Vespers of the Precious Blood

Although the feast of the Precious Blood is very new to the general Calendar, added in 1849 by Bl. Pius IX, the exegetical tradition behind some of its liturgical texts is very ancient indeed. Here I will focus on the antiphons sung with the Psalms of Vespers, four of which are taken from Isaiah chapter 63, and one from Apocalypse 19, both passages long associated with the Passion of Christ and the Redemption effected by it.

The high altar of the Jesuit church in Mindelheim, Germany, with the motif of Christ in the wine-press on the antependium. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Thomas Mirtsch)

Aña Who is this that * cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this one, that is comely in His apparel. Isa. 63, 1
Aña I that speak * justice, and am a defender unto saving. ibid.
Aña He was clothed * with a garment sprinkled with blood, and His name is called The Word of God. Apoc. 19, 13
Aña Wherefore then * is Thy apparel red, and thy garments as of them that tread in the wine-press? Isa. 63, 2
Aña I have trodden * the wine-press alone, and of the nations there was no man with Me. Isa. 63, 3

The passage from Isaiah is traditionally the first of two Old Testament readings on Spy Wednesday, when the station is held at St. Mary Major. In the middle of Holy Week, as the Church of Rome commemorates Christ’s Passion, and visits its principle sanctuary of the Mother of God, this Mass begins with a prophecy of the Incarnation, which took place in Mary’s sacred womb. The full reading is Isaiah 63, 1-7, preceded by a part of verse 62, 11.

Thus sayeth the Lord God: Tell the daughter of Sion: Behold thy Savior cometh: behold his reward is with him. 63, 1 Who is this that comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra, this beautiful one in his robe, walking in the greatness of his strength? I, that speak justice, and am a defender to save. Why then is your apparel red, and your garments like theirs that tread in the winepress? I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the gentiles there is not a man with me: I have trampled on them in my indignation, and have trodden them down in my wrath, and their blood is sprinkled upon my garments, and I have stained all my apparel. etc.

The Fathers of the Church understood this passage as a prophecy of the Passion of Christ, starting in the West with Tertullian.

The prophetic Spirit contemplates the Lord as if He were already on His way to His passion, clad in His fleshly nature; and as He was to suffer therein, He represents the bleeding condition of His flesh under the metaphor of garments dyed in red, as if reddened in the treading and crushing process of the wine-press, from which the laborers descend reddened with the wine-juice, like men stained in blood. (Adv. Marcionem 4, 40 ad fin.)

This connection of these words with the Lord’s Passion is repeated in very similar terms by St. Cyprian (Ep. ad Caecilium 62), who always referred to Tertullian as “the Master”, despite his lapse into the Montanist heresy; and likewise, by Saints Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechesis 13, 27) and Gregory of Nazianzus (Oration 45, 25.)

The necessary premise of the Passion is, of course, the Incarnation, for Christ could not suffer without a human body. Indeed, ancient heretics who denied the Incarnation often did so in rejection of the idea that God Himself can suffer, which they held to be incompatible with the perfect and incorruptible nature of the divine. St. Ambrose was elected bishop of Milan in the year 374, after the see had been held by one such heretic, the Arian Auxentius, for twenty years. We therefore find him referring this same prophecy to the whole economy of salvation, culminating in the Ascension of Christ’s body into heaven, thus, in the treatise on the Mysteries (7, 36):

The angels, too, were in doubt when Christ arose; the powers of heaven were in doubt when they saw that flesh was ascending into heaven. Then they said: “Who is this King of glory?” And while some said “Lift up your gates, O princes, and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, and the King of glory shall come in.” In Isaiah, too, we find that the powers of heaven doubted and said: “Who is this that comes up from Edom, the redness of His garments is from Bosor, He who is glorious in white apparel?”

In the next generation, St Eucherius of Lyon (ca. 380-450) is even more explicit: “The garment of the Son of God is sometimes understood to be His flesh, which is assumed by the divinity; of which garment of the flesh Isaiah prophesying says, ‘Who is this etc.’ ” (Formulas of Spiritual Understanding, chapter 1).

The Risen Christ and the Mystical Winepress, by Marco dal Pino, often called Marco da Siena, 1525-1588 ca. Both of the figures of Christ in this painting show very markedly the influence of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment.

In his Commentary on the Prophet Isaiah (book 18) St Jerome explicitly connects this passage with St John’s vision in Apocalypse 19.

John also in the Apocalypse bears witness that he saw these things: “I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called faithful and true, and with justice doth he judge and fight. And his eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many diadems, and he had a name written, which no man knoweth but himself. And he was clothed with a garment sprinkled with blood; and his name is called, the Word of God. And the armies that are in heaven followed him on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth proceedeth a sharp two edged sword; that with it he may strike the nations.” The Lord and Savior sat upon a red horse, taking on a human body; to whom it is said “Why are thy garments red?” and “Who is this that cometh from Edom, his garments bloodied from Bozrah?” St Jerome presumes his reader’s familiarity with the exegetic tradition that the “garment” and “bloodied vestment” in Isaiah 63 refer to the Incarnation. He does even need to finish the thought by pointing out that both passages refer to a “wine-press” as a symbol  of the instrument of Christ’s sufferings.

The Rider on the White Horse, Apocalypse 19, from the Bamberg Apocalypse, 1000-1020 A.D. The lower part shows the angel calling to the birds of prey in verse 17 of the same chapter.

Well before St Jerome, the great Biblical scholar Origen had also described this vision of St John as a prophecy of the Incarnation and the Passion.

Now, in John’s vision, the Word of God as He rides on the white horse is not naked: He is clothed with a garment sprinkled with blood, for the Word who was made flesh and therefore died is surrounded with marks of the fact that His blood was poured out upon the earth, when the soldier pierced His side. For of that passion, even should it be our lot some day to come to that highest and supreme contemplation of the Logos, we shall not lose all memory, nor shall we forget the truth that our admission (into heaven) was brought about by His sojourning in our body. (Commentary on the Gospel of John, Book II.4)

The Vigil of Pentecost 2025

IN those days: The hand of the Lord was upon me, and brought me forth in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of a plain that was full of bones. And he led me about through them on every side; now they were very many upon the face of the plain, and they were exceeding dry. And he said to me, “Son of man, dost thou think these bones shall live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, thou knowest.” And he said to me, “Prophesy concerning these bones, and say to them, ‘Ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will send spirit into you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to grow over you, and will cover you with skin: and I will give you spirit and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’ ” And I prophesied as he had commanded me, and as I prophesied there was a noise, and behold a commotion, and the bones came together, each one to its joint. And I saw, and behold the sinews, and the flesh came up upon them: and the skin was stretched out over them, but there was no spirit in them.

The Vision of Ezechiel, 1630, by Francisco Collantes (Madrid, 1599-1656); Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

And he said to me, “Prophesy to the spirit, prophesy, O son of man, and say to the spirit, ‘Thus saith the Lord God: Come, spirit, from the four winds, and blow upon these slain, and let them live again.’ ” And I prophesied as he had commanded me, and the spirit came into them, and they lived, and they stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army. And he said to me, “Son of man, all these bones are the house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, ‘Thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will open your graves, and will bring you out of your sepulchres, O my people, and will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have opened your sepulchres, and shall have brought you out of your graves, o my people, and shall have put my spirit in you, and you shall live, and I shall make you rest upon your own land: saith the Lord God.’ ” (Ezechiel 37, 1-14, the sixth prophecy of the Vigil of Pentecost, and seventh of the Easter vigil.)

