O sacrum convivium, in quo Christus súmitur: recólitur memoria passiónis ejus, mens implétur gratia, et futúrae gloriae nobis pignus datur, allelúja. (The Magnificat antiphon for Second Vespers of Corpus Christi.)
O sacred banquet, in which Christ is received; the memory of His passion is recalled, the mind is filled with grace, and the pledge of future glory is given to us, alleluia.
The Office and Mass which St Thomas Aquinas wrote for the feast of Corpus Christ at the behest of Pope Urban IV (1261-4) are universally recognized to be among the finest liturgical compositions of the Middle Ages. There is a famous legend of how this came to be, which tells that the pope proposed a contest between Thomas and his friend St Bonaventure, who was at that time serving as the 7th Minister General of the Franciscan Order. Each would write an Office and Mass for the feast, which would then be read to the papal court, and the better of the two chosen. On the day of the contest, Thomas was allowed to read his first; as soon as he had finished, Bonaventure tore his own manuscript to pieces (or threw it in the fire), recognizing that Thomas’ work was far superior to his own.
Painful as it is to impugn such a charming story, it has to be acknowledged that it has no basis in fact. Among other things, we know enough about St Bonaventure’s doings and whereabouts in that period to say that he was not in Orvieto, the town where the papal court resided for most of Pope Urban’s reign, long enough for such a contest to have happened. There are no written attestations of the story before the later decades of the 15th century, over 200 years after it supposedly took place; even in the mid-15th century, Dominican writers known for their enthusiasm for these kinds of tales about the glories of their early confreres (e.g. St Antoninus of Florence) make no mention of it.
However, there is an artistic depiction of the story, or something like it, earlier than this, a painting by the Sienese artist Taddeo di Bartolo (ca. 1363 - 1422), likely made for the Dominican church of his native city around 1403-5.
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St Thomas is shown kneeling before the pope, presenting his liturgical texts, while a cardinal holds a host and chalice above him. (This is, of course, purely symbolic.) At the far right is a Franciscan cardinal who seems rather taken aback by what’s happening, while the Dominican next to him points toward the host, and the cardinal sitting with his back to the viewer gestures towards the Franciscan, as if to say, “You can stop now.” However, this painting cannot be treated as any kind of proof of the legend’s historical accuracy, since St Bonaventure was not made a cardinal until 1273, while Pope Urban died in 1264.
My thanks to Dr Donald Prudlo, an old friend and occasional guest contributor to NLM, for information which he provided me for this article.
