The Church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois in Paris

Most places which use the Roman Rite keep today as the feast of St Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, who died on July 31, 1556. But in the Middle Ages, this date was kept in France, England and some other places (although not at Rome) as the feast of St Germanus, a 5th-century bishop of the French see of Auxerre; Ignatius himself would have celebrated this feast during his years as a student in Paris, along with the earliest members of the Company. A church dedicated to St Germanus sits directly in front of the Louvre in Paris, and is currently being used as the cathedral pro tempore while Notre Dame is undergoing restoration after the fire of April 2019. In French it is called “Saint Germain l’Auxerrois” to distinguish it from “Saint Germain des Prés”, which is dedicated to a 6th-century bishop of Paris. It was originally founded in the 6th or 7th-century, but has been rebuilt several times, and contains a number of real artistic treasures from different periods. Here are some pictures of it which I took when I visited Paris in the summer of 2019.

A fifteenth-century statue of the church’s Patron.

A retable made in Flanders in the early 16th century, which depicts the events of Our Lord’s life, focusing on the Passion; donated to the church by the Comte de Montalivet, Minister of the Interior, in 1839. See this article on French Wikipedia for closer views and explanations of the individual scenes.

The preaching pulpit in the nave, made in 1684.

The pulpit faces this group of seats made at the same time for the use of the royal family, since Saint Germain l’Auxerrois was the parish church of the royal palace, the Louvre.

The 15th-century Gothic apse, seen from the gate of the church’s very large choir. 

The south transept; the object inside the gate is not a baptismal font, but a very elaborate marble holy water stoup, added to the church in 1844.

A 19th-century fresco of the Deposition from the Cross

A statue of the deacon and martyr St Vincent, contemporary with the statue of St Germanus seen above.

A chapel with an altarpiece of Ss Augustine, Ambrose and Jerome.

Mounted on the balustrade of the choir, and facing into the ambulatory, is this retable of the life of the Virgin Mary, made ca. 1510-30.

Original Sin and the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple on the painted wing on the left.

The Expulsion from the Garden and the Annunciation on the right.

The organ and lectern of the choir

The high altar

The vault of the choir

In the ambulatory behind the choir, the Chapel of the Good Death, formerly the Blessed Sacrament chapel; completely redecorated after the church was badly damaged and profaned by rioters during a political disturbance in 1831 (plus ça change...)

A funerary chapel founded 1505 by a rich merchant named Jehan Tronson, known as the Tomb Chapel from the sculpture of the Dead Christ inside the altar.

A 19th-century neo-Gothic altar piece of the Trinity with St Germanus (right) and St Vincent de Paul (left.)

The chapel of Ss Denys, Rusticus and Eleutherius.

The pillars outside the chapel of Notre-Dame de la Bonne-Garde are covered with ex-votos.

The grand organ was originally built in the Sainte Chapelle in 1771, and removed to Saint Germain in July of 1791, in the midst of some of the worst turbulence of the Revolution; the fate of its predecessor is unknown. Although it has several parts taken from other instruments, it was originally built by the famous François-Henri Clicquot, who built or restored over 40 organs all over France between 1751 and 1790. (One of his pieces was destroyed by the arsonist who set fire to the cathedral of Nantes in 2020.)

The main door, made in the 13th century; the Last Judgment scene in tympanum was destroyed and never restored. The archivolt is decorated with Angels and Saints; to the left of the door are statues of Queen Ultragotha and her husband King Childebert I, traditionally said to have founded the church in the year 542 (there is some debate about this as a matter of history), followed by St Vincent; on the right, St Germanus, St Genevieve, and an angel. The statue of the Virgin and Child on the trumeau is of the 19th century.

Marian Music Program Premieres at St John Cantius in Chicago, August 12th

On Saturday, August 12, at 7:30pm, the critically-acclaimed vocal ensemble His Majesty’s Men (website, Facebook) will once again perform at the historic and beautiful St. John Cantius Church in downtown Chicago.

