The Voice of Tradition: Dom Prosper Guéranger’s “Anti-Liturgical Heresy”

Originally published at Adoremus Bulletin, this article by Richard Kaleb Hammond is more timely than ever, thanks to the recent invocation, by the Abbot of Solesmes and by Andrea Grillo, of Dom Prosper Guéranger as a supposed proponent, in advance, of the liturgical reform (!). We are all the more grateful to be publishing Mr. Hammond’s article in its original form, with many passages restored that had been edited out by Adoremus. It is also pertinent to note that, after 175 years, Guéranger's Liturgical Institutions, in which he speaks about the "anti-liturgical heresy," has finally been published in English. – PAK

Dom Prosper Guéranger has been called the “grandfather” of the Liturgical Movement, [1] a century-long effort within the Catholic Church to inspire deeper understanding and greater appreciation for the Liturgy of the Latin rite through liturgical piety, which Dom Alcuin Reid defines as “drawing one’s spiritual nourishment from active and conscious contemplation of the faith of the Church as it is celebrated and expressed in the liturgical rites and prayers throughout the annual round of seasons and feasts of the liturgical year, as distinct from the practice of an unrelated, however worthy, devotional exercise.” [2] Alongside his many other writings which contributed to this project, Guéranger summarized the errors which he and many future proponents of the Liturgical Movement sought to correct in popular approaches to the Liturgy through what he called the “anti-liturgical heresy.” [3]

The historical development of the Liturgy, including corruptions of it by heretics in the early Church, the Protestant Revolution, and the Jansenists and Gallicans of Guéranger’s own time, as well as the varied threads which would be woven into the Liturgical Movement in the twentieth century, can be measured according to Guéranger’s description of this heresy, which he divided into twelve distinct criteria:

(1) hatred of Tradition;
(2) substitution of ecclesiastical formulae for readings exclusively from Scripture;
(3) fabrication of innovative formulae;
(4) antiquarianism;
(5) demystification of the Liturgy;
(6) “pharisaical coldness” [4] in liturgical prayer;
(7) removal of all intermediaries (Marian devotion, communion of saints, etc.);
(8) replacement of sacred languages with the vernacular;
(9) simplification of rites and easing of religious duties;
(10) rejection of papal authority;
(11) laicization, denying the sacramental nature of the ministerial priesthood; and
(12) confusion of the roles of priests and laity in liturgical reform.

Hatred of Tradition, Sola Scriptura and Innovation

Guéranger begins his formulation of the anti-liturgical heresy with its most overriding criterion: hatred of Tradition. He explains that the Liturgy, “which is Tradition at its strongest and best”, acts as the buttress against all doctrinal error. As such, those in history who wished to introduce innovative doctrines only had to deform the Liturgy, to substitute the heritage of Tradition which it maintains for their own hymns, prayers, and lessons, for the faithful to be subjected to and formed in their falsehoods. Through these cunning and often subtle changes, “the faith of the people was henceforth without defense.”

Even with the corrective work of apologists, as in the Counter-Reformation, the faithful, for whom the liturgy is the most immediate and formative experience of Tradition, can still be easily led astray by these liturgical corruptions.

Liturgical innovators who seek to violate Tradition and form the faithful in false doctrines have tended to uphold one common criterion: the need for all the formulae of the Liturgy to derive exclusively from Scripture, as Guéranger explains:

This involves two advantages: first, to silence the voice of Tradition of which sectarians are always afraid. Then, there is the advantage of propagating and supporting their dogmas by means of affirmation and negation. By way of negation, in passing over in silence, through cunning, the texts which express doctrine opposed to errors they wish to propagate; by way of affirmation, by emphasizing truncated passages which show only one side of the truth, hide the other [from] the eyes of the unlearned.

Ultimately, this second criterion of the anti-liturgical heresy falls prey to the same weaknesses as the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura: the choice of readings and even the canon of the Bible, as well as its interpretation, rely entirely upon “the caprice of the reformer, who, in final analysis, decides the meaning of the word itself.” On the other hand, the formulae inherited from Tradition reflect the infallible teaching of the Church and the integral meaning of Scripture; many of them were composed by saints and, like the creeds and definitions of the ecumenical councils, they codify and explicate the truth of God without bias.

