Sarum Candlemas

The medieval Church had its shortcomings in administration, leadership, and theological imagination, but it made up for it in the perfection of the Latin liturgy and the saints it inspired.

A happy feast to all!

Non Nobis, Domine, Sed Nomini Tuo....

The name of Jesus has been revered throughout the history of the Church back to the days of the Old Testament, when the Jews would substitute Adonai ("Lord" or "Master") for the name God gave for Himself to Moses, Yahweh ("I am Who I am"). The name of the God Who called Himself the One Who simply is, Who is being itself, was only invoked by the high priest once a year, on the Day of Atonement. The O antiphons sung at the Magnificat on last seven days of Advent revive the Old Testament names of God in anticipation of the birth of the Son of God and His naming an octave of days later. Parents name their children symbolically, honoring either a person from the past or steering the newborn toward what the mother and father desire them to be. With God this does not suffice. In the case of God, His name reflects Who He is, the One Who is, the Lord of all.

The name of Jesus was not a new one to the Jews or Christians of the first century. Jesus etymologically derives from Yeshua, commonly Joshua today. Ye-shua literally translates as "Yahweh is salvation" and was the name of Moses's companion who led the victorious Israelite army in the conquest of Canaan. Honoring their ancestor, Yeshua was one of the most popular male names in the Second Temple period. The first Yeshua fulfilled the promise of God to deliver the Israelites from the land of bondage to a new place of freedom. The second Yeshua, as God made man, would deliver all Who believe in Him from the bondage of death. After the Resurrection and descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost believers veered away from naming their children after Old Testament figures in favor of martyrs of the New Testament, although Elias remained popular in Greek Christianity. Jesus would cease to be a called name; instead it would become a revered invocation of God Himself.

Lev Gillet observes that the Biblical expression "at the name of Jesus" comes to us weakly in English from weak Latin, in nomine Iesu. The presumably original Greek text bears a stronger meaning, connoting "by the means", "by the command", or "by the authority" of Jesus. The pre-Nicene Fathers did not theologize the name, but they did follow the tradition of invoking it in times of distress, eventually normalizing its liturgical usage (per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum....). 

The name of Jesus eventually became a prayer unto its own. Latin spirituality is difficult to define before the explosion of Benedictine monasticism, though it was presumably liturgical more than personal like the monastic tradition which sprung from it. St. Augustine's small collective may have anticipated communal living and prayer on a more voluntary, less municipal level, but the common liturgical element remained. Eastern spirituality, at least as far as extant information allows us to know, possessed a more personal element. It is here that the "Jesus prayer" originated. 

The "Jesus prayer" has become the focus of Greek spirituality. "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy of me [a sinner]" is prayed by Athonites, but also by laymen of the Constantinopolitan tradition, non-Chalcedonians, Latin monks, and the odd Protestant. The prayer did not reach its current form until the Hesychast ascendance in the Palaiologan dynasty, the last ruling family before the fall of Byzantine Empire, when Orthodox tradition ossified more or less in its current form. The Jesus prayer is a concatenation of two separate prayers used in the first millennium, one by the monks of Sinai and the other by the faithful of Constantinople. The monks of Sinai plainly uttered the name "Jesus" as a simple prayer to remind the one saying it of Christ's personal presence. Contrary to later Athonite thought, the Sinaites believed psalms and the name of Jesus were the only spiritual refuges for those not strong enough to confront their sins directly. St. John Climacus confirmed this tradition in his Ladder (28). The second piece of the prayer was Kyrie eleison, a favored ejaculatory prayer of the monks and laity of Constantinople. The merger of these prayers resulted in our modern day Jesus prayer, popularized by the Hesychast tradition of St. Gregory Palamas.

St. Gregory Palamas did not popularize the Jesus prayer, nor did his proximate followers. In contesting Barlaam's claim that God was not Himself knowable, the Hesychasts found in the Jesus prayer the most perfect place to meet Christ God in His un-created energy, the "light of Tabor." It was in this context that Palamas defended the prayer and in which his later followers advocated its central place in Greek spiritual life. Much like how the Council of Trent and the Counter-Reformation religious orders coagulated the once fluid and vivacious Roman Church, the disaster of 1453, the dissemination of the Greek tradition to the Slavs, the expansion of Athonite monasticism, and the publication of the Philokalia stiffened a once dynamic Byzantine tradition. The Jesus prayer dominated Athos and its descending spiritual houses. Use of the Jesus prayer can substitute for part or all of the Greek Office: 500 times for Vespers or Mattins, 200 for Compline, 700 for the Typika. It should be noted that most non-Athonite communities do not see the name of Jesus as a substitute for the liturgy.

While the name of Jesus did not become its own prayer in the Latin Church, it did continue to be invoked in prayer and as an object of reverence. The Sarum rite has the feast of the "Name of Jesus" on August 7th. Compostela celebrated the feast on January 8th and Liege on January 31st, the Franciscans and Dominicans kept it on sequential January days. Innocent XIII inserted the feast into the Roman rite for the second Sunday after Epiphany, where it is given in my altar Missal. St. Pius X relocated the feast to the Sunday between the Circumcision and Epiphany, displacing the octave days of the comites Christi. Paul VI abolished the feast in promulgating the new kalendar in 1969/1970. The Roman Mass found in the post-Tridentine Missals is remarkably similar to that given in the Sarum books, sharing the Introit and Epistle, but differing in the Gospel (Sarum gives the Angel's relation of the name to Mary while Roman repeats the Circumcision pericope) and orations. While the Roman rite prays:

"O God, You Who appointed Your only-begotten Son to be the Savior of the human race, and commanded that He be called Jesus, mercifully grant that we may enjoy in heaven the vision of Him Whose holy Name we venerate on earth"

Sarum asks:

"O God, Who has caused the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Only Begotten Son, to be loved with the greatest affection by Your faithful, and to be terrible and fearful to evil spirits, mercifully grant that all who devoutly reverence this Name of Jesus on earth may have part in the sweetness of holy consolations in this present life, and in the world to come may attain unto the fullness of joy and eternal praise."

This snippet of the Sarum sequence, given below, highlights the contrast between the post-Tridentine and Norman interpretation of the Name.

The newer Roman feast sadly neglects the historic emphasis on the personal nature of name, that the faithful can call upon "Jesus for our friend" and ask Him to repel all that may come to harm us. The odd Roman Mass instead centers on the fact that the recently born child was given a name, making the feast redundant.

We call Him the Lord, God Almighty, and Our Redeemer. Perhaps in understandable retraction from protestants haphazardly tossing around the name of the Son of God we have reverted to the Old Testament fear of uttering the name of God. This need not be. Due to Him is all reverence in worship, but on our knees we can address Him as a person to be known and kept in company, that He may forgive our sins and we may give glory to His name.

Non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam....

Sarum Special: Christmas Eve

source: http://www.salisburyhospicecharity.org.uk/

An Englishman named Charles Dickens invented Christmas as we now know it, a season of general goodwill and aimless gift-giving that calls for us to put aside our grievances for 24 hours. It has little to do with the Incarnation of God on earth. No where in Dickens' 60 page novella A Christmas Carol do the words God, Jesus, or Nativity appear, nor is there mention of any traditional hymns. There is, however, plenteous contemning of greed, egocentrism, the primitive welfare state, and parsimony. Five centuries before Ebeneezer Scrooge put aside his daily cares and converted his heart to Bob Cratchit Englishmen put aside their daily cares and converted their hearts to the Lord in anticipation of His Nativity.