This passage was accepted by the Church Fathers from the most ancient times as a prophecy of the resurrection of the body at the end of the world, and hence of the Resurrection of Christ that makes this possible. In the later second century, St Irenaeus of Lyon writes:

“Now Isaias thus declares (26, 19), that He who at the beginning created man, did promise him a second birth after his dissolution into earth: ‘The dead shall rise again, and they who are in the tombs shall arise, and they who are in the earth shall rejoice. … ’ And Ezekiel speaks as follows: ‘And the hand of the Lord came upon me, and the Lord led me forth in the Spirit, and set me down in the midst of the plain, and this place was full of bones. And He caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were many upon the surface of the plain very dry. And He said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I said, Lord, Thou who hast made them dost know. And He said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and thou shalt say to them, Ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord to these bones, Behold, I will cause the spirit of life to come upon you, and I will lay sinews upon you, and bring up flesh again upon you, and I will stretch skin upon you, and will put my Spirit into you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord. … ’ ”

It is cited to the same effect by Tertullian, St Cyprian and St Ambrose in the West, by Origen, St Cyril of Jerusalem and St John Chrysostom in the East, among many others.

A Christian sarcophagus of the first quarter of the 4th century, with a representation of Ezekiel’s vision of the bones on the left, and the Adoration of the Magi on the right. The figures on the far left are cleverly shown in various stages of resurrection; the standing figure next to them is Christ, who is holding a thaumaturgical wand to indicate that He is performing a miracle, as Ezekiel looks on from behind. 

In the Byzantine Rite, this lesson is read at Orthros of Holy Saturday, one of the most beautiful services of the year, commonly called Jerusalem Matins. This is the only day on which this long and complicated ceremony ends with a special synaxis of three readings: Ezekiel 37, 1-14; 1 Corinthians 5, 6-8 and Galatians 3, 13-14 (as a single reading, titled to the former); and Matthew 27, 62-66, which tells of the setting of the guards at the Lord’s tomb. Among the Slavs, it is sometimes sung in a special setting; this recording was made at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York, nine years ago. (The first few times I attended this service, I knew barely a word of Church Slavonic, and had no idea what was happening most of the time. It was sung rather more slowly than it is here, and the cantor used a score with all the notes printed out, rather than a lectionary, so I thought it was some kind of solo motet, a lamentation for the Lord’s death.)

This English version is also very beautiful; the prophecy is preceded by a chant from a Psalm called a prokimen, like most Scriptural readings in the Byzantine Rite other than the Gospel. This recording skips the Epistle and its prokimen, and goes straight to the Alleluia before the Gospel, one of the most beautiful in the repertoire.

The Prodigal Son in the Liturgy of Lent

In his commentary on the Gospel of St Matthew, St Jerome writes as follows about the parable of the two sons who are ordered by their father to go and work in the vineyard (21, 28-32). “These are the two sons who are described in Luke’s parable, the frugal (or ‘virtuous’) and the immoderate (or ‘wanton’).” He then connects these two sons with the following parable of the landowner who sends his servants, and at last his son, to collect the fruits of his vineyard from the tenants (verses 33-46).

The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1667-70, by the Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-82). Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons. ~ This painting is now in the National Gallery in Washington DC; Murillo also did a series of six episodes of this Gospel, which are shown below; these are now in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.

“The order is given first to the people of the gentiles through the knowledge of the natural law: ‘Go, work in my vineyard’, that is, what thou would not have done to thee, do not to another. And they proudly answer, ‘I will not,’ but afterwards, at the coming of the Savior, having done penance, they worked in the vineyard, and corrected the stubbornness of their speech by labor. But the second son is the people of the Jews, which answers to Moses, ‘All things whatsoever the Lord shall say to thee, we shall do,’ (Exod. 24, 3 and 7), and went not into the vineyard, because, having killed the son of the householder, it thought itself the heir. But others think that the parable is not of Jews and gentiles, but simply of sinners and the just, as the Lord Himself also explains it.”

This commentary by so influential a Doctor of the Church may well explain why the Roman lectionary follows the parable of the landowner on the Friday of the second week of Lent with the Gospel known in English as that of the Prodigal Son, Luke 15, 11-32. The former, which tells of the killing of the son and heir, is read on the day of the Lord’s death, and note that he is taken “outside the vineyard” before he is killed, as Christ was taken outside the Holy City. The latter is read on a Saturday, the Jewish holy day, a placement which may be read as a warning against the jealousy of the older brother. And indeed, jealousy among brothers is also the theme of the lengthy readings from Genesis which are assigned to these two days, the stories of the selling of Joseph on Friday (37, 6-22), and of the blessing of Isaac on Saturday (22, 6-40).

The Prodigal Son Receives His Inheritance, and The Prodigal Son Departs: notice how Murillo calls the viewers’ attention to the older son by making him the brightest figure in both pictures.

This arrangement may also be the result of influence from the Eastern churches, but this is by no means certain. In the ancient liturgy of Jerusalem, known as the Hagiopolite Rite (from the Greek “hagia polis – the holy city”), the Gospel of the Prodigal Son was read on the second Sunday of Lent, and in a later elaboration of that tradition, the parable of the landowner was read at Matins of the Fourth Sunday. What makes me suspect Eastern influence here is that in that rite, the Gospel of the fifth Sunday is Luke 16, 19-31, the story of Lazarus and Dives. The Roman Rite originally read this passage at the beginning of the season after Pentecost, but it was moved in the early 8th century to the Thursday of the second week, giving us three Hagiopolite Lenten Gospels in a row.

Furthermore, as I noted in an article on Thursday, some of the chants for this newly instituted Mass are taken from the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, on which is read the Gospel of the Good Samaritan, Luke 10, 25-37, which is the Hagiopolite Gospel of the fourth Sunday of Lent. The pope who instituted this Mass, St Gregory II (715-31), had spent a year in Constantinople, which borrowed many things from the rite of Jerusalem, including the hymns for the Divine Office pertaining to these Gospels, and he might very well have learned of this tradition by attending services there. His successor and seven predecessors were all Greeks or Syrians, and so it is likewise possible that aspects of the Jerusalem tradition were already known in Rome before his time. However, the aforementioned Matins Gospel (Matt. 21, 33-46) is first attested in a manuscript of the 860s, whereas it was already in its place in the Roman Rite at least two centuries earlier, likely rather more, so this all may be no more than a tantalizing coincidence. (See Fr Gabriel Bertonière OCSO, The Sundays of Lent in the Triodion: The Sundays without a Commemoration, p. 46; Orientalia Analecta Christiana, 253; Pontificio Istituto Orientale, Rome, 1997.)

The Prodigal Son Feasting, and the Prodigal Son Driven Out After Wasting All His Substance.

