Feasts of November

Saint Mary church - x12th century, restored 1896-1903)
Source: Wolfgang Sauber, Wiki Commons 

Herewith a quick overview of this month's feasts, and a few notes on them.

Month of the Dead

The calendar includes two days of prayer for the dead this year: All Souls is celebrated on November 3 this year, due to the clash with a Sunday; while All Souls OSB is on November 14.  

But it is also traditional to pray for the dead outside of these days this month, and so do consider saying some or all of the Office of the Dead on other days if you can manage it! If you are interested, you can find notes on the psalms used in the Office of the Dead here. 

Matins reading cycle

November marks the resumption of weekday Scriptural readings in the Benedictine Office, with readings each day of the week from the book of Ezekiel (unless of course you are using an earlier breviary, in which case the Scriptural readings are supplanted by patristic readings on All Saints for the next week or so).

In the traditional Office, Matins is the main vehicle for reading of at least some (originally likely pretty much all) of most books of the Bible over the course of the year.  In St Benedict's original conception, the length of the readings steadily increased as the nights grew longer, as well as during Lent.  But from Easter until November, the Scriptural reading cycle was carried out on Sundays only, with only very short, fixed readings during summer and the months around it, in order to ensure the monk's got enough sleep.

Over time, however, the Scriptural reading cycle has been progressively squeezed out in favour of patristic readings either for particular seasons (such as Lent) or for feasts, Octaves  and Vigils. St Benedict did of course, prescribed patristic readings in the Office - but by way of commentary on the Scriptural readings, not as something separate from that.

One of the positive virtues of the 1962 breviary, in my view, is that it has pared back these incursions, many of which recycle the same short readings several times across the course of the year, at least somewhat, and given greater prominence to the ferial psalm and reading cycle as St Benedict intended it.

But those who wish can make their own judgments by reading through the assorted Patristic readings!

OSB Feasts

This month's calendar also includes an example of one of the more bizarre 'reforms' of 1962: the feast of a Benedictine saint, St Sylvester (founder of the Sylvestrine Congregation) with a lower ranking in the Benedictine calendar than the Roman!

There is an obvious rationale for reducing three Nocturn feasts to two Nocturn ones in the Benedictine Office.

But rather less of one, I think, for reducing some eighteen Class III equivalent feasts to memorials in 1962, particularly given that three of them related to Benedictine saints!

Fortunately the decree Cum Sanctissima allows for such feasts to be celebrated as Class III, and you can find the feasts for St Sylvester in the Brignoles version of the 1963 breviary on page 552*. 

Date	1960 Benedictine	1962 Roman (where different from the Benedictine)	1953 Benedictine	Ben Confed/ 2025 Roman (where extra/different)	Other
1	All Saints, Class I		All Saints	All Saints**
2	All Souls**(transferred to 3 November this year).	All Souls**	Octave of All Saints; Commemoration of All Souls
3	**	**	Octave of All Saints	St Martin de Porres
4	St Charles Borromeo, Memorial	St Charles Borromeo, Class III	Octave of All Saints; St Charles, Memorial
5			Octave of All Saints	St Willibrord OSB
6	Four Crowned Martyrs, Memorial		Octave of All Saints		Wales: All Saints of Wales
7			Octave of All Saints
8			Octave Day of All Saints; Four Crowned martrys, memorial
9	Dedication of the Lateran, Class II		Dedication of the Lateran; St Theodore, memorial
10	St Theodore, memorial	St Andrew Avellino, Class III		St Leo I (see 11 April in MD)
11	St Martin of Tours, Class II	St Martin of Tours, Class III	St Martin of Tours; St Mennas, Memorial
12	St Mennas, Memorial	St Martin I, Class III		St Theodore of Studis or St Josaphat
13	All Saints OSB, Class II	St Didacus, Class III			US: St Frances Xavier Cabrini, Class IIIAll
14	All Souls OSB, Class II	St Josaphat, Class III
15	St Albert the Great, Memorial	St Albert the Great, Class III	St Albert the Great, Class III (Duplex)
16		St Gertrude, Class III**	St Gertrude (see 17 November in MD)		St Margaret of Scotland
17	St Gertrude, Class II/III	St Gregory Thaumaturgis, Class III	St Margaret of Scotland or St Elizabeth of Hungary
18	Dedication of the Basilicas of SS Peter and Paul, Class III
19		St Elizabeth of Hungary, Class III	St Pontianus, Memorial	St Mechtilde
20		St Felix of Valois, Class III			St Edmund
21	Presentation of the BVM, Class III; St Columba, Memorial	Presentation of the BVM, Class III
22	St Caecilia, Class III		St Caecilia, Class II
23	St Clement, Class III: St Felicitas, Memorial**	St Clement, Class III: St Felicitas, Memorial**	St Clement, Class III: St Felicitas, Memorial
24	St John of the Cross and Chrysogonus, Memorials	St John of the Cross, Class III	St John of the Cross, Class III (duplex); St Chrysogonus, Memorials	SS Andrew Dung-Lac and the Vietnamese Martyrs or St Columba
25	St Catherine of Alexandria, Memorial	St Catherine of Alexandria, Class III
26	St Slyvester OSB, Memorial	St Slyvester, Class III	St Slyvester, Class III
27					Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal
28
29	St Saturninus, Memorial		Vigil of St Andrew; St Saturninus, Memoria		Blessed Andrew Whiting and companions OSB
30	St Andrew, Class II**		St Andrew

