The Station Churches of the Christmas Season (Part 2)

By the end of the fifth century, there were a number of Roman churches dedicated to St Stephen the First Martyr, including a monastery behind St Peter’s in the Vatican, and a large basilica on the via Latina. That which was chosen as the station church of his feast day, St Stephen’s on the Caelian Hill, is the one closest to the ancient Papal residence at the Lateran. It is now often referred to in Italian as “Santo Stefano Rotondo – Round St Stephen’s”, and is the only round church built in ancient times in the Eternal City. (The Pantheon was often called “Santa Maria Rotonda”, but was not, of course, built as a church.)

The Basilica of Santo Stefano Rotondo; watercolor by Ettore Roseler Franz, 1880

The station remained at Santo Stefano Rotondo, even after a portion of the Saint’s relics were brought to Rome and placed within the tomb of St Lawrence, in the basilica of St Lawrence outside the Walls. There are two reasons for this, the first being that, after the long trip around the city for the stations of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the papal court would probably prefer to stay close to home on the day following. More importantly, the round shape of Santo Stefano was chosen in imitation of the ancient church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the city of both the Lord’s Passion and the martyrdom of Stephen. The ancient custom of keeping the feast of St Stephen immediately after the birth of Christ serves as a powerful reminder of the mission of the Christ Child, who came into this world to die for our redemption. The eighth responsory of St Stephen’s office expresses this most beautifully when it says that “…he first rendered back to the Savior the death which he, Our Savior, deigned to suffer for us.”

The station on December 27th, the feast of St John the Apostle, is not kept at the basilica of St John in the Lateran, which is officially named the Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior. The dedication of this church to the two Saints John, Baptist and Evangelist, postdates the fixing of the traditional stations; so does the church of St John at the Latin Gate, where the Apostle was traditionally said to have been thrown into a vat of boiling oil, and miraculously preserved from death. Instead, the Papal court returned to the basilica of Mary Major. The reason for this is first of all the traditional association of St John with the Virgin Mary, whom the Lord entrusted to His beloved disciple, shortly before He died on the Cross. The office of St John refers to this twice: “At last, when He was to about to die upon the Cross, he commended His Virgin Mother to this virgin, (i.e. Saint John.)

The rood screen of the church of Saint Giles in Cheadle, England, by A.W.N. Pugin, showing the Virgin Mary and Saint John at the Cross; 1841-46. (Photograph by Fr. Lawrence Lew. O.P.)

As mentioned previously, the third Ecumenical Council was convened in the year 431 to refute the heresy of Nestorius, who claimed that it was improper to call the Virgin Mary “Mother of God”. The city chosen for this council, Ephesus in Asia Minor, was also the place where St John is traditionally said to have died and been buried; the site venerated as his tomb was enclosed within a basilica by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. The station for his feast day is therefore also a reminder of the traditional association of both St John and the Virgin Mary with the city of Ephesus, the ancient church of which was also, of course, the recipient of a letter from St Paul and a divine message in the Apocalypse of John (2, 1-7).

On the following day, the station for the feast of the Holy Innocents is kept at the Basilica of St Paul outside the Walls, the site of the Apostle’s tomb, along the road to the ancient Roman port of Ostia. It may be that this church was chosen because of the relics of the Innocents which were placed there at an uncertain date; on the other hand, the relics may have been placed there because it was already the station church for the feast. (Major relics of the Innocents are also kept at Mary Major in Rome, the Basilica of St Justina in Padua, and the cathedrals of Milan and Lisbon.)

Detail of the Cross in the apsidal mosaic of St Paul’s outside the Walls, with five of the Holy Innocents underneath it. (Photograph by Fr Lawrence Lew O.P.)

The Blessed Ildephonse Schuster notes in The Sacramentary that nearly all of the major solemnities and seasons of the liturgical year include a stational visit to the churches of both St Peter and St Paul; it may be that St Paul’s was chosen with regard to this custom, after the station at St Peter’s on Christmas Day. He also points out that St Paul is the most illustrious son of the tribe of Benjamin, and of Benjamin’s mother, Rachel. When she died in giving birth to Benjamin, Rachel “was buried on the way that leadeth to Ephrata, which is Beth-lehem”; she represents the mothers who wept over the slaughter of their children, as foretold by the prophet Jeremiah. (Genesis 35, 19 and Matthew 2, 18, the conclusion of the Gospel of the Holy Innocents, citing Jeremiah 31, 15.)

There is no station assigned for the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury, who was martyred on December 29, 1170, and whose feast was accepted throughout the Latin church almost immediately after his canonization. By the twelfth century, the church of Rome had long ceased to institute stations for new feasts; even Corpus Christi does not have one. Likewise, the common Sundays and ferias within octaves rarely have stations, with the notable exceptions of Easter and Pentecost. Pope St Sylvester I, who died on December 31, 335, is one of the very first confessors, (i.e., non-martyrs) to be honored by the Church with a liturgical feast. His feast was originally kept with a station at the place of his burial, a basilica which Sylvester himself had built above the Catacomb of Priscilla, in honor of the martyrs Ss Felix and Philip. Prior to the eleventh century, it was the common custom for the Pope to go the principal church of each major Roman Saint on their feast day; in fact, the oldest Roman liturgical calendar is partly a list of such papal celebrations. We may imagine that the popes of that era welcomed the two days’ rest between the station of the Holy Innocents at St Paul’s outside the Walls, and that of St Sylvester, a few miles in the opposite direction, up the Salarian way. In the year 761, however, his relics were translated to a church dedicated to him in the center of Rome; this church is now much more famous as the resting place of the head of St John the Baptist, for which it is named “San Silvestro in Capite, i.e. where the head is.” His feast, like that of St Thomas, is kept only as a commemoration in the Roman Missals of 1962 and 1970; a memory of its former prominence remains in the custom of calling New Year’s Eve “Sylvester’s night” in German and other languages.

(Pictured above; The Donation of Constantine, from the Chapel of Saint Sylvester at the Basilica of the Four Crowned Martyrs in Rome; roughly 1250.)

The third part of this article will discuss the stations of the Circumcision and the Epiphany.

A Medieval Fresco of the Holy Innocents

From the Servite church of the city of Siena, Santa Maria dei Servi (click image to enlarge.)

This was painted in the 1330s by Pietro Lorenzetti, along with the brothers Francesco and Niccolò di Segna. The scene is set in Siena itself, the famous cathedral of which is seen at the middle of the top. Below the border is a famous quotation from Macrobius, a writer of the early fifth century, from the second book of his Saturnalia, “Melius esse porcum Herodis quam filium. - It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son.”

The full citation is as follows: “Cum audisset inter pueros quos in Syria Herodes rex Iudaeorum intra bimatum iussit interfici, filium quoque eius occisum, ait: Melius est Herodis porcum esse quam filium. - When (Augustus) heard that among the children whom Herod, the king of the Jews, ordered to be killed in Syria, within the age of two years, his own son was killed, he said, ‘It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son.’ ” As a Jew, King Herod would have no reason to kill a pig which he could not eat (a Jewish dietary custom which Roman writers often remarked upon,) but did not scruple to massacre the children in Bethlehem, and several of his own relatives. (The Wikipedia article about King Herod cites the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia to the effect that he was “prepared to commit any crime in order to gratify his unbounded ambition.”) In Greek, which Augustus knew well, these words would make a pun, since the word for “pig” is “hus (ὗς)”, while the word for “son” is “huios (υἱός).”

Liturgical Notes on the Feast of the Holy Innocents

In the Missal of St Pius V, the feast of the Holy Innocents is celebrated in violet vestments, rather than the red used on all the other feasts of Martyrs. It is also the only feast on which the Gloria in excelsis is omitted, and with it, the Te Deum in the Divine Office; furthermore, the Alleluia at Mass is replaced with a Tract, and Benedicamus Domino is said in place of Ite, missa est, as in Advent and Lent. This custom is attested in the 9th century by Amalarius of Metz, who writes in his treatise On the Ecclesiastical Offices, citing a rubric in his copy of the Gradual, “ ‘The day is passed, as it were, in sadness.’ The author of this Mass wishes us to be joined to the souls of the devout women who mourned and wept at the Innocents’ death.” (book 1, 47) He also attests that the feast of the Innocents was kept with an octave, as were those of St Stephen the First Martyr and St John the Evangelist. (book 4, 37 in fine).

