28 March 2024

Humble Access

"We do not presume to come to this thy table (o mercifull lord) trusting in our owne righteousnes, but in thy manifold and great mercies: we be not woorthie so much as to gather up the cromes under thy table: but thou art the same lorde whose propertie is alwayes to haue mercie: Graunt us therefore (gracious lorde) so to eate the fleshe of thy dere sonne Jesus Christ, and to drynke his bloud in these holy Misteries, that we may continuallye dwell in hym, and he in us, that our synfull bodyes may bee made cleane by his body, and our soules washed through hys most precious bloud. Amen."

Since the Holy See has approved the Ordinariate Missal, approval has automatically thus been given to a Eucharistic Theologoumenon which is distinctively Anglican. The use of the above Prayer is mandatory in the Ordinariate Missal.

Just before its end, the Anglican Prayer has, since 1552, concluded by asking "that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most precious Blood, and that we may ever more dwell in him, and he in us. Amen."

This association of the Lord's Body with the needs of our bodies, and of his Blood with the needs of our souls, is a medieval idea going back to an unknown writer whose works were mixed up with those of S Ambrose, so that he is for convenience known as Ambrosiaster. S Thomas Aquinas, who in the Summa (III, lxxiv, 1) teaches this distinction (as had that enthusiastic Carolingian upholder of the Real Presence, S Paschasius Radbertus), quotes it as from S Ambrose; and I think it is clearly what the Angelic Doctor had in mind when he wrote the third stanza of his Verbum supernum prodiens; I give a literal translation: To whom [i.e. the disciples] He gave flesh and blood under twofold appearance that He might feed the whole Man of double substance. That is to say, He gave himself in the two species so that He might feed the entirety of Man who is composed, doubly, of both body and soul.

In his first (1548) liturgical experiment in the Eucharistic Liturgy, Cranmer carried this Thomistic distinction even into the formulae at the administration of Holy Communion: The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ .... preserve thy body ... and The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ ... preserve thy soul .... 

Successive generations of Anglican liturgists have been nervous about this Thomist, non-Biblical distinction between the effect of the Body upon our bodies and of the Blood upon our souls; Dix cattily remarked "there is no particular reason why people should be made to pray medieval speculations in a Reformed church". The Puritans asked for its removal, and it has been eliminated from most modern Anglican rites. 

But in the Ordnariate we faithfully preserve this highly distinctive piece of Patrimony!

An erudite correspondent once told me that Garrigou Lagrange argued for the Blood being more efficacious than the Body, because the reception of the Body ipso facto remitted all venial sins repented of, thus leaving the soul the more cleansed and ready to profit from the Chalice (medieval monarchs at their coronations were given the Chalice "ad augmentum gratiae").  

Lagrange also held that a desire thus to profit was a sufficient motive for desiring the Holy Order of priesthood!





27 March 2024

"So what does it SYMBOLISE?"

I sometimes think that this is a profoundly UnCatholic question to ask. 

Of course, as concerns the Consecrated Eucharistic Elements, the prods both inside and outside the Church will give this answer: "They symbolise Christ's Body and Blood". It may then become our duty to embark upon the laborious task of explaining yet again that the Elements ARE the Lord's Body and Blood.

But I fear that the malaise may go even deeper. My view is that the natural and the supernatural interrelate, interpenetrate, in the Liturgy, and especially during these days of the Paschal Mysteries.

Let me begin with the Oil of Chrism.

S Cyril of Jerusalem taught his catechumens that, after the invocation of the Holy Spirit, just as is the case with the the Loaf of the Eucharist becoming the Body of Christ, so (houto) this holy muron is not 'bare' (psilon)--or as someone might say 'common' (koinon)--oil, but the kharisma of Christ and, by the presence (parousiai) of the Holy Spirit is become 'causal' (energetikon) of his  Godhead. "And the body is anointed with the visible muron, while the soul is made holy by the holy and unseen Spirit."

Here comes the first of today's two funny bits.