 **Not in 2025

The feast of St Ambrose and the recycling of responsories (Responsories Pt 4)

Late antique mosaic in St.Ambrogio church in Milan
Source: Wiki commons

St Ambrose

Today is the feast of St Ambrose, a wonderful saint, who Pope Benedict XVI, in a  General Audience you can read here credited with the introduction of lectio divina to the West.

One of his key works to this end is his commentary on Psalm 118, which has as its base a translation and adaption of Origen's (now lost except in the form of catena extracts) commentary on the longest of the psalms, which had also been translated into Latin (with some amendments) independently by St Hilary of Poitiers a few decades earlier.  

St Ambrose's commentary though, is some four times larger than St Hilary's version, expanded by instruction on lectio divina; its links to contemplation through an embedded commentary on the Song of Songs; as well as an extended discussion of humility that may have influenced the ordering of the twelve steps of humility in the Rule as well as the organisation of  Psalm 118 in the Benedictine Office (1). 

The responsories and memory

I hope to come back to St Ambrose's influence on St Benedict in due course, but today I want to continue my discussion of the responsory repertoire of Matins, picking up from the point I made yesterday about it being a largely oral repertoire for several centuries.

One of the key questions for the responsories is, what strategies did monks use to maintain the repertoire?

Memorising

Most people's memories in late antiquity were, of course, much better trained than ours.  Monks for example, were expected to memorise the entire psalter and be able to sing it from memory.  

But then as now, some found it much easier to do than others.  There are two nice saint's stories that draw out just how major an undertaking this could be.   Many monks could learn the psalter in a year or so.  St Alexander the Sleepless, however, a Syrian monk who eventually ended up in Constantinople, and famous for the perpetual liturgy he established there, which involved shifts of monks,  apparently took seven years to learn the psalter, because, his biographer tells us, he insisted on knowing their meanings as he learnt them (2).

Similarly, when the seventh century Northumbrian monk (later bishop) St Wilfrid decided to make a pilgrimage to Rome, he first headed for Kent, where he spent a year relearning the psalter according to the version in use in Rome, as he had previously learnt St Jerome's other translation (3).

Collective memory

Even with this effort though, it is unlikely that all monks learnt all of the responsories.

Monks generally learned large chunks of Scripture by heart for example, but some early sources suggest that different monks in a community would learn different sections of Scripture, and then would be responsible for those particular readings in the Office.  Over time of course, greater availability of books, certainly implied by St Benedict's Rule, probably reduced the need for this.  But something similar could well have occurred with responsories, with different monks responsible for maintaining different parts of the repertoire.

The other key factor in their maintenance though, was the repurposing of  responsories for different feasts and occasions.

'Stock' responsories (1) The saints

For feasts like today's of St Ambrose, for example, there are actually no responsories specific to the saint in the Roman or Benedictine Offices even today.  Instead, the responsories linked to the feast are those of the 'Common of a confessor bishop and doctor'.

Similarly, two of today's 'Advent' responsories actually are actually also used on the feast of the Annunciation, possibly remnants of the original placement of this feast before Christmas rather than in March.

This practice of reusing responsories for different feasts is nicely attested to by a ninth century antiphoner from Prüm dating from the 860s which represents the earliest surviving Benedictine antiphoner, and which Todd Mattingly has argued is derived from a now lost exemplar that was intended to serve as a kind of how to say the Benedictine (rather than Roman) Office starter-kit, including where to source the additional responsories needed, such as from the various Commons (4).

Properization?

And unlike the Mass, where 'properization' (fixing of texts to particular feasts) seems to have largely finalised by at least the eighth century (and probably a lot earlier for many days), there seems to have been a great deal more flexibility around which responsories were used and when until quite late, probably reflecting that earlier reliance on memory and perhaps dependence on the availability of particular singers for particular chants.

The late tenth century Hartker MSS, for example, gives a choice of fourteen different responsories for the common of a confessor, for example, two more than could ever be needed.  By contrast, it only lists three responsories for the feast of All Saints.  That doesn't mean that only three responsories were said however - even in the 1960 version, the feast  has only two unique responsories; the rest are drawn from the feasts of various saints and from the commons.

