The Gospel Book of St Henry II (Part 2)

This is the second set of images from a Gospel book commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor St Henry II and his wife St Cunegond at the beginning of the 11th century. (today is his EF feast day.) It was made at the abbey of Reichenau for the cathedral of Ss Peter and Paul in Bamberg, Germany, a see which they founded. See the first part (which was published on Monday, his OF feast day) for some explanation of the artistic style.

By the time this was made, the common portrayal of Christ which we use today, with long hair, a full beard, and high cheek bones, was already standard, although not the universal standard. Here, He is shown throughout as beardless and younger, which suggests that the artists at Reichenau may have deliberately copied these images from an older prototype, possibly much older, possibly Byzantine. Also note the lack of depth and naturalism so typical of Ottonian art in the figure of Christ sitting at the table of the Last Supper, with legs that have no anatomical relationship whatsoever to His torso. The lower part shows the washing of the disciples’ feet, the Gospel of Holy Thursday in the Roman Rite (John 13, 1-15.) In the corner, one of the Apostles is shown putting his shoes back on, a gesture of realism which also suggests that the artist, who does very little of this kind of thing elsewhere, also worked from a prototype of an older artistic school closer to the naturalism of the ancient Roman tradition.

The first image accompanying the Passion of St John on Good Friday (chapters 18 and 19). In the lower part, Christ is brought before the high priest Caiaphas. Having no notion of what a Jewish priest might look like, the artist has shown him more or less as any magistrate sitting on a throne; were it not for the rending of his garments, (which is recounted in the passions of Matthew and Mark, but not in John’s), we might well think he was Pilate. In the upper part, the Crucifixion: as was commonly done in the early Middle Ages, Christ the King is seen on the Cross fully awake and in triumph, rather than suffering. Note that neither His head nor arms nor torso slumps down, to indicate that even in the midst of His Passion, He is still the creator and sustainer of the universe.

On the second page, the deposition from the Cross and the burial, with the sun and the moon shown covering their mouths and looking away, to convey their astonishment and horror.

The Gospel of Easter, with the myrrh-bearing woman...

and the Angel.

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Interesting Liturgical Sights on a Recent Trip to Europe (1): Vienna and Environs

In May, my daughter and I visited a few places in Austria and Italy, and while I wasn’t much of a shutterbug (I’m trying these days to leave my camera mostly unused), I’ll admit that I pulled it out whenever I saw something that I thought NLM readers might enjoy seeing. As usual, click on the images to enlarge.

The ceiling of the sacristy at Heiligenkreuz Abbey. Note how the tormentors of the three children in the fiery furnace are sporting turbans, a reminder that the Turks once ransacked this abbey.

For a place that’s supposed to help priests become recollected for Mass, the interplay between this priest and his server is rather funny!

The Pummerin of Stephansdom in Vienna, the third largest bell in Europe at 44,380 lbs or the weight of 15-20 cars; its metal is from 208 Turkish cannons melted down after the Siege of Vienna.

Our guide took us up to the perimeter of the Stephansdom roof to give us a close look at the tiles.

Here’s the huge room under the Stephansdom roof, above the vaulted nave of the church - it's almost the size of a church in itself.

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The Use of Sarum Book of Hours: Beautiful 14th-Century English Illuminations

A Model for Artists Today

I was recently made aware of this remarkable collection of English medieval illuminations through Hilary White’s Sacred Images Project Substack, and I was immediately struck by the quality of the draftsmanship. Looking at these images, it became clear to me that these are among the finest models I have encountered for artists who wish to learn to draw and paint in a style appropriate for the renewal of sacred art in our own time.

The Annunciation

The Sarum Use and Its Living Descendants

Before turning to the images themselves, it is worth pausing to consider what this Psalter actually is - it is significant in a way that resonates today. 

The Sarum Use was a distinctly English form of the Roman Rite, developed at Salisbury and prevalent across much of England throughout the medieval period, right up to the Reformation. This particular Psalter belongs to that tradition. 

This gives these illuminations a particular resonance with Christians in the Anglo-American world. The Psalter from the Book of Common Prayer, called the Coverdale Psalter - after Miles Coverdale, who translated the text into English in the 16th century - is a liturgical descendant of the Sarum Use of the Roman Rite. It is the Psalter that generations of Anglicans have prayed, and which continues to be prayed today. It is approved for use by Catholics (in the 1928 revision used by the Anglican Ordinariates), Orthodox, and many Protestant denominations. All share a living connection to the liturgical world that produced the images shown here. To look at this Psalter is, for many of these Christians, to encounter a visual companion of their contemporary daily worship.

Woman and Bishop (identities unkown)

The School of St Albans — Broadly Understood

I have referred in the past to the tradition these images represent as the School of St Albans, though I use that phrase in a more generic sense than art historians might. Strictly speaking, the School of St Albans refers to the English illumination of the early Gothic and late Romanesque period, particularly the work of the 13th-century monk Matthew Paris, who worked at St Albans Abbey. His style can be seen in manuscripts such as the Westminster Psalter and in the wall paintings that still survive in English churches.

