Liturgy

Understanding Medieval Liturgy

The study of medieval liturgy is largely dependent on surviving manuscript sources, but the nature of those sources and their bearing on the most fundamental aspect of liturgy-its enactment-is very difficult to reconstruct. We cannot assume that any written rite captures or prompts performance in a straightforward manner. The reasons for this include the low survival rate of the texts most often and most directly implemented in the course of worship, the dearth of explicit evidence for the ways such texts were used, the longevity of oral methods for transmitting information about performance, significant local and regional differences in the scripting of ritual activity, and changes in recording practices over time. Above all, our understanding of medieval liturgy is fundamentally fettered by the modern academic and confessional agendas that have manipulated and framed its study, beginning with the competing ideologies that shaped the concept of 'liturgy' during and after the Reformation, and continuing up to the present day in the retroactive designation of certain medieval texts as 'liturgical' , 'paraliturgical' or 'nonliturgical'. 1 The very word 'liturgy' (in English and other European languages) came into use only in the mid-sixteenth century, at precisely the time when the parameters and meanings of religious ceremonial were at the heart of confessional controversies. 2 Although the medieval vocabulary used to describe the wide parameters of religious worship was large and rich, it did not-at least in the Latin Westinclude the word 'liturgy'. The classical Greek λειτουργία meant, originally, the performance of any kind of public service or duty (religious, civic, military); it 1 The degree to which post-medieval editorial choices and scholarly chauvinism have shaped the study of medieval texts-while generating the modern genres and typologies to which these texts are assigned-has been the subject of intense critique by scholars in many disciplines for several decades. Yet this sort of scrutiny is only just beginning to inform the way we conceptualize and study such phenomena as medieval worship, preaching and dramatic performance. I address these issues in 'The Appearance of Early Vernacular Plays:

2013

Theater and in this thesis. Special thanks go first to Amy Lehman, who has always been kind, considerate and supportive through this whole process. I am also grateful to all of my professors at the University of South Carolina, especially Nina Levine, Victor and Amy Holtcamp, and Robert Richmond. Your dedication and talent are an inspiration to me. Thanks also to the administration of Cardinal Newman School and in particular to Jacqualine Kasprowski for making it possible for me to pursue Theatre in both practical and scholarly ways. Finally, I thank my wife Laura for putting up with the long hours and strange schedules.

2018

This essay explores the dramatic elements of the medieval Mass, examining how this ritual functioned as a staged performance deliberately intended to provoke a response in its congregation, which, in dramatic terms, can be considered as its audience. An ongoing concern throughout the Middle Ages was the involvement of the (primarily English-speaking) congregation in the (Latin) prayers and action of the Mass, as well as how the congregation’s response to the mass might be shaped. In this essay, I investigate how the actions of the priest performing the Mass might be seen to have clear parallels with the performance of an actor, just as the Mass itself parallels the Passion sequence of the York mystery plays. Moving on to church architecture, which functioned as a ‘playing space’ for the Mass, I then explore how their its deliberately exploited the use of space, light, and sound to capture and hold the attention of an audience. Finally, I consider the significance of the Lay Folks Ma...

Convivium. Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of Medieval Europe, Byzantium, and the Mediterranean VI/1, 2019

In Spanish early modernity, a theatre genre deeply embedded in Catholic material religion and cult of images rose to popularity and saw an aesthetic proliferation, while iconoclast tendencies in the northwest dominated a fundamental change in media and representation culture. During Corpus Christi celebrations, the so-called auto sacramentales-a form of liturgical drama descending from medieval mummery and morality plays-addressed the staging of the Eucharistic miracle. This essay explores how ritual and theatre, as forms of cultural performance, share a common nucleus that also applies to walking ceremonies with images. Likewise, sacramental drama in its liminality can only be explained with reference to its pragmatic religious context in Eucharistic ritual and processions. A juxtaposition of the poetics of transubstantiation in allegorical performance and the mediation of Eucharistic and image presence in Corpus processions aims to differentiate the varieties of presence in sacramental theatre.

