This morning, on the feast of the Holy Pope St. Sylvester I, on the last day of the year 2022, our beloved Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI passed from this world to be judged by his Creator, our Lord, Jesus Christ, at 95 years of age. The Brothers and Chorus Breviarii will pray for his repose, and we certainly hope that we will all be praying, whether through the Holy Rosary, the Office of the Dead, or the Holy Mass, that any purgation his soul may face may be lightened.
Courtesy: LMS England & Wales
Our Fratellino says on this occasion:
"Silvester, or Sylvester, is an interesting name, meaning "of the woodland" or, by implication, a Forester. Think of the Catholics of the Vendée, who were chased into the woods to celebrate the mass, and how many of them were brutally murdered by the Masonic French Revolution... about 800,000. Silvester I was the pope who led the church OUT of the woods, not into them. We should, at this point, be imploring his intercession for all we are worth, lest the present persecution worsen, and last as long as the first one."
Similarly, as the pagans of Europe were called to physically out of the woods by the Roman Pontiff and his missionaries, away from wooden idols and sacred trees, so do we pray that our future Roman Pontiffs may bring the Church out the woods we dwell in now, where many idols, whether wooden or ideological, have yet to be cast down.
The Feast according to the 1938 Laverty Missal
"Let Thy priests, O Lord, be clothed with justice, and let Thy Saints rejoice," reads the Introit for the Mass of St. Sylvester I before the liturgical changes in 1955. Through the praying of this Introit, we hope for the Saints above to rejoice at Christ welcoming a faithful servant into the heavenly kingdom. We also hope that through the prayers of these Saints, especially St. Sylvester I, we may continue to grow a new generation of holy priests who will bravely serve the Lord, many of whom were guided by the late Holy Father's liberation of tradition through Summorum Pontificum.
Monastere Saint-Benoit, established under the Papacy of Benedict XVI
To a great friend and guardian of Tradition, we pray that the soul of Pope Benedict XVI may rest in peace. Lux aeterna luceat ei, Domine, cum sanctis Tuis in aeternum, quia pius es.
Our other posts regarding the deceased Holy Father during his papacy can be found below:
The text of the Christmas hymn "Of the Father's heart begotten" ("Corde natus ex parentis") was originally written in Latin by 4th-century Iberian Roman poet Aurelius Prudentius as Hymn IX "for all hours" in his Liber Cathemerinon, beginning with the phrase "Da puer plectrum." Like other hymns and carols of the Christmas cycle, Anglican churchmen translated the text into English and set both the translated and original texts to music found in medieval songbooks, likely as part of the wider Gothic Revival movement in England. Other hymns and carols of the same kind include "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" and "Good King Wenceslas," with the latter's tune coming from the Piae Cantiones of the Turku Cathedral in Finland. The Piae Cantiones also include the tune for "Corde natus," originally a Sanctus trope used during the latter part of the Mass, with the incipit "Divinum mysterium."
The content of "Corde natus" is certainly influenced by the scriptural books of St. John, especially the Last Gospel (John 1), John 3, and the Book of Revelation, establishing its connection to the Mass of Christmas Day, where the Last Gospel is read as the Proper Gospel of the Mass. The various Psalms and Canticles of the Old Testament are also referenced, such as the Song of the Three Youths in the Fiery Furnace and Psalm 148, both staples of Festal Lauds in the Traditional Roman Office. The 38 stanzas of "Da puer plectrum" go beyond the focus of the Christmas excerpt, focusing instead on the whole life of Christ, including His miracles, His designation as the True Bread of Heaven, and His conquering of death, sin, and the serpent through the bloody sacrifice on the Cross.
The many variations of the chant available on YouTube highlight many interesting aspects of the hymn's original metre and the trickiness of adapting a poem to a tune meant for another metre. The original "Divinum mysterium" alternated between long and short notes (see below).
The peculiarities of metrical adaptation eventually led to Charles Winfred Douglas' "equalist transcription," which is how it is mostly sung today. However, some recordings of the hymn with its original note lengths are available on YouTube, such as the following recording from Ely Cathedral.
Additional peculiarities include the distribution of the original text's syllables on the tune's notes. Disagreements, such as whether the verb in the 8th stanza (of Da puer plectrum) is "psallite" or "psallat," or whether each syllable of the second line gets its own note, appear across different recordings. Based on my searches, however, the most disputed line appears to be the third line of the first verse. The most common text for this line is "A et O cognominatus," a very Latin way of transcribing Christ's titles of Alpha and Omega. This preserves the meter at the expense of sacrificing the explicit reference to Greek letters when sung. Other groups (such as the choir in the first video) preserve the explicit reference to the Greek letters by singing "Alpha" instead of "A," but without elision, the line ends up with too many syllables, and thus they sing the metrically peculiar "cognomina" rather than "cognominatus." The most sound version of this line, in my opinion, has the elision of "Alpha et" to "Alphet," preserving the original text from Prudentius (which writes O as Ω while pronouncing it "O"), the metre of the poem, and the explicit reference to the Greek letters of Christ in Revelation.
