After the Kiss of Peace, the priest prepares for his Holy Communion with two prayers in the Orations style. Both are “shoots that grew from the still living roots of the abandoned Gallican liturgy,” in Jungmann’s colorful formulation. (vol. 2, 344) The first prayer may be found in the ninth-century Sacramentary of Amiens. It is:
Domine Jesu Christe, Fili Dei vivi, qui ex voluntate Patris, cooperante Spiritu Sancto, per mortem tuam mundum vivificasti: líbera me per hoc sacrosanctum Corpus et Sanguinem tuum ab omnibus iniquitatibus meis et universis malis: et fac me tuis semper inhaerere mandatis, et a te numquam separari permittas: Qui cum eodem Deo Patre et Spiritu Sancto vivis et regnas, Deus, in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
Which I translate as:
O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, Who, according to the will of the Father, with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, has given life to the world by Thy death; deliver me by this, Thy sacrosanct Body and Blood, from all my iniquities and from all evils; and make me always cleave to Thy commandments, and permit me never to be separated from Thee, Who live and reign with the same God the Father and the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.
To quote Nicholas Gihr, “This prayer [is] as solid and comprehensive as it is brief and simple.” (p. 726) The opening address to the Son of God is a marvelous compendium of New Testament theology. Jesus is, as St. Peter confesses, “the Son of the living God,” (Matt. 16, 19) who does the will of His Father (Luke 22, 42), and He does so with the help of the Holy Spirit. Cooperante Spiritu Sancto is a faint echo of a verse about Jesus after He ascended into Heaven:
But [the Apostles] going forth preached everywhere: the Lord working withal (Domino cooperante) and confirming the word with signs that followed. (Mark 16, 20)
Cooperante Spiritu Sancto is an ablative absolute, which in this case involves a present active participle in the ablative case. In English it is common to translate an ablative absolute with a noun, as I do here with “cooperation of the Holy Spirit.” The original Latin, however, is livelier since it leaves open the possibility that the Holy Spirit’s cooperation with the Father and the Son is ongoing. I am not fond of the 2011 ICEL translation “and the work of the Holy Spirit” because it loses this sense of collaboration between all three Divine Persons.
The petition of the prayer is threefold:
First, deliver me from all my iniquities and all evils. The use of libera ties the prayer back to the final petition of the Lord’s Prayer and the Embolism, which is why I believe that it should be translated as “deliver me” rather than ICEL’s “free me.” And the prayer seeks deliverance from all my iniquities as well as all evils in general, that is, the evil persons, things, and events outside of me. It is a comprehensive request.
And the prayer asks for deliverance through Christ’s sacrosanct Body and Blood. Sacrosanctus refers to something that is both sacred (sacer) and holy (sanctus), and the Eucharist is one of the few things that fits within this Venn diagram: as the really present living Christ, the Eucharist is eminently holy; and it also extremely sacred, that is, set apart for divine use and handled with great reverence. And yet Anglophone translators have developed a bad habit of picking only one of these attributes and then putting it into the superlative (which is absent from the Latin). ICEL and several preconciliar hand Missals have “your most holy Body and Blood” while other preconciliar Missals have “your most sacred Body and Blood.” Referring to Christ’s Body and Blood as sacrosanct, incidentally, also occurs in the prayer Supplies te rogamus.
Second and third, the priest asks to cleave (inhaerere) to Christ’s commandments and never to be separated from Him. There is a pleasing contrast between cleaving/clinging/sticking and separating. The diction may be an echo of Joshua 22, 5:
Love the Lord your God, and walk in all his ways, and keep all his commandments, and cleave to him (adhaereatisque ei), and serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.
And there is something almost spiritually romantic about the image of cleaving, thanks to Genesis 2, 24:
Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh.
Robert Bowyer (1758-1834), Creation of Eve
The Vulgate uses adhaerere here and elsewhere to translate the Hebrew dabaq or “cleave.” Technically, inhaerere is stronger (“ad-here” is to stick to while “in-here” is to stick into), but they tend to be used interchangeably. In a way, the priest is asking for the same thing to happen to him as is about to happen to Christ. Just as the Eucharist is about to stick to the priest’s flesh (as we will learn from a later prayer) and become one with it, so too does the priest ask to be utterly absorbed into Christ’s commandments and become one with them and with Him. It is a striking statement of self-surrender and communion.
These nuances, in my opinion, are lost in the 2011 ICEL translation:
On this feast of the Stigmata of St Francis, we are very glad to share this announcement sent to us by Fr Joannes Smith, about the rite of the Transitus of St Francis, a commemoration of the Saint’s death celebrate on the evening before his feast day. It includes links to a free booklet of music traditionally sung at this rite.
This year marks the eighth centenary of the “Transitus” (i.e. “Passing”) of one of the most familiar and yet least understood saints of the Church. In one sense, Francis of Assisi is a figure who requires little introduction. Countless churches and shrines are dedicated to him, and hundreds of canonized saints, blessed, and venerable of the Church have worn his habit, professed his Rule, and followed in his footsteps. In recent times, however, Saint Francis has often been misrepresented, not only by those outside the Order he founded, but even – tragically! – by those who outwardly profess to be the heirs to his spiritual legacy.
A fresco in the basilica of St Francis in Assisi, ca. 1320, by Pietro Lorenzetti, known as “the Sunset Madonna” because the rays of the setting sun illuminate it for about an hour at the end of each day. The traditional story about the arrangement of the figures is that the Christ Child is asking his Mother, “Which of My Saints loves Me the most?”, to which the Madonna answers by pointing at St Francis, as if to say “He does.”
Saint Francis was described by an early biographer as “Vir Catholicus et totus apostolicus – a Catholic and wholly apostolic man,” a phrase later incorporated into the proper Divine Office of his feast day. Charged by Christ with the sacred mission of rebuilding the Church, “which, as you can see, is falling into ruins,” the real Saint Francis speaks to us of the unchanging truths of the Gospel and invites men in every age to live that Gospel to the hilt.
