Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury

I watched The King's Speech on DVD last night, and noted again the role of the Archbishop of Canterbury, played by Sir Derek Jacobi. Cosmo Lang was the Archbishop who buried George V, excoriated Edward VIII after his abdication, and crowned George VI and his wife Elizabeth--and Elizabeth II, too. He is not portrayed very sympathetically in the movie: a bit of a prig about Lionel Logue, etc--and this reviewer of a biography of an Archbishop of Canterbury who reigned over the Church of England during a crucial modern era notes that portrayal:

'I HATE Cosmo Lang!’ exclaimed a member of the audience when Robert Beaken spoke to a seminar at the IHR about Lang, archbishop of Canterbury and subject of this important reassessment. As Beaken rightly notes, Lang’s reputation has suffered in the years since his death. His time as archbishop (1928–42) spanned years of economic depression, the rise of fascism, a royal abdication and the outbreak of world war. But, despite this, the prevailing picture has been of a figure caught in the headlights, reactive rather than in the lead, a puritan and a snob; this image has not been altered by his portrayal (by Derek Jacobi) in the recent film, The King’s Speech. Lang’s case was not helped by the biography by J. G. Lockhart, published in 1949. Written without any particular acquaintance with Lang or access to his official papers, Lockhart’s book has long been unsatisfactory, but it has taken until now for a replacement to appear; and Beaken’s study goes a long way towards superseding Lockhart and presenting Lang afresh.

The book has three primary concerns: with Lang’s relationship with the monarchy; with the disputed process of liturgical reform within the Church of England; and with the Second World War. Chapter seven deals with the last, presenting a panoramic view of Lang’s work in the first and darkest days of the war, when Lang was in his mid-70s. Beaken very effectively documents Lang’s interventions at the highest level: in the articulation of peace aims; in negotiating the rhetorically difficult transformation of Soviet Russia from enemy to ally; in articulating the need for national intercession and for remembrance of the 1914–18 conflict in changed circumstances. There are important refinements to the literature in relation to Lang’s early opposition to the obliteration bombing of Germany (191–3), and (in response to the work of Tom Lawson) concerning who knew what and when within the Church in relation to the Holocaust (206–7).

But these national affairs were not the limit of an archbishop’s concerns. Beaken very effectively documents Lang’s interventions in relation to refugees, evacuees and conscientious objectors, to venereal disease in the army abroad, and to the observance of the Sabbath at home. Lang was supportive of the government and the war effort because he strongly believed that the struggle was a just and necessary one. At the same time, there were limits to what could be morally acceptable even in war, and Lang intervened in private and public as far as there was any likelihood of those efforts being effective.

Read the rest here, including the author's response to the review.

Advent Ember Days

As this site reminds us:

Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after Gaudete Sunday (3rd Sunday of Advent) are known as "Advent Embertide," and they come near the beginning of the Season of Winter (December, January, February). Liturgically, the readings for the days' Masses follow along with the general themes of Advent, opening up with Wednesday's Introit of Isaias 45: 8 and Psalm 18:2 :

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just: let the earth be opened and bud forth a Savior. The heavens show forth the glory of God: and the firmament declareth the work of His hands.

Wednesday's and Saturday's Masses will include one and four Lessons, respectively, with all of them concerning the words of the Prophet Isaias except for the last lesson on Saturday, which comes from Daniel and recounts how Sidrach, Misach, and Abdenago are saved from King Nabuchodonosor's fiery furnace by an angel. This account, which is followed by a glorious hymn, is common to all Embertide Saturdays but for Whit Embertide.

The Gospel readings for the three days concern, respectively, the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-28), Visitation (Luke 1:37-47), and St. John the Baptist's exhorting us to "prepare the way of the Lord and make straight His paths" (Luke 3:1-6).

 

The Rorate Caeli performed above at Hereford Cathedral is from William Byrd's Gradualia:

 

℣ Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant justum
(Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just)
℟ Aperiatur terra et germinet salvatorem"
(Let the earth be opened and send forth a Saviour").

 

Ps. Benedixisti, Domine, terram tuam: avertisti captivitatem Iacob

O Lord thou hast blessed thy land: thou hast turned away the captivity of Jacob.

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto . . .
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit . . .

 

It is part of a Votive Mass for Our Lady during Advent and you may find the sheet music here.

