Liturgical Notes on the Feast of St Peter’s Chains

The Latin name of today’s feast in the Tridentine Missal and Breviary is “Sancti Petri ad Vincula”, which is translated literally as “the feast of St Peter at the chains”, not “the feast of St Peter’s chains” or “of St Peter in chains.” This title is found in the oldest liturgical books which attest to it, and even earlier, in the list of the station churches given by the lectionary of Wurzburg, from the mid-seventh century. (Stations are kept there on the Mondays of the first week of Lent and the Pentecost octave.)

The beginning of the calendar for August in the Echternach Sacramentary. (895 A.D.; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Latin 9433) “On the Kalends of August, (the feast of) St Peter at the chains, and the birth of the seven Maccabee brothers with their mother.”

Like many specifically Roman feasts, it began as the dedication feast of a basilica, which in this case is located on the Esquiline hill, within sight of the Colosseum. When a city has more than one church dedicated to the same Saint, they are often distinguished from each other by nicknames; the appellation “at the chains” would therefore serve to distinguish it from the Vatican basilica. Its great antiquity is demonstrated by the fact that it was restored by Pope Sixtus III in the 430s; an inscription which records the restoration mentions that the building was already considered old, and that the Pope re-dedicated it to both Apostolic founders of the See of Rome.

The breviary refers very obliquely to a tradition stated more explicitly in the Golden Legend and elsewhere, namely, that the Romans dedicated the month of August to honoring the Emperor Augustus’ memory, and that this second feast of St Peter was created to supplant this holiday. It is true that the Latin names for the seventh and eighth months of the year were originally “Quintilis” and “Sextilis”, and that the Emperor Augustus renamed the former for his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, and the latter for himself. However, it is not likely that the cult of “the divine Augustus” was so vibrant in the mid-5th century as to require serious opposition from the Church. There are 32 days between June 29th, St Peter’s principal feast day, and August 1st; this perhaps suggests the tradition that Peter was bishop of Antioch for seven years, and bishop of Rome for twenty-five, a total of 32 as the visible head of the Church, one less than the 33 years of Our Lord’s earthly life.

The breviary lessons for the feast day also give the traditional story of the church’s famous relic. When the Empress Eudocia, the wife of Theodosius II, went to Jerusalem in the year 438, she received as a gift the chain by which St Peter was held in prison under King Herod, as narrated in the Epistle of the feast day, Acts 12, 1-11. She then sent it to her daughter Eudoxia in Rome, who in turn presented it to the Pope. When it was exposed for the veneration of the faithful together with the chain by which Peter had been held during his imprisonment in Rome under the Emperor Nero, the two chains were miraculously united, so as to appear to be a single chain.

Photo by Agnese Bazzuchi, from our 2014 Lenten stations series.

In the year 1706, the painter Giovanni Battista Parodi decorated the basilica’s ceiling with a fresco of a famous miracle attributed to the chains, which is also recounted in the breviary. A count of the Holy Roman Empire was possessed by an evil spirit which caused him to bite himself; when he accompanied the Emperor Otto II to Rome in 969, Pope John XIII placed the chain around his neck, at which the demon was expelled.

Image from Wikipedia by Maros Mraz (click to enlarge.)

Many other miracles have been attributed to the numerous fragments of the chain that were shaved off and given by the Popes as gifts, a practice to which Pope St Gregory refers several times in his letters. A medieval sermon on the feast of Ss Peter and Paul, incorrectly attributed to St Augustine and also read in the Roman Breviary, speaks of this when it says, “if the shadow of (Peter’s) body could then bring help (Acts 5, 15), how much more now the fullness of power? … Rightly is that iron of the chains of punishment considered to be more precious than gold throughout the churches of Christ.”

A feast of St Peter’s Chains, (or “chain” in the singular) is also kept in the Byzantine Rite, on January 16. Its very first chant at Vespers refers to the miraculous healing of both body and soul. “Thou didst bind the deceit (of the devil) when thou wert bound in the Lord, and closed up in prison, o Apostle; therefore with love we honor thee, and with faith we embrace thy chain, drawing from it the strengthening of the body, and salvation of the soul. We praise thee, as our duty, who beheld God, and are like unto the Angels.”

Two other chants of the same day refer to a portion of the chains which was given to the church of Constantinople, and kept in Hagia Sophia itself, as noted in the Synaxarion, the Byzantine equivalent of the Martyrology. The apolytikion (dismissal hymn) of Vespers says “Without leaving Rome, thou didst come to us by the precious chains which thou didst bear, o first-enthroned of the Apostles, which we venerate in faith, and pray, that by thy intercessions before God, He may grant us great mercy.” Likewise, in the Canon of Matins, we read “Thou sanctifiest Rome by the burial of thy holy body, Peter, and by faith enlightenest the New Rome, that keeps thy honorable chain.” And: “The Apostle Peter came forth from Palestine as the bearer of Christ, and having proclaimed him to the world in older Rome, fell asleep, but gave to the New Rome his chain to venerate.”

