Red-Letter Day
All Saints
November 1
also known as All Hallows, Hallowmas, Solemnity of All Saints
All Saints' Day, kept on November 1, honours the whole company of the redeemed: not one saint but all of them, and chiefly those whose names no one now knows. It is a Principal Feast in the Book of Common Prayer 2019, one of seven, and the only one the Prayer Book permits to be kept a second time on the Sunday following. Its appointed Gospel, the Beatitudes, has stood unchanged in English use since 1549.
This feast commemorates no event. There is no birth to recount, no martyrdom, no council. What is kept on November 1 is a company: all the saints together, and above all the ones nobody can name.
The church has been candid from early on that this is the point. Preaching to an English congregation around the year 990, Ælfric of Eynsham explained why the day exists at all. The teachers of the church, he said, could not appoint a festival separately for each of the holy dead, "nor to any man in the present life are the names of all of them known." The calendar had run out of days before the martyrs ran out of names. So one day was set aside to carry the remainder.
That is an accounting problem, and the medieval church treated it as one, plainly. Jacobus de Voragine, writing about 1260, gave four causes for the feast, and the second was simply that "we have left and overpassed many saints of whom we have made no feast." We cannot keep a day for every saint, he wrote, "as well for the great multitude, which be infinity, as for our infirmity." John Mirk, preaching in an English parish around 1400, compressed the reasons to three and told his hearers what the day required of them: fast the eve, then come to first evensong, to matins, to mass, and to second evensong, and worship God and all his saints "for our negligence of all the year before." The day made good what the year had done imperfectly.
Mirk also told his parishioners why it was worth the trouble, and here the plain arithmetic turns into something else. Your prayers, he said, will be sooner heard this day than another, because on this day all the saints of heaven pray together, and "all the saints praying at once shall be rather heard than one or two by themselves." And the saints are willing, he added, because they were once what we are: "of our flesh and our blood and our forme-fathers. Wherefore they have compassion of us." (Both renderings are modernised from Mirk's Middle English.)
Reformation England kept the day and changed what it asks for. The Latin collect of the Roman Missal petitioned God for an abundance of mercy through the saints' multiplied intercession. Cranmer did not translate that prayer; he wrote a new one, and the Prayer Book has prayed his ever since: that God, who has "knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord," would give grace to follow the blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living. The company remains; the transaction is gone. What is asked for now is imitation, and arrival: "that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you."
The feast's own appointed lesson is Revelation 7, the great multitude no one could number, robed in white, out of every nation. That is the shape of the day. Most of the holy dead are unrecorded, and the church's answer has never been to pretend otherwise but to keep a feast wide enough to hold them all unnamed. The Prayer Book's preface for the day says what the company is for: God has "surrounded us with so great a cloud of witnesses that we, rejoicing in their fellowship, may run with patience the race that is set before us, and, together with them, may receive the crown of glory that does not fade away."
You will not be able to name most of the people this day honours, and neither could Ælfric a thousand years ago. That is the feast's premise rather than its embarrassment: the church keeps one day precisely for the holiness it never wrote down. Which means the question the day puts to you is not whether your own faithfulness will be remembered, but whether it is real. The collect asks for grace to follow the saints "in all virtuous and godly living," which is a strikingly ordinary phrase for so large a company, and probably deliberately so. Most of the unnamed multitude got there by unremarkable obedience in a place nobody was watching. Where in your own week is the work no one will record?
The documentary base for this feast is uneven, and it is worth saying where it is thin. The consolidated chronology most modern accounts follow comes from two reference works, the 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia and Wikipedia, neither of them a witness. Where medieval primary texts corroborate independently, they are noted below; elsewhere the reader should understand that a much-repeated date may rest on a single line in an encyclopedia.
The commemoration is said to have begun in the East, at Antioch, on the Sunday after Pentecost, and is credited to a sermon of Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373) and to John Chrysostom (d. 407). Both attributions come from later reference works and neither has been confirmed against the primary texts. The Ephrem sermon is undated; 373 is Ephrem's death year, not an attestation date. The Chrysostom claim is weaker still: his genuine homily on the holy martyrs is dated 2 August, the day after the Maccabean Martyrs at Antioch, not the Sunday after Pentecost. The Eastern origin should be reported as what the reference literature says, unconfirmed at the source.
In the West the first firm act is a dedication rather than a feast. On 13 May 609 or 610, Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Blessed Virgin and all the martyrs, ordering an annual anniversary. This is the best-attested early row, and unusually it has a second, independent medieval line: both the Golden Legend and Mirk's Festial narrate the dedication under Boniface IV and the Emperor Phocas. It is, however, a martyrs' anniversary in May, not yet an All Saints feast in November.
