The Hymns of St Elizabeth of Portugal

Today is the feast of St Elizabeth, Queen of Portugal, who died on July 4th, 1336. When she was canonized in 1625, her feast was assigned ad libitum to the general calendar on the day of her death. Pope Innocent XII then made it obligatory in 1694, and reassigned it to July 8th so as not to perpetually impede a day within the octave of Ss Peter and Paul. The octave having been suppressed in 1955, the post-Conciliar rite returned her to July 4th.

St Elizabeth of Portugal, by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664), ca. 1635. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Elizabeth was born into the royal house of Aragon in 1271, and named for her great-aunt, St Elizabeth of Hungary. At the age of 10, she was married by proxy to Denis, the King of Portugal; the official ceremony was held in 1288, when she was 17 and her husband 26. Although Denis was a wise and capable ruler who achieved many good things for his country during his reign of nearly half a century (1279-1325), his personal life was dissolute, as witnessed by the six illegitimate children he fathered with five different mistresses. He was often neglectful of his wife, but did not interfere with either her devotional life, which was very strongly centered on the liturgy (she recited the Office and attended solemn Mass daily), or her many charities, which are celebrated in the proper invitatory of her feast, “Let us praise our God in the holy works of the blessed Elizabeth.” Elizabeth herself prayed constantly for his conversion, which was achieved on his deathbed through a long and painful illness; she also cared for his other children, and worked to bring peace between him and their son, the future king Afonso IV, since Denis’ favor lay rather with his bastard Afonso Sanches.

After her husband’s death, she was professed as a member of the Franciscan Third Order, and retired into a private home near a convent of Poor Clares that she herself had founded at Coimbra. However, in 1336, she was called upon to intervene in a war between her son and his son-in-law, King Alfonso XI of Castile. Although the matter was settled peaceably, the effort of traveling in the summer heat led to her death; her remains were transferred to the Poor Clares’ church in Coimbra, where they rest to this day. She was beatified in 1526, and canonized in 1625.

The Pope who canonized her, Urban VIII (1623-44), is well-known to scholars of the liturgy for promulgating the famous (or infamous) reform by which the hymns of the breviary were mostly recast according to the meters and diction of classical Latin. This reform has been subjected to endless, and for the most part well-deserved, criticism, most succinctly in the famous dictum “accessit Latinitas, recessit pietas – Latinity (meaning, “good”, classical Latinity) came in, and piety went out.”

As Pope, Urban personally composed the hymns of three Saints whose feasts he extended to the general calendar, those of the Visigothic prince and martyr Hermenegild, the early Roman martyr Martina, and Elizabeth of Portugal. The two for the latter are, in my estimation, by far his most successful efforts, and indeed, rather better than the revision of the traditional hymns would lead one to expect. Although their meters are unusual, and therefore require new melodies to be sung, their vocabulary is mostly within the established usage of Christian Latinity, and devoid of the precious citations of classical poems that make the hymns of St Martina especially difficult to pray.

The hymn of Vespers and Matins, with a rather free translation by Fr Edward Caswall.

Domáre cordis ímpetus       Elísabeth, Fortis inopsque, Deo Servíre regno práetulit.	Pure, meek, with soul serene, Sweeter to her it was to serve    unseen Her God, than reign a queen.
En fúlgidis recepta caeli       sédibus, Sidereáeque domus Ditáta sanctis gaudiis.	Now far above our sight, Enthroned upon the star-paved    azure height, She reigns in realms of light;
Nunc regnat inter cáelites       beátior, Et premit astra, docens Quae vera sint regni bona.	So long as time shall flow, Teaching to all who sit    on thrones below, The good that power can do.
Patri potestas, Filióque       gloria, Perpetuumque decus Tibi sit, alme Spíritus.    Amen.	To God, the Father and Son And Paraclete, be glory,    Three in One, While endless ages run.    Amen.