Despite the antiquity and universality of the feast, it was removed from the calendar in the Breviary reform of 1960. It is hard not to see this as a function of a very modern embarrassment at the very idea of miracles and relics, since the same reform also suppressed the Finding of the Cross, St John at the Latin Gate, the Apparition of St Michael, the Finding of St Stephen’s Body, and St Francis’ Stigmata. It is true that we do not have a chain of custody from St Peter’s time to our own to prove the authenticity of the relics. On the other hand, we should shudder at the implication that so many of our ancestors in the faith were stupidly gullible at best, or liars at worst. St John Henry Newman wrote about this in the Apologia pro Vita Sua; in a note in the appendix “on Ecclesiastical Miracles,” he points out that both Testaments have stories of miracles effected by relics. A corpse is brought to life when it touches the bones of Elisha (4 Kings 13, 21), “and God wrought by the hand of Paul more than common miracles, so that even there were brought from his body to the sick, handkerchiefs and cloths, and the diseases departed from them, and the wicked spirits went out of them.” (Acts 19, 11-12.)

In addition to the relic and the basilica’s dedication, today’s feast also commemorates the Biblical event of St Peter’s release from prison. The importance of this episode is indicated by the fact that the church of Rome chose the relevant passage from the Acts of the Apostles for the text of both the Introit and Epistle, not only for today, but also for June 29th.

When the Apostle was held in prison in Jerusalem, and in danger of being killed by the monarch, he was freed by a direct act of divine intervention. Twenty-five years later, when he was held in prison in Rome, and in danger of being killed by the monarch, he was freed by human intervention, that of his jailers, Ss Processus and Martinian. The Christians of Rome then urged him to leave the city, for fear that he be captured once again, and executed. As he started down the Appian Way, the road leading to the port of Brindisi, where he could find a boat to bring him back to the East, Peter encountered Christ just outside the gates of the city. “And when he saw him, he said, ‘Lord, whither goest thou thus? And the Lord said unto him, ‘I go into Rome to be crucified. And Peter said unto him, ‘Lord, art thou being crucified again?’ He said unto him, ‘Yea, Peter, I am being crucified again.’ And Peter came to himself, and having beheld the Lord ascending up into heaven, he returned to Rome, rejoicing, and glorifying the Lord, for that he said, ‘I am being crucified”, which was about to befall Peter.” (from the apocryphal Acts of Peter.)

This episode, which otherwise would seem to have no connection to the feast, is cited in an antiphon for the Office of St Peter ‘ad vincula’ which was very widely used, although not at Rome itself. “Beatus Petrus Apostolus vidit sibi Christum occurrere; adorans eum et dixit: Domine, quo vadis? Venio Romam iterum crucifigi. – The blessed Apostle Peter saw Christ coming to meet him. Adoring Him, he said, ‘Lord, where art thou going?’ ‘I come to Rome to be crucified again.’ ”

We therefore see in today’s feast that St Peter was freed from prison in Jerusalem because his mission was not finished. He was destined to go to Rome, so that he might preach to all nations, “so that the light of truth, which was revealed for the salvation of all nations, might spread itself more effectively through the whole world from its head.” (Pope St Leo I, first sermon of the feast of Ss Peter and Paul.) The Lord Himself sent him back to the eternal city, choosing it as the place to establish the headship of His Church upon the earth, “the first throne”, as stated above in the Byzantine Office of the feast.

Quo vadis, Domine?, by Annibale Carracci, 1601-2

NLM’s Twenty-First Anniversary

Today is the twenty-first anniversary of the New Liturgical Movement, and as always, we cannot let the day pass without a word of thanks to our founder Shawn Tribe for his nearly eight years of dedication to the site, to our long-time contributor Jeffrey Tucker, who succeeded Shawn as editor, to our publisher, Fr Robert Pasley, to our parent organization, the Church Music Association of America, as well as to the rest of our team, new and old, and our many guest contributors, for all the work they have put into NLM over these many years. And of course, thanks to all of our readers for your support, encouragement and the inspiration you provide to continue our work.

Sometime in May, we passed the 18,000-post mark; past items remain accessible in our archives, although many of the older links within them are now dead, including the link which provided our very first article, a piece by Stratford Caldecott (R.I.P.) entitled, “Why a New Liturgical Movement?”

For your amusement, here are a few screen captures of some of the early designs of the site; after the third one, we’ve stayed pretty much the same. (Click images to enlarge.)

2005-2006

2007

2010

A Drinking Song in Honor of St Germanus, by Hilaire Belloc

Most places which use the Roman Rite keep today as the feast of St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, who died on July 31, 1556. But in the Middle Ages, July 31st was kept in France, England and some other places (although not at Rome) as the feast of St Germanus of Auxerre; Ignatius himself would have celebrated this feast during his years as a student in Paris, along with the earliest members of the Company. A 7th-century church dedicated to St Germanus sits directly in front of the Louvre; his feast is also on the calendars of liturgical books of the medieval French and English Uses.

