On Sacred Art (Part 1): Revealing the Invisible through the Visible

How style communicates theological truth, and the three authentic traditions of liturgical art: iconographic, Gothic, and Baroque

This is the first of two related articles on the three authentic liturgical traditions of the Church – what makes them sacred, and how sacred art is the template for mundane or profane art. This first article asks what sacred art is for, how style communicates theological truth, and introduces the three traditions Benedict XVI identifies. The second will consider what governs the style of each, drawing on the anthropology of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, and will explain why the High Renaissance is not among them.

What should the content of sacred art be?

Every time an artist paints, he asks three fundamental questions: What do I paint? How do I paint it? And why am I painting it? All three are interconnected, but his answer to the first question: ‘What?’ governs the content; and his answer to the second: ‘How?’ governs the style. The third question, ‘Why?’, establishes the purpose that both content and style must serve.

The content and style of sacred art must accordingly serve its sacred purpose. By tradition, that purpose is to show us what we could not otherwise see, in such a way that it deepens our participation in worship and prayer. An image of Christ on the Cross is vital to our worship, for example, because it tells us something about what is happening at the Mass. Paintings of saints and angels reveal to us that there is a heavenly host of that worships God alongside us. Paintings of the feasts and Gospel narratives connect these events to specific points in the liturgical year.

In this sense, sacred art makes the invisible visible. It does so in two ways: first, as one might expect, through its subject matter; second, through the style in which it is painted. So, in the case of sacred art, how the subject is painted is just as important in communicating theological truths as what is painted. This second point is less immediately obvious and warrants careful explanation.

Image: The Theotokos, Mary the Mother of God and the Christ Child by Gregory Kroug, 20th century, in the iconographic style. Egg tempera on panel. Three stars on her outer garment, on each shoulder (one is hidden) and her forehead are symbols of perpetual virginity, i.e., before, during and after the birth of the Savior.

What governs style in art?

Most people coming out of fine art departments in the West today would assume that style is a purely personal choice, needing no stronger justification than the artist’s own preference. The Christian artist, however, should approach things differently. Every artist makes personal choices, but a Christian artist makes those choices in light of an end that aligns with his faith, and, as a result, Christian art should be as recognizably Christian by virtue of its style alone.

If an artist wants to paint Our Lady, he will not only represent her visible appearance as faithfully as he can; drawing on tradition, he will also seek to communicate truths about her that would not be visible even if she were standing before us: that she is a saint in heaven, that she is the Mother of God, that she is a virgin in perpetuity, and that, in common with all humanity, she is a person with an invisible soul as well as a visible body. These truths are abstracted – literally ‘drawn out’ – and made visible through a controlled and partial modification of natural appearances, which creates a characteristic style. It takes great skill to do this, but when done well, the resulting stylization conveys a deeper reality than a strictly naturalistic representation could and communicates many of these aspects to people who intuit these truths, even though they are often unaware of precisely how the artist uses style to communicate them.

To describe this in more detail, it is worth establishing the meanings of the terms I will use here. When I want to describe conformity to natural appearances, I use the word ‘naturalism’. Some other commentators will use the word ‘realism’ here, but I generally prefer not to, since it implies that natural appearances constitute the whole of reality, which is not true.

The tendency to deviate from natural appearances, on the other hand, is called by other commentators and me variously and interchangeably ‘abstraction’, ‘symbolism’, or ‘idealism’.

Both tendencies – that is, heightened naturalism or heightened abstraction (symbolism or idealism) – taken to their extremes, mask reality rather than reveal it. Too much abstraction risks an ugly distortion that hides the truth. The artist risks distorting appearances to the point that the viewer cannot recognize what he is supposed to be looking at. Alternatively, the artist can misapply distortion to convey the wrong message. For example, an overly erotic representation of the female figure, as seen in advertising and superhero comics. This quality of heightened eroticism is communicated as much by the style of the painting as by the pose that the figure adopts.

Too much naturalism, as we see in the style known as ‘photorealism’ (which I consider a misnomer for the reason stated above), often produces a cold sterility that fails to convey the full Christian understanding of what it means to be a person, including the presence of an immortal soul.

Christian figurative art has always navigated a course between these two poles. Because doing so is genuinely difficult, the Christian artist is wise to conform to traditional, tried-and-tested styles and to depart from established stylistic conventions only when the needs of a particular community or time clearly require it. This principle is sometimes called the ‘hermeneutic of continuity’, and can be summarized simply: don’t change things unless you have to.

Pope Pius XII addressed this balance directly in his 1947 encyclical, Mediator Dei. (In the passage below, Pius is using the word ‘realism’ to refer to what I would call naturalism, and ‘symbolism’ to refer to the degree of abstraction or idealization):

"Recent works of art which lend themselves to the materials of modern composition, should not be universally despised and rejected through prejudice. Modern art should be given free scope in the due and reverent service of the church and the sacred rites, provided that they preserve a correct balance between styles tending neither to extreme realism nor to excessive ‘symbolism,’ and that the needs of the Christian community are taken into consideration rather than the particular taste or talent of the individual artist. (Mediator Dei, 195)"

Most of the recognizable artistic styles that have developed since the beginning of the 20th century depart radically, in my opinion, from the traditional balance of naturalism and idealism — but that should not surprise us, since most modern artists had no intention of conforming to Christian tradition, actually quite the reverse; and they have a different understanding of the human person and the world around us. To consider two examples: photorealist painting, at one extreme, reflects a denial of anything beyond surface appearances. By reproducing the visible world with photographic precision and deliberate emotional flatness, it presents the human figure as a mere object among objects, stripped of any evident interior life or soul and seen as having no greater value than a cigarette butt on the sidewalk. Abstract Expressionism, at the other extreme, largely abandons the material world and the body as meaningful subjects. It instead seeks to convey pure inner states — emotions and feelings — through gesture, color, and non-representational form. For many of these artists, the essence of humanity lies in thoughts, feelings, and subjective experience rather than in the embodied person. Abstract Expressionist art, such as that of Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko, although it seeks to communicate essential aspects of human nature as they see it, does not convey any sense of the human body. There is no figure shown that we would recognize as having two arms, two legs, and so on. Each approach runs contrary to the Christian understanding of the human person as a unity of body and soul.

