The Ambrosian Sundays “After the Beheading of St John the Baptist”

This article is an expanded version of one originally published in 2018. The first part, up to the *, is mostly a translation of notes written by Nicola de’ Grandi. 

The oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, a manuscript now in Wurzburg, Germany, dates to ca. 700, and represents the reading system used at Rome about 50 years earlier. It has a very disorganized and incomplete set of readings for the period after Pentecost, which is divided into four parts; the Sundays are counted as two after Pentecost, seven after Ss Peter and Paul, five after St Lawrence, and six after St Cyprian, a total of only 20.

The second oldest lectionary, from Murbach in eastern France, dates to about 100 years later, and represents the Roman Rite as used in France after Charlemagne had introduced it to replace the older Gallican Rite. It is much better organized and more complete than the Wurzburg manuscript, with 25 Sundays “after Pentecost.” This system has remained in use in the Roman Rite ever since, adjusted for the variable date of Easter, which can leave as few as 23 and as many as 28 such Sundays. The later medieval custom of counting Sundays after Trinity is no more than a variation on this theme.

A page of Ambrosian Missal printed in 1522; the Ingressa (Introit) of the First Sunday after the Beheading of St John the Baptist is at the bottom of the lower right hand column.

In the Ambrosian Rite the same period is divided into four different parts, as it anciently was in the Roman Rite. There are fifteen Sundays “after Pentecost”, followed by five “after the Beheading of St John the Baptist”; depending on the date of Easter, up to four of the former series will be omitted so the latter can begin. There are then three Sundays “of October”, on the last of which is celebrated the dedication of the cathedral of Milan, followed by three Sundays “after the Dedication”, which close the year before the beginning of the six-week Ambrosian Advent.

This arrangement is attested in one of the oldest sources of the Ambrosian Rite, a codex kept in the Capitular Library of the basilica of St John the Baptist in Busto Arsizio, which contains a very ancient order of readings, one that certainly predates the Carolingian period, when the Ambrosian lectionary underwent a significant reform.

The question therefore arises as to why Ambrosian liturgy raises the Beheading of St John the Baptist, (a very ancient feast, to be sure), to the level of feasts such as Easter, Epiphany, Pentecost, and the dedication of the rite’s mother church. The answer to this was given by Prof. Cesare Alzati in a paper which he delivered at the Sacra Liturgia conference in Milan in 2017.

On the Egyptian calendar, the New Year begins on the first day of the month of Tout, which corresponds to the Roman date of August 29th. (Since the Copts have not reformed their calendar according to the principles of the Gregorian calendar, Tout 1/August 29 currently falls on the Gregorian date September 11th.)

The Roman emperor Diocletian began his reign on November 20th, 284, but the Egyptians backdated his first regnal year to the start of their New Year, and the “Era of Diocletian” was thus counted from August 29th, 284. Since it was he who initiated the last, greatest and most systematic ancient persecution of the Church, the “Era of Diocletian” soon came to be known as the “Era of the Martyrs”; this term is still used to this very day by the Coptic Church, whose calendar begins in 284, making their current ecclesiastical year 1740.

A famous icon showing Christ with St Menas, one of the most revered of the early Egyptian Martyrs; his feast was even adopted at Rome, and he is still kept as a commemoration on the feast of St Martin in the Roman Rite. (Public domain image from Wikipedia.) This icon, which is now in the Louvre, is one of the oldest in existence, dated to the 6th or 7th century.

After the Council of Nicea adopted the method of dating Easter followed by the churches of Rome and Alexandria, it became the latter’s responsibility to calculate the date of Easter, and communicate it to the other churches. As Prof. Alzati noted, St Ambrose speaks about this in one of his epistles. “In the eighty-ninth year from the reign of Diocletian, when the 14th day of the moon was on March 24th, we celebrated Easter on March 31st. The Alexandrians and Egyptians likewise, as they themselves wrote, when the 14th day of the moon fell on the 28th day of the month of Phamenoth, celebrated Easter on the fifth day of the month of Pharmuth, which is March 31st, and so they agreed with us.” (Ep. 13, alias 23, 14, PL XVI 1031A)

The church of Constantinople, or New Rome, as it was officially called, has perhaps preserved a memory of the same tradition, since the ecclesiastical New Year of the Byzantine Rite begins with the first day of the first Roman month after August 29th. The years, however, are counted from the creation of the world, dated to 5509 BC, and the year which begins today is therefore reckoned as Annus Mundi 7533. (Ἔτος τοῦ Κόσμου in Greek, Лѣто Мира in Church Slavonic.) *

This, then, explains why the feast of the Beheading of St John the Baptist, forerunner and prototype of the martyrs, is raised to such prominence in the Ambrosian Rite as one of the reference points for the arrangement of the liturgical year. After the three major cycles of the life of Christ marked by the seasons after Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost, we see His life as it continues in His Mystical Body, the Church, first in the Era of the Martyrs, and then in the era of peace, marked by the building of the great churches.

A reconstruction of the ancient cathedral complex of Milan, with the “summer church”, dedicated to St Thecla, on the left, and the “winter church”, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, at the right. The octagonal structure in front of St Thecla is the baptistery of St John; the smaller structural beneath it is the baptistery of St Stephen. At the lower right is a partial reconstruction of the interior of the baptistery of St John.

