Many thanks, Oriens, for your kind invitation to a Catholic Mass; if I find
myself in your neck of the woods, I'll be glad to attend.
Your point about liturgical solemnity is well taken. Perhaps if we read
Durandus or the other great encyclopedists of the medieval liturgy we are apt
to forget the human coughs-sneezes-wheezes-and-worse which probably punctuated
the occasion; we like to think that it was so rich in multiple symbolic
meanings that no one dared breathe until the last sound, the last iconic
gesture, had disappeared.
Gary Dickson
University of Edinburgh
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