High Altar Research Articles

In This Issue

In This Issue

Giovanni Bellini's Baptism of Christ in its visual and devotional context: transforming sacred space in Santa Corona in Vicenza

The Dominican church of Santa Corona in Vicenza owed its status and nomenclature to its prestigious relic from the crown of thorns. In the early fifteenth century, the reliquary and its procession were enhanced; the community appeared to increase in number and was taken over by a reform movement. From the late 1470s, an ambitious spatial transformation involved removing the prominent choir precinct from the upper nave; constructing an extended high altar chapel to house new choir stalls; and the creation of a crypt in which the precious relic would be displayed. In 1500, textile merchant Battista Graziani was granted a side chapel location in the newly liberated space of the upper nave. Giovanni Bellini's Baptism of Christ altarpiece, with its unique use of light and composition, focused attention on the figure of Christ and, as suggested by an interpretation of a Dominican text, made reference to the crowning of thorns. Graziani's altar was also subtly related to the high altar, possibly intended to house an image of the crowning of thorns above the projected new site for the relic below.

Pietro Sandrioli indorador iz Venecije i drvene oltarne pale u Rabu i Šibeniku

Na temelju novih istraživanja u Državnom arhivu u Zadru autor donosi do sada nepoznate podatke o drvenim oltarnim palama u Rabu i Šibeniku. Pietro Sandrioli indorador iz Venecije obvezuje se 1623. godine da će u crkvi benediktinki Sv. Andrije u Rabu izraditi drvenu oltarnu palu i sliku na platnu sa prikazom Bogorodice sa Sv. Dominikom, Sv. Katarinom Sijenskom i otajstvima Presvetog Ružarija. Isti se majstor, uz indoradora Zuannu Voicovicha i druge neimenovane majstore, spominje i 1628. godine u svezi radova na nekadašnjem glavnom oltaru crkve Sv. Dominika u Šibeniku. Novim čitanjem od prije poznatog arhivskog izvora donose se novi podaci i zaključci o nekadašnjim drvenim oltarima Sv. Vinka Fererskog i Imena Božjeg u crkvi Sv. Dominika u Zadru i ulozi koju je u njihovoj izradio mogao imati indorador Pietro Salamone. U radu se raspravlja i o tome da li se indoradori Pietro Salamone i Pietro Sandrioli bez obzira na podatke iz arhivskih dokumenata mogu smatrati jedinim majstorima zadarskih oltara i rapske drvene pale.

The Religiosity of Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, Governor-General of the Philippines, 1590–1593

Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas, who was Governor-General of the Philippines from 1590 until his death in 1593, was a very devoted and religious man. He was born and grew up in Galicia in northern Spain deeply influenced by St James, whose famous shrine at Santiago de Compostela was nearby. His most important mission in the Philippines was to “strive for the propagation of the holy faith among the natives.” He took this very seriously and, besides fortifying the city of Manila, he was involved in the foundation of the College of Santa Potenciana for young women, and the publication of Doctrina Christiana in Tagalog and Chinese by the Dominicans. In his will he ordered many masses to be said for his soul and asked to be buried by the high altar in the Dominican church. In a postscript, I discuss the possibility that the illustrations in the famous Boxer Codex from about 1590, which mainly concerns the peoples of the Philippine region, were influenced by the recently discovered sixteenth century University of Santo Tomas Hours. I also surmise that this Book of Hours may have belonged to one of the wives of Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas who died before he left Spain.

Mathias Hanisch (1754 körül–1806), egy késő barokk cseh vándorfestő Magyarországon

Abstract Czech itinerant painter Mathias Hanisch (c. 1754, Prague − 1806, Vukovar) moved from the hereditary lands to Trencsen (Trencin) in Hungary in 1788 and lived there until 1791. From this period the signed picture of the high altar in the Church of All Saints in Kocsko (Horne Kockovce) (1790) has long been known. He moved to Zombor (Sombor), the seat of Bacs-Bodrog county around 1793 where he worked for nearly a decade; it is not too far-fetched to regard him as the painter of the Kalocsa-Bacs Archiepiscopacy. Our examinations have already resulted in twelve altar pictures and over forty portraits painted by him in Hungary. The Franciscans of Szabadka (Subotica) preserve 32 pieces of a unique series of 35 paintings of Franciscan saints and blessed persons painted in 1793–95, and a votive picture of Saint Mary of the Snows. In the collection of Szabadka museum, the portrait of Anna Barich can be attributed to Matthias Hanisch. His signed altar picture of the Crucifixion (1794) came to the Zombor muse...

