The Feast of Ss John and Paul, Martyrs

The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Saints John and Paul, as recounted in the pre-Tridentine Breviary according to the Use of the Roman Curia.

At Rome, (the passion) of John and Paul, brothers… when the Caesar Julian was taken by sacrilegious lust for money, he sought to color his greed by the witness of the Gospel. For as he took from the Christians their goods and properties, he would say, “Your Christ says in the Gospel, ‘Who renounceth not all that he possesseth cannot be my disciple.’ ” Now it came to his notice that Paul and John were helping the crowds of Christians by means of the riches which the virgin Constantia (the daughter of Constantine, whom John and Paul had formerly served) had left to them. And he sent a man to see them, and say that they must adhere to him. But they answered … “Because of your iniquity we have desisted from greeting you, and withdrawn ourselves entirely from all association with your rule. For we are not false, but true Christians. … We do not do you this injury, that we prefer any sort of human person before you. We prefer to you the Lord, who made the heaven and earth, the sea and all things that are in them.” (The saints also declare their refusal to return to the court, where they had formerly served Constantine, and greet the emperor.) Julian said to them, “I give you a pause of ten days. When they have passed, if you come to me willingly, I will hold you as my friends; if you do not come, I will punish you as public enemies.”

Despite the great antiquity of the cultus of Ss John and Paul, and the presence of their names in the Roman Canon, they are rarely represented in art. These paintings decorate the place within their house where they were originally buried; other martyrs whose connection to them is not altogether clear, Ss Crispus, Crispinian and Benedicta, are represented alongside them. The relics have long since been moved into the altar of the church dedicated to them, which was built on top of the house. 

Then the holy men John and Paul, calling the Christians to themselves, gave orders concerning all the things which they could leave behind, and for the whole of the ten days busied themselves with almsgiving day and night. But on the eleventh day they were confined within their house. (A military officer named Terentian is then sent to their house and says to them) “Our lord Julian has sent a little golden statue of Jove to you, that you may adore it and burn incense. But if you do not do this, you will both be struck with my sword. … ” John and Paul said, “If Julian is your lord, have peace with him. We have no other Lord, but the One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whom he (i.e. Julian the Apostate) did not fear to deny. And because he was once cast away from the face of God, he wishes others to come down with him to destruction.” (Terentian has them decapitated and buried in their house.)

The exterior of the church of Ss John and Paul, which was completely rebuilt in the 12th century. 

Julian was at once slain in the war with Persia, and when Jovinian had become the most Christian emperor, the churches were opened, and the Christian religion began to rejoice. (Following this, many possessed persons are healed in the house of Saints John and Paul, including the son of Terentian, who himself converts to Christianity, and writes the passion of the Holy Martyrs.)

A later and apocryphal tradition says that Julian the Apostate was killed by a Christian soldier in his army named Mercurius, (who is honored in the East as a Saint), as depicted here in a Coptic icon. (image from wikipedia.) The true historical date of Julian’s death is the same as the feast of Ss John and Paul, June 26th.

R. Hæc est vera fratérnitas, quæ numquam pótuit violári certámine: qui effúso sánguine secúti sunt Dóminum: * Contemnentes aulam regiam, pervenérunt ad regna caelestia. V. Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum habitáre fratres in unum. Contemnentes. Gloria Patri. Contemnentes.

R. This is the true brotherhood, which could never be injured in the struggle; who by shedding their blood, followed the Lord. * Disdaining the palace of the king, they came to the heavenly kingdom. V. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell in unity. Disdaining. Glory be to the Father. Disdaining.

In the Breviary of St Pius V and its predecessors, this responsory is said on the feasts of Several Martyrs who are also brothers. The devotion to John and Paul is one of the oldest in the city of Rome, and the responsory was almost certainly originally written for their feast day.

The Praeceptis salutaribus

Lost in Translation #163

After finishing the Canon, the priest introduces the Lord’s Prayer. He calls the assembly to pray with the familiar Oremus and then says or intones:

Praeceptis salutaribus moniti,

Et divina institutione formati,

Audemus dicere.

Which I translate as:

Taught by salutary precepts,

And formed by divine instruction,

We dare to say:

Transformative Teachings

The exhortation’s structure is redolent of the synonymous parallelisms found in the Psalms, whereby the second line reinstates or reiterates the first. For example, in Psalm 2, 1, the Psalmist cries out:

Why have the Gentiles raged,

And why have the people devised vain things?

The diction of the exhortation goes back to the third century. In his commentary on the Lord’s Prayer (appropriately enough), St. Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258) writes:

Qui inter cetera salutaria sua monita et praecepta divina, quibus populo suo consulit ad salutem, etiam orandi ipse formam dedit: ipse quid precaremur monuit et instruxit. [1]

Which I translate as:

Among His other salutary teachings and divine precepts with which He counsels His people for their salvation, He Himself also gave a form of prayer: He Himself taught and instructed what we should pray for.

Jungmann surmises that the Praeceptis salutaribus has the same fourth-century editor or author as the Roman Canon, whoever he may be. [2]

And the wording is somewhat distinctive. Instead of more obvious choices for the verb “to teach” such as docere or erudio or praecipio, the text has monere. Derived from mens, the Latin word for mind, it means “to call to mind,” but it is often used to admonish or warn. That fits well with Our Lord’s precepts, for as with the Ten Commandments, not choosing to embrace them is ominously choosing curse and death. (see Deut. 30, 19) Fittingly as well, these precepts are called “salutary,” for they bring health and salvation to all who follow them.

The second line also uses a distinctive word for teaching. The word institutio poses a challenge to translators, for it is not an “institution” in the sense of a corporate or legal establishment, but an education or induction into a higher mode.

And the effect of this induction is transformative, for we are formed (formati) by it. In our previous study of the Roman orations, we noted on several occasions how the prayers constitute what Pope Benedict XVI calls a “school of love” that reshapes and reorients our desires (see here and here). Now, in the Ordinary of the Mass, we see the same powerful claim being said about Christ’s teachings in general, and about the Lord’s Prayer in particular. Oddly, not a single pre-conciliar hand Missal that I consulted translates the past particle formati correctly, opting instead for “following” – as if the emphasis were on obedience rather than formation. [3] Happily, the 2011 English translation of the new Mass has “And formed by divine teaching.”

