LIGHT
ON
DARKNESS

LIGHT
ON
DARKNESS

The Untold Story
of the Liturgy

COSIMA CLARA GILLHAMMER

REAKTION BOOKS

For my friend Tristan Franklinos,
fellow lover of the liturgy

Published by
REAKTION BOOKS LTD
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First published 2025
Copyright © Cosima Clara Gillhammer 2025

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Page References in the Photo Acknowledgements and
Index Match the Printed Edition of this Book.

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eISBN 978 1 83639 044 2

Introduction: Why Liturgy?

It is midnight. Deep darkness covers the church. The doors are closed and not a single candle is burning at the altar. Not even the stars can be glimpsed through the high windows. The darkness lies heavy and the silence seems eternal. But then, suddenly, there is movement. The church doors are opened, and the small flame of a single candle pierces the dark space. Stepping upon the threshold, the candle bearer chants two words upon a simple tune: Lumen Christi, ‘The light of Christ’. In the light of the small flame, a large number of people can be seen genuflecting behind the candle, dark shapes now illuminated by a golden hue. Many voices resound with the answer, Deo gratias, ‘Thanks be to God’. Three times the candle bearer sings the same incantation, each time at a higher pitch, followed by the same response. Each time the procession moves further into the church, until the candle has reached the middle of the sanctuary. And now, this single source of light is multiplied. The people are each bearing tapers, which are successively lit from the original candle, the flame slowly passed on through the rows and spreading further and further until the entire church is illuminated by hundreds of small candles. Thus the darkness flees and the shadows recede. Thus the light returns, a harbinger of the dawn which is only a few hours away.

It is the night before Easter Sunday. The location of this particular scene is a small village church in medieval England, but a similar version of the same ritual is being performed at the same hour at countless churches, cathedrals and abbeys throughout England and Western Europe. And for years, decades, centuries, until the present day, the same ritual will continue to be celebrated each year, always using the same words. This is how the Christian Church celebrates Easter. The event that is commemorated is specific – the resurrection of Christ from the dead – but the symbolism of the ritual is universal. Darkness is vanquished by light, night recedes before day, hope glimmers in the hearts of those oppressed by sorrow and grief. The ritual has survived the centuries because it expresses something central to the human experience. Witnessing the new light entering a dark church can have a powerful effect on believers and non-believers alike.

The ritual described here is an example of a vastly rich and diverse body of prayers, songs, gestures and movements, to which we collectively refer as the liturgy of the Christian Church. They are closely tied to Christian theological ideas, but at the same time they express, with astonishing variety and creativity, universal human experiences. They incorporate rituals which precede Christianity, such as those of the Jewish tradition; they generate a vast array of poetry; and they prove inspirational for writers, thinkers and artists over many centuries. Liturgy is at the roots of Western culture. Our music, art, literature and architecture are shaped by and developed out of the liturgy. Without it, Dante’s Divine Comedy would not exist, and neither would Michelangelo’s Pietà. Not even Star Wars would have its memorable soundtrack had it not been for medieval liturgy.

Liturgy has become strange and foreign to us. It is a form that is little understood and mostly relegated to the realm of private religious observance or obscure scholarship. Perhaps it is one of the best-kept secrets of our time that the liturgy stands at the centre of the cultural history of the West. It deserves our close attention and appreciation. It is a common assumption that liturgy is stuffy and stale, but nothing could be further from the truth. The rites of the liturgy are endlessly rich and imaginative, generating in turn new artistic responses throughout the centuries. Through a number of individual stories, this book tells the larger story of how the liturgy influenced the culture of the West for more than a thousand years. It speaks of extraordinary artistic beauty, expressions of faith and human connection. And it contains an enduring symbolism of hope and renewal, passed down the centuries, much like the return of a lighted candle into a dark church on the night before Easter.

What is liturgy, and why does it matter?

‘Liturgy’ is a term commonly used to refer to the forms of public worship in the Christian Church. Such forms of worship, in Christianity as in many other religious faiths, are characterized by a prescribed set of words, prayers, songs, gestures and movements. It is these prescribed forms which make liturgical ceremonies meaningful to the followers of a faith, as they express a set of beliefs in symbolic form, allowing congregants to transcend ordinary life and connect with the divine. While ‘liturgy’ is a general term that can be applied in a broad sense to any service of worship in any branch of Christianity, this book is specifically concerned with Western liturgy, the forms of Christian worship that gained their distinctive form in Western Europe during the Middle Ages (the period from approximately the sixth to the fifteenth century) and are particularly associated with Catholic Christianity under the authority of the pope in Rome. The main language of this liturgy for the majority of the past centuries was Latin. In the medieval period when most of these liturgical forms gained their distinctive shape, no split between Catholicism and Protestantism had yet emerged. In post-medieval and post-Reformation times this strand of medieval Christianity with its forms of worship and theological beliefs is most closely represented by Roman Catholicism, but even the Protestant churches retained, to a greater or lesser extent, many liturgical forms that they had inherited from the medieval tradition. In any discussion of Western liturgy, the Middle Ages therefore loom large, and a great part of this book invokes medieval texts and traditions. But the Western liturgy did not arise out of a vacuum. Many of its distinctive forms were inherited from the very early days of Christianity and are shared between Eastern and Western Christianity. Going back further still, as Christianity was in its earliest days a sect of Judaism, worship in the early Christian Church drew heavily on Jewish scriptures and traditions of worship. This long history can be felt in different places in the texts and forms of Western liturgy, and we will explore these texts in greater detail in the chapters below. But these texts not only tell the story of this history; they above all tell a very human story of how universal experiences of life – love, joy, suffering, grief, death – can be understood, contemplated and transformed into poetry and art.

Before we dive further into these stories, a caveat is warranted. This book is an introduction to the forms of worship rather than a meticulous historical analysis.¹ While it is informed by recent historical research, it is not an academic study but a journey – a journey through time, in order to find out why liturgy matters, and how it has shaped culture in the West for many centuries. For the purposes of such a journey, some generalizations are necessary. The two most blatant of these generalizations are two terms that crop up a lot throughout this book: ‘liturgy’ and ‘the West’. The term ‘liturgy’ is somewhat of an anachronism: it derives from Latin liturgia, which in turn is derived from ancient Greek λειτουργία (leitourgia) meaning ‘public service, service of the gods, public worship’.² While the word itself has a long history stretching back to antiquity, in English it is not applied to Christian worship until after the end of the Middle Ages. The earliest use of the term documented in the Oxford English Dictionary dates to 1564, which means that the word ‘liturgy’ was not actually used during the period most crucial to the development of liturgical forms and texts. In medieval England people talked about religious services using a variety of terms, such as office, rite or observance. It is worth noting that we are therefore using a modern term to refer to the rituals and rites associated with religious worship, while the liturgy was conceptualized in somewhat different terms in the Middle Ages. Part of this conceptual difference was the fact that there was a great diversity of religious rituals throughout Western Europe: church services could vary considerably according to country, region and community, whereas the term ‘liturgy’ in the singular may suggest a well-defined unity and uniformity which is not borne out by the historical reality. In a sense it might be more accurate to speak of ‘liturgies’ or ‘rites’ in the plural. Nonetheless, these rites fall into groups that share many common features. The most common of these liturgical groups in the Middle Ages in the West was the Roman Rite, which developed in the city of Rome and, due to the central papal authority of Rome, became the dominant rite in Western Christianity. Although there were many local variants of this rite during the Middle Ages, the advent of print at the end of the medieval period precipitated a greater uniformity of these rites, particularly following the Council of Trent in 1545–63, which made the Roman Rite obligatory within the Catholic Church with only few exceptions. It remained the dominant rite in this form until the significant changes introduced in the twentieth century by the Second Vatican Council (1962–5). Many aspects of worship within Protestant churches likewise go back to the Roman Rite, and in some cases present direct translations of texts of the Roman Rite, including many aspects of the Book of Common Prayer. Despite the post-Reformation developments into separate traditions, in practice this means that many of the texts and customs that were particularly influential through many centuries of Western literature, art and culture are to be found in the Roman Rite, and this is therefore our focus in this book. Where possible I have used a range of sources on the Roman Rite from the medieval period, but where these sources leave blanks to be filled in, I have at times used some poetic licence in how I describe and imagine liturgical celebrations, sometimes inferring certain details of ritual practice based on later printed sources. In doing so, a certain amount of blurring of chronological developments is inevitable but it is my hope that such an approach can help the reader see the spirit of the liturgy more clearly than a detailed historical account would.

The second caveat concerns the term ‘the West’, which is likewise a generalization. In today’s political discourse this term is often loaded with a long list of implicit assumptions, especially concerning specific qualities that are ascribed to Western culture in opposition to other cultures. To think about ‘Western culture’ as a uniform whole has many problems, and a closer look at the historical and cultural reality reveals a much greater diversity of views and identities than the term might imply. Over many centuries the geographical area known as Western Europe, along with those countries significantly influenced by it, was defined by Christianity as a unifying cultural force, although other beliefs did exist. Yet what is commonly known as ‘the West’ today is a largely secularized culture, in which religious beliefs are largely relegated to the private sphere. This idea of a private religion would have been quite alien to people in medieval Western Europe. Our notions of ‘the West’ are inevitably inflected by many centuries of post-medieval historical, political, ideological and technological developments. The term ‘the West’, then, suffers from similar deficiencies of generalization as the term ‘liturgy’, and can only ever refer to majority views and broad developments. Nonetheless, ‘the West’ is a useful shorthand to describe a broad geographic area and dominant cultural identity, which is, at least from the medieval period to the twentieth century, deeply influenced by Christianity, even if this influence has changed over time. It is a particularly useful term in this sense because this book is concerned with cultural production – literature, art, music – arising from the influence of religious ritual. Despite its usefulness, it has its limits, too, and it is worth keeping in mind the complexities that arise when we zoom in from the general to the particular.

WHY, THEN, WAS THE LITURGY so enormously influential on Western cultural production, identity and imagination? To the modern mind, it may seem rather strange that religious ritual could play such a major role. Ritual and ceremony are often seen as something stiff, cumbersome, uninspiring. And yet, it would be difficult to imagine our lives without a series of rites and rituals in various different shapes. We may have our private rituals, things that we do habitually and that add structure to our day. Many people would describe their morning coffee as a private ritual without which the day would have the wrong shape. Others may have specific ways in which they like to arrange their desks before opening their emails on a Monday morning. We may also have rituals that are not unique to us but which we share with our friends and family at specific occasions. The Sunday brunch at the little place round the corner, the fifteen-minute bedtime story we read to our children, the Christmas tree with the time-worn, familiar decorations we put up on the same day every year. All of these things have a special, recognizable format, which always stays roughly the same and recurs at regular intervals.

Then there are events that occur a lot less frequently, milestones in our lives which are also marked by specific rites: baptisms, graduations, weddings, funerals and the like. Even if many of these types of events happen only once or twice in a human lifetime, they recur regularly and in a predictable way across a community or culture, marking moments of transition and important celebrations with a series of ritual words, gestures, movements, garments, accompanied by traditional types of food and drink, music and so on. Other rites only happen in the lives of very few members of the population who take on a leading role, with some ceremonies so elaborate that they take months and years of planning: the coronation of a king, the swearing in of a president, a state visit. These rites may be religious or secular in nature, and their exact form may vary according to context, and may change over time. A wedding ceremony in the eighteenth century would have looked a little different to one in the twenty-first century, for instance, and it will also vary between different religious backgrounds, cultures and individual couples. Yet despite this variation there will be certain key elements that make it uniquely and recognizably one type of ceremony and not another, elements which will be understood by everyone in a certain culture or community. Few people would be in danger of confusing a wedding with a funeral!

What all of these events have in common is that they recur regularly, either within an individual human life or across a community, and that they follow a specific, prescribed form, though this may vary in its details. Rites and rituals accompany every stage of our lives. And yet, if you were to conduct a spontaneous survey in the street, asking for people’s opinions on rituals and rites, you would in all likelihood elicit two types of responses: enthusiasm and strong dislike. It seems that there are broadly two groups of people: those who love formal occasions with a specific protocol that must be followed in minute detail, and those who think this sort of thing outdated, arcane, elitist or simply a waste of time. There is little space in between the two views; few people feel lukewarm about whether they enjoy attending a lengthy formal occasion or not. In the twenty-first century in the West, the latter group seems to form the majority. The prevailing view is that informal trumps formal, that sitting through ceremonies is tedious and exhausting, that prescribed rules are unnecessary, that they may preserve problematic hierarchical structures, or exclude people who are not familiar with them.

And yet, despite this prevailing negative view, rituals remain extraordinarily powerful. In London as many as 250,000 people queued up for days to attend the late Queen Elizabeth II’s lying-in-state, many of them moved to tears at the coffin of a monarch whom they had never met in person. The Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace is a world-famous tourist attraction. A ceremonial procession through the centre of Oxford, comprising university officials in their striking robes and distinctive caps, will stop passers-by in their tracks, fumbling for their phones. The singing of the national anthem at the beginning of a football match at the World Cup is a deeply emotional experience for many. There is a fascination connected with such ceremonies and rituals that is difficult to describe or explain, yet which can be felt by anyone who experiences it. Such rituals seem, at first glance, to have little to do with the history of worship, the question of how people throughout the ages expressed their religious beliefs. And yet, they fall into the same category in that they are events which are out of the ordinary; they stand apart from the mundane because they follow a specific form that has been in existence for a long time and which must be observed. Although in the modern world we often seem to value spontaneity and informality more highly than a prescribed form, we implicitly rely on form in everything we do. A business meeting would not work if it did not follow a form on which every participant agrees: the presence of an agenda, a chairperson, specific rules of behaviour when asking a question. Activities that we do for fun likewise rely on a certain form in order to work and be enjoyable, whether it is dance, sports or music. Following a prescribed and generally accepted form creates a space of security, in which members of a community know how to behave. This is particularly relevant for things which are difficult to deal with – most people would struggle to mourn their loved ones without a funeral ceremony (whether of a religious or non-religious kind), which lends a form to the act of saying goodbye. Funerals give a shape to mourning just as weddings give a shape to joy. Ceremonies such as these bring together communities, they set important life events apart from the ordinary and mundane, and they connect us with the past in the knowledge that many generations before us have observed the same rituals, whatever they may be.

This connection with the past, the knowledge that a tradition has been passed down to us through the ages and has survived for long periods of time, gives a sense of depth to rituals which may partly account for their fascination even today. This power of tradition is particularly strong in the liturgy, which allows congregations to connect as a community, both in the present and across time. A very pronounced element of Western liturgy is the commemoration of the living and the dead – the saints and all those who have lived and died in the faith before the present moment. The liturgy includes this entire community of the faithful in its prayers, which are connected across time by the same belief and the same ritual practice. This connection was much more broadly felt in the Middle Ages than it is today. While in the modern world church attendance is relegated to the private space and left up to individual preferences and beliefs, or absence thereof, medieval culture was suffused by religion, and more or less everybody went to church on Sundays to hear Mass. And even beyond this, life in monasteries, convents and other religious houses was defined by frequent liturgical prayer at regular hours. There were two main forms of the liturgy: the Mass as the church service that was celebrated daily and attended by nearly everyone on Sundays, and the Liturgy of the Hours as the regular prayers at set hours throughout the day in monasteries and convents: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. This meant that in the medieval period and beyond, the liturgy was part and parcel of daily life. Whether lay or religious, everyone was familiar with at least some aspects of liturgical practice, and this shared knowledge was reflected in literature, art and music, just as much as it was integral to daily life. The year was structured according to the liturgical calendar and its feasts, with the liturgical cycle moving through different seasons with their own moods and modes of worship. In Western Christianity, these are, at a glance:

Advent, the season of expectation in December leading up to Christmas

Christmas, the feast of the birth of Christ (25 December)

Epiphany, the feast of the revelation of Jesus as the Son of God (6 January)

The Feast of the Presentation or Candlemas, commemorating Christ being presented in the Temple (2 February)

Lent, the season of penitence in February and March beginning with Ash Wednesday and leading up to Easter

Holy Week, especially Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday, commemorating Christ’s Passion and death on the cross

Easter, the feast of the resurrection of Christ from the dead (in March or April)

The Feast of the Ascension, celebrating the bodily ascension of Jesus into heaven (forty days after Easter)

Pentecost, the feast celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit (fifty days after Easter)

Added to this was a multitude of saints’ feast days and other solemnities (such as Trinity Sunday, the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Assumption of Mary, the harvest festival of Lammas and so on). In the Middle Ages and beyond, the liturgical cycle thus gave shape to the year for the religious and the laity alike. The liturgy was, and for a long time remained, practically everywhere.

This prominence of the liturgy means that liturgical texts are important if we want to understand Western art and culture. Yet its influence goes beyond its pervasive presence in these periods. It is also connected to its powerful role for a community of believers. Part of the enduring fascination of rituals is the fact that they consist of actions, movements, gestures and words in which we can participate. Rituals are primarily something that we do, rather than something we think or say or discuss. These actions are symbolic in nature, such as the exchange of rings at a wedding ceremony, and we act them out in ritual settings. Being physically present is crucial to these ritual actions: a wedding ceremony conducted on Zoom, for example, just doesn’t feel like it works, as many of us found out during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–21. In rituals a set of common beliefs is acted out in a symbolic setting, in community with others. For example, in religious ceremonies the congregation pray, kneel, bow their heads, sing together, shake hands or perform a number of other symbolic actions in accordance with their beliefs. These symbolic actions model a certain set of behaviours, which in turn encourages individuals to embody these behaviours in their daily lives. In other words, rituals help members of the community internalize their beliefs. This dynamic is well documented in social psychology and anthropology for rites and rituals across cultures,³ and has been summarized as follows: ‘If one must act as though one believed one ends in believing . . . as one acts.’⁴ Within the Christian tradition the same process is hinted at by the motto lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief). Worship and belief are in a reciprocal relationship. Not only are religious beliefs reflected in the form of worship, but the inverse is also true. The law of prayer – in other words, the form of worship that we find in the liturgy – is not just a random aesthetic choice, but it actively influences Christian faith. Liturgy is not just a matter of personal preference, but it goes to the heart of religious belief. How we pray, how we express and act out our beliefs, matter deeply for the individual and for the community. The liturgy is thus a personal practice, a way in which individuals express their religious beliefs in ritual prayer, but it is at the same time the manifest practice of a community, in which individuals come together in public worship, which in turn strengthens this community and instils in individuals a sense of belonging.

While Christian liturgy has the same anthropological basis as rituals in other faiths and cultures, it is distinctive in that its focus is not just a transcendental sense of the divine, but a very concrete and historical reality: that of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth. The centre of Christian belief is that God took on human nature and became man in Jesus Christ, who was born of a human mother, lived as a Jew in the Middle East and was executed around AD 33 by being nailed onto a cross. Christians believe that this historical person truly lived, died and rose again from the dead on the third day after his execution. The spiritual significance of Christ’s death is the redemption of humankind from sin and eternal death. This makes Christianity a faith which is rooted in history. The human and the divine merge in the life of a specific person at a specific point in time, within a particular historical context. This is reflected by a focus on dates, names and places in the gospels, but also, more broadly, in the way in which Christianity emphasizes the human in trying to understand what it means for a person to be fully God and fully man. Christian tradition has always been preoccupied with this question, and we find this reflected in the subjects explored in the liturgy and in Christian art: from the heights of love and joy to the depths of grief and suffering. The liturgy is not merely a set of abstract and symbolic words and gestures, but an act that engages with the whole breadth of human emotion. It reaches to the bottom of human experiences because it is an expression of the belief that God himself experienced them during his life on earth. Exploring these questions, the texts, thoughts and themes of the liturgy in turn proved inspirational for Western culture, with artists drawing on the liturgy for their engagement with these very same questions, whether in visual art, literature, drama or music. The story of Jesus of Nazareth is the central story around which the Western artistic imagination has revolved for thousands of years, but for audiences in the modern secular world this tradition can seem inaccessible. The liturgy can therefore provide the key for unlocking this tradition, and with it, the story that has shaped the West.

What do Christians believe?

In order to be able to use the liturgy as a key for unlocking Western culture, we must be aware of certain basic Christian beliefs. For readers who are not familiar with this tradition, this section offers a very brief summary of the Christian faith. Readers who are well versed in Christian theology may prefer to proceed to the next section. The summary uses as its basis the Apostles’ Creed, a statement of faith that lists the core articles of Christian belief, printed in italics. Individual articles are accompanied by short explanations.

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

Christianity believes in one God in three persons, also referred to as the Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The love of God inherent in the Trinity is poured out in the act of the creation of the world. The book of Genesis in the Bible offers an account of God’s creation of heaven and earth in seven days. On the sixth day, God creates man in his own image (Gen. 1:26). From this creation account arises a belief in the sacredness of human life and the intrinsic value of each individual person. Genesis also tells the story of the Fall: Adam and Eve, the first humans to be created, are placed in Paradise, but after temptation by the Devil they transgress against the law of God. As a result they are cast out of Paradise, and toil, sorrow, pain and death become part of human existence. According to Christian belief, humankind is redeemed from the Fall through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross as a voluntary sacrifice.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,

Jesus Christ is the only Son of God the Father and the second person of the Trinity. Christian belief states that the Son was incarnate and became man in Jesus, uniting a fully divine and a fully human nature. According to the gospel accounts, Jesus Christ was miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit, and his mother Mary was a virgin when she gave birth to him. In her unique role as the mother of the redeemer, Mary has a prominent place in Christian theology and devotion, which is reflected in many ways in liturgical texts, where she is exalted as powerful intercessor and protector of sinners. Christ lived his human life among the Jewish people in what was then the Roman province of Judaea, as a radical preacher, teacher and miracle-worker. Jesus laid claim to being the Messiah, the saviour of the Jewish people who had been promised to them by the prophets of the Old Testament. This understanding of Jesus as the Messiah plays an important role in the Christian tradition, with many liturgical texts drawing parallels between Old Testament prophecies and their fulfilment in Jesus Christ.

suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;

The mention of the name of Pontius Pilate is a reflection of how deeply Christianity is rooted in human history. Pilate was fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, serving under Emperor Tiberius at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion around AD 33. The gospels recount how the Jewish priests and elders object to Jesus’ claim of being the Messiah, the Son of God, and want to put him to death. At the trial of Jesus, Pilate gives in to their pressure and orders Jesus to be crucified (a common way of executing criminals at the time). The crucifixion of Christ in the gospels is a story of how the worst possible things – betrayal by friends, protracted torture and death in the most humiliating way imaginable – happen to the best possible man: God incarnate, who is innocent of any crime. According to Christian belief, his death on the cross is a redemptive act through which Jesus takes the sins of humankind upon himself out of love, and reopens Paradise, which had been closed since the Fall.

he descended to the dead.

From the early history of Christianity, Christ’s death is associated with ideas about his descent into hell, where he liberates the souls of the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets and leads them into heaven. The descent to the dead is based on only a few passages in Scripture, but exerted a particular fascination on the artistic imagination during the Middle Ages, not least because of the role this idea plays in the liturgy (see Chapter Three).

On the third day he rose again;

The gospels recount that Jesus came back to life on the third day after his death, and subsequently walked, talked, prayed and ate with his friends. The resurrection reaffirms the belief that Jesus really is the Son of God who has conquered death and sin, inspiring his disciples to go out and preach this good news in different parts of the earth.

he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father,

After his resurrection, Jesus leaves the earth and is bodily taken up into heaven, where he is exalted as Lord and God, returning to his place at the right hand of God the Father.

and he will come to judge the living and the dead.

An important part of Christian belief is that of a coming Last Judgement at the end of days, where all those who have lived and who are still living will be called to give account of their actions during their lives on earth (see Chapter Seven).

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. He is associated with the giving of spiritual gifts and inspiring conviction of faith, and in Christian iconography is often portrayed as a winged dove.

the holy catholic Church,

‘Catholic’ means universal. The Church as the universal community of the faithful plays an important role in Christian theology, and is often described with the metaphor ‘bride of Christ’ to illustrate his love and care for those who believe in him.

the communion of saints,

Saints are those people who have lived righteous lives in loving God and their fellow humans, and who are now enjoying eternal life with God in heaven. The liturgy frequently invokes the saints in prayer as a sign of the universal community of the living and the dead, sharing in the same belief.

the forgiveness of sins,

Christians believe that God is both just and merciful, and that his mercy is everlasting and abundant. This is why so many texts that we find in the liturgy invoke the mercy of God and ask for his forgiveness of human sins. The Christian understanding of sin refers to all human transgressions, failures and inadequacies in our relationship with God and our fellow human beings.

the resurrection of the body,

Christians believe that at the Last Judgement, all those who have died will rise again and will be given back their physical bodies, just like Jesus rose from the grave. Connected to this is the belief that Mary, as a perfect human being free from sin, was physically assumed into heaven at the end of her life – an event known as the ‘Assumption’, a prominent feast in the liturgical calendar, celebrated on 15 August.

and the life everlasting.

The message of hope inherent to Christianity is that after life on earth, those who have lived lives that glorify God through love, virtue and good actions will experience eternal life and joy in heaven.

How to use this book

More than anything else, this book intends to be an invitation to explore the extraordinary richness and depth of the liturgy. By its very nature, such an invitation has to be selective. This book is not a historical account of the development of the liturgy over time, nor is it a theological account of its meaning, although aspects of both will be discussed. Anyone looking for a stringent scholarly analysis of these questions will find relevant sources in the Bibliography. Instead, this book invites you on a journey of discovery through a wealth of treasures that are almost limitless in their significance and inspiration. It embarks upon this journey through a series of stories about universal experiences that are common to all our lives. Chapters are arranged according to different themes, each of them focusing on a particular emotion or attitude expressed in the liturgical texts and reflected in art, music and literature. The final two chapters, ‘Time’ and ‘Space’, broaden out the perspective to think about how the liturgy influences understandings of time as well as addressing the context of the sacred spaces within which rituals take place. These chapters tell the stories that have deeply moved and fascinated the Western artistic imagination for many centuries, and are still powerful today. More treasures are in store for those who want to understand the liturgy more comprehensively, and this book can only be a starting point.

Before we begin, a few thoughts on questions of language and translation. The majority of liturgical texts take their starting point from the Bible, both from the Old Testament (a collection of books related to the history and tradition of the people of Israel) and the New Testament (the gospel accounts of the life of Jesus Christ and writings of his disciples and followers). While in a modern context we often think of the Bible as a book to be read and studied by individual believers, this was not always the case. In the early days of Christianity, the texts of the Bible were read aloud, chanted and meditated upon by communities of believers, often in liturgical settings.⁵ In these settings, excerpts from different parts of the Bible were often merged together or combined with non-biblical material such as poetry, and used in liturgical celebrations alongside music, symbolic gestures and movements. The Bible is therefore fundamental to the liturgy, but the biblical text in liturgical settings has a distinctive shape that can at times be quite different from the way in which it appears in the Bible. The original texts of the Bible are written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. The language of Western liturgy is traditionally Latin. Many of the texts of the liturgy in the Roman Rite were commonly based on the Vulgate, the dominant Latin translation of the Bible in the Western Church. The language in which liturgical texts would have been widely known for the greatest part of the past centuries, therefore, is Latin. To reflect this tradition and for the sake of completeness, all quotations of liturgical texts in this book are given in their original Latin form, together with an English translation. No knowledge of Latin is required to navigate this book, but individual texts are sometimes referred to under their Latin titles. Similarly, the book attempts to give a flavour of the original language where it quotes English texts from the medieval period, but translations are provided where necessary. For English translations, I have let my own taste be the guide; biblical texts usually follow the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV),⁶ but in other places I have preferred other translations, including my own, for reasons of style, tradition or clarity. Where I do not use the NRSV I note this in the footnotes. For the psalms, in particular, I cite Coverdale’s translation as used in the Book of Common Prayer (1662) because of its wide use and significance within English-speaking contexts. As a result there is a range of styles of biblical translation across this book; my hope is that readers will not see this as an inconsistency but rather as a reflection of the rich history of English Bible translation.

This book makes many references to works of art and music. Not all images could be included in the book, and music is by definition difficult to describe in words. To allow the reader to explore these references further, I have created a website that includes a collection of all images and pieces of music mentioned, as well as further information and a list of recommended resources: www.liturgybook.com.

All other references in this book are equally designed to be accessible, and I have used online sources wherever possible. Using these resources, readers are warmly invited to embark upon their own journeys through the untold story of the liturgy.

1

Petition

The year is 1325. An artist in a monastery just outside Norwich is bent over his desk, carefully illuminating a manuscript page. The skill required is considerable: glue and gold leaf must be applied, precise patterns must be drawn, the colours must be just right. With slow and deliberate movements, which speak to many years of experience, the illuminator paints a figure. A head bearing a crown, with long hair and beard, eyes fixed intently on an object close to his face. After several hours of concentrated work by the artist, the figure finally becomes clear, thrown into sharp relief by the shimmering gold of its background: a king playing a small, delicately curved harp which rests on his knee. He is seated on a throne whose finely carved Gothic decorations mirror the turrets and spires of a cathedral. His clothes are exquisite, with a cloak in colours ranging from the deepest to the lightest shades of blue, half covering his red tunic. His legs are crossed and his hands are raised to the strings, his face focused and intent. We are witnessing a king in the middle of his performance. We cannot hear his song, but its words are written on the manuscript page, surrounding the illustration (illus. 1). The image is placed in the middle of a large, decorated letter B at the top of the page, while the stylized capital letters to the right of the image continue the sentence: B-EATUS VIR QUI NON . . ., and the writing below the illustration completes it: . . . abiit in consilio impiorum et in via peccatorum non stetit, et in cathedra pestilentiae non sedit (‘Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners and hath not sat in the seat of the scornful’).¹

The image portrays the famous Old Testament King David, and the words form the beginning of the Book of Psalms, traditionally believed to have been authored by David. The Greek word ψαλμός (psalmos), meaning ‘song sung to the harp or another stringed instrument’, gestures towards the origins of these texts as songs, originally composed in Hebrew.² This idea is reinforced by the image of King David as harpist, which accompanies the psalms in this manuscript so masterfully illuminated in the first half of the fourteenth century, known to us today as the Ormesby Psalter. But the image of King David playing his harp is not unique to this manuscript; it appears, in various forms and sizes, executed by different artists with their individual styles, in a large number of manuscripts containing the same text. These Psalters (books of psalms) were ubiquitous in medieval Europe, and today often make for showcase pieces in libraries and exhibitions, as they are frequently lavishly illustrated and illuminated. But although the shimmering gold and deep blue and red tones of the illustration in the Ormesby Psalter still impress readers today, they can perhaps make us forget too easily how remarkable this image is in its own right, regardless of the sparkle of gold leaf. A king of Israel who lived around 1000 BC appears here clothed in robes of fourteenth-century England, just as the psalms, which were originally written in Hebrew, appear here in Latin, the language of medieval Christian worship. Texts which were originally written in very different cultural, religious and historical circumstances in the ancient Middle East are here translated, through the language of its words and images, into the cultural context of medieval England. That the psalms should speak, and continue to speak, to a Western Christian audience is in many ways unexpected, given that they make frequent reference to the specific circumstances, place and culture in which they were composed. They speak of warfare, persecution, invasion by heathen nations, temple sacrifice and the tribes of Israel. And yet, as a collection of songs, the psalms exerted a powerful influence on Christian worship, theology and poetic expression through the centuries. More than any other biblical text, the psalms provide the very language and imagery through which prayer is conducted within the Western Church.

1 King David playing the harp, illumination from the Ormesby Psalter, 1250–1330.

The form of the psalms is unusual, too: they are structured according to the traditions of Hebrew poetry, which are quite different from what an English speaker might expect from poetry. Central to this structure are parallel construction of words and poetic lines. The parallel structure of the first verse, which we have already encountered on the first page of the Ormesby Psalter, becomes clearer if we separate the text visually into line segments:

Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners

and hath not sat in the seat of the scornful. (Ps. 1:1)

Another example is a verse a little further on in the same psalm:

Therefore the ungodly shall not be able to stand in the judgement, neither the sinners in the congregation of the righteous. (Ps. 1:6)

Although the English translation is unable to bring out all of the finer points of the Hebrew original, the parallelism is clear. Individual line segments echo each other in their words and imagery, so that often they appear like a rephrasing more than a new thought. To an English audience, such parallel structuring may appear awkward or repetitive as it does not align closely with English poetic forms, but Hebrew speakers clearly felt differently.³

If the poetic, cultural and historical features of the Book of Psalms do not lend themselves easily to an adaptation into different languages and cultures many centuries later, how can we explain the extraordinary and lasting importance of these texts within Western Christianity? Part of the reason for their longevity is, no doubt, their inclusion in the canon of Old Testament texts of the Bible in the early centuries AD. As such they became an important point of reference for Christian interpretations of the Bible. Central to this tradition of interpretation is a method of reading Old Testament texts in the light of the New Testament, with the coming of Christ being understood as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies and events. Yet this in itself is not sufficient explanation for the psalms’ central role in Christian worship. There are many books in the Old Testament, ranging from histories and chronicles to poetry and love songs, but most of them do not feature in Western liturgy with the same prominence as the psalms. The other part of the explanation, then, has to be connected not only with the circumstances of the psalms’ transmission and tradition but with the character of the texts themselves. Despite the specificity of some of their references to the history of the people of Israel, the psalms contain a remarkable range of emotions, attitudes and reflections, which have spoken to readers through the ages in myriad different places and circumstances. The tradition of the Christian Church has used the psalms as an evocative and resonant text with which, and through which, believers could speak to God. Some psalms contain verses of joy, trust and thankfulness: ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me’ (Ps. 23:4). Others plunge into the very depths of anger, despair and tribulation: ‘I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart also in the midst of my body is even like melting wax’ (Ps. 22:14). The voice of the psalmist is powerful, the imagery is compelling, and the poetry has a remarkable immediacy and intensity. The specific historical circumstances may be different, but the emotions expressed in the psalms are universally relevant to a community of believers, which explains their continued use in the Church’s official cycle of prayers many centuries after the psalms were originally written.

From the earliest records we have of Christian liturgy, we know that recitation of the psalms played a central part in the Church’s public prayer, following Jewish models, where the psalms had a prominent position in ritual worship. By the medieval period the psalms formed the central part of the Liturgy of the Hours prayed at fixed times of the day in monasteries, in which a specific selection of psalms would typically be chanted by the monastic community. The Liturgy of the Hours also proved popular among laypeople and spread far beyond religious communities. A great number of Books of Hours containing the texts of the Liturgy of the Hours that survive from the later Middle Ages were owned by members of the laity, testifying to the ubiquitous use of the psalms in private devotion. The psalms also played an important role in the celebration of the Mass, where they provided material from which fitting sections would be selected for chants and prayers for specific feast days. The Introit antiphon (a chant at the opening of Mass) for the third Mass on Christmas Day, for instance, includes the psalm verse Cantate Domino canticum novum: quia mirabilia fecit, ‘O sing unto the Lord a new song: for he hath done marvellous things’ (Ps. 98:1), a fitting expression of joy and wonder at the birth of the saviour.⁴ The set hours of prayer in monasteries were primarily composed of psalms, to which were added hymns, readings from the gospels and other prayers. The exact shape of the canonical hours could vary from place to place, but the psalms were always at the centre of liturgical prayer. The psalms thus shaped and guided daily prayer in religious communities and beyond, as they still do today.

In the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly cycle of these liturgical prayers, the entirety of the Book of Psalms would be sung, moving through a broad range of different emotional states and reflective attitudes expressed in the psalms. Often they also include cries for help from God in times of affliction. Petition for divine intervention is one of the primary reasons why humans turn to prayer. Whether it is a good harvest, recovery from illness, the end of a war – there are countless situations in human life that are outside of our control but which have serious or even life-and-death consequences. In such times of trouble and distress, many people throughout human history have turned to God to ask for help and guidance. The psalms offer a model of prayer expressing precisely this: a petition for help and mercy. Perhaps the most memorable and moving psalms among these are the so-called Penitential Psalms, which take their title from their introspective tone, marked by deep sorrow and remorse for the speaker’s past misdoings and petition for God’s forgiveness and help. They express the speaker’s turning to God for help in a striking way, and it is this quality that made the Penitential Psalms particularly prominent in the liturgy.

This is where we come back to King David, whom our illuminator in medieval Norwich took such great care in painting. The Book of Psalms has traditionally been attributed to King David. There are problems with this attribution: the date of most of the psalms is unknown, and the songs were more likely composed and collected over a much longer period of time than that of King David’s reign.⁵ But the attribution to David is not spurious. Many psalms contain superscriptions which ascribe authorship to David and allude to a particular incident in his life. It is worth noting, however, that the Hebrew word used in these superscriptions with the royal name can be translated as either ‘of David’, ‘for David’ or ‘about David’, so that they are perhaps best understood as indications of authorship in a looser sense. They may have been references to a context in which David acted as the patron of psalms in ancient Israel and authorized the use of such texts in worship through their association with him. Most interpreters today agree that the superscriptions were not originally part of these psalms, but added later during the process of the compilation of the Book of Psalms. Regardless of whether one believes the traditional view of David’s authorship of the psalms, the superscriptions at the very least give an indication of the earliest interpretations of the psalms, in that they often mention a specific historical situation or a moment in David’s life as a framework for understanding a particular psalm. As such, they can still provide helpful guidance for the reader, and they certainly help us understand the context within which the psalms were seen by medieval Christians.

A good example is Psalm 51, which has been called ‘the greatest of the penitential psalms of the church’.⁶ The psalm expresses in a particularly memorable way feelings of sinfulness, remorse and prayerful petition. The psalm has traditionally been read as an expression of King David’s remorse after an illicit affair with Bathsheba, as indicated by the superscription: ‘A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had sinned with Bathsheba’. In 2 Samuel 11–12 you can find the full story to which the superscription alludes (and modern readers may recognize allusions to this story in Leonard Cohen’s 1984 song ‘Hallelujah’): in the midst of war with the Ammonites, David sends the Israelite army out to besiege the city of Rabbah, but remains himself in Jerusalem. One evening, while taking a walk on the roof of his palace, he sees a woman having a bath. She is beautiful, and David is inflamed with desire. When he tries to find out her identity, his servants inform him that her name is Bathsheba, and that she is married to a man called Uriah, who is currently fighting in the war. David embarks on an affair with Bathsheba, and she falls pregnant. When David finds out about the pregnancy, he schemes to rid himself of Bathsheba’s husband. He sends orders to the leader of his army to send Uriah out to the front line where the fighting is fiercest and then withdraw support from him, so that he will be killed in battle. The army leader obeys, and Uriah falls in battle. David then marries Bathsheba, who gives birth to a son. God sends the prophet Nathan to David, who reproaches him for the evil he has done and prophesies that David will be severely punished. The book of Samuel reports David’s reaction as follows: ‘Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord”’ (2 Sam. 12:13). It is at this point that the tradition places Psalm 51, ascribing to David’s voice the expression of deep regret after his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah, calling to God from the depths of guilt and sinfulness.

Looking at the text of the psalm, it is easy to see why such an identification with this episode in David’s life came about, even if it was added by later editors. The psalmist’s voice utters the deeply personal prayer of someone who is full of distress and remorse.

Miserere mei, Deus: secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.

Have mercy upon me, O God: after Thy great goodness.

Et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam.

According to the multitude of Thy mercies, do away mine offences.

Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea: et a peccato meo munda me.

Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness: and cleanse me from my sin.

Quoniam iniquitatem meam ego cognosco: et peccatum meum contra me est semper.

For I acknowledge my faults: and my sin is ever before me.

Tibi soli peccavi, et malum coram te feci: ut justificeris in sermonibus tuis, et vincas cum judicaris.

Against Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that Thou mightest be justified in Thy saying, and clear when Thou art judged.

Ecce enim in iniquitatibus conceptus sum: et in peccatis concepit me mater mea.

Behold, I was shapen in wickedness: and in sin hath my mother conceived me.

Ecce enim veritatem dilexisti: incerta et occulta sapientiae tuae manifestasti mihi.

But lo, Thou requirest truth in the inward parts: and shalt make me to understand wisdom secretly.

Asperges me hyssopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.

Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Auditui meo dabis gaudium et laetitiam: et exsultabunt ossa humiliata.

Thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness: that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice.

Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis: et omnes iniquitates meas dele.

Turn Thy face from my sins: and put out all my misdeeds.

Cor mundum crea in me, Deus: et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis.

Make me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit within me.

Ne proiicias me a facie tua: et spiritum sanctum tuum ne auferas a me.

Cast me not away from Thy presence: and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.

Redde mihi laetitiam salutaris tui: et spiritu principali confirma me.

O give me the comfort of Thy help again: and stablish me with Thy free Spirit.

Docebo iniquos vias tuas: et impii ad te convertentur.

Then shall I teach Thy ways unto the wicked: and sinners shall be converted unto Thee.

Libera me de sanguinibus, Deus, Deus salutis meae: et exsultabit lingua mea justitiam tuam.

Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, Thou that art the God of my health: and my tongue shall sing of Thy righteousness.

Domine, labia mea aperies: et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam.

Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord: and my mouth shall show Thy praise.

Quoniam si voluisses sacrificium, dedissem utique: holocaustis non delectaberis.

For Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it Thee: but Thou delightest not in burnt-offerings.

Sacrificium Deo spiritus contribulatus: cor contritum, et humiliatum, Deus, non despicies.

The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt Thou not despise.

Benigne fac, Domine, in bona voluntate tua Sion: ut aedificentur muri Ierusalem.

O be favourable and gracious unto Sion: build Thou the walls of Jerusalem.

Tunc acceptabis sacrificium justitiae, oblationes, et holocausta: tunc imponent super altare tuum vitulos.

Then shalt Thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, with the burnt-offerings and oblations: then shall they offer young bullocks upon Thine altar.

It is clear from the beginning that the speaker is burdened with the sense of a great evil that he has committed. The first part of the psalm is full of remorse: guilt weighs heavily upon the speaker, who asks God to pardon his offences and cleanse him from his evil deeds. While the nature of the sin is never made more explicit in the psalm other than that it involves ‘blood-guiltiness’, there is a keen sense that God himself has been offended through the evil which has been committed. The speaker addresses God directly in his confession: ‘Against Thee only have I sinned’, and acknowledges that God’s judgement on him is justified. The sense of guilt is so deep that the speaker feels as if it has been with him from the very first moment of his existence: ‘Behold, I was shapen in wickedness: and in sin hath my mother conceived me.’ He has not merely committed evil deeds, but his very nature and deepest being is sinful. This verse hints at the fallen nature of humankind more broadly, bridging the personal and the universal: not only is the speaker laden with individual sinfulness, but he is burdened by the propensity to sin common to all humans. Against such depths of remorse, only God himself can provide help. A contrast is set up between the righteousness of God, a God of ‘truth’, and the speaker’s disposition towards evil. The psalmist then turns more intently to a petition that God may cleanse him from his evil deeds and renew him in a right spirit: ‘O give me the comfort of Thy help again’. Imagery connected to purification is used figuratively here: ‘hyssop’ was used in Jewish custom for the ritual cleansing of lepers. This association is also picked up in the use of this psalm in the Christian liturgy, where the ritual sprinkling of the congregation with Holy Water at the start of Sunday Mass as a sign of purification is accompanied by this very verse. The speaker prays for spiritual renewal, asking that God may turn his crushing sense of guilt to ‘joy and gladness’. As a result of his restoration to joy and innocence, the speaker will be able to convert others to God. He will praise God and offer a sacrifice to him which will consist not of an animal sacrifice but of ‘a broken and contrite heart’. The psalm ends with a prayer that God may rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and accept the sacrifices offered to him. The very last verse appears to contradict the previous statement that God does not desire sacrifice, and for this reason it has often been considered a later addition. Yet it need not be a contradiction; if read in the context of the preceding verses, it may simply strengthen the previous statement that God is not interested in the externals of sacrifices if they are not accompanied by the right inward disposition of humility and penitence. Only if this inward attitude is present will God gladly accept sacrifices.

In a metaphorical sense that is less closely connected with the historical context of Jewish animal sacrifice in the temple, the ‘burnt-offerings and oblations’ of the last verse can also be understood to represent any personal sacrifice of an internal nature, offered to God with the right attitude. What we often mean today when we say we are ‘making a sacrifice’ is to forgo the pleasure of the moment, of whatever kind, in order to reap greater rewards in the future. This can apply to non-religious contexts as well as religious ones: a student may decide to sacrifice a night out in the hope of doing well in an exam the next day. The short-term pleasure is seen to be less important than the rewards of the long-term future achievement, and this is exactly the sense in which the Christian tradition has understood the concept of sacrifice: something greater may be achieved if something less important is sacrificed. In more recent Christian readings of the psalms, the last verse has often been seen as a figurative reference to sacrifice in this sense. The ‘sacrifice of righteousness’, the ‘burnt-offerings’ and ‘young bullocks’ may be images of the practice of animal sacrifice which here signify internal dispositions and personal sacrifices of a moral and ethical nature that are offered to God. Such details of interpretation are often dependent on whether the psalm is read in its original historical context or applied to contemporary concerns, whether it is seen as a reference to historical Jewish worship or used in later Christian practices of worship, as a psalm that expresses the experience of the worshipping community or the personal penitence of an individual. Of course these aspects need not be mutually exclusive, but may merely express different approaches to an understanding of this psalm.

Because of its deep engagement with sin and petition for God’s forgiveness, Psalm 51 played a central role in medieval liturgical practice. It was said in the Liturgy of the Hours in religious communities at Lauds on every weekday, and it was also the final psalm sung in the office of Tenebrae during Holy Week (for more on this, see Chapter Four). Due to this prominent liturgical role, it was one of the liturgical texts frequently set to music in medieval and post-medieval times. In a medieval church, the psalm would have been recited or chanted. The chanting of the psalm typically happened according to a set pattern, in which the first and the second part of a psalm verse alternated between the two sides of the choir. Through the singing, the psalm text was realized by and applied to the present congregation or monastic community. What happens through the praying of the penitential psalm by a community of worshippers in a church is that which is characteristic of liturgy more broadly: in the moment of liturgical performance, the congregation inhabits the text. The words of the psalm are made relevant to the present reality of the lives of the congregation. The ‘I’ of the psalm is no longer primarily the voice of the psalmist or King David himself, but it becomes the ‘I’ of every individual worshipper.

