The Princess Elaine Radziwill passed away on Palm Sunday this year, and she stipulated that her funeral Mass be a Traditional Latin Mass. JPSonnen was a server at the Mass, and he reports at Gigantic funeral for a princess...in Latin!.

GFvonB at Tradition on the March X links to Fr Robert Fromageot's photos, which are here.

The Mass was at S Lorenzo in Damaso, inside the Palazzo della Cancelleria. An image of the Palazzo is below the break.

BLESSING. "A rite by which the Church dedicates persons, places or things to a sacred purpose, or attaches to them a spiritual value, without consecration…” (Donald Attwater, A Catholic Dictionary, The MacMillan Company:New York (1942), p. 64; w/Nihil Obstat and Imprimitur (from the anti-Catholic site Blessings And Such.)

Ephraem posts the words for blessing beer.

On the 'net are also

• the blessing of Easter eggs,
• carriages (will work for pickup trucks),
• herbs (used on the Assumption),
• ships or boats
• Other items mentioned are crosses, medals, houses, fields, candles, food, salt, water, 'military colours, of soldiers and of their arms, ... the congregation as a whole and sick men and women, railways, blast-furnaces, lime-kilns, medicine and medical bandages and all manner of domestic animals'. See BENEDICTION (LAT. benedictio, from benedicere, to bless) from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Philippe Cardinal Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon, administered the sacrament of confirmation in the traditional rite, at St George's church today, and there are some images here. On the Rorate caeli blog at "It is due to the express counsel of Pope Benedict XVI..., New Catholic translates the Cardinal-Archbishop's words 'C'est sur le conseil explicite de Benoit XVI que je suis venu parmi vous', reported in a post at leforumcatholique.org here. It seems as if the folks at the confirmation at St George have an FSSP priest, but the church itself isn't FSSP, according to the Where are we? on the FSSP site.

Alerted by a message in the saveholytrinity Yahoo! group, there's an article on Holy Trinity, Boston, in the May 28, 2006 National Catholic Register. It's not online at This Week's Edition, but on the Travel page: 'Latin Luminescence Not Far From Fenway', by Gail Besse: 'A visit to historic Holy Trinity German Church in Boston'.

At St Augustine of Canterbury, Dominican Br Lawrence has a lovely image of of the reredos (brief article from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica here) of the chapel of St Gregory and St Augustine in Westminster Cathedral, London. St Gregory, of course, was the memorable Pope who made the memorable joke 'not Angels, but Anglicans', and thereafter commanded one of his Saints named St Augustine to go and convert.

Chad, at St. Augustine of Canterbury tells us that '[t]he church in which [St Augustine] and his 40 brother monks worshipped when he arrived in England, St. Martin’s Church in Canterbury, is still in use, 1410 years later', and he provides some images he took a few years ago. Below the break, I put images of two drawings of the church, in 1722 and in 1791, from Archaeologia Cantiana Vol. 14 -1882, at the Kent Archaeological Society's site.

From my ScrapBook grab of the old catholichaven.org site, here is Dom Guéranger's commentary for the Sunday within the Octave of the Ascension. The Alleluia Non vos relinquam and Offertory can be streamed or downloaded from Dominica infra Octavam Ascensionis.

Project Gutenberg has Hand Shadows to Be Thrown upon the Wall, an entertaining diversion, if you tire, briefly, of board games or jigsaw puzzles.

Fr Guy Selvester, at Rosa Mystica tells us that, 'on a visit to the Shrine of the Black Madonna, Jasna Gora (Bright Mountain) in Czestochowa, Poland[,] Pope Benedict XVI bestowed upon the shrine one of the single highest honors a pope can bestow. This is the Golden Rose.' Father has some images of the Golden Rose given by John Paul II to the Shrine of Our Lady of Knock, Ireland and by Paul VI to the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, Portugal.

