Baroque Vespers of St Ignatius of Loyola

For the feast of St Ignatius of Loyola, here is a very Baroque musical setting of the psalms and hymn of his Second Vespers, composed by Domenico Zipoli (1688-1726), an Italian Jesuit missionary in South America. The Magnificat is done here in Gregorian chant, followed by an instrumental sonata and an orchestral Te Deum.

A few interesting things to note here. Unlike basically all other religious orders, the Jesuits did not have a proper Office for their founder; these texts are all taken from the Common Office of a Simple Confessor, which can be found in any edition of the Roman Breviary.

Fr Samuel Conedera SJ recently shared with me part of the text of a letter written by Fr Claudio Acquaviva, the fifth Master General of the Order, in 1609, which is pertinent to this. Writing to another Jesuit, Fr Pedro de Ribadeneyra, Fr Acquaviva shortly before St Ignatius’ beatification (which took place on July 27 of that year), says that he thinks that the order’s petition to be granted a proper office for their founder will likely be denied, since it had been denied in many similar cases. Therefore, in his estimation, there was no point in hurrying up to draw a proper office, and in the end, this was never done. (In early 2021, we published a series by Fr Conedera on the liturgical work of one of the early Jesuits, Fr Alfonso Salmerón (Part 1; Part 2, Part 3)

The first psalm is done in Gregorian chant, the others in polyphony with orchestral accompaniment, a deliberate gesture of respect, I imagine, to the older musical traditional. I don’t know why Zipoli did not include the Magnificat in his setting; perhaps the church for which he wrote this already had a setting which they did not wish to change.

St Ignatius and the Jesuits have taken a lot of criticism, much of it fair, and much of it unfair, for their approach to the liturgy, and especially the Divine Office, which they have never done in choir as an order. It should always been be borne in mind that the liturgical situation of the Society and the whole Catholic Church was very different before the Age of Revolutions began in the later 18th century. (I outlined this in my series on the reforms of the Breviary several years ago, specifically in reference to the Jesuits: see parts 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3.) And yet, here we have a very elaborate setting (which I admit is not entirely to my own personal tastes), not of a Mass, but of Vespers, written by a Jesuit, in an era when the solemn celebration of Vespers was still regarded as a very important part of any major feast. I have also read more than once that particularly in South America, the Jesuit missionaries quickly discovered that many of the native populations were incredibly talented at music, and put those talents to good use in the reducciones.

Domenico Zipoli was born in Prato in Tuscany, and after his early training, which included a brief stint with Alessandro Scarlatti in Naples, he became the organist of the main Jesuit church in Rome, the Gesù, at the age of only 23. A year later, he went to Seville in Spain to join the Society; as a novice, he was sent to Buenos Aires, and from there to Córdoba in what is now Argentina, where he completed his studies, but was never ordained, since there was no bishop available at the time to ordain him. He died of tuberculosis in 1726, at the age of only 38, but his fame as a composer had spread thoughout South America; the Spanish Viceroy in Lima wrote to Córdoba, which is over 2,000 miles away, to request copies of his works, which are also found in the musical archives of many of the reducciones. (For a sense of perspective, Zipoli himself had less distance to travel to get from Rome to Seville.)

The Prophet Elijah, Epic Hero of the Old Testament, Part Two

In Part One of this article, I outlined the historical literary genre known as the epic, and I suggested that we cannot “fully appreciate and honor the Prophet Elijah without consciously reading his life story as that of an epic hero.” (I also included a technical explanation for the different versions of his English name, if that sort of thing interests you. If it doesn’t, here’s the synopsis: The Hebrew name אֵלִיָּה would have sounded like “eleeyah,” the spelling “Elijah” has been around a long time but no longer encourages Hebraic pronunciation, and the spelling “Elias” came to English from Greek via Latin.)

Now it’s time to look at how we can understand and honor the Holy and Glorious Prophet Elijah, whose feast is July 20th in the Byzantine rite, through the lens of epic heroism.

“Into the Midst of Things”

One of the most well-known features of epic literature is the convention of beginning in medias res, which literally means “into the midst of things” and is used in literary theory for works that dive right into the primary narrative. The epic poet is expected to quickly capture the reader’s attention by dispensing with any sort of preamble and, at least initially, with events that led to the main action of the poem. The Aeneid gives us a fine example:

I sing of arms, and of the man who first
Came from the coasts of Troy to Italy
And the Lavinian shores, exiled by fate.
Much was he tossed about upon the lands
And on the ocean by supernal powers,
Because of cruel Juno's sleepless wrath.

These are the first lines of the poem, and Virgil’s song is already recounting Aeneas’ tempestuous voyage away from Troy. The narrative does not begin with the Trojan War or even the fall of Troy; we will, however, hear about some of that action later, in a flashback. (By the way, I’m using Christopher Pearse Cranch’s 1872 translation here; I’ve sampled many Aeneid translations, and this is my favorite. It’s truly excellent, and not well known.)

The opening lines of the Iliad have an even stronger in medias res feeling, and they also give you an idea of the stylistic differences between Virgil and Homer. (In fairness, though, this is from the Robert Fagles translation, which is superb but probably amplifies those differences.)

Rage – Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.

This is how the story of the Prophet Elijah begins:

And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the sojourners of Gilead, said unto Ahab,
As the Lord, the God of Israel, liveth, before whom I stand,
there shall not be dew nor rain these years,
but according to my word. (1 Kings 17, 1)

No prelude, no family history, no tales of his previous life, not even the typical prophet-introducing phrase “The word of the Lord came to...” (this comes after his introduction, in the next verse). Elijah simply bursts onto the scene, and before the end of the first verse in which he is mentioned, he is already defying the wicked King Ahab. Biblical scholars puzzle over this abrupt entrance. They observe that we never learn his parentage or tribe, and the epithet “Tishbite” deepens, rather than clarifies, the mystery of his origin.