I have previously described how the introit of today’s Mass refers to the traditional interpretation of the epistle, the episode in which Jacob deceives his father Isaac to obtain his blessing. Likewise, the gradual, which begins with the words, “It is good to confess (confiteri) to the Lord,” refers to the prodigal son’s confession, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee.” The verb “confiteri” and its derivative noun “confessio” occur nearly 80 times in the Psalter, but this verse was certainly chosen for this Mass in particular because of the Psalm’s title, “a song for the day of the sabbath.”

As St Ambrose explains in his commentary on the Gospel, “This is the first confession before the author of nature, the leader in mercy, the judge of fault. But even though God knows all things, nevertheless He awaits your confession, for ‘with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.’ (Rom. 10, 10) … without fear bring forth what you know is already known. Confess, that Christ may intervene for you, He whom we have as an advocate before the Father… He has reason to intervene for you, lest He should have died for you in vain. The Father has cause to forgive, because He wants what the Son wants.”

For Ambrose, as for other commentators, this passage speaks of course of God’s limitless mercy, and in Lent, tells the catechumens of the remission of their sins which they will receive in baptism at the Easter vigil in four weeks’ time. Right before the passage just cited, he says, commenting on the first word which the son says upon his return, “How merciful, how holy is he, who is not offended and does not disdain to hear the name of father.”

But the story is also a warning against the vice of envy, which is why it is paired in this Mass with the story of the blessing of Isaac, the event which gives rise to the hatred between Jacob and his brother Esau. Commenting on the fact that the prodigal son “went abroad into a far-off region”, Ambrose says, “… we who were afar have been made near in the blood of Christ. (Eph. 2, 13) Let us not envy those who return from a far-off region, because we were also in a far-off region, as Isaiah teaches, saying (9, 2), ‘a light hath risen upon them that sat in the region of the shadow of death.’ ”

The Repentance of the Prodigal Son, and The Prodigal Son Returns to His Father.

On the ferias of Lent, the Communion antiphons are each taken from a different Psalm in sequential order, starting on Ash Wednesday with Psalm 1. The days which were formerly aliturgical do not form part of this series, namely, the six Thursdays, and also the first and last Saturday; the ferias of Holy Week are also not included. (See the table below; click for larger view.)

The series is also interrupted on six days when particularly important passages of the Gospels are read, and the Communion is taken from them instead. The second of these is the very end of Gospel of the Prodigal Son, the father’s gentle rebuke of his elder son’s envy. Note, however, the interesting way in which the chant slightly alters the Gospel text. The original says “gaudere oportebat – it was necessary to rejoice”, in the imperfect, and without a personal subject. But the Communion puts the verb at the fore and in the present tense, while adding the word “thou”, turning it into a personal admonition to all who hear it: “Oportet te, fili, gaudere, quia frater tuus mortuus fuerat, et revixit; perierat, et inventus est. – It is necessary that thou rejoice, son, because thy brother was dead and is come to life again; he was lost, and is found.”

This is also one of only three Gospels in Lent which provides the text of a responsory in the Divine Office on its day. [note]

℟. Pater, peccávi in caelum, et coram te: jam non sum dignus vocári filius tuus: * Fac me sicut unum ex mercenariis tuis. ℣. Quanti mercenarii in domo patris mei abundant pánibus, ego autem hic fame péreo! Surgam, et ibo ad patrem meum, et dicam ei. Fac me…

℟. Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no longer worthy to be called thy son: * Make me as one of thine hired servants. ℣. How many hired servants in my father’s house have bread enough and to spare, but here I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him. Make me…

There are nearly thirty settings of this text as a polyphonic motet; one of the most splendid is this piece in two parts by the Franco-Flemish composer Thomas Créquillon (1505 ca. – 1557).

[note] On the Thursday after Ash Wednesday, the first responsory of Matins is taken from the Gospel, Matthew 8, 5-13. On the Tuesday of the fourth week, the beginning of the first responsory comes from the day’s Gospel, John 7, 14-31, but the rest of it is centonized from other parts of the same Gospel. Many of the Tenebrae responsories are centonized from the Passion readings, but none is taken directly from the Gospel reading of its day.

The Psalms of the Epiphany

In the traditional Roman Divine Office, the only Hours which change their Psalms according to the specific feast day are Matins and Vespers. [1] On the majority of feasts, the first four Psalms of Vespers (109-112) are taken from Sunday, but Psalm 113, the fifth and longest of Sunday, is substituted by another; on the feasts of martyrs, by Psalm 115, on those of bishops by 131, etc. There are, however, four occasions on which Psalm 113 is not replaced, three of which are very ancient indeed, and the fourth relatively recent in origin.

The three ancient feasts are Easter, Pentecost and Epiphany, on which it is said on the day itself and through the octave. (Some medieval Uses, however, vary this.) This custom reflects the traditional baptismal character of these celebrations, which goes back to the very earliest days of the Church.

The Psalm numbered 113 in the Septuagint and Vulgate is really two Psalms joined together, those numbered 114 and 115 in the Hebrew. [2] It is the first of these which speaks of the passage of the Jews out of Egypt, and then of the Crossing of the Jordan into the Holy Land.

The Crossing of the Red Sea, depicted on a Christian sarcophagus at the end of the 4th century from Arles, France. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Marsyas, CC BY-SA 3.0; click to enlarge.)

“When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people: Judea became his sanctuary, Israel his dominion. The sea saw and fled (i.e. the Red Sea): the Jordan was turned back. … What ailed thee, O sea, that thou didst flee: and thou, O Jordan, that thou wast turned back? … At the presence of the Lord the earth was moved, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turned the rock into pools of water, and the stony hill into fountains of waters.”

The Church has always understood the story of the Exodus as a prefiguration of salvation in Christ, and specifically, the Crossing of the Red Sea as a prefiguration of the Sacrament of Baptism. The reading of the relevant passage from Exodus is attested in the very oldest surviving homily on the subject of Easter, the Paschal homily of St Melito of Sardis, from the mid-2nd century; it begins with the words “The Scripture about the Hebrew Exodus has been read”, and this custom continues into every historical Christian liturgy. Following the lead of St Paul, who says that the rock which provided water to the children of Israel in the desert was Christ (1 Cor. 10, 4), St Melito attributes all of the events of the Exodus directly to Him.

“This was the one who guided you into Egypt, and guarded you, and himself kept you well supplied there. This was the one who lighted your route with a column of fire, and provided shade for you by means of a cloud, the one who divided the Red Sea, and led you across it, and scattered your enemy abroad. This is the one who provided you with manna from heaven, the one who gave you water to drink from a rock, the one who established your laws in Horeb, the one who gave you an inheritance in the land, the one who sent out his prophets to you, the one who raised up your kings. This is the one who came to you, the one who healed your suffering ones and who resurrected your dead.”

Psalm 113, therefore, which speaks of the Red Sea fleeing to make passage for the children of Israel as they go out of Egypt, and the rock that becomes a pool of water, is perfectly suitable to the two most ancient feasts on which the Church celebrates the Sacrament of Baptism, Easter and Pentecost. Likewise, on Epiphany, the Church commemorates the Baptism of Christ in the waters of the Jordan, to which the Psalm also refers. On the fourth feast, that of the Holy Trinity, which was instituted much later, it reminds us that our Faith in the Trinity was first manifested on the occasion of Christ’s Baptism, when the Holy Spirit came upon Him in the form of a dove, and the Father spoke from heaven; and likewise, of the baptismal formula which Christ gave to the Church, as recounted in Matthew 28, 16-20, the Gospel of Easter Friday.

