Mary — The Visitation — "the Visitation Of Mary."

ON ST. MARY — the Visitation — "The Visitation of Mary."

The Visitation of St. Mary the Virgin

BY THE AUTHOR J. P.

Under this title the Roman Martyrology announces the annual and solemn memory of the present festivity; concerning which, according to the custom familiar to our Elders, certain things come briefly and sparingly to be noted. For indeed the history of the Virgin, Mother of God, full of God, bearing God in her most sacred womb, The Feast of the Annunciation. driven by the powerful goadings of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and hastening into the hill country to visit her kinswoman Elizabeth, and to have John, the Forerunner of the Lord, freed from the hereditary stain of original sin, is better known and more thoroughly explored by anyone than that it should be either fitting or necessary for its mystery to be expounded here by me at greater length. And truly I should seem, as the saying goes, to put my sickle into another's harvest, were I to bring forward the pious and learned commentaries and observations of others, with which they have illustrated the Gospel text. For these are their parts, this their office, upon whom, in literary leisure, the task of interpreting and explaining the sacred Pages presses. Wherefore, that to each may be left his own province, I assign to the reader, for the notion or exposition of the mystery, the holy Fathers and the interpreters of sacred Scripture, about to circumscribe the present subject briefly within two boundaries: the one indeed concerning the primitive origin or institution of this feast; the other concerning its propagation, purposing to set forth my discourse.

§ I. On the primitive institution of this feast.

That we may trace back the primitive institution of this feast from its first beginnings as high as we can, we must recall to memory the span of past time, This feast, why and when instituted in which the Catholic Church, foully and miserably torn asunder in its concord and unity, its seamless tunic of Christ likewise rent into parts by a pernicious and long-lasting schism, was cut apart and mangled toward the end of the fourteenth century, while Clement VII of Geneva sat at Avignon against Urban VI, who governed the helm of the Church at Rome. And by whom; To compose the disturbances of the Church and to root out the infamous schism, the aforesaid Urban VI first instituted this solemnity, on the sixth of the Ides of April in the year of Christ 1389, the eleventh of his pontificate, that the divided members of the Church might come together into a friendly covenant, with the Ark of the Covenant, the most holy Mother of God, striving and giving her patronage, and that the peace uniquely necessary, which the world could not give, might be sought from the Queen and Lady of the heavens,

[3] By whom published. Urban VI having been taken from among the living, before the decree concerning the observance of this festivity could be promulgated everywhere in due manner, Boniface IX, his successor, published it in the year 1389. Consult Cardinal Baronius in his Annotations on the Roman Martyrology on this day, thus speaking to our purpose. There exist, he says, concerning that matter, diplomas printed in the second part of the Legend, in the Vatican library, shelf 4, number 226. I obtained a manuscript treatise of John of Prague against Adalbert, an assailant of that solemnity; in which, while he discusses many things learnedly, Illustrated by miracles he also weaves in several divine miracles, and certain revelations, by which God most manifestly approved the said most sacred solemnity. Raynaldus, the continuator of the Ecclesiastical Annals after Baronius, at the said year, among other memorable things done by Urban VI which he reviews from Gobelinus, narrates this, as follows: The second (namely, notable and memorable) thing was the feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which he decreed should be celebrated in the church each year on the morrow of the Octave of St. John the Baptist, that the blessed Virgin by her prayers might reform the union of the Church, and might deign to preserve it once reformed. To the same sanction Boniface IX added his own authority, since, as he says, Urban had been overtaken by death before he had issued the Apostolic letters. Thus he.

[4] Then he produces the bull published by Boniface IX, not indeed whole, The Bull of Boniface IX. but headless and truncated in a great part of itself. We set it before the eyes of the reader whole, taken from a manuscript parchment of the church of Fritzlar, and sent to us by Fr. John Gamans of ours in the year 1641. The same is contained in the Breviary of Speyer of the year 1478. The same is read in the Breviary of Schleswig of the year 1512. Certain fragments of it are found elsewhere interspersed in other ancient Breviaries. So then it runs, corrected and collated against the exemplar which is printed in the Bullarium of the Popes.

