Easter 2024 Photopost (Part 1)

Finally we come to the last part of this year’s Holy Week and Easter photopost series! Once again, we are very grateful to all the contributors, and wish it were possible to include all of the beautiful photos that were sent in. There will be a second part, before we move on to Pentecost, so have your cameras ready - Veni, Sancte Spiritus! 

Nuestra Señora del Pilar – Guadalajara, Mexico (FSSP)

The incense grains encased in wax which are inserted in the Paschal candle.

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The Vidi Aquam

Lost in Translation #86

In the days that remain of Paschaltide, we turn to the Vidi Aquam, which is used from Easter to Pentecost at the Asperges rite instead of the antiphon Asperges Me and the verse, Psalm 50,3.

The Antiphon

The antiphon for the season is:

Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a látere dextro, allelúja: et omnes ad quos pervénit aqua ista salvi facti sunt, et dicent: allelúja, allelúja.

Which I translate as:

I saw water coming out of the right side of the Temple, alleluia; and all they to whom that water of yours came were saved, and they shall say, alleluia, alleluia.

The antiphon pieces together three Scriptural threads.

The first is Our Lord’s identification of His Body with the Holy Temple of Jerusalem, an identification that was used against Him at His trial. (see John 2, 19-22; Matt. 26,62 and 27, 40)

The second is the water and blood that flowed from the heart of Jesus on the Cross after it was pierced by the soldier’s lance. (John 19, 34)

The third is a vision in which a man shows the prophet Ezekiel waters coming out of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem:

Et convertit me ad portam domus, et ecce aquae egrediebantur subter limen domus ad orientem: facies enim domus respiciebat ad orientem, aquae autem descendebant in latus templi dextrum, ad meridiem altaris.

Which the Douay Rheims translates as:

And he brought me again to the gate of the house, and behold waters issued out from under the threshold of the house toward the east: for the forefront, of the house looked toward the east: but the waters came down to the right side of the temple to the south part of the altar.

The man leads Ezekiel to the waters, first up to his ankles, then to his knees, and then to his loins. The water is described as a torrent that gives much life. Many fruit trees are on both of its sides as it flows through the desert to the sea. It “heals” the waters of the sea, and “all things shall live to which the torrent shall come,” (Ezec. 47, 9) especially the fish, which shall be abundant, and shall be caught by the fishermen who stand over these waters.

In light of the Risen Christ, the water that flows from the Temple’s right side is the saving baptismal water that flows out from Our Lord’s Sacred Heart and gives life to whomever it touches. And it is the Apostles, who have become “fishers of men,” who will give these healing waters to a multitude of fishes.

The relevance of this sentiment to the Paschal season is clear. And to these three biblical threads we may add a historical thread not explicitly mentioned in the Scriptures.

The Temple in Jerusalem was the site of numerous animal sacrifices that were offered every day of the year, the result being that blood continually drenched the courtyard. As anyone knows who has butchered a goose or field-dressed a deer, even the harvesting of one animal makes a mess. Now imagine dozens of oxen, calves, goats, rams, and lambs being slaughtered from morning to evening. Some of this blood was collected for the ritual sprinkling of the altar inside the Holy Place, variously known as the inner altar, the golden altar, and the altar of incense.

The inner altar

After the priest finished sprinkling the inner altar, he went outside to the so-called brazen altar or outer altar, which was more of a large platform on which the priests walked in order to burn the sacrificed animals. The animals themselves were sacrificed in the courtyard to the north of the outer altar. In this illustration, the north side is behind the outer altar.

Outer altar

When the priest arrived at the outer altar, he poured the remainder of the blood on its western base. Blood that had not been collected for sprinkling, on the other hand, would be poured into the southern base. The blood from both bases then drained into a canal beneath the altar and flowed out, according to the Jewish Mishna,

with the water used to rinse the area to the Kidron River. This water was sold to gardeners for use as fertilizer. The gardeners paid for this water and thereby redeemed it from its sanctity. Failure to do so would render them guilty of misuse of consecrated property (Mishna Yoma 5:6).

The Kidron River, which flows in a southerly direction into the Red Sea, is east of the Temple; and although there is no evidence as to whether the aforementioned canal drained into the river from the north side of the Temple or the south, it is not unreasonable to think of it exiting from the south side, in conformity with Ezekiel’s vision. And since YHWH was present in a special way facing eastward in the Holy of Holies, the south side was to His right, that is, from His perspective the south was “the right side of the Temple.” The Mishna passage also aligns with Ezekiel’s vision of water proceeding from the Temple, becoming a river, and purifying a sea.

Finally, it is worth noting that the Asperges Me antiphon, used during most Sundays of the year, refers to the sprinkling of the blood, while the Vidi Aquam antiphon for the Sundays of Eastertide refers to the blood not used for sprinkling. All of the blood of the immolated animal—and typologically, our immolated Lord—has been accounted for.

Regarding the diction of the antiphon: both the Vulgate translation of Ezekiel 47, 1 and the antiphon use the verb egredior for the issuing of the waters out from the Temple. In translations of the antiphon, it is common to see egredientem as “flowing from,” and given the context the choice makes perfect sense. Historically, however, egredior, which etymologically means, “to come out of,” has a more intentional meaning. In the military, it meant to move out or to march, and when used nautically, it meant to disembark. The water from the Temple and the water from Our Lord’s pierced heart do not simply trickle out; they launch out into the world with a purpose.

And in both cases, we do not come to this water; the water comes to us. Our hearts may be a hart panting after living waters, (see Ps. 41, 2) but ultimately it is the living waters that find us. The antiphon uses ista to demarcate this water. In classical Latin, there are three ways to signify the location of an object vis-à-vis you and me. When the object is closer to me than to you, I use the adjective or pronoun hic/haec/hoc, or “this.” When the object is equidistant from us, I use ille/illa/illud, or “that.” And when the object is closer to you than to me, I use iste/ista/istud, which can be translated “that thing of yours.” The water is God’s, and it comes to us to save.

