A document dated to March of 1312 attests that an Italian cardinal named Gentile Partino, a member of the Franciscan Order, commissioned a chapel to be added to the lower basilica of St Francis in Assisi, dedicated to St Martin of Tours, whose feast is kept today. Later that spring, His Eminence was in Siena, and commissioned the painter Simone Martini, a native of that city, to go to Assisi and decorate the chapel with a series of frescos of the titular Saint’s life. The cardinal himself died in October of that year; Martini would complete his work in the chapel in three phases, ending in 1318. Martin is one of the very first confessors to be widely venerated in the West, partly because of a biography of him written by a contemporary and friend named Sulpicius Severus. The stories presented here are partly based on it, but also on traditional legends which are not in Sulpicius’ work.
The cycle begins with the most famous story of Martin’s life, that when he was a young soldier serving near Amiens, and still only a catechumen, he met a half-naked beggar, and having nothing else to share with him, cut his own cloak in two and gave the beggar one of the halves.
That night, Christ appeared to him in a dream holding the piece of the cloak, saying “Martin, while still a catechumen, covered me with this garment.” This direct quote from Sulpicius’ biography is the first antiphon of Matins of St Martin.
Although it may seem like a folk-etymology, it is actually true that the word “chapel” derives from the Latin word for cloak, “cappa”, in reference to the relic of St Martin’s cloak. As explained by the Catholic Encyclopedia, “This cape, or its representative, was afterwards preserved as a relic and accompanied the Frankish kings in their wars, and the tent which sheltered it became known also as cappella or capella. In this tent Mass was celebrated by the military chaplains (capellani). When at rest in the palace the relic likewise gave its name to the oratory where it was kept, and subsequently any oratory where Mass and Divine service were celebrated was called capella (in Latin), chapelle (in French), chapel.”
Sulpicius then says that Martin continued to served as a soldier for two years. His military service is anachronistically represented here by the medieval rite of the investiture of a knight.
As the barbarians invade Gaul, Martin renounces his military service before the emperor Julian the Apostate, in order to dedicate his life to serving Christ.
The cycle now jumps over the years when Martin lived as a monk to his episcopacy, which began in 371. The story shown here, which is in the Golden Legend, but not in Sulpicius, tells that Martin had a request to make of the emperor Valentinian, something which the emperor did not wish to grant, and therefore forbade Martin entrance to the palace on two occasions. After a week of fasting and wearing of a hairshirt, Martin was told by an angel to return, and he was able to gain access to the throne room. The emperor was at first greatly angered by this, but then his throne was engulfed in flames, and his majesty singed on his hind parts. He offered Martin everything he intended to ask for, but in the Golden Legend’s telling, Martin inexplicably refuses it.
Martin raises a man from the dead; the first responsory at Matins refers to the tradition that he such a miracle three times. However, the Roman version of the lessons does not include a passage found in many others, that he himself said that he had not received such great grace in the episcopacy as he had before it, since he raised two men from the dead before he became a bishop, but only one after.
As he celebrates Mass, a globe of fire appears over him. Commenting on the liturgical texts for his feast day, William Durandus writes (Rat. Div. Off. VII, 37), “He is called ‘equal to the Apostles’, not, as some people think, because he raised people from the dead, since many other martyrs and confessors have done the same; nor because of the multitude of his miracles, but especially because of one particular miracle... (while he was celebrating Mass) a globe of fire appeared over his head, by which it was shown that the Holy Spirit had descended upon him… as He came upon the Apostles at Pentecost. Whence he is rightly called ‘equal to the Apostles,’ and is indeed equal to them in the liturgy.”
A famous legend of St Ambrose tells that he once fell into a deep sleep for several hours during services in church, and on waking, told his clergy that he had been present for the funeral of St Martin in the city of Tours. (St Martin actually died in the same year as St Ambrose, but 7 months later.)
The death of St Martin...
and his burial; at top, his soul is accompanied to heaven by angels.
This last part of the fresco cycle represents Cardinal Partino kneeling before St Martin as a sign that he is offering the chapel to him.
The large arch that leads into the chapel is decorated with eight portraits of Saints: Anthony of Padua and Francis...
Clare and Elizabeth of Hungary
Louis IX, the king of France, and Louis of Toulouse
And how parents and teachers can work together in this formation.
Here is my article on the supernatural end of Catholic education, recently published by Gravissimum: The Catholic Classical Education Journal. I was invited to contribute to the edition that commemorates the 60th anniversary of the promulgation of Gravissimum Educationis.
Summary: Both the Second Vatican Council’s Gravissimum Educationis and Pope Pius XI’s Divini Illius Magistri of 1929 state that the mission of Catholic education is to cooperate with divine grace in forming individuals whose lives are oriented toward eternal union with God. Their emphasis is on an education that transcends mere intellectual or civic development, aiming to form individuals who live a supernatural life in Christ. Central to achieving this mission is a formation that fosters right worship through liturgical participation and the family, recognized as the primary educator, especially in the context of the domestic church.
Union with God – theosis – is the end of the Christian life, and we sometimes forget that not only as educators, but sometimes even as Catholics!
Since today is the anniversary of the death of Pope St Leo I in 461, and his feast day in the post-Conciliar Rite, it seems like a good day for the seventh and final installment of this series on the thirteen papal namesakes of our new Holy Father Leo XIV; click these links to read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6.
