Purgatory, Intercession, and Allhallowtide

The day rests on the doctrine of purgatory: the belief that most of the saved die not yet fully purified and are made ready for the vision of God, and that the living may aid them through prayer, the offering of the Mass, almsgiving and penance, the exchange within the communion of saints. This is why the commemoration belongs to the Roman Catholic calendar in particular, and why in many places priests are permitted to say three Masses on this day. All Souls completes the short season of Allhallowtide: All Hallows' Eve on 31 October, All Saints on 1 November for the souls believed already in glory, and All Souls on 2 November for all the rest of the faithful dead. Read as a whole, the three days move from vigil, to the triumph of the saints, to intercession for the ordinary dead.

Purgatory's role in indulgence practice made this feast a flashpoint at the Reformation: Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses of 1517 directly challenged the sale of indulgences the Dominican friar Johann Tetzel preached as effective for souls in purgatory, and the Reformers who denied purgatory's existence altogether, on the ground that scripture nowhere teaches it, dropped All Souls' Day from Protestant calendars as a consequence; the Council of Trent responded by formally reaffirming purgatory and the value of prayer for the dead, so the feast's continued observance became, from the sixteenth century on, one of the visible markers separating Catholic from Protestant practice.