The Feast of St Thecla, First-Martyr Among Women

In the Byzantine and Ambrosian Rites, today is the feast of the virgin and martyr St Thecla; in the Roman Rite, she is kept as a commemoration on the preceding day.

Image from Wikimedia Commons by Shesmax, CC BY-SA 3.0

Her story is told in a document known as the Acts of Paul and Thecla, generally dated to roughly 180 AD; the narration is often confused and disjointed, and I here give only a very basic summary of it. When St Paul went to Iconium (Acts 14, 1), he was received by a man named Onesiphorus, whose house (i.e. the community gathered in his house) is mentioned twice in II Timothy; in verse 3, 11, Paul also mentions “the persecutions and suffering such as I underwent at Antioch, Iconium and Lystra.” Inspired by his preaching particularly on the subject of virginity, one of the young women present, Thecla, determined not to marry the man to whom her parents had betrothed her, a nobleman called Thamyris. The latter, blaming Paul for his fiancée’s change of heart, hauled him before the city officials, who remanded the Apostle to prison. When Thecla visited Paul there, she was discovered by Thamyris, who then had them both brought before the governor of the city; Paul was scourged and expelled from Iconium, and Thecla condemned to be burnt alive.

As is so often the case, nature refused to cooperate with the persecutors of one of God’s Saints, and the fire was extinguished by a sudden rain. Thecla was then let go, and after finding Paul, accompanied him to Antioch, where she was assaulted by a powerful man named Alexander. For rebuffing his advances, she was twice condemned to the wild beasts, which on the first occasion refused to touch her; on the second, one of them, a lioness, defended her from the rest, and was herself killed in the process. The governor, impressed by this miracle, released her; she then went to find Paul again, catching up with him at Myra (later the see of St Nicholas). From there she returned to Iconium, and then went to Seleucia in Asia Minor, where she lived an ascetic life in a cave for 72 years.

The apse of the ruined church of St Thecla in Seleucia, built at the site of her cave by the Emperor Zeno ca. 475. (Image by Klaus-Peter Simon from Wikimedia Commons, GNU Free Documentation License.)

During her time at Seleucia, she made many converts to the Faith, and performed many miraculous healings, which raised the ire of the local pagan physicians. They therefore plotted to assault her, but she was protected from them when the rock wall of her cave opened up to receive her, and closed when she had passed into it. The story ends here, and seems to imply that this was the manner of her death. Her tomb at Seleucia became an important pilgrimage site, and was seen there in the 4th century by St Gregory of Nazianzus and the pilgrim Egeria among others.

This document has often been attributed, at least in its inspiration, to an heretical sect of the later 2nd-century called the Encratites (“the continent”, or more accurately, “the self-controlling”), who completely rejected the use of marriage. It is true that when he is preaching at the house of Onesiphorus, St Paul is represented delivering a set of Beatitudes partly of his own devising which lay strong emphasis on virginity: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt. 5, 8); blessed are they that have kept the flesh chaste, for they shall become a temple of God (1 Cor. 6, 18-19); blessed are they that control themselves, for God shall speak with them: … blessed are they that have wives as not having them, for they shall receive God for their portion (1 Cor. 7, 29) … blessed are the bodies of the virgins, for they shall be well pleasing to God, and shall not lose the reward of their chastity.” Shortly after this, Thecla’s mother, Theocleia, says to Thamyris, “(Paul) will overturn the city of the Iconians, and your Thecla too besides; for all the women and the young men go in beside him, being taught to fear God and to live in chastity.”

However, the Encratites taught that all sexual activity is intrinsically immoral, even within marriage, and that virginity or perfect continence is necessary for salvation. The “Beatitudes” given above do not say this, nor do they really stray from the words of Paul and Christ Himself in the canonical writings of the New Testament. In point of fact, the closest thing to the Encratite teaching within the story is not said by Paul or Thecla or the narrator, but rather by two characters called Demas and Hermogenes. These are described as “hypocrites” who are “jealous” of Paul, and attribute to him the belief that “(T)here is for you a resurrection in no other way, unless you remain chaste, and pollute not the flesh, but keep it chaste.” But of course, even these words can certainly be understood in a perfectly orthodox sense.

The Preaching of Ss Paul and Barnabas, by Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1744

At her second appearance in the arena with the wild beasts, Thecla baptizes herself by throwing herself into a ditch of water, saying “In the name of Jesus Christ I am baptized on my last day.” Later on, when she departs from Paul to return to Iconium, he says to her, “Go, and teach the word of God.” The first known reference to the Acts of Paul and Thecla is in the treatise On Baptism by Tertullian (cap. xvij in fine), who says that these episodes should not be used to justify women teaching and baptizing, since the document was forged by a priest in Asia Minor, who did this “out of love for Paul”, and having confessed to the forgery, was deposed from his office. St Jerome also refers to them as apocryphal, on the grounds that if they were not, St Luke would have included some mention of the episodes they narrate in the Acts (De viris illustr. 7); they are likewise rejected by a document of the 6th century known as the Gelasian Decree, which lists the books accepted and rejected by the Church.

Despite this diffidence towards the written account of her life, the Church’s tradition has accepted devotion to Thecla as a Saint. In a letter to one of his spiritual daughters, Jerome himself writes that on her death she will be received in heaven by the Virgin Mary, by Miriam, the sister of Moses, and by Thecla, who “shall fly with joy to embrace you.” (Ep. 22, ad Eustochium, cap. 41) St Ambrose, in his treatise On the Virgins (lib. II, 3, 19) also pairs Thecla with the Mother of God: “Let, then, holy Mary instruct you in the discipline of life, and Thecla teach you how to be offered (i.e. how to die), for she, avoiding nuptial intercourse, and condemned through her (would-be) husband’s rage, changed even the disposition of wild beasts by their reverence for virginity.” In his 14th sermon on the Song of Songs, St Gregory of Nyssa comments on the words “His lips are as lilies, dropping a rich myrrh” (5, 13) as follows: “(Myrrh) is contempt for this corporeal life … such myrrh did Paul pour forth from his mouth, mixed with the pure lily of temperance, into the ears of a holy virgin. This was Thecla, who, having nobly received these drops within her soul, mortified the outer man, and extinguished every carnal thought and desire.” (PG 44, 1067-68) Many other references might be adduced to the point.

St Thecla and the Wild Beats; relief probably made in Egypt n the 5th century, now at the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons by R. Huggins, CC BY-SA 3.0)

There is no reason to be surprised at this. Modern scholars of hagiography have long recognized that there are many Saints whose written lives as they have come down to us are, either wholly or in part, not reliable historical documents, but who are nevertheless themselves indisputably real. In St Thecla’s case, we may rightly say that the Church simply recognized this about her a very long time ago.

