The Saint-Sever Beatus: An Illustrated Commentary on the Apocalypse (Part 1)

As the Church’s year draws to a close, the book of the Apocalypse becomes very prominent in the Roman liturgy. It is read at the Mass of both the vigil (5, 6-12) and feast of All Saints (7, 2-12), and at Matins of the latter (4, 2-8 and 5, 1-14); at the third Mass of All Souls’ day (a reading of single verse, 14, 3, borrowed from the daily Mass for the Dead); and at Matins of the two dedication feasts on the universal calendar, those of the Lateran basilica on November 9th (21, 9-18), and of Ss Peter and Paul (21, 18-27) on the 18th. It also provides the epistle for the Mass of a dedication generally (21, 2-5), and the Introit and Magnificat antiphon of Second Vespers of Christ the King. In the Mass lectionary of the post-Conciliar rite, it is read on the ferial days of the last two weeks of even-numbered years.

Introitus Dignus est Agnus, qui occísus est, accípere virtútem, et divinitátem, et sapientiam, et fortitúdinem, et honórem. Ipsi gloria et imperium in saecula saeculórum. Ps. 71 Deus, judicium tuum Regi da, et justitiam tuam Filio Regis. Gloria Patri... Dignus est Agnus...

Introit, Apoc. 5, 12 & 1, 6 Worthy is the Lamb Who was slain to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honor. To Him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Ps. 71 O God, give Thy judgment to the King, and Thy justice to the King’s son. Glory be... Worthy is the Lamb...

In the 8th century, there lived a monk named Beatus (730 ca – after 785) at the monastery of St Turibius in a town called Liébana in Cantabria, one of the northern regions of Spain that was never occupied by the Islamic invaders. (This monastery is still an important stop on the Camino de Santiago, since it possesses a very ancient relic of the True Cross.) Very little is known of this man, although he was a prominent figure in his own time, tutor and confessor to a queen named Adosinda, and correspondent with Alcuin of York. He participated in the controversy over Adoptionism, a Christological heresy which caused some trouble in Spain at the time. (Part of the later rejection of the Mozarabic Rite came from fears that it was tainted with this heresy.) He is now recognized as a Saint by the Church, with his feast day on February 19th, and is therefore officially “Saint Blessed of Liébana.”

Nowadays, he is chiefly known for a lengthy commentary which he composed on the book of the Apocalypse. Medieval authors valued originality much less than we do, and this work borrows heavily from a wide range of earlier writers among the Fathers of the Church. It is valuable most of all because it preserves extensive sections of an earlier commentary, now otherwise mostly lost, by an influential African writer named Ticonius, a contemporary of St Augustine. Like much of the literature of its era, it would probably not be very appealing to most readers today.

The Vision of the Lamb, with the four cherubim and the twenty-four elders, depicted in the Beatus of León, 1047 AD, also known as the Facundus Beatus after its illustrator. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

It is, however, famous among art historians of the period, because nearly 30 copies of it survive that preserve the original illustrations, which are believed to be the work of the author himself. (There are also several copies without illustrations.) The oldest of these dates to the mid-9th century; there are 8 others from the 10th, and by the middle of that century, some copyists began to expand the repertoire of images. At the same time, one line of these manuscripts was expanded to include St Jerome’s commentary on the book of Daniel, with illustrations in a similar vein. These books are collectively called “Beatus manuscripts”, and named individually either from their places of origin (e.g. “the Tábara Beatus”, produced at the monastery of the Holy Savior in that town), or the libraries that hold them, (e.g. “the Morgan Beatus” at the Morgan Library in New York.)

One of the most beautiful and complete of these is the Saint-Sever Beatus, which is now in Paris, at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. (ms. lat. 8878) It was produced at the abbey of Saint-Sever in southwestern France, in the Duchy of Gascony. The name of the abbot at the time, Gregory of Montaner, is in the frontispiece, which dates the manuscript between 1028 and 1072; according to the BnF’s website, the three artists who executed it were called Stephanus, Placidus, and Garsia. (Stephanus’ signature is supposed to be on folio 6, but I can’t seem to find it.) This is the only illuminated Beatus produced in France; in addition to the St Jerome commentary on Daniel, it includes St Ildephonse of Toledo’s influential treatise on the perpetual virginity of Mary. There are nearly 100 images and decorations, with 20 before the commentary even begins, so I will present these in several posts.

