Eucharistic Prayer II and the Anaphora of Hippolytus: A Critical Analysis (Part 1)

The following guest article by Ignacio Gallardo Tampe will be published in three parts. This study aims to elucidate the differences between the Second Eucharistic Prayer and the so-called Anaphora of Hippolytus, which are often erroneously spoken of as if they were identical. Furthermore, this article intends to provide a critical analysis of current liturgical praxis and the near-exclusive use of Eucharistic Prayer II to the detriment of other related prayers.

Introduction

The liturgical reform that took place as a result of the Second Vatican Council and the spirit of change experienced both within and outside the Church at that time marked one of the most profound paradigm shifts in the history of the Catholic Church. Among its most significant liturgical innovations is the break with the exclusivity of the Roman Canon through the creation of multiple Eucharistic prayers for the new Missale Romanum introduced by Paul VI.

The most used and debated of these additions is, without doubt, Eucharistic Prayer II. It was presented by the Consilium ad exsequendam Constitutionem de Sacra Liturgia (“Committee for the implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy”) as an organic recovery of a then-celebrated anaphora contained in the Apostolic Tradition (c. 215), a text traditionally attributed to Hippolytus of Rome; through this organic recovery, the intention was to reconcile the Church of the modern world with the sobriety of early Christian liturgy.

A photo of the bishops at Vatican II not imagining for one second that new canons would be added to the Roman Rite. 

However, contrary to popular belief, the composition process was far from a mere archaeological transcription. Instead, it involved extensive editorial intervention that fundamentally altered the structure of the original text, resulting in a prayer that bears only a vague resemblance to the actual anaphora of Hippolytus.

Furthermore, scholarly research over recent decades has cast doubt not only on Hippolytus’ authorship of the Apostolic Tradition, but also on the text’s Roman origins and even its antiquity. This suggests that the 20th-century reform, in this critical area, was based on a flawed understanding of the source material. Indeed, some scholars go so far as to argue that the anaphora of the Apostolic Tradition never existed as a living tradition, but was merely a literary construct with no concrete application in the life of the early Church.

The purpose of this study is to conduct a critical and comparative analysis of Eucharistic Prayer II and the anaphora of Hippolytus. By examining their philological and structural variations, I shall evaluate the extent to which the modern prayer constitutes an authentic ressourcement [1] or, conversely, whether it represents an artificial creation. Finally, this paper will propose potential solutions regarding the de facto near-exclusive use of Eucharistic Prayer II; a practice that, due to the prayer’s extreme brevity, undeniably represents a liturgical and theological impoverishment when compared to the other available alternatives.

The Anaphora of Hippolytus and the Apostolic Tradition

The Apostolic Tradition [2] is a short treatise belonging to the genre of ordines, ancient, systematic manuals containing both disciplinary and liturgical norms that would eventually evolve to form the earliest basis of canon law.

Discovered during the nineteenth century and originally titled the Egyptian Church Order, it was quickly associated with Hippolytus, a peculiar and enigmatic figure. Historical accounts concerning him are contradictory and often confusing: he not only accused Pope St Callixtus I [3] of laxity regarding the reconciliation of sinners [4], but, in his indignation, went so far as to incite a schism, being chosen by his followers as “Bishop of Rome” in opposition to the legitimate pontiff, or, in simpler terms, the first antipope. Curiously, this mysterious figure eventually reconciled with the rightful pontiff, Pontian [5], and died as a martyr in the year 235 AD.

Why, then, was it given the name Apostolic Tradition? The answer is rooted entirely in conjecture. It turns out that in 1551, the architect and antiquarian Pirro Ligorio (1512 ca. – 1583) discovered a statue in the Tiburtine cemetery, near the Castro Pretorio in Rome, which he described as “broken and mistreated” [6]. Today, this figure appears as a man holding a book, seated in a posture that conveys both authority and the status of a philosopher:

source

Yet, this raises a question: has the statue always looked this way? Given the antiquity attributed to it, it appears remarkably well-preserved. The answer is no. When Ligorio discovered the statue, it lacked the upper torso, and it was he who “reconstructed” it. Before addressing why Ligorio decided to provide the bust of a man and attribute the statue to Hippolytus, we must first examine how he reached such a conclusion.

The statue is seated on a highly ornate throne featuring Greek inscriptions; it is these that provide the answer to Ligorio’s decision. Three groups of inscriptions can be identified. First, on the right side of the throne, there is a lunar calendar divided into seven periods of sixteen years each. [7] Second, on the left side, a 112-year paschal table is engraved. [8] Third, and most importantly for our research, is a large group of Greek inscriptions near the upper right corner of the throne’s backrest, in a rather non-central position. This section contains an extensive list of written works, though it is difficult to determine exactly how many there are or to whom they belong; for instance, it is unclear whether each line represents a specific work or merely parts of a longer title.

What can be identified, however, is that several of these inscriptions coincide with those that Eusebius of Caesarea (260 – 339/340) attributes to a certain “Hippolytus, a leader of another church somewhere.” [9] For example, both catalogues mention a paschal calendar divided into sixteen-year periods during the reign of the Caesar Alexander. [10] Furthermore, the statue explicitly includes a mention of the Apostolic Tradition (ἀποστολικὴ παράδοσις).

It is from this point that a narrative about Hippolytus was constructed, based on the contradictory and incomplete accounts of him found in the writings of Eusebius of Caesarea, Saint Jerome, Eustratius of Constantinople, the Liberian Catalogue, and Theophanes, among other sources.

Ligorio’s reconstructed account would go as follows: Hippolytus was a Roman presbyter who, due to irreconcilable doctrinal differences and personal grievances, opposed Pope Zephyrinus and, subsequently, his successor, Callixtus I. When the latter was elevated to the See of Peter, Hippolytus, outraged, led a schism, becoming the first antipope. Eventually, he was exiled to Sardinia to die alongside Pope Pontian, with whom he had reconciled before both perished in exile. Pope Fabian [11] later had Hippolytus’s remains brought to Rome on the 13th of August. It is upon this assumption [12] that Ligorio attributes the statue to Hippolytus, whom he describes as the Bishop of Rome, and “restores” the statue’s torso.

