A Beautiful Illustration of the Prayer “Anima Christi”

Thanks to the Spanish-language Facebook page Poco y católico for sharing with us this very lovely image of part of the prayer Anima Christi written on Gothic script on scrolls around a cross. I was unable to find any information about the date or source of the image, so if anyone knows where it comes from, please be so kind as to leave a message in the combox.

The “Anima Christi” is traditionally ascribed to St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, and in liturgical books, is printed under the title “Aspirationes Sancti Ignatii ad Sanctissimum Redemptorem – Aspirations of St Ignatius to the Most Holy Redeemer.” It is also traditionally included at the beginning of his Spiritual Exercises, as seen in the picture below, taken from an edition printed in 1920. However, it is found in manuscripts that predate Ignatius’ birth (1491) by over 100 years, and the true author is unknown.

Cenacle Press Website of Silverstream Priory

Last summer, Silverstream Priory in Ireland launched a new website for its online store. Readers of NLM will no doubt be interested in exploring the Cenacle Press, a well-stocked and thoughtfully put-together site. If not quite a “one-stop trad shop,” it’s getting close, with hundreds of products including both Catholic books from dozens of publishers and handmade items from the monks themselves.

Venerable Bede’s Rosaries

First off, the excellent rosaries must be mentioned. Prayerfully handcrafted by the monks of Silverstream with high-quality cords, beads, and crucifixes, their popularity and quality are attested by the customer reviews. The full selection can be found here.
 

Not only do they offer some elegant rosaries made with semi-precious stones, like African Turquoise, Pink Quartz, Blue Sodalite (pictured below) or Connemara Marble…
 

…but also sturdy rosaries like their military paracord rosary made with gunmetal beads. It is featured in the recently released video below, in which a monk explains the ‘catechetical knot’ in this rosary:
 

Books

Although many of the books stocked by Cenacle Press can be found elsewhere, the monks have selected favorite titles from a wide variety of publishers to create a rich catalogue of only the best books. For example, their Divine Office collection is one of the most complete for any single site, while the Saints category draws a multitude of sources into one place. They stock most of the books available in English about Abbot Gueranger and Solesmes, as well as Blessed Columba Marmion (note that Cenacle Press plans to republish Christ the Ideal of the Monk later this year in honor of the 100th centenary of Dom Marmion’s death).
 

For those interested in Mother Mectilde of the Blessed Sacrament, who initiated the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament in the 1600s, the monks have a little book of her quotations to accompany the Rosary: Vidi Speciosam. They also carry two other books about Mother Mectilde which have been released so far from Angelico Press, The Mystery of Incomprehensible Love, an introductory presentation of her life and writings, and The Breviary of Fire, a collection of some of her letters of spiritual direction.

For European customers, Silverstream is an ideal source of books published in America that are not always easy to come by, such as the St. Andrew’s Missal, and titles from Loreto Publications and from Baronius Press, which continues to have a limited international distribution post-Brexit.

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A 17th Century Vesperal from the Abbey of St Gall

Today is the feast of St Gall, a disciple of the great monastic founder of the later 6th and early 7th century, St Columban. He was born in Ireland, educated under Columban at the abbey of Bangor, and accompanied his teacher to the continent, where he assisted him in the founding of the important abbeys at Annegray and Luxeuil. From there, they made their way to the area around the Swiss lakes of Zurich and Constance; when Columban went to Italy, Gall remained behind, and having preached and gathered a group of disciples who lived under Columban’s rule, died sometime around 645 AD. The great Swiss abbey of San Gallen is named after him, since it was built over the site traditionally said to be that of his hermitage, about 70 years after his death. (Further details of this are given below in connection with the founder St Othmar.) 

This abbey is the home of one of the most important libraries in the world; among other things, it houses several of the oldest manuscripts of Gregorian chant. Much of the collection is now free to consult via the website https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en, which also includes links to the digital collections of numerous other Swiss libraries. Here is a book from San Gallen which I recently discovered while perusing the site, a magnificently illustrated Vesperal made for the Prince Abbot of San Gallen at the end of the 17th century. This book contains only the intonations of the antiphons and hymns, which were made by the celebrant and dignitaries of the choir, such as the prior and subprior etc. The celebrant’s other parts (the chapter and orations) would be sung out of a different book called a capitularium.

Here are all of the decorated pages of the book; I have cropped those on which the decorations are confined to the margins. (Cod. Sang. 1452B; all images CC BY-NC 4.0) The complete book can be seen by following the links at the following url: https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/1452B

The First Sunday of Advent. The book is not very large, about 14½ by 11 inches; for the intonation of the second antiphon, a server would carry it to the next dignitary of the choir, then to the third, and so on.