A state of St Germanus in the Parisian church of St Germain l’Auxerrois (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Mbzt, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Although devotion to him is not as widespread now, St Germanus may well be described as the St Ambrose of the fifth century. Like the great archbishop of Milan, he came from a family of high rank, and after studying law in Rome, served as the civil governor of a Roman province. Like St Ambrose, when the bishop of his provincial capital died, he was chosen to succeed him by popular acclamation, and embraced his new state of life completely; and in that role, he revealed himself as fierce an opponent of the 5th century’s dominant heresy, Pelagianism, as St Ambrose had been to Arianism in the 4th.

Pelagius himself was a Briton, and in the early 5th century his heresy was flourishing in his native place. In 429 Pope St Celestine I and the bishops of Gaul sent Germanus, accompanied by St Lupus of Troyes, to Britain, to combat the heresy; they reduced Pelagius’ followers to silence not only by their overwhelming success in a public debate, but also by their example of holiness and various miracles. St Germanus’ triumph would be capped by a second visit to Britain in 440 to stop a new outbreak of the heresy, after which, (as St Bede will note with pride in the 8th century), Britain remained true to the Catholic Faith until the Reformation.

During his first visit to Britain, the Romanized Britons, whose province had been abandoned by the Roman Empire in 410, were threatened with invasion by the Picts and Saxons. After Easter, as the weather grew milder and an enemy attack seemed imminent, Germanus led the forces of the Britons’ to a place between two mountains with a strong echo. As the Saxons drew near, he had them all shout “Alleluia” as loudly as they could; the resulting noise terrified the Saxons into thinking the Britons’ army was much larger than it really was, and they threw down their arms and fled. In the neo-Gallican Missal of Paris, the Alleluia verse for his feast is chosen based on this story. “Alleluia, I heard the voice of many people, saying: Alleluia. Salvation, and glory, and power is to our God. And again they said: Alleluia.”

The great Catholic writer and apologist Hilaire Belloc, who was French on his father’s side and English on his mother’s, wrote a very funny drinking song in honor of St Germanus and his defeat of the Pelagian heresy; it is included in his novel “The Four Men – A Farrago”, first published in 1911. (Set to a jaunty, countrified tune below, although it breaks off before the end of the text.)

Pelagius lived at Kardanoel
And taught a doctrine there
How, whether you went to heaven or to hell
It was your own affair.
It had nothing to do with the Church, my boy,
But was your own affair.

No, he didn’t believe in Adam and Eve
He put no faith therein!
His doubts began with the Fall of Man
And he laughed at Original Sin.
With my row-ti-tow
Ti-oodly-ow
He laughed at original sin.

Then came the bishop of old Auxerre
Germanus was his name;
He tore great handfuls out of his hair
And he called Pelagius shame.
And with his stout episcopal staff
So thoroughly whacked and banged
The heretics all, both short and tall,
They rather had been hanged.

Oh he whacked them hard,
And he banged them long
Upon each and all occasions,
Till they bellowed in chorus, loud and strong
Their orthodox persuasions.
With my row-ti-tow
Ti-oodly-ow
Their orthodox persuasions.

Now the faith is old and the Devil bold,
Exceedingly bold indeed,
And the masses of doubt that are floating about
Would smother a mortal creed;
But we that sit in a sturdy youth
And still can drink strong ale,
Let us put it away to infallible truth
That always shall prevail,

And thank the Lord
For the temporal sword,
And howling heretics too,
And all good things
our Christendom brings,
But especially barley brew!
With my row-ti-tow
Ti-oodly-ow
Especially barley brew!

A Double Scandal of Particularity

Readers of NLM will be familiar with the concept of the scandal of particularity and how it may be applied to liturgical considerations, namely:

1. The Incarnation is scandalously particular. The universal Logos takes flesh from a particular maiden at a particular time in a particular place to become the person Jesus of Nazareth. 
2. God is also scandalously particular in His love for us, not only in the way that He loves us in our individuality but in the way He reaches out to us—the parents who made sure you were baptized, the friend who gave you a book that changed your life, the time you randomly landed on a Catholic radio station that led to your conversion (all true stories). As Joseph Ratzinger puts it, “God wants to come to men only through other men.”
3. In a healthy liturgy, the scandal of particularity abounds. It is evident not only in its generous use of concrete symbols but in its embrace of its own tradition, that democracy of the dead linking us to the “other men” from the past who handed to us the Faith. Ratzinger noticed, for example, that the traditional Roman Rite is a “mysterious fabric of texts and actions [that] had grown from the faith of the Church over the centuries. It bore the whole weight of history within itself, and yet, at the same time, it was much more than the product of human history.”

