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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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