The Basilica of Saint Andrew in Cologne

For the feast of St Andrew the Apostle, we continue our ongoing series on the twelve Romanesque basilicas of the city of Cologne, Germany, with the one dedicated to him. We have already seen part of the church earlier this month, on the feast of St Albert the Great, since he is buried in the crypt. It also houses relics of the Maccabee brothers in a very beautiful reliquary shrine, shown below. (All images from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted.)

The church was founded as a secular canonry in 974, but significantly expanded and rebuilt in the 12th and 13th centuries; the westwork, nave and central tower date from this period. Cologne was where the Dominicans established their very first house in Germany, only a very short time after St Dominic’s death, welcomed by the canons of this church. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Dominicans’ were suppressed in Germany, and their church and monastery in Cologne were both destroyed; they returned to the city in 1947, and have had charge of St Andrew’s church ever since then.

by Johan Bakker

by Edgar El, CC BY-SA 3.0

C. Raimond Spekking

In the 15th century, the original choir was destroyed, and rebuilt in the Gothic style (lower right in the this photo), followed by the north transept in 1470/80 (on the right), and the south transept by 1492.

by Островский Александр, Киев, CC BY-SA 3.0

There are not a lot of good photos of the building available, but one can see a very good panorama of the interior on Google maps. Here we see the nave from the second bay (moving forward), roughly the point at which the architecture transitions from Romanesque to Gothic. I suspect that the Crucifix and statues of Our Lady and St John mounted on the arch were originally part of a rood screen, which would have been positioned right below where they are now.

C. Raimond Spekking

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The Relics of St Andrew

In the Roman Breviary, the life of St Andrew the Apostle ends with the statement that “When Pius II was Pope, his head was brought to Rome, and placed in the basilica of St Peter.” This statement gives no idea of what an extraordinary event the translation of this relic was in the life of the Church at the time.

St Andrew is traditionally said to have died in the city of Patras on the northwestern coast of the Peloponnese, which was usually called “the Morea” in the Middle Ages. In 357, under the Emperor Constantius, his relics were brought to Constantinople, and remained there until the city was sacked during the Fourth Crusade, when they were brought to the Italian city of Amalphi; his head, however, had remained at Patras.

(Each year, for the feast of St Andrew, the reliquary kept in the crypt of the Duomo of Amalphi is taken out for a long procession though the city, and then returned to the church in a rather remarkable fashion, as seen in this video.)

In the later years of the Byzantine Empire, the Peloponnese was made into its own principality within the Empire, ruled by relatives of the Emperor, and called the “Despotate of the Morea.” (“Despotes” in Greek simply means “prince.”) The last two princes, Demetrius and Thomas, were the brothers of Constantine XI, under whom the Great City fell to the Turks in 1453. The Morea, however, was not immediately invaded, and the despotate continued to exist for seven years afterwards. Partly as a gesture to gain the Latin Church’s support for a new Crusade to drive the Turks out of Greece and the Balkans, partly to prevent the relic of the Apostle’s head from being destroyed in the by-then inevitable invasion, the despot Thomas decided to consign it to Pope Pius II.

Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini was known as one of the great men of letters of the Italian Renaissance, although much of his writing as a layman, and most of his personal life, would hardly suggest a man fit for the clerical state, much less the Papacy. However, after years of involvement with important matters of both Church and State, he underwent a profound moral conversion; after receiving the subdiaconate in 1446, he was made a bishop about a year later, a cardinal by 1456, and elected Pope in 1458. His papal name “Pius” was chosen as partly in reference to his secular name “Aeneas”, since Virgil constantly calls the hero of his Aeneid “pius Aeneas.”

Pope Pius II Canonizes St Catherine of Siena, from the famous Piccolomini library in the cathedral of Siena, by Pinturicchio, 1502-8. Pius was born in a small town within the territory controlled by Siena, where his family became especially important upon his election to the Papacy, and he was particularly proud of the fact that he was able to canonize a great “home-town hero” among the Saints. The proper Office of St Catherine still used to this day in the traditional Dominican Breviary was composed by him.

We may be tempted to dismiss this as no more than a clever literary reference from an age very much enamored with clever literary references, but this would be unjust. The Latin word “pius” means “one who fulfils his duty”, duty to God, to one’s country, and to one’s family, and therefore, among its many meanings are “pious, devout, conscientious, affectionate, tender, kind, good, grateful, respectful, loyal, patriotic.” Under the heading of the last of these, Pope Pius died while attempting to rally the Christian princes to the defense of Europe, as the Turks prepared to press further into the Balkans, and cross the Adriatic into Italy.

Under the heading of the first two meanings, “pious and devout”, Pope Pius devoted several pages of his autobiography to the events surrounding the reception of St Andrew’s head. After the despot Thomas had rescued the head from Patras, he brought it to Ancona, a major Italian port on the Adriatic, protected by its presence from severe storms during the crossing. Pius’ legate was sent to examine it, and declared it authentic, after which it was brought to the city of Narni, and left there for a time on account of political and military disturbances then flaring up in Italy. When these had died down, preparation was made for it come to Rome; the Pope had thought to go meet it by bringing with him the heads of Ss Peter and Paul which were kept in the Lateran, but gave up on this idea because the reliquary in which they were enclosed was too heavy to conveniently move.

The high altar of St John in the Lateran; in the enclosed area above may be seen the reliquary containing the skulls of Ss Peter and Paul. (These are not the reliquaries which Pope Pius II found too heavy to move, which were likely destroyed during the sack of Rome in 1527, but later replacements. Image from Wikipedia.)

