Thecalendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing aliturgical year by associating each day with one or moresaints and referring to the day as thefeast day orfeast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context does not mean "a large meal, typically a celebratory one", but instead "an annual religious celebration, a day dedicated to a particular saint".[1]
The system rose from the early Christian custom of commemorating eachmartyr annually on the date of their death, their birth into heaven, a date therefore referred to inLatin as the martyr'sdies natalis ('day of birth'). In theEastern Orthodox Church, a calendar of saints is called aMenologion.[2] "Menologion" may also mean a set of icons on which saints are depicted in the order of the dates of their feasts, often made in two panels.
As the number of recognized saints increased duringLate Antiquity and the first half of theMiddle 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 different feast days in different calendars. For example, saintsPerpetua and Felicity died on 7 March, but this date was later assigned to St.Thomas Aquinas, allowing them only a commemoration (seeTridentine calendar), so in 1908 they were moved one day earlier.[3] When the 1969 reform of the Catholic calendar moved him to 28 January, they were moved back to 7 March (seeGeneral Roman Calendar). Both days can thus be said to be their feast day, in different traditions. TheGeneral Roman Calendar, which list those saints celebrated in the entire church, contains only a selection of the saints for each of its days. A fuller list is found in theRoman Martyrology, and some of the saints there may be celebrated locally.
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."[4] SaintMartin of Tours is said to be the first[5][6] 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 asVirgin,Pastor,Bishop,Monk,Priest, Founder,Abbot, Apostle, andDoctor of the Church.
TheTridentine Missal hascommon formulæ 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. The1962 Roman Missal of Pope John XXIII omitted the common of Apostles, assigning a proper Mass to every feast day of an Apostle. The presentRoman 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).
Thiscalendar system, when combined with majorchurch 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 ofSaint Martin".
As different Christian jurisdictions parted ways theologically, differing lists of saints began to develop. This happened because the same individual may be considered differently by one church; in extreme examples, one church's saint may be another church's heretic, as in the cases ofNestorius,Pope Dioscorus I of Alexandria, orArchbishop Flavian of Constantinople.
In theCatholic Church feast days are ranked in accordance with their importance. In the post-Vatican II form of theRoman Rite, feast days are ranked (in descending order of importance) assolemnities, feasts ormemorials (obligatory or optional).[7]Pope John XXIII's 1960Code of Rubrics, whose use remains authorized by themotu proprioSummorum Pontificum, divides liturgical days into I, II, III, and IV class days. Those who use even earlier forms of the Roman Rite rank feast days as doubles (of three or four kinds), Semidoubles, and Simples. SeeRanking of liturgical days in the Roman Rite.
In theEastern Orthodox Church the ranking of feasts varies from church to church. In theRussian Orthodox Church they are:Great Feasts, middle, and minor feasts. Each portion of such feasts may also be called feasts as follows:All-night vigils,Polyeleos,Great Doxology, Sextuple ("sixfold", having sixstichera atVespers and sixtroparia at theCanon ofMatins). There are also distinctions between Simple feasts and double (i.e., two simple feasts celebrated together). In Double Feasts, the order of hymns and readings for each feast are rigidly instructed inTypikon, the liturgy book.
TheLutheran Churches celebrate Festivals, Lesser Festivals, Days of Devotion, and Commemorations.[8]
In theChurch of England, mother Church of theAnglican Communion, there arePrincipal Feasts andPrincipal Holy Days,Festivals,Lesser Festivals, andCommemorations.
Before the advent ofstandardized naming of tropical storms and hurricanes in theNorth Atlantic basin,tropical storms andhurricanes that affected the island ofPuerto Rico were informally named after the Catholic saints corresponding to the feast days when the cyclones either made landfall or started to seriously affect the island. Examples include: the 1780 San Calixto hurricane (more widely known as theGreat Hurricane of 1780, the deadliest in the North Atlantic basin'srecorded history; named afterPope Callixtus I (Saint Callixtus), whose feast day is October 14),[9] the1867 San Narciso hurricane (named after SaintNarcissus of Jerusalem, feast day October 29),[9] the1899 San Ciriaco hurricane (the deadliest in the island's recorded history;Saint Cyriacus, August 8),[9][10] the1928 San Felipe hurricane (the strongest in terms of measured wind speed;Saint Philip, father of SaintEugenia of Rome, September 13),[9] and the1932 San Ciprian hurricane (Saint Cyprian, September 26).[9]
This practice continued until quite some time after theUnited States Weather Bureau (now called the National Weather Service) startedpublishing and using official female human names (initially; male names were added starting in 1979 after the NWS relinquished control over naming to theWorld Meteorological Organization). The last two usages of this informal naming scheme in Puerto Rico were in 1956 (Hurricane Betsy, locally nicknamed Santa Clara after SaintClare of Assisi, feast day August 12 back then; her feast day was advanced one day in 1970) and 1960 (Hurricane Donna, nicknamed San Lorenzo after SaintLawrence Justinian, September 5 back then; feast day now observed January 8 byCanons regular of St.Augustine).[9]
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