Scenes Of Holy Week From Centuries Past

By JAMES MONTI

From the beginning, Holy Week has always inspired in the hearts of the faithful an ardent longing to be with the Lord, to accompany Christ all the way though the events of His sacred Passion. Anyone who has read the Spanish pilgrim Egeria’s eyewitness account of the celebration of Holy Week in her own time will have seen that this was already the case in the fourth century.
The Church’s liturgy and rites in commemoration of the suffering, death, and Resurrection of our Lord possess a unique capacity to place us in spirit, as it were, at the very events we are commemorating. In an essay on one of the Holy Week customs of Seville, the singing of spontaneous street songs of the Passion called “saetas,” the music scholar Edward Stanton notes, “The Andalusians say that Christ dies on Good Friday, and is resurrected on Easter Sunday” (Edward Stanton, “The Origins of the Saeta,” Romanische Forschungen, volume 88, n. 4, 1976, p. 387).
This ability of the sacred liturgy and traditional devotions of Holy Week to take us back to first-century Jerusalem is such that even simply reading accounts of Holy Week celebrations from centuries ago can draw us closer to Christ in His Passion. The rites possess the power of saying to us what the angel said to the prophet Ezekiel while showing him the vision of water flowing down from the right side of the Temple, prefiguring the flow of blood and water from Christ’s pierced side on the cross: “Son of man, have you seen this?” (Ezek. 47:6).
An exceptionally vivid description of how the commemoration of Holy Thursday and Good Friday transformed the Portuguese capital of Lisbon in the early nineteenth century is provided by a correspondent for the London and Paris Observer writing in 1827:
“Yesterday (Good Friday) the city had a sad appearance. The shops were shut, no church bells tolled, the very bells at the necks of the mules and oxen were taken off, the vessels in the river hoisted colours half-mast high, the troops carried their arms reversed, all the inhabitants who could be at the expense were in mourning [mourning clothes], and at eight the city was in total darkness — not a lamp was lit up, or a shop open….Even in the churches, with the exception of the lights on the chief altar, only a few tapers are to be seen. This darkness commenced on Thursday, at midday, and was preceded by great solemnity. Mass is first celebrated, the Sacrament is then taken by the Clergy and some of the people, and the Priest afterwards removes the Host from the altar, and deposits it in the tabernacle [the Repository tabernacle], where it remains till the ceremonies commence, which represent the resurrection of Christ.
“He conceals it carefully under his robe — walks round the church under a canopy of state, accompanied by some of the principal inhabitants — all the windows of the church are darkened — the bells cease ringing — the candlesticks and images are taken down, and every object around bears marks of some great calamity having taken place. Sentinels are placed at the doors, and at each side of the altar; the altars are lit up with 150 or 200 candles, and adorned with flowers of almost every description. The churches are strewed with odoriferous plants, the church plate is exhibited, and every measure adopted to give an air of dignity and grandeur to the ceremonies.
“On Thursday and Friday, till midnight, torrents of people are pouring into the different churches, to hear sermons, or witness the various ceremonies” (“Easter Ceremonies at Lisbon,” London and Parish Observer, May 20, 1827, p. 307).
It was a year after the above account was written that the Irish Protestant clergyman and historian Robert Walsh (1772-1852) set out on a journey to Brazil that led him to witness the 1829 celebration of Holy Week in Rio de Janeiro. Of particular value is his description of the reposition of the Blessed Sacrament on Holy Thursday:
“Holy Thursday is also distinguished by another remarkable ceremony, the consecration and exposure of the Host. The light of day is excluded from all the churches, which are illuminated inside with wax tapers, and the Host is exposed on the high altar of every one, in the midst of the blaze. Two men stand in robes of red or purple silk beside the altar, as guards to watch it. In some churches I saw the effigy of the body of our Saviour laid under a small cloister, and his hand exposed, which the crowd kissed, depositing money on a silver dish beside it at the same time. . . .
“The night of the day is a promenade of all the people in the city. They put on their best clothes, and the streets are filled, till morning, with well-dressed groups; and as it always falls on a season of moonlight, and the weather is generally fine, it is an enjoyment of which everyone partakes” (Robert Walsh, Notices of Brazil in 1828 and 1829, London, Frederick Westley and A.H. Davis, 1830, volume 2, pp. 389-390).
Describing the repository in Rio de Janeiro’s Church of the Candelaria as he saw it on Holy Thursday of 1846, the Anglo-American traveler Thomas Ewbank (1792-1870) noted, “I called in here this evening, and after counting seven hundred waxen lights about the altar, gave up the task. There were ten or eleven hundred burning in the place, all in costly candlesticks” (Life in Brazil, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1856, pp. 224-225).
The adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in the repositories from Holy Thursday into Good Friday has always been an especially intense experience of being with the Lord in His sacred Passion, for it is a direct response to His plea in Gethsemane, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me” (Matt. 26:38). It was this that particularly inspired the fastidious adornment of the repository, as seen in the accounts above.
The early missionaries who first came to the New World were not slow to introduce this tradition to the peoples of North and South America. Writing of the Holy Week observances of the Jesuits at their newly established college in Porto Seguro, Brazil, Fr. Antonio Goncalves, SJ, tells his confreres in Portugal:
“. . . the church was very well fitted out, principally the Sepulcher [repository], because it was fashioned as an enclosure all of stone with two arches that gave it much splendor. The Blessed Sacrament was in a bier, which was very richly decorated with all the gold that can be found on earth. It had some very tall and sumptuous steps, which gave it much splendor, covered in colored silk…and at the foot of them two figures: one of them of Nicodemus, and the other of Joseph of Arimathea. One of them had the crown [of thorns] in his hands and the other the nails, which gave cause for much devotion” (letter of February 15, 1566, in Monumenta Brasiliae: IV (1563-1568), ed. Fr. Serafim Leite, SJ, volume 87 of Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, Rome, Monumenta Historica S. I., 1960, n. 31, p. 316).
The importance of keeping watch with our Lord by keeping the Eucharistic vigil of Holy Thursday is emphatically expressed in a directive from the synodal constitutions of the Portuguese Diocese of Portalegre, Portugal, issued in 1602: “We exhort and order the parish priests, and more so the priests and clerics in holy orders of our bishopric, that insomuch as the Most Holy Sacrament is exposed in the churches, they should keep watch, and watching always by day, and by night, with much devotion and reverence, taking turns according to the number of clerics who attend; in which the parish priests will provide that with their example, the laity will be disposed to do the same; to which others [the laity], we urge that they keep watch with the Lord as long as they can, making their petitions, so believing that on this day He delights in all of them according to the greatness of His mercy” (Constituicoes Synodais do Bispado de Portalegre, Portalegre, Portugal, 1602, book 1, chapter 11, fol. 38r).