The letters in the center of the frontispiece simply repeat the words “Grigorius (sic) abba nobilis” (Gregory, the noble abbot), with the -lis of the last word in the form of an L with a line through it.

This is followed by pictures of the Evangelists; each is shown sitting in a room with a disciple to whom he is consigning his book, and with his symbol above him. The picture following each of them shows two angels in a similar room holding the relevant book.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Feast of the Prophet Obadiah, and the Vigil of the Presentation

With the exception of the so-called Maccabee brothers, the Church in the West has never generally celebrated feasts of Old Testament Saints. (The Carmelite Order venerates the Prophet Elijah as one of its founders, and some churches in Venice, which has many close cultural ties to the East, are dedicated to figures such as Moses, Job and Jeremiah.) On the other hand, in the Byzantine Rite, most of the prophets are celebrated liturgically. The Tridentine reform was very concerned to emphasize the common theological patrimony of the Western and Eastern parts of the church, as united witnesses against the innovations of the protestant reformers, and in function of this, Cardinal Baronius added many mentions of Old Testaments Saints to the Roman Martyrology, on or near their Byzantine feast day.

As I have explained in a previous article, the Byzantine Rite does not have a formal Advent in the same sense that the Roman Rite does, but it does nevertheless have a period of preparation for the Nativity. The Old Testament Saints celebrated within this period are all prophets, and today is the feast of the first of these, the Prophet Obadiah (“Abdias” in Greek and Latin), as also noted in the Roman Martyrology.

An illuminated letter at the beginning of the book of Obadiah, in a Bible made in southern France in the first quarter of the 12th century, now known as the Bible of Montpellier; British Library, Harley MS 4772, f° 288r.

Since he gives no information about himself, we know basically nothing about Obadiah; he is traditionally but mistakenly identified with a man of the same name who appears in 3 Kings 18, the servant of King Ahab who saved the prophets of the Lord from the wicked queen Jezabel. His prophecy concerns the fall of the kingdom of Edom, which was descended from Esau, the brother of the Patriarch Jacob, and which the prophet reproves thus: “For the slaughter, and for the iniquity against thy brother Jacob, confusion shall cover thee, and thou shalt perish for ever.” There are a number of similarities between his book and the oracles against Edom in Jeremiah 49, for which reason he is generally believed to be a contemporary of his fellow prophet, living around the year 600 BC.

The Byzantine tradition simply presumes that like all the prophets, he foresaw the coming of the Redeemer as God in the flesh. Thus we read at Vespers of his feast, “Being filled with the light that knoweth no setting, and seeing the glory that surpasseth all knowing and understanding, and standing near to the Lord of all things, blessed Abdias, and having become the interpreter of God, beseech Him that peace and great mercy may be granted to our souls.” And likewise, in the canon of his feast, “Thou wast revealed to be like a wedding attendant of the Church, o blessed one, foretelling that the Savior would come forth from Zion, to Whom we cry out, ‘Glory to Thy power, O Lord!’ ” “Wedding attendant” explicitly associates the prophet with the last of his brethren, St John the Baptist, who says of himself, “the friend of the bridegroom, who standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice.” (John 3, 29; at right, an icon of Obadiah painted in 1912, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Vespers in the Byzantine Rite always belong liturgically to the following day, and so on November 19th, they are of the Forefeast of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary in the Temple, the equivalent of a Roman vigil. The Presentation was introduced to the West very late, and has never been celebrated with a vigil, but in the Byzantine Rite, it is one of the Twelve Great Feasts, those of the highest degree of solemnity after Easter. It therefore has both a forefeast and an afterfeast, the latter being the equivalent of an octave, although these vary in length, and that of the Presentation is only four days long. The most important variable texts sung at the Divine Liturgy, the troparion and kontakion, are as follows on November 20th; the former is also sung at the conclusion of Vespers the evening before.

