Author Archives: Derek A. Olsen

Riddel Posts

One of the standard features that identifies a church sanctuary as “English Use” is the appearance of a particular feature called a riddel post. These are two posts that stand at the north and south horns of the altar and have curtains (the “riddels” from whence the name comes) that extend back to the dorsal, the curtain mounted on the back wall right above the altar.

Like many of the features that adorn the English/Sarum Uses, this wasn’t actually a distinctively English characteristic. Instead that which is “English” tends to be that which is 1) pre-Baroque and 2) common to many of the diocesan uses in England and parts of northwestern Europe, especially France.

Recall that the English Use people of the later half of the 19th an early twentieth century were arguing a position against two different opponents. On one hand, they rejected the opinion of their Romanizing Ritualist colleagues that proper “catholic” expression should mimic the aesthetic of the Roman churches of the day which were Baroque or Rococo. On the other hand, they were arguing against the Low Church party who decried any ornamentation as a form of Popery. The English Use position was that, contra both the Romanizers and the neo-Puritans, they were the only ones who were holding properly to the rubrics of the Prayer Book since they were conforming their chancels to the Ornaments Rubric of the BCP which stated that chancels and vestments should be as they were in the second year of Edward the Sixth. So, they were in essence reviving a Renaissance (perhaps even early Mannerist?) aesthetic.

What prompted this post was the new background at the Breviary. For Lent, I’ve chosen to shift away from the leaves from the Little Office of the BVM that I’ve had up and I substituted some pages from the Office of the Dead. During today’s collect my attention was somehow caught by the image of the funeral mass and I realized that the altar in the picture had a nice set of riddels and riddel posts. As a point of reference, this image was taken from the famous Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry and is probably the work of the Dutch Limbourg brothers or someone in their workshop from around 1416. (It’s from the WikiMedia Commons and is believed to not be under copyright.)

Here’s the image. Notice two things: first, the riddels and their posts. Second, note the directions that the angels are facing atop the riddels. Normally they face outward towards the congregation whereas here they face one another. A friend and I had been discussing whether angels facing were an authentic pose and, if so, what that indicated in terms of the classical authenticity of Dearmer’s “open position” where the deacon and subdeacon face both the celebrant and one another. This image is indeed a period attestation of both inward facing angels and, presumably, the open position.

Early Medieval Expectations for Laity

Posting will be quite light in the near future. I’m not giving up blogging for Lent or anything, but—as is usual—have way too many irons in the fire…

I warn you now, not only will posting be sporadic but it may also be both research intensive and potentially cryptic. I’m chasing several quite specific hares—and today’s led me into something I knew some of you would be interested in.

In Old English circles there are two main homileticians and two major anonymous collections: Ælfric, Wulstan, the Blicking Homilies and the Vercelli Homilies. Then there’s the mass of random anonymous stuff into which very few individuals go, myself included.

While trawling an old tome I found a reference to this interesting passage which shows up in an anonymous homily for the Fifth Sunday in Lent (i.e., old Passion Sunday):

Us is ðonne swiðe gedafenlic, þæt we gelomlice ure circan secan and ðær mid micelre eadmodnysse and stilnysse us to urum drihtne gebiddan and godes word gehyran. And se ðe on oðrum ðingum abisgad sy oððe to ðam ungehænde, þæt he dæghwamlice his circan gesecan ne mæge, he huru ðinga on ðam sunnandagum and on oðrum freolsdagum þider cume to his uhtsange and to mæssan and to æfensange and na to nanum idelum geflite, ne to nanum woruldlicum spræcum, ac to ða anum, þæt he his synna gode andette and hira forgifnysse bidde and ðære halgan þenunge mid micclum goddess ege gehlyste and siððan mid ælmæsdædum gange him to his gereorde and mid micelre syfernysse and gemetfæstnysse his goda bruce and na mid nanre oferfylle, ne mid oferdrince, forði ðe Cristenum men nis nan ðing wyrse, ðonne druncenscipe. (Assmann, BASP3, 144: [Assmann 12] B3.2.16)

It is very proper for us that we should frequently visit our church and there pray to our Lord and hear God’s word with great humility and silence. And the one who is busy with other things or is overcome and cannot visit his church daily, he at the least should come on Sundays and on feastdays to morning-song* and to mass and to evensong and not pass them in idleness nor in worldly speech, but in this only: that he confess his sins to God and pray for their forgiveness and that he hear these holy services with a great fear of God and afterward, with almsgiving, go to his meal and partake of his food with much sobriety and moderation and not with any overeating or overdrinking for there is nothing worse for Christian men than drunkenness.

* Uhtsange looks to be the aggregated Night Office of Matins and Lauds which was said at the hour of “uhta”–the first glimmer of light.

Note on the Lenten Suppression of the Te Deum

As most Anglican liturgy buffs know, one of the few changes to the classical Anglican Morning Prayer is the suppression of the Te Deum during Lent (and Advent). The rubrics of the 1549 BCP direct:

After the first Lesson shall follow Te Deum Laudamus, in English, daily throughout the year, except in Lent, all the which time, in the place of Te Deum, shall be used Benedicite omnia Opera Domini Domino, in English as followeth

This direction was suppressed in the 1552 book and the Te Deum and the Benedicite were simply both given as options with no direction as to their use.

