Category Archives: Liturgy

SCLM Meeting Today

The Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM) is meeting this afternoon. This is our first meeting since the budget numbers have come back and, with those in hand, we’ll be able to set our plan of work for the various sub-committees of the SCLM for this present triennium.

In figuring out what that scope of work will look like, I’ve submitted two documents for the two committees that I’m involved with. Here are the highlights on those two…

Further Thoughts Towards an Episcopal Almanac

At the last meeting, I raised again the possibility of an almanac that would supplement the sanctoral calendar. My sense is that some of the commemorations currently being placed on the Church’s calendar don’t represent true sanctoral occasions but that there are those in the Church who still see them as worthy of note. An almanac could be a proper repository for these or for people that the Church would like to remember but for whom the title of “saint” either doesn’t quite fit or where we’re still exploring their sanctity. The sense was that they wanted to hear more in terms of details.

This piece presents some a proposal containing details.

First, I identify six “centers of energy” that I see in the Church around HWHM (with the caveat that my labels are admittedly broad and imprecise and that they are not meant to represent everyone who may identify with a certain label):

  • A Liberal Protestant energy: This movement sees inclusivity as a core commitment of TEC. The definition of “saint” is a broad one. It tends be more vocal about a reluctance to judge the holiness of another. This energy would likely see a reduction of HWHM—particularly if it adversely impacted the diversity represented in the Calendar—as an attempt to “roll back the clock” to a calendar of old white male bishops. [I see this at the Episcopal Café and Facebook]

  • A Broad Church middle energy: This movement seems concerned with the number of commemorations, a loss of ferial days, and is not sure about the sanctity of some of the additions. On the other hand, there is also a reluctance to judge the holiness of others. In general, this group expresses puzzlement around TEC’s theology of sanctity. [I see this at the Episcopal Café, Facebook, on my blog, and specifically on Crusty Old Dean’s (Tom Ferguson of Bexley Hall) post on Lent Madness]

  • An Anglo-Catholic energy: This movement may or may not have an issue with the number of commemorations, but has a narrower definition of saint: inclusion in the Calendar is seen as the church’s official declaration on the eschatological status of the commemorated. There are concerns whether all of the commemorations in HWHM meet this standard. Too, there is a concern that the collects do not appropriately express a robust theology of sanctity. [I see this at on my blog, on Facebook, and summarizes most of the feedback I have received personally]

  • A conservative protestant energy: This movement sees HWHM as a yet another example of the political liberalism of TEC leadership and regards most of the new commemorations as politically motivated. [As seen particularly in the comments section on Lent Madness regarding Frances Perkins]

  • An agency energy: This movement comes from the fact that we explicitly asked specific agencies and groups within the church to put forward candidates. Having done so, there seems to be an obligation to accept them. Furthermore, the work has been done to create the biographies and the propers; to not use them now would be a waste of that time and effort.

  • A legislative energy: This movement is around the establishment of official, published criteria. There is concern that the committee created criteria, then disregarded them in the addition of new commemorations raising an integrity issue.

These are the main tensions that we need to negotiate if we want to create a successful product that will be used across the Church.

Then I turn to the current shape of HWHM and show that it contains an odd alternation between temporal and sanctoral material. It’s a book made up of small sections pieced together and doesn’t have a coherent structure. My proposal is to gather the current material into three sections:

  1. a “Holy Women, Holy Men” section that contains the propers for the sanctoral Days of Optional Observance and recommendations on the local identification and observance of saints containing the Commons of Saints.

  2. a “Temporal Cycle” section that contains the ferial propers in temporal sequence as adapted from the Canadian BAS followed by the alternative six-week thematic lectionary.

  3. a “Various Occasions” section that contains the votive propers followed by an integrated Almanac.

Thus, the resource would put the three principal options for non-Holy Days (a lesser feast, a temporal ferial day, or a votive) on more or less equal footing. The third section would contain the almanac and the people and commemorations there would be presented as specific representatives or examples of certain votives.

My plan for work in light of this is admittedly ambitious. I’m suggesting that we put *all* of the Lesser Feasts back on the table, create a wiki, and—once we have nailed down our operative criteria at our June meeting—we document our evidence for each criterion for each commemoration. Those who fulfill the criteria are candidates for inclusion in a re-formed Calendar; those who don’t meet all the criteria and who are yet deemed significant to our Church and its history will be placed in the Almanac along with other worthy people, movements, and occasions.

Too, I recommend that each section will be prefaced by some basic information regarding what the section is about and how the material in it can and should be used. Specifically, this will address the question about how the Lesser Feasts interact with the Daily Office.

We’ll see how this goes. Some of the folks I’ve discussed it with see it as a workable solution given the various difficulties that have to be negotiated. We’ll see what the others think…

Electronic Publications

As I reviewed the relevant General Convention resolutions around the issue of Electronic Publications, I was quite surprised to find this one:

Resolution 2009-A102 (Authorize Use of the Enriching our Worship Series) represents a major change in policy with regard to the digital realm. After first enumerating the complete set of materials within the EOW series (Enriching Our Worship 1: The Daily Office, Great Litany and Eucharist; Enriching Our Worship 2: Ministry with the Sick and Dying and Burial of a Child; Enriching Our Worship 3: Burial Rites for Adults together with a Rite for the Burial of a Child; and Enriching Our Worship 4: The Renewal of Ministry and the Welcoming of a New Rector or other Pastor) a resolving clause states: “That these liturgical texts be freely available in electronic format on the internet” (emphasis added). It should also be noted that the original text of the resolution did not contain this resolve clause; it was added by the committee in the House of Bishops and concurred in the House of Deputies. According to this resolution, therefore, one of our tasks must be to ensure that these four resources are freely available for download and use.

So—GC has already resolved that this action should be taken. It hasn’t been. Now, I’m not going to say that EOW is my favorite set of resources out there, but I am curious to find out why this resolution wasn’t implemented.

