Part  II – The Prayer-Book Services:

Their Sources and Rationale

The Calendar

By the Editor

      The purpose of the liturgical year is to lead the faithful to conform themselves ever more completely, by prayer, sacrament, and obedience, to the life of God revealed in the flesh.  The year circles round two poles, one movable and the other fixed, namely, Easter and Christmas with their dependent feasts and periods of preparation.  Its secondary purpose is to make the Communion of Saints a reality, as we recall those mighty ones in the order of grace who have reflected in their lives and deaths somewhat of the Light of the World.  As the Anglican Communion recovers its Catholic heritage, the Calendar becomes of increasing importance, so that a somewhat lengthy treatment of the subject is here demanded.

I

The Jewish Calendar.

      The Jews had three great feasts: (i) Passover, a primitive festival of nomads, was celebrated on the night of the full moon (i.e. the 24th, the months being lunar) of the month (originally Abib, afterwards Nisan) nearest the Spring equinox; the sacrifice of a lamb was the chief feature.  When the Hebrews settled in Canaan, the Passover coalesced with the agricultural spring festival of unleavened bread, the firstfruits of barley harvest.  It was traditionally associated with the flight from Egypt.  (ii) Pentecost, the Feast of Weeks, fell on the fiftieth day after Passover and marked the completion of wheat harvest.  (iii) The Feast of the Ingathering (Tabernacles) closed the agricultural year with the harvesting of the vine and olive crop in September.  Of these feasts Passover and Pentecost passed over into the Christian Church; Tabernacles left no mark.  The association of Passover with the deliverance of Israel from bondage and with the killing and eating of the Paschal Lamb had a great influence on Christian theology, as is seen as early as 1 Cor. 5:7: “Our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ.”

      A nomadic tribe, normally travelling by night, attached great importance to the moon, and so we find the New Moon a day of importance so late as the first century A.D. (Col 2:16).  Associated with the New Moon in early times was the Sabbath (cf. 2 Kings 4:23), [The origin of the Sabbath is obscure.  The two most interesting theories are that which connects it with the Kenites, the wandering clan of smiths, and Meinhold’s view that it was originally a full-moon festival.  The theory of Babylonian origin is now generally abandoned.  According to Babylonian records on the 1st, 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th days of at least some months certain things were forbidden to the king.  Not much can be based upon this.] and the (Hebrew) week of which it formed a part. [The Hebrew week as a fourth part of the lunar month may have originated independently of the planetary week.]

The Gentile Calendar.

      The Jews were widely spread in the Roman Empire and their observance of the week made it generally known.  Another strong influence was the planetary week, [The seven days were allotted to the sun, moon, and five planets.] part of an international system of astrology by which all time was apportioned to the sway of the heavenly bodies.  Which was the more potent in establishing the ultimate universal triumph of the week is doubtful; evidently each played its part.  The Jewish observance of one day in seven as holy is reflected in the Christian Lord’s Day – apart from this a weekly commemoration of the Resurrection would hardly have arisen.  But it is noteworthy that the names of the days of the week in Western Europe are nearly all of pagan origin.

The Earliest Christian Age.

      Jewish Christians naturally observed their own festivals for a time, adding the Christian days.  A survival of the primitive custom appears in Eusebius’ description of the more orthodox section of the Ebionites: “They observed the Sabbath and the other Jewish customs ... yet, on the other hand, each Lord’s Day they celebrated rites similar to ours, in memory of the Saviour’s resurrection” (H.E., iii. 27).  St. Paul vindicated the right of Gentile converts to ignore the Sabbath (Col. 2:16).  A curiously exact anticipation of later custom, if we are not reading too much into it, is found in Acts 20:7–11.  The Apostle meets the congregation at Troas “upon the first day of the week,” i.e. after sunset on Saturday.  His exhortation lasts till midnight and after.  He then “breaks the bread”; probably a meal follows, and then social intercourse until dawn.  We already have in germ the anticipation of a festival, a vigil, and an early celebration of the Eucharist.  “The Lord’s Day” (Apoc. 1:10) was an early name for the first day of the week, and 1 Cor. 16:2 shows that Christians met regularly on that day.

II

      We pass on to the early centuries of Church history, dividing the subject into (i) the year; (ii) the week; (iii) Easter and the movable commemorations depending on it; (iv) Christmas and Epiphany, with their dependent feasts; (v) the Martyrologies.

      (i) The year has been reckoned in various ways.  The Jewish New Year begins at the end of September, during the pause before Palestinian agricultural work restarts.  There was also the system, connected with the Mosaic law, by which the year began with the month March–April – “this month shall be unto you the beginning of months” (Ex. 12:2).  The Roman Calendar in the first century began with January 1.  The Church apparently shrank from following the heathen custom, and after a time December 25 was reckoned as beginning the year.  Subsequently March 25 supplanted December 25.  In the England of Bede’s time, December 25 began the year.  The Normans introduced March 25, which held the field until 1752. [The year of the Orthodox Eastern Church, in so far as it is distinguished from the civil year, begins on the Sunday before Septuagesima, or on September 1, the day assigned to the creation of the world, which was for a long time the beginning of the civil (and Church) year.  The East Syrians begin on October 1.]  By the side of the calendrical year is the liturgical year, beginning with Advent.

      The division of the year into twelve months comes, as the names show, from the older Roman Calendar.  The numbering of the days of the month consecutively is traced in the sixth century and began to prevail generally in the fourteenth.

      (ii) The Week.  With the virtual disappearance of Jewish Christianity, Sunday was observed in conscious opposition to the Jewish Sabbath instead of as a supplement to it.  A few well-known passages may be cited.  “No longer sabbatizing but living according to the Lord’s Day” (Ignatius, Magn., 9).  “The present Sabbaths are not acceptable to me ... We celebrate joyfully the eighth day, in which Jesus also rose from the dead” (Barnabas, 15:8, 9).  “We all hold our common meeting on the day of the Sun,” the day of the Creation and of the Resurrection (Justin, Apol., i. 67).  A less-known passage is that in the Ethiopic Didascalia (ii. 47), which calls Sunday “the Christian Sabbath”.

      Saturday in the fourth century had become a day of liturgical observance in the East.  In the West, especially at Rome, it tended to become a fast day, by prolongation of the Friday fast. [Duchesne, Christian Worship, pp. 230 ff.  Note that Sabbatum has survived in Western service books.  See Tertullian, Apol., 16, Ad Nat., 13, for the Gentile associations of Saturday and Sunday.  Cf. Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, iv. 95, for the Sabbath as a fast day among the Jews.]  Wednesday and Friday were fast days, having been chosen at an early date to distinguish Christian practice from Jewish.  Compare Didache, 8: “Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites, for they fast on Monday and Thursday, but do you fast on Wednesday and Friday.”  Although no other cause for Sunday observance than the Resurrection need be sought, it is worth noting that the association of days of the week with heathen divinities would have made almost every day unsuitable for the Gentile Christians’ weekly festival, except Sunday, which as the day of light was given a Christian meaning.  So Clement of Alexandria remarks that Wednesday and Friday are called after Hermes and Aphrodite. [Strom., vii. 12.  One fasts from covetousness and voluptuousness on those days.  Note the French names mercredi and vendredi, from Mercury and Venus.]

      (iii) Easter, with its Passover origin, connects us with the Jewish Church.  Its original signification is somewhat obscure.  The word Pascha is derived from the Aramaic word for Passover.  The form assumed in Syriac suggests a root meaning “rejoicing,” while the Greek writers connect it with πάσχω, “suffer”.  This ambiguity of interpretation reflects the usage of the Church.  Before the fourth century the word probably stood for the festival of the Resurrection with the fast immediately preceding.  Sometimes it was extended to cover Holy Week, or the forty days of Lent, just as Pentecost was used of the whole season from Easter to Whitsunday.  Among the East Syrians Pascha means Maundy Thursday.

      There were two views regarding the date of Easter.  The larger part of the Church, laying stress on the Resurrection, kept the festival always on a Sunday.  In the Province of Asia the Jewish date of the killing of the Paschal Lamb, Nisan 14, was followed.  The tradition was traced back to “Philip, one of the twelve Apostles ... and John ... who leaned back on the Lord’s breast.”  So we learn from Polycrates, who is corroborated by Irenaeus (Eus. H.E., v. 23, 24).  The Asian custom is connected with the account in the Fourth Gospel, according to which our Lord’s death coincided with the killing of the Paschal Lamb on Nisan 14 (i.e. the day which began at 6 p.m. on Thursday and included the Last Supper; John. 19:31, 36).  The Gospel uses “glory” to describe the Crucifixion, 12:23–33, and is clearly the ultimate source of the joint commemoration of the Death and the Resurrection.  The Sunday commemoration of the Pascha goes back to the ideas which underlie 1 Cor. 5:7, 8; 15:20.

      The Asian Christians were called Quartodecimans, observers of (Nisan) 14.  So far back as Pope Xystus I (c. 115) the divergence was noted.  At that period it was tolerated, but about 190 Pope Victor excommunicated the Asians for their practice, calling forth strong protests from Irenaeus and other bishops.  The Council of Nicaea decided against the Quartodecimans, whose influence was henceforward confined to a few communities.

      The Christians at first followed the Jewish reckoning of Passover.  But the lunar Calendar of the Jews needed frequent rectification by the insertion of an intercalary spring month, which was decided empirically, regard being paid to the state of the crops in Palestine.  Reluctance to follow Jewish guidance and the growing alienation of the two religions would lead the Christians to develop rules of their own.  Hippolytus in 222 drew up a Rule for finding Easter, which is inscribed on his statue in the Lateran Museum. [Discovered in 1551.  See Lawlor-Oulton, Eusebius, ii. 210.]  Using the best science of the day, it made Easter fall on the first full moon after the vernal equinox.  This pioneer effort was full of errors; later the Church of Alexandria was regarded as the authority for settling the date.  The Church of Rome in the sixth century adopted the Alexandrian computation, revising it from time to time according to requirements.  The dispute between the Celtic Churches and the Roman missionaries in the seventh century was due to the long isolation of the British Isles, during which the Celts had no opportunity of keeping in touch with the Roman revisions.

      In recent years a demand has sprung up for a fixed Easter.  Sentimental attachment to the Paschal full moon diminishes when it is realized that the ecclesiastical full moon of the Gregorian Calendar is not identical with the astronomical full moon and may be three days later than it.  The practical reasons for reform are the dislocation of school terms by the present system, the desire in Northern lands to have milder weather for the first holiday of the year, and, in Great Britain, the importance of having only one Easter holiday in the financial year, which ends on April 5.  In 1926 a League of Nations Committee reported in favour of fixing Easter on the Sunday following the second Saturday in April.  A measure authorizing adhesion to the reform on the part of the Government of the day when opportunity should arise passed the British Parliament in 1928. [The Church of England, speaking through the Convocations and the Assembly, approved the change, provided the consent of the principal Christian communions had first been obtained.]  But the popular demand for a change is only halfhearted and the present system may have a long life yet; in any case considerable expense would be incurred by the Church in revising service books and long notice would have to be given.

      It was convenient to start from Easter.  We now take the movable dates governed by Easter.

      Lent.  In the ante-Nicene Church there was a considerable variety of custom.  The fast before Easter lasted one, two, or more days. It was specially connected with the preparation for the Easter baptisms.  The Nicene Council (Can. V) refers to it in general terms, merely as a season before which synods shall be held.  In the fourth century the progress of Lenten observance can be traced in the Festal Letters of Athanasius, who, c. 340, urges a fast of forty days.  Considerable divergence prevailed in the fifth century, as Sozomen attests (H.E., vii. 19).  Episcopal Lent Pastorals go back to the letters of the Bishops of Alexandria announcing the date of Easter sent on January 6, the news of which was passed on to their dioceses by the bishops.

      Septuagesima, etc.  Quinquagesima is the 50th day before Easter, Sexagesima and Septuagesima being formed by incorrect analogy.  These Sundays were given special masses at Rome about the seventh century.  Constantinople also set these three Sundays apart, designating Septuagesima and the preceding Sunday by the subjects of the Gospels, Sexagesima by the name Carnival (οι απόχρεω, late Lat. “carnelevamen,” solace of the flesh); in the week following no meat may be eaten.  After Quinquagesima (cheese-fast Sunday) the great fast, including cheese and eggs, begins.

      Ash Wednesday (“dies cinerum”) and the three following days were added in the seventh century to make up the number of forty weekdays.  Their liturgical names are feria iv, feria v, feria vi, et sabbatum, in capite jejunii (“at the beginning of the fast”).  At Milan Lent still begins on the Sunday following these days, [In St. J. Hope and Atchley’s An Introduction to English Liturgical Colours, the recommended use, based on that of mediaeval England, is not to begin “Lenten White” until the Sunday.] and in the Breviary the Lent Antiphons and Chapters begin on the Sunday.

      Mid-Lent Sunday (the fourth) is known as Refreshment Sunday, from the Feeding of the Five Thousand in the Gospel, and perhaps from the phrase in the Collect, “may mercifully be relieved,” the Latin “respiremus” meaning literally “may have a breathing time, or refreshment”.  In England various customs are associated with this Sunday, also called “Mothering Sunday,” a title which Wheatly (1710) apparently considers to be a popular corruption of “Midlenting Sunday”. [The wafers still baked in Hampshire seem to be a survival of pain bénit.  Possibly pre-Christian elements are to be found in some of the Mothering Sunday customs.  For one mediaeval usage cf. Cutts, Parish Priests and their People, p. 121: “The people of the chapelries were required on several of the great festivals of the Church to communicate at the mother church, and on one or more of these festivals to visit the mother church in procession with flags flying.”  Apparently after the Reformation the idea of an offering was transferred to literal mothers.  But the subject is obscure and needs a critical investigation.]  On this Sunday the Pope, wearing rose-coloured vestments, blesses a golden rose, symbolical of the joy of the Church, and sends it to some favoured person; in 1923 the Queen of Spain.

      Passion Sunday (“Dominica in Passione Domini”) is the title of the fifth Sunday, but Passion Week is an incorrect phrase.

      Palm Sunday gets its name from the Procession of Palms, which came to the West c. 800 from Jerusalem, where it is found towards the end of the fourth century; see the Pilgrimage of Etheria (Silvia).

      Maundy Thursday [The title (from “mandatum novum do vobis” of John 13:34, sung in connection with the feet-washing) has been restored in the Scottish, American and English 1928 Books.] (“feria v in coena domini”) was from early times a day of peculiar solemnity as commemorating the institution of the Eucharist, in spite of Thursday’s being an a-liturgical day owing to its association with Jupiter.  It was marked by ceremonial bathing of candidates for Baptism.  The evening Eucharist found in some places, and finally forbidden by the Trullan Council in 692, was perhaps in origin an early Eucharist of Friday, regarded as beginning at sunset on Thursday, but its popularity was due to the desire of imitating the circumstances of the Last Supper, which also influenced the ritual.

      Good Friday (“Parasceve,” i.e. preparation).  In the primitive Church the special feature of this day was the fast in preparation for Baptism, which took place before the Easter Eucharist.  The fast is mentioned as early as the Didache and included others besides the candidates and the baptizer.  It is not clear whether an original Friday fast was extended to include Saturday, or vice versa.  The reason for fasting, referred to by Tertullian, that the Bridegroom is taken away, suggests the former.  But in the Apostolic Constitutions (v. 18) the minimum requirement is the observance of the Saturday fast, and the mystical reason is given apparently as an afterthought.  Probably, therefore, Good Friday originated in a backward extension of the preparation for Baptism, though the associations of the day must have been present to some extent from the first.

      There was no celebration of the Eucharist on this day, but by the eighth century the Mass of the Presanctified is attested at Rome.  It was simply a common participation by the faithful of the previously consecrated elements, similar to that practiced by solitaries, and by the faithful during the persecutions.  The non-eucharistic services which have become associated with the day – a mimetic representation of our Lord’s experiences in the Way of the Cross, the Veneration of the Cross, and even a Three Hours’ Service of readings, hymns and preaching – were all observed in the fourth century at Jerusalem, where Etheria saw them.  There was also a service resembling Tenebrae on the earlier days of the week. [Good Friday is not technically a day on which church-going is obligatory in the Roman Catholic Church, though it is a fast of obligation.]

      Easter Even (“the great sabbath,” “the holy sabbath”) had originally no special services, but it gradually received the ceremonies and attendant rites of the Easter vigil, especially the Baptismal Service.  The Easter Mass then was at midnight, preceded by the vigil services, as in the Eastern Church today.  In the modern Roman rite the first Mass of Easter is said on the morning of Easter Even.

      Easter Week.  Following the lead of the Jewish Passover, the early Church observed the Octave of Easter.  Jerusalem in the fourth century had stations [The technical meaning of this word is the “solemn services held [at Rome] at different churches when the Pope celebrated, supported by the twenty-five parish priests and their people” (Frere, Studies in Early Roman Liturgy, i. 17).] for each day, and on the Sunday commemorated Christ’s appearance to St. Thomas.  According to the Apostolic Constitutions (viii. 33), slaves were to have respite from labour “all the great week [i.e. Holy Week], and that which follows it,” in order to have leisure for instruction – an interesting proof of the primitive character of Easter holidays.  The newly-baptized wore their white robes for a week, so that the Sunday in the West came to be called “Dominica in albis” (depositis).  “Low Sunday” is derived from Laudes,’ the first word of the old Sequence.

      Rogation Days.  The observance of the three days before the Ascension originated about 470 with Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne, who ordered litanies to be said out of doors at a time of earthquake.  It spread through Gaul and to England, and later, about 800, reached Rome.  Litanies of the type still used in the Eastern Liturgies are found in the Apostolic Constitutions (viii. 20, 13).  That out-of-door litanies were so popular in the West was doubtless due to their meeting the needs supplied in pre-Christian times by processions round the fields in which the crops were growing.  (See on April 25 below.)  St. Isidore of Seville (d. 636) says that we fast after Ascension Day and before Pentecost, the days in which the Bridegroom is taken away.

      The Ascension (Holy Thursday, in old English usage) is first traced in the latter part of the fourth century.  St. Augustine, c. 400, speaks of it as universally observed.  Seeing that at Constantinople and elsewhere it was celebrated outside the city, it seems probable that Jerusalem was the place of origin.  There, we learn from Etheria, the faithful went in pilgrimage to Bethany, continuing the dramatic representations of Holy Week.

      Pentecost (Whitsunday in English, i.e. White Sunday, from its associations with the white robes of Baptism) meant the fifty days after Easter, or the concluding day of the period.  From the beginning of the fourth century the latter sense began to prevail.  Very elaborate ceremonial was practiced at Jerusalem in that century.  Pentecost was a great feast as early as Tertullian’s time (De Bapt., 19).

      Whitsun Week. [The Prayer Book speaks of “Monday in Whitsun Week,” of which “Whitmonday” is a popular abbreviation.  Whitsun Monday, i.e. Whitsunday Monday, is not used.]  The octave is very early.  “After you have kept the festival of Pentecost, keep one week more festival, and, after that, fast” (Apost. Const. v. 20).

      Trinity Sunday is thought to owe its origin to the reception of heretics on the Sunday following Pentecost, which would give it a kind of “Orthodoxy Sunday” character.  But the first attaching of the idea to the Sunday was at Liege in the tenth century.  Pope John XXII enjoined the universal observance of the festival in 1334.  Its special popularity in England was due to its association with Thomas of Canterbury, who was consecrated on the Octave of Pentecost.  The English (Sarum) reckoning of Sundays after Trinity, instead of after Pentecost, is also followed by the Lutherans; so too by the ancient Carmelite Rite and the Dominicans. [See A. A. King, Notes on the Catholic Liturgies, pp. 78, 90.]

      Corpus Christi falls on the 60th day after Easter, Thursday after Trinity Sunday, the first free Thursday after the cycle of festivals is over.  It was first observed in the diocese of Liege in 1247, and was made of general obligation by Urban IV in 1264.  The English 1928 Book provides Collect, Epistle and Gospel for “Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion,” and by a rubric, “The Proper Preface of Maundy Thursday may be used,” shows that the commemoration will fall on a day other than Maundy Thursday.  The Scottish Book does likewise, and adds a rubric forbidding the use of the service on a Sunday. [The Roman Communion has two other movable greater feasts of our Lord.  The Sacred Heart falls on the Friday following the octave of Corpus Christi; first observed in 1685, it was made of universal obligation by Pius IX in 1856.  In 1925 Pius XI instituted the feast of Christ the King, on the last Sunday of October.  Its purpose is to teach the dominion of Christ in the world, exercised through His Church, as against the encroachments of the lay secular State.]

      (iv) Christmas and Epiphany.  These are the two characteristic feasts of the Incarnation, in West and East.  The dates go back to immemorial antiquity. Dec. 25 was significant as the winter solstice.  It was celebrated as the birthday of Mithras and of Sol Invictus.  In the form of the feast Kikellia it can be traced at Alexandria back to 239 B.C.  A parallel festival at Alexandria on January 6 celebrated the birthday of Osiris.  Two thousand years before Christ a reformed Calendar was introduced; at that time the winter solstice fell on January 6 of the Julian Calendar.  By the fourth century B.C., owing to the inaccuracy of the Calendar, the solstice was on December 25.  It is thought that a Hellenistic festival may have been introduced soon after the founding of Alexandria, by the side of the national.  Egyptian festival which adhered to the traditional date.  The feast of the Dedication (1 Macc. 4:56, John 10:22) was on Chislev (approximately December 25).  The winter solstice was therefore marked out by immemorial usage as appropriate for a religious feast. [Summarized from the writer’s discussion in New Testament Problems, pp. 2–5; see also p. 90.]

      The earliest evidence for Epiphany is in Clement of Alexandria, who tells us (Strom., i. 21) that the followers of Basilides spent the night of January 5/6 as a vigil and the day itself as a festival of our Lord’s baptism.  This fits in with the conception of Baptism as illumination, and with the pagan celebration of the day as the birthday of a god. [In Alexandria at first Osiris, later Aeon, the (new) age; see Epiphanius, Panarion, li. 22.]  By about 300 Epiphany had established itself among the orthodox of the East.  It was the festival both of the birth and of the baptism of our Lord, as Cassian tells us. [Coll. x. 2.  So also Epiphanius and Etheria.]  The traditional association of the day with the marriage feast at Cana [Cf. the second lesson at Evensong and the Gospel for the Second Sunday after Epiphany.] may be connected with the feast of Dionysus, identified with Osiris and also with Aeon, on January 5/6, our Lord being thought of as giving the true wine in contrast with the falsehoods of paganism.

      Epiphany reached the West in the second half of the fourth century, perhaps appearing in Gaul first.  Augustine at the beginning of the fifth century says it is observed throughout the world, except by the Donatists.  For a time at Rome it seems to have competed with December 25 for the place of honour.  The difficulty was solved by making January 6 preeminently a commemoration of the visit of the Magi, a peculiarly Western meaning of the feast. [See Lietzmann, Petrus und Paulus in Rom, pp. 75–80.  The Proper Preface of Epiphany in the Roman Mass is of the Incarnation: “Quia cum Unigenitus tuus in substantia nostrae mortalitatis apparuit, nova nos immortalitatis suae luce reparavit”; the prayers refer to the Magi.  The name “Theophania” in the old Roman Calendar shows the Eastern origin of the feast.]

      The choice of December 25 in the West was doubtless due to the pagan associations of the day, and to the wise desire of the Church to direct the habits of the people into Christian channels.  But probably the well-known theory of Hippolytus was a contributing factor.  This writer concluded that the Crucifixion took place on March 25 of 29 A.D.; also that the Annunciation was on that day, an exact number of years having elapsed since the Incarnation.  Christ’s birth therefore was on December 25 (March 25 was also considered to have been the date of the Creation).  The Philocalian Calendar, representing the usage at Rome in 336, [See below.] refers to Christmas under December 25: “Natus Christus in Betleem Judaeae,” and probably implies some liturgical observance.  In 386 Chrysostom declared that Christmas had been introduced at Antioch fewer than ten years previously.  Eventually the double celebration made its way in the East, though the Armenians still keep January 6 only.

      Advent as a preparation for Christmas seems to have originated in Gaul in the sixth century.  Thus Caesarius of Arles, c. 542, urged the faithful to prepare for their Christmas Communion for some days before (“ante plures dies”).  Later the period from November 11 to December 24 was known as the Lent (“quadragesima”) of St. Martin.  The length of the preparatory period varied; two, three, or even six Sundays [So still in the Ambrosian and Mozarabic Calendars.] are attested.  The four Sundays now observed date from Gregory the Great; however, for some time to come the liturgical year began on the vigil of Christmas.  In the East preparation for Christmas begins on November 15. [For January 1, February 2, March 25 see below.]

      (v) Martyrologies. [A martyrology was originally a calendar in which days to be observed, predominantly entombments of martyrs, were entered.  In the early Middle Ages it had acquired its modem sense of a list of martyrs, etc., with brief descriptions of their lives and deaths, for reading aloud.]  The prototype of the Christian martyrs is the great cloud of witnesses (or martyrs) mentioned in Heb. 12:1, where the special reference is to the heroes of the Maccabaean rising.  Then first perhaps in the history of the world a community organized as a church resisted unto blood, from motives primarily religious, an attempt to make its manner of life conform to that prescribed by a centralizing State. [See C. G. Montefiore, Rabbinic Literature and Gospel Teachings, pp. 30 ff., for the later Jewish teaching about martyrdom.  Christianity developed an exultation in martyrdom foreign to Rabbinic teaching, which regarded it as a sad necessity.  One must suffer for the cause, lishmah, not for the sake of reward, which, however, would come.  Great veneration was felt for the martyrs of the Hadrianic persecution, of whom Aqiba was the most eminent.  “Where the public Sanctification, or the open Profanation, of God’s name is concerned, a man must be prepared to give his life.  Where that is not in question, a man may rightly violate every injunction of the Law in order to save his life” – except as regards idolatry, unchastity and murder (p. 231).]  The Seven Brethren of 2 Macc. 7 alone among pre-New Testament heroes have passed into the Calendar of the Western Church (Aug. 1). [The prayers of this day in the Roman Missal treat their intercession as being on an equal footing with those of Christian martyrs.]  The Church, then, found the framework of its martyr concept ready made.  The concept itself grew out of the imitatio Christi, the desire for identification with our Lord in His Passion and crucifixion.  The example of St. Stephen and the teaching of St. Paul about union with Christ in His death, added to the continual influence of the Passion narratives of the Gospels, contributed to form a flame-like intensity of spirit unequalled in human history.

      A few passages from the Acta Martyrum will illustrate the prevailing ideas.  Christ suffers and triumphs in His martyrs (Epistle of Church of Vienne and Lyons [Cf. also the Quo Vadis? legend according to the more probable interpretation.]).  The martyr goes straight to God (ib.), entering heaven “by the shortest way” (Passion of Procopius).  The intercession of the martyrs is powerful (Potamiaena, Eus. H.E., vi. 5).  In the Acts of Maximus we read of “the grace of Christ which will save me eternally through the prayers of all the saints” {who have prevailed in martyrdom}.  The Church on earth has “fellowship with the holy martyrs, and through them with the Lord Jesus Christ” (Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas).  The earthly remains of the martyrs are revered.  The bones are laid in a suitable place (Martyrdom of Polycarp; Acts of Justin and his Companions).  They are “carefully guarded to the glory of Christ and the praise of His martyrs” (Acts of Carpus, Papylus and Agathonice).  The place is visited on the anniversary of the martyrdom, or birthday (into eternal life) as it is called.  Other martyrs’ bodies are moved to be near that of a famous martyr, such as Cyprian (Acts of Maximilian).  The pagans tried to hinder the cult, in the case of the martyrs of Vienne and Lyons, by burning the bodies to ashes, which were cast into the Rhone.  Martyrdoms often took place on festival days ; for example, that of Polycarp, and later that of Pionius on the same day, so that in some cases Saints’ days perpetuated a heathen festival.

      If we now return to 2 Maccabees, we shall see how naturally these ideas arose out of Judaism.  Chap. 7 is essentially a martyrology.  The sufferings were endured at a heathen feast (compare 6:7 with 7:42).  Fellowship with the departed is very close.  Judas offers sacrifice for the slain – “holy and godly was the thought that they might be released from their sin” (12:43–45).  Onias the high priest is seen in vision “with outstretched hands invoking blessing on the whole body of the Jews,” and Jeremiah appears with “exceeding glory ... he who prayeth much for the people and the holy city” (15:12–14).  Prophets being held in such veneration, their sepulchres were probably built long before the time of our Lord (see Matt. 23:29).

      If the martyr, about to enter the immediate presence of His Lord, was asked to intercede for those on earth, it was an easy step to transfer his prerogative to the confessor, a martyr (witness), though not actually unto death.  When persecutions ceased, the ascetics, like the martyrs and confessors termed “athletes,” succeeded to the estimation in which these had been held and were reckoned “friends of God” in a special sense. [While this is the distinction between martyrs and confessors, the second-century sense of “martyr,” one who undergoes examination in a court and confesses the faith consistently, persisted for a long time.]

      The Western Calendar, a modified form of which has survived in the English Prayer Book, goes back to the local list of the Church of Rome.  It is convenient to start from 354 and work first backwards, then forwards.  In that year Philocalus put forth a Calendar, which incorporated two lists important for our purpose: (a) the “depositiones” (burial days) of the Popes from Lucius (255–257) to Silvester (314–337), ten in number; and (b) the “depositiones” of twenty-five martyrs.  The January entries will show what the document is like.*

      [*See H. Lietzmann, Die drei ältesten Martyrologien.  (This section is based mainly on his book Petrus und Paulus in Rom, and article supplementing it in Harvard Theological Review, April 1923, and on W. H. Frere, Studies in Early Roman Liturgy, I. The Calendar.)