In the Ambrosian Missal, each Sunday between Pentecost and Advent has its own Scriptural readings, but the feast of the Dedication is the only one that has its own Mass chants, prayers and preface. For the chants, there is a limited repertoire of material (e.g. nine psalmelli, the equivalent of the Roman gradual, but only three allelujas), which are repeated in a mostly regular cyclical order. For the prayers and prefaces, there are only six of each, which are also repeated in a regular cycle. This arrangement places the following as the first prayer as the first Sunday after the Beheading, surely not by coincidence, as it refers to the end of the persecutions and the establishment of the peace of the Church. (It is also said on the Fourth and Tenth Sundays after Pentecost, and the second of October.)

“Deus, qui Ecclesiam tuam nova semper prole foecundas; auge eam quotidie credentium puritate, et divinæ gratiæ infusione multiplica: ut, repulsa impugnatione malorum omnium, in tranquillitate pacis et fidei, tuo semper ditata munere glorietur.

The church of St George ‘al palazzo - at the palazzo’, built on the site of the imperial palace at Milan, from which Constantine issued the Edict of Toleration in 313 AD. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Parsifall, CC BY-SA 4.0)

O God, who dost ever enrich Thy Church with new offspring, increase it daily in the purity of those who believe, and multiply it by the infusion of divine grace, so that, the assaults of all evils being repelled, in tranquility of peace and faith, it may always glory that it has been enriched by Thy gift.”

The words “omnium malorum – all evils” may also be translated “all evil men”, speaking of the Church’s victory over the persecutors, and this is perhaps more consonant with the prophetic reading which comes immediately after it, Isaiah 65, 13-19.

“Thus saith the Lord God: Behold my servants shall eat, and you shall be hungry: behold my servants shall drink, and you shall be thirsty. Behold my servants shall rejoice, and you shall be confounded: behold my servants shall praise for joyfulness of heart, and you shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for grief of spirit. And you shall leave your name for an execration to my elect: and the Lord God shall slay thee, and call his servants by another name, in which he that is blessed upon the earth, shall be blessed in God, amen: and he that sweareth in the earth, shall swear by God, amen: because the former distresses are forgotten, and because they are hid from my eyes. For behold, I create new heavens, and a new earth: and the former things shall not be in remembrance, and they shall not come upon the heart. But you shall be glad and rejoice for ever in these things, which I create: for behold I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and the people thereof joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and have joy in my people: saith the Lord almighty.”

The Gospel, Luke 9, 7-11, also speaks of the martyrdom of John the Baptist as a sign of the beginning of a new era in the life of the Church, which continues in the ministry of the Apostles and their successors, those through whom it is spread throughout the earth.

“At that time, Herod the tetrarch heard of all things that were done by the Lord Jesus, and he was in a doubt, because it was said by some, that John was risen from the dead, but by others that Elijah had appeared, and by others, that one of the old prophets was risen again. And Herod said, ‘John I have beheaded, but who is this of whom I hear such things?’ … And the apostles, when they had returned, told (Jesus) all they had done; and taking them, He went aside into a desert place apart, … And when the people learned of this, they followed Him; and He received them, and spoke to them of the kingdom of God, and healed them who had need of healing.”

The antiphon “after the Gospel” which is sung on this Sunday also refers to the end of the persecutions. (There are eight of these for the period; this is one is also sung on the eighth Sunday after Pentecost and the first of October.)

“Manus tua, Domine, pugnavit pro patribus nostris; tu enim ipse es Dominus Deus noster. Dextera tua confringat inimicos; ut cantemus nomini tuo, Domine, laudem tuam.

Thy hand, o Lord, did fight for our father; for Thou Thyself are the Lord, our God. Let Thy right hand shatter the enemies, that we may sing Thy praise, o Lord, to Thy name.”

The Feast of the Forty Martyrs

The Forty Martyrs were a group of soldiers from the Roman Twelfth Legion, who died for the Faith at Sebaste in Armenia in the year 320. This was seven years after the Edict of Milan and the Peace granted to the Church by Constantine, whose brother-in-law Licinius at that point ruled in the East, and after a period of tolerance, renewed the persecution of Christians. When the Forty had been called to renounce the Faith and refused, they were sentenced first to various tortures, and then condemned to die a particularly horrible death, stripped naked and left to freeze on the ice of a frozen lake. The governor who supervised this execution ordered that a hot bath be prepared at the edge of the lake, by which any one of them who would apostatize might save himself from freezing to death.

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

The Breviary of St Pius V represents the martyrs praying as their sufferings began, “Forty we have entered into the stadium, let us receive forty crowns, o Lord, lest even one be lacking from this number. This number is held in honor. You adorned it with a fast of forty days; through it the divine Law entered into the world. Elijah, seeking God, obtained the vision of Him by a fast of forty days.” This is a very ancient motif, by which the fast of forty days observed in the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah) is associated with that observed in the Gospel by Christ. (For this reason, on the first Sunday of Lent the Roman Rite reads the account of Christ’s fast, and on the second, that of His Transfiguration, at which Moses and Elijah appear as witnesses to the divinity of Christ. On the Ember Wednesday between them, there are two readings before the Gospel, Exodus 24, 12-18, which tells of the forty day fast of Moses, and 3 Kings 19, 3-8, the forty day fast of Elijah.)

One of the forty, however, did abandon the company and enter the hot bath; in some accounts it is said that he died immediately from the shock. In the meantime, one of their guards had a vision of Angels descending upon the martyrs, bearing thirty-nine crowns; he was inspired by this to become a Christian, take the place of the one who had left, and so fulfill the mystical number of forty. Seeing the martyrs’ constancy, those who were in charge of their execution decided to finish them off by breaking their legs, as was done to the thieves crucified alongside the Lord. Only one of them did not die from this, a young man named Melito, but he was mortally wounded and could not live. His own mother then carried him to the place where the rest of them were taken to be cremated, walking behind the wagon; during the journey he died in her arms, and was laid by her on the pyre among the bodies of his comrades.

