Giving ashes on Ash Wednesday was said to be almost the only Catholic custom to survive the Reformation under Henry VIII. The day took its name from penitents in the early church, who appeared in public in sackcloth and ashes. Taylor quoted Fuller’s Church History, which said the ashes reminded every man that he was but ashes and earth.
Ashes that outlived the Reformation
Ash Wednesday · England
Still kept
the custom of giving ashes on Ash-Wednesday, to put every man in remembrance that he is but ashes and earth, and thereto shall return, was almost the only catholic superstition which survived the shock of Reformation.
From Taylor's Antiquitates Curiosae, 2nd ed., p. 126. Read the original
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