Liturgical Notes on the Nativity of the Virgin Mary

Advent is considered the start of the Roman Rite’s liturgical year as a matter of logic and convention, but is not formally designated as such in the liturgy itself. In the Byzantine Rite, on the other hand, the liturgical year has a formally designated beginning on September 1st, a custom which has its origin in an ancient Roman cycle of taxation known as the Indiction. This was celebrated as the civil New Year in the Byzantine Empire until the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and in the Russian Empire until 1699, when it was changed by Tsar Peter I as part of his Westernizing reforms. The Indiction is still mentioned repeatedly in the liturgical texts of September 1, as in this Idiomel for Matins.

Thy kingdom, Christ God, is the kingdom of all the ages, and Thy dominion is from generation to generation; Thou hast made all things in wisdom, fixing for us times and seasons; therefore we thank Thee for all things and through all things we cry out: Bless the crown of the year with Thy goodness and grant that we may all cry out to Thee without condemnation: Lord, glory to Thee! (Psalm 144, 13; 103, 24; 64, 12)

The Byzantine tradition distinguishes twelve feasts, eight of Our Lord and four of Our Lady, as “Great Feasts”, with Easter in a category of its own as the Feast of Feasts. Whether by design or coincidence, the first of these in the liturgical year is also the first chronologically, the Nativity of the Virgin on September 8th. This event does not of course occur in the Bible, but is first mentioned in the popular apocryphal work known as the Protoevangelium of James. The precise origin of the feast is a matter of speculation, and the reason for the choice of date is unknown. It was celebrated at Constantinople by the 530s, when St Romanus the Melodist composed a hymn for it; by the seventh century, it had passed to the West, and Pope St Sergius I (687-701) decreed that it be should celebrated with a procession from the church of St Adrian (who shares his feast day with the Birth of the Virgin) to St Mary Major. It would seem, however, that it was rather slower to be accepted than the other early Marian feasts, the Purification, Annunciation and Assumption, since it is not mentioned in some important early liturgical books. Thus we find it included in the oldest manuscript of the Gelasian Sacramentary in roughly 750 A.D., but missing from the calendar in some later books.

A 16th-century icon of the Birth of the Virgin.

From the Byzantine Rite, the Roman borrowed the following troparion as the antiphon at the Magnificat for Second Vespers, surely one of the most beautiful of the entire Gregorian reportoire.

Ἡ γέννησίς σου Θεοτόκε, χαρὰν ἐμήνυσε πάσῃ τῇ οἰκουμένῃ· ἐκ σοῦ γὰρ ἀνέτειλεν ὁ Ἥλιος τῆς δικαιοσύνης, Χριστὸς ὁ Θεὸς ἡμῶν· καὶ λύσας τὴν κατάραν, ἔδωκε τὴν εὐλογίαν· καὶ καταργήσας τὸν θάνατον, ἐδωρήσατο ἡμῖν ζωὴν τὴν αἰώνιον.
Nativitas tua, Dei Genitrix Virgo, gaudium annuntiavit universo mundo: ex te enim ortus est sol justitiae, Christus Deus noster: qui solvens maledictionem, dedit benedictionem, et confundens mortem, donavit nobis vitam sempiternam.
Thy birth, O Virgin Mother of God, proclaimed joy to the whole world; for from Thee arose the sun of righteousness, Christ our God; who released us from the curse, and gave us blessing; and confounding death, He granted us eternal life.

A tradition of the church of Angers in France claims that the feast was instituted by a bishop of that see in the early fifth century, St Maurilius, in consequence of an apparition of the Virgin vouchsafed to him. Another version of the story, also associated by some authors with St Maurilius, claims that a hermit who lived near Angers heard angels singing on September 8th to celebrate the birth upon earth of the Queen of Heaven. However, St Fulbert of Chartres, (ca. 960-1028) speaks of it as a feast of recent institution, and his three sermons on the subject are the oldest genuine Latin homilies on the feast. In the first of these, he says, “After some of Her other, more ancient feasts, the devotion of the faithful was not content, unless it could add to them today’s feast of Her Birth.”

Ironically, it was another sermon of St Fulbert, preached not on the Nativity, but on the Annunciation, which became the standard medieval Office sermon for the feast, since it was included among the sermons of St Augustine. This inclusion was perhaps not an accident, but a way of adding greater authority to the work of a “new” author on a new custom. (It is still to this day noted as “A Sermon of St Augustine” in the Breviary of the Extraordinary Form.) This text would have a huge fortune in the history of Marian devotion, since a part of the peroration became one of the most commonly used texts for antiphons and responsories of the Virgin Mary.

Sancta Maria, succurre miseris, juva pusillanimes, refove flebiles, ora pro populo, interveni pro clero, intercede pro devoto femineo sexu. Sentiant omnes tuum juvamen, quicumque celebrant tuam commemorationem.
Holy Mary, come to the aid of the wretched, help the weak in spirit, refresh the mournful, pray for the people, intervene for the clergy, intercede for all devout women. May all those who celebrate the commemoration of Thee perceive Thy aid.

The words occurring before and after these were often used in France as lessons for Matins in the Little Office of the Virgin Mary, as for example in the Cistercian Use, which, with characteristic austerity, proposes the same single lesson every day.

Admitte, piissima Dei Genitrix, preces nostras intra sacrarium tuæ exauditionis, et reporta nobis antidotum reconciliationis. Sit per te excusabile quod per te ingerimus: fiat impetrabile quod fida mente poscimus. Accipe quod offerimus, redona quæ rogamus, excusa quod timemus.
Most holy Mother of God, admit our prayers into the holy place where Thou may hear them, and bring us the remedy of reconciliation. Through Thee, may all be forgiven, that we place therein also through Thee; and what we ask with confidence become obtainable. Receive what we offer, grant in return what we ask, obtain pardon for what we fear.

The upper part of the Tree of Jesse window, one of the most famous and best preserved of the stained glass windows in the cathedral of Chartres, from the end of the 12th century.

At the Papal conclave of 1241, one of the most difficult in the Church’s history, the cardinals were forcibly enclosed in a ruined Roman building known as the Septizodium, then a thousand years old, under such rough conditions that one of their number died. This was done by another cardinal, Matteo Orsini, in an attempt to force the election of a Pope favorable to certain interests which he backed. The cardinals vowed to honor the feast of the Virgin Mary’s Nativity by granting it an octave, if She would lead them to agreement on a candidate and obtain their deliverance; the liturgical commentator William Durandus, writing at the end of the century, notes that the Pope thus elected, Celestine IV, died after a reign of two-and-a-half weeks, and it was left to his successor, Innocent IV, to fulfill the vow.

As a “new” feast, the Nativity of the Virgin was never kept with a vigil in the Roman Rite, i.e., a fast on the day before, accompanied by a Mass in violet after None, and without the Gloria in excelsis, Alleluia or Creed. (The same holds true even for the medieval feast par excellence, Corpus Christi.) In the Ambrosian Rite, however, it is kept with such a vigil, as a feast of particular importance, the titular feast of the cathedral. On the façade over the central door is a large plaque with the two words “Mariae Nascenti - To Mary as She is born.”

On both the vigil and feast, a lesson is read which very cleverly links two Biblical passages traditionally associated with the Virgin Mary, the sixth chapter of the Song of Songs, and the twenty-fourth of Ecclesiasticus.

Thus sayeth Wisdom: Song 6, 8-9 She is the only one of her mother, the chosen of her that bore her. The daughters saw her, and declared her most blessed: the queens and concubines, and they praised her. Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array? Eccli. 24, 24-28 I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits. For my spirit is sweet above honey, and my inheritance above honey and the honeycomb. My memory is unto everlasting generations.

