“Liturgical Theology in Thomas Aquinas”: A New Collection of Essays by Fr Franck Quoëx

Fr. Franck Quoëx, a priest of the diocese of Vaduz, Lichtenstein, Savoyard by birth, was one of the foremost liturgists of our times. I had the great honor of serving alongside him at the traditional Masses in Rome for several years, and some of the most beautiful rites I have ever seen were put together and guided by his phenomenal expertise. He had and deserved a reputation throughout Europe as a highly talented Master of Ceremonies; many have remarked that if the Pope should ever decide to do the ancient Papal Mass again, Fr. Quoëx would have been one of the few people who could have arranged it properly. In 2001, he received a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical University of St Thomas (also known as the Angelicum) in Rome, defending a thesis entitled “Le Rite et le Royaume: Culte et histoire du salut selon Thomas d’Aquin” (Rite and Kingdom: The Exterior Acts of Cult [or Worship] and Salvation History according to Saint Thomas Aquinas). He was subsequently professor of liturgy at the FSSP seminary in Wigratzbad, Germany, and continued to write and research on a variety of liturgical topics.

In May of 2006, Abbé Quoëx was diagnosed with cancer, which took his life less than nine months later. In the final days of his illness, when he had become too weak to celebrate Mass, he would have friends sit at his bedside and read the Mass to him. He passed away at the age of thirty-nine, on January 2, the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, and is buried in the cemetery of Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had been serving the faithful of the traditional Mass community.

We are very pleased to share the news that several articles which he wrote, based on the work which he did in his doctoral thesis, have now been gathered into one volume, and translated into English by Zachary Thomas, under the title “Liturgical Theology in Thomas Aquinas: Sacrifice and Salvation History.” It is now available for pre-order, and is scheduled to be published in hardcover on October 27. (Mr Thomas is one of the writers of the excellent blog Canticum Salomonis, whose work we have shared on NLM many times.)

The description on Amazon: “In this volume, Fr. Quoëx responds to Joseph Ratzinger’s call for a renewed appreciation of liturgical rite. A student of Pierre Gy, OP, he brings to this study of Aquinas’ liturgical theology a rare combination of expert knowledge of liturgical sources and history and the best of modern historical-critical research guided by sound theological judgment. Fr Quoëx frames his study with an overview of the problem of rite in modern theological-anthropological discourse, before turning to Aquinas’ theory of worship in the treatise on the virtue of religion. He then explores Aquinas’ doctrine on the cultic dimensions of the Eucharist and other sacraments in his sacramental theology more broadly, finishing with a close study of the mass commentary of the Tertia Pars.

Although there has been increasing attention to Thomas’ treatment of religion as a virtue, none have approached him from an anthropological angle with a focus on the nature of liturgical rite, or fully exploited the perspectives of liturgical scholarship to shed light on sacramental theology. Quoëx’s work, as the work of a Thomist, liturgist, and medievalist well versed in medieval liturgical development and in the genre of often-allegorical liturgical commentary, opens up this crucial but neglected facet of Aquinas’ theological synthesis. Few books have been published on Aquinas’ liturgical theology. Now that interest in Aquinas’ virtue theory and sacramental theology is growing rapidly, Quoëx’s studies are an invitation to further reflection on the topic of Aquinas's liturgical theology with its manifold ramifications for and connections with other theological topics in his Summa, including his theological anthropology, his soteriology, his treatment of the Old and New Laws, and his account of the virtue of religion in connection with the other virtues.”

I asked Mr Thomas to say something about how the project came about, and he wrote, “One problem that has vexed me since my graduate days is how to discuss the liturgical question with modern people who, even if religious, even if Catholic, have no understanding of what a liturgical rite, or a public sacrifice, is. Every page of the Bible or the Iliad impresses one with the fact that it was weirdly natural for an ancient person, say, whose city had been delivered from a plague, or who wanted to crave a divine favor, to drag an animal up to a temple, slaughter it, and invite his friends to a feast. Public cult was the nexus that held together the ancient city states of Greece and the Kingdom of Israel, as it was for all of Christian history until the modern period. The Sacrifice of Christ and the symbolic rites that surrounded its repetition simply made sense to these people.

Given that the Eucharist is the source and summit of Christian life, and the liturgy that font from which we derive the Christian spirit, it is imperative for Catholics to recover an intimate familiarity and emotional connection to what Aquinas calls the ‘rites of the Christian religion.’ We have to recover, for ourselves, and for our societies, the naturalness of liturgical rite.

Fr. Quoëx’s thesis lends us a helping hand. He explains what Aquinas has to say about religious worship and everything related to it – sacrifices, vows, consecrations, sacred places and persons, the Sunday obligation, etc. He shows us how public worship is a part of the virtue of religion, an auxiliary part of the virtue of justice. It is the way that human beings, both as individuals and as ‘cultic societies,’ express the debt of gratitude and submission they owe to their Creator. Further, Aquinas explains the role of solemnity, of holy things and holy places, in exciting our devotion and directing our attention to the worship of the Father. They are not ‘accidentals’, but an intrinsic part of the way that we worship as beings composed of body and soul. Finally, Fr. Quoëx expounds Aquinas’ views on the symbolism of the liturgical rite, the way the rite can be ‘read,’ like Sacred Scripture, on multiple spiritual levels of interpretation.

The translator hopes this volume will contribute to the recovery of liturgical rite that Ratzinger called for in Spirit of the Liturgy. It also contributes to the growing literature on the public role of religion, expressed recently for example in Scott Hahn and Brandon McGinley’s It is Right and Just.”

Review of the New Edition of Honorius of Autun’s Jewel of the Soul

We are grateful to Dr Erik Ellis for sharing with NLM this review of the translation of the Gemma Animae by Honorius of Autun, by our friends Zachary Thomas and Gerhard Eger, the authors of the Canticum Salomonis website. Dr. Ellis is Assistant Professor of Education at Hillsdale College, and Senior Fellow of the Boethius Institute.

Gemma Animae, Jewel of the Soul, by Honorius Augustodunensis. Zachary Thomas and Gerhard Eger, ed. 2 vv. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 2023.

Photo by Joseph Barnas

“…libellum de divinis officiis edidi, cui nomen Gemma animae indidi, quia videlicet veluti aurum gemma ornatur, sic anima divino officio decoratur. – … I have written, as you bade me, a little book on the divine services, to which I have given the name Jewel of the Soul. For you see, just as gold is adorned by a jewel, so the soul is made lovely by the divine services.”

