In 2022, the Axios Men’s Ensemble commissioned Benedict Sheehan, a three-time Grammy award nominee, to compose a memorial in response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, entitled Ukrainian War Requiem. This war, which began in 2014 and escalated into a full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, has tragically claimed countless lives. This music is a solemn tribute to these victims. This November, from the 6th to the 15th, the Ensemble will bring the Requiem on a concert tour to nine locations across Canada.
Earlier this year, the Axios Men’s Ensemble was awarded Canada’s highest musical honour – a JUNO Award for the Classical Album of the Year (Large Ensemble) for the recording of the Ukrainian War Requiem. This marks the first time in JUNO Awards history that an a cappella recording has earned this distinction in the category.
Sheehan’s composition, spanning 12 movements, draws inspiration primarily from the Byzantine burial service, a ritual shared by Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches. Reflecting Ukraine’s diverse linguistic and religious landscape, the Requiem also weaves in elements from Jewish and Roman Catholic traditions. These varied texts serve multiple purposes: they offer solace and strength to the living, especially those grieving; they provide a space for praying for both victims and aggressors; and they ultimately aspire to convey hope, peace, and goodwill.
It is an expansive and sublime piece (already reviewed by Thomas Neal here on NLM!) that skillfully blends modern musical styles with traditional Ukrainian motifs and ancient chants. This arrangement not only reflects the harsh realities of war but also echoes humanity’s deep-seated longing for peace, goodness, truth, and beauty.
Featuring over 50 performers, the ensemble brings together members of the Axios Men’s Ensemble, Pro Coro Canada, and select soloists from North America, Europe, and Ukraine. The performance will be conducted by Maestro Michael Zaugg.
This Requiem is more than just music. It is a reverent homage to those affected by the war, a reminder of the enduring human spirit, and a heartfelt tribute to Ukraine and her people.
In the Breviary of St Pius V, the lives of the Apostles Simon and Jude are summed up in a single lesson of fewer than sixty words. It is noted that St Simon was called “the Chananean, also the Zealot”; the term “Chananean” was thought by some of the Church Fathers to refer to Cana of Galilee, where the Lord turned water into wine, but it is simply a hellenization of the Hebrew word “qanna’i – zealous.” St Thaddeus, more often called Jude, was the author of one of the seven Catholic Epistles. After the Ascension, the former went to evangelize Egypt, the latter to Mesopotamia; they later met in Persia, where they continued to preach the Gospel, and were eventually martyred.
The pre-Tridentine Roman Breviary, on the other hand, gives a much more elaborate account of their lives after the Lord’s Ascension. St Simon is said to have preached the Gospel in many places, which are not specifically named. When St James the Less was killed in 62 A.D., Simon was chosen by the other Apostles to succeed him as bishop of Jerusalem. Having governed the mother church of Christianity for many years, and reached the age of one-hundred and twenty, he was tortured and crucified under the Emperor Trajan. In reality, these stories derive from the life of a different saint with a similar name, Symeon of Jerusalem, who is mentioned by Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260-340) in the third book of his Ecclesiastical History.
Chapter 11. After the martyrdom of James and the conquest of Jerusalem … it is said that those of the Apostles and disciples of the Lord that were still living came together from all directions with those that were related to the Lord according to the flesh … to take counsel as to who was worthy to succeed James. They all with one consent pronounced Symeon, the son of Clopas, of whom the Gospel also makes mention, to be worthy of the episcopal throne … He was a cousin, as they say, of the Savior; for Hegesippus records that Clopas was a brother of Joseph.
Chapter 32. (Citing Hegesippus again) Speaking of certain heretics, he adds that Symeon was accused by them at this time; and since it was clear that he was a Christian, he was tortured in various ways for many days, and astonished even the judge himself and his attendants in the highest degree, and finally he suffered a death similar to that of our Lord. But there is nothing like hearing the historian himself, who writes as follows: “Certain of these heretics brought accusation against Symeon, the son of Clopas, on the ground that he was a descendant of David and a Christian; and thus he suffered martyrdom, at the age of one hundred and twenty years, while Trajan was emperor and Atticus governor. … And after being tortured for many days he suffered martyrdom, and all, including even the proconsul, marveled that, at the age of one hundred and twenty years, he could endure so much. And orders were given that he should be crucified.”
The Martyrdom of Saints Simon and Jude
In his famous Golden Legend, Bl. Jacopo de Voragine writes that the confusion between Symeon of Jerusalem and the Apostle Simon was noted by Eusebius, St Isidore and Bede the Venerable. In the Tridentine reform of the Breviary, therefore, the error was corrected; the story of St Symeon of Jerusalem was detached from that of the Apostle, and he was given his own feast day on February 18.
In each of the Synoptic Gospels, when the Evangelists give the names of the Twelve Apostles, Simon and Jude appear together at the end of the list, right before Judas Iscariot; Ss Matthew (chapter 10) and Mark (chapter 3) give the name of the latter as Thaddeus, but St Luke (chapter 6) calls him Jude. St John does not give a list of the names of the Twelve, but recounts in chapter 14 that Jude “not the Iscariot” at the Last Supper asked Christ, “Lord, how is it, that thou wilt manifest thyself to us, and not to the world?” It is with the name Thaddeus that he is mentioned in the Communicantes of the Roman Canon, and by this name he also came to be associated with one of the most beloved stories of the Christian tradition, the legend of King Abgar, and the painting of the Holy Face of Edessa.
The Holy Face of Edessa, often called the Mandylion from the Syriac word for the cloth on which the image was made.
