The Charterhouse of Pavia

For the feast of Saint Bruno, the founder of the Carthusian Order, here are some pictures from Nicola of one of the most beautiful of the order’s monasteries, that of Pavia in Lombardy, about 8 kilometers north of the city. It was founded by the Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconi, in 1396, partly to fulfill a vow made by his wife for a safe childbirth, partly as an expression of the artistic patronage which was so important to powerful Italian courts of Italy in that era, and partly because the Carthusians were regarded as the best kind of monks to have praying for you. The monks were more than once expelled from the complex and replaced by other religious orders, until they definitively left in 1947; since 1968, it has been home to a Cistercian community. Notwithstanding the theft of its land endowment by the Emperor Joseph II, and damage to the complex itself from the troops of Napoleon, it is an almost indescribably rich collection of artworks, of which we can only give a small idea here. (Although the Carthusians were so widely esteemed for their extreme austerity of life, it is interesting how many of the Italian charterhouses were founded by royalty who welcomed them, apparently, on condition that their austerity would not be expressed in the design or decoration of the church itself.)

The main entrance to the complex, which was originally with the park of a fortress of the Visconti; the fortress itself no longer exists.

The rising sun in the middle of the ceiling, the symbol of the Visconti, is also present in several places in the Duomo of Milan, another project of Gian Galeazzo.

The façade was constructed in the early decades of the 16th century, but never completed, and is missing its upper part, as will be seen from a design shown in another photograph below. It is incredibly rich in decoration, including not just Saints, but a series of medallion portraits of famous figures from classical history.

Although the central nave and side aisles are relatively simply, each of the side chapels in the latter is fully decorated.

This metal screen separates the nave from the transepts and the main choir. The cross seen above it stand over a marble portal at the entrance to the choir, which is shown in another photo below.

The cupola seen from behind the metal screen.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

On Gothic Art, Part 1

The art of pilgrimage

In this and another post next week, I want to look at the Gothic style of Christian art: where it came from, what makes it theologically and artistically distinctive, and how to recognize it in practice through a series of examples. Part 2, next week, turns to the later Gothic masters, the point at which the style begins its transition toward the Renaissance, and the development of secular art that the Gothic spirit made possible.

An example of the late Gothic style, the “Pietà of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon” by Enguerrand Quarton, mid 15th century.

As many NLM readers will already know, Pope Benedict XVI, in The Spirit of the Liturgy, identified three authentic traditions of Christian liturgical art: the iconographic, the Gothic, and the Baroque. Each is a legitimate expression of the Christian understanding of the human person and our relationship to God, and each communicates that understanding through a distinct visual language, thereby promoting prayer and worship among the faithful. The iconographic tradition, which dominated Christian art in both East and West until the 12th century, portrays man as he will be in heaven: transfigured, luminous, outside ordinary space and time. The Baroque, which developed in the 17th century, portrays fallen historical man in this life, in the full drama of suffering and grace. The Gothic stands between them, and it is the art most characteristic of the high medieval period in the West.

What Is the Gothic?

The Gothic is an authentic and distinct style of liturgical art that developed organically in the West from the iconographic prototype. As the change was gradual, any attempt to date its beginning involves some arbitrary choice. Most commentators settle on the mid-12th century, coinciding broadly with the completion of what is generally considered the first Gothic church, the Abbey of St Denis in Paris, in 1144. The name ‘Gothic’ was coined by High Renaissance commentators as a term of contempt. They held it to be a barbaric style belonging to the period of cultural decline that they believed had begun when the Goths overran the Roman Empire in the West a thousand years earlier. Historians today do not generally share that view of cultural decline, but the name stuck. Even those of us who admire Gothic culture and art continue to use it!

The impetus for the departure from the iconographic prototype stemmed from an increased emphasis on the reliability of human experience and the value of information received through the senses. This led to a greater curiosity about and appreciation of the natural world. Such appreciation was not new: Christians had always relied on sensory information and valued the beauty of the cosmos. What was different was the degree of weight now placed upon them.

Tied to this was the conviction that our world, though fallen and imperfect, is nevertheless good, ordered, and beautiful. There may be evil and suffering in the world, and it may not be as good and beautiful as it ought to be, but it remains God’s creation. This appreciation of the natural world and confidence in our ability to know it through the senses sparked curiosity and a desire to observe it more closely. One effect was the rise of scientific inquiry; another, the one that concerns us here, was an increased naturalism in art, a greater correspondence to natural appearances. The devotion to rational inquiry bound up with this cultural movement also led to a new approach to learning, and to the establishment of the great universities, among them those of Paris and Oxford.