In place of these traditional formulae, and as his third criterion, Guéranger explains that the heretics “fabricate and introduce various formulas, filled with perfidy, by which the people are more surely ensnared in error”. These innovations prove to be the true motive for the application of sola scriptura to liturgical Tradition.

Ironically, after discovering that Scripture cannot support all of their erroneous doctrines, even when picked and interpreted selectively, Guéranger notes that these substitutions of Scripture in place of traditional formulae are immediately accompanied by brand-new formulae which are “filled with perfidy, by which the people are more surely ensnared in error, and thus the whole structure of the impious reform will become consolidated for the coming centuries.”

Antiquarianism

Alongside sola scriptura, liturgical deformers will also frequently refer to Guéranger’s fourth criterion of the anti-liturgical heresy: antiquarianism. Asserting that only what is most ancient is truly pure, whereas later developments are those which “the errors and passions of man have mixed in”, proponents of antiquarianism claim to purge the Liturgy “from whatever is ‘false’ and ‘unworthy of God’.” Accordingly, as Guéranger explains,

they prune, they efface, they cut away; everything falls under their blows, and while one is waiting to see the original purity of the divine cult reappear, one finds himself encumbered with new formulas dating only from the night before, and which are incontestably human, since the one who created them is still alive.

Having removed everything that could testify to Tradition in its clearest terms, on the pretext that it did not reflect the “primitive” and pure teachings of the early Church, they replace them with their own formulae which lack the poetic beauty, theological depth, and doctrinal orthodoxy of the monuments of Tradition, thus “cutting them off from the entire past.”

This “pruning” can include the deletion of practices which are considered to be mere late “accretions” [5] yet are later proven not to be so, such as ad orientem prayer which “the early Church… regarded as an apostolic tradition”; indeed, “it goes back to the earliest times and was always regarded as an essential characteristic of Christian liturgy (and, indeed, of private prayer).” [6] It would also involve the exclusion of cherished customs, such as the elevatio at the Consecration or the reading of the Last Gospel, which developed from centuries of pious devotion. By its rejection of later developments in Tradition, antiquarianism, in Guéranger’s words, “cut[s] them [the Christian faithful] off from the entire past.”

Pope Pius XII clearly refuted antiquarianism only a few years before the Second Vatican Council:

It is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device… one would be straying from the straight path were he to wish the altar restored to its primitive tableform; were he to want black excluded as a color for the liturgical vestments; were he to forbid the use of sacred images and statues in Churches; were he to order the crucifix so designed that the divine Redeemer's body shows no trace of His cruel sufferings; and lastly were he to disdain and reject polyphonic music or singing in parts, even where it conforms to regulations issued by the Holy See… This way of acting bids fair to revive the exaggerated and senseless antiquarianism to which the illegal Council of Pistoia gave rise. (Mediator Dei, §62, 64) [7]

Anthropocentrism and Demystification

A fundamental aim of the anti-liturgical heresy, in all its historical and modern forms, is the subjection of the Liturgy, and the Tradition which it monumentalizes, to human interests; this has sometimes been called anthropocentrism, in which “we want to find God on our terms, not on His terms; we want to worship Him in our way, not His way.” [8]

According to Guéranger’s fifth and sixth criteria, man, rather than God, is the center of the liturgy,[1] therefore all teachings, formulae, prayers and devotions which seem mysterious or arresting must be removed while any perceived obstacles to easy comprehension and external participation must also be “reformed.”

This dry rationalism often involves the elimination, simplification or deemphasis of sensible signs in order to demystify and didacticize the Liturgy, the effect of which is “the total extinction of that spirit of prayer, which in Catholicism, we call unction”, since “[a] heart in revolt can no longer love.” Following from this is the seventh criterion, in which man, “[p]retending to treat nobly with God… has no need of intermediaries”; thus is the intercession of the saints made superfluous in a Liturgy brought down to man’s level. In Dom Alcuin Reid’s words,

The ultimate result of this anthropocentrism, warns Guéranger, is “no more Sacraments, except Baptism, preparing the way for Socialism, which freed its followers even from Baptism. No more sacramentals, blessings, images, relics of Saints, processions, pilgrimages, etc. No more altar, only a table, no more sacrifice as in every religion, but only a meal… No more religious architecture, since there is no more mystery. No more Christian paintings and sculpture, since there is no more sensible religion.” In the end, when the Faith centers on man rather than God, it is gutted of all meaning.

