Prof. Boerner's Explorations

by Gerald Boerner

Today we will continue our consideration of the artists who worked during the Renaissance period in Europe outside of Florence and Rome. During this time, art was either commissioned or done for the church, which essentially meant the same thing: the churches, monasteries, and other religious organizations gathered together a store of art that reflected the emotions and reality of people.

We are focusing on the latter Italian Renaissance today and the principle artists involved during that period and look at some of their best works. In general, the renaissance represented a transition from highly stylized art of only religious subjects to art that incorporated the sense of light and color available in the new media available. In addition, innovations in the use of perspective gave these artworks a greater sense of reality.

We hope that this will provide you with food for thought regarding the Holy Week celebrations on which we are also focusing this week.  GLB

“Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.”
— E. O. Wilson

“Every renaissance comes to the world with a cry, the cry of the human spirit to be free.”
— Anne Sullivan Macy

“In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization’s hardest winters.”
— John Fowles

“Actually I like the idea of being a Renaissance hack. If tombstones were still in style, I would want to have the two words chiseled right under my name.”
— Dennis Flanagan

“Great effort is required to arrest decay and restore vigor. One must exercise proper deliberation, plan carefully before making a move, and be alert in guarding against relapse following a renaissance.”
— Horace

“No account of the Renaissance can be complete without some notice of the attempt made by certain Italian scholars of the fifteenth century to reconcile Christianity with the religion of ancient Greece.”
— Walter Pater

“In the West there has always been the attempt to try make the religious building, whether it’s a Medieval or Renaissance church, an eternal object for the celebration of God. The material chosen, such as stone, brick, or concrete, is meant to eternally preserve what is inside.”
— Tadao Ando

“New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements… the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.”
— Jackson Pollock

Note:
This posting is intended for the educational use of photographers and photography students and complies with the “educational fair use” provisions of copyright law. For readers who might wish to reuse some of these images should check out their compliance with copyright limitations that might apply to that use.

GLB

The Renaissance: Renaissance Painting

Raphael, The Betrothal of the Virgin. 

Italian Renaissance painting is the painting of the period from the early 15th to mid 16th centuries occurring within the area of present-day Italy, which was at that time divided into many political areas. The painters of Renaissance Italy, although often attached to particular courts and with loyalties to particular towns, nonetheless wandered the length and breadth of Italy, often occupying a diplomatic status and disseminating both artistic and philosophical ideas.

The city that is renowned as the birthplace of the Renaissance and in particular, Renaissance painting, is Florence. A detailed background is given in the companion articles Renaissance and Renaissance architecture.

Italian Renaissance painting can be divided into four periods:

• Proto-Renaissance, 1290–1400.
• Early Renaissance, 1400–1475.
• High Renaissance, 1475–1525.
• Mannerism, 1525–1600.

The Proto-Renaissance begins with the professional life of the painter Giotto and includes Taddeo Gaddi, Orcagna and Altichiero. The Early Renaissance was marked by the work of Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Uccello, Piero della Francesca and Verrocchio. The High Renaissance period was that of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. The Mannerist period included Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo and Tintoretto. Mannerism is dealt with in a separate article.

NOTE:
This installment will focus on the Renaissance Paintings from outside of Florence or Rome. We will deal with each of the three main periods.

Proto-Renaissance Painting

Mortality and redemption

The Triumph of Death by Orcagna, c.1350,
Museum of Santa Croce. Detail.

A common theme in the decoration of Medieval churches was the Last Judgement, which frequently occupies a sculptural space above the west door, or, as in the case of the Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel, is painted on the inner west wall. The Black Death of 1348 caused its survivors to focus on the need to approach death in a state of penitence and absolution. The inevitability of death, the rewards for the penitent and the penalties of sin were emphasised in a number of frescoes, remarkable for their grim depictions of suffering and their surreal images of the torments of Hell.

These include the Triumph of Death by Giotto’s pupil Orcagna, now in a fragmentary state at the Museum of Santa Croce, and the Triumph of Death in the Camposanto Monumentale at Pisa by an unknown painter, perhaps Francesco Traini or Buonamico Buffalmacco who worked on the other three of a series of frescoes on the subject of Salvation. It is unknown exactly when these frescoes were begun but it is generally presumed they post-date 1348.

Two important fresco painters were active in Padua in the late 14th century, Altichiero and Giusto de’ Menabuoi. Giusto’s masterpiece, the decoration of the Cathedral’s Baptistery, follows the theme of humanity’s Creation, Downfall and Salvation, also having a rare Apocalypse cycle in the small chancel. While the whole work is exceptional for its breadth, quality and intact state, the treatment of human emotion is conservative by comparison with that of Altichiero’s Crucifixion at the Basilica of Sant’Antonio, also in Padua. Giusto’s work relies on formalised gestures, where Altichiero relates the incidents surrounding Christ’s death with great human drama and intensity.

The Annunciation by Simone Martini, 1333,
Uffizi, is International Gothic in style.

In Florence, at the Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, Andrea Bonaiuti was commissioned to emphasise the role of the Church in the redemptive process, and that of the Dominican Order in particular. His fresco Allegory of the Active and Triumphant Church is remarkable for its depiction of Florence Cathedral, complete with the dome which was not built until the following century.

International Gothic

During the later 14th century, International Gothic was the style that dominated Tuscan painting. It can be seen to an extent in the work of Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti which is marked by a formalized sweetness and grace in the figures, and Late Gothic gracefulness in the draperies. The style is fully developed in the works of Simone Martini and Gentile da Fabriano which have an elegance and a richness of detail, and an idealised quality not compatible with the starker realities of Giotto’s paintings.

In the early 15th century, bridging the gap between International Gothic and the Renaissance are the paintings of Fra Angelico, many of which, being altarpieces in tempera, show the Gothic love of elaboration, gold leaf and brilliant colour. It is in his frescoes at his convent of Sant’ Marco that Fra Angelico shows himself the artistic disciple of Giotto. These devotional paintings, which adorn the cells and corridors inhabited by the friars, represent episodes from the life of Jesus, many of them being scenes of the Crucifixion. They are starkly simple, restrained in colour and intense in mood as the artist sought to make spiritual revelations a visual reality.

Early Renaissance Painting

Andrea Mantegna in Mantua

One of the most influential painters of northern Italy was Andrea Mantegna of Padua, who had the good fortune to be in his teen years at the time in which the great Florentine sculptor Donatello was working there. Donatello created the enormous equestrian bronze, the first since the Roman Empire, of the condotiero Gattemelata, still visible on its plinth in the square outside the Basilica of Sant’Antonio. He also worked on the high altar and created a series of bronze panels in which he achieved a remarkable illusion of depth, with perspective in the architectural settings and apparent roundness of the human form all in very shallow relief.

At only 17 years old, Mantegna accepting his first commission, fresco cycles of the Lives of Saints James and Christopher for the Eremitani Chapel, near the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. Unfortunately the building was mostly destroyed during World War II, and they are only known from photographs which reveal an already highly developed sense of perspective and a knowledge of antiquity, for which the ancient University of Padua had become well known, early in the 15th century.

Mantegna’s most famous work is the interior decoration of the Camera degli Sposi for the Gonzaga family in Mantua, dated about 1470. The walls are frescoed with scenes of the life of the Gonzaga family, talking, greeting a younger son and his tutor on their return from Rome, preparing for a hunt and other such scenes which make no obvious reference to matters historic, literary, philosophic or religious. They are remarkable for simply being about family life. The one concession is the scattering of jolly winged cherubs who hold up plaques and garlands and clamber on the illusionistic pierced balustrade that surrounds a trompe l’oeil view of the sky that decks the ceiling of the chamber.

Cosmè Tura in Ferrara

While Mantegna was working for the Gonzagas in Mantua, a very different painter was being employed to design an even more ambitious scheme for the Este family of Ferrara. Cosmè Tura’s painting is highly distinctive, both strangely Gothic yet Classicising at the same time. Tura poses Classical figures as if they were saints, surrounds them with luminous symbolic motifs of surreal perfection and clothes them in garments that appear to be crafted out of intricately folded and enamelled copper.

The Triumph of Venus for the d’Este
by Francesco da Cossa.

Borso d’Este’s family had constructed a large banquetting hall and suite known as the Palazzo Schifanoia. Borso, according to Tura’s personal records, employed him in 1470 to design the decorative scheme for the banquetting hall, to be executed by Francesco del Cossa and Ercole de’ Roberti.

The scheme is both symbolically complex and elaborate in execution. The overriding theme is the Cycle of the Year as represented by the signs of the zodiac accompanied by the mysterious Deans each ruling ten days of the month. Above them, seated in a spectacular array of chariots drawn by lions, eagles, unicorns and other such beasts, are twelve Roman deities with their various attributes. In the lower tiers, as in the Camera degli Sposi, are shown the life of the family. For the month of March, for example, the figure of Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, is represented and in the panel beneath Borso d’Este is administering justice, while in the distance workers are pruning vines. Although areas of the frescoes are very badly damaged to the extent that the subject can no longer be identified, and although there are several different hands apparent in the works, there appears to be a consistency in the design of every remaining scene that shows the overriding eccentric style of Cosmè Tura.

Antonello da Messina

In 1442 Alfonso V of Aragon became ruler of Naples, bringing with him a collection of Flemish paintings and setting up a Humanist Academy. The painter Antonello da Messina seems to have had access to the King’s collection, which may have included the works of Jan van Eyck. He seems to have been exposed to Flemish painting at a date earlier than the Florentines, to have quickly seen the potential of oils as a medium and then painted in nothing else. He carried the technique north to Venice with him, where it was soon adopted by Giovanni Bellini and became the favoured medium of the maritime republic where the art of fresco had never been a great success.

St Jerome in his study by
Antonello da Messina.
Cossa and Ercole de’ Roberti.

Antonello da Messina painted mostly small meticulous portraits in glowing colours. But one of his most famous works also demonstrates his superior ability at handling linear perspective and light. This is the small painting of St. Jerome in His Study, in which the composition is framed by a late Gothic arch, through which is viewed an interior, domestic on one side and ecclesiastic on the other, in the centre of which the saint sits in a wooden corral surrounded by his possessions while his lion prowls in the shadows on the tiled floor. The way that the light streams in through every door and window casting both natural light and reflected light across the architecture and all the objects would have excited Piero della Francesca. His work influenced both Gentile Bellini, who did a series of paintings of Miracles of Venice for the Scuola di Santa Croce, and his more famous brother, Giovanni, one of the most significant painters of the High Renaissance in Northern Italy.

High Renaissance

Netherlandish influence

From about 1450, with the arrival in Italy of the Flemish painter Rogier van der Weyden and possibly earlier, artists were introduced to the medium of oil paint. Whereas both tempera and fresco lent themselves to the depiction of pattern, neither presented a successful way to represent natural textures realistically. The highly flexibly medium of oils, which could be made opaque or transparent, and allowed alteration and additions for days after it had been laid down, opened a new world of possibility to Italian artists.

The Portinari Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes.

In 1475 a huge altarpiece of the Adoration of the Shepherds arrived in Florence. Painted by Hugo van der Goes at the behest of the Portinari family, it was shipped out from Bruges for the Chapel of Sant’ Egidio at the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. The altarpiece glows with intense reds and greens, contrasting with the glossy black velvet robes of the Portinari donors. In the foreground is a still life of flowers in contrasting containers, one of glazed pottery and the other of glass. The glass vase alone was enough to excite attention. But the most influential aspect of the triptych was the extremely natural and lifelike quality of the three shepherds with stubbly beards, workworn hands and expressions ranging from adoration to wonder to incomprehension. The Florentine artist, Ghirlandaio, promptly painted his own version, with a beautiful Italian Madonna in place of the long-faced Flemish one, and himself, gesturing theatrically, as one of the shepherds.

Giovanni Bellini

Giovanni Bellini was the exact contemporary of his brother Gentile, his brother-in-law Mantegna and Antonello da Messina. Working most of his life in the studio of his brother, and strongly influenced by the crisp style of Mantegna, he does not appear to have produced an independently signed painting until he was in his late 50s. During the last 30 years of his life he was both extraordinarily productive and influential, having the guidance of both Giorgione and Titian.

Madonna and Child with Saints by Giovanni Bellini.

Bellini, like his much younger contemporary, Raphael, produced numerous small Madonnas in rich glowing colour, usually of more intense tonality than his Florentine counterpart. These Madonnas multiplied prolifically as they were reproduced by other members of the large Bellini studio, one tiny picture, the Circumcision of Christ existing in four or five almost identical versions.

Traditionally, in the painting of altarpieces of the Madonna and Child, the enthroned figure of the Virgin is accompanied by saints, who stand in defined spaces, separated physically in the form of a polytych or defined by painted architectural boundaries. Piero della Francesca used the Classical niche as a setting for his enthroned Madonnas, as Masaccio had used it as the setting for his Holy Trinity at Santa Maria Novella. Piero grouped saints around the throne, in the architectural space.

Bellini used this same form, known as Sacred conversations, in several of his later altarpieces such as that for the Venetian church of San Zaccaria. It is a masterful composition which extends the real architecture of the building into the illusionistic architecture of the painting, making the niche a sort of loggia opened up to the landscape and to daylight which streams across the figures of the Virgin and Child, the two female saints and the little angel who plays a viola making them brighter than the two elderly male saints who stand to the fore in the picture, Peter deep in thought and Jerome immersed in a book.

Sleeping Venus by Giorgione.

Giorgione and Titian

Whilst the style of Giorgione’s painting clearly relates to that of his presumed master, Giovanni Bellini, his subject matter makes him one of the most original and abstruse artists of the Renaissance. One of his paintings, of a landscape known as the Tempest, with a semi-naked woman feeding a baby, a clothed man, some classical columns and a flash of lightning, perhaps represents Adam and Eve in their post-Eden days, or perhaps it doesn’t. Another painting, called the Philosophers may represent the Magi planning their journey in search of the infant Christ, but this is not certain either. One thing that appears to be certain is that Giorgione painted a female nude, the very first female nude that stands, or rather, lies, as a subject to be portrayed and admired for beauty alone.

Portrait of a Venetian by Titian.

There are no need for Classical references in this painting, although in later nudes Titian, Velazquez, Veronese, Rembrandt, Rubens and even Manet saw fit to add some. They are the artistic heirs of Giorgione’s nude.

On his premature death, Titian completed the painting and went on to paint a great more naked women, most frequently, as Botticelli did, disguising them as goddesses and surrounding them with sylvan woods and starry skies to make perfect decoration for the walls of rich clientele. But it was as a painter of portraits that Titian excelled, his longevity allowing him to achieve far more, both in the way of production and in stylistic development than either Giorgione or his Florentine contemporary Raphael were able to. Titian gave the world images of Pietro Aretino and Pope Paul III and many other people of his day, perhaps his most powerful portrait being that of Doge Andrea Gritti, ruler of Venice, who looms large in the picture space, one huge hand clasping his heavily-buttoned robe in a dynamic Expressionistic gesture. Titian is also renowned for his religious painting, his last work being a turbulent and abstracted Pieta.

Influence of Italian Renaissance painting

Michelangelo and Titian both lived into the second half of the 16th century. Both saw their styles and those of Leonardo, Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Antonello da Messina and Raphael adapted by later painters to form a disparate style known as Mannerism, and move steadily towards the great outpouring of imagination and painterly virtuosity of the Baroque period.

The artist who most extended the trends in Titian’s large figurative compositions is Tintoretto, although his personal manner was such that he only lasted nine days as Titian’s apprentice. Rembrandt’s knowledge of the works of both Titian and Raphael is apparent in his portraits. The direct influences of Leonardo and Raphael upon their own pupils was to effect generations of artists including Poussin and schools of Classical painters of the 18th and 19th centuries. Antonello da Messina’s work had a direct influence on Albrecht Dürer and Martin Schongauer and through the latter’s engravings, countless artists including the German, Dutch and English schools of stained glass makers extending into the early 20th century.

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling and later The Last Judgment had direct influence on the figurative compositions firstly of Raphael and his pupils and then almost every subsequent 16th century painter who looked for new and interesting ways to depict the human form. It is possible to trace his style of figurative composition through Andrea del Sarto, Pontormo, Bronzino, Parmigianino, Veronese, to el Greco, Carracci, Caravaggio, Rubens, Poussin and Tiepolo to both the Classical and the Romantic painters of the 19th century such as Jacques Louis David and Delacroix.

Under the influence of the Italian Renaissance painting, many modern academies of art, such as the Royal Academy, were founded, and it was specifically to collect the works of the Italian Renaissance that some of the world’s best known art collections, such as the National Gallery, London, were formed.

