In 1263 the Franciscans resolved to celebrate the festival publicly in their churches. But even the Franciscans were not agreed among themselves as to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Alvarus Pelagius, the Spanish Theologian, Great Penitentiary of Pope John XXII, in his _de Planctu Ecclesiae_ (1332) declares that ‘the new and fantastic opinion should be cancelled by the faithful.’ As is well known, the Dominicans took a strong and even violent part against the doctrine. The greatest doctor of the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas, had clearly pronounced that St Mary was not sanctified till the infusion of her _anima rationalis_. But with regard to the feast of the Conception he states that inasmuch as the Roman Church, though not celebrating the Conception of the Blessed Virgin, tolerates the practice of certain Churches which do celebrate it, the celebration of the feast is not to be wholly reprobated; and he adds that we must not infer from the observance of the day that St Mary was holy in her conception, but because we are ignorant as to the time when she was sanctified, the feast of her sanctification rather than of her conception is celebrated on the day of her conception[84]. Accordingly in Dominican Kalendars we find the day marked as _Sanctificatio Mariae_. The Council of Bâle (1439) adopted a constitution applicable to the whole Church that the feast should be observed according to the ancient and laudable custom on Dec. 8, and that it should be known under the title of the _Conception_ of the Blessed Virgin Mary, forbidding the use of the name _Sanctification_, as having a less extended use. The Roman See, not recognising this Council, did not take action till A.D. 1477, when Sixtus IV, who had been a Franciscan, published an ordinance (and it is the very first decree of any Pope on the subject) granting large indulgences to all the faithful who celebrated, or assisted at, the Mass and Office of the Conception on the festival or throughout its octave. In 1483 the same Pope pronounced excommunication on any preachers who asserted that St Mary was conceived in original sin or that those who observed the festival sinned[85]. Clement VIII (1592-1605) raised the festival to the rank of a greater double. The later history of the festival can be pursued in Baillet, and in recent writers dealing with Pius IX. For minor festivals of the Virgin, such as ‘St Mary at Snows,’ the Visitation of St Mary, the Espousals (_Desponsatio_), the Most Holy Name of Mary, the Seven Sorrows, the Rosary of St Mary, Blessed Mary of Mount Carmel, the Expectation of the Delivery (_partûs_), and others, the reader may consult Baillet, the _Catholic Dictionary_, etc. II. _The Orthodox Church of the East._