Liturgical Office Research Articles

Les Leçons de Ténèbres: Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Holy Week in Louis xiv’s France

Abstract The Tenebrae Lessons were important components of Holy Week in baroque France. While François Couperin’s (1668–1733) settings of the Tenebrae Lessons hold a significant place in both the repertoire and scholarly literature, Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s (1643–1704) voluminous settings of the Tenebrae Lessons deserve a place alongside those by Couperin. This article first outlines the liturgy of the Tenebrae service. Second, it examines the welcoming and influences of the Italian style on the French Leçons de Ténèbres at a time when Lully’s seizure over stage music was complete. Third, it illustrates the influence of secular music-making on this important Liturgical Office. Fourth, it briefly discusses the importance of rhetoric for Charpentier and his contemporaries and rhetoric’s influence on Charpentier’s compositional style of liturgical music.

Joseph Custos: The Role of Saint Joseph in a Thirteenth-Century Office and Mass for His Feast

This article presents the earliest known liturgical Office and Mass in honor of St. Joseph, composed in the thirteenth century at the monastery of St.-Laurent in Liege. The Office is introduced by an overview of the development of the liturgical cult of St. Joseph. The ideas expressed in this Office and Mass are analyzed with special reference to the selection of Matins readings and the newly composed liturgical texts. The Office of St.-Laurent describes St. Joseph's virtues and casts his relationships to Jesus and Mary primarily within the context of service, as a guardian or caregiver, rather than in the context of family life.

Ainard of Dives and the Ste-Catherine-du-Mont office for St Katherine of Alexandria: ‘Inter praecipuos cantores scientia musicae artis’

ABSTRACTOrderic Vitalis writes that Ainard, a monk of Ste-Catherine-du-Mont monastery, composed a historia for St Katherine of Alexandria for use at his institution, which possessed the saint's oil-secreting finger bones. Through a series of historiographical errors, throughout the twentieth century it came to be believed either that Ainard composed not a liturgical office, but a prose vita of the saint, or that the office he had composed was lost. This article presents a survey of the oldest extant offices for St Katherine, showing that the office widely disseminated in German-speaking lands can be traced to Normandy, and through palaeographical and codicological analysis of its earliest source, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, nouv. acq. lat. 1083, to Ste-Catherine-du-Mont in the late eleventh century. The office contained in this manuscript juxtaposes newly composed proper chants for St Katherine with existing chants from a variety of liturgical sources that honoured established saints, and emphasises the power of St Katherine's relics. The contents and themes of the office suggest an agenda of legitimisation and cultic publicity on the part of its creator, which would be consistent with the aims of a monk of Ste-Catherine. If this manuscript is indeed from Ste-Catherine-du-Mont, it likely records the office that Ainard composed. This attribution is reinforced by a textual-melodic style and modal organisation that grounds it in a later style of chant composition, which Ainard – a south German by birth – would likely have been familiar with.

Liturgical Landscapes in Post-Conquest England: Commemorating King Oswald in the Northern Province

Bringing together the work of musicologists and historians, this essay interrogates the contents of secular and monastic offices for Oswald of Northumbria in the northern province across the high and late Middle Ages, identifying the ways in which perceptions of St. Oswald and his relationship to communities in northern England and Scotland were articulated through the night office. It argues for the importance of considering a liturgical office in its entirety, demonstrating that they were not static, but could be adapted to differing needs. In the northern province the inclusion of geographical and topographical markers within these liturgies was central to the construction of a complex liturgical web connecting the historical Oswald to the communities where the offices were recited. Saints’ offices collapse time and mediate between historical figures and the communities in which they are present through liturgical veneration. Particular places can also act to suggest connections across time, and this essay argues that the invocation of local landmarks such as Lindisfarne, Bamburgh, and Hadrian’s Wall in matins readings for Oswald in the northern province enabled the communities of the North to navigate between their historical pasts and their liturgical presents.

