The Icon of the Transfiguration as a Symbol of Cultural Transformation

In this essay, I explore how beauty and culture led me to Catholic faith well over thirty years ago, using an icon of the Transfiguration as a metaphor. I was drawn to the Church not primarily through theological arguments, but indirectly. I was drawn to Christ by the light of Catholic culture – its art, music, and the graceful lives of believers – which served as heralds pointing toward something greater. The icon’s mandorla, with its bands that darken toward Christ at the center, illustrates my journey: initially I could perceive only the outer rings of divine light reflected in the beauty of Creation and Christian culture. Only after taking my “leap into the blinding Light” by entering the Church’s sacramental life could I encounter Christ more directly. Now, as part of His mystical body, I too contribute to the cultural beauty that draws others toward God in some small way, along with all other Catholics – revealing how Christian cultural transformation is both an effect and a cause of faith.

Mosaic of the Transfiguration in the apse of the katholikon (main church) off St Catherine’s Monastery on Mt Sinai, 6th century.

I am a convert to Catholicism. Becoming Catholic was a decision as important as any I have ever made, and one I have never regretted. I became Catholic because I believed that if I did so, I would be happier in this life and have the possibility of perfect happiness in the next. Being Catholic has more than fulfilled my hopes and expectations for this life and so increased my conviction that it will deliver in the next!

People often ask me why I made the decision. How could I know what the future would hold for me as a Catholic? How did I come to the conviction that being a Catholic was a route to happiness? For all the good reasons one might present for being Catholic to persuade me of its truth and goodness, and there were many, I could never really know whether the proposition was true until I tried it. And I can’t fully experience the life of faith until I am received into the Church. At some point, I have to decide that I am ready to put aside my doubts, take the plunge, and give it a go.

One might liken that final decision to one that is, at least partially, a leap into the unknown, or into the dark. I prefer to think of it as a leap into the Light, albeit a Light so bright and dazzling that it temporarily blinds and appears dark.

Until I was Catholic and participating in the Church’s sacramental life, that Light – the Light of the World, Jesus Christ – was too bright for me to grasp directly. But once I was part of the Church, my eyes of faith could by degrees focus more clearly on and perceive its source, and be transformed by it supernaturally.

However, before I became Catholic, there were ways I could perceive the Light, but only indirectly and dimly. I interpreted these glimmers as promises of what I might receive. Some powerful signs of the Light were the grace, love, beauty and happiness in the lives of Catholics. Another sign was the beauty of Catholic culture. A third was the beauty of Creation, which spoke to me of the One who had created it, the Creator.

Within Catholic culture, it was the art and the music in particular that drew me in. Each person is unique and will likely respond to different aspects of that culture differently, but the wonderful thing is that Catholic culture is so rich; there is something there for just about everyone.

St John the Evangelist tells us in his gospel (chapter 1, 6-8) of the emergence of St John the Baptist, also known as John the Forerunner, acting as a herald of that Light:

“There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that Light so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the Light; he came only as a witness to the light.”

In many ways, the beauty of Catholic culture acted for me just as John the Baptist, the Forerunner of the light, did for the Jews of the 1st century AD. Like John the Forerunner, the beauty was not the Light, but it bore witness to it, powerfully and irresistibly. The beauty of Catholic works of art, music and architecture, for example, was a sign of what inspired their creation by the Christian artists, composers and architects of the past.

Those who contributed to that culture were participating in God’s governance, I now realize, by creating beautiful manifestations of the Light. Their beauty, the creation of which I now know was inspired by the Faith and by God, stimulated my desire for the source, Beauty itself. I was aware that beauty was creating in me a yearning for something more early on, but I didn’t immediately realize that it was God I was yearning for. I have heard this yearning described as a ‘wound’ of beauty because it creates in us an awareness that what we have is not enough, for, of its beauty, we are missing out on something even greater, and we yearn for whatever that might be.

Initially, I responded by seeking greater beauty, which began as a deep interest in Western culture. As I was to discover, traditional Western culture is, at root, a Christian culture, and all Christian culture is, at root, Catholic culture. All the beauty that I found was a reflection, a sign, of a whole new worldview —the Faith.

Consider now this painting of the Transfiguration, an icon of the 16th-century.

In the portrayal of this event, which took place just before His passion, we see Christ on the mountain flanked by the two prophets and with the three disciples stunned by the sight of the transfigured Christ. Their vision was a glimpse given to the disciples of His heavenly glory, which had hitherto been unseen. Jesus revealed to Peter, James, and John who He is—God and man—and what all Christians will become in Him. All of us are invited to embrace that joyful path that He has prepared for us.

This icon is also a good illustration of how a Christian culture is simultaneously the effect and a cause of Christian faith.

The nimbus that surrounds Christ in this picture is called a mandorla. It is called a mandorla because it is often depicted in an elliptical, almond shape, and mandorla is the Italian word for almond. The mandorla surrounding Christ usually shows concentric bands of shading, which get darker toward the center rather than lighter. It is painted in this way to communicate to us, pictorially, that we must pass through stages of what seems like increasing mystery to encounter the person of Jesus Christ. This encounter, which takes place most profoundly in the Mass with the Eucharist at its heart, transforms us supernaturally, so that we can now begin to grasp the glory of Christ both directly and indirectly.

This encounter with Christ present in the Eucharist in the liturgy is made possible by the sacraments of baptism and confirmation, by which we have ‘put on Christ’ as St Paul calls it in Galatians (Gal 3, 2;7). God’s actions are not in any way restricted by the sacraments, of course, but as a general rule, until we become Catholic, we are dazzled into blindness. We are blind to the transfigured Christ, so to speak, so that the mandorla prior to our being in the Church is perceived as a jet-black envelope with a heart of darkness. Only when we take that leap into the blinding Light and are received into the Church are we able to participate in the sacramental and supernatural life of the Church. As a result, we can, in a new way, see Christ directly with our eyes of faith. Only then does his person become visible to us as he was suddenly, to the three disciples.

To ‘see Christ’ in this context does not mean, for most people in this life, literally seeing with their eyes a human figure, but rather to be able to know Him deeply, as one does when one loves someone. To love Christ is to accept His love and return that love to Him. We return that love to Him most profoundly in our acts of worship in the Church, and we glorify Him by leading a life of virtue and beauty and loving Him through our interactions with our neighbors. In the next life, we will see God as the angels and saints in heaven see Him now and as the disciples saw him in glory on Mt Tabor.

Theophan the Greek, 15th century

Returning to consideration of the icon, before being fully part of the body of Christ and the Church, although we cannot see Christ we can perceive the outer rings of the mandorla. These represent the Light of Christ reflected in the cosmos, in Christian culture, and art, and in the loving and graceful lives of good Christians. This is what I was seeing in the beauty of the world and culture before I became Catholic. It is the beauty and grace of the effects of the Christian life in a beautiful Christian culture, and in the work of God in Creation, that tell us there is always more to know and love. If we allow this message to touch our hearts, we yearn for the source of all beauty, grace, and love, who is God and who is portrayed at the heart of this image.