When the 'reformers of the 1960s incorporated this passage in the Liturgy of the Hours, they chickened ... the wimps chopped out the strong parallelism between the Consecration of the Eucharistic Loaf, and the Consecration of the myrrh.

But, hey ... 

In the Traditional Paschal rites of the Roman Church, the Pontiff begs the LORD, the Holy Father, through Jesus Christ His Son, that he might deign to sanctify the richness of this creature with his blessing and to mix into it the virtus of the Holy Spirit through the power of his Christ.

Immiscere is a natural, functional term such you might find in any recipe book, such as the much-fingered 1960s volumes on our kitchen shelf.

This is what, at the Chrism Mass, our Bishop asked God to make an ingredient in the Oil of Chrism. I do not think that we are here a million miles from the instincts of S Cyril. 

And here's another thing the Bishop did. He breathed (three times) on to oil as he consecrated it.

This clearly symbolised ... er, No; it didn't "symbolise" anything.  

As Dix used to explain, the Bishop is "the mediatorial, sacrificing priest ... the unique organ of the Holy Spirit who indwells the Church ... ex officio a prophet, ex officio a healer and (the highest form of healing) a supremely potent exorcist." [Today's second Funny Bit: Dix's powerful advocacy thus assigned to (Anglican) bishops something most of them neither wanted nor for the most part believed in: the status of Sacrificing Priest and of  'supremely potent' confector of Sacraments. But Dix denied them what they were really ravenously hungry for: the Bergogliological  jurisdiction to ban and to extirpate the hated Tridentine Eucharistic Rite.]

Your Bishop at his Chrism Mass is homo mixtus Deo, the Powerful Organ of the Spirit. As he breathes on the Oil, his breath is the Breath, the Pneuma, of the creating Father (Genesis 1: 1) and of the Incarnate Lord (John 20: 22) who in this rite so empowered his disciples. It is one of the most powerful elements in the mysteries of these three mystery-laden days.

You know how universal the use is of the Oil  of Chrism. At what in the West we call Confirmation, the Bishop uses it with the words Signo te Signo Crucis et confirmo te Chrismate Salutis (and what a tragedy it was that anybody thought to tamper with those words). Ordinations; Coronations; the Blessings of Bells and of Churches ...

The Mystery of the Chrism binds together these three days, and the ancient liturgy rightly speaks of a Sacramentum perfectae salutis vitaeque; it refers to the constitutionis tuae  sacramentum, using the word Sacramentum in a broad and prescholastic sense. 

Incidentally, if we are to believe Prudentius, the Blessing of the Easter Candle, as an instance of a Lucernarium, involved the use of Chrism: Lumen ... tinctum pacifici Chrismatis unguine.

26 March 2024

Good Friday: Holy Communion?

 I think that I ... and perhaps, you ... am so habituated by, and to, modern customs, that we might not always realise that Receiving the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar on Good Friday is neither universal; nor the custom, traditio, of all the ages. And not even 'primitive'.

It may now be the almost universal custom in the modern Roman Rite, even in those places where pre-Conciliar usages are valued, for everybody to do what by custom they do every Sunday: to go 'up' and to receive the Sacrament. But "the first witness of the reception of the Eucharist on the Friday of Holy Week is found in the Ordo Einsiedlensis written in the eighth century but recording the custom of the middle of the preceding century". 

Pope Innocent I (401-417) wrote to the the Bishop of Gubbio that "the Tradition of the Church is very strongly that the sacraments are not celebrated" on this Friday and Saturday. 

Was this an abstinence peculiar to Rome? Etheria (circa 385), in her detailed account of the liturgical use in this Week in Jerusalem, makes no mention of Communion on this day. I rather think that some Byzantines abstain from Communion on this Day ... and what was the Ambrosian traditio before the Council?

