A Hymn for Lent, Lost and Restored

The Roman tradition has always been very conservative about the use of hymns in the Divine Office. In most liturgical seasons, there are three proper hymns, one each for Matins, Lauds and Vespers, but many feasts, including some of the greatest solemnities (Christmas, Epiphany, Ascension etc.), have only two. In the Ordinal of Pope Innocent III (1198-1216), the ancestor text of the breviary of St Pius V, Lent is an exception, since it has four hymns, one each for Matins and Lauds, but two for Vespers. Audi, benigne Conditor is said from Monday to Saturday, but Sunday Vespers has its own hymn, Aures ad nostras, an anonymous work first attested in a 10th century manuscript from the abbey of St Benedict on Monte Cassino.

The hymn Aures ad nostras in a breviary according to the Use of Esztergom, the primatial see of Hungary, 1523-24. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 8879)

St Pius V’s reform of the Roman breviary made very few alterations to the established repertoire of musical propers for the Office in all their genres (antiphons, responsories etc.) This hymn was therefore left in its place, with a small correction of the awkwardly arranged opening words (“Ad preces nostras Deitatis aures”), but otherwise unchanged.

In early 1588, Pope Sixtus V established the Sacred Congregation for Rites, and appointed as its first prefect Alfonso Gesualdo, archbishop of Conza in southern Campania, and uncle of the famous composer Carlo Gesualdo. As part of the preparatory work for new editions of the breviary and missal of St Pius, the cardinal wrote to various nuncios in Europe, asking them to canvas the learned men of their respective nations for suggestions as to what might be due for revision. The reports of two different nuncios (Prague and Madrid) contained the suggestion that Aures ad nostras be removed from the Office completely; another (Venice) suggested it be corrected, since its numerous metrical flaws made the Catholic Church look foolish to the Protestant heretics. [1]

This information comes from an article by a chant scholar and canon of the cathedral of Chartres, Fr Yves Delaporte, published in 1907. In the second part, he gives the following information from the notes of the commission that prepared the revised breviary which Pope Clement VIII promulgated in 1602. “The hymn Ad preces nostras... has been removed; it seemed inept in both its choice of words and phrasing, was put together with no account of (metrical) feet or syllables, and further, was superfluous, since in all offices, the same hymn is said at both Vespers, and no other solemn observance... has more then three hymns.” [2]

In the post-Conciliar Rite, however, it has been restored to use, but not in Lent. The first three stanzas serve as the hymn for the Office of Readings on Tuesday of weeks 2 and 4 of the Psalter, and the fifth, sixth and eighth on Wednesday; on both days, it concludes with the same, original doxology. In accordance with the usual censorship of any negative thoughts that might disturb the complacency of Modern Man™ in his splendor, the fourth stanza, which says that “we are submerged beneath the wave of sin” is suppressed, as is the seventh, which refers to the newly unfashionable practice of fasting, and the “thousand vices of the flesh.” Both of these stanzas also contain significant blemishes in their Latinity. Surprisingly, the reference to Satan in the eighth stanza remains in place, and only a few other alterations were made.

This first recording, from the always wonderful Schola Hungarica, begins with the antiphon Media vita, which was commonly sung with the Nunc dimittis at Compline in Lent. The first stanza of the hymn begins at 2:20, in a Gregorian melody, followed by a polyphonic version of the second, and only these two are sung.

The first stanza of the hymn in a musical collection of the 15th century. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Musique, RES-1750)

This English translation is from the collection Pange Lingua by Alan G. McDougall (Burns and Oates, London, 1916.) [3]

Ad preces nostras Deitátis aures, [4] Deus, inclína pietáte sola: Súpplicum vota súscipe, precámur    Fámuli tui.	God, of thy pity,    unto us thy children Bend down thine ear in    thine own loving kindness, And all thy people’s    prayers and vows ascending Hear, we beseech thee.
Réspice clemens solio de sancto, Vultu seréno lámpades illustra: Lúmine tuo ténebras depelle    Péctore nostro.	Look down in mercy    from thy seat of glory. Pour on our souls the    radiance of thy presence, Drive from our weary    hearts the shades of darkness, Lightening our footsteps.
Crímina laxa pietáte multa, Ablue sordes, víncula disrumpe: Parce peccátis, réleva jacentes    Déxtera tua.	Free us from sin by    might of thy great loving, Cleanse thou the sordid,    loose the fettered spirit, Spare every sinner,    raise with thine own right hand All who have fallen.
Te sine tetro mérgimur profundo: Lábimur alta scéleris sub unda: Brachio tuo tráhimur ad clara    Sídera caeli.	Reft of thy guiding    we are lost in darkness, Drowned in the great wide    sea of sin we perish, But we are led by    thy strong hand to climb the Ascents of Heaven
Christe, lux vera, bónitas et vita, Gaudium mundi, píetas immensa, Qui nos a morte róseo salvasti    Sánguine tuo:	Christ, very light and    goodness, life of all things, Joy of the whole world,    infinite in kindness, Who by the crimson    flowing of thy life-blood From death hast saved us,
Insere tuum, pétimus, amórem Méntibus nostris, fídei refunde Lumen aeternum, charitátis auge    Dilectiónem.	Plant, sweetest Jesu,    at our supplication Deep in our hearts thy    charity: upon us Faith’s everlasting    light be poured, and increase Grant us of loving.
Tu nobis dona fontem lacrimárum, Jejuniórum fortia ministra; Vitia carnis millia retunde    Frámea tua.	Grant to our souls a    holy fount of weeping, Grant to us strength to    aid us in our fasting, And all the thousand    hosts of evil banish Far from thy people.
Procul a nobis pérfidus absistat Satan, a tuis víribus confractus: Sanctus assistat Spíritus, a tua    Sede demissus	Bruised by thine heel may    Satan and his legions Far from our minds be    driven, that are guided By the indwelling    of the Holy Spirit Sent from Heaven
Gloria Deo sit aeterno Patri: Sit tibi semper, Genitóris Nate, Cum quo aequális Spíritus       per cuncta,    Sáecula regnat. Amen.	Glory to God the    Father everlasting, Glory for ever    to the Sole-begotten, With whom the Holy    Spirit through the ages Reigneth coequal.