This Psalter was likely not produced at St Albans; it comes from elsewhere in England. The Cambridge Digital Library, which provided the images, suggests that it is likely somewhere in southeast England, either Lincoln or East Anglia. But it still contains the essential elements of the style as I have described it: the primacy of line in describing form, a limited palette, and an emphasis on flat coloration rather than blended tonal modeling. Whether we call it the School of St Albans or simply the English medieval tradition, this manuscript is a full expression of it!

These limitations in stylistic features, which distinguish it from naturalistic forms of art, are its strength. As a result, the style sidesteps what I consider the blight of so much modern sacred art: sentimentality. When you cannot render every gradation of light and shadow, you are forced to think clearly about form, about meaning, and about what is essential. Line demands clarity, while tonal naturalism invites sentiment. The School of St Albans offers artists today a discipline that might hold sentimentality at bay!

St Catherine and St Margaret

What to Notice in These Images

As you look at these beautiful reproductions from the Psalter, there a couple of points I would make:.

Consistent with the broader Western tradition of sacred art, there is a heavy emphasis on beautiful, ornate patterns in the borders, backgrounds, and across the surface of the image. This richly ornamented flatness is distinct from what we encounter in much contemporary Byzantine iconography, for example, which tends toward greater austerity in those areas that could be decorated.

St George

At the same time - and here is an example of how the English tradition converges with the Byzantine - the content follows traditional customs. Notice, for example, how the Nativity is depicted. St Joseph is portrayed as significantly older than Our Lady: by tradition, he was a widower, and is depicted in imagery as set apart from the Virgin and Child in the Nativity. This deliberate distancing signals his temporary doubt about the Virgin Birth. Contemporary depictions of St Joseph in the Roman church, on the other hand, tend to portray him as a young and vigorous man.

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The Gospel Book of St Henry II (Part 1)

The Holy Roman Emperor St Henry II, who died on this day in the year 1024 (born May 6, 973), together with his wife St Cunegond of Luxembourg (975-1040), founded the Bavarian see of Bamberg in 1007. (Prior to his imperial coronation in 1014, he was the Duke of Bavaria.) For the consecration of the cathedral, he commissioned a Gospel book from the monastery of Reichenau, one of the most important Benedictine abbeys in the empire, and the center of an important contemporary school of painting and manuscript illumination. The manuscript (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 4452) has 28 full-page illustrations, and a great many decorated letters, although these latter are all quite similar to each other. This first article will show the illustrations up to Palm Sunday, and some other pages that exemplify the various kinds of decorations. The second part will include the illustrations from Holy Thursday to the end.

Henry was the last of the imperial dynasty which is called “Ottonian” from the name “Otto” shared by its first three emperors, a dynasty which ran from 919 to his death in 1024. The art of the Ottonian period moves strongly away from the naturalism of the classical world which the Carolingian era that preceded it sought to imitate. The human figures are stylized, mostly without expression or depth; the backgrounds are no more than bands of color, very often gold, since this is decidedly a luxury production. The contrast is immediately noticeable when one compares the late Carolingian ivory (ca. 870) on the front cover, looking at the highly naturalistic figure of Christ on the Cross, with the flatness of the figures in the image of Henry and Cunegonde being crowned by Christ.

The ivory plaque shows (from top to bottom; click to enlarge) the hand of God the Father coming down from heaven, with the sun and moon to either side, symbolically represented as figures driving chariots; three angels above the Cross; the Crucifixion, with the mourners and the soldiers, and Joseph of Arimathea speaking to Pilate (Joseph is shown as a nobleman of the early 11th century, carrying a war banner); the women at the tomb (a three-storied structure); the dead rising from their tombs, and symbolic figures of the sea, earth and underworld giving up the dead. At the corners of the gold frame are the symbols of the Four Evangelists in enamel medallions, and between them, slightly smaller enamels of Christ and the Twelve Apostles. Around the edge of the ivory runs an inscription written by someone anxious to show off his knowledge of Greek vocabulary.

“Grammata qui sophie querit cognoscere vere
Hoc mathesis plene quadratum plaudet habere.
En qui veraces sophie fulsere sequaces,
Ornat perfectam Rex Heinrih stemmate sectam.

He who seeks to know the letters of true wisdom / will rejoice in possessing this square (object) of the fullness of learning. / Behold those who shone forth as true followers of wisdom; King Henry adorns this perfect school with a crown.”

The dedicatory inscription, by which St Henry offers the Gospel book to the Apostles Peter and Paul, the titular Saints of Bamberg Cathedral.

“Rex Heinricus ovans, fidei splendore coruscans,
Maximus imperio fruitur quo prosper avito,
Inter opum varias prono de pectore gazas
Obtulit hunc librum, divina lege refertum,
Plenus amore Dei, pius in donaria templi;
Ut sit perpetuum decus illic omne per aevum.
Princeps aeclesiae, caelestis claviger aulae,
Petre, cum Paulo gentis doctore benigno
Hunc tibi devotum prece fac super astra beatum
Cum Cunigunda, sibi conregnante serena.
Hoc Pater, hoc Natus, nec non et Spiritus almus
Annuat, aeternus semper Deus omnibus unus.

