EVICTED SAINTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 May 1927, Page 4

EVICTED SAINTS

ST. VALENTINE & SANTA CLAUS

The changes in the Calendar of the new draft Prayer-Book are not so numerous as had been anticipated in some quarters. Twenty feasts given in the old Calendar 'are omitted, and twenty-eight new ones inserted the dates of three are changed; and two — St. Mary Magdalene and the Transfiguration —are prompted to the rank of “Red Letter Bays,” and provided for the first time with special Collects, Epistles and Gospels. The .only addition with a definite doctrinal significance is that of a Commemoration of All Souls on November 2, which follows on the approval of the principle of praying for the dead, which is indicated in other parts of the new book (says the “Observer"). The only feast suggested in the re port of the National Assembly which the “Bishops’ Book” has not. adopted is that of .the great scholastic philosopher. St. Thomas Aquinas, on March S. The “Green Book” put forth by the English Church Union, the principal Anglo-Catholic body, had suggested the addition of three more Redletter Days, all adopted from the Roman Calendar —St. Joseph, husband of the Blessed Virgin (March 19), the Palling Asleep of the Blessed Virgin (August 15), and the Commemoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the Feast known to Roman Catholics as Corpus Christi (Thursday after Trinity Sunday). These have not found favour in the eyes of the Bishops, presumably in view of their connection with the extreme Romanising section of the clergy. The “Green Book” also proposed a number of minor festivals which are not. adopted in the final draft, including those of King Charles t, St. Joan of Arc (surely her inclusion might have been a tardy recognition of error on the part of the country responsible for her martyrdom?), Dominic, St. Teresa, and St. Thomas a Becket, while objecting to the inI elusion might have been a tardy recognition of error on the part of the country responsible for her martyrdom?). Dominic,. St. Teresa, and St. Thomas a Becket, while objecting to the inclusion of King Alfred the Great, to whom the Bishops have assigned a commemoration on October 26. Most of the saints who have been evicted from the new calendar are of questionable historicity. The most familiar names among them are those of St. Valentine, said to have been a martyred Roman priest (not a bishop, as the old calendar called him), whose feast on February 1-1 became for some obscure reason—probably by connection with some forgotten pagan festival —the favoured day for the exchange of lovers’ greeting: St. Crispin, the patron of shoemakers; St. Catherine of Alexandria, a probably legendary virgin martyr whose torture on a spiked wheel is commemorated by the name of a certain variety of firework; and St. Nicholas, the “Santa Claus” of our childhood, and patron of sailors, pawnbrokers, and thieves.

The only native English saint to be dropped is Edward, the boy king who was murdered at Wareham, in Dorset, in 978 by the hifed assassins of his stepmother, and whose shrine at Shaftesbury was a famous resort of pilgrims in the Middle Ages. The feast on May 3, quaintly named the

"Invention” of the Cross, commemorating the discovery of the True Cross at Jerusalem by Helena, the Britishborn mother of the Emperor Constantine the Great, is excised. On glancing at the additions to the calendar one is first of all found wondering why nuuiy of them -were not made long ago. It will be a surprise to many that St. Patrick, the Apostle and Patron of Ireland, has not previously been named in the Prayer Book; and several other famous British saints, Wufstan of Worcester; Anskar, the first preacher of Christianity in Sweden; Cuthbert of Lindisfarne; Anselm, the greatest English theologian of the Middle Ages: Aidhelm of Sherborne; Columba of Iona; Oswald, the Northumbrian King; Ninian, the apostle of Galloway and the Pennine country; Aidan; Theodore of Tarsus, the Green-born Archbishop of Canterbury:; and Hilda, abbess of Whitby, are now commemorated for the first time. St. Thomas of Canterbury, the first saint to be removed from the Calendar by direct instruction of Henry VIII, has. however, I not regained his place. No attempt has been made to canonise modern Englishmen;; the only name not already generally recognised as that of a saint is Alfred the GreatSeveral figures famous in early church history have been allotted a place: among them Antony, the founder of monasticism in Egypt; Polycarp, the disciple of St. .John the Evangelist and Bishop of Smyrna; .John Chrysostom; Leo the Great, defender of Rome against Attila; Athanasius, the champion of orthodoxy in the face of Arianism: Monica, the gentle mother of St. Augustine: Basil;; Irenaeus of Lyons; Ignatius of Antroch. The Middle Ages give St. Catherine of Siena, the stigmatised ecstatic who did so much to bring to an end the “Bobylonish captivity” of the Popes at Avignon; Bernard of Clairvaux, the preacher of the Crusades; and, most beloved of saints, Francis of Assisi.

A perhaps unexpected name is that of Clement of Alexandria, an early Father not recognised as a saint by the Roman Church, and suspect of certrain heretical tendencies. An interesting innnovation is the establishment of a feast of “Saints, Martyrs, and Doctors of the Church of England,” on November 8.

The removal of St. Alban’s date from June 17 to June 22 rectifies, a queer error in the Calendar of 1662. The latter date was always accorded to St. Alban in pre-Reformation Calenlars, and in the modern Roman Calendar; and the best reason that has ever been found for the .assignment of the former day is that the Roman figures xxii were misread by (he compilers of the old Calendar as fcvii.