Volume 1

A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood.

Date:
[between 1890 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1052/1096 (page 1032)
    the eviujnce is very limited as to its previous growth. In the accounts of the 9th century we meet with statements that Alexander (a.d. 100 to 106) combined the history of the Passion of our Lord with the prayer of the priest, when the masses were celebrated (see § 34); that Xystus (107-116) directed that during the service the people should sing the hymn Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, etc.; that Telesphorus (117- 127) ordered that at the commencement of the sacrifice the angelic hymn Gloria in excelsis Deo should be sung on the night of the Nativity alone. These and similar statements, found in the works of Walafrid Strabo and others, indicate a belief that the portions referred to were of great antiquity. Greater credence may perhaps be given to details such as these which follow. Caelestinus (422) is said to have directed that Psalms of David should be sung before the sacrifice, in addition to the reciting of parts of St. Paul’s Epistles and the Holy Gospel. Of Leo the Gi*eat (440-462), it i^ distinctly stated that he added the words “ .sanctum sacrificium et caeteraand of Gelasius (about 495), that he framed with great caution prefaces for the sacraments. The letter of Vigilius to Profuturus, Bishop of Braga, has been already referred to: he sent to the Spanish bishop the text of the “ canonical prayer,” “ which by God’s mercy we have received (he said) from apostolic tradition.” The letter is preserved, the enclosure unhappily is lost. But in the letter he gives the important informa- tion that “ in the celebration of masses, at no time and on no festival was the order of the prayer ditferent. They always consecrated in the same form the gifts offered to God.” 'then we come to the work of Gregory the Great, of whom it is stated by the Deacon John that he made additions to the ritual of the church, that he ordered the Alleluia [I. 56] to be said at other times beside Pentecost, the Kyrie eleison to be sung, and the Lord’s Prayer to be recited immediately after the canon over the sacrifice. (The Canon here would seem to be the list of saints commemorated in the JSohis quo'/tte pecca- toribus. For an example of this limited meaning, see Muratori de Lit. Rom. i. 555.) Gregory is also declared by his biographer to have reduced into one volume the Gelasian codex of the solemnities of the mass, by removing many things, altering a few, and adding others “ pro exponendis Evangelicis lectionibus.” His letter to John the bishop of Syracuse (Epist. ix. 12) seems to shew that the Deacon John was correct in his account of the alterations which Gregory had introduced, and several writers agree in narrating that Gregory added the words “ dies- que nostros in tua pace disponas.” They are found in the prayer Hanc iyitur. With these brief hints we shall be better able to examine the documents which have come down to us. (60.) The first, and undoubtedly the oldest, is a sacramentary discovered in the library at V'erona, and published by Blanchini in the year 1735. He gave to it the title Sacramentarium Leonianum, and attributed it (without any docu- mentary evidence) to pope Leo the Great. An examination of the contents of the work has in- duced almost all the great ritualists to differ herein from Blanchini; and it seems now to be generally agreed that the manuscript was pre- pared by some ecclesiastic for his own, either private or public, use. It is mutilated at the commencement, and does not give the canon of the Mass. It contains, however, a collection of prayers such as were used at the eucharistic ser- vices, one or two collects for the day, a prayer of oblation, a Vere dignuin, a prayer after com- munion, and a benediction. Of these there is an immense variety ; thus there are eight “ sets ” of prayers for the festival of St. John and St. Paul, and twenty-eight for that of St. Peter and St. Paul (Migne, Iv. pp. 47, 49, etc.). Titles to the prayers occur very rarely; we have, however, preces for the collects on p. 110 ; super oblata on pp. 106, 110; and on the same pages, postcommunio and super p)opulum. We are thus severed from the post nomina of the Gothic sacramentary, and brought more into connexion with the Missale Franvornm and the Bobio manuscript. The Ballerini have remarked that in a mass for Pentecost the prayer Hano igitur is represented as preceding the Communi- cantes (p. 40). On p. 7o there is an embolismus (the only one I have discovered), and on p. 75, ‘‘ Quod ore sumpsimus, Domine, quaesumus, mente capiamus,” etc., and a distinct invocation of the Holy Spirit on pp. 79, 147 (compare p. 139). On p. 117 we find two prayers, still more resembling the Gregorian Ilanc igitur and Quam oblationem; the former has the words ‘‘diesque meos clementissima gubernatione dis- ponas”; in the latter it seems to have been as- sumed that the reader needed only the first few words, his memory would supply the rest. If so, we carry the petition, Quam oblationem, back to a period before the time of Gelasius. We meet with so many prayers for the rulers or princes of the “Roman Name” that we can have no difficulty in assigning the book to some Roman priest or bishop ; and the manner in which the Roman primacy is urged (as we find it in no other sacramentary) may be deemed to jus- tify Blanchini in his opinion that Leo might have been the compiler. We learn from Ger- bert (Vetus Liturgia Alemannica, i. 80) that the effect of the discussions which followed his publication on the mind of Blanchini was this: he became persuaded that the work was still more ancient than at first he deemed it to be, and attributed it to Sylvester, w'ho was pope from 314 to 355. One thing is clear, that, when the book was written* the liturgy at Lome had not assumed the character which Vigilius ascribed to it in the middle of the sixth century, unless we limit most rigidly his lan- guage as to the form of consecration. (61.) In the year 1680 the learned Tliomasius (afterwards Cardinal) jtublished the contents of a manuscript which, having belonged to Petau, was then in the library of Queen Christina, and is now in the Vatican (Vat. 1455 according to Daniel, 316 according to Muratori). This part of Thomasius’work was republished by Muratori in the first volume of his learned work Liturgia Romana Vetus, and with it, in Migne’s series, vol. Ixxiv. p. 847, etc. The manuscript is of the tenth century, and is entitled. Liber Sacramen- torum Romanae Ecdesiae ordinis anni cirouli. It contains several prayers for the princes of the Roman kingdom and the governors of the Roman empire (Muratori, pp. 729-731); but one of the well-known collects for Good Friday (p. 561)