If December 24 fell on a Saturday, the Church of Sarum transferred the Ember days to the third week of Advent. If it fell on a Sunday then Mattins of Sunday was sung until the third nocturne, at which point the Office of the day began with the psalms and readings of Christmas Eve; the Sunday Mass would be sung in chapter and the Vigil Mass sung in choir at the main altar of the cathedral.

The Mattins Gospel is the same as in the Roman rite, however Sarum favors the writings of Origen over St. Jerome. In Origen we see the beginning of the Church's theology of the Incarnation and Mary's motherhood using phrases that would be canonized at Ephesus in 431:

"Why was it necessary that Mary the mother of Jesus should be espoused to Joseph : except in order that by him this Holy One would be concealed from the Devil, and that the spiteful one by trickery should contrive no vengeance against the betrothed virgin ? Or for this reason was she betrothed to Joseph : that Joseph would be seen to bear the care of the newborn child and even of Mary herself : whether going into Egypt or returning once more from thence. For that reason she was espoused to Joseph : yet not joined in wedlock. Of his mother one saith, Mother immaculate, mother incorrupt, mother untouched. His mother. Whose is his ? The mother of God, of the Only Begotten, of the Lord, and of the King of all men : of the Creator and Maker of all things. He which in heaven is without a mother : and in earth is without a father. Of himself which in heaven according to divinity is in the nature of the Father : and in earth according to the assuming of a body is in the nature of the mother. O great grace of admiration, O indescribable sweetness, O ineffable and great sacrament. Herself a virgin, herself likewise mother of the Lord, herself the giver of birth, herself his handmaiden and his fashioner, herself which gave birth."

Origen likens Mary's maternity to the miracles of the Old Covenant which preserved the pure from ordinary patterns of corruptions in order to effect a more providential end. In previous times God kept the bush on Sinai to manifest His Law. Now he preserves an unblemished maiden so that He may manifest His Incarnation, remaining both God and Man:

"Who hath ever heard such, who hath seen such greatness ? Who could have thought of this : that a virgin would be a mother, an untouched would beget, and that a virgin hath remained and yet hath given birth ? Just as indeed formerly a bush was seen to be burning and the fire did not touch it, and as three boys were kept shut up in the furnace : and yet the fire did not hurt them, nor was the odour of the fumes upon them : or just as when Daniel was shut up within the lion’s den : while the doors were shut a meal was brought to him by Habakkuk : and thus this holy Virgin hath brought forth the Lord : but she hath remained untouched. A mother hath produced : but hath not lost her virginity. She hath given birth to a child : and as it is said she hath remained a virgin. Thus the Virgin hath brought forth : and hath remained a virgin. A Mother hath been made by the Son : and the seal of chastity hath not perished. Wherefore ? Because it was not only that man which appeared : but the Only Begotten was God who had come in the flesh. Neither unexpectedly was he born in the flesh : but perfect divinity came in the flesh. Whole therefore and undivided, God came in human kind or was brought forth in flesh : and both God and Lord took up the form of a servant. Neither indeed did a part of the Only Begotten come in body : nor did he divide himself such that half was with the Father, and half was within the Virgin : but in truth wholly with the Father, and wholly within the Virgin. Wholly in nature of the Father, and wholly in human flesh. Not relinquishing the heavenly, he came to seek the earthly. Which in heaven are preserved : and which in earth are saved. Everywhere almighty : unbroken, undivided, this is the holy Only Begotten God."

Lauds is of the day, except with proper antiphons which anticipate the following day: "Judah and Jerusalem, be not afraid, tomorrow you shall go forth and the Lord will be with you." Lauds does not observe preces on this day nor is a genuflexion made. A commemoration of All Saints may be made on Sunday, but votive prayers and Offices are vanquished until after the Octave day of St. Stephen.

The Vigil Mass is virtually identical to the Roman Vigil Mass on this day with a few additions. Sarum provided additional readings on certain days and sang sequences more often than the post-Tridentine Roman Mass. On December 24 the acolyte, the liturgical minister who holds the paten during the Canon of the Mass, reads Isaiah 62:1-4, foretelling the universality of conversion to the Lord. The sequence, repeated from the Fourth Advent Sunday, and the Alleluia are sung only if the Vigil falls on Sunday.

Not the "rite" setting, but something close.

At Vespers the senior most cleric, ideally the Bishop of Salisbury, celebrates with the four most senior canons ruling the choir. The same is done at Mattins of Christmas Day. The hymn is Veni, Redemptor Gentium by St. Ambrose. During Veni the two thurifers bring a pair of copes to the celebrant, who assumes one and picks another cleric to wear the other, who in turn with incense the altar during the Magnificat. Two other senior canons begin the Magnificat antiphon, which is the same as in the Roman rite: "When the sun shall have risen from heaven, you shall see the King of kings proceeding from the Father, as a bridegroom from his chamber."

Mattins of Christmas Day begins at such a time to allow it end before midnight, when the first Mass of the feast is sung. The first six lessons and corresponding responsories are sung by canons and choristers wearing surplies in ascending order of seniority, allowing the senior-most members of the choir to sing the sixth response. At the first response, after the lesson from Isaiah 9:1-8, five boys wearing amices over their heads face the choir from the altar carrying candles. Between the iterations of the response ("This day the King of Heaven was pleased to be born of a virgin, that He might restore lost man to the heavenly kingdom....") they sing "Glory be to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of goodwill." At the second, fifth, and eighth lessons of Mattins a priest from alternating sides of the choir. The Gospel pericopes, taken from the three Masses of the day, and lessons for the final nocturne, extracted from St. Bede the Venerable and St. Gregory the Great, are read in copes.

Rather than singing the Te Deum immediately, a ninth response is sung while a full Gospel procession arrives at the lecturn in the middle of the choir. The deacon then sings the beginning of St. Matthew's gospel, which recounts Our Lord's genealogy, in a special tone.

Initium sancti evangelii secundum Mattheum
source: http://hmcwordpress.mcmaster.ca/

The Te Deum is sung and then the first Mass of Christmas begins, Dominus dixit. The celebrant, who should also have celebrated Mattins, faces the altar after Mass and says "Verbum caro factum est," to which the people reply "Et habitavit in nobis, alleluia." Lauds then commences. After the Benedictus and collect a series of additional antiphons are sung by choristers standing near the choir rulers:

"The Father's Word this day proceeded from a Virgin: He hath come to redeem us, And to the heavenly country hath willed to lead us back: Where the angelic powers with jubilation: Give blessing unto the Lord"

"Shining above the shepherds the angels hath proclaimed Peace, the messenger of peace; Thou O Shepherd of the Church, bestow upon us Thy peace: And Thy children of their debt to their Redeemer teach them, to sing forth in joyful thanks"

A commemoration of antiphons, versicles, and collect is made of the Blessed Virgin to "complete" the Nativity.

After Lauds the second Mass of Christmas is sung. All three Sarum Masses for Christmas are nearly identical with their Roman counterparts, except for the addition of a lesson from Isaiah before the epistle.

Second Vespers was not well attended, speculatively. The good people of Salisbury had settled their brains for a long winter's nap.

The Sarum Rite I: A Brief History

Nave of Salisbury Cathedral, taken by the author.

"Henry VIII, we must remember, was a Roman Catholic." These uncomfortable words a tour guide uttered at an audience in St. Peter da Vincula in the Tower of London four years ago. At the time, I was reading Church History at university and enamored with the decentralized view of Christianity 19th century Tractarians offered. The guide's words tore that veil in two. He continued, "We must remember that in Henry's time, there was no Church of England, only the Church in England."