Several factors combined to produce this cultural shift. Around 1000 AD, the Latin West increased its contact with the Greek East and the Islamic world through trade and warfare, including the Crusades and the Reconquista, the reconquest of Spain from the Moors. This gave Western Europe, for the first time since the decline of the Roman Empire in the West, access to many lost works of classical writers, particularly in the form of Arabic transcriptions of Aristotle. Over the following century, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim scholars collaborated to translate and interpret these texts. It was the friars, the new mendicant orders, the Franciscans and Dominicans, who achieved much of the synthesis of the new learning with the tradition inherited from St Augustine and the Church Fathers. The most significant of these figures is the Dominican St Thomas Aquinas.

This age was characterized by the creation of new ideas and a drive to popularize them. The preaching of the Dominicans and the broad appeal of St Francis of Assisi’s spirituality, which included a love of the beauty of the natural world, led in particular to a wider appreciation of the natural world as part of God’s creation. This shifting worldview, while still firmly Christian, gave rise to cultural movements driven as much by holiness and great artists as by great thinkers.

The New Naturalism

The greater emphasis on direct observation led to an enhanced naturalism fused to an iconographic substrate. What began in the Romanesque period, up to the mid-12th century, as a more naturalistic variant of the iconographic style eventually became so naturalistic that it broke the limits of what had constituted an icon, for example through the introduction of cast shadows and the depiction of figures in profile. Nevertheless, Gothic art always owes something stylistically to the iconographic. It retains, for example, the emotional distance maintained in the portrayal of figures, so that the observer always feels slightly detached from the scene depicted. Even in late Gothic styles, such as those of the Flemish artists Van Eyck and Hieronymus Bosch, we can see how much they owe to the iconographic tradition.

If one were to characterize this style theologically, it is too naturalistic to be considered a portrayal of man as he will be in heaven, which is what the iconographic style portrays, and not naturalistic enough to be a portrayal of fallen humanity as we experience it in this life, which is the subject of the Baroque. It straddles the divide between the two, much like the Christian life within the Church.

When a man is baptized, confirmed, and living the sacramental life, he is transfigured partially by grace even in this life. We may not see it ourselves, but that transformation is real. We are, to use St Peter’s phrase, ‘partakers of the divine nature.’ But we are only setting out on the journey, and we can suffer setbacks and reversals as well as progress. This transformation is only complete and permanent when we are in full union with God in heaven, but while we are on this pilgrimage to heaven, as part of the mystical body of Christ, practicing Catholics are in this respect Gothic men and women.

It is worth noting that the Gothic age is characterized historically as an age of pilgrimages. Many of the great cathedrals were pilgrimage destinations, and it is fitting to describe Gothic art as the art of pilgrimage for that reason also.

If we wanted a single symbol of this age, it might be the spire of the great Gothic cathedral. The Gothic cathedrals of France and England, perhaps more than any other aspect of the culture, characterize this period. The new learning led not only to a new approach to design, developing gradually from the Romanesque styles that preceded it, but also to advances in structural engineering that enabled the creation of higher, more complex structures with larger windows. These stained-glass windows became works of art manifesting the same stylistic elements as the paintings, but now in the medium of colored glass. The Gothic spire that so often sat atop the magnificent new churches and cathedrals born of an outpouring of faith symbolizes this age of pilgrimage in that, more than any other architectural feature, it seems to span the divide between heaven and earth.

Early Gothic: Duccio’s Transfiguration

We can now look at some examples to illustrate the style’s general characteristics. Consider this painting of the Transfiguration by Duccio di Buoninsegna, ca. 1308-11.

This painting has many characteristics of iconographic art. Christ, the most important figure, is the largest; the mountain, which in nature would dwarf any of those present, is significantly smaller. Through these differing relative sizes, the hierarchy of being is communicated: Christ is the highest, and inanimate mountains the lowest. There is no scenery beyond what is necessary to the narrative; anything superfluous to the spiritual message is omitted. All the figures have halos, and Christ has gold-leaf lines on his garment, indicating that even his clothes shine with the heavenly, uncreated light. All of this is strongly iconographic.

However, here is the departure: the figure of John in the center is shown in profile. Duccio has done this to visually connect John with Christ. He wants to show John looking at Christ; given that John is closer to us than Jesus, to look at him John would have to turn away, and we would see only the back of his head. Duccio does not want that, so he uses the pictorial device of portraying John looking directly upward, as though Christ were physically above him and both were in the plane of the painting, which forces him into profile. A conventional iconographic portrayal of the Transfiguration would show the central figure, John, looking towards us, and away from Christ in shock, to avoid depicting him in profile.

