Abecedarium, a Rite of Church Consecration

 

During all the years I’ve been living in Jerusalem, I’ve often had the idea I’d like to attend the annual reconsecration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, probably the holiest and most significant church in all of Christendom. I know I haven’t told you the reasons for my interest yet, so just wait for it.

One of your first questions might be Why is any church anywhere consecrated (but especially here, in a spot that is regarded as already holy), but also When was this church consecrated to begin with? The right answer to the second question is probably the year 1149 CE, but please keep reading. There used to be a consecration inscription on the west wall of Calvary’s chapel. However, at some point that wall was removed in order to extend the floor and expand its available space.*  Luckily various persons in the past copied parts of the Latin inscription so we know most of what it said by piecing them together.

(*In the process access was cut off to the second south entry door [the main access door into the church as a whole since crusader times] which was then walled up, explaining why the originally double doors are still today a single door, but I'll blog again on that.)

The English version of the no longer visible consecration inscription can be seen in Pringle’s gold-standard book:

“This place is holy, consecrated by the blood of Christ. By our consecration we add nothing to this sanctuary. But the house built over and around this holy place was consecrated on 15 July by Patriarch Fulcher with the other fathers. It was then the fourth year of his patriarchate and at the same time fifty years from the taking of the city, which was similar to pure . . . Similarly from the birth of the Lord were numbered 1149 years, the indiction being the (second, sixth and seventh) . . .”

But wait a minute, there was long ago a Basilica, the Anastasis or Martyrium,* built under Emperor Constantine and consecrated on September 13, 335 CE. You may say the Anastasis is no longer there, but that’s not 100% true. For one thing, you can still see a couple of black basalt pillars that marked the breezeway or atrium that divided the Anastasis entrance (and likely its stairsteps) from the Roman main avenue called the Cardo. The Cardo was otherwise lined with white pillars, so the black ones definitely stood out, which I suppose was the whole idea. To see for yourself, all you have to do is enter a nearby Russian church, the Alexander Nevsky. They ask an entrance fee, unlike other churches, because they are as much a museum as a church.** Once inside, just go to the distant-most corner of the lower floor and walk into the small area there. It used to be very dark, but nowadays you can see very well. You can even put your hands on the pillars, at least two are plainly visible and standing vertically. It's really special to be able to touch this piece of Jerusalem’s history.

(*Some called it the Martyrium, and that’s also interesting. Anastasis refers not to the death, but to the resurrection. Besides the basalt pillars, there are still more remains of the Anastasis including its 12-pillared apse, or some remains from it. As this church was oriented to the west, the new Crusader church was oriented to the east, so that the apse of one is practically on top of the apse of the other, even while oriented in opposite directions. I’ll want to go into that another time. **Speak Russian when you enter, but then you'll be expected to donate for a candle or two. Vegans will want to avoid the candles made of beeswax.)

But to get back to my line of thought on the enduring significance of the lost inscription, September 13 is not the day when the reconsecrations are performed by Catholics today. Today’s annual date was chosen because of the Crusader Era consecration of 1149. And notice those words “fifty years from the taking of the city.” Reason for the July 15th date?  It was on July 15th, in the year 1099, that the Crusader army accomplished their siege of the city by breaching the city wall in the north. I don’t want to come down too hard on the Frankish conquerors. After all, it was common practice to punish the people who resisted all the more for their efforts. A difficult siege merits vengeance. In short, a blood bath followed, the local Christians may not have been entirely exempt from it, and I’ve never been able to get myself accustomed to the fact that the Christians continue to celebrate that day as somehow holy anyway.*

(*There are serious scholarly discussions about just how high the blood level could have been in the streets given the size of the city. And as many as 30,000 men, women and children were slaughtered. That was probably the entire population at the time.)

At the same time, apologies for my bluntness. Switching gears entirely, I’m very much interested in the ways religious people of every kind manage to make objects and places holy. And some aspects of Catholic consecration are especially interesting when you think in terms of laying out a sacred space and marking out its very special points of access and what meaning that would hold for those who worship in such a place. That’s why, as a student of religions and not myself a Catholic, I particularly wanted to see how it was done in traditional church dedications, so I read all the books on the subject I could find, taking advantage of some very good state and university libraries.

