Some readers who follow NLM through its RSS feed have been reporting a lack of article updates since September 22, so here is a technical update for them.
On that day, Google disabled its old “feedburner” services, one of which was that RSS feed. But the feed is still also available under this link: https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/feeds/posts/default, so if you use that URL instead, you should be able to get the latest articles as usual.
Users who are already on this newer RSS link probably did not have any interruption in service, and don’t need to make any changes.
I’m adding an RSS icon with the same link in the right-hand column:
Our friend Mr James Griffin of The Durandus Institute for Sacred Liturgy and Music is preparing a full write-up the Institute’s most recent event, a Mass celebrated on the feast of St Hildegard of Bingen this past September 17. In the meantime, we are happy to share these four videos of the Mass, which highlight the splendor of the music.
St Robert Bellarmine was born in 1542, and in his youth, received a classical education typical of his era, showing himself to be a particular bright pupil at a very early age. It was an essential part of education in those days that people were trained not only to read and comment intelligently upon the Latin classics, but also to write their own Latin in both prose and verse, and Robert was already skilled at this as a boy. In his early years in the Society of Jesus, which he entered at age 18, he taught the classics in the order’s school in Florence. When he was transferred to Mondovi in Piedmont, he discovered that he was supposed to teach Cicero and Demosthenes, although he knew hardly any Greek at all; he therefore taught himself in one night the grammar lesson he was supposed to deliver the next day. In the midst of his vast output of theological writings, for which he was named a Doctor of the Church in 1931, and his many other scholarly achievements, he also continued to write poetry in both Latin and Italian throughout his life.
Formal liturgical devotion to the Guardian Angels is found sporadically in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but really began to establish itself in the Counter-Reformation period, of which St Robert was such an important protagonist. Pope Paul V (1605-21), who kept him as one of his most valued counselors, was also the first post-Tridentine Pope to formally approve a feast of the Guardian Angels, which he granted to the Holy Roman Empire at the request of Ferdinand II of Austria. When the feast was extended to the universal church by Pope Clement X in 1670, it was given a proper Office, which includes two hymns composed by St Robert: Custodes hominum, which is sung at Matins and both Vespers, and Aeterne rector siderum for Lauds.
Ancient Greek and Latin poetry was not based on rhyme, which was considered a blemish on verse in antiquity, but on alternations of long and short syllables, according to various established patterns. The oldest Christian hymns, such as those of St Ambrose or Venantius Fortunatus, were similarly constructed, although often rather more loosely than in the classical period. In the Middle Ages, when Latin vowel quantities were mostly not heard or pronounced, rhyme established itself as the norm for new liturgical composition, and even extended itself beyond the various types of hymns into non-metrical forms like responsories. The Renaissance, however, which sought to imitate the classical world in all the arts, rejected rhyme and returned to metrical composition based on vowel quantity; this classicizing spirit in the use of Latin lasted much longer than the Renaissance itself did, and is found in new liturgical compositions of every period, up to and including the most recent texts of the post-Conciliar rite. In the same spirit, Pope Urban VIII (1623-44) had the whole corpus of hymns in the Roman Breviary revised and classicized, giving rise to the famous remark “Accessit Latinitas, recessit pietas - Latinity came in, piety went out.”
To judge by St Robert’s compositions for the Guardian Angels, it is a pity that he did not live to contribute to Pope Urban’s project, which might have been more successful with his input. His vocabulary is almost entirely within the established usage of Christian Latinity. The metrical form is one used by Horace in his odes, called the Third Asclepiadean, but he mostly avoids the contorted word order which the classical poets and their later imitators often employed. Here is a splendid recording by the Ensemble Venance Fortunat, in alternating chant and polyphony; a pure Gregorian version sung by the Gloriae Dei Cantores, alternating women’s and men’s voices, is given below. The English translation is that of Alan Gordon McDougall (1896-1965).
Custodes hominum, psallimus
Angelos,
Naturae fragili quos Pater addi-
dit,
Caelestis comites, insidianti-
bus,
Ne succumberet hostibus.
Angel guardians of men,
spirits and powers we sing,
Whom our Father hath sent,
aids to our weakly frame,
Heavenly friends and guides,
help from on high to bring,
Lest we fail through
the foeman’s wile.
Nam, quod corruerit proditor
angelus,
Concessis merito pulsus hono-
ribus
Ardens invidia pellere nititur
Quos caelo Deus advocat.
He, the spoiler of souls,
angel-traitor of old,
Cast in merited wrath out
of his honoured place,
Burns with envy and hate,
seeking their souls to gain
Whom God’s mercy
invites to heaven.
Huc, custos, igitur pervigil ad-
vola,
Avertens patria de tibi credita
Tam morbis animi quam requi-
scere
Quidquid non sinit incolas.
Therefore come to our help,
watchful ward of our lives:
Turn aside from the land,
God to thy care confides
Sickness and woe of soul,
yea, and what else of ill
Peace of heart
to its folk denies.
