Easter Day

Christ is Risen! Alleluia!

He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

 

As we celebrate Easter and its message of Resurrection - the Resurrection of Christ, the Resurrection that is the Church, the Resurrection that is individual to each and every Christian - may I wish all my readers a joyful, peaceful and happy Easter.

Some weeks ago I discovered whilst preparing a post about the artist Andrea Mantegna 1431-1506 this really very surprising image of the Resurrection. Dated to the last years of the fifteenth century it is a theme that is actually not that common amongst the work of great artists and very different in mood from Piero della Francesca’s wonderous masterpiece of a generation earlier which I commented on last year in Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

Mantegna’s vision, now in Copenhagen, stands in the same tradition, but is utterly different at the same time.

Christ as the Suffering Redeemer

Christ is depicted in the act of Resurrection according to Luke 24:1-2, praising the Lord with a hymn

Dated to 1488-1500 or 1495-1500

There is more about the painting from Wikipedia at Christ as the Suffering Redeemer  

Fr Hunwicke on the Exsultet

Fr Hunwicke marked Holy Saturday with a pair of splendid posts ( but when are his posts not splendid …) about the bees and how their work is celebrated in the Exsultet. He shows - draws forth in an apian way even - his erudition in Latin as in liturgy, in history and culture.

Read the two sections at EXSULTET: some notes (1) and EXSULTET: the Bee (2) …….and enjoy the Exsultet !

 

Conserving the Breamore Rood

The Daily Telegraph has a report on recent conservation work that has been undertaken on the late Anglo-Saxon Rood that is now located above the doorway of the church at Breanore in north west Hampshire. The newspaper account of the work and the Rood and the later paintings added to create a landscape background can be read at Rare Anglo-saxon ‘rood’ in Hampshire successfully restored

 

I visited Breamore many years ago to see both the church and the fine Elizabethan Manor House. Both are very well worth seeing if you are in the area. It is a seemingly very peaceful and tranquil corner of England.

Three impressions remain from that afternoon. Firstly there is the scale and grandeur of the composition of the Rood. There is a similar figure nearby at Romsey Abbey. It is a powerful and striking reminder that late Anglo-Saxon England could create big and bold statements of faith.

The second was the fact that several centuries after it was carved the parish created a special place to ‘enshrine’ it, and provided the background painted decoration to try to give the illusion of real space. Not only does this have a charm all its own but also shows a late medieval desire to enhance what they had inherited and clearly loved.

 

The third thing is, alas, the wickedness of the bigots who destroyed the figure in the belief that they were doing Christ’s work. If, as the article, suggests, this was a result of the Edwardian reformation after 1547 then the shock to the conventional believer in the parish must have been intense. The long arm of the ‘Reformers’ reached not just to Breamore as to every other parish but up into the little chapel over the porch on a mission to destroy. It is hard to feel sorry for the fact that the national authors of such things came to a bad end. The peace and tranquillity of Breamore were shattered the day the Rood was so brutally defaced. So to, in innumerable similar acts, was the peace and tranquillity of this country.

Hot Cross buns

Like, no doubt, so many people yesterday I enjoyed as my ‘small collation’ a hot cross bun at two  points in the day and I looked forward to more today when I was to finish off my stock of these traditional treats.

Country Life has reissued online an article of theirs from 2019 about the history and folk-lore of the hot cross bun. It can be seen at Curious Questions: Why do we eat hot cross buns at Easter?

To the examples of the longevity of individual hot cross buns I can add another example. In the collection of the Museum in my home town of Pontefract is a survivor from the Crimean War - a hot cross bun taken by or sent to a soldier from the town when he served in the Crimean War. Having survived the fighting of 1854-56 both soldier and hot cross bun returned to their Yorkshire home town. Eventually it made its way into the Museum collection. 

 

The Ambrosian Rite for Holy Thursday

The New Liturgical Movement website has a lengthy and detailed account of the liturgy for Maundy Thursday observed in the Ambrosian Rite in Milan. It can be viewed at The Ambrosian Mass of Holy Thursday  

 

Papal Ceremonies for Maundy Thursday

The Liturgical Arts Journal has a very interesting account of Papal ceremonies observed on Maundy Thursday in the past, both recent and others which are somewhat more distant. It has some fasinating illustrations and can be seen at Tapestries of the Papal Court for Holy Thursday

A Scottish equivalent to the Royal Maundy

Quite by chance, and it was an entirely fortuitous thing, whilst I was researching an entirely different topic today I came upon a reference I had not seen before to a Scottish royal custom that is very similar to the English Royal Maundy.

In the new circumstances of the Union of the Crowns and the consequent absence of the King in London the Scottish Privy Council discussed continuing the established tradition of royal charity linked to the age of the monarch, which is usually presented as a particularly English custom, created by King Henry IV. How ancient the Scottish custom was, or when it fell into dissuitude I have not had time to discover, nor whether it was linked to Maundy Thursday.

The extract from the Privy Council records is as follows:

June 2 [1607]. – The Privy Council refer to ‘a very ancient and lovable custom’ of giving a blue gown, purse, and as many Scotch shillings as agreed with the years of the king’s age, to as many ‘auld puir men’ as likewise agreed with the king’s years; and seeing it to be ‘very necessary and expedient that the said custom should be continuit,’ they give orders accordingly. 

Patristics for Palm Sunday

Last year on Palm Sunday I reproduced two sets of readings from the Traditional Breviary Office of Matins. They are from a sermon by St Leo the Great and St Ambrose’s commentary on St Luke.

 

I think both are very well worth reading as we enter Holy Week and therefore I am inking to them both for anyone who would like to read, or re-read them:

 St Leo the Great on the Passion

St Ambrose on Palm Sunday

Quite apart from their apposite wss at this point in the liturgical year they are also fine examples of the style of both authors.