In this way, the Liturgy becomes wholly private and interior, with the sensible being neglected or outright condemned, as in the various iconoclasms throughout history. This demystification and anthropocentrism of the Liturgy result from the previous principles delineated by Guéranger, all of which subjected Tradition to human interests and preferences in conformity with the spirit of the age.

One of the most ubiquitous and effective methods of demystifying the Liturgy is the imposition of vernacularism, the eighth criterion of Guéranger’s anti-liturgical heresy. By exchanging a sacred language with the vernacular, the sacredness and mystery of the Liturgy are essentially destroyed as it is reduced to the level of the commonplace. As a result, Guéranger says, it is insisted that “cult is no secret matter. The people, they say, must understand what they sing.” In so doing, the Liturgy loses its universality, becoming particular to each culture according to language and hindering the ability to participate wherever one happens to be.

A vernacular Liturgy easily falls prey to the arbitrary customizations of the people, as well as confusions of doctrine between languages, whereas a sacred language maintains continuity with Tradition and unity within each of the six liturgical Traditions (rites) which trace back to the apostles and together make up the Catholic Church (“the Latin, Alexandrian, Antiochian, Armenian, Chaldean and Constantinopolitan or Byzantine”). [9] As Pope John XXIII taught (quoting Pope Pius XI), “For the Church, precisely because it embraces all nations and is destined to endure to the end of time… of its very nature requires a language which is universal, immutable, and non-vernacular” (Veterum Sapientia).

From a desire for expediency, vernacularism leads to Guéranger’s ninth criterion, the easing of other sacrifices in the life of the faithful, including “no more fasting, no more abstinence, no more genuflections in prayer” and the lessening of “the sum of public and private prayers”, all going toward the overall goal of this heresy to subject the Liturgy to man and thus break with Tradition.

Once a sacred language has been abandoned, “from that moment on the Liturgy has lost much of its sacred character, and very soon people find that it is not worthwhile putting aside one’s work or pleasure in order to go and listen to what is being said in the way one speaks on the marketplace.”

While Guéranger focuses on Latin, which he describes as “the bond among Catholics throughout the universe [and] the arsenal of orthodoxy against all the subtleties of the sectarian spirit”, this can also be applied to the Eastern rites which often use ancient or specialized forms of vernacular languages to inspire reverence and preserve Tradition, [10] as well as to the Ordinariate Divine Worship which employs archaic English for similar purposes.

Throughout history, anti-liturgical heretics have consistently rejected the unique office of the papacy as the guarantor of orthodoxy, the sign of universality, and the final arbiter of conflict, substituting themselves as the sole authority to customize the Liturgy and interpret Scripture.

Guéranger lists this usurpation as his tenth criterion, a means of rebelling against the ‘tyranny’ of the papacy in favor of localism and individualism. Heretics in the early Church, the Orthodox, Protestants and Old Catholics have adhered to this principle; similarly, today dissident Catholics also reject the papacy, either by denying the doctrines of the Church in liberalism or by asserting that the post-conciliar papacy is illegitimate and the papal seat vacant (sedevacantism).

From this follows the eleventh criterion of the anti-liturgical heresy: the laicization of the priesthood as a whole. When the Liturgy is rationalized and brought down to the merely human level, a sacramental priesthood, acting in persona Christi, is impossible. One consequence of this anti-clerical “presbyterianism” is Guéranger’s twelfth and final criterion, wherein he warns against “secular or lay persons assuming authority in liturgical reform”. He recognized that this inevitably leads, like vernacularism, to “the Liturgy, and consequently dogma, [becoming] an entity limited by the boundaries of a nation or region.” [11]

As Dr. Peter Kwasniewski has noted, the laicizing of the priesthood, in doctrine or in practice, leads, like vernacularism, to “the Liturgy, and consequently dogma, [becoming] an entity limited by the boundaries of a nation or region.” [2] It is also not infrequently responsible for the confusion of roles in the Liturgy, by which tasks proper to the ordained are appropriated by laypeople. [12]