This splendid polyphonic version by the Flemish composer Adrian Willaert (1490 ca. - 1562) has only the odd-numbered stanzas, since it was written to be sung in alternation with the Gregorian melody. (Willaert spent the last 35 years of his life as the Master of the Chapel at the basilica of St Mark in Venice, and is regarded as the founder of the Venetian school of polyphony, which makes great use of multiple choirs.)

[1] Of the hymn’s thirty-six lines, twenty-eight contain mistakes according to the rules of classical Latin prosody.

[2] Les Hymnes du Bréviaire Romain de Pie V à Urbain VIII, 1568-1632; Rassegna Gregoriana, Nov.-Dec. 1907, col. 495-512; cited by Dom Anselmo Lentini OSB in Te decet hymnus, p. 49, with incorrect citation of the first column number (489 instead of 495). Second part, May-June 1908, col. 231-250. (My thanks to Fr Brian Austin, FSSP, for providing me with a copy of the second part.)

[3] This meter is known as the Sapphic stanza, after its inventor, the Greek poetess Sappho (ca. 630-570 B.C.) Each stanza has three lines that run as follows, ⎼⏑│⎼⏒│⎼⏑⏑│⎼⏑│⎼⏒, and then one shorter line, ⎼⏑⏑│⎼⏒, with the primary accents on the long syllables (⎼) at the beginning of each foot. English, however, lends itself more naturally to meters that place the primary accent at the end of a foot, such as the iambic pentameter (⏑⎼ x5); this accounts for the awkwardness of McDougall’s translation in many places, since he retained the meter of the Latin version.

[4] The original wording, “Aures ad nostras Deitatis preces, / Deus, inclina”, abuses the flexibility of Latin word order, and sounds at first blush like it means “O God, incline the prayers of the Divinity to our ears”; hence, the correction to the much clearer (and theologically sounder) “Ad preces nostras Deitatis aures, / Deus, inclina. – O God, incline the ears of the Divinity to our prayers.”

The Third Sunday of Lent 2026

Oculi mei semper ad Dóminum, quia ipse evellet de láqueo pedes meos: réspice in me, et miserére mei, quoniam únicus et pauper sum ego. Ps 24 Ad te, Dómine, levávi ánimam meam: Deus meus, in te confído, non erubescam. Gloria Patri... Oculi mei... (The Introit of the Third Sunday of Lent.)

Introit My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for He shall pluck my feet out of the snare; look Thou upon me, and have mercy on me, for I am alone and poor. Ps 24 To Thee, o Lord, have I lifted up my soul; my God, in Thee do I trust; let me not be put to shame. Glory be... My eyes...

“The third Sunday (of Lent) belongs to confession... which a man must have in two senses, the confession of sin and of praise. For it is by the humility of confession that a man awaits all that he awaits from God, to wit, liberation, and the gift of grace, and all good things, whence the Introit ‘My eyes are ever towards the Lord.’ And it is in the seventh tone, because by the sevenfold grace of the Holy Spirit, a man shall be plucked from the snare of the devil. For through confession, evil deeds are examined, and for this reason, the station is at the church of St Lawrence (in Lucina), who was delivered through confession. ...

the Apostle shows how confession ought to be in the Epistle (Ephesians 5, 1-9) For it must first be in humility, that is, so that we may humble ourselves before God, and thus walk in newness of life. Second, in perseverance, so that a man may not return to his own vomit (2 Peter 2, 22), and that the infamy of sin may be removed, whence it says ‘But let fornication, and all uncleanness not so much as be named among you.’ This happens through perseverance in a good life.” (Durandus, Rat. Div. Off. 6, 47)

Saints Perpetua and Felicity

For over a millennium before the birth of St Thomas Aquinas, March 7th was the feast day of Ss Perpetua and Felicity, two young women who were martyred in the stadium at Carthage on this day in the year 203. Their feast is already noted on the Philocalian Calendar in the mid-4th century, and they are first among the women named in the Communicantes of the Roman Canon, since they predate the other five. They have a Mass in the Gelasian Sacramentary (750 AD) and the Gellone (780 AD), although they are missing from many other liturgical books of the same era, perhaps because March 7 almost always falls in Lent, when the Roman tradition discourages the keeping of too many feasts. They are included in the ordinal of Innocent III (1198-1216), the ancestor of the Tridentine liturgical books.

Ss Perpetua and Felicity (in the middle, directly above the medallion portrait of a bishop), depicted in the company of many other holy women in a 6th century mosaic in the basilica of Sant’ Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY-SA 3.0)

St Thomas died on their feast day in 1274, and was canonized in 1323. Between then and the Tridentine reform, some places moved the martyrs to either the day before or after for his sake, while others moved Thomas for theirs. However, on the calendar of St Pius V’s liturgical books, they are reduced to only a commemoration on Thomas’ day, and so they remained until 1908, when St Pius X restored their full feast, and assigned it to March 6.

The primary source for our knowledge of them is their original passion, which the revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints rightly describes as “one of the greatest hagiological treasures that have come down to us.” This is not only because it gives us an eye-witness account of their martyrdom, one which is universally acknowledged to be authentic, but also because it incorporates a diary which Perpetua kept while she was in prison awaiting execution.