Strategies for Constructing an Institutional Identity: Three Case Studies from the Liturgical Office of Saint Edmund Martyr

The following article explores some of the ways in which the leaders of a medieval ecclesiastical institution, in this case Bury St Edmund, could construct that institution’s own identity by textual production that was centred on the figure of their patron saint, Edmund Martyr. This textual production, and the formulation of Saint Edmund, underwent a continuous development from 1065 onwards, which can be most clearly seen in the composition of the liturgical office for Edmund’s feast day. By an examination of three examples taken from this office, I aim to demonstrate some of the ways in which the figure of Edmund was altered, how the narrative of his passion story was developed and what audiences these changes were aimed at. The purpose of the article is to emphasise the function of the office as a vehicle for the construction of institutional identity in the Middle Ages.

Music, Liturgy, and the Veneration of Saints of the Medieval Irish Church in a European Context ed. by Ann Buckley

Reviewed by: Music, Liturgy, and the Veneration of Saints of the Medieval Irish Church in a European Context ed. by Ann Buckley Constant J. Mews Buckley, Ann, ed., Music, Liturgy, and the Veneration of Saints of the Medieval Irish Church in a European Context (Ritus et Artes, 8), Turnhout, Brepols, 2017; hardback; pp. xxxiv, 359; 7 colour, 15 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €100.00; ISBN 9782503534701. The notion of Ireland as a land of saints has always generated its devotees. Such has been the vigour of enthusiasm for Ireland as having a multitude of saints and as pursuing its own Celtic identity, imagined as at odds with Romanizing orthodoxy, that a good deal of romantic extravagance has been invested in notions of a Celtic Church and a spirituality that is different from Rome's. This volume sets out to counter such notions, by emphasizing the European framework in which the Irish saints have been venerated. From the outset, it must be said that it provides an [End Page 150] authoritative synthesis on a subject that has been too little studied from a European perspective. Ireland suffered what some have called 'cultural genocide' in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, resulting in the near extinction within the country of manuscripts copied between the early and late medieval periods. As a consequence, our knowledge of its liturgical culture is fragmentary in the extreme, and often dependent on a few surviving manuscripts preserved outside of the country. Buckley has gathered together an impressive group of scholars who all seek to place veneration of Irish saints within a European context. A common theme is criticism of the notion of an autonomous Celtic liturgy as a romantic enthusiasm and, in its place, emphasis on the Gallican traditions from which it derives. The dominant focus in this volume is on the way liturgy articulates local identity, most often studied through the offices of individual saints, but within a larger ecclesial framework. There are a few general essays, notably the introduction by Buckley and an overview of early Irish chant by the late Michel Huglo, as well as a closing overview by Liam Tracey, 'Celtic Mists: The Search for a Celtic Rite'. Nils Holger Petersen offers a stimulating reflection on the role of liturgy preserving cultural memory by considering how Irish saints were remembered in a Norwegian context. Perhaps a surprising omission (apart from a brief mention by Buckley in her introduction) is discussion of the eighth-century Ratio de curs<ib>us, which documents and defends distinctions between the cursus scottorum and the cursus gallicorum, formulated just as the Roman liturgy was being imposed across many continental abbeys which proudly remembered their Irish founders. While there can be little doubt, as Huglo and others show, that the melodies preserved in Offices for Irish saints may derive from ancient Gallican chants, the question remains whether foundations claiming an Irish legacy considered themselves to preserve a distinct liturgical tradition. One theme that comes out from Buckley's excellent paper 'From Hymn to Historia', as well as from other contributions, is the magnitude of the transformation brought about within liturgical practice in the twelfth century. Only from this date do we find a full blown liturgical Office for a saint emerging on the continental pattern. There are a large number of specialist studies in this volume about saints whose Irish origins rest on legend rather than firm documentation: Bernhard Hanngartner on St Fintan of Rheinau, Pieter Mannaerts on St Dympna of Gheel, Patrick Brannon on St Canice at Kilkenny Cathedral, Ciaran O'Driscoll and Patricia Rumsey on St Brendan, and Senan Furlong on St Patrick. Each of these has much to offer, both from a musicological and liturgical perspective. The title of the volume may disguise the fact that it also contains some fascinating contributions relating to Scotland and Wales. Thus, Betty Knott writes about the Office for St Kentigern in Glasgow, while Greta-Mary Hair offers important political context to understand why St Andrew rather than St Columba became patron saint of Scotland—the simple reason is that St Andrew, brother of St Peter, was perceived by the Scottish kings as a more worthy apostolic authority...

