Monthly Archives: February 2010

Prayerbook Appreciation: The Fundamentals

Scott once referred to this blog jokingly as the ’79 Prayer Book Society and it does have a certain truth to it. As much as I love my medieval liturgies, I pray from the ’79 BCP at least twice a day (or at least intend to…).

For Episcopalians, the ’79 BCP is the book that we have. It’s not perfect, it’s not the prayer book of my dreams, but it’s Pretty Darn Good. Furthermore, it’s in the canons. As Christopher and bls have pointed out, having a set text may seem boring to some, but it is also a contract and a form of protection for the laity. Respect for the BCP on the part of the clergy is a act of respect towards the people in the pews. Endless clerical tinkering and liturgical innovation—particularly those changes done in the name of inclusivity and egalitarianism—are simply new expressions of the old disease of clericalism. If the sign out front says “Episcopal,” then the liturgy celebrated inside should be found within the book. This is our liturgical text—period.

However…that period isn’t quite as solid as it sounds. For a number of reasons, most of them good, the ’79 BCP is a very gracious and permissive book, allowing quite a number of options within its core liturgies. “May” and “or” are frequently used words.

If consistency and coherency are to be honored as an act of honoring the whole congregation, of providing what the laity have come to expect and aiding in the process of liturgical formation, are there fundamental principles that we can use to determine which options we select and how we fill in these blanks the the BCP allows? Yes and no.

On one hand, No—there’s no one size that fits all. The generosity is there for a reason. Given the three great traditions within the Episcopal Church and the myriad subgroupings therein, one set of rules for all completely defeats the purpose of the book and would, in any case, be roundly ignored anyway.

On the other hand, Yes—in the name of consistency and coherency, I believe that it is incumbent upon congregations to develop a sense of themselves and their patterns in and with this book. Congregations, their constituent members, and like-minded comrades should have a sense of how they regard the book, how they understand its options, and why they make the choices they make.

What I propose, then, is to think through some fundamentals in regard to the use of and formation in and through the ’79 BCP. I’m a layperson myself, so there’s obviously nothing official in these thoughts; they’ll be directly actionable only in that they reflect what I’m hoping to embody in and through the St Bede’s Breviary and related materials. I’m not trying to set anybody straight or to come up with one rule to rule them all—as the foregoing statements ought to make clear.

All that having been said, I’ll begin with a few axioms concerning what the BCP is that we can return to for guidance along the way.

  • Axiom 1: The 1979 American Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church is a legitimate heir of the Western Liturgical Tradition especially as read through the reforming work of the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council.

That is, somebody didn’t just sit down and make up the BCP. It stands in organic continuity with the wider Western (and preeminently catholic) understandings of what the Mass, Office, and other liturgies are and contain. While there is a family resemblance between the texts of the current BCP and the classical Western liturgical texts, the similarities are closest between this BCP and the liturgies as reformed by Vatican II. Indeed, both the Vatican II liturgies and the ’79 BCP (and a host of other recent protestant liturgies including the now superseded Lutheran Book of Worship, the current PCUSA Book of Common Worship, and the United Methodist Hymnal and Book of Worship) all drew from the ecumenical Liturgical Renewal Movement. Whatever one thinks of Vatican II—and I think a number of things, not all flattering—Roman Catholics must recognize it as an authoritative Council and, pragmatically, its changes are magisterial teachings implemented in all but the most recalcitrant Roman parishes today.

  • Axiom 2: The 1979 American Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church is a legitimate heir of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer tradition rooted in the original prayer books of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, and mediated by such notable ancestors as the 1637 Scottish (Laudian) BCP, the 1662 English BCP, and the American 1928 BCP.

Yes, there are changes, yes, Cranmer would be less than thrilled at our current Daily Office Lectionary, but nonetheless, there’s no doubt that this volume is, in fact, a Book of Common Prayer.

This axiom both builds on and says something different from the one before it. On one hand, Anglican is an acknowledged subset of the great Western Liturgical Tradition. On the other, there are distinctive Anglican practices and theologies (a “patrimony” for lack of a better word…) embedded within it.

  • Axiom 3: Adherence to the BCP is a spiritual discipline intended to form those who pray it into certain liturgical, theological, and devotional patterns that express the Christian life as Anglicans have received it. It offers a rule of life simple enough for all Episcopalians to embrace it.