The Baptism of Christ, by Giusto de’ Menabuoi; fresco in the baptistery of Padua, ca. 1378.

The nine psalms of Epiphany Matins are 28, 45 and 46 in the first nocturn, 65, 71 and 85 in the second, and 94, 95 and 96 in the third. The antiphons with which they are sung, and which determine their meaning for the feast, are attested quite uniformly in the ancient antiphonaries. The choice of these psalms and antiphons reflects some very ancient interpretative traditions found in the writings of the Church Fathers.

Psalm 28 is sung with an antiphon taken from its first two verses: “Bring to the Lord, o ye children of God: adore ye the Lord in his holy court.” The full text of these verses is “Bring to the Lord, o ye children of God: bring to the Lord the offspring of rams. Bring to the Lord glory and honour: bring to the Lord glory to his name: adore ye the Lord in his holy court.” The antiphon removes the three objects from the verb “bring”; the act of bringing is in itself to sufficient indicate the gifts which the Magi brought to Christ at the Epiphany.

Although St Matthew does not specify how many Magi there were, the representation of three of them is one of the most ancient and consistent traditions of Christian art. It is commonly assumed that artists settled on three to correspond to their three gifts, which, in turn, have been read from very ancient times as symbols of Christ’s divinity, mortality and regality. This is undoubtedly true, but there is another, equally important reason for showing three. The Greeks, following the Babylonians, divided the world into three parts, Asia, Africa and Europe; this division predates Christianity, but was received by Christians and Jews as part of their sacred history. Each continent was believed to be populated by the descendants of one of the sons of Noah, Asians from Shem, Africans from Ham, and Europeans from Japheth. The three Magi are therefore the symbolic representatives of these three parts of world, coming to worship the Creator and Savior.

A third-century fresco in the Roman Catacomb of Priscilla, showing the three Magi each painted in a different color, to indicate that each one represents one of the three parts of the world.

Particularly in Rome, where people from every part of the Empire lived, an image of three Magi represents the revelation of Christ as the Redeemer of all men, and the coming of all peoples to salvation. The antiphon of Psalm 28 on Epiphany reflects the fact that the gentiles are also numbered among the “sons of God.” The antiphons of Psalms 65 and 85 are chosen on a similar theme. “Let all the earth adore thee, and sing to thee: let it sing a psalm to thy name, o Lord.” (Psalm 65, 4) “All the nations thou hast made shall come, and adore before thee, O Lord.” (Psalm 85, 9) Pope St Leo I quotes the second of these in his third sermon on the Epiphany. [3]

The Church Fathers also associate Psalm 28 with Christ’s Baptism. St Basil teaches that the words of verse 3, “the voice of the Lord is upon the waters” refer to St John the Baptist. (Homily 2 on Ps. 28) St Ambrose understands them to refer to the appearance of the Three Persons of the Trinity (De mysteriis 5.26), and likewise St Peter Chrysologus writes in a sermon on the Epiphany, “Today, as the prophet saith, the voice of the Lord is upon the waters. Which voice? ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (Sermon 160)

A work known as the Breviarium in Psalmos, (traditionally but incorrectly attributed to St Jerome), explains the words of the antiphon of Psalm 45, “the stream of the river maketh joyful the city of God,” as a reference to both the waters of baptism and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. “After the worship of demons is overthrown, the washing of baptism and the pouring fourth of the Holy Spirit maketh joyful the soul, the city of God, or else the Church which is the city of God that is set upon a mountain, and is not hidden.”

The Adoration of the Magi, from the Benedictional of St Aethelwold, ca. 975. By this point the tradition has emerged of showing the Magi with royal crowns, inspired by the words of Psalm 71 cited below, and a verse of the Epistle of the Mass of Epiphany, “And the Gentiles shall walk in thy light, and kings in the brightness of thy rising.” (Isaiah 60, 3)

A commentary on the Psalms of the later 4th century, formerly attributed to Rufinus of Aquileia (345-411), reads the antiphon of Psalm 71, “The kings of Tharsis and the islands shall offer presents: the kings of the Arabians and of Saba shall bring gifts” (verse 10), in reference to the Magi. “The Magi, led by a star, fulfilled this bodily, and the kings and princes of all the earth still do not cease to imitate them even daily. … by these gifts which are said to be brought to Lord, those faithful men are indicated, whom the authority of kings brings into the society of the Church.” It then refers the following verse, “And all the kings shall adore him”, to the end of the worship of the Roman emperors, for the sake of which Christians were so often persecuted before the reign of Constantine. “All the kings shall adore him, who were formerly wont to be adored, … and all nations that were formerly wont to serve earthly kings, will serve Him, that is our heavenly King.” (Commentarius in LXXV Psalmos; PL 21, 0939B). The mention of kings from three places in the East (Tharsis, Arabia, and Saba) also fits in with the traditional artistic representation of three mentioned above.

Psalm 94 was clearly chosen for the close similarity between its words “venite, adoremus, et procidamus ante Deum – come, let us worship, and fall down before God,” (verse 6 of the Old Latin version) and those of the Gospel, “venimus adorare eum. … et procidentes adoraverunt eum – we have come to worship him … and falling down they worshipped him. ” (Matt. 2, verses 2 and 11.) The antiphon with which it is sung on the Epiphany is therefore “Come, let us worship Him, for He is the Lord, our God.” This Psalm is normally said at the beginning of Matins every day with a refrain called an invitatory, which is repeated in whole or part between its verses. On the Epiphany, however, the invitatory and Psalm 94 are omitted from the beginning of Matins, and the psalm is said in the third nocturn, with the antiphon repeated between the verses in the manner of an invitatory.

In his Rationale Divinorum Officiorum (6.16.9), William Durandus also notes this prosaic explanation for omitting the invitatory on Epiphany, the mere avoidance of repetition. Before it, however, he explains that the invitatory is omitted “to show that the Church in its first fruits came from the gentiles to the Lord, not invited, or called by a herald, but with only the star to lead it, … so that shame might be inculcated on those who are late to believe, even though they have many preachers. For the Magi came to worship Christ, even though they were not called.” He then gives a second explanation, a more traditional one which dates back to his ninth-century predecessor, Amalarius of Metz: “Secondly, so that we who are daily invited and urged to worship and beseech God, may be seen to detest the deceitful invitation of Herod when he said to the Magi, ‘Go and inquire diligently concerning the Child.’ ”

A page of 1490 Breviary according to the Use of Passau, Germany. In the right column, the rubics just above the middle of the page begins “At Matins, we do not say the Invitatory, so that we may differ from Herod’s deceitful invitation.”

[1] The regular psalms of Sunday Lauds (92, 99, 62-66, the Benedicite, and 148-149-150) were traditionally said on all feast days in the Roman Rite. In the reform of St Pius X, psalms 66, 149 and 150 were removed, but the group thus reduced continued to be used on all major feasts, including Pentecost. The psalms of the day hours were likewise traditionally invariable for all feasts (53 and the eleven parts of 118), and those of Compline always invariable; this was also changed in the reform of St Pius X, but not in a way that applied to major feasts like Epiphany.

