The Liturgical Development of the Eucharist in the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church
Co-authored with Eugenijus Markovas SJ (http://hekimacollege.academia.edu/EugenijusMarkovas/). Unpublished. Written for BTh 1st Year T12c – Liturgy, Hekima College, 20 April 2012. (6429 words)
This paper seeks to outline the historical development of the Liturgy, and in particular, the Eucharist from its... more This paper seeks to outline the historical development of the Liturgy, and in particular, the Eucharist from its Institution at the Last Supper until its present form. The authors examine the context of the Last Supper in some detail, noting the Jewish influence of Passover and the Roman persecution on the fledgling sect as it grappled during the first few centuries of its existence to maintain an identity and to flourish in spite of such persecution. The influence on the liturgy in ‘peace-time’ is seen through the diversification of rites. The establishment of the Roman Canon and the eventual standardization at the Council of Trent is explained. This paper concludes with the further reforms after Trent at Vatican II and discusses how they have been received. It is of course completely impossible to do justice to any of these topics in such a short and cursory overview as this paper must attempt. What the authors hope to achieve through this paper, apart from a broadening of their own understanding through the various readings in preparation for this paper, is to show how at each stage of the development of the Liturgy there will be differences, it is hoped that one can also see the similarities. The paper describes how the Mass moved from a communal meal to a sacred one; how at different stages the human and divine aspects of the Liturgy became important; and how because of this importance further fights ensued and were expressed externally through public disagreement over such major issues as transubstantiation, or internally within the Church between rites and Mass translations. To put it simply: The Mass Matters – and it is necessary to understand what it is in the Mass that led Catholics to be prepared to be martyred, to travel as missionaries in foreign lands, to baptise and to preach to converts, so that they might fulfil the Lord’s command to do this in memory of Him.
Download (.pdf) Ancient Liturgical Prayers in its Greek text: Barcelona Manuscript
by Beshoy Ramzy
published in 'Alexandria School' 3.2 (2011) 121-136. (in Arabic)
The Celebration of Nativity Feast: The Ancient Egyptian Liturgical Documents
by Beshoy Ramzy
published in 'Alexandria School' 4.1 (2012) 137-167. (in Arabic)
Antiphonale Ambrosianum II
by Luca Ricossa
The second volume of a complete edition of the night office for the old Ambrosian Rite
The Pre-Conciliar Liturgical Movement in the United States and the Liturgical Reform of Vatican II
published in La théologie catholique entre intransigeance et renouveau. La réception des mouvements préconciliaires à Vatican II, eds. Philippe J. Roy, Gilles Routhier, Karim Schelkens (Louvain-la-Neuve – Leuven 2011) 69-89 (proceedings of the conference "La théologie catholique entre intransigeance et renouveau. La réception des mouvements préconciliaires à Vatican II"
Universite' Laval, Faculte' de theologie et de sciences religieuses
Québec City, October, 27-29 2010)
Historians of American Catholicism are unanimous in seeing the continuity between the issues and the goals of the... more
Historians of American Catholicism are unanimous in seeing the continuity between the issues and the goals of the pre-Vatican II liturgical movement in the United States on one side, and the outcomes of Sacrosanctum Concilium and the liturgical reform of Vatican II on the other side. Nevertheless, we need a close analysis of the correspondence between the goals of the American liturgical movement, in the preparatory phases of Vatican II, and the concrete reception of the issues of the American liturgical movement during the liturgical reform.
This is especially important now, given the new attention devoted to the liturgical reform also in the United States, after Benedict XVI’s decisions on the matter of liturgy and the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, and the fact that theologians and historians have somehow taken for granted the long history of the liturgical movement before Vatican II, the fact that Vatican II was the only council to approve a doctrinal document on liturgy, and the patent fact that the council’s liturgical reform is the only major reform in the post-Tridentine Catholic Church after the reform of church discipline in the 16th and 17th centuries.
It is time to help build the bridge between the history of the vast network that we call the “liturgical movement” in the United States and the tumultuous memories of the liturgical reform of the post-Vatican II period.
