United States or Samoa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Some scholars have attempted to explain the difference between these two festivals on the assumption that the Parentalia represents the commemoration of the duly buried dead, the Lemuria the apotropaic right for the aversion of the unburied, and therefore hostile spirits; but Ovid has given a far more significant hint, when he tells us that the Lemuria was the more ancient festival of the two.
There were a number of these days in the year, three of them scattered through the year: August 24, October 5, November 8; and two sets of days: February 13-21 and May 9, 11, 13. The February celebration, the so-called Parentalia, was calm and dignified and represented all that was least superstitious and fearful in the generally terrifying worship of the dead.
It was impossible to observe separately the anniversaries of departed millions, and therefore a day was set apart for religious ceremonies in honor of all ancestors. Hindoo and Chinese families have from time immemorial consecrated such days; and the Romans observed a similar anniversary under the name of Parentalia.
There he perused the various editions of Vitruvius and Palladio, as well as Wren's 'Parentalia. He found a rich store of ancient architectural remains in the British Museum, which he studied with great care: antiquities from Athens, Baalbec, Palmyra, and Herculaneum; "so that," he says, "what with the information I was before possessed of, and that which I have now accumulated, I think I have obtained a tolerably good general notion of architecture."
Lastly, the same kind of feeling which added Parentalia to Lemuria developed the vague general notion of the Di Manes, not the deified spirits of the dead, but peaceful and on the whole kindly divinities holding sway in the world of dead spirits, yet accessible to the prayers of the living.
This double attitude is precisely that of the savage tribes referred to above. The same difference of feeling appears in the Roman cults: the manes are the friendly or doubtful souls of dead ancestors; the Parentalia is a festival in honor of the dead kin; in the Lemuria, on the other hand, the father of the family performs a ceremony at midnight intended to rid the house of ghosts.
Christians retained this ancient custom, but it took a new coloring from their peculiar circumstances. The ties of the church were substituted for ties of kindred. Its members were considered spiritual fathers and brothers, and there was an annual festival in honor of spiritual ancestors. The forms greatly resembled those of the Roman Parentalia.
Ambrose compared the institution to the Pagan Parentalia. Clement says, probably referring to the Agapæ, "the shameless use of the rite occasions foul suspicion and evil reports." Others are more precise in their charges. That the Agapæ became the legitimate cause of complaint is admitted by all.
As civilisation increased, and the sense of the unity of household and community developed, fear, proving ungrounded, gave place to a kindlier feeling of the continued existence of the dead as members of household and state, and even in some sense as an additional bond between the living: this is the period which produced the sacra privata and the Parentalia.
Finally, of course, there is that vague body, the Di Manes, 'the good gods, the principal deities of the world of the dead; to them invocations are addressed, and they have their place in the formulæ of the parentalia and the opening of the mundi. In connection with them, acting as a link with the female deities, we have the strange goddess Genita Mana, the 'spirit of birth and death.
Word Of The Day