Beautiful Liturgical Objects from the Holy Land

Thanks once again to our friend Fr Joseph Koczera SJ, who has often shared his photos with us, this time for these pictures of an exhibition going on at the Marino Matini Museum in Florence of items from the collection of the Terra Sancta Museum in Jerusalem. On display are vestments, books, and other liturgical items, many of the very highest quality, donated to the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land and the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem by the royal houses of Europe.

Father also pointed out to me one of the didactic panels from the exhibition, which offers a very wise rationale for the use of such beautiful and well-crafted objects. “… since the 1960s, certain currents within the Church have sought to condemn the existence and use of such riches, considered contrary to the spirit of the Gospel… However, striving to express the Truth as perfectly as possible through art and beauty, and aware that luxury offered to God brings nothing to the Creator, these extravagant gifts benefit their donors, bringing them closer to perfection, depending on the purity of the intention with which these offerings are placed at the foot of the altar. Thus, in Christian thought, Evil, the Prince of this world, can be defeated not only by Good, but also by Beauty.” Amen!

A fourteenth-century Office antiphonary, donated to the Franciscans of the Holy Land by King Henry IV of England. (It is here opened to a responsory for the feast of the Beheading of St John the Baptist.)

A portable altar given by King John VI of Portugal in the early 1820s; the Portuguese coat of arms are on the backboard and the missal cover.

A crucifix made of gold and lapis-lazuli, given by King Charles of Naples, the future King Charles III of Spain, in 1756.

Altar furnishings given by Kings Philip IV and Charles II of Spain in the 1660s and ‘70s.

A very nice set of vestments donated by the Serene Republic of Venice in the later part of the seventeenth century.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

A New Liturgical Calendar for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church

We are happy to share this information from the London-based Society of St John Chrysostom, about its newly published liturgical calendar. The calendar is free to access as a pdf at this link: https://ssjc.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Calendar-AM-7533.pdf 

On September 1st, the Byzantine rite began its liturgical year with the Indiction, entering the year 7533 according to the Anno Mundi calendar system, which was the official method of recording the civil year in the Byzantine Empire until 1453, and in the Tsardom of Russia until 1699. To mark this, the Society of Saint John Chrysostom in the United Kingdom — a Catholic society founded in 1926 to support the Eastern Catholic Churches and East-West reunion — has published a Byzantine liturgical calendar for the coming year, based on that used by the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).

The first thing to note is that this calendar is fully Gregorian, including the dates of Pascha (Easter) and its dependent feasts and fasts, as is now the practice in the UK and most of the UGCC diaspora. Currently the UGCC in Ukraine itself, along with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, follows the ‘revised’ Julian calendar, meaning that the dates of fixed feasts are synchronous with those of the Gregorian calendar, while the Paschalion remains that of the old, now inaccurate, Julian calendar. This makes little difference once the Paschal cycle begins on 2nd February, since the Julian and Gregorian calculations for Pascha coincide in 2025, whereas the numbering of the weeks after Pentecost differ before this date. As the Byzantine lectionary recites almost the entire New Testament throughout the year, beginning at Pascha, the readings for these days will differ, too.

In the calendar, edited for convenient use in English in the UK, these readings are included for each day, as well as festal readings for feasts ranked Class III and greater. In some traditions, both the moveable and fixed sets of readings are chanted each day at the Divine Liturgy. However, as the latter are mostly readings common to categories of saints, these are usually omitted in UGCC usage for lower-class feasts. The reader will, nonetheless, find a rich tapestry of feasts and commemorations in these pages. The UGCC liturgical calendar is ecumenical, being mostly composed of feasts inherited from Kyiv’s mother see, Constantinople, many of which commemorate ancient Western saints. But continuity is established with the second millennium, following the restoration of communion with the Roman see since 1595/96, as can be seen from the commemorations of Saint Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), Blessed Dominic Barberi (d. 1849), Mother Teresa of Kolkata (d. 1997), and Pope Saint John Paul II (d. 2005).

This works both ways, as the Metropolis of Kyiv was permitted to continue commemorating Saints canonized between the period of the so-called Great Schism and the 1596 Union of Brest. This includes many local saints, such as those of the Kyiv Caves Monastery (founded 1051) and the late-Byzantine theologian Saint Gregory Palamas (d. 1359), whose once-controversial theology led to the suppression of his feast on the Second Sunday of Lent between 1720 and 1974. Of great importance also are those local post-Union Ukrainian saints, many of whom, like Josaphat Kuntseyvich, the Thirteen Martyrs of Pratulin and Blessed Klymentiy Sheptytsky, were martyred for their Catholic faith by mobs, tsars and Soviet commissars for refusing to break communion with Rome. Sadly, this oppression has returned in the latest Muscovite brutalization of Ukraine. Another local commemoration of note is that of the Consecration of the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ in Kyiv on August 18, which marks the return to Kyiv of the primatial see in 2005, after being in ‘exile’ in Lviv since the first liquidation of the UGCC by Moscow in 1805.

Divine Liturgy commemorating the Consecration of the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection in Kyiv, 18 August 2024.

The Society has gone further in providing for the commemoration of British and Irish saints observed in the local Latin Catholic dioceses, from oft-forgotten Anglo-Saxon hierarchs, kings and religious, to the many martyrs of the penal era, and those more recently canonized, such as St John Henry Newman. Of particular note on September 19th is the feast of St Theodore of Tarsus who, although a Greek hailing from the same city as St Paul, served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to 690. St Theodore stands as a witness to the universality of the Church, not only because he was a Greek monk serving as primate of the English Church, but also because he was patron of the first Ukrainian Greek Catholic parish in the United Kingdom — and continues to be so for an Anglophone mission point of the UGCC Cathedral of the Holy Family in London. As the introduction to the calendar says, ‘The Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is at once universal, particular and local’, and these characteristics frequently overlap.

An icon of Saint John Henry Newman by Br. Richard Maidwell, CSsR

Another interesting feature of this calendar is its comprehensive fasting guide, which demonstrates just how austere the traditional Byzantine fasting rule is, to the point that it is almost never fully observed even by the Orthodox. The introduction makes it clear that this is not the point:

In Latin Christianity the obligation to fast has been penitential in nature and enforced ‘on pain of sin’. In recent times it has relaxed or adapted to different circumstances across the world and society. In Byzantine Christianity fasting is more extensive and frequent, but understood as an ideal towards which to strive. […] The rule is austere and rarely observed in its entirety, but is included here as a ‘gold standard’ from which we can adapt our practice to account for personal circumstances, health, and spiritual development.