From a literary standpoint, though, this technique makes sense, as the German commentators Keil and Delitzsch at least partially recognized: “This abrupt appearance of Elijah ... is rather a part of the character of this mightiest of all the prophets.” It is an appearance in medias res, eminently appropriate for an epic hero.

Sacred Digressions

Epic poems are carefully enriched by digressions from the main storyline. This occurs as a story-within-a-story that narrates prior events, as prophecies uttered by a seer, or as episodes that are connected rather loosely to the principal action.

Elijah is fundamentally a prophet, so that connection already exists, and furthermore, his life is episodic, consisting of sudden, brief appearances within the larger frame of a grand mission to defend the cause of God when Israel was drowning in its own iniquity. We feel this especially in the homely stories of the ravens and the widow of Zarephath, which directly follow an introduction that portrays his prophetic mission as intense and momentous.

And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning,
and bread and flesh in the evening;
and he drank of the brook.
And it came to pass after a while, that the brook dried up,
because there was no rain in the land. (1 Kings 17, 6–7)

So he arose and went to Zarephath;
and when he came to the gate of the city,
behold, a widow woman was there gathering sticks:
and he called to her, and said,
Fetch me, I pray thee, a little water in a vessel, that I may drink. (1 Kings 17, 10)

Digressions bring variety and interest to a narrative, and more importantly, they allow an author to communicate themes and character traits that might be lost amidst the primary action of the epic story. Elijah is not only the bold, fiery prophet of Mount Carmel; he is also a humble, compassionate Israelite who promised the widow that her cruse of oil would not fail, and raised her son from the dead. And that brings us to our next epic moment in the prophet’s life.

The Underworld

The katabasis, from the Greek word for “descent,” is a distinctive feature of epic literature. It refers specifically to a descent into the underworld—that is, the world of the dead. The paradigmatic example occurs in Book 6 of the Aeneid, but not until Dante’s Inferno would epic katabasis reach its poetic and theological summit.

Elijah never descends to the underworld, but we hear echoes of katabasis in the story of the widow’s son, when Elijah confronts death and overcomes it. There are only three instances of someone being raised from the dead in the Old Testament, which suggests that great significance is involved in such events. The detail of Elijah stretching himself upon the dead child three times emphasizes his participation in the death, as though he mystically entered the realm of the dead in order to draw the child out of it.

And he stretched himself upon the child three times,
and cried unto the Lord, and said,
O Lord my God, I pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him again.
And the Lord hearkened unto the voice of Elijah;
and the soul of the child came into him again,
and he revived. (1 Kings 17, 21–22)

The Heroism of Faith

The last epic moment that I’ll mention requires little comment. It radiates the heroic energy that we naturally sense in the feats and conquests of ancient heroes, while also utterly surpassing them—for this is a feat of the spirit, not of the body. This is not a conquest of valor and strength and martial skill, however good and noble those things may be, but a conquest of one who prays, and who trusts—against overwhelming odds—that his prayer will be heard.

The passage is simply a masterpiece of epic literature. Saint Elijah the Prophet, defender of Israel against the impious tyrant Ahab, pray for us.

And he put the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces,
and laid it on the wood. And he said,
Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on the burnt offering, and on the wood.
And he said, Do it the second time; and they did it the second time.
And he said, Do it the third time; and they did it the third time.
And the water ran round about the altar; and he filled the trench also with water.
And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening oblation,
that Elijah the prophet came near, and said,
O Lord, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel,
let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel,
and that I am thy servant,
and that I have done all these things at thy word.
Hear me, O Lord, hear me,
that this people may know that thou, Lord, art God,
and that thou hast turned their heart back again.

Then the fire of the Lord fell,
and consumed the burnt offering,
and the wood, and the stones, and the dust,
and licked up the water that was in the trench.
And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces:
and they said, The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God. (1 Kings 18, 33–39)

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For thrice-weekly discussions of art, history, language, literature, Christian spirituality, and traditional Western liturgy, all seen through the lens of medieval culture, you can subscribe (for free!) to my Substack publication: Via Mediaevalis.

An Altarpiece of Ss Abdon and Sennen

Today is the feast of Ss Abdon and Sennen, two Persians who are said to have been martyred in Rome ca. 250, in the first general persecution of the Church under the emperor Decius. This is one of the most ancient feasts of the Roman Rite, attested on the calendar of the oldest surviving sacramentary, known as the Old Gelasian, ca. 700 A.D. Their names are on a mid-4th century list of martyrs’ burials in Rome, and a picture of them from the 6th or 7th century is preserved in the catacomb where their remains were brought in the time of the emperor Constantine (ca. 320).

A portrait of Ss Abdon and Sennen, the central panel of the altarpiece described below.  

The pre-Tridentine Roman breviary states that they were arrested in a Persia by Decius, and imprisoned for refusing to worship the pagans gods. Four months later, he had them brought to Rome, and presented to the Senate as enemies of the republic; when they persisted in their Christian faith, he ordered them to be thrown to the wild beasts in the arena. As is so often the case, nature refused to cooperate with the persecutors, and the beasts lay down at their feet to guard them. They were therefore dispatched with the sword, and their bodies left to lie in front of the “idol of the sun”, i.e., the great statue that stood outside the Flavian amphitheater, and later gave it its nickname, the Colosseum. Three days later, a subdeacon named Quirinus was able to smuggle their bodies away to his house, and later give them a decent burial in one of the catacombs.

A modern representation of the Colosseum and the Colossus of Nero standing next to it; the statue itself disappeared in the ninth century, but the plinth can still be seen in its place to this day. (Image from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0) 

In the Golden Legend of Bl. Jacopo da Voragine, the most popular collection of Saints’ lives in the high Middle Ages, the story begins differently. Decius conquers Babylon “with other provinces”, rather than Persia. There he finds many Christians, whom he brings in captivity to a place called “Corduba”, and kills them in various ways. Abdon and Sennen are arrested and brought to Rome as punishment for burying their bodies, and the story then continues in a similar vein.

Discrepancies of these sorts, and notable inaccuracies such as Decius’ purported invasion of Persia or Babylon, which never took place, or the mention of the unknown city “Corduba”, are a solid indicator that the story cannot be accepted as historically reliable. In the Tridentine breviary, therefore, it is reduced to a single lesson, mixing the two accounts, and stating that the cause of their martyrdom was their burial of other Christian martyrs. (“Corduba of the Persians” was mentioned in the original version, but later removed.)

At the end of the tenth century, the relics of the Saints (or perhaps just a part of them) were conveyed to the abbey of St Mary in the northern Catalonian town of Arles-sur-Tech. (This place is now in France, and should not be confused with the other Arles in Provence). From there, devotion to the Saints spread throughout Catalonia, while their names were somehow transformed into Nin and Non. In 1460, a Catalan painter named Jaume Huguet was commissioned to do an altarpiece dedicated to them for the cathedral complex of Terrassa, about 18½ miles to the northwest of Barcelona. It is still displayed there, one of the best-preserved examples of the International Gothic style in Catalonia.

To either side of the portrait of the Saints in the middle are shown episodes from their legend: upper left, their appearance before Decius; lower left, in the arena with the wild beasts; upper right, their beheading; lower right, their relics are translated to Catalonia. 

Image from Wikimedia Commons by Amador Alverez, CC BY-SA 3.0; item the six images following. 

The scene of their martyrdom.

The upper central panel of the Crucifixion.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Chapel of St Peter Chrysologus in Ravenna

On the calendar of the post-Conciliar rite, today is the feast of St Peter Chrysologus, who was bishop of Ravenna from around 433 until his death in 450; in 1729, Pope Benedict XIII made him the 13th Doctor of the Church. Within the palace of the archbishops of Ravenna is a chapel dedicated to him jointly with St Andrew the Apostle; he is traditionally said to have built it, but it is actually the work of his namesake Peter II, who held the see from 494-519. The chapel is quite small, a cruciform space with a small atrium leading into it. The upper part of both the chapel and the atrium is covered with some very beautiful mosaic work, although it has been heavily restored several times, and some parts are completely lost. (Photos by Nicola de’ Grandi.)

In the apse, the Cross on a starry background. In this period, the Cross was generally shown empty to emphasize the Resurrection, which took place after Christ’s body had been removed from it. Above it we see Peter II’s monogram on a background of vines.

Following an older convention, which at the end of the 5th century had already become rare in the most important center of western Christianity, Rome, Christ is shown young and beardless, to indicate that He is a different person from God the Father. (The heresy that God the Son IS God the Father under a different guise, known as “Patripassianism”, was the great scare-heresy of the pre-Nicene period, and Arianism, which made the Son a creation of the Father, was the over-reaction to it.) He wears the purple of the Roman Emperors, and has a decorated halo, as signs of His divinity. To the right are the Apostles Peter, Andrew, and Philip; to the left, Paul, James and John

In the center of the vault, four angels support a stylized XP monogram; between them are the symbols of the four Evangelists, which are shown below in greater detail.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Marie Reine du Canada Pilgrimage, Aug. 31 - Sept. 2

The 21st annual Marie Reine du Canada pilgrimage from Lanoraie, Quebec to the miraculous shrine of Notre Dame du Cap will take place on August 31 - September 2 this year, a 100 km (62 mile) walk along the St. Lawrence River in the footsteps of the North American Martyrs. Pilgrims from Ontario, Quebec and the United States are served en route by priests of the Fraternity of Saint Peter, as well as diocesan priests; Mass is celebrated daily in the traditional Roman Rite.

Marie Reine du Canada is a lay-led organization of the FSSP’s apostolate in Ottawa, St. Clement Parish. For registration forms, see: https://www.mariereine.ca/participate. Inquiries can be directed to mariereineducanada@gmail.com.

Some pictures of last year’s pilgrimage:

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Lyonese Propers and Chants for the Feast of SS. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus

The purpose of this post is not to argue for or against the traditional Western view that St. Mary Magdalene, St. Mary of Bethany (sister of SS. Martha and Lazarus), and the sinful woman who anoints Christ's feet are one and the same person. For a long time it has been fashionable to assume that this identification is false. A strong case in favor of it was made just last year by Clement Harrold (here); further details about the interesting history of the Magdalene's liturgical feast may be found in this piece by Gregory.

Here, rather, I should like to share several rare liturgical offices from the rite of Lyons, which, instead of the Roman feast of St. Martha by herself, celebrated a combined triple feast of SS. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, the siblings of Bethany. I will share the Hours of the Divine Office with their antiphons and hymns, the five proper antiphons of the Mass, and the readings from a breviary sans music; I will also share the first page of a Mass handout of which, unfortunately, I cannot find the remainder. These prayers, antiphons, and chants are extremely beautiful, and one wonders how different the liturgical reform might have been, had such resources been taken advantage of for the desired "enrichment," instead of buried with the rest of the Western patrimony.

As usual, click on any image to enlarge or download.

Lyonese Gradual:

Alas, I have no more of the pages of this handout!

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Next Possible Anti-TLM Strategy: A Novus Ordo/TLM Hodge-Podge to Demonstrate “Acceptance of the Reform”

Convent de Sant Francesc, Santpedor, Spain (source)

In a press release dated July 25, 2024, the Dominicans of the Holy Spirit, a community that celebrated the traditional rite for decades but was then ordered by the Vatican to begin to adopt the Novus Ordo, announced that the Vatican had given them detailed stipulations as to how they should proceed in the future. As of December 1, 2024:

The Holy See asks us to follow the liturgical calendar currently in force in the Universal Church for the Roman rite [i.e., the Novus Ordo calendar]; it also asks that in our various houses, Mass be celebrated according to the Novus Ordo one week of the a month, with the exception of Sundays, while the Vetus Ordo remains in use for the other three weeks and every Sunday. It specifies that the Mass readings for each day will be those of the current Roman lectionary, and that all the prefaces of the Paul VI Missal will be used for Masses according to the Vetus Ordo. [1]

The Vatican here targets a vulnerable community of nuns, heavily reliant on the outside support of priests [2] , in order to run an experiment that it would like, if possible, to extend to all TLM institutes, such as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, the Institute of the Good Shepherd, the Fraternity of St. Vincent Ferrer, the Fontgombault monasteries, and so forth: namely, not to suppress the old rite, but to hybridize it with the Novus Ordo. Thus, the diktat might be issued that the old Ordo Missae may be retained, but the Novus Ordo calendar, lectionary, and prefaces must be used at all times, instead of the ones proper to the classical Roman rite.

This idea is hardly a new one. In fact, Traditionis Custodes already seems to have envisaged it in the following passage: “In these celebrations the readings are proclaimed in the vernacular language, using translations of the Sacred Scripture approved for liturgical use by the respective Episcopal Conferences.” The obvious sense of these words is that the new lectionary was to be imposed on TLM communities. Yet the motu proprio was so badly written, so clumsily revised, and so hugely controversial from the first moment, that this provision was basically ignored by nearly everyone (and rightly so: see here, here, and here).

This deconstruction by hybridization, and the resulting fractures in unity it would bring about in the traditionalist movement, would be the next and more subtle strategy for officials who have realized they cannot achieve direct and total abolition of the old rite. If you can’t beat them, why not assimilate them in some fashion?

Another view of the same church, which on both the outside and inside was renovated with modernist elements (source).

Such moves would, of course, undermine the integrity of the rite and make it a hodge-podge. As Joseph Shaw is especially good at explaining (see this pamphlet and this book), the old rite and the new rite each has its own “design principles,” if one may use that expression. Each is consistent from start to finish at pursuing certain goals with certain means. In the old rite, the inflexibility of the rubrics, the separation of priest from people, the use of a hieratic language, the frequent periods of silent prayer, the exclusive use of the Roman Canon, the fixed, limited, and repeated texts, etc., form a phenomenological and theological unity. In the new rite, the compact order of celebration, the interaction with the people, the verbalization of nearly everything, the options, the looser movements, the ample portions of Scripture, the clerically controlled silences, the vernacular extroversion, and so forth, also form a phenomenological and theological unity.

I think that clergy and laity who are familiar with the two rites are well aware of the many profound differences between them. While the new rite presents itself as an assemblage of modules, which can be explained both by the manner of its genesis and by the intention of situational adaptability, the old rite is most definitely nothing of the sort, and it cannot be treated as if it were a lego-brick toy in which one can swap out some blue pieces for some yellow pieces.

Indeed, almost every proposal for “improving” the old rite either rests on questionable antiquarian premises or betrays a faulty understanding of how the old rite works. (See my article “The Liturgical Rollercoaster: A Recent Proposal for 14 ‘Improvements’ to the TLM.”)

Anyone who knows about the hundreds of obvious and subtle differences between the old and new calendars will see immediately that combining the old rite with the new calendar is a non-starter. For one thing, the hagiocentricity so characteristic of the old rite will be instantly compromised. For another, the symbolic and numerological patterns that fill the old calendar will be lost without a trace.

Of all the changes, the one that is most alarming is the forcing of the new lectionary into the old rite. This is a topic I have extensively researched and written about. For convenience, I will list here the main articles in which I have sought to articulate the profound rationale for the first-millenium lectionary and to point out the new lectionary’s numerous flaws:

• A Systematic Critique of the New Lectionary, On the Occasion of Its Fiftieth Anniversary
• Mythbusting: Why the TLM’s Lectionary Is Superior to the New Lectionary (this talk overlaps to an extent with the preceding)
• Not Just More Scripture, But Different Scripture—Comparing the Old and New Lectionaries
• A Tale of Two Lectionaries: Qualitative versus Quantitative Measures
• The Omission that Haunts the Church—1 Corinthians 11:27-29
• How Typical Lector Praxis Transmits a Pelagian and Protestant Message
• A Great Example of an Expurgated Reading in the New Lectionary
• Is Reading More Scripture at Mass Always Better?
• Floating in the Sea, Not Drinking from the Firehose
• The New Lectionary and the Catholic Wedding
• How the New Lectionary Treats (or Doesn’t) the Antichrist
• The Annunciation and the Subtle Use of Gospels in the Old Roman Rite
• In Defense of Preserving Readings in Latin
• Against Vernacular Readings in the Traditional Mass
• What’s Wrong with the New Lectionary (audio only)

Of related interest:

The Omission of ‘Difficult’ Psalms and the Spreading-Thin of the Psalter

(I am currently at work on a book that will offer a comprehensive apologia for the old lectionary and critique of the new one; look for it in the coming year.)

The experiment in running the old and new rites together was already tried years ago by the monks of Norcia, who started as a “biritual” community that offered Mass in the Novus Ordo and the Vetus Ordo, while singing the old monastic office. Over time, the incoherence of the alternating rites, the clashing of calendars, the lack of tight interaction between Mass and Office, and other inconveniences so pressed upon them that the monks unanimously chose a fully traditional way of life and worship, which instantly brought “pax liturgica”—the ability to rest in the rites of tradition, as countless monks, clerics, and laymen had done for centuries. And in this case, the lack of peace wasn’t a hybridized rite—God forbid—but a mere alternation between them.

For more photos of this project of architectural hybridization, see this article.

I feel genuinely sorry for the Dominicans of the Holy Spirit, as they now embark on the bumpy, cratered, agitating road of incoherence that wiser monks and nuns have left behind: a forced and clumsy attempt to fit new in old, and old in new, will make the resulting neither-this-nor-that liturgical life more self-conscious and wearisome. And to think they are making this shift in 2024—decades after the problems of the new rite have been exhaustively experienced and canvassed! After so many souls, responsive to the same Holy Spirit who raised up for us these noble apostolic rites in their millennial plenitude, have successfully left behind the “banal on-the-spot product” for good! Thus we see the devastating results of placing obedience to renegade authorities higher than obedience to any other principle, including the universal and unanimous acceptance of liturgical tradition that has characterized Western religious life from its dawn until the rise of ultramontanism.

Nor is my concern limited to the current heads, more or less competent, of Roman dicasteries. For there are figures within the traditional movement who would gladly throw open the gates to the Trojan Horse of late Liturgical Movement innovations in order to maintain what they considered the core of their commitment. For example, in certain years on Pentecost Monday of the Chartres pilgrimage, the Epistle and Gospel have been read in French toward the congregation rather than being chanted in Latin while facing eastwards and northwards (a practice whose deep theological and symbolic meaning is explained in this lecture). Apparently many French and German priests who offer the TLM believe that the readings should be given in the vernacular only, and facing the people. This mentality is a consequence of a fundamental failure to understand the role of the Word of God in the Eucharistic liturgy, reflecting widespread errors—largely rationalist in origin—about the exclusively or primarily “instructional” nature of the first part of the Mass. [3]

Imagine a future pope—let us call him Pius XIII, perhaps hailing from Africa or Asia—who, with all the good intentions in the world, wishes to end the “liturgy wars” and therefore decides to produce a hybrid missal for the “Roman Rite” that combines what he, or a committee he appoints, decides are the best features of both. At this point it is almost a foregone conclusion that, among its components, such a hybrid rite would begin from the old Ordo Missae but adopt the new lectionary, precisely because it is considered such a great success, indeed a necessary step of progress in the Church’s relationship with the Bible.

I have no inside information about what is being planned, but it’s not difficult to connect the dots and to make projections. I say none of this to be a fearmonger or to promote anxiety. I simply wish to warn traditional clergy and faithful of the kind of maneuvers that our antagonists have in mind, so that we can make sure we ourselves understand well the rationale behind the traditional practices of the Roman Rite and, on that basis, be prepared to offer respectful but firm resistance to any attempts at diluting or destroying the integrity of that tradition. If or when the Dicastery for Divine Worship (or the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life) issues the command to adopt the new calendar, the new lectionary, and the new prefaces, we must be ready to say:

Non licet. Non possumus. It is not permitted. We cannot do it.

[1] Communiqué du 25 juillet 2024, translated from https://www.dominicaines-du-saint-esprit.fr/fr/communique-du-25-juillet-2024/.

[2] This is a trial run on a vulnerable group of nuns who seem to be in the grip of a false conception of obedience (see my work True Obedience in the Church for a full explanation). As for Donneaud’s critique of the French translation of my book, I think it is sufficient to point to John Lamont’s refutation of it here.

[3] It goes without saying that there is an instructional aspect, and that is why it has usually been the custom for the preacher to read the readings in the vernacular from the pulpit before his sermon. This is not a liturgical reading but a paraliturgical reading, for the benefit of those who do not know the Latin readings or have not followed them in a hand missal. Nor does it hurt to hear and read the readings twice, a point to which I will return later.

The Basilica of the Virgin Mary “at St Celsus” in Milan

In the Ambrosian and Roman Rites, today is the feast of the martyrs Nazarius and Celsus; in the latter, they are celebrated liturgically together with two Popes, Victor I (died 199) and Innocent I (401-17). Nazarius is said to have been a Roman who in the very earliest years of Christianity preached the Faith in northern Italy, and to have been beheaded at Milan in the reign of the Emperor Nero, together with a boy named Celsus who accompanied him on his missionary journeys. Their burial place was discovered in a small woods by St Ambrose not long before he died in 397, and the body of St Nazarius, whose blood was as fresh as if it had just been shed, was conveyed to a church originally dedicated to the Apostles. At the same time, a small church was built in the place of the discovery, and St Celsus was buried there. Beginning in the late 15th century, a much larger church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was built next to it, and in 1935, the Bl. Ildephonse Schuster had the Saint’s relics transferred there. (Photos by Nicola de’ Grandi; some historical images of the church, and pictures of some relics of the Bl. Ildephonse Schuster, are included below.)

The relics of St Celsus.

The relics were for many centuries kept in this sarcophagus, made sometime between the end of the 3rd and mid-4th century. On the left is one of the earliest know depictions of the Birth of Christ with the ox and the ass; the three kings are shown traveling not towards the infant Christ, but rather to the Christ in majesty of the Traditio Legis in the center. On the right are the three Marys at the tomb, and Christ’s appearance to St Thomas. (On the sides, not seen here, are Moses making water run from the rock, and the healing of the woman with the issue of blood.)

The church of St Celsus, originally built in the 4th century, but completely rebuilt in the 11th; the front of it was then partly demolished at the end of 18th century, and this neo-Romanesque façade added in the 19th. The church is only occasionally open...

and the interior is extremely austere.

Next door, however, is the very splendid basilica dedicated to the Virgin Mary, built to house a miraculous image of Her (shown below), a project which was begun in the late 15th century, and completed at the end of the 16th. Here we see the church of St Celsus on the right, the cupola of the Marian church (1498), its façade (designed by Galeazzo Alessi, modified and constructed by Martino Bassi, 1572), and the portico in front of it by Cristoforo Solari (begun in 1505).

A closer view of the façade.

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The Gloria in Excelsis (Part Three)

Thomas Cole, The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds, 1834

Lost in Translation #101

Last week we examined the opening words of the Gloria in excelsis, “Glory to God in the highest.” Today we examine the second verse, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis. It is traditionally translated as "and on earth, peace to men of good will," a vastly superior rendering of the ICEL translation in use from 1972 to 2010: "and peace to His people on earth."

Men of Good Will?

Consulting the original biblical text helps us gain a better understanding of who these men of good will are. Εὐδοκία or eudokia, which the Vulgate renders bona voluntas or “good will,” literally means “favorable thinking” or “being well-pleased.” When, for example, God the Father says of Jesus Christ, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” (Matt 3, 17) He uses the verb eudokeō. The message in Luke 2, 14, then, is that on earth there will be peace for the men with whom God is well pleased, the men of whom He thinks favorably. There is also a nice word play in the Greek that cannot be translated. The verse begins with “Glory (doxa) to God in the highest” and ends with “men of good will (eudokias), with doxa and eudokia being etymologically connected.

Perhaps because they were not familiar with the original Greek, several Latin commentators interpret “good will” as a reference to the men’s character rather than God’s favoritism towards them. St. Bede, reading the verse in its immediate Nativity context, concludes that men of good will are those who receive the newborn Jesus as the Christ. Thinking more generally, St. Augustine writes that men of good will possess a divine justice by which the devil has been conquered. Having a good will involves at least two things: “to will well, and to be able to do what one wills,” and “to be purged from vices”. [1] Augustine also combines this verse with Matthew 12, 50:

“Whoever has done the will of God (voluntas Dei), He is my brother and mother and sister.” And therefore, at least among those who do the will of God, the will of God is done: not because they cause God to will but because they do what He wants, that is, according to His will. [2]

In a sense, the misunderstanding does not matter. As the Venerable Bede notes, “there is no peace to the ungodly,” (Isa. 57, 20) but “much peace to them that love the name of God.” (Ps. 118, 165). God is well pleased with those who love Him, and insofar as they love Him, their wills are good. And to these men with whom God is well pleased He gives peace, even though, paradoxically, their ability to love Him, which makes God well pleased, is itself a gift of God. Just as God gives a peace that the world cannot give, (John 14, 27) He infuses us with a love that our wills cannot produce.

In 2018, the meaning of this verse came into dispute when the Italian bishops changed their older translation of the Greater Doxology from “pace in terra agli uomini di buona volontà – peace on earth to men of good will” to “pace in terra agli uomini, amati dal Signore – peace on earth to men, loved by the Lord.”

As our brief survey of the Greek suggests, the new translation is in some ways an improvement, since “loved by the Lord” captures the sense of the Lord being well pleased. But the translation is nevertheless misleading, for it gives the impression that all men are loved by the Lord and that all men are therefore to be given peace. It is true that the Lord loves all men, but it is not true that the Lord gives peace to all men: just ask the souls writhing in Hell. “There is no peace for the ungodly,” Isaiah reminds us. The sounder interpretation of the verse, then, is that peace will only go to some men, the men with whom God is well pleased. Writing for this journal, Gregory DiPippo concludes:

To speak of “men of good will” implies that there are men who are not of good will, one of the most basic facts about human existence, and one which the Church has for over half a century wasted enormous time and effort on denying. The new reading permits the insertion of a comma, turning the phrase “loved by the Lord” into a non-restrictive adjectival phrase, (“men, who are loved by the Lord”), in a way that cannot be done by translating the actual text.

Men of Good Will?

The second controversy surrounding this verse is the use of so-called gender inclusive language. The English translation of the 1965 Roman Missals translates hominibus bonae voluntatis as “men of good will” while the 1972 ICEL translation of the 1970 Missal veers off the reservation with "and peace to His people on earth." The 2011 English translation tries to restore order with a more literal “people of good will,” but it retains the so-called inclusive language.

Both the Greek anthropoi and the Latin homines designate human persons, male and female. Historically, the English equivalent for anthropos and homo is “man,” as in “mankind.” But since “man” can also refer to a male human being, twentieth-century feminists contended that the use of “man” for homo or anthropos is sexist, a denial of a woman’s full humanity.

Rev. Paul Mankowski, S.J.

Fr. Paul Mankowski, God rest his soul, wrote powerfully against any concession to the ideological manipulation of language, persuasively arguing that the distinction between gender-inclusive and gender-exclusive words makes no sense linguistically; he was joined in this opinion by such doyens of the English tongue as E. B. White, editor of Strunk and White’s famous Elements of Style. [3]

I agree with Fr. Mankowski, and his insights are especially prescient in an age where pronouns are now being divorced from reality and put in the service of an often capricious self-identification. I also maintain that “outdated” language in liturgy is good insofar as it contributes to its sacrality, such as the use of “deign” and “vouchsafe” or “Thou.”

On the other hand, if the point of translating is to make concepts intelligible in one’s own language, and if the majority of people in that language no longer think that this word means A but B, then liturgical translators are faced with a genuine dilemma. It is one thing to compromise theological meaning, as I believe the use of “brothers and sisters” for fratres does (more on this in a later essay); it is also problematic to violate the rules of grammar or of eloquent usage, as with the substitution of the numerically inaccurate “their” or the clunky “his/her” for the more proper pronoun “his.” But when neither orthodoxy nor grammar nor sonority is at stake but the basic meaning is, I wonder what the right path is.

That said, in the case of hominibus bonae voluntatis, I still tend to favor “men of good will” over “people of good will” because “people” can signify a single populace or group, but “men” keeps the focus on the chosen individuals with whom God is well-pleased. “Persons of good will” sounds too forced and abstract, and “men and women of good will” is, despite recent ideological disputes, still semantically redundant. Perhaps the best course of action would have been for our modern translators to have left well enough alone. Of course, ironically, in order to see the goodness of the older translation, one must approach it with a good will of one’s own, one in line with the Catholic wisdom tradition and a spirit of benevolent interpretation rather than with an ideologically-driven hermeneutics of suspicion.

Notes

[1] On the Trinity 13.13.17.

[2] On the Sermon on the Mount, II.6.21.

[3] See “Voices of Wrath: When Words Become Weapons,” in Jesuit at Large: Essays and Reviews by Paul V. Mankowski, S.J., ed. George Weigel (Ignatius Press, 2021), 42-49. See also E. B. White, who rejected the idea of gender-neutral writing in the fourth and final edition of Elements of Style. “The use of he as a pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the beginnings of the English language,” he wrote in 1979. “He has lost all suggestion of maleness in these circumstances.” After White’s death, however, the following line was added. “Currently, however, many writers find the use of the generic he or his to rename indefinite antecedents limiting or offensive.” The Wall Street Journal characterizes the posthumous insertion as “an assassin slipping a stiletto into someone's back." (David Gelernter, “Back to Basics, Please,” October 14, 2005, W.13)

The Legend of St James the Greater

In the Synoptic Gospels, St James the Greater appears as a particularly prominent figure among the Twelve Apostles. When the names of the Twelve are given as a group, he always appears in the first set of four, along with the brothers Peter and Andrew, and his own brother John. After his calling, which is described at the beginning of Our Lord’s public ministry in all three Synoptics, he appears with Peter and John as a witness of several notable events: the healing of Jairus’ daughter, the Transfiguration, when Christ first revealed His divinity to his Apostles, and the Agony in the Garden. The Gospel of St Mark (3, 13-19) tells us that Christ gave to James and John the nickname “Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder”; this transcription of the Hebrew “b’nê regesh” may be intended to suggest something like “boan ergon” in Greek, “the work of shouting.” St Luke writes (9, 53-56) that when the Samaritans did not receive Christ, “James and John … said: ‘Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them?’ And turning, He rebuked them, saying, ‘You know not of what spirit you are. The Son of man came not to destroy souls, but to save.’ ” (The words in italics are missing in many ancient manuscripts.)

The Transfiguration, by Duccio di Buoninsegna, one of the panels of the dismembered altarpiece of Siena Cathedral known as the Maestà, 1311; this one is now located in the National Gallery in London. (Public domain image from Wikipedia.)

In the Gospel of St Matthew 20, 20-23, it is recounted that their mother, Salome, came to the Lord, “adoring and asking something of him. Who said to her: ‘What wilt thou?’ She saith to him: ‘Say that these my two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left, in thy kingdom.’ And Jesus answering, said, ‘You know not what you ask. Can you drink the chalice that I shall drink?’ They say to him. ‘We can.’ He saith to them, ‘My chalice indeed you shall drink; but to sit on my right or left hand, is not mine to give to you, but to them for whom it is prepared by my Father.’ ” This is the Gospel of St James’ feast, and also that of his brother John’s feast “at the Latin Gate”, which commemorates his martyrdom, in fulfillment of the Lord’s prophecy that “My chalice indeed you (plural) shall drink.”

In the Acts, James is named once again with the other Apostles right after the Ascension (1, 13), but then only once more, at the beginning of chapter 12. “And at the same time, Herod the king stretched forth his hands, to afflict some of the church. And he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. And seeing that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to take up Peter also.” Concerning his martyrdom, the first among the Twelve, Eusebius of Caesarea records that “Clement (of Alexandria), in the seventh book of his Hypotyposes (a work which is now lost), relates a story which is worthy of mention; telling it as he received it from those who had lived before him. He says that the one who led James to the judgment-seat, when he saw him bearing his testimony, was moved, and confessed that he was himself also a Christian. They were both therefore, he says, led away together; and on the way, he begged James to forgive him. And he, after considering a little, said ‘Peace be with you,’ and kissed him. And thus they were both beheaded at the same time.” (Church History 2, 9)

A 15th century reliquary of St James the Apostle in the cathedral of Pistoia, Italy, which also contains relics of his mother, Maria Salome, as well as St Martin of Tours, and two early local martyrs, priests named Rufinus and Felix.

The tradition that St James went to Spain and began the work of evangelizing that country is a fairly late one; it was unknown to writers of the early centuries, and even explicitly denied by St Julian, the archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain in the later 7th century. The Golden Legend of Bl. James of Voragine devotes very little space to it, saying merely that “he went to Spain, to sow the word of God there. But when he saw that he was making no progress there, and had made only nine disciples, he left two of them there to preach, and taking the other seven with him, returned to Judaea.” These are traditionally known as the “Seven Apostolic Men”, Saints Torquatus, Ctesiphon, Secundus, Indaletius, Caecilius, Hesychius and Euphrasius; the Tridentine Martyrology has an entry for them on May 15th, which states that the Apostles ordained them as bishops and sent them back to Spain, where they preached the Gospel in various places. The Golden Legend goes on to give a lengthy account of St James’ martyrdom, which includes the conversion of a magician named Hermogenes; at the end, a story is told of how his relics were translated to Spain, one which does much to enhance the author’s reputation for excessive credulity.

Lest it seem that too much credulity is given here to the hagiographical skeptics, even the pre-Tridentine Roman Breviary shows great reserve about these traditions, giving no space to any part of the legend of St James, not even the very ancient story recorded in Eusebius. All nine of the Matins lessons for the feast are taken from a homily of St John Chrysostom on the day’s Gospel, in which he says much in praise of Salome as one who followed Christ, and was principally concerned with the eternal salvation of her sons. In the Tridentine Breviary, a new set of readings was composed for the second nocturne, which sum up the traditional story as described above. It also notes that James’ death took place around the time of the Jewish Passover, but that his feast day is kept on the day of the translation of his relics to the famous cathedral at Compostela.