And when we do start to hear of lay people receiving Holy Communion on Good Friday, it persists in being an option which people might choose. For example, we read that the Pope and the Deacons do not communicate at the Mass in the Basilica of the Holy Cross ... people who desire to communicate will go to other Roman churches, perhaps one of the titulares, and do so there. Amalarius (circa 830) informs us that "in ea statione ubi Apostolicus salutat crucem, nemo ibi communicat".

It rather looks to me as though we see here new 'customs' gradually, untidily, making their way in ... customs which  the Roman Pontiff himself might not publicly adopt. This rather laisser faire approach seems to have gone on for a very long time; only on 19 February 1632 does the SRC prohibit lay Communion on this day ... a prohibition which was not universally implemented!

You will have gathered that I am not strongly in favour of dragooning everybody up to the Altar on Good Friday.

In the 1930s, an Anglo-Catholic Bishop wrote about the "Eucharistic Fast" on Good Friday as being "perhaps the most moving ceremony of the whole liturgical year. No one who has not experienced it can realise what a climax it makes to the observance of Good Friday, or how near we are brought to the Divine Victim of the Cross. In theory perhaps we ought to wish for the restoration of the general Communion of Good Friday, but in practice the very fact of abstinence from Communion is felt by many to enhance the essential feeling of the day, that the Bridegroom is taken away from us."

Bishop: you were right about 'moving' and 'felt' and 'essential feeling' , but wrong about 'in theory' and 'ought'.

DIES valde AMARITUDINIS!

25 March 2024

Good Friday: what colour is suitable for a Dies Amaritudinis?

 (In a few remarks during Holy Week, I draw on information in the Commentary on the 1955 Holy Week by Braga and Bugnini.)

Incidentally, I rather like the old Latin appellation Great Week.

In the Ordinariate Missal, the rubric intimates that the "Priest and Sacred Ministers, wearing Red or Black vestments ...". This permissive use of Black is interesting and tempting. In the 'reformed' rite of 1955, the rule was still the use of Black, long customary in the Roman Rite (exchanged for Violet in the part of the rite which involves the Most Blessed Sacrament). I do not see the point of Red, the modern usage, a colour which is also used at Pentecost and on other occasions. Is there any more sombre and sober marker of this unique Day than the denuded church and the Ministers, in Black, silently making their way to the Sanctuary?

S Ambrose calls this Day a Dies Amaritudinis; that is, of luctus et dolor (bitterness ... sorrow ... anguish). Dictionaries quote Cicero and Quintilian and talk of passionate expression, pathos). It is necessary, I think, for us occasionally to face up to the role (or absence) of psychology in our liturgical deliberations. I do not think that it is entirely healthy to relegate such considerations entirely to those eras of Christian history which in our lordly way we might consider more emotional or affective. Is our religion not designed to apply to every part of our lives and personalities? If I were in a Hispanic area (and healthy enough), I would take the advantage of all those rites and public, communal usages which centre upon baroque images of the Sacred. Call me a peasant if you like ...

And if Amaritudo has no relevance on this particular Day, when will it be relevant?

I suspect that the old Anglo-Catholic practice of devotions to Maria Desolata on the evening of Good Friday (and then to Maria Consolata on Easter Sunday) does have its point.


24 March 2024

Palm Sunday (3)

The admirable Fr Thurston, I have argued, may not have spotted all the exciting possibilities of the Palm Sunday Rites in the Missal of S Pius V. He writes: "It is a regrettable fact that in many of our Catholic churches the oldest and certainly most interesting portion of the ritual of Palm Sunday is too often not carried out". Interesting! Apparently, palms were blessed and distributed, but in 'many' churches there was no Procession! This was also once the 'moderate' Anglican practice, because processions were High Church. The Blessing and Distribution of Sacramentals, apparently, was not!

"The whole essence of the ceremonies peculiar to this day lies in the procession." [Thurston's italic.]

 This fundamental assumption lay, too, at the basis of the Pacelli-Bugnini changes in 1955.

"... we can only admire the piety which leads the faithful to preserve [their palms] thoughout the year ... [but] the boughs were consecrated primarily to be used in the procession ...".

