On the Loss of Early Liturgical Documents

Last year, I read a fascinating book called Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age, by Dr Ada Palmer, who teaches history at the University of Chicago. I have subsequently recommended it to a number of friends, and all those who have read it have thanked me for the suggestion. Dr Palmer gives a unique take on the history of the Renaissance, and on the history of the idea of the Renaissance, that is, not just what it was, but what it meant, and does so with a truly engaging writing style. I knew I was going to enjoy the book when I laughed out loud at its opening sentence “The Renaissance was like the Wizard of Oz: great and terrible, and desperate for us not to look behind the curtain.” She also debunks many of the popular myths about the period, including some of the myths that were invented specifically to discredit the Church.

She recently gave a full-length interview to the podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, which is very much worth your time, but I wanted to share this clip from it in particular because it is something very pertinent to NLM’s subject matter. I am sure that many of our readers are familiar with the historical falsehood, popular with a certain kind of professional atheist, that the Christians deliberately burnt down the great library in Alexandria, and by doing so, destroyed an unfathomably large amount of literature and scientific knowledge. Here Dr Palmer explains that the real reason for the loss of so much of the classical world’s literary production is a much simpler and more practical one, namely, that it was written on papyrus. Once papyrus ceased to be easily available in the Western Europe (after about 600 AD), the region simply could not produce enough writing materials to save everything from the ancient world, as the papyri aged and began to fall apart. And of course, this also explains why we have such a dearth of liturgical texts from the early centuries of the Church. As I have noted various times before, the oldest surviving collection of liturgical material of the Roman Rite, the so-called Leonine Sacramentary, dates to roughly 550-75, and exists in exactly one very incomplete manuscript. Had it been lost, our next record of Roman liturgical texts would be from about a century later, the list of readings in the Wurzburg capitulary.
 

St Frances of Rome and the Counter-Reformation

This Thursday, the feast of Pope St Gregory the Great, is the anniversary of one of the most important events of the Counter-Reformation. On that day in the year 1622, Pope Gregory XV canonized four Saints who had played particularly important roles in the reformation of the Church after the terrible shock of the Protestant rebellion: Philip Neri, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, and Theresa of Avila. This was not, however, the first canonization of Counter-Reformation Saints; that honor fell to Gregory XV’s predecessor, Paul V, when he canonized Charles Borromeo in 1610. (St Charles’ was the first fast-track canonization of the modern era, with his process completed only 26 years after his death.) The ceremony was held on All Saints’ day of 1610, the closest major solemnity to the day of Charles’ death, November 3rd; a statement, in response to the Reformation, that sanctity still thrived within the Church, and that its hierarchy, the source of so much scandal and corruption in the years leading up to Luther’s revolt, had truly been reformed.

St Frances of Rome, by the Italian painter Fabrizio Boschi (1572-1642). She is traditionally depicted in the company of her guardian angel, whom she could regular see and converse with. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Francesco Bini, CC BY-SA 4.0.)

About a year-and-a-half earlier, Pope Paul had canonized the Saint whose feast we keep today, Frances of Rome (1384-1440). This was also in a very important sense a canonization of the Counter-Reformation, even though Frances died well before the Reformation itself began. The protestants rejected the idea of marriage as a sacrament, and completely abolished religious life for both men and women. Taken together, these two things mean that women could no longer choose a life in community dedicated wholly and solely to the service of God, while the only way of life left open to them, marriage, was reduced to an arrangement which brought with it many duties, but no sense that the fulfillment of those duties is a means of sanctification. In response, the Church presented Frances as a woman who became a Saint both as a wife and mother, and as the foundress of a community of Benedictine oblates.

St Charles’ life was a sign that the Church had successfully effected necessary reforms of the abuses and corruption that had helped to spark the Reformation. During much of St Frances’ life, the Church labored under the Great Western Schism (1378-1417), an event which brought much difficulty and suffering directly upon her and her family, precisely because they were faithful to the true popes, despite their great unworthiness. But she also lived to see the healing of the schism, and therefore serves as a sign of fidelity to the Church, even when it was at its worst, and of sanctity flourishing in the church of Rome specifically, when its head was not the holy father that our Holy Mother deserves.

An engraving of the early 17th century, showing the temporary sanctuary constructed around the altar of St Peter’s basilica for the canonization of St Charles in 1610. At that point, the basilica’s exterior walls had been finished, but the project to build the great baldachin over the high altar would not begin for another 13 years.

Not long after his election in 1605, Paul V commissioned an architect named Flaminio Ponzio (1560 – 1618) to design and build the great chapel attached to the basilica of St Maria Maggiore which now bears his family name, Borghese. Its most important feature is one of the most famous icons in the world, the Madonna ‘Salus Populi Romani’ (salvation of the people of Rome), which is kept in the reredos of the main altar. Many of the finest artists of the era were brought in to execute the decorations, among them, Pietro Bernini, the father of the famous sculptor Gian Lorenzo. The latter was discovered by the cardinal supervising the project, Paul V’s nephew Scipione, and it was the pope himself who rightly predicted that he would become the Michelangelo of his times.

