The influence of the early mediaeval martyrologists, Bede, Florus, Ado, and Usuard, upon the mediaeval Kalendars, is unquestionable; but the relations of their works to one another, the variations of the different recensions and the sources from which they were drawn, are still subjects of investigation. In addition to the brief notices of the martyrologists which will be found in the following pages, the enquirer who desires further information should not fail to study with care the recent treatise of Dom Henri Quentin, of Solesmes, Les Martyrologes historiques.
Of necessity a general outline sketch of the formation of the Kalendar is all that can be attempted in the following pages. Local Kalendars, more especially, for most of our readers, those of the service-books of England, Scotland, and Ireland, present many interesting and attractive features; but it has been impossible to deal with them in an adequate manner. Some space has, however, been devoted to the consideration of the Kalendar and Ecclesiastical Year of the Orthodox Church of the East, including the peculiar arrangement of the grouping of Sundays; and brief notices are given of the fasts and festivals of some of the separated Churches of the East.
The questions concerning the determination of Easter will form the main trial of the patience of the student.
The early controversies on the Paschal question are not free from obscurity; and the interests attaching to the construction of the various systems of cycles, intended to form a perpetual table for the unerring determination of the date of Easter, are mainly the interests which are awakened by the history of human ingenuity grappling more or less successfully with a problem which called for astronomical knowledge and mathematical skill. Religious interests are not touched even remotely. Profound as are the thoughts and emotions which cluster around the commemoration of the Lord’s Resurrection, they are quite independent of any considerations connected with the age of the moon and the date of the vernal equinox. The scheme for a time seriously entertained by Gregory XIII of making the celebration of Easter to fall on a fixed Sunday, the same in every year, has much to commend it. Had it been adopted we should, at all events, have been spared many practical inconveniences, and the ecclesiastical computists would have been saved a vast amount of labour. But we must take things as they are.
If anyone contends that the safest ‘Rule for finding Easter’ is ‘Buy a penny almanack,’ I give in a ready assent. It has in principle high ecclesiastical precedent; for it was exactly the same reasonable plan of accepting the determinations of those whom one has good reason to think competent authorities, which in ancient times made the Christian world await the pronouncements as to the date of Easter which came year by year from the Patriarchs of Alexandria in their Paschal Epistles: while for the date of Easter in any particular year in the distant past, or in the future, there are few who will not prefer the Tables supplied in such works as L’Art de vérifier les Dates, or Mas Latrie’s Trésor de Chronologie, to any calculations of their own, based on the Golden Numbers and Sunday Letters[1]. In the present volume the limits of space forbid any detailed discussion of the principles involved and the methods employed in the determination of Easter by the computists both ancient and modern. A brief historical sketch of the successive reforms of the Kalendar is all that has been found possible. Those who seek for fuller information can resort to the treatises mentioned above or in the course of the volume. The chapter on Easter has for convenience been placed near the conclusion of this volume.
In dealing with both Eastern and Western Kalendars the student will bear in mind that only comparatively few of the festivals affected the life of the great body of the faithful. A very large number of festivals were marked in the services of the Church by certain liturgical changes or additions. Many of them had their special propria; others were grouped in classes; and each class had its own special liturgical features. Only comparatively few made themselves felt outside the walls of the churches. Some of them carried a cessation from servile labour, or caused the closing of the law courts, or, as chiefly in the Greek Church, mitigated in various degrees (according to the dignity of the festival) the rigour of fasting. The distinction between festa chori and festa fori is always worthy of observation. A relic of the distinction is preserved in an expression of common currency in France, when one speaks of a person as of insignificant importance, C’est un saint qu’on ne chôme pas.
Although the general scope of the following pages is wide in intention, the origins of the Kalendar and the rise of the principal seasons and days of observance have chiefly attracted the interest of the writer. Later developments are not wholly neglected, but they occupy a subordinate place.
The enactments of civil legislation under the Christian Emperors and other rulers, in respect to the observance of Sunday and other Christian holy days, is an interesting field of study; but it has been impossible to enter upon it here in view of the limits of space at our disposal.
The study of Kalendars brings one into constant contact with hagiology, the acts of martyrs, and the lives of saints. It would however have been obviously vain to deal seriously in the present volume with so vast a subject, even in broadest outline.
A short Bibliography of some important or serviceable works dealing with various branches of the subject before us is prefixed.