Textus seque[n]tiaru[m] cu[m] optimo comme[n]to, was one of a few incunabula we acquired last year. Published in Cologne by Heinrich Quentell in 1496, the book is a collection of Sequences with extensive comments and explanations for students by a well known Nederlandish scholar and grammarian Hermann Torrentinus (ca.1450-1520)  

Liturgical Sequences were an integral part of the Roman Mass. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) defines the Sequence (Sequentia, or Prose [Prosa]),-as "the liturgical hymn of the Mass which occurs before the Gospel, while the hymn (poetry), belongs to the Breviary." In other words, while hymns were part of the Mass from the earliest times, sequences originated in the ninth century as "texts written to accompany what had hitherto been a wordless musical extension of the final -a of the Alleluia at the end of the antiphon sung between the Epistle and Gospel." * Some scholars think that sequences came from the Byzantine rite; others insist that it was an independent invention of the Roman Church. **

 

 

The word "Sequentia" was first introduced in the 9^th century by Notker Balbulus (ca. 840-912), monk of St. Gall (Switzerland nowadays), who put some liturgical texts into rhythmical melodic phrases. The structure of these sequences was completely new — it was none of the traditional structure of Latin sacred verse, but was "unfolding in a vigorous series of free rhetorical periods, cast in the sonorous cadences of classical Latin diction, and, in the Notker case, –in a more exuberant diction rich with assonance." ***

One of the best known sequences today is the Christmas carol Adeste Fideles, known in English as "O Come, All Ye Faithful", also the Marian sequence Stabat Mater by Jacopone da Todi.

Writing commentaries on sequences was, it would appear, a quite common literary pursuit in the twelfth or thirteenth century. It was part of the extensive commentary literature, especially widespread in the German-speaking countries. Besides Hermann Torrentinus we know the names of Jacob Wimpheling (1450-1528), Caesarius von Heisterbach (ca. 1180 – ca. 1240), and Johannes Adelphus (1445-1522). Such commentaries likely played an important didactic role in schools or universities, depending on the depths of the analysis, which ranged from a basic explanation of the meaning of a phrase to a philosophical treatise.

Our book contains detailed comments by Torrentinus, including analysis of Latin phrases and their component parts in the 51 sequences written by Notker Balbulus. These are on the feasts of the Nativity of Christ (De Nativitate D[omi]ni), St. Stephen, St. John, The Innocents (slain by Herod), the Holy Trinity, St. Nicholas, St. Elizabeth, St. Katherine, the Virgin Mary, the Ascension, the Conception of the Virgin Mary, and many others.

A short introduction states the purpose and subject of the book: "laus divina" –Divine glory, than follows an explanation of the book's structure. Torrentinus then dwells on the meaning of the first sentence of the sequence for the Nativity of Christ (Christmas), and the grammatical structure of it. His explanations of some of the words are quite curious, for example, the word "diabolus":

Grates nunc omnes reddamus domino deo

Qui sua nativitate nos liberavit de dyabolica potestate.

(Item dyabolica est nome[n] adiectivium derivatum a nomine dyabolus. A dya q[uod] est duo…)

The word "dyabolica" is the adjective, derived from the noun "dyabolus".

"Dya" means "duo"– double, and "bolos" – sting, as if {it were} a double sting which strikes our bodies and souls– says the author.

This explanation shows that the man, known as a great grammarian of his time, apparently didn't have much Greek, giving a peculiar interpretation of the original Greek word: "Diabolus (from Greek: Δια + βάλλειν), where Δια — penetration through the line from one end to the other, often the effect of weapons, division, like in "diaphragm","diameter" ,diacritic", and βάλλειν –-"throw", like in ballistics, so the whole word means a "divider", "slanderer"," backbiter".

Most probably this book was intended for beginners studying Liturgy who knew Latin enough to understand instructions and explanations of the book. It has multiple marginal notes, comments by several contemporary owners, corrections, and in some cases an empty space, left for the illuminated or rubricated initial letter, is filled in pen or pencil.