Before the reign of Bl. Pius IX (1846-78), nine among the successors of St Peter (numbering 254 at that point) had reigned for more than 20 years, but none had ever reached the 25 years traditionally ascribed to Peter himself. For many centuries, therefore, it had been part of the papal coronation ritual that as soon as the cardinal archbishop of Ostia placed the crown on a new pope’s head, he would say to him, “Numquam videbis annos Petri. – Thou shalt never see the years of Peter”: a way of reminding him, amid the glories of the Church’s highest office, that like all popes, he is the steward of Another.
But Pius IX did in fact live to see the years of Peter, surpassing the 25-year mark in 1871, and living for more than 6½ years beyond that. This custom was then removed from the coronation rite, and his successor, Leo XIII, reigned for exactly 25 years and 4 months. (St John Paul II, who beatified Pius IX in 2003, also surpassed it, reigning for a bit less than 26½ years.) Pope Leo was over 93 at the time of his death, and had been in the service of the Church since he was in his 20s, making any attempt at a convenient summary of his career a difficult prospect.
He was born Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci on March 2, 1810, the sixth of seven children, in a small town called Carpineto, about 40 miles to the southeast of Rome. He was usually called by his middle name, which is Italian for “Joachim”. His mother’s name was Anna; as pope, Leo would raise the grade of the feasts of both of Our Lady’s parents. When he was eight, he and the brother right before him, Giuseppe, were sent to the Jesuit school in Viterbo, where he excelled especially in Latin; throughout his life, he was known for the high quality of his compositions in both prose and poetry in that language. Like most educated Italians of his era, he was also deeply interested in the works of Dante Alighieri. Giuseppe would go on to enter the Jesuit order, and become a well-respected theology professor; at his brother’s first consistory, in May of 1879, he was elevated to the cardinalate, the last man to receive that honor from a member of his immediate family.
A photograph of Cardinal Giuseppe Pecci taken in 1887.
Gioacchino completed a doctorate in theology in 1832, after which he entered the diplomatic academy, and studied canon and civil law at the University of Rome. His evident talents brought him to the attention of officials in the Curia, leading to his appointment in 1837 to various offices. Now on the track for greater promotions still, he was ordained at the very end of the year to the subdeaconate, deaconate and priesthood, all with a fortnight.
Fr Pecci’s first major responsibility was as delegate to Benevento, an exclave of the Papal State within the territory of the kingdom of Naples. The Napoleonic wars had left the south of Italy in a very disturbed state, but Fr Pecci proved himself a skilled administrator, particularly in dealing with the problem of the gangs of brigands, many of them former soldiers, who plagued the area. In the wake of this success, he was transferred to Perugia, and he did equally well there, despite strong revolutionary sentiment against the papal government. In January of 1843, he was made nuncio to Belgium, then a very new state, (founded in 1830, but only generally recognized since 1839; Pecci was only the third nuncio), where the Catholic majority was ruled by a Lutheran monarch who strongly favored the policies of the anti-Catholic Liberal party. After receiving episcopal consecration, he went to Brussels, and over the following three years, was highly effective in defending the Catholic interest, even earning the king’s good will, despite their strong political differences.
Three years later, however, on the death of the bishop of Perugia, Pope Gregory XVI, at the request of the populace, decided to appoint Mgr. Pecci as his successor. He arrived in Rome very shortly before the pope’s death on June 1, 1846, and took possession of his see, where he would remain for the next 32 years, about two months later.
The church of St Constantius (‘Costanzo’ in Italian), the first bishop of Perugia, traditionally said to have died as a martyr in the persecution of Marcus Aurelius, ca. 170. The construction was begun by Bp Pecci, but the decoration was not concluded until some time after his papal election. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Lumen roma, CC BY-SA 3.0)
The diocese of Perugia flourished under his long episcopacy, despite the many difficulties visited upon it by the anti-clericalism and thievery of the Italian government during the so-called Risorgimento. He took close interest in his seminary, occasionally teaching and examining there in person, and in the other educational institutions under his jurisdiction, and built more than fifty new churches. Although he did not waver in his support of the Holy See and the Papal State, he managed to do so with great tact, and was not disturbed in the possession of his see by the government, even after Perugia was occupied in 1859. (For comparison, the much more important see of Bologna, once the second city of the Papal State, remained vacant for three years after the city was occupied by the anticlerical government.)
Pius IX had made Pecci a cardinal in 1853; in 1877, he appointed him chamberlain of the Apostolic See, a position which required him to live in Rome. Pius died less than five months later, on February 7, and Cardinal Pecci, now close to 68, was elected pope on February 20, taking the name Leo XIII partly in honor of Leo XII, who had been pope when he was beginning his ecclesiastical career.
The cheaper and more facile sorts of histories that abound in our era, and especially within the Church, have been wont to cast Pius IX as a hopeless reactionary, determined to keep the Church stuck in a world that had passed away, and Leo XIII as the forward-thinking progressive who finally embraced the modern world in all its glory. Even Italian Wikipedia, which is generally quite good on Church history, says that Leo’s choice of name was intended as a deliberate sign of change, without mentioning that it had long been customary for popes to not repeat the name of their predecessors (only six have done so in the last 1000 years), and that if there was ever a modern pope who deserved the title of reactionary, it was Leo XII.
A contemporary engraving of the moment of Leo XIII’s papal coronation. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)
One of my teachers, the late Fr Reginald Foster OCD, who worked as a Latin secretary in the Vatican for 41 years, was a great admirer of his fellow Latinist Leo XIII, and one of his favorite anecdotes about him perfectly illustrates this classic misrepresentation of him. The title of Leo’s famous encyclical on the condition of laborers, “Rerum novarum”, seems to mean “of new things”, until, as Fr Foster would say, “you look in your dictionary and see that ‘res novae’ means ‘revolution’. Then you need to look at the words that follow, ‘semel excitata cupidine’, and what you have there means, ‘Once the lust for revolution has been stirred up...’ He wasn’t in favor of it, my friends!”
