Further thoughts on Black Rod and the Door of the House of Commons

I recently posted Black Rod and the Door of the House of Commons based upon a piece on the History of Parliament website about the origins of this ceremonial at the State Opening of Parliament and the apparent modern misinterpretations of its significance.

Since then the online Liturgical Arts Journal has published a piece about medieval French processional practice on Palm Sunday, which I think reinforces my own argument for drawing the parallel between the state and religious ceremonies. The full article, which is very interesting in itself, can be seen at Singing on High: The Gloria Laus Ceremony of Palm Sunday in Medieval France

In it there are a sequence of passages from the early eighteenth century liturgical French commentator Claude de Vert, Explication Simple, Littérale et Historique des Cérémonies de l'église, Volume 2, pp. 377 - 384, about the liturgy of Palm Sunday, notably that of knocking with the Processional Cross on the city gate or church door for admission. That is done in the name and with the symbol of the King of Kings, but very much on the same principle as was considered in respect of the English monarch and the House of Commons, and its possible inspiration with the City of London, by the original History of Parliament post.

Claude de Very in his turn compares the Palm Sunday practice with the ceremonial of Joyeuse Entrees by the Kings of France with the significant interpretation:

“the church doors are closed so that they may be opened again, and in this manner the procession is honoured, as if the doors were only opened for the express purpose of welcoming it.” (from Section 19).

This seems to me to tie in closely with the History of Parliament blog post about the origins of the closing of the doors of the Commons at Black Rod’s approach and their immediate opening upon his or her striking the door in the name of the Sovereign.

Trigger warning: Snowflakes about

The Times yesterday had a report that the University of Oxford has rejected a call by Oxford University Student Union (OUSU) to drop “ablest, transphobic, classist and misogynistic content” from its reading lists.

The University says, quite rightly, that free speech under the law is the lifeblood of the institution. The present Vice-Chancellor has, commendably, in speeches in recent years made that point and that students should expect to engage with challenging ideas as part of their education.

OUSU is, and has been all the time I have been in Oxford, a pathetic and laughable institution, run by people with petty little agendas of their own. As an organisation it was always a joke to those of us who were in any way involved in the life of The Oxford Union (OUS), which is entirely separate, or of our colleges, or indeed who had a life at all.

That is not to minimise the threat posed by such “woke” enthusiasts in places with a less robust or more amenable administration. Such censorship is dangerous and life-denying yo minds in formation. Censorship can have a place - but not in the contemporary world in a place of learning.

The article in The Times is behind a paywall but if you have access it can be read at Oxford ignores call to censor ‘ism’ texts

Watch the birdie!

When I was a young boy I was quite keen on ornithology, partly because we lived opposite open rough grassland that attracted an interesting selection of birds. Something of that interest has always remained with me, and in particular, I suppose being a historian, I was aware of schemes to re-establish birds which have been driven to extinction in this country. I always felt sorry about the extinct of the Great Auk, and further afield, the Dodo - though here in Oxford I am, of course, close to the best bits surviving of the latter.

When I was young it was the return of the Osprey to Scotland which caught my attention. Then there were the moves to reintroduce the Great Bustard to Wiltshire whence it had disappeared in, I think, the eighteenth century.

Here in the Thames valley there has in the last generation been the very successful return of the Red Kite, once common scavengers in medieval and sixteenth century London. I gather they are dab hands ( should I say claws?) at getting into black plastic rubbish sacks looking for food; do not leave such sacks out overnight is the advice. Seeing then hovering around on the wing or in the fields around the Chilterns makes them look like birds of ill-omen who know something we don’t....

In recent years there have been repeated hopes that storks would successfully breed again in the country. There is a report about the latest situation from The Guardian at First wild stork chicks to hatch in UK in centuries poised to emerge. That suggests this may have happened during the Civil War, but the most famous example was in 1416 when a pair nested on St Giles’ in Edinburgh.

Last month the BBC website had a report about the increasingly successful re-establishment of Cranes in various parts of the country. They had disappeared four centuries ago from wetlands. That report can be seen at Cranes make comeback in Britain's wetlands.

