“Their Sound Is Gone Out” - The Division of the Apostles

July 15th is the traditional day for the feast known as the “Divisio Apostolorum – the Division (or ‘Dispersion’) of the Apostles”, a feast which was very popular in the Middle Ages, and continued into the Tridentine period on many local calendars, but was never on the general Calendar. It is the liturgical commemoration of an ancient tradition that some time after the Ascension, (Durandus says twelve years), the Apostles cast lots for which part of the world each one of them would take, and spread out from Jerusalem to preach the Gospel in the various nations. The common Office of the Apostles refers to this idea repeatedly, as, for example, in the first antiphon of Matins, taken from Psalm 18. “Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth: and their words unto the ends of the world.”, and likewise the third antiphon from Psalm 44, “Thou shalt make them princes over all the earth; they shall remember thy name, O Lord.”

The earliest reference to this specific feast is a sequence which was well-known and widely used in the Middle Ages, written by one Godeschalk, a monk of Limburg abbey in western Germany, who died in 1098. It is written in the earlier and freer style of sequences like the Victimae Paschali, with less rhyme and structure than later ones such as St Thomas’ Lauda Sion or the Stabat Mater. It makes frequent use of the Patristic interpretation of the first words of Psalm 18, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God”, according to which the “heavens” are understood to be the Apostles, as St Gregory says in the Breviary. (Common lesson of the 2nd nocturn of the Apostles.)

The Sequence “Caeli enarrant gloriam” in the Mass of the Division of the Apostles, starting towards the top of the second column here. (Click to enlarge.) From the Missal according to the Use of Augsburg, Germany, ca. 1510.

Thus the prayer which concludes it, (as is typical of the genre,) reads, “These are the heavens, in whom Thou dwellest, the Angel of great counsel, whom Thou didst call no longer servants, but friends, to whom Thou makest known all things which Thou hast heard from the Father. / Keep undivided, and in the bond of peace, the flock that was gathered by their division, that we may be one in Thee, as thou are one in the Father. / Have mercy on us, Thou that dwellest in the heavens.”

The Gospel of the feast is that of the Ascension, (Mark 16, 14-20) but with the first verse left off, “Jesus appeared to the eleven as they were at table: and he upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they did not believe them who had seen him after he was risen again.” This omission is entirely appropriate for the common use of the feast among missionary congregations, since it celebrates the mission of the Apostles and their fulfillment of the commandment which Christ gives them in the verse which now opens the Gospel, “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”

There is a tradition known from the 4th century that the baptismal creed now called the Apostles’ Creed was composed as a rule of the Faith by the Twelve before this dispersal, with each one of them contributing an article. This is often represented in art, as here in the border of this page of the famous Hours of Catherine of Cleves, ca. 1440. (In the center is depicted the legend of the Ten Thousand Martyrs, represented symbolically by ten figures.)

It is also seen here in a Carthusian Breviary ca. 1490, (starting near the top of the right column), in which the name of an Apostle is printed in red before each article of the Creed.

Like many of the traditions held dear by the medievals, it was called into question by some of the scholars of the Renaissance, particularly at the time of the Council of Florence in 1438. As the Council wrestled with the question of reunion between the Eastern and Western churches, the issue of the Creeds, and especially the Latin addition of “Filioque” to that of Nicea, was of course one of the most important topics of discussion. The Latins, who recognized three Creeds used in the liturgy, the Apostles, the Nicene, and the Athanasian, were unpleasantly surprised to learn that the Greek delegates had never heard of the first of these.

Fr Nicholas Ayo, C.S.C., in a book on St Thomas’ Sermons on the Apostles’ Creed, beautifully summarizes why we may still refer to it by this name. “With the Apostles’ Creed we have the teaching of the Apostles as passed on by authentic apostolic succession. … The Creed summarizes the Scriptures, which in turn summarize the teaching of the early Church by the Apostles, who in turn were taught of Jesus, who was taught of God.” (Sermon-Conferences of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Apostles’ Creed, p. 175)

The Pear as a Symbol of the Fruit of the Tree of Life in a Painting by Albrecht Dürer

Madonna and Child with Half-Eaten Pear, by Albrecht Dürer

This painting, dated 1512, is influenced by the style of the Italian Renaissance, but was painted by the German artist Albrecht Dürer. It shows Mary and Christ, each regarding the other with a touchingly loving gaze, and Christ holding a half-eaten pear. Because of its sweetness, in Western iconography the pear is often associated with the fruit of the Tree of Life. This fruit, which our first parents, Adam and Eve, never ate, contains the promise of eternal life. Church Fathers such as Ephraim the Syrian speculated that Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden to protect them from the temptation of doing so, so that they could not live forever in a fallen state.

The pear can be contrasted with the apple, which is traditionally used to represent the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The apple is not mentioned in Scripture, but it became associated with the Fall because, in Latin, the word for apple is malum, which is phonetically close to malus, meaning “evil.” Here is a 16th-century German painting of the Temptation of Adam and Eve:

This works beautifully, in my opinion, when paired with the Dürer. It is dark and sombre in mood, lacking in color, and the forms are difficult to distinguish in the tenebrous haze of the effects of sin. Even the garden is uniformly brown and shadowy, stripped of any hint of divine glory. 

The Dürer painting, on the other hand, is brightly colored and clear, with the figures shining with light. The contrast between light and dark is visually heightened by the rich black background, an effect achieved through multiple glazes of thin paint.

As Christians, we are now given the privilege denied to our first parents until Christ retrieved them from Hades after the Crucifixion. We are now all offered the choice to enter an Eden that is raised in glory to a level greater than that of the prelapsarian paradise. And we can choose to eat the fruit that promises eternal life, which is Christ himself, present in the Eucharist.

Hymns from Orthros (morning prayer), in the Byzantine liturgy (Canons for Tone VI on Sunday), express these same sentiments, and connect Mary, the Theotokos, to the economy of redemption directly:

Canon of the Resurrection:

Deceived in Eden into eating of the tree, our progenitor fell into corruption, disobeying Thy commandment, O all-good Lord; yet, obedient to the Father, O Savior, by the Cross Thou didst restore him again to his original beauty.

To the Theotokos:

Through thee, O most holy one, hath grace blossomed forth and the law ceased its effect; for thou, O pure Ever-virgin, gavest birth to the Lord Who granteth us remission.

Tasting of the tree showed me forth as mortal, but the Tree of Life, Who revealed Himself through thee, O all-pure one, raised up the dead and hath made me an heir to the sweetness of paradise.