Dom Guéranger, in The Liturgical Year, has this to say about the Golden Rose:

The blessing of the golden rose is one of the ceremonies peculiar to the fourth Sunday of Lent, which is called on this account Rose Sunday. The thoughts suggested by this flower harmonize with the sentiments wherewith the Church would now inspire her children. The joyous time of Easter is soon to give them a spiritual spring, of which that of nature is but a feeble image. Hence, we cannot be surprised that the institution of this ceremony is of a very ancient date. We find it observed under the pontificate of St. Leo IX (eleventh century); and we have a sermon on the golden rose preached by the glorious Pope Innocent III, on this Sunday, and in the basilica of Holy Cross in Jerusalem. In the middle ages, when the Pope resided in the Lateran palace, having first blessed the rose, he went on horseback to the church of the Station. He wore the mitre, was accompanied by all the Cardinals, and held the blessed flower in his hand. Having reached the basilica, he made a discourse on the mysteries symbolized by the beauty, the colour, and the fragrance of the rose. Mass was then celebrated. After the Mass, the Pope returned to tile Lateran palace. Surrounded by the sacred college, he rode across the immense plain which separates the two basilicas, with the mystic flower still in his hand. We may imagine the joy of the people as they gazed upon the holy symbol. When the procession had reached the palace gates, if there were a prince present, it was his privilege to hold the stirrup, and assist the Pontiff to dismount; for which filial courtesy he received the rose, which had received so much honour and caused such joy.

At present, the ceremony is not quite so solemn; still the principal rites are observed. The Pope blesses the golden rose in the vestiary; he anoints it with holy chrism, over which he sprinkles a scented powder, as formerly; and when the hour for Mass has come, he goes to the palace chapel, holding the flower in his hand. During the holy Sacrifice, it is fastened to a golden rose-branch prepared for it on the altar. After the Mass, it is brought to the Pontiff, who holds it in his hand as he returns from the chapel to the vestiary. It is usual for the Pope to send the rose to some prince or princess, as a mark of honour; sometimes, it is a city or a Church that receives the flower.

See The Fourth Sunday of Lent.

'It antedates 1050, and superseded the practise of bestowing the Golden Keys of Saint Peter's Confessional upon illustrious Catholic rulers. The delivery of the ornament is now entrusted to the "Bearer of the Golden Rose," an office instituted in 1895. The ornament is formed of a central flower and a number of smaller roses, skilfully wrought by papal artisans. In the heart of the principal rose is a small covered cup in which musk and balsam are placed at the annual solemn blessing, the same rose being used at this ceremony until given away. The Golden Rose was last bestowed upon Elizabeth, Queen of the Belgians, in honor of her silver wedding anniversary in 1925.' (Golden Rose, entry in the New Catholic Dictionary, A.D. 1910)

The June 4, 1923 issue of Time magazine reported:

Queen Victoria [of Spain], " best dressed woman in Europe," and granddaughter of the late Queen Victoria of Great Britain, was handed the Golden Rose by Monsignor Tedeschini, Papal Nuncio to the Spanish Court. The ceremony was carried out in the presence of cabinet ministers and members of the diplomatic corps.

Pope Pius XI revivified an ancient custom when he awarded the Golden Rose to the Spanish Queen. In days of old the Popes used to make such awards to the individual who, during the year, performed the most pious deeds for the Church.

The Catholic Encyclopaedia article, Golden Rose has interesting historical information about some different roses, about the custom and about the ceremonies which accompanied the gift, along with a list of some individual recipients.

I included an image from a Biblia Pauperum in the post The Fifth Sunday after Easter, Lessons from the Divine Office, and Daniel Mitsui has some more information about these works at The Ascension, from a 15th-century Biblia Pauperum.

There's even an Internet Biblia Pauperum Project, and the Typology of Medieval Books page at the Medieval Manuscript Manual site says:

Biblia pauperum consisted of a series of captioned miniatures or hand-coloured engravings illustrating parallels (typology) between the Old and the New Testament and became extremely popular in the Later Middle Ages.

I found this intriguing (from The Internet Biblia Pauperum Project):

In medieval typology, an argument is made for the unity of the Old and New Testaments. Two scenes from the Old Testament ("types") are often shown to prefigure (i.e., to predict or foreshadow) scenes from the New Testament (called the "antitypes"). Typically, one OT scene will be from the time before Moses (ante legem), and the other from the the time after Moses (sub lege). ...