All of this has important implications for the history of the Office, not least because several historians have pointed to the lack of a sufficient number of responsories in early antiphoners as a key plank for their claims that the Benedictine Office was not said in Gaul or Anglo-Saxon England until the tenth century, and that the Carolingian reforms aimed at imposing the Rule and Office on all monks were probably never fully implemented in practice (5).

But more on this anon.

Missus est angelus

In the meantime, enjoy this version of one of today's responsories, also used for the feast of the Annunciation:

R. Missus est / Gábriel Angelus ad Maríam Vírginem desponsátam Ioseph, † núntians ei verbum; et expavéscit Virgo de lúmine: † ne tímeas, María, invenísti grátiam apud Dóminum: * Ecce concípies, et páries, † et vocábitur Altíssimi Fílius. V. Dabit ei Dóminus Deus sedem David, patris eius, et regnábit in domo Iacob in ætérnum. R. Ecce concípies, et páries, † et vocábitur Altíssimi Fílius.

R. The Angel Gabriel was sent to Mary, a Virgin espoused to Joseph, to bring unto her the word of the Lord, and when the Virgin saw the light, she was afraid. Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace from the Lord. * Behold, thou shalt conceive and bring forth a son, and He shall be called the Son of the Highest. V. The Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. R. Behold, thou shalt conceive, and bring forth a son, and He shall be called the Son of the Highest.

You can find a copy of the chant setting here.

Notes

1.  For a discussion of the differences between Hilary and Ambrose's translations, with comparisons to the Palestinian catena, see Isabella Image, The Human Condition in Hilary of Poitiers The Will and Original Sin between Origen and Augustine, Oxford, 2017.

2.  Translations of the Life of St Alexander the Sleepless can be found in Daniel Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity, University of California Press, 2002, pp 250 - 280 and Jean-marie Baguendard (trans), Les Moines acémètes, Vies des Saints Alexandre, Marcel et Jean Calybite, Bellefintaine, 1988.

3. Eddius Stephanus, Life of Wilfrid.  A translation by J F Webb is available in Penguin under the title the Age of Bede.  It is not clear that Wilfrid needed the entire year to relearn the psalter - his hagiographer claims he was held up in Kent in part by the need to find a satisfactory escort  and obtain royal permission for his departure.  But as Susan Rankin pointed out in 'Singing the Psalter in the Early Middle Ages' (in Daniel J Di Censo and Rebecca Maloy eds, Chant, Liturgy and the Inheritance of Rome Essays in Honour of Joseph Dyer, London 2017), it was not simply a matter of learning the variant texts, but also absorbing differences in how the psalms were divided into verses and sub-divided for pause places.

4. Todd Matthew Mattingly, "Trier Stadtbibliothek 1245/597:A Ninth-Century Antiphoner and the Conciliar Origins of the Monastic Office", paper given at the Leeds Medieval Congress, July 2014.

5.  Anne Walters Robertson, The Service-Books of the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis Images of Ritual and Music in the Middle Ages,  Oxford, 1991; Jesse Billett, The Divine Office in Anglo-Saxon England, 597-c.1000. London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 2014.

St Martin of Tours and the missing monastic saints of the Office

Shield, on the medieval city walls of Aigues-Mortes, depicting St-Martin dividing his cloak with the beggar.
Source: Wikicommons, photo by Ad Meskens

I want to draw your attention to one of the oddities of the Benedictine sanctoral calendar, namely its longstanding decidedly un-monastic focus.

St Martin, as I've written previously is a wonderful saint, and one certainly worth celebrating.

Feast rankings

The ranking of the feast as Class II in the 1960 monastic calendar though, is something of an oddity, since St Martin is the only non-Benedictine monastic saint to be accorded this level of feast in the 1960 monastic calendar, and the feast is ranked only as a Class III one in the Roman calendar.

All of the other feasts of monastic saints of the same rank (duplex majus) in the previous versions of the calendar - such as those of St Basil the Great and St Augustine - were downgraded to Class III feasts rather than Class I or II, when translated into the 1960 calendar.

The rationale for the reduction of feasts to Class III is, I think, fairly obvious and understandable.  In the Roman Office, whose calendar the Benedictine has largely mimicked since Trent, there was a huge incentive to add more feasts, since festal Matins in the Roman Office was significantly shorter than the ferial version, with nine psalms said rather than twelve.

In the Benedictine Office, though, the effect of higher level feasts is diametrically opposite: the length of the already relatively long Night Office more than doubles.  Instead of one or three readings, Matins of Class II feasts has twelve readings and responsories, as well as an extra Nocturn made up of three canticles, two extra hymns (the Te Deum and Te decet laus) are added, as well as a gospel reading.