This chapel became one of the most important models for architectural decoration in the Counter-Reformation period. The lower part is made with darker materials, which represent the world; the upper is dominated by gold, white, and light-filled windows, representing heaven. The gold, a symbol of God’s grace, comes down into the lower part in the reredos, surrounding the icon. This serves as a response to the protestant idea that grace merely covers over the corrupt nature of sinful man, but does not truly change it for the better; as Luther described it, with his typical crudity, it is like snow covering over a dungheap. The Borghese chapels shows us God’s grace coming into and enlightening the world, effecting the true sanctification, the “making holy”, of man, a process which began with the Incarnation in the womb of the holy Virgin.

The Borghese chapel seen from outside, and about as good an illustration of what the lighting coming in from the dome is supposed to convey as one could hope for. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons by Karelj.)

The main altar of the chapel, which houses the icon of the Virgin Mary, honored with the title Salus Populi Romani. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Fallaner, CC BY-SA 4.0.

It is therefore a deliberate part of the program that as soon as one enters the space, there are placed to either side small chapels dedicated to St Frances of Rome (on the left), and St Charles Borromeo (on the right). These chapels remind us that God came into the world through the Virgin, and, as He promised (John 14, 18), did not leave us orphans, as the protestants would have it. In the life of a great cardinal and bishop, and no less in the life of a wife, mother and religious, we see His grace always working for the authentic reformation of our own lives, and of the life of the Church.

Photos of the two chapels, just inside the Borghese, courtesy of Mr Jacob Stein, author of the blog Crux Stationalis: the chapel of St Francis...

and of St Charles.

A Hymn for Lent, Lost and Restored

The Roman tradition has always been very conservative about the use of hymns in the Divine Office. In most liturgical seasons, there are three proper hymns, one each for Matins, Lauds and Vespers, but many feasts, including some of the greatest solemnities (Christmas, Epiphany, Ascension etc.), have only two. In the Ordinal of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), the ancestor text of the breviary of St Pius V, Lent is an exception, since it has four hymns, one each for Matins and Lauds, but two for Vespers. Audi, benigne Conditor is said from Monday to Saturday, but Sunday Vespers has its own hymn, Aures ad nostras, an anonymous work first attested in a 10th century manuscript from the abbey of St Benedict on Monte Cassino.

The hymn Aures ad nostras in a breviary according to the Use of Esztergom, the primatial see of Hungary, 1523-24. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 8879)

St Pius V’s reform of the Roman breviary made very few alterations to the established repertoire of musical propers for the Office in all their genres (antiphons, responsories etc.) This hymn was therefore left in its place, with a small correction of the awkwardly arranged opening words (“Ad preces nostras Deitatis aures”), but otherwise unchanged.

In early 1588, Pope Sixtus V established the Sacred Congregation for Rites, and appointed as its first prefect Alfonso Gesualdo, archbishop of Conza in southern Campania, and uncle of the famous composer Carlo Gesualdo. As part of the preparatory work for new editions of the breviary and missal of St Pius, the cardinal wrote to various nuncios in Europe, asking them to canvas the learned men of their respective nations for suggestions as to what might be due for revision. The reports of two different nuncios (Prague and Madrid) contained the suggestion that Aures ad nostras be removed from the Office completely; another (Venice) suggested it be corrected, since its numerous metrical flaws made the Catholic Church look foolish to the Protestant heretics. [1]

This information comes from an article by a chant scholar and canon of the cathedral of Chartres, Fr Yves Delaporte, published in 1907. In the second part, he gives the following information from the notes of the commission that prepared the revised breviary which Pope Clement VIII promulgated in 1602. “The hymn Ad preces nostras... has been removed; it seemed inept in both its choice of words and phrasing, was put together with no account of (metrical) feet or syllables, and further, was superfluous, since in all offices, the same hymn is said at both Vespers, and no other solemn observance... has more then three hymns.” [2]

In the post-Conciliar Rite, however, it has been restored to use, but not in Lent. The first three stanzas serve as the hymn for the Office of Readings on Tuesday of weeks 2 and 4 of the Psalter, and the fifth, sixth and eighth on Wednesday; on both days, it concludes with the same, original doxology. In accordance with the usual censorship of any negative thoughts that might disturb the complacency of Modern Man™ in his splendor, the fourth stanza, which says that “we are submerged beneath the wave of sin” is suppressed, as is the seventh, which refers to the newly unfashionable practice of fasting, and the “thousand vices of the flesh.” Both of these stanzas also contain significant blemishes in their Latinity. Surprisingly, the reference to Satan in the eighth stanza remains in place, and only a few other alterations were made.

This first recording, from the always wonderful Schola Hungarica, begins with the antiphon Media vita, which was commonly sung with the Nunc dimittis at Compline in Lent. The first stanza of the hymn begins at 2:20, in a Gregorian melody, followed by a polyphonic version of the second, and only these two are sung.