Despite the many successes of Pius’ reign, when Leo XIII took the throne, anti-clericalism was very much on the ascendant throughout the formerly Catholic world, not just in Italy. In 1870, the kingdom of Italy had seized the remains of the Papal State, where it continued its policy of stealing from the Church as much as it dared. Pius IX had withdrawn into the Vatican and refused to cooperate with the existence of this government of brigands by setting foot on the soil which it illegally occupied. Like him, Leo XIII would remain a “prisoner in the Vatican” for the rest of his life, as would Pius X and Benedict XV after him. He is buried in the Lateran basilica, in fact, because he was the first pope in centuries who was never able to visit the building, his own cathedral, as pope.
He also continued Pius IX’s policy of prohibiting Catholics from participating in the political life of the Italian state, an extension of this standing protest. This policy ultimately failed, and was gradually walked back by his successors; I make note of it here because it gives the lie to the overly simplistic view of his papacy as a drastic volte face from that of Pius.
The heart of European anti-clericalism was in France; Leo’s attempts to persuade the Catholic monarchists to accept the Republic fell flat, but the crisis which led to yet another wave of persecution, and concomitant massive theft of the Church’s property, did not hit until early in the reign of Pius X. In Germany, the ludicrous spectacle of Bismark’s Kulturkampf fell apart under its own weight, the position of Catholics became much more favorable, and the pope received the Lutheran Kaiser Wilhelm II in the Vatican three times, on very cordial terms. Concordats were established with various states that protected the interests of Catholics and the Church.
Leo took great interest in the Eastern Catholic Churches, and is remembered as a good friend to them, and as the pope who initiated the process by which their rites and customs were purged of Romanizations. A schism among the Armenian Catholics was ended, and a college for them was established in Rome, along with another for the Ruthenians. Unfortunately, if there was ever a monarch who could be called a reactionary, it was the Russian Tsar Alexander III, who came to the throne in 1881. The barbaric persecution of Ruthenian Catholics in the Russian Empire worsened, and diplomatic relations with the Holy See were not restored until shortly before the Alexander’s death in 1894. The first impetus towards the foundation of a Russian Catholic Church began in Leo’s reign, led by the philosopher Volodymyr Soloviov.
The famous portrait of Cardinal Newman made in 1881 by Sir John Everett Millais. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons)
Catholicism continued to grow during Leo’s papacy in both England and the United States, both of which also were of special interest to him. As Pius IX had restored the Catholic hierarchy in England, so Leo did in Scotland in the very first year of his papacy, and established it in British India in 1886. At his very first consistory, held in 1879, he made St John Henry Newman, the most prominent convert in England, a cardinal. The building of Westminster Cathedral was begun, and the church was opened for services very shortly before his death. Leo also issued the encyclical Apostolic Curae, recognizing the non-validity of Anglican sacramental orders.
In 1886, he made the archbishop of Baltimore, James Gibbons, a cardinal, only the second American to receive that honor. (Over 25 years and four months, Leo held 27 consistories, at which a total of 147 cardinals were appointed. The number of cardinals was then fixed at 70, which means he fully remade the College twice.) Cardinal Gibbons would later receive the letter Testem Benevolentiae against “Americanism”, one expression among many of the idea that the conditions of modern life required changes to the deposit of Faith, anticipating the general condemnation of modernism later made by Pius X.
Over the course of his 25-year papacy, he issued 85 encyclicals. Comparing this to Pius IX’s 36, issued over 31 years, it is fair to see here an overinflation, and consequent devalution, of the papal magisterium, not the first in its long history. This is balanced somewhat by their comparative brevity; all 11 of his encyclicals on the Rosary together are shorter than St John Paul II’s one. Among the most notable of these, apart from those previously mentioned, are Aeterni Patris, which reestablished the preeminence of Scholastic and Thomistic philosophy, and Providentissimus Deus, on Biblical studies.
There are many anecdotes one could tell about such a long pontificate; I include here one which I had the pleasure of sharing with the late Fr John Hunwicke, himself also a great scholar of classical languages and literature. On one occasion, Pope Leo woke up in the middle of the night, and began ringing the bell for his servants, shouting “Il piede! Il piede!”, Italian for “foot.” They assumed he had hurt his foot and wanted a doctor, but what he wanted was pen and paper. He had just solved, in his sleep (as one does) the problem of a metrical foot in a poem he was working on, and waking up with the solution in his head, he wanted to jot it down before he forgot it.
He also has the interesting distinction of being not just the first pope to be filmed, but the earliest born person to be filmed, and the first pope to have his voice recorded. In this video, the sound recording, made in 1903, of the Pope singing the Ave, Maria, is imposed on the film made in 1896.
At the time of his election, he seemed to many to be in rather poor health. Like Leo XII, he predicted at the time of his election that his own reign would be brief; unlike Leo XII’s, his prediction proved false. Not only did he become the second pope in a row to surpass the years of Peter, as noted at the beginning of this article; at 93, he died as the oldest pope in all of history. (This should be qualified by noting that Pope St Agatho, who died in 681, is traditionally said to have been 107 at the time of his decease, but this cannot be verified. Benedict XVI was 95 at the time of his death, but, of course, not pope.) In the later years of his papacy, there was a popular joke in Italy that the cardinals had tried to elect a Holy Father, but had elected an Eternal Father instead.