                  [Depositio Episcoporum]            III  Idus Januarias   Miltiadis in Callisti.

                                                            XVIII   Kal. Feb.          Marcellini in Priscillae.

                  [Depositio Martyrum]             XIII   Kal. Feb.          Fabiani in Callisti et

                                                                                                Sebastiani in Catacumbas.

                                                                XII   Kal. Feb.          Agnetis in Nomentana.]

      These lists formed a conspectus of shrines in the cemeteries round about Rome, where anniversaries were kept.  Thus St. Agnes was commemorated at the Cemetery on the Via Nomentana.  The word “natale,” or “natalis (dies),” [Properly of martyrs.] was extended to cover any day of remembrance, such as the anniversary of a bishop’s accession to the episcopate.  The date of the first bishop in the Philocalian list is significant.  Interest in the official character of the Roman bishops seems to have begun about 240 under Fabian, and there is an element of uncertainty in earlier episcopates.  The official commemoration of the accession of the popes began towards the end of the third century, and brought with it the festival of the Chair of Peter on February 22, [This festival disappeared at Rome but persisted in Gaul, where, to avoid Lent, it was transferred to January 18.  In the ninth century it returned to Rome on that date and, its origin being forgotten, was taken to commemorate the giving of the keys to St. Peter.] which supplanted the pagan feast of Caristia with its cult of the dead.

      Omitting many interesting problems we confine ourselves to two questions: (a) the feast of SS. Peter and Paul and (b) the days following Christmas.

      (a) The Philocalian entry for June 29 is: “III Kal. Jul. Petri in Catacumbas et Pauli Ostense Tusco et Basso cons.” (“Peter at the catacombs and Paul on the Ostian Way in the Consulate of Tuscus and Bassus,” i.e. 258).  This states that in 354 St. Peter was commemorated “at the Catacombs,” i.e. St. Sebastian on the Appian Way, and St. Paul on the Ostian Way.  This is puzzling, and it is suggested [So Lietzmann.  G. La Piana, who in Harvard Theol. Rev., Jan. 1921, controverts some of Lietzmann’s conclusions, agrees with this reconstruction of the text.] that the original text of the source was: “Petri in Vaticano, Pauli vero in Via Ostensi, utriusque in Catacumbas.”  Now about 200 the graves of the Apostles were shown on the Vatican and the Ostian Way.  It appears that the bodies were taken in 258, during the Valerian persecution, for safety to the Catacomb of St. Sebastian.  The cult will have begun then, for there were no liturgical martyrs’ festivals before 250, and in the original resting places there was no room for gatherings for worship.  When churches were built under Constantine and the bodies were restored to their old resting places, June 29 was taken as the day of martyrdom.  The divergent dates found elsewhere (see below) suggest that the day (or days) of death was unknown, and that June 29 commemorates some historical fact, such as the initiation of the liturgical festival.

      (b) The liturgical year in the Philocalian Calendar begins on December 25, as also in the oldest Syriac Martyrology, based on the Greek one of Asia Minor.  Gregory of Nyssa, in his Sermon in Praise of Basil, gives a list of festivals beginning with Christmas.  He agrees with the Syriac in putting Stephen on December 26.  As early as the Epistle of the Church of Vienne and Lyons he appears as the “perfect martyr,” the prototype of all that followed (Eus. H.E., v. 2), and so fittingly begins the year.  The Eastern (Syriac) Martyrology gives “John and James the apostles in Jerusalem” on the 27th; Gregory gives Peter, James, John and Paul for this and the following days. [Basil followed on Jan. 1, being thus assimilated to the Apostles.]  The Carthaginian Martyrology (c. 500) has “John the Baptist and James the Apostle, whom Herod killed” – correcting the apparent error of the Eastern list.  On December 28 the Eastern gives Paul and Peter, in this order, apparently a Western pair following the Eastern pair John and James, and ascribes this entry to Rome.  So if June 29 was known, it was evidently taken as a local custom.  The Carthaginian Martyrology substitutes the Holy Innocents.  The West having already adopted June 29 for Peter and Paul, December 28 was unacceptable. [Clearly there is abundant opportunity of error in the development of the tradition here summarized, and the evidence afforded by the Martyrologies for the early death of John the son of Zebedee is very precarious.  The tradition supposed to be found in Papias may have arisen from the ambiguity of the word “martyr”.]

      The original Calendars were purely local.  Before long famous commemorations were added from other Churches.  All the names on the Philocalian list are Roman except Cyprian, and Perpetua and Felicitas, from Africa.  Other Churches were readier to accept Roman names.  The most important Martyrologies for our purpose are:

      (a) Hieronymian, drawn up c. 450 and revised in France c. 600.

      (b) Leonine, [I.e. the Calendar reconstructed from the Sacramentary.] sixth century, a Roman book.  April 14 is the first feast of the year, the earlier part being missing.

      (c) Gelasian, used in France in the eighth century.  The Roman original is probably seventh century.

      (d) Gregorian, from the mass book of the Carolingian Empire, based on a copy of the Sacramentary ascribed to Gregory the Great, sent by Pope Hadrian to Charlemagne between 784 and 791. [See a very clear account of these books in Duchesne, Christian Worship, chap. v.]

      The Martyrology ascribed to Bede shows the English usage in the eighth century.  By the tenth century the main Roman commemorations had spread throughout the West, supplemented everywhere by local names.  Lietzmann’s list of the common stock in the early Calendars, i.e. before the sixth century, of Rome, Gaul, Spain and Africa is worth quoting. [Op. cit., p. 62.]  (The martyrs asterisked are in the Canon of the Mass.)

      Dec. 25, Nat. Dom.; 26, S. Stefani; 27, S Johannis Apostoli; 28, SS. Innocentium; January 6, Epiphania; 21, S. Agnetis*; June 24, S. Johannis Bapt.; 29, SS. Petri et Pauli; Aug. 6, S. Xyst.*; 10, S. Laurenti*; 13, S. Hippolyti; Sept. 4, S. Cypriani*; Nov. 23, S. Clementis.* [For the Calendar of the Eastern Orthodox Church see Dowden, The Church rear and Kalendar, chap. x.]

III

      We now reach the Calendar of the English Prayer Book.  It is based on that of the Sarum Use, the Breviary of which was made obligatory for the Province of Canterbury in 1542.  The stages by which the 1662 Calendar was built up were as follows: [See Procter and Frere, pp. 334–41; V. Staley, The Liturgical Year; Dowden, The Church Year and Calendar, pp. 149–53.  Broadly speaking, the holy days in the 1662 Calendar are those feasts which had nine lessons in the Sarum books (Staley, Liturgical Studies, p. 27).]

      Before 1549.  In 1532 the Commons petitioned that holy days, especially in harvest time, might be diminished in number.  Convocation in 1536 curtailed their observance as public holidays considerably.  Small liturgical changes were made about this time, including the removal of the festivals of Thomas of Canterbury. [This was of great political significance and preluded the coming humiliation of the Church by the civil power.]  Cranmer’s drafts for a revised Calendar show how his mind was moving during this period; they include some strange aberrations.

      The 1549 Book.  All commemorations were swept away except those which appear as Red-Letter Days in the 1662 Calendar, to which Mary Magdalene was added.

      The 1552 Book inserted George, Lammas, Lawrence and Clement as Black-Letter Days, omitted Mary Magdalene, and, perhaps by a printer’s error, Barnabas, though providing a Collect, Epistle and Gospel for his day.

      The 1559 Book restored Barnabas.  The Latin edition issued by authority in 1560 had many Black-Letter Saints.  In 1561 a Calendar was published in English, the work of Commissioners acting upon a Royal Letter.  It contained the Commemorations of 1662, excepting Enurchus added in 1604, and Bede and Alban added in 1662.  These 1561 additions were incorporated in the later issues of the Elizabethan Book.

      The 1662 Book.  The sources of the new matter in the Calendar are the Preces Privatae of 1564 and Bishop Cosin’s Collection of Private Devotions (1627).

      The Red-Letter Days were intended for liturgical observance.  Since the Black-Letter entries were first made in 1552 it is reasonable to suppose that the traditional explanation is correct.  This is given by Wheatly (1710).  He says that the dates were restored from motives of secular convenience.  The Courts of Justice used them for reckoning; trades would have been displeased had they lost their tutelary saint; for example, Crispin, patron of Shoemakers.  The patronal festival of a church had a wake or fair associated with it, and for convenience’ sake the date was given; history books referred to periods as Lammastide or Martinmas, and it was well that such references should not become unintelligible.  It is objected that O Sapientia on December 16 is of purely liturgical interest and is sufficient to refute Wheatly.  But it is unlikely that anyone in the seventeenth century wished to retain this entry for its liturgical value.  The bishops’ answer to the Puritans in 1661 shows their motives.  The names were left not to be kept as holy days, but for secular purposes and for the preservation of their memories.  So little interest was taken in Christian antiquity that even exceptionally well-informed writers some fifty years later, such as Wheatly and Nicholls, remembered only the secular motive.

      The 1662 Book had three additional Red-Letter Commemorations, on January 30, May 29, and November 5, of King Charles Martyr, Charles II’s birth and restoration, and “Papists’ Conspiracy”.  Annexed to the Book were the special services for these days, approved by Convocation and added to the Prayer Book by royal mandate issued at the beginning of each reign.  In 1859 Queen Victoria cancelled the order she had issued, and an Act of Parliament was passed repealing the religious observance of these days.  The services henceforward were no longer annexed to the Prayer Book and the printers omitted the corresponding entries in the Calendar.  The loss of Charles I has caused pain to many.  But it is hard to see what other course could have been followed.  No one wished to retain Papists’ Conspiracy in the Calendar, but to have omitted it and retained Charles I would have been at least as arbitrary an act as that of which the printers were accused.  Further, the legalized religious observance having lapsed, there was no authority for printing January 30 as a Red-Letter Day, and the making of a new Black-Letter Day was not a matter for the printers to decide. [On the other side it is argued that the 1859 Act merely removed the legal sanction of the services, and their status as extra services approved by Convocation remained; in any case the printers had no authority to alter the Calendar.]

      We now proceed to examine the Anglican Calendars in detail, including fully authorized revisions and the proposed English Book of 1928.  The Irish and American Books can be omitted from the survey, since from both of them Black-Letter Days are excluded.  The Red-Letter Days are as in 1662, except that both add The Transfiguration, Irish adds St. Patrick, and American Independence Day (July 4).  Of the rest, the Canadian revisers worked upon an early stage of the English revision [Report No. 481 of Convocation of Canterbury.] and used the suggestions of Bishop John Wordsworth [In The Ministry of Grace.] and Dr. Frere, [In Some Principles of Liturgical Reform.] so that the result closely resembles that of the English 1928 Book.  The Scottish revisers aimed at including the great saints of the universal Church, local saints (including Irish), with special consideration for those to whom churches are dedicated, and familiar figures like Cuthbert and Benedict.  The English Book of 1928 contains a revised Calendar, additional to that of 1662, the principles of which have never been authoritatively explained.  It was intended to be provisional only and the subject, it was hoped, would be referred to a special Commission. [In 1923, after a number of haphazard resolutions had been brought forward in the House of Clergy of the Church Assembly, the inclusion of William Laud was proposed, but rejected on the ground that more time was required for consideration of the principles involved.  In 1924 the Lower House of Convocation of Canterbury requested the Archbishop “to appoint a Commission to make an historical investigation of the Beatification and Canonization of Saints; the grounds of their selection, and the methods of procedure for their inclusion in the Calendar.”  The Upper House postponed consideration of this request until Prayer Book Revision should be completed.  In 1925 the House of Clergy in the Assembly reaffirmed the above resolution, adding the following resolutions: “That an authority be appointed which shall judicially investigate and report on the claims of each name proposed for addition to the Calendar.  That the Calendar may be followed, if it be thought desirable, by a list of saints and worthies, drawn up in Calendrical form, but not intended for liturgical observance.  That provision for the liturgical commemoration of local Saints, not already included in the Prayer Book Calendar, and to whom churches have been dedicated, may be made for local or diocesan use, under the direction of the Ordinary.”  In 1931 the matter was taken up again by the Lower House of the Convocation of Canterbury.]  The problem has assumed importance only in recent years, with the rapid increase in number of the churches in which the Eucharist is celebrated daily.  The fact that the subject must come to the front again before long justifies what may seem a rather disproportionate amount of space allotted to it here. [The S. African Calendar is so far only provisional; see below.]

      The notes are arranged as follows:

      The description of the day is given as in the facsimile edition of the Book Annexed, but abbreviations are amplified and spelling is modernized.  Saints not in the 1662 Calendar appear as in the English 1928 Book, in cases where their description in the Scottish or Canadian Books is different. E is used for the 1662 Book; P the Prayer Book as proposed in 1928; S = Scottish; C = Canadian.  Sar. following the first group of capitals signifies that the commemoration is found in the Sarum Use – the Breviary and Missal are not distinguished.  Next comes a brief summary of the Saint’s life, the date of death coming here and not as part of the official designation.  Finally, in most cases a little information is given about the cult, if only by giving the number of dedications in England, with the abbreviation Ded. The number in brackets signifies nineteenth-century dedications. [The figures are taken from F. Arnold-Forster’s Studies in Church Dedications, 3 vols., 1899.  In so vast an undertaking mistakes are inevitable and it was quite impossible for her to trace the original dedication in every case.  But the broad outlines of her study are reliable.  The figures given suggest a criterion by which to judge additions to the Calendar.  If a Saint was not popular in the Middle Ages and did not commend himself to nineteenth-century church  builders as likely to interest parishioners, we may infer that the appeal of a restored commemoration will not be strong.  The inclusion of twentieth-century dedications would not alter the figures appreciably.  Miss Arnold-Forster confined her studies to England, excluding Wales, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands.]

January

      1.  Circumcision of our Lord.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  At first the Octave of Christmas.  The Collect in the Roman Rite is of the B.V.M. and the Incarnation, with no reference to the Circumcision.  SS. Ambrose and Augustine refer to the day as a fast, observed as a protest against heathen license.  In Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries it is called “Octava Domini”.  The name Circumcision first appears in the seventh century in Gaul. The Armenian Church observes the feast on January 13. A collect for New Year’s Day’ is found in the 1928 Book.

      6.  Epiphany of Our Lord.  E.P.S.C.  See above.

      8.  Lucian, Priest and Martyr.  E.  Sar.  (Breviary adds “and his companions”).  M. at Nicomedia, c. 311 (Eus. H.E., ix. 6); perhaps Lucian, m. at Beauvais, c. 290 (?), was intended.  Dedications in England 1.

      11.  David, King of Scotland and Confessor. [The Scottish Calendar adds Confessor in almost every case where the Saint was not martyred.  Dedications of the purely Scottish Saints are not given.  They may be assumed not to exist in England.  S. in such cases means Scottish, not Sarum.]  S.  Son of Malcolm Canmore and Q. Margaret; founded bishoprics and monasteries; d. 1153.

      13.  Hilary, Bishop and Confessor.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Bp. of Poitiers; supported Athanasius; d. 368.  In early Mart. [This is used to mean any of the Calendars enumerated on above, excluding the Philocalian Calendar, and Syriac and Carthaginian Calendars, printed by Lietzmann, which are specified when necessary.]  Pius IX (d. 1878) made Doctor of the Church.  On the 14th in present Roman Calendar.  Ded. 3 (0). [The figure includes all dedications given by Arnold-Forster, double and alternative as well as ordinary, and so elsewhere.]

      13.  Kentigern or Mungo, Bishop of Glasgow.  S. (Red-Letter).  Given pet name of Mungo by his mother; educated by Serfat Culross; Apostle of Britons of Strathclyde; fixed residence where Glasgow now stands; visited Wales; d. c. 603.

      17.  Antony of Egypt, Abbot.  P.S.  Sar.  Founder of organized monasticism; d. 356.  Early Mart.  Ded. 0.

      18.  Prisca, Roman Virgin and Martyr.  E.  Sar.  Martyred 270 (?).  If = Prisca of the Catacomb of Priscilla, an important though obscure figure in Christian tradition; cf. Rom. 16:3, Acts18:2.  Early Mart.  Ded. 0.

      19.  Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester.  P.S.  Sar.  Consecrated 1062; submitted to William I; helped to suppress slave trade at Bristol; d. 1095.  Canonized 1203, relics translated 1218; shrine destroyed at Reformation and relics buried near high altar.  Ded. 1 (0).

      20.  Fabian, Bishop of Rome and Martyr.  E.P.S.  Sar.  Victim of Decian persecution, 250.  In Philocalian list, with Sebastian.  Relics brought from papal crypt in cemetery of Callistus to “basilica ad Catacumbas”.  Epitaph (probably not authentic) discovered in 1915 in St. Sebastian.  Ded. 1 (0) (with Sebastian).

      21.  Agnes, Roman Virgin and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar. (where she has an octave).  [Or rather, secondary festival.  In the early Roman Calendar the 21st was de passione, the 28th de nativitate.]  Child martyr, c. 304.  In Philocalian list, where we find feast celebrated in catacomb on Via Nomentana.  Said to be buried in praediolum of her family, the crypt dug for them being the nucleus of the Cemetery of St. Agnes.  The Church of St. Agnes outside the walls goes back to the time of Constantine.  At this church lambs are blessed each year, whose wool is used to weave the pallium of an Archbishop.  Ambrose, Prudentius and Jerome wrote in praise of her.  Perhaps the first Saint to receive a symbol – a lamb.  Ded. 11 (7).

      22.  Vincent, Spanish Deacon and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Martyred at Valencia, c. 304.  In Carthaginian and early Mart.  Cult came to Rome by the sixth century independently of any church dedicated to him.  Relics said to be at Saragossa.  Ded. 5 (0).

      24.  St. Timothy.  S.  The body is said to have been brought to Constantinople.  Ded. 1 (1).

      25.  Conversion of St. Paul.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Peculiar to the West.  Originally a feast of the Gallican Church, which kept St. Peter on January 8.  In some early Mart.  In Hier. Mart. is feast of “translatio,” i.e. of the Apostle’s relics to Rome; December 12 is the “inventio,’ identification of the body in the catacombs.  In a ninth-century Mart. appears as “translatio et conversio”.  For Ded. see June 29. [Note the frequent occurrence of the 24th and 25th for important days.  March 25 and December 25 having been fixed, the same period of the month seemed suitable for other commemorations.]

      26.  Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna and Martyr.  P.S.C.  Sar. [Calendars of 1530, 1546.  For this and similar notes see C. Wordsworth’s edition of the Sarum Breviary.]  Martyred c. 155.  The outstanding figure in the development of the martyr cult.  The actual date was February 23.  See Mart. Polyc., 21.  Ded. 1 (1).

      27.  John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople and Doctor.  P.S.C.  One of the greatest preachers and commentators of all time.  d. 407.  Ded. 5 (5).

      30.  Beheading of King Charles I.  [E.]S.  d. 1649.  After long debates in Scotland, insertion carried in 1928 in this form.  Omitted finally in English 1928 Book, presumably for political reasons.  Charles saved the Church of England by his fidelity to its Constitution, and may be held to have the status of a local Saint made by popular acclamation.  Ded. 5 (0).

February

      1.  Bride, Abbess of Kildare.  S.  Sar. (an exception to the rule of not having Scottish and Irish Saints); d. 523.  Early Mart.  Very popular in Ireland, in form Bridget characteristic girl’s name.  Ded. 21 (2).

      1.  Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, Martyr.  C.  See December 17.

      2.  Purification of Mary the Blessed Virgin.  E.P.S. (adds “or Candlemas”)  C.  Sar.  Observed at Jerusalem, at the time of Etheria’s visit, on February 54, i.e. forty days after the Eastern feast of the Nativity, as it still is by the Armenians; a feast of our Lord, not of the B.V.M.  Justinian ordered its observance on February 2 in 542.  In later form of Gregorian tradition.  Its Eastern origin is shown in the title “Hypapante,” [Meeting with Simeon and Anna.] which as late as Usuard (c. 875) is the sole title.  For the Candlemas ceremonies see below, Latin Rites ...  The service in the Roman missal scarcely refers to the purification of the B.V.M.

      3.  Blasius, Armenian Bishop and Martyr.  E.  Sar.  Nothing certain is known.  In ninth-century Mart.  A popular mediaeval Saint, patron of wool combers.  Ded. 4 (0).

      3.  Anskar of Sweden, Bishop.  P.  Brought up in monastery of Corbie; missionary to Denmark; first bishop of Hamburg; made two missionary journeys to Sweden; d. 864.  Ded. 0.

      5.  Agatha, a Sicilian Virgin and Martyr.  E.  Sar.  Said to have been martyred 251.  Cult established by fifth or sixth century; liturgical observance perhaps began when Gregory restored the Church of St. Agatha in the Subura to Catholicism, C. 591.  Ded. 6 (2).

      6.  St. Titus.  S.  His head is said to have been taken by the Venetians from Crete to Venice, where it is preserved in St. Mark’s.  Ded. 1 (1).

      11.  Finnian, Bishop of Moville and Confessor.  S.  Teacher of Columba; said to have gone to Lucca and returned to Ireland; d. c. 579.  Lucca claims to possess his bones, under the name of Frigidianus (Frediano).

      14.  Valentine, Bishop and Martyr.  E.C.  Sar.  Said to have been a bishop in Umbria; d. c. 270.  Three Valentines are commemorated in Mart.  Cosin described him as “a Priest of Rome”.  Birds begin to pair on Valentine’s day, according to Chaucer.  The traditional English day for lovers to interchange gifts and tokens.  “Valentines, obsolete in England, still flourish in America.”  Ded. 0.

      17.  Finan, Bishop of Lindisfarne and Confessor.  S.  A monk of Iona who went to Northumbria; d. 661.  Ded. 0.

      18.  Colman, Bishop of Lindisfarne and Confessor.  S.  Succeeded Finan; d. 676.  Ded. 0.

      24.  St. Matthias, Apostle and Martyr. [“St.” is here added to all the Red-Letter Saints, though in the Book Annexed it is given or withheld arbitrarily.]  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  In some forms of Gregorian Sacramentary.  In the Sarum Calendar the day is “vi Kal. Martii,” or (as we say) five days before March 1.  The 1549 Book gave 28 days to February, so that Matthias fell on the 24th; the 1552 allowed for leap year and gave 29, making it the 25th.  The 1662 Book put it on the 24th.  In 1683 Abp. Sancroft ordered that it should always be kept on the 24th, whether leap year or no, the almanac makers having been accustomed to put it on the 25th in leap year.  The Roman Calendar maintains the traditional rule.  The Eastern Church keeps this feast on Aug. 9.  Ded. 20 (19). [Note the comparative absence of early Saints belonging to the general Calendar of the Church about this time of year.  The tendency was to avoid Lent.]

March

      1.  David, Archbishop of Menevia.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Archbishop (an anachronism), in S.W. Wales, of the modern St. David’s, sixth century.  The patron Saint of Wales.  His cult was urged in the Middle Ages in protest against the encroachments of the see of Canterbury.  Ded. 30 (7).

      1.  Marnan or Ernin, Bishop and Confessor.  S.  Marnan is probably the Irish Ernin, Apostle of Banffshire and missionary to the Picts; d. c. 625.

      2.  Cedde, or Chad, Bishop of Lichfield.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  (Ceddae, sic).  Not to be confused with Cedd of Lindisfarne, who was never canonized.  d. 672.  His relics, formerly at Lichfield, were rescued at the Reformation and are now at St. Chad’s (R.C.) Cathedral, Birmingham.  Ded. 44 (11).

      6.  Baldred, Confessor.  S.  Hermit on the Bass Rock.  Crossed to the mainland for missionary labours; local Saint of E. Lothian; d. 608.

      7.  Perpetua, Mauritanian Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  (P.S. add “and her companions, Carthaginian Martyrs”; C. adds “and Felicitas”). [Felicitas in the Roman Canon is probably the Roman matron commemorated on November 23.]  Sar.  Martyred at Carthage 203.  The tomb was seen in the fifth century by a bishop whose account is extant.  The inscription was discovered in 1907 in the Basilica Majorum at Carthage.  It runs thus: “Here are the martyrs Saturus, Saturninus, Revocatus, Secundulus, Felicitas, [Felicitas in the Roman Canon is probably the Roman matron commemorated on November 23.] Perpetua, who suffered on the Nones of March.” [A photograph is given in E. C. Owen, Some Authentic Acts of Early Martyrs.]  In the Philocalian list.  Ded. 0.

      8.  Thomas of Aquinum, Doctor.  S.  d. 1274.  Canonized by John XXII in 1323; declared Doctor of the Church by Pius V in 1567.

      10.  Kessog, Bishop and Confessor.  S.  Evangelized West Perthshire; d. c. 700; remains said to rest in Cemetery at bridge of Callander.

      12.  Gregorius Magnus.  Bishop of Rome and Confessor.  E.P.S.C.  (P.S.C. add “Doctor”).  Sar.  One of the greatest of all popes, held in veneration by the English-speaking races for taking the initiative in evangelizing their forefathers.  d. 604. [Gregory died on March 11 and was buried on the 12th.  In the Philocalian list the burial (“depositio”) is commemorated. It would often coincide with the day of death.]  Canonized by popular acclamation immediately.  Cult began in eighth century.  Ded. 32 (1).

      17.  Patrick, of Ireland, Bishop.  P.S.  (Red-Letter) C.  Sar.  Apostle of Ireland; d. 461.  Follows SS. Peter and Paul in the Canon of the Stowe Missal.  Ded. 10 (2).

      18.  Edward, King of the West Saxons.  E.  Sar.  Murdered at Corfe Castle, 978.  Called “Saint” in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.  Martyr in Sarum Use.  See June 20.  Ded. 4 (0).

      18.  Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem and Confessor.  S.  Best known by his Catechetical Lectures; d. 386.  Ded. 0.

      19.  St. Joseph.  S. (adds “Spouse of the B.V.M.”)  C.  Sar. [Calendars of 1530, 1546.]  The great attention given to him in the Apocryphal Gospels is not reflected in a cultus before the seventh century among the Copts.  In a ninth-century Mart.  (Reichenau).  Sixtus IV formally sanctioned the cult and fixed the date (1480).  In I870 Pius IX proclaimed Joseph “Patron of the Universal Church” and made the feast a double of the first class, but without an octave because of Lent.  Pius X made “The Solemnity of St. Joseph,” on the Wednesday following the Second Sunday after Easter, a double* of the first class with octave.  The traditional time of commemoration in the East is the neighbourhood of Christmas.  Ded. 0.

      [*The occurrence of this technical word is a convenient place for an explanatory note.  In the early Roman Church, when the peace of the Church prevailed, the weeks of Easter and Pentecost were given up to churchgoing.  Important festivals, e.g. St. Agnes and St. Laurence, which fell in working times, had an additional celebration, after Jewish analogies, a week later to enable the faithful who had missed the actual day to observe them.  In the thirteenth century there were simple feasts, double feasts with octaves, feasts with added solemnity but no octaves (“semi-doubles”), and, with difficulty to be distinguished from these last, feasts with nine lessons.  In 1298 Boniface VIII made the principal feasts of Apostles and Evangelists, and those of the four Latin Doctors, into doubles.  And the greatest feasts of all had a rank of their own – “totum duplex”.  At present there are in the Roman Calendar six classes-doubles of the 1st class, doubles of the 2nd class, greater doubles, doubles, semi-doubles, simples; “double” means that the Antiphon is doubled.  When the revision of the Vulgate is finished, a revision of the Missal and the Breviary is promised, carrying with it a reform of the Calendar, which will doubtless be in the direction of simplification.]

      20.  Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindisfarne.  P.S.C.  Sar.  The most beloved of Northumbrian Saints; d. 687.  His body after many wanderings [Cf. Bede. H.E., iv. 28.] reached Durham on Aug. 29, 1104.  The coffin was opened in 1827. [Photographs of the relics are to be found in G. F. Browne’s The Venerable Bede.  The description in Dickens’ Edwin Drood of Durdles the cathedral stonemason and the way he dealt with the tombs of “the old ’uns” presumably does not entirely caricature the period.]  In Bedan Mart.  Ded. 92 (20).

      21.  Benedict, Abbot.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  The father of Western monasticism, Abbot of Monte Cassino; d. c. 540, probably on March 25, the feast being antedated to avoid the Annunciation.  Relics transferred to Fleury on July 11, 623.  Lanfranc abolished March 21 at Canterbury in favour of July 11.  Ded. 18 (3).

      25.  Annunciation of [Virgin] Mary.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  The date goes back to Hippolytus (see above).  Liturgical observance established by the end of the seventh century (Council in Trullo for East [692], Council of Toledo for West [ ? 694]). Cf. Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, V. lxx: “We begin therefore our ecclesiastical year with the glorious annunciation of his birth by angelical embassage.”

April

      1.  Gilbert, Bishop of Caithness and Confessor.  S.  d. 1245.

      3.  Richard, Bishop of Chichester.  E.P.C.  Sar.  d. 1253.  Buried in his Cathedral.  Canonized 1262; the latest saint in the 1662 Calendar.  Ded. 3 (1).

      4.  Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Doctor of the Church.  Baptized Augustine; resisted Theodosius; d. April 4, 397.  Buried with bodies of Gervasius and Protasius; relics found 1864.  Commemorated in the Roman Calendar on Dec. 7, the anniversary of his consecration, to avoid Lent and Easter week.  Ded. 6 (5).

      11.  Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome and Doctor.  P.S.  Famous for his “Tome,” defining the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation; d. Nov. 10, 461.  April 11 is probably the date of translating the relics to St. Peter’s.  East keeps on Feb.18.  Proclaimed “Doctor Ecclesiae” in 1754.  Ded. 0.