In my Lost in Translation series, I often dwell on the scandal of particularity with respect to the Roman Rite’s Romanitas, its conspicuous affirmation and development of its Christian Roman heritage which, rather than creating a myopic insularity, opens up the believer to the universal Gospel. Examples include the use of Rome’s stational churches to shape the liturgical year; frequent petitions within the liturgy to the twin founders of Christian Rome, Peter and Paul; and, of course, the language of the Romans, now conquered, pruned, and repurposed to serve the truth, humbly laboring under the unglamorous sobriquet, “ecclesiastical Latin.”

I have recently learned of another aspect of the Roman Rite’s scandal of particularity: its capacity to work well with other particulars, at least holy ones. Last week I had the privilege of attending a Latin Mass in the Austrian Hospice in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem along the Via Dolorosa, the only TLM currently in the city. As I assisted, the prayers I have been saying or reading for twenty-five years took on a new meaning. A few examples:

“I confess to… blessed Mary ever Virgin,” who was born less than a few blocks east of here, who fell asleep in the Lord at what is now Dormition Abbey three quarters of a mile south, and who was assumed into Heaven at the Tomb of the Virgin a quarter of a mile east of St. Anne’s.

The birthplace of the Blessed Virgin Mary, exterior

The birthplace of the Blessed Virgin Mary, interior

The crypt of Dormition Abbey

Tomb of the Virgin Church, exterior

“I confess to… blessed John the Baptist,” who was martyred at Herod’s desert fortress in Machaerus (east of the Dead Sea in present-day Jordan), and was born five miles west of here, at what is now St. John the Baptist Church.

The birthplace of John the Baptist

“I confess to…Saint Peter,” who learned the Our Father from Jesus Christ in what is now Pater Noster Church on the Mount of Olives (one mile east--see below), who participated in the Last Supper in the Upper Room (one mile south), who slept in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives while Our Lord underwent His agony (about half a mile east), and who denied Our Lord at Caiaphas’ residence, which is now St. Peter in Gallicantu, St. Peter at the Cock’s Crow (over a mile south).

Upper Room/Room of the Last Supper, rebuilt by the Crusaders

St. Peter in Gallicantu

“I confess to… Saint Paul,” who bolted out of the Damascus Gate (about a quarter of a mile north) with a warrant to kill Christians, and came back through the same gate a contrite Christian - the gate that I used to get to this Mass.

“Take away from us our iniquities, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that we may be worthy to go in unto the Holy of Holies with pure minds,” the physical symbol of which once stood on the Temple Mount, less than half a mile southeast of here.

“Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy,” a cry that is conspicuous in Jerusalem for its absence. The Canaanite woman uttered this plea along the coasts of Tyre and Sidon (Matt. 15, 22) and the blind man did the same in Jericho (Mark 10, 47; Luke 18, 38), but there is no biblical record of anyone asking the Son of God for mercy in the Holy City.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will,” the song of the Angels who appeared to shepherds on a hill roughly seven miles south of where I was kneeling (and which I had visited the day before).

“Cleanse my heart and my lips, O almighty God, Who didst cleanse the lips of the prophet Isaiah with a burning coal.” Isaiah was no stranger to Jerusalem. Its fiercest critic, he also rejoiced knowing that the Assyrian assault on the city would be in vain. To Sennacherib their king he relayed the following:

This is the word which the Lord hath spoken of him: ‘The virgin the daughter of Sion hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn: the daughter of Jerusalem hath wagged the head after thee…. When thou wast mad against me, thy pride came up to my ears: therefore I will put a ring in thy nose, and a bit between thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.’ (Isa. 37, 22 and 29)

“He suffered under Pontius Pilate,” a suffering that began when Christ was condemned by Pilate a couple of blocks up the Via Dolorosa from our location and scourged.

“He was crucified for us” on Golgotha, now the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, over a quarter of a mile southwest.

“He was buried. And on the third day He rose again,” also at what is now the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The Tomb of Jesus, inside the church

“He ascended into Heaven” from the Mount of Olives at what is now the Chapel of the Ascension, which reputedly contains the footprints of Our Lord miraculously preserved in limestone and covered with a mysterious oil, about a mile east of here.

“Communicating with and honoring…the memory of Thy blessed Apostle and Martyr James [the Less],” the first bishop of Jerusalem and the second martyr (after Stephen) who was thrown from the pinnacle of the Temple, stoned by an angry mob, and bludgeoned to death with clubs at the base of the Temple Mount.

The Martyrdom of St James, by the Master of the Oberaltaich Mans of Sorrows, early 16th century. Image from Wikimedia Commons, © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / CC BY-SA 4.0

“For this is the Chalice of My Blood of the new and everlasting testament, the mystery of Faith; which shall be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins.” These words were first said in the Upper Room south of here. And while He carried the Cross, Jesus Christ dripped blood onto the street that is now called the Via Dolorosa, upon which I walked in order to get to Mass.

