Black vestments are to be worn on days of penitence and abstinence, and also on the Commemorations of the dead. They were also worn during Advent and Lent, except, of course, on festivals falling within those seasons. With regard to the Holy Innocents some decided in favour of black, some in favour of red, but the Roman pontiff decided for violet. For ferias and ordinary days the colour was green. One might, in addition, wear scarlet for red, violet for black, and yellow for green.
In Durandus († 1296) we find the same rule, in parts verbally identical with the above. The only point to notice in regard to what he says is that he says black vestments are to be worn on Rogation days, violet seems to have the preference over black for Advent and Lent, and the use of the former colour is represented as peculiar to the Roman Church.[838]
There is accordingly nothing strange in the circumstance that in the more ancient rituals, only vestes solleminores in general are prescribed for Maunday Thursday, without reference to colour. The Roman use,[839] from the beginning, was to use white on this day, and this superseded the customs observed elsewhere.[840]
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The Word Mass as a Name for the Sacrifice of the Altar
The term mass does not owe its position to theology, but became established in the course of centuries by popular usage. The most ancient writers of the church speak frequently, and with all the precision desirable of the holy sacrifice of the altar, but they speak of it by other names which fully indicate its essential character, such as oblatio and sacrificium, or even sacramenta and collecta. These two last names have a more general significance; collecta is the late Latin abbreviation for collectio, and means an assembly of men for some given purpose, in this case for divine service. Colligere appears in the same sense in the Latin translation of Irenæus and in Tertullian; the substantive is found in Jerome and other ancient authors; a survival of this primitive usage appears in the name collecta given to the first prayer of the Mass.[841] It owes its name of collecta to the fact that according to the most ancient ritual it formed the commencement of the Mass. In the service-books, collecta was merely a name which served to distinguish the prayers of the Mass from those which preceded or followed. According to the Roman rite, the Mass began with the prayer of the priest at the altar as soon as the invitatorium sung by the choir was finished, the psalm Judica me, the Confiteor, the Kyrie and Gloria being later additions. Thus the name collecta became attached to this opening prayer, and is so given to it in most mediæval and Roman missals, until the reform under Pius V., when it was replaced by the name oratio now in use. At the same time the name postcommunio replaced the older title ad complendum. Whenever we find in prayer-books and explanations of the Mass, that the prayer was called the Collect because the priest “collected” the petitions of the faithful, we can only regard such an interpretation as silly and unhistorical; the same could be said equally well of all, or, at any rate, of most of the prayers of the Mass.
The term sacramentum or sacramenta served also not unfrequently as a name for the Mass,[842] and so gave rise to the name sacramentarium, generally given to the missal in ancient times. In addition to these names, oblatio and sacrificio were especially employed as having the advantage of adequately expressing the essential character of the rite. The former was the particular favourite of Tertullian, the founder of Latin ecclesiastical terminology, and afterwards of St Cyprian, but it may be said to belong to all writers and to all periods.[843] St Augustine, who had already propounded a formal theory of the sacrifice of the Mass, shows a preference for sacrificium.[844]
When we turn to the word missa, we must not treat it as a participle, even in the Ite missa est, for there is nothing with which the feminine participle can agree, and so it must be a substantive. In order to explain the meaning of this substantive, and to show how it acquired its position as the technical term for the most sacred act of the Church’s worship, requires an excursus dealing with the matter from the point of view of etymology, patrology, and liturology. As regards the etymology of the word, attempts have been made from time to time to derive missa from the Hebrew, (מסּה Deut., xvi. 10), in the belief the name must be as old as the thing it signifies, an attempt abandoned as absurd at the present day.[845] A better idea was that of the mediæval liturgists who explained the word as equivalent to transmissio in the sense of the offering up and presentation of the oblation before God. But fortunately there is one man, thoroughly conversant at first hand with primitive usages and terminology, who has left us an explanation of the word and of the origin of its application to the sacrifice of the altar. Bishop Avitus, of Vienne († 518), flourished at the period between the ages of antiquity and the mediæval period, and is, therefore, a reliable witness in this matter. He was asked by his sovereign, King Gundobad of Burgundy, what was the meaning of the word missa, and replied that missam facere was the same as dimittere, and was used by the Romans at both audiences in the royal palace and sittings of the law courts to intimate to the assembly that the audience or session was at an end and that they were free to depart; it was used in the same way in the churches. Avitus[846] himself uses missa simply for divine service.
It is clear that the explanation given by Avitus is correct. For since the conclusion of every session and assembly must be officially announced with words such as, “The session is at an end,” so in church, where a still greater number of men meet together, it is necessary to make known to them the conclusion of divine service. Such was the custom of the ancient Romans at their sacrifices and religious ceremonies, and the Christians naturally did the same. Tertullian speaks already of a dimissio plebis,[847] and we find the same thing in the Greek liturgies, although the formulæ vary in some respects from that in use among the Latins.[848]
It was not, however, the Mass which was first called by this name, but the other services of the ancient Church—the Psalmody, or, in other words, the Canonical Hours. From the striking account given by the so-called Silvia,[849] we can see how important these services were and what a prominent position they occupied in the worship of the Church. “Every day, in the early morning, the doors of the church were opened, and all the monks and nuns, as well as many of the laity, assembled, and until sunrise, sing hymns and psalms, in alternate choirs, along with the antiphons and prayers. About sunrise they begin to say the ‘matutinas ymnos.’ The bishop arrives with the clergy and sings the prayer within the chancel. Then he comes forth and blesses the people one by one. Et sic fit missa,” i.e. so the service ends, which comprised Nocturns, Lauds, and Prime, as they would now be called. The same ceremonies were observed at the Little Hours which followed later. Vespers were performed with more ceremony; at the conclusion the deacon directed the faithful to bow their heads in order to receive the bishop’s blessing. Again the pilgrim ends her description with the words, “Et sic fit missa.”