Curiously enough, it doesn't have a colophon. The only date mentioned in the text could be found on the verso of page signed [3iij], Folium iiij, where the author, while speaking of the Nativity of Christ, explains the principles of dating: "Annos dat ab Adam donec Xr[istu]s homo fact[us]. Sed a nativitate[m] Xri[st]i usque ad nu[n]c scribitur anno domini. Mcccclxxxxvi", ("Dates used to be given from Adam to Christ's incarnation. But from the nativity of Christ onwards they are written as Anno Domini .1496"} which gives us 1496 as a possible date of publication.

Who was the man to whom these comments are attributed?

Torrentinus belongs to that huge crowd of late mediaeval scholars whose names are known nowadays only to a small number of enthusiastic book lovers or medievalists.

Hermann von der Beeke, known mostly under his Latinized name Torrentinus, or Torrentius (meaning "brook" or "torrent, as translated from the original word beeke ) was born around 1450 in Zwolle, Netherlands, about 80 miles north- east of Amsterdam. He received initial education in his native town in the School of the Brethren of the Common Life (Fratres Vitae Commune), a Roman Catholic religious community founded in the 14^th century by Gerard Groote, and devoted to education and teaching. The brethren didn't take up irrevocable vows, in difference from a regular monastic community, but led a simple and chaste life, practicing ascetic discipline and devoting all their time to attending Divine services, reading, and labors. They lived in the common houses and had meals together.

The year 1490 finds Torrentinus in Groningen, teaching rhetoric in the Brethren of the Common Life School. After the death of his father he had to return to Zwolle to help and support his mother, where he took a position of school teacher. Torrentinus is known as an editor of Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics (1502), and as the author of a Elucidarius Poeticus (dictionary of proper names of people, places, plants, etc., encountered in history and poetry) (1498).

He revised and edited the first part of Alexander de Villa Dei's standard Latin grammar, the Doctrinale (1504), and wrote several small books for use in his school. Around 1508 his eyesight was failing and Torrentinus had to leave his position as Head of Zwolle Brethren School. He died in Zwolle in 1520.

It looks like an uneventful life. Appearances often deceive, however. In Groningen Torrentinus came under the influence of such a forceful figure as Wessel Gansfort whose anti-papal sentiments and rather unorthodox interpretations of the Bible****** were known. Some sources mutedly suggest that Torrentinus also might have entertained some peculiar ideas; however we know so little about him that it's hard to prove.

Our copy is bound in half red leather with decorated endpapers and boards, its spine is decorated with floral motif between raised bands in gilt and embossed with "c.1494". Marginal annotations in Latin are in contemporary ink. Initial spaces are not rubricated; on rear lining paper there is a bookplate of Glenmore Whitney Davis, journalist for the New York Globe (New York daily newspaper published till 1923).

 

References and notes:

*Messenger, Ruth, The Medieval Latin Hymn, Washington DC, 1953

Kaske, R.E., Medieval Christian Literary Imagery: a guide to interpretation, Toronto.

**In the Byzantine Church/Orthodox Church it is called Alleluaria and was established on the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. See: Дмитревский И. И. Историческое, догматическое и таинственное изъяснение Божественной Литургии, p. 234 : "Между пением Аллилуя возглашаются чтецом стихи, называемые Аллилуариями"

***Richard Crocker, The Early Medieval Sequence, U of California Press, 1977.

**** Erika Kihlman, Expositiones sequentarum. Medieval Sequence Commentaries and Prologues. Editions with Introductions. Stockholm University,2012?

***** Though Gansfort firmly stands on a Catholic ground and he never had brushes with the Inquisition, his writings were on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Catholic Encyclopedia)

Bibliography:

John Edwin Sandys (1844-1922) A History of Classical Scholarship: From the Revival of Learning to the End of the Eighteenth Century in Italy, France, England and the Netherlands.