The O antiphons. The style of note is known in German as “Hufnagelnotation – hoof-nail notation”, from the resemblance of the notes to a common kind of nail for horse-shoes.

Christmas. At top, the Holy Family turned away from the inn; at the upper right margin, the appearance of the angel to the shepherds.

In the margin of the next page, the angelic choirs sing over the stable at Bethlehem.

Decoration from the following page, with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and angels adoring the Christ Child as He sleeps in the manger, which is shaped like the Cross. Below, Ss Stephen and John.

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From Extemporaneity to Fixity of Form: The Grace of Liturgical Stability

Catholics who love the traditional liturgical rites of the Church maintain that a fixity and stability of sacred formulas is essential both to the nature of liturgy as such and to the fruitful participation of the laity. But some liturgical scholars might object: Wasn't liturgy in the earliest centuries of the church extemporaneous and improvised? The answer is: yes — and no. Few things are as important as understanding how and why we moved from liturgy-in-flux to fixed and stable liturgy.

For starters, in their gatherings for worship, ancient Christians do not seem to have practiced “casual” or “informal” prayer in the way in which the relaxed Christians of today might practice it. All the records we have indicate set prayer forms not only among the Jews whose Scriptures are full of formulaic prayers but also among the earliest Christians, several of whose hymns are preserved in the New Testament and in Patristic literature. Gregory Dix, Adrian Fortescue, Paul Bradshaw, and other scholars note that the prayers of the Christians, offered up by their leaders in a spontaneous but tradition-informed manner, acquired consistent formulaic patterns over time and settled into repeatable rites and ceremonies. After a few centuries of ever-solidifying praxis, improvisation ceased to be a feature of the liturgy — and this, for obvious reasons.

Christianity is a religion with deeply conservative instincts: we are holding on to what has been given to us once for all in the revelation of Jesus Christ, the depositum fidei. A devout bishop who celebrated the Eucharist would arrive at satisfactory ways of speaking to which the people became habituated [1], and his successor, drawn from within his own clergy, would naturally wish to follow in his footsteps and model his liturgical prayer after that of his father in Christ. As Michael Davies observes, when a community had a holy bishop who was accustomed to praying in certain ways, his successor would have had every reason to imitate him, and the people every right to expect that continuity. Otherwise, how would the ancient sacramentaries, with their carefully-formulated orations, have ever developed?

The eloquent and polished prayers we find in the oldest extant liturgical books did not suddenly drop down from heaven; they are the faithful reflection of the actual practice of Catholic communities gathered around their God-fearing bishops. In this way it was normal, one could say inevitable, that fixed anaphoras, readings, collects, antiphons, etc., would develop and stabilize over time. Thus, it should come as no surprise to find, no later than the seventh century and possibly as early as the fifth, a complete cycle of propers for the Roman Rite. Gennadius of Massilia (5th cent.) says of St. Paulinus of Nola, “Fecit et sacramentarium et hymnarium – he made both a sacramentary and a hymnal” (De viris illustribus, XLVIII). There is an account in Gregory of Tours of a bishop who had everything memorized, and when the book was removed (maliciously) he was able to do everything by memory.

In short, improvisation has not been a characteristic of the liturgy for 1,500 years. The evidence we have points to the relatively rapid development of fixed forms.

It is, moreover, absurd to think that the Holy Spirit did not intend this state of affairs as a positive good, or that the Church erred in remaining a jealous guardian of the spelled-out content of liturgical books. It would be no less ridiculous to assert that the same Spirit, after having willed such a state of affairs for 1,500 years, would suddenly will its dissolution, dilution, or replacement. So much for improvisation—or optionitis, which might be called a soft version of improvisation. [2] 

A key principle in liturgy is “the principle of stability.” The early Church was in a divinely-willed state of formation, and had wider and freer powers precisely because she was in an embryonic condition, growing rapidly and establishing her institutions under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. [3] The same Spirit guides her gently and gradually into set forms, which are the fairest flowers of those early developments. He prunes what is less worthy and nourishes what is more worthy. We should therefore expect, as time goes on, that the liturgy will become more and more solid, definite, fixed, and perfected. It will be handed down increasingly as a family inheritance, an approved profession of the Church’s one faith.

We see the same kind of development in the dogmatic debates of the early councils, with their ever more precise creeds that cut off all heretical depravity. We do not have the “freedom” to go back to the looseness and ambiguity of the early centuries, although modernists seem to wish they could do so. [4] Catholics have the immense blessing and privilege of carrying more refined and more precise formulas on our lips. Those who live after an Ecumenical Council — any of the councils except the last one, that is — are at a decisive advantage compared with those who lived before it, since they can now profess their faith in the Lord and confess His holy Name using a more perfect expression of the truth, and with less danger of lapsing into error about the highest, best, and most difficult things.