Beauty is, in this sense, a perceptible sign of the source of all good things, Almighty God. It calls us to itself and then beyond to Him who inspired it, who is Beauty itself. Creation is beautiful because it bears the thumbprint of the Creator, and the culture or any aspect of it, whether mundane or sacred, high or simple art or even everyday Christian activity, any of this is beautiful – graceful – if God inspires it. The rings of the mandorla represent the Light reflected in the beauty of the world, of Christian culture, and in the lives of Christians.

The Christian life well lived is one in which potentially every action contributes to the increasing brightness of those outer rings of the mandorla, and which in turn draw people, just like me, into the Church. We contribute to the intensification of that brightness by creating beautiful things and living graceful lives as best we can.

As Christians, we are part of the Church, the mystical body of Christ. Each of us, therefore, is mystically a pixel of supernatural light in the person of Christ depicted in the heart of darkness in the mandorla! To the degree that we lead the life of a good Christian, we become part of the source of Light as much as the reflections in the cultural Light. This is the paradox of Christianity. Both the artefacts we create and the lives we lead that enable us to create them, participate deeply in the beauty of the Light. The Christian painter is called to create beautiful art and to lead a virtuous life. But it is also true that every Christian, through just about every human activity, can create beauty if he cares to, which gives glory to God and joy to our fellow man.

The icon of the Transfiguration speaks of the whole mission of the Christian life. It reminds us that if we want to transform the culture, our lives must begin and end with Christ himself. He is both the end and the means by which we attain that end. By keeping our sights firmly on Him, we become icons of Christ and draw people to Him through our lives of grace and virtue, participating in God’s governance. We are part of the mystical body of Christ, and we contribute to the creation of the concentric rings of the mandorla that draw others to Him also.

Aidan Hart, England, 21st century

The Orthoflex Patriarch of Alexandria

I am sure that many of our readers have seen this photo or others like it, which show the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria Theodore II incensing Pope Leo XIV. (Purely by coincidence, the current Coptic Pope is called Tawadros, which is Coptic for Theodore, and is also the second of his name.) This was taken during a liturgy celebrated yesterday in the church of St George in the Phanar, the seat of the Patriarch of Constantinople, during the Holy Father’s Apostolic visit to the New Rome, as part of the 17th centenary celebrations of the First Council of Nicaea. And yesterday was the feast of the Apostle St Andrew, who is honored as the founder of the see of Byzantium.

Note that His Beatitude is wearing a triple tiara almost identical to that which was traditionally worn by the Roman Popes, until it was cast off by Paul VI in one of those very modern and counter-productive gestures of which he was so inexplicably fond. A lot of memes have already come out of this, of which my favorite has the Pope saying, “Wait, was I supposed to bring mine too?”

Of course, I am not seriously suggesting that the Patriarch was deliberately flexing on the Pope by wearing his triregnum; it is just a normal part of his regalia, and has been for centuries. But at the same time, I cannot help but think of Pope St John Paul II’s oft-repeated words that “the Church must breathe with her two lungs”, i.e. the Eastern and Western churches, because one of the things the Roman Catholic Church desperately needs to relearn from the East is not to be ashamed of its own patrimony and traditions, but to embrace and cherish them once again. Εἰς πολλὰ ἔτη, Δέσποται!

The complete liturgy can be watched via the YouTube channel of Vatican Media.

The Feast of St Eligius

Most of the dioceses of France have traditionally kept today as the feast of St Eligius (“Éloi” in French), who was born near Limoges in about 590, and died on this day in 660 after serving as bishop of Noyon for 19 years. In youth, he was trained as a goldsmith, and has long been honored as the heavenly Patron of that art; his biography attributes to him reliquaries of several prominent French Saints, including Martin of Tours, and Denys and Genevieve of Paris. Under the Merovingian King Dagobert I (629-39), and his son Clovis II (639-57), he served as the royal treasurer, and several coins with his name on them are still extant. When he was elected bishop of Noyon in 641, the majority of the inhabitants in the regions to the north of that city, which are now the southern part of Flanders, were still pagan; it was in no small measure his preaching, and the example of his great charity to the poor and sick, that helped to convert them to Christianity. He was also the founder of several monasteries, including an enormous convent at Paris which housed 300 nuns.

A reliquary bust of St Eligius, in the church of the goldsmiths’ guild in Rome. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by JTSH26, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The church itself was commissioned from the painter Raphael in 1509, but only completed in 1575, 55 years after his death, by Baldassare Peruzzi and Aristotele da Sangallo. Because of its proximity to the Tiber, it was frequently damaged by the river’s winter flooding, and frequently restored. It is now almost never open, one of the many Roman churches that fall under the nickname “Santa Maria Sempre Chiusa - St Mary’s Always Closed.” (Image from Wikimedia Commons by JTSH26, CC BY-SA 4.0)

A reliquary of the Saint in the cathedral of the Holy Savior in Bruges, one of his many relics venerated in various parts of northern France and Belgium. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Zairon, CC BY-SA 4.0)

The National Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona has the doors of a particularly nice altarpiece dedicated to St Eligius, formerly in the chapel of the silversmiths’ guild in the church of Our Lady of Mercy in that city. This was painted by a Portuguese artist named Pere Nunyes, whose work is documented in various parts of Catalonia and Aragon between 1513 and 1557. The outside of the doors are decorated with very colorful images of episodes from the Saint’s life. (Detailed explanations given below.)

(Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Many Renaissance altarpieces with closeable doors had the Annunciation painted in muted colors, or in grisaille, as we see here, on the outside. During Passiontide, or indeed all of Lent, the doors were kept closed, to be opened again at the Easter vigil, just as the statues were unveiled. However, the liturgical austerity of Lent would be to some degree mitigated for the feast of the Annunciation, which falls within it in most years.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The First Sunday of Advent 2025

Introitus Ad te levávi ánimam meam: Deus meus, in te confído, non erubescam: neque irrídeant me inimíci mei: étenim universi, qui te exspectant, non confundentur. V. Vias tuas, Dómine, demonstra mihi: et sémitas tuas édoce me. Gloria Patri. Sicut erat. Ad te levávi.

Introit To Thee have I lifted up my soul: in Thee, o my God, do I trust, let me not be put to shame; nor let my enemies mock me, for all they that await Thee shall not be confounded. V. Show me Thy ways, o Lord and teach me Thy paths. Glory be to the Father... As it was in the beginning... To Thee have I lifted up my soul...