The scope broadened under Gregory III (731 to 741), who consecrated an oratory in Old St Peter's to all the saints and fixed its anniversary for 1 November. The exact day is contested in the sources themselves, some giving 1 November 731 and others 12 April 732, and no primary act has settled it; the range is what can honestly be printed. Independently, November 1 observance is attested in Ireland and Anglo-Saxon Northumbria by about 800, in the Martyrology of Tallaght and the Félire Óengusso, and Alcuin of York is said to have recommended the November feast to Arno of Salzburg around the same date. That Insular evidence carries a real caveat: the compositional dates are scholarly reconstructions, while the earliest surviving manuscripts are tenth-century and early-fifteenth-century respectively. Whether Rome originated the November date or ratified an Insular one is a question the sources state as rival narratives and do not resolve.
The date's spread is clearer. Louis the Pious decreed All Saints a holy day of obligation throughout the Frankish Empire in 835, and Gregory IV (827 to 844) extended the 1 November celebration to the entire Church; these are two distinct acts and are often collapsed into one. By the twelfth century the older May feast had dropped out of Roman books. An octave was added by Sixtus IV (1471 to 1484), on the authority of a single encyclopedia line.
The day's own liturgical register is rejoicing. The Roman introit begins Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, "let us all rejoice in the Lord," though the chant is not original to this feast: the same formula was adapted from St Agatha's day to several Mass formularies, the closing clause changed for each. The Eastern churches keep the commemoration on a different principle altogether, on the first Sunday after Pentecost, tying the saints to the Spirit's outpouring; the troparion appointed there addresses a Church "adorned in the blood of Your Martyrs throughout all the world, as if clothed in purple and linen."
In English parishes much of what people actually did belongs to the wider Hallowtide, and a good deal of it to All Souls on 2 November rather than to this day: the bread-dole for the dead, souling for soul cakes, the bell-ringing the bishops suppressed. Some customs died quietly. At Findern in Derbyshire children lit fires on the common called Tindles, explained locally as lighting souls out of purgatory; a correspondent in 1784 noted the practice had probably ended when the commons were enclosed, "for want of the wonted materials." A November observance was ended by a land settlement, not a doctrine.
The day now reaches most English-speaking congregations as a hymn. William Walsham How's "For all the saints, who from their labours rest" first appeared in 1864, in eleven stanzas with an Alleluia refrain.
Elsewhere the observance is largely a cemetery day: grave visitation in Spain, candles across Poland and Central Europe, chrysanthemums in France, and in the Philippines the multi-day graveside vigils called Undas, whose name descends directly from the Spanish Todos los Santos.
Book of Common Prayer 2019 (ACNA): the governing text for this entry. Supplies the Collect of the Day and Proper Preface for All Saints' Day I (from the official propers leaflet), the Principal Feast rubric and Canadian Remembrance provision at p. 688, the baptismal rubric at p. 160, the lectionary at pp. 725 and 731, and the proper psalms at p. 733. https://bcp2019.anglicanchurch.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/149-All-Saints-I-11-01-landscape.pdf
Ælfric of Eynsham, Catholic Homilies I.36, "Natale Omnium Sanctorum", ed. and trans. Benjamin Thorpe (1844), Homily XXXVI; Thorpe's translation is quoted here. Source of the feast's stated ground, that the names of all the saints are not known to any man in the present life.
Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, "The Solemnity of All Hallows", Caxton's translation, Temple Classics edition, vol. VI, pp. 94 to 99. Source of the four causes, the "great multitude, which be infinity" passage, the agrarian rationale for the November date, and an independent medieval witness to the Pantheon dedication.
John Mirk, Festial, no. 64, "De Festo Omnium Sanctorum Sermo Breuis", ed. Theodor Erbe, Early English Text Society e.s. 96 (1905), pp. 266 to 268. Source of the fasted vigil and four attendances, the three reasons, the maximum-intercession passage, and the saints' kinship with the living. Quotations in the Story are modernised from Erbe's Middle English text.
Missale Romanum, 1 November, In Festo Omnium Sanctorum, 1962 typical edition. Source of the introit Gaudeamus omnes and of the Latin collect petitioning mercy "multiplicatis intercessoribus," against which Cranmer's replacement collect is contrasted.
Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, Ordinance for Abolishing of Festivals, 8 June 1647. Source of the abolition clause quoted in History. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/acts-ordinances-interregnum/p954
W. H. Frere and W. M. Kennedy, Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Period of the Reformation, vol. III (1910), pp. 208, 256 to 257, and 343. Source of the 1563 proposed article, Parkhurst's Norwich injunctions of 1569, Grindal's York articles of 1571, and Freke's Rochester articles of 1572.
