Devotion to the Sorrows of the Virgin Mary originated in German-speaking lands in the early 15th-century, partly as a response to the iconoclasm of the Hussites, and partly out of the universal popular devotion to every aspect of Christ’s Passion, including the presence of His Mother, and thence to Her grief over the Passion. The feast that emerged as a formal liturgical expression of this devotion was known by several different titles, and kept on a wide variety of dates, but usually in Passiontide, or just after Easter. Before the name “Seven Sorrows” became common, it was most often called “the feast of the Virgin’s Compassion”, which is to say, of Her suffering together with Christ as She beheld the Passion. This title was retained well into the 20th century by the Dominicans, who also had an Office for it which was quite different from the Roman one, although the Mass was the same. It also appears in many missals of the 15th to 17th centuries only as a votive Mass, with no corresponding feast; this was the case at Sarum, where it is called “Compassionis sive Lamentationis B.M.V.” Its popularity continued to grow in the Tridentine period, until Pope Benedict XIII finally extended it to the whole of the Roman Rite in 1727, fixing it to the Friday of Passion week.
The image which introduces the Stabat Mater in a French book of Hours made ca. 1500-1530.
As is often the case with later feasts, there was a considerable variety in its liturgical texts from one place to another, and between the traditions of the various religious orders. But of course, one of the most widespread was the hymn Stabat Mater Dolorosa, which is universally regarded as one of the great masterpieces of later medieval devotional poetry. The author of this hymn is unknown, and has been the subject of a great deal of scholarly conjecture. For a long time, many attributed it to a Franciscan friar name Jacopone da Todi (‘Big James from Todi’, about 80 miles north of Rome in Umbria; 1230 ca. – 1306); however, a fairly recent manuscript discovery has made this attribution untenable. Others have ascribed it to Pope Innocent III, who reigned from 1198-1216, and was certainly a very prolific writer in various genres, but this remains no more than a plausible conjecture.
In the Roman liturgical tradition, it is sung as a hymn in the Divine Office in one melody of the sixth Gregorian mode, and in another of the second mode as a Sequence at Mass, between the Tract and the Gospel.
Many great composers have also put their hand to setting it polyphonically, such as Josquin des Prez.
Palestrina’s version, composed shortly before his death in 1594, was traditionally sung in Rome on Palm Sunday.
One of the best known versions is by the Baroque composer Giovanni Battista Draghi (1710-36), who is generally known by the nickname “Pergolesi”, after Pergola, the small town in the Italian Marches from which his family came. This was also composed very shortly before the author’s death, of tuberculosis at the age of only 26. It became the single most frequently printed work of sacred music in the 18th century, and, in the common fashion of the Baroque era, was reused by several other composers, including JS Bach, who turned the music into one of his German cantatas, albeit with a completely different text based on Psalm 50.
Devotion to the Sorrows of the Virgin Mary originated in German-speaking lands in the early 15th-century, partly as a response to the iconoclasm of the Hussites, and partly out of the universal popular devotion to every aspect of Christ’s Passion, including the presence of His Mother, and thence to Her grief over the Passion. The feast that emerged as its formal liturgical expression of this devotion was known by several different titles, and kept on a wide variety of dates, but usually in Passiontide, or just after Easter. Before the name “Seven Sorrows” became common, it was most often called “the feast of the Virgin’s Compassion”, which is to say, of Her suffering together with Christ as She beheld the Passion. This title was retained well into the 20th century by the Dominicans, who also had an Office for it which was quite different from the Roman one, although the Mass was the same. It also appears in many missals of the 15th to 17th centuries only as a votive Mass, with no corresponding feast; this was the case at Sarum, where it is called “Compassionis sive Lamentationis B.M.V.” Its popularity continued to grow in the Tridentine period, until Pope Benedict XIII finally extended it to the whole of the Roman Rite in 1727.
The Virgin of Sorrows; the central panel of the Van Belle triptych by Pieter Poubus (1523 ca. - 1580); in the church of St James in Bruges, Belgium. There were different traditions as to which events in Our Lady’s life counted as Her Seven Sorrows; here they are (clockwise from lower left) the Circumcision, the Flight into Egypt, losing the Child Jesus, meeting Christ on the road to Calvary, the Crucifixion, the deposition from the Cross, and the entombment. The Roman version of the Passiontide feast contains no specific list. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons.)