In depictions of the Tree of Jesse, we see that Christ is connected to Adam through Jesse, and, crucially, in the line of King David. The genealogy from Abraham to Christ is described in three sets of 14 generations in the Gospel of Matthew (1, 1-17) to establish this connection. The number 14 is associated with King David due to the numerical value of his name in Hebrew ‘gematria’, a numerological system in which Hebrew letters are assigned numerical values, and words or phrases with equal totals are considered to have a mystical or interpretive connection. In this 12th-century English illumination of the Tree of Jesse by an anonymous artist, we see the line from Jesse, David’s father, to Christ, represented by a single figure, Mary, who in this context can also be considered the figure from which springs the Tree of Life. Christ is, according to the hymn above, the fruit - the ‘sweet pear’ - present to us in the Eucharist.

As an aside, in old Cockney rhyming slang used in England, the phrase “apples and pears” is a synonym for “stairs”. When I was a boy, my Dad used to tell me to go to bed by directing me to go, “up the apples and pears”. I was reminded of this as I wrote this article. I’m not aware of any connection with the fruit of Eden for this saying, although many aspects of traditional culture do have roots in the old religion, so you never know. Perhaps he was wishing me a peaceful night and the sleep of the redeemed, although I was unaware of it at the time!

Some Calendar Notes for Mid-July

In the Missal and Breviary of St Pius V, July 13th is the feast of Pope St Anacletus, which was carried over from the pre-Tridentine editions. The 14th is that of St Bonaventure, who died in 1274, while attending the Second Council of Lyon, and was canonized in 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84), his fellow Minister General of the Franciscan Order. His feast was originally kept by the Franciscans on the second Sunday of July, but in the Tridentine books, it was fixed to July 14th. The Acta Sanctorum gives an account of the uncertainty about the proper date of his death, but it is now generally agreed from the earliest accounts that he actually died on the 15th.

The Lying-in-State of St Bonaventure, by Francisco de Zurbarán, 1629

The Holy Roman Emperor St Henry II died on July 13, 1024, and was canonized by Blessed Pope Eugenius III in 1146. The see of Bamberg, Germany, which he founded, and in whose cathedral he is buried, traditionally kept his feast on the day of his death. He was added to the Roman Calendar in 1631 on the same day, as a commemoration on the feast of St Anacletus. When he was given his own feast in 1668, it was assigned to July 15, then the first free day after that of his death.

St Camillus de Lellis died on July 14, 1614. By the time he was canonized in 1746, Our Lady of Mt Carmel had been assigned to July 16th, and St Alexius (whose very existence is rather doubtful) to the 17th. He was therefore placed on the 18th, and the Saints previously kept on that day, an early Roman martyr named Symphorosa and her 7 sons, reduced to a commemoration.

Pope Anacletus is now recognized to be the same person as Pope Cletus, who shares his feast with Pope Marcellinus on April 26th. For this reason, a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites issued on February 14, 1961, ordered the July 13th feast to be completely removed from the calendar. Although the current Roman calendar therefore has July 13th as a feria with no feast at all, and St Alexius as a commemoration, Bonaventure, Henry and Camillus all remain effectively displaced by Anacletus. They were reordered in the post-Conciliar calendar, so that each would be kept on the day of his “birth into heaven,” with St Henry on the 13th, St Camillus on the 14th, and St Bonaventure on the 15th. St Alexius has been completely removed.

An illustration from a 1501 Breviary according to the Use of Bamberg; St Henry and his wife, St Cunegond, holding the cathedral of Bamberg, which they founded in 1002, together with the See itself.

As I have written before, there have always been Saints’ feasts which were kept on different days in different places, and the divergence between the temporal cycles of the Roman Rite and the post-Conciliar Rite is far more significant than the differences in the two calendars of Saints. The principle that a Saint’s feast should be assigned to his death day is a very ancient one, but has never been the sole criterion for choosing a day. A very prominent recent example is Pope St John Paul II, who died on April 2, 2005; since that date often occurs in Holy Week or Easter Week, his feast day is kept on October 22, the date of his inauguration as pope. Nevertheless, we have here in July an occasion where the two calendars might easily be reconciled with no harm done.

Durandus on the Sanctus

Following up on the most recent installment of Dr Foley’s Lost in Translation series, here is most of what William Durandus has to say about the Sanctus in the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, book IV, chapter 34. There are a few places where I have paraphrased him to avoid prolixity.  

The Church, hoping to be joined with the angels and archangels who are mentioned in the preface, immediately after it conforms itself to the angelic song, singing the hymn, “Holy, holy, holy” … therefore as the priest finishes the praise (of God), i.e. the preface, the whole choir, which represents the Church, sings the angelic hymn together, so that one and the same glory, praise and honor may be sung to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

… the first part of this hymn is comprised of the words of angels, and the second of those of men. For we read in Isaiah 6 that the Seraphim cried out to one another and said, “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts, all the earth is full of his glory”, and in the Gospel, “the multitudes that went before and that followed, cried, saying, ‘Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: (Hosanna in the highest.’) ” (Matthew 21, 9) And indeed the words of the angels, namely, “Hosanna in the highest”, commends to us the mystery of the Trinity and the unity in God, that of men, namely, “Hosanna to the son of David”, sounds forth the mystery of the divinity and humanity in Christ. Rightly do we sing the songs of angels in the Church, because through this sacrifice, as we know, earthly things are joined to those of heaven, and therefore we cry out to be saved with those on high.

For this should be noted, that “holy” is said three times to denote the Trinity, or the distinction of persons, but “Lord God of hosts” is said only once, to denote the unity of the divine essence, because the unity is adored, and this is shown forth in the mystery of the Trinity and the unity. Again, it is said three times in the singular, “sanctus”, and not in the plural, “sancti”, so that the one holiness and the one eternity may be understood in these three persons. Not only did the Seraphim cry this out before the throne of God on high, according to the Prophet, but also the four living creatures according to the Apocalypse (4, 6 and 8), “round about the throne… they rested not day and night, saying ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.’ ”

Christ adored by the 24 elders and the four living beings in Apocalypse 4, as represented in an altarpiece painted ca. 1400 by Master Bertram of Minden, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Now God is called holy, that is sanctifying, but not sanctified, whence it is said (Lev. 19 passim), “Be ye holy, because I am holy, the Lord your God.” The Father is called holy when the Son says, “Holy Father sanctify in truth those whom you gave me.” (John 17, 11). The Son is called holy when the angel bears witness, “And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1, 35) The Spirit is called holy when Christ says, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost. 23 Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them.” (John 20, 22-23)

