Liturgical Travels Through France: A New Publication from Canticum Salomonis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New “Psalterium Romanum” Presents Pre-Pius X Divine Office with Chant Notation

For the feast of St. Gregory the Great, there’s more good news on the Gregorian chant front!

Pope Saint Pius X’s reform of the Roman Office not only represented an upheaval in the psalter, it also unaccountably changed many of the antiphons of the ferial cursus, replacing them with novel compositions even when the traditional ones could have continued to be used. One laments, for instance, the disappearance of the antiphons Fidelia for psalm 110, In mandatis for psalm 111, and Nos qui vivimus for psalm 113 at Sunday Vespers, which was only allowed to keep two of its ancient antiphons, and of the antiphon Quoniam in aeternum which so excellently fits the recitation of psalm 135 at Thursday Vespers.

The joyful repetitions of the cry ‘alleluia’ at the minor hours on Sundays, and at Lauds during Eastertide—especially the exuberant nine-fold alleluia for the Laudate psalms—seem to have struck the reformers as unbearable, and those antiphons were replaced with new ones which incorporated psalm verses for which the alleluias serve as parentheses.

These mutations ensured that the Roman antiphonal produced by Solesmes and approved by the Vatican in 1912 cannot be used to sing the ancient Office, even if one were to disregard the new arrangement of the psalms.

The editors of Canticum Salomonis are glad therefore to announce the publication of the pars diurna of the traditional Psalterium Romanum, complete with musical notation for all the old antiphons, responsories, and pre-Urban VIII hymns.

This volume contains the entire ferial Office for Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, including the seasonal antiphons, responsories, and hymns for Advent, Lent, Passiontide, and Eastertide. It also includes the collects for Sundays per annum, making it a self-sufficient resource for singing the ferial office on most days. On the other hand, the proper antiphons for Saturdays and Sundays and for penitential ferias are not included, since they were untouched by Pius X’s reforms and recourse can thus be had to the Solesmes books.

Some particulars:

• The musical notation has been taken principally from the second volume of the new Antiphonale monasticum, published in 2006, which follows better principles of restoration than earlier editions; the episemas, however, have been included, and some antiphon restitutions are new.
• The hymns have been taken from the 1934 Antiphonale monasticum; they are musically identical to those printed in the 1983 Liber hymnarius.
• A Toni communes section includes the ‘archaic’ C and D tones found in the 2006 antiphonal for those who wish to employ them, but the standard tones are also given for the antiphons assigned these rather paleontological ones.
• Those who desire to follow the widespread medieval custom of singing mediants over Hebrew or monosyllabic words in a manner reflecting their oxytone pronunciation can also find the requisite instructions in that section.
• The 1912 antiphonal suggests saying the ferial preces at Lauds and Vespers recto tono, but anyone who prefers to sing them will find the music for the Pater noster chanted by the hebdomadary in the Toni communes as well, taken from the 1934 Antiphonale monasticum.
• Printed with red for the rubrics and black for the remaining text.

We pray that this unique volume will aid the devotion of Catholics who wish to pray the Roman ferial Psalter as it was known to centuries of saints, and contribute to the authentic and informed liturgical restoration so felicitously underway across the Catholic world.

The book is available in both hard and softcover editions on the US, UK, Canadian, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Polish, and Swedish Amazon stores (Australia and Japan soon). 

A New Booklet with the Office of the Dead, from Canticum Salomonis

Our good friends at Canticum Salomonis are pleased to announce the publication of a pocket-sized (4” x 6”) edition of the traditional Roman Office of the Dead, featuring the full Office (Vespers, Matins, and Lauds) according to the 1568 Roman Breviary. This edition includes the Latin text with a facing English translation, along with the additional orations from the 1614 Roman Ritual. The English translation of the psalms follows the original Douay-Rheims version with modernized spelling. The booklet also features a meditation on the mystical significance of the Office, drawn from Dom Prosper Guéranger’s The Liturgical Year, and a section for recording prayer intentions.

Review of the New Edition of Honorius of Autun’s Jewel of the Soul

We are grateful to Dr Erik Ellis for sharing with NLM this review of the translation of the Gemma Animae by Honorius of Autun, by our friends Zachary Thomas and Gerhard Eger, the authors of the Canticum Salomonis website. Dr. Ellis is Assistant Professor of Education at Hillsdale College, and Senior Fellow of the Boethius Institute.

Gemma Animae, Jewel of the Soul, by Honorius Augustodunensis. Zachary Thomas and Gerhard Eger, ed. 2 vv. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 2023.

Photo by Joseph Barnas

“…libellum de divinis officiis edidi, cui nomen Gemma animae indidi, quia videlicet veluti aurum gemma ornatur, sic anima divino officio decoratur. – … I have written, as you bade me, a little book on the divine services, to which I have given the name Jewel of the Soul. For you see, just as gold is adorned by a jewel, so the soul is made lovely by the divine services.”

The appearance of Thomas and Eger’s edition of Honorius’ Jewel of the Soul in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library furthers the contemporary recovery of the allegorical interpretation of the liturgy, signaled by the Knibbs’ edition of Amalarius of Metz’s On the Liturgy in the same series, and of Abbé Claude Barthe’s A Forest of Symbols (reviewed at Rorate here.) After more than a century of the almost complete domination of liturgical scholarship by either historian-archaeologists or pastoral theologians, it is encouraging to see a renewal of interest in liturgical allegory at both the scholarly and popular levels. This follows a similar trend in biblical studies, where fatigue with the historical-critical method led first to a ressourcement of patristic exegesis, then a recovery of medieval approaches to the Bible, and finally to the renewed and productive school of biblical studies represented by Carbajosa and Ratzinger. We may now hope that contemporary and future approaches to the liturgy follow a similar trajectory, and the availability of this important set of books will be a sure aid to this necessary project.

