St. Nicholas, Beloved Bishop and Wonderworker

Unlike his present European status as a white-haired fairytale figure, benign and vaguely Christian, who presides once a year over the delightful day that begins with the discovery of trinkets in one’s shoes, in the Middle Ages Nicholas stood in the front rank of saints universally venerated and loved by the Christian peoples of Europe.

In England alone, there were over four hundred churches dedicated to him, and Russia took him as patron alongside Andrew the Apostle. [1] It has been estimated that in French- and German-speaking lands during the High Middle Ages, at least 2000 churches dedicated to St. Nicholas could be found. [2] “The heterogeneity of his competencies as patron saint is unrivalled: there is hardly another saint to whom the protection of such a large number of towns and countries—stretching from the Atlantic coasts to orthodox Russia—was entrusted.” [3] 

His relics, which were safely landed at Bari, Italy on May 9, 1087 after being rescued from Saracen-dominated Myra, attracted a vast number of pilgrims from all over Europe during the centuries that followed, many of whom were eager to take back home some of the sweet-smelling, health-giving myrrh that flowed from his mortal remains. [4] This oil is referred to as the “manna of St. Nicholas”; a treatise in its defense was composed as recently as 1925. Among the earliest visitors of his relics in Italy was Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury.

His life was depicted in song and sculpture, stained glass and altar paintings; it is even claimed that he was represented in art more frequently than any saint except the Virgin Mary. [5] A manuscript in Fleury, France contains four distinct liturgical dramas dedicated to St. Nicholas. His reputation spread as far as medieval Iceland, where an epic poem, the Nikolassaga Biskupa, was composed in his honor. [6]

What do we know for certain of the life of Nicholas? By modern critical standards, practically nothing other than his existence as a fourth-century bishop of Myra reputed for great holiness. If, however, we broaden our sources to include the best hagiographical literature of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, a more detailed portrait emerges. There is no need to recount the prodigious array of miracles; it is enough to mention the elements common to the vitae Nicolai Episcopi in every land and tongue. [7] 

For having rescued sailors off the coast of Lycia, Nicholas is honored as patron of seafarers; for having appeared in dreams to Constantine and a prefect named Ablavius on behalf of three unjustly-convicted prisoners, he is honored as patron of captives. [8] Later, students and scholars were added to his patronal competency, giving him a foothold at the burgeoning medieval universities. The Vatican Pinacoteca contains several exceptional paintings of the life and miracles of Nicholas. Deserving of special mention are the Quaratesi Altarpiece (1425) by Gentile da Fabriano and The Story of St. Nicholas (1437) by Fra Angelico.

While the old Roman Collect emphasizes his miracles (“Deus, qui beatum Nicolaum Pontificem innumeris decorasti miraculis”) and the Greeks refer to him as “the Wonderworker,” his fame in the Middle Ages rested less on a miracle than on a gift of alms to a family in his native town of Patera, prior to his election as bishop of Myra. In order to rescue three unwed girls from the prostitution their impoverished father was planning for them, Nicholas, who had in­herited wealth from his parents, went under cover of darkness to the man’s house and threw a bag of gold into the window as a dowry, doing this three times, until all the daughters were married off. [9] (The red-garbed jolly old man of no particular religious affiliation distributing gifts to good children at Christmastide appears to be a Protestant reconfiguration, with Victorian touches, of the original Catholic saint famed for giving gold to the three maidens—note the derivation of Santa Klaus from, ultimately, Sanctus Nicolaus.)

As a bishop, Nicholas was celebrated for his generosity toward the poor and his uncompromising defense of Christian orthodoxy. “Thanks to his teaching,” we read in the Chronicles of Methodius, “the metropolis of Myra alone was untouched by the filth of the Arian heresy, which it firmly rejected as death-dealing poison.” [10] Tradition relates that Nicholas participated in the Council of Nicaea, and was so incensed by the pride of Arius that he slapped him in the face. [11] His legendary zeal for the orthodox faith may partially explain the Epistle traditionally appointed for his feast, a reading from the last chapter of Hebrews in the course of which come these words: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings; for it is well that the heart be strengthened by grace, not by foods which have not benefited their adherents. . . . Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God” (Heb. 13:8–9; 15). Verse 17 brings to mind again the charity of Nicholas: “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (in the Vulgate: “Beneficentiae autem, et communionis nolite oblivisci: talibus enim hostiis promeretur Deus”).

