For more than 45 years it lay in pieces on the floor of the organ loft, a forgotten, silent witness to Catholic Faith but when just prior to Easter parish volunteers finished installing the pulley system suspended from the sanctuary ceiling vault, St. Anne’s early sanctuary lamp was at last returned to its rightful place before the Tabernacle of our Lord. Blessed by Fr. Erik Deprey, FSSP, the sanctuary lamp was re-lit and returned to service during the Easter Vigil, on Saturday, April 19th 2014.
High Quality mid 19th Century Workmanship
Made of brass with silver-plated fittings, the lamp was restored by Turn of the Century Lighting, a Toronto firm specializing in the restoration of antique lighting fixtures. We don’t know exactly how old the lamp is. According to Michael Rosar, who oversaw the restoration work, despite the absence of maker’s marks which would help date it definitively, the lamp’s high quality brass workmanship and style would place its manufacture to as early as the 1840s but unlikely not later than 1900. So, does that mean that this lamp is the one that for close to one hundred years following the church’s construction in 1873 burned day and night in the sanctuary at St. Anne? It would be nice to think so but what little hard evidence we have unfortunately doesn’t support that conclusion. It’s far more likely that our lamp arrived at St. Anne much later on but when exactly, we don’t know. Certainly, photographic evidence demonstrates that it was in place in the sanctuary in the 1920s.
The first solid evidence we have of a date for the purchase of a sanctuary lamp at St. Anne comes in 1895* in the form of a passing reference in the accounts making up a year-end summary in the parish ledger which itemizes the supply of olive oil for the year just past.
Huile d’olive pour la lampe achetée en 1893 0.00
A new sanctuary lamp was then in service at St. Anne as early as 1893, the same year that the transept was constructed. The General Ledger for that year however, makes no reference to the purchase mentioned two years later in connection with a supply of olive oil leaving us unsure of the identity of the lamp in question. At this point, all we can safely say is that the construction of the transept undertaken twenty years after the initial dedication of the church eventually made suspension of a sanctuary lamp the size and weight of ours – 95 pounds – entirely possible and most certainly appropriate.
Restoration work revealed traces of silver plating used to highlight the four cameos featuring the Blessed Virgin Mary and other decorative features surrounding the rings that serve to attach the chains required for the lamp’s suspension. The use of two-tone finishes employing brass and silver was a common one at the time of the lamp’s manufacture, according to Turn of the Century Lighting and would have been a well-known feature of church fittings at St. Anne. Early ledgers in the parish archive have an entry for the refurbishment of a processional cross and sanctuary lamp that leaves no doubt about the nature of the work carried out.
1894 – 10 août Croix de procession et lampe de sanctuaire réargentées 25.00
Oil from Montreal
Random choices from the many regular entries over the years in the parish accounts recording the purchase of various quantities of olive oil shipped by train to Ottawa from Montreal mean that our lamp or its predecessor would both once have been fitted to burn olive oil.
1893 – 11 mai 1 chopine huile d’olives [sic] Lampe du sanctuaire .05
1893 – 26 août 2 galls. Huile d’olives [sic] 1.80
1905 – 9 avril Payé pour un canistre[sic] d’huile de 8 jours 5.75
Occasionally these regular entries betray a sense of urgency when supplies were running low and timely delivery was all important.
1896 – 11 janvier Pour transport par express d’huile d’olives [sic] de Montréal .55
Specific entries recording the purchase of olive oil to fuel a sanctuary lamp disappear from the ledger early in 1910 leading one to suspect that the lamp then in service at St. Anne was modified during that year to receive a beeswax candle. Whatever the precise date of the modifications made to accommodate a new light source, those fittings had long disappeared from our own lamp when it was found in the organ loft and had to be recast during restoration.
An baffling ledger entry
While the accounts after 1910 do not directly report expenses related to the maintenance or purchase of a sanctuary lamp, a ledger entry made in 1923 records an expenditure whose uniqueness asks almost as many questions as it answers.
1923 – 25 mars Payé à Millee[sic] cierge de sanctuaire 27.00
Who was Millee and what task did he undertake in early 1923, year of both the church’s centenary and a major renovation campaign to warrant an outlay of $27.00 recorded as having been spent on a sanctuary lamp? Was the expense incurred to install the very lamp today restored and introduced to Saint-Anne’s interior in early spring 1923 as part of the new fittings marking the centenary anniversary? Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to know with any certainty. All we can be sure of is that photographic evidence demonstrates that our lamp was in its place at the heart of the sanctuary in 1923 where it burned day and night for many years. How and in what circumstances it came to us remains one of the church’s secrets.
A Rare Survivor of the centenary
While we continue to search for additional solid evidence that would establish exactly when the newly restored sanctuary lamp first arrived at St. Anne, what can we say about it with certainty? Actually, we can say a great deal. We know that it may well date from the 1840s but most likely not from after 1900; that it is of high quality workmanship employing a two-toned metal finish of copper and silver plate dear to the late Victorians; that both it’s size and weight at 95 lbs are not inconsequential; that in all probability like its contemporaries, it was originally fitted to burn olive oil; that based on photographic records there is absolutely no doubt that it survived the major interior renewal campaign carried out in 1923 to mark the church’s centenary and indeed, may well have arrived in honour of that occasion and finally; that old wedding pictures and First Communion photos attest to it remaining suspended from the sanctuary vault until 1967 when, in the course of an eight-month long renovation campaign described as having left only the roof and walls standing1the high altar was dismantled, the Tabernacle displaced and the lamp relegated to a far corner of the organ loft.
Even if we cannot say with absolute certainty when our lamp was first present at St. Anne, it is none the less remarkable that once taken down in 1967, it lay in pieces undisturbed on the floor at the rear of the organ loft without suffering the fate of so many church furnishings of the time. It was never thrown out, given away or sold for scrap metal, a fact that we can only ascribe to Providence.
St. Clement Parish is pleased to restore St. Anne’s sanctuary lamp to its rightful place before the high altar where it will again burn day and night as a witness to the real presence of Christ in the Tabernacle. Its renewed presence there is a significant step in a long-term plan to return the church’s interior to its original dignity and ensure its conformity to the liturgical requirements of the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite.
© St. Clement Parish at St. Anne Church 2014
* All financial entries are taken from the General Accounts for 1873-1904 and 1904-1952 of the former St. Anne Parish: Fonds Paroisse Ste-Anne d’Ottawa, C72, CRCCF, Ottawa University.
1 Lucien Brault, Sainte-Anne d’Ottawa – Cent ans d’histoire 1873-1973 (Ottawa, 1973), p.25