The Massacre of the Innocents, by Tintoretto, 1582-87, from the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice.

Towards the end of the twelfth century, Bishop Sicard of Cremona notes that in addition, the “festive vestments”, i.e. the dalmatic and tunicle, were not worn on this day, and that these signs of mourning were observed because the Innocents, dying before the Resurrection of Christ had opened the gates of heaven, “went down to hell”, (i.e. the Limbo of the Fathers), but also “to represent the sadness of the mothers.” (Mitrale 9.8) He also says (which Amalarius does not) that the feast was not kept with these signs of mourning if it occurred on a Sunday, “because of their future glorification” in heaven.

Writing about a century later, William Durandus rejects Sicard’s idea that these customs refer to the Innocents’ descent to the Limbo of the Fathers, since if that were the case, the same would have to be observed with St John the Baptist. He does agree with Amalarius, citing his words very closely, and then explains that “the songs of joy” (i.e. the Gloria, Te Deum and Alleluia) are sung if the feast falls on Sunday, and always sung on its octave, “to signify the joy which they will receive on the eighth day, that is, in the resurrection. Although they did go down to (the Limbo of the Fathers), nevertheless they will rise with us in glory; for the octaves of feasts are celebrated in memory of the general resurrection, which they signify.” This is exactly the custom prescribed by the Missal of St Pius V and its late medieval antecedents. Durandus also knows of the custom “in many churches” that the dalmatic and tunicle were not worn, but this is not followed by the Tridentine Missal. (Rationale Divinorum Officiorum VII, 42, 11-12)

The Collect of the Innocents traditionally reads as follows: “O God, whose praise the Innocent Martyrs on this day confessed, not by speaking, but by dying, mortify in us all the evils of the vices; that our life also may proclaim in its manners Thy faith, which our tongues profess.” The phrase “mortify in us all the evils of the vices (omnia in nobis vitiorum mala mortifica)”, which has been removed in the Novus Ordo, refers to the traditional interpretation of the last line of Psalm 136 (137), in which the Psalmist curses the “daughter of Babylon” that had sent the children of Israel into exile: “Blessed be he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock.” For obvious reasons, this passage was used by the early Church’s critics as an example of evil behavior purportedly sanctioned by the Bible, as also by heretics who rejected the Old Testament, such as the Marcionites and Gnostics.

The Masses of the Holy Innocents and Pope St Sylvester I, in the Sacramentary of St Denis, (folio 26v), second half of the 9th century; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 2290

The 3rd century biblical scholar Origen, whose massive corpus of Scriptural interpretation (now mostly lost) was devoted in large measure to answering such critics, explains the meaning of this passage in a spiritual sense as follows.

(T)he little ones of Babylon (which signifies ‘confusion’) are those troublesome sinful thoughts which arise in the soul, and he who subdues them by striking, as it were, their heads against the firm and solid strength of reason and truth, is the man who dashes the little ones against the stones; and he is therefore truly blessed. God may therefore have commanded men to destroy all their vices utterly, even at their birth, without having enjoined anything contrary to the teaching of Christ.” (Contra Celsum, 7.22)

This explanation is accepted and elaborated upon by several of the Latin Fathers. St Hilary refers to “vices – vitia” eight times in his Treatise on this Psalm; he would also seem to be the first to associate the rock against which the vices are dashed in their “infancy” with the rock which St Paul says was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10, 4). He is followed in this by St Jerome in his 22nd Epistle, written to his spiritual daughter Eustochium, and by St Augustine (Enarratio in Ps. 136). Hilary and Jerome in particular were quite familiar with the Greek Fathers, and especially the famous Origen. Continuing this tradition, St Gregory the Great writes in his Commentary on the Penitential Psalms, “We dash our little ones upon the rock, when we mortify illicit impulses (or ‘passions’) as they arise, by directing the mind towards the imitation of Christ. For it is written ‘But the rock was Christ.’ ”

Of course, the actual children who died in Bethlehem at the hands of King Herod’s soldiers do not represent our vices, and their death does not represent the mortification of our vices. The parallel between the Psalm and the Gospel lies in the fact that in both cases, Christ brings redemption and glory out of an event full of horror and sadness, as He will later do with His own death. In the Old Testament, this is realized only in a spiritual and allegorical way; in the New Testament, the story of the Incarnation, it is realized in the very flesh in which Christ is born and dies as a man, and which He shares with the other sons of Bethlehem. The curse of the Psalm becomes an exhortation to virtue, the words that precede it, “blessed shall he be who shall repay thee thy payment which thou hast paid us,” replaced by Christ’s command, “Bless them that curse you.” The murder of the Innocents in Bethlehem, a sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance, will bring them to glory in Heaven, after the murder of another Innocent opens its gates and effects the redemption of the human race.

This may also be the reason why the Roman Rite developed the custom, which is unique to it, of referring to these children as “the Holy Innocents”, since they did not live long enough to commit any sin, and never lost or struggled to keep the innocence which adults must preserve or regain by the mortification of the vices. In other rites, they are referred to simply as a “children” or “infants.” In the Epistle of their Mass, Apocalypse 14, 1-5, St John the Evangelist, whose feast is kept the previous day, sees that “a Lamb (also a symbol of innocence) stood upon Mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty-four thousand, having his name, and the name of his Father, written on their foreheads. … these were purchased from among men, the firstfruits to God and to the Lamb: And in their mouth there was found no lie; for they are without spot before the throne of God.” Medieval authors in the West, having no idea of the true size of Bethlehem at the time of Christ’s birth, often assumed on the basis of this reading that their number must have been 144,000, but the Byzantine tradition says they were 14,000. (The whole population of the city today is just over 25,000.)

A Greek icon of the Massacre of the Innocents, ca. 1580

Various liturgical scholars, including Fr Frederick Holweck, the author of the Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Holy Innocents, have noted that before the reform of St Pius V, their feast was kept at the middle rank of “Semidouble” in the Use of Rome, rather than the highest rank of Double. None of them, as far as I can tell, has noted that it was the only Semidouble feast kept with an octave. These terms derive from the custom of semidoubling the antiphons in the Office, i.e., not singing them in full, but only intoning them before each psalm or canticle. This may seem rather odd to us now, but was historically far more common than doubling, which became the norm less than 70 years ago. Since both doubling and the keeping of octaves were traditionally reserved for the greatest solemnities, this anomaly may also have been thought of as a sign of mourning.

Holweck also states, incorrectly, that the pre-Tridentine Breviary sang the hymns of Christmas at the Office of the Innocents; in point of fact, the Common hymns of Several Martyrs were used. The Pian Breviary, which is in most regards extremely conservative, introduced two new proper hymns for the feast, stanzas from the Epiphany hymn of the 5th century poet Prudentius; the first three of these are sung at Matins, and the other two at Lauds, to be repeated at Vespers. The latter hymn has become famous in connection with a story about St Philip Neri. He lived for many years at the Roman church of San Girolamo della Carità, right across the street from the Venerable English College, many of whose young students died as martyrs in England under Queen Elizabeth I. He used therefore to greet them with the first line of the hymn “Salvete, flores Martyrum! – Hail ye flowers of the martyrs!”

Salvete flores martyrum, / Quos lucis ipso in limine / Christi insecutor sustulit, / Ceu turbo nascentes rosas.
All hail, ye little Martyr flowers, / Sweet rosebuds cut in dawning hours! / When Herod sought the Christ to find / Ye fell as bloom before the wind.

Vos prima Christi victima, / Grex immolatorum tener, / Aram sub ipsam simplices / Palma et coronis luditis.
First victims of the Martyr bands, / With crowns and palms in tender hands, / Around the very altar, gay / And innocent, ye seem to play.

Jesu, tibi sit gloria, / Qui natus es de Virgine, / Cum Patre et almo Spiritu, / In sempiterna saecula. Amen.
All honor, laud, and glory be, / O Jesu, Virgin-born to thee; / All glory, as is ever meet / To Father and to Paraclete. Amen. (English translation by Msgr. Hugh Thomas Henry and J. M. Neale.)

The Feast of Childermas

The Massacre of the Innocent, by Nicolas Poussin, ca. 1625-29

The biblical description of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents is brief but chilling:

Herod, perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry; and sending killed all the men children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying: “A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning; Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” (Matt. 2, 16-18).

