A Survivior of English Iconoclasm: The Blessed Virgin Mary

The Guardian features a story about an English alabaster statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus, carved in perhaps 1350 in the Midlands of England:

Somehow the statue escaped the wholesale wrecking of religious artefacts in churches and cathedrals during the Protestant Reformation of the mid-1500s to travel across the Channel. De Beer and his colleagues speculated that it might have been bought by a wealthy foreigner long before the threat of destruction to religious icons that came with the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. Alternatively it could have been smuggled out later, as the danger to religious works became clear.

Much of its early life was spent in seclusion at a monastery in St-Truiden, Belgium. There it avoided the violence of the French Revolution, when many religious icons were also destroyed.

If the dating is correct, King Edward III was on the throne when this precious statue was created. England was still recovering from the Black Death and still fighting for territories in France in the One Hundred Years War.

You will, of course, have to go to the website to see the pictures of the statue! Thanks to a facebook friend for sharing this story.

O blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our most gentle Queen and Mother, look down in mercy upon England thy "Dowry" and upon us all who greatly hope and trust in thee. By thee it was that Jesus our Saviour and our hope was given unto the world; and He has given thee to us that we might hope still more. Plead for us thy children, whom thou didst receive and accept at the foot of the Cross, O sorrowful Mother. Intercede for our separated brethren, that with us in the one true fold they may be united to the supreme Shepherd, the Vicar of thy Son. Pray for us all, dear Mother, that by faith fruitful in good works we may all deserve to see and praise God, together with thee, in our heavenly home. Amen.

Virtual Iconoclasm

Next year, Christians will be observing the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. There is a tremendous debate about how this anniversary should be marked. Protestants may celebrate it, but I don'd think a Catholic should--and ultimately an event that stands in the way of Our Savior's prayer the night before He suffered--"That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." (John 17: 21 Douai-Rheims)--is not something to rejoice about.

But in Estonia, a museum has developed an odd way to remember one aspect of the Protestant Reformation: the destruction of images. The UK Daily Mail tells  and illustrates the story:

A new exhibit at the National Museum of Estonia which invites visitors to desecrate an image of the Virgin Mary has sparked outrage in some quarters of the Christian community.

The virtual image is projected on a screen in a glass case - and remains intact until a 'smash' zone is kicked at the base of the installation.

This causes the sacred statue to shatter and is replaced by the word, 'Reformation' - after which the exhibit resets itself.

It is intended to celebrate the Protestant Reformation in the historically Lutheran nation.

I have not seen a Catholic response (Catholics are in the minority in Estonia), but not even the Lutherans like it:

Urmas Viilma, the Archbishop of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church, said it insults the feelings of believers.

'I very seriously doubt that this exhibit is suitable for the permanent collection of the National Museum of Estonia, even if it is interesting from a technical point of view or from the perspective of modern approach to the depiction of historical events,' he wrote on Facebook.

He further noted that for a 'huge number of believers,' the Virgin Mary is 'not some historical figure or event, gone into oblivion, but a reality today.'

From the Raccolta, an Act of Reparation to the Blessed Virgin Mary:

Most glorious Virgin Mary, Mother of God and our Mother, turn thine eyes in pity upon us, miserable sinners; we are sore afflicted by the many evils that surround us in this life, but especially do we feel our hearts break within us upon hearing the dreadful insults and blasphemies uttered against thee, O Virgin Immaculate. O how these impious sayings offend the infinite Majesty of God and of His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ! How they provoke His indignation and give us cause to fear the terrible effects of His vengeance! Would that the sacrifice of our lives might avail to put an end to such outrages and blasphemies; were it so, how gladly we should make it, for we desire, O most holy Mother, to love thee and to honor thee with all our hearts, since this is the will of God. And just because we love thee, we will do all that is in our power to make thee honored and loved by all men. In the meantime do thou, our merciful Mother, the supreme comforter of the afflicted, accept this our act of reparation which we offer thee for ourselves and for all our families, as well as for all who impiously blaspheme thee, not knowing what they say. Do thou obtain for them from Almighty God the grace of conversion, and thus render more manifest and more glorious thy kindness, thy power and thy great mercy. May they join with us in proclaiming thee blessed among women, the Immaculate Virgin and most compassionate Mother of God.

