Reports on the Hampton Court Chapel Vespers

I cannot access The Catholic Herald website now because of Malware warnings, but they have a story posted on the Hampton Court Vespers. The Guardian and The Telegraph reported on the service and the conversation that took place before the Vespers.

From The Telegraph, John Bingham reports on the discussion between the Anglican bishop and Catholic cardinal archbishop before Vespers:

All practising Christians are now a "minority" in Britain like persecuted Roman Catholics during the Reformation, according to two of Britain's most senior Anglican and Catholic clerics.

The Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, and Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, said the churches must set aside centuries of division and recognise they have a "common agenda" in a more secular age.

The two prelates were speaking at a unique event at Hampton Court Palace, which served as the backdrop to the tumultuous events of Henry VIII's break with Rome.

In a step hailed as hailed as a landmark in reconciliation between Anglicanism the Catholicism, they joined in a service of vespers in the Chapel Royal.

The service, sung mainly in Latin, was the first Roman Catholic act of worship in Henry's former chapel in more than 450 years.

The Guardian story, by Harriet Sherwood, leads off with a description of the service:

About 15 miles from Hampton Court Palace in south-west London, Henry VIII may have turned in his grave. Almost half a millennium after the Act of Supremacy, which declared the Tudor king as the supreme head of the Church of England and formalised the break with Rome, England’s most senior Catholic cleric celebrated Vespers in the palace’s Chapel Royal on Tuesday evening.

The scent of incense filled the air beneath the chapel’s magnificent blue and gold ceiling as a small procession made its way towards the altar. Vincent Nichols, the Catholic archbishop of Westminster, in a gold mitre and brocade robe, walked a few steps behind Richard Chartres, the Anglican bishop of London and dean of the royal chapels, in a symbolic gesture of reconciliation.

The first Catholic service in the chapel for more than 450 years was hailed as “one for the history books” by John Studzinski of the Genesis Foundation, which jointly organised the event with the Choral Foundation. “Dialogue between faiths is much needed and welcomed in these turbulent times. We need to recognise that we have more in common than not.”

About 300 people attended the service, which was largely conducted in Latin and featured hauntingly beautiful choral music from the 15th and 16th centuries. It concluded with the national anthem.

The comments to The Guardian story are sad reading, ranging from anti-Catholicism, fear of Latin, and rejection of all organized religion. I'll update this story once The Catholic Herald website warnings are off.

Henry VIII and the Hampton Court Vespers

Biographer J.J. Scarisbrick thinks that Henry VIII would not be happy at all about next week's Catholic vespers in the chapel at Hampton Court, as he writes in The Catholic Herald:

Cardinal Nichols’s presence at Hampton Court would be especially galling in that he is Archbishop of Westminster and a senior member of a nationwide Catholic hierarchy appointed by Rome, in communion with the Pope and confident that it is an authentic, organic part of the Church Universal. Henry thought he had got rid of all that and had set up an independent national Church with him as its lord and master. He would be outraged to know that the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and his brother bishops had an “alternative” set of cathedrals and dioceses, and that there had long been houses of monks, friars and nuns in England once more.

Scarisbrick goes on to discuss Henry VIII's "Catholicism without the pope":

We can never know exactly what Henry believed and what he really thought his “Catholicism without the pope” meant.

Yes, he allegedly “heard” Mass often, that is, he (probably) was within hearing distance while going about his early morning rounds. In his younger days he “crept” to the Cross on Good Fridays and went “devoutly” to Walsingham. And, of course, he wrote (with a good deal of help) that celebrated book against Luther which won him the title of Defender of the Faith – a papal award which, incongruously, is still part of the royal style.

Henry was theologically alert and informed, and could hold his own with any divine. But his faith was surely only skin deep. The royal supremacy was above all about power and prestige. The Church which he had delivered from the Roman “yoke” he bled white with merciless taxation. He showed little interest in its spiritual renewal. He certainly flirted with Lutherans when it suited him and had no qualms about importing a Protestant princess to be his fourth wife. Most remarkably, he knew full well that the primate of all England, Thomas Cranmer, was, as he said, “the biggest heretic in Kent”, but the archbishop was too useful in untangling his matrimonial problems to be censured, let alone deposed.