While the branding of all Western Christendom as "Roman Catholicism" was not yet accomplished in the 16th century, any pre-Reformation historian would be sorely tempted to call England the most "Roman" of all Catholic European nations. Both in the age of Henry VIII and before Hastings England situated herself spiritually very close to the Mother Church in central Italy. This is essential to understanding the origins of the Sarum rite, or usage, a variation of the pre-Tridentine liturgy that was in fact a three fold synthesis of the ancient Roman liturgy, the Norman liturgy, and the monastic liturgy. It is to the second Sarum owes its grandeur, the third to which she owes part of her ritual and architecture, but to the first she owes her birth.

As a province of the Roman Empire, Britannia presumably practiced the Christian faith in some capacity after the Edict of Milan in 313. Nearly three centuries later, St. Gregory the Great saw a man with pallor in a Roman square and inquired if he was an angel. A man replied to the pope "Non angelus, sed anglus." The Roman bishop then dispatched St. Augustine to the fallen away isle, where he planted the Church at Canterbury and became the first of many bishops in that see.

The Roman Church's liberation from Imperial persecution was followed by the collapse of the Eternal City and her Western Empire a century later, leaving the faith like water spilled on the floor, running over every smooth surface. Without considerable compulsion, churches throughout Europe deigned to imitate the practices of the Roman Church in their local settings. Of particular interest were the liturgies of the Lateran Cathedral and of St. Peter's Basilica, the former because it is the Papal cathedral and the latter because it was the most prominent destination for pilgrimages in Europe in the first millennium. Romanization was so prevalent that Msgr. Pierre Batiffol hypothesized that Europe would still have adopted the Roman tradition, albeit at a later time, if not for the efforts of Alcuin and Charlemagne. England itself engage in proactive Romanization. St. Bede the Venerable recounts that his mentor, Benedict Biscop, found a Benedictine abbot named John in Roman and brought him to Britain with the permission of Pope Agatho so that "at Wearmouth he might teach the monks in [Biscop's] monastery to sing the office as it was sung at St. Peter's in Rome."

Meanwhile, Pepin and the Frankish court requested of the pope a copy of the Roman Sacramentary for the celebration of Mass according to the Roman tradition as well as the Antiphonaries and Responsories for the celebration of the Office. In 809, Charlemagne made his friend, Amalarius, the Archbishop of Treves. Amalarius visited Pope Leo III in Rome in 795 and would visit Gregory IV in 831. Amalarius recounts various discrepancies in both text and music between the several editions of the Roman Office possessed by his clergy. Initially one is tempted to blame textual corruption, but further consideration adds multiplicity of sources, too. St. Peter's, the Lateran, the Papal Court, and the monasteries of Rome would all have sung the Office with some degree of variation just as the Frankish recipients of those Antiphonal and Responsorial books would have done. 

In the late first millennium the Roman liturgy was governed by a strong traditional taxis without the force of positive law or ritual ornament. While textually the books that traveled to Britain and the Frankish court were identical to those used by the Roman Church, the physical interpretation varied tremendously. The Roman liturgy was a communal affair by a self-consciously ancient and holy city wherein each person had his proper role. The responsorial psalm, which has little to do with its ill-named descendant in the Pauline Mass, was sung alternatively by the district subdeacons who ran a given parish church; the priests existed for sacramental expediency and the deacons handled administration in the Papal court. In northern Europe there was no ancient city, there were no district subdeacons, and there was no papal court. In turn, those in monastic orders or those studying for ecclesiastical life substitute their role with monastic choir ritual. In a like manner, the minimalist use of incense, the eschatological elements of the Papal rites, and the communal processions on great feasts were either done away with or interpreted according to local use. Europe, through Africa, learned to appreciate the use of incense in the manner of the Greek Church. Local churches of note substituted for the Roman stational churches on feasts, vigils, and the days of Lent. Everything un-written Roman element either fell away or was retained in a re-imagined local setting. While this sounds off putting, it means that the spirit of the ancient Roman rite, if not its words, diffused throughout northern Europe and remained alive there long after the Minorites succeeded in suppressing the grand rites of Roman in favor of the reduced Curial books. One could say that the Sarum use was just as Roman as St Pius V's Tridentine Missal and Breviary.

Tomb of St. Osmund, taken myself in 2011

After William the Conqueror won his victory at Hastings, he proceeded to replace, at the behest of Pope Alexander II, the corrupted Saxon clergy with his own Norman clerics (a successful, if inaccurate, attempt was made to explore this in the movie Becket). They brought their exuberant liturgical customs to a British Church which had long been practicing a version of the Roman rite. Among these clerics was a nobleman named Osmund, who, under St. Gregory VII, was appointed and consecrated the first bishop of the new and condensed diocese of Salisbury, where he was buried in the cathedral. St. Osmund's first cathedral, in the defunct city of Old Sarum, had six altars that reflect medieval devotion—the high altar of the church, one for St. Stephen, St. Martin, St. Nicholas, the Holy Cross, and All Saints—and hint at the origin of the processions before Mass codified in the Sarum Missal. A cloister adjoined both the Old Sarum and the Salisbury cathedrals through which processions typically passed.

It was in this environment that the Sarum liturgy grew until the Reformation. At the time of "the king's great matter" Sarum and its brother liturgy in York had become so deeply ingrained in the English Church's mind that they would not pass into memory until after the death of Elizabeth I. The Pilgrimage of Grace, when they had Mass available to them, would have heard Mass in the Sarum rite, refusing Prayer Book services. Decades later the Northumberland uprising of 1570 revived use of the Sarum rite as a spiritual element of a plot to depose Elizabeth and replace her with a faithful queen. After the death of Edward VI churches in London spontaneously began celebrating Mass, theoretically a forgotten ritual, according to the Sarum liturgy, temporarily given an official return to prominence during the brief reign of Queen Mary. Priests who wished to continue the old ways often continued to celebrate low Mass in their rectories according to the Sarum books. Missionaries who were not trained by the Jesuits were known to celebrate the Sarum Mass during Recusant days. Sarum was even considered for revival during the re-establishment of diocesan structure in the 19th century. Eventually, Sarum was passed on in favor of the Roman liturgy without adhering to the canonical norms of Quo primum tempore of St. Pius V, which requires both the approval of the bishop and the unanimous consent of the chapter of canons to jettison the local use for Roman books. Relics of Sarum can still be found in the Book of Common Prayer, which numbers its Sundays after Trinity, retains many readings and collects, and keeps some of the ritual in more "high church" settings. 

The loss of the Sarum rite to the Catholic Church is one of the great liturgical tragedies of the Counter-Reformation that has nothing to do with Ultramontanism, positive law, or minimalism. The loss of Sarum was Henry and Elizabeth's theft of England's great treasure, a theft beyond any form of taxation. It is my goal in this series to explore the Mass, Office, readings, feasts, and seasons of the liturgy of the Sarum church, to deepen our appreciation of the Church's patrimony, and to take these lessons, in some measure, to our own parishes.

New Series: The Whole Sarum

We will begin a new series of posts—atavistically published, perhaps monthly to ensure quality—on the Sarum liturgy. It will follow the structure of our posts on the neo-Gallican "Jansenist" French rites, with a look at the rubrics, ordinary texts, feasts, and time per annum, however we intend to go into greater depth. Resources in Latin and English abound on Sarum, both primary and secondary texts.