The first stanza of the hymn in a musical collection of the 15th century. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Musique, RES-1750)

This English translation is from the collection Pange Lingua by Alan G. McDougall (Burns and Oates, London, 1916.) [3]

Ad preces nostras Deitátis aures, [4] Deus, inclína pietáte sola: Súpplicum vota súscipe, precámur    Fámuli tui.	God, of thy pity,    unto us thy children Bend down thine ear in    thine own loving kindness, And all thy people’s    prayers and vows ascending Hear, we beseech thee.
Réspice clemens solio de sancto, Vultu seréno lámpades illustra: Lúmine tuo ténebras depelle    Péctore nostro.	Look down in mercy    from thy seat of glory. Pour on our souls the    radiance of thy presence, Drive from our weary    hearts the shades of darkness, Lightening our footsteps.
Crímina laxa pietáte multa, Ablue sordes, víncula disrumpe: Parce peccátis, réleva jacentes    Déxtera tua.	Free us from sin by    might of thy great loving, Cleanse thou the sordid,    loose the fettered spirit, Spare every sinner,    raise with thine own right hand All who have fallen.
Te sine tetro mérgimur profundo: Lábimur alta scéleris sub unda: Brachio tuo tráhimur ad clara    Sídera caeli.	Reft of thy guiding    we are lost in darkness, Drowned in the great wide    sea of sin we perish, But we are led by    thy strong hand to climb the Ascents of Heaven
Christe, lux vera, bónitas et vita, Gaudium mundi, píetas immensa, Qui nos a morte róseo salvasti    Sánguine tuo:	Christ, very light and    goodness, life of all things, Joy of the whole world,    infinite in kindness, Who by the crimson    flowing of thy life-blood From death hast saved us,
Insere tuum, pétimus, amórem Méntibus nostris, fídei refunde Lumen aeternum, charitátis auge    Dilectiónem.	Plant, sweetest Jesu,    at our supplication Deep in our hearts thy    charity: upon us Faith’s everlasting    light be poured, and increase Grant us of loving.
Tu nobis dona fontem lacrimárum, Jejuniórum fortia ministra; Vitia carnis millia retunde    Frámea tua.	Grant to our souls a    holy fount of weeping, Grant to us strength to    aid us in our fasting, And all the thousand    hosts of evil banish Far from thy people.
Procul a nobis pérfidus absistat Satan, a tuis víribus confractus: Sanctus assistat Spíritus, a tua    Sede demissus	Bruised by thine heel may    Satan and his legions Far from our minds be    driven, that are guided By the indwelling    of the Holy Spirit Sent from Heaven
Gloria Deo sit aeterno Patri: Sit tibi semper, Genitóris Nate, Cum quo aequális Spíritus       per cuncta,    Sáecula regnat. Amen.	Glory to God the    Father everlasting, Glory for ever    to the Sole-begotten, With whom the Holy    Spirit through the ages Reigneth coequal.

This splendid polyphonic version by the Flemish composer Adrian Willaert (1490 ca. - 1562) has only the odd-numbered stanzas, since it was written to be sung in alternation with the Gregorian melody. (Willaert spent the last 35 years of his life as the Master of the Chapel at the basilica of St Mark in Venice, and is regarded as the founder of the Venetian school of polyphony, which makes great use of multiple choirs.)

[1] Of the hymn’s thirty-six lines, twenty-eight contain mistakes according to the rules of classical Latin prosody.

[2] Les Hymnes du Bréviaire Romain de Pie V à Urbain VIII, 1568-1632; Rassegna Gregoriana, Nov.-Dec. 1907, col. 495-512; cited by Dom Anselmo Lentini OSB in Te decet hymnus, p. 49, with incorrect citation of the first column number (489 instead of 495). Second part, May-June 1908, col. 231-250. (My thanks to Fr Brian Austin, FSSP, for providing me with a copy of the second part.)

[3] This meter is known as the Sapphic stanza, after its inventor, the Greek poetess Sappho (ca. 630-570 B.C.) Each stanza has three lines that run as follows, ⎼⏑│⎼⏒│⎼⏑⏑│⎼⏑│⎼⏒, and then one shorter line, ⎼⏑⏑│⎼⏒, with the primary accents on the long syllables (⎼) at the beginning of each foot. English, however, lends itself more naturally to meters that place the primary accent at the end of a foot, such as the iambic pentameter (⏑⎼ x5); this accounts for the awkwardness of McDougall’s translation in many places, since he retained the meter of the Latin version.

[4] The original wording, “Aures ad nostras Deitatis preces, / Deus, inclina”, abuses the flexibility of Latin word order, and sounds at first blush like it means “O God, incline the prayers of the Divinity to our ears”; hence, the correction to the much clearer (and theologically sounder) “Ad preces nostras Deitatis aures, / Deus, inclina. – O God, incline the ears of the Divinity to our prayers.”

The Third Sunday of Lent 2026

Oculi mei semper ad Dóminum, quia ipse evellet de láqueo pedes meos: réspice in me, et miserére mei, quoniam únicus et pauper sum ego. Ps 24 Ad te, Dómine, levávi ánimam meam: Deus meus, in te confído, non erubescam. Gloria Patri... Oculi mei... (The Introit of the Third Sunday of Lent.)

Introit My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for He shall pluck my feet out of the snare; look Thou upon me, and have mercy on me, for I am alone and poor. Ps 24 To Thee, o Lord, have I lifted up my soul; my God, in Thee do I trust; let me not be put to shame. Glory be... My eyes...

