LITURGY AND CEREMONIES.

Prayer.—Liturgy of St. James, of St. Basil, and of St. John-Chrysostom.—Apostolical Constitutions.—The Sacrifice of the Mass.—Administration of Baptism.—Canonical Penances.—Plan and Arrangement of Churches.—Ecclesiastical Hierarchy.—The Ceremony of Ordination.—Church Bells.—The Tocsin.—The Poetry of Gothic Churches.—Breviary and Missal of Pius V.—Ceremonies used at the Seven Sacraments.—Excommunication.—The BullIn Cœnâ Domini.—Processions and Mystery Plays at the Easter Solemnities.—Instrument of Peace.—Consecrated Bread.—The Pyx.—The Dove.

It was the first Council of Nice, in the year 325, that gave the dignity of canonical law to the custom of prayer on bended knees, and it is a surprising fact that none of the paintings of the Catacombs represent a devotee in the act of kneeling. We, however, know from the Acts of the Apostles that from the very first days of Christianity it was sometimes customary to kneel at prayer. As for the public prayers of the early Christians, the text of the principal ones has survived unaltered to our own days. As early as the close of the first century, the younger Pliny, writing to Trajan, told him that the Christians were accustomed to assemble at daybreak to sing a hymn in honour of Christ, whom they worshipped as God. This is a valuable piece of evidence, and it is moreover corroborated by the known custom that prevailed at the same epoch in the Church of Antioch, of celebrating the Holy Trinity (Figs. 160 and 161) by singing anthems, and of glorifying Christ, the Word of God, by the intoning of canticles and psalms. St. Irenæus, who wrote in the middle of the second century, also mentions in his workagainst heresy, a kind ofGloria in excelsis, which was chanted in Greek in Christian assemblies at the consecration of the host, and which may be translated thus: “To thee all glory, veneration, and thanksgiving; honour and worship to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, now and ever, and for century upon century of infinite eternity!” The people responded, “Amen!” In the dogmatic treatises written by Tertullian, at the end of the second century, that great pagan philosopher, who had become a convert to Christianity, alludes more than once to the first attempts at a liturgy which the Church used in the administration of the sacraments. He speaks of secret meetings where the psalms were sung, the Scriptures read, and edifying discourses were delivered; he mentions public prayers on behalf of the reigning sovereign, of his ministers, and of the great functionaries of the State; he describes ceremonies, forms ofprayer, and religious chants which were used according to certain rites authorised in the Latin Church, amongst which may be distinguished thePaterof the New Testament, that simple and yet sublime and touching invocation of feeble humanity prostrated before the Almighty.

Fig. 160.—Symbol of the Trinity, arranged vertically—the Son at the bottom, the Father at the top, and the Holy Ghost in the centre. The Holy Ghost descends from the mouth of the Father and settles on the head of the Son, and proceeds from both. Copied from a French Miniature by Count Horace de Vielcastel (Fourteenth Century).

Fig. 161.—The three faces of the Trinity on one head and body. At first sight is read—“The Father is not the Son; the Father is not the Holy Ghost; the Holy Ghost is not the Son.” But, from the angles to the centre, is also read—“The Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Ghost is God.” Printed by Simon Vostre in 1524.

The Church of Neo-Cesarea used from the first the liturgy of St. James, the earliest of the Eastern liturgies, until St. Basil, justly surnamed the great, for he was one of the most illustrious Fathers of the Greek Church in the fourth century, modified and shortened it. A little later it came to be known as the liturgy of St. Chrysostom, on account of the important changes introduced into it by that Father of the Church.

Fig. 162 to 171.—Monograms of Christ, belonging to the first centuries of the Church, except the last two. They are mostly composed of the letters X and P interlaced, letters which begin the word Christ (ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ); one is accompanied by an N [Nazarenus); several have on either side the letters α and ω, in allusion to the text, “I am the beginning and the end.” Two of these monograms, from the Catacombs, recall thelabarumof Constantine, especially the one bearing the famous inscription, “In hoc signo vinces;” but it is not certain whether they are rightly attributed. The last two are from the Churches of St. Martin de Lescas (Gironde) and of St. Exupère d’Arreau (Upper Pyrenees), edifices of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries.

The canons of the Council of Laodicea, held in 364, contain many regulations for the recitation of the psalms and lessons, which, as early as the second century, according to Tertullian, were recited atTierce, atSexte, and atNone, that is, at the third, sixth, and ninth hour of the day—at vespers or evening prayer, and at the prayers offered up by the bishops, whether at the ceremonies of baptism and the eucharist, or over catechumens and penitents. It was not until after the conversion of Constantine that public prayers became general in Constantinople even amongst the troops. Constantine built anoratory in his palace, where his whole court worshipped with him. He desired that his soldiers, whether Christians or pagans, should every Sunday repeat aloud certain prayers belonging to the religion of Jesus Christ. Eusebius is the historian who relates this fact. A record has been handed down of a prayer that the Emperor Maximinius declared he had received from the hands of an angel, and which he read out to his soldiers in 313, before he gave battle to Licinius, his rival for the imperial throne.