Like his Lord and Master, Saint Francis was a “sign of contradiction” whose life of heroic poverty and apostolic zeal shook the consciences of the men of his time. Though never ordained to the priesthood, for he regarded himself unworthy of so sublime a calling, his earliest devotees referred to Saint Francis as an “Alter Christus,” another Christ, who revealed the Lord’s Face once again to a prosperous and bustling new world that was in grave danger of forgetting its Redeemer. During the saint’s own lifetime, the Order he founded spread to the far corners of the known world, with missions throughout Europe and in the Holy Land, a group of protomartyrs who shed their blood in an attempt to convert the Saracens of Morocco, and with a constellation of beloved saints, including Clare of Assisi and Anthony of Padua. In the centuries that followed, the spiritual sons and daughters of Saint Francis carried on his mission, with its Christocentric and intensely Marian spirituality, leaving an indelible imprint on the piety, history, liturgy, and theology of the Church.
I would like to propose one small contribution that your parish or oratory can make to the work of rebuilding authentic devotion to this wondrous saint. Saint Mary of the Angels Press has prepared a free, downloadable new edition of the Rite of the Transitus, taken from the Romano-Seraphic Ritual, which can be celebrated on the evening of October 3rd. Among the rites that have developed in the saint’s honor through the centuries, this is one of the most beautiful and evocative. The traditional rite, which has fallen into disuse in many Franciscan communities, begins with a candle-lit procession to the altar or chapel of the saint, the veneration of his relic (or a sacred image if no relic is present), and then a series of chants and prayers. These include the Psalm that Saint Francis asked the friars to recite at his deathbed (Psalm 141 in the Vulgate numbering), together with the antiphon O Sanctissima anima and the hymn Salve, Sancte Pater. This free edition is formatted for easy printing and distribution on a regular photocopier. It includes all the original chants and prayers, newly type-set, together with English translations to aid the reader who is not proficient in Latin.
The Appendices include a series of readings from the early biographies of the saint, together with another scriptural passage which Saint Francis had the friars read to him shortly before his death: the Gospel account of Our Lord washing the Apostles’ feet during the Last Supper, John 13, 1-17. These readings are useful for meditation, and selections could even be inserted at various points during the Rite.
You can download the PDF file from the ‘Free Downloads’ page at the publisher’s website: https://www.smapress.org/
If your budding Chant Schola needs a little help learning the chants, you can find free audio recordings on the ‘Music’ page of the same website, courtesy of the Chant Schola at Saint Mary’s Church in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania: https://www.smapress.org/music-1
May the eighth centenary of the passing of Saint Francis help us to rediscover the true face of this man who, in turn, will help us to rediscover the true Face of Christ.
One stumbles across the most remarkable things on the internet. Today I learned that September 17 is the feast day of an Orthodox Saint named Joachim, a Chalcedonian Patriarch of Alexandria, (formerly a monk of the famous monastery of St Catherine on Mt Sinai,) who is said to have been elected in 1486 at the age of about 38, and died on this day in 1567 at the age of 119, after serving for 80 years. And while this is the record for the longest tenure in the Orthodox See of Alexandria by a huge margin (and possibly in any bishopric in history, but see comments below), nine others have reigned for more than 30 years.
His Holiness Shenouda III, Pope of Alexandria from 1971 to 2012. At 40 years and 4 months, his reign is the 4th or 5th longest among the Coptic Popes. (The uncertainty depends on the poorly documented tenure of John XIII, who reigned from 1484-1524, also 40 years.) This photograph was taken during the consecration of the Coptic church of Ss Mary and George on Staten Island, New York, on Aug. 12, 2007. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Mark Sleman of Hope Pictures LLC, CC BY 3.0)
Among the Patriarchs of Alexandria who lived before the post-Chalcedonian schism, two passed the 30-year mark: St Demetrius I, known as ‘the Vinedresser’, whose reign began in 189 and lasted for somewhere between 35 and 43 years, and St Athanasius the Great, at 45 years (328-73). Theodosius I, the last Patriarch to be acknowledged as such by both the Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians, reigned for 31 years, 535-66. Since then, ten Coptic Popes have ruled for more than 30 years; the record holder among them, Cyril V, sat on the throne of St Mark from 1874-1927, a span 52 years and 9 months. By contrast, among the Popes of Rome, there have been exactly two whose reign was longer than 30 years: St Peter himself (32 years, according to one version of the traditional reckoning), and Bl. Pius IX (1846-78), at 31 years and 7 months. The current Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, is the only one to have passed the 30-year mark; he will celebrate his 35th anniversary on October 22. (This is, incidentally, the feast day of St John Paul II, who was crowned on that day in 1978, 6 days after his election.)
In St Joachim’s time, both the Orthodox Church in Egypt and the much larger Coptic Church had been reduced to a pitiable state by relentless persecution on the part of the Muslim Arabs who ruled the country. And in fact, one of the most notable things about his reign is the fact that during it, Egypt was conquered by the Turks in 1517. The persecution of Egyptian Christians was then mostly ended by a decree of the Ottoman Sultan which gave them a much greater degree of liberty and protection than they had had under the Mamluk Sultanate.
But these persecutions especially affected the kinds of institutions that would have preserved some verifiable record of Joachim’s age, such as parishes and monasteries. As a result, the tradition about his age and the length of his reign has not been proved or disproved, and mostly likely cannot be. No one will be surprised at this. Sed contra, there doesn’t seem to be much doubt or dispute about the dates of either his predecessor or successor, and the 15th century is very late to be losing a whole patriarch or two.
In any case, my very random discovery of this story got me thinking about some things. All these remarkably long-reigning patriarchs were monks, since of course, bishops are only elected from among the monastic clergy in the East. And this reminded me of a story told to me by a relative about visiting a Trappist monastery. One of the monks was a friend of a friend, and she had heard that he was quite elderly; seeing him approach them from a distance, she was very surprised that his walk seemed to be that of a very much younger man.
The Isenheim Altarpiece, by Matthias Grünewald (ca. 1470-1528), ca. 1515. Left panel, the Visit of St Anthony to St Paul; right panel, the Temptation of St Anthony, based on chapters 8 and 9 of St Athanasius’ Life of St Anthony, which give vivid descriptions of the demonic attacks which St Anthony suffered, and have inspired many rather wild artistic depictions. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons.)