King Henry, rejoicing, shining with the splendor of the Faith, / very great in the rule of his grandfather which he successfully holds, / among the varied treasures of his riches, from his heart inclined / offers this book, filled with the divine law, / being full of the love of God, dutiful in giving to the temple, / that it may be an everlasting glory there through every age. / Prince of the Church, key-bearer of the heavenly court, / Peter, with Paul, kindly teacher of the nations, / by your prayer, make this man devoted to you blessed above the stars, / with Cunigonde, his serene co-ruler. / May the Father, and the Son, and also the kindly Spirit / approve this, the one eternal God, ever above all.”

Christ crowning Ss Henry and Cunegonde, who are attended by Ss Peter and Paul. (The lack of depth characteristic of Ottonian art is particularly noticeable in the misplacement of St Paul’s arms.) Below are personifications of the provinces of the Empire; the three larger are probably meant to be Gaul, Italy and Germany, and the smaller, lower ones the German duchies of Bavaria, Swabia, Franconia, Saxony, Lower and Upper Lorraine. Over the upper scene is written,

“Tractando justum, discernite semper honestum.
Utile conveniat, consultum legis ut optat.

Doing what is just, always discern what is honorable; / may that which is useful fit with what the law requires.”

Below, “Solvimus ecce tibi, Rex, censum jure perenni.
Clemens esto tuis; nos reddimus ista quotannis.

Behold, we pay thee, o king, tribute by perennial law. / Be merciful to thine own; we render these things every year.”

The Four Evangelists, each accompanied by his traditional symbol and a poetic inscription. For St Matthew, “Res notat hic hominis Mathaeus, scriptor herilis. - This Matthew, the Master’s writer, notes the deeds of the man.”

St Mark: “Ut leo voce fremit, Marcus dum talia scribit. - As Mark writes such things, he roars like a lion.”

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Protestant Our Father

In his post yesterday on the embolism, the prayer which follows the Lord’s Prayer in the Mass, and builds off its concluding words, Dr Foley noted that something of the sort is found in all Western liturgies, and several Eastern ones. For example, the ancient liturgy of Jerusalem, known as the liturgy of St James, or Hagiopolite Rite, has the priest say in the analogous place, “And lead us not into temptation, o Lord, Lord of hosts, who knowest our weakness, but deliver us from the evil one, and from his works and his every assault and devising, though Thy holy name, that hath been invoked upon our low estate.”

He then concludes with this doxology: “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and forever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.” This latter part is also said in the Byzantine Rite, not only at the Divine Liturgy, but also at the many occasions when the Lord’s Prayer is said in the Office. Partly under Byzantine influence, it has been adopted by various other Eastern rites as well.

This addition is extremely ancient, already attested in germinal form (“for Thine is the power and the glory forever”,) in the Didache, ca. 100 A.D. The names of the three Divine Persons were added to this formula later, in the wake of the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries. Likewise the word “kingdom”, for the same reason that the words “whose kingdom shall have no end” were added to the Nicene Creed, in response to the heretic Marcellus of Ancyra, who taught that Christ would cease to be after He had delivered the eternal kingdom to God the Father.

Matthew 6, 9-13, the Lord’s Prayer with the doxology, in a Greek manuscript of the Gospels with interlinear Latin translation, commonly known as Codex Δ; originally written ca. 850 AD at the monastery of Bobbio in northern Italy, now in the library of the monastery of San Gallen in Switzerland. (Cod. Sang. 48, p. 33; https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/0048, CC BY-NC 4.0)

There is an interesting story of how this Eastern liturgical addition became part of the standard way of saying the Lord’s Prayer among English-speaking protestants. There are many manuscripts of the Gospel of St Matthew which include one version of it or another at chapter 6, verse 13. This is found not just in Greek, but also in a few manuscripts of the old Latin versions, three of the four Syriac translations, in Armenian and Coptic, etc. On the other hand, it is missing from the oldest and most important witnesses to the text of the New Testament, such as the codexes Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, and one of the most important ancient translations, St Jerome’s revision of the old Latin. The first Latin commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, that of St Cyprian, also makes no mention of it. The consensus of modern scholarship recognizes that it is a later addition.

The first printed Greek New Testament was put together by the famous humanist scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), issued in 1516, and revised four times over the following 19 years. But the manuscripts which he and his collaborators had to work with were few, late, and by modern standards bad. The great uncials codices such as the two named above were completely unknown to the West, nor had any of the Egyptian papyri yet been discovered which in more recent times have proved such valuable witnesses to the original text. Erasmus, judging from what he had in his manuscripts, included the doxology at Matthew 6, 13 in his edition, from which it passed into various protestant versions, including the King James Bible, and from that to the Book of Common Prayer. And thus an eastern liturgical interpolation came to be commonly said as if it were part of the prayer itself.

In the movie Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, there is a scene in which the main character, Capt. Jack Aubrey, leads a funeral service for sailors killed in a battle on an English military vessel. At approximately 2:00:45, the whole company recites the Lord’s Prayer together; at the words “give us this day,” the camera moves to show the other main character, Aubrey’s friend and the ship’s doctor, Stephen Maturin, who is Catholic. When they reach “for thine is the kingdom”, Maturin stops speaking, since the addition of those words was a protestant custom which he would not observe. I am certain that this must have been deliberate, even though Maturin’s Catholicism isn’t noted in the film, since the actor who plays him, Paul Bettany, is English, was raised Catholic, and would have known this. (I am not the first person to have noticed this. In this excerpt, Maturin appears at 00:44.)

