Today's Rinunce e Nomine from the Vatican Press Office announces that Msgr Paul Joseph Swain, the Vicar General of Madison, Wisconsin, will be the next bishop of Sioux Falls.

He's a convert (1982) from Methodism and received the Bronze Star while an Air Intelligence Officer in Vietnam.

John at The Inn at the End of the World (Still here. . .) knows he isn't the only one who remembers Horse Feathers, the one with a college football farce, including chariot.

Mary Alexander links to the story.

More on the Holy Face of Manoppello in this post here: The Holy Face of Manoppello, the 500th anniversary.

Cantus Quercus Press has midi files of these Introits, arranged by the Polish Baroque composer Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki. The midi files are linked to at the bottom of their Polish catalog.

There are free mp3 files of his arrangements of St Bernard's hymn Omni die dic Mariae* and of In virtute Tua (Ps 20 in the Vulgate) at the Completorivm - Polish Music from dle Ages to Baroque page.

If you don't already know, you can hear Gorczycki's name pronounced here, as an mp3 file.

* More widely known as 'Daily, daily, sing to Mary'.

Sean O'Leary sings poems put to paper by Gerard Manley Hopkins. He sells compact discs, and makes some demos available here, including part of Pied Beauty (the one with the phrase 'dappled things').

The Victorian Web has a reading of Pied Beauty by Richard Austin on its Related Web and Other Resources page.

The Cantus Quercus Press also has Pied Beauty set to music (click here for the mp3).

Kevin Edgecomb has finished the first drafts of his translations of St Jerome's prefaces, or prologues, to the books of the Bible. (By 'Bible', I of course mean the Vulgate.) He has gathered links to the individual translations at Vulgate Prologues. As far as I know, the only other translation into English available on the 'net is the one by William Henry Fremantle (1831-1916), M.A., Canon of Canterbury Cathedral (appointed 1882) and Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College, Oxford,

• here, at The Work of God,
• a plain text version of the same, with some corrections, here, on EWTN's site,
• and the same at here, on the Christian Classics Electronic Library site.

I mentioned the last in my post St Jerome's preface to the Vulgate Version of the New Testament.

Andrew Criddle guest blogs on Stephen C. Carlson's Hypotyposeis blog, at Earliest Christus Patiens Image ?, on images of Our Lord suffering on the cross, as opposed to the image of Christ triumphant and reigning. The representations changed with time, earlier examples being of the Christus Victor type.


possible Earliest Christus Patiens image

Mr Criddle references a post of his, in a Crucified Orpheus thread. That post links to the page at Augusta State University, on portraying The Crucifixion, in its Christian Iconography section, which attempts to show how to '[l]earn how to identify the saints in medieval and renaissance art, [r]ead the stories that the paintings refer to, [and] [f]ind out the "why" behind traditional elements in paintings of scriptural events.'

One of the comments on the Hypotyposeis entry links to an alleged early graffito from Álava in Spain:



There's a Terrae Antiqvae entry on the finding, in Spanish, at Álava. Iruña Veleia desentierra jeroglíficos y grafías en latín de la historia de Egipto.

A decree of the Council in Trullo, A.D. 692, ordered that images

in human form of the Lamb who taketh away the sin of the world, Christ our God, be henceforth exhibited in images, instead of the ancient lamb, so that all may understand by means of it the depths of the humiliation of the Word of God, and that we may recall to our memory his conversation in the flesh, his passion and salutary death, and his redemption which was wrought for the whole world.

More on the Council in Trullo here, in the Medieval Sourcebook entry. The canons from the Council are here, on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library site.

I quote Jim Davila, Lecturer in Early Jewish Studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, in his PaleoJudaica.com blog post Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha Watch. He links to Stephen J. Shoemaker's Early Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition (Dormitio Mariae) site, which has translations of fifth, sixth, and seventh century writings on the Assumption or Dormition.

He also quotes an article from Tempo of the Philippines, but I haven't gotten the URL he supplies to display anything. Here's the quoted excerpt from his site:

At the time of Jesus, Jews thought that friends of God became members of the heavenly court when they finished their work. The Hebrew Scriptures describe how holy people were aken [sic] upby [sic] God into heaven. One example is Elijah who rode to heaven in a chariot of fire (2Kgs2). Jewish narratives described the assumption of Moses, Isaiah and other prophets. The Jews believed that holy people are protected by the power of the Almighty. ...

