Ranking of Liturgical Days in The Roman Rite - Feast Days

Feast Days

The ranking of feast days of saints and of Christian mysteries such as the Ascension of the Lord, which had grown from an original division between doubles and simples developed into a more complicated hierarchy of Simple, Semidouble, and Double, with feast days of the Double Rite further divided into Double of the I Class, Double of the II Class, Greater Double or Major Double, and Double, in order of descending rank.

What the original meaning of the term "double" may have been is not entirely certain. Some think that the greater festivals were thus styled because the antiphons before and after the psalms were "doubled", i.e. twice repeated entire on these days. Others, with more probability, point to the fact that before the ninth century in certain places, for example at Rome, it was customary on the greater feast days to recite two sets of Matins, the one of the feria or week-day, the other of the festival. Hence such days were known as "doubles".

The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1907 shows the incremental crowding of the calendar with the following table based on the official revisions of the Roman Breviary in 1568, 1602, 1631 and 1882, and on the situation in 1907.

In 1907, when, in accordance with the rules in force since the time of Pope Pius V, feast days of any form of double, if impeded by "occurrence" (falling on the same day) with a feast day of higher class, were transferred to another day, this classification of feast days was of great practical importance for deciding which feast day to celebrate on any particular day. Pope Pius X simplified matters considerably in his 1911 reform of the Roman Breviary. In the case of occurrence the lower-ranking feast day could become a commemoration within the celebration of the higher-ranking one. Further retouches were made by Pope Pius XII in 1955, Pope John XXIII in 1962, and Pope Paul VI in 1969.

On ferias and many feast days of simple rank, the celebrant was permitted to substitute a Mass of his own choice such as a votive Mass, or a Mass for the dead.

Before the reform of Pope St Pius X in 1911, ordinary Doubles took precedence over most of the semidouble Sundays, resulting in many of the Sunday Masses rarely being said. While retaining the semidouble rite for Sundays, the reform permitted only the most important feast days to be celebrated on Sunday, although commemorations were still made until the reform of 1960.

The division into doubles (of various kinds) semidoubles and simples continued until 1955, when Pope Pius XII abolished the rank of semidouble, making all the previous semidoubles simples, and reducing the previous simples to a mere commemoration in the Mass of another feast day or of the feria on which they fell.

Then, in 1960, Pope John XXIII completely ended the ranking of feast days by doubles etc., replacing it by a ranking, applied not only to feast days but to all liturgical days, as I, II, III, and IV class days.

The 1969 revision by Pope Paul VI divided feast days into "solemnities", "feasts" and "memorials", corresponding approximately to Pope John XXIII's I, II and III class feast days. Commemorations were abolished both as a rank of liturgical day and as the addition of a second presidential prayers after the day's Collect, Prayer over the Offerings, and Prayer after Communion at Mass. While some of the memorials are considered obligatory, others are optional, permitting a choice on some days between two or three memorials, or between one or more memorials and the celebration of the feria. On a day to which no obligatory celebration is assigned, the Mass may be of any saint mentioned in the Roman Martyrology for that day. This allows priests more flexibility in their celebration of mass, since they are now permitted to choose between the memorial masses of saints on most days of the year. Before the reforms there was always only one memorial and one text for mass per day, with lesser saints' days being merely commemorated, their own separate masses having frequently fallen into disuse and only the collect, secret and postcommunion remaining in the missal.

The developments in the ranking of feasts according to the Roman Breviary's calendar can be summarised thus: