transition, whatever your church or church body may have chosen to do, as we turn to the preparation for Lent, the observance of that for which he whose birth we recently celebrated came to die and then rise again, and the Easter and Pentecost joy to follow in anticipation of the eternal joy of heaven!

We start with learning from the workers in the vineyard not to haggle over the denarius but understand whose it is and that it is a gift, or, from the call of Jesus to Zacchaeus, who collected taxes for the foreign oppressors, that he doesn't have to climb a tree to see him, that he is coming to his very house -- which btw also produced more grumbling about what is right and just -- after which Zacchaeus repented and made restitution to his brethren. The Son of Man has indeed come to seek and save the lost -- don't worry about being seeker-sensitive, HE is the seeker -- whether that be those who cast aside their own people for power or those who are idle because they are not hired, as we all seek first our own gain by nature and are all "unemployable" before the justice of God, who instead shows us mercy in Christ Whom He has sent.

The Plan Of The Western Transition, Gesimatide.

Here are the readings for the three Sundays of Gesimatide. This is particularly of value for us Lutherans, because the readings for each of the three Sundays of Gesimatide correspond with what came to be called the three "solas" in the Lutheran Reformation!

Septuagesima Sunday, "70 Days". By Grace Alone. (16 February 2025)

Introit.
Psalm 18:5,6,7. Verse Psalm 18:2,3.
Collect.
O Lord, we beseech Thee favourably to hear the prayers of Thy people that we, who are justly punished for our offences, may be mercifully delivered by The goodness, for the glory of Thy name, through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our Saviour, who liveth etc.
Epistle.
1 Cor 9:24 - 10:5.
Gospel.
Matthew 20:1-16. The Workers in the Vinyard. Sola gratia, by grace alone.

Sexagesima Sunday, "60 Days". By Scripture Alone. (23 February 2025)

Introit.
Psalm 44:23-26. Verse Psalm 44:2.
Collect.
O God, who seest that we put not our trust in anything that we do, mercifully grant that by Thy power we may be defended against all adversity, through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our Lord, who liveth etc.
Epistle.
2 Cor 11:19 - 12.9
Gospel.
Luke 8:4-15. The Sower and the Seed. Sola scriptura, by scripture alone.

Quinquagesima Sunday, "50 Days". By Faith Alone. (02 March 20255)

Introit.
Psalm 31:3,4. Verse Psalm 31:1.
Collect.
O Lord, we beseech Thee, mercifully hear our prayers and, having set us free from the bonds of sin, defend us from all evil, through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our Lord, who liveth etc.
Epistle.
1 Cor 13:1-13.
Gospel.
Luke 18:31-43. Healing the Blind Man. Sola fide, by faith alone.

[Textual note: many thanks to Matthew Carver, translator of Walther's Hymnal, published by CPH, for earlier comments on etymology.  I have tried to incorporate those improvements in the current version.  Any remaining need for improvement is due to me.]

The Transfiguration of Jesus, 9 February 2025.

There are many miracles recorded in the New Testament, but this one is different in that it is the only of those miracles which happens to Jesus himself.

The Gospel accounts of this event are Matthew 17:1-9, Mark 9:2-8, and Luke 9:28-36. 2 Peter 1:16-18 and John 1:14 may also refer to this event.

There is much to be learnt from this miracle. For one thing, it gave the Apostles, and now us as we read Scripture, something of a preview of the glorified and complete life in heaven. For another, it shows Jesus as the Messiah, he to whom the Law, represented by Moses, and the Prophets, represented by Elijah, point.

Those two things tell us much about Jesus, and many have written on them, but there is something about us we can learn too. What was the Apostles' reaction to this event? They wanted to stay there, and devote themselves to basking in this event. But they were told not to, that there was work ahead in Jerusalem, and not only that, they were told to not even speak of it until after the Resurrection which they did not yet even understand.

Are we not also like that? We want to preserve sublime moments in this life and create conditions to produce them, either in literal monasteries or in monasteries of the mind, and thus isolate and exempt ourselves from, even protect against, what we are in fact called to do in the rest of life. And are we not also told, like the Apostles, that we cannot remain in these mountain-top experiences but must now go into the Jerusalem of our own lives where there is much to be done, some of it endured? And though we live after the Resurrection, do we not also not fully understand what lies ahead in our own lives?

Jesus both calls us to these sublime moments, and also calls us to go forth from them.

There's more, which relates to all three points and drives them further home. In Lutheran observance, the commemoration of this event is located within the church year where it falls in the progression of the life of Jesus. Which puts it right between observance of his life leading up to his saving work (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany and his Baptism) and the observance of his saving work itself, which is the Gesimatide preparation for Lent, Lent itself, the Holy Week commemoration of his suffering and death, and Easter his resurrection.

