In 1957 the Standing Liturgical Commission issued Prayer Book Studies IX: The Calendar (henceforth PBS9). This report had been in the works since 1945 and throughout that period three people had consistently been represented: Dr. Massey Shepherd, Dr. Bayard Jones, and the Rev. Morton Stone. Bayard died in April of 1957, shortly before the final publication of the work, but had read and approved most of it before his passing.

Massey notes in the Preface that the work as a whole was too long for it all to appear together; as a result, the propers would appear as a separate work later. At this point it was noted only that the Black Letter days listed in italics would receive full propers—the ones without italics would receive only a memorial collect. (For ease of reference, I am referring to the italicized items receiving full propers as “commemorations” and the items receiving only collects as “memorials.”)

Here are the contents:

 The Proposed Calendar (p. viii)

Part One: The History of Prayer Book Calendar Revision
I. The Reformation (p. 3)
II. Red and Black Letter Days (p. 8)
III. Recent Anglican Revisions (p. 12)

Part Two: Principles of Calendar Construction
I. The Development of Saints’ Days (p. 17)
II. The Problem of Modern Reconstruction (p. 24)
III. Recent Anglican Calendars (p. 28)

Part Three: Proposals for Revision
I. Principles of the Present Proposals (p. 35)
II. Changes Proposed in the Red Letter Days (p. 39)
III. Notes on the Black Letter Days (p. 42)

Appendices
1. Comparative Tables of Anglican Calendars (p. 107)
2. The Proposed Calendar in Chronological and Topical Order (p. 120)
3. Notes on Certain Rejected Commemorations (p. 125)
4. General Bibliography (p. 128)
5. Alphabetical Index of Commemorations, with Special Bibliographies (p. 130)

The Proposed Calendar

The proposed calendar contains 118 entries with 117 named individuals. Of these entries, 26 are Red Letter Days, 40 are Black Letter commemorations (full propers), 52 are Black Letter memorials (collect only). Looking solely at the 92 Black Letter entries, there are 91 named individuals of whom there are:

• 49 bishops (54%),
• 16 priests (18%),
• 4 deacons (4%),
• 7 religious (8%),
• 13 laity (14%), and
• 1 unqualified collective (2%)

Sliced another way, there are:

• 82 men (90%)
• 9 women (10%)
• 1 unqualified collective (>1%)

Along classical lines there are:

• 22 Bishop/Confessors
• 15 Male Confessors
• 12 Bishop/Confessor/Doctors
• 8 Hermit/Monastics
• 7 Priest/Confessor/Doctors
• 7 Bishop/Martyr
• 5 Martyrs
• 5 Multiple Martyrs
• 3 Female Confessors
• 2 Feasts of the BVM
• 1 Virgin/Martyr
• 1 Virgin/Abbess
• 1 Apostle
• 1 Multiple Bishops/Confessors

Denominationally, there are no surprises:

• 54 are from the pre-Schism Great Church
• 8 are pre-Reformation Western Catholic
• 1 is pre-Reformation Eastern Orthodox
• 26 are Anglican

By Century:

Obviously, the Patristic period gets the most commemorations with the 4th century scoring 14 entries total. Then there are spikes in the memorials for the 12/13th century renaissance of religious life with the friars et al., a jump up at the Reformation, then a massive ramp-up for the 19th century. Not surprisingly, this Calendar identifies the Late Early Medieval period and Late Medieval period as the nadirs of saintly existence!

Notes on History of PB Calendar Revision

One of the items that I had not heard before was that there was a study of the kalendar conducted in the run-up to the American 1928 BCP. In the first report of the Joint Commission of the Book of Common Prayer in 1916, it recommended the addition of 45 saints’ days to the calendar; this was increased to 54 in its third report in 1922 (p. 14). These days did not received propers, but a generic proper for saints was offered. Ironically, the days were all cut but the propers were accepted! These proposed days are provided in the Comparative Tables.

Notes on Principles of Calendar Construction

Development

After noting the rise of the cult of martyrs, the study summarizes the initial period in this way:

Thus by the close of the ancient period of the Church’s history, the Calendars of the several churches contained a variety of types of commemoration, of which the chief ones were these:

1. Anniversaries of the death of martyrs.
2. Anniversaries of the death of saints, not martyrs.
3. Dates of the translation of relics of martyrs and saints.
4. Dates of the dedication of churches and edifices of cult in honor of martyrs and saints.
5. Dates of the invention [finding] of relics of martyrs and saints (including the Apostles and Evangelists).

