Curiosities of Christian History Prior to the Reformation

by James Paterson

THE RISE OF RITUALISM.

In the ninth century some attention began to be paid to the meaning of rites and ceremonies. One Amalarius, a deacon of Metz, in 820 composed a treatise on the Divine office, and on the order of the antiphonary, in which he attempted to make all the stages of the liturgy represent some doctrine. All the incidents of Divine service, every attitude and gesture, the dresses of the clergy, the ornaments of the church, the sacred seasons and festivals, were expounded as full of symbolical meaning. Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, on the other hand, being something of an iconoclast, and severe against the superstitions of relic hunters, advocated the exclusion of much irrelevant matter, as profane and heretical, from the service-book and hymn-book. He said that far too much attention had been given to music, and far too little to the study of Scripture. Agobard opposed the writings of Amalarius as full of idle comments and errors in doctrine. Not content with this exposure, Florus, master of the cathedral school of Lyons, wrote strongly against Amalarius, and cited him before two councils, the latter of which examined the mystical theories of Amalarius, and condemned them as being founded on nothing but the writer’s fancy, and dangerous. The theories of Amalarius, however, kept possession of many writers of the Middle Ages, and even in the nineteenth century had their admirers and advocates.

THE MASS, OR HOLY COMMUNION.

The great distinguishing ceremony of Christians is the celebration of the Mass or Communion, or Administration of the sacrament in commemoration of our Lord’s Supper. The word Mass was used as early as about the second century, and is derived from the Hebrew missach, signifying a freewill offering, or mincha, an oblation of meal. The name of Mass was used to include all the offices and festivals of which the Holy Communion was a leading feature. After the Reformation the word Mass was discontinued in England, and superseded by the words Holy Communion. The days and times of celebrating the Communion have differed from age to age. High Mass was sung with music and solemn ceremony and the assistance of numerous ministers, but the Communion was seldom given at High Mass. Low Mass was said by a priest attended by a single clerk. The Eucharistic bread, or Host (from hostia, the sacrifice), was required by a council of Toledo in 925 to be made in form of a wafer, so as to be easily broken, and was expressly baked for the altar. Unleavened bread came to be almost universally used. In England, after the Reformation, ordinary bread is ordered to be used, and not wafers or stamped bread. The Elevation of the Host, or lifting up of the paten (a small flat plate so called) and consecrated bread above the head of the celebrant, was instituted by Pope Honorius III. in 1210, and he directed that it was to be adored when elevated. This practice has been prohibited in England since the Reformation. The pyx is the box in which the Host is kept or conveyed, often made of silver or ivory. The wine for the Communion used by the Greeks was mixed with water, and was red wine. The Roman Church now uses white wine. The English Church forbids water to be mixed with the wine. When the custom of carrying about and exposing the Host began, about the fourteenth century, the name of the vessel in which it was shown was called a monstrance, resembling a chalice. The Agnus Dei is a little round cake of perfumed wax, stamped with the figure of the Holy Lamb bearing the standard of the Cross. The cakes were burned as perfumes, symbolical of good thoughts, or in memory of the deliverance of men from the power of the grave at Easter by the Lamb of God. The French shepherds, during the time of the Crusades, were observed to use these perfumes. And people burned them in their houses as a safeguard against evil spirits. The Agnus Dei was also the name given to a hymn sung in the canon of the Mass.

ANCIENT CHURCH SERVICE IN THE MOTHER TONGUE.

The learned Bingham, in his “Antiquities of the Christian Church,” says that there is abundant testimony that in the earliest services of the Church it was a rule that the liturgies and forms of prayers should be in the mother tongue of the people, and not, as had been a modern practice, invariably in the Latin tongue. St. Jerome says that at the funeral of Lady Paula the Psalms were sung in Syriac, Greek, and Latin, because there were men of each language present at the solemnity. He also says it was the practice for the young virgins to sing the Psalter morning and evening, and to learn the Psalms and some portion of the Scripture every day; and St. Basil says that all the people sung the Psalms alternately, and the children joined. And the Church took care to have the Bible translated into all languages—Syrian, Egyptian, Indian, Persian, Ethiopian, Armenian, Roman, Scythian, and Gothic. Another custom pointing to the same conclusion was, that Bibles were laid in the churches for the people to read in private at their leisure. So that none of the ancient Fathers ever dreamt that a time would come when the Scriptures should be only in the hands of the bishops and clergy. St. Chrysostom, in one of his sermons upon Lazarus, says expressly, “The reading of the Scriptures is our great guard against sin. Our ignorance of them is a dangerous precipice and a deep gulf.” A Church Council of Chalons in 813 expressly ordered that the bishops should set up schools to teach the knowledge of the Scriptures. There was an order of officers, called Readers, expressly to assist the people in this matter. And Eusebius relates that a blind man called John, one of the martyrs of Palestine, had so good a memory that he could repeat any part of the Bible as readily as the reader could do. Therefore it was an entire departure from ancient practice when the Church in mediæval and later times discountenanced the reading of the Scriptures by the people at large.

USE OF ORGANS AND BELLS IN CHURCHES.

Though music in Divine service had always a place, yet the use of instrumental music seems not to have become general till the time of Thomas Aquinas, about 1250. And it is related that one Marinus Sanutus, who lived about 1290, was the first to introduce wind organs into churches, whence he was called Torcellus, which is the name for an organ in the Italian tongue. This instrument had long been known as a curiosity before that time, and one was sent by the Greek Emperor about 766 to King Pepin. The use of bells as a mode of summoning worshippers to Divine service was soon thought of as a substitute for employing deacons or deaconesses to give private notice to each attendant. In Egypt the early Christians imitated the Jews by blowing a trumpet. In the early monastery set up by Paula at Jerusalem, one of the virgins was set apart to go round singing hallelujah. In the time of Bede, in the seventh century, bells began to be used as a mode of summoning to worship. And in 968 Pope John XIII. consecrated the great bell of the Lateran Church in Rome, calling it John.

SEPARATION OF SEXES IN CHURCHES.

The custom of separating the sexes in church had a very remote origin. John Gregorie, in his works (published in 1646), says: “There is a tradition that in the ark, so soon as ever the day began to break, Noah stood up towards the body of Adam and before the Lord, he and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet. And Noah prayed and his sons; and the women answered from another part of the ark, ‘Amen, Lord.’ Whence you may note too (if the tradition be sound enough) the antiquity of that fit custom (obtaining still, especially in the Eastern parts) of the separation of the sexes, or the setting of women apart from the men in the houses of God. Which sure was matter of no slight concernment if it could not be neglected, no, not in the ark, in so great a straightness and distress of congregation.”