Deus misereatur again

 Dr R F Littledale, the continuator of John Mason Neale's four-volume commentary on the (Coverdale) psalter, had a bit of a temptation to want to educate the (Anglican) clergy. So, in this psalm, he likes the idea that in verse 6 (where the correct and LXX/Vulgate reading is The earth hath brought forth her fruit), earth refers to our most blessed Lady; and he quotes (Octoechus) anerotos aroura horathes, ton stachun tekousa tes zoes. anerotos aroura ... gracious me, how those Byzantines did love that sort of thing ... as Peter Wimsey admitted with regard to himself, they were drunk on words; never really quite sober.

In the old Breviaries, Deus misereatur was umbilically joined to psalm 62/63; the latter preceded Deus misereatur  and they shared one Gloria, one antiphon. This seems to me fitting: upon waking I recall my afflictions, my thirst ... but the combined psalm ends with the song of glory and divine blessing, which is Deus misereatur. 

Older commentators sometimes related this psalm to the combination in one chosen race of 'believing gentiles' and 'the repentant people of the Jews'.

And in 62/63, I can offer you another example of Dr Littledale's didactic endeavours: in verse 9, he quotes the hymn Salutatio aurea, and relates the words of the psalm to devotion to the Lord's Five Precious Wounds: Ave dextra manus Christi/ Perforata plaga tristi,/ Nos ad dextram iube sisti,/ Quos per crucem redemisti.

Sometimes people want to know what this "Anglican Patrimony" is. Perhaps I might define it as a passion for making arcane connections between disparate texts. Farrer ... Thornton ... Littledale ... Neale ... 

I wonder how our Holy Father would have got on with Gregory Dix ...

Prayer Book Piety (1)

 " ... going to church was a pleasure to her. She liked to hear the Lessons and the Collects, coming round year after year, and marking the seasons. The historical books and prophets in summer; then the 'stir-up' collect just before Advent; the beautiful collects in Advent itself, with the Lessons from Isaiah reaching on through the Epiphany; they were quite music to her ear. Then the Psalms, varying with every Sunday; they were a perpetual solace to her, ever old yet ever new. The occasional additions, too, the Athanasian Creed, the Benedictus, Deus misereatur, and Omnia opera, which her father had been used to read at certain great feasts; and the beautiful Litany ..."

Such is S John Henry Newman's account of the piety of a devout Anglican lay-woman in an ordinary parochial context ... we notice, of course, the absence of a Eucharistic element. I am a little puzzled that, apparently, the Benedictus was an 'addition' ... was it customarily replaced by the Jubilate? Does 'which' refer to the [Benedicite] Omnia Opera, or to all the items on the preceding list?

Intriguingly, Saint John Henry makes reference to the Deus misereatur, psalm 66 (LXX and Vulgate)/67 (Masoretic text). This optional alternative to the Nunc Dimittis was added in the Book of 1552. But there is something here of which not everybody may be aware.

This psalm had been a daily part of the Roman Catholic Morning Office, of Breviary Lauds, until the revisions imposed by S Pius X. What this means is that, from the day S John Henry and Henry Manning and Frederick Faber and all the rest of the nineteenth century clergy, started saying the Breviary Office, Lauds, for them, began with Deus misereatur. 

And, according to Durandus, the practice was of immemorial antiquity. 

Yes; custom ... stuff ... come and go; rupture or no rupture, the Psalter of S Pius X is what we use now ... but the (much more than) half a millennium during which Lauds began with Deus misereatur seems to me a long time. And the generations of clergy nourished by this practice must amount to rather a vast number of clergy ... century by century. 

It is not undeserving, surely, of respect and even of regret. Or am I just soppy?

And it is a diverting whimsy of History that, in the Church of England, it is legal to use Deus misereatur daily, ever since 1552 when that horrible zwinglian Cranmer tweaked his Evensong ...

A bit more on this psalm to follow.

Fr Adrian Fortescue again

 " ... even in religious matters the Pope is bound, very considerably, by the Divine constitution of the Church. There are any number of things that the Pope cannot do in religion. He cannot modify, nor touch in any way, one single point of the revelation Christ gave to the Church; his business is only to guard this against attack and false interpretation. We believe that God will so guide him that his decisions of this nature will be nothing more than a defence or unfolding of what Christ revealed. The Pope can neither make nor unmake asacrament, he cannot affect the essence of a sacrament in any way. He cannot touch the Bible; he can neither take away a text from inspired Scriptures nor add to them. He has no fresh inspiration nor revelation. His business is to believe the revelation of Christ, as all Catholics believe it, and to defend it against heresy."