The Protoevanglium of James mentioned above is also the source for the names of the Virgin’s parents, Ss. Joachim and Anna. Because it is an apocryphal Gospel, their feasts were suppressed from the Roman Rite in the reform of St Pius V, along with the Virgin’s Presentation in the Temple, which is also first mentioned therein. This went far too strongly against the grain of traditional piety, and all three feasts were swiftly restored, St Anne’s by Pius’ own successor, Gregory XIII, in 1584, the Presentation by Sixtus V the following year, and St Joachim by Gregory XV in 1622. In the Roman Rite, his feast was assigned to the Sunday within the Octave of the Assumption, and later fixed by St Pius X to August 16th. The Ambrosians, however, placed it on September 9th, the day after the Virgin’s Nativity; arguably a more reasonable choice, since the ancient tradition was that Joachim and Anne were both quite elderly at the time of the Virgin’s birth, making it certain that neither was still alive at the time of the Assumption.

The Descent of the Virgin from St Anne, by Gerard David, ca. 1490

On both feasts, in both the Roman and Ambrosian liturgies, the Gospel is the genealogy of Christ from the beginning of St Matthew, chapter 1, 1-16. From ancient times, it was understood that this Gospel, in tracing the royal descent of St. Joseph, shows that the Virgin Mary is also descended from King David, to whom the promise of the Messiah was made. Since Joseph is commended as a just man, he would not transgress the law that a Jew must marry within his own tribe, and therefore Mary must also be of the tribe of David. A passage to this effect from St John Damascene’s book “On the Orthodox Faith” (book 4, 15) is read in the Roman Breviary on the feast of St Joachim.

On September 12th, 1683, the combined armies of the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Poland defeated the invading armies of the Ottoman Empire at the gates of Vienna, a battle which would prove to be the high-water mark of the Turkish invasion of Europe. The King of Poland and commander of the Christian armies, Jan III Sobieski, had placed his troops under the special protection of the Virgin Mary, as they rode to the defence of Christendom. In thanksgiving for the victory, therefore, Blessed Innocent XI (1676-89) extended to the universal calendar the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, thitherto kept only in Spain and Naples. It was originally assigned to the Sunday within the Octave of the Nativity of the Virgin, but later fixed by St Pius X to September 12th. (The reform of 1911 abolished the once-common custom of fixing feasts to particular Sundays, with a few exceptions.) In the Calendar of 1969, the feasts of the Holy Name of Jesus and of Mary were both abolished, one of the reformers’ worst decisions, happily undone by St John Paul II in 2002. In the interim, it continued to be observed as the titular feast of many churches of the Virgin Mary, especially in Italy.

King Jan Sobieski Victorious at the Gates of Vienna, by Jan Matejko, 1883. In the middle, King Jan hands to a Dominican friar a message to deliver to the Pope, announcing the victory; on the right, Leopold I, Archduke of Austria and Holy Roman Emperor, doffs his hat to him. The artist, himself a Pole, painted this in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the battle, by which time the Kingdom of Poland had been partitioned between Austria, Russia and Prussia, and no longer existed as an independent state; he is here reminding the Austrians that their position as a dominant power in Central Europe was due in no small measure to the military might of the Poles, now in part their subjects. This painting was donated to the Vatican Museums by the artist, on condition that it always be prominently displayed; on the frame (not seen here) are medallion portraits of Bl. Innocent XI and the then-reigning Pope, Leo XIII. A copy of this image in silver relief was placed over the grave of King Jan in the cathedral of Krakow.

The Feast of Pope St Pius X

From a discourse of His Holiness Pope Pius XII, on the canonization of Pope St Pius X.

Sanctity, which was the guide and inspiration of the undertakings of Pius X, shines forth even more clearly in the daily acts of his personal life. Before applying it to others, he put into practice in himself his program of returning all things to unity in Christ. As a humble parish priest, as bishop, as the Supreme Pontiff, he believed that the sanctity to which God called destined him was that of a priest. What sanctity is more pleasing to God in a priest of the New Law than that which belongs to a representative of the Eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ, Who left to His Church in the holy Mass the perennial memorial, the perpetual renovation of the Sacrifice of the Cross, until He shall come for the last judgment; and Who with this Sacrament of the Blessed Eucharist has given Himself as the food of our souls: “He that eateth this bread shall live forever.”

A priest above all in the Eucharistic ministry: this is the most faithful portrait of St. Pius X. To serve the mystery of the Blessed Eucharist as a priest, and to fulfill the command of Our Savior “Do this in memory of me” (Luke 22:19), was his way. From the day of his sacred ordination until his death as Pope, he knew no other possible way to reach such an heroic love of God, and to make a such generous return to that Redeemer of the world, Who by means of the Eucharist “poured out the riches of His divine Love for men” (Council of Trent, Session 13, chapter 2). One of the most significant proofs of his priestly sensibility was his ardent concern for the renewal of the dignity of worship, and his concern to overcome the prejudices of an erroneous practice, by resolutely promoting the frequent, and even daily, Communion of the faithful at the table of the Lord, without hesitation, leading children thereto, lifting them up, as it were, in his own arms, and offering them to the embrace of God hidden on the altars. From this, sprang up a new springtime of the Eucharistic life of the Bride of Christ.

In the profound vision which he had of the Church as a society, Pius X recognized in the Eucharist the power to nourish substantially its interior life, and to raise it high above all other human associations. Only the Eucharist, in which God gives Himself to man, can lay the foundations of a social life worthy of its members, cemented by love more than by authority, rich in its works and aimed at the perfection of individuals: a life, that is, “hidden with Christ in God.”

A providential example for today’s world, where earthly society is becoming more and more a mystery to itself, and anxiously searches for a way give itself a soul! Let it look, then, for its model at the Church, gathered around its altars. There in the sacrament of the Eucharist mankind truly discovers and recognizes its past, present, and future as a unity in Christ. Conscious of, and strong in his solidarity with Christ and his fellow men, each member of either Society, the earthly and the supernatural one, will be able to draw from the altar an interior life of personal dignity and personal worth, such as today is almost lost through insistence on technology and by excessive organization of the whole of existence, of work and even leisure. Only in the Church, the holy Pontiff seems to repeat, and though Her, in the Eucharist which is ‘‘life hidden with Christ in God,” is to be found the secret and source of the renewal of society’s life.

Hence follows the grave responsibility of those who, as ministers of the altar, have the duty of it is to open up to souls the saving treasure of the Eucharist. There are indeed many forms of activity which a priest can exercise for the salvation of the modern world; but only one of them is without a doubt the most worthy, the most efficacious, and the most lasting in its effects: to act as dispenser of the Holy Eucharist, after first nourishing himself thereof abundantly. His work would not be that of a priest, if, even through zeal for souls, he were to put his Eucharistic vocation in second place. Let priests conform their outlook to the inspired wisdom of Pius X, and orient every activity of their life and apostolate by the sun of the Eucharist.

The canonization ceremony of St Pius X, May 29, 1954. The urn with his relics can be seen in front of the altar of St Peter’s in the lower left; it now rests in the altar of the Presentation in the left aisle of the church.

The Legend of St Giles

On the Roman calendar, today is the feast of the abbot Aegidius, known as Giles in English, one of the most popular Saints of the Middle Ages. All hagiographical scholars recognize that the traditional account of his life is full of incongruities, and cannot be treated as historically reliable. For example, it begins by saying that he was an Athenian of royal descent; Athens had had no king for over a millennium by the time Our Lord was born. Having been raised as a Christian, he performed several miracles in his youth, curing a sick beggar by giving him his cloak, and healing one man of snakebite and another of demonic possession. Fearing the consequences of his growing fame, he fled westward, settling in southern France, and after spending two years with St Caesarius, the bishop of Arles (470 ca. – 542), went to live as a hermit in a remote spot near the mouth of the Rhône.