Why then did St Martin escape the reforms?

Monastic saints in the Benedictine calendar

In general the monastic calendar gives pretty short shrift to most monastic saints, Benedictine or otherwise. 

Although the key later medieval founders of religious institutes are generally well-presented in the calendar, many key earlier monastic saints are missing altogether.  St Pachomius, for example, was only added to the monastic calendar (as a memorial) in 1960; St John Cassian, though long listed in the martyrology (and present in some of the earliest, such as that associated with St Bede) for July 23, still does not feature in the calendar at all.

Even Benedictine saints are sparsely represented in the General Calendar - very few of the Order's wealth of saints are actually included at all, and even where they are, there are cases where they are actually ranked lower than in the Roman calendar.

St Benedict aside, the only monastic saints ranked Class II (or above) are St Scholastica (St Benedict's twin sister), St Gregory the Great (author of the Life of St Benedict) and, in the case of woman's monasteries only, St Gertrude the Great.

Trent and local traditions

This lack of emphasis on monastic saints did not actually originate in 1960 or even 1913, date of the previous major cull of the Benedictine calendar, though those purges certainly exacerbated the problem.

Rather, as far as I can see, the issue is a longstanding one, dating back, as far as I can see to the post Tridentine breviaries, which, as part of the counter-reformation purge of saints and imposition of a uniform calendar, largely wiped out a great wealth of monastic feasts and local cults to be found in medieval calendars.

Instead, the Breviaries of Paul V and Urban VIII largely mirrored the Roman calendar, albeit with a few supplemental feasts and approvals for saints particular to congregations and monasteries.

St Martin and St Benedict

The reason for the prominence given to St Martin in the 1960 calendar presumably goes firstly to the fact that St Benedict dedicated a chapel to the saint at Monte Cassino and secondly to his status as a soldier-saint (given the soldiers of Christ imagery in the Benedictine Rule).

The connection between the two saints seems to have continued in Rome as well, since one of the four monasteries, almost certainly Benedictine, that supported St Peter's basilica in the mid seventh century, was dedicated to St Martin.

St Martin's prominence in a 1960s era calendar though, is a little surprising since St Benedict's reason for dedicating a chapel to him was probably to highlight his own adoption of St Martin's (very un-PC) activist missionary approach, which included converting pagan temples, as St Benedict also did at Monte Cassino, into monasteries and churches.

St Martin, though, was an extremely popular saint throughout the middle ages, and an influential model referred to in many early rules and monastic texts, almost displacing (or at least equaling references to St Antony) in the West.  

Martinian monasticism

Missionary activity aside though, St Martin's form of monasticism seems to have been very different in character to that promoted by St Benedict.

Although RB 1980, written some forty years ago now, could claim that the monastic life as lived in late antiquity was pretty much the same everywhere, few historians would accept that today.

Rather, historians are rediscovering, for late antiquity, the existence of what modern catholics would call distinct charisms - quite diverse forms of monastic life founded on very different theological and spiritual principles.

Where St Benedict, for example, advocated manual work, and encouraged his monks to try and support themselves as far as possible, St Martin's monks followed an entirely different branch of monastic theology, and did no manual work at all (the exception was that junior monks only were allowed to copy manuscripts).

Similarly, when it comes to the liturgy, the two approaches seem to have been very different.  

St Benedict followed St Augustine in urging that prayer be frequent (RB 4), short but fervent (RB 19) rather than literally continuous.   St Benedict's Office probably took up somewhere between four and eight hours a day; by contrast St Martin's seems to have been very long indeed, swallowing up most of the monastic day and night.  

Indeed, even once Cassian's advocacy for a twelve psalm maximum for an hour of the Office had spread to Tours, the 567 Synod of Tours rather creatively reinterpreted the 'Rule of the Angel' as setting a minimum number of psalms rather than a maximum 'out of honour and reverence' for St Martin! 

Influences on St Benedict?

On the face of it, then, if you were thinking about which (if any) pre-Benedictine monastic saints merited Class II status in the Benedictine calendar, I for one would be inclined to place St Basil the Great and St Augustine higher on my list.  

That said, the life of St Martin is certainly an inspiring one, both as a model of charity, of determination to confront, combat and convert both pagans and Arian heretics, and as a monastic founder.

St Romuald OSB (June 19; Feb 7)

Fr Angelico

Today is the feast of St Romuald in some calendars - in the 1962 calendar his feast is celebrated in Febuary, but he actually died on June 19 and his feast has been restored to the date in most modern calendars.  The Martyrology says:

At Ravenna, St. Romuald, anchoret, founder of the monks of Carnaldoli, who restored and greatly extended monastic discipline, which was much relaxed in Italy. He is also mentioned on the 7th of February.

You can read more about the saint here.