ABSTRACT
Underlying calendars representative of Hereford use and other local Western rites is the ancient Roman calendar.1 The product of a long and complex line of development extending from the third century, this recalls an age when there originated cults of the sanctified dead centred on burial places situated within the various suburban cemeteries and shrines of Rome.2 Early devotional interest concentrated mainly on martyrs, in particular martyred popes, beginning with St Callistus, who died in 222,3 but by the mid fourth century the official list that comes to be known as the Philocalian Calendar starts to include other saints.4 This formed in due course the basis of all subsequent Roman calendars and martyrologies comprising the names of saints, whose shrines, or sepulchral chapels (martyria), were generally situated in the more accessible suburban cemeteries customarily visited on the anniversaries of their deaths for a memorial service (memoria, commemoratio).5 Among the more famous shrines in the two cemeteries on the Via Appia within three or four miles of Rome were those of St Callistus and other martyred popes venerated annually.6 Inclusion in the calendar was usually guaranteed if the place of burial was located within an accessible radius of six or seven
1 Lietzmann, ‘Die römische Festkalendar’, Petrus und Paulus in Rom (2nd edn., 1927), 19-62 (ch. 4); Klauser (ed.), Das römische Capitulare Evangeliorum (repr. 1972), 184-5; Frere, Studies in Early Roman Liturgy, i (The Kalendar), ACC 28 (1930). A brief but useful introduction to the Western calendar is by Hiley, Western Plainchant (repr. 1997), 7 ff. (The Church year).