A Portmanteau Post: St. Robert Bellarmine and the Blessed Virgin Mary

Nearly every Saturday on the Roman Calendar of the Catholic Church is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary as an optional memorial and today is also the optional memorial of St. Robert Bellarmine, whose connection to the English Reformation I have highlighted before. We can observe both by exploring St. Robert's devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary!

Servant of God Father John Hardon, SJ describes St. Robert Bellarmine's devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, including this poem:

Among St. Robert’s extant writing there is a short poem of twenty stanzas which he composed in the nature of a Litany to the Blessed Virgin. The text was first published in Italian some fifty years ago, and to the best of the writer’s knowledge, has never been translated into English. Each verse-line begins with the name “Virgin,” joined to a title and petition to Our Lady, starting with the letter “A” and going down the Italian alphabet to “V.” Thus the first seven verses begin with the invocation: “Vergine adorna … Vergine Bella …Vergine casta … Vergine degna … Vergine eletta … Vergine felice … Vergine gradita …”

A free translation to this tribute to the Virgin Mother reads as follows:

“Virgin adored and clothed with the sun, grant me thine aid.
Virgin most beautiful, mystical rose, take abode in my heart.
Virgin most chaste, all undefiled, grant me true peace.
Virgin deserving of all honor and praise, give me thy love.
Virgin elect and full of all grace, lead me to God.
Virgin most blessed, star of the sea, dispel the storms besetting me.
Virgin most virtuous, holy and sweet, show me the way.
Virgin illustrious, with thy burning light, enlighten thou my mind.
Virgin more precious than jewels or gold, make reparation for me.
Virgin most worthy of all praise, mother, daughter, and immaculate spouse.
Virgin and Mother, make me more pleasing to Jesus thy Son.
Virgin most innocent of any stain or fault, make me more worthy of God.
Virgin enriched with every gift and grace, obtain the remission of my sins.
Virgin most pure, grant me to enjoy the bliss of heavenly love.
Virgin, thou lily among thorns, I pray thee for the grace of a happy death.
Virgin more rare than the rarest dream, bring joy to my heart.
Virgin so great there is none like thee on earth, bring peace to my soul.
Virgin most true, loving Mother too, Virgin Mary.”

Holy Mother of God, pray for us!

St. Robert Bellarmine, pray for us!

It's Still Christmas! The Pasche, Merbecke, Ludford, and Tallis Edition

This is another CD we've listed to several times this Christmas season:

The Peterhouse Partbooks, a set of partbooks copied around 1540 belonging to Peterhouse, Cambridge, is one of the most important sources of English Latin church music leading up to the Reformation.

Dr. Nick Sandon has spent a large part of his life reconstructing music from the Peterhouse Partbooks. This album contains music from this beloved collection. Dr. Sandon has meticulously reconstructed the tenor parts in tracks 1-3 and has supplied some of the soprano part in track 4 with precision and artistry in order to provide us a sense of the sound world and the expressive writing of Pasche, Merbecke, Ludford and Tallis in the early 16th century.

There are just four selections:

1. William Pasche (fl. early 16th c.) – MAGNIFICAT

2. John Merbecke (c.1510-1585) – AVE DEI PATRIS FILIA

3. Nicholas Ludford (c.1485-1557) – SALVE REGINA ​

4. Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585) – AVE ROSA SINE SPINIS

The last hymn to the Blessed Virgin Mary weaves the Ave Maria (as it was then prayed, without the section asking Mary to pray for us now and at the hour of our death) into the praise of the Mother of God:

AVE rosa sine spinis,
Te quam Pater in divinis
Majestate sublimavit,
Et ab omni vae servavit.
MARIA stella dicta maris,
Tu a Nato illustraris
Luce clara deitatis,
Qua praefulges cunctis datis.
GRATIA PLENA: te perfecit
Spiritus Sanctus dum te fecit
Vas divinae bonitatis
Et totius pietatis.
DOMINUS TECUM: miro pacto
Verbo in te carne facto
Opere trini conditoris:
o quam dulce vas amoris.
BENEDICTA IN MULIERIBUS:
Hoc testatur omnis tribus;
Coeli dicunt te beatam
Et super omnes exaltatam.
ET BENEDICTUS FRUCTUS VENTRIS TUI,
Quo nos semper dona frui
Per praegustum hic aeternum
Et post mortem in aeternum: Amen.

