SETTUAGESIMA (in the Roman Missal, “Dominica in Septuagesima”). — It is the ninth Sunday before Easter, in preparation for the feast of Christ’s Resurrection.
As a preparation for Easter, S. is purely Roman. Baumstark explains S. as a combination of the eight weeks of Eastern preparation (v. QUINQUAGESIMA; SESSAGESIMA) with the addition of Holy Week (until then independent). St. Gregory the Great was once believed to have organized these three Sundays before Lent (Callewaert, Morin, Capelle). Recently, however, A. Chavasse has maintained that St. Gregory, in organizing the liturgy of his sacramentary and of the ecclesiastical year in 590–93, knew only Sessagesima and that (594–96) he took account only of it (in 594, in fact, there were five Sundays after the Epiphany, and Sessagesima fell on 14 February). The “Comes” attributed to Alcuin, written after 643, likewise does not know S., which is mentioned for the first time in manuscripts of the Roman Epistolary and Evangelary dating no earlier than 700, and in Sacramentaries of the Gelasian type from the eighth century. The seventy days are counted from the Sunday of S. through the Saturday in Albis inclusively, since the Easter week ending on the Saturday in Albis had been reorganized. With books of the Gregorian type, Roman S. too was adopted everywhere, and, after 750, also in Gaul; only in Spain was Quinquagesima retained.
With S. the singing of the Alleluia and the Gloria in the Masses of the season comes to an end (v. ALLELUIA), and the Tractus is sung in their place after the Gradual. The services are celebrated in violet vestments: the deacon and subdeacon wear the dalmatic and tunicle, respectively, also in violet.