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

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

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

A copy made in the 19th century.

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

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

and a 19th century imitation.

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

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An Interesting Fact About Today’s Lenten Station

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image courtesy of Corpus Christi Watershed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

St. Hippolytus

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

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

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

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

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

A Troped Kyrie from the Use of York

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

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

Why Are Modern Church Buildings So Ugly

And Why Does it Matter?

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

Los Angeles Cathedral, completed 2002

Dr Bentz wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

San Francisco Cathedral, completed in 1970

The Penitential Psalms in Books of Hours

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The 150th Anniversary of the Birth of Pope Pius XII

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

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

Outtake footage from the same report.

That same day was also his 80th birthday.

A report of the coronation itself in 1939.

Some Ambrosian Chants For Lent

Here is a very nice recording of four pieces of Ambrosian chant, two of which are particular to the Lenten season, and used on this day, the Second Sunday of Lent, but not only on this day.

The first is an Ingressa, the Ambrosian Rite’s equivalent of the Introit, which is sung, however, without a psalm verse, doxology, or repetition; it is the first in a series of nine which are sung in rotation through the Sundays after Pentecost.

Incline, o Lord, thy ear, and hear me. Save thy servant, O my God, that hopeth in thee. Have mercy on me, for I have cried to thee all the day, hallelujah. (Psalm 85)

The second piece is also an Ingressa, that of the Second Sunday of Lent, which in the Ambrosian tradition is called the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman.

O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me. Let my enemies be confounded and ashamed that seek my soul. (Psalm 69)

The third piece is one of two litanies which are sung in place of the Gloria on the Sundays of Lent, except Palm Sunday. (It should be noted that the Ambrosian Rite does not have an equivalent of the Roman Kyrie, but does add three Kyrie eleisons to the end of a great number of things, including this litany.) The recording gives the second of these two, known from its first words as Dicamus omnes, which is sung on the Second and Fourth Sundays; the other one is the famous Divinae Pacis, of which we have written several times, which is sung on the First, Third and Fifth Sundays. This recording omits the invocations from V to VIII; click the link above for the translation. Both of these are included in various editions of Cantus selecti, and might very well be used as bidding prayers in the modern Roman Rite.

The 4th piece is a Psalmellus, the equivalent of a Gradual; Oculi mei is the fourth in a series of nine, which are likewise sung in rotation through the Sundays after Pentecost.

My eyes are ever towards the Lord: for he shall pluck my feet out of the snare. Look thou upon me, and have mercy on me; for I am alone and poor. (Psalm 24)

The Ember Saturday of Lent at Sarum and St Peter’s

In the Roman Missal, the fifth prophecy is the same on all four of the Saturday Ember Days, Daniel 3, 47-51, with a few of the verses re-ordered. The words that follow in the Biblical text (verses 52-57) are sung as a canticle, according to a very beautiful melody; the text is from the so-called Old Latin translation of the Bible which was used before St Jerome’s version, and contains several more verses than are found in the Vulgate. In the Roman Use, the canticle is sung on the Ember Saturdays of Advent, Lent and September, but supplanted by a very short Alleluja on the Ember Saturday of Pentecost week.

The Sarum Use arranges both the reading and the canticle that follows differently on each of the four Ember Days. In Advent, it is basically the same as the Roman, with a few small variants. In Lent, on the other hand, the words of the Roman canticle are sung as part of the Lesson; the canticle of Sunday Lauds, the Benedicite (Daniel 3, 57-88) is then sung in a special arrangement, alternating between two cantors who sing the verses, and the choir singing the response.

The fifth lesson and canticle of the Ember Saturday of Lent in Sarum Missal printed at London in 1500. The lesson begins in the lower part of the second column.

The Lesson

The Angel of the Lord went down with Azariah and his companions into the furnace, and he drove the flame of the fire out of the furnace, and made the midst of the furnace like the blowing of a wind bringing dew. And the flame mounted up above the furnace nine and forty cubits, and burnt such of the Chaldeans as it found near the furnace, the ministers of the king who kindled the fire. And the fire touched them not at all, nor troubled them, nor did them any harm. Then these three as with one mouth praised, and glorified, and blessed God in the furnace, saying: (Here Sarum continues to read as part of the Lesson the words which are sung as the Canticle in the Roman Use.) Blessed art thou, O Lord the God of our fathers: and worthy to be praised, and glorified, and exalted above all for ever: and blessed is the name of thy glory, which is holy: and worthy to be praised, and exalted above all in all ages. Blessed art thou in the holy temple of thy glory: and exceedingly to be praised, and exceeding glorious for ever. Blessed art thou on the throne of thy kingdom, and exceedingly to be praised, and exalted above all for ever. (Here 3 verses are added from the old Latin text.) Blessed art thou upon the scepter of thy divinity: and exceedingly to be praised, and exceeding glorious for ever. Blessed art thou, that beholdest the depths, and sittest upon the cherubims: and worthy to be praised and exalted above all for ever. Blessed art thou, who walkest upon the wings of the winds, and upon the waves of the sea: and worthy to be praised and exalted above all for ever.