We had a couple of resolutions referred to us as a Commission; referrals are non-binding in that they are there for us to review and then to decide what we believe the best course of action to be. Here’s my take on these two:

Resolution 2013-D060 (Planning for Making Liturgical Resources Freely Available on Any Device or Platform) was concurred for referral. Unlike the previous resolutions, it is not binding, but has been given to us for our study and to formulate policy with regard to whether and how it may be put into place. It directs the SCLM:

to begin planning in the next triennium for the structuring of all liturgical and musical resources as format- and platform-independent content, so that it may be made freely available to any device or medium, and to return to the 78th General Convention with a proposal and budget to begin the work.

This resolution goes a step beyond the policy laid down in 2009-A102. It does affirm the free availability mandated in the prior resolution, and furthermore introduces the principle of format- and platform-independent material. The key point here is that, following this policy, a PDF is no longer sufficient as it does not meet the format-independent requirement.

Also concurred for referral was 2013-D079 (Provide Electronic Availability of Liturgical Resources). While similar in spirit to 2013-D060, it is less specific. It too directs that all liturgical resources approved by General Convention be made “electronically available and easily accessible, both online for downloads and in electronic media such as CD-ROM, DVD, and their successor technologies.” It does not use the word “freely.” While it does so less clearly than 2013-D060, this resolution also functionally requires platform-independent solutions in its mention of successor technologies. The main difference is the urgency and accountability; it directs a timeframe (by the end of calendar year 2013) and a mechanism for oversight (reports to Executive Council by DFMS staff).

I’m in favor of these. I think that they’re very much heading in the right direction.

Electronic frontiers do not—for the most part—open up new mission fields. Instead, I think they give us a new angle onto the existing mission field. Social media and mobile computing give us a means to put worship, devotional, and formational tools at our congregations’ finger-tips quicker and easier than ever in the past. Too, in this resourcing, we can also make it easy for them to communicate via social media that they are using these things and that they are a part of their spiritual life. That, in turn, will raise awareness of their spiritual practice amongst their social networks and possibly lead to helpful and healthy conversations about what modern faith looks like and what faith practices foster it.

We need to free our liturgies and our hymnals so that they can be easily and effectively leveraged to create useful devotional tools and helpful worship aids. Period. Full stop.

As long as there is a monopoly on these materials, ours hands will be digitally tied.

On the other hand, these two referred resolutions, while having the right idea, are pretty short on awareness about the multitude of issues facing such a move. I see four main policy issues that will have to be sorted through before material can be put online:

  • “freely…”: I support freely available electronic materials on the internet. As a member of a small congregation and keeping in mind 2013-A076 on the dissemination of resources to small congregations, I know that free access to all of our liturgical books would be a financial bonus to cash-strapped parishes. However, we would be remiss if we did not note that Church Publishing is in the business of selling liturgical materials including the electronic Rite Series software. As the Church pension system is tied to Church Publishing, we should consider the impact free liturgical materials might have on the broader system.

  • “All liturgical materials”: One of the issues tied to expenses is that some of our resources—notably the Hymnal 1982—make use of materials already under copyright and someone must pay licensing fees for them. Given the incorporation of copyrighted materials in some of our liturgical books, are we legally able to make all of our resources freely available for download? If not, what will our policy with regard to these materials?

  • “…available”: Another facet of copyright is that the materials produced by the Church are under copyright. As a result, their re-use is restricted if not prohibited.   The only exception of which I am aware is the Book of Common Prayer which has been placed in the public domain. While 2013-D060 does not mention copyright, it cannot be effectively implemented with copyright protection in place as currently configured. Creative Commons licenses offer a more nuanced approach to copyright protections. Rather than doing way with copyright, these licenses represent a way to retain intellectual property rights and protections but to voluntarily waive certain aspects of those rights to enable greater digital development particularly around the creation of derivative works. We should explore how these might help us in making our materials more available.

  • “platform-independent”/”successor technologies”: In order to present electronic material in a stable, flexible and—above all—useful format, we need to move beyond PDFs. A PDF document is superior to a book in two ways: it cannot be directly altered and it is far more portable. However, it remains locked into a linear paradigm. Hyperlinks and bookmarks mitigate this shortcoming to a minor extent, but do not solve it. Following 2006-A049, we need to decide upon an open standard format that offers more dynamic possibilities than a PDF. While PDFs are fine in the short-term and ought to be part of our long-term distribution strategy, they need to remain a facet of it and not be its totality.

I’m recommending that we figure out what the barriers are to implementing a freely-available EOW and get that material up as soon as possible in PDF form. I’d also like to honor the intention of the other two resolutions as fully as possible. This means getting as many of our authorized books as possible online as free PDFs before the end of 2013.

Too, we need to work towards platform independence. My goal here is too look at the encoding options, pick one, and to draft a resolution for GC2016 requesting funding and approval for the construction of a Standard Electronic Edition of the Book of Common Prayer.

So—a lot of interesting discussion will be taking place today. I’ll keep you updated on how things unfold…

Liturgy as Language

I haven’t been online a whole lot since around the beginning of Lent. The computer dying was part of it as was general busy-ness. In any case, I’m trying to get caught up on things, including interesting things that were happening online while I was away.

One of these things was this talk from Fr. Bosco Peters. Now, if you read this blog, you probably also ought to be reading his blog anyway. I don’t always agree with everything that he says or suggests, but he is a good, thoughtful voice on Anglican liturgy grounded in the history and ecumenical aspects of it. (He’s also a Kiwi so it’s interesting to have his perspective on a book greatly beloved but little understood by many American liberal-types…)

The general approach that Fr. Peters takes in this talk should be fairly familiar. I see him operating within the sphere of the post-liberal/Yale School perspective pioneered by Frei and Lindbeck that understands religion generally to be a linguistic-cultural phenomenon into which one is enculturated. (This is in opposition to, among others, a perspective of religion as a body of ideas to which one does or does not give assent.) Fr. Peters sees liturgy as a fundamental language of the Christian culture. I heartily agree and have used this perspective myself in some of my own presentations.

What I find most interesting here is the way that Fr. Peters pushes this perspective/metaphor. Making the logical next step, he gives us some very interesting thoughts about fluency. This is a very intriguing way to think about liturgy and the church, how we reach out to the non/un/de-churched, and also how we think about clergy and leaders within our own church and their facility (or lack thereof) in the liturgy.