The appearance of Thomas and Eger’s edition of Honorius’ Jewel of the Soul in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library furthers the contemporary recovery of the allegorical interpretation of the liturgy, signaled by the Knibbs’ edition of Amalarius of Metz’s On the Liturgy in the same series, and of Abbé Claude Barthe’s A Forest of Symbols (reviewed at Rorate here.) After more than a century of the almost complete domination of liturgical scholarship by either historian-archaeologists or pastoral theologians, it is encouraging to see a renewal of interest in liturgical allegory at both the scholarly and popular levels. This follows a similar trend in biblical studies, where fatigue with the historical-critical method led first to a ressourcement of patristic exegesis, then a recovery of medieval approaches to the Bible, and finally to the renewed and productive school of biblical studies represented by Carbajosa and Ratzinger. We may now hope that contemporary and future approaches to the liturgy follow a similar trajectory, and the availability of this important set of books will be a sure aid to this necessary project.

Readers will likely be familiar with the Loeb Classical Library, which over the last century has provided the educated public with well printed and bound editions of the Greek and Roman classics with serviceable texts, pleasant translations, and brief scholarly apparatus at an affordable price. At the turn of the last century, Loeb’s publisher, Harvard University Press, brought out the I Tatti Renaissance Library, which focuses on Italian Neo-Latin texts, in a less pocket-friendly but handier format to complement the Loeb, and medievalists have now for a little over a decade enjoyed the press’ Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, which extends the same idea to texts in medieval Latin, Byzantine Greek, and Old English. As physical objects, the books are beautiful to behold and delightful to use. In an age when even well-established academic publishers charge three-digit prices for print-on-demand paperbacks, the gold-jacketed and purple clothbound volumes, printed on cream paper sewn in signatures and furnished with a bound in scarlet ribbon marker, are a bargain.

In keeping with the design principles of the series, the editors’ introduction is brief but comprehensive. The author of the Jewel of the Soul was named Honorius, was a cleric in the southern German-speaking lands, and is known conventionally as Augustodunensis (“of Autun”), but as the editors point out, there is very little to support this geographical identification. Like many contemplatives, Honorius seems to have wished his text to eclipse its author. Further details of his biography have so far eluded researchers and are likely to do so in the future. We are left with a bountiful corpus of allegorical reflection on the texts and ceremonies to which Honorius dedicated his life to performing and contemplating.

The Jewel of the Soul is divided into four books, the first and longest of which is a close study of the ceremonies, vestments, and paramenta of the Mass. The commentary is not tied to the text but rather floats freely among rubrics, typology, canon law, and moral instruction, while generally following the temporal forward movement of the Mass. Honorius clusters discussions of particular persons, like the subdeacon, vestments, like the sandals, or rites, like the dedication of a church, in discrete and digressive sections of Book I once he has concluded his general exposition of the Mass.

Chapters are generally quite short – two to a page in most cases – making the Jewel an ideal source of daily devotional reading, or a faithful companion that one can dip into and out of when one has a few minutes to gather Honorius’ nugae and spend the next few hours chewing on them. It is like being in the presence of a learned elder whose oral mystagogy flows freely from the practical to the sublime, constructing a dense web of meaning that stitches the heart and the intellect together in dialogue, while preserving a childlike freedom to follow associations wherever they lead. The editors are careful to point out that this is a conscious literary effect, and that Honorius’ measured, rhythmic prose is the product of a careful and practiced stylist. Despite this craftsmanship, his Latin should be familiar to those who know the Mass in that language and pose no real linguistic challenges. In fact, given its self-contained chapters, the Jewel would be an ideal text for those who are looking for an easy and edifying way to practice extensive, daily reading of Latin in short, frequent bursts.

Book 2 of the Jewel treats the Office in a much less effusive manner. Honorius concerns himself with the organization of the hours, the disposition of the Psalms, and the pre-Christian history of regular prayer, both in Israel and among the Nations. Books 3 and 4 are dedicated to the Church year, considering both general structural features and the particular significance of each of the feasts of the temporal and sanctoral cycles. Book 4 is the most challenging and original section of the Jewel – an attempt to synthesize all of the feasts of the year in a single allegorical scheme. While most readers will no doubt focus their attention on Book 1, these last two books reward careful attention. Honorius’ treatment of particular chant melodies highlights the often-overlooked interdependent nature of text and tune in plainsong, and in the final book, his typological understanding of sacred history, which positions Constantine as a new Solomon, will be of interest to contemporary students of medieval political theology.

For scholars, clergy, and interested laymen, this new edition of Honorius’ Jewel of the Soul should prove to be of great and abiding interest. The editors look forward to continuing their work on Honorius and hope to move forward to treat his commentaries on the Song of Songs and the Psalms. Should readers be in a position to support their work directly or indirectly in this time of economic uncertainty and decreasing academic opportunity, the editors would be most grateful to hear from you.

“In Praise of the Tridentine Mass” : Essays of Fr Spataro from Angelico Press

We are pleased to let our readers know that Angelico Press has just published Fr Roberto Spataro’s collection of essays “In Praise of the Tridentine Mass and of Latin, Language of the Church.”As described on their website, “In this new work, Roberto Spataro shows how Pope Francis’ call for ‘joyful evangelization’ finds a ready answer in an unlikely place: the august forms of the ancient Latin liturgy and the unchanging character of the Latin language. He shows how Latin, with its concise formulae and rigorous precision, has been the medium of Catholic—and indeed Western—intellectual life in the past and retains the power to bring unity and coherence to Catholicism in the future. With colorful images and copious examples, Spataro argues that the Latin Mass and its handmaid, the noble Latin language, which have served missionaries in the most varied and dire circumstances, might again be the most effective tools in the Church’s workshop for reevangelizing a fragmented world. In his foreword, Cardinal Burke notes that Latin is the key to an adequate knowledge of Roman Catholic history, liturgy, theology, and canon law. Also included is a detailed introduction by the renowned Latin educator and lexicographer Patrick Owens.”

Fr Spataro is a professor of ancient Greek Christian literature on the faculty of Christian and Classical Literature at the Pontifical Salesian University, and secretary of the Pontificia Academia Latinitatis. He has licentiate and doctoral degrees in dogmatic theology from the same university and has published in the fields of Patristics (especially Origen), Mariology, and Latin history, linguistics, pedagogy, and liturgy.

The translator of this collection is also one of NLM’s frequent guest contributors, Mr Zachary Thomas, who earlier this year shared two of the essays in this collection with us, “The Vetus Ordo Missae for a ‘Church Going Forth’” and “Liturgical Beauty and Joyful Evangelization.”