The putative statue of Hippolytus now stands in the entryway of the Vatican Library; to the left is an inscription which states that “Pope John XXIII ordered that the statue of Hippolytus, a most learned churchman, be placed at the entry of the Vatican Library, July 16, 1959, in the first year of his pontificate.” (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Dobroš © Dana Stehlíková, CC BY-SA 4.0) 

This hypothetical reconstruction has faced extensive criticism in modern scholarship. [13]

Pope Pius IV [14] added the following inscription to the base of the statue: “Statua Hippolyti Portuensis episcopi, qui vixit Alexandro Pio im. ex urbis ruinis effossa a Pio IV Medice pont. maximo restituta. – A statue of Hippolytus, bishop of Portus, who lived under the emperor Alexander the Pius, excavated from the ruins of the city (of Rome) and restored by Pope Pius IV de Medici.” [15]

As one may note, Pius IV refers to him as “Bishop of Porto” (Portuensis episcopi) rather than Bishop of Rome, as Ligorio had claimed. This is because it was not until the discovery of unpublished excerpts from the work Refutation of All Heresies (mentioned above) that he was definitively regarded as Bishop of Rome; prior to this, there had been a debate as to whether he was Bishop of Rome or Porto. Thus, “Once considered the Bishop of Porto, Hippolytus was now considered the first and only canonised antipope in history.” [16]

Regrettably, however, it is not merely the history of Hippolytus that rests upon assumptions, but the very identity of the statue itself. In a 1973 presentation at the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, Margherita Guarducci (1902-99) discussed the studies she had been conducting on the statue. Of all her observations, the most pertinent to our research is the following:

The upper part of the statue is clad in a toga – or, to be more precise, an ἱμάτιον – while a finely carved tunic (χιτών) covers the ankles. The ankle-length tunic, however, is classically part of women’s attire, and depicting it in this way is a typical feature of female representations in Greek sculpture. [17]

This led Guarducci to state that “the ‘holy doctor’ is actually a female doctor!” [18] In the same vein, John Baldovin maintains that “Recent research has demonstrated, however, that the original figure is not that of a bishop but most probably that of a woman.” [19]

Guarducci questioned not only the statue’s gender but also the antiquity of its inscriptions, arguing (and I quote Ginette Vagenheim), “Regarding the date of the inscriptions, there is no conclusive palaeographic element to date them to the third century A.D.” [20] Guarducci’s views would eventually be accepted (at least regarding the statue’s gender) by other scholars, such as Allen Brent in his book Hippolytus and the Roman Church in the Third Century.

Now, without intending to delve further into the intricacies of the question, [21] having already demonstrated that the statue does not truly represent Hippolytus, and that we cannot rely on the catalogue inscribed upon it, let us return once again to the figure of Hippolytus himself. Was he truly Roman? And, more importantly, what is the provenance of the Apostolic Tradition?

As previously mentioned, if we follow the traditional theory, Hippolytus was a rigorist, a staunch conservative with archaizing tendencies already outdated for his time, who composed an ordo to regulate the communities under his pastoral care during his schism.

The theory of Hippolytan authorship of the Apostolic Tradition has been widely criticised in recent times, in part because

An increasing majority of scholars agree, for instance, that church orders are living literature, consisting of several layers of redaction rather than being the coherent work of a single author. Therefore the Apostolic tradition is most likely not the work of someone named Hippolytus, even if later traditions linked that name to this particular piece of writing. [22]

The document in question no longer exists in its original Greek; we have access to it only through later translations into Coptic (in both the Sahidic and Bohairic dialects), Ge’ez (Ethiopian), and Arabic, as well as a 4th-century Latin translation (contained in the Fragmentum Veronese), each translation has considerable lacunae, yet taken together, they allow for an approximate reconstruction of the contents of the original.

It is for this reason that John Baldovin has concluded:

The title of the document in question is not the Apostolic Tradition. It cannot be attributed to Hippolytus, an author whose corpus of biblical commentaries and anti-heretical treatises is somewhat well known. As a matter of fact it is even doubtful whether the corpus of that writer can actually be attributed to a single writer. Finally, the document does not give us certain information about the liturgical practice of the early-third-century Roman Church. [23]

All of this is important because, as we know (and shall examine in greater detail later), Eucharistic Prayer II, the most widely used Eucharistic Prayer from the 1969 Missale Romanum, is inspired by the Anaphora of Hippolytus contained in the Apostolic Tradition, based on the assumption that it represents a “return” to the practices of the early Roman Church. Therefore, if the anaphora is not by Hippolytus, is not Roman, and is not from the third century, we clearly face a problem: the reform, at least in this regard, would have been based on a falsehood.

We know that the Apostolic Tradition was highly influential in the East, especially in the Apostolic Constitutions, the Canons of Hippolytus, and the Testament of Our Lord Jesus Christ. However, to quote Michael Uwe Lang, “its influence on the development of Western liturgy was minimal until the twentieth-century liturgical reforms.”[24] It is for this reason that the same author concludes: “Because of the uncertainties about its date and place of origin, the Latin version of the Apostolic Tradition can hardly be taken as a source for Roman liturgy in the early third century.” [25]

Some authors consider the work to be the collective product of a theological school operating under the pseudonym of Hippolytus, rather than that of a specific individual (this being the Roman Hippolytan school). [26] On the other hand, Kenneth Stevenson attributes its origins to a presbyter from Syria rather than Rome, noting, “Every liturgical expert on antiquity knows that Hippolytus might, conceivably, have been a sham Syrian archaizer, doing his own thing, out of favor with the Pope.” [27] Moreover, as time passes, the integrity of the document is increasingly called into question; for example, Bradshaw describes it as

an aggregation of material from different sources, quite possibly arising from different geographical regions and probably from different historical periods, from perhaps as early as the mid-second century to as late as the mid-fourth century. [28]

We have already briefly and succinctly addressed the Hippolytfrage (question of Hippolytus) in its three dimensions: 1) the identity of Hippolytus, 2) the identity of the statue attributed to him, and 3) the authenticity and authorship of the Apostolic Tradition.

Regarding the first issue, it has been established that, as of today, the assumptions of the 20th century are being called into question; we do not know if Hippolytus actually existed as traditionally understood, nor do we know whether he was Roman or not.

Regarding the second issue, it has been established that the statue does not correspond to Hippolytus, nor even to a man, but to a woman.

Regarding the third issue, it has been established that the Apostolic Tradition cannot be attributed to a specific person or place, and that, in any case, its authorship lies in the East and not in Rome, having had no influence on Western liturgical development. Some authors suggest Alexandria as its place of origin (Jean Michel Hanssens).

Having mentioned the above, and before proceeding to the analysis of the text itself and of Eucharistic Prayer II, let us recall what Baldovin has stated:

There is a very real possibility that the Apostolic Tradition describes liturgies that never existed. A fortiori, great caution must be employed in appealing to this document to justify contemporary rites. [29]

NOTES

[1] A French term meaning “return to the sources”; a concept widely used during the Conciliar and post-Conciliar periods, particularly by proponents of the Nouvelle théologie.

[2] From the Greek 'Αποστολικὴ παράδοσις.

[3] Pontificate from 218 to 222 AD.