“The third Sunday (of Lent) belongs to confession... which a man must have in two senses, the confession of sin and of praise. For it is by the humility of confession that a man awaits all that he awaits from God, to wit, liberation, and the gift of grace, and all good things, whence the Introit ‘My eyes are ever towards the Lord.’ And it is in the seventh tone, because by the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit, a man shall be plucked from the snare of the devil. For through confession, evil deeds are examined, and for this reason, the station is at the church of St Lawrence (in Lucina), who was delivered through confession. ...

the Apostle shows how confession ought to be in the Epistle (Ephesians 5, 1-9) For it must first be in humility, that is, so that we may humble ourselves before God, and thus walk in newness of life. Second, in perseverance, so that a man may not return to his own vomit (2 Peter 2, 22), and that the infamy of sin may be removed, whence it says ‘But let fornication, and all uncleanness not so much as be named among you.’ This happens through perseverance in a good life.” (Durandus, Rat. Div. Off. 6, 47)

Saints Perpetua and Felicity

For over a millennium before the birth of St Thomas Aquinas, March 7th was the feast day of Ss Perpetua and Felicity, two young women who were martyred in the stadium at Carthage on this day in the year 203. Their feast is already noted on the Philocalian Calendar in the mid-4th century, and they are first among the women named in the Communicantes of the Roman Canon, since they predate the other five. They have a Mass in the Gelasian Sacramentary (750 AD) and the Gellone (780 AD), although they are missing from many other liturgical books of the same era, perhaps because March 7 almost always falls in Lent, when the Roman tradition discourages the keeping of too many feasts. They are included in the ordinal of Innocent III (1198-1216), the ancestor of the Tridentine liturgical books.

Ss Perpetua and Felicity (in the middle, directly above the medallion portrait of a bishop), depicted in the company of many other holy women in a 6th century mosaic in the basilica of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0)

St Thomas died on their feast day in 1274, and was canonized in 1323. Between then and the Tridentine reform, some places moved the martyrs to either the day before or after for his sake, while others moved Thomas for theirs. However, on the calendar of St Pius V’s liturgical books, they are reduced to only a commemoration on Thomas’ day, and so they remained until 1908, when St Pius X restored their full feast, and assigned it to March 6.

The primary source for our knowledge of them is their original passion, which the revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints rightly describes as “one of the greatest hagiological treasures that have come down to us.” This is not only because it gives us an eye-witness account of their martyrdom, one which is universally acknowledged to be authentic, but also because it incorporates a diary which Perpetua kept while she was in prison awaiting execution.

Both women were still catechumens at the time of their arrest alongside three others, Saturninus, Secundulus, and Revocatus, the last a slave like Felicity. (The Roman liturgical tradition, however, celebrates only Perpetua and Felicity by name.) Their catechist, a man named Saturus, soon joined the group voluntarily. Perpetua was only twenty-two, a woman of a noble family, recently married to a prominent man, and a new mother. In her diary, she describes how her father came to visit her, and grew very angry with her when she refused to abandon the Faith; later on, he would return to her and plead with her to take pity on him for the sake of his old age, and likewise on her infant son, whom she was still nursing.

Felicity was in her eighth month of pregnancy, and anxious that she might be deprived of the chance to die as a martyr, since Roman law forbade that a pregnant woman be put to death. The soon-to-be martyrs prayed for her, and after much travail, she was safely delivered of a baby girl, who would then be raised by her sister. While she was in her birth-pangs, one of the prison-guards asked her how she could hope to face the pain of being attacked by wild beasts. To this she replied, “I myself now suffer that which I suffer, but there (i.e. in the stadium) Another shall be in me who shall suffer for me, because I am to suffer for Him.”

The diary also includes extensive accounts of the visions which were vouchsafed to Perpetua during her imprisonment. In one of these, she beheld a ladder of bronze reaching to heaven, fitted out along its rungs with various dangerous weapons, and a serpent at its base, representing the combat she was about to undertake.

A Dutch engraving of St Perpetua’s vision, 1740.

In another, she beheld her brother Dinocrates, who had died very painfully of some kind of ulcer or cancer on his face when he was only seven. In the first vision, he appeared still disfigured, in a dark place, hot and thirsty, but unable to drink from a fountain which was too tall for him to reach, and separated from her “by a great gulf”, (certainly a reference to the story of Lazarus and Dives). From this vision, she knew that she was supposed to pray for him, which she did assiduously, and after several days, she beheld him again, now healed, and able to drink from the fountain, “And being satisfied he departed away from the water and began to play as children will, joyfully.” This is, of course, an incredibly important testimony to the early Christians’ belief in the efficacy of their prayers for the dead.

This was followed by another vision of herself, as if she were a male gladiator in combat, triumphing as the leader of a troop over a large Egyptian and his supporters. Saturus also had a vision of their company in the presence of God and some other martyrs who had recently been burnt alive or died in prison.

The account of the martyrdom itself that follows these visions was written by an anonymous eyewitness. (Some scholars have posited that the author may have been the apologist Tertullian, but this is far from widely accepted.) On their last night, they were given a final meal, which they kept as a Christian agape feast. This was held in a place where people were able to come and gawk at them, but many were deeply moved by their words and behavior, and wound up converting to the Faith.

The Martyrdom of Ss Perpetua, Felicity and Companions, depicted in the Menologion of Basil II (ca 1000 A.D.)

When they were brought to the stadium, the soldiers in charge wished to dress them in the clothing of pagan priests, but backed off from this at Perpetua’s forceful remonstration. Because of their general attitude of rejoicing and bold acceptance of their face, the crowd grew enraged against them, and when they spoke of God’s judgment against the man in charge of the games, the governor Hilarian, he had them scourged, but this only brought them to give thanks at the opportunity to share in one of the sufferings that the Lord Himself had endured.