Their program, “The Flower of Beauty”, will feature two newly-commissioned works on Marian themes composed by two traditionalist Catholics: a setting of the Ave Maris Stella by HMM’s composer-in-residence Mark Nowakowski, and a setting of the Stabat Mater by Peter Kwasniewski. Both composers will be present at this concert.

Also featured will be several motets by the brilliant composer William Byrd, who died in 1623, and could be said to be the greatest English composer before Henry Purcell. Marian themes continue in “Ave Maris Stella” by the 15th-century French composer Guillaume Dufay. There will also be several audience favorites, notably “A Cloud Enveloped Them” by Chad McCoy, which made a huge impact last year. And we will once again present the 13th-century “Seacht nDolás na Maighdine Múire”, the seven sorrows of the Virgin Mary, sung in Irish Gaelige in Chris Crilly’s beautiful arrangement.

There will be a reception after the concert in the Cafe San Giovanni. The musicians and the composers Dr. Nowakowski and Dr. Kwasniewski are greatly looking forward to meeting attendees.

Tickets available here: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/6036326

To read more about the group and its mission, read this interview at the National Catholic Register: Evangelists for the Beauty of Sacred Music.

Performers:
Richard Childress, countertenor
Matthew Dean, tenor
Joe Labozetta, baritone
Nathaniel Adams, baritone
Ian Prichard, bass

The Treasury Museum of Genoa Cathedral (Part 2)

Here is the second part of Nicola’s photos of the treasury museum of the cathedral of St Lawrence in Genoa. We begin with several pictures of a silver ark for the Corpus Christi procession, made in the mid-16th to early 17th century; the base is decorated with images of the Lord’s Passion, from the Last Supper to the Burial, alternating with statues of the Apostles.

These two reliquaries were brought to the Republic of Genoa from its mercantile colony at Pera, just outside the walls of Constantinople: one of the 11th or 12th century, with the arm of St Anne...

and the other of the 15th, with the arm of St James.

A silver statue of the Immaculate Conception, 1748. On the feast of the Annunciation in 1637, the Republic of Genoa had officially proclaimed the Virgin Mary to be its Queen. During the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-8), the city was occupied by the armies of Austria and Sardinia; following its liberation at the end of the war, a group of noblemen donated this statue to the Doge Giovan Francesco Brignole-Sale, in recognition of his actions in preserving the republic; the doge then immediately donated it to the cathedral.

A reliquary made in Florence in the 16th-17th century for the cathedral’s relics of the ashes of St John the Baptist.

A silver frontal for Corpus Christi, decorated with statues of the Four Evangelists, and the martyrdoms of the city’s patron Saints: John the Baptist, Lawrence (to whom the cathedral is dedicated) and Sebastian, who in his role as patron against plagues, was always particularly important to maritime cities.

Another frontal, made in 1892, with a reproduction of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper in the middle.

A ciborium made in 1918, and gifted to the cathedral by Pope Benedict XV, a native of Genoa. (A well known story about him is that on reading in a newspaper a description of himself as “the astute Genovese”, he curtly remarked, “such useless repetition.”)

A 16th-century cope.

The Antipope Venerated as a Saint

The feast of St Martha is kept today with a commemoration of four Roman martyrs named Felix, Simplicius, Faustinus and Beatrix. This commemoration originated as two separate observances, which seem to have been united because St Felix was buried in a catacomb named for him along the via Portuensis, the great ancient road which led to the port of Rome, while the other three were buried further down the same road in the Catacomb of Generosa. In earlier liturgical books, however, Felix is called “Pope Felix II”; this is true even in editions printed in the early 1950s, despite the fact that ever since the 1947 revision of the Annuario Pontificio, he has been officially listed as an antipope.

