Part Three · Sources and Rationale of the Offices

Chapter VIII

HOLY COMMUNION:
I. DEVELOPMENT OF THE HISTORIC RITES

§ 1

In the Primitive Church

Since the middle of the second century, the eucharistic liturgies of the Christian churches throughout the world display the evolutionary development of a single definite and universal rite. Under all the diversities of their manifold historic forms, they all possess a unanimous fundamental tenor of a central Prayer of Consecration: consisting typically of a Thanksgiving to God for the Redemption, a narrative account of Christ's Institution, an Oblation of the sacrifice of the New Covenant in formal Commemoration of Christ's Passion, and an Invocation of the power of God to bless the Gifts for the benefit of the partakers.

Until quite recently, this impressive universal unanimity throughout great diversities has caused every one to assume that this type, which we may call the Historic or “Catholic” Liturgy, has always been the only form for celebrating the Eucharist which has ever existed, and that it might almost be regarded as resting ultimately upon a consensus of the College of Apostles from the very day of Pentecost.

Of late, however, evidence has been accumulating from the literature of the earliest period of the Church, which indicates that at that time there was current another form in at least partial possession of the field, which represents an entirely different liturgical tradition from that of the Catholic Liturgy. This form consecrated the Eucharist by some adaptation of the Jewish table-blessings.

As long as this evidence was drawn chiefly from heretical sources,1 it might safely be ignored; but with the discovery of the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,2 and the establishing of the early date, wide circulation, and unassailable orthodoxy of that document,3 it became necessary to reconsider the whole question. What was the nature of the Last Supper itself, which seems to be so closely copied in this form of Liturgy, yet to which the Catholic Liturgy also appeals as its authority? What is the relation of the Catholic Liturgy to the Last Supper; and what is the source of this form which later so completely swept the field?

As to the Last Supper, modern critics seem rather generally to have come to the conclusion that the chronology of our Lord's Last Week in the Fourth Gospel is correct. But if so, the Last Supper did not occur at the Passover, but as some sort of Kiddûsh or sacred meal in preparation for that festival.

If, however, the Last Supper was not the Last Passover, did this observance stand as much alone and apart as has been presumed? May it not have marked a customary procedure of Jesus in the circle of his disciples? Such evidence as exists certainly points in that direction. The “Miraculous Feedings” are hardly to be understood nowadays unless they were cultus-meals; the recognition at Emmaus, when he was “known in breaking of bread”4 by followers not present at the Last Supper, surely implies an habitual rite.

There has been much misconception as to the nature of the rite of the Last Supper. It is natural that attention should have been centered upon the words of Jesus which are quoted in the narrative of the Institution, and not upon those which are not quoted. The words “This is my body,” “This is my blood,” are cited by the Catholic Liturgy as the primary warrant for the observance of the rite. It may even be legitimate to say that they are what the scholastics called the definitive “Form” of the Sacrament, since for us they determine its meaning. In later ages, in some quarters they were magnified into an essential formula of consecration. Yet they were employed by our Lord at the most as words of administration.5 The actual consecration at the Last Supper consisted of those prayers which Scripture does not record and the historic Liturgy does not rehearse, when Jesus “blessed” or “gave thanks.”

These two terms were absolutely equivalent to the Jews. Over food of any sort they recited a Thanksgiving: which, however, was always in the form “Blessed be God,” rather than “Bless this food.” This difference warns us at once that we have to do with concepts on quite a different plane from our modern idea of a “table-blessing,” as an objective and “ministerial” benediction of material things.

To the Jew, all food was potentially sacred, since it was God's gift for the life of man. It was not permissible to partake of it save as a religious action. Man's part in that action was conceived as strictly limited to rendering thanks for God's bounties. The correlated divine action of blessing those bounties to man's use was implied, not expressed. Nevertheless the Jew believed unquestioningly that the result of his Thanksgiving was a real consecration.

Thus every meal was in some degree both sacrifice and communion. It contained implicitly all the elements of a sacrificial action, since in it fruits of the earth were offered to God as a “sacrifice of praise”; they were hallowed by the divine acceptance; and they were given back from the hand of God to be the food of the faithful. The simplest meal was capable of expressing the most exalted ideas of worship; it might be a Passover, a Lord's Supper, a Eucharist.

