The Solemnity of St Benedict 2025

Gloriosus Confessor Domini, orationem faciens, benedictionem dedit; et lapis, super quem antiquus hostis sedebat, subito levatus est. (3rd antiphon of Vespers on the Solemnity of St Benedict.)

The episode referred to in the antiphon above, depicted in the sacristy of the church of San Miniato in Florence by Spinello Aretino, 1388.

The Lord’s glorious confessor, making his prayer, gave the blessing, and the stone, upon which the ancient enemy sat, was at once lifted up.

In the Second Book of St Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, dedicated to the life and miracles of St Benedict, the episode is recounted thus in chapter nine:

On a certain day, when the monks were building up the cells of the same abbey, there lay a stone which they meant to employ about that business: and when two or three were not able to remove it, they called for more company, but all in vain, for it remained so immovable as though it had grown to the very earth.
They plainly perceived that the devil himself sat on it, seeing so many men’s hands could not so much as once move it: wherefore, finding that their own labors could do nothing, they sent for the man of God, to help them with his prayers against the devil, who hindered the removing of that stone. The holy man came, and after some praying, he gave it his blessing, and then they carried it away so quickly, as though it had been of no weight at all.

St Benedict died on March 21 in the year 543 or 547, and this was the date on which his principal feast was traditionally kept, and is still kept by Benedictines; it is sometimes referred to on the calendars of Benedictine liturgical books as the “Transitus - Passing”. There was also a second feast to honor the translation of his relics, which was kept on July 11. The location to which the relics were translated is still a matter of dispute, with the Abbey of Monte Cassino in Italy, founded by the Saint himself, and the French Abbey of Fleury, also known as Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, both claiming to possess them. This second feast is found in many medieval missals and breviaries, even in places not served by monastic communities. (It was not, however, observed by either the Cistercians or Carthusians.). The second feast was in a certain sense the more solemn in the traditional use of the Benedictines; March 21 always falls in Lent, and the celebration of octaves in Lent was prohibited, but most monastic missals have the July 11 feast with an octave. In the post-Conciliar reform of the Calendar, many Saints, including St Benedict, were moved out of Lent; in his case, to the day of this second feast in the Benedictine Calendar.

The Sanctus

Lost in Translation #131

For practical reasons the Sanctus is considered its own composition, but as Adrian Fortescue writes, it “is, of course, merely the continuation of the Preface. It would be quite logical,” he continues,

if the celebrant sang it straight on himself. But the dramatic touch of letting the people fill in the choral chant of the angels, in which (as the preface says) we also wish to join, is an obvious idea, a very early one and quite universal. [1]

Early indeed. The liturgical Sanctus is testified by Clement of Rome (d. ca. 100) and Tertullian (155-220), and some version of it is found in all apostolic liturgies. In the Antiochene, Roman, Ambrosian, Gallican, and Mozarabic Rites, the trisagion of Isaiah 6,3 is followed by the Palm Sunday proclamation of the crowd in the Gospels. [2] In the Roman Rite the result is the following:

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dóminus Deus Sábaoth. Pleni sunt cæli et terra glória tua. Hosánna in excélsis. Benedíctus qui venit in nómine Dómini. Hosánna in excélsis.

Which is usually translated as:

Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

In Isaiah 6, the prophet sees the Lord sitting on a throne high and elevated, with His train filling the temple. Two six-winged Seraphim use two of their wings to cover the Lord’s face, two to cover His feet, and two to fly. As they do so, they sing to each other: “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts, all the earth is full of his glory.”

In the Gospel according to St. Matthew, when Jesus enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday on the back of a donkey, the crowd proclaims: “Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord: Hosanna in the highest.” (Matt. 21, 9) The other Gospels give similar accounts, (see Mk. 11, 9, Lk. 19, 38, and Jn. 12, 13) but no Evangelist has exactly the same wording as the liturgical formula.

While the triple Sanctus has obvious Trinitarian implications, the pairing of the two texts leads one to a consideration of the Incarnation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, “The people devotedly praise the divinity of Christ with the Angels, saying Sanctus Sanctus Sanctus, and His humanity with the [Hebrew] children, saying Benedictus qui venit.” [3] This interpretation is corroborated by the gestures of the priest. During the Sanctus he is bowed down in adoration, and at the Benedictus he stands aright and makes the sign of the cross—and the cross is the reason that the Word became flesh. In this respect, the entire Sanctus hymn is like the sign of the cross, which expresses the two great mysteries of the Christian Faith, the Trinity and our Redemption.

Hosanna

There are two linguistic curiosities in this hymn, the use of the Hebrew loan words Sabaoth and Hosanna.

The word Hosanna is an abbreviation of hōshī‘ā nā’, which means “save, now!” (see Ps. 117 [118], 25) The word played an important role in the Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot); it was recited by the priest every day when he processed around the altar, and it was recited seven times on the seventh day, once during each of the seven processions. When the priest came to the word Hosanna, the people would say it with him as they waved their branches of palm, willow, etc. Indeed, the seventh day of the feast was named the Great Hosanna, and the branches were called hosannas. [4]

One can understand, then, why Saints Matthew, Mark, and John describe the people shouting Hosanna and carrying palm branches during Our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem. Among other things, their actions were an affirmation of Jesus as the One who saves now. And one can understand why the word remains untranslated in Christian liturgy, a tradition that stretches back to the time of the Apostles (it is mentioned in the first-century Didache). First, it connects the assembled faithful who utter it soon before the sacrifice of the altar to the disciples who uttered it soon before the sacrifice of the Cross.

And second, the word is complex: its denotation is plaintive, suppliant, and urgent, but its connotation is boisterous and joyful (as we see in the way that it is used). “Hosanna is the voice of one imploring, showing emotion more than signifying something, like what they call interjections in the Latin language.” [5] But if Hosanna communicates more of a feeling than a meaning, it may be more difficult to translate. The German language, for example, captures quite nicely the essence of schadenfreude, as does the Italian la dolce vita; to use German for the latter and Italian for the former would be an abomination. And it is common for people speaking a second language to revert to their native tongue for exclamations or interjections. Hosanna, then, contains a certain Hebrew-Messianic je ne sais quoi that the new people of God are able to channel.

Sabaoth

Less obvious is the retention of Sabaoth. Unlike Hosanna (or, for that matter, Alleluia and Amen), there would seem to be no ineluctable qualities to the word. Sabaoth is simply the Hebrew for hosts or armies, and thus it can easily be translated into Greek or Latin--indeed, the Vulgate translates Sabaoth as exercituum without any trouble and the Douay Rheims follows suit with “of hosts.” And yet in the Septuagint, the authors chose to leave the word untranslated in Isaiah 6, 3:

ἅγιος ἅγιος ἅγιος κύριος σαβαωθ πλήρης πᾶσα ἡ γῆ τῆς δόξης αὐτοῦ.