The Verse

The verse for the Vidi Aquam rite is Psalm 117, 1:

Confitémini Dómino, quoniam bonus: quoniam in saeculum misericordia ejus.

Which the Douay Rheims translates as:

Give praise to the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.

The distinctively patristic meaning of confession has long been an object of scholarly inquiry. When Clement Louis Hrdlicka published his dissertation on late Latin vocabulary in St Augustine’s Confessions in 1931, the subject was already well-trodden ground. “The words confessio and confiteri have [already] been treated at length by several scholars,” Hrdlicka writes, “chiefly for the purpose of throwing light upon the literary character of the Confessions.” [1] His own overview joins those of Joseph Ratzinger and Christine Mohrmann as among the most helpful. [2] For Mohrmann, the Christian use of the terms confiteri and confessio constitutes one of those cases in which the early Western Church imparted “to existing words a meaning completely foreign to the original Latin sense.” [3] While fateor in classical Latin simply meant to acknowledge something, confiteor (cum + fateor) meant acknowledging an error or fact previously denied, thus giving it the connotation of a concession. [4]

In the mouths of early Christians, however, the word was “abruptly forced” to take on a different and more specific set of meanings.[5] Confessio was first used to denote the profession of faith a martyr would make at his or her tribunal, often despite torture [6]; to this day, confessio is the architectural term for the crypt of a martyr directly below the high altar of a church. [7]

The Confessio in St. Peter Basilica in the Vatican

Further, because it was also used to translate the Hebrew hoda[h]), confiteri came to take on two additional meanings: acknowledging one’s sinfulness, and praising God. [8] The confession of sin was, needless to say, the predominant meaning of the word in the early Church’s penitential system, while the confession of praise was “especially at home in scriptural contexts.” [9]

All of which is to say that to “Confess to the Lord, for He is good” means more than simply to praise. It means to offer oneself up as a contrite sacrifice to God, in imitation of the Paschal Lamb whose season we celebrate now.

Notes

[1] A Study of the Late Latin Vocabulary and the Prepositions and Demonstrative Pronouns in the Confessions of St. Augustine (Catholic University of America Press, 1931), 102.

[2] See Joseph Ratzinger, “Originalität und Überlieferung in Augustins Begriff der confessio,” in Revue des Études Augustiniennes 3 (1957), 375-392; Christine Mohrmann, “The Confessions as a Literary Work of Art,” in Études sur le Latin des Chrétiens, Tome 1, 2nd ed. (Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1961), 371-381; “Quelques traits caractéristiques du latin du chrétiens,” in Miscellanea Giovanni Mercati, vol. 1 (Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1946), 437-66; Liturgical Latin: Its Origins and Character (Catholic University of America Press, 1957); “The New Latin Psalter: Its Diction and Style,” in Études sur le Latin des Chrétiens, Tome II, 2nd ed. (Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1961), 109-31.

[3] Liturgical Latin, 36.

[4] “Confiteor, fessus,” Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), 415A.

[5] Mohrmann, Liturgical Latin, 36-37.

[6] See Mohrmann, “New Latin Psalter,” 122; “Confessio, onis, f.,” II.B, Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, 412C.

[7] “Confessio,” James Stevens Curl and Susan Wilson, The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture, 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2015), 191.

[8] See Mohrmann, “New Latin Psalter,” 122.

[9] Ibid.

A Medieval Hymn for the Ascension

The Roman Breviary of St Pius V derives from the medieval use of the Papal Curia, which was traditionally very conservative in most regards, and especially so in its repertoire of hymns. Many feasts, including some of the greatest solemnities (e.g. Christmas and Epiphany), have only two proper hymns, one of which is sung at both Vespers and Matins, and the other at Lauds; the same is true of almost all of the common Offices. When the Office hymns were revised in the post-Conciliar reform, the corpus was considerably broadened by the addition of new texts, among them, a very nice hymn for the Ascension previously used only in the Ambrosian Rite and by the Cistercians. In the Liturgy of the Hours, it is appointed to be said at Lauds on the Ascension itself, and the days that follow until Pentecost.

The version used in this recording has several discrepancies from the one given in the table below, which I have taken from an Ambrosian Breviary printed in 1539. (The sung text and a French translation are given in the comments on YouTube.) The original form of the hymn given in volume 51 of the Analecta hymnica (p. 92) dates from the 10th century, possibly earlier, and has a number of metrical and grammatical flaws typical of that period. These were subsequently corrected in various ways; it was also reworked for use in the Liturgy of the Hours, somewhat less cack-handedly than usual. The English translation is taken from the second volume of Early Christian Hymns, by Daniel Joseph Donahue; it is fine as poetry, but not especially literal as a translation.

Optatus votis omnium, Sacratus illuxit dies, Quo Christus, mundi spes, Deus, Conscendit caelos arduos.	The morn has dawned upon the sky, The sacred day of joy and light, When Christ, our hope arose on high Above the stars in glory bright.
Ascendens in altum Dominus, Propriam sedem remeat; Gavisa sunt caeli regna Reditu Unigeniti.	To heaven ascends Our Lord and King, As King and Lord he takes his throne; Rejoicing choirs of Angels sing Triumphant songs to greet the Son.
Magni triumphum proelii Mundi perempto principe, Patris praesentat vultibus, Victricis carnis gloriam.	Our glorious prince, in battle tried With sin and death and deep disgrace, In human form all glorified, Now stands before the Father’s face.
Est elevatus nubibus Et spem fecit credentibus, Aperiens paradisum, Quem protoplasti clauserant.	He rose in glory through the skies, And gave to all a hope sublime, He opened the gates of Paradise, That long were closed    by Adam’s crime.
O grande cunctis gaudium, Quod partus nostrae Virginis Post sputa, flagra, post crucem, Paternae sedi jungitur.	O wondrous joy! the Virgin-born, Our hope, our love, our Holy One, After the blows of spite and scorn Is seated on the Father’s throne.
Agamus ergo gratias Nostrae salutis vindici, Nostrum quod corpus vexerit, Sublimem ad caeli regiam.	Let thanks arise on every side To Christ our help, our God of might, Who hath our body glorified And raised it to the throne of light.
Sit nobis cum caelestibus Commune manens gaudium, Illis, quod se praesentavit, Nobis, quod se non abstulit.	Abounding joy shall e’er remain, And earth and heaven with glory fill: In heaven, that Christ returns again, On earth, that Christ is with us still.
Nunc provocatis actibus Christum expectare nos decet Vitamque talem vivere, Quae possit caelos scandere.	Then let our hearts with love o’erflow, Our words and deeds be all of light, That when we leave these walks below, Our souls shall climb    the heavenly height.
Gloria tibi, Domine, Qui scandis super sidera, Cum Patre et Sancto Spiritu In sempiterna saecula. Amen.	To Christ the Lord sing praises meet, Who rose in might the stars above, Unto the Father and Paraclete, Give equal meed of praise and love.    Amen.