Fig. 172.—Heathen Caricature drawn on the wall of the Palatinate, in the Third Century, and preserved in the Kircher Museum, at Rome.—The object of veneration of the Christians is represented by a crucified figure with a donkey’s head, looking down on a small figure of a man: it is accompanied by a Greek inscription signifying, “Alexamenus worshipping his God.” Reduced to a quarter the size of the original.

In the fourth century, it was customary nearly everywhere, in the West as well as in the East, after having sung the praises of God, to put up prayers for the reigning sovereign and the leading potentates of the civilised world. For instance, when St. Athanasius cried out in the presence of the faithful, assembled in the splendid basilica of the Cæsars, “Let us pray for the safety of the very pious Emperor Constantine,” the whole assembly answered with one resounding voice, “Christe, auxiliare Constantio!” (“Help Constantine, O Christ!”)The preceding examples, and many others that it would be easy to gather from the history of early Christianity, prove that in the fourth century, in France, in Italy, in Spain, as well as in the churches of the East and of Africa, Christian worshippers were accustomed to recite either aloud or in a low tone, a set form of prayers, to chant, or rather slowly to intone psalms, and to sing hymns. Did not St. Pacôme order his monks to recite twice a day a psalmody which was composed of psalms interspersed with prayers? Did not St. Hilary of Poictiers lay the foundations of the Gallican liturgy, as St. Ambrose did those of the Lombard liturgy, at the time that St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine revised the liturgies of the Eastern and African Churches?

Fig. 173.—Painting symbolical of the Catacombs of Rome: Jesus Christ, represented as Orpheus, fascinating with the sound of his lyre the wild and domestic animals, as also the trees, which are bending towards him to listen.—Fresco of the First or Second Century, from the Cemetery of Domitilla.

It was generally the custom to follow the precepts of the so-called “Apostolical Constitutions,” a primitive work that was supposed to date from the second century. These Constitutions ordered the psalms to be recited tothe congregation in the morning, at the third, the sixth, and the ninth hours of the day, at vespers, and at cockcrow, that is to say, at dawn. But the faithful, who were long prevented by persecution from openly assembling in sacred buildings, at first offered up their prayers in private, or perhaps surrounded only by their families and a few intimate friends. Tertullian tells us that each strove to show the greatest zeal in singing the praises of God. In the fourth century, the Christians both of the East and of the West were so zealously attached to their psalmody, that none would have willingly missed saying it at its appointed hour, no matter where he might happen to be. “Instead of the love songs formerly heard at all hours, and in all places,” says St. Jerome in a letter to his friend Marcellinus, “the labourer at the plough hums anAlleluia, the reaper, bathed in perspiration, repeats his psalmody as he rests from his toil, and the worker in the vineyard carols David’s grateful verse as he plies his curved sickle.”

Fig. 174.—Silver-gilt Cruet, showing its different sides; on one side is depicted the head of Christ, with a nimbus, and on the other that of St. Peter. (First or Second Century.)—Museum of the Vatican.

Fig. 175.—The Last Supper, symbolically represented as the first eucharistic sacrifice. Jesus, surrounded by his disciples, and with John, his favourite disciple, leaning on his bosom, is administering his body and blood under the form of bread and wine, to another disciple kneeling in front of the table.—From a Miniature of the Eleventh Century in the Burgundian Library, Brussels.

Long before any churches were open to the public, the apostles “brokebread with, the faithful” in the guest chamber of private dwellings; their disciples followed their example in the subterranean cemeteries, termed Catacombs, where the early Christians used to assemble to celebrate the Lord’s Supper (Fig. 175). This sacrament, the primitive form of whichis unknown to us, was not termed amass(missa) till the middle of the fourth century. “It was on a Sunday,” says St. Ambrose, who was the originator of the Ambrosian rite, “that I first held a mass.” The name of mass, about the meaning and origin of which the most learned Christian archæologists are by no means agreed, appears to have been derived from a Hebrew word denoting an offering or sacrifice; or perhaps rather from the Latinmissa, frommittere, to send away, or to take leave of. Apostolical discipline required that the sacrament should be preceded by a discourse, and that before it was celebrated the catechumens, those who had not yet been baptized, should leave the sanctuary. “After the sermon,” says St. Augustine, “the catechumens are sent out” (fit missa).

Fig. 176.—Miraculous Mass of St. Gregory the Great (Sixth Century), depicting the real presence of Jesus Christ in the eucharist.—Miniature from a Missal of the Fifteenth Century, in the Collection of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.