The development of the liturgy in this respect is much like the development of languages. Yes, a language such as French or German or English is ever developing, but it is much more the same than different from decade to decade and even, as time goes on, century to century. English as we write it today is much the same as that which was written 300 years ago; any literate person can pick up Samuel Johnson and read him without much difficulty (perhaps looking up a word here or there).

Yet a notable difference obtains between “hieratic” languages — those that, having attained a certain richness or fullness of development, were then taken over into religious practice as sacral tongues — and vernacular languages. The hieratic languages — e.g., Hebrew, ancient Greek, ecclesiastical Latin, Church Slavonic — are, as regards their use in divine worship, unchanging and unchangeable. They do not need to develop any more, since they are perfect at expressing what their respective liturgies need them to express. Only if revelation were to change would the language conveying it need to change. A hieratic language becomes an external sign of the internal stability, consistency, and timelessness of the religious truths conveyed through it. It does not deviate to the left or to the right in its unerring delivery of the message. Its linguistic completeness not only participates in divine attributes but helps bring about our participation in these attributes. In this way, a sacred language has a sacramental function.

A vernacular language, on the other hand, is intended to be the medium of daily discourse, the supple tool of life in the world, which is rife with change. The vernacular will never be done changing, reflecting the hustle and bustle of the people who use it. It is just this mutability and instability that explain why the religious instincts of all peoples have enshrined their highest forms of worship and doctrine in hieratic or classical languages. The vernacular is for this world of change, of Heracleitian flux; the hieratic is for the eternal world that always abides, like Parmenidean Being, and penetrates through the veil of this world in the form of dogma and doxology.

Think of the Eastern Christian liturgies, which are extremely conservative (at least where modern liturgists have not defaced them). The priest might add a personal intention during the litanies, but the fixed prayers are exactly that: fixed, finalized, admitting of no improvement. It would be a species of sacrilege to tamper with these glorious prayers. That, too, was the attitude of the Latin Church towards the pillars of the liturgy: the antiphons, the readings, the offertory, the Canon, the calendar, the use of certain psalms at certain times of the day or in certain seasons. We might augment, extrapolate, enhance, ornament, and even occasionally prune the dense growth, but in no sense did we throw off what earlier generations held to be sacred and great.

Hence, the essential response to the objection with which this essay opens — “Wasn't liturgy in the earliest centuries of the church extemporaneous and improvised?” — is at once simple and profound: we are not in the same position as the early Christians. They had the first contact with Christ’s life, death, and resurrection; they had the guidance of the Apostles and their immediate successors; they had to develop for themselves a liturgy out of Jewish precedents and apostolic oral tradition. It was a unique situation. Tollite vobiscum verba: “take with you words” (Ember Friday of September). The need to design or write a liturgy is, on the one hand, a sign of imperfection, because it belongs to a phase of institutional immaturity.

On the other hand, because of how central the liturgy is and will be for all future generations until the end of time, the writing of liturgy requires a special charism of the Holy Spirit — a profound spiritual maturity, discernment, and inspiration on the part of anyone who would dare to write liturgical texts or chants. It follows that already elaborated liturgical rites possess an inherent sanctity and nobility that will not and cannot be surpassed by later generations. [5] Since, as time went on, such rites had become more stable, refined, explicit, and expressive of their sacred content, Christians received them accordingly with reverence, as gifts handed down from their forebears. This process of development — which is at the same time a process of explicitation and solidification — must be held to be a work of the Holy Spirit, as Pope Pius XII reminded the Church in Mediator Dei. [6]

After 1,500 or 2,000 years of development, the situation is not and could never be the same for us as it was for the early Christians in the decades and centuries immediately after Christ. The reformers’ argument from antiquity is invalid from the word “go.” Nor has this argument the wherewithal to be taken seriously. Henry Sire demonstrates in Phoenix from the Ashes that the twentieth-century reformers invoked antiquity as an excuse for their modernist agenda, since as a matter of fact (1) they did not restore much that was ancient; (2) they abolished many things that were known to be ancient; (3) and they invented much that was utterly novel. How such people, whose motley work is clear for all to see, can expect us to credit their affected motives is quite beyond me.

The main argument of the postconciliar reformers, expressed in countless pamphlets and publications, boils down to this: “We are now celebrating the Mass as the early Christians did, and dropping away all the ‘accretions’ that accumulated like soot over time and obscured the original purity of worship.” But there are three devastating flaws to this argument.

1. We don’t really know what the early Christians did, and evidence from cultural history suggests that it was probably quite elaborate, rather than the contrary.

2. Many arguments based on antiquity have subsequently been shown to be false, such as the main argument in favor of Mass facing the people (St. Peter’s basilica).