In the traditional Roman prayers for the dying, known as the “Commendation of a soul (to God)”, the last invocation is “And as Thou didst deliver Thy most blessed Virgin and Martyr Thecla from three most cruel torments, so may Thou deign to deliver the soul of this Thy servant, and cause him to rejoice with Thee in the goods of heaven.” Prior to the Tridentine reform, however, this was the only mention of her in the Roman liturgical books; although her feast was celebrated or commemorated almost everywhere else in Europe, in Italy, it was kept only at Milan. She was added to the Roman calendar as a commemoration on the feast of Pope St Linus on September 23, in the first liturgical book to be published after the council of Trent, the breviary issued by Pope St Pius V in 1568, followed two years later by his missal.

As with certain other Saints (Catherine of Alexandria, Gregory the Wonderworker, Timothy), the inclusion of Thecla on the Tridentine calendar is part of the Catholic Church’s answer to the ideas of the Protestants. Despite their supposed emphasis on the teachings of St Paul (whom Luther made the lens by which to read the rest of the Bible), the churches of the Reformation in practice rejected his teaching on virginity and continence from the very start, abolishing the discipline of clerical celibacy, and every form of monasticism or canonical life. This abolition in turn left no formal place at all for women in their institutional life. The figure of Thecla, a personal disciple of St Paul, therefore stands as a witness to the value of virginity, the apostolic origins of the Church’s teaching about it, and the importance of women in consecrated life as both leaders and teachers.

The Duomo of Milan as it stands today is the result of a project which began in 1386, to replace the two cathedrals which had hitherto served the see of St Ambrose. The “winter church” as it is still called in Ambrosian liturgical books, was the smaller of the two, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and used from the Third Sunday of October, the feast of its Dedication, until Holy Saturday; it stood where the modern cathedral stands, but was much smaller. The larger “summer church”, which was demolished in 1543, stood on the opposite end of the modern Piazza del Duomo; in the Carolingian period, it was endowed with a relic of St Thecla’s skull, and her name was added to its dedication. She is therefore included in the list of Saints in the Nobis quoque of the Ambrosian Mass; within the new church, a large altar is dedicated to her at the end of the left nave.

The altar of St Thecla in the Duomo of Milan, by Luigi Bisi, 1872

In the Byzantine Rite, Thecla is called a “Great Martyr”, the title of those who suffered many different torments, and “Equal to the Apostles.” The texts of her Office refer to her over 20 times as the “first martyr” or “first to contend”, not, of course, to the despite of St Stephen, but as the first among women. For this reason, in the preparation rite of the Divine Liturgy, she is named first among the female martyrs. At Vespers of her feast, one of the hymns sung during the major incensation of the church reads, “O Lord, though Thy chaste First-Martyr was given over to the fire, yet she was not burned up within it, having received Thee as a dewfall, and among the many wild beasts, she remained unassailed, protected by Thy hand, who art the Savior of our souls.”

St Satyrus, the Brother of St Ambrose

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…

The Most Holy Name of Mary 2026

Truly it is worthy and just, right and profitable to salvation that we should give Thee thanks always, here and everywhere, o Lord, Holy Father, almighty and eternal God: Who willed the blessed Virgin Mary to be the mother of Thine Only-begotten Son, since no other mother was befitting for God than a virgin, and no other Son was befitting for the Virgin than God. And just as at the name of Jesus, every knee of those in heaven, on earth and below bends before Thy divine majesty; so also, at hearing the name of Mary, the heavens bow down, the earth falls prostrate, those below tremble, and confess that in the Virgin Mother, Thy omnipotence must be adored. And therefore with the Angels and Archangels, with the Thrones and Dominations, and with all the army of the heavenly host, we sing the hymn to Thy glory, saying without end: Holy, Holy, Holy... (The Ambrosian Preface for the feast of the Holy Name of Mary.)

A statue of the Virgin Mary on top of the tallest pinnacle of the cathedral of Milan, and affectionately known as “La Madonnina - the Little Madonna.” The cathedral is dedicated to Her Nativity. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Ibex 73, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Vere quia dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare, nos tibi semper hic et ubique gratias agere, Domine, sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus: Qui beatissimam Mariam Virginem Unigeniti tui Genitricem esse voluisti: quoniam nec alia Deum mater decebat, quam virgo; nec virginem alius Filius, quam Deus. Sicut autem divinæ majestati tuæ in nomine Jesu omne genuflectitur caelestium, terrestrium, et infernorum; sic, audito Mariæ nomine, inclinantes se coeli, terra procumbens, trepidantes inferi tuam in Virgine Matre adorandam omnipotentiam confitentur. Et ideo cum angelis et archangelis, cum thronis et dominationibus, cumque omni militia caeliestis exercitus, hymnum gloriae tuae canimus, sine fine dicentes: Sanctus...

Liturgical Notes on the Nativity of the Virgin Mary

Advent is considered the start of the Roman Rite’s liturgical year as a matter of logic and convention, but is not formally designated as such in the liturgy itself. In the Byzantine Rite, on the other hand, the liturgical year has a formally designated beginning on September 1st, a custom which has its origin in an ancient Roman cycle of taxation known as the Indiction. This was celebrated as the civil New Year in the Byzantine Empire until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and in the Russian Empire until 1699, when it was changed by Tsar Peter I as part of his Westernizing reforms. The Indiction is still mentioned repeatedly in the liturgical texts of September 1, as in this Idiomel for Matins.

Thy kingdom, Christ God, is the kingdom of all the ages, and Thy dominion is from generation to generation; Thou hast made all things in wisdom, fixing for us times and seasons; therefore we thank Thee for all things and through all things we cry out: Bless the crown of the year with Thy goodness and grant that we may all cry out to Thee without condemnation: Lord, glory to Thee! (Psalm 144, 13; 103, 24; 64, 12)

The Byzantine tradition distinguishes twelve feasts, eight of Our Lord and four of Our Lady, as “Great Feasts”, with Easter in a category of its own as the Feast of Feasts. Whether by design or coincidence, the first of these in the liturgical year is also the first chronologically, the Nativity of the Virgin on September 8th. This event does not of course occur in the Bible, but is first mentioned in the popular apocryphal work known as the Protoevangelium of James. The precise origin of the feast is a matter of speculation, and the reason for the choice of date is unknown. It was celebrated at Constantinople by the 530s, when St Romanus the Melodist composed a hymn for it; by the seventh century, it had passed to the West, and Pope St Sergius I (687-701) decreed that it be should celebrated with a procession from the church of St Adrian (who shares his feast day with the Birth of the Virgin) to St Mary Major. It would seem, however, that it was rather slower to be accepted than the other early Marian feasts, the Purification, Annunciation and Assumption, since it is not mentioned in some important early liturgical books. Thus we find it included in the oldest manuscript of the Gelasian Sacramentary in roughly 750 A.D., but missing from the calendar in some later books.