St Giles and the Hind, by an anonymous Franco-Flemish painter active around the turn of the 16th century, known as the Master of St Giles. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0.

He is usually depicted in the company of a hind, which often came to him in his solitude to feed him with her milk. His legend tells that a king of the Goths named Flavius (otherwise unknown to history) fell upon the hind during a hunt, but when she fled into Giles’ cave, the king’s hunting dogs simply gave up the chase. This happened three days in a row, but on the third day, one of the huntsman shot an arrow into the cave, which wounded the hermit. The king and his retinue then entered the cave and found him with the hind sitting at his feet, and after learning who he was and what he was doing, withdrew from any further pursuit. The king offered the services of a physician and a very large monetary donation; Giles refused the former, and told the king to use the latter to found a monastery. This he did, and eventually prevailed upon the Saint to become the abbot.

The Mass of St Giles, by the same painter. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0. 

At this point, another king enters the story, named Charles. (The first king of the Franks to bear this name was Charlemagne, who was born a bit more than 200 years after the death of Caesarius of Arles.) Moved by tales of Giles’ sanctity and miracles, he summoned him to court, and told him that he had committed some great sin, unspecified, but so terrible that he dared not confess it. On the following Sunday, as Giles celebrated Mass in the royal presence, an angel appeared and laid on the altar a scroll on which the king’s sin was written down, along with an assurance that by Giles’ prayers and intercession he was forgiven, IF he sincerely repented and made a firm purpose of amendment of his life. After the Mass, the abbot gave the scroll to the king to read, and the latter did indeed confess and repent.

Not long before his death, Giles paid a visit to Rome, and received as a present from the Pope two doors made of cypress wood, carved with images of the twelve Apostles. These he threw into the Tiber, trusting in divine providence to get them back to Provence, and on returning home, found them at the local port, and was thus able to bring them back to his monastery. When he died not long thereafter, his soul was seen carried into heaven by the choirs of angels.

St Giles is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, the only one of them who was not a martyr. The legends of these Saints all have in common that they received a promise from God that their intercession would be particularly effective on behalf of those who honor them. This promise was made to the other thirteen at the hour of their martyrdom, but in Giles’ case, it was added to the scroll mentioned above, that “whoever should call upon St Giles, for whatever he had committed, provided that he desist from that sin, he should not doubt that it was forgiven him by the Saint’s merits.”

A statue of St Giles on the high altar of the basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers in Bad Staffelstein, Bavaria, and beneath it, a view of the whole altar. Both images from Wikimedia Commons by Holger Uwe Schmitt, CC BY-SA 4.0. 

The two panels shown above by the Master of St Giles were originally part of the same altarpiece, which has long since been dismantled, and the pieces scattered. They are both in the National Gallery in London; two others are in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. One of the Washington panels show the Baptism of Clovis, the first Christian king of the Franks.

The other shows an unidentified bishop on the steps of his cathedral, blessing a crowd of the poor as an exorcism takes place in the background.

The place where the altarpiece was originally displayed is also unknown, but the presence of kings in three of the surviving scenes suggests that the commission was made for a church connected with the French royal family. The Mass of St Giles is set in the royal abbey of Saint-Denis, and The Baptism of Clovis in the Sainte-Chapelle. The unidentified bishop is standing outside Saint-Jean-le-Rond, a small church attached to the north side of the façade of Notre-Dame de Paris which was used as a baptistry. In the background is the old Hôtel-Dieu, a large pilgrim hospice which formerly stood right next to Notre-Dame. These images are precious records of these buildings as they looked before the devastation of the Revolution.

Saint “Added-On”

Since well before the middle of the sixth century, August 30th has been the feast of two Roman martyrs of the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian (ca. 303), a priest named Felix, and a man who after his martyrdom was given the name “Adauctus”, meaning “added-on” or “increased.” The reason for this is explained in the Matins lessons for their feast; this version is taken from a Roman Breviary printed in 1529.

A fresco of the Virgin and Child with Ss Felix (right) and Adauctus (left), painted in the catacomb of Comodilla, close to the site of their burial off the Via Ostiense, ca. 530 A.D. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

“When by the emperors’ order Felix had been brought to the judge’s chamber next to the temple of Serapis, as they tried to force him to sacrifice, he breathed on the statue’s face, and it immediately fell down. Again being brought to a statue of Mercury in another temple, in the same way he breathed upon it, and it fell down at once. Again (he was brought) to an idol of Diana, which he cast down in the same way. Having been brought back to the prefect, put on the “little horse” (i.e. the rack, an instrument of torture) and asked by what sorceries (maleficiis) he had done this, the blessed Felix responded, “Not by the sorceries of the devil, but by the benefits (beneficiis) of my almighty God have I done this.”

Enraged by this, the prefect ordered him to be brought outside the city on the Ostian way, because in that place there stood a very tall tree consecrated to demons, next to which there was a temple, so that he might be forced to sacrifice there. When he was brought there, having prayed, he said to the tree, “I command you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to fall down from the roots, and smash the temple and its idol or altar, so that souls may long no longer be deceived by your worship.” And immediately at his word it was overturned, so that it smashed the temple and the idol. … and when this was announced to the prefect, he immediately ordered him to be beheaded.

When the sentence was handed down, a certain Christian man came to meet him, one who was hidden from men, but manifest to God, and when he had learned that the blessed Felix had been ordered to be lead (to his death), he began to cry out and say, “I am also of the same law, and I worship the very Lord Jesus Christ whom this holy priest confesses.” He was immediately seized by the prefect’s servants, and when they had exchanged a kiss, he was beheaded with the blessed Felix. Because the Christians did not learn his name, afterwards they called him Added-on (Adauctus), because he was added on to the holy martyr Felix for his crown, and his own crown was increased in accord with his confession of faith. Therefore the Christians, having found them, buried them in the same place where the tree had stood, and there in the time of peace their memory was worthily kept.”

The Glorification of Ss Felix and Adauctus, ca. 1759, by Carlo Innocenzo Carlone. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

For various reasons, this story is not considered historically reliable, but the phenomenon which it describes is very real. In the annals of Christian hagiography, there are many stories of people who were spontaneously converted to the Faith by seeing the constancy of the martyrs in the midst of their torments; it is not rare for such persons to become martyrs themselves, even joining the suffering Christians of their own will right on the spot. A well-known case in recent history is that of a Ghanaian named Matthew Ayariga, who in 2015 was seized in Libya by terrorists, along with a group of twenty Egyptian Copts. Although he was not a member of the Coptic Church, he refused to embrace Islam, even at the threat of being beheaded; seeing how the others prayed and called upon the Holy Name of Jesus as they died, he said of them, “Their God is my God,” and was slain in their company.

Durandus on the Beheading of St John the Baptist

The Church celebrates the feast of the beheading of blessed John because he died for the truth, but not as solemnly as the feast of his birth, because (when he died) he went down to hell (i.e, the limbo of the Fathers), as Gregory says, commenting on the words, “Art thou the one who is to come, where do we await another?” (in his homily on the Gospel for the second Sunday of Advent, Matthew 11, 2-10.) John began to preach in the 30th year from the Lord’s birth, and was beheaded around Pascha by King Herod in the 32nd year, that is, the year before the Lord’s passion.