We will endeavor to examine Sarum's origins, its setting in a medieval and Catholic England, its cathedral celebration, and its actual words. The series will take advantage of the various editions of the Missal, Office, processional books, mystery plays (cultural presence of the liturgy), devotions, and commentaries published in liturgical histories since the Ritualist Movement in the 19th century.

Look for an initial post on the origins and setting of Sarum in September. Look for another post on Brideshead Revisited this week.

Liturgical Boutique: Is Sarum Possible?

For a rite that has not been used continuously since the reign of Good Queen Mary Tudor, the Sarum usage has occupied copious amounts of time in the minds and speeches of liturgists, historians, and more common laymen looking for something different from the average parish offering. Most recently one Bernard Brandt has argued for the restoration of the Sarum liturgy on a legal basis, reiterating in depth what Fr. Séan Finnegan wrote years before. Fr. Chadwick is unusually a celebrant of the unadultered Sarum rite in Norman France and occasionally mentions his hopes for the tradition. Other than two Masses by Fr. Finnegan in the 1990s—promptly shut down over legal concerns, Sarum has not been subjected to any visible celebrations.

Why has it remained a more popular point of discussion than the neo-Gallican rites, the use of York, Braga in Portugal, or the idiosyncratic liturgies of Toledo and Milan? Various overlapping Anglican movements (the Tractarian, Oxford, and Ritualist movements) wrought liturgical scholarship into England's Catholic past and new printings of old Sarum books. Scholars in the liturgical movement revived history in the medieval developments that took place in northern Europe. Many of these studies were either conducted in England or were quickly translated into that tongue; the works of Dix and Batiffol come to mind. Lastly, there was the traditionalist movement. Many English Catholics adduced the example of Sarum and York to prove that the liturgical tradition of Latin Christianity existed beyond the Roman rite and was never subjected to proactive papal fiat, hence the pope could not uniformly and unilaterally impose one liturgical rite over a traditionally established praxis. Sarum is discussed, but rarely practiced. What future could it have?

Sarum resources abound the market if one looks hard enough and is willing to pay a handsome sum for hardcover books. Digital books and scholarly materials are available online in both Latin and English. Various ensembles have recorded settings of the Christmas Masses. One enterprising scholar even made a project of uploading the Missal and Divine Office with musical instructions online here, making a restoration feasible outside the Music department at Oxford.

So, we have a Missal, musical notation, a choir and a dozen men ready to serve, but who would be our congregation? In 2011, when the British Ordinariate came to be, there was quite a bit of chatter on St. Giles Street in Oxford that Msgr. Andrew Burnham was fond of Sarum and intended to ask permission to use it as an "extraordinary form" for the community. I met Burnham half a dozen times, but never had the interest to ask him if he even had an affinity for Sarum. The English Ordinariate, unlike its formerly Anglo-Catholic American counterpart, is comprised of former Anglo-Papists, who had been celebrating and interpreting the Pauline liturgy in a conservative Oratorian fashion for decades prior to Anglicanorum coetibus. Their primary concern was not the Catholic heritage of England, it was bridging high Roman Catholicism with Anglicanism. Other than Fr. Hunwicke, not many Ordinariate priests seem interested in older forms of the Roman rite, much less in its English children. 

The best chance for Sarum in the Catholic Church is likely as an exceptional form of liturgy for the Church in England to use on special occasions. It is a rite that belongs to English Catholics as a whole, not uniquely to those of "Anglican patrimony." Sarum descends from the Roman rite and the Prayer Book, although part of a new faith, descended in many strong parts from the Sarum praxis and texts. Traditionalists would be best equipped for a minor restoration: they more readily have scholae, priests versed in Latin, laity unafraid of Latin, and, in England, have a sympathy for the heritage of their predecessors who kept the faith. 

Would they be interested? A large enough portion for the rare Mass or Vespers, surely. Would they be willing? Herein one finds the sticky situation of relying on other clergy and the benevolence of Churchmen. After the backtrack in 1996/7, one would need a very confident dragoman to examine the laws of the Latin Church and then proceed to do exactly what they allow. An old saying "In England, everything is allowed except what is prohibited; in Russia, everything is prohibited except what is allowed" recapitulates the transformation of liturgical perspective in the last few generations. Interest will get us to the door, but eventually some clerics will have to turn the handle and smile at Rome as they stride over the threshold. 

(As a note, the archbishop of Birmingham approved Fr. Finnegan's celebrations in the 1990s. The fallout with Basil Hume and the Vatican can be followed on Mr. Brandt's blog.)

One would hope that if Sarum ever does rise from the dead, its celebrants will utilize its distinctive non-Roman features. Who would not want to read Origen at Mattins on Christmas Eve?

Given the popularity of this quasi-Sarum related post, I think it is at least stocking coped cantors in the boutique for my fellow fetishists.

Lost Octaves: The Ascension

Christ rose from the dead on the eighth day of the week, capping a week that began with His triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday with His entry into Hades, its harrowing, and His return to this earth glorified. Since then, the Church has traditionally marked the great feasts with eight day long celebrations, commemorating the marked significance of what Our Lord did either Himself or through His saints with protractions of the Office, Mass, and associated festivals. We recently concluded the octave of Pentecost, or Trinity Week in the Byzantine rite, one of the few octaves remaining in the 1962 Roman liturgy. The liturgy of Paul VI lacks this octave. Traditionally the Church celebrated numerous octaves until the pontificate of Pius XII, among them the octave of the Ascension of Our Lord into heaven. 

Octaves give the faithful seven days to digest a great feast. Rogation days, three days of penitential services and processions, precede the feast of the Ascension. St. Mamerus of Vienne instituted what eventually became the Rogation days while he was bishop of that see. The saint wanted his people to do penance so that they might repair for the wars of that region. The Council of Tours championed the practiced in 567 and in the ninth century it found a champion in St. Leo III, the pope of the age. 

Originally the Rogation days resembled the Roman observance of Ash Wednesday: the clergy and faithful wore poor clothing, marked themselves with ashes, and processed from church to church singing psalms and litanies. Over time the Rogation days, owing to their proximity to the Ascension, became spiritualized lamentations at the end of Paschaltide for the impending departure of Christ. Dom Gueranger wrote that observance of the Rogation days to their full extent with abstinence "would express how [the Church] feels at the loss of her Spouse, who is soon to be taken from her."

The Gospel of the Ascension and what occurs immediately after its reading are among the most subtle acts in the subdued Roman liturgy. In the 16th chapter of St. Mark's Gospel, Christ commands the Apostles to preach to the good news to the ends of the earth, telling them that they shall cast out devils, speak in new tongues, and survive poison, for no harm shall impede them from their charge. While this sounds hyperbolic, it means that the sign of the Church is miracles—God acting apart from conventional expectation to draw people's attention to the truth of Christ. If the sign of the Church is miracles, then the sign of the Church is holiness above all. Miracles are not part of the message of Christ or of the Church, rather they point to it and enable it.

