>On Mon, 23 Nov 1998 [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>The reason I enquired about this is because the 13th-century Ordinary
>of Chartres Cathedral that I usually check with Carolyn Muessig's
>very interesting postings has St Columbanus celebrated with 3 lessons
>on 21 November. I thought, as well, that that is where Butler has
>it, too, but I could be mistaken. And voila, here it has turned
>up on Carolyn's posting for 23 Nov. Are there many feast days that
>have changed since the Middle Ages?
Short reply: Overall, surprisingly few.
Long reply: Liturgical calendars are living documents. A comparison
of _Missale Romanum_ (Editio Princeps) and the _Missale Romanum_ of 1962
shows that the General Roman Calendar had been fairly stable from its
general promulgation after the Council of Trent (1571 if memory serves)
until the revisions of 1970, which were extensive. As a child I remember
having to reconstruct it from memory for a couple of exams. I am
travelling today and don't have books at hand to give you a count, but
there were a significant number of sanctoral feasts moved and removed in
1970. The intent was to make use of the latest and greatest scholarship
to simplify, remove accretions, clear the Lenten season (e.g., St.
Thomas moves from his _dies obitus_, 7Mar, to 28Jan), and restore feasts
to a date as close to the _dies natalis_ (=_dies obitus_ except for
Jesus, Mary and John Baptist) as possible. (Many feasts had been set on
a day of special meaning for the saint, e.g., translation of relics.) As
one might expect from such an extensive set of changes, there is a
mixture of good and bad.
Particular Calendars are, of course, another matter. They have
changed more often, even disappearing altogether as local churches
adopted --by choice or otherwise-- the Generale or some other calendar,
or as the group (usually a religious community) to whom the calendar had
been granted dissolved. Also, particular calendars can add and move
feasts more easily, it being easier for them to get Curial approval. (Or
at least it was prior to Pius IX.) Although the 1970 revised Generale
was intended to be a model, many of the changes in the 1970 Generale can
still be found in place in particular calendars. Since only a small
number of feasts appear in the Generale, most feasts remain fixed in the
tradition from which they were born.
There is gradually appearing now a new (12 vols, one per month)
edition of Butler's that follows (more or less) the new Calendar and
makes claims to be more historically accurate --debatable words, those--
than previous Butler's editions. If revisions to other texts are any
indications, much material that is useful and interesting to
understanding medieval culture and history will be removed as
'unhistorical' or 'irrelevant.' So the previous editions of Butler's
will remain useful.
Have been curious what will be done in the expected revised
_Martyrologium_, which has yet to appear. Will the dates and feasts map
to the new Calendar? Or will it remain closer to its roots as a
necrology and use the 'traditional' dates?
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