The ancient Christian empire seems to be gaining more and more attention – despite recent denunciations by Team Francis. Two weeks ago we had the pleasure of hearing a 17th century Holy Week oratorio by Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, written in 1678 for Emperor Leopold I. Just this last Saturday we attended the performance of a second short oratorio by Antonio Draghi, also first performed in Vienna in 1668. Giuditta (Judith) was composed for the chapel of the dowager empress Eleanora, widow of Emperor Ferdinand III (1637-57). The oratorio was performed by the “Academy of Sacred Drama” which has as its aim the exploration of the “forgotten cultural treasures of sacred dramatic music.” Amazing that such groups have arisen here in the City! The venue was Corpus Christi Church near Columbia.

Although only ten years separates the composition of the two oratorios, they are quite different. Giuditta is shorter and has a more operatic text. Judith Malafronte gave a scholarly introduction to the piece. The evening concluded with two beautiful works: the Laurentian Litany by Francesco Durante and a Stabat Mater by Antonio Draghi.

(Above) Image of the Twenty-one in a revived “Coptic” style. The common people usually prefer cruder but more expressive images.

Die 21: Eine Reise ins Land der koptischen Martyrer
(The 21: A Journey to the Land of the Coptic Martyrs)

2018 Rowohlt Verlag G.m.b.H. Reinbeck bei Hamburg

The image on the cover of a magazine had attracted me. It showed the head of a young man, apparently a Mediterranean type, surrounded by some orange-colored material. He’s a thin young man with brownish skin, a low hairline, and a not very thick mustache, the eyes half closed. The narrow lips are slightly open and let a little of the teeth be seen. It’s not a smile, rather a sign of deep relaxation, in which the mouth involuntarily opens for a deep breath or a sigh.

But then I discovered that the cropped image shown on the magazine had misled me. I hadn’t realized at first that the head had been separated from the body.

Martin Mosebach opens his new book with this startling image. Die 21 tells of his pilgrimage last year to the land of the twenty-one Coptic men who were killed in 2015 by ISIS in Libya. Part reportage on current events, part travel narrative and part modern day hagiography, Die 21 also addresses liturgy, art, history and theology. Stylistically, Die 21 ranges from precise, almost scientific, descriptive prose to images alternately poetic, shocking and surrealistic. The only work I know that resembles it somewhat in both subject matter and style is Joris-Karl Huysmans’s Les Foules de Lourdes (1908).

Mosebach takes us on a journey of exploration to another world, where the spiritual remains a dimension of ordinary life. For those whose understanding of Christianity is derived from the moribund Roman Catholic Church of the West – the decadent clergy, the “mature Christians” of the financial centers and well-to-do suburbs, the enthusiasts of the “new movements” – Mosebach’s book will be either a destabilizing confrontation with a world thought overcome or a welcome revelation that the Christian Faith still lives on upon this earth.

Mosebach first tells of the martyrdom itself by minutely describing the main evidence of it: the horrifying, very professional video prepared by ISIS of the beheading of these men. The martyrs show no signs of excitement or anguish and above all do not plead for mercy. On their faces only quiet resolve and recollection are visible. The last word on the lips of several was “Jesus.” Twenty were Copts – Egyptian Christians – most of them from a single village. A stranger, a black man from Ghana, had joined them in martyrdom.

Mosebach in the course of the book strives to give each man a separate character and individuality. It is a difficult task. But is that not the case in so many martyrdoms? There are the forty martyrs of Sebaste, frozen to death. Mosebach himself refers to the martyrs of the entire Theban legion (from Thebes in Egypt, that is) who, strangely enough, unite Egypt and Germany. The coat of arms of Cologne still commemorates St. Ursula and her eleven thousand companions. And as recently as 2013 did we not celebrate the canonization of the eight hundred martyrs of Otranto? What is important is not the martyrs’ individuality, but their total identification with Christ. Mosebach records one of the martyrs saying as his confession of faith: “I am a Christian.” Not something enunciated as a concept or only as an article of belief but what he had become through the rite of baptism. And, as a Coptic priest tells us in this book, “Every Christian must have a cross, one real and one symbolic, neither may be lacking. Every Christian must relive Christ’s life.”

