Scholæ cantorum anni circuli: Ad te levavi.”
All the five forms begin with the same two first lines. Eckhart got over the difficulty caused to his theory by these lines by supposing that “Gregorius Præsul” meant not Gregory the Great, but Gregory II. But he does not explain how “Unde genus ducit,” &c., can refer to the latter. But it fits Gregory I. in this way: Pope Felix was his great-great-grandfather; so that, on succeeding to the papacy, he as it were entered on a family inheritance.
This prologue proves that the Antiphoner was ascribed by tradition to St. Gregory in the latter half of the eighth century.
IX.—Egbert, Archbishop of York (732-766), is a still more important witness. Born about 678, he was ordained deacon at Rome, and received the archiepiscopal pallium from Gregory III. in 735. He was the disciple and friend of Bede, the confidant and benefactor of St. Boniface, and the teacher of Alcuin. Shortly after he became archbishop he composed a work addressed to his brother bishops, and called De Institutione Catholica. The following extracts from it refer to the Ember-day Fasts.
“As for us in the Church of England, we always observe the Fast of the First Month in the first week of Lent, relying on the authority of our teacher, St. Gregory, who has thus regulated it in the model which he has handed down to us in his Antiphoner and his Missal through the medium of our pedagogue the Blessed Augustine.” (Patr. Lat. lxxxix., 441.)
“As for the Fast of the Fourth Month, the same St. Gregory, by the same envoy, has prescribed in his Antiphoner and his Missal the week which follows Pentecost as that in which the Church of England ought to celebrate it. And this is attested not only by our own Antiphoners, but also by those which we have inspected with their corresponding missals in the Churches of St. Peter and St. Paul.” (Ibid.)
Egbert brings us back to the seventh century, but during that century (the beginning of which saw the death of Gregory) we have no direct evidence. There are some considerations, however, which may account for this.
In the first place, we have very little light thrown on the history of St. Gregory by the sources of the seventh century. Apart from his Registrum there is little recorded that would by itself justify his surname of the Great. In the Liber Pontificalis there are only a few lines about him, whilst the Hellenic Popes, who sat in the Papal chair from 685 to 741, have detailed biographies, generally very laudatory. The mission of Augustine for the conversion of England is undoubtedly one of the most striking facts in Gregory’s life; but the only chronicler of the seventh century who mentions it is the Continuator of Prosper. Is it surprising, then, that there is a still more profound silence on a fact less calculated to attract outside attention, such as is the recasting of the liturgical books peculiar to the Church at Rome?
In the second place, care must be taken not to apply the ideas of to-day to another age. It must not be supposed that the Gregorian Reform was promulgated throughout the Western Churches in the same manner, for instance, as the Reform of Pius V. The modern system of centralization did not then exist. When Gregory took the liturgical books in hand, he had at first in view only the Papal chapel, and the churches at Rome under his immediate supervision. It was their importation into England in the lifetime of St. Augustine, and into the Frankish Empire two hundred years after, under the pressure exerted by the first Carlovingians, which gave the greatest impetus to their universal use. In Italy, on the contrary, and even at Rome, it came about gradually only through the insistence of such Popes as Leo IV. and Stephen X. that the Gregorian Chant in the end completely supplanted that in use in early times in the Peninsula. This explains why the first witnesses in favour of the Gregorian tradition come to us from England and Carlovingian Gaul.
