A Calendar Wheel in Lyon Cathedral

A friend of mine recently sent me this picture of a calendar wheel, which is part of an astronomical clock in the cathedral of St John the Baptist in Lyon, France. (The clock was built in 1661 to replace earlier one destroyed by the Huguenots in 1562; it has been restored several times.) The outer part is the current liturgical calendar, printed on a card that is supposed to rotate a little bit clockwise every day; on the left side of the frame, there is a metal hand hand with a finger that points to the current date (not shown here). On the inner part, within the metal grill, are indicated the calendar year, the number of Sundays after Epiphany, the dates of Septuagesima (still useful even in the post-Conciliar Rite for the dating of Carnival), Ash Wednesday, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost and Corpus Christi, then the number of Sundays after Pentecost, the date of the First Sunday of Advent, the dominical letter, the golden number, the epact, the indiction, and the letter of the martyrology. The rotatable card currently in place is good until 2089.

Above it is this astrolabe, which indicates the position of the Earth, sun and moon, and various stars.

Image from Wikimedia Commons by Chris 73, CC BY-SA 3.0 

The complete structure; the calendar wheel is on the lower part of the front. 

Image from Wikimedia Commons by Jean-Christophe BENOIST, CC BY 4.0

Kicking St Irenaeus Around

June 28 is traditionally the feast day of Pope St Leo II, who died on that day in 683, after a reign of less than 11 months. The Liber Pontificalis records that on the previous day he celebrated the ordination of nine priests, three deacons, and twenty-three bishops; it is not said that it was the ordination ceremony that killed him, but the heat of Rome in June and the inevitable length of such a ceremony make this seem likely more than coincidence. The principal achievement of his pontificate was the confirmation of the acts of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, the third of Constantinople, which condemned the Monothelite heresy; being fluent in Greek as well as Latin, he personally made the official Latin translation of the council’s acts. It is one of the oddities of hagiography that his predecessor St Agatho, in whose reign the council was held, and whose intervention (through his legates) in its deliberations was acclaimed with the words “Peter has spoken through Agatho!”, has never been honored with a general feast day in the West, but is kept on the Byzantine Calendar. Leo, on the other, was a Sicilian, and therefore born as a subject of the Byzantine Empire, but is not liturgically honored in the East.

In this altar in St Peter’s Basilica are kept the relics of three Sainted Popes named Leo, the Second (682-3), the Third (795-816) and the Fourth (847-55). The altar of Pope St Leo I (440-61) is right next to it, and Pope Leo XII (1823-29) is buried in the floor between them.

Even older than the feast of Pope Leo is the vigil of Ss Peter and Paul. The vigils of the Saints originally consisted solely of a Mass, penitential in character, celebrated after None in violet vestments, without a Gloria, Alleluia or Creed; prior to the Tridentine reform, they had no presence in the Office in the Use of Rome. (Back when there were plenty of canonical and monastic churches, such foundations would have celebrated two Masses in choir, that of St Leo after Terce, and that of the vigil after None, just as was done with the feasts of Saints which occur in Lent.) In the Breviary of St Pius V, vigils were extended to the Office, following a custom of medieval German Uses, an unusual example of change in an otherwise very conservative reform. At Matins, a homily on the day’s Gospel is read, and the prayer of the vigil Mass is said at the Hours; everything else is done as on the feria until Vespers, which are the First Vespers of the feast. However, the vigil of Ss Peter and Paul, because it coincides with St Leo, was reduced in the Office to one lesson at Matins (the ninth) and a commemoration at Lauds.

At Lyon, the ancient primatial see of Gaul, the day was kept as the feast of St Irenaeus, and the vigil as a commemoration. In his book On Illustrious Men, St Jerome mentions the famous martyrdom of St Pothinus, who was Irenaeus’ predecessor in the See of Lyon, but says nothing about the latter’s death, the date and circumstances of which are unknown; it is a rather later tradition that he died a martyr. It may very well be that his feast found its way to the vigil of Ss Peter and Paul at Lyon because of the famous passage in his book Against the Heresies (3.3.2) in which he attests to the primacy of the Roman See as follows. “For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority – that is, the faithful everywhere – inasmuch as the Apostolic Tradition has been preserved continuously by those who are everywhere.” In 1921, Pope Benedict XV extended his feast to the general Calendar on his traditional Lyonese date, moving Pope Leo II to July 3rd, the next free day on the calendar, and the day of his burial according to the Liber Pontificalis.

The crypt of the church of St Irenaeus at Lyon. In 1562, the church was severely damaged by the Huguenots, who also destroyed the Saint’s relics, and played a game of soccer with his skull. After more destruction in the revolution, it was rebuilt in 1824, and the crypt renovated in 1863. Despite these vicissitudes, the crypt may still be regarded as one of the oldest religious buildings in France; relics of certain local martyrs were venerated there already in the later part of the 5th century. The church was originally dedicated to St John the Baptist. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Xavier Caré.)

In the Breviary Reform of 1960, St Irenaeus was moved to July 3rd, and Pope Leo II suppressed, in order to free June 28th up entirely for the Mass and Office of the vigil of Ss Peter and Paul. This was fundamentally a rather odd thing to do, since so many of the vigils then on the general Calendar, (including all those of the other Apostles, and, inexcusably, those of the Epiphany and All Saints) were abolished by the same reform. Less than a decade later, however, with the promulgation of the Novus Ordo, vigils in the classic Roman sense, penitential days of preparation for the major feasts, were simply abolished altogether, “freeing” June 28th from the one observance which had hitherto been absolutely universal on that date, the vigil of Ss Peter and Paul. St Irenaeus was therefore moved back to that date, freeing July 3rd for the transfer of the Apostle St Thomas from his historical Roman date, December 21st, to the date on which the Syrian church commemorates the transfer of his relics from India to Edessa.

This may seem to be just another case of what Fr Hunwicke once described as the freezing in pack ice of the Roman calendar, which keeps Irenaeus on a day which he held for ten years, while the post-Conciliar Rite has restored him to his historical Lyonese date. It should be noted, however, that Lyon itself moved his feast 4 times. After it had been kept on June 28th for centuries, Archbishop Camille de Neufville de Villeroy (1654-93) formally raised St Irenaeus to the title of Patron of the archdiocese, and moved his feast to November 23rd, displacing the very ancient feast of Pope St Clement. Patronal feasts were holy days of obligation in the Ancien Régime, and since adding another holiday to the end of June, right in the middle of harvest season, was judged excessive, his feast was transferred. (Thanks to Mr Gerhard Eger, one of the authors of Canticum Salomonis, for this information.) In the Neo-Gallican reform of Abp Antoine de Montazet (1758-88), which was a catastrophe for the Use of Lyon, it was fixed to the Sunday after the feast of Ss Peter and Paul. In the 1860s, the Missale Romano-Lugdunense was promulgated (basically the Missal of St Pius V, with a great many Lyonese customs added to it, including the rites of Holy Week), and St Irenaeus was fixed to July 3rd. Finally, in the 20th century, he was returned to his traditional date.

St Paul the First Hermit

On the calendars of the Roman and Byzantine Rites, today is the feast of St Paul the First Hermit, an Egyptian anchorite whose life was written by St Jerome around the year 375AD, only 15-20 years after Paul’s death at the age of 113. As recounted by Jerome, Paul was from the city of Thebes (in the Byzantine tradition, he is called “Paul the Theban”), and at the age of 16, on the death of his parents, received a large inheritance. The persecution of Christians under the Emperors Decius (249-51) and Valerian (253-60) was then raging, (Jerome gives particularly awful examples of its ferocity in the deaths of two unnamed martyrs); Paul’s sister had recently married, and her husband thought to get ahold of the inheritance by betraying his young brother-in-law to the authorities.