Or:

Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of Sabaoth, all the earth is full of his glory.

In fact, the Septuagint retains the Hebrew Sabaoth sixty-one times.

But if the meaning of the word is clear, its referent is not. The armies in question could be those of ancient Israel, rallying under their divine commander-in-chief; they could be the Angelic hosts of all nine orders; and they could even be the stars. (see Gen. 2, 1) Whichever it is, the expression made its way into the Christian lexicon. Both Saints Paul and James refer to God as the Lord of Sabaoth in their Epistles, (Rom. 9, 29 and James 5, 4) and it also made its way into the sacred liturgy, probably from almost the beginning. In his letter to the Corinthians, Pope St. Clement of Rome cites Isaiah 6, 3 with the word Sabaoth in what is most likely a liturgical context. [6] In any case, all the ancient liturgies, Eastern and Western, have Sabaoth in their Sanctus hymn. [7]

The Latin edition of the new Roman Missal (1970/2002) likewise retains this ancient word, but the translations of it are another matter. While the German edition has Zebaoth, the French, Italian, and Spanish have “God of the universe” (Dieu de l’univers, Dio dell’universo, and Dios del Universo, resp.). In English, the 2011 translation replaced the 1970’s “God of power and might” with “Lord God of hosts.” The same translations, incidentally, all retain the word Hosanna.

One wonders what, if anything, is lost by translating Sabaoth into the mother tongue. Pius Parsch claims that the words Hosanna and Sabaoth “have come down to us from the primitive Church of Palestine, and were not translated, because a peculiar meaning had in the course of time become associated with these words;” [8] and yet he neglects to tell us what the peculiar meaning of Sabaoth is. I suspect that like Hosanna, it may be more of a feeling than a meaning, in this case, the feeling one gets when encountering the numinous, a feeling of awe and dread. The sight of a vast army is no doubt terrifying, but the Lord’s armies come with inscrutable supernatural powers that make our conventional weapons look harmless. Sabaoth, in other words, conjures up an awareness of the unknown and awful (in the full sense of the word) powers of an omnipotent God: indeed, when Revelation seeks a substitute for Sabaoth, it uses “almighty.” (Rev. 4, 8) [9] Removing Sabaoth from the liturgy, then, contributes ever so slightly to an evacuation of the numinous from the sacred.

Notes

[1] Fortescue, The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy (Longmans, Green, and Co, 1912), 320-21.

[2] Fortescue, 321-22.

[3] Summa Theologiae III.83.4.

[4] Cornelius Aherne, “Hosanna,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910).

[5] Hosanna vox est obsecrantis, magis affectum indicans quam rem aliquam significans, sicut sunt in lingua Latina quas interjectiones vocant. (Attributed to Saint Augustine. See St. Thomas Aquinas, Catena aurea in Johannem 12.2.29).

[6] 1 Cor. 34, 6-7.

[7] Fortescue, 321-22.

[8] The Liturgy of the Mass, trans. Frederic C. Eckhoff (St. Louis, Missouri: Herder, 1940), 219.

[9] William Durandus emphasizes omnipotence in his interpretation of Sabaoth. (see Rationale Divinorum Officiorum IV. 34, 6) Further, I believe that both Saints Paul and James use “Lord of Sabaoth” in order to cause a twinge of the fear of God in their readers. The former, quoting Isaiah, includes the epithet in a sentence about the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah while the latter writes of the cries of exploited and oppressed workers entering into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.

The Feast of the Seven Brothers

July 10th is one of the most ancient feasts in the Roman Rite, that of a group of martyrs from Rome itself, called the Seven Brothers. Their traditional legend makes them the sons of a woman called Felicity, who shares her feast day with Pope St Clement I on November 23rd. The very oldest collection of Roman liturgical texts, the so-called Leonine Sacramentary, has seven different Masses for this feast; the second of these includes the rubric “in jejunio – on the fast”, which suggests that it may even have been kept by some with a vigil. Although the feast is missing from the oldest complete sacramentary, the old Gelasian, ca. 750 AD, it is found in the Gellone sacramentary only 30 years later, and likewise in the Gregorian, and the earliest Roman lectionaries.

An altarpiece of St Felicity and her seven sons, painted in 1464 by the Florentine artist Neri di Bicci (1419-91), for the church dedicated to her in his native city. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

The breviary and martyrology place the martyrdom of these Saints in the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-80), under a prefect of Rome called Publius, an extremely common name in ancient Rome. The very first person of this name to serve as urban prefect, Publius Seius Fuscianus, was actually a childhood friend of Marcus Aurelius, but he did not come into the office until 187, seven years after that emperor’s death.

This is only one of the many historical difficulties about the brothers’ legend. The breviary of St Pius V gives the story only a single lesson, which states that they were threatened with both promises and tortures in order to get them to renounce Christ, and when they would not do so, were executed in various ways as their mother exhorted them to bear their sufferings. Januarius was beaten with lead weights, Felix and Philip with clubs, while Silvanus (whose name is given as “Silanus” in the oldest sources) was thrown off a cliff, and the last three, Alexander, Vitalis and Martial, beheaded. Felicity was then killed four months later. This summary agrees with all the traditional versions of their legend.

However, in the Roman world, beheading was the form of capital punishment reserved for citizens, while more painful forms were used for non-citizens. It is very improbable that only three of seven brothers of one family would be citizens, which makes it difficult to explain why only three of them were killed this way.

The central section of the predella of the panel shown above, in which the prefect Publius condemns Felicity and her sons to death. Notice how someone has expressed their detestation of their cruelty by hacking out the face of both the prefect and his soldiers. (This is not a rare phenomenon. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0)

The Leonine Sacramentary and other ancient sources note that each group of them was buried in a different Christian cemetery, Januarius in that of Praetextatus on the Appian way, Felix and Philip in that of Priscilla, Silvanus in that of Maximus, near his mother, and the last three in the cemetery of the Jordani. This also poses an historical problem. The Romans almost never interfered with the right of even the worst criminals to a decent burial according to custom, and it was generally considered very important for the members of a family to be buried together as much as possible, all the more so among the Christians. Even granting that there could have been a good reason for Januarius to be buried on the opposite side of Rome from the rest of his family, the other three cemeteries are less than a mile apart from each other on the via Salaria. Such a separation of the family in death to four different places, when at least seven of them could easily have been laid to rest in the same place, is also very unlikely.

