MA88
792
IkASS
sacrifioe the dismissal is [missa tempore aocrf/ictt est]
when the catechumens are sent out, as the deacon
cries: If anv one of the catechumens remain, let him
go out: and thence it is the dismissal [et inde missa] "
("Etymol.", VI, xix, in P. L., LXXXII, 252). As
there was a dismissal of the catechumens at the end of
the first part of the service, so was there a dismissal of
the faithful (the baptized) after the Communion.
There were, then, a missa caiechumenorum and a missa
fideliumf both, at first, in the sense of dismissals only.
So Florus Diaconus (d. 860) : " MiSsa is understood as
nothing but dimissio, that is, absolutio, which the
deacon pronounces when the people are dismissed
from the solemn service. The deacon cried out and
the catechumens were sent [mittebarUur]^ that is, were
dismissed outside [id est^ dimiUebaniur foras]. So the
missa catechumenorum was made before the action of
the Sacrament (i. e.. before the Canon Actionis)^ the
missa fiddium is made " — note the difference of tense;
in Florus's time the dismissal of the catechumens had
ceased to be practised — "after the consecration and
commimion" [post confecHonem et participationem]
(P. L., CXIX, 72).
How the word gradually changed its meaning from dismissal to the whole service, up to and including the dismissal, is not difl&cult to understand. In the texts quoted we see already the foundation of such'a change. To stay till the missa caiechumenorum is easily modi- fied into: to stay for, or during, the missa catechu- menorum. So we find these two misses used for the two halves of the Liturcy. Ivo of Chartres (d. 1116) has forgotten the original meaning, and writes : ** Those who heard the missa catechumenorum evaded the missa sacramentorum'* (Ep. ccxix, in P. L., CLXII, 224). The two parts are then called by these two names; as the discipline of the catechumenate is grad- ually jforgotten^ and there remains only one con- nected service, it is called by the long familiar name missaj without further qualification. We find, how- ever, through the Middle Ages the plural missce^ miS" sarum solemnia, as well as missce sacramentum and such modified expressions also. Occasionally the word is transferred to the feastnday. The feast of St. Martin, for instance, is called Missa S. Martini. It is from this use that the German Mess, Messtag, and so on are derived. The day and place of a local feast was the occasion of a market (for all this see Rottmanncr, op. cit., in bibliography below). Kirmess (Flemish Kermis, Ft. kermesse) is Kirch-mess, the anniversary of the dedication of a church, the occasion of a fair. The Latin missa is modified in all Western languages (It. messa, Sp. misa, Fr. messe, Germ. Messe, etc.). The English form before the Conquest was maesse,\hi&n tiiddle Engl, messe, masse — " It nedith not to speke of the masse ne the seruise that thei hadde that day" ("Merlin" in the Early Engl. Text Soc., II, 375) — " And whan our parish masse was done " (" Sir Cau- line". Child's Ballads, III, 175). It also existed as a verb: "to mass" was to say mass; "massing-priest" was a common term of abuse at the Reformation.
It should be noted that the name Mass (missa) ap-
Slies to the Eucharistic service in the Latin rites only, [either in Latin nor in Greek has it ever been applied to any Eastern rite. For them the corresponding word IS Liturgy (titurgia). It is a mistake that leads to confusion, and a scientific inexactitude, to speak of any Eastern Liturey as a Mass.
B. The Origin of the Mass. — The Western Mass, like all Liturgies, begms, of course, with the Last Supper. What Christ then did, repeated as he commanded in memory of Him, is the nucleus of the Mass. As soon as the Faith was brought to the West the Holy Eu- charist was celebrated here, as in the East. At first the language used was Greek. Out of that earliest Liturgy, the language being changed to Latin, de- veloped the two great parent rites of the West, the Roman and the Galilean (see Ltturgt). Of these two
the Galilean Mass may be traced without difficulty.
It is so plainly Antiochene in its structure, in the veiy
text of many of its prayers, that we are safe in ae-
coimting for it as a translated form of the Lituny of
Jerusalem-Antioch, brought to the West at about
the time when the more or less fluid universal Liturgy
of ihe first three centuries gave place to different fixed
rites (see Liturgy; Gallican Kite). The orinn of
the Roman Mass, on the other hand, is a most difficult
Question. We have here two fixed and certain data:
tne Litui^gy in Greek described by St. Justin Mart^
(d. c. 165), which is that of the Church of Rome in toe
second century, and, at the other end of the develop-
ment, the Liturgy of the first Roman Sacramentaries
in Latin, in about the sixth century. The two are
very different. Justin's account represents a rite of
what we should now call an Eastern type, correspond-
ing with remarkable exactness to that of the Apostolic
Constitutions (see Liturgy) . The Leonine and
Gelasian Sacramentaries show us what is practically
our present Roman Mass. How did the service change
from the one to the other? It is one of the chief dS-
ficulties in the history of liturgy. During the last few
vears, especially, all manner of solutions and com-
oinations have been proposed. We will first note
some points that are certain, that may serve as land-
marks in an investigation.
Justin Martyr, Clement of Rome, Hippolytus (d. 235), and Novatian (c. 250) all agree in the Litui^gies they describe, though the evidence of the last two is scanty (Probst, "Liturgie der drei ersten christl Jahrhdte"; Drews, " Untersuchungen tiber die sogen. clement. Liturgie "). Justin gives us the fullest litur- gical description of any Father of the first three cen- turies (ApoL, I, Ixv, IX vi, quoted and discussed in Liturgy) . He describes how the Holy Eucharist was celebrated at Rome in the middle of the second cen- tury; his account is the necessary point of departure, one end of a chain whose intermeaiate links are hid- den. We have hardly any knowledge at all of what developments the Roman Rite went through during the third and fourth centuries. This is the mysterious time where conjecture may, and does, run riot. By the fifth century we come back to comparatively firm ground, after a radical change. At this time we have the fragment in Pseudo- Ambrose, *'De sacramentis" (about 400. Cf. P. L., XVI, 443), and the letter of Pope Innocent I (401-17) to Decentius of Eugubium (P. L. , XX, 553) . In these documents we see uiat the Roman Liturgy is said in Latin and has already be- come in essence the rite we still use. A few indica- tions of the end of the fourth century agree with tiiis. A little later we come to the earliest Sacramentaries (Leonine, fifth or sixth century; Gelasian, sixth or seventh century) and from then the history of the Roman Mass is fairly clear. The fifth and sixth cen- turies therefore show us the other end of the chain. For the interval between the second and fifth centuries, during which the great change took place, although we know so little about Rome itself, we have valuable data from Africa. There is everv reason to believe that in liturgical matters the Church of Africa followed Rome closely. We can supply much of what we wish to know about Rome from the African Fathers of the third century, Tertullian (d. c. 220), St. Cyprian (d. 258), the Acts of St. Perpetua and St. Felicitas (203), St. Augustine (d. 430) (see Cabrol, " Dictionnaire d' arch6oIogie ", I, 591-657). The question of the change of language from Greek to Latin is less impor- tant than it might seem. It came about natundly when Greek ceaused to be the usual language of the Roman Qiristians. Pope Victor I (190^202), an African, seems to have been the first to use Latin at Rome. Novatian writes Latin. By the second half of the third century the usual litui^cal languase at Rome seems to have been Latin (Kattenbusch, " ^rm- bolik", II, 331), though fragments of Greek remame^