A 16th-century icon of the Birth of the Virgin.

From the Byzantine Rite, the Roman borrowed the following troparion as the antiphon at the Magnificat for Second Vespers, surely one of the most beautiful of the entire Gregorian reportoire.

Ἡ γέννησίς σου Θεοτόκε, χαρὰν ἐμήνυσε πάσῃ τῇ οἰκουμένῃ· ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ ἀνέτειλεν ὁ Ἥλιος τῆς δικαιοσύνης, Χριστὸς ὁ Θεὸς ἡμῶν· καὶ λύσας τὴν κατάραν, ἔδωκε τὴν εὐλογίαν· καὶ καταργήσας τὸν θάνατον, ἐδωρήσατο ἡμῖν ζωὴν τὴν αἰώνιον.
Nativitas tua, Dei Genitrix Virgo, gaudium annuntiavit universo mundo: ex te enim ortus est sol justitiae, Christus Deus noster: qui solvens maledictionem, dedit benedictionem, et confundens mortem, donavit nobis vitam sempiternam.
Thy birth, O Virgin Mother of God, proclaimed joy to the whole world; for from Thee arose the sun of righteousness, Christ our God; who released us from the curse, and gave us blessing; and confounding death, He granted us eternal life.

A tradition of the church of Angers in France claims that the feast was instituted by a bishop of that see in the early fifth century, St Maurilius, in consequence of an apparition of the Virgin vouchsafed to him. Another version of the story, also associated by some authors with St Maurilius, claims that a hermit who lived near Angers heard angels singing on September 8th to celebrate the birth upon earth of the Queen of Heaven. However, St Fulbert of Chartres, (ca. 960-1028) speaks of it as a feast of recent institution, and his three sermons on the subject are the oldest genuine Latin homilies on the feast. In the first of these, he says, “After some of Her other, more ancient feasts, the devotion of the faithful was not content, unless it could add to them today’s feast of Her Birth.”

Ironically, it was another sermon of St Fulbert, preached not on the Nativity, but on the Annunciation, which became the standard medieval Office sermon for the feast, since it was included among the sermons of St Augustine. This inclusion was perhaps not an accident, but a way of adding greater authority to the work of a “new” author on a new custom. (It is still to this day noted as “A Sermon of St Augustine” in the Breviary of the Extraordinary Form.) This text would have a huge fortune in the history of Marian devotion, since a part of the peroration became one of the most commonly used texts for antiphons and responsories of the Virgin Mary.

Sancta Maria, succurre miseris, juva pusillanimes, refove flebiles, ora pro populo, interveni pro clero, intercede pro devoto femineo sexu. Sentiant omnes tuum juvamen, quicumque celebrant tuam commemorationem.
Holy Mary, come to the aid of the wretched, help the weak in spirit, refresh the mournful, pray for the people, intervene for the clergy, intercede for all devout women. May all those who celebrate the commemoration of Thee perceive Thy aid.

The words occurring before and after these were often used in France as lessons for Matins in the Little Office of the Virgin Mary, as for example in the Cistercian Use, which, with characteristic austerity, proposes the same single lesson every day.

Admitte, piissima Dei Genitrix, preces nostras intra sacrarium tuæ exauditionis, et reporta nobis antidotum reconciliationis. Sit per te excusabile quod per te ingerimus: fiat impetrabile quod fida mente poscimus. Accipe quod offerimus, redona quæ rogamus, excusa quod timemus.
Most holy Mother of God, admit our prayers into the holy place where Thou may hear them, and bring us the remedy of reconciliation. Through Thee, may all be forgiven, that we place therein also through Thee; and what we ask with confidence become obtainable. Receive what we offer, grant in return what we ask, obtain pardon for what we fear.

The upper part of the Tree of Jesse window, one of the most famous and best preserved of the stained glass windows in the cathedral of Chartres, from the end of the 12th century.

At the Papal conclave of 1241, one of the most difficult in the Church’s history, the cardinals were forcibly enclosed in a ruined Roman building known as the Septizodium, then a thousand years old, under such rough conditions that one of their number died. This was done by another cardinal, Matteo Orsini, in an attempt to force the election of a Pope favorable to certain interests which he backed. The cardinals vowed to honor the feast of the Virgin Mary’s Nativity by granting it an octave, if She would lead them to agreement on a candidate and obtain their deliverance; the liturgical commentator William Durandus, writing at the end of the century, notes that the Pope thus elected, Celestine IV, died after a reign of two-and-a-half weeks, and it was left to his successor, Innocent IV, to fulfill the vow.

As a “new” feast, the Nativity of the Virgin was never kept with a vigil in the Roman Rite, i.e., a fast on the day before, accompanied by a Mass in violet after None, and without the Gloria in excelsis, Alleluia or Creed. (The same holds true even for the medieval feast par excellence, Corpus Christi.) In the Ambrosian Rite, however, it is kept with such a vigil, as a feast of particular importance, the titular feast of the cathedral. On the façade over the central door is a large plaque with the two words “Mariae Nascenti - To Mary as She is born.”

On both the vigil and feast, a lesson is read which very cleverly links two Biblical passages traditionally associated with the Virgin Mary, the sixth chapter of the Song of Songs, and the twenty-fourth of Ecclesiasticus.

Thus sayeth Wisdom: Song 6, 8-9 She is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her. The daughters saw her, and declared her most blessed: the queens and concubines, and they praised her. Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array? Eccli. 24, 24-28 I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits. For my spirit is sweet above honey, and my inheritance above honey and the honeycomb. My memory is unto everlasting generations.

The Protoevanglium of James mentioned above is also the source for the names of the Virgin’s parents, Ss. Joachim and Anna. Because it is an apocryphal Gospel, their feasts were suppressed from the Roman Rite in the reform of St Pius V, along with the Virgin’s Presentation in the Temple, which is also first mentioned therein. This went far too strongly against the grain of traditional piety, and all three feasts were swiftly restored, St Anne’s by Pius’ own successor, Gregory XIII, in 1584, the Presentation by Sixtus V the following year, and St Joachim by Gregory XV in 1622. In the Roman Rite, his feast was assigned to the Sunday within the Octave of the Assumption, and later fixed by St Pius X to August 16th. The Ambrosians, however, placed it on September 9th, the day after the Virgin’s Nativity; arguably a more reasonable choice, since the ancient tradition was that Joachim and Anne were both quite elderly at the time of the Virgin’s birth, making it certain that neither was still alive at the time of the Assumption.