Liturgical Beauty and Joyful Evangelization

The following is a translation of a conference given by Fr. Roberto Spataro on September 30, 2017, in Mantua, Italy, at the Church of Ss Simon and Jude. The conference was entitled “La bellezza della liturgia si fa evangelizzazione (EV 28)”, given on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. It is included (along with another that has appeared on NLM) in a volume of Fr. Spataro’s essays soon to be published by Angelico Press. This translation by Zachary Thomas has also been published on Canticum Salomonis.

“Liturgical Beauty and Joyful Evangelization”

The experience of the Tridentine Mass

It is a great joy for me to speak this evening in the artistic setting of the church of Saints Simon and Jude, in a city so rich in history, culture, and faith. Mantua, a city that boasts so many illustrious citizens: Virgil, quel savio gentil, che tutto seppe (“That gentle sage, who knew all things.” Inferno, Canto VII); Sordello, the troubadour who inspired the Supreme Poet’s invective against Italy, di dolore ostello, nave senza nocchiere in gran tempesta, (“Inn of sorrows, ship without a helmsman in harsh seas.” Purgatorio, Canto VI, Mandelbaum translation) a sentiment which is true today more than ever; Vittorino da Feltre, Christian pedagogue; the Gonzaga princes, who gathered famous artists in their court, among them the composer Angelo Monteverdi. The fiftieth anniversary of this eminent musician is related to another event. In 2017 we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the publication of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum by which Pope Benedict XVI restored dignity to the venerable Tridentine liturgy, calling it the “extraordinary form” of the one Roman rite. Reflecting on the characteristics of this liturgical form, a passage from the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium comes to mind as a springboard for this conversation:

Evangelization with joy becomes beauty in the liturgy, as part of our daily concern to spread goodness. The Church evangelizes and is herself evangelized through the beauty of the liturgy, which is both a celebration of the task of evangelization and the source of her renewed self-giving.

I would like to develop my thoughts in two points.

1. The Tridentine liturgy is beautiful

Mass celebrated by the community of the FSSP’s German seminary at the Buxheim Charterhouse, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, 2016. (Reproduced by permission of the FSSP.)

We might say that there have been two complimentary conceptions of beauty in the history of Western civilization . The first considers beauty as the pulchrum, a proportion and harmony of parts, the perfection of form, integrity and elegance. It is an Apollonian conception found especially in the art of Greece. It appeals to reason and insists on the objectivity of the beautiful. The other conception, expounded especially by Kant, interprets beauty as a species, a sort of luminosity that breaks in upon an object, expands its substance, orienting it outside of itself and putting it in relation with the subject . The whole is in the fragment, as Urs von Balthasar would have said, that great Swiss theologian who, in his monumental work The Glory of the Lord, developed a convincing re-reading of theology in an aesthetic key. It is not by chance that there was a great harmony of thought and feeling between Hans Urs von Balthasar, theologian of beauty, and Joseph Ratzinger, pope of the liturgy and vindicator of the rights of the Latin Mass. They share a Dionysian conception of beauty that appeals to the senses and focuses on the subject. Both these aesthetic conceptions are in agreement that beauty is always very attractive. For this very reason, in Thomistic philosophy it is associated with the other transcendentals of being--unity, truth, and goodness--as part of the moral and spiritual fruition of the subject who experiences it. Now if we apply these categories to the Tridentine liturgy, we will easily grasp why it is beautiful.

The Tridentine Liturgy is harmonious. Like a perfect diptych, its first panel opens with the “Mass of the Catechumens,” and the second with the “Mass of the Faithful.” The second part is the more important since during it the Sacrifice is offered, and so it also lasts longer. The first part has its own interior coherence: it humbly leads us into the presence of God through the prayers at the foot of the altar, with their sublime penitential orientation. Out of this humility, which is the proper basis of the relationship between creature and Creator, sinner and Redeemer, springs the supplication of the Kyrie and the prayer of the Collect. At this point, we are ready to be instructed by the Wisdom of God that is revealed in salvation history and unfolds the truth that leads us to Heaven, for only the humble will “hear” and be glad, as the Psalm says. We find a copious sprinkling of Scripture passages and Psalm verses—a prayed Bible!—that make up the text of the Introit, Gradual, Tract, Alleluia, and then the pericopes of the Epistle and the Holy Gospel. In every place we find the proportion that is the intrinsic property of beauty: texts that, except on a few special occasions, are neither too long nor too many, as is the case with the biennial or triennial cycle of the Novus Ordo. Though it had the laudable intention of offering a semi-continuous reading of the entirety of Sacred Scripture, this cycle ends up “wasting” a great number of texts that the average faithful cannot remember and, sometimes, not even hear, not only because of the length and difficulty of certain passages, but also because they are read by lectors insufficiently prepared for their task, chosen in obedience to the equality called for by an erroneous understanding of actuosa participatio. Length and bad diction are signs of vulgarity, not beauty.

The Diptych of Jeanne of France, by the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden, 1452-70 (Musée Condé, Chantilly)

The Offertory begins. The sacred silence and the kneeling position of the faithful give the moment its peculiar solemnity. The prayers of the priest have an especially harmonious structure: the offering of the host and chalice, the personal apologies, the prayer to the Most Holy Trinity. As these ancient and venerable prayers are being offered, they are accompanied by the precise, delicate gestures typical of the Tridentine liturgy, and that give the rite its unmistakable pulchritudo. These gestures are just one example of the ordered variety that makes the liturgy Vetus Ordo so truly beautiful. There are also the bows toward the cross, the kissing of the cruets by the ministers and of the altar by the priest, and even the affectionate glances toward the sacred vessels and their contents. Christ, Our Lord, is loved because he is beautiful and is beautiful because he is loved. I could go on showing how the extraordinary form of the Roman rite is beautiful because it unfolds without excess or imperfection, with calm and proportion like a melodious chant. But we should move on to other considerations.