Their ashes were scattered to prevent the veneration of their relics, but the Christians were able to recover some of them. St Basil the Great tells of the presence of the relics at Caesarea; his brother, St Gregory of Nyssa, says that their parents, Ss Basil the Elder and Emmelia, were buried in a church at a place called Annesis, which they themselves had built, and for which they had obtained some relics of the Forty. Portions of them were later taken to Constantinople and elsewhere, and devotion to them was brought to the West by St Gaudentius of Brescia, who received a part of the relics from St Basil’s nieces while passing through Caesarea on his way to Jerusalem.

The iconostasis of the Chapel of the Forty Martyrs in the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Deror Avi, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Their feast was originally kept in the West on March 9, the same day it still has in the East. St Frances of Rome died on that day in 1440; when she was canonized in 1608, she was assigned to that day, and the martyrs moved forward to the 10th. In the rubrical reform of 1960, ferias of Lent were given precedence over the majority of feasts, and the Forty were permanently reduced to a commemoration, since March 10th cannot occur outside Lent; notwithstanding the great veneration in which they are held in the East, and the antiquity of the feast, it was abolished from the calendar of the Novus Ordo.

In the Byzantine Rite, certain features of the liturgy which are reserved for the more important Saints are included on their day. The very strict Lenten fast is relaxed, so that wine and oil may be consumed. A Gospel is read at Orthros, John 15, 17 – 16, 2, in which Christ speaks of Himself as the model of martyrdom, and the martyr as the most perfect imitator of Him. “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. ... If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also. ... Yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doth a service to God.”

If the Vespers of the Presanctified Gifts are celebrated, an Epistle and Gospel are added to the rite, sung as they would be at the Divine Liturgy. The Gospel is that which the Roman Rite reads on Septuagesima Sunday, Matthew 20, 1-16, the parable of the workmen in the vineyard; this was clearly chosen in reference to the guard who joined the martyrs at the last minute, and received the same crown with the rest of the company, just as the workmen who came at the eleventh hour received the same wage as the rest.

In the annals of Christian hagiography, there are many stories of people who were spontaneously converted to the Faith by seeing the constancy of the martyrs in the midst of their torments; it is not rare for such persons to become martyrs themselves, even joining the suffering Christians of their own will right on the spot, like the guard among the Forty. This phenomenon was realized again nine years ago in the person of one Matthew Ayariga, a Ghanaian who was seized in Libya by Islamic fanatics, along with a group of twenty Egyptian Copts. Although he was not a member of the Coptic Church, he refused to embrace Islam, even at the threat of being beheaded; seeing how the others prayed and called upon the Holy Name of Jesus as they died, he said of them, “Their God is my God,” and was slain in their company.

An icon of the New Martyrs of Libya, by Tony Rezk. Matthew Ayariga is represented in the middle of the group. 

These twenty-one men were canonized as martyrs by the Coptic Pope Tawadros II very shortly after their death; six years ago, a church named in their honor was dedicated in the village of Al-Our, Egypt, where thirteen of them came from, on the third anniversary of the martyrdom. In the following video, members of the martyrs’ families give exemplary testimonies of true Christian forgiveness, speaking not of anger, hatred or vengeance, but rather of the joy and pride which they take in their Sainted relatives. (It should be remembered that these men were all fairly young, and working construction jobs abroad to provide for their families.) “And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor shall sorrow be any more, for the former things are passed away.”

A 12th-Century Coptic Gospel Book (Part 3)

This is the third and final part of a series of images from a Coptic Gospel book of the later twelfth century, which I stumbled across on the website of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. (Département des Manuscrits. Copte 13) In the first post, we saw the majority of the images, concentrated in the Gospel of St Matthew, and in the second, those from Mark and Luke, so here is John. I have cropped the pages to highlight just the illustrations.

Each Gospel is preceded by one of these elaborately decorated crosses.

The beginning of the Gospel itself. The Coptic alphabet is the same as the Greek alphabet, with seven letters based on late demotic Egyptian script to represent sounds for which Greek has no letter. The language also borrows a huge number of words from Greek, as for example in the very first line, “ⲁⲣⲭⲏ – beginning.”

St John the Baptist sends his disciples to follow the Lord.

The Wedding at Cana

The Samaritan Woman

Continue Reading this Article. . .

A 12th-Century Coptic Gospel Book (Part 2)

Last month, I posted pictures of a twelfth-century Coptic Gospel book which I happened to stumble across on the website of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. (Département des Manuscrits. Copte 13) Even though the see of Alexandria was founded by St Mark the Evangelist, there is a much higher concentration of illustrations in the Gospel of St Matthew than in the other three, so here are the images from Mark and Luke. This is just a selection, and I have cropped the pages to highlight just the illustrations.

Each Gospel is preceded by one of these elaborated decorated crosses; the Coptic letters around it (with abbreviation marks over them at top) mean “Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.” The Coptic alphabet is the same as the Greek alphabet, with seven letters based on late demotic Egyptian script to represent sounds for which Greek has no letter. The language also borrows a huge number of words from Greek, as for example “souter - savior”, from the Greek “soter.”

The beginning of the Gospel; that of Luke as both of these elements as well, but they are almost perfectly identical to these from Mark, and are not included below.

The first illustration does not occur until chapter 6, the beheading of John the Baptist; St Mark gives the most complete account of this, and is consequently read on the feast on August 29th in most liturgical traditions, even those like the Roman Rite which otherwise make fairly little use of him.

The healing of the blind man at Bethsaida in chapter 7.