The shrine of Edward the Confessor: a study in multi‐frequency GPR investigation

ABSTRACTA series of systematic ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) investigations is being carried out at Westminster Abbey. Following an earlier investigation into the 13th century Cosmati mosaic in the Sanctuary, GPR surveys were commissioned in order to locate the site of a large royal tomb. Antennas of 400 MHz and 4 GHz frequency were used in the area of the High Altar steps and on the floor of the current Shrine Chapel. The investigation uncovered evidence of the target tomb, a number of other graves, some previously unknown and at least one buried object. The paper briefly discusses the frequencies selected, their respective contributions and illustrates how these have resulted in a better understanding of the archaeological and historical evidence.

Institute for History of Art, Zagreb

In 2005, during the composing of the Inventory of the Moveable Cultural Heritage of the Church and Monastery of St Francis of Assisi at Krk, three wooden statues were found in the attic. These had once belonged to a lavish Renaissance triptych at the centre of which was a figure of the Virgin (107 x 45 x 27 cm), flanked by the figures of St John the Baptist (c. 105 x 28 x 30 cm), an apostle with a book (c. 93 x 32 x 22 cm), and, in all likelihood, St James the Apostle. A trace of a small left foot in the Virgin’s lap indicates that the original composition was that of the Virgin and Child. It is highly likely that these statues originally belonged to the altar of St James which mentioned by Augustino Valier during his visitation of the Church of St Francis of Assisi in 1579 as having a pala honorifica . Harmonious proportions, fine modelling of the heads, beautifully and confidently carved drapery of the fabrics, together with almost classical gestures, all point to a good master carver who, in this case, sought inspiration in Venetian painting of the 1520s and 1530s. When attempting to find close parallels in the production of Venetian wood-carving workshops from the first half of the sixteenth century, without a doubt the best candidates are two signed statues from the workshop of Paolo Campsa de Boboti: the statue of the Risen Christ from the parish church of St Lawrence at Soave in Italy, dated to 1533, and the statue of the Virgin and Child in a private collection in Italy, dated to 1534. To these one can add a statue from the Gianfranco Luzzetti collection at Florence, which has been attributed to Campsa’s workshop. Judging from all the above, the statues from St Francis’ might be dated to the 1540s. In the parish church of Holy Trinity at Baška is a wooden triptych which, according to a nineteenth-century record, was inscribed with Campsa’s signature and the year 1514. When Bishop Stefanus David visited the Chapel of St Michael at Baška in 1685, he described in detail this wooden and carved palla on the main altar dedicated to St Michael, noting that the altar is under the patronage of the Papić family who had founded it and made considerable donations to it. The high altar in the Church of St Mary Magdalene at Porat, also on the island of Krk, has a polyptych attributed to Girolamo and Francesco da Santa Croce. Until now, it has been dated to 1556 - the year of the dedication of the altar and the church. However, more frequently than not, a number of years could pass between the furnishing of an altar and its dedication. With this in mind and having re-analyzed the paintings, the polyptych can be dated as early as the previous decade. Until now, the Renaissance statue of St Mary Magdalene (105 x 25 x 13 cm), originally part of an altar predella but today housed in the Monastery’s collection, was not discussed in the scholarly literature save for its iconography. Based on the morphological similarities between the statue of St Mary Magdalene and the three statues at Krk, it can be concluded that they were carved by the same master carver. Written sources inform us that after 1541 Paolo Campsa was no longer alive. Great differences between the works signed by Campsa have already been the subject of scholarly debate and it is known that due to high demand, his workshop included a number of highly skilled wood carvers. In the case of Krk, perhaps the master carver was an employee at Campsa’s workshop who outlived him and who, after its closure, went his own way and was considered good enough to be hired by fellow painters from the Santa Croce workshop. Installing a statue in a predella was a rare occurrence in sixteenth-century Croatia and Venice alike. Even in the case of Campsa. Reliefs were used more frequently. However, this arrangement was customary on contemporary flügelaltaren in the trans-Alpine north. It ought to be considered whether this northern altar design might provide a trail which would lead to a more specific location of a possible master carver.