Thing is, the observance of his life leading up to his saving work happens on fixed dates, the sane every year, but the observance of his saving work itself is on moveable dates, different every year.  Which can lead to some out of sequence things.  In 2021, Candlemas, the feast of the presentation of Jesus in the temple and the purification of Mary his mother after childbirth, is held on 2 February, forty days after Christmas, every year, but the observance of his saving work centres on Easter which is not the same date every year and in 2021 puts Gesimatide on 31 January.  So we'll have an event in his adult life celebrated before the last event celebrated in his childhood dated from Christmas.

In the Roman rite and Eastern Orthodoxy, the Transfiguration is celebrated on 6 August. This was always one of several dates on which it was celebrated. But, on 6 August 1456 the news reached Rome that the Kingdom of Hungary had broken the Siege of Belgrade by the Ottoman Empire, saving the rest of Europe from further Islamic conquest.  (You didn't think this Islamic thing was anything new, did you?)  The siege had been broken on 22 July. In honour of hearing the news, Pope Callixtus III made the Transfiguration a feast to be celebrated in the Roman rite on 6 August. In Eastern Orthodoxy it is the 11th of the Twelve Great Feasts, and also the middle of the Three Feasts of the Saviour in August.

We of course are not bound by that, and there is good reason to locate it where we have, in the order of events in the life of Jesus, since the point of the church year for the life of the church is to celebrate and know the life of Jesus. Even if the moveable part of the church year gets backed up into the fixed part of the church year.  There are though two interesting co-incidences (?) about the 6 August thing.

One co-incidence (?) is, centuries later, on 6 August 1945, another type of transfiguration would happen. About 70,000 people died instantly and tens of thousands died later from the effects of the transfiguration, so to speak, of the first use of atomic weapons, in Hiroshima, Japan.  Thus the date of the news of one key military victory becomes the date of another. Point is, even if either or both of these victories are seen as a turning point for the right side, Jesus calls us to another type of bodily transfiguration altogether, one not brought about by breaking a siege or nuclear radiation, and not a turning point in worldly events, but the final triumph of God over the sin and its wages of spiritual death brought into his Creation by us.

The other coincidence (?) is, 6 August 1991 was the start of the World Wide Web, a service available to the public on the Internet, which allows us to go down into "Jerusalem", where there is much to be done, even endured, in ways previously not possible. Now, for example, it would not be two weeks or so before news reached you that defences had held and you are not about to be overrun, now you would see it as it happens.  For another, we can respond to developments much quicker now, for example one can donate online to our beloved synod's efforts to bring relief to people in the aftermath of disasters both in the U.S. and around the world.

Some things to ponder about transfiguration and going down into Jerusalem, whether we celebrate the Transfiguration in the traditional Lutheran way on the last Sunday before Gesimatide, or on 6 August, or some other day, or not at all.

Or, even if one is subjected to that third-hand wannabe Protestant version of the miserable revisionist Roman Catholic Vatican II novus ordo, the Revised Common Lectionary revised again by our beloved synod, whose contemporary worship calendar and lectionary has the worst of both worlds, doing away with Gesimatide altogether like good wannabes (a post on what is Gesimatide and why you don't want to do away with it is coming shortly here) but retaining something of the traditional Lutheran placement by relocating the Transfiguration as the last Sunday of an elongated Epiphany Season on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday.

See you in "Jerusalem".

Candlemas (2 February) 2025, and February's Many Meanings.

What's a Candlemas, and why should I bother with it or care to know about it? Here's what and why.

The Law Of Moses Observed.

In the Law of Moses, when a woman gives birth to a boy, she is ritually unclean for seven days, then in the "blood of purification" for another thirty three days, total of forty days, at which time she goes to the mikveh for a ritual bath of purification.  Great, what's a mikveh?  We'll get to that.  Also, the Law of Moses requires a first-born male, not first born to the father necessarily, but the one who opened his mother's womb, to be presented in the Temple to be redeemed.

Huh?  Redeemed from what?  Hey, this is Jesus and he's the redeemer so really, redeemed from what?  And purified from what?  And anyway, isn't this religion about Jesus, not Mary?  OK, here's the deal.

First, what's a mikveh? The word, also given as mikvah, means collection.  Collection of what?  Water, that's what, but not just any water, but water from a natural source, such as rain, or better yet "living water" from a spring or well, which must be naturally transported, not pumped or carried. Total immersion in the water of a mikveh -- anyone thinking Baptism? -- is considered so important, restoring ritual purity after ritually impure things have happened, such as childbirth, that a Jewish community traditionally must provide a mikveh even before it builds a place of worship (synagogue).