At the Mass (of the First Sunday of Advent), the Introit is Ad te levavi, because through the coming of the Lord into the flesh, hope is most greatly lifted up, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son” (John 3, 16), and again “He did not spare His own Son” (Romans 8, 32), etc. And note that if some are roused, others nevertheless languish in sleep; therefore the cantor, beginning with “To Thee have I lifted up my soul”, by raising up his voice goes from the lower (note) to the higher, which is typical of one rousing others up. And this is noted also in the Epistle (Rom. 13, 11-14), where it says, “Now is the hour to rise from sleep.” There follows the verse, “Show me Thy ways, o Lord,” because Christ when He comes shows us His ways, whence Isaiah says (2, 2 and 3), “The mountain of the house of the Lord shall be (prepared) etc. Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us His ways.” And the Epistle... shows what those ways are: “Knowing that the hour is nigh for us to rise from sleep.” For in the part where it says, “The night hath passed, and the day approacheth,” the effect (of the Incarnation) is indicated, since day came about when the Sun was born; and therefore it follows, “As in the day, let us walk honestly”, that is, in all good works, “and put ye on the Lord, Jesus Christ”, that we may thus be sons of God, because it was for the sake of this that the Son of God became man, that man might become a son of God. (William Durandus, Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, 6.3.15)

Music for the First Vespers of Advent

In nearly all medieval Uses of the Roman Divine Office, one of the responsories of Matins was sung between the chapter and hymn at first Vespers of major feasts, and on the Saturday before the major Sundays. On the Saturday before the first Sunday of Advent, the most common choice for this was the third responsory of Roman Matins, Missus est Gabriel Angelus, which is also sung daily in Advent Little Office of the Virgin, and on the feast of the Annunciation.

℟. Missus est Gabriel Angelus ad Maríam Vírginem desponsátam Joseph, nuntians ei verbum, et expavescit Virgo de lúmine: ne tímeas, María, invenisti gratiam apud Dóminum: * Ecce concipies et paries, et vocábitur Altíssimi Fílius. ℣. Dabit ei Dóminus Deus sedem David, patris ejus, et regnábit in domo Jacob in aeternum. Ecce concipies. Glória Patri. Ecce concipies.

℟. The Angel Gabriel was sent to Mary, a Virgin espoused to Joseph, announcing to Her the word, and the Virgin feared for the light. Fear not, Mary, thou hast found grace with the Lord. * Behold, thou shalt conceive and bear (a son), and He shall be called the Son of the Most High. ℣. The Lord God shall give Him the throne of His father David, and He shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever. Behold... Glory be... Behold...

A very splendid polyphonic setting (for use as a motet) attributed to Josquin des Prez. (The video names Petrus Alamire, a Bavarian composer who produced the manuscript on which this recording is based.)

The Vesper hymn hymn for Advent Conditor alme siderum, in the original version. (The original Latin text, the revised version of Urban VIII, and an English translation are all available on Wikipedia.)

Palestrina’s polyphonic version.

The complete ceremony sung a few hours ago by our good friends of the Schola Sainte-Cecile in Paris; the Magnificat antiphon Ecce nomen Domini begins at 21:25.

Aña Ecce nomen Dómini venit de longinquo, et cláritas ejus replet orbem terrárum. (Behold, the name of the Lord cometh from far, and the glory thereof filleth the world.)

From Vespers of this evening until the second Vespers of the Purification, the major antiphon of the Virgin at the end of the hours is the Alma Redemptoris Mater.

The very nice polyphonic setting by the Franco-Flemish composer Joannes Ockeghem (1410 ca. - 1497).

The Strangest Thing You Will Ever Learn about the Byzantine Rite

When I was preparing my recent article about the Little Vespers of the Byzantine Office, I had a chat with one of the wise men I consult about such things, and we got to talking about the length of the service known as All-night Vigil. As previously noted, the term “all” in “All-night” is something of a rhetorical exaggeration, but in large monasteries such as the great houses on Mt Athos, not by much, and this was his description of the order of services for a patronal feast which he attended at one of them.

The katholikon (main church) of the Iviron Monastery on Mt Athos, at the beginning of the All-night vigil of the Nativity of the Virgin this year.

“Ninth Hour, Small Vespers, dinner in the refectory with solemn procession from the church and then back afterwards.

Break for confessions

Beginning of All-Night Vigil proper

– Vespers with Artoklasia (4 hours; the troparia at the artoklasia took 30 minutes with the terirems, Psalm 103 took 1.5 hours)

Reading of the Saint’s Life (around midnight)

Orthros

After the Kontakion of the Sixth Ode they passed to a full Akathistos (I went to sleep at that point) (Presumably) First, Third, and Sixth Hours, Divine Liturgy

Then procession with water blessing.

Lunch”

Me: “Terirems?” (This word struck me not only because I had never heard it before, but also because it doesn’t sound Greek at all.)

The wise man explained to me that terirems are nonsense syllables added to the liturgy, which were originally spontaneous expressions of joy added to the texts when sung. Over time, they came to be completely scripted, and it is considered part of Byzantine musical formation to study the codified ones. Not at all surprisingly, theological pseudo-explanations have been created to explain them, e.g., that they are words that the angels sing in heaven, or of a lullaby which the Virgin Mary sang to Christ. There is very little information about them available on the internet, but some of the very few references I was able to find say that they were also used to cover the gaps in the music if the clergy hadn’t finished what they were doing. (The syllables te-, ri-, -rem are not the names of notes, by the way.)

Here are a few of examples. You can find more on YouTube by searching in various languages; in Greek, the word is τεριρεμ, in Slavonic and its derivatives, терирем. 

A Very Useful New Piece of Liturgical Scholarship from Sharon Kabel

One of our most frequently seen and linked posts in NLM’s history is a guest article shared with us by archival researcher extraordinaire Sharon Kabel in 2020, about the mythical indult which supposedly granted a general dispensation from the traditional rule of abstinence from meat, in the United States, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, (i.e. today). Mrs Kabel has recently completely another very interesting project on the history of the wedding Mass, which she was able to do via the incredibly useful Usuarium database, a vast, searchable repository of medieval liturgical books. Surprisingly, it turns out that the wedding Mass in the Missal of St Pius V (known from its Introit as Deus Israel) is actually a new creation which did not previously exist. Sharon’s research reveals that there was a variety of different wedding Masses, and the most common was simply a votive Mass of the Holy Trinity.

The wedding Mass, with the Gregorian propers from the votive Mass of the Most Holy Trinity, in a Missal according to the Use of Arrhas in France, printed in 1508. BNF Paris, B-27899

Her project examines all the different parts of the wedding Mass (Gregorian propers, including the sequences, Scriptural readings etc.) and tabulates which ones were used most commonly in which regions, organized into charts which show the frequency of their use, and maps out the geographical regions where each was most common. You can the whole thing on her website:
https://sharonkabel.com/survey_wedding_masses_983-1617/

or download it as a pdf:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jO65PJmCM1BUKTUCIhTqfXjLxb_EibuE/view

This project is not just a worthy and interesting piece of research in its own right, but a model for similar projects to explore other aspects of our liturgical patrimony. We congratulate Mrs Kabel on her excellent and diligent work - feliciter! 

An Introduction to the Canticle of the Creatures

Lost in Translation #149

The year of Our Lord 2025 marks the 800th anniversary of Saint Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures (also known as the Canticle of Brother Sun), and to honor this momentous occasion we will devote the next several issues to it.