The first part of the hymn Optatus votis in an Ambrosian Breviary printed in Venice in 1539. The rubric at the top says “On the vigil of the Ascension of the Lord”; until the Tridentine reform, the term “vigil” was commonly used to mean “First Vespers” in both the Roman and Ambrosian Rites.

A couple of the expressions used in this hymn show very nicely the ability of Latin to say a great deal with very few words, and perhaps call for some explanation. In the third stanza, “Victricis carnis gloriam”, literally means “the glory of the conquering flesh”, a very terse way of saying that the Incarnation, the taking on of our human nature in the flesh, was the means by which Christ both defeated the devil and raised us up to the glory of heaven. Likewise, in the fifth stanza, the unknown author called the Virgin Mary “our Virgin”, as a way of saying that She is the source from which our human nature is united to the divine nature.

As noted above, before the post-Conciliar reform, this hymn was used outside the Ambrosian Rite only by the Cistercians; there is an interesting story about how this came to be. Hymns were first introduced into the western Church by St Ambrose, and because of this, St Benedict in his Rule uses the term “ambrosianum” for them, rather than “hymnus.” When the Cistercians were founded at the end of the 11th century as an order which intended to follow the letter of the Rule as strictly as possible, they took this term to mean not “hymn” generically, but rather, the specific corpus of hymns introduced by Ambrose in person, which they assumed must be the very same ones then used in the rite of his episcopal see. They therefore sent people to Milan to copy out the Ambrosian Office hymnal, and then incorporated it into their own proper Use of the Office, a change which brought them much unfavorable criticism. In the specific case of Optatus votis, they divided it into two parts, with the first four stanzas at Vespers and Matins, and the rest at Lauds. In the post-Tridentine period, however, the Cistercian Use was heavily romanized, and the hymn was replaced with the traditional Roman ones; a later reform restored “O grande cunctis” at Lauds, but not the first part at Vespers and Matins.

The hymn Optatus votis in the hymnal of a Cistercian breviary printed at Strasbourg in 1494. The Roman hymn for Vespers Jesu, nostra redemptio is assigned to Compline, and a truncated version of the Roman hymn for Matins Aeterne Rex altissime to Terce.

Here is a nice recording of the propers of the Mass of the Ascension from the Abbey of Triors in France.

The Ascension of the Bleeding Christ in Medieval Popular Piety

The Christian liturgical tradition envisions the Ascension of Our Lord as a climactic event in which the risen Christ, magnificent with His glorified Body, makes a triumphant return to the heavenly kingdom. In the Roman rite, the hymn, antiphons, and responsories of Matins would have ensured that these themes and images were prominent from the earliest hours of the great feast day: “Alleluia. The Lord Christ hath ascended up into heaven. O come let us worship Him. Alleluia”; “Thy magnificence is elevated above the heavens, O God, alleluia”; “The Lord is in His holy Temple, the Lord’s throne is in heaven, alleluia”; “℣. God is ascended with jubilee, alleluia. ℟. And the Lord with the sound of trumpet, alleluia.” The iconographic tradition likewise emphasizes radiance, strength, and grandeur.

The Ascension, by Benjamin West (d. 1820); oil on canvas. The composition of this fine piece evokes Psalm 67: “Sing ye to God, sing psalms to his name, / make way for him that rideth on clouds.”

We find a profound counterpoint to these Ascension motifs in a collection of religious drama known as the Chester Cycle. The cycle plays of medieval England – in modern times often called “mystery” plays – were among the West’s most extraordinary manifestations of Christian folk culture. Produced on a local scale and performed mostly by amateurs, they brought craft guilds, poets, and civil authorities together in an attempt to dramatize salvation history and Christian doctrine. They were a living catechism written in charming, homely verse and illuminated with poignant vignettes and deeply human characters. As a supplement to sacred liturgy, they were an invaluable means of making the Faith enjoyable, inspiring, and memorable for ordinary people living in the world.

A depiction of a fifteenth-century Crucifixion play.

The Ascension play performed in Chester, a cathedral city in northwest England, included features that are unique among the surviving cycle-play texts. The stage directions indicate that Christ will ascend while singing (further specifying that “God singeth alone”), but He pauses in His ascent and stands “above the clouds,” and then His head, limbs, and clothes appear bloody as though He is in the midst of His Passion. An angel asks who it is that comes “bloody” within the bliss of heaven, and the dialogue continues as given below (I have modernized the language where possible and adapted the meter to modern pronunciation):

Jesus
I that did speak righteousness,
and have brought man out of distress,
redeemer called I am and was
of all mankind through grace.
My people, that were from me rafte [stolen],
through sin and through the devil’s craft,
to heaven I bring—good never one left—
all that were in hell.

Tertius Angelus
Why is thy clothing now so red,
thy body bloody and also head,
thy clothes also, all that are ledd [worn],
like unto pressers of wine?

Jesus
Because of the devil, and of his power,
that brought mankind to great danger,
through death on cross and blood so bright,
them I have made all mine.
These bloody drops that ye now see,
fresh they all reserved shall be,
until I come in my majesty,
to judge on the last day.
This blood I shed bears witness to me,
I died for man upon the Rood-tree,
and rose again within days three—
with such love always I loved thee.

