Coronation at Alba Iulia 1922

Today is the ninetieth anniversary of the coronation of King Ferdinand I of Romania and his consort Queen Marie at Alba Iulia in Transylvania. It had been st Alba Iulia on December 1 1918 that the vote to accede to the Romanian Kingdom was given by Transylvanian representitives, and the city had been the capital of the previous unified Romanian monarchy, that of Michael the Brave from 1599 to 1601. The coronation took place at the Romanian Orthodox Cathedral of the Reunion, built in 1921-22, next to the medieval Catholic cathedral. Both are within the eighteenth century Alba Carolina fortess built under the Emperor Charles VI.

 

King Ferdinand I and Queen Marie of Romania
following their Coronations on October 15, 1922, in Alba Iulia.

 

Image:www.tboyle.net/Royalty/Romania_Coronation

King Ferdinand I of Romania and his wife Queen Marie were crowned in a non-denominational ceremony on October 15, 1922, in the square in front of the Coronation Cathedral of the Reunification.  The ceremony was non- denominational because, although Romania was overwhelmingly Orthodox, the King was a devout Catholic and his wife was then an Anglican.

King Ferdinand's two successors, King Carol II and King Mihai I, however, had only swearing-in ceremonies. King Carol II, upon ascending the Throne in the summer of 1930, did schedule a coronation in Alba Iulia for the following September; but, a few weeks before the planned ceremony, the coronation was postponed and was never to be re-scheduled, because of the complicated situation with Carol's ex-wife, Queen Helen, who due to their divorce obviously could not be crowned with him, but was nonetheless living in Romania as "Queen Mother Helen" or Her Majesty Helen.

The Coronation was very much a celebration of the post-war unification of the Romanian people under one King. thus the pre-war kingdom based on Wallachia and Moldavia was now unired to Bessarabia [ now Moldova], Transylvania and the Dobruja. The diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference which achieved this owed no little part of its success to Queen Marie's presence, and the Coronation was very much her day. As the links above show, she was a somewhat larger-than-life figure, who won the hearts of her Romanian subjects by he enthusiastic support of the national cause during the First World War and the subsequent developments. Here are views from a set of postcards of the ceremony:

Images: Romania Postcards collection at postcardscollection.wordpress.com

Image:tkinter.smig.net

Two sisters, H.M. Queen Elizabeth of Greece and H.M. Queen Marie of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, at the Coronation of their parents. The Queens are followed by T.R.H. Princess Irene of Greece, Princess Ileana of Romania and Grand Duchess Viktoria Fyodorovna of Russia.

Image: Serbian Royal Family website

Queen Marie in her Coronation robes and crown

Image:hoover.org

Queen Marie's own account of the coronation can be read in the illustrated article which can be found here. 

There is information about one of the items of jewellery worn by the Queen, a spectacular sapphire, here  and here - the latter has an expandable link to Philip de Lazlo's 1924 Coronation portrait of the Queen.

A commemorative medal  for the Coronation

Image: e-bay

The Romanian Orthodox Cathedral of the Reunification built in Alba Iulia in 1921-22, and the setting for for the coronation

Image:Wikipedia

 

St Callistus

Were today not Sunday it would, as it is October 14th, be the feast of  Pope St Callistus I (d. 222). Callistus, also, and probably better known as Calixtus, was elected bishop of Rome in 217, succeeding Pope St. Zephyrinus. Our chief sources for him are the tendentious Philosophoumena or Refutatio omnium haeresium of an Hippolytus who tends be called Hippolytus of Rome and the not altogether reliable Liber pontificalis. According to Hippolytus, Callistus had been born into servile status and had twice been punished for crimes. In the second instance he had been sentenced to the mines in Sardinia and probably at that time ceased to be the property of his former master, a Christian of the Imperial household. Some nine or ten years after Callistus's release from the mines Pope Zephyrinus put him in charge of the Christian cemetery at Rome that still bears Callistus's name. There is an illustrated, Italian-language, page on the cemetery of Callistus here.

There is more about the stories of his earlier life and about his death in the online account which can be read here.