The rule itself is from the fifth-century typikon (service book) of Venerable Sabbas the Sanctified which, while developed in Jerusalem, remains the primary point of reference for liturgical life in the East Slavic churches. It prescribes abstinence from meat, eggs, dairy, fish, oil and wine (alcohol) on most Wednesdays and Fridays of the year, as well as throughout Lent and the other fasting periods, subject to relaxation on certain feasts and days of the week. A detail which is often overlooked in some Orthodox fasting guides, however, is fasting itself, rather than abstinence only. The Sabbaite rule, according to the calendar’s introduction, prescribes a total fast until the Ninth Hour (about 3pm), which accords with Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae (Question 147). However, as the introduction makes clear, the canonical minimum for the UGCC is not substantially different from modern Latin observance.

It is hoped that this calendar will be of great assistance to English-language Byzantine rite Catholics in their daily prayer life, but also of interest to Latin Catholics who wish to learn more about the East and the many commonalities and differences between the Roman and Byzantine calendars.

Celebration of the Divine Liturgy on the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God at St Theodore of Tarsus Greek Catholic Mission, London, 8 September 2024. This is an Anglophone mission point of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family of London, delivered with the aid of the Society, and established in November 2022.

The Society’s monthly Divine Liturgy in English at Holy Family Cathedral, London. Since 2013 the Society has served the Divine Liturgy in English at the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family on the second Saturday of each month. This was at the invitation of then-eparch Bishop Hlib.

Relics of St Joseph of Cupertino

Today is the feast of the Franciscan friar St Joseph of Cupertino (the name of his birth place, a small town in southern Italy), who died on this day in 1663 at the age of 60. He is certainly best known nowadays for the fact that he levitated quite a number of times, and these acts of levitation were attested by unimpeachable witnesses as part of the cause of his canonization. The revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints points out that one of the great experts on the canonization process, Cardinal Prosper Lambertini, the future Pope Benedict XIV, served for a time as the “devil’s advocate” for his cause, and after personally examining all the eyewitness testimonies, was absolutely convinced of their truthfulness.

St Joseph of Cupertino Levitating, ca. 1762 by Felice Boscaratti, in the church of St Lawrence in Vicenza, Italy. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0)

From 1639-53, St Joseph lived at the mother church of his order, the basilica of St Francis in Assisi. Earlier this year, I visited the church, and was taken on a tour of part of the complex which includes the rooms where he lived. Here are a few pictures of some 2nd class relics of his, and some views of the building and the surrounding countryside; fortunately, it was a particularly nice day when I was there. For reasons which remain unknown to this day, St Joseph was sent away from Assisi in 1653, and spent the last 13 years of his life being moved from one Franciscan house to another (the Roman breviary refers to this aspect of his history), so his relics are in the order’s church at Osimo in the Marches region of Italy.

A modern, Byzantine-style icon of him.  

His breviary, and the block of wood which he used for a pillow. St Joseph was well known for his prompt obedience to his superiors, but also for his constant distraction of mind from even the most necessary of earthly matters, and when he was ordered to depart from Assisi, he simply left without remembering to bring with him his breviary, or his glasses, or even his hat and coat.

“The mensa of the altar in which St Joseph of Cupertino used to celebrated Mass”, now mounted onto the wall of his former rooms to be venerated as a relic. 

These plaques mark the place where the Lutheran prince of Brunswick (misspelled in classic Italian fashion as “Bransuik”) witnessed one of St Joseph’s levitations, which would eventually lead to his conversion to Catholicism; the lower plaque notes that in the same place, St Joseph was once slapped by the devil, who appeared to him dressed as a pilgrim.  

Continue Reading this Article. . .

By Nothing But Prayer and Fasting

Because of the movable date of Easter, and of everything that depends on it, the Ember Days of September can occur within any of the weeks after Pentecost from the 13th to the 19th inclusive. This year, they occur within the 17th week, where they are traditionally placed within the Roman Missal [1], a textual arrangement which reflects a very ancient theme that permeates the Masses of this set of Ember Days. (Next year, Easter will be very late, on April 20th, and the September Ember days will fall within the 14th week.)

The Collect of the 17th Sunday after Pentecost is a very ancient one, found in different places in the various versions of the Gelasian Sacramentary, but already fixed to the 17th Sunday in the Gregorian Sacramentary by the end of the 8th century. “Da quaesumus, Domine, populo tuo diabolica vitare contagia, et te solum Deum pura mente sectari. – Grant to Thy people, o Lord, to shun (or ‘avoid, escape from’) diabolical contamination, and to follow Thee, who alone art God, with a pure mind.” [2] This is the only Mass Collect of the ecclesiastical year that refers directly to diabolical influence, but the Secret of the 15th Sunday has a similar theme: “May Thy sacraments preserve us, o Lord, and always protect us against diabolical incursions.”

Folio 115r of the Gellone Sacramentary, a sacramentary of the Gelasian type dated 780-800, with the prayer “Da quaesumus...” assigned to the 20th week after Pentecost. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 12048)

On the Ember Wednesday of September, the Gospel is St Mark’s account of the healing of a possessed child, chapter 9, 16-28. Apart from Easter and the Ascension, the ancient Roman lectionary makes very little of use of St Mark, notwithstanding the tradition that the Evangelist was a disciple of St Peter and composed the Gospel while he was with him in Rome. Here, his version was surely chosen for the moving account of the exchange between Christ and the child’s father, which is less detailed in St Matthew’s version.

“And He asked his father, ‘How long time is it since this hath happened unto him?’ But he said, ‘From his infancy, and oftentimes hath he cast him into the fire and into waters to destroy him. But if thou canst do any thing, help us, having compassion on us.’ And Jesus saith to him, ‘If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.’ And immediately the father of the boy crying out, with tears said, ‘I do believe, Lord: help my unbelief.’ ”

The lower half of Raphael’s Transfiguration, the story which precedes the Gospel of Ember Wednesday. The possessed child’s father, on the right side in green, presents him to the Apostles; Raphael beautifully captures the pleading in his facial expression. The brightness of the figure symbolizes his faith, as it does likewise in that of the possessed child, for devils, as St James says, have no doubts about God. (“Thou believest that there is one God. Thou dost well: the devils also believe, and tremble.” 2, 19). The brightest figure, the woman kneeling next to the boy and pointing at him, is an allegorical figure of Faith itself; where the light on these figures expresses their belief, the nine Apostles on the left are wrapped in shadow to symbolize the lack of faith that prevented them from casting out the devil.