Religious Networks in Action: The European Expansion of the Cult of St Thomas of Canterbury

‘Wonder not at our coming here, for unto you, Englishmen, God gave such a wondrous martyr, that he filleth nearly all the world with miracles.’ This admiring assertion, attributed to an archbishop and primate from the Nigros Monies – possibly Stephen, archbishop of Tarsus, which lies at the foot of. the Taurus Mountains in Armenia – provides a good introduction to the theme of this book, for it links Iceland, Canterbury and the eastern Mediterranean in a remarkable manner. The quotation comes from a lost life of St Thomas written in Latin by Robert of Cricklade, prior of St Frideswide in Oxford, who died in 1174; but it is known only from its transmission through one of the longest texts in Old Norse, the Thomas Saga Erkibyskups, compiled in Iceland through the thirteenth century from English Latin sources. This Anglo-Icelandic example, however, is only one part of an extraordinary phenomenon which saw the cult of the ‘wondrous martyr’ established, and not only at the official level, across the whole of the West, from Norway to Sicily and from Portugal to Poland, before the end of the twelfth century. The English martyr was probably depicted among the array of saints on the West front of Trondheim cathedral; his mosaic image stands next to that of St Silvester in the apse behind the high altar in Monreale; the headquarters of the Portuguese Templars at Tomar had a chapel with a reliquary containing fragments of his brains and blood; and French monks from Morimond brought the cult to Sulejów in the diocese of Gneisno in 1177.

Oltar Sv. Jeronima u crkvi Sv. Šime u Zadru i radionica Bettamelli

Based on the book, the full title of which is Registro delle Administrationi de Signori Governatori di San Gerolimo della Nation Oltramarinna in Dalmatia et Albania, this paper discusses the altar of St Jerome in the church of St Simeon at Zadar. It is already known that the altar was commissioned and maintained by the confraternity of Croatian and Albanian soldiers (Croatti a cavallo and Soldati Albanesi) founded in 1675 at Zadar, who were in the service of the Venetian Republic. New archival research has established that on 26 September 1694 the confraternity authorized the expense of 200 silver ducats intended for two Venetian carvers, the Bettamelli brothers, as a down payment for the making of the altar. The work on the altar began in April 1696 and several local master craftsmen took part in it: Zanotti, Rodo and Radičić, as well as smith Rosini. Since the Bettameli brothers, the makers of the altar of St Jerome, are not mentioned in the records by their first names, it should be noted that an altar-maker of the name of Alberto Bettamelli from Venice was responsible for the construction of the high altar and its tabernacle in the cathedral of St Maurus at Maniago (Friuli), as we learn from a contract made in 1693. Alberto Bettamelli also made the tabernacle in the parish church at Marsure (Aviano, Friuli). Bortolo Betamelli (Bettamelli), a tagliapietra, is mentioned between 1646 and 1682 in the ledgers containing contracts of apprenticeship to various sculptors, stone-cutters and carvers kept by the Giustizia Vecchia, a magistracy which supervised the activities of Venetian guilds. Two tabernacles have been attributed to the Bettamelli workshop: one on the high altar of the parish church at Maniago Libero (Maniago, Friuli) of 1694, and one in the parish church at Provesano (Friuli). Based on the records about the construction of the altar of St Jerome, it can be suggested that the coat of arms (composed of a cartouche with a shield emblazoned with a left-facing rampant lion and the initials C.C.S.F. above) depicted on the east pillar of the altar base, previously linked to the members of the Civran family, refers to Šimun Fanfogna (Zadar, 7 April 1663 - Lendinara, 6 March 1707), a Zadar nobleman and distinguished commander in the Venetian army who was the caretaker of the altar. The altar of St Jerome together with the surrounding area inside the church aisle - also called the chapel of St Jerome - represented an isolated unit delineated by a balustraded rail which could be used separately from the rest of the church, on certain occasions and festivities, by the members of the confraternity as well as the representatives of local and regional Venetian government at Zadar, and ecclesiastical and other dignitaries. Numerous works on the decoration of the altar and chapel of St Jerome were carried out throughout the whole of the eighteenth century and large numbers of local craftsmen skilled in different arts were engaged in them. Over a number of years, the Registro mentions the builders Antonio Piovesana (1742) and Antonio Bernardini (1789), the altar-maker Girolamo Picco (1756), the marangon Domenico Tomaselli (1743), blacksmith Antonelli (1744) and the goldsmiths Zorzi Cullisich (1738), Nicolò Giurovich (1752) and Giuseppe (Josip) Rado (1755). A number of other interesting pieces of information concerning the decoration of the altar and the activity of the confraternity of St Jerome is also presented.

