SANCTORALE. — This is the part of the Missal (v.) and the Breviary (v.), also called Proprium de sanctis, which contains the proper formulary for the Mass and the Office of certain fixed-date feasts of Our Lord not included in the Temporal, such as, for example, the Most Precious Blood (10 July) and the Transfiguration (6 Aug.), the feasts of the Cross, of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the Angels, of the Saints, the anniversaries of the dedication of churches, and the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed. The history of the rite of each of these solemnities is treated in the article CALENDARIO DELLA CHIESA UNIVERSALE (for the feasts of the Madonna V. MARIA SANTISSIMA, IV. Nella liturgia; all the saints mentioned in the S. have their own entry in the Enc. Catt.); the number and rite of the proper feasts for a diocese or an Order or religious congregation are determined by their liturgical books (v.), if it is a question of a special liturgy, or else by the Propers. An integral part of the S. is the Common of Saints (v.), which collects the liturgical formulary common to certain categories of saints.
The origin and gradual enrichment of the S. mark the same stages as the spread of the cult of the Martyrs (v. MARTIRIO e MARTIRE), of the Confessors (v. storia; CONFESSORE), of holy virgins and non-virgins. In antiquity and the early Middle Ages, every Church had its own S. in which local saints appeared, especially martyrs, and those more celebrated saints whose cult soon took on a universal character, either because of their outstanding personality, such as the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Princes of the Apostles, St. John the Apostle, St. Andrew, St. Thomas, St. Stephen, St. John the Baptist, or because of their thaumaturgic power, such as, for example, SS. Cosmas and Damian, St. Martin of Tours, and others. Primitive S. of the Churches of Rome, Naples, the Gallican, Mozarabic, and Ambrosian liturgies are instructive in this regard. As for the Roman S., it should be noted that to the very reduced primitive substratum new feasts were added by the compiler of the ancient Gelasian Sacramentary and by that of the Gregorian Sacramentary. These two lists of proper feasts were then brought together in the year 750 by the compiler of the 8th-century Gelasian, who, in turn, added a few other saints then greatly venerated, such as, for example, the Apostles who did not have a cult in the West in antiquity. This new S., reworked fifty years later by Alcuin and the Frankish liturgists of the 9th century, and then accepted into the Missal and Breviary of the Roman Curia (late 12th–early 13th century) and enlarged under the influence of the Franciscan Order, constitutes, from the reform of St. Pius V onwards, the substratum of the present-day S. of the liturgical books of the Roman Church.
Originally, the S. was intended to be nothing more than a supplement to the Temporal (v.), so much so that in ancient liturgical books, with the exception of the primitive Gelasian Sacramentary, the two parts were brought together into a harmonious whole with rare saintly feasts in periods such as Advent, Lent, and Easter Time, when the liturgy of the Temporal was more intense and felt. From the late Middle Ages onwards, despite the reform of St. Pius V, the S. developed to such an extent as to overshadow the Temporal; it was Bl. Pius X who restored the S. to its original function and restored the Temporal to its classic features with the bull Divino afflatu (1 Nov. 1911).
Here now, month by month, are the feasts of the present Roman S. prior to the mid-9th century; in parentheses are indicated the sources with the following sigla: DE. = DEPOSITIO EPISCOPORUM (v.); DM. = Deposito martyrum (4th cent., ed. R. Valentini-G. Zucchetti, Rome 1942); L. = the so-called Leonian Sacramentary (5th–6th cent., ed. C. L. Feltoe, Cambridge 1896); G. = ancient Gelasian Sacramentary (late 5th–mid-8th cent., date of the codex, ed. H. A. Wilson, Oxford 1894); Gr. = Gregorian Sacramentary of the type of the Padua codex (7th–9th cent., date of the codex, ed. K. Mohlberg, Münster in V. 1927); G. VIII = 8th-century Gelasian Sacramentary (various types 8th–9th cent., cf. under De Puniet); Gr. A. = Adrianum Gregorian Sacramentary (late 8th cent., ed. H. Lietzmann, 1912); Kl. = Roman Capitularies of the 7th cent. (ed. Th. Klauser, Das römische Capitulare Evangelium, 1913); Kl. 740, 750 = Roman Capitularies of c. 740 and 750 (ed. cit.); Kl. VIII = Capitularies of the type of the 8th-century Gelasian Sacramentary (ed. cit.; V. EVANGELIARIO).
IN THE EASTERN RITES. — The Eastern rites today have a well-separated S., except for two: the Armenian rite and the Syro-Oriental rite.
In the Armenian rite, only seven feasts fall on a fixed day of a given month: Nativity, Epiphany, Purification, Annunciation, Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, Presentation, and the Conception of the Blessed Virgin; the saints are celebrated on a Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday of a determined week of one of the cycles that make up the liturgical year. If a week of a cycle is shifted, the commemoration of the saints follows the shift. This system seems always to have been in use in the Armenian Church (cf. C. Tondini dei Quarenghi, Etude sur le calendrier liturgique de la nation arménienne, in Bessarione, fasc. 90 [1906], pp. 275–94; fasc. 91–92 [1906], pp. 71–114).
The same principle is observed among the Chaldeans and Nestorians for the few saintly feasts they celebrate (23 among Catholics); Friday is reserved for them. Catholics have added 26 feasts, including those of the Lord and of the Blessed Virgin, on fixed dates of the civil calendar (cf. for the Nestorians, A. J. Maclean, East Syrian Daily Office, London 1894, pp. 264–83).
In the other Eastern rites, the S. occupies all or almost all the days of the civil calendar; the months of March and April, time of Lent and Easter, are less abundant. It admits several saints on a single day and determines the degree of their solemnity.
A. Baumstark has outlined some general lines on the formation of the S., which may also apply to the West: the first nucleus would consist of local martyrs and bishops; it would have been enlarged by the anniversaries of the deposition of relics and the dedication of churches; before the 7th century, some great saints (megalomartyrs) were already celebrated universally; concomitant feasts are grouped around Christmas, Epiphany, the feast of SS. Peter and Paul, etc.; finally, the mariological cycle develops.
Each Church has its own S. It should be noted among the Eastern Catholic communities the tendency to increase the S. ever more, and that the Malabarese Church, after the Synod of Diamper (1599), has, on several occasions, entirely aligned its S. with the Roman one.