The "God Bearing" Patriarch: Hagia Sophia's Apse Mosaic in Ninth-Century Byzantine Politics
MA Thesis
In this paper, I suggest that the Byzantine Patriarch Photios (r. 858-867, 877-886) used the composition of the apse... more
In this paper, I suggest that the Byzantine Patriarch Photios (r. 858-867, 877-886) used the composition of the apse mosaic of the Theotokos and Christ-Child and its relationship to the light within Hagia Sophia to his political advantage. I propose that on Holy Saturday, 867, Photios attempted to counteract political threats through his Homily 17, which dedicated the apse mosaic, the first figural image installed in Hagia Sophia after the end of Iconoclasm. In Byzantine liturgy, the emperor played a ceremonial role as the embodiment of Christ, an idea that was widely propagated, for example, by images of Christ on imperial coins. I argue that Photios emphasized his own ceremonial role as a “God Bearer” and appropriated the image of the Theotokos as his own opposing political symbol. With the dedication of the Theotokos image, Photios garnered the visual language needed to oppose imperial authority and created an opportunity to assert his Iconophile polemic.
Homily 17 is a result of the continuation of the Iconoclast controversy that persisted since the so-called Truimph of Orthodoxy in 843. Through Photios’s dedication of the apse image and its relationship to Hagia Sophia’s liturgy, the apse mosaic became a performative image.
In addition to the convergence of ceremonial liturgy, Photios’s polemic sermon, and the political setting of Hagia Sophia, the play of light on the apse mosaic created an opportunity for the Patriarch to publicly assert his power. Rico Franses discusses how the effect of light on Hagia Sophia’s apse image of the Theotokos and Christ Child conveys Orthodox theology to the church’s congregation. He explains that the changing light in Hagia Sophia, as the sun rises and lowers, and the effect of the reflected light on the gold tessarae illuminate either the Theotokos or the Christ Child. I propose that Photios took advantage of Hagia Sophia’s unique light effect in order to emphasize the Theotokos and his own ceremonial role as a “God Bearer” over the Christ-Child in the political rhetoric of Homily 17 and the liturgy of Hagia Sophia.
Jean-Yves Lacoste:The Experience of Transcendence
From: 'Looking Beyond? Shifting Views of Transcendence in Philosophy, Theology, Art, and Politics' (Rodopi, 2012) ISBN: 9789042034730
This paper will examine Lacoste’s treatment of ethics, transcendence and theology, beginning first of all with the... more This paper will examine Lacoste’s treatment of ethics, transcendence and theology, beginning first of all with the relationship between phenomenology and transcendence in Lacoste’s work, specifically the issue of perception. As we shall see, for Lacoste, every phenomenon has the same right to be welcomed and described as any other: God does not differ from things in the world—both Deus and res can be semper maior. It will then discuss how, with reference to liturgy, the phenomenology of silence could relate to divine transcendence, ethics, and intersubjectivity.
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“La prima edizione in italiano del Book of Common Prayer (1685) tra propaganda protestante e memoria sarpiana,” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, XLIV (2008), 24-45.
[The First Italian Edition of the Book of Common Prayer (1685) between protestant propaganda and Sarpian memories]. In... more [The First Italian Edition of the Book of Common Prayer (1685) between protestant propaganda and Sarpian memories]. In 1685 the first printed edition in Italian of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, was published in London (Il Libro delle Preghiere Publiche Secondo l’Uso della Chiesa Anglicana). This article investigates the apologetic and controversial reasons that led to its publication. Because an Italian Protestant Church in England no longer existed when this translation was published, it was apparently not meant for use in worship. Furthermore, the same Italian Protestant Church in London, founded in 1550 and dissolved probably around 1663, had never adopted Anglican worship and both from the institutional and liturgical points of view had always been a Calvinist Church. The translation’s editor was Edward Brown, an Anglican cleric, who published a translation into English of Paolo Sarpi’s Lettere Italiane Scritte al Signor dell’Isola Groslot in 1693. Brown’s interest in Sarpi is particularly remarkable because, before the edition of 1685, the Book of Common Prayer was translated by the chaplain to the English ambassador, Sir Henry Wotton, for Sarpi himself between 1607 and 1610.