I did spot one error in the liner notes written by Dr. Nick Sandon:

The Magnificat—the poetic version of the Blessed Virgin’s response to the Annunciation (sic) given in St Luke’s Gospel (1:46–55)—was the centrepiece of the evening service of Vespers, the pre-Reformation equivalent of Anglican Evensong.

The Magnificat is the Blessed Virgin's response to St. Elizabeth's greeting at what we call the Visitation in the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. And Vespers are not just the "pre-Reformation equivalent of Anglican Evensong" as they are still sung and celebrated in the Catholic Church.

The booklet accompanying the CD provides analysis of each work. As Dr. Sandon comments, these Peterhouse Partbooks, compiled after the Dissolution of the Abbey at Canterbury, indicate the relative conservatism of the Henrician Reformation, especially with these works honoring the Blessed Virgin Mary, displaying traditional Marian devotion. To these works, however, we would have to juxtapose the destruction of Marian shrines throughout England, wrecking the heritage of Mary's Dowry. 

Vestiges of Mary's Dowry: Reformation Iconoclasm

Once I Was A Clever Boy continues his series on English Reformation Iconoclasm, focused the destruction of Marian shrines and chapels:

Nothing so encapsulates English iconoclasm in the Reformation period and in subsequent centuries than the attack on the cult, on the veneration, on almost even the name, of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary's Dowry appeared more than anxious to expunge her from its collective life and worship.
I have already mentioned the 1538 burning of several famous statues of her as well as other devotional images, and in the first years of the Elizabethan settlement there were similar scenes - what I wonder did the good people of Sleaford in Lincolnshire think in 1560 when the Crucifix was taken out from their parish church of St Denys and burned in the market place outside?

Lady Chapels in churches attracted the attention of zealous reformers. At Ely cathedral the wondrous fourteenth century Lady Chapel lost all its glass and every statue in the canopy work around the arcades was meticulously decapitated. . . .

The English liturgy was purged of virtually all Marian devotions in 1548, and little survived beyond the feasts of her birth and, surprisingly perhaps, conception. In Oxford University the feast of the Assumption survived as a lesser commemoration, and as it still exists in the University Calendar.

In Oxford the University Church of St Mary the Virgin had a new porch built in 1636-37 by the mason Nicholas Stone at a cost of £230. This was adorned with a statue of the Virgin and Child, and in 1644 this was one of the capital charges brought against Archbishop Laud by the Parliamentarians, on the basis that Laud as Chancellor of the University had sanctioned this. The statue had attracted the respect and indeed devotion of some University students and was blasted by a Parliamentarian musket when the army left the city at the beginning of the Civil War. A modern replacement now occupies the niche.

Read the rest there.

Author of the "Stabat Mater": Jacopone da Todi or Pope Innocent III?

In the liturgical calendar for the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Liturgy of the Roman Rite, today is the Friday of Passion Week, dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows. In the calendar for the Ordinary Form of the Latin Liturgy of the Roman Rite, this memorial is celebrated in conjunction with the Exaltation of the Cross in September, which I explained last year in this article for OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine. That memorial highlights the Seven Sorrows, while today we focus on the sorrows Mary felt at her Son's Passion and Death.

I don't think it's in any way inappropriate to reflect on the fear and sorrow she must have felt in the days leading up to the events of Holy Week. Even Palm Sunday, with its glory, laud, and honor, heightened the conflict between Jesus and the Sanhedrin. The image brought up thrice in the Propers for this Mass is the piercing of Mary's soul, foretold by Simeon in St. Luke's Gospel (in the Collect, in the Secret, and in the Post communion Prayer).

The Stabat Mater (the mother standing) sequence was once part of the celebration of this day, but the many sequences once part of the liturgy were reduced after the Second Vatican Council. Authorship of the words is contested: it is most commonly attributed either to Pope Innocent III or Jacopone da Todi.

Pope Innocent III was one of the most influential popes of the early Middle Ages. Just listing some of the historical events he was involved with demonstrates his influence: meeting St. Francis of Assisi and approving his new mendicant order; supporting the Fourth Crusade; opening the Fourth Lateran Council; forcing King John of England to accept Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury and then accepting England as a feudal fief from the same king, etc. It may seem odd that such an intellect and will would write a devotional and emotional work like the Stabat Mater, but as the Catholic Encyclopedia article notes, St. Thomas Aquinas's Corpus Christi hymns might seem out of character too.

