The Origin of the Ecclesiastical Year

From the 1935 book, Catholic Liturgics, by Richard Stapper, S.T.D.

(Spring-Summer, 2006)

The ecclesiastical year originated in the annual observance of certain days in memory of Christ; these commemorative occurrences have a relation to one another and represent anew the historical progress and the supernatural benefits of the work of redemption.

The divinely-instituted feasts of the Old Law served as models; these feasts were especially Easter and Pentecost, on which the “chosen people” gave thanks to God for definite benefits by the offering of sacrifice and public prayers. Paganism contributed toward the development of the ecclesiastical year in two respects: in some cases, pagan practices gave occasion for the institution of Christian practices to counteract them; in particular instances, when pagan feasts could receive a Christian meaning, they were displaced by Christian festivals.

Just as the Christian era is reckoned from the birth of Christ, so it was a favorite practice in the Middle Ages to begin the calendar year on Christmas or its vigil or on some other festival of the Church, for instance, the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin. In the sixteenth century, however, owing largely to the Gregorian calendar, the first day of January was generally accepted as the beginning of the calendar year. It was not until then that the idea of the ecclesiastical year was clearly grasped and its origin closely examined.

How did the first Christians adapt the feasts of the Old Law to honor Christ’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection?

1. Origin of the Easter Cycle. The feast of Easter was the first to assume a more important character.

The Jews celebrated the Passover on the fifteenth of Nisan in memory of their deliverance from the bondage of Egypt. With the Parasceve, that is, the day of preparation before the Jewish feast, the Christians associated the commemoration of the Passion of Christ; the day after the feast, a Sunday in the year of Christ’s death, they kept in memory of the Resurrection. In the beginning there was some variation in the dates of the Christian feast. In consequence of its intimate relation to Jewish practice, the Quartodecimans, a sect of Asia Minor, insisted upon celebrating Easter on the fourteenth of Nisan, the day of the first full moon of spring, no matter what day of the week this might be. Other Christians, however, regarded it of great importance that the Resurrection be commemorated on a Sunday: they always kept the feast of Easter on the Sunday following the first full moon of spring and commemorated the Passion of Christ on the Friday before. After having been prescribed by Pope Victor at the end of the second century and confirmed by the Council of Nicaea (325), this practice, which was that of the majority, finally prevailed in the entire Church.

Meanwhile, the commemoration of the Resurrection had developed into the present Eastertide, a joyful period lasting for fifty days and ending with the feast of Pentecost. In place of the two days of preparation, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, a time of penance and mourning for forty and frequently seventy days, the present pre-Lenten and Lenten period, was introduced. Thus originated the liturgical cycle of Easter.

The English word Easter (German, Ostern) is derived from the name of the Saxon goddess Ostara, whose feast was celebrated with bonfires in the spring of the year. The Christian missionaries transformed the pagan festival into the commemoration of the Resurrection. Even the bonfires were kept, but they were interpreted in a Christian sense.

From the beginning, Good Friday and Holy Saturday were observed with a very strict fast. In the third century the fast was extended through the entire Holy Week, in the fourth century to a period of forty days before Easter. For a long time, however, the reckoning of the forty days varied in different places. Thus in Jerusalem at the end of the fourth century, according to the diary of Etheria, the Christians fasted for a period of eight weeks on all days except Saturdays and Sundays. This arrangement provided forty-one fast days. In Rome, however, and the rest of the Western Church at the beginning of the reign of Gregory the Great (590-604), the fast began on Monday after the first Sunday of Lent; according to this reckoning there were only thirty-six fast days. This practice is still followed in Milan, where the Ambrosian rite is used. Our present arrangement, which includes the four days from Ash Wednesday to the following Sunday, is already found in the Gregorian Sacramentary in its oldest extant form. It is very probable that Gregory the Great arranged the ferial Masses from Ash Wednesday to Palm Sunday as we have them today; the only exceptions are the Masses of the Thursdays of Lent, which were added later by Gregory II (d. 731).