“Il battesimo nel Book of Common Prayer,” in Salvezza delle anime disciplina dei corpi. Un seminario sulla storia del Battesimo, edited by Adriano Prosperi, Scuola Normale Superiore, 2006, 551-571.
[The Baptism in the Book of Common Prayer]. The essay examines how the sacrament of baptism is described in the... more
[The Baptism in the Book of Common Prayer]. The essay examines how the sacrament of baptism is described in the various editions of the Book of Common Prayer (1549, 1552, 1559, 1604, 1662). This examination of the changes to the sacrament in the different Books of Common Prayers shows how central was this issue and how the debate around the liturgy embodied divergent theological settings.
“Libri pubblicati in italiano in Inghilterra nel XVII secolo: il caso della traduzione del Book of Common Prayer del 1685,” in Le livre italien hors d’Italie au XVIIe siècle, Actes du colloque du 23-25 avril 2009 réunis par Delphine Montoliu, Collection de l’Ecrit, no 12 (Toulouse: Université de Toulouse II, 2010), 91-120.
[Books Published into Italian in England in the Seventeenth Century: the Case of the Translation of the Book of Common... more [Books Published into Italian in England in the Seventeenth Century: the Case of the Translation of the Book of Common Prayer in 1685]. This essay has been published among the proceedings of the international conference on the “Italian Book outside Italy in the Seventeenth Century” held at the University of Toulouse in April 2009. Villani distinguishes two phases in the history of the publication of Italian works during the reign of James I. The first, with the laudatory poems by Antimo Galli, Lodovico Petrucci, Francesco Peretto and Alessandro Gatti, published between 1609 and 1619, aiming to flatter their patrons in England, saw the publication of works born in the cultural milieu that had Florio as its greatest exponent. The second was the expression of a specific ideological project that looked to Sarpi and Micanzio in Venice and De Dominis in England. This phase ended in major failure. In England, almost no more books were published in Italian. In 1629 a trade treaty with Savoy was published while in 1644, an edition of the Psalms for the cult of the Italian Protestant Church in London appeared. In 1660, the Quakers published a text aimed at the conversion of Italian Jews after which nothing was published for over two decades, until 1683, when Gregorio Leti published his Teatro Britannico, a description of English history and society, in London. Two years after Leti’s book a translation into Italian of the Book of Common Prayer was published by Moses Pitt. Villani discusses this edition at length basing on his earlier research. Then nothing was published but an anthology on Italian language by Torriano, a music text by Nicola Matteis and broadsheet to advertise a machine to desalinate sea water.
Feminists Borrowing Language and Practice from Other Religious Traditions: Some Ethical Implications
published in 'Feminist Theology', January 2012
Seeking new language for the Divine has encouraged Christian and Jewish feminists to explore other religious... more Seeking new language for the Divine has encouraged Christian and Jewish feminists to explore other religious traditions which are richer in feminine language for God, and in some cases to borrow parts of what they find for their own use. However, these other religious traditions are often socially and politically less powerful, and borrowing their language and practice has ethical implications. Especially because the ethical dimensions of liturgy are bound up with theological issues, religious feminists have a moral duty to consider these questions in which there are rarely if ever any easy answers.
Bernardino Dinali, un mercante milanese in pellegrinaggio a Gerusalemme
in la porta doriente, iii (2010), n-ljb32dm946g. 9, pp. 69-78
Per molto tempo non si è saputo chi fosse e si è confuso il nome di questo viaggiatore medievale col toponimo Noli, la... more
Per molto tempo non si è saputo chi fosse e si è confuso il nome di questo viaggiatore medievale col toponimo Noli, la cittadina in provincia di Savona. Ma dai riscontri d’archivio si è capito che non si trattava di un'indicazione della provenienza – la quale semmai sarebbe stata espressa nella forma da Noli – ma di un semplice cognome.