Then I remembered that hagiographical skeptics have sometimes alleged that the life of a particular Saint is unreliable because it claims that he lived to an extreme old age. For example, St Jerome reports that St Paul the First Hermit, one of the first great Egyptian ascetics, died at 113. (St Anthony, whom he met at the very end of his life, reached a mere 105.) But again, even if we grant that the reported lifespan of Joachim of Alexandria is an exaggeration, we see how the tremendous austerity of the monastic discipline practiced by the Copts definitely seems to make very long livers of them. So perhaps it really does behoove scholars to be less skeptical on that front.
And this in turn reminded me that one of the “proofs” adduced against the historicity of the Gospels is the significant discrepancies between the genealogies of Our Lord given by St Matthew in his first chapter, and St Luke in his third. But the Church Fathers argued that this could be explained (at least in part) by the differences in the lengths of men’s lives, and this is exactly what we see in the lists of the Roman and Coptic Popes. Clement XIV of Rome (famous as the suppressor of the Jesuits) was elected on May 19, 1769, one day after the death of the Coptic Pope Mark VII. Since then, there have been 19 Roman Popes, but only 12 Coptic ones.
On the calendar of the Ambrosian Rite, today is the feast of St Satyrus, the brother of St Ambrose. Our only sources for his life are two orations delivered by his brother, one on the day of his death, and the other a week later. We know that he was the second of their parents’ three children, born after a sister named Marcellina (who is also a Saint); this puts his birth somewhere around 335, before his brother’s in about 340, at either Trier, where their father sat as governor of a Roman province, or at Rome. Being of the senatorial aristocracy, both brothers followed in the path of their father’s career and served as governors of Roman provinces, but that assigned to Satyrus is unknown. In 374, when Ambrose was made bishop of Milan, his brother left public office in order to help him with the administration of the diocese, as well as to care for their sister and the family patrimony. St Ambrose praises him for his chastity in terms that clearly indicate that he was not married.
The altar of St Satyrus in the basilica of St Ambrose in Milan.
More than once, these duties required Satyrus to travel to Africa. Like many men of his class and period, whose public responsibilities were difficult to reconcile with the discipline of a Christian life, he long remained a catechumen. (St Ambrose himself was a catechumen at the time of his election as bishop by popular acclamation; the Ambrosian Rite adds a commemoration of his baptism to the Mass of St Andrew the Apostle on November 30, and keeps his principal feast only a week later, on the day of his episcopal ordination.) Ambrose, however, notes the following episode in proof of his strong faith.
On Satyrus’ return from the last of his African trips, his ship was wrecked on shoals just off the coast of either Sicily or Sardinia. Before jumping off the boat, one of his fellow passengers gave him, at his request, a small piece of the Blessed Sacrament, which he then wrapped up in a small cloth, and fastened around his neck. St Ambrose attributes his safe deliverance from the sea to this, noting that Satyrus’ faith in God was so strong that he did not even bother to grab onto one of the planks of the broken vessel. After safely reaching land, he decided to be baptized; he had, however, evidently already contracted the unknown disease which would take his life shortly thereafter. Having returned to Milan, he died in either 378 or 379 in the arms of his siblings.
The Shipwreck of St Satyrus, by Giambattista Tiepolo, 1737; in the chapel entitled to him where his relics were formerly kept, also within the basilica of St Ambrose.
Ambrose had his brother’s mortal remains placed by those of the martyr St Victor, in a chapel attached to the basilica now named for Ambrose himself, but then called “the Basilica of the Martyrs.” Both Satyrus and Victor were later removed from this chapel, known as “St Victor in the golden heaven”, into a reused pagan sarcophagus. (Victor was later moved again to the basilica named for him with the appellation ‘ad corpus’.) In 1941, an examination of the relics ordered by the Blessed Card. Schuster showed that they are those of a man about 40 years old, quite similar in body type to Ambrose. Since 1980, they have been kept in a crystal urn in the first chapel on the right side of the basilica.
The original location of Satyrus’ burial within the chapel of St Victor.
An inscription which notes the site as the place of his burial, alongside several early martyrs of the church of Milan.
A closer view of the relics as they are today.
Devotion to St Satyrus is first attested in the ninth century, when Anspert, archbishop of Milan, built a small church dedicated to him, his brother, and St Silvester. This was later absorbed into a church constructed by the architect Donatello Bramante in 1476-82, which is still to this known as “St Mary near St Satyrus.” His name first appears in liturgical books of the Ambrosian Rite in the 10th century. In view of his role as his brother’s assistant in the administration of the diocese, he is traditionally honored in Milan as the patron Saint of sacristans.
The story told above about the shipwreck forms a large part of the Ambrosian preface for the Mass of St Satyrus.