Readers will likely be familiar with the Loeb Classical Library, which over the last century has provided the educated public with well printed and bound editions of the Greek and Roman classics with serviceable texts, pleasant translations, and brief scholarly apparatus at an affordable price. At the turn of the last century, Loeb’s publisher, Harvard University Press, brought out the I Tatti Renaissance Library, which focuses on Italian Neo-Latin texts, in a less pocket-friendly but handier format to complement the Loeb, and medievalists have now for a little over a decade enjoyed the press’ Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, which extends the same idea to texts in medieval Latin, Byzantine Greek, and Old English. As physical objects, the books are beautiful to behold and delightful to use. In an age when even well-established academic publishers charge three-digit prices for print-on-demand paperbacks, the gold-jacketed and purple clothbound volumes, printed on cream paper sewn in signatures and furnished with a bound in scarlet ribbon marker, are a bargain.

In keeping with the design principles of the series, the editors’ introduction is brief but comprehensive. The author of the Jewel of the Soul was named Honorius, was a cleric in the southern German-speaking lands, and is known conventionally as Augustodunensis (“of Autun”), but as the editors point out, there is very little to support this geographical identification. Like many contemplatives, Honorius seems to have wished his text to eclipse its author. Further details of his biography have so far eluded researchers and are likely to do so in the future. We are left with a bountiful corpus of allegorical reflection on the texts and ceremonies to which Honorius dedicated his life to performing and contemplating.

The Jewel of the Soul is divided into four books, the first and longest of which is a close study of the ceremonies, vestments, and paramenta of the Mass. The commentary is not tied to the text but rather floats freely among rubrics, typology, canon law, and moral instruction, while generally following the temporal forward movement of the Mass. Honorius clusters discussions of particular persons, like the subdeacon, vestments, like the sandals, or rites, like the dedication of a church, in discrete and digressive sections of Book I once he has concluded his general exposition of the Mass.

Chapters are generally quite short – two to a page in most cases – making the Jewel an ideal source of daily devotional reading, or a faithful companion that one can dip into and out of when one has a few minutes to gather Honorius’ nugae and spend the next few hours chewing on them. It is like being in the presence of a learned elder whose oral mystagogy flows freely from the practical to the sublime, constructing a dense web of meaning that stitches the heart and the intellect together in dialogue, while preserving a childlike freedom to follow associations wherever they lead. The editors are careful to point out that this is a conscious literary effect, and that Honorius’ measured, rhythmic prose is the product of a careful and practiced stylist. Despite this craftsmanship, his Latin should be familiar to those who know the Mass in that language and pose no real linguistic challenges. In fact, given its self-contained chapters, the Jewel would be an ideal text for those who are looking for an easy and edifying way to practice extensive, daily reading of Latin in short, frequent bursts.

Book 2 of the Jewel treats the Office in a much less effusive manner. Honorius concerns himself with the organization of the hours, the disposition of the Psalms, and the pre-Christian history of regular prayer, both in Israel and among the Nations. Books 3 and 4 are dedicated to the Church year, considering both general structural features and the particular significance of each of the feasts of the temporal and sanctoral cycles. Book 4 is the most challenging and original section of the Jewel – an attempt to synthesize all of the feasts of the year in a single allegorical scheme. While most readers will no doubt focus their attention on Book 1, these last two books reward careful attention. Honorius’ treatment of particular chant melodies highlights the often-overlooked interdependent nature of text and tune in plainsong, and in the final book, his typological understanding of sacred history, which positions Constantine as a new Solomon, will be of interest to contemporary students of medieval political theology.

For scholars, clergy, and interested laymen, this new edition of Honorius’ Jewel of the Soul should prove to be of great and abiding interest. The editors look forward to continuing their work on Honorius and hope to move forward to treat his commentaries on the Song of Songs and the Psalms. Should readers be in a position to support their work directly or indirectly in this time of economic uncertainty and decreasing academic opportunity, the editors would be most grateful to hear from you.

Announcing a New Printed Edition of Traditional Roman Compline

Those who have sung traditional Compline may remember the flimsy blue booklet with tiny print, prepared by the Fraternity of St. Peter ages ago, and published by Saint Austin Press in England. The booklets have been out of print for so long that extant copies fetch exorbitant prices. People who have wanted to do Compline have been forced to throw together their own booklet or photocopies. Ignatius Press published a nice Compline book some years ago, but it was for the Novus Ordo Liturgy of the Hours. There has long been a huge need for a new edition of the old Roman Compline.

And now, after a year of painstaking development, it is here at last.

Our friends at the blog Canticum Salomonis have just published Traditional Roman Compline, containing the entire office from the Antiphonale Romanum of 1912, fully notated musically, and accompanied throughout by an English translation. Not only are the antiphons, hymns, and responsories notated, but also the versicles and collects, all of which make things as limpid as possible for the beginner and as complete as possible for the expert (all the seasonal and proper festal melodies of the hymn Te lucis, as well as the special Offices said during the Holy Triduum and the Octave of Easter, are present; no other book will be needed for any day of the year).