The men were set upon by wild beasts, a leopard, a bear and a wild boar, but the latter turned upon its keeper and fatally wounded him, while the bear refused to come out of the pen where it was kept, even when Saturus was tied up to a pole in front of it. He was then killed by the leopard. The women were trampled on and tossed about by a savage cow, and after being badly injured, given the coup-de-grace by gladiators. But the soldier assigned to kill Perpetua was inexperienced, and she had to guide his sword to her own throat. The account of their death ends with these poignant words: “Perhaps so great a woman, one who was feared by the unclean spirit, could not otherwise have been slain, had she not herself so willed it.”

Four sermons which St Augustine preached on their feast day have been preserved. In the first of these, he begins by making a play on the martyr’s names, speaking of their joy in heaven, and also refers to the custom which prevailed in many places by which the acts of the martyrs were read during the Mass.

“This day, as an annual recurrence, reminds us, and in a certain way, sets before us the day on which the holy servants of God, Perpetua and Felicity, adorned with the crowns of martyrdom, flourished unto perpetual felicity, holding onto the name of Christ in their combat, and at the same, time, finding also their own names (i.e. “perpetual felicity”.) as a reward. As the account was being read, we heard how they were encouraged by divine revelations, and the triumphs of their passion; we have listened, we have beheld in our minds, we have honored with devotion, we have praised with charity all of their words, as explained and clarified for us.”

The Ambrosian Lenten Litanies

The duomo of Milan as it stands today is the result of a project which began in 1386, to replace the two cathedrals which had hitherto served the see of St Ambrose. The “winter church”, as it is still called in Ambrosian liturgical books, was the smaller of the two, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and used from the Third Sunday of October, the feast of its Dedication, until Holy Saturday; it stood where the modern cathedral stands, but was nowhere near as large. The larger “summer church”, which was demolished in 1543, stood on the opposite end of the modern Piazza del Duomo, and was dedicated to St. Thecla, for which reason her name is included in the Canon of the Ambrosian Mass.

A reconstruction of the cathedral complex of Milan, with the summer church of St Thecla on the left, and the winter church of the Virgin Mary at the right. The octagonal structure in front of St Thecla is the baptistery of St John; the smaller structure beneath it is the baptistery of St Stephen. At the lower right is a partial reconstruction of the interior of the baptistery of St John.

The Ambrosian Rite has several customs which were designed around this arrangement, one of which is a special set of litanies said after Terce on Wednesdays and Fridays of Lent. These litanies have the same structure as those of the Greater and Lesser Rogations: an opening collect; a series of processional antiphons; a litany of the Saints; another collect; another set of antiphons; and then the same concluding formula. On these Lenten ferias, the first set of antiphons was sung as the clergy processed from the winter church over to the summer one, where the litany of the Saints was said as they knelt before the altar; the second set was sung as they returned to the winter church. The proper texts of these litanies vary from day to day, as do the number of antiphons within each set; here are the texts for today, the Friday of the Second Week of Lent. Until 1913, the Ambrosian clergy were required to say these as part of their Office, just as Roman clergy are required to say the Litany of the Saints on the Rogation days, so they are printed in the breviary. This picture is taken from the first post-Tridentine edition of the Ambrosian breviary, printed by authorization of St Charles in 1582. (Click to enlarge and read the Latin text.)

The opening collect: Be present, Lord, to our supplications, and with Thy heavenly aid, through the intercession of all Thy Saints, kindly protect those who hope in Thy mercy. Through our Lord...

Antiphon I In Thee, o Lord, do we hope, let us not be confounded forever; in Thy justice deliver us, and rescue us, that we may not perish.

Antiphon II Lord, for the multitude of our sins, we are not worthy to look upon the height of heaven: destroy us not unto the end with our sins.

Antiphon III Lord, if Thou shalt be wroth against us, what helper shall we find, or who will have mercy upon our infirmities? Thou didst call the woman of Chanaan and the Publican to repentance, and receive Peter as he wept; receive also our repentance, o Merciful One, and save us, o Savior of the world.

Antiphon IV With Thy unassailable wall surround us, o Lord; and with the arms of Thy might protect us always; deliver, o God, of Israel, those who cry out to Thee.

Antiphon V Hear, o Lord, the voices of Thy servants that cry to Thee, and say, ‘Lord, have mercy on us!’, and with the arms of Thy might protect us always; deliver, o God, of Israel, those who cry out to Thee.

Each version of the litany of the Saints is introduced by three Kyrie, eleisons, three repetitions of “Domine, miserere – Lord, have mercy”, three of “Christe, libera nos - Christ, deliver us”, and three of “Salvator, libera nos – o Savior, deliver us.” The names of the Saints are then sung by the cantors, to which all others answer, repeating the names and adding “intercede pro nobis.” (“Sancta Maria. – Sancta Maria, intercede pro nobis.”) In the Roman Rite, the list of the Saints is always the same, although local Saints may be added by immemorial custom; in the Ambrosian Rite, the Saints named in the litany change from one occasion to another.

