Icon Painting Workshop in Crete, August 1-10th, taught by George Kordis

I will be attending this 10-day residential course this summer. It welcomes all, from absolute beginners to seasoned artists, and can be a masterclass for professionals.

Writing the Light is a program of instruction in traditional Byzantine-style iconography that offers comprehensive training through its Certificate Program, from soup to nuts. Their classes are predominantly distance-learning or online, but are supplemented by in-person intensive workshops taught by master teachers, and led by the main teacher, renowned Orthodox iconographer George Kordis. The workshops are part of the full program, but you don’t need to be enrolled in the Certificate Program to attend. Many do so for personal enrichment and enjoyment without completing the whole program. They take place in various locations: Crete, Dublin, Ireland, and several in the US. I recommend Writing the Light instruction, especially to those who want a fully integrated training program that may lead to becoming working artists, and those seeking classes for personal enrichment.

The program emphasises a welcoming approach; many Catholics are enrolled as students. To register and read more about the class, follow this link.

My wife, Margarita, who teaches at Princeton, and I are looking forward to participating in this residential workshop. We have both been invited to speak to the group, but we will also be following George’s tutoring, and painting icons along with the group. As speakers, we represent the Scala Foundation, where Margarita serves as Executive Director, and I am Artist in Residence, and Pontifex University, which offers the Master of Sacred Arts program, where I also serve as Provost and Dean of the Faculty of Sacred Arts. Writing the Light encourages all their students to complement their practical training with the online intellectual and cultural formation that the Pontifex University classes offer.

In my talk, I will emphasise the relevance of traditional Byzantine iconography to all Christians, discuss the impact that sacred art has on the wider culture, and discuss the importance today to all painters of learning traditional iconography, at the very least as a foundational discipline, regardless of what form they eventually specialize in, if we want to re-establish a Christian culture of beauty in the secular West.

Margarita will speak on the importance of artistic practice in education—both K-12 and higher education—as a formative tool not just for future artists, but for the development of every student’s capacity for perception, imagination, and creativity; and how both the making and contemplation of sacred art, such as icons, can nurture a graced imagination that informs all human activity, where beauty, virtue, moral formation, and the love of God are not separate pursuits, but work in unity.

To register and read more about the class, follow this link.

George Kordis is one of the foremost iconographers of our time. His approach, rooted in and never straying from tradition, emphasises rhythmical and flowing line as the basis of form, bringing the tradition alive for contemporary artists. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned iconographer, the course is designed to meet you where you are, guiding you through the whole painting process.

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A History of the Popes Named Leo, Part 5: The Medicis, Leo X and XI

This is the fourth installment of a series on the thirteen papal namesakes of our new Holy Father Leo XIV; click these links to read part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.

The tenth and eleventh Popes to bear the name Leo were both members of the Medici family, the ruling dynasty (at first de facto, later de jure) of Florence. Thanks to the family’s disastrous lack of concern for the Church’s laws about consanguineous marriage, Cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici was related to Leo X on both his father’s and his mother’s side, and took the name in honor of his relative. But since he died on the 27th day of his papacy, he is really more of a footnote to this series than anything else. He was born on this day in the year 1535, in the reign of another Medici, Clement VII, exactly 300 years before the birth of another Pope, St Pius X.

A portrait of Pope Leo X Medici, with his cousins Giulio de’ Medici, the future Pope Clement VII (born 1478, r. 1523-34), and Luigi de’ Rossi (1474-1519), both of whom he made cardinals; painted ca. 1518/20 by Raphael Sanzio, one of the artists who most benefitted from Leo’s generous patronage of the arts.

Lazy historians, and those who have been unknowingly misled by them, often use the name Medici as a kind of by-word for a general sense that during the Renaissance, the Church was extremely corrupt; and likewise, that the religiosity professed by members of the ruling classes was extremely hypocritical. It is far beyond my scope to untangle the many ways in which this is fair to say, and the many ways in which it is unfair. For those interested in learning more about the matter, I cannot recommend highly enough the relevant chapter (11) of a book I am currently reading, Inventing the Renaissance, by Dr Ada Palmer, who teaches history at the University of Chicago, and whose writing style is very engaging. Suffice it therefore to say that while Leo X’s early career is very astonishing by modern standards, it was not so by the standards of his own age; but the fact that they were the standards of the age goes a long way to explaining why the protestant revolt broke out during his pontificate, and why the Council of Trent needed to happen.

I also need to state that since he lived at the beginning of the 16th century, his papacy is far better documented than those of the Leos we have seen earlier in this series, and this article does not pretend to be anything more than a vary basic summary of his career.

He was born Giovanni de’ Medici in December of 1475, the seventh child of Lorenzo the Magnificent and his wife, a Roman noblewoman named Clarice Orsini. As a second son, he was destined from childhood for a career in the Church, which began at the age of seven, when he was tonsured and made an apostolic protonotary. The following year, he was made commendatory abbot of two different abbeys, one being the great Montecassino; when he was 13, Pope Innocent VIII (his sister Maddalena’s father-in-law) made him a cardinal, although he was not allowed to dress as one until he reached 16. He was then sent to study theology and canon law at the highly prestigious university of Pisa, but found literature far more to his liking. Among his tutors were the two of the greatest scholars of the era, Angelo Poliziano and Cardinal Bernardo Bibbiena.

The wooden paneled ceiling of the Roman basilica of Santa Maria in Domnica, made in the time of Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, who held the title of this church from 1489 until his election to the papacy in 1513, with the name Leo X. Each section represents a title of the Virgin Mary from an earlier form of the Litany of Loreto. (Photo by Mr Jacob Stein.)

The façade, photographed by our favorite Roman pilgrim Agnese during an evening station procession on the Second Sunday of Lent in 2014.   

Shortly after he was formally vested as a cardinal in 1492, he took possession of his title church in Rome, Santa Maria in Domnica, which he retained for 24 years, until his papal election. The building as it appears today is mostly the result of the major restorations he commissioned, which included the very beautiful paneled wood ceiling shown above. Within less than a month, his father died, and he returned to Florence, only to come back to Rome at the death of Pope Innocent in July, to participate in his first conclave.

The pope thus elected was Alexander VI, the second of the two Borgias, a name which eclipses that of the Medicis as a byword for corruption. Since Alexander was quite hostile to the family, Cardinal Giovanni deemed it best to return to Florence, but shortly after, Italy was invaded by France, and plunged into a period of extraordinary chaos. The Medici were driven out of their city, and the cardinal was forced to flee with several members of his family; he eventually returned to Rome, and stayed out of the Borgia palace intrigues, living quietly in the family palace (now the seat of the Italian senate) and keeping a court devoted to literary pursuits.

The Medici family palace in Rome, known as the Palazzo Madama; engraving by the Italian artist Giuseppe Vasi (1710-82).