The traditional Roman office of Compline, as codified by the 1568 breviary, had only a minimal amount of variation in the course of the liturgical year, apart from the special offices said during the Holy Triduum and the Easter Octave. Even in these proper offices, the psalms—4, 30 (verses 2–6), 90, 133—and the concluding canticle Nunc dimittis remained unchanged. Here we can see the perfect alignment of the Roman and Monastic uses. With its unvarying daily psalms, traditional Compline is therefore an excellent starting point for persons and communities who wish to begin to sing the hours of the Divine Office.

This beautiful edition, freshly typeset by Gerhard Eger, who also compiled the Benedictiones mensae published by Pax inter Spinas, includes ceremonial notes for the recitation of Compline in choir. Those unable to say Compline in church, however, can easily adapt these rubrics for their own circumstances. The booklet opens with a meditation, borrowed from a 15th-century English Brigittine prayer-book, on the spiritual significance of Compline.

I heartily recommend this booklet to all who wish to unite their voices with those of generations past in a liturgical conclusion to the day’s toils.

Traditional Roman Compline (based on Antiphonale Romanum of 1912, itself in direct continuity with the 1568 Breviarium Romanum), typeset by Gerhard Eger. Paperback, $12. Available from Amazon and affiliates.

The Offertory Vir erat from the Book of Job

As noted by our good friends at Canticum Salomonis, today’s Offertory chant is taken from the beginning of the book of Job, and presents a very unusual text, inasmuch as it recounts only the beginning of Job’s sufferings.

Off. There was a man in the land (of Hus), Job by name, simple and upright, and fearing God, whom Satan asked to tempt, and power was given to him by the Lord against his possessions and his flesh. And he wasted all his substance and his sons, and he wounded his flesh, too, with a grievous ulcer. (In the video below, the words “of Hus” are omitted, but they are in the printed text of the Tridentine Missal.)

Scenes from the life of Job, by an unknown Flemish Master, ca. 1480-90

Part of the reason for this is that originally, like many Offertories, the text was expanded by the addition of other verses, which in this case, were meant to be sung with the frequent repetition of certain words.

V. Oh that my sins were weighed! Oh that my sins were weighed! whereby I have deserved wrath! whereby I have deserved wrath! And the calamity! And the calamity which I suffer would appear heavier!
V. For what is, for what is, for what is my strength that I should hold out? Or what is mine end, that I should bear patiently?
V. Is my strength the strength of stones? Or is my flesh of bronze? Or is my flesh of bronze?
V. For, for, for mine eye shall not turn back for me to see good things, see good things, see good things, see good things, see good things, see good things, see good things, see good things, see good things.

Writing in the 9th century, the liturgical commenter Amalarius of Metz cleverly explained the significance of these repetitions as follows; later writers on the same subject such as Durandus will repeated his explanation.

“I am reminded of the repetition of words in the verses of the Offertory Vir erat, ... (which) is not in the Offertory itself but in its verses. The words of the historical writer are contained in the Offertory; the words of the ailing and suffering Job in the verses. A sick man whose breathing is weak and unhealthy often repeats broken phrases. In order to create a vivid memory of Job in his sickness, the author of the office repeated certain phrases several times in the manner of sick men. The words are not repeated, as I said, in the Offertory itself, because the historical writer was not sick as he wrote the history.”

(Translations by Notkerus Balbus from Canticum Salomonis, with our thanks.)

Bidding Prayers from Medieval Regensburg: Guest Article from Canticum Salomonis

Our thanks once again to the authors of Canticum Salomonis, this time for their kind permission to reprint this very interesting article on a medieval form of the bidding prayers said at Mass.

When adoption of the Roman rite north of the Alps during the Carolingian period displaced the general intercessions that had been an ancient feature of the Gallican rite, it seems that various attempts were made to remedy their absence. In places such as Milan, the people sang a vestigial Kyrie eleison before or even during the Creed.

By the 12th century, in Germany, the void had been filled by Leis or Credo-songs, often elaborate vernacular hymns with a refrain Kyrie eleison, sung during the Credo.

In France, however, a new ritual, called the prône (Latin pronaüm), developed out of a combination of the sermon and several additional elements that appeared in no particular order: an instruction on Christian doctrine, often on the Our Father and Creed as per Charlemagne’s orders, pious prayers and examinations of conscience, memorials of the dead, bidding prayers, announcements, and, by the 17th century, the vernacular repetition of the Epistle and Gospel. Templates for the prône appear in many ritual books and homilaries beginning in the Middle Ages, and collections of these intercessory prayers are some of the oldest monuments in the German language. In England too the bidding prayers were said in the vernacular on Sundays and feasts. These prayers concluded with song.

A whole architecture developed to house this miniature recapitulation of the Liturgy of the Catechumens. During the Middle Ages the prône was delivered from the rood loft (jubé in French), where the readings of the Epistle and Gospel also took place. In the Baroque era, when many rood screens were destroyed, elaborate preacher’s pulpits were erected with a bank of chairs facing it on the opposite side of the nave to seat the ministers. This “compromise” that the prône represented—a vernacular para-liturgy within the Latin whole—proved fruitful and long-lived. Because of its evocation of the most primitive early Christian arrangement of readings around a central choir, Louis Bouyer calls this era the golden age of Latin liturgy.

