Palm Sunday in Pre-“Reformation” England
April 10, 2022
York Minster
IT’S hard for us to imagine today just how powerful, emotionally charged, solemn, festive and dramatic the observance of Palm Sunday, the commemoration of Jesus Christ’s triumphal entrance into Jerusalem, was in the Middle Ages.
In his great work, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580, Eamon Duffy describes Palm Sunday in pre-Reformation England:
The Palm Sunday procession was by the end of the Middle Ages the most elaborate and eloquent of the processions of the Sarum rite, with the possible exception of the Sarum rite. The parish Mass began as usual with the blessing and sprinkling of holy water. Immediately that had been done the story of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem and greeting by the crowds with palms was read from St. John’s Gospel. The priest then blessed flowers and green branches, which were called palms but were usually yew, box, or willow. The palms were distributed and clergy and people processed out of the church, led by a painted wooden cross without a figure. The procession moved to a large cross erected in the churchyard, normally on the north side of the building at its east end, the choir singing a series of anthems recapitulating the biblical story of Palm Sunday (Pl. 3).
While the palms were being distributed a special shrine supported on two poles was prepared, into which the church’s principal relics were placed, along with the Blessed Sacrament to represent Christ. According to the rubrics, this shrine, carried by two clerks and sheltered by a silken canopy, was now brought in procession to join parishioners and clergy at the churchyard Palm cross. By the end of the Middle Ages this aspect of the rite had been simplified in many places, the Host being carried instead in a monstrance by a single priest. In the meantime the story of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem from Matthew’s Gospel was read to the parishioners in the churchyard. The procession with the Blessed Sacrament now approached the parochial procession gathered at the Cross, and according to the ritual, three clerks wearing surplices and plain choir copes sang an anthem, “Behold, O Sion, thy king cometh”, after which clergy and choir venerated the Sacrament by kneeling and kissing the ground before it. In popular English practice this part of the ritual was elaborated, the singers of the anthem being costumed as Ol Testament prophets with flowing wigs and false beards. [Stripping of the Altars, pp. 23-24]