There was, however, a mass for the catechumens which comprised the introductory prayers, lessons from the Old and New Testaments, and the bishop’s homily. The true mass, celebrated for the faithful alone, was specially called the eucharist. “Those are masses,” says St. Cesarius of Arles, “when the body and blood of Christ are offered up in sacrifice” (Fig. 176).

At first, mass was celebrated once a week, and always on the Sunday. In the second century, the sacrament or eucharistic offering took place three times a week, on Sunday, on Wednesday, and on Friday. In the following century, the Eastern Church decreed that it should also be celebrated on Saturday. In the West, mass was held only on Sundays, unless in exceptional cases; while in the days of St. Augustine, in the dioceses of Africa, Spain, and Constantinople, it was celebrated generally every day. It was not till the sixth century that it became usual in the Latin Church to celebrate mass every day.

As time passed on, and as the number of worshippers increased, the number of masses was considerably augmented, particularly on great festivals and during Holy Week. The same priest was at liberty to perform several, but after each he was bound to purify his fingers in a chalice, the contents of which were afterwards poured into a fitting vessel and consumed at the final mass, either by the priests themselves, by the deacons and clerks, or by those of the laity who were in a state of grace. At first all masses were sung, or rather chanted; they were all public, and could only be celebrated in diocesan or parish churches. Necessity, however, soon instituted inferior orprivatemasses, thus named because they were held in one of the lesser shrines or chapels, on an ordinary day, or before a small congregation.

The bishops, the apostles’ successors, were alone entitled, during the first two centuries, to administer the solemn rites of baptism. The priests, under the authority of the bishop, were the assistant-ministers of this sacrament. The deacons could only confer it when authorised by special episcopal sanction. In cases of urgent necessity, laymen were permitted to baptize, provided they were of irreproachable morals and had been confirmed. In the Latin Church as well as in the East, public baptism was only solemnised during the vigils of Easter and Pentecost; in the Gallican Church, at Christmas, as in the case of King Clovis. Private baptism might be administered at any period whenever it was deemed necessary.

On the day set apart for baptism, the chosen catechumens met in the church at noon to undergo a final examination (Fig. 177); at midnight they again assembled there, the paschal taper and the water were consecrated, and the officiating priest asked the catechumens if they renounced thedevil, theworld, and itspomps. They made answer, Yes. The priest then required of them a profession of Christian faith, carefully prepared beforehand, after which they underwent a short examination on the articles of the Creed. When these preliminaries were completed the deacon presented to the priest the catechumens stripped of their clothing, but covered with a veil. Each then stepped into a large vessel of water and was dipped thrice (Fig. 178); at each immersion the bishop invoked one of the persons of the Holy Trinity, a custom that prevailed till the sixth century in the Western Church, and till the eighth in that of the East. After the immersion the assisting deacon anointed the catechumen’s forehead with holy oil, and the priest put on him thechrismal, a flowing white robe which he wore for eight days. Thus clad, and holding lighted tapers, the new Christians went in procession from the place of baptism to the basilica. Before mass they received the sacrament of confirmation; they were then given a mixture of honey and milk, a symbol of their entrance into the promised land, that is to say, into the highway of Gospel privileges. Whatever the age of the newly baptized might be, they were termed children (pueri,infantes).

Fig. 177.—Exorcism of a catechumen by four of the clergy, who are applying the cross to him to drive the devil out of his body, prior to his baptism.—From a bas-relief of the Fourth or Fifth Century, found at Pérouse. Paciaudi, “De Sacris Christianorum Balneis:” Venitiis, 1750, 4to.

Baptism by sprinkling, as practised now, was not unknown to the primitive church, but it was only adopted in urgent cases, when immersion might be dangerous to the catechumen, or when it was expedient to baptizemany at one time. In the ninth century baptism by sprinkling had become customary, and it soon became the only method in use.

Fig. 178.—Baptism of the Saxons conquered by Charlemagne.—Miniature in Manuscript No. 9,066 in the Burgundian Library, Brussels (Fifteenth Century).

The dogmas of Christianity would have been a dead letter for most of the neophytes, unless they had been accompanied by a rigorous and constant discipline. The Church foresaw this, and showed its sternness, though at the same time it held out indulgences to the penitent. It established a kind of scale of punishments, whose severity were proportionate to the gravity of the crimes committed. The privilege of oblation was taken from the lesser culprits—that is to say, they were neither allowed to place offerings on the altars nor to receive the eucharist; the more hardened and rebellious sinners were excluded from the communion of the faithful, and were not permitted to take part in public worship; those who had been guilty of actual crime, or who had shown themselves to be incorrigible, were expelled from the sanctuary, and their names were expunged from the list of Christians.