At the end of the passage, the disciples ask Christ why they could not expel the devil, to which He replies, “This kind can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” In the Office, these words are sung at Lauds as the antiphon of the Benedictus.

On Ember Friday, the Gospel is that of the woman who anoints the Lord’s feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee, St Luke 7, 36-50. This is one of the very few examples of a Gospel which is repeated from another part of the temporal cycle; it is also read on the Thursday of Passion week, and again on the feast of St Mary Magdalene, with whom the woman is traditionally identified in the West. This identification is partly reinforced by the words of St Luke which come immediately after it (chapter 8, 1-3), although they are not read in the liturgy.

“And it came to pass afterwards, that He travelled through the cities and towns, preaching and evangelizing the kingdom of God; and the twelve with him, and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary who is called Magdalen, out of whom seven devils were gone forth, and Joanna the wife of Chusa, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others who ministered unto him of their substance.”

On Saturday, the Gospel is two stories from St Luke, chapter 13, 6-17, the parable of the fig tree, and the healing of the woman “who had a spirit of infirmity… and was bowed together, (nor) could she look upwards at all.” The choice of this Gospel for the Saturday is a very deliberate one, since it takes place in a synagogue, the ruler of which, “being angry that Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, answering, said to the multitude, ‘Six days there are wherein you ought to work. In them therefore come, and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.” To this Christ answers, “Ye hypocrites, doth not every one of you, on the Sabbath day, loose his ox or his ass from the manger, and lead them to water? And ought not this daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?”

An ancient Christian sarcophagus known as the Sarcophagus of the Two Brothers, made in the second quarter of the 4th century, now in the Vatican Museums. The healing of the crippled woman is depicted in the upper left.

Each of these Gospels, therefore, refers to the same theme as the Collect of the 17th Sunday, the Church’s prayer to the Lord to protect Her and Her individual members from the malign influence of the devil.

It is a well-known fact that the Ember Days are one of the very oldest features of the Roman Rite. Pope St Leo I (444-61) preached numerous sermons on them, and believed them to be of apostolic origin, as he says, for example, in his second sermon on Pentecost. “To the present solemnity, most beloved, we must also add such devotion, that we keep the fast which follows it, according to the Apostolic tradition. For this must also be counted among the great gifts of the Holy Spirit, that fasting has been given to us as a defense against the enticements of the flesh and the snares of the devil, by which we may overcome all temptations, with the help of God.” (Sermon 76; PL 54, 411B)

Likewise, in his second sermon on the Ember Days of September, he refers to Christ’s words about fasting which are read on Wednesday. [3] “In every contest of the Christian’s struggle, temperance is of the greatest value and utility, to such a degree that the most savage demonic spirits, who are not put to flight from the bodies of the possessed by the commands of any exorcist, are driven out just by the force of fasts and prayers, as the Lord sayeth, ‘This kind of demons is not cast out except by fasting and prayer.’ The prayer of one who fasteth, therefore, is pleasing to God, and terrible to the devil…” (Sermon 87; ibid. 439b)

The collect of the 17th Sunday after Pentecost is one of the more obvious cases of a prayer deemed unsuitable by the post-Conciliar reformers for the ears of Modern Man™, who must never be confronted with any “negative” ideas while at prayer. Despite its antiquity and the universality of its place within the Roman Rite, it was removed altogether from the Missal, along with the Ember Days, most references to fasting, and all references to the devil. In a similar vein, when the pseudo-anaphora of pseudo-Hippolytus was adapted as the Second Eucharistic Prayer, the original version of the section that parallels the Qui pridie, “Who, when he was delivered to voluntary suffering, in order to dissolve death, and break the chains of the devil, and tread down hell, and bring the just to the light, and set the limit, and manifest the resurrection,” was reduced to “At the time He was betrayed and entered willingly into His Passion…”

However, as Fr Zuhlsdorf once noted, the 2002 revised edition of the Missal contains certain hints of an awareness that the post-Conciliar reform wantonly threw out far too much of the traditional Roman Rite. Among the things which it restored is the traditional prayer of the 17th Sunday after Pentecost, which now appears as an optional collect among the Masses “for any necessity”, raising the total number of references to the devil in the Missal to one.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal contains an exhortation (and no more than that) to the effect that Rogation Days and Ember Days “should be indicated” (“indicentur”, not “indicandae sunt – must be indicated”) on local calendars, and a rubric (I.45) that it is the duty (“oportet”) of episcopal conferences to establish both the time and manner of their celebration. Unsurprisingly, this rubric has mostly been ignored. However, it has become impossible for any Catholic who loves the Church to ignore the hideous consequences of the almost total abandonment of any kind of formal, liturgically guided ascetic discipline, and the free reign which this seems to have given to the devil. A permanent and universal restoration of the traditional discipline of fasting, including the Ember Days, would be a small but important step in the direction of ending that free reign.

[1] In many medieval liturgical books, they are placed after the last Mass of the season after Pentecost, as for example in the Sarum Missal.

[2] The earliest manuscripts read “dominum” instead of “Deum”; the change would have been made since “Domine” is already said at the beginning. Many manuscripts read “puro corde – with a pure heart” instead of “pura mente.”

[3] It is tempting to think of this as proof that the Roman lectionary tradition, which is first attested in the lectionary of Wurzburg ca. 700 AD, was already set down 250 years earlier in Pope Leo’s time. This is quite possible, of course, but it is equally possible that the unknown compiler of the lectionary was inspired to choose this Gospel by reading Pope Leo’s sermon.

The Stigmata of St Francis

Today, the Church marks the 800th anniversary of one of the most thoroughly well-attested miracles in its history, St Francis’ reception of the Stigmata in the year 1224, a bit more than two years before his death. The Stigmata were of course seen by many people during those two years; the revised Butler’s Live of the Saints quotes one of the very earliest documents to speak of them, the letter which Brother Elias, whom Francis personally chose to run his Order, sent to his brethren in France to announce the death of their founder. “From the beginning of ages there has not been heard so great a wonder, save only in the Son of God who is Christ our God. For a long while before his death, our father and brother appeared crucified, bearing in his body the five wounds which are verily the Stigmata of Christ; for his hands and feet had as it were piercings made by nails fixed in from above and below, which laid open the scars and had the black appearance of nails; while his side appeared to have been lanced, and blood often trickled therefrom.”