3. Most importantly, Pius XII taught in Mediator Dei that we must believe that the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit throughout the ages and that the developments that occur are part of God’s plan. So the development of “medieval liturgy” and “Baroque liturgy” are, if not in every detail, at least in the main, providential. To cast them away and try to return to a questionably reconstructed “primitive church model” is not only to exalt mere hypotheticals over real facts, it is an assertion that the Holy Spirit guides the Church less and less as time goes on, and that we must strip away what each age has added in order to return to the purity of the origins. This is liberal Protestantism, this is higher criticism, this is Modernism. All of it is condemned by the Church.

NOTES

[1] Funnily enough, we see this even today, among well-practiced Protestant preachers when they are offering public prayers, for which they have developed their own vocabulary and formulas. The result is not random but carefully channeled, almost predictable. I have seen the same thing in the Catholic Church. For example, in a certain diocese, almost every “spontaneous” prayer I have heard begins: “Good and gracious God…” I don’t know who originated this alliterative phrase, but it reproduces itself successfully in the wild.

[2] An objection might be raised: Are there not aspects of the old liturgy that are also up to the celebrant’s discretion? And should you not argue against them, as well? The truth is that the realm of choice in the old liturgy is extremely narrow, and is always a choice between fully articulated elements. In some commons, there is a choice between two epistles or Gospels. On a solemn day, a priest may choose to wear gold instead of a different liturgical color. He may choose to sing the most solemn Preface tone rather than the more solemn tone. If his missal has the Gallican prefaces, the rubrics allow him to use them on specified days. But notice how small a range of choice is allowed, and how its components are already fully spelled out — the priest invents nothing. There is no putative right to extemporize; and the most essential elements, such as the Canon, can never be altered. The holiest thing is beyond the realm of choice; it is a given. The Byzantine liturgy is the same: which of the anaphoras is to be used is dictated to the priest by the calendar, not left up to his pastoral discretion.

[3] One may consider what Charles Cardinal Journet said about the difference between the apostolic period and the succeeding ages, and apply it analogously to the early age of worship in contrast with later ages of worship.

[4] Pope Francis, for instance, preaches with such sloppiness that one would think none of the Ecumenical Councils had ever occurred, nor any of the Church Fathers had preached.

[5] John Henry Newman recognized this fact as well.

[6] To question, therefore, the inherited forms in the radical way they were questioned in the 1960s was nothing less than a sin against the Holy Spirit, the sin for which Our Lord says there is no forgiveness.

First Issue of Sophia Press’ Benedictus (August 2021) Now Available

A surprise greeted me in my mailbox last week on July 7 (an auspicious date, to be sure): the first-ever full issue of Benedictus, the new daily Latin Mass companion published by Sophia Institute Press. This issue covers the whole month of August. Readers may recall that this initiative was announced at NLM on February 10.

My hopes were already high, given the short sample that was mailed out during Lent and the detailed advertising, but I have to say that the first issue exceeds all my expectations. It is an absolutely gorgeous publication. I will share now some photos along with brief comments. (If any of the images are blurry, that’s the fault of my bucket-o’-bolts camera; make due allowances.)

For the sake of scale (it’s a compact book that would fit in a purse or a jacket pocket, but not a pants pocket; a bit larger than Magnificat):

The two-tone artwork (black and gold) with gray shading is more elegant by far than anything I’ve seen in a missallette like this; the layout is handsome, the font easy on the eye; the meditations and features are exquisitely chosen from traditional sources, which will be one of the great benefits Benedictus bestows on its users.

First, for the layout of the Order of Mass, which is repeated with full Propers and Ordinary for each Sunday and Holy Day (so, no page turns in those cases):

 

 

 

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An 18th-Century Epistle Book from Notre-Dame de Paris

Following up on Tuesday’s post on the mid-18th century Gospel book used at Notre-Dame de Paris, here is the accompanying book of Epistles. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 8895) This is also just a selection of the images, but it does include all of the headers with illustrations for the various feasts, of which there are fewer than in the Gospel book.

“The book of Epistles according to the use of the metropolitan church of Paris, 1753.”

The Midnight Mass of Christmas

Epiphany

A sample of a the many floral decorations; this is the only one that fills its page, and is placed right before the Purification.

The Purification; the high priest is dressed rather like the Pope, and his servant like a page at the French court, of which the Temple in Jerusalem was merely a prefiguration... 

Easter

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An 18th-Century Gospel Book from Notre-Dame de Paris

Here’s another great find from the website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, a Gospel book for the major feasts of the year, produced in 1753 for the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. (Département des Manuscrits, Latin 9461) Almost every one of its 110 pages has an illustration, illuminated letter, or decorative element of some kind, so this is just a selection of some of the nicer one; the complete book can be seen in high resolution scans, and downloaded as a pdf, at the link above. Last year, I shared pictures of an Epistle book and Gospel book, both in a similar style, made for the Royal Chapel at Versailles.

