Easter prisoner released in Malaga

Traditional Spanish celebrations of Easter are stylish and spectacular and marked by the processions of confraternities in their distinctive habits. One such is that of Jesus El Rico in Malaga, and they have a unique privilege - that of being granted the release of a prisoner. The tradition dates from 1759 and the beginning of the reign of the enlightened and reformist King Carlos III. It is described and illustrated in an article from EuroNews which can be seen at Easter pardon: Centuries-old Spanish ritual frees criminals

It has strong similarities to the much older Privilege of St Romain in Rouen. This custom was observed between 1156 and 1790, and took place on Ascension Day. I posted about it in 2012 in St Romanus of Rouen

The Liturgical Colours of the Triduum

Shawn Tribe has posted a second article about the changes made between 1955 and 1970 to the form and colour of the vestments worn for Holy Week and the Triduum on the Liturgical Arts Journal. Like his previous piece which I linked to in The Liturgical Colours of Palm Sunday it is a well illustrated exposition of the process and a useful reference point. 

Shawn’s article can be seen at The Triduum: Variations in the Vestments and Their Colours in the Span of Fifteen Years

Thoughts on the Green Man

The Daily Telegraph follows up it coverage of the Coronation Invitation with a piece today about the image of the Green Man, which is featured on the border of the card.

I had not realised ( because it had not occurred to me to ask ) that the concept of the “Green Man” as such only dates from 1939, and that he is a synthesis or consolidation of a whole series of images reduced to one in the aftermath of Sir James Frazer and The Golden Bough, which had been published in 1922. In that respect it is rather like Robert Graves’ 1948 book The White Goddess.  

That said it is undeniable that foliated heads were common in medieval and earlier decoration, even if we do not know the reason. They may have a common source, they might have connotations of fertility or of the underlying life force of nature, or they might be an oft-repeated joke. Many medieval churches have examples of this foliated face peering out upon the world, maybe mischievously, and not malevolently. I recall being in Gloucester Cathedral and realising that virtually all the bosses in a western bay of the north aisle of the nave sported the “Green Man”. 

So although his modern date of birth as an object of scholarly discussion might indeed be seen to be 1939 his antecedents and manifestations in decoration are centuries old, and geographically widespread. He is an archetype, a shared image, but historically without a single identity or mythology.

The Daily Telegraph article can be seen at How the ‘Green Man’ went from folklore to the King’s Coronation

Wikipedia has a well illustrated account at Green Man and also has an introduction to Graves’ book at The White Goddess

The Coronation Invitation

The design of the formal invitation to the Coronation was released yesterday. Created by the heraldic artist Andrew Jamieson and chosen personally by The King, it is a fine piece of work, and in full colour, unlike previous such invitations. The Daily Telegraph article about it  gives additional background to the design at First look at King Charles’s Coronation invitation 

The Royal Family website has an account of the design and includes several closeups of the border. This can be seen at The Coronation Invitation

The Mail Online has an article which analyses the symbolism in some detail ( and with a few errors and idiosyncrasies it must be said ) and is accompanied by a generous selection of photo enlargements of details at King Charles's coronation invite symbolism

In its design with a floral border the Invitation is strongly reminiscent of the artistic decoration of Letters Patent or of grants from the College of Arms. 

The arms of The King and of The Queen are rendered in a striking way - the blue boar of the Shand’s would look very well as a free standing Queen’s Beast. 

National floral symbols are obviously included as well as flowers one might see on or around the royal estates in the spring and summer, the flowers shown in threes as this is the third King Charles.

Spring floral imagery is very suitable both for an event in the month of May and also for the new beginning marked by a new reign, as well as a tribute to a monarch noted for his love of gardens and the natural world.

That theme is also referred to by the inclusion of the Green Man - a medieval symbol that draws inspiration from the past and the mythic, but which also has contemporary resonances with the new monarch’s long-standing concern not just for gardens but the wider environment, and looks to the future with its imagery of vibrant and fertile life giving energy.

The BBC News website has an illustrated piece about previous Coronation invitations which is interesting - although irritating in so far as it describes the invitations as “invites”, refers to monarchs being “coronated” and to King George VI being “appointed”…. where do they get their journalists from? Those points notwithstanding, the article can be seen at Coronation invitations through the ages

The Liturgical Colours of Palm Sunday

 

Shawn Tribe has one again a very useful and informative article on the Liturgical Arts Journal website about the changes between the 1950s and 1970s in the liturgical vestments and their colours for Palm Sunday and Holy Week. It can be seen at Palm Sunday: Variations in the Vestments and Their Colours in the Span of Fifteen Years

In it he links to two previous articles by him about two liturgical items of vesture which are guaranteed to set the pulses of some of us racing - the folded chasuble and the broad stole ( though as Shawn points out they are ultimately one and the same ). Both are very informative and are well illustrated. I am giving the links separately to make accessing these articles easier. From 2017 there is History and Designs of the Folded Chasuble on the Liturgical Arts Journal website, and from 2009 Use, History and Development of the "Planeta Plicata" or Folded Chasuble from the New Liturgical Movement

I agree with Shawn Tribe in lamenting the abandonment of so longstanding a liturgical use, one that helped differentiate penitential seasons, and one that gave a special quality to the Liturgy. It has therefore been good on occasion in recent years to watch Masses following the pre-1955 norms online at this time of year and to see both the folded chasuble and the broad stole make a welcome reappearance at those TLMs.