The Canticle was a groundbreaking achievement. Written in the Umbrian dialect, it is believed to be the first work of literature by a known author in the Italian language. The Canticle inspired Franz Liszt (1811–1886) to compose several pieces entitled “Cantico del sol di Francesco d'Assisi” for solo piano, organ, and orchestra. And William Henry Draper’s English hymn, “All Creatures of Our God and King,” is a paraphrase of the Canticle. The Canticle beautifully encapsulates Saint Francis’ profound spiritual worldview and has an admirable poetic style.

The Canticle of the Creatures consists of thirteen stanzas. After addressing the Lord, Saint Francis mentions Brother Sun, Sister Moon and the Stars, Brother Wind, Sister Water, Brother Fire, Sister Mother Earth, and Sister Bodily Death. The Canticle concludes with a warning about dying in mortal sin and a call to serve God in great humility.

The tone of the Canticle is overwhelmingly joyful, which is ironic given the circumstances in which it was written. In 1225, Saint Francis returned to the church of San Damiano, a place close to his heart. It was here that he received the calling from God to repair His Church, and it was here that he foresaw the establishment of the Order of Poor Clares, who now had custody of the church. But Francis was not in good condition. His body was racked with pain because of the austerities he inflicted on himself and because of the stigmata he had received on Mount Verna a few months earlier on September 13, 1224. The Poor Clares had built for him “a little cell made of mats,” but the cell was infested with mice and the weather was dreary, making it difficult for him to sleep. To top it all off, Francis was going blind from trachoma, which he may have contracted when he visited Egypt to convert the Muslims.

One night, as he was reflecting on all his ills, he received an assurance from God of “the promise of His kingdom.” Relieved, the next morning Francis told his spiritual brothers how grateful he was for this consolation, and that he should rejoice in all his troubles. He resolved to write a “new praise of the Lord for His creatures” with a threefold purpose: to praise God, to console ourselves, and to edify our neighbor. After meditating for a while, Saint Francis then dictated most of the Canticle. He added more stanzas later, including the stanza about Sister Bodily Death as he lay dying in October 1226.

It may seem strange that a canticle of joy should be the product of pain and misery, but as St. Augustine observes, man has an inbuilt desire to praise God, and that doing so brings him joy. Such is the case even in the darkest of times, which affords a heightened opportunity to let go of oneself fully and to let in God. A French Franciscan priest named Eloï Leclerc wrote a beautiful book entitled the Canticle of Brother Sun, which he concludes by stating that the hymn first came to life for him in a crowded freight train headed for the Dachau death camp, when a fellow friar who was dying of hunger and exhaustion sang it.

This article appeared as “Praised Be You” in the Messenger of St. Anthony 127:2, international edition (February 2025), p. 21. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its publication here.

The Cardinal Composer: The Music of Rafael Merry del Val (1865–1930)

We are grateful to Don Francesco Deffenu, a priest of the Archdiocese of Cagliari (on the Italian island of Sardinia), and a student of the Pontificio Istituto di Musica Sacra in Rome, for preparing this article, which has been translated and edited by Thomas Neal.

The Servant of God Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val y Zulueta (1865-1930) is remembered as one of the most authoritative and spiritually profound figures of the Church of his time. The most trusted collaborator of Pope St. Pius X, Cardinal Merry del Val served the pope first as his personal secretary and then as Secretary of State. In this role, he assumed a central role in the management of the Roman Curia and in diplomatic relations with heads of state. His life was entirely dedicated to the service of the Holy See, during which he held prestigious positions such as Prefect of the Apostolic Palace, President of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, and Archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica. Today, his intense personal spirituality is attested by the ongoing process of beatification, which was opened in 1953 at the behest of Pope Pius XII.

A portrait photograph of Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val taken ca. 1905. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Alongside his important ecclesiastical and diplomatic commitments, Merry del Val also cultivated a deep passion for sacred music. He experienced first-hand the great musical reform promoted by St. Pius X, author of the famous Motu Proprio Tra le Sollecitudini (1903) and founder of the Scuola Superiore di Musica Sacra (now the Pontificio istituto di musica sacra) in 1910. In his memoirs, he vividly recounted the Pontiff’s love for sacred music:

When new musical compositions were presented to [St. Pius X] for approval, he carefully examined the score and more than once, in my presence, hummed the melody that he read at first sight with the greatest ease, beating time with his hand as he read, then giving his opinion on the merit and style of the music.

This direct contact with the musical sensibility of St. Pius X profoundly shaped the Cardinal’s tastes, inspiring him to dedicate himself with genuine enthusiasm and refined sensitivity to the composition of sacred music.

Surprisingly, despite being immersed in correspondence with Heads of State, in the government of the Curia and in personal assistance to the Pontiff, Merry del Val found time to compose numerous pieces of liturgical music. His hymns and motets — including settings of the Veni Creator, Te Joseph, Ave Maris Stella, Ave Regina Coelorum, O Salutaris Hostia, Tantum Ergo, Panis Angelicus, and Audivi vocem de caelo — provide an extraordinary testimony to his faith, and to his spiritual and artistic sensitivity. The manuscript scores are now preserved in the Archives of the Cappella Giulia and at the Pontifical Spanish College of San José in Rome.

In recent years, the Cardinal’s musical legacy has been rediscovered and enhanced thanks to the work of Monsignor Pablo Colino, Canon and Maestro Emeritus of the Cappella Giulia of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Colino has undertaken an extensive study of Merry del Val’s compositions, culminating in the recording of a CD with the Choir of the Accademia Filarmonica Romana, released in 2005 and entitled Raffaele Merry Del Val & Lorenzo Perosi - Inni, mottetti e canzoni, which has helped raise awareness of this repertoire and demonstrate both its beauty and historical importance.

Three selections from the album; click this link for the full playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l0vK6gjyoSx2wFZzwxz8YrdDFxvVWM9zs

Veni, Creator Spiritus

Ave Maris Stella

Audivi vocem de caelo

Recently, on November 12, 2025, on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Merry del Val’s episcopal consecration, a commemorative concert was held in Rome at the Spanish National Church. Presided over by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State to His Holiness, the event paid tribute to the figure and spiritual legacy of Merry del Val. The choir of Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli (the Spanish national church), directed by Fabjola Lekaj, performed his sacred compositions, offering a rare opportunity to rediscover the Cardinal’s artistic dimension and underline the contemporaneity and lasting value of his ecclesial, spiritual, and artistic testimony.

Paid Summer Choral Fellowship at the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music, Menlo Park, California

The Catholic Institute of Sacred Music at St. Patrick’s Seminary announces the John A. McInnes Choral Fellowship, beginning with the the summer 2026 term of graduate coursework, and the launch of our 36-credit Master of Sacred Music degree and 20-credit Post-baccalaureate Certificates in Gregorian Chant and Sacred Choral Music (pending approval from WSCUC).

The John A. McInnes Choral Fellowship was established to encourage twelve outstanding Catholic singers to exercise their musical gifts for the glory of God in the context of the sacred liturgy. 

Fellows will serve as section leaders for the CISM Choral Institute, an intensive week-long graduate course held July 20–24, 2026, under the direction of CISM faculty Prof. Christopher Berry and Dr. Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka.