St Paul the First Hermit, by Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652), 1640, now in the Prado Museum in Madrid. This representation of the Saint is very similar to that of St Jerome in the Counter-Reformation period, but he is distinguished from the latter by his garment of palm branches, where Jerome traditionally wears the red robes of a cardinal. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Paul therefore fled into the desert, where he happened upon a cave at the foot of a rocky mountain; to this day, there is a Coptic monastery named for him in the eastern desert of Egypt on the site of this cave, roughly 100 miles south-east of Cairo, and 8 miles from the Red Sea. St Jerome says that the cave was “like a large hall, open to the sky, but shaded by the wide-spread branches of an ancient palm”, and contained within itself a stream of water. Paul immediately “fell in love with the dwelling place, as if it were a gift offered to him by God”, and thus remained there for the rest of his life in prayer and solitude, the palm tree being the only source of both his food and clothing. Jerome spent a great deal of time among monks and anchorites in different parts of the Mediterranean world, and for the sake of those who find it incredible that a man might live so, calls “Jesus and his holy angels to witness” that he had personally known monks in Syria who lived in similarly austere conditions.

The Monastery of St Paul (Image by LorisRomito from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

The largest part of the book (chapters 6-16) is taken up with the meeting between Paul and St Anthony the Abbot, whom the East traditionally calls “St Anthony the Great.” This took place when the former was very close to the end of his life, and the latter 90 years old. In the West, St Paul’s feast was formerly kept on January 10, exactly one week before Anthony’s, to symbolize that he preceded Anthony in the monastic life; at the Tridentine reform, it was moved out of the octave of the Epiphany to its Byzantine date.

The thought once came to Anthony that there was no monk in the desert more perfect than himself, but it was revealed to him in a dream that there was indeed such a one, and that he must go to visit him. Although neither the man’s name or dwelling place was revealed along with this information, Anthony at once set out to find him, guided on his way first by a centaur, which pointed the way to the man of God, and then by a satyr. Jerome states that the first of these may have been one of the wild creatures that dwell in the desert, or a devil in disguise sent to terrify Anthony (who had many similar visions in his long career), brought to heel, as it were, by the sign of the Cross which the Saint made over himself. The satyr, however, actually spoke to Anthony, and confessed that the gentiles in their error worshipped creatures like himself, but that he was a mortal, and, speaking on behalf of his people, said “We pray you on our behalf to entreat the favor of your Lord and ours, who, we have learned, came to save the world.”

At last, he was led to the cave by a she-wolf, and upon finally meeting Paul, they greeted each other by name, though they had never met before. As they conversed, there arrived a crow which for many decades had been wont to bring Paul half a loaf of bread each day, this time carrying a full loaf, at which Paul exclaimed, “See, the Lord, truly loving, truly merciful, has sent us a meal. For the last sixty years I have always received half a loaf: but at your coming Christ has doubled his soldier’s rations.” This episode is referred to in the Byzantine Canon for his feast day: “Nourished by heavenly bread, as once was Elias, though the ministry of a crow, o Father, you fled the Jezabel of the senses under the protection of Christ.”

The Isenheim Altarpiece, by Matthias Grünewald (ca. 1470-1528), ca. 1515. Left panel, the Visit of St Anthony to St Paul; right panel, the Temptation of St Anthony, based on chapters 8 and 9 of St Athanasius’Life of St Anthony, which give vivid descriptions of the demonic attacks which St Anthony suffered, and have inspired many rather wild artistic depictions. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Paul then revealed to Anthony that he knew that his time to die was very near, and sent him back to his own place to fetch a cloak which he had received from St Athanasius, which he was to bring back and use to bury Paul’s body. Weeping, Anthony kissed him goodbye, and returned to his monastery to fetch the cloak; when the two disciples who regularly attended him asked him where he had been for the previous several days, Anthony replied, “Woe to me a sinner, who falsely bear the name of monk. I have seen Elias, I have seen John in the desert, and truly, I have seen Paul in Paradise.” This last refers to the words of Paul’s namesake the Apostle, who was “caught up into paradise, and heard secret words, which it is not granted to man to utter”, (2 Cor. 12, 4), but also to Anthony, who, when pressed to explain his meaning, simply replied, “There is a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.” (Ecc. 3, 7)

While returning with the cloak, however, Anthony beheld at a distance Paul’s soul ascending to heaven, at which he prostrated himself and lamented his friend’s departure. On reaching the cave, he found Paul kneeling upright in an attitude of prayer, and at first thinking him to be somehow alive, knelt down next to him to join him, only to realize that “even the Saint’s dead body, in the office of its posture, was praying to God unto whom all things live.” [1] He therefore brought the body out for burial, “singing hymns and psalms in accordance with Christian tradition” [2], but had no shovel with which to dig a grave. This service was provided by two lions who came out of the desert, dug the grave with their claws, and then would not depart until they had received Anthony’s blessing. When he departed from the place, Anthony took with him the cloak which Paul had woven for himself of palm leaves, and wore it each year on Easter and Pentecost.

A capital of the abbey of St Mary Magdalene in Vézelay, France, showing the burial of St Paul, a modern (i.e. 19th-century) restoration by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, based on an original fragment now in the museum of Vézelay. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

In the official commentary on the post-Conciliar reform of the calendar of Saints, published in 1969 by the Vatican Polyglot Press, the entry for St Paul states that his feast “is left to particular calendars, for many difficulties are found in regard to the historical character of (his) life written by St Jerome.” I am certain that this refers not just to the more fantastic elements of the story such the centaur and the satyr, but to the miraculous element in general, which the modern reform downplays or eliminates from the cult of the Saints at almost every turn. [3] This strikes me as a very jejune and drearily modern way of thinking. There is nothing about the miracles reported by Jerome, such as those of the crow and the lions, or the mutual recognition between the two Saints at their first meeting, that particularly stretches the credulity of anyone who believes in the reality of miracles and the providence of a loving God.

As to the centaur and the satyr, even if we discount his supposition that the former may have been some kind of supernatural apparition, St Jerome was certainly not the only educated man in antiquity who believed in such things. Pliny the Elder, for example, writes in his Natural History (6.3), “Claudius Caesar writes that a hippo-centaur was born in Thessaly and died the same day; and in his reign we actually saw one that was brought here for him from Egypt preserved in honey.” He also names the “satyrs” (5.8) as one of the many tribes to be found in Africa; his description of them is far from the strangest given in that chapter. Is it really so difficult to suppose that Jerome’s account of the satyr as a “little man with hooked snout, horned forehead, and extremities like goats’ feet” is merely a pre-scientific exaggeration, received second-hand, of a man of very small stature and unusual appearance? And more to the point, why should the “failures” of a man of that era in the field of natural science, which were the failures of the era, and not of the man, cause us to discount his ability and trustworthiness as a biographer of his fellow men?

Writing about some rather radical proposals made in the 19th century for reforming the Saints’ lives in the breviary, Fr. Pierre Batiffol offers the following quotation from his esteemed contemporary, the liturgist Dom Alexandre Grospellier: “It is, in my opinion, to form an erroneous idea of the breviary to require in it the scientific strictness of a collection of critical hagiography. Certain legends have become the inheritance of Christian tradition, not by virtue of their historical certitude, but because of their expression of lively and fervent piety in regard to the saints: they have influenced the way of thinking, feeling and praying, on the part of our forefathers, and they come to us charged with a spiritual life which is indeed sometimes characterized by simplicity, but often full of power, and almost always able to touch the heart. These legends, therefore, belong to the history of the Church just in the same way as legendary lays and ballads belong to the history of nations. It would be something like vandalism to banish them altogether from the book of public prayer, even as it would be vandalism to break the painted windows of cathedrals or tear the canvases of early masters, on the ground that the representations in those windows or pictures are not accurate historical documents like a charter or a monumental inscription.” (History of the Roman Breviary, p. 314 of the English edition published by Longman, Green and Co., 1912; footnote 3, citing Dom Alexandre Grospellier, De l’état actuel des livres liturgiques et de leur revision (Rome, 1911), p. 34.)

[1] The Latin words here translated as “even the Saint’s dead body, in the office of its posture, was praying to God unto whom all things live”, are “etiam cadaver sancti Deum, cui omnia vivunt, officio gestus precaretur.” It is tempting to think this passage, the first occurrence in Latin Christian literature of the phrase “cui omnia vivunt”, may have inspired the composition of the invitatory for the Office of the Dead, “Regem, cui omnia vivunt, venite, adoremus.”