[4] In Refutation of All Heresies (original title: Φιλοσοφούμενα ἢ κατὰ πασῶν αἱρέσεων ἔλεγχος), Book IX, Chapter 7.

[5] Pontificate from 230 to 235 AD.

[6] Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli “Vittorio Emanuele III”, ms. XIII.B.7, fol. 424: “questa imagine che siede rotta et mal trattata.” (“this image that lies broken and mistreated”).

[7] Inscriptiones Christianæ Urbis Romæ septimo sæculo antiquiores, nova series, ed. Antonio Ferrua (Vatican City: Pontificium Institutum Archæologiæ Christianæ, 1980), vol. VII, N°19934:

ἔτους α´ βασιλείας Ἀλεξάνδρου αὐτοκράτορος ἐγέ / νετο ἡ δι´ τοῦ πάσχα εἰδοῖς ἀπρειλίαις σαββάτῳ ἐμ / βολίμου μηνὸς γενομένου ἔσται τοῖς ἑξῆς ἔτεσιν καθ / ὼς ὑποτέτακται ἐν τῷ πίνακι ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν τοῖς παρῳ / χηκόσιν καθὼς σεσημείωται ἀπονηστίζεσθαι δὲ / δεῖ οὗ ἂν ἐνπέσῃ κυριακή. “In the first year of the Roman emperor Alexander Severus, the 14th of the Paschal moon fell on Saturday, the Ides of April, during an embolismic month. For the succeeding years it will be as indicated in the table below. Events of the past were as noted. One must break the fast when Sunday comes.” Translation is from Alden A. Mosshammer, The Easter Computus and the Origins of the Christian Era, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 117.

[8] Inscriptiones Christianæ Urbis Romæ septimo sæculo antiquiores, nova series, ed. Antonio Ferrua (Ciudad del Vaticano: Pontificium Institutum Archæologiæ Christianæ, 1980), vol. VII, N°19935:

ἔτει Ἀλεξάνδρου καίσαρος / τῷ α´ ἀρχὴ / αἱ κυριακαὶ τοῦ πάσχα κατὰ ἔτος / αἱ δὲ παρακεντήσεις δηλοῦσι τὴν δὶς πρὸ ἕξ. “First year of Alexander Caesar: the Sundays of the Pascha year by year: points indicate the bissextum.” Translation is from Mosshammer, The Easter Computus, 117.

[9] In Ecclesiastical History (original title: Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ Ἱστορία), Book VI, Chapter 20, point 2. It is noteworthy that Eusebius refers to Hippolytus merely as a “leader” (προεστὼς) and not by an ecclesiastical title such as bishop or presbyter. (The original Greek text reads: ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ Ἱππόλυτος, ἑτέρας που καὶ αὐτὸς προεστὼς ἐκκλησίας.)

[10] Eusebius of Caesarea notes the following in the aforementioned work: “He (Hippolytus) presents a chronological table and fixes a 16-year paschal canon, defining the time up to the first year of the Emperor Alexander.” In Ecclesiastical History, Book VI, Chapter 22, point 1. (The original Greek text reads: τὸ Περὶ τοῦ πάσχα πεποίηται σύγγραμμα, ἐν ᾧ τῶν χρόνων ἀναγραφὴν ἐκθέμενος καί τινα κανόνα ἑκκαιδεκαετηρίδος περὶ τοῦ πάσχα προθείς, ἐπὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἔτος αὐτοκράτορος Ἀλεξάνδρου τοὺς χρόνους περιγράφει.)

[11] Pontificate from 236 to 250 AD.

[12] Ligorio himself expresses this as follows: “Between the Via Nomentana and the road to Tivoli, outside the walls of Rome and not far from the Castro […], this image was found sitting, broken and mistreated; on both sides of the seat are these examples in Greek; of this bishop, […]; and it is held to be that Saint Hippolytus of whom Eusebius speaks so honorably; but he does not say of which diocese he was. Only Theophanes writes that he was Roman and that he was a bishop.” (From the Italian original: “Tra la via Nomentana e quella di Tivoli fuor delle mura di Roma, e poco discosto dal Castro […], in certe ruine, fu trovata questa imagine che siede, rotta et mal trattata; nelli duoi lati del(l)a sedia sono posto questi esemplari in greco; di questo vescovo, […]; et si tiene esser quel santo Hippolito di cui fa mentione honoratamente Eusebio; ma non dice di cui diogesi fusse. Ma solamente scrive Theophane che egli fu romano et che fu vescovo.”)

[13] See Pierre Nautin, Hippolyte et Josipe: contribution à l'histoire de la littérature chrétienne du troisième siècle (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1947).

[14] Pontificate from 1559 to 1565 AD.

[15] Paweł Nowakowski, Cult of Saints, E05385 –

Available at: http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E05385

[16] András Handl, “A Heavily Bearded Philosopher in Women’s Underwear: Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Identity of the So-called Hippolytus Statue,” Louvain Studies 44 (2021): 350, https://doi.org/10.2143/LS.44.4.3290040.

[17] Handl, “A Heavily Bearded Philosopher,” 351-352.

[18] “il ‘santo dottore’ è invece una dottoressa!” Margherita Guarducci, “La statua di ‘Sant’Ippolito’ in Vaticano,” Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia 47 (1974-1975): 163-190, cited in Handl, “A Heavily Bearded Philosopher,” 353.

[19] John F. Baldovin, “Hippolytus and the Apostolic Tradition: Recent Research and Commentary,” Theological Studies 64, no. 3 (2003): 522.

[20] Ginette Vagenheim. Pirro Ligorio and the restoration of the statue of Saint Hippolytus in the Vatican Library. 2025. ⟨hal-05401992⟩. P. 19. Available at https://hal.science/hal-05401992v1/document

[21] “Hippolytan question” in German.

[22] Handl, “A Heavily Bearded Philosopher,” 360.

[23] Baldovin, “Hippolytus and the Apostolic Tradition,” 521.

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

[25] Ibid.

[26] In this sense, Brent, cited by Baldovin in “Hippolytus and the Apostolic Tradition,” 525.

[27] Kenneth Stevenson, Eucharist and Offering (New York: Pueblo, 1986), 9.

[28] Johnson Bradshaw, cited by Lang in The Roman Mass, Chapter 3, Kindle.

[29] Baldovin, “Hippolytus and the Apostolic Tradition,” 542, emphasis mine.

Study the Canons of Orthros To Understand the Traditional Symbolism of Christian Art

Years ago, I attended a lecture on the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the fascinating story of its compilation and editing. (Believe me, it was fascinating!) One thing I remember being told, almost in passing, was that the editors insisted every edition include a small number of pictures they deemed essential. I was always puzzled by this painting of the three young men in the fiery furnace from the book of Daniel and by why it was considered so important. Later on I discovered, when I attended a Scripture class, that it was interpreted as an Old Testament type that is Christological, Marian, and of the Holy Spirit.