Let us try to apply the other conception of beauty to the Tridentine liturgy. The senses of one who assists at it are touched by the Sacred, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, to use the famous definition of Rudolf Otto. They are pervaded by a thrill of spiritual joy, to invoke the great bard of the divine beauty, Augustine of Hippo. The Sacred, i.e. the perception of God that follows his manifestation, excites both reverence and adoration, because he is tremendum; and love and attraction, because he is fascinans. Can anyone deny that reverence and adoration are especially present in the Tridentine liturgy, while unfortunately they are not well preserved in the Novus Ordo? Who would not agree with the claim that the priest—mark you, the priest, the sacrum dans and not the president of the assembly—ministers, and faithful, are all intimately drawn, (while each remaining in his proper place), toward the center of all and everything, the Crucified One enthroned on the altar, where the Sacrifice of the Cross is presented to everyone’s gaze, so that everyone may love it? This manifestation of the Sacred, transcendence and immanence, Heaven and earth, divine and human, is not merely the religious archetype identified by Otto, but the incarnation of the divine Word that wills to use the Sacred to reveal his Beauty in a human form: the divine person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has united human nature to his divine nature, and thus rendered his divinity accessible to human senses. This logic of the incarnation extends to the sacred liturgy because—as the Fathers of the Church taught and the Catechism of the Catholic Church has recalled in a timely manner—quod redemptoris nostri conspicuum fuit, in sacramenta transivit. (“what was visible in our Savior has passed over into his mysteries”: CCC 1115, citing Pope St Leo I, Sermon 74, 2). Beauty strikes the senses, and the Tridentine liturgy strongly affirms the aesthetic dimension.

Ss Paul Miki and Companions

In the Latin Mass, our view is directed to a triple focal point: the crucifix, the altar and what takes place there, and the tabernacle. Our attention is seized by the fairest among the children of men: “they will look upon the one whom they have pierced” (John 19:37). Our eyes linger, feasting on the beauty of the colors of the walls, their costly ornament. We follow the ministers’ sacred dance, sober and constrained to careful, rhythmic movements, and from time to time our eyes wander to the decoration of the Temple, which recounts, in various styles, the story of the salvation recalled in each holy Mass. We hear words uttered in a raised voice, in a language different from our ordinary language, because it is reserved for dialogue with God, like a code that heightens understanding and connection between those who adopt it, a sort of familial register sons use to address their Father. It is a beautiful language, as only Latin can be, with its figures of sound and word, with a compact but still mobile construction that comes from its unmistakable literary style. Further, we hear the great silence that shrouds the priestly prayers, above all the Canon Missae, because the Mystery of God who pours out his blood for me, a sinner, because he loves me and saves me, can only be uttered submissa voce. Like all great and sublime things, he loves silence, which invites everyone to recollection and earnest prayer. We are charmed by the celestial charms of the sacred music, the sound of the organ, the Gregorian chant that floats mystically on high. We smell the delicious perfume of the incense that rises to Heaven just like our prayer, and the odor of the candles, symbols of the hearts that pine with longing for Heaven. All this proclaims a hope that the world does not know, and the Church of the last few years, not comprehending the grandeur of the Vetus Ordo, seems to have forgotten. Immersed in secular matters, and entranced by transient fashions, she has become like chaff scattered in the wind.

The sense of touch is also involved: kneeling at various points in the Holy Mass permits the faithful to touch the earth, and from this position to render adoration, thanksgiving, supplication, and impetration. The sense of touch is denied contact with the eucharistic species because the consecrated Host is received directly on the tongue, an eloquent gesture that expresses all the sanctity of the Sacrament received with faith. Only the priest is permitted to touch the Body and Blood of Christ, and only with extreme delicacy, as if caressing it. In fact, on the day of his priestly ordination, his hands were anointed with the chrism, a biblical-liturgical sign of the Holy Spirit, the divine Person who through the epiclesis performs that miracle of miracles, the consecration. “Taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Psalm 33:9), the Psalmist exclaims. The Vetus Ordo liturgy frequently repeats this verse to dispose the faithful to partake of the Body and Blood of Christ with a hunger at once spiritual and material, provided they are suitably disposed to do so.

To sum up, dear friends, we must find, perceive, and enjoy the beauty of the One who has been pierced. This is a “synaesthetic” experience that affirms sensual richness—for the sacraments are propter homines (“for us”), as Thomas Aquinas would say—so that the manifestation of the All in the fragment, of God in the space and time of the unbloody renewal of the sacrifice hic et nunc, may irradiate the Divine Mystery that is in itself the revelation of beauty. Confronted with this liturgy that is so potently theocentric and therefore respectful of all anthropological structures, we cannot help but remark, with a note of sadness, that the Novus Ordo is more impoverished, more rational, more prolix, even to the point that it becomes irritatingly and insufferably wordy in the hands of certain showman priests and ministers. A liturgy celebrated in this way is relentlessly narcissistic and vulgar.

Permit me to conclude this point about the beauty of the old liturgy with a Marian reflection. Our Lady, Tota Pulchra, is the creature in whom all beauty, insofar as it is pulchritudo and speciositas, is gathered to a Mass. The Tridentine liturgy cannot help but invoke her in the heart of the Mass: in the prayer that offers the sacrifice to the Most Holy Trinity, and in the Communicantes of the Canon. An irrepressible longing for Heaven rises from the thought of the Holy Virgin, who descends more beautiful than the dawn (Cant. 6, 9) to soften the pains of this life, where we can always count on her powerful patronage.

The Christ Child and Virgin Mary in the Company of the Saints, by Duccio di Buoninsegna, the central front panel of the dismembered altarpiece of Siena Cathedral known as the Maestà, 1311, now located in the cathedral Museum. (Public domain image from Wikipedia.)

2. The Beauty of the Tridentine Liturgy and Evangelization

Recall the opening citation from Evangelii Gaudium, which pointed out the relationship between the via pulchritudinis of the liturgy and the two-fold evangelical movement of the Church. The Church first allows herself to be evangelized so that she can then evangelize the world. Let us explicate this point. More than ever, the Church today needs to be oriented to Christ, her Head, her Spouse, her Founder. Christ is her Gospel, the good news that brings joy to her youth and fills her with authentic joy and hope. Unfortunately in the past few years, with a rapidity that should raise serious questions and concern, the Church has become engrossed with issues of a sociological nature, all affecting more or less the Church’s moral teaching. Many dubious proposals have been made by pastors, even those who bear serious ecclesial responsibilities, that are frankly incompatible with Gospel. The Church feels the need to be re-evangelized and led back to Christ. Pope Benedict XVI made extraordinary efforts in this direction, and his trilogy on Jesus of Nazareth is an expression of a Christocentrism founded on Scripture and the sound doctrine of Tradition. He always wanted to promote a reform of the liturgy, and this program found a great expression in Summorum Pontificum.

