During the age of the persecutions it was scarcely possible for Christians to observe any other festival than Sunday, and so it is not surprising that the two writers, who have occasion to speak of the institution of the festivals of the Church, mention only Easter and Pentecost, both of which fall on Sundays. To these Christmas was added in the fourth century, and Epiphany somewhat earlier. These chief festivals, along with others soon added to their number, formed the elements for the organisation of a festal system in the Church, as centres round which the lesser festivals grouped themselves. The last step of importance, however, in this development of the Church’s year was to connect these chief festivals with one another, so as to make them parts of a whole. The Sundays afforded a convenient means for effecting this. They were associated with the festal character of the nearest feast and were connected with it as links in a chain. The way for this development had been prepared by the season of preparation before Easter, and by the relation in which Easter stood to Pentecost. The Sundays of Lent had their own character as a preparation for Easter, and the Sundays in the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost—Quinquagesima—were marked by the festal character with which antiquity invested the whole period. All that was needed was, first of all, to connect Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, and, in the second place, the institution of a season of preparation before Christmas. This was accomplished between the sixth and the eighth centuries. During the first six centuries, the ordinary Sundays of the year had neither liturgical position or character, since they were not even enumerated. There was a sort of _commune dominicarum_, _i.e._, a number of masses existed from which one could be chosen at will for each Sunday. To these Sundays, which were called simply _dominicæ quotidianæ_, those after Epiphany and Pentecost belonged. They numbered altogether twenty-nine or thirty, according as the Calendar gave fifty-two or fifty-three Sundays in the year. For the sum of the days of the year, 365, divided by seven makes fifty-two and one over, and so the year which commences on a Sunday has fifty-three Sundays, the others only fifty-two. The smaller number of these, six at most, come between Epiphany and Septuagesima, but the larger, twenty-three to twenty-eight, between Whitsunday and Advent. The variation depends upon the date of Easter. There is no historical circumstance forthcoming to give these Sundays a specially festal character. With Pentecost the commemoration of Our Lord’s redemptive acts concludes, and it was not the custom in the West to include events from Church history in the cycle of feasts, although the East celebrated a few, as, for example, the General Councils.