[2] This passage is an important witness to the fact that by the mid-4th century, when Jerome was very young, and Paul and Anthony very old, there was already some kind of funeral service distinct from the rest of the Church’s prayers.

[3] To give only one of countless possible examples, the original collect of St Francis Xavier used to begin “O God, who didst will by the preaching and miracles of blessed Francis, to add the nations of the Indies to thy Church...”; as a Saint canonized after Trent, this was the only collect of him that ever existed. In the Novus Ordo, it now begins “O God, who by the preaching of the blessed Francis, did acquire many peoples to Thyself...”

Arranging the Breviary for the Rest of the Liturgical Year

This is our annual posting on one of the discrepancies between the traditional arrangement of the Roman Breviary and the new rubrics of 1960; this year, the first such discrepancy appears at Vespers this evening. In some years, including this one, it also moves the September Ember Days one week forward from their traditional place.

One of the changes made to the Breviary in the revision of 1960 regards the arrangement of the months from August to November.

The first Sunday of each of these months is the day on which the Church begins to read a new set of Scriptural books at Matins, with their accompanying responsories, and Magnificat antiphons at Saturday Vespers. These readings are part of a system which goes back to the sixth century: in August, the books of Wisdom are read; in September, Job, Tobias, Judith and Esther; in October the books of the Maccabees; in November, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the twelve minor Prophets. (September is actually divided into two sets of readings, Job having a different set of responsories from the other three books.)

Folio 98v of the antiphonary of Compiègne, 860-77 AD. At the top of the page are three antiphons taken from the book of Job for Saturday Vespers, the first and second of which (Cum audisset Job and In omnibus his) are found in the Breviary of St Pius V and subsequent revisions thereof. These are followed by responsories and antiphons from the book of Tobias, and responsories from the book of Judith. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 17436)

The “first Sunday” of each of these months is traditionally that which occurs closest to the first calendar day of the month, even if that day occurs within the end of the previous month. This year, for example, the first Sunday “of September” is actually tomorrow, August 31st, the Sunday closest to the first day of September.

In the 1960 revision, however, the first Sunday of the months from August to November is always that which occurs first within the calendar month. According to this system, the first Sunday of September is the 7th this year.

The Ember days of September, (which are older than this system), are celebrated within the third week of that month. In the traditional arrangement, this means that they always begin with the Wednesday after the Exaltation of the Cross. However, in the 1960 rubrics, the third week of September is determined differently, and they can be therefore be pushed forward a week, as they are this year. So in the traditional arrangement, they are on Sept. 17, 19 and 20; according to the 1960 rubrics, on Sept. 24, 26 and 27.

This change also accounts for one of the many peculiarities of the 1960 Breviary, the fact that November has four weeks, which are called the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth. According to the older calculation, November has five weeks when the 5th of the month is a Sunday. (This is also the arrangement that has the shortest possible Advent of three weeks and one day.) According to the newer calculation, November may have three or four weeks, but never five. In order to accommodate the new system, one of the weeks had to be removed; the second week of November was chosen, to maintain the tradition that at least a bit of each of the Prophets would continue to be read in the Breviary. However, in some years, November only has three weeks, and the first one is also omitted, but this is not the case this year.

One further note regarding a major discrepancy which occurs this year between the Roman Rite and the post-Conciliar Rite. In the Roman Rite, the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, commonly known as All Souls’ Day, cannot be celebrated on a Sunday, since it is regarded an inappropriate to dedicate the day of the Resurrection primarily to praying for the dead. Therefore, if November 2nd occurs on a Sunday, as it does this year, All Souls is moved to Monday.

As a principle, this is still very much part of the post-Conciliar Rite, which heavily restricts which Masses for the Dead can be celebrated on Sundays. (They are permitted only on Sundays per annum, not on those of Advent, Lent or Eastertide, and only for proper funeral Masses, i.e., with the body of the deceased present.) However, it would obviously be far too much to ask Modern Man™ to attend Mass two days in a row; therefore, when November 2 falls on a Sunday, the Mass of All Souls is celebrated in place of that of the Sunday. (It may be noted in passing that the post-Conciliar Rite’s opening prayer for the first Mass of All Souls’ Day is easily one of its very worst innovations, wholly divorced from the entire Church’s tradition, not just that of the Roman Rite, since it does not actually pray for the dead.)  

 

The Sundays of the rest of the liturgical year, according to the traditional system:

August 31 – the 1st Sunday of September (XII Sunday after Pentecost)
September 7 – the 2nd Sunday of September (XIII after Pentecost)
September 14 – the 3rd Sunday of September (XIV after Pentecost, commemorated on the Exaltation of the Cross); Ember week
September 21 – the 4th Sunday of September (XV after Pentecost, commemorated on the feast of St Matthew the Evangelist)

September 28 – the 1st Sunday of October (XVI after Pentecost)
October 5 – the 2nd Sunday of October (XVII after Pentecost)
October 12 – the 3rd Sunday of October (XVIII after Pentecost)
October 19 – the 4th Sunday of October (XIX after Pentecost)
October 26 – the 5th Sunday of October (XX after Pentecost, commemorated on the feast of Christ the King)

November 2 – the 1st Sunday of November (XXI after Pentecost)
November 9 – the 3rd Sunday of November (XXII after Pentecost, commemorated on the feast of the Dedication of St John in the Lateran)
November 16 – the 4th Sunday of November (XXIII after Pentecost)
November 23 – the 5th Sunday of November (XXIV and last after Pentecost)

The Sundays of the rest of the liturgical year, according to the 1960 system:

August 31 – the 5th Sunday of August (XII Sunday after Pentecost)

September 7 – the 1st Sunday of September (XIII after Pentecost)
September 14 – the 2nd Sunday of September (XIV after Pentecost, omitted on the Exaltation of the Cross)
September 21 – the 3rd Sunday of September (XV after Pentecost); Ember week
September 28 – the 4th Sunday of September (XVI after Pentecost)

October 5 – the 1st Sunday of October (XVII after Pentecost)
October 12 – the 2nd Sunday of October (XVIII after Pentecost)
October 19 – the 3rd Sunday of October (XIX after Pentecost)

October 26 – the 4th Sunday of October (XX after Pentecost, omitted on the feast of Christ the King)

November 2 – the 1st Sunday of November (XXI after Pentecost)
November 9 – the 3rd Sunday of November (XXII after Pentecost, omitted on the feast of the Dedication of St John in the Lateran)
November 16 – the 4th Sunday of November (XXIII after Pentecost)
November 23 – the 5th Sunday of November (XXIV and last after Pentecost)

The calculation of the Sundays after Pentecost also calls for a note here. (The discrepancies between the Missals of St Pius V and St John XXIII are very slight in this regard.)

The number of Sundays “after Pentecost” assigned to the Missal is 24, but the actual number varies between 23 and 28. The “24th” is always celebrated on the last Sunday before Advent. If there are more than 24, the gap between the 23rd and 24th is filled with the Sundays after Epiphany that had no place at the beginning of the year. The prayers and readings of those Sundays are inserted into the Mass of the 23rd Sunday (i.e., the set of Gregorian propers.) The Breviary homily on the Sunday Gospel and the concomitant antiphons of the Benedictus and Magnificat also carry over in the Office. This year, however, there are exactly 24 Sundays after Pentecost, and therefore, none of the Sundays after Epiphany are resumed at the end of the year.

If this all seems a little complicated, bear in mind that the oldest arrangement of the Mass lectionary that we know of was even more so. The oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, a manuscript now in Wurzburg, Germany, dates to ca. 700, and represents the system used at Rome about 50 years earlier. It has a very disorganized and incomplete set of readings for the period after Pentecost; the Sundays are counted as 2 after Pentecost, 7 after Ss Peter and Paul, 5 after St Lawrence, and 6 after St Cyprian, a total of only 20. There are also ten Sundays after Epiphany, even though Septuagesima is also noted in the manuscript, and the largest number of Sundays that can occur between Epiphany and Septuagesima is only six.