Troparion Today, Anna foretells to us joy, having brought forth as a fruit assuaging grief the only ever-virgin, whom indeed today she bringeth rejoicing to the temple of the Lord, fulfilling her promises, as the true temple and pure Mother of God the Word.

Kontakion All the world is filled today with rejoicing at the great feast of the Mother of God, crying out, She is the heavenly tabernacle!

A Greek icon of the Presentation of the Virgin, 17th or 18th century, now in the National Fine Arts Museum in Valetta, Malta; image from Wikimedia Commons by Matthewsharris, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Christ the King of Glory - Rex Gloriae

The Cross is the Glory of Christ

As we approach the Sunday of Christ the King, I thought I would feature the award-winning Crucifixion painted by the English Catholic artist Martin Earle. This choice may surprise some who are expecting an image of Christ Enthroned, such as the one at the foot of this article, by Mr Earle. I chose this Crucifixion because the artist decided to entitle it “Rex Gloriae – King of Glory”, a title that I think is wholly appropriate.

This wonderful painting hangs in the cathedral in Aberdeen, Scotland. It is painted in egg tempera on a gessoed wooden panel, two-sided, with the same image repeated on each side. This allows it to be hung over the altar so that both the congregation and those in the sanctuary will see the image as they worship. It encapsulates Salvation History in five parts, representing Christ’s life, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven.

First, in the main picture, we see the inscription Rex Glo(riae), which draws our attention to the Kingship of Christ commemorated in the Church on the Solemnity of Christ the King, the last Sunday before Advent. Christ was crucified precisely because he claimed to be a king, and Pilate wrote the inscription “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” (not shown on this cross, but often represented by the first letters of the Latin version, INRI). Pilate wrote this to give legal justification for his execution of an authority who might be perceived as a threat to Roman rule.

As Christians, we know that Christ was always king by his divine nature as the Son of God, and he became king by his victory over death and suffering through his crucifixion. Accordingly, in the creed, we profess that Christ is king because of his divine nature as “God from God and Light from Light” and because he was “crucified under Pontius Pilate.”

Accompanying Christ are Mary the Mother of God and St John the Evangelist on the left, and on the right, in accordance with the Gospel of John, we see Mary Magdalene and Mary, the wife of Clopas. The male figure on the right is the soldier who pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy:

“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of compassion and supplication, so that, when they look on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a first-born. (Zechariah 12, 10)”

This centurion is the soldier who came to us in tradition as St Longinus, and recognised Our Lord as the Son of God in an act of faith, later becoming a bishop in the early Church. From the pierced side flow blood and water, symbolising the Eucharist and Baptism. 

Considering now the minor images: 

On the left is the Nativity, which reminds us of the life of Christ and the mystery of the incarnation, and of Mary, the Mother of God, who gave him his humanity. As a point of interest, the stable is portrayed as a cave in a mountain. This reflects the actual local topography and is a visual reference to a prophecy in the Book of Daniel in which the King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had a dream and Daniel, his counsellor, was called to interpret:

“You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. ... Inasmuch as you saw that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold—the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this. The dream is certain, and its interpretation is sure.” (Dan 2, 34; 45)

The mountain is traditionally interpreted as the Mother of God, and Christ Himself is the stone “cut without hands.” This language alludes to Mary’s perpetual virginity; for example, a hymn in the Byzantine liturgy which draws on the traditional teaching of the Church says:

We exalt you, O Theotokos, crying out, “You are the mountain out of which, in a wondrous way, a stone was hewn that crushed the gates of Hades.” (Orthros, Friday, Tone 4)

Below the central figure is the skull in a cave, a reference to Golgotha - “the place of the skull” - where Christ was crucified, and to His descent to Hell for three days after his entombment, by which He freed Adam and Eve, and the souls of the just from the limbo of the Fathers. The cave in this part of the cross echoes the cave which was the stable in the Nativity scene; one is the place of His birth, the other of His death. The white swaddling clothes in the Nativity scene also become an anticipatory sign of His death, when He will be wrapped in a shroud. The heavenly Christ in the Ascension then has a brilliant white outer garment, which is the transfigured garment, indicating that not just the person, but of all creation - animate and inanimate - participates in the redemption offered to us.

