The musings and meandering thoughts of a crotchety old man as he observes life in the world and in a small, rural town in South East Nebraska. I hope to help people get to Heaven by sharing prayers, meditations, the lives of the Saints, and news of Church happenings. My Pledge: Nulla dies sine linea ~ Not a day without a line.
A bit of satire from the Editors of the Imaginative Conservative. It might not be a bad idea! From The Imaginative Conservative By The Editors
(Providence, RI) — In the wake of Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s issuance today of an order to have New Yorkers in her state arrested in order to curtail the spread of the coronavirus, an instant poll by the Pew Research Company shows that 79% of Americans had already supported the concept of locking up escaped New Yorkers.
“I thought that law had been in place since at least the Carter Administration,” said Sarah Travers of Spillville, Iowa. “They’ve never been allowed to wander around the country indiscriminately, have they?”
Commented Deputy Bo Hutchinson of the Henry County, Georgia Sheriff’s Department. “We sure as heck arrest any of those people we find down here. Oh, we just keep them in the slammer a few days, and maybe we are a little rough with them—letting them bump their heads as they get in the squad car, and such—but it’s all just to scare them into not coming thisaway ever again.”
When told that the measure to keep New Yorkers within the the confines of their own state was a new initiative to contain the spread of the coronavirus, Mitch Hopkins of Duluth, Minnesota said, “Well, it ought to be a permanent federal statute anyway, or even a formal amendment to the Constitution.”
The featured image is a combination of this image and this image, courtesy of Pixabay.
The power of Satan is strong in his lick-spittle lackeys like these! From LifeSiteNews By Jonathon Van Maren If you are a certain type of progressive, this global upheaval presents an opportunity.
March 27, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — I’ve always been close to my family, but the coronavirus pandemic and the requisite social distancing have reminded me not to take them for granted. Never again will I “just drop by” my parents’ place without being reminded that it is a blessing to be able to do so. My toddler daughter is so fed up with not seeing her extended family that she frequently demands that we video-call her grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Like everyone else, I worry about my elderly grandparents. In the midst of the panic, many of us are feeling profoundly grateful for the families we have been blessed with.
But if you are a certain type of progressive, this global upheaval presents an opportunity. Open Democracy, for example, published an essay this week with this headline: “The coronavirus crisis shows it’s time to abolish the family.”
Open Democracy’s motto is “free thinking for the world,” and I certainly hope nobody is paying for that garbage. But the group’s essay is a good reminder that many progressives see this crisis as an opportunity to further their political agenda, especially as large swathes of the population are at this point willing to accept massive government oversight of their lives in order to flatten the curve and protect the elderly and the vulnerable. This crisis has taught us that our families are essential and that our elderly are valuable, and I hope we remember these lessons when this is all over.
But if you’re one of the clowns over at Open Democracy, the crisis is leading you to entirely different conclusions — conclusions such as the fact that we must get over “the mystification of the couple-form; the romanticisation of kinship; and the sanitization of the fundamentally unsafe space that is private property.” And why do we have to “get over” the idea of marriage and cease “romanticizing kinship,” whatever that means? Because of “the power asymmetries of housework (reproductive labor being so gendered) ... of patriarchal parenting and (often) the institution of marriage.” One genuinely wonders what the author of this gibberish had to suffer in order to produce such twisted nonsense.
Homes, Open Democracy informs us, are fundamentally unsafe: “[q]ueer and feminized people, especially very old and very young ones, are definitionally not safe there: their flourishing in the capitalist home is the exception, not the rule. It follows that, upon closer inspection, both terms — ‘social distancing’ and ‘sheltering in place’ — appear remarkable as much for what they don’t say (that is, what they presume and naturalize) as what they do. Sheltering in what place...and in whose? Distance from whom...or everyone but whom?”
Obviously, domestic abuse is an enormous issue, and the sad fact is that some people will feel trapped in their homes. But I would argue that family breakdown has contributed to abuse rather than lessened it, and that the idea of getting rid of the family to eliminate domestic abuse would exacerbate the problem rather than mitigate it. But according to Open Democracy, “the pandemic is no time to forget about family abolition.” In fact, even when homes are safe, the author theorizes, they are still awful and should still be abolished:
[E]ven when the private nuclear household poses no direct physical or mental threat to one’s person — no spouse-battering, no child rape, and no queer-bashing — the private family qua mode of social reproduction still, frankly, sucks. It genders, nationalizes and races us. It norms us for productive work. It makes us believe we are ‘individuals.’ It minimizes costs for capital while maximizing human beings’ life-making labor (across billions of tiny boxes, each kitted out — absurdly — with its own kitchen, micro-crèche and laundry). It blackmails us into mistaking the only sources of love and care we have for the extent of what is possible. We deserve better than the family. And the time of corona is an excellent time to practice abolishing it.