Today I saw a report in The Independent about the beginnings of attempts to reintroduce the White-tailed Eagle to the Isle of Wight. Until 1780 that was their last refuge in England, and the last one in the country was shot in the Shetlands in 1918. Reintroduced to Scotland in the 1970s some have now been moved to the Isle of Wight. The report can be read at UK’s largest bird of prey returns to England for first time in 240 years.

GPS tracking has enabled observation of the extensive travels this spring by the birds, and their forays afield. I particularly like the male and female who took off for a few days to the North Yorkshire Moors and included in that a four hour trip to the coast between Whitby and Saltburn - avian romance and a fish supper?

Fr Hunwicke’s Marian Pilgrimage

As he promised Fr Hunwicke has produced his list of medieval English Marian shrines which I have copied and am posting here:

In accordance with suggestions received, I here give the "Spiritual Pilgrimage"' locations for the rest of May. They are the Medieval English shrines as listed in the little Walsingham booklet I mentioned before. As I suggested, one could go a-roaming to foreign shrines too; and to English-Welsh modern shrines. There is, for example, the Shrine at the Oratory Church in Cardiff; there is our Lady of Light, once at S Hilary in Cornwall and also at Posbury S Francis in Devon and Clacton on Sea in Essex ... suggestions welcome on this thread ... 

1: Our Lady of Glastonbury.
2: Our Lady of the Undercroft in Canterbury Cathedral.
3: Our Lady of the Red Ark in York Minster.
4: Our Lady of Westminster (at the North door of the Abbey and in its Pew Chapel, and in Westminster Cathedral.
5: Our Lady of Grace at the Pillar in S Paul's Cathedral.
6: Our Lady at the Oak in Islington.
7: Our Lady of Willesden.
8: Our Lady of Muswell.
9: Our Lady of Oxford.
10: Our Lady of Grace at Cambridge.
11: Our Lady of Coventry.
12: Our Lady of Grace of Ipswich.
13: Our Lady of Thetford.
14: Our Lady of Woolpit.
15: Our Lady of Abingdon.
16: Our Lady of Pity in the Galilee at Durham.
17: Our Lady on the Bridge at Wakefield.
18: Our Lady of the White Friars in Doncaster.
19: Our Lady at the Pillar, St Edmundsbury.
20: Our Lady of Evesham.
21: Our Lady of the Four Candles at S Alban's.
22: Our Lady of Pity in the Rock at Dover.
23: Our Lady in the Park, near Liskeard in Cornwall.
24: Our Lady in the Wood, near Epworth in Lincolnshire.
25: Our Lady of Winchester.
26: Our Lady of Windsor.
27: Our Lady of Peace, at Winfarthing in Norfolk.
28: Our Lady of Ardenburgh, in the Church of S Nicholas in Yarmouth.
29: Our Lady at the Oak, in S Martin's, Norwich.
30: Our Lady on the Red Mount, King's Lynn.
31: Our Lady of Walsingham.

The Book of Common Prayer in Latin

The Special Correspondent has sent me the link to a very interesting post by Dr Francis Young about the Latin versions of the Book of Common Prayer and in particular the Liber Precum Publicarum published in 1560.

In years past as an Anglican here in Oxford I used to attend the Termly 8am Latin Holy Communion according to the BCP in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in the High Street on the Thursday of Noughth Week. This was an interesting experience of Anglican worship as it might have been two or three or four centuries ago. I recall Fr Hunwicke posting some years ago about the history of this particular service on his blog.

Dr Young’s informative and instructive article can be viewed at

https://drfrancisyoung.com/2020/05/01/praying-the-book-of-common-prayer-in-latin/

A Marian virtual pilgrimage with Fr Hunwicke

My ever resourceful friend Fr Hunwicke has proposed an his blog a virtual pilgrimage this month to the medieval English shrines of Our Lady. This would both mark the rededication of England as the Dowry of Mary and also provide a means of expressing devotion in Mary’s month of May. His updated post about this idea of a day by day visit to a different shrine can be seen at

Pilgrimaging during Lock-down UPDATE

His first spiritual ports of call were Glastonbury, Canterbury - Our Lady of the Undercroft - and York. Tomorrow he promises a full list commencing with Our Lady of Westminster to take us through May. This list is drawn from the work of Edmund Waterton*, to which there is a link in the comments section.

