Relics of St Norbert

Today is the feast of St Norbert, the founder of the Premonstratensian Order, who died in 1134 as archbishop of Magdeburg, in the modern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, and was buried in the choir of his order’s local church. The city was one of the first to turn Protestant in the 16th-century, and although the Saint’s relics were not profaned, as were those of so many others, it was no longer possible for Catholics to venerate them. During the Thirty Years’ War, however, the abbot of Strahov, the Premonstratensian house in Prague, was able to recover them during a temporary Catholic occupation of the area, and bring them to back to his abbey, where they were officially installed on May 2nd, 1627, and have remained to this day.

The shrine of St Norbert in the choir of Strahov Abbey.

The Premonstratensians traditionally kept a feast on May 7th of the translation of St Norbert’s relics; the Matins lessons of the second nocturn state that when the original burial site was opened, the skeleton was found intact. These photographs were taken several years ago during another recognitio (verification) of the condition of the bones. 

Here are some great old photographs of the shrine in Strahov Abbey, and of a procession held in Prague with the relics; they are not precisely dated, but František Kordač, who was Archbishop of Prague from 1919-31, is shown in the procession.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Hymns for the Medieval Office of Corpus Christi

When Pope Urban IV promulgated the feast of Corpus Christi in 1264, he also offered a complete set of Mass and Office texts composed at his behest by St Thomas Aquinas. These are rightly recognized to be among the finest of the High Middle Ages, and have been treasured by Catholics as the official liturgical expression of Eucharistic devotion for many centuries. However, the feast had already been established almost two decades earlier in the city of Liège; in his bull Transiturus, Pope Urban refers to the visionary St Juliana of Mont-Cornillon, who had composed an office of Corpus Christi before St Thomas. Her assistant in this task and in the promotion of the feast was a canon of the church of St Martin in Liège, John of Lausanne; this church and several others continued to use the older Office or parts thereof well after Pope Urban’s time. In a 15th-century manuscript of St Juliana’s life, a note is added by a later hand that refers to this Office, saying that “(i)t begins with the words Animarum cibus, and is found in its entirety in the church of Tongres (about ten miles from Liège) and elsewhere; then Urban IV instituted the office which is now sung everywhere.” (As noted in “The Feast of Corpus Christi”, edited by Barbara R. Walters et al., Penn. State Univ. Press, 2006, p. 61.)

The collegiate church of St Martin in Liège, depicted in a watercolor by Joseph Fussell (1818-1912). Image from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. 

Despite the broad liturgical standardization after the council of Trent, Liège maintained its own proper medieval use, edited according to certain criteria of the Tridentine reform, until the French Revolution ended the independence of the city’s Prince-Bishopric. It would appear from the printed liturgical books of the era that the office of St Thomas was adopted throughout the diocese as part of this reform. At the church of St Martin, however, where the feast of Corpus Christi was first celebrated, several parts of the older office Animarum cibus were added to St Thomas’; among them, proper hymns are assigned to the minor hours of Prime, Terce, Sext and None. (This was done in some parts of the Low Countries on a very small number of feasts, where the use of Rome has the same hymns at these hours every day.) As was typical of the period, several lines are borrowed from other hymns already part of the general repertoire; for example, the first line of the hymn of Prime, “Summae Jesu clementiae” is borrowed from a much older hymn which begins with those same words.

At Prime
Summae Jesu clementiae,
Qui ob salutem mentium
Caelestis alimoniae
Nobis praestas remedium

Mores, vitam et opera
Rege momentis omnibus,
Et beatis accelera
Vitam dare cum civibus.

Praesta, Pater, per Filium,
Praesta per almum Spiritum,
Quibus das hoc edulium
Prosperum serves exitum. Amen.

Jesus, of greatest clemency, who for the salvation of our souls grant us the remedy of heavenly nourishment, in every moment guide our manners, life and works, and hasten also to grant us life with the blessed citizens (of heaven.)
(Each of these hymns is sung with the same doxology:)
Grant this, Father, through the Son, and through the Holy Spirit, and a properous end to those to whom you give this food.

At Terce
Sacro tecta velamine
Pietatis mysteria
Mentes pascunt dulcedine,
Qua satiant caelestia.

Sit ergo cum caelestibus
Nobis commune gaudium,
Illis quod se praesentavit,
Nobis quod se non abstulit.

The mysteries of devotion, covered by a sacred veil, feed our souls with the same sweetness that fills those in heaven. Let this then be the joy which we share with them, that He has made Himself present to them, and Has not (by so doing) removed Himself from us.

At Sext
Splendor superni luminis,
Laudisque sacrificium
Coenam tui da numinis
Tuae carnis post prandium.

Saturatus opprobriis
Ad hoc cruci configeris
Et irrisus ludibriis
Credeli morte plecteris

Splendor of heavenly light, and sacrifice of praise, grant the banquet of your Divine presence after that of your flesh. For this were you weighed down with reproaches, this nailed to the Cross, derided and mocked, and punished with a cruel death.

At None
Aeterna caeli gloria
Lux beata credentium
Redemptionis hostia
Tuarum pastus ovium.

Hujus cultu memoriae
Dirae mortis supplicio,
Nos de lacu miseriae
Educ qui clamas: Sitio.

Eternal glory of heaven, blessed light of believers, victim for our redemption, pasture of your sheep, by the worship of this memorial, by the punishment of this dreadful death, lead us forth from the pit of misery, you who cried out “I thirst.”

The Mass of St. Gregory the Great, by Robert Campin, 1440, or an assistant.