The day Mass of Christmas

Epiphany

The Presentation

The Annunciation

Maundy Thursday

Easter

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The Ultimate Communion Antiphon Book for the Usus Antiquior

Most singers of chant will be familiar with the old workhorse Communio by Richard Rice (CMAA, 2008), my own copy of which is so well-thumbed and beaten up it’s a wonder it still holds together. Others may be familiar with the Solesmes publication Versus Psalmorum et Canticorum (repr. CMAA, 2008), which contains pointed psalm texts for the Introits and Communions of the entire liturgical year. Although I used both of these books for many years as a choir director, I have discovered a new volume that definitively surpasses them for Sundays and Holy Days.

In November of 2019, I visited Houston to give four lectures, and while there, I decided to “crash” the Schola practice on Sunday at the FSSP parish, Regina Caeli. The singers were gracious and let me join them for the High Mass. At one point, the director, Kyle Lartigue, handed me a book: Ad Communionem: Antiphons and Psalms (Justitias Books, 2016), which, I discovered, was Mr. Lartigue’s own production.

Unlike the other communion books available, which either lack the antiphons and full musical notation (Versus Psalmorum) or utilize the awkward and untraditional Nova Vulgata for the psalm texts, Ad Communionem includes the antiphons for all Sundays and first-class Holy Days, followed by the pertinent psalm from the preconciliar Vulgate, notated in square notes. (The old Vulgate verses are a breeze to sing for those who are familiar with the Missale Romanum and the Breviarium Romanum or the Breviarium Monasticum.) Ad Communionem also includes Psalm 33 and the Gloria Patri in all modes, and an appendix with the Adoro Te and Ubi Caritas. The antiphons are organized not alphabetically (as in Rice’s book, where one must rely on the index) but by Sunday and feastday in chronological order, which makes it much easier to use. While the Solesmes book is more comprehensive, it merely “points” the texts rather than musically notating them, and both the poor quality of the reproduction (many times removed from its original) and the typographical conventions contribute to confusion and stumbling performances.

It’s exactly what I’d want my own schola to have, and in fact when I returned from Houston I asked the pastor in my town if he would buy a bunch of copies for our choir loft. This book deserves to be standard issue for every TLM schola in the English-speaking world. (I should mention that the antiphons and verses are accompanied by an inline English translation from the Douay-Rheims, which closely matches the Latin sense.)
 

Having a Communion antiphon book with psalm verses (regardless of which of the above three options is used) allows the cantors and/or schola to sing however many verses may be needed to prolong or shorten the music for a particular occasion. Sometimes more than one priest is distributing communion and it goes quickly; at others times perhaps there is an overflow crowd and only one priest distributing, which can take quite some time. The chanting of psalm verses has many benefits: the texts are liturgically appropriate and the music is very much in the background, as it should be; the overall effect is calming and prayerful, but the recurrence of the antiphon adds a welcome contrast to the simplicity of the psalm tones, and impresses the repeated text and melody in the minds of all who listen to it. The format also allows for maximum flexibility in musical forces. One can arrange it this way: antiphon (sung by all); verse (begun by cantor and completed by schola); antiphon; etc. Or: antiphon (sung by all); odd verse (sung by cantor); even verse (sung by all); antiphon; etc. Or instead of cantor and tutti, the schola may be divided into two halves. The simple format allows for a ready use of isons and organum.

Now that the TLM is coming back all over the place, Ad Communionem: Antiphons and Psalms is, I would maintain, a required tool for everyone who sings the proper chants. It is one of two books I always carry with me to the choir loft (the other being my Liber Usualis). The book is available in paperback and hardcover. A large sample of the pages may be found here. An index may be found here.

Mr. Lartigue has also produced a number of other books: a newly-typeset Latin edition of the traditional Martyrologium Romanum (updated through 1961, with an appendix of saints canonized after that year); a two-volume edition of traditional Sunday Vespers; Holy Week chants and a complete Kyriale. All of these books are newly typeset and more affordable than their competitors.

Pay a visit to his website: https://justitiasbooks.com/.

Benedictine Martyrology Back in Print after a Century

La Gloria di S.Benedetto by Pietro Annigoni (1979), showing the Patriarch surrounded by his multitudinous offspring.

