aturnalia, and several other festivals, were
celebrated on the calends of January; Christmas was fixed at the
same epoch. The Lupercalia, a pretended festival of purification,
took place during the calends of February; the Christian
purification (Candlemas) was celebrated on the 2d of February. The
festival of Augustus, celebrated on the calends of August, was
replaced by that of St Peter _in vinculis_, established on the 1st
of that month. The inhabitants of the country, ever anxious about
the safety of their crops, obstinately retained the celebration of
the _Ambarvalia_; St Mamert established in the middle of the fifth
century the _Rogations_, which in their form differ very little from
the _Ambarvalia_. On comparing the Christian calendar with the Pagan
one, it is impossible not to be struck by the great concordance
between the two. Now, can we consider this concordance as the effect
of chance? It is principally in the usages peculiar only to some
churches that we may trace the spirit of concessions with which
Christianity was animated during the first centuries of its
establishment. Thus, at Catania, where the Pagans were celebrating
the festival of Ceres after harvest, the church of that place
consented to delay to that time the festival of the Visitation,
which is celebrated everywhere else on the 2d July."--_F. Aprile
Cronologia Universale di Sicilia_, p. 601. I would recommend to
those who wish to study this subject the work of _Marangoni_, a very
interesting work, though its author (whose object was to convince
the Protestants who attacked the discipline of the Roman Catholic
Church on account of these concessions) tried to break the evident
connection which exists between certain Christian and Pagan
festivals.

_ 21 Author's Note._--"There are at Rome even now several churches which
had formerly been pagan temples, and thirty-nine of them have been
built on the foundations of such temples."--_Marangoni_, pp. 236-268.
There is no country in Europe where similar examples are not found.
It is necessary to remark, that all these transformations began at
the end of the fifth century.

_ 22 Author's Note._--At Rome four churches have pagan names, viz:--_S.
Maria Sopra Minerva_, _S. Maria Aventina_, _St Lorenzo in Mat