References

Background and biographical information is from Wikipedia articles on:

Wikipedia: Renaissance… 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance

Wikipedia: Italian Renaissance Painting… 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Renaissance_painting

Web Sites and Blogs:

Brainy Quote: Renaissance Quotes…  
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/renaissance.html

by Gerald Boerner

As we enter the fifth day of Holy Week, Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday, let us continue to focus our attention on the Christ that is the center of this celebration. On Palm Sunday, we commemorated the entry of Christ into Jerusalem. Today’s focus in upon the Last Supper and the events surrounding it. It is a time to continue our focus upon the meaning of this period of time. GLB

“Christ appeared alive on several occasions after the cataclysmic events of that first Easter.”
— Josh McDowell

“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”
— Pope John Paul II

“Most people outside of America won’t get it. It’s the Easter bunny. It’s another lie and I don’t understand why we had to invent this character.”
— Todd Rundgren

“I am very proud of this work because it is more about the meaning of the Easter Rising and its relationship to what this whole century has been about, people liberating themselves, freeing themselves.”
— Leon Uris

“And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life – it lives in the constant present.”
— John Guare

“Do we believe that there is equal economic opportunity out there in the real world, right now, for each and every one of these groups? If we believed in the tooth fairy, if we believed in the Easter Bunny, we might well believe that.”
— William Weld

“God expects from men something more than at such times, and that it were much to be wished for the credit of their religion as well as the satisfaction of their conscience that their Easter devotions would in some measure come up to their Easter dress.”
— Robert South

“A strangely reflective, even melancholy day. Is that because, unlike our cousins in the northern hemisphere, Easter is not associated with the energy and vitality of spring but with the more subdued spirit of autumn?”
— Hugh Mackay

Holy Week: Holy Thursday (Maundy Thursday)

The Mystical Supper, Icon by Simon Ushakov (1685).

Maundy Thursday, also known as Holy Thursday, Covenant Thursday, Great and Holy Thursday, and Thursday of Mysteries, is the Christian feast or holy day falling on the Thursday before Easter that commemorates the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the Apostles. It is the fifth day of Holy Week, and is preceded by Holy Wednesday and followed by Good Friday. The date is always between 19 March and 22 April inclusive. These dates in the Julian calendar, on which Eastern churches in general base their calculations of the date of Easter, correspond throughout the twenty-first century to 1 April and 5 May in the more commonly used Gregorian calendar. In 2010 it falls on 1 April.

The Mass of the Lord’s Supper initiates the Easter Triduum, the three days of Friday, Saturday and Sunday that commemorate the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus. It is normally celebrated in the evening, when according to Jewish tradition Friday begins.

Derivation of the Name "Maundy"

Most scholars agree that the English word Maundy in that name for the day is derived through Middle English, and Old French mandé, from the Latin mandatum, the first word of the phrase "Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos" ("A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you"), the statement by Jesus in the Gospel of John (13:34) by which Jesus explained to the Apostles the significance of his action of washing their feet. The phrase is used as the antiphon sung during the "Mandatum" ceremony of the washing of the feet, which may be held during Mass or at another time as a separate event, during which a priest or bishop (representing Christ) ceremonially washes the feet of others, typically 12 persons chosen as a cross-section of the community.

 William Blake’s Holy Thursday (1794).

Others theorize that the English name "Maundy Thursday" arose from "maundsor" baskets, in which on that day the king of England distributed alms to certain poor at Whitehall: "maund" is connected with the Latin mendicare, and French mendier, to beg. A source from the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church likewise states that, if the name were derived from the Latin mandatum, we would call the day Mandy Thursday, or Mandate Thursday, or even Mandatum Thursday; and that the term "Maundy" comes in fact from the Latin mendicare, Old French mendier, and English maund, which as a verb means to beg and as a noun refers to a small basket held out by maunders as they maunded. The name Maundy Thursday thus arose from a medieval custom whereby the English royalty handed out "maundy purses" of alms to the poor before attending Mass on this day.

Western Christianity

"The Last Supper" – museum copy of Master Paul’s sculpiturgy

The Washing of the Feet is a traditional component of the celebration in many Christian Churches, including the Armenian, Ethiopian, Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholic, Brethren, Mennonite, and Roman Catholic Churches, and is becoming increasingly popular as a part of the Maundy Thursday liturgy in the Anglican/Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian Churches, as well as in other Protestant denominations. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Mass of the Lord’s Supper begins as usual, but the Gloria is accompanied by the ringing of bells, which are then silent until the Easter Vigil. After the homily the washing of feet may be performed. The service concludes with a procession taking the Blessed Sacrament to the place of reposition. The altar is later stripped bare, as are all other altars in the church except the Altar of Repose. In pre-1970 editions, the Roman Missal envisages this being done ceremonially, to the accompaniment of Psalm 21/22, a practice which continues in many Anglican churches. In other Christian denominations, such as the Lutheran Church or Methodist Church, the stripping of the altar and other items on the chancel also occurs, as a preparation for the somber Good Friday service.

Eastern Christianity

Orthodox icon of Christ washing
the feet of the Apostles
(16th century, Pskov
school of iconography).

In the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Lenten character of the services is for the most part set aside, and they follow a format closer to normal. The liturgical colors are changed from the somber Lenten hues to more festive colors (red is common in the Slavic practice). The primary service of this day is Vespers combined with the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great. At this service is read the first Passion Gospel (John 13:31-18:1), known as the "Gospel of the Testament", and many of the normal hymns of the Divine Liturgy are substituted with the following troparion:

Of Thy Mystical Supper, O Son of God, accept me today as a communicant; for I will not speak of Thy Mystery to Thine enemies, neither will I give Thee a kiss like Judas. But like the Thief will I confess Thee: Remember me, O Lord, in Thy Kingdom.