In honor of the dedication feast of the cathedral of Rome, the Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior, popularly known as St John in the Lateran, here are some interesting thoughts from the medieval liturgical commentator William Durandus on the Office and Mass of the dedication of a church. (Rationale Divinorum Officiorum 7, 48) The version of the Office which Durandus knows is slightly different from the version in the Breviary of St Pius V, as will be noted in the text itself.
The high altar of St John in the Lateran. (Photo by Fr Kevin Kimtis.)
The feast (of a church’s dedication) is solemnly celebrated by the Church, concerning which it is written in John’s Gospel (10, 22 and 23) “It was the ‘renewal’ ”, that is, the feast of the dedication in Jerusalem, “and Jesus walked in the temple, in Solomon’s porch” in order to confirm that festival. It is called Solomon’s porch, because He was wont to pray there, and did so on the day of the dedication. (In many medieval Uses, such as that of Sarum, this Gospel, John 10, 22-38, was read on the octave of a dedication.)
This feast also took place in the Old Testament, whence we read in the book of Maccabees (1 Macc. 4, 42-43), “Judah Maccabee chose priests without blemish, and they cleansed the holy places.” Now the Church Militant can be cleansed, but not the Church Triumphant… * the Church on earth is built in baptism (i.e. washing), and in teaching, and in penance; here are heard (the noise of) the axe and every sort of metal tool, which are the many kinds of penances and disciplines in the Church Militant, … but the temple of Solomon signifies the Church Triumphant, in which these things are not heard.
The Jews celebrated the dedication for eight days, whence it seems that we likewise ought to solemnly keep the feast of the dedication for eight days. But it is strange that they celebrated it for eight days, when they kept Passover and Pentecost for only seven. The reason for this is that this festivity especially signifies the eternal dedication, in which the Church, that is, the holy soul, will be dedicated to God, that is, will be so joined to him that it cannot be transferred to other uses. And this will take place on the octave of resurrection, and therefore, in the New Testament, this feast has an octave. (In Durandus’ original text, this paragraph is actually where the red star is marked above, interrupting his allegorical passage about cleansing the Church.)
In the Office of Matins are said those Psalms in which there is a mention of doors, which represent fear and love, as in the Psalm “The earth is the Lord’s”, where it says “Lift up your gates, o ye princes” (23); those in which there is mention of an altar, as in the Psalm, “Judge me, o God, etc.” (42, not in the Roman Use); those in which there is mention of a city, such as “Our God is a refuge” and “Great is the Lord” (45 and 47); those in which there is mention of atria and gates, such as “How lovely are thy tabernacles” and “Her foundations are in the holy mountains.” (83 and 86)
Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz during the consecration of the seminary chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the FSSP Seminary in Denton, Nebraska. After sprinkling the outside of the church with holy water, the bishop knocks on the door three times with his crozier, saying the words of Psalm 23, “Lift up your gates, o ye princes, and be lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the king of glory shall come in.” From within, the deacon answers from the same psalm, “Who is this king of glory?”, and the bishop replies “the Lord of hosts, he is the king of Glory!” A porter then opens the door, and the bishop blesses the threshold, saying “Behold the sign of the Cross, let all phantasms flee,” then, as he enters, “Peace to this house” to which the deacon replies “Upon thy entrance. Amen.”
But the question arises, why is the Psalm “O Lord, God of my salvation” (87) said? To this, some say that it is because burials are mentioned in it, but this reason is not correct, since the Psalm does not speak of such burials as those in which the bodies of the faithful dwell, or are buried in a church, but rather of the burials of the wicked. Wherefore, we say that that Psalm is said because it is a penitential Psalm, and treats especially of prayer, which is to take place in a church; whence it is said therein, “Let my prayer come in before thee.” And the Lord says of the Church, “My house shall be called a house of prayer.”
But the eighth Psalm (seventh in the Roman Use) is “He that dwelleth in the aid of the Most High” (90), that is, in the Church, in which it is said, “thou hast made the most High thy refuge,” because the Church is founded above all, on the height of the mountains.
The last antiphon, that of the Magnificat at Vespers, is “Eternal peace,” since the dedication is celebrated for this reason, that we may dedicated, and have that eternal peace.
(This antiphon, incorrectly labelled in the video as the Salve regina, is found in the Dedication Office in most medieval Uses, with a number of minor textual variations. Note the long melisma on the O of the last ‘domui.’ “Pax aeterna ab Aeterno huic domui; pax perennis Verbum Patris sit pax huic domui; pacem pius Consolator praestet huic domui. - Eternal peace this house from the Eternal One; may the Word of the Father be everlasting peace to this house; may the Holy Comforter grant peace to this house.”)
… To this feast certainly belongs Jacob’s vision of the ladder, and the angels ascending and descending, which is to say, he saw the whole Church in one vision, and raised up a stone, that is, Christ, who is the cap-stone, and the corner-stone, and foundation, who supports all the rest. He raised it up as a title of proclamation, of memory, of triumph, pouring oil upon it. For Jacob, who signifies the bishop, poured oil upon the stone, that is, on Christ, to show forth His anointings, and prophesied the same, saying, “How terrible is this place! this is no other but the house of God, and the gate of heaven. Indeed the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not.” (Gen. 28, 17 and 16)
For the Church is terrible to demons, because of the likeness which it has to God, and therefore this is the Introit at the Mass, “Terrible is this place.” There follows “and it will be called the court of God.” The blessed Gregory added these words of his own initiative, since God is ready to hear us therein, as the Lord said to Solomon, “I have heard thy prayer etc.” But why it is terrible is shown in the verse, “The Lord hath reigned, he is clothed with beauty,” that is, in His members, and therefore the Church is terrible to demons. …
The Gradual “This place”, that is, the material church, “is holy”, because it is sanctified for this purpose, that the Lord may hear payers in it, and therefore it gives holiness to those praying. For Solomon prayed that the Lord might hear those who pray there, and the Lord said to him, “Thy prayer is heard.”