In the most moving part of his narrative Mosebach visits the village from which most of the martyrs hailed. They were just “ordinary guys.” Some could not read. Their families live in what we might consider extremely modest circumstances: farm animals dwell together with their owners in the same dwelling, swallows fly through the house during interviews. In his conversations with the martyrs’ families Mosebach records very little emotion – no enthusiasm, outward grief, rancor or desire for vengeance. Rather, similar to the attitude of the martyrs themselves, there is a quiet acceptance and a kind of modest pride in having now such advocates in heaven.

For among the Copts the spiritual is still an omnipresent reality. The martyrs’ families tell of the premonitions and signs that they now understand foretold the martyrdom of their children or husbands. Indeed, some of the men themselves seem to have had a presentiment that they would never return from Libya. And now, through the martyrs’ intercession, miracles and cures are taking place as well. Devotion to the 21 is spreading throughout Egypt. Even Muslims come by to request their help.

Yes, the world of the Copts is in so many ways that of the early Church. Persecution is a daily reality. Heavily armed guards are ubiquitous around Coptic institutions and villages. A bishop is unavailable to speak to Mosebach because he has been called to another location to care for girls who have been raped. A priest Mosebach is interviewing somewhat reluctantly admits to having been beaten severely in Libya – and then having been freed by a guard who apparently was impressed by this steadfastness. The priest immediately compared this to St. Peter’s escape form prison through the intervention of an angel. For the Copts are always ready to refer to the words of scripture, of which they have a great living knowledge, for analogies to their present trials and crises. Even though many cannot read, the bible is held with great reverence.

The source and center of the Copts’ spiritual life, however, is their liturgy. The Coptic Mass lasts three hours. It is celebrated in Greek and Coptic, languages nobody today “understands.” Yet the often-illiterate martyrs drew great spiritual treasures and strength from it. The entire Divine Liturgy is sung. Six of he martyrs were ordained “hymn-singers” – the others knew the Mass by heart. “They were totally absorbed (Mosebach states)by the rite – which in many cases in the Western world isn’t possible anymore even for monks.” Is it surprising that monasticism also remains of preeminent importance in Coptic spirituality?

The Coptic Church today is booming. New churches, monasteries, hospitals and schools are springing up everywhere. Formal instruction in the faith is expanding. Attracting the young people is no problem (perhaps not that difficult in a country where half the population is under 25). What the West perceives as contradictions: magnificence of the Traditional liturgy, service to the poor, martyrdom – are understood by the Copts as self-evidently inseparably linked.

Die 21 ends on a more somber, ambiguous note as, in the final chapters, the scene shifts to Cairo. Mosebach lets us experience the truly infernal quarter where the Coptic rag pickers of the city dwell – but this “ghetto” has given birth to a grand cathedral–like shrine and new residential areas. Yet, only a short drive away from the chaotic city of Cairo, an alien force, a new shopping mall, has set down in the desert. It offers to a traditional society a Western fantasy world of air conditioning and unlimited merchandise. For here and there throughout this book we are shown that Coptic and Egyptian life is changing: new homes, new churches, changing economic conditions. In a sense, Mosebach tells us, the Egyptians live between two ages – one coming to an end and the other not yet formed. And, for the Copts, the threat of attack is ever-present. In a country where Islam is the state religion, the government is unpredictable – now protecting, now harassing or even persecuting the Christian minority.

In Die 21 Martin Mosebach has given us his most significant work of religious non-fiction since The Heresy of Formlessness. It must have been a source of great satisfaction to the author to present to the world a flourishing Christian culture that in many ways confirms the theses on the traditional liturgies and their role in the Church for which Mosebach himself has argued for many years. Of course, from another perspective, Die 21 can be read as a point-by-point critique of the institutional Roman Catholic Church as it exists today in Western Europe and the United States. Die 21 indeed is an extraordinary commemoration of the contemporary martyrs of Egypt and of the Church and community that formed them. But at the same time it stands as a stern challenge and rebuke to us who have so much more than the Copts – at least as the world understands it – yet, as we must confess to our shame, have allowed our faith to dwindle away.

(We understand that Die 21 may be appearing soon in English translation. And our Society expects to to welcome Mr. Mosebach back to New York once more in November of this year.)

A Solemn Requiem Mass was celebrated this morning by Fr. Cyprian La Pastina at the Basilica of St. John the Evangelist, Stamford, CT, to mark the anniversary of the death of Ignatius Cardinal Kung. David Hughes led the Viri Galilaei, the men’s chant choir from St. Mary Norwalk.  The Mass was sponsored by the Cardinal Kung Foundation.