Dom Prosper Gueranger on the First O Antiphon: O Sapientia

This site has the prayers composed by Dom Prosper Gueranger for the O Antiphons for the Magnifcat canticle at Vespers, December 17 through 23, starting with "O Wisdom, that proceedest from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end mightily, and disposing all things sweetly, come
and teach us the way of prudence.":

O uncreated Wisdom, who art so soon to make Thyself visible to Thy creatures, truly Thou disposest all things. It is by Thy permission that the emperor Augustus issues a decree ordering the enrollment of the whole world. Each citizen of the vast empire is to have his name enrolled in the city of his birth. This prince has no other object in this order, which sets the world in motion, but his own ambition. Men go to and fro by millions, and an unbroken procession traverses the immense Roman world; men think they are doing the bidding of man, and it is God whom they are obeying. This world-wide agitation has really but one object; it is, to bring to Bethlehem a man and woman who live at Nazareth in Galilee, in order that this woman, who is unknown to the world but dear to heaven, and who is at the close of the ninth month since she conceived her Child, may give birth to this Child in Bethlehem; for the Prophet has said of Him: ‘His going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity. And thou, 0 Bethlehem! art not the least among the thousand cities of Judah, for out of thee He shall come.’O divine Wisdom! how strong art Thou in thus reaching Thine ends by means which are infallible, though hidden; and yet, how sweet, offering no constraint to man’s free-will; and withal, how fatherly, in providing for our necessities! Thou choosest Bethlehem for Thy birth-place, because Bethlehem signifies the house of bread. In this, Thou teachest us that Thou art our Bread, the nourishment and support of our life. With God as our food, we cannot die. O Wisdom of the Father, living Bread that hast descended from heaven, come speedily into us, that thus we may approach to Thee and be enlightened by Thy light, and by that prudence which leads to salvation.

OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine features this article describing the O Antiphons and the well-known translation by John Mason Neale.

Kings Over the Water and their Supporters' "Material Culture"

Coming soon from Cambridge University Press: The Material Culture of the Jacobites by Neil Guthrie:

The Jacobites, adherents of the exiled King James II of England and VII of Scotland and his descendants, continue to command attention long after the end of realistic Jacobite hopes down to the present. Extraordinarily, the promotion of the Jacobite cause and adherence to it were recorded in a rich and highly miscellaneous store of objects, including medals, portraits, pin-cushions, glassware and dice-boxes. Interdisciplinary and highly illustrated, this book combines legal and art history to survey the extensive material culture associated with Jacobites and Jacobitism. Neil Guthrie considers the attractions and the risks of making, distributing and possessing ‘things of danger’; their imagery and inscriptions; and their place in a variety of contexts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Finally, he explores the many complex reasons underlying the long-lasting fascination with the Jacobites.

The Cambridge University Press website contains several .pdfs of excerpts from the book, including the Table of Contents:

Introduction
1. 'By things themselves': the danger of Jacobite material culture
2. 'Many emblems of sedition and treason': patterns of Jacobite visual symbolism
3. 'Their disloyal and wicked inscriptions': the uses of texts on Jacobite objects
4. 'Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis': phases and varieties of Jacobite material culture
5. 'Those who are fortunate enough to possess pictures and relics': later uses of Jacobite material culture
Bibliography

The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia has an exhibition now of one of the most common Jacobite objects: the glassware used to toast the true Kings of England:

So the Stuart supporters, or Jacobites, instituted, amongst other things, the practice of drinking toasts to their King “over the water” in glasses engraved with cryptic symbols which reflected their Stuart loyalties.

The NGV possesses an extensive and important collection of these rare glasses, many of them generous gifts from the Morgan family of Melbourne. Kings over the water will explore the fascinating hidden symbolism of these beautiful objects, created as part of a doomed political adventure whose tragic history continues to cast a romantic spell even today. 

The exhibition site includes an essay on the glassware's manufacture and use, detailing the symbols etched in glass to represent the Stuart claimants:

Jacobite glasses were decorated with engraved cryptic symbols and mottos which, to those who understood their coded messages, spoke of the drinker’s loyalty to the Stuart dynasty. By far the most common symbol was the six-petalled white heraldic rose, an ancient emblem of the Stuarts. The white rose also had connotations of strict legitimacy. Its adoption by James III as his personal badge was particularly appropriate as rumours of his illegitimacy had been circulated by political enemies since his birth.