Watch With The Lord

The same admonition directing the clergy to keep a continual Eucharistic watch from Holy Thursday into Good Friday and urging the laity to do the same is also found in the synodal constitutions of Guarda, Portugal (1621), and Bahia, Brazil (1707). The Bahia constitutions also mandate that in the Holy Thursday repository there should be at least forty candles of white wax, each of sufficient size to last the entire time that the Blessed Sacrament is in the repository (Constituicoes Primeiras do Arcebispado da Bahia, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Antonio Louzada Antunes, 1853, book 1, title 32, n. 116, p. 52).
The highly distinctive and beautiful Holy Week ceremonies of Portugal’s primatial see of Braga, preserved by the special permission of Pope St. Pius V as part of the “Rite of Braga,” were assiduously and zealously celebrated in their entirety by Braga’s archbishop at the close of the sixteenth century, the Augustinian Agostinho de Jesus, who governed the archdiocese from 1588 to 1609. So intense was his personal devotion to the sacred Passion that he never celebrated any Mass commemorating the Passion without weeping.
Having discovered that many parishes in the archdiocese had been neglecting to provide a repository for the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament on Holy Thursday, he ordered all the churches of the see to do so, leading to a restoration of this important practice that helped to shape Braga’s ardent observance of Holy Week for centuries afterward.
Glimpses of what Holy Week must have been like in the early nineteenth century at a church in the Philippine town of Paete are provided by a parish inventory written in 1807 by its Franciscan pastor. For the church’s four large retables there were hangings of black muslin to conceal them during Holy Week. The parish had a special tabernacle for the reposition of the Blessed Sacrament on Holy Thursday, which on this occasion was surrounded by eight polychrome wood chandeliers.
For Good Friday there was a statue of Christ resting in death, which was carried in procession reposing upon two mattress-sized cushions and two pillows. Undoubtedly the church’s black canopy, specifically made for Holy Week rites, was borne over the recumbent Christ during the procession. After the procession, the statue was laid to rest and remained until Holy Saturday encircled by thirty candle stands.
As Holy Week of 2021 arrives, may it be for us all a time of watching with the Lord.