The Dominican Rite Mass for the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas on March 7 at St. Vincent Ferrer Church, New York. Photo courtesy of Diana Yuan.

The Society of Our Lady of Sacro Monte will be having its monthly Rosary this Saturday, March 10th at 11:00 a.m. at St. Anthony’s Oratory in West Orange. Following the Rosary, everyone is invited to join the society for brunch at a local eatery. The idea is that once a month we can offer an opportunity for prayer, fellowship and community. Every month we will be hosting our Rosary at a different area church. Everyone is very welcomed to attend.

L’Arte di Dio: Sacri Pensieri, Profane Idee

Edited by Cristina Siccardi

(2017 Edizioni Cantagalli S.r.I., Siena)

Art and Religion, Beauty and the Sacred: topics that have received ever-increasing attention among Catholic Traditionalists as their movement matures and, moving beyond the mere survival of the liturgy, addresses fundamental issues of our culture. In general, Traditionalists now understand that some necessary connection exists between the realms of the sacred and beautiful. Again, generally speaking, Traditionalists tend to look for their models for a successful interaction of the two spheres in the historic styles and masterpieces of the past.

This is in stark contrast to the policy of the Church establishment, which usually takes one of two forms. More prevalent on these shores is aggressive hostility towards “mere aesthetics” in liturgy, art and music, while instead promoting anti-artistic tendencies like those of evangelical Protestantism. Alternatively, one encounters, especially in Europe, the direct importation of contemporary “elitist” artistic trends into the Church. To the extent new churches are built at all, for example, their architecture usually is informed by a modernist ethos. Cardinal Ravasi may serve as the “patron saint” of this approach. There are and have been laudable exceptions to these dominating tendencies, but as a whole the institutional “Conciliar” Church tends to dispense with the idea of the “beautiful” as a criterion of ecclesiastical art.

The fossilized continuity of institutional Catholic Modernism. (Above) Church of the Epiphany, New York (1967). (Below) The chapel of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, New York (2009). (2nd below) The chapel of the NYU Catholic Center (2012)

Yet are there not clear historical precedents for the experience of the beautiful leading to religious conversion and renewal? Did not Prince Vladimir of Kiev convert to Eastern Orthodoxy after his emissaries had encountered the magnificence of Hagia Sophia and its grand liturgical ceremonies? Vladimir Soloviev in turn used this example to defend François-René de Chateaubriand’s Genius of Christianity (1802), which argued the case for Christianity based on religion’s role in creating Western art and culture. Also in the early 19th century, the first generation of German romantics rediscovered the art, architecture and literature of the Middle Ages. Many of these writers progressed from an appreciation of Gothic art to an understanding of the Catholic religion, resulting in a series of prominent conversions. The German Romantic Movement in no small degree laid the foundation of the spiritual revival of German Catholicism.

To address this complex of issues in the contemporary Church, Cristina Siccardi has assembled a most distinguished group of contributors: writers, artists, performers, historians, museum administrators and theologians. Here are both theoreticians and hands-on creators of art. Not a few have a distinguished place in Italian culture; some, like Martin Mosebach and Roberto de Mattei, should be already well known to readers “over here.” The contributors are both secular and Catholic and not everyone speaks with the same accent – but that’s only as it should be! What unites them all is their engagement for art, the sacred and the beautiful – and their opposition to the destruction or at least deterioration of these values in modernity and in the modern Church.

Each contribution takes the form of an interview and discussion with Cristina Siccardi; in addition, there is a good-sized appendix with important, previously published pieces from people like Jean Clair and Fr. Uwe Michael Lang. There’s also a set of illustrations that serve to highlight the contrasts between “traditional” (in a range of styles) and modern ecclesiastical art – a picture is worth a thousand words.

It’s hardly possible for me to summarize the riches to be found in this book. Among the many noteworthy contributions, let me single out a few to give you an idea of the contents:

In her introduction, Cristina Siccardi writes of the disaster of ecclesiastical art in Italy today – the product of Vatican II. “Is it possible in sacred art that the good can be expressed by the anti-aesthetic? Since the second Vatican Council this has become possible.”   To the extent churches are built at all, they are iconoclastic spaces conceived with the express intent of breaking with the past. Historic buildings, on the other hand are increasingly reduced to museums – like Castel Gandolfo under Pope Francis or the convent of St. Mark in Florence.  Even those cathedrals, churches and monasteries that still have clergy and can function as places of worship usually welcome mostly tourists today.