The Tridentine Mass is truly evangelical because it is Christocentric. Just think of its conclusion: the proclamation of the prologue of the Gospel of John. It is like a hinge joining the liturgy to the daily life to which we are about to return. It proclaims the heart of the Gospel, the Mystery of the incarnation, with the beauty we have been speaking of: the hieratic movement of the priest toward the Gospel side, the reading, the genuflection at the words et Verbum caro factum est, and during the Sung Mass, the musical piece performed by the schola cantorum. The Church is evangelized during the celebration of the Tridentine Mass because, as the fourth-century Father of the Church and author of very valuable liturgical-mystagogical catecheses, Cyril of Jerusalem, said, the teachings of Sacred Scripture must be gathered into a summary, the regula fidei (“the rule of faith”), the Creed of the catechism. But the Tridentine Mass itself is a catechism in action, tying us intimately to the Gospel of Christ. “What are the two principal mysteries of the Faith?” asked the unsurpassable Catechism of St Pius X. The Mass tells us. We profess our faith in God’s unity and trinity when we turn to the three divine Persons at the beginning of the Mass in the nine-fold Kyrie eleison, three times invoking the Father, three times Christ, and three times the Spirit. We adore their majesty when we sing the Gloria. We implore them to accept our offering at the Offertory. We express our desire for them to accept the sacrifice in the prayer just before the final blessing. As for the mystery of our Lord’s incarnation, passion, and death: how many signs of the cross does the priest trace out, especially during the Canon? The whole ancient liturgy and all of its texts are steeped in the theology of the Fathers of the Church, rather than the ideas of the experts and specialists of the twentieth century, and its rites are a compendium of the Holy Gospel, the Church’s real treasure that has been translated into doctrine and summarized in the Catechism.

We could continue to multiply examples of how the Tridentine Mass is a catechism for everyone, including faithful evangelizers and non-believers in need of evangelization. The plan of salvation history—creation, sin, incarnation, redemption, grace, glory, and eternal life—is taken up and synthesized in the great prayers of the Church. For instance, think of the words that the priest says as he pours the water into the chalice:

Deus qui humanae substantiae dignitatem mirabiliter condidisti [creation] et mirabilius reformasti [redemption], da nobis per huius aquae et vini mysterium eius divinitatis esse consortes [divinization and the life of grace], qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps [incarnation]. ~ O God, who did wonderfully create human nature, and more wonderfully still restore it, grant us through the Mystery of this water and wine, that we may be made partakers of His divinity, who deigned to become a partaker in our humanity.

The Confiteor in the Carthusian Mass

Now take the Confiteor. The ritual gestures surrounding it reinvoke the whole drama of sin with great clarity and poignancy, as we kneel, beat our chests, recite the prayer, and await the priest’s absolution so sadly abolished in the Novus Ordo: Indulgentiam, absolutionem, et remissionem peccatorum vestroum tribuat vobis omnipotens et misericors Dominus. In the Roman Canon, the priest asks the Father for the grace to pass the final judgment, the judgment that should be our only concern, though a serene one for Mary is praying for us: ab aeterna damnatione nos eripi et in electorum tuorum iubeas grege numerari.

Once she has been evangelized, the Church is ready to evangelize. The Tridentine Mass furnishes the grace that makes her disciples into zealous apostles, and her faithful into courageous missionaries. Is this not the Mass that inspired generation upon generation of our forefathers to spread the Gospel to faraway lands, often in the midst of grave dangers? When we read the chronicles of the missionary expeditions of the Jesuits and Franciscans in Asia and Latin America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we are surprised and moved by how concerned they were to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass in this liturgical form that casts itself completely upon God as the giver of all things, especially the grace to make efforts of evangelization fruitful.

The usus antiquior is an effective evangelizer for another reason: it speaks to the heart of those who have lost the faith or never had it. For example, today in our western society that denies its Christian roots, some people, thirsting for recollection and interior peace, turn to oriental philosophies that, despite whatever good is in them, leave the soul in its existential loneliness. They have no God to love them, to feel loved, to love. The silence and sacrality of the Tridentine Mass is a discovery that often becomes the first step toward the faith. Others, especially the young, find our “pastoral initiatives” banal, if not outright heterodox! They are looking for solid spiritual food. The Tridentine Mass offers them this substantial nourishment. Its theology coincides completely with the fides quae (“what is believed”); here the lex credendi is the lex orandi. The simple, who are the beloved of God, intuitively recognize that something very great is taking place in the Tridentine Mass, where the priests speaks with God and all are on their knees before him. The sacred mysteries teach and evangelize them too. Every kind of person feels the fascination of the splendor of this Mass that, even when offered in a small place or with modest means, is always solemn and majestic because it is truly beautiful, beautiful with a beauty mediated through vestments, words, gestures, but founded in God the supremely beautiful. To be at this Mass is to set out on a Platonic itinerarium pulchritudinis in Deum, which begins from material signs and ascends in steps up to Reality itself. It gazes upon creation in order to rise to the creator. The experience was described by Augustine, and I will close our conversation with his words:

Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air, amply spread around everywhere, question the beauty of the sky, question the serried ranks of the stars, question the sun making the day glorious with its bright beams, question the moon tempering the darkness of the following night with its shining rays, question the animals that move in the waters, that amble about on dry land, that fly in the air; their souls hidden, their bodies evident; the visible bodies needing to be controlled, the invisible souls controlling them; question all these things. They all answer you, ‘Here we are, look; we are beautiful.’ Their beauty is their confession. Who made these beautiful changeable things, if not unchanging Beauty? (St Augustine, Sermon 241. Translation slightly modified from the Vatican website.)

The Creation, and God Introducing Adam to Eve, by Jean Fouquet, ca. 1470

Zachary Thomas Reviews “Tradition and Sanity” by Peter Kwasniewski

NLM is pleased to present the following review of our contributor Peter Kwasniewski’s latest book, by one of our favorite guest contributors, Zachary Thomas.

Finding a Pearl of Great Price

For the millennial generation, the discovery of the old Mass has been like finding a pearl of great price, inexplicably boxed away in the attic. In the old Mass, so many of us have found, for the first time, the basis for a coherent life of religious practice, an integral Catholicism of mind, body, and spirit—a seamless lex orandi, lex credendi, lex agendi. The Mass was a portal to the sources of theology, to the Fathers, to Latin as a living language, to the sacred arts, and most of all to authentic prayer.

In this journey of rediscovery, already yielding its first fruits, Kwasniewski has been a sort of Virgil to us. He has led us with wit and wisdom through a fraught Church-scape in which, paradoxically, we have been compelled to argue for our right to practice the Catholic Faith whole and intact, just as it was passed down to our grandparents. In so doing, Catholics everywhere have contributed to actualizing Ratzinger’s hermeneutic of continuity, knitting back Catholic thought and piety in the turbulent aftermath of the last Council.

