Lamentations

St Paul's Cathedral

Good Friday in London was a chilly April day (3 degrees C). At 10 am I sat under the lofty and ornate dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, undoubtedly one of the Christian world’s most awe-inspiring architectural edifices. Outside, the tents of the Occupy Movement had been long since tidied away. During the next hour the Choir and Ministers of St Paul’s would celebrate a ritual they entitled ‘Mattins and The Litany in Procession’.

Of course, since it’s Good Friday, I can’t expect this to be upbeat. Christ doesn’t rise until Sunday. Today is about rituals remembering his death. The solemn and, frankly, visceral lamentations were other-worldly and a bit unnerving. The Choir was composed solely of male voices (or was there one lone woman?) - half of them boy trebles. These little chaps were dressed in black cassocks relieved by whiter-than-white ruffles around their throats. Some of them were so small they could barely peek above the bookrests in the choir stalls. Their voices were heavenly. One small soloist, in particular, has a voice you wouldn’t believe could come from a human throat. I’m trying to avoid the cliche “angelic”, but it’s difficult.

And so we come to The Lamentation. The Order of Service tells me that the words are from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and the beautiful music - sung unaccompanied like all the day’s choral music - is by one Edward Bairstow (1874 - 1946). Now I can’t say that I have previously taken much notice of Jeremiah, but he seems to have been both very distraught and at the same time a very talented poet. Note these moving lines that the angelic little boys sang:

How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people:
how is she become as a widow!
She that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces:
how is she become a tributary!
She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks:
among all her lovers, she hath none to comfort her...

It is from Jeremiah’s sad harangues - mostly about the Babylonians defeating the Jewish people - that we have inherited the word “jeremiad”, meaning "a lamentation; mournful complaint" or "a cautionary or angry harangue."

Jeremiah, from Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah

Waiting for the noon bells.

I was so impressed with the Mattins that I came back for more, though I hadn’t intended to. In the afternoon St Paul’s moved on to ‘The Three Hours: The Solemn Liturgy of Good Friday’. The rituals began at noon as the bells tolled (and the London tour buses rolled by). The Ministers hauled a rough wooden cross from the forecourt, up the steps of the cathedral and through the great West Door, which is opened only on such special occasions. The Choir processed and sang, and the people streamed in after them, managing to fill most of the 2,500 chairs in the nave. The centrepiece of the first hour was - I can only call it this - a ‘musical re-enactment’ of Christ’s Passion, taken from John’s Gospel. Three singing clergy played Narrator (baritone), Pontius Pilate (tenor) and Christ (a bass). The Choir played the role of the crowd, the soldiers and the priests baying for the crucifixion. It was extremely eerie and extremely moving. I can’t think why someone hasn’t used this story in an opera - all the elements are there. The music was by Tomás Luis de Victoria (1548-1611).



Having briefly got ourselves to the New Testament (where, let’s face it, all the Easter action is) we then went back to the Psalms and spent and hour and a half in contemplation, reading, and a little Bach on the organ. Then it was time for the Choir to return, and they helped us sing that old favourite from Alexander’s Hymnal:

There is a green hill far away,
Without a city wall...

It made me think of my visit to the Christian Quarter in Old Jerusalem, where Calvary is claimed to be a small and unlikely rock now inside a gloomy cathedral. It has a small cavity where the cross is said to have perched, and pilgrims jostle to kiss it. It’s worlds apart from a ‘green hill far away’ and in my opinion rather a tall story, but I digress.

Interior of St Paul's
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Londres_-_Catedral_de_Saint_Paul_-_Interior.JPG

St Paul's inside is a stunningly beautiful space. As Alain de Botton acknowledges in his new book "Religion for Atheists":

In certain cathedrals that are vast in scale or hewn out of massive, antique-looking stones...we may feel that we are being introduced, with unusual and beguiling grace, to a not unpleasant sense of our own insignificance.

But I digress again...it was that kind of afternoon, one for thought...

The Choir next led ‘The Reproaches’, and these rivalled Jeremiah’s Lamentations for agony and angst. The Order of Service doesn’t tell me where the words come from, but the music used was fairly recently composed by one John Sanders (1933 - 2003). This is a sample:

O my people, what have I done to you?
How have I offended you? Answer me! 

I led you out of Egypt, from slavery to freedom,
but you led your Saviour to the cross... 

I opened the sea before you,
but you opened my side with a spear.
I led you on your way in a pillar of cloud,
but you led me to Pilate’s court...

...and more of the same, exquisitely sung by the men and boys.

Well, since this is a generally timid blog, and the prayers later on did include a wish for better understanding between Jewish and Christian people, I won’t discuss the fairly obvious issues raised by ‘The Reproaches’, which I am sure are arguably universal but pretty clearly aren’t.

The services ended with the story of Joseph of Arimathea asking for the body of Jesus and placing it in a tomb. And so we wait for the happy news on Sunday morning....

At this time last year I was in the small Sicilian town of Trapani, watching agog the endless procession of effigies and dirge-playing bands with which the Sicilians of that town mark the Easter Passion. I have to say that the respectable clergy of St Paul’s Cathedral manage a similarly moving ritual for Good Friday.

St Paul's Cathedral, London

Misteri di Trapani

Good Friday, Trapani, Sicily

One of the statues...very sad scenes.