From the Breviary according to the use of the Roman Curia, 1529, the end of the sermon for the second day in the Octave of All Saints.
We believe that this day’s festivity also belongs to the priests of Christ, to the doctors, levites and other confessors and monks; in whose hearts virtue flourished, because the world had faded away. Because the will of the flesh was mortified, true charity was fervent in them, and because they were dead to the world, they lived within in it as the Saints live in Heaven. For the more a man takes delight in this world below, the more is he separated from the love of the things of Heaven. Therefore, these holy men, fleeing the world that passes and the corrupting passions of the soul, had God before them and the Angels at their sides, and so merited to be brought by the Angels into the kingdom of Heaven.
Scenes from the Lives of the Holy Hermits, or “Thebaid”, by Paolo Uccello, 1460s; now in the Academia Gallery in Florence. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons.)
From the Breviary of St Pius V, 1568, a passage from the fifth sermon on the feast of All Saints by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot and Doctor of the Church, read on November 6th. (In the painting above, St Bernard is represented in the lower left hand corner as the Virgin Mary appears to him.)
What does it profit the Saints that we should praise them or glorify them? What does this solemnity of ours benefit them? What are earthly honors to them whom, according to faithful promise of the Son, the heavenly Father honors? What are our commendations to them? They are full. It is indeed so, dearly beloved; the Saints have no need of our goods, and our devotion gives them nothing. It is for our sake, and not for theirs, that we honor their memory. … It is commonly said, “Out of sight, out of mind”. (literally “What the eye sees not, the heart does not long for.”) The memory is a kind of sight, and to think of the Saints, is to see them in a certain way. Such is our portion in the land of the living; no small portion, indeed, if love accompany remembrance as it ought. And so I say, our dwelling is in heaven, though in manner very different from theirs. For they are truly there, where we long to be; they are there in presence, we only in thought.
The Glory of All the Saints, by the Tuscan painter Giovanni da San Giovanni, 1630; fresco in the apse of the church of the Four Crowned Martyrs, Rome; the titular Saints of this church share their feast day with the octave of All Saints.
For many years now, the Fraternity of St Peter’s church in Rome, Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, has had the custom of exposing all its relics for the veneration of the faithful on All Saints’ day. In the evening, before Vespers, each reliquary is presented before the congregation, and the name of the Saint or Saints whose relics in it are read out. On the side altar of St Matthew, St Phillip Neri, who founded the confraternity that built the church, is given special prominence. (The bronze reliquary seen to the left side of the altar here is also of St Phillip, but is not held up before the faithful, since it is incredibly heavy.) Our thanks once again for the pictures to Don Elvir Tabaković, a former professional photographer from Croatia who is now in religious life, and using his skills to celebrate the beauty of the liturgy.
The sacristan returns one of the relics to its place on the altar.
Relics on the high altar.
At the end, the church’s piece of the True Cross is processed down and up the central aisle, before the faithful are blessed with it.
A friend recently brought to my attention a Taiwan-based YouTube channel called “The Heritage of Chinese Sacred Music by Fr Vincent Lebbe.” Fr Frédéric-Vincent Lebbe (1877 – 1940) was a Belgian, born in the Flemish city of Ghent, who entered the Congregations of the Mission (a.k.a. Lazarists) in 1895, and spent much of his life in China, from 1901-20, and again from 1928 until his death in 1940.
One of the great challenges for missionary work in a country with such a proud and ancient history, but then in the throes of a decades-long series of civils wars and political crises, was to present the Christian faith not as an instrument to further the domination and exploitation of China by foreign powers, but as a call to salvation in Christ valid for all nations and cultures. Fr Lebbe’s views on this subject were expressed by a slogan he promoted through the Chinese-language newspaper he founded, “Return China to the Chinese and the Chinese will go to Christ.” They were the cause of much controversy within his congregation, and with the French government, leading to his recall to Europe for a period of about 8 years. But he was thoroughly vindicated by the publication in 1919 of Benedict XV’s apostolic letter Maximum illud, which among other things, says (paragraph 20):
We have been deeply saddened by some recent accounts of missionary life, accounts that displayed more zeal for the profit of some particular nation than for the growth of the kingdom of God. We have been astonished at the indifference of their authors to the amount of hostility these works stir up in the minds of unbelievers. This is not the way of the Catholic missionary, not if he is worthy of the name. No, the true missionary is always aware that he is not working as an agent of his country, but as an ambassador of Christ. And his conduct is such that it is perfectly obvious to anyone watching him that he represents a Faith that is alien to no nation on earth, since it embraces all who worship God in spirit and in truth, a Faith in which “there is neither Gentile, nor Jew, neither circumcised nor uncircumcised, no barbarian, no Scythian, no slave, no free man, but Christ is all in all.” (Col. 3, 11).
The enduring importance of this letter as a charter for missionary work may be noted in the fact that it is the only one of Benedict XV’s apostolic letters which is available on the Vatican website in any language other than Latin. While in Europe, Fr Lebbe continued to promote the cause of reform of the missions, and in no small part because of his influence, the first native Chinese bishops, six of them, were consecrated by Pope Pius XI personally in St Peter’s basilica on October 28, 1926. (It is surely not a coincidence that Maximum illud was issued on the feast of the St Andrew, and these consecrations were done on the feast of Ss Simon and Jude, three Apostles known for evangelizing lands to the east of Europe and the Roman Empire, and whose relics are (or were) kept in St Peter’s.)