The point is for the liturgy to change you, not for you to change the liturgy. Don’t mess with what you don’t fully understand—and there aren’t many Episcopal clergy I know who I’d say fully understand this stuff. (And, oddly, you won’t catch most of them trying to make changes to it either. Hmmm…)

Next: A set of Principles moving from the Axioms

Jerome: On the Illustrious Men

There’s really no text that lays out who the Fathers of the Church are better than the catalog of ecclesiastical authors by Jerome and Gennadius, On the Illustrious Men (De Viris Illustribus).

Jerome wrote around 392 and Gennadius added on around 480. So—if one wished to follow Lancelot Andrewes’s dictum concerning the sources of Anglican theology, Gennadius’s addition pretty much covers it. Too, this was the main source of data for medieval authors on who the Fathers were. All in all, it’s a key text.

Here’s my version. It’s not pretty, but it gets the job done. Pretty may come later…

Scripture Interpreting Scripture

A number of things have floated across recently including this discussion of English Mass Propers at PrayTell, the appearance of this classic set of Anglo-Catholic Minor Propers and Gospel Canticle Antiphons materials at NLM, and the discussion below and attending link.

Particularly in terms of the discussion at the last link, at Fr. Gregory’s blog, one way to construe the discussion is as the Office either/or; a protestant approach tends to privilege the encounter with Scripture, while the catholic approach tends to privilege the encounter with interpretation. My research indicates that it’s not an either/or but polarities on a sliding scale.

Psalm and Gospel Canticles in the Offices and the Minor Propers in the Mass occupy a particular position  that splits the difference. (We could also throw in Matins responsaries, particularly those of the Temporale but as these are less familiar to most moderns, I’ll leave them aside for now…) That is, these materials are predominately scriptural and yet their function is interpretive.

I’ve suggested before that there are three fundamental mechanisms by which interpretation occurs within the liturgy. Here’s how I’ve spoken about that elsewhere:

I’d like to focus today on three major methods through which the liturgy interprets Scripture: discursive analysis, selection, and pregnant juxtaposition. Discursive analysis appears in composed liturgical texts like prayers, gospel antiphons, proper prefaces, hymns and homilies. This is where a liturgical text explicitly makes an interpretive move—often applying some point from a Scriptural text to the congregation in a moral or typological sense. Examples of this  include the Proper Preface and Benedictions from the Leofric Missal:

From the Proper Preface for Lent I:

…through Jesus Christ our Lord who, for a period of forty days and nights, dedicated this fast—but without hungering. Afterwards he did hunger, not for the food of humans, but their salvation; nor did he lust after dishes of worldly foods, but desired more the sanctification of souls. For his food is the redemption of the people, his food is the complete devotion of a good will. It is he who teaches us not to work for bread alone from which one receives transitory sustenance but it is he himself from which one receives the lesson of the divine Scriptures. Through whom…

(Missal of Robert of Jumièges & the Leofric Missal)

From the Benedictions for Lent I:

May the Omnipotent God bless you (pl.), he who consecrated for the fast the number forty through Moses and Elijah and likewise our mediator [Christ], and grant you (pl) accordingly to steward this present life like the denarius received from the master of the household as a reward, traversing through to the forgiveness of all sins and to the glorious resurrection with all of the saints. Amen.

And may he give you (pl.) the spiritual power of the invincible weapons [cf. 2 Cor 6:7]—which is the example of the Lord—that you may mightily subdue the exceedingly keen temptations of the ancient enemy. Amen.

In him in whom a man may not live on bread alone, but in all the words that proceed from his mouth receive spiritual food, through the observation of this fast and the example of other good works, may we be worthy to attain to the imperishable crown of glory. Amen.

(Leofric Missal)

Homilies clearly fall into this category even though we don’t always consider them as textual elements of liturgies.

Selection is a broad category that ranges from highlighting individual verses—say, for use as Little Chapters at Vespers or Lauds—to identifying large chunks of text as particularly suitable for certain occasions—like selecting Gospel or Epistle texts for Mass. Isolating a single verse out of a text highlights. And even more so if that verse gets repeated for the whole rest of the liturgical season! For instance, the two little versicle and response pairs  from Ps 90 are repeated daily until Mid-Lent.