The Mass of Ss Simplicius, Faustinus and Beatrix, and the Mass of St Felix, who is named only as a Martyr, in the Gellone Sacramentary (folio 97v), ca. 780 AD. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 12048)

Felix was the archdeacon of Rome in the mid-4th century, when the Church, so recently freed by the Emperor Constantine from pagan persecution, was subjected to its first “Christian” persecution by his son Constantius, an ardent supporter of the Arian heresy. In 355, the latter banished Pope Liberius to Greece for his opposition to Arianism, and Felix was consecrated by three Arian bishops to take his place. Although the majority of the Roman clergy apparently did recognize him as their bishop, the laity would have nothing to do with him. Two years later, when Liberius was permitted to return from exile, Felix and his supporters tried but failed to occupy the basilica of Pope Julius I (now known as Santa Maria in Trastevere); he was then banished from Rome by the Senate, never to return. After living for eight years near Porto in quiet retirement, he died in 365.

However, his entry in the Roman Martyrology before 1960 told the story differently. “At Rome, on the Via Aurelia, (the death of) St Felix the Second, Pope and Martyr, who, having been cast out of his see by the Arian Emperor Constantius because of his defense of the Catholic faith, died gloriously at Cera in Tuscany, being secretly slain by the sword.” According to the revised version of Butler’s Lives of the Saints by Herbert Thurston SJ and Donald Attwater, Felix was confused with two persons: first with his rival Liberius, which is difficult to explain, and secondly, with a martyr named Felix who was buried along the Via Aurelia, on which this Felix had built a small church. (Felix was an extremely common name in ancient Rome.) They also note that this confusion is already evidenced in documents of the 6th century. Therefore, the revised liturgical books of 1960, conforming to the updated Annuario Pontificio, eliminate the title “Pope” and the number “II” from his name, and delete his separate entry from the Martyrology altogether, while adding his name to that of the other three martyrs named above.

An engraved portrait of Cardinal Baronius, the frontispiece of a 1624 edition of his Annals. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Jeffdelonge, CC BY-SA 3.0)

What I think is particularly interesting about this is not the hagiographical confusion per se, but rather the way this confusion is treated in the revised Butler’s Lives, which calls it “a sad memorial to the still backward state of critical scholarship at the time when Cardinal Baronius was editing (the Martyrology).” After noting that “(t)he insertion of Felix as Pope and Martyr was not any oversight, for Baronius in his annotated edition of the martyrology refers his readers for an elucidation of the matter to the volume of his great work, the Annales, which was on the point of appearing,” it goes on to ascribe all of the confusion to the Liber Pontificalis, a famous collection of Papal biographies, famously unreliable as an historical document.

It turns out, however, that Baronius’ treatment of the problem is far more detailed and interesting than the brief entry in Butler’s would lead one to believe.

First of all, Baronius did not “insert” Felix into the Martyrology; he was already in the Roman liturgical books (Missal, Breviary and Martyrology) before the Tridentine reform. Moreover, Baronius was perfectly well aware of the historical problem posed by his cultus. In the pre-Tridentine Roman breviary, (which he, as a member of the Roman Oratory, would certainly have used), the first lesson of Matins on July 29th tells the story of Felix II in terms similar to those of the Martyrology entry noted above. It is followed, however, by another lesson which gives the history of Pope St Felix III, who reigned from 483-92, and also staunchly opposed a heresy supported by the Roman Emperor, although he was not martyred for this. The prayer of this Office, however, names only one Felix; this strongly suggests that the compilers of this earlier edition of the Breviary hedged their bets, so to speak, as to which Pope named Felix was actually honored by the feast.

Two columns of a Roman Breviary printed at Venice in 1481, with the lessons for July 29th. On the lower left (“lectio prima”) is the historical lesson for the Felix II, and at the upper right (“lectio secunda”) the lesson for Felix III. Notice that in the title of the feast and in the Collect, only one Felix is mentioned.

In the Tridentine Breviary, both of these historical lessons were completely expunged, along with those of the other three martyrs, and their collective feast reduced to just a commemoration on the feast of St Martha. This change is a clear sign that that the editors, Baronius among them, were aware that the statements contained in the older lessons could not to be regarded as historically reliable.