On its own, the white rose is believed to have stood for the exiled king. A rose bud to the right of the rose represented his heir apparent, Prince Charles Edward Stuart. A second rosebud, to the left of the rose, represented Prince Henry Benedict Stuart, Princes Charles’s younger brother. When there are two rosebuds, that representing Prince Charles is often larger and on the verge of opening.

And the Latin mottoes:

Audentior Ibo (I shall go more boldly). This motto probably derived from the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid, in which Aeneas consults a mystic who warns him of grim fighting to come, but adds ‘sed contra audentior ito’ (‘but go forth against it with great daring’).

Radiat (It shines).

Redeat (May he return). This motto appears on a medal with a bust of Prince Charles, struck in 1752 for the Oak Society.

Rede (Return!).

Redi. Perhaps an abbreviation of Redii (I have returned).

Reditti (Restore).

Revirescit (It revives).

Fiat (May it come to pass). This is also a Latin equivalent of ‘Amen’.

Turno Tempus Erit (For Turnus there shall be a time). Turnus is a character in Virgil’s Aeneid who struggles against Aeneas for mastery of Italy. Aeneas defeats Turnus in battle and is inclined to spare his life, but notices that Turnus wears the sword of a friend of his whom he has killed. Aeneas slays Turnus in revenge. Turnus may be meant to stand for the Duke of Cumberland, who defeated the Jacobites at Culloden. The glass warns that the Hanoverian victory may be short lived.

Hic Vir Hic Est (This, this is the man). This motto derives from the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid. After the fall of Troy, Aeneas escapes to Italy where he is permitted to descend into the underworld in order to gain a glimpse of the future. He sees the coming glory of Rome, and the appearance of Augutus Caesar is heralded with the phrase Hic Vir Hic Est.

French Romantic Catholics

Romantic Catholics: France's Postrevolutionary Generation in Search of a Modern Faith is due out from Cornell University Press next March:

In this well-written and imaginatively structured book, Carol E. Harrison brings to life a cohort of nineteenth-century French men and women who argued that a reformed Catholicism could reconcile the divisions in French culture and society that were the legacy of revolution and empire. They include, most prominently, Charles de Montalembert, Pauline Craven, Amélie and Frédéric Ozanam, Léopoldine Hugo, Maurice de Guérin, and Victorine Monniot. The men and women whose stories appear in Romantic Catholics were bound together by filial love, friendship, and in some cases marriage. Harrison draws on their diaries, letters, and published works to construct a portrait of a generation linked by a determination to live their faith in a modern world.

Rejecting both the atomizing force of revolutionary liberalism and the increasing intransigence of the church hierarchy, the romantic Catholics advocated a middle way, in which a revitalized Catholic faith and liberty formed the basis for modern society. Harrison traces the history of nineteenth-century France and, in parallel, the life course of these individuals as they grow up, learn independence, and take on the responsibilities and disappointments of adulthood. Although the shared goals of the romantic Catholics were never realized in French politics and culture, Harrison's work offers a significant corrective to the traditional understanding of the opposition between religion and the secular republican tradition in France.

The Table of Contents:

Introduction: Romantic Catholics and the Two Frances

1. First Communion: The Most Beautiful Day in the Lives and Deaths of Little Girls

2. The Education of Maurice de Guérin

3. The Dilemma of Obedience: Charles de Montalembert, Catholic Citizen

4. Pauline Craven's Holy Family: Writing the Modern Saint

5. Frédéric and Amélie Ozanam: Charity, Marriage, and the Catholic Social

6. A Free Church in a Free State: The Roman Question

Epilogue: The Devout Woman of the Third Republic and the Eclipse of Catholic Fraternity

Looks fascinating.

Johannes Vermeer, RIP, December 15, 1675

Believe it or not, there is a connection between the death of Johannes Vermeer and the English Reformation, the topic of this blog! The connection is the relationship between Church and State, always fraught with difficulty, but especially when the State chooses an official church and religion. The artist Johannes Vermeer became a Catholic when he married, and this site notes:

By the time Vermeer's parents were married in 1615, the suppression of the public celebration of the Catholic faith in Delft was complete. But even though national decrees denied Catholics the right to serve public office, many areas of the Netherlands remained solidly Roman Catholic. Despite the hostility, Dutch Catholics continued to worship and educate their children throughout the 17th century. In large cities like Amsterdam, Haarlem and Utrecht, commercial concerns dampened repeated calls for anti-Catholic laws. Although intolerance existed in the United Provinces, on the whole Dutch Catholics enjoyed remarkable freedoms compared with religious minorities elsewhere in early modern Europe. Penal laws against Catholics were occasionally enforced and Catholics were vulnerable to extortion, but things could have been far worse.