A view of the rood loft (jubé) of the church of Ste Madeleine in Troyes

Honorius Augustodunensis, writing in the 12th century, most likely in Regensburg, includes an early example of a prône in his sermon collection Speculum Ecclesiae, in the middle of the Christmas sermons. He says it is to be used “on the highest feasts.” Though written in Latin as a preaching guide for clerics, its text would have been delivered in the vernacular by the preacher who used it. It is a remarkable hybrid of several elements:

I. A catechesis on the Our Father and Creed

II. An examination of conscience followed by a general absolution

III. Bidding prayers

IV. A concluding exhortation and Kyrie eleison

The catechesis takes the form of a guided lesson. First the audience is asked to recite the Our Father, word by word, perhaps in order to memorize it; indeed he calls the Our Father “your prayer.” A line-by-line allegorical and numerological exposition of the prayer follows. His word choice may indicate a call-and-response technique, wherein the preacher invites the crowd to shout out (clamatis, dicitis, uociferamini) each successive line of the prayer before explaining it. His ladder analogy is at once homely and yet almost bold in its invitation to the laity to practice Christian perfection and contemplation. The seven petitions of the Our Father lead him into a discussion of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost, also based on the metaphor of the ladder.

This is followed by a paraphrase of the Apostles’ Creed. Although not a line-by-line exegesis like that of the Our Father, he does insist that the people should know it by heart, and use it to combat demons and temptations.

The examination of conscience is quite thorough. (More than one sensitive copyist tried to scratch out one article referring to the sin of bestiality!) His advice to seek out confession and penance suggests the coëxistence, in the early 12th century, of both public and private modes of penance, with grave public sins requiring a public 40-day penance and absolution. He seems to assume frequent confession, and communion more than once a year.

Having taught the faith and absolved their sins, the preacher leads the people in a set of bidding prayers that closely resemble the penitential preces of the Divine Office, the Great Intercessions of Good Friday, and Greek litanies. The response “Amen” is indicated; whether it was to be said by the preacher or people is unclear.

The prône ends with the celebrant stirring up the crowd to raise the joyful cry Eia, and join their voices in a loud refrain of Kyrieleison.

The instruction gives the laity a wealth of material to meditate and pray on during the silent canon. 

Honorius thus gives us a glimpse into the lively interior of a high Romanesque church. Inside we see a clergy who zealously and skillfully impart the doctrine of perfection, and a receptive and enthusiastic people who delight in allegory and loud, even rowdy acclamations of faith.

The prône continued to be said in French and German churches well into the 19th century, conserving the same general structure as found in Honorius’ example.

The text has been established based on the following MSS, and subdivided by the editors with Roman numerals.

A: Admont, Benediktinerstift, cod. 131

SG: St. Gall, Stiftsbibl. 1075

G: Göttweig, Benediktinerstift, Cod. 104

L: Lilienfeld, Stiftsarchiv und Stiftsbibliothek, HS 140

Read the English translation below, or download a PDF with the Latin and English texts.

I. On the Faith

A. On the Pater noster I

Say each word of the Pater noster with them from beginning to end. Then add:

Dearly beloved, God himself composed this prayer, and taught us to climb it like a ladder up to the joys of heaven. The sides of this ladder are the contemplative and active lives, into which the supreme Wisdom inserted seven rungs of petitions.

On the first rung you stand and cry out to heaven: Pater noster. Take heed, brethren, of what you say. You call God your Father. God did not wish that we call him Lord but Father, that you might consider that you are all brethren in him, and so love each other as brethren, and as a reward for this love, become heirs of his kingdom. If God is your Father, then you are brethren in Jesus Christ who is the Son of God. And if, like sons, you do deeds that please your Father, you shall doubtlessly receive your inheritance from God along with Jesus.

Then you say: qui es in celis. Although God is everywhere, nevertheless he dwells more intimately in the saints, who are called “heaven,” since his grace enlightens them more brightly. These words admonish you to pray that you yourselves might become heavens, wherein God may be pleased to dwell.

Thereafter you say: Sanctificetur nomen tuum. God’s name was always hallowed. You ask that the name “our Father” be so hallowed in yourselves that through your good works you might be worthy to be called his sons. For you are called Christians after Christ, and you beg that you might become one body in Christ, so that you might secure hallowdom with him in his kingdom.

Whence, standing on the second rung, you say: Adueniat regnum tuum. That is, may God be pleased to reign in you through grace, and make you worthy of his kingdom.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

A New English Translation of the General Rubrics of the Tridentine Missal

Gerhard Eger has just posted another resource on Canticum Salomonis which I am sure our readers will find useful and interesting, a new English translation of the General Rubrics of the Roman Missal as revised by the authority of Pope Clement VIII. This was first promulgated in the year 1604, and remained in use until the rubrical revision of 1960; later additions from the Divino Afflatu reform of Pope St Pius X, which were officially incorporated into the body of the Missal with the new typical edition of 1920, are included in italics. The document is very attractively set, and can be downloaded for free here: https://sicutincensum.files.wordpress.com/2020/07/generalrubrics-3.pdf

A New Series from Canticum Salomonis on the French “Royal Honors”

Our best friends in the whole world at Canticum Salomonis (really, they’re the best, they even wrote this summary of their work for us!) have finished another interesting series, this one on the liturgy of the French Royal Chapel. The first part describes the daily liturgical regime of Louis XIV and the peculiar customs of the Royal Mass in the Chapel at Versailles, largely conformed to the Roman Rite since 1580, but never without some very French touches. During these Masses, some unique honors were given to the King sitting at his prie-Dieu in the choir, such as the right to kiss the Gospel book and the corporal, genuflections and reverences, a special communion service, and more. Alexandre Maral, curator at Versailles, argues that these honors make the King the liturgical equivalent of a bishop assisting outside his diocese.

King Louis XIV praying in the chapel of Versailles, from the Heures de Louis le Grand, 1693, BnF MS. Lat. 9477 

The second part deals with the King’s coronation and anointing, and what Gallican theologians made of it. The special anointing sheds some light on the meaning of these liturgical honors as an expression of the King’s quasi-episcopal status. This part also touches on Louis XIV’s government of the French Church in the form of assigning benefices.

