Trinity Sunday
Trinity Sunday
The first Sunday after Pentecost, instituted to honour the Most Holy Trinity. In the early Church no special Office or day was assigned for the Holy Trinity. When the Arian heresy was spreading the Fathers prepared an Office with canticles, responses, a Preface, and hymns, to be recited on Sundays. In the Sacramentary of St. Gregory the Great (P.L., LXXVIII, 116) there are prayers and the Preface of the Trinity. The Micrologies (P.L., CLI, 1020), written during the pontificate of Gregory VII (Nilles, II, 460), call the Sunday after Pentecost a Dominica vacans, with no special Office, but add that in some places they recited the Office of the Holy Trinity composed by Bishop Stephen or Liège (903-20) By other the Office was said on the Sunday before Advent. Alexander II (1061-1073), not III (Nilles, 1. c.), refused a petition for a special feast on the plea, that such a feast was not customary in the Roman Church which daily honoured the Holy Trinity by the Gloria, Patri, etc., but he did not forbid the celebration where it already existed. John XXII (1316-1334) ordered the feast for the entire Church on the first Sunday after Pentecost. A new Office had been made by the Franciscan John Peckham, Canon of Lyons, later Archbishop of Canterbury (d. 1292). The feast ranked as a double of the second class but was raised to the dignity of a primary of the first class, 24 July 1911, by Pius X (Acta Ap. Sedis, III, 351). The Greeks have no special feast. Since it was after the first great Pentecost that the doctrine of the Trinity was proclaimed to the world, the feast becomingly follows that of Pentecost.
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NILLES, Kal. man. (Innsbruck, 1897); BINTERIM, Denkwürdig keiten, I. 264; KELLNER, Heortology (London, 1908). 116; BÄUMER, Geschichte des Breviers (Freiburg, 1895), 298.
FRANCIS MERSHMAN Transcribed by Wm Stuart French, Jr. In Memoriam Wm Stuart French, Sr.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XVCopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Trinity Sunday
the octave day of the feast of Pentecost. The introduction of this day into the calendar is of comparatively recent date, it being established by pope Benedict XI, A.D. 1305. It is probable that the zeal of many Christians against the use of images in the 8th and 9th centuries may have been the first cause of the appointment of a distinct day for meditating upon the nature of the Holy Trinity in unity, or the one true God, as distinguished from all idols. The reason for its late introduction is that in the creed of the Church, and in its psalms, hymns, and doxologies, great prominence was given to this doctrine, and it was thought that there was no need to set apart a particular day for that which was done every day.