Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/850

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BCA88


794


MASS


heart for the peace, charityi and iinity of Holy Church, for the Catholic Faith ... for the Diieets and every order of the Church, for kings . . . ; and so on, enu- merating a complete list of people for whom prayer is said. Baumstark prints these clauses parallel with those of the Intercesison in various Eastern rites; most of them may be found in that of the Apo^. Const. (VIII, xii, 40-50, and xiii, 3-9). This, then, supplies another missing element in the Mass. Eventuallv the clauses enumerating the petitions were suppressed!, no doubt because they were thought to be a useless Feduplication of the prayers "Te igitur", "Communi- cantes", and the two Mementos (Baumstark, op. cit., 107), and the introduction of this Intercession (Hahc igitur . . . placatus accipias) was joined to what seems to have once been part of a prayer for the dead

(diesque nostros in tua pace disponas, etc.).

We still have a faint echo of the old Intercession in the clause about*the newly-baptized interpolated into the "Hanc igitur" at Easter and Whitsuntide. The beginning of the prayer has a parallel in Apost. Const.. VIII, xiii, 3 (the (beginning oi the deacon's Litany oi Intercession) . Drews thinks that the form quoted by Baiunstark, with its clauses all beginning pro, was spoken by the deacon as a litany, Uke the clauses in Apost. Const, beginning ^^p (Untersuchungen tiber die sog. clem. Lit., 139). The prayer containing the words of Institution in the Roman Mass (Qui pridie . . in mei memoriam facie tis) has just the construc- tions and epithets of the corresponding text in Apost. Const., VIII, xii, 36-37. All this and many more

Earallels between the Mass and the Apost. Const, liturgy may be studied in Drews (op. cit.) . It is true that we can find parallel passages with other liturgies too, notably with that of Jerusalem (St. James). There are several forms that correspond to those of the Egyptian Rite, such as the Roman '* de tuis donis ac datis" in the " Unde et memores" (St. Mark: iic tQp ffQp d(i)po9v; Brightman, " Eastern Liturgies", p. 133, 1. 30) ; " offerimus praeclarae maiestati tuie de tuis donis ac datis" is found exactly in the Coptic form (" before thine holy glory we have set thine own gift of thine own", ibid., p. 178, 1. 15). But this does not mean merely that there are parallel passages between any two rites. The similarities of the Apost. Const, are far more obvious than those of any other. The Roman Mass, even apart from the testimony of Justin Martyr. Clement, Hippolytus, Novatian, still bears evidence oi its development from a type of liturgy of which that of the Apostolic Constitutions is the only perfect surviv- ing specimen (see Liturgy). There is reason to be- lieve, moreover, that it has since been influenced both from Jerusalem- Ant ioch and Alexandria, though many of the forms common to it and these two may be survivals of that original^ universal fluid rite which have not been preserved m the Apost. Const. It must always be remembered that no one maintains that the Apost. Const. Liturroj is word for word the

?riraitive universal Liturgy. The thesis defended by robst, Drews, Kattenbusch, Baumstark, and others is that there was a comparatively vague and fluid rite of which the Apost. Const, have preserved for us a specimen.

But between this original Roman Rite (which we can study only in the Apost. Const.) and the Mass as it emerges in the first sacramentaries (sixth to seventh century) there is a great change. Much of this change is accounted for by the Roman tendency to shorten. The Apost. Const, has five lessons; Rome has generally only two or three. At Rome the prayers of the faitli- ful after the expulsion of the catechumens and the Intercession at the end of the Canon have gone. Both no doubt were considered superfluous since there is a series of petitions of the satne nature in the Canon. But both iiave left traces. We still say 0remu8 before the Offertory, where the prayers of the faithful once stood, and still have these prayers on Good Friday in


the collects. And the " Hanc Igitur " is a fragment of the Intercession. The first great change that separate! Rome from all the Eastern rites is the ii^uenoe of ths ecclesiastical year. The Eastern liturgies remain al- ways the same except for the lessons, Prokeimerum (Gradual- verse), and one or two other slight modifica- tions. On the other hand the Roman Mass is pro- foundly affected throughout by the season or feast od which It is said. Probst's theory was that this change was made by Pope Damasus (36^-84; Liturgie des vierten Jahrh. ", pp. 448-72) . This idea is now aban- doned (Funkm tabmger Quartalschrift ", 1894, pp. 683 sq.). Indeed, we have the authority of Pope Vigilius (540-55) for the fact that in the sixth century the order of the Mass was still harcUy affected by tbie calendar ("Ep. ad Eutherium" m P. L., LXIX, 18). The influence of the ecclesiastical year must have be^ gradual. The lessons were of course alwa3r8 varied, and a growing tendency to refer to the feast or season in the prayers. Preface, and even in the Canon, brought about the present state of things, already in tull force in the Leonine Sacramentary. That Damasus was one of the popes who modified[ the old rite seems, how- ever, certam. St. Gregory I (590-604) says he intro- duced the use of the Hebrew AUduia from Jerusalem (" Ep. ad loh. Syiucus. " m P. L., LXXVII, 956). It was under Damasus that the Vulgate became the official Roman version of the Bible used in the Litur^; a constant tradition ascribes to Damasus's friend St. Jerome (d. 420) the arrangement of the Roman Leo- tionary. Mgr Duchesne thinks that the Canon was arranged by this pope (Origines du Culte, 168-9). A curious error of a Roman theologian oi Damasus's time, who identified Melchisedech with the Holy Ghost, incidentally shows us one prayer of our Mass as existing then, namely the " Supra qu« " with its allusion to "summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech'* ("Quflest. V. et N. Test." in P. L., XXXV, 2329).

C. The Mass from the Fifth to the Seventh Century. — By about the fifth century we begin to see more clearly. Two documents of this timie give us fairly large frag- ments of the Roman Mass. Innocent I (401-17), m his letter to Decentius of Euffubium (about 416; P. L., XX, 553), alludes to many features of the Mass. We notice that these important changes have already been made: the kiss of peace has been moved from the beginning of the Mass of the Faithful to after the Con- secration, the Commemoration of the Living and Dead is made in the Canon, and there are no longer prayers of the faithful before the Offertory (see Canon op the Mass). Rietschel (Lehrbuch der Litureik, I, 340-1) thinks that the Invocation of the Holy Ghost has already disappeared from the Mass. Innocent does not mention it, but we have evidence of it at a later date under Gelasius I (492-6: see Canon of the Mass, s. v. Supplices te rogamus, and Epiklesis). Rietschel doc. cit.) also thioJcs that there was a dog- matic reason for these changes, to emphajsize the sacri- ficial idea. We notice especially that in Innocent's time the prayer of Intercession follows the Consecra- tion (see (3anon of the Mass). The author of the treatise ** De Sacramentis" (wrongly attributed to St. Ambrose, in P. L., XVI, 418 sq.) says that he will ex- plain the Roman Use, and proceeds to quote a great part of the Canon (the text is given in Canon of the Mass, II). From this document we can reconstruct the following scheme: The Mass of the (Catechumens is still distinct from that of the faithful, at least in theory. The people sing " Introibo ad altare Dei" as the celebrant and nis ministers approach the altar (the Introit). Then follow lessons from Scripture, chants (Qraduals), and a sermon (the Cateohiunens* Mass). The people still make the Offertory of bread and wine. The IVeface and Sanctus follow (laua Deo defertur), then the prayer of Intercession {aratione petttur jaro voptdo, pro reffibug, pro ceteris) and the Ck>n8ecratJ0Q r>y the words of Institution (ut conficUwr vm. 9acrq^