Vere quia dignum … aeterne Deus: Tuam incessanter gloriam collaudantes, tuamque in tuis Sanctis magnificentiam prædicantes. Qui talem beato Confessori tuo Satyro virtutum copiam tribuisti, ut germani sui gloriosi Pontificis Ambrosii, Doctoris et magistri Ecclesiarum praecipui, in multis exercitiis consors effectus, fidelissimus et probatissimus athleta Christi Filii tui ipsius industria censeretur. Nam in ipso tirocinio fidei ita clarus enituit, ut inter undas pelagi, cum dissoluta compage navis durum fuisset perpessus excidium, quamvis adhuc nondum Baptismate sancto perfusus, de tuo tamen non esset diffisus auxilio. Sacramentum denique Corporis Dominici sudario inditum collo circumdedit, et se tali remigio fultum spumante aequori committere non dubitavit. Sed tua potentissima dextera, quæ Apostolorum Principem Petrum in fluctibus ne mergeretur erexit, hunc quoque non dissimili potentia illæsum atque incolumem perduxit ad litus. Haec tua est, Domine, totius virtutis operatio. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. Per quem majestatem tuam laudant Angeli…
Truly it is worthy… eternal God: unceasingly praising Thy glory, and proclaiming Thy greatness in Thy Saints. Who didst grant Thy blessed confessor Satyrus such an abundance of virtues, that he, having become in many affairs the colleague of his brother, the glorious bishop Ambrose, the foremost doctor and teacher of the churches, was for his diligence deemed a most faithful and excellent champion of Christ, Thy Son. For while yet in the first service of the Faith, he so distinguished himself that amid the waves of the sea, when he would have perished miserably by the wreck of his ship, although he was not yet washed by holy Baptism, he still did not lack for trust in Thy help. Therefore, he placed the Sacrament of the Lord’s Body, enclosed in a cloth, around his neck, and did not hesitate to entrust himself to the frothing sea, supported by such an oar. And Thy most mighty right hand, which in the waves lifted up Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, lest he drown, with like power also brought this man safe and unharmed to the shore. This, o Lord, is the working of the fullness of Thy might. Through the same Christ our Lord. Through whom the angels praise Thy majesty…
Truly it is worthy and just, right and profitable to salvation that we should give Thee thanks always and everywhere, o Lord, Holy Father, almighty and eternal God: because Thou didst beneficially enjoin fasts upon us by which the law of the flesh might be quieted, and the mind stand out in greater purity. But since even in the midst of our observances, we do not abstain from what is harmful and unlawful, Thou bearest witness by the voice of the prophet (Isa. 58, 5) that this is not the sort of fast Thou hast chosen. For not only is the chastisement of the body powerless to benefit us if our spirit be caught up in wicked thoughts, but it is also evidently worse if, even when the our earthly condition is made calm, the mind is not made quiet from evil deeds. And therefore do Thou, o Lord, mercifully grant that our frugality, we may rightly observe an outward parsimony, in such wise as to refrain within from wicked intentions, and thus practice moderation perfectly: through Christ our Lord, through whom the angels praise Thy majesty... (An ancient Roman preface for the Ember days of September, attested in the Leonine Sacramentary ca. 550 AD)
The Prophet Isaiah, painted by Raphael in the basilica of St Augustine in Rome in 1512. On his scroll is written in Hebrew, from chapter 26 of his book, verses 2-3, “Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in. Whose mind is stayed on thee, Thou wilt keep him (in perfect peace).” The dedicatory inscription in Greek above reads “To Anne, the mother of the Virgin, to the virginal Mother of God, and to Christ the Redeemer, John Goritz” (hellenized as ‘Joannes Corycios’). Goritz, a merchant from Luxembourg, commissioned both the painting, which is on one of the pillars of the basilica, and the altar to St Anne originally located beneath it. The influence of Michelangelo, who was completing the Sistine Chapel ceiling when Raphael painted this, is very strong in this work; a famous story claims that when Goritz complained to Michelangelo about the price of it, he replied, “The knee alone is worth the price!”
Vere dignum: quia tu quidem nobis jejunia salubriter indidisti, quibus carnis lege sedata purior animus emineret. Sed cum in ipsis nostris observationibus a noxiis et illicitis non vacamus, non hoc te jejunium deligisse profetica voce testaris. Quoniam non solum prodesse non poterit castigatio corporalis, si spiritus noster nefandis cogitationibus implicetur; sed hoc constat esse deterius, si etiam terrena condicione mitigata, mens ab iniquitatibus non quiescit. Et ideo tu nobis, Domine, largire placatus, ut exterius parsimonia convenienter adhibita, intrinsecus a pravis intentionibus temperemus, ut continentiam valeamus exercere perfectam. Per Christum....
Not long ago, a priest wrote to me with some questions prompted by recent events:
Does Saint Thomas teach that the intention of the priest pertains only to the words of institution, as meaning that Jesus becomes substantially present, or does intending what the Church intends encompass more than just the moment of consecration?
Does the SSPX hold, or at least do some within the SSPX hold, that the Novus Ordo is unacceptable because they fear that priests are not intending what the Church intends, by, e.g., understanding the Eucharist to be merely a meal?
But clearly Saint Thomas asserts that lack of personal holiness, and even heretical views, do not prevent a priest, in the context of the liturgy, from intending what the Church intends during the rite of the Mass.
This question seems clear to me, yet there remains some fog surrounding whether the Novus Ordo so undermines what the Church intended for the Mass that I can call its validity into question.
Yet again, I intend what the Church intends: that the Mass is a sacrifice and not merely a meal, and that Jesus is made present on the altar as on Calvary in an unbloody manner. It seems challenging for me to say that I do not intend what the Church intends while celebrating the Novus Ordo through its liturgical prescriptions, such as the change in direction in which I stand (though I have come to understand that the new Mass is still meant to be celebrated facing away from the people).
I am cautious to ask: Is the issue with the Novus Ordo not so much one of validity and intention, but rather of liceity? Liceity seems to belong to following the GIRM, but could the instructions themselves present issues of liceity if the very instructions depart from the meaning of the Mass?
These are important questions, but they involve somewhat dangerous waters. They are also relevant in understanding the positions of the SSPX.
There are a lot of separate issues here to disentangle.
A notorious example of poor understanding is found in Fr. Anthony Cekada, who argued that the Novus Ordo simply “narrates” the institution of the Eucharist, and therefore does not intend the words as consecratory. This, of course, is pure foolishness. The words of institution effect what they signify whenever they are spoken by a priest who intends “to do what the Church does,” which is to confect the Eucharist – however the priest may personally understand that.
St Thomas is very insistent that a priest may have a personally incorrect idea of the sacrament, indeed he may be an atheist, but inasmuch as he is an “animated instrument” of Christ the High Priest, he need merely lend his hands and words to the act of the Church for the rite to be efficacious. This was already hammered out by St. Augustine against the Donatists, who argued that the holiness of the minister was essential; to which St. Augustine replied that it is Christ who accomplishes the sacrament, using the minister as a minister, that is, as an instrument.
For an intention to be invalidating, the instrument must will to not be an instrument, to not serve as the voice and hands of the Church. It is usually assumed that if he recites the words of the rite as printed and follows the usual gestures, he is lending himself to serve in such a way. His invisible thoughts and desires are not relevant in that regard. More relevant would be if he departs so far from the text that he is no longer doing what the Church prescribes, and thus indicating that he has no intention to lend himself as a minister of Christ to doing what Christ’s Church does. I don’t wish to cause readers needless pain, but here is an example shared on my YouTube channel of a priest whose liturgy is certainly invalid.