Christina Sourgins give an admirable summary of the critique of “contemporary art” that has been developed largely by French authors. She exposes the government-subsidized and art market-oriented fakery of “performances” and “installations.” But what is far worse is that this “art” has all too frequently found a home in churches and cathedrals. Deliberately blasphemous and provocative, these works contradict the form and purpose of the magnificent spaces that surround them.  “Contemporary art acts as the contrary of the gospel: honor to him through whom scandal comes!” To dialogue with such art leads Christians only to a “quiet apostasy.”

Martin Mosebach writes of the “attack on the Catholic rite.” Mosebach emphasizes that although the ancient rite has generated an incredible quantity of art, music, painting architecture and sculpture, these are not its essence, which is independent of these great cultural treasures. Rather, the main element of its beauty is the form of the rite itself. Any celebration of the Traditional mass, even in the most wretched of chapels, has an incomparable beauty – the rite itself “creates its own space.” “The splendid art of the most beautiful churches has absolutely no value if it cannot enter into direct correspondence with the rite for which it was created.”

Mosebach: The primary beauty of the Mass is the rite itself, not the embellishments (architecture, vestments, music etc.) with which it may be surrounded. (Above) Easter liturgy in the tiny one room Russian Catholic chapel of St Michael, New York). (Below)  A Missa Cantata celebrated in the basement church of St Mary’s Greenwich before a small congregation of young people.

But through art man gives greater glory to God. (Above) A solemn Requiem Mass celebrated recently in the church of St. Vincent Ferrer, New York. (Below) Cardinal Burke celebrates Mass in the Karlskirche, Vienna. 

Andrea de Meo Arbore develops intriguing ideas regarding architectural archetypes that are or should be constitutive of a Catholic Church such as the tower, the monumental portal and the dome. Citing medieval theorists such as Durandus, de Meo Arbore finds that each of these elements articulates a semantics that refers to the spiritual world. “Thus, the cupola may be the symbol of heaven or of the pregnant womb of Mary.” Vittorio Sgarbi in a similar vein writes that post-sixties church architecture lacks the cupola and the vault: the cupola is heaven and the vault is the dimension which stands above men’s’ heads. The lack of architectural forms like the verticality of the Gothic or the cupola and vaulting of the Renaissance eliminates their symbolism –  equivalent to a “renunciation of heaven.”

A specific cause of dismay mentioned by several contributors (like Vittorio Sgarbi) is the ” liturgical adaptation” of churches and cathedrals to the new mass in Italy resulting in the gutting of sanctuaries (chancels) and the elimination of altar rails, altars and pulpits. Antonio Natali states “what … has happened in our churches to adapt the architecture of the past to the new liturgy doesn’t have even the shadow of a cultural justification.” In this regard, Pietro de Marco writes of modernity’s specific horror of the baroque, the fascination with the allegedly “pure” and of the destructive force and anti-baroque vandalism that succeeded the Council.

(Above and below) Vandalism in the sanctuary – the baptismal “swimming pool” installed before the former high altar of the Jesuit church of St Francis Xavier, New York.

(Above and below) Jesuits again: “Liturgical adaptation” in the sanctuary of the Jesuit church of Vienna.

This book represents an exhaustive compendium of opinion and commentary on truth, beauty and art in the Church and the world. Appropriately enough for (using the term broadly) traditionalists, the various contributors identify and clarify issues and problems but do not necessarily offer “solutions” or role models. But L’Arte di Dio is an indispensable resource for anyone concerned with questions of the liturgy and ecclesiastical art. The book has its own website; we would welcome the day when it is translated into other languages.

Last Friday evening, in the midst of a fierce early March storm, I attended a rare musical event  at the church of St. Luke in the Fields in the Village.  The vocalists of TENET together with the instrumental performers of ACRONYM presented Le Memorie Dolorose, a sepolcro, or kind of oratorio for Holy Week. It would have been first presented in the imperial chapel in Vienna. In fact, Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, the composer, was required to write one or two new sepolcri every year (there were Thursday and Friday pieces).  After their initial performance, they remained unpublished and unperformed until the 1970’s.

