I often look at the late Massey Shepherd’s commentary on the 1928 Prayer Book, published in 1950, when I want to know about the traditional readings associated with Sundays and major feast days. For All Saints’ Day, Massey begins with the possibility of a commemoration of “All Martyrs” from the third century; he says there’s more evidence for these commemorations in the fourth century.[1] For the record, his work is confirmed by more recent scholarship.[2] In addition, Massey wrote these words about this feast, “Sometime between 607 and 610 Pope Boniface IV obtained permission to take over the famous Pantheon in Rome (which had been closed since the fifth century)”—over a hundred years—“for Christian worship.”[3] Under Boniface, the Pantheon was dedicated to St. Mary and All Martyrs on May 13 in the same year. It’s worth noting for us as Anglicans that among the earliest evidence for a November 1 celebration of All Saints is from late eighth-century England.[4]
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