Each of these hymns contains a specific reference to the canonical hour at which it would be sung. The words “in every moment guide our manners, life and works” in the first hymn fit with one of the main ideas of the hour of Prime, to pray for the the sanctification of the day’s work; this is also expressed by the two invariable prayers of that Hour in the Roman Rite and most other uses. The references to receiving Communion in the hymn Sacro tecta velamine derive from the generally observed custom of the Middle Ages that the principle Mass of all major feast days was celebrated after the singing of Terce. The hymn for Sext refers to the Crucifixion which took place “at the sixth hour”, as St Matthew says, and that of None speaks of the death of Christ at the ninth hour, and His crying out “I thirst” just before, as told in the Gospel of St John.

The Offertory: Preparation of the Gifts or a Sacrifice to God? (Part 2)

Having surveyed the Offertory Rite in the 1962 Roman Missal and its theological rationale last week, we turn now to the Offertory Rite in the 1970 Roman Missal.

Modern Revision

Several liturgists of the twentieth century were either unaware or unimpressed with the explanations offered in our last post. They deplored the Offertory’s sacrificial language, its alleged clericalization, its silent recitation, and its medieval Gallican origin, which in their opinion destroyed the “noble simplicity” of the Roman Rite. Some even wanted the washing of the hands and the addition of water to the wine to be eliminated. And most saw the prayers as redundant since they touch upon several themes that are in the Canon. [1] Regarding the latter critique, what these liturgists failed to appreciate was how these prayers were structured to form anticipatory parallels with the Canon, and to develop several themes that are either in the Canon inchoately or not present at all. The result, writes Michael Fiedrowicz, is “a locus theologicus of the highest degree: [the Offertory’s] prayers and rites contain a theology of sacrifice…[that] is unambiguously articulated.” [2]

Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium makes no mention of the Offertory Rite, but a note from the Conciliar Liturgical Commission circulating at the time states:

The rite of the offertory is to be arranged in such a way that the participation of the people is more prominent. The priest’s prayers, which tend to express a private or singular piety, are to be reviewed; the prayer over the offerings is to be said aloud. [3]

The language is somewhat confusing. For example, how are the priest’s prayers, which frequently have in mind other people, both living and dead, “singular”?

Whatever the answer, the 1967 missa normativa (prototype of the Novus Ordo) went much further in its edits, eliminating almost all sacrificial language, the prayer to the Holy Spirit (Veni Sanctificator), and the Trinitarian prayer Suscipe Sancta Trinitas. An earlier drafted even omitted all offertory language as well, presumably conceiving of the Rite as nothing more than a “preparation of the gifts.” Pope Paul VI, however, insisted that the word offerimus (“we offer”) be incorporated into the two new prayers for the bread and wine, the so-called Berakah prayers (“Blessed are You, Lord God of all creation”). The prayer In spiritu humilitatis and the Orate fratres / Suscipiat were also retained, both of which have sacrificial language. And the name of the Secret was changed to Oratio super oblata, “The Prayer over the Offerings,” a name that presupposes something has indeed been offered.

Interestingly, the new rubrics ignore the wish of the Conciliar Liturgical Commission to have an audible Offertory, stating that the prayers are to be recited secreto (quietly) and may be said aloud only if there is no singing. (GIRM #141-2)

Finally, the beautiful prayer about human dignity (Deus qui humanae substantiae) was removed from the Ordinary. Writing about this decisions decades later, McEvoy and Lebech were astonished that the liturgical reforms uncoupled “human dignity from the mystery at the heart of the liturgy,” [4] especially “given the rise to prominence of the concept of human dignity with the human rights tradition after the Second World War.” They express the hope that “the prayer will be restored in its Tridentine integrity to the liturgy at some point in the future.” [5]

Reception

With its combination of pro- and non-offertory elements, the Novus Ordo Offertory has given rise to vastly different interpretations. Fr. Dennis Smolarski, S.J., is the author of the popular book How Not to Say Mass. Writing over thirty years after the promulgation of the new Missal, he advises his fellow celebrants:

Do not offer the gifts during their preparation – in particular, do not lift them high in the air. The 1969 Order of Mass significantly changed what formerly occurred between the Creed and the eucharistic prayer. In the current Order of Mass the gifts are received, prepared, and formally placed on the altar by the priest after he briefly blesses God in thanksgiving for God’s gifts. Formerly, we “offered” bread and wine to God, but now we realize that offering anything other than Christ is theologically inappropriate…. At this point of the Mass we do NOT OFFER – that will be done during the eucharistic prayer. [6]

Smolarski cites in his favor the fact that the new rubrics omit the gestures of offering, namely, of raising the host and the chalice to eye level. But Smolarski does not account for the language of offering in the prayers that remain or were added, nor does he attempt to reconcile his brazen claim that one should only offer Christ to God with the prayer In spiritu humilitatis, in which the priest offers himself to God—or, for that matter, with the biblical command that inspired the prayer. (see Rom. 12, 1)

At the other end of the spectrum is Fr. Michael McGuckian, S.J., who applauds the new Offertory for the opposite reason, namely, that it is more sacrificial on the strange grounds that less is more: “the language of [the] 1969 [Missal] is less overtly sacrificial, but is, if anything, more deeply so.” [7] McGuckian loves the Old Testament three-act model of sacrifice so much that he applies it in a fundamentalist manner to the Mass. To his thinking, if the Offertory corresponds to the laity slaying the victim, then Christ must be “really and truly present during the Offertory,” [8] before the priest’s consecration of the bread and wine; [8] and if the Canon corresponds to the second act, then it is not about Christ’s Passion and Death but His intercession in Heaven. McGuckian deplores the Tridentine rite as the “lowpoint” of the Offertory in Western liturgy for no other reason than that the procession of gifts by select lay folk is absent in it, [9] blissfully unaware of the fact that a presentation of gifts is not outlawed in the 1570 Missal and indeed occurred in some parts of Europe before the liturgical reforms.