During the Institute, participants sing daily Lauds, Mass, and Vespers, immersing themselves in the Church’s living tradition of sacred music. In addition to their liturgical leadership, the 2026 Choral Fellows will participate in a professional recording session featuring one new work from each of the five composers enrolled in the concurrent Composition Seminar under the direction of Dr. Frank La Rocca.  

Each Fellow receives: 

• A $1,000 stipend 
• Up to $600 in travel allowance 
• Room and board for the duration of the program 

Dates 

Arrival: Morning of Saturday, July 18th 

Departure: After 7:00 p.m. on Friday, July 24th. Singers are welcome to stay until the morning of Saturday, July 25th. 

Eligibility 

The fellowship is open to practicing Catholics of all experience levels, aged 25 years and older, including current and prospective CISM graduate students. Singers must be excellent choral musicians with outstanding sight-reading abilities.

Application 

Applicants must submit: 

• Application form 
• Video recordings of themselves singing their voice part in two a cappella Renaissance motets of their choice 
• Video recordings of themselves singing two Gregorian chants of their choice 

Learn more and apply. 

Applications are due February 15, 2026. 

Read the press release about the Fellowship here.

From All Saints to Advent: the Dedication Feasts of November

In the Roman Breviary, the Matins lessons for the dedication feasts of the Lateran and Vatican basilicas state that Pope St Sylvester I (314-35) consecrated them on November 9th and 18th respectively. However, there is no contemporary or early historical source that attests to this. The Liber Pontificalis, which dedicates a considerable amount of space to Sylvester’s career, says nothing of it; neither do his contemporary Eusebius of Caesarea, the famous Church historian, or the acts of Sylvester mentioned in the Gelasian Decree (ca. 500 A.D.) as one of the reliable lives of the Saints to be read in the liturgy. The tradition of these dates seems to have been popularized by a much later sermon which was commonly read at Matins of a church dedication. [1]

The Consecration of the Lateran Basilica by Pope St Sylvester I; fresco in the transept of that basilica, by Giovan Battista Ricci (1597-1601). The decorations in this part of the church were commissioned by Clement VIII (1592-1605), the same Pope who issued the Roman Pontifical, the liturgical book which contains the rite of a church consecration. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

The earliest liturgical books of the Roman Rite do not have these feasts, nor indeed, any annual commemoration of a church’s dedication at all. Such feasts are one of the enrichments introduced into the liturgy in the Carolingian period, and these particular two examples are indisputably post-Carolingian. As I noted in an article last week, in the Middle Ages they were kept only in Rome itself, and did not begin to be celebrated by other churches until after the Tridentine reform, when those churches adopted the Breviary and Missal of St Pius V, and their calendar with them.

This means that they also post-date the institution of the feast of All Saints, and I here make bold to offer an explanation of why this may be relevant. It is impossible to say, and I certainly do not pretend to say, whether this was a deliberate choice of the unknown persons who instituted them, or another happy example of the mysterious providence by which God refines the liturgy towards ever great beauty and intricacy.

On October 31st, the Church militant upon the earth prepares itself for the great solemnity of All Saints with a day of fasting, as it does for all the greatest feasts. On November 1st, it celebrates all the Saints in the Church triumphant in heaven, and the following day, prays for all those in the Church suffering in Purgatory. Thus, the three liturgical days are dedicated to the three parts of Christ’s mystical body, on earth, in purgatory, and in heaven.

Speaking only of those feasts which are attested on calendars of the Roman Rite from the earliest times [2], November continues with at least one feast of each of the traditional classes of Saint: the Apostle Andrew on the 30th; a martyred bishop, Pope St Clement I, on the 23rd; a martyr, St Chrysogonus, on the 24th (plus the Eastern martyrs Theodore and Menna); a group of several martyrs, the Four Crowned Martyrs, on the 8th; a confessor, St Martin, on the 11th; a virgin and martyr, Cecilia, on the 22nd, and a matron, St Felicity, also on the 23rd. Thus the month itself becomes, so to speak, an icon of all the Saints.

The calendar page for November in a Gregorian sacramentary produced in the second half of the 9th century at the abbey of St-Amand-les-Eaux, about 130 miles north north-east of Paris. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 2290). All of the Saints named above are included except for the Egyptian martyr Menna, whose feast coincides with that of St Martin, kept in Gaul as a solemnity of the highest degree, and therefore without commemoration.

With the exception of Martin, each of these Saints is also very Roman. St Andrew is the Apostle Peter’s brother, and has been the subject of great devotion in the Eternal City from earliest times. The rest are either Roman themselves or have important Roman connections. Clement, Chrysogonus, Cecilia and the Crowned Martyrs all have large and prominent basilicas in the city; Felicity had one near the catacomb where she was buried, and the feast of her seven sons on July 10th is in all Roman liturgical books, going back to the so-called Leonine Sacramentary.

Looking back to the earliest calendars, there is no other month which has such a variety of different kinds of Saints, and almost all of them Roman. Perhaps this was the inspiration for placing the annual commemoration of the dedication of Rome’s cathedral in November as well, once such a commemoration had been instituted as a regular feature of the liturgy. And when this was done, the logical thing would be to also add the commemoration of the dedications of the basilicas of Ss Peter and Paul, the Roman church’s two apostolic founders and principal patrons. This complex month-long celebration of the church of Rome and its Saints would then serve as the link between All Saints and the beginning of the new liturgical year in Advent, the season which draws our mind both to the first coming of Christ in the Incarnation, and His second coming in glory at the end of the world, when all the Saints shall be perfected in the fullness of His Redemption.

The placement of the two dedication feasts between All Saints and Advent thus also reminds us of the mediating role which the Church itself plays in bringing us to our own place in heaven among the angels and the saints. And perhaps it is not too extravagant to posit that there is some intentional symbolism in placing them at intervals of nine days, the number of the choirs of angels in heaven: the dedication of the Lateran is on the 9th, of Ss Peter and Paul on the 18th, and the earliest possible beginning of Advent on the 27th.

The interior of the dome of St Peter’s basilica, with Christ, the Virgin, the Baptist and the Twelve Apostles, and above them, the choirs of angels, with God the Father in the mosaic inside the lantern. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Gary Ullah, CC BY 2.0)

[1] The first part of this sermon, which opens with the words “Consecrationes altarium”, was read as the lessons of the first nocturn of a church dedication in the pre-Tridentine Roman breviary, and the Office of many other liturgical Uses. In the breviary of St Pius V, it is rewritten according to the general literary criteria of that reform, and read in part in the second nocturn of November 9, and in part on the 18th, with various other material added to it. The lessons for these two days were considerably expanded in later additions, in order to give more of the history of the three churches as they were rebuilt and renovated in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

[2] All of these are in their places by the time the first version of the Gregorian Sacramentary was created towards the end of the 8th century.