The painting reproduced in the Catechism is from the 3rd century AD and is in the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome.

In Daniel 3, three young Jewish men named Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah (often called by their Babylonian names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego), refuse to worship the golden image set up by King Nebuchadnezzar, and are therefore thrown into a blazing furnace. The furnace is so hot that it burns those closest to it, but miraculously not the three young men inside. The king, looking in, is shocked, first to see them survive but also to see a mysterious fourth figure:

“But I can see four men walking free in the heart of the fire and quite unharmed.” (Daniel 3, 25, RNJB)

The three emerge, but the fourth figure is no longer visible. Nebuchadnezzar then praises their God for sending “his angel” to rescue them (verse 28). The figure is not named in Scripture, but some early Church Fathers interpreted him as a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ who delivered them.

The song of the three young men, which is also in Daniel 3, is chanted every Sunday in the Liturgy of the Hours. In the Byzantine Liturgy, commentaries are chanted after the Old Testament canticles, which are known as Canons. Each Canon is a set of troparia, beautiful hymns that are drawn from the homilies of the Church Fathers and are extremely rich in theological content, so much so that if anyone wants to understand the Church’s traditional imagery, I recommend they pray them regularly. I began to do so several years ago, and it has been a continual source of inspiration, an education in the images in the Christian artistic tradition - quite apart from all the spiritual benefits that praying the liturgy brings! Some readers might already have noticed several posts inspired by this project. Of course, if I had been aware of these hymns earlier, it would not have been such a mystery to me why the editors of the Catechism thought this image so important.

Ode 8, from Sunday morning Orthros (Morning Prayer), in Tone 1, which is a commentary on the song of the three young men in the fiery furnace. Many generations of Christians, therefore, will have known by hearing and singing this hymn regularly in the liturgy what had been a mystery to me for so long. It begins as follows: 

“The furnace moist with cool dew prefigured a wonder surpassing nature: as it left unharmed the young men that were thrown into its midst, so also the fire of the Godhead descended within the Virgin’s womb, leaving it unscathed. Wherefore let us sing a hymn of praise and say, ‘Let the whole creation bless the Lord and exalt Him forever!’ ”

The beautiful icon above is an illumination by the Armenian artist Toros Roslin, 1210-70, who worked at the scriptorium of Hromkla in the kingdom of Cilicia. This was a state established by Armenian refugees fleeing the Seljuk invasion of their land, on the Mediterranean coast of southern modern-day Turkey.

Complete Video of a Recent Glagolitic Mass Celebrated in Australia

Early last month, we posted photos of a Solemn Mass celebrated on the feast of the Precious Blood for the Croatian Catholic community of Sydney, Australia, according to the traditional Glagolitic Missal, which is the Roman Missal translated into a form of Church Slavonic. A complete video of the Mass was recently made available on an Australia-based YouTube channel called New Ark Films. I am sure our readers will find this precious documentation of such a venerable liturgical tradition extremely interesting, and in no small part because it shows us that the transition from Latin to another language does not have to bring with it the destruction of our rite’s musical patrimony. Feliciter, i blagoslovenno!

The Feast of St Lawrence in Other Western Rites

It was the custom of the earliest Christians to obtain transcripts of the trials of their martyrs whenever they could. These were kept in the archives of local churches not merely for the sake of record keeping, but so that they could be read during the liturgy, a tradition which is attested in the writings of several of the Fathers. The Roman custom of reading the lives of the Saints in the Divine Office derives from this, and in the Ambrosian Mass, it is still to this day permitted to substitute the life of a Saint for the Old Testament reading on his feast day.

The following video was taken in 2014 in the basilica of St Ambrose in Milan, on the feast of the Martyrs Ss Protasius and Gervasius; after the Gloria and Collect, the passion of the two martyrs is read.

Because of this custom, there survive indisputably authentic records of the trials of a number of early martyrs (e.g. Ss Perpetua and Felicity, Ss Fructuosus and Companions, and St Cyprian); however, we have none from the city of Rome. A professor of mine had a theory as to why this is so: he believed that the archives of the church of Rome had been destroyed during the persecution of Diocletian (303-6), and this would explain why we are dependent on documents from later writers (sometimes much later) for information about the martyrdoms of so many prominent Roman Saints, such as Agnes or Pope Clement I.

And thus, the earliest major source for the life of St Lawrence, whose feast we keep today, is St Ambrose, who was born in Trier, where his father was serving as pretorian prefect of Gaul, some eighty years after the great martyr’s death in 257. Ambrose’s family, however, was originally Roman, and when his father died while he was still quite young, his mother took him back to Rome, where he studied law and rhetoric. Many of his writings evince familiarity with the customs and traditions of the Eternal City (for example, he is the first witness to an early recension of the Roman Canon), and so we may take him as a reliable witness to those which concern St Lawrence.

A partial view of the frescoed ceiling of the chapel of St Sixtus within the basilica of St Lawrence in Milan, by the German painter Johann Christoph Storer (1611-71). Behind St Lawrence, holding a knife. is the martyr St Aquilinus, who is buried in a chapel on the opposite side of the same basilica, and next to him, St Sixtus, in whose honor the chapel was built in the late 5th or early 6th century. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0.)

One of the fourteen hymns considered indisputably his work was written in honor of St Lawrence; it is sung in the Ambrosian Office at Lauds and both Vespers. Unfortunately, it seems that none of the great English translators such as Fr Caswall or John Mason Neale put their hands to it, and so we must be content with my poor prose version.

Apostolorum supparem, Laurentium archidiaconum, Pari corona martyrum Romana sacravit fides.	The faith of Rome sanctified the archdeacon Lawrence, nearly equal to the Apostles, with an equal martyrs’ crown.
Xystum sequens hic martyrem, Responsa vatis retulit: Mœrere, fili, desine: Sequere me post triduum.	He, following the martyr Sixtus, received these words as those of a prophet: “Cease mourning, my son, after three days thou wilt follow me.”
Nec territus pœnæ metu, Hæres futurus sanguinis, Spectavit obtutu pio Quod ipse mox persolveret.	And not frightened by the fear of suffering, soon to be heir of (Sixtus’) blood, he dutifully be- held that which he himself would soon undergo.
Jam tunc in illo martyre Egit triumphum martyris; Successor æquus syngrapham Vocis tenens et sanguinis.	Already then in that martyr he led a martyr’s triumph, holding as his successor the promise of his words and blood.
Post triduum iussus tamen Census sacratos prodere, Spondet pie, nec abnuit Addens dolum victoriæ.	At last, after three days, ordered to hand over the sacred treasures, he dutifully promised and did not refuse, adding guile to victory.
Spectaculum pulcherrimum! Egena cogit agmina, Inopesque monstrans prædicat: Hi sunt opes Ecclesiæ.	A most beautiful sight! He gathers the needy crowds, and showing the poor, he proclaims, “These are the riches of the Church.”
Lucro piorum perpetes Inopes profecto sunt opes; Avarus illusus dolet, Flammas et ultrices parat.	The poor are the everlasting riches gained by the pious; the greedy man deceived, grieves, and prepares the avenging flames.
Fugit perustus carnifex, Suisque cedit ignibus: Versate me, martyr vocat, Vorate coctum, si lubet.	The executioner is burned and flees, and yields to his own flames; “Turn me over”, the martyr cries out,  “and eat what is cooked, if you like.”
Gloria tibi, Domine, gloria Unigenito, una cum sancto Spiritu in sempiterna sæcula. Amen.	Glory to Thee, o Lord, glory to the Only-begotten Son, together with the Holy Spirit unto everlasting ages. Amen.