Conclusion

Pace Smolarski, the Novus Ordo affirms, by virtue of the few prayers that it has, that the presentation of the gifts is also an offering to God. On other hand and pace McGuckian, it does so minimally, without any blessings of the oblata, offertory gestures, or clear theological articulation. 

The difference between the two Offertories reminds me of the difference between the robust mission statements of unapologetically Catholic colleges such as Thomas Aquinas College, which vow to “pass on the great intellectual patrimony of our civilization and the wisdom of the Church’s greatest thinkers, and to do so in complete fidelity to the Church and her Magisterium” versus the statements of CINO (Catholic In Name Only) universities that mumble something vague about educating the person “within the Jesuit, Catholic tradition.” The latter state nothing heretical but conduce to a climate of heresy and apostasy and, not surprisingly, heresies and apostasies tend to abound at such institutions. Similarly, the Novus Ordo’s Offertory Rite lands on the side of the Angels but an inch away from the divide, and, not surprisingly, misunderstandings of its nature are legion.

At the same time, I believe that it behooves us who attend a traditional Latin Mass to kindle in our hearts a fuller appreciation of the laity’s role in the Offertory. I personally am tempted to think of this portion of the Mass as an interlude: after I have handed over my donation and perhaps sung a verse or two of a hymn, I tend to zone out until the next priestly prompt. A rather poor showing for a member of “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation”! (1 Peter 2, 9) Instead, I should be heeding the words of Pope Pius XII:

The conclusion that the people offer the sacrifice with the priest himself… is based on the fact that the people unite their hearts in praise, impetration, expiation and thanksgiving with the prayers or intention of the priest, even of the High Priest himself, so that in the one and same offering of the victim and according to a visible sacerdotal rite, they may be presented to God the Father. [10]

Notes

[1] See the excellent article by Manfred Hauke, “The Offertory as a Challenge to Liturgical Reforms in History,” in The Sacrifice of the Mass, ed. Matthew Hazell (Smenos, 2023).

[2] The Traditional Mass: History, Form, & Theology of the Classical Roman Rite, trans. Rose Pfeifer (Angelico Press, 2020), 257-58.

[3] Acta Synodalia I.2.121-22, cited in Hauke, 146.

[4] James McEvoy and Mette Lebech, “Deus qui humanae substantiae dignitatem: A Latin Liturgical Source Contributing to the Conceptualization History of Human Dignity,” Maynooth Philosophical Papers 10 (2020), 117-33, 123-24.

[5] Ibid., 130-31.

[6] Dennis C. Smolarski, SJ, How Not to Say Mass: A Guidebook on Liturgical Principles and the Roman Missal, Revised Edition (Paulist Press, 2003), 75-76, 77, original emphasis and capitalizations.

[7] Fr. Michael McGuckian, S.J., The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (Hillenbrand, 2005), 74.

[8] Ibid., 126.

[9] Ibid., 68.

[10] Pius XII, Mediator Dei (1947), 93.

An earlier version of this article appeared as “The Offertory: Preparation of the Gifts or a Sacrifice to God?” in The Latin Mass magazine 34:3 (Fall 2025), pp. 42-46. Many thanks to the editors of TLM for allowing its publication here.

Britain’s Remarkable Monastic History, Told with Admiration, Humor, and Pathos

(This review was first posted at Rorate Caeli but is reprinted here for the benefit of NLM readers, who will also find much that is of liturgical interest in the book under review.)

Britain is full of monastic ghosts. Street names carry them: Monks Lane, Priory Road, Abbey Close. The landscape, too, still bears the imprint of communities that shaped it for a thousand years. The ruins of Fountains, Rievaulx, Tintern, and dozens of lesser houses stand in fields and valleys across England, Wales, and Scotland, drawing visitors who admire their picturesque qualities while knowing almost nothing of the civilization that produced them.

Joseph Kelly, in his new book Long Reign of Silence: A History of Monasticism in Britain (Cruachan Hill Press, 2026), has set out to remedy this ignorance, in what is surely one of the best popular histories of British monasticism ever written.

The scale of what has been lost and forgotten is remarkable. Kelly observes that almost nine hundred religious houses were targeted under Henry VIII between 1536 and 1541, and that their combined population in the thirteenth century numbered some twenty thousand souls in England alone (out of a total population of well under three million). By any measure, British monasticism was a civilization within a civilization, and its disappearance was not simply a matter of institutional change but of a comprehensive cultural rupture.

Kelly argues, convincingly, that the subsequent neglect of monastic history has not been accidental. The powerful new property-owning class of the Reformation whose wealth depended directly on expropriated monastic land had strong reasons to discourage nostalgia, and the cultural legacy of their prejudice is still with us. (We can also sense, against this backdrop, why the Oxford Movement, and even more the revival of monasticism among Anglicans, ignited such fury in the Establishment.)

One of the book’s most interesting segments is its account of how monasticism first took root in Britain. Kelly begins in fourth-century Egypt with Anthony and Pachomius, the desert fathers whose radical withdrawal from the world gave the monastic movement its distinctive character: poverty, common life, manual labor, and ceaseless prayer. That impulse travelled west through Gaul, was received by figures like Ninian and Patrick, and then flowered with extraordinary intensity in Ireland, a land Rome had never touched but whose tribal social structure paradoxically made communal religious life feel native rather than foreign.

The result was a monasticism of vibrant originality, whose hermits and peregrini carried the Gospel across Britain and continental Europe with zeal. Kelly vividly describes beehive huts on Skellig Michael, huddled against the Atlantic, and the monastery-city of Kildare, where the treasures of kings were stored alongside the treasures of God, and readers begin to understand that what was dissolved in the sixteenth century was not a decayed institution but the living continuation of a tradition stretching back to the first Christian centuries.

