MISERERE. The seat of a stall, so contrived as to turn up and down, according as it is wanted as a support in long standing, or as a seat. Misereres are almost always carved, and often very richly; more often, too, than any other part of the wood-work, with grotesques.
MISSAL. (See Mass.) In the Romish Church, a book containing the services of the mass for the various days of the year. In the ancient Church, the several parts of Divine service were arranged in distinct books. Thus the collects and the invariable portion of the Communion Office formed the book called the Sacramentary. The lessons from the Old and New Testaments constituted the Lectionary, and the Gospels made another volume, with the title of Evangelistarium. The Antiphonary consisted of anthems, &c. designed for chanting.
About the eleventh or twelfth century it was found convenient, generally, to unite these books, and the volume obtained the name of the Complete or Plenary Missal, or Book of Missæ. Of this description were almost all the liturgical books of the Western Churches, and the arrangement is still preserved in our own.—Palmer’s Origines Liturgicæ.
MISSION. A power or commission to preach the gospel. Thus our blessed Lord gave his disciples and their successors the bishops their mission, when he said, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
It certainly is essential that the true ministers of God should be able to prove that they have not only the power, but the right, of performing sacred offices. There is an evident difference between these things, as may be seen by the following cases. If a regularly ordained priest should celebrate the eucharist in the church of another, contrary to the will of that person and of the bishop, he would have the power of consecrating the eucharist, it actually would be consecrated; but he would not have the right of consecrating; or, in other words, he would not have mission for that act. If a bishop should enter the diocese of another bishop, and, contrary to his will, ordain one of his deacons to the priesthood, the intruding bishop would have the power, but not the right, of ordaining; he would have no mission for such an act.
In fact, mission fails in all schismatical, heretical, and uncanonical acts, because God cannot have given any man a right to act in opposition to those laws which he himself has enacted, or to those which the apostles and their successors have instituted, for the orderly and peaceable regulation of the Church: he “is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints” (1 Cor. xiv. 33); and yet, were he to commission his ministers to exercise their offices in whatever places and circumstances they pleased, confusion and division without end must be the inevitable result.
Mission can only be given for acts in accordance with the Divine and ecclesiastical laws, the latter of which derive their authority from the former; and it is conferred by valid ordination. It would be easy to prove this in several ways; but it is enough at present to say, that no other method can be pointed out by which mission is given. Should the ordination be valid, and yet uncanonical, mission does not take effect until the suspension imposed by the canons on the person ordained is in some lawful manner removed.
Mr. Palmer, from whom the above remarks are taken, shows, in his Origines Liturgicæ, that the English bishops and clergy alone have mission in England.
MISSIONARY. A clergyman, whether bishop, priest, or deacon, deputed or sent out by ecclesiastical authority, to preach the gospel, and exercise his other functions, in places where the Church has hitherto been unknown, or is in the infancy of its establishment.
MITRE. The episcopal coronet. From Eusebius it seems that St. John wore an ornament which many have considered to be a mitre (φέταλον).