The commemoration of saints figures prominently in the Church’s daily round of worship. At the weekday Mass here at S. Stephen’s, we often celebrate the life of the saint whose day in the calendar it is. Some of these saints are very ancient and obscure figures, such as Crispin and Crispianian, martyrs in fourth century Gaul. Others are much more recent figures whose lives are better documented and better known to us, such as Therese of Lisieux in nineteenth-century France.
But one aspect of the commemoration of the saints that has caught my attention and captured my imagination more and more over the past year or so is what I like to call its geographical dimension. What I mean is that a particular holy person often becomes an important figure in the Church calendar not only because of the intrinsic merits of his or her earthly life, but also because of the specific communities and places where that saint has become known as a living presence in the years and even centuries after his or her death.
When we trace the posthumous careers of various saints through the different communities that have honored them, down to the cathedrals, basilicas, and shrines dedicated to them today, we gradually build up a working knowledge of the sacred geography of the Christian world. For example, whether or nor Saint James the Apostle ever visited Spain, what are claimed to be his relics are certainly enshrined at the cathedral in Santiago de Compostella – a destination for millions of pilgrims down through the centuries since the Middle Ages.
Moreover, the doctrine of the Communion of Saints teaches, among other things, that the saint in heaven watches over and intercedes for the communities and places where he or she is venerated on earth. Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple once wrote that on account of the Incarnation, Christianity is the most materialistic of the world’s great religions. For this reason, physical tokens and reminders of a saint’s earthly life are not unimportant. For example, Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote in his great work The City of God of the many miracles that accompanied the arrival of some relics of our patron saint Stephen in North Africa in the fifth century. When we invoke a saint in the presence of his relics on earth, he explained, the saint in heaven prays for us in turn with powerful effect.
What, then, can we say about the Feast of All Saints? In the early centuries of Church history, Christians visited the tombs of their local martyrs on the anniversaries of their deaths. In this practice lie the origins of the Church’s calendar of saints. As the numbers of martyrs multiplied, however, especially in the third and fourth centuries, the practice developed in some places of setting aside a day to commemorate all the martyrs, so that none would be overlooked. By the fifth century or so, several of the Eastern Churches had designated such a commemoration on May 13.
Then, in the early seventh century, the Byzantine Emperor gave the building in Rome known as the Pantheon into the care of Pope Boniface IV. The Pantheon had been built in the first century by the Emperor Agrippa as a temple to all the gods and goddesses. So, at its consecration as a church on May 13, 609, Boniface decided to undo its former pagan dedication by rededicating it to Saint Mary and all the Martyrs. And as part of the consecration ceremony, cartloads of bones of the martyrs were brought from the catacombs and deposited under the high altar. This event apparently marked several firsts: the first time that a former pagan temple was converted into a church, that relics of the saints were translated from the catacombs to a church in Rome, and that a church was dedicated not just to one martyr saint but to all of them. Incidentally, being made into a church ensured that the Pantheon became one of the few Roman architectural masterworks that did not fall into ruin.
Subsequently, in about the year 732, Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel in the old Saint Peter’s Basilica to All the Saints on November 1. The date may already have been kept as a feast of all the saints in the Frankish Empire, so that Gregory picked it as a suitable date for dedicating his chapel; or the celebration of All Saints on November 1 may arise as the keeping of the anniversary of the dedication of Gregory’s chapel. We’re not sure.
Either way, Gregory’s reasons for dedicating this chapel were enormously significant. In the East, the Iconoclastic heresy had just gained the ascendancy in the Byzantine Empire. And the Iconoclasts not only disputed the validity of the use of images of Christ and the saints in Christian worship, but they also attacked the invocation of the saints and the veneration of relics. Not only did they smash icons but they also broke open shrines and burned the bodies of saints or threw their relics into the sea. In addition to condemning these sacrileges, Pope Gregory made a point of paying special honor to both images and relics of the saints. In Saint Peter’s, he had an iconostasis or icon-screen installed; and he had the aforementioned chapel constructed to house a number of saints’ relics. The chapel itself did not survive the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s in the sixteenth century, but ever since its dedication November 1 has been the established date of the feast of All Saints in the West.
In the Eastern Church, the Iconoclastic heresy was condemned by the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787, and finally suppressed in 842. Later in the ninth century, the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI built the first Church dedicated to All Saints in Constantinople. The Churches of the East celebrate All Saints not on November 1, however, but in the Spring, on the first Sunday after Pentecost.
The point I want to make, then, is that the Church’s solemn celebration of the Feast of All Saints is not the result of some clever abstract speculation on the part of some monk or theologian in his free time. Instead, the feast gained traction and grew in importance precisely because it upheld crucial principles, doctrines, and practices that were under attack – particularly concerning the place of images, relics, and the invocation of the saints in the life of the Church. As we continue the celebration of the Feast of All Saints in our own day, we do well to consider the place of these same principles, doctrines, and practices in our own life in Christ.
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