It was not until a late date that the first Sunday after Pentecost was raised to a higher rank, for in the Gregorian Sacramentary it has no special name, while in the Gelasian Sacramentary, and in the appendixes to the Gregorian,[265] it is called merely the Sunday after the octave of Pentecost, or the Sunday after Pentecost. In the Latin Church, it is now a festival devoted to the honour of the Most Holy Trinity.
Concerning the introduction of this new feast into the Church’s year, we learn from the Micrologus that, the Sunday after Pentecost being a dominica vacans without any special office of its own, many used on this day the office of the Trinity drawn up by Bishop Stephen of Liège (903-20). When Pope Alexander II. († 1073) was questioned on the point, he replied that it was not the Roman custom to set apart any particular day in honour of the Holy Trinity, since the Trinity was honoured every day by the Gloria Patri in the psalmody. It is to be noted, continues the Micrologus,[266] that Alcuin, at the request of the Saint Boniface, composed a Mass in honour of the Holy Trinity.
Binterim speaks sarcastically of this reference, because Boniface had died long before the time when Alcuin flourished. The reference is not to be passed over on this account, for the mistake arose merely from a misunderstanding. Alcuin had put together from the missal employed in his Abbey Church a number of Masses—votive Masses, as they would now be called—for each day of the week, to be used under certain conditions, and to these was added, amongst others, a Mass in honour of St Boniface for the monks of Fulda.[267] This explains the misunderstanding in the Micrologus. Alcuin had also arranged a collection of prayers drawn from the Gregorian Sacramentary to form a prayer-book. This, by itself, enables us now to appreciate Alcuin’s share in the matter.[268] It merely means that he recommended the Mass of the Trinity should be said on Sundays, in case a priest had not a complete missal, or through ignorance was unable to use it properly.
The fact is plain. The later Frankish recension of the Gregorian Sacramentary contained for the Sunday after Pentecost a Mass in honour of the Holy Trinity, with the same preface which is still in use.[269] In addition to this, Bishop Stephen of Liège drew up a suitable office, and so all was in readiness for the institution of an especial feast in honour of the Trinity, which, in the natural course of things, was fixed for the first Sunday after Pentecost. The custom of regarding it as a festival became more and more popular in the Netherlands, England, Germany, and France. Several diocesan synods expressed themselves in favour of it, e.g., that of Arles in 1260. As we have found in other instances, so here, it was the monasteries which prepared the way for the adoption of the festival. Thus, for example,[270] the Cistercians adopted the festival in 1270, the Cluniacs still earlier. The introduction of the festival into each diocese followed gradually in course of time, and it belongs to local historians to investigate the circumstances in each case.
Although Alexander II. had officially declared the festival to be superfluous,[271] it nevertheless continued to increase in popularity in ever-widening circles. Its adoption did not follow any uniform law, for in several places it was observed on the last Sunday after Pentecost, as in several dioceses of France, until on in the seventeenth century, and here and there we find it kept with an octave. Uniformity was at length attained when the Roman Church under John XXII., in 1334, accepted the festival and ordered it to be generally observed. The Franciscan, John Peckham, Canon of Lyons, and, from 1278 to 1292, Archbishop of Canterbury, composed a new office. The one actually in use dates from the times of Pius V.,[272] and is one of the most beautiful in the breviary, remarkable alike for sublimity of thought, depth, and elegance of form. Although the first Sunday has thus been placed in a rank by itself, the Roman rite still continues the older enumeration of the Sundays from Pentecost. In Germany and elsewhere it was the custom to reckon the Sundays from Trinity, and so each Sunday is one less than the corresponding Sunday according to the Roman enumeration.
The Greeks on this Sunday commemorate All Saints, and on this account call it All Saints’ Sunday (κυριακὴ τῶν ἁγίων πάντων).
12. Corpus Christi. The Forty Hours’ Prayer. The Festival of the Sacred Heart
On Maundy Thursday, the consecration of the Holy Oils and other ceremonies overshadow almost entirely the commemoration of the important event which took place on that day—the institution of the Holy Eucharist. It was this fact which suggested the introduction of a festival specially intended to commemorate that event, as is expressly stated in the papal constitution Transiturus. The introduction of this feast dates from a comparatively late time, and its adoption is limited to the West, although the Uniat Greeks have also partially accepted it. The earliest trace of a special reference to the Holy Sacrament of the altar in the public worship of the Church is probably the appearance of the name Natalis Calicis, in the Calendar of Polemius Silvius, on the 24th March. In order to understand this entry, it must be remembered that anciently the 25th March was often regarded as the day on which Christ died (vide ante, p. 57).
Divine Providence made use of a humble nun to further the introduction of this festival. Juliana,[273] born at Retinne, near Liège, in 1193, was received as an orphan into the cloister, and became a nun of the order of St Augustine. She was appointed prioress of the lazar-house of Mons Cornelii (Mont-Cornillon), near Liège, where she passed the greater part of her life. When this institution received another prior who fell out with the authorities of Liège over some matters of administration, Juliana was obliged to leave the lazar-house in 1240. She took up her abode in Liège, with a kindred spirit, the recluse Eve. She returned to Mont-Cornillon after three years, but when fresh disagreements broke out again, on the death of Bishop Robert († 1246), she was compelled to leave Liège altogether. She found a refuge with the Cistercian nuns at Salsinnes in the diocese of Namur. But this convent was destroyed in the wars which then disturbed the country, and Juliana was once more destitute. She ended her life on the 5th April 1258, as a recluse at Fosses, where she had found a refuge, and was buried in the monastery of Villiers, in the diocese of Namur.
Juliana of Retinne had been a zealous worshipper of the Blessed Sacrament from her youth, and, from her sixteenth year, had repeatedly seen a vision of the disc of the full moon from which as it were a part had been broken off. A vision of our Lord enlightened her mind as to the signification thereof. The moon’s disc represented the Church, which still lacked a festival in honour of the Blessed Sacrament, and she was to announce this want to the world and direct all her efforts towards the introduction of such a festival. In 1230, she communicated her secret, on account of which she had much to suffer, for the first time, to John of Lausanne, Canon of St Martin at Liège, and to some other pious and learned men, namely, Guyard, afterwards Bishop of Cambrai, Hugo, afterwards Cardinal Legate, the Archdeacon of Liège, James Pantaleon of Troyes, who became Bishop of Verdun, then Patriarch of Jerusalem, and, finally, Pope.