Although, as we have said, the Thanksgiving with which our Lord blessed the holy meal has not been preserved either in Scripture or in the Catholic Liturgy, it seems that its substance is nevertheless recoverable. The book of Berakhoth (“Blessings”) in the Mishnah prescribes these forms of blessings at table:6

Now the baptismal Eucharist of the Didaché gives these forms of eucharistic consecration:7

It is obvious that these prayers are messianic adaptations of the traditional table-prayers recorded in the Mishnah. Some form of them would be quite conceivable in our Lord's mouth. Indeed, it is entirely possible that the Didaché has preserved approximately the actual Prayers of Blessing used by Jesus at the Last Supper. It looks very strongly as if exactly this ritual tradition was known to the author of the Fourth Gospel: since the distinctive application of the “Vine of David” may well have been the text for the unique passage on the Vine and the Branches in John 15, the “life and knowledge made known through Jesus” for the eucharistic exposition in John 6, and the Gathering together of the Church for the Prayer for Unity in John 17.

In any event, it appears that the “Lord's Supper” was originally a sacred meal of fellowship which Jesus was accustomed to keep with his disciples; its ritual differing only slightly, if significantly, from that of any Jewish meal.

It further appears probable that this observance was continued in pretty much the original form for some time in Palestine. The habitual “breaking of bread” is continually mentioned in the Acts in terms consistent with such a rite of holy fellowship rather than with a “Mass,” or an explicit commemoration of the recent Passion.8 The early Gnostic Acts9 cite formulæ of eucharistic consecration which also are forms of table-blessings, with nothing in common with the tenor of the Catholic Liturgy—yet they certainly regarded themselves as orthodox, and as certainly proffered forms in general accord with contemporary use.

It will be noted that all this evidence (including the Didaché) comes from Syrian regions where the Pauline influence was least.

Now none of these conclusions deny the probability that a new and even higher meaning had been given to the Holy Meal by the circumstances of the Last Supper. The concepts of communion in Christ's Body and Blood may date from that observance; or if there had been some previous instruction of the nature of that set forth in John 6, a full realization of its meaning could only have been attained after that event.

There were also other ideas latent in the circumstances of the Last Supper: and these it seems to have been the contribution of St. Paul to make explicit. St. Paul presents his account in 1 Cor. 11 not merely as a tradition of men, but in some sense as a revelation which he had “received of the Lord” (v. 23). But when we compare his statements with those of the Synoptics,10 the chief new element is the idea, twice repeated in words attributed to our Lord, and underscored by St. Paul's added comment, that this is to be done “in remembrance” of Christ.

Thus it appears that St. Paul was the first to relate the Last Supper to the Passion which followed it, as he was also the first to realize the triumph of the Cross. A commemoration which in the first days after the Crucifixion could have seemed only painful to those who had known and loved the Lord in the days of his ministry, St. Paul saw transfigured in the light of the Resurrection. He also helped to fix the identification of the Last Supper with that Passover which was never held, by his enthusiastic “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast.” (1 Cor. 5:7.)

Clearly St. Paul was the author of the idea of a eucharistic Anamnesis or explicit commemoration of Christ's Passion, as voicing the ultimate significance of the observance. It is likewise hardly to be doubted that his prayer also included, as the basis for this commemoration, the narrative of the Institution which he quotes as of great importance, a formula “received” and “delivered.”

It also seems reasonable to attribute to St. Paul a further expansion of the idea of the Thanksgiving itself. The Thanksgiving over daily bread, which blessed it to the use of the partakers, had already been sublimated to higher mystic meanings in the Didaché's version of the “Lord's Supper,” in the mention of the “Vine of David,” and the “life and knowledge through Jesus.” It was a logical further step to an explicit Thanksgiving for the benefits of the Redemption. And it is probable that St. Paul found a model for this Thanksgiving in the Mishnah's ascription of praise, which followed the biblical rehearsal of the deliverance out of Egypt, in the accustomed ritual of the Passover observance:

By some such process as this, and presumably by the hand or following the influence of St. Paul, the original type of “Lord's Supper,” which repeated the observance of the Last Supper itself as closely as possible in the manner in which it was first celebrated, evolved into a basic form of all subsequent historic liturgies. These, though they also faithfully repeat the Last Supper as a rite, in their ritual make an objective commemoration of the Institution, rightly recognizing the fact that the Last Supper in its own way was an event as unique as Calvary.

