Note 5 — JESUIT MISSIONS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Spanish, sermones de tabla. The tabla is the list kept in the church sacristy which designates on what days certain functions are to be held; it is the tabella of the Italian sacristies, the church calendar of ours. Cathedrals and even lower grade churches (as collegiates, nunneries, hospitals, etc.) had their sermons (d’occasion, as the French say) on certain set days as marked in their local calendars, or tablas; these were always very grand, and delivered by renowned preachers and orators; many of these I have heard.

The phrase “endowed feast” (fiesta dotada) is used also in Italian and French. It was a custom, which I presume still holds, in all those countries (as I often saw in Italy), that a municipality, society, confraternity, or indeed any body of persons, had its feasts on set days in the year—for instance, feasts of their patron saints, or of thanksgiving, etc. Fairs also were endowed; that is, bequests (perhaps centuries old) provided that on set days the people were to have a fiesta, with music, fireworks, games, sermons, etc., with an alms for the poor—all paid for, as also would be the premiums for the fairs. These were occurrences always of great festivity and merriment; and in Italy, at least in the part where I lived, the smallest towns and hamlets had their fiestas dotadas.—Rev. T. C. Middleton, O.S.A. ↑