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Lauda Sion as Doxological Compendium of St. Thomas’s Eucharistic Theology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2024
Abstract
In 1264 in the town of Orvieto, St. Thomas Aquinas composed the Lauda Sion as the Mass sequence for Pope Urban IV’s new universal solemnity of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the feast of Corpus Christi. The present paper will consider this text of St. Thomas’s liturgical sequence in relation to the eucharistic theology that he teaches in the Summa Theologiae. Just as, according to the Dionysian Aquinas, the Psalms contain all the doctrines revealed in the rest of scripture but transposed into the highest literary genre of praise, so the Lauda Sion contains all the essential eucharistic doctrines of the Summa Theologiae, now set in that same laudatory genre as the Psalter. The paper is divided into ten sections, corresponding to the questions in St. Thomas’s treatment of the Holy Eucharist in the Tertia Pars. Proceeding one topic at a time, this paper will show how the Lauda Sion serves as a doxological compendium of St. Thomas Aquinas’s whole eucharistic theology.
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- © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers.
References
1 On the history of St. Thomas’s composition of these liturgical texts, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas. Volume 1: The Person and His Work, trans. by Robert Royal, Revised Edition (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), pp. 129–31, 135–6, 246, 357. For a summary of the arguments about St. Thomas’s authorship, see Jan Heiner Tück, A Gift of Presence: The Theology and Poetry of the Eucharist in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2018), pp. 170–3. On the spirituality of the Lauda Sion, see Paul Murray, Aquinas at Prayer: The Bible, Mysticism and Poetry (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 223–37.
2 The other three sequences to survive St. Pius V were the Victimae Paschali Laudes for Easter, the Veni Sancte Spiritus for Pentecost, and the Dies Irae for the Requiem Mass. A few religious orders preserved more: For example, the Premonstratensians and the Dominicans maintained the Laetabundus for Christmas, and the Franciscans and the Dominicans kept the Sanctitatis Nova Signa for the feast of St. Francis. In 1727, the Stabat Mater Dolorosa for Our Lady of Sorrows was added into the Roman Rite as well. Since 1970, the Novus Ordo Missae has required only the Victimae Paschali Laudes and the Veni Sancte Spiritus, while also recommending the Lauda Sion Salvatorem and the Stabat Mater Dolorosa, with the Dies Irae retained explicitly only in the breviary.
3 The base text for St. Thomas’s Mass and office of Corpus Christi is Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Latin MS 1143 (Officium sollempnitatis nove corporis domini), which contains a rubrical note at the Lauda Sion mandating that it be sung as a contrafactum to the tune of the Laudes Crucis Attollamus. On Adam’s sequence, see Margot Fassler, Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris, Cambridge Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 64–82.
4 For the sake of brevity, in this paper, I limit myself to Tertia Pars, Questions 73–83. A longer study could also incorporate the other works of the Corpus Thomisticum that contain extended treatments of the Holy Eucharist: the Scriptum on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Book IV, Distinctions 8–13; the Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, Chapters 61–69; and the commentaries on John 6 and 1 Corinthians 11.
5 ‘Quidquid in aliis libris praedictis modis dicitur, hic ponitur per modum laudis et orationis’. Super Psalmos, Prooemium. See also Denys, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, 3.4.
6 Of course St. Thomas composed the Tertia Pars after the Lauda Sion, so the point is not that St. Thomas was looking back to the Summa discussion of the Holy Eucharist while writing the Corpus Christi sequence. Rather, he was looking forward to it. The point is simply that he was looking to the most important aspects of the theology of the Holy Eucharist, which he would one day summarize in the Summa Theologiae.
7 On the contents of the Lauda Sion, see Tück, A Gift of Presence, 209–28. On the traditional plan of liturgical sequences in general, see Fassler, Gothic Song, pp. 44–5. On the plan of the Laudes Crucis Attolamus, upon which the Lauda Sion is based, see ibid., pp. 55–56.
8 It should be noted that St. Thomas changes the order of topics received from Peter Lombard’s Sentences, so that they correspond more properly to the ordo disciplinae. On this St. Thomas’s ordering principle for the Summa Theologiae, see ST, Prooemium.
9 The only question left out of the outline of this paper is Question 81, on the use of the sacrament made by Christ at the Last Supper. In itself this question is interesting and important, but it is too historically specific to Holy Thursday to be relevant for the purposes of Corpus Christi, a feast instituted over and above Holy Thursday precisely to celebrate the Blessed Sacrament itself, apart from the other details of that night. Moreover, much of Question 81 concerns uncertain exegetical controversies, in which various Church Fathers and various of St. Thomas’s contemporaries found themselves on opposite sides – whereas the Lauda Sion celebrates only those eucharistic doctrines that are most certain and universal. See Section 8 for a brief discussion of this Question 81.
10 Summa Theologiae III, q. 60, a. 1. The sacraments’ status as sacred signs is deeply important to St. Thomas, especially by the time he writes the Summa Theologiae. Some of the Lauda Sion’s language concerning food and drink, which will be treated in the following section, also connects to the sign value of the Holy Eucharist, since it emphasizes the continuity of the signs: the prefiguring signs corresponding to the fulfilling signs. Nevertheless, the Eucharist as sign receives somewhat less emphasis in the Lauda Sion than in the Summa.
11 ST III, q. 73, a. 6, c.
12 ST III, q. 73, a. 6, c.
13 ST III, q. 74, a. 1, c.
14 ST III, q. 73, a. 1, c.
15 ST III, q. 74, a. 1, c.
16 See Urban Hannon, ‘Real Presence, Ergo Transubstantiation: St. Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharistic Conversion’, in The Metaphysics and Theology of the Eucharist: A Historical-Analytical Survey of the Problems of the Sacrament, Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action vol. 10, Gyula Klima, ed. (Dordrecht: Springer, 2024), 225–263.
17 ST III, q. 75, a. 1, c.
18 ST III, q. 75, a. 1, c.
19 I observed in the introduction that the thematic order is often different between the Summa Theologiae and the Lauda Sion. Note here that the sequence’s verses about the form of the sacrament generally precede those about the mode of Christ’s presence, whereas, as we have seen, it is the other way around in the Summa.
20 ST III, q. 79, a. 5, c. It should be noted that St. Thomas sometimes uses the word ‘sacrament’ in contradistinction to ‘sacrifice’, as here in Question 79, whereas at other times he uses ‘sacrament’ as a generic term that encompasses both Christ’s body as sacrificed and Christ’s body as received in sacramental form, as in Question 73 considered above.
21 ST III, q. 78, a. 1, c.
22 ST III, q. 74, a. 2, c.
23 ‘Angeli spiritualiter manducant ipsum Christum, inquantum ei uniuntur fruitione caritatis perfectae et visione manifesta (quem panem expectamus in patria)’. ST III, q. 80, a. 2, c.
24 ‘Quia ea quae sunt ad finem, derivantur a fine, inde est quod ista manducatio Christi qua eum sumimus sub hoc sacramento, quodammodo derivatur ab illa manducatione qua angeli fruuntur Christo in patria. Et ideo dicitur homo manducare panem angelorum, quia primo et principaliter est Angelorum, qui eo fruuntur in propria specie; secundario autem est hominum, qui Christum sub sacramento accipiunt’. ST III, q. 80, a. 2, ad 1.
25 See Fassler, Gothic Song, pp. 70–2.