Replacing the Angelus

The Regina Caeli owns the Easter season. From Easter Sunday through Pentecost it serves as the seasonal Marian antiphon at the end of Compline, and by a custom fixed in the eighteenth century it replaces the Angelus itself, so that the thrice daily bell of Catholic settlements calls the faithful, for fifty days, to the antiphon of the resurrection rather than the memorial of the incarnation. It is recited standing, in token of Easter joy, where the Angelus tradition kneels. Popes lead it publicly from the window of the Apostolic Palace on the Sundays of Eastertide, delivering the short address and blessing that accompany the Sunday Angelus the rest of the year, which has made the antiphon's opening line one of the most broadcast pieces of Latin in the modern world.

Musically the Regina Caeli lives a double life. The chant books give it in a simple tone that any parish can manage and an ornate solemn tone for trained choirs, and composers of every polyphonic generation have set it, so the same four lines serve a village congregation after evening prayer and a cathedral choir at full strength. Its liturgical logic repays notice, the church keeping time by changing whom it addresses and how, joy measured not by adding words but by exchanging one Marian greeting for another.