Marie of Oignies, of Nivelles, or of Villers: The Multiple Textual Identities of a 13th-Century Holy Woman

Nancy Bradley Warren (2005: 133) maintains that ‘female spirituality and the revelations of holy women were valuable, and extremely valuable, sources of symbolic capital’ in the pre-modern era. In this article, I dissect the ways in which various authors harnessed the ‘symbolic capital’ of the 13th-century holy woman Marie of Oignies (d. 1213). Jacques of Vitry composed Marie’s vita in c. 1215. Most of what we know about the holy woman’s life is contained in this text, which offers us the first extant account of a new form of female spirituality which blossomed in the era, the beguine lifestyle. But Jacques’ account is only one of several iterations of Marie’s life. Two other texts offer significantly different textual constructions of the holy woman: a 13th-century liturgical office in Marie’s honour, and a chronicle of the foundation of Oignies’ priory. Each text manufactures distinct versions of Marie in order to siphon off the holy woman’s ‘symbolic capital’ to their own reserves. This entails a re-situation of Marie in each work – both literal and metaphorical – as she becomes a special patron not just of Oignies, but Nivelles, Villers Abbey, and the entire diocese of Liege. This investigation operates as a case study for the ways in which the precise contours of a saintly individual’s individuality may be fashioned differently by interested parties – specifically that of a hagiographer (Jacques of Vitry), monastic institution (Villers Abbey), and spiritual community (Oignies priory) – as a means to assert their own identity. Modern actors continue to trade on Marie’s reputation, as various Belgian towns seek to claim the holy woman as ‘one of their own’. In my conclusion, then, I demonstrate the ways in which Marie has become a tradable asset in the cultural heritage of the Walloon region.

Giovanni of Capestrano's Liturgical Office for the Feast of Saint Bernardino of Siena

Giovanni of Capestrano's Liturgical Office for the Feast of Saint Bernardino of Siena

