Menologium

Detail of Menologium, showing saints and martyrs of December, January and February, painted by John Tohabi, 11th century tetraptych, kept at the Saint Catherine's Monastery.

A menologium (/mɛnəˈloʊdʒiəm/, pl. menologia), also known by other names, is any collection of information arranged according to the days of a month, usually a set of such collections for all the months of the year. In particular, it is used for ancient Roman farmers' almanacs (menologia rustica); for the untitled Old English poem on the Julian calendar that appears in a manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; for the liturgical books (also known as the menaia) used by the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches following the Byzantine Rite that list the propers for fixed dates, typically in twelve volumes covering a month each and largely concerned with saints; for hagiographies (also known as synaxaria) and liturgical calendars written as part of this tradition; and for equivalents of these works among Roman Catholic religious orders for organized but private commemoration of their notable members.

Name

Menologium is the Latin form of Greek menologion (μηνολόγιον, menológion), which is also used in English, particularly in the context of Eastern Orthodoxy. The plural of both the Latin and Greek forms of the name is menologia. The Greek term derived from mḗn (μήν, "month") + -o- (-ο-) + lógos (λόγος, "writing, recording") + -ion (-ιον), together meaning a monthly record or account. Although properly referring to the thing recorded, menology is sometimes used as a synonym to mean the menologium itself. More rarely, menologe is as well, borrowed from French ménologe.

Historical

Roman almanacs

The ancient Roman farming menologia (Latin: menologia rustica) were given their name by Theodor Mommsen in the first volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, date from the imperial period, and seem to derive from a single source, now lost. They provide the average lengths of day and night for each month at the latitude of Rome, astrological notes, the month's tutelary deity and temples in Rome by their day of dedication, agricultural tasks within the month, and other information but they omit most of the important agricultural festivals and, based on the listed harvest dates, were originally intended for a location rather north of Rome.

Old English poem

The Menologium, also known as the Old English Metrical Calendar, is an untitled late 10th-century Old English poem covering the Anglo-Saxon liturgical year within the context of the Anglo-Saxon Church's Julian calendar. Hart tentatively identifies its author as Byrhtferth, a Benedictine monk at Ramsey Abbey in Cambridgeshire, England. The Menologium serves as an prologue to a manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, introducing the year. There are similar but distinct equivalents in documents from the Celtic Church and in other Anglo-Saxon texts, generally known as kalendars. It has been printed in 18 separate editions beginning with George Hickes in 1703. Hickes entitled the poem "A Calendar or Poetical Menologium" (Calendarium seu Menologium Poeticum), picked up by Samuel Fox and the probable origin of its usual name. Most editions to date have added various emendations of the preserved text and several include misspellings and other errors, including in one instance changing summer to winter.

The Old English poem has also been edited to digital facsimiles of its manuscript folios, with annotations and a modern translation: Foys, Martin et al. (eds.).Old English Poetry in Facsimile Project. Center for the History of Print and Digital Culture, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2019-)

Eastern Orthodoxy

Menaia

Menaia, also known as menologia, are the office books of the Orthodox Church covering the propers assigned to fixed dates in the calendar. They correspond with the Proprium Sanctorum of the Roman Catholic Breviary. They are usually issued in sets of 12 volumes, one for each month of the year, but are sometimes bound in three, each covering four months together. The propers cover the part of the day's liturgy that varies from the usual ordinary. They thus cover the commemoration of the days' saints in the service and in the canons sung at Orthros, particularly the synaxaries. These lives of the saints are inserted between the 6th and 7th odes of the canon in similar fashion to the interpolation of the day's Martyrologium into the choral recitation of Prime in Roman Catholicism.

Synaxaria

Synaxaria, also known as menologia, are collections of saints' lives without the other liturgical material of the menaia. They correspond with Roman Catholic Martyrologies, although the usual Orthodox style is to provide fewer but fuller entries on the saints' lives. The most famous example is the Menologium of Basil II from around the year 1000. Some—such as the Menologium of Symeon Metaphrastes or the Syriac Menologium—bear a close resemblance to medieval Catholic legendaria and early modern recompilations of them such as Surius's Acta Sanctorum. Delehaye found that Symeon and other hagiographers of his era were largely conservative while compiling their works from earlier synaxaria but sparsely added additional materials from other—now uncertain—sources.