Here the canticle begins, alternating between two cantors and the choir.

V. Blessed art thou in the firmament of heaven, and praiseworthy and glorious forever. R. Blessed art thou in the firmament of heaven, and praiseworthy and glorious forever.
V. All ye works of the Lord, bless the Lord. O ye heavens, bless the Lord. O ye angels of the Lord, bless the Lord. R. Sing ye a hymn, and exalt him above all for ever. (This response is repeated by the choir after each verse.)
V. O all ye waters that are above the heavens, bless the Lord. O all ye powers of the Lord, bless the Lord. O ye sun and moon, bless the Lord. R. Sing ye...
V. O all ye waters that are above the heavens, bless the Lord. O all ye powers of the Lord, bless the Lord. O ye sun and moon, bless the Lord. R. Sing ye...
V. O ye stars of heaven, bless the Lord. O every shower and dew, bless ye the Lord. O all ye spirits of God, bless the Lord. R. Sing ye...
V. O ye fire and heat, bless the Lord. O ye nights and days, bless the Lord. O ye darkness and light, bless the Lord. R. Sing ye...
V. O ye cold and heat, bless the Lord. O ye frost and snows, bless the Lord. O ye lightnings and clouds, bless the Lord. R. Sing ye...
V. O let the earth bless the Lord. O all ye mountains and hills, bless the Lord. O ye that are born of the earth, bless the Lord. R. Sing ye...
V. O all ye seas and rivers, bless the Lord. O ye fountains, bless the Lord. O ye whales, and all that move in the waters, bless the Lord. R. Sing ye...
V. O all ye fowls of the air, bless the Lord. O ye beasts and cattle, bless the Lord. O ye sons of men, bless the Lord. R. Sing ye...
V. O let Israel bless the Lord. O ye priests of the Lord, bless the Lord. O servants of the Lord, bless the Lord. R. Sing ye...
V. O spirits and souls of the just, bless the Lord. O ye holy and humble of heart, bless the Lord. R. Sing ye.
V. O Ananiah, Azariah, Misael, bless the Lord. R. Sing ye...
The Cantors repeat the beginning: Blessed art thou in the firmament of heaven. and the choir finishes: And praiseworthy and glorious forever.

O ye holy and humble of heart, bless the Lord!

When the Lenten station is held at St Peter’s Basilica, on Ember Saturday and Passion Sunday, the Papal altar is decorated with relics according to a particular arrangement. The relics of martyrs are placed closer to the edge of the mensa, and those of other Saints further in; the four corners are decorated with reliquaries shaped like obelisks, with long bones (tibias and such) in them. On each of the two short sides of the altar is set a rectangular panel containing relics of 35 Popes, between them, all of the Sainted Popes except the most recent.

On the long side facing the apse, a bust reliquary of Pope St Damasus I (366-84, feast on December 11), containing the relics of his skull, is placed in the middle. This is a particularly appropriate choice, since Damasus was a great promoter of devotion to the saints and the cult of the relics, particularly those of the Roman martyrs. Within many catacombs, he rearranged the spaces around the tombs of the martyrs to make it easier for pilgrims to find and visit them, decorating the tombs themselves with elaborately carved inscriptions written by himself in classical poetic meter. For this reason, he is honored as the patron Saint of archeologists.

A New Holy Week Resource: Latin-English Tenebrae Booklets

A friend of mine, Mr Matthew Roth, has made some very nice new booklets for Tenebrae which include all the Gregorian chants, and a full translation in English. The text follows the Divino Afflatu reform (1911), with the music found in the Solesmes editions. They are on letter paper, and Matthew informs me that they don’t look good saddle-stitched (which tends to be too small anyway), so if the are printed out, they need to be need to be scaled for A4 if you are using A4 paper. Printer software should be able to do this easily. The files for each day may be found at these links: Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

Typographical or other errors may be reported via the comments here on NLM, or this thread on the Musica Sacra forum; the PDFs will be promptly replaced, and this does not break the relevant Dropbox links.