And then we must consider his assault on the religious orders. True enough, many of them were easy targets, but to have destroyed hundreds of monasteries, friaries and nunneries in a mere three and a half years was a colossal “achievement”. Henry masterminded it at every stage, with Thomas Cromwell his tireless agent. The whole operation was a devastatingly clever amalgam of false promises, smear campaigns, deception, blackmail, bribery and brutality.

His definitive biography is out of print from Yale University Press but readily available, including as an E-book with a good sample here. Here's a summary offered by Professor Scarisbrick.

Vespers at Hampton Court with Cardinal Archbishop Nichols

These events appear in the news every so often, when Catholic services (the Mass, the Divine Office, etc) are celebrated in formerly Catholic churches and chapels at the invitation of Anglican officials. From the Hampton Court Chapel website:

History will be made on the evening of Tuesday 9 February when the Genesis Foundation and the Choral Foundation bring together leaders of the Catholic Church and the Church of England for the first service according to the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church to be celebrated since the 1550s at Hampton Court Palace’s Chapel Royal. 

This historic service of Vespers in King Henry VIII’s chapel will be celebrated by His Eminence Cardinal Vincent Nichols and will include a sermon from The Rt Revd and Rt Hon Dr Richard Chartres, KCVO, Bishop of London and Dean of Her Majesty’s Chapels Royal – an unprecedented coming together of the Catholic and Anglican churches on such an historically important site.

Celebrated mostly in Latin, another first in over 450 years, Vespers will be dedicated to St John the Baptist as the Chapel Royal was built by Cardinal Wolsey on the site of a chapel of the Knights of St John Hospitaller, dedicated to that Saint. 

Members of the public will have the chance to attend this service through a free ballot. 

The musical element of the service has been chosen and will be performed by Harry Christophers and his ensembles The Sixteen and Genesis Sixteen. Paying tribute to the rich and turbulent religious history of the Chapel Royal, the ensembles will sing ThomasTallis’ Magnificat, William Cornysh’s Salve Regina and John Taverner’s ‘Leroy’ Kyrie. 

The composers chosen are historically significant according to the news release:

Both Cornyshe and Tallis were Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal. 

William Cornyshe in 1509 became Informator Choristarum of the Chapel Royal and led the Chapel Royal’s ceremonies at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in June 1520. 

Thomas Tallis was a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and served in the royal household under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I. Tallis avoided religious controversies, though he stayed an "unreformed Roman Catholic" under four consecutive monarchs. 

John Taverner was Henry VIII’s chief minister and in 1538 Taverner supervised the demolition and burning of the rood screen in Boston parish church as a result of reformation activities. His Leroy Kyrie takes its name from a tune called “Leroy” which appears in many Tudor manuscripts. It is most likely that one of the C15th kings composed it, most probably Henry IV or V being “Le Roi”. 

I'm not sure what the reference to John Taverner as "Henry VIII's chief minister" means: he was a choirmaster and a lay clerk, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

In 1526 Taverner went to the University of Oxford to become master of the choir in the chapel of Cardinal College (later Christ Church). He left Oxford in 1530 to serve as a lay clerk in St. Boltoph choir in Boston, England, where he may have taken up the position of chorister instructor. However, by 1537 he had ended his association with the choir, at which time he may have retired from employment in church music altogether. The allegation that he served as a paid agent of Thomas Cromwell in Henry VIII’s suppression of English monasteries cannot be verified.

Taverner’s church music, which is printed in Tudor Church Music, volumes 1 and 3 (1923–24), shows a variety, skill, range, and power that represent the climax of pre-Reformation English music. It includes 8 masses (e.g., The Western Wind), a few mass movements, 3 Magnificats, a Te Deum, and 28 motets. Taverner’s adaptation of the musical setting of the words In nomine Domini from the Benedictus of his mass Gloria tibi Trinitas became the prototype for a large number of instrumental compositions known as In nomines, or Gloria tibi Trinitas.

John Foxe reported years after Taverner's death that he had regretted wasting his time with Catholic church music.

More about the history of Hampton Court here: it was Thomas Cardinal Wolsey's great palace before he turned it over to Henry VIII in 1527 after he fell from favour for failing to make the way clear for Henry VIII to marry Anne Boleyn. Before Anne's apartments at the Palace were finished, however, Henry had her executed: neither Wolsey nor Anne had much time to enjoy the pleasures of Hampton Palace.