Do take some time to read over the presentation or to watch it.

Thoughts on Liturgical Categorization

Introduction

I’ve recently been pondering the ways that we categorize and analyze liturgy. What are the various bits, bobs, and elements that  we can use to make sense of liturgical texts that retain meaning across time? To put a finer point on it, how would we go about creating a taxonomy for liturgical texts that could apply equally well to a 9th century Anglo-Saxon liturgical miscellany and the ’79 Book of Common Prayer? Specifically, can one be created that can be used for the analytic markup of liturgical materials for digital use?

The best way to begin is to not reinvent the wheel. Other, wiser, and better-informed minds than mine have worked around this issue even if the scope was not entirely the same. People who work on manuscripts have already had to do a lot of this work, as have the pioneers who began the work of digitizing the material that’s available on the web in a variety of forms. Whenever we encounter someone who has done both, we know that we’re in the right company! As a result, the best conversation partner for this work is Andrew Hughes, author of the magisterial Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office: A Guide to their Organization and Terminology (MMMO) and the ground-breaking Late Medieval Liturgical Offices (LMLO) digital project which is only partially online through this search resource.

The MMMO presents a set of abbreviations and symbols used both within it and in the LMLO. These are presented and discussed on pages ix-xxv. The two questions we need to answer are these: 1) do his temporal restrictions (the years 1200-1500) invalidate his scheme for this proposed general use that hopes to expand out to include material produced 4 centuries in each direction? 2) to what degree can his material be adopted and where must it be adapted?

I’d suggest, first, that the bones of the schema here can be preserved with the important caveat that this taxonomy is only appropriate to Western liturgies that have their basis in the Latin-speaking tradition. That is, I think it’s helpful and useful as long as we don’t try to apply it to Eastern Orthodox liturgies or various modern protestant liturgical traditions that eschew the historic liturgy. With this caveat in mind, I do believe that there is sufficient continuity within the historic western liturgy that question 1 can be answered satisfactorily.

Moving to the second question, a certain amount of adaptation will be required. While Hughes uses abbreviations that sometimes overlap and must be distinguished by typeface or other methods, abbreviations are no longer necessary in a scheme intended for use within a modern markup situation. Indeed, not only are they not necessary, they’re not desirable either as their use hampers the natural-language legibility of a marked-up document. (That is, you have to refer to a key instead of just looking at the source text and understanding what’s going on…)

Too, as is perfectly appropriate for his project, Hughes uses technical liturgical terms appropriate for the high medieval period. Given the much wider span that we’re looking at, not all of these terms may possess or retain the particular technical definitions they had in Hughes’s span. As a result, while I think most can be used as is, it’s worth considering where we might need to build in tolerances to handle this situation. (This is one I’m holding in reserve—I can’t think of any cases like this at the moment but reserve the right to discover some…)

When I read through Anglican prayer books, I see a number of elements that don’t seem to fit properly within the elements that he offers. In order to maximize meaningful tagging within these documents, we will need to add elements that go outside the scope of the texts Hughes was considering. For instance, an enduring heritage of the 1552 book is lengthy addresses by the presider to the congregation; I don’t recall these in earlier liturgies nearly to the degree that we have them now.

One of the most helpful aspects of Hughes’s scheme is that it offers, by means of several lists, different levels of elements necessary to distinguish between whether you’re talking about a specific section of a book or a service itself or about an event within a given service. This aspect definitely needs to be retained and will be reflected in how we present and order our proposed elements.

Proposals

I envision this categorization scheme at use within the TEI P5 guidelines for xml markup of humanities texts. Thus, the section-level and service-level elements would appear as “type” descriptors within <div> elements; intra-service elements would be noted as types within <seg> elements tied to <interp> and <interpGrp> sections.

Section Level Elements

This level would identify sections within a book and be located within <div> tags. The following list is a modification of Hughes’s List 1e with the inclusion of some items from 1f.

  • Aspersion
  • Common of saints
  • Dedication feast
  • Hymnal
  • Invitatorium
  • Kalendar
  • Ordo
  • Ordinary of the Mass
  • Kyriale
  • Psalter
  • General rubric (as a section rather than a specific direction)
  • Sanctorale
  • Temporale
  • Votives
  • Tonary
  • Prayers (as a collection/grouping of prayers of the same sort)

Service Level Elements

These labels would identify the specific rituals or services being described and would operate at the <div> level. This is a substantial expansion of Hughes’s List 1c.

  •  Office
    • First Vespers
    • Compline
    • Matins
    • Prime
    • Chapter
    • Terve
    • Sext
    • Nones
    • Vespers
    • Morning Prayer
    • Noon Prayer
    • Evening Prayer
    • Lamp Lighting
  • Eucharist
  • Baptism
  • Confirmation
  • Confession
  • Unction
  • Marriage
  • Burial
  • Procession
  • Exorcism
  • Rite (Thinking specifically, of the ’79 BCP, the alternation between Rites I & II is a service-level phenomenon and needs to be captured at that point.)
  • Service (This is a generic catch-all for anything else not covered. Differentiation would appear in a subtype.)