I suspect that there is as much of Freud as Marx in all of that, as the logic of attempting to contain a pandemic by collectivizing and moving us into large group homes escapes me. Perhaps it escapes the author, as well, as I see that this essay is long on abolishing things and short on what, exactly, those things will be replaced with. (Smart Marxists always remain fuzzy on the details.) But I think this crisis, whatever else it brings, will be doing precisely the opposite of what the progressives over at Open Democracy hope. Yes, there are genuinely tragic situations occurring. But for most of us, our families are the silver lining in all of this. Trying to figure out where all of this is headed and to plan for the future is stressful, but all of that can vanish the minute your two-year-old tugs on your sleeve and says: “Hey, Daddy. Wanna snuggle for a minute?”
These false shepherds, these liars, will have much to answer for when they face their Judge! From LifeSiteNews By Martin Bürger The bishops claim that the decision was made 'after consultation with the governor and health officials.'
COLUMBUS, Ohio, March 27, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – During the COVID-19 pandemic, churches in the state of Ohio are considered an essential business and allowed to stay open. “Religious facilities, entities and groups and religious gatherings, including weddings and funerals,” are listed by the state as “essential businesses and operations” which may stay open.
The order of the Ohio Department of Health was issued on March 22, taking effect on March 24, and scheduled to last until April 6.
The bishops within the state of Ohio, organized as the Catholic Conference of Ohio, had already decided on March 16 to cancel all public Masses and liturgies, “at least through the celebrations of Holy Week and Easter.”
While all businesses and operations deemed by the state of Ohio to be “non-essential” were ordered to stop, a fairly lengthy list of exceptions included religious entities. Another exception were organizations providing charitable and social services.
Even though “religious gatherings” are explicitly permitted by the order of the Ohio Department of Health, the requirements of social distancing would still have to be practiced.
This includes “maintaining at least six-foot social distancing from other individuals, washing hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds as frequently as possible or using hand sanitizer, covering coughs or sneezes (into the sleeve or elbow, not hands), regularly cleaning high-touch surfaces, and not shaking hands.”
All of these measures could be observed in a Catholic environment, but the public may only leave the house for essential activities. The list of essential activities includes only “health and safety,” obtaining “necessary supplies and services,” “outdoor activity,” “certain types of work,” related to the list of essential businesses and operations, and “to take care of others.”
The order later clarifies that “essential travel” is defined as any travel “related to the provision of or access to Essential Activities, Essential Governmental Functions, Essential Businesses and Operations, or Minimum Basic Operations.”
Legally, public Masses would not be a problem. Nevertheless, the bishops of Ohio never revoked their decision to cancel all public Masses.
“The bishops of Ohio dispense the Catholic faithful who reside in their respective dioceses and all other Catholics currently in Ohio from the obligation of attending Sunday Mass through Easter Sunday,” they wrote instead on March 16.
In their statement, the bishops claim that the decision was made “after consultation with the governor and health officials,” convincing the bishops “that this is the most prudent and necessary action.” Given the more recent order of the Ohio government, this might no longer be the case.
“This is a step that I wish we did not feel compelled to take,” said Archbishop Dennis M. Schnurr of Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 17. “I realize it is yet another source of suffering in an already trying time. However, given the grave health risks we are currently facing, especially with regard to public gatherings, I believe it is a necessary step in the interest of the common good that will help to curb the spread of this virus.”
Cardinal Raymond Burke had a different emphasis in a statement released on March 21.
“We can provide more opportunities for the Holy Mass and devotions at which a number of faithful can participate without violating necessary precautions against the spread of contagion,” he wrote. “Many of our churches and chapels are very large. They permit a group of the faithful to gather for prayer and worship without violating the requirements of ‘social distance.’”
The former Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court within the Catholic Church, offered some practical advice, as well, stressing the role of the laity.
“If a church or chapel does not have a sufficiently large staff to be able to disinfect regularly the pews and other surfaces, I have no doubt that the faithful, in gratitude for the gifts of the Holy Eucharist, Confession, and of public devotion, will gladly assist,” he said.
