A reproduction of the 1748 Nolli Map is for sale.

Last year, the Map Room blog posted Interactive Nolli Map, about the University of Oregon's Flash based 1748 Map of Rome, by Giambattista Nolli, 'regarded by scholars and cartographers as one of the most important historical documents of the city.' From the University's site:

Giambattista Nolli (1701-1756) was an architect and surveyor who lived in Rome and devoted his life to documenting the architectural and urban foundations of the city. The fruit of his labor, La Pianta Grande di Roma ("the great plan of Rome") is one of the most revealing and artistically designed urban plans of all time. The Nolli map is an ichnographic [ground plot] plan map of the city, as opposed to a bird’s eye perspective ...

The Nolli map is the first accurate map of Rome since antiquity and captures the city at the height of its cultural and artistic achievements. The historic center of Rome has changed little over the last 250 years; therefore, the Nolli map remains one of the best sources for understanding the contemporary city. ...

The map not only records the streets, squares and public urban spaces of Rome, but Nolli carefully renders hundreds of building interiors with detailed plans.

Click on the 'Launch Map Engine' bit on the upper right, then use your mouse to move north, south, etc, and to zoom in and out. Below the break are gimp window grab images of St Peter's and St Mary Major.

Last year's post is at November 30, St Andrew, Apostle and Martyr, with images illustrating his life. The images there are

• The Calling of Peter and Andrew, Duccio di Buoninsegna,
• The Calling of the Apostles, Domenico Ghirlandaio
• Saint Andrew and Saint Thomas, Gian Lorenzo Bernini (yes, a painting by Bernini),
• St Andrew Refusing to Worship Idols, Jean-Baptiste Henri Deshayes, and
• The Martyrdom of Saint Andrew, from the Heures d'Etienne Chevalier.

Below the break are images of the Roman churches Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, Sant'Andrea delle Valle and its apse ceiling, the Crucifixion of St Andrew by Mattia Preti in the Church of S Andrea della Valle, and of the Altar of the Miracle, where the Blessed Virgin appeared to Alphonse Ratisbonne in 1842, and where in 1918 (1919?), St Maximilian Maria Kolbe said his first Mass, Sant'Andrea delle Fratte.

Fr Tim Finigan, who blogs at The hermeneutic of continuity, took a day trip from England to Kraków, and graces us with photos of his trip at Krakow: the Royal Cathedral and at The Sigismund Bell, including this one of the Cathedral's chapel of St Leonard, where Fr Karol Wojtyła said his first Mass:

This has been around for a while, but I just saw it: In the How2.0 section at Popular Science are the instructions for Preserving a Snowflake in Superglue.

Icelander Tryggvi Emilsson used superglue's quality of quickly 'polymerising in the presence of water (specifically hydroxide ions), forming long, strong chains, joining the bonded surfaces together'. From the PopSci article:

The tendencies of superglue to seep into the tiniest nooks and crannies, harden on contact with water, and solidify rapidly make it perfect for taking an impression of something that is very small, made of water, and ephemeral, a fact that struck Emilsson during the winter of ’79.

Popular Science has a blog and does podcasting. Hat tip to mirabilis.ca's How to preserve a snowflake.

Using sound waves, Scientists Levitate Small Animals.

The levitated ant tried crawling in the air and struggled to escape by rapidly flexing its legs, although it generally failed because its feet find little purchase in the air. The ladybug tried flying away but also failed when the field was too strong to break away from.

The Schola started a blog here, and there's a post there titled Brinkburn Priory, with some history of the Priory and of the Schola's connection with it. A page at thenorthumbrian.co.uk on fortified churches (I'm using the google's cache on that page at the moment, since thenorthumbrian.co.uk is having a problem) mentions the Priory:

Brinkburn Priory and Blanchland were both built in deep and secluded valleys, presumably in the hopes of keeping their heads down ...

We find fortified churches in the French regions of Thiérache, Languedoc, and Dordogne (Périgord). Estonia, Poland and Transylvania also have examples. There's even a Fortified Churches group on flickr.

We find fortified churches in the United Kingdom along the border with Scotland, along the North Sea coast, and in Wales, defending against threats from outside Christendom and from fellow Christians.

A review of Sheila Bonde's Fortress-Churches of Languedoc: Architecture, Religion, and Conflict in the High Middle Ages, here, says

Throughout the Middle Ages there was intensive interaction between the religious and military orders of society. Bishops and abbots often supplied soldiers and other assistance to military actions, often leading troops themselves. [See below the break for an example.] It is hardly surprising, therefore, that medieval churches were often provided with fortified enclosures, crenellations, iron-barred doors, and other elements of defense. ...

The description, identification, and geographical tracking of the machicolated arch is the central element of this study. According to Bonde: "Machicolation is an opening that permits the passage of projectiles, stones, or other objects to be dropped on the heads of the attackers. Any number of strategies can be used to create the desired slot: from timber balconies to elaborate stone-built projections resting on corbels. The technology we confront in mid-twelfth- century Languedoc is the machicolated arch, which is just what its name says it is: a series of arches or arcades with holes or slots in their summit" (p. 4). ...

The subsequent adoption of the machicolations on the papal palace at Avignon in the fourteenth century introduced the device to a wide international audience, while confirming its association with Southern France. ...

Scholars have frequently focused on the defensive posture of many religious structures of the tenth and eleventh centuries, positing a need to fortify against the ravages of foreign invaders, especially non-Christians, Saracens, Vikings, or Magyars. Bonde demonstrates that even more common were threats from within Christendom, and that these were acknowledged in the architectural adaptations of religious buildings, which could easily serve military needs as well. ...

Bonde discusses the process of incastellemento, which often involved the foundation of fortified hilltop settlements by large monastic landowners--often intended as outposts to oversee effective management of estates--and which began quite early in Italy. In Italy, Bonde cites the evidence of increased incastellemento in the north in the twelfth century. A body of work, however, especially studies by Chris Wickham, has demonstrated the process well underway in the tenth century in Central and Southern Italy, especially for foundations of the large monasteries of Farfa, Montecassino, and San Vincenzo al Volturno. ...

Four examples of fortified churches, and some information about them, are below the break.

At Sources of Catholic Dogma. It's a work in progress, and I hope internal hyperlinks are coming. Ignore the 'motto'.

Hat tip to Mark Scott Abeln's Denzinger's Enchiridion is Online.

In his post Ad te levavi (the reference is to the Introit for the First Sunday of Advent in the pre-Vatican II Latin Rite Missal, as well as, for some reason, the recent Missal) Jeffrey Tucker writes about how we might absorb the Faith not through a homily, but by hearing the Mass sung:

One of the reasons behind the Church's song is to convey the drama of the liturgical year in an audible way. This way, even if a person had no Missal, couldn't understand the homily, and had no access to scripture, the message of the faith could still penetrate. And though today we have printed material and access to a thousands of treatises at our finger tips, what we all miss is the musical score to the liturgical year that our ancestors knew so well. ...

Was there ever a time when people were so inspired by the sound of the new Church year that they would spontaneously join in singing? Could it become that familiar over the generations? I can easily imagine it. Familiarity starts with the first listening. Pastors of souls should insist that this song be heard again this coming Sunday. Perhaps in a few years, it will only require someone to hum the first 6 notes and we will all know immediately: it's Advent!

It is well known that the Traditional Latin Mass had fewer readings from the Bible (most Sundays had only one from an Epistle and one from a Gospel), one Canon and fewer other proper prayers. The familiarity which resulted means these prayers would be quickly recognized, and prior knowledge facilitates learning (a common feature in traditional and more recent theories of information processing).

The stability stemming from this builds up a mental model of the context of the material the faithful are hearing. Novelty and variety interferes with the creation of contexts by weakening the memory. Stability taps into and recalls emotions and re-creates them quickly, reliving and reconnecting with the past.

Familiarity means there is less mental resistance to greater understanding, since the context does not need to be established, permitting the faithful to focus on other matters and reduces the amount of attention being simultaneously focused on multiple ideas, meanings and explanations.

Old words rule because people know them intimately. Familiar words spring to mind unbidden.

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, August 28, 2006

The Walters Art Museum has a free exhibition going of its collection of Medieval illuminated missals, liturgical manuscripts, early printed missals and altar furnishings, with particular emphasis on illustrations that decorate the text of the Canon of the Mass. The exhibition continues until January 28, 2007.