The year 1503 saw the death of both his older brother, at which he became head of the family, and of Pope Alexander, after which he participated in two conclaves, since the cardinals’ first choice, Pius III, died after only 26 days. The new Pope, Julius II, was not as hostile to the Medicis as Alexander had been, but not especially friendly either, and for eight years, Cardinal Giovanni’s life continued much as it had under Alexander, until he was made the papal legate to Bologna, which was part of the Papal State.

Julius II is often referred to as “the warrior pope”, since his reign was taken up almost entirely with a vexingly complicated series of wars. The aforementioned book by Ada Palmer contains this absolute gem of sentence which sums things up as follows: “The War of the League of Cambrai is so incomprehensible (that) its Wikipedia page had to develop a new table format to index the betrayals.” Here I note only that in one of the crucial battles of this period, which took place at Ravenna on April 11, 1512, Card. Giovanni was taken prisoner by the French, who would have brought him as a hostage back to France, but he was able to escape and return to Ravenna.

The Liberation of St Peter from Prison, 1513-14, by Raphael Sanzio. This fresco is in the same room as the painting below; the choice of subject was certainly chosen as an allusion to Pope Leo X’s escape from capture after the battle at Ravenna.

Since the republic established in Florence after the fall of the Medici was allied to France, Julius II, hoping to subvert it, sent troops into Tuscany to support their restoration. This led to an appalling sack of the city of Prato, after which the terrified Florentine government allowed the family to return. Cardinal Giovanni and his younger brother Giuliano entered the city in September of 1512, hoping to reconcile the various factions tearing it apart, but republican sentiment against the Medici ran high. In the midst of a plot to assassinate the brothers, the news of Pope Julius’ death (February 1513) arrived, and Cardinal Giovanni departed for Rome to participate in his fourth and final conclave.

The Meeting of Pope St Leo I and Attila the Hun, 1514, by Raphael and students (more the latter than the former), a fresco within the rooms of Pope Julius II, now part of the Vatican Museums. The cardinal at the far left is Giovanni de’ Medici. Julius died before the artist got around to painting him as Leo I, and was then succeeded by Card. de’ Medici, who chose the papal name Leo, and was therefore painted into the image a second time, as his namesake. 

After the high intensity political drama of Julius II’s papacy, the choice of a Medici to replace him was aimed very deliberately at reconciliation. (Plus ça change...) Partly at the instance of his old friend and tutor Cardinal Bibbiena, Cardinal de’ Medici was elected on the very first day of balloting. His papal name Leo was apparently chosen in remembrance of St Leo I, on whose feast day the battle of Ravenna, and his own deliverance from capture, had taken place the previous year. He was only thirty-seven at the time; after him only one other pope, his cousin Clement VII, would ever be elected at a similarly young age. He is also the last pope who was not already a priest at the time of his election.

The hopes of the cardinals that his papacy would be one of peace and reconciliation were soon realized. Late in Julius’ papacy, a group of cardinals had rebelled against him, withdrawn to Pisa, and attempted to call an ecumenical council against him; Julius’ response was to excommunicate them all, and convoke a council of his own. (In one of the most touching displays of popular devotion to the venerable person of the Holy Father, the citizens of Pisa gathered each night outside the place where these cardinals were staying to serenade them with death-threats.) Leo pardoned them all, along with the leaders of the assassination plot in Florence, and of a would-be uprising in Rome. Later on in his papacy, a group of cardinals, including one of Julius II’s nephews, Raphael Riario, would engage in a conspiracy to poison him. The plot was exposed, and the principal leader executed. Leo would have been perfectly within his rights to execute the rest as well, but he let them off with substantial fines, and confiscated Cardinal Riario’s very large palace.

The Palazzo Riario in another engraving by Vasi; originally known as the palazzo Riario, confiscated and turned into the chancery of the Roman Curia by Leo X.  

Pope Julius did not live to see even the beginning of his counter-council, which was continued by Leo, and lasted for almost five years; this is Lateran V, one of the great and ghastly failures among the ecumenical councils, a missed opportunity to enact badly needed reforms. The eruption of the so-called Reformation just after its closure was certainly one of those signs of the times that a more recent ecumenical council said the Church should look out for, and which the Church then, as more recently, completely failed to see. But this was no more the fault of Pope Leo than of thousands of other churchmen of his era, a truth that was recognized many years later by the opening speech of the Council of Trent.

However, he looms large in any history of the Reformation, in part simply because he was the Pope, and in part because he excommunicated Martin Luther. It was also he who issued the indulgence that became the flash-point for the rebellion, which was offered in exchange for monetary contributions to the rebuilding of St Peter’s basilica, a project which had been begun, but just barely, by Julius II. His nepotism, typical for the period, furthered the ecclesiastical careers of several relatives, among them his cousin Giulio, who would become Pope Clement VII after his death and the brief reign (20 months) of Adrian VI. He also expanded the territory controlled by his family, paving the way for them to eventually take absolute control of the Florentine republic and transform it into the Duchy of Tuscany.

A sketch by the Dutch artist Maarten van Heemskerck (1498-1574), made when he visited Rome in 1532-36, showing the ruins of the old St Peter’s basilica, and the beginnings of the construction of its replacement.

In other ways, Leo was actually a very successful Pope. He negotiated a new concordat to regulate relations between the Church and the kingdom of France, which remained in effect until the French revolution. This was part of a more general pacification of relations with France, which in turn brought much needed calm to the whole Italian peninsula. But the politics of the era were such that it was often necessary to change sides, (see again the quote above from Dr Palmer), and towards the end of his reign, he took the part of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V against France, also hoping that the emperor would stem the tide of the Lutheran rebellion. This hope proved vain, but Leo did not live to see its failure, since he died, suddenly and unexpectedly, on December 1, 1521, at the age of only 46.

As stated above, for my purposes, the brief pontificate of Leo XI is really more of a footnote to that of his kinsman Leo X than anything else. He was born on this very day in 1535 to a cadet branch of the Medici family, distinguished from the main line as the Medici di Ottajano. In his youth, he was tutored by a Dominican priest (the Medici family had always had a close relationship with the order), and wished to enter the clergy, but was opposed in this by his mother, since he was the only male left in his branch of the family. It is a sign of the early success of the Counter-Reformation that she evidently did not think he could just as well have gotten ordained and fathered enough illegitimate children to continue the line, as e.g., Pope Paul III had. The former Florentine republic had now been established as a proper duchy, ruled by the main branch of the family, and she duly packed him off to the court in Florence.

In 1560, he visited Rome in the company of Duke Cosimo I, and became friends with his countryman St Philip Neri. Six years later when his mother died, he resumed his studies for the priesthood, and was ordained within a year. He then served as the Florentine ambassador to Rome for some years, residing in the city with his kinsman Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici. In 1573, he was appointed bishop of Pistoia, but within less a year, he was transferred to Florence, where he served as archbishop for 31 years. He was made a cardinal in 1583, and participated in a total of six conclaves. (Between September of 1590 and December of 1591, three popes in a row, Urban VII, Gregory XIV and Innocent IX, ruled for less than a year; Urban’s is the shortest papacy in history, 12 days.)

