NEW DRAWING

Private commission. The Holy Gazelle of Saydnaya with St. John the Baptist.

The story depicted:

It is said that Justinian I, Emperor of Byzantium, while crossing Syria with his troops either on his way to the Holy Land or on a campaign against the Persians, came to this desert, where his army encamped and soon suffered thirst for lack of water. When they despaired, the emperor saw a beautiful gazelle off in the distance. He vigorously gave chase, hunting the animal until it tired and stopped on a rocky knoll and approached a spring of fresh water, but without giving the emperor the opportunity to shoot it. Suddenly, it transformed into an icon of the Most-holy Theotokos, which shone with a brilliant light. A white hand stretched forth from it and a voice said, No, thou shalt not kill me, Justinian, but thou shalt build a church for me here on this hill. Then the strange heavenly light and majestic figure disappeared.

Upon his return, Justinian related what he had seen to his subordinates and ordered them immediately to draw up a plan for the contemplated church. After some time had passed and the architects were unable to resolve the problems of the plan, the Holy Virgin — the gazelle — reappeared to Justinian in a dream and confided a magnificent plan to him for a convent, of which she would be the Protectress. It is said that the basic structure of the convent follows this plan to this day. The convent soon gained such renown that it came to be ranked second only to Jerusalem as a place of pilgrimage, and nuns from every corner of Syria, Egypt, and other lands flocked to it.

The holy Icon El Chagoura appeared many years after the convent was constructed. In the late eighth century, a certain venerable Marina was abbess of the convent, and she was widely revered for her piety and sanctity of life. It happened that a hermit monk, a Greek pilgrim from Egypt named Theodore, stopped at the convent on his way to the Holy Land. When he was leaving, Abbess Marina asked him to buy in Jerusalem a precious and fine icon of the Holy Virgin. While at Jerusalem, he utterly forgot the task entrusted to him and started on his return journey. However, when he had not gone far from the city, he was stopped short by an unfamiliar voice: Have you not forgotten something in Jerusalem? What have you done in regard to the commission from Abbess Marina? Monk Theodore returned at once to Jerusalem and found an icon of the Theotokos. During the journey back to the convent, he was astounded by the miracles accomplished through the icon. He and his whole caravan were ambushed by bandits, and then attacked by wild beasts. Amidst these dangers, the hermit always invoked the aid of the Holy Virgin while holding her icon, and he and all the caravan were saved from every peril.

When Theodore returned to the convent, these events tempted him to keep the valuable icon for himself, and he decided to bypass Saydnaya and sail back to Egypt. However, he was unable to set sail, for such a fierce storm arose, it seemed the ship would inevitably sink. His conscience was pricked, and he quickly left the ship and returned by way ofsaidnaya Saydnaya. After spending four days in the convent, he was again possessed by an irresistible desire to make the icon of the Mother of God his own. He apologized to the abbess, pretending that he had been unable to buy the required icon, and then he decided to leave the convent secretly. The next morning, as he was about to set out on the journey back to his own country and approached the convent gate, he was amazed to find that an invisible power barred his way, and it was as though a stone wall stood where the gate should have been. After many futile attempts, he was forced to hand the icon over to the abbess, confessing his intention. With tears of gratitude she glorified the Lord and His All-pure Mother. Since that day, the holy Icon has remained in the convent and has been the object of great veneration.

NEW DRAWING



Last Judgment. 8.5" x 11". Private commission.

More religious art.

DARTMOUTH is DEAD

For myself, when I see my Alma Mater surrounded, like Cæsar in the senate house, by those who are reiterating stab upon stab, I would not for this right hand have her say to me: Et tu quoque, mi fili?! - Daniel Webster

HIATUS

Dear friends and readers:

CORPUS CHRISTI

SUSANNA CRYSTAL



In the British Museum:

The rock crystal is engraved with scenes of the story of Susanna... Each scene is accompanied by an inscription drawn from the Vulgate. In the first four scenes Susanna is shown accosted by the elders, falsely accused and convicted of adultery. The last scenes show the elders being questioned by Daniel, condemned for false witness and executed. The final scene shows Susanna declared innocent.