The Holy Ampulle, which was traditionally said to contain oil used by St Remigius at baptism of Clovis, and employed in the coronation ceremonies of all of the French kings from Louis VII in 1131 to Louis XVI in 1774.

Fascinatingly, some of these customs unique to the Royal Chapel have survived in the churches of the Franciscan Custody. The third part documents the centuries-old honors given to the French Consul General in Jerusalem, a curious anachronism considering France’s secular convictions. Who could ever convince a Frenchman to give up pomp and circumstance? Toujours Français, toujours… catholique?

The French Consul General in Jersualem is received at the Holy Sepulcher by the Francsican Friars of the Holy Land Custody.

A New Series on Medieval Liturgy from Canticum Salomonis

Our friends at Canticum Salomonis have just finished up another interesting series, which those who like medieval liturgy will certainly find especially enjoyable, including several recordings of troped liturgical texts. This series describes in detail the reworking of the liturgies for the feast of the Circumcision, both Mass and Office, at the cathedral of Sens in France. Because of the feast’s coincidence with New Year’s Day, and the riotous celebration thereof, special liturgical customs were often introduced to encourage the faithful to come to church. One of the most complete surviving records of such a liturgy is preserved in MS. 46 of the Bibliothèque Municipale de Sens, which contains the music for the entire Office and Mass for the feast, with all of the parts heavily troped, as well as several Latin carols to be sung at various moments during the day.

The cathedral of St Stephen in Sens. (©Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0, from Wikimedia Commons)

The manuscript has traditionally been attributed to Peter of Corbeil, bishop of Sens from 1200 to 1221, who was not only a noted theologian and philosopher, but also a poet and musician. A similar pastoral approach to the issue of immoderate celebrations on New Year’s had been taken in Paris in 1198, where he had previously been a canon. In his Office, Peter generally transcribed musical pieces that were already in use and are attested elsewhere, but he also appears to have taken the chance to incorporate songs of his own composition. These are all of paraliturgical character; the canons of Sens would likely not have tolerated innovations in the liturgical offices themselves.

Here are the links to the six articles in the series.

• part 1: A Feast of Fools? First Vespers
• part 2: Compline
• part 3: Matins, Lauds, and Little Hours
• part 4: Mass and Second Vespers
• part 5: Why the Office of Peter of Corbeil was Suppressed
• part 6: A New Years' Apéritif with the Canons of Sens

Some highlights, with recordings:

The Benedicamus Domino at the end of each Hour provides the occasion for a final hymn produced by troping both the verse and response; the example here is taken from None. Several such medieval Benedicamus tropes in the form of hymns survive, Puer natus in Bethlehem and O filii et filiæ are two examples which are still used today.

https://sicutincensum.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/benedicamus-3.mp3

Compline and Prime feature one of the very few examples of a troped Pater noster as part of the preces towards the end of the office. The tropes are short “quotations” borrowed both textually and musically from other liturgical pieces.

https://sicutincensum.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/pater_trope.mp3

Although both the Our Father and Apostles’ Creed at Compline and Prime are normally said silently, on the Circumcision they were sung at Sens; this is the only surviving Gregorian setting of the Apostles’ Creed. The tropes are also musical and textual quotation from other parts of the liturgy.

https://sicutincensum.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/credo_trope.mp3

At the Mass, while the subdeacon prepares to sing the Epistle and the deacon to sing the Gospel, the canons sung a special chant called a “conductus - leading up to” the reading. Here is the one for the Gospel.

https://sicutincensum.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/conductus_evang.mp3

The Gospel itself is sung to a special melismatic tone.

https://sicutincensum.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/evangelium.mp3

Liturgical Beauty and Joyful Evangelization

The following is a translation of a conference given by Fr. Roberto Spataro on September 30, 2017, in Mantua, Italy, at the Church of Ss Simon and Jude. The conference was entitled “La bellezza della liturgia si fa evangelizzazione (EV 28)”, given on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. It is included (along with another that has appeared on NLM) in a volume of Fr. Spataro’s essays soon to be published by Angelico Press. This translation by Zachary Thomas has also been published on Canticum Salomonis.

“Liturgical Beauty and Joyful Evangelization”

The experience of the Tridentine Mass

It is a great joy for me to speak this evening in the artistic setting of the church of Saints Simon and Jude, in a city so rich in history, culture, and faith. Mantua, a city that boasts so many illustrious citizens: Virgil, quel savio gentil, che tutto seppe (“That gentle sage, who knew all things.” Inferno, Canto VII); Sordello, the troubadour who inspired the Supreme Poet’s invective against Italy, di dolore ostello, nave senza nocchiere in gran tempesta, (“Inn of sorrows, ship without a helmsman in harsh seas.” Purgatorio, Canto VI, Mandelbaum translation) a sentiment which is true today more than ever; Vittorino da Feltre, Christian pedagogue; the Gonzaga princes, who gathered famous artists in their court, among them the composer Angelo Monteverdi. The fiftieth anniversary of this eminent musician is related to another event. In 2017 we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the publication of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum by which Pope Benedict XVI restored dignity to the venerable Tridentine liturgy, calling it the “extraordinary form” of the one Roman rite. Reflecting on the characteristics of this liturgical form, a passage from the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium comes to mind as a springboard for this conversation:

Evangelization with joy becomes beauty in the liturgy, as part of our daily concern to spread goodness. The Church evangelizes and is herself evangelized through the beauty of the liturgy, which is both a celebration of the task of evangelization and the source of her renewed self-giving.

