JUBILEE

A solemn season recurring at stated intervals in the Church of Rome, chiefly marked by the indulgences then granted by the pope to all of his communion. Boniface VIII. was the first that instituted it, in 1300, in imitation of that of the Jews, ordering it to be observed every hundredth year. Clement VI. reduced it to fifty, Urban IV. to thirty, and Sixtus IV. to twenty-five, where it hath continued ever since. Besides this, the popes, upon their exaltation to the see of Rome, have frequently celebrated a jubilee, as likewise upon other extraordinary occasions. The ceremony observed at Rome, for the jubilee, at every twenty-five years’ end, which they call the holy year, is this: The pope goes to St. Peter’s church to open the holy gate, (as they call it,) which is walled up, and only opened upon this occasion; and knocking three times at the said gate, with a golden hammer, says these words, Aperite mihi portas just it iæ , ., “Open to me the gates of righteousne ; I will go into them and I will praise the Lord ” (Psalm cxviii. 19); whereupon the masons fall to work to break down the wall that stopped the gate; which done, the pope kneels down before it, whilst the penitentiaries of St. Peter wash him with holy water, and then taking up the cro , he begins to sing Te Deum , and enters the church, followed by the clergy. In the mean while, three cardinal legates are sent to open the other three holy gates, with the same ceremonies, which are in the churches of St. John of Later an, of St. Paul, and St. Mary Major; and the next morning the pope gives his benediction to the people in the jubilee form. When the holy year is expired, they shut up the holy gates again on Christmas eve in this manner. The pope, after he has ble ed the stones and mortar, lays the first stone, and leaves there twelve boxes full of gold and silver medals. The Jewish jubilee was celebrated every fifty years. The word is derived from jovel , which in Hebrew signifies the blast of a trumpet, (Josh. vi. 4, 13); because the year of jubilee was proclaimed with trumpets. This year was a year of general rest and universal liberty, wherein all servants were restored to their freedom, and all sold po e ions returned to their first owners. The Jews observed these jubilees very exactly till the Babylonian captivity, but after their return did no longer observe it; for their doctors a ure us that there were no jubilees under the second temple. See Lev. xxv. 9, et seq.