The Conversion of St Paul celebrated
The Church named January 25 as the festival day for the celebration of the conversion of St Paul (aka Paul of Tarsus) described in Acts 9. It was once the occasion of a colourful procession in London, whose patron saint was Paul. In 1555, in the reign of Mary and Philip, it is recorded that:
On St. Paul’s day there was a general procession with the children of all the schools in London, with all the clerks, curates, and parsons, and vicars, in copes, with their crosses; also the choir of St. Paul’s; and divers bishops in their habits, and the Bishop of London, with his pontificals and cope, bearing the sacrament under a canopy, and four prebends bearing it in their gray amos; and so up into Leadenhall, with the mayor and aldermen in scarlet, with their cloaks, and all the crafts in their best array; and so came down again on the other side, and so to St. Paul’s again. And then the king, with my lord cardinal, came to St. Paul’s, and heard masse, and went home again; and at night great bonfires were made through all London, for the joy of the people that were converted likewise as St. Paul was converted.
Connected to this day was the yearly presentation to the cathedral’s clergy of a fat buck and doe, an obligation incurred in 1375 in recompense for the enclosure of some of the Dean’s land. It sounds pretty darn pagan to me.
On these days, the buck and the doe were brought by one or more servants at the hour of the procession, and through the midst thereof, and offered at the high altar of St. Paul’s Cathedral: after which the persons that brought the buck received of the Dean and Chapter, by the hands of their Chamberlain, twelve pence sterling for their entertainment; but nothing when they brought the doe. The buck being brought to the steps of the altar, the Dean and Chapter, appareled in copes and proper vestments, with garlands of roses on their heads, sent the body of the buck to be baked, and had the head and horns fixed on a pole before the cross, in their procession round about the church, till they issued at the west door, where the keeper that brought it blowed the death of the buck, and then the horns that were about the city answered him in like manner; for which they had each, of the Dean and Chapter, three and fourpence in money, and their dinner; and the keeper, during his stay, meat, drink, and lodging, and five shillings in money at his going away; together with a loaf of bread, having in it the picture of St. Paul.