Lorenzetti’s Deposition

The Deposition from the Cross by Pietro Lorenzetti, an artist from Siena, was painted in 1320 in the basilica of St Francis of Assisi, and is a good illustration of the distinction between the iconographic and Gothic.

As with Duccio’s Transfiguration, this painting has many figures in profile. This allows Lorenzetti to place them in close proximity to one another, so that each can participate in a beautiful, rhythmical, and flowing design as a harmonious expression of love. While intimacy between two figures can be conveyed in the iconographic style (the Mother of God and Christ are often portrayed cheek to cheek), it is very difficult to show so many figures connected in such an intimate way, each acknowledging the others’ presence, without showing them in profile. This enhanced emotional register is characteristic of Gothic painting generally. The emotion of the figures should be distinguished from the modern concept of ‘self-expression’ or from the artist’s passion. Lorenzetti’s goal is not to tell us what he feels; it is to portray what the figures depicted felt.

Matthew Paris and the English School

Matthew Paris was an English monk who lived at St Albans, in southern England, in the 13th century. We have many examples of his pen-and-ink sketches, which include direct observations of the natural world around him. He also illuminated psalters, including the Westminster Psalter. The image below is taken from a manuscript, the Life of St Alban, depicting Heraclitus taking down St Alban’s head.

His style is characteristic of English art of the period, in which form is described by line almost to the exclusion of tonal description. He controls the quill pen with great assurance, creating smooth, rhythmically flowing lines and varying its darkness and width to draw the viewer’s eye to the most important parts of the composition. The coloration and shading are restrained, which gives his images a symbolic quality appropriate to sacred art. Many wall paintings of this period can still be found in English churches, including St Albans Cathedral itself, that follow this basic structure. Because it is reminiscent of modern illustration and animation art, familiar to and popular with so many people today, this is a form that 21st-century artists could take to easily. It is powerful yet accessible. I teach classes in this style, which I call the School of St Albans, myself.

Next week, in Part 2, I turn to the later Gothic masters: Van der Weyden and Fra Angelico, and the point at which the style begins its transition to the High Renaissance as seen in Ghirlandaio. I also look at how the Gothic’s new appreciation of the natural world gave rise, for the first time, to sculpture as a fully three-dimensional art form, and to portraiture and landscape as distinct genres in their own right.

Why Translation Matters

In the post-Conciliar Rite, yesterday was the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, and in the current year of the three-year cycle of Sunday readings (A), the Gospel was Matthew 21, 33-43, the parable of the vineyard owner. In the Roman Rite, a slightly longer version of this Gospel, going to verse 46, is read on the 2nd Friday of Lent. This is retained in the same place in the post-Conciliar Rite, but verse 44 is omitted, the words of Our Lord being deemed insufficiently irenic for the delicate ears of Modern Man™: “And whosoever shall fall on this stone, shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it shall grind him to powder.”

The Risen Christ and the Mystical Winepress, by Marco dal Pino, often called Marco da Siena, (1525-1588 ca.), an artistic expression of the very ancient exegetic tradition by which the wine-press is a symbol of Christ’s Passion.

The Old Testament reading, Isaiah 5, 1-7, is paired with this Gospel because the parable is unmistakably a citation of it; in both, the owner of the vineyard makes a hedge (or ‘fence’) around the vineyard, digs a wine-press, and builds a tower in it. In the prophecy, despite the care of the vineyard owner, it produces not “grapes”, but “wild grapes.” The latter is the term used in many English translations, including the Douay, the KJV, and the NAB, and does not sound very bad, but in Hebrew, the word is “be’ushim”, derived from a verb root that means “to stink.” The translators of the Septuagint made the contrast between good plant and bad plant more explicit by writing “thorns.”

For the Church, this passage refers to the Jews’ rejection of Jesus as the Messiah, which is why it is paired with this Gospel, in which the workers in the vineyard end up killing the owner’s son. St Jerome in his commentary on Isaiah connects the Septuagint reading with Our Lord’s crown of thorns, but rejects this as a breaking of the comparison in the original metaphor, and instead chooses for his own translation the rare Latin word “labrusca”, the name of a kind of wild grape vine.

