Tea at Trianon: History of the Gloria

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, December 22, 2019

History of the Gloria

From Aleteia:

The initial words of the Gloria are straight from the Bible and part of an angelic hymn to God on that first Christmas night.

Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. (Luke 2:14)
However, after that line everything else was composed separately. Who composed it? There is no known author, but it can be traced back all the way to the third century. According to Joseph A. Jungmann in The Mass of the Roman Rite, “The Gloria, like the Kyrie, was not created originally for the liturgy of the Mass. It is an heirloom from the treasure of ancient Church hymns, a precious remnant of a literature now almost buried but once certainly very rich.”

Jungmann goes on to explain how the additional lines of the Gloria were part of a “literature of songs … written in the early Church in imitation of the biblical lyrics, especially the Psalms.” Furthermore, these early hymns were called psalmi idiotici, “psalms by private persons” and were not written for any particular liturgical use. Whoever wrote it was likely thinking of only one thing: praising God. At first it was used in the East as a a morning hymn in the Little Hours of the Divine Office and later translated into Latin, according to tradition, by St. Hilary of Poitiers. Similarly it was initially used as a general hymn of thanksgiving and praise used outside of the main liturgical events.

Not surprisingly, one of the first instances of its use during the Mass was at the Mass of Christmas night, and then later it was added to Sundays and feasts of martyrs. As the centuries went by this particular hymn became more and more a central part of the Mass and was obligatory on certain days by the 5th century. (Read more.)