Generally, illustrations are quite small but this exhibit includes many that are full-page size, said William Noel, curator of manuscripts and rare books. In addition, “it is very, very rare to show these [books] in a museum context,” with period candlesticks and furnishings that give a sense of the original medieval displays, he said. One of the rarest pieces is the Saint Francis missal, which Noel called “an outstandingly important manuscript.” Many believe Saint Francis ... used that missal to determine the basis for the rule of his order of Friars.

Source: Walters exhibit features rare religious items.

The exhibition's site is here.

Hat tip to rarebooknews.com's November 27, 2006: Missals and Manuscripts on Exhibit in Baltimore.

At his post On the Agnus Dei Fr Nicholas Schofield, of London, England, quoted the 1841 book A journey from La Trappe to Rome by Baron Ferdinand Géramb, Abbot and procurator-general of La Trappe. The complete work is available here from books.google.com, including a .pdf version.

Letter X, beginning on page 89 in the book (page 106 in the.pdf file) has a description of the Pope's dress:

In the interior of his palace, the Pope wears a soutane of white cloth and a rochet of fine linen ; a mozetta of red velvet, lined with ermine, and a large cap of the same material and colour. His shoes are either of red cloth, with gold tissue, or of red morocco leather, according to the time of the year. The cross is embroidered in gold on the middle of the upper part of the shoe. He always wears the same dress, except during Advent, Lent, and on fast days, when he puts on a soutane of white serge. From the Saturday of Holy Week to the following Saturday, he wears a mozetta and cap of white damask. When he goes out, he wears a stole.

The linked Catholic Encycolpedia describe the author's writing style.

His style is easy and without affectation. The customs, manners, and incidents of the journey which he describes, all are vividly and attractively given, and the topographical descriptions are of an irreproachable accuracy.

He married in 1796, when he was 24, had six children, entered the religious life after his wife and children's mother died, leaving the children in the care of his brother. Also from the linked Catholic Encycolpedia article:

in 1833, he went to Rome, where he held the office of procurator-general of La Trappe. He soon gained the esteem and affection of Gregory XVI, who, though he was not a priest, named him titular abbot with the insignia of the ring and pectoral cross, a privilege without any precedent.

The parish website is here. There aren't any images of the sanctuary or nave, but there are images of the church's lovely stained glass windows. This is to where the Boston Traditional Latin Mass and community is being moved.

A representative of Sean Cardinal O'Malley met with Holy Trinity parishioners on Sunday afternoon, November 26, 2006, yesterday. Here is the press release from the Committee to Preserve Holy Trinity Parish:

Holy Trinity Parish To Merge with Cathedral of the Holy Cross

BOSTON November 26 Saying, "It is the Cardinal's view, and my personal view, that the mission of this beautiful church is over," Father Mark O'Connell announced this afternoon Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley's plan to merge Holy Trinity Parish in Boston's South End with the nearby Cathedral of the Holy Cross.

The merger means that the money and records "stay here," according to Father O'Connell, instead of becoming assets of the Archdiocese. The fate of the parishioners of Holy Trinity will be as follows:

The Latin Mass will be moved to Mary Immaculate of Lourdes Parish in Newton Upper Falls. Father O'Connell will inform parishioners there of the plan when he announces the Cardinal's proposal for reconfiguration in Newton tonight at 7:15 PM at St. Philip Neri Church on Beacon Street in Waban. According to a published report in the Newton Tab, St. Philip Neri and Mary Immaculate of Lourdes will merge, with the latter being the surviving church building. The Korean Catholic Community, which is part of St. Philip Neri, is also expected to join Mary Immaculate. Father O'Connell also announced to Holy Trinity parishioners that Father Charles J. Higgins will be named as pastor of Mary Immaculate of Lourdes. Currently stationed at St. Theresa of Avila Parish in West Roxbury, Father Higgins celebrates the Latin High Mass each month and, because of his personal interest in traditional liturgy and spirituality, is extremely popular with Latin Mass parishioners.

Father Harry Kaufman will become the chaplain of the German parishioners, replacing the church building as the anchor of the German Catholic community. Father Kauffman is popular with the German parishioners because he was a member of the community before his ordination to the priesthood in 2002. He is a Parochial Vicar at Sacred Heart Parish in Weymouth.

The two social service agencies hosted by Holy Trinity, the Cardinal Medeiros Center for homeless older adults and the Bridge Over Troubled Waters residence for at-risk youth, will still be expected to move. Bridge will "stay put" until they find a new home. The Archdiocese plans to assist the Cardinal Medeiros Center with a proposed move to Our Lady of Victories Church on Isabella Street in the South End.

The church building of Holy Trinity will return to the Cathedral; it will be the responsibility of the rector of the Cathedral to decide what to do with the church.

Father O'Connell noted that the plan is what Cardinal O'Malley wants to do but is not a final decision. While Father O'Connell gave no timeline for implementation of the plan, he noted that, if the plan goes forward as announced, the Latin Mass would be the first to leave Holy Trinity, early in 2007.

The hour-long presentation was followed by another hour of questions and commentary from parishioners, who, while calm and respectful, generally opposed the plan. A closing statement by George Krim, the 80-year-old Music Director Emeritus and a parishioner since the age of 4, may well summarize their thoughts. "Go back to the Cardinal and tweak his plan. There's a fervor here, unique in the Archdiocese, of two communities who work so well together. Do NOT
let him separate the communities. What advantage is it to the Archdiocese, or to the communities here, to close Holy Trinity?"

Founded in 1844 to meet the pastoral needs of German worshippers, Holy Trinity Church is the Archdiocese's oldest ethnic parish. For 161 years it has cherished and preserved German Catholic traditions
both for new immigrants and for their descendants. It is the only German Catholic parish in New England's eleven Catholic dioceses. In 1990 it expanded its role by embracing the Archdiocese's only authorized traditional Latin Mass. The combination of these two very compatible traditions has produced a faith community that is much stronger than the sum of its parts. The parish has also demonstrated its commitment to ongoing Christian charity by willingly sharing its facilities with two social service agencies: the Cardinal Medeiros
Center day shelter for the homeless and the Bridge Over Troubled Waters residence for at-risk youth.

Source, an email on the Yahoo group Save Holy Trinity (membership required to read the emails).

I thought it was next week, on the First Sunday of Advent, and not on the Last Sunday after Pentecost, but there are posts at The Inn at the End of the World and at Recta ratio about it on the Last Sunday after Pentecost.

The Collects for both Sundays begin Excita, quæsumus, Domine (Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord).

The Internet Archive has a blog: What's New at the Internet Archive. I wonder if I can access it through my WAIS client?

Hat tip to ResourceShelf's The Internet Archive Gets Its Own Blog.

Combine these two recent posts on the Athanasius Kircher Society blog.

Rotary Reading Desk ('with this sort of machine a man can see and read a great quantity of books, without moving his place: besides, it has this fine convenience, which is, of occupying a little space in the place where it is set, as any person of understanding can appreciate from the drawing') and Dog Power (a 'special breed [of dog], known appropriately enough as the turnspit (now apparently extinct), was employed especially for the purpose of turning roasting spits in 19th century Britain').

Images are below the break.

I found this quote about the Mass to be significant, at vine & branches:

This mysterious fabric of texts and actions ... bore the whole weight of history within itself ...

This is from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's Milestones, and he is writing about some things he learned from the German-Latin Missals of his youth, 'annotated with progressively detailed "age-appropriate" explanations of the Mass'.

It reminded me of an impression of mine from a little while after I returned to the Church: that a rapidly built product is frequently rickety. On the other hand, if we allow the creation to ripen, to develop slowly, there is a better likelihood it will be mature, fit, flourishing, solid and robust.

One sense of maturation, of course, is change from a more simple to a more complex state. Roots set down over fifteen hundred years will support a vigorous, healthy trunk and will sustain and cradle its boughs.

Diogenes uses imagery of the vinedresser and grafts at the end of his post. If the stock is weak, the yield will fail, the breed will be sterile, particularly if it is male-sterile.

From my ScrapBook grab of the old catholichaven.org site, here is part of Dom Guéranger's commentary.

There is no entry for the Last Sunday after Pentecost at All Masses of the Liturgical Year - Tridentine Rite.

My technorati feed for: Liturgical AND year AND Gueranger turned up a reference to Adventus MMVI on the Perfectæ Caritatis blog, at the bottom of which post are links to

• The History of Advent, and
• The Mystery of Advent, both from Book 1, Advent, of The Liturgical Year.

