The Lavabo

Lost in Translation #124

After the incensation, the priest goes to the Epistle side and washes his hands, reciting Psalm 25, 6-12:

Lavábo inter innocentes manus meas: et circúmdabo altáre tuum, Dómine.

Ut audiam vocem laudis: et enarrem universa mirabilia tua.

Dómine, dilexi decórem domus tuae: et locum habitatiónis gloriae tuae.

Ne perdas cum impiis, Deus, ánimam meam: et cum viris sánguinum vitam meam.

In quorum mánibus iniquitátes sunt: déxtera eórum repléta est munéribus.

Ego autem in innocentia mea ingressus sum: rédime me, et miserére mei.

Pes meus stetit in directo: in ecclesiis benedícam te, Dómine.

Gloria Patri et Filio et Spirítui Sancto.

Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculórum. Amen.

Which the Douay Rheims translates as:

I will wash my hands among the innocent: and I will compass Thine altar, O Lord.

That I may hear the voice of praise: and tell of all Thy wondrous works.

I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of Thy house and the place where Thy glory dwelleth.

Take not away my soul, O God, with the wicked: nor my life with blood–thirsty men.

In whose hands are iniquities; their right hand is filled with gifts.

But I have walked in my innocence: redeem me, and have mercy on me.

My foot hath stood in the direct way; in the churches I will bless Thee, O Lord.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

The action is not as self-explanatory as one might expect. The priest washes his hands before vesting in the sacristy, and he has not touched anything dirty between then and now. That said, it may be that his hands may have become soiled through handing the thurible. William Durandus, for example, writes that in his day the priest also washed his hands after the second incensation (the Gospel). [Rationale, 4, 38]

Even if there is a practical reason for the ritual, the symbolic explanation is the one that has commanded the most attention among liturgical commentators. But if the lavabo is only for symbolic reasons, we may again wonder why it takes place here and not at the beginning of the Offertory Rite, before the priest handles the bread and wine.

In my opinion, there are two possibilities. The first is that from this point forward, the priest will be touching consecrated bread and consecrated wine.

By “consecrated,” I do not mean transubstantiated, but set apart for sacred use. When the priest first touched the paten containing the host, it was a mere piece of bread; when he finished offering it to God, it was a host reserved exclusively for the divine.

The second explanation is that the priest washes his hands in anticipation of praying the Canon, which, as we will see in a later post, is analogous to entering into the Holy of Holies. And Aaron, the brother of Moses, was instructed to bathe before he entered the Holy of Holies. [Lev. 16; Ex. 30, 17-21]

Like the other scriptural allusions and citations in the Roman Mass, this psalm fragment is well chosen for the occasion. The priest has just finished “compassing” the altar with incense, (verse 1) and now he is washing his hands among the innocent, namely, the communion of saints about whom he will be praying in the next prayer, the Suscipe Sancta Trinitas. That the statement “I will compass Thine altar, O Lord,” is in the future tense does not pose a problem, for the verb in biblical Hebrew does not inherently express stages of time but the state of an action, specifically whether the action is perfect or imperfect. Here, the verb is in the imperfect tense, which designates an action that is ongoing, incomplete, or habitual. The priest could be saying “I have [just] been compassing the altar,” or he could be saying that he is in the habit of compassing the altar. Either way, close enough.

But the key theme of these psalm verses is innocence, which appears twice in name: the priest washes his hands among the innocent, and he declares that he has walked in innocence. The latter claim, combined with the activity of hand-washing, calls to mind Pontius Pilate’s dramatic act of washing his hands of the blood of the innocent Jesus Christ. (see Mt. 27, 24) The psalmist, by contrast, wishes to be free not of innocent blood but of blood-thirsty men, or more literally, men of blood (vires sanguinum). Pilate tried in vain to cleanse himself of the guilt of delivering Jesus to death, while the psalmist and the priest themselves seek to be delivered from wicked men. Curiously, although the psalmist asks for redemption and mercy (v. 11), he does not ask for forgiveness, even though ritual washing is historically tied to cleansing from sin. Perhaps the very act itself is an implicit petition for absolution.

Finally, reference is made to the beauty of God’s house and to the speaker’s blessing of God in the churches (the Greek ekklesia and the Latin ecclesia, the equivalent of our word “church,” is an assembly or congregation, but since that congregation is currently gathered near the priest in the nave, it is acceptable to think of “churches” here as signifying the Christian “worship space”). The priest has been in church for a while now, but as he is about to enter the Holy of Holies mystically, his thoughts are drawn to his spatial surroundings and the wondrous beauty of God’s house. A terrible beauty is about to be born.

Spinello Aretino’s Altar of Ss Philip and James

At the very end of the 14th century, the painter Spinello di Luca Spinelli (1350 ca. - 1410 ca.), usually known as Spinello Aretino (from Arezzo) was commissioned to make a frescoed altarpiece for the Dominican church of his native city. The altar itself no longer exists; it was dedicated to the Apostles Philip and James, whose feast is traditionally kept today, along with St Catherine of Alexandria. The fresco, however, remains, and is in relatively good condition. (All images from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

The two Apostles in the center.

On the left side, St James, the first bishop of Jerusalem, heals many of the sick.