The three authentic traditions of liturgical art

In his book, The Spirit of the Liturgy (p. 129), Pope Benedict XVI identifies three authentic traditions of liturgical art. Each in its own characteristic way strikes the balance between naturalism and abstraction that Pius XII called for. Here is an introduction to them and to what unites or distinguishes them from one another.

The first is the iconographic tradition. This style developed in the early centuries of the Church, reaching a distinctive form around the 4th century AD. It remained the dominant form of Christian sacred art, albeit in many different variations, until the 12th century, and continues to characterize the sacred art of Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox churches to this day. When we speak of ‘icons’, the images of Orthodox churches naturally come to mind first – for example, the holy icons from the Monastery of St Catherine on Mt Sinai dating to the 6th century, or the works of Andrei Rublev and Theophanes the Greek in the 14th and 15th centuries. However, it is less well known that the iconographic style is also part of the Western, Roman tradition. In the West, after the style’s first development in the 4th century, all artistic styles up to and including the Romanesque remained fully consistent with the same iconographic prototype. The figurative art of the Book of Kells, made in Ireland in the 8th century, and the Celtic style, for instance, conform to the iconographic prototype. Though they may look very different from an icon, they share the same underlying principles that define iconographic art.

Image: An 8th-century illumination of St Mark in the Celtic style from the Gospel of St Gallen. It looks very different from a Russian icon, yet the two share the underlying principles of the iconographic tradition.

The second authentic tradition is the Gothic. This term is generally applied to a style that emerged in the Western Church around the 12th century, replacing the earlier Romanesque style, and died out by the 16th century. Duccio, the 13th-century Italian painter, is a representative example: his work is characterized by greater naturalism than the iconographic tradition, though it remains highly abstract in comparison with later Western styles. Over time, the degree of naturalization steadily increased, while maintaining the essential formal elements of this newly established Gothic style. I would include artists such as Fra Angelico and Flemish painters such as Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden in this category, considering them late-Gothic.

Image: Crucifixion Diptych by Rogier van der Weyden, 1460.

One explanation for this transition from the iconographic Romanesque style is the influence of the ideas of Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher of the 4th century BC, whose works were rediscovered and incorporated into Christian thought by the medieval scholastics beginning around the 12th century and gathering pace thereafter – among them St Bonaventure and St Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the 13th century. Through this renewed study of Aristotle, integrated into Christian thought by these great medieval figures, there was now greater confidence in the senses’ capacity to yield reliable knowledge and a deepened appreciation of the created world, which could be accurately observed and understood through the information they provide. It was not a wholesale reversal of earlier assumptions – Christians had always trusted the senses to some degree and believed in the reality of the world around us – but rather a significant shift of emphasis. As a result of this greater stress on the intelligibility of the natural world, there was a greater curiosity about it and a desire to understand the order that pervades it. An outcome of this is an increased naturalism in art. Artists studied and copied nature more rigorously than before. Many today associate high naturalism in Christian art with the Italian High Renaissance, with artists such as Leonardo and Michelangelo, but the development of naturalistic art did not begin with them. Rather, it is the culmination of a process of systematic observation of nature that began much earlier, in the Gothic period. A second outcome of this movement toward a more intensive and systematic study of nature and the natural order, incidentally, was the emergence of what would eventually become modern natural science and the scientific method.

The third tradition considered authentically liturgical and sacred is the Baroque – or, as Benedict XVI puts it, the Baroque ‘at its best’. This is the strongly naturalistic style that developed in Italy as part of the Catholic Counter-Reformation and characterizes the art of 17th-century Western Europe. The artists who established it include Federico Barocci and Caravaggio; other well-known Baroque painters include Velázquez, Georges de La Tour, Zurbarán, Van Dyck, Rubens, Guido Reni, and Ribera. Though strongly naturalistic, the style employs a carefully worked-out, if subtly applied, abstraction. Later commentators, drawing on Platonic terminology, would call this partial abstraction ‘idealization’ in connection with Baroque art.

Image: St James the Greater, by the Italian artist Guido Reni; an example of 17th-century Baroque sacred art.

These, then, are the three traditions: the iconographic, the Gothic, and the Baroque. We have seen what unites them: each strikes, in its own way, the balance between naturalism and abstraction proper to sacred art. What we have not yet seen is what accounts for the differences between them, and why these three, and not others, are the traditions Benedict identifies. In the next of these two articles, I will turn to that question, drawing on the anthropology of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, and will explain why the High Renaissance, so often regarded as the summit of Catholic art, does not belong on the list.

The Centenary of Pius XI Declaring St John of the Cross a Doctor

On this day exactly 100 years ago, Pope Pius XI declared the Carmelite friar and priest St John of the Cross to be the 26th Doctor of the Church; this was just shy of 200 years after his canonization, which took place on December 27, 1726. As noted in the relevant decree, in 1891, the year which marked the 3rd centenary since St John’s death, a petition requesting that this be done was submitted to the Holy See by several Spanish cardinals and bishops.

St John in Ecstasy before the Cross, ca. 1705, by the French painter Antoine Ranc (1634-1716.)  

Here is an excerpt from a translation of said decree, the most important pertinent part; the full text can be read at the website of the Discalced Hermits of Our Lady of Mt Carmel.

“During his nine months of detention he wrote his “Spiritual Canticle” to celebrate the mystical union of the faithful soul with Christ, her Bridegroom, and to show forth the manifold effects as well as the sweet affections of prayer. He developed it later by considerations and explanations. Delivered miraculously from prison, he set to work, at first in the Convent of Calvary, then in other houses where he sojourned filling various offices, and composed other writings in which, as inspired by light from on high, he showed to souls, in a penetrating commentary on the divine gifts, the way of perfection. “The Ascent of Mt. Carmel,” “The Obscure Night,” “The Living Flame of Love,” and his numerous small treatises and letters, though treating of difficult and hidden matters, contain at the same time an elevated spiritual doctrine, which is nevertheless within the reach of his readers. His works may rightly be regarded as the manual and school of the faithful soul in the search for the most perfect life.