Thou shalt not pray for the pope ... nor for the Bishops ...

Is today, February 26, the Feast of an Apostle?  No; S Matthias was on the 24th. BUT this is a leap year ... so the Apostle should be observed on the correct number of days before the Kalends of February. BUT more: that would get him onto a Sunday in Lent, which would be very wicked indeed. So he gets transferred onto Monday the 26th of February.

I love these Feasts of the Apostles. But, on these days, I am nowadays sometimes slightly saddened by the recollection that, since 1970, most of my fellow presbyters of the Roman Rite have been forbidden ... YES!! ... FORBIDDEN ... to pray for the pope or for the hierarchy in the Preface of the Eucharistic Prayer. 

Before that year, the Praefatio of the Mass for Apostles begged God to grant that he would not desert his flock but would guard it through his blessed Apostles with continual protection; that she might be governed by those same helmsmen whom the Father had appointed as vicarious shepherds of his Work.  

('continual': one old manuscript entertainingly reads pervigili; God, literally, was asked not to nod off to sleep. You might justly fear that mixed metaphors of Shepherds and Helmsmen might have been confusing to some people ... but such minor details had long-since been smoothed away.)

However, in the post-conciliar disorders, this petition was struck out. It is no longer lawful in the Preface for a Novus Ordo priest to beg (suppliciter exorare) the Father for anything at all.

I find myself wondering: if this salutary petition had been retained and kept in the Preface, might the Church have been spared the terrible decades since the Council? Instead, there is not a single word of deprecation in the new Preface.

Another detail which is not without significance: in the formula which has replaced the old Preface, instead of the reference to "Vicars of your work", the unfortunate clergy concerned have been saddled with "Vicars of your Son", which I take to be an allusion to the phrase "Vicar of Christ", commonly applied to the Roman Pontiff.

And I think that phrase smells of Canon Law. Or am I being over-sensitive?

Do remember to thank God for Summorum Pontificum.

Fiducia Supplicans

 I think a  change has been made in the way documents of the Dicastery for the Doctine of the Faith are presented. And not a change for the better.

In the old days, these documents concluded with a statement that the Roman Pontiff had agreed the document, and ordered it to be be published. But, in the case of Fiducia Supplicans, this is replaced by the words Responsum ad 'dubium'de benedictione unionem personarum eiusdem sexus, et Nota esplicativa. Ex Audientia Die 18 Dicembre 2023 FRANCESCO.

The Cardinal Prefect, in a text he has added to the top of the document, refers to the pope thus: "he approved it with his signature".

Although published in a rich variety of languages, this document has not appeared in Latin. Moreover, there is not (as there sometimes is) an indication of the original language of the text. But one can surmise that it was composed by someone whose Latin had not reached even an elementary stage. (I have highlighted in red two errors in the one sentence ... and should Die be Diei?.)

Cardinal Mueller has pointed out that this document encourages the clergy to commit "a sacrilegious and blasphemous act against the Creator's plan and against Christ's death for us which meant to fulfill the Creator's plan".   

I would disagree with this only to the extent of critcising additionally the employment by the one-time Suprema of illiterates.

The Fifteenth Mystery of the Holy Rosary

No ... this is not yet another article advising folk to say the Rosary differently. It is not even a commendation of Different Mysteries which I will urge people to adopt ... since the Rosary, as the Lay Person's Psalter, should have 150 Aves ... no more; no less ...to represent the 150 psalms of the psalter. (So I was a little disquieted when S John Paul II added some more.)

No; I wish simply to suggest a fresh tiny shade of meaning to the final Mystery: the Coronation of our Blessed Lady.

I have no complaints about the thirteenth-century iconography, which so often shows the Mother of God sitting beside her Divine Son, who is placing a a Crown upon her head. But I am mindful of a phrase in the old Western Secret in the Vigil Mass of the Assumption, which claims to give a concise and precise account of why Mary was Assumed. Idcirco, it explains to God, you transferred her from the present Age so that she may pray faithfully to intercede for our sins: de praesenti saeculo transtulist, ut pro peccatis nostris apud te fiducialiter intercedat. Idcirco means "for this very reason".