Yet in all this elaboration of the cult of saints, one basic principle unites all its varied forms of commemoration. It was the celebration of the fulfillment of a holy life, not its temporal beginning, but its earthly end. The conception of “death and resurrection” was inherent in all of these anniversaries. (p. 20)

A bit before this section had been called out the qualities of non-martyr saints sought in the 4th century: “lives [that] were outstanding examples of courageous witness for the faith against heresy, of monastic virtues of worldly renunciation, or of conspicuous charity and service” (ibid.). These sections are our first glimmers of a modern Episcopal theology of sanctity.

Then they move on to the medieval period which is worth citing at some length:

The medieval Church built its Calendars upon the basic principles of the earlier period. Martyrdom was still the supreme testimony to sanctity, though the occasion for such testimony was not so constant. Particularly notable in the medieval outlook was the emphasis upon the miraculous as evidence of a holy life. The early Church, of course, had not overlooked this aspect of supernatural grace in the lives of the saints. But the medieval churchmen came to regard miracles as the primary proof of sanctity—whether the miracles were performed during the course of the saint’s earthly life, or after his death. This emphasis upon miracles still obtains in the Latin Church’s weighing of evidence for official canonization.

The medievalists were not, however, so superstitious about the miraculous as to forget the importance of character, or the variety of ways whereby the grace of sanctity was made effectual in the Church. The roster of medieval saints includes all kinds of distinguished service: missionaries and founders of churches and monasteries, eminent scholars and theologians, masters of the discipline of contemplation and life of prayer, and ministers of charity and works of mercy. Special mention should also be made of the deep impression made upon the medieval mind by unselfish, Christian statemanship in the arena of politics. It has been said that medieval saints tend to fall into one of three categories: royal, episcopal, or monastic. But these [p. 22]were precisely the chief avenues , given the structure of medieval society, by which men and women were drawn into ways of constructive and outstanding leadership, paths that tested to the full the qualities of humility, courage, and charity. (pp. 21-2)

Ok—a couple of interesting things here… First, miracles are essentially raised only to be dismissed. The study noted that they were used as evidence of sanctity but doesn’t go into why. It does use in passing the phrase “supernatural grace” but doesn’t do anything with it or consider it further. Second, it’s interesting to note the take on “episcopal, royal, monastic.” The tack taken puts an emphasis on public leadership. We’re not just looking for holy people—we’re looking more for holy people who have made a measurable social impact. Thus, the royal saint gets a better shot at recognition than the peasant contemplative.

Moving to the Reformation, the study notes that the Reformers cut the kalendars of the first authorized prayer books back to the strictly Scriptural, admitting: “that in the matter of holy days the Reformers set up a new principle of selection, unknown hitherto in the tradition of the Church” (p. 23). No mention is made here of the process or significance of the addition of Black Letter days in the 1561 revision. In the historical section it had only been noted that this influx of saints occurred but they were seen as a change to the almanac rather than the rite as no propers had been assigned to them. While that may be, their omission here is not entirely explained away so easily.

Modern Reconstruction

Moving to the present and current, the study notes that General Convention is the only group now authorized to alter the kalendar. Therefore, “A revision of the Prayer Book Calendar that has any chance of being adopted by the General Convention, must be based on principles that are consistent with and agreeable to the various perspectives on the problem that are widely held throughout the Church” (p. 24). Two broad positions are sketched. The first is the (catholic-leaning) traditionalist: “it would build the Church’s Calendar upon the basis of those holy days that were of widespread observance in the Western Church at the time of the Reformation” (p. 25). The second are the modernists who are “less moved by considerations of tradition than by the evaluations of modern historiography. . . . They would see the Calendar in terms of its teaching value, a list of heroes in the long life of the Church, whose lives and accomplish-[p. 26] ments continue to be a living inspiration to modern churchmen. Not only would they stress the importance of authentic information about the life and death of each saint commemorated—that is, a ‘true story’ that is inspiring and edifying—but they would be ‘ecumenical’ in selection. Less concerned with the orthodoxy of the saint, they are more interested in his achievement and his impact upon the on-going life of Christendom” (pp. 24-5).