Liturgical Elements

These items would appear within interpretive  <seg> elements. This is a modification of Hughes’s List 1a, List 1b, and 1f

  • antiphon
    • invitatory
    • gospel canticle
    • psalm
  • lesson
    • chapter (a brief, generally one sentence bit from Scripture in an Office)
    • first lesson
    • second lesson
    • prophecy
    • epistle
    • gospel
    • announcement
    • conclusion
  • psalm
    • invitatory
  • canticle
    • invitatory
    • gospel
  • dialogue
    • versicle
    • response
  • intercession
    • petition
    • response
  • litany
    • section
    • petition
    • section response
  • orison (the English term for an oratio—basically any kind of a number of relatively short prayers typically found in early medieval mass-sets and most commonly encountered in Anglican books as collects. However, not all so-called collects fit the formal criteria for collects; preserving “orison” as a general-use term conveys the concept even when the contents fall short)
    • collect
    • secret
    • post-communion
  • sermon
  • hymn
  • anthem
  • canon
  • proper preface
  • consecration (not just of Eucharistic elements but of baptismal water, etc.)
  • distribution (again, could be Eucharistic elements, baptismal water, ashes, etc.)
  • fraction anthem
    • agnus dei
  • creed
  • communion chant
  • gloria
  • doxology
  • gradual
  • introit
  • kyrie
  • offertory chant
  • sanctus
  • tract
  • responsory
    • verse
    • repetenda
    • doxology
  • benediction
  • rubric
  • prayer (this is a generic catch-all when the presider addresses God when none of the above seem to fit.)
  • address (this is a generic catch-all when the presider speaks to the people and nothing above seems suitable.)
  • response (this is the generic catch-all when the people speak and nothing above seems suitable.)

Concluding Thoughts

I believe this lays out a useful initial plan for liturgical tagging. That having been said, I’ve done enough liturgical research and enough coding to know that this represents only a tentative beginning. As well defined as things seem to be at the beginning, the true usefulness of the scheme is revealed in the coding itself. As a result, this provides a framework. Now some coding actually needs to be attempted to determined where this works, where it fails, and where the framework needs to be reconceived.

Modern Day Sarum Prymer

I’ve idly considered for some time now producing a usable version of the prymers that I’ve been studying. I do intend to do a lot more with them in my research—they’re fascinating subjects on their own terms as examples of biblical interpretation at work in liturgy and popular devotion as well as important precursors to the Books of Common Prayer. While I’ve put a few scripts together and have done some devotional offices allied with the breviary (for which I need to create a landing page with links), I haven’t done the full-on work due to so many other balls in the air.

However—my procrastination has not been in vain! While I have slept, others have labored!

Fr. Michael Shirk, a priest of the Independent Catholic Christian Church, is a friend of the blog and frequent correspondent. He’s also done yeoman’s work in pulling together liturgical materials for the publishing arm, the Rene Vilatte Press.

Michael’s latest labor is, in fact, a Sarum Prymer!

It contains:

  • The Kalendar
  • Hours of the BVM
  • Hours of the Cross
  • Memorials (with chant notation for the primary common memories)
  • The Gradual Psalms
  • The Litany (with chant notation)
  • The Penitential Psalms
  • The Passion
  • Psalms of the Passion
  • Offices of the Dead (with chant notation)
  • Prayers–a lot of prayers including the classic Marian “O intemerata” and “Obsecro te”, the original XV Oos of St. Bridget and many, many others

It’s all in traditional Coverdale English and, when feasible, many of the prayers have been adapted from Anglican prayer book materials to be consonant with the originals. And that’s one of the things I love about this project—Michael has put in the hard work to make sure that it is faithful not only to the original Sarum prymer tradition but that it also partakes of the spirit of the Anglican continuations and translations within that tradition. The postcript identifying the works he used and consulted is an excellent hand-list of the the best current resources and classic Anglican adaptations of this body of material. We also corresponded several times about it, and he graciously asked me to write the foreword. This is what I said:

The great Anglican spiritual writer Martin Thornton once wrote a profoundly true passage about the chief hallmark of Christian catholicity. While we may argue over interpretation of the Scriptures, the sacraments, the creeds, the finer points of apostolic succession and such, the purest and simplest test of a catholic and orthodox faith classically understood is the pattern of its spirituality: “the common Office (opus dei) supporting private prayer (orationes peculiares) both of which are allied to, and consummated by, the Mass” (Thorton, English Spirituality, 76). In the churches that keep this pattern of spirituality, the rites of the Office and Mass are fixed within the authorized books—whether those be missals and breviaries or the Books of Common Prayer of the Anglican traditions. However, all too often clergy and laity alike are left to their own devices when it comes to the practice of private prayer. While the authorized books serve as models and tutors of prayer, while the psalms remain the pedagogues of prayer par excellence, the faithful need resources for guidance, direction, and an informed understanding of how their private, individual prayers join the prayer of the Church Universal.

We now have just such a resource. In this volume, Fr. Michael Shirk has done a great service to all who seek to join themselves to the Church’s rule of prayer. In his instruction on prayer he offers useful, practical, comments about three principle means of praying; the body of the work, however, is the Sarum prymer and associated devotions. This work has been carefully researched and skillfully connected with temporally later but spiritually complementary Anglican materials which were selected for their linguistic excellence rather than any alteration to the theology of the original. It contains that rare blend of fidelity to the historical tradition and pastoral sensitivity to the modern context. Fr. Shirk’s effort enables us to join the great stream of lay devotion that undergirds the English spiritual tradition.

As the great Victorian liturgist Edmund Bishop demonstrated, the materials that would appear in the books of hours and prymers emerged as additional devotions added in and around the Office within early medieval monastic houses. As literacy and devotion grew among the laity, they desired to imitate monastic practice but within a form suitable to their active lives. Thus the little hours—devotional cycles modeled on the structure of the breviary hours but with fewer and shorter elements and minimally altered by the seasons and saints’ days—were the ideal choice. By the late medieval period, the Books of Hours were the chief devotional aid for the literate. Even the illiterate were edified by them as well as their frequent illustrations depicted the central scenes of the life and passion of Christ. Meditation upon both the texts and images of these books was a central practice of the anchorite mothers of the medieval church and the writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (to name just two) are the fruits of these devotions.

Four practices in particular represent the spiritual centers of gravity of the Sarum prymer: the Hours of the BVM, the Hours of the Cross, the Litany, and the Office of the Dead. While medieval Books of Hours and the English-language or bilingual Latin-English prymers which developed from them often incorporated a range of different elements, these four elements were virtually universal. In them, personal devotion and the Church’s theology are united.

The Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary are an extended mediation upon the mystery of the Incarnation. The honors afford to the Virgin approach from several different directions the many paradoxes inherent in the Incarnation—a virgin giving birth, the Lord who spans heaven and earth enclosed in a womb, a creature bringing forth from her body that body’s Creator.  The images that historically accompanied the hours progressed through the story of Christ through the lens of his mother: the Annunciation, the journey to Bethlehem, the Nativity, the Presentation in the Temple, etc. As we pray through this devotion, the theological prescriptions of the Chalcedonian formulation are translated into the relationships between mother and Son.