Belief in the assumption of the Virgin Mary is attested in a number of books written after the year 300 AD. These books describe the death of Mary under various circumstances. Some claim that Mary was raised after three days, others that her body was taken up to heaven during the funeral procession. Other books claim that Mary tomb was opened and found to be empty. These writings claim that Mary died anywhere from three to 50 years after the death of Jesus.

Wojciech Kossak, Battle of Warsaw

This week, in the 1920 Miracle on the Vistula, Polish army forces under the direct command of Józef Piłsudski split attacking Bolshevik armies, preventing the Reds from taking Warsaw, overrunning Poland and advancing into Germany.

The above image is a painting by Wojciech Kossak. There's one gallery of some of his paintings here, and another one here.

The Vatican's nuncio in Warsaw at the time, the titular archbishop of Lepanto, refused to flee the city, despite near universal expectation that the Polish cause was hopeless. His name was Achille Ratti.

marialectrix has started reading Torquato Tasso's epic baroque poem La Gerusalemme liberata, or Jerusalem Delivered. The first podcast, and I suppose, future, podcasts, is available here on the Internet Archive.

From the Wikipedia entry here:

The poem tells of the initial disunity and setbacks of the Christians and their ultimate success. The most famous sequences include the following:

• Sofronia (in English: Sophronia), a Christian maiden of Jerusalem, accuses herself of a crime in order to avert a general massacre of the Christians by the Muslim king. In an attempt to save her, her lover Olinde accuses himself in turn, and each lover pleads with the authorities in order to save the other.

• Clorinda, a female warrior-maiden, joins the Muslims, but she falls in love with the Christian knight Tancredi (in English: Tancred). During a night battle in which she sets the Christian siege tower on fire, she is mistakenly killed by her lover, but she converts to Christianity before dying. The character of Clorinda is inspired in part by Virgil's Camilla and by Bradamante in Ariosto; the circumstances of her birth (a Caucasian girl born to African parents) are modeled on the lead character (Chariclea) from the ancient Greek novel by Heliodorus of Emesa.

• Another maiden of the region, the Princess Erminia (or "Hermine") of Antioch, also falls in love with Tancred and betrays her people to help him, but she grows jealous when she learns that Trancredi loves Clorinde. She returns to the Muslims, then steals Clorinde's armor and joins a group of shepherds.

• The witch Armida (in English: Armide) (modeled on Circe in Homer and the witch Alcina in Ariosto's epic) enters the Christian camp asking for their aid; her seductions divide the knights against each other and a group leaves with her, only to be transformed into animals by her magic.

• Armide tries to kill the greatest Christian knight Rinaldo (in English: Renaud; his name appears in Ariosto's Orlando furioso (III, 30)); he is the son of Bertoldo and was the reputed founder of the house of Este) but she falls in love with him instead and takes him away to a magical island where he becomes infatuated with her caresses and grows idle. Two Christian knights seek out the hidden fortress, brave the dangers that guard it and, by giving Rinaldo a mirror of diamond, force him to see himself in his effeminated and amorous state and to return to the war, leaving Armide heartbroken. (This sequence echoes a similar storyline in Ariosto: the witch Alcina ensnares the knight Ruggiero, but the spell is broken by a magic ring that the good sorceress Melissa brings him. Alcine grieves at this loss and desires death, but being a sorceress, she cannot die.)

The poem was immensely successful throughout Europe and over the next two centuries various sections were frequently adapted as individual storylines for operas, plays, ballets and masquerades; scenes from the poem were also depicted in paintings and frescoes (for example, at Fontainebleau in France).

Delacroix's Clorinda Rescues Olindo and Sophronia is below the break.

From the old catholichaven.org site (now unavailable), here is part of Dom Guéranger's commentary.

Today's propers in mp3 format, chanted, can be downloaded or listened to at Dominica X. post Pentecosten.

The Ancient World on Television, found via a link on the ARLT blog, looks to be this week's UK television and radio programs, with days and times. Helpful, if you receive BBC4 or uKtvHistory.

The ARLT blog (ARLT stands for the Association for the Reform of Latin Teaching, though the organization changed its name to the Association for Latin Teaching) has a post on the first Traditional Latin Mass in Front Royal, Virginia, U.S.A. this past Sunday, August 6, 2006. The post (Latin Mass (1) is an article from the diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Herald.

The blog is well worth reading.

Celebrate St. Lawrence.......

Last year's entry here is at August 10, St Lawrence, Martyr.


The Martyrdom of St Lawrence, by Bernini, Florence
Right mouse click and 'view image' for full size

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Ronald Knox, who reported the 1926 destruction of Big Ben by trench mortars ...