St Francis Receives the Stigmata, by Giotto, 1295-1300; originally painted for the church of St Francis in Pisa, now in the Louvre. The predella panels show the vision of Pope Innocent III, who in a dream beheld St Francis holding up the collapsing Lateran Basilica, followed by the approval of the Franciscan Rule, and St Francis preaching to the birds. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

One of the very few acts of the brief pontificate of the Dominican Pope Benedict XI (October 1303 – July 1304) was to grant to his fellow mendicants of the Franciscan Order permission to keep a special feast of the Stigmata of St Francis. St Bonaventure’s Legenda Major, which the Order recognized as the official biography of its founder, and read at Matins on his feast day, states that Francis received the Stigmata “around the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross”, which is on September 14th. Since the 15th was at the time the octave of Our Lady’s Nativity, and the 16th the very ancient feast of Ss Cornelius and Cyprian, the feast of the Stigmata was assigned to the 17th, where it is still kept to this day.

Before the Tridentine reform, the Franciscans repeated the introit of the Exaltation, Nos autem gloriari oportet, at the Mass of the Stigmata, emphasizing not only the merely historical connection between the two events, but also the uniqueness of their founder, whom St Bonaventure describes as one “marked with a privilege not granted to any age before his own.” The modern Missal cites this introit to Galatians, 6, 14, but it is really an ecclesiastical composition, and hardly even a paraphrase of any verse of Scripture. It is also the introit of Holy Thursday, and in the post-Tridentine period, this use was apparently felt to be a little hubristic; it was therefore replaced with a new one, Mihi autem, which quotes that same verse exactly. “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.”

The verse with which it is sung is the first of Psalm 141, “I cried to the Lord with my voice: with my voice I made supplication to the Lord,” the Psalm which St Francis was in the midst of reciting at the moment of his death. The music of this later introit is copied almost identically from another which also begins with the words Mihi autem, and is sung on the feasts of various Apostles, underscoring the point that St Francis was, as one of the antiphons of his proper Office says, a “vir catholicus et totus apostolicus – a Catholic man, wholly like the Apostles.”

This feast has the distinction of being the very first one added to the general calendar after the Tridentine reform not as the principal feast of a Saint, but one instituted to commemorate a miracle. [1] This was originally done by Pope Sixtus V (1585-90), who, like St Bonaventure, had been Minister General of the Franciscans, and showed a great deal of liturgical favoritism to his order. (He also added the feasts of Ss Anthony of Padua and Francis di Paola, the founder of the Minim Friars, to the calendar, and made Bonaventure a Doctor of the Church.) When Pope Clement VIII issued the first revision of the Pian Breviary in 1602, the feast was suppressed, only to be restored 13 years later by Pope Paul V [2], at the behest of one of his most trusted councilors, St Robert Bellarmine.

St Robert had a great devotion to St Francis, on whose feast day he was born in 1542. His native city, Montepulciano, is in the southeastern part of Tuscany, fairly close to both Assisi and Bagnoreggio, the home of St Bonaventure, and very much in the original Franciscan heartland. Not long after he entered the Jesuits, the master general, St Francis Borgia, commissioned a new chapel dedicated to his name-saint, with a painting of him receiving the Stigmata as the main altarpiece. It was built within what was then the Order’s only church in Rome, dedicated to the Holy Name of Jesus, devotion to which was a Franciscan creation, and heavily promoted by another of their Saints, Bernardin of Siena, who was also Tuscan. This chapel was clearly intended to underline the similarities between the Jesuits and Franciscans as orders promoting reform within the Church, while remaining wholly obedient to it, zealous evangelizers, strictly orthodox, and spiritually grounded in an intensely personal devotion to and union with Christ.

The chapel of the Sacred Heart, originally dedicated to St Francis of Assisi, at the Jesuit church of the Holy Name of Jesus in Rome, popularly known as ‘il Gesù.’ In 1920, the original altarpiece of St Francis Receiving the Stigmata by Durante Alberti was replaced by the painting of the Sacred Heart seen here, a work of Pompeo Battoni done in oil on slate in 1767. Previously displayed on the altar of St Francis Xavier, which is right outside this chapel, it was the very first image of the Sacred Heart to be exposed for veneration in Italy after the visions of St Margaret Mary Alacoque. The other images of St Francis, all part of the chapel’s original decoration, remain in place. (Photo courtesy of Mr Jacob Stein, author of the blog Passio Xpi.)

But the extension of the feast to the general calendar also touches on a much larger issue, one which colors the Tridentine reform, and especially that of the Breviary, in several ways, namely, the response to the Protestant reformation.

St Francis is today held in admiration so broadly by Catholics, non-Catholics and even non-Christians alike, that it is perhaps hard for us to appreciate today how he was seen by the original Protestant reformers. Even within Luther’s lifetime, it was hardly possible to get two of them together to agree on any point; broadly speaking, however, they generally accepted that things had really gone wrong in the Church with the coming of the mendicants, especially the Franciscans, and the flourishing of their teachings in the universities. Luther himself once said “If I had all the Franciscan friars in one house, I would set fire to it”, and more generally, “a friar is evil every way, whether in the monastery or out of it.” Most Protestants had no patience for the ascetic ideals embodied by Saints like Francis and the other mendicants, an attitude sadly shared by supercilious humanists within the Church like Erasmus.

Of course, the mendicants were not immune to the widespread decadence of religious and clerical life justly decried by the true reformers of that age, and which sadly provided much grist for the Protestant mill. And yet, while Ignatius of Loyola was still the equivalent of a freshman in college, the great Franciscan reform of the Capuchins had already begun; where the Jesuits would soon prove the most effective of the new orders in combatting the heresies of the 16th century, the Capuchins would take that role among the older ones. This may be what moved Luther to say, “If the emperor would merit immortal praise, he would utterly root out the order of the Capuchins, and, for an everlasting remembrance of their abominations, cause their books to remain in safe custody. ’Tis the worst and most poisonous sect; the (other orders of) friars are in no way comparable with these confounded lice.” [3]

Fra Matteo Bassi, founder of the Capuchins, and quite possibly the only founder of a Franciscan order who was never canonized; 17th century, author unknown. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

The Tridentine reform was in its essence the Catholic Church’s answer to the question of what to do with what it had developed over the course of the Middle Ages, in response to the Protestant rejection of such developments, and putative return to the most ancient roots of the Christian Faith. It sought to determine which parts of the Church’s medieval inheritance were of perennial or continued value, which needed to be rejected, and which needed to be modified and reformed. This included all aspects of its life: its many institutional forms, its intellectual tradition, its art and architecture, and of course, its liturgy.