The Hours of the Cross—each hour frequently prayed immediately after the associated hour of the BVM—are a constant reminder of the mystery of Redemption.  As the Hours of the BVM move through the life of Christ, the Hours of the Cross move through the events of the Passion. The hymn of each hour associates the time of day with the sufferings of Christ at that same hour.

The Litany is the devotion that explores the scope and directly participates within the mission of the Church. An extended sequence of alternating prayer that works equally well with others or alone, the Litany begins by calling to mind—through requests for intercession—the scope and extent of the Church; the Church at prayer with us is not restricted to the bodies we see in our immediate vicinity but consists of all those baptized into the mystery of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and is preeminently figured by those worthies who have demonstrated their excellence in the imitation of Christ and unity with his divine life. Thus we name the saints and we call to mind the great divisions of the Church Triumphant. Now, with the Church arrayed around us, we undertake the Church’s great work of intercession, praying for ourselves, for the Church, and for the whole world.

The Office of the Dead and related devotions originally tapped into the deep-set late medieval concerns of dying unprepared and the fates of the souls in purgatory. While these concerns no longer have the hold on the popular consciousness that they once did, these Offices continue to play an important role within the devotional life of the Church. In a society that attempts to sanitize death, hiding it from sight and mind (yet simultaneously glorifying casual violence in its entertainment), the Office of the Dead is a stark reminder of the inevitability of death. It oscillates between the pains of death and the promise of redemption, between human anxiety and divine consolation.

For generations, these devotions have fed the English spiritual tradition. Thanks to the efforts of Fr. Shirk, they have been given a new life in our time. May they enrich your devotion, bless your practice, and lead you deeper into the mysteries of Christ.

So—while you’re waiting for the Saint Augustine’s Prayer Book revision to come out, and if you’re concerned at all that it will be too “modernized,” this is a truly classic supplement that deserves a space on your bookshelf! Here’s the link again:  a Sarum Prymer (and no, I don’t get a kick-back from this one). I’m looking forward to using mine quite a bit this Lent.

A word on a digital edition… Due to the font that Michael used to type-set the volume, it can’t be released in a PDF format so there is currently no digital copy. If there is sufficient interest, ways might be found to do an e-book version, though.

SCLM: Initial Meeting

So—I’ve now had experienced my first meeting of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music. I’ve been processing it now, both figuratively and literally. That is, I was appointed secretary so I’ve been literally processing the meeting by compiling my notes into a coherent set of minutes.

It’s an interesting group. On the balance, it’s very much weighted to the “liturgy” side rather than the “music” side. Of the members gathered, only two are full-time church musicians—there is a third who was unable to join us this time. Of course, two of the priests are quite musical as well and others of us have interests in the music area. Nevertheless, out of an appointed group of 12 that’s not too many. Musically, their interest and passion is in looking outside of the box (particularly the box represented by the ’82 hymnal) and gathering resources for world music.

On the liturgical side of things, I got only a slight sense of where people were. Clearly there are a range of views represented—as is proper—and, not surprisingly, I find myself on the more conservative side of the represented spectrum. Obviously, I don’t know how things were in the past, but I don’t think that the Commission in its current configuration can be accurately described as being united behind any one particular agenda.

Most of what we did was business stuff. We elected officers, hashed out priorities and budget requests, and tried to figure out meeting times. (And trust me, working out meeting times among 18 very full schedules is not an easy task!) Needless to say, our main priorities are those directed to us by General Convention. The four big areas that will require and demand most of our attention this triennium are 1) feedback and continued theological work on the rite for same-sex blessings, 2) work on resourcing congregational song, 3) continued work on Holy Women, Holy Men, and 4) revision of the Book of Occasional Services and materials heading into EOW (like the liturgies on the adoption of children and the creation materials). Other items that are not as front-and-center (but on which we still hope to get good work done) include material for combating Christian anti-Judaism particularly with reference to interpreting lectionary texts, criteria for acceptable biblical translations, and the electronic publication of resources.

While I’ll be involved with all of these, I signed up to work specifically on HWHM, Christian anti-Judaism, and electronic publication. While the working groups have been identified, the heads of the groups have not.

Clearly lots went on and I have thoughts and opinions on the meeting for which this is not an appropriate forum. I do want to say a little about meeting people. I’m really glad that it was a joint meeting gathering a whole lot of people into one group.  I had the opportunity to meet in person many whose names have become very familiar to me over the past six or so years. I got to meet Jim Naughton in the flesh for the very first time! The Presiding Bishop addressed us and I did pass her in the hall once—nothing to report there. Gay Jennings, on the other hand, I did cross paths with several times. She comes across as a very straight-shooter and as being quite grounded; I liked what I saw of her. In passing, I met Marshall Scott, Susan Snook, reconnected with Sam Candler, and met a number of readers. I enjoyed meeting my whole group; we’re an interesting lot but I think we’ll work well together. In particular, I got to meet and share meals with two people I’ve been wanting to meet for some time—Dr. Louis Weil, liturgy professor at CDSP, and Gregory Howe, custodian of the prayer book.  Here we are in a small camera phone pic: (from left to right—Louis Weil, Gregory Howe, and me)

 

One thing that I noticed overall across all of the many folks gathered and which I’ll probably write about further was a relative dearth of young laypeople. Liza Anderson and I were noting that so many of the younger folks there were ordained. It made me wonder if we, as a church, have succumbed to the notion that the clerical estate is the proper state for anyone that interested in church. Alternately, it underscores the difficulties that we laypeople face in participating in leadership: clergy can either get time off to travel to meetings like this or they’re on the clock while doing it. Me—it’s vacation time from work that then takes away from what’s available to spend with my wife and kids. (And I’m just glad I’m not an hourly employee anymore or it would mean lost wages as well!) At this point I have no point—I’m just putting out an observation that I hope to reflect on at leisure.