  Christus, by the Lutheran Lucas
Cranach the Elder. This woodcut of
John 13:14-17 is from Passionary
of the Christ and Antichrist.

In addition to the usual Preparation for Holy Communion, the Orthodox faithful will often receive the Mystery of Unction on Great Wednesday as preparation for the reception of Holy Communion on Great Thursday. It is customary to cover the Altar table with a simple, white linen cloth on this day, as a reminder of the Last Supper. On Great Thursday, the Reserved Sacrament is customarily renewed, a new Lamb (Host) being consecrated for the coming liturgical year, and the remainder from the previous year is consumed. The ceremony of the Washing of Feet will normally be performed in monasteries and cathedrals. Because of the joy of the Institution of the Eucharist, on this day alone during Holy Week wine and oil are permitted at meals. Whenever there is need to consecrate more chrysm it will be done on this day by the heads of the various autocephalous churches. In the evening, after the Liturgy, all of the hangings and vestments are changed to black or some other Lenten colour, to signify the beginning of the Passion.

Beginning on Holy and Great Thursday, the celebration of the Lity (memorial service) is forbidden until Thomas Sunday (the Sunday after Easter).

Customs and Names from Around the World

• The Maundy Thursday celebrations in the United Kingdom today involve the Monarch (since 1952, Queen Elizabeth II) offering "alms" to deserving senior citizens (one man and one woman for each year of the sovereign’s age). These coins, known as Maundy money or Royal Maundy, are distributed in red and white purses. This custom dates back to King Edward I. The red purse contains regular currency and is given in place of food and clothing. The white purse contains currency in the amount of one penny for each year of the Sovereign’s age. Since 1822, rather than ordinary money, the Sovereign gives out Maundy coins. which are specially minted 1, 2, 3 and 4 penny pieces, and are legal tender. The service at which this takes place rotates around English and Welsh churches, though in 2008 it took place for the first time in Northern Ireland at Armagh Cathedral. Until the death of King James II, the Monarch would also wash the feet of the selected poor people. There is an old sketch, done from life, of Queen Elizabeth I washing people’s feet on Maundy Thursday.

• The popular German name Gründonnerstag means either "mourning Thursday" or "green Thursday". Other names are Hoher, Heiliger, and Weißer Donnerstag (High, Holy and White Thursday, with "white" referring to the liturgical color associated with Maundy Thursday).

• In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the day is called Zelený čtvrtek or Zelený štvrtok respectively, again meaning "Green Thursday". Because the church bells fall silent until Holy Saturday, here called "White Saturday", because "they have flown to Rome", in some regions they are replaced by groups of children walking round their village and making noise with wooden rattles. People come out of the door and give them money. The Bells & Children also do this in Luxembourg (which has some ties to Romania): The Bells fall silent until Easter, because "They have flown to Rome for Confession", so Children take to the Streets, calling People to Church with melancholy wooden rattling.

• In Malta, Holy Thursday is known as Ħamis ix-Xirka (Communion Thursday) and the a tradition of visiting seven churches (see below) is called is-seba’ visti.
• In Sweden Maundy Thursday (skärtorsdagen) is connected to old folklore as the day of the witches. Young children often dress up as witches and knock on doors getting coins or candy for easter eggs.
• In Bulgaria Maundy Thursday is called Veliki Chetvurtuk (Great Thursday), and is traditionally the day when people color their easter eggs and perform other household chores geared toward preparing for Razpeti Petuk (Crucifixion Friday), Velika Subota (Great Saturday) and Velikden (Easter Day).
• In Kerala, the southern state of India where the Syrian Christians or Nasranis are in high population observes this day with great reverence. This day is called as Pesaha, a syriac word commemorating the last supper of Jesus Christ. This is also a state wide declared public holiday by the Government of Kerala. The tradition of Pesaha appam or Indariyappam is observed by the entire Nasrani people till this day. Special long services followed by Holy Qurbana are conducted during the Pesaha eve or at mid-night till morning in the Syrian Christian churches.
• In the Philippines, most business establishments cease operations from Holy Thursday to Black Saturday. Most malls, however, only cease their operations on Holy Thursday and Good Friday and only opens on Black Saturday. Television and radio stations are on air during that period; should they wish to continue airing they usually broadcast special shows, usually themed for the Holy Week, which were not on their usual schedule. (Cable channels usually continue their normal telecasts as usual.) Newspapers usually have no issues during those days.
• If statues and crucifixes have been covered during Passion Time (the last 2 weeks of Lent, at least in the 1962 Roman Catholic missal), the crucifix covers are allowed to be white instead of purple for Holy Thursday.

Scriptural Reading

In this reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, St. Paul reminds us that Christ is the great high priest, like us in all things but sin. He was tempted, so he can understand our temptation; but being perfect, He was able to offer Himself as the perfect Sacrifice to God the Father. That sacrifice is the source of the eternal salvation of all who believe in Christ.

Hebrews 4:14-5:10

Having therefore a great high priest that hath passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God: let us hold fast our confession. For we have not a high priest, who can not have compassion on our infirmities: but one tempted in all things like as we are, without sin. Let us go therefore with confidence to the throne of grace: that we may obtain mercy, and find grace in seasonable aid.

For every high priest taken from among men, is ordained for men in the things that appertain to God, that he may offer up gifts and sacrifices for sins: Who can have compassion on them that are ignorant and that err: because he himself also is compassed with infirmity. And therefore he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins. Neither doth any man take the honour to himself, but he that is called by God, as Aaron was.