As a longtime dweller in Jerusalem, a city so holy it requires no consecration, it intrigues me that two major rituals in use in the European nations — both the rites of church or temple consecration and those of royal coronation — were by all accounts initiated by one and the same person: the reputed founder of our city three thousand years ago, King Solomon. If you were one of millions who watched the anointment of King Charles on television not long ago you must have noticed how, while “Zadok the Priest” was sung, the king, under cover of a walled canopy, was anointed by oil produced on the Mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls and sanctified by the Greek Patriarch in front of the Tomb in the Holy Sepulchre Church.*

(*The anointment oil, besides the olive oil, included many added fragrances, but at request of His Majesty, no animal-derived products were among them, no ambergris or civet. The walls around the canopy were also invented by him. You don’t see them in recent English or French coronations, only the canopy.)

The one rite among the several together making up the ritual of consecration that has most caught my attention was one called the Abecedarium. I realized that reading about it is one thing, and seeing how it was actually done another. How do they make the letters in the piles of ashes exactly? What is the procedure? Does it spell out its own meaning or would you have to ask the priest to explain it? Who ever tells you that the ash piles are flattened with a trowel? (I had no idea until I saw it done.) Perhaps the chanted Latin words have some clues?  So many questions, and all of them can be answered if you just have a look at the following video clip from the nearly nine-hour ritual. The Bishop is inscribing the ashes with the letters of the two alphabets:

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(Note: I tried to embed a short video clip, but I believe my effort was an abysmal failure. That doesn’t need to be a problem, just go to the entire 9-hour video, move the slider two hours into it, and watch awhile. The link you need is just below.)

If you have infinite patience, or would like to develop the same, watch the entire video. If you are as pressed for time as I assume you are, move ahead to these starting points, to the parts I regard as the most interesting:

Fast forward to around 2:00 (two hours into it) for the ashes with the letters.

Then I think the most interesting segments are at 3:48 when the reliquary is taken from the tent to the altar in a procession with participation by laypeople.* 

 

(*The only layperson that had been allowed inside up to this point was the mason, who hasn’t done his job yet. You can see him up in our frontispiece dressed in black and leaning against a pillar.)

Then at 4:47 where the cavity in the altar for the relics is consecrated... This cavity is called the sepulchrum, and that means a tomb, it is true that this part of the consecration, as it has to do with the relics of the saints, is largely based on funerary rites.

For the mason doing his part, laying the mortar that will seal the relics inside the altar top: 4:53.

An impressive episode in which carvings in cross shape on the altar top are filled with oil and lighted on fire: 6:12.

And to close without closing ourselves off to further understandings, at this point I am entirely convinced that the Abecedarium is a specifically Latin Catholic example of something we frequently find in other contexts in other religions: using one type of holy object to add holiness to another. How so? In this context, the letters of the Greek and Latin alphabets are often called the “elements of faith,” but what that means is that this collection of letters constitutes the complete set of building blocks for Holy Scriptures, specifically the LXX (Septuagint) and Vulgate. The Abecedarium fills the interior space of the church with the holiness of scriptures to the extent they become coterminous. By that I mean that they occupy the same space. A double holiness pervades.

Now that I’m finished it occurs to me that I never said why, despite my desire, I never attended the annual consecration of the Holy Sepulchre Church. I changed my mind about going because I found out that, after an early morning procession to purify the exterior of the church, the bishop and priests would enter and seal the door. No layperson would be allowed entry until the parts of most interest to me were completed. This took some of the wind out of my sails, true, but only some of it.

— • —

Drink Me (but only if you’re thirsty)

If you go first to the 9-hour video, you can find a link to the PDF of a large booklet that goes along with it. Not only does it have the Latin words with English translation, it also has serious and well considered discussions about the meaning and history of various aspects of the ritual.

“Alphabetritus,” a Wikipedia entry in German (turn on your translator if you might need to as there doesn’t seem to be anything like it in the English Wikipedia):

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabetritus.

Lee Bowen, “The Tropology of Mediaeval Dedication Rites,” Speculum, vol. 16, no. 4 (October 1941), pp. 469-479.  