The Sundays before Lent, Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima, were presumably called thus from the fact that, in accordance with different practices, the period of preparation before Easter consisted of seventy, sixty, or fifty days, and began near one of these Sundays. In this period of preparation the number of weekdays observed with a fast varied in different places.

When did the Church establish December 25th as the feast of Christmas?

2. Origin of the Christmas Cycle. Besides the death and resurrection of the Savior, the advent of Christ into the world afforded an occasion for a liturgical celebration.

At first there originated in the East a collective feast, which solemnly commemorated various events relating to the early life of Christ and His first public appearance. This feast was called Epiphania Domini or the Manifestation of the Lord, and was celebrated on the sixth day of January. The Christians of Alexandria seem to have first celebrated this feast in order to substitute Christian practices for a pagan celebration in honor of the “manifestation” or their local God Aion. They adopted the pagan name for the feast, but referred it to the temporal birth of their Savior. The Gnostics of the second century apparently observed January 6 in honor of the birth of Christ. This feast also served as a commemoration of several other “Theophanies” or manifestations of the Divinity of Jesus Christ, as the adoration of the Magi, the baptism in the Jordan, the first miracle at Cana and the miraculous manifestation of bread. The threefold manifestation of the Divinity of Christ, namely to the Magi at Bethlehem, to the disciples of John at the baptism in the Jordan and to the guests at the marriage feast at Cana, is still given as the purpose of this feast in the antiphon for the Magnificat of second Vespers.

During the fourth century, however, a new religious feast with the special purpose of commemorating the birth of Christ spread from the West throughout the entire Church. This feast, observed on December 25, was probably intended to displace the popular feast which was kept on this same day in pagan Rome in honor of the Sol invictus. For the Christians Christ is indeed the “unconquered” and the unconquerable God, to Whom the sun and the stars are subservient, and Who is Himself the true Light of the world.

How many liturgical seasons are there in the Catholic year?

While the Eastern Church made no further progress, and hence only recognizes one liturgical season, that which is connected with Easter, the Western Church has at least two liturgical seasons. In addition to the Easter cycle a special liturgical cycle had developed by the seventh century in connection with the feast of Christmas. In preparation for the feast there was a period of fast of forty days (beginning with the feast of St. Martin, November 11), though this was not obligatory everywhere; moreover, not later than the sixth century, thoughts of Advent, of the coming of Christ, were introduced into the liturgy of the Sundays immediately preceding Christmas. After the feast, the Christmas season was prolonged by the institution of the feasts of the Circumcision of our Lord on the eighth day, and that of His Presentation in the Temple (Candlemas, Purification of the Blessed Virgin) on the fortieth day.

The popular distinction of three liturgical cycles is not correct, for Pentecost week is expressly mentioned in liturgical books as the end of Eastertide. This does not mean, however, that there is no order or coherence in the liturgy during the rest of the ecclesiastical year. Inasmuch as it is a preparation for the coming of Christ as Judge of mankind, it may be regarded as a continuance of the Easter cycle.

How did the liturgical celebration of saints begin?

3. Saints’ Feasts and Papal Reforms of the Ecclesiastical Calendar. In Christian antiquity the faithful had the practice of assembling to celebrate Mass at the burial places of the martyrs on the anniversaries of their death or burial. These anniversaries were known as the birthdays of the martyrs, on which they were born anew for heaven. Thus with the eucharistic Christ the Christians celebrated the days on which He revealed Himself in His glory to the saint and bestowed upon Him the greatest of all graces, the blessedness of heaven. This memorial service gradually developed into the liturgical celebration of feasts, first in honor of the martyrs, and later also in honor of confessors. The feast of St. Martin of Tours (d. 397 or 400) on November 11, the day of his death, may well be considered the most ancient festival observed in honor of a confessor; his immediate successor erected a memorial chapel over his grave. Other confessors who were honored as saints soon after their death, at least in certain localities, were Pope Marcellus I (d. 309), Pope Sylvester I (d. 335) and the Abbott Hilarion (d. 371). Since the close of the sixth century, special feasts of the Blessed Virgin, probably introduced from the East into the Western Church, were celebrated with a procession followed by the Sacrifice of the Mass. The oldest of these feasts are the Assumption, the Nativity and the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin; Candlemas may also be enumerated with them, but for a time it was regarded rather as a feast of our Lord.