What is meant by the contemplative life? It is that kind of life, in which man finds peace in his soul as a result of the subjection of his sinful passions, and of his withdrawal from the external affairs of life; under the impulse of the love of God, he passes his time in the contemplation of God in Himself and in His works in so far as this is possible on earth; rejoicing in the vision of God whom he loves, and finding in this enjoyment of God his highest perfection, such as makes him live a life detached from all things on earth and to cleave to God alone (CLXXX. 1-8). Does the contemplative life presuppose all the virtues? Yes, it presupposes all the virtues, and it helps to make them perfect; but in itself it consists in a certain activity wherein all the intellectual and theological virtues come into play, remaining always and entirely subject to the personal action of the Holy Ghost through the instrumentality of the gifts (CLXXX. 2). Next - The Catechism of the Summa - LIX. OF THE TWO KINDS OF LIFE, VIZ., OF THE ACTIVE AND THE CONTEMPLATIVE; OF THE STATE OF PERFECTION-OF THE RELIGIOUS LIFE; AND OF THE RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES IN THE CHURCH (C)
The coronavirus has closed libraries in countries all around the world. Or rather, it's closed physical libraries: each week of struggle against the epidemic that goes by, more resources for books open to the public on the internet. Most recently, we have the Internet Archive's opening of the National Emergency Library, "a collection of books that supports emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries are closed." While the "national" in the name refers to the United States, where the Internet Archive operates, anyone in the world can read its nearly 1.5 million books, immediately and without waitlists, from now "through June 30, 2020, or the end of the US national emergency, whichever is later."
"Not to be sneezed at is the sheer pleasure of browsing through the titles," writes The New Yorker's Jill Lepore of the National Emergency Library, going on to mention such volumes as How to Succeed in Singing, Interesting Facts about How Spiders Live, and An Introduction to Kant’s Philosophy, as well as "Beckett on Proust, or Bloom on Proust, or just On Proust." A historian of America, Lepore finds herself reminded of the Council on Books in Wartime, "a collection of libraries, booksellers, and publishers, founded in 1942." On the premise that "books are useful, necessary, and indispensable," the council "picked over a thousand volumes, from Virginia Woolf’s The Years to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, and sold the books, around six cents a copy, to the U.S. military." By practically giving away 120 million copies of such books, the project "created a nation of readers."
In fact, the Council on Books in Wartime created more than a nation of readers: the American "soldiers and sailors and Army nurses and anyone else in uniform" who received these books passed them along, or even left them behind in the far-flung places they'd been stationed. Haruki Murakami once told the Paris Review of his youth in Kobe, "a port city where many foreigners and sailors used to come and sell their paperbacks to the secondhand bookshops. I was poor, but I could buy paperbacks cheaply. I learned to read English from those books and that was so exciting." Seeing as Murakami himself later translated The Big Sleep into his native Japanese, it's certainly not impossible that an Armed Services Edition counted among his purchases back then.
What does the Rededication mean to the world? Invoking Juan Donoso Cortes (I thought I was the only one who remembered him!), Mr Davis explains. From Crisis By Michael Warren Davis
This face, for centuries a memory, Non est species, neque decor, Expressionless, expresses God: it goes Past castled Sion. She knows what God knows, Not Calvary’s Cross nor crib at Bethlehem Now, and the world shall come to Walsingham.
Frederick Wilhelmsen called Juan Donoso Cortés the Augustine of the nineteenth century: the chronicler of civilization’s timely demise. To R.A. Herrera, the Marqués de Valdegamas was “the Cassandra of our age,” warning Christendom of her impending ruin. I suppose they both might be right. In any event, to his disciples, Donoso is a prophet.
Those who favor Wilhelmsen’s view will point to Donoso’s best-known work, his Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism and Socialism. And it’s certainly good stuff. Three years before St. John Henry Newman published his Apologia, Donoso made the same argument no less cogently: “there is no medium, in true philosophy, between Atheism and Catholicity.” One is either en route to Rome or slouching towards Sodom.
Yet Professor Herrera points to a lesser-known work, Donoso’s Speech on the General Situation in Europe. To read it in the year 2020 is something of a revelation.
In the year 1850—three-quarters of a century before the Bolsheviks seized power—Donoso issued a warning to the Continent. Europe’s ultimate demise would come in three stages. First was the descent from Christianity to pantheism, and then from pantheism to atheism. The Enlightenment had effected the first stage of decay. The next would be a descent into total godlessness.
At the same time, the decline from Christianity to pantheism would be marked by a shift from monarchy to republicanism; this was accomplished by the French Revolution and its imitators across Europe. Then would come the final plunge into political anarchy, when no legitimate authority would be able to restrain the powers of lust and avarice.
Politics would supersede religion, he warned, and then economics would supersede politics. Then, the world would be turned upside-down.
Europe was already teetering on the edge of its final decline, Donoso warned—between pantheism and atheism, between republicanism and anarchy. How would we know when the descent was complete? “Revolution must dissolve permanent armies; patriotism must be extinguished through socialist expropriation; and the Slavic nations must unite into a confederation under the Russian banner,” as Herrara neatly sums them up. “Once these three events have occurred, the time will have arrived for Russia to impose God’s punishment on the world.”