The Solemnity of St Benedict 2026

Vir Domini Benedictus ferrum de profundo resiliens Gotho reddidit, dicens: * Ecce, labora, et noli contristari. V. Vix enim manubrium misit ad lacum, ferrum de profundo rediit, quod reddens dixit: Ecce. Gloria Patri. Ecce. (The 4th responsory of the Solemnity of St Benedict in the Monastic Breviary.)

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

R. Benedict, the man of God, returned to the Goth the iron that leapt up from the deep, saying, * Behold, work on, and do not be sad. V. For scarcely did he put the handle near the lake, and the iron returned from the deep; and giving it back, he said, Behold... Glory be... Behold.

In the Second Book of St Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, dedicated to the life and miracles of St Benedict, this episode of a miracle also performed by the Prophet Elisha (4 Kings 6, 1-7) is recounted thus in chapter six:

(A) certain Goth, poor of spirit, came to conversion (i.e., became a monk) whom the man of God Benedict most gladly; and one day, commanded him to take ... a sickle, and cut away the briars from a certain plot of ground, so that a garden might be made there. Now this place, which the Goth had undertaken to clear, was by the side of a lake, and while he was cutting away the cluster of briars with all his strength, the head of the sickle flew off the handle and fell into the water, in a place where it was so deep that there was no hope of getting it back. The Goth, in great fear, ran to the monk Maurus, and told him what he had lost, confessing his own fault, and Maurus went to the servant of God Benedict and told him. Therefore, the man of God Benedict went to the lake, took the handle from the Goth’s hand, and put it into the water, and soon the iron head came up from the deep, and entered again into the handle (of the sickle), which he returned at once to the Goth, saying, ‘Behold, work on, and be sad no more.’

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

A 6th-Century Ivory Episcopal Throne

A friend of mine recently visited the Italian city of Ravenna, a port city on the Adriatic coast, about 50 miles directly east of Bologna. In the 5th century, this city became the capital of the waning western Roman Empire, and from the later 6th century to the middle of the 8th, was the seat of the Byzantine imperial governor of Italy, known as the exarch. Several of the city’s churches famously preserve important mosaics from this period.

Here are my friend’s photographs of an interesting monument of the same period, a throne decorated with carved ivory panels, which belonged to an archbishop of Ravenna named Maximian (499-556), who held the see for the last ten years of his life. The throne was made in the first half of the sixth century in either Constantinople or Alexandria. The panels on the back depict episodes from the life of Christ, and those on the side show episodes from the life of the patriarch Joseph; between them are panels with decorative vines interspersed with animals. This is now kept in the archepiscopal museum of Ravenna, and, of course, behind protective glass, which makes for less than ideal photography.

On the front panel beneath the seat are shown St John the Baptist and the four evangelists, with the name archbishop’s name in Greek, Maximianos, arranged in a monogram above St John. 

A detail of the decorative motif in the panel beneath.

Episodes from the life of Christ on the back.

The Annunciation

The dream of St Joseph, and the journey to Bethlehem.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Embolism

Lost in Translation #165

After the Lord’s Prayer, the priest says:

Libera nos, quaesumus, Domine, ab omnibus malis, praeteritis, praesentibus et futuris: et intercedente beata et gloriosa semper Virgine Dei Genitrice María, cum beatis Apostolis tuis Petro et Paulo, atque Andrea, et omnibus Sanctis (signing himself with the paten), da propitius pacem in diebus nostris (kissing the paten): ut, ope misericordiæ tuæ adjuti, et a peccato simus semper liberi et ab omni perturbatione securi.

Which I translate as:

Deliver us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, from all evils, past, present, and future; and through the intercession of the Blessed and glorious ever Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, and Thy blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, as well as Andrew, and of all the Saints (signing himself with the paten), graciously grant us peace in our days (kissing the paten), so that aided by the assistance of Thy mercy we may always be free from sin, and safe from all disturbance.

The name for this prayer is the Embolism (from the Greek embolismos, an addition or interpolation). Most Eastern Rites and all Western ones (Roman, Ambrosian, Gallican, Mozarabic) have one. The exception is the Byzantine Rite, which instead “adds” a Trinitarian ending: “For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and forever and unto ages of ages.” In the Roman Rite, the Embolism is said in a low voice except on Good Friday, when it is said aloud, perhaps to add urgency to the petition on that sorrowful day.

All Evils

The Roman embolism develops the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer. As we saw last week, since Latin lacks a definite article, Sed libera nos a malo can be translated “But deliver us from evil” rather than “But deliver us from the Evil One.” The embolism expands upon the nature of evil, asking for deliverance from all evils, past, present, and future. As Fr. Nicholas Gihr explains:

Of past evils, sins especially often continue to abide in their painful consequences, in their unhappy results and fruits the latter, therefore, should be totally removed and obviated. In the present we are pressed down by evils from within and without, from all sides, and from these we wish to be delivered. The future is frequently enveloped in darkness, and in its bosom conceals a host of threatening evils and from these we would beg to be spared. [1]

Four Saints

The Embolism seeks the intercession of all the saints, but it singles out four: the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Apostles Peter, Paul, and Andrew. As with the Confiteor, the prayer follows the ancient usage of calling some of the saints “Blessed” (beati) rather than “Saint” (sancti): in the Confiteor, it is Michael the Archangel and John the Baptist. In the Embolism, the usage is particularly appropriate since in asking for peace, the Embolism is essentially asking for happiness, and Beatus literally means “made happy.” We seek happiness with the aid of those who have been made happy in the light of glory.