St. Matthew’s account does not indicate how many were killed in Herod’s effort to murder the Infant Jesus. The Byzantine liturgy mentions 14,000, the Syrian churches speak of 64,000, and some medieval authors, inspired by Revelation 14, 3, speak of a staggering 144,000. Based on fertility rates and the size of the population of Bethlehem and its environs at the time, however, a more realistic estimate places the number of the slain somewhere between ten and twenty.

Matthew is also silent about the date of the massacre, except for hinting that it happened within two years of the apparition of the Magi’s star. The Armenian feast day honoring the Holy Innocents falls on the Monday after the Second Sunday after Pentecost in accordance with a belief that they were killed fifteen weeks after the nativity of our Lord. The Byzantine calendar has the feast on December 29, while the Syrian and Chaldean calendars have it on December 27.

The Church of Rome, from what we can tell, has always kept the feast of “Childermas” (Children’s Mass) on December 28, ever since it first began being celebrated there in the fifth century. In so doing, the Western Church presents an interesting array of Christ’s “counts” on December 26, 27, and 28: first St. Stephen, the Proto-Martyr who is martyr by will, love, and blood; then St. John the Evangelist, who is martyr by will and love (John is considered a martyr because of the attempts made on his life even though he died a natural death); and lastly, the Holy Innocents, who are martyrs by blood alone.

But if they are not martyrs by blood alone, how can they be martyrs at all? For surely a martyr is someone who dies because he consciously professes faith in Christ. The very fact that the Church acknowledges the murder of these little ones as holy martyrdom is itself significant, as it tells us something about the nature of salvation and childhood. A child normally does not attain the use of reason until the age of seven, and even then he is under the care of his parents, who act as a kind of surrogate reason, helping him develop his rational faculties. Yet an infant, under the supervision of another surrogate (his godparents), may be baptized long before he has the ability to believe in the Creed for the simple reason that just as he did not personally choose the curse of original sin with which he was born, so too need he not choose the cure of baptismal grace in order to be saved.

Similarly, the Holy Innocents did not choose martyrdom or even Christ, but this is not due to any failure on their part but to the undeveloped state of their minds. (See this this essay by Peter Kwasniewski.) What matters here, as with baptism, is the action done to them. The fact that they died not only for Christ but instead of Him makes them flores martyrum, the “flowers of the martyrs.” As St. Augustine eloquently puts it: “They are the first buds of the Church killed by the frost of persecution.” [1] The Breviary Hymn for the feast, Salvete Flores Martyrum, alludes to this botanical epithet, along with a touching portrayal of the Innocents playing with their symbols of martyrdom before the altar of God:

You, tender flock of lambs, we sing,

First victims slain for Christ your King:

Beside the very altar, gay

With palms and crowns, ye seem to play.

The Mass

As this bittersweet image attests, even though martyrdom is a glorious event in which the Church rejoices, it is difficult not to be moved by the thought of helpless toddlers being cut down in the streets. The Church, therefore, taking heed of Matthew’s citation of “Rachel weeping for her children” from the prophet Jeremiah, assumed the role of a second Rachel and mourned for these little ones. Except for when the feast fell on a Sunday, violet was the liturgical color, and the Gloria and Alleluia were suppressed. In the early centuries, Roman Christians also abstained from meat on Holy Innocents’ Day. It was on the octave day of the feast (January 4) that the Church turned her thoughts to the young martyrs’ glory, the Mass being celebrated in red with the Gloria and Alleluia. In the 1950s, however, the octave was eliminated, and so currently in the 1962 calendar red is the color of Childermas, and the Gloria and Alleluia are used (See Gregory DiPippo’s treatment of the subject.)

The station church of the day, St. Paul Outside the Walls, was chosen because it is believed that it contains the bodies of several of the Holy Innocents.

Coventry Carol

And since we broached the subject of music earlier: the Coventry mystery plays were medieval performances held in Coventry, England that told the entire life of Christ. One of them, the “Pageant of the Shearman and Tailors” (named after the sponsoring guilds), depicts the events of the second chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, which includes the massacre of the Holy Innocents. One of the songs from the play, the “Coventry Carol,” is a lullaby by the mothers of the children who are doomed to die. The first verse is:

Lully, lullah, thou little tiny child,

Bye bye, lully, lullay.

Thou little tiny child,

Bye bye, lully, lullay.

The mystery plays were performed for the summer feast of Corpus Christi, but eventually the “Coventry Carol” went on to become what it is today: hands down, the most depressing Christmas carol of all time. The song got a boost in popularity in 1940 when the BBC Empire Broadcast concluded its Christmas program with the carol being sung in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, which had been bombed by the Germans a month earlier. Even the way in which the song’s popularity spread is depressing!

Customs

The Twelve Days of Christmas are a time of “topsy-turvy” customs, where social ranks and pecking orders are inverted in giddy imitation of the grandest inversion of all, the fact that Almighty God humbled Himself to be born a man in a chilly and foul-smelling stable. Childermas is no exception. In many religious communities, the novices had the privilege of sitting at the head of the table at meals and meetings, while the last person who had taken vows in the monastery or convent got to be superior for a day. Young monks and nuns would receive congratulations and have “baby food,” such as hot cereal, served to them for dinner.

A similar flip-flop occurred in the family. Customs like decorating the crib or blessing the baby were standard ways of observing the feast, and the youngest child was allowed special privileges and honors, even becoming master of the household. Not all customs, however, bode well for the young ’uns, as some children awoke to a spanking from their parents “to remind them of the sufferings of the Innocents.” [2]

But the most famous topsy-turvy Childermas custom is the reign of the boy bishop. The earliest mention of a boy bishop during Christmastime is from the Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland. [3] A boy dressed in the vestments of a bishop and accompanied by young classmates dressed as priests presided over Solemn Vespers. King Conrad I came to the abbey to observe this custom in A.D. 912, and he decided to test their resolve by having apples strewn along the aisle of the church. He was impressed when not even the tiniest lad broke rank from the procession to grab one.

Originally the custom was meant to foster vocations to the priesthood by giving youngsters a taste of liturgical officiating, but once it moved to within the Twelve Days of Christmas, it became linked with more riotous topsy-turvy customs like the Feast of the Ass or the Lord of Misrule. In an effort to put an end to this nonsense, Church authorities decided to move the custom to the feast of St. Nicholas on December 6, safely out of the way of the Christmas mayhem. The plan, however, backfired. Instead of stemming abuses, it prolonged them: the Boy Bishop would now preside from December 6 to December 28.

And the practice was spreading. Initially it was associated only with cathedrals (which by definition have a presiding bishop), but over time other churches took up the practice. Even prestigious institutions like Eton in England had a boy bishop. From Italy to Scandinavia and from Ireland to Hungary, medieval Christians relished the Boy Bishop or Nicholas Bishop (as he came to be called) as he and his entourage solemnly processed through the town and blessed the crowds. We still have inventory records of the little vestments kept for the occasion. And although complaints continued to pour in about abuses (not unlike their corrupt adult counterparts, the boys sometimes emptied the church kitty to fuel their merriment), there was a touching side as well. When a boy bishop in the diocese of Salisbury died during his brief appointment, he was given the full funeral of a bishop and buried in the cathedral.

Eventually, authorities began to crack down. In 1541, King Henry VIII outlawed the practice as superstitious and pagan. Queen Mary brought the boy bishop back, but after Elizabeth’s accession he fell into disfavor again; by the seventeenth century he was an extinct species in England. In 1982, however, the Anglican cathedral in Hereford resurrected the boy bishop, who again presides over some services from December 6 to 28 and gives a sermon. He is installed in a memorable way: during the celebration of Evensong or Vespers, when the Magnificat is sung, the bishop of Hereford rises from his episcopal throne at the verse “He hath put down the mighty from their seat.” Then, the boy, dressed in the regalia of a bishop, takes his seat at the verse “And He hath exalted the humble” and is given the bishop’s crozier. Whatever effect this inversion has for the boy, it must surely be good for the humility of the bishop.

The boy bishop, 2009

Superstitions

All of Christendom once abstained from servile work during the Twelve Days of Christmas, but there was an extra incentive to do so on the feast of the Holy Innocents. According to an old superstition, it is bad luck to begin any new work on this day, either because it will never be finished or because it will come to a bad end. The superstition was strong enough to keep leaders like King Louis XI of France and King Edward IV of England from doing any business on this day. Perhaps the rationale is that just as the Holy Innocents’ lives were cut tragically short, so too would be any work done on their feast day.