As recorded by Eusebius in the Ecclesiastical History (I. 13), King Abgar of Edessa suffered from an incurable disease of some kind; having heard of the many healings wrought by the Lord during His earthly ministry, he sent Him a letter asking Him to come to Edessa and heal him. The Lord replied by letter that He would not come personally, but that after His Resurrection, one of His disciples would be sent to cure him; and in due time, the Apostle Thomas sent one of the seventy disciples, a certain Thaddeus, to perform this office. Eusebius gives what purport to be the texts of the two letters, which were kept, he claims, in the public archives at Edessa. The story is repeated in a much more elaborate form in an early fifth-century apocryphal work, “The Doctrine of Addai,” in which the name of the disciple sent to King Abgar appears as Addai, rather than Thaddeus.
By the late fifth-century, the so-called Gelasian decree, in the section “on books to be received and not to be received”, (i.e., which may be used in the liturgy), already notes the spurious character of the letters exchanged between Christ and King Abgar. (The decree itself would later be spuriously attributed to Pope Gelasius I, and is commonly called after him.) As is the case with many apocryphal writings, formal rejection did not in the least diminish the popularity of the story, which continued to be embellished in various ways. The Doctrine of Addai simply adds that Abgar’s messenger made a picture of Christ’s face to bring back to the King; by the Bl. Jacopo’s time, the legend states that on receiving the reply of Christ, King Abgar sent a painter to make an image of the Lord’s Face on a piece of cloth. The painter was unable to do this himself, however, “because of the exceeding brightness that came forth from His face”; the Lord Himself therefore took the cloth and laid it over His own face, leaving an impression of the image upon the cloth, which was then taken to Abgar. Among Byzantine Christians especially, the Holy Face of Christ is still to this day the object of great veneration; it is known as the Holy Mandylion, a word which derives from the Syriac “mandil – a cloth.” Although Eusebius clearly says that the Thaddeus of the Abgar legend is one of the seventy disciples, and not one of the twelve Apostles, the Golden Legend and the Roman Breviary of 1529 both identify him with the Apostle called Thaddeus in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, and Jude in those of Luke and John. Because of the association with the King Abgar legend, he is sometimes shown holding an image of the Lord’s face.
In modern times, a new devotion has emerged to Saint Jude as the Patron Saint of Lost Causes, the origins of which are quite obscure. There are many variations of the following prayer to ask for his intercession, and it is still a fairly common custom to thank the Saint publicly for his intercession by placing a message of thanksgiving in a newspaper.
Oh glorious Apostle St Jude, faithful servant and friend of Jesus, the name of the traitor who delivered thy beloved Master into the hands of His enemies has caused thee to be forgotten by many, but the Church honors and invokes thee universally as the patron of hopeless cases--of things despaired of. Pray for me who am so miserable; make use, I implore thee, of that particular privilege accorded thee of bringing visible and speedy help where help is almost despaired of. Come to my assistance in this great need, that I may receive the consolations and succor of heaven in all my necessities, tribulations and sufferings, particularly (mention your request), and that I may bless God with thee and all the elect throughout eternity. I promise thee, O blessed St Jude, to be ever mindful of this great favor, and I will never cease to honor thee as my special and powerful patron, and to do all in my power to encourage devotion to thee. Amen.
On June 28, 2021, I posted an article at NLM entitled “Piously
Discarding Blessed Wax: A Quodlibetal Question,” and presented a few
viewpoints about what should be done with stubs and scraps from blessed
candles. May they be thrown away like other debris, or must they be melted
down, burned down, buried, or left on the earth like other blessed objects?
At the time, I offered various arguments on both sides, but then
put my backing behind a response given to me by a Dominican priest and Thomist,
saying that such candle bits should be treated in a special way.
After thinking about this for some time, I have come to
agree with those in the comments who disputed this answer (the comments back
then on NLM were of high quality; sadly, almost no one comments anymore, and I realize that is because comboxes have seen their day; yet I maintain they are more useful than social media comments because the latter are almost impossible to find after a while, whereas the comments attached to a blog post are right there where you need them).
Here is my reasoning: the wax remnants, once they are no
longer a candle in form and no longer capable of serving as a candle, have lost
what is required to be a candle, and so the blessing of candles does not
“hold,” even as (to use a much grander example) the Real Presence ceases the
moment the accidents of bread and wine are corrupted in the one who consumes
them. When the species can no longer be recognized as bread and wine, no Real Presence
under those species is possible. Similarly, when the species (the appearance
and function) of a candle is not there, there is no candle left.
The blessing of the wax as mentioned in certain prayers is not a blessing of the material only, but of the material as formed into a
certain instrument for glorifying God or honoring the saints. This is the common-sense
point of view.
By the way, nothing beats the irreverence I once saw at a shrine in Greece where an employee, who seemed slightly irritated to be working there, came in every so often and simply threw out all the candles that pilgrims had lit, sometimes minutes before, to make room for new candles. There was money to be made – forget about the pious intentions of those who paid 2 Euros for a candle that would burn before the icons! Probably those candles had not been specially blessed, but it was still one of the most unedifying sights I’ve ever seen.
It seems different with objects that, though damaged, retain
enough of their form to be recognizably the same thing and perhaps even partly
useful for their purpose. For example, a crucifix with a broken arm, or with
the corpus detached from the cross, may not be acceptable for mounting in a
church or at home, but it remains a crucifix and should be discarded by burning
or burying. Similarly, a rosary that has fallen apart into segments and can
still be repaired should still be treated as a rosary; but when it falls apart
beyond repair or when no repair is intended, it should be buried. It is quite
different with wax scraps, which have no more than their bare material in
common with functional candles.
Nevertheless, there is of course nothing wrong with burning
the extra wax in a bonfire (it makes the fire go stronger), and if it’s
beeswax, it should be recycled into new candles given the value and quality of
the material.
In the Roman Rite, the term “vigilia – vigil” traditionally means a penitential day of preparation for a major feast. The Mass of a Saint’s vigil is celebrated after None, as are the Masses of the ferias of Lent or the Ember Days, and in violet vestments; however, the deacon and subdeacon do not wear folded chasubles, as they do in Lent, but the dalmatic and tunicle. The Mass has neither the Gloria nor the Creed, the Alleluja is simply omitted before the Gospel, not replaced with a Tract, and Benedicamus Domino is said at the end in place of Ite, missa est.