Some Calendar Notes for Mid-July

In the Missal and Breviary of St Pius V, July 13th is the feast of Pope St Anacletus, which was carried over from the pre-Tridentine editions. The 14th is that of St Bonaventure, who died in 1274, while attending the Second Council of Lyon, and was canonized in 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84), his fellow Minister General of the Franciscan Order. His feast was originally kept by the Franciscans on the second Sunday of July, but in the Tridentine books, it was fixed to July 14th. The Acta Sanctorum gives an account of the uncertainty about the proper date of his death, but it is now generally agreed from the earliest accounts that he actually died on the 15th.

The Lying-in-State of St Bonaventure, by Francisco de Zurbarán, 1629

The Holy Roman Emperor St Henry II died on July 13, 1024, and was canonized by Blessed Pope Eugenius III in 1146. The see of Bamberg, Germany, which he founded, and in whose cathedral he is buried, traditionally kept his feast on the day of his death. He was added to the Roman Calendar in 1631 on the same day, as a commemoration on the feast of St Anacletus. When he was given his own feast in 1668, it was assigned to July 15, then the first free day after that of his death.

St Camillus de Lellis died on July 14, 1614. By the time he was canonized in 1746, Our Lady of Mt Carmel had been assigned to July 16th, and St Alexius (whose very existence is rather doubtful) to the 17th. He was therefore placed on the 18th, and the Saints previously kept on that day, an early Roman martyr named Symphorosa and her 7 sons, reduced to a commemoration.

Pope Anacletus is now recognized to be the same person as Pope Cletus, who shares his feast with Pope Marcellinus on April 26th. For this reason, a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites issued on February 14, 1961, ordered the July 13th feast to be completely removed from the calendar. Although the current Roman calendar therefore has July 13th as a feria with no feast at all, and St Alexius as a commemoration, Bonaventure, Henry and Camillus all remain effectively displaced by Anacletus. They were reordered in the post-Conciliar calendar, so that each would be kept on the day of his “birth into heaven,” with St Henry on the 13th, St Camillus on the 14th, and St Bonaventure on the 15th. St Alexius has been completely removed.

An illustration from a 1501 Breviary according to the Use of Bamberg; St Henry and his wife, St Cunegond, holding the cathedral of Bamberg, which they founded in 1002, together with the See itself.

As I have written before, there have always been Saints’ feasts which were kept on different days in different places, and the divergence between the temporal cycles of the Roman Rite and the post-Conciliar Rite is far more significant than the differences in the two calendars of Saints. The principle that a Saint’s feast should be assigned to his death day is a very ancient one, but has never been the sole criterion for choosing a day. A very prominent recent example is Pope St John Paul II, who died on April 2, 2005; since that date often occurs in Holy Week or Easter Week, his feast day is kept on October 22, the date of his inauguration as pope. Nevertheless, we have here in July an occasion where the two calendars might easily be reconciled with no harm done.

Practical Steps for Transitioning from the 1962 to the Pre-1955 Roman Rite — Part 4: Postures and the Guise of a Conclusion

Click the following links to see the earlier parts in this series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

American traditionalists like to sound off about how there are no strict rubrics for the lay faithful. This is true as far as it goes, but virtually all authorities (such as editors of hand missals and of ceremonials) agreed that if the people did anything, they should follow the rubrics for the clerics. In other words, rubrics are normative, if not strictly binding. Of course, one cannot do the impossible and is excused from the difficult, but we self-selecting traditional Catholics can do better for the greater glory of God and for the edification of other faithful.

It would be especially good to work on the posture of the acolytes, which goes hand-in-hand with that of the choir at key moments like the Canon or the orations on certain days of the year, most often at the Requiem Mass, since this is sung more often in parishes than the ferial Masses. This in turn will influence the people’s gestures such that they correspond better to the liturgical action, better drawing the distinction between festal or dominical and penitential.

But there is one rubric that does demand attention. The liturgical books could not be clearer that, on Good Friday, the priest, the ministers, and servers take off their shoes and proceed to the back. They genuflect on both knees three times before kissing the cross. The faithful do exactly the same. This is something that was detested by Thomas Cranmer at the English Reformation; we would do well to carry out perhaps the most elaborate form of adoration in the Roman rite, which is not known (unlike the Byzantine liturgy) for its full-body prostrations.

As to the last elements, the pontifical ceremonies and the ritual, the former is out of pastors’ hands unless they find a willing bishop, although the pontifical Mass itself has very few changes except for those made in the entire 1962 liturgy, e.g. the omission of the Judica me, etc. on certain days. The Pontificale Romanum and the Cæremoniale Episcoporum govern that form of the Mass, to which no changes were made, apparently due to error or oversight on the part of Rome. Thus, one is unquestionably free to celebrate using these older books. Plus, you either do a pontifical ceremony, or you do nothing. There is no middle ground of transition.

Archbishop Sample celebrating Candlemas in Rome with the traditional ceremonies; it is worthwhile to invite a friendly bishop to rediscover the riches of his heritage.

The Ritual presents particular challenges, since the vernacular editions were sometimes substantially different in the 1950s and in 1962, and the permissions granted to all priests (versus bishops or religious of an order or congregation) did not exist before; however, if one acquiesces to using the Latin alone, then one can use virtually any edition for the ordinary prayers and blessings; those seriously interested should follow the Hand Missal History project, which promises to detail the history of the vernacular in the rituals over the last several centuries.

It bears repeating that there is no one pace to match, one calendar to follow, although I personally think that the order outlined in this four-part series is sound and can be adapted most easily to the needs of parishes, religious communities, and seminaries of societies of apostolic life, for private usage if not public usage in these difficult times. It’s not my neck on the block, so moving glacially would not especially disturb me, although I hope that the actual experience of celebrating the traditional Holy Week, or even watching it online, and reading articles and books on the pre-55 Roman Rite, has by now convinced even the most reluctant traditional or trad-adjacent priest of the supremacy of the majestic traditional Roman Rite celebrated without the ever-accelerating and ever-burgeoning changes of the twentieth century.

I should address some final concerns. I advocate for celebrating the pre-Pius XII liturgy because it is the fullest approved expression of the Roman rite following the reforms of Saint Pius X; this is important, because the John XXIII breviary has at its heart the Pius X psalter. This is the familiar office for traditionally-minded clergy, and there are many beloved things in these liturgical books, particularly the 1927 Mass and Office of the Sacred Heart.

In addressing arguments from both progressives and conservatives, we acknowledge that the 1960 rubrics have the flaws which we already criticize in the Novus Ordo. These flaws prompt us to take up the non-deformed books, yet without being in a situation where we are, as it were, making things up on the fly, as we go along; for that would be just a different version of tinkeritis or optionitis.

Integrity is important; we should not try to make up a new calendar, a new system of precedence, or a new breviary with the Jubilee rubrics of 1900 (and so, with the historical cursus psalmorum)—on our own authority. We should not follow some hybrid forever out of mere convenience, or flip-flop between rubrics. Those who are serious should restore the ceremonies and follow the rubrics of a definite edition such as the 1939 missal, and then stick to it.

In case this was not clear, I reiterate that the times are strange, if not dangerous. Who knows what will happen tomorrow? This is an evergreen question, but with certain technological developments, both bishops and Roman curial officials can, and do, micromanage, with ease. Nor should people do things which gravely offend them or which require disobedience in a sort of slimy way. I encourage people—the clergy above all—to do these things quietly and with great love for the Lord and for their people, but without dissimulation or other troublesome behaviors that cannot bring victory.

I pray that one day, every community that currently uses or has previously used the usus antiquior will be able one day to do so according to the integral editions when the right moment comes. Until then, we take it step by step, brick by brick.

Practical Steps for Transitioning from the 1962 to the Pre-1955 Roman Rite—Part 3: The Divine Office

Click the following links for the earlier parts of this ongoing series: Part 1 | Part 2

I staked the claim that we must return to the 1939 office rather than the simple 1954 form, which happens to have a memorable rhyming slogan in English (“restore the ’54”). But I shall defend that claim, going into the weeds a little bit at the start of this article.