The Ambrosian preface for St Lawrence beautifully compares his faith to gold refined in the fire.

VD: Qui hodierna die Levitæ tui Laurentii fidem áuream igne ardentissimo comprobasti; ut esset tibi hostia viva, hostia sancta, in odorem suavitatis accensa. O gloriosi certaminis virtus! O inconcussa mentis constantia! Stridunt membra viventis super craticulam imposita, et prunis sævientibus anhelantis; ut et tibi hostia fieret, et ad martyrii triumphum intrepidus perveniret. Per Christum…

Truly it is worthy… who on this day didst make proof of the golden faith of Thy Levite Lawrence with a most ardent fire, that he might be a living and holy victim, burnt unto the odor of sweetness. Oh, the might of his glorious contest! Oh, the unshaken constancy of his mind! His members, laid on the grill, groan, as he still lives and breathes while the fires rage; that he might both become a sacrifice unto Thee, and fearlessly arrive at the triumph of martyrdom. Through Christ…

The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, by Titian, 1567, in the Spanish Royal Monastery of the Escorial.

The Spanish poet Prudentius (348 – 405/13 ca.) was a contemporary of Ambrose, and had a similar secular career: training in rhetoric and law, and service as a provincial governor. In later life, he withdrew from public service and became an ascetic, but was never a cleric. One of his most famous works is a collection of fourteen poems “On the crowns (of the martyrs)”, including several Romans, Lawrence among them.

A number of passages from this work are included in the Mozarabic Divine Office, which is often astonishingly prolix. For example, on the feast of the great martyr St Vincent of Saragossa, the hymn at Lauds has 292 lines (73 stanzas) excerpted from the 576 which Prudentius dedicates to him. For St Lawrence, however, a judicious selection of verses was made (and largely rewritten) to create a hymn of classically Roman restraint, with only five stanzas, including the doxology. (I have taken this English version from the website of Mr Matthew Carver, who kindly licenses all his translations as Creative Commons. CC BY-NC 3.0 US)

http://matthaeusglyptes.blogspot.com/2015/05/en-martyris-laurentii.html

En Martyris Laurentii Armata pugnavit fides, Nam morte mortem diruit, Ac semet impendit sibi.	BEHOLD, of Lawrence, martyr famed, What faith, well-armed, hath led the host! By death o’er death the crown he claimed And gave himself to th’ uttermost.
Fore hoc sacerdos dixerat Jam Sixtus affixus cruci, Laurentium flentem videns Crucis sub ipso stipite.	Twas as his bishop Sixtus said As fastened to the cross he hung, When seeing Lawrence weep with dread Beneath his cross whereat he clung:
Desiste discessu meo Fletum dolenter fundere, Praecedo frater, tu quoque Post hoc sequeris triduum.	“Forbear at my departure now To shed thy tears so grievously; Though, brother, I go first, yet thou Shalt three days hence my foll’wer be.”
Extrema vox Episcopi Praenuntiatrix gloriae, Nihil fefellit: nam dies Praedicta palmam praestitit	What lastly did the bishop say Prophetic voice of glorious heav’n In naught deceived, for on the day That he foretold, the palm was giv’n.
Gloria Patri ingenito, Gloria unigenito Una cum sancto Spiritu In sempiterna saecula. Amen..	To th’ unbegotten Father praise, And to the sole begotten Son And Holy Ghost for endless days, One God, for evermore be done.

The outlandish prolixity of the Mozarabic liturgy is frequently displayed in the Mass as well. Its ancient preface for the feast of St Lawrence is over 400 words long, and retells the story not only of Lawrence himself, but also of St Sixtus II, the Pope whom he served as deacon, and of St Hippolytus, the soldier and guard whom he converted, and who was also martyred for the Faith. Here is an excerpt, which is based on the same passage of St Ambrose’s De Officiis (39) that provides the text for several parts of the Roman Office of St Lawrence. (This preface is written in a highly elaborate rhetorical style which does not lend itself easily to literal translation.)

The preface (“illatio” in Mozarabic terminology) of the Mass of St Lawrence in a Mozarabic Missal printed in 1804, starting in the upper part of the 2nd column.

Quique Apostolorum choro donatus, filium generosae mentis Laurentium exspectabat: quia sine eo proprii sanguinis victimam offerre nolebat, cui cuncta mysteriorum ministeria transigenda commiserat. Qui cum de sua remansione patri querulus exstitisset, ab eodem flere prohibitus, quod post tres dies sequeretur audivit: nec debere de sua desertione causari praemonuit, quoniam ei gloriosior diabolo seuiente inrisoque tyranno triumphus maneret. Martyrum tuorum, Christe, infatigabilis fortitudo!

And (Sixtus), having been given as a gift to the choir of the Apostles (i.e. in heaven), awaited his generous-minded son Lawrence, because he did not want to offer the sacrifice of his own blood without him to whom he had entrusted the celebration of all services in the (holy) mysteries. And when the latter complained to his father about remaining behind, he was forbidden by him to weep, since he heard that after three days he would follow; and (Sixtus) foretold that he ought not to complain of his being left, since a more glorious triumph awaited him over the raging devil and the tyrant whom he would mock. Oh, the tireless fortitude of Thy martyrs, o Christ!

The words “to whom he entrusted the celebration of all services in the holy mysteries” refers to the custom by which the administration of the chalice was especially entrusted to deacons. In his account of their martyrdom in the De Officiis, St Ambrose has Lawrence say to Sixtus, “ ‘Whither, holy priest, dost thou hasten without thy deacon? … Dost thou deny a share in thy blood to one to whom thou didst entrust the consecration of the Lord’s blood, and a share in the celebration of the sacraments?’ To this Sixtus replied, ‘I do not leave or abandon thee, son, but greater contests await thee. We, as elder men, receive the way of an easier combat; a more glorious triumph against the tyrant awaiteth thee as a younger man. Soon shalt thou come after, cease weeping; after three days shalt thou follow me, as levite followeth priest.”