At the very end of the Gospel, Joseph of Arimathea goes to Pilate to ask for the body of Christ.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

A 12th-Century Coptic Gospel Book (Part 1)

Here is another beautiful manuscript which I stumbled across on one of my favorite websites for liturgical books, that of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France: a Coptic Gospel book dated (I presume on internal evidence) to the years 1178-80. (Département des Manuscrits. Copte 13) Unfortunately, the site doesn’t give any historical details about it, apart from the fact that it contains a portrait of the Coptic Pope Mark III, who reigned from 1166-89. There is a much higher concentration of illustrations in the Gospel of St Matthew, which I will cover in this post, than in the other three, which will be in a separate post. This is kind of surprising when one considers the tradition that the Evangelist St Mark founded the See of Alexandria. here I give only a selection, and have cropped the pages to highlight just the illustrations.

An image of Christ with writing in the border in Arabic; many of the smaller images have what appear to be Arabic captions added to them as well.

The portrait of the Coptic Pope Mark III

The beginning of the Gospel of St Matthew

The angel appears to St Joseph

The Magi are sent by King Herod to find “the new-born king of the Jews”; notice how the artist conveys the agitation of Herod and all of Jerusalem that was troubled with him by the position of their hands.

The Magi bring their gifts to Christ.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The Feast of the Forty Martyrs

The Forty Martyrs were a group of soldiers from the Roman Twelfth Legion, who died for the Faith at Sebaste in Armenia in the year 320. This was seven years after the Edict of Milan and the Peace granted to the Church by Constantine, whose brother-in-law Licinius at that point ruled in the East, and after a period of tolerance, renewed the persecution of Christians. When the Forty had been called to renounce the Faith and refused, they were sentenced first to various tortures, and then condemned to die a particularly horrible death, stripped naked and left to freeze on the ice of a frozen lake. The governor who supervised this execution ordered that a hot bath be prepared at the edge of the lake, by which any one of them who would apostatize might save himself from freezing to death.

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

The Breviary of St Pius V represents the martyrs praying as their sufferings began, “Forty we have entered into the stadium, let us receive forty crowns, o Lord, lest even one be lacking from this number. This number is held in honor. You adorned it with a fast of forty days; through it the divine Law entered into the world. Elijah, seeking God, obtained the vision of Him by a fast of forty days.” This is a very ancient motif, by which the fast of forty days observed in the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah) is associated with that observed in the Gospel by Christ. (For this reason, on the first Sunday of Lent the Roman Rite reads the account of Christ’s fast, and on the second, that of His Transfiguration, at which Moses and Elijah appear as witnesses to the divinity of Christ. On the Ember Wednesday between them, there are two readings before the Gospel, Exodus 24, 12-18, which tells of the forty day fast of Moses, and 3 Kings 19, 3-8, the forty day fast of Elijah.)

One of the forty, however, did abandon the company and enter the hot bath; in some accounts it is said that he died immediately from the shock. In the meantime, one of their guards had a vision of Angels descending upon the martyrs, bearing thirty-nine crowns; he was inspired by this to become a Christian, take the place of the one who had left, and so fulfill the mystical number of forty. Seeing the martyrs’ constancy, those who were in charge of their execution decided to finish them off by breaking their legs, as was done to the thieves crucified alongside the Lord. Only one of them did not die from this, a young man named Melito, but he was mortally wounded and could not live. His own mother then carried him to the place where the rest of them were taken to be cremated, walking behind the wagon; during the journey he died in her arms, and was laid by her on the pyre among the bodies of his comrades.

Their ashes were scattered to prevent the veneration of their relics, but the Christians were able to recover some of them. St Basil the Great tells of the presence of the relics at Caesarea; his brother, St Gregory of Nyssa, says that their parents, Ss Basil the Elder and Emmelia, were buried in a church at a place called Annesis, which they themselves had built, and for which they had obtained some relics of the Forty. Portions of them were later taken to Constantinople and elsewhere, and devotion to them was brought to the West by St Gaudentius of Brescia, who received a part of the relics from St Basil’s nieces while passing through Caesarea on his way to Jerusalem.

The iconostasis of the Chapel of the Forty Martyrs in the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Deror Avi, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Their feast was originally kept in the West on March 9, the same day it still has in the East. St Frances of Rome died on that day in 1440; when she was canonized in 1608 (together with St Charles Borromeo), she was assigned to that day, and the martyrs moved forward to the 10th. In the rubrical reform of 1960, ferias of Lent were given precedence over the majority of feasts, and the Forty were permanently reduced to a commemoration, since March 10th cannot occur outside Lent; notwithstanding the great veneration in which they are held in the East, and the antiquity of the feast, it was abolished from the calendar of the Novus Ordo.

In the Byzantine Rite, certain features of the liturgy which are reserved for the more important Saints are included on their day. The very strict Lenten fast is relaxed, so that wine and oil may be consumed. A Gospel is read at Orthros, John 15, 17 – 16, 2, in which Christ speaks of Himself as the model of martyrdom, and the martyr as the most perfect imitator of Him. “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. ... If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also. ... Yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doth a service to God.”

If the Vespers of the Presanctified Gifts are celebrated, an Epistle and Gospel are added to the rite, sung as they would be at the Divine Liturgy. The Gospel is that which the Roman Rite reads on Septuagesima Sunday, Matthew 20, 1-16, the parable of the workmen in the vineyard; this was clearly chosen in reference to the guard who joined the martyrs at the last minute, and received the same crown with the rest of the company, just as the workmen who came at the eleventh hour received the same wage as the rest.