Since it is the common teaching of theologians that the words of institution are the immediately efficacious sign, the minimum required for validity is that these words be spoken correctly, over the correct matter, with the intention as described above. Obviously messing with the rest of the liturgy would be unfitting, illicit, scandalous, sacrilegious, etc., but it would not invalidate it. The same could be argued with regard to all the sacraments, each of which has its essential “formula” plus all the additional things done around it.There can be no question, judging from official documents released after the Council and the liturgical reform, that the Mass is still taught consistently to be a true and proper sacrifice, with the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist at its core. Thus, in spite of my very forceful critique of the Novus Ordo qua liturgy,I have never found any argument for its invalidity to be even remotely plausible.
As for illicitness, that’s a more involved question. Technically, anything that follows the rubrics issued by the competent authorities is licit (hence, you mention the GIRM that governs the Novus Ordo); but one may also ask larger questions about how far continuity with tradition can be ruptured without introducing a kind of illegality. This is a topic to which Fr. Claude Barthe has made some important contributions in his recently published book The Seven Sacraments, Past and Present: A Short Critical Study of the New Rituals.
In short: the arguments that sedevacantists are wont to make for the invalidity of any of the new sacramental rites are sunk by the classical Thomistic theology of the minimum required for validity, as well as by the consistent teaching of the Magisterium about what the sacraments are and what they effect, demonstrating that, however disastrous pastorally and spiritually the reforms have been, the underlying theology has not mutated past recognizable continuity.
I would only add that in my experiences traveling around the United States and beyond, all the young clergy I have met are reading books like Ludwig Ott and the Catechism of Trent. Their theology is traditionalist, even if the rites they use are not (yet) in full harmony with the tradition. In fact, recently I was looking at a brochure for a Newman Center at an American university, and I had to smile when I saw a large photo of a priest celebrating a Novus Ordo Mass. He was raising aloft a chalice – and observing canonical digits. Now there’s a man who hasn’t the slightest doubt that he is handling the Body of Christ.
What is an icon? Where the tradition came from, and the modern myths that have grown up around it.
The first of two related articles on the iconographic tradition of sacred art. This first article addresses what icons actually are, where the tradition came from, the modern myths that have grown up around it, and the theology that accounts for its distinctive visual language. The second will examine the revealed images “not made by human hands” — above all Our Lady of Guadalupe, which I take to be among the strongest arguments for the authenticity of the tradition.
When people today talk of ‘icons’ or ‘holy icons,’ what many have in mind is the style commonly associated with the Eastern Church, especially that of the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches. In fact, the iconographic tradition took root across the Christian world, East and West, before Russia existed, and was not limited to the Greek Orthodox Church.
As Christianity became the dominant religion of the Late Antique classical world, a distinct style of art, an adaptation of contemporary Roman art, emerged, and by the early 5th century AD it had become the universal standard for liturgical art across the Christian world. This is the style that became known as icons today and, broadly speaking, is associated today with the Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches.
As with so much of Christian culture, the liturgy is the driving force behind the tradition, in that what gives it authenticity as a style is its role as a complement to right worship. Yet, as with Christian culture more broadly, we see variants responsive to particular local cultures and times, all consistent with the broader principles that characterize it and make it authentically liturgical. In the Latin West, sacred art up to about the 12th century — encompassing, for example, the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Ottonian, Carolingian, and Romanesque styles — was all consistent with the iconographic prototype. Most non-Roman Churches in the Christian East have their own styles, too. Beyond the Greek and Russian Orthodox traditions, one thinks, for example, of Coptic iconography from Egypt as a particularly distinctive variant. Not only are these national styles distinguishable from one another, but within each there are typically distinct regional variants as well.
It is important to distinguish between the use of the word ‘icon’ as a generic term for any work of sacred art that is worthy of veneration, as we might use it in considering the decrees of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, and its use to denote a particular style of sacred art. In translations of the writings of St John of Damascus and the deliberations of the Seventh Ecumenical Council in the 8th century, and of Theodore the Studite in the 9th century, the word ‘icon’ is best understood as interchangeable with the English word ‘image.’ It is not being used to denote a particular style of sacred art or to elevate any one style above another. Everything the Council documents about, for example, the necessity of having sacred art in our churches and the criteria by which that art is worthy of veneration applies to all liturgical art. The theology the Council articulates is therefore a general theology of images.
In what follows, when I refer to icons, I mean sacred art in the iconographic style. Before considering how to identify that style and distinguish it from the other legitimate forms of liturgical art, the Gothic and the Baroque, I want to address a few misunderstandings and myths about icons so that we are clear about what we are discussing. The Creative Retrieval of Iconography
The theology of the iconographic style, developed to account for the stylistic elements that characterize the tradition, is a relatively recent development. It may surprise many to learn that, to my knowledge, no such formulation appears in the writings of any Church Father, East or West, until theologians in the 20th century began to develop the theology of icons. This does not necessarily mean there was no shared understanding of the governing principles prior to that; there may well have been. Yet if there was, no record of it has come down to us.
A group of Russian Orthodox expatriates living in France in the mid-20th century developed what is now generally accepted as the theology of the iconographic style. This group included prominent figures such as the theologians Paul Evdokimov, Vladimir Lossky, and Leonid Ouspensky, who was both a painter and a theologian, as well as the icon painter Gregory Kroug. They were responding to what they saw as the steady degeneration of the iconographic tradition in the Eastern Churches over centuries and wished to reestablish it authentically.
Image: St Gregory the Iconographer, painted by Gregory Kroug, 20th century
Unlike the West, which saw the development of Gothic and then Renaissance traditions from the 11th to the 16th centuries, the art of the Eastern Church did not undergo these transitions. However, the effects of the Enlightenment, which came after the Renaissance, were felt in the East, particularly in Russia, through the efforts of reforming rulers — Peter the Great and Catherine the Great especially — who looked to Western Europe as their model for modernization. Arising from this, there was an increased naturalism in iconography that, unlike the naturalism of Gothic art, was not grounded in a truly Christian understanding. The result was a style that is neither properly naturalistic nor properly iconographic.