Well ... ... up to a point, Lord Copper. But the next prayer calls these olive branches a 'tuae gratiae sacramentum'. This interesting phraseology must go back to before the word 'sacramentum' had had its meaning limited by the precisions of systematic theology (O'Connell/Finberg nervously translate it 'sacred symbol'). But it was, surely, even then a strong word.

I think we may have here a genuine deepening of understanding resulting in a, frankly, more sophisticated appropriation both of Scripture and of Ritual. The much despised peasant kneeling and kissing her palm cross and carefully preserving it throughout the year may, just possibly, have been onto something which Archbishop Bugnini and Papa Pacelli never quite spotted.

23 March 2024

Palm Sunday (2)

You need to have read Palm Sunday (1).

The Pius V liturgy  for Palm Sunday was accounted for by Fr Thurston in a neat CTS booklet. He was a more elegant writer than I am; and more learned by far. But I think he probably got it wrong.

He explained the S Pius V Palm Sunday in this way:
The preliminary rite for blessing the Palms consists of the remains of what was originally a separate Mass. It includes all of the components of a Mass ... even a Preface ... but not the Consecration and Oblation. What clearly happened originally was that clergy and people attended one Mass at a church outside town; then progressed into town for a second Mass.

I think that, over the years, many of us have come uneasily to feel that, logically, two possibilities are equally probable:
(1) Thurston's: we have here the eviscerated remains of what was originally a full Mass; or
(2) the Blessing and distribution of the Palms was gradually built up by accretion, with the structure of the Mass providing a pattern.

I think the second of these models deserves a run for its money. But I want to look at the 'Preface' (translated below mostly by O'Connell/Finberg):

It is very meet, right ... Lord, Holy Father, Almighty everlasting God: whose glory is in the wisdom of thy Saints. For to thee thy creatures render service, acknowledging thee as their sole origin and their God; and the entire fabric of the universe joins in praising thee; and thy saints bless thee. For they boldly proclaim that great Name of thine only-begotten Son before the kings and powers of this age. Around him stand angels and archangels  ...

I don't actually think this is a superb piece of Latin. I would be surprised if it had been composed by S Leo I or even Leo XIII. But its content is very good dogma. And it is attractively cheerful.

We are blessing branches ... or a branch ... of Olive ... or perhaps of Palm. And we regard the sanctification of these inanimate parts of creation as a sign and foretaste (some 'biblical scholars'might use their fancy grecism 'prolepsis') of the restoration of that creation which fell with and through the primeval Fall (Romans 8:18-24; this is worth reading). These blessed twigs will indeed (see the next prayer) be a 'tuae gratiae sacramentum'.

And so, as the King rides past on his donkey, Creation (omnis factura tua) comes to life (is this a bit Narnian?) and joins in praising him (collaudat). But the Saints are busily blessing too, and speaking with parrhesia before the earthly powers. And ... get this ... not only the Saints but the angels and archangels join the praise.

So it is eschatological: we are teetering here on the edge of the great Restoration at the End when all shall have been put right, even in the trees along the sides of the roads. They are already praising their Maker, and it's not surprising that the Saints get caught up in this cosmic glorification. And ... Yes! ... the heavenly powers, unfallen, seeing this apokatastasis have gathered around the Only-begotten and are singing for all they are worth.

Concludes tomorrow.

22 March 2024

Most Holy Mother of God, Save us.

Going through some old papers, I found something by Timothy Ware, otherwise known as Metropolitan Kallistos of Diocleia (Tablet. 17 January 1998). I offer you a couple of selected extracts ... since today is the Feast of our Lady of the Seven Sorrows. 

"With the greatest frequency in Orthodox worship we say to the Virgin Mary, 'Most Holy Mother of God, save us.' In our invocations to other members of the Communion of Saints, including St John the Baptist, except on very rare occasions we never say more than '... pray for us'. This is not an isolated example. ... 