This scene’s mysterious uniting of glory and anguish must have created an intense dramatic effect, especially if the play’s producers decided to reinforce the dialogue with stage blood, which at that time could have been real blood (from an animal). The text also offers some insight into popular devotion to Christ’s sacred Blood, which is presented as a precious substance that paid the debt of sin and allowed Our Lord to reclaim mankind as His own: “through death on cross and blood so bright, / them I have made all mine.” Furthermore, this Blood is not a historical artifact that was shed only once during an enclosed, finalized act of redemption. Rather, it must stay “fresh”: flowing and gleaming with Christ’s eternal love, bearing witness to His power, and sanctifying the human race until He comes in majesty “to judge on the last day.” This imagery resonates with the Precious Blood as medieval Catholics perceived and experienced it in the Holy Eucharist.

A nineteenth-century depiction of a fifteenth-century Passion play performed at Coventry, England.

More directly, however, the playwright was drawing from a long poem called the Stanzaic Life of Christ, which was composed at Chester in the fourteenth century, and which in turn was influenced by the Golden Legend of Bl. Jacobus de Voragine. William Caxton’s 1483 translation of the latter includes the following in the chapter on the Ascension:

Thus seemeth it that ... three questions were made to the angels [when] Jesus ascended. Who is this that cometh from Edom, his clothes dyed of Bosra? This word Edom is as much to say as full of blood, and this word Bosra is to say anguish and tribulation.... The second question is that which the first and sovereign angel made to Jesu Christ saying: Why is thy clothing red, and thy vestments as trodden or fulled in a press? Our Lord hath his clothing and his body red, all covered with blood, because that yet when he ascended he had his wounds in his body.

The Worship of the Five Wounds, by Simon Bening (d. 1561). Tempera, gold paint, and gold leaf on parchment.

The Ascension of the bleeding Christ has no support in the New Testament accounts, and one wonders what the pre-Reformation ecclesiastical authorities thought about the Chester play’s embellished version of the Ascension narrative. (We need not wonder about the post-Reformation ecclesiastical authorities; they were displeased with all the mystery plays, which by the seventeenth century had been terminated.) However, since our dear Lord brought His five sacred wounds with Him to the courts of heaven, I see no harm in a poetic amplification that imagines Him ascending in twofold glory: that of His divine splendor, and that of His human blood, shed amidst love and agony for our salvation.

The Apparition of St Michael

In addition to the universal feasts of the Mother of God, from the Immaculate Conception to the Assumption, the Church also keeps local feasts connected with major centers of Marian devotion such as Loreto in Italy, Walsingham in England, Guadalupe in Mexico etc. A similar custom holds in regard to the Archangel Michael, and in one sense, may be called a universal custom of the Western Church. His principal feast on September 29th originated with the dedication of a church built in his honor a few miles outside Rome off the via Salaria; this feast’s title remained “The Dedication of St Michael” for centuries after the church itself fell into ruins and was abandoned. The Ambrosian liturgy received the feast from Rome, and kept it with the same title, using several of the Mass chants, as well as the Epistle and Gospel, from the common Mass for the dedication of a church.

St Michael, by Fra Filippo Lippi

The Roman Breviary states in the lessons for May 8th that Pope Boniface II (530-32) built a church in honor of St Michael “in the great circus”; this statement seems to confuse the Circus Maximus with the smaller Circus Flaminius, which no longer exists, but was opposite the Tiber Island, in the area of the modern Jewish quarter. Next to its former location stands a Roman portico, built by the Emperor Augustus in honor of his sister Octavia, and within the portico, a small church dedicated to St Michael. This was the traditional location of Rome’s fish-market, well into the 19th century, in fact, and the church is therefore called “Sant’ Angelo in Pescheria – The Holy Angel in the Fish-Market.”

However, the Roman Martyrology refers the September feast to neither of these churches, but rather to the shrine of St Michael on Mount Gargano in the Puglia region of Italy, generally honored as the first church dedicated to him in the West. Today’s feast is called the “Apparition of St Michael” from a story which takes places at the end of the 5th century, and is not reported consistently in ancient sources. The version given in the Breviary is that a bull belonging to a fellow named Garganus wandered into and got stuck in a cave on the side of the mountain. When someone launched an arrow at it, it flew back at him; the inhabitants of the area then asked their bishop what to do about this portent. The bishop declared that they should pray and fast for three days, after which, St Michael appeared to him and told him that the place was under his protection, and a church should be built there in his honor.

The apparition of St Michael on Mt Gargano, by Cesare Nebbia and students, from the Gallery of the Maps in the Vatican Museums, 1580-84.

The Martyrology describes this church as “vili quidem facta schemate, sed caelesti praestans virtute – made in a mean fashion, but outstanding in heavenly might.” In point of fact, much of the church is not “made” at all, at least not by human hands. Mt Gargano is a large massif, rather more like a mesa than a hill, very steep on the northern side where the sanctuary is, with the town of Monte Sant’Angelo located on top. One enters the shrine through a forecourt in the town, and after passing the doors, descends to the church by a considerable number of steps. The church itself is one half natural cave, and one half a set of rooms, including a choir and a relic chapel, built in front of the cave’s opening, and supported from beneath by enormous buttresses that reach quite far down the massif.

In northern Europe, Mont-Saint-Michel holds the same place that Monte Gargano holds in Italy, and the feast of St Michael’s apparition there is kept on October 16th. In the Sarum Breviary, the Matins lessons for this feast begin with an acknowledgement that the devotion to him on Gargano was older. “After the Frankish nation, marked by the grace of Christ, far and wide throughout the provinces on all sides had subdued the necks of the proud, the Archangel Michael, who is set in charge of Paradise, who had formerly shown that he wished to be venerated on Mount Gargano, by many signs showed that now he ought to be honored in the place which is called by the inhabitants ‘Tumba.’ ” (Mons Tumba is the Latin name for the Mont-Saint Michel.) The story continues that in the early 8th century, St Michael appeared three times to the local bishop, St Aubert, and ordered him to build not just a sanctuary, but a replica of the one on Gargano.

