The Origins of Feasts, Fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity

by Paul Bradshaw and Maxwell Johnson

Alcuin / SPCK (2011)

ISBN 0-281-06054-2

The liturgical year is a relatively modern invention. The term itself only came into use in the late sixteenth century. In antiquity, Christians did not view the various festivals and fasts that they experienced as a unified whole. Instead, the different seasons formed a number of completely unrelated cycles and tended to overlap and conflict with one another.

Drawing upon the latest research, the authors tracks the development of the Church’s feasts, fasts and seasons, including the Sabbath and Sunday, Holy Week and Easter, Christmas and Epiphany, and the feasts of the Virgin Mary, the martyrs and other saints.

Paul Bradshaw is Professor Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame, USA, an honorary canon of the Diocese of Northern Indiana, and a priest-vicar of Westminster Abbey, London, UK.

Maxwell Johnson is Professor Liturgy at the University of Notre Dame, USA, and a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

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