esentation of Christ in the Temple. In the Greek
Church it is known as [Greek: Upapante tou Kuriou] ("the meeting of the
Lord," i.e. with Simeon and Anna), in the West as the Purification of
the Blessed Virgin. It is the most ancient of all the festivals in
honour of the Virgin Mary. A description is given of its celebration at
Jerusalem in the _Peregrinatio_ of Etheria (Silvia), in the second half
of the 4th century. It was then kept on the 14th of February, forty days
after Epiphany, the celebration of the Nativity (Christmas) not having
been as yet introduced; the Armenians still keep it on this day, as "the
Coming of the Son of God into the Temple." The celebration gradually
spread to other parts of the church, being moved to the 2nd of February,
forty days after the newly established feast of Christmas. In 542 it was
established throughout the entire East Roman empire by Justinian. Its
introduction in the West is somewhat obscure. The 8th-century _Gelasian
Sacramentary_, which embodies a much older tradition, mentions it under
the title of Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which has led some
to suppose that it was ordained by Pope Gelasius I. in 492[1] as a
counter-attraction to the heathen Lupercalia; but for this there is no
warrant. The procession on this day was introduced by Pope Sergius I.
(687-701). The custom of blessing the candles for the whole year on this
day, whence the name Candlemas is derived, did not come into common use
until the 11th century.

In the _Quadragesimae de Epiphania_ as described by Etheria there is, as
Monsignor Duchesne points out (_Christian Worship_, p. 272), no
indication of a special association with the Blessed Virgin; and the
distinction between the festival as celebrated in the East and West is
that in the former it is a festival of Christ, in the latter a festival
pre-eminently of the Virgin Mother.

See L. Duchesne, _Christian Worship_ (Eng. trans., London, 1904); art.
s.v. by F.G. Holweck in the _Catholic Encyclopaedia_.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] So Baronius, _Ann. ad ann._ 544.

CANDLESTICK, the receptacle for holding a candle, nowadays made in
various art-forms. The word was formerly used for any form of support on
which lights, whether candles or lamps, were fixed; thus a candelabrum
(q.v.) is sometimes spoken of from tradition as a candlestick, e.g. as
when Moses was commanded to make a candlestick for the tabernacle, of
hammered gold, a talent in weigh