Folio 116v of the Gellone Sacramentary, ca. 780 AD, with the Mass of the vigil of Ss Simon and Jude, and the beginning of the Mass of their feast. (Bibliothèque National de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 12048)
The joint celebration of the Apostles Simon and Jude in a single feast originated as a proper custom of the Roman Rite, which was then copied by both the Ambrosian and Mozarabic Rites. (In the Byzantine Rite, St Simon’s feast is kept on May 10th, and St Jude’s on June 19th.) As with the feast of Ss Philip and James, this custom seems to have arisen from the presence of their relics in a Roman church; they have been venerated in St Peter’s Basilica since the 7th or 8th century. Neither the vigil nor the feast appears in the very oldest liturgical books of the Roman Rite such as the Old Gelasian Sacramentary and the Wurzburg lectionary, ca. 750 AD. However, both are found only about 30 years later in the Gellone Sacramentary, and their place in the liturgy is certainly well established by the mid-9th century.
In the common Mass for the vigil of an Apostle, all of the proper texts except for the Gospel refer to a single person, as for example the Epistle, which begins with the words “The blessing of the Lord is upon the head of the just man.” The vigil of Ss Simon and Jude therefore has a different Mass, the texts of which all refer to more than one person, in keeping with their joint celebration. The three orations of the Mass in the Missal of St Pius V are the same as those found in the Gellone Sacramentary, and originated with this vigil, but the Gregorian propers and Scriptural readings are all also used in other Masses.
The altar of the left transept of St Peter's Basilica, in which are kept the relics of Ss Simon and Jude; the altar itself is now also dedicated to St Joseph.
The Introit, Gradual and Communion all take their text from Psalm 78, which the Church Fathers often associated with those who, like the Apostles, had given their lives for the Faith. An anonymous “Exposition of the Psalms” previously attributed to St Jerome says e.g., in regard to the words which begin the Introit, “Why should I not understand this to be simply said about the martyrs who were shut up in prisons? … And I say that God does truly hear the voice of those prisoners.” (PL 26, 1289B)
“Intret in conspectu tuo, Dómine, gémitus compeditórum: redde vicínis nostris séptuplum in sinu eórum: víndica sánguinem Sanctórum tuórum, qui effúsus est. Ps. 78 Deus, venérunt gentes in hereditátem tuam: polluérunt templum sanctum tuum: posuérunt Jerúsalem in pomórum custodiam. Gloria Patri. Intret. – Let the sighing of the prisoners come in before Thee, O Lord; render to our neighbors sevenfold in their bosom: repay our neighbors sevenfold into their bosoms; revenge the blood of thy servants, which hath been shed. Ps. 78 O God, the heathens are come into thy inheritance, they have defiled thy holy temple: they have made Jerusalem as a place to keep fruit. Glory be… Let the sighing…”
Likewise, in his Exposition of the Psalms, St Augustine says of the psalm verse, “I believe the words ‘as a place to keep fruit’ should be understood to mean the laying-to-waste caused by the devastation of persecution: … And certainly, when the Church seemed to be laid waste because the heathen were persecuting it, the spirits of the martyrs passed to the heavenly banquet, as if they were many of the sweetest fruits from the Lord’s garden.” (Enarratio in Ps. 78)
This choice may also reflect a long-standing hagiographical confusion, by which the Apostle Simon was thought to be the same person as a kinsman of the Lord named Symeon, who became bishop of Jerusalem after the death of St James the Less, and was martyred at the age of 120 in the reign of the Emperor Trajan.
The Epistle is taken from the fourth chapter of St Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (verses 9-14), in which he describes the duties of an Apostle. “We are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and to men.” A commentary on the Epistles of St Paul which was traditionally (but incorrectly) attributed to St Ambrose says about this, “the Apostles became a spectacle, because they were publically mocked, and set to the injury and the death which they suffered. By ‘the world’, he means both angels and men, because there are also evil angels, … (and) the injuries done to the Apostles delighted them.” (PL 17 205A)
This reading first appeared in the Roman Rite in the mid-8th century on the feast of two martyrs named Abdon and Sennen, Persians who were killed at Rome in the 3rd century; they are still commemorated in the Extraordinary Form on July 30th. Their bodies were left to lie “before the image of the sun god,” a colossal statue of the Emperor Nero which stood next to the Colosseum, one of the places where gladiatorial “spectacles” were held and Christians were martyred. It makes for an interesting coincidence, but no more than that, that their native land, Persia, is traditionally said to be the place where St Jude died for the faith.
The Gospel, John 15, 1-7, is one of two traditionally read on the feasts of Martyrs in Eastertide, the other being verses 5-11 of the same chapter. This is the only place where this passage is read outside that season, but the reason for doing so is not readily discernible. The concluding words “you shall ask whatever you will, and it shall be done unto you” may seem to reflect the devotion to St Jude as the patron of lost causes, but this devotion is extremely recent, no earlier than the 19th century, and its origin obscure.
The Offertory is taken from an Old Latin version of Psalm 149, and includes a small variant from the Vulgate version of St Jerome. “Exsultabunt sancti in gloria; lætabuntur in cubilibus suis. Exaltationes Dei in faucibus (“gutture” in the Vulgate) eorum. – The Saints shall rejoice in glory: they shall be joyful in their resting places. The high praises of God shall be in their mouth.”
The first part of this is frequently said in the Office of Several Martyrs, and was chosen in reference to the fact that the original focus of devotion to the Saints was always at the place of their burial. This same chant is sung on the feasts of Ss Processus and Martinian, whose relics are also kept at St Peter’s; in the modern basilica, they are in the main altar of the right transept, directly opposite that of Ss Simon and Jude in the left transept. It is also sung on the octave day of Ss Peter and Paul, and on the feast of the Holy Maccabees, whose relics are in another church dedicated to St Peter, the basilica which houses his chains.