There is also said, “Lord God of hosts”, that is the Lord of armies, namely of angels and men, terrible like the line of the camps drawn up (Song 6, 9), of whom the Angels say in the psalm (23, 8), “Who is this king of glory? The Lord of hosts, etc.” For God has as many armies upon earth as there are orders in the Church, and as many in heaven as there are orders among the angels…

The word “Sabaoth” therefore is interpreted “Lord of hosts”, or “of military powers”, or “of victories”, or “almighty” that the Lord himself may be God and almighty, who arrays the armies of angels and of men. And therefore is added, “the heavens and the earth are full of your glory,” that is, so that the heavens and the earth may be ruled by his glory, and they who are in the heavens and on the earth may glorify and honor his holy name. Now the heavens are full of glory in fact, but the earth in hope; later, this will be fully true when these words are fulfilled, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Now when we say, “the heavens and the earth are full of your glory,” we give thanks to the Creator for all his benefits. But when we say, “Blessed is He who comes,” we give thanks especially for the benefit of our redemption, and these words are rightly added because it is necessary for eternal salvation to confess the mystery of the Incarnation. “I am come,” he says, “in the name of my Father.” (John 5, 43) The name of the Father is the Son, of whom the Prophet says, “Behold the name of the Lord cometh from afar.” (Isa. 30, 27)

Jacob’s dream of the ladder, by which angels ascend and descend to and from heaven, Genesis 28, 11-17; 1664/66, by the Cretan painter Elias Moskos (1629-87). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Therefore when the Sanctus begins, we must stand bowed, because then do we venerate the Incarnation and the unknown divine majesty through the song of angels and of men. Again, by saying “Blessed is he”, since these words are from the Gospel, we must make the sign of the cross, because Christ triumphed through the Cross, and then causes us to triumph. For when He came to Jerusalem and went down from the Mount of Olives, then did the children of Israel cry out saying, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord”, since the coming of Christ to Jerusalem signifies the future resurrection, when He Himself will come to judge the living and the dead, and appear to us in the same flesh in which He suffered for our sake, and then at the name of Jesus every knee shall bend of those in heaven (Phil. 2, 10), on earth and below the earth; and for this reason some also begin at that point to kneel and pray devoutly.

There follows “Hosanna”, which is a Hebrew word that means, “save, I beseech”; the words “thy people”, or “the whole world” are understood …

“Hosanna in the highest” is said twice because of the two parts of salvation, which are the garment of the mind and the garment of the flesh, in which the Saints are made blessed in glory, to wit, so that being saved in soul and body, we may be reckoned among the angels on high…

The Capture of Christ in the Garden, fresco painted in 1310 in the lower basilica of St Francis in Assisi by the Sienese artist Pietro Lorenzetti. (Note the Apostles slinking away in the middle right.)

From this point (i.e. from the beginning of the canon), the passion of Christ is represented in words and deeds, for the deacon and subdeacon stand behind the bishop or priest, and in this is represented the fleeing of the Apostles… while those who stand behind the altar (i.e. in the liturgical choir), facing the bishop, signify the women who saw His passion standing from afar. And everyone, those who stand behind the bishop and those who face him, bows down, venerating the divine majesty and the incarnation of the Lord, which are brought in through the song of angels and of men. For the order of angels saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts” brings in the divine majesty,” but the order of men saying, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” signifies the coming in the flesh.

The Feast of St John Gualbert

Today is the feast of St John Gualbert, founder of the monastic congregation known from their mother-house as the Vallumbrosians (the “Shady Valley” monks.) Like his contemporaries Ss Romuald and Peter Damian, he played an important role in the great reform movement taking place within the Church in the 11th century. The life of the Vallumbrosians was extremely austere in an age of terrible laxity among monks, and Pope Alexander II (who died very shortly before him in 1073) testified that it was largely though St John’s efforts that the vice of clerical simony, which had become so common it was hardly even noticed, was largely extirpated in central Italy.

The Vallumbrosa Altarpiece, by Perugino, 1500. The Saints at the bottom are, from left to right, Bernardo degli Umberti, a member of the Vallumbrosian Order who became a cardinal in 1097, and bishop of Parma in 1106, followed by John Gualbert, Benedict and the Archangel Michael.

However, St John is particularly known for an episode that took place in his early life, before he embraced the monastic state. He was born into a Florentine noble family in the later 10th century, when faction-fighting and street-battles among the nobility were a routine fact of life. In the course of this, his older brother Ugo was murdered, and John determined to avenge him privately. One day (the Breviary says it was Good Friday), when he was in the company of his friends and supporters, all of them fully armed, he came across the murderer, unarmed, in an alley from which there was no way to escape. As John advanced to kill him, the man fell on his knees and threw out his arms like those of Christ on the Cross; the sight of this moved him to repent, and he not only forbore his revenge, but embraced and forgave the murderer. John then went to pray at the church of St Miniato on a hill outside the city, where the crucifix on one of the altars nodded to him, signifying the Lord’s acceptance of this gesture of true Christian forgiveness. For this reason, the Gospel of his feast day is not taken from the Common of Abbots, but repeated (in part) from the Friday after Ash Wednesday.

“You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust. For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this? Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5, 43-48)

In the altarpiece show above, by Giovanni del Biondo (ca. 1370), St John is shown forgiving his brother’s killer in the upper left section. Below it is depicted an especially famous episode in the ecclesiastical history of Florence, one which is connected to a contemporary of St John known as “Petrus Igneus - Fiery Peter.” A simoniac prelate, Peter of Pavia, was made bishop of Florence, much to the indignation of the populace, who demanded a trial by fire to determine the legitimacy of his appointment. Their appellant, a monk of St John’s order also called Peter, celebrated Mass in the presence of a crowd of some 3000 people; then, removing his chasuble (of course), he walked between two raging pyres set very close to each other, remaining totally unscathed, even though the fire seemed to fill his alb, and he sank into the hot coals up to his ankles. This was taken as God’s judgment that his cause was just, and Peter of Pavia was removed from the See at the order of Pope Alexander, while Peter the monk was eventually made a cardinal and Papal legate. He is now a blessed, and his feast is kept in Florence and by the Vallumbrosian order on February 8th.

The Solemnity of St Benedict 2025

Gloriosus Confessor Domini, orationem faciens, benedictionem dedit; et lapis, super quem antiquus hostis sedebat, subito levatus est. (3rd antiphon of Vespers on the Solemnity of St Benedict.)

The episode referred to in the antiphon above, depicted in the sacristy of the church of San Miniato in Florence by Spinello Aretino, 1388.

The Lord’s glorious confessor, making his prayer, gave the blessing, and the stone, upon which the ancient enemy sat, was at once lifted up.