Versicle/Response following the Lauds Hymn daily until Mid-Lent:

R: He shaded you with his wings; V: And under his pinions you shall trust. [VgPs 90:4]

(Portiforium of St Wulstan)

Versicle/Response following the Vespers Hymn daily until Mid-Lent:

R: God has commanded his angels concerning you; V: That they will keep you in all your ways. [VgPs 90:11]

(Portiforium of St Wulstan)

The effect is that these two verse snippets become an integral part of the monastic experience of Lent. So, whether big or small, selection makes a difference and alters, sometimes subtly, sometimes profoundly, how a monastic would encounter that same passage again whether inside or outside of the liturgy.

This principle of selection is the starting place for the third and final interpretative method found in the liturgy. Pregnant juxtaposition starts with selection, but kicks it up a notch by putting two or more selections in relation with one another. That is, the liturgy may take two passages from two entirely different parts of the canon but by placing them next to each other has created, in essence, a new Scriptural concept or narrative. Some of these juxtapositions are smooth—like this one:

Responsory for the Night Office

R: Hide your alms in the bosom of the poor and [the alms] will pray for you to the Lord. For just as water quenches fire, so alms quench sin. [Sir 3:33]
V: Honor the Lord out of your substance, and out of your first fruits give to the poor. [Prov 3:9] For just as water…

We have two gnomic statements on the same theme and they flow into one another without a hitch. Others are more challenging and take on the character of a fundamentally under-determined text. That is, you have two concepts intentionally placed together but with no discursive direction as to how they relate. The under-determined character requires the reader and the whole reading community to actively participate in the process of meaning making by creating comprehensible connections. The second example gives a flavor of a more under-determined juxtaposition:

The Introit for Lent I

Ant: He called upon me and I will hear him, I will deliver him and glorify him. I will fill him with length of days. [VgPs 90:15-16]

Ps: He who dwells in the help of the Most High will remain in the protection of the God of heaven. [VgPs 90:1] Glory be…

Ant: He called upon me… [repeated]

Therefore I modify this connection with “pregnant” because the connection between texts is loaded with potential meaning, but the liturgy leaves it in a potential state, not making it quite explicit.

So—these are three major mechanisms through which Scripture interpretation happens in the early medieval monastic liturgies: discursive analysis, selection, and pregnant juxtaposition.

Christopher mentioned below the possibility of a fuller set of antiphons for the Gospel Canticles within the BCP tradition. Obviously, I’m all for that and, alongside traditional resources and current offerings like The English Office and A Monastic Breviary have sought to include both psalm and gospel canticle antiphons in the St Bede’s Breviary.

If we’re going to talk about these antiphons, though, we might as well include the Minor Propers within the discussion as they are perfectly analogous to these antiphons albeit appearing in a different liturgy—the Mass rather than the Office.

I’d love to see a supplement—whether authorized or not (and I’m guessing that “not” is much more likely at the current time)—that is rooted in both the historic Western liturgy (i.e., Sarum and Roman sources) and is sensitive to the Post-Vatican II realities of our present liturgies that offers interpretive Scripture to enrich the BCP. I believe that there have been some useful starts towards this but nothing that fully embraces this scope.

What are your thoughts? Is it even worth the effort to proceed on a project of this magnitude?

Breviaries and the BCP

Fr. Gregory has a quite thought-provoking post here on the different formation issues between the Anglican Breviary and the BCP. It’s one we’ve discussed at points here and a tension I also feel.

The issue is that the Daily Office Lectionary offers Scripture; the breviary offers concrete guidelines for interpreting the Scriptures—by patristic example. How, then, to do both?

I’m still of a mind that the best way to do it (in addition to a proper round of psalm and gospel antiphons which—classically—were themselves interpretive) is an expanded utilization of the Noon Office.

At Smokey Mary, the slot in the Noon Office is occupied by a reading from the Fathers; in the more expanded versions of the St Bede’s Breviary I’ve put in the daily portion from Benedict’s Rule. In practice this mirrors the post-Vatican II Office of Readings which is the retread of Matins, now removed from the middle of the night and stuck at a time where people who sleep can actually pray it.

I don’t know enough about the Office of Readings to know where to find the lectionary of patristic texts… Do any of you know?

Tradition: Between Synthesis and Historicity

“Tradition” is one of the more frequently used words in Anglican debates. It gets utilized constantly on blogs like this one. Due to its use and importance we have to look at it just a bit more carefully: “Tradition” is a cipher. That is, it is not a word with a stable meaning. When writers (including me) invoke “the Christian Tradition” or even “the Anglican Tradition,” they invoke an intellectual construct consisting of what they consider to be the chief teachings, practices, and devotions through the ages. We may both say “Tradition” but what I mean by it and what you mean are inevitably different. Too often this reality remains not only unstated but uncomprehended.