The Head of St John the Baptist Presented to Salome, by the Dutch painter Carel Fabritius, ca. 1640; now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. – Fabritius, born in 1622, studied with Rembrandt, and was considered one of his best pupils. In about 1650, he moved to Delft, where he was killed on Oct. 12, 1654, in the incident known as the ‘Delft Thunderclap’, the explosion of a gunpowder magazine which leveled about a quarter of the city. Fabritius’ studio was destroyed, along with most of his paintings; this is perhaps the earliest of his surviving works, which number only about a dozen.

When John was beheaded, his disciples buried his body in Sebaste, a city of Palestine, and his head was buried in Jerusalem near where Herod lived. In the place where the body lay buried, God worked many miracles, for which reason a multitude of Christians used to gather there. Seeing this, Julian the Apostate issued an order, and the gentiles broke up the mausoleum to dishonor Saint John, and they scattered his bones through the fields. But since the Christians continued to come there and the miracles did not cease, the gentiles gathered up the bones and burnt them, but the finger by which he pointed out the Lord as He was coming to the Jordan, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God”, etc., could not be burnt.

However, there were many Christian monks from Jerusalem mixed in among those gentiles, and as they were gathering up the bones, these men saved as many as they could hide, and brought them to Phillip, the bishop of Jerusalem. The latter, through his deacon Julian, send them to Anastasius, bishop of Alexandria, and afterwards Theophilus, bishop of that same city, laid them to rest in the temple of Serapis, and consecrated it as a basilica in his honor.

A painting of a medieval legend in which Julian the Apostate destroys the bones of St John the Baptist, ca. 1484, by the Netherlandish painter Geertgen tot Sint Jans. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

(Our friend Durandus has received from his sources a great deal of confusion about this part of the story. The bishop of Jerusalem during Julian the Apostate’s brief reign (361-63) was St Cyril; the only bishop of that city named Phillip lived in the 120s. “Anastasius” is a mistake for “Athanasius,” in the reign of whose third successor, Theophilus (385-412), the temple of Serapis at Alexandria was indeed dismantled, and a monastery founded on the site, with a church named in honor of St John.)

For this reason, the Church celebrates this feast of the beheading and of the burning of the bones, as if for one who, although already dead, in some sense underwent a second martyrdom in his bones.

Others say that the blessed Thecla brought John’s finger, the one which could not be burnt, from the Outremer (‘ultramarinis – the lands beyond the sea’, the common term for the Holy Land in the age of the crusaders,) to a place called Moriana, and there founded a church in honor of blessed John which was dedicated on this day. Therefore, the lord pope decreed that this day should be kept in his honor through the whole world, and in accord with this, it seems that it should also be called the feast of this dedication. (This is also fairly confused; St Thecla lived about three centuries before the time of Julian.)

A reliquary of a finger of St John the Baptist, from the museum of the cathedral of Florence, where he is honored as Patron Saint of the city. Attributed to Matteo di Giovanni; first half of the 15th century.

Furthermore, the blessed John revealed the location of his head, which had been buried in Jerusalem, to two eastern monks who had come there to worship, and they found it near Herod’s dwelling place on February 23rd. But afterwards, it was brought by others to the city of Edessa (in Syria), and hidden away in obscurity in some cave, until it was revealed again to a priest named Marcellus, and to the bishop of the same city, This took place on August 29th, and from that time the beheading began to be celebrated in that city on the day on which the head was revealed; and thus, this feast can also be called the feast of the revelation.

(Excerpts from Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, VII, 26. The legend of the repeated loss and rediscovery of St John’s head is well known in the East; in the Byzantine Rite, a feast of both the first and second finding of it is kept on February 24th, and of the third finding on May 25th.)

The Seven Joys of the Virgin Mary

For a fairly brief period, today was kept by the Franciscans as the feast of the Seven Joys of the Virgin Mary. As an expression of the Seraphic Order’s devotional life, it corresponds to the feast of the Holy Rosary, which began among the Dominicans, and the observance on September 15th of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, which was originally the Patronal feast of the Servites. The principal contribution of the Franciscans to the Church’s cycle of Marian feasts is, of course, the Immaculate Conception, whereas the liturgical celebration of the Seven Joys is very late, and short-lived. It was granted to them in 1906, and at first fixed to the Sunday after the Octave of the Assumption; when the reform of St Pius X abolished the practice of fixing feasts to Sundays, it was permanently assigned to August 27th. In the Calendar reform promulgated in 1961, which aimed at reducing the number of feasts, and especially the so-called “feasts of devotion” (as opposed to those of Our Lord and the Saints), it was suppressed.

The Altarpiece of the Seven Joys, by the anonymous painter known as the Master of the Holy Family, ca. 1480; now in the Louvre.

The devotion to the Seven Joys in and of itself, however, is much older; the story of its origin is told thus in the Manual for Franciscan Tertiaries.

About the year 1420, a young man, deeply devoted to Our Lady, took the habit of St Francis. Before joining the Order, he had, among other practices, been accustomed daily to make a chaplet of flowers, and with it to crown a statue of the Blessed Virgin. Having in his novitiate no longer an opportunity of making this crown for his Most Beloved Queen, he, in his simplicity, thought that she would withdraw her affection from him; this temptation of the devil disturbed his vocation, and he resolved to abandon the cloister. The merciful mother appeared to him, and gently rebuking him, strengthened him in his vocation by telling him to offer her instead of the chaplet of flowers, a crown much more pleasing to her, composed of seventy-two Ave Marias and a Pater after each decade of Ave Marias, and to meditate at each decade upon the seven joys she had experienced during the seventy-two years of her exile upon the earth. The novice immediately commenced reciting the new crown or rosary, and derived therefrom many spiritual and temporal graces. This pious practice spread quickly through the whole Order, and even throughout the world… St Bernardin of Siena used to say that it was by the Crown of the Seven Joys that he had obtained all the graces which Heaven has heaped upon him.

A traditional Franciscan Rosary of the Seven Joys, still worn as part of the Order’s habit.

The Seven Joys listed in the Manual are the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Birth of Christ, the Adoration of the Magi, the Finding of the Christ Child in the Temple, the Resurrection and the Assumption, but other version of the list may be found. Two more Aves are added to make the number seventy-two mentioned above, and another Pater and Ave for the intentions of the Pope. The recitation concludes with a versicle and response, and the Collect of the Immaculate Conception.

V. In thy Conception, o Virgin, thou wast immaculate.
R. Pray for us to the Father, whose Son thou didst bear.
Let us pray. O God, Who by the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, prepared a worthy dwelling place for thy Son; we beseech thee, that, as by the foreseen death of Thy same Son, Thou preserved Her from every stain, so Thou may grant us also, through Her intercession, to come to thee with pure hearts. Through the same Christ our Lord. R. Amen.

V. In Conceptione tua, Virgo, immaculata fuisti.
R. Ora pro nobis Patrem, cujus Filium peperisti.
Oremus. Deus, qui per immaculátam Vírginis Conceptiónem dignum Filio tuo habitáculum praeparasti: quaesumus; ut qui ex morte ejusdem Filii tui praevisa, eam ab omni labe praeservasti, nos quoque mundos ejus intercessióne ad te perveníre concedas. Per eundem Christum, Dominum nostrum. R. Amen.

An Altarpiece of St Bartholomew

For the feast of St Bartholomew the Apostle, here is a beautiful altarpiece dated to about 1440, which depicts a series of stories from his traditional legend, by an anonymous Spanish painter known as the Master of Torralba. It is now in the museum of the Château de Castelnau-Bretenoux in France. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons by Benjamin Smith. Click to enlarge.)  