What they’re after, then, is the overlap between the two groups. And, in discussing it, they put quite a bit of weight on the burden of proof for sanctity—what must be met for acceptability:

Neither the pre-Reformation test of miracle nor the Reformation norm of Scripture carries much merit in the Church any longer. The common basis of all judgment is the effect upon edification, the moral and spiritual influence of devotion to the memory of the saints. This is, in effect, a pragmatic norm, and difficult to apply with assured objectivity. It is undoubtedly colored by our unconscious ‘American’ way of evaluating heroism in all spheres of life. It is our way of knowing men ‘by their fruits.’ It is unlikely that any saint will be admitted to the Calendar of the American Church, by vote of General Convention, unless it can be shown that the candidate for such an honor is ‘worthy’ of emulation of his life and example, irrespective of his ancient record of cult in the Calendars of past generations. By the same token, it is unlikely that any saint will be ‘canonized’ by the General Convention without considerable evidence, by official cult or otherwise, of widespread agreement as to his merits. (p. 26)

The assumption here is that a straight-up ancient kalendar won’t be accepted. GC would be too critical for that. I must say, reading this passage over the past 55 years of Episcopal history, I think some things have changed and that General Convention operates on different principles of discernment now than it did then.

At this point, the study talks about Frere’s work that I mentioned the other day. At this point it only notes that the non-Prayer Book saints to whom things are dedicated in America are different from those in England identified by Frere, but that the number had been growing of late.

Recent Anglican Calendars

The study then surveys the significant Anglican Calendars revised since the opening of the 20th century. From this survey it draws 5 points:

1. There is a clear distinction between Red and Black Letter days—only the Red must be observed; Black are always optional. Too, none of the books provide full propers for all Black Letter days.
2. There is greater agreement about saints of the ancient church than the medieval.
3. There’s no agreement on when certain observations should be placed that don’t appear in the 1662 book.
4. Most Anglican Calendars avoid having more than one entry on a day.
5. All of the Calendars include descriptive notes on the saint, their life, work, and death.

Proposals for Revision

Principles of the Present Proposals

I was very interested to learn what is stated at the outset of this section:

For the past ten years, the Standing Liturgical Commission has devoted time at each of its meetings in discussing the materials of this study. With each change in personnel of the Commission the tentative list of Calendar changes, first drawn up in 1945, has been reviewed and revised. . . . The changes and additions herewith have with but few exceptions been unanimously approved throughout the long period of study and discussion. Where the Commission has been sharply divided over particular proposals for inclusion, and has been unable to come to a solution satisfactory to most, if not all, of the members, the proposed entry has been omitted. Thus, some of the prolonged and difficult work of the Commission on this Calendar has led, seemingly, to negative results. But the Commission believes that the energy spent on this disputed and unresolved problems has by no means been wasted. We believe that the concrete result of our labors probably represents the type of Calendar that will be acceptable to the vast majority of the Church’s membership. (p. 35)

Disagreement on the Commission about the kalendar is not new!

A fundamental necessity is historicity. It states in no uncertain terms that a person must be historically verifiable in order to appear on the list. The premiere case in point is St. George:

The fact that he has become a patron saint of England does not make him any the more real; nor does it necessitate making him a saint of the American Church. Fairy-book tales may indeed be edifying. When they become part of the folklore and tradition of a great nation they can become stirring symbols. But it is asking too much of the majority of our American Church membership, who have no such traditional and patriotic associations with the name, to respond with mature devotion to a saint of whom it can only be said, “He may have existed, sometime, somewhere.” (p. 36)

(At a later date we’ll check in on pp. 338-9 of HWHM…) They note that the Feast of All Saints with its octave have been provided for the celebration of the saints not otherwise remembered by the church with the implication that if George were a real saint, he would be properly provided for there.

The official statement on criteria is this:

The choice of commemorations in the proposed Calendar has been made primarily on the basis of selecting men and women of outstanding holiness, heroism, and teaching in the cause of Christ, whose lives and deaths have been a continuing, conscious influence upon the on-going life of the Church in notable and well-recognized ways. There are included martyrs, theologians, statesmen, missionaries, reformers, mystics, and exemplars of prayer and charitable service. In every instance care has been taken to list persons whose life and work are capable of interpretation in terms morally and spiritually edifying to the Church of our own generation. In addition, a few festivals commemorating events of particular importance in the heritage of our own Communion have been included, such as the memorial of the First Prayer Book and the bestowal of the American Episcopate. (p. 37)

It goes on to comment on matters of denomination. Only Anglicans are named post-Reformation. This is due to “a lack of sufficient unanimity” regarding proper selection. “The Commission does believe very strongly, however, that any extension of the present Prayer Book Calendar should give recognition to the fact that our Anglican tradition has produced, and continues to produce saintliness” (ibid.).