The Church naturally turns to the Mother of God (as she does throughout the Mass) as her chief saintly intercessor, and the Church of Rome naturally turns to her own two founders, Peter and Paul, as she does elsewhere (see the Confiteor and the Suscipe Sancta Trinitas and the Prayers after Low Mass). It is thought that Pope St. Gregory the Great is the one who added Saint Andrew’s name to the Embolism, and three reasons are typically given for his decision: first, that Gregory had a personal devotion to Andrew; second, that Andrew is the next ranking Apostle after Peter and Paul (see the Communicantes); and third, that Gregory was influenced by the Byzantine Rite, which praises Andrew as the founder of the Faith in Constantinople. [2]

Yet none of these reasons explains why Gregory added Andrew’s name to this prayer and not someplace else. I believe the answer lies in the role that Andrew plays in the Gospels. Andrew is the Apostle who brings others to Christ. It was he who introduced his brother Peter to Jesus, (John 1, 40-42) and it was he who, along with Philip, tried to introduce some Gentiles to Jesus. (see John 12, 20-22) Moreover, Andrew is the Apostle who helps make an encounter with the Eucharistic Lord happen, for it was he who introduced the boy with the five loaves and two fishes to Jesus. (see John 6, 8-9) Just as Andrew is instrumental in a foreshadowing of the Eucharist (a miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes), so too do we ask him now to be instrumental in preparing us for Holy Communion.

And our author/editor could have written Petro, Paulo, et Andrea but instead he wrote Petro et Paulo, atque Andrea. Atque is a conjunction with “adversative force”: whereas et “designates an external connection of different objects with each other,” atque in general indicates “a close internal connection between single words or whole clauses.” [3] Here, however, it is possible that the word stresses Andrew’s importance vis-à-vis Holy Communion, in which case it could be translated “and especially Andrew.” [4]

Evil vs. Peace

The prayer follows the pattern of “out with the bad, in with the good.” The bad that we want out is evil; the good that we want in is peace. One may wonder why we do not petition for a more natural opposite of evil, such as goodness or holiness. I suspect that there are two reasons. First, peace is the opposite of evil insofar as evil robs us of our peace. And second, we ask for peace as a preparation for Holy Communion because peace, as Augustine famously defines it, is the tranquility of order. [5] A soul that is truly at peace is a soul that is well ordered and thus maximally receptive to the graces of the Eucharist.

But the prayer also has in mind our welfare outside of Holy Communion. The ultimate goal of being delivered from evil and granted peace is to be free from sin always (our spiritual welfare) and to be secure from all disturbance (our temporal welfare). The word perturbatio can refer to a political disturbance such as a riot or a tumult, [6] or to a personal disturbance, as in a state of mental agitation. (The English derivative “perturbation” retains both of these meanings, although the political meaning is now considered obsolete.) [7] In On Genesis against the Manicheans, St. Augustine writes about perturbations in such a way that the passage almost seems to be an embolism of the Embolism:

This is the happy and tranquil life for man: when all his emotions are in accord with reason and truth, and they are called joys and loves: holy and chaste and good. But if they are not in accord while they are being ruled negligently, they rip the mind to pieces and dissipate it and make life utterly miserable. Then they are called perturbations and lusts and evil desires. [8]

Gestures

The gestures of the priest as he recites the Embolism add further meaning to the prayer. At the words, “graciously grant us peace in our days,” the priest makes the sign of the cross with the paten over himself, and when he finishes, he kisses the top of the paten. St. Paul tells the Colossians that Christ reconciled all things to Himself, “making peace through the blood of His cross” (1, 20), and here the sign of the cross draws the blessing of peace purchased by the cross: we can almost picture the priest’s perturbations getting reordered and pacified as the sign is made over him. The priest then kisses the paten before he places it under the Host and moves the paten and Host to the right of the chalice. A kiss is a sign of peace (and indeed the kiss of peace is to be given shortly at a Solemn High Mass), and the paten will soon assume the significance of the Holy Sepulcher, holding the Body of Our Lord. The priest’s kiss is thus a tender tribute to our Lord in the tomb. Further underscoring this symbolism is the placement of the Host to the right of the chalice, as the last drops of Blood that flowed from Our Lord came from His right side.

The Novus Ordo

During the creation of the Novus Ordo Missae, Pope Paul VI expressed a wish to keep the Embolism intact, but Annibale Bugnini and his peers did not accept his suggestion on the grounds that “it did not seem appropriate to repeat intercessions made a few moments ago in the Eucharistic Prayer.” [9] Both the Eucharistic Prayer I (the Roman Canon) and the Embolism are from the Patristic era, which according to Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium, was supposed to function as the gold standard for the ensuing liturgical reforms. [10]. Instead, Bugnini appealed to another principle from the same document, the elimination of “useless repetitions.” [11]. The only problem is that the intercessions in the Embolism are not a repetition of those in the Canon; they are distinctive.

