All Saints, All Souls and their accompanying days* Updated

October 31 marks the start of several days that have been the subject of considerable liturgical change, both over the centuries and more recently, so I thought it might be of interest to list out the various days, and provide some notes or link on their history for those interested.

The relevant days are:  

Feast or day	Instituted	Abolished or modified
Vigil of all Saints	In the Office: Breviary of 1568	1955
All Saints	Disputed: 13 May 608 (dedication of Pantheon) later transferred to November, and/or 735 (Dedication of Oratory in St Peter’s) made general in 835.	na
Commemoration of All Souls	C9th (originally Cluniac)	1960 changes to all hours instead of saying Office of Dead in addition to Office of Octave
Octave of All Saints	C1471-84	1955
All Saints OSB	?
All Soul’s OSB	1918	As for all Souls

 The Vigil (suppressed in the 1962 books)

There is a useful article on this from a few years back by Gregory di Pippio, on the  New Liturgical Movement Blog.

The key points he makes are that marking Vigils in the Office (as opposed to the Mass, and by fasting and/or abstinence) is (largely) a post-Tridentine innovation, and in some ways an odd one given that the Mass of the Vigil was traditionally celebrated after None. 

At the day hours, the only change was in the collect used.

The Feast of All Saints

The traditional explanation for the origin of this feast, repeated in many early sources, gives it a Byzantine origin, translated to the West in the dedication of the Pantheon in May 608, and then transferred to November in the eighth century.

Mr di Pippio has suggested an alternative explanation, which you can read here and here, suggesting it was instituted as a counter to the heresy of iconoclasm. 

It is certainly a plausible explanation though I tend to think that it could be a case of both explanations being true: a feast originally more limited in scope later repurposed in response to a particular need.

Commemoration of All Souls

 All Souls was originally a Benedictine (Cluniac) innovation, though it quickly gained popularity and spread.  

Earlier versions of the Monastic Office had the office of the Octave day, with the Office of the Dead said in addition to that.  The 1950 breviary, though, changed that to the current integration of the Office of the Dead into all hours (though some monasteries do retain the earlier practice),

You can read more about the history of the day here.

The Octave of the feast

The addition of an Octave to All Saints dates from the fifteenth century, and was abolished in 1955.  

I'm always torn between enjoying the Matins readings for octaves, while believing that the ancient Scriptural sequence should generally have precedence - so the best solution is to read them outside the office in my view!  If you don't have a copy of the Liturgical Readings volume, you can find most of them on Divinum Officium (select a pre 1955 office version).

Feasts of all Saints and All Soul's OSB

All Soul's OSB is an early twentieth century addition.

I haven't been able to track how far back All Saints of the Benedictine Order goes, but there were certainly votive offices of All Saints used in various places from at least the twelfth century, but they had a mixed fate!   There are equivalent feasts for many religious orders, and for some regions.

*Update: A reader has also alerted me to a note in The Saint Andrew Daily Missal (page 44 of the section near the end entitled "Supplement for the order of St. Benedict"), which says:

"Up to the end of the sixteenth century, there was no general feast of this name for the whole Order since the "Order of St. Benedict", in the modern sense, was unknown. In individual monasteries, as Monte Cassino, Cluny, Fontenelli, etc., a feast of all the saints proper to the monastery was observed on different dates; only by the revision of the monastic Breviary by Paul V., in 1621, a general feast of All holy Monks of the Order was instituted on the above date."

While I'm not quite convinced of the claim about the status of the 'Order' per se (it still isn't really an order in the traditional sense, but there was certainly earlier regional and papal legislation specifically directed at the 'Black Monks'), the explanation for when a general feast was instituted sounds plausible!