Images of Childhood & the Christmas Mystery

This morning’s Epistle and Gospel readings (for 19 December, in the 29^th week after Pentecost according to the Old Calendar) came from Hebrews 5:11-6:8 and Mark 10:11-16. Being wont to make connections between the two readings on any given day, I would note the following. The Hebrews passage contains the rebuke:

For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. (Heb. 5:12-13)

Mark 10 on the other hand contains the more positive reference to childhood in Our Lord’s insistence, ‘Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein’ (Mk. 10:15).

But it is still more interesting to note that the juxtaposition of these two references to childhood was repeated for me almost immediately after. My one piece of reading specific to the Nativity Fast is by an English Benedictine nun and translator of St. Augustine—Maria Boulding’s The Coming of God. In the course of a meditation on the implications of Our Lord’s childhood for our own ‘paschal rebirth’, Sr Maria cites in tandem a Gospel and Epistle passage which quite closely parallel those in the Eastern lectionary for today. She writes:

Echoing in our minds is the Lord’s warning, ‘Unless you change and become like little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven’ (cf. Matt. 18.3), yet St Paul rebuked the Corinthians for childishness: ‘I could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh’ (I Cor. 3.1-3). (58)

For Sr Maria, this juxtaposition reveals the paradoxes involved in using the image of childhood to convey, not only the mystery of Christmas, but (already present within that mystery) an anticipatory ‘promise of our paschal rebirth in Christ’ (58). In His condescension, Our Lord too became a ‘babe’ who had need of milk rather than strong meat. But in being born as a little child, He invites us to participate in that self-emptying of becoming children once again so that we may enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Maria Boulding, OSB. The Coming of God. London: SPCK, 1982.

'a lost child travelling in the snow'

All the way back in 2009 I posted one of my favourite Christmas poems, Chesterton's 'Child of the Snows' (here). Well, last year I bought a copy of Michael Patrick Hearn's Annotated Christmas Carol, and as I was reading it with my students around Christmas time, I noticed the following passage in the description of the Cratchits' Christmas celebration:

All this time the chesnuts and the jug went round and round; and bye and bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny Tim; who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed. [1]

For the first time, while reading this passage I thought of GKC's poem, and then I noticed Hearn's annotation:

Apparently Dickens had no specific carol in mind; no such song has been found in any old collection of Christmas carols. G.K. Chesterton realized this omission, and included in his Poems (1926) 'A Child of the Snows', which might stand for Tiny Tim's carol until another might be found. [2]

I chose the image above as a good, classic, Logismoic piece, but the image here is more of a real illustration of the poem.


[1] Charles Dickens, The Annotated Christmas Carol: A Christmas Carol in Prose, ed. Michael Patrick Hearn, illust. John Leech (NY: Norton, 2004), p. 108.

[2] Dickens, p. 108, n. 63.

'My Heart's a Clot of Blod'—The Holy Innocents

Today, 29 December on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the 14,000 Infants (the Holy Innocents) slain by Herod at Bethlehem. The source of the story of this heinous crime is Matt. 2:13-23. Here is the account in the Prologue:

When the wise men from the East failed to return to Jerusalem from Bethlehem to tell Herod about the new-born king, but, at the angel’s command, returned to their home another way, Herod was as furious as a wild beast, and commanded that all the children of two years and under in Bethlehem and its surroundings be killed. This terrible command of the king's was carried out to the letter. His soldiers cut off some of the children's heads with their swords, dashed others on the stones, trampled some of them underfoot and drowned others with their own hands. The weeping and lamentation of their mothers rose to heaven: ‘Lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children’ as had been prophesied (Jer. 13:15; Matt. 2:18). This evildoing towards the hordes of innocent children came to pass a year after the birth of Christ, at a time when Herod was trying to find the divine Child. He sought Zacharias’s son, John, meaning to kill him in the belief that John was the new king. When Zacharias refused to hand John over, he was killed in the Temple on Herod’s orders. St Simeon the Host of God was also killed, and went to God soon after the Presentation in the Temple. Slaying the children in Bethlehem, Herod then turned on the Jewish elders, who had revealed to him where the Messiah would be born. He killed Hyrcanes the High Priest, and seventy elders from the Sanhedrin, and thus they who conspired with Herod to kill the new baby King came to an evil end. After that, Herod killed his own brother and sister and wife, and three of his sons. Finally, God’s punishment fell on him: he began to tremble, his legs swelled, the lower part of his body became putrid and worms came out of the sores, his nose became blocked and an unbearable stench spread around from it. At the time of his death, he remembered that there were many captive Jews in prison, so, that they should not rejoice at his death, he ordered that they all be slaughtered. Thus this terrible ruler lost his inhuman soul and was given to the devil for eternity. [1]

As Gordon Giles writes in his comments on the haunting Christmastide song of the Holy Innocents known as the ‘Coventry Carol’:

We live in a violent, cruel world in which human beings damage, maim, and kill one another with calculated spite or mindless violence. This is our world, and it is God's world. It is the same world into which God himself was born, and is only different today because Christ took human flesh and made a difference. [2]

I discussed the Massacre of the Innocents in some detail in last year’s post for today. I have little to add to that post, but Brigit at Under the Oak has some wonderful things in her post for this feast. First, she gives the Martyrology of Oengus for the feast (celebrated on 28 December in the West):

28. Famous is their eternal acclamation,
beyond every loveable band,
which the little children from Bethlehem
sing above to their Father.

