The Liturgy of the Miraculous Medal ... (1)

 I tried, in mid-November, to give readers a feel for how the Mass and Office of the Latin Churches were before the pontificate of S Pius X and his consequent changes. I rather feel that we should appreciate the instincts of priests and peoples during that period when the Newmans and the Mannings, Wisemans, Fabers were worshipping ... like the Pope in Rome and Latin clergy throughout the world. The changes made in the first decade or so of the twentieth century were really fairly radical in how they set aside the previous liturgical culture.

Today, a bit more on that part of the story ... focussing now on a Feast which was instituted to take place on November 27. So think yourself back, please, to the pontificate of Leo XIII ... intellectual, statesman, Classicist, fervent devotee of our Lady (Pope 1878-1903).

Leo XIII granted the Feast of the Manifestation of the Immaculate Virgin Mary Of the Sacred Medal; what we call the Miraculous Medal. S John Henry Newman began to wear the Medal on August 22 1845 ... even before his formal reception into the One Fold of the Redeemer. And I invite you to consider how the Feast came about.

The Clergy had previously been granted Votive Offices which they could say instead of the Breviary offices, so as to lighten their heavy load of liturgical prayer. One of these Votive Offices was of the Immaculate Conception of our blessed Lady. And the Office granted for November 27, Feast of the Miraculous Medal, begins with the rubrical direction "Everything as in the Votive office of the Immaculate Conception the BVM except for what follows". In other words, the 'Votive Offices' system had settled structurally (and comfortably) into the regular liturgical function of the Divine Office.

One of the 'exceptions' was that the Mattins hymn for the new Office was new. I have one or two things I would like to sayabout it.

But, for now, I propose to offer a few words about the Aegis (Aigis).  

Tomorrow.

 

The Usurping Orange (part 2; see yesterday's post)

PREFACE

The Eucharistick Sacrifice being the most efficacious Means for Pardon and Grace, ought to be perform'd with proportionable Care and Solemnity. And since the New Testament has given no Form for this Principal part of the Christian Worship, the safest way is to be govern'd by the Practice of the Ancient Church: Those early Times were best Judges of Apostolical Precedent and Tradition, most exemplary in their Lives, and most remarkably bless'd with the Effusions of the Holy Spirit.

By this Direction, as to Substance and Order, the following Communion-Office is drawn.

Thus at the placing the Elements on the Altar, there is a Prayer for Acceptance, abridg'd out of S Basil's Liturgy.

The most signal Instances of the Divine Providence and Bounty are likewise briefly recounted, as introductive to the Words of Institution. This Recital is Paraphrastically taken from S. James's Liturgy.

After the Words of Institution, the Prayer of Oblation and Invocation is subjoin'd from the Apostolical Constitutions: These Prayers are address'd for completing the Sacrifice, and giving it the highest degree of of Consecration. 

The Prayer for the whole State of Christ's Church is much the same with that in the First Reformed English Liturgy. But the Order is changed, by putting it after the Prayer for Consecration. For when the Sacrifice  commemorative of that upon the Cross, is finished, and God the Father propitiiated by this Memorial: 'tis then the most proper Time to declare the Ends of the Oblation, and recommend the Church to the Divine Protection.

The Introits or Psalms, which begin the Office, stand as they did in our first Reform'd Liturgy.

The Priest's pronouncing the Ten Commandments, with the People's Answer to each, are omitted for the Reasons following: 

First, The putting the Ten Commandments in the Communion-Office was not done by our First English Reformers, and is altogether Modern and Unprecedented.

Secondly, our Duty to God and our neighbour, comprised in the Ten Commandments, is comprehensively explain'd  in the Church-Catechism: The People therefore need only apply to this Instruction; thus they will have a fuller Notion for Practice, than can be gain'd by a bare Repetition of the Decalogue.

Thirdly, the keeping the Sabbath-Day holy is Part of the Mosaick Institution, points upon Saturday, and is peculiar to the Jewish Dispensation: Since therefore the Fourth Commandment looks somewhat foreign to the Christian Religion, since it could not well have been simply omitted, 'tis thought fit to wave repeating the rest: And, instead of this particular Rehearsal to give the Sum and Substance of the whole in our Blessed Saviour's Words, together with the People's Answer at the End of the Tenth.

