St. Francis: Where Reform Begins

The courtyard of the Lateran Cathedral is unassuming, little more than an expanse of grass and brick stretching fifty yards in each direction. To the west is the baroque facade to the Cathedral, to the north is the apse of the Great Hall of the original Lateran Palace, built before the age of Constantine and which held five general councils during the Middle Ages. Like all medieval piazzas and squares, the courtyard became a general market by day and a public forum by night; from the middle of the first millennium until about 1000, the citizens of Rome would attend the funeral of the recently deceased pope and immediately elect his succession by popular acclamation. It was here in 1210 that a Roman ambulating through the day's vegetable, fish, and meat offerings might happen upon a barefooted man dressed in sackcloth preaching a sermon to pigs.

The early life of Saint Francis of Assisi took place during an unimpressive spiritual point in Church history. Three crusades had been waged; the archbishop of Constantinople formally rebuked his Communion with Rome; Saladin had retaken Jerusalem; and aside from Innocent III, the Roman Pontiffs generally spent their time helplessly trying to convince the kings of Europe to undertake another expedition to the Holy Land while the cardinals inelegantly juggled the concerns of the foreign masters. And a young ex-soldier named Giovanni Pietro "Francesco" di Bernardone seemed happily unmoved by any of it.

Francis was moved by the detachment of living in poverty, stripped of the elegant clothing his father's business, silk trading, afforded him. Contrariwise to Brother Sun, Sister Moon Francis did not convert his living standard to Christ in an instant, but after the experience of begging for food while a pilgrim. He cultivated a life in the world and apart from its passions with friends he knew for years. In 1205 he received a vision commissioning him to "rebuild the Church." As a man who understood the parochial nature of the Church, he and his beggar-brethren he gathered to himself restored the downtrodden church of San Damiano. It was only after going to Rome five years later that this vision was understood more broadly.

Francis attracted a substantial following to his vagrant, mendicant manner of living and praying. Poorly dressed and probably smelling quite rancid, he made his way to Rome to ask Innocent III to bless his nascent order. He walked through the markets and trading posts in the Lateran square, through the Constantinian basilica, to the apse where a short man from Segni, ornamented in cope and crown, held court. The pope beholding Francis's deportment and hearing him speak incongruously told the visitor from Assisi to "save [his] sermons for the pigs." After finishing court Pope Innocent walked through the courtyard to enter the then-larger Lateran Palace only to see the man he ejected in fact preaching to the pigs as he had asked. Innocent arranged for Francis to pay another visit the following day, which was preceded by the now renown dream in which the Pontiff saw Francis bolstering the collapsing Lateran.

The Minorites proliferated as men sought to be like Francis, although the desire to be like Francis rather than follow his way, as was normally the case among founders of orders, proved to be a lasting defect of his following. Francis was ordained to the diaconate so he could lawfully read the Gospel and preach to the faithful in churches. He even returned to battle, so to speak, in preaching to Malik al-Kamil, the sultan, in hopes that he would convert and end the Crusades.

At the end of his life Francis became the first stigmatist, something not lost on the people of the age, whose devotion to the sufferings of Christ (cf. Five Wounds devotion) contrasted with the distance at which prelates lived from people. Bishops may well have been selected among learned monks, but they were just as often selected among second born gentry. In suffering with Christ Francis credibly touched the faithful and encouraged reform where most clergy, even the good, failed. And in begging with his friends and rebuilding a local parish he aided in rebuilding the broader Church. And today he is honored in Rome, not at the tomb of Saint Peter, now the symbolic center of the Church, but in the head local Church in Rome, the Lateran Cathedral, where in the north side stands a chapel to the Saint. It is baroque, but quite plain; its pediment and porticos merely meant to frame images of Francis dying and of the Five Wounds of Christ which Francis shared.

Medieval Rome: Forgotten Glory?

Ancient Rome was the capital of the known and civilized world. Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire recalls the power and honor due to the City at the height of her Imperial powers:

"In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this, and of the two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire; and afterwards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall; a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth."

Gibbon was quite gifted with adjectives. In the modern day, scholars and tourists alike remember and glorify Renaissance and baroque Rome for its humanism, its revival of painting and sculpture, its place at the center of emerging nationalistic politics, and for its romantic ambiance. This is the Rome of Bernini, Michelangelo, Sixtus V, and Urban VIII. One would think Rome was a city in eternal strife, earmarked at opposite of its history with two periods of adroit artistic and political vibrancy. The understanding of Rome is natural, intuitive, grounded in artistic history and a deep appreciation for the ancient City. It is also completely and utterly wrong.

Rome, aside from these two epochs, also enjoyed a period of religious revival, prosperity, and recovery of self-identity during the high Middle Ages. Renaissance Rome sprung forth from the fountainhead of medieval Rome, not from a vacuum of dark illiteracy and religious ignorance.

Rome entered a truly dark age after the sackings and raids of the fifth century, the abandonment by the Byzantine empire, and the waves of plague which sent most of the still-living populace into the countryside. Rule of the city devolved to the Pope, known until Pius IX as the "Lord Pope," a title used even within the Magna Carta. A form of Senate continued to run the daily, micro-level affairs of the City and the old families held some level of authority, but the Popes' spiritual and administrative power over the churches meant that the Bishop of Rome was the Lord of Rome. Unfortunately, [St] Leo III crowned Charlemagne and the various families of Italy sought the papacy so they could play king-maker and live off papal beneficences. In the 9th century, the Mohammadans sacked Rome and ravaged St. Peter's Basilica. The papacy entered its absolute nadir, when the Bishops of Rome descended from Marozia—mistress of the murderous Pope Sergius III. Indeed, six popes (John XI, John XII, Benedict VII, John XIX, Benedict VIII, and Benedict IX) came from her line, with a few elderly men functioning as placeholders in between, murdered if they lived too long.

Finally, the Gregorian reforms emancipated Rome from central Italian politics and the un-Holy Frankish Clan Holy Roman Empire. What emerged was a Rome revived in continuity with its past, aware of its present, and vivacious in faith.

Ancient peoples were not so introspective and concerned with documenting their own ways as we are today. One is often struck by the absence of ritual descriptions or theological treatises on non-Scholastic during this age. The ancient and medieval Christians expressed what they believed in what they did, not in word alone. They manifested their Roman tradition of faith in their church and secular architecture, as well as in their liturgical and artistic endeavors.

Roman art during the Middle Ages derived from the older Roman mosaic tradition. While the Orthodox Greek tradition had long ago transitioned into painted, "written" icons, less and less realistic in their appearance, the Romans, a people averse to change and innovation in religious matters, kept their mosaic tradition and even imported it into new places. The below mosaic outside of Santa Maria in Trastevere looks quite ancient, but in fact dates to the 12th century.

source: wikipedia

Unlike the Norman French and English, who built their new churches along the soaring vertical lines of gothic pillars and arches, the Roman people conscientiously kept in continuity with their received identity and tradition in all matters, especially architecture.

Between 1198 and 1216, one of the great men of the Middle Ages, Lothar Segni, sat atop Peter's chair. Keeping with his own doctrine of the spiritual power's place over the temporal power, he refitted the Lateran palace for the government of the Church and as an example to the world. Sadly, few if any records or reconstructions of the ancient Lateran palace exist for us today. Dante called the Lateran palace a place "above all earthly things." Below are two rare representations of what the palace and adjoining cathedral looked like prior to the tearing down of the palace and the addition of a baroque facade on the Archbasilica.

source: mmdtkw.org

source: augustineofcanterbury.org

These views are from the north, not the front entrance to the cathedral, which is to the east. The Lateran palace, built by the Lateran family and given to the popes by Constantine, encompassed a large courtyard—a feature of Roman palatial architecture imitated with the building of the Apostolic palace adjacent to St. Peter's basilica and the new Lateran palace. Until the 9th century or so, the popes were elected by the people of Rome in the field in front of the cathedral. Often violence would break out and whoever won control of the Lateran complex became pope. This author once recalls reading about a victor having difficulty convincing the mob to spare his opponent's life. Next to the courtyard, at the upper left of the above picture, was the Triclinium of Leo III where Innocent III held the fourth Council of the Lateran. This remarkable hall was torn down, its former foundations replaced by roads. Its apse still stands tall in memorial to its previous function.

source: wikipedia.org

The revival of education in France and trade with the East incited by the Crusades brought Rome back to significance in the intellectual and economic realms, attracting students seeking theological knowledge and merchants looking for middle-points in their routes of trade between the Continent and the Eastern Mediterranean. The Colosseum returned to use after half a millennium of dormancy as an open market and, what we would now call, an industrial park.

The Colosseum during the Middle Ages
source: wikipedia

Above all, the Romans still realized that they were the ancient City that ruled the world and that they were now, without contradiction, the City that ruled the Christian world. As such, Rome revived many of its more catholic Catholic features. The early praxis of reading the lessons of the Mass and Office in both Greek and Latin returned, as did use of the stational churches by the Lord Pope on great feasts. The ancient, un-gallicanized rite of Mass remained in use by the pope one day a year on the feast of St. Peter's Chair in Rome. This ancient use involved numerous deacons and subdeacons, long psalms instead of simple chants, no offertory or silent prayers, a sung Canon, and concelebration. The Lateran and Vatican basilicas also retained the ancient Divine Office, which uses the same orations, antiphons, and psalms as the pre-Pius X Office, but sans introductory rites, no hymns, and a more communal ritual. Moreover, the canons recited the Offices of the Dead, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and of All Saints on ferial days per annum and provided pastoral care to the great many pilgrims. Innocent III himself was a canon of the Petrine basilica before his election and familiar with the observances. These rites remained in use until Franciscan pope Nicholas III squashed everything not done in the Franciscan Order. The Byzantine monastery in Rome also enjoyed a resurgence, with no less that six hundred monks and priests in residence in the 12th and 13th centuries. This also suggests that the Rome-Constantinople schism was not taken as seriously during this period as it would be after 1453. The clergy and people of Rome were the enemies of streamlining. Far from assuming the Church required one way of celebrating Mass, as the capital of Catholicism, they welcomed the catholicity of rites practiced within the City.

Medieval Rome was not the superpower ancient Rome was, nor was it the artistic center baroque Rome would be. But it was once again alive and acting as the center of the Christian world. Perhaps this is why modern historians are unable to see that the period between the Gregorian reform and the Avignon papacy was a glorious one, because they cannot understand how Christianity can be the lifeblood of a people.

Rossellino's proposal for the new St. Peter's basilica
source: studybluecom

Then came the Renaissance. Much would have to be lost and rebuilt because of the neglect of the popes while they lived in Avignon. St. Peter's basilica is particularly flagrant example of the paradigm shift. The roof on the old basilica was wood needed regular replacement, something ignored during those dark French years. As a result, the roof collapsed, fires occasioned the church, as one of the walls warped out by six feet. The basilica, built 1,100 years earlier, was beyond saving. Bernardo Rossellino proposed a new basilica built in the same style and with the same features as the old church, only with longer transepts to accommodate devotions and a longer choir for the new, medieval choir praxis. His proposal was canned by Julius II, who wanted a grand new church to house his tomb. Bramante began the construction of the modern basilica, a significant departure in style and outlook from the previous building. With the new basilica, Pope Julius baptized Rome into the Renaissance and gave precedent for a severe remodeling of many churches of the City along new lines. Rome became a center of baroquerie and its old identity began to fade. Lex supplicandi legem statuat credendi.