I am excited to share with readers the latest reprint offered by my modest publishing enterprise Os Justi Press. (It has been awhile since we’ve added titles, as I’ve been busy with other projects, but don’t forget to have a look at the online catalogue—including the anthology John Henry Newman on Worship, Reverence, and Ritual, Parsch’s The Breviary Explained, Guardini’s Sacred Signs, Fr. Willie Doyle’s incomparable pamphlet Vocations, the illustrated Missal for Young Catholics, the best editions of Robert Hugh Benson’s The King’s Achivement and By What Authority?, the pocket edition Roman Martyrology, and many others!)

Speaking of martyrologies, many NLM readers will know that the great religious orders preserve records not only of all their members who have gone over to the eternal country, but also and in a more particular way of those who have died in the odor of sanctity and are venerated either universally or locally as models and intercessors.

For obvious reasons—it has been around for much longer, and its contemplative and liturgical way of life is entirely structured for prioritizing the pursuit of sanctity—the Benedictine Order numbers more saints, blesseds, venerables, and reputed holy men and women than any other in the Church, especially if we include the many later branches and reform movements that, called by various names, take Benedict’s Holy Rule as their own.

This is why it gives me extraordinary joy to announce the republication, for the first time in nearly a hundred years, of A Benedictine Martyrology. Published in 1922 and basically impossible to find on the used book market, this book is Alexius Hoffman’s English translation and adaptation of the Rev. Peter Lechner’s Ausführliches Martyrologium des Benedictiner-Ordens und Seiner Verzweigungen [Detailed Martyrology of the Benedictine Order and its Branches], published in Munich in 1855. The original was published in cloth; this reprint is paperback, but with a simple and formal cover design:

The volume is catholic in its criteria, containing not only the “classic” black monks but members of reforms and branches such as the Order of Citeaux, of Camaldoli, of Vallombrosa, of Monte Oliveto, of Monte Vergine, of Fiore, of Pulsano, and of La Trappe, the Celestines, the Humiliati, and the Congregations of Cava and Cluny, as well as military Orders and eminent benefactors. Weighing in at a substantial 350 pages, with over 1,500 entries, it is a worthy supplement to the Roman Martyrology, a moving testament to the greatness of the spiritual family inaugurated by the holy twins Benedict and Scholastica.

The book gathers succinct biographies of men and women who lived according to or in the ambit of the Rule of St. Benedict and who died with a reputation for heroic virtue and sanctity, including both those officially beatified or canonized and those who received local veneration. Note that, unlike the Roman Martyrology, which is little more than a list of names, places, and a salient fact or two, the Benedictine Martyrology devotes anywhere from one paragraph to a whole page to the life of each man or woman recorded. In that sense, it is a sort of “mean” between the Roman Martyrology’s pithiness and the multi-page treatments in The Golden Legend or Butler’s Lives. Each day has usually four or five entries, covering three quarters of a page to a little over a page. In this way, it would serve admirably for daily reading after the Office of Prime or at some other convenient moment.

The Benedictine Martyrology is available from Amazon.com (link) and its affiliates.

Here are the first three pages from the month of December:

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A 15th Century Gospel Book

On Tuesday, I published a piece with the illustrated pages of an epistle lectionary produced at the end of the 15th century, or very beginning of the 16th, according to the Use of Amiens, another of the endless treasures on the website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The same couple who donated it to the church of St-Martin-au-Val near Amiens, a mayor of Amiens named Antoine Clabault, and his wife, Ysabel Fauvel, also commissioned a Gospel lectionary (Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. Ms-661 réserve), but from a different artist, who is known from one of his other works as the Master of the Dresden Hours. The 13 illustrated pages here are all for the same liturgical days as in the epistle book. It is not altogether clear to me what is happening in a few of the marginal images, and I will be happy to hear suggestions from readers in the combox.

The First Sunday of Advent. In many medieval Uses, especially in the north of Europe, the Gospel for this Sunday was that of the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem, Matthew 21, 1-9, which is shown here in the main panel. At the upper right, Christ preaches in the temple; below that, the apostles get the donkey. At the bottom, angels play trumpets and a drum, while another holds the coat of arms of the mayor.

Christmas Day: the Adoration of the Shepherds. At the upper right is depicted a legendary episode which was very popular in the Middle Ages, in which one of the pagan prophetesses known as the Sybils shows a vision of the Virgin and Child to the Emperor Augustus. Below that is the appearance of the angel to St Joseph, followed by the appearance of an angel to Gideon (Judges 6). This last one is included because the episode of the fleece at the end of the same chapter has traditionally been understood as a prophecy of the virginal Incarnation, as stated in one of the antiphons of the Circumcision: “When Thou wast born ineffably of the Virgin, then were the Scriptures fulfilled; like the dew upon the fleece Thou camest down, that Thou might save the human race; we praise thee, O our God!”; the fleece is seen at the bottom of the circle. On the left side are shown in descending order the Saints whose feasts follow Christmas, Ss Stephen, John the Evangelist, and one of the Holy Innocents, with his mother weeping over him. Note the very elaborate jeweled framework around the initials A and Y for Antoine and Ysabel at the bottom; the artist is much more creative in these parts than his counterpart who did the Epistle book.