Today is the feast of St Catherine of Alexandria, patroness of, among other things, female intellectuals or learned women, and of Balliol College. She disputed with the philosophers. From the linked Catholic Encyclopaedia article:

Of noble birth and learned in the sciences, when only eighteen years old, Catherine presented herself to the Emperor Maximinus [,] ... endeavoured to prove how iniquitous was the worship of false gods. Astounded at the young girl's audacity, but incompetent to vie with her in point of learning the tyrant ... summoned numerous scholars whom he commanded to use all their skill in specious reasoning that thereby Catherine might be led to apostatize. But she emerged from the debate victorious. Several of her adversaries, conquered by her eloquence, declared themselves Christians and were at once put to death. Furious at being baffled, Maximinus had Catherine scourged and then imprisoned. Meanwhile the empress, eager to see so extraordinary a young woman, went with Porphyry, the head of the troops, to visit her in her dungeon, when they in turn yielded to Catherine's exhortations, believed, were baptized, and immediately won the martyr's crown.

In art, she is often depicted arguing with pagan philosophers. (See Ted Hewitt's Medieval_Saints post at (+) Happy St. Catherine of Alexandria's Day, November 25, though this is a member's only read only list, so you'll have to subscribe in order to read it.)

An interesting contrast: there is a well known medieval tale, going back at least to the thirteenth century, wherein Aristotle convinced Alexander the Great to break off his romance of Phyllis. Phyllis then tempts Aristotle from outside his study.


Aristotle's Fall
tapestry, Augustiner Museum
Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany
The incident is portrayed in Rouen and Auxerre Cathedrals.

On the other hand, St Catherine of Alexandria is represented studying, or exercising her knowledge in the defense of the Faith.


St Catherine of Alexandria: Scenes from Her Life
Donato D' and Gregorio D' Arezzo, about 1330


St Catherine, Balliol College, University of Oxford

From the College's site:

St Catherine has been associated with Balliol since its beginnings in the 13th century; even before the college had a chapel, Dervorguilla had the north aisle of St Mary Magdalen repaired and ‘fitted up as an oratory dedicated to St. Catherine.’ (Jones History 7) Oliver Sutton, Bishop of Lincoln, writing in 1284, notes the dedication of the college to St Catherine in his approval of Dervorguilla’s foundation. He later (1293) permits the college to have its own chapel, which was dedicated to St Catherine and probably finished by about 1330.

Below the break are breviary.net's Lessons iv. v. and vi. from the Divine Office readings for the Feast of St Catherine, as well as several images portraying this Saint employing her gifts.

That's a quote from James Franklin's The Renaissance Myth. A good read, along with his Myths About the Middle Ages.

Hat tip to Western Confucian's Iosue Andreas at Chalk Another One Up for the Mediævals.

This blog isn't updated often, but I want to point out a photograph there of Dawson speaking with Sir Alec Guinness at Boston College in 1959.

There are a number of interesting fonts available at Free Medieval Fonts I've installed some on my desktop here, and if you have Theodoric, you can see the words 'in illo tempore', above, in that font, because the css file header section contains 'font: 30pt Theodoric, georgia;'. You might need to clean out your browser cache for the change to appear.

Back on November 14th of this year, per the RSS feed to which I subscribe, archive.org made available The Basilica of St. Clemente in Rome (second edition) by Fr Louis Nolan, O.P. It is dated 1914 and is dedicated to Cardinal O'Connell, Archbishop of Boston and then Cardinal Titular of San Clemente.

The book is only available in the .djvu and FlipBook formats, no .pdf file is at the link. The .djvu files are images, and individual pages in the .djvu file can be exported to .ppm format and then, with a program such as the gimp, saved in .jpg and other formats. Being image files, I haven't figured out a way to swipe-copy text. There are some basic instructions on obtaining the browser plugin or stand alone djvu program (pronounced "déjà vu") at my post A missal for the laity, in English, from 1806.

Back to the book. Fr Nolan describes is purpose in the Author's Preface:

to give to the public as concise and accurate an account of the Basilica of S. Clemente as our sources of reliable information permitted. ...

In this history of so unique a monument as S. Clemente -- seated as it is upon the ruins of pagan antiquity and gathering within its folds the treasures of Christian art and archaelology for a period of nearly nineteen centuries --, we have endeavored not only to explain these treasures taken in themselves, but to shew them as parts of a great whole, a whole which bears living witness to the teaching of the Church from the Apostolic times down through the ages to our own day.

Below the break are images of the nave, altar and apse before the restoration of 1715 (by Pope Clement XI, elected pope on November 23, 1700), and the table of contents.

Fr Nolan translates the inscription above the principal door of the church:

This very ancient church, almost the only one that, unchanged by the ravages of time, still preserves the form of the old basilicas in this City ; built upon the very spot where the paternal house of S. Clement, Pope and Martyr is believed to have stood, and giving a Title to a Cardinal Priest of the Holy Roman Church ; honored by S. Gregory the Great with two homilies which he delivered here ; and by the Holy Station of Lent -- the Supreme Pontiff Clement XI., elected to govern the Catholic Church on the very feast of the same S. Clement, in token of his particular devotion to him, restored and ornamented in the year of salvation 1715, the fifteenth of his Pontificate.

pp 97 - 98 in the book, pp 125 - 126 in the .djvu file. Fr Nolan goes on to regret some of the restorations, specifically the new, flat ceiling and the whitewashing of the walls, whichcovered frescoes, though he admits they were in poor condition .

Here is an engaging, enjoyable quote about the Roman's way of celebrating this Pope:

The St. Clement's day festival in Rome is so Italian it could happen in New York. It has that concentrated, wonderfully cinematic Italianness one simply can't find beyond the watery bounds of Manhattan. After a long and harrowing detour around the Palatine and back towards the Campidoglio to avoid another tiresome pacifist demonstration that was cluttering up central Rome from Il Gesu to the Vittoriano, I arrived to find the procession had already begun. So I followed the lights and the music.

A scraggly-looking brass band played vigorously at the head of the cortege, followed up a banner-bearer, torchers in the black and scarlet habit of the clerks of the Propaganda Fide, as well as assisting Dominican clergy in surplice and tunic. Then came the great gilded head-reliquary of the saint on a litter borne on the shoulders of four men in identical martyr-maroon sweatshirts with the Latin inscription Nihil dificile volenti, the meaning of which is entirely lost on me. After them followed Dominicans in cappa and tunic and surpliced acolytes. And then us, the laity, some bearing burned-down wax tapers.

A truly Italian touch came in the fact that at each corner of the sedia were plastic flame-shaped red lights that blinked on and off the whole time. Only in Italy.

On either side, people ran ahead and lit spark fountains affixed to the walls or taped to stop signs, blazing away with magnesium whiteness until the flammules died in a halo of gold on the sidewalk. Overhead were strung extravagant exotic displays of lights that had a faint hint of some small-town orientalist movie palace. It was great. It was tacky. It was pious. It was holy. It was Italy.

Source: Matthew's post on the Shrine of the Holy Whapping blog, On the Eve of St. Clement's Day in Rome. For something of an American equivalent, see The San Gennaro Festival, New York City, again by Matthew and again at the Shrine of the Holy Whapping:

the sort of crazy, shiny, brightly-colored turn-your-brain-off fun that has a certain garish, wholesome simplicity to it in small doses, seasoned with a touch of the appealingly grotesque and, in the end, sanctified by the bright polychrome image of St. Januarius himself, the guardian of all that is popular and populist within the Catholic soul.

Who wouldn't want such an event put on in their honor, by their family?

The proverb can be translated as 'Nothing is difficult to him who resolves.'

Today is the feast of St Clement I, an early Pope. The linked article at the Catholic Encyclopaedia discusses where in the Apostolic Succession he might have fallen. From breviary.net, here are Lessons iv. v. and vi. from the Divine Office readings for the this Saint.

Today is the feast of St Cecilia, about whom legends abound, and who is the patroness of musicians, at least since the fifteenth century. I believe that the Rome Philharmonic Orchestra is known as Orchestra di Santa Cecilia. The pagans tried first to suffocate her by locking her in the bath, hoping the steam would finish her off. When that was unsuccessful, they tried to chop off her head, but that, too, was unsuccessful, and she lived a further three days, and she used the time to give her things to the poor and her house to the Church. Chaucer's second Nun's Priest's tale has this:

And while the organs maden melodie
To God alone in hart thus sang she:
'O Lord, my soule and eek my body gye
Unwemmed, lest confounded be.'

From breviary.net, here are Lessons iv. v. and vi. from the Divine Office readings for the Feast of St Cecilia, with images from the her Church in Trastevere, one of the first parishes in ancient Rome.