These more rigorous measures, however, might be modified according to the repentance of the offender or at the discretion of the bishop, the sole and sovereign judge in all such matters.Canonical penancewas usually only inflicted for great public crimes, such as idolatry, adultery, and homicide; and, moreover, certain classes of individuals—children, young girls, married women, old men, priests, clerks, and monarchs—were only subject to it under the most careful restrictions; while in every case it was necessary to give legal and accurate proof of the alleged offence. When the period of canonical penance was over, if the criminal showed signs of repentance, the bishop, or even an ordinary priest in case of absolute necessity, was empowered to reconcile him with the Church.

As public worship in the early Church was slow to exhibit itself as a settled institution, so the more solemn and the more imposing it became from the moment that it took its lofty position under the protectorate of Constantine the Great. Then suddenly sprung up a number of Christian places of worship and imposing churches, amongst which we may mention the basilica of Tyre, restored and inaugurated in 315; that of St. John of Lateran, constructed in Rome in 324, with the remains of the temples once raised to the false gods of paganism; and other sanctuaries in the same city, which were consecrated by the Pope St. Damasius. The rites used at the consecrations of the early churches are unknown to us, but each inauguration had its solemn anniversary.

The position, the form, and the arrangement of the early churches were not left to the whims of their founders and architects, even when these churches were small and hidden for the most part in the catacombs, in forests, and in deserts. In the second book of the “Constitutions” of Pope Clement (chaps. 55 and 61), we read the following directions: “Let the church be of a long shape, like a ship, and facing the east.” Here, therefore, in the first century of the church, is an authentic proof of the orientation of the early Christian sacred edifices.

The method of construction of the primitive churches, however, according to the liturgical regulations of the period, is still an obscure question, and one surrounded with uncertainty. It has been surmised, with much probability, that the subterranean chapels of the catacombs of Rome were the models of the first churches; and such is the opinion of the most learned archæologists. It was from the very depths of these sepulchral cavernsthat Christian art, bursting forth into open day after the long series of persecutions, built its crypts and its churches after the types of its hidden shrines, at first in the transmural cemeteries, and afterwards, towards the end of the third century, in the midst of the Christianized populations and in the very centre of their cities. In 303, the date of the decree of Diocletian closing the Christian places of worship, there were already forty churches and chapels in Rome. The shape of these primitive sanctuaries is not well known; they were probably in general of one uniform pattern, specially adapted to the liturgical ceremonies of the day, though considerations of safety, the capabilities of the site, and other imperious necessities, no doubt frequently obliged their architects to depart from precedent and to vary the character of their construction. It was not until the reign of Constantine that Christian edifices began to assume the attributes of size, magnificence, and majestic boldness of outline. It was then that the emperor erected basilicas in the interior of his Lateran and Vatican palaces for the first time, and consecrated to the worship of the true God those immense edifices in which art was the humble handmaid of religion and bathed itself in the ineffable splendours of the faith.

The crypts or chambers (cubicula) of the Catacombs were reproduced in the full light of day in the early churches; they were of a quadrilateral shape, with three arched naves, and three vaulted recesses (arcosolia) which served at once as tombs for the holy confessors and shrines for the celebration of the eucharist. These sanctuaries were generally of greater length than breadth, after the analogy of the ship or vessel (navis), this mysterious symbolism finding favour with the early Christians.

Fig. 179.—Church of St. Antony, Padua, completed in 1307; the seven cupolas were added in the Fifteenth Century. The bronze equestrian statue which stands in front of the church was executed in 1453 by Donatello, and represents the famous captain, Gattemalata.

Fig. 180.—Foot of a large Choir Candelabrum in gilt bronze, with seven branches, nineteen feet high, and known as the “Tree of the Virgin,” because one of its ornaments represents the Infant Jesus adored by the Magi, in the arms of the Virgin.—Work of the Thirteenth Century, in Milan Cathedral.

Fig. 181.—Chandelier, calledChandelier of the Virgin; the branches are of bronze, and the figure is of carved wood. (Church in Kempen, Rhenish Prussia).—From Weerth’s “Monuments of Christian Art.”