"Such language is not new. It has been used by Eastern Christians for many centuries, and scarcely ever has it given rise to scandal or controversy. The phrases are thoroughly traditional ... we Orthodox will continue to address Our Lady with the time-honoured invocation, 'Most Holy Mother of God, save us'."

Until the pontificate of Pius XII, the Western Collect on Assumption Day was: Famulorum tuorum, quaesumus , Domine, delictis ignosce: ut, qui tibi placere de actibus nostris non valemus; Genitricis Filii tui Domini nostri intercessione salvemur. Lord, we beg thee to forgive thy servants' offences:and since we are unable to please thee by our own deeds, may we be saved through the intercession of thy Son our Lord.

Thus the Latin Church confessed the understanding which it shared with Byzantines: that our very salvation comes through the prayers offered on our behalf by the Mother of God. Notice the word salvemur.

Papa Pacelli sent out his minions and they destroyed the old Propers for August 15. 

21 March 2024

Num Spectat Clio?

 Some politician has pronounced that "History is Watching".

What does this mean?

Palm Sunday (1)

I am going to reuse three pieces about Palm Sunday which I wrote some years ago. My reason is that they offer a radical alternative to the narrative we normally accept about the meaning of Palm Sunday.

I think I will leave in place the old threads.

 The liturgies for Palm Sunday which are in use, de jure or de facto,  in the 'Roman Rite' of the Latin Church are:
(1) S Pius V
(2) Pius XII (1955)
(3) The Novus Ordo.

I am not going to say much about (3). I am going to explain why, in my opinion, (2) is as bad as, if not worse than, (3), and I will explain what was lost when (1) was displaced by (2).

A spin-off from this is: we need to understand that 'the Council' is not the problem; Hannibal Bugnini was put in place by Pius XII, and the mayhem which the pair of them created in 1955 was just the first stage of the deformation of the Roman Rite which some good people erroneously attribute to 'Vatican II'. Pius XII should not be thought of as a Hero of Tradition.

My own personal view is that I would not inconvenience myself in order to attend (2), which is what you will find in the Missal of 1962, mandated by Summorum Pontificum. If you can be happy with Bugnini, you might as well go to a decently performed staging of (3) ... the sort of thing which the Oratories manage so superbly. (Indeed, there are one or two details, such as a fuller provision of Readings at the Easter Vigil, where (3) is more traditional than (2).)

The Priestly Fraternity of S Peter have had an indult to use (1). I regard that as a very positive move. I hope it is made permanent and universal. In one or two other places which I think I will tactfully not mention, (1) is happily in use. It was the rite originally employed when the SSPX began its mission in this country.

To be continued.

20 March 2024

ORA PRO NOBIS??

 Not long ago, in the Breviary Reading, we had this from S Ambrose: "And if your sin be so grievous that you cannot wash it away yourself with penitential tears, then let Holy Mother Church weep for you, for she intervenes [intervenit] for each one as a widowed mother for her only sons".

The verb, of course, is a compound of venire, to come, and inter, between.

We shall leave aside the apparent implication that a widowed mother might have a plurality of Only Sons. I want to dwell upon the the use of intervenire both as a verb, and in the form of nouns drawn from it.

Perhaps the incessant cry of our wonderful Western litanies resonates in our minds ... Ora pro nobis. And we are so familiar with the words in the Holy Rosary Ora pro nobis peccatoribus nunc et in hora mortis nostrae that the verb orare, to pray, comes naturally to us when we are thinking of the Saints and their Ministry of prayer for us.

But, a little while ago, browsing idly as one does through some first-millennium liturgical texts from around this part of the Land of the West Saxons, celebrating its great 'Apostle' S Birinus, I came across a Proper Preface asking God that he eum pro nobis apud te iugiter intervenire concedas. And a Benediction (one of those old-style triple benedictions imparted by a Bishop before the Pax) from a different liturgical book asks that, as S Birinus through his praedicationem [preaching] saved  innumeri, so now he might 'save' us through interventionem.