The Descent of the Virgin from St Anne, by Gerard David, ca. 1490

On both feasts, in both the Roman and Ambrosian liturgies, the Gospel is the genealogy of Christ from the beginning of St Matthew, chapter 1, 1-16. From ancient times, it was understood that this Gospel, in tracing the royal descent of St. Joseph, shows that the Virgin Mary is also descended from King David, to whom the promise of the Messiah was made. Since Joseph is commended as a just man, he would not transgress the law that a Jew must marry within his own tribe, and therefore Mary must also be of the tribe of David. A passage to this effect from St John Damascene’s book “On the Orthodox Faith” (book 4, 15) is read in the Roman Breviary on the feast of St Joachim.

On September 12th, 1683, the combined armies of the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Poland defeated the invading armies of the Ottoman Empire at the gates of Vienna, a battle which would prove to be the high-water mark of the Turkish invasion of Europe. The King of Poland and commander of the Christian armies, Jan III Sobieski, had placed his troops under the special protection of the Virgin Mary, as they rode to the defence of Christendom. In thanksgiving for the victory, therefore, Blessed Innocent XI (1676-89) extended to the universal calendar the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, thitherto kept only in Spain and Naples. It was originally assigned to the Sunday within the Octave of the Nativity of the Virgin, but later fixed by St Pius X to September 12th. (The reform of 1911 abolished the once-common custom of fixing feasts to particular Sundays, with a few exceptions.) In the Calendar of 1969, the feasts of the Holy Name of Jesus and of Mary were both abolished, one of the reformers’ worst decisions, happily undone by St John Paul II in 2002. In the interim, it continued to be observed as the titular feast of many churches of the Virgin Mary, especially in Italy.

King Jan Sobieski Victorious at the Gates of Vienna, by Jan Matejko, 1883. In the middle, King Jan hands to a Dominican friar a message to deliver to the Pope, announcing the victory; on the right, Leopold I, Archduke of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor, doffs his hat to him. The artist, himself a Pole, painted this in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the battle, by which time the Kingdom of Poland had been partitioned between Austria, Russia and Prussia, and no longer existed as an independent state; he is here reminding the Austrians that their position as a dominant power in Central Europe was due in no small measure to the military might of the Poles, now in part their subjects. This painting was donated to the Vatican Museums by the artist, on condition that it always be prominently displayed; on the frame (not seen here) are medallion portraits of Bl. Innocent XI and the then-reigning Pope, Leo XIII. A copy of this image in silver relief was placed over the grave of King Jan in the cathedral of Krakow.

The Vigil of the Nativity of the Virgin

The origin of the feast of the Virgin Mary’s Nativity is a matter of speculation, and the reason for the choice of date is unknown. It was celebrated at Constantinople by the 530s, when St Romanus the Melodist composed a hymn for it; by the seventh century, it had passed to the West, and Pope St Sergius I (687-701) decreed that it be should celebrated with a procession from the church of St Adrian (who shares his feast day with the Birth of the Virgin) to St Mary Major. It would seem, however, that it was rather slower to be accepted than the other early Marian feasts, the Purification, Annunciation and Assumption, since it is not mentioned in some important early liturgical books. Thus we find it included in the oldest manuscript of the Gelasian Sacramentary in roughly 750 A.D., but missing from the calendar in some later books. The liturgical commentators of the High Middle Ages such as Sicard of Cremona and William Durandus were aware that it was of later institution.

The Nativity of the Virgin, by Pietro Lorenzetti, 1335-42; originally painted for one of the side-altars of the Cathedral of Siena, now in the Cathedral Museum.

By the time the feast was universally accepted, the Roman Rite had mostly ceased to institute vigils for “new” celebrations; this holds true even for the medieval feast par excellence, Corpus Christi. Thus, the Nativity of the Virgin was only kept with a vigil in a limited number of places, and never at Rome itself. This vigil would have consisted of a fast on the day before the feast, accompanied by a Mass in violet after None, and without the Gloria in excelsis, Alleluia or Creed. As it generally the case with later additions, there is not a complete uniformity in the liturgical texts of these Masses from one church to another, but in most places, they were taken from the daily votive Mass of the Virgin or the vigil of the Assumption.

In the Ambrosian Rite, however, the feast is kept with such a vigil, as a feast of particular importance, the titular feast of the cathedral of Milan. On the façade over the central door is a large plaque with the two words “Mariae Nascenti - To Mary as She is born.”

On both the vigil and feast, the Ambrosian Mass reads a lesson which very cleverly links two Biblical passages traditionally associated with the Virgin Mary, the sixth chapter of the Song of Songs, and the twenty-fourth of Ecclesiasticus.

“Thus sayeth Wisdom: Song 6, 8-9 She is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her. The daughters saw her, and declared her most blessed: the queens and concubines, and they praised her. Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array? Sir. 24, 24-28 I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits. For my spirit is sweet above honey, and my inheritance above honey and the honeycomb. My memory is unto everlasting generations.”

At the Mass of the vigil, the following Confractorium is sung; this is the antiphon that accompanies the Fraction rite, which is done immediately after the Canon, before the Lord’s Prayer.

Beatus ille venter qui te portavit, Christe, et beata ubera quæ te lactaverunt Dominum, et Salvatorem mundi, qui pro salute generis humani carnem assumere dignatus es. ~ Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, o Christ, and blessed are the breasts that nursed Thee, the Lord and Savior of the world, Who for the salvation of the human race deigned to take on the flesh. (In the video below, this is the third piece, beginning at 1:10.)

In the same Mass, the Transitorium (the equivalent of the Roman Communio) was borrowed from the repertoire of processional chants used on the feast of the Purification, the first Marian feast to be accepted by the Ambrosian Rite in the post-Carolingian period. In this video, we hear it sung as part of that procession in the cathedral itself, starting at 1:22.

Magnificamus te, Dei Genitrix; quia ex te natus est Christus salvans omnes, qui te glorificant. Sancta Domina, Dei Genitrix, sanctificationes tuas transmitte nobis. ~ We magnify Thee, Mother of God, because from Thee was born Christ, who saveth all that glory Thee. Holy Lady, Mother of God, impart Thy sanctity to us.

The Byzantine tradition distinguishes twelve feasts, eight of Our Lord and four of Our Lady, as “Great Feasts”, with Easter in a category of its own as the Feast of Feasts. Whether by design or coincidence, the first of these in the liturgical year, which begins on September 1st, is the Birth of the Virgin, which is also the first historically. The Twelve Feasts also each have a Fore-feast, the Roman equivalent of a vigil, and an Afterfeast; the latter are like the octaves of the Roman Rite, but vary in length, and that of the Virgin’s Nativity is only 4 days long, ending on September 12th. A Fore-feast is a full liturgical day, and so unlike Roman vigils, which run from Matins to None, it begins at Vespers of the day which precedes it, in this case, on the evening of September 6th. Here is a selection of some of the hymns sung at that Vespers, followed by the proper hymns of the Divine Liturgy of the Forefeast on September 7th.