It is easy to see how this developed ritual must have commended itself to all who heard it, and how it quietly supplanted the formlessness of the earlier use. It was far more adequate to the full cycle of Christian ideas about the Sacrament; far more natural, as well as significant, as a spiritual action by Christ's ministers, since the words which he used could not seem sufficient or effectual in any other mouth than his. Though the primitive form of the “Lord's Supper” lingered on for some time in Jewish-Christian circles, it was the Pauline type of eucharistic Thanksgiving which was the rootstock of the liturgies of the Universal Church.

§ 2

The First Description

About the year 148 we have the first systematic description of the Liturgy in the First Apology of St. Justin Martyr. Although this was an explanation of Christian rites addressed to the pagan Emperor, not a “Church Order” or directory of the service for the guidance of officiating clergy, it is surprisingly exact and complete. Its omissions of features known later must be received subject to other evidence. It may, for instance, be mere inadvertence which makes no mention of psalmody—an element apparently attested still earlier by the Letter of Pliny.12 On the other hand, Justin is probably right in not including mention of the Sanctus and of the Lord's Prayer. As far as it goes, its descriptions would apply with approximate accuracy to all subsequent liturgies down to the present day. In other words, the general principles and order of the service as a definite rite had been fully developed and fixed by the time of Justin.

This writer indicates a distinct division between the Pro-Anaphora, the common Morning Service characterized by the Ministry of the Word, and the Anaphora or celebration of the Sacrament. The first portion included the General Intercession for All Conditions, just as we find to be the case later13 when the Morning Service was used separately from the Liturgy proper; but the juxtaposition of this Intercession with the ensuing Anaphora had already formed an unbreakable connection of thought, so that when the Pro-Anaphora was displaced by the ceremonies of a Baptism, the Intercession was still included in the combined service.

The First Apology is supplemented by other writings of Justin, to show that the Anaphora as he knew it contained a Prayer of Consecration comprising a Thanksgiving to God for the creation and redemption of mankind,14 the recital of the Institution,15 and an explicit Anamnesis or commemoration of the Passion, accompanied by an Oblation.16

Although Justin affords us a definite structure and order of the rite, he explicitly intimates that the tenor of the prayers was “according to the ability” of the celebrant.17

§ 3

The First Text

About the year 217, we have the earliest known text of the complete Anaphora, in the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus of Rome.18

This form is prescribed to be said by a Bishop at his own consecration; and the Thanksgiving for the divine Redemption seems to be designedly phrased so as to bear witness to the orthodoxy of the new Bishop. It is natural therefore that we should find that some of the more individual of its expressions were ignored by subsequent rituals. Nevertheless this form is properly basic to the history of the Liturgy. There is little doubt that it encouraged the fixing of liturgical formulæ, and it certainly influenced profoundly their content and expression. It underlies the Liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions, and strongly colored that of St. Basil; and indeed its effects are traceable in every other historic rite.

This earliest landmark is as follows, in a slightly emended translation:

This Anaphora is a single uninterrupted prayer. It totally lacks Sanctus, postconsecration Intercession, and Lord's Prayer—all items which other evidence indicates to be subsequent interpolations. On the other hand, it contains an explicit invocation of the Holy Spirit more than a century earlier than most recent students have been wont to admit that such was possible.

It should be further noted that the primary theme of this Thanksgiving is the benefits of the Redemption in Christ. Apparently it was Hippolytus' incidental mention of the work of the Logos in Creation which gave the cue to the extensive elaboration of this theme in the Eastern rites. But in the light of this fundamental form it is clear that the Western Prefaces, which mainly confine themselves to phases of the Redemption, varying according to the Christian Year, faithfully represent the original meaning and intent of the Eucharistic Thanksgiving; the influence of the Christian Year has not, as formerly thought, emptied them of a supposed essential content of the rendering of glory to God the Creator.