It is not astonishing that the Bull of Canonization should affirm, that St. John of the Cross wrote “upon Mystical Theology books full of a heavenly wisdom”; to this judgment of the highest importance, the greater number, if not all, will give their assent. After his death, which occurred in 1591, John became in the course of time such an authority in the mystical science, that the ascetical authors and saintly persons recognized in him a master in sanctity and piety. For their spiritual writings, they drew from his doctrine and works as from a limpid source of the Christian thought and the mind of the Church.”

An Altarpiece of St Bartholomew

For the feast of St Bartholomew the Apostle, here is a beautiful altarpiece dated to about 1440, which depicts a series of stories from his traditional legend, by an anonymous Spanish painter known as the Master of Torralba. It is now in the museum of the Château de Castelnau-Bretenoux in France. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons by Benjamin Smith. Click to enlarge.)  

In the central section, we see the Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John at the top, and the Apostle below, holding his traditional instrument, the knife with which he was flayed, and a chain which ends around the neck of a demon, whose hands are locked up in a stock. The last reflects the tradition that Bartholomew was especially powerful over demons, which is also referred to in the Gospel of his Mass, Luke 6, 12-19: “And they that were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.”

The eight panels surrounding it show stories from his apocryphal acts (running first down the left side, then the right), from which this tradition derives, in the version told by Bl. Jacopo di Voragine in the Golden Legend. When he arrives in India to preach the Gospel, a demon which had been wont to speak though an idol in a temple falls silent. (1 and 2) He heals the possessed daughter of a local king (3), after which, the king sends several camels laden with money and gems (4), which the apostle refuses.

On the right side, the Apostle appears to the king in a dram and preaches the faith to him. (5) When the pagan priests of the area attempt to sacrifice to an idol, the demon which inhabits it protests that now that Christ has won the redemption of man, it hurts him when they do so. (6) Bartholomew is then arrested (7) and killed (8). The varying accounts of his martyrdom have him either flayed alive (which will later become the most common way of representing him in art); here the artist shows both.

The predella show events from the Passion of Our Lord: the arrest in the garden, his appearance before Pilate, the flagellation, the deposition from the cross, and the entombment.  

Palestrina’s Canticle of Canticles

Before the Tridentine reform, very few feasts had Scriptural readings in the first nocturn of the Divine Office. On the feasts of the Saints, it was typical for readings of their lives to supply all the Matins lessons, while on those of Our Lord and Our Lady, the first two nocturns were usually a sermon about the feast, and those of the third a homily on the Gospel read at Mass. There were, however, certain exceptions to this, such as Christmas and Epiphany, which always had the same readings from Isaiah that they do today. Among the feasts of the Virgin Mary, only that of her Nativity had Scriptural readings; these were taken from the Song of Songs, or Canticle of Canticles, as it was traditionally known in the Latin West, from its title in the Vulgate, “Canticum Canticorum.”

Two pages of a breviary according to the Use of Prague, printed in 1502, with the Office of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary; the Canticle of Canticles is read in both the first and second nocturns. In many Bibles of this period, the Canticle also had notes added to the text to indicate who is speaking: “The voice of Christ, (speaking) to the Church”, “the Church (speaking) about its tribulations” etc. These were then often incorporated into breviaries, as seen here. (Click image to enlarge.)

On the Assumption and through its octave, the readings of the first two nocturns were taken from a sermon known from its opening words as “Cogitis me.” This purports to be a letter of St Jerome, written to his great friend Paula and her daughter Eustochium (who are both also Saints), in which he expounds his belief in the Assumption of the Virgin, and exhorts them to imitate Her as a model of consecrated life. In reality, it was written by St Paschasius Radbertus, a monk of the ninth century, when “forgeries” of this sort were not looked upon as frauds or acts of deception. Patristic scholar Jaroslav Pelikan notes that Paschasius “under the name of Saint Jerome made a far more substantial contribution to the history of Marian spirituality and devotion than any of the genuine works of Jerome, or for that matter than (his own) other principal work … on the subject of the Blessed Virgin Mary.” (“The Odyssey of Dionysian Spirituality”, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, Paulist Press, 1987.)

In the early 16th century, however, Erasmus had shown that “Cogitis me” was certainly not by St Jerome, although he did not know who the true author was. It was therefore removed from St Pius V’s breviary and replaced by writings of other Church Fathers. (Ironically, the readings from St Athanasius assigned to the feast in the first edition were also later determined to be not actually his, and were removed from the second edition published by Clement VIII in 1602.)

The upper half of a polyptych of the Assumption, with Ss Paul and Jerome, Catherine of Alexandria and Clare of Assisi, 1529-30, by Alessandro Bonvicino (1492/5 - 1554), known as “Moretto da Brescia.”

The Tridentine breviary also conformed all Matins of nine readings to the arrangement previously found only on major Sundays and a handful of feasts, with Scripture readings in the first nocturn. The Canticle of Canticles, previously assigned to the Virgin’s Nativity and its octave, was then transferred to the Assumption. (On the Nativity itself, they were retained for the feast and the octave day, but not the days between.) The working notes of the editors of this breviary have never been discovered, so we are often left to guess what motivated their changes. They may have thought it was better to emphasize the solemnity of the older and greater of the two feasts by giving it proper readings for every day. But this may also have been done because the readings of the Divine Office in August are, by a very ancient custom, given over to the Sapiential books. The Canticle is always treated as one of these, since it has the same putative author as the others, King Solomon; this is why when they are read at Mass, they all have the same title, “A reading from the book of Wisdom.”

The readings are arranged as follows:

August 15	chapter 1 (1-16)
August 16	chapter 2 (1-17)
August 18	chapter 4, 1-4 and 7-15
August 19	chapter 5, 8-12 chapter 6, 1-5 and 8-12
August 21	chapter 7 (1-13) chapter 8, 1-4
August 22	chapter 8, 5-14

Two days within the octave have no such readings: August 17th, the octave of St Lawrence, and the 20th, the feast of St Bernard. (The readings of the 16th, 19th and 21st were later removed as other Saints were added to the calendar on those days.)