Roman Catholicism

Private commemorations

In the early modern period, some Roman Catholic religious orders began to compile the names and eulogies of their notable members. Saracenus's Menologium Carmelitanum ("Menologium of the Carmelites") printed at Bologna in 1627 may have been the earliest of these, but did not yet include a daily arrangement and only listed formally canonized members of his order. This was soon followed by Crisóstomo Henríquez's Menologium Cisterciense ("Menologium of the Cistercians"), printed at Antwerp in 1630. Nuremberg and Nádasi wrote similar works for the Jesuits, although they did not title them menologia. The earliest Jesuit compilation using the title was printed in 1669, with Giuseppe Antonio Patrignani creating a greatly expanded volume in 1730 and François Elesban de Guilhermy gathering materials for a series (published posthumously) that provided a separate menologium for each of the Jesuits' separate assistancies (now known as conferences).

These compilations quickly began to include respected but uncanonized members and to organize them for commemoration according to a calendrical schedule. Such members might be reputed for their holiness or simply their learning. Published by private authority, these works were intended for private consultation or remembrance within the order but not for inclusion into the liturgy. The Church prohibited reading from such works as part of the Divine Office but allowed them to be read aloud in the chapter-house or refectory. Henríquez's menologium had already included the remark that "it would not appear unsuitable if it were read aloud in public or in chapter or at least in the refectory at the beginning of dinner or supper" and it remained the custom to read aloud from such works in Jesuit refectories as part of the evening meal into the 20th century. The Menologium Franciscanum ("Menologium of the Franciscans") published by Fortunatus Hüber in 1691 was similarly intended for such open recitation but noted that the concluding formula of the Roman Matyrology ("Et alibi aliorum...") should be replaced as the ferialis terminatio cuiuscumque diei with the three verses of Revelation beginning "Post hæc vidi turbam magnam..."

See also

• Menologium der Orthodox-Katholischen Kirche des Morgenlandes
• Horologium, the book of hours in Eastern Orthodoxy

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Although the word Menologium (in English also written Menology and Menologe) has been in some measure, as we shall see, adopted for Western use, it is originally and in strictness a name describing a particular service-book of the Greek Church. From its derivation the term Menologium (menológion, from mén "a month") means "month-set", in other words, a book arranged according to the months. Like a good many other liturgical terms, e.g. lectionary, the word has been used in several quite distinct senses by writers of authority, and the main purpose of the present notice must be to try to elucidate this confusion.

(1) In the first place Menologium is not unfrequently used as synonymous with Menaion (menaîon). The Menaia usually in twelve volumes, one to each month, but sometimes bound in three, form an office-book, which in the Greek Church, corresponds, though very roughly, to the Proprium Sanctorum of the Breviary. They include all the movable parts of the services connected with the commemoration of saints and in particular the canons sung in the Orthros, the office which corresponds with our Lauds, including the synaxaries, i. e. the historical notices regarding the saints of the day, which are always inserted between the sixth and seventh odes of the canon. The Synaxaries are read in this place very much as the Martyrologium for the day is interpolated in the choral recitation of Prime in the offices of Western Christendom.

(2) Secondly and more frequently, the term Menologium is used to denote the bare collection of those historical notices just mentioned, without the odes and the other matter of the canons in which they are inserted. Such a collection, consisting as it does purely of historical matter, bears a considerable resemblance, as will be readily understood, to our Martyrology, although the notices of the saints are for the most part considerably larger and fuller than those found in our Martyrology, while on the other hand the number of entries is smaller. The "Menology of Basil", a work of early date often referred to in connexion with the history of the Greek Offices, is a book of this class.

(3) Thirdly, it frequently happens that the tables of scriptural lessons, arranged according to months and saints' days, which are often found at the beginning of manuscripts of the gospels or other lectionaries, are described as menologia. The saints' days are briefly named and the readings indicated beside each; thus the document so designated corresponds much more closely to a calendar than anything else of Western use to which we can compare it.

(4) Lastly the word Menologium is very widely applied to the collections of long lives of the saints of the Greek Church, whenever these lives, as commonly happens, are arranged according to months and days of the month. This arrangement has always been a favourite one also in the great Legendaria of the West, and it might be illustrated from the "Acta Sanctorum" or the well-known Lives of the Saints by Surius. The Greek compilers however regard September as the first and August as the last month of the ecclesiastical year.