The Canticle of Canticles is primarily read at Matins of the Assumption octave, in an orderly manner over the eight days. (Some chapters are omitted due to the introduction of double feasts, but those could be omitted or the rubrics amended to require the readings of the octave, instead of the occurring Scripture.) In any case, under the 1950 office, chapter 1 of Canticles is no longer read; chapter 2 is still read, but on the Visitation, a less important feast added much later (although it is a feast commemorating a Scriptural event); chapter 3 is omitted if Saint Mary Magdalene is impeded (and 1960 omits even that), and chapter 8 is now omitted in the office of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Chapter 4 is read as the day is unimpeded on the general calendar, and the rest are omitted due to feasts as mentioned above. There is also no reason to read something written by the reigning pope in the office of one of the greatest Marian feasts. But let us move on to the transition, of which this series is supposed to be a guide.

The challenge of making changes in an entire community remains, and these are felt most acutely with the choir office, particularly if some of the office is sung in choir and the rest said privately. Thankfully, that is above my pay grade. Some suggestions for the reform of the office, and to an extent the Mass, are also applicable to priests belonging to a diocese and should be noted; in his own breviary, the diocesan priest might simply take up the whole old office, at least for the minor hours, working up to the full Lauds and Vespers, then Matins.

The simplest place to begin would be by praying the suppressed silent prayers before and after the Hours, which are either in the 1962 breviary as it is, can be put on a card, or are easily memorized; the Marian antiphon could then be added to the end of Lauds or the final day hour when said in a bunch following Lauds, not only Compline, or when Vespers is separated from Compline (and when no other pious exercise, sermon, or Benediction follows). Surely no cleric would decline the opportunity to invoke his Mother’s protection more often?

The feast of Saint Matthias is transferred to Monday if it conflicts with a Sunday of Lent; under Divino Afflatu, the I Vespers are still prayed in full, with a commemoration of Sunday.

Clerics in major orders (from the diaconate, if transitional, or according to the community’s constitutions, from the subdiaconate) who are obliged to pray the entire office could add the first psalm omitted at Lauds of penitential days to Prime, at least in private, though this may pose some difficulties for clerics who pray Prime with community members who are not so bound. That psalm is still in the breviary, and so are the suppressed verses of psalm 88 cut from Christmas, the Transfiguration, or Christ the King, whereas the canticle of Deuteronomy at Saturday Lauds is mutilated such that one could not pray the full text from a 1962 breviary.

From there, the clergy praying the full office could semidouble the antiphons of the minor hours and of Compline, including those sung with members who are not yet subdeacons (typically Prime, Terce, or Sext and Compline); the ferial preces could be prayed anytime the penitential Lauds are said or Vespers are of the feria of Advent of Lent. This change does not even affect the entire year, nor even every day within the seasons.

For those lucky enough to use older, original versions of the Liber Usualis in choir, praying the doxologies as printed for Compline is easy to implement without much thought, as the book is written that way! This would also apply to the other minor hours, of course, although the doxologies are rarely printed for offices other than festal Compline; for example, one has to learn that it changes during the season of Easter or on feasts (an asterisk printed in the breviary reminds the cleric of this).

Semidoubling the hours on Sundays (perhaps surprisingly, all Sundays are privileged but of semidouble rite, except for Low Sunday, which is double major, and the Sundays that are feasts, i.e. Easter and Pentecost, where there is no other Sunday, as well as Trinity, Christ the King, etc. fixed on Sunday) and at daily Compline (sometimes prayed with the faithful) is another easy step to take at public offices. Saint-Eugène-Sainte-Cécile in Paris already does this for most Sundays, and frankly it is easier anyway if you are introducing Vespers, since the psalm matches what is printed for the antiphon, particularly with Psalm 109; the priest intones the antiphon, which is the first words of the psalm, so the cantors continue with the psalm. At first, you could still follow the 1962 observance in omitting the commemorations and suffrages. Adding commemorations and suffrages according to the rubrics and the occurrences or concurrences of the calendar (including the Incarnation doxology for the commemoration of a lesser Marian feast) would be the last step.

That said, the commemorations can be somewhat complicated, particularly when octaves get involved, and figuring out the order is not always intuitive; one simply has to trust the Ordo while trying to learn the rubrics on the fly. For example, the order of commemorations for June 19, 2022 (Sunday within the octave of Corpus Christi) were complicated by the commemoration of the octave, and this is a point of the rubrics that was changed in 1911 to be more complicated than before, leaving it to be blown up in 1955 and in 1960.

For priests belonging to a traditional community, it would be better to work commemorations out privately and to mutually agree on them—say, starting at the community’s seminary—than to introduce them independently, with disagreements arising in different churches; the commemorations can be easy to forget or to execute incorrectly as well, as the rubrics for “Oremus” and the conclusions are not the same as at Mass. At the office, the celebrant sings “Oremus” before each collect, but this is not the case at Mass: it is sung before the first collect and then before the second, but not before subsequent collects. (I recommend a sticky note or an index card.)

In lieu of worrying about that first, restoring I Vespers where there is no conflict seems to be a more prudent choice; to pick at low-hanging fruit, Vespers of the vigil of Saint Lawrence is an anomaly easily fixed by saying I Vespers of the feast provided in the 1960 breviary. I would also suggest singing the traditional hymns of Vespers and Lauds of the Assumption, even with the 1950 collect and chapter for expediency, before moving on to the traditional prayers down the road.

Next, psalms for the feast should replace the ferial psalms of the minor hours on II class feasts. One would already have the necessary texts since the antiphons are from the Lauds already prayed, from the common or proper. Then one can celebrate I Vespers of all II class feasts, especially the feasts of Apostles, and add the commemorations of lower feasts (in occurrence at Lauds and, at first, in concurrence at Vespers, and going from there).

After this begins the a different kind of challenge: restoring texts that simply do not exist in a 1962 breviary or which would constitute a greater burden. The preces at the minor hours and the dominical preces of Prime and Compline are very short, but they were either removed or would require substantial pencil markings in a 1962 breviary if you wish to say them. The same is true for the suffrages. Praying Vespers of the Dead after canonical Vespers of All Saints on November 1 is trivial in the sense that the text is in the breviary, but praying two Vespers is an utterly foreign concept, and when Vespers of the dead is prayed on certain occasions, psalms are added towards the end which are found in the breviary, just not in the 1960 office of the dead. In other words, get a pencil.

Changing the chapter and the verse at Prime when called for by the older rubrics is simple enough and adds virtually no time to the office, but the texts would not necessarily be in a 1962 breviary (in fact, they mostly are not). Also, commemorating a lesser Marian feast commemorated at Saturday Vespers or at those of Sunday, requires memorizing the doxology if using a breviary (easy enough, admittedly); at least in all cases, one needs to create the chant score if using a Liber Usualis. (The omission of the doxology for all tones of the hymns where this happens on green Sundays, from Saturday evening to that of Sunday is a strange lacuna.)

Vespers sung by the seminarians of the FSSP

Unfortunately, Matins is probably the last significant change, because the readings, especially on Sundays, cannot be reconstituted from a 1962 breviary; you have to have an earlier edition, or, less ideally, your phone or a document created with the missing portions, but the thing is that the readings are not that long. Efficiently praying Matins with Lauds on a feast of nine lessons takes less than an hour; even taking into consideration apostolic demands, does one not have an hour to watch and pray? If not, we should fix this, and the faithful should support priests doing this according to their own abilities. (Both are easier said than done.)

Praying Matins is all the more easy considering the compromise psalter, of which the flaws are evident after only a few days of praying the Roman office of 1911/1954 (such as on July 9 and 10, 2022, with Our Lady on Saturday followed by a green Sunday with no doubles commemorated on either day). Nevertheless, the secular clergy would consider this office the most burdensome, not entirely without reason.

In contrast, praying the Athanasian Creed is, in theory, not especially burdensome for those who must pray Prime, but it does require paying attention to the commemorations of octaves and double feasts (these suppress the recitation of this creed) such that its reintroduction could come before adding commemorations at Mass or at the same time, depending on whether one is in a community that should try to pray in the same way or if one is alone (or with other diocesan priests) is in a parish. In other words, one could accelerate the restoration of one’s office at the same pace as, or a faster pace than, that of the public Mass. Mutatis mutandis for the suffrages already mentioned in the context of Vespers, which also occur, even more often, at Lauds.