St Francis was both a product of the Middle Ages, and a creator of one of its most important and characteristic institutions; he was no more a creation of Luther and Calvin’s imaginary “primitive” church than he was a modern environmentalist. The placement of his feast on the general calendar serves as a very useful reminder that it was a man of that era who was the first conformed to Christ so entirely that he merited to bear His wounds upon his own body.

On April 16, 1959, Pope St John XXIII addressed the following words to a gathering of Franciscans in the Lateran Basilica, where Pope Innocent III had once met the Poor Man of Assisi himself, the occasion being the 750th anniversary of the approval of the Franciscan Rule. “Beloved sons! Permit us to add a special word from the heart, to all those present who belong to the peaceable army of the Lay Tertiaries of St Francis. ‘Ego sum Ioseph, frater vester.’ (‘I am Joseph, your brother’, citing Genesis 45, 4, Joseph being his middle name), … This we ourselves have been since our youth, when, having just turned fourteen, on March 1, 1896, we were regularly inscribed through the ministry of Canon Luigi Isacchi, our spiritual father, who was then the director of the seminary of Bergamo.” He went on to recall the Franciscan house of Baccanello, near the place where he grew up, as the first religious house he ever knew, and that four days earlier, he had canonized his first Saint, the Franciscan Carlo of Sezze.

The following year, Pope John approved the decree for the reform of the Breviary and Missal which reduced the feast of St Francis’ Stigmata to a commemoration. As such, the Mass can still be celebrated ad libitum, but is no longer mandatory, and the story of the Stigmata is no longer told in the Breviary. In the post-Conciliar reform, it was removed from the general calendar entirely, and replaced by the feast of St Robert Bellarmine, who died in 1621 on the very feast day he had promoted. It is still kept by the Franciscan Orders.

[1] Before the Tridentine reform, there were many feasts and Saints who were celebrated everywhere the Roman Rite was used, and many of these feasts did originate in Rome itself, but there was no such thing as a “general” calendar of feasts that had to be kept ubique et ab omnibus. When the first general calendar was created in 1568, which is to say, a calendar created with the specific intention that it would also be used outside its diocese of origin, a number of miracle feasts were included; all of these were present in pre-Tridentine editions of the Roman liturgical books, and celebrated in many other places as well.

[2] The feast was added to the calendar by Pope Paul V as a semidouble ad libitum in 1615, made mandatory by Pope Clement IX (1667-69), and raised to the rank of double by Clement XIV, the last Franciscan Pope.

[3] Thanks to Dr Donald Prudlo for this quote from Luther, and the one that precedes it.

A Modern Medium For Artists to Offer Beauty to Our Churches

After a recent article suggesting that light, portable images and furnishings such as a rood screen might be a way to beautify sacred spaces at a reasonable cost, I was delighted to hear again from the well-known Catholic sculptor Thomas Marsh. He wanted to tell me about a medium that he uses, which he felt would help people looking for economical and lightweight sculptures, and sculpted furnishings that nevertheless have a permanent look - white gypsum cement. This was new to me, and what he described was worth passing on to you.

I’ve featured Thomas’s work before, notably in an interview with Dr. Carrie Gress. What sets Thomas apart in the world of classical naturalism is his deep understanding of sacred art. Unlike many skilled artists who blur the lines between sacred and secular, Thomas knows that sacred art should idealize its subjects more emphatically, emphasizing universal human values over particular details, but without neglecting the particular altogether in a subtle balance of naturalism and idealism. When artists get this right, and I think Thomas does, the result is sculptures worthy of veneration, rather than what we often see, portraits of models dressed as holy figures, albeit skillfully rendered.

Thomas wrote to me about white gypsum cement: “It’s in the plaster family, though much harder and more durable. It’s strictly an interior material. I often do relief sculptures for projects for the Church, and the beauty of reliefs is that they are sufficiently subtle to harmonise with architecture when appropriate. When focused upon, they lend themselves to detailed representation, to almost any degree of verisimilitude with proper lighting from above. Finally, they are VERY economical to produce, ship, and install.”

To showcase this versatile medium, I've included some examples of Thomas’ relief works. There’s also a photo of a large ensemble he created for St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The centerpiece is a 6’6” corpus cast in fiberglass-reinforced gypsum cement with light polychrome—i.e. coloration. Despite its impressive size, it weighs just 90 pounds!

Contact Thomas Marsh through thomasmarshsculptor.net.

“The Liturgy Has Been Dismantled”: Portland Archbishop Robert Dwyer’s Assessment in 1971

Robert Joseph Dwyer (1908-76)

Those who read the works of Michael Davies will come across quotations from a wide variety of sources, and will sometimes wonder just who these people are, and what their full views might be (since Davies, like any author, seldom quotes more than a few sentences). One such figure is the American Robert Joseph Dwyer (1908-76), who was the second bishop of Reno, Nevada from 1952-66 (and in this capacity participated in all four sessions of the Council), and the fifth Archbishop of Portland, Oregon from 1966 to 1974.

Dwyer was a prolific writer, as the fine collection recently published by Arouca Press, Ecclesiastes: The Book of Archbishop Robert Dwyer—A Selection of His Writings, edited by Albert J. Steiss, makes plain: we find articles on European history and American history, lives of major Catholic figures, a fairly detailed account of his time at the Council (deserving to be mined: see pages 131–206), apologetics on behalf of the Faith, critiques of liturgical reform, reflections on the fine arts, pastoral letters, and bagatelles. In fact, he’s like a quieter version of Archbishop Fulton Sheen.

Where he differs decisively from Sheen is in his increasingly outspoken critiques of the liturgical reform. The famous quotes are those shared by Michael Davies:

The great mistake of the Council Fathers was to allow the implementation of the Constitution to fall into the hands of men who were either unscrupulous or incompetent. This is the so-called Liturgical Establishment, a Sacred Cow which acts more like a white elephant as it tramples the shards of a shattered liturgy with ponderous abandon.

And:

Who dreamed on that day that within a few years, far less than a decade, the Latin past of the Church would be all but expunged, that it would be reduced to a memory fading into the middle distance? The thought of it would have horrified us, but it seemed so far beyond the realm of the possible as to be ridiculous. So we laughed it off.

Could a bishop really have written such things? Or might this be a case of mistaken attribution or misquotation?

For the first quotation, Davies cites The Tidings of July 9, 1971 (see Pope Paul’s New Mass [Kansas City, MO: Angelus Press, 2009], 651). For the second, he cites the Twin Circle, October 26, 1973 (see Liturgical Timebombs in Vatican II [Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 2003], 65). In order to hunt the original articles down, I did what any sensible person would do: I hired Sharon Kabel as my research assistant!