The very oldest list of Roman martyrs, the Depositio Martyrum, ca. 336 AD, names all seven on July 10, but does not in any way suggest that they were brothers, and makes no mention of their mother. The same is true of the title of their feast in the Leonine Sacramentary, and six of its seven Masses for them. For these reasons, it is now generally accepted that although they were all martyrs who died on the same day, they were not related to each other or to the martyr Felicity. The association of them as a family would therefore have arisen from Silvanus’ proximity to Felicity in their place of burial, and the fact that he shares the date of his death with the others.

A watercolor copy of a fresco in the catacomb of Priscilla, ca. 190 AD, with the Madonna and Child, and a prophet (either Isaiah or Balaam) pointing to a star over her head. It is believed by some scholars that the tomb over which this was painted was that of the martyrs Felix and Philip. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Such skepticism about the traditional story is not modern. The pre-Tridentine Roman breviary accepts the tradition that they were all brothers, but has only one very brief lesson about their martyrdom, almost identical to that in St Pius V’s revision. The other lessons are all taken from a sermon which St Augustine preached on the very ancient feast of the Maccabees. And indeed, many hagiographical scholars believe that the accounts of their passion which make them brothers are modeled on the story told in 2 Maccabees 6 and 7, in which seven brothers are martyred in a variety of ways as their mother exhorts them to remain faithful to God despite their torments, and dies herself after all her sons, “not losing them”, as Augustine says, “but sending them forth.”

However, if this is indeed what we might call a hagiographical confusion, it is one that arose very early. An epitaph for St Felicity which is attributed to Pope St Damasus I (366-84), or at least close to his time, says that she died “with her sons”, although it does not give their names, or say how many they were. By the time of St Peter Chrysologus, who was bishop of Ravenna from 433-50, the number had been fixed at seven, as he preached a sermon on St Felicity in which he called her “truly a mother of lights… who shines brightly in all the world with her seven-fold progeny.” At the end of the 6th century, St Gregory the Great preached a sermon in the church built over the catacomb where she was buried, in which he praises her as one “more than a martyr, since she sent seven pledges before her to the kingdom.” However, we may note that neither Peter nor Gregory gives the names of any of the sons.

The Martyrdom of Ss Rufina and Secunda, 1620-25, by Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli (1573 - 1626), Giulio Cesare Procaccini (1574 - 1625), and Giovanni Battista Crespi (1573 - 1632). ~ Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Since the 12th century, this feast has been kept jointly with that of two other martyrs, sisters named Rufina and Secunda, whose passion is likewise considered historically unreliable. (In the pre-Tridentine Roman breviary, they are not mentioned at all in the Matins lessons.) The story goes that they were the daughters of a nobleman called Asterius, and engaged by their parents to marry fellow Christians named Armentarius and Verinus, but in 257, when the persecution of Valerian broke out, both fiancés apostatized. The sisters fled from Rome, but were captured and brought before the urban prefect Junius Donatus, (a real historical personage, who did hold that office in that period), who imprisoned them, and tried to induce them to likewise apostatize. The breviary preserves the account that when he had Rufina scourged, Secunda protested, “Why is it that you honor my sister, but dishonor me? Order that we both be beaten, as we both confess that Christ is God.” Following various tortures, they were beheaded, and then given burial by a woman named Plautilla on her own property.

The site of their burial, at the tenth milestone from Rome on the Aurelian Way, was called “Silva Nigra – the Black Forest”, but in honor of the martyrs, the name was changed to “Silva Candida – the White (or ‘bright’) Forest.” In the reign of Pope St Julius I (337-52), a basilica was built over the tomb; by the mid-5th century, a town had grown up around it which was big enough to be made its own diocese. This became one of the seven “suburbicarian” sees, the dioceses around Rome whose bishops are traditionally made cardinals, and in the Middle Ages, often served by turns as the assistant bishop at the Pope’s solemn Masses, as other bishops are served by an assistant priest.

The chapel within the narthex of the Lateran baptistery which contains the relics of Ss Rufina and Secunda within its altar. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by ho visto nina volare, CC BY-SA 2.0)

By the mid-12th century, however, Silva Candida was barely more than a ruin, and its cardinal-bishop resided permanently in Rome; the see was therefore united to that another suburbicarian diocese, Porto, and remains so to this day. In 1154, the relics of the two sister martyrs were recovered from the ruins of their church, and transferred to the Lateran baptistery, and their names were then added to the feast of the seven brothers whose day they share.

Liturgical Travels Through France: A New Publication from Canticum Salomonis

We are very pleased to share with our readers this announcement of a new publication by our good friends at Canticum Salomonis, the first-ever English translation of Jean-Baptiste des Marettes’ Liturgical Travels Through France.

Gospels chanted atop rood lofts, the Blessed Sacrament reserved in hanging pyxes, processions with dragons and banners, Lenten expulsion and reconciliation of penitents, manipled choirboys, communion under two species – even, perhaps, nuns serving as acolytes! These are but some of the bygone French liturgical practices and rituals that await discovery by the reader of Liturgical Travels Through France (1718).

His guide is the learned Jean-Baptiste Le Brun des Marettes, a cleric at the turn of the eighteenth century whose abiding interest in pagan and ecclesiastical antiquity spurred him to travel his fatherland to document its diverse liturgical traditions. His account recreates a ritual world where vast cathedrals and abbeys sustained an integral and triumphal celebration of the holy mysteries accompanied by the enthusiasm of the multitudes – a world soon to be obliterated by the vicissitudes of revolution.

Translated for the first time into English by Gerhard Eger and Zachary Thomas, and published by Os Justi Press, Liturgical Travels Through France speaks directly to the concerns of our own unsettled moment as well. Early modern France enjoyed a rich and regionally varied liturgical life, shaped by centuries of faithful observance, artistic cultivation, and civic devotion, elements conspicuously absent from the flattened ceremonial landscape of today. Far from being a mere antiquarian curiosity, Le Brun des Marettes’ work offers a salutary challenge to modern preconceptions about the unicity of the Roman rite, reminding us that organic liturgical development once yielded a dazzling diversity within unity.

The book’s contemporary relevance is brought into focus by Abbé Claude Barthe, whose foreword situates the work within the context of the neo-Gallican movement as well as twentieth-century debates between rupture and continuity. An appendix by Shawn Tribe explores the art-historical aspects of Le Brun des Marettes’ account, while the French scholar François Hou offers a fascinating study of the cathedral chapters that sustained the French Church’s mighty edifice of worship.

