On a folded printed sheet, published by the Society of King Charles the Martyr, there is a Mass for blessed Charles Stuart* in English, in the style of the English Missal (i.e. pre-Bugnini, pre-ICEL), obviously intended to be gummable into Altar Books.
It is endowed with a Sequence, given both in English and in Latin. Such things can be intriguing! Which is a version of which?
The English begins Heavenly King, of Kings the Pastor; the Latin Rex divine, Rector Regum. At the foot of the English, there are the initials C.B.M.; at the foot of the Latin, H.J.. Frankly, the Latin seems to me distinctly more elegant than the English. Both versions make use of Andrew Marvell's lines "He nothing common did nor mean ..."
CBM is presumably the Revd Claude Beaufort Moss, 1888-1964.
HJ, I imagine, is the Hentry Jenner, FSA, 1848-1934, Jacobite, Founder of the Order of the White Rose, Cornish Language revivalist, and Morrab Librarian at that admirable club in Penzance.
Rather my sort of Englishman ...
Does anybody know anything about the genesis of this Sequence in either language?
11 May 2020
10 May 2020
"The A G Swannell Library"?
When I was in my teens, I often darkened the doors of the Roman Catholic Church in Clacton on sea. It was an unusual building. Opened in 1903, it was not just another piece of late-Victorain ungrammatical 'Gothic'. It was Romanesque; taken stylistically from S Bartholomew's Smithfield. The architect, F W Tasker, supplied those furnishings which would not have been present in Norman England ... including all the altar masonry culminating in a fine 'Romanesque' Exposition Throne ... in the same spirit. Stylistically, it was all of a piece.
Or rather, Tasker designed the church and its fittings. It was a Mr A G Swannell who gave ... paid for ... the High Altar, the Altar Rails, the pulpit. To my adolescent eyes, it made a perfect ensemble, graced, additionally, by a Shrine of our Lady of Light (about which I shall write on another occasion) and a statue of Blessed (beatified 1887; canonised 1947) Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, to whose apostolate the devotion to Our Lady of Light owes so much. Totus tuus ...
Using my computer, I have tried to manage a look at the current interior of this Church; the results have not been quite decisive. But I get the impression that the Sanctuary has been completely devasted. Whether the pulpit and statue were allowed to survive, I know not. I would be interested to hear.
I would also be mildly interested to know when the devastation occurred. Such things have continued until fairly recently. The Younger Pugin Cathedral at Queenstown ... er ... I mean Cobh, the one you admire as you sail into Cork Harbour ... was in the news only a few years ago. There were plans to reform the interior in accordance with Vatican II. But Catholic laity, thank God, appear less grovellingly supine than they were in the post-Conciliar decades. They secured some sort of enquiry, and put up Alcuin Reid. Alcuin was easily able to demonstrate forensically that the Council had in no way mandated what was proposed.
Two or three decades ago, I was talking to some Kerry ladies outside Killarney Cathedral (wow, Constable's Salisbury in miniature!!); they described vividly the skips outside, full of smashed masonry and pulverised marble, when Ireland's Most Charismatic and Most Modern Bishop, the Most Reverend Eamon Casey (Bishop of Kerry 1969-1976) was 'reordering' (in 1973) his Cathedral Church.
Casey exemplified ... perfectly ... the "Spirit of Vatican II". Sponsor some Cultural Festivals! Smash up some Altars! Get Sexually Active! (ironytriggerwarning). After all, why on earth do you think God gave us pickaxes? What are American divorcees, and nieces, for?
That generation was a generation of habitual liars. They could read; so they knew perfectly well that Vatican II had prescribed none of the vandalism they desired to unleash on Catholic Churches (or, indeed, the sexual immorality). That's why they invented the mendacious fiction of a "Spirit of the Council". It needed to be invented in order to cover up the con-trick being perpetrated.
I think someone somewhere should maintain an archive of prelates and priests who took part in that crooked cultural conspiracy ... a sort Truth and Justice Commission. With a view to academic use, its lists could be cross-referenced with lists of clergy involved in sexual misconduct or cover-ups.
For all I know, some of those nice old gentlemen may still be oppressing the People of God from Episcopal or Archiepiscopal Thrones.
The archive could be called The A G Swannell Library. May Swannell rest in peace; may he enjoy the rewards of his labours. And of his good taste.
Or rather, Tasker designed the church and its fittings. It was a Mr A G Swannell who gave ... paid for ... the High Altar, the Altar Rails, the pulpit. To my adolescent eyes, it made a perfect ensemble, graced, additionally, by a Shrine of our Lady of Light (about which I shall write on another occasion) and a statue of Blessed (beatified 1887; canonised 1947) Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, to whose apostolate the devotion to Our Lady of Light owes so much. Totus tuus ...
Using my computer, I have tried to manage a look at the current interior of this Church; the results have not been quite decisive. But I get the impression that the Sanctuary has been completely devasted. Whether the pulpit and statue were allowed to survive, I know not. I would be interested to hear.
I would also be mildly interested to know when the devastation occurred. Such things have continued until fairly recently. The Younger Pugin Cathedral at Queenstown ... er ... I mean Cobh, the one you admire as you sail into Cork Harbour ... was in the news only a few years ago. There were plans to reform the interior in accordance with Vatican II. But Catholic laity, thank God, appear less grovellingly supine than they were in the post-Conciliar decades. They secured some sort of enquiry, and put up Alcuin Reid. Alcuin was easily able to demonstrate forensically that the Council had in no way mandated what was proposed.
Two or three decades ago, I was talking to some Kerry ladies outside Killarney Cathedral (wow, Constable's Salisbury in miniature!!); they described vividly the skips outside, full of smashed masonry and pulverised marble, when Ireland's Most Charismatic and Most Modern Bishop, the Most Reverend Eamon Casey (Bishop of Kerry 1969-1976) was 'reordering' (in 1973) his Cathedral Church.
Casey exemplified ... perfectly ... the "Spirit of Vatican II". Sponsor some Cultural Festivals! Smash up some Altars! Get Sexually Active! (ironytriggerwarning). After all, why on earth do you think God gave us pickaxes? What are American divorcees, and nieces, for?
That generation was a generation of habitual liars. They could read; so they knew perfectly well that Vatican II had prescribed none of the vandalism they desired to unleash on Catholic Churches (or, indeed, the sexual immorality). That's why they invented the mendacious fiction of a "Spirit of the Council". It needed to be invented in order to cover up the con-trick being perpetrated.
