History

The Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude is celebrated on October 28th. The Church commemorates them together due to ancient Christian traditions and writings that suggest their collaboration in spreading the Gospel and a shared martyrdom in distant Persia. Their cooperation and shared mission continue to inspire and guide the Christian community, reminding us that great deeds can be accomplished by working together.

St. Simon the Zealot
St. Simon was a devoted disciple of Jesus (Matt. 10:4, Mk. 3:18, Lk. 6:15, Acts 1:13). He was distinguished from Simon Peter because he was called “The Zealot” by Luke or “The Canaanite” (Matthew, Mark). His epithet “Zealot” or “Zelotes” suggests that Simon may have belonged to the Zealot party. This ardent Jewish nationalist group resisted Roman occupation. While the Bible doesn’t explicitly confirm this connection, it underscores Simon’s passion and fervor for his beliefs and serving Christ with dedication. St. Simon the Zealot is one of the lesser-detailed apostles in the New Testament, and as such, much of his iconographic representation has been established by tradition. Art often depicts him with a saw due to his alleged martyrdom from being sawn in half.

St. Jude (Thaddeus)
St. Jude, also known as “Thaddaeus,” (Matthew, Mark) was another faithful disciple of Jesus (Matt. 10:3, Mk. 3:18, Lk. 6:16, Acts 1:13). Luke calls him “Judas ,son James”. He is not that Judas! He is specifically remembered for his inquiry into why Jesus revealed himself to only a select few rather than the entire world. This intriguing question, posed by St. Jude in John 14:22-24, reflects his contemplative nature. Catholics believe the Apostle Jude, who is referred to twice as “Jude, the brother of James” (Lk. 6:16, Acts 1:13) to be the same as the brother of St. James of Jerusalem and a relative of Jesus, who wrote the Epistle of Jude (Jude 1:1). Protestants differ on this, taking a more direct reading of James of Jerusalem and the Epistle of Jude’s author as brothers of Jesus (Matt.13:55, Mark 6:3) and, therefore, unable to be the same as the apostles.

Brothers in Apostleship
Both St. Simon and St. Jude were witnesses to significant moments in the life of Jesus and the early Christian community. They followed Jesus as he preached and ministered until his crucifixion, witnessed his resurrection, received his teachings during the 40 days post-resurrection, and were present at his ascension. Their enduring commitment led them to the upper room, where they joined fellow disciples in awaiting the promised Holy Spirit and became apostles of the Early Church.

Tradition holds that they ventured to distant Persia, where they fearlessly preached the Gospel. Their unwavering dedication to spreading the Good News ultimately led to their martyrdom. St. Simon’s and St. Jude’s relics are believed to be located in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

The Acts of St. Simon and St. Jude
The Acts of Simon and Jude is an apocryphal text that narrates the missionary journey of the apostles Simon the Zealot and Jude to the Persian Empire. Like many other apocryphal acts of the apostles, this text was written to provide a narrative about the later lives and missions of these apostles for whom the canonical scriptures offer limited information.

In this account, the apostles arrived in the ancient city of Babylon and began preaching the Gospel. Their endeavors, however, were not without resistance. The apostles encountered two powerful magicians, Zaroes and Arphaxat, who tried to oppose their missionary efforts with their magical abilities.

In response, Simon and Jude began performing a series of miracles that served as a resounding counterpoint to the magicians’ enchantments. These miracles, performed in the name of Jesus, served as a testament to the power of Jesus and validated their message in the eyes of the local population. Even influential figures within the Persian realm found themselves drawn to the Christian faith, leading to a profound wave of conversions. After many successful conversions and establishing Christian communities, both apostles met their death as martyrs for their faith.

We have covered rites of passage marked by colonial churches—birth, initiation and marriage. Last half of death this week as well as the conclusion of this series.

Because of the frequency of death, a culture of death grew up around objects – mourning attire, mourning rings, the family Bible and a funeral banquet, several which are foreign to us today. They provided a way to remember loved ones and reassert the necessity of survival – in a sense creating a community of mourners. Hair in mourning rings was a substitution for the departed. Lists inscribed in treasured family Bibles in a sense replace the chil¬dren whose short lives were narrated there

Mourning clothing of the sort worn in colonial Virginia had antecedents in the Middle Ages, when elite mourners wore black clothes (although other colors, including brown and red, were also considered proper for mourning). The clothes were worn men participating in burial rites and close relatives. First Mourning lasted where black was worn. Second Mourning last another three months colors shifted to grays. Mourning rings grew popular in the colonial period with rings color reflecting that of the mourning clothes. Wills spelled out who was to get the rings.