The explanation of the Abecedarium you find here on p. 475 is quite the ordinary one:  

“The abecedarium signified the rudiments of doctrine, as simple as the letters of the alphabet but, through the cross, the source of all wisdom and a guide to spirituality.” 

It usually isn't pointed out that, as cross-like as the design may be, it's •not• the cross of Jesus, and neither is it the cross of St. Peter, rather it is the cross of St. Andrew...  It is X-shaped.

But then Bowen adds something I find more interesting: 

“It was long ago recognized that the abecedarium and the decussated cross had a counterpart in early baptismal rites in which a chrismon with pendent alpha and omega was shown to the neophyte.” 

It hadn’t occurred to me that the two things might be related, but now I’ve gotten inspired to look further into the chrismon in a future blog. It seems that in earlier times (as for instance in Dura Europas) the alphabets tended to be placed near the doors and windows, while the chrismon still tends to be placed above the doors (and sometimes on the sides).

E.C. Harington, The Object, Importance and Antiquity of the Rite of Consecration of Churches, F. & J. Rivington (London 1844). Find it at archive.org. Near the beginning is an informative sketch of the earliest history of Christian church-building and consecration. On p. 32 we find out what Eusebius says about the consecration of the Holy Sepulchre Church in his Life of Constantine. I should check the source, but it seems as if this first consecration of the “Martyrion” as he calls it was a convocation of Christian leaders from all the surrounding countries, and hardly anything is said of any ritual actions that were performed, apparently there were a lot of scriptural readings, speeches, prayers and sermons. It lasted eight days. Here there is another interesting mention of annual reconsecration, a practice that certainly goes back to the 4th century (p. 38). Oh, and these early consecrations of the church at Tyre as well as the Martyrion at Jerusalem took place in association with (preceded by) dispute resolutions. Elsewhere I have noticed that it is regarded as important to pay all outstanding debts before the consecration is performed. There are indeed interesting social aspects inside and outside the ritual that we can think about without falling into sociological reductionism (heaven forfend!).

Benjamin Kedar, “On Discontents with Jerusalem’s Sanctity.” A Hebrew version was published in the newspaper Ha'aretz, but the English ought to be available somewhere on the internet (try here). I recommend it as sobering message by an eminent medievalist historian about a city that by no means always lives up to its holiness, let me tell you.

Mark Langham, “Consecration of the Cathedral, 1910,” contained in the Blogger blogsite Solomon, I Have Surpassed You, posted on July 7, 2007. Click on the link to find a few remarkable historic photographs of a 1910 consecration of Westminster Cathedral, London, including the alphabet rite.

Didier Méhu, “The Colors of the Ritual: Description & Inscription of Church Dedication in Liturgical Manuscripts (10th-11th Centuries).” A 2016 publication made available at academia.edu. At p. 272 is a valuable discussion of the Abecedarium, with reference to some French and German studies I should look into: Klaus Schreiner, “Abecedarium: Die Symbolik des Alphabets in der Liturgie der mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Kirchweihe,” contained in Ralf M.W. Stammberger, Claudia Sticher, & Annekatrin Warnke, eds., Das Haus Gottes, pp. 143–187; Cécile Treffort, “Opus litterarum: L’inscription alphabétique et le rite de consécration de l’église (IXe–XIIe siècle),” Cahiers d'civilisation médiévale, vol. 53 (2010), pp. 153–180.

R.W. Muncey, A History of the Consecration of Churches and Churchyards, W. Heffer & Sons (Cambridge 1930). Chapter 5 is mainly about the “Alphabet Ceremony” and its history.  According to this book, the words sung during the Alphabet Ceremony include “O quam metuendus est locus iste!” roughly translated “Oh how awe-inspiring is this place!”* In the speculations about the origins of the rite, it’s especially interesting to wonder how it may connect to the practices of Roman land surveyors called agrimensores, or to divinatory procedures of the Roman auguri.

(*The booklet, p. 29, translates it “How dreadful is this place!”)

James Owen, The History of the Consecration of Altars, Temples and Churches; Shewing the various FORMS of it among Jews, Heathens and Christians, deduced from it’s first Origine to this present Age, Benj. Bragg (London 1706).

