Reading a day’s page

Every day of the Roman Martyrology has the same shape: a heading with the date and the moon, then the eulogies of the saints and blessed whose memory falls on that day, in a fixed order. This is how 2 January looks in the 2004 Latin edition, in outline:

The heading

The older editions date each day in the Roman manner, counting towards three fixed days of the month:

• the Kalends (Kalendae), the 1st;
• the Nones (Nonae), the 5th, or the 7th in March, May, July and October;
• the Ides (Idus), the 13th, or the 15th in those four months.

The other days are counted backwards to the next of these, inclusively: the day before is pridie, the one before that the third day, and so on. So 2 January, four days before the Nones of January counting both ends, is Quarto Nonas Ianuarii, as the 1630 edition prints it, followed by Luna. The days after the Ides count towards the Kalends of the next month: 14 January is the nineteenth day before the Kalends of February. The Italian edition gives both forms when it explains the lunar day: "1 January, or the Kalends of January".

After the date, the reader may announce the day of the moon (see The lunar table). On this site the reader shows the moon for the current year under each day's heading.

The order of the eulogies

The celebrations of the General Roman Calendar come first. They are set apart in the print and carry no number, but the day's numbering counts them: on 2 January the first numbered eulogy is 2, because Saints Basil and Gregory, the memorial of the day, are the first.

Then follow the other eulogies, numbered in their order within the day (Praenotanda, n. 29). When an edition of a conference of bishops adds eulogies proper to its whole nation, they come right after those of the General Calendar (Praenotanda, n. 41).

Remember that a day's eulogies are read on the day before (see Using the Martyrology).

Asterisks

Some entry numbers carry an asterisk: 4*, 5*, 12*. The asterisk marks the particular or local standing of the commemoration: it is placed beside the number of the older saints whose cult is local, and of all the blessed from the Middle Ages to our own time (Praenotanda, n. 29). Their eulogies are read only in the dioceses or religious families where the cult of that saint or blessed has been granted (Ordo, n. 11). Elsewhere the reader passes over them.

The asterisk belongs to an edition, not to the eulogy. The Latin edition of 2004 and the Italian (CEI) edition do not always agree: 23 eulogies are asterisked in the Latin print but not in the Italian, and 6 the other way round. This site shows each edition as it is printed, and records the difference in the edition's notes (see Notes, misprints and errata).

Item, Eodem die, Ibidem

Many eulogies begin with a place: Romae, "at Rome". Three openings link a eulogy to the ones before it:

• Item ("likewise") and Eodem die ("on the same day") begin another eulogy of the same day. They do not carry over the place of the eulogy before.
• Ibidem ("in the same place") does: it means the place named in the eulogy before.