      13.  Justin, Martyr.  S.  Author of “Apology,” martyred at Rome c. 167.  In early Mart.  Roman Calendar April 14.  East keeps on June 1, which see.  Ded. 0.

      16.  Magnus, Earl of Caithness and Orkney, Martyr.  S. d. c. 1116.  Bones found about 1773 in a pillar in Kirkwall Cathedral are thought to be his.  Ded. 3 (0).

      17.  Donnan, Abbot and Martyr.  S.  Founded monastery at Eigg, 40 m. N. of Iona; murdered by pirates c. 617, with 52 monks, on Sunday, April 17, as he was celebrating the Eucharist.

      19.  Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Martyred by the Danes, 1012.  Translated by Cnut in 1023 from St. Paul’s to Canterbury.  In 1078 Lanfranc recognized his canonization.  Ded. 6 (1).

      20.  Serf, Bishop and Confessor.  S.  Lived at Culross; d c. 500; but very obscure.

      21.  Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury and Doctor.  P.S.C.  Great theologian; withstood William II; d. 1109.  Proclaimed Doctor in 1720.  Ded. 3 (3).

      21.  Maelrubha, Abbot of Applecross and Bangor, Confessor.  S.  Came from Bangor in Ireland to Applecross in Ross-shire; d. March 21, 722, his commemoration day in Ireland, August 27, being the original Scottish day.

      23.  George, Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Probably a soldier who died for the faith c. 303.  Became famous at once.  In Greg. Sacramentary.  A marvelous growth of legend became associated with his name in the East, where he is “Megalomartys” (great martyr).  The Eastern, and in particular Palestinian, myth of the dragon slayer was attached to his name. [From time immemorial April 23 has been a spring feast in Palestine, marking the end of the winter rains; see Dalman, Arbeit und Sitte in Palästina, i. 294.]  The Crusaders brought the developed cult to the West, and from the thirteenth century George has been the patron Saint of England.  Ded. 205 (58).

      25.  St. Mark, Evangelist and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  The (late) Acts of Mark give this as date of martyrdom.  In early Mart., but four other dates given.  The great litany procession in the Latin Rite on this day is anterior to the commemoration of St. Mark, being a Christianization of the Robigalia, a feast in honour of Robigo, who averted mildew from the crops.  Relics said to be in Venice.  Ded. 124 (114).

      30.  Catherine of Siena, Virgin.  P.S.  An ecstatic and mystic; largely contributed to the return of the Pope from Avignon to Rome; d. 1380.  Canonized 1461; relics at Siena.  The latest Saint in any Anglican Calendar, but see Jan. 30.  Ded. 0.

May

      1.  St. Philip and St. James, Apostles and Martyrs.  E.P.S.C.  Sal  The dedication festival of the Church of the Apostles at Rome rebuilt under Pelagius I (d. 561), when, if not earlier, it was dedicated to these two Saints, whose relics were deposited in the church.  In the East St. James, “the brother of God,” is commemorated on Oct. 23, St. Philip on Nov. 14.  Bede identified James with James “Domini frater”.  Ded. Philip 72 (40); James 33 (7).

      2.  Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria and Doctor.  P.S.C.  Sar. [Calendars of 1530, 1546.]  d. May 2, 373.  Early Mart.  In East, Jan. 18; Bede gives Dec. 20.  Ded. 1 (1).

      3.  Invention of the Cross.  E.  Sar.  The feast came to Gaul apparently first in the West, in the seventh century, from the East, see Sept. 14.  The date is purely Western, and “seems to have been occasioned by the legend of the invention of the cross, in which a certain Judas-Cyriacus figured.” [Duchesne, Christian Worship, p. 275.]  It falls on the day following the octave of Easter when Easter is on the latest possible date, April 25, and is valuable as a witness to the triumph of the Cross.

      4.  Monnica, Matron.  P.S.  Mother of St. Augustine of Hippo; d. 387.  Her cult began to spread in the thirteenth century, and in 1430 her relics were brought from Ostia to Rome.  Ded. 0.

      6.  St. John Evangelist, ante Portam Latinam.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  A church was built at the Latin Gate of Rome to commemorate the escape of St. John from the boiling oil.  The date is probably that of its dedication when rebuilt at the end of the seventh century.

      9.  Gregory of Nazianzus.  S.C.  A Doctor of the Church, associated with Basil; d. c. 390.  Ded. 0.

      19.  Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Monastic reformer; Abbot of Glastonbury, and statesman; d. 988.  Revered as a Saint at once; date fixed by Cnut 1029; most popular English Saint until overshadowed by Thomas of Canterbury; relics found 1508.  Ded. 24 (2).

      25.  Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne.  P.S.  Sar.  Scholar, poet, and builder; d. 709.  Miracles were attributed to him before and after his death.  Ded. 4 (0).

      26.  Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Sent by Gregory to evangelize the English; landed 597; d. on May 26, 605.  In Roman Calendar on May 28.  He was buried by the side of the Roman road outside the city, “an English Appian Way”.  The body was taken to the Church of St. Augustine’s Abbey, where probably, “in the field around the ruins of the Abbey,” it still reposes. [Stanley, Historical Memorials of Canterbury (Everyman ed.), pp. 36, 40.]  Ded. 59 (30).

      27.  Venerable Bede, Presbyter.  E.P.S.C.  Sar. [Calendars of 1530, 1546.]  Of Jarrow.  Historian of early England and its Church; d. May 26, 735.  Bones transferred to Durham Cathedral 1020, scattered in 1541, but the tomb with inscription remains.  Local cult in North, not much known in South.  In 1899 Leo XIII proclaimed him a Doctor and extended his cult (as St. Bede the Venerable) to the whole world.  Ded. 3 (3).

June

      1.  Nicomede, Roman Priest and Martyr.  E.  Sar.  Nicomedes in the Roman Calendar is on Sept. 15.  Nothing is known of him.  Date is that of dedication of a church at Rome rebuilt at end of seventh century.  In Greg. Sacr.  Ded. 0.

      1.  Justin Martyr.  C.  See April 13.

      5.  Boniface, Bishop of Mentz and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Born at Crediton; “the Apostle of Germany”; d. 755.  Cult probably first in England.  In 1874 Pius IX extended his cult to the whole world.  Ded. 6 (1).

      9.  Columba, Abbot of Iona.  P.S. (Red-Letter) C.  Came from Ireland, founded monastery of Iona, a main source of Scottish and Northumbrian Christianity; d. 597.  Ded. 13 (5).

      10.  Margaret, Queen of Scotland.  C.  See Nov. 16.

      11.  St. Barnabas, Apostle and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Tomb discovered at Salamis in Cyprus in 478.  In Bedan Calendar, so observance is at least eighth century.  Ded. 75 (62).

      12.  Ternan, Bishop and Confessor.  S. Bishop among the Picts in Kincardineshire; d. c. 455.

      14.  Basil, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia and Doctor.  P.S.C.  Sar. (exception to the rule of not having Eastern saints).  Theologian; organizer of monasticism, and many-sided man; d. Jan. 1, 379.  June 14 is supposed date of his consecration to the episcopate.  Ded. 3 (1).

      17.  Alban, Martyr.  E.  See 22nd.

      20.  Translation of Edward, King of the West Saxons.  E.  Sar.  Of his body, in 980, from Wareham to Shaftesbury.  In Jan. 1931 a leaden casket was discovered on the site of Shaftesbury Abbey, containing relics which may be those of St. Edward.  His tomb discovered in 1860 was empty.  See March 18.

      20.  Fillan, Abbot and Confessor.  S.  Irish missionary who laboured in Perthshire (Strathfillan); d. c. 750.

      22.  Alban, Martyr.  P.S.C.  Sar.  d. c. 304.  Venerated in England since the fifth century.  The date in the 1662 Calendar (17th) was apparently taken from the Calendar in the Preces Privatae of 1564.  Ded. 26 (15).

      24.  Nativity of John Baptist.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  The day was recognized by the time of St. Augustine of Hippo.  It was derived from Luke 1:36, John’s birth being six months before our Lord’s, when Dec. 25 had been fixed.  Jan. 7 is associated with the Baptist in the East, and June 24 is of Western origin.  As Dec. 25 is viii. Kal. Jan., so June 24 is viii. Kal. Jul.  Ded. 603 (106).

      25.  Moluag, Bishop of Lismore and Confessor.  S.  An Irish missionary among the Picts of the W. Highlands.  Lismore is an island on Loch Linnhe.  d. c. 592.  His pastoral staff is preserved by the Dukes of Argyll.

      28.  Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons and Doctor.  P.S.C.  Wrote Against the Heresies, the first systematic doctrinal book of the Church.  d. c. 202.  Ded. 0.

      29.  St. Peter, Apostle and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  See above.  Ded. 1302 ( 80).  Of these, 375 are double dedications. [This illustrates the limitations of Miss Arnold-Forster’s work.  The original double dedications must have been far more numerous.  See G. F. Browne’s Essay, “The Cultus of St. Peter and St. Paul,” in The Importance of Women in Anglo-Saxon Times, and Other Addresses, p. 59.  An investigation of the original dedications of 433 churches in Kent revealed 61 dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul, 1 to St. Peter alone, 1 to St. Paul alone.]

July

      2.  Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Commemorates her visit to Elizabeth, the occasion of the Magnificat.  Instituted by Urban VI in 1389.  The first day after the Octave of St. John Baptist.

      4.  Translation of Martin, Bishop and Confessor.  E.  Sar.  By Perpetuus, Bishop of Tours, to a basilica built over the resting place of his body, c. 470, on this day.  See Nov. 11.

      6.  Palladius, Bishop and Confessor.  S.  A missionary sent from Rome to Ireland, said to have laboured in Scotland; d. c. 450.

      15.  Swithun, Bishop of Winchester, translated.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  d. c. 862.  Canonized by popular acclamation; body removed into the Cathedral from outside it in 971.  Ded. 60 (2).

      20.  Margaret, Virgin and Martyr at Antioch.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Said to have been martyred c. 278 at Antioch in Pisidia.  The Eastern Church honours as Marina on July 13.  Her body is said to be at Monte Fiascone in Tuscany.  Was invoked by women in childbirth.  Ded. 274 (23), but see Nov. 16.

      22.  St. Mary Magdalen.  E.P. (Red-Letter) S.C.  Sar.  The first witness of the Resurrection.  In early Mart., but no mass in Roman use till thirteenth century.  Red-Letter in 1549 Book, omitted in 1552, restored as Black-Letter in 1561.  In 1662 was put on the 21st by an error promptly corrected.  Ded. 212 (28).

      25.  St. James, Apostle and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Martyred at Easter (Acts 12:2, 3), at which time, e.g. April 12 or 30, there are commemorations in the East.  The Western date is perhaps connected with the translation of relics or is deliberately put four months after March 25.  In Gregorian Sacr., but not in Leonine or Gelasian.  One of the first of the lesser known Apostles to be commemorated.  The legend is that his body was taken to N.W. Spain, where it was discovered in the ninth century.  Ded. 618 (185).

      26.  Anne, Mother to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Her story is found in the Protevangelium Jacobi.  Her cult in the East begins in the fourth century.  In 550 Justinian built a church in her name in Constantinople.  The cult made its way slowly in the West, greatly helped by The Golden Legend in the thirteenth century.  The feast became popular in England in the fourteenth century through Anne of Bohemia.  In 1378 Urban IV fixed the date on July 26.  In 1570 Pius V removed the name from the Calendar, but his successor Gregory XIII restored it in 1584.  The 25th is the day in the East, marking perhaps the dedication of the first church in her honour, or the arrival of relics at Constantinople in the eight century.  The Western date was presumably fixed to avoid clashing with St. James. Ded. 81 (30). [There are a number of eighteenth-century dedications suggested by Queen Anne.]

      29.  Olaf (Olave), King and Martyr.  S.  Took Christianity to Norway; killed by rebels 1030.  Declared a Saint in 1031; relics at Trondhjem.  The commemoration recalls the time when the Church of Norway had jurisdiction over a large part of the British Isles.  Ded. 14 (1).

August

      1.  Lammas Day.  E.P.S.C.  Sar. (of St. Peter ad Vincula).  A local English feast, Loaf mass, of the offering of firstfruits of harvest.  The Commemoration of the Seven Maccabees on this day was general, perhaps universal, before the fifth century; see e.g. the Syriac Mart.  It still survives in the Roman Use.  The main commemoration, St. Peter ad Vincula, marks the Dedication of the Basilica of the Apostles at Rome, rebuilt c. 435, where the Apostle’s chain (at Jerusalem) was preserved.

      5.  Oswald, King of Northumbria and Martyr.  P.S.C.  Sar.  Forwarded Aidan’s work; slain by Penda at Maserfield (? Oswestry) on Aug. 5, 642.  His head was placed in Cuthbert’s coffin in 875, where it was found at Durham in 1827.  On Aug. 9 in local Roman Calendar.  Ded. 72 (6).

      6.  Transfiguration of our Lord.  E.P.S.C. (Red-Letter in last three).  Sar.  An Eastern feast, mentioned in a hymn ascribed to John Damascene.  Of partial observance in West before it was enjoined by Calixtus III in 1457 in thanksgiving for a victory over the Turks at Belgrade.

      7.  Name of Jesus.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  A local English date.  In fifteenth century kept generally with Transfiguration.  In 1530 an office was granted to the Franciscans on Jan. 14.  Innocent XIII in 1721 fixed on 2nd Sunday after Epiphany. Pius X changed to the 2nd Sunday after Christmas, if there is one otherwise Jan. 2.

      10.  Laurence, Archdeacon of Rome and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  In Carthaginian Calendar and other early Eastern and Western lists.  Died a few days after Xystus (Aug. 6, 258).  The torture of a Roman citizen made a deep impression.  In the present Roman Calendar there is a vigil; also an octave.  Ded. 243 (6).

      15.  Falling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  S.  Sar.  The story of a bodily Assumption is first met in Egypt in Coptic texts. [M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament, pp. 194–227.]  Jesus took the soul of His mother to heaven on Tobi 20.  On Mesore (August) 15 the Apostles assembled, and on the morrow saw Jesus with Mary in a chariot, the body being no longer in the tomb.  Epiphanius (Haer., 78) is the first to suggest anything marvelous about her death.  In the East the festival is said to have been founded by the Emperor Maurice c. 600; it was called “dormitio” or “pausatio,” to give the Latin phrases.  In Gelasian Sacr.; at beginning of eighth century called “dormitio” in Bede; “assumptio” in Greg. Sacr.

      20.  Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot.  P.S.  Sar.  [One Calendar.]  Theologian, mystic, and hymn-writer; d. and canonized 1153.  Ded. 0.

      24.  St. Bartholomew, Apostle and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  One of a group of less well-known Apostles added in the Mixed Sacramentaries.  The East joins with Barnabas on June 11.  Rome keeps locally on Aug. 25, said to be the date of finding the relics.  These were transferred from the Lipari Islands to Beneventum in 809, thence in 983 to Rome.  Ded. 199 (34).

      25.  Ebba, Abbess of Coldingham.  S.  A sister of Oswald; gave her name to Ebchester and St. Abb’s Head; d. 683.  Relics placed in shrine of St. Cuthbert at Durham in twelfth century.  Ded. 4 (0).

      28.  Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Confessor and Doctor.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  d. 430.  Body taken to Sardinia, thence to Pavia, where it is preserved.  Ded. 1 (1).

      29.  Beheading of St. John Baptist.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  His body was said to have been buried in Samaria, and the tomb violated in 362.  In Gelasian, not in Leonine, Sacr.

      31.  Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne.  P.S.C.  Sent at Oswald’s request from Iona to evangelize Northumbria; d. 651.  Buried at Lindisfarne. Ded. 13 (12).

September

      1.  Giles, Abbot and Confessor.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  An abbot in Provence; d. c. 720.  His cult reached Italy in the tenth century.  Relics at Toulouse.  Ded. 156 (0).

      7.  Enurchus, Bishop of Orleans.  E.  Added in 1604, probably to mark Q. Elizabeth’s birthday as a holiday, as it had been during her reign.  Evurtius is said to have died c. 340.  The Calendar of the York Breviary (edit. 1524) had Euurci, from which probably came the form Enurchus in the Preces Privatae of 1564, the source of the 1604 addition.  The printers have altered it to Evurtius.  Ded. 0.

      8.  Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Said by Durandus to have been founded by Sergius I in 695.  From Greek sources into Gelasian Sacr.  Ded. to St. Mary 2469 (197).

      9.  Boisil, Prior of Melrose and Confessor.  S.  Teacher of Cuthbert.  d. c. 664.  St. Boswell’s in Roxburghshire is called after him.  Relics transferred to shrine of St. Cuthbert.

      9.  Kiaran, Abbot of Clonmacnoise and Confessor.  S.  Much esteemed by Columba, who introduced his fame into Scotland; d. 549.

      13.  Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage and Martyr.  So in P.S. Sar. (with Cornelius) on 14th.  d. Sept. 14, 258.  In Philocalian and Carth. lists.  The former has “Romae celebratur in Callisti”.  With Cornelius in Greg. Sacr., and in Roman Missal on 16th, avoiding Octave of Nativity of B.V.M.  The 13th avoids Holy Cross Day.  See 26th.  Ded. 4 (4).

      14.  Holy Cross Day.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  The anniversary of the dedication of the two churches built by Constantine at Jerusalem in 335, on the sites of Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre, to commemorate the discovery of the true Cross by his mother Helena, “the Invention of the Cross”.  It was celebrated with great splendour in the time of Etheria.  In 614 Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, was carried into captivity by the Persians, taking with him a part of the Cross.  In 628 he returned with it.  The old festival was henceforward celebrated with double honour as being also the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, under which name it appears in the early Gelasian Sacr. and in the Sarum Calendar.  In the Preces Privatae of 1564 it is termed “Exalt. Cr.,” and this is doubtless intended by the entry in the Prayer Book Calendar.  Ded. (Holy Cross and Holy Rood) 107 (5).  See May 3.

      16.  Ninian, Bishop in Galloway.  P.S. (Red-Letter) C.  The first name in Scottish ecclesiastical history.  Bishop at Candida Casa in Wigtonshire.  His tomb was illustrious in Bede’s time.  Ded. 3 (0).

      17.  Lambert, Bishop and Martyr.  E.  Sar.  Bishop of Maestricht; murdered c. 709.  Regarded as Apostle of Brabant.  Cult established by ninth century.  Ded. 2 (0).

      19.  Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury.  P.S.C.  Born in Cilicia; came to England as Archbishop in 669; d. 690.  Ded. 0.

      21.  St. Matthew, Apostle, Evangelist and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Not in Gregorian or Gelasian Sacramentary, among group of Apostles brought into Mixed Sacramentaries.  Relics at Salerno.  The East commemorates on Nov. 16.  Ded. 134 (100).

      23.  Adamnan, Abbot of Iona and Confessor.  S.  Introduced Roman rules at Iona; d. 704.

      25.  Finnbarr, Bishop of Caithness and Sutherland.  S.  Apostle of Caithness; gave his name to Barra in the Outer Hebrides, where he is still venerated by the (R.C.) fishermen; has been identified by some with the Finnbarr who founded the see of Cork.  But all is obscure, including the date.

      26.  Cyprian, Archbishop of Carthage and Martyr.  E.C.  Sar. (Cipriani et Justinae).  Cyprian was a magician of Antioch converted by Justina, who from early times was confused with Cyprian of Carthage.  He was commemorated with Justina on the 26th in the Sarum Calendar, Cyprian of Carthage being commemorated with Cornelius on the 14th; see 13th.  Cyprian and Justina are coupled in the Preces Privatae, so this Cyprian is perhaps intended by the 1604 entry.  The description was added in 1662, but the date was not changed.  This magician of Antioch is said to be the origin of the Faust legend.

      29.  St. Michael and All Angels.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  The dedication festival of a Basilica of St. Michael, now vanished, in the suburbs of Rome; it is referred to in the Leonine Sacramentary, and the entry in the present Roman Calendar, “Dedicatio S. Michaelis Archangeli,” testifies to the origin.  The feast of the Apparition of St. Michael on May 8 is traced to his appearance c. 493 at Monte Gargano in Apulia.  The chief celebration of the Angels in the East is on Nov. 8.  The feast of Sept. 29 was especially popular in England during the Middle Ages.  Paul V (d. 1621) instituted the festival of the Guardian Angels on Oct. 2, the first free day after Sept. 29.  The Prayer Book addition, in 1662, of “and All Angels” was doubtless taken from Cosin’s Private Devotions, where it may have been suggested by the new Roman feast.  Ded. 779 (95).

      30.  Jerome, Priest, Confessor, and Doctor.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Made the Latin translation of the Bible known as the Vulgate; d. Sept. 30, 420; buried at Bethlehem.  Ded. 1 (0).

October

      1.  Remigius, Bishop of Rhemes.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Baptized Clovis; d. Jan. 13, c. 530.  Translated 1049.  Ded. 5 (0).

      4.  Francis of Assisi.  P.S.  Sar. [Some calendars.]  d. Oct. 3, 1226; buried Oct. 4. [Illustrates the continuance of fixing the feast on the “depositio,” not the death, of the Saint.]  Ded. 1 (1).

      6.  Faith, Virgin and Martyr.  E.P.  Sar.  Martyred at Agen in Aquitaine, c. 304.  Ded. 26 (3).

      9.  Denys, Areopagite, Bishop and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  (Breviary adds, “and his companions”).  The cult is traced at least to the eighth century.  The third-century Apostle of N. France, Dionysius the Areopagite of Acts 17:34, and pseudo-Dionysius, the mystical writer, were identified.  Ded. 41 (2).

      10.  Paulinus, Archbishop of York.  C.  A great missionary in the Northumbrian kingdom of Edwin; d. Oct. 10, 644.  Ded. 6 (1).

      11.  Kenneth or Canice, Abbot and Confessor.  S.  Went from near Londonderry to Scotland; gave name to Kilkenny; d. 600.  Ded. 0 (but many in Scotland).

      13.  Translation of King Edward Confessor.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  King of England 1042–1066; d. Jan. 5.  Buried in Westminster Abbey; relics translated Oct. 13, 1163.  The relics brought from Toulouse to Westminster Cathedral in 1901 were not accepted as genuine.  Ded. 17 (2).

      13.  Congan, Confessor.  S.  Founder of churches in W. Scotland; d. c. 735 and buried at Iona.

      17.  Etheldreda, Virgin.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  A queen (nominally) married first to an East Anglian prince, then to Egfrid of Northumbria, founder and abbess of a religious house at Ely; d. 679.  Translated Oct. 17, 695, to Ely.  A hand is venerated at the Church of St. Etheldreda, Ely Place, London.  Ded: 11 (1).

      18.  St. Luke, Evangelist.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  An addition in the Mixed Sacramentaries.  Probably a translation is commemorated.  “He was buried at Constantinople, to which city, in the twentieth year of Constantius [357], his bones together with the remains of Andrew the apostle were transferred” (Jerome, De vir. ill., 7).  Ded. 154 (123).

      25.  Crispin, Martyr.  E.P. (adds “and Crispinian”).  Sar. (with Crispinian).  Martyrs at Soissons, third century.  Cult traced in sixth century; relics taken to Rome.  The Battle of Agincourt was fought on this day, 1415.  Cf. Shakespeare, King Henry the Fifth, IV. iii – “And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by ... But we in it shall be remembered” – a good illustration of one motive which led to the restoration of Black-Letter entries.  Ded. 1 (1).

      26.  Alfred, King of the West Saxons.  P.  d. 899.  No precedent for including in a Calendar of Saints. [The proposed insertion of Alfred may be put by the side of the commemoration of Charles I as showing a desire for (quasi-) canonization on the part of the post-Reformation Church of England.  Alfred’s name would be valuable as witnessing to the sanctity of the lay and married life.]  Ded. 0.

      28.  St. Simon and St. Jude, Apostles and Martyrs.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Among the group of Apostles brought into the Mixed Sacramentaries.  Said to have been martyred on July 1, 47; relics in St. Peter’s, Rome.  Ded. 9 old double commemorations; nineteenth century: St. Simon 10, St. Jude 35.

November

      1.  All Saints.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Antioch in Chrysostom’s time celebrated “All Martyrs” on the 1st Sunday after Pentecost; so at Rome for a short time.  According to one tradition the Western feast goes back to the dedication of the Pantheon at Rome as a Christian Church on May 13, 608 (?), when bones of martyrs were brought there from the Catacombs and it was called “Ad Martyres,” later “Sancta Maria ad Martyres”; the commemoration was transferred to Nov. 1 by Gregory VII (d. 1085). [So Liturgia (Paris, 1930), p. 643.  Schuster, The Sacramentary, says Gregory IV (d. 844) was responsible.]  Another view [Dr. Frere’s.] a traces the observance in England, found in the Bedan Martyrology, to the dedication of the Chapel of All Saints in St. Peter’s, Rome, by Gregory III (d. 741).  Ded. 1389 (161).

      2.  Commemoration of All Souls.  P.S.  Sar. (“commemoratio omnium defunctorum”).  Many different days had been considered appropriate.  This date began to prevail c. 1000 and was accepted throughout the West by the thirteenth century.  Ded. 22 (18).

      6.  Leonard, Confessor.  E.P.S.  Sar.  Founder and Abbot of Monastery of Noblac near Limoges; d. c. 559.  Cult not traced earlier than eleventh century.  Ded. 177 (5).

      8.  Saints, Martyrs, and Doctors of the Church of England.  P.S. (which has “of Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland”).  Sixtus IV (d. 1484) added an Octave to All Saints.

      8.  Gervadius or Gerardine, Confessor.  S.  Apostle of Moray; d. c. 934.

      11.  Martin, Bishop and Confessor.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  A soldier who became Bishop of Tours; d. c. 397, buried on Nov. 11.  Miracles ascribed to him before and after death.  Introduction into Calendar was comparatively late (Greg. Sacramentary).  Relics destroyed in 1562.  Ded. 174 (9).

      12.  Machar, Bishop and Confessor.  S.  Accompanied Columba to Iona; preached at Aberdeen; d. c. 600.

      13.  Britius, Bishop.  E.  Sar.  Bishop of Tours, successor of Martin; d. 444.  Ded. 1 (0).

      13.  Devenic, Confessor.  S.  Apostle of Kincardineshire; d. c. 600.

      15.  Machutus, Bishop.  E.  Sar.  A Welshman who became Bishop of Aleth in Brittany; d. c. 564.  The see was moved to St. Malo, which is called after him.  Ded. 0.

      15.  Fergus, Bishop and Confessor.  S.  A Bishop in Ireland; his relics were at Glamis, then taken to Scone.  Also said to have been buried where Glasgow Cathedral now stands.

      16.  Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln.  P.  See 17th.

      16.  Margaret, Queen of Scotland.  S. (Red Letter.)  Born in Hungary, this Saxon Princess was brought to England in the reign of Edward the Confessor.  Soon after 1066 the Saxon Royal Family fled to Scotland, where in 1070 Margaret married Malcolm Canmore. d. Nov. 16, 1093, after an heroic life in which she instigated her husband to make many reforms.  Canonized c. 1250.  Her relics were translated to Dunfermline on June 19 of that year.  Churches of St. Margaret, the dedication feast of which was on either of these days, will have been dedicated to St. Margaret of Scotland; they are mostly in E. Anglia.  In 1693 Innocent XII moved her day to June 10, at the instance of James II of England, that being the birthday of his son, “the old Chevalier”.

      17.  Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln.  E.S.C.  Sar.  Of Avalon in Burgundy, brought to England by Henry II to inaugurate the Carthusian monastery of Witham; made Bishop of Lincoln in 1186; d. Nov. 16, 1220, when away from home, during Compline. [Cf. R. M. Woolley, St. Hugh of Lincoln.]  Buried at Lincoln Nov. 24.  Ded. 3 (2).

      17.  Hilda, Abbess of Whitby.  P.  Ruled over a double monastery, of men [The men in such cases served the women, either as priests or doing hard manual labour.] and women; d. Nov. I 7, 680.  Her fame in the Middle Ages seems to have been almost entirely in the North of England.  Ded. 20 (5).

      18.  Hilda, Abbess of Whitby.  S.C.  See 17th.

      20.  Edmund, King and Martyr.  E. P. S. C.  Sar.  King of East Anglia; murdered by the Danes on Nov. 20, 870.  Ded. 64 (6).

      22.  Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Said to have been martyred at Rome c. 230.  In Canon of the Mass, and early Mart.  Name of an ancient parish church (titulus) at Rome.  Her supposed tomb was found in the Catacomb of Callistus by Paschalis I in 821; the relics were brought to St. Cecilia in Trastevere.  The patron saint of music.  Ded. 4 (1).

      23.  Clement I, Bishop of Rome and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Presumed author of the Epistle to the Corinthians bearing his name.  Said to have been martyred c. 100.  The Philocalian list is silent about him, as about other second-century popes.  His martyrdom was first celebrated in the fourth century.  The day is perhaps the dedication festival of his titulus.  His relics (perhaps belonging to another Clement) were brought from Chersonesus in the Crimea by Cyril and Methodius in 868.  Ded. 58 (20). [Felicitas (a Roman matron) and her sons have also been commemorated on Nov. 23 since the fifth century.]

      25.  Catherine, Virgin and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Said to have been martyred at Alexandria c. 307.  A “great martyr” in the East, though not in the ancient Eastern Calendar.  Her tomb is in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai.  The Western cult began in the tenth century.  Ded. 84 (23).