The first six native Chinese bishops of modern times, photographed outside St Peter’s basilica after their episcopal consecration. On the left, Bishops Joseph Hu Ruoshan, Simon Zhu Kaimin, and Philip Zhao Huaiyi; in the middle, Bp (later Cardinal) Francesco Marchetti, then Secretary of Propaganda Fide, Willem Cardinal Van Rossum, Prefect of Propaganda Fide, and Abp Celso Costantini, then the papal delegate to China, (later cardinal, and secretary of Propaganda Fidei); on the right, Bishops Melchior Sun Dezhen, Odoric Cheng Hede, and Aloysius Chen Guodi. (Copyright of the Société des Auxiliaires des Missions, with permission for educational use.)
In Fr Lebbe’s time, the Church had not yet made the great leap forward into the deleterious modern understanding of inculturation, in which the liturgy is absorbed by the culture of the surrounding society. Rather, the culture of each society, the best of it, was put into the service of the liturgy, but it was a given, as it always had been, that the liturgy itself was received by the local church along with the Faith from the church that evangelized it. Fr Lebbe therefore set a large portion of the Roman liturgy to Chinese, while retaining the original liturgical forms, literary content and music as far as possible. (I am given to understand, however, that the Chinese language represents a unique challenge for translation from any European language, and that many Chinese Catholics were opposed to the use of their native tongue in the liturgy, on the grounds that it was simply incapable of expressing the full and true sense of the original texts. If anyone can comment further on this, I would be interested to hear from you in the combox.)
Here then is a selection of just a few videos from among the more than 300 on the channel. Since it is Saturday, Our Lady’s day, I have chosen the hymns of Her Little Office; the fact that they were all set to music in more than one version indicates that the Little Office was in fact being sung in the churches of these missions, and often enough that some variety was felt to be desirable in the music, since the text changes very little from day to day for most of the year.
The hymn for Vespers, Ave, Maris Stella.
For Compline and the other little Hours, Memento, rerum Conditor.
The antiphon Sub tuum praesidium, one of the oldest Marian liturgical texts that exists, with the canticle Nunc dimittis.
At Matins, Quem terra, pontus, sidera.
At Lauds, O gloriosa virginum.
The solemn Salve, Regina.
I have also recently become acquainted via YouTube with the work of Dr Sarah Paine, who teaches history at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island; there are several of her lectures on this channel, https://www.youtube.com/@DwarkeshPatel, and her presentation style is witty and very engaging. Although she doesn’t talk about the Church in China, these two lectures will give you a good sense of the context, and the extraordinary difficulties, faced by Fr Lebbe and other missionaries in that country in the later 19th and early 20th centuries, and particularly of the resentments which the Chinese felt against the foreign powers operating on their soil.
From the Breviary according to the use of the Roman Curia, 1529, the continuation of the sermon for the second day in the Octave of All Saints.
It is well-known that at first this day’s glorious solemnity honored the triumphal name of the holy martyrs, for the church whose dedication we recall was first called Saint Mary of the Martyrs, and the feasts of holy martyrs alone were celebrated therein. There are many Saints before those times who passed from this present life without shedding their blood; nevertheless they are honored with the title of martyrdom, because they suffered in some way, namely, by exile, by the loss of their goods, by long imprisonment, or harsh beatings, though at last they died in peace. Therefore, no outward savagery of the wicked was strong enough to disturb the spiritual tranquility of these and all the other holy martyrs, even though their members were tormented with every sort of torture, and to every degree. In these the Lord has given use both a defense and an example, so that we may be helped by the protection of their prayers, and be encouraged by the perseverance of their constant faith to overcome all temptations.
The chapel of St Eusebius in the cathedral of Vercelli, Italy, where he served as bishop from 340-71. Eusebius was one of the very first Western Saints to be venerated as a martyr because of the lengthy exile he suffered, although he did not die by shedding his blood. (Below, a closer view of the reliquary above the main altar.)
Memento etiam, Dómine, famulórum famularumque tuárum N.et N. qui nos praecessérunt cum signo fídei, et dormiunt in somno pacis.
Ipsis, Dómine, et ómnibus in Christo quiescéntibus, locum refrigerii, lucis et pacis, ut indúlgeas, deprecámur. Per eundem Christum Dóminum nostrum. Amen.
Which I translate as:
Remember also, O Lord, Thy servants and handmaids N. et N., who are gone before us with the sign of Faith and rest in the sleep of peace.
We beg that You indulge these, O Lord, and all who rest in Christ, with a place of refreshment, light, and peace. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.
The language mirrors that which is in the standard Catholic prayer for the faithful departed: “Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.” What the Ipsis, Domine in particular adds is the notion of refreshment or refrigerium, a word upon which we dwell in this essay at some length.