The reader, I’m sure, can’t help but think of Our Lady’s warning to the three little children of Fátima that “if people do not cease offending God,” a second (and far worse) World War would break out. “When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes,” she advised. Russia “will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, and various nations will be annihilated.”
Of course, we know, there was still hope. “In the end,” she promised, “my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”
This conversation took place in 1917, sixty-seven years after Donoso gave his Speech on the General Situation in Europe. And I have no doubt that, had he lived to hear of the Fátima prophecies, the Marqués de Valdegamas would have been one of their strongest advocates. Yet his solution was not, perhaps, altogether wrong. There was only one hope for Europe as Donoso saw it: England must return to the Catholic Church.
❧
Of all the nations that fell away from the Church during the Reformation, the loss of England was certainly the most grievous. France may have been the eldest daughter of the Church, but England was Mary’s very own dowry.
Before he led his subjects into apostasy, King Henry VIII was given the title “Defender of the Faith” by Pope Leo X for his treatise Defense of the Seven Sacraments, which he wrote as a rebuke to the burgeoning Lutheran heresy. Imagine if Henry had remained steadfast! Imagine if he and his descendants had sided with the Catholic powers during the Wars of Religion! The Nordic kingdoms, Holland, Switzerland, and the Schmalkaldic League could never have withstood the combined forces of England, Austria, Italy, Spain, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. Not only would Christendom have been saved from schism and error but the struggle would have ended with a swift, decisive victory, preventing centuries of needless bloodshed.
Europe could have remained united in the Faith. There would have been no French Revolution and no World Wars, no socialism and no fascism. Today, the Continent would not be under the thumb of the the European Union: it would be flourishing beneath the blue mantle of the Blessed Virgin.
In a matter of centuries, England would become the first great Western empire since the fall of Rome. When she declined, her successor rose from within her own house: the United States, her eldest daughter. Imagine if both nations—England and America—had used their awesome political, economic, and military power to advance the Faith. (This is to say nothing of Canada, Oceania, India, the Caribbean, and huge swathes of Africa.)
And who knows? If the entire Christian world today were united under the Supreme Pontiff, our missionary powers might be doubled, tripled, quadrupled. Hilaire Belloc said that Islam began as a Christian heresy, not a new religion; perhaps it would have gone the way of the Lutherans—that strange little faction which, thanks to Good King Harry, grew no larger than the Cathars. We could have made greater progress in Northern Africa, Indochina, and Japan.
This is all purely speculative, of course. But we must ask ourselves: would Christendom be stronger or weaker had the Protestant Reformation never come to fruition? Would the Church be larger or smaller today? Would the world be more at peace, or more at war? Would more souls have been saved through baptism, or fewer?
Had the Dutch or the Norwegians or the Swiss never embraced Protestantism, the world might have looked much as it does today. It’s doubtful whether any one of these nations was large enough to turn the tide of the Wars of Religion. But what if England had never forsaken the Faith? And what if the prodigal daughter swallowed her pride and came home?
❧
Donoso could only imagine. We can do a bit more. On March 29—this Sunday—England will be re-dedicated to Our Lady. Mr. Christopher Ortega writes exceptionally well in these pages today about why Americans ought to mark this occasion as well. Here, I would add, is its significance for the world:
American Catholics today tend to think of ourselves as members of a strategic alliance. Some follow the “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” mode, where we place ourselves in league with the more politically influential force of fundamentalist Protestantism. Others take a slightly broader view, speaking of something called “Judeo-Christian civilization.” Still others muse about an “Ecumenism of the Trenches,” where traditional Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims will stand in array against the forces of left-wing secularism.
There’s a certain amount of virtue to each of these schools of thought. No right-minded Catholic would refuse to support Donald Trump because he’s a Presbyterian. And if Orthodox Jews voted for a conservative, Catholic governor because he’s unlikely to force their yeshivas to accept girls—why, that seems perfectly sensible.
But such ecumenism or inter-religious dialogue can, at best, only stanch the wounds in our society. It cannot heal them. For the social wounds are themselves only a symptom of a much deeper, far older fracture in the Church. The cracks began to show in 1517, when Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg; they became fatal, perhaps, in 1534, when Henry VIII declared himself “Supreme Head of the Church of England.”
I believe, like Marqués de Valdegamas, that there can be no real victory but victory for the Faith. There can be no true help for the West except Christ, and we must seek Him (as He commands) through His Bride, the Church.
We cannot know what will happen when the English bishops return her dowry to Our Lady. It may be nothing dramatic: a consolation to the faithful and a joy to the saints. Or it may be—as Donoso foresaw—the beginning of a great Restoration that will undo all the revolutions that have torn Christendom apart.