An icon of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, painted by Adrianoupolitis Konstantinos in the middle of the 18th century, now in the Benaki Museum in Athens. (Public domain image from Wikipedia.)

In Thy nativity, o Immaculate one, rays of joy dawned upon the minds of the whole world, foretelling to all the sun of Glory, Christ our God; for Thou were shown to be the mediatrix of true gladness and grace.

The glory of this Thy forefeast, o Immaculate one, foretells to all peoples the good deeds wrought by Thy favor; for Thou art the source of their present gladness, and the cause of the joy that shall come to us, the delight of divine happiness.

The maiden in whom God dwelt and pure Mother of God, the glory of prophets, the daughter of David, today is born of Joachim and the prudent Anne, and in Her birth, overthrows the curse of Adam that was against us.

Theotokion The multitudes of the Angels in heaven and the race of men upon the earth bless Thy all-venerable Nativity, a all-holy and pure Virgin, since Thou became the Mother of the Creator of all things, Christ our God. Ceasa Thou not, we pray, to supplicate Him for us, who after God, place our hopes in Thee, all-praised and undefiled Mother of God.

At the Divine Liturgy, the Troparion From the root of Jesse and from the loins of David, the godly child Mary is born to us today. Therefore, all creation rejoices and is renewed, together with heaven and earth rejoice. Praise Her, ye families of the nations; Joachim is gladdened, and Anna cries out in celebration: The barren woman gives birth to the Mother of God and the Sustainer of our Life.

The Kontakion Today, the Virgin and Mother of God Mary, the inviolate bridal chamber of the heavenly bridegroom, is born from a barren woman according to the divine plan to be made ready as the chariot of God’s Word; even for this was she predestined, the gateway of God, and truly the Mother of Life.

A Medieval Hymn of St Bernard

Here is a very nice medieval hymn for the feast of St Bernard of Clairvaux, which is used in the Cistercian Divine Office at both Vespers of his feast. According to the Analecta hymnica, the great catalog of medieval liturgical hymns, both the author and the date of composition are unknown, but it appears in several Cistercian sources in the 13th century, and has been in continual use within the order ever since. (It does not seem that any of the great translators like Neale or Caswell ever put their pens to this, so we must be content with my poor English prose translation.) This recording from the abbey of Marienstatt in Germany also includes the versicle that follows the hymn, “Ora pro nobis, sancte Bernarde”, in a more solemn tone which is different from the Roman one.

Bernardus Doctor inclytus, Caelos conscendit hodie, Quem attraxit divinitus Splendor paternae gloriae.	Bernard, the renowned doctor ascends the heavens today Whom the splendor of the Father’s glory drew from on high.
Exsultet caelum laudibus De Bernardi consortio, Quem conjungis caelestibus, Jesu, nostra redemptio.	Let heaven exult in praises for Bernard’s company, Whom You join to the citizens of heaven, Jesus, our redemption.
Rufum dorso per catulum Praefigurasti puerum Fore Doctorem sedulum, Conditor alme siderum.	By the figure of a dog with a red back, you showed that the boy would be a zealous teacher, O maker of the stars.
Nascentis ei claruit Clara Christi nativitas, Hoc a te donum habuit, O lux, beata Trinitas.	For him shined most brightly The glorious birth of Christ; This gift he had from you, o light, o blessed Trinity.
Arcana sacrae paginae Declarat, et mysterium Quod effecit in Virgine Deus, creator omnium.	He set forth the mysteries of the holy book, which God, the creator of all things, wrought in the Virgin.
Rore perfusum gratiae Monstrat dulcor eloquii; Per te fons sapientiae, Summi largitor praemii.	The sweetness of his speech showed him to be filled with grace, though Thee, o font of wisdom, giver of the highest reward.
Detentos a daemonibus Sanat, morbos languentium Curat, confert doloribus Magnum salutis gaudium.	He heals those held by devils, he cures the ailments of the sick, and gives the great joy of salvation to their griefs.
Vita vivit feliciter Cum Maria Christifera Cum qua degustat dulciter Aeterna Christi munera.	Happily he lives (eternal) life with Mary, the bearer of Christ, with whom he sweetly tastes the eternal gifts of Christ.
Summae Deus potentiae, Tibi sit laus et gloria: Da post cursum miseriae Beata nobis gaudia. Amen.	God of highest power, to thee be praise and glory: after the way of wretchedness give us blessed joys. Amen.

There are some interesting things to note. The hymn is an acrostic, the first letters of each stanza spelling his name BERNARDVS. The meter is the iambic dimeter, that of the original hymns of St Ambrose and other early Christian poets, short and long syllables alternating four times for a total of eight. (Substitutions are very common, especially since vowel quantities were already weakened in the 5th century, and hardly perceived as such in the High Middle Ages.) As such, it could in theory be sung in any one of a great many melodies, and other common hymns in this meter were often sung with different music from one church to another. However, it was an essential characteristic of the medieval Cistercians to keep a strict uniformity of observance in all their houses, and it is almost certain that they would have all used the same music.

The words of the third stanza “By the figure of a dog with a red back” refer to an episode recorded in the life of St Bernard. When his mother Aleth was pregnant with him (the third of her seven children, of whom four others are Blesseds), she dreamt that she was carrying a barking white dog with some red hair on its back. A religious man whom she consulted explained this dream to mean that the child she bore would be like the dogs mentioned in Psalm 67, “The tongues of your dogs lick the blood of their enemies”, guarding the house of God against its enemies, a preacher, and a healer of souls. This latter idea derives from St Gregory the Great’s symbolic interpretation of the dogs that licked the sores of Lazarus (hom. 40 in Evang.), in a passage which is read in the Roman Breviary on Thursday of the second week of Lent. “A dog’s tongue heals the sore which it licks; and so do holy teachers, when they instruct is in the confession of our sins, touch the sores of our souls by their tongues (i.e. their speech).” The following stanza refers to a vision of the Child Jesus which Bernard himself had when he was a boy, and fell asleep while waiting with his family to go out to Matins and the Midnight Mass of Christmas.

Christ Embracing St Bernard, ca. 1625, by Francisco Riablta (1565-1628). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Medieval hymnographers loved the trick performed by the author of this hymn, in which the last line of each stanza is the title (i.e. first line) of another hymn. (A similarly constructed piece is sung in the proper Office of St Anthony the Abbot.)