Both of these final criteria blur the distinctions between the universal baptismal priesthood and the special ministerial priesthood, thus subjecting liturgical Tradition to the local and individual preferences of the laity. In so doing, much of the mystery and universality of the Sacraments is destroyed through a false democratization, as in laypeople distributing the Eucharist at Mass or boldly approaching the altar and self-communicating in the hand. [3]

Tradition as Living Organism

From these negative criteria of the anti-liturgical heresy, Dom Alcuin Reid deduces positive principles which clarify and affirm liturgical Tradition

[corresponding to 1st and 2nd criteria: to] protect the place of non-scriptural texts in the organic whole of the Liturgy; [3rd] innovate rarely and only where necessary; [4th] reject antiquarianism out of respect for the living, developed Liturgy; [5th] protect all that speaks of the supernatural and of mystery in the Liturgy; [6th] similarly, protect the nature of Liturgy as prayer and worship lest it be reduced to a didactic exercise; [7th] treasure the role of the Blessed Virgin and of the saints in the Liturgy; [8th] reject vernacularism; [9th] resist the temptation to sacrifice the Liturgy for the sake of speed; [10th] rejoice in liturgical unity with the Church of Rome; and, [11th and 12th] to respect the particular liturgical roles and authority of the ordained. [13]

Answering the anti-liturgical heresy requires a thorough understanding of liturgical Tradition in light of these positive principles. The Liturgy must develop organically, as Vatican II taught: “there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.” (Sacrosanctum concilium, §23)

Guéranger also summarized this rule: “Progress in Liturgy must be an enrichment by the acquisition of new forms rather than by the violent loss of the ancient ones.” [14] Likewise, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, “the Liturgy is received and not simply constructed anew according to the tastes of the people among whom he finds himself and… innovation must be for good reason and carefully integrated with the Tradition”, [15] reflecting the truth that “Liturgies are not made, they grow in the devotion of the centuries”. [16]

The Liturgy must be understood not as a mere communal meal, Bible study or prayer-meet but as the approach of penitent sinners on their knees to Calvary, where Christ the High Priest offered Himself as the spotless victim on the altar of the Cross to the Father for the forgiveness of sins, and as the sanctification of the faithful through participation in the Heavenly Liturgy. (Sacrosanctum concilium, §7-8)

Recovery and Restoration

As the Liturgical Movement progressed, it broke into two distinct strains: one faithful to Guéranger’s clear understanding of liturgical Tradition, and another which embraced both antiquarianism, following the “corruption theory” proposed by Jungmann according to which only what is most primitive constitutes authentic Tradition, and anthropocentrism, insisting on the need for a “pastoral Liturgy” which should be “fashioned to meet the needs of contemporary man.” [17]

In response, Cardinal Ratzinger observed, “Archaeological enthusiasm and pastoral pragmatism—which is in any case often a pastoral form of rationalism—are both equally wrong. These two might be described as unholy twins.” [18]

Tradition, then, is not merely a remnant of the early Church or the wholesale adaptation of the Faith to suit the times but the accumulated devotion of the saints across the centuries handed on to future generations. Accordingly, the goal of Pope St. Pius V’s institution of the Tridentine reforms was not to introduce any radical innovations but only to “[restore] the Missal itself to the original form and rite of the holy Fathers” while still permitting the continuation of any rite “which has been continuously followed for a period of not less than 200 years” (Quo primum), thus recognizing medieval contributions as legitimate organic developments of Tradition. [19] The same purpose also guided the orthodox fathers of the Second Vatican Council (cf. Sacrosanctum concilium, §23).

A rediscovery of Guéranger’s anti-liturgical heresy criteria, and their application to contemporary liturgical theology and practice, can help to fulfill the original goals of the Liturgical Movement and restore liturgical Tradition, including those venerable elements, such as ad orientem worship and the use of a sacred language, as well as the received forms of liturgical prayers and rites, which have fallen into disuse.

Kaleb Hammond holds a B.A. in English and Theology from Holy Apostles College & Seminary, Cromwell, CT, where he is now pursuing an M.A. in Theology. He is a writer for Missio Dei and has been published at Adoremus Bulletin, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, St. Austin Review and Catholic Insight. A convert to the faith, he grew up in Georgia but now lives in Indiana with his family.

