*
[137] Butler.
[138] Holme.
Rogation Sunday.
This is the fifth Sunday after Easter. “Rogation” is supplication, from the Latin rogare, to beseech.
Rogation Sunday obtained its name from the succeeding Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, which are called Rogation-days, and were ordained by Mammertus, archbishop of Vienne, in Dauphiné; about the year 469 he caused the litanies, or supplications, to be said upon them, for deliverance from earthquakes, fires, wild beasts, and other public calamities, which are alleged to have happened in his city; hence the whole week is called Rogation-week, to denote the continual praying.[139]
Shepherd, in his “Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer,” mistaking Vienne for Vienna the capital of Germany, says: “The example of Mammertus was followed by many churches in the West, and the institution of the Rogation-days, soon passed from the diocese of Vienna into France, and from France into England.”
Rogation-week is also called grass-week, from the appetite being restricted to salads and greens; cross-week, from the cross being more than ordinarily used; procession-week, from the public processions during the period; and gang-week, from the ganging, or going about in these processions.[140]
The rogations and processions, or singing of litanies along the streets during this week, were practised in England till the Reformation. In 1554, the priests of queen Mary’s chapel made public processions. “All the three days there went her chapel about the fields: the first day to St. Giles’s, and there sung mass: the next day, being Tuesday, to St. Martin’s in the Fields; and there a sermon was preached, and mass sung; and the company drank there: the third day to Westminster; where a sermon was made, and then mass and good cheer made; and after, about the park, and so to St. James’s court. The same Rogation-week went out of the Tower, on procession, priests and clerks, and the lieutenant with all his waiters; and the axe of the Tower borne in procession: the waits attended. There joined in this procession the inhabitants of St. Katharine’s, Radcliff, Limehouse, Poplar, Stratford, Bow, Shoreditch, and all those that belonged to the Tower, with their halberts. They went about the fields of St. Katharine’s, and the liberties.”[141] On the following Thursday, “Being Holy Thursday, at the court of St. James’s, the queen went in procession within St. James’s, with heralds and serjeants of arms, and four bishops mitred; and bishop Bonner, beside his mitre, wore a pair of slippers of silver and gilt, and a pair of rich gloves with ouches of silver upon them, very rich.”[142]