[2] There are four places where the Psalms are joined or divided one way in the Hebrew and another in the Greek. There are also psalms which both traditions have as a single text, but are generally believed to be two joined together, (e.g. 26), and others which both traditions have as two (41 and 42), which are generally believed to have originally been one, later divided. It is quite possible that these variations come from ancient liturgical usages of which all knowledge has long since been lost. Likewise, the meaning of many words and phrases in the titles of the Psalms had already been lost when the Septuagint translation was made in the 3rd century B.C.

[3] It is tempting to think of this as proof that the antiphon itself goes back to the time of St Leo, but it is of course just as possible that its unknown composer was inspired to choose this text by reading Pope Leo’s sermon.

The Five-Week Advent

The most ancient liturgical books of the Roman Rite attest that the Roman Advent was originally five weeks long, rather than four. The oldest surviving sacramentary, known as the Old Gelasian Sacramentary, dates to about 750 AD, and represents the Roman Rite as it stood about 50 years earlier; it has five Masses “de Adventu(m) Domini” (although these are not assigned to specific Sundays), and Masses of the three Ember days of December. About 30 years later, in the Gellone Sacramentary, we find five Sundays of Advent, the first of which is placed after the Mass of St Chrysogonus on November 24; these are counted backward from Christmas as “the fifth Sunday before the birth of the Lord, the fourth Sunday”, etc. All the prayers of the First to Fourth Sundays of Advent in the Missal of St Pius V are found in the same places in Gellone on the Second to Fifth Sundays.

Folio 122r of the Gellone Sacramentary, with the Mass of the “Fifth Sunday before the birth of the Lord”, under the header “Here begin the prayers of the Advent of the Lord.” (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 12048)

The Wurzburg lectionary, the oldest of the Roman Rite, was copied out in about 700 AD, but its contents date to about 650. The Gospel section has no readings for Advent at all, nor any hint of the season’s existence. The Epistle section places the readings for the December Ember days after the feast of St Andrew on November 30th; all but one of these are identical to those of the Tridentine Missal. They are followed by five Epistles “de Adventu Domini”, which include the four Sunday Epistles read in Advent today, in a slightly different order.

The Roman Missal still preserves a reminder of this older custom, even though in the final decades of the 8th century, with the transition to the so-called Gregorian Sacramentary, Advent was shortened to four weeks. The Collect of the last Sunday of the liturgical year begins with the same word, “Excita – stir up”, as those of the 1st, 2nd and 4th Sundays and Ember Friday of Advent, and the Gospel, Matthew 24, 15-35, has an apocalyptic theme similar to that of the First Sunday of Advent, Luke 21, 25-33.

Another relic of this is found in the Divine Office. Normally, any given week of the year (or set of weeks) has about 8-12 responsories for Matins. Depending on the season, 7 or 9 of these are said on Sunday, the rest on Monday, with some series running into Tuesday; once they have all been said, those of Sunday are repeated on the remaining weekdays. In Advent, however, there is a special set of responsories which are said on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of both the first and second weeks of Advent. This set was apparently originally said in the second week of a five-week Advent; when the season was shortened, these texts were preserved by means of a unique arrangement found nowhere else in the Office, which fits five weeks’ worth of responsories into only four weeks.

This table shows the distribution of the Matins responsories of the first two weeks of Advent; those of the first Sunday are marked with red numbers, those of the second with blue numbers, and those of the extra series with green numbers. (Click to enlarge.)

In the Ambrosian and Mozarabic Rites, Advent is six weeks long, beginning on the Sunday after November 11, the feast of St Martin. The keeping of a fast similar to that of Lent in preparation for Christmas, and beginning around St Martin’s day, is first attested towards the end of the fifth century. The oldest sources agree that it was less strict than that of Lent, originally kept only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and over time, it gradually fell out of use altogether. However, nothing in the ancient sources indicates that this was ever the liturgical custom of the Roman Rite, or that the Roman Advent was ever tied to the feast of St Martin, which is not in the Old Gelasian Sacramentary or the Wurzburg epistolary. The oldest Roman liturgical texts for Advent speak of fasting only in connection with the Ember days.

All of these customs long predate any period when people thought to write down explanations of why they made specific additions or changes to the liturgy, although we are often able to glean such reasons from other writings or historical facts. In the case of the Roman Advent, we can reasonably speculate, but perhaps no more than that, that its varying lengths derive from the different ways the Fathers of the Church divided the history of the world before the coming of Christ.

In his book “On the Catechizing of the Uninstructed” (22.39), St Augustine divides the history of the world into six periods, each marked by a covenant between God and His people.

“…five ages of the world having passed, the first of which is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from Adam, who was the first man to be made, down to Noah, who constructed the ark at the time of the flood; then the second goes to Abraham, who was chosen as the father indeed of all those nations which should follow the example of his faith, … the third age is from Abraham to King David, the fourth from David to that captivity by which the people of God migrated to Babylon, and the fifth from that migration down to the coming (adventum) of our Lord Jesus Christ. From His coming, the sixth age begins, so that now that spiritual grace, which was then known to a few patriarchs and prophets, may be made manifest to all nations…”

In this context, the conclusion of this passage could very well be taken as a reference to the liturgical season which runs from Christmas to Epiphany, in which God’s grace is indeed “made manifest to all nations.”

Ss Gregory and Augustine, ca. 1510, by the Spanish painter Juan de Borgoña (1470 ca. – 1536; public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

St Gregory the Great became Pope 160 years after the death of St Augustine; it hardly needs to be said that his writings were especially influential on the Roman liturgical tradition. In his sermon on the Gospel of Septuagesima Sunday, Matthew 20, 1-16, he modifies Augustine’s division of time as follows, according to the hours at which the workers are hired to work in the vineyard. “The morning of the world (i.e., the first hour) is from Adam to Noah; the third hour is from Noah to Abraham; the sixth is from Abraham to Moses, the ninth from Moses to the coming of the Lord; and the eleventh is from the coming of the Lord to the end of the world.” This may also have been inspired by a different tradition found in various writings of Augustine himself, which gives a four-fold division of the entire history of humanity: “before the Law”, from creation to Moses; “under the Law”, from Moses to Christ; “under grace” from Christ to the end of the world; and “in peace”, which is to say, eternity. (De diversis questionibus LXXXIII 66.3, cited in “Bede and the End of Time” by Peter Darby, p. 24, footnote 40.)

The original Roman Advent of five weeks would therefore correspond to St Augustine’s six-fold division of time: five weeks to represent the five ages of the world before the coming of Christ, and the season from Christmas to Epiphany to represent the sixth age. The reduction of Advent to four weeks would correspond to St Gregory’s four ages before the coming of Christ, with one age after. The fourth week of Advent is only complete in those years in which Christmas falls on a Sunday; this would represent the fact that humanity has not yet come to the fullness of time in which it will live “in peace” after the end of this world, and the coming of the new creation.