Kwasniewski’s new book Tradition and Sanity: Conversations & Dialogues of a Postconciliar Exile (Brooklyn: Angelico Press, 2018) differs from his earlier books in two major ways. The first is the genre of the contents. Instead of essays, we find three types of chapters: interviews given to various people over the past several years (reminding one in this respect of Ratzinger, whose interview books have always been favorites); then, delightful fictional dialogues, sometimes between monks distressed about church news and sometimes between laymen at the coffee hour after Mass; and finally, the transcript of a wide-ranging conversation held in Vienna on April 2, 2017, “Gnosticism, Liturgical Change, and Catholic Life,” featuring Mr Wolfram Schrems, Dr Thomas Stark, Dr Kwasniewski, and Pater Edmund Waldstein O. Cist. As a result, the book feels both less formal and more gritty: less formal than a polished essay due to the dialogical format, more gritty because of the highly current, concrete questions presented to Kwasniewski or hashed out between real or imaginary interlocutors.

While Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis (2014), Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness (2017), and Tradition and Sanity (2018) have in common a focus on the sacred liturgy, they differ in regard to how much they venture into controversial non-liturgical territory as well. The first two books seldom step outside the sanctuary, as it were; the new one, in contrast, repeatedly tackles contemporary Church problems: Pope Francis and the papacy, the synods on marriage and the family, the death penalty, and the “new evangelization.” Kwasniewski also speaks here at greater length about the history and role of church choirs, the theology of sacred music, and the problem of vernacular translations. The chapters engaging the role of the pope and the limits of the Petrine office, especially in its obligations to ecclesiastical tradition and to the sacred liturgy, are some of the most helpful in our present crisis. The author’s critique of hyperpapalism skewers this simulacrum of Catholicism.

Kwasniewski follows in a line of Anglophone forebears—Buckley, Waugh, Hildebrand, Davies, and other active lay apologists—who have had to arm themselves against the wolves, as the clergy threw down their staves and dismantled the fold. This unlikely band of intra-ecclesial apologists have in Dr. Kwasniewski perhaps their most articulate, learned, and effective leader to date. A respected scholar and writer, composer and choir director, husband and father, and Benedictine oblate, Kwasniewski brings his erudition and life experience to the service of articulating the appeal of traditional Catholic faith and practice in the 20th century. His words are a clarion call for Catholics everywhere to recover their spiritual and cultural heritage.

If I had to identify two guiding ideas among the many found in Kwasniewski’s work, the first would be that Catholic Orthodoxy does not consist in propositions alone, but in an integral reception of the Catholic faith in all its aspects: dogma, fasting, religious life, devotions, sacred art, etc. Orthodoxy is simultaneously right worship and right belief. For Kwasniewski, the supernatural virtue of faith is acquired and passed down in the mode of tradition, through sacred practices that dispose us to the reception of supernatural virtue. And tradition, far from being a quaint abstraction, is most powerfully expressed in concrete liturgical rites, which sum up and communicate the whole faith, because they contain Christ Himself, set within a whole drama of sacred signs and actions pointing mind and heart toward His presence.

Secondly, if the Eucharist is the “font and apex” of the Church’s life, then in one sense the Church’s only mission is to conform herself ever more deeply to the sacrifice of the Cross, to make her life an ever more perfect icon of Christ’s total oblation. In this light, the Church’s life is a continuous Liturgical Movement, an unceasing vocation to invite the world into a conscious and active participation in worship around the altar of sacrifice, and to make that sacrifice an ever more perfect expression of the Eternal High Priest’s heavenly worship. This makes the recovery of a truly sacrificial form in the Roman liturgy paramount for the renewal of Her life.

But the significance of Kwasniewski’s work extends beyond the ad intra reform of Christian life. He has also skillfully articulated why the Catholic religion, in its more classic expressions, meets the urgent needs of the people of our times: the solid and unchanging ritual forms of the Latin liturgy, its lofty universalism, the perennially appealing beauty of Gothic and Baroque architecture, and sacred music’s moving expression of man’s deepest longings, are all means for drawing people of today—as they drew people of yesterday—into the Church’s bosom.

Pastors and laymen alike have found in Kwasniewski’s writings a treasure trove of insight and argument for the recovery of tradition. For many, he points the way forward out of our institutional malaise. I therefore highly recommend his new book, which completes a handy trio with Resurgent and Noble Beauty. One could describe the chapters of Tradition and Sanity as snapshots of the hopeful process of healing taking place in the Latin Church, now that the ruptures of the twentieth century are being slowly closed and believers are slowly returning to the sources of faith.

Tradition and Sanity: Conversations & Dialogues of a Postconciliar Exile. Brooklyn: Angelico Press, 2018. 232 pages. Hardcover $26.00 (link). Paperback $17.95 (link).

The Vetus Ordo Missae for a “Church Going Forth”

In late March, Angelico Press will be coming out with a translation of selected speeches by Fr. Roberto Spataro, SDB, a professor at the Pontifical Salesian University and the Secretary of the Pontifical Institute for Higher Latin Studies. The tentative title of the volume is In Praise of the Tridentine Mass and of Latin, the Language of the Church. The volume will include an introduction by Dr. Patrick Owens, a widely respected Latinist, on the history of spoken Latin, and a preface by Cardinal Burke, who recommends the work in these words:

“Dom Roberto Spataro is a Salesian father, who bases his thinking on the sound pastoral praxis of the Church, which is always firmly rooted in study and respect for doctrine, as well as on his own magisterial knowledge of the Latin language. In these brief pages, he offers us words full of pastoral charity, love for souls, and love for the Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ.

Dom Spataro does not speak about the Usus Antiquior or the Vetus Ordo of the Mass as a historical reality to be recovered, but as a living sacramental vehicle through which Christ encounters us, trains us, and fills us with the grace of the Holy Spirit. All the texts in this collection are filled with a genuine pastoral sensibility. They show us the heart of a faithful Salesian priest, a true son of St. John Bosco, and a scholar inspired by profound love for the living Church, and for the many souls that thirst to know, love and serve Christ, the one Savior of the world.” (Translation by Zachary Thomas.)

