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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

On Sunday, 17. June 2007, at 3:12 pm, someone using the name of John Briggs wrote:

> 
> John Dillon wrote:
> >
> > Today (17. June) was also long the feast day of:
> >
> > Botulph (d. c. 670).  B. is a well known English saint not appearing
> > either in the RM or in the "Calendar of saints (Church of England)"
> > page at:
> > http://tinyurl.com/39jchm
> > Whereas the latter is merely part of the Wikipedia and as such not
> > particularly authoritative, a limited consultation of other calendars
> > of churches in the Anglican family has failed to reveal evidence of
> > B.'s being celebrated liturgically now.  Nor does he appear in the
> > current Roman Catholic national calendar for England:
> > http://www.catholic-ew.org.uk/cn/00/000829a.htm
> 
> None of which is of the faintest relevance to this list, which is, I 
> would 
> respectfully point out, devoted to medieval religion.

But this cannot have been the same John Briggs who as recently as 15. June 2007 wrote:

> John Dillon wrote:
>>
>> Today (14. June) is the feast day of:

> Basil [moved to 2 Jan in 1969, presumably because the Orthodox have him on 1
> Jan...]

or the same John Briggs who on 30. May 2005 responded to Phyllis Jestice as follows:

> Phyllis Jestice wrote:
>>
>> Today (31. May) is the feast day of:

>> Petronilla

> Whether she still appears anywhere in any calendar is anyone's guess! 

or the John Briggs who on numerous other occasions has enriched this list with unsolicited observations and queries about the modern celebration of various saints of the day, to say nothing of further occasions when in response to utterances by others he has made observations of a like nature rather than observing silence in accordance with the view of relevance to this list expressed above.

To repeat a statement immediately following the matter quoted by the John Briggs of 17. June 2007, "Hence my reluctance to include [Botulph] in a presentation headed "Today ... _is_ the feast day of" (emphasis added),..."  As one knows or could easily ascertain, this list's formulaic introduction to the feature once known as "FEAST" and now as "saints of the day" has always employed this present-tense form of the verb "to be".  If the formula itself is relevant to this list (and numerous contributors over the years seem certainly to have thought so), then an occasional consideration of its accuracy in a particular instance is surely not irrelevant.

Best again,
John Dillon 

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