I think someone somewhere should maintain an archive of prelates and priests who took part in that crooked cultural conspiracy ... a sort Truth and Justice Commission. With a view to academic use, its lists could be cross-referenced with lists of clergy involved in sexual misconduct or cover-ups.
For all I know, some of those nice old gentlemen may still be oppressing the People of God from Episcopal or Archiepiscopal Thrones.
The archive could be called The A G Swannell Library. May Swannell rest in peace; may he enjoy the rewards of his labours. And of his good taste.
9 May 2020
GOVERNMENT DECREE: "THE NEW NORMAL"
The politicians are already indoctrinating us to accept that, post-pandemic, we shall have a "New Normal". I'm pretty sure what they have in mind is that so many clergy will have been celebrating, privately in their studies, the Extraordinary Form of the Holy Eucharist, that they will find it hard to drag themselves back to ... er ...
You are all going to have to prepare for this. But help is at hand. Very cheap help.
You would need to dive in the deepest seas, or traffick for the strangest webs with the most Eastern of merchants, before you found better value for your £3.50 than you will get by buying a little book, written by Joseph Shaw of the Latin Mass Society and published by the dear old Catholic Truth Society (mind you, their pamphlets used to cost 4d at the back of any Catholic Church when I was a boy).
The book is called:
"HOW TO ATTEND THE EXTRAORDINARY FORM"
It is full of information, it covers a vast field, and, unusually in this age, does not condescend to the reader. You are treated as an adult, and given footnotes!
Joseph Shaw is, as many readers will be aware, a man of exemplary energy and drive. His activism has been the main impulse behind the publication of the very fine FIUV Position Papers. This is an age when many ordinary Catholics seem to have a faintly bewildered manner. Not so the laymen and laywomen and laychildren attached to the Traditionalist movement. Do you want passive laypeople who simper submissively in the presence of domineering clerical bullies? Steer clear of the Latin Mass Society.
Of course, not everybody would write any book in exactly the same way. I would have welcomed a clear statement that the rules of the Old Rite allow celebration facing the people or facing the same way as the people ... and that the rules of the New Rite ... have precisely the same two options!!! And that Benedict XVI allowed the Readings in the Old Rite to be in the vernacular. I myself would not do disturbing things in the presence of a congregation likely to be irritated by my eccentric personal choices, but ... for example ... when offering Mass at an open air Altar a few years ago on August 15, at a recusant House not far from Oxford, I said the Old Mass facing the people (literally, I think, versus australia) and with vernacular readings. They were a congregation mostly, I think, not familiar with the Old Mass. They seemed perfectly happy.
My stuff about seas, webs, and merchants ... I can't remember whether I'm alluding to Walter Pater on La Gioconda, or Evelyn Waugh on Mr Scott-King, or Boris Johnson on Winston Churchill. Amazing how vague one gets in old age.
You are all going to have to prepare for this. But help is at hand. Very cheap help.
You would need to dive in the deepest seas, or traffick for the strangest webs with the most Eastern of merchants, before you found better value for your £3.50 than you will get by buying a little book, written by Joseph Shaw of the Latin Mass Society and published by the dear old Catholic Truth Society (mind you, their pamphlets used to cost 4d at the back of any Catholic Church when I was a boy).
The book is called:
"HOW TO ATTEND THE EXTRAORDINARY FORM"
It is full of information, it covers a vast field, and, unusually in this age, does not condescend to the reader. You are treated as an adult, and given footnotes!
Joseph Shaw is, as many readers will be aware, a man of exemplary energy and drive. His activism has been the main impulse behind the publication of the very fine FIUV Position Papers. This is an age when many ordinary Catholics seem to have a faintly bewildered manner. Not so the laymen and laywomen and laychildren attached to the Traditionalist movement. Do you want passive laypeople who simper submissively in the presence of domineering clerical bullies? Steer clear of the Latin Mass Society.
Of course, not everybody would write any book in exactly the same way. I would have welcomed a clear statement that the rules of the Old Rite allow celebration facing the people or facing the same way as the people ... and that the rules of the New Rite ... have precisely the same two options!!! And that Benedict XVI allowed the Readings in the Old Rite to be in the vernacular. I myself would not do disturbing things in the presence of a congregation likely to be irritated by my eccentric personal choices, but ... for example ... when offering Mass at an open air Altar a few years ago on August 15, at a recusant House not far from Oxford, I said the Old Mass facing the people (literally, I think, versus australia) and with vernacular readings. They were a congregation mostly, I think, not familiar with the Old Mass. They seemed perfectly happy.
My stuff about seas, webs, and merchants ... I can't remember whether I'm alluding to Walter Pater on La Gioconda, or Evelyn Waugh on Mr Scott-King, or Boris Johnson on Winston Churchill. Amazing how vague one gets in old age.
7 May 2020
Intron Varia Er Ro, Pedit Evidomp ... ... UPDATED
HENBONT
In the Breton harbour town of Oldbridge ... or do I mean Henbont ... or am I writing about Hennebont ... they used to have problems which, today, seem only too up-to-date. Pestilences. Perhaps being an entrepot had something to do with it.
But the Pestilence which struck in 1699 was worse ... more terrible ... than all the previous disasters. It was no respecter of persons: bras ha bihan, kozh ha yaouank ... bout a oe betek seizh pe eizh a dud varve bemdez (yes, I have slipped into the 'modernised' orthography: the Bretons are as keen as the Irish and Cornish on 'updating'). Though I suppose, today, we would have to add a fair number of zeroes to those over-modest digits.
But the town elders (Vistr=Magistri??) decided do something practical; to vow a silver statue to our Blessed Lady. And, as soon as the pestilence abated, they had a procession round the town with the statue and promised, in thanksgiving, to do the same thing annually. So, each year, this takes place on the last Sunday in September (the silver statue was melted down down at the Revolution, but a new one, this time silvered bronze, took its place after the Bourbon Restoration).
KEY: Intron means Lady (the modern orthography has deleted the first of the ns); Varia is Maria (the so-called "Celtic" languages do strange things with certain consonants at the beginnings of words); and Ro means Vow. Our Lady of the Vow. And Pedit Evidomp? The older banners in Breton Churches have the Pray for us in Breton. (I have often wondered how long this cultic usage survived the practical near-disappearance of the language.)