The Epiphany, with the flight into Egypt and the Wedding at Cana on the left, and the Baptism of Christ below.

Easter Sunday, with the Appearance to St Mary Magdalene and the Supper at Emmaus on the left.

The Ascension, with the Descent into Hell at the upper right; I am unsure about the episode in the panel below that. The small panel shows St Mark the Evangelist, whose Gospel is rarely read in the Roman Rite, but does have two of the most important major feasts, Easter and the Ascension.

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A 15th Century Lectionary

Here is another interesting find from the website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, an epistle lectionary according to the Use of Amiens, dated 1475-1505. (Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. Ms-662 réserve). It was donated by the mayor of Amiens, Antoine Clabault, together with his wife, Ysabel Fauvel, to a church near Amiens called St-Martin-au-Val; the initials of their first names appear on each of the 14 illustrated pages. The anonymous illustrator, whose work is of very high quality, is referred to as the Master of Antoine Clabault.

The First Sunday of Advent: in the main panel, two prophets, Micah and Isaiah, with two sybils, the pagan prophetesses of the Greco-Roman world who were also believed to have prophecied the coming of the Messiah. On the side, the prophet Habakkuk and another sybil.

The Epistle for the Third Mass of Christmas, which begins with the words “God, who, at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets.” (Hebrews 1, 1) In the main panel, King Nebuchadnezzar (who, like many monarchs in medieval art, goes to bed without taking off his crown), has his dream of “a stone cut out of a mountain without hands” (Daniel 2, 34), which was understood by the Fathers as a prophecy of the Virgin Birth. At the lower left, the setting up of the golden statue, and above, the three children thrown into the furnace, from chapter 3. 

The Epiphany: King Solomon receives tributes. This subject is determined by Psalm 71, which is sung at Epiphany Matins, and titled “a psalm of Solomon”, specifically in reference to the words of verse 10, “The kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents, the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring gifts.” I confess that I am not sure what is going on in the images in the two small panels at the right, and would be happy to hear explanations of them from our readers. At the bottom, Clabault’s arms are held by a “wild man”, a popular character in the marginal illustration of Books of Hours.

UPDATE: TB has correctly identified the scenes in the panels on the right as the episode narrated in 2 Samuel 23, 14-17, and its parallel in 1 Chronicles 11, 16-19, of the soldiers who bring King David water from the cistern of Bethlehem during a siege; it is not clear why this subject should be chosen for the Epiphany.

Easter Sunday: three stories from the Book of Jonah.

The Ascension: in the main panel, the ascent of Elijah in the fiery chariot (4 Kings 2); in the side panels, Elijah and the widow of Sarephta (3 Kings 17, 8-16).

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How to Incorporate the Traditional Roman Martyrology into Daily Prayer

A brilliant example of manuscript illumination: the Martyrology of Usuard

Earlier today, I posted about four new reprints from Os Justi Press, one of which is a pocket edition of the Roman Martyrology in the English translation of its last preconciliar edition, which is once more in demand as Summorum Pontificum continues its unstoppable progress.

I recommended incorporating the Martyrology” into one’s daily prayer life. But how exactly do we do this?

The Roman Martyrology is an official liturgical book of the Catholic Church that has a simple ritual of its own. While only a relatively small number of saints are celebrated or commemorated with full liturgical honors (so to speak) at Holy Mass and in the Divine Office, a great many other Saints [1] are carefully recorded in, remembered through, and called upon by the reading of the Martyrology each day after the canonical hour of Prime, [2] as part of the so-called “capitular office.” It is a long-standing custom to read the following day’s saints, because the Church is preparing us to celebrate First Vespers that evening, which begins the observance of those saints. (E.g., on the morning of September 13, we announce the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, because its First Vespers will take place that evening, and historically, First Vespers bore even more “weight” than Second Vespers.)

After praying the final oration of Prime (“Domine, Deus omnipotens” / “O Lord God almighty, Who hast brought us to the beginning of this day”) and the “Benedicamus Domino / Deo gratias,” one opens the Martyrology to tomorrow’s date.

In English:
The reader begins forthwith by announcing the day of the month, and the listing of saints. At the end he always says: 
And elsewhere, many other holy martyrs, confessors, and holy virgins.
R. Thanks be to God.
V. Precious in the sight of the Lord:
R. Is the death of His saints.
(Then immediately, without saying “Let us pray”)
May holy Mary and all the Saints intercede for us with the Lord, that we may merit to be helped and saved by Him who lives and reigns forever and ever.
R. Amen.