Palestrina presents his first book of Masses to Pope Julius III; part of the frontispiece of the book itself, which was published in 1554. Julius (whose scandal-ridden papacy was such a profound embarrassment to the rising reform movement within the Church that his papal name has never been used again), had been bishop of the very ancient suburbicarian see of Palestrina, about 24 miles to the east of Rome. It was he who called the great musician from his position as organist in the cathedral of his native town to work in the choir of St Peter’s basilica. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

In 1584, when this custom was still less than 20 years old, the great Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525 ca. – 1594) published a collection of 29 motets of texts from the Canticle. There seems to be no information available about their intended use, and particularly, whether they were deliberately conceived to be sung during Mass.

However, of these 29 motets, the texts of all but one, the 18th, coincide with the readings for the Assumption and its octave, although they do not include all the verses that are in the breviary. (There are none from chapter 8, so the octave day is not included.) But more interestingly, the same verses that are omitted from the breviary are also not used by Palestrina. The motets taken from chapters 4 and 5 begin at the same verses as readings on August 18 and 19, and those from chapter 6 omit the same verses (8-9) which are omitted in the breviary. The two chapters which get the most thorough treatment, the first (motets 1-8) and second (motets 11-17), are also the ones used on other feast days of the Virgin, the former on Her Nativity, and the latter on the Visitation.

These motets are also quite short, averaging about 2 minutes and 45 seconds each. This would make them very appropriate for the sweltering Roman summer when these feasts are celebrated, a time of year in which we may reasonably guess that people would not want the liturgy to be excessively prolonged by lengthy musical pieces.

Palestrina came to Rome in 1551, and worked there for 43 years, at St Peter’s Basilica, St Mary Major and St John in the Lateran. Given the circles in which he moved, it seems quite possible that he knew the clerics who edited the Tridentine breviary. Taken all together, these things seem to make for at least the possibility that he deliberately selected his texts out of the breviary, and intended them to be used during the Masses of Our Lady’s major feasts in the summer. (This was also noted by Dr Jane Dahlenburg in her Ph.D dissertation The Motet c. 1580–1630: Sacred Music Based on the Song of Songs. (Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2001), and further elaborated by Dr Jessie Ann Owens in her article Palestrina’s “Song” Cycle, published in Palestrina und seine Zeit – Traditionelle und digitale Forschungsperspektiven. (Musiconn, Dresden 2023) My thanks to Dr Owens for bringing this to my attention.)

Here is a very nice recording of the whole set by the Hilliard Ensemble.

The Numinous and the Roman Rite, Part I

The concept of the numinous was first articulated by the German Lutheran Rudolf Otto in his seminal work The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational. Since its publication in 1917, the monograph has influenced an impressive array of thinkers with vastly different points of view: Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Martin Heidegger, Karl Rahner, Leo Strauss, and C.S. Lewis, to name a few. Otto’s thought is not perfect (it has been rightly criticized for working within a post-Kantian framework), but it is sufficient for our purposes, namely, as a means of exploring something in worship that cannot be explained away by rationalist reduction. In fact, I would go so far as to count among the most reliable ways to measure the health of a liturgy its ability to generate a sense of the numinous.

And so, to substantiate my claim, I will in this post summarize Otto’s concept and argue that every Eucharistic liturgy is and should be an encounter with the numinous. Then, next week I will describe three ways in which the 1962 Roman Missal successfully encourages a sense of the numinous.

Rudolf Otto

I. Otto and the Numinous

Otto’s idea of the holy is predicated on the observation that the holy and the just are not synonymous. While every holy person is just, not every just person is holy. You might, for example, call Socrates just, and you might even call him pious, but would you ever call him holy? For Otto, the difference is that the holy person has an encounter with the “numinous,” a word he coins from a Latin word for divinity in general and divine will or sway in particular (numen). And the numinous object, Otto writes, is the “wholly other” that is experienced as a mysterium tremendum et fascinans, a formidable and fascinating mystery. [1]

Regarding the “formidable,” Otto has in mind the full range of meanings for tremendus, which, like its cognate tremor, means both fear and trembling (literally).

First, the mystery is tremendus because it contains an element of awefulness, a shuddering before God that is, paradoxically, a gift from God, for “the natural man is quite unable to shudder or feel horror in the real sense of the word.” [2]

Second, the mystery is tremendus because it contains an element of overpowering, or what the Romans called majestas. It is in the face of this Majesty that one feels a sense of one’s own miniscule creatureliness and utter dependence like never before.

Third, the mystery is tremendus because it contains an element of energy, which Otto compares to a sense of urgency and of divine wrath. In and of Himself, God is beyond emotion, but as we experience Him, the living God is a jealous God, filled with passion and power. Otto quotes with approval a line from an unnamed mystic: “Love is nothing else than quenched Wrath.” [3]

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

This tremendous mystery is also fascinans—in fact, it is “uniquely attractive and fascinating.” [4] This aspect of the mystery explains the “moment of rapture that breathes in our tenderest and most heart-felt hymns of salvation,” such as the poetic compositions of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. “Mere love” and “mere trust,” Otto contends, do not account for the ecstasies that a Saint experiences in his intimate encounters with the numinous. [5]

And the numinous can generate a variety of feelings:

The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its “profane,” non-religious mood of everyday experience. [...] It has its crude, barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of—whom or what? In the presence of that which is a Mystery inexpressible and above all creatures. [6]

Perhaps the clearest commentator on Otto’s work is C.S. Lewis, who builds up to a sense of the numinous with the help of a mental exercise. Lewis asks us to imagine someone coming in and saying that there is a tiger in the next room. Aware of the danger, we would probably experience fear. Now imagine someone saying that there is a ghost in the next room and that we believe it. Lewis conjectures that we would experience a special kind of fear called Dread, which puts us at the “fringes of the Numinous.” Finally, imagine someone saying, “There is a mighty spirit in the room,” and that we believe it. Lewis opines:

Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it—an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare’s words “Under it my genius is rebuked.” This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous. [7]

II. The Numinous in Eucharistic Liturgy

Otto’s Idea of the Holy contains an appendix entitled “The Numinous in Poetry, Hymn, and Liturgy,” but it is a treacly collection of passages from the Bhagavad-Gita and Protestant hymnists. Still, we can at least credit him for thinking about liturgy when thinking about the numinous; for a truly sacred liturgy facilitates the greatest of encounters with the numinous, as is witnessed by the Saints who experienced ecstasies while celebrating or assisting at Mass.