§ 4

The Eastern Liturgies

In the fourth century for the first time we begin to have abundant data for the history of the rite. The era between the Freedom of the Church through the Edict of Milan in 313, and the capture of Rome by the Visigoths in 410, was the great creative and formative period of the Church's worship. This time saw the richest flowering of Greek devotional genius, and the definite fixation of the regional rites in forms which they have ever since retained.

About the year 350, the Apostolic Constitutions, the most fully developed of all the “Church Orders,” offers the earliest complete text of the service. It displays a length, and a rhetorical wealth, equalled in no other liturgy, but entirely characteristic of the taste of the time; and virtually every part of it is thoroughly authenticated in manifold detail by the voluminous allusions of fourth-century writers, especially St. John Chrysostom and St. Cyril of Jerusalem.21 It represents the use of the region of Antioch.

The Tract attributed to Proclus (†446)22 probably records a true tradition, in stating that St. Basil at Cæsarea (†379) and St. Chrysostom at Constantinople (397–407) successively revised the current Syrian liturgy from a very lengthy form analogous to that of the Apostolic Constitutions to the relative brevity of the Anaphoræ which bear their names, and which are still the standard services of the Byzantine rite.

At some time in the same period, a similar simplification at Jerusalem, then a suffragan see of Antioch, was carried out in a form which ere long completely supplanted the original order throughout the Antiochene patriarchate.

Thus the three liturgies of Asia Minor, designated by the titles St. James, St. Basil, and St. Chrysostom, are children of a common parent. They constitute the Syrian type. They are characterized by a highly developed “Great Intercession” within the Prayer of Consecration, following the Invocation. They also possess a distinctive device for handling the problem of Bidding to Prayer, in the form of the “periodic” structure of a diaconal Litany.23

The East-Syrian or “Nestorian” liturgy, contrary to prevailing opinion hitherto, is of little importance, being wholly secondary and derivative in character. It originated in the expulsion of Nestorius from the see of Constantinople in 435, taking with him an altogether unique liturgy, composed by actually conflating the two parallel Byzantine Anaphoræ of St. Basil and St. Chrysostom.24 This peculiar literary tour de force constituted the parent Anaphora of Nestorius, whose subsequent recensions under the names of Theodore and of The Apostles, Addai and Mari are successive degenerative abbreviations.25 The only real significance of the Nestorian rite lies in the testimony it affords for virtually all the salient phrases of the Byzantine orders, as having been fixed by the year 435 in the form in which we still find them.

Egypt on the other hand had developed a quite different national type of rite. This is first exemplified in the “Sacramentary” of Serapion,26 which furnishes a probably provincial, certainly highly individual, but significantly formative stage of this rite about the year 350. The Dêr Balyzeh Papyrus,27 a fragment containing most of the Anaphora, is also attributed to the fourth century; and another papyrus28 of perhaps still earlier date is known, giving a germinal form of the Intercessions. The standard liturgy of this region is found in the Alexandrian rite under the name of St. Mark.

These Alexandrian types are all characterized by a distinctive preliminary Invocation, before the Institution, in addition to that normally found. This rite also differs from the Syrian in the Biddings to Prayer, using the principle of “parallelism” of alternate Biddings and Collects, like the Western forms. And though the later Alexandrian use borrowed extensively and verbatim from the fruits of Syrian devotional eloquence, it refused to admit the Syrian development of a postconsecration Intercession, adhering to a peculiarity of its own, which duplicated its own proper Prayers of the Faithful, enriched with Syrian material, actually within the Preface, in conjunction with some emphatic phrases of Oblation which existed there before this strange interpolation.

The schisms of the fifth century reduced the adherents of the Orthodox patriarchates of Antioch and Alexandria to vestiges, dependent upon the imperial see of Constantinople; and their own liturgies were first partly assimilated toward, and by the twelfth century entirely supplanted by, the Byzantine rite. They remain as living rites, however, in somewhat altered vernacular translations, in the native schismatic churches. Throughout the Orthodox East today, the Liturgy of Constantinople in many languages completely holds the field.

The dominant characteristic of all the Eastern liturgies is their invariability. Lections and chants indeed vary with the day; but the text of the prayers throughout the service remains unaltered on every occasion. The creative spirit of liturgical invention was forced into the channel of composing entirely new Anaphoræ, inserted into the common framework of a rite: of which, for example, the Egyptian and the Nestorian had three, the Abyssinian fifteen, the West-Syrian more than sixty.