“Upon these deign to look with a favorable and serene countenance and to accept them, as Thou wert graciously pleased to accept the gifts of Thy just servant Abel and the sacrifice of our patriarch Abraham.” Abraham’s virtual sacrifice of Isaac took place on Mount Moriah, which later became the Temple Mount.

“To us sinners also, Thy servants confiding in the multitude of Thy mercies, deign to grant some part and fellowship with Thy holy Apostle and Martyr Stephen,” who was stoned to death at the Lion’s Gate near the Mount of Olives, over a quarter of a mile east.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven.” Our Lord taught this prayer to His Apostles on the Mount of Olives, allegedly in a cave now venerated as a shrine.

Pater Noster Church

One of many translations of the Lord’s Prayer at the church. This one is in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. The Latin version, you will be happy to know, is inscribed on the altar.

“The cave in which the Lord taught His Apostles on the Mount of Olives”

Ecce Deus Sunday

Providence blessed me further when it arranged that I attend Mass on a rare occasion where Roman Catholic and modern Jewish memories intersect. The Church calendar contains several “baptized” Jewish holidays—Good Friday and Easter (Pesach), Pentecost (Shavuot), but all of them were celebrated by Jesus Himself. As far as I can tell, there is only one Jewish “feast day” that the Church commemorates that was instituted decades after Our Lord ascended into Heaven: Tisha B’Av.

Tisha B’Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, usually falls sometime in late July or early August. It is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, for it commemorates the destruction of the second Holy Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 69 as well as the Babylonians’ destruction of the First Temple in 523 B.C. For twenty-five hours, observant Jews do not eat or drink, wear leather footwear, bathe, apply ointments or creams, engage in marital relations or any form of intimacy, sit on a chair of normal height, or greet one another. The sorrow of Jews on this day is reminiscent of that of their ancestors during the Babylonian Exile: “If ever I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand be forgotten.” (Ps. 136, 5)

The priest reading the Sunday Gospel at the Austrian Hospice on the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

The traditional Roman Rite’s Ninth Sunday After Pentecost, which is also celebrated sometime between late July and August, hearkens to Tisha B’av. In the Gospel reading, Our Lord has just made the arduous climb up to the Mount of Olives, which has a breathtaking view of Jerusalem. Before him lies the Holy City and its crown jewel, the Second Temple. But all Our Lord sees is the future, when the Romans legions will starve the city into submission (and cannibalism) and raise the Temple to the ground [1]:

At that time, when Jesus drew near to Jerusalem, seeing the city, He wept over it saying: “If thou also hadst known, and that in this day, the things that are to thy peace: but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side; and beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee; and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou hast not known the time of thy visitation.” (Luke 19, 41-47)

The Gospel reading on the wall of Dominus Flevit Church

One is reminded of another lamentation of Our Lord’s:

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest not. Behold, your house shall be left to you, desolate. (Mt. 23, 37-38)

On the wall of the Salon of the Austrian Hospice

Mosaic on the altar of Dominus Flevit Church

This year, Tisha B’av was on July 22-23. I arrived in Jerusalem just as the Jewish fast was ending. Three days later, on July 26, I attended a Low Mass for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost. As I heard the words of the Gospel, I thought of the Temple Mount within eyesight of the Hospice. The Mount, of course, is not only bereft of its Temple but topped with the Dome of the Rock mosque. As if to echo the eeriness of Jerusalem’s history, during the Offertory and Canon, the silence was broken by the muffled sound of a muezzin’s megaphone praying to Allah from a minaret outside. [2]

The Dome of the Rock from the rooftop of the Austrian Hospice

Moreover, during the Mass I thought of the Dominus Flevit church, the site on the Mount of Olives where Our Lord wept over Jerusalem. I had visited the church the day before, and now I was hearing the Church solemnly proclaim the sacred words that gave rise to it.

Dominus Flevit Church

View of the Temple Mount that the priest has when celebrating ad orientem from the altar of Dominus Flevit Church

Notes

[1] You can read Josephus’ account in The Jewish War or Gueranger’s summary in The Liturgical Year, vol. 11, 215-223.

[2] I confirmed this with one of the congregants after Mass, an Arab Catholic born and raised in Jerusalem. When I mentioned that this was the first time I had heard a muezzin in real life, his face grew solemn and he said: “I have heard one every day of my life.”

N.B. Regarding my choice of words regarding this gentleman, I have been told that while some native Christians are fine with the label “Palestinian,” others are not because, it is claimed, 1) the nationality “Palestinian” is a construct invented by Yassar Arafat, and 2) the construct applies mostly if not exclusively to Muslims. As with everything in the Middle East, opinion on the matter is divided.