Both women were still catechumens at the time of their arrest alongside three others, Saturninus, Secundulus, and Revocatus, the last a slave like Felicity. (The Roman liturgical tradition, however, celebrates only Perpetua and Felicity by name.) Their catechist, a man named Saturus, soon joined the group voluntarily. Perpetua was only twenty-two, a woman of a noble family, recently married to a prominent man, and a new mother. In her diary, she describes how her father came to visit her, and grew very angry with her when she refused to abandon the Faith; later on, he would return to her and plead with her to take pity on him for the sake of his old age, and likewise on her infant son, whom she was still nursing.

Felicity was in her eighth month of pregnancy, and anxious that she might be deprived of the chance to die as a martyr, since Roman law forbade that a pregnant woman be put to death. The soon-to-be martyrs prayed for her, and after much travail, she was safely delivered of a baby girl, who would then be raised by her sister. While she was in her birth-pangs, one of the prison-guards asked her how she could hope to face the pain of being attacked by wild beasts. To this she replied, “I myself now suffer that which I suffer, but there (i.e. in the stadium) Another shall be in me who shall suffer for me, because I am to suffer for Him.”

The diary also includes extensive accounts of the visions which were vouchsafed to Perpetua during her imprisonment. In one of these, she beheld a ladder of bronze reaching to heaven, fitted out along its rungs with various dangerous weapons, and a serpent at its base, representing the combat she was about to undertake.

A Dutch engraving of St Perpetua’s vision, 1740.

In another, she beheld her brother Dinocrates, who had died very painfully of some kind of ulcer or cancer on his face when he was only seven. In the first vision, he appeared still disfigured, in a dark place, hot and thirsty, but unable to drink from a fountain which was too tall for him to reach, and separated from her “by a great gulf”, (certainly a reference to the story of Lazarus and Dives). From this vision, she knew that she was supposed to pray for him, which she did assiduously, and after several days, she beheld him again, now healed, and able to drink from the fountain, “And being satisfied he departed away from the water and began to play as children will, joyfully.” This is, of course, an incredibly important testimony to the early Christians’ belief in the efficacy of their prayers for the dead.

This was followed by another vision of herself, as if she were a male gladiator in combat, triumphing as the leader of a troop over a large Egyptian and his supporters. Saturus also had a vision of their company in the presence of God and some other martyrs who had recently been burnt alive or died in prison.

The account of the martyrdom itself that follows these visions was written by an anonymous eyewitness. (Some scholars have posited that the author may have been the apologist Tertullian, but this is far from widely accepted.) On their last night, they were given a final meal, which they kept as a Christian agape feast. This was held in a place where people were able to come and gawk at them, but many were deeply moved by their words and behavior, and wound up converting to the Faith.

The Martyrdom of Ss Perpetua, Felicity and Companions, depicted in the Menologion of Basil II (ca 1000 A.D.)

When they were brought to the stadium, the soldiers in charge wished to dress them in the clothing of pagan priests, but backed off from this at Perpetua’s forceful remonstration. Because of their general attitude of rejoicing and bold acceptance of their face, the crowd grew enraged against them, and when they spoke of God’s judgment against the man in charge of the games, the governor Hilarian, he had them scourged, but this only brought them to give thanks at the opportunity to share in one of the sufferings that the Lord Himself had endured.

The men were set upon by wild beasts, a leopard, a bear and a wild boar, but the latter turned upon its keeper and fatally wounded him, while the bear refused to come out of the pen where it was kept, even when Saturus was tied up to a pole in front of it. He was then killed by the leopard. The women were trampled on and tossed about by a savage cow, and after being badly injured, given the coup-de-grace by gladiators. But the soldier assigned to kill Perpetua was inexperienced, and she had to guide his sword to her own throat. The account of their death ends with these poignant words: “Perhaps so great a woman, one who was feared by the unclean spirit, could not otherwise have been slain, had she not herself so willed it.”

Four sermons which St Augustine preached on their feast day have been preserved. In the first of these, he begins by making a play on the martyr’s names, speaking of their joy in heaven, and also refers to the custom which prevailed in many places by which the acts of the martyrs were read during the Mass.

“This day, as an annual recurrence, reminds us, and in a certain way, sets before us the day on which the holy servants of God, Perpetua and Felicity, adorned with the crowns of martyrdom, flourished unto perpetual felicity, holding onto the name of Christ in their combat, and at the same, time, finding also their own names (i.e. “perpetual felicity”.) as a reward. As the account was being read, we heard how they were encouraged by divine revelations, and the triumphs of their passion; we have listened, we have beheld in our minds, we have honored with devotion, we have praised with charity all of their words, as explained and clarified for us.”

The Ambrosian Lenten Litanies

The duomo of Milan as it stands today is the result of a project which began in 1386, to replace the two cathedrals which had hitherto served the see of St Ambrose. The “winter church”, as it is still called in Ambrosian liturgical books, was the smaller of the two, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and used from the Third Sunday of October, the feast of its Dedication, until Holy Saturday; it stood where the modern cathedral stands, but was nowhere near as large. The larger “summer church”, which was demolished in 1543, stood on the opposite end of the modern Piazza del Duomo, and was dedicated to St. Thecla, for which reason her name is included in the Canon of the Ambrosian Mass.

A reconstruction of the cathedral complex of Milan, with the summer church of St Thecla on the left, and the winter church of the Virgin Mary at the right. The octagonal structure in front of St Thecla is the baptistery of St John; the smaller structure beneath it is the baptistery of St Stephen. At the lower right is a partial reconstruction of the interior of the baptistery of St John.