In the central section, we see the Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John at the top, and the Apostle below, holding his traditional instrument, the knife with which he was flayed, and a chain which ends around the neck of a demon, whose hands are locked up in a stock. The last reflects the tradition that Bartholomew was especially powerful over demons, which is also referred to in the Gospel of his Mass, Luke 6, 12-19: “And they that were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.”

The eight panels surrounding it show stories from his apocryphal acts (running first down the left side, then the right), from which this tradition derives, in the version told by Bl. Jacopo di Voragine in the Golden Legend. When he arrives in India to preach the Gospel, a demon which had been wont to speak though an idol in a temple falls silent. (1 and 2) He heals the possessed daughter of a local king (3), after which, the king sends several camels laden with money and gems (4), which the apostle refuses.

On the right side, the Apostle appears to the king in a dram and preaches the faith to him. (5) When the pagan priests of the area attempt to sacrifice to an idol, the demon which inhabits it protests that now that Christ has won the redemption of man, it hurts him when they do so. (6) Bartholomew is then arrested (7) and killed (8). The varying accounts of his martyrdom have him either flayed alive (which will later become the most common way of representing him in art); here the artist shows both.

The predella show events from the Passion of Our Lord: the arrest in the garden, his appearance before Pilate, the flagellation, the deposition from the cross, and the entombment.  

Ss Hippolytus and Cassian: One Confusion... and Another

The thirteenth of August is the feast of St Hippolytus, an officer of the guards in the prison where St Lawrence was held, whom the latter converted to Christianity. He is said to have taken the body of Lawrence for burial; reproved for this by the Emperor Decius, and threatened with torture and death, he answered “May I merit to be a likeness of the blessed martyr Lawrence, whom you have dared to name with your polluted mouth.” After torture, he was killed by being torn apart by wild horses.

The Saint Hippolytus triptych by Dietric Bouts the Elder, ca. 1470.

Roman Breviaries printed in the period immediately before the Tridentine reform add to the Matins lessons of his feast the story of St Concordia, an elderly member of his household who had been his nurse. When threatened with punishment alongside Hippolytus for her Christian faith, she replied on behalf of the household, “We much prefer to die virtuously with our Lord than to live without virtue.” At this, the man in charge of arresting them said, “Slaves as a class cannot be corrected without torture”, and had her beaten to death with lead weights.

The story of Hippolytus is normally dismissed as a fabrication by modern scholars on the grounds that his manner of death, reported by the poet Prudentius (348 - 405/13 ca.), is the same as that of the Greek mythological character Hippolytus, the son of Theseus who was dragged to death by the horses of his chariot. It seems not to have occurred to any of the modern skeptics that the persecutors might very well have been inspired by his name to choose this manner of killing him, in imitation of the mythological story.

However, it is certainly true that there is much confusion about his history; when Pope St Damasus I (366-84) placed an epitaph upon his tomb recounting his martyrdom, he stated that he himself “relied on purely oral tradition, which he does not guarantee: ‘Damasus tells these things which he has heard; it is Christ who maketh proof of them.’ ” (Loeb Classical Library, The Poems of Prudentius, p. 304, footnote) The editors of the Tridentine breviary, aware of this difficulty, reduced his feast to a commemoration on the day within the octave of St Lawrence, greatly simplifying the nine lessons given for him and Concordia in earlier editions.

The cathedral of St Cassian in Imola, Italy. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Vanni Lazzari, CC BY-SA 4.0)

At the same time, they joined to his feast another Saint who was not traditionally venerated at Rome, but who, like Lawrence and Hippolytus, is celebrated by Prudentius in his collection of poems about famous martyrs, “On the Crowns.” St Cassian was a school-teacher in the town of Imola in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy, about 175 miles to the north of Rome. He was arrested as a Christian, and on refusing to sacrifice to the pagan gods, was sentenced to be stabbed to death by the pens of his own students. (These would be the sharp metallic instruments called “stylus” by the Romans, commonly used by school-boys to cut lines in tablets of wax.) Prudentius visited his tomb while passing through Imola on the way to Rome, and describes a picture of the martyrdom which was painted over it.

The article on St Cassian in the revised Butler’s Live of the Saints contains the following statement. “The stylus-prodding by schoolboys is probably a reminiscence of an incident in Apuleius (see P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Hagiographica, p. 131) and bears a more than suspicious resemblance to the torture of St Mark of Arethusa.” But Fr de’ Cavalieri’s book contains no such reference to Apuleius or his novel The Golden Ass, and explicitly states that there is no meaningful parallel between the martyrdoms of Cassian and Mark of Arethusa. He does, however, consider the story as told to Prudentius untrustworthy, on the grounds that a Roman magistrate would not likely order a death sentence to be carried out by someone other than an official executioner, much less by school-age boys.

More recent scholarship, however, has argued in favor of the truth of Prudentius’ account. A paper by Filippo Briguglio of the University of Bologna finds several things in the poet’s account that argue in favor of its historicity, and forensic analysis of Cassian’s cranium shows that the wounds are consistent with the size of a typical stylus of the era. So we may very well have yet another example of the hagiographical skeptics hoisted by their own petard.

On the other hand, it is true that a Passion of St Cassian written in the ninth century unhistorically makes him the evangelizer and first bishop of Sabiona in the Alto Adige region of northern Italy, exiled to Imola and constrained to work as a school-teacher. This is why this 17th-century statue of him in the diocesan museum of Bressanone, to which the see of Sabiona was transferred ca. 1000 AD, shows him wearing a mitre. (Photo by Nicola de’ Grandi.)

On the calendar of the post-Conciliar Rite, the Hippolytus of the St Lawrence legend has been replaced by another martyr of the same name, celebrated jointly with Pope St Pontian, who reigned from 230-35. This change was made on the basis of a very ancient list (354 AD) of the places where various martyrs are buried, called the “Depositio Martyrum – the laying-to-rest of the martyrs”, which has the following entry for August 13: “Ypoliti in Tiburtina, et Pontiani in Callisti – Hippolytus, on the via Tiburtina, and Pontian in (the cemetery) of Callixtus.”

This Hippolytus is the Roman priest who is said to have rebelled against Pope St Callixtus I for his moral laxity in readmitting to Communion those who had committed serious sins after baptism. After setting himself up as an anti-Pope, he was reconciled with Callixtus’ successor-but-one Pontian, and exiled together with him to Sardinia, where they both died; the manner of their death is uncertain. The entry in the Depositio Martyrum refers to when Pontian’s successor-but-one, Fabian, brought their bodies back from the island and interred them in two different Roman cemeteries.

This is the same Hippolytus to whom the so-called Apostolic Tradition is erroneously attributed, the document which distantly forms the basis of the post-Conciliar Rite’s Second Eucharistic prayer, and the drastic revision of the rites of ordination. When the post-Conciliar rite was created, it was believed (mostly in good faith) that Hippolytus had written the Apostolic Tradition to preserve the older, and to his view, more authentic liturgical traditions of the Roman Church, against the innovations introduced by his theological opponents, especially Callixtus. Of course, it is now known (indeed, it has been known for over fifty years) that this story is completely untrue, and that the so-called Apostolic Tradition has nothing to do with the historical Hippolytus, and is not a record of the earliest liturgical customs of the Church of Rome. (See “Hippolytus and the Apostolic Tradition: Recent Research and Commentary” by Fr John F. Baldovin, SJ, in Theological Studies 64 (2003))

There is more than a little irony here. The creators of the post-Conciliar calendar, eager and over-eager to remove anything that smacks of the legendary from the Church’s prayer, replaced the Hippolytus to whom there was an authentic tradition of devotion, going back to Damasus and Prudentius, with another to whom there was no such tradition. At the same time, they relegated Cassian of Imola to local calendars as a Saint whose “cultus does not belong to the Roman tradition.” Meanwhile, their cohorts on some of the other subcommittees replaced the authentic tradition of some of the Roman Church’s oldest and most important prayers with novelties based on legends, and texts that do not belong to the Roman tradition.