The old basilica, along with Cluny and St Paul outside of the Wall, the largest church in the world, is demolished
and covered with the new basilica.

Medieval Rome is gone, but we ought not forget how wonderful a Catholic city it was nor should we neglect its example as a city conscientiously dedicated to God.

Ancient Roman Office

Herein we shall have a very brief history and synopsis of the ancient Roman Divine Office, which was preserved into the thirteenth century in the major Papal basilicas of Rome until Pope Nicholas III, a Franciscan, imposed the books the Franciscans used, meaning the books of the Roman Curia. This is fitting, given that a Franciscan pope caused liturgical trouble in the Church of Rome and now today the pope of Rome causes liturgical trouble in a Franciscan order! First, we should endeavor to understand how the idea of singing the psalms and lessons according to the hour of the day came about in the first place.

The general consensus, according to Pierre Batiffol a century ago, is that a vigil of prayer preceded the celebration of Mass/Divine Liturgy in churches every Sunday. The origin of this practice is itself obscure. Some theorized that Christians merely extended the Paschal Vigil, what St. Augustine of Hippo called the "mother of all vigils," throughout the year. As one might surmise from the etymological origin, vigilare, a vigil is a watch of prayer before something important, in this case the Eucharist of Sunday, the Lord's day. St. Jerome supposes that the evening vigil reflects the Apostolic expectation of the return of Christ, itself an anti-type to the evening exodus and liberation of God's people, the Israelites, from Egypt (Commentary on Matthew 4).

source: newbyzantines.net

Some like Batiffol expect the vigil on Sunday began at cockcrow, while some others, less popular, might sympathize with the medieval practice of beginning the vigil at midnight. The vigil itself varied drastically from place to place, but we can say that it involved the reading of the psalms, of other holy books (remember the Canon of Scripture was not codified until the end of the fourth century, so we cannot just assume they were "reading the Bible"), and some sort of responsorial prayers—adopted from the Jewish practice of chanting an invocation to which the people would respond with a doxology such as Amen. The Gloria Patri.... is a sort of prayer ending of this variety, albeit used for the psalms rather than for the more variable prayers. The psalms appear to have been recited or chanted by a single reader or cantor in a monotone. St. Athanasius in the fourth century ordered readers to fluctuate the tones of their voices for the benefit of the laity in attendance. Ss. Athanasius and Augustine attest to deacons chanting the psalms alone, which persists in the choral practices of the Byzantine rite and which remained in various usages of the Roman rite—such as Good Friday in the Lyonese use—until the twentieth century. Between the verses of the psalm the choir would chant antiphons, which became increasingly elaborate in time, giving rise to a "responsorial psalm" (the reformers of the twentieth century misread this as a popular part of the liturgy which died off in a fit of clericalism and "restored" it in the Pauline Mass; the responsorial psalm was a clerical part from the beginning). This practice originates not in Rome, but in Antioch. St. John Chrysostom brought it to Constantinople, where it became popular and eventually traveled from the new capital in Asia Minor to the old capital in Milan. Rome, as we shall see constantly, was very slow and wary in adopting this practice, only taking on choral responsorial chant in the fifth century, a century after monastic-influenced Africa and Byzantium.

St. Lawrence outside the Walls
source: penitens.blogspot.com

Eventually vigils became more and more common. The Church in Constantinople had a vigil every single night. In contrast, St. Jerome remarks, Rome held the vigils only on Sundays and the nights anterior to great feasts. Here we see a very local part of Rome's liturgy. The idea of a "stational church" originates in the vigil. For feasts of local martyrs and saints the vigil was in ancient times held at the cemetery were said saint was buried, or at least in a proximate house. When churches were constructed they were built on the sites of these cemeteries or burial spaces, St. Peter's basilica being the most famous example of this. The vigil then would not take place in every church of Rome, but the Pope and the clergy of the stational church, perhaps St. Lawrence outside the Walls on the night between August 9th and 10th, would hold the vigil and the following Mass in that particular church. Rome eventually came to the practice of the rest of Christendom and had daily vigils, as St. Benedict instructs other monks to observe in his Rule (13).

Enough about the timing and frequency of the vigil. What was the vigil? The vigil consisted of three parts: an evening service, a night time service, and a morning service, which are equivalent to Vespers, Mattins, and Lauds today. This is not very difficult to see in the names within the services. Vespers, from vesperae, meaning shadows or darkness. Mattins, from matutinus or "early," is comprised of nocturns, from the word nocte or "night." And Lauds is from Laudate, the opening word of two of the three integral psalms in the pre-1911 psalter. Easy! Vespers might begin around 4PM in the presence of the bishop, who would leave and rejoin the congregation later in the night, or early in the morning if you will, for Mattins. Lauds became seen as so important during the latter half of the first millennium the presiding cleric would often, depending on the time of year, signal all present to cease Mattins and head straight into Lauds the moment the light of the Sun entered the church.