The intimate link between Christian orthodoxy and Christian charity finds an apt expression in Nicholas, “one of the first people to be venerated as a saint without having been a martyr,” observes Cardinal Ratzinger, [12] who continues:

Another of the legends [surrounding Nicholas] expresses it very beautifully in this way: Whereas all the other miracles could be performed by magicians and demons, and thus were ambivalent, one miracle was absolutely transparent and could not involve any deception, namely, that of living out the faith in everyday life for an entire lifetime and maintaining charity. People in the fourth century experienced this miracle in the life of Nicholas, and all the miracle stories which accrued subsequently to the legend are only variations on this one, fundamental miracle, which Nicholas’ contemporaries compared, with wonder and gratitude, to the morning star reflecting the radiance of the light of Christ. In this man they understood what faith in God’s Incarnation means; in him the dogma of Nicaea had been translated into tangible terms. [13]

An ancient Byzantine biographer of St. Nicholas described the Bishop as one who “received his dignity from Christ’s own sublime nature just as the morning star receives its brilliance from the rising sun.” [14]
 

Photo taken in St Nicholas' Orthodox Cathedral in Washington DC on his feast day.

All photos by Fr. Lawrence Lew, OP.

NOTES

[1] A. Butler, Butler’s Lives of the Saints, ed., and rev. Herbert J. Thurston, sj, and Donald Attwater, 4 vols. Westminster, Maryland, Christian Classics, 1990, 4:505–6.

[2] Enciclopedia Cattolica, Città del Vaticano, 1952, s.v. “Nicola di Mira.”

[3] E. De’Mircovich, liner notes to La Nuit de Saint Nicholas, Arcana A72, 15–16.

[4] Butler’s Lives, 4:505.

[5] Butler’s Lives, 4:505–6.

[6] E. De’Mircovich, La Nuit de Saint Nicholas, 15.

[7] For a brief modern account of the life of Nicholas, see Butler’s Lives, 4:503–6. For a popular medieval account—and a good indication of what a thirteenth-century friar is likely to have had in mind when preaching on the saint or invoking his help—see Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. W. G. Ryan, 2 vols. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993, 1:21–27. Jacobus, an Italian Dominican who eventually held high offices in the Order as teacher and administrator and became archbishop of Genoa in 1292, wrote the Legenda Aurea around 1260. As Ryan notes in his introduction, “the popularity of the Legend was such that some one thousand manuscripts have survived, and, with the advent of printing in the 1450s, editions both in the original Latin and in every Western European language multiplied into the hundreds” (1:xiii). See L.-J. Bataillon, op, “Iacopo da Varazze e Thommaso d’Aquino,” in: Sapienza 32/1 [Naples] (1979), 22–29.

[8] Butler’s Lives, 4:505–6; Golden Legend, 1:22–24.

[9] Butler’s Lives, 4:504; Golden Legend, 1:21–22.

[10] Butler’s Lives, 4:504. This Methodius was a Patriarch of Constantinople in the ninth century.

[11] Butler’s Lives, 4:503–4; Golden Legend, 1:22.

[12] J. Ratzinger, “Reflections at Advent,” in Seek That Which Is Above: Meditations Through the Year. Trans. G. Harrison. San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1986, 21.

[13] Ratzinger, “Advent,” 21–22. In this paragraph, “all the other miracles” must be referring to ambiguous external phenomena, since a genuine miracle can only be done by divine power.

[14] Ibid., 20.

In Defense of Side Altars

Side altars in a splendid German neo-Baroque church: St. Anna in Altötting (built 1910-12)

A reader of NLM wrote to me:

I attended a conference in Rome in which a respected liturgist gave a talk about church art. He criticized the phenomenon of “side altars” as a deviation from early Christian practice. I’m not sure if there’s something online that defends not only private Masses for priests but also the architectural phenomenon of side altars, and why, further to that, it is okay for different Masses to be happening simultaneously in one church — say, the parish Mass and a priest’s (or priests’) private Masses.

The critique of side altars is, like so much else, an expression of unsophisticated antiquarianism and misplaced Byzantinophilia.

It is true that the Christian East has held on tightly (as they have done with so many features of worship) to the original architectural plan of a sanctuary centered on a single altar, which signifies Christ, the one and only High Priest and Mediator between God and Man. This is why the altar is dedicated and anointed, and later, kissed and incensed. Liturgy is celebrated solemnly in song once a day at this altar.