CORONAVIRUS
It has suddenly occurred to me!!! Good Heavens!!! !!! How can I have been so slow!!! During this year in which we have rededicated this Kingdom of England to Blessed Mary as her Dowry, we could use the Henbont Strategy to attack Coronavirus (yes; I know this would reduce our Biodiversity, but I am not a Laudato si man). Or perhaps not exactly the same thing. I doubt if the Chancellor's ransacked Exchequer could run to a silver statue! Austerity!! But what about 'vowing' a splendid new Crown to our Lady of Walsingham? The Anglican statue doesn't need one, because she has the spectacular 'Oxford Crown' (given by the people of S Paul's Walton Street, originally a daughter church of S Thomas's but now a nightclub). But, with my sound Anglican Catholic background, I have always thought the image in the Catholic Shrine looks so poor and drab and neglected without a proper Crown or even any hint of a Cope. In the sight of Providence (so S John Paul II reminded us after the bullet was deflected from his heart on the Feast of our Lady of Fatima) there is no such thing as coincidence: therefore we ought to have had Faith enough to realise, from the very name of our current pestilence, what it was that our blessed Lady desired: Coronam novam et splendidam para mihi. Hint hint!!
Like the fine people of Brittany, we could then celebrate the deliverance annually, obviously with a procession along the Walsingham Holy Mile (perhaps backed up by a Metropolitan procession from Westminster Abbey down Victoria Street to a Site near the Railway Station).
The First Lord of the Treasury, God bless him, would fittingly walk the Holy Mile barefoot immediately behind the Incoronata. It might add even more force to this whole anti-virus Strategy if he were to add a personal ingredient to the National Vow: videlicet, that he, Boris, would himself return to the Catholic Faith.
UPDATE An erudite friend suggests emending the penultimate paragraph to: " ... ... Victoria Sttreet to a station near the Railway, with further stations also marked by appropriate devotional images."
In the Breton harbour town of Oldbridge ... or do I mean Henbont ... or am I writing about Hennebont ... they used to have problems which, today, seem only too up-to-date. Pestilences. Perhaps being an entrepot had something to do with it.
But the Pestilence which struck in 1699 was worse ... more terrible ... than all the previous disasters. It was no respecter of persons: bras ha bihan, kozh ha yaouank ... bout a oe betek seizh pe eizh a dud varve bemdez (yes, I have slipped into the 'modernised' orthography: the Bretons are as keen as the Irish and Cornish on 'updating'). Though I suppose, today, we would have to add a fair number of zeroes to those over-modest digits.
But the town elders (Vistr=Magistri??) decided do something practical; to vow a silver statue to our Blessed Lady. And, as soon as the pestilence abated, they had a procession round the town with the statue and promised, in thanksgiving, to do the same thing annually. So, each year, this takes place on the last Sunday in September (the silver statue was melted down down at the Revolution, but a new one, this time silvered bronze, took its place after the Bourbon Restoration).
KEY: Intron means Lady (the modern orthography has deleted the first of the ns); Varia is Maria (the so-called "Celtic" languages do strange things with certain consonants at the beginnings of words); and Ro means Vow. Our Lady of the Vow. And Pedit Evidomp? The older banners in Breton Churches have the Pray for us in Breton. (I have often wondered how long this cultic usage survived the practical near-disappearance of the language.)
CORONAVIRUS
It has suddenly occurred to me!!! Good Heavens!!! !!! How can I have been so slow!!! During this year in which we have rededicated this Kingdom of England to Blessed Mary as her Dowry, we could use the Henbont Strategy to attack Coronavirus (yes; I know this would reduce our Biodiversity, but I am not a Laudato si man). Or perhaps not exactly the same thing. I doubt if the Chancellor's ransacked Exchequer could run to a silver statue! Austerity!! But what about 'vowing' a splendid new Crown to our Lady of Walsingham? The Anglican statue doesn't need one, because she has the spectacular 'Oxford Crown' (given by the people of S Paul's Walton Street, originally a daughter church of S Thomas's but now a nightclub). But, with my sound Anglican Catholic background, I have always thought the image in the Catholic Shrine looks so poor and drab and neglected without a proper Crown or even any hint of a Cope. In the sight of Providence (so S John Paul II reminded us after the bullet was deflected from his heart on the Feast of our Lady of Fatima) there is no such thing as coincidence: therefore we ought to have had Faith enough to realise, from the very name of our current pestilence, what it was that our blessed Lady desired: Coronam novam et splendidam para mihi. Hint hint!!
Like the fine people of Brittany, we could then celebrate the deliverance annually, obviously with a procession along the Walsingham Holy Mile (perhaps backed up by a Metropolitan procession from Westminster Abbey down Victoria Street to a Site near the Railway Station).
The First Lord of the Treasury, God bless him, would fittingly walk the Holy Mile barefoot immediately behind the Incoronata. It might add even more force to this whole anti-virus Strategy if he were to add a personal ingredient to the National Vow: videlicet, that he, Boris, would himself return to the Catholic Faith.
UPDATE An erudite friend suggests emending the penultimate paragraph to: " ... ... Victoria Sttreet to a station near the Railway, with further stations also marked by appropriate devotional images."
6 May 2020
VERY PRIVATE GREETINGS TO VERY SPECIAL PEOPLE
Today's Feast of S John, restored to the Ordinariate Calendar after falling foul of the 'reformers', marks, of course, the beginning of the series of secret meetings (literally underground) which led to the start of the Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham. I send fraternal greetings to any member of that select (fewer than a hundred) and unique priestly group, who happens to be reading this. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers!
Nor do I forget the priests' wives who sustained and supported this process. Stong, sensible, orthodox, resolute women. Did ever priests' wives play such a decisive role before in the history of the Latin Church?
Nor do I forget the priests' wives who sustained and supported this process. Stong, sensible, orthodox, resolute women. Did ever priests' wives play such a decisive role before in the history of the Latin Church?
Self Construction?
One hundred years ago, on May 6 1920, a little fellow was born called Lawrence Alexander Robertson. When he died, on August 4 1994, he was Lawrence Alexander Durdin-Robertson, 21st Baron Strathloch in the peerage of Ireland, and Priest of Isis.
How did he make that journey?
I believe that it was a voyage of self-construction. I think it was rather like the life of Athelstan Riley, who re-invented himself by acquiring noble status through the purchase of a property on Jersey which carried with it a feudal title Seigneur de la Trinite; who had the arms his father had acquired redesigned and regranted to appear more medieval; who transformed a Cornish Church so that it looked just as if the Reformation had never happened and contained a distinctly attractive Riley Chantry Chapel; and who rebuilt his property in Jersey so that it looked just like a traditional Norman Manor House (the German CO lived there during the Occupation).
But Riley, for all his pretensions, remained an orthodox Anglo-Catholic. What happened to Robertson?
Trinity Dublin; BA and MA; Wells Theological College; Ordained in the C of E in 1948. He married in 1949; held a living in the County Wicklow (Aghold, 1951-1952) and then in Norfolk (East Bilney, 1952-1957). Then his career took off. As his obituary in the Irish Times, surely crafted by sources close to his family, was to put it, "He returned to Ireland ... religious convictions led him to withdraw from the Anglican Communion in 1970 and, in 1972, to receive the priesthood of Isis and to found in 1976, with his wife and sister [sic] , the Hon. Olivia Durdin-Robertson, the Fellowship of Isis."
He appears to have augmented his surname by deed-poll. Not difficult. But whence the Barony?
The Obituary carries on: "In 1979 he established, by genealogical reearch, his claim to the ancienrt Gaelic title of Baron Strathloch, which was matriculated by the Chief Herald of the Irish Genealogical Office, on May 7th, 1979".
I apologise to his shade if what I now about to surmise is wrong. But here is my hypothesis.
I think he may have secured a grant or exemplification of Arms (anybody with adequate money for the fees can do this). The Grant included Supporters. In English heraldry, supporters indicate noble status. So he interpreted the Grant as acknowledgement that he was a peer of the Kingdom of Ireland.
But in Irish Heraldry, this is not quite so. For example, the head of the Liberator's family used Supporters, as anybody can detect by looking carefully at the silverware displayed in their romantic property at Derrynane in the County Kerry.
To continue the story in the Irish Times: "He devotedf a great part of his life to scholarship, as might be expected of a cousin of the poet Robert Graves [the Ascendancy gentry, not strangely, were much intermarried], and was the author of some 15 books, in the main dealing with goddess worship throughout the world".
He died on August 4 1994. May God have mercy upon the soul of the poor silly old apostate.
How did he make that journey?
I believe that it was a voyage of self-construction. I think it was rather like the life of Athelstan Riley, who re-invented himself by acquiring noble status through the purchase of a property on Jersey which carried with it a feudal title Seigneur de la Trinite; who had the arms his father had acquired redesigned and regranted to appear more medieval; who transformed a Cornish Church so that it looked just as if the Reformation had never happened and contained a distinctly attractive Riley Chantry Chapel; and who rebuilt his property in Jersey so that it looked just like a traditional Norman Manor House (the German CO lived there during the Occupation).
But Riley, for all his pretensions, remained an orthodox Anglo-Catholic. What happened to Robertson?
Trinity Dublin; BA and MA; Wells Theological College; Ordained in the C of E in 1948. He married in 1949; held a living in the County Wicklow (Aghold, 1951-1952) and then in Norfolk (East Bilney, 1952-1957). Then his career took off. As his obituary in the Irish Times, surely crafted by sources close to his family, was to put it, "He returned to Ireland ... religious convictions led him to withdraw from the Anglican Communion in 1970 and, in 1972, to receive the priesthood of Isis and to found in 1976, with his wife and sister [sic] , the Hon. Olivia Durdin-Robertson, the Fellowship of Isis."
He appears to have augmented his surname by deed-poll. Not difficult. But whence the Barony?
The Obituary carries on: "In 1979 he established, by genealogical reearch, his claim to the ancienrt Gaelic title of Baron Strathloch, which was matriculated by the Chief Herald of the Irish Genealogical Office, on May 7th, 1979".
I apologise to his shade if what I now about to surmise is wrong. But here is my hypothesis.
I think he may have secured a grant or exemplification of Arms (anybody with adequate money for the fees can do this). The Grant included Supporters. In English heraldry, supporters indicate noble status. So he interpreted the Grant as acknowledgement that he was a peer of the Kingdom of Ireland.
But in Irish Heraldry, this is not quite so. For example, the head of the Liberator's family used Supporters, as anybody can detect by looking carefully at the silverware displayed in their romantic property at Derrynane in the County Kerry.
To continue the story in the Irish Times: "He devotedf a great part of his life to scholarship, as might be expected of a cousin of the poet Robert Graves [the Ascendancy gentry, not strangely, were much intermarried], and was the author of some 15 books, in the main dealing with goddess worship throughout the world".
He died on August 4 1994. May God have mercy upon the soul of the poor silly old apostate.
5 May 2020
Bernard of ?Cluny and Bishop Grandisson of Exeter
In the Chapter Library at Exeter, there is an unpublished fragment which comes from a Mary Missal; a Missal containing only the Ordo Missae and the Masses of our Lady (analogous to the Requiem Missals we have nowadays). They were produced for use in the Lady Chapels of great churches which were able to provide an entire establishment ... clergy, books, vestments, plate, cantors ... for use in such chapels. This fragment was corrected by the hand of Bishop John de Grandisson (pronounced Grahnsn; Bishop of Exeter in the fourteenth cenrury).
In this fragment, the Eastertide Mass of our Lady has a Sequence which neither the late Walter 'Patrimony' Frere nor I were able to find elsewhere. I print the remains below; [] indicates a hole in the manuscript. The Revd Dr James 'Patrimony' 'Ordinariate' Bradley learnedly spotted that the first stanza came from the Mariale (III) by Bernard (of Cluny? or of Morlaix?); a long praise of our Lady in 15 Rhythmi; and the other stanzas are scattered around in V. I was accordingly able to fill up most holes in the text from Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi; Volume 50, pp 423 sqq...
This hymn is associated with the name of S Casimir, because a text of it was buried with him. We know it best in the form of dear Fr Faber's translation Daily, daily, sing to Mary, which only uses a small selection from the hundreds of stanzas.
The question remains, whether the centonisation was done by Bishop 'Patrimony' Grandisson of Exeter himself, a great client of our Lady, for the Mary Missal which he had made for his Cathedral or for his collegiate foundation at Ottery; or whether someone else had already done the work.