A second feast of the Seven Sorrows was promulgated in 1668 as the Patronal feast of the Servite Order, which was founded in the mid-13th century by seven Florentine noblemen, and soon spread all over Europe. (St Philip Benizi, who stands in their history as St Bernard does in that of the Cistercians, not their founder, but their most famous member, was almost elected Pope in 1271.) This order had always nourished a strong devotion to the Mother of Sorrows, and has its own rosary of the Seven Sorrows, and its own Marian stations of the Cross. Pope Pius VII added their version of the feast to the general calendar in 1814, after he returned from the exile in France shamefully visited upon him by Napoleon. Part of his reason for doing would certainly have been to ask the Virgin’s intercession and protection for the Church in the midst of the many horrors visited upon it by the French revolution and the subsequent wars. It was originally kept on the Third Sunday of September, as it had been first by the Servites, but when Pope St Pius X abolished the custom of fixing feasts to Sundays, it was placed on September 15th, the day after the Exaltation of the Cross.
As is often the case with later feasts, there was a considerable variety in the liturgical texts of the earlier version of the feast from one place to another, and between the traditions of the various religious orders. But of course, one of the most widespread was the hymn Stabat Mater Dolorosa, which is universally regarded as one of the great masterpieces of later medieval devotional poetry. The author of this hymn is unknown, and has been the subject of a great deal of scholarly conjecture. For a long time, many attributed it to a Franciscan friar name Jacopone da Todi (‘Big James from Todi’, about 80 miles north of Rome in Umbria; 1230 ca. – 1306); however, a fairly recent manuscript discovery has made this attribution untenable. Others have ascribed it to Pope Innocent III, who reigned from 1198-1216, and was certainly a very prolific writer in various genres, but this remains no more than a plausible conjecture.
In the Roman liturgical tradition, it is sung as a hymn in the Divine Office in one melody of the sixth Gregorian mode, and in another of the second mode as a Sequence at Mass, between the Alleluia and the Gospel.
Many great composers have also put their hand to setting it polyphonically, such as Josquin des Prez.
Palestrina’s version, composed shortly before his death in 1594, was traditionally sung in Rome on Palm Sunday.
One of the best known versions is by the Baroque composer Giovanni Battista Draghi (1710-36), who is generally known by the last name “Pergolesi”, after Pergola, the small town in the Italian Marches from which his family came. This was also composed very shortly before the author’s death, of tuberculosis at the age of only 26. This became the single most frequently printed work of sacred music in the 18th century, and, in the common fashion of the Baroque era, was reused by several other composers, including JS Bach, who turned the music into one of his German cantatas, albeit with a completely different text based on Psalm 50.
From 1814 until 1960, the General Calendar of the Roman Rite contained two different feasts of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary. The older of these is the one long celebrated on the Friday of Passion week; the latter is now fixed to September 15th, but was originally a movable feast. The Offices of these two feasts have only a few elements in common, but the Masses are almost identical. This doubling of the feast is not, therefore, a case like Corpus Christi, which emphasizes one particular aspect of what the Church celebrates on Holy Thursday, nor is one a “secondary” feast like the Apparition of St Michael or the Conversion of St Paul.
The Seven Sorrows Polyptych by Albrecht Dürer, ca. 1500. The seven sorrows shown here are slightly different from those of the Servite Rosary shown below; counterclockwise from the upper left, they are the Circumcision (considered a sorrow because of the shedding of Christ’s blood,) the Flight into Egypt, the Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple, the Carrying of the Cross, the Nailing to the Cross, the Crucifixion, and the Deposition of Christ’s Body.
The Passiontide feast emerged in German-speaking lands in the early 15th-century, partly as a response to the iconoclasm of the Hussites, and partly out of the universal popular devotion to every aspect of Christ’s Passion, including the presence of His Mother, and thence to Her grief over the Passion. It was known by several different titles, and kept on a wide variety of dates; Cologne, where it was first instituted, had it on the 3rd Friday after Easter until the end of the 18th century. Before the name “Seven Sorrows” became common, it was most often called “the feast of the Virgin’s Compassion”, which is to say, of Her suffering together with Christ as She beheld the Passion. This title was retained by the Dominicans well into the 20th century; they also had an Office for it which was quite different from the Roman one, although the Mass was the same. It appears in many missals of the 15th to 17th centuries only as a votive Mass, with no corresponding feast; this was the case at Sarum, where it is called “Compassionis sive Lamentationis B.M.V.” (The Sarum Missal also has a highly irregular sequence for this Mass, 128 lines long, more than twice as many as the Stabat Mater in the Roman Mass.)