Family Bibles were part of mourning – reasserted family unity and survival and were a way for church tasks to be brought home. The choice to keep family records in a Bible was doubtless driven by practicality: paper was not readily available, so it made sense to record one’s records in the white spaces of a book one already owned. Bibles had collections of genealogies anyway.

Mourning ring engraved George, Martha Washington with their hair

Death was a great drama in the colonial period. Deathbeds were not spaces dominated only by close kin, and deathbed scenes were not necessarily intimate. Rather, the deathbed was a more broadly social scene, in which clergy and neighbors participated. Clergymen regularly visited the sick, sometimes leaving home in the middle of the night to celebrate Holy Communion at a parishioner’s bedside.

The funeral rituals had four central elements: a burial, a meal, a liturgy, and a sermon

The burial service employed more collects, prayers, psalms, and scripture selections than today’s service to place the reality of death in the context of the faith and teachings of the church with its proclamation of resurrection and another life beyond death. The burial service could not be used for those where “unbaptized, or excommunicate, or have laid violent hands upon themselves.”

Typically there was a full sermon at death expositions of an appropriate scripture text, not simply eulogies to the departed. There was significant attention given to these sermons and tended to be an education in themselves. John Thompson of St. Mark’s Parish preached on discourses on sin and judgment, the right use of time, true repentance, and righteous living, a call to faithful attendance upon one’s religious duties, and a vigorous affirmation of the promised resurrection.

Virginia clergymen’s funeral sermons made three main points about death and salvation from the pulpit. First, salvation was not absolutely as¬sured. Second, salvation came from God but was related to living a good and holy life (whether the parsons were suggesting that a good and holy life testified to or earned salvation is not entirely clear). Third, parishioners should not postpone repentance until just before death. They were trying to inspire parishioners to lead good and holy lives.

After the service there was the burial – Given the distance between the church and the house due to the size of parishes, families wanted beloved decedents to be interred near the home so that mourners could visit graves easily. Household burial was also a mark of status since it was clear that the decedent was a propery owner. Finally there was the desire to be resurrected with one’s own kin.

The Anglican church did not monopolize burial as it did over marriage. Dissenting denominations—at least those with licensed clergy and authorized meetinghouses—were free to bury their own according to the rites and customs peculiar to each.

Finally a large meal was served at the home after the church service and burial. (Today the reception in the Church is similar to this ). These meals served the purpose of reminding the living that they were indeed alive, that life went on and helped to bring them back to their normal lives. The standard funerary meal consisted of "funeral biscuits" or "mourning biscuits" and wine. The biscuits were probably molasses seasoned with caraway and ginger and often shaped in the design of a heart or cherubim. The funeral biscuits were typically dipped in alcohol before being consumed. 

We have covered rites of passage marked by colonial churches—birth, initiation and marriage. The last one is death and there is more written on it so we will cover half of it this week.

Colonial Virginians encountered death regularly. For people who survived to age 20, life expectancy in Virginia and Maryland was between 23 and 29 additional years, so average age at death was mid-to late 40s which is half our own. Women died at a more frequent rate than men (due to malaria) between the ages of 15-40, which are consequently the typical childbearing years. People died at home and were often buried there in contrast with today.

Epidemic diseases often ran rampant among the settlers. Yellow fever, small pox, measles and even the bubonic plague were diseases feared by the settlers. Infant mortality was high among the colonists and there were few trained doctors for those needing medical attention. All too often, a young wife would die when complications occurred during childbirth.

Due to this trend, the laws allowed people to get an earlier start in creating wills. Any male aged 14 or more, or unmarried females aged 12 or more, could make a will to bequeath personal property. However, only persons over 21 could devise land in a will. Married women could not make wills.