On the right, we see the myrrh-bearing women who came to the tomb and found it empty, and the angel that told them of the resurrection. 

Finally, we see the Ascension, when Christ, having appeared to the Apostles, ascended to heaven and took his place at the right hand of the Father.

Note: I drew information on the Kingship of Christ from a posted homily by Fr Hugh Barbour O. Praem: “The Trial of a King”, Catholic.com (25 November 2018) https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-trial-of-a-king [accessed 8 November 2024]

“Turned Around”: Announcing a New Book of TLM Apologetics

Recent travels have thrown a wrench in my writing schedule, so it’s taken me longer to get to this announcement than I had intended. Last month, TAN Books released my latest work, Turned Around: Replying to Common Objections Against the Traditional Latin Mass, which I now commend to readers of New Liturgical Movement.

Here’s the idea behind it: I take nine objections Catholics make to the traditional Latin Mass, and turn them around in jiu-jitsu fashion: “You are right—but you don’t realize how right you are!”

To the objection that “the priest has his back to me. I can’t engage with him,” I reply: “Yes, he does, and no, you can’t—that’s exactly how it should be, and here’s why.” Or “at Mass the priest is doing everything and I’m just watching him”: “Yes, he alone does everything in his proper priestly way, and that makes it possible for you to do everything in the way proper to you.” Or: “It’s all fancy, like a royal court, which doesn’t fit with a democratic society like ours”: “That’s right, because we are in a royal court, the most royal and most courtly of all, and we have left democracy far behind.”

And so with six additional objections, having to do with:
• the use of a non-vernacular, ancient language;
• kneeling to receive Communion on the tongue;
• repetition in prayers, gestures, and readings;
• the “limits” of the one-year lectionary;
• fixed inherited rituals governed by strict rubrics;
• the inability to understand everything, even after long exposure.

By turning the tables around, my goal is to bring into clearer focus why, over the centuries, the Holy Spirit formed this venerable rite for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass to be just the way it was and is—the way that countless saints prayed the Mass day in and day out—in order to show how we, too, stand to gain from its peculiar non-modern, even anti-modern features. As many have observed, it is the paradoxical and countercultural aspects of the Latin Mass that powerfully draw numbers of the faithful, young and old, to this mysterious and luminous rite of divine worship.

Turned Around: Replying to Common Objections Against the Traditional Latin Mass transforms challenges into gateways, perplexities into fresh insights, brick walls into garden paths. Ultimately, our Catholic tradition guides us to deeper conversion: the turning-around to God that is the most important of all conversions.
 

I’m especially pleased to convey the endorsement of Karl Keating, the founder of Catholic Answers:

The public argument in favor of the Traditional Latin Mass has been waiting for a book that handles common objections thoroughly yet winsomely. This is that book.... The writing is clear, approachable, and often elegant. Any reader, no matter his current liturgical preference, will come away instructed, intrigued, and edified.

Eminent Thomistic philosopher and bête noire of progressives on Twitter, Edward Feser, agrees: “Peter Kwasniewski’s Turned Around will contribute mightily to the restoration of liturgical and spiritual understanding.” The director of the Mass of the Ages Trilogy, Cameron O’Hearn, chimes in:

The most common objections to the TLM answered, once-and-for-all! Dr. Kwasniewski has crystallized centuries-old wisdom with his always persuasive prose and left us with a literary treasure. It might be the most convincing defense of the TLM I’ve ever read.

Lastly, Eric Sammons, editor of Crisis Magazine, has this to say:

Defending the TLM’s “foreignness” to modern minds is a high barrier that’s difficult to overcome. In these pages Dr. Kwasniewski not only ably accomplishes this task, he “turns around” the common objections against the TLM to show that it’s the Mass of Ages that is truly at home in a fully Catholic worldview.

