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 to the 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 an Alleluia, 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 “broke bread 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 which is unknown to us, was not termed a mass (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 Latin missa, from mittere, 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.