The Novus Ordo

There are two curious aspects to the Praeceptis salutaribus in the 1970 Missal. The first is the omission of Oremus at the beginning. When Pope Paul VI saw the first draft of the new Mass, he asked: “Why omit the ‘Let us pray’ before the Our Father?” Bugnini writes that the Consilium rejected the Holy Father’s “implied suggestion” on the grounds that “ ‘Let us pray’ is an invitation to prayer, but such an invitation is already contained in the exhortation that precedes the Our Father.” [4]

Second, although the original wording of the exhortation remains unchanged, there appears to be a strange international collusion against translating it accurately. Specifically, no official “vernacular” translation that I consulted keeps the text’s synonymous parallelism (with a past participle as the backbone of each clause) or makes an effort to convey its unusual diction; and every official translation that I consulted changes the adjective “saving” or “salutary” to the noun “Savior” or even, as in the German, “Lord and Redeemer” (see the Appendix of Modern Translations below). I do not know the origin of the latter preference, except to note that a Fr. Bonifatius Fischer wrote an obscure article in 1950 arguing that praeceptis salutaribus can also mean praeceptis Salvatoris (“precepts of the Savior”) [5], and that in his 1960 proposed “sample Mass,” Fr. H.A. Reinhold recommends the following:

Let us pray:

Obeying our Saviour’s command

And taught by his divine institution,

We dare to say: [6]

There is no mention of the issue by the Second Vatican Council, in the documents of the Magisterium, or in Annibale Bugnini’s memoir. Whatever the reason, the new formulation is accurate but unfortunate: accurate because our Savior did indeed command us to say the Lord’s prayer; unfortunate because it erases a verbal link between the Our Father and the Preface, which uses the same word (salutare). And as we will see in a later essay, the two prayers stand in a complementary relationship with each other.

Moreover, the replacement flattens the very Christian concept of a salutary, root-and-branch, transformative observance of a precept into a mere act of obedience. In the words of Fr. Ernest Fortin,

“The truth which the Christian is persuaded to accept is not a truth in any ordinary sense of the word but… a beatifying or saving truth, which is fully appropriated only when it issues in those deeds to which it points as its fulfillment.” [7]

All the new translations that I reviewed follow this turn in other ways as well, choosing words like “obedience” and “following” instead of words that more robustly point to teaching and formation. The problem with this shift is that in moving away from a transformative view of justification, it creates a vacuum for the Lutheran forensic view of justification, the so-called doctrine of imputed righteous.

One translation is egregious for a different reason. The Spanish in the Missal for Mexico is:

Fieles a la recomendación del Salvador,

y siguiendo su divina enseñanza,

nos atrevemos a decir: [8]

Which I translate as:

Faithful to the Savior’s recommendation,

And following his divine teaching,

We dare to say:

As we have seen, moniti can mean “advise” insofar as it connotes rebuking or admonishing, but the Biblical context rules out this possibility. Introducing the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus says to His disciples, “When you pray, say…” with “say” in the imperative voice. (Luke 11, 2) For that matter, how many times in the Gospels does Jesus Christ “recommend”? Conversely, how many times does He say: “Amen, Amen, I say unto you” or “Others have said, ‘Do this,’ but I say unto you, “Do that’”?

Giusto di Menabuoi, The Creation of the World; detail of the dome fresco in the Baptistery of Padua, 1378. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Yukio Sanjo, CC BY-SA 3.0.)

The Audacity

Thankfully, every one of the consulted translations faithfully renders the final line, audemus dicere or “we dare to say.” The notion that praying the Our Father is a daring act comes from the Patristic era.

“Daily we dare to say” (audemus quotidie dicere),” Augustine says in a sermon: “‘Thy kingdom come.’” [9] And Jerome writes:

[Our Lord] so instructed His Apostles that, daily at the sacrifice of His body, believers may be bold enough to say [audeant loqui], “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name…” [10]

The audacity of reciting the Lord’s Prayer lies chiefly in its first two words. As Blessed Columba Marmion explains, out of sheer love and generosity the First Person of the Holy Trinity has willed for all eternity to extend to us His Paternity, to recognize us as His adopted sons so that we can be filled with holiness and share in His eternal happiness. But although it is in accordance with our nature to call God our Creator, it is not natural for a creature to call his Creator “Father.” That privilege is the result of a purely supernatural act of adoption. “By nature God has only one Son,” Marmion observes; “by love He wills to have an innumerable multitude.” [11]

Thus, in calling God “our Father,” we accept the calling of divine adoption and the obligations that it entails. And hence, we should approach this divine intimacy with a healthy sense of fear and trembling. In the words of the Apostolic Constitutions (ca. 400):

Pray [the Lord’s Prayer] thrice in a day, preparing yourselves beforehand, that you may be worthy of the adoption of the Father; lest, when you call Him Father unworthily, you be reproached by Him, as Israel once His first-born son was told: “If I be a Father, where is my glory? And if I be a Lord, where is my fear?” (Malachi 1, 6) For the glory of fathers is the holiness of their children, and the honour of masters is the fear of their servants, as the contrary is dishonour and confusion. For says He: “Through you my name is blasphemed among the Gentiles.” (Is. 52, 5) [12]

“The glory of fathers is the holiness of their children.” If we wish to call God our Father, then we need to resemble Him like a son who is the spitting image of his dad. And the more we resemble Him, the worthier we are to receive His Son in Holy Communion.

Appendix of Modern Translations

The official French translation is:

Comme nous l’avons appris du Sauveur,

et selon son commandement,

nous osons dire: [13]

Which I translate as:

As we have learned it from the Savior,

And according to His commandment,

We dare to say:

The official Italian is:

Obedienti alla parola del Salvatore

e formati al suo divino insegnamento,

osiamo dire: [14]

Which I translate as:

Obedient to the word of the Savior,

And formed by His divine teaching,

We dare to say:

The German translation is:

Dem Wort unseres Herm uns Erlösers gehorsam,

Und getreu seiner Auftrag,

Wagen wir zu sprechen:

Which I translate as:

Obedient to the word of our Lord and Redeemer,

And faithful to His command,

We dare to say:

And the 2011 English translation is:

At the Savior’s command,

And formed by divine teaching,

We dare to say: [15]

Michael Foley is the author of Lost in Translation: Meditating on the Orations of the Traditional Roman Rite (Angelico Press, 2023).

Notes

[1] Cyprian, Treatise IV.2.

[2] Jungmann, vol. 2, 56-57.

[3] That includes the Father Lasance Missal, the St. Andrew’s Daily Missal, the Abbot Cabrol Missal, the Saint Joseph Daily Missal, the Baronius Press Missal, and the Marian Missal.

[4] Bugnini, 380.

[5] Bonifatius Fischer, O.S.B., “Praeceptis salutaribus moniti,” Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft 1 (1950), 124-127.

[6] Reinhold, 96.

[7] Ernest L. Fortin, “Augustine and the Problem of Christian Rhetoric,” in Collected Essays, vol. 1 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1996), 85.

[8] Misal Romano (2017), 118.

[9] Augustine, Sermon 110.5.

[10 Jerome, Against the Pelagians III.15.

[11] Bl. Columba Marmion, Christ the Life of the Soul (Tacoma, WA: Angelico Press, 2012), 24, emphases added.