I’ve recently discovered that there was a bit of a backlash against this practice around the turn into the 20th century on the part of the learned Anglican liturgists of the English Rite party. Vernon Staley spends a bit of time on this matter in his book on the Church Year:

We have said above, that the rubric in the First Prayer Book of 1549 is to a certain extent in accord with ancient precedent; for whilst the direction to omit Te Deum in Septuagesima and Lent was general, if not quite universal, the mediaeval custom was not to substitute Benedicite. This later canticle, considered in itself, is even more inappropriate to penitential seasons than the Te Deum; for it consists of “one unbroken song of jubilant adoration,” whilst the Te Deum has “mingled with its triumphant praise the tenderest pleadings for mercy, the acknowledgment of human weakness, and the memories of the humiliation of the ‘King of glory’ when He took upon him to deliver man.” That the Te Deum should be omitted in Septuagesima and Lent is one thing: that the Benedicite should take its place is another thing altogether. The omission of the former canticle is in accordance with sound precedent; the substitution of the latter is not: for, as we have already noted, in the Sarum rite, Te Deum was a canticle of Sunday and festival Matins; whilst Benedicite was a canticle of another service, Sunday Lauds: neither canticle was for week-day use. What is really needed is a third canticle for penitential seasons and days, and perhaps ordinary week-days, less joyous than either Te Deum or Benedicite. Neither of these latter canticles was sung or said on ordinary week-days; both having a festival character and use, in the Sarum rite. (Staley, The Liturgical Year, 74-5)

This passage may have been inspired by the tear upon which John Dowden, Bishop of Edinburgh, proceeded in his The Workmanship of the Prayer Book (1899, 2nd ed. 1902/4) from which Staley quotes. Dowden’s Appendix E is on the form and use of the Benedicite in the prayer book tradition and he presents the liberty of the 1552 and subsequent books as a very good thing in this case. Here’s the context of the quote Staley pulls:

The opportunity may be taken here of pointing out the real gain of the liberty afforded since 1552 of using either the Te Deum or the Benedicite at any time of the year as the canticle after the first lesson. . . .
A moment’s consideration makes clear that, while Benedicite is one unbroken song of jubilant adoration, the Te Deum has mingled with its triumphant praise the tenderest pleadings for mercy, the acknowledgment of human weakness, and the memories of the humiliation of the “King of glory,” when He took upon Him to deliver man. Setting aside a false antiquarianism and looking at things as they are, I think few will be found to claim Benedicite as, in itself, more suitable than Te Deum for a penitential season. The reader will remember that in the mediaeval use Benedicite was not substituted for Te Deum in the penitential seasons, but Te Deum was omitted. The rubric of the Prayer Book of 1549 is not a continuance, even in an imperfect form, of the ancient rubrical directions. If Benedicite had continued to be sung every Sunday at Morning Prayer, the omission of Te Deum would have a significance which is not attained by the substitution. In my opinion the rubric of 1549 was a lame and wholly inefficient attempt to effect a very laudable object.
It seems to me to be a matter much to be regretted that our Reformers, in their desire for simplicity, abandoned altogether, with the one exception of Benedicite, the use of the several Scriptural canticles which had a place at Lauds on successive week-days. Much more suitable than Benedicite for Lent and Advent would have been the choice, from the Sarum Lauds for Monday, of the exquisitely beautiful Song of Isaiah (xii. 1-6) with its mingled sense of sin and gratitude for God’s mercy. . . .
Should a canticle yet more marked by a penitential character and by the tearful pleadings of fear and sorrow be preferred, the Song of Hezekiah (Isa. xxxviii. 10-20), which was sung in the Sarum Lauds for Tuesday, supplies what is needed.
If the time ever comes when the Church of England will attempt to revise and further enrich her Book of Common Prayer, it is to be hoped that consideration will be given to the treasury of sacred song which lies ready to hand in the canticles for Lauds not only in the Sarum rite, but also in the great store of the Cantica of the Gothic Breviary, and in the old Paris Breviary, which is marked by a number of noble canticles drawn from the Apocrypha. (Dowden, Workmanship, 244-7)

When one turns to the Deposited English 1928 book, you’ll find in the Alternate Morning Prayer that after the Te Deum and the Benedicite comes the Miserere, Ps 51. (The Song of Isaiah referenced above is included in the American ’79 BCP, minus the first verse that gives it its major penitential punch…)

So, to recap,  the Te Deum includes language that recalls the humiliation of both God and the church as well as praise. The Benedicite is basically all praise. As such, the Te Deum seems preferable between the two. However, since the Te Deum is used as the Church’s song of joy, it does seem inappropriate for Advent and Lent and there are better options out there.

To return to the point raised by Dowden in particular—where the heck did the Benedicite come from? Let’s recall the received wisdom on the formation of Morning Prayer. That is, it’s essentially a shortened form of the old Morning Offices said in aggregation–saying Matins, Lauds, and Prime one right after the other which was a not uncommon practice particularly for secular clergy. Hatchett’s Commentary on the ’79 BCP has a table laying this out on page 92 (EP is on the facing 93). The Te Deum was used on Sundays and on Feasts of 9 Lessons; the Benedicite is the appointed Lauds canticle for Sundays. So, is this why these were chosen—Cranmer and the boys decided to use the canticles from Sunday because it was the start of the weekly cycle?

I don’t think so.

