On This Day In Roman History, February 22
The Roman festival of the Caristia, sometimes known as the Cara Cognatio, is celebrated in ancient Rome on February 22. This private holiday was mainly celebrated in one's own home, and looked to celebrate and commemorate the personal family bonds. The family would dine together all day, lighting incense to the personal family Lares. These Lares were guardian deities most likely being a representing hero-ancestors or family guardians of the hearth/home. This holiday follows the trends seen in early February, especially in the context of Parentalia, honoring past family members. This holiday, unlike other Roman public holidays, was allowed to fall on an even numbered date simply because it was privately observed.
Did you know?
This holiday was practiced and even flourished well into the 6th-century. The Caristia was on the calendar long into the late Roman Empire during Christian rule, and in many ways tranformed into a Christian tradition. Polemius Silvius was responsible for re-writing the Julian calendar to help better integrate Christian holidays into the Roman-Pagan festival cycle. He replaced Caristia with a feast day commemorating the burial of St. Peter and St. Paul, and branding the day as a "love feast". Finally, during the late 6th-century, many of the traditions associated with this festival were deemed too "Pagan". Things like dancing, singing, and drinking were deemed simply too "demonic" to be kept around.
Pictured: Roman fresco from the lararium of the house of Iulius Polybius (IX 13,3) in Pompeii. Depicts Ancestral sacrifices. Picture by Wikipedia user WolfgangRieger, via Wikimedia Commons.
Ovid writes in jest of the holiday stating that the only way to truly enjoy Caristia is by excluding family members who would normally be causing trouble within the household.
Many homes had a Lararium where they would display the family Lares. Some could dedicate an entire wall and stone cut mural, while more modest homes would have something closer to a six inch statue depiction within an indent of a wall. Some homes, like that of the image shown, had two Laraiums, one being outside for public purposes, the other the mentioned inside for personal family practices.
Opinion
Welcome to my daily opinion! I was at first puzzled why some of the more "gruesome" festivals like that of Feralia mentioned a few days ago, can be celebrated nearly back to back with a seemingly wholesome holiday. It starts to make sense, however, as one compares what the true purposes of each holiday meant to the people celebrating them. Both of these holidays are celebrating the purpose of family, both living and past. They really seem to remember and honor those who are still living and have a respectful, if not also pretty creepy, take on the deceased. It is also interesting to think this holiday was one of the few that almost made it through the Christian purge of pagan holidays. We were only a few hundred years off from celebrating this one!
Sources
Beard, M., North, J., & Price, S. R. (2013). Religions of Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clarke, J. R. (2007). The houses of Roman Italy, 100 B.C. - A.D. 250: ritual, space, and decoration. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
Naso, P. O., & Wiseman, A. (2013). Ovid, Fasti. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
Further Reading:
Special Thanks: Michael Houghan
No comments:
Post a Comment