In the Second Book of St Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, dedicated to the life and miracles of St Benedict, the episode is recounted thus in chapter nine:

On a certain day, when the monks were building up the cells of the same abbey, there lay a stone which they meant to employ about that business: and when two or three were not able to remove it, they called for more company, but all in vain, for it remained so immovable as though it had grown to the very earth.
They plainly perceived that the devil himself sat on it, seeing so many men’s hands could not so much as once move it: wherefore, finding that their own labors could do nothing, they sent for the man of God, to help them with his prayers against the devil, who hindered the removing of that stone. The holy man came, and after some praying, he gave it his blessing, and then they carried it away so quickly, as though it had been of no weight at all.

St Benedict died on March 21 in the year 543 or 547, and this was the date on which his principal feast was traditionally kept, and is still kept by Benedictines; it is sometimes referred to on the calendars of Benedictine liturgical books as the “Transitus - Passing”. There was also a second feast to honor the translation of his relics, which was kept on July 11. The location to which the relics were translated is still a matter of dispute, with the Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy, founded by the Saint himself, and the French Abbey of Fleury, also known as Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, both claiming to possess them. This second feast is found in many medieval missals and breviaries, even in places not served by monastic communities. (It was not, however, observed by either the Cistercians or Carthusians.). The second feast was in a certain sense the more solemn in the traditional use of the Benedictines; March 21 always falls in Lent, and the celebration of octaves in Lent was prohibited, but most monastic missals have the July 11 feast with an octave. In the post-Conciliar reform of the Calendar, many Saints, including St Benedict, were moved out of Lent; in his case, to the day of this second feast in the Benedictine Calendar.

The Sanctus

Lost in Translation #131

For practical reasons the Sanctus is considered its own composition, but as Adrian Fortescue writes, it “is, of course, merely the continuation of the Preface. It would be quite logical,” he continues,

if the celebrant sang it straight on himself. But the dramatic touch of letting the people fill in the choral chant of the angels, in which (as the preface says) we also wish to join, is an obvious idea, a very early one and quite universal. [1]

Early indeed. The liturgical Sanctus is testified by Clement of Rome (d. ca. 100) and Tertullian (155-220), and some version of it is found in all apostolic liturgies. In the Antiochene, Roman, Ambrosian, Gallican, and Mozarabic Rites, the trisagion of Isaiah 6,3 is followed by the Palm Sunday proclamation of the crowd in the Gospels. [2] In the Roman Rite the result is the following:

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dóminus Deus Sábaoth. Pleni sunt cæli et terra glória tua. Hosánna in excélsis. Benedíctus qui venit in nómine Dómini. Hosánna in excélsis.

Which is usually translated as:

Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

In Isaiah 6, the prophet sees the Lord sitting on a throne high and elevated, with His train filling the temple. Two six-winged Seraphim use two of their wings to cover the Lord’s face, two to cover His feet, and two to fly. As they do so, they sing to each other: “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts, all the earth is full of his glory.”

In the Gospel according to St. Matthew, when Jesus enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday on the back of a donkey, the crowd proclaims: “Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest.” (Matt. 21, 9) The other Gospels give similar accounts, (see Mk. 11, 9, Lk. 19, 38, and Jn. 12, 13) but no Evangelist has exactly the same wording as the liturgical formula.

While the triple Sanctus has obvious Trinitarian implications, the pairing of the two texts leads one to a consideration of the Incarnation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, “The people devotedly praise the divinity of Christ with the Angels, saying Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus, and His humanity with the [Hebrew] children, saying Benedictus qui venit.” [3] This interpretation is corroborated by the gestures of the priest. During the Sanctus he is bowed down in adoration, and at the Benedictus he stands aright and makes the sign of the cross—and the cross is the reason that the Word became flesh. In this respect, the entire Sanctus hymn is like the sign of the cross, which expresses the two great mysteries of the Christian Faith, the Trinity and our Redemption.

Hosanna

There are two linguistic curiosities in this hymn, the use of the Hebrew loan words Sabaoth and Hosanna.

The word Hosanna is an abbreviation of hōshī‘ā nā’, which means “save, now!” (see Ps. 117 [118], 25) The word played an important role in the Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot); it was recited by the priest every day when he processed around the altar, and it was recited seven times on the seventh day, once during each of the seven processions. When the priest came to the word Hosanna, the people would say it with him as they waved their branches of palm, willow, etc. Indeed, the seventh day of the feast was named the Great Hosanna, and the branches were called hosannas. [4]

One can understand, then, why Saints Matthew, Mark, and John describe the people shouting Hosanna and carrying palm branches during Our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem. Among other things, their actions were an affirmation of Jesus as the One who saves now. And one can understand why the word remains untranslated in Christian liturgy, a tradition that stretches back to the time of the Apostles (it is mentioned in the first-century Didache). First, it connects the assembled faithful who utter it soon before the sacrifice of the altar to the disciples who uttered it soon before the sacrifice of the Cross.

And second, the word is complex: its denotation is plaintive, suppliant, and urgent, but its connotation is boisterous and joyful (as we see in the way that it is used). “Hosanna is the voice of one imploring, showing emotion more than signifying something, like what they call interjections in the Latin language.” [5] But if Hosanna communicates more of a feeling than a meaning, it may be more difficult to translate. The German language, for example, captures quite nicely the essence of schadenfreude, as does the Italian la dolce vita; to use German for the latter and Italian for the former would be an abomination. And it is common for people speaking a second language to revert to their native tongue for exclamations or interjections. Hosanna, then, contains a certain Hebrew-Messianic je ne sais quoi that the new people of God are able to channel.

Sabaoth

Less obvious is the retention of Sabaoth. Unlike Hosanna (or, for that matter, Alleluia and Amen), there would seem to be no ineluctable qualities to the word. Sabaoth is simply the Hebrew for hosts or armies, and thus it can easily be translated into Greek or Latin--indeed, the Vulgate translates Sabaoth as exercituum without any trouble and the Douay Rheims follows suit with “of hosts.” And yet in the Septuagint, the authors chose to leave the word untranslated in Isaiah 6, 3:

ἅγιος ἅγιος ἅγιος κύριος σαβαωθ πλήρης πᾶσα ἡ γῆ τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ.

Or:

Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of Sabaoth, all the earth is full of his glory.

In fact, the Septuagint retains the Hebrew Sabaoth sixty-one times.

