Commemorating the Transfiguration

The Transfiguration

Fra Angelico  

San Marco Room 6 Florence. 1438

Image: Wikimedia

Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration, and has been for not a few centuries. But one might ask why it is celebrated today, in August, rather than in the lead up to Easter, which is where the historic event fits into Our Lord’s earthly life and indeed it sets Him on the road to the Passion. The Lenten season does commemorate the Transfiguration on the liturgical path to Easter, so why is it celebrated now?

As the author of the Wikipedia article at Feast of the Transfiguration about the feast admits the origins of its celebration in the ninth century are obscure and that different dioceses celebrated it on various dates. By the mid-fifteenth century it was celebrated in Rome on August 6th.

570 years ago, in 1456, the news arrived in Rome on August 6th of John Hunyadi’s great victory over the Ottoman besiegers of Belgrade on July 22nd. That is recounted in Siege of Belgrade (1456). Hunyadi’s triumph was celebrated across Christendom - here in Oxford a procession and special service was held by the University - and Pope Callixtus III ( the other Borgia Pope ) made August 6th the universal celebration of the Transfiguration. He also mandated, or confirmed, the daily ringing at noon of church bells in thanksgiving for the deliverance. By a strange coincidence the Pope was to die on August 6th 1458.

Pope Callixtus III 1455-58

A portrait from 1455 by Sano di Piero

Image: Wikipedia