NOTES
- F. Procter, A history of the Book of Common Prayer (revised and rewritten by W.H. Frere), 3rd impression, London: Macmillan, 1905, 522–523.
- Idem 550.
- Dom G. Dix, The shape of the liturgy (2nd ed.), London: A. & C. Black, 1945, 361–362.
- Idem 364. See also N.J. Abercrombie, ‘Alcuin and the text of Gregorianum: notes on Cambrai MS No. 164’, Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 4 (1953), 99–103.
- Celebrated at Jerusalem as early as the time of Egeria.
- Originally the Deposition of a relic of our Lady's veil in a church at Constantinople in 469; officially accepted at Rome only in 1389.
- Adopted at Rome, together with the Purification, under the Syrian pope Sergius I, ca. 700.
- Its dependence on the date of the Annunciation seems to suggest that it is a western feast (274 days occur from 25 March, the feast of Jesus' conception, to 25 December, the feast of his birth. 25 March is 183 days or six months after John's conception, cf. Lk. 1:26, ‘in the sixth month’; therefore John's conception took place on 23 September and his birth nine months or 274 days later, on 24 June). St. Augustine knew the feast in Africa as a ‘tradition of our forefathers’, which suggests a fourth-century date. A fifth-century inscription from Spain lists St. John the Baptist on 20 June. This seems to imply a nine-month period of 280 days rather than 274, so that the Annunciation would be on 19 March (hypothetical; it is not mentioned in the inscription. Today the feast of St. Joseph in some western calendars) and the conception of John on 13 September (also hypothetical as the inscription covers only the first half of the year, but intriguingly near to the turn of the year at Holy Cross Day).
- So called from the liturgical colours used: purple during Advent and Lent, green from the Octave of the Epiphany to Shrove Tuesday and from Trinity Sunday to Advent. Actually the period here examined includes ‘white’ (Eastertide) and ‘red’ (‘Pentecost’) periods.
- Two of the five Markan pericopes are unique to that gospel, namely 7:31–37 (the Ephphatha incident) on the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost and 16: 14–20 (the Longer Ending) on Ascension Day. In other words, for two of the five there was no parallel in the other synoptic gospels.
- I grant that this figure includes the Trinity gospel and the Corpus Christi gospel—both mediaeval additions to the sequence. I grant further that I give in the appendix the reading for Trinity Sunday from both the Book of Common Prayer (John) and from the Missal (Matthew).
- The Rogation, Whit Thursday, Whit Friday, Whit Saturday, Pentecost 1, Trinity 1 (from the Book of Common Prayer).
- Ascension Day.
- Trinity in the Missal. This feast is a mediaeval addition. The Book of Common Prayer gives a Johannine gospel (also a mediaeval addition) for Trinity.
- Whit Thursday, Whit Friday, Whit Saturday, the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fifteenth and Sixteenth Sundays after Pentecost, Ember Friday and Ember Saturday in September, and Trinity 1.
- The Fifth, Seventh, Fourteenth and (if it is counted here) Seventeenth Sundays after Pentecost.
- The Sixth and Eleventh Sundays after Pentecost, and Ember Wednesday in September.
- The Second Sunday in Advent, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima.
- The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost. The Johannine gospel for the Sunday Next before Advent in the Book of Common Prayer (from the Sarum Missal) is the second.
- Thursday after Lent 2, Saturday after Lent 2, Lent 3 and Monday after Lent 3.
- Friday after Lent 1 and Monday after Lent 2.
- The First Saturday in Lent.
- Thursday after Lent 3; Thursday after Lent 4; Thursday after Lent 5. The continuing irregularity of Lenten Thursdays should be noted; it will be commented upon below.
- Wednesday after Lent 3.
- Dix, op. cit. 354.
- Cf. Ex. 34:22; Lv. 23:15–16; Dt. 16:9–10.
- Octaves of Easter and Pentecost are known to the writer of the Apostolic Constitutions (VIII.22), and Egeria mentions an eight-day feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, presumably in September. (The day of the dedication of the church was, she says, the day the Cross was found). The Old Testament background to the keeping of octaves is clear.
- According to Dix, op. cit. 342, this practice probably dates back to the first part of the third century.
- This is the western date; some eastern calendars differ by a day or two. This feast was apparently (see note 27) observed in Jerusalem at the time of Egeria; it was accepted at Rome in the eighth century, according to Dix, op. cit. 358.
- E.g. by J. van Goudoever, Biblical calendars, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1961, 153, 210–214.