In his brief pontificate Callistus condemned Sabellius for heresy. Though he died under Alexander Severus, who is not known to have persecuted Christians, by the earlier fourth century Callistus. had come to be considered a martyr. The Depositio martyrum of the Chronographer of 354 enters under today Callistus's laying to rest at a milestone that accords with the location of the cemetery of Calepodius. The latter is given as the site of Callistus's burial by both the Liber pontificalis and Callistus's legendary Passio (BHL 1523; oldest witness is of the ninth century and a condensed version in hexameters is in the earlier to mid-tenth-century De triumphis Christi in Italia of Flodoard of Reims). Callistus's remains are said to have been translated, perhaps by Pope Gregory III (731-741), to Rome's church of Santa Maria in Trastevere where later Pope Gregory IV (827-844) gave him the honour of re-burial in the church's apse. Callistus. third from the left, is depicted in the late thirteenth-century apse mosaic (ca. 1290; attributed to Pietro Cavallini) in  Santa Maria in Trastevere which can be viewed here.

 In 854 relics believed to be those of St Callistus were translated by count St. Evrardus (Everardus) of Friuli to the monastery he had founded at today's Cysoing (Nord) in French Hainaut. The monastery, which survived until 1792, took Callistus's name but in 892 it became a dependency of the church of Reims and his relics, teste Flodoard in his Historia ecclesiae Remensis, were translated thither in the same year and laid to rest in the  cathedral, next to those of St. Nicasius of Reims.

Since the early fifteenth century a head thought to be Callistus's has been in St. George's Chapel of Český Krumlov Castle. The website for the castle at Český Krumlov (in German: Böhmisch Krumau) in Bohemia is here.

St Callistus is portrayed in an earlier thirteenth-century statue on the trumeau of the central portal of the north transept of the present cathédrale Notre-Dame in Reims which, as mentioned above, housed some of his relics:

Image: learn.columbia.edu

There is another view of the statue here:

Image: Wikimedia Commons

This  statue is, I think, interesting not because it is portrait, which it clearly is not - although it does suggest a similar iconography to the mosaic in Santa Maria in Trastevere in the link above - but because it depicts a Pope as he was expected to appear when vested to an early thirteenth century audience - the tiara still has only one circlet, and the Pope appears to be wearing a rationale over his pallium.

Spurious letters of St Callistus are included in the collection known as the False Decretals. One of these decrees fasting in each of four seasons - the Ember Days. Here, in a earlier fourteenth-century (ca. 1326-1350) collection of French-language saint's lives, is an image of Callistus promulgating this decree, again wearing an early form of the Papal tiara: 

Source: Paris, BnF, ms. Français 185, fol. 201r

Image: BnF

St Callistus is shown at the left, baptizing, in a later fifteenth-century copy (1463) of Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum historiale in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay. In this picture he wears the familiar triple crown tiara: 

Source: Paris, BnF ms. Français 51, fol. 9r

Image: BnF

In England the one chapel dedicated to St Callistus that comes to my mind is in the south transept of Wells cathedral, which has a handsome modern stained glass depiction of him, wearing a triple tiara.

Adapted, with additional comments of my own, from John Dillon's post on the Medieval Religion discussion group.

The Forty Hours at the Oxford Oratory

I attended quite a lot of the Forty Hours at the Oxford Oratory over this weekend. We began with a Solemn Mass of Exposition in the Extraordinary Form at 6pm on Friday evening, which drew a good congregation. The sermon as well as the post-Communion litany and prayers all helped to focus our thoughts and prayers as a congregation.

Our Lord enthroned on His altar
Image: Oxford Oratory website

After going off for supper with friends I returned with them for Compline with the Dominicans at Midnight, followed by Benediction.

The Dominicans from Blackfriars sing Compline before the Blessed Sacrament
Image: Oxford Oratory website

Preparing for Benediction after Compline

Image: Oxford Oratory website

I then settled down, as in previous years, to helping maintain the Vigil through the night. We said the successive Mysteries of the Rosary at each hour, and apart from time for silent prayer and adoration there were times when it was possible to have some of refreshments that had been provided to give us bodily sustinence.