Daniel Mitsui found Two Limericks by Ronald Knox.

marialectrix reads Knox discussing Sherlock Holmes in her two posts #328: Part 1, “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes” by Ronald A. Knox, and the second,#329: Part 2, “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes” by Ronald A. Knox.

Ronald Knox at Wikipedia.

For the Big Ben story, see The Riot That Never Was.

Stephen Heiner is posting the photos he took Saturday before the Mass and during the Mass:

• Battleship North Carolina Set 1,
• Battleship North Carolina Set 2,
• Battleship North Carolina Set 3,
• Battleship North Carolina Set 4,
• Battleship North Carolina Set 5,
• Battleship North Carolina Set 6, and
• Battleship North Carolina Set 7, so far.

Previous post here: Traditional Latin Mass aboard the battleship USS North Carolina, in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Two friends mentioned to me this evening aboard the USS North Carolina, that for some days, they'd both been unable to access this site. So, when I got home tonight, I looked to see what might be wrong, and found the problem on the second thing I checked. It was a leftover from the ill-fated attempt to upgrade to Pivot v1.30, and as soon as I corrected it, the site's again accessible. Welcome, returning readers.

Keith Kenney is a young man who posts at Sancta Liturgia. I've forgotten how I came across his blog, but it has been one which I've followed for a while now in my aggregator. He's heading to seminary at the end of the month: O bone Iesu, fac ut sacerdos fiam secundum Cor tuum.

One of his posts, Praying in Latin recounts some of his personal experiences with the Traditional Latin Mass and Gregorian chant, and also makes these interesting points about the subject of the post:

While I am certainly not fluent in Latin, it has become my preferred language for prayer. I find that praying in Latin has had several benefits. First and foremost, it helps me to collect myself and become orientated towards God. Secondly when I first began praying in Latin it helped me to learn the prayers again and to become more familiar with the meaning of the words that I had so often rattled off in English. Thirdly, the natural rythmn of the Latin once become familiar is an anchor that leads me to contemplation and recalls me to my task when my focus shifts. The same but twice over for Gregorian Chant which effortlessly places me in the presence of God even when the schola is chanting an Offertory with which I am by no means familiar.

He goes on to quote a passage from Fr John Baptist Scaramelli (see The directorium asceticum or, Guide to the spiritual life V.2 on this site) on the types of prayer with illustrative anecdotes, a passage well worth reading.

The Sancta Liturgia sidebar has links to the Latin, and to English translations, of Cum Sanctissimum by Pope Clement VIII, Si Quid Est by Pope Urban VIII, Rubricarum Instructum of Pope John XXIII and to some of the Rubricae generales for the 1962 Missal.

Pope Innocent III Action Figure.

Homeschoolers may find the Philosophical Powers page helpful.

From the entry on Anselm:

The manufacturing process has painstakingly increased the perfection of these toys by giving them the property of existence. A consequence of the toys' high quality is that they are so expensive that they can be paid for only with money that is both fully divine and fully money.

Previous post: Name that nun.

Now she's Sister Mariana of the Incarnate Word.

X-rays reveal Archimedes secrets gives some details of the results Will Noel's team achieved using X-ray fluorescence to peer through layers of text which overwrote earlier works. A monk had scraped off the written text of one of Archimedes' works, then wrote Greek Orthodox prayers on the parchment. Twentieth-century forgers added old paintings of religious imagery. The X-rays look below these additions to decipher Archimedes.

There will be an August 4, 2006 live webcast at 2300 GMT of the team operating the equipment.

Update: Phys.org has an entry Modern Technology Reveals Ancient Science, which links to the Archimedes Palimpsest Project site.

Shawn Tribe posts (Chronicle of an Amsterdam Bishop's unintentional "Last Will" - an FSSP Parish.) David Ostveen's recounting of some of the events leading up to the establishment of the FSSP's Traditional Latin Mass in Amsterdam (in .pdf format here). Why it's in .pdf I have no idea.

David okayed me posting the image of the altar, and it's below the break.

Previous posts here about the Amsterdam indult:

• Flying pigs; Hong Kong and Amsterdam,
• More information on the Amsterdam indult TLM.

Amanda Simpson has posted Juventutem 2005 on the video.google site. It's a little longer than 37 minutes.

About 25 minutes in is Bp Rifan playing the accordion (images below the break). There are also some French, Spanish, Nigerian (?) and Polish kids singing.