A libetbányai Keresztre feszítés-oltár

Abstract Out of the three wooden statues exhibited in the Hungarian National Gallery as a rood group from Spisska Bela (Szepesbela), only the Christ on the Cross is appropriately designated. As for the two thieves, both the provenance and the style suggest that originally they were set up somewhere around Banska Bystrica (Besztercebanya): they can be attributed to the workshop of the Pukanec (Bakabanya) high altar. The style of this workshop can be traced to Veit Stoss's Cracow workshop on the basis not only of borrowed motifs but also of the paintings of the Pukanec high altar. The present paper adds to these paintings the original fixed wings. Similarly to Stoss's workshop in Cracow, the workshop of the Pukanec high altar probably also employed a permanent polychrome painter. When placed side by side with the corresponding statues in the Crucifixion group of eight figures in the shrine of the Pukanec high altar, the Budapest statues appear to be workshop replicas. The original altarpiece from which they...

Ismétlődések, hiányok és buktatók. A kisszebeni Keresztelő Szent János tiszteletére szentelt főoltár külső képsorának értelmezése

Abstract Art historians are still at fault for the interpretation of the pictures on the outer sides of the wings of the high altar of Saint John the Baptist from Kisszeben (Sabinov). Restoring work in the past decades has explored the original surface of several pictures, leading to an important insight: the reconstruction of the altarpiece in the baroque age left their contents unchanged. It can therefore be concluded that the baroque layer on the unrestored pic tures cannot hide wholly different scenes. What hinders interpretation is rather the deviation from the customary schemes. The narrative compiled from Biblical scenes is “jerky”: the episodes in some places do not follow in chronological order and while several “customary” scenes are missing seemingly without reason, certain scenes appear, however, to be repeated. Even more perplexing are the “hitches”, representations that are hard to interpret on the basis of traditional schemes, which, however, hide the key to the profound message of the high...

Egy másik Martin Schwarz – A budapesti Riemenschneider-Madonna festője

Sive Marten Swarcz seu Martinus Niger alias Marcin Czarny, master of Veit Stoss's Cracow high altar – this is the subtitle of Miklós Mojzer's major two-part study published in 2006 and 2008 in which he identified Master MS and traced the roots of his work to Veit Stoss's Nuremberg and Cracow workshops. He mentioned in passing that at the very same time, in the 1480s, another winged altarpiece was being made in another important town of Frankonia, Rothenburg on the frame of which the following inscription can be read: Frater Martinus Schwartz die Sancte Marie Magdalene complevit. The altarpiece dedicated to the Virgin was once in the monastery of the Dominican nuns in Rothenburg and is now in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. Martin Schwarz was the guardian of the Franciscan monastery in Rothenburg from 1485 where he had his workshop fitted out. He was the local leader of the order until 1506. Recent researches have proven that some statues carved by Tilman Riemenschneider were painted by Martin Schwarz. The starting point for indentification was the identity of the Pressbrokat on the St John figure of the Wiblingen altarpiece and on the clothes of the Virgin figure of the inscribed altarpiece. The same pattern can be found on the fragment of the attire of the Madonna preserved in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts since 1923. Before the museum, the statue was in an altar shrine (now lost). The history of the altarpiece can be retraced with certainty to the village church of Schweinsdorf outside Rothenburg, but tradition associates it with the neighbouring imperial town. Among the rich documentation on the furnishing of the Jakobskirche mention is made of an altar of the Virgin erected in 1495/96, which was carved by a sculptor of Würzburg – obviously Riemenschneider. The question arises whether the statue painted by Martin Schwarz and datable to the end of the 15th century according to the chronology of the Riemenschneider Madonnas belonged to this altar.

Sajnos, nem Kracker! Korrigenda et addenda

Abstract It is a commonplace that after the release of a new monograph so-far unknown works begin to rise to the surface one after the other. In the case of Johann Lucas Kracker the first to appear were parallel research results, of which most noteworthy are PetrArijcuk's attributions based on archival sources. He discovered the fourth member of the refectory series in the Franciscan monastery of Moravska Třebova (The Feast of St Francis, 1759) and made the daring identification between the high altar picture in the hospital church of St Elizabeth in Znojmo with the Assumption of the Virgin long missing from Slavonice. On the basis of data from the Premonstratensian archives of Nova Řise Vaclav Milek offered a more exact dating for the altar pictures of the abbey: the pictures delivered in 1760 preceded by years not only Kracker's frescoes in the same church but also the similar works at Jasov. The late altar pictures from Banska Bystrica and the paintings discovered around Jasov were probably created wit...