St Sixtus Bids St Lawrence Farewell, 1465 ca., by the German (Südtiroler) painter Michael Pacher (1435-98). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

St Romanus the Martyr

In the Roman Breviary of 1481, the following account is given of St Romanus, a solder who was converted by seeing the constancy of St Lawrence in his torments. His feast is kept today.

At Rome, the birth of St Romanus, a soldier who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ through the words of St Lawrence, and said to (him), “I see before thee a most fair youth, standing with a linen cloth, and wiping thy limbs; wherefore, I adjure thee through Christ, who sent His angel to thee, do not leave me.” Then Decius, being full of wrath and deceit, said to Valerian, “I think we have been beaten by magical art.” And he ordered the blessed Lawrence to be removed from the grill. At that very hour, the blessed Romanus came bearing a vessel of water, falling at the feet of blessed Lawrence, with tears asked him that he might be baptized. And (Lawrence) took the water, blessed it and baptized him. Now Decius on hearing this said, “Strip him, and beat him with clubs.” And blessed Romanus, being brought before Decius Caesar, without being asked, began to cry out in a clear voice, saying “I am a Christian.” And Decius Caesar ordered him in that very hour to be executed; so he was brought outside the walls at the Salarian gate and beheaded on the ninth of August. Then the priest Justin came at night, and collected the body of the blessed martyr Romanus, and buried him in a crypt in the Ager Veranus.

St Romanus before the Blessed Trinity; in the lower left corner, he is seen standing outside the prison where St Lawrence is held, carrying a water vessel. From the high altar of the church dedicated to him in the town of Schweighausen in western Germany. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Jörgens.mi, CC BY-SA 3.0.)

The Church of Ss Peter and Paul in Biasca, Switzerland (Part 2)

Last week, we published Nicola’s pictures of the interior of the church of Ss Peter and Paul in Biasca, a town in Canton Ticino, Switzerland, which has been part of the territory of the Ambrosian Rite since at least the 6th century. As a follow-up, here are some pictures of the exterior, very much in the Romanesque style of its period, the second half of the twelfth century. At the end are some pieces of sculpture which are, to be honest, nowhere near as impressive as the extensive surviving fresco work which we saw in the first part. 

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Uncomfortable Comparisons? Fr. Barthe on the Traditional and New Sacramental Rites

In 1969, A Short Critical Study of the Novus Ordo Missae was published with the signatures of two powerful cardinals, Bacci and Ottaviani. Nicknamed The Ottaviani Intervention, it quickly become a classic, and has never gone out of print. But... where was its companion volume? You know, the one about the other six sacraments?

For, indeed, the reform of the Mass was accompanied by a profound overhaul of all the other sacraments – baptism, confirmation, marriage, holy orders, penance, and extreme unction (the last two renamed reconciliation and the anointing of the sick). And the changes to these were no less profound, no less meaningful, no less consequential.

Understandably, debates about liturgical reform have coalesced around the new missal for decades, since the Eucharistic rite touches the lives of Catholics more than any other. Yet if the new rite of the Mass deserves criticism for its diminished signification of the Church’s faith, the same holds for the new rituals of the sacraments, which were produced according to the same assumptions and principles.

Esteemed liturgical theologian Fr. Claude Barthe confronts this question in his short but potent work, The Seven Sacraments, Past and Present: A Short Critical Study of the New Rituals. Fr. Barthe takes up particular points of comparison between the old and new rituals, looking to the matter and the form (the elements used, the words spoken) as well as the ceremonies surrounding them. Did the effort to “adapt the rites for modern man” end up diluting and dissipating the very faith they were supposed to express more effectively?

In this well-documented book, Fr. Barthe helps readers to see why a coherent defense and practice of tradition must reach beyond the Mass to embrace all of the Church’s rites – at a time when some are seeking to rule out the very possibility of doing so. The Roman Rite, he explains, is a unified world of prayer, and its components should not be arbitrarily divorced. If the traditional Mass deserves to be honored and prayed in our churches, the traditional form of each and every sacrament should be given no less honor and be no less readily available.

Perhaps in time, this book, too, will become famous, and people will start speaking of The Barthe Intervention!

 

Be that as it may, Os Justi Press is proud to present its English edition to the world. I encourage tradition-loving Catholics to take up this brisk and battling book. Find out why it caused a firestorm upon its 2025 publication in France. Consider gifting it to priests you know who love the Mass of the Ages but may not yet fully understand how it is integrated harmoniously into the larger whole of the Roman Rite.

Here’s what a few readers had to say about the manuscript:

“The rites for the administration of all the sacraments underwent substantial revisions following the Second Vatican Council. Fr. Barthe argues that these changes were by and large for the worse. The Seven Sacraments is a valuable resource that joins other works of ‘loyal dissent’ such as the ‘Ottaviani Intervention.’” – Dr. Michael P. Foley, Baylor University

“Wherever one looks in the older Roman liturgical rites, one finds a form of worship that embodies the fullness of Catholic doctrine more explicitly, more robustly, and more impressively than its ‘reformed’ counterpart. Instructive, yet accessible to non-specialists, this study is an important contribution to the growing body of critical literature concerning twentieth-century liturgical reform in the Western Catholic Church.” – Fr. Thomas M. Kocik, author of Reform of the Reform?: A Liturgical Debate

“Fr. Barthe has done the Church a great service by placing, side-by-side, ‘Before’ and ‘After’ snapshots of the seven sacraments (and funeral rites). The similarities and differences between the usus recentior and the usus antiquior are apparent.” – Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J., host of The Catholic Current

Available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook, from the publisher or from any Amazon site.

Review of Cosima Clara Gillhammer’s Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy

In his book The Restoration of Christian Culture, John Senior writes:

Whatever we do in the political and social order, the indispensable foundation is prayer, the heart of which is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the perfect prayer of Christ himself, Priest and Victim, recreating in an unbloody manner the bloody, selfsame Sacrifice of Calvary. What is Christian Culture? It is essentially the Mass. That is not my or anyone’s opinion or theory or wish but the central fact of two thousand years of history. Christendom, what secularists call Western Civilization, is the Mass and paraphernalia which protect and facilitate it.

Senior goes on to describe the Mass as emanating outwards to all aspects of life. What is done on a stone altar inspires the construction of a beautiful church. The church inspires a garden and clerics to tend the church and the people who flock to it. Next to the church and the garden a cemetery is made for those who died as faithful servants of what is done on that altar; and around the church-grounds people build their houses and sow their fields, until a community is formed. That community needs laws, and the laws cannot help but be influenced by the sense of justice that radiates from the center of its citizens’ lives. And before you know it, you have a Christian world built around the Mass.