So Christ also did not glorify himself, that he might be made a high priest: but he that said unto him: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. As he saith also in another place: Thou art a priest for ever, according to the order of Melchisedech.

Who in the days of his flesh, with a strong cry and tears, offering up prayers and supplications to him that was able to save him from death, was heard for his reverence. And whereas indeed he was the Son of God, he learned obedience by the things which he suffered: And being consummated, he became, to all that obey him, the cause of eternal salvation. Called by God a high priest according to the order of Melchisedech.

• Source:
  Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition of the Bible (in the public domain)

References

Background and biographical information is from Wikipedia articles on:

Wikipedia: Holy Week…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Week

Wikipedia: Holy Thursday…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Thursday

About.com: Scriptural Reading for the Thursday of Holy Week…
http://catholicism.about.com/od/lentenreadings/qt/Reading_ThHW.htm

Brainy Quote: Easter Quotes…
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/easter.html

by Gerald Boerner

April Fool’s Day!

Baseball’s origin is often erroneously attributed to Abner Doubleday. It actually evolved out of several games from Britain that used a ball, some type of bat (or hitting device), and a field on which to play. After 1845, our modern game began to take shape in a way that we could identify it today. In the last quarter of the 19th century the modern game emerged and the rest, as they say, is history.  GLB

“April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom, holiday tables under the trees.”
— E. Y. Harburg

“April is a promise that May is bound to keep.”
— Hal Borland

“April is the cruellest month.”
— T. S. Eliot

“For instance, I was a little surprised that the Shiites didn’t rise up against Saddam and the Baath party across most of the country when the Americans moved in March and April of 2003.”
— Juan Cole

“Contrast that with the call of the Liberal Democrats in April, when they were prepared to call upon the British people to participate in a 24-hour strike. It shows how far to the right the Labour Party’s gone.”
— Arthur Scargill

“Arizona’s forest fires are not waiting for April, and neither will we. That is why I am pushing for stepped up deployment for Hot Shot wildfire crews in March rather than April, in order to better prepare for the expected fires in northern Arizona.”
— Rick Renzi

“April is tax month. If you are having trouble filing your taxes, then you should hire an accountant. They’ll give you the same advice that they’ve given hundreds of corporations – taxes are for douche bags.”
— Ed Helms

“After the outbreak of war, in April 1940, we left Geneva with our three children aged 4 years, 2 years and 2 weeks only to become part of the disordered refugee crowds fleeing across France from the German army.”
— James Meade

The Origins of Baseball

The question of the origins of baseball has been the subject of debate and controversy for more than a century. Baseball (and softball), as well as the other modern bat, ball and running games, cricket and rounders, was developed from earlier folk games.

Although the roots of baseball are English, similar games have also been played in other parts of the world. Oina is a Romanian ball sport, similar in some ways to baseball. Russia had a bat and ball game called Lapta since the 14th century. Germans played a game called Schlagball, which was similar to rounders. A “bowler” threw a ball to a “striker,” who hit it with a club and then tried to run around a circuit of bases without getting hit with the ball by a defender.

Americans played a version of the English game rounders in the early 1800s which they called “Town Ball.” In fact, early forms of baseball had a number of names, including “Base Ball,” “Goal Ball,” “Round Ball,” “Fletch-catch,” “stool ball,” and, simply, “Base.” In at least one version of the game, teams pitched to themselves, runners went around the bases in the opposite direction of today’s game, and players could be put out by being hit with the ball like in Schlagball. Like today, however, a batter was called out after three strikes.

Few details of how the modern games developed from earlier folk games are known. Some think that various folk games resulted in a game called town ball, from which baseball was eventually born. Others believe that town ball was independent from baseball.

Folk games in England

A number of early folk games in England had characteristics that can be seen in modern baseball (as well as in cricket and rounders). Many of these early games involved a ball that was thrown at a target while an opposing player defended the target by attempting to hit the ball away. If the batter successfully hit the ball, he could attempt to score points by running between bases while fielders would attempt to catch or retrieve the ball and put the runner out in some way.

Since they were folk games, the early games had no official, documented rules, and they tended to change over time. To the extent that there were rules, they were generally simple and were not written down. There were many local variations, and varied names.

Many of the early games were not well documented, first, because they were generally peasant games (and perhaps children’s games, as well); and second, because they were often discouraged, and sometimes even prohibited, either by the church or by the state, or both.

Aside from obvious differences in terminology, the games differed in the equipment used (ball, bat, club, target, etc., which were usually just whatever was available), the way in which the ball is thrown, the method of scoring, the method of making outs, the layout of the field and the number of players involved.

An old English game called “base,” described by George Ewing at Valley Forge, was apparently not much like baseball. There was no bat and no ball involved. The game was more like a fancy game of “tag,” although it did share the concept of places of safety (for example, bases) with modern baseball.

In an 1801 book entitled The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, Joseph Strutt claimed to have shown that baseball-like games can be traced back to the 14th century, and that baseball is a descendant of a United Kingdom game called stoolball. The earliest known reference to stoolball is in a 1330 poem by William Pagula, who recommended to priests that the game be forbidden within churchyards.

In stoolball, a batter stood before a target, perhaps an upturned stool, while another player pitched a ball to the batter. If the batter hit the ball (with a bat or his/her hand) and it was caught by a fielder, the batter was out. If the pitched ball hit a stool leg, the batter was out. Traditionally it was played by milkmaids who used their milking stools as a “wicket,” according to one belief while waiting for their husbands to return from working in the fields.