Splendor paternae gloriae – an original hymn of St Ambrose himself, which the
      Cistercians sing at Sunday Lauds, the Roman Office at Monday Lauds.
Jesu, nostra redemptio – from the feast of the Ascension, pre-Urban VIII
Conditor alme siderum – from Vespers of Advent, pre-Urban VIII
O lux, beata Trinitas – Saturday Vespers, pre-Urban VIII
Deus, creator omnium – the Ambrosian hymn for Sunday Vespers
Summi largitor praemii – a hymn for Lent sung by the Cistercians at Matins;
      also used at Sarum, but not in the Roman Office.
Magnum salutis gaudium – processional hymn for Palm Sunday
Aeterna Christi munera – Matins hymn of the Apostles.
Beata nobis gaudia – Lauds hymn of Pentecost.

In addition, the first line of the second stanza, “Exsultet caelum laudibus”, is the title of the pre-Urban VIII version of the Vespers hymn of the Apostles. (Like all the religious orders that retained their own Uses of the Divine Office, the Cistercians never adopted Pope Urban VIII’s reform of the hymns.)

The difficulty of this trick is to integrate the titles into the words of a new composition in a new sense. Some of the expressions in the vocative case, such as “Jesu, nostra redemptio,” could be interchanged with any of the others, (I do not say this as a critique of the author; medievals valued originality far less than we do,) but the last three are particularly well chosen.

The Cistercians were founded at the very end of the 11th century as “strict constructionalists” of the original Rule of St Benedict, which they felt had been unhappily compromised by later developments and customs that emerged within the Cluniac monastic empire. The term which St Benedict uses for “hymn” in the Rule (capp. 9, 12, 13 and 17) is “ambrosianum”, since it was St Ambrose who first introduced the use of hymns into the West. This led the Cistercians to the believe that St Benedict’s original intention was not merely that monks should sing “a hymn” at certain Hours, but that they should use the specific corpus of hymns used by Ambrose himself. This corpus would be found, as they thought, in the Ambrosian Divine Office; they therefore sent people to Milan to copy out the Ambrosian hymnal then in use, and bring it back to Citeaux. It was incorporated into their Office to the despite of many hymns which at that point had long been in general use within the broad liturgical family of the Roman Rite. This was very controversial, even for an age in which there was a great deal of liturgical variation, and the Order was eventually pressured into adopting the traditional corpus of hymns, with some variations. This is why some of the original Ambrosian hymns such as “Splendor paternae gloriae” are given a more prominent place within the Cistercian Office than they were elsewhere.

The Feast of St Lawrence in Other Western Rites

It was the custom of the earliest Christians to obtain transcripts of the trials of their martyrs whenever they could. These were kept in the archives of local churches not merely for the sake of record keeping, but so that they could be read during the liturgy, a tradition which is attested in the writings of several of the Fathers. The Roman custom of reading the lives of the Saints in the Divine Office derives from this, and in the Ambrosian Mass, it is still to this day permitted to substitute the life of a Saint for the Old Testament reading on his feast day.

The following video was taken in 2014 in the basilica of St Ambrose in Milan, on the feast of the Martyrs Ss Protasius and Gervasius; after the Gloria and Collect, the passion of the two martyrs is read.

Because of this custom, there survive indisputably authentic records of the trials of a number of early martyrs (e.g. Ss Perpetua and Felicity, Ss Fructuosus and Companions, and St Cyprian); however, we have none from the city of Rome. A professor of mine had a theory as to why this is so: he believed that the archives of the church of Rome had been destroyed during the persecution of Diocletian (303-6), and this would explain why we are dependent on documents from later writers (sometimes much later) for information about the martyrdoms of so many prominent Roman Saints, such as Agnes or Pope Clement I.

And thus, the earliest major source for the life of St Lawrence, whose feast we keep today, is St Ambrose, who was born in Trier, where his father was serving as pretorian prefect of Gaul, some eighty years after the great martyr’s death in 257. Ambrose’s family, however, was originally Roman, and when his father died while he was still quite young, his mother took him back to Rome, where he studied law and rhetoric. Many of his writings evince familiarity with the customs and traditions of the Eternal City (for example, he is the first witness to an early recension of the Roman Canon), and so we may take him as a reliable witness to those which concern St Lawrence.

A partial view of the frescoed ceiling of the chapel of St Sixtus within the basilica of St Lawrence in Milan, by the German painter Johann Christoph Storer (1611-71). Behind St Lawrence, holding a knife. is the martyr St Aquilinus, who is buried in a chapel on the opposite side of the same basilica, and next to him, St Sixtus, in whose honor the chapel was built in the late 5th or early 6th century. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0.)

One of the fourteen hymns considered indisputably his work was written in honor of St Lawrence; it is sung in the Ambrosian Office at Lauds and both Vespers. Unfortunately, it seems that none of the great English translators such as Fr Caswall or John Mason Neale put their hands to it, and so we must be content with my poor prose version.

Apostolorum supparem, Laurentium archidiaconum, Pari corona martyrum Romana sacravit fides.	The faith of Rome sanctified the archdeacon Lawrence, nearly equal to the Apostles, with an equal martyrs’ crown.
Xystum sequens hic martyrem, Responsa vatis retulit: Mœrere, fili, desine: Sequere me post triduum.	He, following the martyr Sixtus, received these words as those of a prophet: “Cease mourning, my son, after three days thou wilt follow me.”
Nec territus pœnæ metu, Hæres futurus sanguinis, Spectavit obtutu pio Quod ipse mox persolveret.	And not frightened by the fear of suffering, soon to be heir of (Sixtus’) blood, he dutifully be- held that which he himself would soon undergo.
Jam tunc in illo martyre Egit triumphum martyris; Successor æquus syngrapham Vocis tenens et sanguinis.	Already then in that martyr he led a martyr’s triumph, holding as his successor the promise of his words and blood.
Post triduum iussus tamen Census sacratos prodere, Spondet pie, nec abnuit Addens dolum victoriæ.	At last, after three days, ordered to hand over the sacred treasures, he dutifully promised and did not refuse, adding guile to victory.
Spectaculum pulcherrimum! Egena cogit agmina, Inopesque monstrans prædicat: Hi sunt opes Ecclesiæ.	A most beautiful sight! He gathers the needy crowds, and showing the poor, he proclaims, “These are the riches of the Church.”
Lucro piorum perpetes Inopes profecto sunt opes; Avarus illusus dolet, Flammas et ultrices parat.	The poor are the everlasting riches gained by the pious; the greedy man deceived, grieves, and prepares the avenging flames.
Fugit perustus carnifex, Suisque cedit ignibus: Versate me, martyr vocat, Vorate coctum, si lubet.	The executioner is burned and flees, and yields to his own flames; “Turn me over”, the martyr cries out,  “and eat what is cooked, if you like.”
Gloria tibi, Domine, gloria Unigenito, una cum sancto Spiritu in sempiterna sæcula. Amen.	Glory to Thee, o Lord, glory to the Only-begotten Son, together with the Holy Spirit unto everlasting ages. Amen.