[W]hereas 12th century typologies seem to be designed to "answer" contemporary heretical movements, the emphasis here seems less on conversion (to prove Christ is the fulfillment of OT prophecies) than to engage the reader in contemplation and understanding.

Avril Henry argues in her introduction to the 1987 facsimile of the British Blockbook against the didactic interpretation many have assigned not only this book, but all medieval figurative graphic arts:

Little medieval art is merely instructive. Our modern response to medieval typology is sufficient evidence that pictures in this mode only "instruct" if you already know what they mean. They then act as reminders of the known truth. It is not a bit of good staring at a picture of a man carrying two large doors on the outskirts of a city and expecting it to suggest the risen Christ. (p.17)

Henry argues rather that the book was intended to create a carefully structured, meditative experience for its reader, likely in a monastery.

Thus, it is a very different sort of knowledge, acquired in a very different sort of way: 'a kind of knowledge which is produced in the intellect but not by virtue of conceptual connections and by way of demonstration' (On Knowledge Through Connaturality).

Classically Crazy, of Greenville, North Carolina, posted some thoughts about James Taylor's Poetic Knowledge (a nice review by Kirk Kramer is at Poetry on the range) at Poetic Knowledge Chapter 2 and at Poetic Knowledge Chapter 3. This is knowledge to some extent understood by way of contrast with 'scientific' knowledge, using a quote of Newman (this is only part of the quote):

When the reason is cultivated, it at once begins to combine, to centralize, to look forward, to look back, to view things as a whole, whether for speculation or for action; it practices synthesis and analysis, it discovers and invents.

Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice remarks on how character is formed and effected by music, and thus, the moral knowledge thereby communicated:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.

The Online Books Page today points to Saint Thomas Aquinas of the Order of Preachers at the University of Notre Dame's Jacques Maritain Center.

Three books on Modernism were recently added on the Center's Readings for Philosophers and Catholics page:

• Modernism, by Désiré Cardinal Mercier;
• Old Truths, Not Modernist Errors, by Norbert Jones, C.R.L. (1908)
• Modernism and Modern Thought by Father Bampton, S.J.

.

What is the difference between Christ and Satan?

It is quite simple. Christ descended into hell; Satan fell into it. One of them wanted to go up and went down; the other wanted to go down and went up.

From 'The Ball and the Cross', in Chesterton Day by Day, Selections from the Writings in Prose and Verse of G. K. Chesterton, with an Extract for every Day of the Year and for each of the Moveable Feasts.

Br Lawrence, at The 'Legenda Aurea' on the Ascension excerpts some of Jacobus de Voragine's The Golden Legend for today. The Golden Legend is available at different places on the 'net, one of which is Paul Halsall's Medieval Sourcebook site: Here beginneth next the Ascension of our Lord.

Daniel Mitsui links to a Gallus motet and the composer's Missa Pater Noster, at Ascendit Deus.

The Introit, Alleluia Ascendit Deus, Alleluia Dominus in Sina, Offertory and Communion can be streamed or downloaded from In Ascensione Domini.

Something new I just came across: the Medieval Music Database entry for Ascensio Domini has the melodic incipit of each liturgical chant for today.

Today is the Fifth Sunday after Easter. From breviary.net, here are Lessons iv v and vi for today, and three images: of the Resurrection of the Flesh, of the Damned, and of the Descent into Hell.

Last year, I posted part of Dom Guéranger's commentary from The Liturgical Year on the Fifth Sunday after Easter, here. I now add a link to Dominica V. post Pascha for mp3 audio files of the Introit, Alleluia: Surrexit Christus et illuxit, Alleluia Exivi a Patre, Offertory and Communion.

Below the break is the entire captured page for the commentary, as well as the image illustrating St John 16:23-30, from the Gospel illustrations of Jerome Nadal, S.J..