Concluding Thoughts

It’s quite fascinating to look over this work at this point in our history. The assumptions that it takes for granted are no longer the case. Ideology plays a much larger explicit role in church politics now than it did then. The mechanisms too for making and continuing change have altered.

A key point that I want to note is the focus on the historical and the historic.  In the push to ensure the historicity of the entries included, the eschatological is being pushed to the margin. Spiritual lives are still considered a critical component, but the relation of the miraculous to the eschatological life isnot present, or do we see anything like the question, “Can I see this person participating in the great chorus of heaven?” Moral and spiritual conduct are the key arbiters. While criteria for what that conduct looks like appears, it is not codified, and is not given an explicit theological foundation either. This is primarily a pragmatic document, not a theological one: there is no theology of the saints here.

The closest we come to theology is, actually, explicitly not theological. The “Principles for the Present Proposals” section ends in this way:

It has often been remarked that the Prayer Book provides the parish priest with an excellent teaching manual for the study of the Bible, the doctrine and ethics of the Church, and, of course, the principles and practices of worship and prayer. It has lacked but one thing, an adequate instrument for teaching the history of the Church. The present proposal should do much to meet this need. With the names on this Calendar arranged in a historical, or, topical order, the parish priest will have a convenient guide and outline of Church History from its beginnings to the present time. Such a study should greatly reinforce the other teachings of the Prayer Book, as they are exemplified in the lives of the saints. (p. 38)

The intent here is to say that a solid kalendar will complete the teaching value of the Prayer Book. And that’s true. But what bothers me—especially given the vantage of major hindsight—is the way this passage connects the saints and Church History without offering explicit integration into church doctrine. The last line is helpful, but is too little, too late. The saints aren’t just historical figures! The question of sanctity is intimately bound with the nature of discipleship, of Christology, and of the sacraments. The saints show us what Christian maturity looks like—not just the scope of Church History! And yet, the historical dimension of the Episcopal Calendar has increasingly been highlighted to the exclusion of the spiritual, sacramental, and eschatological dimensions. This study doesn’t do that—but it doesn’t say much against it, and it leaves a theological vacuum in its wake…

As part of some work I’m doing that will become bloggable material shortly, I want to lay down some basic principles on how I intend to go about tallying up saints.

To back up a step, one of the principles governing current sanctoral kalendars is the notion of adequate representation. The worldwide Christian Church (ecclesial fragmentations aside) has generated saints (however we choose to define that and that’s a big ol’ argument for another post) of all shapes, sizes, colors, genders, whatever. Since the late 20th century, there’s been a push to ensure that this real diversity at least has a presence in our kalendars. Indeed, in the Episcopal Church, this principle is officially designated as criterion 5 of HWHM which states:

5. Range of Inclusion: Particular attention should be paid to Episcopalians and other members of the Anglican Communion. Attention should also be paid to gender and race, to the inclusion of lay people (witnessing in this way to our baptismal understanding of the Church), and to ecumenical
representation. In this way the Calendar will reflect the reality of our time: that instant communication and extensive travel are leading to an ever deeper international and ecumenical consciousness among Christian people.

If we are mandated to pay attention to these things, then we need some basic ground rules on how to do it. Here are mine…

Counting Commemorations

Commemorations should be counted as kalendar entries. Named individuals need to be tallied separately when available with suitable designations for capturing uncertain numbers and unquantifiable mass categories. Thus:

• July 20th in HWHM (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1902; Amelia Bloomer, 1894; Sojourner Truth, 1883; and Harriet Ross Tubman, 1913, Liberators and Prophets) counts as 1 commemoration that honors 4 named individuals and should also be tallied as 4 women.
• September 2nd in the BCP (The Martyrs of New Guinea, 1942) counts as 1 commemoration of an unquantifiable group. (Or—to be truly pedantic about it—the number is potentially quantifiable but is not actually quantified by the entry in the kalendar). Due to the unquantifiability of the entry, gender numbers cannot be forthcoming.
• March 7th in the BCP (Perpetua and her Companions, Martyrs at Carthage, 202) counts as 1 commemoration consisting of 1 named individual (a woman) and an unspecified number of companions. Even though Felicitas is one of Perpetua’s well-known companions, she can’t be tallied due to her absence from the entry.
• Feasts of Our Lord: I’ve tallied these as events. However, as Our Lord became incarnate as a male, I’m going back and forth on this one. To be consistent, I suppose I should count these as both events and as 1 named (male) individual.
• Exaltation of the Cross: This is a commemoration but not of a person (or even an event). It counts as a commemoration but not a gendered named individual.
• Angels: Church tradition regards angels as male—certainly naming conventions (Michael, Raphael, etc.) do—so without going into the question of the gender of angels, these will be tallied as male.