Practical Steps for Transitioning from the 1962 to the Pre-1955 Roman Rite — Part 2: The Mass

See here for Part 1: https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2025/06/practical-steps-for-transitioning-from.html

Before any kind of work can begin in earnest, one must have an ordo alongside the old books of liturgy and try to learn the rubrics. The well-established Saint Lawrence Press Ordo is slightly different from the web-based Ordo of Restore the ‘54, which has the new Assumption and Immaculate Heart offices, the Common of Holy Popes, and some changes to the calendar, like the feast of the Queenship of Mary on May 31, which bumps Saint Angela Merici to the next day. This is not a terribly important feast, but the problem is now that a new double of the II class interrupts a week routinely filled with some feasts: the Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity, etc. routinely fall on or around this day, and as a double of the II class, it eventually is transferred to a free day.

One could also simply ignore all but the changes to the Assumption and its octave and call it a day, as the Immaculate Heart Mass has become beloved among Catholics attached to not just the liturgy but to the devotional culture of the immediate pre-conciliar era. But having claimed that “1939” is the recension to which we ought to return, then we ought to explore why this is so, and while honoring Our Lady’s request to honor her Immaculate Heart on five first Saturdays is not something which I treat frivolously, nevertheless, she did not say that it must be with the votive Mass of the Immaculate Heart.

Attention must also be called to the rubrics of votive Masses, somewhat different than the 1962 rubrics, though not challenging as the SLP Ordo has a handy chart. The trouble is that a Requiem Mass or a votive Mass said on more solemn occasions (so, something more complex than the replacement of the ferial Mass per annum when votive Masses are permitted) have special rubrics for the orations, the Gloria, the Credo, and the precedence, all of which are vastly different from the 1962 rubrics, which are not necessarily straightforward or simple as it is.

If one has a sufficient command of French, then referencing the Manuel de liturgie et cérémonial selon le rit romain of Stercky (taking over for LeVavasseur) is indispensable in addition to the original Fortescue. (Vol. II of Stercky is found here.) These volumes are far more comprehensive than Fortescue(-O’Connell) and O’Connell combined, and the work should have been entirely translated a long time ago; they merit republication in French as well. Note that an excerpt in translation entitled Sacrificare, Ceremonies of Low Mass was published in 1946 and is currently available as an on-demand print, though it deserves a proper reprint from a reputable publishing house.

The Last Gospel is a unique, beloved feature of the traditional Mass; why would we not wish for this text to be said at the Mass of the Easter Vigil?

In all cases, it is perfectly wise to begin with the little details: the name of Saint Joseph is not in the canon. One can immediately begin bowing to the cross as required at the epistle corner; using the three tones of voice and two kinds of head bows and bows of the body respectively; always reciting the prayers at the foot of the altar and the Last Gospel—mostly the ordinary one from Saint John; praying the Confiteor before communion; finally, incensing the celebrant of a sung Mass after the Gospel. [Note 1]

Additionally, the priest should simply not sit down, and he should rise a little earlier, in order to read the epistle and gospel at solemn Mass, which essentially no one will mind; the faithful are listening to the chants. Finally, the priest should follow the traditional rubrics for the tones of the preface and Pater Noster, which happen to neatly correspond to the new categories of the 1962 office (in particular, simples are commemorations, simple votive Masses are IV class, and nothing else changes). 

These small changes get us to the situation immediately before 1960, as seen at this Mass of the XXIV Sunday after Pentecost from Ushaw College in England, now closed.

The pastor should also strive to say Mass pro populo on the required days, a table of which would be found in the various books covering the subject. Treating holy days, even suppressed ones, as something special is almost entirely lost, and this will have to be recovered as well. “Why can’t I have Mass said for Grandma Anne and Grandpa Lawrence on their name days?” Well, because the church considers saying Mass for the people under the pastor’s care one of his most important duties.

One can add the Credo for Apostles, Doctors, Saint Mary Magdalene, and the Holy Angels without touching the calendar or precedence and without making any other commemorations. Since there is already a preface of the Blessed Sacrament, the preface of the Nativity on Corpus Christi celebrated on Thursday or as an external solemnity can be used without difficulty, as there is already the possibility of avoiding the common preface or, on Sunday, that of the Trinity, and virtually no one would blink if the same preface was used on the Transfiguration.

As far as more significant changes go, I would of course start with Holy Week and the vigil of Pentecost. A wealth of material exists such that the rite can be celebrated correctly and with dignity; I am no fan of broadcasting all liturgies, but 2020 provided proof that you can celebrate the traditional rite in a parish church with a skeleton crew. It is also true that the most reformatory changes occurred with these days of the liturgical year, meaning it’s impossible to mix-and-match old and new (i.e., pre-55 and 1955-1969) in a satisfactory way.

Nevertheless, if one must be incrementalist, then the easiest place to begin is on Holy Thursday, where the rubrics of Mass would deviate only for the ministers, not for the schola (aside from the Agnus Dei, where the change from the ordinary way is in the Pian rite, not that which came before or after) or for the faithful, and at Tenebræ, usually anticipated as it is. Psalm 50 is still right there in the books, and the strepitus (the fun part, the noise at the end) is essentially never omitted. Good Friday is perhaps the next change, given that the day is unique no matter what, followed by the two more complex and very notably different days, Palm Sunday and Holy Saturday.

Further, if you have folded chasubles for Holy Week, then you can then use them the rest of the year, starting with Candlemas, to which minimal changes were made and which only apply after Septuagesima, which means that only the vestments change (except once every few years).

Replacing “Ite, missa est” with “Benedicamus Domino” in Advent and Lent or on the Ember Days of September, then adding proper Last Gospels on penitential weekdays where the festal Mass is said instead (even without touching the 1962 rubrics of the Lenten calendar precedence!—one thinks of Saint Joseph, the Annunciation, the privileged votive Masses, proper first-class feasts, and the Masses now permitted by the decree Cum sanctissima), would be easy steps to take next, followed by the reintroduction of proper Last Gospels whenever they occur, including when a feast falls on an ordinary Sunday. One might wish to begin earlier with Christmas day, given that its Gospel is already Saint John’s prologue and would otherwise have no Last Gospel. Can anyone protest too much? In fact, the Ordinariate has this privilege!

By the way, there is virtually no reason to ever justify the short form of Ember Saturday’s liturgy, no matter what rubrics one uses otherwise.

The commemorations of the Mass should be added progressively according to the difficulty for the celebrant and the people. These are straightforward on double feasts or when a double feast is simplified due to the Sunday: pray the collects of the (other) saints, then move to the epistle, unless there is an oratio imperata to be prayed by the order of the bishop or other authority (rare if not nonexistent outside of certain traditional communities).

It can become much more complicated at a votive Mass, including the “daily” Requiem Mass which has three orations; when a semidouble or simplex feast is commemorated; or during octaves or other occasions which have different prayers than those of the season (e.g. a day within the octave of All Saints has different prayers than the ones assigned for the time after Pentecost, and so on and so forth).

More will be said about these with respect to the office, but suffice it to say that one could start on the rare occasions when one makes only the commemorations of the season, gradually moving to commemorate feasts, both of which can already be done, at least in a limited way, at a 1962-compliant low Mass. It is probably unwise to start with Sundays or feasts with four collects, e.g., on June 26, 2022, the Sunday within the octave of the Sacred Heart, when, in pre-55 land, collects would be sung of the Third Sunday after Pentecost, of several martyrs, of the Octave of the Lord, and of the Octave of Saint John the Baptist.

That leaves the calendar itself and the other rubrics. Start with the “votive” Mass of the suppressed feasts, all found in the section for various places of the 1962 missal; the feast of Saint Joseph in Paschaltide is the votive Mass of Saint Joseph, so one could usually say this Mass on the third Wednesday of Eastertide without fuss.