According to many sources, in 1700, a Puritan leader of southern England, Thomas Wilson, expressed his disapproval of “Morris-dancing, cudgel-playing, baseball and cricket” occurring on Sundays. However, David Block, in Baseball Before We Knew It (2005), reports that the original source has “stoolball” for “baseball.” Block also reports the reference appears to date to 1672, rather than 1700, and that it was the English game of baseball that had arrived in the U.S. as part of “a sweeping tide of cultural migration” during the colonial period.

 Woodcut from “A Little Pretty
Pocket-Book” (1744) England,
showing first reference to baseball

A 1744 publication in England by children’s publisher John Newbery called A Little Pretty Pocket-Book includes a woodcut of stoolball and a rhyme entitled “Base-ball.” This is the first known instance of the word baseball in print Today the game is popular in United Kingdom among schoolchildren.

In 1748, the family of Frederick, Prince of Wales partook in the playing of a baseball-like game. The English lawyer William Bray recorded a game of baseball on Easter Monday 1755 in Guildford, Surrey; Bray’s diary was verified authentic in September 2008..

A 1791 bylaw in Pittsfield, Massachusetts bans the playing of baseball within 80 yards of the town meeting house.

By 1796 the rules of this English game were well enough established to earn a mention in the German Johann Gutsmuths’ book on popular pastimes, described “Englische Base-ball” involved a contest between two teams, in which “the batter has three attempts to hit the ball while at the home plate”; only one out was required to retire a side. The book also predates the rules laid out by the New York Knickerbockers by nearly fifty years.

Stoolball

Origins of Stoolball:

1. In stoolball, which developed by the 11th century, one player throws the ball at a target while another player defends the target. “Stob-ball” and “stow-ball” were regional games similar to stoolball. In stob ball and stow ball the target was probably a tree stump, since both “stob” and “stow” mean stump in some dialects. ( “Stow” could also refer to a type of frame used in mining). What the target originally was in stoolball is not certain. It could have been a stump, since “stool” in old Sussex dialect means stump.
2. According to one legend, milkmaids played stoolball while waiting for their husbands to return from the fields. Another theory is that stoolball developed as a game played after attending church services, in which case the target was probably a church stool.

Originally, the stool was defended with a bare hand. Later, a bat of some kind was used (in modern stoolball, a bat like a very heavy ping-pong paddle is used).

The Abner Doubleday Myth

Abner Doubleday

The myth that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839 was once widely promoted and widely believed. There was and is no evidence for this claim, except for the testimony of one man decades after the fact, and there is more persuasive counter-evidence. Doubleday himself never made such a claim; he left many letters and papers, but they contain no description of baseball or even a suggestion that he considered himself a prominent person in the history of the game. His New York Times obituary makes no mention of baseball at all, nor does an encyclopedia article about Doubleday published in 1911. Contrary to popular belief, Doubleday was never inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, although a large oil portrait of him was on display at the Hall of Fame building for many years.

Doubleday’s invention of baseball was invented by baseball, in a sense. It was the finding of a panel appointed by Albert Spalding, once a star pitcher, then a club executive, who had become the leading American sporting goods entrepreneur and sports publisher. Debate on baseball origins had raged for decades, heating up in the first years of the 20th century. To end argument, speculation and innuendo, Spalding organized the Mills Commission in 1905. The members were baseball figures, not historians: Spalding’s friend Abraham G. Mills, a former National League president; two United States Senators, former NL president Morgan Bulkeley and former Washington club president Arthur Gorman; former NL president and lifelong secretary-treasurer Nick Young; two other star players turned sporting goods entrepreneurs (George Wright and Alfred Reach); and AAU president James E. Sullivan.

The final report, published in 1908, included three sections: a summary of the panel’s findings written by Mills, a letter by John Montgomery Ward supporting the panel, and a dissenting opinion by Henry Chadwick. The research methods were, at best, dubious. The Commission probably looked for and found the perfect story: baseball was invented in a quaint rural town without foreigners or industry, by a young man who later graduated from West Point and served heroically in the Mexican-American War, Civil War, and U.S. wars against Indians.

The Mills Commission concluded that baseball had been invented by Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York in 1839; that Doubleday had invented the word “baseball,” designed the diamond, indicated fielder positions, written down the rules and the field regulations. However, no written records from 1839 or the 1840s have ever been found to corroborate these claims; nor could Doubleday be interviewed (he had died in 1893). The principal source for the story was one letter from elderly Abner Graves, who was a five-year-old resident of Cooperstown in 1839. But Graves never mentioned a diamond, positions or the writing of rules. Graves’ reliability as a witness has also been questioned because he was later convicted of murdering his wife and spent his final days in an asylum for the criminally insane. Further, Doubleday was not in Cooperstown in 1839 and may never have visited the town. He was enrolled at West Point and there is no record of any leave time. Mills, a lifelong friend of Doubleday, had never heard him mention baseball.

As noted previously, versions of baseball rules, and descriptions of similar games, have since been found in publications that significantly predate the alleged invention in 1839.

Jeff Idelson of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York has stated, “Baseball wasn’t really born anywhere,” meaning that the evolution of the game was long and continuous and has no clear, identifiable single origin.

Alexander Cartwright

Alexander Cartwright

The first published rules of baseball were written in 1845 for a New York (Manhattan) base ball club called the Knickerbockers. The author, Alexander Joy Cartwright, is one person commonly known as “the father of baseball.” Evolution from the so-called “Knickerbocker Rules” to the current rules is fairly well documented.

On June 3, 1953, Congress officially credited Cartwright with inventing the modern game of baseball, and he is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. However, the role of Cartwright himself has been disputed. His authorship is occasionally called a significant exaggeration: a modern attempt to identify a single “inventor” of the game (akin to the Doubleday myth), although Cartwright still has a far better claim to the title than virtually any other single American.