Sanctae sit Triadi laus pia jugi-
ter
Cujus perpetuo numine machi-
na
Triplex haec regitur, cujus in
omnia
Regnat gloria saecula. Amen.
Now to the Holy Three
praise evermore resound:
Under whose hand divine
resteth the triple world
Governed in wondrous wise:
glory be theirs and might
While the ages unending run.
A different and somewhat looser English version, by Fr Edward Caswall. (Fr Caswall, born in 1814, was an Anglican clergyman who converted to Catholicism in 1847. After the sudden death of his wife in 1849, he entered the Birmingham Oratory in 1850; he was ordained priest two years later, and died in 1878. He was a talented poet, and many of his English translations of the traditional Latin hymns were incorporated by John Crighton-Stuart, the Third Marquess of Bute, into his monumental English version of the Roman Breviary, including this one.)
Praise we those ministers celestial
Whom the dread Father chose
To be defenders of our nature frail,
Against our scheming foes.
For, since that from his glory in the skies
Th’ Apostate Angel fell,
Burning with envy, evermore he tries
To drown our souls in Hell.
Then hither, watchful Spirit, bend thy wing,
Our country’s Guardian blest!
Avert her threatening ills; expel each thing
That hindereth her rest.
Praise to the trinal Majesty, whose strength
This mighty fabric sways;
Whose glory reigns beyond the utmost
length
Of everlasting days. Amen.
On the general calendar, today is the feast of St Remigius, the bishop of Reims who baptized the Frankish king Clovis in 508, a major event for the Christianization of the Franks and the establishment of the French nation. Since he died on January 13, the octave day of the Epiphany, his feast is kept on October 1st, the date of a translation of his relics which took place in 852 A.D. In the Middle Ages, many places kept this feast jointly with various other confessors, one of whom is St Bavo, the patron of the Belgian city of Ghent, where he died ca. 655. (He is also known as Allowin; the Dutch form of his name is Baaf.)
The Conversion of St Bavo, 1624, by Peter Paul Rubens.
Bavo was a nobleman and a soldier, a native of the eastern region of modern Belgium called Hesbaye in French, Haspengouw in Dutch, and Hasbania in Latin; the principality of Liège, formerly a very important ecclesiastical center and state, borders it to the east. He led a very irregular life, but after being left a widower while still young, he was converted by the preaching of a Saint called Amand, and after giving away all his money, entered a monastery. Amand was a great missionary, and Bavo accompanied him on several of his trips in Flanders and northern France, but after a time, his spiritual father let him go to live as a hermit. A well-known story is told that after his conversion, he met a man whom he had sold into serfdom, and did penance for this by having the man publicly lead him in chains to a prison. Eventually, he returned to the monastery at Ghent and ended his life there.
Ghent ca. 1540. The church in the middle is the abbey of St Bavo, which was destroyed by the Emperor Charles V. The tower of the other St Bavo, not yet a cathedral, is the one on the left among the three right behind it.
Today, his name is certainly best known in reference to the cathedral of Ghent, which is titled to him, since that church is the home of one of the most famous pieces of art ever made, The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, (1425 ca. -32) by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, often more simply called the Ghent Altarpiece. The current Gothic structure was begun in 1274, but not completed until the 1569; it was originally a secular canonical church, and only made a cathedral when Ghent became a diocese ten years before its completion. Part of the reason why the Ghent Altarpiece is The Ghent Altarpiece is that the church was raided in 1566 by Calvinists, who, acting as they believed, (which is to say, more like Mohammedans than Christians), smashed up many of its artworks. Of the works later commissioned to replace them, perhaps only the Rubens shown above is really noteworthy, and certainly the only one at all to the taste of our own times.
Ghent is a port city, even though it is 23 miles inland, since it sits at the confluence of two rivers. In 2015, a ship coming into the port collided with and killed a young finback whale nearly 40 feet long, which remained stuck on its bow. The body was brought to the University of Ghent for study, and afterwards, the skeleton was hung up in St Bavo within the ambulatory of the choir as a kind of ex voto, and a reminder of the story of the prophet Jonah; it has been given the name Leo.
A broad view of the nave. (It appears that the modern altar seen here has subsequently been replaced with something much nicer, as seen in the next photograph.)
Here is a reminder and more information on what promises to be a fantastic occasion in DC later this month.
Paul Jernberg, who founded the Magnificat Institute, is the composer of the music for the Mass for Blessed Karl that will premiere at this conference. He told me:
The idea for this new composition, and for this conference, began with my “coincidental” meeting with the great-grandson of Blessed Karl (aka Charles 1 of Austria - the last emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) a couple of years ago. The more I read about him and his wife, Zita, the more I was inspired by their radiant model of great leadership - characterized not by the desire for power but by the pursuit of wisdom and a faithful, self-sacrificial love for his people.
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