Our own argument is simple:

The Mass, as consistently affirmed by the Magisterium from time immemorial to the present day, is the unbloody re-presencing of the death of the Son of God on the cross as well as His Resurrection and Ascension. [8]

This Paschal mystery that is being represenced is truly a mysterium tremendum et fascinans. For how can the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ be deemed otherwise?

Therefore, the Mass should do everything it can to foster an encounter with the numinous through its rites. Certainly, the Mass was experienced as numinous from an early age. Consider the following passages from the Patristic era:

In a sermon, St. Augustine admonishes:

Approach the partaking of this altar with fear and trembling (see Phil. 2, 12-13). Recognize in the bread that which hung on the cross, in the chalice that which flowed from his side. [9]

In his poem On Faith, Isaac of Antioch (ca. 450) writes:

I saw the mixed vessel of faith, which was filled with blood instead of wine; and instead of bread the slain body was placed upon the table. I saw the blood and shuddered; the sacrificed body and terror seized me. [10]

St. Cyril of Jerusalem calls the Mass “a holy and tremendous Sacrifice” and “a holy mystery”; similarly, he calls the time of Sacrifice “a sublimely dread hour.” [11]

Finally, the Liturgy of St. James includes the admonition:

Let all mortal flesh be silent, standing there in fear and trembling, let all things of earth vanish from our thoughts; for the King of kings, the Lord of lords, Christ our God, is about to be sacrificed and to be given as food to the faithful. Before Him choirs of angels go, clothed with power and dominion, with faces veiled, chanting the hymn, Alleluia. [12]

Such is the numinous in the Eucharistic liturgy, according to the Fathers. Next week, we shall how this principle is instantiated in the classical Roman Rite.

This essay appeared in The Latin Mass magazine 35:2 (Summer 2026), pp. 34-38. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.

Notes

[1] The Idea of the Holy (Martino Fine Books, 2010), 25-30.

[2] Otto, 15.

[3] Otto, 24.

[4] Otto, 31.

[5] Otto, 34.

[6] Otto, 12-13.

[7] C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (Zondervan, 2001), 5-6.

[8] See Catechism of the Catholic Church 1354.

[9] Sermon Denis 3.

[10] Cited in Nicholas Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass Dogmatically, Liturgically and Ascetically Explained (Herder, 1902), 104.

[11] Cited in Gihr, 105.

[12] Cited in Gihr, 111.

An Italian Chapel in the Orkney Islands

This post is just a very brief follow-up on one we posted exactly a month ago, which showed pictures of a chapel built by Italian POWs in the British colony of Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) during World War II. A different friend happened to recently another such chapel built on the island of Lamb Holm one of the Orkney islands off the northern coast of Scotland. This chapel was built between 1943 and 1945, after a group of 550 Italian soldiers were captured by the British during the North African campaign, and sent to the island as prisoners for the duration. My friend who visited it informs me that Mass is still said there once a month by the parish priest of Orkney; the chapel is under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Aberdeen. 

Most of the painting of the interior was done by a single man, a fellow named Domenico Chiochetti, who hailed from a little town called Moena in the northern region of the Trento Alto-Adige. Mr Chiochetti returned to the island in 1960 to work on the restoration of the chapel, and again in 1964.
 

Outside stands a monument to the prisoners who lived and worshipped here, with a figure of St George, undoubtedly chosen as something of a tribute to their British hosts.

A Medieval Hymn of St Bernard

Here is a very nice medieval hymn for the feast of St Bernard of Clairvaux, which is used in the Cistercian Divine Office at both Vespers of his feast. According to the Analecta hymnica, the great catalog of medieval liturgical hymns, both the author and the date of composition are unknown, but it appears in several Cistercian sources in the 13th century, and has been in continual use within the order ever since. (It does not seem that any of the great translators like Neale or Caswell ever put their pens to this, so we must be content with my poor English prose translation.) This recording from the abbey of Marienstatt in Germany also includes the versicle that follows the hymn, “Ora pro nobis, sancte Bernarde”, in a more solemn tone which is different from the Roman one.

Bernardus Doctor inclytus, Caelos conscendit hodie, Quem attraxit divinitus Splendor paternae gloriae.	Bernard, the renowned doctor ascends the heavens today Whom the splendor of the Father’s glory drew from on high.
Exsultet caelum laudibus De Bernardi consortio, Quem conjungis caelestibus, Jesu, nostra redemptio.	Let heaven exult in praises for Bernard’s company, Whom You join to the citizens of heaven, Jesus, our redemption.
Rufum dorso per catulum Praefigurasti puerum Fore Doctorem sedulum, Conditor alme siderum.	By the figure of a dog with a red back, you showed that the boy would be a zealous teacher, O maker of the stars.
Nascentis ei claruit Clara Christi nativitas, Hoc a te donum habuit, O lux, beata Trinitas.	For him shined most brightly The glorious birth of Christ; This gift he had from you, o light, o blessed Trinity.
Arcana sacrae paginae Declarat, et mysterium Quod effecit in Virgine Deus, creator omnium.	He set forth the mysteries of the holy book, which God, the creator of all things, wrought in the Virgin.
Rore perfusum gratiae Monstrat dulcor eloquii; Per te fons sapientiae, Summi largitor praemii.	The sweetness of his speech showed him to be filled with grace, though Thee, o font of wisdom, giver of the highest reward.
Detentos a daemonibus Sanat, morbos languentium Curat, confert doloribus Magnum salutis gaudium.	He heals those held by devils, he cures the ailments of the sick, and gives the great joy of salvation to their griefs.
Vita vivit feliciter Cum Maria Christifera Cum qua degustat dulciter Aeterna Christi munera.	Happily he lives (eternal) life with Mary, the bearer of Christ, with whom he sweetly tastes the eternal gifts of Christ.
Summae Deus potentiae, Tibi sit laus et gloria: Da post cursum miseriae Beata nobis gaudia. Amen.	God of highest power, to thee be praise and glory: after the way of wretchedness give us blessed joys. Amen.