After the deacon has read the Gospel, an acolyte snuffs the Paschal candle, which will not burn again save for at the blessing of the font on the vigil of Pentecost. In the middle ages this act would have made more sense to us than it does in the 1962 form or the Pauline form (if it is still done). The other candles in a church would have been light from the Paschal fire, which burned without pause from Holy Saturday through the Ascension. Devotional candles, candles on side altars, and other candles in the sanctuary would have been lit from the Paschal candle before the acolyte extinguished it. Christ has taken the Apostles to the top of Mt. Olivet. Peaks of mountains and hills, as the "closest" point to heaven for those on earth and places of isolation, have special significance in the Scriptures. Moses ascended Mt. Sinai and received the Ten Commandments. Reflectively, Christ brought the Apostles up Mt. Tabor to show the congruity between the Jewish covenant and the one to come when He transfigured before them. At this moment atop Mt. Olivet, the Apostles again assume, again wrongly, that Christ will now restore the kingdom of Israel to its Davidic glory, forgetting the Lord's condemnation of Israel on Palm Sunday. A new covenant will be accompanied by a new Jerusalem, one based in heaven and present on earth, descending from one to another. God outwardly signified His presense in a cloud over the Mercy Seat on the Ark of the Covenant. Now, His presence would descend from heaven to earth and diffuse through the working of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Church, its opus Dei.

Saturday morning's Mattins delve more explicitly into the extinction of the Paschal candle. The Lord "has given us great and precious promises, that by [faith and knowledge (cf. 1-2)] you may be made partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). Grace is given freely, not seen instantly. It must be perceived by faith, just as the presence of Christ is no longer seen physically in human form, only by faith. St. Leo the Great explicitly states in the second nocturne of Saturday "the seen presence of Our Redeemer in the body has been changed for the unseen presence of sacraments, and hearing was given to the Church instead of seeing." As she can no longer "see" her Spouse, the Church turns to externals like the Holy Fire to as reminders of Christ's humanity and His perpetual presence. Some Greek churches expand beyond the medieval Roman practice by reserving the Holy Fire for the entire year and lighting all candles until the next Holy Saturday from it.

The Apostles are left at the peak of Mt. Olivet with the Virgin, confused and disconsolate, none the wiser than they were when Jesus said "The Son of Man must suffer" or "I go to My Father." For understanding they had to await the descent of the Holy Spirit. The Ascension of the second person of the Holy Trinity necessarily implicates the descent of the third. The first nocturne at Mattins on the octave day contains the greeting "peace from God the Father, and from Christ Jesus, the Son of the Father", stopping short of St. Paul's Trinitarian greeting in 2 Corinthians 13:14. As the Holy Spirit has not yet descended in liturgical time, the Church does not draw further attention to the Paraclete, only anticipation. Instead, she continues to focus on Christ's assumption of our humanity both at the Incarnation and the Ascension. St. Augustine of Hippo emphasizes in the second nocturne of Mattins that Christ had to be man for the Cross to matter and that he similarly had to God for the Resurrection to transpire. Local uses further expurgate on the communion between God and Man in the Ascension. The rite of Lyon, in the French tradition, offers additional readings at Mass within the octave. On Wednesday before the octave day the French church reads Christ's prayer: "I pray for them; I pray not for the world, but for them that you have given me, because they are yours. All things are yours and they are mine, and I am glorified in them" (John 17:9-10). The soul naturally drifts to the words recorded in Exodus 33:20, that "no man has seen my face and lived." Now that Christ has taken our humanity into heaven and left the promise of His divinity with us on earth, what was hopeless in the old covenant is now hoped for in the new. Adam fell and could not see God. Christ rose so that we may.

From that same state bear back

From whence by sin he fell,

To the joys of Paradise,

When Thou as Judge dost come

To doom the universe,

Grant, we beseech thee, Lord,

Eternal joys to us

In the Saints' blessed land,

In which we all to Thee

Shall Alleluias sing.

From the Sarum sequence for the feast

Blessed Are They Who Hear the Word of God

source: newliturgicalmovement.org

Never has the Word of God been more discussed than in the last two centuries. Vatican II's Dei Verbum is an entire document on interpreting it. Protestantism is an entire religion founded on most of it. Nineteenth century German biblical scholarship assured us it was mostly second century bosh while late twentieth century scholarship has shown it originated frighteningly proximate to Christ and the Apostles. The average American household owns four copies of it. Never before has it been more read, more discussed, and less heard.

Our modern relationship with Scripture is abecedarian. A layman sits at his reading desk or cozies himself in his arm chair in quiet repose, opens his Ignatius Study Bible to whatever section of the Johannine gospel looks interesting, and reads while imagining the events described, as though he is the woman at the well. Could anything be more Ignatian? Could anything be more modern? Could anything be more removed from how our fathers in the faith interfaced with the Word of God?

The dispute over the place of liturgical theology and the value of the pre-20th century Roman rite—the real thing, I call it—is closely related to a long lost dispute over the place of Scripture in the liturgy. The Byzantine rite long replaced most of the Scriptural portions of the liturgy with hymns and symbolic gestures, although readings of substance remain at Vespers for great feasts and the pre-Sanctified weekday rites of Great Lent. The un-reformed Roman rite retained the place of Scripture from ancient times, although some abbreviations took place, such as the reduction of the psalm verses in the introit. Holy Writ narrated the Mass and the Office. The liturgy was how people encountered what we call the Bible. Liturgical worship outside the Eucharistic sacrifice culminated in the reading of the words of Christ by the herald of the Gospel, the deacon, from a lecturn or ambo in the midst of those destined to hear it. In the Roman rite this singing of Christ's words took place in medio choro, in the Greek rite from an enormous stone ambo in the center of the Hagia Sophia.

In neither of these settings was the place of proclamation a rival or equal to the altar of sacrifice that so much heterodox architecture now presents it to be. The Gospel was sung from a prominent place amid the congregation. The Eucharist is offered from the most prominent point, somewhat veiled, and removed from the congregation until Holy Communion. The Word anticipates the Sacrament as it did for the Israelites in the desert of Egypt.

source: lamprotes1 on YouTube

The Gospel was sung either in vernacular or in a mostly intelligible language proximate to the common tongue. Slavonic is near enough to most Slavic languages as is Latin to French and Italian. If not directly understood, the gospel readings would be comprehended to some degree and decorated with some ornament of mystery. A few oddities did and do exist, like Classical Arabic, which is far removed from vernacular Arabic. We Anglophonic men also seem to have been born outside of the Lord's good liturgical graces, condemned to a bastard Germanic language well removed from the tongues of liturgy.

Above all the reading of the Gospel was the greatest encounter with the spoken word of God a human being would have. God the Holy Spirit spoke by the prophets and Christ spoke to the Apostles His commandments. Christ wrote nothing, but He did say, "Blessed are they who hear the word of God and who keep it." The extravagant actions of the Greek rite and the Scriptural narration of the Office and fore-Mass in the Roman rite climaxed with the solemn speaking of God-made-Man. The words of Christ and the actions of Christ are renewed in the presence of the faithful for their edification and holiness. Previous generations, enriched in their poverty of electronic entertainment and television, understood that anticipation and fulfillment meet the imagination's ideas about God. Gestures, actions, and words together synthesize into a taxis which follows the plan of Revelation: the anticipation of the prophets and the fulfillment of Christ.

The marriage of Protestantism and book-printing changed the purpose of the word of God in people's minds. What was something sacred and removed became a pocket-size product for individual interpretation and personal consumption. A Romanian friend once confided that his mother had never heard of a Bible before she came to America: "Oh yes, we have the prophets and the gospels, but not everything bound up in one nifty package." St. Augustine recalls in his Confessions that when the child said "Take and read" he picked up the letters of St. Paul, not the Revised Standard Version. There is nothing wrong reading the Scriptures on one's own outside a liturgical setting for knowledge or spiritual meditation, but who will deny that generally the accessibility of the words of God has resulted in a decline of reverence for those words. God's word has become my Bible. Some well meaning but very lost celebrants of the Pauline spoken Mass try too hard to imbue rediscovered significance in the spoken Gospel by "proclaiming" the "Good news" in theatrical voices punctuated by long, awkward pauses and eye-piercing stares at the congregation. Father, you are trying too hard. The religion founded on [most of] the Bible has reduced the Bible's gravitas. Combined with emotionally and intellectually dulling forms of entertainment like television, the abecedarian approach to Scripture given to us by the Protestants has removed our awe in encountering and keeping the Word of God when we hear it.