The Communio Amen Dico Vobis

On the Sundays after Pentecost, most of the Communion chants are taken from the Psalms, as indeed are most of the Gregorian propers throughout the year. There are a some exceptions, however, such as the two from John 6, on the 9th and 15th Sundays, and another from Wisdom 16 on the 13th: “Thou hast given us bread from heaven, o Lord...” These are obviously chosen in reference to the Eucharist, although it has never been a habit of the Roman Rite (nor indeed, of any historical rite) to be consistently obvious in its choice and arrangement of liturgical texts, especially in the seasons without an overarching theme such as Advent or Passiontide. In Lent, a number of Communios are taken from the Gospel of the day, and there is one such in the time after Pentecost as well, on the third Sunday.

However, the Communio for the Sundays at the end of the year, from the 23rd to the last, may seem like a bit of a puzzler, since it is a text which has no evident reference to the Eucharist, and from a Gospel which is not part of the temporal cycle at all.

Communio Amen, dico vobis, quidquid orantes pétitis, crédite, quia accipiétis, et fiet vobis. (Amen I say to you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you shall receive, and it shall be done to you. Mark 11, 24.)

The explanation for this lies in a feature which is found in the early sources of the Roman Rite, and which was retained in many of its Uses up to the time of the Tridentine reform, but was not part of the Use of the later medieval Papal court, which became the Missal of St Pius V. In the earliest Roman lectionaries, proper epistles and gospels are assigned to the Wednesdays and Fridays of the weeks after Epiphany and Pentecost, as well as those of Advent and Eastertide. This Communio is taken from the Gospel which is assigned to the Wednesday of the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, Mark 11, 23-26, in the second oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, the Murbach capitulary, ca. 750 AD.

“[Jesus answering, saith to His disciples: Have the faith of God.] Amen I say to you, that whosoever shall say to this mountain, Be thou removed and be cast into the sea, and shall not stagger in his heart, but believe, that whatsoever he saith shall be done; it shall be done unto him. Therefore I say unto you, all things, whatsoever you ask when ye pray, believe that you shall receive; and they shall come unto you. * And when you shall stand to pray, forgive, if you have aught against any man; that your Father also, who is in heaven, may forgive you your sins. But if you will not forgive, neither will your Father that is in heaven, forgive you your sins.”

The Gospel mentioned above in a Missal according to the Use of Cologne, printed in 1487.  

There is no immediately evident reason why the Communio should be taken from the Gospel of the feria, rather than that of the Sunday, but this is not the only such case. The Communio of the 3rd through 6th Sundays after Epiphany is Luke 4, 22, the end of a long-obsolete ferial Gospel attested in the very oldest Roman lectionary, the Wurzburg capitulary, ca. 650. We should note in passing that when Sacrosanctum Concilium spoke of broadening the corpus of Scriptural readings in the Mass (in paragraphs 35 and 51), the broader context of the document makes it clear that what it was talking about was the revival of an authentically ancient and Roman custom such as this, and not the creation of wholly new lectionary founded on more than one erroneous conceit.

Although this passage is missing from the medieval editions of the Roman Missal, and the early printed editions based on them, it returned to general use with the publication of the Missal of St Pius V, in which it forms the Gospel for the Mass of St Gregory the Wonderworker, whose feast is today. (The selection of verses is not exactly the same; it includes verse 22, in brackets above, and ends at the asterisk.) The reason for this is that Gregory is traditionally said to have moved part of a mountain, as explained in the lessons of the 3rd nocturn of Matins on his feast day, which are taken from St Bede’s commentary on the Gospel of Mark.

“The heathen, who have written curses against the Church, are wont to reprove our people by saying that they did not have full faith in God, because they never been able to move mountains. To these it should be answered that not all things have been written down which have been done in the Church, just as the Scripture also bears witness concerning the deeds of Christ our Lord Himself. (John 21, 25) Whence this could also happen, that a mountain might be lifted up and cast into the sea, should this be necessary, as we read was done by the prayers of the blessed father Gregory, bishop of Neo-Caesarea in Pontus, a man outstanding in his merits and virtues...

A stained-glass window in the cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston, which shows St Gregory moving the mountain (in a much more dramatic fashion than in St Bede’s account.) Image from Wikimedia Commons by Faragutful, CC BY-SA 4.0.

for when he wished to build a church in a suitable place, but saw that it was too narrow, being wedged in between a precipice on the sea on one side, and a mountain on the other, he came there by night, and kneeling down, reminding the Lord of His promise... and in the morning ... found that the mountain had left as much space as the builders required for the church. Therefore this man, or other man of like merit, was have been able, if need were, to obtain from the Lord by the merit of his faith, that even a mountain should be removed, and be cast into the sea.”

Fully in keeping with the exegetical traditions of the earlier Fathers, St Bede goes on to give a spiritual explanation of this passage as well. “But since by the term ‘mountain’ is sometimes signified the devil, namely, on account of the pride whereby he lifts himself up against God, and wishes to be like unto the Most High (Isa. 14, 14), a mountain is lifted up and cast into the sea at the command of whose who are mighty in faith when holy teachers preach the Word, and an unclean spirit is driven out of the hearts of them that are foreordained unto eternal life...”

The Legend of St Denis

October 9 has traditionally been kept as the feast of Ss Denis (“Dionysius” in Latin) and Companions, who were martyred at Paris in the 3rd century. St John Leonardi, the founder of a small congregation of clerks regular, died on this day in 1609; when he was added to the general calendar in 1940, his feast was placed on top of that of the martyrs, who were thus reduced to a commemoration. In the post-Conciliar reform, however, both feasts have been made optional memorials, which means that the martyrs may now be celebrated more freely in the Novus Ordo than in the Roman Rite. That they should be present at all in the modern liturgy is very surprising, since St Denis is the subject of one of the most famous hagiographical confusions, of exactly the sort that led to the suppression or downgrading of so many other feasts.

A statue of St Denis, from the treasury of the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Paris. One legend tells that St Denis was beheaded on the hill of Montmartre which overlooks Paris, after which he picked up his head and walked about 4 miles to the site where he is buried, the future location of the abbey which bears his name. (Photo courtesy of the Schola Sainte-Cécile.)

In his History of the Franks (I.30), St Gregory of Tours (538-94) lists Denis as one of seven men sent to Gaul as bishops to evangelize various cities during the reign of the Emperor Decius (249-51), and says that sometime after, he was “afflicted with various sufferings for the name of Christ, and ended the present life at the blow of a sword.” In the Martyrology incorrectly attributed to St Jerome, Denis is named on October 9th together with a priest and a deacon, Rusticus and Eleutherius, who are also mentioned in the prayer of their collective feast day. Their bodies were buried at a site a few miles to the north of Paris, and a church built over it, which Gregory of Tours mentions twice, once in connection with a miracle, and again when describing its profanation. Not long after his time, King Dagobert I (603-39) established a monastery under royal patronage at the site, and completely rebuilt the church; it was rebuilt again in the days of Pepin the Short and his son Charlemagne, the latter of whom attended its consecration in 775.