But if the meaning of the word is clear, its referent is not. The armies in question could be those of ancient Israel, rallying under their divine commander-in-chief; they could be the Angelic hosts of all nine orders; and they could even be the stars. (see Gen. 2, 1) Whichever it is, the expression made its way into the Christian lexicon. Both Saints Paul and James refer to God as the Lord of Sabaoth in their Epistles, (Rom. 9, 29 and James 5, 4) and it also made its way into the sacred liturgy, probably from almost the beginning. In his letter to the Corinthians, Pope St. Clement of Rome cites Isaiah 6, 3 with the word Sabaoth in what is most likely a liturgical context. [6] In any case, all the ancient liturgies, Eastern and Western, have Sabaoth in their Sanctus hymn. [7]

The Latin edition of the new Roman Missal (1970/2002) likewise retains this ancient word, but the translations of it are another matter. While the German edition has Zebaoth, the French, Italian, and Spanish have “God of the universe” (Dieu de l’univers, Dio dell’universo, and Dios del Universo, resp.). In English, the 2011 translation replaced the 1970’s “God of power and might” with “Lord God of hosts.” The same translations, incidentally, all retain the word Hosanna.

One wonders what, if anything, is lost by translating Sabaoth into the mother tongue. Pius Parsch claims that the words Hosanna and Sabaoth “have come down to us from the primitive Church of Palestine, and were not translated, because a peculiar meaning had in the course of time become associated with these words;” [8] and yet he neglects to tell us what the peculiar meaning of Sabaoth is. I suspect that like Hosanna, it may be more of a feeling than a meaning, in this case, the feeling one gets when encountering the numinous, a feeling of awe and dread. The sight of a vast army is no doubt terrifying, but the Lord’s armies come with inscrutable supernatural powers that make our conventional weapons look harmless. Sabaoth, in other words, conjures up an awareness of the unknown and awful (in the full sense of the word) powers of an omnipotent God: indeed, when Revelation seeks a substitute for Sabaoth, it uses “almighty.” (Rev. 4, 8) [9] Removing Sabaoth from the liturgy, then, contributes ever so slightly to an evacuation of the numinous from the sacred.

Notes

[1] Fortescue, The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy (Longmans, Green, and Co, 1912), 320-21.

[2] Fortescue, 321-22.

[3] Summa Theologiae III.83.4.

[4] Cornelius Aherne, “Hosanna,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910).

[5] Hosanna vox est obsecrantis, magis affectum indicans quam rem aliquam significans, sicut sunt in lingua Latina quas interjectiones vocant. (Attributed to Saint Augustine. See St. Thomas Aquinas, Catena aurea in Johannem 12.2.29).

[6] 1 Cor. 34, 6-7.

[7] Fortescue, 321-22.

[8] The Liturgy of the Mass, trans. Frederic C. Eckhoff (St. Louis, Missouri: Herder, 1940), 219.

[9] William Durandus emphasizes omnipotence in his interpretation of Sabaoth. (see Rationale Divinorum Officiorum IV. 34, 6) Further, I believe that both Saints Paul and James use “Lord of Sabaoth” because it triggers a slight fear of God in the reader. The former, quoting Isaiah, includes the epithet in a sentence about the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah while the latter writes of the cries of exploited and oppressed workers entering into the ears of a presumably outraged Lord of Sabaoth.

The Feast of the Seven Brothers

July 10th is one of the most ancient feasts in the Roman Rite, that of a group of martyrs from Rome itself, called the Seven Brothers. Their traditional legend makes them the sons of a woman called Felicity, who shares her feast day with Pope St Clement I on November 23rd. The very oldest collection of Roman liturgical texts, the so-called Leonine Sacramentary, has seven different Masses for this feast; the second of these includes the rubric “in jejunio – on the fast”, which suggests that it may even have been kept by some with a vigil. Although the feast is missing from the oldest complete sacramentary, the old Gelasian, ca. 750 AD, it is found in the Gellone sacramentary only 30 years later, and likewise in the Gregorian, and the earliest Roman lectionaries.

An altarpiece of St Felicity and her seven sons, painted in 1464 by the Florentine artist Neri di Bicci (1419-91), for the church dedicated to her in his native city. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

The breviary and martyrology place the martyrdom of these Saints in the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-80), under a prefect of Rome called Publius, an extremely common name in ancient Rome. The very first person of this name to serve as urban prefect, Publius Seius Fuscianus, was actually a childhood friend of Marcus Aurelius, but he did not come into the office until 187, seven years after that emperor’s death.

This is only one of the many historical difficulties about the brothers’ legend. The breviary of St Pius V gives the story only a single lesson, which states that they were threatened with both promises and tortures in order to get them to renounce Christ, and when they would not do so, were executed in various ways as their mother exhorted them to bear their sufferings. Januarius was beaten with lead weights, Felix and Philip with clubs, while Silvanus (whose name is given as “Silanus” in the oldest sources) was thrown off a cliff, and the last three, Alexander, Vitalis and Martial, beheaded. Felicity was then killed four months later. This summary agrees with all the traditional versions of their legend.

However, in the Roman world, beheading was the form of capital punishment reserved for citizens, while more painful forms were used for non-citizens. It is very improbable that only three of seven brothers of one family would be citizens, which makes it difficult to explain why only three of them were killed this way.

The central section of the predella of the panel shown above, in which the prefect Publius condemns Felicity and her sons to death. Notice how someone has expressed their detestation of their cruelty by hacking out the face of both the prefect and his soldiers. (This is not a rare phenomenon. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

The Leonine Sacramentary and other ancient sources note that each group of them was buried in a different Christian cemetery, Januarius in that of Praetextatus on the Appian way, Felix and Philip in that of Priscilla, Silvanus in that of Maximus, near his mother, and the last three in the cemetery of the Jordani. This also poses an historical problem. The Romans almost never interfered with the right of even the worst criminals to a decent burial according to custom, and it was generally considered very important for the members of a family to be buried together as much as possible, all the more so among the Christians. Even granting that there could have been a good reason for Januarius to be buried on the opposite side of Rome from the rest of his family, the other three cemeteries are less than a mile apart from each other on the via Salaria. Such a separation of the family in death to four different places, when at least seven of them could easily have been laid to rest in the same place, is also very unlikely.

The very oldest list of Roman martyrs, the Depositio Martyrum, ca. 336 AD, names all seven on July 10, but does not in any way suggest that they were brothers, and makes no mention of their mother. The same is true of the title of their feast in the Leonine Sacramentary, and six of its seven Masses for them. For these reasons, it is now generally accepted that although they were all martyrs who died on the same day, they were not related to each other or to the martyr Felicity. The association of them as a family would therefore have arisen from Silvanus’ proximity to Felicity in their place of burial, and the fact that he shares the date of his death with the others.

