CALENDAR

The word calendar is derived from calendæ , the first day of the Roman month. Our calendar in the Prayer Book consists of several columns. The first shows the days of the month in their numerical order; the second contains the letters of the alphabet affixed to the days of the week; the third, as printed in the larger Common Prayer Books, (and as it ought to be in all,) has the calends, nones, and ides, which was the method of computation used by the old Romans and primitive Christians, and is still useful to those who read ecclesiastical history. The last four columns contain the course of le ons for morning and evening prayer for ordinary days throughout the year. The intermediate column, namely, the fourth, contains, together with the holy days observed by the Church of England, such Popish holy days as it was thought best to retain. The reasons why the names of these saints’ days and holy days were resumed into the calendar are various. Some of them being retained upon account of our courts of justice, which usually made their returns on these days, or else upon the days before or after them, which were called in the writs, Vigil. , Fest. , or Crast. , as in Vigil. Martin , Fest. Martin , Crast. Martin , and the like. Others are probably kept in the calendar for the sake of such tradesmen, handicraftsmen, and others, as are wont to celebrate the memory of their tutelar saints: as the “Welsh men do of St. David, the shoemakers of St. Crispin, . And again, churches being in several places dedicated to some or other of these saints, it has been the usual custom in such places to have wakes or fairs kept upon those days; so that the people would probably be displeased, if, either in this, or the former case, their favourite saint’s name should be left out of the calendar. Besides, the histories which were writ before the Reformation do frequently speak of transactions happening upon such a holy day, or about such a time, without mentioning the month, relating one thing to be done at Lammas-tide, and another about Martin mas, .; so that were these names quite left out of the calendar, we might be at a lo to know when several of these transactions happened. For this and the foregoing reasons our second reformers under Queen Elizabeth (though all those days had been omitted in both books of King Edward VI., excepting St. George’s day, Lammas day, St. Laurence, and St. Clement, which two last were in his Second Book) thought convenient to restore the names of them to the calendar, though not with any regard of being kept holy by the Church. For this they thought prudent to forbid, as well upon the account of the great inconveniency brought into the Church in the times of Popery, by the observation of such a number of holy days, to the great prejudice of labouring and trading men, as by reason that many of those saints they then commemorated were oftentimes men of none of the best characters. Besides, the history of these saints, and the accounts they gave of the other holy days, were frequently found to be feigned and fabulous. An effort to reform the calendar was made in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but was never carried into effect. By the acts 24 Geo. ii. c. 23, and 25 Geo. ii. c. 30, the calendar was reformed, and the new style introduced: in consequence of which the calendar (only so far as its astronomical errors were concerned) has attained to that form in which it is now prefixed to the Prayer Book. See Stephens’s Book of Common Prayer, with notes , where both the ancient and modern calendar are given at length.— Wheatly.