The Byzantine Rite keeps a feast on a similar line, related to a shrine in Phrygia, in west-central Asia Minor. At Chonai, near the city of Colossae, (the Christians of which received a letter from St Paul), St Michael appeared to the father of a mute girl, directing him to bring his daughter to a nearby spring, where she miraculously gained her speech. A church was then built over the spring, which attracted many Christians and led to many conversions. The local pagans thought to destroy the church by diverting two nearby rivers towards it, but St Michael came to defend his shrine personally; as he struck a rock nearby, a fissure opened in it which swallowed the rush of water. The feast of “the Miracle of St Michael the Archangel at Chonai” is kept on September 6th. There were several churches in Constantinople itself dedicated to St Michael; the dedication feast of one of these became the general commemoration “of All the Bodiless Powers”, celebrated on November 8th, just as the Roman feast on September 29th also became the feast of All Angels.

A 12th-century icon of the Miracle of St Michael defending the church of the springs at Chonai, probably made in Constantinople, now at the monastery of St Catherine on Mt Sinai.

The two hymns of St Michael were among the most drastically altered in the revision of Pope Urban VIII; here is a nice recording of the original text of the Vesper hymn, retained by the Benedictines and the religious orders with proper Uses, in alternating Gregorian chant and polyphony.

Tibi, Christe, splendor Patris, vita, virtus cordium, / in conspectu Angelorum votis, voce psallimus: / Alternantes concrepando melos damus vocibus. (To Thee, o Christ, splendor of the Father, life and strength of our hearts, in the sight of the angels, we sing with prayer and voice. Our choirs resounding give forth the song.)

Collaudamus venerantes omnes cæli milites, / Sed præcipue Primatem cælestis exercitus, / Michaelem, in virtute conterentem zabulum. (In veneration we praise all the soldiers of heaven, but especially the Leader of the heavenly army, Michael, as in might he destroys the devil.)

Quo custode procul pelle, Rex Christe piissime, / omne nefas inimici: Mundo corde et corpore, / Paradiso redde tuo nos sola clementia. (With him as our guardian, drive far away, Christ, most holy king, every wickedness of the enemy; with pure heart and body, bring us back to Paradise by Thy clemency alone.)

Gloriam Patri melódis personemus vocibus, / Gloriam Christo canamus, Gloriam Paraclito, / Qui trinus et unus Deus exstat ante sæcula. Amen. (Let us sound forth glory with melodious voices to the Father, let us sing glory to Christ, glory to the Paraclete, who is God one and three before the ages. Amen.)

Good Friday 2024 Photopost (Part 3): Via Crucis and Processions in Mexico and Brazil

For our final Good Friday photopost, I saved these particularly interesting sets of images. From the FSSP apostolate in Guadalajara, Mexico, we have a live representation of the Via Crucis, and a nighttime procession with a statue of the dead Christ and the Mother of Sorrow. From the cathedral of São João del Rei in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, we have a deposition and burial ceremony (with a life-sized statue), and preaching on the Seven Last Words, before the main Good Friday liturgy, sent in by one of our most regular photopost contributors, Mr João Melo. We will have the liturgies of Easter within a day or so; in the meantime, have your cameras ready for the Ascension and Pentecost, and keep up the good work of evangelizing through beauty. 

Nuestra Señora del Pilar – Guadalajara, Mexico (FSSP)

Via Crucis

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The Institution of the Rogation Days

Today is the second day of the penitential observance known as the Lesser Rogations or Minor Litanies. On Saturday, there will occur the feast of St Mamertus, bishop of Vienne in France, who first instituted them around the year 470 A.D. His successor but one, St Avitus, has left us a sermon on the Rogations, in which he describes the reason why they were instituted, in the wake of a series of public calamities.

St Avitus is described by the Catholic Encyclopedia as “one of the last masters of the art of rhetoric as taught in the schools of Gaul in the fourth and fifth centuries.” His style is florid and prolix in a way that would make a literal translation in English almost unreadable, and much longer than his almost 1500 words in Latin. I have therefore chosen just a few extracts pertinent to the history of the observance. (The complete Latin text is in the Patrologia Latina, volume 59, columns 289C-294C.)

Two points call for special note. One is that St Avitus acknowledges that the Rogations were not originally celebrated by everyone on the same days, and that only later did the various churches settle on keeping them on the triduum before the Ascension. Rome itself at first only celebrated the Greater Rogations on April 25, but received the Lesser ones from Gaul in the Carolingian period, and as part of the Roman Rite they were then extended to the whole of the Western church. The one exception is the Ambrosian Rite, in which they are celebrated on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after Ascension, and with greater austerity as far as the liturgy is concerned than in the Roman Rite. The vestments are black, the standard Milanese color for the ferias of Lent, and in the Divine Office, all of the proper characteristics of the Paschal season (e.g., antiphons consisting only of the word “Hallelujah”) are suspended.

The other concerns the term Major and Minor Litanies, by which these days are called in the Roman liturgical books. St Avitus nowhere uses the term “litanies”, but refers in one place to “psalms and prayers” and in another to the “offices of psalms,” indicating that these were the substance of the rite, and that the singing of the Litany of the Saints was a later addition. (See the notes attached to the notice of St Mamertus given on May 11 in the revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints, quoting Edmund Bishop’s Liturgica Historia.)

Two leaves of the Farnese Hours, showing a penitential procession and part of the Litany of the Saints. Painted by Giulio Clovio for Card. Alessandro Farnese, in 1546; now in the Morgan Library in New York City.

The mighty river of the Rogation observance flows in its life-giving stream, not through Gaul alone, but nearly the whole world, and cleanses the land stained with vices with the rich flow of this satisfaction made every year. But for us (i.e., the church of Vienne) there is a more particular cause for both joy and the fulfillment of duty in this institution, since that which now flows forth from here to the good of all, came first from us … and certainly I know that many of us recall the reasons for the terrors of that time. For indeed, frequent fires, constant earthquakes, sounds in the night, portended and threatened, as it were, to make a pyre for the funeral of the whole world. (There follows a lengthy description of the calamities and portents, culminating with the destruction by fire of a large public building on the very night of the Easter vigil.)