It was also occasionally known as the “Transfixio”, in reference to Simeon’s prophecy to the Virgin (Luke 2, 35) that “a sword shall pierce Thy heart.” For this reason, the Collect of the feast states that “we remember with veneration (her) Transfixing and Passion.” The Preface of the Virgin Mary contains the phrase “et te in *** Beatae Virginis semper Virginis collaudare, benedicere et praedicare – and to praise, bless and preach Thee in the *** of the Blessed Mary ever Virgin.” The name of the feast (Assumption, Nativity etc.) is said where the stars are, but on the feast of the Seven Sorrows, “transfixione” is said in that place. (The Dominicans said “compassione.”)
The corresponding Office has a number of interesting features. The Seven Sorrows is the only feast of the Virgin which has special psalms at Vespers and Matins, those of the former being the same which are sung on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. The Stabat Mater is divided into three parts and sung as the hymn of Vespers, Matins and Lauds, with simpler music than that of the same text when it is sung as the Sequence at Mass. (In Italy, this simpler form is still often sung at the Stations of the Cross.) The responsories of Matins all refer to the Passion of Christ; the fourth is the most famous of the Tenebrae responsories from Good Friday, Tenebrae factae sunt, with the verse changed: “What dost Thou feel, o Virgin, when Thou beholdest such things?”
The sequence version of the Stabat Mater
The readings of the first nocturn are the famous prophecy of the Suffering Servant, Isaiah 53, which is also read at the Mass of Spy Wednesday, when the Lenten station is kept at St Mary Major. In the second nocturn, they are taken from a well-known sermon of St Bernard of Clairvaux, in which he demonstrates that it is indeed proper to refer to the “martyrdom” of the Virgin, and addressing Her directly, says “Therefore, the force of grief passed through Thy soul, so that we may rightly preach that Thou are even more than a martyr, in whom the affection of compassion exceeded even the sense of bodily passion. … Wonder not, brethren, that Mary is called a martyr in spirit. Let him wonder (at this) who remembereth not that he has heard Paul say, when he recalls the greatest crimes of the pagans, that they were ‘without affection.’ Far was this from Mary’s senses, and far be it from her servants.”
The Pazzi Crucifixion, by Pietro Perugino, 1496, in the convent of St Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi in Florence. St Bernard of Clarivaux and the Virgin Mary are on the left, St John the Evangelist and St Benedict on the right.
In the wake of the Protestant reformation, the feast continued to grow in popularity, spreading though southern Europe, and most often fixed to the Friday of Passion week. It was extended to the universal Church on that day by Pope Benedict XIII with the title “the feast of the Seven Sorrows”, although none of the various enumerations of the Virgin’s sorrows is referred to it anywhere in the liturgy itself.
The second feast of the Seven Sorrows was promulgated in 1668 as the Patronal feast of the Servite Order, which was founded in the mid-13th century by seven Florentine noblemen, and soon spread all over Europe. (St Philip Benizi, who stands in their history as St Bernard does in that of the Cistercians, not their founder, but their most famous member, was almost elected Pope in 1271.) This order had always nourished a strong devotion to the Mother of Sorrows, and has its own rosary of the Seven Sorrows, which are as follows.
1. The Prophecy of Simeon.
2. The Flight into Egypt.
3. The Loss of the Child Jesus in the Temple.
4. The Meeting of Mary and Jesus as He Carries the Cross.
5. The Crucifixion.
6. The Removal of Christ’s Body from the Cross.
7. The Burial of Christ.
A Servite Rosary, also known as the Crown of the Seven Sorrows, one of which is depicted on each of the oval medals between the beads. Only seven Hail Marys are said per sorrow; on the beads that lead to the Cross, three more are added in honor of the tears which the Virgin shed as She stood by the Cross. This example was made in the 19th century; it has more recently been the custom to make them with only black beads, the color of the Servite habit. (Courtesy of Mr Forrest Alverson.)
Since the Servite version of this devotion is not focused entirely on the Passion of Christ, but contains three events from His childhood, a number of changes were made to the corresponding liturgical texts for the second feast. The words of the Collect “we remember with veneration (her) Transfixing and Passion” are changed to “we remember with veneration (her) Sorrows”; however, “transfixione” is still said in the Preface. In the Office, the regular psalms of the Virgin’s other Offices are said at Vespers, but not at Matins; three different hymns, all very much in the classicizing style in vogue in the 17th century, replace the three parts of the Stabat Mater. The responsories of Matins are completely different, each referring in order to one of the mysteries of the Servite rosary given above. An eighth one is added to complete the series, a very beautiful exhortation: “In all thy heart, forget not the groans of Thy Mother, that propitiation and blessing may be perfected. Hail, most noble woman, that art the first rose of the martyrs, and lily of the virgins!” The readings of the first nocturn are taken from the Book of Lamentations, which is otherwise read only at Tenebrae, and the lessons of the second are the same passage from St Bernard read on the other feast. (This passage was also read in the Dominican Office of the Compassion.)