Then, following the comments of a scholiast, Brigit posts two stanzas of Blathmac, and finishes with this ‘Mothers’ Lament at the Slaughter of the Innocents’ from the Leabhar Breac:

Then, as she plucked her son from her
breast for the executioner, one of the
women said:
‘Why do you tear from me my darling son,
The fruit of my womb?
It was I who bore him, he drank my breast.
My womb carried him about, he sucked my vitals.
He filled my heart:
He was my life, ’tis death to have him taken from me.
My strength has ebbed,
My voice is stopped,
My eyes are blinded.’
Then another woman said:
‘It is my son you take from me.
I did not do the evil,
But kill me—me: don’t kill my son!
My breasts are sapless, my eyes are wet,
My hands shake,
My poor body totters.
My husband has no son,
And I no strength;
My life is worth—death.
Oh, my one son, my God!
His foster-father has lost his hire.
My birthless sicknesses with no requital until Doom.
My breasts are silent,
My heart is wrung.’
Then said another woman:
‘Ye are seeking to kill one; ye are killing many.
Infants ye slay, fathers ye wound; you kill the mothers.
Hell with your deed is full, heaven shut.
Ye have spilt the blood of guiltless innocents.’
And yet another woman said:
‘O Christ, come to me!
With my son take my soul quickly:
O Great Mary, Mother of the Son of God,
What shall I do without my son?
For Thy Son, my spirit and my sense are killed.
I am become a crazy woman for my son.
After the piteous slaughter
My heart’s a clot of blood
From this day
Till Doom comes.’

In conclusion, here is the Kontakion of the Holy Infants:

When the King was born in Bethlehem, the Magi arrived from the East with gifts guided by a Star on high, but Herod was troubled and mowed down the children like wheat; for he lamented that his power would soon be destroyed. [2]

May the ruthless slaughter of children come to an end soon.


[1] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 4, trans. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), p. 384.

[2] Gordon Giles, O Come Emmanuel: A Musical Tour of Daily Readings for Advent & Christmas (Brewster, MA: Paraclete, 2006), p. 116.

[3] The Great Horologion, trans. HTM (Boston: HTM, 1997), p. 363.

'Ceremony Doffed His Pride'—Christmas Solemnity

One of the Christmas traditions my wife and I have begun is that of having a very small number of close friends over as soon as possible after the Nativity for a solemn feast of traditional English Christmas fare, when we wear our best Christmas clothes, dine by candlelight, read poetry, and sing songs. When I say that the feast is ‘solemn’, I mean a quality which, in C.S. Lewis’s words—

will be understood by any one who really understands the meaning of the Middle English word solempne. This means something different, but not quite different, from modern English solemn. Like solemn it implies the opposite of what is familiar, free and easy, or ordinary. But unlike solemn it does not suggest gloom, oppression, or austerity. . . . Feasts are, in this sense, more solemn than fasts. . . . The Solempne is the festal which is also the stately and the ceremonial, the proper occasion for pomp—and the very fact that pompous is now used only in a bad sense measures the degree to which we have lost the old idea of ‘solemnity’. To recover it you must think of a court ball, or a coronation, or a victory march, as these things appear to people who enjoy them; in an age when every one puts on his oldest clothes to be happy in, you must re-awake the simpler state of mind in which people put on gold and scarlet to be happy in. Above all, you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a widespread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connexion with vanity or self-conceit. A celebrant approaching an altar, a princess led out by a king to dance a minuet, a general officer on a ceremonial parade, a major-domo preceding the boar’s head at a Christmas feast—all these wear unusual clothes and move with calculated dignity. This does not mean that they are vain, but that they are obedient; they are obeying the hoc age which presides over every solemnity. The modern habit of doing ceremonious things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender’s inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual. [1]

Lewis has connected this solemnity directly with Christmas, not only in the reference here to the major-domo and the boar’s head, but in a passage from The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, which I have already quoted (here). Lewis describes Father Christmas himself:

Some of the pictures of Father Christmas in our world make him look only funny and jolly. But now that the children actually stood looking at him they didn’t find it quite like that. He was so big, and so glad, and so real, that they all became quite still. They felt very glad, but also solemn. [2]

In his long narrative poem, Marmion (referred to here and here), Sir Walter Scott has a moving description of the glories of a traditional English/Scottish Christmas which, I feel, captures this solemnity well. [3] Although this part of the poem seems to be often reproduced, most recently in A Classic Christmas (2009), [4] but also for example in Christmas in Prose & Verse (2000), [5] it is rarely identified as part of a larger work, and one might be excused for having the idea that Scott composed a poem called ‘Christmas in the Olden Time’! So to stave off future confusion, as well as to get myself into the spirit of our feast this coming evening, I offer this excerpt from the ‘Introduction’ to Canto VI of Marmion:

Heap on more wood!—the wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,
We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.
Each age has deemed the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer:
Even, heath yet, the savage Dane
At Iol more deep the mead did drain;
High on the beach his galleys drew,
And feasted all his pirate crew;
Then in his low and pine-built hall,
Where shields and axes decked the wall,
They gorged upon the half-dressed steer;
Caroused in seas of sable beer;
While round, in brutal jest, were thrown
The half-gnawed rib and marrow-bone,
Or listened all, in grim delight,
While scalds yelled out the joys of fight.
Then forth, in frenzy, would they hie,
While wildly loose their red locks fly,
And dancing round the blazing pile,
They make such barbarous mirth the while,
As best might to the mind recall
The boisterous joys of Odin’s hall.

And well our Christmas sires of old
Loved when the year its course had rolled,
And brought blithe Christmas back again,
With all his hospitable train.
Domestic and religious rite
Gave honor to the holy night;
On Christmas Eve the bells were rung;
One Christmas Eve the mass was sung;
That only night in all the year,
Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear.
The damsel donned her kirtle sheen;
The hall was dressed with holly green;
Forth to the wood did merry-men go,
To gather in the mistletoe.
Then opened wide the baron’s hall
To vassal, tenant, serf, and all;
Power laid his rod of rule aside,
And Ceremony doffed his pride.
The heir, with roses in his shoes,
That night might village partner choose;
The Lord, underogating, share
The vulgar game of ‘post and pair’.
All hailed, with uncontrolled delight,
And general voice, the happy night
That to the cottage, as the crown,
Brought tidings of salvation down.