Dunque non di Bernardino Di Noli – e tantomeno Da Noli o Di Nali – si tratta bensì di Bernardino Dinali che, a suo stesso dire, esercitò la mercatura in Venezia da dove si imbarcò nel 1492 alla volta di Gerusalemme. «Incomincia la ierosolomitana peregrinatione facta da me, Bernardino Dinali milanese mercadante in Venetia, ne l’anno de la salute umana Mcccc° lxxxxij su la galia de la Illustrissima Signoria de Venetia chiamata la galia del Zaffo», dichiara l’autore all’inizio della sua narrazione. Da questa debole traccia è stato necessario partire per identificare un personaggio che ha lasciato tanto scarsa documentazione di sé da sollevare perfino il dubbio su quale fosse il suo nome effettivo.
Figurata ornamenta in laudibus Domini: gramática, retórica y música en los repertorios de canción litúrgica conservados en España
Published in Cuadernos de Música Iberoamericana, 13 (2007). pp. 5-34. ISSN 1136-5536
With the aid of a series of representative examples, the objective of this article is to highlight the connections... more With the aid of a series of representative examples, the objective of this article is to highlight the connections between the teaching of, and speculation about, disciplines including grammar, rhetoric and biblical exegesis, and the creation, transmission and assumption of new "extra-official" liturgical repertories at different moments and places during the Middle Ages. Using resources such as ornatus, and with a view to providing a better understanding, composition and proclamation of the truths of Christian faith shown during its celebration, liturgical song (text and/or music) was frequently understood and treated as a genuine liturgical commentary on the very evolution of the liturgy. Thus, the relationship between the old and the new, "sung liturgical commentary" and comments made outside the liturgy, and between the official Gregorian and "extra-official" repertories of tropes, sequences, prosulas, etc., will be examined from the point of view and in the context of liturgical action.
Acerca de la problemática en la transmisión de los tropos del Gloria: la vida de Laus tua Deus, un ejemplo temprano en un manuscrito gerundense
Published in Cuardernos de Música Iberoamericana, 14 (2007). pp. 7-40. ISSN 1136-5536
Using one of the earliest-known examples of trope (Laus tua Deus), conserved in the early-twelfth century troper from... more Using one of the earliest-known examples of trope (Laus tua Deus), conserved in the early-twelfth century troper from Girona (Paris Bibl. Nat. n. a. lat. 495), this article aims to give a practical description of the problems posed by a repertory of the nature of the Gloria tropes. In this respect, the transmission, characteristics and, ultimately, the configuration of the different regional profiles of this chant provide a special framework for it to be analysed from various points of view. Furthermore, in contrast to the "stability" of the Gregorian repertory, certain issues urgently requiring immediate discussion arise: oral transmission versus written notation, biblical versus newly created sources, standardisation versus recreation, etc.
Cantemus Domino cantica gloriae. Una visión panorámica de las epístolas farcidas en España a partir de la contenida en la misa de Santiago del Codex Calixtinus
Published in El Codex Calixtinus en la Europa del siglo XII. Música, Arte, Codicología y Liturgia. ed. Juan Carlos Asensio, León: Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música, Ministerio de Cultura, 2011, pp. 228-257.
ISBN 978-84-87075-79-7
En el escenario general de la canción litúrgica, este trabajo tiene por objeto arrojar luz sobre algunos aspectos de... more En el escenario general de la canción litúrgica, este trabajo tiene por objeto arrojar luz sobre algunos aspectos de la tradición litúrgica, musical y literaria de las epístolas farcidas contenidas en manuscritos españoles. Está claro que el Codex Calixtinus es un testimonio particular en múltiples facetas, entre las cuales como unicum se sitúa Cantemus Domino cantica gloriae. Por ello mismo, por sus mismas peculiaridades, esta epístola será tomada como parangón privilegiado en la valoración litúrgico-musical de las diez epístolas farcidas localizadas hasta ahora en más de dos docenas de fuentes y fragmentos de la España medieval.