HOLT
424
HOLY
Holy Saturday. — In the primitive Church Holy
Saturday was kuowTi as (ireat, or Grand, Saturday,
Holy Saturday, the Angelic Night, the Vigil of Easter,
etc. It is no longer, like Maundy Thursday, a day of
joy, but one of joy and sadness intermingled; it is the
close of the season of Lent and penance, and the begin-
ning of paschal time, which is one of rejoicing. By a
noteworthy exception, in the early Church this was the
only Saturday on which fasting was permitted (Con-
stit. Apost., VII, 2:il, and the fast was one of special
severity. Dating from the time of St. Irenteus, an
absolute fast from every kind of food was observed for
the forty hours preceding the feast of Easter, and
although the moment assigned for breaking the fast at
dawn on Sunday varied according to time and country,
the abstinence from food on Holy Saturday was gen-
eral. The night of the vigil of Easter has undergone a
strange displacement. During tlie first six or seven
centuries, ceremonies were in progress throughout the
entire night, so that the Alleluia coincided with the
day and moment of the Resurrection. In the eighth
century these same ceremonies were held on Saturday
afternoon and, by a singular anachronism, were later
on conducted on Saturday morning, thus the time for
carrying out the solemnity was advanced almost a
whole day. Thanks to this change, special services
were now assigned to Holy Saturday whereas, before-
hand, it had had none until the late hour of the vigil.
This vigil opened with the blessing of the new fire, the lighting of lamps and candles and of the paschal candle, ceremonies that have lost much of their symbolism by being anticipated and advanced from twilight to broad davlight. St. Cyril of Jerusalem spoke of this night that was as bright as day, and Constantine the Great added unprecedented splendour to its brilliancy by a profusion of lamps and enormous torches, so that not only basilicas, but private houses, streets, and public si|uares were resplendent with the hght that was symljolic of the Risen Christ. The as- semljled faithful gave themselves up to common prayer, the singing of psalms and hjTnns, and the read- ing of the Scriptures commentated by the bishop or priests. The vigil of Easter was e-specially devoted to the baptism of catechumens who, in the more'inipor- tant churches, were very numerous. On the Holy Saturday following the deposition of St. John Chrysos- tom from the See of Constantinople, there were 3000 catechumens in this church alone. Such numbers ■were, of course, only encountered in large cities; nev- ertheless, as Holy Saturday and the vigil of Pentecost "were the only days on which baptism was adminis- tered, even in smaller churches there was always a goodly numljer of catechumens. This meeting of people in the darkness of the night often occasioned abuses which the clergy felt powerless to prevent by active supervision unless by so anticipating the cere- monies that all of them could take place in daylight. Ral)anus Maurus, an ecclesiastical writer of the ninth century (De cleric. Instit., II, 2S), gives a detailed account of the ceremony of Holy Saturday. The con- gregation remained silent in the church awaiting the dawn of the Resurrection, joining at intervals in the psalmody and chant and listening to the reading of the lessons. These rites were identical with tho.se in the primitive Church and were solemnized at the same hours, as the faithful throughout the world had not yet consented to anticipate the Easter vigil and it was only during the Middle .\ges that uniformity on this point wasestablislied.
H. Leclercq.
Holy See (Lat. Sancta Sedcs, Holy Chair), a term derivetl from the enthronement-ceremony of the bish- ops of Rome. The seat or chair in question must not be confounded with the ancient sedes gestatoria in the centre of the apse of St. Peter's, and immemorially venerated as the cathedra Petri, or Chair of Peter; the
term means, in a general sense, the actual seat (i. e.
residence) of the supreme pastor of the Church, to-
gether with the various ecclesiastical authorities who
constitute the central administration. In this canoni-
cal and diplomatic sense, the term is synonjonous with
"Apostolic See", "Holy Apostolic See", "Roman
Church ", "Roman Ciiria ". The origin of the.se terms
can only be approximately ascertained. The word
sedes, "chair", is an old technical term ap])licablc to
all episcopal sees. It was first used to designate the
Churches founded by t he .\postles; later the word was
applied to the princii>al Christian Churches. These
ecclesim dictiB wajures were understood to be the five
great patriarchal .sees of Christian anti()uity: Rome,
Alexandria, .Antioch, Jeru.-^alem, and Constantinople.
To these the word sedes was applied: "quod in lis
episcopi sederent in thronis ", and of Rome it was ex-
pressly said: "Romana quidem erat prima sedes
propria dicta." Thus, Gelasius I (492^90) at a Ro-
man council: "Est ergo prima Petri apostoli sedes."
In the earliest Christian writings, also, we often find
references to the see or chair of Peter: "Se<let in cathe-
dra Petri". Tliroughout the early Middle Ages the
term was constantly in official use. Thus, in the
"Liber Pontificalis" (ed. Duchesne, II, Paris, 1892,
7), under Leo III (70.5-.S16) : " Nos .sedem apostolicam,
quse est caput omniuin Dei ecclesianim. judicare non
audemus." (We dare not judge the .\postolic See,
which is the head of all the Churches of (!od.) We
can thus readily understand how Hoi)/ See came to
be the technical term for the pope, the central eccle-
siastical government, and the actual abode of the
same.
The papal reservations of benefices, customary in the MitliUe .\ges. made necessary a more e.xact knowl- edge of the location of the " Holy Sec ", e. g. when the incumlient of a benefice hap|5ened to die "apud sanc- tam sedem ". Where w'as the " Holy See ", when the pope lived apart from the ordinarj' central adminis- tration? From the thirteenth to the fifteenth century we find no satisfactory .solution of this <|uestion, and can only observe the decisions of the Curia in individ- ual cases. Thus, it was not deemed necessary that the pope should reside in Rome: " Ubi Papa, ibi Curia", i. e., it was taken for gr.-inted that the Curia or machin- ery of achninistratidii always followed the pope. This is clearly shown by an interesting case under Nicholas III, who lived at Soriano from 8 June, 1280, till his death on 22 August of the same year. There were with him only his personal attendants, and the offi- cials in charge of the papal seal (hidlatnres) . The Curia, properly speaking, was at Viterbo, whither the pope frequently went to transact affairs, and where he also gave audiences: ".\udientiam suara fecit." Nevertheless, he ordered Bulls to be dateii from Sori- ano, which was done (Baumgarten, ".\us K. und Kammer", Freiburg, 1907, 279). More than a cen- tury later, as appears from the official rules drawn up under Benedict XIII (Pedro de Luna; rules 14S, 151, 158) and John XXllI (rule 08), this important point was still undecided. The aforesaid rules of Benedict XIII and John XXIII appeared on 28 November, 1404, and 5 June, \l\'A. respectively (Von Ottenthal, "Die papstlichen Kanzlcirogein von Johann XXll bis Nikolaus V". Innsbruck, ISSS, pp. 148, 151, 152, and 185). During the journey of Martin V (1417-1431) from Constance to Rome it frequently occurred that the pope ;ind ecclesiastical authorities were separated from each other; even at this late date the official location of the "Holy See", in as far as this was legally important, was not yet authoritatively fixed. This uncertainty, says Bangen, caused Clement VIII to draw up the Constitution: "Cum ob nonnuUas", in which it is laid down that, if the pope and the pontif- ical administration should not reside in the same place, the utterances of both are authoritative, pro- vided they are in agreement with each other. Covar-