The fire, with well-dried logs supplied,
Went roaring up the chimney wide;
The huge hall-table’s oaken face,
Scrubbed till it shone the day to grace,
Bore then upon its massive board
No mark to part the squire and lord.
Then was brought in the lusty brawn,
By old blue-coated serving-man;
Then the grim boar’s head frowned on high,
Crested with bays and rosemary.,
Well can the green-garbed ranger tell,
How, when, and where the monster fell;
What dogs before his death he tore,
And all the baiting of the boar.
The wassail round, in good brown bowls,
Garnished with ribbons, blithely trowls,
There the huge sirloin reeked; hard by
Plum-porridge stood, and Christmas pie;
Nor failed old Scotland to produce,
At such high tide, her savory goose.
Then came the merry maskers in,
And carols roared with blithesome din;
If unmelodious was the song,
It was a hearty note, and strong.
Who lists may in their mumming see
Traces of ancient mystery;
White shirts supplied the masquerade,
And smutted cheeks the visors made;
But O! what maskers, richly dight,
Can boast of bosoms half so light!
England was merry England, when
Old Christmas brought his sports again.
’T was Christmas broached the mightiest ale;
’T was Christmas told the merriest tale;
A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man’s heart through half the year.

Still linger, in our Northern clime,
Some remnants of the good old time;
And still, within our valleys here,
We hold the kindred title dear,
Even when, perchance, its far-fetched claim
To Southron ear sounds empty name;
For course of blood, our proverbs deem,
Is warmer than the mountain-stream.
And thus, my Christmas still I hold
Where my great-grandsire came of old,
With amber beard and flaxen hair,
And reverend apostolic air—
The feast and holy-tide to share,
And mix sobriety with wine,
And honest mirth with thoughts divine;
Small thought was his, in after time
E’er to be hitched into a rhyme.
The simple sire could only boast
That he was loyal to his cost;
The banished race of kings revered,
And lost his land,—but kept his beard. [6]

[1] C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (NY: Oxford U, 1965), p. 17.

[2] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, illust. Pauline Baynes (London: HarperCollins, 2009), p. 101.

[3] True, Scott is writing at a time when ‘Ceremony’ and ‘pride’ are already associated in many minds, but he hearkens back to the earlier age of which Lewis speaks when he says that at Christmas ‘Ceremony doffed his pride’.

[4] A Classic Christmas: Spiritual Reflections, Timeless Literature, & Treasured Verse & Scripture (NY: HarperOne, 2009), pp. 216-8.

[5] Allison C. Putala, ed., Christmas in Prose & Verse (NY: Platinum, 2000), pp. 84-6.

[6] The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1878), pp. 93-5.

Sir John Betjeman on Lewis, Christmas

Humphrey Carpenter has some interesting things to relate about Sir John Betjeman and C.S. Lewis, who was Betjeman’s tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford. For those who do not know, Betjeman was an ‘architectural critic, social historian, conservationist, short story writer, railway enthusiast, country lover, humorist, eccentric and Christian’. [1] He was also one of the more popular Poet Laureates of the twentieth century. According to Carpenter, Betjeman was ‘among Lewis’s first pupils . . . and they did not get on well.’ He quotes Lewis’s diary:

Betjeman and Valentin came for Old English. Betjeman appeared in a pair of eccentric bedroom slippers and said he hoped I didn’t mind them as he had a blister. He seemed so pleased with himself that I couldn’t help saying that I should mind them very much myself but that I had no objection to his wearing them—a view which I believe surprised him. Both had been very idle over the OE and I told them it wouldn’t do. [2]

Humphrey writes that Betjeman ‘was certainly prepared to pay a little desultory attention to English literature, but he had not bargained for Old English (Anglo-Saxon), nor for such a tutor’. By his own admission:

I cut tutorials with wild excuse,
For life was luncheons, luncheons all the way. [3]

In another diary entry, Lewis complains, ‘While in College, I was rung up on the telephone by Betjeman speaking from Moreton-in-Marsh, to say that he hadn’t been able to read the Old English, as he was suspected for measles and forbidden to read a book. Probably a lie, but what can one do?’ [4] Eventually, the inevitable happened and Betjeman was ‘sent down . . . for failing the obligatory University examination in Divinity. Carpenter passes along Betjeman’s own story that he ‘sought out Lewis “in his arid rooms”, but was told bluntly, “You’d have only got a Third.”’ [5] But according to Judith Priestman, he finally ‘returned to Magdalen in Michaelmas 1928, not even as a potential Third Class student but, with Lewis's permission, as an ignominious Pass degree candidate: qui nullum honorem ambiunt’. [6] Twelve years later, he struck back with the following lines:

Objectively, our Common Room
Is like a small Athenian State—
Except for Lewis: he’s all right
But do you think he’s quite first rate? [7]

But Priesthood tells the whole story rather well and poignantly. Incidentally, it was from Betjeman that Lewis borrowed a volume of T.S. Eliot’s poetry, leading to his intense dislike for the famous modernist. Carpenter writes that he actually organised ‘an anti-Eliot campaign among his friends’. [8]

Betjeman’s ‘faith journey’, for lack of a better expression, must be an interesting story about which I know nothing. He wrote a nice poem entitled ‘Greek Orthodox’, including the following insightful lines on the Church:

Thus vigorously does the old tree grow,
By persecution pruned, watered with blood,
Its living roots deep in pre-Christian mud,
It needs no bureaucratical protection.
It is its own perpetual resurrection.
Or take the galleon metaphor—it rides
Serenely over controversial tides
Triumphant to the Port of Heaven, its home,
With one sail missing—that’s the Pope’s in Rome. [9]

But Betjeman also managed to produce one of my favourite Christmas poems, which though quite different in style, reminds me of Updike’s Easter poem.