A very nice setting in alternating polyphony and chant by the composer Matías García Benayas (†1737), without the 3rd stanza.

The hymn for Lauds includes a reference to a miracle which is also attributed to several other Saints, including, more famously, her great-aunt and namesake of Hungary. The story goes that Elizabeth was surprised by her husband while carrying food to the poor in her skirts. Challenged to show that she was not once again exhausting the royal treasury by excessive charities, she opened the folds of her skirt, at which the king saw in them not food, but roses, and this in the middle of the winter, and so allowed her to go on her way. This story is very much out of keeping with what we know of King Denis’ character, and in this case is generally regarded as apocryphal. (English translation also by Fr Caswall.)

Opus decusque regium relí-    queras, Elísabeth, Dei dicáta númi-   ni: Recepta nunc beáris inter    Angelos; Libens ab hostium tuére nos    dolis.	Riches and regal throne,    for Christ’s dear sake, True saint, thou didst despise; Amid the angels seated    now in bliss, Oh, help us from the skies!
Praei, viamque, dux salútis    índica: Sequémur: O sit una mens    fidelium, Odor bonus sit omnis actio,    tuis Id ínnuit rosis operta cáritas.	Guide us; and fill our days    with perfume sweet Of loving word and deed; So teaches us thy beauteous    charity, By fragrant roses hid.
Beáta cáritas, in arce síde-    rum Potens locáre nos per omne    sáeculum: Patríque, Filióque summa    gloria, Tibíque laus perennis, alme    Spíritus. Amen.	O charity! what power is thine!    by thee Above the stars we soar; In thee be purest praise to Father, Son And Spirit,    evermore. Amen.

The Miracle of the Roses, 1735, by the Portuguese painter André Gonçalves (1685-1754; public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Fr Caswall (1814-78), by the way, was an Anglican clergyman who converted to Catholicism in 1847. After the sudden death of his wife in 1849, he entered the Birmingham Oratory in 1850; he was ordained priest two years later, and died in 1878. He was a talented poet, and many of his English translations of Latin hymns were incorporated by John Crighton-Stuart, the Third Marquess of Bute, into his monumental English version of the Roman Breviary, including these two.

Account of the First Mass in Brazil in the year 1500

Pêro Vaz de Caminha, clerk of the armada of Pedro Álvares Cabral, in a letter to the King D. Manuel, left us a remarkable account of the first Mass ever offered in the land known today as Brazil. Fr. Henrique de Coimbra, who had arrived with Portuguese explorers, celebrated this Mass on April 26, 1500. Here is a translation of the main parts of the account (see here for the original in Portuguese):

“One of them saw some white rosary beads; he waved to be given them, took great delight in them, and threw them around his neck. Then he took them off and wrapped them around his arm and waved to the earth and back to the beads and the Captain’s necklace, as if saying they would give gold for it. (...)

“When we got off the barge, the Captain said that we should go straight to the Cross, which was leaning against a tree by the river, to be erected tomorrow, which is Friday, and that we should all get down on our knees and kiss it so that they would see how much we respected it. And so we did. The ten or twelve who were there waved to the Cross, and they all went right away to kiss it. They seem to me to be people of such innocence that, if a man understood them and they understood us, they would immediately be Christians, because they, it seems, have no belief, nor do they understand any belief. (...)

“While they were doing it, he and all of us went down to the Cross below the river, where it was. From there, we brought it with those religious and priests in front of us, singing, in procession-like fashion. Some of them were already there, seventy or eighty; and when they saw us coming, some came under it to help us. We crossed the river, along the beach, and put the Cross where it was to stay, which would be the work of two crossbow shots. A hundred and fifty or more came along.

“Once the Cross was erected, with the arms and motto of Your Highness were nailed to it, they set up an altar near it. There the friar Father Henry said Mass, which was sung and officiated by the aforementioned. There were fifty or sixty of them with us, all sitting on their knees, just like us.