[12] Apostolic Constitutions 7.24.

[13] Missel Romain, 3rd. ed. [MAME Desclée, 2001], 512.

[14] Messale Romano, 3rd ed. [Fond.Ne Di Religione Santi Francesco D'assisi E Ca, 2020], 444.

[15] The Roman Missal, 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: USCCB Publishing, 2011), 336.

St Maximus of Turin, A Forgotten Father of the Church

In the Martyrology, the next-to-last entry for today reads, “At Turin, the birth into heaven of St Maximus, bishop and confessor, most celebrated (or ‘renowned’ (celeberrimi)) for his learning and holiness.” With all due respect to the great Cardinal Caesare Baronio (1538-1607), who wrote this entry for his revision of the Martyrology in 1568, it is something of a rhetorical exaggeration to say that Maximus was “most celebrated.” There is almost no trace of devotion to him as a Saint outside his native city. The Usuarium catalog of liturgical books does not record that his feast was kept anywhere in the Middle Ages, and indeed, the previous editions of the Martyrology which Baronius used as the basis of his text do not mention him. The oldest known biography of him was not written until about 600 years after his death, and is not regarded as historically trustworthy.

A statue of St Maximus at the shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Turin. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Syrio, CC BY-SA 4.0.)

In one of his sermons, Maximus describes himself as an eyewitness to the martyrdom of Saints Sisinnius, Martyrius and Alexander, which happened in a place called Anaunia, in the valley of Trent in northern Italy, in the year 397. It is guessed that he was in his mid- to late teens at the time, and thus born around the year 380. He is named among the bishops who attended a synod in Milan in 451; the last notice we have of him is from the year 465, when he attended another synod in Rome. His name appears on the list of bishops who subscribed to the acts of the latter immediately after that of the pope, indicating that he was senior bishop present. He is the first bishop of Turin whose name is known to us, but it is not known when or how he came to that office. And these are the only details of his life which we can say are known for certain. There seem to be very few artistic representations of him, judging not only from the dearth of images on Wikipedia, but from the fact Nicola de’ Grandi, who has visited and photographed a huge number of churches in northern Italy, doesn’t have any.

No modern edition of his works was published until 1784, when the task was undertaken by an editor called Bruno Bruni, issued by the press of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome, and then reproduced in Migne’s Patrologia Latina. Bruni divided these writings (rather arbitrary, in the estimation of the patrologist Fulbert Cayré; vol. 2, 13.2) into 118 homilies and 116 sermons, with both blocks subdivided according to subject: the seasons of the liturgical year and the feasts of the Lord; feasts of the Saints; various theological topics. But more modern research considers that a great many of these, more than half, are not authentic; in his series of Wednesday audience talks on the Church Fathers, Pope Benedict XVI stated that “we have inherited a collection of about 90 of (Maximus’) sermons.” (Oct. 31, 2007)

Since his feast falls between two of the greatest and most ancient among the Church’s feast days, the Nativity of St John the Baptist yesterday, and the feast of Ss Peter and Paul on the 29th, here are excerpts from one of his sermons for both of these days.

“In praise of the holy and most blessed John the Baptist, whose birth we celebrate today, I do not know what is the most important thing we should preach on – that he was wonderfully born or more wonderfully slain. For he was born in prophecy, and murdered for truth; by his birth he announced the coming of the Savior, and by his death he condemned the incest of Herod. For this holy and just man, who was begotten apart from the common way of men as the result of a promise, merited from God that he should not depart this world by a common death, but that he should lay aside his body, which he had received as a gift from the Lord, by confessing the Lord. Therefore John did everything by the will of God, since he was born and died for the sake of God’s work.” – Sermon 5

St Peter Enthroned, with Ss John the Baptist and Paul the Apostle, 1516, by Cima da Conegliano (ca. 1459-1517.

Though all the blessed apostles receive an equal share of grace from the Lord of holiness, nonetheless in some way Peter and Paul are seen to stand out from the others, and to excel by reason of a certain special virtue of faith in the Savior. Indeed, we can prove this by referring to the judgment of the Lord Himself; for to Peter, as to a good steward, He gave the key of the heavenly kingdom, and upon Paul, as one skilled in instruction, He enjoined the teaching office in the establishment of the Church. Thus, those whom the latter would educate to salvation, the former would receive into peace, and while Paul would enlighten their hearts with the teaching of his words, Peter would open to their souls the kingdom of heaven. Therefore Paul also received, so to speak, a key from Christ, that of knowledge; for whatever opens up the hard places of hearts to faith, lays bare the secrets of minds, and brings what is kept closed within out into the open by a reasonable manifestation ought to be called a key. That is a key, I say, which both opens the conscience to the confession of sin, and inserts grace for the eternal saving mystery. Both, therefore received keys from the Lord: the one of knowledge, and the other of power. The one dispenses the riches of immortality, the other distributes the treasures of knowledge. For there are in fact treasures of knowledge, as it is written, “In whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden (Col. 2, 3). Therefore do the blessed Peter and Paul stand out among all the Apostles and excel by a certain special prerogative. – Sermon 1

The Birth of Polyphony: An Online Presentation Next Monday from Gregorian Chant Academy

We are happy to share this announcement from Mr Christopher Jasper and the Gregorian Chant Academy, about an upcoming presentation on the birth of liturgical polyphony.

Whether we look to the classical mastery of Palestrina and Bach, or the structures of modern secular music, the DNA of Western music can ultimately be traced back to the sacred repository of Gregorian chant. Right at the center of this historical lineage stands one man, perhaps the singular, most influential musician of all time: the eleventh-century Benedictine monk Guido d’Arezzo, the inventor of the diatonic scale. This year marks the 1000th anniversary of the publication of one his most widely-diffused and influential works, the Micrologus.

But Guido’s revolutionary developments did not emerge from a historical vacuum. Before his time, a critical foundation was laid by two anonymous ninth-century musical treatises: the Musica Enchiriadis and the Scolica Enchiriadis (“The Music and School Handbook”). These little-known texts provide our earliest surviving written description of how to sing in harmony, a practice historically known as diaphony or organum.

To mark the anniversary of Guido’s Micrologus, the Gregorian Chant Academy is launching a new video mini-series exploring how these ancient roots shaped Western harmony. Episode 1: The Birth of Written Harmony in the West premieres this coming Monday on YouTube. The full episode can be viewed here on YouTube next Monday: https://youtu.be/KdZzvviz4-g

LITURGICAL UNITY AND THE SCIENCE OF NUMBER

For the medieval intellectual, music was not primarily a vehicle for personal self-expression, but rather a rigorous branch of the curriculum of studies known as the quadrivium, alongside arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. It was a science of number, proportion, and divine order.