Monks of Bethelehem
source: news.ripley.za.net

Outside of Rome, in the mid first millennium, we see a rising tension between the secular clergy and monks, who are often imposing their psalmody on parishes to the annoyance of the local bishops. Yet there developed, in Rome and abroad, a middle ground between hermetical monks and the regular laity. Since the age of martyrdom was more or less over, the very devout, often celibate or virgin, took to singing psalms together in community during the daytime without the presence of a cleric. Imitating the Jewish practice of observing the daytime hours, they prayed at the third, sixth, and ninth hours—terce, sext, and none. Parts of these daytime hours as practiced in ancient times remains in the unreformed Holy Week as it existed before St. Pius X tinkered with the psalter and made the little hours variable. The psalms did not have "doubled" antiphons nor did they have hymns nor introductory rites. They were simply sung beginning with the sign of the Cross and ending with some prayers.

Yet at late as the sixth century the little hours of the devout laity were just that, for the devout laity and not part of the "Office." The hours of Prime and Compline came last, in the fourth century among hermetical monks of Bethlehem. The leaders of monastic communities noticed that the monks had far too much free time to sin between the beginning of the vigil with vespers and Mattins later in the night, and between Lauds and Terce, so they imposed prayers to be sung during those period. For this reason we often call Prime  and Compline "chapter" hours, hours sung by the monks in common outside of a liturgical setting. One wonders why the reformers axed Prime on the false grounds that it was a mistaken repeat of Lauds but kept Compline as "night prayer" as though it was somehow more authentic. As with Lauds, the psalmody chosen for Compline reflected its character, in this case nocturnal. The lingering darkness and uncertainty of night made psalm 90, which speaks of the Lord encompassing us in His shoulders, a source of constant succor.

Back to the Roman vigil. Even in the time of St. Jerome in the late fourth century Rome still sang psalms straight through, without a "choir" concept we have today. Within a century or so we have antiphons sung in between the verses of psalms by the choir, while a deacon or subdeacon chants the psalm itself. There are lessons at Mattins, three from Pascha until late September, and then four lessons from late September until Pascha, when the night is longer. The lessons could be taken from any number of sources according to the parish or monastery's means. Whatever Scripture was available might be read, such as an Old Testament book or a Pauline epistle. The reading was not very exact in length and would end whenever the presiding cleric had heard enough. These readings could be quite long. The Abbey of Cluny, full of very eccentric monks, boasted of restoring the ancient Roman lesson length to the point where they could read the entire book of Genesis at Mattins in just a week; certain monks were ordered to walk the choir stalls and wake any others who had fallen asleep during the onerous readings.

Lessons started to come from non-Scriptural sources as well. St. Gregory the Great recommends that at Mattins his friend, Marinianus, ought to read the pope's commentaries on the psalms at Mattins rather than his writings on Job.

We can also guess that by this time the structure of the Office had become more or less set. Mattins would have three or four lessons on a ferial day and nine on a feast day, with twelve variable psalms on a feria and nine on a feast. The offices began with the sign of the Cross and psalm 69 followed by a doxology and then the proper psalmody of the day. Finding this too long, the Curia eliminated psalm 69 but kept two lines of it and the doxology at the end (Deus in adiutorium.... Domine ad adiuvandum.... Gloria Patri....). In the first half of the first millennium the readings were done in a ferial tone by the senior-most clergy, a place of honor. By the seventh century ornate Roman chant had become so developed that children often sang the lessons as liturgical ministers. Popes Leo II, Benedict II, and Sergius I entered the clerical life as choir boys who read at Mattins.

Batiffol at this point draws attention to an interesting phenomenon: without Imperial aid, churches in Gaul, the Frankish kingdom, and even England sought to imitate the Roman Office practiced at the Lateran Cathedral and St. Peter's basilica. Perhaps one source of variation between the Roman rite and local uses was the limited resources available for transmission, beyond basics like the psalter. Antiphons with their ornate chants were bound in a separate book, as were the Scriptural lessons (perhaps several book). Even if the psalter and texts could be carried from Rome to York the tones of the psalms and the ceremonies surrounding the Office would inevitably vary.

Also unique to Rome were the ornate and long responses after the lessons at Mattins, often two or three lines long. They are usually attributed to St. Gregory I, but are more likely the collective work of Popes centuries before and a century after Gregory the Great. The responses at Mattins, and antiphons for the rest of the Office, become more or less fixed by the eighth century in St. Peter's basilica, the main pilgrimage destination and liturgical envy of Europe. One contribution Gregory the Great did certainly make to the development of chant was his establishment of monasteries at the major churches of Rome. St. Peter's basilica had no less than three monasteries in the first millennium. Monasteries were eventually supplanted by chapters of canons, but their musical influence endured.

At this point it is worth saying something about the ceremonies surrounding the main hours in the ancient Office. The Pope would enter the church in a chasuble—no choir dress and copes were more like rain coats at this time—and go through the ceremonies of an episcopal visit; he would then preside from his throne behind the altar, facing the people, surrounded by the canons or monks of the church in order of seniority, with hundreds of candles lit nearby; cantors, deacons and subdeacons, would take their place at ambos on either side of the altar and a lecturn would be installed for the reading of the lessons, either facing the altar from the apse or facing the altar and Pope from the opposite side. The nature of the ceremonies was a balance of congregational and monastic, whereby clerics performed the liturgy, but directed the more didactic parts of it to the laity.

The Office of St. Peter's took on a special importance to Europe and became the golden standard of Roman liturgy. As Msgr. Batiffol reminds us, Benedict Biscop, teacher of St. Bede the Venerable, managed to convince Pope Agatho to lend him a few monks from St. Peter's to teach his English monastery the Petrine Office. The long and elaborate scriptural responses of Mattins became popular in the Frankish lands and a mainstay of the Offices of diocese and monasteries on those areas. People used the Roman Office because they wanted to do so, not because they were obliged. In utilizing the Roman Office as far as possible, clergy created a localized expression and began local customs in liturgy that would help them perform and express their adoration for God in a way unique to them while remaining substantially united to Rome in the essence and text of prayer. Unique variations developed in the late first millennium outside of Rome. For instance in the lessons at Mattins at the end of each nocturn Gallican clergy would recite the Pater noster while at St. Peter's in Rome they would pray a short absolution. What comes to us today is a merger of both practices.