Not long before the current ‘lockdown’ started I finished the draft of an article about the revival and restoration of various medieval English shrines of Our Lady since the end of the nineteenth century. Fr Hunwicke’s idea fits very well with that and I hope to ‘virtually’ accompany him ond other pilgrims on this journey. I may be a couple of days late starting but I have visited the first three in actual reality in the past.

* Waterton was, incidentally, a collateral relative of Bishop Fleming, and his father was the pioneering naturalist and conservationist Charles Waterton of Walton Hall near Wakefield in my home area.

Procopius’ “Secret History”

I have just finished reading Procopius’ “Secret History” online. It is rather earlier in date than my usual interests, but is a wonderfully lurid account of the reign of the Emperor Justinian, his Empress Theodora and of Count Bellisarius and his wife, and of a whole range of courtiers and officials. Historians are not too sure how accurate Procopius is as a source in the “Secret History”. It is very much an account given by “one who knows”, but some of it needs to be taken with more than a pinch of the proverbial salt. The diabolical conception of Justinian or his shape-shifting would, I think, fall into that category. On the other hand the young Theodora’s performance in her Leda and the Swan act on stage seems to be accepted by historians...

I am sure that historians can interpret some at least of the Emperor’s actions in a less critical or censorious way than Procopius did, but then again, he was a contemporary and an ‘insider’.

As the writer of Ecclesiastes points out repeatedly there is nothing new under the sun, as one knows, and indeed that all is vanity. With that in mind sixth century Byzantium seems refreshingly normal by modern standards. Which, of course, is no great compliment to either era...

Unlike his semi-official and public account of Belisarius’s campaigns and his description of Justinian’s building projects, in his “Secret History” ( not recovered until the seventeenth century in the depths of the Vatican Library ) Procopius does a quite brief but unsparingly vicious hatchet job on Justinian and Theodora. Some have speculated as to quite what alienated him from the Imperial couple, but hostile he certainly was - and doubtless very wise to keep that fact and his manuscript to himself.

Mutatis mutantes it could, of course, be compared to published, let alone planned or projected, accounts of life in Downing Street or the White House or the Elysee in the past generation...

I will restrain myself from drawing closer parallels, but I am sure my readers can draw their own comparisons and conclusions.

Procopius’ text can be read in a 1927 translation by Richard Atwater, together with an introduction and notes at the Fordham University

Internet History Sourcebooks Project
sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/procop-anec.asp

and also at

The Secret History of Procopius Index - Internet Sacred Text
www.sacred-texts.com/cla/proc/shp/index.htm

The Paschal Blessing of the “Agnus Dei”

John Paul Sonnen has an extremely interesting article on the Liturgical Arts Journal website about the Papal blessing or consecration of the wax medallions known as Agnus Dei. Made from the previous year’s Paschal Candles from Rome they were blessed on the Wednesday of Easter Week by a Pope in his first pontifical year and thereafter every seven years. The ceremony was perhaps rather curious to behold, but was also venerable, apparently dating back over a millennium. It was also a way of producing a tangible consecrated link to the Holy See for the faithful to use when in peril.

Indeed thinking about their physical properties makes me wonder if the Agnus Dei can be related to the late Professor James Campbell’s suggestion that what became the Great Seal, and possibly others as well, was originally a separate wax disc to identify a bearer or messenger as authentic, and only later came to be attached to the document that he delivered. 

The post has fascinating photographs from these Paschal blessings in 1939, 1959 and 1964, the last time the rite was celebrated. There is also a video link to film of the 1959 blessing. 

One is, alas, once again left wondering at the cultural vandalism involved in abandoning such a venerable tradition. Like John Paul Sonnen I would wish that this ancient and historic rite were restored to the Papal calendar.

The post can be viewed at The Paschal Blessing of the "Agnus Dei" (Benedizione degli Agnus Dei nel Mercoledì di Pasqua)

Reading and looking at the images made me think about the virtual certainty that, as the Papal household attended the rite, on March 30 1418 when Pope Martin V would have blessed the Agnus Dei whilst still in Constance, amongst those present would have been his Chamberlains, one of whom was the future Bishop Richard Fleming.

I also recalled that Evelyn Waugh in researching his life of St Edmund Campion was deeply moved to be shown two Agnus Dei  which had been found at Lyford Grange where the mission martyr was captured. Indeed possession of an Agnus Dei was incriminating evidence when priests were arrested in that time of persecution.