The Ipsis, Domine is of special interest to those who are curious about what is lost in translation since one of its expressions was used by the liturgical reformers of the 1960s as a reason to reject literal translations of the sacred liturgy, and to embrace what would come to be called “dynamic equivalence.” On January 25, 1969, the Consilium for Implementing the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy issued “Comme le Prevoit – On the Translation of Liturgical Texts for Celebrations with a Congregation.” The document, which argues that translations should be “suited to the greater number of the faithful who speak it in everyday use, even ‘children and persons of small education’” (15a) (might we dare say “baby talk”?) includes the following clause:
The metaphors must be changed to keep the true sense, as in locum refrigerii in northern regions. (23b)
The authors are referring to the fact that refrigerium literally refers to a “cooling” since it is from the verb refrigero, “to cool off” (hence the name for our modern appliance, the refrigerator). Their assumption is that the idea of a cool space only appeals to people in hot climates, and so the metaphor needs to be changed for colder parts of the globe. [1]
Whether that assumption is valid is debatable. When describing the “small but richly diverse world” of his character Virginia Troy, who lives in the northern regions of England and Scotland, Evelyn Waugh writes approvingly that it “was one of coolness, light and peace”—an obvious allusion to this prayer. [2] A locum refrigerii can also refer not to the temperature of a room but to a place that provides a cool, refreshing drink, which appeals to anyone who has been working outside and develops a hot thirst, even in the coldest of weather (see illustration below).
According to Comme le Prevoit, he should not be enjoying that.
There are four other problems as well with Comme le Prevoit 23b. First, refrigerium does not only mean coolness and therefore does not require a radical reinterpretation based on climate. Second, even if it did, every Apostolic liturgy, in imitation of the Incarnation itself, has some “scandal of particularity.” Third, the particular “scandal” of refrigerium is that it is ideally suited to designate the remedy for the souls in Purgatory. Fourth, a locum refrigerii is not, as the authors of Comme le Prevoit presume, a metaphor at all but another “scandalously” particular allusion.
1. The Christian Meaning of Refrigerium
It is true that refrigerium denotes coolness. In the devilishly godly humor of (Eastern Orthodox believer) Jason Peters, locum refrigerii is code for the kitchen – “whence all sickness, sorrow, and sighing have fled” – in part because it is where “Mr. Freezer” gets to meet “Mr. Martini glass.” [3] Peters even makes full use of the Ipsis, Domine, albeit in a way its pious author(s) never intended:
You ignore [Walker Percy’s essay] on bourbon at your own peril. One thing you’ll miss out on is Uncle Will’s mint julep recipe, to say nothing of Percy on the topic of college girls and nurses, where he’s without rival among the writers of the century he graced and helped make bearable. Ipsis, Domine, et Walker Percy et omnibus in Christo quiescentibus, locum refrigerii, lucis, pacis et bourbon, ut indulgeas, deprecamur. Per eumdem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen. [4]
But as this citation illustrates, locum refrigerii can also mean a place of refreshment and consolation, and indeed it has had this usage in ecclesiastical Latin since the days of Tertullian. In his Apologeticus, Tertullian even uses the word in the same way as the Ipsis, Dominine, that is, as a description of the Beatific Vision. Christian beliefs about the afterlife, he writes,
make all who believe them better men and women, under the fear of eternal punishment and the hope of eternal refreshment [refrigerium].[5]
The Vulgate translation of the Bible also employs the broader definition of refrigerium:
Thou hast set men over our heads. We have passed through fire and water, and thou hast brought us out into a refreshment [refrigerium]. (Psalm 65, 12)
For they have said, reasoning with themselves, but not right: ‘The time of our life is short and tedious, and in the end of a man there is no remedy [refrigerium], and no man hath been known to have returned from Hell.’ (Wisdom 2, 1)
To whom he said: ‘This is my rest, refresh the weary, and this is my refreshing [refrigerium].’ And they would not hear. (Isaiah 28, 12)
The Lord give mercy to the house of Onesiphorus: because he hath often refreshed [refrigeravit] me, and hath not been ashamed of my chain. (2 Timothy 1, 16)
Curiously, the Consilium that issued Comme le Prevoit seems entirely unaware of the Christian usage of the word, fixating only on its original, pagan meaning. Other Catholics, however, were aware of the word’s deeper meaning. Evelyn Waugh includes a breathtaking description of a skydive in his Sword of Honour trilogy:
Guy jumped. For a second, as the rush of air hit him, he lost consciousness. Then he came to himself, his senses purged of the noise and smell and throb of the machine. The hazy November sun enveloped him in golden light. His solitude was absolute. He experienced rapture, something as near as his earthbound soul could reach to a foretaste of paradise, locum refrigerii, lucis et pacis. The aeroplane seemed as far distant as will, at the moment of death, the spinning earth. As though he had cast the constraining bonds of flesh and muscle and nerve, he found himself floating free… He was a free spirit in an element as fresh as on the day of its creation. [6]
Several (though not all) official translations of the Mass also evince a greater awareness of the Christian meaning of refrigerium. The 2011 English translation has “a place of refreshment, light, and peace,” replacing the earlier translation inspired by Comme le Prevoit: “May these…find in your presence light, happiness, and peace.” [7] The Missal in use in Mexico is similar to the improved 2011 English edition: concédeles el lugar del consuelo, de la luz y de la paz.[8]
2. Scandal of Particularity
A second point to be considered is that Christianity, and Judaism before it, radiates outward from what theologians call the “scandal of the particular.” [9] In the Old Testament, the Lord God chose Abraham and his seed out of all other nations to be His Chosen People. In the New, the eternal Word of God chose to take flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ, the foster son of a carpenter in the “fly over” town of Nazareth at a particular historical epoch, when the Romans had conquered much of the known world.
