Heinz Memorial Chapel

Be sure to observe Good Friday with Bach's dramatic and moving "St. John Passion" TONIGHT at 7pm EDT. Classical WQED FM 89.3 will broadcast the Resonance Works 2019 performance of this masterwork from their first appearance in the Chapel. Here's the opening chorus "Herr, Unser Herrscher" performed by the Resonance Chamber Orchestra and Chorus, with Maria Sensi Sellner, Conductor. Hear the entire work tonight.

When it comes to significant women in American history, Frances Willard, was certainly one of the most notable such personages in the 19th century. To mark the third Monday in Women’s History Month, she is shown as depicted in stained glass, prominently among the figures in the Chapel’s Temperance windows. The depiction commemorates the momentous occasion in 1895 when, as president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.), Frances presented the Polyglot Petitio...n to President Grover Cleveland in 1895. Polyglot was used as descriptor because of the wide mix of cultural traditions among the millions of women who demanded a prohibition on the manufacture, sale and partaking of alcohol and opium and signed their names to the mammoth muslin roll. Much earlier in her life, before she was a national figure, Frances Willard had a Pittsburgh connection. At the age of 24, she arrived here in 1863 to take a position with the Pittsburgh Female College. Founded in 1854 under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church, this was Pennsylvania’s first degree-granting institution dedicated to the education of women and was located at Eighth Street and Penn Avenue, Downtown. After various relocations and mergers, its successor today is Arcadia University, ten miles north of Philadelphia. Frances lived and taught in Pittsburgh for only two years, but made friendships that she renewed a decade later when passing through to her Evanston, Illinois home. Frances expected to visit friends (to whom she was known as Frank) in 1874, but she did not expect to find herself, on the front line of the battle for the prohibition of alcohol. She happened to be in the right place at the right time to join other women engaged in a temperance crusade. As she recounted in her autobiography, Glimpses of Fifty Years, Frances stepped inside a bar for the first time in her life as she joined a group of women who marched through Downtown streets stopping at one saloon after another to pray, sing hymns and tried to dissuade men from drinking beer and whiskey. According to her biography, the next week she was elected President of Chicago’s Women’s Temperance Society, five years before taking national office as head of the W.C.T.U. As for the Polyglot Petition, nothing resulted from its presentation to President Cleveland and Frances died not long after in 1898. However, two decades after her death, she had a posthumous victory with the passage of the 18th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution in 1919. Even so, it was a relatively short-lived victory with Prohibition being repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933. See more

Thrysa W. Amos: The Woman Behind the Women in the Windows. The most impressive stained glass in the Chapel is found in the four transept windows that tower over the nave at a height of 73 feet. Not only are the figures depicted in them mostly secular, as opposed to sacred figures typically found in a Gothic style chapel, but each has an equal number of men and women. For the second week of Women’s History Month, and especially since today, March 8, is International Women’...Continue reading

March comes in like a lion... For the first day of the third month of the year, here are two Chapel images. One is a stained glass representation of March showing a farmer digging in the soil with a spade, preparing for Spring planting. This is a detail from a South aisle window in which Charles Connick (in whose studio the windows were made) takes us through the months and seasons of the year using lines from the third chapter of the Book of Daniel. The other ties into... the old saying above and is a lion carved in the limestone wall beneath the Le Morte d’Arthur window high above the main entrance at the western end of the building. A lion rampant was on the coat of arms of Thomas Malory and was carved to represent him as the author of the work which he titled, The Whole Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table. The French title was used by William Caxton for his 1485 published edition, even though it is a masterpiece of English literature. See more

This year, the Chapel cannot host the customary in-person interfaith service to commemorate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Nonetheless, we honor his memory on this day set aside to honor him and as part of the University of Pittsburgh, reflect on this quote about education.

Two details that designer Charles Connick incorporated in the Chapel’s stained glass windows call to mind that this week we are in midst of respective holy days of two religious traditions. Tonight will be the fifth night of Hanukkah. Jewish families traditionally use a nine branch menorah, but the seven branch one depicted here represents the original that stood in the Second Temple in Jerusalem. For the Temple’s rededication following the successful second century B.C. M...accabean revolt, oil that was only supposed to last one night, lasted eight, giving time to obtain a new supply. The angel, from the O Come, All Ye Faithful window, is a reminder that Christians are in midst of Advent and that this Thursday, December 17, is the first of the last seven days of this pre-Christmas period. Going back over a thousand years, the O Antiphons have been sung on these last seven days of Advent, continuing through the 23rd. Translated from the original Latin, they are O Wisdom, O Adonai, O Root of Jesse, O Key of David, O Radiant Dawn, O Ruler of the Nations, and O Immanuel. O Come All Ye Faithful is not one of the Great Os, but is attributed to John Francis Wade (1711-1786), who had a great interest in chant that had its roots in the centuries earlier era of the O Antiphons. An English Catholic layman, he is said to have fostered a revival of plainchant in his time. See more