“And when it came to the Gospel and we all stood up, with raised hands, they then stood up with us and raised their hands, and stayed like that, until it was finished; and then they sat down again like us. And when they lifted up God [the elevation of the Mass?] and we knelt down, they all stood like this, as we stood with our hands raised, and in such a quiet way, that, I certify to Your Highness, it made us very devout. They stayed like that with us until communion was over, after which those religious and priests and the Captain received communion with some of us others.

“Some of them, because the sun was intense, when we were receiving communion, got up, and others stood and stayed. One of them, a man of about fifty or fifty-five, stayed with those who stayed. This man, as we were thus gathered together, gathered those who remained, and called for others. And walking thus among them speaking, he waved his finger toward the altar and then pointed his finger toward heaven, as if to say something good to them; and we took the meaning of it.

“When the Mass was over, the priest took off his vestments and stayed at the altar, sitting on a chair. There he preached to us from the Gospel and the Apostles, whose day it is today, treating, at the end of the preaching, of this your so holy and virtuous continuance, which increased our devotion.

“Those who were at the preaching stood like us, looking at him. And he called for some to come there. Some came and some went. And when the preaching was over, as Nicolau Coelho had brought many pewter crosses with crucifixes, which he had left from his other visit, they decided that each one should wear his own around his neck. Father Henry sat down at the foot of the Cross, and there he fastened crosses on the people, one by one, tied by a thread around the neck, first making them kiss the cross.”

Many are the striking aspects to this narration. In an age like ours, when false inculturation has made such headway, and with the syncretistic scandal of the Amazon Synod still fresh in our memories, we can look to these missionaries for a lucid picture of what Christian evangelization looks like and how it works. They do not start by building hospitals, schools, or roads, digging wells, distributing food and supplies, much less trying to interfere with political and economic structures. They do not even start by preaching (it would have been difficult, in any case, until they learned enough of the local language). Nor do they start by trying to sneak a peak at what the local shaman is doing so that they can quickly find ways to adapt Christian worship to the spirit of the place.

No. They start by building a makeshift sanctuary, with cross and altar, and proceed to sing in Latin the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in the form they have received from tradition. This (of course) instantly attracts the curiosity and respect of the natives, all of whom grasped that something important was happening, and some of whom perceived at once its transcendent religious character. After the Mass, a bit of preaching takes place (the Mass itself was not burdened with that merely human element), and then the priest begins to distribute crosses to willing bystanders. There is no hemming and hawing, no concern about trampling on the rights of natives or tiptoeing around an indigenous culture. The fundamental need of every fallen human being is to encounter the Cross, to come to know the Savior Himself, and this is attended to first and foremost.

The event was depicted in a famous painting from 1860 by Victor Meirelles (1832–1903), shown at the head of this article. Another painting from around the same time, A elevação da cruz em Porto Seguro (1879) by Pedro Peres (1841–1923), complements both the above narrative and painting.

My thanks to João Silveira of Paix Liturgique for sharing the account and painting with me during our time in Mexico at the Summorum Pontificum Congress.

The Hymns of St Elizabeth of Portugal

On the calendar of the Extraordinary Form, today is the feast of St Elizabeth, Queen of Portugal, who died on July 4th, 1336. When she was canonized in 1625, her feast was assigned ad libitum to the general calendar on the day of her death. Pope Innocent XII then made it obligatory in 1694, and reassigned it to July 8th so as not to perpetually impede a day within the octave of Ss Peter and Paul. The octave having been suppressed in 1955, the post-Conciliar reform returned her to July 4th.

St Elizabeth of Portugal, by Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664), ca. 1635. Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.