Sure enough, she located both articles, and since our searching online indicates that these have never been transcribed and made available, I took the time to type them out, while attaching the originals below. If only we had a few more bold bishops like this today! (And can you imagine the newspaper of the archdiocese of Los Angeles—or any Catholic diocesan newspaper—publishing something like this today?) A piece like this, from 1971, counts as good evidence that at least some public figures were willing to state the obvious: the Catholic liturgy had, in fact, been dismantled past recognition, and this was an evil deed. Moreover, this bishop’s presence at all four sessions of the Council makes his claims about what the Council Fathers intended—at least to the extent that any on-the-ground participant could know the mens patrum from conversations, meetings, and documents—credible.

In any case, enjoy the crisp and piquant style of the good archbishop.
 

(Click to enlarge)

The Liturgy Has Been Dismantled
Archbishop Robert Dwyer
The Tidings (Catholic Newspaper of Los Angeles)
July 9, 1971

In the remote caverns of memory the image flickers in the candlelight: Marius on the Ruins of Carthage. What somber text of Ancient History this was designed to illustrate we have long forgotten, but the figure of the Roman general, triumphant at last over the Punic power, contemplating the wreckage of war, meditating upon the Dead Sea fruits of victory, has never quite faded.

The other day the image was refreshed by a re-telling of the familiar jest at the expense of a gun-and-camera tourist: “Mrs. C. Humphrey Jones on the Ruins of Carthage (the ruins are to the left).”

But another image, alas, overlays that of the baffled conqueror in our contemporary illustration. It is that of Mother Church seated amid the ruins of the liturgy. No less disconsolate is she, no less sorrowfully pensive.

Some six years ago she had reached that point in her Renewal where it seemed beyond question or cavil that she could summon to her aid, in her monumental task of re-interpreting the Christian message to the modern world, all the services of liturgical art and drama, all the treasures of biblical science and patristic lore, all the riches of music and sacred literature, to enhance the supreme act of divine worship, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Surely that was the confident expectation of the Council Fathers when they hailed with overwhelming affirmation the Constitution on the Liturgy.

In the euphoria of that moment cankerous doubt and cantankerous misgivings were cavalierly set aside. All would be well, we assured ourselves, and all things would be well, as Blessed Juliana of Norwich had so calmly predicted. All that was needed was a touch of genius to muster all the arts of expression and exposition to achieve the perfect rendering of the liturgy in every language under the sun, and for every living culture known to man. We all devoutly made our act of faith in the immediate availability of that touch of genius.

Documents Insipid

Wherein, under the blessing of hindsight undoubtedly we made our first mistake. For there are times and seasons in man’s history, the history of his culture, when genius touches the liturgy, and times, alack, when it simply does not. It is as though the lines of communication, faithfully relaying its messages, were abruptly to be cut off.

It is not necessary, in our reading of the liturgical texts which have been foisted upon us, to suspect the poisoned pen of the heretic or the velvet glove covering the mailed fist of the Communist conspiracy working through the channels of the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship. It is enough to note that the touch of genius has so far absented itself from these documents which reach us with such monotonous regularity and insipidity, as to suggest a total substitution of dross for gold.

It was not so in ages past when Basil and John Chrysostom and Gregory formulated the texts and set the patterns for the prayer of the Church, East and West. It was not so when those unknown masters of rhythmic melody devised and developed the liturgical chant, the noblest music man has ever sung, nor was it so when the flowering of polyphony enriched the musical treasury of the liturgy with works of classic dignity and grace.

The Renaissance and Trent hardened the liturgy into molds perhaps too rigid and ungiving, but the authentic note of dignity and greatness was by no means wanting. With the Baroque the liturgy left the austere confines of the sanctuary to mingle with the multitudes crowding the nave and aisles, to undergo, at least in some aspects, a process of vulgarization, but however much the liturgy stood in need of refurbishing and reform as our day approached, it was still recognizable as an original work of religious genius. It was by no means a shambles.

The malady must be reported of the rendering of the liturgy into the vernacular. To focus exclusively here upon our English experience, it is commonly recognized that only once or twice in a millennium have we any right to expect a translator of such power as Thomas Cranmer. Whatever his other merits or demerits, he possessed the gift of noble expression and haunting phrase, so as to mold the language our forebears have spoken these 400 years and more. And while he had no Catholic rivals to contest his mastery, he set a standard to which they must needs approximate or publicly confess their inadequacy.

Liturgists Incompetent

And for the most part, those commissioned or inspired to render the liturgy into the vernacular for the English-speaking Catholic world had done a commendable if not a brilliant job. [1] Why their work, present and available, was ignored and set aside, and even spoken of with contumely by the current generation of Martin Mar-Texts [2] is a mystery beyond our ken.

The liturgy needed reform by 1965; there was no call for dismantling it. It was intended that the vernacular would enhance the Latin, not supplant it. It was not, emphatically, the mind of the Council Fathers to jettison Gregorian Chant, or to encourage the banal secularization of Church music, so as now to surpass in crudity the worst aberrations of the Howling Pentecostals.

It was anticipated that the liturgical texts, along with the Biblical readings for the Mass and the Divine Office, would be so translated as to reflect the beauty and suppleness of our tongue in the praise and worship of God. If any Council Father—for this we can vouch—leaving the aula of St. Peter’s on that day when the Constitution on the Liturgy was proclaimed, had seen in vision the liturgical calamities which have befallen us in this short span of time, it is conceivable that he would have had a heart attack, then and there.

The first mistake, then, was dependence upon the Dabitur Vobis [3], a brash confidence that the touch of genius would not be lacking. The second, in uncomfortably close alliance, was to allow the interpretation and implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy to fall into the hands of men who were either unscrupulous or incompetent. This is the so-called “Liturgical Establishment,” a Sacred Cow which acts more like a White Elephant as it tramples the shards of a shattered liturgy with ponderous abandon. [4]

The third mistake, fully as destructive as either of the foregoing, was the genial supposition that widespread “experimentation” could be sanctioned, with any hope of holding the line thereafter. This is not to condemn experimentation; it is useful and necessary from time to time, under certain controlled circumstances.

But the broad permissiveness granted or even encouraged by the Sacred Congregation and by various Episcopal Conference committees, has led to what must be described, without exaggeration, as a state of chaos. Everyman is now his own liturgist, just as he is his own pope; the Parish Liturgical Commission, made up, for the most part, of good and well-meaning folk whose liturgical competence is on the kindergarten level, legislates for all the world as though it were the Sacred Congregation itself. Or perhaps, what is by no means unthinkable, with far greater assurance and authority.