This week marks the 870th anniversary of the death of Abbot Suger, long credited with developing the style of architecture which informed the look of the Chapel. Modern scholarship has determined that Suger did not actually invent this style, but rather two master masons whose names are lost to us. But it can be said that his patronage of those talented masons gave rise to the pointed arch style called Gothic. Unfortunately, not enough is known about this French political a...nd religious figure who died at age 70 on January 13, 1151. Certainly, he became well-connected and advanced to become Abbot of Saint-Denis in Paris. In 1135, he was put in charge of rebuilding the church attached to the Abbey. This structure, shown here along with an image of the Chapel, influenced thousands of other buildings, mostly religious, over the following centuries. Initially, the look was called the French style, but Gothic was applied two centuries later, first by Francesco Petrarch and then other Italian Humanists. In their eyes, it was unattractive, even barbaric, hence the name inspired by the German tribes known in antiquity as Goths, enemies of the Roman Empire. Even with such detractors, the style persisted. Here in Pittsburgh in the early 20th century, Pitt Chancellor John Bowman thought well enough of it to select it for the University skyscraper known as the Cathedral of Learning, designed by Philadelphia architect Charles Klauder. Bowman’s influence also led to Klauder’s design of both the Gothic Stephen Foster Memorial and Heinz Memorial Chapel. These three were among the last major Gothic buildings constructed in the last century. See more

Typically, during this first week of December, we would be in midst of the traditional series of holiday concerts by the Heinz Chapel Choir, but not this year, due to the pandemic. Begun eight decades ago by the choir’s founding director, Theodore Pop Finney, and continued under current director, Dr. Susan Rice, these concerts became a Pitt tradition and were nearly always sold out to capacity audiences. Images from concerts in the recent past are shown here as fond memories and with hearty wishes for hosting the choir in a full slate of holiday concerts next year.

The Adoration of the Magi, shown in this South aisle window, ties in with the fact that the ancient Christian holiday of Epiphany will be observed this Wednesday. Annually occurring the day after Twelfth Night, it marks the visit to the Christ child by the magi (or wise men or kings). Although no number of magi is mentioned in the Bible, their three gifts of incense, gold and myrrh, as cited in the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, are represented here. All five aisle windows represent songs and this scene is from the one featuring O Come All Ye Faithful. Stained glass artisan Charles Connick designed this window as a tribute to H. J. Heinz from his grandchildren. Ecclesiastically, Epiphany does not mark the end of the Christmas season. Instead, it continues until Candlemas on February 2, forty days after Christmas.

World’s AIDS Day is yet another event that will not be observed in the Chapel this year, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It has been commemorated annually here since 1988 to raise awareness of AIDS/HIV and held as a service of remembrance for those who have died of the disease. The photo of Dr. Charles Rinaldo, Pitt Men’s Study Primary Investigator, is of him making welcoming remarks for last year’s observance. In 1983, Dr. Rinaldo created the AIDS/HIV research entity known ...as the Pitt Men’s Study that conducts the annual event. A distinguished member of the University community, he is is Chairman and Professor of Infectious Diseases and Microbiology in Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health, as well as Professor of Pathology in the School of Medicine. Local clergy, shown seated in pews, also participated in the service in the spirit of its interfaith nature. Reporter Debra Erdley wrote about last year’s event in the Tribune-Review and this year, her front page article noted that instead of an in-person observance in the Chapel, it will be online on Tuesday, December 1 at 7:00 P.M. Here is the link: https://pittmensstudy.com See more

Since Thursday of this week marks Thanksgiving, shown are details of stained glass designer Charles Connick’s representation of the historic 1621 Plimouth Plantation feast credited with inspiring the modern American holiday. They are found in the Chapel’s Courage windows. Even though the Church of England Separatists, known as Pilgrims, who crossed the Atlantic aboard the Mayflower get attention for the first Thanksgiving by English colonists in the Americas, it sho...uld be remembered that Virginia truly deserves the honor. On December 4, 1619, over two years before the Pilgrims, thirty-eight English settlers stepped onto the banks of the James river after their Atlantic voyage aboard the Margaret. Rather than a day devoted to food, they fasted and prayed instead of celebrating. This was more in keeping with what a thanksgiving was considered at that time opposed to what the Pilgrims and their less religious compatriots known as Strangers did in 1621. Theirs was more of a harvest-home as celebrated back in England after the end of the harvest season. It was not until July 1623 that the Pilgrims observed a true Thanksgiving. Culturally, Thanksgivings were decreed by European monarchs for special occasions and derived from the Te Deum Laudamus (Thee, O God, we praise) of the earliest centuries of Christianity (attributed to Ambrose, 4th century Bishop of Milan, but in truth likely not by him). Think of the lines from Act 4 of Shakespeare’s Henry V after the bloody victory at Agincourt: Do we all holy rites. Let there be sung Non nobis and Te Deum.... Similarly, in our nation, Thanksgivings have been declared as early as 1777 when the Continental Congress called for one day of public thanksgiving after the battle of Saratoga. Such thanksgivings were called for in later decades as Washington did in 1789 and Lincoln in 1864. This is something to metaphorically chew on this Thanksgiving as we observe a pandemic version with turkey or tofu and with less people with us than in the past. See more