My predecessor, and spiritual father in baptism, the bishop Mamertus, who many years ago was succeeded by my own father, as God saw fit, conceived of the whole idea of the Rogations in his holy spirit on that very night of the vigil of Easter which we have mentioned above, and together with God, silently determined all that which the world cries out today in Psalms and prayers. (St Mamertus then explains his plans to the leading citizens of Vienne.)

Therefore, as God inspired the hearts of the repentant, (his plan) is heard by all, confirmed and praised. These three days are chosen, which occur between Sunday and the feast of the holy Ascension, … (and) he announces the prayer of the first procession at the basilica which was closer to the city’s walls. The procession goes with the fervor of a great multitude, and the greatest compunction, … But when, from the accomplishment of these lesser things, the holy priest recognized the signs of greater things to come, on the following day, the custom which we about to observe tomorrow, if the Lord will it, was established for the first time. In the days thereafter, some of the churches of Gaul followed this worthy example; but it was not celebrated by them all on the same days as it was established among us. Nor was it very important that a period of three days be chosen, provided that the services of Psalms be completed with annual functions of penance. Nevertheless, as harmony among the bishops grew, together with love for the Rogation, their concern for a universal observance brought them to one time, that is, these present days.

Book Recommendation: “The Spiritual History of English,” by Andrew Thornton-Norris

A new edition, revised, expanded and published by Os Justi Press

What makes literature or art Christian? Some would say just the content, that is, what is said; others would say both the content and the form, because the way in which certain truths are conveyed can communicate them more fully. It’s not just what you say that’s important, but also how you say it.

If this is the case, the style of prose or poetry can be Christian (or un-Christian), as much as the meaning of the words considered apart from that style. As an artist and a teacher of art, I have long maintained that the style of art is every bit as important as the content, and that since the Enlightenment, style has declined because artists have rejected the traditional Catholic forms.

In this slim volume, the English Catholic poet Andrew Thornton-Norris does for poetry and prose what I have been trying to do with visual art. He relates the actual structure of the writing and the vocabulary used in it to the worldview of a given age. He shows us, for example, that even if the poet or novelist is sincerely Catholic and trying to express truths that are consistent with the Faith, he is at a great disadvantage if he is seeking to express those truths with vocabulary and poetic forms that reflect a post-Enlightenment culture.

I agree with the author’s analysis of the phases of modernity, which he sees as ever-greater degrees or manifestations of the Protestant heresy. Chapter by chapter, he analyses and critiques the worldview of the Enlightenment, down to the present day. The philosophies behind Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Modernism, and Postmodernism are each presented as differing reactions against Christianity, and ultimately, against the authority of the Catholic Church. He then connects each with the cultural forms it engenders. Because he is dealing with the English language, he first describes the rise of the language as a distinct vernacular, and connects this with the presence of the Faith.   

He argues that the very idea of the English as a nation comes from the Church, through Pope Gregory the Great and his emissary, St Augustine of Canterbury. He then describes how the language and its literature developed in light of the spread of Christian teaching, through the influence of figures such as Bede, Alcuin of York, and King Alfred the Great. Then, after the great heights of writers such as  Chaucer and finally Shakespeare, he argues that the trajectory has been downhill from there. As he puts it in the beginning of his concluding chapter: “This book has argued that English literature has declined, almost to the point of non-existence. In this and previous chapters we examine what remains: the entrails, or shipwrecks, so to speak. It has argued that this decline has been concurrent with that of English Christianity, and it has examined the relationship between these two phenomena.”

This means that Mr Thornton-Norris is much more suspicious of the Romantic poets than many other Catholic commentators. I like the idea of this, firstly because it makes me feel less of a philistine for finding them dull, but also because this parallels exactly my analysis of painting—that the Romantics and all thereafter are, in substantial and important ways, inferior to earlier Christian artists and artisans. The same seems evident to me in Neoclassicism, Modernism, and Postmodernism.

Thornton-Norris clearly believes that through the prism of literature, one can identify problems with the whole culture, which are at root related to the rejection of the Faith and its forms of worship. This idea is also very similar to my own about visual art, and appeals to me on a similar level.

The author is discussing general trends; he has no intention of dismissing all examples of English literature in these later periods. Rather, he points out the great disadvantage suffered by those poets and novelists who were trying to express something that is consistent with the Faith in an era that breathed a different atmosphere. They were restricted, generally, to the vocabulary and structural forms of the language at the time in which they lived, and because these were affected by one form or another of a post-Enlightenment anti-Catholic worldview, they always faced a struggle to rise above the cramping conventions and assumptions of their time.

The source of hope for the English language and English literature is, for Mr Thornton-Norris, the same as it is in the Church. As he puts it:

“Whereas Christianity provided an external discipline or control of the emotions and ego, romanticism exalts them, as does psychoanalysis and the cult of therapy and self-development, especially in its Freudian or theoretical form. The logical conclusion is that if we want to resist the relativism of artistic and religious values, a fundamental rehabilitation of English relations with the papacy is the only solution.”

This is true for the culture in general. The task here is one of an authentic renewal of the Catholic Faith. 

The Spiritual History of English is full of luminous ideas that deserve careful pondering. May this new edition from Os Justi Press place its insights into the hands of many more readers who are seeking to understand the cultural crossroads at which we stand and the conditions necessary for the rebirth and flourishing of all the arts, especially the art of the poetic word.

To order: Os Justi Press or Amazon

Norcia’s New Sanctuary Paintings in Honor of Our Lady

Near the start of this month of Our Lady, I am very pleased to be able to share with NLM readers several photos of the new wall paintings in the church of the Monastery of San Benedetto in Norcia, Italy. As will be quickly apparent, these are only the start (but what an auspicious start!) of an ambitious iconographic program that will eventually encompass the walls on both sides of the sanctuary, radiating down toward the choir. The monks have thought very carefully about the sequence, the symbolism, and the juxtaposition of scenes.