§ 5

The Western Liturgies

In fundamental contrast with the fixity of Eastern uses, in the West the properly extempore spirit and method long survived. Even after the services were written down, they remained essentially an Order rather than a Text. There was a definite structure, and a prescribed sequence of parts, each of which had its proper purpose and theme; but virtually every part might vary with each occasion. The whole service was a series of variable collects.

The original form of this use once universal throughout the West has been preserved in the so-called “Gallican” texts. These are found in a pure form in the fragmentary but considerable survivals of the Gallican proper,29 from France, and complete rituals of the fundamentally identical Mozarabic,30 which is still a living rite locally in Spain. Later “mixed” books presenting a Roman Canon fitted to a distinctively “Gallican” framework, from Milan31 and Bobbio32 in North Italy, the British Isles,33 and elsewhere, show the extent to which this use once held sway. After the eighth century, both Gallican and Mozarabic rites suffered a rapid decline from the desire to copy the current customs of the Apostolic See; being completely extinguished in France save for a few minor local details, and in Spain continuing only at Toledo and Salamanca.

The original “Gallican” Rite, alone among known texts, retained the entire Great Intercession in its primordial place34 between Sermon and Offertory. Like the Eastern liturgies, it put the Kiss of Peace at the beginning of the Anaphora. It showed direct Eastern influence subsequent to the fourth century in the adoption of the rite of Prothesis, preparing the Elements before the beginning of the service, and bringing them in with an imposing procession, like the Greek “Great Entrance,” at the Offertory; together with a number of other Eastern importations, such as Kyries, the Byzantine Trisagion,35 litanies of Syrian type and phrase, and the like. The Lord's Prayer was separated from the Consecration Prayers by the ceremony of the Fraction.

All of these features stand in some contrast to the present Roman rite, and attempts were formerly made to attribute to the “Gallican” liturgies an Eastern origin independent of the Roman. This hypothesis has not stood examination. It is virtually certain that the Roman rite was once identical with the “Gallican” in the position of the Intercessions, the Kiss of Peace, and the Lord's Prayer. As to Eastern importations, they affected the Roman rite to much the same degree as the “Gallican”; though Prothesis and “Great Entrance” never secured admission.

A comparison of “Gallican” and Roman types as a whole shows that both are of essentially the same structure, in their framework of lections, chants, collects, and all the ritual details which take little space in the text, but bulk large as the effective turning-points of an enacted ceremonial. In fine, students have increasingly been coming to the conclusion that both types are a single rite of common origin, which in all probability radiated originally from Rome.

The chief problem is to account for the origin of the Roman “Canon” or sequence of fixed Prayers of Consecration. Exactly as in the “Gallican” exemplars, this Canon consists not of a single prayer, but a chain of collects.

The first ray of light on the Canon is the quotation of a single unmistakable phrase during the papacy of Damasus (366–84).36 The first text occurs in the tract De Sacramentis, which is a report of catechetical lectures delivered by St. Ambrose of Milan, probably in the year 387.37 This document possesses unusual importance, since it comprises precisely the portions of the present Canon which there is no reason to suspect of being subsequent interpolations.

This tract contrasts the Pro-Anaphora or preliminary part of the service with the Anaphora or Consecration Prayer:

While this has been generally taken as alluding to the Preface, followed by the intercessory Collects Te igitur, Memento, Communicantes, and Hanc igitur, as in the present Canon, it is perhaps more probable that this matter of the ancient Prayer of the Faithful had not yet been assimilated into the Canon, but preceded the Preface.