The Church of Ss Peter and Paul in Biasca, Switzerland (Part 1)

Our Ambrosian expert Nicola de’ Grandi recently visited the town of Biasca, about 79 miles to the north of Milan in the Swiss canton of Ticino. There are three valleys in the area known as the Ambrosian valleys, which were under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the archbishop of Milan since at least the sixth century, and consequently celebrated the Ambrosian Rite. Many churches in the area still use the rite to this day, even though they are now part of the diocese of Lugano, which was founded in 1888, and is coterminous with the canton. Biasca was the seat of the principal parish and mother church of the region, originally dedicated to just St Peter, later also to St Paul. The current building is the second church to be built on the site, the result of a reconstruction project begun in the second half of the 12th century.

Modern restorations have removed most of the additions made to the building in later periods, especially the Baroque, and revealed a great amount of fresco work is preserved in fairly good condition, and a very nice wooden ceiling with decorations of the Gothic period. This post of Nicola’s photos will focus on the frescos; a second post will show the Romanesque exterior. 

The apse is dominated by a fresco of Christ in majesty with the four Evangelists, each accompanied by his traditional symbol. The images of the two bishops on the sides have been deliberately damaged with an awl to make the surface rougher; a second layer of fresco which was placed on top of them has subsequently been removed.  

To the right of this window is the meeting of St Peter with Christ as he flees from Rome, part of a traditional legend about the Apostle’s career in Rome and eventual martyrdom.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Antipope Venerated as a Saint

The feast of St Martha is kept today with a commemoration of four Roman martyrs named Felix, Simplicius, Faustinus and Beatrix. This commemoration originated as two separate observances, which seem to have been united because St Felix was buried in a catacomb named for him along the via Portuensis, the great ancient road which led to the port of Rome, while the other three were buried further down the same road in the Catacomb of Generosa. In earlier liturgical books, however, Felix is called “Pope Felix II”; this is true even in editions printed in the early 1950s, despite the fact that ever since the 1947 revision of the Annuario Pontificio, he has been officially listed as an antipope.

The Mass of Ss Simplicius, Faustinus and Beatrix, and the Mass of St Felix, who is named only as a Martyr, in the Gellone Sacramentary (folio 97v), ca. 780 AD. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 12048)

Felix was the archdeacon of Rome in the mid-4th century, when the Church, so recently freed by the Emperor Constantine from pagan persecution, was subjected to its first “Christian” persecution by his son Constantius, an ardent supporter of the Arian heresy. In 355, the latter banished Pope Liberius to Greece for his opposition to Arianism, and Felix was consecrated by three Arian bishops to take his place. Although the majority of the Roman clergy apparently did recognize him as their bishop, the laity would have nothing to do with him. Two years later, when Liberius was permitted to return from exile, Felix and his supporters tried but failed to occupy the basilica of Pope Julius I (now known as Santa Maria in Trastevere); he was then banished from Rome by the Senate, never to return. After living for eight years near Porto in quiet retirement, he died in 365.

However, his entry in the Roman Martyrology before 1960 told the story differently. “At Rome, on the Via Aurelia, (the death of) St Felix the Second, Pope and Martyr, who, having been cast out of his see by the Arian Emperor Constantius because of his defense of the Catholic faith, died gloriously at Cera in Tuscany, being secretly slain by the sword.” According to the revised version of Butler’s Lives of the Saints by Herbert Thurston SJ and Donald Attwater, Felix was confused with two persons: first with his rival Liberius, which is difficult to explain, and secondly, with a martyr named Felix who was buried along the Via Aurelia, on which this Felix had built a small church. (Felix was an extremely common name in ancient Rome.) They also note that this confusion is already evidenced in documents of the 6th century. Therefore, the revised liturgical books of 1960, conforming to the updated Annuario Pontificio, eliminate the title “Pope” and the number “II” from his name, and delete his separate entry from the Martyrology altogether, while adding his name to that of the other three martyrs named above.

An engraved portrait of Cardinal Baronius, the frontispiece of a 1624 edition of his Annals. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Jeffdelonge, CC BY-SA 3.0)

What I think is particularly interesting about this is not the hagiographical confusion per se, but rather the way this confusion is treated in the revised Butler’s Lives, which calls it “a sad memorial to the still backward state of critical scholarship at the time when Cardinal Baronius was editing (the Martyrology).” After noting that “(t)he insertion of Felix as Pope and Martyr was not any oversight, for Baronius in his annotated edition of the martyrology refers his readers for an elucidation of the matter to the volume of his great work, the Annales, which was on the point of appearing,” it goes on to ascribe all of the confusion to the Liber Pontificalis, a famous collection of Papal biographies, famously unreliable as an historical document.

It turns out, however, that Baronius’ treatment of the problem is far more detailed and interesting than the brief entry in Butler’s would lead one to believe.