During his time as archbishop of Florence, the Carmelite nun Saint Maria-Magdalene de’ Pazzi had predicted to him that he would be elected Pope, but that his reign would be brief. This prophecy was realized in 1605; elected Pope on April 1st, he was crowned on April 10th, and died on the 27th. His papal reign is the eighth shortest in history!

The monument of Pope Leo XI in St Peter’s Basilica, by Alessandro Algardi. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Torvindus, CC BY-SA 3.0)

A Rubrical Note for the End of This Month

This year, the feast of Ss Peter and Paul falls on the Sunday after the feast of the Sacred Heart (June 27). A priest friend has put forth the question, What does one do about the external solemnity of the Sacred Heart, which would be celebrated on that day? The short answer, according to the rubrics of both the 1960 Missal and of the prior editions, is, Omit it.

The Allegory of the Holy Eucharist, 1750, by Miguel Cabrera. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.) 

An “external solemnity” is not the translation of a feast. It is a pastoral provision which may be made, but is not obligatory, in cases where a reasonable number of the faithful are unable to attend a feast on the day itself. The Mass of the feast is repeated, but the Office is not changed to match it; the rubrics of the 1962 Missal (numbers 356-361) describe it as “celebratio … festi absque Officio – the celebration of the feast without the Office.” Whereas on the feast day itself, a church may celebrate as many Masses of the feast as are possible, desired, or necessary, only two may be said of the feast on its external solemnity (number 360), and only one of them may be sung.

Further, it should be noted that according to this rubric, there are only two feasts to which an external solemnity is automatically granted, those of the Sacred Heart and the Holy Rosary; the former may be repeated on the following Sunday, the latter on the first Sunday of October, whether before or after its fixed date of October 7.

An external solemnity is classified as a Votive Mass of the Second class (rubr. gen. 341d), and therefore does not take precedence over a feast of the First class such as that of Ss Peter and Paul.

Other Gospels for the Ascension

The Roman Rite has various ways of arranging the Masses during an octave. That of Easter, for example, has a completely proper Mass for every day, that of Pentecost for every day but Thursday, which was originally an “aliturgical” day; when its Mass was instituted later, it was given proper readings, but everything else is repeated from Sunday. The feast of Ss Peter and Paul is continued with one Mass for the days within the octave, and another for the octave day itself, plus the special Commemoration of St Paul on June 30th. Some others, however, especially the relatively late ones like Corpus Christi and All Saints, simply repeat the Mass of the day throughout the octave.

A folio of the Echternach Sacramntary, 895 AD, with the last two prayers of the Mass of St Paul, those of Ss Processus and Martinian on July 2, and the first two prayers of the octave of Ss Peter and Paul.

The feast of the Ascension falls into the latter category, although the Mass of the Sunday within the octave, which is older than the octave itself, is different. Octaves are for the contemplation of mysteries that are too great for a single day, and it is certainly true that “repetita juvant”, a proverb which the Roman Rite, with its habitual conservatism, historically took very much to heart. One might argue, however, that there was some room for expanding the repertoire of readings within this octave in particular, in a way that would have been fully consonant with the tradition of the Rite, and expanded the scope of such contemplation.

The very oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, the Comes (the Latin word for “companion”) of Wurzburg, attests to the Roman system of readings as it was in the middle of the 7th century. (The manuscript itself was copied out in roughly 700-750.) Although there are some notable differences, it is unmistakably the same system as that of the Missal of St Pius V. Its Gospels for the Easter season are almost entirely the same, while those of the second oldest Comes, that of Murbach, are exactly the same. Both of them also attest to a feature which was not included in the late medieval Missal of the Roman Curia, the immediate predecessor of that of St Pius V, namely, a series of ferial readings for the Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the year. In Wurzburg, this feature is very irregular; some weeks have readings for both days, some have one for Saturday as well, but others them have only for one day, and others have none. In Murbach, which is from roughly a century later, it has been completely regularized, and every Wednesday and Friday has readings assigned to it.

On the Wednesday after the Ascension, the Gospel is the very end of St Luke, chapter 24, 49-53. (Ss Matthew and John do not describe the Ascension, although Christ Himself refers to it in John 20, 17, in the words that form the antiphon for the Benedictus, “I go up to my Father and yours, my God and yours, alleluia.”) The Roman Rite tends to choose shorter passages than both the Ambrosian and Byzantine Rites, which have a longer selection from this passage, verses 36-53 (everything after the Supper at Emmaus), as the main Gospel of the feast; the Byzantines read the Roman Gospel at Orthros. In the Neo-Gallican Use of Paris, which expanded the Roman corpus of Scriptural readings considerably, while keeping to the traditional structure of the lectionary, verses 44-53 were assigned to the octave day of the Ascension.

Another passage which is connected to the feast is one of the most beautiful in St John’s Gospel, chapter 17, which Biblical scholars now often call the “priestly prayer.” On the vigil of the Ascension, the Missal of St Pius V has only the first 10½ verses, breaking off at vs. 11 “… and I come to thee.” The rest of the chapter is not read in either the temporal or sanctoral cycles, but verses 11-23 are the Gospel of the Votive Mass to remove a schism. In the Murbach lectionary, the rest of passage is read on the Wednesday following the Fourth Sunday after Easter; on the Sunday after the Ascension, the Ambrosian Rite reads the full chapter, while the Byzantine reads the first 13 verses. The revised Parisian Use kept the traditional Roman Gospel for the vigil, then very cleverly divided the rest into two parts. Verses 11b-19, in which Christ prays for the Apostles, is read on the Friday within the octave of the Ascension; the rest of the chapter, in which He prays “also for those who shall believe in Me though their word”, is assigned to Tuesday.

Two leaves of the Parisian Missal of 1736, with part of the propers for the Mass for the Friday after the octave of the Ascension, and the beginning of the vigil of Pentecost.

The Parisian Use is in many respects inspired by tradition, as in the examples given above, but did not shy away from innovations, which vary in quality. One of its better innovations, which has no precedent in the ancient Roman lectionaries, is the Gospel chosen for the Friday between the Octave of the Ascension and the vigil of Pentecost, which is traditionally celebrated as a kind of extension of the octave. (The Roman Missal repeats the Gospel of the Sunday). The liturgy of the Ascension often looks forward to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; an example is the responsory “If I do not go, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, will not come.” With the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles will go out in the world to preach the Gospel, for which they, and many others after them, will receive the crown of martyrdom. The Parisian Use therefore moves away from St John, who dominates the Easter season, and takes this passage from St Luke, 12, 8-12, which looks forward to the ongoing witness to the life and teachings of Christ in the mission of His Church.

“At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God. But he that shall deny me before men, shall be denied before the angels of God. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but to him that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven. And when they shall bring you into the synagogues, and to magistrates and powers, be not solicitous how or what you shall answer, or what you shall say; For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what you must say.”

