where did the ashes from ash wednesday originate
Pope Gregory I the Great
title: Ash Wednesday text: Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday is a Christian holy day of prayer, fasting and repentance. It is preceded by Shrove Tuesday and falls on the first day of Lent, the six weeks of penitence before Easter. Ash Wednesday is observed by many Christians, including Anglicans, Lutherans, Old Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, and some Baptists. Ash Wednesday derives its name from the placing of repentance ashes on the foreheads of participants to either the words "Repent, and believe in the Gospel" or the dictum "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." The ashes may be prepared by title: Ash Wednesday text: by sprinkling ashes on the heads of all. This practice is found in the Gregorian Sacramentary of the late 8th century. About two centuries later, Ælfric of Eynsham, an Anglo-Saxon abbot, wrote of the rite of strewing ashes on heads at the start of Lent. The article on Ash Wednesday in the 1911 "Encyclopædia Britannica" says that, after the Protestant Reformation, the ashes ceremony was not forbidden in the Church of England, a statement that may explain the research by Blair Meeks that the Anglican tradition "never lapsed in this observance". It was even prescribed under King Henry VIII in title: Ash Wednesday text: the head. Originally, the ashes were strewn over men's heads, but, probably because women had their heads covered in church, were placed on the foreheads of women. In the Catholic Church the manner of imposing ashes depends largely on local custom, since no fixed rule has been laid down. Although the account of Ælfric of Eynsham shows that in about the year 1000 the ashes were "strewn" on the head, the marking of the forehead is the method that now prevails in English-speaking countries and is the only one envisaged in the "Occasional Offices" of the Anglican Church of Papua title: Ash Wednesday text: being sprinkled over their heads or, in English-speaking countries, more often by being marked on their foreheads as a visible cross. The words (based on Genesis 3:19) used traditionally to accompany this gesture are, ""Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris."" ("Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.") This custom is credited to Pope Gregory I the Great (c. 540–604). In the 1969 revision of the Roman Rite, an alternative formula (based on Mark 1:15) was introduced and given first place "Repent, and believe in the Gospel" and the older formula was translated title: Ash Wednesday text: its general traditional Ash Wednesday liturgy, they are not associated specifically with the rite of blessing the ashes. The rite of blessing has acquired an untraditional weak association with that particular psalm only since 1970, when it was inserted into the celebration of Mass, at which a few verses of Psalm 51 are used as a responsorial psalm. Coincidentally, it was only about the same time that in some areas Anglicanism resumed the rite of ashes. In the mid-16th century, the first Book of Common Prayer removed the ceremony of the ashes from the liturgy of the Church of England