Like most Masses in the ancient sacramentaries, this vigil originally had its own proper preface, which refers to the ancient character of such days as preparation for a major feast.
VD: Quia tu es mirabilis in omnibus sanctis tuis, quos et nominis tui confessione praeclaros, et suscepta pro te fecisti passione gloriosos. Unde, sicut illi ieiunando orandoque certaverunt, ut hanc possent obtinere victoriam, ita nos potius quae exercuere sectantes, convenientius eorum natalicia celebremus. Per Christum. – Truly it is worthy … because Thou are wondrous in all Thy Saints, whom Thou has made honorable by the confession of Thy name, and glorious by the passion which they accepted for Thee. Wherefore, just as they strove by fasting and praying, that they might be able to obtain this victory, so may we also, by follow their practices, more fittingly celebrate their birth into heaven.
The style that developed in 17th-century Italy: its origins, principles, and visual vocabulary
In this posts and a follow-up, I will examine the Baroque tradition of sacred art: where it came from, why it looks the way it does, and what makes it distinctively Christian. The second part will examine how the tradition spread across Europe and the two main tendencies that developed within it. Subsequent posts in this series will look at Baroque secular art, the portraiture, landscape, and still life that emerged as the same habits of perception flowed out from the liturgy into every corner of cultural life.
As regular NLM readers will know well, Pope Benedict XVI, in The Spirit of the Liturgy, identified three authentic traditions of Christian liturgical art: the iconographic, the Gothic, and the Baroque. The iconographic tradition, which dominated Christian art in both East and West until the 12th century, portrays man as he will be in heaven, transfigured, luminous, outside ordinary space and time. The Gothic, which I examined in earlier posts, straddles the divide between heaven and earth, and is best understood, I argue, as the art of the Christian pilgrim, partially transformed by grace yet still journeying. The Baroque is the most naturalistic of the three. It portrays fallen, historical man, in this life, in the full drama of suffering and grace. That drama, and the Christian hope that transcends it, is what Baroque sacred art is fundamentally about.
The Baroque is also the most influential of the three traditions on art more broadly. As the naturalism of late Gothic painting increased, artists began applying the same visual principles to secular subjects, but the Baroque fully established this tendency, creating a tradition in which the habits of observation and perception formed by creating art for the altar extended naturally into wider contemporary culture. A painter skilled in depicting the light of Christ on the face of a saint would bring the same level of skill and insight to a landscape, a portrait, or a still life, not as an overtly religious act, but in the recognition that the beauty of Creation speaks of its Creator.
Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (c. 1595), by Caravaggio, one of the pioneers of the Baroque.
The Council of Trent and the Origins of the Style
The Baroque style in art emerged in the late 16th and 17th centuries as a powerful artistic response to the Catholic Church’s Counter-Reformation efforts, particularly the Council of Trent’s directives on sacred images issued at its closing session in 1563. Building on the precedent set by the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which closed in 787 and which defended the veneration of religious images, Trent reaffirmed the importance of art as a vehicle for faith while addressing Protestant criticisms. Concerned that some religious imagery had grown overly complex, indecorous, or inaccessible to ordinary believers, the Council instructed artists to portray the mysteries of the Faith, the lives of saints, and the truths of redemption with clarity, emotional directness, and devotional effectiveness, avoiding lasciviousness (that is, the promotion of disordered sexual desire), doctrinal error, superstition, and anything that might confuse or mislead the uneducated, thereby fostering a more immediate and edifying visual language that helped define the Baroque aesthetic.
It took time for the artistic community to absorb and successfully manifest these general directives. By the end of the century, approximately thirty years later, a coherent tradition was emerging that built upon the finest stylistic achievements of the 16th century.
The origin of the name ‘Baroque’ is not known with certainty. Commentators speculate that it is a pejorative term derived from the Portuguese word for an imperfect pearl, barocco, which art historians later applied to the more extravagant examples of the style. I offer another suggestion below by connecting it to the work of one of the tradition’s pioneers, the Italian artist Federico Barocci.
While the primary impetus for this new style was the desire to create a form of sacred art, it very quickly became the standard for all secular art as part of the broader Catholic cultural response to the Reformation. On seeing the beauty of this style, even Protestants decided they wanted to paint in this Catholic manner, and they copied and adapted it to their own needs, developing parallel theological justifications for its use, as happened notably in Holland. The Protestant Dutch artists of the period, among them Rembrandt, painted portraiture, landscape, and still life in this new style.
The power of Baroque beauty was noticed in Protestant England too. Anthony Van Dyck, a Flemish Catholic and student of Rubens, was invited by the Protestant Charles I of England to serve as his court portrait painter and was elevated to the title of Sir Anthony. He was so successful and influential that the English school of portraiture was inspired by him and sustained itself for 250 years after his death. Figures such as Gainsborough and Reynolds were the most celebrated painters of this school. Americans will be familiar with the portraits of the founding fathers, particularly of George Washington by the American artist Gilbert Stuart, which were executed in the style of the English portrait school.
The Origins of the Baroque Style: Federico Barocci
The Italian artist Caravaggio is credited with popularizing the style at the end of the 16th century, but perhaps the clearest early articulation of what became the Baroque came slightly earlier, from another Italian, Federico Barocci. Consider this painting of St Jerome, which he completed in 1598.
Federico Barocci, St Jerome, 1598
I have never read a historical account that confirms this, but I have long wondered whether the term ‘Baroque’ is, in part, a play on his name. Barocci’s work from this period certainly bears all the hallmarks of the tradition he was pioneering.