Miracles of St Clare of Assisi

St Clare died on August 11, 1253, at the age of 59. The pope at the time, Innocent IV, had known her personally for many years, and had even come with his court to the church of San Damiano in Assisi, the first Franciscan women’s house, which Clare had ruled over for many years, in order to be present for her funeral. The story is told that he had such a high regard of her sanctity that he wished to canonize her immediately without process, and celebrate the Mass of a Holy Virgin in her honor, rather than a Requiem for her, but was prevented by the admonition of the Franciscan Master General that to do so would be a violation of the Church’s tradition. Pope Innocent himself died the following year, and so it fell to his successor, Alexander IV, to canonize her just over two years after her death, on the feast of the Assumption in 1255. Her feast day is assigned to the day after her death, partly out of respect for the martyrs Ss Tiburtius and Susanna, whose feast occupies August 11, but also so that her order especially could celebrate her feast with First Vespers, which in the Middle Ages was generally treated as the more solemn of the two, and not conflict with those of St Lawrence.

In art, St Clare is often represented holding a monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament in it, an unusual attribute for any Saint who was not a priest. This custom arises from one of the great miracles which she performed. In the year 1234, the army of Frederick II, which counted a great many Saracens from Sicily in its number, were plundering the part of Umbria which includes Assisi. As the invaders sought to enter the convent at San Damiano, Clare took the ciborium from one of the chapels within the complex, and brought it to a window near the place where the soldiers had set a ladder against the walls in order to scale them. When she raised the Blessed Sacrament on high, the soldiers fell off the ladder and away from the wall as if dazzled, and the whole company of them fled.

St Clare Defends the Walls of Assisi, by Giuseppe Cesari, (often called ‘Cavaliere d’Arpino’; 1586-1640), date uncertain.

St Clare was often very ill, and spent many years practically confined to her bed. Another story is told that one year, when she was too ill to attend the Midnight Mass on Christmas, she was able to be present for the ceremony through a vision, for which reason Pope Pius XII declared her the Patron Saint of television in 1958. (This subject seems to have attracted no attention from artists, inexplicably, and I was unable to find a good representation of it. If anyone knows of one, please be so kind as to let me know in the combox.)

The Vision of St Clare (not the Midnight Mass vision), by Guercino, 1615-21.

St Romanus the Martyr

In the Roman Breviary of 1481, the following account is given of St Romanus, a solder who was converted by seeing the constancy of St Lawrence in his torments. His feast is kept today.

At Rome, the birth of St Romanus, a soldier who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ through the words of St Lawrence, and said to (him), “I see before thee a most fair youth, standing with a linen cloth, and wiping thy limbs; wherefore, I adjure thee through Christ, who sent His angel to thee, do not leave me.” Then Decius, being full of wrath and deceit, said to Valerian, “I think we have been beaten by magical art.” And he ordered the blessed Lawrence to be removed from the grill. At that very hour, the blessed Romanus came bearing a vessel of water, falling at the feet of blessed Lawrence, with tears asked him that he might be baptized. And (Lawrence) took the water, blessed it and baptized him. Now Decius on hearing this said, “Strip him, and beat him with clubs.” And blessed Romanus, being brought before Decius Caesar, without being asked, began to cry out in a clear voice, saying “I am a Christian.” And Decius Caesar ordered him in that very hour to be executed; so he was brought outside the walls at the Salarian gate and beheaded on the ninth of August. Then the priest Justin came at night, and collected the body of the blessed martyr Romanus, and buried him in a crypt in the Ager Veranus.

St Romanus before the Blessed Trinity; in the lower left corner, he is seen standing outside the prison where St Lawrence is held, carrying a water vessel. From the high altar of the church dedicated to him in the town of Schweighausen in western Germany. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Jörgens.mi, CC BY-SA 3.0.)

The Finding of St Stephen the First Martyr

Today is the feast of the Finding of St Stephen the First Martyr. This took place in the year 415, when the teacher of St Paul, Gamaliel, who is named twice in the Acts of the Apostles (5, 34-40 and 22, 3) appeared in a vision to a priest of Jerusalem named Lucian, on three successive Fridays, and named the location of the burial. Gamaliel further revealed that he himself had taken charge of Stephen’s body after his martyrdom, and buried him on his property near a village that bore his own name, Caphargamala; and that he himself was later buried in the same place, along with his son Abibas, and Nicodemus, who is mentioned in three places in the Gospel of John. (“Abibas” is the Hellenized form of the name “Habib”, which means “beloved” and is very common in Semitic languages.)

St Stephen Mourned by Gamaliel and Nicodemus. Attributed to the anonymous painter known as Pensionante del Saraceni (active 1610–1625), a follower of the Venetian painter Carlo Saraceni (1579–1620); ca. 1615. Public domain image from the website of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Gamaliel ordered Lucian to tell what he had seen in these visions to John, the bishop of Jerusalem, who then sent Lucian to investigate the site. In due course, the graves were discovered, with inscriptions to confirm the identity of the persons buried therein. John was then attending a synod at Lydda (the place of St George’s martyrdom); on receiving word of the discovery from Lucian, he hastened to the site, attended by two other bishops and a large multitude of people. When the coffin of St Stephen was opened, the ground shook, and “an odor of such sweetness and fragrance came forth therefrom, … that (those present) thought they were in the delight of Paradise”; seventy-three persons were healed of possession and a great variety of physical ailments. The relics were then translated to a church on Mt Sion, which Lucian’s letter, the first source for this story, anachronistically describes as the place “where Stephen was ordained as archdeacon.”

From there, portions of the relics were subsequently sent out to many other places, as attested inter alia by a sermon of St Augustine. “His body lay hidden from (the time of his martyrdom) until these days; but recently appeared, as the bodies of the holy martyrs are wont to appear, by the revelation of God, when it pleased the Creator. And indeed, it was revealed to him who showed these very things when they had been found; for the place was shown beforehand by signs, and the discovery made just as had been told by revelation. Many have received relics from there, because God willed it so, and these have come here.” (Sermon 318, 8) At the end of the 5th century, Gennadius, a priest of Marseille, wrote a continuation of St Jerome’s book On Illustrious Men, in which he states that “Lucian the priest, a holy man, to whom God revealed the place of the burial and the relics of St Stephen the First Martyr, in the time of the Emperors Honorius and Theodosius, wrote down (the story of) the revelation to all the churches, in Greek”, which a Spanish priest named Avitus then translated into Latin. (capp. 46-47; PL 58 1084B).

A reliquary for the hand of St Stephen from the cathedral of Genoa, Italy.

Prior to the Tridentine reform of the Breviary, it was far more common for the lessons of a Saint’s life to occupy all the lesson of Matins, and readings from Scripture on feast days were very rare. Therefore, in the Roman Breviary of 1529, the lessons of August 3rd tell the story as above, with a number of other less important details, in six lessons which occupy the first two nocturns of Matins. In the third nocturn, a homily of St Jerome on the Gospel of the day, Matthew 23, 34-39, is repeated from St Stephen’s main feast day.

In 1568, however, the lessons are reordered according to a pattern which was made universal by the Breviary of St Pius V, in which those of the first nocturn are always Biblical, those of the second are either a Patristic sermon or the life of a Saint, and those of the third a homily on the day’s Gospel. In the case of today’s feast, the lessons of the third nocturn remain the same, while those of the first are repeated from St Stephen’s octave day, Acts 7, 51 – 8, 2, the end of his speech and the account of his death and burial.