Perhaps curious to us is that the ancient Office did not commemorate the saint of the day. Pope Gregory III is said to have constructed small shrines in St. Peter's basilica with short offices in honor of the saint of the day to be prayed in those places. Eventually the two became fused as monks shirked this extra duty.

In the eighth century scholae are established everywhere from Rome to Rouen according to the rites of St. Peter's basilica, effectively snuffing whatever might have been done in the Gallican practices. The long, subtle Roman Office triumphed in Europe, but outside of St. Peter's it was not immune to fluctuations and changes.

The old St. Peter's basilica, bastion of the old Roman Office. Note the Leonine wall to the south.
source: wikipaintings.org

Another variation that arose was in the translation of the psalter. Ever notice that the antiphons in the Office and the proper chants of Mass differ a bit from the psalm texts in the Vulgate? There are many examples of this. For instance erue me versus eripe me in translating psalm 42. The Church in France under Charlemagne and his successors used the "Gallican" psalter of St. Jerome, the saint's third translation of the psalms, while at St. Peter's in Rome they used an earlier translation of Jerome's, which was just a minor revision of the Latin texts he received. Therefor proper texts like antiphons and chants, which one reads prepared in a book, would be static while the most familiar psalm text might just be sung in a tone.

The repetition of each antiphon after a psalm verse died a slow death outside of Rome, but remained until the turn of the millennium at some places like Cluny or among the Canons of St. Martin of Tours. Similarly, the Gallican psalter supplanted the Roman psalter outside of the Lateran and St. Peter's.

Another feature that seems to have changed is the "chapter," the very short scriptural lesson after the psalms in each hour. The monk Amalarius, a student of Alcuin, has lessons at the minor hours, including Compline. What the hours might have looked like in the old Roman Office can be found in the pre-1911 Offices for Holy Week: each hour is begun with the sign of the Cross and an antiphon; the psalms and antiphons are sung straight through with no lesson, only a response, at the end; depending on the hour there might be a canticle; then a closing prayer functioning like a collect (although not taken from the Mass, the texts of the Mass and the Office did not overlap as much as they did after the 13th century).

The lessons, as mentioned earlier, went on as long as pleased the presiding cleric, often an abbot or the Pope himself. The practice of reading Scripture, which seems impromptu, dates only to the late 700s, but became a fixed part of the Office, albeit in a reduced form outside of Rome and Cluny. I wonder, are the Tenebrae lessons of the Triduum abbreviated for Curial purposes from longer originals? It seems possible.

Perhaps an important factor in the reduction of the core of the Office and addition of hymns and collects from Mass outside of the major churches of Rome is the number of books necessary to pray the Office: a Bible, or collection of Scripture books; a psalter; an antiphonary; a book of homilies for the lessons; and, later, a Sacramentary. This books could take years to make and consumed precious resources. It was much easier, for instance, to shorten the Wisdom selections for August and protract their reading than to speed through them and be out of books, forcing repetition. We read, in the mid-700s, Pope Zachary donating books to St. Peter's basilica from his private library for the public Office. Even the main center for pilgrimage in Europe was not immune to a shortage of funds for these expensive liturgical resources!

Fr. Finigan doing it the rite way in Blackfen
(Zephyrine, you lucky duck!)

Another point of interest is the kalendar. The Sundays of Advent were not penitential, but joyful in the ancient Roman Office. Batiffol examines the Mattins responses for the first Sunday of Advent, which you can read for yourself elsewhere. The concept of Advent as a penitential season seems to be of French origin rather than Roman. The great O antiphons sung as the Feast of the Nativity approaches, corroborate this hypothesis. The mid points in Lent and Advent, Laetare and Gaudete Sundays, were also great days of the year which merited the Pope's public celebration of the entire liturgy as late as the Middle Ages.

Moreover, according to Pope Hadrian I and later sources on the great feasts of the year there were two celebrations of Mattins at the stational church on a given night. The first, without the elaborate introduction, would be the ferial Office. Later in the night would come the festal Office and the rest of the day would follow as normal. Simple-ranked feasts were compromises between the festal and ferial Office. They were important enough to celebrate, but too local for the same treatment as universal feasts like the Nativity or St. John the Baptist. So the ferial psalms, aside from Lauds, were sung but with festal antiphons on the canticles and prayers pertaining to the saint of the day at the end of the major hours.

So, how did the "traditional" breviary/Office we have today, or had until 1911, come into being? Certainly the groundwork for it should be visible to my more liturgically oriented readers. In 1241 Gregory IX gives the Minorites (now colloquially called the Franciscans) the use of the "modern" Roman Office, which begs the question: what the heck is that?

St. Gregory VII, a monk, was
not a fan of reduced Offices

The "modern" Office was a variation of the Roman Office used by the Curia in the Lateran Palace, although not cathedral, from around the time of St. Gregory VII onward. It has many influences from outside Rome, particularly from France. The "modern" breviary, for instance, utilizes hymns before or after the psalms, depending on the hour. Hymns were not a complete innovation, although hymns as we know them did not take liturgical flight in either Rome or in the Eastern Churches. St. Benedict, although generally following the Roman way, prescribes hymns in his Rule the same way we sing them now. "Ambrosian" hymns, following a specific sort of meter attributed to the patron saint of Milan, became very popular in monasteries and in France. The international nature of the Curia and the re-emphasis on monasticism from St. Gregory VII throughout the high Middle Ages imported elements from priories and foreign cathedrals into the Papal Court. Somehow the Lateran Cathedral managed to resist hymns in their Office until the 12th century! Even the other local churches of Rome had long ago taken on the newer practice.