Medieval Liturgical Objects at the Musée de Cluny in Paris

Once again, I am very grateful to a friend for sharing with us photos taken during his travels, this time from the medieval collection at the Musée de Cluny in Paris. This museum, which is housed in a building that was once the Parisian residence of the abbot of Cluny, is best known as the home of a famous set of six tapestries called The Lady and the Unicorn, but also possesses a large number of very beautiful liturgical objects. In 2019, I visited the museum, and posted some of my own photos, but a large part of it was closed for renovations, and so there isn’t any overlap between these and my own set.

The museum is currently hosting an exhibition titled “The Middle Ages of the 19th Century - Creations and Fakes in the Fine Arts”, which displays medieval works next to modern ones inspired by them, and some forgeries as well. E.g., here we see a medieval thurible on the right, and a modern one which copies it on the left.

A reliquary in the form of an angel, made in France ca. 1470-80.

A modern reliquary inspired by it, made in 1913, containing a rib of the Dominican Saint Gerard of Brogne.

The smaller reliquary at the lower right of this photo was made towards the end of the 19th century to contain a small fragment of the True Cross; another container was added to it later to contain a relic of Julie Billiart, the founder of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, shortly after her beatification in 1906. (She has since been canonized.)

An embroidered panel inspired by the same type of design, made in England in the mid-19th century.

A medieval chalice and paten, and a modern copy (upper right.)

On the right, a ciborium made in France in about 1200, and on the left, a 19th-century copy.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

St Catherine of Alexandria 2025

Truly it is worthy ... through Christ our Lord. Through whom the triumphant, most noble, and outstanding martyr, the virgin Catherine, instructed in the teachings of the prophets, apostles and philosophers, and taught in all languages by the grace of the Holy Spirit, by her wonderful wisdom overcame the emperor with the orators, and the world with all its vices. She converted to Christ the august empress with the aforementioned orators, and Porphyry (her jailer) with all his companions, by her magnificent teachings and examples; and when they had all received the faith together with the sign of Christ from the virgin Catherine, and been crowned with martyrdom, she sent them before her to the kingdom of the heavens. She is the one illuminated by that wisdom which conquers malice, and mightily reaches from end to end (of the word), and sweetly disposes all things. She is that most glorious virgin who with a hundredfold fruits, by her great martyrdom presented herself as an offering to Jesus Christ. And therefore being confirmed by the word of Christ and the visitation of angels she overcame with wondrous constancy nails and wheels, blades most sharp, the tyrant’s sword and threats. She asked from the Lord for all those who devoutly honor her passion health of mind and body, firmness of faith, and abundance of all things. She also, having been beheaded for the name of Christ poured forth milk instead of blood, so that for us who venerate her with pure mind, her teaching and passion might be spiritual drink and food, and the forgiveness of sins. Through the same Christ our Lord, through whom the Angels praise, the Archangels venerate, the Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Principalities and Powers adore Thy majesty; whom the Cherubim and Seraphim celebrate joined in exultation; and we ask that Thou order our voices also be brought in among theirs, saying with humble confession, ‘Holy…’ (The preface of the Ambrosian Mass of St Catherine of Alexandria, used before the post-Tridentine reform of the Ambrosian Missal.)

St Catherine of Alexandria explaining the truth of Christianity to the philosophers sent by the emperor Maximin to convince her of its falsehood. Through the window on the right, we see the same philosophers, encouraged by Catherine, accepting martyrdom. This fresco was painted in the chapel dedicated to both her and St Ambrose in the Roman basilica of St Clement by Masolino da Panicale, 1425-31.

VD... per Christum, Dominum nostrum. Per quem triumphatrix nobilissima et egregia martyr virgo Catherina, Prophetarum et Apostolorum atque philosophorum doctrinis imbuta, omnibusque linguis charismate Sancti Spiritus erudita, imperatorem cum rhetoribus, mundum cum vitiis omnibus mirabilia sapientia superavit. Imperatricem augustam cum praefatis rhetoribus, Porphyrium cum sociis omnibus suis, exemplis et doctrinis magnificis convertit ad Christum, omnesque accepta fide cum signo Christi a virgine Catherina, martyrio coronatos, praemisit ad regna polorum. Haec fuit illa sapientia illustrata, quae vincit malitiam, attingit a fine usque ad finem fortiter, et disponit omnia suaviter. Haec est illa gloriosissima virgo, quae cum centenis fructibus seipsam libando, magnoque purpurata martyrio, representavit Jesu Christo. Ideoque famine Christi et angelorum visitatione confirmata, clavos et rotas, seras acutissimas, tyranni gladium atque minas mirabili constantia superavit. Haec pro cunctis ejus passionem devote colentibus, sanitatem mentis et corporis, fideique firmitatem et rerum abundantiam a Domino postulavit. Haec etiam decollata pro Christi nomine lac fudit pro sanguine, ut sua doctrina et passio nobis eam pura mente venerantibus, esset potus spiritualis et cibus, atque peccatorum remissio. Per eundem Christum, Dominum nostrum. Per quem maiestatem tuam laudant Angeli, venerantur Archangeli, Throni, Dominationes, Virtutes, Principates, et Potestates adorant. Quem Cherubim et Seraphim socia exsultatione concelebrant. Cum quibus et nostras voces, ut admitti iubeas, deprecamur, supplici confessione dicentes: Sanctus…

A particularly good turn of phrase from Fr Hunwicke, said à propos of St Nicholas, applies just as well St Catherine of Alexandria; she was “a saint with as large a portfolio of patronages as a Renaissance cardinal.” Devotion to her was very strong in Milan in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, no less than anywhere else, as evidenced by the fact that in some of the early printed editions of the Ambrosian Missal, her name was even added to the list of Saints in the Nobis quoque of the Canon. In addition to this lengthy proper preface (which from a literary point of view is not quite as polished as it could be), her Mass had almost all proper chants, mostly taken from her legendum, and all proper prayers.

A page of an Ambrosian Missal printed in 1499, with the name of St Catherine in the Nobis quoque.

At the same time, it cannot be denied that many reasonable doubts have been raised about the historicity of the written accounts of her life, not by modern skeptics, but by serious and devout scholars such as St Robert Bellarmine and Cardinal Baronius. On the basis of these doubts, the Ambrosian Missal of 1594, the first revised edition after the Tridentine reform of the Roman Rite, removed all the proper chants, and this preface, replacing them with those of the Common Mass of a Virgin Martyr.

Patronal Feasts of the Schola Sainte-Cécile

November is an especially busy month for our good friends of the Schola Sainte-Cécile in Paris, since both of their patronal feasts fall within it. Their home church was built in 1854, in the reign of the last French Emperor, Napoleon III, and named for St Eugenius, a 7th-century bishop of Toledo, Spain, partly to honor the emperor’s Spanish-born wife, Eugénie. His feast day is November 15th; one week later is the feast of St Cecilia, patron of musicians, who was added as a second patron of the church in 1952 because of its proximity to the Paris Conservatory. As has been the general custom in Francis for over two centuries, both of these feasts are usually celebrated on the Sunday following as external solemnities.

All of the ceremonies in the church are broadcast live on their YouTube channel, and then permanently reposted. Below, I have also included links to their website, which gives the complete musical program (in French) for each ceremony. (Those pages include links to pdfs with the musical scores as well.) The Mass of St Eugenius begins with a rousing Christus vincit, as a relic of the Saint is carried though the church in procession – Feliciter! Feliciter!

