medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear John,
There is a good chapter on the feast of the Transfiguration in R.W. Pfaff, New
Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England, pp. 12-39. Calixtus's official
promulgation of the feast in, as Pfaff says, 1457 only formalized long-standing
custom. The eastern church celebrated the Transfiguration on or around 6 Aug.
from the early Middle Ages, perhaps as early as the 4th century. "There is no clear
evidence that the Western observance was directly borrowed from, or dependent
on, the East, except probably in the matter of date." The earliest western use of the
story is as the gospel for Ember Saturday in Lent; this as early as Leo the Great in
the 5th century. That is rather curiously close to its post-Reformation date. As for
how it moved to August from there, Pfaff talks of the tendency of transferring
commemorations falling in Lent to another time. There's a lot more, but the feast
seems to have become widespread in Europe during the 12th century. For the rest,
I refer you to Pfaff, since I'm a bit out of my depth in discussing the liturgy.
Cheers,
Jim Bugslag
On 4 Aug 2006 at 16:56, John Wickstrom wrote:
>
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Dear List members,
>
> One of my many small unanswered questions: why was the feast of the Transfiguration
> celebrated on August 6th: I see on line that it was placed there definitively for the western
> church by Pope Calixtus III to celebrate a Christian victory over the Turks, 6 August,
> 1456.
> However, this date (and a few others, equally mysterious) seems to have predated
> Calixtus's designation by some centuries. Does anyone know why this particular date was
> originally widely used?
> (I've always thought that the Reformation, in moving the day to the Sunday before Lent,
> made one of its few admirable liturgical changes).
> thanks,
> JBW
>
>
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