At 5am we had Mattins and Lauds sung by the Oratorians and the Sisters of the Work from Littlemore, and this seemed particularly beautiful and meditative - much more so than, as too often, rushing to say the Morning Office from the Divine Office before going out into the city on an ordinary day.

At 6am there was Mass, again in the Extrordinary Form, for the feast of St Edward the Confessor. After that in the still and quiet of early light I found my prayers moved on from set forms and intentions to a greater openess - I clearly needed a time of spiritual purgation in the presence of Our Lord to help me pray.

Later on I went off to London and the Rosary Crusade, and was not back in the Oratory until Sunday.

The 11am Mass was that of the Sacred Heart, a very splendid liturgy with some of the finest vestments in the Ortaory collection in use, and a packed congregation. I was back in good time for Solemn Vespers at 5pm.

This proved, as always, a magnificent conclusion to the devotion, with the Choir singing the psalmody, a procession of the Blessed Sacrament with the singing of hymns around the church and then Benediction.

As I was leaving a lady from the congregation, who had participaed in the all night vigil on Friday-Saturday commented to me how lucky we are to have the Forty Hours at the Oratory and what those who do not have it miss. She spoke with evident warmth of how on this occasion she felt she was walking on air when she left the church, and I am sure that she and I are not alone in having such reactions to this annual event.

I know from what I have seen behind the scenes, and helping a little in the preparations, how much effort goes into organising the Forty Hours and the Oratory Fathers and also in particular, the Sacristan, are to be congratulated on all their hard work on our behalf .

The Rosary Crusade in London

I took time off from the Forty Hours at the Oxford Oratory to go up to London to participate in the Rosary Crusade this afternoon. I thought we were going to be in for rain as there was sharp shower just before the coach stopped but in fact the afternoon proved dry and sunny at times. I was anxious to go this year, having been unable to do so last year, to remember Fr Hugh Thwaites S.J., the founder of the Crusade who died at the age of 95 in the late summer. As it was also the 95th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun on this day in 1917 there was an additional cause for commemoration.

I had just arrived in Ambrosden Avenue beside Westminster Cathedral when I was greeted by a friend who is a seminarian at Allen Hall, and we kept company throughout the procession to Brompton. The numbers participating were again impressive, and we seemed as a procession to keep together in recitation of the Mysteries than on some previous occasions. At the appropriate points as we sang the Aves in various hymns most of us waved our hymn sheets in the approved Fatima fashion.

As usual on this occasion I was struck by the friendliness of Saturday afternoon shoppers as we passed by - when we are so often told there is such hostility to religion, here was renewed evidence of tolerance and, indeed, benevolence towards what we were doing.

At the Oratory itself those who had processed from Westminster and others who had awaited our arrival filled the church - as usual on these occasions I ended up standing in a side chapel. We had a forceful sermon from the Provost of the London Oratory, Fr Julian Large C.O., on the way in which Marian dogmas and devotion counteract heresy, and applying it to the observance of the Year of Faith. More so than in the past the devotions, including the Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, spoke to me as an individual, making me all the more pleased to have made the effort to go. Benediction at the High Altar and the Salve Regina at the Lady Altar closed the devotions. A good way to spend the afternoon - next year's Crusade is scheduled for Saturday October 12th.

Afterwards I met up with two sisters, friends from their student days in Oxford, and their parents. We exchanged news and information about mutual friends before I set off back up Brompton Road and Park Lane to Marble Arch and the coach back to Oxford.

Ordinariate Conference November 9th

I have received this from the Ordinariate, and thought it might interest readers, though I regret that I doubt if I shall be free to attend myself.

 

I came to know and respect Fr Richardson when we used to meet in Oxford at Pusey House and elsewhere.

Join us as we look to the future, to growth in Christ and for his Church...

 

Inspired by the Year of Faith, which opened this week, the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham is hosting a one day conference on mission and evangelisation for members and supporters of Pope Benedict’s vision for the reunion of Anglicans with the See of Peter.

The conference, which will take place at the church of St Patrick, Soho Square - itself described as ‘a beacon of hope’ for the New Evangelisation - will have keynote presentations from experienced ‘practitioners’, and the opportunity for discussion, questions, and answers.

