Presentation

Titian, The Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple (1534–1538) [Detail]

For today's feast, the translation by the Benedictines of Stanbrook Abbey of Dom Prosper Guéranger's masterpiece The Liturgical Year has the following footnote:

From sources that do not come within the learned author's scope, it appears that in England the feast is of a much more ancient institution [than 1372], though the evidence gathered so far confines its observance to the monasteries. As Oblatio S. Mariae in templo Domini cum esset trium annorum, it occurs in several monastic calendars of Saxon times, and, still under the title of Oblatio, in some of later date. This is only one of many interesting facts illustrating the English movement of the tenth and early eleventh centuries in its devotional aspect : a side of the question which still awaits special study.