This reference to the old Irish Church reminds us that a learned and well-known man, Sir James Frazer, in his Golden Bough, argues with great display of references to many literatures, that the great Feast of All Souls is of Celtic and pagan origin. Sir James holds that this Christian feast is nothing but a refined survival of an ancient Celtic festival, which was celebrated with many barbarous superstitions and heathenish observances. The festival was popular and had spread to many lands, so that this scholar writes that ecclesiastical authority' being unable to suppress it, was at length induced to connive at it.' Irish priests rejoice in all that tends to the honour of God and the glory of Ireland. Unhappily, the thesis maintaining the pagan origin of this feast cannot be maintained.1 Even if the thesis could be maintained there is nothing in such origin, transference and sanctification to shock Christian sentiment. For, history narrates how temples became churches, and how saints planned and timed holy processions and services on days of pagan revels, sacrifices and sports, to attract the multitude, to retain the weak, to allow harmless recreation, whilst forbidding and preventing pagan rites and ceremonies.

Hence, priests are quite safe in holding with the makers of text-books that the Feast of All Souls was established by the Abbot Odilo in 998. I quote from such a textbook:

The pious duty of prayer for the departed (2 Mach. xii. 46) finds expression in private and public devotions. The public prayers usually take place on stated days, i.e., the day of the death, the seventh and thirtieth day after death, and the anniversary; the observance of these devotions is left in the hands of the relatives and friends of the deceased. The religious Orders began at an early date to observe these pious customs, with regard to their own departed members. Besides this, for the last thousand years, a particular day in the year has been set apart for the commemoration of all the departed in general; this was the 2nd November The impulse which led to its introduction into the ritual of the Church came from Cluny, for in 998 the Abbot Odilo issued an ordnance to this effect (the so-called Statutum S. Odilonis pro Defunctis, Migne Pat. Lat. cxlii. 1038) to all the monasteries of his congregation. In this it was directed that in all monasteries of the Order on the 1st November, after vespers, the bell should be tolled and the Office of the Dead recited, and on the next day all the priests of the congregation were to say Mass for the repose of the faithful departed.2

...

1 See Father Thurston's The Memory of Our Dead, pp. 102-104.

• Kellner, Heortology, chap. ii. 12.

Dr. Kellner in the above passage states: The public prayers usually take place on stated days, i.e., the day of the death, the seventh, the thirtieth day after death, and the anniversary.' Why were these days selected? Why were special services and Masses named for the third, the seventh, the thirtieth day, rather than for the fifth and thirteenth and fortieth day? In the Roman Missal there stand Masses, In Die Obitus seu Depositionis; In Anniversario Defunctorum, In Missis Quotidianis, and the extremely accurate compilers of the Irish Ordo Divini Officii Recitandi (on page xiii) call these days-the third the seventh and the thirtieth day-privileged days. Why were they selected for privileges? They have long been observed as special days for requiem offices and Masses. St. Theodore of Canterbury, who died in 690, wrote in his canons: 'On the first, the third, the ninth and also the thirtieth day let Mass be celebrated for them.' It is quite probable that the fixing of these days for requiem rites is a survival of pre-Christian times. For, it is hard not to see some connexion between the pre-Christian and the Christian use, when the mention of these very days is found in classical authors, living and describing the funeral rites of their day, long before the birth of Christ.

A look into a classical dictionary, such as Seyffert's or Smith's, finds Greek usage before the birth of Our Lord : 'On the third, ninth and thirtieth day after the funeral, libations of honey, wine, oil, and milk or water, with other offerings, were brought to the tomb. . The kinsfolk visited the graves more especially on the anniversaries of births and deaths. . . . The outward signs of mourning were laid side at Athens on the thirtieth day.' Surely there must be some connexion between these days of paganism and Christianity. But Christianity mentioned generally, but not always, the seventh, not the ninth day; how arose the divergence?

The fact is that for the old Greeks and Romans the week as a measure of time did not exist. It was introduced into pagan Rome, seemingly from Alexandria, about the second century after Christ. Consequently from the earliest times the Greeks and the Romans, too, in their novendiali had kept a nine-day period of special mourning. When the week was introduced, and the weight of Christian authority and practice was added to it, there was probably for some time confusion and diversity of usage, but in the end the seven-day period prevailed. There can be little doubt, however, that we still retain a survival of the old nine-day

arrangement in the novendiali observed in the obsequies of a Pope, and possibly also in the novena, which is the familiar period of our protracted prayers of special intercession.1

The thirtieth day is in this country known as the month's mind. It is of ancient custom, and even in times of persecution was celebrated in Ireland. Sir Henry Piers, in his Description of West Meath (1682), tells how, 'After the day of interment of a great personage they count four weeks, and that day four weeks all priests and friars and all gentry, far and near, are invited to a great feast, usually termed the month's mind.' In England, in Catholic times, the wills of the time bequeath sums of money, stipends for Masses, alms to poor, and to buy meat and bread for the mourners. Thus Robert Fabyan, whose will bears date 1511, gave directions to his executrix: ‘And agenst my moneths mynde I will there be ordered at the said churche, competent brede, ale, pieces of beeffe and moton and rost rybbys of beeffe as shall be thought needful by the discretion of myn Executrice for all comers to the said obsequy.' Such bequests are very common in the old English wills. And such a will as the following by the Earl of Worcester in 1524 is not uncommon: I will that no month's mind dinner shall be kept for me, but only an obit of an hundred Masses to be said for me at Windsor.' In England for centuries the singing of dirges and Mass was impossible. The practice of having Masses or feasts on the thirtieth day died out very early in Reformation days. But the words, ' a month's mind,' hung on in English speech for centuries. They retained their meaning partially, but the pious practices of Mass and alms were quite forgotten.