The symbolism is magnificent, yes, but it is not exhaustive of the possibilities of the cult of the saints and devotional liturgy, which were to develop prodigiously in the West. In the first millennium, side altars developed as a way to house the relics of the saints. Most side altars, even to this day, are associated with a particular saint or devotion, while the high altar retains an obvious primacy, prominence, and centrality for the solemn conventual Mass. As Enrico Finotti comments:

The side altar keeps its liturgical function intact and it is rather harmful to transmit to the faithful the idea that the emergence of the side altars is the sign of a decadent and incorrect phase of liturgical development. The side altars celebrate with amazing artistic expressions the wonderful fruits of the only Sacrifice of Christ: the Saints and their works. Their memory, erected in connection with the altar, affirms that from the Sacrifice of Christ they received the grace of their holiness and the efficacy of their witness. Wanting to deprive such monuments of the table [i.e., the mensa for offering Mass] is to disrupt them theologically from their divine source. The multiplicity of the side altars is the visual manifestation of the infinite prism of the fruits of the one Altar and of the only Sacrifice, Christ Jesus. This is why the side altars cannot be “museified,” but must remain “alive” with all their own signs, open to the exercise of their liturgical function.

In the West, with the general absence of concelebration, and with the proliferation of monastic and cathedral clergy, the custom arose of priests offering their own daily low Mass, a Missa lecta or Missa recitata or Missa privata — as still occurs in a number of traditional religious and clerical communities today. Therefore, quite apart from the cult of the saints, which requires suitably beautiful repositories for their relics, the essential defense of side altars rests on the legitimacy in itself, and the value for the Church, of the priest’s daily, individual, “devotional” offering of the Mass, over against the postconciliar imposition of the alien custom of concelebration in a feeble imitation of the East.[1]

Nor should it cause any surprise to recall that the claim that there should only be one altar in each church was specifically condemned by Pope Pius VI in the Bull Auctorem Fidei as one of the numerous errors of the Synod of Pistoia:

Propositio Synodi enuntians, conveniens esse, pro divinorum officiorum ordine et antiqua consuetudine, ut in unoquoque templo unum tantum sit altare, sibique adeo placere morem illum restituere: temeraria, perantiquo, pio, multis abhinc saeculis in Ecclesia, praesertim Latina, vigenti et probato mori iniuriosa.
       [The proposition of the synod enunciating that it is fitting, in accordance with the order of divine services and ancient custom, that there be only one altar in each church and, therefore, that it is pleased to restore that custom: rash, injurious to the very ancient pious custom flourishing and approved for these many centuries in the Church, especially in the Latin Church.] (Denzinger 2631)

In response to the reader’s question, let me mention that the definitive study has been written by the Carmelite priest Joseph de Sainte-Marie, OCD, The Holy Eucharist—The World’s Salvation. Studies on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, its Celebration, and its Concelebration (reviewed here). I have defended the fittingness of the daily private Mass in chapter 10 of my book Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis (“The Loss of Graces: Private Masses and Concelebration”) and in two articles at NLM (“Celebration vs. Concelebration: Theological Considerations” and “The Mounting Threat of Coercive Concelebration”). Dr. Joseph Shaw has also made a contribution on this topic (“What Are Side Chapels For?”).

Once one admits the legitimacy of a priest offering his Mass each morning (when not otherwise engaged for public Mass), the existence of side altars is basically unavoidable, for the clergy cannot be reasonably accommodated otherwise.

In the monastery . . . 

. . . and during retreats or workshops . . .

. . . and at times of pilgrimage or international events.

From a symbolic point of view, it may not seem appropriate to have many priests offering many Masses at many altars in a church, as if this detracts from the unity of Christ, His priesthood, and His sacrifice. On the other hand, since symbolism cuts many ways, a counterargument can be made that the many offerings symbolize the multiplication of Christ’s priestly power in His ministers and into His Mystical Body, which has many members, all of which, being persons, are temples of the Holy Spirit. The very fact that the one all-sufficient sacrifice is renewed unbloodily at many altars glorifies and exalts the priestly power of Christ, who sanctifies all places and all times, giving rise to many springs from one reservoir, gathering all streams together in a measureless ocean. Moreover, it emphasizes the subordinate nature of the ministers and of the liturgy as compared with the one Mediator Himself and His heavenly self-offering “beyond the veil” in the true Holy of Holies. In other words, as we can see to be typical of Western liturgy, it both welcomes Christ into our midst and emphasizes, in obvious and subtle ways, the distance between the earthly realm and the heavenly kingdom, unlike the Eastern liturgy which tends to see the earthly liturgy as a direct reflection of and immediate participation in the heavenly kingdom.

