Amedieval manuscript fragment of Finnish origin, c. 1340–1360, utilized by the Dominican convent at Turku, showing the liturgical calendar for the month of June
The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast dayorfeast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context does not mean "a large meal, typically a celebratory one", but instead "an annual religious celebration, a day dedicated to a particular saint".[1]
The system arose from the early Christian custom of commemorating each martyr annually on the date of their death, their birth into heaven, a date therefore referred to in Latin as the martyr's dies natalis ('day of birth'). In the Eastern Orthodox Church, a calendar of saints is called a Menologion.[2] "Menologion" may also mean a set of icons on which saints are depicted in the order of the dates of their feasts, often made in two panels.
A Welsh calendar of saints' days, c. 1488–1498Excerpt from the Irish Feastology of Oengus, presenting the entries for 1 and 2 January in the form of quatrains of four six-syllabic lines for each day. In this 16th-century copy (MS G10 at the National Library of Ireland) we find pairs of two six-syllabic lines combined into bold lines, amended by glosses and notes that were added by later authors.
As the number of recognized saints increased during Late Antiquity and the first half of the Middle Ages, eventually every day of the year had at least one saint who was commemorated on that date. To deal with this increase, some saints were moved to alternate days in some traditions or completely removed, with the result that some saints have different feast days in different calendars. For example, saints Perpetua and Felicity died on 7 March, but this date was later assigned to St. Thomas Aquinas, allowing them only a commemoration (see Tridentine calendar), so in 1908 they were moved one day earlier.[3] When the 1969 reform of the Catholic calendar moved him to 28 January, they were moved back to 7 March (see General Roman Calendar). Both days can thus be said to be their feast day, in different traditions. The General Roman Calendar, which list those saints celebrated in the entire church, contains only a selection of the saints for each of its days. A fuller list is found in the Roman Martyrology, and some of the saints there may be celebrated locally.
The earliest feast days of saints were those of martyrs, venerated as having shown for Christ the greatest form of love, in accordance with the teaching: "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends."[4] Saint Martin of Tours is said to be the first[5][6] or at least one of the first non-martyrs to be venerated as a saint. The title "confessor" was used for such saints, who had confessed their faith in Christ by their lives rather than by their deaths. Martyrs are regarded as dying in the service of the Lord, and confessors are people who died natural deaths. A broader range of titles was used later, such as: Virgin, Pastor, Bishop, Monk, Priest, Founder, Abbot, Apostle, Doctor of the Church.
The Tridentine Missal has common formulæ for Masses of Martyrs, Confessors who were bishops, Doctors of the Church, Confessors who were not Bishops, Abbots, Virgins, Non-Virgins, Dedication of Churches, and Feast Days of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Pope Pius XII added a common formula for Popes. The 1962 Roman Missal of Pope John XXIII omitted the common of Apostles, assigning a proper Mass to every feast day of an Apostle. The present Roman Missal has common formulas for the Dedication of Churches, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Martyrs (with special formulas for missionary martyrs and virgin martyrs), pastors (subdivided into bishops, generic pastors, founders of churches, and missionaries), Doctors of the Church, Virgins, and (generic) Saints (with special formulas for abbots, monks, nuns, religious, those noted for works of mercy, educators, and [generically] women saints).
This calendar system, when combined with major church festivals and movable and immovable feasts, constructs a very human and personalised yet often localized way of organizing the year and identifying dates. Some Christians continue the tradition of dating by saints' days: their works may appear "dated" as "The Feast of Saint Martin".
As different Christian jurisdictions parted ways theologically, differing lists of saints began to develop. This happened because the same individual may be considered differently by one church; in extreme examples, one church's saint may be another church's heretic, as in the cases of Nestorius, Pope Dioscorus I of Alexandria, or Archbishop Flavian of Constantinople.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church the ranking of feasts varies from church to church. In the Russian Orthodox Church they are: Great Feasts, middle, and minor feasts. Each portion of such feasts may also be called feasts as follows: All-Night Vigils, Polyeleos, Great Doxology, Sextuple ("sixfold", having six sticheraatVespers and six troparia at the CanonofMatins). There are also distinctions between Simple feasts and double (i.e., two simple feasts celebrated together). In Double Feasts, the order of hymns and readings for each feast are rigidly instructed in Typikon, the liturgy book.
The Lutheran Churches celebrate Festivals, Lesser Festivals, Days of Devotion, and Commemorations.[8]
^Senn, Frank C. (2012). Introduction to Christian Liturgy. Fortress Press. p. 103. ISBN978-1-4514-2433-1.
^ abcdefMújica-Baker, Frank. Huracanes y tormentas que han afectado a Puerto Rico(PDF) (Report) (in Spanish). Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, Agencia Estatal para el Manejo de Emergencias y Administración de Desastres. pp. 4, 7–10, 12–14. Archived from the original(PDF) on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 12 October 2018.
^"San Ciriaco Hurricane". East Carolina University, RENCI Engagement Center. Archived from the original on 19 October 2019. Retrieved 12 October 2018.
Category