This is something to which probably no English translation can do justice, but there is a much more serious error in this reading in the dreadful NAB, which the wise Dr Anthony Esolen rightly has described as a “colorless, odorless, gaseous paraphrase.” The first verse should read, “Let me sing of my well-beloved, a song of my beloved concerning his vineyard.” The Hebrew words for “my well-beloved” and “my beloved” derive from the same root from which comes the name of King David. Our readers will hardly need to be reminded that Christ’s claim to be the Messiah is derived in part from His descent from David, and that he is repeatedly acclaimed as the son of David in the Gospels. In the Septuagint version, they are both translated with forms of the Greek verb “agapao”, the same verb which is used in the Synoptic Gospels when God the Father speaks from heaven at Christ’s baptism and calls him “my beloved Son”. In Hebrew, however the two words are slightly different, “dīdī” and “dōdī”. (The suffix -ī at the end of these words is the “my”.) This seems to have inspired St Jerome (following the lead of a different Greek version of the Scriptures) to translate the latter with an alternate meaning, “patruelis mei - my cousin.” And he goes on to explain this as follows in the same commentary:

“The title of the 44th psalm, ‘A song for the beloved one’, teaches us ... that Christ is called ‘beloved’ and ‘most dear.’ Likewise the voice of God the Father in the Gospel, ‘This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.’ And in the 67th psalm we read, ‘The Lord will give the word to them that preach the glad tidings with great might: the king of hosts, of the beloved.’ ... Thus, it should certainly be understood to mean, ‘I will sing to the almighty God the Father the song of Christ, who is my cousin, that is, begotten of the same people as myself.’ ”

The Baptism of Christ, ca. 1387, by Lorenzo Monaco 

This is the very exegetical tradition which justifies pairing this reading with this Gospel, but the NAB, which can always be relied on to make the blandest choice among possible readings, stupidly eliminates it by rendering “dīdī” and “dōdī” as “my friend”.

The time is long past for the Church to insist on the truth of the most recent ecumenical council’s constitution Dei Verbum, which states that “by her authority and with maternal concern, (She) sees to it that suitable and correct translations (of the Scriptures) are made into different languages.” For the English-speaking world, this means permanently abolishing the New American Bible.

A Proper Hymn of St Francis of Assisi

This year the Church marks the 8th centenary of the death of St Francis of Assisi, which took place later on the evening of October 3rd, 1226. Following the ancient (and indeed pre-Christian) principle that feasts begin on the preceding evening, his feast is assigned to today, October 4th. Here is a very nice recording of the hymn for 2nd Vespers of the proper Office composed for him shortly after his canonization, and used ever since then by the Franciscan Order.

Decus morum, dux Minorum, Franciscus tenens bravium, In te vite datur vitae, Christe, redemptor omnium.	The glory of our way, the leader of the Friars Minor, / Francis, holding his prize, is given to life in Thee, the Vine, O Christ, Redeemer of all.
Plaudat frater, regnat pater Concivis caeli civibus; Cedat fletus, psallat coetus, Exsultet caelum laudibus.	Our brother hails, our father reigns a fellow with heaven’s citizens; Let weeping end, let the chorus sing, Let heaven exult in praise.
Demptum solo, datum polo Signorum probant opera; Ergo vivit, nam adivit Aeterna Christi munera.	His works of wonder prove that he is Taken from earth, given to heaven; Therefore he lives, for he entered The eternal gifts of Christ.
Pro terrenis votis plenis Reportat dona gloriae; Quem decoras, quem honoras, Summae Deus clementiae.	For the fullness of his prayers on earth He receives the gifts of glory, Whom Thou grace and honor, O God greatest mercy.
Hunc sequantur, huic iungantur Qui ex Aegypto exeunt, In quo duce, clara luce, Vexilla Regis prodeunt.	Let them follow him, and be joined to him / Who march out of Egypt; With him as leader, in bright light The standards of the King go forth.
Regis signum ducem dignum Insignit manu, latere; Lux accedit, nox recedit, Iam lucis orto sidere.	The sign of the king marks him on his Side and hand as a worthy guide; The light comes, the night departs, When the star of day has risen.
Est dux fidus, clarum sidus, Ducit, relucet, devia Devitando, demonstrando Beata nobis gaudia.	He is a trusty guide, a bright star He leads, he shines, avoiding The wrong path, showing Blessed joys to us.
Mina gregem dux ad regem Collisor hostis callidi, Nos conducas et inducas, Ad cœnam Agni providi. Amen.	Bring the flock to the king, our leader, Who dash down the clever enemy; May thou lead and bring us To the banquet of the Lamb. Amen.

