“Despite this earlier Christian discomfort, imperial processions flourished during Late Antiquity. After Constantine’s’ conversion they acquired Christian elements. Moreover, alongside imperial ceremonies like the adventus, a bevy of ecclesiastical processions developed. Penitential processions were common, but churches also marched for holidays like Candlemas and on certain saint’s days. Processions are a frequent organising devide in Early Christian art; the mosaics of the sixth century basilica of Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo in Ravenna, for example, depict two lines of saints progressing down the nave and converging on the altar.”
PENITENTIAL PROCESSIONS
Processions became especially common in times of trouble, when plague struck or enemies threatened a city. The traditional story of the origin of Rogationtide, first told by Sidonius Apollinarius (430-489), has its roots in such practices, though Ristuccia argues strongly that this is most likely to be a later fiction. According to tradition, the French town of Vienne had been struck by earthquakes and other disasters around the year 472, when its Bishop, Mamertus, called on its population to observe a series of penitential processions in the days leading up to Ascension Day, to ask God for his forgiveness and protection. Ristuccia questions the historicity of this story, and the later claims that Rogation processions were a Christianization of a pagan procession called the Robigalia, claiming that little evidence for such a procession exists. However they originated, though, Rogation processions became a major feature of the pre-Reformation European Church, and were one of the few elements of popular Catholic practice which survived the Reformation and continued to be practiced, albeit in a rather different form.
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| The procession of St Gregory, Tres Riches Heures du duc de Berry. made by the Limbourg brothers between 1411 and 1416. |
Early medieval Rogation processions were explicitly penitential in character, or at least were intended to be, though clergy often complained that those who took part in them often saw it as an outing and a break from work. Taking place over three days, they were supposed to be compulsory. Anyone calling themselves a Christian was supposed to take part in them, though the fact that attendance needed to be mandated rather suggests that many people probably didn’t attend. In their earliest days, at a time when the Christian Roman Empire was being overrun by pagan invaders, Rogationtide processions were also a demonstration of Christian loyalty in the face of this threat to the faith.
Unlike the later agricultural focus of Rogationtide, they were initially more often urban processions, and rather than “beating the bounds” of a parish – the parish system was not firmly established until well into the 12th century – they took the form of processions from the “mother church” out to the various chapels, shrines or other significant features in the landscape. Relics of the saints, statues, images and so on, would be carried in the procession, establishing in the minds of those who took part, that the land around which they were carried was under the protection of the saint or saints being carried. The processions were a way in which people prayed for blessing on their land (rogare being Latin for “to pray”) but also asked God to drive any evil spirits out of it. Once parish boundaries became established this could lead to local trouble, with neighbouring parishes complaining that demons had been driven out of the next door land onto their land.
ST EDITH AND THE ROGATIONTIDE PROCESSIONS OF WILTON ABBEY
Alison N. Alstatt’s research into the Rogationtide Processions of Wilton Abbey uncovers not only the processions that would have taken place in the late Thirteenth Century, but also the music that would have been sung by the nuns and the parishioners as they marched, carrying the relics of St Edith to various churches in the area. They seem, at least in part, to have been consciously making their pilgrimage an echo on a small scale of the pilgrimages to Jerusalem which most of them would never have been able to make, designating a neighbouring hill, the Rollington, as Zion.
From Jerusalem the relics go forth, and salvation from Mount Sion.
Through them, protection will be on this city
and it will be saved by David, her servant, alleluia.
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| Wilston House, on the site of the old Wilton Abbey. |
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| The hill beyond this ornamental arch is the Rollington, the "Mount Sion" of the Rogationtide processions |
The text’s reference to Jerusalem takes on additional meaning when considered within the context of the Paschal liturgy at Wilton, when the abbey was symbolically transformed into the city of Jerusalem. In their exit from the "Jerusalem" of the abbey, the relics—and the nuns— prefigured the Division of the Apostles, which the abbey commemorated ten days later on the Feast of Pentecost in dramatic ritual. If the abbey was the city of Jerusalem, then their destination, the Rollington can be read as the nuns’ Mount Sion.
Rogationtide was not the only time processions happened, of course. Saints days were also celebrated with vigour, often involving dramas, like the mystery plays, telling the story of the saints lives. In some parts of England and France, these might be accompanied by puppet Giants and dragons, some of which still survive, even if their original purpose is somewhat obscured. On a visit to Salisbury museum, I encountered the Giant and Hob Nob, ancient processional figures which have been used almost continually on significant public occasions in the city. The Giant, according to his museum label, is "also sometimes known as St Christopher", and is clearly a survival of the figure which the Tailors' Guild whose patron saint was Christopher, would have carried in procession. It was common to have dragon or monster figures in these processions, symbolising Satan and it may be that Hob Nob is his descendent!Pre-Reformation Rogation processions, honouring the local saints, were a public demonstration of the recognition of a power beyond that of the secular landowner echoed not only the pre-Christian understanding of the “genius loci”, the spirits of the place, but also the Old Testament teaching that land was the gift of God, given on what might be described as a “leasehold” arrangements to the tribes of Israel with complicated rules to ensure that it could not be permanently sold out of the family to whom it had been allocated. “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.” (Leviticus 25.23)
Rules spelled out how the land should be farmed, not reaping to the edges of the field or going back to glean what was missed, not sowing mixed crops etc. This land may have been the communal “property” of Israel, but they were never allowed to forget that it actually belonged to God, who could just as easily take away as give. “You shall keep all my statutes and all my ordinances, and observe them, so that the land to which I bring you to settle in may not vomit you out." (Leviticus 20.22)
ROGATIONTIDE PROCESSIONS AND THE REFORMATION
Post-Reformation Rogationtide processions , which became known as “Beating the Bounds” tended to become civic processions, however, with the aim of impressing the civic boundaries of parishes on the local population, a vital measure when the parish was made liable for supporting those in need in its “patch”. This change had begun in the later Middle Ages, but it was very convenient for the Reformers. They had found it hard to abolish Rogationtide, a popular event in local communities, but could conveniently change its emphasis, using the procession instead as a way of underlining that the land belonged to this or that civic community. In eliminating the local saints and their miracle working relics from their processions, however, they also weakened the message that their lives had borne testimony to, that God had been and could still be at work in people's own locality, and that this land was God’s land. Beating the Bounds sent the message instead that this was the land of whichever landowner or secular authority happened to control it, and sanctioned that control.
Of course, Protestants still believed that “the earth was the Lord’s and everything in it”, but their approach to Rogationtide, at least in the popular mind, may have weakened that message. Whether that distinction was ever really noted at the time is hard to know, but it is one way in which the intrinsic sacredness of the land could potentially have become lost. Did this make it easier for people to exploit the land, paving the way for the Industrial Revolution and the environmental damage which we now see all too clearly? It is hard to prove, but it is a tantalising possibility. Desacralization is perhaps only a short step away from desecration. The twenty-first century revival of Beating the Bounds in the Rogationtide liturgies of Common Worship is a conscious attempt to reassert that fundamental truth of God’s ownership of the land, and our responsibility, therefore to care for and not exploit it. The modern liturgies now provided for these events stress the need for good stewardship, not for building boundaries that exclude others.
[i] Ristuccia p.24
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