Later, the De Sacramentis quotes these Prayers of Consecration:

We have here typical examples of “Gallican” Post-Sanctus and Post-Pridie prayers, accompanying an early form of the Institution narrative—a complete “Gallican” Canon. The Post-Sanctus is in the form of a prayer for divine acceptance of the sacrifice; and is of identical origin with the same prayer in Serapion.38 The Post-Pridie contains three of the four possible elements of this prayer (Commemoration, Oblation, Invocation, Fruits of Communion), all of which appear in every Eastern rite, and any selection of which may occur in any “Gallican” mass. It happens however that instead of a direct expression of the effect of the consecration, such as characterizes most formal prayers of Invocation, there has been substituted the idea of a mystic—and metaphorical—sublating of the oblations to the Heavenly Altar: a form of supplication originally devised with perfect appositeness for the offering of incense, later less felicitously adopted into many prayers of oblation.39

It seems that it was around this nucleus that the other prayers of the Roman Canon accumulated. It is a curious and fortunate fact that to this day the text of the Canon preserves a number of seemingly adventitious and liturgically unjustified “Amens,” each of which marks the end of a constituent block of matter of different dates and origins. The details of this process are obscure. It is however hardly to be doubted that the first group of prayers, from Te igitur to Hanc igitur, represents the ancient Prayers of the Faithful, which in some form originally followed the mysterious “Let us pray,” with no prayers to follow, which still remains at the Roman Offertory;40 and that by the beginning of the fifth century they had been transferred to a place after the Preface for the reasons which Innocent I (†417) alleged with such insistence41—i.e., in order that they might be drawn into closer association with the central action of the rite.

The other addition, comprising the Memento etiam and Nobis quoque peccatoribus, composes precisely the paired supplications for the Departed and for Those who Offer for them, which seems to have been the first portion of the Intercession to secure a place within the Anaphora in the Eastern rites, as we find in Serapion's liturgy,42 and which is always embedded, as an inseparable combination, in every postconsecration Intercession.

During the latter half of the fourth century, then, the Roman Canon was crystallized out of a fluid order displaying extreme variability in detail, by a process of arbitrary selection among alternative formulæ current at the time. It shows marks of Alexandrian affinities or influence, and represents a stage of development equivalent to the liturgy of Serapion. Like Serapion, it is relatively impoverished of ideas and bald of expression; it is careless of form and order; it is distinctly a provincial and “back-country” product, drawing its materials ultimately from distant creative centers, and presenting them imperfectly transmitted and retained.

It was in fact unfortunate that the Canon should have been so summarily and unalterably arrested at a time of so little literary ability in the West, and so little liturgical knowledge of the organic meaning and purpose of certain portions of the rite. But jejune, abrupt, ill-articulate, and often obscure as it is, it does contain everything that is essential, and most of what is desirable, in a Christian liturgy. It has a noble simplicity, a rugged vigor, and a cogent brevity which compare favorably for practical purposes with the far more elaborate, ambitious, and verbose efforts of the oriental and the Gallican mind. It seems a perfect expression of the Roman genius, in the beauty of strength, careless of minor discords or extrinsic adornment.

§ 6

Subsequent Elaborations

Though the structural outlines, and the text of the central Canon or Anaphora, were pretty well settled for all rites in the course of the formative fourth century, for twelve hundred years thereafter there was continuous elaboration of the scheme, by embellishment with decorative detail.

Some of these hardly concern our purpose, and may be briefly dismissed. Such are the Eastern and Gallican development of a Prothesis and “Great Entrance”; and the Dismissals of various classes not in full communion before the Anaphora, the memory of which now survives only in the term Missa (=Missio, dismissal), by which the Liturgy is called in the Western Patriarchate.

The use of liturgical Litanies, after Syrian precedent, is, as we have seen, something that has come and gone in the West, leaving as vestiges in the Roman rite since the sixth century its responds of Kyrie eleison, and its terminal Collect.

The Lord's Prayer appears not to have been used at all in the Liturgy in the time of Justin, Hippolytus, Serapion, or the Apostolic Constitutions. The earliest texts which contain it show that it was inserted in a most peculiar manner, actually as a manifest interpolation within the prayer said at the Fraction or Breaking of Bread.43 The extant patristic evidence would be satisfied by the hypothesis that the Lord's Prayer was first added to the Liturgy at Jerusalem about the year 340.