Let us for a moment imagine what this experience might be like. In the early hours of the morning, we enter a dark church to sing Lauds, the morning office. The sky outside is still dark, only a golden hue on the eastern horizon and a chorus of birds announcing the coming of dawn. The church is dimly illuminated by candles in the choir-stalls; not enough light to give a clear sense of the size of the building, only an awareness of great vaults and slanting columns above. It is cold inside, and the air smells of candlewax and incense. The office begins: Deus in adiutorium meum intende, ‘O God, come to my help’. Psalm verses are sung, alternating between the sides of the choir. One side calls, the other responds, echoing and continuing each other’s thoughts as the psalm moves from confession of sin to hope of renewal in God’s mercy. The words are those prescribed by the ritual, words that are ancient and weighty. They have been said in this manner by countless generations of previous worshippers, and they will continue to be said for many generations to come. But despite their ancient origins, the words are also our words. They are no longer the prayer of an Israelite psalmist only. Through the singing, we inhabit the words. It is we who are burdened with an awareness of our faults, and who are asking God to cleanse us and renew us in the right spirit. It is a communal as well as a deeply personal prayer. As the office progresses, the sky outside grows gradually lighter, dispelling the shadows inside the church. First rays of sunlight fall through the high, arched windows to the east, colourful reflections of the stained glass illuminating the altar as the final verse of the psalm speaks of God’s merciful acceptance of offerings.

The liturgy is an experience that involves all senses. An intellectual analysis of the texts and prayers of liturgical practice only describes a small part of what makes it so special. The lived experience is much more difficult to capture. But its enduring power is reflected in the fact that it inspired a multitude of interpretations and adaptations in musical form, and continues to do so today. Composers from the late Middle Ages to the present have expressed their understanding of this psalm in a variety of different musical styles. In a medieval context, psalms would usually have been sung in the style of plainchant (an unaccompanied musical setting sung by a single voice, or several voices all singing the same tune together). This style of music arose in medieval monasteries and was traditionally used in the liturgy of the church. It formed the origin of later developments of music in the West, starting from polyphony, a style of music developed in the Renaissance that was marked by interweaving but independent melodic parts. The influence of plainchant has subsequently been heard in musical composition through to the present day, including very recent choral pieces by composers such as Arvo Pärt and James MacMillan. Throughout this long line of development, composers worked on setting psalms to music.

Certainly the most famous musical setting of Psalm 51 is by Gregorio Allegri (1582–1652), a Catholic priest and composer of the Italian Renaissance. Allegri wrote his setting of the Miserere for the celebration of the Holy Week services in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Holy Week was celebrated with particular intensity in the Vatican, and Allegri’s sublime setting for two choirs, written in the 1630s, was a fitting contribution to this tradition that drew inspiration from earlier models of composition by his predecessors. Allegri’s original version was very clearly influenced by plainchant, presenting a harmonized version of the medieval chant, interspersed with simple verses of chant following a specific melody, the tonus peregrinus. A call-and-response structure is followed by the two choirs, which finally come together for the last verse – a fitting conclusion to the text, emphasizing the reconciliation and forgiveness achieved by God’s acceptance of the sacrifice at the end of the psalm. The version of Allegri’s Miserere that is most widely known today, however, is the result of a long evolution of the piece over the centuries, which involved added ornamentation and several mistakes of transcription in a long history of transmission and copying by later musicians, resulting in the famous soaring soprano line with a high C – a moment that frequently moves modern audiences to tears.

Many other composers, including Byrd, Bach, Handel, Gounod, Wesley and Brahms set the psalm in its entirety or in parts to music, either in Latin or in the vernacular. Perhaps the most compelling musical setting of the psalm in recent years has been that of 2009 by Scottish composer James MacMillan, whose contemporary setting incorporates references to plainchant and the long musical tradition of the psalm, including Allegri’s setting. MacMillan’s Miserere captures superbly the psalm’s movement from guilt and sin to forgiveness and renewal. There is a constant contrast between coldness and warmth, despair and hope. The opening sequence sounds desolate and bare, like a whispered prayer coming from the depths under the heavy burden of sin. A few moments later, the score is marked ‘warmer and warmer’ on the words magnam misericordiam (‘great mercy’). The word misericordiam is drawn out over a long line, illustrating musically the greatness of God’s mercy. A still tentative hope is kindled. The verses starting at ‘Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness’ are sung by the sopranos with a ‘keening, crying’ sound, making palpable the anguish experienced in the engagement with the speaker’s guilt, culminating in the admission of sin: ‘Against Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that Thou mightest be justified in Thy saying, and clear when Thou art judged.’ Gradually, the hope in God’s mercy grows stronger, marked by a fortissimo outcry that marks roughly the middle point of the piece: Asperges me hyssopo, hyssopo, et mundabor (‘Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean’). The word ‘hyssop’ is prominently emphasized by repetition in MacMillan’s version.

To understand the significance of this repetition, we must understand a basic principle of Christian biblical interpretation known as ‘typology’. Christian tradition understands the relation of the Old and the New Testaments to each other as one of prophecy and fulfilment in a figurative manner. In this way, key figures and events of the Old Testament are understood to be ‘types’ of Christ insofar as they prefigure his coming; for example, Abraham and Moses are seen as forerunners of Christ. The Fall and expulsion from Paradise of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis are undone by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross; Christ, therefore, is sometimes referred to as ‘the new Adam’. Of particular importance here is the Jewish custom of offering and eating the paschal lamb at the feast of Passover, a tradition to commemorate the Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt. In Exodus 12 the Israelites are told that they can avoid the destruction that awaits the Egyptians by sprinkling the blood of the paschal lamb on the lintel and side posts of their doors using a bunch of hyssop. The Egyptians are punished, while the Israelites escape into freedom. This is understood in later Christian tradition as a symbol of the Passion of Christ, through which the destruction of death and sin is averted from humankind. Christ is referred to in John 1:29 as the ‘Lamb of God’, and so the animal sacrifice of the Old Testament becomes an image or a figure of Christ’s redemptive death on the cross. The double reference to ‘hyssop’ in MacMillan’s piece, therefore, reinforces a word in Psalm 51 that has traditionally been read as a reference to the redemptive power of the death of Christ. This repetition of the word marks a shift at the mid-point of the piece in the journey from the burden of sin at the beginning to forgiveness at the end. Following this crucial shift, the musical development of the text incorporates harmonized chant melodies, as well as a solo tune which evokes associations with Allegri’s famous setting. The piece concludes with a warm and hopeful revision of the desolate opening sequence, this time in a major rather than a minor key. The journey from sin to renewal is complete.

In Allegri’s and MacMillan’s settings we find two interpretations of Psalm 51 that take different approaches and emphasize different aspects of the text, but which also refer back to the same liturgical tradition of plainchant. In this way both pieces hearken back to their liturgical roots while finding a musical language that builds upon this tradition and incorporates new ideas, in the seventeenth century as well as in the twenty-first. But it is not only composers who have been inspired by the central role of this penitential psalm in the liturgy. The psalm was recited in communal prayer in monasteries, but from the Middle Ages onwards Christians also began reading the seven penitential psalms in private devotion. In the late Middle Ages the psalms were regularly included in handbooks of devotion for the laity, so-called primers. The popularity of the psalms was due to their central role in the liturgy, as well as their powerful introspective and confessional qualities, which lent themselves especially to private examinations of conscience and reflection on personal faults. The interest of laypeople in these texts for private devotion meant that from the late Middle Ages the penitential psalms were being translated from Latin into English. Several translations survive from the pre-Reformation period, including by poets such as Richard Rolle (1300–1349) and Richard Maidstone (d. 1396).⁷ With their emphasis on penitence and self-examination, the psalms also spoke to later post-Reformation readers. An early English translation of the Miserere psalm in the wake of the Reformation comes from Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542), an influential courtier and ambassador of Henry VIII. Wyatt presents a unique interpretation of the persona of King David, as he crafts a dramatic speaker of the psalms marked by introspection, self-doubt and theological subtlety. Wyatt’s version of Psalm 51 oscillates between close translation and loose paraphrase of the text, resolving many ambiguities of the Latin version. For instance, the apparent contradictions at the end of the psalm between ‘For Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it Thee: but Thou delightest not in burnt-offerings’ and ‘Then shalt Thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, with the burnt-offerings and oblations: then shall they offer young bullocks upon Thine altar’, is resolved in Wyatt’s version in the following way:

For if thou hadst esteemed pleasant good

The outward deeds that outward men disclose

I would have offered unto thee sacrifice.

But thou delights not in no such gloze [= false show]

Of outward deed as men dream and devise.

The sacrifice that the Lord liketh most

Is sprite contrite; low heart in humble wise

Thou dost accept, O God, for pleasant host . . .

Then shalt thou take for good these outward deeds

As sacrifice thy pleasure to fulfil.

Of thee alone thus all our good proceeds.⁸

Wyatt summarizes the terms specific to sacrifice (‘burnt-offerings’, ‘oblations’, ‘young bullocks’) under a more general category as ‘outward deeds’, setting up a contrast between sacrifice offered by mere external actions without the appropriate internal disposition, and those actions in which the ‘outward deeds’ are accompanied by a ‘sprite contrite’. The implication is that God only wants external actions if they are done for the right reasons and out of contrition and humility, not for outward show. In paraphrasing the words of the psalm, Wyatt presents a consistent reading that does away with some of the problems of interpretation that we encounter when reading the Latin text.

Shakespeare, too, makes reference to the Penitential Psalms and uses them for dramatic purposes. The Miserere features in a scene in Hamlet, when Claudius, having murdered his brother, reflects on the possibility of attaining God’s forgiveness:

What if this cursed hand

Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood?

Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens

To wash it white as snow? (III.3.43–6)

The passage alludes to a section from the psalm, ‘Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow’. This connection makes sense when we compare Claudius’s situation with that of King David. Like David, Claudius is a king who is guilty of murder. Like David, Claudius has married his victim’s wife. The parallel between the two kings which Shakespeare sets up in these lines only reinforces the contrast between them: while David is truly contrite, Claudius cannot bring himself to repent. The allusion, in this case, undercuts what Claudius is saying. While his speech implies that there is rain enough to wash away his guilt, the comparison with David subtly indicates that there will be no forgiveness for Claudius as he does not feel true remorse.⁹

It is not only Old Testament texts like the psalms that have been widely used in liturgical prayer and which have subsequently exerted their influence on literature. Texts from the New Testament as an expression of petition were equally influential in medieval Europe and beyond. An example is a short prayer that occurs as part of the Mass, just before the communion of the faithful, known as the Agnus Dei, ‘Lamb of God’, a term commonly applied to Jesus. As mentioned above, the term ‘Lamb of God’ refers to a passage from the Gospel of John (1:29), in which John the Baptist first encounters Jesus and exclaims: ‘Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’ The idea of Jesus as the Lamb of God is foundational to Christian theology, which holds that Jesus as the Son of God willingly chose to undergo crucifixion and death in order to take away the sins of humankind. In an instance of typology, the ritual sacrifice of the Passover in the Old Testament is interpreted as a foretelling of the redemption through Christ, whose death atones for human sin. Christ therefore becomes a metaphorical lamb sacrificed for the salvation of all.

This is the background to which the liturgical prayer refers, when God is invoked three times as the Lamb of God, connected with a prayer for forgiveness and peace:

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

As a fixed part of the Mass, the Agnus Dei prayer has been set to music countless times by composers, perhaps most hauntingly so in Samuel Barber’s 1967 choral arrangement of his Adagio for Strings. It is the part of the Mass that is traditionally the most introspective and pleading in many musical settings, expressing hope in God’s mercy and uncertainty at the prospect of peace on earth. Yet nowhere has the motif of the Lamb of God been more influential than in the visual arts. From the Middle Ages onwards, the Lamb of God is a distinctive iconographical motif. In such representations, the lamb typically stands upright, surrounded by a halo of light, its foreleg tucked around either a cross, or a flag with a symbol of the cross. Its stance is triumphant, representing victory over death and sin: a symbol of the risen Christ. An early example of this mode of representation is a relief in the Basilica of Santa Pudenziana, Rome, which dates to around AD 1000 (illus. 2). Countless churches contain the same image, such as that found on an architectural detail at All Saints’ Church in Kleinschwarzenlohe, Germany (illus. 3). But it is not only churches that feature this image as a symbol of Christ as the redeemer. In fact, once you start looking for the lamb, you will soon see it everywhere. Few people will associate traditional English pub signs with Christian art, but if you travel around the United Kingdom you will likely chance upon a pub called the Lamb and Flag in one place or another. Many signs still depict the lamb using the traditional iconography. The long history of the liturgy is present in unexpected places, sometimes even when you are enjoying a pint.

2 Lamb frieze, Basilica of Santa Pudenziana, Rome, 11th century, marble.

3 Lamb roof boss, All Saints’ Church in Kleinschwarzenlohe, 15th century.

2

Love

‘I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys,’ a young woman sings. ‘How beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful!’ her lover replies, and praises her beauty: ‘Your lips are like a crimson thread, and your mouth is lovely.’ It is unlikely that a modern reader would interpret such a scene as anything beyond what it seems on the surface: an encounter between two young lovers. And yet, this is not quite how this scene has been interpreted by the majority of its readers since it was first written more than two millennia ago. This imagined scene is a short version of a much longer dialogue from a poem stretching over several chapters. Let us look at a longer section to get a sense of the poem’s language:

1 How beautiful you are, my love,

how very beautiful!

Your eyes are doves

behind your veil.

Your hair is like a flock of goats,

moving down the slopes of Gilead.

2 Your teeth are like a flock of shorn ewes

that have come up from the washing,

all of which bear twins,

and not one among them is bereaved.

3 Your lips are like a crimson thread,

and your mouth is lovely.

Your cheeks are like halves of a pomegranate

behind your veil.

4 Your neck is like the tower of David,

built in courses;

on it hang a thousand bucklers,

all of them shields of warriors.

5 Your two breasts are like two fawns,

twins of a gazelle,

that feed among the lilies.

6 Until the day breathes

and the shadows flee,

I will hasten to the mountain of myrrh

and the hill of frankincense.

7 You are altogether beautiful, my love;

there is no flaw in you.

8 Come with me from Lebanon, my bride;

come with me from Lebanon.

Depart from the peak of Amana,

from the peak of Senir and Hermon,

from the dens of lions,

from the mountains of leopards.

9 You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride,

you have ravished my heart with a glance of your eyes,

with one jewel of your necklace.

10 How sweet is your love, my sister, my bride!

how much better is your love than wine,

and the fragrance of your oils than any spice!

11 Your lips distil nectar, my bride;

honey and milk are under your tongue;

the scent of your garments is like the scent of Lebanon.

12 A garden locked is my sister, my bride,

a garden locked, a fountain sealed.

13 Your channel is an orchard of pomegranates

with all choicest fruits,

henna with nard,

14 nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon,

with all trees of frankincense,

myrrh and aloes,

with all chief spices –

15 a garden fountain, a well of living water,

and flowing streams from Lebanon.

16 Awake, O north wind,

and come, O south wind!

Blow upon my garden

that its fragrance may be wafted abroad.

Let my beloved come to his garden,

and eat its choicest fruits.

(Song of Songs 4)

The imagery of the poem is rich and suggestive: the eyes of the beloved are compared to doves, her cheeks to pomegranates, her breasts to twins of a gazelle. Middle Eastern flora and fauna are invoked in order to praise the beauty of an unnamed woman. Within the context of an arid country, the images of life-giving abundance used to express her beauty would have resonated particularly strongly. She is strikingly described as a locked garden containing a verdant scenery of well-water, fruits and spices to which her lover will come to ‘eat . . . choicest fruits’. The erotic undertones of such imagery are hardly subtle.

Most modern readers would not associate such sensual poetry with divine or spiritual love. The language seems too concrete, the symbolism too sexual, to suggest a spiritual reading. And yet, in the Middle Ages this poem was used more than any other text as a vehicle for thinking about divine love. It was interpreted as describing, in a symbolic manner, the relationship between God and his people, and between God and Mary, the mother of Christ. Although this may seem surprising at first glance, it helps us make sense of many aspects of Western art and music, whether secular or sacred. The unexpected story of how an erotic poem came to be central to the Christian theological tradition takes us back many centuries, and into the heart of the liturgy.

The poem, with its references to gazelles, orchards and warriors, is merely one chapter in a much longer poem known as the Song of Songs, or the Song of Solomon. The title indicates that the poem was originally intended to be sung to music. It is one of the books of the Old Testament used within a Jewish context for reading on the feast of Passover in the synagogue or within the family. In a superscription in the Hebrew text, the Song of Songs is attributed to King Solomon, the son of King David renowned for his wisdom, although, as with King David’s psalms, it is unclear whether Solomon was actually the author of the poem. Many scholars today think of it as a collection of songs brought together over a period of time rather than a single song by a single author. The title Song of Songs can therefore be explained as a reference to a collection of songs, or it might simply indicate the excellence of the text – in other words, the ‘most exalted’, ‘best’ or ‘all-encompassing’ song.¹

Nobody quite knows how the Song of Songs came to be included in the canon of the Old Testament next to historical books and chronicles. It does have some similarities with other poetic Old Testament texts, such as the psalms, but it is very different in that it presents a dialogue between two lovers, without a single mention of God or religious concepts. The subject matter of erotic love is clear from the outset as the song starts with ‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine’ (Song of Songs 1:2). As its inclusion in the Old Testament canon was so curious it consequently prompted discussion in early Jewish sources. In Jewish tradition a specific line of interpretation developed, which helped acceptance of the Song of Songs as a sacred text despite its ostensibly secular nature. The poem was read as an allegory (a tale with a hidden meaning) of the love between God and his people, the Israelites. This allegorical interpretation was developed in great detail by Jewish commentators, and later adopted and adapted by early Christian interpreters, who took the general principle in a slightly different direction. Christian readings sought to explain the apparent incongruity of the Song of Songs with the canon of the Old Testament by reading it symbolically in the context of the New Testament. Typology – the method of reading the Bible that we already encountered in the first chapter – played a role here. If the Old Testament was seen as pointing towards the coming of Christ, what could the role of an apparently erotic love poem be in relation to Christ? A range of interpretations emerged. Taking inspiration from the Jewish tradition, the Song of Songs began to be read as an allegory of the love between Christ and the Church, or between Christ and the soul of the individual believer. According to these interpretations, Christ is presented in the Song of Songs as a passionate lover who pursues his bride – the Church or the soul – using secular and erotic imagery to refer to a spiritual reality. The literary language of sexual love, also known as eros, is used to refer to divine love or agape.

Critics have seen this allegorical interpretive tradition as a sign of a prurient attitude, but interpreting the Song of Songs in a spiritual vein does not have to be an attempt to evade the presence of sexual language – quite the contrary. Much of the literature of the Middle Ages positively delights in the sensual imagery of the Song of Songs, draws upon it, expands it, and uses it as an inspiration to create new poetry. What engagement with the Song of Songs achieves is not so much an avoidance of erotic language and sexual subject matter as a deliberate and creative use of such language in engaging with religious matters. Human sexuality is incorporated into a celebration of the mystical love between the human and the divine. The identification of the Song of Songs with divine love meant that erotic imagery could be used freely and abundantly in religious writings. A space was opened up for innovative, sometimes daring, engagement with erotic language when talking about God. This is particularly clear in the mystical tradition of the Middle Ages, where writers such as Bernard of Clairvaux, Brigit of Sweden, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe explored a range of sensual imagery in describing their deep, spiritual union with God. The writings of twelfth-century Benedictine monk Rupert von Deutz are an example of how the Song of Songs inspired mystical experiences of union with God. Rupert describes how, years earlier, he had experienced the call to priesthood. In a dream, Christ calls him to approach him on the crucifix and kiss him on the mouth: ‘I held Him, I embraced Him and kissed Him long and profoundly. I noticed how happily He received this sign of love, for in the kissing, He opened his mouth so that I would kiss Him more deeply.’² This passage clearly recalls the beginning of the Song of Songs (‘Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth’) and applies it to an experience of connection with Christ. The kiss described is an expression of a spiritual, mystical union – Rupert experiences it as a call to the priesthood – but it is at the same time described with the language of human desire. The Song of Songs allows the sacred and the sensual to meet.

Given these literary and theological developments, it is perhaps unsurprising that the bridal imagery of the Song of Songs eventually came to be applied to a very particular female subject: the Virgin Mary. According to a Christian theological understanding, Mary occupies a unique position in the divine plan of salvation. Though human like all other human beings, she was uniquely privileged to become the mother of Christ, whom she conceived miraculously by the Holy Spirit. The basis for this belief is the Gospel of Luke, which tells of an angel’s visit to Mary to announce that she will become the mother of Jesus.

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.’ (Luke 1:26–35)

Through interpretation of this account, Mary comes to be thought of as the bride of the Holy Spirit, and yet she is also a child of God as all other humans are. In her relationship with the three persons of the Trinity, Mary can therefore be described paradoxically as mother, daughter and spouse of God, while remaining a perpetual virgin. The miracle of God’s Incarnation collapses normal categories of human relationships. Latin theological writings and liturgical poetry play upon these paradoxes with evocative language. One medieval hymn praises Mary as ‘wife, sister, dowry, and daughter of the supreme Creator’.³

While later Protestant movements were keen to curb devotions to the Virgin Mary in a reaction against what they saw as idolatry and worship of a quasi-divine Blessed Virgin, medieval Christianity had no such qualms. Mary was venerated as the ideal of all women and the mediator between God and humankind. Many prayers and hymns praised Mary as the epitome of all virtue, beauty and grace. In a tradition of biblical interpretation where God was identified with the male speaker of the Song of Songs, it was only a small leap to identifying Mary as the bride of the Holy Spirit with the female beloved in the Old Testament text. This interpretive tradition goes back at least to the patristic writings of St Ambrose in the fourth century, but it is developed in greater detail in theological writings from the twelfth century onwards. This is a particularly interesting development because it is here where we see the true transformative power of the liturgy at work. While we may commonly think of worship reflecting theological beliefs, what seems to have happened around the twelfth century is exactly the inverse: the association of the female beloved in the Song of Songs with the Virgin Mary is an idea which arises, first and foremost, in and through the liturgy, and it is only later that it is discussed and expanded in a more systematic way in theological and scholarly writings of the medieval period.⁴ It is, in other words, an illustration of the lex orandi, lex credendi principle discussed in the introduction: the form of worship influences belief. Liturgy comes first, and theology after.

The gospels do not provide us with many details about the life of the Virgin Mary. Apart from crucial moments such as her consent to the angel’s message, the texts only give us glimpses of her story. Nonetheless, there is a rich early tradition of stories of the life of the Virgin, based on oral tradition as well as sources that were not part of the canonical Bible. An example of an event that is not mentioned in the canonical gospels, but nonetheless appears in Christian worship very early on, is the Assumption, a belief according to which the Virgin Mary was bodily taken up into heaven at the end of her life. This feast proved a particular inspiration for the creation of liturgical hymns. As the event of the Assumption is not described in the canonical gospels, texts from the Old Testament were used in liturgical celebration which were, through a typological reading, applied to the Virgin Mary. Because of the bridal imagery explored above, the Song of Songs ranked foremost in the texts used for this occasion. We find evidence of this in the earliest sources that tell us how the liturgy was celebrated, such as the Antiphoner of Compiègne, the oldest surviving book that contains the Latin texts of the Liturgy of the Hours, dating to the late ninth century. In this we find a striking antiphon for Vespers on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary:

Quae est ista quae ascendit sicut aurora consurgens, pulchra ut luna, electa ut sol, terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata?

Who is she that ascends like the rising dawn, fair as the moon, chosen as the sun, terrible as an army drawn up for battle?

This antiphon is almost identical to Song of Songs 6:10, with the single difference that the biblical text contains the word progreditur (comes forth) instead of ascendit (ascends). The Song of Songs here praises the beloved in a striking way with celestial and martial imagery. The images of dawn, moon and sun may have prompted an association of this particular verse with the feast of the Assumption. We can see in the liturgical version of the verse how the Song of Songs is applied to the Virgin, and made relevant to the feast of the Assumption by replacing the verb with ‘ascends’. In this way, the quotation is turned into a reference to Mary being taken up into heaven. It is this early association of the Song of Songs with the Virgin Mary in the liturgy that later prompted more elaborate theological commentaries, which saw the Song of Songs as referring to the Virgin Mary. The powerful poetic qualities of the Song of Songs lent themselves naturally to a use in liturgical worship, and it is only later that this connection became a fully formed system of interpretation.⁵

The solar and lunar imagery of this verse is a recurring feature of many representations of the Virgin Mary in art since the late Middle Ages, such as an illustration from a 1577 work on the Blessed Virgin by Petrus Canisius (illus. 4). We can see the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus in the middle, surrounded by a range of objects. The sun and moon to the top left and right cite the words from the same verse of the Song of Songs that is used in the Antiphoner of Compiègne: Electa ut sol (‘chosen as the sun’) and Pulchra ut luna (‘fair as the moon’). But there are more symbols surrounding Mary, many of which are references to the Song of Songs. Some of these we have already encountered at the beginning of this chapter. We see a well on the left-hand side of the picture, and a tower, a garden and a fountain on the bottom right. These are references to the ‘well of living water’ (puteus aquarum), the tower of David (Turris David), the locked garden (hortus conclusus) and the sealed fountain (Fons signatus) to which the beloved is compared in Song of Songs 4. The inscription at the bottom cites Song of Songs 4:7: Tota pulchra es amica mea et macula non est in te (‘You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you’). The application of the praise of the beloved in the Song of Songs to the Virgin Mary is here expressed very clearly in visual form. This image illustrates the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a long prayer that praises Mary with a list of invocations and asks for her help. The symbols surrounding the Virgin form part of this list of invocations. Yet such imagery is more than just a poetic praise of the Virgin; each symbol is imbued with significance.

4 Woodcut of the Blessed Virgin and child from Petrus Canisius, De Maria Virgine incomparabili, et Dei Genitrice sacrosancta (1577).

The enclosed garden is an example that can help us trace this deeper significance. The illustration emphasizes the state of the garden as locked to such an extent that it looks almost like a cage. This emphasis on locking and enclosing is significant, as the image of the hortus conclusus was traditionally read as a metaphor of Mary’s perpetual virginity, conceiving Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Impassable to men, Mary is a locked garden into which only God can enter. Numerous liturgical hymns of the Middle Ages use this image in often creative ways to emphasize Mary’s virginity, such as this hymn of unclear date, which praises Mary with the following words:

O salutaris

Oh saving

Miserorum portus,

port of the wretched

Ortus

Day-spring

Et conclusus hortus,

And closed garden,

Ex te sol exortus,

The sun came forth from you

Virgo deum paris.

You give birth to God as a virgin.⁶

The Latin original makes clever use of the rhyme between portus – ortus – hortus – exortus (port – day-spring – garden – came forth), connecting metaphorical images in praise of the Virgin, including those from the Song of Songs, with the birth of Christ. The rhyme between the first line and the last further emphasizes that she is worthy of being invoked as one who saves (salutaris) by dint of the fact that she gives birth (paris) to God.

An event where Mary’s virginity is of particular relevance is the Annunciation as reported in the Gospel of Luke, as we have seen above. This scene exerted a particular fascination on the creative imagination over the centuries, and became a popular subject in religious art. The metaphorical language of the Song of Songs proved an effective tool to communicate Mary’s everlasting virginity in visual terms. In a famous Annunciation fresco by Renaissance painter Fra Angelico (1395–1455), we find an insistence on the fact that Mary is sitting in an enclosed garden when the angel approaches (illus. 5). Mary is seated in a covered outdoor space (in an Italian context known as a loggia) with a reverent attitude, her head slightly bowed, as the angel delivers the message. The angel is bowing reverently in return; we get the impression of a conversation full of mutual respect. Mary appears calm and composed as she accepts the role she is to play in the salvation of humankind. In the background we see a strongly emphasized wooden fence, which separates Mary’s garden from the outside world. Inside the fence flowers abound, while outside there is a wilderness of trees. Using the symbolic language of this garden, Fra Angelico’s fresco thus highlights the tradition of the hortus conclusus and its implied theological meaning regarding Mary’s virginity.

5 Fra Angelico, The Annunciation, c. 1442–3, fresco, Convent of San Marco, Florence.

6 Tintoretto, The Annunciation, 1583–7, oil on canvas.

We also find versions of the hortus conclusus symbolism in a large number of Renaissance paintings of the Annunciation, with the enclosed garden emphasized to a greater or lesser extent by different artists. The fact that this tradition was so widespread makes any deviations from it all the more noteworthy. A notable example is Tintoretto’s Annunciation (illus. 6). In this painting Mary is portrayed as one of the common people, seated in a room filled with old furniture and items required for daily work. She sits on a low chair and has clearly been interrupted in the midst of her work. A dove, a conventional symbol of the Holy Spirit, descends on her from above. But her demeanour is quite the opposite of the calm and composed Mary whom we saw in Fra Angelico’s version. She looks startled, even shocked, by the sudden appearance of the angel and the accompanying host, who appear to be flying towards her at great speed from above. Her arms and shoulders are turned away in a gesture of surprise and fear. As in Luke 1:26, this Mary is ‘much perplexed’ by the angel’s visit. Whereas in Fra Angelico’s version the Virgin and the angel are separated by a column, there is nothing separating the two in Tintoretto’s painting: the angel has passed between two stone pillars at the threshold of her home, breaking into the private space of her humble abode, upsetting the routine of everyday life. And unlike Fra Angelico, Tintoretto also disrupts the traditional iconography of the enclosed garden. Mary’s home is not surrounded by a meadow of beautiful flowers, but by a dark and chaotic scene. Bits of broken furniture are spread around the outside of her house in a disorderly fashion. According to the gospels, Mary was engaged to be married to a carpenter, but the chaos outside her home is more than just a nod to St Joseph’s profession. It is precisely the contrast with the earlier tradition of the well-ordered beautiful garden that makes the disorder in this painting all the more striking. We get the impression that this is a messy and broken world, into which, unexpectedly, the divine message is brought. Everything is changed in an instant. Tintoretto deviates from the familiar iconography of the hortus conclusus only to introduce a different, equally powerful symbolism: a bright dawn is rising over the distant hills on the left, announcing the coming of hope for humankind at the incarnation of its saviour.⁷

At this point in the Renaissance period the imagery of the Song of Songs has come a long way from an apparently secular erotic poem to an allegory of Mary’s excellence in the liturgy, only to be negated and disrupted to communicate a different, equally powerful theological idea. But the original context of the Song of Songs, that of a passionate exchange between two lovers, was not completely lost along the way. As we have seen in the mystical tradition of the Middle Ages, the line between secular erotic imagery and a religious, spiritual meaning could be blurry, and in fact it was very deliberately blurred in many texts. In reality, it is difficult to separate the two, and the evocative language of the Song of Songs inspired both secular and religious poetry and song.

Many medieval poems exploit these blurry boundaries between the religious and the secular for dramatic effect. There is an entire group of Middle English lyrics (short poems) that take the form of a love quest, a setting common in secular, chivalric French songs. In their original form these songs typically include a male speaker who, after wandering out into the country, unexpectedly meets a woman and has a conversation with her. This setting is sometimes transferred onto a religious context, in which the speaker has a dream in which he meets a woman who is revealed to be the Virgin Mary. One of these types of poems begins as follows:

In a tabernacle of a toure,

In a niche of a tower,

As I stode musyng on the mone,

As I stood musing on the moon,

A crouned quene, most of honoure,

A crowned queen, of greatest honour,

Apered in gostly syght ful sone.

Appeared very soon in a vision.

She made compleynt thus by hyr one,

She made a complaint thus on her own,

For mannes soule was wrapped in wo,

For man’s soul was enveloped by woe,

‘I may nat leve mankynde allone,

‘I cannot leave mankind alone,

Quia amore langueo.’

Because I languish for love.’

‘I longe for love of man my brother,

‘I long for love of man, who is my brother,

I am hys vokete to voyde hys vyce;

I am his advocate to eliminate his faults;

I am hys moder – I can none other –

I am his mother – I cannot do otherwise –

Why shuld I my dere chylde dispyce?

Why should I despise my dear child?

Yef he me wrathe in diverse wyse,

If he angers me in different ways

Th[r]ough flesshes freelté fall me fro,

Through flesh’s frailty fall from me,

Yet must me rewe hym tyll he ryse,

Yet must I pity him until he arises,

Quia amore langueo.’

Because I languish for love.’⁸

The trope of love-longing is here transferred onto the Virgin Mary, who languishes for love of humankind, whose state of sin she laments. Every man is her brother whom she patiently helps and for whom she intercedes. Yet the identity of the lady is at first mysterious and is then only slowly revealed in the course of the poem. The text invokes the trope of a noble lady lamenting her lover, which appears in different forms in many secular love lyrics, but this initial impression is quickly undermined. The ghostly vision of the ‘crowned queen’ takes place while the speaker is ‘musing on the moon’, and this association with lunar imagery subtly hints at the lady’s true identity as Mary. The lady is not waiting for her lover, as we might expect, but expressing her love for ‘mankind’. The second stanza makes clear that the lady can only be speaking of spiritual love, as she is lover, mother and sister to the man for whom she laments. The poem plays with these paradoxes to make us reassess our initial understanding of the text in the light of the complex family ties that are mentioned. Like the speaker of the poem who receives a vision, we are on a journey of discovery, trying to make sense of the identity of the initially mysterious lady. Fitting with these paradoxes, each stanza concludes with a refrain that quotes the Song of Songs: Quia amore langueo, ‘Because I languish for love’ (Song of Songs 2:5 and 5:8). Spoken in the Bible by the woman awaiting her lover, the line is here given to Mary as the lover of all human souls. Just like the liturgy, the poem uses associations and connections between the Song of Songs and the Virgin that are traditional, and at the same time plays with this tradition in an innovative way.

A different approach to the Virgin Mary through the language of the Song of Songs is found in a fifteenth-century poem by the friar James Ryman, which celebrates the Assumption of Mary into heaven. According to traditional medieval belief, Mary was crowned as queen of heaven after her Assumption. The poem uses the invitation famously spoken by the lover to his beloved in the Song of Songs, ‘Come’, and attributes them to Christ himself, who addresses the Virgin Mary when she is taken up into heaven:

Carissima in deliciis,

Sweetest in delights,

Iam ueni: coronaberis.

Come now, you shall be crowned.

Come, my dere spowse and lady free;

Come, my dear spouse and lady free;

Come to thy sonne in heven blis,

Come to your son in heavenly bliss,

For why next me thy place shalbe,

For next to me your place shall be,

Iam ueni: coronaberis.

Come now, you shall be crowned.

Come, my myelde dove, into thy cage,

Come, my mild dove, into your cage,

With ioye and blis replete whiche is;

which is full with joy and bliss,

For why it is thyne heritage.

For it is your heritage.

Iam ueni: coronaberis.

Come now, you shall be crowned.

Moost faire and swete, moost meke and myelde,

Most fair and sweet, most meek and mild,

Come to thy sonne and king of blis.

Come to your son and king of bliss.

Moder and mayden vndefielde,

Mother and maiden undefiled,

Iam ueni: coronaberis.

Come now, you shall be crowned.

Thou art alle fayre, my spowse moost dere,

You are all fair, my spouse most dear,

And spotte of synne in the noon is:

And spot of sin is not in you,

Come fro Liban, to me appere.

Come from Libanus, to me appear.

Iam ueni: coronaberis.

Come now, you shall be crowned.

Thy stature is assymylate

Thy stature is to be compared

To a palme tree and thy bristis

To a palm tree and thy breasts

To grapes, spowse inmaculate.

To grapes, spouse immaculate.

Iam ueni: coronaberis.

Come now, you shall be crowned.

Off alle clennes I am the floure,

Of all cleanness I am the flower,

The felde wherof thy pure soule is.

The field whereof your pure soul is.

O virginall floure moost of honoure,

O virginal flower most of honour,

Iam ueni: coronaberis.

Come now, you shall be crowned.

Thy blessed body was my bowre,

Your blessed body was my bower,

Wherefore my blis thou shallt not mys,

Wherefore my bliss you shall not miss,

And alle seintes shalle the honoure.

And all saints will honour you.

Iam ueni: coronaberis.

Come now, you shall be crowned.

With thy brestes so pure and clene

With your breasts so pure and clean

Thou haste me fedde, wherfore, i-wis,

You have fed me, wherefore, truly,

Of heven blis thou shalt be quene.

Of heaven’s bliss you shall be queen.

Iam ueni: coronaberis.

Come now, you shall be crowned.⁹

Christ here speaks to the Virgin Mary, who is his spouse, mother, lover and queen. He remembers what she has done for him as his mother during her earthly life, and now invites her to come and be crowned in heaven. We once again find here a play with the language of the Song of Songs and paradoxical images that do not map onto human relationships but only apply to God as the Trinity. As in the Song of Songs, God speaking as the lover compares his beloved’s breasts to grapes, but later on in the poem this image is related to Mary’s feeding of the infant Jesus. Once again, we are brought up short by the paradoxes and incompatible categories of human relationships that shift throughout the poem. By playfully disorienting the reader, the poem encourages us to pause and consider the exceptional role that Mary plays in the divine plan of salvation.

It is not only medieval religious poetry that is influenced by the Song of Songs. We likewise find secular love poetry using the imagery of the Song of Songs in abundance. ‘Dû bist mîn, ich bin dîn’ (‘You are mine, I am yours’) begins one of the oldest medieval German minnesinger poems, echoing Song of Songs 2:16: ‘My beloved is mine and I am his.’ Later on in the medieval period the images describing the beauty of the beloved in the Song of Songs became stock phrases to describe the beauty of the lady in French and Italian love poetry, where they frequently occur in secularized contexts. For instance, Italian poet Guido Cavalcanti (1250–1300), a friend of Dante Alighieri, wrote a sonnet praising an unnamed woman, whose beginning, ‘Chi è questa’, invokes Song of Songs 6:10, Quae est ista (‘Who is she’). We have previously encountered this phrase as it is used in the liturgy for the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but here it is used to refer to a courtly lady rather than the Virgin Mary:

Rime, 4

Chi è questa che vèn, ch’ogn’om la mira,

Who comes this way, that all men stand and gaze,

che fa tremar di chiaritate l’âre

Who gives a trembling brightness to the air,

e mena seco Amor, sì che parlare

And leads Love with her so that no one there

null’omo pote, ma ciascun sospira?

Can speak a word, but all must melt in sighs?

O Deo, che sembra quando li occhi gira!

O God, the radiance of those glancing eyes,

dical’ Amor, ch’i’ nol savria contare:

Beyond what I can say, let Love declare:

cotanto d’umiltà donna mi pare

All other women seem but fretful care

ch’ogn’altra ver’ di lei i’ la chiam’ ira.

Before this lady’s modest gracious ways.

Non si poria contar la sua piagenza,

There is no tongue that can describe her grace,

ch’a le’ s’inchin’ ogni gentil vertute,

Before her all the noble virtues bend,

e la beltate per sua dea la mostra.

Beauty’s divinity made manifest.

Non fu sì alta già la mente nostra

But we were never granted such great bliss,

e non si pose ’n noi tanta salute

Nor was our mind so raised as to pretend

che propiamente n’aviàn conoscenza.

To knowledge of her as she truly is.¹⁰

Even though the context is a secular one, the spiritual resonances invoked by the first line continue throughout the poem. The object of affection is a paragon of all virtue and nobility and the manifestation of a divine kind of beauty. There is an exaltation and idealization of the beloved that we have also seen in religious poetry. Cavalcanti’s lady is not the Virgin Mary, and yet she is not unlike the Virgin Mary, who likewise is the epitome of all female virtue, grace and beauty. Indeed, the lady is so exalted that the true extent of her virtues is ineffable: our mind cannot know her ‘as she truly is’, much like a religious ideal. Cavalcanti is not the only poet to play with this idea: Dante’s Beatrice and Petrarch’s Laura are described in very similar terms. The line between secular and religious, sensuality and mysticism, is difficult to draw. Many love poems of this period deliberately hover between these two poles, just as the Song of Songs itself can be read along both erotic and spiritual lines.

This rich tradition inspired by the Song of Songs had a long afterlife until modern times. More recent texts that allude to this tradition sometimes use references to the Song of Songs to undermine traditional readings, or to throw up new perspectives. Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself (first published in Leaves of Grass in 1855), a poem which remains among the most acclaimed in American poetry, sets out its key idea at the start: ‘I celebrate myself, and sing myself.’¹¹ Rather than the love between two people, as in the Song of Songs, Whitman’s poem celebrates love of the self, but it does so in distinctly biblical language. The parallel structure of the opening line echoes the repetitive structure so characteristic of Hebrew poetry. Whitman’s poem is filled with images reminiscent of the language of the Song of Songs. Lines such as ‘Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes’ evoke an echo of ‘Your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is perfume poured out’ (Song of Songs 1:3), and likewise, ‘The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides’ seems to invoke ‘Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the fields, and lodge in the villages’ (Song of Songs 7:11). In Whitman’s poem there is no beloved but the self, which is praised in such terms. As such it is a distinct break from the tradition of biblical love poetry, a deliberately provocative act. But at the same time it is not entirely dissimilar from moments in the Song of Songs where the woman celebrates her own beauty, ‘I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys’.¹² Even in its biblical origins, love of other and love of self are intertwined, inspiring modern poets to take these ideas further. Modern pop music likewise draws inspiration from the Song of Songs, such as Kate Bush in her 1993 ‘Song of Solomon’. Even after a long and complex history of interpretation and transformation, the Song of Songs has not lost its inspirational qualities for poets and songwriters.

3

Hope

Every story has a beginning. Christian interpretation of the Bible includes many moments of prophecy and foreshadowing, as we have seen with the typology of the Song of Songs. But the Christian belief, at its heart, is centred around the life of a single extraordinary person: Jesus Christ. The life of Jesus begins, according to the gospels, in a stable. His parents have travelled to a small town called Bethlehem, and all available guest rooms are taken. So it happens that Mary has to give birth between farm animals, and uses a manger as a crib for the baby. Countless carols and songs have been sung about this event, and when we celebrate it today as Christmas, the very name of the festival refers to the liturgical celebration: the ‘Christ-Mass’ said on the day marking the birth of Jesus.

But Christmas is more than just the extended festival starting on the eve of 25 December. In the liturgical calendar it is followed by the closely associated festivals of Epiphany and Candlemas, but preceded by a period of waiting and preparation for the birth of the saviour. It is this latter season that we call Advent, derived from the Latin word adventus, meaning ‘arrival’. In the liturgy the arrival of Christ is not a sudden event, but it is heralded by a season of expectation. The liturgy of the four weeks of Advent is marked by constant and ever more intense calls for the coming of the saviour. The imagery used for the impending arrival of Christ often draws upon Old Testament episodes that speak of the various exiles of the people of Israel and the long period during which they receive prophecies of the coming of the Messiah. The birth of the baby at Bethlehem is seen as the fulfilment of these prophecies.

A recurring feature of services in the season of Advent was traditionally the Rorate verse, so called after the Latin word with which it begins. It cites the opening words of Isaiah 45:8:

Rorate coeli desuper

Drop down, ye heavens, from above

et nubes pluant justum.

and let the skies pour down righteousness.

The English translation given is widely known through a popular hymn. It is elegant and flows well in English, but it is worth noting that it presents a very specific interpretation of the Latin words. The Latin version is itself a translation of the original Hebrew via Greek, but it is the Latin that is the most influential for liturgical practice. Strictly speaking, the word rorare in Latin refers to the falling of dew drops, and justum can mean either ‘just thing’ or ‘just man’, so the verse can be understood to refer to a person coming to earth from above, rather than the more abstract ‘righteousness’. The poetic conceit of the Latin text is unusual and immediately evocative: the first half of the verse speaks of dew drops falling from heaven, while in the second half this image of dew from heaven may be associated with a person. The original Old Testament text is no more explicit than this, but within Christian understanding and liturgical symbolism this ‘just man’ is associated with the coming of Christ as the Messiah. This verse occurs in the daily prayer of the Church during the season of Advent, where it is accompanied by the response Aperiatur terra et germinet salvatorem (‘Let the earth be opened and send forth a Saviour’), which is a citation from the remainder of Isaiah 45:8. After the image of a just man being rained down from heaven, the response presents us with the inverse image. Here, the Messiah comes out of the very earth, springing out of the soil like a new tree. Heaven and earth, above and below, are intimately connected in this verse. In this way they mirror the miracle of Christ’s birth, which combines the heavenly with the earthly, God with humankind. But the poetic expression of the Rorate merely alludes to such complex theological ideas, and instead uses immediately accessible natural images of the dew, the rain and the growing of plants to express the expectation of the coming of Christ.

The verse has also lent its name to a particular kind of service that takes places during Advent: the ‘Rorate Mass’, a votive Mass in honour of the Virgin Mary. Rorate Masses take place very early in the morning, before sunrise, and are only lit by candles. Let’s picture the scene: a dark church, before the break of dawn. The air is wintry cold, and the only sources of warmth are the candles on the altar and the many tapers which the congregation carry. The Mass begins with the Rorate verse, praying that the saviour may come down to earth as the dew, bringing justice and peace. As the service proceeds, the sky outside grows gradually brighter – a dark grey at first, then lighter and lighter, until at last the first rays of sunlight fall through the high windows. The church is illuminated by the light of the new day, a symbol of the hope of the coming of the Messiah. We started out in a cold and dark world, but we emerge from the church in the bright light of the dawn which Christ brings.