The rest of the Office is the same with the English Liturgies, excepting that the Rubricks, for more Direction and Solemnity, are somewhar alter'd.

The Cross and the Chrism are restored in the Confirmation-Office. The Sign of the Cross is no less significant here, than In Baptism: It was so used in our First Reform'd Liturgy, and therefore there is no need of saying more about it. And as for the Chrism, it is an Emblem of Spritual Unction, of Grace conferr'd by the Holy Ghost; and with this Reference and Allusion it has been practised by the Primitive and Universal Churtch.

The Anointing with Oil in the Office for the Sick is not only supported by Primitive Practice, but commanded by the Apostle S. James. It is not here administered by way of Extreme Unction, but in order ro Recovery.

Upon the whole, here is nothing introduced without unexceptionable Warrant; nothing of Late Beginning; Here is no Application to Saints or Angels, no Worship of Images, no Praying the Dead out of Purgatory, no Adoration of the Consecrated Elements; nothing that supposes a Corporal Presence, either by Trans- or Con-substantiation; In short, nothing but what is Primitive and agreeable to Scripture, and practis'd by the best recommended and enlighten'd Ages.

The Usurping Orange (1)

When I was in teaching, I sometimes sprang a sudden General Knowlege Test. Into this test, I inserted the question "When was this kingdom of England last successfully invaded from abroad?". The fun here was watching as the dimmer students confidently scribbled down "1066" and then lounged lazily. The brighter students realised that Father H must be Up To Something, and fiddled uneasily.

I deemed the correct answer to be 1688". Because that was the year of the Dutch Invasion, the Orange Usurpation, which led to the current "Royal Family" (Sir Max Beerbohm used the entertaining phrase 'Smug Herrenhausen') being in situ.

All Office Holders ... including Clergy ... were required to swear allegiance to the New Usurping Orange. Clergy who declined to do so ... on the grounds that that they were already bound by their oaths to James VII and II ... were called Non-Jurors (Non-swearers). They were deprived; but they and their supporters regarded themselves as still the true Office Holders. And since several bishops were of this group, they were able to regard themselves and their group (though small) as the lawful, valid, Church of England. 

After some years, the group split. There were those who believed that they should maintain their legal claimed position by being strictly liturgically legal; but there were those who could not resist the temptation afforded by their position to make liturgical changes, This second group came to be called the 'Usagers'. The 'Usager' Eucharistic Liturgy of 1718 is to be found in Anglican Liturgies of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, XL of the Alcuin Club Collections, London S.P.C.K. 1958, by W Jardine Grisbrooke, pp71 sqq..

But in the Library of Sion College, there is a Book of Common Prayer, which includes provision for every Anglican liturgical need. The 1718 liturgy is bound into it; but with alterations ... some of moment, others less so ... throughout. Its cataogue number, when I was last there, was ARC A35 16 N73 ... as long as I copied that correctly. I do not think the book was ever put into print.

In my next post, I plan to transcribe "THE PREFACE", which I consider to be of interest. Meanwhile, here is a 'Statement of Authority'. 

We Jeremy Collier and Thomas Brett Bishops of the Catholick Church in England do hereby with the unanimous consent of our Brethren the Priests then present receive and appoint this Book (with the Several insertions and deletions) to be our Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments & other rites and Ceremonies of the Church. Given under our hands this eleventh day of March in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and nineteen. Sign'd Jer; Collier Tho: Brett. Witness A Campbell  Geo Brown  Roger Laurence  Thos Deacon  John Rutter  Tho: Wagstaffe