Religions, 2022

Whereas medieval liturgy has often been presented as a specialized and complex but well-defined area, gradually and to a high extent bound by tradition, modern scholarship has increasingly shown how difficult it is to define or circumscribe what the notion covers, or what may be the margins of the notion, even in later medieval centuries. In this article, I propose to shed light on the notion of medieval liturgy, framing the notion, as it were, by analyzing ceremonies that by many would be considered to belong to the fringes of liturgy, ceremonies which even—problematically—have been understood as biblical and liturgical theater. I shall focus on two twelfth-century Easter ceremonies, which in their theological contents are traditional and uncontroversial, and hardly were thought of as theater by contemporaries. In their form, however, they show an acute interest in experimenting with (and thus changing) traditional liturgical procedures. These examples underline how, even on one of...

2019

frontispiece showing the stage design for a mystery play, The Passion and Resurrection of the Savior, performed in Valenciennes in 1547

When one studies ancient sanctuaries there is a tendency to focus on their primary functions, namely the rituals surrounding the cult itself, that is, the sacrifice to and the worship and the invocation of the deity. The historians of religions are of course well aware that the sanctuaries during the festivals, which were the only times when they were really the centre of religious action, served many secondary functions as well. The classical archaeologists have in this connection concentrated primarily on the so-called pan-Hellenic sanctuaries in Greece with their installations for sports, drama, choral singing, poetry and epic and, to a lesser degree, the sanctuaries for ludi in Rome. It is, however, important to remember that both in Greece and Italy not only this kind of sanctuaries, but also the "ordinary" sanctuaries, that is, those, which were not specifically adapted to that kind of games, served other functions than the primary ones as well. One of these functions, I think, was the performance of ritual dramas, which may be defined as non-literary dramas based on the myth of the deity in the sanctuary in question, and performed at the great seasonal festivals, at which the myth illustrated the power of the god to conquer the various crises which society and its members had to go through. These crises could be, and often were in the agrarian society of antiquity, connected to the various transitions of the agrarian year, like sowing and harvest. But they could also refer to the transitions connected to the worshippers, such as the transition from child to puberty, the preparation of the young girl to her wedding, the change from youth to citizen, or, of course be connected to death, the so-called rites of passage 1 .

Proceedings from the Somló Bódog Conference around the topic of Mimesis, 2019

The mimetic character of the catholic mass liturgy is hardly debatable, as the words of the founder of the religion sound as follows: Touto poieite … eis ten emen anamnesin („Do this… in memory of me”). This mimesis is necessarily a stylized and abstracted one, in tension with the non-mimetic dimensions of the mystery – a fertile relationship, one might say. Although the question has been extensively discussed from a theological-theoretical point of view, research on the mimetic character of the liturgy – which in no way limited to the mass – has remained a somewhat uncultivated field, especially from the perspective of the phenomenology of the religious experience in general. Certainly, a single lecture cannot promise to “pay off” such a debt, yet it may hopefully raise some relevant questions about the overall topic. For example, besides examining the constant parts of the mass (the so called Ordinary), it seems promising to examine the variable parts of the ecclesiastical year (Propers): it is not self-evident why it was needed to expand the otherwise heavily textualised rite with dramatic-mimetic elements, and it is known from historical sources that this expansion happened not without serious debates and not from one day to the next. One could cite a series of examples from the Palm Sunday liturgy, which reenacts the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem (with a priest on a wooden donkey’s back in the role of Jesus himself) to the “fish supper” of Maundy Thursday and to the Good Friday liturgy with its ceremony of putting the Eucharist into a “grave” — not to mention such rites that are considered para-liturgical (outside of the scope of the official liturgy but openly tolerated), for example the custom of standing guard at the tomb of Jesus (so called “soldiers of Christ”). But the phenomenon is not limited to the celebration of Easter holidays examples could be cited from other parts of the ecclesiastical year, such as the Tractus stellae (Play of the Star) in the Divine Office of Epiphany, or the blessing of the wine on St John’s day. Future research should answer a number of questions about the proper function of mimesis in the liturgy. Where the boundaries of mimic involvement are drawn? What is the position of the actors of the mimetic ritual in the context of the whole liturgical drama, especially in the light of its interpretative context? What characteristics of the liturgy can be in conflict with mimetic rites, etc. That the latter is not only a problem of the past is evident from the cautious words of a recently issued (2002) directive of the Congregation for Divine Worship: “In relation to the so called ‘mystery or miracle plays’, it is necessary to explain to the believers the important difference between a reenacting presentation (mimesis) and a liturgical ceremony (anamnesis), that is the mystical presence of an event of the history of salvation. For example, the practice of reenacting the crucifixion with actual nails must be effectively discouraged.”