At the bottom, for my own satisfaction, I give, from AH, a brief account of textual variants it records.
III.15 [O beat]a
per quam data
nova mun[do gaudia]
et aperta
fide certa
regna sunt caelestia.
V.19 [Quot dolore]s
et angores
tua sensit anima
cum in cru[cem
summ]um ducem
gens levavit pessima!
21 Corde tris[ti
pertulisti
pa]ssionis gladium
cum irrisum
et occisum
as[pexisti filium.]
28 Sed quam laeta
es effecta
die statim tertia
[cum rex fortis
v]ictae mortis
protulit indicia!
30 Nec nar[rari
nec pensari]
tuum possit gaudium,
quando maestis
[rex caelestis
pacis dedit nuntium.]
__________________________________________________________
mss=most of the manuscripts; ms=one or few of them.
III.15 ms quam beata
V.19 mss quot angores quot dolores; ms tot dolores; ms et dolores; ms quot languores quot dolores; ms quot dolores quot angores
mss cum; ms dum; ms levavit impia.
V.21 mss tuum cernis filium; ms cernens filium; ms tuum vides filium
V. 28 mss o quam; ms es completa; ms et repleta [haec cum assonantia]; mss die facta tertia; ms die virgo tertia; ms facta die tertia; ms dum rex; ms qua rex; ms dirae mortis; ms pertulit; ms iudicia.
V. 30 mss quis narrare quis pensare; ms quis pensare quis narrare; ms hinc narrare, quis pensare; ms unde maestis; ms quoniam maestis.
In this fragment, the Eastertide Mass of our Lady has a Sequence which neither the late Walter 'Patrimony' Frere nor I were able to find elsewhere. I print the remains below; [] indicates a hole in the manuscript. The Revd Dr James 'Patrimony' 'Ordinariate' Bradley learnedly spotted that the first stanza came from the Mariale (III) by Bernard (of Cluny? or of Morlaix?); a long praise of our Lady in 15 Rhythmi; and the other stanzas are scattered around in V. I was accordingly able to fill up most holes in the text from Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi; Volume 50, pp 423 sqq...
This hymn is associated with the name of S Casimir, because a text of it was buried with him. We know it best in the form of dear Fr Faber's translation Daily, daily, sing to Mary, which only uses a small selection from the hundreds of stanzas.
The question remains, whether the centonisation was done by Bishop 'Patrimony' Grandisson of Exeter himself, a great client of our Lady, for the Mary Missal which he had made for his Cathedral or for his collegiate foundation at Ottery; or whether someone else had already done the work.
At the bottom, for my own satisfaction, I give, from AH, a brief account of textual variants it records.
III.15 [O beat]a
per quam data
nova mun[do gaudia]
et aperta
fide certa
regna sunt caelestia.
V.19 [Quot dolore]s
et angores
tua sensit anima
cum in cru[cem
summ]um ducem
gens levavit pessima!
21 Corde tris[ti
pertulisti
pa]ssionis gladium
cum irrisum
et occisum
as[pexisti filium.]
28 Sed quam laeta
es effecta
die statim tertia
[cum rex fortis
v]ictae mortis
protulit indicia!
30 Nec nar[rari
nec pensari]
tuum possit gaudium,
quando maestis
[rex caelestis
pacis dedit nuntium.]
__________________________________________________________
mss=most of the manuscripts; ms=one or few of them.
III.15 ms quam beata
V.19 mss quot angores quot dolores; ms tot dolores; ms et dolores; ms quot languores quot dolores; ms quot dolores quot angores
mss cum; ms dum; ms levavit impia.
V.21 mss tuum cernis filium; ms cernens filium; ms tuum vides filium
V. 28 mss o quam; ms es completa; ms et repleta [haec cum assonantia]; mss die facta tertia; ms die virgo tertia; ms facta die tertia; ms dum rex; ms qua rex; ms dirae mortis; ms pertulit; ms iudicia.
V. 30 mss quis narrare quis pensare; ms quis pensare quis narrare; ms hinc narrare, quis pensare; ms unde maestis; ms quoniam maestis.
4 May 2020
Spiritual Pilgrimage
In accordance with suggestions received, I here give the "Spiritual Pilgrimage"' locations for the rest of May. They are the Medieval English shrines as listed in the little Walsingham booklet I mentioned before. As I suggested, one could go a-roaming to foreign shrines too; and to English-Welsh modern shrines. There is, for example, the Shrine at the Oratory Church in Cardiff; there is our Lady of Light, once at S Hilary in Cornwall and also at Posbury S Francis in Devon and Clacton on Sea in Essex ... suggestions welcome on this thread ...
4: Our Lady of Westminster (at the North door of the Abbey and in its Pew Chapel, and in Westminster Cathedral.
5: Our Lady of Grace at the Pillar in S Paul's Cathedral.
6: Our Lady at the Oak in Islington.
7: Our Lady of Willesden.
8: Our Lady of Muswell.
9: Our Lady of Oxford.
10: Our Lady of Grace at Cambridge.
11: Our Lady of Coventry.
12: Our Lady of Grace of Ipswich.
13: Our Lady of Thetford.
14:Our Lady of Woolpit.
15: Our Lady of Abingdon.
16: Our Lady of Pity in the Galilee at Durham.
17: Our Lady on the Bridge at Wakefield.
18: Our Lady of the White Friars in Doncaster.
19: Our Lady at the Pillar, St Edmundsbury.
20: Our Lady of Evesham.
21: Our Lady of the Four Candles at S Alban's.
22: Our Lady of Pity in the Rock at Dover.
23: Our Lady in the Park, near Liskeard in Cornwall.
24: Our Lady in the Wood, near Epworth in Lincolnshire.
25: Our Lady of Winchester.
26: Our Lady of Windsor.
27: Our Lady of Peace, at Winfarthing in Norfolk.
28: Our Lady of Ardenburgh, in the Church of S Nicholas in Yarmouth.
29: Our Lady at the Oak, in S Martin's, Norwich.
30: Our Lady on the Red Mount, King's Lynn.
31: Our Lady of Walsingham.
4: Our Lady of Westminster (at the North door of the Abbey and in its Pew Chapel, and in Westminster Cathedral.
5: Our Lady of Grace at the Pillar in S Paul's Cathedral.
6: Our Lady at the Oak in Islington.
