Popular devotion to the Sorrows of Our Blessed Lady, whom the Holy Church invokes as Queen of Martyrs, led, in the Middle Ages, to the institution of several local festivals, such as that, still kept in some places, of Our Lady’s Compassion. The devotion was fostered by the Holy Founders of the Servite Order who seem to have been the first to distinguish and enumerate the Seven Dolors. It has been raised by Pius X to the rank of a double of the second class.

(Source: The New Roman Missal, Rev. F. X. Lasance)