      30.  St. Andrew, Apostle and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  All texts of the Martyrdom of the Apostle give Nov. 30 as the date.  Carthaginian Mart. gives Nov. 29.  His relics were deposited in the Church of the Apostles in Constantinople in 357.  In the thirteenth century the French brought them to Amalfi.  Relics were also brought to Kilrymont in Scotland, which was accordingly called St. Andrews.  Ded. 733 (107).

December

      4.  Clement of Alexandria, Doctor.  P.S.  With Origen [During the debates on the revision of the English Prayer Book, an influential petition was presented to the Convocations, desiring the inclusion of Origen in the Calendar.  But it would presumably be beyond the competence of a local Church to make a new Saint of the universal Church, as Origen would have to be, if he were recognized as a Saint at all.] (who for more than one reason is excluded from the Calendar) the typical representative of the Alexandrian School of Theology; d. c. 210.  Ded. 0.

      6.  Nicolas, Bishop of Myra in Lycia.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  There probably was a Bishop of this name c. 300.  The ancient “Soter” (Saviour) legend came to be attached to him and he became the favourite popular Saint of the East.  In the tenth century the cult came to the West, and in 1087 his bones are said to have been brought to Bari.  Ded. 435 (9).

      8.  Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  The date was deduced from that of the Nativity on Sept. 8.  The festival has been thought to have originated in England before 1066. [By E. Bishop, quoted by V. Staley, The Liturgical Year, p. 110.]  Abolished at Canterbury by Lanfranc, it was reintroduced into England in the twelfth century.  Since 1854 it has been “The Immaculate Conception” in the Roman Catholic Church. [J. Schuster, The Sacramentary, iii. 300, says that the use of the office “Conceptionis Immaculata Virginis Maria” was ordered for the city of Rome by Sixtus IV in 1477.]

      13.  Lucy, Virgin and Martyr.  E.  Sar.  Said to have been martyred at Syracuse c. 303.  In early Mart, and Canon of Mass.  Ded. 2 (0).

      14.  Drostan, Abbot of Deer.  S. Nephew of Columba; preached in Aberdeenshire; d. c. 600.

      16.  O Sapientia.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  (Breviary: “hic incipit O Sapientia”).  The first of the Greater Antiphons to the Magnificat, seven in number, sung on Dec. 16 to 23 (St. Thomas’ Day having its own). [A unique reference to a liturgical addition, which has been taken to suggest that “enrichment” was a possibility in the minds of some of the Reformers, see above.  In the form of the hymn “O come, O come, Emmanuel” the Antiphons are very familiar.]

      17.  Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch and Martyr in Rome.  P.S.  Martyred at Rome c. 110.  The body was taken back to Antioch and buried in a cemetery outside the walls.  In the fifth century it was transferred to the Temple of Fortune, which was converted into a church dedicated to him.  Oct. 17 is the date in the Syriac Mart.  Dec. 20 is given in the (late) texts of the Martyrdom.  The Roman Martyrology gives Feb. 1 for the martyrdom and Dec. 17 for the translation.  See Feb. 1 for Canadian Prayer Book.  Ded. 1 (1).

      21.  St. Thomas, Apostle and Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar. There may be some historical fact behind the legend of his visit to India.  In early Mart.  July 3 was the original Western date (of the translation); Oct. 6 is the Eastern date.  Ded. 154 (102).

      25.  Christmas Day.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  See above.

      26.  St. Stephen, the First Martyr.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Ded. 130 (81); see above.

      27.  St. John, Apostle and Evangelist.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Ded. 581 (390); see above.

      28.  Innocents’ Day.  E.P.S.C.  Sar.  Ded. 16 (11); see above.

      29.  Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury.  C.  Sar.  Murdered by the (supposed) order of Henry II, 1170.  Canonized 1173; translated July 7.  Ded. 79 (1).

      31. Silvester, Bishop of Rome.  E.  Sar.  The bishop under whom Constantine became a Christian; d. Dec. 31, 335.  The Philocalian entry is “Silvestri in Priscillae”.  One of the earliest Confessor cults.  An ex-voto silver crown of the fifth century has been found with the inscription “Sancto Silvestrio ancilla sua votum solvit.”  Ded. 1 (0). [The English 1928 Book recognizes “New Year’s Eve.”]

      It remains to note a few additional days kept in the Anglican Communion.

      Ember Days. [“Periodical” days, from Old English ymb “about” and ryne “course”; or possibly a corruption of “quatuor tempora”.]  The ancient Romans had sacrifices, for a blessing on agriculture, in June and about Sept. 25 and Dec. 25.  Some time before the time of Leo I (d. 461) these had been transformed into Christian celebrations.  The primitive Wednesday fast has been preserved in connection with them as well as the Friday one, the latter being prolonged into Saturday. [Duchesne, Christian Worship, p. 233.]  Leo saw in these fasts a continuation of the Jewish custom referred to in Zech. 8:19. [The fasts of the 4th, 5th, 7th, and 10th months.]  In the Leonine Sacramentary there are masses for the fasts of the 4th, 7th, and 10th months – June, September, and December; [The Church year then began in March.] the part previous to April is missing.  The fasts of these months were ordered by the Council of Cloveshoe (747); the Lenten Ember fast is perhaps passed over because in any case the time was one of fasting.  The exact days now observed – Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday following the 1st Sunday in Lent, Pentecost, Sept. 14 and Dec. 13 – were apparently fixed about 1100.  From early times Ordinations were held in Embertide. [Preferably on the December Ember Saturday (Duchesne, p. 353).  Ordinations were “formerly” confined to the Ember Seasons (Liturgia, p. 623).  A study of the Ember Masses in the Roman Missal with their primitive features is instructive.]

      Dedication Festival.  This is actually earlier than the liturgical observance of Saints’ Days, for in many cases the latter was determined by the former.  It arose simultaneously with the custom of dedicating churches.  In 335 the church of “The Great Martyrium” (built over Calvary) was completed and consecrated.  “Since that period the anniversary of the consecration has been celebrated with great pomp ... the festival continues eight days” (Sozomen, H.E., ii. 26).  The precedent of the dedication of Solomon’s Temple was followed (1 Kings 8:65, 66).  The dedication festivals of the ancient Roman churches are very important, and those of St. John Lateran (Nov. 9) and the Basilicas of St. Peter and of St. Paul (Nov. 18) are in the general Roman Calendar.  Gregory I ordered that the heathen festivals connected with temples in England be converted into dedication festivals (Bede, H.E., i. 30).  The present village feasts in some cases go back to Saxon times.  In 1536 Henry VIII, with the assent of Convocation, fixed the first Sunday in October as the universal date of the festival.  The Scottish and American Books provide Collect, Epistle and Gospel for the festival; so does the English 1928 Book, with the rubric, “If the day of Consecration be not known, the Feast may be observed on the first Sunday in October,” and allows for an Octave.

      The Patronal Feast of a Church is mentioned in the 1928 English and Scottish Books.  It is of less liturgical importance than the dedication festival.

      Octaves have been already mentioned several times.  Probably Easter was the first festival to receive an Octave, but Old Testament examples would suggest it naturally.  The rubrics governing the Proper Prefaces in the 1662 Book show that the principle of the Octave was not forgotten by the Reformers.

      Thanksgiving for Harvest is a natural human custom which the Hebrews consecrated in their feasts of Pentecost and Tabernacles.  In mediaeval England Lammas Day was a kind of Harvest Festival, corresponding, however, rather to Passover. [See above.]  From 1796 onwards prayers for abundant harvests were put out by authority from time to time, and in 1847 a complete form was issued “by Her Majesty’s special command”.  In the decade 1850–60 the custom became general, especially in country districts, where a service was held on a weekday before the “Harvest Home”.  In 1862 the Convocation of Canterbury issued a form of service, which was, however, not given legal authorization. [See below, Prayer Book Revision ...]  The American Prayer Book of 1789 prescribed a form to be used on the first Thursday in November, or other day fixed by civil authority.  “Thanksgiving Day” is a great national festival in America, with its appropriate customs.  All the Anglican revisions recognize the Harvest Thanksgiving. [Summarized from an excellent article in The Prayer Book Dictionary.  The English 1928 and Scottish Books give Collect, Epistle and Gospel for “Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Baptism,” but it is improbable that this will ever become a commemoration on a fixed day.  The Accession Service, on the Accession Day of the reigning monarch, is unfortunately now little used.]

IV

      Finally, we ask, what is a Saint?  Latin Christendom is quite definite in its answer.  The Church puts her seal upon the popular devotion to martyrs and Saints inherited from the early centuries, but now regulates these matters with great care.  The Pope began to canonize names formally about 1000, but local canonization continued for some time.  The present procedure is as follows.  When a case is introduced before the Congregation of Sacred Rites, the Pope issues a decree by which the person becomes “Venerable”.  If the case is successful the person is beatified.  This means that a limited cult is permitted, in particular localities or by particular Orders.  The name may not be inscribed in Calendars, nor may images be put in churches, unless by special permission.  Miracles (in the person’s lifetime or after his death) and heroic sanctity are required in proof of the claim.  For canonization, proof of miracles wrought since beatification is necessary; it is thereby shown that the Saint has passed from Purgatory to Heaven and possesses the power of prevailing intercession on behalf of those who invoke him.  The canonized Saint is a Saint of the universal Church. [The forms of a legal trial are observed.  The opposition to beatification of canonization is represented by an “advocatus diaboli”.  According to H. Mulert, Konfessionskunde, p. 298, there were over 10,000 Saints by the sixteenth century, and from 1500 to 1903 there were 113 canonizations and 547 beatifications.  The Pope may dispense with evidence for miracles.]

      Fr. Delehaye, however, gives a rather different account of the matter, opposing the view that canonization consists of a definition that the faithful departed one enjoys the heavenly vision.  The Church lays no stress on miracles worked during life.  After death, they play an important part in the procedure; the Church accepts them “as a providential indication before encouraging the faithful to have recourse to the prayers of God’s servant.” [Sanctus, p. 252.  On p. 259 he says: “This cult does not belong to the essence of religion.  It is a thriving branch grafted naturally on to a venerable tree trunk.”  Sometimes it grows so as to impoverish the sap of the tree.]

      The Orthodox Eastern Church makes no distinction between beatification and canonization.  Theory and practice alike are less definite than in the West, as is shown by the inclusion of Old Testament names in the Calendar. [However, O.T. Saints are commemorated among the Uniates, and by the Carmelites, and the Roman Martyrology includes Elisha on June 14 and Elijah on July 20; cf. also the Maccabees on August 1.]

      The Ecumenical Patriarch in 1931 wrote a Letter to the Patriarch of Rumania, describing the practice of the Church in the following terms: [See The Christian East, 1931, pp. 88, 89.] “In accordance with our tradition the following general principles are followed in the recognition and placing amongst the Choir of Saints of the Church, of persons glorified by God.

      “1.  The verification of the elements of holiness must be made by a Synod, composed of all the Metropolitans, Archbishops, Bishops, and official clergy of the particular church.

      “2.  This verification is superfluous in the case of those holy persons whom the general consciousness of the Church – of both shepherds and flock – has for long ages recognized and celebrated as such.  Of such holy persons who have been tacitly recognized up till now as sanctified and glorified by God, a merely formal recognition is given by the Church in accordance as we have said above.

      “3.  At the proclamation there is a proper ecclesiastical procedure of which the enclosed copy of the procedure in the consecration of St. Gerasimos the Younger – which took place under the blessed Patriarch Cyril Lucaris at the beginning of the seventeenth century – may serve as an example.

      “4.  The Deed of Proclamation is solemnly signed in the church, the proper ecclesiastical ceremony being as follows: –

      “The whole Synod having come down into the Church and the Book of the Gospels being placed in the centre, the following troparia are sung: – ‘Blessed art thou, O Christ our God,’ ‘When He (the Holy Spirit) descended,’ then the Deed of Proclamation is signed by all the members of the General Synod who are present and immediately after are sung the troparia ‘Holy martyrs who fought well,’ ‘The tortures of the saints which they suffered for Thee,’ ‘The blood of Thy martyrs throughout the world.’

      “5.  At a convenient time a special and suitable Office, within the framework of the hymnology and ceremonial of the Orthodox Churches, is naturally composed for the most noteworthy of the canonized saints, for use in the churches.

      “6.  Of equal necessity is the translation of the relics, if such are preserved, and their anointing with Holy Chrism.  At the translation of the relics it is customary to have vigil services and solemn liturgies.”

      The Canonical Committee to whom the subject was referred, and whose Report accompanied the Letter, referred also to the Russian Synod of 1547, which “lays most stress on the examination in Synod of the genuineness of the miracles, on the life and on the right faith; the Bishop of the place where those who were proposed as Saints had distinguished themselves, being deputed as principal examiner.”

      No such processes of Saint-making as those in vogue at Rome are thinkable in the Anglican Communion at present.  The theology which lies behind them is accepted by very few Anglicans, and in any case no centralized machinery exists.  However saintly an Anglican Christian may be, if he lives in the nineteenth or twentieth century he can never attain the honour that might have been his had he lived in the Middle Ages.  Some people feel that this is a reproach to Anglicanism, which does not “produce Saints”.  It is therefore a matter of some importance that the principles upon which additions to the Calendar might be made should be discussed.

      The book which has had most influence upon Anglican revisions is Bishop John Wordsworth’s The Ministry of Grace, in which he lays down the following principles which should govern the revision of the Calendar – (i) Points in the mystery of redemption which may have been omitted should be brought out.  (ii) Commemorations calculated to foster true Catholicity should be introduced.  (iii) The special blessings of the Anglican part of the Church should be borne in mind.  (iv) Commemorations of little importance should be omitted.

      The writer would express himself rather differently.

      (i) Now that the Transfiguration and St. Mary Magdalen [The first witness of the Resurrection.] are generally observed, there seems no need to emphasize any further neglected aspects of the mystery of Redemption.  As regards Biblical Saints, a Calendar that includes St. Anne, known to us only from the Apocryphal Gospels, and excludes St. Joseph, is surely defective.  A commemoration of St. Paul’s martyrdom, for which June 30 would naturally be chosen, is badly needed.  Instead of introducing Timothy, Titus and Silas, perhaps one of their dates might be allotted to “St. Paul and his Companions.”’

      (ii) A certain number of commemorations should be deliberately chosen with a view to widening the knowledge and sympathies of English Church people.  France is already well represented, though St. Joan of Arc would be welcomed.  Anskar was presumably added to the 1928 Calendar in order to direct attention to the Church of Sweden.  The principle might be extended to the inclusion of Olaf of Norway, Willibrord of Holland, Elizabeth of Hungary, etc.

      (iii) The 1662 Calendar has been criticized for containing a disproportionate number of martyrs from the ante-Nicene days of the Church of Rome.  But these commemorations should be treated with great reverence.  In particular, the Calendar brought to England by St. Augustine is very precious.  Further, the Catacombs are an abiding witness to the primitive fervour of the Church, and martyrs connected with them have a value for teaching purposes not possessed by some other Saints who might seem of more intrinsic importance.

      (iv) The missionaries who brought the faith to England are men of renown never to be forgotten.  Roman and Celtic names should be retained or inserted in fairly equal proportions.  In some districts, especially in the West and North, the traditional names of early Saints and missionaries are embarrassingly numerous.  Diocesan Supplements would meet this difficulty.

      (v) The principle of including those Saints made familiar by Church dedications should not be forgotten. [Note the following English dedications: Botolph 62, Edith 16, Helen 117; the only numerous ones not represented in the foregoing lists.]

      (vi) It is much to be desired that one name given at Baptism should be that of a Saint, and for English Church people a full and varied Calendar found in the Prayer Book is the natural place in which too look for a suitable name.  Other things being equal, preference should be given to those Saints whose names are likely to be taken for this purpose and whose lives contain lessons intelligible to young people.  Thus the numerous Joans should be encouraged to love St. Joan of Arc, and the Margarets’ attention should be turned towards St. Margaret of Scotland rather than to her obscure namesake of Antioch.

      (vii) Grave difficulty arises in connection with post-Reformation Saints of the Roman obedience.  Names like those of Teresa, Francis Xavier, Francis de Sales, and Vincent de Paul are much honoured by Anglicans and it is doubtful if any principle would be sacrified by their inclusion.  If post-Reformation Saints are ruled out, the Prayer Book Calendar would gain greatly by the inclusion of the saintly men who lost their lives under Henry VIII.  The Carthusians and Sir Thomas More, for example, are among the glories of England.  They were sacrificed because of their resistance to a theory of the omnipotent State which Anglicans should repudiate as fully as Roman Catholics.  They could be classed as pre-Reformation Saints, since no final break with the Papacy had taken place.  If this suggestion is thought too controversial, they might be included with Cranmer, [That Cranmer was a poor creature seems to be the usual verdict now.  But the unexpected strength he showed in his last moments and the incomparable services he rendered to English-speaking Christianity by his liturgical work make it impossible to ignore him in such a commemoration.] Ridley, Latimer, and other English men and women who died for their faith in Christ and for freedom of conscience in the sixteenth century, the day being observed as one of mingled joy and penitence.

      (viii) Lastly, a list of distinctively Anglican Saints is required.  Without any suggestion of formal canonization, it is within the powers of a local church to frame a roll-call of its own members whose heroism and sanctity deserve permanent record, one which could be used for teaching purposes and, in commemoration only, and optionally, at the altar. In such a list we might put George Herbert, Bishop Andrewes, Charles I, Bishop Ken, John Wesley, Bishop Wilson, Charles Simeon, Henry Martyn, and Bishop Patteson, making a first and tentative selection. [The absence of laymen, except Charles, and laywomen, illustrates the difficulty of making such a list.  Christina Rossetti has nearly every qualification except joy.]  At least fifty years should elapse after anyone’s death before considering his or her name.  The list would vary in each province; the South African one, for instance, would differ substantially from the Indian. *  Such a roll-call of local Saints would be a first step towards an Anglican Breviary.

      [*The provisional S. African Calendar (1932) contains the following entries in the Calendar not found in the lists discussed above: JANUARY: 4 Titus; 12. Benedict Biscop.  FEBRUARY: 4. Gilbert of Sempringham; 20. African Missionaries and Martyrs.  APRIL: 24. Wilfrid.  MAY 30. Joan of Arc.  JUNE: 2. Martyrs of Lyons.  JULY: 5. Vladimir; 30. Mary and Martha of Bethany; 31. Germanus and Lupus.  AUGUST: 4. Dominic.  OCTOBER: 11. Philip the Deacon; 19. Frideswide.  NOVEMBER: 7. Willibrord; 19. Elizabeth of Hungary.  DECEMBER: 3. Birinus.  Some of these seem more suited to a local English list.  In a list of Names that may be commemorated are: Jan. 10. William Laud; Feb. 27. George Herbert; March 19. Thomas Ken, 29. John Keble; April 6. William Law, 11. George Augustus Selwyn; May 13. The Martyrs of Uganda; June 18. Bernard Mizeki; July 29. William Wilberforce; Sept. 1. Robert Gray; 20. John Coleridge Patteson; Oct. 16. Henry Martyn, 25. Alfred the Great, 29. James Hannington; Nov. 13. Charles Simeon; Dec. 1. Nicholas Ferrar.]

      Authorities. – The chief sources used in this compilation are the relevant articles in The Dictionary of Christian Antiquities (especially those by Henry Bradshaw), The Dictionary of Christian Biography, The Catholic Encyclopedia, The Dictionary of English Church History, Liturgia (Paris, 1930), The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, The Prayer Book Dictionary (especially articles by Bp. A. J. Maclean) and The Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels (an article on “The Calendar” by Bp. Maclean, which is the best short summary in English of the early evidence); Duchesne, Christian Worship; Bp. J. Dowden, The Church Year and Calendar; Bp. J. Wordsworth, The Ministry of Grace; Bp. W. H. Frere, Studies in Early Roman Liturgy; V. Staley, The Liturgical Year; and H. Lietzmann, Petrus und Paulus in Rom.  The Very Rev. J. W. Harper, Dean of St. Andrews, most kindly lent a MS. book containing full details of the Scottish Saints and of the discussions which led to their selection.  J. M. Mackinlay, Ancient Church Dedications in Scotland: non-Scriptural Dedications, is the standard book on this subject.  Bp. Maclean gave valuable help in correcting the proofs.

Fasting and Abstinence

By A. J. Maclean

      The object of this article is to give a summary of the history of Christian fasting and abstinence in ancient and modern times, and to suggest their proper place in Church life and practice of today.  But here, as in all ecclesiastical investigations, it should be borne in mind that customs have varied greatly in different parts of the Christian world in all ages.  A custom may be ancient but far from universal; or it may have been at one time practically universal, yet not necessarily suited to all ages.  With this caution we may now consider the history of the practice in question.

      It should be noted at the outset that the words “fasting” and “abstinence” were in England originally interchangeable, and that the present practice in the Roman Church, which forbids meat on days of abstinence, but does not restrict the quantity of food to be eaten, while it restricts the quantity also on fasting days, is comparatively modern.  English Roman Catholics did not observe the difference till the end of the eighteenth century.

      1.  The Weekly Fasts. – These were on Wednesday and Friday of each week, and are mentioned, probably in the beginning of the second century, in the Didache or Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles; and later in that century by Tertullian, who calls them “station days,” or (because they ended soon after midday) “semi-fasts”.  In some parts of the West each Saturday also was fasted; but later, Friday was in the West, as a normal rule, the only weekly fast.  See further below, § 12.

      2.  The Seasonal Fasts. – These seem to have originated with the fast before Easter.  Late in the second century Irenaeus speaks of this as an ancient custom.  It was a rigid fast, at first for two days only; but it was soon extended, though as a less rigid fast, so as to include, first the six days before Easter, and later the forty days of “Lent,” or in some places even a longer period.  In this connection we must note the custom of fasting before baptism, by the candidates and others; this is mentioned in Acts 9:9, 18 f.; in the second century by Justin Martyr and Tertullian; early in the third century by Hippolytus in his Apostolic Tradition; [This work was originally written in Greek, and is now known in an old Latin translation and in some later Oriental versions.  We owe to Dom Connolly and Professor Schwartz the discovery of at any rate the very high probability that this manual is (with some added details, at least in the case of the Oriental versions) the work of the great Hippolytus of Portus, near Rome.  It represents to us, therefore, in the main, Roman customs of that early period.  This enables us to carry back the evidence for many customs for a century.] and often elsewhere.  The principal day for baptism was Easter, very early in the morning, so that the pre-baptismal fast coincided with the pre-Paschal fast.  Indeed, it may be thought that the former was the origin of the latter.  For here a curious variety of early custom is noticeable.  A sick person was allowed to fast on one day only, namely, on the Saturday (not Good Friday); and in connection with this we must remember the strange fact that in some places the Death and Resurrection of our Lord were commemorated on the same day.

      When the fast was prolonged, there was considerable variety in the number of weeks fasted, and in the mode of fasting.  A further difference was that the so-called “forty days” fasting in Lent – which did not include Sundays – formerly began in the West on the Monday after Quadragesima, the first Sunday in Lent; but in the seventh century four fasting days were prefixed so as to complete the number forty, and the fast began on Ash Wednesday.  But in the East it began on the day after Quinquagesima.  Even the Lenten fast of forty days had some connection with baptism.  For on the fortieth day before Easter the candidates for baptism were enrolled, and thenceforth they were called “competentes” or “qualified”.

      Some other seasonal fasts remain to this day.  That of the Four Seasons (Ember Days) is Western, and is the sole relic of the old weekly fasts of three days, which in some places included Saturday.  The Ember Days originally had no reference to ordination; the custom of ordaining at that time arose from the fact that they were already fasts.  The Rogation Days Fast before Ascension Day seems to date from the fifth century, and was Western only.  A fast after, or even before, Pentecost is mentioned in the fourth century.  Advent, as a season of fasting, is mentioned in the fifth century; but it soon became, in the West, merely a solemn time for prayer, as at present, without compulsory fasting.  Eastern Christians have some other, but minor, seasonal fasts; for these see below, § 10.

      3.  Vigils are single fasting days before certain festivals; but as fasts they are purely Western.  For their use in modern times see below, §§ 6 f., 9.  A vigil was originally a night service (mentioned as early as Tertullian) before a great festival, or even before every Sunday, or before martyrs’ days.  This idea of a vigil is kept up in the Orthodox Eastern Church, where an “all-night vigil” is observed on the eve of a festival when the Great Vespers and the Great Mattins are conjoined.  Such are the nights before the Nativity of St. Mary (September 8), the “Presentation of the Mother of God” (November 21), the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple (February 2), the Annunciation (March 25), the Procession of the Cross (August 1), the Transfiguration (August 6), and the “Repose of the Blessed Virgin Mary” (August 15).

      But in the West vigils developed into a fast kept on the day before certain feasts.  In the Roman and Sarum kalendars the vigil fasts are those before Christmas, Easter, Ascension Pentecost, Epiphany, St. Matthias, St. John Baptist, St. Peter and St. Paul, St. James, St. Laurence, the Assumption, St Bartholomew, St. Matthew, St. Simon and St. Jude (not Sarum), All Saints, St. Andrew and St. Thomas.  Late editions of the Sarum kalendar add Annunciation, Nativity of St. Mary, Michaelmas, and (perhaps) Circumcision; for these see Procter and Wordsworth, Sarum Breviary, Vol. I.

      4.  Fasting before Ordination is mentioned in Acts 14:23, where the plural “fastings” (in the Greek) seems to imply that there was fasting at each place where the Apostles “appointed” presbyters.  We may compare Acts 13:2, where, however, it is not probable, or at any rate not certain, that an ordination proper is meant.  In early Church history no great stress seems to have been laid on this fast; but we find in some of the ancient Church Orders, which contain regulations for, and forms of, worship, directions for a bishop to fast after his “ordination” (consecration).  The Copts similarly prescribe a fast of forty days after ordination for a newly-made priest, and a vigil to be kept by a bishop on the night before his ordination.

      5.  Fasting in England after the Reformation is emphasized in Acts of Parliament, in Episcopal directions, and in the Homilies.  An Act of Parliament of 1548 orders abstinence from flesh meat on “all days formerly accounted fasting days,” and gives as a reason that it is “for the better subduing of the body to the soul and the flesh to the spirit”; and curiously enough adds that it is also for the preservation of the breed of cattle, the encouragement of mariners, and the increase of shipping. [Hooker, at the beginning of his disquisition on Fasting, makes the remark that in his day all parties agreed to public fasts on extraordinary occasions “as the temporal state of the land doth require the same, for the maintenance of sea-faring men and preservation of cattle” (Ecclesiastical Polity, v. 72).]  This Act mentions all Fridays and Saturdays, Lent, Ember Days, and Vigils.  An Act of 1552 similarly names Vigils, Lent, Fridays and Saturdays, “or any other day appointed to be kept as a fasting day”; but “no other even or day shall be commanded to be fasted.”  Acts of Parliament of Elizabeth’s reign also mention the preservation of cattle and the encouragement of fisheries as reasons for fasting; and James I reenacted the former Acts.  The Homilies of 1562 enjoin fasting, and allow two meals on a fast day.  Royal Proclamations in 1559–61 forbade butchers to sell meat in Lent.  Licenses to eat flesh in Lent are, however, found in the period 1564–1650.  Generally, sick people were excused; and in 1650 Jeremy Taylor in his Holy Living (iv. 5. 14) says that fasting is not to be made “an instrument of scruple, or become an enemy to our health”; sick and aged people, travelers, the poor, and little children are excused.

      6.  The English Prayer Book of 1662. – The “Days of Fasting or Abstinence” (in one place “Fasting and Abstinence”) are the Forty Days of Lent, the Ember Days, the Rogation Days, and all Fridays except Christmas Day.  Each of the “Evens or Vigils” in the Tables of this book is “a Vigil or Fast Day”; namely, those of Christmas, the Purification (an addition to the Sarum list), the Annunciation, Easter Day, Ascension Day, Pentecost, St. Matthias, St. John Baptist, St. Peter, St. James, St. Bartholomew, St. Matthew, St. Simon and St. Jude (an addition to the Sarum list, from the Roman), St. Andrew, St. Thomas, All Saints.  {The list omits St. Laurence and the Assumption.}  If any of these feasts fall on a Monday, the “Vigil or Fast day” is to be kept on the Saturday just before.

      There were no Tables of this nature in the English Prayer Books before 1662; fasting was based on ancient custom, and to a certain extent on Statutes, for which see above, § 5.

      7.  Recent Anglican Revisions of the Prayer Book. – (a) English (1928).  In this book the phrase “fasting or abstinence” remains unchanged.  Friday ceases to be a fast also when the Epiphany falls on that day of the week, and in the Octaves of Christmas, Easter and the Ascension.  The Vigil fasts are reduced to five, namely, those of Christmas, Pentecost, St. John Baptist, All Saints and St. Andrew.  Easter Eve is not mentioned as a Vigil, presumably because it is included in the Forty Days of Lent.  The “Greater Fasts and Days of Abstinence” are Ash Wednesday and the weekdays of Holy Week.

      (b) Scottish (1929).  The list is identical with the revised English list except that the Advent Ember Week is noted as the days after the Third Sunday in Advent instead of after December 13 – St. Lucy not being included in the new Scottish and English Kalendars; and except that the only Vigils prescribed are those of Christmas, Easter Day, and Pentecost.  The “Greater Fasts” are Ash Wednesday and Monday to Saturday before Easter, as in the new English book.

      (c) Irish and Canadian.  These have the old English list, unaltered.

      (d) American (1929).  Two fasts, Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, are specially mentioned.  On other days “the Church requires such a measure of abstinence as is more especially suited to extraordinary acts and exercises of devotion,” namely, the Forty Days of Lent, Ember Days, and all Fridays except Christmas Day and the Epiphany, “or any Friday which may intervene between these feasts.”

