…by God to introduce the festival of the Immaculate Conception by Anna of the Virgin Mary.1 This Alfinus was no doubt Helchinius, mentioned in the ancient Breviary of Tours. At first it was left free to the people to observe it or not, as by the Council of Oxford of 1222, but not so a synod of London in 1287. It was again enjoined in a synod of London in 1328. It was ordered by the Council of Sens in 1247, and by the Council of Bayonne in 1300. The festival was introduced at Rome only after Benedict XIII. Sixtus IV. published two constitutions appointing this festival to be observed throughout the Church, and issued an office for it, but without making the festival one of obligation. Pope Clement VIII. elevated it to the rank of semi-double, Clement IX. gave it an octave, and Clement XI. constituted it a major festival “de praecepto” in 1708. The festival was, however, everywhere only that of the “Conception of Mary” till the promulgation of the decree of 1854 by Pius IX., making the Immaculate Conception of Mary an article of faith. The Franciscans of Naples asked permission of Pius VII. to celebrate the Immaculate Conception of S. Mary in the preface of the Mass, and this favour was accorded them by bull, dated May 17, TREE OP JESSE.

Prom the Office [the Divine Office, the Church’s daily cycle of prayer from the Psalms] for the Immaculate Conception m the Vienna Missal. Dec. a] S. Macarius. 1806. Many Spanish and French dioceses and religious Orders asked the same favour, and it was accorded them. On Sept. 20, 1839, the Congregation of Sacred Rites granted the bishop of Ghent permission to add to the Litany of Loreto the invocation, “ Queen conceived without sin, pray for us.” Gregory XVI., in 1840, received petitions from all the Catholic world requesting him to proclaim the Immaculate Conception as an article of faith. This proclamation was, however, made j|Y the Immaculate Conception of Mary the Virgin is meant that, as Jeremiah and John the Baptist were sanctified from their mothers' wombs, so was she purified from all stain of original sin at her conception; thus of her, far more than of Jeremiah, it might be said, “ Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee; and before thou earnest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee 1 or of the Baptist, “ He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb.”51