My research on the Prymers may be bearing some interesting fruit here… When you look at both the Sarum pre-Reformation prymers and the Reformed English prymers, both contain the Te Deum and the Benedicite for daily use. The Sarum Matins of the BVM uses the Te Deum everyday without regard for season, and—likewise—the Sarum Lauds of the BVM uses the Benedicite daily. In the so-called “Marshall Hours” that replace the Offices of the BVM in the Reformed books (first appearing around 1535—almost 15 years before the first BCP comes on the scene), the “Matins” office already aggregates material from Matins and Lauds and—again—contains both items for daily use. Thus, if one looked at the Marshall Hours, they contained three canticles for the morning: the Te Deum, the Benedicite, and the Benedictus. If, in following the directions of the Sarum Breviary (not the prymer), the Te Deum were to be dropped in Advent and Lent, there would be two canticles left: the Benedicite and the Benedictus. And there, I suspect is the real rationale of why the Benedicite appears as an alternative to the Te Deum. It has nothing to do with being a real replacement or substitution. Instead, there were three morning canticles that people knew in English and were used to saying in English from the prymers—and these happen to be the three that appear in the Prayer Book’s Morning Prayer.

Again, I’ll be saying more about this in coming days, but I do believe that prayer book historians would be well to give the prymers a bit more attention. I think their role in the shape of the Prayer Book offices has been significantly underplayed especially in current narratives of Prayer Book origins.

Artist Missing the Point

So I’m flipping through an online Book of Hour in the Library of Congress’s collection. One of the standard items is the seven penitential psalms. Traditionally, these were ascribed to David as part of his remorse over the seduction of Bathsheba, the killing of Uriah the Hittite, and the subsequent death of David’s son.

The introductory image to the seven penitential psalms is a full frontal nude of Bathsheba in her bath with David looking on.

Call me crazy, but it seems like the illustrator is kind of missing the point and, were this my devotional book, I might have some trouble staying focused on my psalter…

Illuminated Angelus Card Download

We’ve started doing public Evening Prayer at our parish. Like a lot of A-C shacks, we like to start with the Angelus but don’t have any Angelus cards around. So, with the assistance of some nice files from this art site with quite a lot of high quality public domain images, I sat down with Word and after an hour or so of fiddling came up with:

a basic Rite I angelus card

It prints off onto a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper (I’d recommend photo paper, of course) which will then need to be trimmed to the appropriate size. I think if I spend a little more time with it, I ought to be able to come up with a two-column layout that has the Angelus on one side and the Regina Coeli on the other for Eastertide.

Taxonomical Observation on the 79 Prayer Book

In pondering two volumes on my shelves, it occurs to me that they are taxonomically distinct. The first is the Deposited English 1928 BCP from Canterbury Press containing the Office readings (affectionately known as “the brick”); the other is my standard American 1979 BCP.

The Deposited ’28 is a missal/breviary combination with an affixed ordinal and ritual.

The ’79 BCP is a sacramentary/expanded psalter combination with an affixed ordinal and ritual.

I wonder what the significance of this is…

To expand on this briefly, a missal is itself a combination of books: a sacramentary (which contains the ordinaries and proper prayers of the Eucharist) + an evangeliary (the Gospel readings for the Mass) + an epistolary (the Other biblical readings from the Mass classically taken from the Epistles) + a gradual/mass antiphoner.

All English BCP and American BCPs before the ’79 have included the first three, and it’s worth the redundancy to underscore that the Gospels and Epistles for all Masses in the year were printed in the prayer book. The American 1979 BCP is the first to contain a lectionary list rather than the texts themselves.

The first English BCP made an attempt at a restricted protestant gradual but the second reduced it to a tiny vestige in the Offertory sentence and the pretense rather than the substance thereof has been maintained since. Where the ’79 BCP goes a step farther—arguably a large step farther—in regard to the gradual is in the clear recognition of its absence. At each point where an element would be sung from the gradual it provides permission for a “hymn, Psalm, or anthem” (with the exception of the readings where it suggests a “Psalm, hymn, or anthem” clearly intending the use of a gradual Psalm from its lectionary). Rather than pretend that the space has been filled or that no space exists, it draws attention to the space within the service.

A breviary is likewise a combination of Office books: a psalter (which contained a kalendar, the psalms, the canticles, and some of the commons of the hours) + a legendary (which gave the readings and, in some taxonomies, itself incorporates the homiliary, Bible, and Martyrology from which these readings are drawn) + a collectar (which gave the collects both proper and ordinary—and sometimes a sacramentary was used instead as it already had the collects) + an antiphoner (which had the propers) + a hymnal.

BCPs have always contained an expanded psalter with an integral collectar thanks to the repurposing of the Mass collects; the antiphoner was largely dropped at the Reformation. Both readings and hymns appear in some printings and not others.

The conclusion that I draw is that the ’79 BCP appears to present itself as a more taxonomically primitive rite whose historical analogs flourished in the early medieval period of the Western liturgy.

So—what are the take-aways here? I don’t know, I’m still working through them. I can think of two, however:

  1. The text of the ’79 BCP requires more supplementary material and books in order to create a complete rite. At the very least, a valid rite whether Mass or Office cannot be performed without a Bible or a lectionary book of readings whereas at least Mass could be said with no other sources in the past.
  2. As we see in the early medieval rites, the lack of incorporation of more elements gives a greater flexibility—which is sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes neutral. We can’t fail to observe that this flexibility has already been significantly leveraged: the mass lectionary originally printed in the ’79 book has already been removed and the Revised Common Lectionary put in its place.

I’m still thinking—what are your thoughts?

Rubric Note on the Prayer Book System

As has been mentioned here before, we understand the Book of Common Prayer most clearly when we grasp that it is more than just a book of prayers—rather it contains an implicit rule of life. One of the difficulties in former days as well as our own is the full enacting of this rule. Because it is implicit rather than explicit, it requires a careful reading of the book to discern the collective wisdom of the church that has handed it down to us.