Prompted by Turned Around, Eric conducted an extensive interview with me for Crisis Point, covering some of the major difficulties people (both ordinary faithful and academic liturgists) have with the TLM. In the end we covered a good bit of ground. Although the content would be appreciated by TLM attendees, we made a special effort to address mainstream Catholics (so this could be a good one to send to people you know who are wondering what all the fuss is about, or who have been resisting your invitation to attend a traditional Mass because of preconceived ideas):

Kennedy Hall also interviewed me about the book. You can watch and listen to our conversation here:

Order a copy today, either at TAN Books (they're having a 40% off sale at the moment) or at Amazon — and, while you're at it, consider getting another copy for a friend or relative!

The Communio Amen Dico Vobis

On the Sundays after Pentecost, most of the Communion chants are taken from the Psalms, as indeed are most of the Gregorian propers throughout the year. There are a some exceptions, however, such as the two from John 6, on the 9th and 15th Sundays, and another from Wisdom 16 on the 13th: “Thou hast given us bread from heaven, o Lord...” These are obviously chosen in reference to the Eucharist, although it has never been a habit of the Roman Rite (nor indeed, of any historical rite) to be consistently obvious in its choice and arrangement of liturgical texts, especially in the seasons without an overarching theme such as Advent or Passiontide. In Lent, a number of Communios are taken from the Gospel of the day, and there is one such in the time after Pentecost as well, on the third Sunday.

However, the Communio for the Sundays at the end of the year, from the 23rd to the last, may seem like a bit of a puzzler, since it is a text which has no evident reference to the Eucharist, and from a Gospel which is not part of the temporal cycle at all.

Communio Amen, dico vobis, quidquid orantes pétitis, crédite, quia accipiétis, et fiet vobis. (Amen I say to you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you shall receive, and it shall be done to you. Mark 11, 24.)

The explanation for this lies in a feature which is found in the early sources of the Roman Rite, and which was retained in many of its Uses up to the time of the Tridentine reform, but was not part of the Use of the later medieval Papal court, which became the Missal of St Pius V. In the earliest Roman lectionaries, proper epistles and gospels are assigned to the Wednesdays and Fridays of the weeks after Epiphany and Pentecost, as well as those of Advent and Eastertide. This Communio is taken from the Gospel which is assigned to the Wednesday of the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, Mark 11, 23-26, in the second oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, the Murbach capitulary, ca. 750 AD.

“[Jesus answering, saith to His disciples: Have the faith of God.] Amen I say to you, that whosoever shall say to this mountain, Be thou removed and be cast into the sea, and shall not stagger in his heart, but believe, that whatsoever he saith shall be done; it shall be done unto him. Therefore I say unto you, all things, whatsoever you ask when ye pray, believe that you shall receive; and they shall come unto you. * And when you shall stand to pray, forgive, if you have aught against any man; that your Father also, who is in heaven, may forgive you your sins. But if you will not forgive, neither will your Father that is in heaven, forgive you your sins.”

The Gospel mentioned above in a Missal according to the Use of Cologne, printed in 1487.  

There is no immediately evident reason why the Communio should be taken from the Gospel of the feria, rather than that of the Sunday, but this is not the only such case. The Communio of the 3rd through 6th Sundays after Epiphany is Luke 4, 22, the end of a long-obsolete ferial Gospel attested in the very oldest Roman lectionary, the Wurzburg capitulary, ca. 650. We should note in passing that when Sacrosanctum Concilium spoke of broadening the corpus of Scriptural readings in the Mass (in paragraphs 35 and 51), the broader context of the document makes it clear that what it was talking about was the revival of an authentically ancient and Roman custom such as this, and not the creation of wholly new lectionary founded on more than one erroneous conceit.