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare—
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine. [10]

[1] From the back cover of John Guest, select., The Best of Betjeman (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1979).

[2] Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, & Their Friends (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), p.19.

[3] Ibid., p. 20. For more lines on Betjeman's Magdalen stint, see this post.

[4] Ibid., p. 20.

[5] Ibid., p. 20.

[6] Judith Priestman, ‘The Dilettante & the Dons’, Oxford Today, Vol. 18, No. 3, Trinity 2006.

[7] Carpenter, p. 21.

[8] Ibid., p. 21.

[9] Sir John Betjeman, A Nip in the Air (NY: Norton, 1974), p. 37.

[10] Guest, pp. 81-2.

'A Pretty Babe All Burning Bright'—The Nativity of the Lord Jesus Christ

Today, 25 December on the Church’s calendar, we celebrated the Nativity of our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Concerning the Incarnation of Christ, St Maximus the Confessor teaches:

For not as God in His essence and as coessential with God the Father was the only-begotten Son given to us; only inasmuch as by virtue of God’s providential dispensation He became man by nature and, for our sakes made coessential with us, He was given to us who have need of such grace. [1]

Archimandrite Justin (Popović) writes, ‘Therefore Nativity, the day of the birth of the God-man, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the greatest and most important day in the history of all the worlds in which man moves and lives.’ [2] And Metropolitan Hierotheos observes, ‘All the other feasts of the Lord—Epiphany, the Transfiguration, the Passion, the Cross, the Resurrection and the Ascension of Christ—follow from the Nativity.’ [3] Here is the account of our Lord’s Nativity in the Prologue:

‘And when the fullness of time was come, God sent His only-begotten Son’ (Gal. 4:4), to save the human race. And when the ninth month had come after the archangel Gabriel appeared to the most holy Virgin in Nazareth, saying: ‘Hail, thou that art highly favoured . . . thou shalt conceive and bear a son’—at that time a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus that all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire be taxed. In accordance with this decree, everyone had to go to his own town and there be inscribed. Therefore righteous Joseph came with the most holy Virgin to Bethlehem, the city of David, for they were both of the royal House of David. But, there being a great many people in that small city for the census, Joseph and Mary could not find a lodging in any house, and found shelter in a cave which the shepherds used as a sheepfold. In this cave the most holy Virgin gave birth to the Saviour of the world, the Lord Jesus Christ. Bearing Him without pain, as He was conceived without sin of the Holy Spirit and not of man, she herself wrapped Him in swaddling bands, worshipped Him as God and laid Him in a manger. Then righteous Joseph drew near and worshipped Him as the divine Fruit of a virgin womb. Then the shepherds came in from the fields, directed by an angel of God, and worshipped Him as Messiah and Saviour. The shepherds had heard a multitude of angels singing: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill among men’ (Luke 2:14). At that time there also came wise men from the East, led by a wonderful star, bearing their gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh, and worshipped Him as King of kings, offering Him their gifts (Matt. 2:11). Thus He came into the world Whose coming had been foretold by the prophets and Who was born in the way that they had prophesied: of the most holy Virgin, in the city of Bethlehem, of the lineage of David according to the flesh, at the time when there was no longer in Jerusalem a king of the tribe of Judah, but Herod the stranger was on the throne. After many types and prefigurings, messengers and heralds, prophets and righteous men, wise men and kings, finally He appeared, the Lord of the world and King of kings, to perform the work of the salvation of mankind that could not be performed by His servants. May His be eternal glory and praise! Amen. [4]

The last troparion of the Second Ode of the second Canon of the Feast, written by St John of Damascus in iambic verse, beautifully summarises the wonder of Christ’s Incarnation:

He who rules the heights of heaven, in His compassion,
Has become such as we are, born of a Maiden who has not known man.
The Word who before was wholly outside matter, in these last times
Has assumed the material substance of the flesh
That so He might draw unto Himself fallen Adam, the first-formed man. [5]

Similarly, in his homily on the Nativity, the Venerable Bede tells us, ‘Hence, dearly beloved brothers, we who today recall in yearly devotion the human nativity of our Redeemer, must always embrace the divine nature as well as his human nature with a love that is not yearly, but continual . . . .’ [6] Furthermore, referring to the Epistle from today’s Liturgy—Gal. 4:4-7: ‘. . . God sent forth His Son . . . that we might receive the adoption of sons’—Archbishop Andrei of Novo-Diveevo exhorts us in his homily for the feast:

Let this Holy Day become the Holy Day of the consecration of our heart, of the acceptance of adoption, in order to perform for us this spiritual endeavor: the beginning of that which Christ gives. ‘Prepare, O Bethlehem . . . Christ shall be born to raise the image that fell of old.’ [7]

But of course, this consecration of our heart entails an interior reenacting of the Nativity, as St Maximus the Confessor teaches, ‘The divine Logos, who once for all was born in the flesh, always in His compassion desires to be born in spirit in those who desire Him. He becomes an infant and moulds Himself in them through the virtues.’ [8]

A couple of points about the calendar date of this Feast: first, all Anglophile Orthodox will of course recall that on this date, that is, specifically on the Old Calendar, the Glastonbury Thorn of St Joseph of Arimathea has traditionally bloomed. As Tennyson writes, at Glastonbury Abbey, Somerset:

. . . the winter thorn
Blossoms at Christmas, mindful of our Lord. [9]

