In the early thirteenth century seven young Florentines formed a confraternity of laymen devoted to the praise of Mary. In 1233, after a vision on the feast of the Assumption, they took up the life of hermits on Monte Senario outside Florence. They went preaching through the whole of Tuscany and founded the order of the Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary, known as the Servites, whose foundation was approved by the Pope in 1304. Their feast is celebrated today because one of the seven founders, Saint Alexius Falconieri, died on 17 February 1310. See the articles on the Servites in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia.

Procopius of Gaza was a Christian sophist and rhetorician, one of the most important representatives of the famous school of his native place. Here he spent nearly the whole of his life teaching and writing; he took no part in the theological movements of his time. Procopius’s theological works are a series of commentaries on books of the Bible: Kings and Chronicles, Isaiah, the Proverbs, the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes. The form is that of a catena – that is to say, a chain in which the links are the phrases in the work being discussed, while from each link there hangs a second chain of comments or elucidations by the Fathers or other authorities and ultimately by Procopius himself.

The theological virtue of hope is symbolized by the colour green, just as the burning fire of love is symbolized by red. Green is the colour of growing things, and hope, like them, is always new and always fresh. Liturgically, green is the colour of Ordinary Time, the orderly sequence of weeks through the year, a season in which we are being neither single-mindedly penitent (in purple) nor overwhelmingly joyful (in white).