Although this passage is missing from the medieval editions of the Roman Missal, and the early printed editions based on them, it returned to general use with the publication of the Missal of St Pius V, in which it forms the Gospel for the Mass of St Gregory the Wonderworker, whose feast is today. (The selection of verses is not exactly the same; it includes verse 22, in brackets above, and ends at the asterisk.) The reason for this is that Gregory is traditionally said to have moved part of a mountain, as explained in the lessons of the 3rd nocturn of Matins on his feast day, which are taken from St Bede’s commentary on the Gospel of Mark.

“The heathen, who have written curses against the Church, are wont to reprove our people by saying that they did not have full faith in God, because they never been able to move mountains. To these it should be answered that not all things have been written down which have been done in the Church, just as the Scripture also bears witness concerning the deeds of Christ our Lord Himself. (John 21, 25) Whence this could also happen, that a mountain might be lifted up and cast into the sea, should this be necessary, as we read was done by the prayers of the blessed father Gregory, bishop of Neo-Caesarea in Pontus, a man outstanding in his merits and virtues...

A stained-glass window in the cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston, which shows St Gregory moving the mountain (in a much more dramatic fashion than in St Bede’s account.) Image from Wikimedia Commons by Faragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0.

for when he wished to build a church in a suitable place, but saw that it was too narrow, being wedged in between a precipice on the sea on one side, and a mountain on the other, he came there by night, and kneeling down, reminding the Lord of His promise... and in the morning ... found that the mountain had left as much space as the builders required for the church. Therefore this man, or other man of like merit, was have been able, if need were, to obtain from the Lord by the merit of his faith, that even a mountain should be removed, and be cast into the sea.”

Fully in keeping with the exegetical traditions of the earlier Fathers, St Bede goes on to give a spiritual explanation of this passage as well. “But since by the term ‘mountain’ is sometimes signified the devil, namely, on account of the pride whereby he lifts himself up against God, and wishes to be like unto the Most High (Isa. 14, 14), a mountain is lifted up and cast into the sea at the command of whose who are mighty in faith when holy teachers preach the Word, and an unclean spirit is driven out of the hearts of them that are foreordained unto eternal life...”

Sacred Art in the Johnson Museum at Cornell University

Following up on my Thursday article about an exhibition at the Johnson Art Museum on the campus of Cornell University, here are some religious artworks from the museum’s permanent collection.

A statue of St Anne with the Virgin and Child, carved from a single block of oak in Flanders ca. 1500.
 

A portable triptych painted in Ethiopia in the mid- to late 17th century: the central panel of the Virgin and Child is apparently based on copies of the Salus Populi Romani icon at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, brought to Ethiopia by Jesuits; on the left side, the Resurrection and St George slaying the dragon; on the right, the Crucifixion.   

The Adoration of the Magi, painted ca. 1500 by an anonymous Flemish artist known as the Master of Frankfurt, active primarily in Antwerp from about 1480-1520. (He is called the Master of Frankfurt from two painting commissioned by patron in that city.)  

A limestone statue of the Virgin and Child (with surviving traces of the original paint), made in France ca. 1380.

The Appearance of Christ to Saint Ausias, ca. 1490, by the Catalan painter Pau Vergós, a member of a prominent artistic family in Barcelona. (“Ausias” is the Occitan form of the name “Elzearius.”) Elzéar de Sabran (1285-1323) was a prominent Provençal nobleman, who after a life of exemplary holiness, was canonized by a decree of his own godson, Bl Pope Urban V. The story depicted here is that when he had repented for his participation in war, Christ appeared to him and scourged him three times, which he accepted as his penance. (Note that the three scourges in Christ’s hand penetrate through his armor and draw blood.)  

A German statue of St George, made of linden wood in the second half of the 15th century. 

St James the Greater, ca. 1610-14, by El Greco and workshop.

A painted wooden bust of the Man of Sorrows, 2nd quarter of the 16th century, by the Italian sculptor Giovanni Mirigliano da Nola (1488-1558).