And one 17th-c. booklet on ‘The History of that Holy Disciple Joseph of Arimathea’ in the Abbey Library tells us that ‘at Glastenbury in Somersetshire . . . is still growing that noted White-Thorn, which buds every Christmas-Day in the Morning, blossoms at Noon, and fades at Night, on the Place where he pitched his Staff in the Ground.’ [10]

But another point worth noting is a Slavic term relating to Christmas. In a note at the beginning of his short story, ‘The Night Before Christmas’, Nikolai Gogol writes:

Among us [that is, Ukrainians], to go caroling [koliadovat] means to sing songs called koliadki under the windows on Christmas Eve. The master or mistress of the house, or anyone staying at home, always drops into the carolers’ sack some sausage or bread or a copper coin, whatever bounty they have. They say there used to be an idol named Koliada who was thought to be a god, and that is where the koliadki came from. Who knows? It’s not for us simple people to discuss it. Last year Father Osip forbade going caroling around the farmsteads, saying folk were pleasing Satan by it. However, to tell the truth, there’s not a word in the koliadki about Koliada. They often sing of the nativity of Christ; and in the end they wish health to the master, the mistress, the children, and the whole household. (The Beekeeper’s note.) [11]

But, noting a similar term—and similar customs—in Bulgaria, Thomas Butler doesn’t even mention a god ‘Koliada’, but offers another suggestion:

The festival of koleda (Christmas) seems to trace its origins to a pagan Roman ritual (calendae). Koledni or koledarski pesni (‘Christmas songs’) are sung by groups of village boys who go from house to house on Christmas Eve (bŭdni večer). They have a leader (tsar or vodač) who knows a large repertory of songs or refrains, many of which are designed for individual members of the household (child, wife, husband, grown son, marriageable daughter). The following song seems to be an amalgam of both pre-Christian and Christian elements, with the young God representing both the New Year and Christ.

‘The Christening of the Young God’

The Mother of God labored
From Ignatius’s Day to Christmas [Koleda]
To give birth to the young God.
Everyone came by
To have a look at the young God.
They invited Saint John
To baptize the young God.
Saint John murmured:
—But how can I baptize,
Baptize the young God?
I am the chaff—he is the fire.
The young God murmured back:
—Come here, come here, Saint John,
And fulfill God’s law.—
Saint John brightened up,
Then he rolled up his white sleeves
And tucked his silk skirts,
His silk skirts inside his belt
And he made three candles.
He took the candles in his left hand
And in his right—the young God.
The young God glows with beauty
Saint John with joy;
His hands turned to silver
His skirts to gold
His beard became golden as well.
We sing to you, we praise God.
May God grant you much health!
May the health in this house be abundant
As geraniums on the mountainside—
In this house, in this company.
O Christmas, my Christmas! [12]

H.J. Rose notes that in the Empire, Kalends gift-giving at least was not abolished until Leo I in 458. [13]

Next, I have just a few online recommendations for the Nativity:

St John Chrysostom’s Homily.

St Leo the Great’s Homilies.

St Theodore the Studite’s Catechesis.

Bishop Theophilos of Campania on the Incarnation.

Another beautiful Serbian video.

Article on Father Christmas & the Christmas Spirit.

Article on the date of Christmas.

Obviously, more than one of these is from John Sanidopoulos’s blog, Mystagogy, which consistently features fascinating posts.

In conclusion, I offer another great lyric from the golden age of English poetry: Robert Southwell’s, ‘The Burning Babe’.

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised 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 scorchèd with exceeding heat such floods of tears did shed,
As though His floods should quench his flames with what His tears were fed;
Alas, quoth He, but newly born in fiery heats of fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I.
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel 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 defilèd 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 vanished out of sight, and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I callèd unto mind that it was Christmas day. [14]

[1] The Philokalia, Vol. 2, trans. G.E.H. Palmer et al. (London: Faber, 1990), pp. 156-7.

[2] Archimandrite Justin (Popović), ‘Perfect God & Perfect Man: A Nativity Epistle’, trans. Rev. Todor Mika & Rev. Stevan Scott, Man & the God-Man (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian, 2009), p. 10.

[3] Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos) of Nafpaktos, The Feasts of the Lord: An Introduction to the Twelve Feasts & Orthodox Christology, trans. Esther Williams (Levadia, Gr.: Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 2003), p. 39.

[4] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 4, trans. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), pp. 369-70.

[5] The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary & Archim. Kallistos (Ware) (South Canaan, PA: STS, 1998), p. 272.

[6] St Bede the Venerable, Homilies on the Gospels, Book 1: Advent to Lent, trans. Lawrence T. Martin & David Hurst, OSB (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1991), p. 82.

[7] Archbishop Andrei of Novo-Diveevo, The One Thing Needful (Liberty, TN: St John of Kronstadt, 1991), p. 14.

[8] Philokalia 2, pp. 165-6.

[9] Jerome H. Buckley, ed., Poems of Tennyson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), p. 390.

[10] F. Vere Hodge, Glastonbury Gleanings (Norwich: The Canterbury, 1991), p. 5.

[11] Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky, trans. & annot., The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (NY: Pantheon, 1998), p. 19.

[12] Thomas Butler, Monumenta Bulgarica: A Bilingual Anthology of Bulgarian Texts from the 9th to the 19th Centuries (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Slavic, 2004), pp. 476, 479.

[13] H.J. Rose, Ancient Greek & Roman Religion, Two Volumes in One: Vol. 2 (NY: Barnes & Noble, 1995), p. 148.

[14] H.C. Beeching, ed., A Book of Christmas Verse, illust. Walter C. Crane (NY: Bonanza,1986), pp. 27-8.