Ordination Status

This one is fairly straight-forward, but is complicated by a few marginal cases. I take this to mean not just whether a person has been ordained but whether they are officially recognized as an authority figure in whatever ecclesial body they happen to be part of. Thus, even lay monastics (like Benedict) should be recognized as not being “laity” in the strictest sense. The categories I’m using are “bishop,” “priest” (read broadly as recognized presbyters), “deacon,” “religious,” “lay person.”

Questionable cases would include:

• Bernard Mizeki, Catechist and Martyr in Mashonaland, 1896: What should be done with “Catechist”? As far as I know it’s not an ordained position, so despite it being an ecclesial recognition, I’m going with “lay.”
  
• Lillian Trasher, Missionary in Egypt, 1961: Lillian was the preacher and leader of her Pentecostal church before heading off to Egypt to do her missionary work. She goes in the “priest” column.
• Charlotte Diggs (Lottie) Moon, Missionary in China, 1912: A school builder and evangelist, she was Southern Baptist. The church did appoint her as a missionary but (obviously) didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t recognize her as ordained so she goes in the “lay” column.
• Apostles: Following church tradition, I’ve tallied these as bishops.
• Feasts of Our Lord: On one hand, OLASJC is our great high priest; on the other, marking these feasts as commemorating a “bishop” seems like it would skew the data oddly and not address what the criterion is concerned about. I’m currently thinking that feasts that name Jesus would be left blank for ordination, but that those naming the BVM and John the Baptizer would be tallied for one “laity.”
• Angels: I’m leaving this one blank for angels.

Race/Region

I’m not going to tackle this one at the moment. Using the census labels for race is the obvious place to start, but some of our figures from Late Antiquity are complicated. What was the racial make-up of Roman North Africa? Augustine, Cyprian, and Athanasius are big question marks in my book. What do we use for acceptable evidence? Is it proper to say “Africa=Black”? Given the Copts I know, that doesn’t work very well. How do we address the racial make-up of the Levant? Based on the blunt instrument of the census questions do we say “Syro-Palestine=White” (cue images of the blonde BVM…)?

Certainly when we are speaking of the modern world this becomes a less fraught question, but not simple either. How do we properly chart the racial component of  “James Hannington, Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, and his Companions, Martyrs, 1885”? Following the principles above for named individuals, I’d have to tally 1 white guy.

So, while recognizing this one as important, I may identify some clear-cut cases and dodge the issue until some clarity emerges…

Ecclesial Affiliation

Again, this one should be fairly clear-cut for most but there are obvious questionable cases. Newman, Chesterton, and Seton are on the short-list of problematic folk—while they ended up as Roman Catholics, some of their key formation and work occurred while they were Anglicans. In the interests of simplicity, this will probably be wherever they ended their lives—meaning that the Wesleys will be recorded as Anglican.

I do plan on identifying everyone pre-Schism as “Great Church”, then pulling out “Western Catholic;” “Roman Catholic” will be a post-Reformation designation.

Bottom Line

No system is perfect but these guidelines should reflect a pretty common-sense approach to how things are tabulated. Thus, the key principle is that named people are the ones who get tallied and categorized for diversity purposes. The entries about which there are quibbles should be fairly small.

Red State Mystic asks a very leading question at the end of his comment to the previous post:

As a rabbit-trail, perhaps, I’d be interested in your thoughts about whether Saints are Saints primarily because of what they do or because of who they are in Christ. It seems to me that the older-style prefers their identity as definitive of their Saintliness, whereas HWHM sees it for what they do.

I’m sorry that this even has to be asked as a question.

One of the real failures in the theological life of the Episcopal Church is the perspective that we can talk about Christology, ecclesiology, eschatology, the theology of death, and the theology of the sacraments and that we are therefore discussing five different things. We are not. We are discussing one thing: Christology, and are looking at four of its implications.