A Romanesque stylophore, i.e., a base designed to hold up a column, in the form of a lioness, thought to have been part of the portico over a side door of the cathedral of St Peter in Bologna, ca. 1200, attributed to the workshop of Pietro Alberigo. This sculpture was acquired and brought to the United States by Juliana Armour Ferguson (1864-1921), a devout Catholic, heiress to an enormous fortune from the Chicago-based Armour meat-packing company. This was one of hundreds of such items incorporated into her large mansion, built in the form of a medieval castle, overlooking Huntington Harbour on Long Island. It was rescued by workmen when the mansion was demolished in the early 1970s, but damaged in the process; the part at the bottom which was broken off was the heads of the lioness’ cubs.  

The Tomb of St Albert in Cologne

One of the twelve Romanesque basilicas of Cologne, Germany, is dedicated to the Apostle St Andrew, and I will add this church to the ongoing series which I have been doing about them on his feast day, which is two weeks from tomorrow. Today I am doing just the crypt, since it contains the tomb of St Albert the Great, whose feast it is.

St Albert Preaching, by the German painter Friedrich Walter (1440-93) 

Cologne was the very first city where the Dominicans established a presence in Germany, not long after St Dominic’s death in August of 1221, and they were first received there by the secular canons who had charge of the basilica of St Andrew. In 1248, St Albert was sent to this house by a general chapter of the order to establish a “studium generale”, which under his leadership became one of the Dominicans’ chief centers of learning in all fields. Albert’s remarkable career, including a brief stint (1260-62) as bishop of Regensburg, took him to a great many places in Germany, France and Italy, but he spent much of his time at Cologne, and died there in the Dominican house in 1280, at the age of about 80.

This chasuble, which now is kept in the sacristy of the church of St Andrew in Cologne, was found in the tomb of St Albert on one of the occasions when it was opened, and was still used until fairly recently. Our thanks to Fr Innocent Smith OP for sharing this photo with us. 

In 1802, when the left bank of the Rhine was under the rule of France and God’s enemy Napoleon, Cologne suffered the effects of the “secularization”, as it is called, by which religious orders were suppressed, and their property stolen by the government. The Dominican’s church was first confiscated and used as a military barracks, then later destroyed. St Albert was therefore moved across the street to the crypt of the church of St Andrew, and his remains placed in an unfinished Roman of the 3rd century sarcophagus, where they remain to this day. Well has it been said that the wheels of God’s justice grind slowly, but to powder, for the powers of this world that once expelled the Dominicans from Cologne are no more. The friars, on the other hand, returned to the city in 1947, and were given custody of the church of St Andrew, and of their brother and teacher St Albert. (The following images are from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0; first by Raimond Spekking, the rest by © 1971markus.)

An inscription in the crypt: “Here lies Saint Albert the Great, doctor of the Church, born ca. 1200 AD in Lauingen (in the southern German region of Swabia); entered the Order of Preacher in 1223; Professor of Theology at Paris and Cologne, 1248; bishop of Regensburg, 1260-62; on November 15, 1280, he passed to heaven; on December 16, 1931, he was canonized by Pope Pius XI. Rejoice, o happy and holy Cologne, who alone above all others hast merited to possess the splendor and glory of all Germany.”

Another which commemorates the visit of Pope St John Paul II to Cologne in 1980, for the 700th anniversary of St Albert’s death.

Consubstantial with the Father

Lost in Translation #111

During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells His listeners:

Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled. (Matt. 5, 17-18)

A jot is an iota, the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, and a tittle is a tiny mark used in Hebrew to differentiate one letter from another. Christ’s point is that He will fulfill the Mosaic Law down to the smallest detail.

But the iota resurfaced during the first ecumenical Council three centuries later. The Council of Nicaea was convened in 325 A.D. to determine what Christians really believed about Jesus Christ: was He truly God, or was He merely godlike? The entire debate hinged on the Greek iota (comparable to our letter i): Christ was either of the same substance as God (homoousios), or he was of a similar but distinct substance (homoiousios). After much deliberation, the Council professed Christ to be of the same substance (homoousios) as God the Father, enshrining their definition in the Nicene Creed that is now recited at Mass every Sunday.