Crucialchurches, that is to say, churches in the shape of a cross, were, however, not uncommon, as well as round, pentagonal, hexagonal, and octagonal buildings. But whatever their shape, they differed essentially from the pagan temples, as much in their general internal arrangement as in their size, which continued to increase in proportion as Christianity waxed in magnitude and influence. The basilicas were divided into three principal parts: the vestibule, or portico (in Greek,pronaon), the central area (in Greek,naos—in Latin,navis, whence the term nave), and the apse or choir (in Greek,ieratrion), reserved for the officiating priests. The portico was supported by two, five, or seven columns, and projected from the front wall. An iron rod furnished with rings ran across the columns, and from it were suspended curtains ofcloth or hanging tapestries which could be drawn or closed at will. Beneath this portico the penitents, termedstrati(prostrated), were accustomed to kneel, and from that position they could hear the psalmody and the sermon without actually witnessing the ceremony. The larger basilicas had frequently three porticos instead of one (Fig. 179), the central one facing the west, and the two side ones the north and south. A large vessel (malluvium) full of water was placed in the centre of the portico, in which each member of the congregation before entering the church purified his face and hands. The clergy alone entered by the middle entrance (aula); the worshippers entered by the two side portals, the men by that to the right and the women by that to the left; this division of the sexes was maintained within the building also. The internal main area was subdivided into three or five naves. The central nave was always left open andfree, but in the others, partitions six feet high completely divided off the catechumens, the penitents, the virgins consecrated to God, the monks, and the mass of the congregation. At the end of the nave was the choir (in Greekbêma), in front of which stood thesolea(the cellar or wine-press, in allusion to what was called the vineyard of the Lord), surrounded by a chancel, an open-work partition, in the centre of which one or more gates opened into the interior. One or sometimes two stands (calledpulpitum, pulpit), intended for the public reading of the epistles, the Scriptures, and the holy books, were erected in front of the gates of the choir. In Rome, and probably in Constantinople, Milan, Trèves, and in all the larger imperial cities, there was in front of the choir, between the stalls of the secular clergy and those of the holy virgins and monks, a space (senatorium) reserved for the dignitaries and the noble families of the place. Thesoleawas occupied by the sub-deacons and the minor clerks, whose duty it was to intone the psalmody. One or two sacristies (secretaria) wereplaced at the sides of thesolea. The sanctuary (Figs. 180 and 181), in which the holy sacrifice took place, was surrounded with iron or wooden railings, and communicated through one or three doors with the naves. The farther end of the choir was semicircular in shape, and is now called the apse (in Greek,kongche, a muscle or cockle-shell; in Latin,absida; in French,chevet); around it were placed seats, amongst them that of the bishop, which was raised above the altar, and was visible to the whole congregation. The altar, which was draped and surmounted with theciborium(a canopy of a cupola shape—Italian,baldacchino), was always placed in the centre of the apse (Figs. 182 and 183).Such, was the material framework, the normal arrangement of the Greek and Latin liturgy towards the end of the sixth century.

Fig. 182.—Altar-piece at Mareuil-en-Brie.

Fig. 183.—Altar-piece of the Church of Mareuil-en-Brie (Marne).—Latter half of the Thirteenth Century.

No pope was more capable than Gregory the Great (590–604) of uniting the different and scattered elements of which the liturgy was composed.To him is due the merit of having been the first to put forth a revised issue of the books of religious service, and who impressed the stamp of his genius on the Roman Catholic ceremonial. Before him, however, Pope Gelasius had collected the prayers used in the administration of the sacraments, and had prepared the first missal or book of masses. The latter was remodelled and corrected by Gregory. The same pope gave a more orthodox and popular form to the Antiphonary (Antiphonarium), sometimes calledCantatoriumandGraduale, a collection of anthems for every mass in the year; he amended and remodelled in the most skilful and learned manner the anthems that were badly selected and ill scored—endeavouring, after the example set by Solomon, to impart a harmonious and dignified character to sacred music which it did not previously possess. It is tolerably certain that the church chant dates from this period, and that notation byneumes, a method the present age does not understand, of marking the rhythm and the modulations of the voice, cannot be traced farther back than the pontificate of Gregory the Great. John Diacre, who has written the life of this illustrious pope, says that he has seen the school of choristers, founded at Rome by St. Gregory, officiating in full splendour. The founder of this famous school continued to give lessons to the pupils in spite of his old age, his attacks of gout, and his other infirmities, even when he was no longer able to stand or sit upright. Reclining on a narrow and very hard bed, he infused emulation into the minds of the idle and reproved the disobedient.

Since the fifth century, the holy duties and the canonical prayers to which the liturgy consecrated the different hours of the day have been known under the name ofoffices, orcanonical hours(Fig. 184), and ofbreviaries. In Tertullian we already meet with the wordsTierce,Sexte, andNone. St. Cyprian, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Jerome, and many other fathers of the Church, assigned certain hours at which to recite the different offices, in such a manner that before the close of the fourth century psalmody seems to have been already regulated in the principal churches of the East. The practice of the Western churches differed, it is true, from that of the churches of the East; many differences even were to be found in the dioceses of the same country. But, during the earlier centuries, it was everywhere customary to perform the principal offices at night, which was divided into four watches of three hours each: these hours were measured by a water-clock, termed clepsydra. The first watch commenced at sunset(ad vesperas), the second at midnight, the third at cockcrow, the fourth at dawn. Towards the fifth century the piety of the early Christians having somewhat abated, it soon became customary not to go to church till the fourth watch, when the whole psalmody, that is to say, the twelve psalms, as there were three psalms in each watch, was got through at one repetition. Hence the name of matins (matutinæ). It would seem that the monks themselves, who were more conservative of ancient rites than the secular priests, commenced about this period to chant theNocturnand theLaudat the morning hours. Rome alone rigorously preserved the distinction between the offices of the day and those of night.