Several features immediately direct the eye to the figure of St Jerome. He is painted with the most naturalistic coloration, is the most brightly lit, and is the most precisely rendered and sharply focused element of the composition. Barocci reinforces this by setting the figure against a background of deliberately restricted tonal range: a single color, sepia, varied only in its tonal values and given almost no detail. The brightest colors in the composition are concentrated in the cloth immediately surrounding the saint. The sharpest tonal contrast runs along the edge of his right elbow, tracing upward along his shoulder to a sharp point just below the right ear, leading the eye steadily toward the face. This contrast is further intensified by darkening the background immediately adjacent to that edge.
The sharpness and clarity of rendering also vary across the painting. The least precisely handled areas are on the periphery; the most detailed are the saint’s face and hands, the two elements through which expression and gesture communicate the person’s interior life. Through these, the artist portrays the man as a living being with a soul.
Compare Barocci’s painting with this work on the same subject, done nearly fifty years later, in 1646, by the Spanish artist José de Ribera, who spent most of his professional life in Italy.
We can see the same stylistic features at work, except that St Jerome’s face is no longer the primary focus. Ribera directs us instead toward the Word, as exemplified by the scroll. St Jerome produced the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, and Ribera draws our attention to it, perhaps underscoring that Catholics hold Scripture in the highest regard and directly countering Protestant accusations to the contrary.
The sharp contrast between light and dark throughout Baroque painting symbolizes both the darkness of evil and suffering in this fallen world and the Light that overcomes it. This visual device embodies Christian hope, which transcends suffering.
Within a few decades, this style of idealized naturalism had become the standard model for new sacred art across Catholic Europe. As with any living tradition, artists retained room for personal variation within its boundaries; some, for instance, incorporated lighter ochres or cool grays alongside sepia in their tonal work. Broadly speaking, however, the style remained remarkably consistent throughout the 17th century, before gradually and subtly declining in the 18th as the rising influences of Neoclassicism and Romanticism began to transform artistic priorities.
Why This Style Works
The stylistic vocabulary of the Baroque, its variation of tone, color, and focus, is not an arbitrary invention. It accounts for how we actually look at the world and process visual information in the mind. The image cast onto our retinas is not evenly colored or uniformly focused. It is sharply focused and richly colored at the center, where the cone cells respond to color; it is blurred and effectively monochrome at the periphery, where the rod cells respond only to tonal information. We are not ordinarily aware of seeing in this way, because the eye moves constantly across the scene before it, collecting information. The picture we are actually conscious of is an aggregate of this information, assembled from memory. As we observe the world, we tend to notice sharp tonal contrast and strong color first, and we spend the most time examining these and other points of greatest interest to gather more visual information.
A painting is a snapshot in time, but the mind naturally supplements it with information from memory, drawing on recollections of similar scenes encountered in the past. What we see in our mind’s eye at any moment when engaging with a Baroque painting is therefore more natural to us than what we would experience when looking at an image in which every detail, from border to center, is rendered with equal precision, as in photorealism or some 19th-century naturalism.
The effect on the viewer is to direct the imagination toward God by employing a dynamic similar to what we experience when we respond to Creation with awe and wonder. God made us to look at the world in a particular way so that we might see the Creator in his Creation and delight in both. By delivering visual information in a way that stimulates the same dynamic process of observation, the artist who paints well makes his painting speak of Christ as powerfully through its beauty and style, regardless of the content, just as the cosmos itself does.
Next week, in Part 2, I turn to how the Baroque tradition spread organically across Europe and examine the two great tendencies that developed within it: Baroque Classicism, which sought a more idealized, classical look, and Baroque Naturalism, which insisted on direct observation from life. I will also look at a question that matters practically for any artist working in sacred art today: how does sacred art differ from portraiture, and why does the distinction matter?
On Monday, November 2nd, for the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts (diocese of Fall River), will celebrate a sung Requiem Mass (usus recentior,ad orientem) beginning at 7:00 PM. Tomás Luis de Victoria’s Requiem of 1605 will be performed by the Greater New Bedford Choral Society. The church is located at 230 Bonney Street, in the city’s south end. No tickets or admission is required.
On October 26, Byzantine Christians celebrate with great solemnity the feast of St Demetrius of Thessalonica, a soldier and martyr of the early 4th century, whose popularity is almost as great as that of another warrior, St George. The traditional story of his life is that he succeeded his father as military commander at Thessalonica, but was imprisoned by the Emperor Maximian (286-305) for not only refusing his orders to persecute the Christians, but openly preaching the Gospel.
Maximian had a favorite gladiator, a very large German named Lyaeus, who, at his behest, challenged any Christian to wrestle him on a platform surrounded by spears. A Christian named Nestor, brave, but very small of stature, visited Demetrius in prison and received his blessing, after which he wrestled and beat Lyaeus, hurling him down onto the spears. In his anger at losing his favorite gladiator, Maximian sent his soldiers to the prison, where they speared Demetrius though the chest, while Nestor was killed the following day.
This story forms the tropar of St Demetrius’ feast day.
The world has found you to be a great defense against tribulation, and a vanquisher of heathens, O Passion-bearer. As you bolstered the courage of Nestor, who then humbled the arrogance of Lyaios in battle, Holy Demetrius, entreat Christ God to grant us great mercy. Kontakion God, who has given you invincible might, has tinged the Church with streams of your blood, Demetrius! He preserves your city from harm, for you are its foundation!
Devotion to St Demetrius has always been very strong among the Slavs, particularly as a patron of soldiers, as witnessed by the popularity of the name Dmitry. Attempts have even been made to claim him as a Slav, since he was supposed to be originally from the city of Sirmium, now called Mitrovica, in Serbia; this is in fact in the area of the Balkan peninsula where the Slavs first settled in Europe, but only in the 6th century. His patronage of soldiers was reaffirmed in modern times during the First Balkan War (Oct. 1912 – May 1913), when Thessalonica was liberated from Ottoman control and united to Greece on his feast day in 1912. He is also honored with the titles “Great-Martyr”, as one who suffered much for the Faith, “Myrrh-gusher” from the tradition that streams of scented oil came forth from his relics, and “Wonderworker” for the many miracles attributed to him.