The Rorate, a constant companion of the faithful on their liturgical journey through Advent, was often combined with other biblical passages to form a series of prayers that express the yearning for a saviour, followed by words of comfort spoken by God to his people. In the Anglican tradition this series of prayers was adopted in English translation under the title the ‘Advent Prose’. The music to which the Advent Prose is set uses the same plainchant melody as the original Latin text. It is simple, meditative and full of longing, and the musical line reinforces the words: the word ‘heavens’ is sung on the highest note, followed by a descending line that imitates the falling of the dew from above. The English translation of the Latin prayer is as follows:

Drop down, ye heavens, from above,

and let the skies pour down righteousness.

Be not wroth very sore, O Lord,

neither remember iniquity for ever:

thy holy city is a wilderness,

Sion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation:

our holy and our beautiful house,

where our fathers praised thee.

We have sinned, and are as an unclean thing,

and we all do fade as a leaf:

and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away:

thou hast hid thy face from us:

and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.

Behold, O Lord, the affliction of thy people,

and send forth him whom thou wilt send;

send forth the Lamb, the ruler of the earth,

from Petra of the desert to the mount of the daughter of Sion:

that he may take away the yoke of our captivity.

Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord,

and my servant whom I have chosen;

that ye may know me and believe me:

I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is no Saviour:

and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people;

my salvation shall not tarry:

why wilt thou waste away in sadness?

why hath sorrow seized thee?

Fear not, for I will save thee:

For I am the Lord thy God,

the Holy One of Israel, thy Redeemer.¹

This series of prayers is suffused with the feeling that the cries of the afflicted people will be heard, creating a call-and-answer structure in which God responds to his people with words of comfort: ‘Fear not, for I will save thee.’

Perhaps more than any other text, the Rorate encapsulates the atmosphere that fills the period of Advent: a feeling of yearning, of expectation, of hope and of eventual comfort. In contrast with the expected salvation, the present is experienced as barren and desolate; ‘thou hast hid thy face from us’, the people cry, lamenting that ‘Sion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.’ The desolation of the present makes this hope of the coming of the Messiah all the stronger. It is these verses about Jerusalem’s desolation that inspired the most famous setting of these words to music, William Byrd’s two-part piece Ne irascaris Domine and Civitas sancti tui. Byrd’s setting uses the Latin version of the verse that appears as the second part in the English Advent Prose, complete with an additional line from Isaiah 64:9–10:

Ne irascaris Domine satis,

Be not wroth very sore, O Lord,

et ne ultra memineris iniquitatis nostrae.

neither remember iniquity for ever.

Ecce respice populus tuus omnes nos.

Behold, we are all your people.

Civitas sancti tui facta est deserta

Thy holy city is a wilderness,

Sion deserta facta est, Jerusalem desolata est.

Sion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.

William Byrd (c. 1540–1623) lived during a time of political and religious upheaval in sixteenth-century England, in which he belonged to the much-embattled minority group of recusant Catholics. Born around 1540, a few years after Henry VIII’s break from Rome, Byrd saw England’s Catholic heritage demolished and traditions broken as the Protestant Reformation sought new ways of religious belief and expression outside the authority of Rome. For most of Byrd’s lifetime Catholics were persecuted, and those who remained attached to the old faith often had to follow it in secret or flee abroad. This was only broken by a brief restoration of Catholicism under Mary Tudor, which brought on a persecution of Protestants, followed by Elizabeth I’s reinstatement of the Protestant Church, during which those who remained loyal to the old faith had to retreat into hiding once again. The pendulum of history swung between extremes, but nonetheless for a good part of his life Byrd managed to straddle the divide relatively successfully. As a composer who was widely appreciated and embedded in Elizabeth’s court and the religious establishment, he wrote music in Latin and English for Catholic and Protestant services and escaped serious persecution, although in the latter part of his life he had to retreat from the court to rural Essex, where he had a room at a noble household in Ingatestone, where clandestine Catholic Masses were said. Although he himself remained relatively unscathed, Byrd was a member of a community deeply aware of the destruction of their heritage: prominent Catholics were tortured and executed, others fled into exile; monasteries that had long flourished were demolished, their windswept ruins a tangible reminder of all that had been lost, as they still are today.

Within this context, the utterly devastating musical image of desolation that Byrd paints in Ne irascaris gains an additional layer of significance. The destruction to which the Old Testament text refers is that of the holy city of Jerusalem, and the anguish is that of the people of Israel amidst persecution. Yet in Byrd’s music we may also sense a deep grief at the desolation of his own lifetime, in which the old faith to which he belonged was persecuted, old friendships and alliances were broken in the midst of political turmoil, and the monumental buildings that had been great symbols of faith were destroyed. Sion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. In Byrd’s setting, the Advent text is about not only the historical affliction of the Israelites, but the barren wasteland that England had become for Catholics. Despite such connections that we might draw, Byrd’s music goes beyond an interpretation along denominational divides. It can be applied to any situation marked by loss, destruction and desolation, historical or contemporary. Byrd’s musical language is universal; it speaks to the listener in immediate and truthful ways about the reality of grief, which crosses all boundaries. Much could be said about the musical architecture of Byrd’s setting, the delicate interplay between upper and lower voices, and changes in texture that make this piece so extraordinary. But as words are a poor substitute for music, it is best to listen to the piece and let it speak for itself. Listen out for two moments in particular: in the first part (Ne irascaris), there is an appeal to the Lord to look upon us in mercy (Ecce, respice), like a cry from the depths of anguish. In the second part (Civitas sancti), pay attention to the moment when the texture of interweaving independent voices is interrupted by all voices singing together the phrase Sion deserta facta est (‘Sion is a wilderness’). It is an abrupt change in the flow of the piece, which emphasizes a melancholy sense of the city of God as a desolate wasteland. But there is hope, too: even though Byrd’s setting does not include the Rorate coeli verse, the liturgical context from which this text is taken implies that God’s mercy is present even in the midst of destruction. It may appear hidden, as in Byrd’s piece, but it is always there in the background. It is no wonder that this is one of Byrd’s best-loved pieces of music today, a feeling that was shared by his contemporaries. An anonymous Elizabethan copyist summed it up nicely when he annotated his manuscript of Ne irascaris with the comment ‘good song’.²

The sense of hope and expectation of a saviour who will free his people from the bleak desolation of their present situation becomes stronger and stronger in the liturgy as Advent progresses. In the final seven days before Christmas, this feeling is prominently expressed through the inclusion of a number of antiphons at Vespers, the ‘O Antiphons’. They are a series of invocations of the Messiah under a range of titles, all starting with ‘O’. The titles are, in chronological order: O Sapientia (‘O Wisdom’), O Adonai, O Radix Jesse (‘O Root of Jesse’), O Clavis David (‘O Key of David’), O Oriens (‘O Radiant Dawn’), O Rex Gentium (‘O King of Nations’), O Emmanuel. The order of these titles is easy to remember with a Latin acrostic, as the first letters of the titles read in inverse order form the words ero cras, ‘tomorrow, I will be there’ – an apt phrase, as the last of the O Antiphons appears on 23 December, the day before Christmas Eve. These are what are known as the ‘Great O Antiphons’, while there are additional lesser O Antiphons in local liturgical traditions, which extend this list with further invocations. The O Antiphons are thought to be a very early liturgical tradition, dating back to at least the sixth century. Each of the antiphons is composed of quotations from different biblical passages, predominantly from the Old Testament, but also including some New Testament allusions. These quotations are combined in a new way to form an invocation that lends voice to the yearning expectation of the coming Messiah, seen through the eyes of the Old Testament prophets and prefigured in a range of images. These images can be highly symbolic and frequently mysterious to modern readers: what does it mean, for instance, to invoke Christ with the title of ‘key’ or ‘root’? To answer these questions, we must look more closely at the O Antiphons.

O Wisdom

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodiisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from one end to the other, mightily and sweetly ordering all things: come and teach us the way of prudence.³

The first of the O Antiphons invokes the coming Messiah under the title ‘wisdom’, creating an immediate connection with the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. In the Book of Wisdom and Proverbs, wisdom is praised as the highest good. The phrase ‘coming forth from the mouth of the Most High’ is a quotation from Sirach 24:3, but at the same time it subtly evokes an association with the beginning of the Gospel of John: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.’ This association implies that Christ is the Word, coming from the mouth of the Most High. Wisdom is personified in Christ. The connection also implies that the Old Testament wisdom books are to be interpreted from a Christocentric point of view, as prophesying and pointing towards the coming of Christ.

The earliest known literary reference to this antiphon occurs in a work from late antiquity that was to become one of the most influential texts in the intellectual world of the Middle Ages: Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. Written in the sixth century while Boethius was imprisoned and awaiting torture and death, the Consolation is an imagined conversation with the personified Lady Philosophy, considering the value of philosophy in the face of adversity and death. Boethius himself was a Christian, but the Consolation does not take a pronounced Christian view – rather, it turns to Greek philosophy: Boethius consoles himself with Neoplatonist ideas about God as the one and ultimate good, rather than with the story of the redemption through Christ. There are only a few direct biblical references in the work, but the one that stands out is a reference in Chapter Twelve, alluding to Wisdom 8:1, which also occurs in O Sapientia: ‘So God is the highest good which governs all things powerfully, and orders them sweetly.’⁴ It is not entirely clear whether Boethius cites the biblical text directly, but it is thought most likely that he draws upon the Advent antiphon. If this assumption is correct, it indicates that the O Antiphons are very old indeed, going back to at least the sixth century, and that O Sapientia was used by Boethius for a very specific purpose, in which the Neoplatonic world of his work meets the veiled liturgical prophecy of the coming of Christ.

O Adonai

O Adonai, et Dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apparuisti, et ei in Sina legem dedisti: veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush, and gave him the law on Sinai: Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

The second O Antiphon is particularly focused on Jewish history, reaching far back into the Old Testament. Two episodes are mentioned in particular: God appearing to Moses in the burning bush and God giving Moses the tablets of the law on Mount Sinai. The former (Exodus 3) marks the beginning of the Israelites’ departure from slavery in Egypt. The story is of crucial importance in the history of the Israelites, both within Jewish understanding as a sign of God’s guidance of his chosen people from captivity to freedom, and in Christian interpretation, which sees this manifestation of God as a precursor to the manifestation of God in Christ. Moses, while keeping his flock, comes to Mount Horeb. God appears to him in a burning bush, which is blazing with fire but ‘not consumed’ (Ex. 3:2). He names himself as ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ (Ex. 3:4), and proclaims that he is going to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, with Moses as his chosen prophet who will lead them into the Promised Land.

The giving of the law takes place after the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, when Moses leads the Israelites to Mount Sinai. There God reveals to him the law of the covenant and gives him two stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments are inscribed. Both events are crucial in the Old Testament. God is revealed as the protector and lawgiver of his people, who communicates directly with Moses and guides the Israelites to freedom. Drawing on both these events, the O Antiphon establishes a continuity between Old Testament history and the coming of Christ. God is invoked with his Jewish title ‘Adonai’, a Hebrew word meaning ‘My Lord’, and commonly used in Jewish tradition as a substitution for the holy name of God, which may not be spoken aloud. From a Christian perspective Christ the Messiah, whose coming is eagerly awaited in the Advent season, is the very same God who led the Israelites to freedom and gave the law to Moses. Through the liturgy, the Christian people adopt the voice of the people of Israel. Implied in this O Antiphon is a foreshadowing of the great deeds that the Messiah will accomplish: just as God in the Old Testament led his people out of slavery in Egypt, Christ will lead all of humankind out of the slavery of sin through redemption.

The prayer at the end of the antiphon subtly reinforces this typological connection. ‘Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm’ seems at first glance a straightforward prayer for the coming redemption, emphasizing God’s strength. The reference is a direct quotation from Exodus 6:6, where God instructs Moses: ‘Say therefore to the Israelites, “I am the Lord, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgement.”’ But there are additional layers of meaning hidden within this simple phrase. It is reminiscent of the moment when the Israelites arrive at the shore of the Red Sea, pursued by Pharaoh:

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and turned the sea into dry land; and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. (Ex. 14:21–2)

Just as God parts the sea through Moses’ outstretched hand and saves the Israelites from their enemies, the liturgy prays for the coming of the Messiah who will save the Christian people. God’s outstretched arm is a reminder of God’s faithfulness towards those who are oppressed and struggling, but in relation to Christ it is also a subtle foreshadowing of how the redemption is going to be accomplished – by a man whose arms are stretched out on a cross.

O Root of Jesse

O radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem continebunt reges os suum, quem Gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.

O root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples; before you kings will shut their mouths, to you the nations will make their prayer: come and deliver us, and delay no longer.

The invocation of Christ as the ‘root of Jesse’ plays upon a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah found in the prophet Isaiah (11:1–2): ‘A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.’ Jesse is named in the Book of Samuel as the father of King David and one of the ancestors of Christ. The royal lineage of Jesus receives particular emphasis in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, who include lengthy genealogies naming Christ’s ancestors (Matthew 1:1–17; Luke 3:23–38). The gospel writers place such emphasis on Christ’s ancestry in order to demonstrate that he is truly the Messiah who fulfils all the Old Testament prophecies. In medieval art this metaphorical family tree emerging from the ‘root of Jesse’ is a popular motif in manuscript illuminations, stained-glass windows and stone carvings.⁵ It appears, for instance, in an illustration from the twelfth-century French Bible des Capucins, which shows the family tree at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, forming a large illuminated initial letter L of the title Liber generationis (‘Book of the genealogy of Christ’; illus. 7).

Within this L-shaped illustration, we can see Jesse at the very bottom. The stem of a tree emerges from his loins, branching out in different directions. The person sitting directly above him on the stem is his son David, with a crown to indicate his kingship, followed by his son, King Solomon. Other branches of the tree hold other members of the family, while at the very top we can see an image of Christ, whose divine nature is symbolized by the seven doves surrounding his head as a sign of the Holy Spirit. Below him sits his mother, Mary, who occupies a central position in the tree amidst an overwhelmingly male ensemble. The uniqueness of her position illustrates her role as the virginal mother of Christ: unlike the other figures in the tree, Christ has no human father. Through the Jesse tree, the symbolic genealogy of Christ shows that he is a legitimate descendant of David, but at the same time emphasizes what is extraordinary about his lineage: unlike all others before him, he is miraculously born of a virgin. This iconographical tradition was likely influenced by a pun upon the ‘radix Jesse’ text from Isaiah: the Vulgate uses the word virga, ‘shoot, twig’, which is very similar to the Latin word for ‘virgin’, virgo. This textual association implied that it is Mary who is the ‘shoot’ from the root of Jesse, rather than Christ. The medieval tradition varies between these two interpretations. In post-Reformation times the ‘root of Jesse’ motif became a point of contention. Protestant usage of the motif tended to focus on Christ as the ‘shoot’, while Catholic traditions emphasized Mary to a greater extent, seeing her as the ‘shoot’ from which grows a flower, which stands for Christ. The two interpretations can be seen clearly in the well-known Advent carol ‘Lo, how a Rose e’er-blooming’. The carol is commonly sung to a sixteenth-century tune by Protestant Michael Praetorius, but the English text is a translation of a medieval German text beginning with ‘Es ist ein Ros entsprungen’. While the original medieval version interpreted the Jesse tree imagery with an emphasis on Mary and her virginity, Praetorius rewrote the lyrics so as to align better with the Protestant focus on Christ rather than Mary. There are two well-known English translations, one by Theodore Baker and the other by Catherine Winkworth (used by Herbert Howells in his oft-performed setting ‘A Spotless Rose’). Theodore Baker’s translation stays relatively non-committal on the thorny question of stem and rose, choosing the inclusive translation ‘with Mary’:

7 Root of Jesse, illumination from the Bible des Capucins, 1150–1200.

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming

From tender stem hath sprung!

Of Jesse’s lineage coming

As men of old have sung.

It came, a flower bright,

Amid the cold of winter

When half-gone was the night.

Isaiah ’twas foretold it,

The Rose I have in mind:

With Mary we behold it,

The virgin mother kind.

To show God’s love aright

She bore to men a Savior

When half-gone was the night.

With carols such as this, the imagery of the O Radix Jesse antiphon still regularly features in Advent and Christmas services, regardless of denominational differences.

O Key of David

O Clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel; qui aperis, et nemo claudit; claudis, et nemo aperit: veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris et umbra mortis.

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel; you open and no one can shut; you shut and no one can open: come and lead the prisoners from the prison house, those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

The next O Antiphon invokes the Messiah under the title ‘Key of David’. The invocation is a reference to Isaiah 22:22, ‘I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open’. In its original context, God speaks of Eliakim, who is to replace a self-seeking royal official in his office. In the antiphon, however, it is applied to the coming Messiah, who is here seen as someone who can open prison doors and lead out the captives. The prisoners who ‘dwell in darkness and the shadow of death’ are symbolic of fallen humanity, hoping for a saviour to redeem them and release them from their prison of sin and death. But for a medieval audience, this antiphon would also have evoked associations with something more specific than the prison-house of unredeemed humankind: the ‘Harrowing of Hell’. This term refers to a belief unfamiliar to most modern audiences. After his death and before his resurrection, Christ was believed to have rescued the souls of those in Hell who had led righteous lives, particularly the Old Testament prophets and patriarchs. Since the Fall of Man and prior to the redemption, all of these souls had been held captive by the Devil in Hell, but through Christ’s redemptive death on the cross, they were delivered from the dominion of Satan and heaven was opened for them once more. Some theologians distinguished between Hell and Limbo to differentiate the place of the damned from the place of the righteous who had lived before the time of Christ. It is this event of the ‘Harrowing of Hell’ that is referred to in the Apostles’ Creed with the phrase ‘[Jesus Christ] was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead.’ This event played a significant role in the belief of medieval Christians in particular, reinforced by non-canonical gospels such as the Gospel of Nicodemus, and was transformed creatively in many shapes in poetry, drama and art.⁶ Dante’s great vision of the afterlife in the Divine Comedy, for instance, identifies the first circle of Hell with Limbo, in which are Virgil and many other souls of those who lived in pre-Christian times but led righteous lives. Virgil, who acts as Dante’s guide through the Inferno, explains:

they did not sin; and yet, though they have merits,

that’s not enough, because they lacked baptism,

the portal of the faith that you embrace.

And if they lived before Christianity,

they did not worship God in fitting ways;

and of such spirits I myself am one. (Inferno 4:34–9)⁷

When Dante then inquires whether anyone has ever been released from Limbo, Virgil mentions the Harrowing of Hell:

I was new – entered on this state

when I beheld a Great Lord enter here;

the crown he wore, a sign of victory.

He carried off the shade of our first father,

of his son Abel, and the shade of Noah,

of Moses, the obedient legislator,

8 Fra Angelico, Christ in Limbo, c. 1442–3, fresco, Convent of San Marco, Florence.

of father Abraham, David the king,

of Israel, his father, and his sons,

and Rachel, she for whom he worked so long,

and many others – and He made them blessed;

and I should have you know that, before them,

there were no human souls that had been saved.

(Inferno 4:52–63)

In Dante’s vision it is Old Testament figures such as Adam, Abel, Noah, Moses, Abraham, David, Israel and Rachel whom the victorious Christ led out of Hell because they worshipped the true God, unlike virtuous pagans such as Virgil himself. Jesus is described as a ‘Great Lord’ who entered Hell wearing a crown of victory as a sign that the redemption had been accomplished. Perhaps the most famous artistic depiction of the Harrowing of Hell is Fra Angelico’s fifteenth-century fresco in San Marco, Florence (illus. 8).

We can see Christ with the signs of the nails upon his hands, bearing the banner of triumph, entering a cavernous dark place in which the prophets and patriarchs are being held captive. His light drives back the demons, who flee in terror; the iron gate of Hell has been shattered and lies underneath Christ’s feet, crushing a demon with its weight. Christ extends his hand towards a long line of captives, guiding them out of their prison into freedom. First in line is Abraham, depicted as an old man with white hair and a long beard. Behind him are Adam and Eve, followed by Moses. The prisoners being released are those who knew the true God but who were unable to enter Paradise until the redemption, the event which changes everything.

O Clavis David, then, merges the hope of the coming of the Messiah who will release mankind from the darkness of its current state, with a more specific reference to Christ’s redemptive deeds during his descent to Hell. Christ is aptly described as a ‘key’, since he opens the gates of Hell and unlocks the kingdom of heaven. Under its deceptively simple surface, the antiphon contains a wealth of associations that hinge upon the imagery of opening and closing of gates.

O Radiant Dawn

O Oriens, splendor lucis aeternae, et sol justitiae: veni, et illumina sedentes in tenebris, et umbra mortis.

O Radiant Dawn, splendour of eternal light, sun of justice: come and shine on those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death.⁸

In the liturgical calendar this antiphon is sung on 21 December, three days before Christmas, which is also the day of the winter solstice, when the day is shortest and the night is longest. It is no coincidence that it is on precisely this day that the Messiah is invoked as the ‘radiant dawn’ and ‘sun of justice’. More than any other of the O Antiphons, this text focuses on light. Christ is the new dawn, the new sun, who will shine into the darkness of those who wait for his coming. The liturgy connects the events of the physical world, the annual pattern of growing and receding darkness, with a spiritual significance. Just as 21 December marks the hope of the return of the light, a turning point in the cycle of the year, the days before Christmas mark the hope of the coming of the saviour who will enlighten those who believe in him. The desire for light and warmth is universal. We can imagine the effect of this text in the gloom of a cold church on the evening of the shortest day of the year: the liturgy draws its power from not only the poetry of its texts and music, but the connections that it creates with the physical world and the concerns of the people who live within it.

The imagery of this antiphon speaks to us directly and immediately, as it has done for many centuries. From the earliest days of the English language survives a translation of O Oriens in the tenth-century Exeter Book, in a collection of Old English poems titled by modern scholars (somewhat unimaginatively) Christ I. The Old English version is not so much a direct translation of the liturgical text but more of a poetic reflection expanding on the imagery of the Latin antiphon. It begins with the following words:

Eala earendel, engla beorhtast,

O Earendel, brightest of angels,

ofer middangeard monnum sended,

sent to mankind over middle-earth,

ond soðfæsta sunnan leoma,

and righteous radiance of the sun,

torht ofer tunglas, þu tida gehwane

splendid above all stars, of your own self

of sylfum þe symle inlihtes!

you ever enlighten every age.

Swa þu, god of gode gearo acenned,

As you, God born of God long ago,

sunu soþan fæder, swegles in wuldre

Son of the true Father, eternally existed

butan anginne æfre wære,

without beginning in the glory of heaven,

swa þec nu for þearfum þin agen geweorc

so your own creation cry with confidence

bideð þurh byldo, þæt þu þa beorhtan us

to you now for their needs, that you send

sunnan onsende, ond þe sylf cyme

that bright sun to us, and come yourself

þæt ðu inleohte þa þe longe ær,

to lighten those who long have lived,

þrosme beþeahte ond in þeostrum her,

surrounded by shadows and darkness, here

sæton sinneahtes; synnum bifealdne

in everlasting night; who, shrouded by sins,

deorc deaþes sceadu dreogan sceoldan.

have had to endure death’s dark shadow.⁹

This is only the first half of the poem, but we can already see how the poem intensifies further the imagery of light and darkness: words abound that describe light, brightness, radiance, stars and the sun. The translation of oriens, which in Latin can mean ‘dawn’ or ‘morning star’, is particularly striking. Christ is invoked under the title ‘Earendel’. The origin of this word is somewhat mysterious and may have mythological connections, but our best guess is that it is a name the Anglo-Saxons used for the morning star Venus, or another bright constellation.¹⁰ Through its use in the Old English text, the word Earendel also acquired a more popular afterlife in the twentieth century. When the young J.R.R. Tolkien, studying Old English as an undergraduate at Oxford, came across the word, he was immediately struck ‘by the great beauty of this word (or name)’, noting that he felt ‘a curious thrill, as if something had stirred in me, half wakened from sleep. There was something very remote and strange and beautiful behind those words.’¹¹ It was his fascination with this name that struck a creative spark, and Tolkien would later describe these Old English words as the source of the mythology he created. He included a character named Eärendil in his mythology of Middle-earth, as a mariner who is set into the skies as a star, casting light upon the darkness of the world as a token of hope. Tolkien’s work is a testament to the power of the words of this antiphon, even if they are so ancient and strange that we hardly know their meaning.

O King Of Nations

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limo formasti.

O King of the nations, and their desire, the cornerstone making both one: come and save the human race, which you fashioned from clay.

The overarching theme of the penultimate O Antiphon is unity. Christ is invoked under the title ‘King of the nations’, implying a universal reign that stretches across different countries and continents. But there is a certain ambiguity in the title, as the Latin could also be translated as ‘king of gentiles’. The Jewish tradition distinguishes very clearly between those of Jewish and those of non-Jewish heritage and belief, and ‘gentile’ was the term generally used for a non-Jewish person. The early days of the Christian Church in particular were still marked by this distinction, as the early followers of Christ came from both Jewish and non-Jewish backgrounds. As Paul’s letters to the early Christian communities show, there were tensions between those of Jewish and those of non-Jewish heritage, and discussions about whether Jewish laws and customs should be upheld. Eventually the matter was settled: there were to be no distinctions between those of different cultural traditions, as everyone was united in their common belief in Jesus Christ – the sign of a new, truly universal faith. It is this unity that Paul invokes in his letter to the Ephesians, and a short but decisive section of this letter is picked up in the antiphon: ‘making both one’. Some translations of this section render the Latin as ‘uniting all as one’, but strictly speaking the reference is to two factions becoming one. In the original context of Paul’s letter, he refers to both Jews and gentiles: ‘For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us’ (Eph. 2:14). At the centre of this antiphon, then, is the thought of the unity that the coming saviour will bring, acting as a ‘cornerstone’ who will connect divided factions. The antiphon ends with a poignant reference to the communality between all humans, who, according to the account of creation in Genesis, were all ‘fashioned from clay’ (Gen. 2:7). The faith in Christ unites all those who believe in him, regardless of race, gender and background.

O Emmanuel

O Emmanuel, Rex et legifer noster, expectatio Gentium, et Salvator earum: veni ad salvandum nos, Domine, Deus noster.

O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver, the hope of the nations and their Saviour: come and save us, O Lord our God.

The final O Antiphon on the day before Christmas calls upon the Messiah under the title of ‘Emmanuel’, a Hebrew name meaning ‘God with us’. It is a one-word summary of the expectation of the saviour whose arrival is imminent, as God – become man – who will be ‘with us’ quite literally and live among us. It is this antiphon that gives its name to the well-known Christmas carol ‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’, which is inspired by the O Antiphons and recapitulates many of the titles of the Messiah that we have seen. Its first stanza paraphrases the final O Antiphon:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,

And ransom captive Israel;

That mourns in lonely exile here,

Until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

It is difficult to imagine a Christmas in English churches without hymns such as this, a testament to the continued influence of the O Antiphons and their liturgical tradition. The antiphons are poetic, powerful and immediate. They express the human longing for someone to come and heal the world from its evil, hatred and despair, a desire which is as present today as it was 2,000 years ago, and is renewed every year in the liturgical cycle.

4

Suffering

It is a cold and rainy evening in early spring. The last light of day is slowly fading. Clouds in the west obscure the setting sun. The gargoyles atop the tower cast long shadows, their grotesque faces uncannily dark in the growing gloom. Inside the church, monks in brown robes gather, bowing their heads in prayer in the choir. A large congregation is assembled in the nave, silent, waiting. Outside the wind howls, raindrops patter against the windows, through which now falls only a pale light. In the sanctuary a large candelabrum stands tall, its fifteen candles illuminating the front of the otherwise dim and shadowy church. At the toll of the bell, the monks begin their chant, their voices alternating across the aisle: Zelus domus tuae comedit me (‘The zeal of your house consumes me’). The ancient words reverberate in the sacred space. After each psalm a candle at the front is extinguished, gradually plunging the church into ever deeper shadows. Only a few candles are still burning when a lone monk moves to the lectern. In a mournful tone that pierces the darkling vaults above, he recites the opening of the Book of Lamentations: Incipit lamentatio Jeremiae prophetae (‘Here begins the lamentation of the prophet Jeremiah’). Through his voice, the words of Jeremiah the prophet come alive, lamenting the fall of Jerusalem, once beautiful and full of life, now full of sorrow: ‘How lonely sits the city that once was full of people! How like a widow she has become, she that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal. She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks’ (Jer. 1:1–2). Jeremiah’s words echo through the gloom as the church encounters anew and embraces the weight of his grief.

But this is not Jerusalem. It is a church somewhere in fifteenth-century England. And yet the lament over the destruction of the city is fitting, because today is Maundy Thursday. The congregation is assembled to commemorate the betrayal, capture, torture and execution of Christ. It is something that is almost unthinkable, and must be spoken about in metaphors and poetry: God himself who became a man is put to death. God, immortal and impassible, suffers and dies. He accepts this death willingly in order to atone for the sins of humankind. The best man who ever lived, innocent of any crime, is betrayed by his friend and executed by one of the cruellest methods of torture ever invented. It is an event that is both a theological mystery and an unbearable human tragedy. The voice of the prophet mourning the fall of the holy city becomes the voice of the people mourning the death of their God. Like Jerusalem, they weep ‘bitterly in the night’.

The service continues. Darkness has fallen outside. Psalm follows psalm, and ever more candles are gradually extinguished until at last only a single burning candle remains at the top of the candelabrum. When the final psalm is finished, a monk rises from his stall and picks up the last candle. He carries it with him, moves towards the back of the church and behind the altar. Utter darkness now covers the church. The congregation is silent. But then, at once, a tremor runs through the rows. Suddenly a loud noise fills the air. The people are banging upon the wooden pews with their hands, some are slamming their books shut, some are stomping their feet on the cold stone ground. The noise continues until at last the monk returns from behind the altar, the candle in his hand still burning: a single warm flame emerging from the darkness, illuminating the face of its bearer. A flickering source of hope in the midst of death.

Thus concludes the first service of Tenebrae, which can be translated literally as ‘darkness’. It is the most intense time of the liturgical year, the three days leading up to Easter, when the Church celebrates the day of the resurrection of Christ from the tomb. The so-called Triduum (‘three days’) of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Saturday is marked by long and elaborate ceremonies, which are among the most moving the liturgy has to offer. The power of the texts emanates not only from the words themselves, which create a rich panorama of feelings of mourning, loss, shock and horror at the death of the saviour, but from the way in which the texts are embedded into a liturgical tapestry of music, gesture and movement. The symbolism of light and darkness in the liturgy of Tenebrae illustrates this: the gradual extinguishing of candles represents the growing darkness and despair at the suffering of Christ. The congregation is physically plunged into darkness, experiencing the gradual withdrawal of light at first hand in order to reflect on Christ’s death. The darkness is full of Scriptural resonances: the gospels report that ‘darkness came over the whole land’ (Matthew 27:45) when Jesus was on the cross. The single candle left burning at the end, hidden from view behind the altar-stone and finally returned with a loud noise, is a symbolic representation of the death of Christ. According to the Gospel of Matthew, when Christ died on the cross ‘the earth shook, and the rocks were split’ and the tombs ‘were opened’ (27:51–2). The noise created by the congregation at the end of the service, also known as a strepitus (‘loud noise’, ‘crashing sound’), can be interpreted as a symbolic imitation of the earthquake at the death of Christ. It can also be seen as a reference to the closing of Christ’s tomb, into which he is laid on Friday after the crucifixion. In this liturgical drama, we are reliving the events that accompanied the crucifixion. Through visual experience of darkness, the congregation is immersed in the symbolism and its Scriptural resonances, but through the banging and stomping of the strepitus the congregation also co-creates this symbolism. This is not a performance we are watching: we are part of the drama, participate in it and make it happen. The return of the candle at the end represents the return of hope as Christ rises from the tomb. A small, flickering candle remains. Darkness has not conquered. Witnessing this return of the light, having lived through the darkness in the ceremony, can be a deeply moving experience. Through the liturgy, the hope of the resurrection becomes our hope.

One of the things that gives Tenebrae such a sombre and moving character is the use of a range of poetic reflections on the passion of Christ, which are interspersed between psalms in the liturgy and take the form of responsories – chants which alternate between a small group singing verses and the whole choir or congregation responding with a refrain. These so-called Tenebrae responsories are famous for their emotional and immediate engagement with the Passion of Christ. Unlike many of the liturgical texts that we have seen thus far, they do not merely present biblical material in a liturgical context, but often form a free and creative reflection on the events of the Triduum, which is inspired by, rather than a faithful reproduction of, biblical texts. There are nine responsories for each Tenebrae liturgy of the three holy days. Originally sung as plainchant in the liturgy, the Tenebrae responsories were also frequently set to music of various styles by composers in post-medieval times. Their intensely moving words alongside the dramatic symbolism of darkness and light in the ceremony lent themselves particularly well to musical explorations of these texts. A selection of five responsories from Maundy Thursday to Holy Saturday will help us understand better their poetic and dramatic qualities, and how these are reflected in later musical settings.

The responsories of Maundy Thursday transport us into the setting of the garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. It is here, according to the gospels, where Christ suffered his agony, foreseeing his passion and death. The second Tenebrae responsory on this day, Tristis est anima mea, creates an ominous sense of anticipation of the events that are about to occur:

Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem:

My soul is sorrowful even unto death.

sustinete hic et vigilate mecum.

Stay here, and watch with me!

Nunc videbitis turbam quae circumdabit me.

Now you will see the mob that will surround me.

Vos fugam capietis, et ego vadam immolari pro vobis.

You will run away, and I will go to be sacrificed for you.

Versus:

Verse:

Ecce appropinquat hora, et Filius hominis

See, the time draws near, and the Son of Man

tradetur in manus peccatorum.

will be delivered into the hands of sinners.

Vos fugam capietis, et ego vadam immolari pro vobis.

You will run away, and I will go to be sacrificed for you.¹

This responsory is based on the narrative of the gospels, selecting different passages in order to evoke an emotional response. The first two lines, ‘My soul is sorrowful even unto death. Stay here, and watch with me!’ cite Matthew 26:38, the words spoken by Jesus to his disciples in the garden, while the rest of the responsory uses different gospel passages more freely. Christ foretells to the disciples what is about to happen: he will be surrounded by the mob and led away to be sacrificed, while the disciples, terrified, will run away. The verse reinforces the sense of urgency: ‘See, the time draws near.’ We stand on the brink of the most significant event of human history: God himself will be killed at the hands of sinners. But in the midst of the sense of urgency and anticipation of the death of God, there is also a very real and tangible feeling of human sorrow. It is Christ as man who speaks of his mental pain: ‘My soul is sorrowful even unto death.’ It is the pain felt within the soul that is highlighted here, preceding the physical pain which is to come. Jesus shudders with horror at the thought of being surrounded by a mob, being deserted by all his friends, and only hopes for someone to stay and watch with him in this moment of agony. These are the words of an innocent man who is about to be confronted with the depths of human malice and cowardice.

This responsory uses the words that Jesus speaks to his disciples in the gospel, but the addressees are implied rather than explicitly mentioned here. This allows the text to gain a significance that is both broader and more personal to those who believe in him. Christ speaks not only to the disciples, but to every individual who participates in the liturgy. It is also us who have abandoned him, run away, and who are now invited to stay and watch with him. This is particularly apt for the setting of Tenebrae, where the congregation is assembled to pray in the gathering darkness. We too are the disciples, and we too are here to watch with Christ.

Such are the feelings evoked powerfully in just a few lines of the responsory. It is an aid to personal reflection, soul-searching, as well as profound feelings of compassion for the very human sorrow that Jesus endures on the eve of his death. The original chant melody encourages such reflection through its sombre tone. Later composers often attempted to heighten the impact of these words by emphasizing particular aspects through word-painting, such as in the setting of the responsory by Carlo Gesualdo, written in 1611. A controversial and mysterious figure who murdered his wife and her lover, and later in life suffered from poor mental health, perhaps insanity, Gesualdo nonetheless was a musical genius who experimented with the tonal language of the Renaissance in a way that anticipated the musical developments of later centuries. His setting of ‘Tristis est anima mea’ opens with a slow downward movement, which evokes Christ’s desolation in Gethsemane. The ‘vos fugam’ section, however, forms a complete contrast to the beginning, imitating the running away of the disciples with fast, hectic runs in all voices. This is again followed by a contrasting section as we move from frantic movement into stillness. Clashing chords express the aching loneliness of Christ when he prophesies ego vadam immolari pro vobis, ‘I will go to be sacrificed for you.’

Francis Poulenc’s setting of the same text, written in 1938–9, more than three hundred years after Gesualdo, uses a very different musical language. A soaring soprano solo opens the piece with Christ’s sorrowful words. Similar to Gesualdo, Poulenc takes his cue from the text of the responsory and provides vivid word-painting of the flight of the disciples. But Poulenc has a very different interpretation of the announcement of Christ’s sacrificial death: ego vadam immolari pro vobis is marked by a dissonant intensity that builds up to a climax, perhaps reflecting the outrage and painful wonder at the thought of God himself being sacrificed for the salvation of humankind. It is only the repetition of these words at the very end of the piece that offers a sense of resolution, with the solo soprano accompanied by a full eight-part choir leading the piece to a luminous end in which we glimpse a hope of final salvation.

The third responsory for Tenebrae on Good Friday enters more deeply into the emotional world of the crucified Christ. The text itself is, at first glance, somewhat counter-intuitive: it is the song of a gardener lamenting his vineyard.

Vinea mea electa, ego te plantavi:

O vineyard, my chosen one, I planted you.

quomodo conversa es in amaritudinem,

How is your sweetness turned into bitterness,

ut me crucifigeres et Barrabbam dimitteres.

to crucify me and take Barabbas in my place?

Sepivi te, et lapides elegi ex te, et aedificavi turrim.

I surrounded you with a fence; I cleared you of stones, and built a watch-tower in your defence.

An analogy is drawn here between those who crucify Christ, and a chosen vineyard that has turned rebellious despite the gardener’s care. The image is connected with Old Testament texts, where the metaphor of a vineyard is commonly used to describe the people of Israel, as in Isaiah 5:1–4:

Let me sing for my beloved

my love-song concerning his vineyard:

My beloved had a vineyard

on a very fertile hill.

He surrounded it with a fence and cleared it of stones,

and planted it with choice vines;

he built a watch-tower in the midst of it,

and hewed out a wine vat in it;

he expected it to yield grapes,

but it yielded wild grapes.

And now, inhabitants of Jerusalem

and people of Judah,

judge between me

and my vineyard.

What more was there to do for my vineyard

that I have not done in it?

When I expected it to yield grapes,

why did it yield wild grapes?²

Within the Old Testament world this section is read as the voice of God speaking of his love for his people in spite of their rebelliousness. God, having tended to his vineyard with love and great care, is disappointed by the result of his efforts. Despite his work, the vineyard yields only wild grapes, which are too sour for consumption. The vineyard with its wild grapes can be interpreted as a symbol of the people of Israel, who in their history often reject, disappoint or fall away from their God, who nonetheless looks after them with great faithfulness. In the New Testament Jesus uses the same imagery to speak about himself and his relationship with his people. The idea occurs in the gospels of Matthew and Luke in the ‘Parable of the Wicked Tenants’, which Jesus tells the people:

‘A man planted a vineyard, and leased it to tenants, and went to another country for a long time. When the season came, he sent a slave to the tenants in order that they might give him his share of the produce of the vineyard; but the tenants beat him and sent him away empty-handed. Next he sent another slave; that one also they beat and insulted and sent away empty-handed. And he sent yet a third; this one also they wounded and threw out. Then the owner of the vineyard said, “What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.” But when the tenants saw him, they discussed it among themselves and said, “This is the heir; let us kill him so that the inheritance may be ours.” So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.’ When they heard this, they said, ‘Heaven forbid!’ But he looked at them and said, ‘What then does this text mean:

“The stone that the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone”?

Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.’ When the scribes and chief priests realized that he had told this parable against them, they wanted to lay hands on him at that very hour, but they feared the people. (Luke 20:9–19)

In keeping with his usual way of teaching, Jesus tells a story that has to be interpreted, here presenting a metaphor for his relationship with the Jewish people. Without saying so overtly, Jesus draws an analogy between God the Father and the owner of the vineyard. The slaves sent to the tenants can be interpreted as the prophets of the Old Testament, while the son stands for Christ himself, who is cast out and killed by the people. The reference to the cornerstone that Jesus adds to the parable is a quotation from Psalm 118:22–3, which again relates ideas of the Old Testament to the person of Christ. An interpretive thread is therefore drawn from the Old Testament to the New, and the rebellious vineyard (or its rebellious tenants) become an image of God’s people who reject and kill him.

It is this tradition to which the imagery of the Tenebrae responsory refers. The actions of God that are mentioned in Isaiah are quoted here, but whereas they occur in the third person in the Old Testament, they are here spoken by the poem’s speaker in the first person: ‘I cleared you of stones’ rather than ‘He . . . cleared it of stones’; ‘I built a watch-tower for your defence’ rather than ‘he built a watch-tower.’ The words here are more immediate, spoken directly to an unidentified addressee. The responsory also makes clear that these words are spoken by Jesus, who asks: ‘How is your sweetness turned into bitterness, to crucify me and take Barabbas in my place?’ The mention of the crucifixion and Barabbas, a criminal who was released instead of Jesus as mentioned in the gospels, connects the complaint about the rebellious vineyard to Christ’s suffering. Christ speaks God’s words from the Old Testament, and he is the one reproaching the people for betraying him. The liturgical text is full of references to biblical material, but it also offers a free and poetic reflection on those ideas. This shift means that the application of the text is broader. Originally the verses from Isaiah referred to the disobedient behaviour of the people of Israel, but the responsory does not specifically target them. It is Christ’s reproach to his own people, those who crucify him, but it is also meant for everyone. Christ addresses the listeners in the second person, ‘you’. The implication is that each individual is involved in the crucifixion, having betrayed Christ through their own wrongdoings.

The liturgy of the Triduum reverberates with this theme of personal accountability and even culpability. It is a notion that often seems odd or perplexing for non-Christians, and yet it is foundational for believers. How could someone living many years after Christ be in any way personally implicated in his death? The notion hinges upon the biblical idea that all humans are made in the image of God, and so every human being bears a reflection of the divine. Consequently any transgression against another person, whether rooted in enmity, envy, lust or anger, is in the final analysis a transgression against God. This idea also has an internal dimension, as there is a reflection of God found within the self. Accordingly, instances of personal failings, such as wrongs committed, lies told, moments of cowardice and weakness, are not mere individual failings, but also transgressions against the divine image within the self. This conception of God is not just a vague spiritual notion, but a very concrete reality, which is anchored in the person of Jesus Christ. Against this background it is easier to understand the sense of personal accountability that the liturgical texts evoke. The liturgical narrative does not merely contemplate the execution of a man in Jerusalem two millennia ago, but emphasizes the lasting relevance of this event. It reminds each participant in the liturgical celebration of their personal responsibility to live a life guided by virtue and integrity. The vineyard of the responsory is not only ancient Israel – it is us in the here and now.

These ideas are variously emphasized in musical settings of the responsory. In Francis Poulenc’s version, for example, the piece begins at a slow and meditative pace, full of tender harmonies expressing God’s love for his people, but it soon turns to intense dissonance as the speaker reflects on the bitterness of the people’s betrayal and the injustice committed against him. Love and betrayal are set in a heart-wrenching contrast.

As Tenebrae continues, we enter further into the very depths of suffering. The fifth responsory on Holy Saturday again speaks with the voice of the crucified Christ. Taking its inspiration from the words of the prophet Jeremiah in the Book of Lamentations (1:12) as he sits weeping over the destruction of Jerusalem, the text uses words from the Old Testament and gives them to Christ, who speaks to the passers-by who see him on the cross:

O vos omnes qui transitis per viam:

O all you who pass by the way,

attendite et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus.

look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow.

Versus

Verse

Attendite, universi populi, et videte dolorem meum.

Look, all you people, and see my sorrow:

Si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus.

If there is any sorrow like my sorrow.

Using only few words, the responsory conjures up an image of the crucified through an invocation of the passers-by, placing the individual reader or listener in the midst of the scene. Through the liturgy, that which is in the historical past – the event of the Crucifixion – is made present. Golgotha is past, but it is also called to mind powerfully in the ritual. We are on the highway to Jerusalem. The responsory invites us to pause, stand and look. It leaves space for individual thoughts and reflections. It does not tell us what to think or how to relate to the suffering of Christ, except to look and consider if there is any sorrow like that of Jesus.

The responsory’s sense of profound sadness and suffering is captured particularly effectively in the setting by twentieth-century cellist, composer and conductor Pablo Casals (1876–1973). The piece starts quietly in the lower voices, almost as if with a whisper. The upper voices then join in gradually as the music builds in volume and intensity, until it reaches a climax with an almost unbearable outcry of pain on the word attendite, ‘look’. After this it slowly dies away again. The piece ends on an extremely quiet repetition of the opening words ‘O all you who pass by the way’, which leaves the sentence unfinished, suggesting the last sigh of a man exhausted from his ordeal.

What we see throughout the poetry of the Tenebrae responsories is an intense and insistent engagement with the pain and suffering of the crucifixion. Through the texts we experience the emotional depths of a fierce human tragedy, of an innocent man killed in the most horrific way imaginable. What underlies the insistent exploration of these emotions is an emphasis on the humanity of Christ. We do not see a divine figure exalted and removed from human suffering, but a God who shares in humanity, shares in it to the very depths of agony and death. Behind the texts of the liturgy is an invitation to the congregation to engage with this startling, almost unbelievable fact, to consider its relevance to each individual life. And perhaps deeper still, there lies a sense of wordless, silent wonder at a God who loves so deeply that he would die for humankind.

This is what moved, and continues to move, congregations about the liturgies of the Triduum. It is also the context from which we can begin to understand other elements of the ceremonies of these holy days. These ceremonies include not only Tenebrae, but an ensemble of Triduum services that commemorate the events around Christ’s death. A memorable element of the main Good Friday liturgy, which is traditionally celebrated around the time of Christ’s death (3 p.m.), is the so-called Improperia, or Reproaches. They form an extended poem which, similar to some of the Tenebrae responsories that we have seen, speak with the voice of the crucified Christ, reproaching his people for their cruelty in putting him to death.