Fig. 184.—Ancient Legend of Christmas, with the words of the old French plaint. The engravings represent the Sibyl prophesying the Birth of Christ; Jesus in the Stable at Bethlehem; one of the Magi; and John the Baptist announcing that Christ was born.—Fac-simile from a book ofhours, printed with illuminations at Paris by Anthoine Vérard, towards the close of the Fifteenth Century.

ThePetites Heureswere known asTierce,Sexte, andNone;Prime, the first of thecanonical hours, was not instituted till the twelfth century, but the other three appear to date from the earliest institution of Christianity. St. Cyprian, who lived in the third century, says that prayers were said atTiercein honour of the descent of the Holy Ghost, atSextein memory of the Crucifixion, and atNoneto commemorate the death of Christ. Half a century earlier Tertullian wrote that, independently of the mystic traditions consecrated by prayer, the Church, in establishing the canonical hours, wished to conform to the secular division of the day.

Vespers (Vespera), so called from the starVesper, which rises as the sun is setting, also dates from the origin of the liturgy. The hour of vespers was calledlucernarium, because it was necessary to light the lamps at the performance of that service. A hymn exists entitled “Ad incensum lucernæ,” that is, “To the lighting of the lamp.” The Latins as well as the Greeks, until the eighth century, celebrated vespers after sunset; but since that period the usage of Rome, where vespers were said immediately afterNones, prevailed and became universal. Milan, however, still adhered to the primitive form of the rite; vespers were commenced as soon as the evening star appeared above the horizon, and terminated by torchlight. Until the fifth century vespers were the last prayers of the day, and included the psalms, which were said separately in the following century, as a last service, termedCompline, and which at first only contained three psalms—it was not till the ninth century that the thirtieth psalm was added.

The principal libraries of Europe possess several large manuscript volumes written on vellum, as remarkable for their illuminations (Fig. 185) as for the beauty of their calligraphy; they are termed theEvangeliarium, theLectionarium, and theLiber Benedictionis, and were frequently bound with great magnificence. They belonged to different churches and dioceses which, while generally following the rules of the dogmatic liturgy established by the councils, used several modifications of their own invention. Some of these modifications were important ones, and were due either to local feeling and the peculiarities of the congregation, or arose during the anniversaries, the commemorative festivals of the diocesan ritual. The use of theEvangeliariumdates from St. Jerome. Before him each of the four Gospels formed a separate book, and the four were of different liturgical importance. St. Jerome collected them, arranged them in their proper order, and added marginal notes of the daily offices.

Fig. 185.—The Mystic Fountain, from anEvangeliariumof Charlemagne (Eighth Century), in the National Library of Paris. The jet of water represents the Church, the source of truth; the inner birds the souls of the elect; while those outside seem to personify souls attracted to baptism by divine grace.—From the large work of Count de Bastard.

A hierarchical order with defined powers and privileges existed from the date of the first establishment of Christianity. In his sixth epistle to the Magnesians, St. Ignatius, who had been a disciple of St. Peter, says, “Iexhort you to behave, in all things, with that spirit of concord which comes from God; and to look upon the bishop as the representative of God himself in your midst, upon the priests as forming the august senate of the apostles, and upon the deacons as those to whom is intrusted the ministry of Jesus Christ.” The faithful bowed the head to none but the bishop, to ask his blessing; and in the church the bishop occupied a seat raised above that of the priests. The bishops wore a tunic andpallium, or long mantle, a chasuble or dalmatic, and a circlet of gold or polished metal upon the head. The latter was subsequently replaced by the mitre, which for some time was made of cloth, and was a circular pointed cap split at the top (Fig. 186). The primitive insignia of office worn by the bishops were the episcopal ring and the pastoral staff, made of wood, ivory, or metal. They are mentioned as wearing sandals for the first time in the ninth century, and gloves in the twelfth. The bishop of Rome, the first among his brethren (primus inter pares), wielded over the whole Church a supremacy formally enunciated by St. Irenæus, a disciple of St. Polycarp, a contemporary of the apostles. Originally, however, he wore no distinguishing mark of his pre-eminent rank; but towards the fifth century, the term “pope” began to be exclusively applied to him.