Liturgical Travels Through France is more than a picturesque record of vanished rites (illustrated here not only in prose but in 55 plates); it is a vital source for understanding the nature and history of liturgical reform. Written at a time when the French church stood at a crossroads – torn between renewed zeal for tradition and pressures for rationalization and adaptation – it documents a moment of extraordinary tension and creativity.

The early eighteenth century, particularly in France, witnessed a flourishing of ressourcement in the fields of Scripture, patristics, and liturgy, carried out under the long shadow of the Council of Trent. As national pride swelled under Louis XIV, diocesan churches, once eager to conform to Roman norms, began asserting the legitimacy of their local customs. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes further complicated the pastoral landscape, as churchmen were forced to reconcile the needs of both lifelong Catholics and recently converted Protestants.

The sanctuary of Notre-Dame de Paris as it looked before its rood screen was taken down in the 18th century.

It was in this climate that the so-called “neo-Gallican” rites emerged: diocesan liturgical books often marked by classical sensibilities, didactic preoccupations, and a mixture of reverent innovation and archaeological curiosity. While some of these reforms culminated in the excesses of the Synod of Pistoia (1786), whose decrees were rightly rejected by both pope and faithful, many others reflected a sincere effort to recover the spirit of the Fathers, and to reform abuses without compromising the integrity of worship.

Le Brun des Marettes’ work belongs to this milieu. His accounts do not merely chronicle local curiosities; they bear witness to a Church still deeply rooted in sacramental practice, even while grappling with the challenges of modernity.

The significance of this moment has not escaped historians of twentieth-century liturgical reform. Many have sought in the eighteenth century the remote prelude to the innovations of the Liturgical Movement, and ultimately, the creation of the rite of Paul VI. Hence, this edition of the Liturgical Travels provides a cautionary counterpoint to easy narratives of rupture or progress. It reminds us that the impulse to reform, if divorced from the lived tradition and ecclesial piety that nourishes it, risks destroying the very thing it claims to renew.

In our own day, Le Brun des Marettes’ work stands as a witness to the fruitful tension between tradition and reform. Both traditionalists and progressives may be tempted to use the past he describes to justify liturgical experiments of one kind or another. The greater value of his work lies in its ability to broaden our understanding of what the Latin liturgical tradition has been – and what it might yet become. For readers today, it offer not a blueprint, but a horizon: a vision of sacred order instantiated in a particular place and time, which can inspire our own efforts to restore the sacred.

The book is available in hardback, paperback, and ebook directly from Os Justi Press. It may likewise be purchased on Amazon US or any other Amazon outlet (UK, Canada, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan).

The Martyrs of Gorkum

The Roman Martyrology notes today as the feast of a group of Saints known as the Martyrs of Gorkum. Their feast has never been on the general calendar, but is celebrated in many places, and by the various religious orders to which they belonged, the Franciscans, who were the majority of the group, the Dominicans, Premonstratensians and Augustinian Canons. They were solemnly canonized in 1867 by Bl. Pius IX, as part of a year-long series of celebrations to commemorate the 18th centenary of the martyrdom of Ss Peter and Paul, then generally held to have taken place in 67 AD.

The Glorification of the Martyrs of Gorkum; engraving of the year 1675 after a painting by Johan Zieneels. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

In 1572, Dutch Calvinists in rebellion against the Spanish Catholic rulers of the Hapsburg Netherlands, as they were then called, seized control of the town of Gorkum. Eleven members of the local Franciscan friary, three secular priests, including the local parish priest, and an Augustianian canon were taken by the soldiers; when a member of the local Dominican community came to administer the Sacraments to them, he was also taken and imprisoned with them. Shortly thereafter, two Premonstratensians and another secular priest were added to their number, a total of nineteen. Over the course of several days, beginning on June 26, the soldiers subjected them to terrible cruelties, partly out of hatred for the Catholic religion, partly in the hopes of getting hold of precious vessels from the church which they believed the religious had hidden. On the morning of July 7th, they were transferred to another town, called Briel, and in the presence of the Calvinist commander, the Baron de la Marck, and several Calvinist ministers, told they would be set free if they would abjure the Catholic doctrine on the Blessed Sacrament, which they refused to do.

The baron then received a letter from the leader of the rebellion, the Prince of Orange known as William the Silent, ordering that they all be released. He agreed to this on the new condition that they publically repudiate the primacy of the Pope, which they also refused to do. On the morning of July 9th, they were taken to an abandoned monastery in the countryside near Briel and hanged from the beams of one of the outbuildings, with the nooses placed in their mouths. Even this incredibly slow and painful death did not satisfy the barbarity of the Calvinists, who also mutilated the bodies, some of them while they were still alive. One of the Franciscans, a Dane named Willehad, was 90 years old; three others were in their seventies. When the bodies had been taken down, their remains were left in a ditch, and not recovered until 1616, during a truce in the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Netherlands; they are now kept in the Franciscan church of St Nicholas in Brussels. There is also a pilgrimage church dedicated to them at the place of their martyrdom in Briel.

The Martyrs of Gorkum, by Cesare Fracassini; this painting was made specifically for the canonization ceremony of 1867. One of the traditional customs of the canonization ritual was that images of the Saints were hung within decorative frames from the balconies in the central rotunda of St Peter’s Basilica, but covered with plain pieces of burlap, which were then allowed to drop to the floor, exposing the image for the first time, once the Pope had finished reading the bull of canonization. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Perhaps the most appalling of Calvin’s many appalling doctrines was that of double predestination, the belief that we are all pre-destined to eternal salvation or damnation. (Calvin also taught that perhaps 100 souls would be saved from among the entire human race, although there was still enough human left in him at least to recognize that this was a “horrible conclusion.”) Inevitably, this drives people to search through their lives for signs that they are among the pre-saved; hence the idea that material prosperity in this life is a sign of pre-election in the next, a doctrine which has, with equal inevitability, now degenerated to truly parodic levels. But, as Catholic apologists immediately noted, this doctrine is pastorally disastrous, since it encourages not just the sinful, but also those who have repented of a sinful life, to see their past or present sins as a sign that they are among the pre-damned, and thus despair of their own correction and salvation. (A friend of mine who grew up in a Calvinist church and is now a Catholic priest once expressed the attitude that results as follows: “If I’m going to hell anyway, I might as well take the champagne flight.”)

Against this, we may adduce as particularly notable witnesses, the first meaning of the Greek word “martyr”, the lives and deaths of two among the company of Gorkum, which demonstrate that the door of conversion is not closed to anyone in this life, not even to the most obdurate sinner.