And so, the 1970 Missal made several changes to the Embolism. First, it was to be said aloud always and not just on Good Friday. Second, a version of the Byzantine ending (also found in some Biblical manuscripts at Matthew 6, 13), “For the kingdom, the power and glory are yours, now and for ever,” was added, in part because of its “ecumenical value” – not, we speculate, in order to draw closer to the Byzantine Rite, but to be more aligned with Protestant services. [12] Third, the invocation of the four saints was removed, thus eliminating a “scandal of particularity” characteristic of all Apostolic liturgies. [13] Fourth, a reference to the Parousia was added in order to rescue “the embolism from a kind of ‘horizontalism.’ ” [14] Huh? And fifth, the tender gestures involving the paten were omitted.

Vernacular translations further flattened the Embolism. For the rich perturbatio, the first ICEL version used “protect us from all anxiety.” Anxiety is very much on the mind of modern man (fair enough), but the word is not a faithful transposition of what our spiritual ancestors meant by a perturbation. Fortunately, the 2011 ICEL fares much better with “safe from all distress,” which keeps both the personal and political connotations of the noun intact. For though we live in an age of psychological anxiety, we also live (and have always lived) in a time of political uncertainty. It would surely be a blessing and a great source of peace to be safe from all disturbances within and without.

Notes

[1] Gihr, 702.

[2] See Jungmann, 285-286.

[3] “Atque or ac,” Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary.

[4] See Ibid., I.B.b.

[5] City of God 19.13.

[6] See the Vulgate translation of 2 Machabees 13, 16.

[7] “Perturbation, noun,” OED, 1.a. and 1.b.

[8] De Genesi contra Manichaeos libri duo 1.31, trans. mine. Following Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations 4, 5, 10, Augustine holds that perturbation is the Latin equivalent of the Greek pathos. (City of God 8.17) Augustine also follows the Stoics and Cicero in defining the four disturbances (perturbationes) of the mind as desire, joy, fear, and sadness (see Conf. 10.14.21; Cicero, De finibus 3.10.35; Disputationes Tusculanae 4.6.11).

[9] Bugnini, 380.

[10] Sacrosanctum Concilum, 50.

[11] Ibid., 34.

[12] Bugnini, 376.

[13] See Peter Kwasniewski, The Once and Future Roman Rite (TAN Books, 2023), p. 228, n. 15. For his thoughts on the Embolism, see here.

[14] Bugnini, 376.

The Votive Mass of St. Thomas More

Portrait of Sir Thomas More, by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1527

In the 1969 General Calendar, the celebration of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More is an optional memorial on June 22, whereas in England and Wales it has the rank of a feast. Neither appeared on the universal calendar prior to that date, but in England and Wales their combined feast was celebrated on July 9 after they were both canonized in 1935. (Yes, it took four hundred years for these heroic men to be raised to the altar). I suspect that the reason for the choice of July 9 was practical. St. John Fisher was martyred on June 22, 1535, but in the 1935 General Calendar late June was rather full: June 22 was the feast of St Paulinus of Nola, and the first available feria day was not until June 27. St Thomas More, on other hand, was martyred on July 6, 1535, the Octave of Saints Peter and Paul. (More himself considered it an honor to die on the same day as St Peter, to whose See he had remained loyal at all costs). Because July 7 is the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius and July 8 that of St Elizabeth of Portugal, the first “free day” after July 6 was July 9.

In addition to a July 9 Mass for Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, which can be celebrated in the dioceses of England and Wales, there is a Votive Mass of St. Thomas More. Although it does not appear in the 1962 Roman Missal, it has been celebrated before outside of England without raising too many eyebrows (see here). Moreover, its propers are an excellent example of how the traditional liturgy tailors its petitions and lessons to the “genius” of a particular saint. [1]

The Introit is:

In Thy strength, O Lord, the just man shall joy: and in Thy salvation he shall rejoice exceedingly: Thou hast given him his heart’s desire. Ps. 20, 4 For Thou hast prevented him with blessings of sweetness: Thou hast set on his head a crown of precious stones.

These verses (Ps. 20, 1-4) are used as the generic Introit for a Martyr who is not a Pontiff, but the verse about coming before the martyr (the meaning of “preventing him”) with the blessings of sweetness holds special meaning in reference to the gentle St. Thomas More, and it anticipates a key theme of the Collect, which is:

Deus, qui beáto Thomæ Mártyri inter sǽculi illécebras et cárceris mortisque dolóres hílari fortíque ánimo crucem tuam amplecti tribuisti: concéde, quǽsumus, ejus intercessióne et exemplo, ut pro fide et justitia alácriter decertantes, ad æterna gaudia læti perveníre mereámur. Per Dóminum.

Which I translate as:

O God, who didst empower blessed Thomas Thy Martyr, amidst the allurements of the world and the pains of prison and death, to embrace Thy cross with a merry and courageous spirit: grant, we beseech, that by his intercession and example we may be quick to fight for faith and justice, and so, filled with cheer, deserve to attain eternal joys.