In Latin:
R. Deo gratias.
V. Pretiosa in conspectu Domini:
R. Mors sanctorum ejus.
Sancta Maria et omnes Sancti intercedant pro nobis ad Dominum, ut nos mereamur ab eo adjuvari et salvari, qui vivit et regnat in saecula saeculorum.
R. Amen.

That’s all there is to it. (If you are looking to do the capitular office in full, I suggest picking up a copy of the Breviarium Romanum or, for those interested in the Benedictine tradition, the Monastic Diurnal, where you will find more information.)

May God bless us, and may all the holy angels and saints of God intercede for us!

NOTE

[1] Not all Saints are included in the Martyrology; there are a large number of saints on a multitude of Eastern calendars, both pre-schism and uniate, who are not to be found in the Roman Martyrology. On the other hand, there is a surprising amount of overlap between the traditional Roman calendar and many Eastern calendars, a feature that is sorely lacking in the reformed (Novus Ordo) calendar. This article is not the place to go into the question of the neo-Martyrology of 2001/2004 that has been extensively revised in accord with reformist principles. Interested readers may wish to consult a guest article by Dr Jeremy Holmes published six years ago at NLM: “Remembering the Saints.”

[2] Some readers might be wondering: “But hasn’t Prime been abolished?”
       As Wolfram Schrems explains in this important article, neither a pope nor an ecumenical council has authority to abolish a liturgical rite of immemorial tradition. Thus, the fact that Sacrosanctum Concilium “suppressed” the office of Prime (as opposed, e.g., to merely regulating who must say it or when and how it should be said) is sufficient to demonstrate the presence of a radical constructivism at the heart of this document, an authoritarian rationalism that subordinates tradition to the volitions of momentary hierarchs.
       It is therefore fitting that the Office of Prime, together with the capitular office that follows it, be recovered by Catholics today, not only because it is highly practical in its duration and themes, but also because it is a sign of refusing to accept the bad hermeneutic underlying Sacrosanctum Concilium. It goes without saying that Summorum Pontificum’s revival of the preconciliar Roman Breviary (which includes Prime) is a further application of Benedict XVI’s general principle: “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place” (Letter to Bishops, July 7, 2007).
       It bears mentioning that Prime is still part of the Eastern rites (proving once again that the reform moved the Latin Church further away from, not closer to, the East); fortunately, Prime continues to be celebrated by some Benedictines, since the Council did not dare to legislate directly against the Rule of St Benedict.

Visit www.peterkwasniewski.com for articles, sacred music, and classics reprinted by Os Justi Press (e.g., Newman, Benson, Scheeben, Parsch, Guardini, Chaignon, Leen, Roguet, Croegaert).

Liturgical Books at Christ Church, Oxford

Yesterday, the pilgrimage group of the Schola Sainte-Cécile visited the library of Christ Church, Oxford; among the items on display were a couple of particularly interesting liturgical books. The first is the only extant printed copy of the Antiphonary for the Divine Office according to the Use of Sarum, printed in Paris in 1519.

Christmas Eve (photo by Henri de Villiers)

The second, perhaps even more interesting from an historical point of view, is this late 15th century Epistolary, with letters in the classicizing style preferred by the Italian humanists, rather than the Fraktur types seen above. This is the Epistle for St Thomas of Canterbury; note that the words “sancti Thome Martyris” in the rubric have been partly effaced. After breaking with Rome, King Henry VIII ordered a complete damnatio memoriae of St Thomas; all churches and chapels titled to him had to be renamed for the Apostle Thomas, and every trace of his feast suppressed. In this case, as in many others, the effacement of the rubric was clearly not done in a very thorough way, since many people in England believed that the storm would eventually pass, and all things would be restored to their rightful place.

Christ Church was originally founded as Cardinal College in 1525 by Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England. (The latter position was also once held by St Thomas of Canterbury.) This galero of his was stored for many years in the royal wardrobe, where it was found by Gilbert Burnet, the Anglican bishop of Salisbury, who gave it to his son, who gave it to his own housekeeper, who gave it to the butler of a countess, who gave it to his mistress, who gave it to the writer Horace Walpole, the 4th Earl of Orford. When items from Walpole’s estate were sold off, it was bought by a famous Shakespearean actor named Charles Kean (1811-68), who wore it when he played Cardinal Wolsey in Henry VIII. It was acquired by Christ Church in 1898.

Other items of religious interest: a very small Vulgate of the “Parisian” recension, a mass-produced (so to speak) edition made on cheaper paper and written in a very small and highly abbreviated script for the use of students at the Sorbonne and the other great medieval universities (13th century. The braided rope is used so that people can keep the book open without touching it, since there is always oil on the fingers, which is very bad for paper and parchment.)

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