Liturgical Dance in the 16th Century
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    I found this interesting note in an edition of something called St. James Magazine, from London, 1862. Can anyone fill in any of the details?

    Thanks.

    Kenneth
    dancing.JPG
    536 x 259 - 55K
    Thanked by 1Adam Wood
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    Somehow, this is quite believable, even not overly surprising, but overly disappointing.
    Thanked by 6Adam Wood amindthatsuits CHGiffen Ben francis eft94530
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    More depressingly, I found this after looking up the sarabande, which was apparently the dance performed. Wikipedia says "including clerics," but I haven't tracked that down. It was apparently a dance from Central America that caught on in Spain rather shortly after the conquest. It was considered risque.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    Should we flatter ourselves that our age is unique in the exhibition of liturgical bizarritry, impropriety, and just plain abuse and irreverence (not to mention depravity)? Probably not. Humans are, always have been, and always will be human. Some more 'human' than others. (And yes, the Sarabande was indeed risqué, even lewd and lascivious.)

    But, um, one will never see this done at Walsingham.
    Thanked by 3Ben amindthatsuits eft94530
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:9.

    Thanked by 3amindthatsuits M. Jackson Osborn StimsonInRehab
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Very true, Jackson, a point I make over and over: admitting the horrors of the past is essential to (1) understanding the Doctrine of Infallibility correctly, because it is the monstrous Popes who prove that it is true, and (2) charity for our fellow Catholics now.

    And CharlesW provides the mot juste, as always.

    Kenneth
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • Andris Amolins
    Posts: 154
    The article says: "the old custom in the cathedral of Toledo". So it probably has originated in the Mozarabic rite and before the expeditions to the Americas.
  • PLTT
    Posts: 150
    It is still done - search on Youtube for "Los Seises" and you will get a series of videos of the two main occasions (Corpus Christi and the Immaculate Conception).
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415


  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    search on Youtube for "Los Seises" and...

    ...WAT
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,216
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4JkpnZPQ00
    Thanked by 1eft94530
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    i saw the video. My reaction was...

    WAT
    Thanked by 1ryand
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    Do those guys know how to rock, or what?

    Thanked by 1amindthatsuits
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,093
    Spanish Catholic culture is not that of northern European Catholics, but aside from Italian-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, American Catholic culture tends to be shocked at the many flavors of Catholicism. This reminds of the following:

    "The Discalced Carmelites arrived in France at the beginning of the seventeenth century, having overcome formidable political and cultural obstacles to their immigration. Among the Spanish sisters who came to France were several who had been close companions of Saint Teresa of Jesus herself, including Anne of Jesus and Anne of Saint Bartholomew. They were also formed in the spiritual life by Saint John of the Cross. They thus transplanted the very flower of Spanish Golden Age culture, with all its Baroque and militantly Counter-Reformation conventions, to a France which was already a hotbed of pietism. It was a meeting of two drastically different cultures. The French novices are said to have been astonished when Mother Anne of Jesus danced in the choir."

    http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/MARCOMP.htm
    Thanked by 2Andris Amolins amindthatsuits
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    Different cultures, different practices, so nothing new there. Much better than what I have seen of "liturgical dance" in other places. The Spanish dancers were fully clothed, not pretending to be ballerinas, and were not far too old to hide bags and sags under the leotards.
    Thanked by 1amindthatsuits
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,093
    The red & gold colors of the livery of the dancers is a legacy of the those of ruling houses of Barcelona-Navarra-Provence-Aragon et cet. (eventually to Spain) going waaaay back....
    Thanked by 1amindthatsuits
  • BruceL
    Posts: 1,072
    Consider me SHOCKED that the Anglophiles here think the Mediterraneans among us are decadent! ;-O
    Thanked by 5Liam amindthatsuits CHGiffen CharlesW JL
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    Andris Amolins and PLTT: two separate issues.

    1) Where did the practice of dancing come from?
    2) What particular dance? I did not start with "liturgical dance of the Mozarabic Rite." I started with "what is a sarabande," which was (as Jackson clarified) a popular and risque dance from Central America that somehow made it to the Choirs of Spain.

    Apply, as you see fit, to the general use of stringed instruments vs.particular songs played on those instruments.

    But the clarification on the general use is most enlightening. I find way too much of "this has never, ever been done" in comments on the Liturgy. While I myself am not going to ever recommend it here, knowing what completely different things have been done greatly improves the conversation and assists with the charity and mercy that should be at the center of our conversations about something so important as the Mass.

