Categories: uncategorized
Date: 15 February 2006 09:25:55
One of the books I'm reading at the moment is Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars -- which fellow blogger Philippa got for free from her professor! (I paid $34.95 for mine -- though I'm not complaining: it's rather large -- around 600 pages excluding references and index -- and very good). The book details and illustrates English lay people's experiences of religion just before the Reformation and clearly shows that it was not all decay and decadence, but there was a great thriving of traditions and learning -- often coming from the laity.
I'm currently reading a chapter on Primers, or Book of Hours, and their use by religious and laity, though the laity feature more prominently. Duffy makes his own translation of a prayer, which I love:
I adore you, Lord Jesus Christ, hanging upon the Cross, and bearing on your head a crown of thorns: I beseech you, Lord Jesus Christ, that your cross may free me from the avenging Angel.I adore you, Lord Jesus Christ, wounded upon the Cross, drinking vinegar and gall: I beseech you, Lord Jesus Christ, that your wounds may be my remedy.
I adore you, Lord Jesus Christ, placed in the tomb, laid in myrrh and spices: I beseech you, Lord Jesus Christ, that your death may be my life.
I adore you, Lord Jesus Christ, descending into hell, liberating the captives: I beseech you, never let me enter there.
I adore you, Lord Jesus Christ, rising from the dead, ascending into heaven and sitting on the right hand of the Father: have mercy on me, I beseech you.
O Lord Jesus Christ, the good shepherd, preserve the righteous, make righteous the sinners, have mercy on all the faithful: and be gracious to me, a sinner.
O Lord Jesus Christ, I ask you for the sake of that most bitter suffering which you bore for my sake upon the cross, and above all when your most noble soul left your most holy body: have mercy on my soul at its departing. Amen.
We adore you O Christ and we bless you,
Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.
Lord hear my prayer.
And let my cry come unto you.The Prayer:
O most kindly Lord Jesus Christ: turn upon me, a miserable sinner, those eyes of mercy with which you beheld Peter in Caiaphas' court, and Mary Magdalene at the banquet, and the thief on the gibbet of the cross: and grant that with blessed Peter I may worthily lament my sins, with Mary Magdalene may perfectly serve you, and with the thief may behold you eternally in heaven. Who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars, 2005, pp 239-40