In spite of these losses, hope is not gone. Even in the reformed rites of Holy Week ('62 or Pauline) people find the non-Sacramental gestures and readings powerful. People attend these rites for these ceremonies and readings almost exclusively. Were Thursday of Holy Week just a Mass, how many would attend? Most go because of what makes it unique: the reading of the Mandatum periscope and the washing of the feet. The same is true for the singing of the Passion and the adoration of the Cross on Good Friday as well as the blessing of the fire and the prophecies on Holy Saturday. They are going to find Christ in His words and actions, something previous Catholics were able to see more regularly than we can, who Platonically peer into the water which reflects the Sun those before us saw so brilliantly.

 

source: the Pit

 

Sarum Christmas Mass

Above is a recording of the full midnight Mass in the Sarum rite according to the ordinary and propers of the Sarum chant tradition (minus readings and orations). A few things to notice:

• In the Roman rite, the Introit is: verse A, verse B, Gloria Patri, verse A. In Sarum it goes: verse A, verse B, verse A, Gloria Patria, verse A
• The Kyrie is Sarum can be "troped" (interpolated with exclamations) according to the season. Christmas season called for Deus Creator Omnium. 
• Christmas has three sequences, one for each Mass. Midnight warrants Nato canunt omnia
• The Creed is Credo I as found in the Roman rite. It is the oldest surviving Credo in continuous use and enjoyed popularity throughout Europe
• The chant at the Preface sounds a bit off key, but it is not. These chants were meant to be sung by priests of any vocal quality, so the chants accommodated their capabilities. The preface dialogue resembles that of the Roman rite on ferial, simple, and funerary days
• The method of singing is more robust and deeper than the Solesmes method continued by the various Solesmes congregations scattered throughout the world and the Institute of Christ the King. I like this method better.
• It is much better than the Missa de angelis!

Latin Offertory

source: newliturgicalmovement.org

An interesting and brief article on the history of the various offertory prayers used by priests through the history of the Latin Church. Well worth the five minutes to read about the creation and spread of offertory rites throughout the Middle Ages.

Is Braga a French Rite?

Rite of Versailles

The English local uses, defunct since the death of Mary Tudor with precious few exceptions, are essentially local variations of the Rouen liturgy used in Norman France, itself a local "dialect" of the Roman rite, to borrow from Adrian Fortescue. The Dominican rite, still used according to the 1962 variation in some circles, shares many prayers and choir ceremonies with the Sarum and Norman rites. Some of the propers are stunningly similar, such as the oration Veneranda on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. It begs the question, are the Roman rite and the medieval European rites distinct from each other?

The two were certainly different prior to the Minorites (Franciscans). Rome jealously resisted any innovations even in the most remote of ways, such as the broader use of incense in the rites of Europe. The international character of the Roman Curia brought the European liturgy, a synthesis of the Benedictine monastic choir rites with the cathedral liturgies of European dioceses—themselves informed by a resurgence in literary and philosophical education, to Rome. The Curia had its own rite, which one could summarize as the Roman text with the European ritual. The Lateran Cathedral and St. Peter's Basilica retained the more congregational and communitarian Roman ritual and practices during this time. Papal Mass as it existed until 1964 could itself be called a blend of these two forces. The Franciscans used the Curial liturgy and popularized it as the Roman rite throughout Europe. Nicholas III, a Franciscan, suppressed the old Roman usages at the basilicas of the City, making the Curial rite the only form of the Roman rite (the current era is not the only time an extraordinary form of the Roman rite was suppressed!). We all know what happened under St. Pius V and the aftermath of Trent.

The consequential question then is: can the medieval European rites—excluding the unique liturgies of Milan and Toledo—similar enough to characterize as one rite with many variations? As mentioned above, Sarum, Rouen, and the Dominican rite are all very similar as they should be. Dominicans often studied at the university of Paris, itself likely influenced by the same Norman praxis which the conquerors brought to England after Hastings. What, then, of Braga? The Bragan rite, as our friend Marco has underscored many times on his excellent blog on that tradition, shares many of the same prayers as Sarum and the Dominican liturgy, both on feasts and Sundays per annum. Braga is in northern Portugal, nearly a thousand miles from Normandy. Can the Norman liturgical family really extend that far south or had dioceses begun to develop their own variation of the Roman rite very early on in the Middle Ages, only encountering the proper texts with the coming of the Minorites? Another possibility is that these common texts are themselves remnants of the liturgy used prior to Alcuin and Charlemagne's attempt to impose the 9th century Roman books on Western Europe. People will speak of the Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries, but are there a reasonable number of extant Gallican source to cross-reference? Unlikely, which makes this thesis impossible to test. The neo-Gallican rites, while occasionally making concessions to Jansenist culture (octave of St. Augustine while suppressing the octave of Ss. Peter & Paul), are themselves orthodox and can be read as an attempt to revitalize French liturgical life. Unfortunately, the propers were themselves changed considerably and are not returns to the Norman texts (if they were even used in Lyons or Paris). Still, Normanesque elements are readily visible in the neo-Gallican rites: extravagant choir ceremonies, vivid and loquacious proper orations, and optional ferial readings for the resumed Sunday Mass. They are not part of the medieval European or Norman group, but imitate them in style, indicating a distant relation. 

So how were the various medieval European rites connected, given their considerable textual departure from the Roman rite, to which they imparted their ceremonies?

Major Fetish in the Boutique: Sarum in the 20th Century UPDATED

Tip of the biretta to Mr. Alan Robinson for directing me to the photo gallery for St. George's church in Sudbury (London). Many will know that in the early to mid-20th century the pastor of St. George was Fr. Clement L. Russell, a priest who, much like Quintin Montgomery-Wright decades later, imported the Sarum rituals and aesthetics into the existing Roman praxis.

The church of St. George was built in a truly gothic style, albeit it with the inclusion of many features popular in England at the time: devotion to St. Joseph and Ss. Thomas More & John Fisher. St. Geroge was also the first post-Reformation (Deformation would be more accurate) church in England with a shrine to Our Lady of Walsingham. Russell managed an enormous boys choir and army of altar servers. He used his services as a way of giving young men something to do and a diversion to keep out of trouble. He had first and second Vespers for all feasts Double of the II Class or higher, as well as Mattins and Lauds for the great feasts. Quite the Englishman, he usually kept two candlesticks on his altar, per Sarum, and quibbled over the matter with the vicar general of Westminster. Russell told the vicar general that St. George's would sport six candlesticks when the rest of the parishes in the archdiocese finally started using two on ferial days and four on vigils and ember days.

All the photographs below come from this page and belong entirely to St. George's Catholic Church. The images are British Catholicism at its finest. Pure liturgical fetish eye candy! Yum yum yum!

The Baptistry

The shrine and altar of Our Lady of Walsingham. Note the

very English, very sumptuous frontal. Much of the statuary

was carved from single pieces of wood on St. George's grounds.

Some fool wreckovated the sanctuary, but fear not!—we have images below of

liturgies during the Clementine years. Judging by the altar arrangement, I would

hypothesize that St. George is now in the hands of a "hermeneutic of continuity" priest.