The figures are executed in the energetic figural style known as the Rheims style which derived from manuscript drawings such as the Utrecht Psalter. According to an inscription engraved on the crystal it was engraved for Lothar King of the Franks, most probably Lothar II of Lotharingia (AD 855-69). It is likely that the crystal, made for a king and meant to be seen at court, was intended to exemplify the proper functioning of justice. However, there is an irony to the subject matter, as Lothar tried many times to have his marriage annulled so he could marry his mistress, which resulted in a bitter dispute between Lothar and Pope Nicholas I.

From the tenth century until 1793 the crystal was in the abbey of Waulsort in Belgium. Supposedly the crystal was cracked when thrown into the Meuse during the sack of Waulsort by the French in 1793.

MARYTOWN



While in Lake County yesterday, I was privileged to attend a Traditional Latin Pontifical Solemn High Mass celebrated in Marytown Chapel by His Excellency Joseph Perry, assisted by the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius.

NEW GRACANICA

Yesterday I had occasion to be in Lake County, and stopped to see New Gracanica Serbian Orthodox Monastery. Its church is one of the most beautiful and inspiring I have ever seen.







The architecture and iconography of the monastery church is based on that of the original Gracanica Monastery founded by the Serbian king Stefan Milutin in 1321. God only knows how long this venerable church will survive in the new Republic of Kosovo.

More on Old Gracanica:

Here.
Here.
Here. 

LITURGICAL OSTRICH EGGS

From the First Book of the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum of Wm. Durandus of Mende, late 13th century:

In some churches two eggs of ostriches and other things which cause admiration, and which are rarely seen, are accustomed to be suspended: that by their means the people may be drawn to church, and have their minds more affected.

Again, some say that the ostrich, as being a forgetful bird, leaveth her eggs in the dust (Job 39.14): and at length, when she beholdeth a certain star, returneth unto them, and cheereth them by her presence. Therefore the eggs of ostriches are hung in churches to signify that man, being left of God on account of his sins, if at length he be illuminated by the Divine Light, remembereth his faults and returneth to Him, Who by looking on him with His Mercy cherisheth him. As it is written in Luke that after Peter had denied Christ, the Lord turned and looked upon Peter. Therefore be the aforesaid eggs suspended in churches, this signifying that man easily forgetteth God, unless being illuminated by a star, that is, by the influence of the Holy Spirit, he is reminded to return to Him by good works.

From the Voyage Liturgique of Sieur de Moleon*, 1718:

At the conclusion of Matins [at the Church of St. Maurice in Angers on Easter Day] two chaplains take their place behind the altar curtains. Two corbeliers in dalmatics, amices, and mitellæ, with gloves on their hands, present themselves before the altar. The chaplains chant, Quem quæritis? The corbeliers representing the Maries, reply Jesum Nazarenum Crucifixum. The others answer, Resurrexit, non est hic. The corbeliers take from the altar two ostrich eggs wrapped in silk, and go forth chanting, Alleluis Resurrexit Dominus, resurrexit Leo Fortis, Christus, Filius Dei.

*A pseudonym. The actual author was Jean Baptiste de Brun Desmarets: He was born in 1650, and received his education at the Monastery of Port Royal des Champs, with the monks of which order he kept up such a connection, that he was finally involved in their ruin. [The monastery was suppressed, and then razed, in the early 18th century for its Jansenist and Cartesian errors.] His papers were seized; and he was himself committed to the Bastille, and imprisoned there five years.

TWO UPCOMING CONCERTS

Both on May 18th, both featuring friends:

Bonjour, Mon Coeur: the sublime 16th Century French Chanson
Chicago Early Music Consort & Spirit of Gambo Consort of Viols
4:00 p.m.
Glenview Community Church
Glenview, IL
Program here.

An Afternoon in Paris
Br. Jonathan Ryan, SJC
French Organ Music
Works by Olivier Messiaen, Nicolas de Grigny, Claude-Bénigne Balbastre and Alexandre Guilmant
2:00 p.m.
St. John Cantius Church
Chicago, IL

AKIRA MITSUI



Photograph taken at China Doll Restaurant at 51st & Broadway in New York City on 15 March 1947. The man on the far right is my late paternal grandfather.

See also Jiro Morikuni.

The DEVONSHIRE HUNTS





Two of the four surviving tapestries in this 15th century cycle, now in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. I highly recommend Linda Wooley's book, Medieval Life and Leisure in the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries.

WEDDINGS

Congratulations are in order for several dear friends:



Will and Leika, now living in Arizona.