I do not want to overemphasize this contrast, as one can find features of the Eastern liturgy that deeply express man’s fallen condition and his exile from heaven, just as there are aspects of the Western liturgy that symbolize or enact the union of earth with heaven (most notably, the “Supplices te rogamus” of the Roman Canon). We also find Sacrosanctum Concilium giving prominence to this point, in a paragraph that would become all but unintelligible in the wake of the Consilium’s reform:

In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, a minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle; we sing a hymn to the Lord’s glory with all the warriors of the heavenly army; venerating the memory of the saints, we hope for some part and fellowship with them; we eagerly await the Savior, Our Lord Jesus Christ, until He, our life, shall appear and we too will appear with Him in glory. (n. 8)

Two, then, can play this game of symbolism. A symbolic argument will never, by itself, be sufficiently determinate to decide between two conflicting practices. One has to justify any liturgical practice based on theological, spiritual, pastoral, and aesthetic arguments — not simply on the basis of archaic practice or Eastern practice or a modern penchant for simplicity, which usually comes out as horizontal, democratic, undifferentiated, and plain, when not ugly.

As for side altars, we may well say: in the East, anathema sit; in the West, “multiply and fill the earth.”

Stift Wilten (Norbertine) in Innsbruck

St. Gallus, Bregenz (h/t Fr Jerabek)

NOTE

[1] Additionally to the question of relics, there is another major motivator for the creation of side-altars, which really takes off in the age of the canons regular (who emerge as a major force within the Church in the 12th century) and the mendicants (13th century): since they were largely an urban phenomenon, and did not have stable foundations based on owning land, as monks did, canons regular and mendicants had to provide for themselves from their apostolic works; as St Paul says in 1 Timothy 5:18, “the worker is worthy of his wage.” Within a large house of (e.g.) Dominicans like Santa Maria Novella in Florence, each side-altar was privately owned by a family, who paid for everything, including all the accoutrements necessary for saying Mass, and the priest’s salary. All the Masses were therefore said for that family’s intentions. This was one of the things that made the apostolic ministry of such communities possible, and in addition, gave us a lot of really amazing art, since the families that could afford their own chapel could generally also afford to hire the best artists to decorate it.

Visit Dr. Kwasniewski’s website for articles, sacred music, and classics reprinted by Os Justi Press (e.g., Newman, Benson, Scheeben, Parsch, Guardini, Chaignon, Leen, Roguet, Croegaert), his SoundCloud page for lectures and interviews, and his YouTube channel for talks and sacred music.

Why the Confiteor Before Communion Should Be Retained (or Reintroduced)

The Confiteor at the start of Mass

In this article, I will defend the fittingness of the repetition of the Confiteor by the ministers immediately before their communion — sung by the deacon and subdeacon at Solemn Mass, said by the acolytes at the Missa Cantata and Low Mass. I shall argue that it not only deserves to be retained, but that it should be used everywhere in the usus antiquior, and not omitted.

Before moving to this question, let us consider for a moment why there ought to be a double Confiteor at the start of the Mass, in the penitential section at the foot of the altar, prior to the ministers’ ascending the mountain of the Lord to offer the twofold sacrifice: first, the verbal sacrifice of the readings, followed by the unbloody sacrifice of the Lamb of God.

At first glance, it might appear that there should be only a single Confiteor of priest and people together, and indeed, this is what the Novus Ordo Missae provides, having relied on scholars to purge it of “useless repetitions.”

Nevertheless, the double Confiteor is far from useless. It strongly brings out the dialogical nature of liturgical worship, where the celebrant acts as a mediator for the people, and where each member of the body is praying for the other. The doubling formalizes the mediation as well as the mutual assistance. It reinforces the humility needed in the celebrant, who confesses his sins alone coram omnibus, and also exhibits the dignity of the servant who says to the master: “May almighty God have mercy on thee, and having forgiven thy sins, lead thee to eternal life.” It reflects the truth of cosmic and ecclesiastical hierarchy and pushes against one of the dominant errors of our time, that of democratic egalitarianism, which lumps everyone together into an undifferentiated mass (or Mass).