'A Holiday Can Be Celebrated Without Extravagant Festivity'—Comments on Saturnalia

When, in my post on Saturn, I quoted Charles Huttar’s observation that C.S. Lewis was alluding to the Roman Saturnalia festival in his poem ‘The Turn of the Tide’, I had intended to add another thing or two on that subject, but unfortunately I forgot.

Catullus famously described the Saturnalia as ‘our day of days’ (14.15). [1] H.J. Rose claims that it fell ‘originally on December 17th, but later extended to three, four, five or even seven days’. [2] But according to one site, citing Macrobius's work, Saturnalia:

Originally, it was celebrated on only one day, the fourteenth before the Kalends of January (December 19). With the Julian reform of the calendar, however, two days were added to December, and the Saturnalia was celebrated sixteen days before the Kalends (December 17), ‘with the result that, since the exact day was not commonly known—some observing the addition which Caesar had made to the calendar and others following the old usage—the festival came to be regarded as lasting for more days than one’ (I.10.2).

Rose explains how the holiday was observed:

. . . [The Saturnalia] to begin with resembled the Greek harvest-feast of the Kronia, for during it there were no social distinctions, slaves had a holiday and feasted like their masters, and all restrictions were relaxed, one being the prohibition on gambling with dice, which was supposed to be in force at other times of the year. It was, however, a more thoroughgoing season of jollity than the Kronia, at least in historical times, ‘the best of all days’, says Martial. Civilians and soldiers alike celebrated it, it was usual to choose by lot a Lord of Misrule (Saturnalicius princes, ‘leading man of the Saturnalia’), and gifts were exchanged. [3]

But the most interesting thing to me concerning Saturnalia is Seneca’s comments on it in his 18th Letter to Lucilius. There the great Stoic seems to anticipate to a striking degree Christian teaching on the proper celebration of Christmas:

It is the month of December, and yet the whole city is in a sweat! Festivity at state expense is given unrestricted license. Everywhere there echoes the noise of preparations on a massive scale. It all suggests that the Saturnalia holidays are different from the ordinary working day, when the difference is really non-existent—so much so in fact that the man who said that December used to be a month but is now a year was, in my opinion, not far wide of the mark!

If I had you with me I should enjoy consulting you and finding out what course you think we should follow: should we make no alteration in our daily habits, or should we take off our togas—time was when a change from formal wear would come about only during periods of grave political upheaval, whereas with us it happens for holidays’ and pleasure’s sake!—and have dinner parties with a note of gaiety about them, to avoid giving the impression that we disagree with the ways of those around us? If I know you as well as I think I do and you had to give a decision in the matter, you would say that we should be neither altogether like nor altogether unlike the festive-hatted crowd. But perhaps this is the very season when we should be keeping the soul under strict control, making it unique in abstaining from pleasure just when the crowd are all on pleasure bent. If the soul succeeds in avoiding either heading or being carried away in the direction of the temptations that lead people into extravagant living, no surer proof of its strength of purpose can be vouchsafed it. Remaining dry and sober takes a good deal more strength of will when everyone about one is puking drunk [vomitante populo]; [4] it takes a more developed sense of fitness, on the other hand, not to make of oneself a person apart, to be neither indistinguishable from those about one nor conspicuous by one’s difference, to do the same things but not in quite the same manner. For a holiday can be celebrated without extravagant festivity. [5]

[1] Roy Arthur Swanson, trans., Odi et Amo: The Complete Poetry of Catullus (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977), p. 15.

[2] H.J. Rose, Ancient Greek & Roman Religion, Two Volumes in One: Vol. 2 (NY: Barnes & Noble, 1995), p. 77.

[3] Ibid., p. 77.

[4] Walter C. Summers, ed., Select Letters of Seneca (London: Macmillan, 1962), p. 19.

[5] Seneca, Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, trans. Robin Campbell (London: Penguin, 1969), pp. 66-7.

'Saturn's Rule Returns'—Saturn & the New Golden Age in Virgil & Lewis

Continued from Parts 1, 2, and 3.

As will have been noticed, line 6 of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue contains the statement redeunt Saturnia regna, ‘Saturn’s rule returns’ in Lee’s simple translation. [1] Dame Frances Yates comments, ‘The poets taught . . . that justice reigned in the golden age of Saturn and left the earth.’ [2] Therefore, the return of Justice—Virgo—means the return of Saturn. The mythology to which Virgil refers, of the Golden Age and its end, can be found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 1.89-124. Here are a few pertinent lines:

First to be born was the Golden Age. Of its own free will,
without laws or enforcement, it did what was right and trust prevailed.
. . .
Spring was the only season. Flowers which had never been planted
were kissed into life by the warming breath of the gentle zephyrs;
and soon the earth, untilled by the plough, was yielding her fruits,
and without the renewal the fields grew white with the swelling corn blades.
. . .
When Saturn was cast into murky Tartarus, Jupiter seized
the throne of the universe. Now there followed the age of silver,
meaner than gold but higher in value than tawny bronze.
Gentle spring was no longer allowed to continue unbroken;
the king of the gods divided the year into four new seasons:
. . . [3]

When I first read the Eclogue I didn’t pay much attention to the reference to Saturn. But when I really started thinking about how the whole poem might relate not only to the Incarnation generally, but to the Nativity in particular, a question reared its head.

In an earlier post, I discussed the thesis of Michael Ward that each of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia are meant to correspond to one of the seven planets in classical Western astronomy. Referring to an article Ward published in Touchstone, I pointed out that The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe, in the plot of which the coming of Christmas has an important rôle, could be seen to correspond to the sphere of Jupiter, as expressed by Lewis’s alliterative poem, ‘The Planets’:

. . . Of wrath ended
And woes mended, of winter passed
And guilt forgiven, and good fortune
Jove is master; and of jocund revel,
Laughter of ladies. The lion-hearted,
The myriad-minded, men like the gods,
Helps and heroes, helms of nations
Just and gentle, are Jove’s children,
Work his wonders. . . . [4]

A little search also yielded another passage Ward quotes, from Lewis’s Allegory of Love: ‘The poetry which represents . . . winter overgone, [is] the poetry born under Jove . . .’ [5] Again, the passing of winter means the coming of Jove.

