Episode Two in the AIC Seasonal Video series, Lent A.D. 2018, is now available on our YouTube channel. The subjects of Episode Two are other commemorations of Lent (Lenten meals, prayers and music) and the Collects, Epistle and Gospel readings, and suggested seasonal music, for First Sunday in Lent through and including the Fourth Sunday in Lent. I’ve found some additional illustrations, including a stained glass window of St. Paul in East Anglia, England (above, left), to which I applied perspective correction. I used this one because, since all four epistle readings are from the writings of St. Paul, I was running out of images not previously used (either in Episode One or in other AIC Video series). Also in the episode is a Russian Orthodox icon of St. Paul in flowing robes from the 18th C., from the iconostasis at the Church of the Transfiguration, Kizhi Monastery, Karelia, Russia. The music suggestions come from the AIC Bookstore publication, The St. Chrysostom Hymnal, which include hymns either not in the 1940 Hymnal or which are in it but set to different tunes.
Watch the Video. Listen to the Podcast Version of Episode Two
I am already working on Episode Three, which will be the final episode in the series. It will be focused on Passiontide, including the Fifth Sunday in Lent (Passion Sunday), Sixth Sunday in Lent (Palm Sunday) and Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday). The episode, due for release before Passion Sunday, will include many illustrations not commonly seen in the Western Church, including mosaics, frescoes and icons. The multi-part AIC service for Good Friday, In the Cross of Christ I Glory, is already available in Podcast version and in written form in another AIC Bookstore publication, Occasional Services for Anglican Worship (pp. 75-101). The eight podcasts are linked from the Podcast Homilies page. The book is linked from the Virtual Bookstore tab at the bottom on the home page.
The next AIC Seasonal Video series is Easter: From Easter to Ascension, for which I have developed a special graphic featuring a 16th C. icon of the Resurrection.
As always, thank you for your interest in and support of this Internet ministry. Just a reminder, 100% of all book royalties are donated to the AIC and no one associated with the AIC receives any form of compensation. Please consider subscribing to the Blog by clicking “Follow Anglican Internet Church” in the right hand column. You’ll receive notice of each new posting.
If you have not already done so, I urge readers to attend an Ash Wednesday service today and receive the Imposition of Ashes.
May God bless you in all that you do in His Name. Glory be to God for all things! Amen.
Episode Two in the revised 2018 A.D. edition of Epiphany: the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles is now available both on our YouTube channel and through the episode links on the Digital Library page. The focus of Episode Two has been changed since last week’s blog post. The topics are Epiphany Eve, Epiphany (Day) and the First Sunday after Epiphany, including appropriate Scripture readings from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the Proper for the Feast, the timeline of how and when St. Matthew’s “wise men” acquired a number and names, and seasonal music for Epiphany in The St. Chrysostom Hymnal (now available in a single volume paperback edition).
What a busy week! Phone conversations and site visits with clients, in town and out of town, and meeting with a potential singer/chanter for The War on Christianity series Episode Six and Episode Seven. Plus putting up the family Christmas tree after Church on Sunday – and then nearly all day Monday as well. But it was truly worth it on all fronts!
The War on Christianity series has been reorganized, with the addition of at least two and possible three new episodes that will provide a better bridge between Episode One, which examined the nature of the threat using actual examples of violence from around the world in A.D. 2016 and 2017, and the teaching episodes intended to offer self-defense through knowledge of Church doctrine and through the actual application of traditional teachings.
Episode Thirty-one, the last episode in the Second Series, celebrates St. Catherine of Alexandria, formerly a favorite saint but in the last 300 or so years relegated to near fictional status. Among the saints of the early 2nd millennium, largely as the result of the Crusades in the Holy Land and the Western discovery of her story, she was widely popular. Her name endures today in various colleges, islands, and mountain ranges named in her honor. A strong tradition in the Eastern Church is that her remains are interred at the Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, built in the 6th C. under orders by, and sponsorship of, Emperor Justinian. There are many schools named after her, including St. Catherine’s here in Richmond, Va. She is the Patron Saint of Virgins and all young women. She met her death by beheading around 305 A.D. The illustration is a detail in tempera and gilt on velum of the death of St. Catherine which I extracted from a larger work from the Menologion of Basil II, a form of service book with a Synaxarion of over 400 martyrs prepared for the incumbent Archbishop of Constantinople in the late 10th C. The original is in the Vatican Library. The illustration and the larger work from which it was extracted are included in the video.
The episode features a short introduction placing the events in the historical context of the history of the Church of England from the 1620s through the accession of Elizabeth, with one picture each of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. After that is a brief biography of Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer. The very popular work, commonly called John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs but officially titled Acts and Monuments, is the source for many of the illustrations of the trial and executions. I’ve left the gruesome details out of this Blog entry, instead posting the attached colorized illustration by Joseph Martin Kronheim of Plate V, Latimer Before the Council, taken from an 1887 A.D. edition of Foxe’s famous work
St. Francis of Assisi, celebrated on October 4th (Episode Twenty-five), is one of the most popular, or at least one whose name is widely recognized, among the Western Church saints. No matter what you think about him, you can say without reservation that he was unique. He anticipated by many centuries the environmentalist movement, wrote a poem which was turned into a hymn in the 20th C. in the Church of England tradition, (All Creatures of Our God and King. trans. William R. Draper, 1925 A.D.; and he can be found in many gardens, both public and private, in the form of a diminutive statue. I’m unconvinced that he would have appreciated becoming a small garden ornament! The illustration is the central detail I extracted from a larger work showing scenes in his life. The source provided no details about either the artists, but I suspect it was not long after St. Francis’ lifetime, probably in the 13th C St. Francis’ poem is the basis for Hymn No. 777 in the AIC Bookstore publication, The St. Chrysostom Hymnal, in which Draper’s translation is set to the arrangement of the German/Lutheran hymn, Lasst uns erfreuen. He lives on in the memory of the Western Church in the Blessing of the Animals service, usually celebrated on his feast day in October each year.
recognition than he receives in the modern world. He is called “the blessed” because the modern Anglican world no longer designates faithful Christians as “saints,” probably thinking it is too Roman Catholic. Such denial of the right to celebrate the men and women who have done remarkable work in the service of the Lord and of the Church is one of those regrettable shortcomings of the modern Western Church. William Tynedale, pursued all across Europe until he was betrayed by a friend, was strangled, then burned at the state in Belgium on October 6th, 1536 A.D. for producing his New Testament in the English language, a violation of edicts of the Bishop of Rome. The identity of his persecutors and executioners is long gone from human memory, but the work of the Blessed William Tynedale lives on in the King James Version and New King James Versions of the Bible, which are largely based upon his pioneering translations of both the Old and New Testaments. Rather than post the gruesome depiction of his death, which is in the video, I post here Page One from Chapter 1 of his Gospel of St. John from either the 1525 or 1526 A;D. edition of his New Testament. Many people, myself included, believe he deserves the credit that William Shakespeare generally receives for the creation of the English language. His pioneering translation was adapted by his associate Miles Coverdale for the Great Bible of 1539 A.D. the first complete Bible in the English language (with credit also due to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who purchased copies for placement in all the churches of the Church of England, a goal ever achieved in his lifetime) and, a half-century later, without a word of recognition, provides the vast majority of the wording in the King James Version and its successor, the New King James Version. For more on which words and phrases were unique to the Blessed William Tynedale watch the video or listen to the Podcast. You’ll probably be surprised to learn how much of the Bible you know is the result of the Blessed William Tynedale’s creation of English prose phrasing.
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