(Latin septuagesima, the seventieth). Septuagesima is the ninth
Sunday before Easter, the third before Lent known among the
Greeks as "Sunday of the Prodigal" from the Gospel, Luke 15,
which they read on this day, called also Dominica Circumdederunt
by the Latins, from the first word of the Introit of the Mass.
In liturgical literature the name "Septuagesima" occurs for the
first time in the Gelasian Sacramentary. Why the day (or the
week, or the period) has the name Septuagesima, and the next
Sunday Sexagesima, etc., is a matter of dispute among writers.
It is certainly not the seventieth day before Easter, still less
is the next Sunday the sixtieth, fiftieth, etc. Amularius, "De
eccl. Off.", I, I, would make the Septuagesima mystically
represent the Babylonian Captivity of seventy years, would have
it begin with this Sunday on which the Sacramentaries and
Antiphonaries give the Introit "Circumdederunt me undique" and
end with the Saturday after Easter, when the Church sings
"Eduxit Dominus populum suum." Pe