The really short form is this: The Daily Offices are our daily set prayers; Eucharists are for Sundays and other Holy Days; private prayers—whether extemporaneous or fixed—occur throughout the day and night.

Throughout most of our history, the Eucharist point has been problematic. For generations, puritan-prompted practices have prevailed in many places and the Eucharist has been infrequent at best. These days, naturally the tide has turned, certainly in the American Church, and now we seem in danger of losing the Office…

My point, though, is this. The current American BCP lays out the pattern in our first full paragraph of the book:

The Holy Eucharist, the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day and other major Feasts, and Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, as set forth in this Book, are the regular services appointed for public worship in the Church. (p. 13)

But where do we get the same sense from our predecessor books?Yes, the fact that there are Collects, Epistles, and Gospels appointed for all Sundays and Holy Days in the English BCPs does recommend it, but doesn’t determine it.

I stumbled across the answer quite by accident while looking through John Jebb’s The Choral Service of the United Church of England and Ireland: tucked into a rubric after the communion service in the 1662 book is this gem:

And in Cathedral and Collegiate Churches, and Colleges, where there are many Priests and Deacons, they shall all receive the Communion with the Priest every Sunday at the least, except they have a reasonable cause to the contrary.

In looking back, this principle isn’t clearly stated in the first 1549 book, but, oddly in the most protestant of our books, the 1552 revision, the rambling post-communion rubric of 1549 is trimmed and altered to this of which the 1662 rubric is only a slight expansion:

And in Cathedral and Collegiate Churches, where be many priests and deacons, they shall all [who all—the priests and deacons or all present?] receive the communion with the minister every Sunday at the least, except they have a reasonable cause to the contrary.

So—there you have it. Even in our most protestant book, we find the legislated rule on the reception of the Eucharist. Of course, as Jebb points out, this rubric (in its multiple forms) was widely ignored. Furthermore, in the rubrical abbreviation of the first American book, it disappeared. Nevertheless, its early presence despite its lack of practice reminds us that there is a fundamental pattern of piety taught in the Prayer Book even if it has only been followed in fits and starts.

On Doxology

I wanted to spend a few moments considering the point at the end of the last post, specifically the model of liturgical professionalism that arose throughout the medieval period, its organization in cathedral structures in the Late Sarum period, and its continuation in some contemporary practices of regular but low-attendance parish services like daily masses or the public Daily Office.

I have to begin by identifying what I understand to be part of the reluctance or resistance to this system. Jumping back to my own “proper” field for a moment, I want to steal some theory from a recent work, Among the Gentiles by Luke Timothy Johnson. (If you are interested in the New Testament or in the Early Church this should definitely be on your reading list! This is Johnson the scholar at his best—taking his exhaustive knowledge of Greco-Roman religious literature and condensing it into a brilliant synthesis, then using it to shed new light on Jewish and early Christian texts.) Based on his work with the sources, Johnson identifies four main non-exclusive ways of being religious in the Greco-Roman milieu:

  • A: the way of participation in divine benefits
  • B: the way of moral transformation
  • C: the way of transcending the world
  • D: the way of stabilizing the world

In his application of this synthesis to the New Testament and early Christianity, he finds that the New Testament emphasizes most strongly types A and B. With legitimation of the Church, the post-Constantinian writings seem to make a shift to A and D. (Particularly in the sense that D can be seen as the “supply side” of A—the benefits come through the ritual process and priestcraft of D.) He suggests in a concluding chapter that many of the Reformation movements were strongly of type B and were reacting to the types A and D of late medieval Catholicism and that some of our own Anglican struggles between the Puritans and the High Churchmen concerned appropriate levels of B and D in our own body.

And that’s where I’d identify some of the current discomfort—my own and Isaac’s: the system of endowed choirs and certain groups of professionals doing liturgy without the conscious and active participation of the majority of the community (a definite type D way of doing religion) affronts some of our type B inclinations. That is, if we’re not being edified or transformed, is this system a legitimate expression of the faith we hold?

I want to argue that is legitimate, and worth doing and supporting in our present situation.

God does not need our prayers and liturgies. God is God without them. The prayers and liturgies are for our benefit—but benefit and edification are not always the same thing.

The Morning Offices of the Western Church are, to me, our clearest documents of purpose. Mat(t)ins begins thus: Open thou our lips, O Lord/And our mouth shall proclaim thy praise. Then the Venite itself issues a call to praise God as the One who holds all creation in being and the One who guides his people as a flock. The festal Te Deum offers us a doxological perspective of the created order, showing us our place as beings most fully alive when oriented with the rest of creation in its uncorrupt state towards and in praise of God. Finally the ultimate Lauds psalms (from which the Office earns its appellation) echo and expand the Te Deum.

There are two reasons that we praise. The first is because we are creatures offering the praise due our Creator. As made beings, we owe our existence to the One who made us and who should be praised for it. The second is thanks to our Baptism: in our Baptism we are consciously and intentionally joined to and made aware of our membership within the Body of Christ. We become conscious participants within the life of God. Within these our boundaries our praises take on a deeper and greater valence—we participate in the internal dialogue of the Trinity. Expressed most perfectly in the Eucharist, we as the divided members of the Body of Christ come together as part of the eschatological Body of Christ who offers his own self and praises to God the Father in and through the Holy Spirit.