We celebrate the saints because at the heart of our theology is the principle of incarnation. Incarnation is the belief that the divine and the spiritual do not eschew physical matter and form, but that God has chosen to reveal himself and his realities in flesh and matter, preeminently in Jesus Christ who, as both fully God and fully human, constitutes the ultimate revelation of God’s self-identity. Furthermore, God’s self-revelation through the mode of incarnation did not cease with the end of the physical, visible, sojourn of Christ among humanity. In Baptism we are bound into Christ, as true mystical members of his Body. We are nurtured deeper into the reality of that life through the Eucharist. We are invited in the sacraments to participate deeply and fully within the divine life of God. Not all who are invited choose to participate. Not all who are invite participate as deeply and earnestly as they could (my hand’s up here…). There are those who are invited who even in (and necessary through) their humanity and limitation nevertheless share with those around them the truth of the reality of the life of God. These are the saints. They inhabit the life of God; they reflect the life of God to those around them.

It’s my blog so I’ll give myself permission to be a bit hyperbolic: We do not celebrate the saints because of their virtues. Rather, we celebrate the saints because of Christ’s virtues. Yes, that’s hyperbole but it’s necessary to focus on the main thing: saints are incarnational icons. The self-revelation of God happens in many ways–through their participation in the incarnation, the saints are one of them. Looking at the saints helps us to learn about who Christ is. In particular, I see the saints teaching us two very important lessons about who Christ is and they do it because they’re able to clarify generalities by means of particularities.

First, by looking across the array of the saints, we perceive the patterns that display the virtues of Christ. We learn what faith, hope, and love look like in embodied form. Too often we consider and discuss these virtues in their “ideal” form and any one given person’s understanding of “ideal” can veer quite a bit from the Church’s intended understanding of the term. Love is, of course, the major term here especially given its wide range of possible meanings, only a few of which legitimately capture the Church’s intent.  By looking at a thousand discrete acts in a thousand different situations, we gain a composite understand of the contours and depths of virtues what the virtues of Christ really are. By contemplating the lives of the saints, we learn that love is not just a fluffy feeling but that any definition which does not include and account for sacrifice and discipline is not the kind of love which the Scriptures and the Church affirm.

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why inclusion of the unbaptized into our roll of saints is not helpful. It’s not that we believe that only Christians have and exhibit virtue. Rather, we look at these people because we believe that their lives show us the lingering and enduring effects of being bathed in the life of God. We learn Jesus through them by virtue of the baptismal connection. Looking at, say, Gandhi, can teach us about virtue—no doubt!—but does not teach us about Jesus in the same way as when we study the life of the baptized and what a fully Christian understanding of faith, hope, and love is.

Second, we talk about the “full humanity of Christ”. But what exactly is “full humanity”? On one hand we’re affirming an anti-Macedonian position and asserting that Jesus wasn’t a human body with a divine soul or some such nonsense. On the other hand, we get a sense of exactly what “full humanity” means when we survey the catalog of the saints. This is one of the reasons why I welcome as much diversity as possible within the legitimately acceptable roll of the holy ones: we need to see the dazzling array of colors, and histories, and contexts, and trials, and travails in which and through which humans have proclaimed the identity, life, and love of God. We don’t understand what “full humanity” means if we restrict our vision to a set of Mediterranean ecclesiastics (which is a charge that has been laid at the feet of the pre-conciliar Roman kalendar). We are part of the “full humanity” of Christ. In Baptism, we  bring our own humanness to who he is. Not creating it—for he already encompasses within him full humanity—but as visible representatives of exactly what that means.

So–that’s the long answer to the short question: Sainthood is not a profession nor professionally determined, it’s an expression of being.

Starting in this post and continuing in this post, I’ve been doing some thinking about the liturgical naming of our ecclesiology particular with reference to the dead and the saints. My focus there was looking at prayers and practices that try and express through language the contours of the spiritual community.

There are other ways that liturgies inform our understanding of spiritual community, though, and one of the most important is categorization. That is, through the vehicle of the Commons of the Saints, liturgies provide us a framework for understanding what sanctity looks like and charts out identifiable routes to sanctity.

This notions of commons and categories arose pretty early in the church’s worship. By the fourth century, we had three clear categories in particular: martyrs, confessors, and virgins. The martyrs were, of course, those who had died in the persecutions and had given the ultimate witness to the steadfastness of their beliefs. Confessors were those who had been tortured for their beliefs yet had survived. The historians’ descriptions of the bishops at Nicaea give us a sense of this. Theodoret writes:

Paul, bishop of Neo-Cæsarea, a fortress situated on the banks of the Euphrates, had suffered from the frantic rage of Licinius. He had been deprived of the use of both hands by the application of a red-hot iron, by which the nerves which give motion to the muscles had been contracted and rendered dead. Some had had the right eye dug out, others had lost the right arm. Among these was Paphnutius of Egypt. In short, the Council looked like an assembled army of martyrs. (EH 1.7)

Virgins were women who had pledged themselves to virginity and who were typically martyrs as well. (In fact, I can’t recall off the top of my head any 5th century or earlier virgin saints who weren’t martyrs…)

I want you to notice something about this list. Martyr, confessor, and virgin aren’t job descriptions. It’s not about careers. Yes, many of the martyrs and confessors were bishops, priests or deacons but not all. But let’s also recall that taking any sort of leadership position in the church in the age of persecution was equivalent to painting a bulls-eye on your chest.