Elizabeth was born into the royal house of Aragon in 1271, and named for her great-aunt, St Elizabeth of Hungary. At the age of 10, she was married by proxy to Denis, the King of Portugal; the official ceremony was held in 1288, when she was 17 and her husband 26. Although Denis was a wise and capable ruler who achieved many good things for his country during his reign of nearly half a century (1279-1325), his personal life was dissolute, as witnessed by the six illegitimate children he fathered with five different mistresses. He was often neglectful of his wife, but did not interfere with either her devotional life, which was very strongly centered on the liturgy (she recited the Office and attended solemn Mass daily), or her many charities, which are celebrated in the proper invitatory of her feast, “Let us praise our God in the holy works of the blessed Elizabeth.” Elizabeth herself prayed constantly for his conversion, which was achieved on his deathbed through a long and painful illness; she also cared for his other children, and worked to bring peace between him and their son, the future king Afonso IV, since Denis’ favor lay rather with his bastard Afonso Sanches.

After her husband’s death, she was professed as a member of the Franciscan Third Order, and retired into a private home near a convent of Poor Clares that she herself had founded at Coimbra. However, in 1336, she was called upon to intervene in a war between her son and his son-in-law, King Alfonso XI of Castile. Although the matter was settled peaceably, the effort of traveling in the summer heat led to her death; her remains were transferred to the Poor Clares’ church in Coimbra, where they rest to this day. She was beatified in 1526, and canonized in 1625.

The Pope who canonized her, Urban VIII (1623-44), is well-known to scholars of the liturgy for promulgating the famous (or infamous) reform by which the hymns of the breviary were mostly recast according to the meters and diction of classical Latin. This reform has been subjected to endless, and for the most part well-deserved, criticism, most succinctly in the famous dictum “accessit Latinitas, recessit pietas – Latinity (meaning, “good”, classical Latinity) came in, and piety went out.”

As Pope, Urban personally composed the hymns of three Saints whose feasts he extended to the general calendar, those of the Visigothic prince and martyr Hermenegild, the early Roman martyr Martina, and Elizabeth of Portugal. The two for the latter are, in my estimation, by far his most successful efforts, and indeed, rather better than the revision of the traditional hymns would lead one to expect. Although their meters are unusual, and therefore require new melodies to be sung, their vocabulary is mostly within the established usage of Christian Latinity, and devoid of the precious citations of classical poems that make the hymns of St Martina especially difficult to pray.

The hymn of Vespers and Matins, with a rather free translation by Fr Edward Caswall.

Domáre cordis ímpetus       Elísabeth, Fortis inopsque, Deo Servíre regno práetulit.	Pure, meek, with soul serene, Sweeter to her it was to serve    unseen Her God, than reign a queen.
En fúlgidis recepta caeli       sédibus, Sidereáeque domus Ditáta sanctis gaudiis.	Now far above our sight, Enthroned upon the star-paved    azure height, She reigns in realms of light;
Nunc regnat inter cáelites       beátior, Et premit astra, docens Quae vera sint regni bona.	So long as time shall flow, Teaching to all who sit    on thrones below, The good that power can do.
Patri potestas, Filióque       gloria, Perpetuumque decus Tibi sit, alme Spíritus.    Amen.	To God, the Father and Son And Paraclete, be glory,    Three in One, While endless ages run.    Amen.

A very nice setting in alternating polyphony and chant by the composer Matías García Benayas (†1737), without the 3rd stanza.

The hymn for Lauds includes a reference to a miracle which is also attributed to several other Saints, including, more famously, her great-aunt and namesake of Hungary. The story goes that Elizabeth was surprised by her husband while carrying food to the poor in her skirts. Challenged to show that she was not once again exhausting the royal treasury by excessive charities, she opened the folds of her skirt, at which the king saw in them not food, but roses, and this in the middle of the winter, and so allowed her to go on her way. This story is very much out of keeping with what we know of King Denis’ character, and in this case is generally regarded as apocryphal. (English translation also by Fr Caswall.)