NOTES

[1] Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy, 2^nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 381. Kindle.

[2] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 58-59.

[3] See Prosper Guéranger, “The Anti-Liturgical Heresy,” at Catholic Apologetics, at catholicapologetics.info.

[4] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 55.

[5] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 46.

[6] Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2018), loc 816. Kindle.

[7] The propositions of the illegal 1786 Synod of Pistoia, eighty-five of which were condemned in the 1794 papal bull of Pope Pius VI Auctorem fidei, were Jansenist attempts to make the Liturgy rationalized and anthropocentric according to the aims of the Enlightenment. They included having only one altar in each church, no recitation by the priest of anything chanted by the choir, “[f]orbidding relics and flowers on the altar”, reciting the Offertory and Canon aloud, “forbidding numerous devotional and pious practices, including the rosary,” simplifying the Liturgy and translating it into the vernacular. “The people rose up and rejected the imposed reforms.” See Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 49-50.

[8] Peter Kwasniewski, The Once and Future Roman Rite (Gastonia, NC: TAN, 2022), 117. Kindle.

[9] Edward McNamara, “Why So Many Rites in the Church,” at EWTN (25 October 2016), at www.ewtn.com.

[10] E.g. “[L]iturgical Greek… Church Slavonic… old literary Georgian… literary Coptic… Ge’ez… classical Syrian and Arabic [and] classical literary Armenian.” See Peter Kwasniewski, “The Byzantine Liturgy, the Traditional Latin Mass, and the Novus Ordo – Two Brothers and a Stranger,” at New Liturgical Movement (4 June 2018), at www.newliturgicalmovement.org.

[11] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 55.

[12] See Peter Kwasniewski, Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion (Manchester, NH: Crisis, 2021).

[13] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 55-56.

[14] Quoted in Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 56.

[15] Joseph Ratzinger, introduction to Alcuin Reid, The Organic Development of the Liturgy, 2^nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 20. Kindle

[16] Owen Chadwick, The Reformation, vol. 3 of The Penguin History of the Church (London: Penguin, 1990), 119; cf. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, loc 1952.

[17] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 151.

[18] Ratzinger, introduction to Organic Development, 10.

[19] Reid, Organic Development, 2^nd ed., 39-41.

Newly Republished: Cantus Mariales — Rare 1903 Book of Marian Chants

Choirs and scholas often like to have a selection of devotional chants for ad libitum use. Books like The Parish Book of Chant have done an admirable job in this regard, but I often find there is a real dearth of Marian chants. I was therefore delighted when, some years ago, friends of mine delivered to me three copies of an exceptionally rare book published in 1903, Cantus Mariales, that contains 50 beautiful Marian chants for the entire Church year, as well as an Appendix of several litanies and antiphons. I am happy to announce today the publication of a facsimile edition, bringing this volume once again to choirs and scholas everywhere.

The story of how I came by these books is quite interesting. My friends were visiting Jerusalem, and happened to enter a monastery called St. Pierre de Sion, otherwise known as the Ratisbonne Monastery. They somehow got up into the choir loft (which is exactly what I would have tried to do myself!) and found a stash of old chant books, covered with dust and in various stages of disrepair, and evidently unused. When they asked a person who lived there if they could buy any of the books, he shrugged his shoulders and said: "Go ahead and take them, no one's using them." When my friends got back to Austria, they gave them to me and said: "You should be the one to get these, you'll know what to do with them."

One of the original books

Once I began to sing the chants inside Cantus Mariales — which bears the subtitle quos e fontibus antiquis eruit aut opere novo veterum instar concinnavit — I knew that I had stumbled on a goldmine that deserved to be republished. The editor, Dom Joseph Pothier, O.S.B., is well known to chant afficionados as one of the great maestros and paleographers of the Solesmes monastic movement. Dom Pothier ranged through manuscripts finding Marian sequences, proses, and rhythms from all centuries. Some of these were already fitted with melodies, others he adapted to existing melodies, and still others he set to neo-Gregorian compositions. At the end of most pieces, the sources of text and melody are indicated. (The preface and annotations are in Latin.) Here is the Table of Contents:

The short chant antiphons given for announcing each of the traditional 15 mysteries of the Rosary (pp. 125-31) are fascinating and could elevate the communal recitation of the Rosary in places where that is a custom, e.g., during a public Holy Hour.