For the traditional Catholic in particular, this phenomenon matters in a way that goes beyond historical curiosity. The Celtic and Benedictine monks of Britain inhabited a sacramental cosmos wherein prayer was not private therapy but the Church’s essential public work, offered on behalf of the whole of creation—and shaping it in turn. Their monasteries were, as Kelly suggests, the heartbeat of a civilization. When Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, what ceased was not merely a way of organizing property, but a way of interacting with reality itself. The consequences are well traced by other authors such as Sebastian Morello in his Mysticism, Magic, and Monasteries.

The central chapters of Long Reign of Silence, concerning the Benedictine reform under King Edgar and the three monk-bishops who orchestrated it (Dunstan, Æthelwold, and Oswald), deserve particular attention from readers interested in what authentic Catholic renewal actually looks like, especially when (N.B.) ecclesiastical culture is resistant.

By the early tenth century, monasticism in England had largely collapsed, its communities hollowed out by continuous Viking raids and dominated by married clergy who sang the Office and drew an income while ignoring the Rule. What followed was one of the most complete reversals in ecclesiastical history. The pious King Edgar, supported by his austere Bishop Æthelwold, instituted a thoroughgoing purge, expelling the unworthy and refounding house after house on strict Benedictine lines. The instrument of that reform was the Regularis Concordia, a document Æthelwold produced after convening the kingdom’s leading ecclesiastics at Winchester, mandating in precise detail how every monastery in the realm was to be governed.

Kelly tells this story with a novelist’s instinct for character: Dunstan, brilliant and combative, thrown bodily into the marsh by disgruntled monks and returning years later as their abbot; Æthelwold, who translated the Rule into English for the benefit of laypeople, and whose armed thanes arrived at Winchester to enforce compliance when persuasion failed; Oswald of Worcester, a descendant of Viking invaders who converted and became a champion of the civilization his ancestors had plundered. What makes this episode so interesting is that the reform succeeded not through accommodation to the surrounding culture but through an alignment of sacred and secular authority that is almost inconceivable today—together with a willingness to use “tough love” with gloves off, also quite foreign to our flaccid age.

(A few sample pages)

I’d particularly like to highlight the physical beauty of the book itself, which is a pleasure to hold and to read. The layout is clean and professional, and the more than sixty color illustrations—photographs of ruins, abbey churches, manuscript pages, beehive huts on Skellig Michael, the Book of Kells, and landscapes from Egypt to the Scottish Highlands—are reproduced with a clarity and care that genuinely enhances the text rather than merely decorating it. This is the kind of book you find yourself lingering over, turning back to an image to look again. Cruachan Hill Press and Joseph Kelly have produced a truly beautiful work that every traditional Catholic should own and read.

Long Reign of Silence has real virtues: narrative confidence, historical range, an accessibility that makes it suitable for any educated reader rather than Church history buffs alone. As a Brit from Oxfordshire, Kelly tells the story with a passion for the subject that only an English Catholic could bring. The endnotes are generous and point toward primary sources and scholarly literature with discernment.

Those with an interest in medieval history, in the roots of British culture, or simply in understanding what was lost when the monasteries fell will find much here to reward them. Anyone who has spent time in a functioning Benedictine monastery will recognize the life Kelly is describing, and will feel its absence in the landscape all the more acutely for having read this book. Perhaps, one might dare to hope that some of its readers will be among those whom God is calling to become monks or nuns, to help restore to the West its invisible heart, enclosed in visible walls.

Joseph Kelly’s Long Reign of Silence is available from Amazon. Alternatively, receive a 15% discount by pre-ordering at the Cruachan Hill webstore before the end of June.

Corpus Christi 2026

Transiturus de mundo ad Patrem Jesus, in mortis suae memoriam * instituit sui corporis et sanguinis Sacramentum. V. Corpus in cibum, sanguinem in potum tribuens, Hoc, ait, facite in meam commemorationem. Instituit. Gloria Patri. Instituit. (The twelfth responsory of Matins of Corpus Christi in the Benedictine Breviary.)

Folio 22r of the Hours of René of Anjou, King of Sicily (15th century; Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des manuscrits.)

V. When He was about to pass from the world to the Father, in memory of His death, Jesus * instituted the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. V. Giving His Body as food, and His Blood as drink, He said, “Do this in memory of me.” He instituted. Glory be. He instituted.

The text of this responsory is taken from the Bull Transiturus of Pope Urban IV (1261-64), by which he ordered the establishment of the feast of Corpus Christi; it is such a beautiful piece of writing that it was commonly read in the Divine Office at Matins of the feast. This custom was changed in the Roman Breviary by the Tridentine reform, but it continued elsewhere, most notably at Liège, where the feast was first celebrated, and where Pope Urban had been archdeacon; also in the Carthusian Breviary.

“When Our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, was about to pass from this world to the Father, as the time of His Passion drew nigh, having taken supper, He instituted unto the memory of His death the most exalted and magnificent Sacrament of His Body and Blood, giving His Body to eat and His Blood to drink. For however so often we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the death of the Lord. In the institution of this saving Sacrament, He said to the Apostles, “Do this in memory of Me”, so that this august and venerable Sacrament might be the special and particular memorial of the exceptional love with which He loved us: this memorial, I say, wondrous and astounding, full of delight, sweet, most secure, and precious above all things, in which signs are renewed and wonders changed, in which is contained every delight and the enjoyment of every savor, and the very sweetness of the Lord is tasted, by which we do indeed obtain the support of our life and salvation. This is the memorial most sweet, most sacred, most holy, profitable unto salvation, by which we recall the grace of our redemption; by which we are drawn away from evil and strengthened in good, and advance to the increase of virtues and graces, by the bodily presence of the Savior.

