Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Gregory McNeff
Guest: Cosima Clara Gillhammer, author of Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy (Reaktion Books, 2025)
Date: October 30, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth interview with Cosima Clara Gillhammer, an Oxford scholar of medieval literature, about her new book Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy. The conversation explores how Christian liturgy shaped Western art, literature, music, and culture from the Middle Ages to the present—arguing that liturgy is not a relic, but a living, creative force still resonant today. Designed for both students and general readers, the episode considers how symbolic ritual suffuses all aspects of communal life, past and present, far beyond the walls of the church.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Why Write a Book on Liturgy?

• Personal and Pedagogical Origins: Originally crafted to help Oxford undergraduate students understand the medieval context of literature, the book grew into a work for wider audiences interested in Western art and culture.
  • “It was a teaching book and an introduction for my first year students... but as I wrote it, it grew into something broader.”
    (Cosima, 02:17)
• Not Just for Experts: Designed to reach readers who may see liturgy as “stuffy or antiquated.”
  • “It’s attempting to convince them of the contrary and show why they're relevant.” (Cosima, 03:28)

What Is Liturgy?

• Definition & Scope:
  • Rooted in Greek for “public service;” refers to prescribed forms of Christian worship involving words, gestures, music, and movement, especially as developed in medieval Western Europe (primarily Roman Catholicism but inherited by Anglican and some Protestant traditions).
  • “Liturgy is a term that’s commonly used to refer to the forms of public worship in the Christian church… my book is specifically concerned with the Western liturgy.”
    (Cosima, 04:01)
• Survival Across Denominations: While most linked to Catholicism, even flexible Protestant traditions carry echoes of liturgical inheritance.

Liturgy as the Root of Western Culture

• Central Thesis: Liturgy underlies the “cultural history of Western Europe”—its art, music, literature, and architecture.
  • “We wouldn’t have Dante’s Divine Comedy… Michelangelo’s Pieta… or Mozart’s Requiem, et cetera, et cetera. The list continues.” (Cosima, 06:40)
• Persistence in Popular Culture:
  • Connections from medieval chant to Star Wars soundtracks are drawn to show cultural continuity.

The Misconception of Liturgy as Static or Boring

• Ritual as Dynamic and Creative:
  • Liturgy is not just formalism; it’s alive with universal human experiences: love, joy, grief, suffering.
  • “Our lives are suffused by rites and rituals… the rites of the Christian church are not stocky and boring, but they engage deeply with fundamental experiences such as love and joy and grief and suffering.” (Cosima, 08:07 & 09:31)
• Ritual Beyond Religion: Everyday secular rituals mirror the structure of religious ones.

Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi: Prayer and Belief

• Reciprocal Relationship:
  • “The law of prayer is the law of belief” — ritual shapes belief as much as belief shapes ritual.
  • “If one must act as though one believed, one ends in believing as one acts.” (Cosima, 10:31 & 11:59)

Catechetical (Educational) Function

• Religious Education Through Worship:
  • Liturgy teaches core Christian beliefs—creeds, scripture readings, sermons—interwoven into church services.

Liturgy in Daily Life, Past and Present

Medieval Integration

• All-Encompassing:
  • “The liturgy was part of the fundamental structure of people’s daily lives.”
    (Cosima, 14:07)
  • Mass and Liturgy of the Hours structured every day for laity and religious alike.
• Secular Intersections: Feasts, rents, and trade followed the church calendar.

Sensory Immersion

• Bodily & Aesthetic Engagement:
  • “It channels sound, sight, smell and movement. It demands to be experienced in a fully embodied form.”
    (Cosima, 16:46–17:18)
  • Collective action: kneeling, standing, making the sign of the cross, movement—plus music, incense, and visual art in sacred space.

Scriptural & Poetic Themes in Liturgy

Psalms—Psalm 51 (“Miserere”)

• Liturgical Centrality:
  • Penitential psalm expressing remorse and plea for mercy, recited or chanted by the congregation, making each participant “inhabit the text.”
  • “So in the moment of liturgical performance, the congregation inhabits the text and the speaker of the psalm.” (Cosima, 19:43)

Song of Songs/Solomon—Erotic Language as Allegory

• Sensual Imagery:
  • “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine.”
  • Allegory for divine love—God with Israel, Christ with the Church or the soul, and especially the Virgin Mary.
  • “It is in the first instance, quite unusual to have this text in the Old Testament. But then it becomes not at all unusual to be applying this text to particularly the Virgin Mary on specific feast days…” (Cosima, 24:48)

Marian Imagery—Hortus Conclusus

• Mary as “Enclosed Garden”:
  • “A metaphor of Mary's perpetual virginity… a garden in which only God can enter.” (Cosima, 27:06)

Advent & Christmas—Expectation in Liturgy

• Rorate Cœli:
  • Isaiah’s “Drop down, ye heavens…” as a recurring Advent prayer expressing the longing for messiah, mixing natural and divine imagery.

Darkness, Light, and Personal Culpability

Tenebrae (Holy Week)

• Dramatic Ritual:
  • Gradual extinguishing of candles symbolizes Christ’s passion and growing darkness; sudden return of light as hope.
  • “The congregation are plunged into darkness… only one single candle remains, which is then briefly hidden from view and then restored with a loud crashing sound ... The light of hope is hidden, but it’s not extinguished.” (Cosima, 30:57–33:04)
• Personal Accountability:
  • Ritual implicates all, not just historical actors, in the betrayal of Christ.