November 21: Our Lady of Light, 1924, and Unitatis Redintegratio, 1964

Ninety nine years ago tomorrow, on the Feast of the Presentation of our Lady, November 21 1924, in the little Anglo-Catholic mining village of S Hilary in Cornwall, where Fr Bernard Walke so heroically worked and suffered to establish the Faith, one of his collaborators had a remarkable vision. Mother Theresa, Foundress of the Franciscan Servants of Jesus and Mary, describes it:
"We were preparing to go to church as usual just before 9 p.m.. It was a dark misty night, there was no moon and the stars were not showing at all. As I came down the stairs from my bedroom, I saw through a long window on the landing that there was a great glow of light shining all round the house and lighting up the fields beyond the house. My first thought was that there must be a fire somewhere, though the light was not red but white, and I called to Emma to come out with me to see from where it was coming. We went out of the front door, which opened straight on to a lane, and stood in the middle of the lane to see better.
"At the side of the house there was a gigantic figure, veiled and crowned in a dazzling, perfectly still light. The figure seemed to reach from the sky down to the ground. It was the figure of a woman but we saw no features, the face, as well as the rest of the figure, was veiled in the pure light. We could see the other's faces and the hedges in the lane, and the fields beyond the lane, quite clearly in this light. The figure did not move at all, though we stood silently watching it for nearly ten minutes, It was still there when we left and walked up to the church, but there was no sign of it when we returned in about three quarters of an hour. We did not speak, either that night or for a long time after, to one another about what we had seen.
"I think, while I was looking at the figure, I did not reflect at all on what I saw. I hardly even wondered at it, I watched with a great sense of quietness within myself and with no surprise. Afterwards, while we were praying in church, there came into my mind and soul a certainty that what we had seen concerned our Lady and must have been an apparition of her ... "

I think the most remarkable thing about this is that our Lady said nothing. There is Light: but there is nothing here of all the daily chatter and bustle reported from Medjugorje; instead, there is Silence! I am powerfully reminded of the Byzantine liturgical texts for our Lady's Presentation, with their incessant emphasis on the theme of Light. And we recall  another Byzantine perception, which links the sojourn of the Mother of God in the Temple with the hesychast ('silent') tradition of prayer. Yet I think it unlikely that the Cornish experience was a product of subconscious memories because I know of no evidence that Mother Foundress was a student of things Byzantine. Surely, it truly was Mary, Queen of Athos, the exemplar of hesychia, the prayer of Silence, who came to that Cornish lane in a great veil of Light, on this her Feast of Light and of Silence, and said nothing, and stood in silent prayer, and gave her Son's gift of Silence ('... perfectly still Light ... the figure did not move ... we stood silently ... I watched with a sense of great quietness ...'). The messages the Mother of God brings when her Son sends her among us do not always have to be verbal.

Oh dear ... I suppose this account raises the possibly contentious question of Appearances of our Lady to those not in full canonical communion with the See of Peter. The Catholic Church has never taught that such appearances are to be denied. Unitatis Redintegratio (3) teaches ...ex elementis seu bonis, quibus simul sumptis ipsa Ecclesia aedificatur et vivificatur, quaedam immo plura et eximia exstare possunt extra visibilia Ecclesiae catholicae saepta ... haec omnia, quae a Christo proveniunt et ad Ipsum conducunt, ad unicam Christi Ecclesiam iure pertinent (many of the good things by which the Church is built up can exist outside her visible boundaries, and they by right belong to her). This was far from an innovation in teaching; it expresses what had for centuries been Catholic praxis. And I can cite the fact that Eastern Catholic calendars today include liturgical commemorations of graces bestowed through the hands of the Mediatrix of All Graces extra visibilia Ecclesiae catholicae saepta. Subject to correction, I see no reason not to accept, as a private opinion, the probable authenticity of such reported visions. The Church, of course, reserves to herself the authoritative judgement about all such matters ... both within her visibilia saepta and outside them. Readers will remember the Apparitions in a Coptic context at Zeitun; and the appearances of our Lady of the Atonement to Anglicans not yet in Full Communion with the Holy See.

I will dare to go further. It seems to me that the powerful converging arguments for the authenticity of such an Apparition as this, on a day such as this, afford support to the teaching of Vatican II, about the authenticity of the Lord's gifts outside the visible boundaries of His Church; gifts which are graces truly belonging to the Church herself.

I have left parts of the original thread.

