Quarantine as cloister: "'experienced populations,' well-organized institutional responses, . . . [integrally] resourceful strategies for survival"

Times of Israel

"One of the chapters of [St. Charles Borromeo’s] Constitutiones [et decreta de cura pestilentiae] is devoted to spiritual activities in public administrative spaces and closed-up homes.  In it, the clergy are told to prepare each household for the devotional activities devised for the extraordinary circumstances by teaching them a variety of prayers, litanies, and Psalms ahead of the quarantine.  During the quarantine, bells across the parish were to be rung seven times a day, approximately every two hours, to call the households to prayer.  Once begun, the bell would be rung again every quarter hour, until the fourth bell signals an end to the hour of prayer.  While the bell rings,

Litanies or supplications will be chanted or recited at the direction of the Bishop.  This will be performed in such a way that one group sings from the windows or the doors of their homes, and then another group sings and responds in turn.

To ensure that these prayers are carried out properly, the decree continues, a member of the clergy or someone trained in these prayers (possibly the head of the household) should also come to a window or door at the appointed times to direct the prayers and stir up enthusiasm for this devotion. . . .

     "Borromeo’s directive to sing at doors and windows was evidently put into practice and impressed a number of chroniclers.  In his Relatione verissima, Paolo Bisciola reports:

[W]hen the plague began to grow, this practice [of singing litanies in public [procession]] was interrupted, so as not to allow the congregations to provide [the plague with] more fuel.  The orations did not stop, however, because each person stood in his house at the window or door and made them from there. . . .  Just think, in walking around Milan, one heard nothing but song, veneration of God, and supplication to the saints, such that one almost wished for these tribulations to last longer.

. . . 

It was a sight to see, when all the inhabitants of this populous city, numbering little short of three hundred thousand souls, united to praise God at one and the same time, sending up together an harmonious voice of supplication for deliverance from their distress.  Milan might at this time have been not unfitly compared to a cloister of religious of both sexes serving God in the inclosure [sic] of their cells, an image of the heavenly Jerusalem filled with the praises of the angelic hosts.

     "We can imagine the astonishment of these chroniclers, hearing the disembodied voices emerging from isolated homes all around, aggregating and blanketing an entire parish in song. . . . .

". . . As Randolph Starn writes, 'the chronic presence of disease suggests that we should not think of medieval and early modern societies as caught in the grip of plague-year panics or as waiting passively to be delivered by [the] modern medicine [of the future].  The newer accounts [of plague history] speak of "experienced populations," of well-organized institutional responses, of resourceful strategies for survival'."

     Remi Chiu, “Singing on the street and in the home in times of pestilence:  lessons from the 1576-78 plague of Milan,” in Domestic devotions in early modern Italy, ed. Maya Corry, Marco Faini,and Alessia Meneghin (Leiden:  Brill, 2018), 38-39, 42-43 (27-44).

The ancient and traditional Collect for the Second Sunday of Lent, just in time for a time of coronavirus

Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves:  Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through.

Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves:  Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through.

     Collect for the Third Sunday of Lent, BCP (1979 Contemporary and Traditional).

Deus, qui conspicis omni nos virtute destitui:  interius exteriusque custodi: ut et ab omnibus adversitatibus muniamur in corpore, et a pravis cogitationibus mundemur in mente. Per.

O God, who seest that we are wholly destitute of strength, keep us within and without:  that we may be defended in body from all adversity:  and cleansed in mind from evil thoughts.  Through.

     Collect for the Second Sunday of Lent, Missale Romanum (1962), as translated in the Baronius Press edition of 2009.

Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves:  Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through.

     Collect for the Second Sunday of Lent, BCP (1928).

Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of our selves to keep our selves:  Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul, through.

     Collect for the Second Sunday of Lent, BCP (1662).

Deus, qui conspicis omni nos virtute destitui:  interius exteriusque custodi; ut et ab omnibus adversitatibus muniamur in corpore, et a pravis cogitationibus mundemur in mente. Per.

O God, who seest that we are wholly destitute of strength, protect us inwardly and outwardly, so that our bodies may be safeguarded from all misfortune and our minds cleansed from evil thoughts:  through.

     Collect for the Second Sunday of Lent, Missale Romanum (Tridentine), as translated in the Sheed & Ward Latin-English version of 1949.

Almightye God, whiche doest see that we haue no power of oureselues to helpe oureselues:  keepe thou us both outwardly in oure bodies, and inwardly in oure soules; that we maye be defended from all aduersities whiche maye happen to the body, and from all euel thoughtes which maye assault and hurte the soule; through.

     Collect for the Second Sunday of Lent, BCP (1547), as reproduced in the Everyman's Library edition.

     This (Corpus orationum no. 1494 =Bruylants, vol. 2, no. 313) was the traditional collect for the Second Sunday of Lent (no. 202) from the (at the latest) early 8th-century Gregorian Sacramentary.  It seems to have been dropped from the current Missal:

Deus qui conspicis omni nos uirtute destitui, interius exteriusque custodi, ut et ab omnibus aduersitatibus muniamur in corpore, et a prauis cogitationibus mundemur in mente. per.

Deus qui conspicis omni nos virtute destitui, interius exteriusque custodi, ut et ab omnibus adversitatibus muniamur in corpore, et a pravis cogitationibus mundemur in mente. per.