One of the two Premonstratensians, James Lacops, had formerly renounced both his vows and the Catholic Faith, after being reproved by his superiors for a very irregular life, and declared contumacious. Having been reconciled to the Church, he and St Adrian Jansen were captured in Gorkum when they opened the door of their presbytery to a man claiming that he wished to receive the Last Rites. Although the town was under occupation, and they knew that it might be a trick (as indeed it was), they would not risk letting someone die without the ministrations of a priest, and so they were taken to torture and death. It is, of course, especially appropriate that a son of St Norbert, who was himself rather a lax cleric in his youth (though nowhere near so egregiously) should die for the Catholic teaching on the Blessed Sacrament.

Even more interesting is the case of one of the secular priests, St Andrew Wouters, who was well-known as a womanizer and the father of more than one illegitimate child; despite being in disgrace, he joined the company of the others voluntarily. The Calvinist soldiers mocked him on account of the sins for which he was so notorious, and, in accordance with the logical conclusions of their creed, fully expected such a bad-living priest to apostatize and save his skin. This he did not do, and his last recorded words were, “Fornicator I always was, but heretic I never was; I will go to my death with the others.” As the article about them in the revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints wisely states, “it is a significant warning against judging the character of our neighbor, or pretending to read his heart, that, while a priest of blameless life recanted in a moment of weakness, the two who had been an occasion of scandal gave their lives without a tremor.”

Despite their disdain for religious vows and priestly celibacy, Calvinists did not of course believe that fornication was not sinful, and thus they would have seen in the sinful life of Andrew Wouters a clear sign of his eternal predestination to hell. To Catholics, his death as a martyr and canonization as a Saint are a reminder that we should never look on any sinful life, including our own, as anything other than a call to pray for conversion, which can happen even at the very last moments of life.

The reliquary of the Martyrs of Gorkum at the Franciscan church of St Nicholas in Brussels.

The full names of the martyrs are as follows.

The secular priests: Leonard van Veghel, pastor of Gorkum, Nicholas Poppel, Godfried van Duynen, and Andrew Wouters.
The eleven Franciscans: Fathers Nicholas Pieck, (who is listed first on the Franciscan liturgical calendar, since he was the guardian of the friary at Gorkum), Jerome of Weert (the vicar), Theodore van der Eem, Nicasius Jansen, Willehad of Denmark, Godfried of Mervel, Antony of Weert, Antony of Hoornaer, and Francis de Roye; the two lay brothers, Peter of Assche and Cornelius of Wyk near Duurstede.
The Premonstratensians: Adrian Jansen van Hilvarenbeek and James Lacops.
The Dominican: John of Cologne.
The Augustinian canon: Jan Lenartz of Oosterwyk, chaplain of the beguinage in Gorkum.

Clarity on Genuflections Around Communion in the Usus Antiquior

I received the following question from a reader, and given that others might find themselves with a similar question, or might simply wish to doublecheck that they are doing the right thing, I share my response today at NLM.

The Query: I am seeking instruction on the rubric in the Missal of 1962 which directs the priest to genuflect prior to retrieving the Blessed Sacrament from the tabernacle in the ciborium, and again after reposing it. I know Novus Ordo instructions do not point to this gesture. Would you be so kind as to indicate where such an instruction may be found, should it exist? And the rationale behind it.”

The Response: The instructions can be found in the 1962 Ritus Servandus which read as follows in translation:

X. The Lord’s Prayer and everything else up to the end of Communion…

6. If there are some to communicate during the Mass, the minister [read “server”] warns them a little beforehand with a ring of the bell. The Priest, after drinking the Blood, places the Chalice a little toward the Gospel side, but still within the Corporal, and covers it with the Pall.

• Then, if there are consecrated Hosts upon the Corporal, having made a genuflection, he places Them upon the Paten.
• If They have been consecrated in the same Mass within a Pyx/Ciborium, he places the Pyx/Ciborium in the middle of the Altar, uncovers It, and genuflects.
• If the Hosts to be administered have been consecrated beforehand, having opened the Tabernacle, he genuflects, extracts the Pyx/Ciborium and uncovers It.

He takes the Pyx/Ciborium or Paten with the Sacrament in his left hand, and takes one Host in his right, which he holds somewhat elevated over the Pyx/Ciborium or Paten with his thumb and index finger, and standing at the center of the Altar, facing the communicants, says: Ecce Agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi. Then he says: Domine, non sum dignus, ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbo, et sanabitur anima mea. After repeating this the third time, he goes to their right, that is, to the Epistle side, and facing each one, holding the Sacrament, he makes the sign of the cross with It over the Pyx or Paten, saying at the same time: Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam. Amen.

7. After the Faithful have communicated, the Celebrant returns to the Altar. Then, if there have been any Hosts upon the Corporal, he wipes it with the Paten, and if there are Fragments upon it, places them in the Chalice. If Hosts remain in the Pyx/Ciborium, he places It upon the Corporal, covers It, replaces It in the Tabernacle, genuflects, and closes the door.

Afterward he places in the Chalice any Fragments, which he happens to find upon the Paten, which was placed under the mouths of the communicants. Then he says secretly Quod ore sumpsimus, etc., and purifies himself, saying Corpus tuum, Domine, quod sumpsi, etc., and does everything as above. If there is a Tabernacle upon the Altar, and a Pyx/Ciborium with consecrated Hosts remains upon the Altar until the end of Mass, They are saved, which is prescribed at the end of Mass on Holy Thursday.

Thus, for the actual rubrics in the missal. The general principle is that any time the Priest and ministers interact with the Blessed Sacrament, a reverence is shown. This is also the case when the proximity between the ministers and the Blessed Sacrament changes, such as when the Tabernacle opens or shuts.

As to why this is done, it should be self-explanatory: under the signs of bread and wine, Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself is present, in person, and so we should reverence the Person as we would do when entering the presence of a King, or leaving it. The lack of such a gesture would be nothing better than negligence or contempt, if not a sign of a merely notional assent to the Real Presence rather than the real assent of supernatural faith.

It is worth pointing out, in addition, that the number of genuflections in connection with the Sacrament were reduced in 1962. If one takes a look at Matters Liturgical of 1956 (n. 238), the genuflections were:

• When the tabernacle is opened
• When the Priest uncovers the ciborium and turns for the Misereatur…
  
• When the Priest turns from back the Misereatur…
• After returning to the altar after Communion and placing down the ciborium (if hosts remain) 
• After placing the ciborium in the Tabernacle, before closing the door (if hosts remain)

Even not considering the Confiteor before Communion, there would have been two additional genuflections pre-62, one when the ciborium is uncovered and one at returning from the distribution (presumably connected with the immediate or somewhat immediate covering). Yet another indication of the involvement, in the code of rubrics for the 1962 missal, of the same reductionistic and horizontalizing reformers who would later, as part of the Consilium, take advantage of a wide permission to deconstruct and destroy.