That’s not to say, however, that there’s no such thing as “Tradition” or even that there’s no such body of material as “Tradition”—and that’s where things get really tricky. We have to acknowledge and agree up-front that when we church people (and anyone else who uses the term, actually) throw out the word “Tradition” what we are appealing to is very rarely actual teachings written in actual texts by actual people at actual times. Instead, we are referring to a synthesis which has, in theory, amalgamated actual teachings from actual people into a more-or-less coherent body of teaching, practice, and devotion.

This synthesis then becomes “Tradition.”

When we fight over “Tradition,” we are far more often fighting over our syntheses that we call “Tradition.”

That’s far too easy, though—let’s complicate things a bit…

In fact, most of us—especially the more invested of us—don’t just bring a synthesis to the table, we bring a metasythesis which is composed of quite a mix of interlocking and sometimes contradictory syntheses all mashed together under the solitary label of “Tradition.”

Think of it this way. When I make an appeal to “Tradition”, I’m making an appeal to my understanding of Christian teaching, practice, and devotion as filtered through and privileging insights from the Church Fathers, early medieval monasticism, the English Reformation, the Caroline Divines, and Anglo-Catholicism with a side-order of the Lutheran Confessions.

Now—every single one of those labels represents a synthesis. How I mash them all together into something even vaguely coherent is my metasynthesis.  We all do this. I’m lucky in that I’ve had the opportunity to think and read a lot about this and to have an awareness that that’s what I’m up to.

Everybody has a synthesis, but most people both receive them and deploy them unconsciously or subconsciously. We acquire them from our rectors, our teachers, our liturgies, from conversations, from study, from blogs…the list goes on and on.

At this point I’ll stop working on this line and restate my central thesis to this point: When church-folk speak of “Tradition,” we refer to a usually  subconscious synthesis of the Church’s past teachings, practices, and devotions.

Turning to the syntheses and metasyntheses themselves, some are better than others. To evaluate these, I would say that the three major criteria would be:

  • how compelling a synthesis is
  • how comprehensive a synthesis is
  • how historically grounded a synthesis is

This is where we get into muddy territory. I believe that there are quite a lot of syntheses floating around out there that are quite compelling but which are severely limited in terms of their comprehensiveness and especially their historical grounding.

Ground Zero here is the Vincentian Canon: “Now in the Catholic Church itself we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all.” As Caelius noted in highly memorable and quotable fashion, this canon fails through irony; its original purpose was to discredit the writings of Augustine on grace, claiming that they were a novelty. In essence, this canon is a one-sentence synthesis stating that what the Roman Catholic Church teaches now is what it has always taught, no more, no less. Very compelling for its clarity and its simplicity. In terms of historicity and confirmability—it works far better as a rallying cry than an effective synthesis. Indeed, if one were to attempt to utilize this synthesis in practice, where would you begin?

I truly love Thomas Ken’s words but see in them a similar problem: “I am dying in the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith professed by the whole Church before the disunion of East and West; and, more particularly, in the Communion of the Church of England, as it stands distinguished from both Papal and Protestant innovation, and adheres to the Doctrine of the Cross.” Again, a classic rallying cry—but historically speaking, what texts, what liturgies do we appeal to? If we ask the simple question, “How does one fast in Lent?” this Tradition can not and does not give us one clear answer; instead it gives us a range. If we’re looking for a single answer, this synthesis cannot give it to us. We must choose amongst the available options on the basis of other criteria, other syntheses. Furthermore, this construal of Tradition hacks off how many centuries (i.e., nothing after the “disunion”)? One must assume that it picks up again at the establishment of the mentioned “Church of England” but when and where—especially given Ken’s own rocky relationship with his church?

Without going into specifics, I think that it is fair to say that most of the current Anglican culture warriors are operating with syntheses that may well be compelling but that fail on the criteria of both comprehensiveness and historicity. Of these last two, I place a heavy emphasis on the second. A synthesis that cannot be verified by reference to particular documents from particular times falls more into the realm of politically malleable myth than authentic expression of the historic Christian faith.

So, to summarize and restate: A good synthesis must be compelling, comprehensive, and be built on fact. Statements about what Christians have believed in the past must be rooted in documents, liturgies, and actual evidence. We have to be honest about what’s there, what’s not, and the degree to which other considerations govern our choices.