The Ambrosian Rite has several customs which were designed around this arrangement, one of which is a special set of litanies said after Terce on Wednesdays and Fridays of Lent. These litanies have the same structure as those of the Greater and Lesser Rogations: an opening collect; a series of processional antiphons; a litany of the Saints; another collect; another set of antiphons; and then the same concluding formula. On these Lenten ferias, the first set of antiphons was sung as the clergy processed from the winter church over to the summer one, where the litany of the Saints was said as they knelt before the altar; the second set was sung as they returned to the winter church. The proper texts of these litanies vary from day to day, as do the number of antiphons within each set; here are the texts for today, the Friday of the Second Week of Lent. Until 1913, the Ambrosian clergy were required to say these as part of their Office, just as Roman clergy are required to say the Litany of the Saints on the Rogation days, so they are printed in the breviary. This picture is taken from the first post-Tridentine edition of the Ambrosian breviary, printed by authorization of St Charles in 1582. (Click to enlarge and read the Latin text.)

The opening collect: Be present, Lord, to our supplications, and with Thy heavenly aid, through the intercession of all Thy Saints, kindly protect those who hope in Thy mercy. Through our Lord...

Antiphon I In Thee, o Lord, do we hope, let us not be confounded forever; in Thy justice deliver us, and rescue us, that we may not perish.

Antiphon II Lord, for the multitude of our sins, we are not worthy to look upon the height of heaven: destroy us not unto the end with our sins.

Antiphon III Lord, if Thou shalt be wroth against us, what helper shall we find, or who will have mercy upon our infirmities? Thou didst call the woman of Chanaan and the Publican to repentance, and receive Peter as he wept; receive also our repentance, o Merciful One, and save us, o Savior of the world.

Antiphon IV With Thy unassailable wall surround us, o Lord; and with the arms of Thy might protect us always; deliver, o God, of Israel, those who cry out to Thee.

Antiphon V Hear, o Lord, the voices of Thy servants that cry to Thee, and say, ‘Lord, have mercy on us!’, and with the arms of Thy might protect us always; deliver, o God, of Israel, those who cry out to Thee.

Each version of the litany of the Saints is introduced by three Kyrie, eleisons, three repetitions of “Domine, miserere – Lord, have mercy”, three of “Christe, libera nos - Christ, deliver us”, and three of “Salvator, libera nos – o Savior, deliver us.” The names of the Saints are then sung by the cantors, to which all others answer, repeating the names and adding “intercede pro nobis.” (“Sancta Maria. – Sancta Maria, intercede pro nobis.”) In the Roman Rite, the list of the Saints is always the same, although local Saints may be added by immemorial custom; in the Ambrosian Rite, the Saints named in the litany change from one occasion to another.

St Ambrose, 1465-70, by the Sienese painter Giovanni di Paolo (1403 ca - 1482) 

On this day, after the Virgin Mary, the three Archangels are named, followed by St John the Baptist as the last prophet, and St Joseph as the last patriarch; the Apostles Peter, Paul, Andrew, Thomas and Barnabas, whose is traditionally said to be the founder of the see of Milan and its first bishop; the protomartyr Stephen, followed by the local martyrs Nazarius and Celsus, Protasius and Gervasius, Victor, Nabor and Felix, then two Easterners, George and Theodore (both soldiers, as were the three named before them); Faustinus and Jovita, the patrons of nearby Brescia, and Aquilinus; the virgin martyrs Thecla, Agnes and Pelegia; then Galdinus, Charles Borromeo, and Ambrose, who always conclude the litanies in the Ambrosian Rite. The litany ends with three repetitions of “Exaudi, Christe. R. Voces nostras. Exaudi, Deus. R. Et miserere nobis.”, (Hear, o Christ, our voices. Hear o God, and have mercy on us.), and three Kyrie eleisons.
The second collect: O God, who causest all things to benefit those who love Thee; grant to our hearts a disposition of inviolable charity; that desires conceived from Thine inspiration may not be able to be changed by any temptation. Through our Lord...

The processional antiphons for the return to the winter church.

Antiphon I We have sinned, o Lord, we have sinned: spare our sins and save us. Thou who governed Noah upon the waves of the flood, save us, and Thou who called Jonah back from the depth with a word, deliver us. Thou who stretched for Thy hand to Peter as he sank, come to our aid, o Christ, son of God.

Antiphon II Let Thy right hand lift us up straight, whom the weight of sins boweth down, et because we have fallen to the earth, may we be lifted up o Lord, by Thy mercy.

Antiphon III Lord, incline Thine ear and hear us; look down from heaven, and hear out groaning, and deliver us, o Lord, from the hand of death.

The litany concludes with the following formula each day:

Kyrie, eleison (six times)
V. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
R. Gloria Patri. Sicut erat.
V. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
R. Sucipe deprecationem nostram, qui sedes ad dexteram Patris.
V. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

R. Kyrie, eleison. Kyrie, eleison. Kyrie, eleison.

R. Benedicamus Domino. R. Fidelium animae.

“Let My Prayer Rise as Incense” by Dmitry Bortniansky - Byzantine Music for Lent

In the Byzantine Rite, the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated on the weekdays of Lent, but only on Saturdays and Sundays; an exception is made for the feast of the Annunciation. Therefore, at the Divine Liturgy on Sundays, extra loaves of bread are consecrated, and reserved for the rest of the week. On Wednesdays and Fridays, a service known as the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts is held, in which Vespers is mixed with a Communion Rite. (It is also held on the first three days of Holy Week, and may be done on other occasions, but twice a week is the standard practice.)