St Ambrose, 1465-70, by the Sienese painter Giovanni di Paolo (1403 ca - 1482) 

On this day, after the Virgin Mary, the three Archangels are named, followed by St John the Baptist as the last prophet, and St Joseph as the last patriarch; the Apostles Peter, Paul, Andrew, Thomas and Barnabas, whose is traditionally said to be the founder of the see of Milan and its first bishop; the protomartyr Stephen, followed by the local martyrs Nazarius and Celsus, Protasius and Gervasius, Victor, Nabor and Felix, then two Easterners, George and Theodore (both soldiers, as were the three named before them); Faustinus and Jovita, the patrons of nearby Brescia, and Aquilinus; the virgin martyrs Thecla, Agnes and Pelegia; then Galdinus, Charles Borromeo, and Ambrose, who always conclude the litanies in the Ambrosian Rite. The litany ends with three repetitions of “Exaudi, Christe. R. Voces nostras. Exaudi, Deus. R. Et miserere nobis.”, (Hear, o Christ, our voices. Hear o God, and have mercy on us.), and three Kyrie eleisons.
The second collect: O God, who causest all things to benefit those who love Thee; grant to our hearts a disposition of inviolable charity; that desires conceived from Thine inspiration may not be able to be changed by any temptation. Through our Lord...

The processional antiphons for the return to the winter church.

Antiphon I We have sinned, o Lord, we have sinned: spare our sins and save us. Thou who governed Noah upon the waves of the flood, save us, and Thou who called Jonah back from the depth with a word, deliver us. Thou who stretched for Thy hand to Peter as he sank, come to our aid, o Christ, son of God.

Antiphon II Let Thy right hand lift us up straight, whom the weight of sins boweth down, et because we have fallen to the earth, may we be lifted up o Lord, by Thy mercy.

Antiphon III Lord, incline Thine ear and hear us; look down from heaven, and hear out groaning, and deliver us, o Lord, from the hand of death.

The litany concludes with the following formula each day:

Kyrie, eleison (six times)
V. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
R. Gloria Patri. Sicut erat.
V. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
R. Sucipe deprecationem nostram, qui sedes ad dexteram Patris.
V. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

R. Kyrie, eleison. Kyrie, eleison. Kyrie, eleison.

R. Benedicamus Domino. R. Fidelium animae.

“Let My Prayer Rise as Incense” by Dmitry Bortniansky - Byzantine Music for Lent

In the Byzantine Rite, the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated on the weekdays of Lent, but only on Saturdays and Sundays; an exception is made for the feast of the Annunciation. Therefore, at the Divine Liturgy on Sundays, extra loaves of bread are consecrated, and reserved for the rest of the week. On Wednesdays and Fridays, a service known as the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is held, in which Vespers is mixed with a Communion Rite. (It is also held on the first three days of Holy Week, and may be done on other occasions, but twice a week is the standard practice.)

The first part of this ceremony follows the regular order of Vespers fairly closely, and the second part imitates the Great Entrance and the Communion rite of the Divine Liturgy. After the opening Psalm (103) and the Litany of Peace, the Gradual Psalms are chanted by a reader in three blocks, while a portion of the Presanctified Gifts is removed from the tabernacle, incensed, and carried from the altar to the table of the preparation. This is followed by a general incensation of the church, as the hymns of the day are sung with the daily Psalms of Vespers (140, 141, 129 and 116), the entrance procession with the thurible, and the hymn Phos Hilaron. Two readings are given from the Old Testament (Genesis and Proverbs in Lent, Exodus and Job in Holy Week), after which, the priest stands in front of the altar and incenses it continually, while the choir sings verses of Psalm 140, with the refrain “Let my prayer rise before Thee like incense, the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice.” (The first part of this refrain is also NLM’s motto.)

This particular setting is by one of the greatest Slav composers of music for the Byzantine Liturgy, Dmitry Bortniansky, who was born in 1751 in the city of Hlukhiv in modern Ukraine. At the age of seven, he went to St Petersburg to sing with the Imperial Court Chapel, whose Italian master, Baldassare Galuppi, was so impressed with his talents that he brought him back to Italy in 1769. After ten years of training and work as a composer, Bortniansky returned to St Petersburg, and eventually became himself master of the same choir. His enormous oeuvre includes operas, instrumental compositions, songs in a variety of languages, 45 sacred concertos, and of course a very large number of liturgical compositions in Church Slavonic, like the one given above.

Medieval Art and Liturgical Objects at the Musée de Cluny in Paris (Part 5): Ivories

This is the fifth post in our series of Nicola’s photographs of an exhibition recently held at the Musée de Cluny in Paris, titled “The Middle Ages of the 19th Century - Creations and Fakes in the Fine Arts”. In this post we focus on various kinds of objects made of ivory. In ancient times, ivory was often used to make the diptychs from which were read the names of persons to be commemorated at the liturgy, a custom which continued into the early Middle Ages, and a good number of well-preserved high quality examples of these survive.   

A plaque if the Crucifixion, with allegorical figures of the Sun and the Moon above the Cross, the Church and the Synagogue to either side, (with the Virgin Mary and St John behind them), and the Ocean and the Earth beneath it. Made in Metz, France, ca. 860-70 to decorate the cover of a manuscript.

A copy made in the 19th century.