According to the revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints, even before the Carolingian period, St Denis of Paris had already been confused in some quarters with the Biblical figure of the same name (i.e. Dionysius), who was converted by the preaching of St Paul in Athens (Acts 17, 22-34). This preaching took place at the “Areopagus – the hill of Ares”, a large outcropping of the Athenian acropolis which was used as a place of judgment for serious crimes like murder; St Luke calls Dionysius “the Areopagite”, i.e., one of the judges who sat on the court held there. The Church historian Eusebius reports (3.4.11), on the witness of another Dionysius (a very common name in antiquity), bishop of Corinth in the later 2nd century, that the Areopagite was the first bishop of Athens; by the turn of the seventh century, he was believed to have died as a martyr, being burnt alive by the Emperor Domitian.

The Preaching of St Paul at Athens; a preparatory cartoon made by Raphael in the 1510s as part of a series of designs intended to be woven into tapestries; now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Sometime in the later 5th or early 6th century, an unknown Greek-speaking theologian produced a series of four treatises and ten letters, purporting to be works of Dionysius the Areopagite. This is not a case like those of Ss John Chrysostom or Augustine, among many others, to whom writings were very often mistakenly ascribed in later generations; the author clearly and deliberately intended to pass himself off as the contemporary of St Paul. To this end, he claims to have been present, along with Ss Peter and James, for the Dormition of the Virgin Mary (Div. Nom. 3, 2), and addresses letters to Ss John the Evangelist, Timothy and Polycarp. Scholars generally suppose him to have been a Syrian; the dating of his works depends in part on the obvious influence upon them of the neo-Platonic philosopher Proclus, who died in 485. Further attempts to glean information about the author from his writings remain speculative.

By the first decades of the sixth century, these writings were cited by authors on both sides of the debate over the Monophysite heresy, which the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon had condemned in 451. Most notably, at a council held in Constantinople in 533, the Monophysites cited them in support of their teaching, to which the leader of the Catholic party replied that they were forgeries. Nevertheless, as the controversy continued, and as the heresy evolved into Monotheletism in the 7th century, they came to be gradually accepted as both genuine and orthodox by several important figures, the most significant being St Maximus the Confessor, who cited them at a council held in the Lateran Basilica in Rome in 649, under Pope St Martin I. They were further defended and cited to the same effect at the next two ecumenical councils, Third Constantinople in 680, and Second Nicea in 787. To this day, the Byzantine Rite’s liturgical texts for St Dionysius, “the Holy Martyr and Areopagite”, bishop of Athens, are filled with references to the writings, as for example, this hymn at Vespers: “Having made thy mind equal in honor to that of the Angels through virtue, o all-wise father Dionysius, thou didst write an account in (thy) holy books of the heavenly order of their hierarchy, and according to it, didst organize the orders of the Church’s government, likening them to the ranks of heaven.” (He is also the titular Saint of the Roman Catholic cathedral of Athens.)

An early 11th-century mosaic of St Dionysios the Areopagite, in the monastery of St Luke in Boeotia, Greece. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

In the year 827, the Byzantine Emperor Michael II (820-29) sent a copy of the writings to Charlemagne’s son, King Louis the Pious, along with several other gifts. By coincidence, they happened to reach the king on the evening of October 8th, when he was at the royal abbey of St Denis for the vigil of the titular Saint’s feast day. The abbot, Hilduin, who was very close to the king, had them translated into Latin, although this translation was not very well done, and was replaced by another about 30 years later. At the king’s behest, he also wrote a life of St Denis, which definitively conflated the bishop of Paris with the Areopagite, ascribed his mission in Gaul to Pope St Clement I towards the end of the 1st century, and acknowledged the writings as his. This conflation was henceforth accepted, and remained the common legend of St Denis in western Europe for the next 700 years. The writings became extremely influential in the High Middle Ages; Hugh of St Victor, St Albert the Great, and yet another Denis, the great Carthusian theologian, wrote commentaries on them, and they are cited well over 2000 times in the works of St Thomas Aquinas.

In the Renaissance, when many of the certainties of the medieval tradition were being called into question, the authenticity of the writings, and the identification of the two Denises as the same person, were challenged by two of the most prominent among the great humanist scholars, Lorenzo Valla (1407-57), who also unmasked the forgery known as the Donation of Constantine, and later Erasmus. The question was the subject of much controversy and debate over the following centuries, with learned men, Catholic and Protestant, offering their opinions as both defenders and detractors of the tradition. The neo-Gallican revision of the Parisian liturgical books sided with the detractors by separating Denis into two persons, one of Athens, kept on his Byzantine date, October 3rd, and the other of Paris on the traditional date, without the title “Areopagite”, a change which was later harshly condemned by Dom Prosper Guéranger.

A leaf of a 15th century Missal according to the Use of Paris, with the Epistle of the Mass of St Denis, Acts 17, 22-34. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 859A)

However, this diffidence towards the traditional legend of St Denis was not a novelty of the neo-Gallicans. The pre-Tridentine Roman Breviary devotes only a single lesson of less than 70 words to St Denis and his companions, which makes no mention of the theological treatises. It also says that he was sent to Gaul “by the Roman Pontiff”, without specifying which one, a clear sign of doubt about the legend that it was St Clement.

Much more tellingly, the pre-Tridentine Parisian Breviary also pointedly does not refer to Denis as the author of the Areopagitic corpus, although it does accept him as the Athenian disciple of St Paul and the contemporary of St Clement. The Matins lessons for the feast day and the days of its octave are taken directly from Hilduin’s life of the Saint, but omit the chapters (9-17) which describe the theological writings, nor is there any reference to them in any of the proper antiphons or responsories of the Office, or in the Sequence of the Mass. (The Epistle of the latter is the passage from Acts 17 cited above.)

In point of fact, it was only with the Tridentine revision that the Roman Breviary accepted Hilduin’s conflation of the Athenian and Parisian Denis as the same person. Furthermore, a sentence is added to the effect that “He wrote wondrous and indeed heavenly books, on the divine names, on the celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies, on mystical theology, and certain others.” This is perhaps the only case in the Breviary of St Pius V in which the legend of a Saint moves further away from the more skeptical view, almost certainly due to the influence of Cardinal Baronius, who defended the traditional legend in his notes on the revision of the Martyrology.

As late as 1857, when the Abbé Migne put together his great corpus of Patristic writings, the Patrologia Graeca, which is arranged in chronological order, he put the Areopagitic corpus and associated writings, including several defenses of its authenticity, between the works of St Clement I and those of St Ignatius of Antioch. However, in 1895, two Catholic scholars, Hugo Koch and Josef Stiglmayer, working quite separately from each other, demonstrated the dependence of the writings on the works of Proclus, and the question is now universally regarded as settled in the negative. This also explains what was, of course, the strongest objection to their authenticity all along, namely, the complete absence of any reference to them in the writings of earlier Church Fathers.

Part of the choir of the abbey of St Denys. Around the year 1135, the abbot Suger began the process of enlarging the Carolingian church, during which the choir was rebuilt from 1140-44. Inspired by the Areopagite’s theology of light as an expression and manifestation of God’s presence, Suger created the idea of having huge walls of windows which flood the church’s interior with light; this is the foundation of the architecture style which we now call Gothic, and this choir is the first example of it. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Guilhem Vellut, CC BY 2.0)

As with the many controversies over the authorship of the books of the Bible, the assumption behind this debate was to a large degree that if a work is not genuinely by the author to whom it is attributed, it is therefore a forgery, and hence worthless. And likewise, as with the many controversies over the authorship of the books of the Bible, this assumption has more recently been to a large degree subsumed by an understanding that authenticity is principally an historical question, and one that need not always impinge on the value of a writing as a work of theology. In his series of Wednesday audiences on the Church Fathers, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the author of these writings (May 14, 2008), and explicitly rejected the idea that he passed himself off as the Areopagite in order to vest his work with the authority of one close to the Apostles, but rather, did so “to make an act of humility; he did not want to glorify his own name, he did not want to build a monument to himself with his work but rather truly to serve the Gospel, to create an ecclesial theology, neither individual nor based on himself.”