On Holy Monday, the Pope and his court, along with an enormous crowd of Romans, went forth from the Flaminian gate to meet the three cardinals charged with bringing the relic from Narni, close to the Milvian bridge, the site of Constantine’s famous victory so many centuries before. A large platform was erected in the middle of a field, so that all could witness the event, with two staircases on either side, and an altar in the middle. As Pius II describes the event, “as the Pope ascended the one side, weeping with joy and devotion, followed by the college (of cardinals) and the clergy, (Card.) Bessarion with the two others ascended from the other side, bearing the small arc in which the sacred head was contained, and set it on the altar… the arc was then opened, and Bessarion, taking the sacred head of the Apostle, weeping, handed it to the weeping Pope.” Pius then gives his address before the crowd.

“Thou hast finally come, most sacred and adored head of the Apostle! The furor of the Turks has driven thee from thy place; thou hast fled as an exile to thy brother. … This is kindly Rome, which thou seest nearby, dedicated by thy brother’s precious blood; the blessed Apostle Peter, thy most holy brother, and with him the vessel of election, St Paul, begot unto Christ the Lord this people which stands here. Thy nephews, all the Romans, venerate, honor and respect thee as their uncle and father, and doubt not of thy patronage in the sight of God. O most blessed Apostle Andrew, preacher of the truth, and outstanding asserter of the Trinity! With what joy dost thou fill us today, as we see before us thy sacred and venerable head, that was worthy to have the Holy Paraclete descend upon it visibly under the appearance of fire on the day of Pentecost! … These were the eyes that often saw the Lord in the flesh, this the mouth that often spoke to Christ! …

We are glad, we rejoice, we exult at thy coming, o most divine Apostle Andrew! … Enter the holy city, and be merciful to the Roman people! May thy coming bring salvation to all Christians, may thy entrance be peaceable, thy stay among us happy and favorable! Be thou our advocate in heaven, and together with the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, preserve this city, and in thy devotion take care for all the Christian people, that by thy prayers, the mercy of God may come upon us.”

The Pope then lifted up the head for all to see, and the entire crowd knelt, most of them already moved to tears by the Pope’s oration. The relic was brought to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo, just inside the gates of Rome; from there, it was carried on Holy Wednesday under a golden processional canopy through the streets of the Eternal City to St Peter’s Basilica, accompanied by thousands of Romans and pilgrims.

Less than 50 years later, Pope Julius II would begin the process of tearing down the ancient basilica of the Vatican, which was then close to twelve centuries old, and in several places on the point of collapsing under the weight of its own ceiling. The new basilica, not the work of Pope Julius’ original architect, but of the genius of Michelangelo, is centered upon a massive elevated dome, directly over St Peter’s tomb. The base is pierced with enormous windows to show us that St Peter is God’s privileged instrument, who opens for us the doors of Heaven with the keys which Christ gave him, and that it is through Peter that God brings us up to Himself. The four enormous pillars which support the dome are each dedicated to one of the church’s major relics, among them the head of St Andrew, which was kept in a room behind the balcony seen here above François Duquesnoy’s statue of the Apostle. (In 1966, this relic was returned to the custody of the Orthodox Church in the city of Patras.)

The pillar of St Andrew in St Peter’s Basilica. (Image from Wikipedia)

A View of the Newly Restored Notre-Dame de Paris

As I am sure our readers have already heard, the interior restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris has been completed, although work is still going on on the exterior. Earlier today, the French president Emmanuel Macron was taken on an official tour of the restored interior, which will be formally reopened for liturgical use with a celebration of Vespers on the evening of December 7th by the archbishop of Paris, His Excellency Laurent Ulrich. It is certainly an impressive feat that after the devastating fire of April 2019, the restoration was able to be done so quickly, and for the most part, so well.

There are several such videos available on YouTube, which can easily be found by searching for something like “Notre Dame interior”. I chose this one from the French news channel BFMTV because it shows fairly little of the most obvious failure of the restoration, the terrible new liturgical fixtures. The baptismal font, placed in front of the main door, according to one of the sillier conceits of modern church arrangements, is not so much ugly as out of place, and much like the new lectern and cathedra, basically just a very boring knock-off of the worst of IKEA, purely functional, and devoid of beauty. The new altar and tabernacle, on the other hand, are not just out of place, but profoundly and offensively ugly, as is the new display thing in which the relic of the Crown of Thorns has been installed, (not shown in this video). What’s worse, I learned today from a friend that the altar which Cardinal Lustiger installed in 1987 was not destroyed by the collapse of the ceiling during the fire, as had been widely reported, and will apparently be used to deface one of the other great Gothic cathedrals of France, in the city of Bourges.

The Power of Prepositions

Lost in Translation #113

The verses in the Nicene Creed concerning the Incarnation, Passion, and Death of Jesus Christ contain a number of expressive prepositions. Prepositions, though usually diminutive in size, can be surprisingly difficult to translate, perhaps because they express a relation between two or more things, and relations are understood differently by different cultures. For example, to say in Latin that “The glass is on the table” I must say that “The glass is in the table” (poculum in mensa est), and I would use the same formulation to say that there an inlaid stones in the table (tesserae in mensa sunt). And were I to use another preposition like supra for the glass’s location, a Roman would picture a glass hovering over a table.

De and Ex

The verse concerning the Incarnation has two prepositions denoting the relationship between Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Blessed Virgin Mary. The original Greek is:

σαρκωθέντα ἐκ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου καὶ Μαρίας τῆς παρθένου καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα,

And the Latin translation is:

Et incarnátus est de Spíritu Sancto ex María Vírgine: et homo factus est.

Which I translate as:

And He was incarnated by the Holy Ghost from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

De is the Latin translation for the Greek ἐκ while ex is the translator’s way of signifying that Μαρίας τῆς παρθένου (“of the Virgin Mary”) is in the genitive case. One would have thought that the Latin ex would be used for the Greek ἐκ since they are etymologically kindred. And one can translate into Latin “of the Virgin Mary” without the explicit use of a preposition, as does the original Greek.

Although the choice of de and ex are surprising, the prepositions successfully accentuate certain aspects of the Incarnation. De is a preposition that can mean both “the material of which any thing is made” and “the producing cause or reason.” [1] The Second Person of the Holy Trinity is of the same material, so to speak, as the Third, and the Third Person was instrumental in incarnating the Second Person when He (the Holy Spirit) overshadowed the Blessed Virgin Mary at the moment of Christ’s conception. (see Luke 1, 35)

The older official English translation and the current Italian translation add “by the power of the Holy Spirit” (e per opera dello Spirito Santo), probably as a nod to Luke 1, 35: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee.” The addition, however, obscures the double meaning of de, and upon closer analysis it is not faithful to the biblical narrative either, for in the Gospel according to Saint Luke the Holy Spirit does not act by the power of the Most High; the Holy Spirit is the power of the Most High. The 2011 ICEL translation is a welcome improvement: “And by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”

Ex, on the other hand, “denotes out from the interior of a thing,” and it too can “indicate the material of which any thing is made or consists.” [2] In His divinity, Jesus Christ is consubstantial with the Father and Holy Spirit, while in His humanity He is consubstantial with mankind in general and the Blessed Virgin Mary in particular. For while we take 50% of our DNA from our father and 50% from our mother, Jesus took 100% of his DNA from His mother. Hence the official French translation: Par l’Esprit Saint, il a pris chair de la Vierge Marie, “By the Holy Spirit, He took flesh of/from the Virgin Mary.”

On a different note, most of the older English translations of the Creed render et homo factus est as “and [He] was made man.” The 2011 ICEL translation and its predecessor, on the other hand, have “and [He] became man.” “Became” is a perfectly acceptable way of translating the passive voice of facere, but it loses a connection to the other references to “making” in the Creed, which are significant. God the Father is the Maker (factor) of Heaven and earth, while His Son is begotten, not made (genitum non factum) and He through whom all things were made (per quem omnia facta sunt). And yet this same Unmade, Maker-of-All Son was made something, He was made a human being in the person of Jesus Christ. Translating factus est as “made man” rather than “became” highlights this profound paradox.

Etiam

The next line is Crucifixus etiam pro nobis or “He was crucified also for us.” “Also” or etiam is not a preposition but a conjunction, which is used here to translate the Greek -τε (“and”). Curiously, the current English, French, Italian, and German translations of the Missal omit the word altogether.

One wonders why the Latin translator chose etiam when he could have used several other words for “and” (et, atque, ac, etc.) or another word for “also” such as quoque. Whatever his reasoning, etiam has added meaning because it can be used to introduce a more important idea and thus has the sense of “and even” or “nay.” [3] And if this meaning is kept in mind, etiam here expresses astonishment at the Christ event from beginning to end. “The eternally begotten Son of God,” the text seems to be saying, “became a lowly human being. And as if that weren’t enough, He was even crucified for our sake!”

Sub

The next line is Sub Pontio Piláto passus, et sepultus est or “Under Pontius Pilate, He suffered and was buried.” Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea from A.D. 26 to 36, is no doubt mentioned by name to stress the historicity of the Crucifixion. As we have seen in other parts of the Mass, care is taken to remind the believer that he believes in historical reality rather than instructive myth. The preposition sub is small but powerful, for it can mean “subject to” or “in the time of.” [4] In this case, it means both.

Still, Pontius Pilate is the only proper name of a person in the Ordinary of the Mass that I can think of who is not a Divine Person, an Angel, or a Saint. A Greek Orthodox priest friend told me that he was trained in seminary not to mention anyone in the homily who was not holy, for the mere mention of someone’s name triggers the image of that person in the listener’s mind, and if that person is not a living icon of Christ, it is a distraction. It would seem that for the most part a similar logic is at play in the Ordinary of the Roman Mass.

But Pontius Pilate is an exception. Not only is he not holy, but he has the blood of the innocent Lamb on his hands, despite his vain efforts to wash it off. The Coptic Church believes that Pilate repented and died a Saint, but personally, I have my doubts. While the Passion of Our Lord caused Peter to repent and weep bitterly, it incited Pilate to become friends with the despicable Herod, who had formerly been his enemy. (Luke 23, 12) The historian Josephus claims that Pilate was dismissed from his post for cruelly suppressing a Samaritan revolt; and if you are considered cruel by the Romans who, in the words of Tacitus “make deserts and call it peace,” you must be very cruel indeed. At the very least, even if the Coptic tradition is true, the Pilate at the time of the Crucifixion, the one on whose orders Jesus Christ suffered, died, and was buried, was a baddie. And so in the Ordinary, Pilate’s name sticks out like a fly on a wedding cake.

And God help me—and dear reader, please forgive me—this anomaly reminds me of the song “Pilate’s Dream” from the utterly atrocious but occasionally astute Jesus Christ Superstar.