The Saint’s funeral, by the same artist. The church in the background is a representation of his basilica in Thessaloniki, with an image of him over the door. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons.)
Christ with Four Military Saints (Theedore of Amasea, Theodore Stratelates, Demetrius and George), by Michael Damaskinos (1530-93). - Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.
The Byzantine Synaxarion, the equivalent of the Martyrology, also still notes on this day a terrible earthquake which took place in Constantinople in the year 740, which killed thousands of people and did terrible damage to the city and its walls. This was the year before the death of the first iconoclast Emperor, Leo the Isaurian, and it was generally believed that the earthquake was a divine punishment for the iconoclast heresy. There are also liturgical texts for the day which refer to this event, which serve roughly as the equivalent of what we call a commemoration in the Roman Rite. As a matter of their deep respect for history and tradition, those who celebrate the Byzantine Rite may omit these texts, but they have never been removed from the liturgical books, a wise policy we would do well to emulate in the West.
Troparion Thou who lookest upon the earth, and cause it to tremble, deliver us from the fearful threat of the earthquake, and send upon us Thy rich mercies, by the prayers of the Mother of God, o Thou who lovest mankind.
Thine is the power, thine the kingdom, o Lord; Thou art above all nations. * Give peace, o Lord, in our days. ℣. God, creator of all things, fearful and mighty, just and merciful. Give peace in our time, O Lord. (The ninth responsory of the feast of Christ the King in the Benedictine Office.)
From the Great Hours of Anne of Brittany, 1503-8, illuminated by Jean Bourdichon. This image accompanies a suffrage of All Saints, and perfectly expresses Pius XI’s intention in placing the feast of Christ the King on the Sunday before All Saints’ day: Mystical Head before Mystical Body. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 9474)
℟. Tua est potentia, tuum regnum, Dómine: tu es super omnes gentes: * Da pacem, Dómine, in diébus nostris. ℣. Creátor omnium, Deus, terríbilis et fortis, justus et miséricors. Da pacem, Dómine, in diébus nostris.
By the time the feast of Christ the King was instituted in 1925, the hour of Matins was very rarely sung outside of a fairly small number of monasteries, and even then, only on major feasts, and this had been the case for quite a long time. To the degree that it was done in choir at all, it was usually done recto tono. (The common exceptions were Christmas Matins before Midnight Mass and Tenebrae.) As a result, there was little impetus to compose new responsories when new feasts were promulgated. For example, when Pope Clement XIII first granted permission for the feast of Sacred Heart to be celebrated in certain places, the Matins responsories of the Office which he promulgated for it were all borrowed from Tenebrae, Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi. Likewise, this responsory is borrowed for Christ the King from the very ancient corpus of Gregorian chants for the month of October, accompanying the readings from the books of the Maccabees, which is why a recording of it is available at all.
This year, the feast happily coincides with the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, the Gospel of which, Matthew 22,15-21 is one of Our Lord’s best known and most fundamental teachings regarding how we, his followers, are to live in the world, and what our duties to the state are.
“At that time, the Pharisees went and consulted among themselves how to ensnare Jesus in his speech. And they sent to him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, ‘Master, we know that thou art a true speaker, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou dost not regard the person of men. Tell us therefore what dost thou think, is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?’ But Jesus knowing their wickedness, said, ‘Why do you tempt me, ye hypocrites? Show me the coin of the tribute.’ And they offered him a penny. And Jesus said to them, ‘Whose image and inscription is this?’ They said to him, ‘Caesar’s.’ Then he saith to them, ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God, the things that are God’s.”
The Tribute Money, 1782 by the Anglo-American painter John Singleton Copley (1738-1815).
Pope Pius XI’s very purpose in instituting the feast of Christ the King was, of course, to respond to the ideologies of his era, which taught that man must render to Caesar that which was Caesar’s, and also render to Caesar that which is God’s. On this feast day, since we see these ideologies rising again in the world, let us remember to pray “for the liberty and exaltation of our Holy Mother the Church”, to which they pose no less of a threat now than they did a century ago.
On Thursday, the DDF issued a document called Venite ad me, (“Come unto me”, from Matt. 11, 28) subtitled “Considerations on the Transmission of the Faith in the Change of Epoch.” Assuming the Italian text to be the original, the official English version slightly bungles this subtitle as “in an Epochal Change”; the French, Spanish, Portuguese and German versions all agree with the Italian. And there is another interesting translation error which was just brought to my attention.
The document refers three times to the Paschal candle, in paragraphs 27, 33 and 140-141, and compares the passing of “the light of Christ” from the candle to one person, and from him to another, and so on, to the transmission of the Faith from one person to another. But in the last of these, it speaks of “the lighting of the paschal candle and its placement on the altar, following the procession through the nave of the church...”
No, this is not the accidental leak of some strange new variant planned for the rite of the Easter vigil. The Italian original reads “...l’accensione del cero pasquale e della sua collocazione sull’ altare.” The preposition “su” (compounded with the definite article to make “sull’ ”) is used here in a broad sense to mean “in the sanctuary.” Likewise, one can and does say in Italian that a person “serve sull’ altare – serves at the altar”; this does not in any way suggest that he is climbing up and standing on top of the altar itself.
We make bold to suggest to the Dicastery that in the future, they avoid issuing translations made with the kind of program that also made this picture.
The revised version of Butler’s Lives of the Saints, in the notes to the entry for the feast of St Raphael the Archangel, says that “In the Ethiopic Synaxarium... is a curious account of the dedication of a church to St Raphael in an island off Alexandria early in the fifth century.” A reference is given for an English translation of this Synaxarium, which is basically the Eastern version of the Martyrology, but no further information is given about the dedication or what makes it curious. In the marvelous age of the internet, I was able to track the text down at the following website, (https://stmichaeleoc.org/html/Pagumen_03.htm) where I discovered what a spectacular understatement “curious” is in describing this legend.