Now—creation continues without our praise; the dialogue of the Trinity continues without us. However, we as individuals and as a community most clearly express our nature when we are oriented in praise towards God.

Paul calls us to “pray without ceasing.” To pray without ceasing is to be in constant awareness and embodiment of life in contact with God. It is to live the praise of God in all of our actions, proclaiming through daily virtues the victory of God in Christ and the triumph of love and light over darkness, hatred, and all the forces that seek to corrupt the works of God. It is for us to recall our right mind—for the Body of Christ to be directed by the Mind of Christ. (That there would be my own type B inclinations coming up to the surface…)

While this is our goal, we fall short of its embodiment. While Anglican spirituality as laid out by Martin Thornton in English Spirituality gives us the central tools to direct us in this way—formal periodic liturgies in combination with habitual prayer of recollection—as individuals in the world we will fail to reach our aspirations while on this side of the veil. Thanks be to God, however, that we are not alone in this task. I think not only of the Te Deum but of its paraphrase in the hymn “Holy God we praise thy name” where, in Walworth’s words, “And from morn to set of sun/Through the Church the song goes on.”

We are members of the Body of Christ. And one of the ways that this is expressed locally is that we are members of a liturgical community. In our corporate nature, the living organism in which we subsist can more completely embody prayer without ceasing than any of its constituent members apart from the whole. We are just starting up public daily Evening Prayer at our parish. Some days it’s just two of us. Other days it’s five or six (when M and I and the girls can be there; G insists on doing one of the Scripture readings; H’s task—since she’s still learning to read—is to start the Lord’s Prayer). As our priest said when announcing the effort at church, we’re doing corporately and publicly what the rest of us should be doing individually at home. When it may just be the two of us—or even one solitary person—standing in the choir of the cold sanctuary, we are indicating our community’s commitment to a corporate liturgical life and the hope and promise of a life turned towards God. It doesn’t mean that we’re succeeding, that we’re meeting Paul’s challenge of praying without ceasing. What it does means is that we are making a public proclamation that the effort is worth doing, that we recognize that a life of praise is one of the central aspects of the Christian life.

The medieval system with its endowed cathedral choirs was a corporate social expression of this ideal. Public monies supported public prayer which offered a public encouragement to a life of prayer. As members of a larger organism we can look to those edifices and to the services held at our own parishes in our absence and know that some are praying even when we cannot. The services are to and for our benefit—not solely through the edification of the words uttered and understood, but through the example they enact of the life to which we are called.

That’s where I’ll stop for now, but there’s more to be said here. In particular there’s quite a bit to be said about the early monastic concept of the resurrection life being patterned upon the angelic life, with the angelic life being primarily defined by the ceaseless praise of the beings around the throne as presented in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Revelation, but at the moment I have neither the time nor the brain cells to give that topic the treatment it deserves.

American Sarum: Monday Afternoon

Monday afternoon was the Sarum Mass. While there was a session entitled learning the rubrics beforehand, it was really an opportunity for a talk through what was going on as we watched the participants practice. Unfortunately due to the sickness of some key folks and the sudden disappearance of a central annotated edition of the service, the practice was more helter-skelter than it was intended to be and the rubrics session couldn’t live up to the original intention.

I have to confess upfront that it’s been a long time since I’ve been to a Traditional Latin Mass. This would be a much more informed article if I’d been recently and could compare the differences between a “standard” TLM and what occurred at the conference—but I can’t.

There is no video of the mass that I know of, but there are some photos. This album contains photos from the entire conference with the mass at the end.

The church was surprisingly full—I think many of the regular congregants came and other interested folks. A couple of the people from my parish were able to come (and should leave comments to add to my account…).

The point of the service was to present as completely as possible an actual Sarum Mass. It was not a suggestion that this is what the Episcopal Church should do now, but rather to convey an experience of the liturgical world from which the Anglican rites developed and the world to which Dearmer, Frere, Staley, and other Victorian and Edwardian liturgists pointed as a source for understanding and enriching the Anglican rites of their day. The service was a reconstructed votive mass of the Blessed Virgin. Full programs containing the Latin and an English translation were handed out, but my preference was just to watch and listen without it.  As the basis of the Sarum truly is the Roman Rite, I didn’t have much trouble following along. To my eyes, it was much like other Latin Masses to which I have been but the server and subdeacon were much more involved in the preparation of the chalice than I recall. There was also a significant moment, I believe just prior to the fraction, where the deacon held the paten and sudary cloth high which was familiar from to me from late medieval manuscript images.

What struck me, likely due to Dr. Harper’s presentation, was the interplay between the choir and the altar party. The choir was singing almost the entire time and very little of what the altar party said could be heard. It was completely clear that the Ordinary of the Mass sung by the choir was following a different track from the altar party. That is, while the altar party undoubtedly said the same parts—the Gloria, the Sanctus, etc.—they did not wait until the choir had finished singing to continue their parts. Instead, the choral sanctus stretched from the beginning of the canon until the elevations, there was a pause for the elevations, then the choral benedictus qui venit continued from that point virtually until the end of the canon and the beginning of the Communion proper. It reinforced for me how linear our current service is: only one significant action is occurring at a time, and if an overlap would occur, we stop until that action or element is completed. The medieval experience seemed to have much more layering.  (Of course, it must be noted that the congregation present acted like a typical modern congregation—we “paid attention” and “followed along” as we are used to and did not wander around and do our own devotions as a medieval congregation would have!)