In the annals of Christian hagiography, there are many stories of people who were spontaneously converted to the Faith by seeing the constancy of the martyrs in the midst of their torments; it is not rare for such persons to become martyrs themselves, even joining the suffering Christians of their own will right on the spot, like the guard among the Forty. This phenomenon was realized again six years ago in the person of one Matthew Ayariga, a Ghanaian who was seized in Libya by Islamic fanatics, along with a group of twenty Egyptian Copts. Although he was not a member of the Coptic Church, he refused to embrace Islam, even at the threat of being beheaded; seeing how the others prayed and called upon the Holy Name of Jesus as they died, he said of them, “Their God is my God,” and was slain in their company.

An icon of the New Martyrs of Libya, by Tony Rezk. Matthew Ayariga is represented in the middle of the group. 

These twenty-one men were canonized as martyrs by the Coptic Pope Tawadros II very shortly after their death; three years ago, a church named in their honor was dedicated in the village of Al-Our, Egypt, where thirteen of them came from, on the third anniversary of the martyrdom. In the following video, members of the martyrs’ families give exemplary testimonies of true Christian forgiveness, speaking not of anger, hatred or vengeance, but rather of the joy and pride which they take in their Sainted relatives. (It should be remembered that these men were all fairly young, and working construction jobs abroad to provide for their families.) “And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor shall sorrow be any more, for the former things are passed away.”

The Coptic Orthodox View of a 21st Century Renaissance in Catholic Culture

I want to draw your attention to a new blog from my friend, Dr. Stephane Rene, who is one of the foremost proponents of neo-Coptic iconography today. You can find it here: copticiconography.com.

Stephane is not only a wonderful painter; he has a deep understanding of the Christian tradition, and he is always worth reading and listening to. He is based in London and teaches at the Prince of Wales’ school of traditional arts in Shoreditch. Here is an example of his work.

His latest post is intended for a Coptic readership, and is an appeal against the influence of Western kitsch art in Coptic iconography. It is interesting to me to see how sentimentality and kitsch are so virulent they can infect just about any milieu, even one that I had viewed as resiliently traditional as the Coptic culture.

While he is critical of some Western traditions, most notably the High Renaissance, (and he is in good company here; Benedict XVI was too), he is refreshingly open to the first developments taking place in what he sees as a renewal of sacred arts in the Roman Catholic Church. As a member of the Coptic Orthodox Church, he is making such observations as an outsider. After first making some kind comments about my book, The Way of Beauty, he mentions two artists by name. One is known to me already, Ian Knowles the British iconographer whose style is influenced by that of his teacher Aidan Hart. The other is a French painter that I had not seen before, François Peltier who, he says, “has a more contemporary approach and uses modern materials, but his content and vocabulary are steeped in tradition.” The image below is one of his Stations of the Cross.

This is interesting work. It brings to mind the scripturally based work of the 20th-century Jewish French artist Marc Chagall. Benedict XVI is an admirer of Chagall’s art; I wrote in an article in 2011 that while I can see potential for devotional art in his style, I was skeptical about its value as liturgical art and the likelihood of it inspiring the rejuvenation of tradition. At the time I wrote:

Chagall’s work is highly individual in its stylization, and it relies much more on an interpretation of ideas that is directed by intuition rather than reason. Unless we can discern the principles that underlie it and characterize them very clearly, we can copy his work, but it is going to be difficult to do so with sufficient understanding for it to be the basis of a new tradition.

There is another factor that mitigates against Chagal: we live in the age where the tradition is one of anti-tradition. Today’s artists spend most of their time trying to be different be from everyone else. So even if Chagall does represent the beginning of a fourth liturgical tradition and somebody worked out his system of iconography, no tradition derived from it is is going to emerge as long as artists spend most of their time chasing ‘originality’ and consciously trying to differentiate themselves from other work.

Time will tell!

I’m not sure it is to my taste, but perhaps time is telling me something after all through the work of M. Peltier! Below is his Divine Mercy, which I prefer to the common image, as he has managed to purge it of the sentimentality which is so strong in the original.

Martin Mosebach on the Coptic Martyrs of Libya

Today is the fourth anniversary of the martyrdom of a group of 20 Egyptians and one Ghanaian, collectively known as the Coptic Martyrs of Libya, who were beheaded by Islamic terrorists on the Libyan seashore. These men were working abroad to provide for their families, braving the dangerous conditions in Libya; several of them were married, the oldest among them was only forty-six, the youngest twenty-two. The Ghanaian, Matthew Ayariga, was seized along with them, and although he was not a member of the Coptic Church, refused to embrace Islam, even at the threat of being beheaded; seeing how the others prayed and called upon the Holy Name of Jesus as they died, he said of them, “Their God is my God,” and was slain in their company. They were canonized as martyrs by the Coptic Pope Tawadros II very shortly after their death; one year ago, a large church named in their honor was dedicated in the village of El-Aour, Egypt, where thirteen of them came from. Their relics, which were recovered in September of 2017, were brought back to Egypt, and are now housed in this church.

A widely-diffused icon of the Coptic Martyrs of Libya, by Antoun Rezk.

Last year, Martin Mosebach, who is well-known to our readers, published a book about them in German, an account not only of the Saints and their martyrdom, but also of the author’s visit to Egypt and meetings with several members of their families and community. The English translation, The 21: A Journey into the Land of Coptic Martyrs, has just been published today. An essay adapted from the book, typical of Mosebach’s simple and beautiful writing, has just been published on First Things, and is very much worth your time.