Bishop Athanasius Schneider once told of a Low Mass he was offering in Africa at a large traditional Catholic school for girls. When he had confessed his sins, he heard all these little girls say to him, in perfect Latin, “Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus, et dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam aeternam.” He was overcome with feelings of humility, littleness, and joy. This experience of the priest confessing his own sins in front of the people—or, for that matter, the bishop, or the pope—is something we could use a great deal more of in the Church today, together (of course) with the confession of the people. And all of this in the humbling and strengthening presence of the saints invoked by name, twice: “Blessed Mary ever-virgin, St. Michael the Archangel, St. John the Baptist, the holy apostles Peter and Paul, and all the saints” — not (as we were just saying) lumped together in an undifferentiated mass of “all the angels and saints,” mentioned only once, for efficiency’s sake. There are no shortcuts in penance and forgiveness.

Now, moving to our main topic — the Confiteor before communion — it was not only the repetition at this moment of something that had “already been done” earlier in the Mass that the liturgical reformers objected to; it was rather the impression that the communion rite for the faithful is “tacked on to” the Mass as an extrinsic piece rather than something intrinsic to it. Eliding the communion rite(s) was a way of underlining the unity of liturgical action.

Yet the old practice makes theological sense, at least from the vantage of the dogmatic teaching of the Council of Trent. The communion of the offering priest is essential to the completion of the sacrifice in a way that the communion of no one else is. In fact, the obscuring of this point by having a single communion rite in which the priest announces “Ecce Agnus Dei” prior to receiving Christ and distributing Him to the faithful is among the many factors that have contributed to the obscuring of the difference in kind between the ministerial priesthood and the priesthood of the faithful.

Moreover, one should not evaluate this practice only from a low Mass standpoint, but also from the Solemn High Mass, the normative Mass of the Roman Rite. Seeing the priest flanked by his close companions, the deacon and the subdeacon, with the deacon chanting the Confiteor, throws into sharp relief how the sacrifice is essentially complete with the communion of the priest, who stands in for Christ the High Priest, and that the further communions are an extension of this sacrifice to the ministers and the faithful, a sacramental “rippling out” comparable to the rippling out of the Pax, the gesture of peace, passed down from on high — much as the higher angels communicate illuminations to lower angels.

The one offering brings the sacrifice to completion by himself partaking of the sacrificial Victim. No other communion is necessary for this completion, although obviously the Church rejoices in the participation of as many faithful as are in a state of grace and prepared to receive Our Lord. The scholastic distinction between intensity and extension is helpful here. For example, the separated soul in heaven fully possesses beatitude intensively, but when the body is reunited to it in the resurrection, that happiness will overflow into the flesh and so the beatitude will be greater extensively, i.e., it will have a greater extension.

The separate communions of priest and people, with the Confiteor as a visible and audible caesura, is the liturgy’s way of representing the dogmatic truth spoken of by Pope Pius XII in Mystici Corporis Christi when he distinguishes between the “objective redemption” that Christ accomplished in full on the Cross and the “subjective redemption” of Christians, which occurs through the application of the merits of His Passion to our souls in the sacraments of the Church. St. Thomas speaks of this point often, as when he explains why the faithful need not receive the chalice: “The perfection of this sacrament does not lie in the use of the faithful, but in the consecration of the matter. And hence there is nothing derogatory to the perfection of this sacrament, if the people receive the body without the blood, provided that the priest who consecrates receive both” (Summa theologiae III, q. 80, a. 12, ad 2). “Our Lord’s Passion is represented in the very consecration of this sacrament, in which the body ought not to be consecrated without the blood. But the body can be received by the people without the blood: nor is this detrimental to the sacrament, because the priest both offers and consumes the blood on behalf of all; and Christ is fully contained under either species, as was shown above (q. 76, a. 2)” (ibid., ad 3).

This aspect of the usus antiquior points unambiguously to the essence of the Mass as the re-presentation of the Sacrifice of the Cross at the hands of the ordained minister, and forcefully sets aside the Protestant conflation of the Mass and the Last Supper, i.e., the simple identification of the Eucharist with communion — an error so ubiquitous in our day that Catholics not only take it for granted but are unaware that there is any other way of thinking about the matter.