Even ‘Father Christmas’ appears in Narnia, where it has been ‘always winter and never Christmas’, [6] giving gifts to the Pevensie children. As winter in Narnia is beginning to pass, Lewis describes him in very ‘Jovial’ terms:

He was a huge man in a bright red robe (bright as holly-berries) with a hood that had fur inside it and a great white beard that fell like a foamy waterfall over his chest. . . . Some of the pictures of Father Christmas in our world make him look only funny and jolly. But now that the children actually stood looking at him they didn’t find it quite like that. He was so big, and so glad, and so real, that they all became quite still. They felt very glad, but also solemn.

‘I’ve come at last,’ said he. ‘She has kept me out for a long time, but I have got in at last. Aslan is on the move. The Witch’s magic is weakening.’

And Lucy felt running through her that deep shiver of gladness which you only get if you are being solemn and still. [7]

Finally, I recalled Lewis’s words in his wonderful poem on the Nativity, ‘The Turn of the Tide’:

Saturn laughed and lost his latter age’s frost,
His beard, Niagara-like, unfroze; [8]

So I’m not sure if it will be clear to all, but I had formed an idea in my head from of all of this of the coming of Christ meaning the passing of Saturn before Jupiter and the beginning of the end of winter. Yet, here in this Eclogue that I am reading through a Messianic lens, it says that the coming of Christ means the return of Saturn! How can these things be reconciled? I wasn’t looking for perfect logical consistency from a myth, but it seems that they usually have their own logic, and Lewis, who of course knew Virgil and Ovid well, surely knew what he was doing!

Although he was not coming at it from the same point of departure as I, I found that revisiting a fascinating article by Charles A. Huttar answered the question rather well. In ‘C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, & the Milton Legacy: The Nativity Ode Revisited’, Huttar is studying the controversy between Lewis and Eliot over the continued influence of Milton on English poetry and whether it was positive or negative. Huttar argues that Lewis’s ‘Turn of the Tide’ was written as a sort of update to Milton’s ‘Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ in order to demonstrate how his legacy can be put to positive use. I shall quote this article at length:

‘Saturn laughed and lost his latter age’s frost’ (line 69); that is, he cease to be saturnine (melancholic). What does Lewis have in mind? . . . The bitter cold (‘frost’) and the melancholy derive from the planet’s distance from the sun and its astrological significance, and Lewis exploits these features elsewhere in his poetry and his fiction. But the cold belongs to the myth also, not as an inherent property of Saturn but as a condition to which he is subjected: Ovid, for example, tells how winter first appeared when Jupiter overthrew Saturn and banished him (Met. 1.116-20). In the present lines, Lewis has the myth in mind as well as the astronomy, and as so often in Lewis’s handling of myths, he gives it a new, creative twist. Saturn has been melancholy, we may suppose (and the cause of melancholy in others), ever since Jupiter dispossessed him and put an end to the Age of Gold over which he ruled; but now, with the prospect of that Age’s returning, his melancholy gives way to mirth. . . . [Thus, Lewis] ties the return of the Golden Age back to the winter setting of his opening lines—and of the ancient Roman Saturnalia, whose carnival atmosphere in December Lewis reflects not only in Saturn’s laughter but in the word ‘revel’ (line 67). No longer burdened with the endless postponement of his rôle as returning king, Saturn greets the true king who will have that rôle. [9]

Huttar also adds a footnote to the statement about Saturn’s melancholy giving ‘way to mirth’:

A connection may also be drawn between the melting of the ice in Saturn’s beard—the ‘Niagara’ image wonderfully illustrates the vast scale of Lewis’s imaginations of the heavens—and the thaw that brings spring to Narnia when Aslan comes (heralded by Father Christmas, whose ‘great white beard . . . fell like a foamy waterfall over his chest’) in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe . . . . The imaginative identification of Saturn with the paradisal had long occupied Lewis’s thoughts. [10]

So, for Lewis it is not Saturn’s rule passing that is equated with the passing of winter (and thus he does not disagree with Virgil), but the melancholy frost passing from Saturn, who thereby becomes more ‘jovial’. Of course, even devoid of his frost, Saturn’s rule, like that of Caesar Augustus, is not the purpose of Christ’s coming, but its prefigurement. As Huttar states, ‘Saturn greets the true king’ whose coming unfroze his beard. [11]

The Saturnine theme links back to my post on the shepherds as well. Recall Albert Hamilton’s statement that the ‘shepherd was taken as the type of the contemplative life as opposed to the active plowman’. [12] Well, Saturn is of course traditionally associated with contemplation, which Cornelius Agrippa considered a species of melancholy (on Saturn & contemplation, see this post). [13] Note too that in l. 23 of the Metamorphoses Ovid says the ‘active plowman’ began his work ‘for the first time’ after the overthrow of Saturn. [14]

I conclude with the words of Lactantius, who, having acknowledged in Divine Institutes V.5 the truth from a Christian perspective in Ovid’s account of the Golden Age, writes in V.7:

But God, as a most indulgent parent, when the last time approached, sent a messenger to bring back that old age, and justice which had been put to flight, that the human race might not be agitated by very great and perpetual errors. Therefore the appearance of that golden time returned, and justice was restored to the earth, but was assigned to a few; and this justice is nothing else than the pious and religious worship of the one God. [15]

[1] Virgil, The Eclogues, trans. Arthur Guy Lee (London: Penguin, 1988), p. 57.

[2] Dame Frances A. Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Ark, 1975), p. 35.