Mass on the feast of St Eugène (program)

Vespers (program)

Mass on the feast of St Cecilia (program)

Vespers (program)

For He Must Eventually Reign...

It is no secret that the post-Conciliar liturgical reform, finding the original purpose of the feast of Christ the King, and the doctrine of Christ’s social kingship, rather an embarrassment in Modern Man™’s brave new world, completely denuded it of that purpose and transformed it into a celebration of Christ’s eschatological kingship, a kind of Septuagesima of Christmas. Following the lead of the wise Fr Hunwicke, I here share some considerations on this subject from N.T. Wright, one of the best Biblical scholars of our times, from his book “For All the Saints: Remembering the Christian Departed.” Prof. Wright is an Anglican, and formerly served as the bishop of Durham; he is therefore speaking here principally about the adoption of the new version of the feast of Christ the King into the Anglican liturgy, but his observations are just as pertinent to the post-Conciliar Catholic rite.

“The Sunday next before Advent had an old popular name: ‘Stir-up Sunday’. This derived from the old prayer, the Collect set for the day, which began, ‘Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people… ’, (traditionally also the date when people began preparing cakes and puddings for Christmas.) Its readings gave just a hint of things to come in Advent itself…

The prayers of the last Sunday of the year in the Gellone Sacramentary, ca. 780 AD. (Bibliothèque National de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 12048)

This new festival concludes the implicit storyline at the wrong point and with the wrong point, thereby throwing out of kilter the narrative grammar of the whole story. It implies that Jesus Christ becomes King at the end of the sequence, the end of the story, as the result of a long process.

This is radically misleading … we already have a ‘Feast of Christ the King’. It is called Ascension Day, and occurs forty days after Easter. It celebrates the time when the disciples recognized that the risen Lord Jesus was now the true King of the world. The way Luke tells the story of the Ascension (24, 50-53) invites us to compare Jesus with the Roman emperors who were believed to have ascended to heaven and thereby to have become divine: Jesus, not Caesar, is now the world’s true Lord. His Kingdom has already begun. He has defeated death – and, since death is the final weapon of the tyrant and the bully, he has brought to birth a new sort of kingdom, a kingdom not from this world but emphatically for this world. Easter and Ascension, taken together, constitute Jesus as Messiah and King, as Lord of the world.

(Editor’s note: one of the contributors to Annibale Bugnini’s report on how to “fix” the liturgical year, which we published here on NLM in 2022, grasped this point better than did the Consilium ad exsequendam when he proposed to move Christ the King to the Sunday within the octave of the Ascension. See part 2 of the series, the paragraph beginning “Other proposals of lesser importance...”)

The mission of the church presupposes this. Going into the world to declare that Jesus is Lord only makes sense if he is already reigning, not if the church is merely suggesting that he might perhaps reign at some point in the distant future (our emphasis), at the end of the long years of church history (represented, in the church’s year, by the Trinity season). But when we place ‘Christ the King’ on the last Sunday before Advent, this is what we imply. Christ is not fully King, it seems, until the end. …

‘Ah, but,’ people say (as they have from Christianity’s earliest days), ‘look out of the window. Read the newspapers. It’s obvious that Christ is not yet reigning fully. Evil is still rampant. The kingdom has not yet come.’ Well, yes and no. St Paul knew as well as we do how powerful evil still was: half his letters were written from prison; but he doesn’t for a moment modify his claim that Jesus is already the true King, the world’s true Lord. St John, too, knew all this as well as we do: when he described that marvellous scene of Jesus before Pilate – or perhaps we should say of Pilate before Jesus – he was well aware that Caesar, Pilate’s boss, had persecuted the church and would continue to do so. Yet he has Jesus appear as the King of the Jews, the rightful King of the whole world (John 18.33—19.16)

Christ before Pilate, 1881 by the Hungarian painter Mihály Munkácsy (1844–1900). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

(Editor’s note: the original Gospel of Christ the King is John 18, 33-37. In the lectionary of the post-Conciliar rite, it is read in year B; in year A, the Gospel is Matthew 25, 31-46, the separation of the just from the unjust, and in year C, the mocking of Christ on the Cross and the confession of the Good Thief, Luke 23, 35-43.)

The belief that Jesus was already reigning was, then, woven into Christianity from the first. We have come to think that the difficulty about Christianity is believing in God in the teeth of the scientific evidence, but this misses the point. The real problem is giving allegiance to Jesus as Lord in the teeth of the claims of earthly rulers, systems and philosophies. Kyrios Iesous, Jesus is Lord, was the earliest confession of Christian faith, the thing you had to say before you got baptized. Confessing that Jesus was Lord – meaning, among other things, that Caesar wasn’t – was basic, bottom-line Christianity right from the start. … It wasn’t something you had to wait for until the end of time. Being a Christian was always about living by faith in Jesus’ sovereign Lordship in a world which didn’t much look as if he was in charge.

… At Jesus’ final appearing, his second coming, he will put into operation for the entire cosmos that Lordship which is already his by right. … It will be a fresh act of grace, of new creation, completing what was done in the cross, the resurrection and the ascension, but also going way beyond them in the remaking of the entire cosmos. And the church’s year, which remained unaltered in this respect from at least the sixth century until 1970 in Rome and the late 1990s in the Church of England, kept Advent itself … as the preparation not only for Christmas but also for the second coming, the final reappearing, of Jesus. … If the ‘Feast of Christ the King’ refers to the final kingship of Christ, it makes no sense to celebrate it on the Sunday before Advent and then spend the next four weeks preparing for it. That’s like trying to eat the Christmas pudding and stir it afterwards.”

The kingship of Christ and the renewal of creation was a prominent theme in an absolutely magnificent series of lectures which Prof. Wright delivered at the Univ. of Aberdeen in Scotland in February 2018, his contribution to the annual Gifford Lectures, which have been running since 1888. Here is the first of eight; links to the others will be found easily on YouTube. Prof. Wright later published them as a book titled “History and Eschatology: Jesus and the promise of natural theology.”

The Little Vespers of the Byzantine Office

Earlier this week, I published an article which described the Inter-hours of the Byzantine Divine Office, a second Prime, Terce, Sext and None which are said after the main ones on certain penitential days. There are also days on which two Vespers are appointed to be celebrated, which are distinguished from each other by the terms “Little Vespers” and “Great Vespers.” As with the Inter-hours, this practice is for the most part only observed in the more liturgically energetic monasteries, and indeed, it emerged specifically because of the monastic discipline of fasting.

There is a perception in some quarters that nothing has ever changed in the Byzantine Rite, a perception which is sometimes played up for propagandistic purposes, as a way of unfavorably contrasting the drastic liturgical rupture in the Roman Catholic Church after Vatican II with the continuity of worship in the Orthodox churches. There is, of course, a very considerable degree of continuity in the history of the Byzantine liturgy, as there is in the Roman, but there have also been some very significant changes, and especially in the Divine Office. And it was one of these changes that led to the institution of Little Vespers, which became a standard part of the rite in the later 14th century.