In practice, as would be expected, the strict following of the ’62 Ritus is not universal, with the older practice still finding a place, even as occurs with the repetition of the Confiteor and other carryovers from the past.

Back to the point at hand, I would recommend that every celebrant of the TLM obtain a copy of a translation of the Ritus (it is in the Missal itself in Latin), which the FSSP sells here (along with other items).  It is important to be familiar with the Ritus along with the rubrics to get a full picture of how Mass is to be celebrated.

Photos by Allison Girone.

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s Substack “Tradition & Sanity”; personal site; composer site; publishing house Os Justi Press and YouTube, SoundCloud, and Spotify pages.

A Very Good Video from Brian Holdsworth on Liturgical Reform

I meant to share this video from the always-wise Brian Holdsworth yesterday, which was the 18th anniversary of Pope Benedict’s motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, but travel plans and an uncooperative router intervened. The title is “A Plea to Pope Leo For Reform”, and essentially, he lays out a very good case for why Summorum Pontificum needs to be restored, and likewise, some good food for thought as to what the future of liturgical reform in general should look like.

If I may be so bold as to summarize his argument, it basically runs as follows. Improvements in the human person do not happen at once; they require slow and steady work. If you are unhealthy and out of shape, you cannot simply decide to be healthy and in shape from one day to the next. You need to not just exercise and eat better, but get in the habit of exercising and eating better. Likewise, if you want to be smarter, you cannot simply decide to be smarter; you need to develop the habit of doing things that will make you smarter (read more good books, waste less time on scrolling through videos, etc.) And if you try to change your habits all at once, and go directly to he desired end-result, you will fail disastrously; he likens this to trying to get in shape by going from lifting 40 pounds in the gym one day to lifting 200 the next.

What this means (and this is the part which really made me take notice) is that even if the post-Conciliar liturgy were indeed a vast improvement on the traditional liturgy in every way, as some contend, it was nevertheless brought with it such an unprecedented amount of change, and was implemented at such an unprecedented speed, that it was never going to have the desired effect. Mr Holdsworth makes the analogy that it was like moving the pin in the weight machine from 40 to 200 from one day to the next, and the result has been a failure.

And here, by the way, he also makes a very wise cautionary note for those of us who love the traditional rite, and pray to see it restored to its rightful place in the Church, namely, that this cuts both ways. If, as we believe, it is the traditional Roman Rite that is superior, circumstances within the Church have nevertheless now changed in such a way imposing it all at once would be similarly imprudent, and lead to a similar failure.

This, in turn, is why Pope Benedict’s vision, that the liberation of the traditional Roman Rite, and his hope that it would gradually improve the general condition of the liturgy in the Church as a whole, were so wise. So I thank Mr Holdsworth for this very good observation, and urge all our readers to continue their prayers for the hastening of the day when the Summorum Pontificum regimen is restored as it should be.  

A Recent Discovery - Is This The Earliest Image of Our Lady of Sorrows?

I was recently contacted by my friend Fr. Andrew Marlborough, a priest based in England, who has written for the New Liturgical Movement in the past about items of interest that appear in auction houses throughout Britain and Europe. Before becoming a priest, his career was in the commercial art world.

This time, he wanted to know if I could shed any light on a recent purchase he had made, which, he was speculating, might be the earliest known example of an image of Our Lady of Sorrows, dating back over 1,000 years and possibly as much as 1,400 years. I could not offer any new information, so I open this up to New Liturgical Movement readers. It was described in the auction house as early Byzantine, but Fr. Andrew thinks it might be of Ottonian or Carolingian origin. Here is the object, followed by the letter he sent to me, with his description and thoughts. 

Fr Andrew wrote:

I recently purchased this small gilt-bronze roundel (7.5 cm diameter) at an auction in London. It was catalogued as 6th-8th century Byzantine and described as the Virgin Mary ‘grasping a long staff’. But I could see that it is clearly an early image of Our Lady of Sorrows. It is generally thought that this devotion developed between the 12th and 15th centuries. Therefore, it seemed a rather important object that could rewrite a chapter in the history of Marian iconography. I suspect the Byzantine attribution is wrong and that it is a little later, possibly Carolingian or Ottonian. If so, it could be one of the earliest depictions in art of Our Lady of Sorrows, if not the earliest.

As well as the question of dating, there is also the question of function. The auctioneers described it as a Byzantine phalera. These were decorative metal roundels which adorned the chest armour of soldiers or the harnesses of their horses in antiquity. This is possible, but I wonder if it may have been some kind of ornament for religious processions, pilgrimages, or for membership of a confraternity. Markings visible only on one side of the reverse suggest it has been used as a brooch. The amount of hand-finished detail on the roundel is impressive and finely executed. The use of gilding also indicates that it was a costly and highly prized object.

Stylistically, it seems more Western. This is supported by the fact that Eastern depictions of the Virgin Mary without Jesus are very unusual. The style of the sword/dagger may also help identify its date and origin.

I’d be grateful if anyone can shed further light on this.

He asks that anyone with information write to him at: andrew.marlborough@gmail.com.

The Translation of St Thomas Becket

On this day in the year 1220, the relics of St Thomas Becket were translated from the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral to a splendid new shrine in the main body of the church. This was one of the major religious events of the era, celebrated in the presence of King Henry III and many leading churchmen; in the Use of Sarum, it was commemorated by its own feast on July 7th, with the feast of the Holy Relics assigned to the following Sunday. It was of course the presence of St Thomas’ relics that made Canterbury such an important place of pilgrimage in medieval England, famously noted in the prologue of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (verses 15-18): “And specially from every shire’s ende / Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende (went), / The hooly blisful martir for to seke (seek), / That (t)hem hath holpen (helped) whan that they were seeke (sick).”

Because Thomas had given his life to defend the independence of the Church from undue interference by the civil power, King Henry VIII had the shrine destroyed in 1538, and forbade all devotion to him, even requiring that every church and chapel named for him be rededicated to the Apostle Thomas. The place within Canterbury Cathedral where the shrine formerly stood has been empty ever since; this video offers us a very nice digital recreation. Like the nearly contemporary shrine of St Peter Martyr and several others, the casket with the relics rests on top of an open arched structure, so that pilgrims can reach up and touch or kiss it from beneath, without damaging the metal reliquary itself.