As for propriety of usage it must be confessed that the question is primarily one of convenience; but on the whole it seems desirable that the term Menologium should be limited to the fourth acceptation among those just given. One of the most important collections of this kind is that made by a writer in the second half of the tenth century known to us as Symeon Metaphrastes. Something more than ten years ago Father Delehaye and Professor Albert Ehrhard working independently succeeded for the first time in correctly grouping together the works which are really attributable to this author, but great uncertainty still remains as to the provenance of his materials, and as to the relation between this collection and certain contracted biographies many of which exist among the manuscripts of our great libraries. The synaxaries, or histories for liturgical use, are nearly all extracted from the older Menologia, but Fr. Delehaye who has given special attention to the study of this class of documents, considers that the authors of these compendia have added, though sparsely, materials of their own, derived from various sources. (See Delehaye in his preface to the "Synaxarium Eccles. Cp.", published as a Propylæum to the "Acta SS." for November, lix-lxvi.)

Menologies in the West

The fact that the word Martyrology was already consecrated to a liturgical or quasi-liturgical compilation arranged according to months and days, and including only canonized saints and festivals universally received, probably led to the employment of the term Menologium for works of a somewhat analogous character, of private authority, not intended for liturgical use and including the names and elogia of persons in repute for sanctity but not in any sense canonized Saints. In most of the religious orders it became the custom to commemorate the memory of their dead brethren specially renowned for holiness or learning. In more than one such order during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the collection of these short eulogistic biographies was printed under the name of Menologium and generally so arranged as to form a selection for each day of the year. Since they were made by private authority which could not pronounce judgment on the sanctity of those so commemorated, the Church prohibited the reading of these compilations as part of the Divine Office; but this did not prevent the formation of such menologies for private use or even the reading of them aloud in the chapter-house or refectory. Thus the collection made by the Franciscan Fortunatus Hüber of the abbreviated lives of those of the Friars Minor who had died in the odour of sanctity, printed in 1691 under the title of "Menologium Franciscanum", was evidently intended for public recitation. In lieu of the concluding formula "Et alibi aliorum" etc. of the Roman Martyrology, the compiler suggests (364) as the ferialis terminatio cuiuscumque diei the three verses of the Apocalypse (vii, 9-11) beginning: "Post hæc vidi turbam magnam". The earliest printed work of this kind is possibly that which bears the title "Menologium Carmelitanum" compiled by the Carmelite, Saracenus, and printed at Bologna in 1627; but this is not arrranged day by day in the order of the ecclesiastical year, and it does not include members of the order yet uncanonized. A year or two later, in 1630, Father Henriquez published at Antwerp his "Menologium Cisterciense". That no general custom then existed of reading the Menology at table appears from his remark: "It would not appear unsuitable if it (the Menologium) were read aloud in public or in chapter or at least in the refectory at the beginning of dinner or supper". Again quite a number of works have been printed under the name Menologium by Fathers of the Society of Jesus, one or other of which it has been and still is the custom of the order to read aloud in the refectory during part of the evening meal. Though Fathers Nuremberg and Nadasi compiled collections of a similar character, they did not bear the name Menologium. The earliest Jesuit compilation which is so styled seems to have been printed in the year 1669. A more elaborate Menologium was that compiled by Father Patrignani in 1730, and great collections were made during the last century by Father de Guilhermy for the production of a series of such menologies, divided according to the groups of provinces of the Society called "Assistencies". The author did not live to complete his task, but the menologies have been published by other hands since his death. The term Menologium is also loosely used for any calendar divided into months, as, for example, the "Anglo-Saxon Menologium" first published by Hickes.

The whole subject of the Greek Menologia has been treated in fullest detail by Father Delehaye in the Anal. Bolland. (1895), 396 sqq., (1897), 311 sqq., (1898), 448 sqq., as well as in the Synaxarium Constantinopolitanum which forms the Propylæum of the Acta SS. for November. Consult also Nilles, Calendarium Utriusque Ecclesiæ (Innsbruck, 1896); Maltzew, Das Menologion (2 vols., Berlin, 1900); Kellner, Heortology (Eng. trans., London, 1908).

Bibliography

Sources

• "Menologium", Catholic Encyclopedia.