There are some interesting things to note. The hymn is an acrostic, the first letters of each stanza spelling his name BERNARDVS. The meter is the iambic dimeter, that of the original hymns of St Ambrose and other early Christian poets, short and long syllables alternating four times for a total of eight. (Substitutions are very common, especially since vowel quantities were already weakened in the 5th century, and hardly perceived as such in the High Middle Ages.) As such, it could in theory be sung in any one of a great many melodies, and other common hymns in this meter were often sung with different music from one church to another. However, it was an essential characteristic of the medieval Cistercians to keep a strict uniformity of observance in all their houses, and it is almost certain that they would have all used the same music.

The words of the third stanza “By the figure of a dog with a red back” refer to an episode recorded in the life of St Bernard. When his mother Aleth was pregnant with him (the third of her seven children, of whom four others are Blesseds), she dreamt that she was carrying a barking white dog with some red hair on its back. A religious man whom she consulted explained this dream to mean that the child she bore would be like the dogs mentioned in Psalm 67, “The tongues of your dogs lick the blood of their enemies”, guarding the house of God against its enemies, a preacher, and a healer of souls. This latter idea derives from St Gregory the Great’s symbolic interpretation of the dogs that licked the sores of Lazarus (hom. 40 in Evang.), in a passage which is read in the Roman Breviary on Thursday of the second week of Lent. “A dog’s tongue heals the sore which it licks; and so do holy teachers, when they instruct is in the confession of our sins, touch the sores of our souls by their tongues (i.e. their speech).” The following stanza refers to a vision of the Child Jesus which Bernard himself had when he was a boy, and fell asleep while waiting with his family to go out to Matins and the Midnight Mass of Christmas.

Christ Embracing St Bernard, ca. 1625, by Francisco Riablta (1565-1628). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Medieval hymnographers loved the trick performed by the author of this hymn, in which the last line of each stanza is the title (i.e. first line) of another hymn. (A similarly constructed piece is sung in the proper Office of St Anthony the Abbot.)

Splendor paternae gloriae – an original hymn of St Ambrose himself, which the
      Cistercians sing at Sunday Lauds, the Roman Office at Monday Lauds.
Jesu, nostra redemptio – from the feast of the Ascension, pre-Urban VIII
Conditor alme siderum – from Vespers of Advent, pre-Urban VIII
O lux, beata Trinitas – Saturday Vespers, pre-Urban VIII
Deus, creator omnium – the Ambrosian hymn for Sunday Vespers
Summi largitor praemii – a hymn for Lent sung by the Cistercians at Matins;
      also used at Sarum, but not in the Roman Office.
Magnum salutis gaudium – processional hymn for Palm Sunday
Aeterna Christi munera – Matins hymn of the Apostles.
Beata nobis gaudia – Lauds hymn of Pentecost.

In addition, the first line of the second stanza, “Exsultet caelum laudibus”, is the title of the pre-Urban VIII version of the Vespers hymn of the Apostles. (Like all the religious orders that retained their own Uses of the Divine Office, the Cistercians never adopted Pope Urban VIII’s reform of the hymns.)

The difficulty of this trick is to integrate the titles into the words of a new composition in a new sense. Some of the expressions in the vocative case, such as “Jesu, nostra redemptio,” could be interchanged with any of the others, (I do not say this as a critique of the author; medievals valued originality far less than we do,) but the last three are particularly well chosen.

The Cistercians were founded at the very end of the 11th century as “strict constructionalists” of the original Rule of St Benedict, which they felt had been unhappily compromised by later developments and customs that emerged within the Cluniac monastic empire. The term which St Benedict uses for “hymn” in the Rule (capp. 9, 12, 13 and 17) is “ambrosianum”, since it was St Ambrose who first introduced the use of hymns into the West. This led the Cistercians to the believe that St Benedict’s original intention was not merely that monks should sing “a hymn” at certain Hours, but that they should use the specific corpus of hymns used by Ambrose himself. This corpus would be found, as they thought, in the Ambrosian Divine Office; they therefore sent people to Milan to copy out the Ambrosian hymnal then in use, and bring it back to Citeaux. It was incorporated into their Office to the despite of many hymns which at that point had long been in general use within the broad liturgical family of the Roman Rite. This was very controversial, even for an age in which there was a great deal of liturgical variation, and the Order was eventually pressured into adopting the traditional corpus of hymns, with some variations. This is why some of the original Ambrosian hymns such as “Splendor paternae gloriae” are given a more prominent place within the Cistercian Office than they were elsewhere.

Eucharistic Prayer II and the Anaphora of Hippolytus: A Critical Analysis (Conclusion)

We complete today the publication of Ignacio Gallardo Tampe’s guest article on the history of the so-called Anaphora of Hippolytus and its relationship to the Second Eucharistic Prayer. Part one was published last Wednesday, and part two on Friday.

Observations on Liturgical Practice

In this final section, I will offer some observations on the ars celebrandi and liturgical practice, as well as make a proposal for normative guidelines.

First, the Missale Romanum, reformed after the Second Vatican Council, has four core Eucharistic prayers, to which are added those contained in its appendix, some of which are recognized to be quite regrettable, such as the Eucharistic prayers for children’s Masses.

Second, the use of these is regulated poorly in Article 365 of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, which says that “the choice” between them is merely “guided” by the following norms.

Article 365 letter a) of the GIRM states that “Eucharistic Prayer I, or the Roman Canon, which may always be used, […]; likewise it is especially suited for use on Sundays, unless for pastoral reasons Eucharistic Prayer III is preferred.”

The Sanctus and the beginning of the Canon in the Gellone Sacramentary, one of the oldest of the Roman Rite, ca. 780 AD. 

For its part letter b) states that “Eucharistic Prayer II, on account of its particular features, is more appropriately used on weekdays or in special circumstances.”

