Feast Day  - All Saints' Day (November 1st)
Channel: House of Prayers for Everyone (HOPE)
Date: 31/10/2023

All Saints' Day is a Christian solemnity celebrated every November 1st in honor of all the Saints of the Church, whether they are known or unknown, martyred or not.

Observance

The Christian celebration of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day stems from a belief that there is a powerful spiritual bond between those in heaven, the living, and the "Church penitent" which includes the faithful departed.

History

From the 4th century, there existed in certain places and at sporadic intervals a feast day to commemorate all Christian martyrs. It was first held in Edessa, the Sunday after Pentecost in Antioch, and the Friday after Easter by the Syrians.

During the 5th century, St. Maximus of Turin preached annually on the Sunday after Pentecost in honor of all martyrs in what is today northern Italy. The Comes of Würzburg, the earliest existing ecclesiastical reading list, lists the Sunday after Pentecost as the "Sunday of the Nativity of the Saints".

By this time, the commemoration had expanded to include all saints, martyred or not.

In the year 609 or 610, Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyrs, ordering an anniversary - the feast of dedicatio Sanctae Mariae ad Martyres has been celebrated at Rome ever since. It was suggested that May 13th was chosen by the Pope and earlier by Christians in Edessa because it was the date of the Roman pagan festival of Lemuria.

November 1st

Pope Gregory III dedicated an oratory in Old St. Peter's Basilica to the relics "of the holy apostles and of all saints, martyrs and confessors, of all the just made perfect who are at rest throughout the world". 

Some sources say Gregory III dedicated the oratory on November 1st, and this is why the date became All Saints' Day. Other sources say Gregory III held a synod to condemn iconoclasm on November 1, 731, but he dedicated the All Saints oratory on Palm Sunday, 12 April 732.

But by the turn of 9th century, there was wide evidence that the churches in Ireland, Northumbria and Bavaria were holding a feast commemorating all saints on November 1, with the Irish Martyrology of Tallaght and Martyrology of Óengus, also listed the commemoration of all saints on that particular date.

Sicard of Cremona, a scholar who lived in the 12th and 13th centuries, proposed that Pope Gregory VII suppressed the feast of May 13 in favor of November 1. By the 12th century, May 13 had been deleted from liturgical books.

The All Saints octave was added by Pope Sixtus IV. Both the All Saints vigil and the octave were suppressed by the Liturgical reforms of Pope Pius XII in 1955.

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