I dreamt I met a Galilean,

A most amazing man.

He had that look you very rarely find,

The haunting, hunted kind.

I asked him to say what had happened,

How it all began.

I asked again; he never said a word,

As if he hadn’t heard.

And next the room was full

Of wild and angry men.

They seemed to hate this man.

They fell on him and then

They disappeared again.

Then I saw thousands of millions

Crying for this man.

And then I heard them mentioning my name,

And leaving me the blame.

We know, of course, that it was Pilate’s wife who had a dream. Nonetheless, the closing image is chilling. Thanks to the recitation of the Creed, millions of Catholics every Sunday cry for the God-Man, and leave Pontius Pilate the blame.

Notes

[1] “De,” 2.I.C.3 and 5, Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), 513-14.

[2] “Ex,” intro and III.C, Ibid., 669-70.

[3] “Etiam,” II.A, Ibid., 662.

[4] “Sub,” I.C.3, Ibid., 1772.

The Saint-Sever Beatus: An Illustrated Commentary on the Apocalypse (Part 4)

This is the fourth part of an ongoing series on the Saint-Sever Beatus, an illuminated manuscript of the 11th century produced at the abbey of Saint-Sever in southwestern France. The primary text which it illustrates, and for which it is named, is a commentary on the book of the Apocalypse written by Saint Beatus of Liébana, a monk who lived in northern Spain in the 8th century; for further details, see part 1. This article covers the illustrations from chapters 12 to 16. The next post will complete the book, and a sixth one will give the images from the second text in the book, St Jerome’s commentary on the prophet Daniel. 

This image is the surviving half of an illustration of chapter 12, the vision of the woman clothed with the sun who gives birth to a child, of the great dragon, and St Michael’s battle against him.

Chapter 13, 11: “And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns, like a lamb, and he spoke as a dragon.”

A table with the eight names of the Antichrist, arranged in a grid in which the syllables that comprise them are repeated very frequently. The inscription in the gold band reads as follows: “Octo nominibus nuncupabitur in septem regna que est bestia (cum septem capita et decem cornua serpens). – By eight names shall he be called in tthe seven kingdoms, who is the beast with seven heads, and the serpent with ten horns.” The text that is missing at the lower right is known from other Beatus manuscripts...

such as the Valcavado Beatus, produced in the year 970 at the monastery of Our Lady in Palencia, Spain. It is not immediately apparent how this table is be be used, but apparently, each letter of the eight names is assigned a numerical value, which when put together in a certain order amount to the number of the beast mentioned in Apocalypse 13, 18.   

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

A decorative element on the opposite side of the preceding page.

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Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Summit, July 1-4, 2025, in Menlo Park, California

You are cordially invited to the Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Summit, which will be held from July 1-4 of next year, in Menlo Park, California!

https://liturgysummit.org/

Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Summit gathers together Catholics who love Christ, the Church, and the Church’s sacred liturgical tradition for: 

• the solemn celebration of the Mass and Vespers;  
• insightful talks on the sacred liturgy, liturgical formation, and the sacred liturgical arts; 
• and fellowship to build fraternal bonds through which the clergy, religious, and lay faithful can support the Church and one another in their promotion of the sacred liturgy. 

Fons et Culmen

At the heart of the Summit is the solemn pontifical celebration of the sacred liturgy, both Mass and Vespers.

The conference liturgies feature a special emphasis on excellence in ars celebrandi, superb preaching, beautiful sacred music rendered from the Church’s treasury throughout the ages by a professional choir, and the opportunity to sing Vespers in common. 

Clergy attendees, supported by letters of good standing, are welcome and encouraged to assist at conference liturgies. 

Lectures

Featuring lectures from prominent prelates, clergy, and laity from around the world, the talks of the Summit will offer timely insight into the nature of the sacred liturgy, its ars celebrandi, liturgical formation, the sacred liturgical arts (music, art, and architecture), and the role of the sacred liturgy in the lives of the Church’s clergy and faithful.

Fellowship

Designed to foster conversation amongst attendees and speakers, the Summit schedule features time for shared meals and conversational fora.

The fora, moderated by conference hosts, will engage participants, prelates and clergy in attendance, and Summit speakers in discussion about the practicalities of the promotion of the sacred liturgy and liturgical formation in their parishes and schools.

Speakers, Celebrants, and Directors of Sacred Music

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The Basilica of Sankta Maria ‘im Kapitol’ in Cologne (Part 2)

Continuing our series on the twelve Romanesque basilicas of Cologne, Germany, this is the second article on the city’s principal church of the Virgin Mary, Sankta Maria ‘im Kapitol’. The first post was published last week, and covered the architectural structure, so this one will show the church’s most notable artistic works, with one exception, which I am leaving until Advent, a wooden door made at the time of its original construction, ca. 1060 AD. (Images from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted.)