After the reformation of his clerks (clerici) by the famous Bishop of Hippona, the former were calledcanonici, whence the term chanoines, because they led a life in conformity with the canons of the Church. In Africa, in Spain, and in Gaul these canonical clerks lived together and boarded with the bishop, and devoted themselves to science, literature, art, music, and especially to calligraphy. They thus formed a sort of religious school, whence their title of scholastics (scholastici)—a title which they well deserved during the reign of Charlemagne, but which they had ceased to merit at the time of Charles the Bold. The priests attached to each church constituted what was termed the assembly of the presbytery (presbyterium), or the ecclesiastical senate of the bishop of the diocese (senatus ecclesiæ episcopi). It was permissible for the clerks at an early age to enter the minor degrees of their calling, such as those of porter, exorcist, reader, and acolyte; but they were not allowed to assume the higher grades until they had reached a ripe age. The minimum age for the diaconate was thirty years; for the priesthood, thirty-five; ordination, from the fourth century upwards, took place four times a year. We learn from St. Cyprian, who lived in the thirdcentury, that from that date it was decreed that this ceremony should only take place in the churches, publicly, at mass.

Fig. 186.—Chasuble, Mitre, and Stole of St. Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (1117–1170); preserved in the Cathedral of Sens.—Cloth and Embroidery of the Twelfth Century.

Before choristers were regularly introduced many churches hadpsalmists, who constituted a distinct minor order. These psalmists were succeeded by chanting clerks. In the reign of the Emperor Justinian, the metropolitan church of Constantinople possessed twenty-six choristers and a hundred and ten readers. In the fifteenth canon of the Council of Laodicea we read that “none but the canonical choristers are allowed to sing in the church.” The congregation, however, still kept to the custom of joining their voices to those of the choristers.

At first there no doubt existed a special dress worn during the hours of service, but it is supposed that it was only in its colour, which was white, that this dress differed from that worn by the deacons and the priests in everyday life. The maniple (manipulum) and the stole (stola), accessories to the alb, which was the original vestment worn by the priest, were not adopted and consecrated by the liturgy till the third or fourth centuries. The deacons only wore the stole during the sacrament, but the priests wore it continuously, as a mark of their sacerdotal dignity. The use of the chasuble was subsequent to that of the stole, the alb, and the dalmatic. The chasuble is first mentioned in the twenty-seventh canon of the Fourth Council of Toledo (in 527A.D.).

Prior to the fifth century, the clergy were obliged to wear no distinctive dress in private life. As in the days of the Apostles, the bishops, the priests, the clerks, the deacons, and the choristers wore tunics and sandals, as prescribed by the Saviour in the Gospel of St. Mark (vi. 9). They covered themselves with a square piece of black or brown cloth, which was draped around the figure, and was fastened by neither hook nor tie; beneath it was a plain tunic of a dark colour. In the fifth century Pope Celestinus disapproved of this costume, which caused the followers of Christ to be confounded with the Stoic philosophers. In the sixth century the laity had abandoned the Roman style of costume, and wore short dresses, copied from those of the barbarians who had become the rulers of Gaul; but the Church, careful of the dignity of its ministers, refused to adopt this expensive alteration. Henceforward a broad distinction was established between the dress of the clergy and that of the laity. The Council of Agde (506A.D.) ordered all clerks to wear clothes and shoes of a peculiar cut, in conformity with their religious profession. Two later councils forbade them the use of the Roman military cloak (sagum) and of purple-coloured stuffs. Gregory the Great forbade his household to wear any dress but the long toga, as the one essentially appropriate to the people of the Church. This costume, with scarcely any modification, was worn by all orthodox ecclesiastics, through all the changes of the Middle Ages, until the seventeenth century.

The priest, when in the exercise of his holy functions, was not expected to make any change in his dress. Still, from the fourth to the ninth century everything seems to show that his proper costume was always white, or at least that it was so during the celebration of the highest ceremonies. St. Chrysostom, feeling the approach of death, and being anxious to partake ofthe holy sacrament, called for his white vestments, and distributed those he was wearing, even to his shoes, among his assistants. The customs and traditions of the West conformed in this to those of the East. The neophyte was stripped of his worldly garments, he was clad in a white or religious robe (habitus religionis), and was then considered fit to perform his duties. Sometimes, however, the white robes of the sovereign pontiff were adorned with bands of gold or purple. White was not mixed with other tints in the dress of the clergy till towards the ninth century; the five hues admitted by religious symbolism date only from the twelfth century.

Fig. 187.—Romanesque perforated Handbell, representing the symbols of the Four Evangelists (Twelfth Century).—From the Archæological Museum at Rheims.

Charlemagne, who was proud of his thorough acquaintance with the liturgy, who esteemed it an honour to wear, on high occasions, the green chasuble embroidered with gold, and to chant the epistles before the assembled congregations, took the greatest pains with all the ceremonies of the Church; and it is an undoubted fact that the pomp with which they were afterwards celebrated was inaugurated by him.