Next, before we get to redeemed from what, what is to be redeemed anyway?  One hears the word a lot but what does it literally mean?  To buy back, that's what, to pay something to get something else, like redeeming a coupon.  That's why it's called redeeming a coupon -- you turn in the coupon to get what it promises.  Under the Law of Moses, the first born, or bekhor in Hebrew, is required to be dedicated to the service of the Lord.  Originally this was to be the priesthood, but after the Golden Calf episode, that was given to the sons of Aaron, the cohens (yes, the name Cohen and variations thereof derive from that), but nonetheless the requirement for redemption remained.  This is called the pidyon haben, and is a sum of five silver coins to be paid to the Cohen, though the Law provides other options for poor families, which Luke records is the option Joseph and Mary took.

Of course Jesus did not need to be redeemed.  For himself.  But he wasn't sent here for himself.  He didn't need to be baptized either, or circumcised, but he was.  He was here for us, and to be put under the Law so he could fulfill the Law for us, all needed to be fulfilled, just like he told John the Baptist.  And that's the enormous significance here.  Without these key events in fulfilling the Law, he wouldn't have fulfilled the Law, which in part required an action by his mother, and that's why we celebrate them -- it's part of what makes Jesus the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah.

So, to observe and fulfill the Mosaic Law, Mary was purified in a ritual bath in a mikveh, after which her first-born Son was presented in the Temple to dedicate him to God. In the Western Church, since the birth of Jesus has been set on 25 December for its celebration, the celebration of the Purification of Mary and the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple is fixed forty days later as required by the Law, 2 February. Easter, however, does not have a fixed date, thus Holy Week, and the preparation for it, Lent, and the transition to that, Gesimatide, are reckoned backward from Easter's date in any given year. That is why in some years, like 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2021, Candlemas may happen after the transition to Lent, Gesimatide, is underway. Or like in 2012 when it happened only three days before Gesimatide began with Septuagesima on 5 February.  

In the Eastern Church, as we saw in an earlier post that Epiphany, 6 January, at least until 1960s Rome got a hold of it, originally contained all the events of the early life of Jesus including his birth.  And, 25 December in the Gregorian calendar of the West, now in civil use in most of the world, falls on 7 January in the Julian calendar still in liturgical use in the East, so, the 40th day after it falls on Gregorian 15 February in the East, and is called The Meeting of the Lord.

Either way, either part of the church, either calendar, forty days after Jesus' birth celebration.

The Gospel Fulfillment Of The Law.

The Gospel account of it is Luke 2:22-40, the Gospel reading for the day. Part of it relates Simeon the Elder, who had been promised that he would not die before seeing the Messiah. When Mary brought Jesus for the meeting, Simeon saw him and recognised him as the Messiah, saying what is now called the Canticle of Simeon, or, from its first words in Latin, nunc dimittis:
"Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel."
This reference to light gave rise to the custom of blessing on this day the candles for use in the church during the year, which in turn has given the day yet another name, Candelemas, or mass of the candles. Some observances include a procession with candles to the church.

Simeon's nunc dimittis has also become a feature of the Office of Compline, the completing church office of prayer for the day. In the Lutheran Common Service, that most wonderful version of the Western liturgy, in its current edition known as Divine Service Setting III in Lutheran Service Book, the nunc dimittis is also sung after Communion. A practice which continues even in our Vatican II wannabe services of late, though of course with the Vatican II-esque option of doing something else instead.

Post Vatican II Rome downplays the candles and Mary stuff for the Simeon thing. Simeon did no such thing. He got it about the purpose of Mary and light to the people.  Let's look at that.

The Prophecy of Simeon.

Simeon didn't just say what became the nunc dimittis, he said something else too that should not be forgotten. The joy of the Messiah cannot be separated from the reason why he came, which isn't all that pretty. Saviours are great, as long as it's not about being saved from sin. Jesus would run into this again, to put it mildly, and Satan would even tempt him about it during another forty days the church is about to celebrate in imitation of his forty days in the desert, Lent. Simeon said:

Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be spoken against -- yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also (this to Mary) -- that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.

The cross, the crucifixion, the payment for redemption from sin, is present here too, as the central event in the life of Jesus, the life of Man, and the life of each man. Bishop Sheen once remarked that the crucifix is the autobiography of every Christian.

Ain't It Just A Christianised Groundhog Day Or Other Pagan Stuff?

As with Christmas, Candlemas is sometimes taken as simply a Christian version of pre-existing observances. Well there are pre-existing observances.  2 February is the date of Imbolc, a Celtic observance of the mid-point between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox. It was associated with the goddess Brigit, where sacred fires were maintained by 19 consecrated women in Kildare -- sort of an Irish Vesta -- some of whose legends seem to have been passed to the Christian St Brigit. And Brigit, through mingling of Irish and African slaves in the New World, may be the source of Maman Brigitte in Voodoo. Imbolc was also a time of weather forecasting, with Spring coming on, when snakes or badgers or other animals were watched to see if they would come out of their Winter hibernation, indicating a short Winter, or not, indicating a longer one.  See something familiar in that?

