Note 410 — Chapter VI · VILLAGE FESTIVALS

Schaff, v. 403; Duchesne, 240; Rock, iii. 2. 71, 94, 98, 107, 244; Feasey, 184; Wordsworth, 204; Frazer, iii. 245; Jahn, 129; Grimm, ii. 616; Simpson, 198. The formulae of the benedictio ignis and benedictio cereorum at Candlemas, and the benedictio ignis, benedictio incensi, and benedictio cerei on Easter Eve, are in Sarum Missal, 334, 697; York Missal, i. 109; ii. 17. One York MS. has ‘Paschae ignis de berillo vel de silice exceptus ... accenditur.’ The correspondence between Pope Zacharias and St. Boniface shows that the lighting of the ignis by a crystal instead of from a lamp kept secretly burning distinguished Gallican from Roman ceremonial in the eighth century (Jaffé, 2291). All the lights in the church are previously put out, and this itself has become a ceremony in the Tenebrae. Ecclesiastical symbolism explained the extinction and rekindling of lights as typifying the Resurrection. Sometimes the ignis provides a light for the folk-fire outside.