In German-speaking countries, Christianity almost literally baptized a pagan fear of souls wandering the earth after the winter solstice. According to legend, the souls of unbaptized children are chaperoned by the frightening Hel, the Germanic goddess of the underworld (from which the English word “Hell” is derived). Each child carries a pitcher filled with the tears he or she shed that year. But thanks to the mercy of God, if a person on Innocents’ Day hears their cry in the howling wind or sees their ghostly shape fluttering in the dark, he should call out a Christian name. By being given a “baptismal” name, the child is freed from Lady Hel’s grip and allowed to join the Holy Innocents in eternal bliss.

In central Europe, groups of children observed a pre-Christian fertility rite by going to women and girls with branches and twigs and chanting:

Many years of healthy life,

Happy girl, happy wife:

Many children, hale and strong,

Nothing harmful, nothing wrong,

Much to drink and more to eat;

Now we beg a kindly treat.

They would then swat them gently with branches and twigs. These and other "ritual scourgings" were once popular with our pagan and later Christian ancestors: the recipients were even expected to thank their floggers for the service and give them treats. Anything to help mankind be fruitful and multiply!

For more information on the Christmas season, see Michael Foley's latest book, Why We Kiss under the Mistletoe: Christmas Traditions Explained (Regnery, 2022). An earlier version of this article also appeared as “The Counts of Jesu Christo, Part II” in The Latin Mass magazine 17:5 (Advent/Christmas 2008), pp. 44-47. Many thanks to its editors for allowing its inclusion here.

Notes

[1] Sermon 10 on the Saints.

[2] Joanna Bogle, A Book of Feasts and Seasons (Gracewing, 1992), 59.

[3] Originally, the custom was for the Feast of Pope St. Gregory Great on March 12.

King Herod and the Martyr Children

Why in the world would anyone ever think of killing a child?

If we look at the nature of Herod’s murderous decree and the way in which the Innocents suffered for Christ, we see that the persecution of the child results from a hatred of God, of human nature as the imago Dei, and of Christ who has a special love and welcome for all “little ones”: children, the elderly, the poor, the handicapped, the helpless, the oppressed.

Herod “the Great,” as he was called by some of his contemporaries, slaughtered the children of Christ’s age because he did not want to submit to the reign of Christ the King. He did not want anyone else to rule over him; he wanted only to rule himself—and, of course, to rule others. (As St. Thomas notes: “Mary and Joseph needed to be instructed concerning Christ’s birth before He was born, because it devolved on them to show reverence to the child conceived in the womb, and to serve Him even before He was born, ST III.36.2 ad 2.)

Then Herod, perceiving that he was deluded by the wise men, was exceeding angry, and sending killed all the men children that were in Bethlehem and in all the borders thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremias the prophet, saying: A voice in Rama was heard, lamentation and great mourning: Rachel bewailing her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. (Gospel of the day)

The Roman Emperors who persecuted Christianity in its infancy stand in league with Herod: they sought to extinguish a religion that taught the supremacy of another king, another ruler, to whom all earthly knees must bend. If Christianity had not exacted this otherworldly allegiance, the Emperors would have left it quite alone. Any bizarre mystery cult or intellectual religion was palatable to the cosmopolitan taste of the Romans; as long as the citizens would tip a spoonful of incense into the fire to honor the divinity of the Emperor who commanded all earthly obedience, then they could go about worshiping or not worshiping whatever god they pleased. But Christianity declared that there was a higher kingship, a higher imperium: “You would have no power over me unless it had been given to you from above” (John 19, 11). To this higher authority, all earthly kings and kingdoms must pay homage.

It is truly meet and just, right and availing unto salvation that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto Thee, O holy Lord, Father almighty and everlasting God. Because by the mystery of the Word made flesh the light of Thy glory hath shone anew upon the eyes of our mind: that while we acknowledge Him to be God seen by men, we may be drawn by Him to the love of things unseen. (Preface of the Nativity)

As if such a claim were not audacious enough, Christianity went further. It taught that all men who share in the mystery of Christ are adopted sons with Him, co-heirs of the kingdom of heaven—and as a consequence, that all men, from Emperor to slave, are fundamentally equal in the eyes of God. [1] Thus, while in the worldly order the slave negates himself before his master and the citizen falls before his Emperor, in the divine order inaugurated by Christ, the master serves his slave and the Emperor his citizens. [2] All must serve one another in humility and love. The most basic Christian identity is that of servanthood: Jesus tells his disciples that they are to distinguish themselves not as masters but as servants. [3]

Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings, O God, Thou hast perfected praise, because of Thine enemies. Ps. O Lord our God, how admirable is Thy Name in the whole earth! (Introit)

At this late time in the history of the West, when Christianity has become so story-book familiar that its radical message fails to attract notice, can we begin to imagine how offensive this religion must have been to the pagans of ancient empires? We must renew in our minds the impression the Christian faith produced: it was a stumbling block, impious and rebellious. Indeed, it was something that had to be not only rejected but crushed, for it turned upside-down almost everything that fallen mankind takes for granted. In overthrowing the idols of paganism, Christ did more than introduce the worship of the true God; he destroyed an entire world, an entire philosophy of life, based upon the idolatry of power and self-will.

When we venerate martyrs, we venerate those who will not tip a spoonful of incense to the gods of this world; we honor those who by their example, by the offering of their life, prove to a world comfortably entangled in self-love that man is meant to live unto God alone and sacrifice all that he is in the service of others.

O God, whose praise the martyred Innocents on this day confessed, not by speaking, but by dying: destroy in us all the evils of sin, that our life also may proclaim in deeds Thy faith which our tongues profess. (Collect)

A man and woman who conceive a child are bound by natural and divine law to nurture and educate that child, or to give it up for adoption when they cannot take responsibility for its upbringing. They are bound to submit to the demands laid upon them by their children, just as Joseph and Mary devoted their lives to serving the Christchild, and as all faithful parents do when they sacrifice years to the rearing of their children. The child is like a king in that he must be served, but he is absolutely helpless, he is all neediness and dependence, he cannot even survive unless cared for by others. He begs to be welcomed; he needs and demands love. If there is one person whom all should love, it is the child, the infant, who is pure dependency and trust. Where is the human being who cannot find room in his heart to do this much?

Grant, we beseech Thee, almighty God, that the new birth of Thine only-begotten Son in the flesh may set us free, who are held by the old bondage under the yoke of sin. (Commemoration of Christmas)

Herod was such a man. Just as there was no empty room in the inn of Bethlehem, there was no receptive room in his heart for another person to take precedence. All that Herod knew is that this promised child would threaten his lovable self, his selfish self-rule; and that was enough of a motive for him to send the soldiers on their horrible mission. In a mockery of his own rulership, Herod slaughtered the most innocent of his subjects, simply to ensure that none of them would grow up to manhood and ask of him some sacrifice of honor, freedom, or power. As St. Peter Chrysologus preaches:

Herod’s inhuman cruelty has exposed how far jealousy tends to go, and spite leaps, and envy makes its way. While this cruelty was jealously seeking the narrow limits of temporal reign, it strove to block the rise of the eternal King. … In his earthly fury he hunts Him whom he does not believe to be born from heaven. He moves the soldier’s camp to the bosoms of mothers, and attacks the citadel of love among their breasts. He tests his steel in those tender breasts, sheds milk before blood, causes the infants to undergo death before experiencing life, brings darkness on those just entering into the light of day…. In fear of a successor, he moved against his Creator. He slew the innocent babies, with intent to kill Innocence Himself. … Their tongue has been silent, their eyes have seen nothing, their hands have done nothing. No act has proceeded from them; then, whence do they have any guilt? They who did not yet know how to live got death. The period of their life did not protect them, nor did their age excuse them, nor their silence defend them. With Herod, the mere fact that they were born was their crime. [4]

The ultimate cause of abortion is that some people do not want to have another person “reigning” over them, another life making claims upon them, absorbing their time and their energy—in a word, making them servants. Whether it be parent, relative, doctor, nurse, counselor, politician, employer, or any other who is primarily responsible for the decision to abort or the collective pressures which bring it about, abortion objectively means: I, the adult with power over life and death, will have no ruler but myself alone; non serviam, I will not serve, I will not show mercy. This child is a nuisance, an inconvenience, a hardship, it will change the way we have to live our lives, and that, finally, is what we cannot allow.