And my heart does rather warm when I find East and West concurring in the same sentiments. So, when I read some words of S Gregory Palamas, Doctor eximius Marianus, my heart uttered a pious Heureka!!

Kanteuthen kai nun dia thanatou pros athanasian khoresasa, kai dikaios apo ges eis ouranon metastasa ... tais akoimetois pros auton presbeiais touton pros pantas hileoumene ... 

Palamas referred to our Lady as the Boundary (methorion) of created and uncreated nature, so that nobody could come to God except through her ... she is the Treasury (tamieion) and President (Prytanis) of the Wealth of the Godhead. ... Thou didst become the Steward and Full Encompassment of Graces ...

Today, I filch ...

 ... some very important information from Michael Hodges's magnificent recently published The Golden Legend. It relates to the Norfolk Saint Walstane, born of local royal stock. He died in 1016, and was buried at Bawburgh. Miracles led to him becoming a ...Saint 'by acclamation',

John Bale, an unfriendly 'reformer', wrote:

 " ... both Men and Beastes which had lost their Privy Parts had new Members again restored to them, by this Walstane. Mark thys kynd of Myracles. For your Learnynge, I thynke Ye have seldome redde the lyke."

 Mr Hodges lists some ten surviving paintings of  S Walstane in Norfolk churches; his feast day, apparently, was (is?) on May 31.

He is usually shown with a scythe and with cattle.

Saint David ... ??

 It's a little while until March 1, so I'm sneaking in with a query seeking information in good time ... it concerns the liturgical observance ... or not ... of S David, in accordance with the hints to be gleaned from Tradition and past praxis. 

I begin with the Victorian period and its evidence.

I have an 1874 Breviary. It contains a single appendix for 'Anglia'. This appears to treat Wales as part of England. It does have S David on March 1, but not with any particular dignity. He is a plain "Double". The assumption must be that in every part of England and Wales he was observed, and with that rank.

9 November 1943: the SRC granted a Calendar to the English Diocese of Nottingham. It has nothing indicated for 1 March. 

In 1949, Burns Oates Washbourne published a bilingual hand-missal with copious information about British local Calendars. On 1 March, S David was observed as a "double" in: Westminster, Cardiff, Menevia, and Portsmouth. I can imagine historical reasons for the Westminster observance; I think Cardiff and Menevia at that time constituted the whole of Wales; but why on earth is Portsmouth the only other 'English' diocese to observe S David? Is it because he visited Paulinus on the Isle of Wight (Vecta insula) and eiusdem hortatu vicinis populis praedicare coepit?

A 1958 Brentwood Calendar, for 1 March, simply says "Ember Day. Mass of feria." And the Anglo-Papalist English Missal of 1958 gives congruent information.

A friendly priest researching an associated topic writes: "I found a set of old Clifton breviaries ... I discovered that in 1962 SS David and Patrick were not in Clifton's calendar at all."

Joining up the dots indicates whither this is all leading. Does anybody have other fact-based information? 

I wonder if one could discern in this jumble of facts evidence for a paper on Liturgical Evidence for Notions of Nationhood?

Dons, Murder, and Rape

A day or two ago, as one does, I happened to catch the end of an interview on the Steam Radio; it involved two dons ... one, an Anglo-Saxon specialist; the other (to judge from the small fragments I heard of her input) a pro-Viking enthusiast. Is there some new exhibition somewhere highlighting the Vikings? Anyway, I may have got this wrong, but I think she was asked what the Vikings had done for us. Her reply was to the effect that every placename ending in -by is part of what the Vikings did for us.

Well, different people can see things differently ... and I come from a part of England with Viking placenames. Each such toponym suggests to me the expropriation of land and property, and the merciless slaughter of men, women and children; theft and rape and pillage; the destruction of much that I hold sacred.

But, for the interviewee, the Vikings are History and 'Heritage' and Exhibitions.

I possess a small relic of S Theodore, Martyr, Abbot of Croyland (alias Crowland).

Croyland is ... or, until the days of Tudor Minor, was ... a large Abbey in a disart; that is, in inaccessible lands remote from humankind. It founder is considered to be S Guthlac, but this morning I take you back to 870. An army of devout and principled believers in Odin is, by the Permissive Will of God, approaching Croyland. So, "putting on their sacred vestments, the abbat and all the others assembled in the choir, and there performed the regular hours of the holy office; after which, commencing it, they went through the whole of the Psalter of David. The lord abbat himself then celebrated high mass, being assisted therein by brother Elfget, the deacon; brother Salvin, the subdeacon; and the brothers Egelred and Wulric, youths who acted as taper-bearers.