Fr Nicholas Schofield has a photgraph at Manning and Harrow, which shows the mitre in the background.

Salvador Miranda has a short biography of Manning here.


Banner of the Amalgamated Society of Watermen and Lightermen,
Cdl Manning Lodge

The Cardinal was a supporter of the dockers during the 1889 strike. He also founded, in 1873, The League of the Cross, a 'Catholic total abstinence confraternity'.

In googling for "Sixth Sunday after Epiphany" "Gueranger", I came across Liturgy links, which is valuable resource for its large number of links to mp3 audio files in section eight, and on the traditional Latin Mass in its section eleven. The page sometimes loads slopwly, so practice patience.

This past April, the English Benedictine Dom Alcuin Reid presented 'Looking Again at the Liturgical Reform: Some General and Monastic Considerations'. The paper is available here, as a .pdf (.pdf == where information goes to die). He briefly discusses a different manner of 'participation' at Mass, that of watching:

the capacity for living-in-the-gaze, for resting in the act of seeing, for welcoming the sacred in the form and event, by contemplating them

This is a quote from Romano Guardini's Spiegel und Gleichnis. Bilder und Gedanken (Mirror and Allegory/Parable. Pictures and Thoughts), Grünewald- Schöningh, Mainz-Paderbon, 1990, translated at “Holy Week at Monreale,” the Author: Romano Guardini. (Monreale is in Sicily, near Palermo.) I posted on this quote at 'Everyone was watching', so-called because of another remark of Guardini's: 'Almost no one was reading, almost no one stooped over in private prayer. Everyone was watching.'

There's a letter here Guardini wrote in April, 1964 in which he develops this approach:

A mass of ritual and textual problems will, of course, present themselves-and long experience has shown how much scope there is for a right and a wrong approach. But the central problem seems to me to be something else: the problem of the cult act or, to be more precise, the liturgical act.

As I see it, typical nineteenth-century man was no longer able to perform this act; in fact he was unaware of its existence. Religious conduct was to him an individual inward matter which in the 'liturgy' took on the character of an official, public ceremonial. But the sense of the liturgical action was thereby lost. ...

The question is ... whether we shall re-learn a forgotten way of doing things and recapture lost attitudes. ...

The liturgical act can be realized by looking. This does not merely mean that the sense of vision takes note of what is going on in front, but it is in itself a living participation in the act. I once experienced this in Palermo Cathedral when I could sense the attention with which the people were following the blessings on Holy Saturday for hours on end without books or any words of 'explanation'. Much of this was, of course, an external 'gazing', but basically it was far more. The looking by the people was an act in itself; by looking they participated in the various actions. However, cinema, radio and television-not to forget the flood of tourists-will have destroyed this remainder of old contemplative forces.

Only if regarded in this way can the liturgical-symbolical action be properly understood: for instance, the washing of hands by the celebrant, but also liturgical gestures like the stretching out of hands over the chalice. It should not be necessary to have to add in words of thought, 'this means such and such', but the symbol should be 'done' by the celebrant as a religious act and the faithful should 'read' it by an analogous act; they should see the inner sense in the outward sign. Without this everything would be a waste of time and energy and it would be better simply to 'say' what was meant. But the 'symbol' is in itself something corporal-spiritual, an expression of the inward through the outward, and must as such be co-performed through the act of looking. ...

The active presence of the people of Palermo was based on the fact that they did not merely look up in the book what the various actions 'meant', but they actually 'read' them by simply looking-an after-effect of antique influences, probably paid for by a lack of primary education. Our problem is to rise above reading and writing and learn really to look with understanding.

This is the present task of liturgical education. If it is not taken in hand, reforms of rites and texts will not help much.

Mass in Latin promotes this disposition, as it erects a barrier to the explanatory presentation and eliminates that possibility of dull, lazy numbness. But if the laity use their missals to 'follow along' with the action in the sanctuary, their prayer and attention will be intercepted thereby as much as if the priest and faithful are dis-oriented (i.e., versus populo).

What we commonly now know as St Peter's Basilica is an edifice begun 500 years ago (see On this date April 11, 1506, on this blog), and which replaced the old St Peter's, built by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. From the readings for November 18 in the Breviary:

Ex locis sacris quæ olim apud Christiános veneratiónem habuérunt, illa celeberrima et frequentíssima  fuérunt, in quibus cóndita Sanctórum corpora, vel aliquod Mártyrum vestigium aut monuméntum esset.  In quorum número sanctórum locórum, in primis semper fuit insígnis ea Vaticani pars, quam sancti Petri Confessiónem appellábant.  Nam eo Christiáni ex ómnibus orbis terræ partibus, tamquam ad fídei petram et Ecclésiæ fundaméntum conveniéntes, locum, Príncipis Apostolórum sepúlcro consecrátum, summa religióne ac pietáte venerabántur.

Among the hallowed places which have from of old time been held in honour among Christians, the most famous and sought after were those where the bodies of the Saints were buried, or where there was some trace or token of the Martyrs.  Among these spots so hallowed hath been ever among the most noteworthy that place on the Vatican Hill which is called the Confession of St. Peter.  Thither Christians do come from all parts of the earth as unto the rock of faith and the foundation-stone of the Church, and surround with godly reverence and love the spot hallowed by the grave of the Prince of the Apostles.

Illuc Constantinus Magnus imperátor octávo die post susceptum baptismum venit, depositóque diadémate, et humi jacens, vim lacrimárum profúdit.  Mox, sumpto ligone ac bidénte, terram éruit ; indeque duódecim terræ cóphinis, honóris causa duódecim Apostolórum, ablatis, ac loco basilicæ Príncipis Apostolórum designato, ecclésiam ædificávit.  Quam sanctus Silvester Papa décimo quarto Kaléndas Decembris, eo modo quo Lateranensem ecclésiam quinto Idus Novembris consecráverat, dedicávit, et in ea altáre lápideum, chrísmate delibutum, eréxit ; atque ex eo témpore sancívit ne deínceps altária nisi ex lápide fíerent.  Idem beátus Silvester basilicam sancti Pauli Apóstoli, in via Ostiénsi ab eodem Constantino imperatóre magnificentíssime ædificátam, dedicávit.  Quas basilicas idem imperátor multis prædiis attributis locupletávit, ac munéribus amplíssimis exornávit.

Thither came the Emperor Constantine the Great upon the eighth day after his Baptism, and, taking off his crown, cast himself down upon the ground, and wept abundantly.  Then presently he took a spade and pick-axe, and began to break up the earth, whereof he carried away twelve baskets-full in honour of the twelve Apostles, and built a Church upon that spot, appointed for the Cathedral Church of the Prince of the Apostles.  This Church was hallowed by holy Pope Sylvester upon the 18th day of November, in like manner as he had hallowed the Church of the Lateran upon the 9th day of the same month.  In this Church did the Pope set up an altar of stone, and pour ointment thereon, and ordain that from thenceforth no altars should be set up, save of stone.  The same Emperor Constantine likewise built a very stately Church upon the road to Ostia, in honour of the holy Apostle Paul, which Church also was hallowed by the blessed Sylvester.  These Churches the Emperor enriched by grants of much land, and adorned with exceedingly rich gifts.

I've put some images and information about old St Peter's below the break. There is a post about the other basilica in today's feast at St Paul's-Outside-the-Walls.

A reverse dictionary is one by which you can find the word if you know the definition, or a by

describ[ing] a concept [you] get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. ...

[W]e search our references for words that have definitions conceptually similar to the words you search for.

Access the reverse dictionary here.

Hat tip to the Cool Tools post Reverse Dictionary.

A few days ago, a friend asked whether an English translation of L'Année liturgique by Dom Guéranger is available on the 'net, and I replied that I had not found one. There is the French, hosted by Abbaye Saint Benoît de Port-Valais, here.

So, I did the next best thing: set up searches in technorati and icerocket, to notify me of blog posts which reference 'Liturgical AND year AND Gueranger' (technorati), and, in icerocket, 'OR Gueranger "Liturgical Year"'.

The technorati and icerocket sites make it quite simple to create such searches, and then, once the search is created, you are able to subscribe to the searches and be notified of new blog posts, via RSS.

• This is the icerocket search, and by clicking on the 'Subscribe' button near the left hand margin, a menu drops down, and the bottom option is 'RSS'. Click there and add it to your RSS reader.
• This is the technorati search, and by right mouse button clicking on the orange Subscribe button near the right hand margin, you can copy that link address for pasting into your RSS reader's 'add subscription' or 'add new feed' feature.