To get a sense of the impact of the Improperia, we first need to think ourselves into the drama of readings, music, gestures and movements of the liturgical ceremony itself. Details of the ceremony in medieval times could vary from place to place, but they usually converged upon some central elements, which were later unified and prescribed. The Good Friday liturgy is lengthy; its celebration has a sombre and mournful tone. The church is bare, stripped of any decorations. Statues are hidden behind cloths, and even the crucifix on the altar is covered. Towards the beginning of the ceremony the account of the Passion according to John is read or sung, often with roles distributed between three singers, with the voices each taking the narrator, Jesus and other speakers in the gospel. The long account of Jesus’ capture, trial, torture and execution comes alive through the dramatic quality of the recitation. The gospel reading is followed by a long list of prayers and intercessions for all members of the church, the society and the world. Through this juxtaposition, a parallel is drawn between the historic event of the gospel account and its lasting effect on the present. The sacrificial death of Christ and the anticipated resurrection, the liturgy reminds us, are the source of all grace for the present, for every single person.

After the conclusion of the intercessions, we move to the veneration of the cross, at the heart of which stand the Improperia. The alternating verses of the Reproaches are sung by the priest or deacon and the choir, forming a dialogic structure. During the singing a covered crucifix is carried to the front of the church. Later the cover is removed and the tortured body of Christ is revealed to the congregation with the words Ecce lignum crucis in quo salus mundi pependit. Venite adoremus! (‘See the wood of the cross, on which hung the salvation of the world. Come, let us worship!’). The choir and congregation then genuflect in a gesture of adoration. Any description of the intricate choreography of the liturgical celebration must needs seem dry and abstract, and it is only in personal experience that the liturgy comes to life. It is clear, however, that the gestures, chanting and recitation of the Good Friday liturgy focus with intensity on the mystery of the cross, and express awe and veneration, mixed with restrained horror at the great paradox that the salvation of the world should be brought about by the death of God, suspended upon an instrument of torture. The liturgy uses words, music, movement, but also absence – the emptiness and silence of the church, the veiling of all religious symbols and statues – in order to reveal with greater clarity why and how the cross has become the central symbol of Christianity.

And in the midst of this symphony of sound, gesture and symbolic veiling and unveiling, Christ himself speaks from the cross. It is his voice that we hear in the Improperia:

Popule meus, quid feci tibi?

O my people, what have I done to you?

Aut in quo contristavi te?

How have I offended you?

Responde mihi.

Answer me!

Quia eduxi te de terra Aegypti: parasti Crucem Salvatori tuo.

I led you out of Egypt, from slavery to freedom, but you led your Saviour to the cross.

Agios o Theos.

Sanctus Deus.

Holy is God!

Agios Ischyros.

Sanctus fortis.

Holy and strong!

Agios Athanatos, eleison ymas.

Sanctus immortalis, miserere nobis.

Holy immortal One, have mercy on us.

Quia eduxi te per desertum quadraginta annis:

For forty years I led you safely through the desert.

et manna cibavi te, et introduxi te in terram satis bonam:

I fed you with manna from heaven, and brought you to a land of plenty;

parasti Crucem Salvatori tuo.

but you led your Saviour to the cross.

Agios o Theos.

Sanctus Deus.

Holy is God!

Agios Ischyros.

Sanctus fortis.

Holy and strong!

Agios Athanatos, eleison ymas.

Sanctus immortalis, miserere nobis.

Holy immortal One, have mercy on us.

Quid ultra debui facere tibi, et non feci?

What more could I have done for you?

Ego quidem plantavi te vineam meam speciosissimam:

I planted you as my fairest vine,

et tu facta es mihi nimis amara:

but you yielded only bitterness:

aceto namque sitim meam potasti:

when I was thirsty you gave me vinegar to drink,

et lancea perforasti latus Salvatori tuo.

and you pierced your Saviour’s side with a lance.

Agios o Theos.

Sanctus Deus.

Holy is God!

Agios Ischyros.

Sanctus fortis.

Holy and strong!

Agios Athanatos, eleison ymas.

Sanctus immortalis, miserere nobis.

Holy immortal One, have mercy on us.

Ego propter te flagellavi Aegyptum cum primogenitis suis:

For your sake I scourged the firstborn of Egypt,

et tu me flagellatum tradidisti.

but you have given me up to be scourged.

Popule meus, quid feci tibi?

O my people, what have I done to you?

Aut in quo contristavi te?

How have I offended you?

Responde mihi.

Answer me!

Ego te eduxi de Aegypto,demerso Pharone in mare Rubrum:

I led you out of Egypt, having drowned Pharaoh in the Red Sea:

et tu me tradidisti principibus sacerdotum.

but you have delivered me to the chief priests.

Popule meus, quid feci tibi?

O my people, what have I done to you?

Aut in quo contristavi te?

How have I offended you?

Responde mihi.

Answer me!

Ego ante te aperui mare:

I opened the sea before you,

et tu aperuisti lancea latus meum.

but you opened my side with a spear.

Popule meus, quid feci tibi?

O my people, what have I done to you?

Aut in quo contristavi te?

How have I offended you?

Responde mihi.

Answer me!

Ego ante te praeivi in columna nubis:

I led you on your way in a pillar of cloud,

et tu me duxisti ad praetorium Pilati.

but you led me to Pilate’s court.

Popule meus, quid feci tibi?

O my people, what have I done to you?

Aut in quo contristavi te?

How have I offended you?

Responde mihi.

Answer me!

Ego te pavi manna in desertum:

I bore you up with manna in the desert,

et tu me cedisti alapis et flagellis.

but you struck me down and scourged me.

Popule meus, quid feci tibi?

O my people, what have I done to you?

Aut in quo contristavi te?

How have I offended you?

Responde mihi.

Answer me!

Ego te potavi aqua salutis de petra:

I gave you saving water from the rock,

et tu me potasti felle et aceto.

but you gave me gall and vinegar to drink.

Popule meus, quid feci tibi?

O my people, what have I done to you?

Aut in quo contristavi te?

How have I offended you?

Responde mihi.

Answer me!

Ego propter te Chananeorum reges percussi:

For your sake I struck the kings of the Canaanites,

et tu percussisti arundine caput meum.

but you have struck my head with a reed.

Popule meus, quid feci tibi?

O my people, what have I done to you?

Aut in quo contristavi te?

How have I offended you?

Responde mihi.

Answer me!

Ego dedi tibi sceptrum regale:

I gave you a royal sceptre,

et tu dedisti capiti meo spineam coronam.

but you gave me a crown of thorns.

Popule meus, quid feci tibi?

O my people, what have I done to you?

Aut in quo contristavi te?

How have I offended you?

Responde mihi.

Answer me!

Ego te exaltavi magna virtute: et tu me suspendisti in patibulo crucis.

I raised you to the height of majesty, but you have raised me high on the gibbet of the cross.

Popule meus, quid feci tibi?

O my people, what have I done to you?

Aut in quo contristavi te?

How have I offended you?

Responde mihi.

Answer me!³

The Improperia are a very old element of the Good Friday liturgy, dating back to at least the ninth century, and they occur, in different forms, in both the Western and the Eastern churches. It is given here in its longest extant version, which eventually became the standard format, while many early manuscripts contain a shorter version. Modern translations and adaptations in different traditions of Christianity have variously chosen to omit specific verses, but the essence of these Reproaches is always the same. They are a series of rhetorical questions, directed by God at his people, with the repeated refrain Popule meus, quid feci tibi? (‘O my people, what have I done to you?’). Interspersed with these reproaches in the first part are praises of God as thrice-holy, the so-called Trisagion (‘Holy is God! Holy and strong! Holy immortal One, have mercy on us.’). This hymn is a regular part of the Byzantine Rite, but its only use in the Roman Rite is on Good Friday, where it occurs in both Greek (Agios o Theos) and a Latin translation (Sanctus Deus). The Improperia thus invoke the Greek tradition, reaching back far in time to the very roots of Christianity. They are often sung antiphonally, alternating between a cantor and the choir. The cantor’s verses juxtapose God’s love and protection of his people in the Old Testament with their rejection of Christ as the saviour. God, by whom the people of Israel were led out of slavery in Egypt, guided through the desert and fed with manna, led through the Red Sea, given a powerful kingdom, and granted victory over their enemies – this very same God has now been crucified despite his never-wavering faithfulness to his people. The specific acts of God in the Old Testament are contrasted in a moving way with the suffering of Christ, playing upon the similarity of words and concepts: ‘I opened the sea before you, but you opened my side with a spear.’ The warlike imagery of some of these references alludes to the violence done to Christ, but the Old Testament references are more than mere reminders of military victories of the Israelites over their enemies (with all the violence that this entails). Once again, we encounter the principle of typology: the Old Testament episodes mentioned in the Reproaches are key events that have a rich history of allegorical interpretation. The parting of the Red Sea, which delivered the Israelites from the Egyptians in the Book of Exodus, for example, was traditionally interpreted as a prefiguration of the redemption through Christ, who leads the Christian people out of captivity by the Devil. The sea was seen as a reference to the water of baptism. The drowning of Pharaoh and his troops was understood to represent the victory over the Devil and the forces of Hell through Christ’s death. On one level, by mentioning these Old Testament events the Reproaches delve into the emotional landscape of Christ cruelly betrayed by his people. But there is also a deeper meaning, relating events that were seen as prophecies of the coming of Christ to their fulfilment in Christ. The events of the Red Sea point towards the crucifixion, and it is exactly at the moment of crucifixion that the voice of Christ speaks them in the liturgy. The past and the present merge; here is the moment when the prophecies come true.

Within the later history of the Improperia, modern audiences have sometimes seen the emphasis on the betrayal of Christ by his people as a sign of a veiled antisemitism within this text. This concern is understandable in view of the troubled history of antisemitic views within Christianity, but it is important to realize the full context and implication of the Reproaches rather than merely picking up on partial phrases of ideas from the text. It is striking that God’s address to his people is broad in nature: ‘O my people, what have I done to you? How have I offended you? Answer me!’ We have seen in some of the Tenebrae responsories how the idea of the transgressions of the people of Israel came to stand more generally for the transgressions of the people of God – the Christian people, and therefore each and every individual attending the liturgical ceremony. In fact, the Improperia even use the same image of the vineyard yielding sour grapes that we have already encountered in Vinea mea electa: ‘What more could I have done for you? I planted you as my fairest vine, but you yielded only bitterness.’ As in the responsory, the text of the Improperia gains a broader application. Its use within the Good Friday liturgy serves as a reminder that every individual present has betrayed Christ through wrongful actions, lack of love and unfaithfulness. The people of Israel and the Christian people become merged. The poetic engagement with the bitterness of betrayal as God’s son is rejected by his own makes this pain relevant to each member of the congregation in the Good Friday liturgy.

This sense of each individual being implicated in the Passion is clearly apparent from vernacular adaptations of the Improperia from the Middle Ages. From medieval England there survive several close translations of the Improperia from Latin into English, but perhaps most interesting are those poems that engage with the tradition more freely, play with the liturgical tradition and merge it with other literary traditions, often to striking effect. Reflected in these innovative adaptations is an interpretation that highlights a sense of general responsibility, in which Christ’s reproaches are directed against each and every human being. This becomes particularly clear in a poetic development of the Improperia tradition in a poem that scholars have titled ‘A Dialogue between Natura Hominis and Bonitas Dei’.⁴ What is so striking about this poem is that it is not a one-sided list of reproaches but a dialogue, as it imagines a response from man. The first few stanzas go as follows:

Saluator mundi domine,

Lord, Saviour of the world,

to þe, Ihesu, make I my mone,

To you, Jesus, I make my complaint,

to haue mercy Thorow þi pyte;

To have mercy through your pity;

gracius god, now here my bone.

Gracious God, now hear my prayer.

If I haue done owte of þo way

If I have strayed from the way

of ryghtfulnes thorow my foly,

Of righteousness through my folly,

Or dethe me kache & close in clay,

Before death catches me and returns me to clay,

mercyful god, I crye mercy!

Merciful God, I ask mercy!

Bonitas dei:

God’s goodness:

Man, qwat haue I done to þe?

Man, what have I done to you?

qwy art þu, man, to me vnkynde?

Why are you, man, unkind to me?

Qwy has þu, man, for-sake me?

Why have you, man, forsaken me?

qwy flese þu, man? I am þi frynde.

Why do you run away, man? I am your friend.

ffurst, I þe made to my lyknes

First, I made you in my likeness,

& put al þis world in þi bayle,

And put all this world under your stewardship,

And, for to hele al þi sekenes,

And, in order to heal all your sickness,

I lost my myght & toke mercy.

I lost my power and took mercy.

Natura hominis:

Human nature:

Þu maduste me, lord, to þi lyknes,

You made me, Lord, in your likeness,

And to þin ymage þu me schape

According to your image you have shaped me.

Þo makynge, lord, of þi godnes

Because of your goodness, Lord,

let not me, lord, thorow fowle warke.

Let me not destroy this work through wickedness.

My flesche is frele & redy to fall,

My flesh is frail and ready to fall,

þo world, þo dele, a grete enmy.

The world, the Devil, a great enemy.

With meke hert þer-fore I cal,

With a meek heart therefore I call,

Mercyful god, I crye mercy!

Merciful God, I cry for mercy!

Bonitas dei:

God’s goodness:

Man, þo rede see I partud in too,

Man, the Red Sea I parted in two,

owte of egypte qwen I browghte þe;

When I brought you out of Egypt;

I was þi frynde, þu was my foo,

I was your friend, you were my foe,

þu in deserte haste for-sake me;

In the desert you have forsaken me;

With awngels methe þer I þe fedde,

With the bread of angels I fed you there,

my luf to þe þu fonde ay redy;

You always found my love ready for you;

þer þu were worthy hell pyne to haue had,

When you were deserving of the pains of hell,

I left my myght & toke mercy.

I left my power and took mercy.

Natura hominis:

Human nature:

þat mercy, lord, take þu to mynde,

That mercy, Lord, call to mind,

þat þu wold schewe to Maudeleyn;

That you showed to Mary Magdalen;

Thynke þat þu art of owre kynde,

Remember that you are of our nature,

let noght mane-kynde þoro synne be sleyn.

Let not mankind be slain through sin.

Opone my synful sole þu rew,

Have mercy upon my sinful soul,

as þu hit boght with þi body.

As you bought it with your body.

ffor dedly syne has chawngude þo hewe,

For deadly sin has changed your face,

mercyful god, I cry mercy!

Merciful God, I cry for mercy!

The poem takes its starting point from the Improperia, with God’s reproach ‘Man, qwat haue I done to þe?’ (‘Man, what have I done to you?’) echoing the memorable opening of the refrain from the Improperia: Popule meus, quid feci tibi? (‘O my people, what have I done to you?’). Christ here speaks explicitly to ‘man’ – all of mankind, rather than only the people of Israel. The ideas behind the liturgical text are here expanded and made more concrete, as the poem includes a series of insistent questions (‘Why are you, man, unkind to me? Why have you, man, forsaken me? Why do you run away, man? I am your friend’), followed by a list of God’s deeds that demonstrate his mercy and love (‘First, I made you in my likeness, And put all this world under your stewardship, And, in order to heal all your sickness, I lost my power and took mercy.’). In contrast to the Improperia, however, Christ does receive a response to his questions. The poem imagines an answer from mankind which responds directly to the points which God has raised, and turns it into a plea for mercy: ‘You made me, Lord, in your likeness, According to your image you have shaped me. Because of your goodness, Lord, Let me not destroy this work through wickedness.’ The next stanza again draws upon the imagery of the Improperia as God’s reproach invokes the Old Testament exodus. In the liturgical text God contrasts his deeds in the Old Testament with the injustice done to Christ (‘I led you out of Egypt, having drowned Pharaoh in the Red Sea: but you have delivered me to the chief priests’), but the poem again takes this as a starting point to broaden out the perspective. God’s words here are not spoken to the Jewish people, but to all of humankind: ‘Man, the Red Sea I parted in two, When I brought you out of Egypt; I was your friend, you were my foe.’ We can see clearly how the words, style and imagery of the liturgical text are used as a source of inspiration in the poem, which expands upon these ideas and makes them directly relevant to the present lives of its readers.

Other Middle English responses to the liturgical tradition transform it equally creatively. In a poem beginning ‘In a valley of this restless mind’, tropes and images associated with the tradition of medieval love poetry are fused with images derived from the Improperia to striking effect.

In a valey of this restles mynde,

In a valley of this restless mind,

I soughte in mounteyne and in mede,

I sought in mountain and in meadow,

Trustynge a trewelove for to fynde.

hoping to find a true-love.

Upon an hil than Y took hede:

Upon a hill I then took notice;

A voice Y herde, and neer Y yede,

I heard a voice – and I drew closer –

In huge dolour complaynynge tho:

lamenting in great sorrow:

‘Se, dere Soule, how my sidis blede,

‘See, dear Soul, how my sides bleed,

Quia amore langueo.’

because I languish for love.’

Upon this hil Y fond a tree,

Upon this hill I found a tree,

Undir the tree a man sittynge,

under the tree a man sitting;

From heed to foot woundid was he,

from head to foot wounded was he,

His herte blood Y sigh bledinge:

and I saw his heart’s blood bleeding.

A semeli man to ben a king,

He was a man fit to be a king,

A graciouse face to loken unto.

with a gracious face to look at.

I askide whi he had peynynge,

I asked why he was suffering;

He seide, ‘Quia amore langueo.

he said, ‘Because I languish for love.’

‘I am Truelove that fals was nevere.

‘I am True-love who never was false.

My sistyr, mannis soule, Y loved hir thus:

My sister, man’s soul, I loved her thus:

Bicause we wolde in no wise discevere,

because we would not in any way be parted,

I lefte my kyngdom glorious.

I left my glorious kingdom,

I purveide for hir a paleis precious;

I prepared for her a precious palace.

Sche fleyth; Y folowe. Y soughte hir so,

She flees; I follow; I sought her in such a way

I suffride this peyne piteuous,

that I came to suffer this terrible pain,

Quia amore langueo.

because I languish for love.

‘My fair spouse and my love bright,

‘My fair spouse and my love bright!

I saved hir fro betynge, and sche hath me bet!

I saved her from beating, and she has beaten me.

I clothid hir in grace and hevenli light,

I clothed her in grace and heavenly light;

This bloodi scherte sche hath on me sette!

she set this bloody shirt upon me.

For longynge of love yit wolde Y not lette –

For longing of love I will not cease –

Swete strokis are these, lo!

these are sweet strokes, lo!

I have loved hir evere, as Y hir het,

I have loved her always, as I promised her,

Quia amore langueo.

because I languish for love.

‘I crowned hir with blis, and sche me with thorn;

‘I crowned her with bliss, and she crowned me with thorns;

I ledde hir to chaumbir, and sche me to die;

I led her to a chamber, and she led me to die.

I broughte hir to worschipe, and sche me to scorn;

I brought her to worship, and she brought me to scorn;

I dide hir reverence, and she me vilonye.

I did her worship, and she did me villainy.

To love that loveth is no maistrie;

To love one who loves you is no hard task;

Hir hate made nevere my love hir foo.

her hate never made my love her foe.

Axe me no questioun whi –

Do not ask me questions why;

Quia amore langueo.

because I languish for love.

‘Loke unto myn hondis, man:

‘Look at my hands, man:

These gloves were yove me whan Y hir soughte.

these gloves were given me when I sought her.

Thei ben not white, but rede and wan,

They are not white, but red and pale,

Onbroudrid with blood. My spouse hem broughte.

embroidered with blood. My spouse brought them.

Thei wole not of; Y loose hem noughte.

They cannot come off; I will not undo them.

I wowe hir with hem whereevere sche go –

I woo her with them wherever she may go.

These hondis for hir so freendli foughte,

These hands fought for her so lovingly,

Quia amore langueo.

because I languish for love.

‘Merveille noughte, man, though Y sitte stille:

‘Marvel not, man, though I sit still:

Se, love hath schod me wondir streite,

see, love has shod me very tightly,

Boclid my feet, as was hir wille,

and buckled my feet, by her choice,

With scharp naile, lo! Thou maiste waitenails;

with sharp nails, look! You may know by these nails,

In my love was nevere desaite.

there was never any deceit in my love.

Alle myn humours Y have opened hir to,

I have opened all my blood to her

There my bodi hath maad hir hertis baite,

and made my body her heart’s bait,

Quia amore langueo.

because I languish for love.

‘In my side Y have made hir neste.

‘In my side I have made her nest.

Loke in: how weet a wounde is heere!

Look in, how wet a wound is here!

This is hir chaumbir. Heere schal sche reste,

This is her chamber; here she shall rest,

That sche and Y may slepe in fere.

and she and I shall sleep in company.

Heere may she waische if ony filthe were;

Here she may wash away anything that befouls her;

Heere is sete for al hir woo.

here is shelter for all her sorrow.

Come whanne sche wole, sche schal have chere,

Come whenever she will, she shall have good cheer,

Quia amore langueo.

because I languish for love.

‘I wole abide til sche be redy,

‘I will wait until she be ready;

I wole hir sue if sche seie nay;

I will seek her if she say nay.

If sche be richilees, Y wole be gredi,

If she be careless, I will be insistent;

And if sche be daungerus, Y wole hir praie.

if she be disdainful, I will beseech her.

If sche wepe, than hide Y ne may –

If she weep, then I cannot conceal myself –

Myn armes her highed to clippe hir me to:

my arms are outstretched to clasp her to me.

Crie oonys! Y come. Now, Soule, asay!

Cry once, I come! Now, soul, try me!

Quia amore langueo.

Because I languish for love.

‘I sitte on this hil for to se fer,

‘I sit on this hill to see far:

I loke into the valey my spouse to se:

I look into the valley to see my spouse.

Now renneth sche awayward, yit come sche me neer,

Now she runs away, now she comes closer,

For out of my sighte may sche not be.

but she cannot be out of my sight.

Summe wayte hir prai to make hir to flee,

Some others lurk to make her their prey, to make her flee to them,

I renne bifore and fleme hir foo.

but I run before them and drive away her foes.

Returne, my spouse, ayen to me!

Return, my spouse, again to me!

Quia amore langueo.

Because I languish for love.

‘Fair love, lete us go pleye!

‘Fair love, let us go play:

Applis ben ripe in my gardayne;

apples are ripe in my garden.

I schal thee clothe in a newe aray,

I shall clothe thee in new array,

Thi mete schal be mylk, hony, and wiyn.

thy food shall be milk, honey, and wine.

Fair love, lete us go digne;

Fair love, let us go dine;

Thi sustynaunce is in my crippe, lo!

thy sustenance is in my bag, lo!

Tarie thou not, my fair spouse myne!

Tarry not, my own fair spouse,

Quia amore langueo.

because I languish for love.

‘Iff thou be foul, Y schal thee make clene,

‘If thou be dirty, I shall make thee clean;

If thou be siik, Y schal thee hele;

if thou be sick, I shall heal thee.

If thou moorne ought, Y schal thee meene.

If thou mourn for anything, I shall comfort thee.

Whi wolt thou not, fair love, with me dele?

Why wilt thou not, fair love, have dealings with me?

Foundist thou evere love so leel?

Hast thou ever found such loyal love?

What woldist thou, spouse, that Y schulde do?

What wouldest thou, spouse, that I should do?

I may not unkyndeli thee appele,

I cannot accuse thee of unkindness,

Quia amore langueo.

because I languish for love.

‘What schal Y do with my fair spouse

‘What shall I do with my fair spouse,

But abide hir, of my gentilnes,

but wait for her, in my courtesy,

Til that sche loke out of hir house

until she look out of her house

Of fleischli affeccioun? Love myn sche is!

of fleshly affection? She is my love!

Hir bed is maade, hir bolstir is blis;

Her bed is made, her pillow is prepared in bliss,

Hir chaumbir is chosen, is ther non moo.

her chamber is chosen – there is none other such.

Loke out on me at the wyndow of kyndenes,

Look out on me at the window of kindness,

Quia amore langueo.

because I languish for love.

‘My love is in hir chaumbir. Holde youre pees!

‘My love is in her chamber, hold your peace!

Make ye no noise, but lete hir slepe.

Make ye no noise, but let her sleep.

My babe Y wolde not were in disese;

I would not have my babe troubled;

I may not heere my dere child wepe;

I cannot hear my dear child weep.

With my pap Y schal hir kepe.

With my breast I shall feed her.

Ne merveille ye not though Y tende hir to:

Do not marvel that I tend to her so!

This hole in my side had nevere be so depe,

This hole in my side would never have been so deep,

But Quia amore langueo.

but that I languish for love.

‘Longe thou for love nevere so high,

‘Long thou for love never so much,

My love is more than thin may be:

my love is more than thine can be.

Thou wepist, thou gladist, Y sitte thee bi,

Thou weepest, thou rejoicest, I sit beside thee;

Yit woldist thou oonys, leef, loke unto me?

but wouldest thou once, love, look to me?

Schulde I alwey fede thee

Should I always feed thee

With children mete? Nay, love, not so! –

with children’s food? No, love, it cannot be so!

I wole preve thi love with adversitè,

I wish to test thy love through adversity,

Quia amore langueo.

because I languish for love.

‘Wexe not wery, myn owne wiif.

‘Wax not weary, my own wife;

What mede is it to lyve evere in coumfort?

what reward is there to live in comfort for ever?

In tribulacioun I regne moore riif,

In tribulation I often reign

Oftetymes, than in disport –

more fully than in pleasure.

In wele and in woo Y am ay to supporte!

In weal and woe I am ever there to help!

Than, dere Soule, go not me fro!

Then, dear soul, do not go from me.

Thi meede is markid whan thou art mort, Quia amore langueo.’

Thy reward is fixed after thy death, because I languish for love.’⁵

What happens in the poem is extraordinary. Different liturgical and literary traditions are blended together, taking the reader on a rollercoaster of abrupt changes of direction and surprising views. We start out with a setting that we might typically expect from a medieval love poem: the speaker, troubled in mind, goes on a journey to find ‘a true-love’. There is a deliberate ambiguity in this word, as it can refer either to a specific kind of flower, which was associated with fidelity, or to the idea of steadfast love itself.⁶ The speaker’s journey leads to a man sitting underneath a tree on a hill, and the man’s lament has much in common with conventional love laments, with the concluding quotation Quia amore langueo, ‘Because I languish for love’. We have already encountered in Chapter Two the use of this quotation from Song of Songs 2:5 and 5:8 in a poem that plays with and breaks down categories of secular and spiritual love, and the present poem takes a similar approach. The speaker here, however, is Christ himself, ‘a man fit to be a king’ who is wounded ‘from head to foot’. Gradually the poem reveals that this is not, as we may have expected at first, a lovesick knight weeping over his lady, but Christ himself with the wounds of the Passion upon his body recounting his long love affair with ‘man’s soul’. As we have seen in Chapter Two, the language of the Song of Songs is used liberally to blur the boundaries between erotic and religious, and earthly categories are broken down in the course of the poem. Man’s soul is the beloved who is pursued passionately by Christ, described in language that recalls the sensual imagery of the Song of Songs: ‘Fair love, let us go play: apples are ripe in my garden. I shall clothe thee in new array, thy food shall be milk, honey, and wine.’ But at the same time, man’s soul is described as Christ’s ‘sister’, and later on as a child who is nursed by a loving mother: ‘Make ye no noise, but let her sleep. I would not have my babe troubled; I cannot hear my dear child weep. With my breast I shall feed her.’ The image is disorienting in the context of what has come just a few stanzas before, until in a striking conceit it is revealed that the reference to breastfeeding is an allusion to the wound to Christ’s side, which he sustained when the soldiers pierced him with a lance.

The poem is full of unexpected turns like this, leaving the reader with a sense of vertigo. The constant betrayal and unfaithfulness of man’s soul, by contrast, is described with a series of antitheses that borrow from the Improperia:

I crowned her with bliss, and she crowned me with thorns;

I led her to a chamber, and she led me to die.

I brought her to worship, and she brought me to scorn;

I did her worship, and she did me villainy.

The liturgical tradition is invoked in the midst of the whirlwind of images of this poem, and yet such oppositions of Christ’s love and the soul’s disdain occur side by side with words of love-longing:

My fair spouse and my love bright!

I saved her from beating, and she has beaten me.

Such conceits are achieved in this poem through the fusion of different liturgical traditions with an exuberantly creative spark that plays with apparent contradiction, paradox and rich layers of meaning, prompting the reader to reflect on the suffering man who is also God. The repertoire of images, words and ideas found in the liturgy of the Triduum have thus proved a sheer limitless source for poets’ engagement with the theme of Christ’s Passion.

In later periods, too, this influence can be felt. Priest and poet George Herbert (1593–1633), whose writings are associated with the ‘Metaphysical poets’ who delighted in innovative poetic conceits, alludes to the same liturgical traditions in ‘The Sacrifice’, which begins:

O, all ye, who pass by, whose eyes and mind

To worldly things are sharp, but to me blind;

To me, who took eyes that I might you find:

Was ever grief like mine?

The Princes of my people make a head

Against their Maker: they do wish me dead,

Who cannot wish, except I give them bread:

Was ever grief like mine?

Without me each one, who doth now me brave,

Had to this day been an Egyptian slave.

They use that power against me, which I gave:

Was ever grief like mine?⁷

The poem takes its cue from O vos omnes, framing the first stanza with the central idea of the Tenebrae responsory: ‘O all ye, who pass by . . . Was ever grief like mine?’ Christ is the speaker, and his insistent question subsequently acts as a refrain to each stanza of the long poem, which contemplates the stages of the Passion from Christ’s point of view. In various places the Tenebrae responsory is merged with the Improperia tradition, as in the second and third stanzas, which compare God’s acts of kindness to his people with their present malice: ‘The Princes of my people make a head/ Against their Maker: they do wish me dead/ Who cannot wish, except I give them bread’, with the reference to ‘bread’ evoking associations with both the manna in the desert and the Eucharist. ‘Without me each one, who doth now me brave/ Had to this day been an Egyptian slave’ continues this line of thought: God’s aid in guiding the Israelites out of Egypt is juxtaposed with their betrayal, once again drawing inspiration from the liturgical tradition. This perspective gradually becomes broader in the course of Herbert’s poem, and shifts towards a focus on Christ’s suffering as a remedy for the Fall:

O all ye who pass by, behold and see:

Man stole the fruit, but I must climb the tree;

The tree of life to all, but only me:

Was ever grief like mine?

The antithesis used here refers to the Fall. The taking of the forbidden fruit from the tree of Paradise in Genesis is undone by Christ’s suffering upon the wood of another tree: the cross. In order to accomplish the redemption and turn the cross into a ‘tree of life to all’, Christ must die. For him it is an instrument of torture and death; for humankind it is the source of life. The juxtaposed ideas here relate to all of humanity, placing the earlier descriptions drawn from the Improperia into a more universal context. Again, as in the liturgical text, it becomes clear that, in a moral and theological sense, everyone is a member of the people who betray Christ. His death atones for all of humankind: ‘My wo, man’s weal.’

But now I die; now all is finished.

My wo, man’s weal: and now I bow my head:

Only let others say, when I am dead,

Never was grief like mine.

In such poetry and many other literary texts we hear the liturgy echoing down the ages, from the medieval period to the seventeenth century and beyond. The liturgical texts provide models of thinking about the Passion and exploring Christ’s emotional landscape, but at the same time they are an invitation to poets to transform these models in ever-changing ways. The liturgical tradition remains lively, dynamic and vibrant.

5

Grief

Many of the liturgical texts of Good Friday take the perspective of the crucified Christ, as we have seen. But Christ, though the protagonist, is not the only participant in the events of Good Friday. As the Gospel of John reports, ‘standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene’ (19:25). John the disciple is also present, and Jesus makes sure that his mother will be looked after by John in the future: ‘When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home’ (John 19:26–7). The gospels restrict their laconic narrative to events that can be externally observed. They report what happens and what is spoken as Christ is on the cross, but are mostly silent on the subject of feelings. In every age these blank spaces have been filled by believers’ own imaginations. The inner life of the bystanders and onlookers of the crucifixion prompted poetic explorations and re-imaginings. Particularly prominent among these are explorations of the feelings of the Virgin Mary as she sees the events of the crucifixion unfold. Mary is exceptional not only in her singular virtue and status as mother of Christ, but in the singular grief that she had to undergo. What does it feel like to watch your only child dying for the salvation of the human race? This is an insistent question that has long occupied the artistic imagination and that gave rise to the Stabat Mater tradition, a term which literally translates to ‘the mother stood’. In this tradition, we see the crucifixion through Mary’s eyes, empathizing with her bitter grief. The text that gave its name to this tradition is Stabat Mater dolorosa, a poem first written in thirteenth-century Italy and known widely throughout medieval Europe. The liturgical history of the text is turbulent: in the Middle Ages it was soon incorporated into liturgical celebrations of the Passion in many places. Its use within the liturgy was later suppressed by the Council of Trent (1545–63) in the attempt to unify different local liturgical uses, only to be restored as a part of the liturgy for the Feast of the Seven Dolours of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1727. The poem moves from a reflection on the grief of the mother standing before the cross to a direct address to the Virgin, in which the speaker asks Mary for her intercession.

Stabat Mater dolorosa

The sorrowful mother stood

Iuxta crucem lacrimosa

weeping before the cross

Dum pendebat Filius.

where hung her son.

Cuius animam gementem

Her grieving soul,

Contristatam et dolentem

anguished and lamenting,

Pertransivit gladius.

was pierced by a sword.

O quam tristis et afflicta

O how sad and afflicted

Fuit illa benedicta

was that blessed mother

Mater unigeniti!

of the only-begotten one.

Quae moerebat et dolebat,

She who grieved and suffered,

Pia Mater, dum videbat

the loving mother, while she looked

Nati poenas incliti.

on the torment of her glorious child.

Quis est homo qui non fleret,

Who would not weep

Matrem Christi si videret

seeing the mother of Christ

In tanto supplicio?

in such agony?

Quis non posset contristari,

Who would not share her sorrow,

Christi Matrem contemplari

seeing the loving mother

Dolentem cum Filio?

grieving with her son?

Pro peccatis suae gentis

For the sins of his people

Vidit Iesum in tormentis,

she saw Jesus in torment

Et flagellis subditum.

and subjected to scourging.

Vidit suum dulcem natum

She saw her own sweet son

Moriendo desolatum

dying, abandoned,

Dum emisit spiritum.

as he gave up the spirit.

Eja Mater, fons amoris

O Mother, fount of love,

Me sentire vim doloris

make me feel the strength of your grief,

Fac, ut tecum lugeam.

so that I may mourn with you.

Fac, ut ardeat cor meum

Make my heart burn

In amando Christum Deum

with love for Christ, my God,

Ut sibi complaceam.

that I may find grace in his eyes.

Sancta Mater, istud agas,

Blessed Mother,

Crucifixi fige plagas

cause the sufferings of the crucified

Cordi meo valide.

to be fixed deeply in my heart.

Tui nati vulnerati,

Share with me the agony

Tam dignati pro me pati,

of your wounded son

Poenas mecum divide.

who deigned to suffer so much for me.

Fac me tecum, pie, flere,

Make me truly weep with you,

Crucifixo condolere,

grieving with him who is crucified,

Donec ego vixero.

as long as I shall live.

Iuxta crucem tecum stare,

To stand with you beside the cross

Et me tibi sociare

and to be your companion in grief

In planctu desidero.

is my desire.

Virgo virginum praeclara,

O Virgin, peerless among virgins,

Mihi iam non sis amara

do not turn away from me,

Fac me tecum plangere.

let me weep with you.

Fac, ut portem Christi mortem

Let me bear the death of Christ,

Passionis fac consortem,

be a sharer of his Passion,

Et plagas recolere.

contemplate his wounds.

Fac me plagis vulnerari,

Let me suffer his pain,

Fac me cruce inebriari,

let me be engulfed by the cross,

Et cruore Filii.

and by the blood of your son.

Inflammatus et accensus,

Lest I be destroyed by devouring flames,

per te, Virgo, sim defensus

Virgin, by you may I be defended

in die iudicii.

at the day of judgement.

Fac me cruce custodiri

Grant that I may be protected by the cross,

Morte Christi praemuniri

fortified by the death of Christ,

Confoveri gratia.

strengthened by grace.

Quando corpus morietur,

When my body dies,

Fac, ut animae donetur

let my soul be given

Paradisi gloria. Amen.

the glory of Paradise. Amen.¹

A reciprocal relationship of compassion is evoked: the speaker contemplates the grief of the mother undergoing the most painful experience imaginable, and asks in turn for her compassion and support. While no actual dialogue takes place between Mary and the speaker, the emotive style of the address to the sorrowful Virgin immediately invites us to place ourselves in the position of the speaker. Mary’s experience is described in simple words which are all the more heartbreaking for their lack of elaboration: ‘She saw her own dear son, dying, abandoned, as he gave up the spirit.’ Even if many aspects of medieval devotion have grown alien to modern sensibilities, it is difficult to remain indifferent to these reflections as they address an experience that, across the ages, has always been one of the most devastating things that can happen to a person: the loss of a child. Mary’s experience powerfully resonates with the reader. Despite Mary’s unique experience of being the mother of God, her feelings underneath the cross also express a universal experience that is shared by many others – even more so in the Middle Ages, where infant mortality was extremely high. But this text is not only written for parents who have gone through a similar loss; it connects to other kinds of loss and grief. It is easy to empathize with Mary. The poem sets the scene for a heartfelt emotional response from the individual believer: ‘Who would not share her sorrow, seeing the loving mother grieving with her son?’ Inspired with compassion for the sorrowful Virgin, the speaker then asks for Mary’s protection and intercession. Suffering and understanding are connected: Mary’s unique position at the foot of the cross also gives her privileged insights into the mysteries of the crucifixion. Because of this privileged position, Mary can act as a mediator between the speaker and her son: ‘Let me bear the death of Christ, be a sharer of his Passion, contemplate his wounds,’ the speaker asks.

There is, then, a dialogue implied by this poem, even though Mary’s response is left to the reader’s imagination. This communicative situation is relevant to this text, but the interplay between different perspectives is also an important motif in portrayals of the crucifixion in other media. In visual art, the crucifixion scene is frequently portrayed with at least three people: Christ on the cross, the Virgin Mary, and John the disciple underneath the cross. Sometimes other figures are added: Mary Magdalene (one of the women who followed Jesus), Roman soldiers and the other two men who were crucified with Jesus. Although there is some variation in the dramatis personae, communication is always important. Who looks at whom is crucial in crucifixion paintings, guiding the spectator’s gaze into the scene and suggesting a range of interpretations. Similar to the Stabat Mater, an Austro-Bohemian painting of Christ on the cross by an anonymous artist from around 1400 invites the audience into a dialogue with the sorrowful mother (illus. 9). In this painting Christ’s eyes are half closed in silent agony. John looks attentively up at Christ, but Mary gazes straight at the spectator. Her arms are crossed protectively and her head is slightly inclined towards her right. Her body language betrays her sorrow. But the look with which she greets us is lively and direct, perhaps even questioning. Through Mary’s gaze, a communication with the viewer is established. We become part of the scene. We too are bystanders at the crucifixion, and Mary’s look invites us to consider what our own role in it might be. Are we about to turn away with indifference, or are we going to stay and contemplate this event and its relevance to our lives? Mary’s gaze turns this painting of an oft-portrayed scene into something that is deeply personal, to her and to us.

9 Anonymous, Christ on the Cross, c. 1400, oil on wood.

We might see the effect of this painting as the inverse of the Stabat Mater poem: whereas in the text the speaker opens up a conversation with the Virgin without receiving a direct response, in this painting it is Mary who initiates the communication, challenging us with her look to respond. The interaction is open-ended and ongoing, and the outcome may be radically different depending on the viewer’s response. We don’t know whether the anonymous painter meant to allude directly to this poem, which was familiar through liturgical uses, but the work clearly arose from the same tradition and imaginative world. In this way, the Stabat Mater tradition creates a space for conversation underneath the cross that includes the individual spectator. Through Mary, it makes the crucifixion personal.

We see this movement towards dialogue reflected in a large number of vernacular poems that stand in the same tradition. There is an entire family of Middle English poems that imagine different kinds of conversations underneath the cross – between Mary and Christ, between the speaker and Mary, sometimes between all three. Many of them take their starting point from the Stabat Mater motif. An anonymous fourteenth-century poem, for instance, takes its cue from the liturgical text with the words ‘Stond wel, Moder, under rode’ (‘rode’ being an old word for cross), but then takes the idea in a different direction with an imaginary conversation between Mary and Christ.²

‘Stond wel, Moder, vnder rode,

‘Stand well, Mother, under the cross,

bihold þi child wyth glade mode,

Behold your child with a glad mind;

blyþe Moder mittu ben.’

Joyful, Mother, you may be.’

‘Svne, quu may bliþe stonden?

‘Son, how may I joyful stand?

hi se þin feet, hi se þin honden,

I see your feet, I see your hands

nayled to þe harde tre.’

Nailed to the hard tree.’

‘Moder, do wey þi wepinge;

‘Mother, cease your weeping:

hi þole þis ded for mannes thinge

I suffer this death for man’s sake;

for owen gilte þoli non.’

I do not suffer for my own guilt.’

‘Svne, hi fele þe dede stunde,

‘Son, I feel the hour of death

þe swerd is at min herte grunde,

The sword is at the bottom of my heart,

þat me byhytte symeon.’

As foretold to me Simeon.’

‘Moder, reu vpon þi bern!

‘Mother, have pity on your child,

þu wasse awey þo blodi teren,

And wash away those bloody tears,

it don me werse þan mi ded.’

They hurt me worse than my death!’

‘Sune, hu mitti teres wernen?

‘Son, how could I stop these tears?

hy se þo blodi flodes hernen

I see those bloody floods run

huth of þin herte to min fet.’

Out of your heart to my feet.’

‘Moder, nu y may þe seyn,

‘Mother, now I may to you say:

bettere is þat ic one deye

Better that I alone should die

þan al man-kyn to helle go.’

Than all mankind should go to hell.’

‘Sune, y se þi bodi swngen,

‘Son, I see your body swung,

þi brest, þin hond, þi fot þur-stungen –

Your breast, your hand, your foot pierced,

no selli þou me be wo.’

No wonder that I mourn!’

‘Moder, if y dar þe tellen,

‘Mother, if I dare you tell,

yif y ne deye þu gost to helle;

If I die not, you will go to hell;

hi þole þis ded for þine sake.’

I suffer this death for your sake.’

‘Sune, þu best me so minde,

‘Son, you are so kind to me.

with me nout; it is mi kinde

Blame me not, it is my nature

þat y for þe sorye make.’

That I for you this sorrow make.’

‘Moder, merci! let me deyen,

‘Mother, have mercy! let me die,

for adam ut of helle beyn,

Adam out of hell to buy

and al mankin þat is for-loren.’

And all mankind that is forlorn!’

‘Sune, wat sal me to rede?

‘Son, what would you have me do?

þi pine pined me to dede,

Your pain pains me to death;

let me deyn þe bi-foren.’

Let me die before you.’

‘Moder, mitarst þu mith leren

‘Mother, now you may well learn

wat pine þolen þat childre beren

What pain they endure who children bear,

wat sorwe hauen þat child for-gon.’

What sorrow they have who children lose.’

‘Sune, y wot y kan þe tellen,

‘Son, indeed, I can you tell,

bute it be þe pine of helle

No sorrow but the pain of hell

more sorwe ne woth y non.’

Is greater than to suffer so!’

‘Moder, reu of moder kare!

‘Mother, pity a mother’s care,

nu þu wost of moder fare,

Now you know how mothers fare,

þou þu be clene mayden m(an).’

Though you are a pure virgin.’

‘Sune, help alle at nede,

‘Son, help all at need,

alle þo þat to me greden –

All those that to me cry

m(ay)den, wyf and fol wyman.’

Maiden, wife, and unchaste woman.’

‘Moder, y may no lenger duellen,

‘Mother, I may no longer dwell;

þe time is cumen y fare to helle,

The time is come, I go to hell,

þe þridde day y rise upon.’

The third day I will rise upon.’

‘Sune, y wyle wi’the funden,

‘Son, I will with you go;

y deye ywis of þine wnden,

I die, indeed, of your wounds;

so reuful ded was neuere non.’

Such pitiful death was never none.’

When he ros þan fel þi sorwe,

When he rose then fell your sorrow:

þe blisse sprong þe þridde morewe,

The bliss sprang up the third morrow.

wen bliþe moder wer þu þo.

Joyful, Mother, were you then!

Moder, for þat ilke blisse,

Mother, for that very bliss

bisech vre god, vre sinnes lesse,

Beseech your son, our sins release,

þu be hure chel ayen hure fo.

You are our shield against the foe.

Blisced be þu, quen of heuene,

Blessed be you, full of bliss,

bring us ut of helle leuene

Bring us out of the fire of hell

þurth þi dere sunes mith.

Through your dear son’s might.

Moder, for þat hithe blode

Mother, for that selfsame blood

þat he sadde vpon þe rode,

That he shed upon the rood,

led us in-to heuene lith. Amen.

Lead us into heaven’s light. Amen.

The conversation between Christ and Mary contrasts a divine perspective with an intensely human one. His suffering is necessary in order to save humankind from hell. Christ tries to comfort his mother. But Mary sees the crucifixion through a mother’s eyes, horrified by her child’s bitter pain. When Christ asks her to wipe away her tears, she rejects this as impossible: ‘Son, how could I stop these tears?’ The interchange has a dramatic immediacy that draws the reader into the scene. The two perspectives seem irreconcilable because they operate with different time frames. Jesus sees the future victory that his suffering will bring, while Mary is unable to see beyond the unbearable present. It is a very understandable response, giving a voice to the validity of human grief. Despite the necessity of suffering for the greater good in the divine plan, it is nonetheless a thing awful and intolerable. Only in the last two verses does the poem give us a resolution to the two clashing perspectives: ‘When he rose then fell your sorrow: The bliss sprang up the third morrow. Joyful, Mother, were you then!’ In this poem, a glimpse of the joy of the resurrection only follows after a profound exploration of the reality of pain and death.