The most recent attempt to uncover that world is Cosima Clara Gillhammer’s Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy. Gillhammer contends that the liturgy of the medieval Christian West exerted a greater impact on art and culture than is generally appreciated. “The liturgy forms the fabric of Western creative imagination,” she writes. “It provides the very images, words and concepts with which we think and tell stories” (253). To substantiate her claims, the author organizes her chapters based on different themes: Petition (the Psalms), Love (the Song of Solomon and the Blessed Virgin Mary), Hope (Advent), Suffering (Holy Week), Grief (the Stabat Mater), Joy (the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday), Death (the Dies Irae), Revelation (the Apocalypse), Time (liturgical seasons), and Space (Holy Week).

Light on Darkness does not presuppose any knowledge of the Catholic Faith: on the contrary, it sometimes reads like a Dummies’ Guide to Christianity. One chapter, for example, walks the reader through the Creed before proceeding further. Clearly, the intended audience is not limited to Catholics but seeks to persuade a broader demographic of the liturgy’s impact on Western culture.

Not all of Gillhammer’s genealogies are equally persuasive or relevant. It is true that (the Protestant) George Herbert’s poems communicate a “union with God in terms of a banquet,” but there is no evidence that he developed this idea thanks to Catholic liturgy rather than a direct reading of the Sacred Scriptures. And although I loved Gillhammer’s explanation of liturgical time as an example of Kairos (the time when God acts) rather than Chronos (mere sequential time), she does not explain in what ways the Kairos of the Roman rite changed the West or its culture.

The book also contains a few errors. A sentence on page 39 gives the impression that Psalm 51(50) was recited every day of the year during Lauds, but it was not said on feast days, which were many. The suppression of the Alleluia does not occur at the beginning of Lent (in the traditional calendar) but at the beginning of pre-Lent or Septuagesimatide. And in her discussion of liturgical time, Gillhammer conflates the idea that time is relative with the idea that time is subjective. What Einstein meant by his general and specific theories of relativity is not the same as my experiencing a one-hour department meeting as lasting an eternity.

Nevertheless, Light on Darkness abounds in fascinating facts. Did you know that:

The haunting sequence Dies Irae in the Requiem Mass is the “most frequently cited musical motif” in the history of Western music (187). In film alone, it has appeared in The Exorcist (1973), Jaws (1975), Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977), Mad Max (1979), The Shining (1980), The Lion King (1994), Mulan (1998), X2 (2003), The Return of the King from The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2005), and Watchmen (2009).

The liturgical application of (seemingly racy) passages from the Song of Songs to the Blessed Virgin Mary created a new way of thinking about love. “What engagement with the Song of Songs achieves is not so much an avoidance of erotic language and sexual subject matter,” Gillhammer writes, “as a deliberate and creative use of such language in engaging with religious matters” (53). The author goes on to describe the impact of this new approach from the secular poetry of the Middle Ages and Renaissance to the poems of Walt Whitman.

The Impropreria or Reproaches in the Good Friday service generated a new genre of English literature in which the fallen nature of man dialogues with the goodness of God.

The concept of felix culpa (O happy fault) in the Easter Vigil proclamation the Exsultet has found its way into artistic expression, from Middle English to James Joyce.

The beautiful sequence Stabat Mater for the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows went on to inspire artists to think of new ways of envisioning compassion, from Michelangelo’s Pieta to the Pieta of Kathe Kollwitz (d. 1945).

The celebration of the Resurrection in the liturgy led to the resurrection of the theatre in the Christian West, from biblical dramas on Easter (and Passion Plays on Good Friday) to Corpus Christi plays to “mystery plays” to the works of William Shakespeare. Hamlet is much more liturgical than you think.

Despite a few hiccups, Light on Darkness is an engaging and worthwhile read. Among its many virtues is its refutation of the myth that Catholic Christians were disconnected from the liturgical life of the Church because they were denied so-called “active participation.” The book convincingly demonstrates that liturgy was in the very air that our medieval and Renaissance forebears breathed and that the results of this insufflation are beautiful. John Senior would be pleased, I think, with Gilhammer’s explication of the central fact of two thousand years of history.

This review appeared in The Latin Mass magazine 35:2 (Summer 2026), pp. 56-57. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.

Note

[1] The Restoration of Christian Culture (Ignatius Press, 1983; reprinted, Roman Catholic Books), 16-17.

Solar Horarium, Organ Improvisation, Homeschool Music Curriculum, Sarum Rite, Aesthetics - Find It All in Season 8 of Square Notes

As the summer winds down, catch up with the latest (eighth!) season of Square Notes: The Sacred Music Podcast! The show is on its annual summer hiatus because of the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music’s summer graduate program; season nine will launch in the fall with new episodes. The timeless topics of the past season are well worth the time, whether you’re a church musician, casual appreciator of sacred music, or a Catholic who just wants to know more about the Church’s perspective on sacred music. The podcast is distributed via all major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, and Podbean.

Here’s a list of this past season’s topics and guests:

• Episode 1 – Building a Beautiful Homeschool Curriculum for Art and Music – with Elizabeth Lemme
• Episode 2 – From Puebla Cathedral to Today’s Spanish-Speaking Pews: The Legacy of Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla – with Fernando Gil
• Episode 3 – The Art of Organ Improvisation: Insights from Martin Baker
• Episode 4 – From Chant to Counterpoint: How to Improvise Polyphony – with Dr. Charles Weaver
• Episode 5 – Lenten Reflection for Church Musicians – with Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone
• Episode 6 – What Did American Sacred Music Sound Like in the 19th & Early 20th Centuries? A Snapshot from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York – with Salvatore Basile
• Episode 7 – Developing Great Vocal Technique for Singing Chant – with Dr. Rosemary Heredos
• Episode 8 – Chant Accompaniment, Organ Building, & Fundraising for Organ Projects – with Chris Berry
• Episode 9 – Is Beauty a Transcendental, Why Beauty Matters, and Can We Be Wrong About Beauty? Philosophical Questions Every Church Musician Should Consider with Dr. Margaret Hughes
• Episode 10 – All About Sarum: Ceremonial, Chant, Sources, and Processions from Medieval England – with Dr. Christopher Hodkinson
• Episode 11 – Learning & Living Gregorian Chant as a Monk – with Fr. Mark Bachmann, OSB, Choirmaster of Clear Creek Abbey
• Episode 12 – Caring for Temples of the Holy Spirit: The Busy Church Musician’s Guide to Nutrition, Health, and the Immune System – with Dr. Lizbeth Alter
• Episode 13 – A Masterclass in the Magisterial Compositions and Style of Palestrina – with Thomas Neal
• Episode 14 – Conflict Resolution, Work-Life Balance, and Avoiding Burnout As a Church Musician – with Angela Rosson
• Episode 15 – The Solar Horarium & Monastic Fast According to the Rule of St. Benedict, Plus Praying the Chant & Making Beer – with Fr. Augustine Wilmeth, OSB, Prior at the Benedictine Abbey in Norcia