'It probably won't work', says University of Washington physicist John Cramer, who will try to split photons. The next step will be to test for quantum 'retrocausality'. Going for a blast into the real past, If the experiment works, a signal could be received before it's sent.

This phenomenon was first described in The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline (1948), by I. Asimov, during his doctoral research. Thiotimoline is notable for the fact that when it is mixed with water, the chemical actually begins to break down before it contacts the water. This is explained by the fact that in the thiotimoline molecule, there is at least one carbon atom such that, while two of the carbon's four chemical bonds lie in normal space and time, one of the bonds projects into the future and another into the past.

Iosephus's post Letter from Oxford has two wonder-ful, marvel-ous images of the interiors of these two libraries.

Along with the Gradual, the Catholic Music Association of America recently made Dom Johner's Chants of the Vatican Gradual available as a .pdf file here. This is a commentary, 'a book descriptive and explanatory of the Gregorian Mass chants'. In the Foreword by the translators, Dom Johner is quoted:

The present work is intended chiefly to serve as an aid to the prayerful rendition of the variable chanted parts of the Mass. At the same time it aims to be a guide for the worthy and artistic rendition of those chants which have been handed down to us from an age of strong faith and noble taste.

The Introit, Gradual, Alleluia-verse, Tract, Sequence, Offertory, and Communion 'are studied in their historical and liturgical setting, and their sentiments of joy and sorrow, hope and fear, gratitude and penance, are pointed out and developed. In this sense also the intimate relationship existing between these various texts is indicated; all are integrated into a unified whole and referred to the life of Christ and His Church. Following this short meditation, the author analyses the musical score accompanying the text, and attempts to show how Gregorian Chant interprets these various sentiments and gives adequate expression to them— in short, how Gregorian Chant is the perfect yet simple medium of translating religious emotion into the language of music.' (Quoting the translators.)

And Dom Johner says this about his work:

Choral music, or chant, is here considered not as a mere historic relic of the past, nor is worthy rendition to be understood in the sense of an elaborate concert interpretation of these monodic church compositions of the Middle Ages. Chant is more than this. It is an integral part of the liturgy, as much alive and inspiring today as ever. It is the praise of the living God by his people in union with Christ. Anyone, therefore, wishing to render chant properly must participate in the Christ-life of the Church, must seek spiritual nourishment at the heart of the liturgy, which is the Eucharistic Sacrifice. He must desire, as Christ did, to honor the Father with due reverence. These few thoughts have formed the guiding principles of the present work.

Please note that this is a quick job at composing this post, so there will be typographical errors and improperly rendered symbols, such as for Versicle and Response.

From my ScrapBook grab of the catholichaven.org site, here is part of Dom Guéranger's commentary.

Today's Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory and Communion in mp3 format, chanted, can be downloaded or listened to at Dominica XXIII. post Pentecosten.

The Last Judgement, William Blake
1808, engraving

WHEN the number of the Sundays after Pentecost is only twenty-three, the Mass for to-day is taken from the twenty-fourth and last Sunday; and the Mass appointed for the twenty-third is said on the previous Saturday, or on the nearest day of the preceding week which is not impeded by a double or semi-double feast.

But, under all circumstances, the antiphonary ends to-day. The Introits, Graduals, Communions, and Postcommunions, which are given below, are to be repeated on each of the Sundays till Advent, which vary in number each year. Our readers will remember that, in the time of St. Gregory, Advent was longer than we now have it; {See our 'Advent,' chap. i., page 23 et seq.} and that, in those days, its weeks commenced in that part of the cycle which is now occupied by the last Sundays after Pentecost. This is one of the reasons for the lack of liturgical riches in the composition of the dominical Masses which follow the twenty-third.

Even on this one, the Church, without losing sight of the last day, used to lend a thought to the new season which was fast approaching, the season, that is, of preparation for the great feast of Christmas. There was read, as Epistle, the following passage from Jeremias, which was afterwards, in several Churches, inserted in the Mass of the first Sunday of Advent: 'Behold! the days come, saith the Lord, and I will raise up to David a just branch: and a King shall reign, and shall be wise: and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In those days, shall Juda be saved, and Israel shall dwell confidently: and this is the name that they shall call Him: The Lord our Just One. Therefore, behold the days come, saith the Lord, and they shall say no more: The Lord liveth, who brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt! But: The Lord liveth, who hath brought out, and brought hither, the seed of the house of Israel, from the land of the north, and out of all the lands, to which I had cast them forth! And they shall dwell in their own land.' {Jer. xxiii. 5--8.}

As is evident, this passage is equally applicable to the conversion of the Jews and the restoration of Israel, which are to take place at the end of the world. This was the view taken by the chief liturgists of the middle ages, in order to explain thoroughly the Mass of the twenty-third Sunday alter Pentecost. Bearing in mind that, originally, the Gospel of this Sunday was that of the multiplication of the five loaves, let us listen to the profound and learned Abbot Rupert, who, better than anyone, will teach us the mysteries of this day, which brings to a close the grand and varied Gregorian melodies.

'Holy Church,' he says, 'is so intent on paying her debt of supplication, and prayer, and thanksgiving, for all men, as the apostle demands, {1 Tim. ii. 1.} that we find her giving thanks also for the salvation of the children of Israel, who, she knows, are one day to be united with her. And, as their remnants are to be saved at the end of the world, {Rom. ix. 27.} so, on this last Sunday of the year, she delights in them, as though they were already her members. In the Introit, calling to mind the prophecies concerning them, she thus sings every year: My thoughts are thoughts of peace, and not of affliction. Verily, His thoughts are those of peace, for He promises to admit to the banquet of His grace the Jews, who are His brethren according to the flesh; thus realizing what had been prefigured in the history of the patriarch Joseph. The brethren of Joseph, having sold him, came to him when they were tormented by hunger; for then he ruled over the whole land of Egypt. He recognized them; he received them; and made, together with them, a great feast. So, too, our Lord, who is now reigning over the whole earth, and is giving the bread of life, in abundance, to the Egyptians (that is, to the Gentiles), will see coming to Him the remnants of the children of Israel. He, whom they had denied and put to death, will admit them to His favour, will give them a place at His table, and the true Joseph will feast delightedly with His brethren.

'The benefit of this divine Table is signified, in the Office of this Sunday; by the Gospel, which tells us of our Lord's feeding the multitude with five loaves. For it will be then that Jesus will open to the Jews the five Books of Moses, which are now being carried whole, and not yet broken; yea, carried by a child, that is to say, this people itself, who, up to that time, will have been cramped up in the narrowness of a childish spirit.

'Then will be fulfilled the prophecy of Jeremias, which is so aptly placed before this Gospel: ``They shall say no more: The Lord liveth, who brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt! But, the Lord liveth, who hath brought out the seed of Israel from the land of the north, and from all the lands into which they had been cast.''

'Thus delivered from the spiritual bondage which still holds them, they will sing with all their heart the words of thanksgiving as we have them in the Gradual: "Thou hast saved us, O Lord, from them that afflict us!"

'The words we use in the Offertory: "From the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord," clearly allude to the same events; for, on that day, His brethren will say to the great and true Joseph: "We beseech thee to forget the wickedness of thy brethren!" {Gen. 1. 17.} The Communion: "Amen, I say to you, all things whatsoever ye ask, when ye pray," etc., is the answer made by that same Joseph, as it was by the first: {Ibid. 19--21.} "Fear not! Ye thought evil against me: but God turned it into good, that He might exalt me, as at present ye see, and might save many people. Fear not, therefore, I will feed you, and your children."' {Rup., De Div. Off., xii. 23}

If I shall touch only his garment I shall be healed.

Although the choice of this Gospel for the twenty-third Sunday is not of great antiquity, yet is it in most perfect keeping with the post-pentecostal liturgy, and confirms what we have stated relative to the character of this portion of the Church's year. St. Jerome tells us, in the homily selected for the day, that the hemorrhoissa, healed by our Lord, is a type of the Gentile world; whilst the Jewish people is represented by the daughter of the ruler of the Synagogue. {S. HIERON., in Matt., cap. ix.} This latter is not to be restored to life until the former has been cured; and this is precisely the mystery we are so continually commemorating during these closing weeks of the liturgical year, viz., the fullness of the Gentiles recognizing and welcoming the divine Physician, and the blindness of Israel at last giving way to the light. {Rom. xi. 25.}

He took her by the hand, and the maid arose.