“The cause of all your errors,” he warned his countrymen,
lies in your ignorance of the direction which civilization is taking. You believe that civilization and the world are advancing, when civilization and the world are regressing. The world is taking great strides towards the constitution of the most gigantic and destructive despotism which men have ever known. That is the trend of our world and civilization.
“I do not need to be a prophet to predict these things,” he claimed (perhaps with a touch of false modesty); “it is enough to consider the fearful picture of human events from the only true viewpoint, from the heights of Catholic philosophy.” England once stood at the very summit of that awesome height. May she do so again. We need her now more than we ever have.
Real Crusades History #133. And don't forget the Real Crusades History website! Margaret of Provence (1221 – 20 December 1295) was Queen of France as by marriage to King St Louis IX.
Excerpts from Joinville used in this podcast:
“The King was once by his wife’s side, at a time when she was in great danger of dying on account of the injuries she had suffered in giving birth to a child. Queen Blanche came to her room, and taking the King by the hand, said to him: ‘Come away, you’re doing no good here.’ Queen Margaret, seeing that the Queen Mother was taking the King away, cried out: ‘Alas! Whether I live or die, you will not let me see my husband!’ Then she fainted, and they all thought she was dead. The King, convinced that she was dying, turned back, and with great difficulty they brought her round.” –Joinville, 316.
“Now you have already heard of the great suffering the King and all the rest of us endured. The Queen (who was then in Damietta) did not, as I am about to tell you, escape from tribulations herself. Three days before she gave birth to a child news came to her that the King was taken prisoner. This frightened her so much that every time she slept in her bed it seemed to her that the room was full of Saracens, and she would cry out. So that the child she was bearing should not die, she made an old knight lie down beside her bed and hold her by the hand. Every time she cried out, he would say to her: ‘Don’t be afraid, my lady, I am here.’
“Just before the child was born she ordered everyone except the knight to leave her room. Then she knelt down before the old man and begged him to do her a service; he consented and swore to do as she asked. So she said to him: ‘I ask you, on the oath you have sworn to me, that if the Saracens take this city, you will cut off my head before they can also take me.’ The knight replied: ‘Rest assured that I will do so without hesitation, for I already had it in mind to kill you before they took us all.’” –Joinville, 262-63.
“The Queen gave birth to a son who was named Jean. Her people called him Tristam, because of the great sorrow that had attended his birth. On the very day on which she was confined she was told that the men of Pisa, Genoa, and the other free cities were intending to flee Damietta. The next day she had them all summoned to her bedside, so that the room was quite full, and said to them: ‘Gentlemen, for God’s sake, do not leave this city, for it must be plain to you that if we lose it the King and all those who have been taken captive with him would be lost as well. If this plea does not move you, at least take pity on the poor weak creature lying here, and wait until I am recovered.’
“They answered: ‘My lady, what can we do? We’re dying of hunger in this city.’ The Queen told them that they need not leave for fear of starvation. ‘For,’ said she, ‘I will order all the food in this city to be bought in my name, and from now on will keep you all at the King’s expense.’ After talking the matter over among themselves, they came back to the queen and told her they would willingly remain. Then the Queen – may God grant her grace! – had all the food in the city bought at a cost of more than three hundred and sixty thousand livres.” –Joinville, 263.
“The Count of Tripoli – may God grant him grace! – entertained us nobly and paid us all the honor he could. He would have given me and my knights most valuable presents, if we had been willing to accept them. But we refused to take anything except a few relics, some of which I took to the King, together with the camlet I had bought for him.
“I also sent four pieces of camlet to Her Majesty the Queen. The knight who came to present them carried them wrapped up in a piece of white linen. When the Queen saw him enter her room she knelt before him, while he in his turn knelt before her. The Queen said to him: ‘Rise up, my good knight, it is not fitting for you to kneel when you are the bearer of relics.’ ‘My lady,’ replied the knight, ‘these are not relics, but pieces of camlet sent to you by my lord.’ On hearing this, the Queen and her ladies began to laugh. ‘Tell your lord I wish him the worst of luck,’ said the Queen to my knight, ‘since he has made me kneel before his camlet!’” –Joinville 314-15.
A fascinating look at the history of the Palm Sunday Procession. From Canticum Salomonis By Aelredus Rievallensis
The eminent 18th century liturgist Claude de Vert’s work is a wealth of picturesque knowledge about the pre-Revolutionary Gallican Church. We have previously discussed the key role he played in the anti-allegorical turn in liturgical studies.
But in this place his rationalist temper waxes less conspicuously, as with touching detail he describes Christ’s annual triumphal entry into the cities of France in the Palm Sunday procession.