The three original copies appear to be hand-produced: the pages show obvious signs of having been printed, cut, and assembled in small batches; each cover is marbled in a distinctive manner, and each book has discrepancies of spacing and placement, not to mention pencil and pen markings. The one I dismantled for scanning was in good shape and had few extraneous markings. I am happy to announce the availability of a full-color facsimile edition identical in content to the original, with a new cover.

An original copy (1903) and the new facsimile (2016)

Continue Reading this Article. . .

Solesmes releases new Liber Cantualis

Solesmes has published a new edition of the Liber cantualis - Gregorian Melodies (Latin-English). This small and convenient book contains Latin Chants for the Ordinary of the Mass & Chants for other occasions. The new edition uses the newer clearer notational typeface and also provides English translations of the Chants.

The Liber Cantualis was first published in 1995 and is designed for small parishes or schools. Amongst the Chants are seven settings of the Ordinary (Masses I, IV, VIII, IX, XI, XVII, XVIII), Credos I & III, four Alleluias, the Asperges & Vidi aquam, and Sequences including Victimae Paschali & Veni Sancti Spiritus. There are also chants in honour of the Blessed Sacrament, Our Lady, chants for different liturgical seasons, selected Psalms and Canticles, and the complete office of Compline. It is impressive how much has been fitted into this slim little volume and I am sure it will be of great use in a variety of contexts. It is available directly from Solesmes for 15E.

Books for Sale/3: Solesmes Books [UPDATED]

Update as of 1/14/15: All books in this batch have been SOLD.  (I will leave the rest of this post as it stands, because it is interesting to be able to see these books from the point of view of liturgical history and the art of the book.)
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Today's batch includes some rare Solesmes chant books. If interested, or to obtain more information, contact me at the email listed in the sidebar on the left.

Liber Antiphonarius (1891)

The oldest book in the batch. It's in decent shape for its almost 125 years of age, though I would be careful not to throw it across the room, even at someone who's not singing well. The binding has a few wormholes (no, not the astrophysics kind) and, like the classic Solesmes books, is filled with lovely line art. $100 or best offer, plus shipping.

Liber Usualis (1904) Here we have an early Solesmes edition, published in 1904, that, while printing the neumes in a way familiar to our eyes, utilizes a few note-shapes that were subsequently abandoned. One will notice parallels with certain more recent (post-conciliar) Solesmes editions. Also charming is the opening letter from Pope Leo XIII to Dom Paul Delatte. $85 obo + shipping.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

From Solesmes: A Beautiful Facsimile of a Montecassino Manuscript and a Flying Drone

Solesmes has published the latest volume in the Paléographie Musicale series. This beautiful volume is the 23rd in the series which began in 1889 and is the first to be published in colour. It is a facsimile of Montecassino MS 542, a 12th century antiphonary and a beautiful example of the distinctive Beneventan Chant which originated in the south of Italy. The book has an introduction and explanation (in French) of the notation by the scholar and musician Katarina Livljanić as well as a comprehensive index.

The photograph below shows the original manuscript and the first antiphon from Lauds on the Feast of the Holy Innocents: Herodes iratus occidit multos pueros in Bethlehem Judae civitate David. The damage sustained in a fire can be seen at the top.

The new edition can be purchased directly from Solesmes.

The video of Solesmes below was recently filmed by a drone and shows parts of the monastery usually hidden out of sight. The opening shot starts in the French Garden, the Abbey Church visible to the right, and moves towards the Maurist Priory building which contains both the Atelier of the Paléographie Musicale as well as Dom Gueranger's cell, exactly as he left it. The charming garden of the smaller Maurist Cloister can be seen, as well as the Great Cloister, in the corner of which is the small building (with turret roof) where the Abbot washes the hands of guests before they enter the refectory. The Abbot's octagonal cell juts out at first floor level over a small internal courtyard (1:30) next to the library at the heart of the complex. The classic view of Solesmes which ends the short video is taken from a little further upstream on the River Sarthe.

In Honor of St. Benedict, St. Thomas, and Benedict XVI

A meditation in honor of Saint Benedict, born into eternal life on March 21, 543 (or 547).