The story of the discovery of the relics by Lucian would normally then be compressed into the three lessons of the second nocturn, as was done for countless other Saints. However, they are actually reduced to two lessons, while the sixth is taken from the last book of St Augustine’s City of God.

“When the bishop Projectus was bringing the relics of the most glorious martyr Stephen to the waters of Tibilis, a great concourse of people came to meet him at the shrine. There a blind woman entreated that she might be led to the bishop who was carrying the relics. He gave her the flowers he was carrying. She took them, applied them to her eyes, and immediately saw. Those who were present were astounded, while she, with every expression of joy, preceded them, pursuing her way without further need of a guide. Lucillus (bishop of Sinita), in the neighborhood of the colony Hippo, was carrying in procession some relics of the same martyr, which had been deposited in the castle of Sinita. A fistula under which he had long suffered … was suddenly cured by the mere carrying of that sacred burden.” (De Civ. Dei 22, 8)

These are only two of the many miracles which St Augustine attributes to the relics of St Stephen in this chapter; he goes on to list several others, and more still which took place in the towns of Calama and Uzali, which also had relics of the Saint, miracles of which he had personal knowledge. “I cannot record all the miracles I know; and doubtless several of our adherents, when they read what I have narrated, will regret that I have omitted so many which they, as well as I, certainly know. … I beg these persons to excuse me, and to consider how long it would take me to relate all those miracles … For were I to be silent of all others, and to record exclusively the miracles of healing which were wrought in the district of Calama and of Hippo by … the most glorious Stephen, they would fill many volumes.”

St Augustine, by Giuseppe Antonio Pianca, ca. 1745

As is so often the case (see here, here, and here) the inclusion of this passage in the Breviary is part of the Church’s response to the Protestant reformation. The early reformers frequently claimed to find in the writings of the Church Fathers proof that their novelties were in fact the original teachings of Christ and the Apostles, long obscured by medieval corruptions, and happily restored by themselves. On this score, St Augustine was frequently appealed to especially in matters pertaining to the doctrine of grace; John Calvin famously stated about him “totus noster est – he belongs entirely to us” (a typically gross exaggeration), while Luther himself had been an Augustinian.

It hardly needs to be said that apologists on the Catholic side had an easy rejoinder to this, namely, that the same Church Fathers frequently and enthusiastically taught and practiced things which the reformers themselves rejected. St Jerome, for example, was the only authority to whom they could appeal in support of their rejection of the Deuterocanonical books of the Bible, but he was also a fierce defender of the Papacy, of asceticism, monasticism, celibacy and virginity, all of which made him particularly distasteful to Luther. Likewise, here we see St Augustine, the supposed Protestant doctor of grace, unreservedly promoting not just devotion to the Saints (which many Protestants could accept in some form), but also the importance of relics.

There were, of course, many dubious or manifestly false relics in circulation at the time of the Reformation; it also true that in some places, clerical avarice benefitted greatly from the laity’s devotion by charging them to see or touch the relics kept in churches, a frequent matter of Protestant complaints. True reformers rightly wished to see such abuses put to an end, and the problem was raised and effectively dealt with at the final session of the Council of Trent. But passages such as the one from St Augustine added to the Breviary show the complete rejection of relics on the part of the reformers for what it truly was, a radical break with a universally held tradition, one with roots in the Bible itself, and faithfully passed on by the Fathers.

Folio 113r of the Saint-Sever Apocalypse, a mid-11th century manuscript which contains inter alia the Commentary on the Apocalypse of St Beatus of Liébana (ca. 730-800). This page represents the words of Apocalypse 6, 9-11, “I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long, O Lord (holy and true) dost thou not judge and revenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’ And white robes were given to every one of them one; and it was said to them, that they should rest for a little time, till their fellow servants, and their brethren, who are to be slain, even as they, should be filled up.” The golden T in the upper right corner of the picture is the altar (labelled ‘ara aurea - the golden altar’) and the birds beneath it are labelled ‘the souls of the slain.’ In the lower part, the caption reads ‘to these were given white stoles.’ (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des manuscrits. Latin 8878)

In another example of its classic liturgical conservatism, the Roman church kept the feast of the Finding of St Stephen with almost the same liturgical texts as his principal feast on December 26th. The lessons of Matins described above are the only proper feature of the Office; the Mass is exactly the same, apart from the change of a single word in the Collect: “Grant us, we beseech thee, O Lord, so to imitate what we revere, that we may learn to love even our enemies; for we celebrate the birth/finding of him who knew how to pray for his very persecutors to our Lord.”

There was however, a completely proper Office for the feast, based on the text of Lucian’s letter, which was used in many other parts of Europe. Here are the three antiphons for the Gospel canticles.

Folio 312v of an antiphonary produced for the abbey of St Maur in France in the last quarter of the 11th century, with the first part of the proper Office of the Finding of St Stephen. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des manuscrits. Latin 12584)

Ad Magn. Aña in I Vesp. Ostendit * sanctus Gamaliel per visum Luciano sacerdoti tres calathos aureos rosis refertos, et quartum argenteum croco plenum, et dixit: Hi sunt nostri loculi, et nostræ reliquiæ: hic autem sanguineas habens rosas, loculus est sancti Stephani, qui solus ex nobis martyrio meruit coronari. – The holy Gamaliel showed the priest Lucian in a vision three golden baskets filled with roses, and a fourth of silver, filled with saffron, and said, ‘These are our coffins, and our relics; and this one that hath roses the color of blood is the coffin of Saint Stephen, who alone among us merited to be crowned with martyrdom.” (In the letter, Gamaliel explains that the saffron represents the purity of his son Abibas, who died very young, and that they were buried together, hence there are only three coffins.)

Ad Bened. Ex odoris * mira fragrantia sanitas ægrotis emanavit maxima: septuaginta namque et tres tunc a variis languoribus curati sunt homines in Inventione corporis Stephani dilectissimi Martyris, Deum benedicentes. – From the wondrous fragrance of the smell, very great healing came forth unto the ill; for seventy-three persons were then healed of various ailments at the finding of the body of Stephen, the most beloved martyr, as they blessed God.

Ad Magn. in II Vesp. Hodie * Joannes Pontifex cum maximo cleri plebisque tripudio, pretiosas Protomartyris Stephani reliquias in sanctam transtulit ecclesiam Sion, ubi quondam Archidiaconi functus est officio: cujus pia apud Deum sit pro nobis, quæsumus, intercessio. – Today, bishop John, with very great rejoicing of the clergy and people, translated the precious relics of the First Martyr Stephen to the holy church of Zion, where once he fulfilled the office of archdeacon; and we ask that his holy intercession may stand for before God.

Liturgical Notes on the Feast of St Peter’s Chains

The Latin name of today’s feast in the Tridentine Missal and Breviary is “Sancti Petri ad Vincula”, which is translated literally as “the feast of St Peter at the chains”, not “the feast of St Peter’s chains” or “of St Peter in chains.” This title is found in the oldest liturgical books which attest to it, and even earlier, in the list of the station churches given by the lectionary of Wurzburg, from the mid-seventh century. (Stations are kept there on the Mondays of the first week of Lent and the Pentecost octave.)

The beginning of the calendar for August in the Echternach Sacramentary. (895 A.D.; Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Latin 9433) “On the Kalends of August, (the feast of) St Peter at the chains, and the birth of the seven Maccabee brothers with their mother.”