This is a reality that is also explored in great depth in religious art through the centuries. Paintings of the crucifixion emphasize, to a greater or to a lesser extent, the suffering which Mary undergoes as she stands underneath the cross. While the anonymous painting earlier in this chapter shows us a calm and composed Mary who focuses on an interaction with the spectator (see illus. 9), we see an entirely different Mary in the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald, which dates to the early sixteenth century (illus. 10). The wings of the altarpiece can be opened up or closed, revealing or hiding a range of scenes on the outside and the inside, but they are never all visible at the same time. The outside confronts us with Christ on the cross in near-complete darkness, which throws into relief the bright red that predominates among the bystanders’ clothing and Christ’s pale, emaciated body. It is one of the most poignant crucifixion scenes in Western art, depicting the full horror of what it means to be nailed to a cross. Christ is writhing in agony, his skin covered with wounds and his limbs ridden with cramps. His head is bowed, lips parted in a silent scream. There could hardly be a more radical contrast with the serenity that seems to emanate from the Christ of the Austro-Bohemian piece. In the Isenheim Altarpiece, Christ is flanked on the left by John, the Virgin Mary and a kneeling Mary Magdalene, while on the right John the Baptist, accompanied by a lamb, is symbolically included, even though his execution preceded that of Jesus. As the forerunner of Christ, he stands here explaining the significance of the event. In a teacher’s pose with book in hand he points at Christ, proclaiming: illum oportet crescere me autem minui, ‘He must increase, but I must decrease’ (John 3:30). In this way, Grünewald’s version includes both symbolic elements and dreadful realism, expressing both the metaphysical significance and the physical reality of the crucifixion. Mary, in this version, recoils in horror at the scene in front of her, her hands wrung in a gesture of helpless dismay. Her eyes are closed, her face is ashen, her body is swaying backwards, and she has to be supported by John. True to the gospel account, Mary stands – but only just. Her posture is that of a mother stricken to the depth of her soul. We could well imagine this Mary speaking the words of ‘Stond wel, Moder, under rode’: ‘Son, how could I stop these tears?’

A painting by the follower of the Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden, roughly contemporary with the Isenheim Altarpiece, takes Mary’s grief a step further (illus. 11). The body of Christ on the cross here does not show the same intense physical agony as in Grünewald’s version. His fingers are clutching the nails, but his face looks almost peaceful. Mary, with a look of utter exhaustion, has fainted. She is kept upright by John, whose face shows concern as he supports her, but her knees have buckled under the weight of her anguish. Her body is the very image of grief. Unlike the other paintings, this Mary is falling rather than standing.

10 Matthias Grünewald, Isenheim Altarpiece, c. 1512, oil on wood.

We have seen a range of portrayals of the Blessed Virgin underneath the cross: from restrained grief to near collapse. The latter is particularly prevalent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, where a large number of paintings portray Mary’s emotional state through her fainting or having fainted next to the cross, a motif also known as the ‘swoon of the virgin’. It was a deviation from the Stabat Mater idea of the liturgical poem following the Gospel of John, a choice made by artists who went to new extremes in order to plunge the viewers into the depths of suffering and grief of Christ’s mother. The very point of these images is that Mary does not stand; as we might say, mater non stabat. As such, this motif also calls for a compassionate response from the spectator. It intends to move and touch the emotions rather than explain. This focus on a compassionate response is connected to a particular devotional movement of the Middle Ages, known as ‘affective piety’. The term summarizes a set of practices rooted in a religious sensibility that focuses on an emotive approach to the mysteries of the faith. Believers are encouraged to meditate on different episodes in the life of Christ by imagining themselves present at the scene, entering into the same experience as Mary or the disciples. A compassionate response to the suffering of the Virgin Mary could also serve as a model of behaviour to the viewers in their daily lives, encouraging them to act with compassion when encountering those in sorrow or grief.

11 Follower of Rogier van der Weyden, The Crucifixion, c. 1510, oil on panel.

The fainting virgin, however, was not without controversy. This representation of Mary worried theologians, particularly in the sixteenth century, as it had no biblical precedent, and indeed seemed to contradict the wording of the Gospel of John, which insists that Mary stood underneath the cross. Critics of the fainting virgin worried that this might show her as weak, unable or unwilling to bear the immensity of the sacrifice required of her for the salvation of humankind, implying a lack of perfection. For a brief period images of the ‘swoon of the virgin’ tradition were even subject to official disapproval by the Catholic Church, while many Protestants rejected it outright along with many other images that were not rooted in Scripture.³ But it seems that the Catholic condemnation of the swoon of the virgin was short-lived, perhaps due to the great popularity of the image, variations of which were found in thousands of churches. Perhaps it was also the artistic integrity and intense humanity of this way of portraying a grieving mother that made this image prevail. We still find the same motif in much later paintings, such as Carl Heinrich Bloch’s crucifixion scene from the late nineteenth century (illus. 12). Here we see Mary in a full state of collapse, lying on the ground. She is deathly pale, and at first glance it is difficult to tell whether she is alive or dead. A turbaned male is bent over her and seems to be asking the same question. He has taken her hand; his body language betrays his uncertainty. Mary’s head rests in the lap of Mary Magdalene, who has been taken by the sleep of exhaustion. A sorrowful John looks on, seated on a rock in the background. On the left-hand side, men arrive with ladders, ready to take the dead Jesus down from the cross. The great deed has been accomplished. Christ is dead, and Mary’s body stretched out at the foot of the cross mirrors the dead body of her son suspended above.

Bloch’s painting captures a particular moment in time, when Christ’s suffering is finished and his body is about to be taken down. According to tradition, another moment is to follow shortly after, though not explicitly mentioned in the gospels: Christ’s dead body will be cradled by his grieving mother. This motif, known as the ‘Pietà’, is particularly widespread in sculpture, but also makes appearances in other art forms. Without doubt the most famous example is Michelangelo’s Pietà, which he completed at the end of the fifteenth century, when he was only 24 years old (illus. 13). Although the motif of Mary cradling her dead son in her lap had been common in the Middle Ages, Michelangelo’s depiction is strikingly different to previous ones. He shows Mary as young and beautiful rather than as the middle-aged woman she would have been at the death of Jesus, who died aged 33. Her features are not those of a woman stricken by sorrow: her face is calm and peaceful; one might almost call her joyful. Reflected in her face is the certainty that the great act of salvation has been accomplished. She looks more like a young mother cradling her baby than a bereaved woman who is going through the most painful experience imaginable. The comparison is apt because Jesus, too, is smaller than he would naturally be. The two figures are out of proportion, with the effect that the fully grown man in Mary’s lap looks more like a child or teenager. The statue evokes a faint memory of a much happier time in Mary’s life as a young mother; an allusion to Jesus as an infant cradled in his mother’s lap underlies the present scene, creating a parallel between the beginning and the end of Jesus’ life. There is little emphasis on the Passion in Michelangelo’s Pietà. In addition to Mary’s calm and gentle face, the stigmata (the marks of the nails) on Christ’s hands and feet are small and understated. The emotional impact of this sculpture lies not in the emphasis on suffering, but in the haunting suggestion of a soon-to-be-lost innocent childhood scene. This image of the Pietà is unbearably sad precisely because she is so beautiful.

12 Carl Heinrich Bloch, The Crucifixion, 1870, oil on copper.

The parallel between the infant Jesus on his mother’s lap and Mary cradling his dead body is not unique to Michelangelo but goes back to medieval times, where the two scenes are sometimes juxtaposed in visual art, but also explored in literature, such as the following fifteenth-century carol.⁴ A carol in medieval times was not just a song for Christmas, but could address a range of themes. This text explores the idea of Mary singing to her child, who has foreknowledge of how his life will end. The carol begins:

13 Michelangelo, Pietà, 1498–9, quartz.

So blessed a sight it was to see,

How Mary rocked her Son so free

So fair she rocked and sang, ‘By, by.’

‘My own dear mother, sing lullay.’

The innocent childhood scene of a lullaby is soon harshly interrupted, when a few stanzas later, the baby declares:

When I am naked, they will me take

And fast bind me to a stake

And beat me sore for man’s sake

My own dear mother, sing lullay.

Upon the cross they shall me cast,

Hand and foot nail me fast,

Yet gall shall be my drink [at] last,

Thus shall my life pass away.

The jarring juxtaposition of the words of a cradle-song and violent images of Christ’s death on the cross plays upon the same idea as Michelangelo’s Pietà, though it is explored from a very different angle here. The poem achieves its startling effect from the baby’s unexpected prophecy, so at odds with the imagery of the first stanza that the cruelty of Christ’s death is thrown into sharp relief. Even more explicit is this parallel in a poem from the fifteenth century in which Mary speaks to all mothers, which begins:

Of all women that ever were born

That bear children, stay and see

How my son lies before me

Upon my knee, taken from the tree.

Your children you dandle upon your knee

With laughing, kissing, and merry cheer;

Behold my child, behold now me,

For now lies dead my dear son, dear.⁵

Mary addresses those mothers who can still enjoy playing with their infant children, contrasting such happy childhood scenes with her own experience. She speaks these words in the moment of receiving her dead son from the cross; it is almost as if we can hear a Pietà image gaining a voice.

Across the ages, the image of the mother mourning for her only son has deeply resonated with those going through a similar experience. It is not surprising that Pietà images are a frequent feature of war memorials in churches. Some of these memorials take the traditional form of Mary cradling her dead son, full of a pathos that is relatable for the mourners of the countless dead of the two world wars. There are also variations upon this theme, with some artists choosing to take a more secular perspective. A sculpture that is inspired by the Pietà tradition, yet is not overtly religious, was created by Käthe Kollwitz, one of Germany’s most celebrated female artists. Mother with Her Dead Son was completed in 1937 on the anniversary of the death of Kollwitz’s son, who died in 1914 (illus. 14). It shows the large figure of a mother in a meditative pose. Her silhouette is mirrored by that of her son, who is seated in an embryonic posture on the ground between her legs, as if to seek shelter. This portrayal is different from the usual tradition: the son is sitting between his mother’s knees rather than lying in her lap. The mother is holding her son’s hand, and her draped clothing protectively enfolds his body. He seems like a small child asking for his mother’s protection. The sculpture invokes silence and reflection rather than focusing on the outward display of pain. Kollwitz’s diary entries suggest that the work was not initially designed to be a Pietà, but rather became one in the course of the creative process: ‘I am working on the small sculpture that is the result of my sculptural experiments to portray old age. It has become a kind of Pietà. The mother is seated, her dead son lying on her lap between her knees.’⁶ Although Kollwitz clearly draws on the religious tradition, her work is not explicitly religious. The mother and child are not Mary and Christ, but two figures unidentified. They could be anyone – or everyone. This particular interpretation of the Pietà motif takes a distinctly secular perspective, highlighting the universal nature of the experience of a mother mourning her dead child.

As we have seen, the Pietà can take many different shapes. The image still resonates deeply in modern times, and variations upon the same theme are found in many places. Even popular culture is influenced by the Pietà motif. It is a recurring trope on comic book covers, such as the 1982 graphic novel The Death of Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin, which features Death cradling the hero of the story in his lap in the same posture as Michelangelo’s Pietà.

14 Käthe Kollwitz, Pietà (Mother with Her Dead Son), 1937–9, bronze (enlarged copy by Harald Haake, 1993).

In films, too, this trope is frequently invoked. Like the comic book cover, visual citation in popular culture often plays with the motif or changes it to dramatic effect. An example is the ending of the Bond film Skyfall (2012, dir. Sam Mendes), which has the devastated Bond cradling M as she dies. Within the 007 universe, M has become something of a mother-like figure to Bond, and thus the motif in Skyfall exchanges the roles of the two figures: the metaphorical son holding the body of his dying mother. In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, dir. Peter Jackson), Sam cradles the exhausted and near-comatose Frodo on the slopes of Mount Doom before making the decision to carry him so that the quest can be fulfilled. The variations upon this theme are near-endless, and the contexts in which the Pietà is invoked are frequently secular, or at least not explicitly religious. And yet the underlying symbolism of the motif lingers. The pose is typically used in popular culture at a particular point in the story, often connected with a heroic moment in which the hero sacrifices him- or herself for the greater good. Fighting this heroic battle, the protagonist either dies or is believed to have died before unexpectedly coming back to life. It is not hard to see parallels with the dying Christ as a sacrifice for the sins of humankind in the underlying symbolism of such stories. The moment of mourning the fallen hero has such a deep resonance because it is a narrative archetype, recurring in a thousand forms in the stories that move us the most.

6

Joy

It is the Easter Vigil. Candles illuminate the dark church. The congregation has come together to celebrate Christ’s resurrection from the grave. The deacon stands at the front, prepared to start the reading. A parchment scroll is brought forth and slowly unrolled. The deacon begins to sing the text on the scroll. His voice carries to the furthest crevices and darkest corners of the building, an elaborate melody of keen and ancient beauty.

Exult, let them exult, the hosts of heaven, exult, let Angel ministers of God exult, let the trumpet of salvation sound aloud our mighty King’s triumph! Be glad, let earth be glad, as glory floods her, ablaze with light from her eternal King, let all corners of the earth be glad, knowing an end to gloom and darkness.

As he sings, the scroll is further unrolled and its top is draped further and further over the lectern, so that it becomes visible to the congregation. In the flickering candlelight those at the front of the church are able to glimpse the pictures that are interspersed with the text on the scroll. The images are upside down in relation to the text the deacon sings, allowing the congregation to see them more easily. Scenes from the Old Testament are revealed in the half-light of the church: Adam and Eve, the parting of the Red Sea; scenes from the life of Christ: the crucifixion, Christ enthroned, the paschal lamb. The images unfurl before the people’s eyes, taking their cues from the hymn sung by the deacon, lending colour and substance to the words that praise Christ’s resurrection from the dead:

This is the night when Christ broke the prison bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld. Our birth would have been no gain, had we not been redeemed. O wonder of your humble care for us! O love, O charity beyond all telling, to ransom a slave you gave away your Son! O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer!

These words are from the Exsultet (meaning ‘rejoice’), the Easter proclamation, which expresses the exuberant joy at the resurrection of Christ. Good Friday is over, and the light has returned. The broken world is healed by the voluntary sacrifice of God become man. Even in the darkest night, there is hope. Hope rises like a flame, conquering the shadows of death and despair. This is the thought that dominates the liturgical ceremonies of Easter. It is the most important feast of the church calendar, the feast without which none of the other feasts would exist. Without it, none of the other practices of the Christian faith would make sense. This is the night of Christ’s resurrection, the night when life rises from the grave triumphant. After the abyss of horror and despair of the crucifixion, explored to its very depths by the poetry and music of the Triduum, comes a new day. Christ’s tomb is empty. The light of new life radiates from the symbolism of the liturgy. We have already caught a glimpse of this symbolism in the scene that opened this book: the new fire is lit, blessed and carried into the pitch-black church. Each member of the congregation carries a taper, and as the candles are successively lighted, the church is gradually illuminated, a visible sign of the return of life after the darkness of the tomb, and the joy of those who are redeemed. Joy is central to the Easter liturgy. Joy shines through every word, every movement, every gesture. Joy particularly speaks through the Exsultet, which is perhaps the most intensely poetic hymn of the entire liturgical year. Its imagery is particularly rich, combining typological references to the Old Testament and complex theological ideas with a tender consideration of seemingly small and insignificant things, such as the bees that produced the wax of the great Easter candle. The great and the small things of heaven and earth meet in this triumphant hymn of praise, which presents its ideas like a kaleidoscope of images. It is a hymn that invokes all senses, an effect that in the Middle Ages was often heightened by the use of colourful illustrations on the Exsultet scrolls that the people were able to glimpse, along with the smell of incense and the touch of the wax tapers held by all. The moving power of the Exsultet becomes particularly clear in performance. Given here are both the Latin original and an English translation, which are best read while listening to a recording of the hymn as it is sung.

Exsultet iam angelica turba caelorum: exsultent divina mysteria: et pro tanti Regis victoria tuba insonet salutaris.

Exult, let them exult, the hosts of heaven, exult, let Angel ministers of God exult, let the trumpet of salvation sound aloud our mighty King’s triumph!

Gaudeat et tellus, tantis irradiata fulgoribus: et aeterni Regis splendore illustrata, totius orbis se sentiat amisisse caliginem.

Be glad, let earth be glad, as glory floods her, ablaze with light from her eternal King, let all corners of the earth be glad, knowing an end to gloom and darkness.

Laetetur et mater Ecclesia, tanti luminis adornata fulgoribus: et magnis populorum vocibus haec aula resultet.

Rejoice, let Mother Church also rejoice, arrayed with the lightning of his glory, let this holy building shake with joy, filled with the mighty voices of the peoples.

Quapropter adstantes vos, fratres carissimi, ad tam miram huius sancti luminis claritatem, una mecum, quaeso, Dei omnipotentis misericordiam invocate. Ut, qui me non meis meritis intra Levitarum numerum dignatus est aggregare, luminis sui claritatem infundens, cerei huius laudem implere perficiat. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum Filium suum qui cum eo vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum.

Therefore, dearest friends, standing in the awesome glory of this holy light, invoke with me, I ask you, the mercy of God almighty, that he, who has been pleased to number me, though unworthy, among the Levites, may pour into me his light unshadowed, that I may sing this candle’s perfect praises. Through our Lord Jesus Christ His Son, who with Him and the Holy Ghost lives and reigns, one God for ever and ever.

R. Amen.

Amen.

V. Dominus vobiscum.

Deacon: The Lord be with you.

R. Et cum spiritu tuo.

People: And with your spirit.

V. Sursum corda.

Deacon: Lift up your hearts.

R. Habemus ad Dominum.

People: We lift them up to the Lord.

V. Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro.

Deacon: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

R. Dignum et iustum est.

People: It is right and just.

Vere dignum et iustum est, invisibilem Deum Patrem omnipotentem, Filiumque eius unigenitum, Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, toto cordis ac mentis affectu, et vocis ministerio personare.

It is truly right and just, with ardent love of mind and heart and with devoted service of our voice, to acclaim our God invisible, the almighty Father, and Jesus Christ, our Lord, his Son, his only begotten.

Qui pro nobis aeterno Patri Adae debitum solvit, et veteris piaculi cautionem pio cruore detersit.

Who for our sake paid Adam’s debt to the eternal Father, and, pouring out his own dear blood, wiped clean the record of our ancient sinfulness.

Haec sunt enim festa paschalia, in quibus verus ille Agnus occiditur, cuius sanguine postes fidelium consecrantur.

These, then, are the feasts of Passover, in which is slain the Lamb, the one true Lamb, whose blood anoints the doorposts of believers.

Haec nox est, in qua primum patres nostros, filios Israel eductos de Ægypto, Mare Rubrum sicco vestigio transire fecisti.

This is the night when once you led our forebears, Israel’s children, from slavery in Egypt and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea.

Haec igitur nox est, quae peccatorum tenebras columnae illuminatione purgavit.

This is the night that with a pillar of fire banished the darkness of sin.

Haec nox est, quae hodie per universum mundum in Christo credentes, a vitiis saeculi et caligine peccatorum segregatos, reddit gratiae, sociat sanctitati.

This is the night that even now throughout the world, sets Christian believers apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, leading them to grace and joining them to his holy ones.

Haec nox est, in qua, destructis vinculis mortis, Christus ab inferis victor ascendit.

This is the night when Christ broke the prison bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld.

Nihil enim nobis nasci profuit, nisi redimi profuisset.

Our birth would have been no gain, had we not been redeemed.

O mira circa nos tuae pietatis dignatio!

O wonder of your humble care for us!

O inaestimabilis dilectio caritatis: ut servum redimeres, Filium tradidisti!

O love, O charity beyond all telling, to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!

O certe necessarium Adae peccatum, quod Christi morte deletum est!

O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!

O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!

O happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer!

O vere beata nox, quae sola meruit scire tempus et horam, in qua Christus ab inferis resurrexit!

O truly blessed night, worthy alone to know the time and hour when Christ rose from the underworld!

Haec nox est, de qua scriptum est: Et nox sicut dies illuminabitur: et nox illuminatio mea in deliciis meis.

This is the night of which it is written: The night shall be as bright as day, dazzling is the night for me, and full of gladness.

Huius igitur sanctificatio noctis fugat scelera, culpas lavat: et reddit innocentiam lapsis et maestis laetitiam.

Fugat odia, concordiam parat, et curvat imperia.

The sanctifying power of this night dispels wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners, drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty.

In huius igitur noctis gratia, suscipe, sancte Pater, laudis huius sacrificium vespertinum, quod tibi in hac cerei oblatione solemni, per ministrorum manus de operibus apum, sacrosancta reddit Ecclesia.

On this, your night of grace, O holy Father, accept this candle, a solemn offering, the work of bees and of your servants’ hands, an evening sacrifice of praise, this gift from your most holy Church.

Sed iam columnae huius praeconia novimus, quam in honorem Dei rutilans ignis accendit.

But now we know the praises of this pillar, which glowing fire ignites for God’s honour,

Qui, licet sit divisus in partes, mutuati tamen luminis detrimenta non novit.

a fire into many flames divided,

yet never dimmed by sharing of its light,

Alitur enim liquantibus ceris, quas in substantiam pretiosae huius lampadis apis mater eduxit.

for it is fed by melting wax, drawn out by mother bees to build a torch so precious.

O vere beata nox, quae expoliavit Ægyptios, ditavit Hebraeos! Nox in qua terrenis caelestia, humanis divina iunguntur!

O truly blessed night, which spoiled the Egyptians and made rich the Hebrews! Night in which things of heaven are wed to those of earth, and divine to the human.

Oramus ergo te, Domine, ut cereus iste in honorem tui nominis consecratus, ad noctis huius caliginem destruendam, indeficiens perseveret.

Therefore, O Lord, we pray you that this candle, hallowed to the honour of your name, may persevere undimmed, to overcome the darkness of this night.

Et in odorem suavitatis acceptus, supernis luminaribus misceatur.

Receive it as a pleasing fragrance, and let it mingle with the lights of heaven.

Flammas eius lucifer matutinus inveniat.

May this flame be found still burning by the Morning Star:

Ille, inquam, lucifer, qui nescit occasum.

Ille, qui regressus ab inferis, humano generi serenus illuxit.

the one Morning Star who never sets, Christ your Son, who, coming back from death’s domain, has shed his peaceful light on humanity.¹

The words are rich and evocative. The Exsultet is a truly ancient part of the liturgy, going back to the fourth or early fifth century AD. Throughout the Middle Ages there was local variation between different versions of the text and the melody to which it was sung, before it became more standardized. Today it is often sung in the vernacular rather than Latin, but the essence of its ideas and imagery has remained stable over different centuries and in different places. The imagery of light illuminating the darkness and lifting the shadows of death is a central theme throughout the hymn. Christ is the bringer of light to a world in darkness, which is suddenly set ‘ablaze with light from her eternal King’. Christ is hailed as ‘the one Morning Star who never sets . . . who, coming back from death’s domain, has shed his peaceful light on humanity’. With its emphasis on light dispelling the darkness, the hymn echoes the sensory experiences by which the congregation is surrounded in the liturgical celebration. The text makes reference to the dramaturgy of the liturgy as the light of the Easter candle is shared by the tapers of the faithful, ‘a fire into many flames divided, yet never dimmed by sharing of its light’. The words reflect the ritual, and the ritual reflects the words.² The hymn is loosely structured by the recurring phrase ‘This is the night’, which exalts the Easter vigil as a moment long foretold and central to human history. It uses typological readings of key events of the Old Testament, such as the exodus from slavery in Egypt and God leading the Israelites through the desert with a pillar of fire, as prophecies of the redemption through Christ. These promises are all fulfilled in this one night when Christ rises from the tomb. We encounter, as in so many other liturgical texts, an understanding of the Christian celebration as a continuation and fulfilment of the history of the people of Israel, who are described as ‘our forebears’. It is striking, too, that the text describes the resurrection as an event not of the past but of the present: ‘This is the night’, rather than ‘That was the night’. In the liturgical celebration, the past becomes the present. We are not merely commemorating a past event but participating in it through the ritual because of its everlasting significance for every individual person. All of humankind is redeemed, including each member of the present congregation. This historical event, which happened many centuries ago in the Middle East, is still relevant, still present, still celebrated through the liturgical ritual: ‘This is the night when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld.’

The understanding of time implied by these words is different from the kind of chronological reckoning of time that we encounter in everyday life. The logic of the text is not based on a progression from hour to hour, year to year, century to century, but rests on a type of thinking that sees time as relative, expressed as a series of relationships between the past and the present, prophecy and fulfilment. This fulfilment in the form of the redemption is so central to human history that it is not bound by the normal daily progression of time; it is continually present, and can be repeatedly made present in the liturgy. On a poetic level, however, these ideas create a rich web of resonances, by which the pillar of fire in the desert becomes a mirror of the lighted Easter candle in front of the congregation’s eyes. Everything is interconnected: words, objects and present experience are linked.

The section framed by the repetition of ‘This is the night’ then shifts to a different mode of expression. Typological references give way to repeated exclamations that express wonder at the abundant love of God for humankind: ‘O love, O charity beyond all telling, to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!’ This is followed by what is certainly the most controversial idea in the entire hymn: ‘O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault that earned for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer!’ This is an idea often referred to by its Latin term, O felix culpa (‘O happy fault’). Embedded as it is in this richly poetic hymn of praise, it is easy to miss just how radical this thought is. The Christian faith rests upon the idea that humankind is fallen, that the world is broken, that things are not as they should be, as expressed in the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Paradise. Equally foundational is the idea that in order to repair what has been broken and heal humankind from the consequences of the Fall, Christ became incarnate and died as a willing sacrifice. The felix culpa motif turns this narrative upside down: Adam’s sin was necessary, it was even a ‘happy’ event, as it brought about such an inestimably wonderful thing as the incarnation of God himself. Within a Christian framework, to describe the Fall as necessary and fortunate could hardly be more provocative. Indeed it has been controversially debated by theologians through the ages, and has sometimes been excised from the hymn in different churches and traditions, particularly by Protestant reformers who took exception to the idea. Yet the early liturgy boldly makes this claim. The idea is rooted in the writings of the Church fathers, such as St Ambrose and St Augustine, who writes that ‘God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.’³ The felix culpa idea stretches paradox to its limits with its underlying logic that the unexpectedly fortunate outcome of an unfortunate event would not exist, had the unfortunate event not occurred in the first place. By this logic, the unfortunate event itself is redefined as something positive. The ‘necessary sin of Adam’ is an idea so radical and paradoxical that it is perhaps only palatable in the liturgical context in which it occurs, accompanied by rich symbolism, and presented not as a sermon but as a poetic song.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the unexpected and provocative nature of this idea, it quickly became part of the fabric of Western thinking about the Fall. We see the motif reflected in a range of medieval texts, such as the carol ‘Adam lay y-bounden’, which is still sung in church services in the English choral tradition today. Here is a slightly modernized version:

Adam lay ybounden, bounden in a bond;

Four thousand winter thought he not too long.

And all was for an apple, an apple that he took,

As clerkes finden written in their book.

Nor had the apple taken been, the apple taken been,

Then had never Our Lady a-been heaven’s queen.

Blessed be the time that apple taken was!

Therefore we may singen, Deo gratias!⁴ [= ‘Thanks be to God’]

The carol refers to the Fall as the taking of an apple, a somewhat more tangible version of Genesis, where Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Adam is described as being ‘bounden in a bond’ for ‘four thousand winter’ – according to medieval views, the length of time that was believed to have elapsed between the expulsion from Paradise and the redemption through Christ. Adam’s punishment for the taking of the apple ends with the salvation of the world, and hope is restored. In the middle of the carol, after the first two stanzas, there is an abrupt shift: what has previously been alluded to in negative terms suddenly turns into something positive. If the apple had not been taken, if the Fall had not happened, the great mystery of the incarnation would also not have happened. Mary would never have become the mother of God and queen of heaven. Based on this shift of perspective, which looks at the positive outcome of a negative event, the final stanza then paradoxically praises the Fall and declares that the taking of the apple was a ‘blessed’ event. This poetic text very clearly echoes the felix culpa of the liturgy. It is deliberately designed to turn upside down our ideas of what it means to define something as good or bad. The redemption through God’s own son is unexpected, shocking, unhoped-for; it stands outside our usual frames of reference, and the texts emphasize this with ideas that are meant to startle and provoke.

The felix culpa motif had a long afterlife. John Milton (1608–1674) refers to the same idea in Paradise Lost, where Adam praises the goodness of God with the following words:

Oh goodness infinite, goodness immense!

That all this good of evil shall produce,

And evil turn to good; more wonderful

Than that which by creation first brought forth

Light out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand,

Whether I should repent me now of sin

By me done, and occasioned; or rejoice

Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring;

To God more glory, more good will to men

From God, and over wrath grace shall abound.⁵

In Paradise Lost the felix culpa paradox leaves Adam personally conflicted. He is unsure whether he should repent of his sin – the reaction which we would see as appropriate under normal circumstances – or in fact do the opposite and rejoice that his sin has brought about an even greater good: ‘over wrath grace shall abound’. There is no easy answer to Adam’s conundrum. The problem is not one of logic, but one of perspective and timescales:⁶ only in hindsight does it become clear whether an unfortunate event has led to fortunate consequences. Milton’s Adam is both within and outside of time. He speaks with the knowledge of the coming of Christ, knowledge which stands outside of the timeline of normal earthly chronology, which contends with the perspective of the supposed historical Adam who does not have the knowledge that his Fall will have a good outcome. The historical Adam wants to repent of his sin as he sees its negative outcomes, while the Adam with foreknowledge of the redemption wants to rejoice. Temporal and eternal perspectives are not easily reconciled. A thing can both be bad and turn out to be good in hindsight, depending on one’s point of view. As the liturgy indicates, believers have to hold both of these aspects in balance and accept the paradox. The Fall is both unfortunate and, through God’s unexpected intervention, the most fortunate thing that has ever happened.

The use of the motif was not restricted to religious contexts and narratives of the Fall and redemption; we also find it, for instance, as a literary motif in an Arthurian romance of the fourteenth century entitled Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The plot of the story is complex, but at its core it revolves around the redefinition of a sign of failure as a sign of victory. Sir Gawain, the hero of the story, is sent on a quest to find the mysterious and monstrous Green Knight at the Green Chapel. In order to keep his honour, Gawain must accept a blow to the neck with the Green Knight’s axe. Gawain tries to live up to the challenge, but in fear of his life accepts the gift of a green girdle said to protect the life of whoever wears it. Although he had initially promised to surrender the gift, Gawain secretly keeps the girdle for himself. When he meets the Green Knight, his courage is tested and his life is spared. Gawain has proved himself a worthy knight, but with a single fault: he has not surrendered the green girdle. Gawain returns to King Arthur’s court wearing the green girdle around his arm as a sign of his shame at his failure to keep his promise. Happy to see Gawain alive, the knights of the round table absolve him from all blame, and collectively start to wear green girdles on their arms in recognition of Gawain’s quest. In this way an unfortunate event – Gawain’s failure to live up to his word – is redefined as a token of honour worn by all of King Arthur’s knights. Gawain’s fault has become a happy fault. The implications of the motif in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are less universal and far-reaching than that of the redemption of humankind, but the same idea of the felix culpa echoes through the story.

We also find the idea of the Fortunate Fall expressed in visual art from the Middle Ages and beyond. Medieval representations of the Fall frequently include references to the crucifixion, or juxtapose the two images in a way that makes clear that Christ’s sacrifice atones for Adam’s Fall. For instance, in the south rose window at Lyon Cathedral, the expulsion from Paradise and the crucifixion are depicted on opposite sides, paralleling and balancing each other in the structure of the window. The parallel between the two scenes was emphasized by the fact that both the Fall and the redemption of humankind came from a tree: the Tree of Knowledge in Eden and the wood of the cross, respectively. The medieval imagination was much preoccupied by this parallel, giving birth to a number of legends that connected the wood of the cross quite literally with the tree of Paradise, whose fruit prompted the Fall. The Holy Cross legend weaves these connections into a story in which Adam’s son is given a seed from the tree of Paradise and plants it in his father’s grave. From this seed grows a young tree which, after many centuries, is cut down and eventually becomes the cross of Christ. The legend was extremely popular in the medieval period. It seems that a story that created a connection between the two trees, which was palpable rather than merely metaphorical, touched a nerve.

A late heir to this tradition is a stained-glass window at Saint Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana, produced at the beginning of the twentieth century (illus. 15). In the lower half we see Adam and Eve being banished from Paradise. The serpent is curling around the trunk of a tree, which appears like a traditional representation of the Tree of Knowledge if we look at the image in isolation. If we look at the upper part of the window, however, the tree grows into the tree of the cross on which Christ is suspended. The expulsion and the crucifixion scene are intimately connected; the tree from which came the Fall grows to be the tree on which humankind is redeemed. Out of death comes life. O happy fault!

15 Crucifixion and Adam and Eve, stained glass, Saint Meinrad Archabbey, Indiana.

The Easter liturgy may abound in joyful paradoxes, but it also teems with other exuberant expressions of joy. Certainly the most memorable and widely known of these is the exclamation ‘Alleluia’, which also occurs in the spelling ‘Hallelujah’. Today the word is used in everyday contexts that often have nothing to do with religion, but still express joy or relief: ‘I made it to the meeting on time, hallelujah!’ Originally, though, the word was a loan from Hebrew, expressing praise of God in psalms and prayers. It literally means ‘praise God’, composed of the Hebrew words hallēl ‘to praise’ and yāh, a shortened form of the Hebrew holy name of God, Yahweh. The spelling ‘Alleluia’ mirrors the Greek form, which was also adopted into Latin. Along with ‘Amen’, it is one of the few Hebrew words taken over untranslated in most biblical translations and in both Latin and Greek liturgies. It is a word familiar to all branches of Christianity, regardless of whether services are celebrated in Latin, Greek, English, Spanish, Vietnamese or any other language. Biblical translators clearly felt that the Hebrew version of the word carried a power or expressed a feeling that a translation simply could not match. The word is melodic and beautiful, including a range of different vowels connected by the consonant ‘l’, which gives it a flowing sound, almost like water. It is a uniquely singable word in the way in which it rolls off the tongue. Perhaps this is why it was felt to be such an appropriate word of praise. In the Bible the word occurs primarily in the psalms, at the beginning or conclusion of psalms of praise as a kind of acclamation giving glory to God. The word is included in Jewish worship, in a prayer known as Hallel, where six psalms of praise are recited at specific feast days, including Passover. Outside of the psalms, Alleluia is a relatively rare word in the Bible. Nonetheless, it is a regular and constant feature of Christian liturgies. As an expression of exuberant joy, Alleluia is associated first and foremost with the celebration of Easter. In the Western liturgical tradition this is particularly marked as the Alleluia is not sung during Lent, the period preceding Easter, only to return triumphantly in the celebration of the resurrection of the saviour. St Augustine explained the significance of the absent Alleluia as follows:

The season before Easter signifies the tribulations in which we live now, while the time after Easter which we are celebrating at present signifies our happiness in the future . . . This is why we dedicate the first season to fasting and prayer, but now the fast is over and we devote the present season to praise. This is the meaning of the Alleluia we sing.⁷

Lent is a sombre period of fasting and penance, and this fasting is metaphorically echoed in liturgical practice: the church is fasting from the Alleluia. In medieval France various customs arose to make this absence of the Alleluia more tangible. In some places the Alleluia was physically buried in a solemn ceremony at the start of Lent. A hole was dug in the parish garden for a banner or wooden board on which was written the word ‘Alleluia’, only to be retrieved at Easter. This was not an official church service and the clergy did not officiate. Rather it was the choirboys who took the lead in the burial of the Alleluia, as a fifteenth-century statue book from a church at Toul reports:

On Saturday before Septuagesima Sunday all choir boys gather in the sacristy during the prayer of the None, to prepare for the burial of the Alleluia. After the last Benedicamus [i.e., at the end of the service] they march in procession, with crosses, tapers, holy water and censers; and they carry a coffin, as in a funeral. Thus they proceed through the aisle, moaning and mourning, until they reach the cloister. There they bury the coffin; they sprinkle it with holy water and incense it; whereupon they return to the sacristy by the same way.⁸

At the paschal celebration of the resurrection of Christ, the Alleluia was also resurrected, both in physical form in the parish garden and as part of liturgical singing.

The Alleluia appears in the music of the liturgy in many different shapes and forms, with a rich tradition of different chant settings that express the joy of Easter with elaborate melodies. Composers of sacred music through the ages continually came up with new and different ways to voice the joyous character of the Alleluia. The musical form in which the word is probably most widely known today, however, is Handel’s setting of the Hallelujah Chorus. Although it was originally written as part of the oratorio Messiah, the chorus has become a famous stand-alone piece, used in a wide range of contexts from religious services to adverts and television series such as South Park and The Simpsons. It is a uniquely memorable and moving piece, and audiences around the world often express their love for it by rising to their feet whenever it is performed. Handel’s piece takes its cue from the Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament. The Alleluia here occurs in the context of a mystical vision of worship in a renewed heaven, where God is praised with the words ‘Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth’ (19:6). The word ‘Hallelujah’ occurs as a memorable, short motif at the beginning and throughout the chorus. Charles Jennens, Handel’s librettist, adds to the quotation from the Book of Revelation the lines ‘The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever’ (11:15). This text is interspersed with repeated exclamations of ‘Hallelujah’. Perhaps the most exciting part of the piece occurs towards the end, when the final acclamation ‘King of Kings and Lord of Lords’ is repeated at an increasingly higher pitch by the sopranos, accompanied by trumpets, raising musical tension until it culminates in a final Hallelujah chord as a triumphant, solemn praise of God. It is hardly surprising that many people feel so moved by this piece that they cannot stay in their seats.

The Alleluia has stirred not only concert hall audiences, but entire armies. The Venerable Bede, in his seventh-century historical account of the early years of the Christian Church in Britain, tells the story of the ‘Alleluia Victory’. It recounts how in the year AD 430, Briton villagers on the Welsh borders were subject to attacks by the pagan tribes of the Picts and Saxons. Just after Easter, when many members of the army of the Britons had been newly baptized, they learnt that a great host of the Picts and Saxons was travelling towards them, preparing for a violent attack. A Christian bishop named Germanus offered to lead the Britons into battle. Germanus decided to waylay their foes in a narrow valley encompassed by hills, and instructed his army to repeat the words that he would speak, and shout them at the top of their voices. Bede writes:

as the enemy approached confidently, believing that their coming was unexpected, the bishops shouted ‘Alleluia’ three times. A universal shout of ‘Alleluia’ followed, and the echoes from the surrounding hills multiplied and increased the sound. The enemy forces were smitten with dread, fearing that not only the surrounding rocks but even the very frame of heaven itself would fall upon them.

In blind panic, the enemy host took flight and was caught in a nearby river, where many men drowned. The Britons celebrated their unexpected victory, which had been accomplished without shedding of blood.⁹ According to the belief of the early Christians in the British Isles, the victory of the risen Christ over sin and death could also give them victory over their pagan enemies – sometimes simply by shouting ‘Alleluia’.

7

Death

Somewhere in medieval Europe, in some remote monastery on a cold winter’s evening, a monk sitting in his lonely cell decided what death sounds like. He was trying to set a poem to music, a poem to describe the horror, grief and destruction of the Day of Doom in the most evocative language. The poem was gripping, but the music the monk invented was what made it truly haunting. It contained a simple, distinctive tune of just a few descending notes, in a key that sounded hollow and ominous. The tune of death was a stroke of genius. We will never know who the monk was, but his music has survived. It was passed down the ages, first from monastery to monastery, and later picked up by composers writing for general entertainment rather than religious purposes. Whenever they wanted to create a haunting atmosphere of danger, death and despair, this was their favourite tune to use, and it never failed to cast its spell. You can even find it in films today. Were you gripped by the spine-chilling music in Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King (2003) that plays when the armies of Mordor march forth against Gondor? Or by the music in Jaws (1975, dir. Steven Spielberg) when the shark is closing in on its intended victims? Or by the terrifying march that accompanies the Huns’ attack in Disney’s animated film Mulan (1998)? What they all have in common is the same threatening tune that aurally convinces us that something dangerous and sinister is afoot. We are listening to the musical shorthand for death.

Much is unclear about the history of this music. We will probably never know whether it really was one monk in his solitary cell who wrote it, as the tune may have been the product of the creative efforts of several people, perhaps over many years. But what matters more than the historical circumstances under which the music was created is the fact that it survived many centuries and, in Western culture, became almost synonymous with ideas of death and destruction. It is commonly referred to as the musical motif of Dies irae, named after the poem that inspired the music. It still is the most frequently invoked motif in all of Western music, and often appears in film scores with grand orchestral settings, in operas and oratorios involving large choirs, with a volume and acoustic force that is not easily forgotten by the audience. The origins of the music, however, are more humble, and start, as all liturgical singing, with plainchant and a simple musical motif, which was to become the defining tune of death.

But what was the text that inspired this music and was to become so profoundly influential in expressing a feeling of impending doom and destruction? The Latin poem starting with the words Dies irae (‘day of wrath’) is a text full of astonishing imagery describing the Day of Doom. It features trumpets, dead bodies rising from their graves and a fearsome judge. The ideas are traditional, taking inspiration from the Bible and established Christian beliefs, but nowhere do they find a more powerful expression than in this poem. The text is both gripping in its content and masterful in its form, switching between a descriptive and an intensely personal perspective. It is hardly surprising that this poem would exert a virtually unending fascination on artists for centuries to come.

The poem is most frequently attributed to Thomas of Celano, a thirteenth-century Italian friar. Friars were members of a mendicant religious order: having taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, they lived itinerant lives of preaching and apostolic mission in service of the community. This meant that friars were closely connected with the concerns of laypeople, and in the Middle Ages became a driving force in literary activity, particularly in the writing of poetry. Thomas of Celano was a friend and biographer of St Francis, the famous Italian saint after whom the Franciscans are named. A friar as the author of Dies irae would certainly be plausible, but other figures have been put forward as potential authors of the poem, including St Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) and St Bonaventure (d. 1274). The number of potential authors who have been named is testimony to the enduring power of the poem, which gave rise to a curiosity about its origins.

To understand the poem in its context and fully appreciate its imaginative power, we have to be aware of Christian views of the afterlife. Like all religions, the Christian faith has a set of beliefs regarding death, including specific ideas about a judgement that awaits the deceased. The Christian idea of judgement after death has two aspects: one is a particular judgement of each person after death, the other is a general judgement at the end of time. Christianity inherits ideas about God’s judgement of mankind at the end of the world and the coming resurrection of the dead from the Jewish tradition, although Jewish apocalyptic literature contains a wide divergence of views on this event. Filtered and reinterpreted through a Christian lens, these ideas take on a particular form in the later Christian tradition, particularly during the Middle Ages. Some aspects of these ideas tend to be emphasized more or less in different periods, but their essence has remained stable over the course of many centuries. At its core, Christianity believes in a judgement after death, in which each individual person will be judged by God according to their good and bad actions in life. If the good outweighs the bad, the soul will be rewarded with eternal life in heaven, but evil actions will be punished by eternal death in hell. We are familiar with traditional representations of heaven and hell in art by images of light, sun, clouds, pointing towards a realm of beauty above, in opposition to darkness, terror and fire in a devil-swarmed realm below. In a more abstract theological sense, heaven is understood as the presence of God, who is life, truth, goodness and beauty, whereas hell is eternal separation from God, and by extension the absence of those positive qualities in a realm of death, lies, horror and evil.

This particular judgement awaits each individual soul immediately after their physical death. Even though the outcome of this judgement is heaven or hell eternal, according to the medieval understanding (which is later continued by the Catholic Church) there is a recognition that people are neither straightforwardly saintly nor purely evil, but that in most people’s lives good deeds and bad actions are intermingled. Many good people die in a state in which they are too imperfect to enter into the presence of God directly. This intermediate state is represented by the idea of purgatory as a state of purification, which a soul has to undergo after death before it is admitted to heaven, provided that the good actions during a person’s life outweigh the bad ones. The outcome of this particular judgement, then, may be the commitment of a soul to purgatory for a certain period of time according to the gravity of the person’s faults, until it has been cleansed of its wrong inclinations and deeds. According to the medieval understanding, later contested by Protestant reformers, the progress of a soul through purgatory can be helped and expedited by the living through their prayers for the dead.

This individual judgement is distinct from the idea of a general judgement awaiting all of humankind at the end of time at the Day of Judgement, also frequently referred to as the Last Judgement, the Day of Wrath and the Day of Doom. Once the history of earth has run its course, Christ will come again in glory, the dead will be resurrected and given back their bodies, to stand before the judge on the day of universal judgement. The idea is based upon a number of biblical verses, in particular those in Revelation, in which the prophetic voice speaks of the future judgement:

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20:11–15)

The passage emphasizes the strict separation between those who have done good works and those who will be cast into the ‘lake of fire’. Particularly striking here is the image of good and bad works being recorded in books that are brought forth as evidence at the trial, an idea which was frequently echoed in representations of the Day of Judgement in art. There is a key difference between the concepts of universal judgement and particular judgement: at the end of time there will be no more purgatory, but the judgement will be a final and eternal division between those in heaven in the presence of God and those in hell suffering eternal separation from God. The ultimate hope of the Christian faith, then, is the expectation of salvation from the torments of hell in order to have eternal life in the fullness of God’s glory. This expectation of the final things, the ultimate destiny of the individual soul and the whole created world – a set of ideas often referred to as ‘eschatology’ – shaped the imagination of the Christian West from the Middle Ages for many centuries, and is reflected in the art, literature and music of these periods. Perhaps the most famous artistic representation of the Last Judgement is Michelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, but the subject goes back far earlier to medieval times and the tradition of ‘doom paintings’, which display the Judgement on a large scale on church walls. The apocalyptic scene also frequently appears in medieval cathedrals as a tympanum carved above an entrance to the building, which is decorated with reliefs presenting to the viewer the Day of Judgement in all its awful detail. The central west portal at Bourges Cathedral, France, for instance, creates a striking narrative (illus. 16). Christ as judge is enthroned in the middle of the scene. The bottommost panel shows the dead rising from their graves, anticipation and dread written on their faces. Tombstones are upturned and lie scattered about. In the panel above the rising dead, an angel is weighing up the virtues and faults of humankind with a scale. Those deemed worthy of entering into heaven are congregated on Christ’s right with blissful expressions on their faces, whereas the damned on the left are attacked by grimacing devils and at last thrown into the terrifying mouth of hell and engulfed by flames. The twisted bodies to Christ’s left form a stark contrast to the serene figures of the blessed on his right. On the panel above, Christ is surrounded by angels holding instruments of the Passion, such as the cross, the nails and the crown of thorns (also known as the arma Christi, the ‘weapons of Christ’). Implicit in the relief is a question for the viewer of this awe-inspiring scene: where will I stand on the Day of Judgement? Will I be called among the saved, or hounded by devils into the depths of hell? At the same time, the scene presents an answer to these questions: the only hope lies in taking refuge in the merits of the Passion of Christ and imploring God for mercy, as modelled by two kneeling figures in the corners of the central panel.