We will introduce the seven photos as if we are walking up through the choir, toward the sanctuary. (Click on any photo to enlarge it.)

Photo 1. Here we see the monks’ benches on either side, the wrought-iron candle holders, the seat of the prior, the statue of Our Lady, and the sanctuary lamp hanging at the juncture of choir and sanctuary, as if marking out the Holy of Holies.

Photo 2. We ascend the first flight of steps and take note of the Annunciation on the right side. This is one of ultimately six large panels (seven, if you include the image directly above the altar) that will decorate the entire apse. All of the marble is painted “faux marble,” a common technique throughout the Renaissance and Baroque periods. On the right are the seats for the ministers at Mass, and the credence table.

Photo 3. Turning to the right, we gaze at the Annunciation.

Photo 4. In keeping with iconographic tradition, Our Lady is shown studying Scripture when St. Gabriel arrives. She demurely looks down, but interestingly her right hand is shown almost in a gesture of blessing, as if she is responding with her hand to the upraised right hand of the archangel. Gabriel wears the dalmatic of a deacon (a messenger of the good news, the Gospel), holds a lily, and genuflects. God the Father, enthroned upon the cherubim (Is 37:16), sends forth His Holy Spirit, which moves toward the Virgin’s womb for the enactment of the mystery of the Incarnation. The vegetation outside recalls the Garden of Eden; this garden is walled, for it is, in the words of the Song of Songs, a hortus conclusus or enclosed garden of unstained virginity consecrated to God.

Photo 5. Now we draw closer to the high altar, nobly dressed with its antependium. To the right, we see the Deposition of Christ; to the left, the holy death of the Virgin Mary and her (implied) Assumption; and directly above the altar, her Coronation.

Photo 6. The Deposition. Our Lady cradles the head of her dead Son; her sister holds His arm with veiled hands; Mary Magdalene bathes His feet again with her tears, a jar of ointment beside her. The crown of thorns and nails lie in the foreground. Giotto-like, three theatrical angels express their grief in contorted flight: one holds a hand over his eyes, another holds both hands to his cheeks, and a third holds his hands up. St. John stands and contemplates. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus rest to the side after their labor in taking the body down from the Cross. The splendor of the colors of all the clothing contrast sharply with the lifeless pallor of the dead Christ. Receding layers of mountains and writhing clouds suggest the ungraspable vastitude of the sacrifice that has been offered.

Photo 7. The Dormition of the Virgin Mary. She is surrounded by Apostles, some of whom are stricken with grief at the loss (as they feel it) of their spiritual mother. Christ her Son holds her soul in His hands. The body will be taken up soon thereafter. One of the Apostles, undoubtedly St Peter, wears a cope and reads a Gospel—the Gospel about “Mary hath chosen the better part.”

All the paints were executed by the Italian painter Fabrizio Diomedi, a portfolio of whose work may be viewed here and here.

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s Substack “Tradition & Sanity”; personal site; composer site; publishing house Os Justi Press and YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify pages.

Of Litanies and Rogations in Old England

The narratives, teachings, and poetry of Holy Scripture are occasionally enriched with a technique known as the envelope structure (often called inclusio in Biblical studies). The “envelope” is created by a phrase that is repeated at the beginning and end of a literary unit, as in the following example from Psalm 103, which opens and closes with the speaker exhorting himself to praise God:

O my soul, bless thou the Lord:
       thou, my God, hast shown thy glory,
clothed thyself in splendor and majesty:
       radiance is thy garment.
...
Let sinners vanish from the earth,
       and the wicked be no more.
O my soul,
       bless thou the Lord.

Envelope structures create a sense of unity and closure, with emotional effects similar to those of a decrescendo in music, and they may also accentuate an important theme or precept in the enclosed text. They are used throughout the Bible – in the New Testament and the Old, in verse and in prose. And if we think of sacred liturgy as a dramatic celebration and continuation of the events, heroes, teachings, and poetic meditations of Holy Scripture, we will expect to find envelope structures in the Church’s public worship.

Indeed, we are now in the midst of one: the Litany of Saints that signaled the beginning of the Easter Vigil Mass on Holy Saturday will soon be repeated on the three Rogation Days that precede Ascension Thursday. What a memorable way this is to emphasize the spiritual and liturgical unity of the forty joyful days when the risen Christ walked the earth and conversed with men. It also draws our minds to the essential fruit of Our Lord’s Resurrection: the Saints in heaven, who were once mortals like us, burdened by sin and doomed to die, and are now gloriously alive, shining on high with God and His angels.

“What I saw seemed to me to be a smile / the universe had smiled; my rapture had / entered by way of hearing and of sight. / / O joy! O gladness words can never speak! / O life perfected by both love and peace! / O richness so assured, that knows no longing!” (Dante, Paradiso, 27; Mandelbaum translation)

Litanic prayer originated in the East, where it formed part of both the Eucharistic liturgy and the Divine Office, and it soon migrated to the Roman church. These texts were shorter and less elaborate than the prayers that we now call litanies, and their defining characteristic was supplication (for the sick, the dead, the bishop, etc.) intensified by a communal response such as Kyrie eleison or Domine exaudi et miserere. (The word “litany” derives from Greek litaneia, which simply means “petition” or “entreaty.”) The Kyrie eleison as it currently exists in the Roman Mass is actually a vestigial form of litanic prayers recited during the Eucharistic liturgy in the early Church.

The beginning of the Litany of the Saints in the eleventh-century breviary known as St. Wulfstan’s Portiforium (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 391, p. 221). Note the legibility of the text (compared to some manuscripts produced much later) and the visual prominence given to the names of Our Lady and St. Peter.

Other occasions on which the Church employed litanies were solemn processions. This practice is of venerable antiquity, dating at least to the fifth century, and has endured to the present in the Church’s traditional Rogation Day ceremonies. A homily composed by St. Avitus, a sixth-century bishop of Vienne in southern Gaul, is a striking example of historical continuity in Catholic liturgy. He refers to Rogation fasts, which included processions and litany chants, occurring on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Thursday—precisely as they do in the Roman liturgy of our own day. [1]

Jules Breton, La Bénédiction des blés en Artois (oil on canvas). The artist is portraying the blessing of agricultural fields that occurred during the Rogation processions.

