Ag'apæ

Ag'apæ (Gr. agapê, 'love') were love-feasts, or feasts of charity, originally celebrated by the early Christians in connection with the Lord's Supper. Wealthy or well-to-do Christians brought the materials of the feast, in which the poorer brethren who had nothing to bring shared equally. Prayers were said, hymns sung, and church business discussed; and the meetings closed with the 'holy kiss.' The agapæ long maintained something of the early Christian community of goods. Both the Lord's Supper and agapæ were at first celebrated in the evening; but during the persecutions, when the Christians had often to hold divine service before dawn, the Lord's Supper followed the morning service. Later, a formal separation was made between the two rites. In the 3d and 4th centuries, the agapæ had degenerated into a common banquet, where the deaths of relatives and the anniversaries of the martyrs were commemorated; and they ultimately became occasions of debauchery, or were suspected to be so by the heathen. Councils declared against them, forbade the clergy to take any share in their celebration, and finally banished them from the church. Some Protestant sects have instituted a kind of agapæ, tea-meetings with praise and prayer.