The Road to Emmaus, by Fritz von Uhde, 1891

Honored Sir, distinguished gentlemen, dear friends,

I am honored to have received an invitation to this gathering. Our meeting is held in Lecce—one of the capitals of art and culture of southern Italy, the seat of a vivacious coetus Summorum Pontificum, where the national coordinator Dr. Capoccia is based. We owe the splendid pilgrimage days of October 2014—in the presence of the grandi cardinali so esteemed by the great Pope Emeritus—to his initiative. This kind of gathering helps us to reflect on the spiritual riches of the Vetus Ordo Missae (VO Missae), that authentic thesaurus of doctrine and piety that Benedict XVI has restored to the Church intact in order for it to accomplish its mission in history: to give glory to God and to be an instrument of grace for the salvation of souls.

The reflections I intend to share are based on a concern of which, I am sure, none of us is unaware. It is an objection on the part of those who look with little sympathy on the vetus ordo, a challenge we could formulate in this way: the Extraordinary Form of the Roman liturgy is an anachronism, divorced from the Church’s current life and needs as indicated by the pontificate of Francis, who is urging the Church to make a bold pastoral turn toward the peripheries of the world, without hesitation or retreat. The world’s poverty calls for options very different from that of an ancient ritualism that is incomprehensible to modern sensibilities. Some go even further in their evaluation of the Tridentine liturgy, saying that there is an insurmountable distance between the magisterium of the current Pope and the groups who promote the Mass in Latin. In order to sentire cum ecclesia (think with the Church), it is necessary, therefore, to renounce the liturgia antiquior.

I see the matter differently. I maintain, in fact, that the Tridentine Mass offers a resource for realizing the program that the Supreme Pontiff has espoused in the most relevant and authoritative document of his magisterium to date, the apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (EG), summed up in the already well-known expression “a Church that goes forth.”

What he means by “a Church that goes forth” is illustrated in n. 24 of EG: “The Church which “goes forth” is a community of missionary disciples who take the first step, who are involved and supportive, who bear fruit and rejoice.”

We should read this citation alongside another, drawn from the passage immediately preceding. Here Francis explains that the actions of these disciples, which constitute the movement of the Church going forth, is nothing other than what we call evangelization and mission. We have to take the initiative, involve ourselves, accompany, bear fruit, and rejoice because there is a content to transmit the Gospel!

“Evangelization obeys the missionary mandate of Jesus: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.’ Today in this ‘Go’ of Jesus are present all the scenarios and challenges of the evangelical mission of the Church, and we are all called to this new missionary ‘going forth.’”

A Church that “goes forth” means, therefore, nothing more or less than a missionary Church that evangelizes people and their cultures, a task that must be undertaken in the diverse situations and numerous challenges of the world today.

The Latin Mass is certainly part of this ecclesiology of “going forth,” and this for three reasons:

1) Above all for a doctrinal reason. Before testifying, before accompanying, before celebrating, the community of disciples who “go forth” and reach the existential peripheries do not arrive empty-handed. They pass on their most precious treasure to the men and women they encounter, their own reason for existence: their faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. The Supreme Pontiff has reminded us of this, citing the words of the missionary mandate that is valid for all times: Teach and observe all that I have commanded you.

My dear friends, my claim is that the VO Missae is a summarium (summary) of the teachings and commandments of our Lord.

The First Mass celebrated in Brazil, by Victor Meirelles, 1860

“What are the two principal mysteries of the faith?” asked the timeless catechism of St. Pius X. “The unity and trinity of God, the Incarnation, Passion, and death of Jesus Christ.

Using a ritual language composed of gestures and speech, the VO Missae is a dialogue going out from the Holy Trinity and returning to the Most Holy Trinity. Take one example. In the priestly prayers, the priest twice addresses himself directly to the Holy Trinity: first, at the conclusion of the Offertory when he implores the three Divine Persons to gather the offering presented in memory of the Passion and glorification of Jesus Christ and in honor of His Mother and the saints: Suscipe, Sancta Trinitas, hanc oblationem . . . At the end of Mass, the priest begs the Holy Trinity to accept the offering that the Son has renewed. And how could the Three Divine Persons refuse the propitiatory gift of Jesus Christ: Placeat tibi, Sancta Trinitas, hoc obsequium servitutis meae . . . ? Unfortunately, these two prayers have disappeared in the Novus Ordo (NO), and what’s more, in the Ordinary of the Mass the Most Holy Trinity is never mentioned once. This is rather curious, to say the least.

The second principal mystery of the Faith, the Incarnation, is constantly recalled in the celebration of the Extraordinary Form. What do the faithful who assist at this Mass see? Physically, they see a crucifix depicting the second Person of the Holy Trinity, the one who became Incarnate and suffered for our salvation. In this way, the lex credendi penetrates with luminous simplicity into the lex orandi. The vetus ordo Missae presents, in all their integrity and essential nature, the divine teachings that together form the content of the evangelical mission of the Church “going forth.”

The Mass of St John of Matha, by Juan Carreño de Miranda, 1666

We could multiply examples to show how the Tridentine Mass, in se et per se, is a sort of catechism for everyone, suited for evangelizing both believers and non-believers alike. We see, for instance, that the framework of salvation history—creation, sin, incarnation, redemption, grace, glory, and eternal life—is assumed into the prayers in words that recall the teaching, not of a post-conciliar liturgical expert (however great), but of the Fathers of the Church, of great teachers like St. Leo the Great. For example, there are the words the priest pronounces at the moment of the infusion of the water into the chalice: Deus qui humanae substantiae dignitatem mirabiliter condidisti [creation] et mirabilius reformasti [redemption], da nobis per huius aquae et vini mysterium eius divinitatis esse consortes [divinization or the life of grace] qui humanitatis nostrae fieri dignatus est particeps [incarnation].

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The Velatio Nuptialis: An Ancient (and Forgotten) Part of the Latin Marriage Rite

This article was written by Henri de Villiers for the blog of the Schola Sainte-Cécile. We are pleased and grateful to translate and publish it here with the author’s permission, and that of the translator, Zachary Thomas. It has also been published on Canticum Salomonis.

Until around 1999, our parish of Saint-Eugène in Paris was one of the few in France to keep up a custom that goes back to the first centuries of the Church. At Nuptial Masses, [1] two high-ranking clerics or two witnesses held a large white veil [2] over the kneeling couple during the nuptial blessing given by the priest between the Pater and the Kiss of Peace.

In France, the traditional name for this veil is the poêle. The word comes from the Latin pallium, which means a rectangular piece of fabric. [3]

The same word poêle was also used in France to designate the canopy for the Corpus Christi procession and for the funeral pall, and for the canopies used for solemn receptions of a bishop or powerful prince. It lives on in the popular expression “Tenir les cordons du poêle” (“Hold the ends of the veil”) that refers to someone enjoying an honorary position. Jean-Jacques Dortous de Mairan, in his encomium for Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury, points out that it was in virtue of his position as chaplain to the King that he had the privilege of holding the poêle at the wedding of the Duke of Orléans in 1692.