The upcoming episode steps directly into the Carolingian soundscape to unpack how these mathematical principles directly addressed an important pastoral crisis:

• The Carolingian Context: In the ninth century, Frankish rulers demanded strict political and liturgical unity, requiring the supplanting of local Gallican rites in favor of the Roman rite.
• The Crisis of Memory: Entire dioceses were suddenly forced to learn an immense new repertoire of Roman melodies without the aid of precise, pitch-specific notation, relying entirely on voices and memory.
• The Monochord as Theological Proof: Using the Pythagorean monochord, medieval theorists demonstrated that the primary consonances – the Octave, the Fifth, and the Fourth – were audible icons of the cosmic and theological order established by God.

THE MECHANICS OF EARLY ORGANUM: BENDING THE THEORY

How did ninth-century cantors actually harmonize sacred chant without falling into chaotic dissonance? While early forms of organum (singing in parallel intervals) seemed straightforward on paper, applying rigid mathematical scale systems to real human voices immediately exposed major vulnerabilities – including forbidden clashing intervals and completely broken octaves.

In the first episode, we look at the fascinating, hands-on boundaries the Musica Enchiriadis introduced to solve these practical problems. We will explore the structural origins of independent voice leading through the birth of “oblique motio”", unpack how phrases elegantly converged back into unison at cadences (the occursus), and discover the astonishing exceptions where ancient singers were explicitly allowed to use “wondrous changes” and ”deliberate errors” to protect the organic beauty of a liturgical melody when the rigid math of the scale wouldn’t allow it.

A PASTORAL RESOURCE FOR MODERN SCHOLAS

This exploration is not merely an academic exercise in codicology. Understanding the transition from a purely oral tradition to the earliest written rules of polyphony provides profound practical tools for today’s parish choir loft. It reminds us that our sacred music tradition is a living lineage. When a modern schola experiments with simple organum, using boundary tones and drones to navigate tricky vocal intervals, they are participating in the exact same search for ordered beauty that occupied our ninth-century ancestors.

Please join us this Monday, June 29, for the premiere of Episode 1, and consider subscribing to the channel as we continue this journey through the medieval treatises toard the great synthesis of Guido d’Arezzo.

The Dawn Mass of St John the Baptist

St Augustine notes that John the Baptist is the only Saint whose birth the Church celebrates, apart from that of the Savior Himself, since the feast of the Virgin Mary’s Birth had not yet been instituted in his time. This custom is observed in fulfillment of the Angel Gabriel’s words to John’s father Zachariah, which are read in the Gospel of the vigil, that “Many shall rejoice in his birth.” (Luke 1, 14) In the Carolingian period, the custom emerged by which the Roman Rite celebrated two Masses on June 24th, one to be celebrated early in the morning, after Prime, and another after Terce, as attested in the oldest copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary. These correspond to the dawn and day Masses of Christmas; the greater solemnity of the birth of Christ, of whom John himself said “I must wane that He may wax”, is proclaimed by the fact that it is celebrated with three Masses.

This custom of the two Masses gradually died out, and was observed only in a few places at the time of the Tridentine liturgical reform; the Mass which survived, and is included in the Missal of St Pius V, is the second one, and the older of the two. Here is the full text of the dawn Mass; medieval commentators such as William Durandus noted that the day Mass was the more solemn, since it has more proper texts, while most of the Gregorian chants for the dawn Mass are also used on the feasts of other Saints.

Folio 174v of a 13th century Missal according to the Use of Paris, with the morning Mass of the Nativity of St John the Baptist, beginning in the upper part of the left column, and the day Mass beginning at the lower right. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des manuscrits. Latin 1112)

The introit is one used in the Roman Missal for the feasts of simple Confessors, but the same words from Psalm 91 are also used in the Office of a Martyr.

Introitus Ps. 91 Justus ut palma florébit: sicut cedrus Líbani multiplicábitur: plantátus in domo Dómini, in atriis domus Dei nostri. ℣. Bonum est confitéri Dómino: et psállere nómini tuo, Altíssime. Glória Patri. Justus ut palma...
Introit The just man shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow up like the cedar of Libanus, planted in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God. ℣. It is good to give praise to the Lord, and to sing to Thy name, O most High. Glory be. The just man...

The three proper prayers of the Mass are all found in the Gregorian Sacramentary, and the Missals of those Uses which retained the dawn Mass until the post-Tridentine reform.
Collecta Concede, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus: ut qui beati Joannis Baptistae solemnia colimus, ejus apud te intercessione muniamur. Per.
Collect Grant, we ask, almighty God, that we who keep the solemnity of blessed John the Baptist, may be defended by his intercession. Through Our Lord...

The Epistle for this Mass varies from one Use to another; in the Parisian version shown above, it is taken from Isaiah 48 (verses 17-19), the chapter preceding that from which the Epistle of the day Mass is taken.

Thus saith the Lord thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the Lord thy God that teach thee profitable things, that govern thee in the way that thou walkest. O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments: thy peace had been as a river, and thy justice as the waves of the sea, and thy seed had been as the sand, and the offspring of thy womb like the gravel thereof: his name should not have perished, nor have been destroyed from before my face.

The Gradual repeats the text of the Introit, with the second verse of the same Psalm.

Graduale Justus ut palma florébit: sicut cedrus Líbani multiplicábitur: plantátus in domo Dómini, in atriis domus Dei nostri. ℣. Ad annuntiandum mane misericordiam tuam, et veritatem tuam per noctem.
Gradual The just man shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow up like the cedar of Libanus, planted in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God. V. To show forth thy mercy in the morning, and thy truth in the night.

In some places, the Alleluia repeats the same words from Psalm 91 a third time, but in others, it was taken from the Savior’s own testimony to the greatness of John, from Matthew 11, 11.

Alleluja, alleluja. Inter natos mulierum, non surrexit major Joanne Baptista. Alleluja. (Among those born of woman, there hath arisen no greater than John the Baptist.)

The Preaching of John the Baptist, by Domenico Ghirlandaio, in the Tornabuoni Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, the Dominican parish in Florence, 1485-1490.

On the vigil, the Gospel, Luke 1, 5-17, tells of the Angel Gabriel’s appearance to Zachariah in the temple, and his prophecy of the conception and birth of John. In the Missal of St Pius V, the story of Zachariah’s doubting of the Angel’s words, and being struck dumb, and the words of Elizabeth about her conception are not read; this was the Gospel of the dawn Mass, verses 18-25.

