AGAPE, plur. Agapae, the love-feast, or feast of charity, which among the primitive Christians usually accompanied the Eucharist. The word (άγάπη, love) is first employed in this sense in the Epistle of Jude, verse 12. The suggestion of a connection between Christian love-feasts and the ε ρ αvoι and ∈ταιρίαι of Greece and Rome is both improbable and unnecessary. The feelings of love and brotherhood fostered by the new faith, strengthened as these must have been by the complete isolation of the little Christian community, are quite sufficient to account for the existence of the Agapae, without referring them to other more or less similar institutions. According to Chrysostom, the Agape was a common feast, symbolising the community of goods when it no longer really existed, to which the rich brought provisions, and the poor, who brought nothing, were invited. At first it was observed probably every evening in immediate connection with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, though whether before or after is a point that has been much disputed. It closed with the holy kiss (φίλημα άγιον, φίλημα αγάπης). The Corinthian church was the first to pervert the Agape by destroying the community between rich and poor (1 Cor. xi. 21). Partly perhaps on account of such irregularities extending, and partly to escape the notice of persecutors, it became usual about the middle of the 2d century to separate the Lord’s Supper from the Agape by celebrating the former at the close of morning service on Sunday, and the latter by itself after a considerable interval. Abuses becoming more frequent, love-feasts were gradually put under greater restrictions. The rich began habitually to absent themselves from the Agapae, which came thus to be regarded ...

AGAPETUS, deacon of the St Sophia Church at Constantinople, presented to the Emperor Justinian a work entitled Charta Regia, composed in 527, which contained advice on the duties of a Christian prince. It is highly valued, and has been several times reprinted. The best edition is that contained in Bandauri’s Imperium Orientale (Paris, 1711). There is an English translation by Thomas Paynell (1550); and a French translation, executed from a Latin version by Louis XIII., with the assistance of his tutor, David Rivault.