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
From the entries on the 20th April and the 17th November it is plain that
the Cologne MS. of this martyrology edited by Rosweyde comes from Stablo,
and it may have been that at Stablo the names of some Frankish saints
were inserted into it. Ado went much further than Bede in admitting names
from the Old Testament. Roseweyde’s conjecture that this calendar, the
so-called “Little Ado,” is the Roman martyrology mentioned by Gregory I.
in his letter to Eulogius, is devoid of proof and obviously mistaken,
for in that document there were no Old Testament names. This “Little
Ado” is not a martyrology at all, but a calendar, and displays none of
the peculiarities which characterise the calendars of the city of Rome
of that date; neither is it an independent work, but only an abstract
made by Ado from his own larger work, and a summary of its contents. The
preface prefixed to the two other parts is chiefly concerned with the
martyrology, and not with this abstract, and it is only the circumstance
that this abstract is found in MSS., with some later additions and
altogether separate from the larger work, which led the first editor to
regard it as a treatise by itself; it is merely the abstract used at
Stablo and Malmedy, and not an original Roman work, though it is plain
from Ado’s preface that the existing Roman calendar was employed in its
composition.[824]
Two or three decades later, Usuardus composed his martyrology after
Ado’s example, which he dedicated to Charles the Bald in 875. Usuardus
was a monk of St Germain des Près, then outside the gates of Paris, but
now surrounded by the city; his work is by no means so full as Ado’s,
but is more polished in style, and more uniform in its treatment of
the different entries, and on this account is more suited for use in
choir. It was accordingly used throughout the entire West, and in all
Benedictine monasteries,[825] and even in Rome itself with the exception
of the Vatican basilica. At the end of the fifteenth century it was so
to speak, the universal martyrology of the Western Church, and indeed no
other was known.[826]
The value of these works depends naturally upon the sources employed by
the redactor, and also upon his personal qualities, as, for instance,
whether he revelled in the miraculous or was inclined to be critical.
Two martyrologies by German authors must now be dealt with—those of
Rabanus Maurus and Notker Balbulus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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