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Feast of the Most Precious Blood

feast in the General Roman Calendar from 1849 to 1969

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ5439554 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ was in the General Roman Calendar from 1849 to 1969. It was focused on the Blood of Christ and its salvific nature.

History

The feast, celebrated in Spain in the 16th century, was later introduced to Italy by Gaspar del Bufalo.

For many dioceses, there were two days to which the office of the Precious Blood was assigned, the office for both being the same. The reason was that the office was at first granted only to the Fathers of the Most Precious Blood. Later, as one of the offices of the Fridays of Lent, it was assigned to the Friday after the fourth Sunday in Lent (Laetare Sunday) in some dioceses, including, by decision of the Fourth Provincial Council of Baltimore (1840), those in the United States.

When Pope Pius IX went into exile at Gaeta in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (1849), he had as his companion Giovanni Merlini, the third superior general of the Fathers of the Most Precious Blood. After they had arrived at Gaeta, Merlini suggested that the pope make a vow to extend the feast of the Precious Blood to the entire church, if he would again recover possession of the Papal States. The pope took the matter into consideration, but a few days later, on 30 June 1849, the day the French army conquered Rome and the insurgents of the Roman Republic capitulated, he sent Joseph Stella to Merlini with the message: "The pope does not deem it expedient to bind himself by a vow; instead His Holiness is pleased to extend the feast immediately to all Christendom."

On 10 August of the same year, Pope Pius officially included the Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the General Roman Calendar, for celebration on the first Sunday in July, that is the first Sunday after 30 June, which is the anniversary of the liberation of the city of Rome from the insurgents.

In reducing the number of feasts fixed for Sundays, Pope Pius X assigned the date of 1 July to this feast.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Feast of the Most Precious Blood” as feast in the General Roman Calendar from 1849 to 1969. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Feast, Most and Precious.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1849, 1969, 1840—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1849. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Feast, Most and Precious providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Feast of the Most Precious Blood”, the useful work is to connect “feast in the General Roman Calendar from 1849 to 1969” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5439554. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1849, 1969 and 1840.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Feast of the Most Precious Blood” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.