The liturgy at this close of the year continually alludes to the end of the world. The earth seems to be sinking away, down into some deep abyss; but it is only that it may shake off the wicked from its surface, and then it will come up again blooming in light and love. After the divine realities of this year of grace, we ought to be capable of feeling a thrill of admiration at the mysterious, yet, at the same time, the strong and sweet ways of eternal Wisdom. {Wisd. viii. 1.} At the beginning, when man was first created, sin soon followed, breaking up the harmony of God's beautiful world, and throwing man off the divine path where his Creator had placed him. Wickedness went on increasing, until God's mercy fell upon one family. The light which beamed on that privileged favourite only showed more plainly the thick darkness in which the rest of mankind were enveloped. The Gentiles, abandoned to their misery, all the more terrible because they had caused it and loved it, saw God's favours all bestowed on Israel, whilst they themselves were disregarded, and wished to be so. Even when the time came for original sin to be remedied, it seemed to be the very time for the final reprobation of the Gentiles; for the salvation that came down from heaven in the person of the Man-God was seen to be exclusively directed towards the Jews and the lost sheep of the house of Israel. {St. Matt. xv. 24.}

But the people that had been treated with so much predilection, and whose fathers and first rulers had so ardently prayed for the coming of the Messias, was no longer in the position to which it had been raised by the holy patriarchs and prophets. Its beautiful religion, founded on desire and hope, was then nothing but a sterile expectancy, which kept it motionless and unable to advance a single step towards its Redeemer. As to its Law, Israel then minded nothing but the letter, and, at last, turned it into a mummy of sectarian formalism. Now, whilst in spite of all this sinful apathy it was mad with jealousy, pretending that no one else had any right to heaven's favours, the Gentile, whose ever-increasing misery urged him to go in search of some deliverer, found one, and recognized him in Jesus the Saviour of the world. He was confident that this Jesus could cure him; so he took the bold initiative, went up to Him, and had the merit of being the first to be healed. True, our Lord had treated him with an apparent disdain; but that had only had the effect of intensifying his humility, and humility has a power of making way anywhere, even into heaven itself. {Ecclus. xxxv. 21.}

Israel, therefore, was now made to wait. One of the Psalms he sang ran thus: 'Ethiopia shall be the first to stretch out her hands to God.' {Ps. lxvii. 32.} It is now the turn for Israel to recover, by the pangs of a long abandonment, the humility which had won the divine promises for his fathers, the humility which alone could merit his seeing those promises fulfilled.

By this time, however, the word of salvation has made itself heard throughout all the nations, healing and saving all who desired the blessing. Jesus, who has been delayed on the road, comes at last to the house towards which He first purposed to direct His sacred steps; He reaches, at last, the house of Juda, where the daughter of Sion is in a deep sleep. His almighty compassion drives away from the poor abandoned one the crowd of false teachers and lying prophets, who had sent her into that mortal sleep, by all the noise of their vain babbling: He casts forth for ever from her house those insulters of Himself, who are quite resolved to keep the dead one dead. Taking the poor daughter by the hand, He restores her to life, and to all the charm of her first youth; proving thus, that her apparent death had been but a sleep, and that the long delay of dreary ages could never belie the word of God, which He had given to Abraham, His servant. {St.Luke i. 54, 55.}

Now therefore, let this world hold itself in readiness for its final transformation; for the tidings of the restoration of the daughter of Sion puts the last seal to the accomplishment of the prophecies. It remains now but for the graves to give back their dead. {Dan. xii. 1, 2.} The valley of Josaphat is preparing for the great meeting of the nations; {Joel iii. 2.} Mount Olivet is once more to have Jesus standing upon it, {Acts i. 11.} but this time as Lord and Judge! {Zach. xiv. 4.}

Today in my archive.org RSS feed came notice that The Externals of the Catholic Church, A Handbook of Catholic Usage is available here. First published in 1917, it went through at least five editions, and was then revised by Rev John C. O'Leary, in 1951 and 1959. I'm not sure which is the archive.org version (1951 or 1959), because the .pdf lacks the page containing imprimatur, nihil obstat or publishing history.

Here is an interesting description of the Rituale, from pages 312 - 313 (pages 328 and 329 in the .pdf):

The Roman Ritual is a book which every priest has occasion to use frequently. The ritual means the "Book of Rites' just as the Missal signifies the "Book of the Mass," and the Pontifical the "Book of the Pontiff" or bishop. It has taken centuries to bring the ritual to its present form. In early times all the forms of blessing were not comprised in one book; some were contained in the sacramentary, some in the Missal, some elsewhere. The first book resembling our ritual was entitled a sacerdotale, or "priest's book' and was published at Rome in 1537. In those days nearly every diocese had its own ritual and its own list of authorized blessings; and, to promote uniformity, the Council of Trent recommended that a new and complete ritual should be issued and should be used all over the world, at least where the Latin rite prevailed. In 1614 the learned Pontiff Paul V authorized a revised ritual which was put into form by a commission headed by Cardinal Julius d'Antonio, a man of remarkable zeal and ability. It had been re-edited by Benedict XIV in 1753 and many new blessings have been added to it at various times. In 1925, by the authority of Pope Pius XI, the Vatican Edition of the Roman Ritual was issued and henceforth all future editions must conform to this model. This new edition was revised, improved and enlarged in accordance with the norms of Canon Law, the rubrics of the Roman Missal, and the decrees of the Apostolic See.

11 11 06 18:58 || Church history, liturgy, rubrics, ceremonies and the like || Permalink to this entry || No comments yet

For Martinmas: Philip, the 'fighting bishop' of Beauvais

It is well-known that when Martin was baptized, he left the Roman army. We've had 'fighting bishops', commanders of troops, since then. In 'The Voices Of The Cathedral', Prentice writes:

Not without a distinct loss could the Abbey of S. Yves-de-Braisne be thus despoiled, for here lay Robert II who had fought at Bouvines [near Lille] under Philip Augustus; . . .  another Philip [of Dreux], Bishop of Beauvais, who, obedient to clerical custom, fought with a mace lest episcopal hands shed blood with a sword; . . .

Philip commanded part of the French left wing at the Battle of Bouvines on Sunday morning, July 27, 1214. Another good site on the battle is here.



The battle is memorable (pace Sellar and Yeatman).

Bouvines was the most important battle from a political point of view for a century. Most historians cite the event as 'the battle that made France' and credit France's very existence to the victory of Philip II Auguste. It was a great pitched battle, the greatest of its age, in contrast to the many smaller and briefer engagements of the period. If the French monarch had lost, the Platagenêts might have won back their lost Norman and Angevin territories, and the counts of Flanders might have won freedom from the French king, and the German emperor might have retained Lotharingian territories. Not until the time of the emperor Charles V did France have so many enemies allied against it.

For England, Philippe II's victory of Bouvines more than confirmed the end of Platagenêt claims to Angevin France. It brought king John Lackland to his lowest ebb, and certainly promoted the English barons to revolt and to force upon the monarch the Magna Carta. Further, the English nobles went so far as to invite Philippe II's son, prince Louis, to take the crown of England.

Source: Battle of Bouvines (27 July 1214).

There is a 19th century stained glass window in the parish church of St Pierre in Bouvines, showing the Earl of Salisbury on the ground and the bishop handing him over to Jean de Nivelles, chatelain de Bruges.


The incident is recounted in the Philippiad of William of Breton:

. . . Indeed, the Bishop of Beauvais, having seen the brother of the King of the English, a man of incredible strength whom the English had on this account nicknamed "Longsword," overthrow the men of Dreux and do great harm to his brother's battalion, the bishop became unhappy, and since by chance he happened to have a mace in his hand, hiding his identity of bishop, he hits the Englishman on the top of the head, shatters his helmet, and throws him to the ground forcing him to leave on it the imprint of his whole body. And, since the author of such a noble deed could not remain unnoticed, and since a bishop should not be known to have carried arms, he tries to hide as much as possible and gives orders to John, whom Nesle obeys by the right of his ancestors, to put the warrior in chains and to receive the prize for the deed. Then the bishop, throwing down several more men with his mace, again renounces his titles of honor and his victories in favor of other knights so as not to be accused of having done work unlawful for a priest, as a priest is never allowed to be present at such encounters since he must not desecrate either his hands or his eyes with blood. It is not forbidden, however, to defend oneself and one's people provided that this defense does not exceed legitimate limits . . .

Source: The Battle of Bouvines according to the Philippiad, by William of Breton.