So I did what any sensible person would do: I consulted Sr Dr Ellebracht. She never lets one down.

She explains that intervenire in legal terminology 'has basically the same sense as intercedere , but "it includes the of ' the assumption of another's obligation"'. And it is far less frequent, in the Prayers of the Roman Missal, than intercedere.

Then comes a really interesting bit in Ellebracht's information.

Intervenire appears much more frequently in the Veronense, what we used to call 'the Leonine Sacramentary', and Ellerbacht remarks that, really, intercedere is theologically the more accurate word, "since the role of the saints is to plead in behalf of the faithful on earth, but not to intervene in the strict sense of the word".

The Veronense is a very strange old document: I think it is still unknown who collected its contents and why. It is a sort of ragbag ... everything in it is of interest, but we are a bit stymied about how to place it all. However, it is clear that we here are in the rich, fertile soil of the First Millennium. 

And I think that intervenire has much more of a sense of an almost legalistic intervention, as if the interventor has a more formal role of acting on our behalf than even Messrs Wigge and Gowne in the High Street. We would be very glad, in Ellebracht's words, if our selected interventor were, indeed, to "intervene in the strict sese of the word". 

Stricter the better!

Interventor has bigger clout than Intercessor. Does that work?

 

 

19 March 2024

Improper liaisons inside the House

Attentive readers of Scripture will have noticed that the Ioseph typikos, of whom our blessed Lady's chaste Spouse is the Antitypos, is described (Genesis 39) in the Vulgate (and the Neo-Vulgate) and the Septuagint  as having been sold as a slave to Potiphar, 'Eunuch' of Pharaoh. Indeed, Brown Driver Briggs gives "Eunuch" as the central meaning of the Hebrew SRIS. 

Eunuchs were very often Great Men in ancient kingdoms because a sovereign could be moderately confident that they would not spend their time and ingenuity squirreling away state resources for their own offspring. Since, therefore, great officers of state were often eunuchs, it will often yield apparently good sense to translate SRIS as "Officer" or "Courtier" or (Tyndale) "Lorde". 

And, of course, that rendering will prevent naive people from blurting out "But how can a eunuch have a wife?" Nor will puzzled children ask what a Yew Nuck is and, when told, get out their pen-knives and start experimenting on the household pets.

And, indeed, all the proliferating English Protestant Bibles which derive from the King James Bible do  translate this word as something like Officer. But, surprisingly, so do the Catholic Knox and Jerusalem Bibles (and, even more oddly, they do so with never even an explicatory footnote). Only the Geneva Bible and the Douay-Rheims-Challoner Bible courageously give "eunuch". (John Wycliffe, sometime Master of Balliol College in this University, rendered it "gelding"! Nice one, Master!)

Now: observe, in the Genesis narrative, the emphasis given by the writer to Joseph's sexual attractions. He was (LXX) Kalos toi eidei kai horaios tei opsei ... sphodra (exceedingly)! And this heavy hint introduces the narrative of Potiphar's wife's attempt upon Joseph's virtue. 

Translating the term accurately as "Eunuch" gives, um, piquancy to Potiphar's wife's rather urgent desire for sexual intimacy (some have suggested that her name was Zuleika!) And the writer emphasises that there was nobody else in the oikiai when she made her attempt. He also sees a narrative need to explain that Joseph was not dillying or dallying, with no reason, within the oikia ... No; he had had to go inside to poiein ta erga autou. Dutiful; as well as chaste!

Joseph is not another Paris; although perhaps Potiphar's wife is another Helen (vide my previous post in which I drag in Homer).

I venture to suggest that the Spouse of God's Mother has through Providence the name Joseph precisely because of his chaste abstinence within his marriage to Mary. This would make the emphasis on his name, in both Matthew and Luke, a "historical" witness to the Perpetual Virginity of our Lady.