Die Danziger Gebote-Tafeln als Spiegel ihrer Zeit

Entering the church of St. Mary in Danzig the visitor will be struck by the two paintings in the north-western wing not far away from the high altar. Even though related though their subject they date form different periods. One was provided by a Netherland master between 1480 and 1490, the other from the regional artist Anton Moller in 1607. Both paintings can be summarized under the term “instructive,” because they address the viewer with his duties as a good Christian. The painting form the end of the 15th century shows the Ten Commandments, the painting from Anton Moller the seven works of charity. With that both paintings are part of instruction as it follows form Christian religion. Remarkable however is the interrelation both paintings show to social-historical events of their time. This can be observed by details included in the representation. The painting with the Ten Commandments gives a close observation of the population form Danzig showing the different roles within society. They evidence of wealth and prosperity, which took influence on morality. Therefore the clerical became aware of the necessity to remind of the duties as they were given with the Ten Commandments. The works of charity allude to the religious constellations, which has become competing powers at the turn of the century. The painting of Moller results to be a sort of manifest for the Lutheran Church against the Reformed Church. The Calvinist at that time had powerful positions within the municipality and took more and more influence on the political development. Therefore the Protestant were interested to demonstrate the power they had, especially when they allied with the Catholics. Such both paintings are of an importance, which exceed the clerical context by far. While both representations refer to the current situation of their time they can be considered as a document of the social and political development.

The Search for the Holy Grail: Arthurian Lacunae in the England of Edward III

EDWARD III (1343-77) enthusiastically promoted the idea of himself as a new Arthur in the minds of his countrymen/'2 often identifying himself with Arthur, reinforcing himself as Arthur's heir, and legitimizing his position by associating his reign with that of the most successful of his forebears.3 Thus he followed in the steps of his grandfather Edward I, who had hoped to fulfill the prophecies of Merlin by uniting England, Scotland, and Wales as Arthur had done be fore him; who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; and who attended the service of the reburying of Arthur's remains at the high altar of

Allegóriától allegóriáig. Mantegna Assisiben

Abstract 1. Andrea Mantegna's painting known by the name Pallas Expelling the Vices from the Garden of Virtue (fig. 1) could not have been created without knowledge of three frescoes in the lower church of Assisi (figs 2–4). My arguments are not based on verbal but on visual sources. The former possibility is precluded by the lack of any written information on Mantegna's presence in Assisi. What is certain is that the Mantuan court painter was working in the chapel of pope Innocent VIII's Belvedere villa between June 1488 and the summer of 1490. It is hard to imagine that he did not visit Assisi's San Francesco basilica during this time, one of Christianity's main shrines of pilgrimage endowed with the promise of papal absolution. (Isabella d'Este is known to have been there in 1494.) Pallas – the second painting after Parnassus for the studiolo of Isabella d'Este in Mantua – was painted sometime between 1497 and 1502. The venue is the Garden of Virtues into which the Vices have intruded and they have imp...

