Euchologion of about the year 795, now in the Vatican. The prayers recite that at His baptism Christ hallowed the waters by His presence in Jordan,[1] and ask that they may now be blessed by the Holy Spirit visiting them, by its power and inworking, as the streams of Jordan were blessed. So they will be able to purify soul and body of all who draw up and partake of them. The hymn sung contains such clauses as these:
“To-day the grace of the Holy Spirit hallowing the waters appears (ἐπιφαίνεται, cf. Epiphany) . . . To-day the systems of waters spread out their backs under the Lord’s footsteps. To-day the unseen is seen, that he may reveal himself to us. To-day the Increate is of his own will ordained (lit. hath hands laid on him) by his own creature. To-day the Unbending bends his neck to his own servant, in order to free us from servitude. To-day we were liberated from darkness and are illumined by light of divine knowledge. To-day for us the Lord by means of rebirth (lit. palingenesy) of the Image reshapes the Archetype.”
This last clause is obscure. In the Armenian hymns the ideas of the rebirth not only of believers, but of Jesus, and of the latter’s ordination by John, are very prominent.
The history of the Epiphany feast may be summed up thus:—
From the Jews the Church took over the feasts of Pascha and Pentecost; and Sunday was a weekly commemoration of the Resurrection. It was inevitable, however, that believers should before long desire to commemorate the Baptism, with which the oldest form of evangelical tradition began, and which was widely regarded as the occasion when the divine life began in Jesus; when the Logos or Holy Spirit appeared and rested on Him, conferring upon Him spiritual unction as the promised Messiah; when, according to an old reading of Luke iii. 22, He was begotten of God. Perhaps the Ebionite Christians of Palestine first instituted the feast, and this, if a fact, must underlie the statement of John of Nice, a late but well-informed writer (c. 950), that it was fixed by the disciples of John the Baptist who were present at Jesus’ Baptism. The Egyptian gnostics anyhow had the feast and set it on January 6, a day of the blessing of the Nile. It was a feast of Adoptionist complexion, as one of its names, viz. the Birthday (Greek γενέθλια, Latin Natalicia or Natalis dies), implies. This explains why in east and west the feast of the physical Birth was for a time associated with it; and to justify this association it was suggested that Jesus was baptized just on His thirtieth birthday. In Jerusalem and Syria it was perhaps the Ebionite or Adoptionist, we may add also the Gnostic, associations of the Baptism that caused this aspect of Epiphany to be relegated to the background, so that it became wholly a feast of the miraculous birth. At the same time other epiphanies of Christ were superadded, e.g. of Cana where Christ began His miracles by turning water into wine and manifested forth His glory, and of the Star of the Magi. Hence it is often called the Feast of Epiphanies (in the plural). In the West the day is commonly called the Feast of the three kings, and its early significance as a commemoration of the Baptism and season of blessing the waters has been obscured; the Eastern churches, however, of Greece, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Egypt, Syria have been more conservative. In the far East it is still the season of seasons for baptisms, and in Armenia children born long before are baptized at it. Long ago it was a baptismal feast in Sicily, Spain, Italy (see Pope Gelasius to the Lucanian Bishops), Africa and Ireland. In the Manx prayer-book of Bishop Phillips of the year 1610 Epiphany is called the “little Nativity” (La nolicky bigge), and the Sunday which comes between December 25 and January 6 is “the Sunday between the two Nativities,” or Jih dúni oedyr ’a Nolick; Epiphany itself is the “feast of the water vessel,” lail ymmyrt uyskey, or “of the well of water,” Chibbyrt uysky.
Authorities.—Gregory Nazianz., Orat. xli.; Suicer, Thesaurus, s.v. ἐπιφάνεια; Cotelerius In constit. Apost. (Antwerp, 1698), lib. v. cap. 13; R. Bingham, Antiquities (London, 1834), bk. xx.; Ad. Jacoby, Bericht über die Taufe Jesu (Strassburg, 1902); H. Blumenbach, Antiquitates Epiphaniorum (Leipzig, 1737); J. L. Schulze, De festo Sanctorum Luminum, ed. J. E. Volbeding (Leipzig, 1841); and K. A. H. Kellner, Heortologie (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1906). (See also the works enumerated under Christmas.) (F. C. C.)
