A Lenten Station Mass in the Roman Forum

Date: 
Friday, March 26, 2021 - 23:45
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Many thanks for this. As much as I love Dom Prosper and Blessed Ildefonso, it's certainly true that their imaginations get the better of them at times, given the contemporary states of historical knowledge. You should write a book....

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A number of medieval breviaries (I've looked at Salisbury, York, Fréjus, Calahorra, Urgell, Uppsala, & Lérida, & also medieval OP & OPraem) have yet another collect for this Thursday: Concede quaesumus omnipotens Deus ut ieiuniorum nobis sancta deuotio & purificationem tribuat, et maiestati tue nos reddat acceptos. The 1560 breviary of Barcelona, interestingly, states that both collects Magnificet te & Concede are to be said sub una conclusione. All these uses, however, had John VI, 27-35, as the gospel instead of Luke IV, 38-44; I don't think the former pericope is ever read in the Tridentine Roman rite.

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    Rome was supposedly founded by Romulus and Remus, who were twins, and there was a big temple of Castor and Pollux, who were twins. There were lots of sets of famous hero brothers in Etruscan and Roman myth, legend, and history. And then there's Ss. Peter and Paul, who weren't brothers by birth but were brothers in the faith, and are usually linked in Roman church stuff.

    So having a non-pagan opposing set of twin brother saints, Ss. Cosmas and Damian, may have been why they built such a prominent basilica for saints who weren't from Rome. It was something that Roman Christians could get into, as well as countering what was bad about pagan traditions.

    And if going to Ss. Cosmas and Damian for a station was going to a very formal and important part of the city, like the Via Sacra and the forum, maybe the festal character became more solemn because of that. So you'd maybe want to nod to the saints as part of the formality, and because they were the anti-Romulus/Remus/Castor/Pollux, and that made the situation inherently combative against paganism's old haunts; but whoever thought that up, might not have wanted to compose something totally new.

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  • These are fantastic. Hope it's a warm up to a book.

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    I so wish he would write a book. Reading these excellent articles online, especially the extensive series on the liturgical reforms of Breviary and Missal, really makes me want a complete book, which I would love to pay for!

     

     

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    The Church has a very rich liturgical history, which rewards anyone who dares to delve in it.

    Part of how you can tell a genuine tradition from a fake one is that with genuine traditions oftentimes one cannot trace their origin point. That is in stark contract to everything in Novus Ordo land, which can be traced often to the misguided notions of the particular modernist was in the committee which set it up.