His martyrdom, in which he was thrown off the roof of the temple, and then, when found to be still alive, hit in the head with a fuller’s club. Spinello or his patrons either did not know, or chose to ignore, the tradition that St James was in his 90s at the time of his martyrdom.

On the opposite side, two episodes of the legendary acts of St Philip, as told in the Golden Legend of Bl. Jacopo de Voragine. Philip is in Scythia, where he is brought by the pagans before a statue of Mars, and ordered to sacrifice to it. A dragon emerges from the statue’s base, killing the son of the priest in charge of the sacrifice, and the two local officials who were keeping the Apostle in chains, while making everyone else present sick with its breath. Philip promises to remedy these ills if the pagans break the statue and replace it with a Cross; when they do, he heals the sick, raises the three dead persons, and banishes the dragon to an uninhabited desert. He then comes to Hierapolis, where he successfully combats the heresy of the Ebionites, establishes the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and is finally crucified by the infidels.

In the upper section, the mystical marriage of St Catherine of Alexandria...

and her martyrdom.

A Medieval Hymn for Eastertide

Many medieval breviaries, including those of the Sarum Use, the Cistercians, Carmelites and Premonstratensians, have a hymn for the Easter season which is not found in the Roman Breviary, Chorus novae Jerusalem by St Fulbert, bishop of Chartres, who died in 1029. The original version of the Latin text, and the English translation of John Mason Neale (1867), are given below. In this recording, the monks of the French abbey of Ligugé sing the revised version which Dom Anselmo Lentini made for the Liturgy of Hours; the differences are explained in the notes below the table.

Chorus novae Jerusalem, Novam meli dulcedinem, Promat, colens cum sobriis Paschale festum gaudiis.	Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem! To sweet new strains attune your theme; The while we keep, from care releas’d, With sober joy our Paschal Feast:
Quo Christus, invictus leo Dracone surgens obruto Dum voce viva personat A morte functos excitat.	When Christ, Who spake the Dragon’s       doom, Rose, Victor-Lion, from the tomb, That while with living voice He cries, The dead of other years might rise.
Quam devorarat improbus Praedam refudit tartarus; Captivitate libera Jesum sequuntur agmina.	Engorg’d in former years, their prey Must Death and Hell restore to-day: And many a captive soul, set free, With Jesus leaves captivity.
Triumphat ille splendide, Et dignus amplitudine, Soli polique patriam Unam facit rempublicam	Right gloriously He triumphs now, Worthy to Whom should all things bow; And, joining heaven and earth again, Links in one commonweal the twain.
Ipsum canendo supplices, Regem precemur milites Ut in suo clarissimo Nos ordinet palatio.	And we, as these His deeds we sing, His suppliant soldiers, pray our King, That in His Palace, bright and vast, We may keep watch and ward at last.
Esto perenne mentibus Paschale, Jesu, gaudium, Et nos renatos gratiae Tuis triumphis aggrega.	(in the recording, but not in the original text)
Per saecla metae nescia Patri supremo gloria, Honorque sit cum Filio Et Spiritu Paraclito. Amen.	Long as unending ages run, To God the Father laud be done; To God the Son our equal praise, And God the Holy Ghost, we raise.

A literal translation of the hymn’s first two lines would read “Let the choir of the new Jerusalem bring forth the new sweetness of a song.” The word “meli – song” is the genitive singular form of the Greek word “melos” (as in “melody”); this is unusual in Latin, and the line was emended in various ways. The Premonstratensians, e.g., changed it to “nova melos dulcedine – Let the choir of the new Jerusalem bring forth a song with new sweetness.” Dom Lentini disturbed the original text less by changing it to “Hymni novam dulcedinem – the new sweetness of a hymn.”

This manuscript of the mid-11th century (British Library, Cotton Vesp. d. xii; folio 74v, image cropped), is one of the two oldest with the text of this hymn.

Unfortunately, he then decided to remove altogether the original doxology, which is unique to this hymn, in favor of his re-written version of the double doxology used at most hymns of the Easter season.

Esto perenne mentibus
Paschale, Jesu, gaudium,
Et nos renatos gratiae
Tuis triumphis aggrega.

Jesu, tibi sit gloria,
Qui morte victa praenites,
Cum Patre et almo Spiritu,
In sempiterna saecula.

“Be to our minds the endless joy of Easter, o Jesus, and join us, reborn of grace, to Thy triumphs. – Jesus, to Thee be glory, who shinest forth, death being conquered, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, unto eternal ages.”

It is not difficult to figure out the rationale behind this change, since it appears in other features of the reform as well. As the wise Fr Hunwicke noted two years ago, “The post-Conciliar reforms made much of Easter being 50 days long and being one single Great Day of Feast. They renamed the Sundays as ‘of Easter’ rather than ‘after Easter’, and chucked out the old collects for the Sundays after Easter ... because they didn’t consider them ‘Paschal’ enough.” (The “old” collects to which he refers are all found in the Gelasian Sacramentary in the same places they have in the Missal of St Pius V.) Likewise, St Fulbert’s original conclusion makes no direct reference to Easter. For further reference, see these articles about the supposed restoration of the 50 days of Easter:

http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2019/05/fifty-days-of-easter.html http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2019/06/fifty-days-of-easter-part-2.html