If a feast of an Apostle or another II class feast falls on a Sunday and would have taken its place before 1962, one should follow that precedence, commemorating Sunday appropriately. Also, move the Apostles to Monday if there is a conflict, as is the case when October 28 falls on the Sunday which is the feast of Christ the King or when Saint Matthias falls on a Sunday of Lent.

The full vigils, including that of the Epiphany, will have to be last, if one does not already possess a pre-1955 missal. The same holds for the octaves which have proper texts for all or some of the days (in particular, the days within the octave of Saints Peter and Paul), but the Second and Third Sundays after Pentecost have no textual changes not found in a 1962 missal and can be restored quickly as the Sundays within the respective octaves of the Lord.

The pre-1939 recension is imperfect. It would perhaps be better, at conventual Mass, to celebrate ancient vigils instead of later feasts (on June 28, the vigil of Saints Peter and Paul and variously the feast of Saint Irenaeus or of Pope Saint Leo II) and on August 9 (the vigil of Saint Lawrence and the feast of the Curé d’Ars). Instituting the vigil and suppressing or moving around, again, feasts, or removing the vigil in the 1960 liturgy came at the cost of everything else, and a change to permit the vigil at conventual Mass (without having to duplicate the festal Mass) would have mirrored the rubrics for private Masses (I take the meaning of “private” to be the Mass said outside of the parish schedule, not as the “parochial Mass” in lieu of a conventual Mass, where there is no community, the sort of Mass that priests say right after Lauds in the monastery). Those allowed priests to choose the Mass ad libitum when a vigil or ferial day of Lent, or the Ember Days, was to be said, although public Masses, including the main Mass, really ought to be of the feast. [Note 2]

One final change: the Mass of the Rogation days has a unique Alleluia in the pre-1962 missal; the Alleluia with the verse Laudate Dominum is sung, but the form is not responsorial. Two Alleluias are sung as on other days of Paschal Time in the 1962 missal, for consistency.

Surveying the many differences listed above, we should bear in mind that there is no one order that must be followed in implementing them, nor a prescribed pace at which to move. The changes to be implemented in parallel with one’s breviary (to be described in the next post) can be mixed and matched. The order I have suggested, however, seems to be a good general order that makes logical sense. At a minimum, I have tried to lay out each element that will need to be restored to the traditional Roman Mass.

Notes

[1] This one is more controversial, as not every place received an indult for incense at sung Mass before the 1962 rubrics made it universal. But it is the expectation the world over, and further detaching sung Mass from solemn Mass was a step in the wrong direction.

[2] As an aside, though, the term “private Mass” is nebulous, having at least eight definitions and has consequences if the priest is saying a community Mass for his community, conventual or otherwise, or as the main parochial Mass. As noted earlier, a pastor would have had to say Mass pro populo on many feast days according to the former law.

Interesting Saints on May 13th

May 13th is now occupied by two different feasts on the general calendar, one in the Ordinary Form, and one in the Extraordinary Form. For most of the history of the Roman Rite, it was not occupied by any feast of general observance at all, but an interesting collection of local feasts and observances is kept on this date.

St Robert Bellarmine, the second Jesuit to be made a cardinal, and one of the most famous scholars and controversialists of his era, spent much of his life in Rome as an adviser to a series of Popes in the later 16th and early 17th century. At his behest, Pope Paul V added the feast of the Stigmata of St Francis to the calendar on September 17th, the day on which it had long been kept by the Franciscans. By one of those particular acts of providence which seem to touch so many Saints, Robert himself then died on that day in 1621. When Pope Pius XI canonized him in 1930, and declared him a Doctor of the Church the following year, his feast was assigned to May 13th on the general calendar, the date of his beatification in 1923, since his death day was already occupied. September 17th was then freed by the suppression of the Stigmata of St Francis in 1960, and St Robert was moved to that date in the post-Conciliar reform.

A well-known photograph of Ss Francisco and Jacinta Martos (middle and right), together with their cousin Lúcia Santos, whose cause for canonization is in process. St Francisco died on April 9, 1919, at the age of 10, St Jacinta the following year on February 20, at the age of 9, both of them victims of the great influenza pandemic which raged though the years 1918-20, one of the greatest natural catastrophes in human history. (More deaths were caused by the so-called Spanish flu than by the First World War.) Sister Lúcia died on February 13, 2005, at the age of 97, almost 56 years after her profession as a Discalced Carmelite.

May 13th remained without any general feast until the promulgation of the revised Roman Missal of 2002, in which Pope St John Paul II assigned to it the feast of Our Lady of Fatima as an optional memorial. This was the date on which the three shepherd children had their first vision of the Virgin Mary in 1917; Ss Francisco and Jacinta Martos were canonized on this same date 8 years ago, the centenary of that first apparition. It is a well-known fact that it was also on this day in 1981 that John Paul II was shot in St Peter’s Square, while moving though the crowds at the weekly papal audience. His Holiness always ascribed the preservation of his life to the direct intervention of Our Lady of Fatima; as a sign of gratitude for his deliverance, the bullet which just missed his heart is now mounted in the crown of Her famous statue.

Less well known is the fact that in 1792, the same day saw the birth of Bl. Pius IX, the Pope who would later formally define the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. As a young man, he had suffered from some kind of seizure disorder (it does not appear to be precisely known which one), of which he was cured at the most important Marian shrine in Italy, that of Loreto. Even more remarkably, Eugenio Pacelli, who as Pope Pius XII would formally define the dogma of the Assumption in 1950, was being ordained a bishop in the Sistine Chapel at the very same time that the first apparition of the Virgin was taking place at Fatima.

Before St Robert’s feast was put on the general calendar, the first entry in the Martyrology for May 13th was the dedication of the Pantheon in Rome as a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and All Martyrs, which took place in the year 609, in the reign of Pope St Boniface IV. As I have noted on more than one occasion, the name “Pantheon” means “building of all the gods”, but there is no evidence that there was any kind of collective worship of all the gods in the ancient Roman world, and no evidence that the building was a temple. The idea is probably a misunderstanding which arose in the Carolingian period, when much of ancient Rome lay in ruins; to an early medieval Christian’s eyes, the imposing mass of the structure, dominating the center of the city, could hardly have appeared as anything other than a religious building. Nevertheless, the legend persists that the building was dedicated to All Martyrs, and hence to All Saints, because it had previously been a temple of all the gods. On the basis of this tradition, when the Benedictines revised their calendar in 1915, they put the feast of All Relics on this same day.

Solemn Mass in the traditional rite celebrated in the Pantheon on May 13, 2009, the 14th centenary of its dedication as a church.

The entry that follows in the Martyrology is that of St Mucius (“Mokios” in Greek), a priest who was martyred at Byzantium in 304, during the persecution of Diocletian. His traditional legend is not considered historically reliable, but there is no doubt that he is an authentic martyr and that his cultus is very ancient. There was a church dedicated to him at Constantinople by the end of the 4th century, but it may have been built even earlier than that, by Constantine himself, as part of his first refounding of Byzantium as New Rome. In the Byzantine Rite, his feast is kept on May 11th, which is also celebrated liturgically as the anniversary of that refounding, while May 13th is the feast of another martyr of the same region, a virgin named Glyceria. Her acts are also historically unreliable, but she is also an authentic martyr, killed on that day at Heraclea in Propontis in the later part of the 2nd century. (As an episcopal see, Byzantium was originally suffragan to Heraclea.) There are actually quite a number of cases where martyrdoms took place in the same place on or around the same date, but at a distance of many years or decades, as is the case with these two. This is because the officials who were in charge of the courts that tried and sentenced capital crimes traveled from place to place, and the schedule by which they arrived on the same date in the same city each year was maintained for long spans of time.

In the Low Countries and many other parts of northern Europe, May 13th is traditionally the feast of St Servatius (“Servais” in French, “Servaas” in Dutch), bishop of Tongres in modern Belgium, who is said have come to that area from Armenia as a missionary, to have received St Athanasius during his exile to Trier, and defended the Catholic Faith against Arianism at various councils in the mid-4th century. The see of Tongres was later transferred to Maastricht, where a large and very beautiful church dedicated to him preserves the relics of his body, and several items said to be his.