Barberini (2)

"Imploret, clementissime Domine, nostris opportunam necessitatem opem devote a nobis prolata meditatio, qua sanctus olim Joannes Chrysostomus, in hac basilica conditus, te cum beatissimis Apostolis Petro et Paulo repraesentavit sic colloquentem: Circumdate hanc novam Sion, et circumvallate eam: hoc est, custodite, munite, precibus firmate; ut quando irascor in tempore, et orbem terrae concutio, aspiciens sepulcrum vestrum nunquam desiturum, et quae libenter propter me geritis stigmata, iram misericordia vincam, et ob hanc percipiam vestram intercessionem. Etenim quando Sacerdotium et Regnum video  lacrymari, statim quasi compatiens ad commiserationem flector, et illius meae vocis reminiscor: Protegam urbem hanc propter David servum meum, et Aaron, sanctum meum. Domine, fiat, fiat, Amen, Amen."

That is the text of the prayer of which I yesterday provided a translation. It follows penitential prayers and versicles and responses imploring Apostolic intercessions. Then comes the exquisite and ancient prayer which serves as the Collect of the Vigil Mass of SS Peter and Paul ... and, finally, Imploret. 

Somebody out there will be able to explain it all. To me, its oddities include the combination of SS Peter and Paul, who are not buried in the same basilica ... was the prayer to be said at the sepulcre of each of them? Is the prayer connected with Pope Urban's Consecration of the [new] Basilica of S Peter? It surely can't have been part of the actual service of Dedication, because the Dedication of even quite a modestly sized church is a lengthy business, and no sane Pope (or MC) would want to add stuff. 

Does 'Regnum' simply nod politely to Ancien regime  polity, or does it mean the Papal States?

Most interesting to me is the theological implication that Urbs Roma is an ancient and venerable Sacramental in which the City represents and carries the symbolic weight of the city of YHWH, the Sion of God. That idea, of course, certainly goes back to the composition of the Mass of Laetare  Sunday and probably to the Empress Helena.

Barberini (1)

Sensitive readers will have noticed a recent interest, on my part, in the distinctive liturgical culture of the period a century and more before the reforms of S Pius X. My interest has been stimulated not a little by the thought that this is how S John Henry daily said his Mass and Office, not to mention the Mannings, the Fabers and the Wisemans and the rest of that great number of bishops and priests and lay benefactors of all classes who (in Newman's lapidary phrase) 'set up the Church again in England' (and built all those churches which were so enthusiastically vandalised in the period after 1960).

My studies, if that is not too grand a word, have been encouraged by a Breviary which I owe to my inheritance of books from Fr Michael Melrose, Vicar of S Giles, Reading. It is Mame, 1874. I wonder if other publishing houses also contained the prayer which I propose to discuss here. 

ORATIO A PAPA URBANO VIII EDITA

Mafeo Barberini was pope 1623-1644; he was both praised and condemned for the classical elegance of his Latin. On November 18, 1626, he consecrated S Peter's.

This prayer is incorporated on the Breviary page before the prayer Aperi and the other preliminaries of the Divine Office. I have tried to translate it literally; given the sophistication of Barberini's Latinity, I am awkwardly aware that I may have misunderstood him!

"Most Merciful Lord, may the meditation devoutly uttered by us implore opportune help for our needs, by which S John Chrysostom, buried in this basilica, once represented thee speaking thus with the most blessed Apostles Peter and Paul: Surround this new Sion, and build fortifications round her: that is, guard, fortify, strengthen her with prayers; that when I am wrathful for a time, and strike the round world, beholding your sepulchre destined never to end, and the wounds you willingly bear on my account, I may conquer wrath with mercy, and for this purpose (ob hanc) I perceive your intercession. And when I see the Priesthood and the Kingdom the object of tears, I immediately feel compassion and am moved to mercy, and remember those words of mine: I will protect this city on account of David, my Servant, and Aaron, my Holy One. Lord, may it be, may it be, Amen, Amen."

Tomorrow, I hope to offer a few observations, and to provide the Latin original.

Three Cheers for Vatican II (not III)

 As any Fule do Kno, under Papa Barberini, known often as Urban VIII, the hymns of the Roman Breviary were 'revised' ... or, if you are a classicising pedant, 'corrected' ... so that that obeyed the 'laws' of the Latinity (Prose and Verse) of the Augustan period.

Even S Ambrose was not spared humiliation. I offer a few words about a locus in his hymn Splendor paternae gloriae, which pops up at ferial Lauds on Mondays. 