I would like to develop my thoughts in two points.

1. The Tridentine liturgy is beautiful

Mass celebrated by the community of the FSSP’s German seminary at the Buxheim Charterhouse, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, 2016. (Reproduced by permission of the FSSP.)

We might say that there have been two complimentary conceptions of beauty in the history of Western civilization . The first considers beauty as the pulchrum, a proportion and harmony of parts, the perfection of form, integrity and elegance. It is an Apollonian conception found especially in the art of Greece. It appeals to reason and insists on the objectivity of the beautiful. The other conception, expounded especially by Kant, interprets beauty as a species, a sort of luminosity that breaks in upon an object, expands its substance, orienting it outside of itself and putting it in relation with the subject . The whole is in the fragment, as Urs von Balthasar would have said, that great Swiss theologian who, in his monumental work The Glory of the Lord, developed a convincing re-reading of theology in an aesthetic key. It is not by chance that there was a great harmony of thought and feeling between Hans Urs von Balthasar, theologian of beauty, and Joseph Ratzinger, pope of the liturgy and vindicator of the rights of the Latin Mass. They share a Dionysian conception of beauty that appeals to the senses and focuses on the subject. Both these aesthetic conceptions are in agreement that beauty is always very attractive. For this very reason, in Thomistic philosophy it is associated with the other transcendentals of being--unity, truth, and goodness--as part of the moral and spiritual fruition of the subject who experiences it. Now if we apply these categories to the Tridentine liturgy, we will easily grasp why it is beautiful.

The Tridentine Liturgy is harmonious. Like a perfect diptych, its first panel opens with the “Mass of the Catechumens,” and the second with the “Mass of the Faithful.” The second part is the more important since during it the Sacrifice is offered, and so it also lasts longer. The first part has its own interior coherence: it humbly leads us into the presence of God through the prayers at the foot of the altar, with their sublime penitential orientation. Out of this humility, which is the proper basis of the relationship between creature and Creator, sinner and Redeemer, springs the supplication of the Kyrie and the prayer of the Collect. At this point, we are ready to be instructed by the Wisdom of God that is revealed in salvation history and unfolds the truth that leads us to Heaven, for only the humble will “hear” and be glad, as the Psalm says. We find a copious sprinkling of Scripture passages and Psalm verses—a prayed Bible!—that make up the text of the Introit, Gradual, Tract, Alleluia, and then the pericopes of the Epistle and the Holy Gospel. In every place we find the proportion that is the intrinsic property of beauty: texts that, except on a few special occasions, are neither too long nor too many, as is the case with the biennial or triennial cycle of the Novus Ordo. Though it had the laudable intention of offering a semi-continuous reading of the entirety of Sacred Scripture, this cycle ends up “wasting” a great number of texts that the average faithful cannot remember and, sometimes, not even hear, not only because of the length and difficulty of certain passages, but also because they are read by lectors insufficiently prepared for their task, chosen in obedience to the equality called for by an erroneous understanding of actuosa participatio. Length and bad diction are signs of vulgarity, not beauty.

The Diptych of Jeanne of France, by the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden, 1452-70 (Musée Condé, Chantilly)

The Offertory begins. The sacred silence and the kneeling position of the faithful give the moment its peculiar solemnity. The prayers of the priest have an especially harmonious structure: the offering of the host and chalice, the personal apologies, the prayer to the Most Holy Trinity. As these ancient and venerable prayers are being offered, they are accompanied by the precise, delicate gestures typical of the Tridentine liturgy, and that give the rite its unmistakable pulchritudo. These gestures are just one example of the ordered variety that makes the liturgy Vetus Ordo so truly beautiful. There are also the bows toward the cross, the kissing of the cruets by the ministers and of the altar by the priest, and even the affectionate glances toward the sacred vessels and their contents. Christ, Our Lord, is loved because he is beautiful and is beautiful because he is loved. I could go on showing how the extraordinary form of the Roman rite is beautiful because it unfolds without excess or imperfection, with calm and proportion like a melodious chant. But we should move on to other considerations.

Let us try to apply the other conception of beauty to the Tridentine liturgy. The senses of one who assists at it are touched by the Sacred, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, to use the famous definition of Rudolf Otto. They are pervaded by a thrill of spiritual joy, to invoke the great bard of the divine beauty, Augustine of Hippo. The Sacred, i.e. the perception of God that follows his manifestation, excites both reverence and adoration, because he is tremendum; and love and attraction, because he is fascinans. Can anyone deny that reverence and adoration are especially present in the Tridentine liturgy, while unfortunately they are not well preserved in the Novus Ordo? Who would not agree with the claim that the priest—mark you, the priest, the sacrum dans and not the president of the assembly—ministers, and faithful, are all intimately drawn, (while each remaining in his proper place), toward the center of all and everything, the Crucified One enthroned on the altar, where the Sacrifice of the Cross is presented to everyone’s gaze, so that everyone may love it? This manifestation of the Sacred, transcendence and immanence, Heaven and earth, divine and human, is not merely the religious archetype identified by Otto, but the incarnation of the divine Word that wills to use the Sacred to reveal his Beauty in a human form: the divine person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has united human nature to his divine nature, and thus rendered his divinity accessible to human senses. This logic of the incarnation extends to the sacred liturgy because—as the Fathers of the Church taught and the Catechism of the Catholic Church has recalled in a timely manner—quod redemptoris nostri conspicuum fuit, in sacramenta transivit. (“what was visible in our Savior has passed over into his mysteries”: CCC 1115, citing Pope St Leo I, Sermon 74, 2). Beauty strikes the senses, and the Tridentine liturgy strongly affirms the aesthetic dimension.