"The mass being now finished, just as the abbat and his assistants before-named had partaken of the mystery of the holy communion, the Pagans bursting into the church, the venerable abbat was slain upon the holy altar, as a true martyr and sacrifice of Christ, by the hand of the most blood-thirsty king Osketul. His assistants, standing around him, were all beheaded by the barbarians ...."

Visitors and pilgrims can still see the skull of that Holy Abbot. He died, I suspect, without a thought for 'History' or 'Heritage' or magnificent Exhibitions or the career prospects of dons. His death, probably, has some connection with the deep sword wound by his left eye-socket.

Chroniclers tell us that on March 22, Bardney in Lincolnshire observed the Festival of the Many Holy Monks and Nuns martyred during the Danish Persecution. Not unfittingly; apparently King Osketul also managed to slaughter the monks of Peterborough and the nuns of Ely and many others of my dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ with whom I am most solemnly linked in my crucified Saviour and whose gracious suffrage I implore.

 

Part (2) of the Bishop of Lamus.

In the first half of this piece, I demonstrated the shifty treatment which an old prayer received at the hands of the liturgists of 1943. I also wished to suggest to you that, whereas the seventh century original was about the Church of Rome and its protection by its august Apostolic Patrons, in 1943 the spotlight falls on the lonelier, soltary figure of the Bishop of Rome ... whom we rather hope will continually protect the Roman Church.

I can best illustate this by a quotation or two from the sam ancient source. 

In an adjacent Preface, we learn that, however many heretics there are around (errantium multitudo), the true Sons of the Father's Redemption are those who do not make a different noise from from the principalis Traditio; who follow quidquid sedes illa censuerit quam tenere voluisti totius ecclesiae principatum.

The "Principal Tradition". The "See which by God's will holds the principatus of the whole, world-wide, Church".

As I read this, I feel almost as if I am back in the first or second century. You will remember the Latin version of S Irenaeus: "ad hanc Ecclesiam propter potentiorem principalitatem ... in qua semper ... conservata est ea quae est ab Apostolis Traditio". S Cyprian called Rome the "Ecclesia principalis, unde unitas saccerdotalis exorta est." As Dix pointed out, everybody knew that Jerusalem was the first Church chronologically, and then there was Antioch; early writers cannot be staking a claim that Rome came first chronologically. I suspect that Greek concepts are at work here: the authenticity of Roman Tradition means that, like a stream emerging from a hill-side, Rome is at the pure source. S Irenaeus is certainly making that point when he calls the Roman Church arkhaiotate. Classicists will remember the poetics of Callimachus and his school. 

A couple of generations ago, scholars on the continent (Callewart, Chapelle ...) and even in England (Cross in Oxford) did a fair bit of work, identifying on stylistic grounds liturgical compositions by various Roman Pontiffs, going back to S Leo himself, in the Verona Sacramentary. They identified two or three centuries of elegant, gracious, confident Latinity, centred around the essential concepts of Primacy and Tradition. Here is one example; another Preface:

" Qui ineffabili sacramento ius apostolici principatus in Romani nominis arce posuisti unde se evangelica veritas per tota mundi regna diffunderet, ut quod in orbem terrarum eorum praedicatione manasset Christianae devotionis, sequeretur universitas salubrique compendio; et hi qui ab illorum tramite deviassent haberentur externi; et tantummodo filii veritatis existerent qui a principali nullatenus traditione discederent."

I don't find it easy to imagine men who thought, conversed, and prayed like this, discovering much in common with the Fernandezs or the Bergoglios or their Rome.

The Bishop of Lamus (1)

 Edward Myers, titular Bishop of Lamus and Vicar Capitular of Westminster, sat at his desk to deal with his correspondence on June 10 1943 ... the Thursday, Octave day, after the Ascension. He was a good liturgist who wrote a small book on the Lenten Liturgy which I commend. But, on that Thursday, Stuff was Happening in the Med. The 'Allies' were interested in a little island called Pantelleria, off the coast of Sicily and, therefore, a useful possible base from which to open up a front in Sicily ... and, thence, in Western Europe. The invasion of this tiny island was envisaged and planned. But it never took place.