In turn, letter c) states that “Eucharistic Prayer III may be said with any Preface. Its use should be preferred on Sundays and festive days.”

Letter d) concludes by stating “Eucharistic Prayer IV has an invariable Preface and gives a fuller summary of salvation history. It may be used when a Mass has no Preface of its own and on Sundays in Ordinary Time.”

The problem with this norm is that it merely makes suggestions (“The choice between the Eucharistic Prayers […] is suitably guided by the following norms”) instead of establishing a clear rule, rendering it useless as such; moreover, this is evident in the fact that many priests use Eucharistic Prayer II almost exclusively, as it is the shortest and takes the least time, seemingly overlooking the fact that the Eucharistic Prayer is precisely the most important part of the Mass, for it is here that the transubstantiation of the elements takes place, transforming the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.

This is disconcerting, considering that the GIRM recommends Eucharistic Prayers I and III, and, with certain limitations, IV, for Sundays and other major days, yet Eucharistic Prayer II, which is recommended for weekdays, is used as the standard.

This must change; it should be clearly established that Eucharistic Prayer I is the one to be recommended. Let us recall the Council of Trent’s description of it as the perfect prayer, free from error: “If any one saith, that the Canon of the Mass contains errors, and is therefore to be abrogated; let him be anathema.” [1]

Furthermore, it should be established that Eucharistic Prayer II may only be used on weekdays, and its use on Sundays or solemnities should be definitively prohibited. It would also be advisable to prohibit bishops from using it at any Mass with a congregation, even on weekdays, in order to give their Masses a more “pontifical” character, thereby restoring the distinctions that existed between priests and bishops prior to the reform. [2]

The restrictions on Eucharistic Prayers III and IV should be maintained and made stricter.

It is important to regulate this aspect, for never in the history of the Roman Rite has there been more than one Eucharistic Prayer; this anomaly has led to the heritage of the Western Church (the Roman Canon) being replaced by an imitation of a Eucharistic Prayer that not only originates from the East, but (as mentioned earlier) was likely never used in actual practice.

For their part, the Churches of the Eastern rites, which do have the custom of using multiple Eucharistic prayers, do not leave the choice to the discretion of their priests; in all of them, it is expressly regulated. Let us look at some examples, though this list is not exhaustive of all rites:

First, the Churches of the Greek (or “Byzantine”) rite routinely use the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. This liturgy is said every Sunday and weekday of the year, unless it is expressly stipulated that another must be used, the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, which is said only ten times throughout the year: on the five Sundays of Great Lent, Holy Thursday, Holy Saturday, on the vigils of Christmas and Theophany (January 6), and the feast of St. Basil (January 1). [3]

The beginning of the liturgy of St John Chrysostom in a Byzantine euchologion, printed in Venice in 1602.   

The Liturgy of Saint Basil is characterized by longer prayers, especially in the anaphora, which is much longer than that of St. John Chrysostom. It is worth noting that the Churches of the Greek rite did not abolish the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil, which was their original liturgy for Sundays and feast days, when that of St. John Chrysostom was introduced, but rather relegated it to the most important days. Could this also be a lesson for us? Should we require that on certain days only Eucharistic Prayer I be used, given its antiquity and length?

For their part, the Copts use three liturgies: that of St. Basil the Great, that of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and that of St. Cyril I of Alexandria. According to this rite, the choice is not free either; the liturgy of St. Basil is the general rule and is used for most of the year, while that of St. Gregory is used at midnight on Christmas, Theophany, and Easter. This liturgy is characterized by being deeply Christ-centered, which is why it is reserved for the so-called “feasts of the Lord.” Finally, the Liturgy of St. Cyril, the longest of the three, is reserved exclusively for Great Lent.

The Churches of the East Syriac rite use three anaphoras: the Anaphora of Addai and Mari, which is said to date back to the third century, making it the oldest anaphora still in use [4], the Anaphora of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and finally that of Nestorius. According to this rite, the Anaphora of Addai and Mari is the general rule and is used unless it is specified that another is to replace it; as for the Anaphora of Theodore of Mopsuestia, it is used from the first Sunday of the season of the Annunciation (equivalent to Advent) through Palm Sunday; finally, Nestorius’ anaphora is used five days a year: on Epiphany, the feast of St. John the Baptist, the Commemoration of the Greek Fathers, the Wednesday of the Fast of the Ninevites, and on Holy Thursday.

Given the above, it follows that the Church, in its current liturgical maturity [5], establishes strict criteria for determining which Eucharistic prayer is to be used. The freedom of the modern Roman rite is an anomaly in comparison to the Eastern rites.

But, on the other hand, as mentioned earlier, the very existence of multiple Eucharistic Prayers in the Roman Rite is also an anomaly, since we know that this rite has always had only one, the famous Roman Canon, which, due to its exclusivity, came to be simply called the Canon Missæ (the Canon of the Mass) in the liturgical books prior to the post-conciliar reform.

This exclusivity does not indicate “liturgical poverty” in comparison to the Eastern rites, but rather a legitimate difference in them, for, as is well known, the Roman Rite has always been characterized by its simplicity compared to the Eastern rites or the now defunct Gallican rites of the West; therefore, introducing multiple Eucharistic prayers into it is nothing more than a corruption of the rite. [6]

Furthermore, what is the problem with having a single Eucharistic prayer? There are rites other than the Roman one that also have a single anaphora; in the East, for example, we find the Armenian rite, which uses only the Divine Liturgy of St. Gregory the Illuminator. [7] For their part, other Western rites, the Ambrosian Rite, native to Milan, and the nearly extinct Visigothic Rite (also known as Mozarabic or Hispanic Rite) [8], native to present-day Spain, also effectively use only a single Eucharistic prayer.

Without going into too much detail, the Ambrosian Rite uses the Roman Canon with slight modifications. The Visigothic rite uses an anaphora in which some parts vary depending on the day of the year, but maintains the same structure, as follows: the illatio, equivalent to the Roman preface, which is variable; the Sanctus, which is invariable; the post-Sanctus, which is variable; the pridie, which is invariable; and the post-pridie, which is variable. These variable parts are not at the priest’s discretion, as the Missal [9] itself dictates which text must be used for each day of the year.