It is an excellent description of the witty and playful Saint. Erasmus famously called Thomas More a “man for all seasons” because he was the kind of man you wanted and could depend on in any circumstance or situation. He was a joy to be around. And his generous heart was quick to forgive, as he did when his judges condemned him to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. (Henry VIII had the sentence reduced to a beheading the night before his execution). Rather than express outrage at the unjust verdict and recoil at the gruesome way he thought he was to die, More prayed that they would all meet “merrily together” one day in heaven. The adjective hilaris, which I have translated as “merry”, is the perfect word to describe More. It is the only time that it appears in the traditional liturgy. [2]

The choice of II Maccabees 6, 18-28 for the Epistle is also distinctive: the only other time it appears in the traditional liturgy is the combined feast of Fisher and More. The passage tells the story of an old and pious scribe named Eleazar who was told by the Hellenistic occupiers of Israel to eat swine’s flesh or be executed. Eleazar chose a “most glorious death” over a “hateful life,” but his friends, moved by a “wicked pity,” suggested a clever way out: he could eat something that only looked like pork and thereby not violate the Law of Moses. Without delay Eleazar replied that it was not becoming for a man his age to dissemble, and that he would be giving bad example to the youth. “And having spoken thus, he was forthwith carried to execution.”

The Martyrdom of Eleazar the Scribe, by Gustave Doré; public domain image from Wikimedia Commons. 

The reading is perfect for the two martyrs but especially for More. His most famous work, Utopia, is proof that he could be a master of dissembling when he wanted to. The ironic fantasy fiction is written in such a way that the bitter truth about political life is cleverly hidden by “honeyed” absurdities. (See his Letter to Peter Giles). And after his resignation from the Chancellorship of England, More could have remained quiet, but he continued to write veiled critiques of Henry VIII’s decision to marry Anne Boleyn and declare himself head of the Church of England. It is possible that a shrewd lawyer like More could have found a loophole in the Oath of Supremacy, but instead of using a casuistic approach, he followed the path of Eleazar, even though he was not an old man but at the height of his skills.

The Gospel reading, Matthew 10, 34-42, is equally appropriate, for among other things it contains the verses: “And a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me.” Thomas More truly and sincerely loved his country’s father, the King, but he did not love Henry more than God.

The Secret is:

Hoc sacrificium redemptiónis nostræ, quǽsumus, omnípotens Deus, clementer réspice: et intercedente beáto Thoma Mártyre tuo, pro hac familia tua placátus assúme. Per Dóminum.

Which I translate as:

Look mercifully, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, on this sacrifice of our redemption: and by the intercession of blessed Thomas, Thy Martyr, graciously accept it on behalf of this Thy household. Through our Lord.

The prayer uses language that is common in Secrets: “Graciously accept,” for example, appears thirty-one times in the Secrets of the 1962 Roman Missal either as benignus assume or, as here, placatus assume. Nor is it unusual to refer to the Church as God’s household or family (familia), but in the over hundred times that the word appears in the Roman orations, it is in the Collect or the Postcommunion rather than the Secret.

The Postcommunion is:

Sint tibi, omnípotens Deus, grata nostræ servitútis obsequia: ut hæc sancta quæ súmpsimus, intercedente beáto Thoma Mártyre tuo, nobis ad capessenda pérpetis vitæ prǽmia profícere sentiámus. Per Dóminum.

Which I translate as:

O Almighty God, may the homage of our service be pleasing unto Thee, with the result that, by the intercession of blessed Thomas, Thy Martyr, we may feel these holy things which we have received bring about a snatching up of the rewards of perpetual life. Through our Lord.

Again, the language is and is not familiar. Petitions to feel the effects of the Eucharist (sentiamus) are common in Postcommunion prayers, but the construction of this prayer is unusually elaborate, as is the use of the verb capesso (snatch up, seize eagerly), which is nowhere to be found in the 1962 Missal. I wonder--and this would take a much more extensive study to confirm--if the diction is an implicit homage to the Renaissance humanist Latin in which More excelled.

In 1929, G.K. Chesterton wrote that “Thomas More is more important at this moment than at any moment since his death, even perhaps the great moment of his dying; but he is not quite so important as he will be in about a hundred years’ time.” As we approach the centenary of GK’s prophecy, let us pray that an increased use of the well-crafted Votive Mass of Thomas More will duly reflect the Saint’s ever-growing importance in the world today.

Notes

[1] For instance, the new Missal takes all the propers of the feast from the Common of Martyrs, with the sole exception of the Collect. And the Collect, aside from mentioning Fisher and More by name, could easily be used for any martyr since it has nothing distinctive about their lives. The new Collect is: “O God, who in martyrdom have brought true faith to its highest expression, graciously grant that, strengthened through the intercession of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, we may confirm by the witness of our life the faith we profess with our lips. Through our Lord.”

[2] It appears once in the 2002 Missale Romanum, in the Oratio super Oblata for St. Philip Neri on May 26. The 2011 English edition translates the word as “cheerfully.”

Photos from the CMAA 2026 Sacred Music Colloquium

We are glad to share some photos from the liturgical celebrations held last week during the Church Music Association of America’s 36th Annual Sacred Music Colloquium at the St. John Newman Center at the University of Illinois in Champaign. The event took place from June 22 to 26, and drew over 200 participants, who gathered to learn more about the Church’s treasury of Sacred Music through chant, polyphony, and organ repertoire.

