Conferring the Diaconate

This morning Bishop Alan Hopes will ordain 21 former Anglican clergy to the Diaconate for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in Westminster Cathedral. Amongst them is my good friend John Hunwicke.

To mark the occasion I am posting a painting by the Catalan artist Jaume Huguet (1412-92) from his Retaule de Sant Vicenç de Sarrià‎, of 1455-60 which is now in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona.

In this panel St Vincent is ordained as deacon by his Bishop, St Valerius of Saragossa:

Image:Wikimedia

As with contemporary late medieval Netherlandish and German art I delight in the details of liturgy and contemporary life and costume such paintings record. As a painting it is a splendid representation of the beauty of medieval ritual and practice.

 As with the great Lisbon panels depicting St Vincent, themselves of the 1460s, the use of a red pileus is shown - is this, I wonder, an indication of membership of the episcopal familia and the equivalent of a Monseigneurial or canonical biretta today?

May St Stephen, St Lawrence and St Vincent join us in praying for these new Deacons.