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Processions
Topic Started: Mar 30 2015, 01:37 PM (166 Views)
Kati Ihnat
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One thing to keep in mind is that, as today, the liturgy of the Old Hispanic rite was not static. There was constant movement, so we shouldn't think of simply two halves of the choir standing still in their choir stalls for the duration. Not only was there a processional chant at the end of every office, which the singers would chant as they walked towards the relics of a saint held in the church or towards a chapel, there were processions that moved around the church and also outside of it.


Because it was just Palm Sunday, I thought it would be fitting to talk a little about this with respect to the Palm Sunday ceremony in the Old Hispanic tradition.

So just as a reminder, Palm Sunday commemorates the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem the week before his Crucifixion. He was riding on a donkey, and the people of Jerusalem met him waving palm branches and cheering "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the king of Israel!" (Matthew 21; John 12) Isidore writes about this in his On the ecclesiastical offices, but doesn't describe the ritual, just what it's meant to celebrate and what each element symbolises, so for example the palms represent victory over death.



In the office of vespers for Palm Sunday in a manuscript from Leon, there's an instruction that just after the bishop has blessed the oil with which he'll anoint the children who will be baptised the following week (at the Easter Vigil), all the deacons should go out onto the via sacra, singing an antiphon that's taken from the biblical book of Exodus (when Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and parted the red sea). This via sacra got me thinking - is it a metaphorical description for the procession itself? Or is it a technical term for some route in the church, which would have been called the via sacra in imitation of the famous street in Rome? I'm leaning towards the latter, because the term has since been used for the path that was marked out between the choir and a major chapel, say, to ease the passage of clerics among the crowds of lay people. Here it seems to refer to the path between a place outside the church (literally referred to as foris meaning outside, but then called the sacrarium, which could be a sacristy or some other little room attached to the church where the vestments and liturgical objects were kept) and the choir. Seeing as these instructions come from Leon cathedral, which would have been a pretty big institution even in the early tenth century (being the main church of the royal capital of the kingdom of Leon), it's possible they needed to have a designated path between these two spaces because of the number of people in attendance.


Anyway, so that's one form of movement - the deacons moving around within the church while singing during the vigil of Palm Sunday.



Just before the mass of Palm Sunday, however, there's another procession, and this one happens outside the church and is quite generally attended. The instructions are pretty brief, so I'll just include them here:
Quote:
 
"All the people walk to the church where they will pick up their palms, and while singing (literally psallendo - singing psalms) arrive at another church where the mass will be said. Arriving first, the bishop blesses the palm branches, and at precisely the point where the palms will have been given to the people, the bishop says "Thanks be to God" three times, and then the people say it three times too.Then the archdeacon sings this antiphon."

What follows is a set of six antiphons, describing Jesus' arrival in Jerusalm from the Gospel of Matthew, with lots of 'Hosanna's in there - the quintessential phrase of greeting and blessing that really marks the whole celebration of Palm Sunday. It goes on:
Quote:
 
And as he gets to the doors of the church, they (everyone? not sure) sing the following: "Glory be to God on high, and peace on earth for men of good will. Hosanna, son of David, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord."

At this point, after a prayer, they all go into the church.


This instruction indicates that there's a procession preceding the mass, where everyone would have been carrying palm branches. I'm not sure how many palm trees there were in early medieval Leon, but they may have imported some branches and also just used local vegetation (that happens elsewhere in Europe where there were definitely no indigenous palm trees).

The procession happened between two churches - the one where people got their branches, and the second where the mass was actually celebrated. I don't know what people would have done in smaller places where there was only one church, maybe just walked around the village and back.

It's not entirely clear what they were singing - were they singing with the archdeacon as they walked? Or did he sing alone? I can't read the neumes (so hopefully some musicologist will come to my rescue, here), but just even a brief glance makes it look like each antiphon has a pretty different melody, meaning that it could have been quite tough for anyone not practised in singing to know all of them, let alone the words in ecclesiastical Latin. Not sure about this, though.


So there's Palm Sunday.





  • Things to take away:

    - there were processions - inside and outside of churches
    - in some, only clergy took part; in others, there was general attendance including lay people
    - processions were accompanied by singing (antiphons)
    - on Palm Sunday, people would have been carrying palms and many of the antiphons include the line about "Hosanna, blessed is he..." from the Gospels
    - the whole Palm Sunday procession was meant to symbolise the arrival of Jesus to Jerusalem, with the people taking the role of the citizens of Jerusalem
    - BUT there is little sense in this liturgy that, apart from the people and their palms, the procession was meant as a literal re-enactment - no donkey, no mention of a figure of Jesus, unless we count the bishop who leads the way (but he doesn't do anything that particularly reflects what Jesus did in the Gospels) - so it has little to do with how we imagine Palm Sunday processions by some Catholics today, like this:

    Posted Image

**NOTE: NOT LIKE THIS, that we know of, anyway

Nor is there any evidence of this (a 15th century 'Palmesel' used in Palm Sunday processions):

Posted Image
**ALSO NOT LIKE THIS
Edited by Kati Ihnat, Mar 30 2015, 01:54 PM.
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