7: Our Lady of Willesden.
8: Our Lady of Muswell.
9: Our Lady of Oxford.
10: Our Lady of Grace at Cambridge.
11: Our Lady of Coventry.
12: Our Lady of Grace of Ipswich.
13: Our Lady of Thetford.
14:Our Lady of Woolpit.
15: Our Lady of Abingdon.
16: Our Lady of Pity in the Galilee at Durham.
17: Our Lady on the Bridge at Wakefield.
18: Our Lady of the White Friars in Doncaster.
19: Our Lady at the Pillar, St Edmundsbury.
20: Our Lady of Evesham.
21: Our Lady of the Four Candles at S Alban's.
22: Our Lady of Pity in the Rock at Dover.
23: Our Lady in the Park, near Liskeard in Cornwall.
24: Our Lady in the Wood, near Epworth in Lincolnshire.
25: Our Lady of Winchester.
26: Our Lady of Windsor.
27: Our Lady of Peace, at Winfarthing in Norfolk.
28: Our Lady of Ardenburgh, in the Church of S Nicholas in Yarmouth.
29: Our Lady at the Oak, in S Martin's, Norwich.
30: Our Lady on the Red Mount, King's Lynn.
31: Our Lady of Walsingham.
3 May 2020
Spitting: how, when, why, and where to do it.
Our Lady at the Red Ark of York, pray for us
The theory has been attractively argued that the collect for the Third Sunday After Easter in the Old Calendar (as that Calendar was before, according to Fr Louis Bouyer, it was wrecked by "three maniacs") was originally composed, perhaps by Pope Damasus, during a Papal campaign to get the Lupercalia celebrations in Rome banned. An aristocratic Collegium called the Fratres Luperci, naked but for a thong, ran through the streets of the City slashing with leather whips the outstretched hands of the citizenesses - who hoped thereby to secure fertility. This collect, in such a context, would be expressing the hope that the Roman aristocracy (who had conservative tendencies) will relinquish such pagan residues as incompatible with their Christian Faith.
Even if, however, that rather jolly theory were not true in its details, it does remain very clear, from the early Roman Sacramentaries, that this Collect comes from a Mass-set deeply concerned with the duty of Christians to abstain from going to the Sacrificial Banquets which followed and were an integral part of the worship of pagan deities. Here is another prayer from the same set: "... Deus qui tuae mensae participes a diabolico iubes abstinere convivio, da quaesumus plebi tuae ut gustu mortiferae profanitatis abiecto puris mentibus ad epulas aeternae salutis accedant" [God who dost command the participants at thy table to abstain from the banquet of the Devil, grant we beseech thee to thy people that, rejecting the taste of death-dealing profanity, they may approach with pure minds the banquets of eternal salvation]. The Preface of this Mass-set vividly describes a situation in which true and false Christians are all mixed up in the Church, so that there is risk that the True might weakly slip away, while we must hope that the False and weak will be converted and get their senses back (resipiscientiam).
This, of course, is the point S Paul is already making in I Corinthians 10. We all need to be reminded, in our respective cultures, of the risks of conforming to this world, to the Devil, rather than to the very different Way of our Merciful Saviour. The temptation for Greeks and Romans was the stronger because those distinctly tempting Sacrificial Banquets were both religious and social occasions combined.
Our rather good Anglican Patrimonial translation of this collect:
Almighty God, who shewest to them that be in error the light of thy truth, to the intent that they may return into the way of righteousness: grant unto them that are admitted into the fellowship of Christ's religion; that they may eschew those things that are contrary to their profession, and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same.
In the Latin, the word Cranmer rendered as eschew, respuere, really means spit back out.
Spitting ... Yes! The Pontiff who composed this collect is vividly suggesting that the rather decent food provided in Pagan Sacrificial Banquets deserves really to be just spat back out! It is Diabolical! Spitting back out is a Christian duty!
Spitting ... Memories crowd in of all those old notices whereby English town councils tried to preserve genteel ladies from the offensive spitting of the lower orders (somebody ought to start a museum for surviving examples; and for other old favourites like Commit No Nuisance, and Kindly Adjust Your Clothing Before Leaving The Convenience).
But we know from first millennium documentation that part of the papal entourage, as the Pope (on horseback!) made his solemn way through the streets of Rome, was a subdeacon carrying a bowl for the Sovereign Pontiff to expectorate into. What a shame we no longer have Subdeacons (the abolition of which was a 'reform' which Dom Bernard Botte, the main post-conciliar reviser of the Pontifical, regarded as a most unfortunate breach of an ancient tradition which the West shared with the East). One imagines seminary professors needing to instruct ordinands for the Subdiaconate on the best techniques for avoiding inaccurately projected Pontifical Spittle. Dear me, how I do ramble. You really should stop me.
I have never quite been able, when saying this lovely old collect, to get out of my mind an image of Marcus Antonius, who was a lupercus, capering through the streets of Rome generously bestowing welted hands and fertility upon the philoprogenitive womenfolk. Just imagine the look of sniffy disapproval on the face of Octavian. What a shame he won the Battle of Actium. I have never liked the cut of his ... rambling again ...
Here is a limerick offered by that mighty Pontiff, the late Edwin Barnes, First Bishop of Richborough:
There was a young man of Darjeeling
Who got on a 'bus bound for Ealing;
When he saw near the door
"Do not spit on the floor"
He climbed up and he spat on the ceiling.
The theory has been attractively argued that the collect for the Third Sunday After Easter in the Old Calendar (as that Calendar was before, according to Fr Louis Bouyer, it was wrecked by "three maniacs") was originally composed, perhaps by Pope Damasus, during a Papal campaign to get the Lupercalia celebrations in Rome banned. An aristocratic Collegium called the Fratres Luperci, naked but for a thong, ran through the streets of the City slashing with leather whips the outstretched hands of the citizenesses - who hoped thereby to secure fertility. This collect, in such a context, would be expressing the hope that the Roman aristocracy (who had conservative tendencies) will relinquish such pagan residues as incompatible with their Christian Faith.
