Love Feasts, Agapae

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Agapae Love Feasts

(Gr.)

These banquets of charity held by the earliest Christians were founded at Rome by Clemens, in the reign of Domitian. Professor A. Kestner’s The Agapæ or the Secret World Society (Wiltbund) of the Primitive Christians” (published 1819 at Jena) speaks of these Love Feasts as “having a hierarchical constitution, and a groundwork of Masonic symbolism and Mysteries”; and shows a direct connection between the old Agapæ and the Table Lodges or Banquets of the Freemasons. Having, however, exiled from their suppers the “holy kiss” and women, the banquets of the latter are rather “drinking” than “love” feasts. The early Agapæ were certainly the same as the Phallica, which “were once as pure as the Love Feasts of early Christians” as Mr. Bonwick very justly remarks, “though like them rapidly degenerating into licentiousness”. (Eg. Bel. and Mod. Thought, p. 260.) (TG).

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To show: Agapae Love Feasts; sortable: Love Feasts, Agapae
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