On one hand, the worship experience seemed more rich because of the multiple elements occurring simultaneously. On the other, the layering did obscure some aspects of the experience, deliberately so. The deliberate obscuring of the altar party’s actions and vocalizations left no doubt in my mind that my personal edification was not the point—their action was Godward. The elements most central presented to the congregation’s perceptions—the choir’s part—were also not for congregational edification as it was not in our native tongue and even someone like me who understands a modicum of spoken Latin sometimes would have difficulty understanding all the words due to the polyphony. Thus, the Godwardness of the experience was quite clear. What was less clear to me was the theological place of the congregation; I got the strong sense that we were superfluous. Yes, our being there changing something about the nature of the service in the same way that any act of observation alters the behavior of the observed, but I lacked a sense that we played a necessary role—and I found that theologically interesting.

I say “interesting” because it’s leading me to reflect on my understanding of the place of liturgy within the life of the liturgical community. I *do* see value in the continuity of liturgical action conducted on behalf of the full community in the full community’s absence. That is, masses and offices should be said on behalf of and in reference to the community even when the full community is not able to gather for them—even a token congregation provides the necessary continuity, but the presence of those few is both significant and important whereas the choir and clergy seemed sufficient in the Sarum system in a way that felt questionable to me.

This is the last post on the sessions of the conference, but I am working on a summary post that seeks to pull together what I took from the conference, what I think its real strengths were, and the questions that I believe it poses to the larger Episcopal Church.

American Sarum: Monday Morning

Session 7: Panel Discussion

This session was a discussion with four panelists and the occasional addition of a fifth. The panelists were:

  • Bishop Whitmore (BW)
  • Canon Jeremy Davies (JD)
  • Dr. Allan Doig (AD)
  • Dr. John Harper (JH)

Fr. Cody Unterseher (CU) also addressed a few of the questions. I sat with my laptop and typed like crazy. I won’t pretend to have recorded everything, but I think I hit the high points. So—here’s my record of the proceedings.

? (me): From my perspective, we’re looking at liturgy from the wrong way around if we don’t start with theology. That is, liturgy and ceremonial is the kinetic expression of a community’s theological commitments. How would you encapsulate the theology that drives an English/Sarum Use?

BW: Issue is not how has it gone, but what will you do next? The gap between the boomer generation and the next two is the biggest that has ever existed. Boomers want things to be free—Gen Xers and millennials are interested in order. They’re more traditional. They’re more interested in the experience of the worship. Statistics show us that the RC is the fastest growing church; the fastest growing liturgical movement there is the return to Latin movement.

AD: The sense of integration; the way that within the architecture everything has to go with the grain and be integrated. All of the symbolism coordinated allow a rich and dense and layered language with which to express the theology being working out in the congregation. The architecture, the deliberate use of what is there, adjustments can be made to employ that linguistic system you’re developing because there are some things you just can’t express.

JD: There are principles which are quite important—the principles cut across the party boundaries. One of things about John Harper’s presentation is that we’re moving away from text . The preparation and presentation are important as well, especially the use of the senses. That gets the liturgy off the page. What works for people in the performance/apprehension of worship is when all the senses are engaged. Tried to rediscover that at Salisbury. The cathedral had been turned into an auditorium, we’ve moved the chairs out as they weren’t there in the medieval period—the rite gave a structure to the shape. The experience of the ornamented space—the texture. The sense of moving across thresholds and mystery. There are places to go. Moving, being enticed, bit by bit beyond where we are—it’s a way of enfleshing the theology.

JH: The mere fact that we’re doing this research project with the *experience* of worship is critical. We may have a better shaping of the questions about the experience of medieval worship by doing it however inadequately. 20-30 years ago everyone was seeking authenticity. They realized pretty quickly that you couldn’t recapture historical authenticity. But readings of the texts grounded in historical principles is better than not. We are God’s people in the now. I’m conscious of how much my understanding changes of what’s going on—a pointer from yesterday: the distinction between a liturgy that uses the music of its time and a liturgy like Dearmer who was working with Ralph Van Williams in the English Hymnal . Plainsong was intended by those editors as the congregational music. In 1549 we inherit the liturgy as being simplified, our theology of liturgy and music is the least developed.

?: Do we sometimes presuppose a style of music when we envision a liturgy; what’s the place of guitar music and gospel?

JH: In designing the program that we conduct at the University, I wanted to put the underpinning principles back for leaders of worship and liturgy. We had three strands: ministry and worship, music and worship, and the applied. My starting point is that liturgy without a single note sounded is already music. It’s about the interplay between silence and sound. A said service still has the big rhythms. Without that underlying understanding of the liturgy as a whole you’ve missed something.  If it doesn’t make the people pray better, then you’re doing something wrong. Dropping things in to please certain groups is the wrong way to go.

?: The problem is not just the under 30s but the over 30s—they want to be entertained. How do we move them from there to this?

BW: People only do what they know how to do. We know entertainment. The way they unlearn it is that someone has to teach them. One of our difficulties is that we have not embraced our teaching role. In the ordination rite we ask only two things: pastors and teachers. We have yet to embrace that. The parish priest has to embrace the rabbinic role in the community. You have to start with the experience and then go to the theory. We desperately need to recapture the teaching ministry. What we do in worship has to be tied into the teaching ministry of the church. I don’t like how we separate music and liturgy into two different things—they’re two parts of the same thing.

? (Lizette Larson-Miller): The growing tendency in TEC is to minimize training of clergy. I come from the disestablished west coast where most clergy have only been Episcopalians for only a few years. We have to give them the ethos and training very quickly. Putting the Sarum use in the context of a pluralistic society and church; how do we take an adaptation of an inculturated tradition and put it in the place of a multicultural situation?

