In modern Rome today, 25 April is known as Liberation Day, a national holiday on which liberation from the Nazi occupation and fascist rule during World War 2 is remembered. This day of celebration comes close to a celebration of Rome's birthday (21 April) when it is believed to have been founded by twins Romulus and Remus in 753 BC. In ancient Rome, though, 25 April marked a festival to appease Robigus, god of wheat rust and mildew - Robigalia.
Something as lowly as mildew and wheat disease would seem hardly suitable oversight for a member of the celestial hierachy, yet in those days a crop blight could condemn a farmer and his family to starvation; also Roman economy relied greatly on agriculture, bad harvests were something to be dreaded. I guess, actually, that rather than seeing Robigus as a god he/it represented for the people a personification of the dreaded mildew, so sacrificing to that personification probably helped, psychologically.
Robigalia involved a public procession through Rome and around the fields to a shrine where a rust coloured dog and a sheep were sacrificed, with prayers, incense and wine. Why the dog? Why a rust coloured dog? The colour probably links to the reddish-brown wheat rust. Romans believed in sympathetic magic, meaning anything red, like blood, could also be connected with wheat rust. Mars, the red planet, in Roman mythology was the god of both war and agriculture.
By the year 600 a Christian procession had replaced the pagan one. Rogation Days are April 25 ( Major) and the three days before the Feast of the Ascension ( Minor). The Major Rogation replaced Robigalia, and was shrewdly timed, probably, to counteract the existing "heathen" event. Rogation Day (from Latin rogare = to ask or beseech) was instituted by Pope Gregory I to atone for a lack of sobriety and continence during Lent. Prayers at that time ask for blessings on the fields and agriculture. In colonial America, and even still in some places, Rogation Sunday (the Sunday prior to Ascension Day) was the day farmers and clergy would walk the newly planted fields, praying for healthy crops.
Something as lowly as mildew and wheat disease would seem hardly suitable oversight for a member of the celestial hierachy, yet in those days a crop blight could condemn a farmer and his family to starvation; also Roman economy relied greatly on agriculture, bad harvests were something to be dreaded. I guess, actually, that rather than seeing Robigus as a god he/it represented for the people a personification of the dreaded mildew, so sacrificing to that personification probably helped, psychologically.
Robigalia involved a public procession through Rome and around the fields to a shrine where a rust coloured dog and a sheep were sacrificed, with prayers, incense and wine. Why the dog? Why a rust coloured dog? The colour probably links to the reddish-brown wheat rust. Romans believed in sympathetic magic, meaning anything red, like blood, could also be connected with wheat rust. Mars, the red planet, in Roman mythology was the god of both war and agriculture.
By the year 600 a Christian procession had replaced the pagan one. Rogation Days are April 25 ( Major) and the three days before the Feast of the Ascension ( Minor). The Major Rogation replaced Robigalia, and was shrewdly timed, probably, to counteract the existing "heathen" event. Rogation Day (from Latin rogare = to ask or beseech) was instituted by Pope Gregory I to atone for a lack of sobriety and continence during Lent. Prayers at that time ask for blessings on the fields and agriculture. In colonial America, and even still in some places, Rogation Sunday (the Sunday prior to Ascension Day) was the day farmers and clergy would walk the newly planted fields, praying for healthy crops.