[I wish, by the way, that not so many ferial offices fall victim to those never-ending Confessor Bishops who founded religious orders. I believe that the old Lauds Office hymns offer an unbeatable sweep of teaching on the spirituality of Light and on the rhythmic return of Light, the daily Ikon of Christ.]

Splendor paternae gloriae expresses a hope that Christ might be our Food; that Faith may be our Drink; that, "rejoicing, we may imbibe the sober/ drunkenness of the Spirit": "laeti bibamus sobriam/ ebrietatem Spititus".

Surely, an exquisitely eloquent oxymoron.

But Barberini gave a supercilious sniff [have I just perpetrated another oxymoron?] and emended ebrietatem to profusionem.

Happily, Sacrosanctum Concilium ordered the restoration of the original texts of the hymns ... in most cases. (Unhappily, the overconfidence of those charged with implementing the wishes of the Council led to excessive creativity in the latter years of the post-Conciliar period ... but that's another story.)

This conciliar restoration means that, in the Liturgia Horarum, S Ambrose's text is restored to due honour. Hooray!

Wozzat you say? The Barberinians perhaps thought that ebrietatem was insufficiently 'classical'? Pull the other one ... If it was good enough for Tully in the Tusculan Disputations ...

But what d'you think about this ... the conciliar chappies rejected the customary doxology on the grounds that "Haec strophe [they are referring to the last stanza, Aurora cursus ...], certe doxologica, reicit aliam doxologiam"? This stanza which seems to them certe doxologica only mentions the first two Persons of the Blessed and Undivided Trinity ... yes; I know the Spirit is mentioned twice earlier in the hymn, but, all the same, don't we nowadays rather expect ... er ...

I wonder ...

 I wonder, annually, about the Mass proper for S Josaphat, whom we 'kept' quite recently.

The Collect begins "Excita ..." The Introit began "Gaudeamus ...".

These are both first millennium formulae common in the Roman Rite. It is almost as if the nineteenth century popes or functionaries who were responsible for this Mass wanted to say "The Unia which existed in the first Millennium between East and West, for which S Josaphat was martyred, makes it suitable that, when we Latins celebrate this Saint, we should do so with formulae redolent of our own liturgical Tradition during that First Millennium". 

He was beatified in 1643 by Urban VIII (1623-1644). The ODCC says that he was the first saint of the Eastern Church to be formally canonised after process in the Congregation of Rites, in 1867, that is, during the pontificate of Pius IX. Later, Leo XIII made his observance universal. But he had been beatified in 1643, and the usual process was for a candidate to be beatified and then assigned propers printed in the Appendix pro aliquibus locis. If that candidate was subsequently canonised, and if a future Roman Pontiff desired to make his cultus universal in the Latin Churches, the liturgical provision already available in the the Appendix would often be yanked out and made the liturgical provision of the whole (Latin) Church.

Incidentally, collects beginning Excita can be found in earlier Latin Sacramentaries: the Verona Sacramentary has such a collect for S Lawrence in August; 'Gelasianum' one in Holy Week.

A Dodgy trick (2)

Monday: The Holy Angels.

Tuesday:  The Holy Apostles.

Wednesday: S Joseph.

Thursday: The Most Holy Sacrament.

Friday: The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Saturday: The Immaculate Conception of Blessed Mary the Virgin. 

Such were the Votive Offices granted in the circumstances I explained yesterday. There is, by the way, no obvious relationship between these Offices and the votive Masses for the days of the week in the Carolingian Little Missal attributed to Alcuin.

The sources of the materials in these votives are, for the most part, fairly obvious. Modern readers might be puzzled by the Friday office; most of it is taken from the Commemoratio Passionis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, which, in the nineteenth century Appendix pro Aliquibus Locis, comes on the Tuesday after Sexagesima. The hymns are characteristic of the Counter Reformation; affective; emotional. "Grieving eyes, scatter tears"; such imperatives will combine with rhetorical questions ("Who is such a person as not to weep?"). Perhaps they are the metrical equivalents of the the paintings of Zurbaran; of the polychromatic statues still displayed in public in Iberian Catholic cultus. Perhaps they lose some of their vitality out of that context. Perhaps not.

They apparently supplied a need! The volume containing these votive offices is officially dated to July 1883; in April, 1896, Imprimatur was given to an additional Office of Ss Peter and Paul, alternative to the Tuesday Office of the Apostles in general. But in 1911, Divino afflatu suppressed the entire initiative.

