A CLERK OF OXFORD, a blog about medieval England, has a number of interesting posts about the celebration of Candlemas, or the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, which brings to a close the 40-day liturgical Christmas season and marks the occasion when Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem. On this day, candles are blessed and carried in procession. From the day’s Gospel:

At that time: After the days of Mary’s purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they carried Jesus to Jerusalem, to present Him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord: Every male opening the womb shall be called holy to the Lord; and to offer a sacrifice according as it is written in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle-doves, or two young pigeons. And behold there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was in him. And he had received an answer from the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord. And he came by the Spirit into the temple. And when His parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for Him according to the custom of the law: he also took Him into his arms, and blessed God, and said: Now Thou dost dismiss Thy servant, O Lord, according to Thy word, in peace: because my eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples; a light to the revelation of the gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel. GOSPEL. Luke ii. 22 – 32: 

The Clerk of Oxford writes:

The name ‘Candlemas’ dates from the Anglo-Saxon period (the first recorded appearance of the name is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle‘s entry on the death of Svein Forkbeard in 1014), and there’s plentiful and evocative evidence of the observance of this feast in England from the tenth century onwards. In the past I’ve posted an Anglo-Saxon sermon for this feast, a Candlemas miracle-story about St Dunstan, Cnut’s Candlemas song at Ely, a particularly lovely Middle English Candlemas carol ‘The queen of bliss and of beauty’, and Margery Kempe’s description of her experience of the celebrations of this day – five centuries of Candlemas Days.

The liturgy for this day is particularly dramatic, encouraging the congregation to re-enact the Gospel story by bearing the light of Christ in their hands. The Presentation in the Temple is also represented in medieval drama, in several different versions, so here are a few short extracts, in modernised spelling, from the fifteenth-century N-Town Plays. The full text can be found here, and you might like to compare the treatment of the same subject from the York Corpus Christi Plays.

The play begins with the aged Simeon, expressing his desire to see God before he dies: [cont.]

Please follow and like us: