The Church Year and Kalendar

by John Dowden

As regards the particular Church for the use of which any Kalendar was intended, attention should be directed not only to the appearance of certain festivals, but to the rank and dignity of the festivals, which are often indicated by some such notes as ‘principal,’ ‘of ix Lessons,’ ‘of iii Lessons,’ ‘greater double,’ ‘lesser double,’ or some other term of classification[135]. Classification in continental Kalendars is often otherwise expressed[136]. In the Kalendar of the Missal of Westminster Abbey the dignity of the greater festivals is marked by indicating the number of copes (varying from two to eight) which were to be used, as has been thought, by the monks who sang the Invitatory to Venite at Mattins. No one will be surprised to learn that at Westminster the Feast of St Edward the Confessor (Jan. 5), and his Translation (Oct. 13) are marked ‘viii cape,’ a dignity which is reached only in the cases of St Peter and St Paul, the Assumption, All Saints, and Christmas: while in the Sarum Kalendar St Edward is marked on Jan. 5 only by a ‘memory,’ and his Translation is but a ‘lower double.’ At Holyrood Abbey, near Edinburgh, Holy Cross Day was naturally one of the greatest festivals of the year, while in the Aberdeen Breviary the Invention of the Cross and the Exaltation were both ‘lesser doubles.’ At Hereford, Thomas of Hereford (Oct. 2) was a ‘principal feast,’ and so was his Translation (Oct. 25); neither day appears in the Sarum Kalendar. The Translation of the Three Kings, already referred to, which is a ‘summum festum’ at Cologne, is all but unknown elsewhere. These examples will suffice for our purpose.

It remains to notice entries of other kinds not uncommon in mediaeval Kalendars. There are notices of what I may call an antiquarian kind, which did not at all, or but seldom, affect the service of the day, but which are not without an interest of their own. Thus, such entries as the following are not uncommon. ‘The first day of the world’ (March 18); ‘Adam was created’ (March 23); ‘Noah entered the ark’ (March 17); ‘The Resurrection of the Lord’ (March 27), by which is meant that the actual resurrection of the Saviour took place on this day of the month, in the year in which the Lord was crucified. This assigned date is of great antiquity. We find it in Tertullian (adv. Judaeos c. 8); and later it was accepted by Hippolytus and Augustine, and it is frequent in the Kalendars of the early mediaeval period. In the Sarum Kalendar it is marked as a principal feast of three lessons, but there is no service answering to the day in the Breviary. We find ‘Noah comes forth from the ark’ (April 29); ‘The devil departs from the Lord’ (Feb. 15); ‘The Ascension of the Lord’ (May 5); this last mentioned day is plainly a corollary to the date assigned to the Resurrection, but it is not so frequently inserted in the Kalendars.

We may pass without comment entries of astronomical interest, such as ‘Sol in aquario,’ ‘Sol in piscibus,’ and such like; the solstices and the equinoxes; the days when the four seasons began; and such weather-notes as the dates when the dog-days (dies caniculares) began and ended. It will be observed that there was at least ancient precedent for what gave offence to Bishop Wren when he wrote of the Kalendar of the Book of Common Prayer, ‘Out with the dog-days from among the Saints.’

Some of the features just noticed continued to make their appearance in various English Kalendars after the Reformation. The Kalendar, indeed, of the Prayer Book of 1549 looks to our eyes singularly bare, with no days marked other than what we call the red-letter festivals. In 1552, the ‘dog-days’ reappear, and also the astronomical notes as to dates of the sun’s entrance into the various signs of the zodiac. To these are added, for reasons of practical convenience, the Term days. The Prayer Book of 1559 adds further the hours of the rising and setting of the sun at the beginning of each month. In the Primer of Edward VI (1553) the names of a very large number of the old Saints’ Days are introduced, and the convenient reminder of ‘Fish’ is placed at the days preceding the Purification, St Matthias, the Annunciation, St John Baptist, St Peter, St James, St Bartholomew, St Matthew, St Simon and St Jude, All Saints, St Andrew, St Thomas, and Christmas. This Kalendar also, after the manner of many mediaeval Kalendars, marks the first possible day for Easter, and ‘first of the Ascension,’ ‘uttermost Ascension,’ ‘first Pentecost,’ ‘uttermost Pentecost.’ In some of the unauthorised books of devotion issued in Elizabeth’s reign we find some of the dates inferred rightly or wrongly from the Scripture history, which had long before appeared in mediaeval Kalendars, such as days connected with Noah’s story, the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of the Lord; and to these many other days of historical interest are added[137].

In many of the mediaeval Kalendars we find entered at Jan. 28, March 11, and April 15, respectively, the words ‘Claves Quadragesimae,’ ‘Claves Paschae,’ and ‘Claves Rogationum.’ The number of days to be counted from each of these dates to the beginning of Lent, to Easter, and to the Rogation Days, varying according to the place which any given year occupies in the Cycle of Golden Numbers, may be found with the help of a table prefixed to the Kalendar. It should be noted that the ‘terminus’ of the key never falls on the day of the fast or festival sought, and if the terminus of the key for Easter falls on a Sunday, Easter is the following Sunday.

Several of the old Kalendars exhibit the days on which ‘the months of the Egyptians’ and ‘the months of the Greeks’ begin, with the names of these several months. In some early English Kalendars the Saxon names of the months are also inserted. This feature may have been of use to historical students, but having no bearing on ecclesiastical life in the West it is passed over here without further notice.

For a similar reason we do not describe the verses frequently inserted at the various months, with advice as to agricultural operations, blood-letting, rules of health, and the unlucky, or Egyptian days.

Occasionally attached to early Kalendars and Martyrologies is to be found the Horologium or Shadow-clock—a set of rules for determining, in a rough way, the hour of the day by measuring one’s own shadow on the ground[138].

The modern Roman Martyrology was preceded towards the close of the fifteenth century and in the sixteenth century by several attempts to provide what was thought to be a more serviceable work than that of Usuard. Among the more remarkable of these are the Martyrology of the Italian mathematician Francesco Maurolico, and that of Pietro Galesini, published first at Milan in the year 1577. The latter work had the effect of making manifest that there was need for the correction of the Roman Martyrology. Gregory XIII appointed a commission to deal with the subject. The result of the labours of the commission was printed in 1584. Further corrections were made by Cardinal Baronius; and the work as revised by him is in substance the modern Roman Martyrology[139].