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Much is being made in some quarters of yesterday's having been, liturgically speaking, the fortieth anniversary of the introduction of what we are now learning to call the "Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite of the Mass". Some write as if this marked the first appearance of Mass in the vernacular. It did not. It was five years earlier on the First Sunday of Advent in1964 that I first heard Mass in English. Vatican2 was still in session and in the following five years there was a succession of changes so that by the time the fully fledged "Missa Normativa", as I seem to remember it being called, arrived we were being assured by the clergy that this was at last definitive and an end to the changes.
It is interesting now to read the remarks with which Pope Paul VI introduced the new rite. Two things strike me. Firstly, his very words seem to not merely express a sympathy with those who would find the new mass a trial but to betray an anguish all of his own in the face of a sacrifice deemed necessary. Secondly, he stresses the passage from Sacrosanctum Concilium requiring that the faithful "should be able to sing together, in Latin, at least the parts of the Ordinary of the Mass, especially the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, the Our Father".
Reading around the subject it is not difficult to get the impression that Pope Paul was somehow steam-rollered on liturgical reform and subsequently fought a rear guard action, as seen, for instance, in his issuing the "Jubilate Deo" booklet of basic Latin chants everyone should know to all the bishops in 1975. A pity so few did anything about it.
Well. Who knows? It may yet come to pass that the liturgy envisioned by the Council Fathers will appear- thanks, in no small part, to Pope Benedict's efforts.
(Click to enlarge) In the porch of the church adjacent to the figure of Christ in Glory.
(Click to enlarge) Above the Romanesque doorway is a figure Of Christ in Glory attended by angels.
(Click to enlarge)The home of the famous medieval chronicler William of Malmesbury and last known resting place of Athelstan- the first king of all England (and a good chunk of Scotland too).His tomb is still there.
At the Dissolution the entire abbey was acquired by a local merchant who gave the church to the townsfolk and used the monastic dwellings for his cloth business. So there you have it: the Reformation was largely about money and making the rich richer.
(Click to enlarge) The Druids' Dance, also known as Stonehenge, the famous group of stones on Salisbury Plain, was said by some ancient authorities to have been transported from Ireland by Merlin. Modern experts suggest that work on the site began about 5,000 years ago with the larger stones having been brought from the Marlborough Downs, about 25 miles away while the smaller stones appear to have come from the Preseli Hills in Pembrokeshire. Nobody knows what it was for. Perhaps, like so many of the strange and wonderful works of man, it seemed like a good idea at the time! One interesting possibility is that the building trade hasn't changed very much: the contractor said he'd be" back to put the roof on next Wednesday" and that was about 3,500 years ago.
(Click to enlarge)Looking west. I have suspected for some time that typical features of Gothic architecture- the pointed arch and the clustered column- were developed with stone vaulting in mind. In a pointed arch more of the weight of the arch and what it supports appear to be concentrated over the pier while the lines of the clustered columns may well have acted as markers for the ribs which, as the building progressed upwards, would support the vaulting.
(Click to enlarge) The view that greeted us as we made our way from Harnham on 22nd October. Of all the medieval cathedrals of England Salisbury is possibly the most visually harmonious. It was built, if I remember correctly, in one major campaign in the first half of the thirteenth century and from scratch owing to the decision to relocate the entire city from its ancient hill fort site at Old Sarum. Salisbury- or New Sarum- was also one of relatively few English cathedrals which was not a monastic foundation and was the home of the Use of Sarum, a variant of the Roman Rite, which predominated in much of England in the later middle ages.
(Click to enlarge)The ranging of figural sculpture across the west front seems to be a peculiarly English feature- as seen, for instance at Wells, Salisbury and, here, at Exeter. The effect is not unlike the idea of a reredos "writ large" and contrasts with the characteristic French tendency of having figures predominantly arranged in "funnel-like" groupings around the doors- a feature to which Pope Benedict drew attention in his recent discourse on Romanesque and Gothic art.
It is difficult to gauge the extent to which such figures constitute survivals. The quality of the stone, particularly with weathering, sometimes makes 19th century work appear far older. Nevertheless one gains some sort of impression of the original impact of the whole facade.
(Click to enlarge) Just to show that England isn't all beautiful ancient monuments and tasteful antiquities! This was what greeted us at Land's End- a far cry from what I recall from the days of my youth- nevertheless, out of season and just as the shades of evening began to fall, I think it had an almost melancholy kind of beauty about it.
(Click to enlarge) Site of a medieval monastery now inhabited by a wealthy family looked after by the National Trust. In the foreground is the causeway by which the island is reached at low tide. There is an additional charge for a ferry should you be still on the Mount after the causeway is submerged by the incoming tide. As a fellow passenger remarked "This is the first time I have had to pay to leave a place."