First of all, Baronius did not “insert” Felix into the Martyrology; he was already in the Roman liturgical books (Missal, Breviary and Martyrology) before the Tridentine reform. Moreover, Baronius was perfectly well aware of the historical problem posed by his cultus. In the pre-Tridentine Roman breviary, (which he, as a member of the Roman Oratory, would certainly have used), the first lesson of Matins on July 29th tells the story of Felix II in terms similar to those of the Martyrology entry noted above. It is followed, however, by another lesson which gives the history of Pope St Felix III, who reigned from 483-92, and also staunchly opposed a heresy supported by the Roman Emperor, although he was not martyred for this. The prayer of this Office, however, names only one Felix; this strongly suggests that the compilers of this earlier edition of the Breviary hedged their bets, so to speak, as to which Pope named Felix was actually honored by the feast.

Two columns of a Roman Breviary printed at Venice in 1481, with the lessons for July 29th. On the lower left (“lectio prima”) is the historical lesson for the Felix II, and at the upper right (“lectio secunda”) the lesson for Felix III. Notice that in the title of the feast and in the Collect, only one Felix is mentioned.

In the Tridentine Breviary, both of these historical lessons were completely expunged, along with those of the other three martyrs, and their collective feast reduced to just a commemoration on the feast of St Martha. This change is a clear sign that that the editors, Baronius among them, were aware that the statements contained in the older lessons could not to be regarded as historically reliable.

Turning to the relevant entry in Baronius’ Annals (Liberii ann. 4, 56-58) mentioned in Butler’s Lives, we discover the real reason why the notice of Felix as “Pope” was retained. He points out that Felix was (to borrow an odious turn of phrase from modern politics) personally faithful to the Nicene confession of faith, although he did not therefore separate himself from communion with the Arians or refuse ordination at their hands; this, according to the testimony of two ancient Church historians, Sozomen and Theodoret of Cyrus. Since he was deacon under Liberius, who also held fast to the Nicene faith, Baronius thought it unlikely that the latter would promote a convinced heretic to the important position of archdeacon, or keep him in that role. Furthermore, he explains, Felix must have known that he could not legitimately be Pope if Liberius was unlawfully deposed by a heretical Emperor. It was therefore Baronius’ opinion that Felix had accepted episcopal ordination not as the unlawful replacement of Liberius, but rather as a “chorepiscopus”, the title of a bishop who took care of rural areas without a fixed see in a city; effectively, what we would nowadays call an auxiliary bishop. He would have accepted this role so as to not leave the Church of Rome without governance during the exile of its rightful pastor.

Baronius goes on to explicitly state that “what is said about Felix’s ordination in the book about the Roman Popes falsely attributed to the name of Pope Damasus (i.e. the Liber Pontificalis), does not seem to be at all true”, an important recognition of that book’s value (or lack thereof) as an historical source. Further on (Liberii ann. 6, 58), he also notes that the ancient sources were not in agreement as to Felix’s ultimate fate, whether he died in peace near Porto, as is now believed, or was condemned by Constantius and killed at Caere in Tuscany, as formerly stated in the Martyrology.

Baronius then gives an account (ibid. 62) of something which happened in his own time, which vindicates him from Thurston and Attwater’s charge of being a backward scholar. He writes that scholars had long accepted that Felix was an intruder in the papal office, and that the ancient sources did not agree on the circumstances of his death. Under Pope Gregory XIII (1572-85), several learned men had gathered in Rome to work on the revision of the Martyrology, and there had been a great deal of intense discussion among them specifically about the case of Felix. Baronius himself leaned strongly towards removing him altogether, and wrote a lengthy treatise in defense of this position, which found much support and agreement among his colleagues.

Mass for the Lenten Station at Ss Cosmas and Damian in 2017, photographed by our Roman pilgrim friend Agnese.

It happened, however, that in the year 1582, a side-altar of the very ancient church of Ss Cosmas and Damian in the Forum was moved, revealing a marble box that was divided into two parts by a stone slab. On the one side were the relics of three Martyrs, Ss Mark, Marcellian, and Tranquillinus; on the other, bones, and the following inscription on a small stone plaque: “The body of St Felix, Pope and Martyr, who condemned Constantius.” This discovery happened to take place on the day before his feast. “To the wonder of all, Felix himself seemed to appear as one come back to life, as if to personally take up his own cause, since he had been greatly overwhelmed by the pens of those who wrote against him. I myself, struck by no small wonder at an event of such greatness… with the moderation of a Christian, then curbed my pen, which I had sharpened in zeal for the truth, and deemed that it had most happily (felicissime) befallen me to be beaten by Felix.”

Now none of this is to say that Baronius’ assessment of the historical question was necessarily correct, or that the revisers of the liturgical books were wrong to do as they did in 1960 by joining Felix to the other martyrs. It is however, very much to say that whether he was ultimately right or wrong, Cardinal Baronius was not careless; he acted in good faith, and in the belief that divine providence had intervened to prevent the suppression of the long-standing veneration of a Saint.