A tension between the Roman Office and the Curial Office arose in the 12th and 13th centuries, during which the Curia, outside of public Papal celebrations, used their Gallicanized, modern Office exclusively. Innocent III lamented that the Curia only used the true Roman Mass and Office on the feast of St. Peter's Chair in Rome. The Mass, unrelated to this article, may have differed too. Example: at Papal Mass a cardinal deacon and the local sacristan would arrange the burse, chalice, and bread on the altar during the Creed. The Tridentine practice—wherein the deacon of the Mass prepares the burse during the Creed and the subdeacon prepares the matter for the Eucharist during the Offertory—was a Curial adaptation for smaller spaces and less elaborate liturgies. In his own time Gregory VII blamed shortening and simplification on laxity among the clergy. One wonders what he would think of the Liturgia Horarum, which one can recite, for the entire day, in 30 minutes or less! John Beleth wrote in the 12th century "How many of us are found joyfully to rise with the Sun to say the Divine services?.... How many are they who conscientiously recite in due course the Office of the day? Few indeed, and very few, if the real truth be told."

Another point of note is that the Office, among the Curia, was now more frequently read than sung. St. Leo IX is recorded, in the 11th century, to have piously recited the Office in private daily, a proof of his holiness and sanctity. Given the need for books outlined a few paragraphs ago, we must ask: did a "breviary," an abbreviated version of the Office text without musical notation, exist even then? If not it certainly existed two centuries later. The word "breviary," from the Latin breve, means "brief" or "shortened" and is directly linked with the Franciscans, who wished to carry the modern Curial Office around in a single volume. Thus the breviary for private recitation was born. The Rad Trad, who has no firm scholarly ground for this assumption, guesses that parish priests outside of cathedral cities, probably just recited psalms with a Pater noster at the end rather than an entire Office, with hymns and antiphons, every day.

Nicholas III, Franciscan and
liturgical dissident

At the same time the Papal Court slowly drifted away from the Roman Office as devotion to the Virgin and prayers for the Church Suffering in Purgatory increased. Clergy of the major cathedrals and collegiate churches of Europe would sing the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin on days with three lessons at Mattins and perhaps also the Office of the Dead. The Office of the Dead would, at least, be recited on Fridays of Lent. It was not inconceivable that on a Lenten feria, between the Office of the day, the Office of the Virgin, the Office of the Dead, the seven penitential psalms, the Mass of the feria, and, if it occurred, the Mass of a feast, a canon or monk might spend near ten hours singing. This was truly onerous (compare that with the 1975 Pauline Office!). Inevitably canons and monks viewed this schedule of prayer as a burdensome daily grind rather than as God's praises. Liturgy became a grueling obligation, which is perhaps why when Pope Nicholas III completely suppressed the ancient Roman Office he met no major opposition in doing so.

In 1223 the Franciscans obtained the Roman breviary books and may or  may not have "corrected" some aspects, such as which psalter was used. The order was permitted to celebrate local feasts where ever they lived, but had to fit each feast into the relevant Common and never rank it above semi-double. As a result the kalendar took on a lot of extra European saints with little international or distinctly Roman importance. The Rad Trad cannot verify, but guesses some of these feasts were "scrubbed" by St. Pius V in the aftermath of the Council of Trent.

And there it is. The reduced Office for Curial use which made Innocent III lament, himself a former canon of St. Peter's, became the Office of the Franciscans, which in turn became the Office of Rome, which in turn became the Office of Europe. Although the communal nature and structure of the ancient Office died with the clerically focused Curial Office, vestiges of the older Office remain, for instance, in the old Triduum Offices and from Pascha through Low Sunday. The psalm schedule remained and the psalm translation for antiphons and propers of Mass stayed, too. The effect of the impositions of Nicholas III and Trent was an abbreviation, but not a complete loss or change. If there is a real tragedy in all this, it is that the Office used at St. Peter's was the golden standard of the Latin Church and remained for so long, only to be eventually seen as an unneeded weight on lethargic clergy. The popular element of the Office, which incorporated local feasts, interaction with the bishop (in this case the Pope), and participation of parish clergy, was lost for a convenient minimalism.

Of course, as the Rad Trad has suggested earlier, there is no "going back," but we can learn the lessons of liturgical history, lest we traverse the roads of worship with only the most plain and un-detailed maps of the Divine cult.

Reasons for the Reform of the Roman Rite Part VI: Centralization

Today's post, the penultimate "reason" before our conclusions, focuses on centralization in the Roman liturgy which followed the Council of Trent and eventually facilitated the reforms of the Roman rite during the papacies of St. Pius X, Pius XII, John XXIII, and Paul VI, as well as the legislation of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Aside from providing a means for the reforms to present themselves to the Church, centralization changed the mindset of the Church of Rome and of her clergy toward the worship of God.

Following the Council of Trent, St. Pius V issued two papal bulls Quod a nobis and Quo primum, promulgating a Divine Office and a Missal which, although not always obligatory, could be used by any priest in the Latin rite of the Church without exception. To the modern reader this hardly seems shocking. The revised English translation of the new rite of Mass came at Rome's behest, the diocesan bishops, at least in the United States, liked the old translation, even the erroneous "for all" in the consecration of the chalice. We can easily lose sight of how drastic a change this was.