D'you know, I can't remember where I bought that book. I thought I purchased it in a shop selling second-hand Catholic books in the Strand ... called Ducketts ... but an internet search reveals to me no evidence of any such emporium. I must have imagined it!

A Dodgy Trick (1)

As the Novus Ordo presbyter leaps out of his austere bed and reaches for his Liturgia Horarum, he is letting himself in for ... have I got this right? ... fourteen psalms, from the Invitatory to the end of Compline. Except, of course, that it's not actually fourteen psalms, because several of them are are likely to be psalms broken up into small segments.

During the pontificate of Pius IX, things were different. Simply to get through Mattins alone, Father might have needed to recite twelve psalms. And they were not sliced up into portions. There is evidence that this was quite a burden for a number of clergy. In fact, the Divine Office had been a problem area for quite a time. Benedict XIV had set up a commission in the hope of dealing with some, at least, of the difficulties, but his efforts came to nothing.

Nestling on my bookshelves is a second-hand book, still with the price (3/6) pencilled in. I bought it as a schoolboy; it describes itself as OFFICIA VOTIVA PER ANNUM a SS. D. N. Leone PP. XIII concessa, additis Lectionibus Scripurae occurrentis, Festorum simplicium ac Vigiliarum, Orationibus Sanctorum, necnon Vesperis Dominicarum Festorumque semiduplicium, quae ad Officia ista integre recitanda pertinent.

The publisher was Desclee; he explained that that these Votive Offices, semidouble in liturgical rank, were granted by the decree URBIS ET ORBIS of the SCR on 5 JULY 1883. They might be used except at such obvious times as Ash Wednesday ... Passiontide ... etc ....

You wanna know what was going on here? It all meant that a cleric who didn't feel quite up to the burden of psalmody in the then-current Breviarium Romanum could recite the Votive Offices in this volume, and because their rank was semidouble, they imposed on him a much smaller burden of psalmody to recite ... although still considerably greater than what today's Novus Ordo cleric faces.

Everybody knew that this business was really not quite kosher. The great historian of the Breviary, Batiffol, himself shamefacedly admitted "All of us have recited these votive offices, for lack of the leisure needed for the recitation of the ferial office". He considered it a mark of saintliness that Cardinal Richard, Archbishop of Paris, "a man possessed of a sound sense of liturgy" had never used these offices. Cardinal Parocchi let it be known that he considered these votive offices entirely contrary to the tradition and desire of the Church ... and he was actually a member of the SCR!

Mgr Grospellier wanted these offices suppressed, because their introduction was "a principle absolutely novel". 

But what were these votive offices? Do their texts contain anything of value? Those questions are for tomorrow.

 

VICATIM

One should always be open to adverbs one has not met before. Recently, I particularly enjoyed meeting Vicatim.

Its meaning of course, is not obscure. It comes from 'Vicus', which means the shanty town which would tend to grow up arround a Roman military establshment for families, tradesmen, and military hangers-on. I recall, years ago, when I was doing Duty for the (Anglican) parish of Burgh-by-Sands, on Hadrian's Wall, we had a group of archaeologists in the Rectory garden, excavating the 'vicus' which accompanied the Wall Fort of  'ABALLAVA'. They were led by a blond Welshman ... yes ...

Archaeologists call the villages which grew up in such contexts 'vici'. Whether this is what the Romans called them, or whether the usage is a convenient modern academic adaptation, I do not know. But, certainly in the area of the Wall, some of these vici, at least, became quite significant architecturally. Our Family enjoyed lending a hand and seeing what emerged from the ground.

So, if we were to talk about a procession round the vicus, vicus would mean the unofficial township around an important Roman site. We would be thinking about a procession ... perhaps, at Aballava, in honour of Hercules and the Deity of the Emperor (an altar with that dedication has been found there). And we could conveniently talk, adverbially, about such a procession being done vicatim, if we expected it to go piously winding round the streets and alley-ways of the township,

Which brings me very naturally on to the subject of Apostolic Constitutions.