All rites evolved choral parts of the service along mutually parallel lines, and to a similarly high degree. The earliest of these is probably the Gradual Psalms between the Lessons. This was explicitly referred to by Tertullian (†ca. 230)44 and may have been the “song” mentioned in the Letter of Pliny in 112. Duchesne claimed that it was as old as the Lessons themselves.45

The Sanctus seems to have been added to the Liturgy about the year 200 in North Africa; the Benedictus qui venit to have been appended to the Sanctus in Syria about the beginning of the fifth century.46

Of the other musical portions of the Roman rite, the Introit, Offertory, and Communion anthems were designed to accompany and cover ceremonies that had “grown elaborate.” The Agnus Dei at the Fraction is a Roman specialty, dating from the papacy of Sergius I (687–701).47

Various rites developed other canticles, sung, like the Sanctus and the Gradual, as an end in themselves, and applied to the adornment of the Pro-Anaphora, to express a joyful and “eucharistic” note rather lacking in the introductory portion of the Liturgy. Such were the Byzantine Trisagion,48 adopted in other Eastern uses, and in Gaul; the Gallican use of the Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel, and the Benedicite; and the Roman Gloria in Excelsis. This last originated in Syria as a hymn at Matins, where it is employed in the Byzantine offices to this day. The first version of its text is found in the Apostolic Constitutions;49 it was first mentioned by St. Athanasius (†373);50 translated by Hilary of Poictiers (†366);51 its use at Matins in Gaul attested by Cæsarius of Arles (469–542);52 and introduced at Rome by Pope Symmachus (498–514)53 at a bishop's mass on Sundays and Holy Days, its use being gradually extended until by the eleventh century all priests used it on festivals and on Sundays outside of penitential seasons.

The Creed, originally a baptismal formula, was included in the Liturgy under the provocation of controversies. In the East, it was first introduced at Antioch by Peter the Fuller in 471, at Constantinople by Timothy in 511. The Emperor Justinian (527–65) ordered it sung in all churches. In the West, the Third Council of Toledo in 589 inserted it in the Mozarabic rite as a protest against the Arians. Thence it spread to France; but it was not admitted to the Roman mass until the year 1014.54 To this day it is a festal addition rather than a daily essential of the Roman service.

Another great source of elaboration of liturgical texts lay in the natural instinct of devotion which prompted the celebrant to say prayers of his own to accompany ritual actions. At such points as the Preparation, the Censings, the Offertory, Fraction, Communion, and Departure from the altar, these private supplications eventually assumed definite form, and solidified into stated features. Some of these developed rather early in the East, and were copied or paralleled in “Gallican” regions; from whence they invaded the Roman rite. Yet none of these were in evidence in Rome before the eleventh century; they were not in general use in their present form until the fourteenth; and they were not formally admitted to the rite and required throughout the Roman obedience until the Missal of Pius V in 1570.

Thus though at an early date the Roman rite supplanted the luxuriant exuberance of the varying Gallican rituals with the austere unalterable simplicity of its Canon, in the end the Gallican enriched the Roman with an ornate setting of significant ceremonial, and graced it with devotions imbued with inspired feeling.

The services of the Church of England at the time of the Reformation were of this resultant Gallico-Roman type then prevalent throughout the West. There being as yet no authoritative Roman standard imposed urbi et orbi, in England the diocesan, monastic, and regional “Uses” varied in minor detail. Of these the rite of the see of Salisbury possessed the widest influence, so that the term “Sarum” is commonly employed for the English norm in the few particulars where the national customs differed from the Roman. Such were somewhat less elaborate personal prayers of the celebrant at beginning, Offertory, etc.; a medieval use of a Kiss of Peace at the Preparation; a few “Gallican” survivals such as the Bidding Prayer at sermon-time, and the priest's extending his arms to form a living cross at the Anamnesis; and the once universal benediction before communion retained at a bishop's mass.

Appended Note

Note on the Lord's Prayer and the Fraction

In the earliest state of the Liturgy, the Fraction, or breaking of the One Loaf of the oblation for the communion of the people, occurred as a necessary action immediately after the Consecration. At first this was done in silence. Later, it attracted ritual words to accompany the action. In the Apostolic Constitutions, the Fraction was performed during the diaconal Litany which introduced the Bishop's blessing of intending communicants—the original “Prayer of Humble Access.” The next step appears in Serapion, in a special Prayer of the Fraction: which, like all later prayers for this purpose, simply duplicated the communion-time themes of the Humble Access prayer. The Ethiopic rite illustrates the ensuing development, with the Lord's Prayer interpolated between two halves of the Fraction Prayer. The Coptic order shows the final stage, with the second part of the Fraction Prayer assimilated to the concluding “But deliver us from evil” of the Lord's Prayer, to constitute the so-called Embolismus (Interpolation).