The first part of this ceremony follows the regular order of Vespers fairly closely, and the second part imitates the Great Entrance and the Communion rite of the Divine Liturgy. After the opening Psalm (103) and the Litany of Peace, the Gradual Psalms are chanted by a reader in three blocks, while a portion of the Presanctified Gifts is removed from the tabernacle, incensed, and carried from the altar to the table of the preparation. This is followed by a general incensation of the church, as the hymns of the day are sung with the daily Psalms of Vespers (140, 141, 129 and 116), the entrance procession with the thurible, and the hymn Phos Hilaron. Two readings are given from the Old Testament (Genesis and Proverbs in Lent, Exodus and Job in Holy Week), after which, the priest stands in front of the altar and incenses it continually, while the choir sings verses of Psalm 140, with the refrain “Let my prayer rise before Thee like incense, the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice.” (The first part of this refrain is also NLM’s motto.)

This particular setting is by one of the greatest Slav composers of music for the Byzantine Liturgy, Dmitry Bortniansky, who was born in 1751 in the city of Hlukhiv in modern Ukraine. At the age of seven, he went to St Petersburg to sing with the Imperial Court Chapel, whose Italian master, Baldassare Galuppi, was so impressed with his talents that he brought him back to Italy in 1769. After ten years of training and work as a composer, Bortniansky returned to St Petersburg, and eventually became himself master of the same choir. His enormous oeuvre includes operas, instrumental compositions, songs in a variety of languages, 45 sacred concertos, and of course a very large number of liturgical compositions in Church Slavonic, like the one given above.

Medieval Art and Liturgical Objects at the Musée de Cluny in Paris (Part 5): Ivories

This is the fifth post in our series of Nicola’s photographs of an exhibition recently held at the Musée de Cluny in Paris, titled “The Middle Ages of the 19th Century - Creations and Fakes in the Fine Arts”. In this post we focus on various kinds of objects made of ivory. In ancient times, ivory was often used to make the diptychs from which were read the names of persons to be commemorated at the liturgy, a custom which continued into the early Middle Ages, and a good number of well-preserved high quality examples of these survive.   

A plaque if the Crucifixion, with allegorical figures of the Sun and the Moon above the Cross, the Church and the Synagogue to either side, (with the Virgin Mary and St John behind them), and the Ocean and the Earth beneath it. Made in Metz, France, ca. 860-70 to decorate the cover of a manuscript.

A copy made in the 19th century.

A triptych of the Adoration of the Magi, with scenes of the Baptism of Christ on the right panel, and the Beheading of the Baptist on the left, with portraits of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabelle of Castille, made by a Catalan art restorer and forger named Francisco Pallás y Puig in the late 19th or early 20th century.

Another Adoration of the Magi, made in Paris ca. 1325-50...

and a 19th century imitation.

Another piece of the 19th century, with a scene of the Annunciation.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

An Interesting Fact About Today’s Lenten Station

Several years ago, I read a very interesting book called Mourning into Joy: Music, Raphael, and Saint Cecilia, by Thomas Connolly. (Yale Univ. Press, 1995). The principal subject is Raphael’s painting The Ecstasy of St Cecilia, but it also contains a great deal of information about devotion to the Saint, at whose basilica the Lenten station is held today. I am here paraphrasing what Connolly writes about this station, and its connection to Cecilia; the credit for putting this information together is entirely his.

The Ecstasy of St Cecilia, by Raphael, 1515-17, now in the National Gallery of Bologna. To the left of St Cecilia we see Ss Paul and John the Evangelist, to the right, Ss Augustine and Mary Magdalene. The broken instruments at her feet symbolize that she has rejected the things of this world in order to “sing only to God in her heart”, as is stated in her Office.

In 1744, three inscriptions were found very close to the Basilica of St Cecilia in the Trastevere area of Rome, referring to a small shrine of the “Bona Dea”, as she was called, “the good goddess.” Although she was quite popular in ancient Rome, we know very little about this goddess, since men were excluded from participation in her cult, and it was forbidden to write down what took place at her two annual festivals. One of these was held at a temple dedicated to her on the Aventine hill, the other in the house of the senior magistrate of the Republic, presided over by his wife. During the rites, all men and male animals were excluded from the house; in fact, “Good Goddess” is a euphemistic name, since men were not allowed to speak or even know her true name. One of the most famous episodes in the history of the late Roman Republic, involving all of the leading political figures of the day, including Cicero, Pompey and Julius Caesar, took place when these rites were held in the latter’s house in 62 BC. A man named Clodius Pulcher dressed as a woman in an attempt to sneak into the rites and seduce Caesar’s wife, creating an enormous and long-lasting scandal.

The Bona Dea was a goddess very much associated with female chastity, and therefore, anything to do with the goddess of sexual desire, Venus, was also removed from the house where the rites of the Bona Dea were held. This would include any statues and images of Venus, and most particularly the plant myrtle, which was woven into crowns and worn on the head by her worshippers at her principal festivals.

When the Lenten Station is held at the Basilica of St Cecilia on the Wednesday of the Second Week, next door to a shrine of the Bona Dea, the traditional Epistle is taken from the Deuterocanonical additions to the book of Esther, the only reading from that book in the Missal. (This reading was later borrowed from this day for the votive Mass “against the pagans.” It has been suppressed in the post-Conciliar rite.) In chapter 13, Mardochai is praying for the delivery of the Jewish people from their enemy Haman, who has arranged for the Persian Emperor to order the massacre of all the Jews in his dominions.

“In those days, Mardochai prayed to the Lord, saying, ‘O Lord, Lord, almighty king, for all things are in thy power, and there is none that can resist thy will, if thou determine to save Israel. Thou hast made heaven and earth, and all things that are under the cope of heaven. Thou art Lord of all, and there is none that can resist thy majesty. And now, O Lord, O king, O God of Abraham, have mercy on thy people, because our enemies resolve to destroy us, and extinguish thy inheritance. Despise not thy portion, which thou hast redeemed for thyself out of Egypt. Hear my supplication, and be merciful to thy lot and inheritance, and turn our mourning into joy, that we may live and praise thy name, O Lord, and shut not the mouths of them that sing to thee, O Lord, our God.’ ” (vss. 9-11 and 15-17)

This is the reading as it appears in the Missal of St Pius V, but before the Tridentine reform, it began as follows: “In those days, Esther prayed to the Lord, saying…” And this, despite the fact that it is Mardochai who offers this prayer in the Bible.

