March 29.] Low Sunday
March 29.]
LOW SUNDAY.
The Octave or first Sunday after Easter.
The author of Christian Sodality, a collection of discourses, 1652, says:—This day is called White or Low Sunday because in the Primitive Church those neophytes that on Easter Eve were baptized and clad in white garments did to-day put them off, with this admonition, that they were to keep within them a perpetual candour of spirit, signified by the Agnus Dei hung about their necks, which, falling down upon their breasts, put them in mind what innocent lambs they must be, now that of sinful, high, and haughty men they were by baptism made low, and little children of Almighty God, such as ought to retain in their manners and lives the Paschal feasts which they had accomplished.
Seymour in his Survey of London (1734, B. iv. p. 100) tells us that the aldermen used to meet the Lord Mayor and sheriffs at St. Paul’s in their scarlet gowns, furred, without their cloaks, to hear the sermon.