Feast of the Patronage of Our Lady

It was first permitted by Decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites, 6 May, 1679, for all the provinces of Spain, in memory of the victories obtained over the Saracens, heretics, and other enemies from the sixth century to the reign of Philip IV. Benedict XII ordered it to be kept in the Papal States on the third Sunday of November. To other places it is granted, on request, for some Sunday in November, to be designated by the ordinary. The Office is taken entirely from the Common of the Blessed Virgin, and the Mass is the "Salve sancta parens". In many places the feast of the Patronage is held with an additional title of Queen of All Saints, of Mercy, Mother of Graces. The Greeks have no feast of this kind, but the Ruthenians, followed by all the Slavs of the Greek Rite, have a feast, called "Patrocinii sanctissimæ Dominæ" etc., or Pokrov Bogorodicy, on 1 October, which, however, would seem to correspond more with our Feast of the Scapular.

NILLES, Kalendarium Manuale, II, 532; BENEDICT XIV, De festis, II, 173, 174; MARTINOV, Précis historiques (1858), July.

FRANCIS MERSHMAN