A watercolor copy of a fresco in the catacomb of Priscilla, ca. 190 AD, with the Madonna and Child, and a prophet (either Isaiah or Balaam) pointing to a star over her head. It is believed by some scholars that the tomb over which this was painted was that of the martyrs Felix and Philip. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Such skepticism about the traditional story is not modern. The pre-Tridentine Roman breviary accepts the tradition that they were all brothers, but has only one very brief lesson about their martyrdom, almost identical to that in St Pius V’s revision. The other lessons are all taken from a sermon which St Augustine preached on the very ancient feast of the Maccabees. And indeed, many hagiographical scholars believe that the accounts of their passion which make them brothers are modeled on the story told in 2 Maccabees 6 and 7, in which seven brothers are martyred in a variety of ways as their mother exhorts them to remain faithful to God despite their torments, and dies herself after all her sons, “not losing them”, as Augustine says, “but sending them forth.”

However, if this is indeed what we might call a hagiographical confusion, it is one that arose very early. An epitaph for St Felicity which is attributed to Pope St Damasus I (366-84), or at least close to his time, says that she died “with her sons”, although it does not give their names, or say how many they were. By the time of St Peter Chrysologus, who was bishop of Ravenna from 433-50, the number had been fixed at seven, as he preached a sermon on St Felicity in which he called her “truly a mother of lights… who shines brightly in all the world with her seven-fold progeny.” At the end of the 6th century, St Gregory the Great preached a sermon in the church built over the catacomb where she was buried, in which he praises her as one “more than a martyr, since she sent seven pledges before her to the kingdom.” However, we may note that neither Peter nor Gregory gives the names of any of the sons.

The Martyrdom of Ss Rufina and Secunda, 1620-25, by Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli (1573 - 1626), Giulio Cesare Procaccini (1574 - 1625), and Giovanni Battista Crespi (1573 - 1632). ~ Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Since the 12th century, this feast has been kept jointly with that of two other martyrs, sisters named Rufina and Secunda, whose passion is likewise considered historically unreliable. (In the pre-Tridentine Roman breviary, they are not mentioned at all in the Matins lessons.) The story goes that they were the daughters of a nobleman called Asterius, and engaged by their parents to marry fellow Christians named Armentarius and Verinus, but in 257, when the persecution of Valerian broke out, both fiancés apostatized. The sisters fled from Rome, but were captured and brought before the urban prefect Junius Donatus, (a real historical personage, who did hold that office in that period), who imprisoned them, and tried to induce them to likewise apostatize. The breviary preserves the account that when he had Rufina scourged, Secunda protested, “Why is it that you honor my sister, but dishonor me? Order that we both be beaten, as we both confess that Christ is God.” Following various tortures, they were beheaded, and then given burial by a woman named Plautilla on her own property.

The site of their burial, at the tenth milestone from Rome on the Aurelian Way, was called “Silva Nigra – the Black Forest”, but in honor of the martyrs, the name was changed to “Silva Candida – the White (or ‘bright’) Forest.” In the reign of Pope St Julius I (337-52), a basilica was built over the tomb; by the mid-5th century, a town had grown up around it which was big enough to be made its own diocese. This became one of the seven “suburbicarian” sees, the dioceses around Rome whose bishops are traditionally made cardinals, and in the Middle Ages, often served by turns as the assistant bishop at the Pope’s solemn Masses, as other bishops are served by an assistant priest.

The chapel within the narthex of the Lateran baptistery which contains the relics of Ss Rufina and Secunda within its altar. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by ho visto nina volare, CC BY-SA 2.0)

By the mid-12th century, however, Silva Candida was barely more than a ruin, and its cardinal-bishop resided permanently in Rome; the see was therefore united to that another suburbicarian diocese, Porto, and remains so to this day. In 1154, the relics of the two sister martyrs were recovered from the ruins of their church, and transferred to the Lateran baptistery, and their names were then added to the feast of the seven brothers whose day they share.

Liturgical Travels Through France: A New Publication from Canticum Salomonis

We are very pleased to share with our readers this announcement of a new publication by our good friends at Canticum Salomonis, the first-ever English translation of Jean-Baptiste des Marettes’ Liturgical Travels Through France.

Gospels chanted atop rood lofts, the Blessed Sacrament reserved in hanging pyxes, processions with dragons and banners, Lenten expulsion and reconciliation of penitents, manipled choirboys, communion under two species – even, perhaps, nuns serving as acolytes! These are but some of the bygone French liturgical practices and rituals that await discovery by the reader of Liturgical Travels Through France (1718).

His guide is the learned Jean-Baptiste Le Brun des Marettes, a cleric at the turn of the eighteenth century whose abiding interest in pagan and ecclesiastical antiquity spurred him to travel his fatherland to document its diverse liturgical traditions. His account recreates a ritual world where vast cathedrals and abbeys sustained an integral and triumphal celebration of the holy mysteries accompanied by the enthusiasm of the multitudes – a world soon to be obliterated by the vicissitudes of revolution.

Translated for the first time into English by Gerhard Eger and Zachary Thomas, and published by Os Justi Press, Liturgical Travels Through France speaks directly to the concerns of our own unsettled moment as well. Early modern France enjoyed a rich and regionally varied liturgical life, shaped by centuries of faithful observance, artistic cultivation, and civic devotion, elements conspicuously absent from the flattened ceremonial landscape of today. Far from being a mere antiquarian curiosity, Le Brun des Marettes’ work offers a salutary challenge to modern preconceptions about the unicity of the Roman rite, reminding us that organic liturgical development once yielded a dazzling diversity within unity.

The book’s contemporary relevance is brought into focus by Abbé Claude Barthe, whose foreword situates the work within the context of the neo-Gallican movement as well as twentieth-century debates between rupture and continuity. An appendix by Shawn Tribe explores the art-historical aspects of Le Brun des Marettes’ account, while the French scholar François Hou offers a fascinating study of the cathedral chapters that sustained the French Church’s mighty edifice of worship.

Liturgical Travels Through France is more than a picturesque record of vanished rites (illustrated here not only in prose but in 55 plates); it is a vital source for understanding the nature and history of liturgical reform. Written at a time when the French church stood at a crossroads – torn between renewed zeal for tradition and pressures for rationalization and adaptation – it documents a moment of extraordinary tension and creativity.

The early eighteenth century, particularly in France, witnessed a flourishing of ressourcement in the fields of Scripture, patristics, and liturgy, carried out under the long shadow of the Council of Trent. As national pride swelled under Louis XIV, diocesan churches, once eager to conform to Roman norms, began asserting the legitimacy of their local customs. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes further complicated the pastoral landscape, as churchmen were forced to reconcile the needs of both lifelong Catholics and recently converted Protestants.