      (e) South African (1929).  The following Tables dealing with Fasting or Abstinence have been authorized by the Episcopal Synod for experimental use, and are to be printed.  They will be presented to the Provincial Synod, with or without further revision, in 1934.  If they are then passed, they will need ratification by the Provincial Synod of 1939 before being finally authorized as Alternatives to the Book of Common Prayer:–

From the Kalendar.

      (iii) Table of Days of Fasting (that is, days on which no meat is taken, and the quantity of food is lessened): Ash Wednesday, all Fridays in Lent, Friday in the September Ember Week, and the Vigil of St. Andrew.

      (iv) Table of Days of Abstinence (that is, days of self-denial, either by abstinence from meat, or by some other form of self-discipline): all Fridays in the year, except Christmas Day, the Epiphany, and the Fridays in the Octaves of Christmas, Easter and the Ascension; the Forty Days of Lent; the Vigils of Whitsunday and of Christmas Day.

      {The South African Church appears to be the first province of the Anglican Communion that has officially made a distinction between “fasting” and “abstinence”.}

      8.  The Mission Field. –It is generally felt that rules and customs in the matter of fasting which are usual or suitable in Europe are not always applicable in their entirety to all countries of the world, whether in extremely hot or in extremely cold regions.  From questions put to missionaries in many parts of the world it would appear that individual missionary bishops have issued special directions on the subject to their dioceses, but as far as the present writer knows, no official provincial action has been taken, except in South Africa.

      9.  The Roman Communion. – We may here note the present Roman regulations on the subject of Fasting and Abstinence.  In England and Wales the Fasting Days are the week-days of Lent, except the afternoon of Holy Saturday; the Ember Days; and the Vigils of Pentecost, the Assumption, All Saints and Christmas.  Abstinence Days are all Fridays except Holy Days of Obligation and December 26; Wednesdays in Lent; Ember Saturday in Lent; Ember Wednesdays; and the Vigils of the Assumption, All Saints and Christmas. {From The Catholic Directory.}

      On abstinence days flesh meat is forbidden.  On fasting days only one meal, with a collation, is allowed to those who are bound to fast.  Abstinence and fasting together mean a stricter standard than either separately.  The Catholic Encyclopaedia gives the following list of those who are exempted from the obligation: those under 21 or over 60 years of age, the sick, the delicate, those to whom fasting involves loss of sleep or severe headaches, those engaged in hard or protracted labour, mental as well as physical.  {The Bishops frequently give general dispensations from fasting when an epidemic, such as influenza, is raging.}  The one meal of a fast day is usually taken at or about midday; it may be split up into two parts, with an interval not exceeding two hours.  The quantity is not limited.  The collation in the evening is limited to eight ounces of solid food.  At the present time tea or coffee with a little bread is allowed in the morning.  Liquids may be drunk apart from meals if they are without food values; milk or broth are not permitted.  Altogether the rules, alarming at first sight, pay due regard to human infirmities, and present little difficulty to healthy people; they are less irksome than the regimes frequently imposed by doctors, which indeed might often be made unnecessary if the neglected practice of fasting and abstinence were to come into favour among Anglicans.

      But the difference between the method of minute regulation shown in the above paragraph, and that of leaving much to individual consciences, as is the Anglican practice, is very noteworthy.

      10.  Modern Eastern Practice. – (a) Among the Orthodox Easterns the Advent Fast begins on November 15 and lasts till Christmas Eve.  Before Lent comes the “Week of Cheese Fare” (beginning with Sexagesima), when cheese and eggs are permitted on Wednesday and Friday, as well as on other days.  The “Fast of the Holy and Great Quadragesima, which continueth till the Day of Holy Pascha” begins on the Monday after Quinquagesima.  In addition to these fasts, and to the weekly fasts of Wednesday and Friday, the “Fast of the Mother of God,” from August 1 to 14 inclusive, is observed.

      (b) The Separated Churches of the East, the Copts, Abyssinians, Armenians, West Syrians (“Jacobites”) and East Syrians (“Nestorian” or “Assyrians”), observe very strict and frequent fasts.  Of these Churches two may be taken as examples.

      (c) The Armenians.  Wednesdays and Fridays are fasts, except (by dispensation) in the Octave of Epiphany (the Armenian Christmas), in Eastertide, and the weeks after Pentecost and “Assumption Sunday”.  The Lenten fast lasts for 48 consecutive days, from Shrove Monday to Holy Saturday, except (according to some) the Sundays.  Also there are ten weeks of abstinence in the year, in each week five or six days, especially the week of “Arajavor,” the tenth before Easter; then only vegetable food is allowed, also honey, but no animal food; milk and fish are allowed only on the eve of the five great festivals and after the Eucharist of the day.  Altogether there are about 160 days of abstinence in the year.  At the present time there is on fast days abstinence from all food from early morning till midday, though this is not binding on all (Ormanian, Church of Armenia, p. 79).  Dr. Neale (Holy Eastern Church, pp. 795 f.) mentions as fasts seven days before the Epiphany (Christmas), the Transfiguration, the Assumption, the Exaltation of the Cross, and the “first Sunday of the Second Pentecost,” and three days before Whitsunday; and says that on fast days, strictly, only one meal, at sunset, is allowed; flesh meat, milk, butter, and eggs being forbidden.

      (d) East Syrians.  The weekly fasts of Wednesday and Friday, even if Christmas falls on one of these days, are strictly observed; but in practice meat may be eaten after evening prayers.  The “Little Fast,” or Advent, begins on December 1; formerly this was voluntary, except for monks, but now it is generally observed.  The “Great Fast,” or Lent, lasts for fifty days before Easter, beginning on the Monday, or on the Sunday (see below, § 11).  The “Fast of St. Mary,” August 1 to 14, is generally kept; and other “Rogations” are often observed as fasts, especially the three days “of the Ninevites,” in memory of the preaching of Jonah, which fall twenty days before Lent, and are strictly and generally kept, as they are also by the Armenians.  In the fasts no meat, fish, milk, butter or eggs are allowed; and, in strictness (except on Sundays), nothing is eaten or drunk until midday.

      11.  Non-fasting Days. – Here it must be noticed that Sundays and all days of Eastertide (till Pentecost) are explicitly excepted from fasting in ancient Church authorities, Eastern and Western.  This exception, however, did not apply to the Western Rogation Days.  And in some Separated Churches of the East at the present day the people fast on the Sundays, as well as on the weekdays, of Lent and Advent; though this seems to be a comparatively modern custom, adopted for convenience only, so that flesh meat should not be kept over from the Sundays and eaten on the weekdays of the fast.  Although this is the practice, for example, of the East Syrians, it is forbidden by their Book of Canon Law.

      Great stress was laid on the fact that the Lord’s Day is a day of rejoicing, not of gloom; and therefore from early times fasting was strictly forbidden on it.  In the same way kneeling, which was taken as a symbol of sorrow (for standing was in most places the normal attitude of prayer, as it still is in the East), was forbidden on Sundays and also in Eastertide (fifty days); as, for example, by the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325 (Canon 20).

      12.  A General Survey. – The rules for fasting became stricter after the earliest ages.  Our Lord gave no regulations on the subject, for it was His practice to enunciate general principles, and to leave the Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to make rules for carrying them out.  Thus Jesus foretold that the disciples would fast when the Bridegroom was taken away from them, and there left the matter (Mark 2:19 f., Matt 9:15, Luke 5:34 f.).  The Church early applied this saying in particular to the fast of Good Friday and Easter Eve.  The stricter Jews in the first century of our era were in the habit of practicing voluntary fasts, besides the one obligatory fast of the Day of Atonement, and in each week had two fast days (Luke 18:12), namely, Monday and Thursday.  For the Christian weekly fasts Wednesday and Friday seem to have been originally chosen so as to make a distinction between Christians and Jews; this is implied in the Didache (§ 8), though various symbolical reasons were afterwards found for the choice of these days, of which one was that the Jews made their conspiracy against our Lord on Wednesday, and Friday was the day of the Crucifixion.

      The East made stricter rules for fasting than the West; and it may be noticed that the Separated Oriental Churches formulated quite as strict rules on the subject after the fifth century as the Orthodox Easterns did; which shows that we cannot safely argue that a custom which is common to bodies which have separated from each other must necessarily be older than the separation.  Indeed, it may be thought that there was a certain rivalry between the various Oriental Churches in making strict rules for fasting.

      From the Reformation onwards it may be said that in England, except for early Acts of Parliament, Proclamations, and so forth, much more was left to the individual conscience in the matter of observing fast days than had formerly been the case.  The fast days were fixed in the 1662 revision of the Prayer Book, but the manner of observing them was left very much to custom.  That they were largely observed, at least by the more earnest Churchmen, there is much evidence to prove.  But we do not find that, as time went on, there were definite rules laid down, such as those of the sixteenth century mentioned above (§ 5).

      Reasons for the diversity of custom in fasting may be found in the differences of manner of life in various countries of the world, differences largely due to climate.  Further, hours of meals on ordinary days are and have been constantly changing in different parts of the world.  In many Eastern countries, for example, it is no hardship, quite apart from fasting, to eat nothing before midday.  In the north of Europe the hours and number of meals in the day are quite different from those of a few hundred years ago.  Such a diversity of ordinary practice suggests that one fixed rule of fasting for all countries and all ages is not, and never has been, practicable.  But that some kind of self-denial in food at certain times is valuable for the spiritual welfare of Christians – not to speak of their physical welfare – is very largely recognized; and it may be regretted that so great a measure of laxity in the matter has for long been prevalent.  At the same time it must always be remembered that rules of fasting are matters of ecclesiastical precept, not of divine law.

      13.  The Fast before Communion. – This custom differs from the other fasts already mentioned (except that before baptism) in having its primary motive in reverence rather than in self-discipline.  It has, indeed, its analogy in the fast before baptism, described above, § 2, but in respect of motive the analogy is perhaps not quite close.  The object of the notes which follow is to state the facts about this custom as they appear from a perusal of the history.

      (a) In the Early Church.  As a custom, the fast is mentioned at the end of the second century by Tertullian; he is speaking of private reservation of the Sacrament in houses, which was then and for some time afterwards permitted; and he says that the Sacrament was partaken of before other food.  As a rule, the fast before Communion is first mentioned, early in the third century, by Hippolytus in his Apostolic Tradition (above, § 2), in the Latin version as well as in the somewhat later Oriental (Sahidic and Ethiopic) versions  ; and in the fourth century by other ancient Church Orders which are derived from that work.  But it may be noticed that the form of the rule is that the Eucharist is to be received by the faithful before they eat other food. It has, indeed, been suggested by Dr. P. Dearmer (The Truth about Fasting, London, 1928) that, as some of these Church Orders hold that the Eucharist is a preservative or antidote against evil, the meaning is that before every meal the Christian is to eat a morsel of the Eucharistic species; but it is not easy to see how this interpretation can be got out of the words.  In the so-called Canons of Hippolytus, a Church Order based on the Apostolic Tradition, but a good deal later in date, perhaps of the end of the fourth century, the rule is of the later form, that no one is to taste anything before receiving the mysteries, “especially on the days of the sacred fast”.  These last words suggest that there were at least some exceptions, or that the rule was not quite universal.

      The rule is insisted on, in the fourth, and early in the fifth, century, by Basil, Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine, and others.  Gregory says (Orat., xl. 30) that “we celebrate [the Eucharist] in houses of prayer and before food.”  Augustine says that “it seemed good to the Holy Ghost that for the honour of so great a Sacrament the body of the Lord should enter into the mouth of a Christian before other foods, for so is the custom kept throughout the world.”  This last passage shows at least that the fast before Communion was the common custom of Augustine’s age, even if we hold that he exaggerates the universality and antiquity of it.

      The rule became very rigid in West and East alike, though there were some exceptions; and it is still held firmly by the great majority of Christians in the world.  But it is recognized by all that it is an ecclesiastical precept only.

      It may be remarked, in passing, that there is found some trace of fasting after Communion.  There is evidence of this in the ninth century; the fast lasted for two or three hours.

      (b) Post-Reformation usage in England.  There seems to have been no canonical or statutory prescription of fasting before Communion.  But as a custom it is frequently attested in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  Jeremy Taylor, for example, states that it is a custom of the Christian Church, and derived to us from great antiquity.  “Let us” (he says) “do the honour to it that it be the first food we eat, and the first beverage we drink that day, unless it be in the case of sickness or other great necessity” (Holy Living, iv. 10. 9).  The requirement of pre-baptismal fasting (above, § 2), repeated in the first rubric of the 1662 service for adult baptism, may be regarded as throwing light upon the attitude of the English Reformers towards Fasting Communion.

      The English Prayer Book as proposed in 1928 adds a new rubric before the Communion Service: “It is an ancient and laudable custom of the Church to receive this Holy Sacrament fasting.  Yet for the avoidance of all scruple it is hereby declared that such preparation may be used or not used, according to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.”

      (c) Regulations on this subject in the Roman Communion.  A learned Roman Catholic friend has sent the following notes:–

      Communicants.  The rubrics of the Missal contain the following regulations: “If anyone has not kept fast from midnight, though he has taken only water or other drink or food even as a medicine, and in however small a quantity, he cannot communicate or celebrate.”  This continues to be the law of the Church, and is of grave obligation.  Being, however, a positive ecclesiastical law, it admits of exceptions.  Thus, when in danger of death, from whatever cause, one may receive Holy Communion not fasting.  This also may be done if it is not possible to abstain from Communion without grave scandal, or serious loss of reputation; or when the Blessed Sacrament is in danger of being profaned; or in order to complete the Sacrifice of the Mass, left unfinished by another priest from sudden illness; or, probably, in order to consecrate the Viaticum for a dying person who would otherwise be deprived of it.

      With regard to the sick who are not in danger of death, the Decree of Pius X, December 7, 1906, has now been incorporated in the Codex, of which Canon 858, § 2, is as follows: “The sick who already for a month have been confined to bed, without certain hope of immediate recovery, may, under the direction of a prudent confessor, receive the most holy Eucharist, once or twice in the week, even though they may have taken medicine, or liquid nourishment.”

      The celebration of Mass.  The extraordinary relaxations with regard to fasting, granted to chaplains during the War, have been withdrawn, and the general law of the Church still binds all priests.  It is stated thus in the Codex, Canon 808: “A priest is not allowed to celebrate Mass unless he has preserved the natural fast from midnight.”  However, a Decree of the Congregation of the Holy Office dated March 22, 1923, grants a special relaxation for priests who have to say two Masses, or may have to say Mass at a late hour in the forenoon; but the privilege is very much restricted.  The Decree may be thus summarized: – (i) The dispensation must be secured for each individual priest by his bishop, from Rome; (ii) the dispensation can be granted only to a priest to whom, whether from reasons of health or excessive labour, the natural fast would involve grave injury; (iii) the Mass must be required for the spiritual good of the faithful, and not said merely for the private devotion or utility of the priest; (iv) the nourishment allowed must be of a liquid nature, exclusive of anything of an intoxicating nature.  By virtue of this dispensation, and under the above conditions, a priest may say Mass after having taken liquid nourishment.

      It may be mentioned that certain relaxations in this matter of fasting may be enjoyed by missionaries, or certain of the faithful, but these are personal privileges, in no way connected with the official discipline of the Church.

      (d) Regulations on this subject in the Orthodox Eastern Church.  A learned Orthodox Archbishop gives the following information as to relaxations of the strict rule of Fasting Communion, allowed in certain cases.  (i) The Fast before Communion is not held binding in the case of very young children; the general age for its being held binding is six.  {It will be remembered that among the Orthodox infants receive Holy Communion.}  (ii) It is not held binding in the case of danger of death.  (iii) In the case of the extremely aged, the very infirm, and those who are dangerously ill, it may be relaxed by the priest confessor.  (iv) In no case can the individual decide for himself.  (v) No other relaxations than the above are permitted.  (vi) Where relaxation is permitted the food taken must be of the lightest kind, liquid food, a few grapes, or the like.

      {It should be added that these relaxations among the Orthodox are a matter of custom or oecumenical “common law,” and are not regulated by oecumenical canon.}

      (e) Regulations on this subject in the Armenian Church.  A learned Armenian bishop gives the following information.  The law of fasting is observed in this Church; the fast begins at midnight.  It may be relaxed in the case of danger of death, and of the sick and the aged, and of riffle children; also “in cases of conscience”.  The fast can be dispensed with by a priest; but, except in very special cases, it is considered better not to communicate unless the fast is observed.

      {It is not quite certain what is meant by “cases of conscience”.  Probably it would be, for example, that if a person had to walk very far to reach the church, or if a priest found that he could not carry through the long fast and be able to preach and sing adequately, then such a person might take such food, presumably liquid only, as he decided (with his priest’s advice, or in an emergency on his own decision) to be necessary.}

      (f) Regulations on this subject in the Coptic, Abyssinian, East Syrian and West Syrian Churches.  In these Churches the rule of Fasting Communion is strictly laid down.  The East Syrian Canon Law, for example, decrees that no clerk who takes any part in the services of the Eucharist, Baptism or Ordination is to eat or drink anything beforehand.  No rule is laid down in this book of Canon Law for laymen, but the custom stringently binds all.

      References for many of the facts recorded in this article may be found in the following works, among others: – W. Smith and S. Cheetham, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities (London, 1875, 1880), Articles “Fasting” (W. E. Scudamore), “Communion, Holy” (S. Cheetham), etc.; J. Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Article “Fasting, Christian,” by the present writer, v. 765 ff. (Edinburgh, 1912).  For Post-Reformation usage in England, in Hierurgia Anglicana, part iii (ed. V. Staley, London, 1904).  For Oriental Churches, G. V. Shann, Euchology (Kidderminster, 1891); A. J. Butler, The Ancient Coptic Church of Egypt, Oxford, 1884; M. Ormanian, Church of Armenia (London, 1912); T. E. Dowling, The Armenian Church (London, 1910); A. J. Maclean and W. H. Browne, The Catholicos of the East and his People (London, 1892).

The Choir Offices

By E. C. Ratcliff

1.  History

The Origins of the Offices and their Development.

      The question of the origins of the Choir Offices, or Daily Services, is difficult and obscure.  We find them an accomplished fact in the second half of the fourth century, but lack of evidence leaves us without certain knowledge of the steps by which they became so.  It is sometimes suggested that the origins of the Offices are to be traced to the observance by the Apostles and first Christians of the Jewish hours of prayer, as recorded or indicated in the Acts of the Apostles.  This, however, is a mistake, because such observances were in no sense public acts of worship on the part of the Church; they were the private prayers of one or more individuals.  Apart from the Eucharist, we know little or nothing of the public worship of the early Church.  Concerning private prayer, on the other hand, the early literature gives us definite information.  The Didache, for example, directs the saying of the Lord’s Prayer three times daily.  Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian and St. Cyprian assume or recommend the observance of the third, sixth, and ninth hours.  Origen recommends prayer during the night; Tertullian assumes it on certain special occasions.  Morning and evening prayer are taken for granted.  There is, it will be noticed, a significant correspondence between the times of private prayer observed at least by the more devout in the early Church and the times of the public services of later days.  Following this clue, the great French scholar Mgr. Duchesne supposed that the Offices originated in the transformation by the ascetics in the fourth century of the private observances of the hours of prayer into public services in church.  That the transformation was effected is incontestable; but was Duchesne right in thinking it to be solely the work of the ascetics?  Since he wrote there has been a re-estimation of the evidence.  Thanks to the learned investigations of Dom Connolly we now know that an important document, once believed to be secondary and to belong at the earliest to the late fourth century, is actually primary and belongs to the early third century.  This is the so-called Egyptian Church Order, now generally recognized to be the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus of Rome, who died in 235.  As a third-century document, it is a new factor in the situation, and its emergence as such calls for a reconsideration of Duchesne’s theory. [Mgr. Duchesne published extracts from Ap. Tr. in the last edition of Christian Worship, but did not discuss the bearing of the work on the Offices.]

      The Apostolic Tradition was written in view of a particular situation that had arisen in the Roman Church.  It was designed as a manual of direction in Christian practice for the converts who were then entering the Church in considerable numbers; and it was intended also perhaps as a safeguard against the supposed errors and slackness of the Latin group of Roman Christians and their bishop.  Hippolytus, its author, apparently presided over a group of Greek-speaking Christians who, though resident in Rome, derived their traditions from some Greek centre, probably Antioch or its neighbourhood.  The Apostolic Tradition, therefore, may be taken with certainty as representing only Hippolytus’s own group at Rome. [Dom Connolly regards it as generally representative of Roman use.  The question, however, depends upon the view taken of the constitution of, and situation in, the Roman Christian Community at this time: whether it was a corporate unity, or whether any of the groups, of which it appears to have been constituted in the immediately preceding period, still maintained an existence.  See G. La Piana, “The Roman Church at the End of the Second Century,” Harvard Theological Review, July 1925.]  But it is not the less important for that, because it attained a great publicity and popularity, principally in the East; it was translated into several languages, and its provisions were incorporated in or influenced a number of the “Church Orders,” manuals like itself for guidance of the life of local churches and their members.  In the matter of prayer, Hippolytus issues explicit injunctions.  Every Christian is commanded to pray on rising in the morning; at the third and sixth hours, because of their association with our Lord’s Passion; at the ninth hour; on going to bed; and in the middle of the night, on account of our Lord’s words in Matt. 25:6, 13.  Nothing is said about evening prayer.  Directions are, however, given for the conduct of the “supper of the congregation” in the evening: when the lamps are brought in, [The passage about the lamps occurs only in the Ethiopic version: but it is found also, though without the thanksgiving, in dependent documents, and may, therefore, be considered as integral to the original, but now lost, Greek of Ap. Tr.] the bishop is to say a thanksgiving which is closely related, both in matter and form, to the hymn “Cheerful light” quoted by St. Basil as already ancient in his day and still sung at Greek Vespers. [Tr. in Hymns Ancient and Modern, No. 18.  See St. Basil, De Spiritu Sancto, 73.]  Injunctions are given also for daily assemblies in church for instruction, and for reading the Scriptures at home when the instruction had to be abandoned; but there is as yet no trace of Offices. Prayer, “which is the duty of all,” is still private.

      Yet, although this is so, Hippolytus’s outlook is noticeably different from that of the earlier writers.  Regimen has replaced recommendation; and the importance of the Apostolic Tradition lies in the fact of its wide acceptance and the consequent diffusion of the changed outlook.  In its systematization of daily private prayer and in the imposition of its system as obligatory, the Apostolic Tradition gave a new direction to the movement of Christian life and ideal of practice, and originated a process of which the logical conclusion was a liturgical system of daily public prayer.  Common prayer at stated times in church is the next step to obligatory private prayer at the same times at home, and the step is easier when the custom is already established of resorting daily to church for instructions.  There is, also, but a short distance between direction to say prayers, and direction as to what prayers to say.  A study of the documents dependent upon the Apostolic Tradition shows that the step was taken and the distance covered.  We cannot, however, trace the details of the process.  In the Apostolic Constitutions, the last of these documents (c. 375–400), we see the process complete.  There are two principal daily public services, at morning and evening, for which psalms and prayers are alike prescribed, and at the other hours of prayer there are services in church.  The evidence of contemporary writers shows that practice followed precept.  The daily Offices are settled institutions.  The Apostolic Tradition and the Church Orders in stereotyping the old tradition, therefore, make the chief contribution to what was in effect the settlement of a new tradition in the matter of worship and of Church life in general; and the movement which they inspired and guided was a movement of “secular” laity and clergy, as distinct from the ascetics.  That the ascetics played their part in developing the Offices is indisputable; but that the Offices were their creation, as Mgr. Duchesne supposed, a fresh reading of the evidence does not seem to suggest.

      We have, as might be expected, fuller information about public worship in the latter half of the fourth century than in the period preceding.  Much of this is derived from ascetic sources.  In his Longer Rules St. Basil the Great outlines a scheme of daily prayers for the ascetics of Pontus and Cappadocia. [L.R. xxxvii.  See W. K. Lowther Clarke, The Ascetic Works of St. Basil, S.P.C.K., 1925, pp. 206–9.]  There are eight Offices in all, viz. at midnight, before dawn, at dawn, at the third, sixth and ninth hours, at evening and at the beginning of the night.  Prayer at these hours was obligatory, as in the earlier period, on those who could not pray with the community.  It has been questioned whether the last Office was recited in common as a public service, or whether it was a private devotion observed by each individual on retiring to bed.  Basil’s language does not suggest that it was different from the other Offices, the communal character of which is beyond doubt.  Its observance, together with that of the dawn Office, appears to have been restricted to the communities who lived by Basil’s Rules.  In John Cassian’s Institutes of the Caenobites we have accounts of the customs of the ascetics in Egypt and Palestine.  The Egyptian monks met twice a day for common worship, before daybreak and at evening.  There were no other services, because it was the duty of ascetics to live in a state of prayer.  The ascetics of Palestine observed a daily cycle of at least six Offices, viz. the Vigil or night Office, a morning Office said almost immediately after the Vigil, the Offices of the third, sixth and ninth hours, and the Lucernare or evening Office.  An extra morning Office was added at Bethlehem, during Cassian’s sojourn there (c. 388).  It would seem to correspond to Basil’s dawn Office, but Cassian betrays no knowledge of this, and speaks of the Bethlehem service as an innovation.  Its use was not everywhere adopted; nevertheless Cassian thinks of the daily Offices as being seven in number, and as being therefore a literal fulfillment of the Psalmist’s vow, “Seven times a day will I praise thee.”  Cassian gives us but few details about the services; Psalms 148–150 were said at the first morning Office, and other psalms seem to have been chosen on account of appropriate references to morning and evening.  Cassian’s information is confirmed and supplemented by another document of interest and value.  This is the Peregrinatio Etheriae, a diary kept by a Spanish lady, Etheria by name, of her pilgrimage to the Holy Places of Palestine and the East (c. 385).  Etheria describes the Holy Week and festival services at Jerusalem and Bethlehem.  The cycle of Offices is that of Cassian, without, of course, the extra morning Office; and the ninth hour is a special observance proper to Lent.  Although there was a general attendance of “secular” laity and ascetics at all these services, Etheria gives us to understand that the morning Office and Lucernare had an importance above the rest and were better attended.  In the morning the bishop, after the Psalms are sung, says “a prayer for all, mentioning the names of those whom he wishes to commemorate”; in the evening the commemoration is made by a deacon, Kyrie eleison being sung as a response after each name, and the bishop then prays for all as in the morning.  Both Offices conclude with the blessing and dismissal of the faithful by the bishop.  Etheria notes, as something new, that on festivals and in Holy Week the Psalms and lessons from Scripture are appropriate to the day and place.  This scheme of daily services, it will have been noticed, is that contemplated in Apostolic Constitutions; and Etheria is definite that they are as much the services of the “secular” laity as of the ascetics.  We find, then, at Jerusalem already at the end of the fourth century the breviary cycle of daily Offices almost complete, and the beginnings of the observance of the liturgical year.

      This same system obtained also at Constantinople.  There it was subsequently amplified by the incorporation of Basil’s two Offices of dawn, or the First Hour, and of the beginning of the night, or the Service After Dinner (απόδειπνον).  These eight Offices, elaborated in the monasteries during the Byzantine period and attaining their finished state about the tenth century, form the framework of the Byzantine Daily Service, and are the foundation of the Horologion, or daily Hour-book, of the Greek Orthodox Church at the present day.

The Offices at Rome and the Formation of the Breviary.

      Evidence for the history of the Offices at Rome before the sixth century is slight.  The only public Office during the fourth century was the Station Vigil kept in connection with the Station Mass.  The hours were observed in private.  When the cycle of public Offices was first established at Rome we do not know.  The Roman clergy were conservative and opposed themselves to institutions associated with the ascetics.  There is, however, a clear indication of the existence of a Roman Office in the first quarter of the sixth century.  In his Rule, composed about 530, St. Benedict frames a definite and detailed scheme of Offices, which is also the earliest known in the West and is the foundation of the Monastic Breviary.  Benedict is silent as to his sources, but residence at Rome had acquainted him with its liturgical customs, and he makes some reference to these in his Rule.  The inference, in part supported by a passage in a trustworthy document of the seventh-eighth century, [I.e. Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum, which contains material of an earlier date.] is that Benedict’s scheme is a rearrangement, and an adaptation to monastic needs, of the system in use at Rome; and that it retained the basic principle of that system, viz. the weekly recitation of the Psalter.  In Benedict’s time the Roman cycle was identical with that which Etheria had found in Jerusalem, and not improbably had been influenced by Jerusalem in its beginnings.  The six services were called Vigil or Mattins, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, and Vespers.  Terce, Sext and None, however, were said only on Sundays and certain other occasions.  To this scheme Benedict, apparently following Basil’s Rules, added two other Offices, viz. Prime, corresponding to the dawn Office, and Compline (completorium, i.e. the completion of the day), corresponding to the Office at the beginning of the night, and characterized by the same Psalm, 91.  Benedict provided also for the daily recitation of Terce, Sext and None.  He further added ambrosiani, hymns either composed by St. Ambrose or in his style, to be sung at the Offices.  From Benedict’s Rule, then, and from various later notices as to changes, we can form some general idea of the character of the Roman Office at this period.  Lauds and Vespers were the two principal services of the cycle.  Lauds began always at dawn.  It had its appointed psalms for each day, an Old Testament canticle, a lesson, and a Gospel canticle.  The psalms always included 148–150, which from the frequent occurrence in them of the word Laudate gave its name to the Office.  Vespers was the service of nightfall; it had its psalms, a lesson, and if the Roman custom were in this respect identical with the Milanese as recorded by Honorius of Autun, also a Gospel canticle.  Both Lauds and Vespers concluded with prayers introduced by Kyrie eleison, and probably beginning with the Lord’s Prayer, as in Benedict’s Rule.  The proper Collects were still confined to the Mass.  It is reasonable to conjecture, however, that the morning and evening prayers of the Leonine Sacramentary were intended for recitation at these Offices.  There seems to have been some freedom in the conduct of the Vigil.  If it had not come to an end before the hour appointed for Lauds, it could be terminated without the full number of psalms and lessons being said.  There are indications that the number of psalms was twenty-four for Sundays and twelve for week-days.  About the scheme of lessons, presumably drawn only from the books of the Bible read in course, we know nothing certain.  The arrangement of the Psalter distributed 1–109 (Vul. 108) over the Vigils for the week, with certain exceptions, and 110 (Vul. 109) to 147, excluding 119 and certain other psalms over Vespers.  Ps. 119 was assigned to Terce, Sext and None.  The remaining psalms were said at Lauds.  This scheme of Offices did not include commemorations of Saints.  At this period the Saints whose anniversaries were celebrated by the Roman Church were for the most part Roman martyrs who were buried in one or other of the local cemeteries.  Saints’ festivals were accordingly few, and their services were not integral to the scheme of Offices.  Services in commemoration of these Saints were held on their anniversaries at their cemetery churches; psalms and lessons suitable to the occasion were said, and the lessons included the Acts of the martyr.  When contrasted with the Benedictine system, the Roman appears to be non-monastic or “secular”.  It is not a cycle which divides the day into so many periods, each beginning with a corporate act of prayer and praise, and which thus effects an alternation of worship and work in a common life; it is a cycle in which the Offices are the metamorphosis of the private devotions of clergy and people into public services, and in which the distribution of the Psalter is an illustration of the Roman genius for simplicity, order and the practical sense which provides against confusion and ineffectuality.