Contrast this with the disdainful attitude of the supposedly far more sophisticated modern scholars, who speak of his work as the product of a “backward” state of affairs, but do not mention the discovery of the relics in connection with him, nor the reason why he changed his mind about St Felix. This cavalier and unjustified attitude of superiority has been all too common for far too long, and we have lived with the damage it has done to the Church’s tradition for far too long.

Reader Appeal: Origins of the Terminology “Liturgy of the Catechumens” and “Liturgy of the Faithful”?

If one looks at an old Roman hand missal, one will find the Mass divided into two parts, “the Mass of the Catechumens” and “the Mass of the Faithful.” Like most people, I had supposed this was an ancient division. However, Lynne C. Boughton, in her fascinating article “An Imagined Past: Initiation, Liturgical Secrecy, and ‘Mass of the Catechumens’” (Antiphon 25.2 [2021]: 161–210), believes that this terminology was invented rather later.

Boughton quotes a Catholic Encyclopedia article of 1908 in which the author, Thomas Scannell, writes: “Catechumens when present at Mass were not dismissed with the inquirers, but were detained while a special prayer was recited over them. They then also withdrew before the Mass of the Faithful began.” She suggests that the language became popularized through Dom Fernand Cabrol in the 1920s, based on Cabrol’s interpretation of the disciplina arcani:

Hand-missals provided for congregations into the early part of the twentieth century corresponded to altar missals in not indicating a “Mass of the Catechumens / Mass of the Faithful” distinction. But in 1921, a hand-missal edited by the liturgical movement specialist Fernand Cabrol contained labels that divided the Ordo missae into a “Mass of the Catechumens” and a “Mass of the Faithful.” Cabrol’s introduction to the hand-missal explains that the labels indicate that catechumens were “only allowed to assist at this first part of the Mass and were obliged to withdraw after the Gospel.” Although some hand-missals that were produced as late as 1950 did not insert labels that implied a division in the Ordo missae, the presence of such became standard in these books for the laity—but not in books for altar use—in the decade preceding the Second Vatican Council.

The remainder of her article then questions the historical assumptions on which the division was made. But my question is: When and where did this division originate? What are its origins?

A 1941 publication

Picking up volume 10 of Dom Guéranger’s The Liturgical Year, the English version of which was first published in 1879, I see he writes on page 39:

The Priest and the people should now have their hearts ready: it is time to prepare the offering itself. And it is here that we come to the second part of the holy Mass; it is called the Oblation, and immediately follows that which was named the Mass of the Catechumens, on account of its being formerly the only part at which the candidates for Baptism had a right to be present.

Dom Guéranger speaks as if it’s a well-known fact, not something he’s daringly introducing. And this is over forty years earlier than Cabrol’s 1921 missal cited by Broughton.

So, my first question is: What is the earliest evidence any reader has come across for the Mass being divided explicitly into these two parts?

The plot thickens: I have noticed that Byzantine publications also divide the Divine Liturgy into “Liturgy of the Catechumens” and “Liturgy of the Faithful,” and I am trying to figure out how far back that goes. One hypothesis would be that it was picked up from Western writers and applied to the Eastern rite, but it could also work the other way around.

I asked a biritual priest for his opinion and he replied:

“In Greek liturgical books, one distinction is ancient: ‘Pre-anaphora.’ But the evidence I can see points to the formal division of Byzantine service books under those exact headings being a later, imposed editorial convention, not a Byzantine manuscript habit. In the Greek tradition, older witnesses seem to prefer categories like proanaphora rather than ‘Liturgy of the Catechumens.’ In the Slavonic printed tradition (not my area of expertise) but discussed by Taft et al., explicit headings such as ‘Литургия оглашенных’ (Liturgy of the Catechumens) are attested at least by the 1617 Sluzhebnik, and continue in later editions (the interesting question here is whether or not Cabrol had access to French/Slavic versions of these books—from Russian emigres in post-Revolutionary France?). The formal division of Byzantine liturgical texts into “Liturgy of the Catechumens” and “Liturgy of the Faithful” appears to be modern editorial imposition. That is to say: the rite historically had a ritual seam at the anaphora, but the titles themselves may be largely a modern scholarly fiction when projected backward.”

Now, if a book in Russian in 1617 has “Liturgy of the Catechumens,” then could Guéranger have gotten this term from the Slavic tradition and imposed it on the Roman Rite? Perhaps “Liturgy/Mass of the Faithful” was a later imposition, something invented for the sake of parallelism and a clear division?

As a provisional hypothesis, one might say that the source of calling the first part of the liturgy “catechumenal” is due to the litany of the catechumens terminating before they are thrown out of “the doors” by the subdeacons at Hagia Sophia, and thus, the second part becomes, by default, the liturgy “of the faithful.” St. Augustine complains at one point that there are too many catechumens to bless individually so he will bless them all at once, which indicates the origin of the oratio super populum. The litany of the catechumens ended in a common dismissal prior to the anaphora, as likely attested in North Africa, Rome, and Constantinople.

In any case, I would very much welcome input from readers on these questions.