It began innocently enough, the Archdeacon responsible for the parish where I am serving at the moment asked why Anglicans fold their Palm Sunday palm fronds into small crosses. This form of Anglican origami is, of course, not limited to Anglicans or to the current generation or to this geographical region, but it is observed with a vigor around here that gives it a status far above its paygrade. An innocent question, I assumed with a simple answer, but one that has led me down a rabbit hole of turns and twists and a frustrating series of non-answers. Along the way it afforded a wonderful Facebook conversation with suggestions, personal anecdotes, and varying answers \u2013 all of which were interesting, and all of which made it even more complex. My original hypothesis was dead wrong, and the \u201canswers\u201d are still emerging\u2026why do we do this to palm fronds? In order to start to form an answer, we need to back up into the convoluted history of what is popularly called Palm Sunday\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In\nthe beginning there is Egeria \u2013 we all know from various encounters with the\nhistory of the liturgical year that it is in 4th<\/sup> century pilgrim\naccounts from Jerusalem we start to hear of imitating the procession of Jesus\ninto Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy or Great Week. In her account, at the\n11th<\/sup> hour of the day (after a busy day of other liturgies and\nstations), all the people, with branches and palms, escort the bishop from the\nMount of Olives to the Anastasis, singing \u201cBlessed is the One who comes in the\nname of the Lord.\u201d (The Pilgrimage of\nEgeria, <\/em>31). She confirms what earlier pilgrims had already written, along\nwith Bishop Cyril, particularly in the association of children singing and carrying\npalms. From the holy city the tradition is carried forth \u2013 we assume \u2013 to be\ntaken up as the primary focus on that Sunday morning in the Syriac tradition.\nThere, the hymns and readings centred on singing the hosannas, palms and olive\nbranches adorned the church and the processional cross, the station outside the\nfront door was a type of the station at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, a joyful\nentry into Jerusalem by all (into the church) followed, and then the\neucharistic liturgy continued that particular focus. It is only in the evening\nliturgy (the evening office of the lamp) that the church has been stripped, the\nfocus shifting to the week of great suffering, and the same processional path\nnow stopping at the closed front door pleading to be admitted into the Kingdom\nof God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nSyrian influence on many other churches is extensive, and perhaps contributes\nto this procession in Constantinople, an imperial city with its own way of\nmapping the church over the city. We read of the complexity of the Palm Sunday\nprocession in the liturgical books of the 10th<\/sup> and 11th<\/sup>\ncenturies, with a gathering at one church (Church\nof<\/em> the Forty Soldier Martyrs<\/em>) where\npalms are distributed, prayers prayed, and then a procession with a complicated\narray of ecclesial and \u201ccivil\u201d participants involving most of the city. After\nseveral stations, the procession arrives at the Great Church (Hagia Sophia<\/em>) followed by the divine\nliturgy. Eventually, however, the texts (scripture and ecclesial) remain, but\nthe literal use of palms and branches fades away, for political reasons in a\nconquered city, but perhaps for other reasons too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\nof the Latin-speaking West? We know from scattered resources that liturgically\nwalking the streets of Rome came a bit later than in other urban centres of\nChristianity, and that processions often carried with them a penitential or\nsupplicatory nature. The Palm Sunday procession, as it developed in the East, was\nnot penitential, but rather a procession of victory and rejoicing, linking the\nancient use of palms with signs of victory and honour with the gospel accounts\nof the entry into Jerusalem. It stands to reason, therefore, that it might have\nbeen at odds with the developing repertoire of processional liturgy in Rome.\nBut there is another factor for which the timing is a bit murky: the earliest\nlectionary evidence points to a focus on the reading of the passion according\nto St. Matthew on this Sunday prior to Easter, and the earliest liturgical\nbooks for the city of Rome show a palm procession added as a later separate\nsection to the primary liturgy focused on the passion (with a blessing of the\nbranches that included a prayer of protection for the faithful). The first\nclear evidence for a blessing of palms in the \u201cEastern\u201d style is in the Bobbio\nMissal (I\u2019ll go with the most recent research, Vienne and early 600s\u2026) So Rome\n(and all that the city of Rome influences) probably adopt the tradition from\ntheir Merovingian\/Frankish neighbours to the north, or from the Byzantine\ninfluence of