The Mass in Van der Weyden's Seven Sacraments
Rogier Van der Weyden’s Seven Sacraments Altarpiece is now in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. It was painted between 1445 and 1450 when Van der Weyden was in Brussels and is generally held to have been commissioned for a church in Poligny in the Jura département in eastern France. It is a fixed-wing triptych, with a complex scene that continues across the three divisions of the altarpiece. The central focus of the iconography is a Crucifixion scene with attendant figures set up in the centre of the nave of a late Gothic Flemish church. It’s a large church with double side aisles and an apsidal east end with an ambulatory. The Seven Sacraments are shown being acted out in the church, primarily in the side aisles.
What Van De Weyden’s Seven Sacraments might teach us about the Mass
In this article, I’m going to focus on the portrayal of only one of the sacraments: the Mass. In this complex image, there are three separate depictions of the Mass being celebrated concurrently. I’m interested in thinking through what these depictions of the Mass might reveal about the use of space, the purpose of divisions within a church buildings and how fifteenth-century lay people encountered the liturgical action and experienced the Mass.
The Mass against the Chancel Screen
Behind the central Crucifixion, we can see a division between the nave and the chancel of this large Flemish church in the form of a chancel screen. The screen, in part a barrier, physically and visually reveals and hides the action going on behind it, but it is primarily presented here as a backdrop against which a celebration of the Mass is taking place. In a recess in the screen is an altar, presumably dedicated to the Virgin Mary, as there is a reredos above it with her image. A priest is celebrating the Mass here and has come to its most solemn moment, the Elevation of the Host. We might think of the late medieval Mass as a little-understood ceremony, celebrated apart from the people in a clericalised, screened off zone. This celebration of the Mass is in the nave the peoples’ space and in proximity to them – the Body of Christ in the Host is here shown among the hurly-burly of this busy place; God incarnate comes sacramentally into the midst of his people.
The laity is not kept at a distance in this tableau but plays an integral part in this offering of the Mass. As the priest elevates the host, a layman in fine clothing, a purple doublet and red hose, holds an elevation torch, and he lifts the base of the priest’s chasuble. There is no fear here of any proximity to the divine. Standing between two pillars is a man in a grey, his hand on the knife at his belt with his hat on the other, he focuses his attention on the host; today, he has seen his maker.
Mass in the side aisle
If we move to the left-hand panel of the painting to a depiction of a side aisle of this great church, we see a cha Behind the central Crucifixion, we can see a division between the nave and the chancel of this large Flemish church in the form of a chancel screen. The screen, in part a barrier, physically and visually reveals and hides the action going on behind it, but it is primarily presented here as a backdrop against which a celebration of the Mass is taking place. In a recess in the screen is an altar, presumably dedicated to the Virgin Mary, as there is a reredos above it with her image. A priest is celebrating the Mass here and has come to its most solemn moment, the Elevation of the Host. We might think of the late medieval Mass as a little-understood ceremony, celebrated apart from the people in a clericalised, screened off zone. This celebration of the Mass is in the nave the peoples’ space and in proximity to them – the Body of Christ in the Host is here shown among the hurly-burly of this busy place; God incarnate comes sacramentally into the midst of his people.
The laity is not kept at a distance in this tableau but plays an integral part in this offering of the Mass. As the priest elevates the host, a layman in fine clothing, a purple doublet and red hose, holds an elevation torch, and he lifts the base of the priest’s chasuble. There is no fear here of any proximity to the divine. Standing between two pillars is a man in a grey, his hand on the knife at his belt with his hat on the other, he focuses his attention on the host; today, he has seen his maker.pel at the end of the aisle, screened off. There is an altar here surrounded by riddels, with an altarpiece, a wooden tabernacle containing the image of the saints. A priest in a blue chasuble turns to the people; perhaps he’s turned to say ‘Orate fratres et sorores’ to ask his brothers and sisters to pray for him as he begins the Canon of the Mass and begins to offer the sacrifice on their behalf. It’s important to note that those who are witnessing this Mass taking place are within the screened-off chapel. There is a group of men and women just within the screen to the left, and there is another figure on the right of the entrance who appears to be busy with his primer, his prayer book. Just below the altar step is a figure dressed in a green doublet with a purple liripipe over his shoulder. Here the screen of this chapel acts not as a barrier to keep the laity at a distance from the holy but as an enclosure in which men and women seeking Christ’s presence are welcome. The screen exists only to demark the particularity of this liturgical space.
Mass at the high altar
Then there is the third celebration of the Mass depicted in this painting, but we only glimpse it. In the choir screen, there are two gates, which give us a restricted view beyond the church’s chancel. Our restricted view gives us enough visual information to be able to determine that a solemn celebration, a high mass is underway there. Through the left gate, we see the deacon of the Mass in his dalmatic, where he appears to be reading the liturgical gospel from an eagle lectern. This lectern is placed just where you would expect it, below the footpace of the altar, and we can see the edge of the altar itself, enclosed with riddel posts with figures of angels on the top and with a green frontal. A missal is open on a lectern on the altar itself. We can see no more of the altar and cannot see the priest and the other ministers.
A further visual clue shows that a Mass is underway in the chancel. Through the right-hand gate of the choir screen, we can see the arcade that divides the chancel from an ambulatory, and there are no screens to create a division between these spaces. Beyond, standing in the ambulatory itself, are two figures. The first is a man in a blue doublet who appears to be looking across the chancel to where the deacon is reading the gospel. His wife stands beside him, dressed in a purple and black gown, reading and concentrating on her primer in its white chemise covering. These people are standing at a reverential distance from the action in the chancel, but they are not shut out; without screens under the arcade, they will have had an uninterrupted view of the action, an action that is hidden from our eyes by the choir screen. The liturgical action in the chancel is clearly more complex than in the other two masses. The distance of those lay people is probably explained not by a desire to keep away from the holy but through a need to allow the complex liturgical action to take place unhindered.
Final Thoughts on on the Mass in Van der Weyden's Seven Sacraments
One thing to notice about these three depictions of the Mass in Van der Weyden’s painting is that they are at different stages in the celebration. Those stages in the liturgical action are evenly spaced out, and the elevations of the host would have been staggered. The celebration at the high altar has only got as far as the Gospel; that in the side chapel has as far as the beginning of the Canon of the Mass, and the most prominent celebration in the nave has reached the moment of liturgical climax: the elevation of the host. Late medieval churches were busy places where complex liturgical action took place concurrently. If this painting’s observation is any evidence, that action took place with the people drawing near.
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Fascinating; thanks. I don’t pay enough attention to how churches were actually used, habitually seeing them primarily aesthetically. This is a very useful corrective.
Thank you again – fascinating. I’ve seen this painting in the flesh, and I wish I’d read this first. Best wishes Delyth
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Very true. The destruction of chancel screens and jubés in Northern Europe prior to the revolutionary violence of the late eighteenth century although carried out on the pretext of greater visibility for the laity very often had the opposite consequence of distancing them from the liturgy. In France this was sometimes got around by inverting the choir and the sanctuary but very often not. Altars in this case shrouded in incense at at the end of long choirs were very definitely things over there, far off in the distance and not at hand as here.
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