In the first excerpt, he argues that the Palm Sunday procession that commemorates Christ’s entry into Jerusalem is modeled on the triumphal entries of princes and monarchs into subject cities.
The Harrowing of Hell, Duccio di Buoninsegna, 14th century
Claude de Vert,Explication Simple, Littérale et Historique des Cérémonies de l’église, Volume 2,pp. 377 – 384.
On Palm Sunday Processions in Medieval France
The blessing and distribution of palms once took place outside the city and still does in many places.
Since the purpose of today’s procession is to represent the triumphal entry of Our Lord into Jerusalem, so it is necessary, in order to bring before the people’s eyes the minutes details of this entry, even down to the tree branches that were strewn on the roads where Our Lord passed by—I say it is necessary not only to enter the city, and so to come from outside it, but to enter it solemnly and as if in triumph, with tree branches and twigs in hand.
We note that, if there are several churches and the procession is not to leave the city, then the blessing of branches takes place in one of these churches, and thence there is a procession to another church with the branches in hand.
Further, in several places with only one church, as most of the market towns and villages, they have sought to imitate the cathedral church, as do the rest of the churches of the diocese, by doing the blessing outside the city or village, at some wayside cross or altar prepared on the main road expressly for this purpose.[1]
And if the procession does not leave the town at all, then the blessing, at least, is done outside the Church, and usually in some public place. Finally, where even the blessing is done inside the church itself, they then leave the church in order to be able to return in procession with branches after having done a round around the building. In these latter cases, the ceremony of the Attolite portas, which we shall discuss later, takes place at the door of the Church itself, or at the door of the choir. For on the one hand, market towns and villages are not walled and so do not have city gates; and in the cities only the cathedral or principal parish has the right of blessing the branches wherever it pleases, and then process out of the city and reenter through one of the city gates.
For this purpose a church outside the walls was always chosen, usually a monastery, as we shall see hereafter. We know that almost all the monasteries that lie within city walls today formerly stood outside the gates. With the growth of cities, these monasteries found themselves within the walls. Thus they are usually found in the suburbs, where some of them still retain their ancient names, as in Paris, Saint-Germain-des-Prés (in the meadows), Saint-Martin des Champs (in the fields), Saint Victor and Saint Geneviève-lès-Paris (of Paris-side), i.e. ad latus Parisiorum. It is this last church where Paris still goes to bless and distribute the branches.
The Donkey Walk of tsar Alexis (Vyacheslav Schwarz, 1865). The Donkey Walk is a Russian Orthodox Palm Sunday ritual re-enactment of Jesus Christ’s entry into Jerusalem.
In the Roman Rite, the door is struck with the foot of the processional cross.
Since it bears an image of Our Lord, the processional cross is a very suitable instrument for striking the door of a place where the representation of Our Lord’s entry takes place, which is the whole purpose of this procession, instituted to express and symbolize the triumphant entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. Bishops usually use their crosier instead of a processional cross, though it seems quite to the purpose that the rubrics prescribe the use of a processional cross, which is, so to speak, the main character in this procession, since it bears the figure of Jesus Christ whose entrance into the city is being represented.
Moreover this cross, veiled throughout Lent, is here uncovered in some churches, and in many uses it is saluted and adored in a very peculiar manner, accompanied by the hymn Ave rex noster.[2]
The gate of the city is intentionally closed when the procession returns,
just as one may observe in solemn receptions of princes and kings in our cities, for we have said already more than once, that the Palm Sunday procession is meant to represent Our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Hence in some churches during this procession the Gospel Book used to be carried in pomp and triumph, as if to represent Jesus Christ whose image ordinarily appears embossed on the cover. In Rouen, they still carry Our Lord himself, namely the Blessed Sacrament.
We observe similar practices, if the reader would countenance the comparison, in the public entries of princes and kings. In like manner the present King, now happily reigning,[3] made his entry into Paris: the Porte Saint-Antoine was closed in his presence, then opened again as soon as he had been given the keys. Similarly in Bourges, when the procession from the Cathedral of Saint-Étienne arrives at the stational church on Rogation days, the church doors are closed so that they may be opened again, and in this manner the procession is honored, as if the doors were only opened for the express purpose of welcoming it. A similar ceremony was once held in Paris on Rogation Tuesday, at Notre-Dame-des-Champs,[4] when the procession from Notre-Dame arrived in front of this church.
And so, upon its return, the Palm Sunday procession should naturally find the gates closed; either the city gates, as is still the custom in some places, or those of the prison, in a peculiar use, as at Paris,[5] or of the church itself, or finally of the choir, for the reasons noted above.