Constantinople in the 6th<\/sup> century, or from both, adding\nit to a primary focus on the passion of Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\nmay remember that the point of this ramble through history was how did we get\nto folding our palms into crosses \u2013 how indeed? There are multiple ethnic and\ngeographic descriptions of forming the palms into glorious shapes, but\nhistorically it seems to be a result of an \u201ceast-meets-west\u201d affair. One of the\nmost interesting is the Western Christian return to Jerusalem and the\nimposition of Frankish practices on the new Latin Kingdom at the turn of the\nmillennium. What seems to have merged in their elaborate processional practices\nis a development of two earlier traditions of a hypapante <\/em>and adventus, <\/em>meeting\nand arrival. The meeting was physically ritualized in many Christian centres\nwith two processions \u2013 one group going out to meet Christ (\u201cgoing to Bethany\u201d)\nand then both processional groups escorting the \u201cKing\u201d with the solemn\ncelebration of welcoming a ruler to the city. Medieval historians think some of\nthe elaborate ceremonial that makes its way to Jerusalem originated in that\nhotbed of liturgical reform in the late 11th<\/sup> century, Chartres\nCathedral, which in the Jerusalem version has the Patriarch and a small group\nprocessing to Bethany with the \u201ctrue cross\u201d, then returning to Jerusalem where\nthey were met with a group coming out of the city with blessed palms and olive\nbranches. When the two groups meet there is an adoration of the cross, several\nstations of prayer, and an eventual return to the Holy Sepulchre. This cross\nmeets palms plays out in other ways in other places, and Christ is\n\u201crepresented\u201d varyingly by the bishop\/patriarch, a gospel book, relics, the\ntrue cross\/cross, but consistently the blessed branches (victory) meet the\ncross (passion) in an assortment of dramatic ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just\none more story of the complexity of the development of Passion Sunday with the\nLiturgy of the Palms\u2026the Sarum Use in England (inculturated Roman Rite), picks\nup the \u201ccreation\u201d of Lanfranc of Bec\u2019s addition of the Blessed Sacrament, which\nhe brought to Canterbury in the 12th<\/sup> century. The elaborate accounts\nof the procession for Palm Sunday around London (up to the 1547 injunction\nagainst these processions) had a meeting between one procession bearing the\nrelics of saints and a suspended pyx with the Sacrament (Jesus and his\ndisciples) meeting a larger group (the crowd) singing \u201cBlessed is He who comes\nin the name of the Lord\u201d, now carrying clear eucharistic overtones. The many\nstations involved children and adults singing from high platforms (tossing\ncakes and flowers to the waiting crowds below) and there are indications of\nshort plays done along the route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\nare we to make of this seemingly unending rabbit hole of variable historical\ndevelopment? At the heart of it is the procession with the cross and the\nprocession with the palms which meet in marvelous and diverse ways. I think\nKenneth Stevenson had it partially right when he said the \u201cpalm cross, a\nrelatively recent invention, is by its nature interpretive because it spells\nout the symbolism of Palm Sunday in linking the palm procession with the\npassion gospel.\u201d (Jerusalem Revisited, <\/em>page\n24) Both Roman Catholic cautions (use an unveiled cross decorated with palms as\nthe primary symbol of Christ, 1955) and Anglican (Lee Mitchell on not waving\npalms already made into small crosses because the palms need to be signs of\nvictory and processional logic calls for something larger) represent a move\naway from a focus on the palms themselves (or other branches) and back to\nprocession. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In\njust a few days we will go out to meet our Saviour in the annual juxtaposition\nof joy and sorrow, palm and passion. The clash is an essential dimension of\nHoly Week \u2013 it keeps us from ordering the days as if Jesus was to suffer and\ndie again and sets the week as sacramental commemoration and participation\nrather than solely mimicry and representation. But occasionally, the incredibly\ncomplex history of our liturgies may startle us again in the midst of the\nreality that it is today we do this, now is the acceptable time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It began innocently enough, the Archdeacon responsible for the parish where I am serving at the moment asked why Anglicans fold their Palm Sunday palm fronds into small crosses. This form of Anglican origami is, of course, not limited to Anglicans or to the current generation or to this geographical region, but it is observed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":46957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3118,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ars-celebrandi-new-ws","category-liturgical-year"],"yoast_head":"\n