The same source provides another video which shows sick persons praying at the original burial site in the crypt, which continued to attract pilgrims even after the relics themselves had been moved to the upper church. (The same is true of the church of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro in Pavia, where the original sarcophagus which held the relics of St Augustine is kept, although the relics were long ago moved to the main sanctuary.)

The Octave of Ss Peter and Paul

At that time: Jesus obliged his disciples to go up into the boat, and to go before him over the water, till he dismissed the people. And having dismissed the multitude, he went into a mountain alone to pray. And when it was evening, he was there alone. But the boat in the midst of the sea was tossed with the waves: for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking upon the sea. And they seeing him walk upon the sea, were troubled, saying: It is an apparition. And they cried out for fear. And immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying: Be of good heart: it is I, fear ye not. And Peter making answer, said: Lord, if it be thou, bid me come to thee upon the waters. And he said: Come. And Peter going down out of the boat, walked upon the water to come to Jesus. But seeing the wind strong, he was afraid: and when he began to sink, he cried out, saying: Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretching forth his hand took hold of him, and said to him: O thou of little faith, why didst thou doubt? And when they were come up into the boat, the wind ceased. And they that were in the boat came and adored him, saying: Indeed thou art the Son of God. (Matthew 14, 22-33, the Gospel of the octave day of Ss Peter and Paul)

(Public domain image from Wikimedia.)

This image of St Peter walking on the upon the water was originally made by Giotto in 1298 as a mosaic on a wall of the courtyard of the old St Peter’s Basilica, opposite the church’s façade. Only a few fragments were saved from the destruction of the old basilica; this copy is an oil painting made in 1628 from drawings of the original. In 1675, a new mosaic on the same design was mounted in the portico of the new basilica, facing the main door, as a reminder to pilgrims as they leave the church to pray for the Holy Father.

Image from Pax inter Spinas, the printing house of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in Brignole, France.

Interesting Saints on July 4th

In the Middle Ages, very few churches celebrated July 4th as a day within the octave of Ss Peter and Paul as Rome did. In most places, it was kept as a secondary feast of one of Western Christianity’s most popular Saints, Martin of Tours, commemorating the anniversary of both his ordination and the translation of his relics. The origin of this commemoration is narrated by the famous historian St Gregory of Tours, who succeeded to that see about two centuries after Martin did. The following excerpt from his book “On the Miracles of St Martin” was read at Matins of the feast in the breviary of Sarum.

The modern basilica of St Martin of Tours, built between 1886 and 1924 to replace a great medieval basilica which was destroyed during the Revolution. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by rene boulay, CC BY-SA 3.0.)

“In the 64th year after the passing of the most glorious lord Martin, the blessed Perpetuus obtained the dignity of the See of Tours… and decided to set the foundations of a church over (Martin’s) blessed body, greater than that which has had been. … When the desired time came for the priest (i.e. bishop) to dedicate the church, and translate the holy body from where it had been buried, Perpetuus brought together to the feast day the nearby bishops, and no small multitude of the abbots and various clerics. And because he wanted to do this on July 1st, after they had kept a vigil through the night, in the morning, they took a hoe, and began to dig out the dirt which was over the sacred tomb. Once it was uncovered, they put their hands to it to move it, and the work of the whole multitude could do nothing at all (by way of moving it) for the whole day.

(This happened again the next day, after which) one of the clerics said, ‘You know that after these three days was the beginning of his episcopacy, and perhaps he is admonishing us that it is on that day that he wishes us to move him.’ Then giving themselves over to fasting and prayer and continual silence day and night, they passed the three days … but on the fourth day, coming and putting their hands (on) it, they were completely unable to move the sarcophagus. Being all then thoroughly terrified, and ready to cover over the vessel which they had uncovered, there appeared an old man (of venerable appearance), saying that he was an abbot, and he said to them, ‘How long will you be confused and (thus) delay? Do you not see the lord Martin standing there, and ready to help you if you put your hands to it?’ Then casting aside his cloak, he put his hand on the sarcophagus with the rest of the priests… and (thus) at last at the attempt of the old man, the sarcophagus was moved with the greatest ease, and brought to the place where it is now venerated by the Lord’s favour. And being set in its place as the bishop wished, when the Mass was said, they went to a banquet, and looking diligently for the old man, they did not find him anywhere. Nor was there any man who had seen him leave the church. I believe that it was some angelic power, which proclaimed that it saw the blessed (Martin), and thereafter appeared no more.”

The tomb of St Martin in the crypt.

The Use of Sarum also kept the feasts of four other relic translations in July: St Thomas of Canterbury on the 7th, St Benedict on the 11th (this feast was kept in many other parts of Europe), St Swithin and Companions on the 16th, and St Osmund on the 17th. For this reason, a general feast of all relics was also instituted for the Sunday following July 7th.

In many parts of Germany, however, July 4th is the feast of St Ulrich. He was born in the Bavarian city of Augsburg in 890, and studied at the famous monastery of St Gallen in Switzerland; in 924, he was appointed to succeed his own uncle as bishop of his native place. The Magyars, not yet converted to Christianity, frequently attacked the southern and eastern parts of the Holy Roman Empire, and shortly before his appointment had raided Augsburg and destroyed its cathedral. Ulrich built a temporary church to replace it, and devoted himself entirely to divine services, beginning with Matins in the early hours of the morning, and to caring for the people both spiritually and temporally. In 955, he successfully preserved the city from another Magyar assault, personally taking charge of the defences until an imperial army could relieve it. He died on July 4, 973, and has the distinction of being the first Saint canonized by the Pope through a formal process.

St Ulrich, ca. 1510, by the painter Leonard Beck (1480 ca. - 1542) a native of Augsburg. Ulrich is often show holding a fish, in reference to a legend that he once was traveling, and forgot to eat his meal until it had gone past midnight of a fast day. On opening his container of provisions, he found that the meat had been miraculously turned into fish so he could eat it.

In some parts of eastern Europe, especially Bohemia, today is the feast of a Saint called Procopius, not to be confused with the 4th-century martyr of the same name noted in the Martyrology on July 8th. He was a married man who later became a hermit, and like so many truly holy hermits, attracted many disciples (thereby effectively ceasing to be a hermit). After his death in 1053, this community was organized into a Benedictine monastery that celebrated the liturgy in Church Slavonic, a tradition which continued until the end of the 11th century. (No records survive of which rite they used, but circumstantially, it seems more likely that it would have been the Roman Rite in Church Slavonic, since the Byzantine liturgy was not used by any of the monastic communities with which he was associated, or which evangelized the region.) Procopius was canonized in 1204 by Pope Innocent III, and has long been venerated as one of the patrons of the Kingdom of Bohemia.