St Ambrose on Palm Sunday

The third set of Lections at Matins for Palm Sunday are from a sermon delivered by St Ambrose of Milan, who died in 397. They are an interesting and insightful exegesis of St Luke’s account of Christ entering Jerusalem:

Homily by St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.
9th Book on Luke 

Beautiful is the type, when the Lord, about to leave the Jews, and to take up His abode in the hearts of the Gentiles, goeth up into the Temple; a figure of His going to the true Temple wherein He is worshipped, not in the deadness of the letter, but in spirit and in truth, even that Temple of God whereof the foundations are laid, not in buildings of stone, but in faith. He leaveth behind Him such as hate Him, and getteth Him to such as will love Him. And therefore cometh He unto the Mount of Olives that He may plant upon the heights of grace those young olive-branches, whose Mother is the Jerusalem which is above. Upon this mountain standeth He, the Heavenly Husbandman, that all they which be planted in the House of the Lord may be able each one to say: "But I am like a fruitful olive-tree in the House of God." Ps. li. 10.

And perchance that mountain doth signify Christ Himself. For what other is there that beareth such fruit of olives as He doth, not rich with store of loaded branches, but spiritually fruitful with the fulness of the Gentiles? He also it is on Whom we go up, and unto Whom we go up; He is the Door; He is the Way; He is He Which is opened and Which openeth; He is He upon Whom knocketh whosoever entereth in, and to Whom they that have entered in, do worship. A figure also was it that the disciples went into a village, and that there they found an ass tied and a colt with her neither could they be loosed, save at the command of the Lord. It was the hand of His Apostles which loosed them. He whose work and life are like theirs will have such grace as was theirs. Be thou also such as they, if thou wouldest loose them that are bound.

Now, let us consider who they were, who, being convicted of transgression, were banished from their home in the Garden of Eden into a village, and in this thou wilt see how Life called back again them whom death had cast out. For this reason, we read in Matthew that there were tied both an ass and her colt; thus, as man was banished from Eden in a member of either sex, so is it in animals of both sexes that his re-call is figured. The she-ass is a type of our sinful Mother Eve, and the colt of the multitude of the Gentiles; and it was upon the colt that Christ took His seat. And thus it is well written of the colt, Luke xix. 30, that thereon never yet had man sat, for no man before Christ ever called the Gentiles into the Church which statement thou hast in Mark also xi. 2: Whereon never man sat.

Text reproduced from the Divinum Officium website

St Leo the Great on the Passion

The second set of Lections today at Matins as we begin Holy Week are from Pope St Leo the Great, who reigned from 440 to 461. As a Pope and Doctor of the Church he possessed great and sonorous eloquence and his reflections on the Passion are I think well worth sharing:

From the Sermons of Pope St. Leo the Great.
Second on the Passion of the Lord. 

Dearly beloved brethren, the jubilant and triumphal day which ushereth in the commemoration of the Lord's Passion is come; even that day for which we have longed so much, and for whose yearly coming the whole world may well look. Shouts of spiritual exultation are ringing, and suffer not that we should be silent. It is indeed hard to preach often on the same Festival, and that always meetly and rightly, but a Priest is not free, when we celebrate so great and mysterious an out-pouring of God's mercy, to leave his faithful people without the service of a discourse. Nay, that his subject-matter is unspeakable should in itself make him eloquent, since where enough can never be said, there must needs ever be somewhat to say. Let man's weakness, then, fall down before the glory of God, and acknowledge herself ever too feeble to unfold all the works of His mercy. We may jade our emotions, break down in our understanding, and fail in our speech it is good for us, that even what we truly feel in presence of the Divine Majesty is but little, (compared to the vastness of the subject.)

For when the Prophet saith: Seek the Lord and be strong; seek His face evermore, Ps. civ. 4, let no man thence conclude that he will ever have found all that he seeketh, lest he which hath ceased to come near should cease to be near. But among all the works of God which foil and weary the steadfast gaze of man's wonder, what is there that doth at once so ravish and so exceed the power of our mind's eye as do the sufferings of the Saviour? He it was Who, to loose man from the bands wherewith he had bound himself by the first death-dealing transgression, spared to bring against the rage of the devil the power of the Divine Majesty, and met him with the weakness of our lowly nature. For if our proud and cruel enemy had been able to know the counsel of God's mercy, it had been his task rather to have softened the minds of the Jews into gentleness, than to have inflamed them with unrighteous hatred; and so lost the service of all his slaves, by pursuing for his Debtor One That owed him nothing.

But his own hate dug a pit-fall for him he brought upon the Son of God that death which is become life to all the sons of men. He shed that innocent Blood, Which hath reconciled the world unto God, and become at once the price of our redemption and the cup of our salvation. The Lord hath received that which according to the purpose of His Own good pleasure He hath chosen. He hath let fall on Him the hands of bloody men, but while they were bent only on their own sin, they were servants ministering to the Redeemer's work. And such was His tenderness even for His murderers that His prayer to His Father from the Cross, as touching them, was, not that He might be avenged upon them, but that they might be forgiven.

Text reproduced from the Divinum Officium website

CUP’s Coronation BCP continuing tale of woe

It has now been pointed out to me that the Book of Common Prayer printed by Cambridge  University Press, The King’s Printer, to commemorate the Coronation not only has His Majesty as King of England, France and Ireland ( oh happy days! ) but also misspells Psalter -”Psaltar” - and Consecration - “Concecration” - on the title page….

This really is a collector’s edition.

If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand   Ps.130:3

O LORD Thou hast searched me, and known me   Ps.139:1