Contemporaries of Erasmus: a biographical register of the Renaissance and Reformation. Ed. Peter G. Bietenholz. Toronto, U of Toronto press, 1987

 

Are you tired of your Moleskine planner?  Do Siri’s annoying reminders tax your nerves? Consider trying a medieval perpetual calendar and discover a more streamlined approach to managing your affairs.

Among their many virtues is longevity: the same calendar can be used year in, year out, all the way up to the Second Coming. How is this possible?  As our forebears knew, parchment is a durable medium that can withstand the insults of time and use. It is also well suited to accommodating the changing winds of orthodoxy. Should it be necessary to remove a feast from the calendar, simply scrape the pigment off, and no one will suspect your error. Should a new saint arrive on the scene, simply pencil in the feast day as someone has done for Saint Wulfstan using brown pigment in the calendar above from twelfth-century England.

Perpetual calendars are imminently portable. Tuck yours inside your breviary, where it be within reach at all times. Rise in your co-workers esteem by scheduling meetings according to the Julian calendar (left). Your coworkers will be impressed by your willingness to master a more complicated scheme of keeping track of dates, and you will soon have everyone trying to count the days forwards and backwards from Kalends, Ides and Nones.

You will be the life of the party on New Year’s Eve, when, with a furtive glance, you can determine the dominical letter, for the upcoming year (right). Dominical letters are useful for determining the date of Easter, a service for which your friends and relations will no doubt be grateful.

Be the envy of everyone with your attractive, vintage planner. You might think the colors are there merely to delight the eye, but look again. Differentiate feast days of high-status saints from those of middling status. Color code astronomical events from those of a more cosmic nature. They serve the practical purpose of differentiating different kinds of events, as well as ranking them in importance. In the calendar we’ve been looking at, the feast of the Ascension, the feast day of Saint Barnabus, the sun’s entrance into cancer, the feast day of St. Aethelthryth, and a commemoration of Saint Paul the apostle are all given special distinction. Most astronomical information is recorded in green pigment.

Attractive, convenient, and durable, medieval perpetual calendars allow you to honor the past as you plan the future. They sit quietly inside your psalter or breviary without interrupting your classes. Get yours today!

Gregory the Great was consecrated to the papal office on this day in the year 590. He would have preferred to remain a monk. According to Gregory of Tours, “[h]e strove earnestly to avoid this high office for fear that a certain pride at attaining the honor might sweep him back into worldly vanities he had rejected.” Circumstances colluded to push him into public office,however, and he seems to have met with great success there. He was responsible for the conversion of the English, and is credited with the development of Gregorian chant. An eminent historian of the papacy calls him, if not the greatest pope, then the “greatest Christian” of all the popes.(1)

He was also very adept at puns, and the historical record preserves many of his zingers. When he learned that some soon-to-be-converts were from a province called Deira, he replied that this was only suitable, since they were soon to be rescued “de ira,” or “from wrath” (that is, of God). Another opportunity to exercise his skill came as he set off for the mission field with some fellow monks. When a locust landed on Gregory’s Bible he exclaimed, naturally enough, “Ecce, locusta,”  (Behold, a locust). Ever attuned to alternative meanings, however, Gregory soon realized that “locusta” could be broken into “ loco  sta,” meaning “stay in place.”  He quickly decided to stay put and sent his cohorts on to convert the heathen alone. The drum roll, however, is generally reserved for the following.  In the well-known account recorded Historia ecclesiastica, Bede tells of how Saint Gregory came upon some especially attractive slave-boys for sale in the Roman market. Gregory inquired after them and soon learned they were Angles, or members of the Germanic tribe occupying what is now England. “Not Angles, but angels,” he quipped.

Gregory’s writings provide a synthesis of the orthodox thought of the Patristic era in the West; as such they remained very influential during the Middle Ages. This image comes from a 13^th-century Italian copy of Gregory the Great’s Magna Moralia, a commentary on the Book of Job. This section comes from chapter 23 of book XIII, and comments on Job: 16:19-20, verses that the scribe underlined in red. (The scribe indicates the start of a scriptural verse drawn from outside of the Book of Job with green pigment.)

