Anyone know?

[tsumik]

I searched on google and wikipedia and never came with any conclusive answer. Anyone know?

Which leader of the Catholic Church made Mardi Gras an "official" holiday?*


EDIT: So I'm under the general impression through my continued research that official is in quotes because someone decided to tolerate it to make the pagens happy back way when. Question is who was head of the Catholic Church at that time? St Augustine? Constantine? Pope Gregory?

Comments

[dustyskinandall.livejournal.com]

I wasn't aware of Mardi Gras being an "official" church holiday any more than any other carnival.

[moober.livejournal.com]

That's what I was going to say! I grew up Catholic and we never celebrated it, the Church never said it was a holiday or anything. It's just more or less "the day before Ash Wednesday". One last time to get your party on before you behave for the next 40 days. :)

[dustyskinandall.livejournal.com]

Yeah, "carnival" comes from Latin "carne vale", farewell to the flesh. So it's just a big "uh oh we have to fast tomorrow" kinda party.

This might help..

[tsumik.livejournal.com]

It most likely began with a 3,500-year old Greek spring fertility festival marked by animal sacrifices, masking, overindulgence, and too much of a good time. Men smeared blood all over themselves and lashed women with whips made from the sacrificed animals, believing that the lash on a woman's bare skin was a guarantee of fertility. Once it got into Roman hands, it was renamed "Lupercalia" in honor of Lupercus, their pastoral god. This festival became an excuse for orgies in which face masks furnished the secrecy needed for various misdeeds, including murder. Citizens were given license to do anything they wanted under the guise of face masks, and the sexes cross dressed. Streets were littered with the corpses of criminals and pepper, whereas now the streets are littered with broken beads, beer cans and trash.

Under Christianity, Lupercalia was incorporated into church celebrations because the pagan refused to set aside their pagan ways. But it took five centuries for the Roman Catholic Church to tame it into a celebration just for fun.


To make the spring rites acceptable, church leaders revived the original Greek motive of atonement with acceptable feasting before the Lenten season. The carnival in its less raucous form spread across Europe, and Christianized Roman and Greek leaders had medals struck and dispensed them along the roadside while masked revelers paraded and pelted one another with confetti and Candy. By the time of the Middle Ages, Florence and Venice had parades with boats. It eventually spread to Europe.

Re: This might help..

[dustyskinandall.livejournal.com]

Yeah, so it's not an official church holiday.. it just happens to have ties to Catholic traditions.

[etherealfire.livejournal.com]

As far as I'm aware it's not an 'official' holiday. It is the day before the beginning of Lent (which was brought about by st. Gregory). Originally it was Shrove Tuesday which later became Pancake Day (since all meat and things that came from meat were forbidden during the period, and they used all of the eggs and milk in a giant pancake feast). I believe Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) came out of the tradition... just A LOT bigger.

Catholic Encyclopedia article on Lent