First Council of Nicaea

Thus, there is literally one iota of difference between orthodoxy and heresy, a fact which illustrates how the smallest deviation from the truth can lead to the greatest error (incidentally, from this comes our phrase of not budging one iota). And it is also a testimony to Christianity’s unique obsession with the truth. Whereas the other two great monotheistic religions of the West are more concerned with orthopraxy (right practices), Christianity shows a pronounced interest in orthodoxy (which means both right belief and right worship). For Chesterton, this preoccupation with orthodoxy involves a combination of “two almost insane positions” that somehow still amount “to sanity”:

Last and most important, it is exactly this which explains what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word. It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's breadth on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world. Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas; she was a lion tamer. (Orthodoxy, chapter 6)

What is so dangerous about the Son being of the same substance as the Father? For starters, it is an inexhaustible (and hence untamable) mystery. It is easy for the mind to grasp the concept of someone who is half-god and half-man, like Hercules; it is impossible for the mind to grasp the concept of someone who is fully God and fully man, like Jesus of Nazareth. It is easy for the mind to see how someone can be extremely similar to someone else, as when an earthly son is the spitting image of his earthly father; it is impossible for the mind to grasp how someone is of the exact same stuff as someone else, as God the Son is consubstantial with God the Father while also having a human intellect, will, body, etc.

Jesus Christ, Hagia Sophia, Constantinople

Given the storied history of homoousios and what it tells us about Christianity’s priorities, it is scandalous to see how it has been translated. The Latin Credo faithfully renders the word as consubstantialis, consubstantial or of the same substance. But the 1970 ICEL translation had “one in being with the Father.” Aside from the equally lamentable German eines Wesens (which means the same thing), no other official translation has been so ontologically sloppy or indifferent to the truth. The French Missal has consubstantiel, for example, and the Italian stessa sostanza (same substance).

Worse, when in 2006 the Vatican wanted the USCCB to use “consubstantial” in their new English translation, the American bishops protested on the grounds that this was a word that “required theological explanation”—as if the very job of a bishop was not to provide theological explanation. Happily, the Vatican did not budge one iota and Chesterton’s lion tamer returned to the ring with “consubstantial”—a scandal to the Jews, folly to the Greeks, and a pain in the neck to lazy prelates.

Sacred Art of Spanish America - An Exhibition at Cornell University

I recently visited a very interesting exhibition at the Johnson Museum of Art on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, titled “Colonial Crossings: Art, Identity, and Belief in the Spanish Americas.” The works on display are primarily from the 18th century, with a few earlier pieces anda few later, from several different parts of the former Spanish colonies of the New World. The exhibition is scheduled to end on December 15th; if you are in the area, it is very much worth your time. Here are pictures of all the major works, and most of the minor ones. Very few of the artists are known by name.

We start, of course, with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This was painted in 1779 by a Mexican artist named Sebastián Salcedo, a prestige commission done in a difficult and expensive medium, oil on copper; difficult, because it requires a lot of layering, and takes forever to dry. (The very first image of the Sacred Heart to be exposed in a church in Rome, the famous work of Pompeo Batoni, was done in the same medium only 12 years earlier.) It has to be said that the didactic panels in the show give far too little information about basic art historical facts, such as who commissioned this, whether it was for a church, a private chapel, a public space etc.

A painting of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, known as Our Lady of Miracles, from Cuzco, Perú, 18th century, made for the local Franciscan house. This is a very much toned down version of the allegorical representation of the Immaculate Conception, by this period long out of fashion in Europe.

Madonna and Child, 1592-1605, by an anonymous follower of the Italian painter Bernardo Bitti, a Jesuit priest from Camerino, Italy, who worked in many different places in the Viceroyalty of Perú.

Our Lady of the Rosary of Chiquinquirá (modern Columbia), with Ss Francis and Andrew, late 17th or early 18th century. The anonymous donor at the right clearly seems to have been added to the painting by a different hand, but no further information about this was provided by the show.

An image of Our Lady of Remedies, from La Paz (in modern Bolivia), 1770. The story depicted here is that a local miscreant stabbed an image of the Virgin Mary, but was converted instantly when it began to bleed.

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