Holy Saturday is the day of Christ's rest in the tomb — the only day in the Christian year when the Church contemplates the reality that God the Son lay dead and buried. It is the third day of the Paschal Triduum, spanning from the evening of Good Friday to the lighting of the Paschal Candle at the Easter Vigil. Like Good Friday, no Eucharist is celebrated on Holy Saturday itself; the altar remains bare. The theological significance of this day was developed early. The Apostles' Creed's affirmation that Christ 'descended to the dead' (descendit ad inferos) finds its liturgical home here. The tradition of Christ's descent — variously called the Harrowing of Hell, the Descensus, or the Anastasis — is rooted in 1 Peter 3:18-20 and 4:6, amplified by early patristic reflection. An ancient homily attributed to the second century (sometimes called the 'Ancient Homily on Holy Saturday,' preserved in the Liturgy of the Hours) dramatically narrates Christ descending to the realm of death to liberate Adam and Eve: 'Arise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven.' The BCP 2019 provides two collects for this day: one focusing on the entombment and the hope of the third day, the other on the descent to the dead.

Holy Saturday is characterized by silence, waiting, and theological paradox. The Church holds a kind of cosmic Sabbath — God resting from the work of redemption as God once rested from the work of creation. The Byzantine tradition makes the most of this paradox, with icons of the Anastasis (Resurrection) that depict Christ standing on the shattered gates of Hades, pulling Adam and Eve from their tombs, even as his own body lies in the grave above. This icon is, notably, the Eastern Church's primary Resurrection image — not the empty tomb, but the harrowing of the dead. In the West, the day is marked by quiet preparation. The Easter Vigil, which begins after nightfall, is technically the first liturgy of Easter Day and belongs to the Resurrection rather than to Holy Saturday. The BCP 2019 makes this distinction explicit: the Vigil is listed under Easter rather than Holy Saturday. The hours before the Vigil are a genuine liturgical void — the Church waits, as the disciples waited, not yet knowing what the morning will bring. The ancient baptismal connection is strong: Holy Saturday was historically the final day of preparation for catechumens who would be baptized at the Vigil, their passage through water mirroring Christ's passage through death.

Anselm was born in Aosta in the foothills of the Alpine region and trained at the monastery of Bec in Normandy under the celebrated Lanfranc. He became prior (1063) and then abbot (1078) of Bec, earning a reputation across Europe for his theological acumen and monastic reformism. In 1093, King William II appointed him Archbishop of Canterbury, though he accepted with reluctance. His tenure was marked by fierce disputes over the investiture controversy and Church-State authority. Anselm insisted that the Church's independence from secular rulers was non-negotiable; he resisted both William Rufus and his successor Henry I, going into voluntary exile (1097–1100 and 1103–1106) rather than compromise ecclesiastical liberty. During his final years at Canterbury, he maintained extraordinary intellectual vigor, debating theology and revising his works until his death. Eadmer, his companion and secretary, records that Anselm continued deep theological discussion on his deathbed. His life embodied the conviction that reason and faith must work together in seeking God's truth.

Anselm's theological legacy rests on two pillars: the ontological argument for God's existence (Proslogion, 1077–78) and the satisfaction theory of the atonement (Cur Deus Homo, 1098). The ontological argument — that God is 'that than which nothing greater can be thought,' and that such a being must exist in reality as well as in the mind — has generated continuous philosophical debate from Gaunilo's contemporary rebuttal through Kant's critique to Plantinga's modal reformulation. Cur Deus Homo reframed atonement theology by arguing that only a God-man could offer the satisfaction owed to divine honor by human sin, displacing the earlier ransom theory that had dominated patristic thought. Both works exemplify Anselm's method of 'faith seeking understanding' (fides quaerens intellectum) — not proving faith by reason alone, but pressing reason into service within the life of faith. His monastic writings, especially the Prayers and Meditations, reveal a devotional warmth that balances his intellectual rigor. The prayers to the Virgin Mary and to St. Paul anticipate later medieval affective piety while remaining grounded in scriptural imagery. Anselm was canonized in 1494 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1720. His influence runs through Aquinas (who adopted and modified the satisfaction theory), Descartes (who revived the ontological argument), Barth (who devoted his first major work to Anselm's theological method), and contemporary analytic philosophy of religion.