Even if, however, that rather jolly theory were not true in its details, it does remain very clear, from the early Roman Sacramentaries, that this Collect comes from a Mass-set deeply concerned with the duty of Christians to abstain from going to the Sacrificial Banquets which followed and were an integral part of the worship of pagan deities. Here is another prayer from the same set: "... Deus qui tuae mensae participes a diabolico iubes abstinere convivio, da quaesumus plebi tuae ut gustu mortiferae profanitatis abiecto puris mentibus ad epulas aeternae salutis accedant" [God who dost command the participants at thy table to abstain from the banquet of the Devil, grant we beseech thee to thy people that, rejecting the taste of death-dealing profanity, they may approach with pure minds the banquets of eternal salvation]. The Preface of this Mass-set vividly describes a situation in which true and false Christians are all mixed up in the Church, so that there is risk that the True might weakly slip away, while we must hope that the False and weak will be converted and get their senses back (resipiscientiam).
This, of course, is the point S Paul is already making in I Corinthians 10. We all need to be reminded, in our respective cultures, of the risks of conforming to this world, to the Devil, rather than to the very different Way of our Merciful Saviour. The temptation for Greeks and Romans was the stronger because those distinctly tempting Sacrificial Banquets were both religious and social occasions combined.
Our rather good Anglican Patrimonial translation of this collect:
Almighty God, who shewest to them that be in error the light of thy truth, to the intent that they may return into the way of righteousness: grant unto them that are admitted into the fellowship of Christ's religion; that they may eschew those things that are contrary to their profession, and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same.
In the Latin, the word Cranmer rendered as eschew, respuere, really means spit back out.
Spitting ... Yes! The Pontiff who composed this collect is vividly suggesting that the rather decent food provided in Pagan Sacrificial Banquets deserves really to be just spat back out! It is Diabolical! Spitting back out is a Christian duty!
Spitting ... Memories crowd in of all those old notices whereby English town councils tried to preserve genteel ladies from the offensive spitting of the lower orders (somebody ought to start a museum for surviving examples; and for other old favourites like Commit No Nuisance, and Kindly Adjust Your Clothing Before Leaving The Convenience).
But we know from first millennium documentation that part of the papal entourage, as the Pope (on horseback!) made his solemn way through the streets of Rome, was a subdeacon carrying a bowl for the Sovereign Pontiff to expectorate into. What a shame we no longer have Subdeacons (the abolition of which was a 'reform' which Dom Bernard Botte, the main post-conciliar reviser of the Pontifical, regarded as a most unfortunate breach of an ancient tradition which the West shared with the East). One imagines seminary professors needing to instruct ordinands for the Subdiaconate on the best techniques for avoiding inaccurately projected Pontifical Spittle. Dear me, how I do ramble. You really should stop me.
I have never quite been able, when saying this lovely old collect, to get out of my mind an image of Marcus Antonius, who was a lupercus, capering through the streets of Rome generously bestowing welted hands and fertility upon the philoprogenitive womenfolk. Just imagine the look of sniffy disapproval on the face of Octavian. What a shame he won the Battle of Actium. I have never liked the cut of his ... rambling again ...
Here is a limerick offered by that mighty Pontiff, the late Edwin Barnes, First Bishop of Richborough:
There was a young man of Darjeeling
Who got on a 'bus bound for Ealing;
When he saw near the door
"Do not spit on the floor"
He climbed up and he spat on the ceiling.
2 May 2020
Sub tuum praesidium (2).
Our Lady Undercroft of Canterbury, pray for us..
Here is a very literal translation of the Greek original of the Sub tuum praesidium.
O Mother-of-God, we flee-for-refuge beneath thy bowels-of-compassion; do not overlook our supplications in a-time-we-are-surrounded, but ransom [or deliver] us from danger, only Holy-one, only Blessed-one..
Supplication: in Greek thought, if you were in danger from someone (perhaps they might be about to kill you in battle), if you could clasp their knees or reach up and touch their beard, you achieved the official status of 'suppliant' and ought not to be killed. You might be sold into slavery ... but ...
Surrounded: surrounded by threats, dangers, enemies.
Ransom: buy back, 'redeem'.
Deliver: this variant reading gives the same word as the 'deliver' at the end of the Our Father.
Blessed: the same word as in the Hail Mary.
Here is a common English translation of the Latin version.
We fly to thy protection, O holy Mother of God. Do not despise our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin.
Edgar Lobel's early dating of the papyrus, of course, simply gives us the terminus ante quem of this prayer. It could come from much earlier than 250. As far as theotokos is concerned, even in the West Tertullian writes Dei ... Mater; and one would expect such talk earlier in the East than the West; and particularly in the Egyptian backyard of S Cyril's own Church. It would be no skin off my nose if it turned up in a very early second century context. While I do not (for cogent reasons I am prepared to explain) see the cultus of our Lady as being a 'Christianisation' of the Ptolemaic goddess Isis, I do suspect that the coinage of the verbal compound theotokos is very likely to come from the same inveterate habit of linguistic ingenuity which generated the Isiac aretalogies of Pap Oxy 1380 and the Kyme stele published by Salac in 1927. Perhaps Callimachus of Cyrene coined it .... oops, he died before the Christian era ... but you know what I mean. He would have done it if ... come to think of it, I wonder if anyone has ever done a study of what S Cyril owed to Callimachus ....
1 May 2020
May Morning in Oxford
The Hymn of Thanksgiving was not, of course, sung from the top of Magdalen Tower this coronaviric morning. But it was sung electronically on the Internet, quod videte. A written account of May Morning is in Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night, Chapter XI.
In Magdalen Chapel, there is glass from the 1630s; one of the lights shows our Lady, labelled as Deipara ... the Latin equivalent, of course, of Theotokos. I wonder if it is pure coincidence that in the May Hymn (text and music seventeenth century) there is the stanza
Tibi, aeterne Spiritus
cuius afflatu peperit
infantem Deum Maria,
aeternum benedicimus.
It was in that interesting decade that the baroque 'salomonic' porch was built onto the University Church, with the crowned statue of the Mother of God which so infuriated the Puritans. In the late 1630s, Oriel (associated with the University Church) acquired a statue of our Lady; removed in 1650, she returned after the Restoration. S John Henry Newman (himself of Oriel) remarked "The presence of Catholicism was at length simply removed ... It took a long time to do this thoroughly; much time, much thought, much labour, much expense; but at last it was done. ... Truth was disposed of and shovelled away ..." Yet 1630s Oxford does at least slip a hesitant footnote into that summary.