Raphael’s Transfiguration of Christ

When Raphael was commissioned to paint the Transfiguration of Christ in 1515, the feast commemorating this event in the Lord’s life was still a new one in much of Western Europe. Although it had been kept in some places much earlier, it was given to the universal Church only in the reign of Pope Callixtus III (1455-58), in thanksgiving for the Christian victory against the Turks at the siege of Belgrade on August 6th, 1456. Coming only three years after the fall of Constantinople, this victory signaled an important halt to the Turkish invasion of Europe; in fact, the common custom of ringing church bells at noon began as a reminder to pray for the defense of this bulwark of Christendom.

In the Byzantine tradition, on the other hand, the feast is much older, and one of the Twelve Great Feasts commemorating the principal events of the life of Our Lord and His Mother. It is kept forty days before another of the Great Feasts, the Exaltation of the Cross, a custom based on the teaching of the Church Fathers that the purpose of the Transfiguration was to strengthen the faith of the Apostles in preparation for the Our Lord’s Passion. Long before the adoption of the feast in the West, this aspect of the tradition was also known to the Roman Rite, which reads St. Matthew’s account of the Transfiguration on both the Ember Saturday of Lent and the following Sunday.

The Transfiguration, in the apse mosaic of the monastery church of St. Catherine on Mt Sinai, ca. 565.

The painting was commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, the cousin of Pope Leo X, who had just been made archbishop of the French city of Narbonne. In accordance with a common abuse of the era, the cardinal had no intention of taking possession of the see to govern it personally, being as he was also the chancellor of the church in Rome; instead, he would have paid a vicar to fulfill the duties of bishop, while drawing the revenues of the see. (In the 10 years between his cousin’s election as Pope in 1513 and his own election as Clement VII, Giulio de’ Medici held ten different sees under various titles, five of them before his priestly ordination.)

Within a few decades, this abuse was completely extirpated by the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation; one must not imagine, however, that all the beneficiaries of it were entirely neglectful of their sees and abbeys. Cardinal de’ Medici commissioned the painting for the high altar of Narbonne’s cathedral, and would certainly have paid the artist a handsome sum for it. In the reign of a Pope whose family had been leading patrons of the Renaissance for generations, in a city filled with every kind of artist, Raphael stood head and shoulders above all of his contemporaries. His only equal in prominence, Michelangelo, had left Rome in 1513 shortly after the election of Pope Leo; in 1516, Raphael was made superintendent of Pontifical works, a job in which he could command his own prices, choosing for himself a few outstanding commissions, and leaving the rest in the hands of an army of assistants and apprentices.

The cathedral of Narbonne, dedicated to Ss Justus and Pastor. Their feast day is August 6th, the same as that of the Transfiguration, which was kept on the following day in the city itself; Raphael’s painting shows the two on the upper left side as witnesses of the Lord’s Transfiguration.

As I have noted before, in an age in which imitation was considered the very essence of art, which is to say, the imitation of the classical past, no-one had a keener eye for seeing what was good about the styles of other artists, taking it into his own, and improving upon it. In this painting, the last work of Raphael, one sees not merely the mastery of technique, but the perfect union at every point of technique to story. While certainly concerned to demonstrate his skill and versatility, especially in light of Michelangelo’s very recent triumph in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, each technical feature of the painting serves to communicate the Biblical story and theological idea behind it.

In Lent and on the feast in August, the Roman Rite reads the story of the Transfiguration from chapter 17 of St Matthew. However, in the upper part of the painting, Raphael has taken account also the words of St Luke that “the appearance of (Christ’s) countenance was altered,” (chap. 9, 29), as it will also be after the Resurrection. (Mark 16, 12 and Luke 24, 16.) The Lord’s face is painted in a style very similar to that of one of Raphael’s early teachers, Perugino, a style greatly admired in the later 15th and early 16th centuries, and considered a kind of idealized facial type. Thus, as Christ reveals himself to be the perfect man, the man who is also God, he is represented with a “perfect” face. The rest of the figures are painted in a variety of styles, with a much more realistic range of facial types, reminiscent of various predecessors and contemporaries of Raphael, a great demonstration of his extraordinary versatility.

Christ in the Transfiguration of Raphael.

The upper part of the Oddi altarpiece, which Raphael painted 15 years earlier. Note the similarity in the faces, all of which are reminiscent of the idealized facial type typical of Perugino.

The painting is also marked by three different major lighting schemes. In the upper part, the light of the transfigured Christ shines onto the clouds behind him, and back at us, while also illuminating the figures around Him, the Prophets Moses and Elijah, and the Apostles Peter, James and John. Through them, the divinity of Christ is revealed to us; thus the light of His divinity coming out at the viewer is not merely a special effect for its own sake, but helps to convey the meaning of the Biblical narrative. The lower part represents the next episode in the Synoptic Gospels, the healing of a possessed child. The very ancient date of the Exaltation of the Cross determines not only the day of the Transfiguration, but also that of the Ember Wednesday of September, always the Wednesday after it, on which the Church reads this episode in the words of St Mark.

And one of the multitude, answering, said: Master, I have brought my son to thee, having a dumb spirit. Who, wheresoever he taketh him, dasheth him, and he foameth, and gnasheth with the teeth, and pineth away; and I spoke to thy disciples to cast him out, and they could not. … And He asked his father: How long time is it since this hath happened unto him? But he said: From his infancy: And oftentimes hath he cast him into the fire and into waters to destroy him. But if thou canst do anything, help us, having compassion on us. And Jesus saith to him: If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth. And immediately the father of the boy crying out, with tears said: I do believe, Lord: help my unbelief. And when Jesus saw the multitude running together, he threatened the unclean spirit, saying to him: Deaf and dumb spirit, I command thee, go out of him; and enter not any more into him. And crying out, and greatly tearing him, he went out of him, and he became as dead, so that many said: He is dead. But Jesus taking him by the hand, lifted him up; and he arose. (Mark 9, 16-17 and 20-26)

The light enters the scene from the left and above, brightly illuminating the figures on the right, but leaving those on the left wrapped up in a mysterious dark mist. The former lighting scheme is based on the style of portraits done by Florentines, the latter scheme is that of the Venetians, another demonstration of the artist’s mastery of a variety of styles.

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