A stained-glass window in the north wall, with St James the Apostle on the left, and then hometown heroes Ss Ursula (middle) and Gereon, both of whom have churches of their own in the city. Dated after 1510.

by MenkinAlRire

The Crucifixion, with St Hubert, the Virgin Mary, Ss John the Evangelist, Mary Magdalen (at the foot of the Cross), St Jerome (right), and the donors in the lower section, William IV, Duke of Jülich-Berg (1475-1511) on the left, and his wife Sibilla of Brandenburg and their daughter Mary. Made after 1510.

by Armin Kleiner

Another of St James the Apostle, 16th century

by Michael Wittwer

A 16 century carving of the burial of Christ in painted sandstone.

by Hans Peter Schaefer, CC BY-SA 3.0

An old Romanesque stylophore, i.e. a base designed to hold up a column, very often part of an external porch. Lions were popular for these all over Europe, and before the 12th century, often look like large grinning cats, since they were extinct in Europe, and most of the artists had never seen one.  

by HOWI, CC BY 3.0

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The Saint-Sever Beatus: An Illustrated Commentary on the Apocalypse (Part 3)

This is the third part of an ongoing series on the Saint-Sever Beatus, an illuminated manuscript of the 11th century produced at the abbey of Saint-Sever in southwestern France. The primary text which it illustrates, and for which it is named, is a commentary on the book of the Apocalypse written by Saint Beatus of Liébana, a monk who lived in northern Spain in the 8th century. For further details, see part 1. This article covers the illustrations from the beginning of chapter 6, the appearance of the Four Horsemen, to the sounding of the seventh trumpet at the end of chapter 11.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (chapter 6, 1-8); in each corner, the Lamb opens the relevant seal. Between each horseman and the Lamb St John is seen with one of the four animals mentioned in the previous chapter.

The Lamb opens the fifth seal, and St John see the souls of those who were slain for the word of God under the altar (6, 9-11).

Chapter 6, 12-15: “And I saw, when he had opened the sixth seal, and behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood, and the stars from heaven fell upon the earth, as the fig tree casteth its green figs when it is shaken by a great wind. And the heaven departed as a book folded up, and every mountain, and the islands were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the princes, and tribunes, and the rich, and the strong, and every bondman, and every freeman, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of mountains.”

Chapter 7, 1-3: “After these things, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that they should not blow upon the earth, nor upon the sea, nor on any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the sign of the living God, and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying: Hurt not the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees, till we sign the servants of our God on their foreheads.”

Chapter 7, 9-10: “After this I saw a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne, and in sight of the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands: and they cried with a loud voice, saying: Salvation to our God, who sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb.” (The artist has obviously taken some liberty with the white robes.)

Chapter 7, 11-12: “And all the angels stood round about the throne, and the ancients, and the four living creatures, and they fell down before the throne upon their faces, and adored God, saying: Amen. Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, honour, and power, and strength to our God for ever and ever. Amen.”

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Wreckovation of Berlin Cathedral Completed

Just over ten years ago, I wrote an article about the proposed re-wreckovation of the cathedral of St Hedwig in Berlin, Germany. I termed it a “re-wreckovation” because the original building

The interior in 1886

The exterior after post-war restorations

was severely damaged during the Second World War; the distinctively shaped dome was completely destroyed, and the interior gutted, by a fire-bomb. It was then rebuilt with this strange arrangement, opening up a large hole in the floor to expose the bulk of the crypt. The large pillar that unites the altars of the upper and lower churches probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

image from wikipedia

 

This design, which clashes in a particularly unpleasant way with the building’s neo-Classical exterior, was completed in 1963.

But for some ... mysterious reason... the archdiocese of Berlin grew weary of its ugly cathedral, and decided to replace it with one that is not so much ugly (although there is ugliness in it too) as completely sterile. It is the kind of architecture that is often described as lifeless, but (stealing a line from one of the great humorists of our age, the late P.J. O’Rourke,)  “a design (cannot) be said to lack life when it exhibits such animated hatred of beauty.” This past Sunday, a Mass was celebrated for the official reopening by the archbishop, in the midst of what now looks not like a church, but a concert hall with a very inconveniently placed white cereal bowl in the middle of the floor. And I say “concert hall” advisedly, because the Mass was celebrated with a full orchestra and a large choir, and much of the music is actually pretty nice.  

Of course, the illusion of poverty is important enough to warrant any expense, and this vast room full of nothing is reported to have come at the price tag of something like 40 million euros. Didn’t someone once say something about “whited sepulchers”?

The Five-Week Advent

The most ancient liturgical books of the Roman Rite attest that the Roman Advent was originally five weeks long, rather than four. The oldest surviving sacramentary, known as the Old Gelasian Sacramentary, dates to about 750 AD, and represents the Roman Rite as it stood about 50 years earlier; it has five Masses “de Adventu(m) Domini” (although these are not assigned to specific Sundays), and Masses of the three Ember days of December. About 30 years later, in the Gellone Sacramentary, we find five Sundays of Advent, the first of which is placed after the Mass of St Chrysogonus on November 24; these are counted backward from Christmas as “the fifth Sunday before the birth of the Lord, the fourth Sunday”, etc. All the prayers of the First to Fourth Sundays of Advent in the Missal of St Pius V are found in the same places in Gellone on the Second to Fifth Sundays.

Folio 122r of the Gellone Sacramentary, with the Mass of the “Fifth Sunday before the birth of the Lord”, under the header “Here begin the prayers of the Advent of the Lord.” (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 12048)

The Wurzburg lectionary, the oldest of the Roman Rite, was copied out in about 700 AD, but its contents date to about 650. The Gospel section has no readings for Advent at all, nor any hint of the season’s existence. The Epistle section places the readings for the December Ember days after the feast of St Andrew on November 30th; all but one of these are identical to those of the Tridentine Missal. They are followed by five Epistles “de Adventu Domini”, which include the four Sunday Epistles read in Advent today, in a slightly different order.