Fr Allan Hawkins, Parish Priest of St Mary the Virgin in Arlington, Texas, is a former Anglican clergyman who was received into the Catholic Church and ordained under the Pastoral Provision of Blessed John Paul II. Since the advent of the Pastoral Provision, Fr Hawkins has grown and developed a Catholic parish community within the Anglican liturgical and spiritual tradition. Earlier this year it was announced that the parish will transfer to the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter.

Fr Paul Richardson is a priest of the Archdiocese of Westminster. He was formerly Assistant Bishop of Newcastle in the Church of England, previously working in Norway, and as a missionary in Nambaiyfa, Papua New Guinea. He was Principal of Newton Theological College, Popondetta, Dean of Port Moresby, and subsequently Bishop of Aipo Rongo, Papua New Guinea, and later Bishop of Wangaratta in Australia.

A spokesman for the Ordinariate said, “This is an exciting opportunity for us and our supporters to begin to think in a strategic way about the development of our mission. We are integrated into the Catholic Church by virtue of our communion, but the Year of Faith presents us with an opportunity to think about the ways in which we can contribute - as the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham - to the work of the New Evangelisation, claiming back these lands for Mary’s Dowry’.

The conference takes place on Friday 9 November 2012 from 11.00 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. All are welcome to attend. No charge is made, but a donation of £10 is requested, plus a further donation to help cover the cost of lunch, which will be provided. To register your interest, please email media@ordinariate.org.uk 

The conclusion of the conference will be a Solemn Mass, celebrated by the Ordinary, Mgr Keith Newton, according to the Book of Divine Worship - the Eucharistic liturgy drawn from the Anglican tradition, currently permitted for use in the Personal Ordinariates.

The programme for the day is as follows:

11.00 a.m. Coffee available11.30 a.m. First Session: Fr Allan Hawkins12.30 p.m. Q&A, discussion1.00 p.m. Lunch (provided, donations please)1.45 p.m. Second Session: Fr Paul Richardson2.45 p.m. Q&A, discussion3.15 p.m. Solemn Mass, celebrated by the Ordinary

Clergy wishing to assist in choir at the Mass should bring cassock, surplice/cotta, and white stole.

St Wilfrid and Fr Faber

Having written my posts St Wilfrid two years ago about his life and cult and last year about two of the churches under his patronage I was wondering what to say about him today when, searching for images of him on the internet I came across this one, of a statue in the church at Cotton in Staffordshire. It is not in itself a great work of art, but it is an interesting link between St Wilfrid and one of the great figures of the English nineteenth century Church, Fr F.W. Faber.

Statue of St Wilfrid
St Wilfrid's Catholic church, Cotton, Staffordshire

Image: Mr Po on Flickr

Fr Faber, the Oxford DNB life of whom by Sheridan Gilley can be read here, was born at Calverley in the West Riding  in 1814, although he only spent the first six months of his life in the village, about which there is an online article here. His grandfather, Thomas Faber, was the Vicar and Frederick William was born at the vicarage. The medieval church at Calverley, in which he was baptised is dedicated to St Wilfrid, and in later life Faber was to exhibit considerable devotion to the seventh and eighth century Bishop whose Roman preferences shaped the evolution of the Northumbrian church. Devotion to English saints was, of course, a hallmark of the Oxford Movement.

Thus upon his reception it was under the patronage of St Wilfrid that Fr Faber made his initial foundation at Cotton, known as the Wilfidians, built a church under St Wilfrid's patronage, and was to take the name Wilfrid in religion.

In later years at London the Oratory came to have a chapel of St Wilfrid, where Faber's remains now lie, and St Wilfrid's Hall.

 

St Wilfrid's Calverley

Image: Wikimedia commons

St Wilfrid's Calverley may then be seen, in a sense, to be a somewhat surprising mother church to the London Oratory.

Vatican II and other Councils fifty years on

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the opening by Pope John XXIII of the Second Vatican Council in 1962.