[5] Boniface, Bishop, servant of the servants of God. For the perpetual memory of the matter. The goodness of the Word Incarnate, The benignity of the supernal Creator, regarding with merciful piety the human creature created after his own likeness, and considering that it would fall by the fall of the first parent, decreed by a wondrous counsel that it should be relieved, namely that the supernal Word, which was in the beginning, might free it from the bonds of death. Therefore the charity of the pious Father, with which he loved us, the fullness of time coming, willed that the eternal Word itself, under the form of a servant, should assume the flesh of our mortality, that by dying it might destroy that same death of ours, and that the clement goodness of the eternal Word might abolish the sentence of damnation, together with the stain, which the posterity of the human race was known to have incurred through the guilt of the first man.

[6] Wherefore from the illustrious royal Davidic stock he chose beforehand a Virgin, The dignity of Mary, in whose womb, by a mystical breathing, the Word itself might take on flesh; that there might go forth, according to the prophetic word, a Rod from the root of Jesse, and a flower rise from his root, and the spirit of the Lord rest upon him; choosing indeed as mother the renowned * queen, who was worthy of so great a King to prepare the bridal chamber of her body, from which, as a bridegroom, he might come forth beautiful beyond the sons of men; choosing as the place of his conception Nazareth, which is called a flower, or holiness, in which, through the words of the Angelic salutation, the mysteries of the Word itself incarnate, and wondrous solemnities, were celebrated. For there we took the beginnings of our redemption, and there first shone the day of sanctification, which brought us hope of salvation and joy of eternity. For in this place of so great fecundity, the royal Virgin most lovely, preserved by the Lord, the flower of holiness, the most pure vessel of heavenly grace, wreathed with the flowers of all virtues, whose beauty the sun and moon admire, the Virgin conceived the Redeemer begotten, about to give light to the nations, set under the darkness of death.

[7] Truly the Queen of the heavens herself, in whose womb the Son of God made man enclosed himself, humility. from the summit of so great an honor announced to her by the Angel, by no means took on a spirit of elation, but as a humble handmaid, though made the Mother of God, at length fulfilling the office of her own humility, which the Lord regarded, arising went into the hill country to Elizabeth her kinswoman, who was called barren, already six months pregnant, with haste; and just as she had received from the Angel the oracle of a most humble salutation, so too she humbly saluted Elizabeth herself. But Elizabeth, when she heard the salutation of the glorious Virgin, filled with the Holy Spirit, and feeling the mystery of the Word incarnate in her virginal womb, cried out with a loud voice and said: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, as the voice of thy salutation came into my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed art thou who hast believed, for those things shall be accomplished in thee which were spoken to thee by the Lord. To whom the venerable Virgin, answering in a spirit of humility, sang that marvelous canticle: My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour, because he hath regarded the humility of his handmaid: for behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed; because he that is mighty hath done great things to me, and holy is his name.

[8] The mystery of the Visitation O great mystery! O admirable exchange! O ineffable sacrament, that mothers should foresense in spirit, and even prophesy, concerning the pledges which they bore in their wombs; and, as the history of the sacred Gospel unfolds, the Queen of heaven, with child, to be consecrated by a divine childbearing, by a seal of ampler humility, rendered the homage of her humility to the pregnant mother of her Forerunner, the son whom she bore; which homage rendered and completed over a time of such a visitation of about three months, she returned to her own house. For this is she, of whom the sacred elogia sing, who, clothed with the sun, having the moon under her feet, merited to be crowned with twelve stars. For this is she, who in her chaste womb bore the Maker of heaven and earth, and alone destroyed all heresies, and for the Christian people, as a strenuous advocate and ever-watchful intercessor, intercedes with the King whom she bore.

[9] Therefore Pope Urban VI of happy memory, our predecessor, by Urban VI reckoning it worthy and due that the feast of the Visitation of the same blessed Virgin Mary — when, as is set forth, she visited Elizabeth — should be celebrated in the Church of God, which, being supported by the testimony of the holy Gospel, cannot be disparaged by human reasonings; and attending that the human tongue does not suffice to express the praises of so great a Virgin, nor even can the Saints and the just fully set forth with worthy heraldings of praise her, in whose virginal hall he, whom the heavens could not contain, betook himself; and considering that, since we are commanded to praise the Lord in his Saints, how much more, with exulting spirits, in the veneration of the blessed Virgin Mary, his Mother, ought we to praise her together, and, by increasing the titles of her praises, to render thanks to the Son whom she bore, who also, exalted above the stars, has sat upon the starry throne of her Begetter.