[3] Ovid, Metamorphoses: A New Verse Translation, trans. David Raeburn (London: Penguin, 2004), pp. 9-10.

[4] C.S. Lewis, Poems, ed. Walter Hooper (San Diego: Harcourt, 1992), p. 14.

[5] C.S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in the Medieval Tradition (Oxford: Oxford U, 1959), p. 197.

[6] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, illust. Pauline Baynes (London: HarperCollins, 2009), p. 23.

[7] Ibid., p. 101.

[8] Lewis, Poems, p. 51.

[9] Charles A. Huttar, ‘C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, & the Milton Legacy: The Nativity Ode Revisited’, Texas Studies in Literature & Language, Vol. 44, No. 3, Fall 2002, pp. 334-5.

[10] Huttar, p. 344, n. 48.

[11] Ibid., p. 335.

[12] Albert Charles Hamilton, The Spenser Encyclopedia (Toronto: U of Toronto, 1997), p.531.

[13] Dame Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 62-3.

[14] Ovid, p. 11.

[15] Here.

'When Augustus Reigned Alone Upon Earth'—The Augustan Peace as Prefigurement

This is my third post on Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue. Here are the first and second.

Dame Frances Yates has discussed some of the more this-worldly readings of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue in her study of the figure of Astraea-Virgo as background to the cult of Queen Elizabeth I. She writes:

Later ages have read the Eclogue in the light of subsequent history and seen it in the context of Virgil’s position as the prophet of the imperial mission of Rome. In the sixth book of the Aeneid, Aeneas, in the course of his journey through Hell in the company of the Cumaean Sybil, hears from the lips of Anchises the prophecy of the return of the gold age under Augustus Caesar. [1]

She then gives a prose translation of Aeneid VI, 791-5. Here is James Rhoades’s rendering:

This, this the man so oft foretold to thee,
Caesar Augustus, a god’s son, who shall
The golden age rebuild through Latian fields
Once ruled by Saturn, and push far his sway
O’er Garamantians and the tribes of Ind,
. . . [2]

Finally, Yates concludes, ‘The golden age is the Augustan rule, the Augustan revival of piety, the peace of the world-wide Augustan empire.’ [3] As Donna Tartt writes of the character ‘Bunny’ Corcoran in her striking psychological thriller, The Secret History:

Caesar Augustus was Bunny’s hero; he had embarrassed us all by cheering loudly at the mention of his name during the reading of the Bethlehem story from Luke 2 at the literature division’s Christmas party. ‘Well, what of it,’ he said, when we tried to shush him. ‘All the world shoulda been taxed.’ [4]

Obviously, whatever his merits, to equate the ‘golden age’ with the rule of Augustus is to set one’s sights rather low from a Christian perspective. But Bunny’s excitement serves to call our attention to a connection here with the Nativity. It was the decree of Caesar Augustus that led the Most-Holy Theotokos to the place appointed for her to give birth to Christ. Commenting on Luke 2:1, ‘And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be enrolled’, Bl Theophylact writes, ‘An enrollment took place for this reason: so that, as every one went to their ancestral city, the Virgin too would go up to Bethlehem, her own ancestral city, and thus the Lord would be born in Bethlehem, and the prophecy fulfilled (see Micah 5:2).’ [5] True, as St Ambrose of Milan observes:

Then, that ye may know that the enrolment is not of Augustus, but of Christ, the whole world is bidden to enroll. When Christ is born, all confess Him; when the world is included, all are tested. Then, Who could exact the confession of the whole world, save He Who had power over the whole world? For the earth is the Lord’s, and not Augustus’, the fullness thereof, the world, and all that dwell therein [Psalm 23:1]. Augustus did not rule over the Goths, he did not rule over the Armenians; Christ ruled. [6]

But in the words of Archbishop Chrysostomos and Bishop Auxentios, ‘Christ was born into a Greek and Roman world that existed simply to accommodate His Birth.’ [7] It is no surprise that we should chant in a doxasticon of St Cassia at Vespers for the Nativity:

When Augustus reigned alone upon earth, the many kingdoms of men came to end: and when Thou wast made man of the pure Virgin, the many gods of idolatry were destroyed. The cities of the world passed under one single rule; and the nations came to believe in one sovereign Godhead. The peoples were enrolled by the decree of Caesar; and we, the faithful, were enrolled in the Name of the Godhead, when Thou, our God, wast made man. Great is Thy mercy: glory to Thee. [8]

Thus, in the historical perspective of the Orthodox Church, there is perhaps a sense in which Augustus’s rule, while not the ‘Golden Age’ itself, is a prefigurement or herald of it. Keeping in mind St Ambrose’s insistence that not even the enrolment is of Augustus, it may be an even more pronounced case of the ‘unwitting prophet’, as we saw of Virgil himself in the first post on this Eclogue. But it is a connection worth noticing nonetheless.


[1] Dame Frances A. Yates, ‘Queen Elizabeth I as Astraea’, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Ark, 1975), p. 33.

[2] James Rhoades, trans., The Poems of Virgil, Vol. 13 in Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1980), p. 232.

[3] Yates, p. 33.

[4] Here.

[5] Fr Christopher Stade, trans., The Explanation by Bl Theophylact, Archbishop of Ochrid & Bulgaria of the Holy Gospel According to St Luke, Vol. 3 of Bl Theophylact’s Explanation of the New Testament (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom, 1997), p. 29.

[6] St Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Holy Gospel According to St Luke, trans. Theodosia Tomkinson (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1998), p. 50.

[7] Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna & Bishop Auxentios of Photiki, The Roman West & the Byzantine East (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1997), p. 19.

[8] The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary & Archim. Kallistos (Ware) (South Canaan, PA: STS, 1998), p. 254.