It is a little late to wish you Buona Pasqua, but better late than never. I spent Good Friday this year in the towns of Trapani and Marsala in Western Sicily. All over southern Italy, towns large and small hold processions through the streets, usually bearing a life-sized figure of Christ in one of the stages of his Easter passion (the processions have Spanish origins and similar procession occur there too). It is community occasion, but also a funeral procession, and a deeply serious thing for the people. In Sicily, they do dark and tragic very well, and nowhere is this more evident than in their Good Friday processions. In Trapani, they have been doing their “Procession of the Mysteries” – Misteri di Trapani – since at least 1612.

Another band.

Trapani’s is a particularly famous procession, which lasts for 24 hours. Yes, you read right – from 2 pm on Holy Friday until 2 pm on Easter Saturday. Much as I knew you would want a full report of this event, I regret that I wasn’t up to staying for the whole 24 hours. I did arrive early enough in the proceedings to snag a position relatively close to the front of the crowd lining the barriers around a very small square in front of one of Old Trapani’s many churches, the Church of the Purgatorio. This is where the Easter statues spend the year, before they come forth for their annual airing, atop platforms decorated with fresh flowers, candles, ribbons and lace, and carried by teams of men. We in the crowd waited patiently while the local dignitaries assembled, the mayor donned his red, white and green sash, the head bishop arrived in his hot pink outfit, various ecclesiastical persons fluttered about in white frocks, and the local TV cameras waited on scaffolds. Eventually the bishop made a speech, a band formed up, and we had kick-off. The band wailed out a funeral dirge, like something out of ‘The Godfather’, various versions of which were to echo around the streets of Old Trapani for the next 24 hours.

Acolytes.

I watched, quite transfixed, as the first of the statues emerged from the church porch, inched over to one of the ecclesiastical gents, paused for a blessing, then slowly processed off down a side street. Each statue was not only carried by a large entourage of men, but was also accompanied by its own 40 or 50 piece band, a bevy of strange religious acolytes (children in red Klu Klux Klan hoods, young girls carrying sheathes of roses, little children with golden wings, serious boys with candles on poles), and – importantly – representatives of various town guilds carrying the banners and insignia of their Guild. It is said that the statues were granted in trust, by deeds, by the Brotherhood of St. Michael the Archangel, which instituted the rite in the late 16th century, to the members of the local Guilds in exchange for the promise to carry them during the passion procession every Good Friday. And a promise made is a promise kept, in Sicily.

Most impressive of all were the men carrying the statues. Each wore a suitably solemn expression, most were in suits and ties, or the uniforms of their guilds. There were young men and old men, all with a bowed-down stance and a long 24 hours ahead.

A serious business.

I watched for about an hour and a half, and saw five or six of the statues emerge. For each one, a new group of acolytes assembled, and a new band appeared (where all these people were marshalled remains a wonder). I was thinking that it might be time to move on, that perhaps most of the statues had now emerged, when a conversation in the crowd around me revealed that there are in fact twenty of them. Twenty! By my reckoning, it would take about six hours for them all to emerge and join the procession. I retired for a well-earned gelato.

'The littlest musician.'

A closer inspection...

It is always difficult to see much from amongst a crowd, but I certainly got a good dose of atmosphere, if no very good photos. The dirge-like band music haunts me still. But by good fortune (rather than good management) I had that morning happened upon another of Trapani’s churches, Sant’Agostino, a 14^th century church of the Knights Templar (the only building left in Sicily that is associated with the order). It was badly bombed in WWII, but on this particular Good Friday its claim to fame was that it housed an exhibition of the very wood, straw and canvas statues that are carried in the Easter parade. I was thus able to inspect some of these rather crude but uncannily life-like figures up close. They are traditionally made of light materials so that they are not too heavy to be carried all day.

There are some wonderful photographs of the Misteri di Trapani on this site.

Marsala's two statues, on the advertising poster.

A sorrowful sight.

Later in the day, I found myself on the sidewalks of Old Marsala, having successfully negotiated the parking question again (aren’t cars a pest when you want to leave them?) Here the locals didn’t try to compete with their close neighbour’s famous parade on the question of quantity. They went for quality. The parade here was just reaching the main street at about 4 pm (it too goes on for hours). Various members of various congregations were marching in matching purple (“if there’s purple, someone dies”, as we learnt a couple of blog posts ago); there were some dirge-like intonations and readings over a tinny loudspeaker, one band (only one!)...and two statues. I didn’t notice the dead Christ at first, because he was carried lying down. All attention was on the Madonna – carried high, and with her own purple velvet canopy carried aloft behind her.

And what Madonna she was! The artist had created an epitome of agony. All along the street, as she was carried past, grown men had tears in their eyes, everyone bent their heads and crossed themselves piously, an old lady watching from her balcony wept openly. I was a little aghast. The Madonna had a silver sword piercing her heart! Made the hairs stand up on the nape of my neck, I must say. Very Sicilian – the agony and hardship of all those centuries of oppression transmogrified into their religious observance.

Sad spectator, Marsala.

I wasn’t sure if I would be able to get any dinner in Marsala that evening. Everyone was so sad and lachrymose. But in the end, Marsala came through, with the fresh fish I by now demanded. Hopefully everyone would cheer up on Easter Sunday.

The Itinerario for the Trapani parade...24 hours

Here is quite a long clip of the parade in Trapani, very well filmed. Listen to a little to get the flavour of the dirge and the seriousness, and the involvement of the whole community in this centuries-old ritual.