This study aims to present the history of the feast celebrating the Presentation of the Lord at the Temple (otherwise called the Hypapante feast, from the Gr. Ὑπαπαντή - meeting) in the Eastern part of the Christendom from a theological and a liturgical perspective, until its official adoption in the Church calendar. At the beginning, the Hypapante feast was merely known as the „fortieth day after the Epiphany”, as Egeria notes in the oldest record of this celebration, marked – from the first moment – by great joy and solemnity as on any of the dominical feasts. Later, the date of the celebration will be established by imperial decree and the festal hymnography will be fixed.