The children abandoned by their parents and murdered by the abortionist are rejected, just as the infant boys were rejected, on account of Christ whom they represent. The Holy Innocents shed their blood in witness to Christ “who came to his own and his own received him not” (John 1, 11). Strikingly, St. Peter Chrysologus declaims:

Isaias had foretold that a virgin would bring forth the God of heaven, the King of the earth, the Lord of the regions, the renewer of the world, the slayer of death, the restorer of life, the author of perpetuity. The very occurrence of the Lord’s nativity proved how sad this was for worldly men, how frightening to kings … Fearing a successor, they tried to slay the Saviour of all men. At length, since they could not find Him, they devastated His country, mixed mothers’ milk with blood, and beat to death the infants of His own years. They dismembered the companions of His innocence, because they could not find for punishment sharers in any guilt of His. If they did all this after Christ was already born, what would they in their wild fury have done to Him when He was conceived? (Chrysologus, Sermons, 242)

The Holy Innocents did not meet their death freely confessing a Savior whom they knew; they played no active part in their own martyrdom. They were slaughtered for the same reason Christ was ultimately crucified: self-will, self-rule. That Christ disappointed Jewish hopes for a Messianic leader who would establish political self-rule takes on deeper significance when considered in relation to fallen man’s restless desire for worldly autonomy or autocracy, the desire to be the very rule of behavior, the measure of right and wrong. The kingdom of Christ is not of this world, His rulership is of an entirely different order (John 18, 33-38). There is only one rule of behavior, one measure of right and wrong—the Truth which Jesus himself is (John 14, 6).

These are they who were not defiled with women: for they are virgins. These follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. These were purchased from among men, the firstfruits to God and to the Lamb: and in their mouth there was found no lie: for they are without spot before the throne of God. (Epistle of the day)

As the chief priests, the people, and Pilate rejected Christ in the end, so Herod rejected Him in the beginning. The sudden friendship that sprang up between Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas, son of the Herod who ordered the massacre of the Innocents, is not a mere coincidence recorded by Luke (23, 12) for the curious reader. Among other things, it demonstrates the ultimate identity of the first Herodian rejection of Christ the infant and the final Roman-Jewish rejection of Christ the man. The end circles around to meet up with the beginning, just as the legal endorsement of abortion logically necessitates the legal endorsement of euthanasia, or any “purification of unwanted social elements.”

In line with two kinds of persecutions, there are going to be two kinds of martyrs: those who are killed on account of professing a Gospel which their persecutors hate, and those, like John the Baptist, who are killed because their presence prevents someone else from living as he or she pleases. The latter kind of martyr, though not giving an explicitly Christian witness, is by no means unrelated to Christ. As victims of the insidious pride which has the kingdom of God as its formal object, their witness to the Messiah is not personal but cosmological. The Holy Innocents died a death of rejection by the world and its powers long before Christ died on the Cross, despised and rejected; they were killed out of the same hatred for God and for his law that will later propel the enemies of Christ and all who persecute Christians throughout history.

The witness given by a martyr is brought about by persecutors who torture or kill him precisely because he represents the Creator and the Redeemer to an ungrateful and sinful world. To be persecuted is obviously a necessary condition for martyrdom, but it is more. If a sleeping Catholic is attacked and killed by a Moslem out of hatred for the Christian faith, the former can be a martyr—not because he consciously bore witness, but because his very identity as a Catholic was the reason for which the other killed him; the motive specified the generic act of killing as an act of persecution. If, on the other hand, a Moslem judge ordered the death of a Christian because he had committed a serious crime, the Christian would not be a martyr by anyone’s definition. The motive of the killer thus figures crucially in the definition of any “passive” or “unconscious” martyr such as the Holy Innocents.

Although the victims of abortion are not martyrs because they are not incorporated into either the Old Covenant (as were the circumcised Hebrew children slaughtered by command of Herod) or the New Covenant (as would be children who are sacramentally baptized and thus capable of being killed in odium fidei), their death is nevertheless an implicit and analogous rejection of God the Creator and Christ the Redeemer. It is therefore not inappropriate to link the memory of these victims with the story of the Holy Innocents recounted each year, and to pray to God for the conversion of all who lend their support to the ever-crystallizing regime of Antichrist.

[1] See John 1, 12–13; Rom. 8, 14–23; Eph. 1, 5; Gal 4, 4–7; 1 John 3, 1; Acts 10, 34; Rom. 10, 12; Eph. 6, 8-9; Col 3, 11.
[2] See Phlm 1, 15–16; Eph. 6, 9; Col. 4,1; the same teaching is already present in Wis. 6, 2–10 and Sir. 32, 1–3.
[3] See Luke 9, 48; Eph. 5, 21; Phil. 2, 3; Matt. 20, 25–27; Mark 9, 34.
[4] Selected Sermons, trans. G. Ganss [New York: Fathers of the Church, 1953], 254–55; 256–57.

Liturgical Notes on the Feast of the Holy Innocents

In the Missal of St Pius V, the feast of the Holy Innocents is celebrated in violet vestments, rather than the red used on all the other feasts of Martyrs. It is also the only feast on which the Gloria in excelsis is omitted, and with it, the Te Deum in the Divine Office; furthermore, the Alleluia at Mass is replaced with a Tract, and Benedicamus Domino is said in place of Ite, missa est, as in Advent and Lent. This custom is attested in the 9th century by Amalarius of Metz, who writes in his treatise On the Ecclesiastical Offices, citing a rubric in his copy of the Gradual, “ ‘The day is passed, as it were, in sadness.’ The author of this Mass wishes us to be joined to the souls of the devout women who mourned and wept at the Innocents’ death.” (book 1, 47) He also attests that the feast of the Innocents was kept with an octave, as were those of St Stephen the First Martyr and St John the Evangelist. (book 4, 37 in fine).

The Massacre of the Innocents, by Tintoretto, 1582-87, from the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice.

Towards the end of the twelfth century, Bishop Sicard of Cremona notes that in addition, the “festive vestments”, i.e. the dalmatic and tunicle, were not worn on this day, and that these signs of mourning were observed because the Innocents, dying before the Resurrection of Christ had opened the gates of heaven, “went down to hell”, (i.e. the Limbo of the Fathers), but also “to represent the sadness of the mothers.” (Mitrale 9.8) He also says (which Amalarius does not) that the feast was not kept with these signs of mourning if it occurred on a Sunday, “because of their future glorification” in heaven.

Writing about a century later, William Durandus rejects Sicard’s idea that these customs refer to the Innocents’ descent to the Limbo of the Fathers, since if that were the case, the same would have to be observed with St John the Baptist. He does agree with Amalarius, citing his words very closely, and then explains that “the songs of joy” (i.e. the Gloria, Te Deum and Alleluia) are sung if the feast falls on Sunday, and always sung on its octave, “to signify the joy which they will receive on the eighth day, that is, in the resurrection. Although they did go down to (the Limbo of the Fathers), nevertheless they will rise with us in glory; for the octaves of feasts are celebrated in memory of the general resurrection, which they signify.” This is exactly the custom prescribed by the Missal of St Pius V and its late medieval antecedents. Durandus also knows of the custom “in many churches” that the dalmatic and tunicle were not worn, but this is not followed by the Tridentine Missal. (Rationale Divinorum Officiorum VII, 42, 11-12)

The Collect of the Innocents traditionally reads as follows: “O God, whose praise the Innocent Martyrs on this day confessed, not by speaking, but by dying, mortify in us all the evils of the vices; that our life also may proclaim in its manners Thy faith, which our tongues profess.” The phrase “mortify in us all the evils of the vices (omnia in nobis vitiorum mala mortifica)”, which has been removed in the Novus Ordo, refers to the traditional interpretation of the last line of Psalm 136 (137), in which the Psalmist curses the “daughter of Babylon” that had sent the children of Israel into exile: “Blessed be he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock.” For obvious reasons, this passage was used by the early Church’s critics as an example of evil behavior purportedly sanctioned by the Bible, as also by heretics who rejected the Old Testament, such as the Marcionites and Gnostics.

The Masses of the Holy Innocents and Pope St Sylvester I, in the Sacramentary of St Denis, (folio 26v), second half of the 9th century; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin 2290

The 3rd century biblical scholar Origen, whose massive corpus of Scriptural interpretation (now mostly lost) was devoted in large measure to answering such critics, explains the meaning of this passage in a spiritual sense as follows.