Paschal Mass in the Lyonese rite, some very different texts
from Rome's Resurrexi.

From the earliest days of Christianity in the West, the liturgy developed at a local level and took on the characteristics of both the people who celebrated it and of the rites of major churches within the same area. In Europe, the city of the Rome was the most influential church "in the same area." I suspect this is what so many modern day commentators mean when they discuss "organic" development. Charlemagne accelerated a process already underway, whereby bishops would seek to emulate the liturgy as it was practiced in the city of Rome. This meant following the Latin language, the basic structure of the Mass, the schedule of the hours of the Divine Office, the structure of the Office, loosely the arrangement of the psalms, and many of the prayers. Yet no one diocese had the same exact rite as another. Indeed, within the city of Rome the Divine Office varied by church. In some cathedrals each priest might say a slightly different private Mass in his chapel. Yet, any observer of a Mass in Cluny, St. John Lateran, or the Cathedral of Canterbury would recognize that the same ritual, spirituality, faith, and objectives were being followed. The late Laszlo Dobszay, whose work I find myself constantly recommending, notes that the neo-Gallican graduals are almost all the same text as in the "Tridentine" Roman rite, although this did not come to pass by legislation. Rites gradually converged as ideas and rites spread, but the Roman Canon and the Roman structure remained the barometers of liturgical order.

These rites could vary in their texts and their ceremonies, imbuing the liturgy with a very personal character. There existed in these local churches numerous abuses condemned by the 22nd session of the Council of Trent, and rightly so. Votive Requiem Masses have no place on Sundays or on great feasts. Priests should not charge stipends for missis siccis. Pius V, Pope immediately after Trent, determined to correct any potential abuses or defects in priestly life or in religious practice by imposing a streamlined version of the Roman Curia's liturgy on the Latin Church at large. He did so at the behest of the Council of Trent, but eventually promulgated the rites under Papal authority. One correspondent of mine observed that Quod a nobis, the 1568 bull concerning the Divine Office, is brimming with "aggression and conquest." He might have been right.

The immediate effects of Pius V's actions were two-fold:

1. The bottom-up problem: local rites, unless they were more than two hundred years old, died immediately and could no longer contribute to the development of the liturgy in the Church. Even some older rites did not last. Rome attempted for centuries after Trent to suppress the local usages of France, particularly the Parisian rite. Anyone interested can find at least one edition of the Missale Parisiense on Google Books. The rites of Braga, Lyons, and Milan were similarly targeted, but managed to survive until the Second Vatican Council.
2. The top-down problem: the Roman liturgy becomes a product under corporate management and subject to quality tests.

First, the bottom-up issue. The suppression or de facto extinction of local usages and variations of the Roman rite was not immediately troublesome, but blurred the character of local churches—and each church is a unique Christian community—and removed their own expression of belief. Aside from the personal investment people had in worshiping as their fathers had, people had grown accustomed to singing hymns to particular chants and in local tones, to distinct ceremonies and rituals—especially during Holy Week, and the liturgy of the cathedrals revolved around these communal celebrations, led by the bishop and his convened chapter. All of this either vanished or became a tolerated exception under the bulls of 1568 and 1570.

Local uses of Rome disappeared almost immediately, although a few oddities, like the Lateran Cathedral's refusal to sing Dona nobis pacem for the third invocation in the Agnus Dei remained. Why does this matter? Roman churches each celebrated the liturgy somewhat differently. Hymns and chants are great examples as to how. Local churches would often repeat the same hymn from day to day, or from feast to feast, and utilize simple melodies so that the ignorant could sing along and memorize these chants through repetition. The uses of the Carmelites, Dominicans, and Carthusians better preserve this principle than the rite of 1570.

Ecce lignum crucis....

While considering this point, we ought to meditate on the 1570 Missale Romanum. The 1570 Missal and 1568 Office are trimmed down versions of the same books used in the Roman Curia a century earlier. The Henry Bradshaw Society reprinted the 1474 Missale Romanum a few years ago, should any of you wish to purchase a copy. St. Pius V specified some rubrics, explicitly added the Last Gospel (formerly said in procession rather than at the altar), deleted Gallican prefaces and sequences, slashed a few feasts (including of Ss. Joachim and Ann), and adjusted other points in the Office which elude me. The reformers of the post-Tridentine period purported that this Missal represented the liturgy of the time of St. Gregory VII. It may well have been the liturgy as it was practiced by the Papal Court in the eleventh century, in fact it was probably very close, but no closer than any of the other local usages to the essence of the Roman rite as a liturgy diffused throughout Europe.

Here comes a secondary negative effect. The Missal of the Roman Curia was made for small scale, simple, timely celebrations by bureaucrats who had other work to do. The Pope, until 1964, had his own rite of Mass very befitting the dignity of his office. The Curia, on the other hand, was a body of priests and cardinals, who operated in chapels rather than large churches, who did so in the presence of similarly educated people, aided by professional singers, and who wished to make these rites as succinct as possible. These rites were consequently very simple in ceremony and sometimes stark in text compared to the larger Roman liturgy spread throughout Europe.

For example: on Good Friday in the 1474-1955 Roman Missals, the deacon gives the priest a veiled crucifix, who exposes it in three moments, lays it on a pillow, and the choir sings the "reproaches" (Trisagion, Pange lingua etc) while those present adore it. In the Norman and neo-Gallican rites we see more clearly the function of the reproaches. The deacon brings the veiled crucifix through the church, or more likely, cathedral, whilst the choir sings the Trisagion: Agios o Theos! Agios ischyros! Agios athanatos, eleison imas! At the altar, the priest would then do the three familiar un-veilings and lay the crucifix down for adoration, during which the choir would sing Pange lingua and the subdeacon would "comment" by singing antiphons between the verses, antiphons which described Christ. Clearly, the Roman liturgy on Good Friday was a simplification made to suit a particular brand of practitioner.