Michelangelo’s Pietà in St Peter’s Basilica.
This Servite version of the feast was added to the general calendar by Pope Pius VII in 1814, after he returned from the exile in France shamefully visited upon him by Napoleon. Part of the Pope’s reason for doing would certainly have been to ask the Virgin’s intercession and protection for the Church in the midst of the many horrors visited upon it by the French revolution and the subsequent wars. It was originally kept on the Third Sunday of September, as it had been first by the Servites, but when Pope St Pius X abolished the custom of fixing feasts to Sundays, it was placed on September 15th, the day after the Exaltation of the Cross. While the connection between the Sorrows of the Virgin and the Crucifixion is essential, the Seven Sorrows was of higher rank at the time, and its new placement therefore had the unfortunate effect of cancelling Second Vespers of the much older feast of the Exaltation. This defect was remedied by the Breviary reform of 1960, but at the cost of a much more serious general defect, the abolition of First Vespers from all but the highest grade of feasts. At the same time, the older Passiontide feast was reduced to a commemoration.
As promised last week, here is the superb talk which Dr Emily Thelen gave last Monday about devotion to the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin in the Low Countries in the later 15th centuries, and an important manuscript that contains a very beautiful Mass composed for that feast. This talk was held as part of an ongoing lecture series offered by the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music; the next one in the series will be on Tuesday, November 7th, at 5:45 pm Pacific.
This past Monday, I attended a supremely interesting online talk by Dr Emily Thelen, hosted by the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music as part of a recurring lecture series. Her subject was the devotion to the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, and particularly, its emergence in the later 15th century in the Low Countries, and how it was promoted by some of the secular rulers of the area through art and music. I cannot pretend to do justice to the lecture by summarizing it; fortunately, it will soon be posted on YouTube so we can share it here. However, I can do justice to the work which was her principal subject, a manuscript by one Pierre Alamire, by posting these videos of the magnificent Mass of the Seven Sorrows which it contains, recorded by the Belgium-based Early Music ensemble Capilla Flamenca.
Alamire is a nom-de-plume, the pitch signature A and the musical notes La-Mi-Re. He was born in Nuremberg, Bavaria, ca. 1470, with the last name Imhoff or Imhove, which became van den Hove when he moved to the Dutch-speaking parts of the Low Countries in his youth. He was very talented not only as a composer, but also as a creator of beautifully illuminated musical manuscripts, which were highly sought after. As a result of his renown in this field, he traveled a good deal, which led to him serving for a time as a spy for King Henry VIII of England and Thomas Cardinal Wolsey.
The manuscript which Dr Thelen describes in her talk contains inter alia this Mass by the French composer Pierre de La Rue (1452 ca. - 1520), made at the behest of Philip I, Duke of Burgundy (1482-1506; born 1478), who was a great promotor of the devotion to the Sorrowful Mother in a period of great social and political turmoil within his domains.
The name “Capilla Flamenca”, by the way, is Spanish for “the Flemish chapel.” This refers to the fact that the Spanish Habsburg court under the Emperor Charles V and his successor was so generous in its patronage of music that it maintained two full-time choirs, a native choir, the “capilla española”, and another of musicians brought down from its possessions in the Low Countries.
The Catholic Institute of Sacred Music is proud to announce the fall term of our second Public Lecture and Concert Series. For our first event, we’re delighted to feature a brilliant and engaging young scholar, Dr. Emily Thelen, as she presents from the topic of her recent monograph, A Choirbook for the Seven Sorrows: Royal Library of Belgium MS. 215-16, part of the Leuven Library of Music in Facsimile Series.
Contemplating Our Lady of Sorrows through Sacred Art and Music
Monday, September 11 - 5:00 p.m. PDT
In the current Roman calendar, the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin is celebrated on September 15. This date is a relatively recent change to a devotion that has its roots in the late Middle Ages. In this talk, we will hear the fascinating story of the origins of the feast, and how devotion to the Seven Sorrows grew out of a period of severe economic crisis, civil war, and famine. We will view images of the earliest surviving source of music for this feast—a beautifully illuminated manuscript containing both plainchant and polyphony—and early artistic renderings of the Virgin of Sorrows.