      During the next three centuries the Roman system underwent some development.  Its use also became widely extended, and this led finally to important modifications.  One factor in the development was the regulative and coordinative work, musical as well as liturgical, of St. Gregory the Great, who was himself a monk.  Another was the influence of the convents of monks who were attached to the basilicas, first to St. Peter’s and later to the others, with the responsibility of maintaining the Offices.  The monks recited the Roman Offices; but they introduced into the Roman cycle the two monastic offices of Prime and Compline, and further made Terce, Sext and None daily observances.  It was doubtless also due to them that expositions of Scripture and homilies came to be included among the lessons at Mattins.  During this period the commemorations of the Saints were transferred from the cemeteries to the City, and were celebrated in the churches to which their relics had been translated or with which their names were in some way associated.  But their Offices remained additional to those of the day, which was not pretermitted because of them.  This is the origin of the officium duplex, or double Office.  In course of time, certain commemorations were fused with the Office of the day.  These were minor festivals.  Greater commemorations retained, or when introduced had assigned to them, each a complete Office proper to itself, i.e. were “double” festivals.  During these centuries, also, the prestige of the Roman Schola Cantorum led to the diffusion of the Roman chant north of the Alps.  As might be expected, it came to England with the Roman Mission to Kent.  Thence it spread to other centers.  From Bede’s Ecclesiastical History we learn that Augustine’s colleague, Paulinus, on moving from York to Rochester left behind him a deacon, James, “who was extraordinarily skilled in singing ... and began to teach many to sing the ecclesiastical chant according to the custom of the Romans or Cantuarians.”  With the corning of Theodore as Archbishop of Canterbury in 669, “they began,” says Bede, “in all the churches of the English to learn the ecclesiastical chant, which hitherto had been known only in Kent.”  In 680, Benedict Biscop brought back to his monastery at Wearmouth no less a person than John, the arch-chanter of St. Peter’s in Rome.  John taught the singers of the monastery “the manner of singing and reading aloud, and wrote down what was necessary for the celebration of festivals throughout the course of the year.”  John’s pupils, however, were not confined to the monks of Wearmouth; they were drawn “from almost all the monasteries of the same province,” and many other places expressed a desire to learn the Roman chant.  The introduction of the music led naturally to the introduction of the texts to which it belonged, and the Roman Offices became the use of the Anglo-Saxon Church.  The Roman music was adopted also in the Frankish dominions.  The Roman zeal of the English missionaries brought the Frankish Court into relations with the Roman See, and inevitably aroused interest in Roman modes of worship.  Chrodegang of Metz, returning from an embassy to the Pope in 753, introduced the Roman chant and with it certain Roman liturgical customs.  Others followed his example.  The movement proceeded apace, but the Roman service books did not wholly supplant the Frankish.  Roman material was combined with non-Roman, and new service books were drawn up.  Frankish interest in liturgical matters produced modifications and abbreviations in the Roman Offices which eventually were accepted at Rome.  This result was facilitated by the changed conditions of the Papal Court.  Constant absence from Rome, travelling, and growth of business made the performance of the old Roman Offices increasingly inconvenient.  Moreover, the number of books required for the Offices made it impossible for the clergy to fulfill their obligation of saying them when not in choir.  Attempts were made to collect the psalms, lessons, rubrics, etc. into one book; this is the earliest form of the Breviary.  The Offices, however, were too long, and their abridgment in view of changed conditions was inevitable.  In the first half of the twelfth century we hear of a new, as opposed to the old, Office.  This was the modernum officium used by the Pope and the Curia in the Papal Chapel.  The Modern Office was characterized by the two contrary tendencies of abbreviation and amplification.  It abbreviated lessons, and probably suppressed certain responds and antiphons.  On the other hand, it introduced new festivals into the Kalendar, some of non-Roman local observance, e.g. St. Martin of Tours, and others of more general interest, e.g. the Feast of the Trinity; it attached octaves to festivals which it classed as of first rank; it adopted the hymns of the Monastic Office; and it added the Offices of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the Dead as supplementary observances to the canonical Office, together with Memorials of the Cross, of the Blessed Virgin and All Saints, and of St. Peter and St. Paul at Vespers and Lauds on most days of the year.  The fifteen gradual Psalms, the seven penitential Psalms, and other Psalms were likewise prescribed for recitation at particular times.  The comparative shortness of the new Office, as contrasted with the old, commended it to the Franciscans, whose work and manner of life demanded shorter services and a portable service book.  The Rule of 1223 adopted it for Franciscan use.  The Franciscans soon found, however, that they required an Office yet shorter than that of the Curia, and one more in accord with their own devotional temper and practices.  With the approval of Pope Gregory IX, therefore, their general, Haymo of Faversham, and his colleagues undertook a revision of the Breviarium Romance Curia.  Their revision was marked by the same two contrary features remarked above.  The Scripture lessons were further reduced, and longer expositions and homilies were replaced by short passages from other sources.  At the same time the number of festivals was considerably increased, and those of double rank augmented.  The double Office was still maintained in the Roman basilicas.  The Franciscans, however, did not celebrate it among themselves.  They said only the Office of the festival and pretermitted that of octaves.  The celebration of an octave had originally been a commemoration of the festival in the Office of the eighth day.  The Franciscans not only raised the eighth day to the rank of a double; they gave the same rank to the six intervening days, so making double festivals last for a week.  In this way the old Office of the day or season fell largely into disuse, and the recitation of the Breviary Office became a succession of festival observances.  Not a few of these were marred by the introduction of lessons from spurious and mythical Acts, Lives and Passions of the saints, such as were condemned, complains a fourteenth-century liturgist, by the Decree of Pope Gelasius I.  Among Franciscan amplifications, we may note also the addition of the four Anthems of the Blessed Virgin to Compline, and the practice of saying both the Lord’s Prayer before and after each Office and also Ave Maria at the beginning and end of the Offices of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  The revised Breviary was authorized for the use of the Franciscans by Pope Gregory IX in 1241.  It was adopted by the Papal Curia; and in 1277 Pope Nicholas III, himself a Franciscan, imposed its use upon most of the churches of Rome.  The Franciscans had already carried it throughout Western Europe.  Thus it became the core of the Offices of the Sarum Use and of the other mediaeval non-monastic uses of the two English provinces.

      The new Office retained the Roman distribution of the Psalter, and most of the old antiphons, prayers and responds, but it was nevertheless, as Dom Baudot has said, “a veritable revolution in liturgy”.  It was no less a revolution in worship, because it was based upon the principle that the Offices were preeminently the concern of the clergy.  There was now little general attendance except at Mattins, sung before Mass, and “Even-song,” [So The Vision concerning Piers the Plowman.  For pre-Reformation Sunday Services see Chr. Wordsworth, Notes on Medieval Services in England.] on Sundays and festivals.  With the advance of the Middle Ages, the interest of the laity had been concentrating upon the votive Offices of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of the Dead, a translation of which into English formed an important division of the Prymer, the layman’s book of prayers.  It was almost as much owing to this comparatively new devotional interest, as to ignorance of Latin, that the Offices ceased to be in practice, if not in theory, the common prayer of the Christian people.

The English Reform of the Offices and the Book of Common Prayer.

      At the beginning of the sixteenth century there was general dissatisfaction with prevailing liturgical arrangements.  In the case of the Offices, objection was made, first to their complication and to the rules pertaining to them, and next to the diversity of Uses.  The multiplication of feasts had rendered nugatory the ancient plan of the Offices.  The too frequent repetition of the same psalms impeded the regular weekly recitation of the Psalter, and the continuous reading of Scripture was interrupted by lessons taken from Lives of Saints and other ecclesiastical sources.  The first reform of importance was the Breviary drawn up by Cardinal Quiñones at the instance of Pope Clement VII and published in 1535.  Quiñones’ aim, as set out in his Preface, was the redistribution of the Psalter over the week, provision for the continuous reading of most of the books of the Bible, and simplification.  The last was secured by the abolition of antiphons, short chapters, i.e. the verse to which the lessons at all services but Mattins had been reduced, and responds.  Quiñones’ Breviary was intended to serve the convenience of the clergy, and not for public use.  It was opposed, however, as being too radical in tendency, and although Quiñones issued a second edition with antiphons restored, it was suppressed in 1558.  It had, nevertheless, helped to prepare the way for the reform of the Breviary by Pope Pius V, who with his Breviary of 1568 and Missal of 1570 established all but uniformity within the Roman Church.

      Quiñones’ reform had proceeded on the assumption that the Offices belonged to the clergy alone.  Among the Lutherans a different tradition was in process of formation; the Latin Offices had been replaced by services in the vernacular, in which the people could take part.  In England it was for some time uncertain which direction reform would pursue.  The first step inclined in the Lutheran direction.  In 1543 it was ordered that a chapter of the New Testament in English should be read every Sunday and holy day at Mattins and Vespers.  In the following year the first English Litany was issued.  The Offices, however, continued in Latin; and at first it appears that a revision of these was considered.  A MS., mostly in Cranmer’s handwriting and containing two schemes of revision, is preserved in the British Museum.  The first of these schemes reduces the services to two, Mattins and Evensong; it arranges the Psalter over the month; abolishes non-scriptural lessons and provides for the Bible to be read over once in the year; and also abolishes antiphons and responds, although retaining hymns.  There were to be three lessons at Mattins and two at Evensong.  Te Deum and Benedictus were to be sung at Mattins, and Magnificat at Evensong; Nunc Dimittis was omitted.  This scheme recalls Quiñones’ first Breviary, and the Preface prefixed to it is often verbally reminiscent of Quiñones’ Preface.  The second scheme is of the type of Quiñones’ second Breviary: the cycle of eight services is retained, and Sarum material is used.  What led Cranmer to abandon his Latin projects we do not know for certain.  As long as Henry VIII lived, the possibilities of revision were limited in a conservative direction, but that king’s death in 1547 removed from Cranmer all check and restriction on thought and inclination.  Accordingly, Cranmer could, and did, associate himself with the party that favoured the German reforms.  This association finally determined the direction of English liturgical reform.  That reform took the shape of a new book of services in the English language and was published in 1549 as The Book of Common Prayer.

      The Choir Offices of the first Prayer Book are two in number, Mattins and Evensong, and are identical in structure.  The structure is simple, as can be seen from the following table:

      The above scheme has marked affinities with the first Latin scheme of Cranmer’s MS.  There is also a close relation between the Preface of the MS. and that of the Prayer Book of 1549.  The latter calls for attention as it explains the principle of the new Offices, and indicates their purpose and significance.  According to the Preface the original purpose of the Choir Offices or “common prayers” as established by “the ancient Fathers” is “great advancement of godliness” among clergy and laity.  The principal means to this end being a daily reading or hearing of the Bible, the Fathers ordained that the Bible should be read over once in the year at the daily Offices.  Edification, therefore, is the set purpose of the new Offices.  It is to be secured by a restoration of the ancient “continual course of the reading of Scripture” and by the use of such language as the people “might understand and have profit by hearing the same.”  As edification is ministered only by “the pure word of God” and by “that which is grounded upon” it (i.e. the Apocrypha), non-scriptural and non-Apocryphal lessons are excluded, together with antiphons, responds and invitatories, which interrupt the reading of Scripture, both psalms and lessons.  Finally, the interests of edification require that the Use of the new book shall become the uniform Use of the whole realm.

      In his Latin Preface Cranmer had written of his projected Breviary that it was “an order not newly devised by us but rather the old order delivered by the Fathers (if you shall consider their purpose aright) which we have restored, as far as we could, to its ancient and primitive use and excellence.”  Of the English Offices he says, “Here you have an order for prayer (as touching the reading of holy scripture) much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old fathers, and a great deal more profitable and commodious than that which of late was used.”  He does not claim that it is a restoration of the old order, and the differences between the old and the new are more than a change of liturgical language and a simplification of the structure of services.  The emphasis on edification and on the necessity of it is the assertion of what, at the time, seemed to be a new principle in public worship.  It was the founding of a new tradition which has survived in English religion to our own time and which in its overshadowing of worship by edification has had unfortunate effects.  This emphasis on edification and on Scripture reading as the means of it is, of course, to be understood in the light of the conditions from which the sixteenth century Church of England was emerging, and of the new interest in the Bible and in the new ideas of its inspiration, authority and universal accessibility, and of knowledge of it as a necessity for salvation.  To this new principle, as much as to any desire to return to antiquity, is attributable the place assigned in public worship to the people, and the popularity of the new Offices, increasingly at the expense of Communion, among those who accepted Reformed ideas.  The intention and spirit of the new Offices are summed up, not by the verse, “Seven times a day do I praise thee,” but by “Thy word is a lantern unto my feet.”  The Offices, as occasions of the ministering of the Word of God, became by a process natural within Reformed circles, the central religious observances of English Church life.

      Such a result appears not to have been contemplated or desired by the earlier Reformers.  It was, however, to some extent assisted by the revisions of 1552 and 1661.  In 1552 the introduction, consisting of the opening sentences, exhortation and confession, was added.  At the same time certain psalms were provided as alternatives to Benedictus, Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis.  These canticles were disliked by the extreme Reformed party on account of their use in the old services, and the alternative psalms served perhaps to give a more definitely Reformed character to the Offices.  In 1661 the anthem, the four last prayers, and the “Grace” were added, and it was made possible to say the Occasional Prayers, which in the previous edition of the Prayer Book were attached to the Litany, at Mattins and Evensong.  It is possible that, although lacking rubrical authority, this practice was not new in 1661.  The effect of these additions was to make the Offices perform the function originally assigned by the Reformers to the Litany.  The Litany was the principal form of general intercession, but it was unpopular with the Puritans, who termed its petitions and responses “short cuts and shreddings, which may be better called wishes than prayers.”  A further and undesigned effect of the additions was to bring the Offices into line with the earlier Eastern tradition as represented by the early morning and evening services at Jerusalem in the time of Etheria.

      Each of the attempts at Prayer Book revision subsequent to 1661 would have affected the Offices conformably with the aims and principles of the revisers.  The proposed revision of 1689 was at once a gesture of conciliation towards Nonconformity and a concession to Low Church feeling.  The proposals with regard to the Offices were few, but indicated an absence of a sense of form and of liturgical tradition.  A new versicle and response drawn from Psalm 119 were thrust between those with which the Offices open.  Psalms were substituted for Benedicite and Nunc Dimittis, Psalm 8 was inserted before Magnificat, [The Psalm was doubtless intended to be an alternative to Magnificat, but there is no explicit direction to this effect.] and most of the prayers were expanded or altered.  The main structure, however, remained unchanged.  The revision of 1927–28, on the other hand, was intended both to meet new needs and to make use of liturgical knowledge for improvement and enrichment.  Had this revision been sanctioned by Parliament, it would have opened a new chapter in the history of the Offices.  In respect of these, its principal feature was the permissive use of a considerable number of variations.  Certain of these were revolutionary.  By its provision of a table of psalms for all Sundays and the greater holy days, it would have enabled the separation of the Offices of these days from those of other days, and so have interrupted that continuity which is fundamental to the Offices.  By its permission to omit not only the introduction, including the first Lord’s Prayer, but also all that follows the second canticle at either service, when that service is immediately succeeded by another, it would have made it possible to reduce the status of either Office to that of a mere preliminary.  Such violation of the integrity of Offices is objectionable in its disregard of their rationale.  On the other hand, the provision of a shorter alternative introduction and the sanction of the reduction of the prayers to one out of the three Collects if desired are both reasonable and respectful of history.  The chief fault of this revision of the Offices lay in its principal feature, viz. the provision of many variations.  A modicum of variation, so limited as not to affect the general character of services, is defensible.  The revisers of 1927–28, however, proposed variations so numerous and of such a character that they not only abandoned the old principle of uniformity of Use, but they also introduced a new principle of multiformity of Office.

2.  The Contents

The Title.

      In 1549 the old names Mattins and Evensong were used.  Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer came into use in 1552.  The old names, however, are retained in the Tables of Proper Lessons and Proper Psalms.

The Introduction.

      In 1549 the Offices began with the Lord’s Prayer said aloud by the priest.  This was a continuation of the custom, which may be traced back to the ninth century, of beginning the Latin Offices with the Lord’s Prayer as a private devotion.  In the later Middle Ages Ave Maria was said in addition.  The doxology was not attached to the Lord’s Prayer in the English Prayer Book before 1662: it appeared first in the Scottish Prayer Book of 1637, from which the English practice appears to be derived.  The direction for the people to say the Prayer with the priest belongs also to 1661.

      The authorship of the exhortation, confession and absolution is unknown.  A confession without exhortation and an absolution were said among the prayers at Sarum Prime and Compline.  The present introduction, however, seems to be inspired by continental Reformed practice.

      The revision of 1927–28 proposed a new arrangement of opening sentences, and alternative forms of exhortation, confession and absolution.  The eleven sentences of 1552 and 1662 were intended to introduce the confession and absolution with scriptural thoughts of penitence and assurance of forgiveness.  The last revision provided twenty-seven sentences, of which eight belonged to the original number, the rest being chosen on account of their suitability for seasons, festivals, Saints’ days and other special occasions.  This disregard of the purpose of the sentences breaks the unity of the introduction.  The function of the new sentences would have been better performed by invitatories.  The alternative confession is a modern and undistinguished composition.  The alternative absolution is based on the form used at Prime and Compline in the Sarum Breviary.

The Versicles, Responses, and Gloria Patri.

      The versicles and responses are drawn respectively from Ps. 51:15 and Ps. 70:1.  St. Benedict directed that at the beginning of the Vigil Ps. 70:1 and the Gloria Patri should be said, followed by Ps. 51:15, repeated three times.  They were probably sung by all together, and not yet as versicles and responses.  The Roman and Sarum Breviaries placed Ps. 51:15 before Ps. 70:1, and treated both as versicles and responses.  Gloria Patri continued to be sung by all, and was followed, except from Septuagesima to Easter Day, by Alleluia.  Except Compline, the other Offices began immediately with Ps. 70:1 and the Gloria and Alleluia.  This beginning passed to the Prayer Book of 1549.  At Mattins, however, Ps. 51:15 was said before “O God, make speed to save me.”  The Gloria was said by the priest alone, followed by “Praise ye the Lord,” and, from Easter to Trinity Sunday, also by Alleluia.  In 1552 the singular of the versicles and their responses was changed into plural, and the Mattins versicle, “O Lord, open thou our lips,” and its response were prefixed to Evening Prayer.  Alleluia, perhaps as being a reduplication of “Praise ye the Lord,” was removed.  The Prayer Book of 1661, following the Scottish Book of 1637, divided the Gloria into a versicle and response, and added “The Lord’s name be praised” as an answer to “Praise ye the Lord.”

      Gloria Patri as a concluding doxology to each psalm was in use in Gaul, according to Cassian, at the end of the fourth century.  It was similarly used in Rome by the fifth century, and this use of it is presupposed by St. Benedict in his Rule.  The Greek form of the doxology is “Glory to Father and Son and Holy Spirit, now and always and for ever and ever.”  This is almost identical with the form prescribed in the pseudonymous fourth or early fifth century document De Virginitate. Trinitarian doxologies, however, appear to be older than the fourth century.  Their form, also, was not fixed, and it was therefore possible for the Arians to use forms capable of unorthodox interpretations, such as “Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.”  For this reason, the form of doxology became a test of orthodoxy, and the present forms were stereotyped among the orthodox in East and West.  The purpose of the doxology is to turn the Psalms and canticles of the Old Testament into Christian hymns, by affirming belief in the God who, though only fully revealed in Trinity to the Church of the New Testament, is nevertheless truly known by the Church of the Old.

The Invitatory Psalm.

      St. Benedict prescribes the daily recitation of Ps. 95 with an antiphon before the hymn and psalms for the day at the Vigil.  The Vigil is the first of the eight daily services, and Ps. 95 therefore comes appropriately at its beginning as an invitation to worship and to listen to the Divine Voice.  There is little doubt that this is an original Benedictine feature of the Vigil, and was not borrowed from Rome.  It was, however, adopted at Rome, whence it passed to the Sarum Breviary, and thence to the Book of Common Prayer.  In the Roman and Sarum Breviaries it is the only psalm said with its antiphon in the ancient manner, i.e. the antiphon is sung in whole or part after the second, fourth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh verses and after the doxology.  The antiphons, because they belonged to the psalmus invitatorius, themselves came to be termed invitatories ; hence the 1549 rubric, “Then shall be said ... without any invitatory ... Psalm 95.”

      The proposed revision of 1927–28 restored the invitatory, and provided ten forms, to be sung as antiphons before the psalm and after the doxology, on certain festivals and Sundays.  As setting the tone of the service, this was an enrichment; and a complete set of invitatories for permissive use throughout the year might well have been provided.  On the other hand, the revision allows only the first seven verses of Ps. 95 to be recited.  This is presumably due to objections, made on sentimental grounds, to the stern language of the remaining verses.  It should be noted, however, that the “invitation” is as much in “Today, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts,” as in “O come, let us sing unto the Lord”; and it is to be hoped that in future revisions this mutilation will not be repeated.

      On Easter Day and throughout the Octave, Ps. 95 is omitted, and the “Easter Anthems” are sung.

      The Easter Anthems consist of 1 Cor. 5:7–8, Rom. 6:9–11, and 1 Cor. 15:20–22 with Gloria Patri at their conclusion.  Their origin may be traced to the service at the “Sepulchre” on Easter morning.  The Sarum Processionale directs that before Mattins the Blessed Sacrament and the Cross, which had been placed in the sepulchre on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday respectively, shall be removed and placed, the first on the high altar, and the second on a side altar, “cum magna veneratione”.  After this has been done, “Christ, being raised from the dead” is sung as an antiphon, followed by its verse, a versicle and response are said, and a Collect recited.  The service concludes with an adoration of the Cross.  In the Prayer Book of 1549, this service, with a different versicle and response and with Rom. 6:11 and 1 Cor. 15:20–22 added to the original antiphon, in place of the verse, was prefixed to Mattins, without, of course, the accompaniment of the old ceremonies.  The service was abolished, and the anthems were directed to be said in place of Venite, in 1552.  “Christ our Passover” and Gloria Patri were not added until 1662.

The Hymn Te Deum and the Canticles.

      Hymns in ancient times were rhythmical, but not metrical and rhyming, compositions.  Such hymns have been in use in Christian worship from the earliest days.  Traces of them are to be found in the New Testament, e.g. 1 Tim. 3:16, 1 Tim. 6:15, 16; Rev. 15:3, 4, etc.; and as examples of early Christian hymns still in use we have Gloria in excelsis and “Cheerful Light”.  Canticles are scriptural hymns as distinct from psalms.  In addition to Benedicite, Benedictus, Magnificat, and Nunc Dimittis, the Roman and Sarum Breviaries prescribe  Audite coeli (Deut. 32), Cantemus Domino (Exod. 15), the Song of Isaiah (Isa. 12), Domine audivi (Habakkuk 3), the Song of Hezekiah (Isa. 38:20–22), and the Song of Hannah (1 Sam. 2:1–10).  The Monastic Breviary, and the French diocesan Breviaries issued in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, are rich in canticles.

      (i) Te Deum. – The Breviaries ascribe this hymn to St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, but there is no foundation for the ascription.  Dom Morin’s attribution of it to Niceta, Bishop of Remesiana in Dacia, and a contemporary of St. Jerome, is now generally accepted.  The hymn is parallel in structure with Gloria in excelsis, which may have influenced it.  In its original form it ended at ver. 21.  The Rule of Caesarius of Arles, written about 500, orders that certain specified psalms, and “Te Deum laudamus, Gloria in excelsis Deo and the capitellum” shall be said at the end of the Morning Office.  This is the earliest known reference to the liturgical use of Te Deum.  The capitellum was a verse, usually chosen from a psalm, and recited as an antiphon or prayer, in the form of versicle and response, at the conclusion of a hymn.  Verses 22 to 29 consist of the capitellum belonging to Te Deum (vv. 22, 23) fused with capitella belonging originally to Gloria in excelsis (vv. 24–27), to which have been added two further verses at a later date.  As these capitella were sung always with the hymn, they were eventually taken to be part of it; and in this form Te Deum found its way into the Western service books.  St. Benedict prescribed its use on Sundays and festivals at the Vigil, and the Roman and Sarum Breviaries direct a like use, except during Advent and Lent.  The Prayer Book of 1549 appointed it to be said “daily throughout the year except in Lent.”  In 1552 the exception was removed; it has not since been restored.

      In the 1549 and subsequent Prayer Books, Te Deum is printed without any division.  In the Accession Service, drawn up in 1901, it is divided into three sections.  The proposed Prayer Book of 1927–28 printed it in four sections in Morning Prayer, while retaining the tripartite division in the Accession Service.  The quadripartite division cannot be justified.  Verses 1–13 are a single address to the Trinity, and verses 14 to 21 are an address to the Son.  The balance of the hymn is destroyed if the first section be divided into two parts as in the proposed Prayer Book.  The point is not without importance if the arrangement of the hymn is to serve as a guide to musical settings.

      (ii) Benedicite. – This canticle, known as the “Song of the Three Children,” is taken from the Greek addition to Daniel 3.  It is sung daily at Greek Lauds and seems to have been so used since the latter half of the fourth century.  In the sixth century it was used at Rome on Sundays and festivals at Lauds; it retained this position in the Breviaries.  The Prayer Book of 1549 appointed it as the alternative to Te Deum during Lent.  The restriction to Lent was removed in 1552.  The Breviaries shortened the canticle by omitting the second half of each verse, “praise him and magnify him for ever,” except at the beginning of each of the three divisions and at the close of the last.  The Prayer Book, however, printed the canticle in full.  The revision of 1927–28 proposed a shortening similar to that of the Breviaries; as relieving the monotony of the canticle, this is an improvement.  In the Breviaries the canticle has a doxology proper to itself, “Let us bless the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost: let us praise and exalt him for ever.  Blessed art thou, O Lord, in the firmament of heaven: praised and exalted above all for ever.”  Although this doxology continues the characteristic form of the canticle, it was rejected in 1549 in favour of the Gloria Patri.  The Scottish Prayer Book of 1929 has restored it as a permissible alternative to the Gloria Patri.  The 1927–28 revision, however, ignored the point.  A more careful revision in the future will doubtless restore the proper doxology.

      With a view perhaps to making suitable provision for Lent, the 1927–28 revision proposed Ps. 51 as an alternative to Te Deum and Benedicite; when Ps. 51 had already been said, Ps. 40 might be substituted.  The length and monotonous form of Benedicite do not commend it for frequent use to modern congregations, and its character and liturgical associations are rather festival than Lenten.  An alternative, therefore, had much to recommend it; but, in view of the large number of canticles from which a choice could have been made, the alternative proposed is lame.  The Scottish Prayer Book of 1929, following the American, has provided the canticle Benedictus es, also taken from the Greek addition to Daniel 3.  In the Irish Book of 1926, Urbs fortitudinis (Isa. 26:1–8) is used.  Either of these, or such other canticles as the Song of Isaiah (Isa. 12) or Miserere plebi tuae (Ecclus. 36:12–17) would have been suitable in the English Book.

      (iii) Benedictus, Magnificat, and Nunc Dimittis. – These are the Breviary canticles for Lauds, Vespers and Compline respectively.  When they first came to be employed at these services we do not know.  It is certain, however, that in the time of St. Benedict, Compline was not a Roman service, and the Monastic Compline lacks the Nunc Dimittis.  The Monastic service was added to the Roman secular cycle, and Nunc Dimittis had become part of it by the eighth century.

      In the Sarum Breviary these three canticles were preceded by metrical hymns proper to the service and the season, known as Office Hymns.  Cranmer retained certain of these in his first scheme for a revised Latin Office.  His confessed inability to write English verses probably accounts for the absence of hymns, with the exception of his bad translation of Veni Creator, in the Prayer Book.  Translations of them are now to be found in several collections, and a rubric in the proposed Prayer Book of 1927–28 would have made their restoration possible.

The Creed, the Suffrages, and the Collects.