[10] and by Boniface IX Lest also he should seem to resist the divine will, which deigned to inspire the mind, both his own and that of other devout men, to the celebrating of a holy festivity of this kind, as the same predecessor piously believed: mature deliberation also having been had beforehand upon this, by the counsel of his brethren, the Cardinals of the holy Roman Church, of whose number we then were, for the exaltation of the Catholic faith, worthily and reasonably, namely on the sixth of the Ides of April, in the eleventh year of his Pontificate, he decreed that the aforesaid feast — namely of the Visitation of the blessed Virgin Mary, when, as is set forth, she visited Elizabeth — should be solemnly celebrated on the sixth of the Nones of July every year in the Church of God throughout the whole world, with the canticle of praises, the jubilee of gladness, and the exultation of the heart, under a double office.

[11] The same Predecessor also urged and advised that the vigil of this feast, ordered to be celebrated like the vigil of the Nativity and of the Assumption of the aforesaid Virgin's festivities, should be more devoutly observed also in the keeping of a fast, and he ordered that a like — yet not double — office, without the commemoration of any Saint (except at the first vespers before the Octave of the Apostles Peter and Paul, and the office of the whole day of the octave with a commemoration nonetheless of the same new feast), should be chanted in the Church of God with due celebrity for the seven following days. And also the same predecessor, willing to animate the faithful of Christ to the honoring, and likewise the celebrating, of the feast of so great a Virgin with spiritual gifts, and desiring to anticipate them with mystical treasures, the gifts of the blessings of the Church militant: to all truly penitent and confessed who should be present at the matins office of the same feast in the Church in which the same feast should be celebrated, a hundred days; to those who at Mass, as many; to those who at the first vespers of the feast itself, likewise a hundred; to those who at the second vespers, as many. But to those who should be present at the offices of Prime, Terce, Sext, None, and Compline, for each of those hours, forty days.

[12] But to those who through the octaves of the aforesaid feast should be present at matins, vespers, with added indulgences Mass, and the offices of the aforesaid hours, a hundred days on each of the days of the octaves themselves, trusting in the mercy of Almighty God and in the authority of his blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, he mercifully relaxed from the penances enjoined upon them. And lest, because the Apostolic letters drawn up concerning the premises did not come into being on account of the supervening death of our Predecessor, this constitution of the aforesaid predecessor should be frustrated of effect; willing and decreeing by Apostolic authority that a constitution of this kind should take effect from the said day, namely the sixth of the Ides of April, just as if the Predecessor's letters had been drawn up concerning it under the date of that same day, as is narrated above; and that the present letters should everywhere suffice fully to prove a constitution of this kind, nor should there be required for that proof the support of any other.

[13] All Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, and other prelates of the churches we admonish and exhort in the Lord, and strictly through Apostolic writings, strictly commanding by the virtue of holy obedience, and enjoining unto the remission of sins, that they devoutly and solemnly celebrate so glorious and famous a feast every year on the sixth of the Nones of July, as is set forth, and that they persuade the fast of a vigil of this kind to be observed for the increase of merit, and that they cause it to be celebrated throughout all the churches of their cities and dioceses, and the aforesaid office to be performed, so that, by the pious intercession of the same Virgin Mary, the faithful of Christ themselves may deserve both to be protected here from harmful things, and in the future to attain everlasting joys.

[14] Let it therefore be lawful for no man at all to infringe this page of our will, constitution, admonition, exhortation, and mandate, or with rash daring to contravene it. But if anyone shall presume to attempt this, ordered to be published. let him know that he shall incur the indignation of Almighty God and of his blessed Apostles Peter and Paul. Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, on the fifth of the Ides of November, in the first year of our Pontificate.

[15] It was not first instituted by the Council of Basel. And so from this authentic bull, concerning the primitive and genuine institution of this feast, it is established more than sufficiently. Rightly and deservedly our Gretser, in book 2 On Feasts: The Lutheran Dresser, he says, is mistaken in his little book On Feasts, when he hands down that the feast of the Visitation was instituted in the Council of Basel, in the year 1441, following of course the error of Hermann Witekind, who nevertheless writes that it was done by the Council of Basel in 1432, but he errs: because it is one thing to promulgate anew and to command, another to institute for the first time. The former the Synod of Basel did; the latter, Urban VI and Boniface IX. But indeed that the said synod labored not sluggishly toward propagating that festivity is easily proved from the decree of session 43, by which it establishes and decrees … in honor of the Virgin Mother of God herself, that after the completion of the solemnities of the Lord's Resurrection, of Pentecost, of the glorious Trinity, of the sacred Body of Christ, of the blessed John the Baptist, and of the Apostles Peter and Paul — with which the Church is occupied after the solemnity of the Lord's Annunciation, which the aforesaid Visitation followed forthwith in order of time — through each of the churches of Christians, in every year on the sixth of the Nones of July, the feast of the glorious Virgin should be celebrated. A pious and moving exhortation is prefixed to the aforesaid decree, by which the minds of the faithful are stirred to place their hope in this Virgin, and the mystery of the Visitation is learnedly and ascetically illustrated. All of which there is no need to transcribe here in full, and they may be seen in that same place.