Vermeer very probably converted to Catholicism upon his marriage to Catharina Bolnes [in 1653] and there is no sign that his decision had negative repercussions on his career. The most influential painter in Delft and friend of the Vermeer family, Leonaert Bramer as well as the popular painter of Dutch family life, Jan Steen were noted Catholics.

So, like Catholics in England, Catholics in the Netherlands had to worship secretly--that line "things could have been far worse" might indeed be applied to English Catholics during the 17th century. Since this painting dates to 1670-1672, English Catholics were still under the Penal and Recusancy laws that made it an act of treason for a priest to be in England and a felony for a layperson to assist a Catholic priest in any way--although there was a hiatus in the persecution of Catholics during those years of Charles II's reign. It would start up again after the Fire of London and while Titus Oates' nefarious conspiracy of a conspiracy ran its perjurous course.

Catholics in the Netherlands were allowed to worship in schiulkerk, or hidden churches, as long as they kept it quiet.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has this Vermeer currently on display. Its description:

One of Vermeer's most unusual pictures, this large canvas was probably commissioned by a Catholic patron. The subject was adopted from a standard handbook of iconography, Cesare Ripa's "Iconologia." Vermeer interpreted Ripa's description of Faith with the "world at her feet" literally, showing a Dutch globe published in 1618. The divine world is suggested by the glass sphere hanging overhead. The painting of the Crucifixion on the wall copies a work by Jacob Jordaens. Among the several Christological symbols, the most prominent are the apple, emblem of the first sin, and the serpent (Satan) crushed by a stone (Christ, the "cornerstone" of the church). Dating from about 1670, the work strikes a balance between abstraction and haunting similitude.

Painted about 1670–72, this picture presents an allegory of Vermeer's adopted religion, and was probably made expressly for a private Catholic patron or for a schuilkerk, a hidden Catholic church. It is unlike any other work by Vermeer, though it shows compositional similarities to The Art of Painting (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) of about 1666–68. The latter work is also allegorical in subject, but only nominally, as it was intended mainly as a virtuosic display of the artist's abilities. In the MMA canvas, Vermeer shifts his late style towards a more classicist and schematic manner.

The choice and interpretation of the imagery included here would have been discussed by the artist and his patron. For many of the allegorical motifs, Vermeer must have turned to Cesare Ripa's emblem book, Iconologia (Rome, 1603), translated in a Dutch edition by Dirck Pietersz Pers (Amsterdam, 1644). The female figure represents the Catholic Faith, wearing white, a symbol of purity, and blue, the "hue of heaven". A hand raised to the heart indicates the source of living faith. She rests her foot on a globe, published in 1618 by Jodocus Hondius, to illustrate Ripa's description of Faith with "the world under her feet". In the foreground, Vermeer shows the "cornerstone" of the Church (Christ) crushing a serpent (Satan). The nearby apple, which has been bitten, stands for original sin. The table is transformed into an altar with the addition of a chalice, crucifix, and a Bible or, more likely because of its proximity to other objects used for the Mass, a missal. The glass sphere, hanging from a ribbon, was a popular decorative curiosity; in this context, it may be viewed as a symbol of heaven or God. The room itself, with its high ceiling, marble floor, and a large altarpiece based on a work by Jacob Jordaens (possibly identical with one in Vermeer's estate), was meant to be recognized by contemporary viewers as a private chapel installed within a large house or some other secular building. Though apparently an illusionistic device, the tapestry at left would also have been understood as part of a very large hanging, drawn aside to reveal a normally secluded space.

This book, published by Harvard University Press, covers the era: Faith on the margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age by Charles H. Parker and this book even compares the two minority communities of Catholics in England and the Netherlands. And Vermeer is in the news with the release of Tim's Vermeer, a movie about a man's efforts to figure out how Vermeer composed his paintings so perfectly balancing light and shadow, using a camera obscura.