The Feast of St Petronilla

Long before either the Visitation or the Queenship of the Virgin Mary were celebrated on this day, and before those, St Angela Merici, the founder of the Ursulines, May 31st was the feast day of St Petronilla. Although she is missing from the oldest Roman liturgical books, she is seen in a painting of the mid-4th century in the catacomb of Domitilla, where she was buried, and her name appears on lists of the venerated tombs of martyrs in the sixth and seventh centuries. In the reign of Pope St Paul I (757-67), an ancient sarcophagus containing her remains was translated from the catacomb to the basilica of St Peter, the treasury of which still preserves a large metal reliquary with her skull inside it.

Fresco of the mid-4th century, with the martyr Petronilla on the right, leading a young woman named Veneranda into the garden of Paradise. (Image source.)

The true history of her life and martyrdom has long since been lost, but she was for many centuries believed to be the daughter of St Peter. This idea seems to have come partly from her name and the location of her relics, partly from a Gnostic “Acts of St Peter”, which speaks of a daughter of St Peter, without giving her a name. (In the Middle Ages, this apocryphal document would not have been understood as a work of heretical origin.)

The first edition of the Breviary of St Pius V carried over from its late medieval predecessors two brief Matins lessons of her life, which state that she was miraculously healed of paralysis by her father, relapsed, and while she was recovering again, a “count” named Flaccus conceived a wish to marry her sight unseen. Petronilla, “understanding that the human race’s most bitter enemy was readying an assault on her virginity, which she had dedicated to Jesus Christ”, prayed and fasted for three days, and then, after receiving the Eucharist, died. When St Robert Bellarmine and Cardinal Cesare Baronio revised the Saints’ lives for a new edition of the Breviary, published in 1602, these lessons were replaced with a generic one from the common of Virgins, a clear sign that the traditional story was considered wholly unreliable.

A reconstruction and partial cross-section view of old St Peter’s Basilica, with the mausoleum mentioned below on the far left. This structure was round on the outside, but octagonal on the inside. A narthex was later constructed between the left transept of the basilica and the rotunda, and doors opened up to form a passage from the church into the mausoleum. Another passage connected the mausoleum with its twin next door, also demolished by Vignola in the 1570s.

In the middle of the 5th century, a large mausoleum was built next to the left transept of the Constantinian basilica of St Peter. Six of its eight internal niches later became chapels, with that opposite the door being dedicated to St Petronilla; for a long time, this chapel was under the patronage of the kings of France. In 1498, Cardinal Jean Bilhères de Lagraulas, the French ambassador to the Papal court, commissioned his own funerary monument to be added to the chapel, from a 23-year-old Florentine sculptor named Michelangelo Buonarroti. This is, of course, one of the most loved and admired sculptures in the entire world, the Pietà.

Michelangelo did not know, of course, that only 7 years after the sculpture’s completion and the Cardinal’s death, both in 1499, Pope Julius II and the architect Donatello Bramante would begin (though just barely) the process of replacing the ancient basilica, then in a pitiable state. Much less did he know that, after decades of delays, he himself would take the project in hand in 1545, at the age of 70, and spend the last 19 years of his life working on the monumental church which we have today. Although he lived to an extraordinary age for that era, dying 2 weeks before his 89th birthday, he did know full well that he would not live to see the project finished. It fell to his successor as chief architect of St Peter’s, Giacomo Vignola, to demolish the mausoleum where the Pietà originally stood, in order to make way for the left transept of the vastly larger new basilica.

The Pietà now stands in its own chapel at the back of St Peter’s, and most of the thousands of people who come to see it every day never visit the chapel dedicated to St Petronilla on the opposite end of the building. (The new church is so much larger than the old one that this chapel in the northwest corner stands entirely outside the former footprint of the Constantinian structure.) Around the year 1623, the painter Francesco Barbieri (1591-1666), known by the nickname “Guercino” (“squinty” in the dialect of his native region, the Emilia Romagna), was commissioned to do a painting of the Burial of St Petronilla for this chapel.

Guercino was especially admired for a remarkably vivid blue paint of his own invention, which he uses for two figures in this painting, as well as the sky in the background. In the upper part, it clothes Christ as He receives St Petronilla into heaven. Although the historical St Petronilla was certainly honored as a martyr, as the legendary daughter of St Peter, she is honored as a virgin, but not as a martyr, and here she is shown receiving the crown of virginity, but not the palm of martyrdom.

Below, notice the intense realism of the scene of her burial; we see the hands of a man standing in her grave, but only his hands, reaching up to help lower her body into it. The fellow dressed in blue on the left is the painter’s tribute to Michelangelo, whose most famous sculpture formerly graced the chapel of the same Saint for whom Guercino himself made this painting. The face of this man is taken from a bust of Michelangelo carved by the latter’s disciple Daniele da Volterra, and his massive forearm is very much that of a sculptor. (Even as a very elderly man, Michelangelo never ceased to work in his favorite medium, sculpture in white marble, a labor-intensive and muscle-building activity.) Surely by design and not coincidence, the chapel immediately next to that of St Petronilla in the modern basilica is dedicated to Michelangelo’s name-saint, the Archangel Michael.

Portrait of Michelangelo by Marco Venusti, one of his friends and colleagues, ca. 1535. (Public domain image from Wikipedia.)

The Festival of St Joan of Arc in Orléans, France

Today is the feast of St Joan of Arc, kept on the anniversary of her execution by burning at the stake in the city of Rouen, in the year 1431. The second Sunday of May is kept as a national holiday in France in honor of her, called the “national holiday of Joan of Arc and of patriotism.” (The title isn’t any less awkward in French.) This date was chosen in reference to the liberation of Orléans on May 8, 1429, by troops under St Joan’s command; Orléans has its own annual St Joan festival, which runs from April 29-May 8. The city of Reims, where the French kings were traditionally crowned, has a festival on July 17, the anniversary of the coronation (also in 1429) of King Charles VII, which was made possible by the military defeat of the English in France, again, led by St Joan.

A friend of mine, Fr Jason Vidrine of the diocese of Lafayatte, Louisiana, was in Orléans at the end of April, and kindly agree to share these pictures of some of the events of the festival, and of the city’s cathedral. Part of the festival is held inside the cathedral...

where a young woman playing the part of St Joan is escorted in 

and is formally presented with a sword.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Holy Ghost Hole

A Holy Ghost hole in Saints Peter and Paul parish church in Söll, Austria

A curious architectural feature of some churches in France, southern Germany, and Austria is the Holy Ghost Hole, an opening in the ceiling into which different objects were once thrown during the celebration of the Mass. It is speculated that the art surrounding the hole indicates its original function. If the theme is the Holy Spirit, then the use of the Holy Ghost Hole was limited to Pentecost, but if the theme was more generic (such as the Eye of Providence featured below), it was used at other times of the year. The Holy Ghost Hole was an invention of the Middle Ages but it persisted into the Baroque era, at least as a façade, and in some churches, it could be disguised as a sound-hole for the organ.

