Easter 2024 is here and one wonders what a medieval Easter with the Knights Templar might have involved. For a start, you would have just completed the misery of forty days of fasting for Lent – marking the time period Jesus spent in the desert being tempted by Satan. Meat, dairy, and eggs would have been off the menu for weeks and you would have been sick of the sight of fish. So, Easter was a time for genuine rejoicing.
On the final Sunday of Lent, the faithful celebrated the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem. He entered the city on a donkey while his disciples strew the path before him with palm fronds. As a child, I remember this being re-enacted in our local Catholic church where we waved some kind of vegetation at an actor playing Jesus. In the Middle Ages, bits of yew would have been used for the same purpose with the congregation following the priests and monks as they prayed before the stations of the cross.
DISCOVER: Medieval killer priests!
The rite of mass and sung hymns were all in Latin – as was the case right up until the 1960s in the Roman Catholic church. On the Wednesday of Holy Week, approaching Easter, the veil covering the altar was removed with a flourish. While on Maundy Thursday, the Tenebrae was produced. This was a a triangular lectern holding twenty-four candles representing the prophets and apostles. Each candle was extinguished in turn – leaving on the light of Christ. More famously, the feet of the poor were washed by the monks on this day – an act of supreme humility.
Good Friday was a day mixed with gladness and sorrow. It was the final day of Christ’s life on Earth leading to the ultimate sacrifice on the cross at Calvary. There was a curious ceremony known as ‘Creeping to the Cross’, where monks, priests, and the congregation abased themselves before a crucifix, kissing its feet. Now, I did this once – at Downside Abbey – as a child, and decided not to repeat the experience. Decided that kissing an area where so many other lips had just gone was less than hygienic. I was a fussy youngster!
The burial of Christ would then be re-enacted in an Easter Sepulchre – essentially a tent that was intended to represent the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. This was the most sacred church in Christendom and the Knights Templar built many of their churches in a circular design intended to copy its rotunda. On Easter Saturday, the Paschal Candle would be lit.
In the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem this was said to happen magically within the actual tomb of Jesus. Essentially, holy fire was believed to descend directly from heaven to the candle held by the priest in the privacy of the tomb. He would then emerge to light everybody else’s candles. In the year 1009, this was condemned as superstition by the Muslim Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim, who was the ruler of Jerusalem, and in an orgy of sectarian destruction, he flattened the Holy Sepulchre.
While in the year 1109, two years after Roman Catholic crusaders seized Jerusalem, the holy fire failed to light when Catholic priests attempted to do what Byzantine orthodox priests had managed for centuries. The following year, it was decided to let the orthodox priests back in to run the show. While in 1238, Pope Gregory IX denounced the miracle as a fraud.
On Easter Sunday, the church’s crucifix was removed from the Easter Sepulchre and reinstalled at the high altar. Christ had risen from the dead! This was the occasion for the most sumptuous mass of the year. After all, the Resurrection – as Saint Paul had written – was the sole criteria for the existence of the Christian faith. No resurrection – no church.