Through the adoption of the Gregorian Sacramentary the feasts of the Roman saints, as Fabian and Sebastian, Agnes, Agatha, Pancratius, Gervase and Protase, John and Paul, Peter and Paul, Lawrence, Cosmas and Damian, Callistus, Cecelia, Clement, Sylvester, etc., obtained acceptance throughout the Western Church. There soon followed local festivals in honor of the Frankish saints, as Remigius, Severin, Cunibert, Servatius, Lambert, and those of famous missionaries (all the Apostles, Boniface, Gall, Willibrord, Ludger). The further enrichment of the calendar of feasts in the Western Church is due to various causes, namely: the translation of relics, as those of Crispin and Crispinian from Soissons to Osnabrueck about 800, Liborius from LeMans to Paderborn about 836, Blaise from Italy to Paderborn about 1040, Nicholas from Asia Minor to Bari in Apulia about 1087, the Magi or Three Kings from Milan to Cologne about 1164; the frequenting of pilgrimage churches erected over the graves of saints, as those of St. Ursula in Cologne and St. Aegidius at St. Gilles in southern France; the knowledge of feasts celebrated in the Eastern Church, as the Conception of Mary, St. Joseph (March 19), St. George, St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Christopher, etc.; the spread of the great Orders which promoted devotion to their own saints, as Sts. Benedict, Bernard, Francis of Assisi, Dominic, Clare, Scholastica, Elizabeth of Hungary, etc.

In order to prevent certain abuses which might easily result from allowing too much freedom to individual churches in regard to the veneration of saints, Pope Alexander III reserved to himself about 1170 the right to approve any new cult. From that time on the Popes have supervised the canonization of saints. Gradually there developed the process of canonization, which requires proof of the exercise of heroic virtue as a first condition for the introduction of public cult.

In 1264 Pope Urban IV decreed the celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi in the entire Church. About 1334 John XXII did the same for the feast of the Most Holy Trinity. Both feasts originated in Liege. Later Popes greatly increased the number of saints’ feasts. In some cases victories over the Turks, or other general interests of Christendom, were the occasion of new festivals. The feast of the Transfiguration of Christ on August 6 was introduced in 1457 by Callistus II in memory of a victory over the Turks at Belgrade; that of the Most Holy Rosary on October 7 was decreed by Gregory XIII after the victory at Lepanto in 1571; that of the Holy Name of Mary on September 12 was instituted by Innocent XI after the deliverance of Vienna in 1683. In addition to the feast of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin on the Friday after Passion Sunday, Pius VII in 1814, in thanksgiving for his deliverance from bondage, decreed the observance of another feast of the same title in September (since 1913, September 15). On account of the troubles that were threatening the Church, Pius IX, in 1847, instituted the feast of the Patronage of St. Joseph. After his return from Gaeta he raised the feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin to a higher rank, and in 1856 extended to the universal Church the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which Clement XIII had previously granted in 1765 to particular churches. Pius XI enriched this feast with a privileged octave and decreed the observance of the feast of Christ the King on the last Sunday of October.

The feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin on December 8 was introduced from the East into southern Italy, was then adopted in Normandy, England, and France, and in 1263 became a universal feast of the Franciscan Order; Clement XI extended it to the entire Church in 1708; in 1855, after the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, Pius IX declared this feast a holyday, and in 1863 approved its present Office. The feast of St. Joseph on March 19 owes its spread in the Western Church in great measure to the efforts of the Franciscans.

In 1911 and 1913, Pius X accomplished some important reforms of the calendar of the Church. Henceforth no feast was to be assigned permanently to a particular Sunday, and only double feasts of the first and second class were to be transferred. Double feasts of the first and second class may, however, as far as the external solemnity is concerned, be transferred to the following Sunday; a single exception is the feast of the Rosary, which is celebrated for the faithful on the previous Sunday, the first Sunday of October. The feasts of the dedication of churches are celebrated as primary feasts and feasts of our Lord; these are the feasts of the Dedication of St. John Lateran (November 9), of Sts. Peter and Paul (November 18), of the diocesan cathedral (the anniversary day), and of any church which has been consecrated (perhaps a common feast for all consecrated churches of a diocese).