Please join us via Zoom for this first event of our new season; click here to RSVP. The event is free. Space is limited.
Devotion to the Sorrows of the Virgin Mary originated in German-speaking lands in the early 15th-century, partly as a response to the iconoclasm of the Hussites, and partly out of the universal popular devotion to every aspect of Christ’s Passion, including the presence of His Mother, and thence to Her grief over the Passion. The feast that emerged as its formal liturgical expression of this devotion was known by several different titles, and kept on a wide variety of dates, but usually in Passiontide, or just after Easter. Before the name “Seven Sorrows” became common, it was most often called “the feast of the Virgin’s Compassion”, which is to say, of Her suffering together with Christ as She beheld the Passion. This title was retained well into the 20th century by the Dominicans, who also had an Office for it which was quite different from the Roman one, although the Mass was the same. It also appears in many missals of the 15th to 17th centuries only as a votive Mass, with no corresponding feast; this was the case at Sarum, where it is called “Compassionis sive Lamentationis B.M.V.” Its popularity continued to grow in the Tridentine period, until Pope Benedict XIII finally extended it to the whole of the Roman Rite in 1727.
The Virgin of Sorrows; the central panel of the Van Belle triptych by Pieter Poubus (1523 ca. - 1580); in the church of St James in Bruges, Belgium. There were different traditions as to which events in Our Lady’s life counted as Her Seven Sorrows; here they are (clockwise from lower left) the Circumcision, the Flight into Egypt, losing the Child Jesus, meeting Christ on the road to Calvary, the Crucifixion, the deposition from the Cross, and the entombment. The Roman version of the Passiontide feast contains no specific list. (Public domainimage from Wikimedia Commons.)
A second feast of the Seven Sorrows was promulgated in 1668 as the Patronal feast of the Servite Order, which was founded in the mid-13th century by seven Florentine noblemen, and soon spread all over Europe. (St Philip Benizi, who stands in their history as St Bernard does in that of the Cistercians, not their founder, but their most famous member, was almost elected Pope in 1271.) This order had always nourished a strong devotion to the Mother of Sorrows, and has its own rosary of the Seven Sorrows, and its own Marian stations of the Cross. Pope Pius VII added their version of the feast to the general calendar in 1814, after he returned from the exile in France shamefully visited upon him by Napoleon. Part of his reason for doing would certainly have been to ask the Virgin’s intercession and protection for the Church in the midst of the many horrors visited upon it by the French revolution and the subsequent wars. It was originally kept on the Third Sunday of September, as it had been first by the Servites, but when Pope St Pius X abolished the custom of fixing feasts to Sundays, it was placed on September 15th, the day after the Exaltation of the Cross.
As is often the case with later feasts, there was a considerable variety in the liturgical texts of the earlier version of the feast from one place to another, and between the traditions of the various religious orders. But of course, one of the most widespread was the hymn Stabat Mater Dolorosa, which is universally regarded as one of the great masterpieces of later medieval devotional poetry. The author of this hymn is unknown, and has been the subject of a great deal of scholarly conjecture. For a long time, many attributed it to a Franciscan friar name Jacopone da Todi (‘Big James from Todi’, about 80 miles north of Rome in Umbria; 1230 ca. – 1306); however, a fairly recent manuscript discovery has made this attribution untenable. Others have ascribed it to Pope Innocent III, who reigned from 1198-1216, and was certainly a very prolific writer in various genres, but this remains no more than a plausible conjecture.
In the Roman liturgical tradition, it is sung as a hymn in the Divine Office in one melody of the sixth Gregorian mode, and in another of the second mode as a Sequence at Mass, between the Alleluia and the Gospel.
Many great composers have also put their hand to setting it polyphonically, such as Josquin des Prez.
Palestrina’s version, composed shortly before his death in 1594, was traditionally sung in Rome on Palm Sunday.
One of the best known versions is by the Baroque composer Giovanni Battista Draghi (1710-36), who is generally known by the last name “Pergolesi”, after Pergola, the small town in the Italian Marches from which his family came. This was also composed very shortly before the author’s death, of tuberculosis at the age of only 26. This became the single most frequently printed work of sacred music in the 18th century, and, in the common fashion of the Baroque era, was reused by several other composers, including JS Bach, who turned the music into one of his German cantatas, albeit with a completely different text based on Psalm 50.
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