5. Enter the Dead: All Saints Day and the Lemuria
It was the Christians who added the dead to the Samhain celebrations when they established the feast of All Saints on November 1. This addition, however, still had pagan influences, as it included pre-existing elements from pagan Roman religion blended with the newly founded Christian traditions.
By the fourth century AD, Christianity was legal within the Roman Empire. St Ephraem, a contemporary writer, and Christian saint recorded how, safe and secure at last, the newly legitimized Christians began to remember the early Christian martyrs. However, this remembrance occurred at different times across the empire. The Syrian church chose Easter, the time of the death and resurrection of Christ. Greece chose Pentecost, the time of the descent of the Holy Spirit as its date instead. The date of choice in Rome, however, had no links to any Christian event. Alternatively, the Roman church celebrated All Saints on May 13- which just happened to be the date of the Roman pagan festival of the Lemuria.
The Lemuria was the day when the Romans exorcised malevolent ghosts from their homes. According to Ovid, it was instigated by Romulus to appease the spirit of his murdered brother, Remus. The paterfamilias of each Roman house, barefoot and dressed in black, led the household around the home nine times. While he threw beans over his shoulder intoning, “With these beans, I redeem me and mine, ” the rest of his family and servants followed, clashing pots to scare away the ghosts while shouting: “Ghosts of my fathers and ancestors, be gone.”
In 609AD, Pope Boniface IV declared May 13 the official empire-wide All Saints Day-probably because it sat nicely with the Lemuria’s direct association with the dead and would, therefore, wipe away the practice of the pagan festival. However, in 835AD, the date was moved to November 1st by Pope Gregory IV because of the insistence of the co-emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Louis the Pious.
Exactly why Louis requested this is unclear, but it seems that from 800AD, churches in England and Germany had been using November 1st for their masses. Perhaps the rites of the Lemuria, which had been dedicated to expelling malevolence spirits, and had now become associated with propitiating the Christian saints, were deemed to fit better with a festival at the dark time of the year, already dedicated to the appeasing of spirits. Either way, All Saints and all its associated rituals moved to join Samhain. And where the saints went, the rest of the dead followed.