Russian painters of the 19th century noted this degeneration, and arguments were made to abandon the iconographic style altogether in favor of Western naturalism in sacred art. For a while, Orthodox churches were adorned with 19th-century naturalistic styles. While this may have produced fine results in secular painting — the Russian traditions of portraiture and landscape in this period were indeed spectacular — they jarred with many Orthodox Christians, who felt that this naturalistic style of art undermined their worship. By the turn of the 20th century, commentators once again argued for the reestablishment of a purer, more authentic iconographic tradition. This process of creative retrieval, begun in that period, was interrupted by the Bolshevik Revolution, and it was not until the mid-20th century that the expatriates based in Paris who had escaped from Russia, including those already mentioned above, were able to work toward a change.
Image: 19th century Russian painting of God the Father and God the Son
Their approach was first to establish a canon of imagery they considered the epitome of the style (generally Russian icons from the 15th century). By analyzing the common features within this canon, they developed a theology to explain them, hoping to define a set of principles that would allow both conformity to the tradition and the legitimate organic development of styles within it, as needed by the Church in particular times and places.
It is a tribute to the work of this small group of pioneers that the painting of icons has developed so authentically that many people today wrongly assume that the iconographic tradition of the Eastern Churches has been passed down through an unbroken line since St Luke painted the first icon of the Theotokos. We are now in the third or fourth generation of icon painters who have passed these principles down from teacher to pupil since those 20th-century pioneers, and the best of them are creating work today that is as beautiful and significant as that of the great iconographers of the past.
Because of the success of the pioneering Russians based in Paris, iconographers from other Orthodox and Eastern Rite churches were influenced by their work. Among these were the Greek painter Photis Kontoglou, who contributed to the reestablishment of a flourishing Greek iconographic tradition, and the Egyptian Isaac Fanous, who did the same for the Coptic style.
I have long felt that their approach should serve as the template for Roman Catholic Christians to reestablish their Western traditions of Gothic and Baroque art today. My own analysis of those traditions is based on the work of those 20th-century Russian theologians and is my attempt to begin that process. The Modern Myths of Iconography
The mystique that so many contemporary Roman Catholics and Protestant Christians associate with iconography has also emerged from this recent period, and bound up with this are several modern myths about icons. These include the ideas that you have to be Orthodox to paint icons well, that you have to be a monk to paint icons, that you must ritually fast and pray before painting an icon, and that the true iconographer does not paint icons but only ‘writes’ them.
Is it true that only Orthodox Christians can paint icons successfully? I would certainly agree that someone who regularly worships with sacred art is more likely to paint it well. This does place Roman Catholics at a disadvantage. Unless a Roman Rite Catholic prays the Divine Office with an image corner at home, he will almost certainly not have the opportunity to do so in the Roman liturgy as it is generally celebrated today, even if there is beautiful art in the church. This therefore greatly favors Orthodox and Eastern Rite Christians, although in principle it does not preclude others from painting icons well; in fact, there are several excellent Catholic iconographers today.
Can only monks paint icons? While a monk’s spiritual life is likely to be compatible with that of an artist who wishes to pursue his vocation, it is not the only form of Christian life that can offer such formation. A devout and sincere layman might flourish as an artist too, and there are many fine icon painters today who are not monks.
On the question of fasting and praying: while there is no accounting for whom God may choose to inspire, or which individual will respond well to that inspiration, the greatest chance of a good response lies with those who lead good and holy lives, and typically this involves regular fasting and prayer. However, this principle is not uniquely applicable to artists; it applies to every aspect of the Christian life and to every Christian. Icon painters should fast and pray regularly, as all Christians should, but this is not a special requirement peculiar to icon painters.
On whether we ‘write’ or paint icons: this question arises from the fact that the Greek and Slavonic words for creating an icon carry no distinction between the two activities, and could legitimately be translated as either writing or painting. One well-known Orthodox iconographer told me that he considered the insistence on the word ‘write’ to be ‘a bit precious.’ As far as he was concerned, if someone uses a paintbrush to apply paint, the English word for that activity is painting, and it does not diminish the standing of the profession to say so. On the contrary, when the icon is beautiful, and we venerate it as we should, that elevates the role of the painter of icons to one of the highest importance, regardless of what we call the process of creating them.
There is also an associated myth that overstates the role of a theology of method, as distinct from the theology that governs the style of the finished image. Some, for example, hold that the image must be created by starting with a dark base and adding layers of lighter color, because God created Light out of darkness. There is no basis for this. A painting is as good as it looks, and if the finished work is good, the method by which it was made is of secondary importance. This is confirmed by modern X-ray analysis of authentic and ancient icons, which shows that painters of the past used a wide variety of methods to produce authentic work.
A Short Summary of the Theology of Iconographic Style
So what is the theology of icons? The iconographic style expresses a desire to present man in full union with God, that is, eschatological man. Consider the Transfiguration icon below, painted in Yaroslavl, Russia, in 1516.
The nimbus around Christ darkens toward its center, reflecting a theological point about the nature of divine light. Christ in the Transfiguration is understood as the prototype for all iconographic imagery, and the principle extends further, since all saints shine with the light of Christ because, as baptized Christians, they have ‘put on Christ’. The halo, typically a gold disc around the head, is a stylized representation of the light emanating from the person. In the Transfiguration icon, the prophets and Christ bear halos, while there is a convention that before Pentecost the apostles do not, though they are still portrayed as saints in other respects: there is no cast shadow from any figure, since each is his own source of light, and we see the floating sparkles of uncreated light on their clothes and bodies.
To convey the heavenly dimension, which is outside time and space, the image avoids creating the illusion of depth. The artist paints the image so that it lives, as it were, in the plane of the surface. Rarely does an iconographer use single-point perspective, in which things diminish with distance; he will often use inverted perspective instead, in which things appear wider as they recede.
The size of the beings and creatures portrayed varies according to the hierarchy of being, a feature often referred to as hierarchical perspective. Christ is the largest figure, while trees and mountains are shown smallest relative to their natural size. Even inanimate objects, such as trees and mountains, can be shown bowing toward Christ, indicating that each owes its existence to him and further reinforcing our sense that each has its place in the hierarchy of being. The negative space around the figures is usually a single color, often gold leaf, with minimal indication of the location. The gold or other single-color background reinforces the sense of flatness, and the environment is suffused with light, an effect accentuated by gold leaf that reflects candlelight, causing it to shimmer as though it were a source of light in itself. Some variants, particularly Western variants, have complex patterned backgrounds that achieve the same end — the sense of flat negative space around the figures.