Church of St. Michael, Ziegelbach, Germany

Annunciation

The Holy Ghost Hole was useful on at least three holy days. On the Annunciation (March 25), churches in western Germany that had one would lower a boy dressed as Saint Gabriel it to address another young actor playing Mary below. As the children in the congregation looked up in awe, their mothers would surreptitiously place cookies or candy on the pew benches, allowing them to believe that Gabriel’s heavenly companions put them there. [Francis X. Weiser, S.J., Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs (Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1958), 303.]

Ascension Thursday

Second, on the Ascension, some churches hoisted a statue of Jesus Christ up into the hole with a pulley after the Gospel was read. The first recorded instance of this custom is marked with tragedy: in 1433, the Provost of the Augustinian Canons’ Monastery in Bernried, Germany, was killed by a falling figure of Christ after the rope broke. Today the custom continues in two parishes in the Freising district of Germany.

One custom that did not survive is the sequel to the Ascension of the Christ statue. Inspired by the Book of Revelation’s description of the fall of the dragon from Heaven, some churches threw one or more straw effigies of the devil out of the Holy Ghost Hole. Apparently, this addition caused quite a stir, as spirited adolescents would drag the effigy through the streets before burning it. Tired of all the commotion, the clergy eventually suppressed the practice around the eighteenth century.

Kapelle Schanz in Ebbs, Austria

Pentecost

But the main use of the Holy Ghost Hole was on Pentecost. During the chanting of the sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus, communities came up with creative ways to mimic the descent of the gifts of the Holy Spirit upon the first disciples. The eminent scholar of feasts and customs Fr. Francis X. Weiser, SJ writes:

In some towns of central Europe people even went so far as to drop pieces of burning wick or straw from the Holy Ghost Hole, to represent the flaming tongues of Pentecost. This practice, however, was eventually stopped because it tended to put the people on fire externally, instead of internally as the Holy Spirit had done at Jerusalem. [ibid. 252]

France had a safer if not cleaner solution. In the thirteenth century, several cathedrals released real white pigeons that flew around inside while roses were dropped from the Holy Ghost Hole. The records do not show how the pigeons were collected afterwards, or who had to clean up the birds’ own contributions to the floor and pews.

Another option was lowering a blue disc the size of a wagon wheel with the figure of a white dove painted on it. The disc would swing in ever-widening circles as it descended. Some places even provided sound effects, imitating the noise made by the Holy Spirit’s appearance in the Upper Room with trumpets, windbags, hissing, humming, and rattling benches. It too was followed by a shower of rose petals.

Rose petals, in fact appear to have been the most popular (and reasonable) practice. The most famous example of this custom today is at the Basilica of St. Mary and the Martyrs in Rome, better known as the Pantheon. Volunteers from the local fire department scale the roof of the ancient temple and throw thousands of petals through the oculus, the opening in the center of the dome. Although the oculus predates the Holy Ghost Hole by a millennium, it serves the same function.

Gaming Parish Church

We conclude with a more modest example, the Pfarrkirche Gaming or Gaming Parish Church, in the tiny town of Gaming, Austria, (not to be confused with the magnificent medieval Karthause (former Carthusian monastery) less than a mile away.)

Exterior of the Gaming parish church

The small Baroque church serves the town’s 3,200 residents. Its simple exterior belies its ornate interior, which includes statues completely plated in gold, and an elaborate pulpit made of marble and wood. The church also has an organ that legend says a young Mozart once played.

The church organ

Interior of the Gaming Parish Church

More to the point, the small church boasts of two Holy Ghost Holes. The first, in the nave, is covered with the eye-and-pyramid image betokening the Providence of God, similar to that found on the back of every U.S. dollar bill.

The first Holy Ghost Hole over the nave in the Gaming Parish Church

That same pyramid crowns the reredos of the high altar in the sanctuary. As the eyes ascends beyond it, one comes to the second Holy Ghost Hole, which is covered with an image of a dove.

The second Holy Ghost Hole over the sanctuary in the Gaming Parish Church

No petals, fireballs, devils, or angelically-clad children came out of these two holes in the old days, nor did statues of Our Lord pass up through them. They are Baroque organ-holes masquerading as the real thing. Nevertheless, like their more authentic counterparts, they are both a marvelous testimony to the dramatic flair of our ancestors and a permanent reminder to the worshipper that the Holy Spirit stands ready to descend into our hearts every day of the year and not just on special occasions.

“Hold Fast to the Traditions” - Guest Article by Mr Jay Rattino

Our thanks to Mr Jay Rattino for sharing with us this interesting article about the folk customs of Italian Catholics, and the efforts being made to preserve and revive them.

The Italian Catholic communities throughout New Jersey and the surrounding areas are filled with long-standing traditions, and there are renewed efforts going on to revive the devotional customs brought to this country by their ancestors. For those unfamiliar with these practices, witnessing them can evoke both awe and confusion, often prompting the question, “What exactly is this?” Many of these traditions fall under the umbrella of Catholic folk piety, which Gregory DiPippo defines as “devotional customs and practices which have arisen spontaneously among the people, and not from the Church’s official rites.” Phillip Campbell, in a video for Unam Sanctam Catholicam, further reflects on how these simple acts express profound theological truths.

A great example—recently highlighted in an article on New Liturgical Movement—comes from Dr. Peter Kwasniewski’s pilgrimage to Catania, Sicily. The patroness of the town is St. Agatha, who endured multiple tortures, including the cutting off of her breasts. During her feast, which spans three days, Dr. Kwasniewski witnessed “countless individual candles,” “hundreds of devotees wearing white garments and medallions,” a “giant silver reliquary,” depictions of St. Agatha in prison, and more. The picture of an entire city embracing its patroness with such dramatic public devotion is striking. This is a vivid and moving example of Catholic folk piety in action.

The Italian immigrants who came to the United States brought with them many of these folk devotions, and while they may not be on quite so grand a scale in New Jersey — or in the United States as a whole — one can still see traces of them, which we can perhaps also think of as seeds read to sprout again.

During March, you can see a plethora of tables presented to St. Joseph at churches like St. Joseph’s in Lodi, St. Mary’s in Nutley, Our Lady of Mount Virgin in Garfield, and more. As the blog Il Regno explains, the St. Joseph table is a popular tradition throughout Sicily, which dates back to medieval times, when the saint interceded during a severe drought and famine. It is customary for these tables to include a serving of Pasta con le Sarde (Pasta with Sardines); the pasta is topped with toasted breadcrumbs (a muddica), symbolizing the sawdust of a carpenter’s workshop—a tribute to St. Joseph the Worker.

The St. Rocco Society of Fort Lee carries their saint in a traditional procession, but at one point, they begin to run—a joyful tradition known as the Running of the Saint, which traces its origins back to their hometown in Italy.