B Pius IX felt that the afflicted Church needed a Patron/Protector, and gave S Joseph a Sunday in Eastertide (according to Gueranger, the commemoration had to be on a Sunday to ensure that Joseph did get a Day of Obligation). A Pontiff or two later, when it had become unpopular to encumber the same Sunday permanently with some other celebration, S Pius X shifted him onto an adjacent Wednesday. Pius XII, another restless liturgical innovator, suppressed that festival, replacing it with S Joseph Opifex on May 1. The post-conciliar revisers (according to Fr Louis Bouyer, "three maniacs"), noticing that nobody much seemed to want S Joseph the Workman, chopped him down to an Optional Memorial.

I disagree with you: this story is not funny. It has had the effect of sending Pip and Jim on their travels.

The bodies of Ss Philip and James are buried in the Basilica of the XII Apostles, dedicated on May 1 in some year near 570. Pius XII exiled them to May 11; the post-conciliar 'reformers' reduced their sentence of relegation to three days and left them on May 3.

Reckless libertarian that I am, I plan to be getting out Red Vestments on May 1. 

The celebration of S Joseph on March 19, found in many Western calendars in the first millennium, was received at Rome in 1479 but did not enter the universal Roman calendar until 1621 ... yet another witness to Rome's innate conservatism ... before the twentieth century ...

The Masses and Offices provided for  S Joseph are very decently typological; shedding a great deal of light upon the role of S Joseph in a rounded, intelligent Heilsgeschichte.

18 March 2024

Visiting women in their houses

In the Iliad, the epic account of the Wrath of Achilles during the Trojan War, there is a thought-provoking vignette juxtaposing Hector and Andromache, and Paris and Helen. The latter pair are corrupt adulterers whose passion has precipitated the War. We must remember that, in Classical Literature, sexual passion is regarded as a wound or madness which leads to disaster; the Romantic superstition that sexual incontinence is "love" and that it justifies any and every wrong deed, had not yet been invented.

Hector his brother, on the other hand, is a brave man who fights for his country; and Andromache is a faithful and devoted wife and mother.

Paris was defeated in a single duel with Helen's lawful husband, Menelaus, but rescued from death by - needless to say - his divine patroness Aphrodite, louche goddess of sexual passion. She miraculously transfers him to his fragrant bedchamber and then scoops up Helen to join him in bed. Meanwhile, the slaughter continues.

In Book 6, we find Hector deciding to urge Paris back to the battlefield. He approaches Paris's house, which consists of thalamos, doma, and aule, defined respectively by the Scholiast [ancient commentator] as bridal chamber, men's quarters,and 'outside'. Still fully equipped in his armour, Hector enters (eiselthe) ... but how far does he go inside?

He finds Paris in the thalamos with Helen and the handmaids, to whom she is assigning their tasks. Paris is sitting there stroking his superb display armour (I was tempted to translate: fiddling with his tackle). To his brother's remonstrances, Paris replies that he had been feeling rather depressed, but that Helen had been wheedling him malakois epeesin to return to the battle. The Scholiast helpfully reminds us here that Paris is gunaimanes, 'womancrazed'.

Helen now adresses her brother-in-law Hector. She apologises for being an abominable bitch who would have been better not to have been born, and adds some derogatory remarks about her husband ... and starts trying to persuade Hector to 'come in' and sit beside her on this nice little chair.

But is Hector not already 'in'? I think not; and the Scholiast agrees with me. He explains that Hector had so far only entered 'in' as far as the aule. In other words, he had been standing on the threshold of the thalamos. Now she desires him to go in and sit down.

What we need to know here is that in pre-modern societies there were rigid and prescriptive assumptions about where each sex did go and did not go. Except when retitring at night, you would not normally expect a man to spend daylight hours in the thalamos with his wife and the womenfolk. 

That Paris was doing so reflects enormous discredit upon him. And now Helen is inviting Hector to join in this discreditable behaviour.

Tomorrow, I plan to move on to Joseph and Potiphar's wife. And to the proprieties of their situation.

  ...