The fixed part of the canon in a Mozarabic Missal printed in 1804.

In light of what has been said, it is evident that the current system, as set forth in the Missale Romanum introduced by Paul VI, constitutes an unprecedented historical and liturgical anomaly. A comparative analysis demonstrates that the Church never conceived of the anaphora as a text subject to the convenience, haste, or personal taste of the celebrant. [10]

Both Eastern and Western rites establish imperative norms for the use of the anaphora: in the case of the Eastern rites, through strict adherence to the calendar and the liturgical season; and in the case of the Western rites (as well as the Armenian rite, which, despite being Eastern, follows the same logic as the Western rites), through a fixed anaphora, which is invariable in some cases, such as in the Roman or Ambrosian rites, and variable in others, such as in the Visigothic rite. In any case, the Eucharistic prayer consists of a standardized element that takes precedence over individual discretion.

The laxity of Article 365 of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, by limiting itself to offering suggestions rather than prescriptions, has led to an undeniable impoverishment of contemporary practice, allowing the abhorrent and widespread practice of using Eucharistic Prayer II as the daily and Sunday standard to the detriment of the others which possess greater merit.

Consequently, a revision of the current liturgical legislation, in the manner already indicated, is urgently needed. The guidelines of the General Instruction of the Roman Missal must be transformed from mere recommendations into binding norms. [11]

Only through restrictive regulation, analogous to that wisely preserved by the Eastern Churches, will the Roman Rite be able to escape the disorder and mediocrity that currently corrode it.

Finally, let us recall that Eucharistic Prayer II is not the Anaphora of Hippolytus, as has been demonstrated; therefore, defending it by virtue of its supposed antiquity is nonsensical. Furthermore, when compared with the other three Eucharistic Prayers of the Missal, it is theologically poor and sparse, little more than an “express” consecration.

Let us not forget that one of its authors, Louis Bouyer, referred to it as a “distorted specimen” containing “incredible weaknesses”, and stated the necessity of a “revision that sooner or later will be inevitable.” [12]  Therefore, considering that even one of its creators deemed it in need of reform, the Church would do well to limit its use or even abrogate it. [13]

It could be said that the lesson here is not to undertake liturgical reforms based on incomplete archaeological evidence, for it may happen, as in this case, that in the future it is proven that everything, absolutely everything, was a falsehood. And to think that Duchesne, at the beginning of the twentieth century, asserted with total certainty that “There is nothing to hinder us from assigning it to the time of Hippolytus himself.” [14]

NOTES 

[1] Council of Trent, XXII Session, Canon VI.

[2] By this we obviously mean to the distinctions made by the traditional Roman rite between Missa lecta, cantata, solemnis and pontificalis. Today many bishops celebrate Mass in an almost identical manner to priests; in the traditional Roman rite even the Missa lecta (Low Mass) of the bishop has remarkable differences from that of the priest. For instance, the bishop puts on the maniple only after the acolytes have finished praying the Confiteor, whereas the priest is already wearing it before leaving the sacristy. In the new rites, generally, the bishops often do not even bother to wear the dalmatic under the chasuble on solemnities, even though article 56 of the Ceremonial of Bishops clearly stipulates it, saying: “... it is appropriate that, in solemn celebrations, according to ancient custom, the dalmatic be worn beneath the chasuble”.

[3] For obvious reasons, we make no mention of the Divine Liturgy of the Presentified Gifts, as it does not contain an anaphora; in any case, it may only be used on weekdays during Great Lent and the first three days of Holy Week, and not whenever the priest deems it appropriate.

[4] Michael Uwe Lang, The Roman Mass: From Early Christian Origins to Tridentine Reform. (Cambridge University Press, 29 September 2022), Chapter 3, Kindle.

[5] Let us recall that, as centuries pass, rites become solidified; therefore, matters that were once not well regulated are now firmly established.

[6] It would be the inverse of the “Latinisation” that Eastern Christians so heavily despise.

[7] It is interesting to note that the Armenian rite in ancient times had ten anaphoras, but the rite evolved to favour one exclusively over the others; this has also been seen in other rites, albeit to a lesser extent, for example, the Greeks have not used the Divine Liturgy of St. James for centuries.

[8] Today, it survives only in the so-called Mozarabic chapel of the Cathedral of Toledo, thanks to the efforts of Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros.

[9] Missale omnium Offerentium.

[10] Even in the early centuries, when not all prayers were written down and were instead transmitted orally, the priest was not permitted to choose the prayers freely; rather, if he chose to vary them, a practice that was permitted in those times, the priest was required to follow a certain structure and content. See footnote No. 30.

[11] By this we mean that the norm becomes a «norma imperativa propiamente tal», an imperative norm in the strict sense, that is, one that simply commands something.

[12] See Louis Bouyer, Memoirs, 125.

[13] Just as with the Eucharistic Prayers for Masses with children, which must undoubtedly be abolished.

[14] Louis Duchesne, Christian Worship: Its origin and evolution, a study of the Latin Liturgy up to the time of Charlemagne, trad. M. L. McClure (Londres: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1910), 524.

Photos of the Annual Eucharistic Procession by Boat in Louisiana on the Assumption

On Saturday, August 15th, the twelfth annual Eucharistic Procession by boat down Bayou Teche, Louisiana, was held as part of the celebration of the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Patroness of the Acadian people and of the Acadiana region. This day also marks the anniversary of the arrival of French-Canadian immigrants to the area in 1765, those who brought the Catholic faith to Acadiana after enduring great trials and suffering. (The procession was first held in this manner in 2015 for the 250th anniversary.)

After Vespers and Final Benediction, it was announced that next year, the procession will run all the way from St Louis Missouri to St Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, an 8-day long pilgrimage down the Mississippi to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the consecration of the first St. Louis Church. It will arrive on December 9, the anniversary of the dedication of the present basilica of St Louis, which is the oldest continuously functioning cathedral in America. The event will also commemorate the 300th anniversary of the arrival of the Ursuline nuns from France to New Orleans; they still have the oldest continuously functioning school of its kind in America. Feliciter!

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