Hand Missal History Project

Yes, in 1955 at the Easter Vigil. Unprecedented in the Roman Rite.

The earliest known depiction of the Virgin Mary as a queen (Santa Maria Regina) is a 6th-century palimpsest wall painting located in the ancient church of Santa Maria Antiqua in Rome, Italy. Here the word “palimpsest” means incomplete. That church is in the Roman Forum and beneath the slopes of the Palatine Hill. It is something of a time capsule in that it was ruined and covered over by an earthquake in AD 847, and was more or less been left untouched and buried for over a millennium. It has once been the papal church of Rome (under Pope John VII). Because Santa Maria Antiqua was never redecorated by the baroque aesthetic in later years, it reveals the paleo-Christian aesthetic of the earlier ages of our history. Now excavated, this gives us a glimpse of what Roman churches would have looked like in the first millennium. In looking at these palimpsest frescos therein, one is sometimes looking at multiple frescos at once, as sometimes the outer layer of the latest fresco is seen, and sometimes one or more of the older frescos that are earlier are seen partially beneath, depending upon how many layers of plaster were chipped away. So, it can be a little like looking at three partially completed puzzles one a top another. This church is fifth century, and the fresco of the enthroned Virgin Mary is from the sixth century, and is considered to be the oldest extant image of Mary as a Queen in the world.

I've now been around long enough to know that this is not the first time that this has happened. There was a move in the 20th c. to move books and newspapers to microfilm and microfiche. That process often involved the guillotining, copying, and disposing of books.

Interesting. Mass attendance rates fell more sharply in the years *before and during* Vatican II than in the decades after the council's implementation (the immediate decade after VII was the steepest tho)

From Card. Burke's interview: "one must revisit the historical & liturgical studies covering the years 1965-1969... These matters certainly need to be examined more deeply in light of the archives that are beginning to open up. There is still much work to be done in this regard."

I've finished my latest newspaper/data project! "When's the big day?": The days and times of Catholic wedding masses, 1871-1960 I looked at over 3,000 articles across 30 American Catholic newspapers to tabulate what day of the week and time of day people had their wedding masses. Link below!

De brand in de Notre-Dame in Parijs leidde tot een bijzondere archeologische ontdekking: meer dan 1,000 fragmenten van middeleeuwse sculpturen werden ontdekt tijdens de restauratie, waaronder levensgrote beelden van het oorspronkelijke oksaal uit de 13e eeuw.

Why at a Nuptial Mass the Couple May, and Should, Kneel Inside the Sanctuary dlvr.it/TSWRKf

Wife: what are you watching? Me: