Gothic and Baroque Sculptures in a Swiss Abbey

Following up on three recent posts from earlier this month, this is the final set of Nicola’s photos of the abbey of St John in Müstair, Switzerland. The first part showed frescos from the Carolingian era, the second those of the Romanesque period, and the third, various Romanesque sculptures. I have titled this post Gothic and Baroque Sculptures for the sake of simplicity, but they are mixed in with some other things, including the abbess’ crook and pectoral cross, and some pictures of the nuns’ living quarters.

A wooden altar of Our Lady of the Rosary, with small panels of the fifteen mysteries arranged around the central image of the Virgin and Child, as Mary hands a rosary and a scapular to the faithful beneath Her.

Two late Gothic (1520s) sculptural panels, originally part of a triptych, of the Annunciation and Visitation.

The pectoral cross, ring and crook of the last abbess, Rev. Mother Augustina Wolf, who held the title from 1806-10. (When the area was invaded by the kingdom of Bavaria in 1810, the abbey was not suppressed, but degraded to a priory.)

Rings with the letters IHS or some other symbol on them, which signify that the nuns’ are brides of Christ.

The refectory was built in a large within the complex by the abbess Angelina Planta ca. 1500; these decoration were added to it by another abbess in the 1760s.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

An Important New Online Resources: Dom Lentini’s Te Decet Hymnus

My colleague Matthew Hazell has uploaded to archive.org a scan of an important resource for the study of the reform of the Divine Office, Dom Anselmo Lentini’s book Te decet hymnus: L’innario della “Liturgia Horarum”. Dom Lentini (1901-89), a monk of the abbey of Montecassino, was the head of the coetus (subcommittee) that reformed the Office hymns, and this book is the official account of their work.

The bulk of the book is taken up with the hymns themselves, with information on the author and date of each one, if known, or if not, an estimate at least of the period in which it was composed. In the cases where hymns are excerpts from longer ones, it indicates which strophes of the original text are used. (This is not by any means an innovation of the reform.) It also indicates where relevant, some of the other which breviaries had the hymn in their repertoire, i.e. Dominican, Premonstratensian etc. Prior to the internet age, the tools for researching other medieval breviaries were very limited, and so this information is certainly useful, but far from comprehensive. There are also many bibliographical references to scholarly collections of hymnography in which the original texts have been collected, such as the Analecta hymnica.

There is also detailed information about the changes which were made to the hymns for various reasons. I have often referred to these changes in articles that I have written here, and my favorite adjective to describe them is “cack-handed”. As with the rest of the liturgy, the hymns were subjected to an aggressive campaign of ideological censorship, based on the Bright Ideas of the members of the each coetus as to what Modern Man™ could bear to hear in his prayers. So for example, all references to fasting in Lent are replaced by “abstinence” or something similar.

There is a common notion that the Liturgy of the Hours undid Pope Urban VIII’s classicizing reform of the Latinity of the hymns, and reverted to the original texts. This is largely true, but not entirely so. In addition to imposing the aforementioned ideological censorship, Dom Lentini also “corrected” many metrical irregularities, and changed unusual words. Many of these changes are well made, but many of them were unnecessary, and together, they have the unfortunate effect of homogenizing the hymns.

Lastly, I note that the non-Latin text (all the notes, the prenotanda etc.) is in Italian, but I hazard to guess that at least the more basic notes are simple enough as to be intelligible to those who know some Latin, or one of the other Romance languages.

Historical Falsehoods about Active Participation: A Response to Dr Brant Pitre (Part 5)

This is the fifth and final part of my series in response to a video by Dr Brant Pitre of the Augustine Institute about active participation in the liturgy. The previous installments may be read at the following links. (Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4)

Having substantially and systematically mispresented the history of the liturgy, and of the laity’s participation in it, for almost 38 minutes, the remainder of his presentation is devoted to extolling the virtues of the post-Conciliar reform specifically vis-à-vis active participation.

It hardly needs saying that he builds his case by repeating some of his earlier errors. He twice repeats (38:10 and 46:22) the erroneous English translation of Sacrosanctum Concilium which he had cited earlier, “In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else.” (my emphasis). As I noted in the first part of this series, what it really says is that “active participation … is to be given the greatest attention.” And of course, no hint is given of the myriad ways in which, by hook and by crook, the inventors of the post-Conciliar Rite trampled on the letter of Sacrosanctum Concilium in executing the reform.

He also repeatedly claims that this goal has been achieved by “restoring” to the faithful things which were never really taken away from them. He does, however, deserve credit for acknowledging that this has also been done by giving them things to do which were never previously theirs. The assertion that this is a perfectly fine and reasonable procedure, in no way problematic despite the ghastly results, falls neatly under the rubric, “Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.”

As I noted in the first part of this series, Dr Pitre does not fall into the fatuous excesses that so many others have fallen into when writing or speaking about this topic, by claiming that “active participation”, however defined, is incompatible with the historical Roman Rite. He acknowledges that active participation of the lay faithful was part of the traditional rite in its earlier history, although he grossly misrepresents that earlier history. Indeed, he builds his historical case, such as it is, on this very claim.

Likewise, he fully acknowledges (45:50, “I have no doubt in my mind”) that active participation was certainly to be found among many of the faithful interiorly (in silent prayer and adoration, etc.) even after the changes which took place “in the second millennium”, changes which he describes incorrectly and incompletely, and to which he wrongly attributes the subsequent lack of such participation, both real and imagined. This essential distinction between exterior and interior participation, introduced so late in his presentation, is required by the many historical falsehoods which he has previously brought forth, which amount to the claim that the faithful were deprived of all exterior participation, i.e., that they did not make any of the responses, did not sing any of the chants, heard no sermons, read no hand missal, etc.

This is why, as he says (46:15), “an ecumenical council of the Church … called for the missal to be revised precisely on this point (i.e. active participation) above all (his emphasis)”. Although, as noted above, he is wrong on this point about Sacrosanctum Concilium, he is right about the liturgy of Paul VI. The men who invented it were indeed guided in their work by the principle that they must give the people more to do exteriorly, and that this consideration must trump all others. From this principle, they arrogated to themselves carte blanche to do anything to the Roman Rite: to mutilate or suppress any text; to change or remove any custom, no matter how ancient or widespread, no matter why it was instituted in the first place; to violate any dictum of the very constitution on which they claimed to base their work, as long as doing so created exterior participation.

The past fifty-six years and counting have made it painfully clear that this principle is a foundation of sand. In theory, it was supposed to be applied to redress an imbalance between the role of the priest in the liturgy and that of the laity. In practice, it has been applied in such a way that it lays all the emphasis on “active” and none on “participation”, and by so doing, mistakes activity for achievement. In practice, the reformed liturgy takes it for granted that as long as the laity are doing something, they are actively participating, and it doesn’t really matter what exactly they are doing or how they are doing it. Indeed, it does not even consider whether what they are doing might adversely affect interior participation, even though it is the sine qua non of actual participation.

On the left, a page full of mute spectatorship; on the right, a page full of active participation. 

In the previous article of this series, I noted that several of Dr Pitre’s historical mistakes seem to derive from the inexplicably naïve and totally erroneous assumption that if something wasn’t officially mentioned in a liturgical book, it didn’t exist. He bases his claim that there was no full, conscious and active exterior participation of the laity in the liturgy in the Tridentine period precisely on this fact, that there is barely any mention of the laity at all in the rubrics of the Missal of St Pius V.

Conversely, in his telling, it is a great achievement of the Missal of Paul VI that it has a great many explicit rubrical directives as to what the faithful are supposed to do during the liturgy, because this has supposedly “restored” the full conscious and active participation desired by Vatican II. This is no less naïve and erroneous an assumption. Active participation was not created in the ancient world by non-existent directives in liturgical books, it was not ended by their supposed disappearance, and it has not been restored by their putative return.

Participation literally means “taking a part” in something. It hardly needs saying that Dr Pitre does not give the slightest hint of the catastrophic pastoral failure of the post-Conciliar reform. I repeat that I most certainly do not attribute to him any conscious dishonesty. Nevertheless, anyone who claims that the reform restored full, conscious and active participation in the liturgy will at some point have to ask himself WHY in its wake countless millions simply stopped exercising the baptismal priesthood of the faithful altogether, because they stopped taking part in Mass altogether.

I therefore conclude with some of the final words of an article that he should have read and studied on the topic of participation, “The Mass as a Social Institution, 1200-1700”, by the British historian John Bossy. (Past and Present; Aug. 1983, no. 100) They were written about the early protestant reformers, but mutatis mutandis, they apply just as well to Paul VI, to the members of the Consilium ad exsequendam, and to the rite they invented.

“Without disparaging their ambitions, one may feel that the object they had in view was more remote when they had finished their work than it had been in the fifteenth [read ‘nineteenth’] century. Speaking for the more traditional Reformers, Hooker put his finger on one flaw in the more advanced (i.e. reformed) eucharistic rites, a lack of otherness: ‘No nation under heaven either doth or ever did suffer public actions which are of weight … to pass without some visible solemnity, the very strangeness whereof and difference from that which is common, doth cause popular eyes to observe and to mark the same.’

A sense of fatality, of results achieved which were the opposite of those intended, hangs over their efforts: as if the current of social and cultural evolution which was carrying them forward was at the same time pushing them aside into shallow waters. … At least one success may be set against them. In the practice of the vernacular hymn [read ‘vernacular liturgy’] the Reformers did surely achieve something of the immediate and unproblematic unity at which they aimed: a congregational homophony which for Luther himself, and for European civilization in general, did not entirely exorcize nostalgia for the polyphonic mysteries of the Mass.”

The Feast of St Martina

January 30th is the feast day of the Roman virgin and martyr St Martina. The Martyrology notes the day of her death as January 1st, and that it took place in the reign of the Emperor Alexander Severus (222-235). Although far less well-known than her fellow Romans Agnes and Cecilia, by the 7th century there was a church built in her honor at the base of the Capitoline Hill, close to the Mamertine prison and the Julian Senate-house. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V gave it to a confraternity of artists named for St Luke the Evangelist, and it has ever since been known as ‘San Luca e Martina’. Starting in 1634, a complete reconstruction of the church was guided by one of the great artists of the Italian Baroque, Pietro da Cortona, and after his death in 1669, brought to completion by his students.

At the very beginning of the works to clear away the previous structure, the relics of St Martina were rediscovered within the ruins; Pope Urban VIII then added her feast to the general calendar, giving her two proper hymns of his own composition. (With all due respect to both the Saint and the Pope, they may easily be counted among the worst Latin hymns ever written.) Since the acts of St Martina are considered at best highly unreliable, her feast was removed from the general calendar in the reform of 1969. The confraternity of San Luca also keeps her feast day each year with a solemn Mass.

A reliquary of St. Martina, who was beheaded after undergoing many torments, placed on the main altar of the church on the feast day.

Directly above the main altar is a statue of the saint by Luca Berrettini, nephew and student of Pietro da Cortona, made in 1635-9.

The main altarpiece of the church is a copy by Anteveduto Grammatica of a painting by Raphael, “St Luke Painting an Image of the Virgin Mary.”

The cupola

The counter-façade, with the dedicatory inscription and the crest of Cardinal Francesco Barberini, nephew of Urban VIII, who took great personal interest in Pietro da Cortona’s work, and was one of the principal sponsors of the rebuilding project.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

A New Clarification on Transferred Holy Days of Obligation

I am sure our readers remember that last year, the Immaculate Conception, a holy day of obligation, was transferred off the Second Sunday of Advent in the post-Conciliar Rite. The USCCB had previously instituted a rule that when this happens, the obligation did not transfer with it, but more recently, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Legislative Texts had issued a general ruling that the obligation does transfer along with the feast. Of course, bishops are still free to dispense from the previsions of such a ruling, and I heard of some that did so. To make matters a little more complicated, in the current rubrics of the Roman Rite, the Immaculate Conception takes precedence over the Sunday, which means that some faithful who regularly attend a Sunday TLM were ad litteram required to attend Mass on Monday to fulfill an obligation for a feast which they had already fulfilled. I also heard of at least one bishop who officially ruled that the faithful in his diocese who attended the Mass of the Immaculate Conception in the traditional rite on Sunday, Dec. 8, did not have any obligation to attend it again on Monday, Dec. 9.

Last week, the Dicastery for Divine Worship issued a new ruling on the subject, which should in theory clarify the matter; it establishes as a universal liturgical law that when a holy day of obligation is transferred, the obligation does not transfer with it. I say “in theory”, however, because I have seen at least one canonist claim that DDW cannot override a decree from DLT. I am (Deo gratias) not a canonist myself, so I have no further comment to make on the topic, but I suspect that further comments will not be lacking. (Click image to enlarge. The Pillar published an article about the matter yesterday.)

On Music and the Beautiful - Guest Article for the Feast of St. Francis de Sales

In honor of today’s feast, that of St. Francis de Sales, NLM is grateful to Alan Hicks for offering us this de Sales-infused reflection on the objectivity of the beautiful and the manner in which habituation in what is beautiful shapes the human character. This is a key lesson to bear in mind when considering the beauty of the liturgy in its ceremonies, music, vestments, furnishings, and architectural setting: not only is giving glory to God by the best we can offer at stake, but also the formation of Christians in right instincts, appetites, and responses. The moral and the aesthetic touch at every border. It is also clear that true beauty takes time to get used to, and that we do no service to anyone by making “instant relevance” or “easy accessibility” the sole or primary criterion. - PAK

On Music and the Beautiful

Alan Hicks 

It is often said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and on the surface, at least, this seems to be the case. A beautiful object is always a source of delight—what we call aesthetic pleasure—and for different people different things will please. Clearly pleasure has an obvious subjective element, in so far as it resides in a human subject with unique dispositions and inclinations.

Yet there are serious difficulties in denying any objectivity to beauty or to the pleasure it engenders; not least is the recognition that while people may sometimes differ in their judgments of what is beautiful, there is also remarkable agreement, which would not be so if beauty was purely subjective. That is why there are lines of tourists at the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, or St. Peter’s Basilica; for such objects, both natural and man-made, have always possessed a universal aptitude to please. It is only because of this objective element, even allowing room for subjective taste, that it is possible to educate and form in the young a sense of beauty and an aesthetic sensitivity.   

According to the ancient tradition, subsumed and elaborated upon throughout the Christian centuries, the objectivity of beauty rested upon its essential connection to what is true and good. Thus, the sense in saying that a moral person has a beautiful soul or even that a human act is beautiful. Accordingly, when the woman in the Gospel anointed Christ’s head with precious oil and was scolded for wasting wealth that could have been used for the poor, Christ replied that her act was kalos, literally translated as “beautiful.” [1] It would seem to follow, then, that one of the pathways to the good is through the beautiful, which in addition to its affective power to please, can contribute to the shaping of a virtuous and moral soul. Only with this understanding can we make any sense of the oft-cited line from Dostoevsky that “beauty will save the world.” [2] 

The connection between goodness, truth and beauty is grounded in their nature as “transcendentals,” a term signifying attributes or properties transcending any division or category of being—all of which is to say that they are coextensive with being itself, accompanying existence in all its forms. As coextensive with being, they are convertible with one another, such that we may say that a thing is both true and good to the extent that it exists, and to the extent that it exists, it is both true and good. Hence their identity.

Their differences, on the other hand, are understood in their relation to us. Goodness, for example, is a transcendental aspect of being understood as desirable. As for truth, while we might say that it exists primarily in the intellect, in the intellect’s conformity to what is, it can also be said to exist as a property of being itself insofar as what exists is capable of being known. [3] Though beauty is not identified by Aristotle as a transcendental property, Plato sees the good as always beautiful, and therefore always pleasing to the perceptive powers of intellect and sense. This is essentially the position of St. Thomas as well. [4] 

St. Francis de Sales, in the opening of his incomparable Treatise on the Love of God, describes this relationship of goodness and beauty:

As the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, following the great St. Dionysius, well puts it, although beauty and goodness agree to a certain extent, they are not one and the same thing. The good is that which pleases appetite and will; the beautiful is that which pleases sense and understanding. To put it otherwise, the good is that whose possession delights us, while the beautiful is that whose apprehension pleases us. For this reason, we attribute corporal beauty in the strict sense only to the object of the two senses that have the greatest capacity for knowledge and best serve the intellect, namely, sight and hearing. We do not say, ‘These are beautiful odors or beautiful tastes,’ but we rightly say, ‘These are beautiful voices or beautiful colors.’ [5]

Of course we desire to possess beautiful objects, for those objects are also good, and there is a corresponding pleasure in the possession. But the beauty of the object itself cannot be possessed and enjoyed except through apprehension, and this apprehension and its resulting aesthetic pleasure can be, and often is, of those things we do not possess in any material sense. I can get as much pleasure looking at a beautiful picture that is owned by my friend as my friend, I just don’t get it as often. 

Now one of the most widespread of human pleasures is the delight found in music, and in regards to this beauty which pleases the understanding through the medium of sound, we may ask: what it is in music that gives it its beauty and appeal? St. Francis de Sales is again a rich source of insight:

Unity established within a variety of different things produces order. Order produces harmony and proportion, and in things that are whole and complete harmony produces beauty. We speak of a fine army if all the parts making it up are so arranged that their differences are reduced to the relative proportions needed to constitute a single army. For music to be beautiful it is necessary not only that the voices be pure, clear, and quite distinct from one another, but also that they be blended in such fashion that a right consonance and harmony result by means of both union in the midst of variety and variety within that union of voices. Not incorrectly, then, is music called a discordant harmony, or a harmonious discord.[6]

St. Francis continues in elaboration on the added elements of the beautiful object—splendor and clarity.
 

Painting of St. Francis de Sales by Valentin Metzinger

But as significant and profound as his brief discourse on beauty is, it does not help us to understand why one person might enjoy a specific piece or form of music but not another, or why two people may have contrary responses to the same piece, which variance contributes to the perception that beauty is subjective and merely “in the eye of the beholder.” To account for this variety of taste would require an exploration of individual habits and acquired dispositions, in a similar manner by which we might explain why what appears good and hence desirable to one person might not to another, even assuming the objective nature of the good.

Years ago, while living in Northeastern Pennsylvania, my wife and I began attending the opera in New York City. We would dress and then drive in early, sometimes to shop and then to dine. After coffee and dessert, we would walk the streets in the fading daylight, enjoying the variety of people and sights, arriving at the opera house shortly before the performance. These are treasured memories, which even yet provide some pleasure in the memory, mixed with a note of sadness for days that are no more. They were times of togetherness, away from the many cares which beset our lives, sharing a beautiful and uplifting form of human expression. The theater was grand, the staging and sets elaborate, and the performances were of the highest order. But it was the music itself that touched the soul with a poignant beauty expressive of the most elevated emotions and longings of the human heart.

Now it is true that most people enjoy music, and children of all nations respond cheerfully to simple songs and melodies; for music is consonant with human nature. Yet complex musical expressions are not universally appreciated and only come to be so after experience over time. Earlier in my life I didn’t enjoy opera and in fact was quite put off by my wife’s attempts to introduce me to its pleasures. In time, however, it became one of my greatest delights.  I won’t elaborate here the progression of experiences that led me to change in my perceptions of the operatic art, but only to say that while the art remained the same, there was, over time, a clear change in me, in my perception and appreciation. 

All of which goes to show that there is a difference between the objective good or the beauty of an object and the value that we may attach to it or our appreciation; for “good” and “beautiful” denote something objective, while “value” and “appreciation” allude to our subjective response. The pleasure that we receive is no doubt connected to the good and the beautiful, but only through the value; that is to say, a good or beautiful object will please only if we see it as such. And there are many personal factors which influence how we see a thing. While I didn’t like opera in my initial exposure, we have all had the experience of having something “grow on us” as we come to know it better and thereby come to see the good that is there. My wife liked opera and I enjoyed spending time with my wife, and it was for this reason that I first submitted myself to the experience. Over time I grew to appreciate the art in itself.
 

People enjoying an opera in Romania (source)

And so it is with many of the things that we eventually come to value. In our limited understanding and perception, we often don’t see the full reality of an object or its goodness at first sight. When a young man meets a young woman fair of form and appearance, he is naturally attracted and drawn to her. Such an attraction may be superficial, but there is nothing wrong with that—that is simply the way of nature. Another woman may not be so attractive on initial meeting; yet if given the opportunity to spend time with her the man begins to see her for what she truly is. He comes to appreciate the charm of her personality, her feminine ways of thinking and looking at the world, her tender feelings and responses to things around her. Her very look begins to alter as she becomes more familiar and he sees her in a different light. Given time, the man is able to recognize a deeper and more lasting beauty, a beauty from which a greater satisfaction and pleasure is drawn.

This human progress in appreciation is multiplied repeatedly in the course of a human life. Some likes are fairly universal and immediate, while others are only what we call “an acquired taste.” No one, for example, has to be taught to enjoy food or drink. That is instinctual and innate. We exit the womb hungry for our mother’s milk. Yet eating soon becomes a more complex activity as its object becomes more diverse and differentiated. The ability to appreciate certain kinds of food or drink is not innate, but is a cultivated taste that develops over time, with culinary tastes formed according to environmental factors of culture and family joined to one’s own personal habits and experience. That being said, there are unquestionably better and worse ways to eat from an objective point of view regarding human health.

Now if pleasure immediately followed the objective good, then the best foods would always engender the most pleasure. Yet for a child, what is perceived as “best” may differ markedly from the judgment of an adult. If a child is allowed to develop bad eating habits, he will have an inclination to what is unhealthy and will generally be repulsed by what is not. The trick is thus to form the habit, thereby matching the value to the objective good. If a child is raised in an environment where the kitchen is ruled by reason as opposed to mere desire, he will have no choice but to eat what is healthy. Accordingly, he will develop in time a taste for healthy foods, after which he will eat better because that is what he likes.

For whatever agrees with a thing according to its nature is pleasurable, and as habit exists as a sort of nature—what we call “second nature”—those acts consonant with a developed habit are naturally agreeable. [7] This is true not only in regards to culinary tastes or ones taste in music and art, but in the moral realm as well, for virtue is an acquired disposition no less than one’s aesthetic sense. Thus it is that Aristotle sees the pleasure or sorrow experienced by a man in his moral activity as an indication of his true character. In his words: “every virtuous person rejoices in virtuous acts, for no one will call a man just who does not enjoy doing just deeds; no one will call a man generous who does not enjoy giving generously.” [8] For this reason, moral education was understood by Aristotle to be necessarily concerned with pleasure and pain and consists in training one to feel joy and sorrow in the proper object and at the proper time. [9]

Alan Hicks was a student of the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas under John Senior and received his degrees in Philosophy at Kansas following his conversion to the Catholic Church. He was the founding Headmaster of St. Gregory’s Academy in Pennsylvania and was subsequently the principal of Catholic schools in both St. Louis and Southern California. He has since returned to his first love—teaching—and is currently a professor of Humanities at St. Gregory the Great Seminary in Lincoln, Nebraska.

NOTES

[1] Mark 14, 6.

[2] The Idiot.

[3] See St. Thomas Aquinas, The Disputed Questions on Truth (Henry Regnery, 1952), Q. 1, art. 2.

[4] St. Thomas, On Truth, I, 5, 4.

[5] St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God (TAN Books and Publishers, 1975), 53.

[6] Ibid., 53.

[7] See St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Ethics (Henry Regnery, 1964), 124.

[8] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, bk. 1, ch. 8, 1099a 15-20.

[9] Ibid., bk. 2, ch. 3, 1104b10.

The Second Feast of St Agnes: A Liturgical Oddity

January 28th is traditionally the day of the “Second Feast of St Agnes”, although this very ancient observance was reduced to a commemoration in 1931, and abolished in the post-Conciliar reform. It is still kept in some churches dedicated to St Agnes, most prominent among them, the basilica built over the site of her burial, less than a mile and a half from the gates of Rome.

The church of St Agnes Outside-the-Walls on the via Nomentana. (Image from Wikimedi Commonsa. by the parish of St Agnes Outside-the-Walls; CC BY-SA 2.0)

In liturgical books, the formal name of the feast is “Sanctae Agnetis secundo”, which literally means “(the feast) of St Agnes for the second time.” This title is found on the calendar of the Tridentine Missal and Breviary, as also seven centuries earlier in the Gregorian Sacramentary. The single Matins lesson in the Breviary of St Pius V tells us that after her death, Agnes appeared first to her parents to console them, and then to the Emperor Constantine’s daughter Constantia, who suffered from an incurable sore, while she was praying at her grave, exhorting Constantia to trust in Christ and receive baptism. Having done this and been healed, Constantia later built a basilica in the Saint’s honor.

The original purpose of the second feast, however, is not at all clear; theories abound, but evidence is lacking. In the Wurzburg lectionary, the oldest of the Roman Rite, January 21 is “natale S. Agnae de passione – the birth (into heaven) of Agnes, of her passion,”, while January 28 is simply “de natali.” One theory is that the actual day of her death was the 28th, and the 21st originally commemorated the beginning of her sufferings, starting with her trial and condemnation. However, we would then expect something similar for other prominent martyrs, particularly St Lawrence, whose passion also extended over a variety of days and events. The next oldest lectionary, Codex Murbach, doesn’t mention the second feast at all, nor does the Lectionary of Alcuin. In the Gregorian Sacramentary, the titles are simply “natale” and “natale...secundo.”

The prayers of the old Gelasian Sacramentary, the contents of which date to the early 8th century, and uses titles for the two feasts similar to those in the Wurzburg lectionary, may refer to the idea that St Agnes’ passion began on the 21st, and her death occurred on the 28th. One of the two collects for the former refers to the day “of her passion”, and asks that “we may follow the constancy of her faith,” while the Secret of the latter says that “she was glorious from the beginning of her blessed contest unto the end.” On the other hand, the Collect that goes with it says that we are “repeating” her feast, while the Secret on the 21st speaks of her “heavenly victory”, certainly a more appropriate expression for the actual day of death. In the revised Gelasian sacramentaries, the preface of January 21st speaks of “the day consecrated by the martyrdom of the blessed Agnes” and of her “receiving a precious death ... for the confession of Christ”, while that of January 28th speaks of “doubling (her heavenly) birthday”, but also says that she “went forth so that she might come to share in divinity.” In short, the earliest evidence in inconclusive.

A leaf of the Gellone Sacramentary, a sacramentary of the revised Gelasian type written in 780-800. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 12048; folio 17r); the feast of St Agnes “de nativitate” begins with the rubric in the sixth line. There are two Collects, the first of which is also said in the Missal and Breviary of St Pius V; the second is the one which refers to “repeating” her feast. The preface is the third element from the bottom.

The most common theory, and the most influential, is that the second feast represents a primitive form of octave. I find this theory unconvincing, but it does have one notable point in its favor. In the old Gelasian Sacramentary, some of the octaves (those of Christmas, St Lawrence and St Andrew) are referred to in terms similar to those of the “repeated” feast of St Agnes: “festivitas” or “solemnia” paired with the word “repetita” or “iterata.” However, by the end of the 8th century, the Gregorian Sacramentary had not only simplified the title of the feast as noted above, but also removed this kind of expression from its prayers, while retaining similar expressions (though not in all of the manuscripts) on some of the other octaves. This strongly indicates that the Second Feast of St Agnes was understood to be something different from the other octaves.

Moreover, St Agnes was the single most prominent female martyr of ancient Rome, very much on a par with other great Roman martyrs like Ss Peter and Paul and St Lawrence. Pope Honorius I built her current church in the 7th century to replace an earlier one that had fallen into ruin. (It has subsequently undergone numerous restorations.) The original, however, was one of the basilicas built by the Emperor Constantine in the very early years of the Peace of the Church, along with those of the two Apostles, Lawrence, and the cathedral of Rome at the Lateran. The early manuscripts mentioned above all refer to the “octaves” of Ss Peter and Paul and St Lawrence; it seems very odd that the octave of such a prominent Saint as Agnes, and hers alone, should instead be called a “feast … for the second time.”

Nevertheless, Dom Suitbert Bäumer (1845-96), in his History of the Breviary refers to it as an example of an octave that has only a commemoration on the eighth day, with no mention made of the feast on the days in between. (pp. 31-32 of the French edition, vol. 2, 1905) In support of this theory, he cites a text of the year 1085 called the “Micrologus de Ecclesiasticis Observantiis – Summary of Church Services”; it was Dom Bäumer himself who identified the author as one Bernold of Constance, a supporter of the great reformer Popes of that era. In chapter 44, Bernold writes that “according to the authority of Rome, … we make no daily mention of those whose octaves we celebrate on the intervening days, … except for those of St Mary (i.e., the Assumption), and of St Peter.”

What he says in this regard, however, is hardly conclusive. Fifty years later, a canon of St Peter’s Basilica named Benedict, in a treatise now known as the 11th Ordo Romanus, describes the manner of celebrating the days within octaves, specifically mentioning those of Saints John the Baptist, Peter, Lawrence, and the Assumption alongside those of Christmas and Epiphany. (chapter 68) A similar custom is attested in the Ordinal of Pope Innocent III at the beginning of the 13th century. Bäumer radically overstates his case when he attributes the celebration of the days within octaves to the influence of the Franciscans; St Francis was born fifty years after Canon Benedict wrote, and received verbal approval for his order from Innocent III only a few years before the latter’s Ordinal was compiled circa 1213-16. Simply put, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Bäumer fell into the trap that the liturgical scholars of his era routinely fell into, extrapolating too much from too little evidence.

I write above that Bäumer’s was “the most influential” explanation for the Second Feast of St Agnes, because it seems to have been the model for part of the Breviary reform of Pope St Pius X. Prior to this reform, octaves were celebrated with varying degrees of precedence, but not formally divided into classes as feasts were. The reform of 1911 created three classes of octaves, “privileged, common and simple,” the first of which was subdivided into three orders. The simple octaves are those attached to feasts of the second rank (among six), called Doubles of the Second Class; such octaves are celebrated as a Simple feast (the lowest of the six grades) on the eighth day, with no mention of them on the intermediary days.

St Agnes on the Pyre, by Ercole Ferrata, 1660-64, in the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone, built at the site of her martyrdom in the Piazza Navona in Rome.

A Prayer Novena for the Fraternity of St Peter

We are glad to share this prayer request from the Fraternity of St Peter, which will renew this year the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Of course, I am certain that all our readers are praying continually for the good preservation of the institutes and churches that celebrate the traditional Roman Mass, but the upcoming Marian feasts are a good time to bring this intention to the fore.    

Three years ago, at a moment of deep incertitude, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter called out to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, mindful that never was it known that anyone who fled to her protection has been left unaided. Following a novena, the Fraternity consecrated itself to her Immaculate Heart on the very day that the Holy Father providentially published the decree reaffirming the practice and charism that the Fraternity has had from its foundation.

Three years later, in order to render thanks once again and implore her continual help, all the members of the Fraternity will solemnly renew this consecration. To represent them all, the members of the Plenary Council and I will recite the act of consecration at the Grotto of Lourdes on her feast day, February 11.

We ask all the faithful who are close to us to join in this novena of preparation February 2-10, 2025 and to renew the consecration on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, February 11, 2025.

Fribourg, January 18, 2025
Rev. John Berg
Superior General FSSP

The Fearlessness of St John Chrysostom

Today is the feast of St John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople [1] from 397 until 404, when he was unlawfully deposed from his see. He was one of the first four Eastern Fathers to be officially recognized in the West as a Doctor of the Church, along with Ss Athanasius, Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus. The epithet “Chrysostom” means “golden-mouthed”, since he has always been honored as one of the greatest preachers in the Church’s history. In 1908, Pope St Pius X declared him the Patron Saint of orators and public speakers, a role in which he is needed now as perhaps only very rarely before in the Church’s life; I attended a Mass on his feast day many years ago, the celebrant of which repeatedly called him, both while reading the prayers and in the sermon, “St John Christendom.”

Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s great cathedra in St Peter’s Basilica, in which the throne of Peter is supported by two Latin Doctors, Ambrose and Augustine (with miters), and two Greek Doctors, Athanasius and John Chrysostom.

There is a popular notion that with the coming of Constantine and the end of persecution, the Church somehow sold its soul in part or whole to the Roman Empire. The falsity of this was demonstrated long ago by GK Chesterton, who was a convert from Anglicanism, and knew a state-owned church when he saw one. In the chapter of The Everlasting Man called “The Five Deaths of the Faith”, he rightly pointed out that the Creed of most of the early Christian Emperors was not Christianity, but a version of it far more in keeping with the spirit of the age, that which we now call Arianism. Caesar did not usually appreciate the Church’s resistance to his dogmatic meddling, and persecuted the orthodox Fathers such as St Athanasius. St Eusebius of Vercelli, one of the great Western opponents of Arianism, is even honored as martyr, although he did not die a violent death, because he was hounded into exile by an Arian Emperor.

The same might well have been applied to John, who unlike Eusebius, died in his exile, both from the rigors of the journey and the terrible ill-treatment meted out to him; the date of his death was September 14, 407. In his case, Caesar’s wrath was provoked against him not by dogmatic issues, but by moral ones. The Empress Eudoxia was the wife of the famously useless Emperor Arcadius, a man wholly under the control of his ministers and court sycophants. Taking personal offense at John’s words against the immorality and extravagances of the nobility, she had already arranged once before for John to be exiled. He was swiftly recalled, partly because of the popular uprising in his favor, partly because a small earthquake in the city was seen as a sign of divine displeasure, especially by the highly superstitious Empress. However, when a silver statue of her was erected on a pillar in front of Hagia Sophia [2], the dedication of it was celebrated with a series of “games”, as the Romans called them, an immoral spectacle which also disturbed the liturgy. St John had often preached against public license of this very sort, even when a simple priest in Antioch, and did not hesitate to do so on this occasion well.

A mosaic of St John Chrysostom in Hagia Sophia, ca. 1000. (Public domain image from Wikipedia.)

His sermon began with the words “Herodias is again become furious; again she is troubled, again she dances; and again desires to receive John’s head on a plate.” [3] A synod full of bishops hostile to him and in the Empress’ control was convoked, and deposed him on a canonically invalid pretext, but he refused to relinquish his see. A particularly ugly episode followed in which soldiers were sent to drive the people out of the churches on Holy Saturday, resulting in no little bloodshed in the sacred places themselves. The order for the Saint’s banishment was finally and definitively issued during Pentecost week.

The scene of St John preaching before Herodias was painted by two French artists of the later 19th century, Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921) and Joseph Wencker (1848-1919). This choice of subject reflects various events of their era, particularly the conquest of the Papal State, and the subsequent “exile” of Bl. Pope Pius IX, who refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Kingdom of Italy by setting foot on land which it illegally occupied. More broadly, it refers to the general situation of the Church in that period. Italy’s was not the only government hostile to the Church and seeking to reduce or destroy its influence by diminishing or destroying its institutions; this was also era of the German Kulturkampf, and the infamous French law of Separation of Church and State was soon to follow in 1905.

Laurens’ painting is the smaller of the two, but the more forceful. (See a higher resolution version here.) The Empress looks down with an expressionless face at the Saint, confident in her eventual triumph over him, but at the same time, she is almost lost in the trappings of her position, less distinct than St John in his white robes. (John also appears to be rather older than he should; historically, he was only about 55 at the time.) Both artists seem to accept the idea, common in their time, that churches in this period were “still” very austere; note that all of the decoration in both paintings is centered around the Empress, while the pulpits and the walls are very plain.

Jean Paul Laurens, 1872

Wencker’s version, on the other hand, is much larger (almost 14½ feet by 20), and he fills the space by showing the crowd in the church, the clergy, the nobility and the poor, and their varied reaction to the Saint’s words. John is on eye level with the Empress, so that she has to look up in order to pretend not to notice him as he points directly at her.

Joseph Wencker, ca. 1880

[1] It was not until well after St John’s death that the title “Patriarch” was given to the archbishops of Constantinople, at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Even to this day, in the blessing at the end of the Byzantine Divine Liturgy which bears his name, he is referred to as “John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople”, as also in the liturgical calendar, whereas his Sainted successors after 451 are called “Patriarch.”

[2] Not the church which is seen in Constantinople today, a construction of the 6th century, but the original built by Constantine in the 4th century. At the news of John’s second exile, the city was wracked with riots, during which the first Hagia Sophia was burnt down; nothing now remains of it. Its replacement, dedicated in 415, was also destroyed by riots, a very popular pastime in Constantinople, in 532; the present structure was built very shortly thereafter, by the Emperor Justinian.

[3] In the original edition of his Lives of the Saints, Alban Butler wrote that “Montfaucon refutes this slander, trumped up by his enemies. The sermon extant under that title is a manifest forgery.” Modern writers, including Butler’s revisers, all seem to accept its authenticity.

Durandus on the Third Sunday after Epiphany

In his treatment of the Third Sunday after Epiphany (Rationale Divinorum Officiorum 6, 20), our friend William Durandus is more than a little obscure, so this excerpt is to some degree a paraphrase more than a direct translation.

The third Sunday after Epiphany exhorts us to adore the one King with the angels, saying in the introit “Adore God, all ye His angels,”; with the angels, because the Angel says to John in the Apocalypse (22, 9), “I am the fellow servant of thee and thy brothers.” There follows, “Sion (that is, the Church) heard and rejoiced.” And note that this introit refers to the feast of the Meeting (‘hypapante’, the Greek name of the Purification) … (since) the words of this introit agree with the those of the invitatory of that feast. In the introit is said “Sion heard and rejoiced”, and in that invitatory is said “Be glad and rejoice, o Sion, as thou comest to meet thy God.” The words of one of responsories of that feast also agree with this, namely, “Adorn thy bridal chamber, o Sion.”

Introitus, Ps. 96 Adoráte Deum, omnes Angeli ejus: audívit, et laetáta est Sion: et exsultavérunt filiae Judae. Ps. Dóminus regnávit, exsultet terra: laetentur ínsulae multae. Glória Patri... Adoráte Deum...

Introit Adore God, all ye His angels: Sion hath heard and rejoiced, and the daughters of Juda have exulted. Ps. The Lord hath reigned, let the earth rejoice; let the many isles be glad. Glory be... Adore God, all ye His angels...

The Gospel (Matthew 8, 1-13) is about the healing of the leper. Where he says, “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst cleanse me,” behold his faith, wherefore Christ says to him, “I do so will; be thou cleansed.”

Now the Epistle (Romans 12, 16-21) seems not to agree with the Gospel, but in fact it agrees very well, in a way that is fitting for the mystical sense or understanding. For the healing of the leper signifies that God wants to heal us from the wickedness of heresy, and from every other leprosy, namely from every sin … The epistle agrees with this understanding, and removes the first leprosy when it says, “Be ye not prudent amongst yourselves.” This alone is the cause of heresy, that a man wants to rely upon his own sense in the understanding of the Scriptures. And it removes another leprosy when it says, “To no man rendering evil for evil. … But if thy enemy be hungry, give him to eat.”

The Centurion at Caparnaum Begs Jesus to Heal His Servant, 1651, by the Flemish painter Johannes Ykens (1613 - after 1680). The building on the right behind the centurion is clearly copied directly from the Palazzo Nuovo on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, representing the authority of the Roman Empire which here submits itself to Christ. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

… The gradual refers to the conversion of the Jews and the gentiles… The words “The nations shall fear Thy name” pertain to the conversion of the gentiles, and the words “because the Lord hath built Sion” to the conversion of the Jews. … The Gospel also refers to this, since it treats of the curing of the leper, who is a figure of the Jewish people, and the curing of the centurion’s servant, as a figure of the gentile nations, spiritually cured by the Lord, since it is the love of neighbor that works the cure of both people. We are therefore invited to this in the epistle, “To no man rendering evil for evil. Providing good things, not only in the sight of God, but also in the sight of all men.”

Graduale Ps. 101 Timébunt gentes nomen tuum, Dómine, et omnes reges terrae gloriam tuam. ℣. Quoniam aedificávit Dóminus Sion, et vidébitur in majestáte sua. (The gentiles shall fear Thy name, o Lord, and all the kings of the earth Thy glory. ℣. For the Lord has built up Sion, and He shall be seen in His glory.)

In the Offertory (Psalm 117), the Church, gathered together from both peoples, praises God saying, “The right hand of the Lord hath wrought strength.”

A splendid polyphonic version by Palestrina

Offertorium, Ps. 117 Déxtera Dómini fecit virtutem, déxtera Dómini exaltávit me: non moriar, sed vivam, et narrábo ópera Dómini. (The right hand of the Lord hath wrought strength: the right hand of the Lord hath exalted me: I shall not die, but live: and tell of the works of the Lord.)

And because until the day of judgment, Christ is always being increased, as far as His mystical body is concerned, the Communion “All were wondering” agrees very well with this, because the Jews and the gentiles seeing His wondrous deeds and hearing of His gifts, wondered and were converted.

Communio Luc. 4 Mirabantur omnes de his, quae procedébant de ore Dei. (All were wondering at the words that came from the mouth of God.)

Historical Falsehoods about Active Participation: A Response to Dr Brant Pitre (Part 4)

This is the fourth part of my response to a video by Dr Brant Pitre of the Augustine Institute about popular participation in the liturgy. (part 1; part 2) At the conclusion of the third part, I stated that in any defense of the post-Conciliar reform, it is necessary to mispresent the history of the liturgy in the Tridentine period, and Dr Pitre begins to do this at the 31:00 mark. In matters of history, precision matters, and this part of the presentation is very lacking in precision.

His essential contention is that because the liturgical books of the Tridentine period contain no clear directives for lay participation (31:12), there was no lay participation. As I have explained in the previous articles of this series, the liturgical books never had any directives for lay participation, either before or after the Tridentine reform. This lack “in the five-hundred years after the Council of Trent” is unfavorably contrasted with the active lay participation that supposedly predominated “in the first thousand years of the Latin Rite.” (Five hundred years have not passed since the beginning of the Council of Trent in 1545; indeed, its four-hundredth anniversary, Dec. 4, 1963, was the day the first documents of Vatican II were formally promulgated, including, most ironically, Sacrosanctum Concilium.)

His chosen example (31:20) of this lack of participation is taken from a letter written by an English bishop named Stephen Gardiner which “describes what the liturgy was like in the wake (n.b.) of the Council of Trent and the promulgation of the Tridentine Missal (n.b.).” Dr Pitre quotes this letter from the book Roman Catholic Worship: Trent to Today by James F White, who in turn quotes it from an edition of Gardiner’s letters published in 1933. “The people in the church took small heed what the priest and clerks did in the chancel, but only to stand up at the gospel and kneel at the sacring [bell], or else every man was occupied himself severally [individually] in several prayers. And therefore it was never meant that the people should indeed hear… the Mass but be present there and pray themselves in silence.”

But this letter was written in 1547. By the end of that year, only ten of Trent’s eventual twenty-five sessions had been held; of these ten, the last three were concerned solely, and very briefly, with administrative matters. The Missal imprecisely known as “the Tridentine Missal” would not be promulgated for another 23 years. What then does the liturgical situation which Bp Gardiner describes have to do with the so-called Tridentine Missal? Nothing. 1547 is also the year in which Henry VIII died, which means that at the time that Gardiner wrote, the vast majority of the faithful in England were still used to the Sarum liturgy, not the liturgy of the papal court and the Franciscans, which Dr Pitre accuses earlier of removing the participation of the laity.

The frontispiece of a Sarum Missal printed at Paris in 1555.

This would have been the perfect place to mention at least one example of the better scholarship which has corrected these tendentious and overly simplistic claims about lay participation in the liturgy before the modern era. The most obvious example, because it is concerned directly with Gardiner’s place and period, would be Eamon Duffy’s famous book The Stripping of the Altars. Another would be Fr Augustine Thompson’s Cities of God, which deals with the religious life of the medieval Italy from which emerged the villains of Dr Pitre’s presentation, the Franciscans. Another still would be John Bossy’s very interesting article The Mass as a Social Institution, 1200-1700 (Past and Present; Aug. 1983, no. 100), or the Italian scholar Gian Luigi Beccaria’s Sicut Erat, a study of the influence of the Latin Bible and liturgy on the Italian language, which shows that ordinary Italians in post-Counter Reformation Italy absorbed a great deal more from the liturgy than modern liturgists know.   

Ignoring all such scholarship, Dr Pitre declares this state of affairs to be normative for the entire period after Trent until the 20th century, although he does acknowledge that “in solemn High Masses and other forms of liturgy you might have more participation of the faithful.” And the next witness he adduces to this effect is the Belgian liturgist Dom Bernard Botte OSB (1883-1980).