Pope John XXIII is carried into St Peter's to open the Second Vatican Council

Image: offerimustibidomine.blogspot

The Pope's speech, which he delivered at the opening session, can be read here.  It repays reading, and asking the question as to whether the Council achieved Pope John's aims for it

On the basis of this fiftieth anniversary, and the twentieth anniversary of the publication of one of its fruits, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the  present Pope has declared 2012-13 the Year of Faith both to mark these anniversaries and to build upon what they represent. That would appear to be a positive way of applying, and perhaps, reclaiming, the heritage of Vatican II.

Thinking about this I was struck by the thought that the fiftieth anniversaries of the opening of Ecumenical Councils have not always been auspicious. In case you need to brush up your knowledge of the Ecumenical Councils, and indeed which Councils are deemed Ecumenical, and by whom, there is an on-line introduction here.

The fiftieth anniversary of Nicea, which met in 325, fell in 375, in the lead-up to Constantinople I which met -in 381, and in a slightly amended form, ratified the Nicene Creed. So far, so good.

Fifty years later, in 431 the Council of Ephesus was held and proclaimed the Virgin Mary as Mother of God; within twenty years, and one dubious council in 449 later, in 451 there was the Council of Chalcedon, whose Christological definitions consolidated taht which was Catholic and Orthodox, but provoked schisms in the East which still endure.

Passing over other meetings which did, or did not help the unity of all Christians, to those later Councils of the Catholic Church in the post-Gregorian era the first to really strike one is , of course, Lateran IV in 1215. Fifty years later Innocent III's achievement was a consolidated fact and shaping the life and practise of the Western Church.

Lyons I in 1245 deposed the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II; fifty years later he and the Hohenstaufen were indeed past history, bu at a terrible cost to individuals and institutions, not least the Papacy.

Lyons II in 1274 proclaimed unity with the Orthodox: well before 1324 the hollowness of that achievement had become apparent.

Vienne in 1312 famously dissolved the Templars (a favourite subject, of course, with conspiracy theorists ) and they did not really make a come-back, but the initiatives towards the Eastern churches bore no real fruit before or after 1362.

Constance summoned by the Emperor in 1414 and by one of the three Popes - John XXIII - in 1415 resolved the Great Schism by electing one recognised Pope in Martin V (barring a few followers of Benedict XIII, Clement VIII etc in the Pyrenees), but its ensuing Conciliarism was to be formally reprobated by Pope Pius II before his death in its anniversary year of 1464. Within fourteen years of the Council of Florence's union with the East in Laetare Coeli,  Constantinople had fallen to the Ottomans, and Orthodoxy's, position was even worse.

Lateran V in 1512-17 had no substantive impact. Seven moths after its close Luther posted up his 95 theses and within a few years Catholic Christendom was riven asunder. By 1562 the Wars of Religion had begun in France, the eldest daughter of the Church...

Trent which met in 1545 had, by 1595, enabled a significant and substantial recovery by the Catholic Church which continued into the next century, but much lost territory - and many souls - remained lost.

Vatican I met in 1869-70 but was halted after its first session by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. It achieved a definition of Papal Infallibility, but its intended aim of engaging with the issues posed by the contemporary world and its ideas had to be deferred. By 1919-20 the world to which Pope Pius IX and his bishops belonged had largely disappeared, much of it blown away by the disaster of Word War I. That new world would have been largely unimaginable to most in 1870, and then mainly as a nightmare.

The opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962

Image: dsjliturgyblogspot.com

So as we reflect fifty years on about Vatican II, as indeed many have been doing ever since it closed in 1965, its purpose, achievement and legacy, not to mention the "Spirit of Vatican II" continue to be discussed and indeed fought over. The precedents are uncertain as to the successes of such Councils. The future is, of course, unknowable, so there is much to contend for and over. Maybe the Year of Faith will help all Catholics not only to know their faith better, as the Pope intends, but also to understand what has happened since this day fifty years ago. We must pray so.

A modern take on an Old World View

The other week a friend, who knows my somewhat traditional sympathies, sent me this slightly tongue-in-cheek piece of modern historical cartography:



It seems a reasonably fair assessment of the situation in 1914...

It comes from a series of quite entertaining mapping stereotypes produced by Alpha Designer.com, all of which can be accessed here.