It was an outstanding performance. The work is not at all an eclectic jumble but has a clear form leading to a dramatic climax in which all musical forces participated. These were significant because, despite the modest length of this work, eleven singers are required. The performances were uniformly outstanding. Originally the sepolcro was semi-staged; this performance tried to duplicate this by the solemn procession-like entrances of the singers.

The Italian libretto by Nicolo Minato is quite sophisticated theologically and poetically. At times it seems almost reminiscent of the eastern liturgy in its dramatic juxtapositions of the divine and the human. The text serves to further integrate the succession of recitatives and arias which make up this work.

An extremely informative lecture preceded the performance.  Prof. Robert L Kendrick of the University of Chicago explained the genre and the libretto and situated Le Memorie Dolorose in its place and time – Vienna of the 1670’s, in the reign of Leopold I.

(Above) Ivory image of Emperor Leopold I in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Contemporary artists in all media seemed to delight in exaggerating Leopold’s not very attractive features.

Leopold I (reigned 1658-1705) is one of the most underrated rulers in history, the victim of the utterly dishonest writings of French, German (Prussian), Czech, Hungarian and Polish nationalist historians. Extremely well educated (he had been initially destined for an ecclesiastical career) he became ruler of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation at its nadir after the Thirty Years War. His entire reign was an exhausting struggle against external and internal foes. At the end he succeeded. It was primarily his forces, not those of Poland, which defeated the Turks in 1683 at Vienna. The forces of the Empire then recovered Hungary from the Ottomans between 1683 and 1699. France, in the ascendant under Louis XIV, proved a more formidable foe. Yet here too Leopold lived to experience the crushing defeat of the French at Blenheim in 1704.  in the north, the elector of Brandenburg, now allied with Leopold, threw back the Swedes. And beyond just conducting seemingly endless wars, Leopold introduced significant improvements in administration – both of his own lands and of the greater Empire itself. The Holy Roman Empire, seemingly moribund in 1658, had acquired a new vitality and prestige under Leopold.

But Leopold’s main claim to fame is cultural. Completely devoted to Catholicism, he consolidated the Church throughout his domains. He cultivated strong cultural links with Italy – this performance is evidence of that. In so doing he ushered in the age of the baroque in the German lands. After 1683 there was a veritable renaissance of art and music. Starting in the Habsburg lands, in Prague and Vienna, baroque architecture, sculpture and painting spread to the other principalities of the Empire: Salzburg, Dresden, Fulda, Passau and Bamberg. Leopold was personally a great enthusiast of music and a composer in his own right. In Leopold’s own Hapsburg domains alone, musicians like Schmelzer, Biber and Fux were active. As for literature, in Silesia, then one of the Austrian territories, there was a long line of baroque poets, including one genius: Angelus Silesius. Leopold’s reign was the start of a glorious revival of art and culture that lasted into the succeeding classical and romantic ages.

Regretfully, we must pass from the past to the present day. The lecturer felt it necessary to “utterly dissociate” himself from parts of the text that feature “anti-Jewish outcry.” I myself was unable discover anything in that regard  in Minato’s text beyond what is contained in the gospels; presumably our speaker would have to qualify a performance of one of Bach’s Passions in the same way. After these remarks, he noted how important it is to make such statements when “hate” is taking over Washington and “countries like Poland and Hungary.” I would note that the speaker, who shows such sensitivity to the alleged anti-Semitic nuances of a 17th century libretto himself feels free to disparage whole peoples of today. And I ask myself; doesn’t he know that the world media are accusing Poland and Hungary of the crime of seeking to restrain immigration – of the same “migrants” and “refuges” who are making life increasingly miserable for the Jewish populations of the UK and France? It reminds me very much of my experiences long ago in East Germany, where every presentation on every conceivable topic had to include a ritualistic reference to the controlling ideology.

But enough of such thoughts! It was a wonderful evening. And I hear this work is being recorded by Friday night’s performers. I would highly recommend acquiring it when it appears!

For the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer will offer a Dominican Rite Mass on Wednesday, March 7 at 7 pm.

On the 18th anniversary of the death of Ignatius Cardinal Kung,  a traditional Latin high Mass will be offered at the Basilica of

St. John the Evangelist in Stamford, CT on Saturday, March 10 at 10:30 am.  Fr. Cyprian La Pastina will be the celebrant.  David Hugh will direct the music.

This is the most critical time in the history of the Catholic Church in China.  Please pray for the underground church in China.

Note: Parking is free during church services in the Bell Street Government Parking at the back of the basilica.