On Tuesday, June 23, a Votive Mass of the Holy Angels was celebrated in English and Latin, with a new English Mass Ordinary, the Missa Mystica, commissioned by the CMAA and composed by Christopher Mueller. The propers were sung in both English and Latin by the Men’s Schola, directed by Dr. David Hughes, and by the Women’s Schola, directed by Fr. Mark Bachmann, OSB. Our section-leader ensemble was directed by Paul French, who sang a motet by Guerrero, while Christopher Berry directed all the participants in singing a motet by Peñalosa. The organist for this Mass was Michael Olbash.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Historian Breaks New Ground in Vatican II Research, with Special Attention to Liturgical Reform

People today often ask questions like: “What in the world happened at the time of Vatican II, that the Church seemed in such an unholy hurry to change? Why were the changes so drastic and so sudden? What were the causes, the motives, the expectations, the assumptions about reform and its expected fruits? Who were the main actors? Was it planned out or random? Who benefited (cui bono)? How responsible were the bishops for it, versus the middle managers, versus the laity?” and so forth. It can be very hard to disentangle so many threads.

This is why professional historians exist. Professor Hanael Bianchi has spent 10 years researching, at the nitty-gritty level, how Vatican II was received and implemented in a particular (and very important) diocese, using archival materials, period documents, and firsthand accounts. The resulting book, A Liberal Revolution: The Implementation of Vatican II in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, will leave a permanent mark henceforth on all studies of the period.

Bianchi answers the above questions, one after the next – and brings the receipts. In an era of endless podcasting and spitballing, the disciplined work of research is more necessary than ever if we wish to gain a well-documented and well-organized account of complex events, while overturning faulty theories and clumsy generalizations from (…yes…) every part of the ecclesiastical spectrum.

While the Second Vatican Council has generated a large scholarly corpus, A Liberal Revolution is the first close-up history to be written of a single diocese in the years immediately following it. Using the see of Baltimore as a case study and drawing exclusively on primary sources, Bianchi reconstructs how the decrees of the Council in faraway Rome – and, more tellingly, the new ideas and attitudes prompted by it – were implemented and experienced on the local level, in parishes, seminaries, religious communities, retreat centers, and chancery offices.

The claim that the Church “embraced the modern world” after Vatican II is well known; this book sharpens it by focusing specifically on liberalism as the framework through which implementation took place. The study begins by tracing the dismantling of inherited traditions, then turns to the rise of individualism within Catholic life and governance, before arriving at its most original contribution: an analysis of the emergence of a dense church bureaucracy that embodied and enforced a liberal worldview.

Although the story told in these pages is a tragedy, A Liberal Revolution is no polemic; rather, it is a work of careful historical analysis grounded in years of research. It will not only contribute to the scholarly understanding of Vatican II and its aftermath but also offer guidance to Catholics seeking a path toward genuine renewal, grounded in a thorough and accurate assessment of what actually happened. Understanding the whats, hows, and whys of postconciliar disruption – a topic that, so far from fading into the past, has grown to be a most urgent task for the present – finds in Bianchi a uniquely capable guide.

NLM readers will find especially valuable Part 1, “Attack on Tradition and the Rise of the New,” divided into “The Priesthood Revolts,” “Novelty in Music and Architecture,” and “Liturgical Confusion.” Among other topics, Bianchi's presentation of the data concerning how the different age groups reacted to new policies shows that radical change was in fact extremely popular with the younger set of seminarians and priests (at least, until they left the seminary or the priesthood, as many of them did), and, at the same time, that diocesan policies repeatedly found ways to empower these reformatory forces while marginalizing older priests who were skeptical of the changes or even wished to continue with the traditional Mass in Latin. There is also liturgically relevant material in Parts 2 and 3.

Famed sociologist Dr. Stephen Bullivant, Professor of Theology and the Sociology of Religion and Director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at St. Mary’s University in London, calls A Liberal Revolution “a richly detailed account... an impressive piece of scholarship, beautifully written, very compelling, and highly recommended.”

Dr. Anne Hendershott, Professor of Sociology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, concurs: “With historical precision and narrative force, this book shows how reforms reshaped Catholic life in unexpectedly negative ways, with consequences that still reverberate through the Church today.”

Veteran journalist and founder of the Catholic Culture site, Philip Lawler, finds in the book a crucial tool for understanding the bureaucratic mentality that has morphed into synodality: “[Bianchi documents how] the post-conciliar era saw a spectacular proliferation of offices, boards, and commissions at the diocesan level. This new bureaucracy developed its own interests in spurring change, regardless of either the formal directives of the Council or the wishes and needs of the faithful.”

Finally, poet and liturgist Barry Spurr sums up the effusive reactions of the book’s initial readers: “The importance and necessity of this book cannot be overstated. Bianchi reveals the destructive effects of the late 1960s mindset at the parochial level.”

A Liberal Revolution is available in paperback, hardcover with dust jacket (both pictured here), or ebook, either directly from the publisher Os Justi Press or from any Amazon site around the world. At both places, you can “look inside” to read the Introduction.