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Anthony and Emily, married this penultimate Saturday in a traditional Latin Nuptial Mass. Many thanks to the family of the bride and the pastor and staff of Ss. Philomena and Cecilia Church for their hospitality.

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Sister Crystal, clothed in the habit of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles last Saturday.

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Pray for them all. 

VOTE for DARTMOUTH PARITY

CHURCH of ST. GEORGE in EDMONTON

The Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Great Martyr Saint George the Victorious in Edmonton has a thorough webpage explaining its iconography.















The link to this website was sent to me by a friend of the iconographer, Heiko Schlieper. Memory eternal.

This parish was one of several organized in the 1950s and 1960s championing Ukrainian Catholic traditionalism, Byzantine iconography, delatinized liturgy, and the Julian Calendar. Another such parish is the extraordinary Ss. Volodymyr and Olha in Chicago, about 2 miles directly west of my apartment, which I visit on occasion.

BURGLARY



Those who know me will be amused.

After telling Michelle that my apartment had been burglarized yesterday, her first response was: Oh no! I'm so sorry!. Her second was: Wait... what do you have that they could possibly steal?.

For his efforts in prying my door apart with a crowbar, the thief had to content himself with one bottle of sparkling white wine and another of vodka, three-quarters full. He looked for pills in the medicine cabinet but found none.

My main liquor cupboard escaped his attention, so the Chimay Grand Reserve and red wine that I had been saving are still in my possession. The Chartreuse was at Michelle's apartment, Deo gratias.

Artwork, papers, clothing, dishware, and stereo equipment were left undisturbed.

Sancte Dismas, latro de Cruce, ora pro eum.

GREAT CLOCKS of CHRISTENDOM, PART XXI

Two from Bavaria:

In Burg Burghausen:



In Munich Frauenkirche:



See also parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, *, *, *, *

NEW DRAWINGS

Four private commissions and two gifts:

DEVILS in the GREEN WOOD

It was not fitting for Christ's body to putrefy, or in any way be reduced to dust, since the putrefaction of any body comes of that body's infirmity of nature, which can no longer hold the body together. But as was said above, Christ's death ought not to come from weakness of nature, lest it might not be believed to be voluntary: and therefore He willed to die, not from sickness, but from suffering inflicted on Him, to which He gave Himself up willingly. And therefore, lest His death might be ascribed to infirmity of nature, Christ did not wish His body to putrefy in any way or dissolve no matter how; but for the manifestation of His divine power He willed that His body should continue incorrupt. Hence Chrysostom says that with other men, especially with such as have wrought strenuously, their deeds shine forth in their lifetime; but as soon as they die, their deeds go with them. But it is quite the contrary with Christ: because previous to the cross all is sadness and weakness, but as soon as He is crucified, everything comes to light, in order that you may learn it was not an ordinary man that was crucified.

Since Christ was not subject to sin, neither was He prone to die or to return to dust. Yet of His own will He endured death for our salvation, for the reasons alleged above. But had His body putrefied or dissolved, this fact would have been detrimental to man's salvation, for it would not have seemed credible that the divine power was in Him. Hence it is on His behalf that it is written: What profit is there in my blood, whilst I go down to corruption? as if He were to say: If My body corrupt, the profit of the blood shed will be lost.

Christ's body was a subject of corruption according to the condition of its passible nature, but not as to the deserving cause of putrefaction, which is sin: but the divine power preserved Christ's body from putrefying, just as it raised it up from death.

Summa theologica 51.3

April 6th of this year fell on a Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday. It otherwise would have been a feria, with no sanctoral feast in the Roman Missal. But in the Lutheran liturgical calendar, three artists would have been commemorated: Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach and Matthias Grünewald.

These are the most famous members of the first generation of artists influenced by Lutheranism. Dürer called Martin Luther inspired of God and in 1520 expressed a desire to paint his portrait. Protestant statements are obvious in some of Dürer's art, such as the Four Apostles of 1526. His theology, his humanism and his undeniable narcissism (exhibited in his self-portraits) have long made me dislike Dürer, although I cannot deny his brilliance. Cranach, of course, was a strident propagandist for the Reformation, and one of Luther's closest friends (they were godfathers to each other's children).

Of the three, Grünewald has the least known connection to Protestantism; this is largely because his biography is unknown; even his surname (Gothardt) has been misremembered. A chest of his belongings was posthumously found to contain Lutheran literature, but this in itself proves nothing. None of his surviving paintings was commissioned by Protestants; none contains any discernable Protestant message.