Charlemagne and his successors, Louis the Affable and Charles theBald, did not, however, content themselves with merely attending to ceremonial pomp; they did their best to introduce a principle of unity in conformity with the Roman liturgy. At the commencement of the eighth century Pope Adrian I., having sent to Charlemagne an antiphonary scored by St. Gregory himself, the Emperor ordered all the churches in his dominions to adopt the Gregorian chant. Thenceforward the ancient Gallican liturgy almost disappeared, and when Charles the Bald was desirous of comparing together the Greek, Roman, and Gallican liturgies, he was obliged to summon ecclesiastics from Toledo to officiate in his presence according to the Gallican rite. Charles preferred the Roman ritual; but notwithstanding this, each diocesan cathedral, each separate abbey, introduced into the Gallo-Roman liturgy various accessory forms differing more or less from one another.

It is possible to trace back to the sixth century the first use of church bells, but their general introduction into the Western church dates from the eighth century. They were termedseings(in Latinsigna); they were not rung, but were simply struck with wooden or metal hammers (Fig. 187), as is still done south of the Pyrenees. From this practice comes the wordtoc-seingortocsin, applied to the municipal peals of the Middle Ages and of still later times. The organ (organum) also dates from the eighth century. Imperfect as this instrument originally was, it caused tremendous enthusiasm among its hearers. Indeed, it may be said that organs and church bells had an equal share in raising the prestige of the ceremonial liturgy, which charmed and captivated both the senses and the souls of its hearers, by the display of its numerous officiating clergy, by the solemn gravity of its chants, by the noble simplicity of the vestments, and by the chaste and majestic arrangement of its ritual.

Fig. 188.—The Triumph of the Lamb.—Christ, typified as the spotless lamb, with a glory round his head and holding the cross, is at the feet of God the Father; around him are the Four Evangelists, represented by their typical attributes, and resting upon wheels of fire. The archangels are bringing him their offerings. The firmament is supported by four angels. Beneath is St. John explaining the Apocalypse to his commentator.—From a Miniature in the “Commentary upon the Apocalypse,” by Beatus; a Manuscript of the Twelfth Century, in the Collection of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.

Under the last Carlovingians the liturgy gradually deteriorated; less in the East perhaps than in the West, less at Rome and Milan perhaps than elsewhere, but everywhere the signs of deplorable relaxation and falling away were manifest. The choristers attempted to assume the privileges of the clerks; the deacons arrogated to themselves impossible rights of independence; the priests despised the bishops, and too frequently the bishops, presuming on their power, had the audacity to disobey the pontifical decrees. This change and deterioration principally showed itself in the psalmody, in the chants, in the adornment of the sanctuary, and in the dress of theecclesiastics. The Byzantine methods of treatment, as applied to architectural monuments and to the various forms of Christian art, did something to preserve the traditions of the liturgy, but from the close of the tenth century tillthe twelfth much confusion prevailed in the Latin Church. It was reserved for the Crusades, after a century and a half of adventurous expeditions, to bring back from countries beyond the sea, from Antioch, from Constantinople, and from Jerusalem, the elements and the principles of a Neo-Greek liturgy, in which the degenerate Gallo-Roman was as it were saturated, and its whole character remodelled.

The Catholic liturgy thus underwent a touching and marvellous transformation; this transformation was inaugurated by the construction of new churches, in which the Romanesque style gave place to that of the Ogive or Gothic; by the erection of slender belfries, recalling the minarets of the Mahometan mosques; by the introduction of transparent pictures on painted glass; by the chaste but splendid appointments of the chapels; by the dazzling decorations of the altars; by the melody of the church bells, the sonorous messengers of religion calling the faithful to prayer; and by the harmony of the human voice with the organ and other musical instruments. A complete and ingenious symbolism was contained in this comprehensive allegorical ritual, and rendered the liturgy a veritable sanctuary of Christian instruction and sacred tradition, each mystery (Fig. 188), each precept of which penetrated into the soul, as it were, through the medium of the senses.

In the thirteenth century, when the celebrated William Durand, Bishop of Mende, wrote his “Rationale of Divine Service,” a complete collection of the liturgy of the day, this sort of canonical legislation became settled as much as a matter could be which the bishops and even the mere priests were continually modifying. William Durand, following the example of his predecessors, included many innovations which were to be lamented, many eccentric rites foreign to the traditions of the primitive church, and lowering to the dignity of divine worship. Enlightened minds felt the truth of this, and the Council of Trent found it necessary to demand a liturgical reform. In consequence of this demand Pope Pius V., in 1568, issued the corrected form of theRoman Breviary, and, in 1570, the newMissal. As the principal object was to reform the errors which had crept in in later times, the dioceses which possessed rituals of at least two hundred years old could either preserve their own customs or adopt the Breviary and the Missal of Pius V.

The Church has deviated as little as possible from its ancient ceremonial, particularly in what concerns the administration of the sacraments. Nevertheless, seven sacraments, which we will rapidly notice in the order in whichthey are enumerated by the Council of Trent, were formerly accompanied by certain ceremonies which the change of manners and customs has caused to fall into disuse, and which we shall mention merely as a proof of their antiquity.

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