Again, at a high Mass, the faithful are usually not able to hear the Confiteor of the priest and the servers at the beginning, as these preparatory prayers in the sanctuary are muffled under the soaring sound of the Introit. Thus, when the deacon sings or the servers say the Confiteor right before communion, everyone is able to hear it and make it their own, since there is nothing else “covering over” this action.[1] Holy Mother Church offers all the faithful one final opportunity to bow low before the altar, express contrition for sins, call upon saints and angels as intercessors, and receive a minor absolution prior to approaching the Sanctissimum, the Most Holy One, before whom even the Cherubim and Seraphim veil their faces. Thus we see that this Confiteor is both theologically appropriate and spiritually profitable.

To my mind (and probably, I’ll admit, for quite incidental reasons), the suppression of this Confiteor before communion in the missal promulgated by Pope John XXIII serves as the “poster child” of all that went wrong during that strange no-man’s-land between Mediator Dei (1947) and the imposition of the Novus Ordo (1969). In this period of two decades, official papal language still paid lip service to the binding force of tradition and the non-negotiable good of continuity, while at the same time three Popes in succession permitted changes to the liturgy — at first tentatively and in smaller ways, but subsequently growing in audacity to embrace whole sacramental rituals from top to bottom — that led with a kind of inevitability to the jettisoning of the historic Roman Rite and its replacement by the “modern papal rite” (as Gamber calls the Novus Ordo).

Let there be no mistake about it: the incremental changes of Pius XII and John XXIII to the Mass and its rubrics — the abolition of most octaves and vigils, multiple collects, doubled lections, the “Benedicamus Domino,” folded chasubles, etc. — are also corruptions, even if lesser corruptions than Montini’s, and deserve to be rejected by those who care for the Roman Rite in its integrity and plenitude just as readily and easily as the more egregious novelties of the late sixties.

A last consideration, since we are on the subject of the Confiteor and the role of penitence in the rite of Mass: I read in an article at PrayTell about the proposal, fashionable among today’s “with-it” liturgists, to move the penitential rite to after the “Liturgy of the Word.” Their theory (fine on paper, as always) is that we should first hear the Word of God summoning us to faith and repentance, and then express our acceptance of the message in the Creed and a penitential rite immediately prior to the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Probably the sign of peace would be moved into this intermediate section as well, so that we can take care of all the Eucharistic preliminaries at once.

Now, I have two reactions to this idea.

First, this proposal and any other like it would make sense only if liturgy is just something we make up according to our own brilliant ideas, rather than a form of prayer we receive from those who came before us and whom we revere as our fathers in Christ, from whom we receive the faith together with its enactment in rites. And surely this is a tempting view, since modern people are seen consistently to have better ideas and to produce greater art than their predecessors. Just think of primitives like Plato and Aristotle, Dante and Shakespeare, Bach and Mozart, and compare them with Rorty and Derrida, Cummings and Kerouac, the Beach Boys and Eminem. We are clearly in a better position to design liturgy than the men who built Hagia Sophia or Notre Dame Cathedral.

What is astonishing to me is that such proposals can be made, let alone taken seriously. Do we know better than the millennia of Latin Catholics who started off the liturgy with penitential preparation—or for that matter, Eastern Christians who can’t help chanting “Lord, have mercy” from the get-go? But we can forgive them and, well, ignore them; after all, among professional liturgists, Byzantines get a pass for everything, no matter how outlandish; the more litanies, processions, blessings, and chants, the better. The East is the exotic “other” whose presence allows us to loathe ourselves in a perpetual inferiority complex, which prompts us to “act out” irrationally from time to time by lopping off another ancient feature that connects us with the East.

Second, in an irony that repeats itself on a regular basis, what the fashionable liturgists say they want is already present in the unreformed (I mean, pre-1962) traditional Mass. They say they want a moment, after the Word and before the Eucharist, in which to express our repentance. The old Mass gives us the Confiteor before communion and the threefold “Domine, non sum dignus...” with the minor absolution from the priest. The old rite, embodying a deep instinct for symmetry, has in that sense two penitential rites: the one prior to receiving the Word, and the one prior to receiving the Word-made-flesh.