A triptych of the Adoration of the Magi, with scenes of the Baptism of Christ on the right panel, and the Beheading of the Baptist on the left, with portraits of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabelle of Castille, made by a Catalan art restorer and forger named Francisco Pallás y Puig in the late 19th or early 20th century.

Another Adoration of the Magi, made in Paris ca. 1325-50...

and a 19th century imitation.

Another piece of the 19th century, with a scene of the Annunciation.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

An Interesting Fact About Today’s Lenten Station

Several years ago, I read a very interesting book called Mourning into Joy: Music, Raphael, and Saint Cecilia, by Thomas Connolly. (Yale Univ. Press, 1995). The principal subject is Raphael’s painting The Ecstasy of St Cecilia, but it also contains a great deal of information about devotion to the Saint, at whose basilica the Lenten station is held today. I am here paraphrasing what Connolly writes about this station, and its connection to Cecilia; the credit for putting this information together is entirely his.

The Ecstasy of St Cecilia, by Raphael, 1515-17, now in the National Gallery of Bologna. To the left of St Cecilia we see Ss Paul and John the Evangelist, to the right, Ss Augustine and Mary Magdalene. The broken instruments at her feet symbolize that she has rejected the things of this world in order to “sing only to God in her heart”, as is stated in her Office.

In 1744, three inscriptions were found very close to the Basilica of St Cecilia in the Trastevere area of Rome, referring to a small shrine of the “Bona Dea”, as she was called, “the good goddess.” Although she was quite popular in ancient Rome, we know very little about this goddess, since men were excluded from participation in her cult, and it was forbidden to write down what took place at her two annual festivals. One of these was held at a temple dedicated to her on the Aventine hill, the other in the house of the senior magistrate of the Republic, presided over by his wife. During the rites, all men and male animals were excluded from the house; in fact, “Good Goddess” is a euphemistic name, since men were not allowed to speak or even know her true name. One of the most famous episodes in the history of the late Roman Republic, involving all of the leading political figures of the day, including Cicero, Pompey and Julius Caesar, took place when these rites were held in the latter’s house in 62 BC. A man named Clodius Pulcher dressed as a woman in an attempt to sneak into the rites and seduce Caesar’s wife, creating an enormous and long-lasting scandal.

The Bona Dea was a goddess very much associated with female chastity, and therefore, anything to do with the goddess of sexual desire, Venus, was also removed from the house where the rites of the Bona Dea were held. This would include any statues and images of Venus, and most particularly the plant myrtle, which was woven into crowns and worn on the head by her worshippers at her principal festivals.

When the Lenten Station is held at the Basilica of St Cecilia on the Wednesday of the Second Week, next door to a shrine of the Bona Dea, the traditional Epistle is taken from the Deuterocanonical additions to the book of Esther, the only reading from that book in the Missal. (This reading was later borrowed from this day for the votive Mass “against the pagans.” It has been suppressed in the post-Conciliar rite.) In chapter 13, Mardochai is praying for the delivery of the Jewish people from their enemy Haman, who has arranged for the Persian Emperor to order the massacre of all the Jews in his dominions.

“In those days, Mardochai prayed to the Lord, saying, ‘O Lord, Lord, almighty king, for all things are in thy power, and there is none that can resist thy will, if thou determine to save Israel. Thou hast made heaven and earth, and all things that are under the cope of heaven. Thou art Lord of all, and there is none that can resist thy majesty. And now, O Lord, O king, O God of Abraham, have mercy on thy people, because our enemies resolve to destroy us, and extinguish thy inheritance. Despise not thy portion, which thou hast redeemed for thyself out of Egypt. Hear my supplication, and be merciful to thy lot and inheritance, and turn our mourning into joy, that we may live and praise thy name, O Lord, and shut not the mouths of them that sing to thee, O Lord, our God.’ ” (vss. 9-11 and 15-17)

This is the reading as it appears in the Missal of St Pius V, but before the Tridentine reform, it began as follows: “In those days, Esther prayed to the Lord, saying…” And this, despite the fact that it is Mardochai who offers this prayer in the Bible.

A leaf of a Roman Missal printed at Lyon in 1497. The Mass for today’s station begins in the middle of the right column.

It might seem that by taking the words of a man and putting them in the mouth of a woman, the Church has somehow adopted or absorbed an aspect of the Bona Dea cult when reading these words right next door to her shrine at the Basilica of St Cecilia. This is not the case, however. In chapter 2, 7, it is stated that Esther, (who becomes the Queen of Persia, and saves the Jews from Haman) was called “Hadassah,” (הֲדַסָּה) which is the Hebrew word for “myrtle”, the plant of Venus that was excluded from the rites of the Bona Dea. This would therefore be a deliberate critique of the Bona Dea, and a statement of rejection of the many pagan cults that excluded one class of persons or another.

On the Roman Mass, Don’t Take Your Cue from Fortescue

Separated by over 100 years, with the advantage going to Fiedrowicz

This article is a combined effort of Gregory’s and mine. - PAK

Undoubtedly Adrian Fortescue is a fascinating figure, rather eccentric in some ways (see Aidan Nichols’ biography) – a biting critic of Pius X, e.g., whom he called “an Italian lunatic” – but it must be borne in mind that his liturgical scholarship is somewhat out of date, and actually wrong in certain respects. It is thus a source of near daily frustration to find well-intentioned people online citing his book The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy from 1912 as if it were the final word on the topic, when in fact there are much better resources that have appeared in the last 114 (!) years.