If I had to try and describe how these folks were being grouped, I think it would have to be something about dedication to the faith. Again, martyrs were those who had given the ultimate witness about their dedication. The confessors displayed with their bodies the depths of their commitment. Same with the virgins. Their dedication to the church not only deprived them of sex (which is pretty much the only way we think about it these days), but—more importantly and more significantly—deprived them of the whole social safety net for women which placed them in dependence to their spouse and children. And a virgin was giving up both.

So—this construction of sanctity seems to be oriented around levels of dedication or commitment to the Gospel.

There was a shift in how these categories were understood as we make the turn from Late Antiquity and into the Early Medieval Western Church. When we look at the main line of the Gregorian and Gelasian sacramentaries and other liturgies we see a clear set of folks that tends to start from the liturgical naming found in the Te Deum. Thus, hymns and sermons of the period talk about the angels, patriarchs, prophets, John the Baptist, the apostles, marytrs, confessors, and monks & virgins.

When we look at this list in relation to Carolingian homilies, it is described as being a temporally sequential list. First there were angels, then partiarchs, then prophets (then Jesus), then apostles, then martyrs, then—once the period of persecutions were over–confessors. Furthermore, these confessors were clergy and, when you actually check the kalendars, virtually all of them were either bishops or abbots (who were hierarchically on the same level as bishops). So, you had a strong redefinition of the term “confessors” (concerning which AKMA and I had a good discussion in the comments section of the post linked to above). By the end of the Early Medieval period, the categories where people were being added were Confessor (= Abbot/Bishop), Doctor, Monk/Hermit/Virgin.

In a sense, you have a professionalization of the sanctoral categories.

On one hand, this method of defining sanctity makes me uncomfortable. It says that only people who have established professional places within the Church’s hierarchy are eligible to be declared as saints. That is, you’ve either got to be high-level clergy or religious or  forget about it. And that’s just not right.

On the other hand, the people who were living these kalendars day in and day out were clergy and religious. Even in the Early Medieval period there was a practical distinction between the saints revered by the people and saints revered by the monks. (Aelfric makes this distinction in the intro to his Lives of the Saints as one data point.) Thus, the clergy and religious were lifting up examples for themselves. That makes it a little more understandable—and reveals to me the depth of my own bias that insists that laypeople can and should be saints too…

This tendency and set of categories dominated the thinking of the Western Church until the current day. A decent representative list (actually more inclusive than some) is that of the Commons of the  Anglican Breviary:

•   the BVM
• Apostles
• Evangelists
• Martyrs
• Bishop Confessor
• Doctor [often combined with the above]
• Confessor not a Bishop
• Abbots, Hermits, and Monks
• Saints not Martyrs
• Virgins
• Holy Women [Not married but not virgin, i.e., penitents]
• Matrons/Widows [i.e., women not virgins]

Since I’m a breviary programmer, when I see this list I automatically read it as a hierarchical tree-structure taxonomy. Or, to shift metaphors, you use it by sorting things into buckets that contain smaller buckets until you’ve found the right bucket. Thus, if we wanted to celebrate St Cecelia we’d analyze her as saint:(female):virgin:virgin_martyr. In the Anglican Breviary, that means we’d use Common 12.2.

One of the issues this raises is that when e see a tree-taxonomy laid out this way there’s a natural human tendency to read value into the order. The higher on the list, the cooler you are. That leads to logic like the following:

• the BVM is the coolest of all (actually, this one’s true…)
• martyrs are cooler than non-martyrs
• Bishop Confessors are cooler than Confessors not a Bishop
• boy saints (Commons 2-11) are cooler than girl saints (Commons 12-14)
• The coolness of girl saints is determined by the amount of sex they had

Since we’re talking about saints, coolness is invariably replaced by “holiness.” And this leads me in places where I’m simply not willing to go. No, a bishop is not inherently holier than a matron; it simply doesn’t work like that. Of course, there were mitigating factors in actual liturgical practice like the class of feast that various saints received. Thus, it was not uncommon for a Bishop Martyr to only receive a simple while a Matron like Bridget of Sweden might be a double or higher in some places.

