The Church Year and Kalendar

Series Title: The Cambridge Handbooks of Liturgical Study

The purpose of The Cambridge Handbooks of Liturgical Study is to offer to students who are entering upon the study of Liturgies such help as may enable them to proceed with advantage to the use of the larger and more technical works upon the subject which are already at their service.

The series will treat of the history and rationale of the several rites and ceremonies which have found a place in Christian worship, with some account of the ancient liturgical books in which they are contained. Attention will also be called to the importance which liturgical forms possess as expressions of Christian conceptions and beliefs.

Each volume will provide a list or lists of the books in which the study of its subject may be pursued, and will contain a table of Contents and an Index.

The Church’s Year, as it has been known for many centuries throughout Christendom, is characterised, first, by the weekly festival of the Lord’s Day (a feature which dates from the dawn of the Church’s life and the age of the Apostles) and, secondly, by the annual recurrence of fasts and festivals, of certain days and certain seasons of religious observance. These latter emerged, and came to find places in the Kalendar at various periods.

The study of Kalendars brings one into constant contact with hagiology, the acts of martyrs, and the lives of saints. It would however have been obviously vain to deal seriously in the present volume with so vast a subject, even in broadest outline.

A short Bibliography of some important or serviceable works dealing with various branches of the subject before us is prefixed.