The original sanctuary. Note the curtains around the altar, something still seen in medieval

English churches. Above the altar is a Rood, seen in other images below. The Rood

was not a proper screen, but the effort was admirable given the times.

Solemn high Mass. The choir sits—gasp!—in the Choir. Judging by where the ministers

are situated and the sitting posture of the congregation, I would hazard a guess that this

is the Gradual and that the celebrant and subdeacon are reading the Gospel while the deacon

prepares to proclaim the Word. Note the two lead cantors singing ("ruling"?) from the

lecturn in medio choro.

A nuptial Mass, again with full choir and lead cantors. Again, probably

the Gradual.

The annual procession with relics on St. George's day. Cardinal Griffin, archbishop of

Westminster, visited on this occasion.

This picture is, for some reason, my favorite of the lot. The tall candles at the corners of

the steps leading to the altar are an English tradition. The Missal appears to be resting on

a cushion rather than a stand. Don Quoex did this, too.

A Requiem Mass

A Byzantine priest of some stripe offers the Divine Liturgy at St. George's.

From his facial features, seen in other pictures, and the cut of his vestments I would

guess that he is either Arab (Melkite) or Greek rather than Slavic. At first I was

surprised to see this picture, but then again Dr. Adrian Fortescue also imported native English

elements into the Roman rite during his life time and held the Byzantine tradition in high esteem,

almost joining the Melkite Church in Lebanon.

St. George's must have been quite spectacular until Fr. Russell's death in 1965 following an accident.

Here is an article on St. George's and Fr. Russell from the Anglo-Catholic
Historical Society:

FEATURED ARTICLE

“THE ONLY ANGLICAN CHURCH IN COMMUNION WITH ROME”:
SAINT GEORGE’S SUDBURY AND FATHER CLEMENT LLOYD RUSSELL.
By John Martyn Harwood

I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of Thy House; and the place where Thy Glory dwelleth.
[Psalm 25, Douai version]

 

If any church’s tradition could be said to be sui generis, St George’s could and this was because of the vision of one man, its founder and priest for nearly forty years. Clement Lloyd Russell was born in 1884, the son of Henry Lloyd Russell, vicar of the Church of The Annunciation, Chislehurst and a prominent Tractarian. There is an early and amusing mention of him in the infamous report of the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline (1906) which was established to put an end to “illegal” ritual practices in the Church of England. Among the hundreds of pages of evidence is an entry about The Annunciation, Chislehurst, on 18th September 1904. The vicar strongly refutes any charge of lawlessness, taking a traditional Tractarian position and mentioning examples of past episcopal approval. He does however become a little defensive when replying to the report of a “visitor” that the festival of Corpus Christi was solemnly kept. The notice in the church porch announcing this, he maintains, was “placed there by my son, and I told him, after I became aware of it, of my disapproval”.

This indicates that Clement’s position was a good deal more advanced than the respectable High Church ritualism of his father. However, the son never experienced or embraced anything resembling “baroque” Anglo-Catholicism but remained an Edwardian High Churchman and medievalist to the end.

The younger Russell was ordained a priest of the Church of England in 1908 and for a short time was one of a tribe of curates at St Andrew’s, Willesden Green. In 1910 he experienced a crisis of conscience and was received into the Roman Catholic Church. After almost no formal training (he always maintained that he knew practically nothing about Roman Moral Theology or Canon Law) he was ordained deacon in 1914 and priest in 1915. He was sent as curate to work under a tyrannical parish priest at the Holy Rosary Church in Marylebone, London.

 

SUDBURY

This was a low point in Father Russell’s life but in the early 1920s he received an offer, which had the approval of Cardinal Bourne, from a very wealthy lady who wished to fund the building of a new church in one of London’s growing suburbs. He found himself in the happy position of being able to choose the site, architect, style of building, furnishings and dedication of the new church and parish. The foundation stone was laid in November 1925 and Father Russell moved into the newly built presbytery a few months later. He remained there, never taking a holiday, until his death in 1965.

Saint George’s church, in the non-descript district of Sudbury, near Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middlesex, was completed in 1927 and solemnly consecrated (a rare occurrence in those days) on the 18th April 1928. Its architect was the almost forgotten Leonard Williams, a modest church builder who died before this, his last work, was completed. Again unusually, it was entirely free from debt. At a time when “side altars” were usually wooden stands for holding statues and flowerpots, St George’s possessed four properly consecrated stone altars, designed on English medieval lines, dedicated to St George (the high altar), Our Ladye (Fr Russell’s invariable spelling), the Archangel Michael, and St Thomas of Canterbury.

 

THE CHURCH

He that hewed timber afore out of the thick trees: was known to bring it to an excellent work.[Psalm 74, Prayer Book version]

The church from the outside still looks much as it did in 1927 and can be seen on its current website. It is a dignified perpendicular gothic building of warm stock brick and much stone dressing. The clergy house is joined to the church which can be accessed from it. The whole composition is very charming and romantic despite the clearing of many trees which used to surround it. There are two large bells, also properly consecrated and anointed.

But it was chiefly for its furnishings that St George’s was famous. Over many years Fr Russell acquired or had made innumerable objects of piety to adorn his new creation. Slowly the altars were all vested with rich frontals in all the liturgical colours – this meant at least six or seven sets for each of the four altars. Each also had the inevitable riddle posts with angels holding candles. Between these, curtains of the highest quality hung, again in the different colours. Canopied images of the dedicated saints stood above. All the woodwork was carved and nothing of plaster was allowed in the church even temporarily.

The rector, as Fr Russell was often called, had no objection to popular devotions and was not of the austere “Benedictine” school; however the devotions had to have medieval precedents. No images of the Sacred Heart or Our Lady of Lourdes were permitted but near the back of the church, opposite the main door, was a large oak “tableau” depicting the Five Wounds of Christ and with a carved statue of the Lord at its centre. This was of course a very popular cult in late medieval England. Above were emblazoned the words (and I quote from memory for the entire shrine has since disappeared): JHESU BY THYE WOUNDES FYVE: SHEWE ME THE WAYE TO VERTUYOUS LYFE.

For many years it remained a puzzle to new parishioners especially those of simple faith but eventually the shrine acquired its devotees.

Above the Lady altar, was enthroned, in September 1928, a beautiful carved image of Our Lady of Walsingham. This was the first one based on the ancient seal to be erected in a Roman Catholic church. It was only six years after Fr Hope Patten had placed his Walsingham statue in the parish church there. Of course Fr Russell knew of all that had been achieved by the Anglicans at Walsingham and was anxious to spread the devotion in his own Communion. Thereafter the appropriate Marian Antiphon was always sung after all evening services in front of her image. In 1933 a second statue of the Blessed Virgin was unveiled in the Lady Chapel: this was a magnificent alabaster carving of medieval origin, showing her standing and holding her Son and, in the other hand, a sceptre. It had been found in Devon, restored and presented to Fr Russell. Several experts claimed that it had originally formed part of the reredos behind the high altar of Exeter cathedral, and it still retained traces of colouring. A beautiful carved wooden screen enclosed the Lady chapel, decorated with images of Saints Lawrence and Katherine in memory of the last two chapels on the ancient pilgrims’ “Walsingham Way.”

This is only a partial description of the church’s contents; there were also two carved eagle lecterns, one of which stood in the centre of the choir for use by the cantors, and additions were still being made right up to the rector’s death. In 1962, for example, the huge rood beam, rood, statues of Saints Mary and John and attendant cherubim on “wheels” were re-gilded and in the same year expensive iron gates and a fine image of St John the Baptist were added to the Baptistery.