Essays on Giovanni of Capestrano Preface

Essays on Giovanni of Capestrano Preface James D. Mixson (bio) and Bert Roest (bio) The following essays focus on one of the most important figures in the religious history of the later middle ages. Giovanni of Capestrano is in one sense familiar to many, above all to scholars and students of Franciscan history. The story of the friar from Abruzzo, one of the 'four pillars' of the Observance, appears in every standard account of the Order's history: his career as a jurist, his conversion and tutelage under Bernardino, his fierce advocacy for the Observants, his long preaching tour north of the Alps and his role in the crusade of 1456. And for centuries that story has been the subject of progressively more refined scholarship, from Luke Wadding in the seventeenth century to Johannes Hofer and Ottokar Bonmann in the twentieth. Some of the best has appeared in the last generation, including important conference proceedings and essays in the 1980s and 1990s. But momentum and focus have increased in the last decade in particular, as scholars from Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Romania have turned to Giovanni with renewed focus and interest. Yet in the Anglophone tradition of studies on the Franciscan Order, to which the journal Franciscan Studies has long been central, Capestrano remains by turns relatively neglected, misread, or misunderstood. He remains a challenging, enigmatic, and overall difficult figure who can be subject to widely divergent, even contradictory interpretations. The sources for access to his life and work, in contrast to other Franciscan figures, remain very difficult to access. And overall his story, perhaps along with that of the Observants generally, may seem too 'late' for scholars interested in Francesco d'Assisi and his followers, or the 'golden age' of the Order. Whatever the reasons, the fact remains: despite the great scholarly energy devoted to Giovanni in recent years, we still have relatively little English-language scholarship on this important figure, and in comparison to his contemporaries he remains marginal in Anglophone histories of the religious history of his era. In an effort to remedy that neglect, and to add to the few but significant studies on Capestrano that have appeared previously in Franciscan [End Page 1] Studies,1 we have brought together a number of essays by predominantly European scholars who are either currently working on Capestrano and his legacy, or whose work touches on the Observant world partly shaped by the initiatives of the friar from Abruzzo. Given the range of his work, the complexity of the sources, and his intricate afterlife, we cannot pretend that these essays offer anything like a complete or panoramic view. Instead, we present a selection of essays that provide a few select entry points into the historical context of Giovanni of Capestrano's many undertakings; that focus on some central aspects of his agency, his literary production, and the controversies he both inspired and engaged in; that highlight the contemporary and posthumous impact of his activities, and that give a sense of Capestrano's place in the self-representation of the Early Modern Franciscan Order. An entry point into the historical context is provided by the opening essay of Letizia Pellegrini & Ludovic Viallet ('Between christianitas and Europe: Giovanni of Capestrano as an historical issue'), which situates Capestrano's actions, his successes and failures in the broad historical context of fifteenth-century Europe, with an emphasis on his letter writing as a key historical source for the period. The essays that follow then deal with specific aspects of Capestrano's agency, his impact and immediate reception: his evaluation of the behavior of doctors in the context of the plague (Ottó Gecser, 'Giovanni of Capestrano on the Plague and the Doctors'), his fight for the canonization of Bernardino of Siena and his liturgical commemoration (Daniele Solvi, 'Giovanni of Capestrano's Liturgical Office for the Feast of Saint Bernardino of Siena'), and the wide-ranging tensions and impacts of his 'Great Mission' north of the Alps (James D. Mixson, 'Bernardino's Rotting Corpse? A Skeptic's Tale of Capestrano's Preaching North of the Alps' and Pietro Delcorno, 'Giovanni of Capestrano and Jan Brugman in a Manuscript of the Brothers of the...

The Secular Liturgical Office in Late Medieval England by Matthew Cheung Salisbury

The Secular Liturgical Office in Late Medieval England by Matthew Cheung Salisbury

‘‘In ipso sunt idem esse, vivere et intelligere’’: Notes on a Case of Textual Bricolage

The article aims at ascertaining the provenance of the components of a textual bricolage found in Wyclif’s De scientia Dei. One of these conveys the doctrine - formulated by Victorinus and Augustine, and largely accepted by western medieval theologians - of the identity of divine being, life, and thought. Wyclif hints at it through the expression mentioned in the title of this article, whose wording depends upon a verse found in Alcuin’s hymn to the Trinity. Possibly unknown to Wyclif, Alcuin’s text is the source of the liturgical office for the Trinity composed by Stephen of Liege and reproducing Alcuin’s verse almost in the same wording. Adopted by many dioceses from the tenth century, Stephen’s office was approved by John XXII in 1334, and is probably Wyclif’s source. The appendix provides insights concerning Wyclif’s statement that philosophers agree with the teachings of theologians and the Church tradition on the doctrine at issue.

La Vita S. Petri ep. Oxomensis (BHL 6760-61). Edición y estudio del oficio completo en honor del obispo Pedro de Osma

The Vita s. Petri ep. Oxomensis (BHL 6760-6761) is a prose account of bishop Pedro de Osma († 1109). It was written probably in the second half of the 12th century by a canon of the church of Santa María de Osma, who was perhaps of French origin. The article contains the first complete edition of the liturgical office in honour of the bishop on the basis of the sole manuscript with the entire corpus made up not only of the Vita s. Petri ep. Oxomensis but also of hymns, prayers, antiphons and responses, viz. fifteenth-century codex 2B of the Cathedral Library, Burgo de Osma.