The Institution of the Holy Eucharist, by Federico Barocci, from the Aldobrandini Chapel of St Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome; 1603-8

Transiturus de mundo ad Patrem Salvator noster Dominus Jesus Christus, cum tempus suae passionis instaret, sumpta coena, in memoriam mortis suae instítuit summum et magnificum sui Corporis et Sanguinis sacramentum: Corpus in cibum, et Sánguinem in poculum tribuendo. Nam quotiescumque hunc panem manducamus, et calicem bibimus, mortem Domini annuntiamus. In institutione quidem hujus salutiferi Sacramenti, dixit ipse Apostolis: Hoc facite in meam commemorationem: ut praecipuum et insigne memoriale sui amoris, quo nos dilexit, esset nobis hoc praecelsum et venerabile Sacramentum, memoriale, inquam, mirabile ac stupendum, delectabile ac suave, tutissimum ac sitibundum, carissimum et super omnia pretiosum. In quo innovata sunt signa, et mirabilia immutata, in quo habetur omne delectamentum, et omnis saporis suavitas, ipsaque dulcedo Domini degustatur; in quo utique vitae suffragium consequimur, et salutis. Hoc est memoriale dulcissimum, memoriale sanctissimum, memoriale salvificum, in quo gratam redemptionis nostrae recensemus memoriam, in quo a malo retrahimur, confortamur in bono, et ad virtutem et gratiarum proficimus incrementa, et in quo profecto reficimur ipsius corporali praesentia.”

Music for First Vespers of Corpus Christi

O how delightful, * o Lord, is thy Spirit, Who, that Thou may show Thy sweetness unto Thy children, having granted them most sweet bread from heaven, fillest the hungry with good things, and sendest away empty the scornful rich. (The Magnificat antiphon for First Vespers of Corpus Christi.)

Aña O quam suávis est, * Dómine, spíritus tuus, qui, ut dulcédinem tuam in filios demonstráres, pane suavíssimo de caelo prǽstito, esurientes reples bonis, fastidiósos dívites dimittens inánes.

A very nice polyphonic setting by the Spanish composer Alonso Lobo (1555-1617), a contemporary of Victoria, who held him in the highest regard.

Another by William Byrd (1540 ca. - 1623)

A particularly fine recording of the Gregorian melody of the hymn Pange, lingua, gloriosi Corporis mysterium, which is sung at both Vespers.

And finally, an absolutely splendid version by Victoria himself, alternating a different Gregorian melody with polyphony.

Timely for Republication: An Interview with Dom Gérard Calvet in 1995

At the Abbey of Le Barroux

As the consecrations of the bishops for the Society of St. Pius X draw near, it seems worthwhile for the historical record to make available once again online an interview that was given by Dom Gérard Calvet, the founder of Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux Abbey (also known simply as “Le Barroux”), who lived from 1927 to 2008. He suffered much to remain faithful to the traditional monastic way of life during and after the tempests of the Second Vatican Council and eventually found himself in the ambit of Archbishop Lefebvre. However, he and his community parted company with Lefebvre over his decision to consecrate bishops without the approval of the Holy See. The interview was conducted by Stephano Paci for 30 Giorni in 1995.

How did your full reconciliation with the Holy See come about?

Dom Gérard Calvet: In 1984, while still in canonical ‘Limbo’ and without recognition by our local bishop, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger telephoned me saying that he wanted to meet me. I immediately rushed to Rome and Cardinal Ratzinger received me. He was very respectful and listened to all I had to say. We immediately felt an affinity, both intellectual and spiritual. My esteem for him has grown with the years with every discourse of his that I read, especially his very moving intervention at the Communion and Liberation movement’s Meeting in Rimini in Italy in 1990. I was greatly impressed by the depth and clarity of its analysis of the Church today.

To go back to my meeting with him that day in 1984, I told Cardinal Ratzinger that our canonical situation at Le Barroux was not good, that we had not been welcomed by the Benedictine order. At the time, Archbishop Lefebvre was ordaining our priests. Ratzinger advised me to speak with the ‘Congregation for Religious’. But the Congregation demanded that we stop celebrating Holy Mass by the old Traditional rite - the St Pius V Rite - in order to be fully integrated within the Church, and then to receive their help. So, negotiations broke down.

Then one day, June 19, 1988, Cardinal Augustin Mayer called me telling me he wished to see me at the Vatican. He also begged me not to follow the path of Msgr Lefebvre. The Cardinal, who had also been a Benedictine abbot, came to Le Barroux here, with an aide, Msgr Perl, and told us at a deeply emotional meeting that the Pope (John Paul II) was ready to grant us whatever we asked for in our monastic life - we could celebrate all Liturgy, and the Mass, by the old rites. We were so happy at that news. It is hard to describe the joy we felt at being recognized, belonging once more fully to the Catholic Church. Our Mother had embraced us again and all we could do was chant the Magnificat ...

What Cardinal Mayer was offering you was the Protocol of Agreement which Archbishop Lefebvre also accepted on May 5^th 1988, but which he then rejected the very next day. Why did you accept when he refused?

I asked him that. I was actually amazed at his refusal because Rome was agreeing to all our (traditionalist) requests after years of painful confrontations. But after all the false accusations and misunderstandings Msgr Lefebvre was really exhausted. He was wearied and exasperated. So he reacted by rejecting the offer. When I asked why he had signed the accord in the first place he said: “That’s what they all wanted. But then, when I was by myself, alone, I realized that we couldn’t trust it”. I think his age was also a factor. And he was always a suspicious man by nature. Moreover, in those years, I witnessed that in the Lefebvrist fortress at Ecône (seminary) the ‘Sensus Ecclesiae’ was becoming progressively impoverished. They themselves were starting to identify themselves with the Church: “Beware the Roman serpent!”, Msgr Lefebvre once wrote to me after I had told him that Cardinal Mayer was coming to Le Barroux to visit.