(T)he little ones of Babylon (which signifies ‘confusion’) are those troublesome sinful thoughts which arise in the soul, and he who subdues them by striking, as it were, their heads against the firm and solid strength of reason and truth, is the man who dashes the little ones against the stones; and he is therefore truly blessed. God may therefore have commanded men to destroy all their vices utterly, even at their birth, without having enjoined anything contrary to the teaching of Christ.” (Contra Celsum, 7.22)

This explanation is accepted and elaborated upon by several of the Latin Fathers. St Hilary refers to “vices – vitia” eight times in his Treatise on this Psalm; he would also seem to be the first to associate the rock against which the vices are dashed in their “infancy” with the rock which St Paul says was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10, 4). He is followed in this by St Jerome in his 22nd Epistle, written to his spiritual daughter Eustochium, and by St Augustine (Enarratio in Ps. 136). Hilary and Jerome in particular were quite familiar with the Greek Fathers, and especially the famous Origen. Continuing this tradition, St Gregory the Great writes in his Commentary on the Penitential Psalms, “We dash our little ones upon the rock, when we mortify illicit impulses (or ‘passions’) as they arise, by directing the mind towards the imitation of Christ. For it is written ‘But the rock was Christ.’ ”

Of course, the actual children who died in Bethlehem at the hands of King Herod’s soldiers do not represent our vices, and their death does not represent the mortification of our vices. The parallel between the Psalm and the Gospel lies in the fact that in both cases, Christ brings redemption and glory out of an event full of horror and sadness, as He will later do with His own death. In the Old Testament, this is realized only in a spiritual and allegorical way; in the New Testament, the story of the Incarnation, it is realized in the very flesh in which Christ is born and dies as a man, and which He shares with the other sons of Bethlehem. The curse of the Psalm becomes an exhortation to virtue, the words that precede it, “blessed shall he be who shall repay thee thy payment which thou hast paid us,” replaced by Christ’s command, “Bless them that curse you.” The murder of the Innocents in Bethlehem, a sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance, will bring them to glory in Heaven, after the murder of another Innocent opens its gates and effects the redemption of the human race.

This may also be the reason why the Roman Rite developed the custom, which is unique to it, of referring to these children as “the Holy Innocents”, since they did not live long enough to commit any sin, and never lost or struggled to keep the innocence which adults must preserve or regain by the mortification of the vices. In other rites, they are referred to simply as a “children” or “infants.” In the Epistle of their Mass, Apocalypse 14, 1-5, St John the Evangelist, whose feast is kept the previous day, sees that “a Lamb (also a symbol of innocence) stood upon Mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty-four thousand, having his name, and the name of his Father, written on their foreheads. … these were purchased from among men, the firstfruits to God and to the Lamb: And in their mouth there was found no lie; for they are without spot before the throne of God.” Medieval authors in the West, having no idea of the true size of Bethlehem at the time of Christ’s birth, often assumed on the basis of this reading that their number must have been 144,000, but the Byzantine tradition says they were 14,000. (The whole population of the city today is just over 25,000.)

A Greek icon of the Massacre of the Innocents, ca. 1580

Various liturgical scholars, including Fr Frederick Holweck, the author of the Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Holy Innocents, have noted that before the reform of St Pius V, their feast was kept at the middle rank of “Semidouble” in the Use of Rome, rather than the highest rank of Double. None of them, as far as I can tell, has noted that it was the only Semidouble feast kept with an octave. These terms derive from the custom of semidoubling the antiphons in the Office, i.e., not singing them in full, but only intoning them before each psalm or canticle. This may seem rather odd to us now, but was historically far more common than doubling, which became the norm less than 70 years ago. Since both doubling and the keeping of octaves were traditionally reserved for the greatest solemnities, this anomaly may also have been thought of as a sign of mourning.

Holweck also states, incorrectly, that the pre-Tridentine Breviary sang the hymns of Christmas at the Office of the Innocents; in point of fact, the Common hymns of Several Martyrs were used. The Pian Breviary, which is in most regards extremely conservative, introduced two new proper hymns for the feast, stanzas from the Epiphany hymn of the 5th century poet Prudentius; the first three of these are sung at Matins, and the other two at Lauds, to be repeated at Vespers. The latter hymn has become famous in connection with a story about St Philip Neri. He lived for many years at the Roman church of San Girolamo della Carità, right across the street from the Venerable English College, many of whose young students died as martyrs in England under Queen Elizabeth I. He used therefore to greet them with the first line of the hymn “Salvete, flores Martyrum! – Hail ye flowers of the martyrs!”

Salvete flores martyrum, / Quos lucis ipso in limine / Christi insecutor sustulit, / Ceu turbo nascentes rosas.
All hail, ye little Martyr flowers, / Sweet rosebuds cut in dawning hours! / When Herod sought the Christ to find / Ye fell as bloom before the wind.

Vos prima Christi victima, / Grex immolatorum tener, / Aram sub ipsam simplices / Palma et coronis luditis.
First victims of the Martyr bands, / With crowns and palms in tender hands, / Around the very altar, gay / And innocent, ye seem to play.

Jesu, tibi sit gloria, / Qui natus es de Virgine, / Cum Patre et almo Spiritu, / In sempiterna saecula. Amen.
All honor, laud, and glory be, / O Jesu, Virgin-born to thee; / All glory, as is ever meet / To Father and to Paraclete. Amen. (English translation by Msgr. Hugh Thomas Henry and J. M. Neale.)

Station Churches of the Christmas Season (Part 2)

By the end of the fifth century, there were a number of Roman churches dedicated to St Stephen the First Martyr, including a monastery behind St Peter’s in the Vatican, and a large basilica on the via Latina. That which was chosen as the station church of his feast day, St Stephen’s on the Caelian Hill, is the one closest to the ancient Papal residence at the Lateran. It is now often referred to in Italian as “Santo Stefano Rotondo – Round St Stephen’s”, and is the only round church built in ancient times in the Eternal City. (The Pantheon was often called “Santa Maria Rotonda”, but was not, of course, built as a church.)

The Basilica of Santo Stefano Rotondo; watercolor by Ettore Roseler Franz, 1880

The station remained at Santo Stefano Rotondo, even after a portion of the Saint’s relics were brought to Rome and placed within the tomb of St Lawrence, in the basilica of St Lawrence outside the Walls. There are two reasons for this, the first being that, after the long trip around the city for the stations of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the papal court would probably prefer to stay close to home on the day following. More importantly, the round shape of Santo Stefano was chosen in imitation of the ancient church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the city of both the Lord’s Passion and the martyrdom of Stephen. The ancient custom of keeping the feast of St Stephen immediately after the birth of Christ serves as a powerful reminder of the mission of the Christ Child, who came into this world to die for our redemption. The eighth responsory of St Stephen’s office expresses this most beautifully when it says that “…he first rendered back to the Savior the death which he, Our Savior, deigned to suffer for us.”

The station on December 27th, the feast of St John the Apostle, is not kept at the basilica of St John in the Lateran, which is officially named the Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior. The dedication of this church to the two Saints John, Baptist and Evangelist, postdates the fixing of the traditional stations; so does the church of St John at the Latin Gate, where the Apostle was traditionally said to have been thrown into a vat of boiling oil, and miraculously preserved from death. Instead, the Papal court returned to the basilica of Mary Major. The reason for this is first of all the traditional association of St John with the Virgin Mary, whom the Lord entrusted to His beloved disciple, shortly before He died on the Cross. The office of St John refers to this twice: “At last, when He was to about to die upon the Cross, he commended His Virgin Mother to this virgin, (i.e. Saint John.)

The rood screen of the church of Saint Giles in Cheadle, England, by A.W.N. Pugin, showing the Virgin Mary and Saint John at the Cross; 1841-46. (Photograph by Fr. Lawrence Lew. O.P.)

As mentioned previously, the third Ecumenical Council was convened in the year 431 to refute the heresy of Nestorius, who claimed that it was improper to call the Virgin Mary “Mother of God”. The city chosen for this council, Ephesus in Asia Minor, was also the place where St John is traditionally said to have died and been buried; the site venerated as his tomb was enclosed within a basilica by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. The station for his feast day is therefore also a reminder of the traditional association of both St John and the Virgin Mary with the city of Ephesus, the ancient church of which was also, of course, the recipient of a letter from St Paul and a divine message in the Apocalypse of John (2, 1-7).