Nevertheless, this is what we inherited: a tree-structure that had morphed from devotion into profession.

When the 1979 BCP decided to start using Commons of Saints, this was the starting place. Moving from here we have Commons reflecting something both similar and different:

• Of a Martyr
  • the first mentions explicitly witness in official or politically-sponsored oppression (“before the rulers of this world”)
  • the third is generic but the use of “her” as the default pronoun and the similarity to the payers for monastics suggests this collect for Virgin Martyrs
• Of a Missionary
• Of a Pastor
  • The second contains a bracketed clause specifically for “bishops”
• Of a Theologian and Teacher
• Of a Monastic
• Of a Saint

(See more on this here.)

This also gives us a hierarchical tree-structure taxonomy. What it does is to mitigate some of the problematic issues around both gender and professionalism that I find in the earlier one. Bishops are no longer the automatic top of the heap once we leave the martyr category and that’s good. Furthermore, women aren’t isolated into a secondary place. That’s good too. It’s still based on a bucket-system/tree-structure. Now if we go looking for St Cecilia we find that she is saint:martyr:virgin_martyr. Same specificity, less baggage.

Looking at the sanctoral kalendar printed in the BCP you’ll find that most folks have epithets that direct you to one of these categories. Not all, though—no epithets direct you to “Theologian and Teacher”; you have to figure those out on your own. Overall, the epithets tend to be professional: “Bishop of X”, “Priest”, “King”, Abbess”, “Princess” etc. and more often than not ecclesiastical. This is an observation, rather than a strict judgement.

In the Anglican Breviary or a Roman kalendar, the epithets have a strict and clear correlation to the Commons.  By glancing at the entry, you know what set of prayers, etc. to use. The BCP epithets give a strong correlation to the Commons but it is not as strict and clear as the Roman particularly around the distinction between pastors and teachers.

Now we turn to Holy Women, Holy Men.

The new entries display a dazzling array of new epithets: “Witness to the Faith”, “Iconographer”, “Prophetic Witness”, “Friend of the Poor”, “Educators”, “Pioneers in Medicine”, etc. Furthermore, we have “Teacher” or “Theologian” added to some pre-existing folks in addition to titles like “Bishop” or “Priest” that they already held. In one sense this makes things easier, in another it doesn’t—which Common do you pick for this person/these people?

Furthermore, some people who were recognized separately are now grouped together.

What’s going on here?

There’s a very simple explanation, actually, and it goes back to our discussion of taxonomies.  What we’re seeing is the effect of new technologies and media on taxonomy: these aren’t categories, they’re tags. When you mass all of these together, you realize that we’re not dealing with a hierarchical bucket-system/tree structure. Instead, individuals are being tagged by a set of labels that don’t have a hierarchical-structural valence.  Groups are then formed by assimilating high-correspondence tag clusters. Thus, we receive: Johann Sebastian Bach, 1750, George Frederick Handel, 1759, and Henry Purcell, 1695, Composers. They’re celebrated together based on a profession tag.

To go back to Cecilia, in this system she’s simply be (virgin, martyr, patron:music). And no one of these takes precedence, predominance or preeminence over any of the others.

A tag-based cloud taxonomy removes some of the problems and dis-ease I was feeling earlier. This is a fundamentally non-hierarchical system of taxonomy. Even tagging girl and boy saints does not thereby impute value to either category. This is a win. But in this win, what have we lost?

A tag-based construction of sanctity breaks apart the old system of categorization. Despite its flaws, the old system gave us a clear conceptualization of what sort of roles and levels of dedication to the Gospel were necessary in order to strive towards sainthood. In a cloud taxonomy, that clarity is gone. We don’t have something specific to aim at any more.

The creation of new Commons furthers this thinking. In the back of HWHM there are the BCP Commons, then a group of prayers identified as “New Commons for Various Occasions”. A whole bunch of things are mixed in here. Some of these are people-tags (“Artists & Writers”, “Prophetic Witness in Society”) some of these are event-tags (“On the Occasion of a Disaster”) while more are concept-tags (“Goodness of God’s Creation”, “Reconciliation and Forgiveness”, “Space Exploration”). As I think through the eminently practical question of how I would code these into the breviary, I feel caught between two different paradigms, two different taxonomies, and—therefore—two different ways for how Episcopalians are expected to conceptualize what the life of sanctity looks like.

It seems—well—cloudy…