The Ambrosian preface for St Lawrence beautifully compares his faith to gold refined in the fire.

VD: Qui hodierna die Levitæ tui Laurentii fidem áuream igne ardentissimo comprobasti; ut esset tibi hostia viva, hostia sancta, in odorem suavitatis accensa. O gloriosi certaminis virtus! O inconcussa mentis constantia! Stridunt membra viventis super craticulam imposita, et prunis sævientibus anhelantis; ut et tibi hostia fieret, et ad martyrii triumphum intrepidus perveniret. Per Christum…

Truly it is worthy… who on this day didst make proof of the golden faith of Thy Levite Lawrence with a most ardent fire, that he might be a living and holy victim, burnt unto the odor of sweetness. Oh, the might of his glorious contest! Oh, the unshaken constancy of his mind! His members, laid on the grill, groan, as he still lives and breathes while the fires rage; that he might both become a sacrifice unto Thee, and fearlessly arrive at the triumph of martyrdom. Through Christ…

The Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, by Titian, 1567, in the Spanish Royal Monastery of the Escorial.

The Spanish poet Prudentius (348 – 405/13 ca.) was a contemporary of Ambrose, and had a similar secular career: training in rhetoric and law, and service as a provincial governor. In later life, he withdrew from public service and became an ascetic, but was never a cleric. One of his most famous works is a collection of fourteen poems “On the crowns (of the martyrs)”, including several Romans, Lawrence among them.

A number of passages from this work are included in the Mozarabic Divine Office, which is often astonishingly prolix. For example, on the feast of the great martyr St Vincent of Saragossa, the hymn at Lauds has 292 lines (73 stanzas) excerpted from the 576 which Prudentius dedicates to him. For St Lawrence, however, a judicious selection of verses was made (and largely rewritten) to create a hymn of classically Roman restraint, with only five stanzas, including the doxology. (I have taken this English version from the website of Mr Matthew Carver, who kindly licenses all his translations as Creative Commons. CC BY-NC 3.0 US)

http://matthaeusglyptes.blogspot.com/2015/05/en-martyris-laurentii.html

En Martyris Laurentii Armata pugnavit fides, Nam morte mortem diruit, Ac semet impendit sibi.	BEHOLD, of Lawrence, martyr famed, What faith, well-armed, hath led the host! By death o’er death the crown he claimed And gave himself to th’ uttermost.
Fore hoc sacerdos dixerat Jam Sixtus affixus cruci, Laurentium flentem videns Crucis sub ipso stipite.	Twas as his bishop Sixtus said As fastened to the cross he hung, When seeing Lawrence weep with dread Beneath his cross whereat he clung:
Desiste discessu meo Fletum dolenter fundere, Praecedo frater, tu quoque Post hoc sequeris triduum.	“Forbear at my departure now To shed thy tears so grievously; Though, brother, I go first, yet thou Shalt three days hence my foll’wer be.”
Extrema vox Episcopi Praenuntiatrix gloriae, Nihil fefellit: nam dies Praedicta palmam praestitit	What lastly did the bishop say Prophetic voice of glorious heav’n In naught deceived, for on the day That he foretold, the palm was giv’n.
Gloria Patri ingenito, Gloria unigenito Una cum sancto Spiritu In sempiterna saecula. Amen..	To th’ unbegotten Father praise, And to the sole begotten Son And Holy Ghost for endless days, One God, for evermore be done.

The outlandish prolixity of the Mozarabic liturgy is frequently displayed in the Mass as well. Its ancient preface for the feast of St Lawrence is over 400 words long, and retells the story not only of Lawrence himself, but also of St Sixtus II, the Pope whom he served as deacon, and of St Hippolytus, the soldier and guard whom he converted, and who was also martyred for the Faith. Here is an excerpt, which is based on the same passage of St Ambrose’s De Officiis (39) that provides the text for several parts of the Roman Office of St Lawrence. (This preface is written in a highly elaborate rhetorical style which does not lend itself easily to literal translation.)

The preface (“illatio” in Mozarabic terminology) of the Mass of St Lawrence in a Mozarabic Missal printed in 1804, starting in the upper part of the 2nd column.

Quique Apostolorum choro donatus, filium generosae mentis Laurentium exspectabat: quia sine eo proprii sanguinis victimam offerre nolebat, cui cuncta mysteriorum ministeria transigenda commiserat. Qui cum de sua remansione patri querulus exstitisset, ab eodem flere prohibitus, quod post tres dies sequeretur audivit: nec debere de sua desertione causari praemonuit, quoniam ei gloriosior diabolo seuiente inrisoque tyranno triumphus maneret. Martyrum tuorum, Christe, infatigabilis fortitudo!

And (Sixtus), having been given as a gift to the choir of the Apostles (i.e. in heaven), awaited his generous-minded son Lawrence, because he did not want to offer the sacrifice of his own blood without him to whom he had entrusted the celebration of all services in the (holy) mysteries. And when the latter complained to his father about remaining behind, he was forbidden by him to weep, since he heard that after three days he would follow; and (Sixtus) foretold that he ought not to complain of his being left, since a more glorious triumph awaited him over the raging devil and the tyrant whom he would mock. Oh, the tireless fortitude of Thy martyrs, o Christ!

The words “to whom he entrusted the celebration of all services in the holy mysteries” refers to the custom by which the administration of the chalice was especially entrusted to deacons. In his account of their martyrdom in the De Officiis, St Ambrose has Lawrence say to Sixtus, “ ‘Whither, holy priest, dost thou hasten without thy deacon? … Dost thou deny a share in thy blood to one to whom thou didst entrust the consecration of the Lord’s blood, and a share in the celebration of the sacraments?’ To this Sixtus replied, ‘I do not leave or abandon thee, son, but greater contests await thee. We, as elder men, receive the way of an easier combat; a more glorious triumph against the tyrant awaiteth thee as a younger man. Soon shalt thou come after, cease weeping; after three days shalt thou follow me, as levite followeth priest.”

St Sixtus Bids St Lawrence Farewell, 1465 ca., by the German (Südtiroler) painter Michael Pacher (1435-98). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

The Feast of Ss Peter and Paul 2026

Truly it is fitting and just, right and profitable to salvation to give Thee thanks always, here and everywhere, in honor of the Apostles Peter and Paul. Whom Thy election did so deign to consecrate, that it might change blessed Peter’s worldly trade as a fisherman into divine teaching; so that he might deliver the human race from the depths of hell with the nets of Thy precepts. And then Thou didst change the mind of his fellow Apostle Paul, along with his name; and whom the Church at first feared as a persecutor, She now rejoices to hold as the teacher of divine commandments. Paul was blinded that he might see; Peter denied, that he might believe. To the one Thou gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven, to the other, knowledge of the divine law, that he might call the nations; for the latter brought them in, as the other opened (the door of heaven). Therefore both received the rewards of eternal virtue. Thy right hand did raise up the one, lest he sink as he walked upon the water, and rescued the other from the dangers of the deep when he was shipwrecked for the third time.