Not that I claim particular knowledge of this subject; but, often enough, I have seen that phrase attached to what look to me ... am I right, or am I right? ... like really important bits of the Church's law ... new codes of Canon Law ... new translations of Scripture ... erections of Ordinariates ...

I am refering here to an Apostolic Constitution (Ubi Primum) of 2 October 1898 ... or, for the mathematically slower among you, of the Sixth before the Nones of October. It bears the authority of  Pope Leo XIII. It contains, most importantly, norms for Rosary Sodalities. 

Not that these norms are revolutionary: they mostly reassert legislation of S Pius V (1569); Gregory XIII (1573); Paul V (1608). 

And what they assert (XIV), among other enactments, is that on the first Sunday of each month, each Sodality should hold a pompa of our blessed Lady.

And that they should do so vicatim.

"PIETY/PIETAS/GODLINESS"

Today's Sunday Collect in the Old Roman Rite and in the Ordinariate Rite is a beautiful and ancient prayer asking God to guard (custodi) his Household (familia) with "continua pietate".

Pietas is the word which gives us the English term piety; but there is rather more to it than that. After all, the English word piety suggests a humble human attitude of devout religious attention to God. Perhaps it even evokes a vision of an old woman of either gender who belongs to multiple religious societies. That is misleading. And it would confuse you as you read this particular prayer: after all, God isn't pious towards us; We're supposed to be pious towards him.

Pius is a Latin adjective and pietas is the noun that comes from it; pietate is what's called the Ablative, so pietate means "with pietas". And what these words refer to is the sense of duty and obligation which somebody has towards those to whom he is bound by bonds of kinship or religion or country or friendship or whatever. In Vergil's epic the Aeneid, the hero is called "Pius Aeneas" because he is dutiful to the Gods (he rescues the sacred Palladium); to his country Troy (for which he fights as long as possible: when there is no further hope, he guides its remnants to a new country); to his Father (whom he carries out of the wreckage of Troy upon his shoulders); to his friend Pallas (an adolescent whose death in battle Aeneas avenges in the bloodthirsty climax at the end of Book XII of the Aeneid).

But Vergil also uses pietas to refer to the gods themselves: "May the gods, if there is any pietas in heaven ...."; and "Almighty Juppiter ... if any ancient pietas regards human labours ..." (compare "If pia divinities can do anything ..."). The idea was that the Gods, too, can be thought of as having their duties towards mortals (or particular mortals). And this sense was to be very common in Christian Latin, which developed as a special dialect crafted to serve the needs of Christians and especially of their Liturgy. So pietas becomes pretty well synonymous with misericordia (mercy) and clementia (clemency). And the end of this story of the evolution of words is that we get the English derivative pity. (Incidentally, the old Lewis and Short is rather less helpful on this than the newer Oxford Latin Dictionary.)

So ... does pietate in this collect mean (1) our devoted duty to God, or (2) his covenanted loving-kindness to us? In his English translation, Archbishop Cranmer got it wrong and thought it meant the former (1): so he rendered it as "true religion" (and, in another similar collect, "godliness"). Experts are agreed, however, that it means the latter (2). But Cranmer was aware of the two possibilities: for Epiphany 1 he correctly rendered caelesti pietate ('heavenly pietas') as "mercifully".

In fact, there is a slight difference between 'ordinary' Christian speech and the usage of prayers like the collect we are considering now. In more 'ordinary' everyday Christian Latin, for example, in sermons, pietas refers to human attitudes towards God more often than the other way round; in prayers, the word most commonly refers to God's loving attitude towards us. As it does in this collect. This may be a spin-off from the way that, in Roman Imperial circles, people addressed the Mighty. Another possibility is that this may be another example of how 'Christian Latin', as used in prayer, adopted much of the style and vocabulary of very ancient pre-Christian Roman prayer-language; a process brilliantly documented by Christine Mohrmann.

[The main expert on Christian Latin was the great Christine Mohrmann. Today's post also benefits from books by Sr Mary Gonzaga Haessly and Sr Mary Pierre Ellebracht (which I gather can both be found on the Internet). This is a subject to which, before the collapse of both liturgical scholarship and of women's religious communities in the 1960s, women scholars made very significant contributions. What a tremendous shame that even their names are now so little known! I regard it as a demand of pietas to do what I can to remedy the situation!]