BW: We need to take the Dr. Phil approach to constructive theology—how’s that working for you? (thumbs down). The way to go forward is to go backward. We have to reach into our past to pull out what works and put it back in place. We have to ask some honest hard questions—for the young clergy in the room, in 10, 20 years, most of us will be dead—it’ll be your church. You’ll be the bishops. You have the opportunity starting now to transform the church and make it something that will help the religious experience of people all over. If we just keep doing what we’re doing we’ll be part of a small “emergent” church. We have to look past the latest theological fads and draw on the past in a reasoned way. This is about the incarnation. We have a core set of doctrines. For us it’s incarnation: the coming of flesh makes a difference. Bringing the tradition into the present and making it live makes all the difference.

AG: the liturgy and all that goes with it is language. If the liturgy is the embodied preaching of the church we’re never just saying one thing. We’re expressing and working towards a whole range of things. There will be a core that remains the same, but it reaches in a lot of … Sarum doesn’t just have one thing to provide.

JD: When I was being trained at Cambridge in my sermon class, a preacher said, “But I’m not a theologian…” The principal completely lost his temper—if you’re not a theologian you shouldn’t be a priest! There is a range of systematic theologies on the Continent and America—England doesn’t really have one and has to borrow it. We can’t escape from systematic to make it up as you go. Theology came alive when I went into an east end parish. Practicalities and aesthetics are part of it, but there’s an education formation that’s part of it. When we introduced Common Worship at Salisbury, we decided there was no point in a consultation—we did it for 6 months, then had a presentation on why and articulate the principles under the change. Then we reshaped the liturgy around the constructive ideas produced by that forum. It’s a theological process as much as anything else.

JH: I take a different take. Many musicians are involved with church because that’s how they’re part of church. As a practical thing, I live on Anglesey. It’s an island of 400 square miles, mostly smaller communities. We have 70 Anglican churches. The quota for stipendiary ministry is 9 as a foreseeable maximum. One thing that the church in Wales is trying to address is the priesthood of all believers and how the laity will have to be formed to keep the churches open if we’re going to. Where is the teaching that lay musicians are receiving? You may be lucky to have a liturgy teacher on staff and they’re usually scholarly rather than practical. To take the cultural thing, we face it because we’re a bilingual church. One of the most painful things for me is when a well-known hymn comes up in Welsh and I can’t understand it. Or I’m playing a hymn I can’t understand. We’ve gone overboard with the gathered community/circle thing. It doesn’t address the individual who wants to sit behind the pillar. Nor does it deal with the theology of where the choir belongs—and a choir is like its own church. When do you make church in the Thursday evening when you come together to practice? One of the things about the service this afternoon is the freedom you have to engage or not engage in the service. The choir and the priests take the responsibility of making sure the flow of the worship goes forward give the laity a freedom to engage in a variety of ways. People will come and go and be touched or not touched but we have the job to just keep doing it. Just sustaining it is important.

?: (Fr. Parker): There are several elephants in the room—one that Dearmer addressed was the lawlessness of the clergy and musicians and what they were doing in church. The Parson’s Handbook has a good deal to say about following the rubrics. Lizette’s question was the most pertinent. The answer has to relate to how we relate to authority and tradition in the church. That has to be sustained. In America the BCP is no longer Common Prayer—rubrics are generally disregarded except when it’s convenient. You do what seems best. To have common worship, you have to agree on what’s common. The other is the Reformation. The BCP is the filter through which Sarum had to come—we don’t have that. By what authority and how do we make a common life in a pluralistic society?

JD: Great question—no clear answer. One of the virtues of Common Worship is that it is fairly common. There has been an ecumenical drawing together within the COE. There was a huge change after Vatican II. There has been a convergence. How and whether one should deal with aberrant practice is a question. I always go to the bishop and ask him—that’s one way to deal with it. Bishops also have a responsibility for the commonality of the bishop. (Depending on the bishop…)

JH: I could have talked about the Reformation more. Last night we heard the musicians’ response to the Reformation. Mundy’s response—priest was the third son of the Duke of Northumbria. You see them responding and taking out the altars and reducing the spending on liturgy in 1551. The parish priest also made sure all the vestments had been put in Westminister and he collected them back at Mary’s reign. Worchester flip-flopped its chancel over the Marian reign. I think of our own recent changes. Last night was mostly chapel royal—the Byrd preces with the chant still there. The continuities are there. There was a respect for the theological things but you also see the syllabic setting of the evening hymn. As for what happens in 1559, there’s article by Robert Barrows—best musicologist alive—on the Elizabethan settlement . Every musician should know Queen Elizabeth’s injunctions on the place of music from 1559. Only words within the BCP should be sung or said at MP/EP; what sounded in the music should be plain and distinct. Respect for the authority of the book! That stays in the COE until the 19th century. When hymns are introduced in 1820 by the first priest who dared to do so, his congregation took him to court for it. I grew up in a MP/EP parish where you sing the hymns before and after the service and on either side of the sermon.

BW: Something about authority that I learned from the army. Once you’ve been given authority it has to be exercised properly. By virtue of ordination vows we’re under authority—if those who have it don’t exercise it, that’s their problem. Everything done here has the authority of the bishop. We still struggle with authority. If I’m not willing to be obedient it doesn’t matter how much authority is in the system.

? (Mark): Thinking again about words and language our Prayer Book offers two different linguistic rites. Should there be a place for the traditional liturgical language in our current idiom? What’s the place of traditional language going forward?