The Cantus Database: Mining for Medieval Chant Traditions

The Cantus database is a well-established project devoted to the creation and distribution of electronic indices of manuscript and early printed sources of Latin chant for the liturgical Office. As of January 2011, there were over 379,000 records in the database, each of which is an individual chant in one of the 134 manuscripts which have been indexed to date. For over a decade, this research tool has been growing and adapting to the needs of chant scholars, musicologists, hagiographers, art historians and researchers in other fields. In addition to the basic search functions and downloading options, there are now several analytical tools available on the website, including a textual concordance and an interactive dendrogram-creation tool. The latter, an example of data-mining, allows the user to select a series of chants which will form the basis of a comparison among the numerous manuscripts whose contents are recorded in Cantus. Similarities in chant series can be interpreted as affinities among manuscripts, and so, the dendrograms which are created (through the calculations of similarity matrices) can assist researchers in identifying related chant repertories, in studying the origins and dissemination of saints' feasts, in providing evidence for the provenance of manuscript sources and, undoubtedly, for numerous other research applications.

La Vie de Jean de Novgorod : genèse du texte et fonction hagiographique [The Vita of Ioann from Novgorod : Genesis of the Text and Hagiographic Function

The Vita of Ioann from Novgorod Genesis of the Text and Hagiographic Function The article focuses on the Vita of Ioann from Novgorod (Žitie Ioanna Novgorodskogo), a document composed in Novgorod at the end of the 15th century. The author considers the text within the historical context of its genesis and analyzes its literary form and function. In the middle of the 15th century Archbishop Ioann (1165-1186) became the symbol of Novgorod independence in the face of the centralizing policy of the Muscovite State. Evfimij II (1428 [ 1434]-1458) founded the local cult and ordered Paxomij the Serb to compose a liturgical office in celebration of the Ioann’s memory. The gathering and literary (re-) elaboration of some ancient, pre-existing tales about Ioann began then, and these materials were included in the Vita. The Vita of Ioann (in its main redaction) is composed of three different parts : the Story about the sign of the Mother of God (Skazanie o Znamenii Bogorodicy), the Narration of Ioann’s journey from Novgorod riding the devil (Povest ´ o putešestvii Ioanna Novgorodskogo na bese), and the Sermon on the discovery of the relics of the Saint (Slovo o projavlenii moščej svjatogo). Their inclusion in the biography created an apparently anomalous vita. Textual analysis shows the repetition and the unifying role of some topics (i. e. miracles) and the lack of others. Above all, however, the analysis of the Vita of Ioann establishes its substantial regularity, accurate elaboration, and conformity to the paradigms of traditional hagiography. In the 16th century the Vita of Ioann was included in metropolitan Makarij’s Velikie minei chetii.

The Feast of Corpus Christi (review)