      In the Prayer Book of 1549, Benedictus at Mattins and Nunc Dimittis at Evensong were followed immediately by the suffrages and the Collects.  The Creed and the Lord’s Prayer were said at the beginning of the suffrages; they were said, privately, among the suffrages at Sarum Prime and Compline.  The suffrages in the Prayer Book are composed of versicles and responses mostly taken from the series of suffrages used at the Sarum services.  With the exception of the last versicle and response, the suffrages in the Prayer Book Offices are those prescribed at the conclusion of certain Offices in Cranmer’s second Latin scheme.  They are followed by the ancient salutation, “The Lord be with you,” and its response, the invitation “Let us pray,” and the Collects.  In 1552 this arrangement was altered.  As the Creed is not a prayer, it was placed by itself immediately after the canticle; and, as the suffrages are no less prayers than the Collects, the salutation and invitation were put immediately before “Lord, have mercy upon us,” as an introduction to the prayers.  This is a more orderly arrangement than that of 1549, and has the advantage of restoring the Lord’s Prayer to its old position of importance.  Suffrages were no part of the old Roman Offices.  They were added to the Roman Offices when the latter were adopted by the Franks, and then were accepted at Rome.  In the fuller forms in which they were used in certain Gallican Churches, they provided complete series of intercessions, comparable with those of the Litany.

      The Apostles’ Creed was not recited at Prime and Compline before the eighth century, and was probably not in general use much before the ninth.  In its present form it is first found about 750.  It is an expansion of the old Roman Baptismal Creed.  It is omitted when the Athanasian Creed is appointed to be said (see below); and it might reasonably be omitted on weekdays except such as are Saints’ days.  The use of the proper Collect at the Offices is no older than the eighth century.  Its recitation was originally confined to Lauds and Vespers on festivals, Sundays and Station days.

      The proper Collect at Lauds and Vespers was followed by Memorials.  These consisted of a Collect, either of a Saint or with some particular intention, preceded by an antiphon, a versicle and a response.  The second Collect at each Office belongs to a Sarum Memorial of Peace: both prayers occur in the Gelasian Sacramentary.  The third Collect at Mattins is the ferial Collect for Sarum Prime; it is a variant of the prayer for Prime in Alcuin’s Sacramentary.  The third Collect at Evensong belongs to Sarum Compline, and is taken from the Gelasian Sacramentary.

The Anthem and Final Prayers.

      Although the anthem was not sanctioned by rubric until 1662, it had been in use since Queen Elizabeth’s time and was covered by her Injunctions of 1559.  It is a continuation of the practice of singing the Anthems of the Blessed Virgin at the end of Compline.

      The Scottish Prayer Book of 1637 directs that at Morning Prayer, when the Litany is not appointed to be said, and always at Evensong, the third Collect shall be followed by “the Prayer for the King’s Majesty, with the rest of the prayers following at the end of the Litany, and the Benediction.”  This usage was imitated by the revisers of 1662.  The Prayer for the King is an abbreviation of a prayer found in a book of devotions published in 1545.  In its present form it first appears as the Prayer for the Queen in 1559.  The Prayer for the Royal Family, usually attributed to Archbishop Whitgift, was added to the prayers at the end of the Litany in 1604.  The Prayer for the Clergy and People is derived from the Gelasian Sacramentary; it was said at the end of the Rogation Litany in pre-Reformation days, and was retained in the first English Litany of 1544.  The Prayer of St. Chrysostom belongs, as its name implies, to the Byzantine Liturgy, but is wrongly ascribed to the saint; the authorship is unknown.  No conclusion other than the third Collect was prescribed for the Offices before 1662.  The Benediction, or “Grace,” is to be found at the end of certain Offices in some of the French Breviaries.  Three additional permissive endings to the Offices were proposed by the revisers of 1927–28.

The Occasional Prayers.

      The Occasional Prayers were first collected into their present position in 1661.  In 1549 they were represented by the two prayers “For rain” and “For fair weather” printed with the Collects at the end of the Mass.  In 1552 these were transferred to the end of the Litany, and the prayers “In time of dearth,” “In time of war” and “In the time of any common plague” were added.  Special Collects, secrets and post-communions with these intentions had been provided in the Sarum Missal.  The new English prayers were not translations of these, and the occasion of their use is an indication of the change of view as to the Eucharist being preeminently the occasion of special intercession.  With the exception of the Gregorian Collect, “O God, whose nature and property is ever to have mercy,” said at the end of the Sarum Litany and introduced into the English Litany in 1559, the remaining prayers belong to the revision of 1662.  The fine “Prayer for the High Court of Parliament” is thought to have been written by Laud.  The “Prayer for all conditions of men,” probably written by Peter Gunning, Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and afterwards Bishop of Ely, was intended in its original and longer form to supersede the Litany.  The Litany, however, was retained, and the present shorter form of the prayer was provided for use when the Litany was not said after Morning Prayer.  Hitherto the only prayer of general intercession had been that in the Communion Service.  Thanksgivings, corresponding with the prayers at the end of the Litany, were first provided by order of King James I in 1604; in 1662 they were supplemented by the “General Thanksgiving” and by that “For restoring public peace at home”.

      In the proposed revision of 1927–28, the section of Occasional Prayers and Thanksgivings was considerably enlarged both by the transference to it of prayers following the third Collect at Morning and Evening Prayer and taken from other services in the Prayer Book, and also by the addition of new forms.  The section as proposed consists of forty-five prayers distributed under thirty-two headings.  Thirteen of the prayers belong to the Prayer Book of 1662.  Of the remainder, only five, says Dr. Brightman, “represent anything that can be called really new.”  These are the prayers for the British Empire, for the Church Assembly, for the League of Nations, for Sunday Schools, and for Industrial Peace.  Dr. Brightman has criticized the new prayers as a whole as being “inferior ... in strength, in variety, in quality of expression” to the older prayers.  The reason of this inferiority is not far to seek.  The original compositions appear to have been written without regard to the cursus. [See below in Prayer Book as Literature.]  The sources of several of the others are private, and however adequate to their purpose private prayers may be, they invariably fall short, in diction, expression and range, of what is requisite for liturgical use.  In justice to the revisers, however, it should be noted that they have included such prayers of first rank as Bishop Cotton’s Missionary Prayer, and the Collect “Remember, O Lord, what thou hast wrought in us,” etc.  In a collection obviously intended to be all-comprehensive, there are some curious omissions.  Although there is a prayer for the Church Assembly, there is none for the Church!

      A useful study of this section of the proposed Prayer Book has recently been written by Mr. Milner-White, entitled The Occasional Prayers in the 1928 Book Reconsidered (S.P.C.K., 1929).  He criticizes the collection as one who has constantly used the new prayers in church.  He finds the collection to be lacking in provision for modern need and the prayers to be wanting in distinction of form and expression.  He makes suggestions for supplying the unprovided needs, for improving the proposed prayers where they can be improved, and for replacing them when they cannot.  Certain of Mr. Milner-White’s suggestions will command general agreement, e.g. his introduction, and adaptation for public use, of Laud’s prayer for the Catholic Church, and his provision of an intercession “For the Servants of the Crown and Country,” with Bishop John Wordsworth’s Collect for St. George’s Day as the prayer.  His preference for Laud’s prayer for the State to the intercession for the British Empire will be generally shared; but few will prefer his mangled version of it to Laud’s fine original.  The necessity of some of Mr. Milner-White’s needs, however, and the rightness of some of his provisions, may be questioned.  Should the well-to-do, for instance, be singled out as special objects of prayerful solicitude, as in the intercession “For the right use of Possessions,” unless we ask also that those not burdened with the responsibilities of the wealthy may be moved to discharge their own?  This ground is better covered, though in undistinguished language, by the new Irish Prayer “For Christian Citizenship.”  But Mr. Milner-White claims no more than to make suggestions.  The usefulness of his book is considerable, and his detailed and irrefutable criticisms have made it impossible for this section of the proposed Prayer Book to reappear in a future revision without drastic amendment and alteration.

Rubrics Relating to the Offices.

      Two sets of rubrics or directions relating to the Offices call for notice.

      (i) The rubric preceding Mattins in 1549 directed the priest to say that service, and presumably Evensong as well, “in the quire”.  This continuation of mediaeval custom was disliked by the Reformed extremists as “anti-christian”.  In 1552 the rubric was altered; it read, “The Morning and Evening Prayer shall be used in such place of the Church, Chapel, or Chancel, and the Minister shall so turn him, as the people may best hear.  And, if there be any controversy therein, the matter shall be referred to the Ordinary.”  The rubric of 1559 directed merely that the Offices should be read “in the accustomed place”.  This rubric was left unchanged in 1662.  The Elizabethan rubric refers to the choir, since that was “the accustomed place” in Mary’s reign.  The present rubric is of wider interpretation.  Certain of the Elizabethan bishops ordered a reading-pew to be set up outside the Chancel, and this became the accustomed place of the minister at the Offices.  The Canons of 1603 require that the minister’s seat shall be “in such place of every church ... so as the people may be most edified.”

      (ii) The existing Prayer Book imposes a double obligation with regard to the recitation of the Offices.  They are to be said daily by all priests and deacons, unless hindered by sickness or some other urgent cause; and the parish priest “that ministereth in every Parish Church or Chapel, being at home and not being otherwise reasonably hindered,” is to say them in the church, and to cause a bell to be rung a convenient time before he begins, “that the people may come to hear God’s Word, and to pray with him.”  The Prayer Book of 1549 imposed the obligation of recitation only upon such clergy as “serve the congregation”.  The general obligation dates from 1552.  The rubric of 1552, however, allowed preaching and the study of divinity as reasons for non-compliance.  This was altered to sickness in 1662.  Perhaps owing to the Catholic ancestry of this obligation, it has been ignored by the Puritans and their successors.

      Permission has also been given since 1549 for the use of any language, in the private recitation of the Offices, known to the person reciting them.

The Athanasian Creed

      Quicunque vult is neither Athanasian nor a creed.  It is structurally different from the regular creed which arose out of the triple baptismal formula.  “This difference of structure,” Professor C. H. Turner has pointed out, “corresponds to a difference of intention.”  Quicunque is rather exclusive than inclusive, a summary of orthodoxy rather than a profession of faith.  The question of its origin and date has been the subject of controversy and continues undecided.  Dr. Burn at one time thought that the external evidence pointed to Lerins in Gaul as its place of origin.  He argued that it was known to and quoted by members of the school of Lerins – Caesarius of Arles, Avitus of Vienne, Vincent of Lerins and others.  As he could not trace it earlier than this, he was disposed to regard Honoratus, abbot of Lerins, who was known to have given expositions of the Creed, as the author of Quicunque.  Dr. Burn found confirmation of his theory in the internal evidence.  He thought it clear that the author was acquainted with and in some measure dependent upon St. Augustine’s treatise De Trinitate, published in 416.  Further, he noted that Quicunque defines orthodoxy as against Priscillianism, Arianism and Apollinarianism, while it is silent about Nestorianism and Monophysitism.  Dr. Burn found it difficult to suppose that the author would have ignored these heresies had they been in existence.  He therefore dated Quicunque between 416 and 431, a period which coincides with the activity of Honoratus of Lerins.  Later, however, Dr. Burn changed his mind, and inclined to the theory advanced by the German scholar, Dr. Brewer.  Dr. Brewer ascribed Quicunque to St. Ambrose.  He found support for his view in the many close parallels between the clauses of Quicunque and passages in authentic writings by St. Ambrose.  This ascription derives additional strength from the fact that a Rescript of Theodosius, of 384, appears to be dependent on Quicunque, that Quicunque is known to certain other writers of the period, e.g. Faustinus and Philastrius of Brescia, and that in a letter to Valentinian, Ambrose himself alludes to a “grande carmen,” composed by himself, which he describes as a “confessio Trinitatis”.  Finally, it can be argued that the author of Quicunque knew and had in mind certain phrases of the circular letter of the second Council of Constantinople held in 382: so that the seventh or eighth year of St. Ambrose’s episcopate can be maintained as a possible terminus a quo.  Dom Morin, or the other hand, began by agreeing with Dr. Burn in looking to Gaul as the place of origin of Quicunque, although he favoured Caesarius of Arles as author, rather than Honoratus of Lerins.  Some time afterwards, however, he rejected this view, and argued that internal evidence points to Spanish authorship of A.D. 550–580.  He then thought that only Priscillianism and Arianism were objects of attack; what were considered to be references to Apollinarianism appeared, when rightly understood, as references to Arianism.  External evidence was adduced in support of this theory.  It was pointed out that the first undoubted quotation from Quicunque comes from Spain.  Also, the earliest extant MS. of it, written at Bobbio [An Irish monastery in N. Italy, and a centre of anti-Arian propaganda among the Lombards.] about 700, includes several Spanish works and was apparently copied from a Spanish MS.; this is true of other early MSS.  Priscillianism and Arianism were strong enough in mid-sixth-century Spain to provoke an orthodox movement against them.  One of the principal figures in this movement, if not the principal, was Martin, Bishop of Braga (580), who composed a Rule of Faith exposing Priscillianist and Arian errors.  Dom Morin connected Quicunque with the movement, and proposed Martin as the author.  Commenting on Dom Morin’s theory and assuming it to be correct, Mr. Edmund Bishop pointed out that the damnatory clauses exhibit the characteristic spirit of Spanish orthodoxy in the sixth and seventh centuries.  The attribution to St. Athanasius was explained by Spanish interest in St. Athanasius’ anti-Arian polemic.  Since that time, however, Dom Morin has retracted his Spanish theory, and has shown himself disposed to revert to the authorship of Caesarius of Arles.  This brief sketch of opinions and change of opinions is enough to indicate the complexity of the problems raised by Quicunque and of the difficulty attending attempts at their solution. [For a detailed account see chap. xvii of F. J. Badcock’s History of the Creeds, S.P.C.K., 1930.]

      Quicunque enjoyed great popularity during the Middle Ages.  It was regarded as authoritative, particularly in Frankish territory, by the late eighth and ninth centuries.  Its popularity led to its adoption into the Gallican Offices.  Thence it came to Rome, and became a feature of the Modern Office.  The Latin Offices treated it as a canticle.  The Sarum Breviary appointed it for daily use, with its own antiphons, at Prime.  The Prayer Book of 1549 printed it after Evensong, and directed its use on the six greater festivals “immediately after Benedictus” at Mattins.  There is no rubric directing the omission of the Apostles’ Creed; presumably, therefore, Quicunque was an additional canticle.  The revision of 1552 added seven Saints’ days to the list of occasions on which Quicunque was said; otherwise the rubric remained unaltered.  The Apostles’ Creed was put immediately after Benedictus in 1552, but we are not told whether Quicunque was additional or alternative to it.  The present rubric making the latter alternative to the former on, thirteen festivals was inserted in 1661.

      The damnatory clauses of Quicunque have been the cause of complaint; and for some time its translation and use have been under discussion.  The proposed Prayer Book of 1927–28 revised the translation.  Its rendering is closer to the Latin, and in v. 27 it has restored the older text. [I.e. “The Trinity is to be worshipped in Unity, and the Unity in Trinity” instead of “The Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.”  The translation as well as the text is here corrected.]  The directions as to use are changed.  In addition to the thirteen festivals, Quicunque may be said whole or in part on two additional days; but its use on all fifteen days is now made optional.  This is unsatisfactory, and would cause friction in parishes where it was wanted and not conceded, or vice versa.  Some clear and definite direction is desirable.  The arrangement of the rubrics relating to Quicunque is irritating, also.  Half of them stands at the head of the old translation, the other half follows the new.  These defects need to be remedied at the next revision.

The Litany

      A Litany is a form of prayer in which fixed responses are made by the people to short biddings or petitions said or sung by deacon, priest, or cantors.  The Liturgy in Apostolic Constitutions, viii, and the allusions of St. John Chrysostom are our earliest evidence for litanies, and point to their origination at Antioch in the second half of the fourth century.  The Antiochene Litany consisted of biddings recited by a deacon on behalf of the Church, the clergy, the people, the sick, travelers, etc., and the supplication Kyrie eleison as the people’s response to each bidding; e.g. Deacon: “Let us pray for them that travel by water and by land,”  People: “Kyrie eleison.”  This type of prayer came early to Constantinople, and became a feature of the Liturgy and Offices; its adoption in other Greek and Eastern liturgies is considerably later and may be taken as an example of “Constantinopolitanizing”.  Of the beginnings of the Litany at Rome we know nothing.  The earliest surviving example is the Deprecatio which Pope Gelasius appointed to be sung on behalf of the Church throughout the world.  It is preserved by Alcuin in his Officia per ferias, but competent scholars are agreed that there is no reason to doubt the attribution.  The Deprecatio therefore belongs to the fifth century.  On what occasions it was used, Alcuin does not record; and we are not told whether it was said by the Pope himself or by deacons or priests.  Its subsequent history also is obscure.  It is probable that some litany like it was sung in the Mass on festivals at Rome in the time of Gregory the Great.  It lies behind a number of other litany forms, e.g. that said in the Milanese Mass on the first Sunday of Lent, and that called “The Deprecatio of St. Martin on behalf of the people” in the Stowe Missal.  It would appear, in short, that the Deprecatio Gelasii settled, if it did not actually originate, the form and style of litanies in Latin.

      It will have been noted that the designation of the earliest Latin Litany is not litania, but deprecatio, “intercession”.  The term litania had a diversity of significance.  It could be used of any penitential observance, whether prayer or otherwise.  It could be used also of a procession, and not necessarily of a penitential procession.  Eventually, however, it came to be used of processions which were the occasion of penitential supplications, and particularly of those connected with April 25 and the three days preceding Ascension Day, known as the Rogations.  Responsorial prayer of the litany type is peculiarly suited to processions, and it is not surprising that litanies came to be the main constituent of Rogation devotions, and that by this means intercession was added to the original element of penitence.  In the Sarum Processionale we have the form of the Rogation Litany which was used throughout the Province of Canterbury on the eve of the Reformation, and which Cranmer took as the foundation of his work on the first English Litany of 1544.  This is sometimes called the Litany of the Saints.  It may be divided into six sections: (i) The introductory Kyrie eleison and invocation of the Persons of the Trinity.  (ii) The invocations of the saints with the response Ora pro nobis.  (iii) The deprecations, or supplications for deliverance, e.g. “From all evil,” with the response, “Deliver us, O Lord”.  (iv) The obsecrations, or appeals for deliverance by virtue of events in Christ’s redemptive life, e.g. “By thy nativity,” with the same response.  (v) The intercessions.  (vi) A concluding invocation of Christ as Lamb of God.  Immediately following the Litany and treated as one with it were the Lord’s Prayer, several capitella of Gallican form reduplicating the intercessions, and a set of final prayers.  With the exception of the intercessions, the Litany of the Saints has little in common with the Gelasian Deprecatio; and the intercessions themselves are cast in a form different from those of the Deprecatio.  The ultimate source of the Litany has been indicated by Mr. Edmund Bishop.  It is a Greek Litany which came to England from Rome during the pontificate of Sergius I (687–701).  Sergius was a Greek-speaking Pope whose family belonged to the district of Antioch.  He introduced, or emphasized, two cults, that of the Cross, and that of Christ as Lamb of God; and the Greek Litany, in addition to the invocation of the latter at its close, has as its only obsecration, “By thy cross, Deliver us, O Lord.”  An early Latin version of this Litany is extant, and sixteen out of its seventeen petitions reappear in the Sarum Litany.  A still earlier version, though invoking different saints, occurs in the Stowe Missal.  In short, therefore, this Greek Litany is the foundation of the Rogation Litany of the Saints, which is indeed only an expansion of it.  The expansion is most to be observed in the case of the intercessions.  The Greek Litany has but one petition in the form of an intercession, “That thou wouldst grant peace,” with the response, “We beseech thee hear us”; the Sarum Litany has seventeen with the same response.  The subjects of the latter are those of the Deprecatio Gelasii.  Their form and style have, however, been made to accord with those of the one Greek intercession.  The use of the Sarum Litany was not confined to Rogations or processions.  It was sung on Holy Saturday, and at Ordinations of deacons and priests; and it was said kneeling after Terce daily in Lent.  On Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent it was sung in procession as a separate service.

      Of the Greek Litany itself; it should be noted that its character, unlike that of the Gelasian Deprecatio, is private rather than liturgical.  It was not originally intended for recitation at public services.  Its style and form are reminiscent of the supplications of the pagan soldiers of Licinius and Constantine, recorded respectively by Lactantius and Eusebius.  This is one of the normal styles and forms of pagan religious address.  We need not, therefore, conclude with some scholars that the Christian Litany is borrowed from pagan usage; but it is nevertheless reasonable to think it an adaptation to a new purpose of a form which was traditionally associated with prayer and devotion, and which in the directness and simplicity of its address was intrinsically appropriate to that purpose.  The directness and simplicity of the Greek Litany may account for its popularity and diffusion.  From England it went to Ireland, where it was incorporated into at least one liturgical book (the Stowe Missal).  Thence it passed to Germany and Gaul, and was there expanded.  Finally it came to Rome with other Gallican and Frankish additions and found its way into the Roman Liturgy.

      Although the Latin service-books were still in use when the first English Litany was published, the latter was no mere translation of the Sarum Litany.  Cranmer had access to Luther’s Litany of 1529 and to the diaconal Litany of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and the influence of both of these is traceable in his work.  The structure of the Latin Litany is largely preserved, but there are great changes.  The ancient introductory Kyrie eleison is abolished.  The invocations of the Saints are reduced to three, one in particular of “Saint Mary, mother of God,” etc., the other two in general of “All holy angels and archangels,” etc., and “All holy patriarchs and prophets, apostles,” etc., respectively.  For his deprecations, Cranmer selected petitions from various sources, and arranged them in groups each under one response.  The last deprecation reads, “From all sedition and privy-conspiracy; from the tyranny of the bishop of Rome, and all his detestable enormities; from all false doctrine and heresy; from hardness of heart, and contempt of thy word and commandment.”  The obsecrations have been formed by a similar process.  The intercessions, though following the ancient form, have in most cases been enlarged.  Lutheran influence is most clearly discernible in the intercessions.  The old Litany originally ended with the invocation “O Lamb of God,” etc., and “O Christ, hear us.”  The English version of Kyrie eleison, “Lord, have mercy upon us,” and the Lord’s Prayer, which follow, represent an early addition to the Litany.  The next versicle, answer, and Collect were taken from the corresponding section of the Lutheran Litany.  The Collect “O God, merciful Father, that despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart,” etc., occurs in the Sarum Missal in the Mass “for tribulation of heart”.  Probably by a mistake the final Amen was omitted from the English translation.  The omission blurs the distinction between this section and the next, beginning with the words “O Lord, arise, help us and deliver us for thy Name’s sake,” and continuing down to the Collect “We humbly beseech thee, O Father, mercifully to look upon our infirmities; and for the glory of thy Name’s sake, turn from us all those evils that we most righteously have deserved.  Through, etc.”  This section is one of special intercession in time of war, and was adapted from the corresponding Sarum intercession.  The Collect has been altered so as to avoid a reference to the intercession of the saints.  There is a curious dislocation at the beginning of the section.  The words “O Lord, arise,” etc., are an antiphon to Ps. 44:5, and should be said before the verse and after Gloria Patri.  They have, however, been inserted before Gloria Patri in a variant translation.  The Litany ended with a series of five Collects.  Three of these were translations of Sarum prayers, one was new, and the last was the “Prayer of St. Chrysostom.”

      The differences between the English and Latin Litanies are no less striking than their resemblances.  Most marked is the difference between the two sets of deprecations and obsecrations.  The Latin Litany assigns one of each of these to one response, an arrangement which has been retained in the admirable “Litany for the Sick and Dying” in the proposed Service of the Visitation of the Sick of 1927–28.  Cranmer in combining several in one petition, though doubtless he secured brevity and convenience in recitation, at the same time destroyed a conciseness which was of the essence of the parent form and a mark of its origin and antiquity.  The Litany of 1544 is substantially that of the 1549 and subsequent Prayer Books.  A number of modifications have been made, but only three are of importance.  The first is the removal in 1549 of the three clauses invoking the Saints.  The second is the rearrangement of the final prayers, made also in 1549; the new prayer of 1544 was grafted on to the Collect, “We humbly beseech thee, O Father, mercifully to look upon our infirmities,” and the rest with the exception of “St. Chrysostom” disappeared.  The third is the withdrawal in 1559 of the clause relating to “the bishop of Rome,” first removed by Queen Mary, and the addition of the Benediction or “Grace”.  The addition, in 1552, 1559 and 1604, of the Occasional and other Prayers, which modify neither the character nor the structure of the Litany, has already been noted.

      The textual alterations proposed by the revisers of 1927–28 are fewer in number than would have been justifiable, but are improvements.  Three intercessions are added; one for ordinands to be said in the Ember Weeks, another for the work of the Church throughout the world, and the third for the forces of the King.  The antiphon “O Lord, arise, help us” is supplied after the Gloria Patri at the beginning of the war intercession; but, oddly, the variant is retained between the verse of the psalm and its Gloria.  The clausula “Through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen,” which was accidentally omitted in 1661, is happily restored to the prayer “O God, merciful Father.”  There are several rubrics affecting both the use and structural arrangement of the Litany.  The war intercession and the section preceding it are joined together under the heading “A Supplication” and are made of optional use.  Their place may be taken, if desired, by any of the Occasional Prayers and Thanksgivings.  This is a decided improvement, as more fully restoring the intercessory character of the Litany.  When the Litany is sung or said immediately before the Communion Service, it may be ended with “Lord, have mercy upon us,” etc.  This arrangement also commends itself on practical grounds.  Permission was also proposed for the minister to say, at his discretion, after the opening invocations, “such of the suffrages as he thinks convenient, provided that some are drawn from each section” of deprecations, obsecrations and intercessions, “and that all are concluded by Son of God, we beseech thee to hear us, etc.”  The purpose of this was obviously to give the Litany as great a flexibility as possible and also to sanction the utmost abbreviation where necessary.  Loose sanctions of this description are, however, difficult and dangerous.  The same purpose has been accomplished in the Scottish Prayer Book of 1929 by the provision of two additional shorter litanies.  The first is an abbreviation of the Litany proper.  The second is a new Litany of Greek form with the usual opening invocations, followed by fourteen biddings, to which “Lord, have mercy” is the response.  The versicle “Lord, hear our prayer,” and the answer, “And let our cry come unto thee,” may be substituted for “Lord, have mercy.”  The Litany ends with Dr. Bright’s translation of the fine Gelasian prayer Deus incommutabilis virtus.  The whole is brief and yet complete; and its simplicity suits it to occasions when the rotundities of the Litany proper are out of place.  The Scottish Church may justly be envied this beautiful devotion.  The new Scottish Litany proper also deserves consideration.  It has been improved not only by the addition of new intercessions, but by the restoration to their original form of the opening invocations and responses, thereby giving them such lightness as an introduction should have.  When at some future date a fresh revision of the English Litany is undertaken, it is much to be desired that careful attention be paid to the three litanies in the new Scottish Prayer Book.

      It remains to note in conclusion that the use of the Litany on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays was to have been made optional, and its use on Rogation Days was to have been compulsorily restored.  The restoration is to be commended.  Permission was also proposed for its use upon any day at the discretion of the minister.  This permission scarcely requires comment.  One of the alleged advantages of the use of a fixed Liturgy was protection from the discretion of the minister.  In this and in similar provisions, and above all in their sanction of extemporaneous prayer after the conclusion of the Offices or of any other service, the revisers of 1927–28 would have opened the door to all the confusions of ministerial idiosyncrasy and experiment from which the fixed Liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer at its last revision was intended as a safeguard.  That the confusions would have been supported or desired by Parochial Church Councils is neither a recommendation nor a mitigation of an evil.  Here as in other respects the plan of the new Book was revealed as different from that of the old.  The principle of one Use for the whole realm was to have been exchanged for that of Quot ecclesia tot liturgiae.

The Psalter

      The oldest translation of the Psalter used in Christian worship is the Greek of the Septuagint.  This version of the Old Testament was made in Egypt during the third and second centuries B.C.; and we are probably right in supposing that “the rest of the books” of the Canon mentioned by Jesus the son of Sirach in 130 B.C. as translated from Hebrew into Greek included the Psalter. [See the Prologue to Ecclesiasticus.]  Owing to scribal errors, and textual corruptions and alterations, the LXX has not been transmitted to us in precisely its original form.  On the whole, however, it represents a Hebrew text older and often different, both verbally and in the arrangement of its sections, from that which we now have.  The LXX Psalms, like the Hebrew, number one hundred and fifty. [Ps151 is stated, in its title, to be “outside the number”.]  In certain cases, on the other hand, they are differently divided and numbered.  The Hebrew Pss. 9 and 10 form the LXX Ps. 9.  Again, the Hebrew Pss. 114 and 115 form the LXX Ps. 113.  But the Hebrew Pss. 116 and 147 become respectively the LXX Pss. 114 and 115 and Pss. 146 and 147.  It will be seen from this that in between Pss. 11 and 113 and Pss. 117 and 146, the LXX numbering falls one behind the Hebrew.  Besides these differences of arrangement, there are also, of course, differences of text.  As examples of the latter may be cited the two well-known cases of Ps. 2:12 and Ps. 110:3.  In the former, for “Kiss the son” the LXX reads “Lay hold of instruction”; in the latter, where the difficult Hebrew appears to mean “Thy people are freewill offerings in the day of thy strength, in holy adornments from the womb of dawn: thou hast the dew of thy birth,” the LXX reads, “With thee is the beginning in the day of thy power, in the splendour of thy saints: from the womb before the daystar I begat thee.”