[16] One might not unreasonably ask here, with our John Azor, Part 2 of the Moral Institutions, book 1, chapter 23: Why does the Church celebrate the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin on the second day of July, when from the Gospel it is established that it followed immediately after the Annunciation? I answer with him: The Church celebrates the feast day of the Virgin on the second day of July, after the Octave of St. John the Baptist, because on what day the Blessed Mary visited St. Elizabeth is not established from sacred Scripture. But from them it is clearly established that she remained with her for about three months, from the day on which she came to visit her. Whence from the Gospel the time at which the Visitation had its end is more known to us than the time at which the Visitation was made. For if the Blessed Elizabeth, being visited, remained about three months in the house of Zechariah, it is consequent that she remained until the day on which John the Baptist was born, a little before or a little after. The Church, therefore, being more certain of the time at which the Visitation was ended than of the time at which it was begun, celebrates the feast day of the Visitation after the birthday of St. John the Baptist, because then, or a little before, the Visitation had its end, and the Blessed Virgin returned to her home. To this opinion assents, among the more recent, our Simon Mother in his observations on the Roman Martyrology published in French, on the second day of July; where he further notes that this feast was always accustomed to be celebrated in the diocese of Avranches on the Kalends of April; and that only from the year 1698 was it marked in its new Breviary on the second day of July; and that at Reims likewise it is performed on the eighth day of the same month with the rite of the first class with a solemn Octave. But to the praises of this mystery of which we speak there accrues no common commendation from the fact that, for so many ages now, in the Greek Menology collected by order of the emperor Basil Porphyrogenitus, express mention of the said mystery is had.

* elsewhere, perfect.

§ II. The propagation of this feast in various churches and places.

But now to inquire and survey more curiously the churches, dioceses, provinces, and kingdoms, far and wide diffused, in which this feast has been accustomed to be celebrated piously, religiously, and solemnly, This feast, in the year 1263 I judge to be a matter of superfluous work and of by no means necessary labor. It will have sufficed to have exhibited certain specimens out of many. It does not seem able to be doubted that, after the promulgation made by the Council of Basel, this solemnity was admitted throughout the whole of Gaul, and ordered to be celebrated under precept by the peoples of many dioceses and cities of this kingdom, just as was done at Rome in the time of Paul III. But it is reported to have been abrogated in various places, reported celebrated by the Franciscans. where only its office is prescribed to be celebrated with a double rite without an Octave. The Franciscan religious are said to have celebrated this feast in their Order already from the year 1263, that is, a hundred and twenty years and more before its common institution. There are those who would have it that it was in use in the Eastern Church, and celebrated in Syria on the fifth of the eight Sundays preceding the Lord's Nativity, which was the fourth in order, preliminary to this natal feast. The ecclesiastical Office, in what tenor and rite it appeared published from the time of Clement VIII, had as its author Peter Ruis of the Visitation, a religious of the Order of St. Francis of Paola, who had been employed for the reformation of the Roman Calendar under Gregory XIII, and for the correction of the Missal and Breviary, that is, of the whole Roman liturgy, under Clement VIII, as Nicolaus Antonius attests in volume 2 of the Hispanic Library, page 188. Now let us heap together certain things which conduce to establishing the veneration of this mystery in various places, from some ancient Calendars and Breviaries.