William Oddie on the Ordinariate Liturgy

William Oddie was once an Anglican and he recently attended a Mass at an Ordinariate church and then wrote about it in The Catholic Herald:

I had never once felt, since my conversion, that I missed Anglicanism: the Church of England had become so awful, so impossible for anyone tending in a Catholic direction, that I was far more conscious, when I made my submission nearly 25 years ago, of how wonderful it was to be a Catholic. But I had forgotten, after my youthful atheism, how wonderful I thought so much of Anglicanism was, after the dry, dry desert of actual unbelief. One thing I loved was the setting of the Ordinary of the Eucharist (as I always called it before I discovered the excitements of Anglo-Catholicism) by the composer John Merbecke. This was Cranmer’s translation set to a kind of reformed plainchant (one note to a syllable), which though deriving from Gregorian chant eschewed its (I think wonderful) peripatetic longeurs. On Advent Sunday, I sang the creed to Merbecke for the first time in nearly 30 years: it all came back as though it was yesterday, and it was wonderfully moving. Another unexpectedly wonderful bonus I hadn’t anticipated was the entire absence of the suppressed irritation I so often feel at the debased English of the readings in the Roman Missal from the Jerusalem Bible: the readings, of course, were from the Authorised version, the King James Bible, now authorised afresh for liturgical use by our dear Pope Benedict.

I could go on about how splendid it all was. It was not just a voyage of rediscovery, however: it was also a realisation anew of how lifegiving a thing it is to belong to a Church which determines and teaches with authority what theological meaning actually is. Cranmer’s freshly composed prayers (as opposed to his translations from the Sarum rite, as with the Ordinary of the Mass and many of his collects) are sometimes written in deliberately ambiguous language, so as to be acceptable to a distinctly, even dangerously, various public, some members of it — then as now — radically Protestant but many of them still resentfully Catholic at heart. Again and again, you come across phrases which can be read in either a Catholic or a Protestant way. The authorisation of the use of such prayers by the Congregation for Divine Worship, quite simply removes the ambiguities.

Read the rest here.

The Wise Virgins and the Advent of the Bridegroom

The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids; Matthew, chapter 25 “Then the kingdom of heaven shall be compared to ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.[a] 2 Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. 3 For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; 4 but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. 5 As the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. 6 But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Behold, the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ 7 Then all those maidens rose and trimmed their lamps. 8 And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ 9 But the wise replied, ‘Perhaps there will not be enough for us and for you; go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’ 10 And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast; and the door was shut. 11 Afterward the other maidens came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ 12 But he replied, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ 13 Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. (RSV)

The German chorale Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme by Philipp Nicolai, a 16th century Lutheran hymnist and pastor, reflects on Our Lord's counsel to "Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour." Note that the music for the hymn was written by Hans Sachs, one of Wagner's Meistersingers.

Catherine Winkworth translated the hymn in the 19th century:

1. Wake, awake, for night is flying,
The watchmen on the heights are crying;
Awake, Jerusalem, at last!
Midnight hears the welcome voices,
And at the thrilling cry rejoices:
Come forth, ye virgins, night is past!
The Bridegroom comes, awake,
Your lamps with gladness take;
Hallelujah!
And for His marriage-feast prepare,
For ye must go to meet Him there.

2. Zion hears the watchmen singing,
And all her heart with joy is springing,
She wakes, she rises from her gloom;
For her Lord comes down all-glorious,
The strong in grace, in truth victorious,
Her Star is risen, her Light is come!
Ah come, Thou blessed Lord,
O Jesus, Son of God,
Hallelujah!
We follow till the halls we see
Where Thou hast bid us sup with Thee!

3. Now let all the heavens adore Thee,
And men and angels sing before Thee,
With harp and cymbal's clearest tone;
Of one pearl each shining portal,
Where we are with the choir immortal
Of angels round Thy dazzling throne;
Nor eye hath seen, nor ear
Hath yet attain'd to hear
What there is ours,
But we rejoice, and sing to Thee
Our hymn of joy eternally.

An Advent Hymnn for Christ's Second Coming: The Dies Irae

If we think of the Dies Irae, The Day of Wrath, we think of it as the sequence in the Catholic Requiem Mass according to the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite--but it is the ultimate Advent hymn to proclaim Christ's Second Coming, which the first part of Advent anticipates. Here is a translation by the Very Reverend James Ambrose Dominic Aylward:

That day of wrath and grief and shame,

Shall fold the world in sheeted flame,
As psalm and Sibyl songs proclaim.

What terror on each breast shall lie
When, downward from the bending sky,
The judge shall come our souls to try.

The trump, through death's dominions blown,
Shall summon with a dreadful tone
The buried nations round the throne.

