All Saints' Day Service

Please see the Service Rota for details

Painting by Albrect D'rer 1471-1528

We celebrate All Saints' Day with a service in All Saints' church Wickhambrook [details]. All Saints' Day is a Christian Feast that honours and remembers all Christian saints, known and unknown. In the Western Church it is kept on 1st November.

Ephrem Syrus (d. 373) mentions a Feast dedicated the saints in his writings. St. Chrysostom of Constantinople (d. 407) was the first Christian we know of to assign the Feast to a particular day: the first Sunday after Pentecost. The Feast did not become established in the Western Church, however, until the Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to Christian usage as a church on May 13, 609 or 610. The Feast was observed annually on this date until the time of Gregory III (d. 741) when its observance was shifted to 1st November, since on this date Gregory dedicated a chapel in the Basilica of St. Peter's to "All the Saints". It was Gregory IV (d. 844), who in 835 ordered the Feast of All Saints' to be universally observed on 1st November.