The sanctuary of Notre-Dame de Paris as it looked before its rood screen was taken down in the 18th century.

It was in this climate that the so-called “neo-Gallican” rites emerged: diocesan liturgical books often marked by classical sensibilities, didactic preoccupations, and a mixture of reverent innovation and archaeological curiosity. While some of these reforms culminated in the excesses of the Synod of Pistoia (1786), whose decrees were rightly rejected by both pope and faithful, many others reflected a sincere effort to recover the spirit of the Fathers, and to reform abuses without compromising the integrity of worship.

Le Brun des Marettes’ work belongs to this milieu. His accounts do not merely chronicle local curiosities; they bear witness to a Church still deeply rooted in sacramental practice, even while grappling with the challenges of modernity.

The significance of this moment has not escaped historians of twentieth-century liturgical reform. Many have sought in the eighteenth century the remote prelude to the innovations of the Liturgical Movement, and ultimately, the creation of the rite of Paul VI. Hence, this edition of the Liturgical Travels provides a cautionary counterpoint to easy narratives of rupture or progress. It reminds us that the impulse to reform, if divorced from the lived tradition and ecclesial piety that nourishes it, risks destroying the very thing it claims to renew.

In our own day, Le Brun des Marettes’ work stands as a witness to the fruitful tension between tradition and reform. Both traditionalists and progressives may be tempted to use the past he describes to justify liturgical experiments of one kind or another. The greater value of his work lies in its ability to broaden our understanding of what the Latin liturgical tradition has been – and what it might yet become. For readers today, it offer not a blueprint, but a horizon: a vision of sacred order instantiated in a particular place and time, which can inspire our own efforts to restore the sacred.

The book is available in hardback, paperback, and ebook directly from Os Justi Press. It may likewise be purchased on Amazon US or any other Amazon outlet (UK, Canada, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan).

The Martyrs of Gorkum

The Roman Martyrology notes today as the feast of a group of Saints known as the Martyrs of Gorkum. Their feast has never been on the general calendar, but is celebrated in many places, and by the various religious orders to which they belonged, the Franciscans, who were the majority of the group, the Dominicans, Premonstratensians and Augustinian Canons. They were solemnly canonized in 1867 by Bl. Pius IX, as part of a year-long series of celebrations to commemorate the 18th centenary of the martyrdom of Ss Peter and Paul, then generally held to have taken place in 67 AD.

The Glorification of the Martyrs of Gorkum; engraving of the year 1675 after a painting by Johan Zieneels. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

In 1572, Dutch Calvinists in rebellion against the Spanish Catholic rulers of the Hapsburg Netherlands, as they were then called, seized control of the town of Gorkum. Eleven members of the local Franciscan friary, three secular priests, including the local parish priest, and an Augustianian canon were taken by the soldiers; when a member of the local Dominican community came to administer the Sacraments to them, he was also taken and imprisoned with them. Shortly thereafter, two Premonstratensians and another secular priest were added to their number, a total of nineteen. Over the course of several days, beginning on June 26, the soldiers subjected them to terrible cruelties, partly out of hatred for the Catholic religion, partly in the hopes of getting hold of precious vessels from the church which they believed the religious had hidden. On the morning of July 7th, they were transferred to another town, called Briel, and in the presence of the Calvinist commander, the Baron de la Marck, and several Calvinist ministers, told they would be set free if they would abjure the Catholic doctrine on the Blessed Sacrament, which they refused to do.

The baron then received a letter from the leader of the rebellion, the Prince of Orange known as William the Silent, ordering that they all be released. He agreed to this on the new condition that they publically repudiate the primacy of the Pope, which they also refused to do. On the morning of July 9th, they were taken to an abandoned monastery in the countryside near Briel and hanged from the beams of one of the outbuildings, with the nooses placed in their mouths. Even this incredibly slow and painful death did not satisfy the barbarity of the Calvinists, who also mutilated the bodies, some of them while they were still alive. One of the Franciscans, a Dane named Willehad, was 90 years old; three others were in their seventies. When the bodies had been taken down, their remains were left in a ditch, and not recovered until 1616, during a truce in the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Netherlands; they are now kept in the Franciscan church of St Nicholas in Brussels. There is also a pilgrimage church dedicated to them at the place of their martyrdom in Briel.

The Martyrs of Gorkum, by Cesare Fracassini; this painting was made specifically for the canonization ceremony of 1867. One of the traditional customs of the canonization ritual was that images of the Saints were hung within decorative frames from the balconies in the central rotunda of St Peter’s Basilica, but covered with plain pieces of burlap, which were then allowed to drop to the floor, exposing the image for the first time, once the Pope had finished reading the bull of canonization. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Perhaps the most appalling of Calvin’s many appalling doctrines was that of double predestination, the belief that we are all pre-destined to eternal salvation or damnation. (Calvin also taught that perhaps 100 souls would be saved from among the entire human race, although there was still enough human left in him at least to recognize that this was a “horrible conclusion.”) Inevitably, this drives people to search through their lives for signs that they are among the pre-saved; hence the idea that material prosperity in this life is a sign of pre-election in the next, a doctrine which has, with equal inevitability, now degenerated to truly parodic levels. But, as Catholic apologists immediately noted, this doctrine is pastorally disastrous, since it encourages not just the sinful, but also those who have repented of a sinful life, to see their past or present sins as a sign that they are among the pre-damned, and thus despair of their own correction and salvation. (A friend of mine who grew up in a Calvinist church and is now a Catholic priest once expressed the attitude that results as follows: “If I’m going to hell anyway, I might as well take the champagne flight.”)

Against this, we may adduce as particularly notable witnesses, the first meaning of the Greek word “martyr”, the lives and deaths of two among the company of Gorkum, which demonstrate that the door of conversion is not closed to anyone in this life, not even to the most obdurate sinner.

One of the two Premonstratensians, James Lacops, had formerly renounced both his vows and the Catholic Faith, after being reproved by his superiors for a very irregular life, and declared contumacious. Having been reconciled to the Church, he and St Adrian Jansen were captured in Gorkum when they opened the door of their presbytery to a man claiming that he wished to receive the Last Rites. Although the town was under occupation, and they knew that it might be a trick (as indeed it was), they would not risk letting someone die without the ministrations of a priest, and so they were taken to torture and death. It is, of course, especially appropriate that a son of St Norbert, who was himself rather a lax cleric in his youth (though nowhere near so egregiously) should die for the Catholic teaching on the Blessed Sacrament.