For the traditional feastday of the Patriarch of Western Monasticism and the Patron of Europe, it seems appropriate to recall these beautiful words from the Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict written by a great disciple of his, the Right Rev. Dom Paul Delatte, O.S.B., Abbot of Solesmes from 1890-1921.

St. Benedict of Nursia was above all else a man of tradition. He was not the enthusiastic creator of an entirely new form of the religious life: neither nature nor grace disposed him to such a course. As may be seen from the last chapter of his Rule, he cared nothing for a reputation of originality, or for the glory of being a pioneer. He did not write till late, till he was on the threshold of eternity, after study and perhaps after experience of the principal monastic codes. Nearly every sentence reveals almost a fixed determination to base his ideas on those of the ancients, or at least to use their language and appropriate their terms. But even though the Rule were nothing but an intelligent compilation, even though it were merely put together with the study and spiritual insight of St. Benedict, with the spirit of orderliness, moderation, and lucidity of this Roman of old patrician stock, it would not for all that be a commonplace work: in actual fact, it stands as the complete and finished expression of the monastic ideal. Who can measure the extraordinary influence that these few pages have exercised, during fourteen centuries, over the general development of the Western world? Yet St. Benedict thought only of God and of souls desirous to go to God; in the tranquil simplicity of his faith he purposed only to establish a school of the Lord’s service: Dominici schola servitii. But, just because of this singleminded pursuit of the one thing necessary, God has blessed the Rule with singular fruitfulness, and St. Benedict has taken his place in the line of the great patriarchs.

Dom Delatte’s splendid characterization of the “unoriginal originality” of Benedict reminds me strongly of St. Thomas Aquinas, himself a Benedictine oblate as a child and, later, a Dominian friar of whom quite the same thing could be said: he was determined to collect and harmonize the teachings of the ancients and bring them to bear on every problem, so that his solutions often seem like the work of an elegant host who manages, at the table, to get all the guests talking to one another and to reach a consensus that keeps the best of each while gracefully ignoring the rest. Aquinas, in that sense, “was above all else a man of tradition … who thought only of God and of souls desirous to go to God.” To paraphrase Delatte, “Who can measure the extraordinary influence that the works of Thomas, particularly his Summa, have exercised, during seven and a half centuries, over the general development of the Western world?”

But I am also reminded here of our beloved Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who chose the name Benedict for so many of the reasons for which Dom Delatte praises the patriarch. How often did we thank the good Lord for sending us a pope who “was above all else a man of tradition”? How could we fail to see that he sought neither originality nor glory, but pursued a steady course of reviving the wisdom and language of the ancients, bring to his difficult task the “orderliness, moderation, and lucidity” of the best kind of German scholar? It is as if he had been handed the keys to a mansion in which many rooms were closed off and falling apart, one in which the domestic staff had turned suspicious and unaccommodating, and had taken it upon himself to begin the long process of repairing physical structures and healing spiritual breaches. God willing, it will someday be said of him: “Who can measure the extraordinary influence that the few pages of Summorum Pontificum have exercised over the reconstruction of the Church after the destruction wreaked by postconciliar storms?” Yet in all this, Pope Benedict “thought only of God and of souls desirous to go to God; in the tranquil simplicity of his faith he purposed only to restore to the faithful the first and greatest school of the Lord’s service, the sacred liturgy.”

May the teaching and legislation of Pope Benedict be blessed over the centuries with a fruitfulness comparable to that of the Rule of Saint Benedict and the Summa of Saint Thomas.

What are those strange squiggles in the Graduale Triplex?

Sacred Music is the name of the quarterly journal of the Church Music Association of America. In the most recent issue, I have an article entitled 'The Solesmes Chant Tradition: The Original Neumatic Signs and Practical Performance Today'. The article is based on a talk I gave at the CMAA Colloquium in Salt Lake City in 2012 and is intended as an entry into the world of Solesmes and Semiology, in other words how the monks went about the process of deciphering the early chant manuscripts and converting them into a universal and singable performing edition. I know that many readers of the NLM blog are very knowledgeable about this particular field, however this may be of interest if you want to know what semiology is, what is meant by 'Old Solesmes' or if you have simply always wondered what those strange squiggles are in the Graduale Triplex:

I have posted the article here and I am grateful to the CMAA for allowing me to do so. If you would like to subscribe to the journal, you can do so here. It represents good value at $48 a year, however you can donate more to this extremely good cause should you wish and help support the CMAA's vast plethora of projects. You can also browse the online archive of previous editions.

