Lemuria (festival)

1 See also

For other uses, see Lemuria (disambiguation).

Lemuralia redirects here. For the EP by Patrick Wolf,
see Lemuralia (EP).

All Saints Day

Feralia

The Lemuralia or Lemuria was a feast in the religion of

ancient Rome during which the Romans performed rites
to exorcise the malevolent and fearful ghosts of the dead
from their homes. The unwholesome spectres of the restless dead, the lemures or larvae[1] were propitiated with
oerings of beans. On those days, the Vestals would prepare sacred mola salsa, a salted our cake, from the rst
ears of wheat of the season.

Halloween
Lemures
Pantheon, Rome
Parentalia
Setsubun

In the Julian calendar the three days of the feast were 9,

11, and 13 May. The origin myth of this ancient festival,
according to Ovid, who derives Lemuria from a supposed
Remuria[2] was that it had been instituted by Romulus
to appease the spirit of Remus (Ovid, Fasti, V.421;
Porphyrius). Ovid notes that at this festival it was the
custom to appease or expel the evil spirits by walking
barefoot and throwing black beans over the shoulder at
night. It was the head of the household who was responsible for getting up at midnight and walking around the
house with bare feet throwing out black beans and repeating the incantation, I send these; with these beans I
redeem me and mine (Haec ego mitto; his redimo meque
meosque fabis.) nine times. The household would then
clash bronze pots while repeating, Ghosts of my fathers
and ancestors, be gone!"[3] nine times.

2 Notes
[1] they do not occur in epitaphs or higher poetry, George
Thaniel noted (in Lemures and Larvae The American
Journal of Philology 94.2 [Summer 1973, pp. 182-187] p
182) remarking The ordinary appellation for the dead in
late Republican and early Imperial times was Manes or Di
Manes, although frequent use was also made of such terms
as umbrae, immagines, species and others. He notes the
rst appearance of lemures in Horace, Epistles ii.2.209.
[2] Modern linguists dismiss this connection but nd the etymology of lemures obscure.
[3] Manes exite paterni! is the formula given by Ovid (Fasti
V.443); scholars argue over how accurate Ovid was in this
instance.

Because of this annual exorcism of the noxious spirits of

the dead, the whole month of May was rendered unlucky
for marriages, whence the proverb Mense Maio malae
nubent (They wed ill who wed in May).

[4] See for example Days of the Dead in Christian Roy, ed.
Traditional festivals: a multicultural encyclopedia, 2005,
vol. 2: s.v. All Saints Day and Halloween": "...yet May
13 had also happened to be the last day of the Roman
Lemuria for lost souls"; Richard P. Taylor, Death and
the Afterlife: a cultural encyclopedia 200, p. 163: Pope
Boniface IV (608-615) replaced Lemuria with All Saints
Day on 13 May.

On what had been the culminating day of the Lemuralia,

May 13 in 609 or 610 the day being recorded as more
signicant than the year, Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Blessed Virgin and all
the martyrs, and the feast of that dedicatio Sanctae Mariae
ad Martyres has been celebrated at Rome ever since. According to cultural historians,[4] this ancient custom was
Christianized in the feast of All Saints Day, established
in Rome rst on May 13, in order to de-paganize the Roman Lemuria,[5] while others see a link to the May 13
date in Saint Ephrem's celebration of All Saints on that
day in the 4th century.[6]

[5] An attempt to connect the cultus of All Saints and All

Souls Day with the Roman Parentalia, observed however
in February, is sometimes made: e.g. Gordon J. Laing,
Survivals of Roman Religion (Boston 1931) p. 84: "...the
thirteenth of May, which was one of the days of the Roman festival of the dead, the Lemuria. Whether there is
any connection between these dates or not, the rites of All
Saints Day are a survival not of the Lemuria but of the
Parentalia.
[6] Butlers Lives of Saints, Volume 4, Nov. 1, citing in turn
Ephraem Syrus, Carmina Nisibena, ed. Bicknell, pp. 23,
89

3 SOURCES

Sources
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/
Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Lemuralia.html
Smith, William, 1875. Dictionary of Greek and
Roman Antiquities.

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

4.1

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Lemuria (festival) Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemuria%20(festival)?oldid=647727215 Contributors: Bryan Derksen, Ihcoyc,

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