The marialectrix blog has some readings from 'On the Life of St. Martin' by St Sulpitius Severus, a young contemporary of St Martin of Tours:

• #533: Preface, “On the Life of St. Martin” by St. Sulpitius Severus,
• #534: Part 1, “On the Life of St. Martin” by St. Sulpitius Severus,
• #535: Part 2, “On the Life of St. Martin” by St. Sulpitius Severus,
• #536: Part 3, “On the Life of St. Martin” by St. Sulpitius Severus,
• #537: Part 4, “On the Life of St. Martin” by St. Sulpitius Severus,

marialectrix has one more podcast coming, perhaps today, but she's a bit under the weather, according to a blog entry of today, Nov 11, 2006: Happy Martinmas!.

Last year's post, with readings from the Breviary, is here. There are images of frescoes by Simone Martini, from the Cappella di San Martino, Lower Church, San Francesco at Assisi dedicated to him, illustrating the main points of his life.

In one of the images, we see Martin so absorbed in meditation, that two acolytes are trying to interrupt his reverie, so he may say Mass.

In another image, The Miraculous Mass, two angels appear at the first elevation, I quote a commentary,

During the elevation, the most deeply spiritual moment in the mass, two angels appear and give Martin a very beautiful and precious piece of fabric.

That doesn't seem right, especially given the additional commentary,

[the deacon's] astonishment is so great that he instinctively reaches out towards his bishop.

because the deacon is raising St Martin's chasuble, and the server will typically do so at the first and second elevations.

Now, because the second comment is doubtful, I challenge the first, and ask instead whether the angel is holding St Martin's maniple:


The Miraculous Mass
Cappella di San Martino, Lower Church, San Francesco, Assisi

Examining the image closely, one angel is holding the maniple, lifting it, and the other's arm or arms seem to be at such an angle that the arm or arms are not presenting the Saint with a piece of fabric.

The Illustrated History of Folding Chairs, including ... folding chairs / medieval!

the makeup of the roman 'sella curulis' assumes, through the longobard 'sella plicatilis' in steel, the form of the carolingian 'faldistorium'. here we notice another typological alteration. the crossed legs are frontal instead of being placed laterally. this was to emphasize the crossing 'X' structure which became a re-inforced symbol of authority.

the most emblematic example is the throne of dagobert I,
king of the franconians (arm- and backrests were added later). the 'faldistorium' in time acquired arms and a back, while retaining its folding shape. the most famous, as well as the most ancient, english chair is that made at the end of the 13th century for edward I., in which most subsequent monarchs have been crowned.

in spite of this, it was mostly used in ecclesiastical settings.

Hat tip to the MonkeyFilter post The Illustrated History of Folding Chairs.

Recta ratio has a number of blog entries mentioning 'memento mori' (not St Thomas More's last words, but 'remember, you must die'). If one examines the illustrations, the examples, incuding those of vanitas, are from the 15th century forward. The Tate has a glossary entry on the term as well.

Prentice makes this point and discusses it in The Voices Of The Cathedral. He claims that there is a radical difference in the faith between the 12th and 13th centuries on the one hand, and the 15th and later centuries.

In 1792 the Revolutionary Government of Paris, needing ammunition wherewith to repulse invaders who had crossed the Rhine, ordered its agents to search the burial vaults of France for lead coffins that might be melted and moulded into bullets. Later the tomb-plates of bronze or copper wherewith the aisles of churches had been paved and all bronze statues were also seized, smelted and turned into artillery; ...

Not only the history but much of the mind of the Middle Ages was written on these tombs, for what men thought of death, and much of what they thought of life, was here inscribed; wherefore we might have been able to trace, through the tombal monuments, the progress of Christian thought as it declined from the lofty faith of early Gothic years to the neopaganism of the Sixteenth Century, had it not been for the vandals of the Revolution.

If we may still trace that progress we owe it to Roger de Gagnieres, a Frenchman with a curious passion who, in the Seventeenth Century, spent most of his life travelling through France, accompanied by an artist, the two copying, describing, and sketching the tombs which the Revolutionists later destroyed.

The tombs of the Twelfth and early Thirteenth Centuries speak to us, as they spoke to de Gagnieres, of the resolute beliefs of men, their confidence in the reality of life and their denial of any validity to death. The men and women who lie here have thrown off both the weaknesses of infancy and the decrepitudes of age; they are all just thirty-three years old the age at which Christ died and therefore the perfect age for men. At Chalons death has given to a mother and her two daughters the same span of years; she is as young as they, and they are as old as she. Doubtless many of these dead bore in life scars, blemishes, disfigurements from disease, or deformities from birth or battle, but these have been expunged by God's gentle messenger of death who makes all things beautiful. So they lie here upon their tombs, transfigured, young, radiant with strength and beauty; their hands joined in prayer. The peace of God has left its seal upon their faces; their eyes are open since they now see God face to face, and walk in the glory of an eternal day. If a dragon, or some form of monster, is carved beneath their feet it is because they have become one with Him who trampled under foot the dragon and the basilisk, emblems of the evil that so easily besets us.

In all this the artist followed the thought and faith of his own time, giving expression to the belief of men who trusted deeply in the mercy of God. Certainly these dead had not been sinless but He who knoweth our frame, who called us from the dust, will have mercy even though we have leaped to evil as the sparks fly upward. According to the words of a Missal, "God is the eternal lover of souls" and there is no limit to His pity. Such was the faith of the early Gothic centuries. But the events of the Fourteenth Century had thrown that faith into an eclipse.

The horrors of the Hundred Years' War, the terrors of the Black Death, the "Babylonian Captivity," the anarchy of the Great Schism, the corruption of the Church, the immorality of priests and the worldliness of prelates had combined to rob men of an age-old place of refuge and to leave them exposed to all the storms of doubt.

The tombs tell the tale; a famous physician who died in 1393 appears, on his monument in a chapel of Laon Cathedral, as a naked cadaver, half mummy and half skeleton a man trodden under foot by death, not raised to life by the hand of Christ. Nearly ten years later Cardinal Legrange died at Avignon; his figure lies upon his tomb, desiccated and mummified, the ribs and bones barely covered by the yellowing skin. "What reason for pride have you?" his inscription cries to all who pass by. "You are but ashes; as I am so you shall be a fetid cadaver, a pasture ground for worms." ...

In earlier years men could face death and cry, "I have no part in thee." Roland, dying at Roncesvalles, needed no other assurance for his passing hour than his own brief prayer "God, I confess me guilty. I ask Thy power to cleanse me from my sins from the hour when I was born to this day, when death comes to me." But he who died in the Fifteenth Century needed a whole book -- Ars Moriendilo -- to teach him The Art of Dying. The joint labours of the priest and the artist could not do for him, when neo-paganism was in the air, what a very simple faith in Him whose constant message was "Believe, fear not" had done for the paladin of Charlemagne and for the Christians of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries.

The point is not that one attitude is more Catholic than the other, or that one is 'modern' while the other is outdated or passé, but that both are fitting and acceptable.

Contrarian: to go against the prevailing wisdom. Pro- or con-, memento mori, like one's attitude to bone chapels, is not an acid test (cf. The Acid Test and Bone Chapels as an Acid Test?).

Hunting for Dominican collects, I was poking around Archivum Liturgicum, and noticed on their Latest updates page, that they have a blog, archivum [La Liturgia Romana e il Rito Tridentino]. In Italian, of course.

Words fail.

It couldn't have been a greater contrast: the comrades of the Communist Party of Britain were meeting on a wet Wednesday night in one of the grottier enclaves of east London, while in an auction room in Manhattan the world's leading art dealers were on a spending spree which broke world records.

Few would have guessed the unlikely link between them. But Anita Halpin, the 62-year-old stalwart and chair of the far left group, was about to become a multimillionaire.

Read it all at Communist Party chair nets £20m in painting sale.

Thank you, David, of Cronaca, for Leading British Stalinist cashes in.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

Joee Blogs posts photos taken by Gregory Flash, of English Iuventutem, at Our Lady of Willesden Solemn High Mass in the Old Rite, Saturday 28th October.

Click on the images to see them in full size.

it was by the calculations of Dionysius Exiguus ('Wee Dennis'). At Dionysius Exiguus and AD/BC, Roger Pearse describes finding that there is on the 'net a good chunk of the Latin and Latin-English translation, of Liber De Paschate, in which Dennis sets out the nineteen year cycle for calculating Easter. (The complete Latin text is here.)