The Stefaneschi Triptych, painted by Giotto and assistants for the high altar of St Peter’s Basilica, ca. 1330. On the left, the Crucifixion of St Peter; in the middle, Card. Giacomo Stefaneschi kneels before Christ in majesty; on the right, the beheading of St Paul. In the upper part of the right panel, Angels bring St Paul’s blindfold to one of the women of the Roman church after his death, as Paul promised her would happen. (Public domain image from Wikipedia; click to enlarge.)

The one did conquer the gates of the hell, and the other the sting of death; and Paul was beheaded, for he was shown to be the head of the Gentiles’ faith, while Peter, followed in the footsteps of Christ, the head of us all. Whom together with Thee, almighty Father, and the Holy Spirit, the Angels praise, the Archangels venerate, the Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Principalities and Powers adore; whom the Cherubim and Seraphim with shared rejoicing praise. And we pray that Thou may command our voices to be brought in among them, saying with humble confession: Holy, Holy, Holy… (The Preface of Ss Peter and Paul in the Ambrosian Missal.)

Vere quia dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare, nos tibi semper hic et ubique in honore Apostolorum Petri et Pauli gratias agere. Quos ita electio tua consecrare dignata est, ut beati Petri secularem piscandi artem in divinum dogma converteret; quatenus humanum genus de profundo inferni praeceptorum tuorum retibus liberaret. Nam Coapostoli ejus Pauli mentem cum nomine mutasti, et quem prius persecutorem metuebat Ecclesia, nunc caelestium mandatorum laetatur se habere doctorem. Paulus caecatus est, ut videret; Petrus negavit, ut crederet. Huic claves caelestis imperii, illi ad evocandas gentes divinae legis scientiam contulisti. Nam ille introducit, hic aperit. Ambo igitur virtutis aeternae praemia sunt adepti. Hunc dextera tua gradientem in elemento liquido, dum mergeretur, erexit; illum autem tertio naufragantem, profunda pelagi fecit vitare discrimina. Hic portas inferni, ille mortis vicit aculeum: et Paulus capite plectitur, quia gentium caput fidei probatur: Petrus autem praemissis vestigiis caput omnium secutus est Christum. Quem una tecum, omnipotens Pater, et cum Spiritu Sancto laudant Angeli, venerantur Archangeli; Throni, Dominationes, Virtutes, Principatus et Potestates adorant. Quem Cherubim et Seraphim socia exsultatione concelebrant. Cum quibus et nostras voces, ut admitti jubeas, deprecamur, supplici confessione dicentes: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus…

The Minor Litanies in the Ambrosian Rite

This post comes entirely from notes written by our Ambrosian expert, Nicola de’ Grandi. The photos were taken yesterday at the church of Santa Maria della Consolazione in Milan, where the traditional rite is celebrated, and which observed the Minor Litanies with a procession and a station within the church. (In previous years it has been held outside, but yesterday it was raining.) Last month, I posted the liturgical texts of the Ambrosian form of the Major Litanies. Special thanks to Mr Andrea Riva for providing the video of the Litany of the Saints given below. 

In the Ambrosian Rite, the Minor Litanies are celebrated on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after the Ascension, not before as in the Roman Rite. This custom is attested in the very oldest Ambrosian liturgical books, and was observed from very ancient times throughout the north of Italy, not just at Milan, as seen in a liturgical manuscript at Friuli, in the Veneto region, already in the 6th century. They were originally known as the “Major Litanies”, since they were instituted before the observance on April 25th that now bears that name, but which is not attested in the Ambrosian Rite before the 11th century.

An Ambrosian liturgical manuscript of the 13th century.

Although St Ambrose himself writes that it was not the custom of the Church to fast during the Easter season (Exposition of the Gospel of St Luke 25), a fact which was adduced in criticism of the Milanese custom in the Middle Ages, it was defended in the later 11th century by a cleric of the city named Landolfo, who refers to what Christ says when asked why His disciples did not fast. “The days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then they shall fast.” (Matthew 9, 15) The three day fast after the Ascension, the departure of the Bridegroom, therefore imitates what the Apostles did while waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit. A contemporary of St Ambrose, St Philastrius of Brescia, attests to exactly this same custom, and for exactly the same reasons, already in the mid-5th century. The Mozarabic liturgy also traditionally observes a fast of three days in the week after the Ascension, on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday before the vigil of Pentecost.

From the most ancient times, the Church administered baptism on Pentecost with the same rites as on Easter; this is attested in a letter of Pope St Siricius (384-99) to Himerius, bishop of Tarragon in Spain (cap. 2), and one of Pope St Leo the Great (440-461), in which he exhorts the bishops of Sicily to follow the Church’s custom and the example of the Apostle Peter, who baptized three thousand persons on Pentecost day. (Epist. 16)

In accordance with this universal custom, the traditional Ambrosian celebration of the Minor Litanies, as they are now called, has many elements in common with Lent, the season par excellence for baptismal preparation. During the processions, there are stations at various churches; at each station, lessons are read as part of the catechumenal preparation for baptism, exactly as was done in Lent. Black vestments are used as on the ferias of Lent, and in the Office, all of the characteristic features of the Easter season (the Paschal hymns, antiphons consisting of just the word “Alleluia”, etc.) are replaced with those of the season per annum. The Ambrosian Rite has no Ash Wednesday, and only much later did it adopt the imposition of ashes on the first Monday of Lent; the blessing and imposition of ashes is in fact historically done on the first day of the Minor Litanies.

In the Middle Ages, when the Minor Litanies were still kept with great solemnity, on each of the three days, the archbishop, the cathedral chapter and the entire clergy of the city participated in a procession which departed from the cathedral, and stopped at twelve different stational churches along the way, each group within the clergy walking behind its own processional cross. An enormous number of processional antiphons were sung, interspersed between the verses of the longest Psalm in the Psalter, Beati immaculati (118). At each station, a synaxis was held in a form which is common to various penitential functions in the Ambrosian Rite such as vigils and the ferias of Lent: twelve Kyrie eleisons, followed by a prayer, a reading of the Old Testament, a responsory, and a Gospel. In 1767, the diary of the master of ceremonies of the Duomo records that the full ceremony lasted for just under 5 hours!

The procession

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