Photo by Allison Girone

The Penitential Psalms in the Liturgy of Lent

In his Life of St Augustine, St Possidius of Calama writes that in his final illness, the great doctor “had ordered the Psalms of David, those very few which concern penance, be written out; and lying on his bed … read the four of them (from the pages) attached to the wall, and wept copiously and continuously.” (chapter 31) He does not say which four these were, but we may safely assume that Psalm 50, often known by its first word in Latin, “Miserere”, was included among them, long recognized as the penitential psalm par excellence.

The Funeral of St Augustine, by Benozzo Gozzoli, 1465, in the church of St Augustine in San Geminiano, Italy.

In the following century, Cassiodorus (ca 485-585), in his massive Exposition of the Psalms, refers in many places to the Penitential Psalms as a group, and when commenting on the first of them, Psalm 6, lists the others, according to the traditional numbering of the Septuagint: 31, 37, 50, 101, 129 and 142. (The list is given twice more, in the comments on Psalms 50 and 142.) At the conclusion of this section, he states that these seven are especially worthy of attention, since they “are given to the human race as an appropriate medicine, from which we receive a most salutary cleansing of our souls, revive from our sins, and by mourning, come to eternal joy.” As he explains each one individually, he often relates it in some way to one or more of the other six, as for example Psalm 142, which is placed last in the group “because these psalms begin from afflictions, and end in joys, lest anyone despair of that forgiveness which he knows has been set forth in these prayers.”

Cassiodorus takes it for granted that his reader know this tradition, and therefore we may safely assume it was already part of the Church’s prayer by his time; his influence was very strong in the Middle Ages, and we may also assume that his writing did much to solidify its place in the liturgy. They were added to a variety of rites, such as the dedication of a Church according to the Roman Pontifical; in the traditional ordination rite, the bishop enjoins those who receive tonsure and the minor orders “to say one time the seven Penitential Psalms, with the Litany (of the Saints) and the versicles and prayers (that follow).”

One of the oldest manuscripts of Cassiodorus’ Exposition of the Psalms, from the library of the Swiss monastery of San Gallen. (Cod. Sang. 200, 950-75 A.D.)

Of course, they are particularly prominent in the liturgy of Lent. The customary of the Papal court known as the Ordinal of Innocent III (1198-1216) prescribes that they be said after Lauds every ferial day of Lent, together with the Litany of the Saints. To these were added the fifteen Gradual Psalms (119-133) before Matins, and the Office of the Dead, a burden which unquestionably increased the temptation to add more Saints to the calendar, since these supplementary Offices were routinely omitted on feast days. The Breviary of St Pius V distributed them over the days of the week, so that the Office of the Dead would be said on the first ferial day of each week of Lent, the Gradual Psalms on Wednesdays and the Penitentials on Fridays, if the Office was of the feria. This remained in force until the reform of St Pius X, in which all mandatory recitation of them in the Office was abolished; the Gradual and Penitential Psalms are not included as specific groups in the post-Conciliar Liturgy of the Hours.

The Use of Rome, with characteristic simplicity, simply recites the Psalms as a group with a single antiphon, based on the words of Tobias 3, 3-4: “Ne reminiscaris Domine delicta nostra, vel parentum nostrorum: neque vindictam sumas de peccatis nostris. – Remember not, Lord, our offenses, nor those of our forefathers, nor take Thou vengeance upon our sins.” In other Uses, the antiphon was followed by a series of versicles like those sung with the Litany of the Saints, and various prayers; this custom was highly developed in German-speaking lands, less so elsewhere. At Augsburg, for example, each day of the week had a different collect to conclude the recitation of the Penitential Psalms; the prayer for Monday was as follows.

“Deus, qui confitentium tibi corda purificas, et accusantes se ab omni vinculo iniquitatis absolvis: da indulgentiam reis, et medicinam tribue vulneratis; ut percepta remissione omnium peccatorum, in sacramentis tuis sincera deinceps devotione permaneamus, et nullum redemptionis æternæ sustineamus detrimentum.
O God, who purify the hearts of those that confess to Thee, and release from every bond those that accuse themselves, grant forgiveness to the guilty, and bring healing to the wounded, so that, having received the remission of all sins, we may henceforth abide in Thy sacraments with true devotion, and suffer no detriment to eternal salvation.”