BW: Since we have one authorized BCP, yes. I don’t see prayer book revision anywhere on the horizon. [general applause at this point. It may have started somewhere near us…] Most people in the House of Bishops were priests who had to implement the 79 BCP. We don’t have the will to do it now. There has to be a generational turnover in the HOB. Resolution in 2003 to change the BCP was struck down by 80% in the HOB. We will eventually have to revise the prayer book. Liturgy lives by adapting it to where you are. Be a willing participant. But we’re safe for a while.

?: If the church is not at a point to revise the BCP, how can we revise the hymnal?

BW: I don’t know, I didn’t vote for it. Remember, we authorized a study to see if revision should go forward.  Whatever happen will happen in the HOB first. The HOB actually does understand the relation between liturgy and music.

? (BW): how do you recognize the difference between Sarum and Roman Rite?

JH: Speaking before 1500, I answer this way… In going to the Roman Mass, I know what’s going to happen in which order even if I don’t know the language. If you had travelled through Europe, you’d be able to follow just fine. I wonder if there’s some way that local practice can also share in the broader continuity.

?: Flannery O’ Conner critiques Southern Baptist culture in her letters—it’s [worship is] not about us. We all have to make choices in shaping liturgy and music. How do you make the choices to make sure it’s not about personal choice and preference?

JD: I’ve been there for 25 years and that helps. I’ve built up a rapport with the congregation and with wider congregations. Building up over time trust builds too. You get a way of listening to what people say Liturgy is also ministering on all sorts of levels. There’s a lot of formal but also informal discussion with the staff as music and liturgy work in the same space at the cathedral. We’ve also had to find ways through committees to widen that conversation. There’s partly the discipline; it’s not just about choosing an appropriate text but looking at the  texture as well. 16th century polyphony has a richness but is unaccompanied—it presents a texture about Advent, giving the feel of the season, feast. I like to have French music during Epiphany because the 20th century French had an extraordinary sense of liturgical sensibility in music. It captures the mystery.

CU: On the Sarum—after Trent there was a straightening process that put an Italian Baroque aesthetic on all of Europe. Medieval England was a pick and choose game. There are some practical aesthetic markers. Rome uses 6 candles; EU uses 2. Riddels and side-posts. These are found across  continental diocesan uses but Dearmer connected these with an EU in contrast to the Italian Baroque style.

?: Sarum blue—isn’t it just faded purple?

JH: No. One of the thing we’re currently doing is a searchable version of the Sarum medieval customary. There’ll be six Latin texts. With 6 English translations. In the register of St Osmund. There is a specification of color. Blue is signaled there as one of the colors. Purple is a royal dye.

?: What is characteristically different between the Roman and the Sarum Use?

JH: First a defensive question—liturgists and liturgical theologians are primarily interested in the first hundred years of liturgy. Not the Medieval. There’s a big hole about what we read. I wouldn’t dare to write that book that I wrote 20 years ago.  There’s a study of 400 churches over 400 years in one county to look at how the churches changed and how the theologies changed there that has to be grasped. Dick Pfaff’s book on late medieval feasts—do get it. One of our students is working on the theology of the late medieval Jesus Mass. Rededication of monastic cathedrals were to Jesus—Christchurch and then subsidiary saints.

?: Atonement theology has covered the Incarnation piece so heavily, when will Anglican teachers formulate liturgies that talk about and lift up the incarnation and tone down the Atonement?

BW: You did point out one of the theological difference between Sarum and Roman. One of the core doctrines of the Roman church is about the atonement. That’s not core for us (?) the way we worship doesn’t flow from the doctrine of the atonement. Being raised Roman and going through a Roman seminary, I don’t hear the strands of atonement sounding for us the way it does there. We hear the strands differently because we start from a different perspective. The uniqueness of our view flows from our particular perspective and history. I don’t know when we’ll get to our incarnational root but we’re going in the right direction.

JD: There isn’t just one doctrine of atonement. I don’t think we should think in terms of minimizing it, but putting it in context. In the Cranmer prayerbook, there’s no mention of the resurrection outside of the creed. The place of the Holy Spirit likewise. The atonement is in a different context.

? (Fr. Parker): How do we make the richness of the Sarum Rite/Use available in a Reformed context and with our current BCP? The object is to make people holy. That’s what our liturgy does. We survive and grow. We want to make the numinous more readily available. I want to know how to make that happen in my building with my people, being faithful to the question of one use.

CU: The use, properly speaking, is the externals. If we’re all using the prayer book must we be using the same externals?

BW: I think the fullness of that answer has yet to be unfolded. This is the first time a conference like this has been put on. This is a beginning. We can’t just lay it down now that it’s happened. What is the next step? How do we help you look at your building and go from there?

AD: Referring to something John said—the Sarum family—there have always been different inflections of the language of Sarum but a core of expression. Sometimes a dialect becomes a dominant form of a language because it’s been useful in a certain place. It makes sense to inflect it differently based on the needs of your position. Something it’s discovering something that was lost that will reinvigorate it.

JH: What we saw last night was not available to Percy Dearmer. We have so many more resources to enrich our understanding. I’m petrified to write a book because emy knowledge is so narrow—but if somebody doesn’t have the courage to have a go at it, it won’t happen. I found the liturgy comfortable and rich. Fr. Bird knows how to use technology as well. He can face east with a good microphone and good amplification. Note how different it’ll be this afternoon when Jeremy says the service without it.