Ss Paul Miki and Companions

In the Latin Mass, our view is directed to a triple focal point: the crucifix, the altar and what takes place there, and the tabernacle. Our attention is seized by the fairest among the children of men: “they will look upon the one whom they have pierced” (John 19:37). Our eyes linger, feasting on the beauty of the colors of the walls, their costly ornament. We follow the ministers’ sacred dance, sober and constrained to careful, rhythmic movements, and from time to time our eyes wander to the decoration of the Temple, which recounts, in various styles, the story of the salvation recalled in each holy Mass. We hear words uttered in a raised voice, in a language different from our ordinary language, because it is reserved for dialogue with God, like a code that heightens understanding and connection between those who adopt it, a sort of familial register sons use to address their Father. It is a beautiful language, as only Latin can be, with its figures of sound and word, with a compact but still mobile construction that comes from its unmistakable literary style. Further, we hear the great silence that shrouds the priestly prayers, above all the Canon Missae, because the Mystery of God who pours out his blood for me, a sinner, because he loves me and saves me, can only be uttered submissa voce. Like all great and sublime things, he loves silence, which invites everyone to recollection and earnest prayer. We are charmed by the celestial charms of the sacred music, the sound of the organ, the Gregorian chant that floats mystically on high. We smell the delicious perfume of the incense that rises to Heaven just like our prayer, and the odor of the candles, symbols of the hearts that pine with longing for Heaven. All this proclaims a hope that the world does not know, and the Church of the last few years, not comprehending the grandeur of the Vetus Ordo, seems to have forgotten. Immersed in secular matters, and entranced by transient fashions, she has become like chaff scattered in the wind.

The sense of touch is also involved: kneeling at various points in the Holy Mass permits the faithful to touch the earth, and from this position to render adoration, thanksgiving, supplication, and impetration. The sense of touch is denied contact with the eucharistic species because the consecrated Host is received directly on the tongue, an eloquent gesture that expresses all the sanctity of the Sacrament received with faith. Only the priest is permitted to touch the Body and Blood of Christ, and only with extreme delicacy, as if caressing it. In fact, on the day of his priestly ordination, his hands were anointed with the chrism, a biblical-liturgical sign of the Holy Spirit, the divine Person who through the epiclesis performs that miracle of miracles, the consecration. “Taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Psalm 33:9), the Psalmist exclaims. The Vetus Ordo liturgy frequently repeats this verse to dispose the faithful to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ with a hunger at once spiritual and material, provided they are suitably disposed to do so.

To sum up, dear friends, we must find, perceive, and enjoy the beauty of the One who has been pierced. This is a “synaesthetic” experience that affirms sensual richness—for the sacraments are propter homines (“for us”), as Thomas Aquinas would say—so that the manifestation of the All in the fragment, of God in the space and time of the unbloody renewal of the sacrifice hic et nunc, may irradiate the Divine Mystery that is in itself the revelation of beauty. Confronted with this liturgy that is so potently theocentric and therefore respectful of all anthropological structures, we cannot help but remark, with a note of sadness, that the Novus Ordo is more impoverished, more rational, more prolix, even to the point that it becomes irritatingly and insufferably wordy in the hands of certain showman priests and ministers. A liturgy celebrated in this way is relentlessly narcissistic and vulgar.

Permit me to conclude this point about the beauty of the old liturgy with a Marian reflection. Our Lady, Tota Pulchra, is the creature in whom all beauty, insofar as it is pulchritudo and speciositas, is gathered to a Mass. The Tridentine liturgy cannot help but invoke her in the heart of the Mass: in the prayer that offers the sacrifice to the Most Holy Trinity, and in the Communicantes of the Canon. An irrepressible longing for Heaven rises from the thought of the Holy Virgin, who descends more beautiful than the dawn (Cant. 6, 9) to soften the pains of this life, where we can always count on her powerful patronage.

The Christ Child and Virgin Mary in the Company of the Saints, by Duccio di Buoninsegna, the central front panel of the dismembered altarpiece of Siena Cathedral known as the Maestà, 1311, now located in the cathedral Museum. (Public domain image from Wikipedia.)

2. The Beauty of the Tridentine Liturgy and Evangelization

Recall the opening citation from Evangelii Gaudium, which pointed out the relationship between the via pulchritudinis of the liturgy and the two-fold evangelical movement of the Church. The Church first allows herself to be evangelized so that she can then evangelize the world. Let us explicate this point. More than ever, the Church today needs to be oriented to Christ, her Head, her Spouse, her Founder. Christ is her Gospel, the good news that brings joy to her youth and fills her with authentic joy and hope. Unfortunately in the past few years, with a rapidity that should raise serious questions and concern, the Church has become engrossed with issues of a sociological nature, all affecting more or less the Church’s moral teaching. Many dubious proposals have been made by pastors, even those who bear serious ecclesial responsibilities, that are frankly incompatible with Gospel. The Church feels the need to be re-evangelized and led back to Christ. Pope Benedict XVI made extraordinary efforts in this direction, and his trilogy on Jesus of Nazareth is an expression of a Christocentrism founded on Scripture and the sound doctrine of Tradition. He always wanted to promote a reform of the liturgy, and this program found a great expression in Summorum Pontificum.