Reviewed by: The Feast of Corpus Christi Michael S. Driscoll The Feast of Corpus Christi. By Barbara R. Walters, Vincent Corrigan, and Peter T. Ricketts. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. 2006. Pp. xviii, 562. $70.00. ISBN 978-0-271-02924-5.) In the twentieth century six names are associated with the historical and liturgical study of the feast of Corpus Christi, namely Peter Browe (1928), Cyrille Lambot (1942), L.M. J. Delaissé (1950), Pierre-Marie Gy (1980), Ronald Zawilla (1985), and Miri Rubin (1991). To this impressive list of scholars we now must add three more names: Barbara Walters, Vincent Corrigan, and Peter Ricketts. The present volume represents a collaboration of perhaps what will remain the definitive work on the subject dealing with multiple dimensions of the feast, treating the multiple versions of the original Latin liturgy, complete transcriptions of the music associated with the feast, and a set of poems in Old French with English translations. In part 1, Walters provides a well-researched historical essay starting with the hagiographic vitae of Juliana of Mont Cornillon, the thirteenth-century religious leader of Liège whose vision of the moon missing a quarter of its form led to the invention of the feast—first in the Lowlands and later in the universal Latin Church. The historical chapter moves beyond the legendary to give an honest and scholarly appraisal of Juliana's role in Flemish society and the Church of her day. The feast of Corpus Christi owes its origins to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), which established the doctrine of transubstantiation in its attempts to resolve the eucharistic disputes of the late-twelfth and early-thirteenth centuries. Yet the feast was not added to the universal calendar of the Church until 1264 after an interesting period of reception. The most striking alterations happened after 1261 when St. Thomas Aquinas turned to shaping the liturgical Office and the Mass for the feast, including the composition of several eucharistic hymns. Part 2 consists of an introductory essay to the musical component and critical editions of seven late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth-century manuscripts from the period of 1269 to 1320. Vincent Corrigan, using the critical tools of musicology, traces the transmission of three major offices associated with the feast: Animarum cibus (the original office associated directly with Juliana), Sapiencia edificavit (found in a manuscript preserved in Prague at the Abbey of Strahov), and Sacerdos in aeternum (attributed to Aquinas and the basis for the contemporary liturgical books). Although the team has uncovered additional manuscripts since the appearance of the book, the critical edition of the seven manuscripts represents state-of-the-art musicological research, classifying each musical item by genre, manuscript, incipit, mode identification, identification of concordances between manuscripts, and liturgical usage for each item. Part 3 consists of an introductory essay dealing with vernacular poetry and a critical edition of twenty Old French poems of Mosan Psalters that are associated with the feast of Corpus Christi and that are in a dialect associated with Liège. Ricketts studied thirteen manuscripts dating roughly from 1230 to 1330 that contain poems intended largely as metric psalms for lay breviaries and as prayers to be recited at Mass like a lay missal. The origins for such vernacular settings aimed [End Page 806] at the béguines who in their vernacular fashion imitated the Divine Office that was recited in Latin by clerics and in monastic communities. The inclusion of Corpus Christi material in such vernacular poems attests to the growing popularity of the feast and the desire of the Church that this feast be received and disseminated at a popular level. Beyond the content of this book that is stellar, this volume distinguishes itself as a monument to collaborative research and a must-have for any serious scholar of the liturgy. Michael S. Driscoll University of Notre Dame Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of America Press

Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation (review)

Reviewed by: Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation Carolyn Muessig Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation. Edited by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker; translated by Margot H. King and Hugh Feiss, and with additional contributions by Brenda Bolton and Suzan Folkerts. [Medieval Women: Texts and Context, 7.] (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers. 2006. Pp. xii, 260, €60,00; $89.00.) This is the first sustained study in English of the holy woman from the diocese of Liège, Mary of Oignies (d. 1213). Her name is normally linked and discussed in association with the preacher Jacques de Vitry. However, in this study Mary is center stage, not as a footnote to the life of the great preacher, but as the most important icon of the early beguine movement. The book is a group effort that brings together a number of primary sources and short articles that illuminate the riveting contours of Mary's life and contribution to the early beguine movement. Mulder-Bakker provides a helpful introduction outlining the life and times of Mary of Oignies. The introduction is fleshed out by the inclusion of various translations of key primary sources. Some of these sources were originally published in the unfortunately defunct series Peregrina Publications, but now they are conveniently brought together in this one volume. These sources are The Life of Mary of Oignies by James of Vitry (translated by Margot H. King), The Supplement to James of Vitry's Life of Mary Oignies, History of the Foundation of the Venerable Church of Blessed Nicholas of Oignies and the Handmaid of Christ Mary of Oignies,and The Liturgical Office of Mary of Oignies by Goswin of Bossut (translated by Hugh Feiss). The liturgical office of Mary of Oignies contains a special Mass and eight offices of the liturgy of the hours. It was produced at the Cistercian monastery of Villers in the early thirteenth century and indicates the intensity of the local devotion to Mary. The Liturgical Office of Mary of Oignies is followed by two articles that delve into the cult of Mary of Oignies and its dissemination. Brenda Bolton's essay "Mary of Oignies:A Friend to the Saints" assesses the attempts to establish Mary's cult in the years shortly after her death. Bolton argues that the efforts of her ardent supporters, such as Jacques de Vitry, to establish a collection of impressive relics and religious literature failed to ignite an official cult because of the growing papal bureaucracy related to canonization. While the official canonization failed, Suzan Folkerts in her essay "The [End Page 560] Manuscript Transmission of theVita Mariae Oigniacensis in the Later Middle Ages" shows that Mary was nonetheless a popular holy woman. Here Folkerts demonstrates that although there was no official cult for Mary, there certainly was a widespread devotion to her as indicated in the healthy manuscript dissemination of her life found throughout Europe (including England). This is witnessed in the several vernaculars into which her vita was translated—these include French, Dutch, Italian, Norse, and Swedish. Furthermore, from among all the holy women who came from the Low Countries, there are more extant manuscripts of Mary's life, thirty-nine in total, than any other beguine. If there are any shortcomings to the book it is that it lacks articles that focus primarily on the luxurious religious artifacts surrounding the cult of Mary of Oignies and the sermons written in her memory. But these matters are at least alluded to in the study and no doubt can be picked up in later articles and books on this most influential holy woman from the diocese of Liège. Mary of Oignies: Mother of Salvation is a welcomed addition to the growing research area of female involvement in the Church in the later Middle Ages. It will benefit students and scholars working in the field of medieval religion. Carolyn Muessig University of Bristol Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of America Press