Sacred Congregation of Rites, Decretum generale de rubricis ad simpliciorem formam redigendis ("Cum nostra hac aetate"), 23 March 1955, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis 47 (1955), pp. 218 to 224, Tit. II nn. 8, 9 and 11. Source of the suppression of the vigil and octave and of the decree's stated motive.
John Julian, A Dictionary of Hymnology (1907), p. 380 ii. Source of the 1864 first publication of "For all the saints" in eleven stanzas with the Alleluia refrain.
John Brand and Henry Ellis, Observations on Popular Antiquities (1813), vol. I, pp. 308 to 311. Source of the Findern Tindles and their end at the enclosure of the commons, citing the Gentleman's Magazine (1784).
Orthodox Church in America, Synaxis of All Saints: source of the troparion quoted in Traditions, from a jurisdiction's own liturgical page. https://www.oca.org/saints/troparia/2024/06/30/48-synaxis-of-all-saints
Drew Keane, "A Note on Blackletter Days in the Prayer Book Calendar": source of the red-letter and blackletter distinction, Parker's 1561 additions, and Whitgift's civil-convenience rationale. https://www.drewkeane.com/notes/2023/12/11/a-note-on-blackletter-days-in-the-prayer-book-calendar
Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), "All Saints, Feast of": source of the Ephrem and Chrysostom attributions, the Pantheon dedication of 609 or 610, Gregory III's oratory, Gregory IV's extension, and the Sixtus IV octave. A single tertiary witness underlying most modern accounts, and treated as such throughout. https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01315a.htm
A popular modern claim, that November 1 was chosen to displace the Gaelic festival of Samhain, could not be traced in this research to any primary papal record or scholarly source. It is widely believed and remains unverified. Two witnesses point elsewhere: the Golden Legend, a thirteenth-century Western text with no motive to conceal a Celtic origin, gives an agrarian reason for the November date, "for then ought to be greater abundance of victual, when the corn is had in, and wine made"; and the Catholic Encyclopedia derives the date from the Roman dedications.
The Reformation did not treat the day uniformly. Scotland's First Book of Discipline (1560) abolished saints' days as a class. In England, Parliament's Ordinance of 8 June 1647 ordered that "the said Feast of the Nativity of Christ, Easter and Whitsuntide, and all other Festival dayes, commonly called Holy-dayes, be no longer observed," on the ground that they had been "superstitiously used and observed"; All Saints fell under the general clause rather than by name, and the ordinance stood until 1660. The Church of England's own books never dropped it. When the 1549 Prayer Book cut the medieval sanctorale to a short list, All Saints was retained with full propers, and it remained a red-letter day with its own collect, epistle and gospel through every recension. The blackletter days Archbishop Parker added in 1561 carried no liturgy at all; Archbishop Whitgift explained frankly that they served "to express the usual times of payments, and the times of the courts and their returns." All Saints was never in that category.
What the Elizabethan authorities did suppress is instructive, because they had to name it. Diocesan articles between 1563 and 1572 repeatedly forbade the night bell-ringing at Hallowtide for the dead: a proposed article of 1563 against "the superstitious ringing of bells at All Hallowtide and at All Souls' Day, with the two nights next before and after"; Bishop Parkhurst at Norwich in 1569; Grindal for the Province of York in 1571, asking "whether on All Saints' day after Evening Prayer, there be any ringing at all"; Freke at Rochester in 1572. Each order ties the ringing to prayer for the dead, and each demands not merely that it stop but that offenders be named, "and who they be that use the same." The feast was kept; the traffic with the dead was cut out.
In the Roman rite the day was trimmed in the twentieth century. The general decree on rubrics of 23 March 1955, in force the following January, retained only the vigils of Christmas and Pentecost as privileged and five others as common, suppressing all the rest, and kept only the octaves of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, "suppressing all others." The vigil Mirk had commanded and the octave attributed to Sixtus IV both ended. The decree's stated motive was the burden on clergy weighed down with new pastoral duties.
In the Book of Common Prayer 2019, All Saints' Day is one of seven Principal Feasts, and the only one carrying a rubric permitting its observance on the Sunday following in addition to the fixed date. It is named one of the four days most appropriate for Baptism, given multiple sets of lessons (a distinction it shares only with Christmas Day and Easter Day), and given proper psalms in the daily office. The same page concedes the date in one place: in Canada, when Remembrance Day observances fall on the first Sunday of November, All Saints may be kept on the preceding Sunday.
Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical Body of your Son: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Sirach 44:1–14 or Revelation 7:9–17Psalm 149Revelation 7:9–17 or Ephesians 1:(11–14)15–23Matthew 5:1–12 or Luke 6:20–26(27–36)
British (Received Pronunciation): Augustine /ɔːˈɡʌstɪn/