Apostolic liturgies followed suit, reveling in the cultural context in which they first received the Gospel. In the Byzantine Rite, homage is paid to St. John Chrysostom, the patriarch of their liturgy. In the Armenian Rite, it is St. Gregory the Illuminator. In the Roman Rite, it is the new founders of Christian Rome, Saints Peter and Paul, as one sees in the Confiteor and elsewhere. Apostolic liturgies do not abstract from the particular hands that bequeathed them the universal Gospel (itself a product of particular Revelation) but add them to the narrative, thereby providing a concrete link between our current age and that of the Apostles. As Pope Benedict XVI writes in his memoirs:
It was becoming more and more clear to me that here I was encountering a reality that no one had simply thought up, a reality that no official authority or great individual had created. This mysterious fabric of texts and actions had grown from the faith of the Church over the centuries. It bore the whole weight of history within itself, and yet, at the same time, it was much more than the product of human history. [10]
The traditional Roman Rite bears the whole weight of its Roman history, which is why it contains “metaphors” of coolness coming from a hot climate, and which is why it metaphorically conceives of the North as the realm of heathenism (the Germans!) when it points the celebrant northward to proclaim the Gospel, towards the barbarians on the other side of the Alps. Such particularity is not to be disdained but honored in an incarnational religion.
3. Souls in Purgatory
A third consideration is that the Ipsis, Domine is a prayer for the poor souls in Purgatory, and a petition to grant them a place of refreshment is a suitable remedy for their condition. As Fr. Martin Jugie writes in his classic Purgatory and the Means to Avoid It, the Magisterium has never formally defined Purgatory as a realm of fire, but it is by far the most common way to imagine it. [11] Western Christian art most often depicts Purgatory as such, and so does private revelation. In every vision that Saint Faustina had of Purgatory or of a soul in it, flames were involved. Indeed, Faustina describes Purgatory in her journal as “a misty place full of fire.” And if Purgatory is a misty place full of fire, then the antidote, so to speak, is a lightsome and peaceful place of refreshment. Appropriately, when Salvian of Marseilles (d. 480) discusses the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, when the damned Dives asks for Lazarus to “dip the tip of his finger in water, to cool [his] tongue, for [he is] tormented in this flame,” (Luke 16, 24) he calls it a petition for a “drop of refreshment” (gutta refrigerii). [12]
Souls in the flames of Purgatory, 15th century Missal
4. Not a Metaphor
Finally, the Consilium authors assume that locum refrigerii is a metaphor when in fact it is an allusion to a historic location.
During the Roman persecutions of Christianity, the sacred sites where Saints were martyred or buried and the places where the faithful gathered to celebrate Mass were not one and the same. And when the persecutions ceased, this custom of maintaining separate places continued for a while. At martyrs’ shrines like Saint Lawrence Outside the Walls and Saint Agnes in Rome, there were two buildings: a smaller basilica ad corpus where the bones of the martyr were kept and a larger basilica major or coemeterium, a roofed cemetery where Christians were either interred in the ground or in mausolea. The basilica major was occasionally used for the celebration of Mass, but its main function was to house funerary banquets. Despite the protests of some Church Fathers like Saints Ambrose and Augustine, these banquets were enormously popular among early Christians. And the name of these banquets? A refrigerium. [13] There is, then, an actual historical locum refrigerii: it is the basilica major or coemeterium. The Ipsis, Domine, then,is essentially praying that the souls of the faithful departed may rest as peacefully as their bodies do in the places where funerary banquets are held, surrounded by joy and confidence.
Saint Lawrence Outside the Walls in the fourth century.
Conclusion
The Consilium’s disregard of the aforementioned considerations calls to mind an additional scriptural verse containing the word we have been tracing:
Thus saith the Lord: ‘Stand ye on the ways, and see and ask for the old paths which is the good way, and walk ye in it, and you shall find refreshment for your souls.’ And they said: ‘We will not walk.’ (Jeremiah 6, 16)
Notes
[1] Some readers may wish to forgive the Northern-Hemisphere bias of this statement, which ignores the cold southernmost regions of the Southern Hemisphere, e.g., Chile, Argentina, Australia, etc.
[3] Jason Peters, The Culinary Plagiarist: (Mis)Adventures of a Lusty, Thieving,
God-Fearing Gourmand (Eugene, Oregon: Front Porch Republic Books, 2020), 209; see also 203.
[4] Peters, 234.
[5] Apologeticus 49.2. See 39.16, where Tertullian uses the word to describe the post-liturgical agape meal designed to refresh the poor.
[6] Evelyn Waugh, 102.
[7] For the 1985 Missal, see The Roman Missal (New York: Catholic Book Publishing, 1985), p. 547; for the 2011 Missal, see The Roman Missal, 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: USCCB Publishing, 2011), p. 642. The French and Italian translations are similar to the 1985 English Missal even though as southern regions they should not have to “change the metaphor”: Qu’ils demeurent dans la joie, lumière et la paix. (Missel Romain, 3rd. ed. [MAME Desclée, 2001], p. 473, no. 95) and la beatitudine, la luce e la pace (Messale Romano, 3rd ed. [Fond.ne di Religione San Francesco d’Assisi E Ca, 2020], p. 627), resp.
[8] Misal Romano (2017), p. 92, no. 95.
[9] See Peter Kwasniewski, The Once and Future Roman Rite, (Gastonia, NC:
TAN Books, 2023), p. 228, n. 15.
[10] Joseph Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977, trans. Erasmo Leiva- Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 20.
[11] Purgatory and the Means to Avoid It (Fortin Collins, Colorado: Roman Catholic Books, 2022),15. Nor has the Church weighed in on whether this fire is to be taken literally or as an ardent pain.
[12] Salvianus Massiliensis, Adversus avaritiam 3.11.
[13] See Kelsey Anne Bell, “The Use of Sacred Space in Hellenistic, Roman, and Christian Religious Sites” (Baylor University Honors Thesis, May 2015), pp. 30-49.
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