The Inner Temple Yearbook 2021–2022
The Temple Church: Transforming with the Times
THE TEMPLE CHURCH:
TRANSFORMING WITH THE TIMES By The Master of the Temple
TC
Outside altar Colonna votiva piazza Roma © Comune di Brugherio digital archives
Portrait of Charles Borromeo © Attributed to Giovanni Ambrogio Figino. Public Domain
In July 1576, the plague struck Milan. It would be a terrible outbreak. The civic authorities fled. Authority devolved upon Archbishop Carlo Borromeo, already a hero of the Catholic Reformation and Milan’s most powerful figure. His first move, consonant with the practice of centuries past, was to mount vast penitential processions through the city. He led them himself, barefoot. After three of these, however, the doctors urged him to stop; however prayerful the penitents, such crowds were the surest way to spread the disease. The Archbishop had already divided each procession into parishbased bubbles, to prevent contagion. But he now promptly followed the science; he put the whole city into lockdown. Even 16th-century Milan had its SAGE.
Borromeo would have been the first to live-stream services and Zoom his congregations. It has been something of an inspiration, over the last 18 months, to know that we have in our way been doing what he did in his. The Church at large has been here before.
Next, the Archbishop invoked the calling and courage of his clergy, even of the most enclosed monks. They must be out in the city, providing for those who needed help, but always keeping, as best they could, at a safe distance. The laity clearly could not attend Mass; so, Borromeo had altars set up at squares and crossroads at which priests could celebrate Mass and the laity could watch from their homes. Then came pamphlets, for universal distribution, on which were printed simple musical litanies. At set hours, all the churches would ring their bells, and citizens would fling open their doors and windows and sing the litanies antiphonally across the city’s streets. Even in these months of horror, we are told, Milan seemed to resound with the music of the heavenly Jerusalem. Borromeo was of course promoting the prayers that would surely help end the plague; he himself admitted, as well, that he suspected Milan’s citizens simply did not have enough to do. 96
We have been grateful for other inspiration too: loyal congregations at our weekly Zoom evensongs; a welcome surge of attendance online and then in person as the choir gradually regained its freedom to sing here, live; an astonishing resilience in our musicians and the choristers, as the boys had over and again to rehearse and perform online; and the support of both Inns and of the Temple Music Foundation for a vastly enhanced streaming system that will from now on be in use at every service and, we hope, at Call Nights, concerts, lectures and discussions. Imagine training young children, who learn everything from listening to those around them and from the shared energy of their enterprise, to sing in a choir which has hardly met in person for a year. Roger Sayer and his team have worked wonders. At the start of the legal year, we sang an evensong at which Master Buckland, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, gave the address (live!) and Bar leaders in the USA, Continental Europe, Africa and Hong Kong read the intercessions. Towards its end, an Australian bride celebrated her wedding here with 15 guests in church and 95 – including her grandparents – in Sydney, champagne in hand. And in between, we were able to issue genuine