Improperia (“Reproaches” of Good Friday)

• Interwoven Literary & Liturgical Elements:
  • Ancient rhetorical dialogue between God and his people, contrasting Old Testament deliverance with Crucifixion.
  • “I opened the sea before you, but you opened my side with a spear.” (Cosima, 35:27–38:00)

Liturgy and the Arts

Impact on Visual Art

• Core Narrative:
  • “The story of Jesus is the central story around which the Western artistic imagination has revolved for thousands of years.” (Cosima, 41:41)
• Understanding Symbolism:
  • Many iconic artistic scenes—Annunciation, Crucifixion—draw their symbols directly from liturgical sources not immediately obvious to modern viewers.

Liturgy in Music: Dies Irae

• Worldly Reach:
  • “The beginning goes like this… and this little tune becomes… the shorthand for death.”
  • Composed for funeral liturgies, the melody’s ominous tones recur in classical and film music (e.g., Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, horror scores).
  • “Somehow, in the back of our minds when we hear this tune, we go, ooh, something’s not quite right here. Something ominous…” (Cosima, 43:49–46:00)

Visual Art & the Stabat Mater

• Eliciting Compassion:
  • “Artistic representations… attempt to elicit a compassionate response from the viewer, intending to touch the emotions rather than explain.” (Gregory, 47:21; Cosima, 48:04)
  • Depictions of Mary at the cross range from stoic to “near collapse,” intended to move spectators emotionally.

Literature: Milton and Felix Culpa

• Paradise Lost:
  • The paradoxical “happy fault”—Adam’s sin is a source of greater good, the Incarnation.
  • “Milton’s Adam here is both within and outside of time. He speaks with the knowledge of the coming of pride, obviously, knowledge which stands outside the timeline…” (Cosima, 50:03–54:18)

Modernity & the Continuing Legacy

Liturgical Influence in Modern Times

• Contemporary Music:
  • Arvo Pärt: Inspired by early chant and Orthodox traditions; music structured around silence, repetition, timelessness.
    • Recommended: “Berlin Mass”
      (Cosima, 55:17–56:43)
  • James MacMillan: Catholic; deeply liturgical, especially his setting of the Miserere.
    • “Charts a wonderfully moving journey from darkness and sin to hope and renewal.” (Cosima, 57:11)
  • Kate Bush: Pop reinterpretation of Song of Songs imagery.
    • “An example of the long afterlife of biblical and liturgical influence in… popular culture.” (Cosima, 58:21)
  • Tolkien: Inspired by the O Antiphons, especially “Earendel”—morphs liturgical imagery into legends of hope, as in Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings.
    • “This fascination with its name… was the source of the mythology that he created.”
      (Cosima, 59:35–61:20)

Philosophical & Theological Reflections

Liturgy and Time

• Collapsed and Cyclical Time:
  • Liturgy as intersection of historical and eternal time; a “collapse” where Christ’s sacrifice becomes truly present at Mass, not just commemorated.
  • “The celebrant actually blesses. He does not play the role of Christ’s blessing. We actually give thanks...” (Cosima, 62:37–64:38)
• Performance and Ritual:
  • Medieval church drama—liturgical plays and mysteries—merged stagecraft with ritual, involving whole communities, blending performance with liturgical text.
  • “So the past and the present meet through the words of the liturgy enacted here on stage in a very interesting way.” (Cosima, 65:22–68:58)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Liturgy being the root of Western culture is really the central thesis of the book.” (Cosima, 06:24)
• “The law of prayer is the law of belief.” (Cosima, 10:39)
• On Dies Irae: “This little tune becomes… the shorthand for death.” (Cosima, 45:17)
• “The liturgy has formed and still forms the fabric of Western creative imagination in different forms in the modern period than in the medieval period, but it is still there.” (Cosima, 69:10)
• On the future: “This is very much an ongoing process that will continue into the future for many centuries to come.” (Cosima, 70:13)

Important Timestamps

• 02:17 Why Gillhammer wrote the book, origins and intended audience.
• 04:01 Defining “liturgy” in historical and denominational context.
• 06:24 Central thesis: liturgy as foundational to Western culture.
• 08:07 Dynamic and creative nature of ritual.
• 10:39 Lex orandi, lex credendi: prayer shapes belief.
• 14:07 Liturgy in everyday medieval life.
• 16:46 Sensory immersion in liturgical practice.
• 18:43 Psalm 51 in medieval liturgy.
• 22:21 Song of Songs: erotic language and allegory.
• 27:06 “Hortus conclusus” and Marian symbolism.
• 30:57 Tenebrae liturgies: extinguishing light and shared sorrow.
• 35:27 Improperia: blending of traditions and literary play.
• 41:41 Liturgy’s influence on Western art.
• 43:49 Dies Irae: musical and cultural afterlife.
• 48:04 Stabat Mater and the emotive power of art.
• 50:03 Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Felix Culpa.
• 55:17 Arvo Pärt and the musical expression of liturgy.
• 57:11 James MacMillan’s Miserere setting.
• 58:21 Kate Bush’s pop liturgical borrowing.
• 59:35 Tolkien’s “Earendel”—liturgical roots of fantasy.
• 62:37 Liturgy and the mystery of time.
• 65:22 Medieval liturgical drama and stage performance.
• 69:10 Why liturgy’s future is “bright.”

Tone and Language

The conversation is scholarly but accessible, interwoven with evocative explanations, literary references, and clear enthusiasm for the beauty and richness of the tradition. Gillhammer consistently emphasizes the universal, timeless qualities of ritual and its surprising permeation of secular and modern culture.

Summary Takeaway

Light on Darkness and this interview challenge listeners to see liturgy not as a dusty relic but as the “well-spring of Western creativity”—a living tradition still shaping collective imagination, intertwining worship, art, music, language, and human experience across the centuries and into the modern world.