How long, do you suppose, will it take for another Hercules to clean up these Augean Stables?

Next week, we will publish the transcription of His Exellency’s 1973 article. 

NOTES

[1] Dwyer is referring here to the first translations from the 1960s, which were all replaced by the tawdry claptrap of ICEL when the Novus Ordo was rolled out. He may also be referring to the many translations that existed in hand missals for many decades prior to the Council.

[2] This seems to be a reference to “Martin Mar-prelate,” “the name used by the anonymous author or authors of the seven Marprelate tracts that circulated illegally in England in the years 1588 and 1589. Their principal focus was an attack on the episcopacy of the Anglican Church” (source).

[3] See Luke 11, 9: “Petite, et dabitur vobis” (Ask, and it shall be given).

[4] This is the paragraph quoted by Davies, with some minor differences that do not alter the meaning.

A young Dwyer holding a model of a church (backstory unknown)

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

Liturgical Notes on the Feasts of the Seven Sorrows

From 1814 until 1960, the General Calendar of the Roman Rite contained two different feasts of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary. The older of these is the one long celebrated on the Friday of Passion week; the latter is now fixed to September 15th, but was originally a movable feast. The Offices of these two feasts have only a few elements in common, but the Masses are almost identical. This doubling of the feast is not, therefore, a case like Corpus Christi, which emphasizes one particular aspect of what the Church celebrates on Holy Thursday, nor is one a “secondary” feast like the Apparition of St Michael or the Conversion of St Paul.

The Seven Sorrows Polyptych by Albrecht Dürer, ca. 1500. The seven sorrows shown here are slightly different from those of the Servite Rosary shown below; counterclockwise from the upper left, they are the Circumcision (considered a sorrow because of the shedding of Christ’s blood,) the Flight into Egypt, the Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple, the Carrying of the Cross, the Nailing to the Cross, the Crucifixion, and the Deposition of Christ’s Body.

The Passiontide feast emerged in German-speaking lands in the early 15th-century, partly as a response to the iconoclasm of the Hussites, and partly out of the universal popular devotion to every aspect of Christ’s Passion, including the presence of His Mother, and thence to Her grief over the Passion. It was known by several different titles, and kept on a wide variety of dates; Cologne, where it was first instituted, had it on the 3rd Friday after Easter until the end of the 18th century. Before the name “Seven Sorrows” became common, it was most often called “the feast of the Virgin’s Compassion”, which is to say, of Her suffering together with Christ as She beheld the Passion. This title was retained by the Dominicans well into the 20th century; they also had an Office for it which was quite different from the Roman one, although the Mass was the same. It appears in many missals of the 15th to 17th centuries only as a votive Mass, with no corresponding feast; this was the case at Sarum, where it is called “Compassionis sive Lamentationis B.M.V.” (The Sarum Missal also has a highly irregular sequence for this Mass, 128 lines long, more than twice as many as the Stabat Mater in the Roman Mass.)

It was also occasionally known as the “Transfixio”, in reference to Simeon’s prophecy to the Virgin (Luke 2, 35) that “a sword shall pierce Thy heart.” For this reason, the Collect of the feast states that “we remember with veneration (her) Transfixing and Passion.” The Preface of the Virgin Mary contains the phrase “et te in *** Beatae Virginis semper Virginis collaudare, benedicere et praedicare – and to praise, bless and preach Thee in the *** of the Blessed Mary ever Virgin.” The name of the feast (Assumption, Nativity etc.) is said where the stars are, but on the feast of the Seven Sorrows, “transfixione” is said in that place. (The Dominicans said “compassione.”)

The corresponding Office has a number of interesting features. The Seven Sorrows is the only feast of the Virgin which has special psalms at Vespers and Matins, those of the former being the same which are sung on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. The Stabat Mater is divided into three parts and sung as the hymn of Vespers, Matins and Lauds, with simpler music than that of the same text when it is sung as the Sequence at Mass. (In Italy, this simpler form is still often sung at the Stations of the Cross.) The responsories of Matins all refer to the Passion of Christ; the fourth is the most famous of the Tenebrae responsories from Good Friday, Tenebrae factae sunt, with the verse changed: “What dost Thou feel, o Virgin, when Thou beholdest such things?”

The sequence version of the Stabat Mater

The readings of the first nocturn are the famous prophecy of the Suffering Servant, Isaiah 53, which is also read at the Mass of Spy Wednesday, when the Lenten station is kept at St Mary Major. In the second nocturn, they are taken from a well-known sermon of St Bernard of Clairvaux, in which he demonstrates that it is indeed proper to refer to the “martyrdom” of the Virgin, and addressing Her directly, says “Therefore, the force of grief passed through Thy soul, so that we may rightly preach that Thou are even more than a martyr, in whom the affection of compassion exceeded even the sense of bodily passion. … Wonder not, brethren, that Mary is called a martyr in spirit. Let him wonder (at this) who remembereth not that he has heard Paul say, when he recalls the greatest crimes of the pagans, that they were ‘without affection.’ Far was this from Mary’s senses, and far be it from her servants.”

The Pazzi Crucifixion, by Pietro Perugino, 1496, in the convent of St Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi in Florence. St Bernard of Clarivaux and the Virgin Mary are on the left, St John the Evangelist and St Benedict on the right.

In the wake of the Protestant reformation, the feast continued to grow in popularity, spreading though southern Europe, and most often fixed to the Friday of Passion week. It was extended to the universal Church on that day by Pope Benedict XIII with the title “the feast of the Seven Sorrows”, although none of the various enumerations of the Virgin’s sorrows is referred to it anywhere in the liturgy itself.

The second feast of the Seven Sorrows was promulgated in 1668 as the Patronal feast of the Servite Order, which was founded in the mid-13th century by seven Florentine noblemen, and soon spread all over Europe. (St Philip Benizi, who stands in their history as St Bernard does in that of the Cistercians, not their founder, but their most famous member, was almost elected Pope in 1271.) This order had always nourished a strong devotion to the Mother of Sorrows, and has its own rosary of the Seven Sorrows, which are as follows.

1. The Prophecy of Simeon.
2. The Flight into Egypt.
3. The Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple.
4. The Meeting of Mary and Jesus as He Carries the Cross.
5. The Crucifixion.
6. The Removal of Christ’s Body from the Cross.
7. The Burial of Christ.