Dom Gérard Calvet with Archbishop Lefebvre

The day Archbishop Lefebvre announced that he would be going ahead with Episcopal consecrations against the Pope’s express will, he confessed to me in an interview that he was convinced a solution to all this would be found “within four or five years at the most”. But that was nearly six years ago…

Sadly, I am pessimistic. If, before his death, Archbishop Lefebvre had said: “When I’ve gone, I would like the question with Rome to be resolved”, then there would have been some hope. But he did not say this. And the ‘Lefebvrist phenomenon’ is growing. They have more and more priests and faithful and the gap with Rome is widening all the time. Of course, the Lord can do anything he pleases and a miracle could happen. But, in purely human terms, I can see no possibility of their reconciliation with Rome.

Were you ever tempted to follow Archbishop Lefebvre?

Never. I have never even considered breaking away from the Church. When we were canonically out of place, in a void, I would say to my monks: “You must suffer because of this situation. If you don’t you have lost your sense of the Church”.

Some of the younger monks here might have been tempted and I guess they were. But I wasn’t. I have never been scandalised by sin and failing in the Church. The Church is without sin, even if it is made of sinners. The Church is not out to fool anyone. Although its sociological apparatus has deteriorated, it is holy and immaculate. When there was misunderstanding and great suspicion in our regard, we were always, always writing to the Holy Father and to various Cardinals to keep up our contact with them and to remind them that there were some faithful sons here who were suffering…. No, we have always sustained that it would be unthinkable to break away from the Church.

I was surprised to hear the prayer of consecration to Our Lady that you recite in the abbey: “Let it be, Sweet Virgin Mary, that the spirit of this century, the assaults of schism and heresy, crash against our (Abbey) walls without ever penetrating them and reaching us”. When was that written?

It was written in 1986, two years before Msgr Lefebvre’s decision. Our community, gathered together at the foot of the statue of the Blessed Virgin, recited this prayer for the first time on August 22^nd 1986, consecrating the abbey to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And with her love, she has protected us. I wrote this prayer because even then I had a feeling that Msgr Lefebvre was planning something extreme. The error lies in thinking that the faith and sacraments alone are the criteria for belonging to the Catholic Church, forgetting about the bond with hierarchy. Look what happened in 1054 when the Church of Constantinople finally broke away from Rome. The Eastern Churches have remained totally faithful to the faith and Sacraments but they are no longer Catholic. By breaking the bond of dependence on St. Peter, they became schismatic. And although the Lefebvrists sincerely protest that they never caused a schism at all, they are schismatic in practice.

You call yourselves ‘traditionalist Catholics’. What does ‘tradition’ mean for you?

This is the way God chose for transmitting the message to us of the Event by which we are saved. According to the word’s Latin root, “tradere”, it means the transmission of the essential fact of divine revelation from person to person and from generation to generation. To grasp the full meaning of this solid chain, linking the whole history of the Church, there is nothing more moving than the memoirs St.Irenaeus wrote to Florinus:

“I could still show you the place where the blessed Polycarp sat when he preached the Word of God; I can see him going in and coming out, I can still see the way he walked, the way he looked, the way he lived and I can still hear his discourses to the people. All of this is engraved on my heart. I imagine I can still hear him tell us how he would talk with John and the others who had seen the Lord. He would repeat their words to us and all that he had learned about Jesus Christ, about his miracles and doctrine”.

This was the respect and fervour with which the disciples accepted the deposit of Apostolic Tradition and transmitted it to us. This deposit is both unchangeable and progressive, as St Vincent of Lerins Abbey explains to us in his fifth century Commonitorium.

“Deposit”, he wrote, “means something entrusted to you, not found by you but received, not imagined by you but a doctrine revealed, not the fruit of your spirit. It is a truth that has found its way to you, not come from you, a truth of which you are not the author but the guardian, not the initiator but the disciple, not the guide but he who follows. Guard this deposit without changing it and without corrupting it for it is the treasure of the Catholic Faith. Guard what they have entrusted to you and transmit it. You have received gold so give gold and nothing less. Do not give me lead. I do not want what appears to be gold but the real thing”. And St Vincent adds: “Always teach what you have learned but teach it in such a way as to give a doctrine that is not new the air of newness”.

Sooner or later Catholics will have to reach an agreement because some tend to stress the unchangeable nature of dogma and some are attracted by the progressive vitality of its development. But they are two sides of the same coin. Scripture contains the revelation in its entirety but down the centuries the perfectly objective and unchangeable truth revealed has allowed itself to be discovered progressively. If there are any changes, they depend on the point of view and certainly not on the object of vision. We need to be unceasing in our search for ways to revitalize our approach to unchangeable things. For tradition is not being immobile. It is living faithfulness.

The Mass at Le Barroux

Liturgy was perhaps your main bone of contention with Rome. Why are you so attached to “the Mass of St Pius V”? Does this mean that you do not believe the “modern” Mass—known as Paul VI’s—to be valid?

No, it is valid! Obviously Holy Church would not have given us an heretical Mass. But this Rite is inadequate in expressing the Real Presence manifest on the holy altar, the sacrifice of Christ, the Divine Majesty. We, as monks, are attached to the Mass that St Pius V formulated because, as the act of promulgation says, “we know that this Mass is the perfect expression of the faith of the Church”.