At that time: Zachary said to the angel: Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years. And the angel answering, said to him: I am Gabriel, who stand before God: and am sent to speak to thee, and to bring thee these good tidings. And behold, thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be able to speak until the day wherein these things shall come to pass, because thou hast not believed my words, which shall be fulfilled in their time. And the people were waiting for Zachary; and they wondered that he tarried so long in the temple. And when he came out, he could not speak to them: and they understood that he had seen a vision in the temple. And he made signs to them, and remained dumb. And it came to pass, after the days of his office were accomplished, he departed to his own house. And after those days, Elizabeth his wife conceived, and hid herself five months, saying: Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he hath had regard to take away my reproach among men.

The Annunciation to Zachariah, by Giovanni di Paolo (ca. 1455-60; public domain image from the website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.)

The Offertory is taken from the Mass of Confessors.

Offertorium In virtute tua, Domine, laetabitur justus, et super salutare tuum exsultabit vehementer; desiderium animae ejus tribuisti ei.
Offertory In thy strength, O Lord, the just man shall rejoice, and in thy salvation he shall exsult exceedingly; thou hast given him his soul’s desire.

Secreta Munera, Domine, oblata sanctifica; et intercedente beato Joanne Baptista, nos per haec a peccatorum nostrorum maculis emunda. Per...
Secret O Lord, sanctify the gifts offered; and by the intercession of blessed John the Baptist, through them cleanse us from the stains of our sins. Through Our Lord...

The Communion antiphon is one commonly used for the feasts of Confessors.

Communio Posuísti, Dómine, super caput ejus corónam de lápide pretióso.
Communion Thou hast set, o Lord, upon his head a crown of precious stones.

Postcommunio Praesta, quaesumus, omnipotens Deus: ut qui caelestia alimenta percepimus, intercedente beato Joanne baptista, per haec contra omnia adversa muniamur. Per...
Postcommunio Grant, we ask, almighty God, that we who have received the food of heaven, by the intercession of blessed John the Baptist, may through it be defended from all adversities. Through our Lord...

What Were the Rites “Older Than 200 Years” for Which Pius V Made Exception?

The following letter exchange is published here for the interest of NLM readers.

Dear Dr. Kwasniewski,

I found my way into saying the Traditional Latin Mass a year after my ordination in 2018. Saying the TLM has changed my life and drawn me closer into our Lord’s sacrifice. I have suggested your book Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright and the documentary Mass of the Ages as resources to educate others about the significance of the TLM. The motu proprio Traditionis Custodes has certainly shown people’s true colors when it comes to the liturgical life of the Church.

In an interview you did with Cameron O’Hearn, you mentioned that there were liturgical rites older than 200 years that Quo Primum did not suppress, but that most of them died out over time. Do you have a list of these liturgical rites that were not suppressed by Quo Primum but which eventually dissolved anyway? Is there also a comprehensive list of liturgical rites that Quo Primum actually did effectively suppress because they were younger than the two-century span he posited?

I would also love to read any academic sources on this subject to educate others on what a liturgical rite actually is. Most people do not realize how many liturgical rites exist or have existed. My hope is that the Traditional Latin Mass will not have to compete for the title “Roman Rite” and will someday simply be acknowledged as the Roman Rite bequeathed to us from across the centuries. Indeed, I have pondered the idea of the Novus Ordo just dissolving over time, as apparently did some of these local liturgical rites, instead of a Pope someday strictly banning it. Most Catholics start scratching their heads when I suggest that the Novus Ordo is likely to lose its hold and dissolve over time, but I really believe this is true.

Yours in Christ,
Father Fiddleback

Dear Father,

You are one of many priests I know who have been so seized with “Eucharistic amazement” through the traditional Latin Mass that they seek to join a fully traditional society of apostolic life or religious order. You may have seen the article I wrote about a priest’s crisis of conscience; many are they who have experienced similar awakenings.

I’m not aware of a simple list of suppressed or defunct rites (or, in most cases, more accurately “uses”), but we can say that there were many in England alone that the Reformation tragically swept away. Sarum was only the most famous. Similarly, the Mozarabic rite was nearly extinguished throughout Spain, surviving eventually only in Toledo, so in a way it can be considered a rite that died away and would have disappeared had not Cardinal Cisneros personally intervened. The rites of Lyons and of Braga were once quite prominent yet barely survive today, with just a handful of clergy who know how to do them.

It would have been ideal had Pope Francis left alone the “Pax Benedictina” of the two “forms.” Yes, one can object to the coherence of the idea, but on the ground it was working as a modus operandi. The “market forces,” so to speak, would have slowly but surely increased the share of the TLM, and the NOM would eventually have peacefully given up the ghost—especially because younger clergy would keep nudging it closer and closer to the TLM until a smooth adoption of the old rite would, in fact, be the logical and pastorally appropriate step. But the late pope allowed himself to be persuaded (or maybe he really believed it) that an all-out war against the TLM was necessary to rid the Church of the last impediment to the glorious revolution marked by Vatican II and its (putative) reforms, and so, now, we will be in the trenches for a while, and the stakes will be higher. Somehow this too is in God’s plan.

I posed your question to another learned fellow, who wrote this interesting reply:

“Basically, every diocese in Latin Christendom had its own use, plus independent monasteries and monastic congregations, plus religious orders, plus some important collegiate churches. Look at the list of uses at Usuarium: it’s huge! Of course, often several dioceses would share the same use, differing only in patronal feasts, and some of the newer dioceses such as in Finland and the Baltic just copied the Dominican use (also adding patronal feasts), so one would have to determine what constitutes an independent “use” and by what standards one may differentiate between uses—a question that exercises many a fine mind. Another difficulty is that a large number of pre-Tridentine books have not survived the ravages of time, especially in smaller dioceses, so we have precious little information about how the liturgy was celebrated there. Generally, no diocese outside of Italy imported their books from Rome, prior to Quo Primum; smaller and poorer dioceses imported them from bigger neighboring dioceses, almost always the metropolitan See.

“To carry out the project, one would have to determine when and why each diocese adopted the Roman rite, and what it means concretely to adopt the Roman rite—as many French dioceses at least amended their books ad Romani formam or ex decreto concilii Tridentini without actually outright adopting the Breviarium Romanum. But at any rate, any diocese that was itself older than 200 years would have been free to keep its own use. St Pius V’s bull was probably aimed at novelties such as the Quiñones breviary and the Ferrari hymnal (both of which, nota bene, had received papal approbation from his predecessors!) rather than against any local use as such.

“The only scholar I know who has even attempted an overview of this transition to the Roman rite is Dom Guéranger in his Institutions liturgiques: he not only gives detailed information about the French dioceses but also discusses, in more general terms, dioceses in the rest of Christendom. (Happily, Os Justi Press has published the meatiest parts of Gueranger’s Liturgical Institutions.)

“Based on Guéranger’s research, I’d say one of the most important reasons many dioceses changed to the Roman rite was financial considerations; it was cheaper to buy the Tridentine books than to publish their own, although it is surprising how many non-French dioceses did not adopt the Roman books until as late as the 19th century, such as the city and region of Cologne. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that many dioceses and religious orders experienced pressure to adopt the Roman books, despite what St Pius V actually said. (The ‘Spirit of the Trent,’ if you will!)