Bede gave us B.C., by the way, or maybe he didn't. The concept of 'zero' as a number didn't come to the West until later.

Lars Brownworth's '12 Byzantine Rulers' lectures are hosted on anders.com, which is run by a fellow nearby, in Research Triangle Park. I mentioned the lectures in 12 Byzantine Rulers, more free audio. Now, Mr Brownworth's page makes available a podcast in mp3 format, on the Empress Irene (link is directly to the mp3 file):

When the weak, ineffectual emperor Leo IV died in 780, he left the empire divided and in the hands of an orphan from Athens; the beautiful and grasping Empress Irene. 17 years later she was crowned as sole ruler after murdering her own son to take his place. It was hardly an auspicious start, beset by enemies on every border, the empire was now facing its most serious internal threat; the terrible iconoclastic controversy. Successive emperors had neglected the frontiers to concentrate on the war against icons, and in the process had not only weakened the state, but had destroyed some of the finest works of art the Byzantine world ever produced. Even worse, an emperor had at last returned to the long vacant throne of the West, to challenge Byzantium's claim of universal temporal domination. If ever the empire had needed strong leadership, it was now. Join Lars Brownworth as he looks at the reign of Irene; the only woman to rule the empire, not as Queen or Regent, but as a King.

There's a small mp3 file providing additional commentary on 'Why [study] Irene?'

There have been many new books available for free downloading since the last time I posted noting some (Search results from books.google.com). I probably merely ought to mention newly available notable works, but instead, I wait until I have the time (hah) to read, or at least skim, them.

Today, in the RSS feed from archive.org, for texts (this is the URI for the feed, use it if you want to subscribe), comes notice of The Voices Of The Cathedral by Sartell Prentice, copyright 1938. From the preface, 'Ut gratias reddam':

The church is very slow in making friends -- in fact there are just four to whom she will really open up her heart and mind. She will speak to the Historian as she will speak to no one else; but so also will she speak, in turn, to the Architect, the Artist, and to the Archaeologist; to each a part, to none the whole. It is only when these four go down her aisles together, each receiving and interpreting, that the full, fine story of the cathedral is ever told.

In an earlier book, The Heritage of the Cathedral, we made our visit with the Historian, the Architect, the Archaeologist, and the Artist, although then the Artist dropped behind and asked few questions. Now the Architect will follow while the Artist takes the lead, with the Historian and the Archaeologist at his right hand and his left. But the artist whom we have chosen for our company will not, for the moment, be interested in the techniques of his art, nor would the cathedral answer his questions if he were; she is not interested in these things, being very human and only concerned with the sons of men.

The questions we shall ask begin with a "Whence?" or with a "Why?" Whence did the mediaeval artist draw his theme-, and why did he select it? Sometimes the Historian or the Archaeologist will understand the cathedral's answer better than the Artist, but to one of the three she will always give reply.

I've read chapter XIII, 'Tales and Legends' and ch. XI 'The Calendar in the Carving'. From the latter, Prentice relates the parallels between Old and New Testament scenes and times:

She [Holy Church] also wished her children to know that the Crucifixion, abolishing the Synagogue, had given authority and divine commission to the Church. It was on the very spot where God had fashioned Adam from the primeval clay that Mary was seated when the angel announced to her "a holy thing shall be born of thee which shall be called the Son of God."

The cross on which Jesus had died had not been made of ordinary wood; it had been hewn from that Tree of Knowledge whose tempting fruit had ruined the entire world; the fatal tree of Paradise now bore a new fruit whereof man might freely take and live, thus making the promise of the Serpent, "If ye eat thereof ye shall not die" once a lie from the Father of Lies a vital and eternal truth.

Moreover, that cross was raised above the grave of Adam so that the blood which streamed from the wounds of Jesus, filtering into the ground, touched with saving power the bones of him "in whose Fall we sinned all," as the old New England Primer reminded our grandparents. To complete the parallel the Crucifixion took place on Friday, the same day of the week whereon the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and Jesus died at three o'clock in the afternoon, the precise hour when Adam committed his mortal sin.

Finally the Church, standing at the right of the cross,, receives all power to loose or bind, in Heaven as on earth, with the mingled blood and water that flows into her chalice from the wound made by Longinus' spear; while the Synagogue on the left, her eyes bandaged, her staff broken, and her crown falling from her head, vanishes forever from the purposes of God.

Some interesting comments on the Good Samaritan, comments which I hadn't come across before: '... the traveller from Jerusalem to Jericho represents the whole human race which, because of Adam's sin, had forfeited Paradise often symbolized by Jerusalem and been compelled to take the road to Jericho whose name, in Hebrew, means "the Moon" which, now bright, now black, with its fadings and eclipses, aptly portrays the life of man stumbling and sinning along his earthly road. This man is attacked by robbers his sins who take away his garment of immortality.' (footnote correcting the derivation of 'Jericho' omitted)

And, on Judgment Day: 'At Bale the dead hurry into their attire, fastening their shoes, pulling up their long stockings, and putting on their garments that they may appear in decent and respectful garb before the great Assize.'



Yes, the cathedral is 'very human and only concerned with the sons of men' and, being so concerned, understands how humor makes for high spirits:

The Church is not always serious, however; she has a thousand sprightly tales to tell, and there are smiles or laughter mortared with her stones. She asks us to chuckle over embarrassed Aristotle saddled, bridled and ridden by the vengeful courtesan Campaspe, against whose morals he had warned the Emperor who now witnessed, by invitation, the philosopher's plight. Then, with a broad grin, she tells us of Virgil, raised in a basket by a lady strong of arm if frail in virtue, only to be left suspended halfway up to the window of her tower chamber for the mockery of the people when day should dawn. She delights in the sight of wives who dispute with flying fists the authority of their husbands; and in that of husbands trundling their scolding wives in wheelbarrows to the ducking pond as on a corbel of Mumby in Lincolnshire. At Bristol, England, the man, having ventured into the kitchen and meddled with the fire, has to dodge a plate which goes skimming past his ear, but he has less success in the protection of his beard which is being vigorously pulled by the hands of his helpmate. She shows us the lazy peasant sleeping between the rows of corn; the doctor treating his patient not always decorously; the water-carrier at the fountain, the candlemaker in his shop, the farmer, bearing home a lamb from market.

Apropos of this post's title, see also An Exhortation to Read Better, which links to the 1965 edition of Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book.

Last year's post is here. At that URI are some images of the papal altar and baldachino.

Inside the basilica is a stone which, it is said, sweats water when a pope is about to die.

Quoting the post

There has been a church here since the days of the emperor Constantine. After he had his vision and won at the Milvian bridge, he had the basilica built on the site of part of Maxentius' army, a nice touch. Over the centuries, it has been rebuilt several times: after the Vandals sacked it, after an earthquake during the 'trial' of Pope Formosus, after fires in 1308 and 1360. When Borromini restored the basilica interior in preparation for the Holy Year of 1650, he did so in a Baroque style.

Father Demets, assistant pastor at the FSSP's St Francis de Sales parish, Mableton, Georgia, U.S.A. (Archdiocese of Atlanta), who blogs at De Fide Catholica has an entry pointing to a video of a Tridentine Mass in Fontainebleau, France, but the link doesn't work for me.

I did find
these references to "messe in latin" on the france3.fr site. There are videos (MS-Windows media player or Real player) on some of the linked articles, notably at

• Ite missa est ... le retour de la messe en latin ?,
• Corse: la messe en latin and
• Les traditionalites vont-ils sortir de l'ombre ? ('The traditionalists to leave the shadows?').

Apologies for the odd formatting of this post.

The MetaFilter post An 8.6 gigapixel stitched image of an Italian fresco links to a site with an image of Gaudenzio Ferrari's fresco of the life of Christ in the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Varallo Sesia, Italy (population 7,000, according to the 1910-1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition. Displaying the image in your browser requires Macromedia Flash, and the image is zoomable and scrollable. Mozart's Lachrymosa from the Requiem plays in the background while the image displays in your browser.

The photographers shot 1,145 digital frames, and wrote software specifically for the tasks of stitching them together. See 8.6 gigapixel stitched photograph of Italian fresco revealed at Rob Galbraith's Digital Phtotgraphy insights.

Nineteen Eighty-Four, in the 1984 version (imdb entry here), is available at this post at ThrowAwayYourTV.com.



Raise your handcuffed wrists during the ten minute hate.

Hat tip to the reddit post.

So notes J.P. Sonnen at Update on Reggie: our Latin is back!, with an image of the former aula.