Denys Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, a Corpus: Volume III, The City of Jerusalem, with drawings by Peter E. Leach, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge 2007), with the section about the Holy Sepulchre at pp. 72, the now lost consecration inscription on pp. 20-21, 68. We can find out on p. 14 that in around 1006 CE, the west wall of Calvary would have been adorned with a large icon of Jesus being taken down from the cross. There too, we find out to our surprise that the small stairway leading up to Calvary (most pilgrims miss it by going straight ahead; it pays to have a guide) looked then much as it does now. As the Abbot Daniel said in his travel account, “It has two doors; you must go up seven steps to the door, and passing through the door, another seven steps.” But I do wonder if this marble stairway is now located on the same spot it was then if, as we know, the area of Calvary was expanded to the west by removing the west wall. My idea is that this very heavy marble staircase must have been moved (I’m guessing after the fire of the early 19th century, at the same time the tombs of the Crusader kings were removed). I believe this book by Pringle, even if it doesn’t cover everything, is the best thing there is if you want to know the histories of the churches of Jerusalem at every step, up or down, through the ages. Even churches that no longer exist are described in remarkable detail.

Brian Repsher, “The Abecedarium: Catechetical Symbolism in the Rite of Church Dedication,” Mediaevalia, vol. 24 (2003), pp. 1-18. I have no access to this. I once had a copy of the same author’s book on church dedications but cannot locate it at the moment. My first acquaintance with the alphabet rite I owe to that book.

Augustin Joseph Schulte, Consecranda: Rites and Ceremonies Observed at the Consecration of Churches, Altars, Altar-Stones, Chalices and Patens, Benziger Brothers (New York 1907).  The publishers are "Printers to the Holy Apostolic See,” and it bears a Nihil Obstat. Its specifications and drawings for the altars are quite clear. On page 22 are the diagrams you see below (see also p. 54).

Augustin Joseph Schulte, "Consecration," entry in The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 26 May 2023 <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04276a.htm>

Thomas Wemys [Vicar of Whittingham, Northumberland], Beth-Hak-Kodesh or the Separation and Consecration of Places for GOD's publick Service and Worship and the Reverence due unto Them vindicated, Thomas Dring (London 1674), in 104 pages. Although it has clear polemical intentions, perhaps this helps explain why some points are made more sharp and plain than they would have been otherwise. The author is very much against the Quakers and what he calls the “sectaries.” He is especially keen to defend the idea that the church is not a place for sermons and preaching, or a place for preaching only. No, it’s intended as a place of worship, prayer, offering and ritual. He observes that the preacher, after all, doesn’t require anointment as the priest does. The book is quite rare, so I made my copy from a microfilmed version of it. It appears this has not as yet appeared anywhere on the worldwide web (try Proquest if you have institutional access). This is a pity. At one point he discusses the verse in Deuteronomy 16.21 that forbids a sanctuary to have any tree nearby, or any pillar, “which the Lord thy God hates.” What could be more clear in the background to the history of holy edifices? Sanctified buildings were preceded by consecrated groves and standing stones (the maseboth of the Tanakh)? Recall how Jacob poured oil on a stone? (Genesis 28.18). Wemys sees this as a very early Biblical instance of anointment by oil, what we still see as the most definitive moments in the ordination of priests, the consecration of churches, and the coronation of kings and queens.

§  §  §

Here is one of the diagrams of the Abecedarium I could locate. It is ultimately extracted from a 1722 (1723?) publication with engravings by by Bernard Picart.*

(*I think the work in question is this one, although it is difficult for me to check: The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of All the Peoples of the World, in French, the first of its seven folio volumes appearing in 1723. I once saw it in Widener Library. There is a book about this book I would like to read. See Peter Harrington’s blog entry about it.)

Final attempt at clarification: I haven’t seen that any of my written sources convey quite the same idea I have given about the Abecedarium, not in so many words. But I believe it is suggested, too, when you see in the accompanying booklet (p. 31) the comment that in earlier times the Hebrew alphabet was also included in it (and I would add, as the original alphabet of the Old Testament). Nothing is said about exactly how this was done, but it could be that a third line of ash piles was used, I have no way of knowing.