The sense of another world is further heightened by placing the figures in the middle distance. No matter how near we approach the image, there is always some sense of distance between us and the closest figures depicted; they seem to recede as we draw closer. Even with our faces pressed against the surface, they remain some way from us. This creates a dynamic between us and the icon when we pray with them, for it instills in us a longing to be with the saint. This is a longing that finds its fulfillment only in heaven.
All icons aim to portray heavenly realities. Heaven is a realm in which time is compressed into a single moment; past, present, and future are perpetually in a single moment. It is difficult even to imagine this, but it is possible to reflect this mystery. A way to do so is to present a full narrative with different scenes from a story portrayed simultaneously in the image, even though, in real time, they happened sequentially. What took place over an extended period appears in a single image. This might be useful in an icon of the life of a saint, for example. It is common for an important event in the saint’s life to be the largest image, with several miniature scenes of other events from his life around the periphery.
Consider now another image. This icon of the Mother of God with Christ is known as the Vladimir Mother of God. It was painted in Constantinople around 1100 AD, brought to Russia, and became the prototype and model for Russian iconography.
Image: The Vladimir Mother of God, Constantinople, c. 1100 AD. The prototype for Russian iconography.
The first thing to notice is how the Theotokos, who bore and gave birth to God, expresses a contentedness tinged with melancholy. This is called ‘bright sadness’ and is intended to convey that the saint lives in eternal bliss but nonetheless feels compassion for those who are not yet with God. The saints want us to join them, and they are happy to intercede for us so that it might happen.
The proportions of the person's features are subtly modified to communicate holy wisdom. The wise man reflects on God’s will before acting. To convey this aspect of wisdom, the receptive organs are relatively large, while the active ones are smaller. Therefore, the eyes are enlarged, and the nose, which inhales the fragrance of heaven, is elongated slightly, and the ears, if they are visible, are slightly larger than they would be naturally. (Typically, we don’t see Our Lady’s ears.) In contrast, the mouth and hands are made smaller. This is not to say that saints are inactive; when they act, their actions are effective. Rather, it speaks of an economy of effort in which nothing is wasted. And similarly, while there is no superfluous word coming from the mouth of a saint, every word that is spoken is golden.
We also see that Christ, though a child in his mother’s arms, appears as a little man. This indicates the paradox that, though human and physically immature, he is still fully God.
Another feature of icons is that the faces of saints are always portrayed in either a full or three-quarter view, so that both eyes are clearly visible. This symbolizes the idea that in heaven we can behold another and know them fully; nothing is hidden, and we are fully known to all others. Only the devil would be shown in full profile. (This is one feature that differentiates early Gothic art from iconographic art. Gothic artists, in order to portray a more naturalistic three-dimensional setting and the sense of a more lifelike interaction between the figures in the composition, gradually begin to place some of those key figures in profile.)
These stylistic devices in icons draw out realities that would otherwise be invisible. The modification of natural appearances, therefore, produces a greater realism than any naturalistic painting or photograph could achieve.
It is common for people who cannot draw well to want to learn to paint icons, assuming that draftsmanship matters less in this tradition, but this is not the case. The artist must not be tempted to use the style to conceal a lack of drawing ability. It takes great skill to reflect visible and otherwise invisible realities in the same painting, so that the two aspects support rather than undermine each other. Our figures must both sparkle with the uncreated light of Christ and read anatomically, just as the drapery must hang and fold as it would naturally around the figure.
Here is another common image of Christ, known as the Mandylion.
Image: The Mandylion (Christ Acheiropoietos), 12th century, Russia.
The name comes from the archaic Greek term for ‘cloth’ or ‘towel’ and refers to the tradition that the prototype of this icon was a cloth pressed against the face of Our Lord, and that the image was miraculously transferred to it. It is perhaps the most famous of the icons called acheiropoietos, meaning ‘not made with human hands,’ images that are revealed rather than painted. Notice how stern Christ appears. This sternness is sometimes employed in the depiction of Christ to indicate that he is a judge. It must never be excessive, because we also wish to convey that he is a just judge and that divine justice is always tempered with great mercy.
In common with all authentically liturgical art, there is a general disposition against innovation and originality for their own sake. New icons are created only as needed by the Church, for example to portray a newly canonized saint. The icon painter always reproduces the prototype with an understanding of the ideal it is intended to express and always aims to portray the ideal as best he can rather than a simple copy of another work of art. Accordingly, the goal is to create something greater than that which he copies.
These revealed images — the ones said to be “not made with human hands” — raise a question that goes to the heart of the whole tradition: does what we see in an icon actually correspond to what Christ and the saints are like in heaven, or is it simply an internally consistent system of symbols? That question, and the most remarkable of these revealed images, Our Lady of Guadalupe, are the subject of the second of these two articles.
This feast is called the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, because Chosroas, the king of the Persians, came to Jerusalem, and took away with him from there the wood of the Lord’s Cross, and having made for himself a house decorated like heaven, he made a seat for himself in it, and put the wood on his right in the place of the Son, and a rooster on his left in the place of the Holy Spirit, and standing in the middle, ordered that he be called God.
The Emperor Chosroas adored by the Persians, and Heraclius being told in a dream to recover the relics of the Cross. Painted ca. 1385 by Agnolo Gaddi in the choir of the Franciscan basilica of the Holy Cross in Florence, as a part of a cycle which tells the full legend of the Cross.
On hearing this, the Roman emperor Heraclius moved his army (against the Persians) and having beaten the son of Chosroas in single combat, took back the Lord’s cross. As he was approaching Jerusalem in great splendor, the gates of the city were closed by an angel, so that he could not enter. And as he wondered very greatly at this, a voice was heard from heaven saying that the King of kings, when He came to suffer for all, had not entered Jerusalem thus decked out, but humbly, and sitting upon a donkey.
