And Now...

Two random articles from E.G. Atchley's Ordo Romanus Primus that might be of some interest:

ii. Lights.

The basilicas and churches were illuminated when need was with lamps and candles, of which we have very frequent mention in the Liber Pontificalis and elsewhere. The numerous gifts, for example, recorded in the Life of St. Silvester, which although probably of later date than the time of Constantine yet belong to an early period, include large lamps in which scented oils burned, heavy silver candelabra for the nave of the Lateran Basilica, and seven bronze candlesticks before the altar in the same; and in the time of Innocent I there was said to be twenty brazen candelabra in the nave of the church of SS. Gervase and Protase, each weighing forty pounds. Later on, Pope Leo III ordained that on Sundays and festivals lights should be set on either side of the lectern during the reading of the lessons.
Prudentius makes the Prefect of the City inquire of St. Laurence for the silver scyphi in which the sacred blood was held, and for the golden candlesticks in which the tapers were set at their nocturnal meetings. Paulinus of Nola (θ 431) describes the lights in his basilica of St. Felix at the festival in the following lines:

'Now the golden doors are adorned with curtains all snow-white,
Thickly crowned with lamps the altars are brilliantly shining:
Lights are burning, and give forth the scent of the waxen papyrus,
Night and day they shine: thus night with the splendour of daylight
Blazes, and day itself, made bright with heavenly beauty,
Shines yet brighter, its light by lamps innumerable doubled.'

So, in another poem on the same subject, he mentions tapers fixed to the pillars of the church, giving forth scented odours, and lamps hanging by brazen chains in the spaces between them. These he compares to a tree full of branches, bearing little glass vessels at the end like fruit in which the lights burn: the whole candelabrum, when lit, rivalling the crowd of stars with its numerous flames.
We have got beyond mere lighting for necessity here, for the lamps were lit by day as well as by night at the festival of St. Felix: the lights are become signs of rejoicing, a common practice amongst most nations of antiquity. The well-known lines of Juvenal will suffice to recall the custom of pagan Rome:

'All things are gay: my doorway now is decked with tall branches,
And is keeping the feast with lanterns lit in the morning.'

St. Paulinus also mentions lamps (lychni) hanging by brazen chains in the basilica of St. Felix. And in the Life of Pope Hilarus we read of four golden lamps burning before the Confession in the Oratory of the Holy Cross, and ten silver candelabra hanging before the altar of the Lateran Basilica. Belisarius is recorded, in the Life of Pope Vigilius, to have offered of the spoils of the Vandals two large silver-gilt candlesticks, which stood (at the time when the biographer wrote) before the body of blessed Peter in the Vatican Basilica. There was also a branched candelabrum hanging by golden chains in the covered space (pergula) before the same Confession, given in the time of Leo III; this pope also ordained that two lamps should burn every night before the altar in the same Basilica. Pope Paschal caused them to burn by day as well as by night.

iii. Incense.

From lights to incense is but a step. The list of gifts recorded in the Liber Pontificalis under St. Silvester mentions Donum aromaticum ante altaria, after the censers. As the latter weighed thirty pounds, the passage may mean that the aromatics were burned in censers hung before the altar of the Lateran Basilica. Boniface I (418-422) is said to have ordained that no woman or man, save only a minister, should burn incense (incensum poneret). We do not meet with censers in the Liber Pontificalis before the time of Sixtus III (432-440), except in the Life of Silvester; and these latter, as was mentioned before, seem to belong rather to the time of Hilarus.
In the church of SS. Marcellinus and Peter aromatics were burned before the relics of the patron saints who were buried therein, according to the compiler of the Life of St. Silvester. Later on, Pope Sergius (687-701) hung a golden censer, with columns and a cover, before the images of St. Peter in the Vatican Basilica, 'in which incense and the odour of sweetness were put while mass was being celebrated, on festivals.' We find a similar practice at Cremona in 666, and in England under Theodore (668-690). Leo III (795-816) set up a golden censer before the vestibule of the altar in the same basilica, which weighed seventeen pounds. In the Life of Leo IV (847-855) we are told of a censer with a hanging cup (canthara) at the basilica of the Four Crowned Martyrs.
We have already dealt with the ceremonial use of incense in the pope's procession to the altar, and the deacon's procession to the ambo to read the gospel. Ordo I also mentions that the sexton and the assistant presbyter of the
stational church welcomed the pope with incense on his arrival there.
Incense was only used in the Roman rite at these two liturgical moments, save the occasional use in some basilicas of a hanging censer, burning all through the service, before some altar or image. When Amalar of Metz went to Rome for the furtherance of his liturgical studies, he found that the Ordo Romanus, by which he had set such store, had misled him in several particulars, which he recorded in the second preface to his book on the Ecclesiastical Offices. There he tells us that the Romans did not offer incense at the altar after the gospel; and there is no reference to any such practice in Ordo I, although the Gallicanized Ordo II directs it to be done.