The Franciscan Office of their Holy Founder was composed by a German member of the order, Julian of Speyer, roughly ten years after the Saint’s death, and is one of the best known examples of a later type of Office known as a “rhymed office.” This particular hymn, however, was apparently added to it by Cardinal Thomas of Capua (1185-1239), Archbishop of Naples and a notary in the Papal court at the time St Francis was canonized by Pope Gregory IX. (The highly compressed rhyme scheme puts an accurate and poetic translation far beyond my literary skills.)

Rhyme itself was not used by the ancient Greeks or Romans, and where it occurred it was considered a blemish on poetry. Verse was formed by the alternation of long and short syllables in regular patterns; the iambic pentameter used so much by Shakespeare is broadly similar. (His type of English poetry is however much freer than Latin verse.) An example of this type of poetry in the liturgy is an antiphon found in the Office of St Peter in Chains on August 1st.

Aña Solve, jubente Deo, terrarum, Petre, catenas,
Qui facis ut pateant caelestia regna beatis.

Release at God’s order, o Peter, the earthly chains
Who make the kingdom of heaven open to the blessed.

These two lines are written in dactylic hexameters, the same metrical form used in the epic poetry of Homer and Virgil; they were composed by Pope St Leo I, (440-61) and inscribed on a wall of the ancient church of St Peter.

As the Latin language evolved into the modern Romance languages, the vowel quantities on which ancient poetry was based came to be less and less perceptible, leading over the centuries to the emergence of rhyme as we understand it today. (The older forms, on the hand, never ceased to be used.) By the High Middle Ages, this new type of poetry had become extremely popular in the liturgy. Four of the five sequences in the Roman Missal (Lauda Sion on Corpus Christi, Veni Sancte Spiritus on Pentecost, Stabat Mater on the feast of the Seven Sorrows, and the Dies irae of the Requiem Mass) are in rhyme. Likewise, whole Offices were routinely composed in which all of the proper musical parts, (antiphons, hymns and responsories), are rhymed.

Julian of Speyer is considered one of the great masters of this type of liturgical composition, and the rhymed offices which he wrote for St Francis and St Anthony of Padua were widely imitated from his own time (he died in about 1250) until the Tridentine liturgical reform, when rhymed offices fell out of favor. Many continued to be used by the older religious orders, and churches which maintained their own proper Offices, but the newer orders, in the spirit of the Tridentine reform, preferred to base their proper Offices on Scriptural quotations. Thus, for example, the five antiphons used by the Oratorians at Lauds of St Philip Neri are all quotations from the Bible, while the proper hymns are all written in thoroughly classical meter. (The Jesuits, unsurprisingly, do not even have a proper Office for St Ignatius.)

The disfavor into which rhymed offices fell is also a by-product of the increasingly common habit in the Tridentine period of reciting the Office in choir recto tono, i.e. singing everything on a single note, rather than with its longer, proper notation. This manner of saying the Office makes the sing-song quality of the medieval rhyme schemes far more obvious; most people would agree that the Dies irae, for example, sounds much better when sung then when read. The recording of the hymn above shows very nicely how the proper musical notation transcends the rhyme scheme.

Medieval hymnographers also loved the trick used in this hymn, in which the last line of each stanza is the title (i.e. first line) of another hymn. (A similarly constructed piece is sung in the Cistercian Office of St Bernard.) The hymns thus quoted are all from the repertoire generally found in all medieval Uses of the Office.

Christe redemptor omnium - from Vespers of Christmas, pre-Urban VIII
Exultet caelum laudibus - from the Common of Apostles
Aeterna Christi munera - from the Common of Apostles
Summae Deus clementiae - from ferial Matins of Saturday, pre-Urban VIII
Vexilla Regis - from Vespers of Passiontide
Iam lucis orto sidere - the hymn of Prime
Beata nobis gaudia - from Lauds of Pentecost
Ad cœnam Agni providi - from Vespers of Eastertide, pre-Urban VIII

The difficulty of this trick is to integrate the titles into the words of a new composition in a new sense, and the results here are quite good. Some of the expressions in the vocative case, such as “Lucis creator optime,” could be interchanged with any of the others, but I do not say this as a critique of the author; medievals valued originality far less than we do. “Aeterna Christi munera,” however, works very cleverly with the third stanza, as do “Vexilla Regis prodeunt” with the fifth and “Beata nobis gaudia” with the seventh.

The citation of the Easter hymn in its original text, “Ad coenam Agni providi,” is the only real flaw, since in the original, the word “providi” does not modify “Agni”, but the main subject of the stanza, which appears in the fourth line. (“Ad coenam Agni providi, et stolis albis candidi, post transitum maris Rubri Christo canamus principi. - Looking forward to the banquet of the Lamb, and shining in white stoles, after the passing of the Red Sea, let us sing to Christ the prince.”) Here, “providi” is left marooned to modify “the Lamb”, who is now “looking forward” to no stated object; I have left it untranslated above. The exact same flaw occurs in a hymn to St Anthony the Abbot constructed in the same way, which I have written about previously.

The Book of Hours of Marguerite of Orléans (Part 2)

This is the second set of images from one of the finest Books of Hours in the vast collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Département des Manuscrits, Latin 1156B), made around 1430 for a noblewoman named Marguerite of Orleans (1406-66).  The first set was published on Thursday, and contained an example of the calendar pages, the images accompanying the Little Office of the Virgin Mary, and the Hours of the Cross. Here we resume with the Hours of the Holy Spirit, a devotional office in which each Hour consists solely of a brief hymn, an antiphon, a versicle and a prayer. This particular group of images is especially beautiful; the one before Matins and Lauds is lost, and so it starts with Prime, with an image of the Lord’s Ascension.

At Terce, most appropriately, the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

At Sext, St Peter preaching on the first Pentecost, as described in Acts 2.

At None, the baptism of 3,000 people, also from Acts 2.

Before Vespers, the general resurrection at the end of the world.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Vespers Hymn for the Feast of the Guardian Angels

A very nice alternation of chant and polyphony, by the Ensemble Venance Fortunat. The English translation is that of Alan Gordon McDougall (1896-1965).

1. Custodes hominum psallimus angelos,
Naturae fragili quos Pater addidit
Coelestis comites, insidiantibus
Ne succumberet hostibus.

Angel-guardians of men, spirits and powers we sing,
Whom our Father hath sent, aids to our weakly frame,
Heavenly friends and guides, help from on high to bring,
Lest we fail through the foeman's wile.

2. Nam quod corruerit proditor angelus,
Concessis merito pulsus honoribus,
Ardens invidia pellere nititur
Quos coelo Deus advocat.

He, the spoiler of souls, angel-traitor of old,
Cast in merited wrath out of his honoured place,
Burns with envy and hate, seeking their souls to gain
Whom God's mercy invites to heaven.

3. Huc custos igitur pervigil advola,
Avertens patria de tibi credita
Tam morbos animi, quam requiescere
Quidquid non sinit incolas.

Therefore come to our help, watchful ward of our lives:
Turn aside from the land God to thy care confides
Sickness and woe of soul, yea, and what else of ill
Peace of heart to its folk denies.

4. Sanctae sit Triadi laus pia jugiter,
Cujus perpetuo numine machina
Triplex haec regitur, cujus in omnia
Regnat gloria saecula. Amen.

Now to the Holy Three praise evermore resound:
Under whose hand divine resteth the triple world
Governed in wondrous wise: glory be theirs and might
While the ages unending run. Amen.

The Priest’s Second Prayer for Holy Communion

Lost in Translation #170

After praying the Domine Jesu Christe, the priest prays:

Perceptio Corporis tui, Domine Jesu Christe, quod ego indignus sumere praesumo, non mihi proveniat in judicium et condemnationem: sed pro tua pietate prosit mihi ad tutamentum mentis et corporis, et ad medelam percipiendam: Qui vivis et regnas cum Deo Patre in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Which I translate as:

May the reception of Thy Body, O Lord, Jesus Christ, which I, who am unworthy, presume to consume, turn out not to be a judgement and condemnation of me; but on account of Thy mercy may it be profitable to me as a protection for soul and body and as a cure to be applied; Who with God the Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, livest and reignest, God forever and ever. Amen.

Like the prayer that precedes it, the Perceptio Corporis is a product of the Carolingian renaissance but a century later (tenth). Its structure is almost chiastic and its wordplay virtually untranslatable. The first and last words (prior to the adjuration Qui vivis) are both from percipio (perceptio and percipiendam); the verbs proveniat and prosit (translated here as “turn out” and “be profitable,” respectively) are similar insofar as both can also mean “to prosper”; and the two frightful things in the first half of the petition, judgment and condemnation, are juxtaposed with the two desirable things in the second half, protection and cure. Just as judgment can lead to condemnation, protection leads to healing.

