Heortology : $b A history of the Christian festivals from their origin to the present dayKellner, K. A. Heinrich (Karl Adam Heinrich)
Religion
Heortology : $b A history of the Christian festivals from their origin to the present day
Kellner, K. A. Heinrich (Karl Adam Heinrich)
Church year; Fasts and feasts
In the West the worship of the saints exerted a much stronger influence
on the liturgy than in the East. The Roman and kindred rites provided
special Masses for saints’ days, while in the East the worship of
saints as far as it effected the liturgy continued to be limited to the
canonical hours. At first the lections used at the Psalmody were drawn
from the Holy Scriptures alone, but from the sixth century, passages
from the _passiones martyrum_ were admitted.[805] In course of time,
these became more numerous, and in this way the martyrologies obtained
an ever increasing importance. As regards the Mass, in the earliest
Gallican Masses published by Mone, we find one for the feast of St
Germanus,[806] and several in the _Sacramentarium Leoninum_, and for
many centuries the Masses for saints’ days remained considerably less
numerous than the Masses _de tempore_. Later on, however, they became so
numerous that they were finally indicated in a special calendar bound up
with the sacramentary, such as is now prefixed to the massal as one of
its integral parts. Equally important with the sacramentaries in this
connection are the service-books, containing the epistles and gospels,
called lectionaries. We shall examine these first, and then those of the
martyrologies specially bearing upon the subject we are investigating,
and afterwards we shall utilise whatever we find in the sacramentaries in
connection with saints’ days.
The lectionaries of Luxenil and Silos show very plainly that in the
seventh century the worship of the saints had as yet very slightly
affected the liturgy. The saints’ days are somewhat more numerous in the
_Leoninum_ and in the _Missale Gothico-Gallicanum_ edited by Mabillon and
belonging to the end of the same century.
In both the other Roman sacramentaries the increase of saints’ days is
noticeable. The _Gelasianum_ was originally drawn up especially for the
city of Rome, but the recension in which it has come down to us was
obviously compiled at the request of some other church; at any rate it
contains a number of saints who do not belong to the city of Rome. For
instance, on the 7th August we have the Confessor Donatus who belongs
to Imola, on the 19th a martyr called Magnus who can only be assigned
to Cæsarea in Cappadocia, and on the 27th a martyr Rufus belonging to
Capua; the appearance of the legendary family of martyrs Marius, Martha,
Audifax, and Ambacum or Habacuc is curious, and in addition to these,
there is also a number of saints whose names one would search for in vain
in the better and older recensions of the _Gregorianum_, _e.g._ Soter,
Vitalis, Felicula, Juliana, Euphemia, Juvenal, Nereus and Achilleus,
Cyrinus, Nabor, Nazarius, and Vitus. Of these many were certainly
venerated in Rome, yet had hitherto received no recognition in the
calendars attached to the service-books.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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