Wishing to enter, or rather to make the cross enter, the celebrant says to the door, Attolite portas principes vestras, et elevamini portae aeternales, et introibit rex gloriae.
And those inside the city, prison, church, or choir respond: Quis est iste rex gloriae? This exchange does little more than set in Scriptural terms and ceremonialize what happens every day as a matter of course when we knock on a door, which is to say: “Open the door,” at which those inside take the precaution of asking: “Who’s there? Who goes there?” The same ceremony is observed at the dedication of a church, when the bishop and those outside say the Attolite portas thrice and at different times, adding the word aperite, which they also say three times, like people in distress and tired of waiting: Aperite, aperite, aperite! Open up, Open already, Open, quick! But the words et introibit rex gloriae that follow Attolite portas are so much the more relevant here, as the purpose of the Palm Sunday procession (as we have said many times), is to express and symbolize the great and glorious entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. So much so that Christ himself is carried in pomp and triumph under the sacred symbols of the Eucharistic Bread, or at least is represented by the Gospel Book. Thus there is no more felicitous thing in all these goings on than to encounter this one verse of scripture, accompanied here in a manner entirely proper and perfectly natural, by the ceremony of the opening of the gate, saying to those inside: “O High and Lofty gates, open! that the King of glory may enter in.”[6]
In the second excerpt (pp 97 – 100), our dear author shows how the hymn Gloria laus was sung during Palm Sunday processions, throughout France, staged in a dramatic way at a high point above the city gates, or from some other elevated place.
On the Gloria laus sung from a high place
The ancient Missal of the church of Embrun and Glandève says “from the loftiest place.” At Vienne in the Dauphiné, according to the Ordinary of 1250 and 1504, it is from a casement above the city gates. At Châlons-sur-Marne, from the towers of the gate through which the procession rëentered the city on its way back from the Abbey of Saint-Menge or Saint-Memmie; it is still done today from a tower. In Paris, it is from a room above one of the gates of the Petit Châtelet, where the prisons are. According to the Ordinary of the Cathedral of Saint-Gatiens in Tours, also from above of one of the city gates. Likewise at Angers, it is done above the gate called Angevine or Porte de la Cité, in a chapel that was formerly a prison and is indeed still called La vieille Chartre (from carcer). According to city tradition, it was in this chartre or prison that Theodulf, Bishop of Orléans was held[7]. When the Palm Sunday procession passed this place, they began to sing the hymn Gloria laus, which he himself had composed expressly for this ceremony.[8]
Detail of the Gloria laus, Fairford parish church, England
At Besançon, it was held atop the city walls, at the Porte de Mars, later called La Porte-noire, where the city prisons are still found. At Metz, it is done from the rood-loft, and formerly on the city walls near the Porte serpenoise, as it is commonly called. Contrary to the usual custom, the choir-boys of Metz did not sing the Gloria laus, but rather the Benedictine nuns of Saint-Pierre and of Sainte-Marie of the same city. Because of the phrase in excelsis (“in the highest”), they sing this hymn from a high place atop the city walls, as the choir-boys would elsewhere do.
In Rouen, it is sung from the place where the old city gate once stood, called La porte de Sainte Apolline, or Porte du grand-pont. Here a station is held and the choir-boys and musicians climb up to a neighboring room whence they chant Gloria laus. Formerly they sang it from the actual tower of the gate. The ancient Ordinary of this church says, “When the procession to the city gate, duly decorated, arrives, six boys go up the tower, &c.[9] In Langres, it is at the Porte au pain that the boys climb into a room called tour (“tower”), according to the ancient ceremonial. At Troyes, since the gate from which the Gloria laus used to be sung has been demolished, the boys climb to the windows of a house that stands on the same spot. At Auxerre, it is over the church portal on a platform called de laGloria laus for this very reason. At Bourges, it is over one of the city gates called de Bourbonne; or, when due to bad weather they do not go to the church of Saint-Ursin, it takes place in an upper room of the house closest to the main gate of the cloister next to Saint-Ursin; or when the weather is so bad that it prevents them from going even that far, they do it at the organ-loft located above the main door of the church; or finally, if it is not even possible to leave the church, it takes place on the rood screen standing between the choir and the nave. Such are the pains this Church takes to sing the Gloria laus from a high place!
In Lisieux, it sung over the church portal between the two towers in a place also called for that reason, in the dialect, Gloria las.[10] In Coutances and Bayeux it is from above the main doors of the church. In Senlis from the place where one of the city gates formerly stood, called. as at Langres, La porte au pain, now destroyed. the Ordinary manuscript of this church says, Super portam civitatis, quae dicitur Porta panis.