Subsequent degenerations in the great rites obscured this process, and made its development difficult to identify. The original Fraction Prayer was wholly assimilated everywhere to its new office of introducing the Lord's Prayer. The East and West Syrian rites interpolated a new Prayer of Fraction before the altered old one. The Byzantine, followed by the Armenian, and by the Greek St. James and St. Mark, displaced the Fraction to a place immediately before the Communion. The Byzantine eliminated the Embolismus; and the Western rites reduced the introductory Prayer to a mere proëm.

Appended Note

Note on the Sanctus and the Benedictus Qui Venit

We have seen that the Sanctus does not occur in Hippolytus' single unbroken Prayer of Thanksgiving.55 It could not be inserted therein save as a violent interruption of the continuous narrative—which is exactly what happens when the Abyssinian rite attempts to adapt Hippolytus' form to an Egyptian framework. All the Eastern rites show the same quality of interruption, with considerable awkwardness;56 and no two examples choose precisely the same place for the insertion. Obviously the Sanctus was interpolated into the Eastern liturgies after Hippolytus' pregnant phrases had been expanded into a systematic account of both the Creation and the Redemption of mankind.

The fact that as late as the sixth century the Council of Vaison (529)57 had to order the Sanctus to be used in all masses, even “early services,” in Lent, and at requiems, is further indication of an innovation only gradually becoming universal.

The first unquestionable allusion to the liturgical use of the Sanctus is in the Acts of Perpetua, written in North Africa at the beginning of the third century.58 The next is in Tertullian,59 in the same region. Possible references may be reflected in Clement of Alexandria60 and Origen.61 As the first citations come from the vicinity of Carthage, and the next from Egypt, the birth of this feature is, as above, attributed to North Africa, not far from the year 200.

Now all the Eastern liturgies, including Serapion, with the exception of St. James, introduce the Sanctus by a scriptural quotation which conflates Dan. 7:10 and Isa. 6:2. Precisely this conflation is given by Clement of Rome in his First Corinthians, about the year 95: “For the Scripture saith: Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him, and thousand thousands ministered unto him (Dan. 7:10); and cried, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Sabaoth; the whole creation is full of his glory. (Isa. 6:2.)”

But the allusion is avowedly to Scripture, and cannot conceivably cite an as yet unwritten Liturgy. Nor is it possible that Clement can have quoted the liturgical use of Rome in his time, only to have Hippolytus, standing in the same Greek tradition of the same center, display entire ignorance of it something more than a century later.

It seems very probable however that the man who first introduced the Sanctus into the liturgical Thanksgiving deliberately adopted for the purpose the formula of introduction which Clement had produced as a purely literary allusion.

The frequent use of the Sanctus in Jewish rituals may have influenced this addition to the Liturgy.62

The Benedictus qui venit is found in all liturgies subsequent to the Apostolic Constitutions, except the Egyptian in all its forms; raising a presumption of Syrian origin at a date when the Alexandrian rite had become so fixed as to refuse admission to this feature, but before the Nestorian schism in 435.

The cause which instigated this supplement was the abrupt ending of the Sanctus, to which even Jewish forms had some tendency to make additions,63 and to which the Apostolic Constitutions appended a concluding “Blessed for evermore.”64 It seems to have occurred to some one, perhaps at Jerusalem, to amplify this rudimentary Benedictus to the acclamation of Matt. 21:9, some form of which had often been used at the communion-time ever since the Didaché.65 The Syrian Thanksgiving at this period commemorated the Creation in the “Preface,” the Redemption in the Post-Sanctus; and the original rationale of the change seems to have been to reflect this balance of thought in the choral response, joining the two Covenants by adding this Hosanna to the Redeemer to Isaiah's angelic song of praise to God the Creator.

It is interesting that the Anglican order of 1549 translated its second Hosanna by conflating Luke 19:38 to the original text; and that this conclusion was left appended to the Sanctus when the rest of the Benedictus was excised in 1552: leaving very much the dimensions and effect of the germinal form of this development in the Apostolic Constitutions.