A leaf of a Roman Missal printed at Lyon in 1497. The Mass for today’s station begins in the middle of the right column.

It might seem that by taking the words of a man and putting them in the mouth of a woman, the Church has somehow adopted or absorbed an aspect of the Bona Dea cult when reading these words right next door to her shrine at the Basilica of St Cecilia. This is not the case, however. In chapter 2, 7, it is stated that Esther, (who becomes the Queen of Persia, and saves the Jews from Haman) was called “Hadassah,” (הֲדַסָּה) which is the Hebrew word for “myrtle”, the plant of Venus that was excluded from the rites of the Bona Dea. This would therefore be a deliberate critique of the Bona Dea, and a statement of rejection of the many pagan cults that excluded one class of persons or another.

On the Roman Mass, Don’t Take Your Cue from Fortescue

Separated by over 100 years, with the advantage going to Fiedrowicz

This article is a combined effort of Gregory’s and mine. - PAK

Undoubtedly Adrian Fortescue is a fascinating figure, rather eccentric in some ways (see Aidan Nichols’ biography) – a biting critic of Pius X, e.g., whom he called “an Italian lunatic” – but it must be borne in mind that his liturgical scholarship is somewhat out of date, and actually wrong in certain respects. It is thus a source of near daily frustration to find well-intentioned people online citing his book The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy from 1912 as if it were the final word on the topic, when in fact there are much better resources that have appeared in the last 114 (!) years.

The internet promised to give everyone access to all information, but interestingly, I have noticed that it actually tends in a different direction: it encourages access to what is old because it’s in the public domain, and thus promotes an odd kind of time-trapped referentiality, at least in areas where genuine progress has occurred. Recent books are copyrighted and have to be bought and studied; they can’t be downloaded and searched quite as readily, so they are neglected or not even recognized. Our cutting-edge technology has, in fact, made us lazy regurgitators of low-hanging information.
 

Image courtesy of Corpus Christi Watershed

Fortescue’s gravest error – and the one that would cause the greatest mischief later – is an assumption he shares with many other scholars of his time: namely, that the “original” text and order of the Roman Canon was wildly disturbed over the course of time by any number of omissions, transpositions, rewrites, etc. deliberate or accidental. This simply flies in the face of everything that is attested in all the ancient manuscripts of the Canon, which are astonishingly consistent from one to another, and fundamentally very similar to what we find in the Gelasian Sacramentary, and thenceforth in all pertinent liturgical books of the Roman Rite.

Behind that lies the equally false and equally pernicious assumption that in ancient times, the various major churches (not just Rome) routinely trashed their older, and hence “more authentic” tradition in favor of novelties, feeding into the narrative that this is a routine occurrence and a normal procedure. It is certainly not.

Then, we have the problem that scholars assumed that X, Y, or Z thing which is attested in all the pertinent liturgical books as far back as we have them nevertheless does not represent the “original” (and hence “more authentic”) tradition. They will then be only too delighted to reconstruct that “original” and hence “more authentic” tradition on the basis of various theories. So, e.g., since the Eastern rites make a great deal of the pneumatic epiclesis, but the Roman Rite doesn’t have one, the Roman Rite must “originally” have had one and somehow lost it at some point.

(The late, great, and much-missed Fr John Hunwicke wrote a fine series on that specific topic; you can find all the links in “Reforming the Canon of the Mass: Some Considerations from Fr Hunwicke.”)

In a similar vein, we have the assumption that the Roman Mass must have had two readings before the Gospel, because some of the Eastern rites do (that is false, and there is no evidence for it), and similar extrapolations from the false premise that all rites are descended from a single early and primitive rite; therefore, what one has and another doesn’t must have “fallen out of” the other.

So the whole section in Fortescue on the “liturgical uniformity” of the first three centuries basically needs to be torn out and discarded; it is the opposite of the truth. The historical trajectory is that liturgies begin very varied and diverse, and over time, gradually assimilate to the forms of the nearest dominant see.

He accepts the error, very common in his time, that the Leonine Sacramentary is a sacramentary. It isn’t; it’s a private compilation of libelli Missarum, the Masses composed by the priests of the churches of Rome. Basically, everything they thought they knew about the so-called Apostolic Constitutions in the early twentieth century is wrong.

St. Hippolytus

Anything he says anywhere about “Hippolytus” has to be dismissed if he says it in reference to Rome. The whole Hippolytus construct completely collapsed when Margarita Guarducci presented a key piece of evidence at a conference held in Rome in 1974 that demonstrated the falsity of everything patristic scholars had built up over him before then. Even a figure as progressivist as Fr. John Baldovin candidly admits that there is nothing to the Hippolytus legend on the basis of which the Second Eucharistic Prayer was cobbled together.

When it comes to evidence drawn from the Fathers, one has to check and see if the sermon that is being quoted is authentic. This is an especially big problem with St. Augustine. If a sermon of his witnesses to a particular reading in the Mozarabic liturgy, one needs to check if the sermon was actually written by him, or passed off under his name after that reading had been fixed in the Mozarabic tradition.

Having said all this, I am not arguing that Fortescue’s book on the liturgy is without value; I am simply saying that one must consult more recent and better studies, such as Fr. Uwe Michael Lang’s 2022 book from Cambridge University Press, The Roman Mass: From Early Christian Origins to Tridentine Reform, which covers in superb academic detail all that is known about the development of the Roman rite from antiquity to the Tridentine reform (i.e., AD 33 to 1570). (The original hardcover was very pricey but a paperback edition has finally come out.) Fr. Lang also published A Short History of the Roman Mass in 2024. These works, in their own quiet way, do more to sweep away the misconceptions held by modern liturgical reformers than Fortescue, who never lived to see the awful things done by liturgists after him.

