All Souls

All Souls (commemoration of all the faithful departed). Although prayers for the dead are inscribed in some Roman catacombs from early Christian centuries, the Church was slow to dedicate a liturgical day to offering prayers and masses to help them attain the Beatific Vision through purification later described as Purgatory. The first example of this commemoration seems to be in the time of Isidore of Seville (d. 636): the day assigned was the Monday after Pentecost.

Dead monks were commemorated in this way: the extension to ‘all the dead who have existed from the beginning of the world to the end of time’ was the work of Odilo, abbot of Cluny (d. 1049). He also appropriately decreed that the day immediately following the feast of All Saints, 2 November, should be set aside for this purpose. The influence of Cluny was a principal reason why this practice spread to the whole Church of the West. It came to England through Lanfranc's Monastic Constitutions, based largely on Cluniac practice. At least four ancient English dedications are known, the most famous of which are Archbishop Chichele's foundation of All Souls College, Oxford, and the church in Langham Place, London. Christian concern for the dead is attested by very many medieval bequests and chantry foundations.

There was also widespread popular belief that souls in purgatory could appear on earth on this day to haunt, in the form of ghosts, witches, or toads, those who had wronged them in life. It was also believed that they could be helped by almsgiving in cash or in kind, such as ‘soul-cakes’ or fruit requested in a plaintive English folksong which survives to this day. Some of these beliefs seem to be subsumed in popular customs now associated with Hallowe'en, or the Eve of All Saints (31 October). Feast: 2 November; but in Armenian calendars on Easter Monday.

Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.

• Odilo's sermon is in P.L., cxlii. 1037; N.C.E., i. 319; H. Delehaye, Sanctus (1927); B.L.S. xi, 12–13