The Tridentine Mass is truly evangelical because it is Christocentric. Just think of its conclusion: the proclamation of the prologue of the Gospel of John. It is like a hinge joining the liturgy to the daily life to which we are about to return. It proclaims the heart of the Gospel, the Mystery of the incarnation, with the beauty we have been speaking of: the hieratic movement of the priest toward the Gospel side, the reading, the genuflection at the words et Verbum caro factum est, and during the Sung Mass, the musical piece performed by the schola cantorum. The Church is evangelized during the celebration of the Tridentine Mass because, as the fourth-century Father of the Church and author of very valuable liturgical-mystagogical catecheses, Cyril of Jerusalem, said, the teachings of Sacred Scripture must be gathered into a summary, the regula fidei (“the rule of faith”), the Creed of the catechism. But the Tridentine Mass itself is a catechism in action, tying us intimately to the Gospel of Christ. “What are the two principal mysteries of the Faith?” asked the unsurpassable Catechism of St Pius X. The Mass tells us. We profess our faith in God’s unity and trinity when we turn to the three divine Persons at the beginning of the Mass in the nine-fold Kyrie eleison, three times invoking the Father, three times Christ, and three times the Spirit. We adore their majesty when we sing the Gloria. We implore them to accept our offering at the Offertory. We express our desire for them to accept the sacrifice in the prayer just before the final blessing. As for the mystery of our Lord’s incarnation, passion, and death: how many signs of the cross does the priest trace out, especially during the Canon? The whole ancient liturgy and all of its texts are steeped in the theology of the Fathers of the Church, rather than the ideas of the experts and specialists of the twentieth century, and its rites are a compendium of the Holy Gospel, the Church’s real treasure that has been translated into doctrine and summarized in the Catechism.

We could continue to multiply examples of how the Tridentine Mass is a catechism for everyone, including faithful evangelizers and non-believers in need of evangelization. The plan of salvation history—creation, sin, incarnation, redemption, grace, glory, and eternal life—is taken up and synthesized in the great prayers of the Church. For instance, think of the words that the priest says as he pours the water into the chalice:

Deus qui humanae substantiae dignitatem mirabiliter condidisti [creation] et mirabilius reformasti [redemption], da nobis per huius aquae et vini mysterium eius divinitatis esse consortes [divinization and the life of grace], qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps [incarnation]. ~ O God, who did wonderfully create human nature, and more wonderfully still restore it, grant us through the Mystery of this water and wine, that we may be made partakers of His divinity, who deigned to become a partaker in our humanity.

The Confiteor in the Carthusian Mass

Now take the Confiteor. The ritual gestures surrounding it reinvoke the whole drama of sin with great clarity and poignancy, as we kneel, beat our chests, recite the prayer, and await the priest’s absolution so sadly abolished in the Novus Ordo: Indulgentiam, absolutionem, et remissionem peccatorum vestroum tribuat vobis omnipotens et misericors Dominus. In the Roman Canon, the priest asks the Father for the grace to pass the final judgment, the judgment that should be our only concern, though a serene one for Mary is praying for us: ab aeterna damnatione nos eripi et in electorum tuorum iubeas grege numerari.

Once she has been evangelized, the Church is ready to evangelize. The Tridentine Mass furnishes the grace that makes her disciples into zealous apostles, and her faithful into courageous missionaries. Is this not the Mass that inspired generation upon generation of our forefathers to spread the Gospel to faraway lands, often in the midst of grave dangers? When we read the chronicles of the missionary expeditions of the Jesuits and Franciscans in Asia and Latin America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we are surprised and moved by how concerned they were to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass in this liturgical form that casts itself completely upon God as the giver of all things, especially the grace to make efforts of evangelization fruitful.

The usus antiquior is an effective evangelizer for another reason: it speaks to the heart of those who have lost the faith or never had it. For example, today in our western society that denies its Christian roots, some people, thirsting for recollection and interior peace, turn to oriental philosophies that, despite whatever good is in them, leave the soul in its existential loneliness. They have no God to love them, to feel loved, to love. The silence and sacrality of the Tridentine Mass is a discovery that often becomes the first step toward the faith. Others, especially the young, find our “pastoral initiatives” banal, if not outright heterodox! They are looking for solid spiritual food. The Tridentine Mass offers them this substantial nourishment. Its theology coincides completely with the fides quae (“what is believed”); here the lex credendi is the lex orandi. The simple, who are the beloved of God, intuitively recognize that something very great is taking place in the Tridentine Mass, where the priests speaks with God and all are on their knees before him. The sacred mysteries teach and evangelize them too. Every kind of person feels the fascination of the splendor of this Mass that, even when offered in a small place or with modest means, is always solemn and majestic because it is truly beautiful, beautiful with a beauty mediated through vestments, words, gestures, but founded in God the supremely beautiful. To be at this Mass is to set out on a Platonic itinerarium pulchritudinis in Deum, which begins from material signs and ascends in steps up to Reality itself. It gazes upon creation in order to rise to the creator. The experience was described by Augustine, and I will close our conversation with his words:

Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air, amply spread around everywhere, question the beauty of the sky, question the serried ranks of the stars, question the sun making the day glorious with its bright beams, question the moon tempering the darkness of the following night with its shining rays, question the animals that move in the waters, that amble about on dry land, that fly in the air; their souls hidden, their bodies evident; the visible bodies needing to be controlled, the invisible souls controlling them; question all these things. They all answer you, ‘Here we are, look; we are beautiful.’ Their beauty is their confession. Who made these beautiful changeable things, if not unchanging Beauty? (St Augustine, Sermon 241. Translation slightly modified from the Vatican website.)

The Creation, and God Introducing Adam to Eve, by Jean Fouquet, ca. 1470