SABATINO, PRIVILEGE. — It is based on the apparition and promise of the Most Holy Virgin to free from Purgatory the souls of the Carmelite confrères on the Saturday after their death. The conditions for obtaining the privilege are: for religious, to persevere in the Order; for those aggregated to it as confrères, to wear the “sign of the holy habit” (literally taken: the cape, but practically the scapular), to observe chastity according to one’s state, and to recite the Little Office of the Madonna or, if unable to do so, to abstain from meat on Wednesdays and Saturdays; this last condition may be commuted by priests having the faculty to the recitation of seven Pater, Ave, and Gloria.
The apparition and privilege are set forth in the so-called “Sabbatine Bull” of John XXII, Sacratissimo uti culmine (1322), known through a transcript in the confirmatory bull of Alexander V (1409) authenticated in 1421, and later inserted into the bull of Clement VII, Ex clementi (1530).
The decree of the Holy Office of 11 February 1613 clarified: “It is permitted to the Carmelite Fathers to preach that the Christian people may piously believe… that the Most Holy Virgin will assist the souls of the friars and confrères after their death… with her continual intercession, suffrages, merits, and special protection, especially on Saturday, the day which the Church consecrates to the same Virgin…” Even the recent popes have repeatedly recalled the Sabbatine Privilege, the most recent being Pius XII in the commemorative letter for the seventh centenary of the vision of St. Simon Stock (11 February 1950).
However, the material authenticity of the bull of John XXII has been strongly contested, both because it is not contained in the official Register and because of the text’s un-curial and somewhat strange tenor. According to the present state of documentation, the privilege is fully developed only in the second half of the 15th century.