Now we come to the second effect of this post-Tridentine centralization, the "brand" of the Roman liturgy.

Palm Sunday according to the rite of Braga, but actually in Rhode Island.
source: newlitugicalmovement.org

We have made the case that prior to Trent local dioceses based their liturgy around what Rome generally did and use Rome as an enduring standard. Now Rome did not nurture the liturgy, but actually imposed it from afar. Liturgy was something given to the clergy of the Roman rite, even if they were originally of another rite or use, by Papal decree. The Sacred Congregation for Rites, erected in 1588 by Sixtus V, managed the Roman liturgical books on the Pope's behalf, except when the Pope felt inclined to intervene, for instance when Urban VIII published his new and improved hymns.

The Roman Church became like McDonalds. The Pope was CEO, the cardinals formed a board of directors—each with his own congregation or department, bishops were the franchisees, and priests were restaurant managers who had to sell their product to the faithful customers. The product, the liturgy, must meet a given standard. Falling short of or exceeding the standard are not options.

This analogy is facetious, but contains some truth. Priests had to do whatever was in the books imposed by the Pope, no more, no less. If he celebrated, or said, Mass and recited the Office as instructed then he was, on one count, meeting expectations.

During the centuries after Trent no one paid too much attention to the liturgy outside of the cathedrals and monasteries. Theology, doctrine, devotion, and art dominated the Counter-Reformation and baroque epochs. Few seem to have bothered to adopt local customs, music, or ceremonial to the Roman liturgy, perhaps due to the phenomena examined in our posts on low Mass culture and Devotionalism. Local expression, even in a highly centralized liturgical setting, is not impossible. The Church of Antioch, after having the liturgy of Constantinople forced upon it, rejected ceremonies pertaining to the Byzantine court and continued to administer Holy Communion without the spoon. Not until the 19th century did clergy think about the liturgy, but by then popular perceptions of what constituted or created the liturgy had changed.

Most clergy accepted the 1911, 1955, and 1960 liturgical reforms without batting an eyelash. The right authorities promulgated these changes. Consideration of the merits of these changes was frivolous, perhaps even disobedient. Divino afflatu uses similar language to that of Pius V's decrees centuries earlier. When the more visible changes came through in 1964, 1965, 1967, 1968, and finally the new rite of Mass in 1969 and new Office in 1975, priests and bishops were expected to accept any changes because they came from Rome. Cardinal Ottaviani, who in his private "intervention" with Pope Paul VI wrote that the proposed new rite was a "striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated in Session XXII of the Council of Trent," eventually learned to accept the new rite in spite of his intuition. Ditto for Cardinals Bacci and Siri.

The legal authority Rome found itself possessing after Trent made a drastic overhaul somewhat inevitable. No longer were the Latin rites guarded by tradition, but they were given by a congregation in central Italy. This meant that whoever controlled that office or whoever had the Pope's ear could essentially have his way with the liturgy of western Christendom. It was only time before a large number of people from the Liturgical Movement found themselves in that position. Moreover, Rome no longer guards the liturgy. Rome is neither the aggressor nor the victim in the war over the liturgy. Rome is the battlefield.

This last point represents a problem for the "brick by brick" crowd, as they often rely on exercising the most conservative legal options when celebrating the Mass of Paul VI. What is the point of celebrating the Mass of Paul VI ad orientem and in Latin if one has to give Holy Communion in the hand? An Oratorian high Mass and an American suburban low Mass both follow the prescribed rules.

Rome must also find this phenomenon problematic. Benedict XVI's Summorum Pontificum stated that the Missal of John XXIII was never "abrogated." It may never have been explicitly suppressed, but after Inter oecumenici in 1964 priests could not have expected to be able to follow 1962. If 1962 is legal, are not 1967 and 1920?—two very different Missals. As Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the previous Pope wrote many commentaries on "organic" liturgy. He even sat on a commission with Cardinals Hoyos and Stickler which found the old rite perfectly legal for use. Question: which Missal was found legal for use? The 1962 rite? The "Tridentine" Mass? The "Mass of St. Pius V?" The "old rite?" Indeed, the choice of 1962 is now commonly acknowledged to be that of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, not of the Vatican. Still, why pick a year? I personally think Benedict XVI was aware the rites of Paul VI represented a departure from the established tradition of the Roman rite and wished to find some way of stating that the Church would never suppress her tradition, that its use was always legitimate. 1962 was the year most commonly used by "traditionalists," so that is the rite he declared was never "abrogated."

Perhaps the saddest consequence of this legalism and liturgical centralization is that decline of people's view of Rome as the spiritual center of the Church and of the Pope as the spiritual father. The Pope is just the man who makes the rules and the Vatican processes them. If in the early 13th century, I asked a priest in Canterbury Cathedral if Pope Innocent III had the power to depose King John, the priest would probably at least entertain the question: political power comes from God and the Pope is His vicar on earth. If I asked him if the same Pope could dictate every word and action of the Mass he just celebrated, the same priest would think me mad. Yet, I wager the same priest would not dare to change a punctuation mark in the Roman Canon, much less write a series of new anaphoras.

Thus ends my proposed list of causes of the reform of the Roman liturgy. In our next post, the last in this series, we will give a brief summation of what we have found, make a few conclusions, and, since I prefer to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, present some ideas for the future.

God bless.