CELESTIAL CHOIRMASTER: THE LITURGICAL ROLE OF ENOCH-METATRON IN 2 ENOCH AND THE MERKABAH TRADITION

Enoch-Metatron's liturgical office plays a prominent role in the Merkabah lore, yet this tradition appears to be absent in early Enochic texts, including the compositions collected in 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Genesis Apocryphon and the Book of Giants. Despite this apparent absence, this study argues that the roots of Enoch-Metatron's liturgical imagery can be traced to the Second Temple Enochic lore, namely, to 2 Enoch, the Jewish apocalypse, apparently written in the first century CE. Some traditions found in this text appear to serve as the initial background for the developments of the future liturgical role of Enoch-Metatron as the celestial choirmaster. Scholars have previously noted that Enoch's figure portrayed in the various sections of 2 Enoch appears to be more complex than in the early Enochic tractates of 1 Enoch. For the first time, the Enochic tradition seeks to depict Enoch, not simply as a human taken to heaven and transformed into an angel, but as a celestial being exalted above the angelic world. In this attempt, one may find the origins of another image of Enoch, very different from the early Enochic literature, which was developed much later in Merkabah mysticism — the concept of the supreme angel Metatron, the «Prince of the Presence». The attestation of the seventh antediluvian patriarch as the celestial liturgical director in 2 Enoch gives additional weight to this hypothesis about the transitionary nature of the Slavonic account which guides the old pseudepigraphical traditions into the new mystical dimension. In this respect the tradition found in 2 Enoch represents an important step towards defining and shaping Enoch-Metatron's liturgical office in its transition to his new role as the celestial choirmaster. It is also significant that the beginning of Enoch's liturgical functions in 2 Enoch is conflat¬ed there with the development of his new titles-offices as the Youth and the Servant of the Divine Presence which will later play a prominent role in the Merkabah passages pertaining to Metatron's liturgical actions.

Celestial Choirmaster: The Liturgical Role of Enoch-Metatron in 2 Enoch and the Merkabah Tradition

This article investigates the roots of Enoch-Metatron’s liturgical office of celestial choirmaster which plays a prominent role in the Merkabah tradition. Although references to this office of the exalted patriarch are absent in 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Genesis Apocryphon, and the Book of Giants, this article argues that the roots of Enoch-Metatron’s liturgical imagery can be traced to the Second Temple Enochic lore, namely to 2 Enoch, the Jewish apocalypse, apparently written in the first century CE. This article investigates a tradition found in 2 Enoch 18 where the translated patriarch encourages the celestial Watchers to start liturgy ‘before the Face of the Lord’, that is, in front of the divine Kabod, the exact location where Metatron will later conduct heavenly worship of angelic hosts in the Shi‘ur Qomah and Hekhalot accounts.