St Procopius, together with St Vicent Ferrer, on one of the decorative pillars of the Charles Bridge in Prague. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by ZP, CC BY-SA 2.5) 

In the treasury of the cathedral of Reims in France there is kept a Gospel book written partly in the Cyrillic alphabet, and partly in the early Slavic script known as Glagolitic. The Glagolitic parts are pericopes that follow the tradition of the Roman Rite. The true origin of this manuscript is unknown, but it was long attributed to the hand of St Procopius. After being lost during the Hussite wars of the 15th century, it passed through various hands until it was acquired by a French cardinal and donated to Reims cathedral in 1574. By that time, the legend was current that St Jerome himself (who was in fact a native of the Balkan peninsula) has made the first translation of the Gospels into Church Slavonic, and this manuscript was believed to be his original copy of this (non-existent) translation. It was therefore incorporated into the coronation ritual of the French kings, which was traditionally held there. Unfortunately, the cover, which was covered with jewels and small relics, was destroyed during the Revolution.

A page of the Reims Gospel book, with a picture of St Jerome in an illustrated letter. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The Preface

Lost in Translation #130

The 1962 Missal contains twenty Prefaces (including the five so-called Gallican Prefaces added by Pope St. John XXIII in November of that year), but it may be more accurate to say with Abbé Claude Barthe that the Roman Rite has one Preface with twenty different options, just as there is one Roman Canon with different versions of the Communicantes and Hanc Igitur. [1]

The Opening

The opening of the Preface is almost always the same:

Vere dignum et justum est, aequum et salutáre, nos tibi semper et ubíque gratias ágere, Dómine sancte, Pater omnípotens, ætérne Deus:

Which I translate as:

It is truly meet and just, right and salutary, that we should at all times and in all places, give thanks unto Thee, O holy Lord, Father almighty, everlasting God;

The two exceptions are the Preface for Easter and the Preface for the Apostles or Evangelists. The former bespeaks the sheer exuberance of Paschaltide:

It is truly meet and just, right and salutary, that at all times, but more especially on this day [or in this season], we should extol your glory, Lord, when Christ our Pasch was sacrificed:

The Preface for the Apostles is more unusual in that it addresses God the Son rather than God the Father:

It is truly meet and just, right and salutary, to pray humbly to You, O Lord, eternal Shepherd, not to desert Your flock but to keep it in continual protection through Your blessed Apostles…

Together all the Prefaces declare that giving thanks to God everywhere and always, that extolling God’s glory, and that humbly praying to God have four qualities in common: they are dignum et justum, aequum et salutare. Since we discussed dignum et justum last week, let us now turn to aequum et salutare.

Aequus, which is etymologically related to “equality” and “equity,” originally referred to an area that was level or even, and because it was level or even (as opposed to steep or bumpy), it was considered favorable or advantageous. Applying this notion to the realm of morality, to be aequus was to be even-handed, fair, equitable, and impartial. From this understanding there developed the formula aequum est plus an infinitive verb, the meaning of which is “it is reasonable, proper, right, etc.” [2]

It seems that the claim of the Preface is that giving thanks to God is both morally correct and very much to our advantage. Of course, one can argue that the two are one and the same: to be just is to act to one’s true advantage and vice versa. Such is the thesis of Cicero’s classic De officiis, with which Catholic moral theology is in agreement. Nevertheless, the two ideas are distinct. It seems to me that the Preface uses two words to denote advantageousness and two words to denote moral correctness, and that it arranges these words chiastically:

To say that giving thanks to God is dignum is to say that it is worth our while; and to say that it is salutare is to say, as several preconciliar hand missals do, that it is “profitable for our salvation.” These concepts of advantage appeal to our enlightened self-interest, if you will.

Justum, on the other hand, clearly invokes justice, and I believe aequum plays a similar role in affirming the moral rectitude of thanksgiving. I therefore side again with the preconciliar hand missals when they translate aequum as “right.” The new Missal’s 2011 English translation of aequum also acknowledges the moral connotation of aequum here, but I believe it goes too far by translating it as “our duty,” for not everything that is right is a duty (it may be right for me to have a glass of wine with dinner, but it is not a duty). Similarly, I contend that the new translation of salutare as “our salvation” goes too far, for our salvation and something that contributes to our salvation are not the same thing.

The Ending

The majority of Prefaces end with sine fine dicentes (“saying without end”) while six, including the Gallican Preface for All Saints’ Day, end with supplici confessione dicentes (“saying with suppliant confession”). Only one, the Preface for the Holy Trinity, ends with una voce dicentes (“saying with one voice”), but since this Preface is used during the Time after Epiphany and the Time after Pentecost, it is the one heard the most by the average Latin Mass goer.

It is curious that the Preface, which was composed to be sung and which sometimes includes images of the congregation and the Angels singing together, ends with dicentes, speaking or saying. It is a reminder that the Latin verb dico can also mean “To describe, relate, sing, celebrate in writing.” [3] This usage is mostly found in poetry, which fits the lyrical quality of the Preface.

Claude-Marie Dubufe, La Suppliante, 1829

Of the various endings, supplici confessione dicentes, which I have slavishly rendered “saying with suppliant confession,” is the most difficult to translate. Most preconciliar hand missals have “with lowly praise” while the 2011 English translation of the new Missal has “in humble praise.” “Praise” is not wrong, but it is incomplete. For the early Church, confessio meant three things: praise of God, accusation of self, and profession of faith. There is, then, a slightly dolorous note to confessio insofar as it involves a recollection of our sinfulness, and this dolorous note, I believe, is reinforced by the adjective supplex: from sup-plico, bending the knees.

On the other hand, the dolorous note may not be the dominant one since supplici confessione dicentes is used on joyful occasions such as the feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of Saint Joseph, and it is also found in the Common Preface. The phrase is not found in the Preface for the Dead (where one might expect it), but it is found in the Preface for Lent and the Preface for the Holy Cross, which is used during Passiontide. Liturgical context may therefore be the deciding factor as to which meaning of confessio should be in the foreground. For instance, on a feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it may be more proper to translate confessio as “praise,” while during the season of Lent it may be more proper to translate it as “confession.”

Notes

[1] Claude Barthe, Forest of Symbols: The Traditional Mass and Its Meaning, trans. David J. Critchley (Angelico Press, 2023), pp. 97-98.

[2] Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary (Clarendon Press, 1879), “aequus,” II.B.3, p. 58.

[3] Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary, “2. dico,” I.B.4, p. 571.

[4] The Roman Missal, 3rd edition (USCCB Publishing, 2011), p. 552.