What message they do contain is more elusive, and more disturbing.



Grünewald's most famous work, the Isenheim Altarpiece, has a very confused iconography; John the Baptist is the most prominent figure at the foot of the Cross and the Resurrection is bizarrely conflated with the Transfiguration. No art historian has ever identified beyond dispute the kneeling, glowing figure before a chorus of angels in one of the panels; she appears Marian, but worships a larger, older, homelier Mary in the facing panel. A widely accepted theory is that this is the idea of Mary in the mind of God adoring Mary as fact; one gets the sense that the art historians were desperate. Behind the mysterious woman, among the angels, a strange figure plays a viola de gamba; he is multiwinged and entirely covered in green feathers and curly hair. At least one scholar has argued that he is Lucifer.



But more troubling are the human figures. There is an indefinable wrongness to the bodies given by Grünewald to Christ and His saints; they are awkwardly posed, with lopsided heads, puffy skin, sausagelike fingers, almost cretinous expressions; they are seemingly moulded from glutenous bread dough. This is entirely unlike the precise grotesquery of Hieronymus Bosch (drawn from the tradition of comical manuscript marginalia) because it marks every face, not merely those designated for villainy.

And then there are the Crucifixions. The corpus of the Isenheim Altarpiece, and the similar corpora in paintings at Karlsruhe, Basel and Washington are so well-known that detailed description is unnecessary.

Justifications for Grünewald's dead Christs invariably invoke the writings of St. Bridget, St. Gertrude and other late mediaeval mystics, who described the Passion in gruesome detail. And it is true that, beginning in the 14th century, intense meditation on the physical suffering of Christ dominated spiritual writing as well as sacred art. The pious literature of the age even numbers the lashes that Our Lord received (5,475 according to Oliver Maillard). Late mediaeval art is morbid, somber and tragic; its crucified Christ is crowned with thorns, contorting under His own weight, streaming blood. His muscles and bones are visible beneath his stripped-away skin. This is the suffering Christ bearing the immeasurable sins of humanity.

But this is most emphatically NOT the Christ whom we encounter at Isenheim and at Karlsruhe. The difference is obvious; 5,475 scourges turn a body red, not green - and Grünewald's Christ is green. It is the corruption of the tomb that turns a body green. Grünewald's Christ does not bleed; he rots.



This is not, as Joris-Karl Huysmans fatuously claimed, the Christ of Justin, Basil, Cyril, Tertullian, the Christ of the apostolic Church... the Christ of the afflicted, of the beggar, of all those on whose indigence and helplessness the greed of their brother battens ; this is not their Christ at all. This is a Christ unknown to the mystics, unknown to the fathers, unknown to the poor and suffering; a Christ unknown to any Christian.

It is a Christ who has never risen from the dead.

***



That seraphic cellist on the inner panel of the Isenhem Altarpiece might represent the entire oeuvre of the painter; something is bowing discord; something disguised, perhaps something satanic. It is all the more frightening because it is impossible to prove anything about it.

The GREATEST DAMAGE

[quote]

Perhaps the greatest damage done by Pope Paul VI's reform of the Mass (and by the ongoing process that has outstripped it), the greatest spiritual deficit, is this: we are now positively obliged to talk about the liturgy. Even those who want to preserve the liturgy or pray in the spirit of the liturgy, and even those who make great sacrifices to remain faithful to it - all have lost something priceless, namely, the innocence that accepts it as something God-given, something that comes down to man as gift from heaven. Those of us who are defenders of the great and sacred liturgy, the classical Roman liturgy, have all become - whether in a small way or in a big way - liturgical experts. In order to counter the arguments of the reform, which was padded with technical, archæological, and historical scholarship, we had to delve into questions of worship and liturgy - something that is utterly foreign to the religious man. We have let ourselves be led into a kind of scholastic and juridical way of considering the liturgy. What is absolutely indispensable for genuine liturgy? When are the celebrant's whims tolerable, and when do they become unacceptable? We have got used to accepting liturgy on the basis of the minimum requirements, whereas the criteria ought to be maximal. And finally, we have started to evaluate liturgy - a monstrous act! We sit in the pews and ask ourselves, was that Holy Mass, or wasn't it? I go to church to see God and come away like a theatre critic.

[end quote]

-- Martin Mosebach, The Heresy of Formlessness, Ignatius Press 2003