“An attempt to list all the proper uses would therefore be almost impossible without a lot of research, and in any case it would end up being mostly a list of all the dioceses that existed in the late Middle Ages.

“A final note about the term ‘uses’: liturgical uses are probably comparable to languages, in the sense that before the erection of firm borders between European nation-states there were seldom strict boundaries between languages, but rather a continuum existed that makes it difficult to mark where exactly one language stops and another one begins. And like languages, there were several ‘dialects’ of what one might classify as a single liturgical use. But no one has yet ventured to identify and classify all the liturgical dialects of Latin Christendom.”

With my very best regards,
Dr. Kwasniewski

From a Sarum Rite Mass in Illinois, 2025, done with local episcopal permission

Dear Dr. K,

Your colleague has provided much insight about the defunct liturgical rites. I realize that finding a complete list of former rites would be difficult considering that Latin Christendom had many dioceses and religious orders. Taking a look at Dom Gueranger’s Institutions liturgiques should provide some insight into what content these former rites contained. I’m delighted to hear that a translation has finally been published. It sounds like a keeper for my liturgical library.

I do believe St. Pius V was correct in promulgating his bull Quo Primum, considering how many local rites or uses there were. The Protestant Revolution was wreaking havoc in Europe and there was a need to make sure the liturgy was teaching Catholics what the Church actually believed. Making possible the adoption of a unified way of worship was crucial for handing down the Faith in the midst of this religious revolution spreading across Europe. Studying the content of the defunct liturgical rites might give us insight into why certain parts of Europe were better able to, or more eager to, accept the Missal of St. Pius V than others. Did these rites already look similar to the TLM? Were there unworthy novelties that needed to be rooted out? Were certain regions able to adapt quicker than others?

The late Msgr. Klaus Gamber hints in his book The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background that the Novus Ordo essentially fosters a creation of multiple rites due to the vast amount of options in the missal: “As we all know, we now have an abundance of individual ‘rites,’ since so many priests now design their own liturgy, just as they please. In this environment, can we really talk about a unity of a liturgical rite?” (p. 95).

I believe that studying the vast number of defunct liturgical rites can teach us about how to promote the TLM amidst a myriad of local “rites” that the Novus Ordo has de facto created. The options of the Novus Ordo create multiple variations of the sacred liturgy that Catholics deal with on a regular basis; this, added to linguistic differences, yields a confusing and chaotic map. Perhaps studying how the TLM conquered (as it were) a plethora of local rites would yield strategies beneficial to us today.

Yours in Christ,
Father Fiddleback

(I must say, Father raises here a very interesting parallel I hadn’t thought of before: how today’s situation of plurality might be compared to that of the late medieval period, suggesting the desirability of a new imposition of the once and future Roman Rite. May God someday bestow this immense gift on us by the hands of a future St. Pius V!)

The Vigil of the Nativity of St John the Baptist 2026

Do not be afraid, Zachary, thy prayer hath been heard, and Elizabeth thy wife shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John; and he shall be great before the Lord, and shall be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb; and many will rejoice at his birth. V. O Lord, in Thy strength the king shall be glad; and in Thy salvation shall he rejoice exceedingly. Glory be. Do not be afraid (The introit for the vigil of the Nativity of St John the Baptist.)

Introitus Ne tímeas, Zacharía, exaudíta est oratio tua: et Elísabeth uxor tua pariet tibi filium, et vocábis nomen ejus Joannem: et erit magnus coram Dómino: et Spíritu Sancto replébitur adhuc ex útero matris suae: et multi in nativitáte eius gaudébunt. V. Dómine, in virtúte tua laetábitur rex: et super salutáre tuum exsultábit vehementer. Gloria Patri. Ne tímeas.

When Mary Calls, It Is Surprising Who Hears

A new book by Margarita Mooney Clayton on Mary, the Mother of God, and what it might mean that a prominent UK philosopher, mother, and critic of feminism read it and reviewed it

Earlier this month, Mary Harrington devoted her popular newsletter to a book she says she did not expect to land on her doorstep. The book was When Mary Calls: Surprising Encounters with the Mother of God by Margarita Mooney Clayton, a Roman Catholic professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. Harrington’s review carried the title “The Icons Are Coming Alive Again,”. It is worth reflecting, I think, not only on what she wrote, which is a thoughtful and positive response to the book, but also on the fact that she wrote it at all.

In When Mary Calls, Margarita Mooney Clayton (who is, I should disclose, my wife) gathers seven personal accounts of encounters with the Mother of God, drawn from Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and secular lives, including her own perilous work among religious dissidents in her mother’s native Cuba.

She leads with these testimonies, hooking readers through the often unseen and untold drama of finding and deepening faith. Theology is not missing but rather embedded within the narrative of each story. In unique ways, each story emphasizes that the Christian faith is not about a dry grasp of dogma but about dogma in service of a deep personal relationship with Christ, with Mary, and with the saints, whose mission is to lead us to Him. The stories show Mary drawing seekers into deeper relationship with her son and into the living community of faith, which they need to journey from questioning to belief, where unique and extraordinary encounters with Mary are transformed into the sustained practices of a life of faith shared in community.

Mary Harrington is not, on the face of it, the sort of reader one would expect to be moved by a book of Marian testimony. She is an academic by formation, secular in background, a feminist who came to public attention, especially in Britain, where she comes from, through a critique of progressive feminism rather than through any religious commitment. Published in 2023, her book Feminism Against Progress argued that feminism has done little to help most women.

Five years ago, one suspects, the idea that she, or anyone in the world she occupied, would write a warm and deeply considered review of a book about the Virgin Mary would have seemed improbable to me. And yet here she is, not merely tolerating the subject but finding in it something culturally significant, even personally affecting.

Harrington has been sharing her journey with her followers, in which her critiques of progressivism and secularism are leading her not just to critique feminism but also to attend an Anglican church.

When a thoughtful female philosopher, one who, at least in the past, was resolutely secular, turns to a book on Marian devotion and finds those deeply personal encounters with Mary not embarrassing but compelling, one wonders whether something has shifted in the wider culture.

Harrington herself seems to sense this. The stories Margarita has gathered, Harrington observes, are not confined to Catholics. They include people who were once seekers, not people raised with faith, who are now Greek Orthodox believers, mainline Protestants, and Catholics, each of whom was drawn to Mary’s presence and, through it, to healing, transformation, or inspiration.

A young Protestant man was healed at a holy well in Ireland. Our Lady of Guadalupe speaks to a frightened pregnant woman and saves her life. Tammy Peterson, wife of Jordan Peterson, who had rejected Christianity as a teenager, makes her way through cancer in her 50s and begins praying again, eventually converting to Catholicism. These are not the testimonies of cradle Catholics confirming what they already believed. They are accounts of surprise.

