2. Gallican Liturgy.—This was the ancient and national liturgy of the church in France till the commencement of the 9th century, when it was suppressed by order of Charlemagne, who directed the Roman missal to be everywhere substituted in its place. All traces of it seemed for some time to have been lost until three Gallican sacramentaries were discovered and published by Thomasius in 1680 under the titles of Missale Gothicum, Missale Gallicum and Missale Francorum, and a fourth was discovered and published by Mabillon in 1687 under the title of Missale Gallicanum. Fragmentary discoveries have been made since. Mone discovered fragments of eleven Gallican masses and published them at Carlsruhe in 1850. Other fragments from the library at St Gall have been published by Bunsen (Analecta Ante-Nicaena, iii. 263-266), and from the Ambrosian library at Milan by Cardinal Mai (Scriptt. Vet. Vat. Coll. iii. 2. 247). A single page was discovered in Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, published in Zeitschrift für Kath. Theologie, vi. 370.
These documents, illustrated by early Gallican canons, and by allusions in the writings of Sulpicius Severus, Caesarius of Arles, Gregory of Tours, Germanus of Paris and other authors, enable us to reconstruct the greater part of this liturgy. The previously enumerated signs of Eastern origin and influence are found here as well as in the Mozarabic liturgy, together with certain other more or less minute peculiarities, which would be of interest to professed liturgiologists, but which we must not pause to specify here. They are the origin of the Ephesine theory that the Gallican liturgy was introduced into use by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons (c. 130-200) who had learned it in the East from St Polycarp, the disciple of the apostle St John.
3. Ambrosian Liturgy.—Considerable variety of opinion has existed among liturgical writers as to the proper classification of the “Ambrosian” or “Milanese” liturgy. If we are to accept it in its present form and to make the present position of the great intercession for quick and dead the test of its genus, then we must classify it as “Petrine” and consider it as a branch of the Roman family. If, on the other hand, we consider the important variations from the Roman liturgy which yet exist, and the traces of still more marked variation which confront us in the older printed and MS. copies of the Ambrosian rite, we shall detect in it an original member of the Hispano-Gallican group of liturgies, which for centuries underwent a gradual but ever-increasing assimilation to Rome. We know this as a matter of history, as well as a matter of inference from changes in the text itself. Charlemagne adopted the same policy towards the Milanese as towards the Gallican church. He carried off all the Ambrosian church books which he could obtain, with the view of substituting Roman books in their place, but the completion of his intentions failed, partly through the attachment of the Lombards to their own rites, partly through the intercession of a Gallican bishop named Eugenius (Mabillon, Mus. Ital. tom. i. Pars. ii. p. 106). It has been asserted by Joseph Vicecomes that this is an originally independent liturgy drawn up by St Barnabas, who first preached the Gospel at Milan (De Missae Rit. 1 capp. xi. xii.), and this tradition is preserved in the title and proper preface for St Barnabas Day in the Ambrosian missal (Pamelius, Liturgicon, i. 385, 386), but it has never been proved.
We can trace the following points in which the Ambrosian differs from the Roman liturgy, many of them exhibiting traces of Eastern influence. Some of them are no longer found in recent Ambrosian missals and only survive in earlier MSS. such as those published by Pamelius (Liturgicon, tom. i. p. 293), Muratori (Lit. Rom. Vet. i. 132) and Ceriani (in his edition, 1881, of an ancient MS. at Milan). (a) The prayer entitled “oratio super sindonem” corresponding to the prayer after the spreading of the corporal; (b) the proclamation of silence by the deacon before the epistle; (c) the litanies said after the Ingressa (Introit) on Sundays in Lent, closely resembling the Greek Ektené; (d) varying forms of introduction to the Lord’s Prayer, in Coena Domini (Ceriani p. 116) in Pascha (Ib. p. 129); (e) the presence of passages in the prayer of consecration which are not part of the Roman canon and one of which at least corresponds in import and position though not in words to the Greek Invocation: Tuum vero, est, omnipotens Pater, mittere, &c. (Ib. p. 116); (f) the survival of a distinctly Gallican formula of consecration in the Post-sanctus “in Sabbato Sancto.” Vere sanctus, vere benedictus Dominus noster, &c. (Ib. p. 125); (g) the varying nomenclature of the Sundays after Pentecost; (h) the position of the fraction or ritual breaking of bread before the Lord’s Prayer; (i) the omission of the second oblation after the words of institution (Muratori, Lit. Rom. Vet. i. 133); (k) a third lection or Prophetia from the Old Testament preceding the epistle and gospel; (l) the lay offering of the oblations and the formulae accompanying their reception (Pamelius, Liturgicon, i. 297); (m) the position of the ablution of the hands in the middle of the canon just before the words of institution; (n) the position of the “oratio super populum,” which corresponds in matter but not in name to the collect for the day, before the Gloria in Excelsis.
4. Celtic Liturgy.—We postpone the consideration of this liturgy till after we have treated of the next main group.
VI. The Roman Rite (St Peter).—There is only one liturgy to be enumerated under this group, viz. the present liturgy of the Church of Rome, which, though originally local in character and circumscribed in use, has come to be nearly co-extensive with the Roman Catholic Church, sometimes superseding earlier national liturgies, as in Gaul and Spain, sometimes incorporating more or less of the ancient ritual of a country into itself and producing from such incorporation a sub-class of distinct Uses, as in England, France and elsewhere. Even these subordinate Uses have for the most part become, or are rapidly becoming, obsolete.
The date, origin and early history of the Roman liturgy are obscure. The first Christians at Rome were a Greek-speaking community, and their liturgy must have been Greek, and is possibly represented in the so-called Clementine liturgy. But the date when such a state of things ceased, when and by whom the present Latin liturgy was composed, whether it is an original composition, or, as its structure seems to imply, a survival of some intermediate form of liturgy—all these are questions which are waiting for solution.
One MS. exists which has been claimed to represent the Roman liturgy as it existed in the time of Leo I., 440-461. It was discovered at Verona by Bianchini in 1735 and assigned by him to the 8th century and published under the title of Sacramentarium Leonianum; but this title was from the first conjectural, and is in the teeth of the internal evidence which the MS. itself affords. The question is discussed at some length by Muratori (Lit. Rom. Vet. tom. i. cap. i. col. 16). Assemani published it under the title of Sacramentarium Veronense in tom. vi. of his Codex Liturg. Eccles. Univ.
A MS. of the 7th or 8th century was found at Rome by Thomasius and published by him in 1680 under the title of Sacramentarium Gelasianum. But it was written in France and is certainly not a pure Gelasian codex; and although there is historical evidence of Pope Gelasius I. (492-496) having made some changes in the Roman liturgy, and although MSS. have been published by Gerbertus and others, claiming the title of Gelasian, we neither have nor are likely to have genuine and contemporary MS. evidence of the real state of the liturgy in that pope’s time. The most modern and the best edition of the Gelasian Sacramentary is that by H. A. Wilson (Oxford, 1894).