Nature and death in dumb surprise
Shall see the ancient dead arise,
To stand before the judge's eyes.

And lo, the written book appears,
Which all that faithful record bears,
From whence the world its sentence hears.

The Lord of judgment sits him down,
And every secret thing makes known ;
No crime escapes his vengeful frown.

Ah, how shall I that day endure ?
What patron's friendly voice secure,
When scarce the just themselves are sure ?

O king of dreadful majesty,
Who grantest grace and mercy free,
Grant mercy now and grace to me.

Good Lord, 'twas for my sinful sake,
That thou our suffering flesh didst take ;
Then do not now my soul forsake.

Thou soughtest me when I had strayed ;
Thy blood divine my ransom paid ;
Shall all that love be fruitless made ?

O just avenging judge, I pray,
For pity take my sins away,
Before the great accounting-day.

I groan beneath the guilt, which thou
Canst read upon my blushing brow ;
But spare, O God, thy suppliant now.

Thou, who didst Mary's sins unbind,
And mercy for the robber find,
Dost fill with hope my anxious mind.

Though worthless all my prayers appear, S
till let me not, my Saviour dear,
The everlasting burnings bear.

Give me at thy right hand a place,

Amongst thy sheep, a child of grace,

Far from the goats' accursed race.

Yea, when thy justly kindled ire

Shall bind the lost in chains of fire,

Oh, call me to thy chosen choir.

Lo, here I plead and suppliant bend,

Nor cease my contrite heart to rend,

That so thou spare me in the end.

Oh, on that day, that day of weeping,

When man shall wake from death's dark sleeping,

To stand before his judge divine,

Save, save this trembling soul of mine :

Yea, grant to all, O Saviour blest,

Who die in thee, the saints' sweet rest.

The original sequence is attributed to Thomas of Celano, a Franciscan from the thirteenth century. The translator, the Very Reverend James Ambrose Dominic Aylward, was a

Theologian and poet, born at Leeds, 4 April, 1813; died at Hinckley (England), 5 October, 1872. He was educated at the Dominican priory of Hinckley, entered the Order of St. Dominic, was ordained priest in 1836, became provincial in l850, first Prior of Woodchester in 1854, and provincial a second time in 1866. He composed several pious manuals for the use of his community and "A Novena for the Holy Season of Advent" gathered from the prophecies, anthems, etc., of the Roman Missal and Breviary (Derby, 1849). He reedited (London, 1867) a "Life of Blessed Virgin St. Catherine of Sienna", translated from the Italian by the Dominican Father John Fen (Louvain, 1609), also an English translation of Father Chocarne's "Inner Life of Lacordaire" (Dublin, 1867). His essays '' On the Mystical Elements in Religion, and on Old and Modern Spiritism " were edited posthumously by Cardinal Manning (London, 1874). Father Aylward's principal monument is his translation of Latin hymns, most of which he contributed to "The Catholic Weekly Instructor." In his "Annus Sanctus" (London, 1884) Orbey Shipley has reprinted many of them. He says of Father Aylward that he was "a cultivated and talented priest of varied powers and gifts."

Christmas Carols on the BBC

The BBC (Radio 4) is broadcasting a series on Christmas Carols:

The Christmas carol is as popular now as it was when carolers celebrated the birth of Edward III in 1312. Back then the carol was a generic term for a song with its roots in dance form, nowadays only the strictest scholar would quibble with the fact that a carol is a Christmas song.

But the journey the carol has taken is unique in music history because each shift in the story has been preserved in the carols that we sing today. Go to a carol concert now and you're likely to hear folk, medieval, mid-victorian and modern music all happily combined. It's hard to imagine that happening in any other situation.

In these programmes Jeremy Summerly follows the carol journey through the Golden age of the Medieval carol into the troubled period of Reformation and puritanism, along the byways of the 17th and 18th century waits and gallery musicians and in to the sudden explosion of interest in the carol in the 19th century. It's a story that sees the carol veer between the sacred and secular even before there was any understanding of those terms. For long periods the church, both catholic and protestant, was uneasy about the virility and homespun nature of carol tunes and carol texts. Nowadays many people think that church music is defined by the carols they hear from Kings College Cambridge.

He traces the folk carol in and out of church grounds, the carol hymn, the fuguing carol and the many other off-shoots, some of which survive to this day and many others which languish unloved but ready for re-discovery.

You may listen to the first episode for the next six days.