However, as with superficial similarities with pre-Christian Winter solstice observances, the content of fulfilling the Mosaic Law by the newborn Messiah is rather different than simultaneous pagan observances, including the references to light. But, as to watching animals for a clue to the length of the remaining cold weather -- hello, Groundhog Day, which is also, guess what, 2 February!

And then there's the Roman Lupercalia, the Wolf Feast, honouring the she-wolf who raised Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, celebrated this time of year too. In it, the Luperci, the priests of the wolf (lupus in Latin) sacrificed, well, originally people, but then two male goats and a dog, whose blood was put on the foreheads of other Luperci, then there was a feast, then the Luperci cut thongs from the animal skins -- called februa, from which comes our month name February! -- and put on the rest, running around town, with women coming forward to be lashed by the thongs to insure both fertility and easy childbirth.

Hey, Lupercalia lasted well into Christian Rome and beyond, and some think Pope Gelasius in the 490s -- after the sack of Rome by the Visigoth under Alaric in 410 and by the Vandals under Geiseric (aka Genseric or Gaiseric) in 455 and the deposing of the last Roman Emperor in the West, Romulus Augustus, by the Arian Germanic-Italian King Odoacer on 4 September 476 -- used Candlemas to replace and remove Lupercalia.

The feast is among the oldest in Christian observance.  Sermons for it survive from as early as the 300s.  It took on wider celebration starting with a plague.  Yeah, a plague.  In 541 an outbreak of the bubonic plague devastated the Byzantine Empire (the old Eastern Roman Empire, the only one left by then).  It came from rodents with the fleas carrying the disease aboard merchant ships from Egypt, from which Constantinople bought lots of grain and other goods, and the spread of those goods spread the bubonic plague too and wiped out about half the population to which it spread all over the Empire.  This was during the reign of Justinian, who got it too, but he recovered under such treatment as they had at the time, which was, eat a good diet, get plenty of rest, and go somewhere where it hadn't spread to avoid the bad air they thought carried it.  In 541 Justinian ordered fasting and prayer at this time that the plague be lifted.  The plague did lift, but, plagues lift anyway, and the mortality rate for untreated bubonic plague is about 50% anyway, so hey.  But Justinian ordered the observances to continue in thanksgiving.  This outbreak is the first one clearly documented in history, and is now named after him, the Plague of Justinian.

BTW, the world-wide custom of saying "Bless you" or "Health" or "Gesundheit" (which is "health" in German) or some such thing when someone sneezes comes from the plague, since for most of human history sneezing might be an indication you won't be around in a few days.  These days, antibiotics, streptomycin in particular, are effective against bubonic plague and I'd recommend that as well as the good wishes.  While we're at it, what is "bubonic" anyway?  Comes from the Greek word for groin -- the swelling from infected lymph nodes turns up in the groin, among other places, but that one really gets your attention so the whole thing got named after it.

The first-born thing also has been the source of other pious bullroar.  In imitation of it, first born sons were often "encouraged" to be priests, resulting in all kinds of not-so-suited "priests" and monks.  On the brighter side, the assumed survival of childbirth by women is a fairly recent phenomenon, thanks to modern medicine, but for centuries recovery from childbirth was celebrated as the "churching of women".  There is no purification per se, but the Biblical Purification of Mary was the model for it, a blessing and celebration of the woman's health and ability to return to usual activities.  The rite is called Benedictio mulieris post partum (Latin for "blessing of a woman after having given birth") and is still practiced in some places, though Vatican II ash canned it in the Ordinary Form of the liturgy.. 

So What's A Candlemas? This.

So what do we have here? Later, Christianed-over versions of universal themes, or, universal themes that derive from natural knowledge of God, and therefore have something to them, but could never even have guessed the Law and Gospel in the revealed word of God in Scripture.

Well, as we saw with Christmas and will see with Easter, both. You got your choice. Yeah, there is 2 February as modern and presumably more civilised and less superstitious observances that Winter will end sooner or later and nice weather come back -- Groundhog Day, which also has the advantage that you're way less likely to have the cops called on your Groundhog Day party than if you try to have a Lupercalia.

And, there's 2 February as something to which these things have only the crudest of inklings in the fallen heart of Man -- The Presentation of Our Lord and the Purification of Mary.

Collect for Candlemas, to collect our thoughts for the day. (From The Lutheran Hymnal)

Almighty and ever-living God, we humbly beseech Thy majesty that, as Thine only-begotten Son was this day presented in the Temple in the substance of our flesh, so we may be presented unto Thee with pure and clean hearts; by the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end.