 

THE SERVICES

Those who still remember St George’s before 1965 will recall its liturgical life even more than the beauty of its furnishings. Starting from modest beginnings, Fr Russell gathered around him a team of enthusiastic helpers to form choir and servers to assist him in the offering of the rich round of services he desired. By the early 1950s he had established Sung Masses and Solemn Vespers on all Sundays and great festivals, with vespers being sung even on “Days of Devotion”, including all the feasts of the Apostles. Christmas was particularly well served with solemn first vespers; solemn matins and midnight mass; sung masses of the dawn and day (celebrated at9.30 and 10.30am respectively); solemn second vespers, procession and benediction and solemn vespers with procession on each of the following four days (they were all Days of Devotion!) The grandest and most fashionable Anglo-Catholic church in Edwardian days could not have done more.

The number of singers and servers, who were all housed in the sanctuary, rarely exceeded thirty-five which the rector considered a rather inadequate figure though most clerical visitors viewed it with envy. Needless to say those who served at the high altar were not only rigorously trained but were richly attired. The cantors wore copes, the rest of the choir and most servers, full gathered surplices, like those shown on portraits of Tudor bishops, with enormous sleeves and in length reaching below the knee. Famous (or notorious) were the apparelled albs and amices worn by the acolytes and thurifer (even the apparels came in complete sets of liturgical colours) and the alb and tunicle of the crucifer. Fresh chasubles and copes for the celebrant were often added when Fr Russell heard of Anglo-Catholic churches which had abandoned “gothic” styles. He had some kind of source of secret information about such matters. Everything used in the worship of God was of the highest quality down to the candles, incense, altar breads and wine. The music of course was strictly plainsong and under the direction of men who had Benedictine monastic training.

The number of sung services was actually increasing in the years just before Fr Russell’s death whereas elsewhere, both in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Church of England, they were in steep decline. I can remember when matins on Pentecost Eve was introduced for the first time, in 1959. However, it cannot be said that any services at St George’s other than low masses were ever very well attended. This worried Fr Russell not at all. When the church was first opened only twenty Roman Catholics lived in the area and there was no real need for a new parish at all. In 1962 mass attendance was found to be 1,175 souls. The rector arranged worship in the same way for both numbers. On one dark evening, a server nervously told him, before vespers began, that there was no one in the church at all. “Nonsense” he replied, “the nave is full of angels”.

 

THE MAN

As can be guessed, Fr Russell was not free of eccentricities. Life in his clergy house was a strain for most curates, who did not tend to stay long. First there was the Dickensian clutter of vestment presses, cuckoo clocks (all set at slightly different times, though never British summer time), large cats as eccentric as their master, books and antique silver. Then there was the conceit that he was a beleaguered Anglo-Catholic vicar liable to be disciplined by his diocesan, though successive Cardinals actually showed astonishing indulgence towards him (it should be remembered that before the Second Vatican Council the overriding priority of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England was the establishment of a RC school in every parish; Fr Russell never attempted to do this and never even mentioned the need for one.) “The Archbishop is coming” he would say, “We must hide the acolytes’ albs” or: “When I am dead they will come and turn all my vestments into bed covers just as the Reformers did”. Actually, in a sense, this prophecy was fulfilled. Some wag had once called St George’s “The only Anglican church in communion with Rome”. This was probably intended as a taunt but Fr Russell wore the label with great pride (perhaps he remembered his father’s church at the start of the Twentieth Century) and would often quote it to startled new-comers.

Fr Russell wrote everything by hand using the most extraordinary late medieval Gothic script. Many parishioners claimed they could not read the notices in the church porch at all. The local postman was made of sterner stuff and took great pride in being able to deliver all the rector’s letters without difficulty. He especially approved of the priest’s complete non-use of abbreviations – Saint not St or London North West rather than NW. How Father would have hated (it still makes me feel slightly guilty) my use of “Fr” in this article.

Often such highly motivated men can be ill-mannered or off-hand; Fr Russell by contrast was the mildest and most easy-going of souls, other-worldly and quite without authoritarianism. Servers and young choir members would sometimes ask him to inscribe their missals. He always used the same text for this, taken from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Authorized Version: “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them”. In his later years he allowed a poor Irishman who drank rather too much to live permanently in the clergy house and provided for him generously in his will.

Much was rumoured about Fr Russell’s supposed fascist leanings. I believe them greatly exaggerated. He certainly supported Mussolini in the 1930s but so did many others, and he admired General Franco all his life. Hitler he wrote openly against in the parish magazine after the war started. I believe that the fascist rumours were partly based on the certain fact that two members of his choir were prominent members of Mosley’s Party and later were conscientious objectors. In truth Father was not much interested in events that took place after 1530.

 

THE AFTERMATH

But now they break down all the carved work thereof: with axes and hammers.
[Psalm 74, Prayer Book version]

Clement Lloyd Russell was hit by a car, crossing the road outside his church, and died soon afterwards, on 11th January 1965. He was 80 but in good health and still running St George’s along usual lines. His death at least saved him from having to make inevitable and difficult choices, for the Second Vatican Council was in full swing. Already low masses at St George’s were being said in English. Fr Russell’s tradition would have received little sympathy from the new sort of Roman Catholic who regarded the Council documents as on par with the Four Gospels, nor from their conservative opponents, Anglo-Irish and stubbornly philistine, nor even from modern Anglo-Catholics eagerly following every trend of the Liturgical Movement. In the mid Sixties his ideals of liturgical worship could not have been more unfashionable. This needs to be clearly stated. It should also be added that he had almost no sympathy with the budding ecumenical movement. Without of course realising it, he was in his spirituality and his priorities, extremely close to Eastern Orthodoxy. If any reader thinks this far-fetched, read Russell’s own summary of his aims, which concludes this article.

The priest appointed as his successor, Wilfrid Purney, tried to maintain some continuity but the looming liturgical changes from above demoralised Fr Russell’s old supporters. The men’s choir was disbanded in June 1966 and most of the servers ceased to attend about the same time. Services began to resemble those elsewhere in the archdiocese. Fr Purney however, always kept the church looking as it had always done and no “re-ordering” was permitted. After his death the long-delayed deluge came with the arrival of those “who knew not Joseph”. Because of the late date of the building and its furnishings, those opposed to major change could not appeal to the law or preservation societies. Between 1990 and 1996 St George’s interior was completely gutted. Most of the furnishings and hangings disappeared, the consecrated stone altars were desecrated and destroyed and an extraordinary octagonal-shaped altar was placed in the centre of the church. But it would be fruitless, and perhaps libellous, to continue. Fr Russell would perhaps have simply remarked that King Edward VI’s visitors had returned to earth.

 

CONCLUSION

I want to conclude by quoting from Fr Russell’s own words because it is important to understand that he was much more than just a “character”. Here he is writing in the parish magazine in the 1940s, but he very often expressed himself in similar terms, as I heard him do so several times:

And beyond all, I want the sanctuary, especially at sung mass and at vespers and benediction, to speak to people of the glories of Heaven, and that, as far as is humanly possible, there shall be gathered there a splendour of colour and light, beauty of vesture, and ordered movement that compels the most wandering and distracted of undisciplined minds to realise that something far, far more than the satisfaction of human devotion is being accomplished – that the eternal and invisible GOD is being worshipped, and that all that is being done, is performed to render the easier, a response to the invitation “Sursum Corda!” There, at all events, is and has been my great endeavour.