Cartwright, a New York bookseller who caught “gold fever,” umpired the first-ever recorded U.S. baseball game with codified rules in Hoboken, New Jersey on June 19, 1846. He also founded the older of the two teams that played that day, the New York Knickerbockers. Finally, Cartwright introduced the game in most of the cities where he stopped on his trek west to California to find gold.

One point undisputed by historians is the direct evolution from amateur urban clubs of the 1840s and 1850s, not the pastures of the small Cooperstowns of America, to the modern professional major leagues that began in the 1870s.

Before 1845

Evolution of the game that became modern baseball is unknown before 1845. The Knickerbocker Rules describe a game that they had been playing for some time. But how long is uncertain and so is how that game had developed.

There were once two camps. One, mostly English, asserted that baseball evolved from a game of English origin (probably rounders); the other, almost entirely American, said that baseball was an American invention (perhaps derived from the game of one ol’ cat). Apparently they saw their positions as mutually exclusive. Some of their points seem more national loyalty than evidence: Americans tended to reject any suggestion that baseball evolved from an English game, while some English observers concluded that baseball was little more than their rounders without the round.

Cricket and Rounders

That baseball is based on English and Gaelic games such as cat, cricket, and rounders is difficult to dispute. On the other hand, baseball has many elements that are uniquely American. The earliest published author to muse on the origin of baseball, John Montgomery Ward, was suspicious of the often-parroted claim that rounders is the direct ancestor of baseball, as both were formalized in the same time period. He concluded, with some amount of patriotism, that baseball evolved separately from town-ball (rounders) out of children’s safe haven ball games.

Certainly baseball is related to cricket and rounders, but exactly how, or how closely, has not been established. The only certain thing is that modern cricket is much older than modern baseball.

Games played with bat-and-ball together may all be distant cousins; the same goes for base-and-ball games. Bat, base, and ball games for two teams that alternate in and out, such as baseball, cricket, and rounders, are likely to be close cousins. They all involve throwing a ball to a batsman who attempts to “bat” it away and run safely to a base, while the opponent tries to put the batter-runner out when liable (“liable to be put out” is the baseball term for unsafe).

Elysian Fields

 Early baseball game played at Elysian Fields, Hoboken
(Currier & Ives lithograph).

In 1845, the Knickerbocker Club of New York City began using Elysian Fields in Hoboken to play baseball due to the lack of soft grounds on Manhattan. In 1846, the Knickerbockers played the New York Nine on these grounds in the first organized game between two clubs. A plaque, and baseball diamond street pavings at 11th and Washington Streets commemorate the event. By the 1850s, several Manhattan-based members of the National Association of Base Ball Players were using the grounds as their home field.

In 1865 the grounds hosted a championship match between the Mutual Club of New York and the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn that was attended by an estimated 20,000 fans and captured in the Currier & Ives lithograph “The American National Game of Base Ball.”

With the construction of two significant baseball parks enclosed by fences in Brooklyn, enabling promoters there to charge admission to games, the prominence of Elysian Fields began to diminish. In 1868 the leading Manhattan club, Mutual, shifted its home games to the Union Grounds in Brooklyn. In 1880, the founders of the New York Metropolitans and New York Giants finally succeeded in siting a ballpark in Manhattan that became known as the Polo Grounds.

After 1845

In 1857, sixteen clubs from modern New York City sent delegates to a convention that standardized the rules, essentially by agreeing to revise the Knickerbocker rules. In 1858, twenty-five including one from New Jersey founded a going concern but the National Association of Base Ball Players is conventionally dated from 1857. It governed through 1870 but it scheduled and sanctioned no games.

By 1862 some NABBP member clubs offered games to the general public in enclosed ballparks with admission fees.

During and after the American Civil War, the movements of soldiers and exchanges of prisoners helped spread the game. As of the December 1865 meeting, the year the war ended, there were isolated Association members in Fort Leavenworth, St. Louis, Louisville, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, along with about 90 members north and east of Washington.

In 1869 the first openly professional baseball team formed. Earlier players were nominally amateurs. The Cincinnati Red Stockings recruited nationally and effectively, toured nationally, and no one beat them until June 1870.

Already in the 19th century, the “old game” was invoked for special exhibitions such as reunions and anniversaries — and for making moral points. Today hundreds of clubs in the U.S. play “vintage base ball” according to the 1845, 1858, or later rules (up to about 1887), usually in vintage uniforms. Some of them have supporting casts that recreate period dress and manner, especially those associated with living history museums.

Other Events on this Day

• In 1789…
  In New York City, the U.S. House of Representatives holds its first full meeting and elects Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as its first Speaker.
• In 1865…
  Union Troops win a victory at the Battle of Five Forks, Virginia, causing Robert E. Lee to tell Jefferson Davis that Petersburg and Richmond must be evacuated.
• In 1945…
  American troops begin landing on the island of Okinawa in the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific during World War II.
• In 1954…
  The U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is established.
• In 1960…
  Tiros I, the world’s first weather satellite, is launched from Cape Canaveral.
• In 1996…
  Fast-food chain Taco Bell announces it has bought the Liberty Bell and renamed it the Taco Liberty Bell, and thousands believe the April Fool’s Day Prank.

Dates and events based on:

William J. Bennett and John Cribb, (2008) The American Patriot’s Almanac Daily Readings on America. (Kindle Edition)

Background information is from Wikipedia articles on:

Wikipedia: Origins of Baseball… 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_baseball

Brainy Quote: April Quotes…
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/april.html