But remember too, that the Mass one witnesses celebrated today in most places is not the one Pope Paul VI wanted and the one Conciliar Fathers approved. The problems of the Church in these past few decades have not been caused by the Council. The problems are the result of a bad, perhaps intentionally so, interpretation of its texts which are still misunderstood today. The Mass the Second Vatican Council produced is the 1965 one, which safeguarded the crux of traditional liturgy. With the use of the [new] Vulgate and by means of a few other modifications the Mass was given a more modern tone but all its effectiveness was restored.

However, in 1969 a completely new Mass was produced. The principal person behind this sudden sweeping initiative that prevailed over the wishes of Conciliar Fathers was Msgr Bugnini who himself described this Mass explicitly as “a new creation”. He also said it was “evolutionary” to the extent that it could easily change with the times and the countries where it would be celebrated. Cardinal Ottaviani, who was prefect of the Holy Office at the time and therefore the institutional watchdog of the Faith of the Church, made a solemn declaration, saying that “this new Rite is remarkably far removed in detail and as a whole from the sacrificial theology as it had been drafted at the 22nd session of the Council of Trent” etc. But no one heeded him in those turbulent years.

Today the time has finally come to reform that negative reform, as Cardinal Ratzinger and the Primate of France, Cardinal Decourtray, have requested. In our time here, over 115 priests have come to us to learn and relearn how to say the traditional Mass so far. Now eight monasteries in France have adopted the ancient rite as we have done. The Pope should lift the restrictions on the traditional Mass and, I hope, declare that whoever wishes may celebrate it without obtaining the special permission now required. This is something I have written [asking] for.

Dom Gérard at the Mass for his 50th Jubilee of Ordination

What are those problems of the Church you mentioned?

Today there is a crisis of authority. The Church is adapting to the prevailing culture as if its doctrine were the findings of a survey: what the majority thinks, what the Church ought to teach. Pope John Paul II’s most recent encyclical Veritatis Splendour, however, highlighted the abomination of this attitude. The Church transcends all opinions, even if they are the majority. But unfortunately, the men of the Church are incredibly conditioned by the press and media.

There is another problem. It is that the Church is prey to a sentimentalist crisis. Faith is an act of the intellect guided by will, as the First Vatican Council reminded us. Faith is not just sentimentalism or even nostalgia, for the mind too has something to say about the fact revealed. But today many Christians are living the faith as if it were an emotion. Yet martyrs did not let themselves be killed for an emotion, but for a reality they had proven, and which their intellect had recognised.

Even as the third millennium approaches, you are living the lives of early monks, a strict observance. What sense is there in the monastic life today?

Monks unconsciously built Europe. Their adventure is primarily, if not exclusively, an interior thing. We are moved by thirst: thirst for the Absolute, thirst for another world, thirst of truth and beauty. Liturgy feeds this thirst by making us turn our eyes to things eternal and by it the monk becomes a man tending with all his being towards things that do not pass away. Monasteries, old and new, are primarily hands raised in silence to heaven. Then after that they might also be academies of science and cradles of civilisation. But first they are the obstinate, irreducible reminder that there is another world, of which this world is just the image, the annunciation and the herald. This is the task we monks are called to. Today, as 2,000 years ago.

Recovering England’s Sacred Musical Heritage: The St Birinus Festival

We are very grateful to our friend Thomas Neal sending us this item, this time writing with his colleague Dominic Bevan, about the upcoming third edition of a sacred music festival, which will be held in England in July in honor of St Birinus, the patron Saint of Dorchester.

The St Birinus Festival, which will be held this year from Thursday July 9 to Sunday July 12, seeks to celebrate a remarkable and often overlooked part of England’s Catholic heritage: the arrival of Roman liturgy, chant, and sacred music in the Kingdom of Wessex. While this may seem an ambitious claim, even a brief glance at early English Christian history reveals the extraordinary significance of St Birinus and his legacy. So who was St Birinus, and why does he matter for sacred music?

A part of a stained glass window with an image of St Birinus (here spelled “Bernius”) from Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Stemonitis, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Curiously, despite his importance in the early Christian history of England, St Birinus is little known today outside specialist circles. Before the Reformation, devotion to him was widespread throughout southern England. Afterwards, however, his shrines were destroyed, and his memory gradually faded from public consciousness.

Christianity first arrived in Britain during the Roman occupation. Archaeological discoveries, including references to Christians on Roman curse tablets found in Bath, suggest the faith had already taken root here by the second century. St Alban, martyred around AD 303, is remembered as Britain’s first martyr.

Following the collapse of the Roman Empire and the upheavals that followed, the kingdom of Wessex gradually emerged as a major centre of power. In response, Rome sent missionaries to different parts of England. St Augustine arrived in Kent in 597 and established the see of Canterbury. Some decades later, another missionary was sent to Wessex: St Birinus, an Italian monk who, according to tradition, was consecrated bishop in Milan by Archbishop Asterius before being sent to Britain by Pope Honorius I. His original intention had been to travel deep into the interior of the country to preach among peoples who had not yet heard the Christian faith. Yet, as the Venerable Bede recounts in his Ecclesiastical History, upon arriving among the West Saxons and finding them “all confirmed pagans”, Birinus judged it wiser to remain there and begin his mission in Wessex itself.

In AD 635, King Oswald of Northumbria travelled south to meet Cynegils, King of the West Saxons, whose daughter he hoped to marry. Oswald had already embraced Christianity through the influence of the Celtic mission at Iona. During his visit to Dorchester-on-Thames, he found Cynegils receiving instruction in the Christian faith from Birinus. The outcome was momentous: Birinus baptised Cynegils, probably in the nearby River Thame, with Oswald acting as godfather. Cynegils and Oswald subsequently granted land at Dorchester for the establishment of Birinus’ episcopal see and cathedral church, making him the first Bishop of the West Saxons.