Les Ethiopiens , and: Les Falashas (review)

Book Reviews 201 tion of field data, however rich and exciting, is not enough by itself. As usable history, Identities on the Move would have benefited from firmer editing and more reflection. Richard WaUer Bucknell University Les Ethiopiens K. Stoffregen-Pedersen Turnhout, Belgium: Éditions Brepols, 1990. and Les Falashas S. Kaplan Turnhout, Belgium: Éditions Brepols, 1990. These two books are part of a series called "FiIs d'Abraham," and apparently concerned with monotheistic or Biblical religions and religiocultural groups. (Other volumes published or in preparation at the time of writing are, e.g., on the Sikhs, Armenians, Catholics, Baha'is, Druzes, several Jewish communities, Copts, Syrian Christians and several other Eastern Orthodox groups.) The books seem to be intended as easily readable compendia with basic information on these various communities. They are set up according to a fixed formula, with chapters on history and doctrine, followed by a substantial anthology, chapters on art, spiritual life, and a sociological profile, a chapter on "organization," and finaUy an extensive bibliography and a section of good-quality photographs. The text is also supported by recent statistics on the groups discussed. These monographs are produced in the way that a good book should be produced—an attractive hardcover complete with bookmarker, a clearly organized and accessibly written text (with painstaking Ethiopie spelling and few typing or printing errors), and well illustrated. In the nature of the series, these publications are not major new studies on the subject matter, but present a summing-up of the information on the various groups, in a more or less encyclopedic manner. They 202 Book Reviews do not advance new theories or present insights that really challenge our understanding. This is not a criticism but an observation, and one can easily see the function that these handbooks will fulfill for a wide audience outside scholarly circles. That the complexity of certain subjects and various controversies had to be glossed over in such a text is perhaps understandable. Indeed, one almost searches in vain (though less so in Kaplan's book, perhaps because of the subject itself) for ideas or theories on which some fundamental critical comments or alternative views can be given. Sister Kirsten Pedersen's book (she now adds her mother's family name, Stoffregen, to her name) about the "Ethiopians," i.e., the Christian Highlanders (Amhara and Tigray, or "Abyssinians," not the other peoples living within the state's boundaries), is a fairly conventional but crystal-clear survey of the general history and doctrines of these Ethiopian, predominantly Christian, peoples. The detailed and carefully written part on doctrine closely follows the religious works produced by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, on which the author is one of the outstanding non-Ethiopian experts. The chapter on spiritual life provides a detailed treatment of the liturgical office, calendar, and holy days of the Ethiopian Church. The brief discussion of the life-cycle rituals (birth, baptism, marriage, funeral) are perhaps stamped with the religious point of view too much, and fails to say anything about how the average Ethiopian deals with this. Similarly, it omits any mention of the very real beliefs in spirits, zars, evil eye, magic, etc., which constitute the "folk" aspects of the religion. This religious imprimatur is also evident in the "Sociological Profile," which is mainly a survey of the linguistic, ethnic, and territorial distribution of Ethiopian Christians, and less about their actual social institutions, daily culture, and way of life. Compared to Pedersen's work, Kaplan's book is more broadly focused on the Fälasha or Beta Esra'el community in all its aspects, from traditional religious life and doctrine to current social and political changes and problems (cf. the 30-page sociological profile). His work is an adequate and reliable synthesis of the current state of knowledge on this much-discussed Ethiopian Jewish group, emphasizing its Ethiopian historico-cultural context. Very valuable is the Anthology part, where some newly edited religious text fragments are presented, among them the Sänbäte Sänbät. Book Reviews 203 In reading this text, however, it should be noted that the Ethiopian Jewish community is no more. Virtually all Fälasha/Betä Esra'el have emigrated from...

The Catholic Priesthood: A Liturgically Based Theology of the Presbyteral Office Mary M. Schaefer and J. Frank Henderson Ottawa, ON: Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Liturgical Office, 1990. 111 p

The Catholic Priesthood: A Liturgically Based Theology of the Presbyteral Office Mary M. Schaefer and J. Frank Henderson Ottawa, ON: Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Liturgical Office, 1990. 111 p