The beginning of the Penitential Psalms in the Book of Hours of Louis de Roncherolles, end of the 5th or beginning of the 16th century. (Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Ms-1191 réserve, Bibliothèque nationale de France)

At Salzburg, the intentions for reciting the Penitential Psalms were summed up in the following prayer, attested in a few other breviaries and books of hours.

“Suscipere digneris, omnipotens Deus, hos septem psalmos consecratos, quos ego indignus et peccator decantavi in honore nominis tui, et beatissimæ Genitricis tuæ Virginis Mariæ, in honore sanctorum Angelorum, Prophetarum, Patriarcharum, in honore sanctorum Apostolorum, in honore sanctorum Martyrum, Confessorum, Virginum et Viduarum, et sanctorum Innocentum, in honore omnium Sanctorum, pro me misero famulo tuo N., pro cunctis consanguineis meis, pro omnibus amicis et inimicis meis, pro omnibus his qui mihi bona et mala fecerunt, vivis et defunctis: concede, Domine Jesu Christe, ut hi psalmi proficiant nobis ad salutem et veram pænitentiam agendam, et vitam æternam consequendam.
Deign thou to receive, almighty God, these seven holy psalms, which I, though unworthy and a sinner, have sung unto the honor of Thy name, and of Thy most blessed Mother the Virgin Mary, to the honor of the holy Angels, Prophets and Patriarchs, to the honor of the holy Apostles, to the honor of the holy Martyrs, Confessors, Virgins and Widows, and the Holy Innocents, to the honor of all the Saints, for myself Thy wretched servant, for all my relatives, for all my friends and enemies, for all those who have done me good and ill, both living and dead; grant, o Lord Jesus Christ, that these Psalms may profit us unto salvation and the doing of true penance, the obtaining of eternal life.”

The Penitential Psalms were also generally used at the beginning of Lent, at the ceremony by which the public penitents were symbolically expelled from the church, and again on Holy Thursday, when they were brought back in. These ceremonies were particularly elaborate in the Use of Sarum, but similar rites were observed in a great many other places. After Sext of Ash Wednesday, a sermon was given; a priest in red cope, accompanied by deacon, subdeacon and the usual minor ministers, then prostrated before the altar, while the choir said the seven penitential psalms. At the end of these were said a series of versicles and prayers, most of which refer directly to the public penitents.

“Dómine Deus noster, qui offensióne nostra non vínceris, sed satisfactione placaris: réspice, quæsumus, super hos fámulos tuos, qui se tibi gráviter peccasse confitémur: tuum est enim absolutiónem críminum dare, et veniam præstáre peccántibus, qui dixisti pænitentiam te malle peccatóris quam mortem. Concéde ergo, Dómine, his fámulis tuis, ut tibi pænitentiæ excubias celebrant; et correctis áctibus suis, conferri sibi a te sempiterna gaudia gratulentur.
Lord our God, who are not overcome by our offense, but appeased by satisfaction; look we beseech Thee, upon these Thy servants, who confess that they have gravely sinned against Thee; for it is Thine to give absolution of crimes, and grant forgiveness to those who sin, even Thou who said that Thou wishest the repentance of sinners, rather than their death. Grant therefore, o Lord, to these Thy servants, that they may keep the watches of penance, and by correcting their deeds, rejoice that eternal joys are given them of Thee.”

The ashes were then blessed, followed by a procession, which, as I noted in an article last week, was a normal part of the Ash Wednesday ceremonies in the Middle Ages. The Sarum Processional specifies that a cross was not used, but an “ash-colored banner” was carried instead at the head of the procession. At the door, the penitents were taken by the hand, and led out of the church, while the following responsory was sung, reprising an ancient theme of meditation on the Fall of Man in the readings of Genesis in Septuagesima.

An illustration from a Sarum Processional of the Ash Wednesday procession; the captions reads “The station on the day of ashes, when the bishop expels the penitents.” The ash-colored banner is seen up top. Reproduced in a modern edition by WG Henderson, 1882. (This would seem to be one of the inspirations for Fr Fortescue’s famous little illustrations in the Ceremonies of the Roman Rite.)

R. Behold, Adam is become like one of us, knowing good and evil; see ye lest he take of the tree of life, and live forever. V. The Cherubim, and the flaming, turning sword, to guard the way to the tree of life. See ye…

On Holy Thursday, when the penitents were brought back into the church, usually referred to as their “reconciliation”, the process was reversed, again by a priest in a red cope, accompanied by the various grades of ministers and the ash-colored banner. This ceremony deserves its own post, which I shall do on Holy Thursday; suffice it therefore to note here that the penitential Psalms are said again before the final absolution is imparted.