This way of singing the hymn is audible in the following recording from the choir at the ICKSP church in Oakland, CA.
The text of "Da puer plectrum" is full of elisions, which I have annotated to the best of my ability in the verses of "Corde natus" at the end of this post. The description of the Holy Ghost as "Hagioque Pneumate" in the final doxology (possibly not part of the original text) is extremely Greek, showing the great influence of Greek Christian terminology on Late Latin and Medieval Christian writing. Had "Corde natus" been a Breviary hymn, I wonder if Pope Urban VIII would have rewritten this particular verse, or any of the others, for being insufficiently Classical in metre or terminology!
Interestingly, the 35th stanza of "Da puer plectrum" (above) actually appears to be short a syllable in its fourth line, implying that one of the syllables had to be lengthened. In my transcription, this means that when sung to the "Divinum mysterium" tune, the "-scen-" of "adscendit" needs to be carried over two notes. A similar elongation of a syllable occurs in the final doxology.
The book scan available at Hymnology Archive also provides various written variants of Latin words, such as:
"seculorum seculis" rather than "saeculorum saeculis"
"inluminat" rather than "illuminat"
"adscendit" rather than "ascendit"
"bustuali" rather than "bustuari"
Under this video are the commonly includes lyrics of "Corde natus," plus the final doxology, which may have been a late addition to the text, since it is not available in other full texts of "Da puer plectrum," and because Prudentius likely intended for the poem to conclude on the phrase "seculorum seculis," making the doxology redundant. There are also pointers in the text for where the accented notes and elisions lie.
BOLD: this syllable goes over multiple notes
ITALICS: vowels (and nasal consonants) are elided
UNDERLINE: highlights a single syllable
SPECIAL: syllable spans two notes to compensate missing syllable
(Every verse is followed by the phrase "saeculorum saeculis" in the hymn, even the verse ending "seculorum seculis")
For the readers' convenience, I have copied the text of the poem from the post onto the site as well. The author, St. Robert Southwell, was a Jesuit priest and one of the Forty Holy Martyrs of England & Wales. St. Robert was, like many of the persecuted priests of Elizabethan England, an English priest educated in Douai, France who ministered covertly to the Recusant population. The plot to place the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne through the assassination of Queen Elizabeth I led to suspicions towards one of the families St. Robert ministered to, and through a lascivious and possibly coerced affair with one of the family's daughters, the Queen's chief priest-hunter, Richard Topcliffe, was able to arrest St. Robert. After weeks of torture at the behest of Topcliffe and the Queen, St. Robert was sent to the gallows, where the raging mob eagerly tugged at his suffering body and cut it into pieces.
The Burning Babe ~ St. Robert Southwell, S.J. 1595
"As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorchéd with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuél wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiléd souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I calléd unto mind that it was Christmas day."
And that's what Christmas is REALLY all about, Charlie Brown.
22 men from the Brothers of the Little Oratory, Chorus Breviarii San Diego, Chorus Breviarii Murrieta, the serving corps of Holy Martyrs Ordinariate Parish, and the altar guild of St. Anne joined and assisted Fr. Liebert in the celebration of St. Thomas' Vespers during O Tide. Due to the various furnishings present in the sanctuary in preparation for Christmas, those in choir sat in the first two rows of pews. For the Murrieta crew, this was their fourth O Antiphon out of the five they were able to organize this year across Southern California.
On December 21, the Brothers of the Little Oratory and Chorus Breviarii San Diego will be joined by our sister group from Riverside County, Chorus Breviarii Murrieta, to celebrate 2nd Vespers of St. Thomas at St. Anne Catholic Church. The once doubtful Apostle came to suffer martyrdom in India after bringing the Faith to the pagan land's shores, with many of the descendants of these first Indian Christians forming the still-extant Syro-Malabar Church.
Additionally, there will be a commemoration of the O Antiphon for the day, where our Lord is referred to by his title as "the Orient," referring to Christ as the Light that rises in the East that dispels the darkness of night.
Please check the link and poster below for the full schedule of Chorus Breviarii's O Tide celebration, especially if you are within the Riverside County area.