•

May 31, 2023

Another matter, although I cannot tell you how important you will find it:  In a review of Martin Biddle’s book The Tomb of Christ, Joseph Patrich says,

“The Crusader church was not consecrated on the 50th anniversary of the conquest (July 15, 1149) but between the accession of Amalric in 1163 and the years 1167-69. This had been deduced from the charters of the church by de Vogüé in 1860 but many scholars had ignored him. The erroneous idea was based on the Latin inscription on the façade of Calvary, but the inscription refers only to the consecration of the Calvary chapels, not to the whole church (92-98).”

I take it Patrich means to say that the consecration of the entire restored church did not mark a 50th year anniversary, although I suppose it did mark an anniversary (was the consecration of the entire church performed on a July 15th date? It isn’t made clear). I don’t believe Patrich’s idea about the 1149 consecration being limited to the chapel of Calvary has been accepted, although it may be correct.

I’ve also received a message from Father F.T. who kindly disabused me of my false impression that a July 15 consecration event at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre would have included all the steps of a full church consecration. That means my chances of witnessing an Abecedarium would be much diminished. To quote from his mail:

“I had never heard of reconsecrating a church every year.  We do commemorate the consecration of a church every year, but we don't redo the ceremony.  It would be like re-baptizing a Christian.  I wonder why they would do this at the Holy Sepulchre?”

I stand corrected. 

(And thanks to N.G., who sent a further clarification together with a website link and a link to a video that I much recommend.) There is a great deal more I need to know. 

I only now learned of a Stanford dissertation that in its Chapter Five has much to say about the annual July 15 church rededication ritual in early centuries and what made the way it was performed unique to Jerusalem. As you may see if you look there, these special aspects have much to do with celebrating the Crusader ‘Liberation’ of the city.

Sebastián Ernesto Salvadó, The Liturgy of The Holy Sepulchre and The Templar Rite: Edition and Analysis of The Jerusalem Ordinal (Rome, Bib. Vat., Barb. Lat. 659) with a Comparative Study of The Acre Breviary (Paris, Bib. Nat., Ms. Latin 10478), doctoral dissertation, Stanford University (August 2011). For free download, the only worthwhile kind there is, go here. Then scroll down to around p. 170.

June 10, 2023

An interesting wrinkle: I wasn’t sure if I could rely on any of the ideas I’ve run across about the age of the practice, but today I stumbled on an interesting reference to Abecedaria being inscribed on walls (not on the floor) close to the doorways in one of the earliest surviving Christian churches, the one in Dura-Europos. My source on this is Jodi Magness’ chapter “The ‘Foundation Deposit’ from the Dura Europos Synagogue Reconsidered,” contained in: Bonna D. Wescoat and Robert G. Ousterhout, eds., Architecture of the Sacred Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium, online publication of Cambridge University Press (2012), pp. 232-247, at p. 236. In the attached footnote, reference is made to C.B. Welles, The Excavations at Dura-Europos Conducted by Yale University and the French Academy of Inscriptions and Letters, Final Report VIII, Part II: The Christian Building (New Haven 1967), pp. 89-92, 95, 125-126. I will have to go see what that book has to say when I can find it. I’ve found a little bit about this in some other books. It does seem that the location of the Greek and Syriac (Estrangelo) alphabets indicates they have some ritual purpose, just what ritual purpose isn’t clear enough for me to say anything. But perhaps the key to understanding is there, somewhere, already in the time when the first house-churches were becoming churches. This begs for illumination. I’ll let you know what I find out.

October 15, 2023

I found out a new thing. I thought I might go to the church to see what happens on the annual founding anniversary for the Constantinian church. Then I saw the ritual processions that happened last year on that day posted as a video on the internet. Now I see that in Jerusalem, and only in Jerusalem, the day is celebrated by Romans. The Custodia put up a page with interesting information about it (and a series of around 30 photographs if you can find them there). It's called The Exaltation of the Holy Cross, celebrated not only at the Holy Sepulchre Church, but also at the Monastery of the Holy Cross in the western part of the city (by all means go to that link if you haven’t yet seen the interior of our neighborhood’s holy place). This is one holiday that the Greeks and Romans agree about, both celebrating it on the 14th of September according to the Gregorian calendar.