Calendar of Saints - Ranking of Feast Days

Ranking of Feast Days

Feast days are ranked in accordance with their importance.

In what is now the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, feast days are ranked (in descending order of importance) as solemnities, feasts or memorials (obligatory or optional). The 1962 version, whose use is authorized by the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum as an extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, divides liturgical days into I, II, III, and IV class days, as decreed by Pope John XXIII in 1960. Those who use even earlier forms of the Roman Rite rank feast days as Doubles (of three or four kinds), Semidoubles, and Simples. See Ranking of liturgical days in the Roman Rite.

In the Eastern Orthodox Church the ranking of feasts varies from church to church. In the Russian Orthodox Church they are: Great Feasts, middle, and minor feasts. Each portion of such feasts may also be called feasts as follows: All-Night Vigils, Polyeleos, Great Doxology, Sextuple ("sixfold", having six stichera at Vespers and six troparia at the Canon of Matins). There are also distinctions between Simple feasts and Double (i.e., two simple feasts celebrated together). In Double Feasts the order of hymns and readings for each feast are rigidly instructed in Typikon, the liturgy book.

In the Church of England, there are Principal Feasts and Principal Holy Days, Festivals, Lesser Festivals, and Commemorations.