A very accessible one-volume work that accomplishes less in historical detail than Lang, but more in terms of an overall assessment of the “rightness” of the traditional Roman Rite against its attempted replacement, is Patristic scholar Dr. Michael Fiedrowicz’s The Traditional Mass: History, Form, and Theology of the Classical Roman Rite, published in English translation in 2020 by Angelico Press. This is the book I always recommend to people who are looking for a scholarly introduction.

(It bears mentioning that Fortescue’s book The Orthodox Eastern Church, which has been reprinted in a newly typeset edition, remains one of the finest historical, patristic, and ecclesiological investigations of the vexed relationship between Eastern and Western Christianity, and has much to contribute to the newly volcanic apologetics world that has sprouted up online. Unlike his book on the Roman Mass, The Orthodox Eastern Church is out of date only in a charming way, namely, its description of the early 20th-century Orthodox churches, countries, and peoples, which have changed a lot since then.)

A Troped Kyrie from the Use of York

Over the years, we have published a fair number of articles about the medieval Use of Sarum, which predominated in England before the Reformation, but very little about the other English Uses of the Roman Rite, those of York, Lincoln, Bangor and Hereford. So I was very pleased when I stumbled across this video of a troped Kyrie sung during a liturgy according to the Use of York, celebrated at an Anglo-Catholic parish in that city called All Saints. The text is given in the video in both Latin and English; note that the words ‘Kyrie’ and ‘Christe’ are omitted in all but one of the invocations, which is objectively something of an abuse.

As was pretty generally the custom in the Middle Ages, the servers wears appareled albs. Also note that as the Kyrie begins, the chalice is brought in from the sacristy and filled, after which the altar is incensed. The preparation of the chalice during the first part of the Mass in this fashion was also a very common medieval custom, and is still preserved in the Uses of the Dominican and Calced Carmelite Orders.

Why Are Modern Church Buildings So Ugly

And Why Does it Matter?

The following first appeared as an interview in The Catholic Herald. Jan C. Bentz, who conducted the interview, teaches philosophy at Blackfriars College, Oxford.

Los Angeles Cathedral, completed 2002

Dr Bentz wrote:

For many Catholics, the experience is familiar and disquieting: newly built churches that feel more like conference centres than places of worship, stripped of ornament, symbolism, and the Holy. The question of ugliness in modern church architecture is often dismissed as a matter of taste or nostalgia. Yet for David Clayton, artist, educator and one of the most articulate contemporary defenders of traditional Catholic aesthetics, the issue runs far deeper. At stake is not merely style, but theology: how the Church understands worship, the human person and the relationship between beauty and truth.

In this conversation, Clayton argues that modern ecclesial ugliness reflects a loss of Catholic inculturation, a failure of formation, especially in seminaries, and a philosophical rupture that predates the Second Vatican Council by more than a century. Drawing on Benedict XVI, classical harmony and proportion and the liturgical traditions of East and West, he makes the case that beauty is not decoration but necessity: a formative power that shapes belief, prayer and even faith itself.

Jan C. Bentz (JCB): Many modern churches appear deliberately resistant to beauty, ornament and symbolic density. Do you think this widespread ugliness is primarily a failure of taste, or does it reflect a deeper theological, or even anthropological, confusion about what a church actually is?

David Clayton (DC): It is, I would say, a combination of all three. There is certainly a failure of taste, but that failure itself is rooted in something deeper: a loss of awareness of Catholic tradition and of how that tradition is inseparable from theology and anthropology, specifically, the Church’s understanding of what man is and what worship does to him.

We have become dislocated from our own inheritance. That rupture is largely the result of inadequate education and formation among Catholics today, and unfortunately this includes the formation of priests in seminaries, where these questions are often not given the attention they deserve. One of the most significant gaps is a lack of understanding of form, by which I mean not simply what is depicted, but how it is depicted. Style, proportion, harmony and architectural language all express a philosophical and theological world-view.

When this connection is lost, architecture and art are reduced to matters of personal taste. And taste, when it is not properly formed, becomes highly susceptible to contemporary trends and cultural fashion. People end up liking what they think they ought to like, rather than judging according to universal principles. At that point, beauty no longer refers to reality but to preference. That, I think, is at the heart of the problem.

JCB: You mentioned formation, especially in seminaries. Do you think there is an active lack of education in these areas? Should seminaries be more intentional about teaching beauty across architecture, art and music?

DC: Yes, very much so. Seminarians may encounter aesthetics in a philosophical sense, but what is really needed is a deeper Catholic inculturation. They need to be formed within a living tradition, not simply taught concepts in isolation. If you look at Orthodox or Byzantine Catholic priestly formation, the contrast is striking. Their clergy are required to understand what icons belong in a church, how iconographic schemas function and how art, architecture and liturgy work together as a unified whole. They are formed liturgically in a very concrete way. By comparison, Roman seminaries often teach what the liturgy is without sufficiently explaining how architecture, music and visual art are ordered towards it. There is, in short, a significant gap in formation. Without that integration, priests are left unequipped to make informed decisions about church buildings, and the results are all around us.

JCB: Do you see a connection between this loss of formation and a post-conciliar loss of confidence in symbolism, transcendence and tradition more broadly?

DC: Yes, but it is essential to be precise here. This is not the fault of the Second Vatican Council itself. Rather, the Council was used as a pretext by those who already wished to introduce changes, often in ways that directly contradicted what the Council actually taught.