Palm Sunday, Zdzislaw Piotr Jasinski
At Mâcon, it takes place from a house facing the great door of the church. And at the Cathedral of Saint-Martin of Tours, according to the manuscript Ritual of this church, it is sung from the house of the Treasurer, where the prisons are (and perhaps once one of the city gates). At Liège, according to the Ordinary of 1521, it takes place at a chapel in Sainte-Agnes, up which the boys must climb. At Arras, it is done above a vault, apparently that of the porch or vestibule of the church. Supra testudinem, according to the manuscript Ordinary of this church. Gloria laus a pueris in alto canentibus, says the Missal of Noyon of 1541.
At Beauvais, it happens in a room located above one of the city gates, for this reason still known as the de la Gloria laus. These two words in fact are engraved there in gold letters. At Meaux, it once took place over the city gate, returning from the abbey of Saint-Faron, where the branches were blessed. Later, the Gloria laus came to be chanted in the gallery above the church’s main door, still called the Galerie Gloria laus. Today it is sung down below in the church itself, because in this church, as in many others, they have forgotten the reason that this hymn is sung in a high place, namely, the verse of the hymn that goes: “The whole heavenly host lauds thee on high.”[11] In a certain Roman ritual we find that the choir boys, in the event they cannot easily find a high place, at least sang the hymn from a window: super fenestram dicunt Gloria laus. Behold how striking these words Coetus in excelsis were felt to be, so that they had to be sung, with the whole rest of the hymn, from a high place!
In Cambrai the Gloria laus is sung from a tower. At Amiens this hymn is also sung from a tower, the remains of an old city gate called Porte de l’arquet, now demolished. Locals call it tour de Jerusalem, an allusion to the city of Jerusalem where Our Lord made his triumphal entry, of which the Palm Sunday procession is a representation and expression.
To answer the curious cases in which theGloria laus is sung at the doors of a prison (as at Paris), De Vert seems to propose a historical explanation (Theodulf’s imprisonment). But it seems to me not far-fetched to suppose that the medieval mind concocted it to serve as a dramatic portrayal of Christus Victor, who triumphs over the devil, enters the prison of Hell, and despoils it of its captives.
Claude de Vert, Explication Simple, Littérale et Historique des Cérémonies de l’église, Volume 2, pp. 377 – 384.
Study of King Alfonso XIII of Spain and Queen Victoria Eugenia, Palm Sunday procession, Royal Chapel, Royal Palace of Madrid, Spain, 1923
NOTES:
[1] Hence all the road-side crosses one finds especially in the environs of towns and villages, with stone pulpits attached for the chanting of the Gospel or setting down the Book. Sometimes one also finds stone tables to hold the branches during the blessing.
[2] Trans. note: This was the case in many places in England, where the veil was draw up by pulleys and everybody knelt. As the hymn was sung, the clergy venerated the Cross by kissing the ground (see Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, p. 25).
[3] Trans. note: Louis XIV in 1660, on the occasion of his marriage.
[4] Author’s note: Now the convent of the Carmelites of the fauxbourg St-Jacques. Trans. note: This church was destroyed by the Revolutionaries. Another church, still under the old name, was rebuilt in its place in 1876.
[5] Author’s note: This is a recent custom. Formerly, as in every other use, the ceremony took place at the city gate, called at that time porte du Point or du Petit-Point and today le Petit Châtelet. Sistitur ante portam civitatis, as the manuscript book of the church’s cantor says, a quatuor pueris Gloria laus, etc.
[6]Attollite, elevamini means literally: “Raise the gates and make way.” The gates of Sion in question here were suspended like those of military cities and other fortified places, called a portcullis (herces), made in the form of a grill or trellis with large spikes of wood or iron, that are raised and lowered as needed. So the prophet demands the doors be opened to give access to the arc that he was having transported from the house of Obed-edom to Mt. Sion [See 1 Chronicles 13; 2 Samuel 6:12].
[7] Trans. Note: When accused of treason by Emperor Lewis the Pious. The legend is mentioned in book 6 of Hugo of Fleury’s Historia Ecclesiastica from the 12th century
[8] Trans. Note: The Emperor himself was participating in the procession, and duly moved, released Theodulf.
[9]Cum processio ad portam civitatis ornatam venerit, sex pueri turrim ascendunt, etc.,
[10]Gloria las for Gloria laus, due to the region’s accent, which pronounces au as as. Likewise they still say Saint Valeryen Cas for en Caux.
(Providence, RI) — In the wake of Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s issuance today of an order to have New Yorkers in her state arrested in order to curtail the spread of the coronavirus, an instant poll by the Pew Research Company shows that 79% of Americans had already supported the concept of locking up escaped New Yorkers.