Iosephus at From le Barroux tells us of the photo album on bellapix.com. The direct link to the photo album in the post didn't work for me, so I registered at the bellapix site, then, eventhough I had already logged in at bellapix, enter the email address I used to register, and enter the password I used, then click on 'Les Expos' to get to a search page. Searching on 'Barroux' in the title ('par titre') brought up two albums, and searching on 'Barroux' in the author's name ('par auteur') brought up three:

• Cinquantième anniversaire de sacerdoce de Dom Gérard Calvet. 13 mai 1956 – 13 mai 2006.
• Profession monastique (voeux de religion) de F. Jean-Cassien à l'abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux.
• Messe solennelle de saint Joseph (1er mai 2006) à l'abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux

There's a page displaying all Barroux albums. It would be convenient if one could generate an RSS feed for authors or titles, but I don't see any way to do that on bellapix.com.

I've displayed one of the images from the Mass commemorating Dom Gérard Calvet's ordination below the break.

I return W's the tip of the bowler in Those Awful Dark Ages III by pointing out a recent archaeological report. I believe I first ran across these in a post at Mirabilis.ca, namely Researchers trawl the origins of sea fishing in Northern Europe. Or, it could have been a post at phys.org: Researchers Trawl The Origins Of Sea Fishing In Northern Europe. The research and excavations

[build] on earlier research by the project team which discovered that extensive sea fishing began in Europe 1,000 years ago. A major shift from freshwater to sea fishing was due to a combination of climate, population growth and religion.

The University of York press release, New research shows intensive sea fishing dates back 1,000 years quotes Dr James Barrett, of the Department of Archaeology:

"Within the space of a few decades around AD1000, there was a dramatic shift in the bone record from freshwater to fully marine species."

"Fish like pike, trout, tench, bream and perch, together with migratory species like salmon, eel and smelt dominate finds from the 7th to 10th centuries. From the 11th century onward, they are supplanted by herring, cod, haddock, hake and saithe. There was a sea-fishing revolution which swept through England."

Also from the press release

The end of the first millennium was a time of extraordinary change in medieval Europe with the human population expanding, cities developing and wild woods being cleared. Demand for fish was high, particularly as new Christian practices forbade eating flesh on 150 days of the year.

Meanwhile, freshwater stocks were suffering due to the drastic human impact on waterways -- watermills proliferated in 10th and 11th-century Europe, their dams blocking access for migratory species such as salmon. At the same time, soil eroding from newly created farmland choked watercourses.

Dr Barrett is involved in the Viking Age Transitions Project, which studies, among other things

• the intensification of production
• the development of long-range trade in commodities
• the centralisation of authority
• the growth of urbanism, and
• the adoption of Christianity

in excavations at Quoygrew, Westray, Orkney.

Eureka alert has some more information at Researchers trawl the origins of sea fishing in Northern Europe:

New research co-ordinated by archaeologists at the University of York will spotlight the earliest development of Europe's sea fisheries ...

The three-year project ... will involve researchers across Northern Europe. ...

By studying fish bones from archaeological sites such as York, Gent in Belgium, Ribe in Denmark, Schleswig in Germany and Gdansk in Poland, the researchers hope to establish what long-term impact this rapid switch to intensive sea fisheries had on medieval trading patterns. In York, the vast collections assembled by York Archaeological Trust will provide material for the bone study.

Dried cod was traded from the Arctic in the Middle Ages and, around 1000AD, trade routes opened up across the Viking world to allow long-range trading of bulk staple goods.

Dr Barrett said: "We are using the fish trade as a way of understanding long-term economic and social changes in Northern Europe. We want to look at how a large-scale trade in commodities developed and the way it has been influenced by so many socio-economic and environmental factors."

"We shall use both traditional zooarchaeological techniques and new biomolecular approaches. Dried cod for trade was cut up in certain ways, which can be detected by the cut marks on the bones. Moreover, we will use biomolecular tests to establish whether fish found in towns such as York originated locally from the North Sea or from distant sources such as Arctic Norway."

The biomolecular studies may also provide a direct insight into changes in marine ecosystems and help to improve understanding of the early human impact on fish stocks. The project aims to link an understanding of medieval economic development with the pressing current need to know what marine ecosystems were like before the impact of over-fishing.

Is there other information available on the 'net as to the 'new Christian practices [which] forbade eating flesh on 150 days of the year' at that time?