The more we ponder the inherited liturgy, the more riches we find in it, and the less we are inclined to tinker with it or accept the tinkering of others, bereft of the fear of God the Father, the love of Christ the High Priest, and the unction of the Holy Spirit. We give thanks to the Most Holy Trinity for beginning to deliver His people from the seventy-year Babylonian captivity of liturgical reform (ca. 1948–2018), stretching from Pius XII’s creation of the committee that would produce the neo-Tridentine Holy Week to the year when Ecclesia Dei granted permission to the ICKSP and FSSP to return to the unreformed Holy Week. We are coming full circle at last, and there is no turning back.

(Portions of this article are excerpted from my lecture at St. Mary’s in Norwalk, “Poets, Lovers, Children, Madmen — and Worshipers: Why We Repeat Ourselves in the Liturgy.”)

Note

[1] Needless to say, if it is to serve a corporate purpose, the Confiteor needs to be heard at this point rather than mumbled or muttered into the acolyte's sleeve. No need for loudness; an articulate voice and a reasonable pacing will suffice to make the prayer audible even in a large church. For more thoughts along these lines, see my article "Two Modest Proposals for Improving the Prayerfulness of Low Mass."

Visit www.peterkwasniewski.com for events, articles, sacred music, and classics reprinted by Os Justi Press (e.g., Benson, Scheeben, Parsch, Guardini, Chaignon, Leen).

The Oratory of the Forty Martyrs in the Roman Forum

March 9th is the original day for the feast of the Forty Martyrs, who were killed at Sebaste in Armenia under the Roman Emperor Licinius, around 320 AD. They were a group of soldiers of the Twelfth Legion who refused to renounce the Faith, and after various tortures, were condemned to die a particularly horrible death, stripped naked and left to freeze on the ice of a frozen lake. Their feast is still kept on this day, and with great solemnity, in the East, but in the West, they were moved forward to the 10th after the canonization of St Frances of Rome, who died on the same day in 1440.

A 10-century ivory relief icon of the Forty Martyrs, made in Constantinople, now in the Bodemuseum in Berlin. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

In the sixth century, Italy was wracked by a series of devastating wars fought between the Byzantine Empire and the Ostrogothic kings for control of the peninsula. A series of new churches dedicated to Greek soldier Saints was then constructed in Rome, which was the focus of much of the fighting, on sites associated with the city’s political history, a way of presenting the Byzantine Emperor and his armies as both the liberators of the city and the preservers of its history and tradition. St George in Velabro, from which one could see the site on the Palatine Hill where Romulus founded Rome, is followed by St Theodore, barely an eighth of a mile away. An oratory dedicated to the Forty Martyrs was then made out of a building of the early 2nd century, less than a tenth of a mile from St Theodore. From there, it was a short walk across the Forum to the ancient senate house known as the Curia Julia (originally built by Julius Caesar, but reconstructed after a fire by Diocletian in the 280s), transformed into a church dedicated to St Adrian. Right next to it was built another small oratory, now demolished, dedicated to Ss Sergius and Bacchus; its bell-tower was perched on top of one of the Forum’s most prominent landmarks, the Arch of Septimius Severus.

In 847, a massive landslide off the Palatine, caused by an earthquake, buried the Oratory of the Forty Martyrs, along with the nearby church of Santa Maria Antiqua, and both structures were abandoned and forgotten about. The Oratory was not rediscovered until 1901 during an excavation campaign in the Forum, which lies well within the Tiber’s flood plain, and was deeply buried. A fair amount of fresco work remains within the building; although none of it is in particularly good condition, there is enough to get a sense of what it originally would have looked like.

The martyrdom of the Forty, depicted in the apse, which was added to the original structure to transform it into an oratory. On the right is seen a defector leaving their company, whose place was taken by one of their guards.

The Forty Martyrs glorified in heaven.

The remains of a band of decoration to the left of the apse.

Remains of the decorations to the right of the apse.

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Dr Kwasniewski on Liturgical Chant: Lecture in Whiting, Indiana, November 3

For those in the Chicago area, I will be giving a lecture on “Liturgical Chant: Wellspring, Model, and Heart of All Sacred Music” at St Mary Byzantine Catholic Church, in Whiting, Indiana, on Saturday, November 3. The church is located at 2011 Clark Street; Byzantine Vespers will be sung at 5 p.m., with the lecture immediately after. All are welcome.