Dorchester-on-Thames was no ordinary settlement. Positioned strategically between Winchester, Oxford, and London, it became an important centre for the developing Christian life of Wessex. From there, Birinus helped organise the structures of the Church in the kingdom and laid foundations that would shape the future religious identity of England.

Birinus died around AD 650 and was buried at Dorchester, where he was soon venerated as a saint. His relics were later translated to Winchester by Bishop Hedda around 690 and moved again in the tenth and twelfth centuries as devotion to him continued to grow. During the Middle Ages, Dorchester Abbey became an important place of pilgrimage, centred on a richly decorated shrine dedicated to St Birinus. Extensive rebuilding followed, including the construction of the south choir aisle around 1320. Although the shrine was destroyed during the Reformation in 1536, fragments of it survived and were later incorporated into the reconstructed shrine that stands in the abbey today.

Evidence of Birinus’ enduring importance can still be seen in the medieval art of Dorchester Abbey. A stained-glass roundel dating from around 1225 depicts Birinus receiving a blessing from an enthroned archbishop, believed to represent Asterius of Milan before Birinus’ mission to Britain. Elsewhere in the Great East Window, Birinus is shown preaching before King Cynegils and his people.

For musicians, St Birinus holds an additional significance. With him came not only Roman Christianity, but also Roman liturgy and chant. The liturgical chant traditions cultivated in Rome were brought to England by Birinus and his fellow monks. From Dorchester, the structures of the Church in Wessex were organised, with Winchester becoming one of its principal centres.

One of the most important surviving witnesses to this musical tradition is the pre-Reformation manuscript known as the Winchester Troper. It preserves some of the earliest and most sophisticated examples of liturgical music in medieval England, offering a glimpse into the flourishing musical culture that developed from these foundations.

As part of the festival’s efforts to renew devotion to St Birinus and recover this heritage, we have carefully transcribed chants from the feast of St Birinus preserved in the Winchester Troper. Festival attendees will hear, for the first time in centuries, antiphons, hymns, sequences, and chants written specifically for his feast.

The festival was created not simply as a concert series, but as a celebration of a living Catholic musical tradition rooted in the history of this country. Dorchester-on-Thames is a uniquely fitting setting: one of the earliest centres of English liturgical music and of the Roman rite in Wessex.

England already possesses several celebrated sacred music festivals within the Anglican tradition, including the Three Choirs Festival and The Eddington Festival. Yet opportunities to experience Catholic liturgical music in its proper liturgical context remain relatively rare. The St Birinus Festival hopes, in its own small way, to contribute to the rediscovery of that tradition and to make it accessible once again.

The response to previous festivals in 2024 and 2025 was deeply moving. Many attendees have spoken of the profound impact of hearing this music within the liturgy for which it was written. Some have described the experience as faith-deepening or spiritually transformative. Above all, the festival reminds us that sacred music is not simply a historical artefact, but part of a living tradition that continues to speak with beauty, reverence, and power today.

Some pictures from last year’s festival.

Aquinas Institute Mass in Princeton University Chapel

Here are some photographs of the Mass held each Sunday for Princeton University students (and attended by many local families) during the academic year. These were taken right before Christmas, but I have only just seen them and thought they might interest you. The Mass is celebrated by Fr. Zack Swantek of the Aquinas Institute, the university’s student chaplaincy; the choir is directed by Peter Carter of the Catholic Sacred Music Project, who will be well known to many of our readers

The chapel was built in the Gothic style and completed in the 1920s. It was not intended to house the Mass - Princeton has a strong Presbyterian history. However, it is interesting to note that even Protestants in the early 20th century were able to create imagery evoking the Eucharist that surpasses what many Catholic churches today can offer. On sunny days, when the imagery in the stained glass is visible, we can make out an image of the Last Supper, then, working upwards, the Risen Christ, and, above that, the Crucifixion.

In the window at the other end of the chapel, there is an image of Christ in Majesty, which portrays the Risen Christ to the faithful who have participated in the Eucharist, and by partaking of the divine nature, have “put on Christ.”

An Appeal for Prayers for the Unity of the Church

In view of the upcoming consecration of new bishops for the Society of St Pius X without the necessary mandate from the Holy See, we share this appeal from the Monastère Saint-Benoît in Brignole, France, to pray for the unity of the Church. We note especially the suggestion to priests to celebrate the votive Mass for the unity of the Church, for both the Holy Father and those who serve in relevant positions of authority, and likewise for the leadership of the Society. (Click image to enlarge.)

Trinity Sunday 2026

Duo Seraphim clamabant alter ad alterum: * Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth: * Plena est omnis terra gloria ejus. V. Tres sunt qui testimonium dant in cælo: Pater, Verbum, et Spíritus Sanctus: et hi tres unum sunt. Sanctus. Gloria Patri. Plena.

R. The two Seraphim cried one to another: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord, the God of hosts: * All the earth is full of his glory. V. There are three who give testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. And these three are one. Holy. Glory be to the Father. All the earth.

This responsory is very prominent in the Divine Office in the Use of Rome, being sung after the eighth lesson of Matins on all the Sundays between the Octave of Epiphany and Septuagesima, and again on the Sundays between the Octave of Corpus Christi and Advent. This custom was introduced by its author, Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), under whom the ordo of the Divine Office was written out which would ultimately form the basis of the Breviary of St Pius V. Odd as it may seem, given its Trinitarian theme, it was not originally written for, or used in, the Office of the Holy Trinity, which in Pope Innocent’s time had not yet been received into the Use of the Papal court; it was only added to the feast in the Tridentine reform. Several composers have set it to polyphony for use as a motet; among the best of these is the version of Tomás Luis de Victoria.