The rubrics for Little Vespers, and the first part of Great Vespers, in a Greek typikon printed in Venice in 1603.

The liturgical book that regulates the various services of the Byzantine Rite is called the typikon. During the iconoclast controversy, which wracked the Byzantine world for much of the eighth century, and broke out again for three decades in the first half of the ninth, one of the major centers of opposition to the heresy was a monastery in Constantinople called the Studion, and among the most important leaders of the opposition was one of its abbots, St Theodore the Studite (759–826). Because of its role in defeating iconoclasm, the prestige of this monastery became very great, and so its typikon came to be adopted as the standard in Byzantium. This was also the version which was first translated into Church Slavonic, and diffused among the Slavs who used the Byzantine Rite in Kyivan Rus’ and elsewhere.

An aerial view of the lavra of St Sabas. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Andrew Shiva, CC BY-SA 4.0)

However, in the Holy Land there was another very prestigious monastery, the Lavra of St Sabbas, located about eight miles from Jerusalem, which had its own version of the typikon, and its own traditions which differed from those of Constantinople in several ways. In the twelfth century, this Sabaite typikon, as it is called, was adopted by one of the monasteries on Mt Athos, and from there, came to have a strong influence on that of a very important monastery in Constantinople known as the Evergetis. In the later part of the 14th century, it was spread throughout the Byzantine world by a patriarch of Constantinople named Philotheos I, who reigned in two periods, from Aug. 1353 – Dec. 1354, and again from Oct. 1364 – Aug. 1376. He was also the author of a book called the “diataxis” (arrangement) of the holy services, and it was these two books together which made various customs of the Sabaite tradition standard in the Byzantine Rite, supplanting those of the Studite tradition.

This historical summary is taken from a very useful modern book called “The Typikon Decoded” by Archimandrite Job Getcha (pp. 42-46; St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012). He goes on to cite an author of the 15th century, Symeon of Thessalonica (1381 ca. – 1429), who says that by his time the use of the Sabaite typikon had spread almost everywhere.

One of the customs thus introduced into general use in the Byzantine Rite was that of the “All-night Vigil” [1], the celebration of Vespers, Orthros (which has features similar to those of both Matins and Lauds in the Roman Rite), and the First Hour, one after another as if they were a single service. (This is not done every day, but on Saturday evenings, as part of the liturgy of Sunday, and on the vigils of many important feasts.) Depending on the church or monastery, the “all” in “all-night” is something of a rhetorical exaggeration, but in great houses like those on Mt Athos, not by much. As I recently noted, a friend of mine attended part of the All-night Vigil at Iviron Monastery on the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, which began at 8pm and ended at 2am, with services resuming in the morning at 6. In cathedrals and large parishes, it is normally shortened in various ways, and typically lasts for 2-2½ hours.

The All-night Vigil for the feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple, celebrated this past Thursday evening at the monastery of St Michael in Kyiv, Ukraine.

From time immemorial, it has been the custom of monks to take their only meal of the day after Vespers, and indeed, it is still the standard arrangement of the pertinent Byzantine liturgical books that the prayers said before that meal are placed between Vespers and Compline. But this poses a significant practical problem for the celebration of the All-night Vigil. Byzantine Vespers is not a short service to begin with, and on major feast days, it is usually lengthened by the addition of Scriptural readings, and a rite called the Litia, at which various hymns are sung, followed by some very lengthy prayers, and a blessing of bread, wine and oil. Orthros is by far the longest part of the Office as a whole. If they are to be said one after another, leaving no break for a meal after Vespers, that makes for a lot to do on an empty stomach and rather less sleep than usual.

The Sabaite tradition’s answer to this problem was to create the service of Little Vespers, in which Great Vespers is abbreviated by the complete omission of some elements, and the shortening of others. This is celebrated in the later afternoon or early evening, usually preceded by the Ninth Hour, and followed by a meal, so that the monks can maintain the tradition of fasting until Vespers, but not faint away from hunger and exhaustion during the vigil. Of course, the meal after Little Vespers is a simple one, since it is not taken on the feast day or Sunday itself. Compline is then said (often in the church’s narthex), with a pause for some rest before the All-night vigil begins.

This table outlines the major differences between Great and Little Vespers. [2]

On Sundays, the hymns for Little Vespers are partly repeated from Great Vespers, and partly proper; on feast days, they are generally all proper, except for the final one, known as the tropar or apolytikion (dismissal hymn), which closes the service. Here are just two examples from this week.

From Little Vespers of Saturday evening, tone 7, which would be said this evening:

From Thee, all-holy Mother of God and Virgin, Christ our God ineffably was born, being truly God before the ages, and of late a man, being the one eternally, become the other for our sake; for He preserveth in Himself the property of both natures, the one, shining out in miracles, the other, believed in His sufferings, whence one and the same both dieth as a man, and riseth as God; whom do Thou beseech, o Holy One who knewest not wedlock, that our souls may be saved.

An icon of the Virgin of the Passion, by the Cretan icon painter Emmanuel Lampardos (1567-1631), so called because Mary is holding Jesus as He looks forward to His passion, represented by the Cross which the angel in the upper right hand corner is showing to him. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

From Little Vespers of the Entrance of the Most Holy Mother of God into the Temple:

David proclaimed in prophecy to Thee o Immaculate one, foreseeing the sanctification of Thine entry into the Temple, at which the ends of the earth today keep festival and glorify Thee, o all-hymned one. For the virgin before childbirth, remaining incorrupt after childbirth, o Mother of the Word of life, today as she comes into the Temple Zechariah receiveth with gladness, o Lady; and the Holy of Holies rejoiceth, taking Thee in, the nourishment of our life. Wherefore we also cry out in songs to thee: Beseech thy Son and our God for us, that great mercy be granted to us.

I add the following because it is relevant to what one might experience in a Byzantine parish today on a Saturday or the eve of a major feast. In 1838, a chief cantor of the Orthodox church in Constantinople named Constantine issued a reformed typikon for parish use, which was revised in two subsequent editions, and then corrected by another issued in 1888, and known from the last name of its author as the Violakis typikon. Among the many changes which these new editions introduced “for pastoral reasons” (ahem…) was the suppression of the vigils of the Sabaite tradition, thus making Little Vespers obsolete. This reform is now standard in Greek parishes, and spread into the Balkans, but is not generally accepted among the Eastern Slavs.

[1] In Greek, the All-night Vigil is either called “παννυχίς (pannykhis)” or “ἀγρυπνία (agrypnia)”, which means “watchfulness”; the Slavonic term is, “Всенощное бдѣнїе (vsenoschnoye bdyeniye).”

[2] There are no Little Vespers for Christmas, Theophany, Easter or Pentecost, due to the specific character of Vespers on each of these days. The rest of the Twelve Great Feasts have it, as do a number of major feasts of the Saints, such as the Nativity of St John the Baptist on June 24, and Ss Peter and Paul on June 29.