EPIRUS, or Epeirus, an ancient district of Northern Greece
extending along the Ionian Sea from the Acroceraunian
promontory on the N. to the Ambracian gulf on the S. It was
conterminous on the landward side with Illyria, Macedonia and
Thessaly, and thus corresponds to the southern portion of Albania
(q.v.). The name Epirus (Ἤπειρος) signified “mainland,” and
was originally applied to the whole coast southward to the
Corinthian Gulf, in contradistinction to the neighbouring islands,
Corcyra, Leucas, &c. The country is all mountainous, especially
towards the east, where the great rivers of north-western Greece—Achelous,
Arachthus and Aous—rise in Mt Lacmon, the back-bone
of the Pindus chain. In ancient times Epirus did not
produce corn sufficient for the wants of its inhabitants; but it
was celebrated, as it has been almost to the present day, for its
cattle and its horses. According to Theopompus (4th cent. B.C.),
the Epirots were divided into fourteen independent tribes,
of which the principal were the Chaones, the Thesproti and
the Molossi. The Chaones (perhaps akin to the Chones who
dwelt in the heel of Italy) inhabited the Acroceraunian shore,
the Molossians the inland districts round the lake of Pambotis
(mod. Jannina), and the Thesprotians the region to the north
of the Ambracian gulf. In spite of its distance from the chief
centres of Greek thought and action, and the barbarian repute
of its inhabitants, Epirus was believed to have exerted at an
early period no small influence on Greece, by means more especially
of the oracle of Dodona. Aristotle even placed in Epirus the
original home of the Hellenes. But in historic times its part
in Greek history is mainly passive. The states of Greece proper
founded a number of colonies on its coast, which formed stepping-stones
towards the Adriatic and the West. Of these one of the
earliest and most flourishing was the Corinthian colony of
Ambracia, which gives its name to the neighbouring gulf. Elatria,
Bucheta and Pandosia, in Thesprotia, originated from Elis.
Among the other towns in the country the following were of some
importance. In Chaonia: Palaeste and Chimaera, fortified
posts to which the dwellers in the open country could retire in
time of war; Onchesmus or Anchiasmus, opposite Corcyra
(Corfu), now represented by Santi Quarante; Phoenice, still
so called, the wealthiest of all the native cities of Epirus, and
after the fall of the Molossian kingdom the centre of an Epirotic
League; Buthrotum, the modern Butrinto; Phanote, important
in the Roman campaigns in Epirus; and Adrianopolis,
founded by the emperor whose name it bore. In Thesprotia:
Cassope, the chief town of the most powerful of the Thesprotian
clans; and Ephyra, afterwards Cichyrus, identified by W. M.
Leake with the monastery of St John 3 or 4 m. from Phanari,
and by C. Bursian with Kastri at the northern end of the
Acherusian Lake. In Molossia: Passaron, where the kings
were wont to take the oath of the constitution and receive their
people’s allegiance; and Tecmon, Phylace and Horreum, all
of doubtful identification. The Byzantine town of Rogus is
probably the same as the modern Luro, the Greek Oropus.
History.—The kings, or rather chieftains, of the Molossians, who ultimately extended their power over all Epirus, claimed to be descended from Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, who, according to legend, settled in the country after the sack of Troy, and transmitted his kingdom to Molossus, his son by Andromache. The early history of the dynasty is very obscure; but Admetus, who lived in the 5th century B.C., is remembered for his hospitable reception of the banished Themistocles, in spite of the fact that the great Athenian had persuaded his countrymen to refuse the alliance tardily offered by the Molossians when victory against the Persians was already secured. Admetus was succeeded, about 429 B.C., by his son or grandson, Tharymbas or Arymbas I., who being placed by a decree of the people under the guardianship of Sabylinthus, chief of the Atintanes, was educated at Athens, and at a later date introduced a higher civilization among his subjects. Alcetas, the next king mentioned in history, was restored to his throne by Dionysius of Syracuse about 385 B.C. His son Arymbas II. (who succeeded by the death of his brother Neoptolemus) ruled with prudence and equity, and gave encouragement to literature and the arts.
- ↑ The same idea is frequent in Epiphany homilies of Chrysostom and other 4th-century fathers.