The quality of the scene is highly dramatic; the events of the Day of Judgement are narrated through images that are symbolic and at the same time shockingly vivid. The viewer on the steps of the portal, about to enter the cathedral, receives a call to action, something akin to: ‘Use well the time still left to you on earth, and pray for yourself and for others.’ In this way, the present and the future become closely intertwined. The actions of today stand in a close relationship with the events at the end of time, as they determine the ultimate destination of each individual.

16 Portal of the Last Judgement, Bourges Cathedral, c. 1195–1240.

These connections between present and future, bound up with ideas of particular judgement and universal judgement at the end of time, make it easy to see why the idea of the Last Judgement took on a special role in the context of prayers for the dead. The medieval church placed an emphasis on prayers and devotions for the souls of the deceased so that they might be released from purgatory. In their ritualized, liturgical form, prayers for the dead occurred in particular in the Requiem Mass, the Mass said at funerals for the repose of the soul of a deceased, and repeated annually on All Souls’ Day on 2 November. The texts of the Requiem Mass draw an impactful connection between the fate of the souls of the recently deceased and the coming universal judgement: while we pray for the dead, we are also reminded of our own death and the final realities we will have to face when the judge returns to weigh up our merits and failings. The liturgy encourages us to see an individual’s death not just as an occasion for grief and prayers, but also as a memento mori for the living. A few centuries later, Metaphysical poet John Donne in his 1624 work Devotions upon Emergent Occasions wrote the famous words ‘and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.’ Donne was a Protestant, but at its core the idea is a similar one: the fates of the living and the dead are closely intertwined.

Part of the Requiem Mass is the Dies irae, the most famous and long-lived poetic engagement with the theme of the Last Judgement. The poem picks up on many traditional motifs that we also encounter in the Bible and in medieval visual culture, but it does so in a uniquely impactful way.

1 Dies irae, dies illa

solvet saeclum in favilla,

teste David cum Sibylla.

A day of wrath; that day,

it will dissolve the world into glowing ashes,

as attested by David together with the Sibyl.

2 Quantus tremor est futurus,

quando iudex est venturus,

cuncta stricte discussurus.

What trembling will there be,

when the Judge shall come

to examine everything in strict justice.

3 Tuba mirum spargens sonum,

per sepulchra regionum,

coget omnes ante thronum.

The trumpet’s wondrous call sounding abroad

in tombs throughout the world

shall drive everybody forward to the throne.

4 Mors stupebit et natura,

cum resurget creatura,

iudicanti responsura.

Death and nature shall stand amazed

when creation rises again

to give answer to its Judge.

5 Liber scriptus proferetur

in quo totum continetur,

unde mundus iudicetur.

A written book will be brought forth

in which everything is contained

from which the world shall be judged.

6 Iudex ergo cum sedebit,

quidquid latet, apparebit;

nil inultum remanebit.

So when the Judge is seated,

whatever is hidden will be made known:

nothing shall go unpunished.

7 Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?

Quem patronum rogaturus,

cum vix iustus sit securus?

What shall I, wretch, say at that time?

What advocate shall I entreat (to plead for me)

when scarcely the righteous shall be safe from damnation?

8 Rex tremendae maiestatis,

qui salvandos salvas gratis,

salva me, fons pietatis.

King of awesome majesty,

who grants salvation to those that are to be saved,

save me, o fount of piety.

9 Recordare, Iesu pie,

quod sum causa tuae viae:

ne me perdas illa die.

Remember, dear Jesus,

that I am the reason for your journey:

do not cast me away on that day.

10 Quaerens me, sedisti lassus:

redemisti crucem passus:

tantus labor non sit cassus.

Seeking me, you sat down weary,

You have redeemed me, suffering the death on the cross:

let not such toil have been in vain.

11 Iuste Iudex ultionis,

donum fac remissionis

ante diem rationis.

Just Judge of vengeance,

grant me the gift of pardon

before the day of reckoning.

12 Ingemisco tamquam reus:

culpa rubet vultus meus:

supplicanti parce, Deus.

I groan like one condemned:

my face blushes for my sins:

spare a supplicant, o God.

13 Qui Mariam absolvisti,

et latronem exaudisti,

mihi quoque spem dedisti.

You who absolved Mary,

and heard the robber,

gave hope to me as well.

14 Preces meae non sunt dignae:

sed tu bonus fac benigne,

ne perenni cremer igne.

My prayers are not worthy:

but you, of your goodness, deal generously with me,

that I burn not in the everlasting flame.

15 Inter oves locum praesta,

et ab haedis me sequestra,

statuens in parte dextra.

Give me a place among the sheep,

and separate me from the goats,

setting me on your right hand.

16 Confutatis maledictis,

flammis acribus addictis:

voca me cum benedictis.

When the accursed have been confounded

and sentenced to acrid flames,

call me along with the blessed.

17 Oro supplex et acclinis

cor contritum quasi cinis,

gere curam mei finis.

I prostrate myself, supplicating,

my heart in ashes, repentant;

take good care of my last moment!

18 Lacrymosa dies illa

qua resurget ex favilla

iudicandus homo reus.

Huic ergo parce, Deus:

Pie Iesu Domine,

dona eis requiem. Amen.

That day will be one of weeping

on which shall rise again from the embers

the guilty man, to be judged.

Therefore spare him, O God.

Merciful Lord Jesus,

grant them rest. Amen.¹

The poem is one of the finest examples of Latin liturgical poetry. The Latin text is arranged into stanzas of three eight-syllable lines rhyming aaa, bbb, ccc and so on, which is lost in the English translation. This regular pattern changes only towards the end of the poem, in stanza 18, which switches from triple rhymes to rhymed couplets. This has been seen as an indicator that the final stanza may originally have been a different, separate poem, which was appended to Dies irae at an early stage. However the poem came to exist in its current form, this is the version that has become widely known through its inclusion in the liturgy.

The poem dramatically imagines the events of the Last Judgement. The first stanza draws the reader in immediately: the approaching dreadful day is a ‘day of wrath’. The destruction of the world by fire and its dissolution into ashes is foretold by the two authoritative prophetic voices of David and the Sybil. We have already encountered David in Chapter One as the putative author of the psalms. The psalms contain multiple references to the day of God’s wrath, as in Psalm 110:5: ‘The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath.’ The reference to the Sibyl, here mentioned as the second credible witness, is somewhat more cryptic. It is not entirely clear to whom exactly the name refers, but the most common interpretation sees her name as a reference to the pagan oracles. Sibyls were virginal prophetesses who prophesied at holy sites in ancient Greece, the most famous of which was Delphi. The reference to a pagan prophetess in this context is likely prompted by visual traditions in Christian art since the thirteenth century, which tended to represent the Sibyls alongside Old Testament prophets. A late example of this tradition can be found in Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. The implication of this verbal juxtaposition of a Jewish prophet and a pagan oracle is clear: the coming of the Last Judgement is a fact universally acknowledged by both Judaeo-Christian and pagan sources of the ancient world. Nobody can claim ignorance of the coming Day of Wrath.

Stanzas 2–6 turn to a description of the Day of Doom in all its terrible detail. All creatures tremble in anticipation of the coming judgement. Summoned from their graves by a trumpet, the dead rise to stand before God’s throne and face their creator. All that was hidden will be brought out into the open, and a book will be brought forth that contains an account of every good and evil work which has ever been done. The striking images in these lines are full of biblical resonances. We have already encountered the idea of the book of life with its detailed record of good and evil in Revelation 20:15. The trumpet calling humankind to judgement is likewise a biblical idea, mentioned in both the Old and the New Testaments, perhaps most memorably in I Corinthians 15:51–2, famously quoted in Handel’s Messiah: ‘Behold, I tell you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’ The imagery in these lines is traditional, but the way in which this dramatic scene is laid out in the poem is novel and gripping. The events described are so great and terrible that even ‘death and nature’ themselves marvel to see them. Two of the most fundamental realities of human life become personified onlookers who stare in awe at the judgement as it unfolds. All-important as death and nature may seem to humans now, they will in the end be mere impotent bystanders in the face of such wondrous occurrences. They are not the final facts of human life, as something greater than them, something which even they cannot comprehend, is about to take place.

Having contemplated the scene on a grand scale, attended by death and nature in personified form, the poem then takes a sudden introspective turn. Stanza 7 features the first occurrence of the personal pronoun ‘I’. The speaker here becomes an everyman who can stand in for the individual reader as well as for all of humanity. The focus shifts to the speaker’s own reaction to the terrible events unfolding: it is a universal judgement, but by implication it is also a highly individual judgement. What will this judgement mean for me? If even those who have only done good during their lives on earth can only just be sure of their salvation, how will the judge respond to me, as I am so far from perfection? These are the questions that preoccupy the speaker. The answer can only be found in an appeal to God’s mercy. Stanzas 8–18 contain an extended prayer that juxtaposes images of God as a fearsome and righteous judge with images of Christ’s deeds of mercy to save humankind. Jesus is addressed directly here. In conversation with Christ, the speaker reminds him that the reason why he became man and suffered on the cross was to save each individual sinner. This appeal takes the shape of an intensely personal dialogue with Jesus – ‘Remember, dear Jesus, that I am the reason for your journey’ – culminating in a plea for the remission of the speaker’s sins before the fearful Day of Judgement, so that Christ’s suffering may not have been in vain. In a personal and emotional turn, two views of Christ – one as the just judge, the other as the merciful friend who dies in order to save humankind – are pitted against each other, so that the latter may prevail over the former.

Stanza 12 heightens this emotional appeal by focusing on the speaker’s shamefaced look and feelings of guilt. But the speaker has reasons to hope that all sins may be forgiven; after all, Jesus forgave two of the most prominent sinners he encountered: Mary and the robber. The first is a reference to Mary Magdalene, who was traditionally seen as a symbol of penitence. According to the gospels, Mary of Magdala was one of the followers of Jesus, and was present at his crucifixion and resurrection. Mary Magdalene was later conflated with an unnamed woman who anointed Jesus’ feet, mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. A reference to her as having lived ‘a sinful life’ (Luke 7:37) and an identification with Mary Magdalene led to the widespread belief that Mary had led a life of promiscuity before meeting Jesus, being forgiven by him and becoming one of his closest friends and disciples. As a result, medieval culture understood her as synonymous with a repentant sinner, which explains her being mentioned so prominently in Dies irae. The other reference is to one of the two robbers who were crucified next to Jesus, according to the Gospel of Luke. One of the robbers hurls insults at Jesus, while the other is penitent and asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom, to which Jesus responds: ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise’ (Luke 23:43). The penitent robber is here mentioned as another example of prominent sinners who were forgiven by Jesus, and it is because of these examples that the speaker of Dies irae is able to feel hope for the remission of sins.

Stanzas 14–17 expand on this theme of hope. The speaker implores God to be called among the numbers of the blessed rather than cursed to ‘everlasting flame’ in hell. This separation of the blessed from the damned is reinforced by the image of separating the sheep from the goats. The reference stems from Matthew 25:31–3:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Sheep versus goats, right versus left, thus form a traditional metaphoric way of speaking about the blessed in heaven versus the damned in hell. It is, by extension, also a way of imagining a final state in which evil and good are no longer intermingled, as they are at present on earth. The metaphysical realities after the end of the world are, according to the poem, fundamentally different to anything we know. There will be an eternal separation of good and evil, light and darkness, with no grey areas in between. The realm of evil is described in the poem using images of burning fire and flames. The speaker, however, is humbly asking God to be merciful, with a prayer to be numbered among the saved.

The final stanza not only marks a shift from rhyming triplets to couplets, but shows a change in perspective that accompanies the change of form. From the intensely personal focus of Stanzas 7–17, the last two stanzas once again zoom out to the bigger picture. The speaker is no longer a tangible ‘I’, but the point of view is a more universal one, recapitulating the events of the day of ‘weeping’ when ‘guilty man’ will rise again to be judged. The poem ends with a prayer to spare the speaker on that day of judgement, followed by a prayer that refers more obviously to the present rather than the future: ‘Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine’, a prayer traditionally said by the Church to commemorate the souls of the dead in purgatory. Their death is here figuratively imagined as an eternal sleep, and the living implore God to grant the dead eternal rest from their labours. The image of the sleeping dead gestures forward to the coming day of the resurrection, when the dead will rise again to eternal life.

The Dies irae paints an awe-inspiring scene of universal judgement. It contains compelling images of death and the resurrection of the dead, fear of being held to account paired with hope in the mercy of God. What makes it particularly successful as a poem is the close connection it creates between the great and terrible events at the end of time, affecting the whole of creation, and their intensely personal application from the individual speaker’s point of view. This connection explains why this poem was incorporated into the liturgy of the Requiem Mass, said for the repose of the souls of the faithful departed. The last stanza makes it clear that the coming Day of Judgement and the present concerns of the congregation gathered together for a Requiem Mass are intricately connected. The death of an individual, the prayers said for their soul, and the hope that they will live eternally in heaven point towards the final Day of Judgement of all humankind that is to come. Through this connection, the prayer to grant the soul of the deceased ‘eternal rest’ is at the same time a prayer for those who are now living. The members of the congregation are led to meditate on their own deaths, in anticipation of the events that are to come.

If the poem itself is compelling, what gave it an enduring place in Western cultural memory is the plainchant melody to which it was set. Plainchant is monophonic – a single melody sung by one or several voices without accompaniment – and has a less rigorously defined rhythm than later Western music, giving chant its free and flowing character. The Dies irae was officially incorporated into the Requiem Mass in 1570, but its use in the liturgy goes back to medieval times. It was sung as a so-called Sequence, a Latin hymn, after the Alleluia chant and preceding the gospel reading. The words Dies irae, dies illa are set to a sombre descending motif that forms an instantly recognizable tune, which perfectly captures the ominous atmosphere of the text. The original chant was sung in unison, usually by a small group of either male or female voices in monasteries and convents. The Sequence alternates between different tunes used for two stanzas each, thus creating a call-and-response effect that musically relates two adjacent stanzas closely to each other. The signature tune recurs several times in the course of the Sequence (in stanzas 1/2, 7/8, 13/14), evoking a sense of an inevitable cycle of repetition. The setting of the Latin words is simple and mostly syllabic, with a purposeful progression that feels disconcerting in its determination.

The characteristic setting of the first two words, ‘Dies irae’, occurs on four descending notes in the Dorian mode, an ancient Church tonality. The motif fills the listener with a sense of foreboding and brings the text to the fore in its declamatory style. Throughout the Sequence, the musical setting responds sensitively to the content of the Sequence: the tune of Lacrimosa dies illa, ‘Oh that day of weeping’, is markedly mournful and establishes a tone that is quite different from the hollow, threatening effect of the opening motif. The sombre character of the opening motif would have been all the more resonant in its original setting as part of the Requiem Mass, in the context of a dimly lit church, with the coffin of the deceased set up in the middle of the church, surrounded by candles. The music is perfectly in tune with such a setting, and connects themes of tears and mourning with dark and threatening references to the future day of judgement in a most effective manner.

Quivering between fear of judgement and hope in the mercy of the judge, the Sequence gives a ritual form to mourning that is personal and yet transcends the personal. The music is more than mere ornamentation of the words of the Dies irae; rather, the musical setting is integral to this process of reflection and mourning. Medieval liturgical theory emphasizes the centrality of music to worship, stressing that the meaning of the words of a text is closely connected to its musical expression. It is this interplay of text and music that has a deep emotional and intellectual effect on the individual listener.

This effect was evidently a long-lasting one, with the Dies irae becoming the most frequently cited musical motif throughout the history of Western music, and surviving into contemporary music. Over time, its meaning underwent subtle changes, but to the present day it has maintained its association with danger, death and destruction. In modern times plainchant has acquired very distinctive qualities. With its characteristic monophonic sound, it sounds radically different to most other types of Western music. Instantly recognizable as the music of Western Christianity, it is often used in modern culture to evoke a spiritual aura – the sense of something meditative and otherworldly. On the other hand, plainchant can be used in popular culture to construct an image of the ‘Dark Ages’, evoking associations with sinister-looking monks in dark robes processing round dimly lit Gothic cloisters. Neither association is consonant with the complex historic reality. These perceptions are based on a changing understanding of Christian theology and an increasing secularization of the Western world. As a result of this secularization, themes and ideas originally bound up in a systematic theological system, such as those of divine mercy and judgement at the end of days, became disconnected from this system, while other associations, such as those of doom and death, were retained. This is why we encounter the Dies irae motif today in film scores from The Shining to Star Wars to The Lion King, where the invocation of the musical motif tends to be used as a shorthand for death, often without a specifically religious context. The association is so strong that whenever the tune occurs in a film, it ‘can arouse in the audience a feeling of imminent danger’ even when it is woven into an instrumental composition without accompanying words.²

In the first centuries after the medieval period, however, the Dies irae motif was still firmly connected to a religious framework. It frequently occurs in polyphonic settings of the Requiem Mass, marked by interweaving independent voices which maintain a close relationship with the original chant, often carefully following the plainsong themes. Jacobus de Kerle (1532–1591), for instance, a Flemish composer of the Renaissance, sets the Dies irae as part of his Missa pro defunctis. His setting alternates polyphonic stanzas with stanzas in plainchant. We hear a polyphonic setting of the opening of the Sequence, with independent lines of melody that are musically innovative. We have moved far beyond monophony, and yet the piece’s inspiration by chant is obvious. At the start of the Dies irae the characteristic descending chant motif appears first in the lower voices, then in the upper voices, interlocking and developing to form different harmonies. The musical tapestry is complex, but the original chant melody can still be clearly heard in each independent voice.

Later classical composers setting the texts of the Requiem Mass to music continued to be influenced by the chant motif, but at the same time introduced unique alterations and variations. Mozart’s unfinished Requiem in D minor (1791) contains one of the best-known settings of the Dies irae, which has in turn been invoked many times in popular culture, such as in Mad Max (1979, dir. George Miller) and the superhero films Watchmen (2009, dir. Zack Snyder) and X2 (2003, dir. Bryan Singer). Mozart’s approach to the opening of the Sequence is different to what we have seen in Renaissance polyphony. Rather than citing the chant motif directly, Mozart’s music evokes associations with the chant through its rhythm and word setting, even if the medieval chant melody is never heard directly. The beginning of the Sequence is sung by the choir and accompanied by a full orchestra at a speed that makes palpable the breathlessness and terror of the Day of Wrath. Mozart’s word setting, like that of the chant melody, is syllabic, with each note falling like a hammer to heighten the impact of the words. In a surprising inversion of the descending motif of the original chant melody, Mozart’s setting presents an ascending motif, in which the soprano line becomes gradually higher, increasing the intensity of the anguish expressed in the music. Mozart takes his starting point from the chant and its word-setting, but alters the tune in order to achieve an effect of even greater intensity and dread.

The beginning of the Sequence is not the only place where Mozart responds to the vivid descriptions of the text and makes them more explicit in his music. For instance, the third stanza, Tuba mirum spargens sonum, inspired the use of an unaccompanied solo trombone at the start of the second movement before the words are declaimed by an expressive bass solo. ‘The trumpet’s wondrous call’ is no longer left to our imagination as it was in the chant. In his setting, Mozart gives the imagery of the Sequence a musical expression.

Later composers of the Romantic period took this musical word-painting to even further extremes. Verdi’s setting of the Messa da Requiem (1874) presents us with a veritable abyss of terror. The Dies irae movement starts with four abrupt staccato chords from the orchestra, four knife-like stabs followed by a tumultuous swirl of strings. Then, a threatening crescendo from the lower voices ushers in a high descending soprano line on the words Dies irae, a line which can only be understood as a wailing of horror. Verdi’s interpretation of the Sequence is fundamentally operatic in the depths of its musical expression: every emotion in the text is taken to its musical extreme. Where Mozart took inspiration from the mention of a trumpet in the text, Verdi turns the third stanza of the Sequence into a theatrical moment of epic dimensions, with trumpets sounding from the distance with a mighty crescendo that makes the audience feel as if the Day of Judgement is truly come upon them. Verdi imagines what it would be like to hear the call of a trumpet that ‘shall drive everybody forward to the throne’ with a power that cannot be withstood. The trumpets pierce the listener through and through with an irresistible force before the full orchestra enters, followed by the choir announcing the end of the world at the top of their lungs. And indeed, the call of the trumpets has pierced even the ‘tombs throughout the world’: At the end of the third verse, we hear the dead rising from their graves. The orchestra plays an isolated, eerie, stumbling motif evocative of the rattling foot of a skeleton stepping out of a tomb. Breathless fascination and horror intertwine. Verdi takes the text of Dies irae seriously and literally, with a setting that quivers between operatic spectacle and inclusion of the audience. When the trumpets are heard calling behind us, we become implicated in the action of the text, part of the countless living and dead called before the throne of God.

Over time the Dies irae motif also increasingly started to appear in classical music in contexts divorced from the Requiem Mass and its religious setting. In Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (1830), for instance, this secularized use of the chant theme appears in the context of a programme piece of orchestral music that charts the life of an artist in five sections. We follow different episodes in the life of a young artist, who desperately falls in love with a woman who represents the ideals of all his dreams. He subsequently becomes haunted by her beloved image, which follows him wherever he goes. The five movements are entitled ‘Rêveries, passions’ (‘Dreams, Passions’), ‘Un bal’ (‘A Ball’), ‘Scène aux champs’ (‘Scene in the Fields’), ‘Marche au supplice’ (‘March to the Scaffold’) and ‘Songe d’une nuit du Sabbat’ (‘Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath’). The artist’s journey of increasing obsession and disorientation finally leads him to poison himself with opium, and the last movements of the symphony consist of strange opium-fuelled visions, culminating in a witches’ sabbath. Berlioz’s original programme notes describe the scene:

He sees himself . . . in the midst of a hideous gathering of shades, sorcerers and monsters of every kind who have come together for his funeral. Strange sounds, groans, outbursts of laughter; distant shouts which seem to be answered by more shouts . . . The funeral knell tolls, burlesque parody of the Dies irae, the dance of the witches. The dance of the witches combined with the Dies irae.³

Berlioz here uses the Dies irae motif to evoke its associations with death and funeral rites, but also places it in an explicitly diabolical scene, filled with ghoulish groans and hollow laughter. We have come a long way from the plainchant warning about the impending day of God’s judgement. Berlioz here exploits the ominous feeling of dread that the tune evokes, while dispensing with its original religious and moral context. Interestingly, Berlioz also relies solely on the music to evoke these associations; the symphony is purely orchestral and does not feature the actual words of the sequence.

Berlioz’s use of the theme divorced from its immediate religious context proved groundbreaking for many other composers, in particular because artists of the Romantic period were fascinated with the grotesque and the macabre. Franz Liszt, for instance, used the tune prominently in his piece for solo piano and orchestra entitled Totentanz (Dance of the Dead): Paraphrase on Dies irae (1849). Sergei Rachmaninov’s symphonic poem Isle of the Dead (1908) is themed around an image of the dead being ferried across an expanse of water to a desolate island. Rich with symbolic and mythological resonances, the symphonic poem quotes the Dies irae motif as an allusion to death, passing it from instrument to instrument as the music builds. The motif also appears in Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 (1894), dubbed ‘Resurrection’ because of its final movement, which contains a setting of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s poem Die Auferstehung (Resurrection). The programmatic theme is that of a funeral, memories of the life of the deceased, and hope of the resurrection. The Dies irae motif is heard prominently in the last movement, first quietly, and later as a solemn brass chorale, as a symbol of death that must precede resurrection. The theme seems traditionally religious at first glance, but the emphasis of the text is on the resurrection of the human heart after its manifold trials, a process of transcendent renewal that can be read as symbolic or psychological rather than religious in its narrow sense. At any rate, there is no mention of judgement as accompanying the resurrection, and the hope that is evoked is unequivocally positive, without any sense of fear and trepidation:

O believe, my heart, O believe:

Nothing is lost to you!

Yours, yes yours, is what you desired

Yours, what you have loved

What you have fought for!

Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets likewise invokes the motif in the fifth movement, entitled ‘Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age’. The music begins with a slow, creeping ‘tick-tock’, suggesting the passage of time. Echoes of the Dies irae fill the music with a sense of foreboding as the ticking clock merges with the atmosphere of a funeral dirge. Near the end of the piece, however, this ominous atmosphere gives way to a sense of wonder and final resolution.

What all of these later examples have in common is that they dispense with the words of the Dies irae and instead rely solely on the tune as a proxy to evoke a specific atmosphere. Out of the range of themes originally contained in the poem – individual death, universal judgement, second coming of Christ, rising of the dead, plea for mercy, prayer for eternal rest for the souls of the dead – the music of later periods merely actualizes specific associations, usually without embracing their full religious context, which had originally implied a moral directive about doing good works and hope in divine mercy. Increasingly the theme becomes a shorthand for death and an impending feeling of doom, and this is very much the musical usage that survives into contemporary film scores.

The use of the Dies irae motif in film goes back to the early days of cinema. Perhaps the first use of the motif was in Gottfried Huppertz’s 1927 score for Fritz Lang’s silent film Metropolis. The theme is generally used in films to evoke an ominous sense of dread and premonition of evil. In this way it lends itself naturally to the horror film genre. The Exorcist (1974, dir. William Friedkin, theme comp. Mike Oldfield) is a prominent example, in which the theme contains a modified version of the Dies irae. It is subtle, and the scene when we first encounter the theme is innocuous enough – nuns with billowing robes leaving church – but the music warns the attentive listener that there is something sinister lurking in the background. Much less subtle than The Exorcist, the soundtrack of The Shining (1980, dir. Stanley Kubrick, music comp. Wendy Carlos) opens with a synthesized brass version of the Dies irae motif, complemented with ominous electronic sounds, filling us with a sense of trepidation and foreshadowing of the doom to come.

It is not only horror films that use this theme. It occurs in a vast number of films of a wide variety of different genres. Remember the heart-wrenching scene in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977, dir. George Lucas, music comp. John Williams), when the young Luke Skywalker finds that his adoptive parents have been brutally murdered on their farm in Tatooine? The Skywalker theme indicates that the young Luke is being called to fulfil his destiny, but at the same time this is overlaid by the Dies irae motif harshly played by brass instruments, reinforcing the feeling that a horrible force of evil is at work here. Similarly, in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–3), an ominous figure of descending thirds reminiscent of Dies irae represents the threat of the realm of Mordor to enslave all the free peoples of Middle-earth. The figure is first heard in the Prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring (music comp. Howard Shore) when the armies of Mordor clash with the armies of elves and men, and appears at prominent points in the narrative to reinforce the sense of threat and impending doom connected to the power of Mordor and the Ring. Disney’s original animated film The Lion King (1994, dir. Rob Minkoff and Roger Allers, music comp. Hans Zimmer) likewise uses Dies irae in the context of Scar’s evil plot to usurp the throne. In a pivotal scene, when Scar’s plan has almost succeeded, he tries to cover up his murder of his brother Mufasa by blaming Simba for Mufasa’s death. The high-pitched, fast and relentless repetition of the Dies irae motif at this moment leaves us in no doubt that Scar is the epitome of a twisted villain. Modified allusions to the Dies irae motif pervade the entire score of The Lion King, imbuing it with quasi-religious significance. Not only does Scar represent the ultimate, Devil-like antagonist, but Simba’s return to the throne at the end of the film as the rightful heir may, in combination with the insistent use of the Dies irae motif, evoke associations with the second coming of Christ.

There are more than one hundred film scores that use the Dies irae motif. It is astonishing that the music exerts a profound effect on listeners regardless of whether they are musically trained or even consciously recognize the motif. The dark and foreboding character of the music, perhaps along with subconscious memories of having heard the tune many times before in contexts of death and doom, is enough to evoke in audiences feelings of anxiety, fear and desperation. We are far removed here from the apocalyptic struggle of the Christian Day of Judgement, but the conflicts between good and evil presented in many of these films imply an archetypal struggle that is similar in structure to the original context of the Dies irae. The use of the motif can evoke complex religious allusions, or it can be used in a more simplistic manner as a shorthand for doom. What has remained constant since the Middle Ages, however, is the association of the music with death. Invented many centuries ago, the tune of death has remained definitive until the present day.

8

Revelation

The Christian understanding of Doomsday may seem rather gloomy, and it may have a secular equivalent in modern apocalyptic visions such as those of nuclear war, climate catastrophe or asteroid impacts. The negative bent of such visions of destruction has been parodied many times, such as in R.E.M.’s song ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)’. But Christian ideas are not solely about fire and destruction but also about the hope of Paradise. The Book of Revelation abounds in imagery of the remaking of the broken world and the establishment of a new Heaven after the end of days, in which all of the faithful will dwell in the company of God and all angels and saints. This vision of Paradise bears within it the hope that all suffering and death of the present life will in the end be made right, that this world will pass away and a better one will take its place, in which humanity will be healed from its hurts. The justice towards those who in this life have committed wrong is one side of this, as we have seen in the previous chapter, but the reward of those who have done good is the other side of the coin. The Requiem liturgy, which on the one hand contains the Dies irae, also expresses this hope in many ways. One of the antiphons sung at burial services prays that the deceased may be taken up into Paradise and may be granted rest eternal with the angels and the saints:

In paradisum deducant te angeli,

May the angels lead you into Paradise,

in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te

may the martyrs receive you

in your coming,

in civitatem sanctam Jerusalem.

and may they guide you into the holy city, Jerusalem.

Chorus angelorum te suscipiat,

May the chorus of angels receive you

et cum Lazaro quondam paupere

and with Lazarus once poor

aeternam habeas requiem.

may you have eternal rest.

This antiphon, most famously set to music by Gabriel Fauré in his Requiem, is usually sung by the choir when the body is taken out of the church and carried to the graveyard to be buried. It contains two references that we encounter again and again in biblical and liturgical texts concerning the afterlife and the end of days: Jerusalem the holy city, and ‘Lazarus once poor’. The latter is a reference to a story told by Jesus in Luke 16:19–31 about a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus. The rich man lives in luxury, while Lazarus lies outside the rich man’s gate and begs to be fed with the crumbs from his table. When both men die, however, their fates are reversed, and Lazarus is carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom (in Jewish belief the abode of the righteous dead, later interpreted by Christians as heaven), while the rich man is punished by torments. This reversal of fortunes from suffering to eternal bliss in the biblical story is applied to the here and now in the In paradisum antiphon, with the prayer that the deceased may be taken up to the same place of comfort and rest as Lazarus.

The reference to the holy city of Jerusalem in the context of the afterlife is one of the most central images for the remaking of heaven and earth. We encounter the metaphor throughout biblical, theological and religious literature and art. Its origin is the Book of Revelation. This book, the last book of the New Testament, is also known as the Apocalypse of John. The term ‘apocalypse’ has entered common parlance as a word to describe a disastrous event leading to the end of the world, but its original etymology is simply Greek for ‘revelation, disclosure’. The Book of Revelation is told by a first-person narrator who calls himself John (in later Christian tradition often identified with the Apostle John, though this is thought unlikely by many modern scholars). John describes a series of prophetic visions, which concern the events that lead up to the Second Coming of Christ. Many of the events in the Book of Revelation have entered our cultural memory and popular culture, and are familiar even to those who have never read the Book of Revelation. Key figures include the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Seven-Headed Dragon, the Beast and the Whore of Babylon. It is a long and complex series of visions, describing a universal destruction of the earth and subsequent renewal, with a new heaven on earth in which the resurrected dead will live in celestial joy. Its cryptic imagery has led to a wide range of often contradictory interpretations. The liturgy uses the imagery of the Book of Revelation selectively, and this chapter discusses in greater detail a number of motifs that are particularly prominent in the liturgy.

The image of the holy city of Jerusalem occurs towards the end of the Book of Revelation. It is preceded by a description of a range of calamitous events on earth and in the heavens, involving a dragon’s attack on a woman clothed with the sun and the dragon’s defeat by Michael (discussed below), two beasts, the destruction of Babylon, followed by the marriage-feast of the lamb (discussed below), the Second Coming of Christ and the great battle at Armageddon in which Satan is overthrown and bound. A period of peace ensues, the thousand-year reign of the saints, until Satan is loosed again and overthrown in a second great battle. At the end come the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgement, after which is found the passage that mentions the heavenly Jerusalem.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

‘See, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them;

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away.’

And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ (Rev. 21:1–5)

In this passage the holy city, new Jerusalem, stands for the renewed creation and a heaven on earth without suffering or pain, in which God himself will dwell with the blessed souls in everlasting joy. The liturgical antiphon In paradisum expresses the hope that the deceased may become an inhabitant of this city.

The tradition of interpreting this section from the Book of Revelation as a metaphor rather than a reference to the historical city of Jerusalem goes back to St Augustine in his work called De civitate Dei (The City of God). He interprets the New Jerusalem as the bliss that is to come in the ‘immortality and eternity of the saints’ after the Last Judgement.¹ This is certainly the interpretation that is behind the inclusion of this reference into the Requiem liturgy. Accordingly, the image of the New Jerusalem, also known as the Heavenly Jerusalem, has often been used in literature as shorthand for the renewal of the fallen world. The celestial city is described in Revelation in very specific terms:

The wall is built of jasper, while the city is pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every jewel; the first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth cornelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, each of the gates is a single pearl, and the street of the city is pure gold, transparent as glass. (Rev. 21:18–21)

The description of the city as transparent, clear and radiant, adorned with jewels, inspired a fourteenth-century poem known as Pearl, in which the narrator falls asleep and has a dream vision of the heavenly Jerusalem. Outside its gates, he meets one of the blessed souls, a girl who might be the dreamer’s daughter who died at a young age, although this never becomes entirely clear. Whoever she may be, the dreamer knew her in her life on earth, but now meets her in her new state as an inhabitant of the heavenly city. She acts as his guide in the dream, in which he sees and hears many marvellous things. Although he is not allowed to enter the city, he is able to describe it in great detail, echoing the Book of Revelation:

Then I did not want to wait any longer, but passed under boughs so beautifully leaved until on a hill I caught sight of the city and, as I made my way onwards, gazed at it, situated beyond the brook, at some distance from me, shining brighter than the sun with beams of light. The form of it is shown in the Apocalypse, as the apostle John describes it. Just as John the apostle saw it clearly, I saw that city of great renown, Jerusalem so new and royally adorned, as though it had come down from heaven. The city was all of bright refined gold, burnished bright like gleaming glass, set beneath with noble gems, with twelve tiers fixed on the base, the twelve layers of the foundation admirably joined; each tier was a different stone, as the apostle John splendidly describes this same city in the Apocalypse.²

Inspired by the Book of Revelation, Pearl fills the description of the city with further detail and incorporates it into a different kind of story, in which the narrator tries to understand how someone whom he knew on earth has changed into one of the blessed souls in heaven. The poem is a reflection on what it might mean for an individual to inhabit the celestial city – the very hope expressed in the liturgy through texts like In paradisum. In Pearl, however, this is not at all a straightforward or uncomplicated state of bliss. The dreamer struggles to understand the laws of heaven, which are so different from earth. It is a place where the last are the first and earthly hierarchies are irrelevant. In the end, the dreamer is tied to his earthly existence and unable to pass over into the heavenly city, despite its mystical beauty.

The metaphor of the New Jerusalem for heaven is adopted by many other authors throughout the history of English literature, sometimes with an unexpected twist, as in William Blake’s ‘And did those feet in ancient time’, first published in 1808. Today, it is better known as England’s unofficial anthem ‘Jerusalem’, set to music by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916. Blake’s poem plays with the idea of the heavenly Jerusalem while applying it to his present time. The first two stanzas allude to the legend that, in his young years, Jesus once travelled to England accompanied by Joseph of Arimathea (the man who buried Jesus after the crucifixion). Blake subtly implies some doubt about the veracity of this folklore idea by phrasing the first two stanzas as a series of questions:

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green?

And was the holy Lamb of God

On England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine,

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here,

Among these dark Satanic mills?³

Whether Christ’s feet really did walk on England’s green hills is left up for debate; the speaker is unsure. The imagery, too, implies a certain incongruity of this legend: imagining ‘the holy Lamb of God’ on ‘England’s pleasant pastures’ and the ‘Countenance Divine’ shining ‘upon our clouded hills’ means to transpose traditional epithets of Christ into a distinctly English setting. The second stanza is also where we encounter a reference to ‘Jerusalem’. If Christ really did visit England, the poem implies, he must have established a New Jerusalem on these very green hills, a heaven on earth. The speaker is somewhat incredulous that there might once have been a paradise where now there are only ‘dark Satanic mills’. This phrase, oft-cited in the English language, has frequently been explained as a reference to the destruction of nature in the wake of the Industrial Revolution with its factories and machinery, which Blake witnessed. The new, industrial, steam-powered, ‘dark Satanic’ mills stand in stark contrast to the light-filled Heavenly Jerusalem with its gates of pearl. But it is not only the factories’ physical ugliness that prompts Blake to use the word ‘Satanic’. Perhaps even more than the visible destruction of pleasant landscapes, the word implies destruction of a spiritual kind: of human relationships, dignity and freedom. For Blake, factory work in inhuman conditions under a black cloud of smoke is the very expression of hell on earth. The Heavenly Jerusalem could not be further from the reality of industrialized Britain. This contrast inspires the speaker to fight unceasingly to establish the New Jerusalem in England:

Bring me my bow of burning gold;

Bring me my arrows of desire;

Bring me my spear – O clouds, unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:

Till we have built Jerusalem,

In England’s green and pleasant land.

What this Jerusalem that the speaker envisages would look like remains unclear; it seems to be a physical place, located in England, but at the same time it is also a spiritual state, which can only be gained by ‘mental fight’. The weapons that the speaker uses for this fight appear to be metaphorical rather than physical, too: the ‘bow of burning gold’, ‘arrows of desire’ and ‘chariot of fire’ express a mental attitude rather than real-life weapons. This is no call to arms in an ordinary sense. It is a call for radical change from the present state, a change for the better that requires endless dedication. As such, it has a lot in common with traditional religious views of the New Jerusalem, which in Revelation descends from the clouds after much war and strife, but Blake’s vision is different in that his Jerusalem is a vision of a better society that has a very strong bent of social criticism.⁴ The New Jerusalem is presented as an antidote to the moral ills and social alienation of the present.

The New Jerusalem is not the only image from the Book of Revelation that has had a lasting impact on our liturgical and literary imagination. A large part of the biblical book is concerned with a description of the battles that precede the coming down of the holy city. Perhaps most memorable among these is the war between the great dragon and the woman clothed with the sun:

A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne. (Rev. 12:1–5)

Using astrological language, this passage presents a cosmic conflict. The dragon, identified with the Devil, wreaks havoc upon the heavens and pursues the woman and her child. Such imagery is not unique to the Bible: many mythologies contain a dragon-like creature, representing the forces of evil, chaos and destruction. In these stories the slaying of this dragon is usually a pivotal event that restores order and peace. Due to its similarities with such mythological accounts, this passage in Revelation has variously been connected by scholars to a sun goddess in several Near Eastern myths, as well as an ancient astrological idea about the conflict between Scorpio and Virgo. Regardless of its links with other mythologies, in a Christian context the woman clothed with the sun was traditionally interpreted in two different ways: one was to see the woman as a metaphor for the Church of all the faithful, persecuted by the Devil. Another option, however, was to see the woman as an image of the Virgin Mary giving birth to the Messiah, ‘who is to rule all the nations’. It is this interpretation that was particularly foregrounded by the liturgy, as the first line of Revelation 12 was sung at the annual celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven. We have already seen in Chapter Two how imagery from the Song of Songs was used to refer to the Virgin Mary, following liturgical tradition. One picture of Mary shows her standing on the sickle of the moon, surrounded by the beams of the sun, with stars around her head (illus. 4). This way of portraying Mary merges imagery from the Song of Songs with Revelation, showing her to be the apocalyptic ‘woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars’. In this tradition, the cosmic aspects of the Book of Revelation and the amorous language of the Song of Songs were combined into a single image of the Virgin Mary, who is seen as beautiful beyond all humans and exalted to cosmic significance.

This Marian interpretation of Revelation also appears in literary works, such as Dante’s Divine Comedy. Near the end of his vision of heaven in Paradiso, Dante lifts up his eyes to Mary, the Queen of Heaven. What he sees is a sun that shines brighter than all others, described with luminous language:

I lifted up my eyes; and as, at morning,

the eastern side of the horizon shows

more splendour than the side where the sun sets,

so, as if climbing with my eyes from valley

to summit, I saw one part of the farthest

rank of the Rose more bright than all the rest.

Dante goes on to describe the quality of the sun’s rays, which are brightest in the middle and then shade off at the sides:

And as, on earth, the point where we await

the shaft that Phaethon had misguided glows

brightest, while, to each side, the light shades off,

so did the peaceful oriflamme appear

brightest at its midpoint, so did its flame,

on each side, taper off at equal pace.⁵

17 The Woman Clothed in the Sun, illumination from the Getty Apocalypse, c. 1255–60.

Dante imagines in detail what it might look like to see a woman who is ‘clothed with the sun’, describing the light radiating from her using the classicizing term Phaethon, the son of Sol, who lost control of his father’s chariot while attempting to direct its course (compare Ovid, Metamorphoses 2). It may be a little difficult to imagine the quality of the light described here solely with words, but a look at medieval illustrations can help.

Here we see a thirteenth-century illustration from a manuscript that was illuminated around fifty years before the Divine Comedy was begun (illus. 17). In this image, we can see something of the vision that Dante describes. Fiery rays of light surround the woman, flowing outwards in waves as if they were a living thing. The woman, crowned with twelve stars and the moon under her feet, is at the centre of this radiant brightness. Images such as these may be similar to what Dante had in mind when he wrote his exquisite verses.

Later artists found very different approaches to this passage from Revelation. William Blake produced a series of illustrations on this theme, including The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun (illus. 18). The woman is depicted with circular wings, her hair like flames of fire. The sickle of the moon beneath her feet shines brightly. Her light is all the more powerful in contrast with the stormy darkness that reigns all about her. Her arms are lifted up as she braces herself for the attack of the red dragon swooping down above her. The dragon has features of both reptile and man, the horns on his head invoking a common motif in portrayals of the Devil as goat-like in appearance. Yet in his fall from above, the outstretched arms of the dragon mirror those of the woman below, visually balancing light and darkness. The two forces, Blake’s image suggests, act like yin and yang as good and evil are poised, in conflict and yet in balance.

18 William Blake, The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, c. 1805, pen and grey ink with watercolour over graphite.

This mystical dualism of Blake’s interpretation takes a specific perspective on the role of good and evil in the world. In this it is unlike the perspective we find in the Book of Revelation as we read on in the same chapter:

And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world – he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Rev. 12:7–9)

Michael the Archangel is here portrayed as the chief adversary of the dragon, who is also named the Devil and Satan. As the leader of an army of angels, Michael defeats the Devil in battle and casts him and his followers out of heaven. Michael, whose name in Hebrew means ‘Who is like God?’, represents here the spirit of willing obedience to God that conquers the rebellion of the fallen angels. This role as the chief of the angels is assigned to Michael not only in the New Testament but in a number of Jewish works, which are often similarly apocalyptic in nature. It is from this passage in Revelation, however, that Christian tradition took its inspiration in portraying St Michael as the dragon-slayer. The liturgy praises him in these terms on his feast day on 29 September, where the office at Matins contains an antiphon that echoes Revelation:

Factum est silentium in caelo,

There was silence in heaven

Dum committeret bellum draco cum Michaele Archangelo.

When the dragon fought with the Archangel Michael.

Audita est vox millia millium dicentium:

The voice of thousands of thousands was heard saying:

Salus, honor et virtus omnipotenti Deo.

Salvation, honour and power be to almighty God.

Millia millium ministrabant ei et decies centena millia assistebant ei.

Thousands of thousands ministered to him and ten hundreds of thousands stood before him.

This antiphon would have been sung in monasteries before the break of dawn. It contains quite a striking change from how the passage is worded in Revelation. While the biblical text frames the deeds of Michael by emphasizing the context of a war in heaven, the antiphon takes a different approach by emphasizing silence. It invokes an image of all the multitudes of heaven standing silently and awaiting with bated breath the outcome of Michael’s decisive battle with the dragon. While Revelation names St Michael first (‘Michael and his angels fought against the dragon’), the antiphon delays the mention of his name until the end of the sentence (‘the dragon fought with the Archangel Michael’). The phrasing of the liturgical text places its audience in the same position as the multitudes of heaven, as we likewise await the outcome of the battle. The unsettling idea of silence in heaven only reaches its reassuring conclusion at the end of the sentence with the mention of Michael’s name. As a religious audience would have known, Michael’s presence ensures that good triumphs over evil, but the breathless tension of the moment of battle is reinforced in the liturgy. Michael’s victory and the fall of the demons is not explicitly mentioned here, but instead implied in the chorus of praise that follows: ‘Salvation, honour and power be to almighty God.’ The liturgical text here splices together verses from various books of the Bible, which include not only Revelation but the Book of Daniel. The result is a narrative that is somewhat different in its emphasis from Revelation. After the battle follows the image of an overwhelming multitude of angels, ‘thousands of thousands’ praising God in triumph.