One last thing which falls under “business”… Regarding Holy Women, Holy Men, I would like to ask for your help. I’ve expressed my own opinions on the project, its overall shape, and some of its specifics both here and elsewhere. The resolution voted on at Convention (A051) directs its third resolve thus: “that the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music continue to seek responses from the wider Church during the coming triennium.”

I’m looking for your response here.

What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? What do you find problematic about it? Where do you see it as an improvement over Lesser Feasts & Fasts?

Quick Note on the Christmas Proclamation

I have a post to post in the next day or two on my initial meeting with the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music and my thoughts coming out of that. In the meantime, a topic has popped up on the Society of Catholic Priests list that might be edifying beyond that group.

A question was asked about the Christmas Proclamation—what kind of beast is it, what is to be done with it, and where is the best place and time to use it?

Here’s my take…

This proclamation was originally part of the martyrology. In the intentional liturgical communities of the medieval period—monastic establishments, priories, cathedrals, etc—the office of Chapter functioned both as a quasi-business meeting and a liturgical office. One of the components was the reading of the martyrology which informed those present of the saints who would be celebrated on the coming liturgical day. Outside of these environments (and even there over time) it was collapsed into the Office of Prime. So—this was the proclamation’s original habitat. It’s properly an Office “thing” rather than a Mass “thing.” Hence, you’ll not find it in the missals.

What do we do with it? I’m personally in favor of re-purposing good liturgical material as long as it’s done within the scope of prayer book theology and does not do violence to the rite. As was noted, the classical form of this is based on a faulty understanding of biblical dating and geological science. While I appreciate the intention and poetry of the original form, it ties us liturgically to a stance on the Bible and science that we just don’t believe. The version put out by the US Council of Catholic Bishops adheres much better to our own theology and biblical understanding.  The St Meinrad version mentioned by Fr. Steve Rice is different but takes the same factors into account: http://www.saintmeinradmusic.org/downloads/ChristmasProclamation.pdf

The notes in the bishops’ version suggest putting the proclamation after the initial greeting. That’s one option. I think a better option is to include it with any para-liturgical devotions before the service. For instance, a common custom is a Christmas carol hymn-sing before the Midnight Mass concluding with a blessing/censing of the creche—this would fit in perfectly and naturally at that point.

Fr. Tobias Haller recommended that his usual practice was to sing it (or have it sung by the deacon if you have a deacon who can sing) at the door before the processional hymn which is an excellent place for it as well.

Heading Out

I’m on my way to my first meeting of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music since my appointment. I’ll know a lot more about the scope of the appointment this time next week! I’m not going to speculate on what I will or won’t be able to blog about. However, I do know that my computer access will be quite limited and the breviary will have to live without me the next few days.

More later…

Books of Hours: Images I

After having discussed the texts of the Books of Hours, we’ll now turn to the images. Ironically, most people who study the Books of Hours are more interested in this facet than in the texts themselves as most students are going after the art-history angle rather than late medieval devotion. (Go figure!)

There are several different ways to lay this topic out and to work through it. At the moment I’m relying mostly on the art-historical data from Harthan (totally worth picking up if you’re interested at all either in the topic or in pretty medieval pictures…) cross-referenced with images from a variety of the digitized Books of Hours linked to in a previous post.

First, we’ll take a look at major kinds of images and where they appear on the page, then (likely in a subsequent post), we’ll take a look at the various possible contents of these images. Needless to say, our focus here will be primarily on the deluxe manuscript Books of Hours. That’s not to say or imply that there weren’t images in the printed Books of Hours and prymers however—there were, and I do hope to touch on those but exactly how and when that’ll happen, I can’t say.

In his section on “Decoration,” Harthan states, “The varying stress laid at various times on decoration and illustration, the problems of reconciling the inventive fantasy of the artist with the demands of the text, and the several solutions adopted for combining the separate units of text, initial, miniature and border into a decorative ensemble, represent book illumination considered as an art form” (Harthan, Books of Hours, 19). His identification here of four fundamental units on the page: 1) text, 2) initial, 3) miniature, and 4) border is quite important. Unfortunately, he leaves one of these out as he begins his explication of the illuminated elements: “The basic elements in illumination are the initial, the miniature and the border” (Harthan, Books of Hours, 19-20). While he’s correct that most of the text is not technically illuminated, we’ll keep an eye on it as we go…

So, before looking more at Harthan, let me throw up an image that contain all three (four) elements. Here we have a page from the beginning of Matins of the BVM from the British Library’s fifteenth-century Royal MS 2 A XVIII (f. 25r):

We have the picture of the Annunciation above the text. That’s the miniature. We have the big “D” with a woman with her own Book of Hours looking up at the scene. (Chances are this is the person for whom the book was commissioned). That’s an initial—but so are the smaller ones done in blue, red, and gold sprinkled down the page. We have an outline that bounds the text, containing lots of flowery stuff  between the boundary and the page; that’s the border. Text-wise, notice that we have a rubric—the text in red—and a fine, clear, easy-to-read Gothic text containing the aforementioned smaller initials.

In manuscript terms, “miniature” doesn’t technically refer to size but to the practice of painting; the Latin miniare means to paint with vermillion. Basically, it’s any large free-standing picture whether bordered or not. In the later books we see this become full page illustrations as in this great one standing before Sext from Bibliotheque nationale, Latin 1173:

 

Miniatures are miniatures and there’s not a lot to say about them until we start discussing content. Next up are the initials.