The Minor, Trivial Biblical Stuff, Part 2: the Kapporet (aka Mercyseat)

Out of all the items described within the Bible, one of the most popular is the Ark of the Covenant. Indiana Jones famously summed it all up; it is "the chest the Hebrews used to carry the Ten Commandments around in." In the Bible, God gives Moses specific instructions on how to construct this box:

And they shall make a chest of shittim (acacia) wood: two cubits and a half its length, and a cubit and a half its breadth, and a cubit and a half its height; and you shall overlay it with pure gold, inside and out shall you overlay it, and shall make on it a zer (traditionally 'crown'; most modern translations 'molding') of gold all around. And you shall cast four rings of gold for it and put them on its four feet, even two rings on one side of it and two rings on the second side. And you shall make poles of shittim wood and overlay them with gold, and you shall put these poles into the rings on the sides of the chest, to carry the ark with them. In the rings of the chest shall be the poles; they shall not be removed from it. And you shall put in the chest the testimony which I will give you.

The text then goes on to describe an item usually thought of as the Ark's lid, called in Hebrew kapporet, traditionally called the mercy-seat (Exodus 25:17-20):

And you shall make a kapporet of pure gold: two cubits and a half its length, and a cubit and a half its breadth; and you shall make two kheruvim of gold, of beaten work you shall make them at the two ends of the kapporet; and make one kheruv at the end on this side, and one kheruv at the end on that; from the kapporet you shall make the keruvim on its two ends. And the kheruvim shall stretch out their wings upward, overshadowing (sokhekhim; other possible renderings are 'covering', 'screening', 'hedging') the kapporet with their wings, and their faces a man to his brother - towards the kapporet the faces of the kheruvim shall be.

January 1 - The Circumcision of Christ and Mary, Mother of God (the Octave of Christmas)

The propers of the feast (without the readings), from the Vatican Gelasian Sacramentary, aka Old Gelasian (Vatican, Bibliotheca Apostolica, Reg. lat. 316/Paris, B.N., 7193, 41-56):

ITEM IN OCTABAS DOMINI. KALENDAS IANUARIAS
(Liber I.VIIII)

Deus qui bonis nati saluatoris diem celebrare concedis octauum, fac, quaesumus, nos esse perpetua diuinitate munere, cuius sumus carnali conmercio reparati: per.

Omnipotens sempiterne deus, qui unigenito tuo nouam creaturam nos tibi esse fecisti, custodi opera misericordiae tuae et ab omnibus nos maculis uetustatis emunda, ut per auxilium gratiae tuae in illius inueniamur forma, in quo tecum est nostra substantia: per.

(secreta) Praesta, quaesumus, domine, ut per hanc munera, qui domini Iesu Christi arcanae natiuitatis mysterio gerimus, purificate mentes intellegentiam consequamur: per dominum.

Uere dignum: per Christum dominum nostrum. Cuius hodie octauas nati celebrantes tua, domine, mirabilia ueneramur, quia qui peperit, et mater et uirgo est; qui natus est, et infans et deus est. Merito caeli locuti Sunt, angeli gratulati, pastores laetati, magi mutati, regis turbati, paruoli gloriosa passione coronati. Lacta, mater, cybum nostrum, lacta panem de caelo uenientem, in praesepio positum uelut piorum cybaria iumentorum. Illic namque agnouit bos possessorem suum et asinus praesepium domini sui, circumcisio scilicet et praeputium. Quod etiam saluator et dominus noster a Symione susceptus in templo plenissimae dignatus est adimplere. Et ideo cum angelis et archangelis.

(post communionem) Praesta, quaesumus, domine, ut guod saluatoris nostri iterata solempnitate percipimus, perpetuae nobis redemptionis conferat medicinam: per.

(ad populum) Omnipotens sempiterne deus, qui tuae mensae participes a diabolico iubes abstinere conuiuio, da, quaesumus, plebi tuae, ut gustum mortiferae profanitatis abiecto puris mentibus ad aepulas aeternae salutis accedat: per.

