on which, according to tradition, he took possession of the Roman bishopric. AYitli this there was also an Antiochian St. Peter's day on the eighteenth of January, in memoiy of the supposed episcopal reign of this apostle in Antioch. The Catholic liturgists dispute which of the two feasts is the older. After Leo the Great, the bishops used to keep their Natales. Subsequently the feast of the Chains of Peter ^ was intro- duced in memory of the chains which Peter wore, according to Acts xii. 6, under Herod at Jerusalem, and, according to the Poman legend, in the prison at Pome under Nero. 3. The feast of John, the apostle and evangelist, on the twenty-seventh of December, has already been mentioned in connection with the Christmas cycle.* 4. Likewise the feast of the protomartyr Stephen, on the twenty- sixth of December, after the fourth century." 5. The feast of John the Baptist, the last representative ' JS'aialis apoatolorum Petri et Pauli. ■ Festum caihedrcB Petri. ' Festum catenarum Petri, commonly Petri ad vincula, on the first of August. According to the legend, the Herodian Peter's-chain, which the empress Eudoxia, wife of Theodosius 11., discovered on a pilgrimage in Jerusalem, and sent as a pre- cious relic to Rome, miraculously united with the Xeronian Peter's-chain at Rome on the first contact, so that the two have since formed only one holy and inseparable chain ! " Comp. § 77, p. 398. ' Ibid. 444: THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. of the saints before Christ. This was, contrary to the geuerai. rule, a feast of his birth, not his martyrdom, and, with reference to the birth festival of the Lord on the twenty-fifth of Decem- ber, was celebrated six months earlier, on the twenty-fonrth of June, the summer solstice. This was intended to signify at once his relation to Christ and his well-known word : " He must increase, but I must decrease." He represented the de- creasing sun of the ancient covenant ; Christ, the rising sun of the new.' In order to celebrate more especially the martyr- dom of the Baptist, a feast of the beheading of John,'^ on the twenty-ninth of August, was afterward introduced ; but this never became so important and popular as the feast of his birth. 6. To be just to all the heroes of the faith, the Greek churcli, after the fourth century, celebrated a feast of All Saints on the Sunday after Pentecost (the Latin festival of the Trinity).'* The Latin church, after 610, kept a similar feast, the Festum Omnium Sanctorum, on the first of November; but this did not come into general use till after the ninth cen- tury. 7. The feast of the Archangel Michael,* the leader of the iiosts of angels, and the representative of the church trium- phant,^ on the twenty-ninth of September. This owes its origin to some miraculous appearances of Michael in the Cath- olic legends.* The worship of the angels developed itself sim- ' Comp.