LAMMAS DAY. The word Lammas is either the Anglo-Saxon Hlaf Maesse, Loaf-mass, or is a corruption of Lamb Mass. The day is the first of August, and if Lammas is loaf-mass, it was so called because it was an old Saxon custom to make offerings of new grain on that day. In the Sarum Manual the day is, in fact, called " Benedictio Novorum Fructuum." If Lammas is Lamb Mass, the name may be due to the fact that lambs also were offered. Dr. C. J. Casher notes that the tenants of the chapter of York Minster used formerly on the 1st of August to pay a tribute of a live lamb (Prot. Diet.). It is curious that in Italy it has been a practice at Easter to eat a baked image of a lank. In the Roman Church Lammas has been explained as equivalent to Lamb Mass, and as due to the fact that St. Peter (to whom Jesus addressed the words " Feed my lambs ") was the patron of lambs. It is remarkable that on the same day, the 1st of August, a festival known as the Feast of Peter's Chains has been celebrated at Rome since the beginning of the seventh century. The Roman Breviary relates
that the Empress Eudocia, wife of Theodosius the Younger, on a visit to Jerusalem obtained the chains with which Peter had been bound (Acts xii.) and brought them to Constantinople. One of them she placed in the church of St. Peter there, the other she sent to her daughter Eudoxia, wife of Valentinian III., at Rome. According to another tradition, St. Peter was bound with chains at Rome during the Neronian persecution. In the Acts of Pope Alexander a St. Balbina is said to have found the chains of St. Peter, presumably these. Elsewhere it is said that Pope Alexander instituted a feast on the 1st of August and built the church ad Vincula. In the Greek Church the corresponding feast is kept on the 16th of January, and in the Armenian Church on the 22nd of January.