From the Angoulême Sacramentary (B.N. Lat. 816):

XII. KALENDAS IANVARII. OCTABAS DOMINI AD SANCTAM MARIAM
(Liber I. VIIII)

Deus qui bonis nati saluatoris diem celebrare concedis octauum, fac, quaesumus, nos esse perpetua diuinitate munere, cuius sumus carnali conmercio reparati: per.

Omnipotens sempiterne deus, qui unigenito tuo nouam creaturam nos tibi esse fecisti, custodi opera misericordiae tuae et ab omnibus nos maculis uetustatis emunda, ut per auxilium gratiae tuae in illius inueniamur forma, in quo tecum est nostra substantia: per.

(secreta) Praesta, quaesumus, domine, ut per hanc munera, qui domini Iesu Christi arcanae natiuitatis mysterio gerimus, purificate mentes intellegentiam consequamur: per dominum.

Uere dignum: per Christum dominum nostrum. Cuius hodie octauas nati celebrantes tua, domine, mirabilia ueneramur, quia qui peperit, et mater et uirgo est; qui natus est, et infans et deus est. Merito caeli locuti Sunt, angeli gratulati, pastores laetati, magi mutati, regis turbati, paruoli gloriosa passione coronati. Lacta, mater, cybum nostrum, lacta panem de caelo uenientem, in praesepio positum uelut piorum cybaria iumentorum. Illic namque agnouit bos possessorem suum et asinus praesepium domini sui, circumcisio scilicet et praeputium. Quod etiam saluator et dominus noster a Symione susceptus in templo plenissimae dignatus est adimplere. Et ideo cum angelis et archangelis.

(post communionem) Praesta, quaesumus, domine, ut guod saluatoris nostri iterata solempnitate percipimus, perpetuae nobis redemptionis conferat medicinam: per.

(ad populum) Omnipotens sempiterne deus, qui tuae mensae participes a diabolico iubes abstinere conuiuio, da, quaesumus, plebi tuae, ut gustum mortiferae profanitatis abiecto puris mentibus ad aepulas aeternae salutis accedat: per.

From the Cambrai Hadrianum (Bibl. Municipale MS 164):

MENSE IANUARIO IN OCTABAS DOMINI AD SANCTAM MARIAM AD MARTYRES

Deus, qui salutis aeternae beatae mariae virginitate fecunda humano generi praemia praestitisti, tribue quaesumus, ut ipsam pro nobis intercedere sentiamus, per quam meruimus auctorem vitae suscipere. Per dominum.

Super oblata. Muneribus nostris quaesumus, domine, precibusque susceptis, et caelestibus nos munda mysteriis et clementer exaudi. Per dominum.

Ad completa. Haec nos communio domine purget a crimine, et caelestibus remediis faciat esse consortes. Per.

From the 1962 Missale Romanum:

IN OCTAVA NATIVITATIS DOMINI
I classis
Statio ad S. Mariam trans Tiberim

Oratio: Deus, qui salutis aeternae, beatae Mariae virginitate fecunda, humano generi praemia praestitisti: tribue, quaesumus; ut ipsam pro nobis intercedere sentiamus, per quam meruimus auctorem vitae suscipere, Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, Filium tuum: Qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate.

Secreta: Muneribus nostris, qusesumus, Domine, precibusque susceptis: et caelestibus nos munda mysteriis, et clementer exaudi. Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum.

(Praefatio et Communicantes de Nativitate)

Postcommunio: Haec nos communio, Domine, purget a crimine: et, intercedente beata Virgine Dei Genetrice Maria, caelestis remedii faciat esse consortes. Per eundem Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, Filium tuum: Qui tecum vivitet regnat in unitate.

From the 2002 Missale Romanum:

SOLLEMNITAS SANCTAE DEI GENITRICIS MARIAE IN OCTAVA NATIVITATIS DOMINI
Deus, qui salutis aeternae, beatae Mariae virginitate fecunda, humano generi praemia praestitisti, tribue, quaesumus, ut ipsam pro nobis intercedere sentiamus, per quam meruimus Filium tuum auctorem vitae suscipere...

Super Oblata: Deus, qui bona cuncta inchoas benignus et perficis, da nobis, de sollemnitate sanctae Dei Genetricis laetantibus, sicut de initiis tuae gratiae gloriamur, ita de perfectione gaudere.

Postcommunio: Sumpsimus, Domine, laeti sacramenta caelestia: praesta, quaesumus, ut ad vitam nobis proficient sempiternam, qui beatam semper Virginem Mariam Filii tui Genetricem et Ecclesiae Matrem profiteri gloriamur...