For the Holy Communion, they had the Missal; including (1) the Gradual, which was an Antiphoner, or book of the musical parts of the Service; (2) the Lectionary, or book of the Epistles; (3) the Evangelistarium, or book of the Gospels; and (4) the Sacramentary. The Sacramentary contained, amongst other things, the Collects.
We have already referred to the combination and simplification of the
Breviary Services, which have given us our Morning and Evening Prayer.
We must now observe that many of our Collects come from the
Sacramentaries.
Three celebrated Sacramentaries.
Three of the Sacramentaries deserve here special mention.
I. Gregory the Great, who was Pope of Rome from 590 to 604, was the author of one of them. The English Church owes him gratitude for sending missionaries to this country at a time when the older British Church was deficient in missionary zeal: and we must here notice our debt to him for a number of our best-known collects, as well as other improvements in the Services. Canon Bright gives a list of 32 or 33 taken from Gregory's Book. Some of them may perhaps have been added after Gregory's time; for it is often difficult to distinguish between the original passages of an ancient Service-book and the additions which were quickly made to it.
Twenty-eight Collects in that list are in our book amongst the Epistles and Gospels. Besides these there are: one in the Baptism Service—Almighty and {136} immortal God: the first part of We humbly beseech thee in the Litany: O God, whose nature and property in the Occasional Prayers: Prevent us, O Lord at the end of the Communion Service.
II. The Sacramentary of Gelasius (who was Pope of Rome 492 to 496) had provided much material which Gregory adopted. From this ancient source we have our Second Collect, for Peace in the Morning Service; and the Third Collect, for Grace: the Second Collect, for Peace in the Evening Service: the Third Collect, for Aid: the Collect for the Clergy and People: Assist us mercifully, at the end of the Communion Service: the Confirmation Collect, Almighty and everlasting God: a Collect in the Visitation Service: O Lord we beseech thee, in the Commination: and 21 of those which are placed with the Epistles and Gospels.
III. We go back still further for seven of the Sunday Collects, which are taken from the Sacramentary of Leo the Great (Pope of Rome, 440 to 461).
Thus, five-sixths of our Sunday Collects are from these three Service-books: although we do not purpose here to say much of the Collects used in the Communion Service, and ranking as the "First Collects" of Morning and Evening Prayer, we think it useful to note their derivation from the 5th and 6th centuries. Even those which are not so derived owe their form and manner to the same models.
This last remark applies to all the prayers which have the Collect form. We may suppose that, in the years which preceded Leo the Great, the Collects were being made. Perhaps the dignity of their {137} diction grew by the survival of the simplest and best; by the falling away of superfluous words; and of words of effort: in any case the absence of small auxiliary words, in Latin sentences, contributed much to their tone of modest dependence on God, as well as to their poetic force.