Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Saturday 12 February 2022

Bidding farewell to the Alleluia


This evening, being the eve of Septuagesima, sees the cessation of the use of “Alleluia” until Easter in traditional Catholic and Orthodox liturgical usage. 

The New Liturgical Movement has a good article about this custom and its various expressions, including a recording of the tenth century hymn as translated by John Mason Neale traditionally sung on this day in many places as an accompaniment to the custom of literally burying the “Alleluia”, at The Dismissal of the Alleluia

I have posted before about this symbolic act in 
Burying the Alleluia in 2012 and Burying the Alleluia ( again - I was not being very original ) in 2014, and did so again last year with Burying the Alleluia ( still not very original ), which has links to those two previous posts. At least this year I have shown some originality, as did those who came up with this evocative custom in the medieval period.


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