The internet promised to give everyone access to all information, but interestingly, I have noticed that it actually tends in a different direction: it encourages access to what is old because it’s in the public domain, and thus promotes an odd kind of time-trapped referentiality, at least in areas where genuine progress has occurred. Recent books are copyrighted and have to be bought and studied; they can’t be downloaded and searched quite as readily, so they are neglected or not even recognized. Our cutting-edge technology has, in fact, made us lazy regurgitators of low-hanging information.
 

Image courtesy of Corpus Christi Watershed

Fortescue’s gravest error – and the one that would cause the greatest mischief later – is an assumption he shares with many other scholars of his time: namely, that the “original” text and order of the Roman Canon was wildly disturbed over the course of time by any number of omissions, transpositions, rewrites, etc. deliberate or accidental. This simply flies in the face of everything that is attested in all the ancient manuscripts of the Canon, which are astonishingly consistent from one to another, and fundamentally very similar to what we find in the Gelasian Sacramentary, and thenceforth in all pertinent liturgical books of the Roman Rite.

Behind that lies the equally false and equally pernicious assumption that in ancient times, the various major churches (not just Rome) routinely trashed their older, and hence “more authentic” tradition in favor of novelties, feeding into the narrative that this is a routine occurrence and a normal procedure. It is certainly not.

Then, we have the problem that scholars assumed that X, Y, or Z thing which is attested in all the pertinent liturgical books as far back as we have them nevertheless does not represent the “original” (and hence “more authentic”) tradition. They will then be only too delighted to reconstruct that “original” and hence “more authentic” tradition on the basis of various theories. So, e.g., since the Eastern rites make a great deal of the pneumatic epiclesis, but the Roman Rite doesn’t have one, the Roman Rite must “originally” have had one and somehow lost it at some point.

(The late, great, and much-missed Fr John Hunwicke wrote a fine series on that specific topic; you can find all the links in “Reforming the Canon of the Mass: Some Considerations from Fr Hunwicke.”)

In a similar vein, we have the assumption that the Roman Mass must have had two readings before the Gospel, because some of the Eastern rites do (that is false, and there is no evidence for it), and similar extrapolations from the false premise that all rites are descended from a single early and primitive rite; therefore, what one has and another doesn’t must have “fallen out of” the other.

So the whole section in Fortescue on the “liturgical uniformity” of the first three centuries basically needs to be torn out and discarded; it is the opposite of the truth. The historical trajectory is that liturgies begin very varied and diverse, and over time, gradually assimilate to the forms of the nearest dominant see.

He accepts the error, very common in his time, that the Leonine Sacramentary is a sacramentary. It isn’t; it’s a private compilation of libelli Missarum, the Masses composed by the priests of the churches of Rome. Basically, everything they thought they knew about the so-called Apostolic Constitutions in the early twentieth century is wrong.

St. Hippolytus

Anything he says anywhere about “Hippolytus” has to be dismissed if he says it in reference to Rome. The whole Hippolytus construct completely collapsed when Margarita Guarducci presented a key piece of evidence at a conference held in Rome in 1974 that demonstrated the falsity of everything patristic scholars had built up over him before then. Even a figure as progressivist as Fr. John Baldovin candidly admits that there is nothing to the Hippolytus legend on the basis of which the Second Eucharistic Prayer was cobbled together.

When it comes to evidence drawn from the Fathers, one has to check and see if the sermon that is being quoted is authentic. This is an especially big problem with St. Augustine. If a sermon of his witnesses to a particular reading in the Mozarabic liturgy, one needs to check if the sermon was actually written by him, or passed off under his name after that reading had been fixed in the Mozarabic tradition.

Having said all this, I am not arguing that Fortescue’s book on the liturgy is without value; I am simply saying that one must consult more recent and better studies, such as Fr. Uwe Michael Lang’s 2022 book from Cambridge University Press, The Roman Mass: From Early Christian Origins to Tridentine Reform, which covers in superb academic detail all that is known about the development of the Roman rite from antiquity to the Tridentine reform (i.e., AD 33 to 1570). (The original hardcover was very pricey but a paperback edition has finally come out.) Fr. Lang also published A Short History of the Roman Mass in 2024. These works, in their own quiet way, do more to sweep away the misconceptions held by modern liturgical reformers than Fortescue, who never lived to see the awful things done by liturgists after him.

A very accessible one-volume work that accomplishes less in historical detail than Lang, but more in terms of an overall assessment of the “rightness” of the traditional Roman Rite against its attempted replacement, is Patristic scholar Dr. Michael Fiedrowicz’s The Traditional Mass: History, Form, and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite, published in English translation in 2020 by Angelico Press. This is the book I always recommend to people who are looking for a scholarly introduction.

(It bears mentioning that Fortescue’s book The Orthodox Eastern Church, which has been reprinted in a newly typeset edition, remains one of the finest historical, patristic, and ecclesiological investigations of the vexed relationship between Eastern and Western Christianity, and has much to contribute to the newly volcanic apologetics world that has sprouted up online. Unlike his book on the Roman Mass, The Orthodox Eastern Church is out of date only in a charming way, namely, its description of the early 20th-century Orthodox churches, countries, and peoples, which have changed a lot since then.)