The other candidate, Jacopone da Todi, was a 13th century Franciscan, author of many laudi, popular poetry written in an Umbrian dialect. He was one of the "Spiritual" Franciscans who desired to follow a stricter interpretation of St. Francis's rule, and did come into conflict with the pope at the time, Boniface VIII. Since the Stabat Mater is written in Latin, it might seem unusual in his oeuvre. 

Whomever wrote the poem, it is moving and solemn, and it has been set to music by many composers, as the Wikipedia article attests.

Stabat mater dolorosa
juxta Crucem lacrimosa,
dum pendebat Filius.

Cuius animam gementem,
contristatam et dolentem
pertransivit gladius.

O quam tristis et afflicta
fuit illa benedicta,
mater Unigeniti!

Quae mœrebat et dolebat,
pia Mater, dum videbat
nati pœnas inclyti.

Quis est homo qui non fleret,
matrem Christi si videret
in tanto supplicio?

Quis non posset contristari
Christi Matrem contemplari
dolentem cum Filio?

Pro peccatis suæ gentis
vidit Iesum in tormentis,
et flagellis subditum.

Vidit suum dulcem Natum
moriendo desolatum,
dum emisit spiritum.

Eia, Mater, fons amoris
me sentire vim doloris
fac, ut tecum lugeam.

Fac, ut ardeat cor meum
in amando Christum Deum
ut sibi complaceam.

Sancta Mater, istud agas,
crucifixi fige plagas
cordi meo valide.

Tui Nati vulnerati,
tam dignati pro me pati,
pœnas mecum divide.

Fac me tecum pie flere,
crucifixo condolere,
donec ego vixero.

Juxta Crucem tecum stare,
et me tibi sociare
in planctu desidero.

Virgo virginum præclara,
mihi iam non sis amara,
fac me tecum plangere.

Fac, ut portem Christi mortem,
passionis fac consortem,
et plagas recolere.

Fac me plagis vulnerari,
fac me Cruce inebriari,
et cruore Filii.

Flammis ne urar succensus,
per te, Virgo, sim defensus
in die iudicii.

Christe, cum sit hinc exire,
da per Matrem me venire
ad palmam victoriæ.

Quando corpus morietur,
fac, ut animæ donetur
paradisi gloria. Amen.

Hymns and Music for the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady

This site has a great list of appropriate hymns and musical selection for today's feast, including this hymn by Father John Lingard:

Hail, Queen of heaven, the ocean star,
Guide of the wanderer here below,
Thrown on life's surge, we claim thy care,
Save us from peril and from woe.

Mother of Christ, Star of the sea
Pray for the wanderer, pray for me.

O gentle, chaste, and spotless Maid,
We sinners make our prayers through thee;
Remind thy Son that He has paid
The price of our iniquity.

Virgin most pure, Star of the sea,
Pray for the sinner, pray for me.

And while to Him Who reigns above
In Godhead one, in Persons three,
The Source of life, of grace, of love,
Homage we pay on bended knee:

Do thou, bright Queen, Star of the sea,
Pray for thy children, pray for me.

Father John Lingard (5 February 1771 – 17 July 1851), of course, was the Catholic priest who wrote the great eight-volume work The History of England that did so much to overturn the Whig view of English history. More on the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the English Reformation here.

Happy Mother's Day! May as Mary's Month

The MAY Magnificat by Gerard Manley Hopkins

MAY is Mary’s month, and I
Muse at that and wonder why:
Her feasts follow reason,
Dated due to season—

Candlemas, Lady Day;
But the Lady Month, May,
Why fasten that upon her,
With a feasting in her honour?

Is it only its being brighter
Than the most are must delight her?
Is it opportunest
And flowers finds soonest?

Ask of her, the mighty mother:
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?—
Growth in every thing—

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested

Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod or sheath or shell.

All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathising
With that world of good,
Nature’s motherhood.

Their magnifying of each its kind
With delight calls to mind
How she did in her stored
Magnify the Lord.