Latin-language Saint litanies are relatively abundant in manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon period of English Catholicism. The earliest records take us all the way back to the seventh century, but most of what has survived dates to the tenth century or later. These litanies vary in form and content, but exhibit a common structure that is remarkably similar to what we pray and sing today in the Roman rite.

A story recounted by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (see book I, chapter 25) reveals that the combination of litany and procession has an illustrious role in the history of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. When St. Augustine and his evangelizing companions reached the Isle of Thanet in Kent, King Ethelbert, who knew of Christianity but was still a pagan at the time, was “sitting in the open air” and

ordered Augustine and his companions to be brought into his presence. For he had taken precaution that they should not come to him in any house, lest, according to an ancient superstition, if they practiced any magical arts, they might impose upon him.

Thus, the missionaries came to the king—himself later venerated as a saint—in procession,

bearing a silver cross for their banner, and the image of our Lord and Savior painted on a board; and singing the litany, they offered up their prayers to the Lord for the eternal salvation both of themselves and of those to whom they were come.

Stained-glass depiction of King Ethelbert (d. 616), from All Souls College Chapel, Oxford.

Anglo-Saxon Saint litanies were prayed both publicly and privately, and many of the surviving litanies appear in manuscripts that are primarily psalters. This suggests that they served as a supplement to the psalms, which were the principal fount of prayer for laity and clergy alike during the Ages of Faith.

One thing that stands out in the litanies of Old England is the multitude of English saints. Names such as Æthelthryth, Cuthberht, Botwulf, Wihtburg, Mildthryth, and Switthun are well represented in these texts. How exactly liturgical singers integrated these names into the Latin pronunciation system is an open question, but in any case, I feel some nostalgia for a time when the Church’s litanies were inhabited by a more equal distribution of local and universal saints.

Litany of the Saints in the late-ninth-century Psalter of Count Achadeus (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 272, folio 151r). This litany invokes 160 saints.

Scholars do not know when exactly the Western churches began incorporating individual saints into their litanies. In other words, the history of litanic prayer in general is well established, but the origin of what we now call the Litany of the Saints has proved elusive. The eminent medievalist Dr. Michael Lapidge, whose research inspired me to write this article, believes that Saint litanies first achieved widespread usage in eighth-century England. What an extraordinary thought, that Anglo-Saxon England—a recently converted, far-flung outpost of Western Christianity—may have been the birthplace of the Latin Litany of the Saints, which would soon spread to continental Europe and eventually occupy a place of great honor and distinction in the liturgy of the universal Church.

---

[1]. These three days are currently known as the Minor Rogations. A Major Rogation takes place every year on April 25th.

Welcome to a New Writer: Robert W. Keim

We are very glad to welcome a new contributor to our writing staff, Mr Robert W. Keim, a secular brother of the London Oratory of St Philip Neri, a linguist, and a literary scholar specializing in the poetic and dramatic literature of the English Renaissance. A longtime student of the arts and spirituality of sacred liturgy, Robert teaches university courses in rhetoric, recently completed a new verse translation of the Psalms, and has worked in traditional and online publishing for over ten years. He is writing his doctoral dissertation on martyrdom and martyrial characters in Shakespeare’s plays and poems, and he is also pursuing research into the devotional, scriptural, and liturgical culture of medieval England.

We have already shared some lovely pieces by him, one about the Exsultet and another (in two parts: one and two) about bells. His first piece as a staff writer will appear shortly - feliciter tibi, optime!

Reliquary Busts of the Chapel of St Januarius in Naples

The Italian city of Naples keeps three feasts in honor of its Patron St Januarius, the relics of whose blood famously liquify on all three occasions. His principal feast, the anniversary of his martyrdom, is on September 19, but today, the Saturday before the first Sunday of May, there is a commemoration of the translation of his relics (one of several) from Pozzuoli, about 9 miles to the west, the place where he died during the persecution of Diocletian, ca. 305 AD. The third feast, on December 16th, commemorates a miracle which took place in 1631, when he stopped an especially powerful lava flow from Mt Vesuvius that threatened to destroy the city’s winter grain supply.

The Martyrdom of St Januarius in the Amphiteater at Pozzuoli, 1636, by Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Januarius was in point of fact bishop of neither Naples nor Pozzuoli, but of Benevento, about 33 miles to the north-east of Naples. In the Middle Ages, a large part of his relics were transferred to the important monastery of Monte Vergine, and from there to the cathedral of Naples only at the very end of the 15th century. In the wake of a horrific plague that devastated the city between 1526 and 1529 (worsened by the events of a series of major military conflicts), the Neapolitans made a vow to build a new chapel to house them; in classic southern Italian fashion, the project was not even begun until 80 years later, and not completed until 1646. The result, however, is one of the most splendid Baroque chapels in all of Europe.

Image from Wikimedia Commons by ErwinMeier, CC BY-SA 4.0

The chapel also boasts a collection of 54 extremely fine silver reliquary busts of the city’s various patrons and other popular Saints, all made by artisans from the city and environs in an era when the art of silversmithing was at its height. At the December feast, the blood relic and several of these busts are carried in procession from the cathedral down to the nearby church of St Clare. The streets of central Naples are very narrow; I once went there for this feast (generally the least crowded of the three), and got to see the liquified blood moving around in its reliquary only a few feet away from me as it passed by on the way back to the cathedral.

Our friend Mr John Ryan Debil of The Home Oratory just visited Naples, and kindly agreed to share with us these pictures which he took of the busts (not all of them) – gratias tibi quam maximas, optime! (I don’t know who the last two Saints are; if you can identify them, please be so good as to leave a note in the combox. UPDATE: thanks to reader SMJ for identifying one of them, and correcting my mistake on another Saint.) 

St Joachim holding the Virgin Mary

St Anne

St Augustine

St Joseph

Continue Reading this Article. . .