    Kenneth
    Thanked by 2CharlesW eft94530
  • francis
    Posts: 10,825
    time out from Mass... let's have some entertainment! In the USA we tend to have TV talk shows as the model for Mass... or maybe, American Idol. Gosh, that reminds me of the first commandment... how does that go again?
    Thanked by 3CharlesW M. Jackson Osborn eft94530
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    The accounts discuss how even priests were involved way back when, so I wonder if what is shown in this video is not something of a revival being used to involve the very young. I would bet in the old days at least the retainers, if not the college-age children, of the ruling classes pressed their right to do it. I have seen things like this here--yes, the leotards and age thing is distracting--but I have seen things involving children like this here, and it was not scandalous.
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    And I believe--but this would be ancient history; i mean in my life-but I seem to recall accounts of such "enculturation" throughout the Americas. I know that the priest who had so much to do with my conversation was in Paraguay in the '60s before any changes, and he recounted things--things he thought were very blessed--that had little to do with the Catholicism of his native Ireland. In Africa in the 1950s, so very much under the old Rite, my mother was stationed with the State Dept.Even though her family had belonged to the very church where Jonathan Edwards preached in Northampton and was thoroughly Protestant, she admired how the Catholics let the Africans add their local customs.

    Kenneth
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,799
    Antient liturgical dance crops up in a book or two that I've reviewed here.
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    I know this may seem odd, but color me relieved when the urchins donned their hats.
    I went to Mass and a dance recital burst out. Like going to a hockey game....
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,232
    that our age is unique in the exhibition of liturgical bizarritry, impropriety, and just plain abuse and irreverence


    Pick up Mgr Hayburn's book, in which multiple Popes wrote (near-exactly) the same letter on sacred music over several centuries. We are certainly not the first, won't be the last.

    There is good news!!!! Time in Purgatory will be reduced for us who are forced to listen to this stuff!!
    Thanked by 1eft94530
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    WAS IT FUNNY-HATTED BOYS DANCE-WALKING IN 19TH CENTURY RUSSIA?!
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,093
    Btw, they take the Immaculada's livery, as it were, on 8 December:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnxmWSf-OPs

    PS: if you've never seen the Retablo Mayor of that cathedral (it's only 20 meters tall; Toledo's is notably taller, but not nearly as gilt):

    http://c8.alamy.com/comp/C9D8HR/el-retablo-mayor-de-la-catedral-de-sevilla-carved-gold-piece-altar-C9D8HR.jpg
  • amindthatsuits
    Posts: 860
    This has been very informative. Richard Mix, I particularly like the thing about the Priest in armor. I think the actual song L'homme Armee is a wretched pop tune, and find it passing strange that so many great Mass settings derive from it. It is interesting that even then, they thought donning costumes would help somehow.

    Don't press me for details just yet--I have to go look it up--but an absentee Bishop in England got religion and went home some time just before the Henrician "Reforms," and, following Erasmus, I think, surveyed his priests, most of whom were curates and were paid measly salaries by absentee "pastors"--or even lay people who had bought the rights to the income from the parish and skimmed most of the profits for themselves. The now-good Bishop discovered that a large number could neither recite the Ten Commandments nor name the author of the Our Father!

    A good quote covering that unfortunate reality of how the Mass has frequently been celebrated comes from no less than Alphonsus Liguori, Saint and Doctor of the Church.

    "But whom do so many priests today represent? They represent only mountebanks earning their livelihood by their antics. Most lamentable of all is it to see religious, and some even of reformed orders, say Mass with such haste and such mutilation of the rite as would scandalize even the heathen.... Truly the sight of Mass celebrated in this way is enough to make one lose the faith. "

    Granted, I live in an archdiocese with well regulated Masses, but I think we are actually doing much better than what was going on in 1762.

    Kenneth

    http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2014/08/st-alphonsus-on-need-for-reverence-in.html#.VxfoPhqsiG4
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980

    WAS IT FUNNY-HATTED BOYS DANCE-WALKING IN 19TH CENTURY RUSSIA?!


    It probably was. LOL. Ears be covered in Russia. It be cold.
  • eft94530eft94530
    Posts: 1,577
    That is no longer the operative question.
    Please update: Was it __ at Walsingham?
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    I would propose that it is the same theologically astute mind, the same profound reverence for the Most High, the same most excellent and pelucid spirituality, and the same cerebral grasp of all categories of the sacred that gives us pop-combos and their near cousins at mass, that gives Fr Ed Sullivan and Fr Lawrence Welk their license to ad lib their way through mass, that gives us kiddie shows at confirmation and such, (need I go on?), that gives us, across the pond and a little to the south, young men dancing before the altar at mass (or even not at mass) in Spain. The fact that the Spanish children are costumed elegantly does not alter the inappropriateness of their clerically sanctioned ballet (not to mention the unfortunate music to which it is danced). The only thing that I can perceive which differentiates the Spanish from the American liturgical depravity is that of inured centuries of experience (and better taste in costume).
    Thanked by 2Adam Wood eft94530
  • eft94530eft94530
    Posts: 1,577
    A timeline incorporating all above-mentioned names and info, and a few more:

    1170-1209-1247 ABP Rodrigo Jiménez (or Ximénez) de Rada
    1436-1507cardinal-1517 CDL Ximenes de Cisneros ["restored the old custom"?]
    1491-1547 Henry VIII
    1492 Columbus crosses the ocean
    1515-1535convent-1582 Teresa of Avila
    1516 Spain begins to colonize Paraguay
    1539 Paraguay poem Vida y tiempo de Maricastaña first mentions zarabanda
    1568 Carrion de los Condes municipal law "at least two dances"
    15__ Cathedral of Seville "ballet is performed nightly"
    1583 banned in Spain but still performed, even by clerics

    Problems:
    What characteristics and norms of "another" culture were incorporated?
    Canned music.
    Children do not look ages twelve thru seventeen.