As for the wordplay: Perceptio (per+capio) simply means “reception,” but it has a strong etymology. Capio already means “to take wholly, to seize entirely,” and per as a prefix makes it even more intense. It is difficult to imagine a more thorough way of receiving something than by consuming it entirely. The priest’s physical consumption of the Eucharist is expanded upon with its intended spiritual effect, as a cure to be taken in (ad medelam percipiendam). I do not blame the 2011 ICEL translation for rendering this phrase “healing remedy,” since it is so strange.

There is also a word-play with sumere praesumo, which I have translated as “presume to consume.”

Prosit, to be beneficial or useful, is a fine choice since it is often used with respect to medicines. The prayer, which is inspired by St. Paul’s dire warning about receiving the Eucharist unworthily, (1 Cor. 11, 29) recognizes that the Sacrament is like the Greek pharmakon, which can mean both poison and cure (much depends on the condition of the recipient). The use of this word also recalls the custom of the priest saying to the servers in the sacristy after Mass: Prosit or “May [the sacrifice of the Mass] be beneficial.” To which they reply: Pro omnibus et singulis or “In each and every way.”

Pietas is a concept that figures greatly in Latin literature. For Vergil at least, it is the signature virtue of the Romans (as we see in his hero pius Aeneas), where pietas signifies loyalty to one’s gods, one’s family, and one’s country. Similarly in some Christian Latin, pietas is a proper respect or attitude that the believer has towards God; it is both a moral virtue and one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.

But Christianity also added a new and revolutionary meaning to the word by turning the tables and applying it to God’s attitude to man, namely, an attitude of lovingkindness or mercy. Whereas most Christian literature favors the “human” meaning over the “divine” (the sermons of Pope St. Leo the Great, pietas is used fifty-three times as a human attitude or habit and only seven times as a divine quality), in liturgical Latin it is the opposite; in the Orations of the Mass, pietas is used twenty-seven times in reference to God and three times in reference to man. [Ellebracht, 53] The use of pietas here follows the conventions of liturgical Latin.

As for the concluding adjuration (which both this prayer and the one that comes before it has in common), the most remarkable thing about it is that it is there at all. Even though Christ the living God is present on the altar inches away, the priest is focused on Christ’s living and reigning in Heaven with the Father and the Holy Spirit. As Jungmann astutely notes,

The idea of the heavenly Christ and his heavenly existence is so strong that it is not eclipsed even by the sacramental nearness… The mood which prevails in the popular devotion since the late Middle Ages—that mood here was stopped short and not permitted to turn the reception of Communion into a meditative visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Instead, a complete view of the Christian world of faith is maintained and not even in the moment of reception is it forsaken in favor of a partial view. [Jungmann, vol. 2, 349]

The 1970/2002 Missal, incidentally, allows the celebrant to choose between the prayers Domine Jesu Christe and the Perceptio Corporis tui or to say them both. The closing adjurations have been removed from both prayers. Two additional changes were made to the Perceptio Corporis tui: 1) et Sanguinis tui (“and of Thy blood”) was inserted after Perceptio Corporis; and 2) the penitential line quod ego indignus sumere praesumo was removed. The 2011 ICEL translation is :

May the receiving of your Body and Blood,

Lord Jesus Christ,

not bring me to judgment and condemnation,

but through your loving mercy

be for me protection in mind and body

and a healing remedy.

The Book of Hours of Marguerite of Orléans (Part 1)

A good way to start the Marian month of October is by enjoying this particularly glorious Book of Hours, since the principal text in any such book is always the Little Office of the Virgin Mary. This particular example was made around 1430 for Marguerite, a daughter of Louis I, duke of Orleans, born in 1406, who was countess of Vertus and Etampes from 1420 until her death in 1466. The repertoire of sacred images is not especially large, but the ones it does have are very richly detailed, and the floral borders which are found on every page of very intricate and beautiful. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 1156B)

It begins, as most Books of Hours do, with a calendar. Every day has an entry, but many of the Saints were not kept liturgically, and in any case, none of them were mentioned in the Little Office itself. The most important feasts are written in gold letter, and here we see the name of St Denys on October 9th, but no other indication of liturgical rank is given.

The second part of the calendar for October.

Many books of Hours included a group of four Gospels, one from each of the Evangelists: John 1, 1-14, the Gospel of Christmas day; Luke 1, 26-38, the Annunciation; Matthew 2, 1-12, the Epiphany; and Mark 16, 14-20, the Ascension. Here we see St John on the island of Patmos, where he wrote the Apocalypse, with his eagle next to him.