“On this day are commemorated the glorious angel Raphael the archangel, the third of the vigilant, holy and heavenly archangels; and the dedication of his church, which was built to him on an island outside the city of Alexandria in the days of Saint Theophilus the Archbishop (385-412, the predecessor of St Cyril); and the miracle which was made manifest therein, and took place thus.
A certain rich woman from the city of Rome came to Saint Theophilus the Archbishop, and with her were her son and a picture of the glorious Archangel Raphael, and much money, which she had inherited from her parents. ... And Saint Abba Theophilus built many churches, and among them was the church, which was on the island outside the city of Alexandria, and was dedicated in the name of the glorious Archangel Raphael; and Abba Theophilus the Archbishop finished the building thereof and consecrated it as it were this day.
And whilst the believers were praying in the church, behold the church trembled, and was rent asunder, and it moved about. And they found that the church had been built upon the back of a whale... on which a very large mass of sand had heaped itself. Now the whale lay firmly fixed in its place, and the treading of the feet of the people upon it cut it off from the mainland; and it was Satan who moved the whale so that he might throw down the church.
And the believers and the archbishop cried out together, and made supplication to the Lord Christ, and they asked for the intercession of the glorious Archangel Raphael. And God, the Most High, sent the glorious angel Raphael, and he had mercy on the children of men, and he drove his spear into the whale, saying unto him, ‘By the commandment of God stand still, and move not thyself from thy place’; and the whale stood in his place and moved not.
And many signs and wonders were made manifest, and great healings of sick folk took place in that church. And this church continued to exist until the time when the Muslims reigned, and then it was destroyed, and the whale moved, and the sea flowed back again and drowned many people who dwelt in that place.”
Here is a more complete representation of the story, depicted in a mural in a monastery in Ethiopia. (This image is reproduced by the kind permission of Sara Genene.)
The church of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro in the Italian city of Pavia, which houses the relics of St Augustine, also has those of another Saint, the philosopher and theologian Boethius, whose feast is kept today.
The first page of a later 14th-century manuscript of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, showing him as a teacher of philosophy above, and in prison below.
His full name was Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius; the gens Anicia were a very prominent family in ancient Rome, and there is reason to believe that St Gregory the Great was also descended from it. Boethius was born about 480 A.D., and orphaned in youth; his guardian was a member of another very ancient family, one Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, whose daughter Rusticiana he eventually married. (The Vesper hymn of Ss Peter and Paul was long falsely attributed to a non-existent second wife of his called Elpis.) His life was dedicated to the study of both philosophy and theology, and it was largely through his work as a translator that the early Middle Ages knew what it knew of the writings of Plato and Aristotle, as well as Euclid, Archimedes and others. Several of his theological treatises also survive and there is also a famous letter to him from the writer Cassiodorus in which he asks Boethius to make a sundial and waterclock for the king of the Burgundians.
In the great tradition of the ancient families to which they belonged, Boethius, like his father and father-in-law before him, took an active part in the public life of Italy. By the end of the 5th century, the last Roman Emperor in the West had been removed, and the peninsula was nominally ruled by the Eastern Emperor in Byzantium, but in fact, by the Ostrogothic king Theodoric. Boethius served under Theodoric as the Roman consul in the year 510 A.D., and saw the same ancient honor vested upon his two sons twelve years later. (The fact that they were in their teens shows what the office had been reduced to in reality, but the prestige of it was still very great.) More importantly, he also held the position of the “magister officiorum – the master of the offices,” one of the greatest significance and responsibility.
Shortly thereafter, Theodoric had come to believe that members of the senate in Rome were plotting with the Emperor to overthrow his kingdom and restore direct control of Italy to Byzantium. When one of their number was charged with this conspiracy, Boethius defended him in court, for which he was also accused of the conspiracy, arrested, imprisoned at Pavia, and condemned to death. During his imprisonment of about nine months, he wrote his most famous work, The Consolation of Philosophy, a lengthy dialogue between himself and Philosophy, in which she consoles him for his misfortunes, and teaches him to regard them with what, largely because of this work, we would now call a “philosophical approach.” This exhortation to regard all earthly things as transitory, to value the eternal things which only the mind can apprehend, and to see the world governed by divine wisdom which is always just, was one of the most popular books in the Middle Ages, and many vernacular translations were made of it.
Boethius was murdered in prison in 524, his death preceded by torture, according to the common tradition. His relics were at first buried in the cathedral of Pavia, but later moved to the crypt of St Pietro in Ciel d’Oro. Although his death was essentially a political matter and not inflicted for the Faith, he was popularly venerated as a martyr, since he was unjustly put to death by an Arian heretic. In this sense, he is very similar to the 11th century Princes of the Rus’ Saints Boris and Gleb, also killed for political reasons, but immediately venerated as Saints for their Christ-like acceptance of the injustice inflicted upon them.
The devotion to Boethius as a saint and martyr is still kept in the city of Pavia, and also in the Roman church of Santa Maria in Campitelli, which was founded by his sister-in-law, St Galla. This devotion was confirmed by Pope Leo XIII in 1883. These photos were taken by Nicola de’ Grandi.
The entrance to the crypt, under the main sanctuary.
“The body of St Severinus Boethius, Martyr.”
Next to his relics and altar in the crypt is this well, whose waters are said to have healing properties.
This poetic inscription reads as follows:
Hoc in sarcophago iacet ecce Boetius arto,
Magnus et omnimodo mirificandus homo.
Huncque Sophia suis prae cunctis compsit alumpnis.
Quam sibi grande decus contulit ipse Deus!
Consul enim factus cum natis ipse duobus,
Romae conspicuum et habitus speculum;
Sparsa per Europam vulgant sua dogmata totam.