Even more interesting is the case of one of the secular priests, St Andrew Wouters, who was well-known as a womanizer and the father of more than one illegitimate child; despite being in disgrace, he joined the company of the others voluntarily. The Calvinist soldiers mocked him on account of the sins for which he was so notorious, and, in accordance with the logical conclusions of their creed, fully expected such a bad-living priest to apostatize and save his skin. This he did not do, and his last recorded words were, “Fornicator I always was, but heretic I never was; I will go to my death with the others.” As the article about them in the revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints wisely states, “it is a significant warning against judging the character of our neighbor, or pretending to read his heart, that, while a priest of blameless life recanted in a moment of weakness, the two who had been an occasion of scandal gave their lives without a tremor.”

Despite their disdain for religious vows and priestly celibacy, Calvinists did not of course believe that fornication was not sinful, and thus they would have seen in the sinful life of Andrew Wouters a clear sign of his eternal predestination to hell. To Catholics, his death as a martyr and canonization as a Saint are a reminder that we should never look on any sinful life, including our own, as anything other than a call to pray for conversion, which can happen even at the very last moments of life.

The reliquary of the Martyrs of Gorkum at the Franciscan church of St Nicholas in Brussels.

The full names of the martyrs are as follows.

The secular priests: Leonard van Veghel, pastor of Gorkum, Nicholas Poppel, Godfried van Duynen, and Andrew Wouters.
The eleven Franciscans: Fathers Nicholas Pieck, (who is listed first on the Franciscan liturgical calendar, since he was the guardian of the friary at Gorkum), Jerome of Weert (the vicar), Theodore van der Eem, Nicasius Jansen, Willehad of Denmark, Godfried of Mervel, Antony of Weert, Antony of Hoornaer, and Francis de Roye; the two lay brothers, Peter of Assche and Cornelius of Wyk near Duurstede.
The Premonstratensians: Adrian Jansen van Hilvarenbeek and James Lacops.
The Dominican: John of Cologne.
The Augustinian canon: Jan Lenartz of Oosterwyk, chaplain of the beguinage in Gorkum.

Clarity on Genuflections Around Communion in the Usus Antiquior

I received the following question from a reader, and given that others might find themselves with a similar question, or might simply wish to doublecheck that they are doing the right thing, I share my response today at NLM.

The Query: I am seeking instruction on the rubric in the Missal of 1962 which directs the priest to genuflect prior to retrieving the Blessed Sacrament from the tabernacle in the ciborium, and again after reposing it. I know Novus Ordo instructions do not point to this gesture. Would you be so kind as to indicate where such an instruction may be found, should it exist? And the rationale behind it.”

The Response: The instructions can be found in the 1962 Ritus Servandus which read as follows in translation:

X. The Lord’s Prayer and everything else up to the end of Communion…

6. If there are some to communicate during the Mass, the minister [read “server”] warns them a little beforehand with a ring of the bell. The Priest, after drinking the Blood, places the Chalice a little toward the Gospel side, but still within the Corporal, and covers it with the Pall.

• Then, if there are consecrated Hosts upon the Corporal, having made a genuflection, he places Them upon the Paten.
• If They have been consecrated in the same Mass within a Pyx/Ciborium, he places the Pyx/Ciborium in the middle of the Altar, uncovers It, and genuflects.
• If the Hosts to be administered have been consecrated beforehand, having opened the Tabernacle, he genuflects, extracts the Pyx/Ciborium and uncovers It.

He takes the Pyx/Ciborium or Paten with the Sacrament in his left hand, and takes one Host in his right, which he holds somewhat elevated over the Pyx/Ciborium or Paten with his thumb and index finger, and standing at the center of the Altar, facing the communicants, says: Ecce Agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi. Then he says: Domine, non sum dignus, ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea. After repeating this the third time, he goes to their right, that is, to the Epistle side, and facing each one, holding the Sacrament, he makes the sign of the cross with It over the Pyx or Paten, saying at the same time: Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam. Amen.

7. After the Faithful have communicated, the Celebrant returns to the Altar. Then, if there have been any Hosts upon the Corporal, he wipes it with the Paten, and if there are Fragments upon it, places them in the Chalice. If Hosts remain in the Pyx/Ciborium, he places It upon the Corporal, covers It, replaces It in the Tabernacle, genuflects, and closes the door.

Afterward he places in the Chalice any Fragments, which he happens to find upon the Paten, which was placed under the mouths of the communicants. Then he says secretly Quod ore sumpsimus, etc., and purifies himself, saying Corpus tuum, Domine, quod sumpsi, etc., and does everything as above. If there is a Tabernacle upon the Altar, and a Pyx/Ciborium with consecrated Hosts remains upon the Altar until the end of Mass, They are saved, which is prescribed at the end of Mass on Holy Thursday.

Thus, for the actual rubrics in the missal. The general principle is that any time the Priest and ministers interact with the Blessed Sacrament, a reverence is shown. This is also the case when the proximity between the ministers and the Blessed Sacrament changes, such as when the Tabernacle opens or shuts.

As to why this is done, it should be self-explanatory: under the signs of bread and wine, Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself is present, in person, and so we should reverence the Person as we would do when entering the presence of a King, or leaving it. The lack of such a gesture would be nothing better than negligence or contempt, if not a sign of a merely notional assent to the Real Presence rather than the real assent of supernatural faith.

It is worth pointing out, in addition, that the number of genuflections in connection with the Sacrament were reduced in 1962. If one takes a look at Matters Liturgical of 1956 (n. 238), the genuflections were:

• When the tabernacle is opened
• When the Priest uncovers the ciborium and turns for the Misereatur…
  
• When the Priest turns from back the Misereatur…
• After returning to the altar after Communion and placing down the ciborium (if hosts remain) 
• After placing the ciborium in the Tabernacle, before closing the door (if hosts remain)

Even not considering the Confiteor before Communion, there would have been two additional genuflections pre-62, one when the ciborium is uncovered and one at returning from the distribution (presumably connected with the immediate or somewhat immediate covering). Yet another indication of the involvement, in the code of rubrics for the 1962 missal, of the same reductionistic and horizontalizing reformers who would later, as part of the Consilium, take advantage of a wide permission to deconstruct and destroy.

In practice, as would be expected, the strict following of the ’62 Ritus is not universal, with the older practice still finding a place, even as occurs with the repetition of the Confiteor and other carryovers from the past.

Back to the point at hand, I would recommend that every celebrant of the TLM obtain a copy of a translation of the Ritus (it is in the Missal itself in Latin), which the FSSP sells here (along with other items).  It is important to be familiar with the Ritus along with the rubrics to get a full picture of how Mass is to be celebrated.

Photos by Allison Girone.

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