Isidore of Seville and Holy Saturday

Last semester, I wrote a paper on Holy Week in the Old Hispanic (Mozarabic) Liturgy that in part contrasted Isidore of Seville’s treatment of Holy Saturday in De Ecclesiasticis Officiis with later liturgical commentary (e.g. Rabanus Maurus). Now that the day in question is upon us, I went back to my research and reflected on some of Isidore’s lessons on Holy Saturday and the special quietude this day deserves.

The Old Hispanic Triduum started with lengthy ceremonies on Holy Thursday and complex processions, often encompassing entire villages, on Good Friday. Holy Saturday had no unique ceremony of its own, other than an evening Easter Vigil Mass which was similar to, but distinct from that of the Roman Rite (for a fantastic write-up of the history and development of the Mozarabic Holy Week, read Rev. Raúl Gómez-Ruiz’s book Mozarabs, Hispanics, and the Cross).

In De Ecclesiasticis Officiis, Isidore devotes an entire section to vigils, connecting the devotion of foregoing rest for prayer to Isaiah, Exodus, and Christ’s example in Luke 6 among numerous scriptural references. He even goes so far as to say that this pious tradition is falsely maligned by lazy heretics who value their sleep over prayer. It comes as a surprise, then, that Isidore devotes his capitulum on Holy Saturday entirely to its merits as a day of rest, rather than as a vigil in anticipation of Easter. The passage on vigils precedes the discussion of Holy Week closely, so Isidore may have assumed the point had been made and the other merits of Holy Saturday could be expounded. However, given Isidore’s general readiness to repeat himself, and the focus of other liturgists and theologians on the Easter Vigil and its ceremonies, his choice stood out to me, so I dove in deeper.

Isidore writes:

Sabbati paschalis ueneratio hinc celebratur pro eo quod eodem die dominus in sepulchro quieuit… Hic autem dies inter mortem Christi et resurrectionem medius est, significans requiem quandam animarum ab omni labore omniumque mo- lestiarum post mortem, per quam fit transitus per resurrectionem carnis ad illam uitam quam dominus noster Iesus Christus sua resurrectione praemonstrare dignatus est.

“The veneration of Holy Saaturday is celebrated because it was on this day that the Lord rested in the tomb…This day is also midway between the death and resurrection of Christ, signifying that rest after death of souls from every labor and from all troubles through which there is a passing over through the resurrection of the flesh to that life of which our Lord Jesus Christ has deigned to give a foretaste in his resurrection.” (Knoebel Translation).

Christopher Lawson, in his fantastically thorough edition of DEO, identifies Isidore’s inspiration for this passage in Augustine’s Epistula 55 on the topic of Easter. Augustine discusses the theological concept of the Sabbath, including the importance of Holy Saturday as a day of rest. (Augustine wrote other sermons on the Easter Vigil and its importance, but Isidore does not reference those.) While there was clearly precedent, Isidore’s definition of Holy Saturday purely as a day of rest would be the last one of its kind. Rabanus Maurus, in De Institutione Clericorum, opens his discussion of Holy Saturday by citing this very passage from Isidore, and subsequently briefly expounds on it, adding that “On this day we should remain accompanied entirely by silence and tranquility, and with prayer and psalmody await the holy hour of the resurrection.”

He then proceeds to discuss the typical vigil ceremonies, without further reflection upon the requies of the day. In fact, by Rabanus’ time in the eighth century, the vigil liturgy was already creeping earlier and earlier to take up the entire day, edging out the possibility of a very substantial requies. Eventually, in some parts of the West, the day would be almost entirely subsumed into looking toward Easter. While this attitude of total focus on Paschal anticipation in Lenten liturgies was common in the Roman Rite, the Old Hispanic Liturgy tended to focus on day-to-day significance as well.

Doubtless, Isidore felt his emphasis here was rooted in the Scriptures; scholars of Isidore have written at length on Isidore’s particular exegetical outlook toward Church teaching. Thomas O’Loughlin, for example, describes Isidore as relying on the belief that Holy Scripture already contained a sufficient and complete body of truth, but that this truth needed to be transmitted concisely and intelligibly (and such was the duty Isidore took upon himself). The key to Isidore’s theology of Holy Saturday rests in his explanations of the Sabbath in both De Ecclesiasticis Officiis and the Etymologiae.

In Book VI of the Etymologiae, Isidore follows a very brief discussion of the Lord’s Supper with an explanation of why the the Lord’s Day, originally celebrated in honor of God’s day of rest after perfecting His creation, was shifted from Saturday to Sunday. God resting on the seventh day of creation was, in fact, a foreshadowing of Holy Saturday, Isidore explains, on which day Christ “perfected the figure of the Sabbath in His tomb.” Thus Holy Saturday is in its own right a fulfillment of Genesis, as well as a pivotal shift from the Old to the New Covenant, reflected in the new Lord’s Day established by the Resurrection. Throughout the Old Testament, Isidore believed, the Sabbath handed down for Saturday observance was foreshadowed to shift to Sunday, the Lord’s Day. In DEO Isidore even references Ecclesiastes 11:2, which suggests “investing into one’s portions into seven or eight,” as a foreshadowing that the eighth day would someday have precedent over the seventh. (The layers upon layers this man saw in Scripture, especially the O.T., are mind-blowing).

In essence, Holy Saturday is profoundly a day of rest because of the glorious resurrection that follows–that would change even the Sabbath observance itself. Holy Saturday was the last Saturday Sabbath– the last Sabbath of requies–in human history. Even Christ Himself observed Holy Saturday as a day of rest for His body in the tomb, but on the next day he freed His people from the old Sabbath and established the new. Such an intricate but scripturally cohesive interpretation is a prime example of Isidore’s goal to let no scriptural stone go unturned, and he accomplishes it with brevity and sophistication characteristic of his theological goals (for more on these, see O’Loughlin’s chapter in this book).

It’s always been easy for me (and for the later medieval Church) to treat Holy Saturday like a pre-game for Easter. But for Isidore, deeply engrossed in Sacred Scripture as he was, Holy Saturday was a sacred finale of the Sabbath of the Old Covenant. Taking Holy week day-by-day without rushing through to the Lindt-Chocolate-flavored light at the end of the tunnel is hard especially after the weighty, profoundly sacramental meditations Holy Thursday and Good Friday offer us. But today, though quieter (and rightfully so), we can take a page from Isidore and reflect not just on what awaits tomorrow, but on the foundations of the day of rest laid into place from the very beginning.

Also, if you’re into following along Holy week in Scripture, I cannot recommend enough the Holy Week series published by Monsignor Charles Pope this year (read the Good Friday segment here; I am hoping he comes out with a Holy Saturday post by the end of today!)

Enjoy the end of your Triduum, friends, and Happy Easter.