The church of Rome was always very slow to accept new liturgical texts; one often finds that a Saint who was hugely popular in the Middle Ages had a proper Office elsewhere, but was celebrated in the Roman Use with a Common Office. Such is the case with St James. At Compostela itself, an Office was sung with a completely proper set of antiphons, responsories and hymns, which refer to the tradition of his coming to Spain, the presence of his relics, and his frequent aid to the Spanish kings in liberating the peninsula from the Moors during the Reconquista. One of the best of these antiphons was then received by the Dominicans for the Magnificat at First Vespers of his feast, although they did not take on any of the rest of the propers from Compostela.

O lux et decus Hispaniae, sanctissime Jacobe, qui inter Apostolos primatum tenes, primus eorum martyrio laureatus! O singulare praesidium, qui meruisti videre Redemptorem nostrum adhuc mortalem in Deitate transformatum! Exaudi preces servorum tuorum, et intercede pro nostra salute omniumque populorum.

A superb motet by the Spanish composer Ambrosio Cotes (1550-1603), with the first words of the antiphon given above.

O light and glory of Spain, most holy James, who among the Apostles holdest the primacy, the first of them crowned with martyrdom! Our special defense, who merited to see our Redeemer transformed in the Godhead while yet a mortal! Hear the prayers of thy servants, and intercede for our salvation, and of all peoples!

St James is traditionally depicted in the garb of a pilgrim, with a broad hat and a staff, even though he is the destination, and not the traveler. This is not done with other Saints whose tombs or relics were popular pilgrimage centers, indicating perhaps that to the medieval mind, a trip to Compostela was thought of as the pilgrimage par excellence. This may have something to do with its location at almost the westernmost point in continental Europe. Compostela is about 48 miles from a town on the Atlantic called “Fisterra”, which literally means “the end of the land”; pilgrims would often take an extra couple of days to go as far as the ocean itself, beyond which it was believed that there was nothing but more water to the other side of the globe. (Technically, Cabo da Roca in Portugal is 15 minutes of longitude further to the west.)

St James the Greater dressed as a pilgrim, by Ferrer and Arnau Bassa, ca. 1347; from the Diocesan Museum of Barcelona (Courtesy of the Schola Sainte Cécile).

The third element which identifies St James in art is a scallop shell, a custom which ultimately derives from the medieval laws collectively known as the Peace of God. These laws prohibited armed men from bothering various classes of people, including all women and children, clerics and monks, pilgrims, merchants and Jews. Women and children are obviously such, clerics and monks were identified by their tonsure; the other groups habitually wore something to identify them as members of one of the classes entitled to the protection of the Peace of God. For pilgrims, the hat and staff were not at first sufficiently distinct to serve that purpose, and so they would wear something else to indicate their destination. The scallop shell showed that one was traveling as a pilgrim to or from the shrine of St James, along the Galician coast where scallops grow in abundance. This became so well know that even today, the German word for “scallop” is either “Jakobsmuschel – James’ mussel” or “Pilgermuschel – a pilgrim mussel.”

The Chicago Eucharistic Congress of 1926

Since a Eucharistic Congress just concluded in Indianapolis, and was by all accounts very successful, our readers might be interested to see these two newsreels from a similar congress held in Chicago in 1926, so long ago that moving pictures still did no have sound! From the always interesting archives of British Pathé.

And here is a photograph of the first general meeting, at which a Solemn Pontifical Mass was celebrated by His Eminence Giovanni Cardinal Bonzano, the papal delegate to the conference. (From 1912-22, he had been the Apostolic Delegate to the United States, the office which is now that of the nuncio; he passed away about a year later.) The Mass was sung by 60,000 parochial school children at Soldiers’ Field in Chicago on June 21, 1926.

The Basilica of St Apollinaris in Classe

Today is the feast of St Apollinaris, bishop and martyr. The traditional story of his life states that he accompanied St Peter from Antioch to Rome, was appointed by him to be the first bishop of Ravenna, a small city of the northern Italian region now called the Emilia-Romagna; after various persecutions and exiles, he was martyred in the reign of the Emperor Vespasian, ca. 79 AD. This story is not regarded as historically reliable, and his feast was removed from the general calendar in 1969; in the most recent revision of the Missal, however, he was put back, but on July 20th, since his traditional feast day is now occupied by St Bridget of Sweden, who died on this day in 1373.

In the late 5th century, Ravenna was the capital of the Ostrogothic Kings, after they had definitively overthrown the Roman Emperor of the West in 476. It was subsequently retaken by the Eastern Roman Empire, and became the seat of the Byzantine governor of Italy, known as the Exarch of Ravenna, until the mid-8th century. Several Christian monuments survive from this period, including two churches dedicated to St Apollinaris. The older of these is not in Ravenna itself, but the nearby city of Classe, an important commercial and military port; in antiquity, Classe was directly on the sea, but due to the silting-up of the Adriatic coast, it is now more than 5½ miles inland.

The façade and bell-tower.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 4.0

The apsidal mosaic of the church is one of the best preserved examples of early Byzantine work in Italy, dating to the mid-6th century. St Apollinaris is represented in the lower middle, wearing a stole and with his hands raised in prayer. At the very top, Christ Himself is shown, as He is in many early Christian images, with six sheep to either side of Him, emerging from the holy cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. These represent the twelve Apostles, of course, and the representation of Apollinaris in similar company is probably intended to remind the viewer of his close connection to the Apostolic era, and therefore also of the antiquity of the see of Ravenna. (Click to enlarge.)

Image from Wikimedia Commons by José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro; CC BY-SA 4.0

The face of Christ is placed at the center of the Cross, with Moses and Elijah to either side; the three sheep (two to the right, one to the left) represent the Apostles Peter, James and John. This is therefore a symbolic representation of the Transfiguration, the moment at which Christ revealed His Divinity to His Apostles for the first time, foreshadowing the glory of His Resurrection, which can only come through the suffering of the Cross.

Image from Wikimedia Commons by Pequod 76, CC BY-SA 3.0

A closer view of St Apollinaris.

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