The Roman Missal still preserves a reminder of this older custom, even though in the final decades of the 8th century, with the transition to the so-called Gregorian Sacramentary, Advent was shortened to four weeks. The Collect of the last Sunday of the liturgical year begins with the same word, “Excita – stir up”, as those of the 1st, 2nd and 4th Sundays and Ember Friday of Advent, and the Gospel, Matthew 24, 15-35, has an apocalyptic theme similar to that of the First Sunday of Advent, Luke 21, 25-33.

Another relic of this is found in the Divine Office. Normally, any given week of the year (or set of weeks) has about 8-12 responsories for Matins. Depending on the season, 7 or 9 of these are said on Sunday, the rest on Monday, with some series running into Tuesday; once they have all been said, those of Sunday are repeated on the remaining weekdays. In Advent, however, there is a special set of responsories which are said on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of both the first and second weeks of Advent. This set was apparently originally said in the second week of a five-week Advent; when the season was shortened, these texts were preserved by means of a unique arrangement found nowhere else in the Office, which fits five weeks’ worth of responsories into only four weeks.

This table shows the distribution of the Matins responsories of the first two weeks of Advent; those of the first Sunday are marked with red numbers, those of the second with blue numbers, and those of the extra series with green numbers. (Click to enlarge.)

In the Ambrosian and Mozarabic Rites, Advent is six weeks long, beginning on the Sunday after November 11, the feast of St Martin. The keeping of a fast similar to that of Lent in preparation for Christmas, and beginning around St Martin’s day, is first attested towards the end of the fifth century. The oldest sources agree that it was less strict than that of Lent, originally kept only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and over time, it gradually fell out of use altogether. However, nothing in the ancient sources indicates that this was ever the liturgical custom of the Roman Rite, or that the Roman Advent was ever tied to the feast of St Martin, which is not in the Old Gelasian Sacramentary or the Wurzburg epistolary. The oldest Roman liturgical texts for Advent speak of fasting only in connection with the Ember days.

All of these customs long predate any period when people thought to write down explanations of why they made specific additions or changes to the liturgy, although we are often able to glean such reasons from other writings or historical facts. In the case of the Roman Advent, we can reasonably speculate, but perhaps no more than that, that its varying lengths derive from the different ways the Fathers of the Church divided the history of the world before the coming of Christ.

In his book “On the Catechizing of the Uninstructed” (22.39), St Augustine divides the history of the world into six periods, each marked by a covenant between God and His people.

“…five ages of the world having passed, the first of which is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from Adam, who was the first man to be made, down to Noah, who constructed the ark at the time of the flood; then the second goes to Abraham, who was chosen as the father indeed of all those nations which should follow the example of his faith, … the third age is from Abraham to King David, the fourth from David to that captivity by which the people of God migrated to Babylon, and the fifth from that migration down to the coming (adventum) of our Lord Jesus Christ. From His coming, the sixth age begins, so that now that spiritual grace, which was then known to a few patriarchs and prophets, may be made manifest to all nations…”

In this context, the conclusion of this passage could very well be taken as a reference to the liturgical season which runs from Christmas to Epiphany, in which God’s grace is indeed “made manifest to all nations.”

Ss Gregory and Augustine, ca. 1510, by the Spanish painter Juan de Borgoña (1470 ca. – 1536; public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

St Gregory the Great became Pope 160 years after the death of St Augustine; it hardly needs to be said that his writings were especially influential on the Roman liturgical tradition. In his sermon on the Gospel of Septuagesima Sunday, Matthew 20, 1-16, he modifies Augustine’s division of time as follows, according to the hours at which the workers are hired to work in the vineyard. “The morning of the world (i.e., the first hour) is from Adam to Noah; the third hour is from Noah to Abraham; the sixth is from Abraham to Moses, the ninth from Moses to the coming of the Lord; and the eleventh is from the coming of the Lord to the end of the world.” This may also have been inspired by a different tradition found in various writings of Augustine himself, which gives a four-fold division of the entire history of humanity: “before the Law”, from creation to Moses; “under the Law”, from Moses to Christ; “under grace” from Christ to the end of the world; and “in peace”, which is to say, eternity. (De diversis questionibus LXXXIII 66.3, cited in “Bede and the End of Time” by Peter Darby, p. 24, footnote 40.)

The original Roman Advent of five weeks would therefore correspond to St Augustine’s six-fold division of time: five weeks to represent the five ages of the world before the coming of Christ, and the season from Christmas to Epiphany to represent the sixth age. The reduction of Advent to four weeks would correspond to St Gregory’s four ages before the coming of Christ, with one age after. The fourth week of Advent is only complete in those years in which Christmas falls on a Sunday; this would represent the fact that humanity has not yet come to the fullness of time in which it will live “in peace” after the end of this world, and the coming of the new creation.

The Saint-Sever Beatus: An Illustrated Commentary on the Apocalypse (Part 2)

This is the second part of an ongoing series on the Saint-Sever Beatus, an illuminated manuscript of the 11th century produced at the abbey of Saint-Sever in southwestern France. The primary text which it illustrates, and for which it is named, is a commentary on the book of the Apocalypse written by Saint Beatus of Liébana, a monk who lived in northern Spain in the 8th century. It also contains a commentary on the book of Daniel by St Jerome, and a treatise on the perpetual virginity of Mary by St Ildefonse of Toledo. There are nearly thirty surviving Beatus manuscripts, but this is the only one that comes from France. For further details, see part 1. This article covers one of the most famous things about this type of manuscript, a detailed map of the world. (image 7).