Like many specifically Roman feasts, it began as the dedication feast of a basilica, which in this case is located on the Esquiline hill, within sight of the Colosseum. When a city has more than one church dedicated to the same Saint, they are often distinguished from each other by nicknames; the appellation “at the chains” would therefore serve to distinguish it from the Vatican basilica. Its great antiquity is demonstrated by the fact that it was restored by Pope Sixtus III in the 430s; an inscription which records the restoration mentions that the building was already considered old, and that the Pope re-dedicated it to both Apostolic founders of the See of Rome.

The breviary refers very obliquely to a tradition stated more explicitly in the Golden Legend and elsewhere, namely, that the Romans dedicated the month of August to honoring the Emperor Augustus’ memory, and that this second feast of St Peter was created to supplant this holiday. It is true that the Latin names for the seventh and eighth months of the year were originally “Quintilis” and “Sextilis”, and that the Emperor Augustus renamed the former for his adoptive father, Julius Caesar, and the latter for himself. However, it is not likely that the cult of “the divine Augustus” was so vibrant in the mid-5th century as to require serious opposition from the Church. There are 32 days between June 29th, St Peter’s principal feast day, and August 1st; this perhaps suggests the tradition that Peter was bishop of Antioch for seven years, and bishop of Rome for twenty-five, a total of 32 as the visible head of the Church, one less than the 33 years of Our Lord’s earthly life.

The breviary lessons for the feast day also give the traditional story of the church’s famous relic. When the Empress Eudocia, the wife of Theodosius II, went to Jerusalem in the year 438, she received as a gift the chain by which St Peter was held in prison under King Herod, as narrated in the Epistle of the feast day, Acts 12, 1-11. She then sent it to her daughter Eudoxia in Rome, who in turn presented it to the Pope. When it was exposed for the veneration of the faithful together with the chain by which Peter had been held during his imprisonment in Rome under the Emperor Nero, the two chains were miraculously united, so as to appear to be a single chain.

Photo by Agnese Bazzuchi, from our 2014 Lenten stations series.

In the year 1706, the painter Giovanni Battista Parodi decorated the basilica’s ceiling with a fresco of a famous miracle attributed to the chains, which is also recounted in the breviary. A count of the Holy Roman Empire was possessed by an evil spirit which caused him to bite himself; when he accompanied the Emperor Otto II to Rome in 969, Pope John XIII placed the chain around his neck, at which the demon was expelled.

Image from Wikipedia by Maros Mraz (click to enlarge.)

Many other miracles have been attributed to the numerous fragments of the chain that were shaved off and given by the Popes as gifts, a practice to which Pope St Gregory refers several times in his letters. A medieval sermon on the feast of Ss Peter and Paul, incorrectly attributed to St Augustine and also read in the Roman Breviary, speaks of this when it says, “if the shadow of (Peter’s) body could then bring help (Acts 5, 15), how much more now the fullness of power? … Rightly is that iron of the chains of punishment considered to be more precious than gold throughout the churches of Christ.”

A feast of St Peter’s Chains, (or “chain” in the singular) is also kept in the Byzantine Rite, on January 16. Its very first chant at Vespers refers to the miraculous healing of both body and soul. “Thou didst bind the deceit (of the devil) when thou wert bound in the Lord, and closed up in prison, o Apostle; therefore with love we honor thee, and with faith we embrace thy chain, drawing from it the strengthening of the body, and salvation of the soul. We praise thee, as our duty, who beheld God, and are like unto the Angels.”

Two other chants of the same day refer to a portion of the chains which was given to the church of Constantinople, and kept in Hagia Sophia itself, as noted in the Synaxarion, the Byzantine equivalent of the Martyrology. The apolytikion (dismissal hymn) of Vespers says “Without leaving Rome, thou didst come to us by the precious chains which thou didst bear, o first-enthroned of the Apostles, which we venerate in faith, and pray, that by thy intercessions before God, He may grant us great mercy.” Likewise, in the Canon of Matins, we read “Thou sanctifiest Rome by the burial of thy holy body, Peter, and by faith enlightenest the New Rome, that keeps thy honorable chain.” And: “The Apostle Peter came forth from Palestine as the bearer of Christ, and having proclaimed him to the world in older Rome, fell asleep, but gave to the New Rome his chain to venerate.”

Despite the antiquity and universality of the feast, it was removed from the calendar in the Breviary reform of 1960. It is hard not to see this as a function of a very modern embarrassment at the very idea of miracles and relics, since the same reform also suppressed the Finding of the Cross, St John at the Latin Gate, the Apparition of St Michael, the Finding of St Stephen’s Body, and St Francis’ Stigmata. It is true that we do not have a chain of custody from St Peter’s time to our own to prove the authenticity of the relics. On the other hand, we should shudder at the implication that so many of our ancestors in the faith were stupidly gullible at best, or liars at worst. St John Henry Newman wrote about this in the Apologia pro Vita Sua; in a note in the appendix “on Ecclesiastical Miracles,” he points out that both Testaments have stories of miracles effected by relics. A corpse is brought to life when it touches the bones of Elisha (4 Kings 13, 21), “and God wrought by the hand of Paul more than common miracles, so that even there were brought from his body to the sick, handkerchiefs and cloths, and the diseases departed from them, and the wicked spirits went out of them.” (Acts 19, 11-12.)

In addition to the relic and the basilica’s dedication, today’s feast also commemorates the Biblical event of St Peter’s release from prison. The importance of this episode is indicated by the fact that the church of Rome chose the relevant passage from the Acts of the Apostles for the text of both the Introit and Epistle, not only for today, but also for June 29th.

When the Apostle was held in prison in Jerusalem, and in danger of being killed by the monarch, he was freed by a direct act of divine intervention. Twenty-five years later, when he was held in prison in Rome, and in danger of being killed by the monarch, he was freed by human intervention, that of his jailers, Ss Processus and Martinian. The Christians of Rome then urged him to leave the city, for fear that he be captured once again, and executed. As he started down the Appian Way, the road leading to the port of Brindisi, where he could find a boat to bring him back to the East, Peter encountered Christ just outside the gates of the city. “And when he saw him, he said, ‘Lord, whither goest thou thus? And the Lord said unto him, ‘I go into Rome to be crucified. And Peter said unto him, ‘Lord, art thou being crucified again?’ He said unto him, ‘Yea, Peter, I am being crucified again.’ And Peter came to himself, and having beheld the Lord ascending up into heaven, he returned to Rome, rejoicing, and glorifying the Lord, for that he said, ‘I am being crucified”, which was about to befall Peter.” (from the apocryphal Acts of Peter.)

This episode, which otherwise would seem to have no connection to the feast, is cited in an antiphon for the Office of St Peter ‘ad vincula’ which was very widely used, although not at Rome itself. “Beatus Petrus Apostolus vidit sibi Christum occurrere; adorans eum et dixit: Domine, quo vadis? Venio Romam iterum crucifigi. – The blessed Apostle Peter saw Christ coming to meet him. Adoring Him, he said, ‘Lord, where art thou going?’ ‘I come to Rome to be crucified again.’ ”

We therefore see in today’s feast that St Peter was freed from prison in Jerusalem because his mission was not finished. He was destined to go to Rome, so that he might preach to all nations, “so that the light of truth, which was revealed for the salvation of all nations, might spread itself more effectively through the whole world from its head.” (Pope St Leo I, first sermon of the feast of Ss Peter and Paul.) The Lord Himself sent him back to the eternal city, choosing it as the place to establish the headship of His Church upon the earth, “the first throne”, as stated above in the Byzantine Office of the feast.

Quo vadis, Domine?, by Annibale Carracci, 1601-2