The Gospel of the Assumption: A Medieval Allegory

Shortly after Pope Pius XII made the formal dogmatic definition of the Assumption in 1950, he promulgated a new Office and Mass for the feast. The Gospel of the new Mass, known from its Introit as Signum Magnum, is St Luke 1, 41-50, the words of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, to the Virgin at the time of the Visitation, and the first part of the Magnificat. Before the promulgation of this new Mass, the Gospel had been for many centuries that of Mary and Martha, Luke 10, 38-42.

Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, by Henryk Semiradzki, 1886

At that time, Jesus entered into a certain town, and a certain woman named Martha received Him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sitting also at the Lord’s feet, heard his word. But Martha was busy about much serving; who stood and said, “Lord, hast thou no care that my sister hath left me alone to serve? speak to her therefore, that she help me.” And the Lord answering, said to her, “Martha, Martha, thou art full of care, and art troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary hath chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

This Gospel was received, like the feast of the Assumption itself, from the Byzantine tradition, in which it is read on various feasts of the Blessed Virgin, with two verses from the following chapter appended to it, Luke 11, 27-28. In the traditional lectionary of the Roman Rite, these two verses are separated from the previous Gospel, and read on the Vigil of the Assumption.

And it came to pass, as He spoke these things, a certain woman from the crowd, lifting up her voice, said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that bore thee, and the paps that gave thee suck.” But He said, “Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it.”

The Church Fathers traditionally explained Mary and Martha as symbols of the contemplative and active life respectively, as is seen already in St Ambrose’s Exposition of the Gospel according to Luke, although he does not use the terms “active” and “contemplative”.

“One of them listened to the Word, the other was busy about serving, and stood and said, ‘Lord, hast thou no care etc.’ Therefore, the one applied herself more to attention, the other to the service of action: nevertheless, there was in both equally zeal for both forms of virtue. For indeed, if Martha did not hear the Word, she would not have undertaken her service, the doing of which indicates her intention; and Mary took such great grace (as she had) from the perfection of both virtues. (1.9)

Nor is Martha rebuked in her good ministry, but Mary is set before her, because she chose for herself the better part; for Jesus abounds in many things, and gives many things. Therefore, she is judged the wiser, because she perceived and chose what is first (or ‘most important’), as indeed the Apostles deemed it was not the best thing to leave the word of God and serve tables (Acts 6, 2). (7.86)”

Ss Ambrose and Augustine, by Fra Filippo Lippi, ca. 1437

This is stated even more clearly by St Augustine, in the homily which was traditionally read in the Office on the feast of the Assumption.

“In these two women are figured two lives, the present and the future, one full of labor, the other restful, one full of trouble, the other blessed, one in time, the other eternal. … Therefore, there remained in that house which received the Lord two lives (represented) in the two women; both innocent, both praiseworthy; one full of labor, the other at rest; neither sinful, neither idle… In that house, there were these two lives, and the fountain of life itself. In Martha was the image of the things that are present, in Mary of those that will be. What Martha was doing, there are we; what Mary was doing, this do we hope for; let us do the former well, that we may have the latter in full.” (Sermon 104, alias 27)

In the middle of the 9th century, Amalarius of Metz, in his treatise On the Offices of the Church, uses the terms “active” and “contemplative” life, although not specifically in reference to the feast of the Assumption, which he does not mention.

“Thus there are in our Church today two kinds of the elect who are baptized. One kind is in the active life, the other in the contemplative, and these two kinds are signified by Martha and her sister Mary. The better part was allotted to Mary by the Lord, but that of Martha was not reproved, for it is good.” (4.27)

By the middle of the 12th century, this tradition is fully well-established. In the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, John Beleth explains that some Gospels are chosen as historical narrations of the events which the liturgy celebrates, such as that of the Epiphany, while others are chosen as allegories.

“According to an allegory (is) one such as that which is customarily read on the Assumption of the Blessed Mary, concerning Mary Magdalene and her sister Martha ... since in Mary is signified the contemplative life, and through Martha, who was serving (the Lord), the active life. By this Gospel it is taught that in the Blessed Virgin Mary was the perfection of both lives...” (29 de Evangelio)

Commenting on the feast itself, he writes: “That fact that a Gospel (of the allegorical sort) is read, indicates that both lives, the contemplative and the active, were in the Virgin Mary. For she was Magdalene, that is, the one who was taken up with the contemplative life. She was Martha, that is, the one who was wholly occupied with the active life ... For these words declare sufficiently that She was constantly taken up with the contemplative life, ‘But Mary kept all these words in her heart. (Luke 2, 52)’ ” (146 de Assumptione)

The Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin Mary, by Don Silvestro dei Gherarducci; from the Gradual of Santa Maria degli Angeli, ca. 1370, now in the British Library.

At the end of the same century, Sicard of Cremona adds an allegorical explanation of the “town” which the Gospel mentions as the place where Mary and Martha lived, since the Latin word for it, “castellum”, also means “a little castle.”

“In the Mass is read the Gospel of Martha and Mary Magdalene, according to an allegory; for the blessed Virgin was the little castle, because She secured herself well against the devil. She was Martha, for there was none better in action; she was Mary, for there was none better in contemplation, of which it is said, ‘But Mary kept all these words in her heart.’ ” (Mitrale 9. 40)

William Durandus’ commentary on the liturgy, also called Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, stands in relation to the earlier commentaries as St Thomas’ Summa theologica does to earlier Summae, bringing together all of the threads of the tradition with great thoroughness and clarity. He writes thus on the traditional Gospel of the Assumption.

“The Gospel is read about Martha and Mary, which at first sight appears to have no relevance, and yet it is indeed relevant, according to an allegory. For Jesus entered into a certain ‘small castle’, that is, into the Virgin Mary, who is called a castle since She is terrible to demons, and armed Herself well against the devil and against vices. But She is called ‘a small castle’ in the diminutive (castellum) because of her humility, and because of Her unique condition, since ‘neither before nor henceforth hath there been or shall be another such as Her.’ (quoting the 2nd antiphon of Lauds on Christmas day.) And Martha, that is, the active life, received Him. For She most diligently reared Her Child, and brought him into Egypt, and showed her goodness in the active life, by going to Elizabeth, and serving her, and just as She was (like) Martha in the active life, so also she was (like) Mary Magdalene in the contemplative life. Whence in another Gospel is read, “Mary kept all these words in her heart.” (Luke 2, 50) Now these two sisters signify the active life and the contemplative life, which were clearly in the Blessed Virgin Mary, and through them she exaltedly, honorably, and with great delight, received Christ in Herself.” (7.24)