The mother-shaped blind spot

Harrington reads When Mary Calls through the prism of a theme she has written and spoken about elsewhere: what she calls the cultural erasure of motherhood, the way the modern world quietly eliminated the maternal role and instincts from its understanding of what it means to be a woman.

The marginalization of Mary in the Anglophone world, she suggests in response to reading this book, was not incidental to the Reformation but close to its center. The purging of icons, relics, and pilgrimages, set in motion in England by Thomas Cromwell in 1538, meant, in practice, the radical setting aside of Marian theology in favor of something more verbal, less visual, less sensory and more abstract.

Harrington does not spell out the insight by which she connects the rejection of icons and devotional practices to the eventual decline in devotion to Mary herself and the theological truths bound up with her role in the Incarnation, but I think she is correct. A lack of appreciation for Mary, she suggests, led, in time, to the situation in which the visible, embodied, mother-centered spirituality of the medieval world gave way to something cooler and more cerebral, what one person profiled in the book called a “rational, disenchanted worldview” that had made its way into Christianity.

Was it a coincidence, Harrington wonders, that this spiritual marginalization of Mary was followed, albeit slowly over centuries, by the material and technological marginalization of women in the modern project? She draws on Ivan Illich, who argued that modernity had the displacement of women (at least women as women, not the same as men, and women as mothers) baked into its worldview.

One need not endorse every link in her argument to say that it is significant that a scholar formed by feminist philosophy is suggesting that the loss of Mary and the loss of the valuing of motherhood may be outward signs of the same error. An error, I would add, that only leads to misery for all if lived out. On this point, Harrington has won many followers precisely for admitting that the modern world never prepared her for the most incredible part of her life: becoming a mother. Motherhood changed her, setting her on a journey toward more than progressivism and feminism had given her.

What the Protestants forgot

Here I want to add something that Harrington’s account seems to invite, though she does not quite say it. We are accustomed to speaking of the Reformation as a rejection of Mary. But it may be closer to the truth to say that in many cases Protestantism forgot Mary rather than rejected her. Woven throughout When Mary Calls, and explained in the books’ appendix, is something I didn’t know: the Reformers themselves did not reject fundamental Marian doctrines such as the Virgin Birth or the Mother of God (Theotokos).

Rather, the apparent hostility to the Mother of God comes from questions about improper forms of devotion to Mary. Luther and Calvin were concerned about medieval devotional practices that had grown up around Mary, which they feared had displaced the honor due to Christ alone. Over time, this in turn led to the neglect of Mary herself.

The icons coming alive

Harrington’s title is well chosen. “The icons are coming alive again,” she wrote, and not because anyone has mounted a campaign to revive them, but because people who had no particular reason to look for Mary are finding, it seems, that she calls them by their name, she lets them know in their hearts, as she told Saint Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill five centuries ago “I am your mother.”

Two chapters of When Mary Calls I would particularly commend to artists and to anyone who thinks about the making of beautiful things. The first, specifically referred to by Harrington, features the composer Sir James MacMillan, whose words about Mary as a model for creatives Margarita puts into dialogue with a Promethean model, where the artist is defiant and human-centered, in which the artist seizes the fire and turns away from God to assert his own sovereign making.

And there is the Marian model, drawn from the Annunciation, which MacMillan describes, in which the artist receives rather than seizes, saying fiat to an inspiration that comes from beyond himself and extending the incarnational moment into the work of his hands. This is not a sentimental contrast. As an artist myself, I find that MacMillan offers a genuine account of where creative work comes from. Drawing our attention to Mary’s cooperation with God as an inspiration for creatives, it reframes the whole question of artistic vocation in a way that a secular age, perhaps exhausted by its own self-assertion, may be more ready to hear than it was a generation ago.

The other chapter from When Mary Calls that I recommend for artists is the story of the conversion of my own icon-painting teacher, Aidan Hart, and his journey from a young seeker to a mature man of faith and master iconographer. He speaks of devotion to Mary not as a doctrine held at arm’s length but as something that has guided his personal journey, both as a Christian and as a maker of sacred images.

The icon painter does not invent his subject. He receives a tradition and submits to it, and in that submission finds, one might say, not constraint but greater freedom. There seems to be a direct line between the fiat of the Annunciation and the discipline of the practicing iconographer, and Hart’s own path, from a secular beginning through testing a monastic vocation to a life as married man a working artist, could in many ways be considered a living illustration, one might even say icon, of the very pattern MacMillan describes of openness to inspirations of the Holy Spirit.

The clever title of Harrington’s article refers as much to images of Mary as to Mary as an icon in the more modern sense of the word, a figure who has become emblematic of an idea or a movement, someone the culture recognizes and reaches for. That the two senses, the painted image and the cultural emblem, should converge on the same word is itself a small instance of what Margarita’s book on Mary is about. The icon on a chapel wall and the icon in the imagination of a secular readership may be nearer to one another than many are aware.

What it means to venerate again

Harrington closes by wondering what it might mean, culturally and spiritually, if people were once again to regain the desire and capacity for veneration — the willingness to kneel before a figure like Mary and ask for her help. She rightly describes Margarita Mooney Clayton’s book as a gentle, careful work of ecumenical restoration.

I am inclined to put the point more strongly. The capacity for veneration is part of what it means to be fully human. The widespread loss of this capacity to venerate Mary, outside the Catholic and Orthodox churches and perhaps some Protestant churches, has cost us dearly. To venerate the Mother of God is to acknowledge, at the deepest level, our need for a model of love and self-giving, and for Christ Himself as the ultimate source of all that is good. In her fiat, Mary herself recognized this truth: “Ecce ancilla Domini: fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum” (“Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it done to me according to thy word”). As a pastor recently observed in a homily I heard, these may be the most important words ever spoken by any human being aside from those of Christ Himself.

That a secular feminist scholar can see Mary as an icon in the religious and cultural sense of the word, and write about it with such elegance and care, is astounding. When Mary Calls is a book for Catholics, certainly. But its deeper interest perhaps lies in the people it reaches who are not Catholic or Orthodox, but Protestants and seekers, who seem to be discovering that the figure their culture set aside was waiting for them all along.

The icons are indeed coming alive again. We would do well to pay attention to who is noticing.