A Servite Rosary, also known as the Crown of the Seven Sorrows, one of which is depicted on each of the oval medals between the beads. Only seven Hail Marys are said per sorrow; on the beads that lead to the Cross, three more are added in honor of the tears which the Virgin shed as She stood by the Cross. This example was made in the 19th century; it has more recently been the custom to make them with only black beads, the color of the Servite habit. (Courtesy of Mr Forrest Alverson.)

Since the Servite version of this devotion is not focused entirely on the Passion of Christ, but contains three events from His childhood, a number of changes were made to the corresponding liturgical texts for the second feast. The words of the Collect “we remember with veneration (her) Transfixing and Passion” are changed to “we remember with veneration (her) Sorrows”; however, “transfixione” is still said in the Preface. In the Office, the regular psalms of the Virgin’s other Offices are said at Vespers, but not at Matins; three different hymns, all very much in the classicizing style in vogue in the 17th century, replace the three parts of the Stabat Mater. The responsories of Matins are completely different, each referring in order to one of the mysteries of the Servite rosary given above. An eighth one is added to complete the series, a very beautiful exhortation: “In all thy heart, forget not the groans of Thy Mother, that propitiation and blessing may be perfected. Hail, most noble woman, that art the first rose of the martyrs, and lily of the virgins!” The readings of the first nocturn are taken from the Book of Lamentations, which is otherwise read only at Tenebrae, and the lessons of the second are the same passage from St Bernard read on the other feast. (This passage was also read in the Dominican Office of the Compassion.)

Michelangelo’s Pietà in St Peter’s Basilica.

This Servite version of the feast was added to the general calendar by Pope Pius VII in 1814, after he returned from the exile in France shamefully visited upon him by Napoleon. Part of the Pope’s reason for doing would certainly have been to ask the Virgin’s intercession and protection for the Church in the midst of the many horrors visited upon it by the French revolution and the subsequent wars. It was originally kept on the Third Sunday of September, as it had been first by the Servites, but when Pope St Pius X abolished the custom of fixing feasts to Sundays, it was placed on September 15th, the day after the Exaltation of the Cross. While the connection between the Sorrows of the Virgin and the Crucifixion is essential, the Seven Sorrows was of higher rank at the time, and its new placement therefore had the unfortunate effect of cancelling Second Vespers of the much older feast of the Exaltation. This defect was remedied by the Breviary reform of 1960, but at the cost of a much more serious general defect, the abolition of First Vespers from all but the highest grade of feasts. At the same time, the older Passiontide feast was reduced to a commemoration.

Venetian Miracles of the Holy Cross

In the days of the Venetian Republic, one of the most important aspects of the city’s religious life was a group of large and prestigious confraternities known as the “scuole grandi – the great schools.” These associations engaged in a wide variety of devotional and charitable activities, and each of them had a large hall on which these activities were centered.

The entrance to the Scuola Grande of St John the Evangelist. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The interior of the upper hall, constructed in 1544. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra, CC BY 2.0)

In 1369, the scuola grande of St John the Evangelist, one of the oldest in the city, was given a relic of the True Cross, which soon became known for the miracles it effected. At the end of the 15th century, the confraternity commissioned a group of painters to make a series of panels celebrating nine of these miracles, which were to be displayed in the large hall where the relic was kept. One of these, a work by Raphael’s teacher Perugino (1446-1523), has been lost, but the other eight survive. Three were painted by Gentile Bellini (1429 ca. - 1507), scion of a family of painters who had long been among the most successful in the city; the rest are by artists who were in various ways his students or associates, who also assisted Bellini to varying degrees with his own canvases. (It is no small testament to the prestige which Perugino enjoyed throughout Italy in the late 15th century that he was invited to participate in this project.) In 1797, the arch-criminal Napoleon, enemy of God and the Faith, overthrew the Republic and closed the scuole, whose properties were then plundered and dispersed; since 1820, the paintings have been displayed at the Galleria dell’ Accademia.

1. The Miraculous Healing of a Madman at the Rialto Bridge, ca. 1495, by Vittore Carpaccio (1460/65 - 1525 ca.) The principal scene, in the upper left part of the painting, shows the healing of a madman by the relic of the True Cross, which is held by Francesco Querini, Patriarch of Grado (1367-72) when the relic came to Venice. (From the time of its foundation in 774, the see of Venice was suffragan to the Patriarchate of Grado, a town roughly 55 miles to the east along the edge of the Adriatic. In 1451, shortly after St Lawrence Giustiniani was appointed bishop of Venice, the pope transferred the title of the patriarchate to his see.) This takes place on the loggia of a palace near the famous Rialto Bridge; most of the painting is taken up with the view of the surrounding area, a very busy scene very much to the taste of the times in Venice, as also seen in the remaining paintings. (The wooden bridge seen here collapsed in 1524; the central section of this older structure was movable so that taller ships could get up the canal.)

2. The Miracle in the Campo San Lio, ca. 1495, by Giovanni Mansueti (flor. 1485-1527). During the funeral procession of a member of the confraternity who had been but little devoted to the Holy Cross, the relic suddenly became too heavy to carry, until it was handed over to the parish priest.

3. The Relic of the True Cross is Given to the Scuola Grande of St John the Evangelist, ca. 1495, by Lazzaro Bastiani (1429-1512). This picture is an important record of the appearance of the confraternity’s complex before a number of subsequent renovations. The relic had previously belonged to a French Carmelite named Pierre de Thomas (1305-66), who was the papal legate to “the churches of the East” from 1357 until his death. When he died on the island of Cyprus, it passed to Philippe de Mézières, the chancellor of the Kingdom of Cyprus and Jerusalem, the successor state to the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem; it was de Mézières who in turn gave it to the confraternity.

4. A Miracle During the Procession on St Mark’s Day, 1496, by Gentile Bellini. On April 25th, the feast of Venice’s Patron Saint, the Evangelist Mark, the scuole grandi and many other pious associations would participate in a grand procession in front of the famous basilica that houses his relics. (In the days of the Republic, San Marco was not the cathedral of Venice, but the chapel of the doge and his court.) The members of the Scuola Grande of St John are seen in the lower middle of the painting, carrying the relic under a baldachin. Underneath the relic, a plaque is mounted into the pavement of the piazza, which commemorates the procession of 1444, during which a merchant from Brescia named Jacop de’ Salis knelt down and prayed before the relic, and his gravely injured son was immediately healed. This painting is also an important historical record of the mosaics on the façade of the basilica, and the older brick pavement of the piazza.

Continue Reading this Article. . .