Thursday, December 29, 2022

It is the 29th of December 2022. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

A happy 5th day of Christmas- the Gold or Golden Rings Day- and the most annoying part of the song. It’s been all birds so far, and now a gold ring, huh?

 

It would be appropriate in Christmastide, we would look at the life and faith of one of the authors of a beloved Christmas hymn- you likely know these lyrics:

 

In the bleak mid-winter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak mid-winter,

Long ago.

 

That is, of course, In the Bleak Midwinter from Christina Rossetti, who died on this, the 29th of December in 1894 in London, where she was born in 1830.

 

If you listened to the Dickens Weekend edition, you would note she is literally in the middle of Dickensian London- but she wouldn’t be among those less fortunate. Her father was an expatriate from Italy- he taught Italian Literature at the Kings College London, and he had an obsession with Dante- in fact, Christina’s older brother was called “Dante Rossetti,” and he (and to some extent Christina) belonged to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Real quick: this meant they idealized the early Italian Renaissance- when it was deemed by them to be more natural and evocative- less overly detailed and considered overly formal.

 

You get a sense of that in another stanza from the Carol:

 

Enough for him, whom Cherubim

Worship night and day,

A breastful of milk

and a mangerful of hay;

Enough for him, whom Angels

Fall down before,

The ox and ass and camel

Which adore.

 

Her faith is central to all she did- after her father's death and her own breakdown, she became especially centered in her devout Anglican faith. She was of the high church variety- influenced by the Anglo-Catholicism of the Tractarians- those folks led by a man named Pusey- who wanted a reform of the Catholic Church and stressed the sacramental nature of faith.

 

In 1848 she was engaged to James Collinson- he was also of the High Church persuasion, but he converted to the Roman church, and they broke off their engagement. He backtracked, went Anglican again- they were engaged, and then he changed his heart and joined a Jesuit monastery (he would leave that later and marry another woman). She would later become engaged to Charles Bagot Cayley, but that broke off for what may have been his lack of Christian faith, but the two would remain close for the rest of their lives.

 

 

Her mental state was frail- and it seems the young girl who was vivacious became somewhat reserved. Hear her advice to a niece:

 

“You must not imagine, my dear girl, that your Aunt was always the calm and sedate person you now behold. I, too, had a very passionate temper; but I learnt to control it. On one occasion, being rebuked by my dear Mother for some fault, I seized upon a pair of scissors, and ripped up my arm to vent my wrath. I have learnt since to control my feelings—and no doubt you will!”

 

Christina held to something like the Anglo-Catholic doctrine of reservation- that is, we mustn’t speak so freely about the mysteries of the faith (as they thought the low church folk did). Instead, there was a good bit of coding in works of art for others to either piously recognize or miss in their ignorance. While some of her allegorical work has been taken to be rather sensual and even risqué, she is in the tradition of women mystic poets from Hildegard and Julian of Norwich.

 

She wrote a number of works for children- she was admired by Lewis Carol of Alice in Wonderland and William Blake. Her “the Prince's Progress” mimics Bunyan’s “Pilgrims Progress,” and the journey of Dante from hell to paradise seems a prevalent parallel theme in her poems.

 

Later, she would be more explicit with her 1874 “Annus Domini: A Prayer for Each Day of the Year, Founded on a Text of Holy Scripture” and her 1879 Seek and Find: A Double Series of Short Studies on the Benedicite. Many of her later more straightforward devotional works would be published with the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

 

She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1892 and died from that in 1894, on this the 29th of December- born on December 5th in 1830. She had just turned 64. Today we remember Christina Rossetti- the great English poet and author of “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

 

The last word for today comes from the daily lectionary, from Jeremiah 31- and quoted in Matthew 2:

This is what the Lord says:

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
    mourning and great weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”

16 This is what the Lord says:

“Restrain your voice from weeping
    and your eyes from tears,
for your work will be rewarded,”
declares the Lord.
    “They will return from the land of the enemy.

17 

So there is hope for your descendants,”
declares the Lord.
    “Your children will return to their own land.

 

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 29th of December 2022, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

 

The show is produced by a man whose favorite Dantes include Rossetti, Alighieri, and Dante Daniel Bonaduce (from the partridge family)- He is Christopher Gillespie.

 

The show is written and read by a man for whom a Dante reference always goes right to Dante Bichette, a former Angel we traded for Dave Parker when I was 12. I’m Dan van Voorhis

 

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.