In Magdalen Chapel, there is glass from the 1630s; one of the lights shows our Lady, labelled as Deipara ... the Latin equivalent, of course, of Theotokos. I wonder if it is pure coincidence that in the May Hymn (text and music seventeenth century) there is the stanza
Tibi, aeterne Spiritus
cuius afflatu peperit
infantem Deum Maria,
aeternum benedicimus.
It was in that interesting decade that the baroque 'salomonic' porch was built onto the University Church, with the crowned statue of the Mother of God which so infuriated the Puritans. In the late 1630s, Oriel (associated with the University Church) acquired a statue of our Lady; removed in 1650, she returned after the Restoration. S John Henry Newman (himself of Oriel) remarked "The presence of Catholicism was at length simply removed ... It took a long time to do this thoroughly; much time, much thought, much labour, much expense; but at last it was done. ... Truth was disposed of and shovelled away ..." Yet 1630s Oxford does at least slip a hesitant footnote into that summary.
Sappho of Lesbos and the Mater Misericordiae
Our Lady of Glastonbury, pray for us.
One of the most distinguished classical scholars of the twentieth century was Edgar Lobel. He worked among the innumerable scraps of Papyrus brought back to Oxford in 1890s from the rubbish dumps of ancient Egypt ... where such 'paper' is preserved by the dry soil. Here in Oxford we still have great tea-chests of them, which are gradually being worked through; not unnaturally, earlier workers tended to start with the bigger and cleaner fragments, so that we are now down to the smaller and dirtier bits. Much of the material was ephemeral ... shopping lists, tax returns; even these, of course, are of immense interest twenty or more centuries later. But what has excited classicists most is the rediscovery of famous Greek authors whose works had failed to survive the fall of Constantinople.
So, for example, we now have extensive fragments of the great lyric poets of ancient Lesbos, Alcaeus and Sappho. Indeed, during the last five or so years big new additions have been made to the Corpus Sapphicum. Liturgists would be most interested in Sappho because she originated (or enhanced the profile of) the metre called the Sapphic, which is employed in a number of Office Hymns (especially those written in the Carolingian renaissence). The metre concerned is the one you may recognise as having stanzas composed of three metrically identical lines followed by a short one. (In the old Breviary, Iste Confessor was the one most frequently used). And Edgar Lobel was not only a skilled papyrologist, but a master of the rather strange and difficult Lesbian dialect. He was, quite simply, the foundation stone of Lesbian studies and a very great ornament of this University.
However, this post is not really about Lobel's work on Sappho. I just thought I'd like you to have a rounded picture of his greatness. Let us now, Zedwise, 'drill into' a most interesting Papyrus for us: an early Christian fragment with the earliest known prayer to our Lady. It is the brief formula we know as the Sub tuum praesidium, and is common to the Coptic, Byzantine, and Roman liturgies (pretty ecumenical, then, you might say). Edgar Lobel looked at it and gave his view (you go by 'palaeography', handwriting styles) that it was Third Century.
But when it was published, the Editor disregarded this judgement and dated it a hundred years later. Why? Was he an even greater papyrologist and palaeographer than Lobel? Not a bit of it. He just could not believe that such devotion to our Lady could have existed so early in the history of the Christian Church.
I am always preaching at you and the point of my sermon today is that a fair number of non-Catholic 'scholars', especially 'liberals', simply cannot be trusted to keep their own bias out of things. They are terrified that evidence might come to light subverting their liberal and semi-agnostic dogmas. So they are not above falsifying history. When I was an undergraduate in the School of Litterae Humaniores (Classics), I was surprised by the way that Ancient Historians with no theological axe to grind were so very much more respectful of New Testament evidence than were the old gents in dog-collars who lectured upon the New Testament.
Now back to that Marian Papyrus. More tomorrow.
One of the most distinguished classical scholars of the twentieth century was Edgar Lobel. He worked among the innumerable scraps of Papyrus brought back to Oxford in 1890s from the rubbish dumps of ancient Egypt ... where such 'paper' is preserved by the dry soil. Here in Oxford we still have great tea-chests of them, which are gradually being worked through; not unnaturally, earlier workers tended to start with the bigger and cleaner fragments, so that we are now down to the smaller and dirtier bits. Much of the material was ephemeral ... shopping lists, tax returns; even these, of course, are of immense interest twenty or more centuries later. But what has excited classicists most is the rediscovery of famous Greek authors whose works had failed to survive the fall of Constantinople.
So, for example, we now have extensive fragments of the great lyric poets of ancient Lesbos, Alcaeus and Sappho. Indeed, during the last five or so years big new additions have been made to the Corpus Sapphicum. Liturgists would be most interested in Sappho because she originated (or enhanced the profile of) the metre called the Sapphic, which is employed in a number of Office Hymns (especially those written in the Carolingian renaissence). The metre concerned is the one you may recognise as having stanzas composed of three metrically identical lines followed by a short one. (In the old Breviary, Iste Confessor was the one most frequently used). And Edgar Lobel was not only a skilled papyrologist, but a master of the rather strange and difficult Lesbian dialect. He was, quite simply, the foundation stone of Lesbian studies and a very great ornament of this University.
However, this post is not really about Lobel's work on Sappho. I just thought I'd like you to have a rounded picture of his greatness. Let us now, Zedwise, 'drill into' a most interesting Papyrus for us: an early Christian fragment with the earliest known prayer to our Lady. It is the brief formula we know as the Sub tuum praesidium, and is common to the Coptic, Byzantine, and Roman liturgies (pretty ecumenical, then, you might say). Edgar Lobel looked at it and gave his view (you go by 'palaeography', handwriting styles) that it was Third Century.
But when it was published, the Editor disregarded this judgement and dated it a hundred years later. Why? Was he an even greater papyrologist and palaeographer than Lobel? Not a bit of it. He just could not believe that such devotion to our Lady could have existed so early in the history of the Christian Church.
I am always preaching at you and the point of my sermon today is that a fair number of non-Catholic 'scholars', especially 'liberals', simply cannot be trusted to keep their own bias out of things. They are terrified that evidence might come to light subverting their liberal and semi-agnostic dogmas. So they are not above falsifying history. When I was an undergraduate in the School of Litterae Humaniores (Classics), I was surprised by the way that Ancient Historians with no theological axe to grind were so very much more respectful of New Testament evidence than were the old gents in dog-collars who lectured upon the New Testament.
Now back to that Marian Papyrus. More tomorrow.
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