In this particular case, the folios which contained the latter part of this Gospel, the image of St Luke, and the beginning of the Gospel of the Annunciation are now missing. (A few other illustrated pages elsewhere are also missing.) Here we see St Matthew with the angel...

and St Mark with his lion.

Most books of Hours also include two fairly long prayers to the Virgin, known from their incipits as Intemerata and Obsecro te.

At the beginning of the second prayer, Marguerite of Orléans is depicted kneeling in prayer before the Virgin and Child.

The most common arrangement in Books of Hours of this period is for each Hour of the Little Office to be introduced with an image of an episode of the Virgin’s life. The repertoire of these is not absolutely fixed, but the set we see here is the common standard. Before Matins, the Annunciation; the Office is said according to the Use of Rome, in which the invitatory is the words of the angel Gabriel to Mary, “Ave, Maria, gratia plena; Dominus tecum.”

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“The Mystery of the Orthodox Liturgy”: A New Video about the Byzantine Rite

In February, we shared news of the publication of a handbook for the Byzantine Rite, entitled “The Divine Services of the Orthodox Church with Commentary”, from St Symeon of Thessalonica Press, a catechetical resource designed to guide both clergy and laity more deeply into the Orthodox liturgical cycle. St Symeon Press has recently released another very useful catechetical resource, a video which gives a tour through the Byzantine Divine Liturgy, written by the authors of the books, Frs Lucas Christensen, Joshua Genig and Patrick O’Grady, and Dr Emmanuel Melonakos. The authors write, “Our aim is to increase the catechesis of our people, helping the faithful to understand, love, and more deeply enter into the worship of the Church. We also hope for the growth of the liturgical movement in the West, particularly the recovery and flourishing of the ancient rites of the Latin Church.”

The book can be purchased in various formats through Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Divine-Services-Orthodox-Church-Commentary-Full/dp/B0GCYK7NJF?ref_=ast_author_mpb

St Jerome’s Lion

There are very few episodes of what we might call a legendary character attached to the figure of St Jerome, at least in part because we have so much authentic information about his life from his own incredibly prolific pen. The Golden Legend gives only one such story in its account of him, which explains why a lion became his most distinctive attribute in art.

“One evening, when Jerome was sitting with the brethren to listen a sacred reading, a lion came limping into the monastery; at the sight of it, as the other brothers fled, Jerome went to meet it as a guest. When the lion showed him its wounded foot, he commanded that its feet be washed and its wound carefully examined. This revealed that the sole of its paw was wounded by thorns; therefore, they took good care of it, and the lion recovered, and laying aside all its ferocity, lived among them like a domestic animal. Then Jerome, seeing that the Lord had sent the lion not so much for the healing of its foot as for their use, at the suggestion of the brothers imposed this duty upon it, that it should bring to pasture and watch over a donkey which they had, which carried wood from the forest.”

St Jerome Bringing the Lion into the Monastery, by Lazzaro Bastiani, second half of the 15th century. (Public domain image from Wikipedia.)

The story goes on to say that one day, the lion fell asleep while on duty, and the donkey was stolen by merchants passing by in a camel train. St Jerome therefore imposed the donkey’s job on the lion, which it faithfully did, until one day, it spied at a distance the same merchants, with their camels and the stolen donkey. By roaring and lashing its tail, the lion drove the whole camel train, including the thieves, back to the monastery; St Jerome received them as guests, while exhorting them not steal any more. As a token of their repentance, the merchants gave a certain quantity of oil as a gift to the monastery, and promised they would henceforth bring it every year in perpetuity, laying the same obligation on their heirs.

Right after the episode of the lion, the Golden Legend says that the behest of the Emperor Theodosius and Pope St Damasus I, he arranged the traditional division of the Psalter over the days of the week, prescribing the singing of the doxology at the end of the psalms, and that he also created the Roman Mass lectionary, “which he sent from Bethlehem to the Supreme Pontiff, and it was heartily approved by him and his cardinals, and deemed forever authentic.”

The Funeral of St Jerome, also by Bastiani. The lion attends in the lower left hand corner.

Photos of a Missale Romanum Printed in Antwerp, 1616

As mentioned last week, my visit to Milwaukee gave me the opportunity to view several rare books in a friend's collection. Today I will share some photos of a Missale Romanum printed in Antwerp in 1616; brief commentary will be offered in the captions. Although not in order, let's begin with the Canon page:

The viewer will see wormholes present throughout.

The title page

First Sunday of Advent

The Order of Mass, starting with Psalm 42

The words of consecration.

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