Now in Catholic England the month's mind was sometimes the last Mass in a series of thirty, which made up the trental of St. Gregory. The concluding service was one of solemnity, and there was a pious belief that on the celebration of the final Mass of the thirty, said on each successive day of the month, that the suffering soul was relieved and released. The relatives in anxiety and sorrow importuned Heaven for the repose of the soul, and longed for the day of its release; whilst the mourners longed for the month's mind which brought to some alms and to all good cheer, as witness the thoughtful kindness of the

1 Thurston, op. cit., p. 138.

testators quoted above. Hence we find in Shakespeare (1564-1616), who lived during the early days of the Reformation, the words month's mind used to express no sacred ceremonies, but merely ardent longing, mental importunity. Thus Julia, Thus Julia, coveting some letters, says to her maid: 'I see you have a month's mind to them." Again, Lyly (1578), in his Euphues and his England, says that Euphues determined to end his life in Athens although he had a month's mind to England.' And in Sir Walter Scott's (1728-1811) Diary stands the passage: 'I had a month's mind-but was afraid of the newspapers.'

It is needless to write about the beginnings of Mass and prayers for the departed. Text-books in Church history, liturgy and archaeology supply abundant proof, texts and details of the antiquity of the devotion and of its growth.

With the saints of Ireland the memory of the dead was a special duty. When St. Gall was informed of the death of St. Columbanus he forthwith gave orders to enable him to offer Mass at once for the repose of the departed saint.2 And St. Columba hearing of the same saint's death hastened to show his love for his departed friend by celebrating Mass. Diptychs containing the names of the deceased were brought by a deacon to the celebrant, and their contents were read aloud by him during the offertory. A special penance was assigned to the deacon who forgot this part of his duty. This recitation of names was followed by an anthem called the Deprecatio. It contained an enumeration of the names of those departed saints for whose repose the prayers of the congregation were requested, and of those by whose intercessions such prayers would aid it. This anthem, in the Mass at Iona, ended with the name of St. Martin, and one day St. Columba, as celebrant, turned to the chanters and bade them add the name of Columbanus: Tunc, omnes qui inerant fratres intelligere quod Columbanus, episcopus Lagenensis carus Columbae amicus ad Dominum emigraverit." The letter of association or agreement drawn up between the monasteries of St. Gall and Reichenau about the year 800 is typical of the arrangements made

1 Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act I., Scene 2.

2 Walafrio Strabo, Vita B. Galli, 1, cap. xxvi.

3 Adam, Vita S. Col., iii. 12.

4 Cuminius, De Mens. Penitent, c. xiii.

Adam, Vita S. Columbae, iii. 12.

between communities of long ago. It prescribes that when the news of the death of a monk reached the members of another monastery, (a) all priest-monks should say three Masses on that day for the soul of the deceased; and those not in priest's orders should recite the Psalter and sing the night offices for the same intention. (b) A week afterwards thirty psalms were to be recited. (c) On the thirtieth day each priest again said Mass for deceased. (d) At the beginning of each month the Office of the Dead was to be said by each community, with a special commemoration for the soul of the most recently deceased monk. (e) Both monasteries were to have a solemn anniversary service on 14th December, when each priest said three Masses. From such agreements the number of Masses in a single day in a monastery must have been very large indeed, and hence legislation restricted the numbers. Thus Theodore of Canterbury ordered only two or three Masses to be said at the death of a priest. But the practice of saying five or seven Masses daily was not unheard of in times long ago.1

Even in Ireland holy and earnest men may have said, through zeal and charity for the suffering souls, two or three Masses daily. But the practice led to abuses; and in the Provincial Synod of Armagh held at Killoe, Co. Longford, the following enactment was issued :—

Cum audiamus aliquos de utroque clero in provincia Dubliniensi diebus Dominicis et festivis ter eodem die celebrare et subinde bis diebus ferialibus ne mallum illud et inusitata praxis in nostram provinciam serpat, statuimus et ordinamus quod nullus in nostra jurisdictione audeat aut praesumat celebrare ultra secundum sacrum diebus Dominicis et festivis : et hoc ipsum indulgemus tantum curam animarum habentibus, idque urgente necessitate; in ferialibus autem nullus praesumat secundum sacrum celebrare sub paena suspensionis.

But the privilege of saying three Masses on All Souls' Day was not a renewal of an old privilege, nor have the three Masses on All Souls' Day any parity with the three Masses of Christmas Day. The practice of saying three Masses on All Souls' Day is recorded of the religious Orders in the diocese of Valencia in Spain in 1658. The secular priests said only two Masses, and the Jesuits followed the practice of the seculars. The practice dated in that diocese before 1553, and it was stated that Pope Julius III

1 See Thurston, op. cit. p. 63.

2 Monahan, Records of Ardagh and Clonmacnoise, p. 29.