      The Hebrew language was not widely known in antiquity; and the classical world, in so far as it wished to acquaint itself with the Hebrew Scriptures, had to rely on the LXX.  The LXX, therefore, acquired something of the status of an “authorized version”.  As such it was inherited by the early Church.  Most of the quotations in the New Testament are derived from it, and it was regularly used in Christian Greek writing.  Its use is continued by the Greek Orthodox Church at the present day for the lessons and psalms of the Liturgy and Offices.  Ignorance of Hebrew and the special position of the LXX led naturally to the use of the latter in the formation of the Old Latin versions.  The earliest Latin Psalter of the Roman Church was but a translation of the Psalms of the LXX, exhibiting all the characteristic differences of that version from the Hebrew.  This Psalter, known from the version of which it was part as the Itala, twice underwent revision at the hands of St. Jerome.  The first revision, called the Roman, became the use of the Roman Church at the order of Pope Damasus in 383, and was widely adopted in Italy and outside.  The second, called the Gallican from its spread in Gaul following upon its adoption by Gregory of Tours at the end of the sixth century, eventually ousted the Roman, and is the Psalter of the Vulgate.  By the sixteenth century it had long been in almost general use, the churches in Rome, however, retaining the older Psalter.  At the Council of Trent, Pope Pius V prescribed the Gallican Psalter for all Breviaries, and restricted the use of the Roman to the Basilica of St. Peter.  This arrangement continues to our own time.

      In England, the Gallican Psalter had begun to displace the Roman in the ninth century, and later became the Psalter of the Sarum and other English mediaeval Breviaries.  From it are taken the initial words of each Psalm prefixed to the English equivalent in the Prayer Book.  The Prayer Book Psalter, however, is not a translation of the Gallican.  It “followeth the Division of the Hebrews and the Translation of the great English Bible, set forth and used in the time of King Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth.”  The Great Bible of 1539 was the first authoritative English version.  It was a revision, made by Miles Coverdale, of the version known as Matthew’s Bible published two years earlier.  Matthew’s Bible was neither a new nor an independent translation; it was a compilation from the versions of Tyndale and Coverdale.  The Psalms were taken from Coverdale’s Bible of 1535.  The Psalter of the Great Bible, therefore, is Coverdale’s own revision of his earlier work.  The title page of his Biblia of 1535 states that he made his translation out of “Douche (i.e. German) and Latyn” and in the “Epistle unto the Kinges highnesse” with which he prefaces the book, he says that he drew upon “fyve sundry interpreters”.  Among these were the Zürich Bible, Luther’s version, and the Vulgate.  In revising his Psalter for the Great Bible, Coverdale consulted yet another “interpreter,” viz. Sebastian Münster, whose Latin version appeared in 1534–35.  The 1540 edition of the Great Bible exhibited a further revision of the Psalter, consisting of a number of small corrections and improvements.  These point to some understanding of Hebrew on the part of the reviser, but although Coverdale seems to have been acquainted with the language, it is uncertain whether the work was his.  The corrected version of 1540 appeared in subsequent editions of the Great Bible, and came into regular use in church with the Prayer Book of 1549.  “The Psalter, or Psalms of David pointed [I.e. punctuated for corporate liturgical recitation.  The verse was divided between the two sides of the choir, and the colon marks the division.] as they are to be sung or said in Churches,” however, was not printed as a constituent part of the Prayer Book until 1662.

      The Prayer Book Psalter is too well known for its characteristics and merits to require indication or comment.  No less secondhand than the Psalter of the Breviary, it has nevertheless survived several attempts to replace it with the Authorized or some other more accurate version.  The great majority of those who have used it since its first publication have desired not so much a correct translation of the ancient Hebrew, as a rendering, in fine but simple language, of what they believed to be a spiritual songbook for their present use.  This the Prayer Book Psalter has been, and its melodious and sincere English has made it a religious classic, and has so imprinted it on the minds and memories of successive generations that no other version has taken, or could take, its place.  All the same, it has certain defects which hinder the fulfillment of its purpose.  Not only are its translation and its form sometimes faulty; its diction is at times so archaic or obscure as to be unintelligible, and its text has been corrupted by unauthorized alterations in the press.  There has for some time been general agreement that these defects could be remedied without damage to its character.  In 1913, a Resolution of the Upper House of Canterbury Convocation requested the Archbishop to take steps “in order to secure the revision of passages in the Psalter in which the language is specially obscure or misleading.”  The Archbishop, after consultation with the Archbishop of York, appointed a Committee to draw up proposals for revision within these terms.  The Committee presented its Report in 1916.  It had adhered strictly to its instructions.  Its basic principle was to propose “no change in the text which did not present itself to us as necessary towards intelligent devotional use of the verse or passage in question.”  The main changes were concerned with (i) such passages as are in their present form unintelligible, e.g. Ps. 45:6, which is retranslated “Thy arrows are very sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies: and the people shall be subdued unto thee”; (ii) passages which, though they make good sense, are mistranslated or are misleading on account of archaic or too liberal renderings, e.g. Ps. 16:2, Ps. 18:18, and Ps. 80:1 which become respectively “O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord: Thou art my God, I have no good like unto thee,” “They came upon me in the day of my trouble: but the Lord was my upholder,” and “Hear, O thou Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a flock”; (iii) passages which are obscure on account of the use of obsolete words or faulty punctuation, e.g. Ps. 48:12 and Ps. 6:6, which become “Mark well her bulwarks, consider her houses,” and “I am weary of my groaning: every night wash I my bed, and water my couch with my tears”; and (iv) obscurities of general sense, whether affecting single phrases or whole verses or passages, e.g. Ps. 2:12 and Ps. 50:8, which are changed to “Honour the Son,” and “I will not reprove thee because of thy sacrifices: as for thy burnt offerings, they are alway before me.”  The re-division and re-pointing of certain verses were also recommended as making for convenience in recitation, and the Report concluded with a list of passages, the use of which in Christian worship, in the opinion of the Committee, “does not tend to edification,” and the omission of which was suggested for consideration.  The Report was admittedly conservative.  The Committee considered its conservatism justified, not only because of its instructions, but also because it held that continuity of use of the Psalter carried with it continuity of understanding, and that therefore only the minimum of alteration was necessary and desirable.  This point of view, however, was not universally shared.  The proposals were generally criticized for not being thorough.  The then Bishops of Gloucester and Truro, who were asked by the Canterbury Upper House to consider the proposals, reported that twenty-eight passages requiring alteration had been passed over by the Committee, that the meaning of twenty-three of the suggested alterations was not clear, and that a further sixteen alterations were unnecessary.  In the proposed Prayer Book of 1927–28, the Report was represented only by the permission to omit “such Psalms or portions of Psalms as are enclosed within brackets,” among these being most of those passages suggested for omission by the Committee as, in its opinion, not tending to edification.  The work of the Committee nevertheless has not been wholly wasted.  The Psalters in the recently revised Irish and American Prayer Books have benefited much from the Report and proposals of the Committee, and also from the criticisms of the bishops.

      Since 1916 two noteworthy essays in Psalter revision have been published.  The first, by the late Canon N. Dalton, is printed in The Book of Common Prayer: An edition containing proposals and suggestions, edited by him in 1920. [And recently reprinted in The Psalms: a suggested revision of the Prayer Book Version, and Twelve Old Testament Canticles.  Cambridge University Press, 1931.]  Canon Dalton often reverts to the earlier version of Coverdale, but his revision is in effect a new translation.  Not infrequently the infelicity of his renderings exceeds that of the current version.  He advances three suggestions for making the Psalter more intelligible to the “ordinary worshipper” (i) that there should be prefixed to each Psalm a few words of explanation of its point or character; (ii) that the fivefold division of the Psalter and duplicates of Psalms should be indicated; and (iii) that the acrostic or alphabetical form of certain Psalms should be shown.  The first of these suggestions is defensible.  The third has at times led Canon Dalton into such curiosities of phrasing that his version could hardly bewilder the ordinary worshipper less than that now in use.  The second essay is A Liturgical Psalter arranged for use in the Services of the Church, [Mowbray, 1925.] by the Bishop of Truro.  The principle of Dr. Frere’s work is selective.  In 1912 it was agreed by the Canterbury Lower House that Proper Psalms should be provided for all Sundays of the year, for the greater Festivals and certain other occasions.  A Table of such Psalms was incorporated in the Proposed Prayer Book of 1927–28.  The Psalms were so allotted that the greater part of the Psalter was to be recited on Sundays and certain holy days throughout the year.  Five whole Psalms, for the most part of an “Imprecatory” nature, were omitted; and, as has been noted above, permission was given for the omission of passages of a similar kind in certain other Psalms.  Dr. Frere not unreasonably describes the resultant as a “bowdlerized Book of Psalms”.  The method of selection, he thinks, should be positive instead of negative, and should aim at retaining only what is “devotionally profitable” rather than at omitting the contrary.  Dr. Frere’s omissions are therefore considerable; they include fourteen whole Psalms, and all such passages as seem to demand of the ordinary worshipper too great a knowledge of Old Testament history, religion and outlook.  Dealing with the question of translation, Dr. Frere lays it down as a principle that a satisfactory revision must take into account not only the sense and structure of the original Hebrew poem, but also the requirements of the Anglican chant.  Careful attention to the last has made his version superior for singing in church to Canon Dalton’s, but sometimes at the cost of the omission of a member of a verse.  If Dr. Frere’s Psalter is not to be described as bowdlerized, it may yet fairly be said to be attenuated.  In spite of much that invites criticism and question, however, these two books have use and value, not solely because they advance interesting and sometimes opposite suggestions for the improvement and revision of the Prayer Book Psalter, but also and perhaps mainly because they are a reminder that the matter of improvement or revision cannot be shelved or indefinitely postponed.

The Choir Offices, The Occasional Prayers and The Litany

in the American, Scottish, Irish and Canadian Prayer Books

1.  The American Prayer Book.

      The history of the genesis of the American Prayer Book is outlined elsewhere (see below, Prayer Book Revision).  The main characteristic differences between the American Offices of 1789 and those of the English Prayer Book can be indicated briefly.  The Absolution was renamed the “Declaration of Absolution, or Remission of Sins,” and the form of absolution in the Communion Service was authorized as an alternative.  The versicle “O God, make speed to save us,” was omitted together with its response.  The last two verses of Venite were omitted, verses 9 and 13 of Psalm 96 being substituted for them.  The use of Gloria Patri at the end of Psalms and Canticles was made optional, except at the end of the portions of the Psalms appointed for the Office; in the latter case, however, it could be replaced by Gloria in excelsis.  Benedictus was reduced to the first four verses.  Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis were discarded, their alternatives, Psalms 98 and 66, taking their place.  Psalms 92, verses 1–4, and 103, verses 1–4, 20–22 were introduced as respective alternatives to these.  Quicunque vult was omitted.  Permission was given for the use of the Nicene Creed instead of the Apostles’; and the clause “He descended into Hell” could be omitted or could be replaced by “He went into the place of departed spirits.”  The suffrages were reduced to two, viz. the first and the last; and permission was given for the omission of all prayers after that for the President, when the Litany was to follow.  The use of the Litany after Evening Prayer was sanctioned.  The several English petitions for the civil authorities were reduced to one on behalf of “all Christian rulers and magistrates”; the omission of all from “O Christ, hear us,” to the prayer “We humbly beseech thee, O Father,” was sanctioned; and the General Thanksgiving was introduced at the conclusion.  Several new Occasional Prayers and Thanksgivings were provided.  The “Prayer for all Conditions of men” and the General Thanksgiving were removed from the number of the latter, and placed among the concluding prayers of the Offices.  A composite psalm to be said in place of Venite was appointed for Thanksgiving Day.  Selections of Psalms were also provided; any one of these might be recited instead of the Psalms for the Day.

      The Offices, therefore, though retaining their former structure, acquired a new and distinctive character in the first official American Prayer Book.  This character has been modified, but not destroyed, by the two subsequent revisions; the American Offices remain one stage further removed from the mediaeval Latin services than the English Offices.

      At the revision of 1892, the remainder of Benedictus was restored, but the reduced form was sanctioned for use at discretion, except on the Sundays of Advent.  Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis were also restored, the two sets of psalms continuing as alternatives; and the full complement of suffrages was restored to Evening Prayer.  A number of Proper Sentences for Festivals were provided for use in addition to those already existing.  The number of Festivals and Occasions for which Proper Psalms were appointed was increased.  Further Occasional Prayers were also provided.

      The principal features of the last revision in 1929 were the provision of Invitatories almost identical with those proposed in England in 1927–28; the introduction of Benedictus es as an alternative Canticle to Te Deum and Benedicite: the restriction of the use of Gloria in excelsis (outside the Communion Service) to Evening Prayer; and the omission of the Proper Collect when the Communion Service is to follow.  A Table of Psalms, similar to the proposed English Table and additional to the existing selections now expanded and regrouped under such headings as “Godliness,” “Intercession,” etc., was provided, together with a number of new Occasional Prayers.

      The daily recitation of the Offices is nowhere prescribed in any of the American Prayer Books.

2.  The Scottish Prayer Book.

      The Choir Offices in the 1929 Book closely resemble those in the proposed English Book.  The alternative General Confession and Absolution are the traditional “We confess to God Almighty ... Almighty God have mercy ... life everlasting.”  Te Deum is printed with a three-fold division.  Benedictus es is given as an alternative Canticle.  There are no alternatives at Evensong to Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis.  Quicunque vult is termed “A Confession of the Christian Faith” and is obligatory on Trinity Sunday only.  Three Litanies are given: (a) That of 1662 appears with slight alterations; (b) it is also printed in an abbreviated form, half its original length; (c) a brief Litany of Greek type is a new feature.  The Occasional Prayers differ in important particulars from those in the English revision.  A Bidding Prayer is added.

3.  The Irish Prayer Book.

      The Irish revision of 1869 affected the Offices to no great extent.  Psalm 148 was provided as an additional alternative to Te Deum.  The second of the Collects at the end of the Communion Service was made an alternative to the Third Collect at Evening Prayer under the heading “for Grace and Protection”.  A new “Prayer for the Chief Governour or governours of Ireland” was introduced after the “Prayer for the Royal Family”.  The recitation of Quicunque vult was discontinued, but it was stated in the Preface that “this Church has not withdrawn its witness ... to the truth of the Articles of the Christian Faith therein contained.”  Several new Occasional Prayers and one Thanksgiving were added.

      The revision of 1927 has dealt with the form rather than the matter of the Offices.  If the Litany and Communion Service follow immediately upon Morning Prayer, “the Minister after Te Deum Laudamus may proceed to the Litany, first saying, “Let us pray.”  One lesson only is to be read, and the intercessions from “That it may please thee to guard and bless,” etc., to “That it may please thee to give to all nations,” etc., are to be omitted from the Litany.  If the Communion Service alone follows Morning Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, the lesser Litany and the Lord’s Prayer may be omitted, but the Second and Third Collects must be said.  An abbreviation of the Offices is sanctioned for weekdays, except they be certain of the greater holy days, on which the Offices must be said complete.  Proper psalms are provided for optional use on Sundays and holy days.  The Litany, when used as a separate service, may be prefaced by a hymn and lesson; and permission is given to omit all that follows the Lord’s Prayer, and to substitute one or more of the Occasional Prayers, provided that the “Prayer of St. Chrysostom” and the Benediction be always said in conclusion.

      The direction for daily recitation of the Offices, removed in 1869, was not restored in 1927.

4.  The Canadian Prayer Book.

      The Canadian Prayer Book of 1922 followed the American Book of 1892 in providing Proper Sentences for Festivals.  With the exception of permission to shorten the Exhortation at Evening Prayer, and the addition of new prayers for the civil authorities, the Canadian Offices are substantially those of the English Prayer Book.  The distinctive feature of the Canadian revision is the provision of Proper Anthems, in place of Venite, for Christmas Day, Good Friday, Ascension Day and Whitsunday.  Quicunque vult, in a slightly emended translation, may be said on any day at Morning Prayer, no particular days being specified.  The Offices may be shortened on weekdays; and the Litany, when not said as a separate service, may be shortened by the omission of all after the Lord’s Prayer, except the last prayer and the Benediction.  Proper psalms are appointed for certain holy days and special occasions, for which the English Book makes no provision; and sixteen Selections of Psalms are provided for use on the 31st day of the month or “on any other day for sufficient cause with the approval of the Ordinary.”  Many new Occasional Prayers and Thanksgivings are also provided.

The Lectionary

By the Editor

      Here we are concerned with the Lessons at Morning and Evening Prayer, the reading of Scripture lections at the Eucharist being treated elsewhere. [See below, Holy Communion ...]  These originated in the Bible Readings at the Vigil Services of the early Church.  They were developed in the Hours services of the monasteries; thus in the fourth century Cassian writes: “adding [to the psalms] two lessons, one from the Old Testament, the other from the New” (Inst., ii. 6).  In mediaeval England Mattins (Nocturns) was the only service with regular lections.  These were read from three sources – the Bible, the Fathers, and the Lives of the Saints.  The volume containing the Scripture Lessons was called the Lectionarius; the course followed the ecclesiastical year.  But, as the 1549 Preface explained, “this godly and decent order of the ancient Fathers hath been so altered, broken and neglected, by planting in uncertain stories, Legends, Responds, Verses, vain repetitions,” that only three or four chapters of a book would be read and the rest omitted.

      The evils of the prevailing system were generally recognized, and Pope Clement VII ordered Cardinal Quigñon to revise the Roman Breviary.  His revision was issued in 1535 and largely influenced Cranmer’s scheme, which after three successive drafts appeared in its final form in the 1549 Prayer Book. [In 1541 Convocation had ordered the reading of a chapter of the New Testament on Sundays and Holy Days, in English, after the Te Deum and the Magnificat; when the New Testament was finished, the Old was to be started.]  Aiming at the utmost simplicity, Cranmer followed the civil year, with a very few exceptions for important Holy Days; even Good Friday had no Second Lessons, and Easter Day no First Lesson for Evensong.  The Old Testament and the Apocrypha were read through consecutively and almost in their entirety, though by way of exception Isaiah was assigned to the Advent period.  Almost invariably each Lesson consisted of one chapter.  The Gospels and the Acts were read at Mattins, the Epistles at Evensong.  Proper Lessons, when appointed, were printed with the Collect, etc.  Thus St. Stephen’s Day has: “At Mattins.  The second Lesson.  Acts 6, 7.  Stephen full of faith and power (unto) and when XL years.”  Introit, Collect, Epistle and Gospel follow.  The section ends with: “The second Lesson at Evensong, Act. 7.  And when XL years were expired, there appeared unto Moses, (unto) Stephen full of the Holy Ghost, etc.”  In 1559 a Table giving Proper First Lessons for each Sunday in the ecclesiastical year was introduced.  With minor alterations in 1604 and 1662 (as there had been also in 1552) this system lasted until the latter half of the nineteenth century.  We may imagine John Keble reading the whole of St. Luke 3 to his village congregation when Feb. 20 fell on a Sunday, or reading Philemon at Evensong when Maundy Thursday was March 29, without losing his intense appreciation of the Prayer Book’s setting forth of the Christian Year.

      Cranmer’s 1549 Lectionary was almost entirely based on the civil year, and subsequent modifications of it left the principle practically intact.  The 1922 Lectionary is based on the ecclesiastical year.  Between the two, in conception as well as in time, comes that of 1871, which in the ordinary English Prayer Book has replaced the 1662 Lectionary, as the phrasing of the 1928 Book shows clearly – “The Calendar (1662) with the Table of Lessons (1871).”  Its history is instructive as illustrating nineteenth-century procedure.  The Lectionary was one of a number of subjects considered by a Royal Commission appointed in 1867 to deal with Prayer Book matters.  This Commission entrusted the revision of the Lectionary to a Committee of nine, of which Bishop Samuel Wilberforce was chairman.  The Committee, after submitting their draft to the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England and Ireland, and to others, reported to the Royal Commission, which, after negotiations, accepted their Report on June 24, 1869.  The Convocations had not been consulted, but the several Houses approved the change in the Prayer Book, praying the Sovereign in an Address to the Crown “to direct that the measures necessary to give legal effect to the said Report should be taken thereupon.”  In 1871 an Act of Parliament was passed legalizing the use of the new Lectionary as from January 1, 1872, the 1662 Lectionary remaining legal until the end of 1878.

      This New, now generally called the Old, Lectionary was, as we have said, a compromise between the civil and ecclesiastical years as regards its framework.  Proper First Lessons were provided for all Sundays, but Second Lessons, with six exceptions, remained those prescribed for the day of the month.  All Holy Days were given proper First Lessons, and all except nine proper Second Lessons.  Two – SS. Philip and James and St. James the Great – had proper Second Lessons for Mattins but not for Evensong.  In other directions improvements were introduced: chapters were divided freely, Lessons shortened, and alternative First Lessons provided for Sunday Evensong.  But the result was unsatisfactory.  The reader had, as a rule, to consult two different Tables in order to ascertain the Sunday Lessons; the opportunity of giving teaching appropriate to the seasons in the Second Lessons was missed; the daily course was interrupted about 80 times in a year, by Sundays and fixed Holy Days; and certain important chapters, such as St. John 3 and St. Luke 15, might not be heard on a Sunday for four or five years.

      One is not surprised, therefore, to find a desire for further reform expressed before long.  In 1915 a Joint Committee of the two Houses of the Convocation of Canterbury was appointed to consider the matter.  Representatives of the Convocation of York cooperated, and a Report was presented in 1917, which with slight amendments was accepted by all four Houses.  Subsequently it was submitted to the newly-formed Church Assembly, and after further modifications in detail came back to the Convocations in the form of an Annex to a Measure.  This Measure was approved by the four Houses of Convocation, who agreed “that the Measure in the form proposed by the House of Bishops shall be so laid before the Assembly.”  In June 1922 the Assembly finally approved the “Revised Tables of Lessons Measure, 1922,” for submission to Parliament, and the Measure presently received the royal assent.  On Advent Sunday of that year the new Lectionary became an authorized alternative to that of 1871.  Since 1917 it had been widely adopted for experimental use, and the general approval it had received doubtless conduced to its smooth passage through the various stages towards authorization.  So the first installment of Prayer Book revision was successfully accomplished.  It is worth noting that it was not formally promulgated by the Convocations subsequent to its being passed by Parliament and before the royal assent.

      The 1922 Lectionary returns to pre-Reformation custom in that it is entirely based on the ecclesiastical year; this, it may be noted, with its movable Easter, makes a completely satisfactory solution of all problems impossible.  Other changes are the provision of Proper Second Lessons for all Sundays, of alternative Lessons for most Sundays, and of Proper Lessons for the First Evensongs of Holy Days.  Reversing the tendency of 1871 when Lessons from the Apocrypha were reduced in number, the Revisers considerably increased the occasions when it may be read.  Forty-eight of these occur in the variable weeks at the end of the Trinity season.  Altogether, in a favourable year, if every alternative Apocrypha Lesson is chosen, it is possible to read from the Apocrypha on 127 occasions.

      Some explanations of the principles on which Lessons are chosen may be useful.

      Sunday First Lessons. – Isaiah is begun in Advent, and Genesis in Septuagesima, in accordance with ancient custom.  The Historical Books are read on Sundays I–XIV after Trinity.  Then follow Daniel, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.  The less familiar portions of the Old Testament, and the Apocrypha, are generally drawn upon for alternative Lessons.

      Sunday Second Lessons. – The Report of the Joint Committee stated: “We have endeavoured (1) to exclude as few passages of the New Testament as might be from the possibility of being read in church on Sunday; (2) to give variety for successive years and for congregations differing in character.”  As a rule, alternative Lessons are provided, the first from the Gospels, the second from the other books.  With two exceptions, Septuagesima and the Sunday before Advent, when the Lectionary provides Lessons from the Gospels for both Mattins and Evensong, one of such Lessons must always be read.

      Week Days. – The Book of Acts is read between Easter and Pentecost, in accordance with a custom attested as early as the fourth century.  Between Trinity Sunday and Trinity XI a continuous narrative of the life of our Lord is read, drawn from the Synoptic Gospels.  The Fourth Gospel is not used for this purpose but is read for a second time in its entirety.  The order of books read follows the conclusions of nineteenth-century English scholarship.  Thus 2 Peter comes last of the Catholic Epistles, preceded by Jude, with which it is closely connected.  St. Mark as the earliest Gospel is read first.  The Pauline Epistles occur in this order: Thessalonians, Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians, 1 Timothy, Titus, 2 Timothy.  The whole New Testament is utilized except parts of the Revelation. [The original intention was to exclude 1 Cor. 7:25–40, 11:2–16, as has been done in the Irish and Canadian Revisions.]

      Holy Days. – One example may suffice to show how the Revisers dealt with the problem of finding appropriate Lessons.  In the 1871 Lectionary for St. Luke’s Day, First Lessons only were appointed, Isaiah 55 and Ecclesiasticus 38:1–15.  Four more had to be found.  First Evensong.  First Lesson: Isaiah 55 is retained, as teaching the abundance of divine forgiveness, which is the main theme of the material peculiar to St. Luke.  Second Lesson: Luke 1:1–4, which describes the sources, method and purpose of St. Luke’s Gospel. Mattins.  First Lesson: Isaiah 61:1–6, the passage given by the Evangelist as read by Christ, as a kind of program of His mission, in the synagogue at Nazareth.  Second Lesson: Acts 16:6–18 is chosen as the most striking of the “we passages” of the Acts, marking the moment when the Evangelist became an eyewitness of the events he describes.  Second Evensong.  First Lesson: Ecclesiasticus 38:1–14 is retained as appropriate to the festival of Luke the physician.  Second Lesson: Col. 4:14 is chosen since it refers to St. Luke.  The other passage from the Epistles in which he is mentioned – 2 Timothy 4:5 – has been used as the Epistle of the day.

      The Canadian Prayer Book (1922) incorporated the new English Lectionary, the Revision Committee having sacrificed its own less thorough draft, which was experimentally used in Canada in the years 1915 and following, in order to secure uniformity with the Mother Church.  The slight differences which will be noticed are due to the Canadian Church’s adoption of the English Lectionary as first drafted and to its avoidance of Lessons from the Apocrypha on Sundays, and on weekdays unless alternatives are provided. The procedure accounts for the untidy appearance of, e.g., the Lessons of the Third Sunday in Lent, when Genesis 37 or 40 is prescribed for the morning, 39 or 42 for the evening; one reader might choose 40 in the morning, another reader choosing 39 at night.

      The Irish Prayer Book (1927) has a Lectionary virtually identical with the English one of 1922, except for the modifications necessitated by the elimination of the Apocrypha.

      The Scottish Lectionary (1929) follows the ecclesiastical year.  The weekday course has some features in common with the English system, but is an independent compilation.  The following peculiarities may be noted.  In Advent, Morning and Evening, the Second Lessons are taken from Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Peter, Jude, Revelation 1–10, 1 Timothy (Ember Days), Revelation 11–22.  St. Matthew comes first of the Gospels.  Job begins the New Year, followed by Proverbs, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus.  The Sunday Lessons are arranged in a three-years’ course, so that regular worshippers may hear a large part of the Bible.

      The Lectionary of the American Prayer Book of 1789 is thus described: [Procter and Frere, A New History of the B.C.P., p. 246.] “The table of Daily Lessons was nearly the same as that prepared by Bishop White for the Proposed Book; the table of Sunday Lessons, two for each service, was new; it began Isaiah in Advent, read other prophets from Septuagesima to Whitsunday (except on Easter and the Sunday following), began Genesis on Trinity Sunday, and then read the historical books and Proverbs till the end of the year, while the New Testament Lessons were selected with reference to the Church’s season.”  The 1892 Book contained revised Tables, but the double framework of the civil and ecclesiastical years remained.  The present Book (1929) follows the ecclesiastical year, has a separate series of Sunday Lessons, and gives no alternatives.  The principle of the Sunday course is hard to follow.  The Isaiah Lessons in Advent are interrupted by the story of Samson (Judges 16).  On Sundays after Epiphany, Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, 1 Samuel, 1 Kings, Nehemiah, Jonah and Daniel are used.  Septuagesima has Joshua 6 in the morning, Lamentations 1 in the evening.  Lent alternates between Genesis and the historical books.

      The problem faced by framers of an Anglican Lectionary is very perplexing.  On the one hand, they must consider the edification of the laity who attend Morning and Evening Prayer on Sunday; on the other hand, they have to provide a kind of Breviary for clerics who are bound to recite the Daily Office.  Ultimately, one imagines, it may be found best to revert to the principle of separate Tables for Sundays and weekdays, the latter being designed as a Breviary for the clergy apart from the public offices of Sunday Morning and Evening Prayer.  And the existence of a class of worshippers who hear the Liturgical Epistle and Gospel, and frequently the Evensong Lessons, but never those of Mattins, will have to be taken into consideration.

      Finally, it may be asked what version of the Bible may be used.  Until recently no one thought of any other than the Authorized Version.  Nowadays, with the passing of the desire for uniformity, no objection is likely to be raised to the Revised; indeed by many congregations the change would not be noticed.  The matter is left open by the recent revisions.  However, the substantial changes in the text of many Epistles and Gospels in the new English and Scottish Books suggest that the Authorized Version no longer occupies an unchallenged position.  The Epistle for Palm Sunday in the English 1928 Book is instructive.  The Revised Version is followed in the crucial phrases, but its literal translations of aorists and participles are rejected.  This method of treatment suggests that the ideal is a Corrected Authorized Version, that is to say, the traditional Bible of the English-speaking race with such changes only as are needed to remove serious misconceptions. [Considerable use has been made of Bp Chase’s pamphlet The New Lectionary (S.P.C.K., 1922).  As Chairman of the Committee which drew up the Lectionary he wrote with unique authority.]