When Mary Calls: Surprising Encounters With the Mother of God by Margarita Mooney Clayton is published by Odysseus Books

Below is a YouTube presentation by Margarita Mooney Clayton about her book, delivered at the Catholic Information Center in downtown Washington, DC.

https://www.youtube.com/live/XgeSi_B2vVk

David Clayton is Dean of the Faculty of Sacred Arts at www.Pontifex.University and Artist in Residence of www.ScalaFoundation.org

The Year of the Four Popes

The Church has on several occasions seen “a year of three Popes”, when a Pope died shortly after his election, and another was then chosen. The most recent such year was 1978, when John Paul I died on the 33rd day of his papacy, making him the twelfth shortest-reigning Pope in history. There has also been one “year of four Popes”, 1276, when two Popes died after very brief reigns, the first of them on June 22.

Gregory X was elected on September 1, 1271, at the end of the longest papal conclave in history, which lasted for 33 months. His reign was brief, though not unusually so for his era, less than four and half years, but highly important. In 1272, he convened the Fourteenth Ecumenical Council, the second to be held in the French city of Lyon, which took place in six sessions in the summer of 1274. This council brought about a reunion of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches, although sadly, this only lasted for a short time. Plans were also put forth for a renewal of the Crusades, and, in the wake of the absurdly long recent conclave, a new set of rules for the Papal elections was promulgated. These rules were made definitive in 1298; the constitutions that govern Papal elections have been modified in many ways since then, but the basic principles given in Gregory X’s bull Ubi periculum are still essentially in force to this day.

The tomb of Pope Bl. Gregory X, in the cathedral of Arezzo, Italy. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0.

His relics are now kept in a chapel dedicated to Pope St Silvester I. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0.

Following his death on January 10, 1276, a cardinal who had been one of his close collaborators, Peter of Tarantaise, was unanimously elected to succeed him on the first ballot, taking the name Innocent V. Born ca. 1225, he joined the Dominican Order as a teenager, and became one of its most prominent members. (He is the first of four Dominican Popes.) Together with Ss Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great, he helped to establish the Dominican “ratio studiorum – program of study”, which would build the Order’s well-deserved reputation for learning. He also held one of the two chairs of theology that were reserved for Dominicans at the University of Paris, the most important center for theological study in the later Middle Ages. Gregory X appointed him archbishop of Lyon and made him a cardinal; as such, he became the host of the ecumenical council. When St Bonaventure, the first Franciscan cardinal and also a well-respected theologian, died during the council, it was Peter who celebrated his funeral.

St Bonaventure Lying in State at the Second Council of Lyon, 1629, by the Spanish painter Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664). Bl. Gregory X is speaking to King James I of Aragon; Peter of Tarantaise is standing behind him. 

By the time of Innocent’s election, Gregory X had been so taken up with the affairs of the council that he had not been to Rome for 3½ years. Innocent therefore decided to be crowned there; after a month’s travel from France, the ceremony took place on February 22, the feast of St Peter’s Chair, in the Lateran basilica. However, he died almost exactly 5 months into his reign. The Church now honors both him and Gregory X as Blesseds.

A fresco of Bl Pope Innocent V, painted ca. 1350 by Tommaso da Modena in the chapter room of the former Dominican convent of St Nicholas in Treviso, Italy. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Risorto Celebrano, CC BY 3.0.

Three weeks later, the Cardinals elected Ottobuono de’ Fieschi, who was roughly seventy years old, a member of an old noble Genovese family. His uncle, Pope Innocent IV (1243-54), had made him cardinal deacon of the Roman church of St Adrian in 1251; in that role, he had done several important jobs for the Church, and participated in five previous conclaves. In the 1260s, he served as Papal legate to England, and had great success in bringing peace between King Henry III and his rebellious barons. On his election, he chose the name Adrian in honor of Adrian IV, the only English Pope (1154-59), and in honor of the Saint of his cardinalitial church.

This conclave took place with much duress inflicted upon the cardinals by its “guardian”, the powerful king of Naples, Charles of Anjou, who was trying to force the election of a Pope favorable to his interests. (Many of the later changes to the papal election rules were designed to exclude this kind of undue external influence.) Adrian was deliberately chosen as a transitional Pope, so that the cardinals could leave the conclave and escape from both Charles’ control and the Roman summer heat. It is not clear if they understood just how transitional he would prove to be; after moving the court to the city of Viterbo, about 50 miles north of Rome, he died on the 39th day of his papacy, August 18th, without being crowned, or even ordained a priest.

The third conclave of the year was held three weeks later, and elected the one and only Portuguese Pope. By a strange error, Cardinal Pedro Julião Rebolo chose the name “John XXI”, even though there was never a John XX. Like many of his recent predecessors, he spent most of his reign in Viterbo. He added a large studio and bedroom to the papal palace in that city. Eight months after his election, the ceiling of this room collapsed in the middle of the night, severely injuring him; he died ten days later.

The cathedral of St Lawrence in Viterbo, seen from the loggia of the former Papal palace. Four Popes of the 13th century are buried in the city, two in the cathedral (Alexander IV (1254-61) and John XXI), and two in the basilica of St Francis, (Clement IV (1265-68) and Adrian V). Image from Wikimedia Commons by Jean-Pierra Dalbéra, CC BY 2.0.)

The Sacramentary of St Henry II

Here are pictures of a particularly beautiful sacramentary made at the behest of St Henry II (973-1024) for the cathedral of Bamberg in Bavaria, a see which he founded in the year 1007. (At the time, he was Duke of Bavaria, and held the titles of King of Germany and Italy, but had not yet been elected Holy Roman Emperor.) It was produced in the city of Ratisbon, and some of the images are modelled on those of a Gospel book of the Carolingian era, known as the Golden Codex of the local monastery of St Emmeram. The decorations are all found within the first 20 or so folios, which include a calendar and the Canon of the Mass; the liturgical texts have many decorated initials, but no illustrations.

The ivory plaque mounted into the front cover depicts the Crucifixion, with figures representing the sun and moon to either side of the Cross, and at the solders’ feet, the dead rising from their graves; a serpent, representing the devil in his defeat, is wrapped around the base. In the lower part are shown the woman coming to the tomb. The gold sheet around it is not original, but part of a restoration done in the 18th century.

The title page of the calendar.

The calendar page for June; the other eleven months are very similar to it. Even though there is an entry for every day, many of the Saints noted here were not actually celebrated, and have no corresponding Mass among the liturgical texts.

An image which represents the coronation of St Henry; as Christ places the crown on his head, he receives a lance (topped with a cross) and a sword from the angels at the upper left and right. To either side of the king stand Ss Ulrich of Augsburg and Emmeram of Regensburg, two important Bavarian Saints, both wearing pontifical vestments.

A representation of St Henry enthroned, with crown, orb and scepter. To either side stand his squires, holding his sword and shield, and around them, female figures holding cornucopias, representing the prosperity of his reign. Within the canopy above the king’s head, the hand of God is directly above his crown, blessing him.

A portrait of Pope St Gregory I; by this point, the attribution to him of the Roman Sacramentary in its commonly used form was a well-established tradition.

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