At St. Lucy’s in Newark, you’ll find St. Gerard’s statue on full display before the novena begins. Shortly after, you’ll consistently see blankets of cash wrapped around the statue—an expression of gratitude by devotees for favors received.

The St. Joseph Society of Lodi celebrates their patron on (or around) March 19 and May 1—but also during Labor Day Weekend. According to society leaders, the founders chose this weekend without work to honor St. Joseph the Worker, dedicating it as a time of rest in his name.

These traditions (and many more) are alive—some thriving more than others, comparable to a pilot light: steady and quietly burning. But recently, that pilot light has been turned up to full blast, thanks to a fresh wave of energy from young people involved in the Italian Apostolate of the Archdiocese of Newark.

Under the direction of Eric Lavin, the Apostolate has been actively supporting these traditions across the archdiocese through promotion and participation. In addition to preserving the rich cultural and spiritual heritage of Italian communities, the group has organized pilgrimages (including to the Padre Pio Shrine and Mother Cabrini Shrine) and continues to support both an Italian-language RCIA program and Italian-language Masses throughout the archdiocese. Most notably, the Italian Apostolate is also helping to revive and bolster forgotten or fading Italian Catholic traditions—and even to bring to light devotions previously unknown to many.

In southern Italian tradition, sepolcri are donated to churches and presented at the Altar of Repose on Holy Thursday. As Il Regno explains, these are potted wheat or lentil sprouts that lack color because they are grown in darkness during the days leading up to Holy Week. The pale, yellow plants represent death, rebirth, and the Resurrection. Over the past two years, the Italian Apostolate has revived this custom by growing the plants and providing them to parishes across the archdiocese.

Courtesy of the blog Il Regno

In much of Italy, including the south, it is more common to distribute olive branches on Palm Sunday instead of palms. The branches are typically decorated with ribbons, paper flowers, and sometimes even caciocavallo cheese—a unique offering of beauty and abundance to begin Holy Week. The Italian Apostolate has embraced this tradition, organizing the distribution of these decorated olive branches to both Italian and non-Italian parishes throughout the archdiocese, continuing the legacy of southern Italian Catholic customs with renewed devotion.

Other examples of interesting devotions include two distinguished feasts—Madonna del Sacro Monte and the feast of Maria Santissima Incoronata—where young girls may dress as the Blessed Virgin Mary or an angel, and young boys as Saint Anthony of Padua or Saint Pio of Pietrelcina. The processions and reenactments are expressions of deep devotion, allowing children to embody the saints as part of the community’s act of worship and celebration.

Some other feasts have gone defunct, such as those of St. Rocco (Church of the Assumption in Emerson), St. Michael (St. Lucy’s in Newark), Our Lady of the Snows (same), and Maria SS. della Lavina (St. Aloysius in Caldwell). But this last has recently seen a promising revival, featuring a Solemn High Latin Mass, with the celebration resuming and growing steadily. Perhaps, with a little zeal, the others too may experience a revival.

Locally, the Italian Apostolate of the Archdiocese of Newark is working hard to bring people back to Mass, preserve long-held traditions, and revive those that were once lost. Beyond New Jersey, this trend is gaining traction among young Italian Catholics across America.

The Italian Mass Project of New York promotes Catholic initiatives for the Italian-American community throughout the New York area. In Denver, Colorado, La Società Maria SS. dei Sette Dolori seeks to restore religious and cultural traditions at their local parish, Our Lady of Mount Carmel. The Madonna del Lume Associazione is instituting an annual procession in Tampa, Florida—featuring a 24-man processional vara (platform) to carry their statue of Our Lady of Light. Under the patronage of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Italian Feasts promotes Italian celebrations and traditions nationwide, offering a current calendar of events that connects communities across the country.

“So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.” 2 Thessalonians 2, 15

True pious devotions and traditions need to be preserved. Lost ones need to be revived.

At Newark Italian Apostolate events and meetings, you'll find the familiar group of dedicated members working hard to preserve, revive, and support Italian Catholic traditions.

But perhaps the greater victory is this: the curious secular soul who observes one of these traditions and asks, “What is this?” They drop into a meeting or event, drawn by something they saw in person or on social media. There, they encounter Catholic folk piety—and then say to themselves, “I’d like to be a part of this.”

That’s because these traditions can be the hook a soul needs to draw close to Jesus. Many people are not yet ready for direct catechesis—but the taste of a St. Joseph pastry or a plate of pasta con le sarde can be the first door to a life of grace in Christ and His Church.

Rendiamo grazie a Dio!

The Ascension of the Lord 2025

Men of Galilee, why do you wonder looking up to heaven? alleluia. As you have seen Him going into heaven, so shall He come, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Ps 46 All ye nations, clap your hands: shout unto God with the voice of joy. Glory be... Men of Galilee... (The Introit of the Ascension)

The Ascension, 1495-98, by Pietro Perugino (1448-1523); public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Introitus Viri Galilaei, quid admirámini aspicientes in caelum? allelúja: quemádmodum vidistis eum ascendentem in caelum, ita veniet, allelúja, allelúja, allelúja. Ps. 46 Omnes gentes, pláudite mánibus: jubiláte Deo in voce exsultatiónis. Gloria Patri... Viri Galilaei...

A motet by Palestrina on a similar text.

How Medieval Christians Celebrated the Rogation Days (with a Dragon)

The following description of the Rogation Processions comes from a canon of the cathedral of Siena named Oderico, who in the year 1213 wrote a detailed account of the liturgical texts and ceremonies used in his church.

“Mindful of that promise of the Gospel, ‘Ask, and ye shall receive,’ (John 16, 24; from the Gospel of the Sunday which precedes the Lesser Litanies) St Mamertus, bishop of Vienne, in this week instituted the three days of the Litanies, because of an urgent necessity … days which are greatly celebrated by every church with fasts and prayers. The Greek word ‘litany’ means ‘supplication,’ because in the Litanies we beseech the Lord that he may defend us from every adversity, and sudden death; and we pray the Saints that they may intercede for us before the Lord. … The Church celebrates the Litanies with devotion in these three days, with (processional) crosses, banners, and relics She goes from church to church, humbly praying the Saints that they may intercede with God for our excesses, ‘that we may obtain by their intercession what we cannot obtain by our own merits.’ (citing a commonly used votive Collect of all the Saints.) ...

