[Sidenote: The Roman mass.]
During the fifth and sixth centuries it would seem that the Roman mass, the rite which has slowly superseded the local forms of service in most parts of Europe, was undergoing the modifications which brought it to the stereotyped form it now has. The severe, terse, practical nature of the liturgy, in words, ritual, ceremonial, which is so characteristic of the Roman nature, was being altered by the admixture of other elements. This was especially the case, it is said, in France and Germany, during the ninth century. Earlier changes had been made by Gregory the Great, partly from Eastern sources. [Sidenote: The fifth century.] At the middle of the fifth century the rite, in words and action alike, was a simple one. The choir sang an introit, the priest a collect, epistle and gospel were read, and a psalm was sung: the gifts were offered, the prayer or "preface" of the day was followed by the Sanctus, as in the East, and then came the Canon or actual Consecration. After this was the Lord's Prayer, communion of priests, clergy and people, a psalm and a collect and the end. The ceremonial was equally simple, and was connected almost exclusively with the entrance of the celebrant and his ministers, at which incense was used, and with the reading of the gospel, where also lights and incense were prominent. All else was simple and of dignified reticence. "Mystery never flourished in the clear Roman atmosphere, and symbolism was no product of the Roman religious mind. Christian symbolism is not of pure Roman birth, not a native product of the {182} Roman spirit." [1] This reticent character is most clearly found in the Gregorian missal, which has been believed to represent the period of Gregory the Great. More probably the assertion of John the Deacon that Gregory revised the Gelasian Sacramentary is an error, and what is called the Gregorian Sacramentary is simply the book which was sent by Pope Hadrian I. to Charles I. between 784 and 791. But that S. Gregory did make certain alterations is certain. They were three in the Liturgy, two in the ceremonial of the mass. The Alleluia was ordered to be more frequently chanted than before; and we find it used outside the Easter season almost immediately after this by S. Augustine in England. He added words to the "Hanc igitur" in the Canon of the mass, praying for peace and inclusion in the number of the elect. He inserted the Lord's Prayer immediately after the Canon. He also forbade the deacons to sing any of the mass except the gospel and the subdeacons to wear chasubles at the altar.
[Sidenote: The eighth century.]
It is thought that the great change, which made the Roman mass into the elaborate rite it became, is due to the influence, at the end of the eighth century, of Charles the Great, who with the determination of a ruler and the interest of a liturgiologist made one rite to be observed throughout his dominions, but enriched the Gregorian book with details and ceremonies derived from uses already common in France. The study of liturgies became common in the ninth century, and in Gaul additions were made to the book sent by Pope Hadrian {183} to Charles the Great, which were finally accepted throughout the greater part of Italy, the Ambrosian rite in the province of Milan remaining different throughout the changes.
It is natural that English readers should desire to know more particularly of the first English Christian worship. How did the Church's worship first begin in our own land?
[Sidenote: The rites of the Western isles.]
No doubt the Christians who received conversion during the Roman occupation of Britain, and those of Ireland who were won by the preaching of S. Patrick, worshipped according to the same rite as the churches of Spain or the churches of Gaul, following that use which survived in Spain generally till the eleventh century and in Gaul till the ninth. Gildas, who wrote during the stress of the conquest of the Christian Brythons by the heathen English, mentions one custom which undoubtedly was Gallican, and which is preserved in the Gelasian Sacramentary and the Missale Francorum, the one a Roman collection which contains Gallican uses, the other a Gallican rite. It is that of anointing the hands of priests, and perhaps deacons, in ordination, and the custom was kept up after the conversion of the English, at least in some parts of England in the tenth and eleventh centuries. But the influence of the British Church was slight. It is of more interest to us to know what was the first worship offered in this land by those who were to convert our own forefathers.
Bede tells us how first Augustine prayed when he came before the heathen king of Kent. Some days after their landing Aethelbert received the monks from {184} Rome. [Sidenote: S. Augustine in Kent.] They had tarried, it seems probable, under the walls of the old Roman fortress of Richborough. They had waited, in prayer and patience, for the beginning of their Mission. It was on prayer that they still depended when they were summoned before the king. On a ridge of rocks overlooking the sea sat Aethelbert and his gesiths, and watched the band of some forty men draw near. Slowly they came, and the strange sound of the Church's music was wafted to the ears of the heathen company as they drew near. Before them was borne a tall silver cross, and a banner which displayed the pictured image of the Saviour Lord,
The Cross preceding Him who floats in air,
The pictured Saviour.
S. Gregory, the great pope who had sent the mission, who had himself long dwelt at the court of the emperors in Constantinople, had learnt the value of icons, of sacred pictures, as texts for an appeal, or as stimulants to devotion. Those who cannot read, he said, should be taught by pictures, but pictures are valuable only because they point to Him whom we adore as incarnate, crucified, sitting at the right hand of God. As they came, they sang, and Bede says: "they sang litanies, entreating the Lord for their own salvation and that of those for whom and to whom they came." The litany ended when they came to the king, and then Augustine preached the word. He declared, says an old English writer of later days, "how the merciful Saviour with His own sufferings redeemed their guilty world, and opened an entrance into the kingdom of heaven to all faithful men."