A random decorated letter A, with a monkey and wolf (helpfully labeled) standing on it, and two birds underneath.

Early medieval authors did not shy away from prolixity, and the commentary begins with 24 pages of prologues and summaries.

Another purely decorative element before the commentary itself begins.

It is followed immediately by this double image; in the upper part, Christ consigns the book of the Apocalypse to an angel, and in the lower, the angel speaks to St John for the first time as he hands him the book. The figure standing behind St John is most likely St Prochorus, one of the first seven deacons, who became his amanuensis.

“The Lord upon the clouds, and His enemies, and they who pierced Him, see him.” (Apocalypse 1, 7)

Saint John’s vision of the angel with the seven stars, and the Lord Himself amid the seven candlesticks, from chapter 1. The lower part shows verse 11, where John is enjoined to write to the seven churches of Asia, each of which is represented by a building with an altar in it, the gold T-shaped object.

The highly stylized map of the world, with East at the top, and the North on the left. Right below the label ORIENS is shown the terrestrial paradise with Adam and Eve and the tree. The red strip on the right is the Red Sea, and the blue section in the middle is the Mediterranean, and the green ovals within it and in the surrounding ocean are the major islands. This particular manuscript has a much greater number of place names than its Spanish counterparts. ~ At an unknown date, the two folios of the map were removed from the manuscript and lost, but rediscovered in 1866, and reintegrated into it.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Legends of St Clement

The feast of Pope St Clement I, which we keep today, is one of the most ancient of the Roman Rite, attested in almost every pertinent liturgical book going as far back as we have them, to the so-called Leonine Sacramentary in the middle of the 6th century. It is kept on the same day in the Ambrosian and Mozarabic Rites, and one day later in the Byzantine.

The Apotheosis of St Clement, 1807, by the German painter Josef Winterhalder the Younger (1743-1807).

According to the consensus now generally accepted, he was the fourth Pope, although there is some confusion in the earliest sources as to his place in the order of St Peter’s successors. A tradition known since at least the time of Origen, who died ca. 252, identifies him with the Clement whom St Paul mentions in the Epistle to the Philippians (4, 3). This tradition is accepted in the Roman Missal as we currently have it, which read this verse in the Epistle of his Mass (Phil. 3, 17 – 4, 3), but this is not attested in the oldest Roman Mass lectionaries.

Clement vies with the anonymous writer of the Didache for recognition as the author of the first known Christian work outside the New Testament. In the Greek city of Corinth, some members of the Church had unlawfully deposed their presbyters, and Clement wrote them a fairly lengthy letter, in which he ordered that the deposed clerics be restored. This work was very well known in antiquity, and treated in some places on a par with the Sacred Scriptures by being read at the liturgy. It is included with the Gospel of John in a fragmentary Bible of the fourth century, and in one of the most important surviving great codices of the fifth, the Codex Alexandrinus. Despite the mention of it in St Jerome’s book On Illustrious Men, it was forgotten by the West until the 17th century, when the Alexandrinus was given to the English king Charles I in 1627. Since that time, it has been the subject of a great deal of scholarly study; one Anglican divine even described the letter as the first act of papal aggression against the independence of the local churches.

Part of the Epistle of St Clement shown in a photographic facsimile of the Codex Alexandrinus made in 1856.

This letter is Clement’s only known authentic writing, but the Codex Alexandrinus also has a text placed right after it, which is commonly, though improperly, referred to as his Second Epistle, a general sermon on the Christian life dated to roughly 120-140 AD. St Jerome also mentions it in On Illustrious Men, noting that it had been “reproved by the ancients”; on the other hand, he himself accepts the authenticity of two treatises on virginity which have often been attributed to Clement, but are properly dated to the third century.

In the pre-Tridentine Roman breviary, one of the Matins lessons for St Clement declares that “he wrote many books in his zeal for the Faith and the Christian religion”, a statement which is repeated in other words in the 1568 edition of St Pius V. This does not seem to refer, however, to the works mentioned above, which are three, not many; generously four, if we count the one explicitly rejected by no less an authority than St Jerome. I believe it is rather a holdover from earlier medieval sources, and refers to another set of apocryphal works, which modern scholars call the Pseudo-Clementine literature.

The history of this material is extremely complicated, and I can do no more than give a rough summary here. The article about it in the old Catholic Encyclopedia is quite thorough, although it was published in 1908, and has most likely been superannuated in some regards.

The lost original version of the Pseudo-Clementines is a document ascribed to the fourth century, and is generally believed to have resulted from the fusion and elaboration of two earlier apocryphal works. One of these is a purported account of St Peter’s preaching in various places. Eusebius of Caesarea speaks of this document in his Ecclesiastical History (III, 38), noting that it was attributed to Clement, but that it was not mentioned by any writers earlier than himself. St Jerome quotes Eusebius to this effect in On Illustrious Men, and refers to it elsewhere as “Periodi Petri – the wanderings of Peter.”

The Fall of Simon Magus, 1745, by the Italian painter Pompeo Batoni (1708-87).

The other, which provides the narrative framework, is the Klementia, a novel written in the third-century, fraught with plot twists, surprise revelations and improbable coincidences, the story of how the young Clement came to be separated from his family, and after becoming a disciple of Peter, was eventually reunited with them. Many people from the New Testament appear as characters in it, such as the Apostles James and Barnabas, the centurion Cornelius (Acts 10), and the Syro-Phoenician woman healed by Christ (Mark 7, 25-30), who is given the name Justa, and made to be the stepmother of two of Peter’s disciples. Simon Magus figures very prominently in the book as Peter’s antagonist, and much of the theological content (which is extensive, and in some regards bizarrely unorthodox) is framed within disputes between them.