     I have not been able to verify that the photograph is indeed of a priest carrying communion to the sick.

"God himself will set me free, from the hunter's snare. | —God himself will set me free, from the hunter's snare. | From those who would entrap me with lying words | —and from the hunter's snare."

℟. Ipse liberabit me * De laqueo venantium.  Ipse.
℣.  Et a verbo maligno.  *De laqueo venatium.  Gloria Patri.  Ipse.

     Responsorium breve, frequently in the Liturgia horarum.  malig* occurs with verb* (so as to constitute "malicious words" (Douay-Rheims)) in the Vulgate of 3 John 10 only.  But the responsorium as a whole comes from Ps 90:3:  "Quoniam ipse liberavit me de laqueo venantium, et a verbo aspero" ("sharp word" (Douay-Rheims), underscoring mine).

"As morning breaks we sing of your mercy, Lord, and night will find us proclaiming your praise."

Mt. Angel Abbey

"Annuntiamus mane misericordiam tuam, Domine, et veritatem tuam per noctem."

We proclaim at dawn your mercy, O Lord, and your truth throughout the night.

     Antiphon 1 for Morning prayer, Second Saturday of Lent.
     Though misericordia and veritas appear very often together in the Vulgate, this antiphon appears to have been been newly composed for the post-Vatican II Liturgia horarum, as I have not been able to get it to appear in CANTUS.

"None but the Schola Theologorum is competent to determine the force of Papal and Synodal utterances".

"When the Church teaches with authority, theologians explain the exact meaning of these decrees 'in order to make [them] as tolerable as possible.' Such an approach, Newman argues, is not minimalism but a doctrinal moderation consistent with sound faith. The decisions of councils and popes are authoritative for Newman. However, such statements also mark the beginning of sustained reflection wherein theologians determine precisely how and in which exact manner they are in continuity with the prior tradition. This is why Newman can say that [the prophetic power of] theology 'has restrained and corrected such extravagances as have been committed, through human infirmity, in the exercise of the regal [episcopal] and sacerdotal [pastors and the faithful] powers.' Even popes can be salutarily corrected. . . . In a private letter, Newman remarks that theological schools protect the church from the encroachments of popes and councils."

     Thomas G. Guarino, Vincent of Lérins and the development of Christian doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2013), . I was put onto this by Reinhard Hütter, “Authentic development of doctrine between Scylla and Charybdis,” Thomistic Institute Angelicum, 7 December 2019.  The header, also quoted by Hütter, following Guarino, is from the famous "Letter . . . to the Duke of Norfolk", where, however, it is directed against the Anglican Gladstone, not the regal and sacerdotal (as distinguished from the prophetic) powers/offices of the Church as understood by Newman in the important 1877 Preface to the third (Catholic) edition of The via media of the Anglican church.

"My youthful years were spent [in the slave trade] in Africa, and I ought to take my degrees (if I take any) from thence."

Seattle Pacific University Archives

     "I have been hurt by 2 or 3 by letters directed to D^r. Newton.  I beg you to inform my friends in Scotland as they come in your way, that after a little time, if any letters come to me, addressed to D^r. Newton I shall be obliged to send them back unopened.  I know no such person, I never shall, I never will, by the Grace of God.

     "Do not think I am displeased with you or any of my kind friends, who mean me kindness and honour by such an address.  I only beg for my peace sake, that it may not be repeated.

     "I have been informed that a College in America, I think in the New Jersey, has given me the Honory degree of Doctor.  So far as this mark of their favour, indicates a regard to the Gospel truths which I profess, I am much pleased with it.  But as to the title itself I renounce it heartily; nor would I willingly be known by it, if all the Universities in Europe can conferred it upon me.  My youthful years were spent in Africa, and I ought to take my degrees (if I take any) from thence.  Shall such a compound of misery & mischief as I then was, be called Doctor?  Surely not."

     Newton, John, Letter from John Newton to John Campbell, June 2, 1792. Newton/Campbell Letters 19.  https://digitalcommons.spu.edu/newton_campbell/19/.  See also Letters and conversational remarks, by the late Rev. John Newton, rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard-street, London: during the last eighteen years of his life, ed. John Campbell (New York:  S. Whiting & co., theological and classical booksellers, Paul & Thomas, printers, 1811), 5-6.  It would be fun to track documentation of this honorary Doctor of Divinity down from the side of Princeton University.

"God's thought of lions is lionlike"

     "It is a poor speaker of French who thinks in English and translates as he goes; the true master of tongues thinks as he talks.  He is a Frenchman in France and a German in Germany; why, he may find himself dreaming in German or in French.  The shape, the idiom of the Creator’s thought is the very shape and idiom of his creature’s existence.  God’s thought of man is human, for he thinks man as he is.  It is true that his thought of man stretches man, and reaches out into possibilities undreamt by us; but these possibilities are still  human.  God’s thought for us extends into the heaven he has prepared for us; but heaven itself is a human state; it is the state of man-in-glory.  God’s thought of lions is lionlike, and of sparrows sparrow-like; and elementary things that have neither life nor sense are thought and willed by him exactly as they are or as they go."

     Austin Farrer, God is not dead (New York:  Morehouse-Barlow Co., 1966), 74.  God is not dead was first published in Great Britain as A science of God?