What is a Baculus Cantoralis and why do you need one?

The Baculus Cantoralis, to give it one of its many names, is a large staff held by a Choirmaster or Cantor which originates in Benedictine Monasteries of the 10th and 11th centuries. It is sometimes called a Baculus Choralis or a Baculus Praecentoris. At Solesmes, where it is still in use, it is referred to as Le Bâton de Chantre. When I was there recently I saw it being used at Vespers on Trinity Sunday. It can be seen beside the Cantors just to the right of the Eagle, resting on a stand:

At the top of the Baculus is a small ivory carving of St Peter, the patron of Solesmes Abbey, imparting a blessing and holding the Basilica of St Peter in Rome:

Its use is purely ceremonial nowadays, although in medieval times it was reportedly used as a 'corrective' instrument when dealing with inaccurate singers. (I wonder where I might acquire one...) The photograph below shows Dom Umberto Bertini of Farnborough holding a Baculus. The photograph was taken before Solemn Vespers at Clairvaux before the First World War.

I came across an article from 1940 about Dom Uberto Bertini in the Catholic Herald's online archive. Do go and read it if you have a moment: he was an extraordinary man. My thanks to the Monks of Farnborough for providing the photograph.

Jeffrey Tucker on: Enchanting book on chant

I don't know how much longer this book will be available from the publishers, but there are also 29 used copies out there on Amazon, so that's good. In any case, if you have never read anything on the modern history of chant and don't want to bored with detail you don't care about, this is a marvelous book: Katherine Bergeron's Decadent Enchantments: The Revival of Gregorian Chant at Solesmes.

There are a wide number of opinions on this book from the point of view of chant enthusiasts. Quite frankly, some people hate it. They find her language too flowery, her analysis too dreamy, her detail too selective, her philosophical brush too broad, and her highlighting of personal struggles too petty. I don't happen to agree with any of these criticisms actually. I'm just wild for this book and would recommend it to anyone.

She shows how Solesmes came to be founded and how the musical project came to dominate. She covers the main players in involved, their incredible work, their idiosyncrasies and in-fighting, puts in context the Vatican involvement, and generally manages to produce a book on chant that reads like a thrilling novel. I would say that is a good enough reason to recommend it. And the length is right: not too long.

Her language is indeed over the top but often brilliant (IMHO). But what I like most is what it taught me about the theory of restoration in 19th-century France. She shows that it was not movement to make things exactly as they were before the revolution but rather a movement motivated by ideal types, to make things as they might be in our highest imaginings.

An example might be Jefferson's home in Virginia. Should it be restored precisely as it was, or should it be restored in the way that Jefferson imagined it could be. The owners of the home chose the latter route. And so it was at Solesmes. In other words, this was not a fundamentalist movement devoted to authenticity as a sole principle but a movement attached to beauty and tradition as an ideal, informed by authenticity but not fixated solely on this issue. The result of their efforts was the 1908 Graduale, the 100th anniversary of which we are celebrating this year.

This point about ideals had a big impact on me when I first read it. It explains certain anomalies such as why the Solesmes editions look so much more beautiful and "medieval" in the way we imagine it than actual medieval or Renaissance editions themselves. Given a choice between a Solesmes edition and any chant page from the 16th century and really there is no choice. It also explains how it came to be that the monks introduced certain innovations to the chant designed to make it easier to sing and more uniform in style across the world. That's not to say that it wasn't historically based: they worked to eliminate the corruptions that had been introduced following Trent. The point is that they didn't stop there: they wanted restoration in the way that term was understood in this period. She also demonstrates what a true progressive Dom Mocquereau was, with his love of modern technology and his attachment to paleographic research. He is the main hero of this book, in my view.

I highly recommend to this book to anyone who wants to learn about the modern history of chant. I'm so sorry that the author seems to have moved on, for this book left me with a desire for volume 2 and 3. For a more detailed account, there is no substitute for the Combesvolume of course, but that doesn't seem to be available actually.