There are two fundamental types of initials in Books of Hours (as in other medieval manuscripts), decorative and historiated. Decorative are those initials that are decorated and embellished with backgrounds and various kinds of pen-strokes; historiated means that there is an image inside of it. In Books of Hours whether you’ll see one or the other tend not to be an either/or situation but a both/and. Thus, on the page with the Annunciation on it, we have a large historiated initial (with the woman in it), and a number of smaller decorative initials. Here’s another example from an earlier period, coming from Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, 288 (f. 17r) from the first quarter of the 14th century:

Again—a both/and; we have a historiated initial of Jesus with bloody sweat in the Garden, then a number of decorated initials. Note the alternation of colors in the decorative initials. The most typical scheme is blue and red but I’ve seen gold or green instead of red in some and, occasionally, a three color alternation with blue, red, and gold. These denote sense-breaks and indicate when different elements begin. As you know, the Offices were originally communal affairs with alternation between individuals and groups or between two parts of a choir. The colors provide indications of hen each “part” changes, but does not assume either private or public use. We know from contemporary writings, however, that people (often women) would use their books of hours in pairs with a companion; the colors would give an indication as to when one person was to stop and the other start.

On the text, note that we have three different kinds of visual cues in the text-block: We have a “regular” text for the bulk of the material, we have rubrics (those in red) identifying the parts of the Office, but then we also have a “lesser” text identified by the smaller writing used for the invitatory antiphon. Directly after the rubric “Invitatorium” is the text “Regem xpm crucifixu: venite adoremus [the last word appears just under the “venite,” at the right ogf the new line rather than the left]” in a smaller font than the surrounding text. This becomes visually important as we move down the page because we will consistently be able to identify the antiphon even when it’s not marked because it will remain visually smaller as we see here when the second half of the antiphon is repeated after the blue decorative initial “V” (that does look sort of like a “U” if you’re not used to this script):

 

As for borders, they are often visually outgrowths from initials. For instance, if you look at the images above, you’ll see that the line in the left border of the second picture begins as a line coming off the historiated initial in the first. Citing Harthan:

Originally introduced to enclose the miniature and separate it from the text, the rectangular frame-border in Anglo-Saxon and Romanesque manuscripts (for example, in the English Winchester School of illumination) was often enlarged to form wide panels around the miniature, which were filled with a variety of closely packed acanthus ornaments or an interlace of foliage with climbing beasts and human figures. Towards the end of the Middle Ages, in the Gothic period of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, a second type of border appeared with irregular edges. Beginning as a tail-like extension of the initial into the margin, it developed into the prolific ivy- or vine-leaf border composed of curling tendrils from which sprouted tiny leaves picked out in gold. The ivy-leaf border was to become one of the most characteristic decorative features of northern Books of Hours in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. (Harthan, Books of Hours, 20)

He describes how images started escaping their initials and how miniatures would likewise escape their borders, and around 1420 would become full-fledged paintings with perspective, movement, etc. as opposed to the more cartoon-like look that we saw in the image of Jesus in the garden…

Parallel with the miniature, the borders are undergoing a similar evolution. At first, the blank margins of the text are filled only sparsely by the tail-like extension of initials from which sprout the first shoots of vine- or ivy-leaf ornament. But when these ‘tails’ extend to the corners they throw out cusped bars at right angles which provide platforms to support drolleries, grotesque figures, monsters, birds, and animals. Playful secular imagery of this kind is sometimes said, on not very clear grounds, to indicate the artists’ emancipation from clerical control. It derives more immediately from the natural inventiveness of artists and from the willingness of their clients to be diverted from their religious texts during long services in church or periods of private devotion; Books of Hours were taken to church as well as read at home. In the late fourteenth century the emphatic ‘bar borders’ supporting drolleries and little human figures gradually give way to lighter and more graceful ivy-leaf designs which now completely frame the miniature and text with a dense but delicate mass of foliated scrolls or rinceaux. (Harthan, Books of Hours, 21)

Alright—enough citing…

The Little Hours of John de Berry (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, ms. lat. 18014) is a delightful book that shows a wide variety of decorations including most everything talked about here. What Harthan can’t always give a sense of is the balance of illustration. Some pages get lavish attention artistically; in others it’s quite scant. However, this set of hours demonstrates how decoration on a variety of levels was deployed within the same text and how beautiful results were achieved on all levels.

First, a page virtually devoid of decoration:

We have vernacular French prayers with just a couple of decorated initials and no border at all. The regularity of the text and punctuations of color make it work.

Now, decorative initials moving towards a pseudo-border in Psalm 8:

or this one:

 

Then there’s the full-on ivy-leaf border of which Harthan speaks deployed at the start of the Lauds of the BVM:

That’s enough for now—more on the content later.

And this is why I’ve always said that the breviary doesn’t live up to my dreams of what a well-crafted electronic text could live up to…

 

 

 

 

Books of Hours: Contents

Medieval Books of Hours were manuscript devotional texts. The two most significant words here are “manuscript” and “devotional”; both of them remind us that the contents of these books were largely based around the desires of the people who commissioned them or the sense of the market by those who produced them. Therefore, in considering both the Books of Hours and the prymers that developed from them, we need to gain a sense of what elements were typical, and what sort of devotional material was expected.

One of the resources that will help us get a sense of this terrain is the landmark study of the Books of Hours conducted by Abbe Leroquais, Les livres d’Heures. Manuscrits de la bibliothèque nationale in three volumes. Not having this readily to hand (or the thousand or so bucks on hand to pick it up off the used market), however, I rely on John Harthan’s work, The Book of Hours, for Leroquais’s classifications of contents:

The Abbe Leroquais established a basic classification of the contents of Books of Hours. Three elements are distinguished: essential, secondary, and accessory texts. The essential texts are those extracted from the Breviary: the Calendar, the Little Office or Hours of the Virgin, the Penitential Psalms, the Litany, the Office of the Dead, and the Suffrages of the Saints. Like the Breviary, the Book of Hours in its turn attracted further texts which extended its devotional scope as well as increasing the variety of its contents.

These secondary texts comprise the Sequences, which are the passages from the four Gospels in which the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John describe the coming of Christ; the account of the Passion given in the Gospel of St John; two special prayers to the Virgin which enjoyed great popularity, the Obsecro te (‘I implore thee’) and O intemerata (‘O matchless one’); a number of shorter alternative Offices, the Hours of the Cross, of the Holy Spirit and (less often) of the Holy Trinity; the Fifteen Joys of the Virgin; and the Seven Requests to the Saviour.