Opus decusque regium relí-    queras, Elísabeth, Dei dicáta númi-   ni: Recepta nunc beáris inter    Angelos; Libens ab hostium tuére nos    dolis.	Riches and regal throne,    for Christ’s dear sake, True saint, thou didst despise; Amid the angels seated    now in bliss, Oh, help us from the skies!
Praei, viamque, dux salútis    índica: Sequémur: O sit una mens    fidelium, Odor bonus sit omnis actio,    tuis Id ínnuit rosis operta cáritas.	Guide us; and fill our days    with perfume sweet Of loving word and deed; So teaches us thy beauteous    charity, By fragrant roses hid.
Beáta cáritas, in arce síde-    rum Potens locáre nos per omne    sáeculum: Patríque, Filióque summa    gloria, Tibíque laus perennis, alme    Spíritus. Amen.	O charity! what power is thine!    by thee Above the stars we soar; In thee be purest praise to Father, Son And Spirit,    evermore. Amen.

The Miracle of the Roses, 1735, by the Portuguese painter André Gonçalves (1685-1754; public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Fr Caswall (1814-78), by the way, was an Anglican clergyman who converted to Catholicism in 1847. After the sudden death of his wife in 1849, he entered the Birmingham Oratory in 1850; he was ordained priest two years later, and died in 1878. He was a talented poet, and many of his English translations of Latin hymns were incorporated by John Crighton-Stuart, the Third Marquess of Bute, into his monumental English version of the Roman Breviary, including these two.

CD Review: Renaissance Polyphony of Portugal for Our Lady of Fatima

As we come very near the centenary of the last apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Fatima, it is an opportune moment to offer a brief review of a recent CD from the Choir of St. Cecilia at St. John Cantius Catholic Church, under the direction of Fr. Scott Haynes, SJC. This stunning disk of Portuguese polyphony brings the listener to the heart of the Iberian Renaissance and the Marian devotion prevalent at that time.

Renaissance Polyphony of Portugal for Our Lady of Fatima encompasses pieces by a wide range of lesser-known Renaissance composers, superbly sung by the St. Cecilia Choir. One of the most beautiful pieces is the very first track, Beata Dei Genetrix Maria by Francisco Guerrero. In six parts, this luscious motet sets a text from the feast of the Presentation. Guerrero’s setting of Ave Maria Dulcissima gives us a hint at Guerrero’s personal devotion to the Blessed Virgin. The informative liner notes tell us that “Because of Guerrero’s lively devotion to Our Lady, he composed many motets in her honor, earning the nickname ‘El cantor de Maria’ (the singer of Mary).” Dulcissima Maria, another offering of Guerrero on this disc, is a simple four part piece which flows on in peaceful counterpoint.

Some of the other composers on the recording include Duarte Lobo (1556-1646), Pedro de Escobar (1465-1535), and Manuel Cardoso (1566-1650). Pedro Escobar, a composer who lived earlier in the age of “Renaissance polyphony,” offers a delightful piece in Spanish (the only non-Latin piece on this CD), accompanied by drum, which delights with its more medieval harmonic and rhythmic style.

The twenty-four singers of the St. Cecilia Choir exhibit a beautiful blend of voices; the sopranos gently arc with little vibrato over the peaks of the melody, while the altos and tenors supply beautifully phrased inner counterpoint. The basses are loud and rich, providing a strong underpinning for the whole auditory landscape. The CD is recorded in the church of Saint John Cantius in Chicago, the Cantians’ motherhouse, which has an acoustic perfectly suited to this repertoire. It also features the same church’s Oberlinger Portative Organ on three tracks, including beautiful variations on the hymn Maris Stella and Magnificat with the chant and variations alternating, by the composer Manuel Rodrigues Coelho. The organ variations are meditative and give good opportunity for the woody-sounding flute stops of the Oberlinger organ to be used to great advantage. The organ is also heard in a very pleasant Tiento sobre la Letanía de la Virgen by Pablo Bruna (1611-1679).

A highly recommended CD for your sacred music collection. The link at Cantius has extensive detail about the tracks as well as a short video presentation if you'd like a taste of the music.