Too, attention to actual fact reminds us of the importance of comprehensiveness. Specifically, I’ve read too much history and too much theology to say that the Tradition is truly univocal on many things. Because of comprehensiveness, I recognize that my synthesis cannot be hegemonic. That is, I recognize that I have sub-selected strands within the Tradition that I think best proclaim the Gospel to me and my people at this time. I recognize that there are other strands within the Tradition that are not only different from but that disagree with other strands—including mine. (I.e., some Reformation, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox strands simply do not play well with one another; some strands of monastic and Scholastic don’t play well; Gaulish monasticism and St Augustine; etc ad nauseum…)

At the end of the day, very few people will do the work of creating a synthesis or metasynthesis for how they understand and embody the Christian Tradition.

And that’s perfectly fine.

What’s crucial, though, for thinkers and leaders in the Church, is that we have an awareness of what syntheses are out there, how they collide and clash with one another, and how they rank in terms of being compelling, comprehensive, and historically-grounded. I believe that part of the task of Church historians is the creation of effective syntheses that start with historical fact and theological truth that are compelling for our clergy and congregations. I’d suggest that this is the real value and power of a work like Martin Thornton’s English Spirituality—not that it teaches everything anyone needs to know but that it presents a clear, compelling, and factually grounded synthesis of how the Church has taught and lived.

And we need more like it.

Private Confession and Shame: A Medieval Perspective

Or… Ash Wednesday with Aelfric.

Remembering that Aelfric had written a bit for Ash Wednesday in his Lives of the Saints (i.e., devotional readings for literate nobles that consists mostly of monastic saints plus some additional seasonal material), I thought I’d give it a look over. There are several interesting items in this piece, some of which I’ll just note briefly before moving to my main topic…

  • For Aelfric, like most liturgies up to Vatican II, “Lent” began liturgically at Quadragesima (The First Sunday in Lent) rather than Ash Wednesday. He makes this very clear with his starting section: “This discourse belongs to the seventh night before Lent. In this week on Wednesday (as you well know) is caput ieiunii, that is in English, the head of the Lenten fast.” This, then, seems to be taken from a sermon given on Quinquagesima evening—I’d place it ideally at the Second Nocturn of the Night Office.
  • Aelfric tells three local stories concerning people who despised the Lenten fast and then died (or almost did—illustration 2 survives just barely) in unfortunate “accidents”. Not a theology I agree with, but Aelfric is clearly exhorting that God’s commands are to be obeyed at the risk of serious repercussions which, after these bodily examples he moves into a spiritual realm: “Every man who eateth or drinketh untimely in the holy Lent, or on appointed fast-days, let him know in sooth that his soul shall sorely suffer for it, though the body may here live sound.” Personally, this is the social control ascesis which I think we need to reject while still embracing the practices rightly understood.
  • Section on the joys of heaven is predictable in an early medieval kind of way.

Then we get to what I consider the most interesting parts—his discussion of repentance and the psycho-social dynamics of confession. Let’s actually give his whole bit on penance. (N.B. I’m using Skeat’s translation here; volume 1 is here and volume 2 is here.)

Now every man is baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, and he may not be again baptized, that the invocation of the Holy Trinity be not contemned ; but true contrition, and penance with abstaining from evil, washeth us again from the sins which we have committed after our baptism. The merciful God speaketh, concerning all sinful men, two very profitable words, ‘Declina a malo et fac honum’ that is, ‘Turn from evil, and do good.’ It is not enough that thou turn from evil, unless thou ever, according to thy measure, do good. Penance, with abstaining from evil, and almsdeeds, and holy prayers, and faith, and hope in God, and the true love of God and men, heal and cure our sins, if we diligently use those medicines, God said that He desired not the death of the sinful, but He willeth rather that he should turn from his sins and live.

Couple of notes… See, he starts with baptism which is where all proper teaching on penance must begin. Nice use of Scripture. The ascetical theologian in me likes the nice blend of outward and inward action in penance, but I’ll admit the Lutheran in me wants to see the word “grace” in the mix. I think the concept is certainly implicit here.