[18] I take my beginning from the Coptic Calendar, in which it is thus read on the second day of July: Its cult from ancient breviaries Of the festivity of our Lady the God-bearer Mary, and of her going to Elizabeth. There is added the Chaldaic or Syriac Calendar in Italian words, which in Latin thus sound: The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary made to Elizabeth. The said Syriac or Chaldaic Calendar is reported to have been printed at Rome in the year 1624, from which Simon Moses the Maronite, an alumnus of the college of the Maronites in the City (as the interpreter himself, or another in his name, notes at the foot), gathered the Saints with great diligence. The office of this feast in the old Roman Breviary printed at Venice in 1479 is prescribed to be celebrated with an Octave; where also the reason is assigned as to what obstacle there was, that this feast was not everywhere and among all nations at once promulgated and admitted: But, it says, since there then hung over the Church of God a certain great rending, which vehemently afflicted the members of Christ under various Pontiffs, and indeed for a long time, the festivity was not universally received by all; nor could so holy and salutary an institution come to the notice of the individual churches, nor was an office ordained to be chanted in the churches, which, as was fitting, might explain the mysteries of so great a festivity with congruous reasons and sufficient words. For which reasons Sixtus, the fourth of this name, likewise Roman Pontiff, to whom that devotion was especially at heart — to adorn the feasts of the inviolate Virgin with sacred gifts, and to provoke the piety of the faithful toward celebrating her by the bestowal of indulgences — kindled with the piety of religion, sedulously turned his affection to adorning that festivity.

[19] established. The office of this feast, that it might be performed with greater splendor and solemnity, the church of Speyer prescribed to be celebrated with an Octave, as is clear from its ancient Breviary of the year 1478, in these words: But that all the multitude of the Faithful may be more keenly and devoutly stirred to the memory of the aforesaid Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, the same Roman Pontiff Urban VI willed that to all truly confessed and contrite who should celebrate the said feast of the Visitation of Mary with its Octaves, in place of the material distributions accustomed to be made in the churches, from the spiritual treasury of the Church true indulgences, as at the feast of the Body of Christ, should in future times be effectually bestowed. I gather from the Proper Offices of the Saints of the archdiocese of Prague that the said festivity is there celebrated by the clergy with the double rite of the first class with an Octave. The same is done in the diocese of Wrocław. The same was done from the first, at least as regards the Octave, in the diocese of Liège, as is clear from a most ancient headless manuscript breviary, at whose foot I thus read: Note, the history of the Visitation of St. Mary the Virgin began in the diocese of Liège in the year of the Lord 1396, on the first day after the Octave of Blessed John the Baptist in the aforesaid year. It is moreover to be observed that in the said office various proper collects concerning the Blessed Virgin, and lessons, are interspersed, to be said through the Octave. There would also be some monument concerning this feast in the library of Neustadt on the Saale, of which mention is made at the end of the diploma already produced, promulgating the institution of the feast of the Annunciation, added — if I am not mistaken — by the pen of the said Father Gamans of ours; as also of proper letters of the Duke of Saxony, and others of the Elector of Mainz, commanding the same feast to be celebrated, and together with them the whole office annexed.

[20] Congregations erected in her honor. Let these things said from ancient breviaries suffice. I pursue this matter briefly from another source. Fr. George Weis, in a letter given from Prague to Fr. Papebroch on the 29th of June 1669, thus writes to our purpose: This year we begin, or rather resume by the authority of His Holiness, to celebrate the feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin in the forum. Add that to the commendation of the reverence due to this mystery there ought to have no small weight and moment that which Cornelius a Lapide writes on chapter 1 of Luke, where he thus establishes: Wherefore, by the example and title of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin, many congregations were instituted for visiting the poor, guests, the sick, the imprisoned, etc.; and lately under this title Francis de Sales, a man of great piety and zeal, instituted throughout all Gaul a congregation of distinguished Religious women, to serve the sick, being led by this reasoning, as Mother observes, that he held it persuaded that the Religious of that Order ought to be propagated throughout the world, to serve their neighbor. But after Cardinal de Marquemont, archbishop of Lyon, had cast another mind into him, and had prevailed that a cloister was fitting, nay rather necessary, for the daughters, Francis established his institute under that form which it has to this day, the former name being left to it. But concerning the institute, profession, and propagation of the aforesaid Religious, D. Marsollier has gathered very many things in the life of St. Francis de Sales published by him in French, volume 2, book 7, which you, reader, if it concerns you, may consult.

APPENDIX On St. Mary the Virgin, Consoler of the afflicted, chief Protectress and Patroness of the Duchy of Luxembourg and of Chiny.

The Visitation of St. Mary the Virgin

BY THE AUTHOR J. P.

Since the solemn and festive day, on which the Virgin Mother was chosen as chief protectress and patroness of the Duchy of Luxembourg and of Chiny under the title of Consoler of the afflicted, Why Mary the Consoler of the afflicted is treated on this day. falls on the second of the month of July; and since in a printed program the office of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is set forth to be celebrated this year 1679 with the double rite of the first class by both clergies of the Duchy of Luxembourg and the County of Chiny, and by the secular indeed with an octave, on account of the feast of the Blessed Mary Mother of Jesus, Consoler of the afflicted, protectress and chief patroness of the Duchy of Luxembourg and County of Chiny on the second of July: I have thought that I should not be doing a thing foreign to our institute, if on this second day of July I should append a few things which pertain hereto.

