Blackletter Days

In medieval service books and the earliest editions of the Book of Common Prayer, major festivals were formerly listed in the calendar in red ink, hence the name red letter days. Lesser festivals were in black ink. Because red ink is more expensive and printing in two colors (whatever the colors) also adds expense, the red ink fell out of general use, but the terminology and distinction remained. The 1549 Prayer Book had no blackletter days listed in the calendar at all. In the 1552 recension four were added — who precisely is responsible for the additions is not clear, nor is the purpose of the additions. They are not assigned special readings (that is, propers), so they were not observed liturgically. In 1561, Archbishop Parker added fifty-nine blackletter days into the calendar, but like the four blackletter days of 1552, he did not assign any propers to these days — no proper first lesson, collect, epistle, or gospel. Indeed, he also added a note to the calendar that excluded liturgical observation of the blackletter days. This exclusion was confirmed by Canon 88 of the 1604 Constitutions and Canons of the Church of England. What, then, was the point in noting them on the calendar at all?

Elizabeth’s third Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift, defended listing these lesser festivals in the calendar by explaining they are only meant “to express the usual times of payments, and the times of the courts and their returns.” It was customary for contracts and leases and other legal documents to use the traditional names of days rather than the day of the month, so the inclusion of these names in the Prayer Book calendar was useful for secular reasons. Modern historians have noted, however, that some traditional day names commonly referred to in secular affairs were not included in the fifty-nine days added by Parker. So the addition was not as useful to lawyers in this way as it might have been, as useful as say contemporary almanacs, which listed many more saints’ days in their calendars, like St Brigid on 1 February, for example, and St Wilfred on 24 April. 

After the Restoration, when the Prayer Book was revised, the question was raised again. The bishops at the Savoy Conference reiterated Whitgift’s defense and added one of their own. They said the naming of these saints in the calendar, despite not having a liturgical function, preserved their memory. The 1662 recension of the Prayer Book added a few more blackletter days to the calendar (in fact, since Parker’s additions were never sent to Parliament for approval, it was only in 1662 that his additions obtained statutory authority). Once again, however, why only these specific names were added, remains unknown – St Brigid and St Wilfred still didn’t make the cut! 

The Savoy bishops’ mnemonic defense was not advanced by any in the Elizabethan establishment and provides no more help than Whitgift’s civil rationale in explaining why only those days were included rather than the full panoply of pre-reformation blackletter days. Indeed, the only voices in Elizabeth’s church who suggested that the blackletter days were intended to preserve the memory of pre-reformation saints were those who adamantly opposed listing them in the Prayer Book calendar. Elizabethan defenders of including blackletter days in the calendar only ever offer a civil rationale. Interestingly, even high-churchman Charles Wheatley’s early eighteenth-century commentary on the Prayer Book does not follow the Savoy bishop’s second rationale for blackletter days. While it does not look likely to have been one of the motivations for it, the preservation of the memory of those saints is one of the effects of listing blackletter days in the calendar.