On the following day, the station for the feast of the Holy Innocents is kept at the Basilica of St Paul outside the Walls, the site of the Apostle’s tomb, along the road to the ancient Roman port of Ostia. It may be that this church was chosen because of the relics of the Innocents which were placed there at an uncertain date; on the other hand, the relics may have been placed there because it was already the station church for the feast. (Major relics of the Innocents are also kept at Mary Major in Rome, the Basilica of St Justina in Padua, and the cathedrals of Milan and Lisbon.)

Detail of the Cross in the apsidal mosaic of St Paul’s outside the Walls, with five of the Holy Innocents underneath it. (Photograph by Fr Lawrence Lew O.P.)

The Blessed Ildephonse Schuster notes in The Sacramentary that nearly all of the major solemnities and seasons of the liturgical year include a stational visit to the churches of both St Peter and St Paul; it may be that St Paul’s was chosen with regard to this custom, after the station at St Peter’s on Christmas Day. He also points out that St Paul is the most illustrious son of the tribe of Benjamin, and of Benjamin’s mother, Rachel. When she died in giving birth to Benjamin, Rachel “was buried on the way that leadeth to Ephrata, which is Beth-lehem”; she represents the mothers who wept over the slaughter of their children, as foretold by the prophet Jeremiah. (Genesis 35, 19 and Matthew 2, 18, the conclusion of the Gospel of the Holy Innocents, citing Jeremiah 31, 15.)

There is no station assigned for the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury, who was martyred on December 29, 1170, and whose feast was accepted throughout the Latin church almost immediately after his canonization. By the twelfth century, the church of Rome had long ceased to institute stations for new feasts; even Corpus Christi does not have one. Likewise, the common Sundays and ferias within octaves rarely have stations, with the notable exceptions of Easter and Pentecost. Pope St Sylvester I, who died on December 31, 335, is one of the very first confessors, (i.e., non-martyrs) to be honored by the Church with a liturgical feast. His feast was originally kept with a station at the place of his burial, a basilica which Sylvester himself had built above the Catacomb of Priscilla, in honor of the martyrs Ss Felix and Philip. Prior to the eleventh century, it was the common custom for the Pope to go the principal church of each major Roman Saint on their feast day; in fact, the oldest Roman liturgical calendar is partly a list of such papal celebrations. We may imagine that the popes of that era welcomed the two days’ rest between the station of the Holy Innocents at St Paul’s outside the Walls, and that of St Sylvester, a few miles in the opposite direction, up the Salarian way. In the year 761, however, his relics were translated to a church dedicated to him in the center of Rome; this church is now much more famous as the resting place of the head of St John the Baptist, for which it is named “San Silvestro in Capite, i.e. where the head is.” His feast, like that of St Thomas, is kept only as a commemoration in the Roman Missals of 1962 and 1970; a memory of its former prominence remains in the custom of calling New Year’s Eve “Sylvester’s night” in German and other languages.

(Pictured above; The Donation of Constantine, from the Chapel of Saint Sylvester at the Basilica of the Four Crowned Martyrs in Rome; roughly 1250.)

The third part of this article will discuss the stations of the Circumcision and the Epiphany.

Holy Innocents, Hidden Metamorphosis

For several summers, we have obtained a small number of painted lady butterfly caterpillars and watched them change into butterflies. It is always fascinating to see each caterpillar shape the chrysalis around itself and afterwards remain suspended, motionless, as if in death. Then there is the day when the chrysalis starts to vibrate, eventually shivering, as if impatient to be done with change. It shivers a long time, so much so that one fears it will fall off the branch. But the moment of emergence has always eluded us. We go to sleep, or go out of the house for some reason, and the next time we look at the container, we see — as if substituted by a magician’s sleight-of-hand — a magnificent butterly next to its empty bedchamber.

The ancients often used the image of the caterpillar transformed into the butterfly to speak about the resurrection of the body. As the caterpillar, not known for beauty or dexterity, is wrapped in silk like the winding-sheets of burial, it seems that all life is extinguished. The coming forth of a far more beautiful creature, free of earth to soar in the skies, aptly tells us of the glory of the resurrected body. As the Preface for the Mass of the Dead says: For Thy faithful, life is not ended, but changed.

Thoughts like this often occur to me on the strangely melancholy post-Christmas feast of the Holy Innocents. I say melancholy because, right after Christmas, we have a feast of unspeakable slaughter, bloodthirsty egotism, the ugly shadow of corrupt politics looming over the cradle of Bethlehem, the chill breath of the world against the cheek of humility. I cannot be the only one who winces when the Gospel passage is read out, and thinks of all the ways in which our world has still not let itself be redeemed, is still waging war against the Christ-child, is still scheming to suppress the King of kings.

But then I remind myself why it is a feast and not a day of penance like January 22nd. The Holy Innocents are true martyrs who stood in for Christ: they anticipate in their flesh the scourging, the nails, and the spear by which our salvation was wrought, and by which theirs was completed. What a triumphant victory, to have won without fighting, to have rushed ahead into the mystery of the Cross, without waiting for leave!

By being circumcised into the covenant with Abraham, the Holy Innocents professed their faith in the coming Messiah who, indeed, had just come into the world. Because of this, they were able to greet Him when He harrowed hell. For it was meet that unfailed innocence should greet the sinless One.

They were spared the bitter test of fallen human life, the risk of mortal sin, the all-too-real possibility of eternal damnation. We consider it a terrible tragedy when human life is cut short, and it always is, for us; but the Holy Innocents remind us that there is a higher vantage, a divine comedy, in which this life plays the part of a prelude to eternity. They rejoice forever in the vision of God’s glory, in the joyous dance of all the saints and angels; to them earthly life looks like a mere moment, as it will look to all of us.

Washed in the blood of the Lamb, the Holy Innocents bask in the light of the beauty of Christ the Savior born in Bethlehem. The sacred liturgy immortalizes their mortal story. We know they are transformed in soul and will be resurrected in their mature bodies — as great a surprise to their mothers as ever a butterfly was, compared to the caterpillar.

Icon of the Holy Innocents

A Medieval Fresco of the Holy Innocents

From the Servite church of the city of Siena, Santa Maria dei Servi (click image to enlarge.)

This was painted in the 1330s by Pietro Lorenzetti, along with the brothers Francesco and Niccolò di Segna. The scene is set in Siena itself, the famous cathedral of which is seen at the middle of the top. Below the border is a famous quotation from Macrobius, a writer of the early fifth century, from the second book of his Saturnalia, “Melius esse porcum Herodis quam filium. - It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son.”

The full citation is as follows: “Cum audisset inter pueros quos in Syria Herodes rex Iudaeorum intra bimatum iussit interfici, filium quoque eius occisum, ait: Melius est Herodis porcum esse quam filium. - When (Augustus) heard that among the children whom Herod, the king of the Jews, ordered to be killed in Syria, within the age of two years, his own son was killed, he said, ‘It is better to be Herod’s pig than his son.’ ” As a Jew, King Herod would have no reason to kill a pig which he could not eat (a Jewish dietary custom which Roman writers often remarked upon,) but did not scruple to massacre the children in Bethlehem, and several of his own relatives. (The Wikipedia article about King Herod cites the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia to the effect that he was “prepared to commit any crime in order to gratify his unbounded ambition.”) In Greek, which Augustus knew well, these words would make a pun, since the word for “pig” is “hus (ὗς)”, while the word for “son” is “huios (υἱός).”

The “Coventry Carol”

One of the most haunting of all Christmas-season carols is the “Coventry Carol,” whose text, melody, and harmony come from a medieval play, the sixteenth-century Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors.

In 2010, I wrote an arrangement of this carol for unaccompanied SATB choir. While retaining the basic structure, the arrangement uses counterpoint, polytonality, and sustained notes to lend the work a heightened intensity. I also added an ostinato line from the Preface of the Mass for the Dead—vita mutatur, non tollitur, “life is changed, not destroyed”—and a final invocation of the Holy Innocents, orate pro nobis, Amen.

The performance in the video, sung by the Ecclesia Choir, took place at St. John Cantius in Chicago on June 25, 2017, under the direction of Deacon Timothy Woods.

The Coventry Carol

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
By, by, lully, lullay.

Vita mutatur, non tollitur.

1. O sisters too,
How may we do,
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling
For whom we do sing
By, bye, lully, lullay?

