history of calendrical coincidence
2004.08.18 15:12
Re: new member, etc.
2001.08.14
Don't forget that August 18 is both the feast of Saint Helena and the anniversary of the Rape of the Sabine Women -- a strange (but perhaps even intentional?) coincidence of paradigm shifting ancient Roman motherhood, for sure. As I like to say, "Better late antiquity then never!"
Re: new member, etc.
2001.08.15
Dear Stephen
Having spent some time thinking about Helena (as later venerated) in terms of the possible absorption of aspects of Helen of Troy, I should be very interested indeed to hear more from you regarding the calendrical coincidence of Helena and the Sabine Women.
Best wishes
Graham Jones
Helena: calendrical coincidences
2001.08.15
Dear Graham:
Regarding Helena and calendrical coincidences I have a few more examples besides that of 18 August.
While Helena is revered as saint in the Roman Catholic Church, both Helena and Constantine are revered as saints in the Eastern/Greek Catholic Church, and, moreover, Helena and Constantine there share the same feast day, 21 May. The second Agonalia, a Roman 'festo' in honor of Janus is also on 21 May. Since Janus had two faces, one that looked forward and the other that look backward, I find it interesting that 21 May also celebrates double saints. Furthermore, Constantine and Helena themselves come to represent a 'Janus' like situation in that they too were at a distinct historical edge from which one could look back at the Pagan world and ahead towards the Christian world.
The dedication date for Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome is 20 March. This church is the remaining vestige of the Sessorian Palace which served as Helena's Roman residence very likely from late 312 to 326, and the story goes that Helena had a chapel built within the palace, and in this chapel was deposited ground/dirt from Golgotha along with many other relics including a piece of the Cross, hence the name 'Holy Cross in Jerusalem'. According to the Freund Latin - English Dictionary (under Bellona) 20 March is the "dies sanguinis", the day of blood when Bellona's (sister of Mars and goddess of war) priests and priestesses "gashed their arms and shoulders and offered their blood to the goddess." What I think is interesting here is that Santa Croce in Gerusalemme also represents an intense day of blood, namely Christ's crucifixion.
We are probably all here familiar with the notion that Christmas is a 'christianization' of the Sol Invectus feast, and I'm beginning to believe that there may well have been a deliberate design of Christian 'usurpation' of Pagan feasts, especially in Rome where apparently virtually every week there was something Pagan to celebrate. The above examples only strengthen my conviction.
Steve
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