Certain topics recur, one of which is the Bea Psalter, a shorthand name for the re-formation of the Latin of the Psalms, done in the mid-1940s by members of the Biblical Pontifical Commission under Cardinal Bea. While made official by Pope Pius XII, its use was not mandated.

In a message thread discussing the changes from the Vulgate Latin version of the Psalms, part of a 1953 article from the American Benedictine Review by Christine Mohrmann was posted. I reproduce that portion below the break. It was translated from the Dutch by Abbot Justin McCann.

More information on the indult is available at Amsterdam Indult - The Story. The Fraternitatis Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri will say the Masses every Sunday in Saint Agnes Church in Amsterdam. The former bishop of Haarlem, Hendrik Joseph Alois Bomers, C.M., ordained six priests for the Fraternity of Saint Peter in June, 1998. Apparently, the Dioecesis Harlemensis includes Amsterdam.

It came to my attention that because I had not enabled Pivot-Blacklist trackback spam protection, the old trackback feature on this blog was populated with garbage. Rather than spend hours manually deleting all the garbage, I've enabled the protection. From now on, if someone wants to trackback to a post, a temporary URL will be created for that use. If you don't know what this means, it's something that you won't run into in reading this blog, and it's nothing with which you need concern yourself. If you're curious, there's a wikipedia article on Trackback, and there's a previous post mentioning Pivot-Blacklist here at Blocking comment spam with Pivot-Blacklist.

Because I decided not to manually delete the garbage, previous trackbacks can no longer be displayed.

Last year, I posted part of Dom Guéranger's commentary from The Liturgical Year on the Fourth Sunday after Easter, here. I now add a link to Dominica IV. post Pascha for mp3 audio files of the Introit, Alleluia Dextera Dei, Alleluia Christus resurgens, Offertory and Communion.

Below the break is the entire captured page for the commentary, as well as the image illustrating St John 16:5-14, from the Gospel illustrations of Jerome Nadal, S.J..

Recently created Joseph Cardinal Zen celebrated a Pontifical Solemn High Mass, which isn't remarkable, except that he used the 1962 Missal. Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong, China, offers Pontifical Solemn High Mass in the Tridentine rite, on the Latin Mass Society of Ireland web site. (Why not via the Tridentine Latin Mass Association of Hong Kong Diocese web site?)

Photos are here.

Next, David's Amsterdam Indult post on the Juventutem blog announces that the TLM will be available beginning this September, every Sunday, at midday, at St Agnes Church, south of Vondelpark, and near or on tram lines, according to the map of the GVB network of tram, bus, metro (subway) and ferries.

Chris Gillibrand's post, English Benedictine History prompts me to mention that the Internet Archive has available the first volume of The English black monks of St. Benedict by the Rev Ethelred L. Taunton, published by Longmans, Green and Co. in 1897.

Lauren has the links to them at .:{Liturgy Pics On Demand}:.. There's a video there, requiring Flash 8 or newer.

Fr Laurent Demets, FSSP, Assistant Pastor of St Francis de Sales parish in the Archdiocese of Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. blogs at De Fide Catholica, and his May 2, 2006, Nostalgie ! post links to a two minute realPlayer video of Pope Pius XII's election. Is anyone able to view this? I get the uninformative 'Unable to locate server. This server does not have a DNS entry. ...' message. The direct link Father posts fails, as well as the links on the Religione Cattolica page.

This Friday is the feast of Pope St Pius V, a Dominican. +veritas+ at Roamin' Roman had a tour of St Dominc's and Pope St Pius V's cells in Rome in Santa Sabina all'Aventino, and she will have photos up shortly. Her blog post is Wow wow.

Update: she has photos here, here, and here.

digg's article points to a brief item on Business Week's site, O Click All Ye Faithful, but the magazine has very few details.

There will be personal news updates, e-learning programs, and areas set aside for families, young people, and parishes. Collaboration is key, and that should differentiate the site from others in its genre. "People will be able to find each other and work together online, and then go back and use what they have learned or done in their own communities," says Sister Judith [Zoebelein, the editorial director of the Internet Office of the Holy See].

Sister says that the changes will be live this Fall. No blogging, which isn't a surprise.