2. Herod, the king,
In his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might,
in his own sight,
All young children to slay.

3.That woe is me,
Poor child, for thee!
And ever morn and day,
For thy parting
Neither say nor sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

Orate pro nobis. Amen.

A Special Chant for the Epistle of the Holy Innocents

From our friends of the Schola Sainte-Cécile, here is a beautiful proper tone for the traditional epistle of the feast of the Holy Innocents, Apocalypse 14, 1-5. (Click here to see a downloadable pdf version in two pages.)

Here are Henri de Villiers’ notes on the chant, translated by Zachary Thomas; they are also being published on Canticum Salomonis.

This special chant was formerly sung in places with interwoven French verses that paraphrased the Latin text, a “farced epistle”, as they were called. These epistles were chanted by two or three subdeacons on certains feasts of the year, especially during the period around the feast of Christmas, from St Nicholas to Epiphany. We find farced epistles very frequently in liturgical manuscripts from the 12th to the 13th centuries, after which the practice seems to decline and disappear. Some however were composed as late as the 14th century, and were still sung with their texts in Old French in certain parts of France into the middle of the 18th century, especially the epistle of St. Stephen, which is probably the most ancient. For linguists who study the history of the French language, these farces are very valuable because they represent some of the most ancient written witnesses of French, as expressed in numerous regional forms.

Here is the beginning of the Epistle of the Holy Innocents transcribed by Fr. Lebeuf in his famous Treatise on ecclesiastical chant, with tropes in Old Picard. [The text in square brackets is not included in the music here, but can be seen in this book. Translation by Gerhard Eger.]

Now listen, old and young, draw near to this writ. If ye listen to what this lesson sayeth and what it singeth, I ask you all that each one pray that the Lord God dwell in us, and take his rest in our hearts, and not forget not our end.
A Lesson from the book of the Apocalypse of blessed John the Apostle. Hearken ye to the sense and reason of Saint John’s vision. They call it “Apocalypse,” the raising of the house, and of the lofty house that God promiseth us in his name, by the Gospel and by the sermon. We must not doubt that he sayeth in his lesson.

In those days, I saw the Lamb standing upon Mount Sion, and with Him a hundred and forty-four thousand having His name and the name of His Father written on their foreheads. In those days whereof I sing to ye, Saint John saw a very large mount. Sion is its name, and on its slope there is a standing Lamb. Accompanying Him are a hundred and forty thousand children, and four thousand more withal, and in the midst of their forehead above their faces they bear the name of the living God. [Mount Sion is the Holy Church, which the Lord God made and placed upon a firm and well-founded stone, and He taught Her with Scripture, which doth crush and break the haughty, and doth blow and kindle charity. But the sinner hath chosen another way, by evil counsel and by lust. He rendereth a smoky wind for flame, and doth separate himself from God’s love exceedingly. This Lamb is atop the mount, very beautiful, very good, with true wool. With Him is a very large company, but none in this multitude matches Him. It is Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Who through the heavens on a broad plain taketh up again and again the Innocents, they who praise God with healthy voice.]

And I heard a voice from heaven like a voice of many waters, and like a voice of loud thunder; and the voice that I heard was as of harpers playing on their harps. [From afar I heard the waters turn, just like the sea, and then I heard loud thundering and the clash of thunder. Then I heard the sound of harps, harpers with song. Now, we must explain this well: Our deeds, our words, and our thoughts, that we can bring together, we must give over to the Lord God. The waters are the great multitude, the bad, the good, and the incredulous, which God made to be born on earth, as many as there are flowing waters. All must in their lives praise the Lord God almighty. And the thundering I heard from God is what he shall threaten us with, thrashing us with want, and chastising us with hunger and war, as a father his child. The harps produce a melody, while man says a psalmody, and he afflicts himself with fasting when he hath no hypocrisy. Without pride and without envy, he singeth to God in symphony, and rendereth to Him a sweet harmony.]

And they were singing as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four living creatures and the elders; and no one could learn the song except those hundred and forty-four thousand, who have been purchased from the earth. [Those whom I mentioned, the children, will sing a song the like whereof no man hath ever heard. The news was of a new sound: it is called the Gospel, and none can hold the tone, besides the companions.]

These are they who were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These follow the Lamb wherever He goes. [Those who love virginity, and resolved in their hearts to keep their bodies in purity, can serve the Majesty that is of such great power. Those who have besmirched themselves and amused themselves in filth, and have shriven themselves well, and purified and cleansed themselves, shall be able to follow in tranquillity the Lamb of such great holiness.]

These were purchased from among men, first-fruits unto God and unto the Lamb, and in their mouth there was found no lie. [These Innocents are the first whom God suffered to be martyred, and be struck and broken down, and be defleshed on the rocks. The tyrant and the butcher, for the sake of Jesus Christ our prince, sought to kill and slay them, for Herod who wished to reign alone, with no other heir. When the tyrant beheaded them, their vermilion blood did flow, and while milk appeared, which they had first suckled from their mother, from the mouth that held her. And when the children beheld the bright sword that shone, they laughed on account of their age, for without fail when they looked they bethought that they were playing in that spot.]

They are without blemish before the throne of God. For they are without any blemish, and without care of this world. [To God’s holy nature they have well offered their likeness and figure as a pure offering. They shall never suffer a harsh word, if, as Holy Scripture sayeth, throughout all the days that the world should last, God shall grant them sweet pasture, and God, as good nourishment! Now, let us pray to God very simply that He might grant us amendment, and He shall sweetly hearken to us. He desireth to take us at His will hither to our end, and stand for us soit on the judgement day. Thereafter he shall give us a dwelling in Paradise, as His gift. Now, say ye all: Amen! Amen!]

The French paraphrase is set in the same 7th mode as the cantillation for the Latin text, but the chant is not set to the same melody. In other farced epistles, all the strophes reproduce the same melody, distinct from that of the Latin, which develops more freely from one verse to the other. It is probable that the French verses were composed to be inserted into the pre-existing Latin cantillation. Are these cantillations, at least with regard to the Latin text, very ancient? Probably. They are found with similar melodies from one diocese to another. The two examples Fr Lebeuf gives of the farced epistle of the feast of St Stephen (26th December), taken from the books of Amiens (1250) and from a church in the province of Lyon or Sens (1400) contain very similar melodies—both French and Latin—but with different words for the French paraphrases (except the first strophe).

Hence, the farced Epistles are precious because they let us hear an echo of the great variety of liturgical cantillations that must have been in use to chant the various Epistles and Gospels of the year. Thus they are a memory of an ancient stage of the liturgy, much richer than what has come down to us. (The Roman liturgical books since the 17th century contain only two tones for the Epistle, one of which is just recto-tono.)

The chant for the Epistle of the Holy Innocents cited by Lebeuf is taken from the ancient liturgical books of Amiens. The French trope contains a full 130 verses all in masculine rhymes to facilitate their adaptation to plain-chant. Our schola preserves the chant of the Latin verses, without the French paraphrases, and we have completed the first verses provided by Fr Lebeuf based on a 19th-century work by Dr. Rigollot. The 7th mode, which naturally has a wide range, was perhaps chosen based on the meaning of the text. The melody rises in the second verse to express the text:

“Et audivi vocem de coelo, tamquam vocem aquarum multarum, et tamquam vocem tonitrui magni. – And I heard a voice from heaven, as the noise of many waters, and as the voice of great thunder.” (Apocalypse 21, 14)

Note that the 4th verse especially (and to an extent the 5th verse) imitates the psalmody of the 7th mode, and this psalmody might have inspired the entire cantillation for the Epistle on Childermas.

Although the Parisian books do not preserve any farced epistles, this might be because few liturgical manuscripts from Paris from before the middle of the 18th century have survived. Must we conclude that the diocese of Paris rejected the singing of farced epistles?

No! In an interesting ordinance promulgated in 1198 by bishop Odo of Sully to regulate the celebration of the feast of the Circumcision on the 1st of January in Paris, we find the following passage, which demonstrates that this city, like the other dioceses of France, also farced epistles. “Missa similiter cum ceteris Horis ordinate celebrabitur a aliquo prœdictorum, hoc addito quod Epistola cum farsia dicetur a duobus in cappis sericeis. – The Mass shall be celebrated like the rest of the Hours by one of the aforesaid, with the addition of a farced Epistle which shall be said by two [ministers] in silken copes.”