Quam fuit et merito clarus et ingenio
Nam nobis logicen de graeco transtulit artem,
Commenti gemino quam reserat radio
Catholicae verum fidei dedit et documentum
Et nos informat musica quae resonat.
Qui Theodorico regi delatus iniquo
Papiae senium duxit in exilium
In quo se maestum solans dedit inde libellum
Post ictus gladio exiit e medio.
In this narrow sarcophagus lies Boethius,
A great man, in every way to be marvelled at.
Wisdom adorned him more than all her students;
How great a glory did God Himself bestow (upon him).
For he was made consol, along with his two sons,
Prominent in Rome, an example of decorum.
His teachings are shred through all of Europe;
How famous he was in merit and in genius
For he translated for us the art of logic from the Greek,
Which he clearly explained in two commentaries.
He also gave true proof of the Catholic Faith,
And teaches us how to play music.
Accused before the wicked King Theoderic
He passed his old age in exile at Pavia,
Where he consoled himself in his sadness by writing a book;
Afterwards, the blow of a sword took him away.
After receiving (and distributing) Holy Communion, the priest purifies the sacred vessels and his canonical digits. As Fr. Nicholas Gihr notes, “the exterior act of cleansing the chalice and also his fingers” prompts a meditation on his interior, [1] and thus he prays:
Quod ore sumpsimus, Domine, pura mente capiamus: et de munere temporali fiat nobis remedium sempiternum.
Which I translate as:
Grant, O Lord, that what we have received with our mouth we may take hold of with a pure mind; and out of a temporal gift may it become for us an eternal remedy.
A transition from the physical to the spiritual is a common theme in traditional Catholic prayer. For example, the Postcommunion Prayer for Low Sunday (the Sunday after Easter) is:
Præsta, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus: ut, qui pascalia festa peregimus; haec, te largiente, moribus et vita teneamus. Per Dominum.
Which I translate as:
Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that we who have finished the Paschal feasts may, by Thy bounty, hold onto them in our practices and in our life. Through Our Lord.
The prayer also forms a contrast between the receptivity involved in Holy Communion and the activity involved in profiting from it. Capiamus, which we have translated as “take hold of,” is a vigorous verb, meaning to seize, grab, or capture. The contrast calls to mind St. Augustine’s interpretation of the myth of Proteus, the god who, once captured, turned into terrifying deceptive shapes. But if his assailant ignored these appearances and held on to him, Proteus would disclose the truth. For Augustine, the appearances are what the senses grasp and the truth is what the mind grasps. [2] Similarly, in Holy Communion, the mouth senses a wafer but the mind, illumined by Faith, grasps the Real Presence.
Finally, the prayer does not ask that a temporal gift may become an eternal remedy but that the Eucharist may become an eternal remedy from a temporal gift. I must confess that I am perplexed by this construction. If anyone has any ideas, please share in the commentary section.
The 2011 ICEL translation is:
What has passed our lips as food, O Lord,
may we possess in purity of heart,
that what has been given to us in time
may be our healing for eternity.
Next, the priest prays:
Corpus tuum, Domine, quod sumpsi, et Sanguis, quem potavi, adhaereat visceribus meis: et praesta; ut in me non remaneat scelerum macula, quem pura et sancta refecerunt Sacramenta: Qui vivis et regnas in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
Which I translate as:
May Thy Body, O Lord, which I have received, and Thy Blood which I have drunk, stick to my innards; and grant that no stain of sin may remain in me, I who have been fed with this pure and holy Sacrament; Who livest and reignest forever and ever. Amen.
The prayer follows the same pattern of external to internal—although, ironically, the “external” here is the physically internal. As Jungmann notes,
In regard to its contents, this prayer goes a step beyond the preceding one. It does not feature the contrast between the outer sign and the inner efficacy; instead, the Sacrament Itself appears almost as the grace: through that which It contains, It is so pure and so holy that in a certain sense It need only remain in us in order to push aside and burn up all stain of sin.[3]
The prayer also contains a petition that is difficult to translate: adhaereat visceribus meis. Viscera in Latin designates the internal organs of an animal, though it can also be used metaphorically for the flesh. [4] The English equivalent is “bowels,” defined as “the interior or inside of the body.” [5] But unfortunately, “bowels” has been the victim of semantic narrowing in our own day and age: what once meant all the innards, both noble (such as the heart) and less noble, has been reduced to that part of the body which produces excrement. That’s quite a movement.
This migration of language presents a quandary to the modern translator, and yet the biblical use of viscera is unmistakable. Consider the following:
From the Benedictus:
Through the bowels of the mercy of our God, in which the Orient from on high hath visited us. (Luke 1, 78).
And Philippians 1, 8:
For God is my witness, how I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ.
And Colossians 3, 12:
Put ye on therefore, as the elect of God, holy, and beloved, the bowels of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, patience.
And this choice imperative from Philemon 1, 12, where St. Paul asks Philemon to welcome back the fugitive slave Onesimus:
Whom I have sent back to thee. And do thou receive him as my own bowels.
It is perfectly understandable that modern liturgists would wish to shy away from such gutsy language, for it is likely to induce a snicker rather than a pious response. (The 1970/2002 Roman Missal omits the entire prayer). And yet, to eliminate this language is to feed indirectly the heresy of Gnosticism, with its pronounced discomfort of the body. I am not suggesting that the architects of the Novus Ordo were dyed-in-the-wool Gnostics, but I do raise the question as to whether their genteel bowdlerizations divorce us from the earthy side of our Faith, which is, after all, deeply Incarnational. Paul exults when he speaks from the bowels of Jesus Christ, and perhaps so should we.
Notes
[1] Gihr, 744.
[2] Against the Academics 3.6.13.
[3] Jungmann, vol. 2, 402-403.
[4] “Viscum,” n., Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary, 1.I and 1.I.B.
[5] “Bowel,” n., Oxford English Dictionary, II.2.c.
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