The
calendar of saints is a traditional
Christian method of organizing a
liturgical year by associating each day with one or more
saints and referring to the day as that saint's
feast day. The system arose from the very early Christian custom of annual commemoration of
martyrs on the dates of their deaths, or birth into heaven, and is thus referred to in
Latin as
dies natalis ("
day of birth").
History
As the number of recognized saints increased during
Late Antiquity and the first half of the
Middle Ages, eventually every day of the year had at least one saint who was commemorated on that date. To deal with this increase, some saints were moved to alternate days in some traditions or completely removed, with the result that some saints have more than one feast day. The
General Roman Calendar, in its various forms, contains only a selection of the saints for each of its days.
The earliest feast days of saints were those of martyrs, venerated as having shown for Christ the greatest form of love, in accordance with the teaching: "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." Saint
Martin of Tours is said to be the first or at least one of the first non-martyrs to be venerated as a saint. The title "
confessor" was used for such saints, who had confessed their faith in Christ by their lives rather than by their deaths. Martyrs are regarded as dying in the service of the Lord, and confessors are people who died natural deaths. A broader range of titles was used later, such as:
Virgin,
Pastor,
Bishop,
Monk,
Priest, Founder,
Abbot, Apostle,
Doctor of the Church.
The
Tridentine Missal has common formulas for Masses of Martyrs, Confessors who were bishops, Doctors of the Church, Confessors who were not Bishops, Abbots, Virgins, Non-Virgins, Dedication of Churches, and Feast Days of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Pope Pius XII added a common formula for Popes. The
1962 Roman Missal of Pope John XXIII omitted the common of Apostles, assigning a proper Mass to every feast day of an Apostle. The present
Roman Missal has common formulas for the Dedication of Churches, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Martyrs (with special formulas for missionary martyrs and virgin martyrs), Pastors (subdivided into bishops, generic pastors, founders of churches, and missionaries), Doctors of the Church, Virgins, and (generic) Saints (with special formulas for abbots, monks, nuns, religious, those noted for works of mercy, educators, and [generically] women saints).
This
calendar system, when combined with major
church festivals and movable and immovable feasts, constructs a very human and personalised yet often localized way of organizing the year and identifying dates. Some Christians continue the tradition of dating by saints' days: their works may appear "dated" as "The Feast of
Saint Martin". Poets such as
John Keats commemorate the importance of
The Eve of Saint Agnes.
Ranking of feast days
Feast days are ranked in accordance with their importance.
In what is now the ordinary form of the
Roman Rite feast days are ranked (in descending order of importance) as
solemnities, feasts or
memorials (obligatory or optional). The
extraordinary form of the Roman Rite whose use is authorized by the
motu proprio Summorum Pontificum divides liturgical days into I, II, III, and IV class days, as decreed by
Pope John XXIII in 1960. Before 1960, feast days were ranked as Doubles (of three or four kinds), Semidoubles, and Simples. See
Ranking of liturgical days in the Roman Rite.
In the
Eastern Orthodox Church the ranking of feasts varies from church to church. In the
Russian Orthodox Church they are:
Great Feasts,
All-Night Vigils,
Polyeleos,
Great Doxology, Sextupple (having six
stichera at
Vespers and six
troparia at the
Canon of
Matins), Double (i.e., two simple feasts celebrated together) and Simple.
In the
Church of England, there are
Principal Feasts and
Principal Holy Days,
Festivals,
Lesser Festivals, and
Commemorations.
See also