“So the martyrs’ family members weren’t surprised when people came to visit. Their husbands, sons, and brothers had experienced the most amazing transformation of all: they had left home as poor migrant workers, and would never return, but had become saints and were now more present than ever, albeit in a different form. They now wore crowns, even though they had only done what was expected of them, and what all their brothers were equally prepared to do. Unexpectedly, this natural fulfillment of duty that would otherwise be taken for granted was surrounded by the greatest splendor—but this served only to prove that little more than the thinnest tissue separates earthly life from the heavenly sphere. One must always be prepared for the possibility that this tissue could tear, letting a golden ray of light fall into the realm of everyday life. Precisely by accepting such a cruel fate, their husbands, sons, and brothers were magnificently exalted. The martyrs’ relatives made no pretense of sharing their late loved ones’ glory, but they did take calm pride in the dead.”

The Ambrosian Sundays “After the Beheading of St John the Baptist”

The oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, a manuscript now in Wurzburg, Germany, dates to ca. 700, and represents the reading system used at Rome about 50 years earlier. It has a very disorganized and incomplete set of readings for the period after Pentecost, which is divided into four parts; the Sundays are counted as two after Pentecost, seven after Ss Peter and Paul, five after St Lawrence, and six after St Cyprian, a total of only 20.

The second oldest lectionary, from Murbach in eastern France, dates to about 100 years later, and represents the Roman Rite as used in France after Charlemagne had introduced it to replace the older Gallican Rite. It is much better organized and more complete than the Wurzburg manuscript, with 25 Sundays “after Pentecost.” This system has remained in use in the Roman Rite ever since, adjusted for the variable date of Easter, which can leave as few as 23 and as many as 28 such Sundays. The later medieval custom of counting Sundays after Trinity is no more than a variation on this theme.

A page of Ambrosian Missal printed in 1522; the Ingressa (Introit) of the First Sunday after the Beheading of St John the Baptist is at the bottom of the lower right hand column.

In the Ambrosian Rite, however, the same period is divided into four different parts, as it anciently was in the Roman Rite. There are fifteen Sundays “after Pentecost”, followed by five “after the Beheading of St John the Baptist”; depending on the date of Easter, up to four of the former series will be omitted so the latter can begin. There are then three Sundays of October, on the third of which is celebrated the dedication of Milan cathedral, followed by three Sundays “after the Dedication”, which close the year before the beginning of the six-week Ambrosian Advent.

In the ancient use of the Roman Rite, the Saints whose feast days mark the divisions of this period are three patrons of the city of Rome itself, and one of the most prominent martyrs of the era before the Peace of the Church. The question therefore arises as to why the Ambrosian liturgy marks the second division with a feast which is certainly very ancient, but by no means the most prominent within the same period, where the Assumption might be seen as a more logical choice. This was answered by Prof. Cesare Alzati in his talk given last year at the Sacra Liturgia conference held in Milan.

On the Egyptian calendar, the New Year begins on the first day of the month of Tout, which corresponds to the Roman date of August 29th. [1] The Roman Emperor Diocletian began his reign on November 20th, 284, but the Egyptians backdated his regnal year to the start of their New Year, and the “Era of Diocletian” was thus counted from August 29th, 284. Since it was he who initiated the last, greatest and most systematic ancient persecution of the Church, the “Era of Diocletian” soon came to be known as the “Era of the Martyrs”; this term is still used to this very day by the Coptic Church, whose calendar begins in 284, making their current ecclesiastical year 1734.

A famous icon showing Christ with St Menas, one of the most revered of the early Egyptian Martyrs; his feast was even adopted at Rome, and he is still kept as a commemoration on the feast of St Martin in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. (Public domain image from Wikipedia.) This icon, which is now in the Louvre, is one of the oldest in existence, dated to the 6th or 7th century.

August 29th, therefore, becomes a crucial point within the Ambrosian ecclesiastical year both as the beginning of the Era of the Martyrs, and slightly later, as a feast of the Saint who is both forerunner and prototype of the Martyrs. This tradition, which is attested in the oldest Ambrosian liturgical books, would have come to Milan from the East in the 4th century.

After the Council of Nicea adopted the method of dating Easter followed by the churches of Rome and Alexandria, it became the latter’s responsibility to calculate the date of Easter, and communicate it to the other churches. St Ambrose speaks about this in one of his epistles. “In the eighty-ninth year from the reign of Diocletian, when the 14th day of the moon was on March 24th, we celebrated Easter on March 31st. The Alexandrians and Egyptians likewise, as they themselves wrote, when the 14th day of the moon fell on the 28th day of the month of Phamenoth), celebrated Easter on the fifth day of the month of Pharmuth, which is March 31st, and so they agreed with us.” (Ep. 13, alias 23, 14, PL XVI 1031A)

The church of Constantinople has perhaps preserved a memory of the same tradition, since the ecclesiastical New Year of the Byzantine Rite begins with the first day of the first Roman month after August 29th. The years, however, are counted from the creation of the world, and the year about to begin is reckoned as 7527.

[1] Since the Copts have not reformed their calendar according to the principle of the Gregorian calendar, Tout 1/August 29 currently falls on Gregorian September 11th.

Part of this article comes from notes written by Nicola de’ Grandi.

The Hard Work of Re-Establishing an Artistic Tradition - The Icons of Dr Stephane Rene

Some NLM readers will be aware of the Neo-Coptic iconography of Dr Stephane Rene. He is one of the main figures in the group of iconographers who are working to maintain the momentum of the revival of the Coptic style of iconography, a student of the man who is generally seen as responsible for reestablishing Coptic iconography in the mid-20th century, the late Dr Isaac Fanous.