[22] The said program has it thus: On the second of July, the day of the Visitation of the Holy Virgin, The program of the solemnity, throughout the whole Duchy of Luxembourg and County of Chiny there shall be celebrated the feast of St. Mary, Mother of Jesus, Consoler of the afflicted, chief protectress and patroness, by virtue of the election made on the 20th of February 1678 by the three Orders of the province and Duchy of Luxembourg, as well as of the County of Chiny, and then by all the cities and parishes of the same province, and approved by the most serene princes, the Elector Archbishop of Trier and the Elector Archbishop of Cologne, as well as the Bishop of Liège; and by the sacred Congregation of Cardinals who preside over Rites, at Rome on the sixth of May 1679.

[23] Furthermore, the approbation of the said Cardinals is of the following tenor: approbation The ordinary deputies of the three orders of the estates of the Duchy of Luxembourg and County of Chiny set forth before the sacred Congregation of Rites, that the blessed Mary, Mother of Jesus, Consoler of the afflicted, who is venerated in a chapel dedicated to her under the said title, and pertaining to the college of the Society of Jesus at Luxembourg, situated indeed outside and beside the walls of the same city of Luxembourg, of the diocese of Trier, was chosen as protectress and patroness, both by the three orders of the estates, and by the people of the individual cities of the aforesaid Duchy and County, through secret ballots and with the intervening consent of the Bishop and clergy of the said cities.

[24] Wherefore they supplicated for the confirmation and approbation of an election of this kind, and the same sacred Congregation, upon the report of the most eminent Lord Cardinal Colonna, of the Congregation of Rites. the cause of the said election of the Blessed Mary, Mother of Jesus, Consoler of the afflicted, as protectress and patroness of the Duchy of Luxembourg and County of Chiny — which had never before had a common and universal Patron — having been examined; the things to be observed having been observed according to the disposition of the decree of the same sacred Congregation, concerning the election of Saints as patrons, issued by the mandate of Urban VIII of happy memory on the 23rd of March 1630 — confirmed and approved the aforesaid election, and decreed for the aforesaid Blessed Mary Mother of Jesus, Consoler of the afflicted, thus chosen as Protectress and Patroness, all the prerogatives befitting such protectors and patrons, yet according to the rubrics of the Roman Breviary and Missal, and to the form of the Constitution of the same Urban VIII concerning the observance of feasts, issued on the 13th day of September of the year 1642. On this day, the sixth of May 1679. It was signed Caesar Cardinal Facchinetti. Below was subscribed Bernardino Casali, secretary of the sacred Congregation of Rites. A seal in red wax was affixed.

[25] The festive splendor of the solemnity I return to the aforesaid program, and from it I set forth in summary those things which graced the instituted solemnity, that it might be performed with the greater splendor and pomp. Pope Innocent XI accompanied it with plenary indulgences, by a diploma issued on the 26th of May 1679, to be gained for this year throughout the whole said octave. The sound of every bell that was in the city of Luxembourg was heard four times over with festive murmuring. A solemn Mass was chanted by the most reverend and most illustrious Lord Bishop of Hierapolis, suffragan of Trier, during which was renewed the election of the most merciful Virgin Consoler of the afflicted, as protectress and patroness of the province. A solemn procession was instituted, whose apparatus, order, ornament, magnificence, inscriptions, retinue, statues, and triumphal cars to recount one by one would be longer than is fitting.

[26] Through the Octave the sacred solemnities were sung by the most reverend Lord abbots of Echternach and of Munster, described in summary. as well as by the reverend Father Superiors of the religious orders. Moreover, so great was the concourse of the people, so great the multitude of men and women of every order and condition, so ready the pious will of all in emulation toward the Virgin Mother, that in the churches of the city of Luxembourg alone and in the shrine of the Lady Consoler, throughout the octave, there were distributed easily forty thousand smaller hosts. So it is narrated in a writing composed concerning the matters surrounding this celebration, where the writer completes his narration — as I too do mine — with this pious and apt exclamation: Blessed be God, that, at the time when in other regions the cult of Mary is torn down, in this Province, which is wholly and entirely Marian, it is thus established.