Even this substantial addition was not enough to satisfy the yearning for devotion among the laity. It was increased by Leroquais’ third element, the accessory texts. These comprise more extracts from the Psalter, and miscellaneous prayers. The Fifteen Gradual Psalms (also present in the Breviary in this form) and the Psalter of St Jerome represent a further appropriation of the inexhaustible riches of psalmody. The Gradual Psalms comprise numbers 119-33 [Vulgate numbering], the short and beautiful psalms sometimes considered to be those recited by Jewish pilgrims ‘going up’ (gradus, a step) to Jerusalem. The Psalter of St Jerome is an anthology of 183 verses from the Psalms compiled for the use of the sick by an unknown writer but traditionally associated with St Jerome, the translator of the Bible into Latin and author of three versions of the Psalms. The miscellaneous prayers were of widely diverse character. Many were of venerable antiquity, going back to the prayer books (libelli precum) of Carolingian times. Most were anonymous, but some were attributed to major saints or Fathers of the Church to give them status and perhaps greater efficacy.

The arrangement of a ‘typical’ Book of Hours is given below. Only the essential and secondary texts are included. It must always be remembered that no two manuscript Books of Hours are exactly alike. Except for the Calendar at the beginning, the order of the seperate parts was never fixed, and the number of texts included could vary as much as their position in the Book.

  1. Calendar
  2. Sequences of the Gospels
  3. The prayer Obsecro te
  4. The prayer O intemerata
  5. Hours of the Virgin
  6. Hours of the Cross
  7. Hours of the Holy Spirit
  8. Penitential Psalms
  9. Litany
  10. Office of the Dead
  11. Suffrages of the Saints

(Harthan, The Book of Hours, 14-5)

As a practicing medievalist without access to the text of Leroquais, I immediately grant his specific grouping of elements a conditional status accounting for time and place. Even the most cursory glance through the holdings of the BN (which, to be fair, is all I’ve given it…) notes that there appears to be a predominance of Books of Hours from the Diocese of Rouen. We will thus note but bracket the possibility that Leroquais’ assessment of contents might reflect local use and may differ from English norms—either Sarum or York.

Duffy in his Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers is wisely reticent on the exact contents of the French and English books that he surveys, remarking on the development of the form “All the earliest books contain the Little Hours of the Virgin, but their consistency ends” (Duffy, Hours, 10). In speaking of the 15th century hours and their proliferation with the advent of printing he allows himself to become a bit more specific and, indeed, produces a list that accords well with the observations of Leroquais:

All these people, then, high and low, aristocratic and plebeian, were using the same book. That book contained a standardised selection of psalms, antiphons, hymns and prayers arranged for recitation in honour of Mary at each of the eight monastic divisions or hours of the day. To these ‘hours’ of the Virgin were added the Office for the Dead or Placebo et Dirige (Vespers, Matins, and Lauds for the dead), the short Hours of the Cross, which in books for the English market were usually inserted between the Hours of the Virgin, the long Psalm 118 (119) called the Commendation of the soul, the seven Penitential Psalms and the Litany of the Saints, the fifteen Gradual Psalms, and a series of individual ‘suffrages’ or short prayers to saints, especially to the Virgin Mary. These made up the core contents of the Book of Hours, which by the later fifteenth century had expanded to become a compendium of popular devotions. By then most included also a series of devotions (with accompanying illustrations ) to the Trinity, the Wounds, the Passion and the Veronica or Holy Face of Jesus, prayers to the Virgin such as the popular prayers beginning Obsecro Te and O Intemerata, hymns to and about Mary, such as the well-known poem on the Passion, the Stabat Mater, or the Marian hymn against the plague Stella Coeli extirpavit. Many also included eucharistic devotions like the Anima Christi (‘Soul of Christ, sanctify me, Body of Christ, save me…’), designed to be recited at Mass, and almost all contained the shortened version of the Psalter known as St Jerome’s Psalter, which included almost 200 verses from the psalms including the whole of Psalm 50 (51), the Miserere, and which normally carried a prefatory legend which guaranteed the user protection against the devil and untimely death (Duffy, Hours, 28).

Note that Duffy includes the Commendation among the standard contents, agreeing (against Leroquais’ essentials) with what I’ve seen in the English sources.

We gain an even clearer picture of the types and variety of what Leroquais dubs secondary and accessory materials when we look at the survey in Hoskins’ introduction on English Books of Hours:

Six primers of the thirteenth century which are known to exist show that taking one book with another the Primer uniformly contained (a) A Kalendar, (b) The Hours of the Virgin from Purification to Advent, (c) The seven penitential psalms, (d) The Litany of the Saints, (e) The Office for the dead, (f) The Psalms of commendation, (g) the fifteen or gradual Psalms, and (h) The prayers of St. Bridget commonly called the 15 Oes; while one Primer or another has, “Hore de S. Trinitate,” “Hore de passione,” or, “Heures de Nun Jesu,” “Hore de S. Johanne Baptista,” “Hore de S. Katherina,” “Hore de S. Spiritu,” Rubrics in French, and pictures with prayers on the sacred mysteries (Hoskins, Horae, xi).

The list gets even more interesting and diverse as we go later and make the language jump into English:

The contents of thirteen Primers in English of the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries which are known to exist are the Hours of the Virgin from Purification to Advent with the Hours of the Cross, a Kalendar, the Seven penitential psalms, the Fifteen or Gradual psalms, the Litany, the Office of the dead, the Psalms of commendation, devotions to the Virgin, the psalm De profundis, Psalms of the passion, A Christian man’s confession, Misereatur, Pater Noster, Ave Maria, Credo, the Ten commandments, Six manners of conscience, Seven deadly sins, Five witts outward and inward, Seven works of mercy bodily and ghostly, Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, Seven words, Sixteen properties of charity; together with instructions on many of the above subjects, and the words of Paul (Hoskins, Horae, xiv).

My sense is that a fuller investigation will prove and make explicit what seems nascent here: the Latin books—and Latin texts within mixed-language books—consist primarily of the standardized liturgical devotional material; the shift into vernaculars (notably French and English for the scope of my curiosity) introduces not only additional devotional material but a greater influx of catechetical contents.