    FYI (supporting material)
    http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dtols.html
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    1492 Columbus crosses the ocean blue


    Fixed.


    Problems:


    Is stupid.


    I mean, really. It clearly is a bad idea, having nothing whatever to do with any version of what any stripe of liturgical theologian would say the Mass is about.

    "Is the Mass more horizontal or more vertical in its orientation?"
    Well, actually, I think the Mass is both, in that the funny-hatted boys walk horizontally through the sanctuary, while ascending and descending vertically on their toes.

    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • a_f_hawkins
    Posts: 3,471
    I have seen somewhere, long ago, a reference to a processional shuffle in Bavaria. I think it was three steps forward and one back, it was/is traditional and that as archbishop of Munich & Freising, Joseph Ratzinger would have participated. NB this is street procession NOT Mass, but it was cited in an article about liturgical dance.
  • Liam
    Posts: 5,093
    AFH

    That's probably referring to the dancing procession of Echternach, Luxembourg, on St Willibrord's day.
    Thanked by 1a_f_hawkins
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    I think all these naysayers are frustrated Disco babies. I wonder how many of them secretly have bell bottoms hidden in their closets.
  • StimsonInRehabStimsonInRehab
    Posts: 1,933
    I have seen somewhere, long ago, a reference to a processional shuffle in Bavaria. I think it was three steps forward and one back


    Sounds similar to the dance our diocesan Latin Mass group is doing with our bishop, but for us it's one step forward and three steps back . . .
    Thanked by 3CharlesW Adam Wood Andrew_Malton
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    Somewhere in the cosmos, Gloria Weyman is chortling.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    Who???
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    Who???


    That's what I said, Jackson, so I googled her.
    Weyman

    She is supposedly prancing before the Lord, so WLP maintains.
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    Don't ever play me in Trivial Pursuit, gentlemen.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    As Maggie Smith might have said: 'um, what is Trivial Pursuit!?'
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    It is the intellectual offspring (oxymoron) of drunken Canadians, likely spawned when ice-fishing, in which otherwise unoccupied dolts like me aspire to College Bowl fame (or Jeopardy, at least) by answering stupid questions after rolling dice, which is the least strenuous physical portion of this "entertainment" in the eternal, optimistic quest for the vainglory of screaming at your closest opponent, "IN YOUR FACE!"
    One supposes you're sorry you asked, Jackson?
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    It is the intellectual offspring (oxymoron) of drunken Canadians,...


    I think Trump should build that wall on the border with Canada.
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,193
    As Maggie Smith might have said: 'um, what is Trivial Pursuit!?'

    Isn't that what we find ourselves doing in some threads here?
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • ViolaViola
    Posts: 411
    They really know how to do this sort of thing in Spain. See this clip from the Misterio de Elche, a play about the Assumption that takes place in Elche each August. Dancing also features in it, as does a descending pomegranate, but this clip shows angels descending from a seriously high dome in the basilica (see how long it takes them to descend). It wouldn't get past Health-and-safety here in the UK

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9O6TEDtVm0

    Other youtubes show the whole thing. I am fascinated by this and want to go and see it.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    It seems these dances are organic development from, as someone else noted, the golden age of high Spanish culture. Given the Puritanism that affected U.S culture and the, "no joy in Mudville" atmosphere that took hold after Trent, it is a bit difficult to realize things were not always like that. If someone from the high Baroque period could see what passes for liturgy today, they might be horrified. There were huge differences between Spanish and English cultures, and they persist to this day.
    Thanked by 2M. Jackson Osborn PaxMelodious
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    ...huge differences...

    And thank goodness we were spared the Armada's onslaught... by an 'act of God', no less!
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    And thank goodness we were spared the Armada's onslaught... by an 'act of God', no less!


    If God had prevailed, the country would have been Catholic. LOL.
    Thanked by 1Liam
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,415
    ...prevailed...

    True enough, Charles; but, obviously, he did not wish it under a Spanish inqui..., um, impostition.
    Gottes Zeit ist der allerbest Zeit.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • PaxMelodious
    Posts: 442
    This may drive some of you to despair:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX5ervWNfkI

    I wonder who the Zambian's caught their type of praying with their bodies from!
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,980
    I wont get too much into the once prevalent concept that took religion to primitive places and peoples and used it to civilize them.

    Nothing wrong with the Zambians and what they are doing. It is specific to their culture and is acceptable in that context.

    Here is the big problem. Bored, jaded, dilettantes of little social or cultural worth, bring such into cultures where it doesn't fit for their own shallow entertainment. A plague on these dabblers and on their houses! The Zambians are fine, it just doesn't belong in my parish where it is completely out of context.
    Thanked by 5Spriggo M. Jackson Osborn GerardH eft94530 Vilyanor
Add a Comment