It is the custom of certain churches also to carry a dragon on the first two days before the Cross and banner, with a long, inflated tail, but on the third day, (it goes) behind the Cross and banners, with its tail down. This is the devil, who in three periods, before the Law, under the Law, and under grace, deceives us, or wishes to do so. In the first two (periods) he was, as it were, the lord of the world; therefore, he is called the Prince or God of this world, and for this reason, in the first day, he goes with his tail inflated. In the time of grace, however, he was conquered by Christ, nor dares he to reign openly, but seduces men in a hidden way; this is the reason why on the last day he follows with his tail down.” (Ordo Officiorum Ecclesiae Senensis, 222)

Oderico does not describe the dragon, but given that Siena is in Tuscany, still a major center of leather-working to this day, we may imagine that the dragon itself was a large wooden image mounted on wheels or a cart, and the inflatable tail something like a leather bellows. It should be noted that in addition to the processional cross, Oderico mentions both banners and relics as part of the processional apparatus. In the medieval period, it was considered particularly important to carry relics in procession; so much so that, for example, a rubric of the Sarum Missal prescribes that a bier with relics in it be carried even in the Palm Sunday procession. A typical bier for these processions is shown in the lower right corner of this page of the famous Book of Hours known as the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry. made by the Limbourg brothers between 1411 and 1416.

Why Louis Bouyer Is Delightful and Frustrating to Read

One experience I think many of us have had with liturgical authors who wrote prior to the Council and/or the imposition of the Novus Ordo is that we find in their works so many wonderful insights, mingled with passages of excruciating naivete, baffling optimism about the possibilities of reform-in-continuity, strange flights of reformatory fancy, embarrassingly erroneous theories (such as “the canon of Hippolytus” and “early Christian clergy celebrated versus populum”), and the like. It can feel a bit schizophrenic to go from a glowing paragraph on the glories of tradition to another paragraph about how this and that have to be rethought and reworked. One suffers from intellectual whiplash.

This experienced plays itself out with a wide variety of authors: Romano Guardini, Pius Parsch, Ildefonso Schuster, Joseph Jungmann, Joseph Ratzinger, Yves Congar, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, A.-M. Roguet, J.D. Chrichton, and others less famous. But the whiplash author par excellence must surely be Louis Bouyer—a theologian who, let’s say on page 35, was capable of dismissing as buffoons the squadrons of tinkering liturgists, and then on page 37 of declaring that Baroque excrescences had to be purged from the liturgy (presumably, by specialists like himself). His soaring lyricism about traditional aspects of the liturgy is matched only by his acerbic criticism of just about everything to do with the concrete liturgical life of the preconciliar era.

A good example of the mingling of true, dubious, and erroneous may be found in his important 1963 work Rite and Man, recently republished by Cluny Media. In what follows, I will first present an overview of major themes, then look at Bouyer’s take-away for the liturgical reform taking place at the very time he was writing, and lastly, discuss why Bouyer shows the fracture-lines he does.

What Is Required for Ritual Activity

Essentially, this work is an extended prelude to Guardini’s Sacred Signs that tries to explain the natural religious presuppositions of Catholic liturgy. Unless we deeply understand the roots of liturgy in human nature and Christian tradition, we are destined to misunderstand, misappropriate, and deform it even further.

Bouyer draws on recent discoveries of depth psychology and comparative religion to show how man, naturally religious, has expressed his religious experience in history. He shows empirically what we confess in faith: that the Christian religion is the fulfillment of all natural religion. He shows the origin of religious rituals, their relation to divine word, developing notions of sacred time and space, showing in each case how Christian rituals recapitulate and consummate these universal features of natural religion. Finally, he suggests how this study might inform the Liturgical Movement.

Primitive Rites and Natural Sacramentality. In its earliest stages, religious man felt himself surrounded by divine hierophanies: fire, mountains, woods, the rhythmic seasons. Each of these was a manifestation of divine power in which man participated out of reverence and fear. Thus, rites developed spontaneously as man’s attempt to participate in these divine revelations (e.g., fertility rites) and attain union with the divine powers. Each natural object had its hierophanic meaning (water, fire, earth, etc). Men understood these rites to be somehow divinely instituted—actions of the gods in which man was privileged to participate. 
 

Rite and Divine Word. These rites naturally gained expression in priestly prayers and in myths. Myths exist to justify the divine institution of primitive rites—this is a fascinating point: rites actually precede myths and give rise to them, but, at the same, thereby dangerously objectify them. Priestly prayers, too, though necessary for human participation in the ritual, can devolve into mere magic: a human arrogance that believes a set rite or prayer in a sacred language may obligate the deity. One may think of the Carmina Saliaria, the ossified antique Latin prayers used in religious rites even in the Late Republic: no one understood them anymore, but their supposed magical powers made them last.

Thus, the natural relationship between rite and divine word is essential to the survival of genuine cultus. The rite is established by divine word, because it is divine action. Only when clothed in the living divine word can the rite be what it really is: the gratuitous re-enactment for us by God of a divine action. If the divine word does not constitute the rite, then the rite devolves into magic: a collection of formulae and gestures whose validity binds the divine agent to confer certain boons. The Bible makes copious protest against such magic-making, when it insists on the radically conditional presence of God among His people. The sense of divine theophany is lost, and the rites become a mere instrument—a work of human hands.

Here is a marvelous passage that makes for painful reading when we think about the liturgical reform and the extent to which it falls afoul of the fundamental law Bouyer discerned:

This is why at all times and in all places rites are considered to be the work of the gods. The men who celebrate these rites would not celebrate them as they do if they thought that they were themselves their authors. And, in fact, the rites soon cease to be observed when men get the idea that they were instituted by other men before them…. Far from being an exception to this rule, Christianity is a transcendent realization of it…. Where this conviction fails or becomes obscured, the sacraments are emptied of their substance, just as in any case where rites come to be regarded as simple human actions, as pious means of teaching the people invented by theologians. In such a hypothesis, the theologians themselves have no need of these rites since they are supposed to have already been in substantial possession of the religion itself and to have later created the rites as a means of transmitting it to the people…. This aspect of the matter should be pointed up in more detail since it is so fundamental that if sight of it is once lost, the very possibility of a substantially religious ritual is also lost. (p. 69)

Bouyer also tarries for two chapters on the nature of sacred space and sacred time. He concludes by drawing several practical applications for the liturgical movement.

Applications to Liturgical Reform

First, he maintains that a sense of natural religion must be restored. This is where one feels the kinship with Guardini the most: we must “not attempt to rationalize [liturgy], to empty it not only of its mystery but also of its expressions that are not strictly rational. They should, on the contrary, seize again upon the chords in the heart of modern man which respond to these eternal expressions in order to restore to them their maximum efficacy. At the same time, we must do everything in our power to revive modern man’s atrophied faculties…and to bring back to our contemporaries a religious culture….,” that is, one rooted in the natural sacramentality of the world. Otherwise, there is no hope for man to live the liturgy.

A photo I took in Wyoming years ago at a ranch

This point has major implications in all kinds of spheres: family life, parish life, education. For example, ideally, schools should educate in natural religion, in two phases: first, students should be immersed in literature and poetry that fascinate with their beauty and indeed their superintelligibility, which escapes what the rational mind immediately grasps; then, they should be immersed in the wilderness, which will create a great void of silence and a sense of grandeur. (It could go in the other order, too; indeed, best of all would be some alternation between poetry and the wilderness.) With these experiences in place, the traditional liturgy is capable of capturing the soul with its beauty, transcendence, seriousness, and holiness. This is the process all students of the college should go through, because it is the true end of a liberal education: being truly free to worship God as He planned. Everything falls into line behind this supreme final goal!

Second, we should restore the primacy of the divine word. In Bouyer’s view, current liturgical practice—when the congregation stands silently by, either subjected to rationalistic commentaries on the sacred action or devoutly praying their private devotions—is a clear devolution into the sort of white magic that, according to his historical analysis, is an ever recurring danger in established rites when the ceremony is seen as a formulaic means of binding the divinity’s power. The Divine Word in the Eucharist is made present through the divine words of consecration as a consummation of the divine words of Scripture. Thus, according to Bouyer, the faithful should hear the Scripture (and much of the Canon) proclaimed in the vernacular, so that the liturgy is sufficiently manifest as divine word, rather than seeming to be a distant apotropaic relic.

Here, of course, is where red flags should be popping up. It seems like Bouyer, though he cites the dogma of ex opere operato efficacity, does not fully appreciate the objectivity of it; on his own account it might be criticized as magic (a description Sebastian Morello would take as a compliment). Bouyer is right to take a dim view of a liturgical minimalism content with validity and rubrical correctness, but surely there is quite a bit of terrain lying between magical thinking and the view that immediate verbal comprehension is the only way to see the liturgy as God speaking to us and accomplishing His salvation.

Third, purging the rites of “dramatic” substitutes for living rites clothed in the divine word. He is reticent about giving particulars in this book, but elsewhere he complains about certain elements of pomp and circumstance, the accumulation and duplication of ceremonial gestures that could seem fussy or superfluous, the importation of allegories, and other elements that seem to belong to a staged religious drama. This emphasis on “the word” as the be-all and end-all might prompt one to wonder if the old Protestant pastor in Bouyer has not quite let go of his grip.

Fourth, Bouyer approves of a certain adaptation of liturgy to modern man. At the same time, he explicitly condemns rationalizing the liturgy, turning altars around (!), etc. But he remains vague. What does he mean that the liturgy must be “adapted to modern man with his technical and rational outlook”? Is he too confident about the work specialists can do? How exactly is a technical and rational outlook compatible with the wellsprings of natural religion he so eloquently canvased? How is it compatible with spiritual perception of the divine word that brings Christian man into being? One might think, rather, that the Church needs somehow to work against the technical and rational outlook in order to prevent it from undermining liturgy altogether.
 

Modernity does not seem especially conducive to liturgy.

An Insoluble Contradiction

Bouyer was very influential in his day, yet he expressed himself in ways that were easily misconstrued and exaggerated. He regretted all this later when it was much too late; he could have made his own the words of Joseph Ratzinger:

Anyone like myself, who was moved by this perception [viz., that liturgy is a living network of tradition that cannot be torn apart] in the time of the Liturgical Movement on the eve of the Second Vatican Council, can only stand, deeply sorrowing, before the ruins of the very things they were concerned for.

Case in point: Bouyer generally criticizes liturgy from the late medieval period through the Baroque as “theatrical” and “courtly,” but doesn’t seem to recall that Scripture heavily uses the language of God as a King surrounded by His court (as I discuss here). He criticizes the Tridentine liturgy for being too privatized, ritualistic, and intellectual, but does not see that it connected people consistently with the numinous, with the real presence of our Lord, and spoke to their souls—the souls of very common people, of farmers, artisans, laborers, as well as the educated and sophisticated. That is, he was overlooking strengths that are obvious to us in retrospect, now that a banal fabrication has been substituted in its place. Again, he lamented the rationalization and verbalization of the Mass, but all too late.

It seems to me that Bouyer, like Guardini, was trapped in an insoluble contradiction. For them, religion begins in something primeval, natural, essential, vital; and yet modern man is trapped in technology, subjectivism, egoism, calculative reason, and is cut off from his natural roots. So how do we build a bridge? Well, we can either try to awaken man to what is natural and primordial, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, or we can adapt and modify liturgy to his peculiar condition in an effort to educate him “as he is” and “where he is.”

The problem is that doing the latter—judging and reworking the liturgy, in other words, in contrast to submitting to a liturgy handed down from tradition—puts man in the pseudo-divine position of fabricating rites, when this is contrary to the very notion of a rite; or, one might say it implicitly makes him a god, the measure of all things, even of the sacred. Hence it compounds his alienation from the divine and makes the overall situation even worse. In contrast, the principle of tradition—namely, that one should have immense respect for what is given as a result of long centuries of organic development—has at least the merit of taking a man out of himself, out of his age and its limitations, and connecting him with, or at least confronting him to, something greater, deeper, broader, other than himself and his age.

Bouyer, it seems to me, is caught on the horns of this dilemma, which is why he will say in one chapter the sort of things traditionalists say, and then in the next chapter, the sort of things Bugnini or Lercaro say. Ultimately, I do not think his liturgical theology is altogether coherent, and yet it is extremely thought-provoking. It exercised a seductive power over the minds of men who genuinely wanted the faithful to be enthusiastic participants in the Church’s liturgy. The irony is that, in the effort to move away from “magic” to “word,” we ended up with a Protestantized “liturgy of the word”—and here I include the Canon inasmuch as it is said aloud in the vernacular—that lacks the dimension of mystery at the heart of the authentic notion of the word: the mysterion, the secret both hidden and revealed. Thus, we departed not merely from the Tridentine heritage of the preceding four centuries, but from the most ancient heritage of the Fathers, who already speak of the liturgy as something fearful, awesome, tremendous (as verified in this article).

It is true that Bouyer considered the experts of his day to be well-qualified for the work of revising the liturgical books, but as John Pepino recounts in his superb article “Cassandra’s Curse: Louis Bouyer, the Liturgical Movement, and the Post-Conciliar Reform of the Mass” (Antiphon 18.3 [2014]: 254–300), already as early as the 1950s Bouyer was complaining about would-be reformers impatient to replace the genuine liturgy of the Church with a pastoral construction of utilitarian aims. Like many churchmen, I genuinely believe Bouyer did not think it was possible or conceivable that the liturgy could or would be jettisoned in the manner in which it actually was jettisoned. He would have instinctively viewed it as monolithic, permanent, dominant, almost immovable, so that the reformers would have functioned more like men who were simply cleaning off the old mosaics or repositioning the pillars—not removing or replacing them. When things turned out differently, he was among those most surprised at the wreckage.

It is fair to say that Guardini and Bouyer would have heartily approved of what students at Wyoming Catholic College are doing: climbing mountains, memorizing poems, and learning Latin as a spoken language, among other full-immersion activities. By taking seriously the senses, the imagination, the poetic, the literary, in confrontation with God’s First Book, their souls are opened to receive the powerful divine message of the sacred liturgy. Perhaps this is the principal reform that needs to take place: a reform of our minds and hearts, so that the revelation of God will not fall on deaf ears.