The vivid imagery and dramatic quality of the narrative in this antiphon are echoed in the most famous setting of this text to polyphonic music by Richard Dering (1580–1630). Factum est silentium opens with a quiet, slow, almost static phrase. The silence in heaven is palpable. This only heightens the contrast with the faster rhythmic energy of the next phrase, describing the battle, culminating in the word draco, ‘dragon’. We get a sense of the fearsome size of the dragon through repetitions of the word at successively higher pitches. Dering’s setting of the antiphon uses word-painting so evocative that we can almost see the image of the great dragon before our very eyes. The war in heaven could hardly be more gripping.

The liturgical feast of St Michael on 29 September was memorable for its engrossing descriptions of dragon-slaying as well as its importance in the annual cycle of the seasons. The word ‘Michaelmas’ (a shortened form of ‘St Michael’s Mass’) is still used to describe the first term of the year, beginning soon after 29 September, at various universities and schools, as well as law courts in England, Ireland and Wales.⁶ In medieval England, Michaelmas day marked a quarter-day of the business year, when accounts had to be settled and rents were due. As the feast occurred near the autumnal equinox, it was frequently associated with the beginning of autumn, and the ending of the harvest for farmers. This is why various flowers that bloom around this time of the year are known as Michaelmas daisies or asters. In some places festivities accompanied the liturgical celebrations, with Michaelmas processions and pilgrimages taking place in Scotland and Ireland. The tradition of Michaelmas fairs, at which servants found work, continued until well into the eighteenth century, as described by Sir Frederick Morton Eden in 1797: ‘In Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, and Berkshire, servants continue to attend the mopp, or statute, as it is called, (that is, Michaelmas fair,) in order to be hired.’⁷ Evidently St Michael was important in slaying the dragons of hunger and unemployment, too.

St Michael, then, is the original dragon-slayer in the Bible. But the slaying of a dragon is a motif that is not unique to the Bible. We encounter it in legends and myths around the world, whether it is Sigurd’s fight with Fafnir, Hercules’ fight with the nine-headed Hydra or Susanoo’s fight with Yamata no Orochi. It is a truly universal idea in folklore across cultures, representing the fight against the cosmic forces of evil to be fought in all ages. Within a Christian context, St Michael has a counterpart in St George the dragon-slayer. According to tradition, George was a soldier in the Roman army, originally from Cappadocia, who was martyred for his Christian faith. Medieval legends surround his great deed of slaying a dragon that was wreaking havoc upon the city of Silene in Libya. In order to keep the dragon at bay, the people of the city were forced to sacrifice to him first sheep, and later humans chosen from among the city’s population. George arrives in Silene when the lot is cast again and the king’s daughter is selected to be sacrificed. Armed with a lance, George then rides out to meet the dragon and slays it, saving the king’s daughter from death. The legend became known in medieval Europe through Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend, a collection of saints’ lives. The saintly dragon-slayer on horseback appealed to medieval knightly culture in particular, with George becoming a model of chivalry in Arthurian stories, being invoked as the patron saint of chivalric orders such as the Order of the Garter, and eventually becoming known as the patron saint of England. It may be that the idea of slaying a dragon has a fascination that is hard to resist, but it is likely that the prominence of St Michael in the Book of Revelation, in the liturgy, and the importance of the feast in the cycle of the year, helped to further George’s popularity.

The Book of Revelation is important to liturgical practice not only as a source of texts and prayers for specific feasts. Beyond these paths of influence, it also provides a symbolic model for the very form of Christian worship. Many of the things that John sees in his vision seem, at first glance, rather odd. The vision culminates in a marriage feast, at whose centre stands the Lamb:

Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunder-peals, crying out,

‘Hallelujah!

For the Lord our God

the Almighty reigns.

Let us rejoice and exult

and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

and his bride has made herself ready;

to her it has been granted to be clothed

with fine linen, bright and pure’ –

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ (Rev. 19:6–9)

In Revelation, what concludes the end of the world and marks the beginning of the new heaven and the new earth is a wedding and a banquet. This cryptic imagery of a marriage feast may seem unexpected but it makes sense seen in relation to the Old Testament, where the metaphor of a marriage is repeatedly used to speak about the relationship between God and the people of Israel (for example, Isa. 54:1–8; Ezek. 16; Hos. 2–6). Here we again meet the imagery of Christ as a Lamb. Given this context, the Lamb’s marriage in Revelation is often understood to be a symbolic marriage of Christ with the Church or with his people in the New Jerusalem. The motif of a wedding feast or banquet occurs frequently in the New Testament in Jesus’ parables, and in the miracle at Cana. There is also an explicitly liturgical implication: Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples on the evening before his death marks the institution of the Eucharist, and this is an event that is celebrated and commemorated through the liturgy of the Mass. The Mass is a Eucharistic feast in which Christ himself gives himself as spiritual food to his people.

From this perspective, the descriptions of the worship of the Lamb in the Book of Revelation can be understood as a cosmic liturgy at the end of time, with its apocalyptic banquet as a reflection and fulfilment of the liturgy of the Mass that is celebrated in the here and now. Many of the elements of the liturgy of the Mass are present, in one form or another, in Revelation. For example, the servants of God standing around his throne in Revelation praise him with the words ‘Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty’ (4:8), a prayer which also occurs as the Sanctus in the liturgy of the Mass. The ‘Alleluia’ that is sung before the proclamation of the gospel likewise appears in the cosmic worship of John’s vision, as we have seen in the section from Revelation 19 above. There are references to incense (5:8), an altar (8:3) and many other elements of liturgical practice.⁸ The vision of Revelation imagines the new Heaven as an everlasting liturgy, which is at the same time a celestial marriage feast.

This imagery is reflected in the works of many writers who have imagined communication or union with God in terms of a banquet. George Herbert’s mystical dialogue with God in his poem Love (3) is an example:

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:

Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

So I did sit and eat.⁹

The speaker is invited to a feast by God as personified Love. The poem imagines a dialogue between host and guest: the speaker is laden with feelings of sin and unworthiness, while Love is concerned about the well-being of his guest. Through a series of exchanges, the speaker is reassured that God has atoned for all sins, and is encouraged to serve the Lord with love and courage. The poem ends with an invitation to ‘sit and eat’, which the guest at last accepts. Within the context of Revelation, it becomes clear why this poem images a conversation with God around the theme of food. The imagery of feasting in connection with divine love evokes associations with the liturgy of the Eucharist, and at the same time with the cosmic liturgy at the end of all time. The apocalypse and its heavenly marriage feast is foreshadowed in the liturgy of the Mass, where the faithful are invited to full communion with God by sharing in the Eucharist. Through the liturgy, the apocalypse is now, and the apocalypse is a feast.

9

Time

It is the middle of the Mass. The epistle and gospel have been read, prayers have been said, a homily has been preached. The choir has sung the Sanctus. Silence has fallen. But this is not a silence of inaction; it is a silence that is deep and reverent, which speaks of concentration and anticipation. We are approaching the holiest, most central moment of the service: the consecration of the bread and wine on the altar, the very reason for which the congregation have come together. The congregation’s attention is focused on the priest at the east end of the church, who stands bowed over the altar, speaking in a low voice the words of consecration. Through these words, the offerings of bread and wine will be miraculously transformed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. These words are strictly prescribed, echoing the words which the gospels report Christ speaking to his disciples at the Last Supper: Hoc est enim corpus meum (‘This is my body’). In the midst of the deep silence, a bell rings as a sign that the words have been spoken. The priest genuflects and raises the host high above his head for the congregation to see, small and white and round like a pearl in the gloom of the church. This liturgical dramaturgy makes it easy to see why Latin hymns praise the Eucharist as panis angelorum, ‘bread of angels’. Moments later, the priest consecrates the wine in the golden chalice: Hic est enim calix sanguinis mei, novi et aeterni testamenti, mysterium fidei, qui pro vobis et pro multis effundetur in remissionem peccatorum (‘For this is the chalice of my blood, of the new and eternal testament, the mystery of faith, which will be shed for you and for many unto the remission of sins’). The same movements are repeated, and the chalice containing the wine, which has now become the blood of Christ, is lifted up high by the priest while heads are bowed and lips move in fervent prayer.

This is the scene evoked in an illustration from a medieval Book of Hours (illus. 19). The congregation is assembled in silent adoration of the sacrament of the Eucharist. The formula of consecration spoken by the priest speaks of the mystery of faith, and indeed the celebration of the Eucharist is the central mystery around which the liturgy of the Mass is structured, and around which the entire Christian faith revolves. The Latin texts, prayers, hymns and chants that accompany the celebration of the Mass follow a prescribed, poetically and dramatically consistent form, which culminates in the elevation of the host and chalice, and eventually the communion, where the bread and wine are consumed as a sign of oneness with Christ, so that each individual can participate in the divine life. The Eucharist is not only the central mystery of faith, but one of the central points of contention within Christianity: across the history of the Christian West, countless pages have been written, arguments have been had, wars have been fought, countries have been torn apart and people have died over the question of what exactly happens to the bread and wine at the celebration of the Mass. Catholics and Protestants are divided on the question of whether the bread and wine literally become the body and blood of Christ while retaining their external appearance of bread and wine – the Catholic view known as ‘transubstantiation’ – or whether the bread and wine are merely symbols of the body and blood of Christ, with a wide range of views within Protestantism on the exact nature of this symbolism. Both schools of thought are represented by medieval thinkers, for whom this question was a central issue, which had crucial implications not only for the faith, but for philosophical and scientific thought more broadly. Debate among medieval scholars about this question started around the ninth century, centring around a philosophical and theological question: are the consecrated elements of bread and wine entirely replaced by the body and blood of Christ, do they coexist with it, or do they not change their nature at all? Out of these questions arose the doctrine of the Real Presence, the view according to which Christ’s body is truly present in the consecrated bread and wine, and that the substance of bread and wine changes into the body and blood, while the ‘accidents’ (that is, the external appearance, physical properties, texture, taste and so on) of the bread and wine remain.¹ The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirmed the doctrine of transubstantiation, and this remained the dominant theological opinion in the course of the Middle Ages in the West until the great rift opened by the Protestant Reformation at the beginning of the early modern period, which engulfed Europe in religious conflict for the following centuries. The question of the Eucharist was much more than a mere academic difference of opinion: for many people, it was worth dying for.

19 Illumination from a Book of Hours, Use of Tournai, c. 1480–1500.

For Protestants and Catholics alike, then, the Eucharist and its meaning are central to the faith, one way or another. Many histories have been written of the Reformation and its religious, cultural and political implications for Europe, but they are not what this book is about. Instead, we will focus on how the liturgy of the Eucharist understands and conceptualizes time, and why this is important. Our reference point here is the medieval liturgy; not to take sides in a theological debate but because it is the common root of all later developments across religious divides within Western Christianity. The liturgy of the Eucharist today will vary, sometimes significantly, between Catholic and Protestant communities, and will be influenced by different theological understandings. But fundamentally, all of these different liturgies are derived from the medieval tradition (or are marked by deliberate deviations from this tradition), and it is this tradition which has profoundly influenced representations of time in art, literature and music for centuries.

When we talk about time in an ordinary sense, we often tend to think of it as an inexorable movement from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, year to year. Each segment of time, be it long or short, is precisely measured out in smaller units, and clocks are ubiquitous to remind us of the passing of time. Through these means, time is often perceived as objective, external, scientifically laid out. We cannot influence it; we can merely try to keep up. But there are various problems with this perception. Ever since Einstein’s theory of special relativity, we know that this perception of time as a constant that is forever and steadily moving without interruption is a fallacy: time in a scientific sense can expand or contract; it is dependent on our frame of reference, on the position of the observer. Such theories may be difficult to conceptualize in our daily lives; the relativity of time is of little relevance when one is running late for a train. But apart from the models of modern-day physics, we are very much aware of a different sense in which time is not objective: while an hour can fly by and feel like five minutes when we are engaged in an exciting activity, it can feel like ten hours when we are waiting for a boring meeting to end. Perception of time can be very much subjective and dependent on the emotional state of the individual.

Not unlike the modern world, the Middle Ages had a range of ways of conceptualizing the passing of time. The clock, for us a ubiquitous item that we now carry on our wrists and mobile phones, was much less common in the Middle Ages than the presence of church bells. As in any largely agrarian society, the cycle of the seasons dominated medieval life, and the life of an ordinary peasant looked different in winter time than in the spring or summer, with agricultural tasks dependent on the time of the year.² Those members of society who were engaged in trade were equally dependent on meteorological time and changes in climate: a storm could delay the arrival of a merchant ship, for example, with ramifications for commerce. While the natural cycle of seasons was continuously the same, commercial activities required timekeeping of a more precise sort than that of the agricultural labourer. Time in the countryside was measured by the tolling of church bells, which indicated the hours of religious services. The bells tolling these hours were reliant upon sundials, and could be unreliable and weather-dependent. But within urban environments, more complex and precise timekeeping was necessary for the purposes of trade. Clocks were built opposite church towers, fulfilling a secular function that was directed towards the daily business of the merchant, rather than the concerns of the church. Jacques Le Goff has described these two different conceptions of time as the ‘merchant’s time’ and the ‘Church’s time’.³ Secular structures of timekeeping directed towards the requirements of urban tradesmen developed around an older system of keeping time that measured the liturgical hours. For the Church, the hours of the day were primarily important in order to maintain the rhythm of prayer, giving thanks to God at allotted times throughout the day. Such astronomical observation of the most basic sort existed alongside highly specialized versions, with a sophisticated apparatus of astronomical and computational tools appearing in many medieval almanacs, prayer books, psalters and Books of Hours.⁴

Despite these different requirements, however, both the merchant’s time and the Church’s time were closely interlinked with the natural order of seasons. For trade and agriculture, the time of the year dictated activities that had to be performed: the sowing of seeds, the selling of goods, the storing of produce. For the Church, the turn of the seasons in the yearly cycle had an immediate relevance in a different sense. The cycle of feasts in the liturgy repeated every year, thus following an annual pattern that linked into the natural cycle of the seasons. The secular year and the liturgical year were not identical, however: the liturgical year started with Advent (the period of four weeks until Christmas) and ended the day before the first Sunday of Advent, usually at the end of November, with the exact dates variable depending on when Advent Sunday fell in a particular year. Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Candlemas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost: the Church’s year was marked by important feasts and the seasons leading up to them, with Easter being the most important feast of the entire year. Easter was a ‘moveable feast’ dependent on the lunar cycle, celebrated on the Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox (the date in spring when day and night are of equal length). In practice, this meant that Easter was celebrated on a different date each year, and as a result many other moveable feasts dependent on the date of Easter took place at equally variable dates. This cycle of moveable feasts was known as the Temporale. Alongside these important moveable feasts and related liturgical seasons there was a concurrent cycle of feast days of saints, the Sanctorale. Saints’ feasts were celebrated on the same fixed date every year. A page from a Book of Hours of Simon de Varie lists the calendar of saints for the first half of the month of July (illus. 20). Saints such as Thibault (Theobald), Thomas and Benoit (Benedict) are mentioned. The presence of French saints’ names indicates that this Book of Hours originates from France: a calendar from England, by contrast, would show a slightly different inventory of saints, including some who were of local or regional significance, as well as widely known biblical saints. Despite the universal nature of the Church’s calendar, which prescribed the cycle of Sundays, seasons and feasts for everyone, there was room for local variation. People were more inclined to venerate their ‘own’ saints from a nearby town or at least from the same country, and this preference for the local and the familiar is reflected in the Sanctorale. Believers did not worship saints in the same way that they worshipped Christ, but rather asked them to intercede for them with God or pass on their prayers for specific intentions. The cult of saints may seem odd or arcane from a modern perspective, but the logic behind it was not dissimilar to that of asking a friend to put in a good word for you with their friend (in this case, God). People seem to have felt closer ties of friendship with saints who lived in the same area and spoke the same language than with those from far away, though there were exceptions.

Although the liturgical cycles of the Temporale and the Sanctorale are distinct from the natural cycle of the seasons, they do not exist in isolation from it. We have seen in previous chapters that the texts of the liturgy allude very deliberately to natural phenomena connected to the seasons, such as the return of light in the depths of winter. An example of the interlinking of the natural and the liturgical cycles can also be seen in the calendar in Simon de Varie’s Book of Hours (illus. 20): to the right of the list of saints’ feasts is an illustration of a man and a woman binding sheaves in the fields. The month is July, and the image points to the importance of the harvest that takes place in this month, an activity of daily life which occurs alongside the Church’s feasts. On the manuscript page, the harvest is almost given a greater focus than the calendar itself, occurring as it does in a beautifully executed illustration with careful details, in the middle of a decorative floral border. The miniature of a lion at the bottom of the page represents the sign of the zodiac relating to July: Leo. We have, then, three different ways of measuring time presented side by side in this calendar: the year of the Church, the year of the labourer, and the year of the stars.

Calendars such as this show just how important liturgical time was to medieval life, even to those not in religious orders. The liturgical calendar intersected with and defined the rhythm of daily life. Holy days, feasts, anniversaries and rituals formed the very social fabric of medieval society, and were equally important not only as religious occasions but for such mundane duties as paying rent. A document from around 1440 from the London Guildhall specifies the ‘vsuell dayes of Rent paying . . . at Witsonday, Lammasday, alhalowday, and Candelmasday’.⁵ ‘Witsonday’ refers to the feast of Pentecost; ‘Lammasday’ is derived from the Old English word hlafmæsse, ‘bread-Mass’, and refers to the feast on 1 August, which was observed as a harvest festival in the early church; ‘alhalowday’ refers to the feast of All Saints on 1 November, and ‘Candelmasday’ to the feast of the purification of the Virgin Mary on 2 February. The presence of ‘-mas’ in some of these words (as, of course, in ‘Christmas’) indicates the importance of religious services on these dates, but evidently the liturgical celebration did not impede transactions of a more secular nature on these festivals. Although terms such as ‘Lammas’ have fallen out of use, or are relegated today to firmly religious spheres, we find references to them in centuries far beyond the Middle Ages, such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s ‘Youth’ (1833):

I heard Spring laugh in hidden rills,

Summer thro’ all her sleepy leaves

Murmur’d: a voice ran round the hills

When corny Lammas bound the sheaves:

A voice, when night had crept on high,

To snowy crofts and winding scars,

Rang like a trumpet clear and dry,

And shook the frosty winter stars.⁶

Lammas is here invoked as a personification of the harvest, who binds the sheaves of corn. There is no religious aspect to Tennyson’s vision of autumn, and yet the use of the word persists, a word whose very form speaks of the liturgical connection that this season used to have.

In the Middle Ages liturgical practice is thus closely interwoven with seasonal activities, trade and commerce. The liturgy is, therefore, in one sense intensely time-bound and time-dependent. Measuring and keeping time are necessary in order to celebrate the feasts of the liturgical year. This time is cyclical: the same feasts recur every year, the same prayers are said and the same hymns are sung on the same day each year. Within the rhythm of monastic life, hours are measured by the tolling of bells, and every day follows the same pattern of prayer. Through the Liturgy of the Hours in religious communities, every hour is filled with significance, through the Mass and eight set times for communal prayer. This custom was inherited from the Jewish tradition of praying seven times a day (based on Psalm 119:164: ‘Seven times a day do I praise thee’), which was expanded in the Christian tradition to include an additional night office, bringing the total number of liturgical hours to eight: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, set hours of prayer from the very early morning to evening.⁷ The prayers for these canonical hours are set out in medieval prayerbooks called ‘Books of Hours’. The survival of a great number of Books of Hours, often sumptuously illustrated and illuminated, shows the significance of this liturgy not only within religious houses but for society more broadly. Judging by the number of surviving manuscripts, Books of Hours were among the most popular and sought-after texts in late medieval England, France and the Netherlands. Many of these books were not intended for monks and nuns, but for pious laypeople, who wished to follow the Liturgy of the Hours as private devotions and prayers in their homes. Some of these books are relatively modest and simple, while others include finely executed illustrations and miniatures with scenes from the life of Christ and lavishly decorated borders, such as the nativity scene in the Arenberg Hours (illus. 21). From simple objects for private prayer to luxury objects often made for members of the nobility, Books of Hours enjoyed a broad appeal.⁸

20 Illumination from the Book of Hours of Simon de Varie, 1455.

The nativity scene in this stunningly illustrated Book of Hours is attributed to Flemish illuminator Willem Vrelant (d. 1481). With tempera colours, ink and gold leaf, the illustration shows Mary and Joseph with the Christ-child, set in a rural scenery. God the Father and the Holy Spirit are depicted above the stable, accompanied by angels. But although the image is the centrepiece of the page, and the delicate border decoration certainly absorbs the reader’s attention, both are there to embellish and illustrate the text of the Liturgy of the Hours at Prime (with Ad primam written in red in the first line): Deus, in adiutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adiuuandum me festina. Gloria patri et filio et spiritui sancto. Sicut erat in principio et nunc et . . . (supplied from the next page) semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen. (‘O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.’) These words, citing Psalm 70:1, form the introductory prayer to every liturgical Hour. In a religious community, these verses would usually be chanted, following a call-and-response structure. But they would likely have been recited privately by the owner of this Book of Hours, with its lavish illustrations encouraging private meditation on the mysteries of the life of Christ at set hours of the day. The book is an object of great beauty, which is intended to reveal the even greater beauty hidden within the Liturgy of the Hours.

The Liturgy of the Hours focuses on prayers that recur at the same time every day. It is repetitive, cyclical, designed to lead the individual into ever-deeper meditation upon the same words. But there is also another understanding of time expressed in the liturgy, which appears to clash with this idea of cyclical time. Time can be seen as a movement from the Creation to Old Testament history to the birth and death of Christ to the many centuries after Christ until the present, and continuing from the present into the future, with a distinct end, after which will come the resurrection of the dead and the renewal of heaven and earth. In this sense, Christian time can be imagined as teleological, as a straight line rather than a circle, moving inexorably forward towards an end point. The two understandings, though they seem at first glance contradictory, are deliberately brought into conversation in the liturgy. We have seen in previous chapters that the Dies irae sequence moves from prayers said for the individual soul of a deceased to prayers for the Day of Judgement at the end of time, and how the idea of eventual renewal of heaven and earth is alluded to in liturgical prayers. Through the liturgy, there is a close connection between the here and now and the future that is to come. The feasts of the present point forward in time, as emphasized in many liturgical prayers such as the prayer after communion (also known as the Postcommunio) on the third Mass of Christmas Day: ‘Grant, we pray thee, almighty God, that as the Saviour of the world born today is the author of our supernatural birth, so he may himself also be to us the giver of immortality.’⁹ The feast celebrated on this particular day is relevant in relation to eternal life that is to come. The present looks towards the future, and the liturgical celebration of a feast, dependent upon the measuring of time, invokes a future immortal life outside of time.

21 The Nativity, illumination from the Arenberg Hours, early 1460s.

The liturgy not only points forward to the future in a teleological sense, however, but draws the past into the present. At its core the Christian understanding of time sees the life of Christ as the central event of all history. It is through the death of Christ on the cross and his resurrection that salvation has been accomplished, and therefore all of human history is dependent upon this one decisive moment in time. Throughout the previous chapters, we have seen the importance of the concept of typology for the liturgy: episodes, characters, and narratives of the Old Testament are interpreted in relation to the life of Christ. The liturgical use of such Old Testament material turns it into a prophecy of the coming of Christ, in which the Old Testament is the prefiguration, and the life of Christ is the fulfilment. In this understanding, time is not so much a straight line, but circles around Christ as the centre of gravity. Such an outlook raises an important question: how can the life of Christ as the centre of all human history stay relevant to those who live many centuries afterwards? How can the death of a Jewish man around AD 33 influence the lives of people in the fourteenth, the sixteenth or the twenty-first century?

The liturgy offers a solution to this question. Among the multiplicity of different understandings of time that we have seen, perhaps the most mysterious, but also the most crucial, is the idea of liturgical presence. This is where we come back to the scene of the elevation of the host and chalice from the beginning of this chapter. When the priest speaks the words of consecration, he uses the very words of Christ at the Last Supper reported in the gospels: ‘This is my body’ and ‘this is the chalice of my blood.’ The theological idea behind this liturgical practice is that the priest speaks and acts in persona Christi (in the person of Christ), representing Christ in ritual practice. This is why the priest’s words are the words of Christ himself, rather than words of a human minister spoken to God. This idea is important in relation to theological ideas about the Real Presence of Christ in the form of bread and wine. According to this idea, it is not the priest who miraculously transforms these elements into the body and blood of Christ, but it is God himself who effects the miracle. The priest is not important in his own right, but rather as an instrument of divine power. What happens during the Mass is not a re-enactment of the Last Supper as if it were a play on a stage; to the contrary, it is an actualization of past events that is anything but a play. Nicholas Wolterstorff explains it like this: ‘the celebrant actually blesses; he does not play the role of Christ blessing. We actually give thanks; we do not play the role of the disciples giving thanks.’¹⁰ Although there are significant disagreements and divergent interpretations of these ideas in later Protestant movements, the understanding of the Eucharist expressed by medieval liturgy insists that Christ becomes truly present through the words of consecration.

This idea has implications for the understanding of time within the liturgical ritual. The liturgy collapses time into a single liturgical moment. If the priest speaks the words spoken by Christ at the Last Supper in the person of Christ, this means in turn that within the liturgy the events of Christ’s death and resurrection are brought into the present, although they have historically taken place within the past. In other words, the liturgy makes present again the key events of salvation history. What happened in a Roman province around the year AD 33 is again made present in every celebration of the Mass through the ritual. We can see this understanding of time reflected in many ways in the liturgy. When the church calendar commemorates a particular event, the liturgy speaks of it not as a past but as a present event.¹¹ For instance, the liturgical celebration of Christmas speaks of the birth of Christ as an event of today rather than an event that is being merely remembered, as in the Postcommunio on the third Mass of Christmas quoted above: ‘the Saviour of the world born today’. The Exsultet of the Easter vigil (see Chapter Six) likewise celebrates the redemption as an event of the present time: ‘This is the night when Christ broke the prison bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld.’¹² But in the Exsultet, there are further events that are spoken of as having taken place this very same night: ‘This is the night when once you led our forebears, Israel’s children, from slavery in Egypt and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea.’ The parting of the Red Sea in Exodus, which is understood as a prefiguration of the salvation through Christ, likewise becomes mystically present in the liturgy of today. Past, present and future are connected in one all-encompassing liturgical present. Through the words of the ritual, the present expands to include prophecy, fulfilment and vast swathes of historical time. All these things have already happened, but in the liturgy they are still happening, and continuously happening in every church in any place where Mass is said.

In this way, liturgy breaks through the barriers of the linear time of ordinary life, and reorients the congregation towards the Redemption as the focal point of all of human history. Time becomes flexible, malleable, all-inclusive. This stands in sharp contrast to a strict linear chronology, in which one second ticks on into the next, and will never return once it is past. Theologically, liturgy is situated at the intersection between the passing of ordinary time and divine timelessness. God is outside of time, and therefore the historical events of the Redemption can remain perpetually present in the liturgy, not just as a memory or recollection of past events, but as an actualization of that which happened in the past. At the same time, the liturgy points forward to the events of the Last Day and the subsequent renewal of earth and heaven as the completion of salvation history that is still to come. Chronological time is important to the celebrations of the liturgical year, but at the same time liturgy transcends it, merging past and future in an everlasting liturgical presence, which mirrors the timelessness of God.

This mysterious and all-encompassing sense of liturgical time is part of the reason why the Mass is so fundamental to Christian worship. It also helps us to understand why the question of how to celebrate the Eucharist, and how to interpret it, has been so important to Christians of different persuasions through the ages. It explains why Catholics and Protestants alike, in the middle of religious, political and social crises such as the Reformation, were willing to argue, fight and die for it. The mystery of liturgical time is powerful, not unlike the mysterious simultaneity of time to which T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) alludes in the Four Quartets: ‘Time past and time future/ What might have been and what has been/ Point to one end, which is always present.’¹³

10

Space

We are standing in the magnificent cathedral in medieval Wells. A bell is rung. Its pure, sharp sound reverberates through the high vaults above. The congregation rises as the procession moves up the aisle, a line of white robes slowly advancing towards the high altar. Their steps can be heard on the stone floor, coming closer and closer. First comes a golden cross carried at the head of the procession, shimmering whenever it catches a ray of sunlight falling through the high, arched windows on the side of the nave. The smell of incense fills the church, and the burning candles of the torch-bearers shine through the white cloud around the thurible. The sun casts colourful specks of light through the stained-glass windows; red and blue and green and gold dancing on walls. For a moment the incense veils the vaulted ceiling above, so that all that remains visible are the pillars on either side of the nave, going upwards, ever upwards. The whole building seems to be reaching towards the heavens, stretching its limbs higher, higher. Then, the organ starts, and a low chord fills the building that can be not only heard but felt in the depths of the body. The choir begins to sing the Introit, voices interweaving like the twisted vines that decorate the stonework on the outside of the cathedral. The procession has reached the altar, and the priest genuflects and ascends the steps, his brightly coloured vestments shining in the light of the candles. The choir now changes from Latin into another language: Kyrie, eleison – ‘Lord, have mercy’ in Greek – reaching far back in time and asking for God’s forgiveness with the same words as the earliest Christians. The music is reflective and yet hopeful, directing a heartfelt plea upwards, reaching towards heaven just like the high pillars and the arched windows and the vaulted ceiling.

The preceding chapters have mainly focused on liturgical texts and their role within worship. But although the words of these texts are of crucial importance in the liturgy, it is important to remember that they are not the only important aspects of Christian worship. Liturgy is a multi-sensorial experience; it gains its life through the interplay of spoken word, singing and silence. It includes not only sound but a vibrant display of colour, light and darkness, carved statues and images, the movements of the priest and the servers around the church, the smell of incense, burning candles, the feel of cold air from the stone floor and the warmth of sunlight through the windows. It is a symphony of sound, light and colour. The ritual’s significance is enhanced by the space within which it takes place; the liturgical words draw their weight not only from their theological and poetic qualities but from the setting in which they are used. In medieval England, the most impactful settings for the liturgy would have been provided by the numerous Gothic cathedrals, built with breathtaking craftsmanship and considerable sacrifice, sometimes even the sacrifice of human lives lost in the process of construction. Their construction took many decades, often centuries, leaving behind monumental works of art in stone, which have remained in use as places of worship until the present day. Gothic architecture reflects in stone the same attitude towards the divine that we also find in the liturgy. The key to understanding these buildings is to remember that they were built for the liturgy and are an expression of its spirit. They are monuments that speak of what G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) called the ‘battle-beauty of the Gothic’, in his poetic vision of Lincoln Cathedral with its spires, gargoyles and flying buttresses, contrasted with the mundane city around it:

I had climbed the sharp, crooked streets up to this ecclesiastical citadel; just in front of me was a flourishing and richly coloured kitchen garden; beyond that was the low stone wall; beyond that the row of vans that looked like houses; and beyond and above that, straight and swift and dark, light as a flight of birds, and terrible as the Tower of Babel, Lincoln Cathedral seemed to rise out of human sight. As I looked at it I asked myself the questions that I have asked here; what was the soul in all those stones? They were varied, but it was not variety; they were solemn, but it was not solemnity; they were farcical, but it was not farce . . . All of a sudden the vans I had mistaken for cottages began to move away to the left. In the start this gave to my eye and mind I really fancied that the Cathedral was moving towards the right. The two huge towers seemed to start striding across the plain like the two legs of some giant whose body was covered with the clouds. Then I saw what it was. The truth about Gothic is, first, that it is alive, and second, that it is on the march. It is the Church Militant; it is the only fighting architecture. All its spires are spears at rest; and all its stones are stones asleep in a catapult. In that instant of illusion, I could hear the arches clash like swords as they crossed each other . . . The graven foliage wreathed and blew like banners going into battle; the silence was deafening with all the mingled noises of a military march; the great bell shook down, as the organ shook up its thunder. The thirsty-throated gargoyles shouted like trumpets from all the roofs and pinnacles as they passed; and from the lectern in the core of the cathedral the eagle of the awful evangelist clashed his wings of brass.¹

Regardless of whether or not one agrees with Chesterton’s vision of the cathedral at war, his description captures an important aspect of the magnificent buildings erected for the celebration of the liturgy: they are no mere functional spaces for religious ceremonies, but they are an expression of an idea, of a vision of God. Every part of a Gothic cathedral points upwards, directing our gaze and thought towards the divine, beyond the mundane present. But the small and the mundane are not insignificant. Beyond the monumental, the upward movement, the light shining from above, there is room for almost obsessive detail. Intricate decoration – painting, carving and engraving – adorns every nook and cranny of the building, up until the highest tower, where perfectly carved saints stand guard even though they are too far from the ground to be seen by any human eye. Cathedrals are theology made stone. Like the texts of the liturgy, they are dramatic, poetic and almost unbearably beautiful.

Nothing about the architecture of a medieval cathedral is accidental. The building, its form, orientation and decoration – everything is symbolic. Its very geometry, with its intricate relationship between circles and squares, expresses core Christian beliefs about the divine. A medieval cathedral is built in the shape of a cross, the central symbol of Christ’s death and resurrection. The building is oriented towards the east, with the High Altar at the east end invoking the rising sun, a symbol of Christ, the light that overcomes the darkness. Accordingly, as we enter the building from the portal at the west end and follow the nave towards the east, our path maps a symbolic journey from darkness towards light. This symbolism is mirrored by many architectural elements, such as the placement of the baptismal font usually found near the main entrance of a church (though sometimes placed in a separate chapel, called a baptistery). Baptism marks the initiation of new members into the church, and therefore the placement of the font at the beginning of this symbolic journey towards the rising sun emphasizes the importance of the baptismal rite as a moment of transition when the newly baptized child or adult enters the community of the faithful. Reinforcing this symbolism, the baptismal rite begins outside the sacred building, before moving inside and to the font placed near the entrance.² The baptismal font, then, stands at the beginning of the way into a church building, just as baptism marks the entrance of the individual into the Church as a community, the symbolic body of Christ. Sacred architecture reflects the meaning of the liturgy.

Understanding the liturgy within the broader context of the spaces within which rituals take place means that we have to fill in many blanks with our imagination. Historical research can reconstruct, up to a certain point, which words were said or sung at which point in the ritual, which movements accompanied it, where in a building a ceremony took place, and so on. Nonetheless, we have to imagine many aspects relating to sound, sight and space. This can only be a poor substitute for the real thing, because fully understanding the experience of a liturgical ritual, its effect on all the senses within the astonishing space of a church, requires bodily presence at this ritual. The liturgy, in the way it channels sound, sight, smell and movement, demands to be experienced in a fully embodied form because it demands participation in community with others. In the liturgical celebration, a series of postures and movements are required not only of the priest and the servers, but of the congregation who have assembled – kneeling, standing, sitting, making the sign of the cross, going up towards the altar to make an offering and so on. This participation is encouraged in the Middle Ages even for those who did not understand the Latin texts of the liturgy. A number of texts survive from late medieval England that guide lay members of the congregation in their devotions during Mass and serve to explain what the priest is doing, even if they do not translate the exact words. What is particularly notable about these texts is the way in which they not only describe the priest’s movements but instruct the congregation in their movements, with directions such as these: ‘When thou thy Creed thus hast done, upon thy feet thou stand up soon’; ‘a large cross on thee thou make’; ‘take good keep unto the priest, when he him turns, knock on thy breast’; ‘kneeling hold up both thy hands’.³ The lay members of the congregation are encouraged to participate in the ritual, not only by silently saying prayers but by adopting collective postures and gestures that reflect what is happening in the liturgy. The liturgy thus follows an intricate dramaturgy in which all those present participate, and which becomes a unified whole through speaking to all the senses within dedicated sacred spaces.

The structure of the Mass follows a detailed theological logic, which unites stable parts that are strictly prescribed, and some variable parts that change according to specific liturgical feasts. Its dramatic architecture is representative of core theological beliefs that are embodied, or enacted, in the ritual. Fundamental to these beliefs is an understanding of the Mass as a ritual that makes present again the crucifixion, in which Christ is wholly and truly present in the sacrament of the Eucharist under the appearances of bread and wine, according to the dominant belief in the medieval period, and continued in post-Reformation times in Catholic doctrine. The crucifixion was a sacrifice that Christ willingly underwent in order to atone for the sins of humankind, and consequently the Mass has the character of a sacrifice. This understanding is expressed in a multitude of ways in the dramaturgy of the Mass, in which all liturgical texts, prayers and actions build up to the pivotal moment of the consecration of the bread and wine, which become the body and blood of Christ. The ritual gestures and movements up to and around the altar all express this sacrificial character – the priest stands at the altar facing east, as a sign of directing prayers to God on behalf of the congregation, the altar is incensed as a sign that it is the place where the sacrifice is offered, and the prayers over the offerings of bread and wine implore God to accept them graciously for the remission of sins. This emphasis on sacrifice, though somewhat alien to modern sensibilities, is deep and old. Most ancient cultures had ritual practices that involved sacrifice of some kind, including the slaughter of animals connected with ideas of ritual cleansing, expurgation and renewal. Jewish ritual practices, too, involved animal sacrifice in the temple, and many aspects of the Mass hearken back to Jewish traditions, prayers and psalms. Christian liturgy thus draws a connection between animal sacrifice in the temple and the sacrifice of Christ at the cross, using the metaphor ‘Lamb of God’ to refer to the idea that Jewish animal sacrifice prefigured the ultimate sacrifice of an innocent man who is also God, laying down his life for the salvation, cleansing and renewal of the world.

The structure of the Mass is complex, and at first glance can merely seem a long list of prayers and readings. One way of approaching this structure is to understand it as a narrative arc that leads us from God’s words to God’s actions. In the first part of the Mass, we listen to and reflect on the word of God, while in the second half we celebrate the Eucharist, making present Christ’s death on the cross. This narrative logic helps us to understand the individual elements of the rite, which construct a dramatic development across both parts of the Mass, culminating in the consecration of the bread and wine. The introductory rites at the beginning of the Mass take place at the foot of the altar, preparing the celebrant and the congregation for what is to come in order to enter into the liturgy in an attitude of humility and reflection, with the recitation of a psalm and a general confession of sins. When the priest has ascended the steps to the altar, the liturgy leads us from prayers for God’s mercy in the Kyrie and praise of God in the Gloria to listening to the word of God in the epistle and gospel readings. The gospel is then expounded and interpreted in the homily, in order to understand more deeply the layers of meaning contained in the biblical text. The first part of the Mass concludes with an affirmation of the articles of faith in the Creed. Broadly speaking, the first part is therefore focused on an engagement with Scripture through listening and exegesis, and in the Middle Ages those members of the congregation who were unable to follow the readings in Latin were still able to gain an understanding of them through the homily, which was often in the vernacular.

After this focus on the word of God, the sacrificial character of the Mass becomes increasingly prominent in the second part. The offering is prepared and the priest washes his hands as a ritual sign of cleansing before performing the sacrifice. The offering is incensed and the sign of the cross is made many times over it. The Sanctus expresses a sense of the ineffable divine majesty and power. Prayers are said for the living, and the saints in heaven are invoked, expressing the idea that the sacrifice is offered for the entire community of the faithful. Then we approach the dramatic climax: the consecration of the bread and wine, with the words of Christ at the Last Supper said inaudibly by the priest – creating a silence for the congregation that enhances the mystery and awe of the moment. The host and chalice are lifted up high for the congregation to see, in a symbolic gesture that echoes Christ being lifted up high on the cross. After the moment of consecration, the priest says a number of prayers asking God to accept the sacrifice and commemorating the souls of the departed. Finally, as a means of preparing for communion, the Lord’s Prayer is said, reflecting a sense of trust towards God who is ‘our Father’. The choir then sings the Agnus Dei, which in many musical settings is the most introspective and moving part of the Mass, invoking Christ as the ‘Lamb of God’ sacrificed for our sins. After the communion of the faithful (or, in medieval times where communion was less frequent, the communion of the priest only), concluding prayers are said, and the final blessing is given.

This summary makes apparent the dramatic development of the liturgy of the Mass, from introduction through reflection on Scripture to the sacrifice, and final conclusion. Within this large-scale narrative framework, many psalms and prayers, which change with the liturgical occasion (also called ‘propers’), offer abundant material for reflection. What is not described above is the extent to which this rite varied locally, particularly in the Middle Ages in the West, before the liturgy became more unified after the Council of Trent. Also missing from the description above are those elements that can only be fully experienced in person: the setting within a church with its distinctive architecture and stained-glass windows, the sound and movement and visual appearance of the ritual, the priest’s and the servers’ movements from one side to the other around the altar, the bowing, genuflecting and elevation of hands, the swinging of the thurible, the liturgical vestments, the alternation between sung and spoken words, all of which are imbued with deeper significance in the ritual. There is a choreography to the celebration of the liturgy that gives it a dramatic sense, and yet the Mass, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, is not like a stage play. The Mass makes Christ’s actions present again, rather than merely representing them as a play would. Nonetheless, there are areas of overlap between ritual performance and stage acting, and the two have fruitfully inspired each other.

From the early Middle Ages in the West onwards, a tradition of liturgical plays developed around the liturgy, containing dramatic representations of crucial moments in the life of Christ. The earliest evidence of such plays comes from monastic communities. For example, the Regularis Concordia, a manual of rules for houses of the Benedictine order in England compiled by Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester between AD 965 and 975, contains a dramatic dialogue between the women at the empty tomb of the risen Christ and the angel who announces Christ’s resurrection, centring on the question Quem quaeritis? (‘Whom do you seek?’).⁴ Small ‘plays’ such as this were designed to accompany major feasts such as Easter and Christmas, and were performed in Latin and usually in plainchant within monastic communities: in this case the Benedictine monks would have taken on the roles of the angel and the women. Other examples of such liturgical plays survive from communities in England and continental Europe. There are, as we have seen in preceding chapters, also texts within the liturgy itself that harness such dramatic elements, such as the Improperia of Good Friday, which imagine the crucified Christ reproaching his people. Another example can be found in liturgical processions for Palm Sunday at the beginning of Holy Week, which enact in liturgical form the triumphant entry of Christ into Jerusalem before his passion and death. The Gospel of Matthew recounts these events as follows:

A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!’ (Matthew 21:8–9)

The liturgy of Palm Sunday contains many elements of the gospel account and re-enacts them in symbolic form: palm branches are blessed and distributed to the people, and a procession is formed leading to different stations, where readings, prayers and chants take place, before the procession finally enters the church. During the procession, various antiphons and hymns are sung, including one that starts with the words:

Gloria, laus, et honor tibi sit Rex Christe Redemptor: cui puerile decus prompsit Hosanna pium.

Glory, praise, and honour belong to you, O Christ, king, redeemer, to whom the youthful virtue presented the holy Hosanna.

You are king of Israel and the celebrated offspring of David, who comes in the name of the Lord, O blessed king.⁵

Israel es tu rex Dauidis et inclita proles: nomine qui in Domini rex benedicte venis.

Ascribed to Theodulf of Orléans (c. 760–821), the full hymn describes Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, with the refrain Gloria, laus, et honor repeated after each verse. The hymn takes its cue from the acclamations of Christ as the ‘Son of David’ and ‘the one who comes in the name of the Lord’ reported in the gospel, with the jubilant shout ‘Hosanna’. The rubrics of liturgical manuscripts indicate that this hymn was sung at Palm Sunday processions by choirs of young boys, echoing the hymn’s emphasis on ‘youthful virtue’.