Following Benedict XVI, especially in The Spirit of the Liturgy, I would trace the deeper roots of this problem back to the early nineteenth century. The real issue lies in a distorted understanding of worship itself and in the separation of liturgy from the artistic forms that properly belong to it.

Architecture is not merely a neutral container for worship. The church building actively forms those who worship within it. Its structure, orientation and beauty guide the faithful towards participation in the liturgy. When this formative role is forgotten, worship becomes increasingly internalised and cerebral, almost purely intellectual.

As long as liturgical structures were fixed and immovable, they exercised a kind of corrective force. But once change was permitted without sufficient theological grounding, the floodgates opened. What we saw after the Council was not a sudden rupture but the acceleration of a trajectory long in the making.

JCB: Turning to architecture more directly: are modern movements such as functionalism or Brutalism fundamentally incompatible with Catholic liturgical theology?

DC: Yes, because these movements are grounded in materialist philosophies. They fail to acknowledge the metaphysical and spiritual dimension of the human person. Ironically, they are not even functional in the fullest sense, because they do not fulfil the true function of a church, which includes nourishing the spiritual life of those who worship there.

Utility has been reduced to purely material concerns: keeping out the rain, ensuring audibility and accommodating bodies. Those things matter, of course, but they are not sufficient. Beauty is not optional. It is essential, because it raises hearts and minds to God.

And not just any beauty will do. A railway station can be beautiful, but beautiful as a railway station. A church must be beautiful as a church. Its form must be ordered towards worship, towards encounter with Christ in the Eucharist.

Brutalist architecture, in particular, quite literally brutalises man by reducing him to a creature with purely material needs. Designing a church according to such principles is therefore incoherent.

Traditional harmony and proportion presuppose that beauty is objective, that it is rooted in reality itself, even though it is perceived subjectively. This assumption was undermined by Enlightenment philosophy, especially by Kant’s separation of perception from reality. Once that happens, beauty becomes merely emotional response.

Those ideas eventually filtered into architecture schools. By the mid-twentieth century, traditional harmony and proportion were no longer taught. Interestingly, many architects understood they were rejecting Christianity long before Christians themselves recognised it.

JCB: Defenders of modernist simplicity often argue that it fosters humility and prayer. How would you respond?

DC: Accessibility is important. People should not need a university education to respond to beauty. Traditional forms achieve this remarkably well, but they are not simple. They are complex, in the same way that the cosmos is complex: immediately accessible, yet inexhaustible.

The claim that complexity distracts is ancient. It goes back at least to the iconoclastic controversies, and even figures such as St Bernard worried that beauty might draw attention to itself. But authentic beauty does not trap the gaze; it draws us beyond itself, towards its source, who is God.

Experience overwhelmingly confirms this. The forms that have endured in Christian worship are not simplistic designs but richly ordered ones, capable of forming the soul precisely because of their depth.

JCB: Finally, on a practical level: if a parish or diocese were to build or renovate a church today, what principles should guide the project?

DC: The first principle is to find the right architect, someone deeply immersed in tradition. Whether classical or Gothic matters less than whether the architect truly understands a living tradition. But it is equally important not to reproduce the past uncritically.

Here I follow the guidance of Pius XII and Benedict XVI’s hermeneutic of continuity. We do not change forms unless we must. Modern elements may be incorporated, but only if they genuinely serve the needs of the worshipping community.

The liturgy is the wellspring of Catholic culture. Architecture, art and music must flow from it. Only then can the Church engage modern culture discerningly, rejecting what is harmful and integrating what is good.

If we begin with worship, grace will do the rest. Beauty will attract. And from that beauty, a truly Catholic culture can once again emerge.

San Francisco Cathedral, completed in 1970

The Penitential Psalms in Books of Hours

The seven Penitential Psalms are a standard part of the liturgical material incorporated into Books of Hours, along with the Little Office of the Virgin Mary, the Office of the Dead, and the Litany of the Saints. Of course, many Books of Hours are filled with beautiful illustrations, and as a follow-up to a recent post about the Penitential Psalms in the liturgy of Lent, here is a selection of some of the images commonly chosen to go with them.

From the Maastricht Hours, 14th century (Stowe ms. 17, British Library): Mary Magdalene, the penitent Saint par excellence, meets the risen Christ in the Garden; a woman kneels before her confessor, as the hand of God absolves her from above. The bishop on the right is probably meant to signify that the priest can absolve sins only on the bishop’s authority.

The Maastricht Hours are famous for their repertoire of strange and whimsical marginal images, most of which have no relationship to the text and are not religious in character. Here is an exception, a black bird accompanying the words of Psalm 101, “I am like a night raven in the house.”

Book of Hours according to the Use of Ghent, 14th century. (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 565, Bibliothèque nationale de France.) Christ in Judgment at the end of the world, with the dead rising from the earth, and a figure representing the mouth of Hell.

Book of Hours according to the Use of Paris, late 14th - early 15th century. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 18014.) The Trinity in Majesty, with the symbols of the Four Evangelists. Below, David, the author of the Psalms, in combat with Goliath, a popular subject with the Penitential Psalms.

The Hours of Brière de Surgy, 14th century. (Bibliotheque Municipale de la Ville de Laon, ms. 243q.) King David as an elderly man in prayer.

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The 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Pope Pius XII

Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of His Holiness Pius XII, who was also elected Pope on this day in 1939, his 63th birthday; his papacy would be the 14th longest (among 266 thus far) in history, at 19 years, 7 months and one week. Here are some interesting videos of from reign, from the always interesting archives of the old newsreel company British Pathé.

The celebration of the 17th anniversary of his coronation, in 1956.

Outtake footage from the same report.

That same day was also his 80th birthday.

A report of the coronation itself in 1939.