In the Dominican Rite, his feast was kept on May 22nd, because of the story given as follows in the Order’s Breviary. “When Louis of Bavaria, who was very hostile to the Church and to the Order, learned that the friars had been summoned to hold a general chapter in his domain, he laid plans to put them to death. As historical records testify, St Servatius appeared in a dream to one of our brethren, and warned the friars to flee to another city; thus did he save them from certain slaughter. Wherefore, because the Order was delivered from such great peril, the fathers decreed that henceforth his feast should be forever observed.” In his History of the Dominican Liturgy, Fr William Bonniwell notes that this story rests on very shaky historical foundations, and the feast was suppressed from the Dominican calendar in 1962.

A reliquary bust of St Servatius, 1579; image from Wikimedia Commons by Kleon3, CC BY-SA 4.0

The last entry of the day in the traditional Martyrology is that of St John the Silent, an Armenian monk who was consecrated bishop, much against his will, in the year 482 AD, at the age of only 28. After serving for nine years, he determined to lay down his pastoral charge, partly out of a sense of his own unworthiness, partly from a desire to return to the monastic life. He did this, not by formally resigning, but by disappearing; making his way to Jerusalem, and led by a miraculous sign, he entered the famous Lavra of St Sabbas, then still governed by the founder for whom it is named. However, he told no one of his past, and was received as a layman, working as an ordinary laborer.

As has often been the case, it was impossible to hide the light of holiness under a bushel, and several years later, Sabbas deemed him worthy to be presented to the Patriarch of Jerusalem, St Elias, for priestly ordination. Before the ordination could take place, John insisted on having a private meeting with Elias, at which he revealed his past, and swore him to secrecy. Elias could not, of course, ordain him a priest, but also could not reveal the reason to John’s superior, who unsurprisingly feared the worst, but the true reason for the refusal was later made known to him by a revelation of God. St John lived for 56 years after this incident, to the age of 104, without ever resuming the function of the episcopal office.

Arranging the Breviary for the Rest of the Liturgical Year

This is our annual posting on one of the discrepancies between the traditional arrangement of the Roman Breviary and the new rubrics of 1960; this year, the first such discrepancy appears at Vespers this coming Saturday. In some years, but not this one, there is also a discrepancy between the traditional placement of the September Ember Days, and their placement according to the new rubrics.

One of the changes made to the Breviary in the revision of 1960 regards the arrangement of the months from August to November.

The first Sunday of each of these months is the day on which the Church begins to read a new set of Scriptural books at Matins, with their accompanying responsories, and Magnificat antiphons at Saturday Vespers. These readings are part of a system which goes back to the sixth century: in August, the books of Wisdom are read; in September, Job, Tobias, Judith and Esther; in October the books of the Maccabees; in November, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the twelve minor Prophets. (September is actually divided into two sets of readings, Job having a different set of responsories from the other three books.)

Folio 99r of the antiphonary of Compiègne, 860-77 AD, with the responsories taken from the books of the Maccabees. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 17436)

The “first Sunday” of each of these months is traditionally that which occurs closest to the first calendar day of the month, even if that day occurs within the end of the previous month. This year, for example, the first Sunday “of October” is actually September 29th, the Sunday closest to the first day of October.

In the 1960 revision, however, the first Sunday of the months from August to November is always that which occurs first within the calendar month. According to this system, the first Sunday of October is the 6th this year.

This change also accounts for one of the many peculiarities of the 1960 Breviary, the fact that November has four weeks, which are called the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth. According to the older calculation, November has five weeks when the 5th of the month is a Sunday, as it was last year. (This is also the arrangement that has the shortest possible Advent of three weeks and one day.) According to the newer calculation, November may have three or four weeks, but never five. In order to accommodate the new system, one of the weeks had to be removed; the second week of November was chosen, to maintain the tradition that at least a bit of each of the Prophets would continue to be read in the Breviary. However, in some years, November only has three weeks, and the first one is also omitted, but this is not the case this year.

One further note regarding a major discrepancy between the Roman Rite and the post-Conciliar Rite. On September 29th, the Roman Rite celebrates the feast known as “the Dedication of St Michael”, since it originated with the dedication of a basilica titled to him off the via Salaria, about 7 miles from the gates of Rome. Despite this name, it is really a feast of all the angels, and already in the so-called Leonine Sacramentary, the oldest surviving collection of Roman liturgical texts, there are prayers that refer to this broader understanding of it.

The central panel of The Last Judgment, by Rogier van der Weyden, 1446-52, showing Christ above, and below, St Michael weighing the souls of the dead.

In 1917, Pope Benedict XV raised this feast to the highest grade; it remains so in the 1960 rubrics, and thus, when it falls on a Sunday after Pentecost, as it does this year, it takes precedence over it. In the post-Conciliar Rite, however, it has been downgraded to the second rank, and is impeded by an occurring Sunday of Ordinary Time. Since the post-Conciliar Rite also does not have commemorations, and almost never transfers impeded feasts, this year, it will have no general celebration of the angels at all. (In the many places where one of the three archangels is a principal patronal, it is raised to a solemnity, and takes precedence over the Sunday.)

The Sundays for the rest of the liturgical year, according to the traditional system:

September 29 – the 1st Sunday of October (XIX after Pentecost, commemorated on the feast of St Michael and All Angels)

October 6 – the 2nd Sunday of October (XX after Pentecost)
October 13 – the 3rd Sunday of October (XXI after Pentecost)
October 20 – the 4th Sunday of October (XXII after Pentecost)

October 27 – the 5th Sunday of October (XXIII after Pentecost, commemorated on the feast of Christ the King)

November 3 – the 1st Sunday of November (IV after Epiphany resumed)
November 10 – the 3rd Sunday of November (V after Epiphany resumed)
November 17 – the 4th Sunday of November (VI after Epiphany resumed)
November 24 – the 5th Sunday of November (XXIV and last after Pentecost)

The Sundays for the rest of the liturgical year, according to the 1960 system:

September 29 – the 5th Sunday of September (XIX after Pentecost, commemorated)

October 6 – the 1st Sunday of October (XX after Pentecost)
October 13 – the 2nd Sunday of October (XXI after Pentecost)
October 20 – the 3rd Sunday of October (XXII after Pentecost)
October 27 – the 4th Sunday of October (XXIII after Pentecost, omitted on the feast of Christ the King)

November 3 – the 1st Sunday of November (IV after Epiphany resumed)
November 10 – the 3rd Sunday of November (V after Epiphany resumed)
November 17 – the 4th Sunday of November (VI after Epiphany resumed)
November 24 – the 5th Sunday of November (XXIV and last after Pentecost)

The calculation of the Sundays after Pentecost also calls for a note here. (The discrepancies between the Missals of St Pius V and St John XXIII are very slight in this regard.)

The number of Sundays “after Pentecost” assigned to the Missal is 24, but the actual number varies between 23 and 28. The “24th” is always celebrated on the last Sunday before Advent. If there are more than 24, the gap between the 23rd and 24th is filled with the Sundays after Epiphany that had no place at the beginning of the year. The prayers and readings of those Sundays are inserted into the Mass of the 23rd Sunday (i.e., the set of Gregorian propers.) The Breviary homily on the Sunday Gospel and the concomitant antiphons of the Benedictus and Magnificat also carry over in the Office. This year, therefore, on November 12th, the Mass is that of the V Sunday after Epiphany resumed, and on November 19th, that of the VI Sunday after Epiphany resumed.

If this all seems a little complicated, bear in mind that the oldest arrangement of the Mass lectionary that we know of was even more so. The oldest lectionary of the Roman Rite, a manuscript now in Wurzburg, Germany, dates to ca. 700, and represents the system used at Rome about 50 years earlier. It has a very disorganized and incomplete set of readings for the period after Pentecost; the Sundays are counted as 2 after Pentecost, 7 after Ss Peter and Paul, 5 after St Lawrence, and 6 after St Cyprian, a total of only 20. There are also ten Sundays after Epiphany, even though Septuagesima is also noted in the manuscript, and the largest number of Sundays that can occur between Epiphany and Septuagesima is only six.