10 February 2016

The Five Wounds pro aliquibus locis.

At the back of preconciliar missals, there is delightfully readable appendix of Masses which at one time might only be used by indult in particular places. For example, on the Fridays of Lent the following Votives were printed:
After Ash Wednesday: The Holy Thorns of the Crown of Christ.
Week 1: The Sacred Spear and Nails of OLJC.
Week 2: The Most Sacred Shroud of OLJC.
Week 3: The Sacred Five Wounds of OLJC.
Week 4: The Most Precious Blood of OLJC.
(In Passion Week, of course, the main body of the Missal gives the Seven Sorrows of the BVM. Interestingly, the Third Typical Edition of the postconciliar Missal gives an alternative Collect for the ferial Mass this day: a new collect of our Lady of Sorrows.)

You will remember that the old English Votive of the Five Wounds consisted essentially of another Mass, the Votive Humiliavit of the Passion, with a few clauses added and a whole lot of very 'medieval' material before the Gospel. Aliquibus locis gives the same Votive of the Passion as the Mass of the Five Wounds, but with different Collect, Secret, and Postcommunion from those used in medieval England. Happily, over here in the Ordinariate we have a good translation of the old Sarum Votive. Happily, our rubrics do not discourage us from using it on ferias in Lent!

When the people of many parts of England rose in rebellion against Edward Tudor in 1549, carrying the Banner of the Five Wounds in front of them, there was one respect in which the peasantry of the South West was fortunate. There was an Exeter man, Vowell, a strong Protestant but a fair historian, who left an account of their insurrection. Other areas lacked a historian, so that we know very little of what happened in them. But we do have lists of those whom the government ordered to be executed in the Oxfordshire Rising - and of where they were ordered to be killed. And the list makes clear that this is only the tip of an iceberg; that very many disaffected have already been killed.

The Five Wounds is Patrimony.


1 comment:

Olaus Ouisconsinensis said...

As far as Passion Offices go, the Lenten Fridays are paired with the Gesima Tuesdays:

--Tuesday after Septuagesima: The Agony in the Garden
--Tuesday after Sexagesima: The Passion
--Tuesday after Quinquagesima, aka Shrove Tuesday: The Holy Face

See here for the first two: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11527a.htm

The Feast of the Holy Face on Shrove Tuesday came only with the reign of H.H., Ven. Pius XII.