Celebrating St Gregory

Today is the EF feast of St Gregory the Great, and yesterday evening I attended an anticipated celebration of the day which was also the patronal feast at SS Gregory and Augustine in north Oxford. Fr John Saward offered a Missa Cantata in his church, which had put aside Lenten austerity and was suitably decorated with spring flowers in a style which complemented the Arts and Crafts style of the building.

A good occasion, if not quite as spectacular as the Mass of St Gregory...

 

The Mass of St Gregory 

 Image:cathcon.blogspot.uk

Relics travelling to Canterbury

My attention was drawn to this article in the latest edition of The Tablet about the loan of the reputed crozier of St Gregory the Great to Canterbury Cathedral during the meeting of the Primates of the Anglican Communion and also of a blood stained vestment of St Thomas Becket that is also going to be lent to the cathedral in December.

The article can be viewed, together with a photograph of the ivory crozier head, at Vatican loans Church of England ancient relics ahead of vital gathering

Maybe one should pray that these relics will remind the Primates of the Rock whence Anglicanism was hewn, and that they will be drawn by the Ordinariates or otherwise to seek reconciliation.

Images of St Gregory the Great

Today is the traditional feast day of Pope St Gregory the Great.

Here, from contributors to the Medieval Religion discussion group, are a selection of images of him.

Gordon Plumb posted the following images in stained glass:

York Minster, NXI, 2b-4b (right-hand light)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/5019923265

Winchester, Hospital of St Cross & St Faith, South Transept, North-East Clerestory window:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/5759439053

and detail:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/5759982642

Saint-Nicholas-de-Port, Bay 101, 6a-10a, (left-hand light):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22274117@N08/4125529241

Genevra Kornbluth added a page of sculpted and painted depictions of St Gregory, and dating from the 14th-16th centuries:

http://www.kornbluthphoto.com/SaintGregory.html

Jim Bugslag posted the manuscript illumination in the Très Riches Heures of Gregory's procession in Rome against the plague, when he saw the apparition of St Michael sheathing his sword atop Hadrian's Tomb, aka the Castel S. Angelo.

http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/Images/ARTH212images/liturgical_objects/Relics/TRH_Litany.jpg

There are aselection of images of him from over the centuries illustrating the Wikipedia biography and article about him at Pope Gregory I 

The nearest thing we possess as a contemporary likeness of St Gregory is one which depicts him, flanked by his parents, but which I cannot track down on the internet today.

A very popular dedpiction of him in the later middle ages was in the context of the story of the Mass of St Gregory, when there was vouchsafed a vision of Our Lord whilst St Gregory was celebrating Mass, so as to confound a member of the congregation who doubted Transubstantiation.

Image:traditionalcatholicpriest.com

St Gregory the Great

Today, in the novus ordo calendar, is the feast of St Gregory the Great, Pope from 590 until 604, and the Apostle of the English.

To mark his feast day here is another depiction of the Mass of St Gregory, the oft-used later medieval story of how he convinced a doubter of the reality of Transubstantiation. As became usual the scene is shown with the Saint having a vision of the Man of Sorrows.

The Mass of Saint Gregory Student or follower of Robert Campin about 1440 Oil on panel, 85 x 73 cm Brussels, Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts

Some scholars have thought that the Mass of Saint Gregory was a copy after a lost original by Robert Campin dating from around 1410-1415. Image: aiwaz.net

As with other depictions of this story the painting is an insight into late medieval liturgical practice and also late medieval expectations of what churches and liturgies looked like.

Gregorian celebrations

This weekend I have attended two liturgical celebrations to mark the feast of St Gregory the Great.

On Saturday, his modern feast day, and the day of his election as Pope in 590, the Oxford Ordinariate Group evening Mass was for the feast, and accompanied by Gregorian chant from the schola Chorus Anglorum. The Mass itself was celebrated in the novus ordo in Latin by Mgr Andrew Burnham - so it was a different, if not new, translation. Given the crucial part played by St Gregory in the conversion of the English this was a way of claiming, and indeed reclaiming, patrimony, though perhps not in the way everyone might expect. Patrimony, however, to my mind is something that stretches deep into an undivided, pre-reformation Church. This sense was clear to me with traditional chant reverberating in the 1960s church of Holy Rood, and incense rising up above the altar through the striking corona over the sanctuary. Here were the English coming home to their spiritual father in Rome - be it Gregory I or Benedict XVI, and blending the accumulated treasures and gifts of centuries.

I commented afterwards to Mgr Burnham that, much as I appreciate the new Mass translation, which is so much better than the one that has been used I really have come to prefer Mass in Latin - which is again, I suppose, a fruit of St Gregory's mission to us Angles and Saxons

A thirteenth-century manuscript showing Pope Saint Gregory the Great with the Dove of the Holy Spirit perched on his shoulder, and Gregory dictating to two scribes.

Image: testamonianzaprefetica.org

I was asked to serve at today's principal Mass at St Gregory and St Augustine in north Oxford, as they were observing it as an external Solemnity to mark their patronal feast, and they were short of servers this weekend. I was pleased to do so, and the Mass was a joyful and reverent celebration. The church was handsomely decorated with flowers following a wedding yesterday which complemented its Arts and Crafts design and the recently redecorated and rededicated reredos.

In his sermon Fr Saward allued to the frequent medieval depiction of the Mass of St Gregory, of which I give an example below. I cannot claim that Mass today at St Gregory and Augustine's actually looked like that, but the central truth of the Mass is no different. The legend of Christ appearing to St Gregory to indicate the truth of His presence in the Sacrament is a reminder to us all of what is happening when a priest celebrates the Holy Sacrifice - true in the time of St Gregory and true now.

The Mass of St Gregory

Image: traditionalcatholicism.org

St Gregory the Great

My post the other day about folded chasubles included an illustration of St Gregory the Great, which reminded me that today is the anniversary of his death in 604, and used to be his feast day until 1970, when it was transferred to September 3rd. It is still his feast day in the missal used for the Extraordinary Form of Mass. Given his importance to English Christianity it seemed a pity not to post something about him today.

He must be accounted as one of the most influential of all the Popes, not merely because of the English mission sent under St Augustine in 596-7, but also because of his development of the Papal office in practical terms, his contribution to the liturgy and music of the Church and his writings as one of the Latin Doctors of the Church.

The picture below, which prompted this post, shows Pope St. Gregory the Great standing between his father, Gordianus, and his mother Silvia. It is an engraving of a now lost original which must be datable to his pontificate of 590-604 as he is shown with a square nimbus, indicationg that he was alive when the work was done. It is, I think, the only surviving contemporary picture of him to be known.

Image:New Liturgical Movement

I found two other images online from a somewhat later date. The first, from the thirteenth century, shows the Dove of the Holy Spirit speaking into his ear of Saint Gregory the Great to indicate the inspired nature of his writing. He appears to be shown wearing the early form of the Papal crown rather than a mitre.

The second one looks to be earlier in date, but again shows St Gregory being inspired by the Holy Spirit and dictating to a scribe. This is one of several similar depictions of him to survive from the Carolingian and Ottonian eras.

Images: Marcello Ciai

May St Gregory continue to pray for the Church in England and for the life of the Church as a whole.

May we continue to be grateful for his contribution to the life of the Church and especially to that of this country.