In my opinion, the Coptic revival demonstrates just how a tradition can not only be re-established after a hiatus in practice, but it can be done so in such a way that the new work surpasses the quality of the old. This latter point is just a personal opinion, but I am struck by how powerfully distinctive and instantly recognizable the neo-Coptic style is. It participates in the tradition of Coptic iconography, but at the same time has a wide appeal to contemporary Christians from other rites and churches, as well as, presumably, Coptic Christians. I have seen Stephane’s icons in Catholic churches on a number of occasions, for example.

Furthermore, (and again, this is just a personal opinion), although the style originates from a very different starting point, they do not look so “un-Roman” as, for example, a Russian icon. I would be interested to know how readers feel about this.

I wanted to bring his work to your attention again for a couple of reasons. One is that I had occasion to talk to him not long ago, and he sent me examples of recent work.

The second is that he told me of his concerns about ensuring that the tradition survives, and has started to take on students who are committed to learning and maintaining the tradition. He is in touch with a number of students in the US and Canada whom he tutors via video connection. He told me that he was initially skeptical of the potential for such distance-learning, but has now changed his mind.

“I now have three promising young Coptic students, two doing a BA in fine art in Canada, and a third from California who already has a BA in painting. I had been following them for the last 2-3 years on Facebook, and they eventually contacted me separately, begging me for some kind of tuition. I accepted and started weekly group video calls on Messenger (for now). It has been quite an interesting experience so far, and I now see that my reservations about teaching iconography online were not warranted. I give them written assignments, exercises and a reading list that includes The Way of Beauty, which I consider a must for any student of Christian sacred art. As you may already know, the very existence of Coptic iconography is now very much in jeopardy and I want to do whatever I can to contribute.”

In the Roman Church, we are lagging behind the Eastern Churches in this regard. This is going to sound harsh, but in my opinion, we are still looking for our own Fanous who will re-establish the distinctive Catholic traditions of art, such as the Gothic or Baroque, with such great effect. I hope that this story will inspire artists out there to believe that we can have beautiful liturgical art again.

If anyone wishes to contact him, you can do so via his website: www.copticiconography.org.

Also, here is an excellent interview with Stephane, who is a deacon at the Coptic Church in London where he lives, in the Orthodox Arts Journal.

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The Feast of the Forty Martyrs

The Forty Martyrs were a group of soldiers from the Roman Twelfth Legion, who died for the Faith at Sebaste in Armenia in the year 320. This was seven years after the Edict of Milan and the Peace granted to the Church by Constantine, whose brother-in-law Licinius at that point ruled in the East, and after a period of tolerance, renewed the persecution of Christians. When the Forty had been called to renounce the Faith and refused, they were sentenced first to various tortures, and then condemned to die a particularly horrible death, stripped naked and left to freeze on the ice of a frozen lake. The governor who supervised this execution ordered that a hot bath be prepared at the edge of the lake, by which any one of them who would apostatize might save himself from freezing to death.

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

The Breviary of St Pius V represents the martyrs praying as their sufferings began, “Forty we have entered into the stadium, let us receive forty crowns, o Lord, lest even one be lacking from this number. This number is held in honor. You adorned it with a fast of forty days; through it the divine Law entered into the world. Elijah, seeking God, obtained the vision of Him by a fast of forty days.” This is a very ancient motif, by which the fast of forty days observed in the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah) is associated with that observed in the Gospel by Christ. (For this reason, on the first Sunday of Lent the Roman Rite reads the account of Christ’s fast, and on the second, that of His Transfiguration, at which Moses and Elijah appear as witnesses to the divinity of Christ. On the Ember Wednesday between them, there are two readings before the Gospel, Exodus 24, 12-18, which tells of the forty day fast of Moses, and 3 Kings 19, 3-8, the forty day fast of Elijah.)

One of the forty, however, did abandon the company and enter the hot bath; in some accounts it is said that he died immediately from the shock. In the meantime, one of their guards had a vision of Angels descending upon the martyrs, bearing thirty-nine crowns; he was inspired by this to become a Christian, take the place of the one who had left, and so fulfill the mystical number of forty. Seeing the martyrs’ constancy, those who were in charge of their execution decided to finish them off by breaking their legs, as was done to the thieves crucified alongside the Lord. Only one of them did not die from this, a young man named Melito, but he was mortally wounded and could not live. His own mother then carried him to the place where the rest of them were taken to be cremated, walking behind the wagon; during the journey he died in her arms, and was laid by her on the pyre among the bodies of his comrades.

Their ashes were scattered to prevent the veneration of their relics, but the Christians were able to recover some of them. St Basil the Great tells of the presence of the relics at Caesarea; his brother, St Gregory of Nyssa, says that their parents, Ss Basil the Elder and Emmelia, were buried in a church at a place called Annesis, which they themselves had built, and for which they had obtained some relics of the Forty. Portions of them were later taken to Constantinople and elsewhere, and devotion to them was brought to the West by St Gaudentius of Brescia, who received a part of the relics from St Basil’s nieces while passing through Caesarea on his way to Jerusalem.

The iconostasis of the Chapel of the Forty Martyrs in the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Deror Avi, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Their feast was originally kept in the West on March 9, the same day it still has in the East. St Frances of Rome died on that day in 1440; when she was canonized in 1608 (together with St Charles Borromeo), she was assigned to that day, and the martyrs moved forward to the 10th. In the rubrical reform of 1960, ferias of Lent were given precedence over the majority of feasts, and the Forty were permanently reduced to a commemoration, since March 10th cannot occur outside Lent; notwithstanding the great veneration in which they are held in the East, and the antiquity of the feast, it was abolished from the calendar of the Novus Ordo.

