Parish life in mediæval England

by Francis Aidan Gasquet

Hit is Crist with his crois, conqueror of crystine.”

Palm Sunday.—The dramatic ceremonies of Holy Week commenced with those of Palm Sunday. “This week now begun,” says an old fifteenth-century writer, “is called penosa, because people, in this more than in any other week, keep their sins before their minds, and mortify themselves in their sorrow.” From the earliest times, as Ælfric tells us, it was the custom in England on this Sunday that “the priest should bless palm-twigs and distribute them so blessed to the people,” and that then the people should go forth in procession with him, singing the “hymn which the Jewish people sang before Christ when He was approaching to His Passion.” The so-called “palms” in England were probably willow, box, and yew, charges for which appear in the churchwardens’ accounts. In fact, one sixteenth-century authority states that the yew trees so frequently to be found in the neighbourhood of churches were planted in the churchyards of England to furnish the yew-branches which usually served for palms on Palm Sunday.

Dr. Rock thus describes the procession and other ceremonies in the first part of the service on this day—

“In many parts of the country a large and splendidly ornamented tent was set up at the furthermost end of the close or burial-ground, and thither, early in service time, was carried by two priests, accompanied with lights, a sort of beautiful shrine of open work, within which hung the Blessed Sacrament, enclosed in a rich cup or pix. The long-drawn procession, gay and gladsome with its palms and flowers, went forth, and halted now and then, as it winded round the outside of the church to make a station. While they were going from the North side towards the East, and had just ended the Gospel read at the first of these stations, the shrine with the Sacrament,” borne by priests under a canopy, “surrounded with lights in lanterns and streaming banners, and preceded by a silver cross and by a thurifer with incense, was borne forward, so that they might meet it as it were; and our Lord was hailed by the singers chanting En rex venit mansuetus. Kneeling lowly down and kissing the ground, they saluted the Sacrament again and again, in many appropriate sentences out of Holy Writ; and the red cross withdrew from the presence of the silver crucifix.”

The procession then moved forward in parish churches to the churchyard cross, where it halted, and there, falling down, all, priests and people, worshipped Him who had died on the cross for the sins of men. Then palms and flowers were strewn round about it, and after the Passion had been read, palms were brought and the churchyard cross was wreathed as for a victory, in memory of Christ’s triumph over death.

From the cross the procession now went to the closed door of the church for the singing of the Gloria laus—the joyous imitation of the hymns the Jews sung on that day when bringing our Saviour to the gates of Jerusalem. When this part of the ceremony was ended, the church doors flew open, and the priests who bore the shrine with the Blessed Sacrament, held their sacred burden aloft in the doorway, “so that all who went in had to go under this shrine, and in this way the procession came back into the church, each one bowing his head in token of reverence and obedience” as he passed beneath the Sacrament.

The fourth and last “station” of the Palm Sunday procession was held before the great Rood, from which the large curtain, which all Lent had hidden the figure of the crucified Saviour, was now drawn aside. At the sight of the crucifix the celebrant and his assistants, together with all the people, knelt and saluted it thrice with the words Ave Rex noster, fili David, Redemptor. A fifteenth-century preacher, giving only a brief instruction on this day, because, as he notes, of the length of the service, says—

“Holy Church this day in a sollempne procession makes in mynd of that procession of our Lord to Jerusalem.... And as they songen and diden worship to Christ in ther procession, rythe so we this day worchep the crosse in our procession, thries kneeling to the cross in worchep, in ye mynde of Hym that was for us done on the crosse, and we welcome Him with songe in the chirch as they welcomed Him to the citie Jerusalem.”

The true inward meaning of this great act of worship done to the cross at this time was carefully taught to the people. The author of Dives and Pauper has the passage which follows, about the worship of the Rood on Palm Sunday—

“Dives.—On Palm Sunday at the procession the priest draweth up the veil before the rode and falleth down to the ground with all the people, and sayeth thrice thus: ‘Ave Rex noster’-‘Hail be Thou our King,’ and so he worships the thing as King.