### ASCENSION. — I. IN HOLY SCRIPTURE
After appearing repeatedly for forty days, the risen Jesus showed Himself for the last time to the apostles in the Cenacle, where He ate with them, leaving them His final admonitions; then He set out with them toward Bethany, ordering them not to depart from Jerusalem until they had been clothed with “power from on high.” When they reached the Mount of Olives, as they looked on, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him and hid Him from their sight. Two men in white garments appeared and declared: “This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, shall come in the same way as you saw Him going into heaven” (Lk. 24:44-53; Acts 1:1-14). The appendix of Mk. (16:19) also alludes to the Ascension. In Jn. 6:62 Jesus had promised His Ascension as a “sign.”
Various non-Catholics have supposed that the account of the Ascension was an interpolation; but objective textual criticism recognizes the genuineness of the two Lucan texts in the form preserved by the Eastern recension (all manuscripts from the 4th and 5th centuries). Even in the so-called Western form (Codex Bezae), which harmonizes the two accounts of Luke, the historical fact is clearly affirmed. Literary criticism, which discerns in the narrative the unmistakable stamp of Lucan style, and historical criticism, which finds the fact affirmed or assumed in the earliest apostolic preaching, confirm its reality. Attempts to see in it a myth, arising in various evolutionary stages, are shattered against the established fact of the antiquity of the Acts (c. A.D. 62-63).
In the New Testament itself, the apostles Paul, Peter, and John either suppose or attest the reality of the Ascension or of the presence of Christ’s glorified humanity in heaven (1 Thess. 1:10; Eph. 1:20-22; 4:10; 6:9; especially Heb. 9:24 [and 7:27; 8:1; 10:12; etc.]; 1 Pt. 3:22; 1 Jn. 2:1). The testimonies are more than sufficient to compensate for the silence of Matthew, who preferred to close his Gospel with the appearance of Jesus in Galilee, where He sends the apostles to evangelize the world.
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V. Larrañaga, *L'Ascension de N
S. dans le N. T.*, French trans. by G. Cazaux, Rome 1938 (a fundamental exegetical-critical work). Pietro De Ambroggi---
### II. IN LITURGY
The feast of the Ascension is celebrated on the Thursday following the fifth Sunday after Easter, forty days after Easter, in accordance with the narrative of the event left to us by the Acts. In ancient Roman liturgical monuments, such as the Leonine, Gelasian, and Gregorian Sacramentaries, it is called *Ascensa*, and in the Mozarabic, Gallican, and Ambrosian liturgies, *Ascensio*, a denomination that later remained in the Roman rite. Its first mention is found in Eusebius of Caesarea (*De solemn. paschali*, ch. 5), who calls it a most solemn feast. By the end of the 4th century, it is also recorded in the *Peregrinatio Aetheriae*, according to which it was celebrated in Jerusalem fifty days after the Resurrection, i.e., on the afternoon of Pentecost. But in the 8th century, even that Church adapted itself to the Roman usage. In the Middle Ages, it was accompanied by certain symbolic ceremonies, and in some countries rather singular customs, yet full of meaning, still survive today. The Paschal candle is extinguished after the Gospel of the Mass, signifying that the risen Christ has ascended into Heaven.
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### III. IN ARCHAEOLOGY
The composition of the scene of the Ascension was inspired by the texts of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, as well as by apocryphal monuments, such as the *Gospel of Nicodemus* and the *Gospel of Peter*, besides the so-called *Ascension of Isaiah*. A determining factor was also the liturgical diffusion of the solemnity of the Ascension throughout the Christian world, from the basilica erected in Jerusalem (q.v.) at the initiative of the matron Poemenia before the year 378, on the summit of the Mount of Olives, at the very spot where the Lord had ascended into Heaven.
Early Christian iconography created two distinct types of the Ascension: the first, of Eastern origin, represents the divine glorification of Christ, the *Rex gloriae* (Ps. 23): the Lord ascends to Heaven in a mandorla, supported by angels; the second, of Western origin, is more realistic and exalts the Son of Man: the Lord ascends to Heaven from the Mount of Olives, aided by the hand of God.