With all due respect, it is unpardonably sloppy to treat the entire post-Tridentine period as if it were all of one piece. No mention is made of the massive social upheavals which began in the mid-18th century with the so-called Enlightenment, leading to the French revolution, and a crescendo of further revolutions and wars, and culminating in two horrifically destructive world wars. No mention is made of the damage which these wars and revolutions did to the Church in Europe and South America by closing down or destroying an incalculably large number of its institutions. And no mention is made of the impact which the destruction of so many churches had on the Church’s liturgical life.

The cathedral of St Donatianus in Bruges (now part of the modern state of Belgium) in 1641; destroyed in 1799 by the occupying French Revolutionary Army. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

We therefore get a long quote from Dom Botte’s book Silence and Participation (34:15), the usual dreary litany of complaints from the early cancerous phase of the liturgical movement, that the laity recite private devotions while the priest says Mass, and usually receive communion outside of Mass, etc. But in Dr Pitre’s telling, this has nothing to do with the social and cultural conditions of early 20th central Belgium specifically, or post-revolutionary Europe generally. It is due solely to an absence of rubrics in the Tridentine Missal ordering the faithful to actively participate.

This would have been a good place to at least give a nod to the fact that the later leaders of the liturgical movement, especially between the world wars, were often highly tendentious in their presentation of the then-current state of the liturgy, exaggerating the most negative aspects, while downplaying or ignoring the more positive ones. This tendentiousness, in turn, comes from a shift in attitude which marks them off from the first among them, Dom Prosper Guéranger, a shift which I have described elsewhere.

In brief, Dom Guéranger believed that the Church possessed in its liturgy a treasure of inestimable value, but one which had come to be widely neglected in many ways. The goal of the liturgical movement, as he saw it, was primarily educational, to reacquaint the clergy and the laity with that very treasure. In the interwar period, the attitude of many liturgists changed towards the belief that the liturgy was in many ways flawed, and that the laity cannot be educated up to its level. Therefore, in this view, the liturgy needed to be purged of its flaws and reformed down to the presumed level of the laity, which is why I referred above to this period as “the early cancerous phase.”

Dom Guéranger

The first part of the quote from Dom Botte begins with a reference to the sung Masses in his hometown as “a dialogue between the clergy and the cleric organist.” Dr Pitre interrupts (34:25) to give us another historical error: “In our own day, the choir will often consist of lay people, for many centuries after Trent, the choir often consisted of clerics.” This is an error per suppressionem veri; the choir very often consisted of clerics for centuries before Trent as well. This is consistently attested by the very same class of documents, the Ordines, which he had previously cited as witnesses to popular participation. The Ordo Romanus Primus, which he had brought in earlier as a witness to lay participation, refers to the clerical schola more often than to the people.

He then mentions the famous (or infamous) restriction of St Pius X’s motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini on women singing in the liturgy, specifically, as part of the liturgical schola. There has been a lot of debate, and legitimately so, about the application of this motu proprio; personally, I agree with the joke that “tra le sollecitudini” is Italian for “too much of a good thing.” Dr Pitre, however, makes it sound as if in practice, women were systematically excluded from singing at Mass for centuries, and as if Tra le sollecitudini were an expression of long-standing and post-Tridentine policy, which is categorically false on both counts. In reality, Pius X issued it thinking of the places where the same professional singers, including women, who performed at the opera house on Friday and Saturday also performed in church on Sunday, and in much the same style. This was especially common in Italy, which is why the document is named by its opening words in Italian, not Latin. It should be noted as well that in other writings, Pius X made exceptions for congregations of female religious; and, in any case, his successor Pius XII made it clear that women were permitted to sing if they were not part of a clerical schola that sang near or in the sanctuary.

A recording of the Regina Caeli by the Italian composer Paolo Giorza (1832-1914), made at the “Anglo-Catholic” church of St Magnus the Martyr in London. The video helpfully includes a quotation from a document issued by the Society of St Gregory of America, following a convention which the society held in May of 1922, a blacklist of music held to be not in accordance with the motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini. “All compositions by P(aolo) Giorza should be eliminated from the repertoire of the Catholic choirs. The composer ... did not change his style one iota when he put sacred words to these utterly secular melodies. The worst example of the ‘Ballet’ style in church is the setting of the Regina Coeli, which, sad to relate, is still sung in many of our churches.”

Under all this, there seems to lie an assumption which would be charming in its naiveté, did it not lead to such a betrayal of historical facts; namely, that the Church’s life is described wholly and solely by whatever the Holy See puts into its documents. If the Missal makes no mention of what the people are supposed to do at Mass, they must not be doing anything at Mass. If a motu proprio says that women are not to be part of the liturgical schola, this means that “for centuries” women did not sing at Mass at all.

I make bold to say this because at 36:35, Dr Pitre introduces yet another historical error, the claim that because vernacular missals, with or without the Latin, were forbidden by the Holy See, they did not exist. “There was no missal to read.” (To this effect, he cites the book Liturgy: An Illustrated History, by Fr Keith Pecklers SJ.)

Here again, some very pertinent information is omitted. Before the Industrial Revolution, paper was far more expensive to produce than it is now, and therefore books were as well. Moreover, a much larger percentage of humanity’s collective energy had to be devoted to satisfying what anthropologists call primary needs: food, clothing, shelter, and the arms necessary to keep your neighbors from taking your food, clothing and shelter. As a result, relatively speaking, far fewer people were educated to such a degree that they could make any use of a hand missal, and far fewer people could afford one.

Nevertheless, for those who could read, and could afford them, they did in fact exist. I am greatly indebted to Mr Nico Fassino, the creator of The Hand Missal History Project, for the following summary.

“What we think of as a modern hand missal was not put into the hands of a majority of the laity until rather late, but there were an astonishing number of books which were very close to modern hand missals which were published in large numbers, already in the 1600s in France, and even in English. There was a huge variety of books which contained the Ordinary (including the Canon), the Sunday readings, collects and other parts, and these were published in all sorts of editions and binding options, from cheap paper copies to luxurious leather. In short, there were many more such books in circulation than is commonly assumed, even accounting for literacy rates and cost, and stretching back to the 1600s.

There are obvious cases of Church authorities being wary of vernacular liturgical translations, and these are cited by the existing scholarship over and over. But they do not seem to align with or explain the facts on the ground when compared with the number of titles, the number of copies, the number of editions, and the continuous printing history of such books across so many different geographical areas.” (Images following courtesy of Mr Fassino.)

The beginning of the Canon in a hand missal for the laity, translated into German; this book was published within a decade of the end of the Council of Trent.

Another in English, from roughly 1660.

A French example from the first decade of the 17th century.