As Myers sat at his desk, the Axis commander on Pantelleria, at his desk, was receiving permission from Rome to surrender. On Friday, the surrender came into effect. And before the end of July, Il Duce had been sacked by Italy's midget Piedmontese monarch and ... the tide of war had turned.

Yes!! I can tell you a bit about Bishop Myers' post-bag that morning! ... although it had no relation to the situation on Pantelleria. He signed the Imprimatur on a new liturgical text: nothing less than a new Commune to be gummed into your Roman Missal. 

The new Commune was for sainted Popes.

Very many of the early popes had been martyrs and sat comfortably in the Calendar. But their liturgical commemoration at the altar was performed simply by the use of the Commune of a Bishop ... either as Martyr or Confessor. Now somebody had decided that they should have their own Commune. Perhaps it was felt that a Bishop of Rome deserved better than the familiar Propers used for any old ordinary bishop!

And I have some views on the Collect of that new Mass. It is still, I think, in the 1962 Missal. It is drawn from a very old Roman collect in a very old volume ... so far so good ... but:

It begins Gregem tuum, Pastor aeterne [bone], placatus intende, et per ... . There are two versions in the Verona Sacramentary: 291 and 316. And, after per they both refer to the Apostles, because this section of the Sacramentary is a collection of Masses for the Solemnity in June of Ss Peter and Paul. So ... per [beatos] Apostolos [tuos] ...

If you look now at the 1943 Commune in your Missal, you will see that, instead, it names the Holy Pope who is being commemorated on that day. per beatum N [Martyrem tuum atque] Summum Pontificem This twists the entire sense of the rest of the prayer. Because the words which, in the original, applied to Ss Peter and Paul on their great festival, were made to apply instead to a particular day's commemorated pope.

316 goes on to say that the Apostles were totius ecclesiae ... Filii tui vicarii pastores; 291 refers to the Apostles who were [are] the same rectores, gubernatores, whom the Lord appointed to be his vicarii pastores.

The same sort of neat, slippery job we expect to find in accounts of the 1960s!

The first thing I dislike about this is that it gives a false impression: that a Pope is a superior rank in the Church's sacramental structure to that of an ordinary Bishop ... just as a Bishop is sacramentally superior to a Presbyter. And, quite simply, I do not believe that this is true. As Mascall put it in 1958, " ... whereas the episcopate is a sacramental function of the Church, which is imparted by the sacramental act of consecration, the Papacyis a juridical and administrative one, which is imparted by the administrative act of election. ... nothing can alter the fact ..."

The good news is that the guns fell silent on Pantelleria.

To be rapidly concluded.

 

A Panicky September?

 In the autumn of 1745, things may have looked good, especially in Scotland. Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Prince of Wales and our future King Charles III, bearing a Commission of Regency from his Father King James VIII of Scotland and III of England, was the centre of Edinburgh Society, and had defeated the Georgite general Cope at the Battle of Prestonpans on Saturday 21 September; wags suggested that Cope was the first general to have carried the news of his own defeat when he entered Berwick in fullest flight.

Back in the capital, Charles "received the ladies who came to his drawing room; he then supped in public, and generally there was music at supper and a ball afterwards". "He dines every day in public. All sorts of people are admitted to see him, then. He constantly practises all the arts of condescension and popularity--talks familiarly to the meanest Highlanders, and makes them very fair promises".

As the news spread in London, rumour had it that Smug Herrenhausen was about to foot it back to Hannover and that in London's dockland, ships were being loaded with such goodies as could be salvaged by the usurping dynasty.

But what was happening in Golden Square, in the property we now rejoice to know as the Headquarters of the Ordinariate? And, especially, in the Portuguese embassy which resided in those properties and had established there an Embassy Church?

The Portuguese Minister was Sebastiao Jose De Carvalho e Melo, an 'enlightenment' figure later created Marquis of Pombal. He was to acquire a fearsome reputation as a result of his political conviction that the only good Jesuit was a dead Jesuit. In the following decades, he ruled Portugal with whatever is the Portuguese for an iron rod.

A GLC blue plaque in Golden Square suggests that the property ceased to be the Portuguese Embassy in 1744, but other sources assert that Pombal left London on September 25 1745.

If that is the correct date, we have the interesting coincidence that the Portuguese diplomat left London only three or four days after the Georgite debacle in the Northern Kingdom.

Are we here in the realm of interesting coincidences, or ...