VIGIL, in its ecclesiastical sense, means the day preceding a festival. In the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church there are special offices for the vigils of the greater feasts, and the vigil is regarded as more or less of a fast day. In the early church there was a widespread practice of celebrating festivals, of martyrs especially, by actual vigils (vigiliae or pernoctationes, παvvυχίδες ) in the churches; but this led to such serious evils that the custom had to be discouraged, and now survives, if at all, only in rare, unauthorized, and considerably disguised forms. In some of the stricter religious orders the daily office is recited at various hours of the night as well as during the day; but, if these nocturnal services are spoken of as vigils, it is only in the popular meaning of that word.

VIGILANTIUS, presbyter, celebrated as the author of a work, no longer extant, against superstitious practices, which called forth one of the most violent and scurrilous of Jerome’s polemical treatises, was born about 370 at Calagurris in Aquitania (the modern Saint Bertrand de Comminges in the department of Haute-Garonne), where his father kept a “statio” or inn on the great Roman road from Aquitania to Spain. While still a youth his talent became known to Sulpicius Severus, who had estates in that neighbourhood, and in 395 Sulpicius, who probably baptized him, sent him with letters to Paulinus of Nola, where he met with a friendly reception. On his return to Severus in Gaul he was ordained; and, having soon afterwards inherited means through the death of his father, he set out for Palestine, where he was received with great respect by Jerome at Bethlehem. The stay of Vigilantius lasted for some time; but, as was almost inevitable, he was dragged into the dispute then raging about Origen, in which he did not see fit wholly to adopt Jerome’s attitude. On his return to the West he was the bearer of a letter from Jerome to Paulinus, and at various places where he stopped on the way he appears to have expressed himself about Jerome in a manner that when reported gave great offence to that father, and provoked him to write a reply (Ep., 61). Vigilantius now settled for some time in Gaul, and is said by one authority (Gennadius) to have afterwards held a charge in the diocese of Barcelona. About 403, some years after his return from the East, Vigilantius wrote his celebrated work against superstitious practices, in which he argued against relic worship, as also against the vigils in the basilicas of the martyrs, then so common, the sending of alms to Jerusalem, and ...

VIGILIUS, pope from 537 to 555, succeeded Silverius and was followed by Pelagius I. He was ordained by order of Belisarius while Silverius ( q.v.) was still alive; his elevation was due to Theodora, who, by an appeal at once to his ambition and, it is said, to his covetousness, had induced him to promise to disallow the council of Chalcedon, in connexion with the “three chapters” controversy (see vol. xiii. p. 796). When, however, the time came for the fulfilment of his bargain, Vigilius declined to give his assent to the condemnation of that council involved in the imperial edict against the three chapters, and for this act of disobedience he was peremptorily summoned to Constantinople, which he reached in 547. Shortly after his arrival there he issued a document known to history as his Judicatum (548), in which he condemned indeed the three chapters, but expressly disavowed any intentions thereby to disparage the council of Chalcedon. After a good deal of trimming (for he desired to stand well with his own clergy, who were strongly orthodox, as well as with the court) he prepared another document, the Constitutum ad Imperatorem, which was laid before the so-called fifth “oecumenical” council in 553, and led to his condemnation by the heterodox majority of that body, some say, even to his banishment. Ultimately, however, he was induced to assent to and confirm the decrees of the council, and was allowed after an enforced absence of seven years to set out for Rome. He died, however, before he reached his destination, most probably in the beginning of 555.