Well but there was more than this:
Spring’s universal bliss
Much, had much to say
To offering Mary May.

When drop-of-blood-and-foam-dapple
Bloom lights the orchard-apple
And thicket and thorp are merry
With silver-surfèd cherry

And azuring-over greybell makes
Wood banks and brakes wash wet like lakes
And magic cuckoocall
Caps, clears, and clinches all—

This ecstasy all through mothering earth
Tells Mary her mirth till Christ’s birth
To remember and exultation
In God who was her salvation.

The Feast of the Assumption in England

On the Solemnity of Our Lady's Assumption, body and soul into Heaven, it seems appropriate to remember the great devotion of the English people to Mary before the Reformation.  According to some sites I've seen, England was one of the first countries to celebrate the feast, in 1060, before the Norman Conquest. The shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham symbolizes this devotion to Mary, as it was such an important pilgrimage destination. Depictions of Our Lady filled Catholic churches before the Reformation; certainly pride of place belonging to her figure on top of the Rood Screen beside her crucified Son with St. John on the other side. This imagery certainly recalled Jesus's words to her and to St. John, the Beloved Apostle: "Woman, behold your son. Behold your Mother." (And then Mary joined St. John's household.) Lady Chapels and other images of Mary as the Mother of God, and devotions to both the Joys AND Sorrows of Mary also demonstrate devotion to Our Lady,

Here is a link to an interesting academic project, tracing the changes in Marian devotion under the Tudors:

My thesis examines the changing position of the Virgin Mary during the English reformations of the sixteenth century. It explores the unsettling of established Marian tropes in order to assess the development of theological belief and its interaction with shifting patterns of piety. It also analyses the use of the Virgin as an archetype for England’s 'female kings', Mary and Elizabeth. Although she had been a central figure in medieval Christianity, the Virgin’s role in the incarnation and her place in the scheme of salvation lacked clarity, leaving space for religious speculation. Consequently, re-imagining Mary became an aspiration for Catholic evangelicals and Renaissance humanists, and one of the identifying symbols of Protestantism.

Situated at the crossroads of cultural history (representations of the Virgin) and social history (devotional practice), this research will contribute to the post-revisionist debate within Reformation studies (Wooding, 2000; Wizeman, 2006) and also engage with key writers on the sociology of religion, such as Emile Durkheim, Peter Berger and Max Weber. Consequently, it promises insights into paradigm formation, the activity of collective consciousness and the birth of confessionalism.

Although the Church of England does honor this feast on their calendar--with a nod toward the Eastern Catholic/Orthodox feast of the Dormition of Our Lady--the 2005 document on Marian dogmas and devotion agreed to by the Anglican - Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) noted that:

The dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption raise a special problem for those Anglicans who do not consider that the precise definitions given by these dogmas are sufficiently supported by Scripture. For many Anglicans the teaching authority of the bishop of Rome, independent of a council, is not recommended by the fact that through it these Marian doctrines were proclaimed as dogmas binding on all the faithful. Anglicans would also ask whether, in any future union between our two Churches, they would be required to subscribe to such dogmatic statements (para. 30 of Authority in the Church II (1981)).

Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ ended with these advances in ecumenical understanding and agreement on the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

As a result of our study, the Commission offers the following agreements, which we believe significantly advance our consensus regarding Mary. We affirm together

 

- the teaching that God has taken the Blessed Virgin Mary in the fullness of her person into his glory as consonant with Scripture, and only to be understood in the light of Scripture (paragraph 58);

- that in view of her vocation to be the mother of the Holy One, Christ’s redeeming work reached ‘back’ in Mary to the depths of her being and to her earliest beginnings (paragraph 59);

- that the teaching about Mary in the two definitions of the Assumption and the Immaculate Conception, understood within the biblical pattern of the economy of hope and grace, can be said to be consonant with the teaching of the Scriptures and the ancient common traditions (paragraph 60);

- that this agreement, when accepted by our two Communions, would place the questions about authority which arise from the two definitions of 1854 and 1950 in a new ecumenical context (paragraphs 61-63);

- that Mary has a continuing ministry which serves the ministry of Christ, our unique mediator, that Mary and the saints pray for the whole Church and that the practice of asking Mary and the saints to pray for us is not communion-dividing (paragraphs 64-75).