Wills tell us about attitudes toward death in this period. Death was constantly described in theological language. They characteristically opened with a statement like that penned by William Byrd I: "First I bequeath my soul to God that gave it hopeing thro the merits & mediation of my ever blessed saviour & redeemer Jesus Christ to obtain pardon and remission of all my sins and to inherit life everlasting. I bequeath my body to the ground to be decently buryed."

The Anglicans in Va. consciously distinguished her or his "spiritual goods or inward estate" from "the material goods or outward estate," thus enabling "the dutiful to cross the boundary between the everyday material world and the transcendental spiritual world of the Christian afterlife." Death was the great demarcation between the material and spiritual worlds, returning the soul to God. Sermons were preached that preparation for death was a lifelong process.

In statements of death, there was the key notion of divine providence and confident hope about the resurrection which provided solace. The death of her husband Mary Bland Lee told her brother, "is so great an affliction to me, that I han’t words to express it." Nevertheless, she did find words: "I know it is my duty as a christian, to bear patiently whatever happens to me, by the alotment of divine providence, and I humbly beseech Almighty God, to grant me his grace, that I may be enabled to submit patiently, to whatever trialls it may please him to lay on me…but that I may bear them as a good christian, with courage and resolution, with calmness and resignation, and that I may resign this life with joy and comfort, when it pleaseth God to remove me, and may have a well-grounded hope in his mercy through the merits and interseshun of our dear Saviour and merciful Redeemer”

Statements dealing with spouses were also based on a relationship with God. In her account of Mr. Fletcher’s death Mary Fletcher spends almost the entire time speaking about their relationship with each other in respect to God. She shows how great of an impact the church has on life in general (Fletcher). She demonstrated this by writing the following: “For some time before this last illness, his precious Soul (always alive to God) was particularly penetrated with the nearness of eternity; there was scarce an hour in which he was not calling upon me to drop every thought and every care, that we might attend nothing but drinking deeper into God”

There were certain rites of passage marked by colonial churches—birth, initiation, marriage, and death for the great majority of its white population and to lesser and varying extents for non-adherents and African Americans as well. We will look at the third one this week – Marriage.

In the 1662 prayer book its was called the “Solemnization of Matrimony."

Unlike the Catholics, the Anglicans rejected marriage as a sacrament but ascribed greatest importance to it in very direct language. First it was “ ordained for the procreation of children.” Secondly “, It was ordained for a remedy against sin, and to avoid fornication; that such persons as have not the gift of contingency might marry, and keep themselves undefiled members of Christ’s body.” Thirdly “It was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. “ Marriage was a "holy estate."

As in England, legal authorization for a man and a woman to marry could be obtained by one of two means. The couple might apply through the county clerk for a license, the clerk in this instance serving as the governor’s deputy. The advantage of the license was its minimal waiting period, but the hefty fees and the posting of a bond put this out of reach for most Virginians. Publication of barms in the parish church was the alternative utilized by most.

On three successive Sundays, the parson or, more likely, the parish clerk announced at the appointed time during or following the service: "I publish the Banns off Marriage between M. of and N. … If any of you know cause, or just impediment why these two persons should not be joyned together in holy Matrimony, you are to declare it." If the man and the woman lived in different parishes, banns were announced in both. For this task, parsons or clerks received a fee

The language of banns made obvious the purpose of ensuring the lawfulness of the intended union

Among mutual concerns, age was central. To guard against precipitous or unwise decisions, anyone under twenty-one years of age had to secure the permission of parents or guardian. Licensing or banns also sought to protect against marriages that might violate the rules of consanguinity. To this concern with blood relationship, Virginia civil authorities, like their counterparts in other colonies into which African slaves had been introduced, added prohibitions of racial intermarriage.

Weddings in Virginia were a monopoly of the Anglican church. Parsons alone could officiate.  At the time the canonical requirement that weddings be performed between the hours of 8 and 12 in the morning. By Canon law, weddings were prohibited during Lent and Advent. However, there were numerous exceptions made.

Like with baptisms, practice among gentry families was to hold the wedding at their home rather than the church. Church rubrics were explicit: weddings were to be performed "not in any private Place" but in a church where one of the parties "dwelieth" and "in the time of Divine Service."

Marriage records have survived mostly from the eastern parts of Virginia but not the back country. When population exploded after 1730 and when people came from outside rather than from home Anglican churches, there were more deviation in the above – more common -law marriages.