The first type originated in Palestine, probably for the decoration of the Ascension basilica itself in Jerusalem, since the most characteristic examples are provided by an ampulla (q.v.) from Monza and one from Bobbio, of unquestionable Palestinian origin, reproducing subjects copied from representations in Palestinian sacred buildings. Other examples of the same type are provided by the encolpion in the Royal Library of Windsor and the reliquary from the Sancta Sanctorum, now in the Museo Sacro of the Vatican Library. Related to the Palestinian type are: the one developed in Syria, whose archetype is offered by the Syriac manuscript written in 586 by the monk Rabula of the monastery of St. John at Zagba in Mesopotamia, now in the Laurentian Library in Florence (cod. Plut. I, 56); the silver plate of Perm (Siberia); the Syriac manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; the Armenian type, represented by the evangelary of Queen Mlk (now at San Lazzaro, no. 1144); the Egyptian type with the fresco in Chapel no. 42 at Bawit.
To the Eastern type are also connected both the panel with the Ascension in the door of St. Sabina, and the Ascension in the underground of St. Clement, both in Rome, as well as those in Monreale and the ciborium of St. Mark in Venice. In all these representations, the Lord is always accompanied by a retinue of angels, according to the text of the Gospel of St. John (1:51) and the homily of St. John Chrysostom (*De Ascensione*: PG 50, 449).
The second type, Western, is depicted in the ivory of the National Museum in Munich from the 4th century; similar representations are found in a sarcophagus from Servanne (Wilpert, *Sarcophagi*, p. 336 and pl. XV); in an ivory from the Free Public Museum in Liverpool, in the diptych of the South Kensington Museum in London, etc. Certainly, the scene of the Ascension spread quickly in the West, for it was represented at the beginning of the 5th century in the basilica of Saragossa in Spain, as attested by tetrastich no. 44 of the *Dittochaeum* of Prudentius.
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### IV. IN ICONOGRAPHY
While in the 10th and 11th centuries Western representations of the Ascension increasingly abound with Eastern elements, by the year 1000 (Missaie of Robert of Jumieges, Rouen) a wholly new theme begins to be introduced, which prevailed beyond the Alps until the late Gothic period: only the feet and the hem of the garment of the figure of Jesus elevated into the air remain visible. For the definitive development of the subject, three Italian masterpieces mark its stages: the fresco by Giotto in the Arena of Padua, that by Melozzo da Forlì (Rome, Quirinal), and that by Correggio in the dome of the Parma Cathedral, where the glory of Jesus, thanks to the grand rotational movement of the entire composition, achieves the greatest visual impact.
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V. IN POPULAR TRADITIONS
In popular life the feast of the Ascension in the past held immense importance, whereas today, perhaps more than other feasts, its character is fading and disappearing. It gave rise to a series of practices, rites, and beliefs, whose underlying inspiration stems from this being a solemn day of purification and blessing; a day, therefore, anxiously awaited by those afflicted with serious illnesses, and also considered an omen of good fortune.The majority of popular customs are connected with the
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Ascension — A. and descent of the Holy Spirit — Miniature from the Bible of St. Paul (first half of the 9th century).
Rome, Basilica of St. Paul.
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Inscription — A. and descent of the Holy Spirit — Miniature from the Bible of St. Paul (first half of the 9th century).
Rome, Basilica of St. Paul.
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Inscription — A. and descent of the Holy Spirit — Miniature in the Basilica of St. Paul (first half of the year).
Rome, Basilica of St. Paul.
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Inscription — A. and descent of the Holy Spirit — Miniature in the Basilica of St. Paul (first half of the year).
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ASCENSION — Detail of the mosaic in the cathedral of Monreale (1174–82)
centuries-old, grand and picturesque solemnity. In Venice it was one of the most sumptuous: a fair lasting fifteen days was held there, and the ceremony of the blessing of the sea took place, which corresponded in Bari to the rite of the blessing of the waters of the sea.
In Florence the famous Cricket Festival still takes place on Ascension Day.