The Vatican Rag

The Vatican Rag Lisa Erb Stewart (bio) Recently I attended an Episcopal service at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. It was the Monday-noon Eucharist. With a few other tourists I sat in the richly decorated pews closest to the high altar and gazed beyond its brocade to the enormous gilt altarpiece, whose excesses eventually became too much for my eyes. The priest approached a woman seated nearby who was already praying, and asked her to remove her hat. Then the service began. I was made dizzy by the presence of the sculpted crucifixion, but then recovered in the quiet breathing of the Virgin off to the side, clothed in that mineral blue. The heavy pews forced gravity upon my heart, and the rose windows steadied the kaleidoscopic reeling in my brain. The service was very similar to the Catholic Mass: the same words and soft rhythms, the wafer, and then the wine. After the final benediction, when the priest came over to greet the five or six of us who had attended the service, I expressed my pleasure at the similarity—having never attended an Episcopal service before. “Yes,” the priest replied crisply, obviously delighted with my Catholic openness. “Catholic and Episcopal faiths are exactly the same. The only difference is the location of authority.” But it seemed to me there was a second difference; I searched my catechism for the rub. “And transubstantiation?” I asked. The priest laughed and gestured toward the altar. “Wasn’t it as real for you today as it always is?” Then, turning serious and even a little angry, he looked directly into my eyes. “We don’t talk that way about God,” he lectured. “That was a fourteenth-century issue. Romans today don’t think they’re eating a corpse.” He smiled. “Only a silly Roman would ask a question like yours.” My conversion to Catholicism occurred gradually over a twenty-year period—the result of Catholic schooling coupled with my struggle, as a poet, to understand language and its relation to the world. The revelation art offers and religion celebrates is the indivisibility of spirit and matter: the world is one body. To recognize this fully is to transubstantiate. Tom Lehrer, the musical comedian of the 1960s whose recordings I [End Page 37] memorized as a child, performed a number called “The Vatican Rag.” The refrain went, “Two, four, six, eight / Time to transubstantiate!” But transubstantiation, the task of artists and mystics as well as silly Romans, requires the best of our intelligence, which is faith. Simone Weil wrote that faith is the intelligence in love, and indeed, it is through love that the fallacy of separation breaks down. One gift that the intelligence in love offers is metaphor. Because it reveals connectedness, metaphor is the beginning of the experience of transubstantiation. It is the opposite of symbol, which, in creating an equation, differentiates and therefore fragments. In tending my small garden plot, I have learned that one metaphor expands into another: despair and hope in the weeds, the potato that multiplies underground. These metaphors astonish my heart by divulging to it its own secrets. Metaphor, like the universe, continually nudges its boundaries outward, making infinity more infinite, making God more God. In some art, transubstantiation is as much the subject as the activity. The sculptor Tony Cragg uses tiny fragments of plastic rubbish to erect larger-than-life mosaics that suggest whole, unbroken objects. One of my favorite works is Green, Yellow, Red, Orange, and Blue Bottles, which, on a white wall, has the effect of five large stained-glass windows. Most impressive is the twelve-foot-high laundry-detergent bottle, glowing in the Virgin’s blue. Writers know that words and their objects were once the same, and we long for that. Cragg’s work has taught me something about my own task as a writer: to sort through the fragments of symbolic language and reconstitute them. His work is both joyful and tragic because it points to wholeness and brokenness, the sacred and profane. It is in the reconciling of wholeness with brokenness that metaphor occurs, and with it, faith is possible. The National Cathedral was built...

Mobiliario litúrgico del siglo XVIII en la Iglesia Parroquial de Guillena

This paper studies different pieces of the liturgical furniture of the parish of Our Lady of the Granada of Guillena’s Villa (Seville), which were acquired in the 18th century. Across the investigation in diverse historical files, we could have announced new information on the height and gilding of the reredos for the high altar, the work of the chairs coral, and the construction of the candlestick of glooms and of the eucharistic monument.

Pierre Du Bellocq's Poem on the Dôme des Invalides

AbstractPierre du Bellocq's L'Eglise des Invalides. Poeme, published in 1702, is a dramatic narrative, replete with otherworldly powers, of the genesis and creation of the Dome des Invalides in Paris, and the recounting of a miracle that allowed the completion of the baldachin over the high altar. The miracle was meant as an allegory alluding to Louis XIV's command of the previous year for a final modification of the baldachin columns. The poem (which exists in one known copy) is unique among architectural writings of the Louis XIV period.

“I Willingly Speak to You about Her Virtues”: Catherine de Saint-Augustin and the Public Role of Female Holiness in Early New France

On July 11, 1666, the new cathedral in the French colonial capital at Quebec was finally consecrated by the vicar apostolic of New France, Msgr. François de Laval. Catherine de Saint-Augustin, a nursing sister who belonged to the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec, described the elaborate ceremony in her journal. The celebrants in their regalia made three trips around the church sprinkling holy water and chanting prayers before they came to the main door. After striking the door three times with a cross, “to signify the power of Jesus Christ, sovereign bishop of the Church,” they entered, and majestically processed toward the high altar. Upon the altar sat four candles, which signified “that Catholics (have) spread to the four corners of the world.” In the middle of these was a single cross, “that of Our Lord,” which symbolically linked the entire Church throughout the world to its (European) center—“au milieu du monde.” Following a number of minor rites including lessons and responses, the bishop circled the altar seven times sprinkling its base with holy water. The relics of saints were interred within it, and the church was dedicated to the holy trinity—the new seat of a new bishop in a “New” World.