The dramatic elements of such processions can be gleaned when we imagine what such occasions would have looked like: the members of the procession clothed in liturgical vestments, the choir, the congregation with palm branches in their hands, the music, the incense, the movement from station to station up to the entrance into the church, the diverse array of prayers and hymns. It is not only a liturgical celebration but a spectacle that speaks to all senses. And yet the drama of the occasion was heightened even further by the ways in which the procession was adapted to the spaces in which it took place. The rubrics of the Gloria, laus hymn contain instructions that the refrain was to be sung by the boy choir standing in an ‘elevated place’,⁶ while the alternating verses of the hymn were sung by a choir in a response-and-answer structure coming from different places. Where exactly this ‘elevated place’ was would have depended on the particular church or cathedral in question; platforms or other devices could have been used. The features of a specific location could be used effectively in order to heighten the dramatic impact of the moment, as the example of medieval Wells demonstrates. Wells Cathedral has an imposing facade, which shows scenes from the heavenly Jerusalem. The facade also hides a secret: behind a row of carved angels is a hidden passage for singers, built around 1220.⁷ Openings originally hidden behind statues of angels allowed for singers to stand in the passage and sing to those congregated below in front of the facade. The passage is constructed so that it would function as a resonating chamber to amplify the sound, with the effect that it could be clearly heard across the space outside the portal.⁸ The historical evidence suggests, then, that these architectural elements were constructed so that the liturgy could be celebrated in an even more dramatic fashion. In medieval England, the Eucharistic host – the body of Christ – was carried in a golden monstrance during Palm Sunday processions, thus vividly re-enacting the entry of the historic Jesus into the city of Jerusalem.⁹ The sacramental body of Christ approached the cathedral whose front depicted the Heavenly Jerusalem. The symbolism of this moment could hardly be more impactful: as the procession moved towards the west door of the cathedral, there would have been a dramatic interchange in the singing of the hymn between the boy choir stationed up in the passage behind the statues of angels, and the responding choir down below. The boys’ choir would have been invisible to those below, creating the impression of angels singing from on high, with mankind below responding and joining in a shared song: heaven and earth united in shouts of praise before the carved facade of the Heavenly Jerusalem as Christ entered. The space within which the liturgy took place was used to maximum symbolic effect, acting as a breathtaking stage-set for the Palm Sunday celebrations.¹⁰

Imagining the liturgy in the spaces within which it took place allows us to catch glimpses of how it was dynamically adapted and developed in order to heighten the effect of the texts, creating rituals that communicated not only through words but through a multitude of sensory experiences. Dramatic elements, and sometimes even plays, could be used to this end. It is difficult to say whether there is a clear line of development from such liturgical drama to what we would these days associate with the term ‘drama’, such as Shakespeare’s plays and more recent modern forms of acting in film and television. But what we do know is that the medieval precursor to Shakespeare’s plays was very closely associated with liturgical and religious ideas. This tradition, one of the main forms of medieval theatre, is what we usually refer to with the terms ‘biblical drama’, ‘cycle plays’ or ‘mystery plays’. Records of such plays survive from a number of medieval towns, including Chester, York and various places in East Anglia. The medieval conception of such plays is quite different from what a modern-day theatregoer might expect. Plays were performed in cycles, and the performances took place as open-air street theatre, with a series of wagons for the pageants set up at stations at key points within the medieval towns. Audiences were able to move from wagon to wagon along the streets in order to watch individual pageants being performed. The subject matter of such plays was religious in nature and spanned the whole of Christian history, representing crucial events from the creation of the world to the life of Christ to the Day of Doom. A complete cycle of plays survives from medieval York, containing 47 plays in total, which gives us an idea of the truly remarkable scale of such performances. The theatrical spectacle of such a cycle was a civic event in which everyone took part, whether as a member of the audience or as an actor in a play. Associations of craftsmen and merchants practising a specific trade (called ‘guilds’) were in charge of individual plays and all aspects concerning their performance, acting and staging. Guilds were often put in charge of plays that had some connection with the crafts or trade they were practising: in medieval York, for instance, the play about the building of Noah’s Ark was under the direction of the shipwrights, while the play about Christ’s suffering on the cross was the responsibility of the butchers. Although some other forms of medieval theatre used troupes of professional actors, the biblical drama of the cycle plays was a truly communal endeavour. The religious subject matter might lead us to assume that the cycle plays were a solemn and serious affair, but in reality the plays incorporate plenty of the kind of humour that would appeal to their audiences in such civic settings, with many comical and rowdy moments, not unlike the bawdy humour in Shakespeare’s plays. Medieval theatre leaves space for laughter even in the midst of the most serious plays.

In medieval towns, the performance of such biblical theatre was associated with the liturgical calendar. The York cycle was performed on the feast of Corpus Christi, which was celebrated every year on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday (late May or early June, depending on the date of Easter). Corpus Christi was a feast in honour of the sacrament of the Eucharist, during which the consecrated host was carried in solemn procession through the city in order to celebrate and affirm belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. This liturgical occasion was accompanied by the annual performance of the cycle of plays, which allowed the members of the community to visualize and experience the central events of salvation history.¹¹ In this way, biblical drama was embedded into a liturgical context in how, where and when it was performed. We can see the importance of the liturgy to biblical theatre throughout the individual plays, which take their cues not only from the Bible, but specifically from the liturgy in the way in which characters, themes and ideas are portrayed.

We have already seen above the dramatic elements of liturgical processions for Palm Sunday. The York Corpus Christi play of the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem is closely reminiscent of such liturgical practice in a scene where the town officials of Jerusalem decide to go and welcome Christ:

Go we then with procession

To meet that comely [= gracious one] as us ought

With branches, flowers, and unison,

With mightful songs here in a row.

Our children shall

Go sing before that men may know.¹²

Precisely as in the liturgical celebration, Christ in the play is being welcomed into Jerusalem by singing children. The singing is not just a mention in the text, but an instruction and an action to be performed, as the play includes the stage direction Tunc cantant (‘They then sing’). The manuscript sources do not specify precisely what was sung, but given the liturgical resonances of the play, it is likely to have been a hymn or antiphon taken from the Palm Sunday liturgy. For the medieval audience of this play, such references would inevitably have brought to mind the ritual re-enactment of the event on Palm Sunday.

Other plays, too, weave a rich web of references to the liturgy. As we have seen in Chapter Five, the human sorrow of Christ’s mother under the cross is a subject that was explored with intensity in Western liturgy, literature and art. It is not surprising, therefore, that the portrayal of this moment onstage would have particular poignancy. When we see Mary standing underneath the cross in play 32 of the so-called N-Town plays (a cycle that would have been performed in a number of different towns), the Virgin’s grief-stricken address to Jesus can hardly fail to move the audience:

Alas! Alas! I live too longe

To see my sweet son with pains stronge,

As a thief on cross doth honge,

And never yet did he synne!

Alas, my dear child to death is dressed!

Now is my care well more increased.

A! My heart with pain is pressed,

For sorrow my heart doth twynne [= break].¹³

This is reminiscent of the Stabat Mater (see Chapter Five), which begins:

The sorrowful mother stood

weeping before the cross

where hung her Son.

Her grieving soul,

anguished and lamenting,

was pierced by a sword.

Mary’s speech in the play contains close verbal echoes of the Stabat Mater, such as ‘my sweet son’, as well as her description of her sorrows, in which her ‘heart doth twynne’. The play clearly invokes this tradition, but presents it from a first-person perspective rather than the third person, as the Latin Stabat Mater does. Similarly to some of the Middle English poems that we have seen in Chapter Five, the pathos of the mother watching her only son suffer torment is further enhanced in heart-wrenching words when Mary speaks to her own heart, bidding it to leave her body, and wishes for her own death:

A! Out on my heart! Why burst thou not?

And thou art maiden and mother and seest thus thy child spill [= die].

How mayst thou abide this sorrow and this woeful thought?

A, death, death, death! Why wilt thou not me kill?¹⁴

What is merely descriptive in the Stabat Mater is here imagined as an anguished mother at the brink of what she can endure, wishing for death, and her cri de coeur would have been even more haunting in live performance onstage. The crucifixion play in the N-Town cycle also makes reference to the tradition of the swoon of the virgin formed in visual art, with the stage directions specifying that she ‘falls to the ground as if dead’.¹⁵ The dramatic performance clearly invokes a larger liturgical and paraliturgical tradition of Mary underneath the cross, and uses it for an emotionally impactful scene onstage.

While the N-Town crucifixion play alludes to the Stabat Mater tradition, using it rather freely in order to create an emotionally compelling stage performance, medieval plays frequently cite directly from liturgical texts.¹⁶ An example is the York crucifixion play, which shows us in brutal detail the irreverent Roman soldiers nailing Christ to the cross in a rather incompetent fashion. When at length they have finished, and have hoisted the cross upright, the crucified Christ speaks to the passers-by with the following words:

Al men that walk by way or street,

Take tente ye shal no travail tyne [= Pay attention so that you may not miss any suffering]

Behold my head, my hands, and my feet,

And fully feel now, or ye fyne [= before you go away]

If any mourning may be meet [= equal]

Or mischief measured unto mine.

My Father, that all bales [ = sorrows] may beat [= cure],

Forgive these men that do me pain.

What they work wotte [= know] they not.

Therfore, my Father, I crave

Let never their sins be sought,

But see their souls to save.¹⁷

This speech echoes the Tenebrae responsory O vos omnes, as we have seen in Chapter Four:

O all you who pass by the way,

look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow.

The beginning of Christ’s speech directly cites the liturgical text, which in turn draws from the words of the prophet Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem (Lam. 1:12). We have seen how the liturgy brings together Old Testament texts and the events of the Passion in order to emphasize that Christ’s redemptive acts are the fulfilment of these prophecies. The York play invokes this tradition but expands upon the idea contained in the responsory, listing the signs of his suffering: ‘Behold my head, my hands, and my feet’. Christ then turns to a prayer for his tormentors, following Luke 23:34: ‘Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”’ The text of the play thus merges Christ’s words from the cross, which the Gospel of Luke reports, and the words that the liturgy uses to contemplate Christ’s suffering, creating an emotional appeal which directly addresses the spectators, inviting them to contemplate the crucifixion through their senses, to ‘take tente’, ‘behold’ and ‘feel’. The speech uses a regular four-stressed metre, with alternating rhymes and numerous alliterations, making Christ’s words all the more memorable. It also forms a striking contrast to the Roman soldiers’ short, scornful comments that follow the speech:

I MILES [1st soldier]: We, hark, he jangles like a jay.

II MILES [2nd soldier]: Methinks he patters like a py [= magpie].

The derogatory comparison of Jesus with a chattering bird could not be further from the reality of his simple yet profound speech through which we hear the authority of biblical and liturgical tradition. But the use of this tradition in a play, the act of transposing these words from a liturgical setting onto a stage, has a very specific effect. While the liturgical O vos omnes imagines a situation in which Christ speaks to those who pass by where he is crucified, in a performance in a cycle play this appeal gains an additional layer of meaning and becomes quite literal: since the wagons on which the plays were performed were set up along the main streets of the medieval town, the audience wandering from pageant to pageant literally become the ‘men that walk by way or street’. The appeal to the passers-by, inviting them to look upon the crucified Christ and see if there is any sorrow like his, is directed at the spectators of the play. Christ on the cross speaks to the medieval inhabitants of York who are watching the play. The past and the present meet through the words of the liturgy enacted onstage.¹⁸

These are just a few examples of how liturgical allusions were used in medieval theatre with theological depth and dramatic effect. Biblical drama continued into the sixteenth century and well beyond the Reformation, and Shakespeare’s plays show that he was aware of this tradition. Many aspects of his themes, characters and dramaturgy are influenced by medieval dramatic forms. Hamlet expresses his aversion to excessively exaggerated performance and admonishes the players to avoid it, since ‘it out-Herods Herod’ (Hamlet III.2.14), a reference to the portrayal of Herod as a raging tyrant in medieval biblical drama.¹⁹ But Shakespeare’s plays are also concerned with the importance of the liturgy in a deeper sense than such passing references. One of the key themes of Hamlet is the question of how we remember the dead, and what rituals should be performed at their passing.²⁰ In the medieval world, this function was fulfilled by the elaborate liturgy of the dead, with Requiem Masses and prayers said for the souls of the departed. The Reformation, with its changes to the old idea of purgatory, heralded changes also to funeral rites, which could vary widely according to local custom in England during Elizabeth’s reign.²¹ This change in liturgical rites of remembrance is reflected throughout Hamlet by a prevailing concern over deaths and burials without full rites. Old Hamlet’s ghost is restless, he tells us, because he was

Cut off, even in the blossoms of my sin,

Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled

No reck’ning made, but sent to my account

With all my imperfections on my head.

O horrible, O horrible, most horrible! (I.5.76–80)

In other words, Old Hamlet has died without having received the last rites, consisting of confession, communion and the sacrament of extreme unction, administered to those who are dying. Likewise, Ophelia is buried with ‘maimed rites’ (V.1.208), on account of her suicide. Laertes, deeply disturbed by this curtailment of the ritual, insistently repeats the question: ‘What ceremony else?’ (V.1.212–14), only to be told by the priest that no Requiem Mass has been sung:

We should profane the service of the dead

To sing a requiem and such rest to her

As to peace-parted souls (V.1.245–7)

Throughout the play there is a profound sense of disturbance and unrest associated with such absence or curtailment of ritual, which speaks to anxieties about the changes to liturgical ritual in Shakespeare’s time. Part of what Hamlet seems to say is that the full liturgy of the dead is of crucial importance to both the living and the dead – ‘Words must be said over the dead, goodbyes must be uttered, goodnights liturgically chanted.’²² Disruption of these rites is the road to political, social and spiritual peril.

In its ritual celebration in sacred spaces, and in its influence on performance onstage, liturgy is about presences, both human and divine. Liturgy speaks to the everlasting presence of God across time, and in turn highlights the role that each individual plays as a part of the ritual at a given point in time. Understanding its texts and allusions is only one aspect in a complex experience of liturgy, which can only be grasped if one is fully present in the ritual – the spaces within which it takes place, as well as the music, sounds, gestures, movements and visual cues that accompany it. The liturgy requires the individual to be embodied and present in the space, in the moment. This importance of presence is connected to the liturgy’s key function of making present the divine mysteries. As a result, the ritual also serves to create a community that includes both the living and the dead, united in a common ritual practice and belief. The presence of God is at the heart of the liturgy, and as such it also proved richly inspirational for dramatic representation onstage. Shakespeare, in turn, thinks through the importance of liturgical presence by showing the consequences of the absence of rites. Liturgy remains crucial in the changing post-Reformation world, and has continued to inspire literature, art and music for many centuries beyond the Middle Ages.

Liturgy Revisited

There are many sides to the liturgy. As we have seen, the yearly cycle of celebration of feasts explores the full range of human experience, from profound despair to triumphant joy. The liturgy is poetic, expressing these experiences with words of great depth and beauty. The liturgy is inspiring, prompting artists through the ages to engage creatively with its texts and themes, and transform them as part of a living tradition. The liturgy is connective, forging a link between past, present and future in its ritual. The liturgy is immersive, speaking through words, music, gesture, movement, architecture, colour, light. The liturgy is participatory, drawing the individual into the ritual as a member of a larger community. The liturgy is embodied, celebrating the divine mysteries in the physical presence of the priest and congregation. The liturgy is both public and private, an expression of the public prayer of a community of faith as well as an invitation to members of the congregation to listen, reflect and let themselves be moved. The liturgy is a living tradition, and the forms of worship, texts and rites described in this book can still be experienced, in one form or another, in many churches today.

This is why the liturgy has been so extraordinarily important to Christian communities over the centuries. Its profound influence on Western culture as a common frame of reference, whether in literature, music or art, can hardly be overstated. The reasons for the depth of this influence are perhaps best explained if we think of liturgy not as a one-sided monologue – a form to be observed, a set of rubrics to follow, a range of prescribed readings to attend to – but as a dialogue between thoughts and words that have come down to us from previous generations on the one hand, and the responses of the present congregation on the other. The community and the individual, the past and the present, are in conversation with each other in the ritual. Yet these are not the only participants in this conversation: more than anything else, the liturgy is a dialogue between humans and God. This is expressed in the oft-repeated prayer that opens Matins every morning after the Roman Rite, and also occurs in the Anglican tradition near the beginning of morning and evening prayer: ‘O Lord, open thou our lips – And our mouth shall show forth thy praise.’ Citing Psalm 51:15, this prayer asks God to enable the congregation to praise him in the right way. In a sense, the liturgical prayer opens with a prayer to God to make the liturgy possible in the first place. Without his help, the liturgy is empty and futile, no more than a set of hollow phrases. The liturgy requires the presence of God in order that it may become an active exchange.

Over hundreds, even thousands, of years, countless artists have been inspired by the liturgy. Many lips have indeed been opened to show forth God’s praise in word, song, painting, sculpture, architecture. This dialogue with God has continued down the centuries, and it is still ongoing today. It is an involved dialogue with plenty of disagreement. Artistic productions that have engaged with the liturgy have added to its detail, richness and meaning, but also questioned it, provoked it and reacted against it. Such responses are part and parcel of a living tradition, and the fact that liturgical inspirations have proved meaningful in sometimes entirely secular contexts shows the extraordinary stability, yet also the versatility, of this tradition. The liturgy forms the fabric of Western creative imagination; it provides the very images, words and concepts with which we think and tell stories. It is surprising, perhaps, that the story of the liturgy itself is not known more widely. This book can only provide an introduction to this untold story, and there are many more riches to discover in the liturgy for those who wish to take part in the conversation between the divine and the human, between tradition and present moment, which has preoccupied us for many centuries.

How this conversation will develop in the future is difficult to foretell. The liturgy certainly has its own answer to this question: the set formula for the conclusion of many liturgical prayers is in saecula saeculorum, Amen. This has in the English tradition often been translated as ‘world without end. Amen’, referring to God’s eternal and everlasting presence. However, the Latin words translated more literally mean something closer to ‘unto the ages of ages’. Each age of human history is different and brings its own novelties, challenges and surprises. And yet, in saecula saeculorum imagines the praise of God as lasting through all of these changes, from age unto age, for all eternity. There is, it would seem, a bright future ahead for the liturgy.

REFERENCES

Abbreviations

CPDL Choral Public Domain Library, www.cpdl.org

ICEL International Commission on English in the Liturgy, ‘Music for the Roman Missal’, http://icelweb.org

MED Hans Kurath et al., eds, Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor, MI, 2000), available at http://quod.lib.umich.edu

NRSV The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Cambridge, 1989)

OED The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edn online, www.oed.com

Introduction: Why Liturgy?

1 There is a sizeable body of scholarship on medieval liturgy. Good starting points are the following: Nicholas Orme, Going to Church in Medieval England (New Haven, CT, 2022); Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, CT, 2011); Richard Pfaff, The Liturgy in Medieval England (Cambridge, 2012).

2 OED, liturgy n.

3 Dimitris Xygalatas, Ritual (London, 2022), pp. 210–12.

4 E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande (Oxford, 1977), cited in Xygalatas, Ritual, p. 212.

5 J. A. Lamb, ‘The Place of the Bible in the Liturgy’, in The Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 563–86.

6 NRSV.

1 Petition

1 All translations of psalms, as well as the psalm numbering, follow The Book of Common Prayer as printed by John Baskerville (Cambridge, 1662).

2 OED, psalm n.

3 For more details on the structure of the psalms, see Walter Brueggemann and W. H. Bellinger, Psalms, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 1–12.

4 F. H. Dickinson, Missale ad usum insignis et praeclarae ecclesiae Sarum (Burntisland, 1861), col. 57.

5 C. S. Rodd, ‘Psalms’, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, ed. John Barton and John Muddiman (Oxford, 2007), pp. 355–404.

6 Ibid.

7 See the edition by George Shuffelton, Codex Ashmole 61: A Compilation of Popular Middle English Verse (Kalamazoo, MI, 2008).

8 Thomas Wyatt, The Complete Poems, ed. R. A. Rebholz (New Haven, CT, 1981), pp. 208–9, ll. 495–508.

9 Hannibal Hamlin, ‘William Shakespeare’, in The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature, ed. Rebecca Lemon (Chichester, 2012), pp. 225–38 (p. 253).

2 Love

1 Athalya Brenner, ‘Song of Solomon’, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, ed. John Barton and John Muddiman (Oxford, 2007), pp. 429–33.

2 Rupert of Deutz, De gloria et honore filii hominis super Mattheum, ed. Hrabanus Haacke, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 29 (Turnhout, 1979), 12.383; trans. J. Arblaster, cited in Louise Nelstrop, ‘Erotic and Nuptial Imagery’, in The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology, ed. Edward Howells and Mark Allen McIntosh (Oxford, 2020), pp. 328–46 (p. 336).

3 Joseph F. Mone, ed., Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters, aus Handschriften herausgegeben und erklärt, vol. II (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1853–5), hymn 548; my translation.

4 A more detailed account is given in E. Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia, PA, 2010), pp. 151–77.

5 Ibid., pp. 188–92.

6 Guido Maria Dreves, ed., Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, vol. I: Cantiones Bohemicae: Leiche, Lieder und Rufe des 13., 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1886), Hymnus 49. On this poem, see also J. M. Salvador-González, ‘Hortus Conclusus: A Mariological Metaphor in Some Renaissance Paintings of the Annunciation in the Light of Medieval Liturgical Hymns’, Religions, XIV/1 (2023), pp. 36–52.

7 Richard Stracke, A Guide to Christian Iconography: Images, Symbols, and Texts, www.christianiconography.info, accessed 24 January 2024.

8 Karen Saupe, ed., Middle English Marian Lyrics (Kalamazoo, MI, 1998), lyric no. 79; my translation.

9 Translation based on Eleanor Parker’s version, A Clerk of Oxford, https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com, accessed 24 January 2024.

10 Translation by Anthony Mortimer in Guido Cavalcanti, Complete Poems (Richmond, Surrey, 2010).

11 Walt Whitman, Song of Myself with a Complete Commentary, ed. Christopher Merrill and Ed Folsom (Iowa City, IA, 2016), p. 7.

12 For more details, see Ilana Pardes, The Song of Songs: A Biography (Princeton, NJ, 2019), pp. 178–9.

3 Hope

1 Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year: Advent, 2nd edn (Dublin, 1870), pp. 155–6. The translation is adapted from The New English Hymnal, Melody edition (Norwich, 1994), no. 501.

2 Kerry Robin McCarthy, Byrd (New York, 2013), p. 109.

3 This and the following English translations (with the exception of ‘O Radiant Dawn’) follow the Church of England’s Common Worship, available at www.churchofengland.org, accessed 24 January 2024.

4 Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, trans. P. G. Walsh (Oxford, 1999), p. 67.

5 Wolfgang Braunfels and Engelbert Kirschbaum, Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, vol. IV (Rome, 1968), pp. 549–58.

6 David Lyle Jeffrey, A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (Grand Rapids, MI, 1992), pp. 332–3.

7 Translation by Allen Mandelbaum, Digital Dante: The Divine Comedy (New York, 2014), https://digitaldante.columbia.edu, accessed 24 January 2024.

8 The translation follows Thomas O’Gorman, ed., An Advent Sourcebook (Chicago, IL, 1988), p. 138.

9 Translation by Eleanor Parker, at A Clerk of Oxford, https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com, accessed 24 January 2024.

10 Carl F. Hostetter, ‘Over Middle-Earth Sent unto Men: On the Philological Origins of Tolkien’s Eärendel Myth’, Mythlore, XVII/3 (1991), pp. 5–10 (p. 6).

11 J.R.R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien, Sauron Defeated (London, 2010), p. 236.

4 Suffering

1 This and the following translations are adapted from CPDL.

2 Translation adapted from NRSV.

3 Translation adapted from CPDL.

4 Carleton Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford, 1939), no. 107; my translation.

5 Translation by Eleanor Parker at A Clerk of Oxford, https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com, accessed 24 January 2024.

6 MED, treu-love n.

7 George Herbert, The Complete English Poems, ed. John Tobin (London, 2004), p. 23.

5 Grief

1 Translation adapted from The Ultimate Stabat Mater Website, https://stabatmater.info, accessed 24 January 2024.

2 Carleton Brown, ed., English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century (Oxford, 1932), pp. 89–91. Translation adapted from Eleanor Parker at A Clerk of Oxford, https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com, accessed 24 January 2024.

3 Nicholas Penny, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, vol. I: Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia, and Cremona, exh. cat., National Gallery (London, 2004), pp. 26–8.

4 Richard Leighton Greene, ed., The Early English Carols, 2nd revd edn (Oxford, 2019), no. 153, modernized spelling.

5 Karen Saupe, ed., Middle English Marian Lyrics (Kalamazoo, MI, 1998), no. 42, modernized spelling.

6 Käthe Kollwitz, Diaries, 22 October 1937, quoted in ‘Pietà (Mother with Dead Son), 1937–1939’, www.kollwitz.de, accessed 24 January 2024.

6 Joy

1 English translation adapted from ICEL, ‘Music for the Roman Missal’, http://icelweb.org, accessed 24 January 2024.

2 Aspects of this analysis are based on Nathan Chase, Contingent Magazine, 11 April 2020, www.contingentmagazine.org.

3 Augustine, Enchiridion, viii, 27, trans. Albert C. Outler in Augustine of Hippo, Confessions and Enchiridion, Library of Christian Classics 7 (London, 1955).

4 Carleton Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford, 1939), p. 120; modernized spelling.

5 John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Alastair Fowler, 2nd edn (London, 2013), pp. 469–78.

6 Victor Y. Haines, ‘The Iconography of the Felix culpa’, Florilegium, 1/1 (1979), pp. 151–85.

7 Augustine of Hippo, Enarrationes in Psalmos CI–CL, ed. E. Dekkers and J. Fraipont, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 40 (Turnhout, 1956), psalmus: 148, par: 1, ll. 14–21.

8 Francis X. Weiser, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs: The Year of the Lord in Liturgy and Folklore (New York, 1958), p. 159.

9 Bede, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1969), Book I, Chapter Twenty.

7 Death

1 The English translation follows CPDL.

2 Kees Vellekoop, Dies ire dies illa: Studien zur Frühgeschichte einer Sequenz (Bilthoven, 1978), p. 14.

3 English translation of the programme notes from the Hector Berlioz Website, www.hberlioz.com, accessed 24 January 2024.

8 Revelation

1 Cited in David Lyle Jeffrey, A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (Grand Rapids, MI, 1992), p. 546.

2 Malcolm Andrew and Ronald A. Waldron, ed. and trans., The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript in Modern English Prose Translation: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Liverpool, 2013), p. 22.

3 William Blake, The Poems of William Blake, ed. W. H. Stevenson and David V. Erdman (London, 1972), pp. 488–9.

4 Jeffrey, Dictionary of Biblical Tradition, p. 548.

5 Paradiso 31.118–29; translation by Allen Mandelbaum, Digital Dante, https://digitaldante.columbia.edu, accessed 24 January 2024.

6 OED, Michaelmas n.

7 Sir Frederick Morton Eden, The State of the Poor: or, An History of the Labouring Classes in England, vol. I (London, 1797), pp. 32–3.

8 Scott Hahn, The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth (London, 2003), pp. 66–7.

9 George Herbert, The Complete English Poems, ed. John Tobin (London, 2004), p. 178.

9 Time

1 Cristina Maria Cervone, Poetics of the Incarnation: Middle English Writing and the Leap of Love (Philadelphia, PA, 2012), pp. 42–3.

2 For further details on the medieval seasons, see Eleanor Parker, Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year (London, 2022).

3 Jacques Le Goff, ‘Merchant’s Time and Church’s Time in the Middle Ages’, in Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, IL, 1980), pp. 29–42.

4 For more details on scientific tools in medieval manuscripts, see Seb Falk, The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery (London, 2020).

5 MED, lammasse n. 2b.

6 Alfred Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son (London, 1897), p. 112.

7 Glenn Gunhouse, ‘Introduction to the Book of Hours’, A Hypertext Book of Hours, available at https://medievalist.net, accessed 12 April 2024.

8 For further details on Books of Hours, see Eamon Duffy, Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240–1570 (New Haven, CT, 2011).

9 F. H. Dickinson, Missale ad usum insignis et praeclarae ecclesiae Sarum (Burntisland, 1861), col. 62; my translation and italics.

10 Nicholas Wolterstorff, ‘The Remembrance of Things (Not) Past’, in Christian Philosophy, ed. Thomas Flint (Notre Dame, IN, 1990), p. 146. For more on the topic of liturgical remembrance, see also Joshua Cockayne and Gideon Salter, ‘Feasts of Memory: Collective Remembering, Liturgical Time Travel and the Actualisation of the Past’, Modern Theology, XXXVII/2 (2021), pp. 275–95.

11 Roch Kereszty, ‘Contemporaneity: The Mystery of Liturgical Time’, Nova et vetera, XVIII/2 (2020), pp. 505–19 (p. 510).

12 Dickinson, Missale, col. 340.

13 T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays (London, 2004), p. 172.

10 Space

1 G. K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men, 3rd edn (London, 1920), pp. 211–13.

2 For further details, see Nicholas Orme, Going to Church in Medieval England (New Haven, CT, 2022), pp. 302–14.

3 Thomas Frederick Simmons and Dan Jeremy, eds, The Lay Folks Mass Book or the Manner of Hearing Mass: With Rubrics and Devotions for the People; in Four Texts and Offices in English, According to the Use of York. From Mss. of the Xth to the XVth Century, Early English Text Society 71 (London, 1879), pp. 10, 18, 24, 38; spelling modernized.

4 Alexandra F. Johnston, ‘An Introduction to Medieval English Theatre’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 1–25 (p. 3).

5 Translation by Chris Fenner, ‘Gloria laus et honor’, Hymnology Archive, 6 March 2023, www.hymnologyarchive.com.

6 J. Wickham Legg, ed., The Sarum Missal (Oxford, 1916), p. 96 (‘pueri in eminenciori loco canentes’).

7 Carolyn Marino Malone, ‘Architecture as Evidence for Liturgical Performance’, in Understanding Medieval Liturgy: Essays in Interpretation, ed. Helen Gittos and Sarah Hamilton (London, 2016), pp. 207–38 (p. 225).

8 Ibid., p. 231.

9 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, CT, 2011), p. 26.

10 Malone, ‘Architecture as Evidence for Liturgical Performance’, p. 236.

11 ‘Introduction’, in The York Corpus Christi Plays, ed. Clifford Davidson (Kalamazoo, MI, 2011).

12 Douglas Sugano, ed., The N-Town Plays (Kalamazoo, MI, 2007), Play 25, ‘The Entry into Jerusalem’, ll. 260–65; spelling modernized.

13 Ibid., Play 32, ‘Procession to Calvary; Crucifixion’, ll. 222–9; spelling modernized.

14 Ibid., ll. 97–101; spelling modernized.

15 Ibid., l. 269a; my translation (‘Hic quasi semi-mortua cadat prona in terram’).

16 For a detailed analysis, see Pamela M. King, The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City (Cambridge, 2006).

17 Davidson, ed., The York Corpus Christi Plays, Play 35, ‘Crucifixio Christi’, ll. 253–64.

18 For more details, see King, The York Mystery Cycle, pp. 144–50.

19 This and all following references follow the edition of Hamlet, ed. Ann Thompson and Neil Taylor, revd edn (London, 2016).

20 On this in greater depth, see Gerard Kilroy, ‘Requiem for a Prince: Rites of Memory in Hamlet’, Downside Review, CXX/419 (2002), pp. 91–112; and James V. Holleran, ‘Maimed Funeral Rites in Hamlet’, English Literary Renaissance, XIX/1 (1989), pp. 65–93.

21 Holleran, ‘Maimed Funeral Rites in Hamlet’, p. 72.

22 Kilroy, ‘Requiem for a Prince: Rites of Memory in Hamlet’, p. 107.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Simmons, Thomas Frederick, and Dan Jeremy, eds, The Lay Folks Mass Book or the Manner of Hearing Mass: With Rubrics and Devotions for the People; in Four Texts and Offices in English, According to the Use of York. From Mss. of the Xth to the XVth Century, Early English Text Society 71 (London, 1879)

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Secondary Sources

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Brueggemann, Walter, and W. H. Bellinger, Psalms, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge, 2013)

Cervone, Cristina Maria, Poetics of the Incarnation: Middle English Writing and the Leap of Love (Philadelphia, PA, 2012)

Cockayne, Joshua, and Gideon Salter, ‘Feasts of Memory: Collective Remembering, Liturgical Time Travel and the Actualisation of the Past’, Modern Theology, XXXVII/2 (2021), pp. 275–95

Dickinson, F. H., Missale ad usum insignis et praeclarae ecclesiae Sarum (Burntisland, 1861)

Duffy, Eamon, Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240–1570 (New Haven, CT, 2011)

——, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven, CT, 1992)

Evans-Pritchard, E. E., Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford, 1977)

Falk, Seb, The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery (London, 2020)

Guéranger, Prosper, The Liturgical Year: Advent, 2nd edn (Dublin, 1870)

Hahn, Scott, The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth (London, 2003)

Haines, Victor Y., ‘The Iconography of the Felix culpa’, Florilegium, 1/1 (1979), pp. 151–85

Hamlin, Hannibal, ‘William Shakespeare’, in The Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature, ed. Rebecca Lemon (Chichester, 2012), pp. 245–58

Holleran, James V., ‘Maimed Funeral Rites in Hamlet’, English Literary Renaissance, XIX/1 (1989), pp. 65–93

Hostetter, Carl F., ‘Over Middle-Earth Sent unto Men: On the Philological Origins of Tolkien’s Eärendel Myth’, Mythlore, XVII/3 (1991), pp. 5–10

Jeffrey, David Lyle, A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (Grand Rapids, MI, 1992)

Johnston, Alexandra F., ‘An Introduction to Medieval English Theatre’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, ed. Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 1–25

Kereszty, Roch, ‘Contemporaneity: The Mystery of Liturgical Time’, Nova et vetera, XVIII/2 (2020), pp. 505–19

Kilroy, Gerard, ‘Requiem for a Prince: Rites of Memory in Hamlet’, Downside Review, CXX/419 (2002), pp. 91–112

King, Pamela M., The York Mystery Cycle and the Worship of the City (Cambridge, 2006)

Klauser, Theodor, and John Halliburton, A Short History of the Western Liturgy: An Account and Some Reflections, 2nd edn (Oxford, 2000)

Lamb, J. A., ‘The Place of the Bible in the Liturgy’, in The Cambridge History of the Bible, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 563–86

Le Goff, Jacques, ‘Merchant’s Time and Church’s Time in the Middle Ages’, in Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, IL, 1980), pp. 29–42

McCarthy, Kerry Robin, Byrd (New York, 2013)

Malone, Carolyn Marino, ‘Architecture as Evidence for Liturgical Performance’, in Understanding Medieval Liturgy: Essays in Interpretation, ed. Helen Gittos and Sarah Hamilton (London, 2016), pp. 207–37

Matter, E. Ann, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia, PA, 2010)

Nelstrop, Louise, ‘Erotic and Nuptial Imagery’, in The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology, ed. Edward Howells and Mark Allen McIntosh (Oxford, 2020), pp. 328–46

O’Gorman, Thomas, ed., An Advent Sourcebook (Chicago, IL, 1988)

Orme, Nicholas, Going to Church in Medieval England (New Haven, CT, 2022)

Pardes, Ilana, The Song of Songs: A Biography (Princeton, NJ, 2019)

Parker, Eleanor, Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year (London, 2022)

Penny, Nicholas, National Gallery Catalogues: The Sixteenth Century Italian Paintings, vol. I: Paintings from Bergamo, Brescia, and Cremona, exh. cat., National Gallery, London (2004)

Pfaff, Richard, The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History (Cambridge, 2012)

Rodd, C. S., ‘Psalms’, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, ed. John Barton and John Muddiman (Oxford, 2001)

Salvador-González, J. M., ‘Hortus Conclusus: A Mariological Metaphor in Some Renaissance Paintings of the Annunciation in the Light of Medieval Liturgical Hymns’, Religions, XIV/1 (2023), pp. 36–52

Vellekoop, Kees, Dies ire dies illa: Studien zur Frühgeschichte einer Sequenz (Bilthoven, 1978)

Weiser, Francis X., Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs: The Year of the Lord in Liturgy and Folklore (New York, 1958)

Wolterstorff, Nicholas, ‘The Remembrance of Things (Not) Past’, in Christian Philosophy, ed. Thomas Flint (Notre Dame, IN, 1990), pp. 118–61

Xygalatas, Dimitris, Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living (London, 2022)

Websites and Online Resources

Chase, Nathan, ‘This Is the Night’, Contingent Magazine, 11 April 2020, www.contingentmagazine.org

Choral Public Domain Library, www.cpdl.org

Common Worship, Church of England, available at www.churchofengland.org

Fenner, Chris, ‘Gloria laus et honor’, Hymnology Archive, 6 March 2023, www.hymnologyarchive.com

Gunhouse, Glenn, A Hypertext Book of Hours, http://medievalist.net

International Commission on English in the Liturgy, ‘Music for the Roman Missal’, http://icelweb.org

Käthe Kollwitz Museum, Cologne, www.kollwitz.de

Kurath, Hans, et al., eds, Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor, MI, 2000), available at http://quod.lib.umich.edu

The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edn online, www.oed.com

Parker, Eleanor, A Clerk of Oxford, http://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com

Stracke, Richard, A Guide to Christian Iconography: Images, Symbols, and Texts, www.christianiconography.info

Tayeb, Monir, and Michel Austin, The Hector Berlioz Website, www.hberlioz.com

The Ultimate Stabat Mater Website, http://stabatmater.info

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe thanks to many for helping me make this book a reality. First and foremost, I must thank the wonderful team at Reaktion Books for their help with this book despite its somewhat unconventional nature. My thanks also go to Eleanor Parker for permission to reproduce some of her fine translations of medieval poems in this book. The book was written while I was a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, and I am most grateful to my college for giving me this opportunity, as well as for many encouraging comments from colleagues, especially Mishtooni Bose. The reproduction of colour images in this book was made possible through a grant by the Research Centre at Christ Church. My students in medieval literature at Trinity College, Oxford, have played no small part in shaping this book through their questions about these texts over the years; this book is an attempt to provide more detailed answers for which there was insufficient time in tutorials. My special thanks go to Minty Plumstead for acting as a student test reader and offering detailed suggestions that have helped me make this a better book.

Space does not permit me to name everyone who has had an influence on the conception and completion of this book but I am grateful for all of the help, support, kind words and criticism that I have received. My heartfelt thanks go to Tristan Franklinos, not only for his detailed comments on the manuscript but for many years of friendship. Katie Bank provided excellent company on a trip to Gladstone’s Library, where I first started thinking about this project, challenged me to rethink how I approach terminology, and pointed me towards relevant pieces of music with her impressive mental archive of polyphony. Florence Hazrat’s guidance was extremely helpful in navigating how to write a trade book. Jessica Frazier accompanied me on many a trip to Cotswold pubs, making writing all the more productive and enjoyable. Felicity Brown, Will Ghosh and Harry Daniels have been supportive friends and cheerful lunch companions. Rebekah Wallace provided pipes as well as ruminations on the universal and the particular. The Very Revd Professor Sarah Foot, Dean of Christ Church, prompted me to change the book’s title during an engaged High Table conversation; it is much improved as a result. My friends in various choirs over the years have helped me discover, understand and perform many of the pieces mentioned in this book; particularly memorable are long conversations with Martin Heissler about the musical history of the Dies irae. Last but certainly not least, I owe thanks to my parents, for introducing me to the liturgy in the first place, and for their constant love and support.

PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author and publishers wish to express their thanks to the sources listed below for illustrative material and/or permission to reproduce it. Some locations of artworks are also given below, in the interest of brevity:

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich: 4; Bibliothèque nationale de France (MS Latin 16746, fol. 7v): 7; Bodleian Library, University of Oxford: 1 (MS Douce 366, fol. 10r), 19 (MS Douce 266, fol. 11v); Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: 9; photo Jim Grey, all rights reserved: 15; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles: 17 (MS Ludwig III 1, fol. 19v), 21 (MS Ludwig IX 8, fol. 85r); Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague (MS 74 G 37a, fol. 94r): 20; Musée Unterlinden, Colmar: 10; Museo del Convento di San Marco, Florence: 5, 8; Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid: 11; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC: 18; Nationalhistorisk Museum, Frederiksborg Slot, Hillerød (photo Hans Petersen): 12; Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice: 6; Wikimedia Commons: 2 (photo Sailko (Francesco Bini), CC BY 3.0), 3 (photo Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 4.0), 13 (Basilica di San Pietro, Rome; photo Stanislav Traykov, CC BY-SA 3.0), 14 (Neue Wache, Berlin; photo abbilder (Axel Kuhlmann), CC BY 2.0), 16 (photo Zairon, CC BY-SA 4.0).

INDEX

Illustration numbers are indicated by italics

‘A Dialogue between Natura Hominis and Bonitas Dei’ (medieval lyric) 115–18

‘Adam lay y–bounden’ (medieval lyric) 162–3

Advent 17, 71–94, 220

Advent Prose see Rorate coeli

affective piety 142

Agnus Dei 46–8, 238–9

Allegri, Gregorio, Miserere 40–41

Alleluia 167–70, 213

Ambrose, St 56

Ascension 16

Assumption 16, 23, 56, 65, 204

Augustine, St 168

De civitate Dei 199

baptism 235

Barber, Samuel, Adagio for Strings 46

Bede, Venerable 170

Berlioz, Hector, Symphonie fantastique 191–2

Bernard of Clairvaux 54, 173

Bible des Capucins 7

Blake, William

‘And did those feet in ancient time’ 201–3

The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun 207, 18

Bloch, Carl Heinrich, The Crucifixion 144, 12

Boethius 79

Bonaventure, St 173

Book of Common Prayer 11, 25

Books of Hours 31, 216, 220–21, 225–6, 19, 20, 21

Bourges Cathedral 16

Byrd, William, Ne irascaris Domine /Civitas sancti 75–7

Candlemas 16, 71, 220, 222

Canisius, Petrus, De Maria Virgine incomparabili, et Dei Genitrice sacrosancta 57, 4

Casals, Pablo, O vos omnes 106–7

Cavalcanti, Guido, ‘Rime, 4’ 67–9

Chesterton, G. K. 233–4

Christmas 17, 16, 32, 71, 146, 220, 223, 226, 229, 240

Cohen, Leonard, ‘Hallelujah’ 33

Compline 16, 224

Corpus Christi 17, 244–5

Council of Trent 11, 239

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy 8, 87–9, 205–6

Dering, Richard, Factum est silentium 210

Deutz, Rupert von 54

Dies irae (sequence) 172–96, 226

Donne, John 178

dragon 203–11

Easter 7–9, 17, 97, 152–270, 220–21, 229, 240, 244

Elizabeth I, queen 76, 250

Elizabeth II, queen 14

Epiphany 16, 71, 220

Eschatology 175

Eucharist 213–18, 229, 231, 237–8, 242, 244

Exorcist, The (film) 193

Exsultet 152–60, 229

Factum est silentium (antiphon) 209

Fauré, Gabriel, Requiem 197

Felix culpa motif 161–7

Fourth Lateran Council 218

Fra Angelico

The Annunciation 60–62, 5

Christ in Limbo 8

George, St 211

Gesualdo, Carlo, Tristis est anima mea 100–101

Gloria, laus, et honor (hymn) 241–2

Good Friday 16, 97, 107–8, 113, 115, 130, 153

Grünewald, Matthias, Isenheim Altarpiece 140–41, 9

Handel, George Frideric, The Messiah 169, 182

happy fault see felix culpa motif

Harrowing of Hell 86–9

Heavenly Jerusalem 197–203, 242–3

Henry VIII, king of England 76

Herbert, George

Love (3) 213–14

‘The Sacrifice’ 127–9

Holst, Gustav, The Planets 193

Improperia (Reproaches) 107–29, 240

‘In a tabernacle of a toure’ (medieval lyric) 63–5

‘In a valey of this restles mynde’ (medieval lyric) 119–27

In paradisum (antiphon) 197, 199, 201

Jaws (film) 171

Kerle, Jacobus de, Missa pro defunctis 188–9

King David 28, 32–3, 39, 45, 83, 181

King Solomon 52, 83

Kollwitz, Käthe, Pietà (Mother with Her Dead Son) 149, 14

Lammas 222–3

Lauds 16, 224, 39

Lent 16, 168, 220

Lion King, The (film) 188, 194–5

Liszt, Franz, Totentanz: Paraphrase on Dies irae 192

liturgical plays 240

Liturgy of the Hours 16, 31, 39, 224–6

‘Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming’ (hymn) 85

Lord of the Rings, The (book and film series)

Fellowship of the Ring 194, 171

Return of the King 150

MacMillan, James, Miserere 41–3

Mad Max (film) 189

Mahler, Gustav, Symphony No. 2 192–3

Mary Magdalene 117, 130, 136, 141, 144, 184

Mary Tudor 76

Matins 16, 208, 224, 253

Maundy Thursday 17, 96–8

medieval drama see mystery plays

Metropolis (film) 193

Michael, archangel 208–11

Michaelmas 210

Michelangelo

Pietà 8, 146, 148, 150, 13

Sistine Chapel frescoes 182

Milton, John, Paradise Lost 163

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, Requiem in D minor 189–90

Mulan (film) 171

mystery plays 243–9

None 16, 224

O Antiphons 77–94

O Adonai 80–82

O Emmanuel 93–4

O Key of David 86–9

O King of Nations 92–3

O Radiant Dawn 90–92

O Root of Jesse 82–6

O Wisdom 79–80

‘O come, O come, Emmanuel’‘ (hymn) 94

‘Of all women that ever were born’ (medieval lyric) 148

Ormesby Psalter 28–9, 1

Ovid, Metamorphoses 206

Palm Sunday processions 240–43, 245

Pearl (poem) 200–201

Penitential Psalms 32–45

Miserere (Psalm 51) 33–45

Pentecost 16, 221–2

Pietà (motif) 145–51

Plainchant 40–41, 43, 73, 98, 172, 186–8, 191, 240

Poulenc, Francis

Tristis est anima mea 101

Vinea mea electa 105

Prime 16, 224

Protestantism 9–11, 55, 76, 85, 144, 161, 174, 216–18, 229, 231

Psalms 28–45, 52, 98, 167–8, 181, 237, 239

see also Penitential Psalms

purgatory 174–5, 177, 185, 250

Quae est ista (antiphon) 57

Rachmaninov, Sergei, Isle of the Dead 192

Real Presence 218, 229, 237, 244

Reproaches see Improperia

Requiem Mass 177, 186–9, 196, 250

Rorate coeli 72–7

Ryman, James, Carissima in deliciis (medieval lyric) 65–7

Sanctorale 220

Sanctus 213, 215, 239

Second Vatican Council 11

Sext 16, 224

Shakespeare, William, 243, 251

Hamlet 45, 249–51

Shining, The (film) 188, 194

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (poem) 164

Skyfall (film) 150

‘So blessed a sight it was to see’ (medieval lyric) 147

Song of Solomon see Song of Songs

Song of Songs 49–70, 126, 204

Stabat Mater 131–42, 246–7

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (film) 8, 188, 194

Stond wel, Moder, under rode (medieval lyric) 137–40

swoon of the virgin 142–4, 247

Temporale 220

Tenebrae 39, 95–107, 128

O vos omnes 106, 128, 248–9

Tristis est anima mea 98–101

Vinea mea electa 101–5, 115

Tennyson, Alfred Lord, Youth 223

Terce 16, 224

Thomas of Celano 173

Tintoretto, The Annunciation 62, 6

Tolkien, J.R.R. 92

see also Lord of the Rings

typology (in biblical interpretation) 42, 46, 53, 56, 81, 114, 161, 228

Verdi, Giuseppe, Messa da Requiem 190

Vespers 16, 57, 224

Watchmen (film) 189

Weyden, Rogier van der, The Crucifixion 141, 11

Whitman, Walt, Song of Myself 69

woman clothed with the sun (motif) 203–8

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, Psalm 51 44–5

X2 (film) 189