By his Motu proprio, Abhinc duos annos (October 23, 1913), Pius X ordered a reform of the calendars of all dioceses and religious orders. Henceforth the diocesan calendars were to retain only the feasts of those saints who were born, lived or died in the diocese, or of whom notable relics exist there, or whose festival has some relation to the diocese. Since then the number of particular Offices in many dioceses has been considerably diminished.

What is the meaning of the different classes of feasts?

4. Present Calendar of Feasts. As a result of the general adoption of the Roman Missal and Roman Breviary, there exists now a uniform calendar of feasts in the Western Church. In this calendar may be inserted such feasts as are proper to dioceses and religious communities.

Feasts are distinguished as follows:

A. Festa fori or holydays, that is, festivals on which the faithful participate by resting from servile work. Such are at present, for the whole Church, all Sundays (decreed as far back as the reign of the Emperor Constantine), Christmas, New Year’s Day, the Epiphany, the Ascension of Our Lord, Corpus Christi, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph, Ss. Peter and Paul, and All Saints’ Day.

In the Middle Ages the number of holydays was far greater. In 1642 Pope Urban VIII limited them to thirty-five for the entire Western Church. Later popes reduced the number still more or transferred the external solemnity of some of them to the following Sundays. Not all the aforementioned holydays prescribed for the universal Church are celebrated everywhere. Owing to custom or other circumstances, some of them may not be kept, while others not mentioned in this list may be prescribed. Thus in the United States the feasts of the Epiphany, Corpus Christi, St. Joseph, and Ss. Peter and Paul are not holydays of obligation. In Prussia Easter and Pentecost Mondays and the feast of St. Stephen (December 26) are holydays, while the feasts of St. Joseph and the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin are celebrated with external solemnity on the following Sunday.

B. Festa Chori or purely ecclesiastical feasts are divided according to their greater or lesser liturgical solemnity, into double feasts, semidouble feasts, and simple feasts. Some feasts of higher rank (doubles of first and second class) have a vigil or day of liturgical preparation, in some cases observed as a fast day. Some of these same feasts also have an octave or a period of eight days after the feast; in some octaves (those feasts of the first class) there is at least a commemoration of the feast on each day, while in the case of others (those of feasts of the second class) the feast is not commemorated except on the eighth day.

The name “double feast” seems to have been derived from the medieval practice of having two Offices and two Masses on certain feasts, which usually occurred during the week, such as Christmas, Epiphany, Ss. Peter and Paul, etc.; on these days the entire festal Office was recited besides Matins and Lauds of the feria, and a special Mass of the feast was celebrated besides the ferial Mass (cf. Amalarius, De ord. Antiph., c. 15). On these feasts the antiphons were doubled, so that they were sung not only after the psalms of Matins, Lauds and Vespers, but also before them. The peculiarities of these feasts were also extended afterward to feasts of lesser solemnity. On the latter, however, as also on simple feasts, the antiphons before the psalms were merely intoned as far as was necessary to indicate the particular tone of the psalm which followed. In the Breviary of Pius V (1568), double feasts were divided into doubles of the first and second class and ordinary doubles. Clement VIII introduced another class of double feasts, the major doubles, between those of the second class and ordinary doubles. The present regulations concerning the celebration of octaves are due to the reforms of Pius X; the octaves are divided into privileged, common and simple octaves. There are three classes of privileged octaves: to the first class belong the octaves of Easter and Pentecost, to the second class those of Epiphany and Corpus Christi, and to the third class the octaves of Christmas, the Ascension of Our Lord, and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

* Catholic Liturgics, trans. by David Baier, O.F.M. S.T.D., St. Anthony Guild Press, Paterson, New Jersey, 1935.

–Taken from the Reign of Mary Quarterly Magazine, Issue 123