Vigils (Night Watches)
Keeping watch through the darkness until the light of Easter breaks
Vigils are night-long or pre-dawn services of prayer and watching, above all the Paschal Vigil kept before Easter. Tertullian and the Apostolic Tradition attest early night prayer, and the pilgrim Egeria, around 380, describes such observances in Jerusalem. The Great Vigil is celebrated across Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental, Anglican, and Lutheran traditions, and is especially elaborate in the East. Many Free churches keep a simplified vigil or none at all.
How it traveled
- The Church History of EusebiusCaesarea · 339explains
Key passages(18)
A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles · John Chrysostom
Book V · Constitutions of the Holy Apostles
The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
The Twelve Books on the Institutes of the Cœnobia, and the Remedies for the Eight Principal Faults · John Cassian
The Church History of Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
On Baptism. · Ethical
Selected Epistles of Gregory the Great · Pope Gregory the Great
The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril · Cyril of Jerusalem
The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril · Cyril of Jerusalem
The Life of Constantine with Orations of Constantine and Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
Appendix to the Works of Hippolytus. Containing Dubious and Spurious Pieces. · Hippolytus
The Commentary and Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Galatians and Ephesians · John Chrysostom
The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus · Socrates Scholasticus
The Life of Constantine with Orations of Constantine and Eusebius · Eusebius of Caesarea
The Canons of the Councils of Ancyra, Gangra, Neocæsarea, Antioch and Laodicea, which Canons were Accepted and Received by the Ecumenical Synods · The Ecumenical Councils