Far from being a simple folk custom proper to certain regions of France, the poêle for the nuptial blessing goes back to the earliest centuries, where it was a fundamental element of Christian marriage. Required by the Fathers of the Church, the origin of this rite helps us to understand the arrangements for marriage in the first Christian centuries in the West.

The velatio nuptialis in the age of the Church Fathers: a Confirmation for the Church and by the Church of the Sacrament of Marriage

From the period of the catacombs until the Early Middle Ages, the essential part of the rites of the sacrament of Christian marriage were celebrated in private and took place in the home. The exchange of vows was from the beginning considered the fundamental element, a consent manifested by an exchange of symbolic gifts (such as the ring, but also a token piece of money.)

Gradually these domestic rites began to be held in the church (and at first in front of the church building), and there is a faint reminder of this in the traditional marriage rite (still followed in the 1962 books): the sacrament is celebrated before the Mass, which is later offered for the husband and wife already married. But originally the spouses gave themselves the sacrament of marriage in their own house by the exchange of consent.

Nevertheless, the spouses then had, in a manner of speaking, to ratify this sacrament they had given themselves by receiving a solemn blessing at the church during a special Mass celebrated for their intention. This solemn, public confirmation of the sacrament given in private appears to have been well-established at least since the 4th century [4] and took the form of a ceremony performed before the priest in the church: the velatio nuptialis, or nuptial veiling.

During a Mass celebrated for the husband and wife (a Mass that has had proper prayers and texts since the 4th century), the couple is covered with a veil while the priest pronounces over them the special nuptial blessing. This blessing comes between the end of the canon and the Communion. [5] The placement of this blessing was no accident: it preceded the ancient blessing that was given by the bishop to all the faithful before Communion. [6]

Contrary to what certain liturgists in the 20th century believed, the veil in question was not the veil that the bride wore on the marriage day (at that time every Christian women wore one, whether she was married or not), but rather a large veil stretched over the couple precisely as the title of the blessing in the Gregorian Sacramentary indicates: Oratio ad sponsas velandas.

St. Ambrose speaks in clear terms about this public ratification in the church (and before the Church) of the sacrament that the spouses had given themselves in private. “It is fitting that the marriage be sanctified by the imposition of the veil and the blessing of the priest.” [7]

In 380, in a letter to Archbishop Himerius of Tarragona, Pope Siricius mentions the nuptial blessing given under the veil. “De conjugali velatione requisisti, si desponsatam alii puellam alter in matrimonium possit accipere. (You inquired about the conjugal veiling, whether a man make take a girl who has been betrothed to another to wife.)”

The question that worries Himerius and Pope Siricius’s subsequent response are very obscure: he wanted to know whether it was possible to give a second nuptial blessing under the veil. The Pope refused. But it is telling to see that the veiling of the spouses is a synonym for marriage in canonical questions about this sacrament from this time onward.

The same Pope Siricius wrote in 390 to many bishops and mentions the velatio nuptialis in passing. “Nos sane nuptiarum vota non aspernantes accepimus, quibus velamine intersumus. (We certainly receive, and do not disdain the vows of marriage, in which we have been present for the veiling. - Ep. 7, PL 13, 117).

Several more passages in the Latin Church Fathers from the 4th to 6th centuries indicate a common point of agreement: in the West the veiling of the spouse is the only public aspect of the ceremony of Christian marriage. [8]

The wide attestation of this rite in the 4th century could lead us to think that the ceremony dates from before the Peace of Constantine. A text of Tertullian (ca. 150 - ca. 220) might also indicate that the nuptial blessing was practiced in Christian Africa in the 3rd century during the sacrifice of the Mass. “This union that the Church ratifies, that the sacrifice confirms, that the blessing consecrates, and that the angels celebrate, and that gladdens the Father.” (Ad Uxorem, II, 8, 6). In any case this citation shows that the marriage celebrated by the spouses in private is confirmed by the subsequent celebration of the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

In 403, St Paulinus of Nola composed a very beautiful poem on marriage, an epithalamion written for the occasion of the wedding of the lector Julian (future bishop of Eclanum), son of the bishop of Benevento, to the daughter of the bishop of Capua. Paulinus describes the bishop of Benevento leading the couple to the altar, where the bishop of Capua gives them his nuptial blessing, who are both covered by the same veil. “Ille jugans capita amborum sub pace jugali, / Velat eos dextra, quos prece sanctificat” (He, joining both their heads under the peace of the marriage bond, veils with his right hand those whom the prayer sanctifies. Poem XXV, v. 226-227).

In the most ancient Roman liturgical books we find not only the text of this velatio nuptialis, but also the other texts for the Mass celebrated for the husband and wife. The Leonine and Gelesian Sacramentaries even include a special preface and Hanc igitur. In the Leonine Sacramentary, the most ancient witness of the Latin liturgy, the Mass is entitled Incipit velatio nuptialis. From the Gelesian Sacramentary, we know that this Mass for the spouses was celebrated a second time thirty days later, and on the day of their anniversary.

The Leonine text of the nuptial blessing is repeated in the Gelasian. It is notable that the text asks for God’s blessing only over the wife, even though it is evident that the two spouses are under the same veil. Here is what the Blessed Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster, archbishop of Milan, wrote about this:

“A further remark seems called for in this connection. The various formulas for the nuptial blessing among the Latins have reference to the woman, rather than to the nuptial pair in common. According to the Leonine Sacramentary, it is for her that the holy sacrifice is offered: hanc igitur oblationem famulae tuae N. quam tibi offerimus pro famula tua N. (this sacrifice, of Thy handmaid N., which we offer to Thee for Thy handmaid N.; so also does the velatio conjugalis, together with its special blessing before the Fraction of the Host, refer exclusively to the bride: Sit amabilis ut Rachael viro, sapiens ut Rebecca, longaeva et fidelis ut Sara, etc. (May she be for her husband as lovely as Rachel, as wise as Rebecca, as long-lived and faithful as Sarah, etc.)

Considering the mentality of the ancients with regard to the inferior status of women, the Church displays an admirable wisdom here; in her liturgical formulas she takes the weaker part under her protection, raising her from the degrading condition to which paganism had reduced her, ennobling her to the point that, in Christian chivalry, she has become almost a cultic symbol (Liber Sacramentorum).”

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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.”