Turning to the relevant entry in Baronius’ Annals (Liberii ann. 4, 56-58) mentioned in Butler’s Lives, we discover the real reason why the notice of Felix as “Pope” was retained. He points out that Felix was (to borrow an odious turn of phrase from modern politics) personally faithful to the Nicene confession of faith, although he did not therefore separate himself from communion with the Arians or refuse ordination at their hands; this, according to the testimony of two ancient Church historians, Sozomen and Theodoret of Cyrus. Since he was deacon under Liberius, who also held fast to the Nicene faith, Baronius thought it unlikely that the latter would promote a convinced heretic to the important position of archdeacon, or keep him in that role. Furthermore, he explains, Felix must have known that he could not legitimately be Pope if Liberius was unlawfully deposed by a heretical Emperor. It was therefore Baronius’ opinion that Felix had accepted episcopal ordination not as the unlawful replacement of Liberius, but rather as a “chorepiscopus”, the title of a bishop who took care of rural areas without a fixed see in a city; effectively, what we would nowadays call an auxiliary bishop. He would have accepted this role so as to not leave the Church of Rome without governance during the exile of its rightful pastor.

Baronius goes on to explicitly state that “what is said about Felix’s ordination in the book about the Roman Popes falsely attributed to the name of Pope Damasus (i.e. the Liber Pontificalis), does not seem to be at all true”, an important recognition of that book’s value (or lack thereof) as an historical source. Further on (Liberii ann. 6, 58), he also notes that the ancient sources were not in agreement as to Felix’s ultimate fate, whether he died in peace near Porto, as is now believed, or was condemned by Constantius and killed at Caere in Tuscany, as formerly stated in the Martyrology.

Baronius then gives an account (ibid. 62) of something which happened in his own time, which vindicates him from Thurston and Attwater’s charge of being a backward scholar. He writes that scholars had long accepted that Felix was an intruder in the papal office, and that the ancient sources did not agree on the circumstances of his death. Under Pope Gregory XIII (1572-85), several learned men had gathered in Rome to work on the revision of the Martyrology, and there had been a great deal of intense discussion among them specifically about the case of Felix. Baronius himself leaned strongly towards removing him altogether, and wrote a lengthy treatise in defense of this position, which found much support and agreement among his colleagues.

Mass for the Lenten Station at Ss Cosmas and Damian in 2017, photographed by our Roman pilgrim friend Agnese.

It happened, however, that in the year 1582, a side-altar of the very ancient church of Ss Cosmas and Damian in the Forum was moved, revealing a marble box that was divided into two parts by a stone slab. On the one side were the relics of three Martyrs, Ss Mark, Marcellian, and Tranquillinus; on the other, bones, and the following inscription on a small stone plaque: “The body of St Felix, Pope and Martyr, who condemned Constantius.” This discovery happened to take place on the day before his feast. “To the wonder of all, Felix himself seemed to appear as one come back to life, as if to personally take up his own cause, since he had been greatly overwhelmed by the pens of those who wrote against him. I myself, struck by no small wonder at an event of such greatness… with the moderation of a Christian, then curbed my pen, which I had sharpened in zeal for the truth, and deemed that it had most happily (felicissime) befallen me to be beaten by Felix.”

Now none of this is to say that Baronius’ assessment of the historical question was necessarily correct, or that the revisers of the liturgical books were wrong to do as they did in 1960 by joining Felix to the other martyrs. It is however, very much to say that whether he was ultimately right or wrong, Cardinal Baronius was not careless; he acted in good faith, and in the belief that divine providence had intervened to prevent the suppression of the long-standing veneration of a Saint.

Contrast this with the disdainful attitude of the supposedly far more sophisticated modern scholars, who speak of his work as the product of a “backward” state of affairs, but do not mention the discovery of the relics in connection with him, nor the reason why he changed his mind about St Felix. This cavalier and unjustified attitude of superiority has been all too common for far too long, and we have lived with the damage it has done to the Church’s tradition for far too long.