And he, at once recognizing his own pride, came down from his horse, and was greatly humbled. And the gates opened up to him of their own accord, and he entered the city barefoot, and as he did so, many people who suffered from various kinds of ailments were cured through the Cross, and the emperor himself broke forth with these most devout praises of the Cross, saying, ‘O Cross, moreover splendid than all the stars, renowned to the world, etc.’ Therefore, he lifted up the cross, and established, with the agreement of the bishops, that in his empire the day of the Exaltation would henceforth be a solemn feast.
The Exaltation of the Cross by Heraclius, mid-15th century, by Piero della Francesca; part of a similar cycle in the basilica of St Francis in Arezzo, Italy. The artist’s habit of depicting people in outlandish hats, which he shares with a number of his Tuscan contemporaries, comes from seeing the delegates of the Eastern churches to the ecumenical council of Florence, which concluded in 1449, shortly before he began this project.
Long afterwards, in the sacristy of St Peter’s basilica, Pope Sergius found a silver container, and in it a cross put together from a large portion of the saving wood, adorned with precious stones, and this was put in the basilica of the Savior (i.e. the Lateran), and adored by the people on the day of the Exaltation.
The feast of the Finding of the Cross is greater than that of the Exaltation because of the authority of the one who instituted it, for the former was established by the Pope, namely Eusebius, but the latter by the emperor.” (Rationale Divinorum Officiorum 7, 30, 1-2)
Our friend Durandus evinces some very typically medieval confusion in narrating these events, which took place nearly 700 years before his time. In the reign of the Persian emperor Khosrow II (590-628), whose name is usually Latinized as Chosroas, one of his generals did capture the city of Jerusalem, steal the True Cross from the basilica of the Holy Sepulcher, and bring it back with him to Persia. The Byzantine emperor Heraclius then engaged Persia in a long and spectacularly successful war, penetrating into enemy territory so deeply and so rapidly that at times he lost communication with his own supply lines. In the midst of his astonishing reversals, Khosrow was overthrown in 628 by his son Kavad, who then sued for peace. Heraclius was able to impose the return of the True Cross and various other relics taken in 614 as one of the terms of the peace treaty, and did indeed bring them back to the Holy City in a splendid ceremony.
Piero’s fantastically complicated version of the battle between Heraclius and Chosroas.
All this is narrated in the Roman Breviary in the second nocturn of Matins, leaving out the most obviously legendary embellishment, the story of Chosroas and his chamber made to look like heaven, which is also included in Bl. Jacopo da Voragine’s Golden Legend. The idea of an emperor ordering himself to be worshiped as a god is, of course, a memory of the ancient Romans’ cult of the divinized emperors, the principal cause of conflict between them and the early Christians. It is also unlikely that a Greek-speaking emperor would “break forth with devout praises of the Cross” in the form of the Roman antiphon for the Magnificat at First Vespers.
Aña O Crux, splendidior cunctis astris, mundo célebris, homínibus multum amábilis, sanctior universis: quae sola fuisti digna portáre talentum mundi, dulce lignum, dulces clavos, dulcia ferens póndera; salva praesentem catervam in tuis hodie láudibus congregátam. (O Cross, more splendid than all the stars, renowned throughout the world, much loved by men, more holy than all things, who alone wast worthy to bear the Price of the world, sweet word, bearing the sweet nails and the sweet burdens, save the flock here gathered today in thy praises. A polyphonic setting by Orlando de Lassus.)
The events surrounding the loss and recovery of the True Cross under Heraclius have long been associated with the feast of the Exaltation in the West, but in the Byzantine Rite, they are not mentioned at all. There are, however, a few mentions of the emperor Constantine in the feast’s liturgical texts, and one of his mother Helena, the discoverer of the Cross.
As I explained in an article last year, many major feasts in the Byzantine Rite are followed immediately by a “synaxis” (“σύναξις” in Greek, “собóръ” in Church Slavonic), a commemoration of a sacred person who figures prominently in the feast, but who is, as it were, overshadowed by its principal subject. (Scholars of the Eastern rites also call them “concomitant feasts.” Byzantium borrowed this custom from the traditions of the Syrian church and of Jerusalem.) This past Wednesday, for example, was the Synaxis of Ss Joachim and Anne, which is kept the day after the Birth of the Virgin Mary. Another is kept in honor of the Virgin Herself on the day after Christmas, another of St Gabriel on the day after the Annunciation, etc.
The dedication of the church of the Holy Sepulcher, which Constantine and Helena built over the site of the Lord’s tomb, was celebrated on September 13th, and was one of the most important feasts in Jerusalem; in the oldest sources of the city’s native liturgical rite, it was kept with an octave. The complex also contained the site where the True Cross was found, and the Cross itself was long kept within it. The Exaltation of the Cross therefore began as a kind of synaxis or concomitant feast for this dedication. Since the latter was closely tied to the traditions of the Holy City, but obviously less important elsewhere, in Byzantium, the Exaltation supplanted the Dedication in importance.
Durandus notes that in the West, the feast of the Finding of the Cross was superior in dignity to that of the Exaltation, although the reason which he gives for this is not really correct. (In pre-Tridentine Roman books, and in the missal and breviary of St Pius V, they have the same rank.) There was a Pope called Eusebius, but he ruled for only 4 months in the year 310, and obviously has nothing to do with either feast.
There have been four Popes named Sergius. Durandus does not say which was the one who discovered the silver reliquary of the True Cross in the sacristy of St Peter’s basilica, but such a reliquary does exist. The Crux Vaticana is also known as the Cross of Justin II, the early Byzantine emperor (reigned 565-78) who gave it to Pope John III sometime around 568. The wood of the Cross contained within it comes from the portion which St Helena had sent to her son in Constantinople more than 200 years earlier. This cross was used for centuries at the adoration ceremony of Good Friday; after being kissed by so many people for so long, the original container mounted in the middle finally disintegrated, and was replaced in the early 19th century.
Justin II gave a second cross, very similar in form, to St Radegund, the Queen of the Franks (520 ca. – 587); her friend St Venantius Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers, composed the famous hymns of the Cross Vexilla Regis and Pange, lingua to celebrate its arrival.