Fairly early on, the book was split into two recensions, which have much in common, but also diverge from each other considerably in many places. The Greek one is known as the Clementine Homilies, while the other, whose Greek original is now lost, is called the Recognitions, from the Dickensian scenes in which so-and-so is at last revealed to be the long lost child of such-and-such, etc. The latter was the version known to the West throughout the Middle Ages, through the Latin translation made by a one-time friend of St Jerome named Rufinus, who, however, took the liberty of suppressing some of the more strangely unorthodox passages. (The acrimonious break between him and Jerome was provoked in part by his doing the same to some of the writings of Origen.)

In the long entry on St Clement in the Golden Legend of Bl. Jacopo da Voragine, about 60% of the material is taken from the Recognitions. But if the words of the Roman Breviary about Clement’s “many writings” are in fact a glancing reference to them, the story itself is given no space at all therein.

The Roman Matins lessons also skip the first part of what the Golden Legend says about Clement’s career after he became Pope. This is the story of how, after he converts a woman named Theodora, her husband Sisinnius follows her to church to see what she is doing there, but is struck blind and deaf on entering the building. At Theodora’s request, Clement comes to their house and heals him, but Sisinnius believes that he achieves this by magical powers which he plans to also use to seduce his wife. Sisinnius therefore orders his servants to seize Clement and bind him, but the servants’ minds are turned by God, and they wind up seizing and binding a marble column instead. Clement then says to Sininnius, “Because you call stones gods, you have merited to drag stones.”

In the 1860s, archeological investigation under the basilica of St Clement in Rome led to the discovery of the remains of the original church of the 4th century. At the very end of the 11th century, or the beginning of the twelfth, this structure was filled in and transformed into the foundation of a new basilica on top of it, thereby preserving some frescoes which at the time were very new, ca. 1065-1090. One of these depicts exactly this part of the legend of Clement, with Sisinnius and Theodora. At left, Clement is shown celebrating Mass at an altar decorated as it would have been in the later 11th century, accompanied by a group of clerics. (Note the candelabrum hanging from the baldachin, rather than resting on the altar.) On the right Theodora looks on as Sisinnius, struck blind and deaf, is led out of the church by his servants.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The lower part shows Sisinnius yelling at his servants; the captions which give their names and his words to them are the oldest known prose inscriptions in Italian, and, unsurprisingly, very rude indeed. (“Fili delle pute” means “whoresons”; the translation of the other part is unprintable.) A version of Clement’s words cited above is given in Latin: “Because of the hardness of your hearts, you have merited to pull away stones.” The upper part of the fresco (cut in half when the floor of the new basilica was made) shows Clement with his predecessors, Ss Peter, Linus and Cletus, and five other figures, now unlabeled.

The story goes on to say that because of Clement’s success at making converts, he comes to the attention of the Emperor Trajan, who exiles him to the Crimean peninsula, where there was a penal colony attached to a marble quarry, with many Christians among the condemned. (The Romans did in fact exile people to the shores of the Black Sea, one of them being the poet Ovid.) On arriving, Clement learns that the workers must get their water from six miles away; he therefore prays and receives a vision of a lamb standing on a rock and pointing with its foot. Like Moses, Clement strikes the rock at that place to which the lamb pointed, and water begins to flow from it. This part of the story furnishes the proper antiphons for the psalms of Lauds and Vespers of St Clement’s Office, as e.g. the third one, “I saw the Lamb standing upon the mountain, and from under His foot a living spring floweth.”

St Clement Making Water Run from the Rock, by the Italian painter Bernardino Fungai (1450-1506). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

This leads to the conversion of many others, but three years later, the news of this reaches Trajan, and he therefore sentences Clement to death. Executioners are sent from Rome, who row Clement out three miles from the shore, and throw him into the sea with an anchor tied around his neck.

The Martyrdom of St Clement, also by Fungai.

At the shore, his disciples pray that the Lord might show them the location of his body, (presumably in order to recover it), and the sea miraculously recedes to reveal a small marble temple, with St Clement’s body in an ark, and the anchor next to it. The Christians walk out to visit it, but it is revealed to them they are told not to remove the body; instead, each year, around the anniversary of his death, the water recedes again to reveal the temple. This gives us the Magnificat antiphon for Second Vespers of feast: “O Lord, Thou gavest to Thy martyr Clement a dwelling place in the sea, after the fashion of a marble temple, fashioned by the hands of Angels, granting a way to the people on the land, that they may tell of Thy wondrous deeds.”

One year, at the end of the feast, a woman is frightened by the sound of the returning waters, and rushes back to the shore, accidentally leaving behind her little son, who had fallen asleep in the temple. The following year, when the waters recede again, she returns to find him safe and sound, and indeed still sleeping, unaware that he had been under the sea for a whole year.

This story is also depicted in the lower basilica of St Clement in Rome, in a fresco in the narthex. In the lower part are shown the family who paid for it, a couple named Beno and Maria, from an otherwise unknown place called Rapiza, along with their daughter Altilia, and their son, “the little boy Clement.” To the right of Maria is a dedicatory inscription which says that they had the fresco made as a thanksgiving “for the grace which (they) received”; it seems likely that this refers to the birth of the son whom they named for the church’s patron Saint.

Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.