EASTER MORNING (1)

So, at what point, would a medieval Englishman feel that his Easter was really starting? 

The ceremonies of Holy Week have left his parish church with the Most Holy Sacrament, together with the Cross, in a recess, probably on the North side of the Sanctuary and called "the Sepulchre". On Easter Morning, very early (ante matutinas) the clergy enter and go straight to the Sepulchre. Having censed it, they take the Sacrament to the High Altar, where it is replaced in the usual place of Reservation. They then return to the Sepulchre.

The clergy, genuflecting, then extract the Cross. The most senior cleric present "with another most excellent person begins in an alta voce this antiphon Christus resurgens, with which antiphon let the procession proceed with the choir singing the whole antiphon with its verse. And then all the bells are to be rung for a classicum ... the antiphon being sung with its verse by the whole choir ..." [I have given the Exeter version of this]. All then "kneel joyfully before the Cross and kiss it in worship ... The crosses and images throughout the church are unveiled now". [Urquhart.]

So, as this antiphon is loudly chanted, and the bells are rung in a jangling peal, and his church sheds its penitential Lenten aspect, the lay worshipper realises that Easter, surely, is under way! Here is the text of the antiphon  (Romans 6: 9).

"Christus resurgens ex mortuis jam non moritur, mors illi ultra non dominabitur. Quod enim vivit, vivit Deo. Alleluia. Alleluia. Versus Dicant nunc Judaei Quomodo milites custodientes sepulchrum perdiderunt regem ad lapidis positionem, quare non servabant Petram iustitiae aut sepultum reddunt, aut resurgentem adorant nobiscum dicentes Quod enim vivit, vivit Deo. Alleluia. Alleluia.

And so firmly was this fixed in the traditional memory that Cranmer preserved parts of it in his 1549 Prayer Book, to be used "in the Morning afore Matins, the people being assembled in the church". ... indeed, damaged fragments are still present in the BCP.

There are wider cultural references here, rarely or never noticed, to which I intend to return tomorrow.