In the Byzantine Rite, certain features of the liturgy which are reserved for the more important Saints are included on their day. The very strict Lenten fast is relaxed, so that wine and oil may be consumed. A Gospel is read at Orthros, John 15, 17 – 16, 2, in which Christ speaks of Himself as the model of martyrdom, and the martyr as the most perfect imitator of Him. “If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. ... If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my word, they will keep yours also. ... Yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you, will think that he doth a service to God.”

If the Vespers of the Presanctified Gifts are celebrated, an Epistle and Gospel are added to the rite, sung as they would be at the Divine Liturgy. The Gospel is that which the Roman Rite reads on Septuagesima Sunday, Matthew 20, 1-16, the parable of the workmen in the vineyard; this was clearly chosen in reference to the guard who joined the martyrs at the last minute, and received the same crown with the rest of the company, just as the workmen who came at the eleventh hour received the same wage as the rest.

In the annals of Christian hagiography, there are many stories of people who were spontaneously converted to the Faith by seeing the constancy of the martyrs in the midst of their torments; it is not rare for such persons to become martyrs themselves, even joining the suffering Christians of their own will right on the spot, like the guard among the Forty. This phenomenon was realized again three years ago in the person of one Matthew Ayariga, a Ghanaian who was seized in Libya by Islamic fanatics, along with a group of twenty Egyptian Copts. Although he was not a member of the Coptic Church, he refused to embrace Islam, even at the threat of being beheaded; seeing how the others prayed and called upon the Holy Name of Jesus as they died, he said of them, “Their God is my God,” and was slain in their company.

An icon of the New Martyrs of Libya, by Tony Rezk. Matthew Ayariga is represented in the middle of the group. 

These twenty-one men were canonized as martyrs by the Coptic Pope Tawadros II very shortly after their death; quite recently, a church named in their honor was dedicated in the village of Al-Our, Egypt, where thirteen of them came from, on the third anniversary of the martyrdom. In the following video, members of the martyrs’ families give exemplary testimonies of true Christian forgiveness, speaking not of anger, hatred or vengeance, but rather of the joy and pride which they take in their Sainted relatives. (It should be remembered that these men were all fairly young, and working construction jobs abroad to provide for their families.) “And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes: and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor shall sorrow be any more, for the former things are passed away.”

This article is a revised version of one that was originally published in 2015.

Coptic Catholic Liturgy in New York City

Our thanks to one of our regular photopost contributors, Diana Yuan, for these images of a Coptic liturgy celebrated at the Pontifical Shrine of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in New York City, by Abouna (Fr) Francis Fayez of the Coptic Catholic Church of the Resurrection in Brooklyn. The Coptic clergy and faithful guided the congregation in participating in their beautiful Rite, which was followed by a blessing of the sick. This liturgy at Mt. Carmel is a part of the Pallottine tradition of presenting Eastern Catholic liturgies.

Let us remember to pray for the many Christians who are subject to persecution in the land where Our Lord found refuge when He was subject to persecution!

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The Consecration of St Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo, 1968

A friend brought to my attention this fascinating footage of the consecration of St Mark’s Cathedral in Cairo, the seat of the Coptic Orthodox Pope. The church was built in the reign of Cyril VI (1959-71), and consecrated by him on June 25, 1968; the ceremony was attended by the President of Egypt, Gamal Nasser, and by the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. (It may be noted in passing that one of the first acts of Cyril VI’s reign was to grant autocephaly to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, according to an agreement reached in the reign of his predecessor.) The cathedral is named, of course, for St Mark the Evangelist, who is honored as the first bishop of Alexandria and the founder of the Coptic Church. Before this ceremony took place, Pope Paul VI ordered that a portion of the relics of St Mark, which were stolen by Venetian merchants in 828 and kept in their city’s most famous church, be returned to the Coptic Church; they are now housed in a special shrine within the cathedral.

Our readers are certainly aware that only ten days ago, during the Sunday morning liturgy, a suicide-bomber killed 27 people and injured 47 others in a chapel dedicated to Ss Peter and Paul, right next to this cathedral. Let us remember, as we await the coming of the Prince of Peace, to ask the Lord to visit all of the persecuted Christian churches of the Middle East, and grant them a peaceful and permanent respite from the evils of the persecution visited upon them for their faith.

An Icon of the Coptic New Martyrs of Libya

I am sure that all of our readers are aware of the recent massacre in Libya of a group of Egyptian Copts, who were killed for their faith by Islamic terrorists. The Patriarch of Alexandria, His Holiness Pope Tawadros II, has officially recognized them as martyrs, and ordered that their commemoration be inserted into the Synaxarium; their feast will be kept on February 15th, the same day as the Presentation of the Lord in the Alexandrian Rite. The title “New Martyr” was originally used in the East for those killed by heretical Christian rulers, but has subsequently been extended to all those who received the crown of martyrdom under various kinds of tyranny.

Among the 21 martyrs was a man named Matthew Ayariga, a native of the sub-Saharan nation of Ghana. His name was at first erroneously reported as Samuel Wilson, but his real name, and his death among the group, has reportedly been confirmed by family members. He has also been recognized as a Saint and New Martyr no less than the others, although he was not a member of the Coptic Church. This report was known to the writer of this icon, Tony Rezk, who has represented him here in the middle of the group. Note also that the rest of them are shown with the same face as Jesus, whose Holy Name they spoke as they were killed; the sea behind them is shown reddened by their blood. The red stoles and crowns above them symbolize their martyrdom; the stoles are arranged like those of Coptic deacons during the liturgy.

Let us all remember during the course of this Lent to pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world, but most especially in the Middle East, and ask for the intercession of all of the Saints on their behalf.