You can see the end of verse 19–“O earth, do not cover my blood; let my outcry find no resting-place”-at the top of the folio. In the commentary that follows, Gregory first equates the blood in question with Christ’s blood. More surprisingly, he also equates the outcry with the blood, bringing in support from Genesis (And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”) Gregory finds further application to human conduct: “We are bound to imitate that which we take,” i.e. the sacrament of wine representing the blood of Christ. “But that His cry may not lie hid in us, it remains that each one of us according to his small measure should make known to his neighbors the mystery of his own quickening.”(2)

Verse 20–“Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven,and he that vouches for me is on high” is about two-thirds of the way down. A three-line blue initial begins the commentary for this verse. Gregory interprets the “witness” to be God the Father. The verse thus contributes an orthodox understanding of the divine nature of Christ. The Christological debates of the Early Middle Ages, in which the dual nature of Christ was often contested, probably underlie this understanding.

Fragment 75, and others of Gregory’s manuscripts are available to be consulted during our regular opening  hours.

1. Erich Caspar, Geschichte des Papsttums, vol. II, p. 514

2. Translations from the Latin taken from the translation by John Henry Parker, et al.

A year after the child king, Edward VI, ascended to the British throne, the first Act of Uniformity was enacted in 1549. The Act established the Book of Common Prayer as the sole legal form of worship in England. Subsequent Acts of Uniformity in 1552 and 1559 adopted revisions of the Book of Common Prayer, or reinstated the act after the reign of a Catholic monarch, like Mary I. The Book of Common Prayer, first published in 1549, is the liturgical text of the Church of England. It contains liturgies for both Sunday and daily worship services as well as orders for baptisms, weddings, funerals, confirmation, and words to say over the ill and dying. Readings from the Old and New Testament were included as well as Morning Prayers, Evening Prayers, and Holy Communion rites. In England, a country that had only just recently broken from the Roman Catholic church, it was invaluable to have a liturgy text in the English language.

A century later, after the end of England’s Civil War and the reign of Oliver Cromwell and his son, Richard, the monarchy was reestablished under Charles II in 1661. Another major revision of the Book of Common Prayer was published a year later and a new Act of Uniformity was enacted along with it. This new Act was even more stringent. Not only was the Book of Common Prayer the only legal form of worship throughout England again, but adherence was mandatory for anyone who wished to hold a position in the church or in the government. Furthermore, the requirement for episcopal ordination for all ministers was reintroduced. The Act was met with hostility from a large group of ministers who complained that they could not adhere to a revised, yet-to-be-printed, Book of Common Prayer that they had not yet even seen. However, a deadline to comply with the Act was placed on St. Bartholomew’s Day, August 26, 1662.

What is now known as the Great Ejection took place on that day. It is estimated that about 2,000 to 2,500 ministers were cast out of not only the Church of England, but also from social and academic life. The Clarendon Code, named for the Earl of Clarendon, consisted of the Act of Uniformity and three other acts, passed around the same time. The Code forbade non-conformist ministers from holding university degrees from Cambridge or Oxford and many were forced to move at least five miles away from their former home parishes. Historians and former ministers wrote passionately on the injustice of the Great Ejection. Well-known ministers who became victims of the Great Ejection include John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, Sr., Thomas Doolittle, Matthew Poole, Samuel Clarke, and Richard Baxter. At Special Collections, you can find historian John Corbet’s An Account Given of the Principles & Practices of Several Nonconformists and Edmund Colamy’s The Church and the Dissenters Compar’d as to Persecution.

It would be 150 years before Nonconformists could hold civil or military office. This year, 350 years after the Act of Uniformity of 1662 was enacted, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Dean of Westminster held a Service of Reconciliation at Westminster Abbey in London on February 8th. To mark the occasion, an Act of Penitence and an Act of Recommitment were performed, and selections from various writings of seventeenth century and eighteenth century Nonconformist ministers were read.