Again saith the Almighty God, ‘ If the wicked man, and the sinful do penance for all his sins, and keep my commandments, and follow after righteousness, he shall live, and shall not die an evil death, and I will not remember any of his sins which he hath committed.’ There is no sin so great that a man may not atone for it if he cease from evil, and with true contrition repent of his guilt, according to the teaching of the doctors. The man who desires to weep for his sins, and make satisfaction for them with good, then must he diligently beware that he repeat not afterward the evil deeds. The man who after his penance reneweth his evil deeds, he so angereth God, that he is like the dog who spueth, and again eateth that which he before spued up. Nor must any man delay to amend his sins, for God hath promised to every penitent the forgiveness of his sins, but He hath promised to no procrastinator certain Hfe until to-morrow.

Good stuff, here, and very fitting for the season. I’m not even going to try to source all of this material but Aelfric ends with one of my very favorite lines from Gregory the Great’s Homily 12: “The One who promised pardon to a person who repents did not promise us a tomorrow.” Now the turn promised by my post’s title…

Let no man be ashamed to make known his sins to a teacher; for he who will not confess his sins in this world with true contrition, he shall be shamed before God Almighty, and before the company of His Angels, and before all men, and before all devils at the great doom, where we shall all be gathered. There shall all our deeds be known to all that company ; and he who cannot for shame confess his sins to one man, shall then be shamed before the hosts of heaven, and the hosts of earth, and the hosts of hell, and his shame will be endless. Verily, no man gets forgiveness of his sins from God, unless he confess them to some man of God, and by his judgment make satisfaction.

Wow—what a concept…  I think it’s pretty clear that the psychology of aural confession was the same then and now; shame holds us back from doing what we ought to do. But Aelfric takes the Judgment Day image of Matthew 25 and, conjuring it to mind in the context of shame, uses it very effectively. Yes, confessing in secret to a priest may shame you—but it’s better than having it confessed for you before the assorted hosts of heaven, hell, and earth!

That’s all for now—I think I need to get cracking on Martin Smith’s book again…

On Confessors in the Sarum Kalendar

I just took a crawl through the kalendar of the Sarum Breviary (I know—a modern one…). Of the confessors listed, there are precisely two who are not listed as either bishops,  archbishops, popes or abbots:

  • Petrocii Conf. (June 4th) concerning whom I’ve been able to find no data (and who isn’t in the Warren edition of the Missal).
  • Translatio S. Edwardi regis et confessoris, inferius duplex, ix. lectiones. (Oct 13) Royalty—not clergy.

Jerome is an odd case. He’s listed as: Hieronymi presbyteri et doctoris, festum inferius duplex, ix lectiones. He’s the only “doctor” present so theoretically he ought to be considered a Confessor as well.

There’s only one saint in the Sarum kalendar designated as “presbyteri” with no other qualifications and that’s the memorial of Eusebii presbyteri. (Aug 14) whose status is questionable. This Eusebius was a priest of Rome who may be a confessor or may be a martyr—it’s unclear. In any case, he is the only “presbyterus” in the Sarum kalendar who’s not a martyr.

So—while in theory the Confessor category included all non-apostle/martyr/virgin/monks, functionally speaking it was for bishops and abbots.

Question for Lutheran/Protestant Users of SBB

…if there are any, that is…

The current OF Roman kalendar is waiting in the wings at the breviary, but I received a suggestion that I should include the Lutheran or other protestant kalendars for my non-Anglican/Roman readers. Is there sufficient interest and a large enough body of Lutheran/protestant sorts who use St Bede’s Breviary to make this worthwhile?

Momentary Kalendrical Randomness

Leap year in our calendar is pretty simple—we add a day to the end of February.

The medieval calendar is a little different. The Roman method is to count down to days. Thus, an add at the end of the February functionally means an increase in the middle of February in the count-down to March’s kalends.

Where this makes things weird is that, moving to the kalendar, feasts are attached to days before the kalends. Simple enough when you’re using a medieval kalendar: the feast of St Matthias is always on vi. Kalends Martii. The issue is when you’re looking at a modern calendar in conjunction.

In regular years, the Feast of St Matthias is on February 24; in leap years, it’s on February 25th. Assuming this holds true for other feasts, when placing medieval feasts everything from the Ides must shift, thus after the 13th. So, in leap years, the feast of St Valentine is on the 15th etc.

Note to self: don’t even try to use this one as an excuse…

The Real Story: While this makes for a fun excuse, it’s not technically correct… The leap day was actually inserted after the 23rd of February and thus there were two “six days before the kalends of March.” This, it’s thought, is where we get the English term bissextile (from bis sextum Kalendas Martias). So the feast of Matthias real does move in leap years, Valentine’s does not.