inundado por um mistério de luz que é Deus e N´Ele vi e ouvi -A ponta da lança como chama que se desprende, toca o eixo da terra, – Ela estremece: montanhas, cidades, vilas e aldeias com os seus moradores são sepultados. - O mar, os rios e as nuvens saem dos seus limites, transbordam, inundam e arrastam consigo num redemoinho, moradias e gente em número que não se pode contar , é a purificação do mundo pelo pecado em que se mergulha. - O ódio, a ambição provocam a guerra destruidora! - Depois senti no palpitar acelerado do coração e no meu espírito o eco duma voz suave que dizia: – No tempo, uma só Fé, um só Batismo, uma só Igreja, Santa, Católica, Apostólica: - Na eternidade, o Céu! 
Portrait of St. Pius V, who codified the Roman Mass for all time.
A Short History of the
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"For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, My name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to My name a clean oblation: for My name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts." -----Malachias 1: 11
CONTENTS:
Gradual Development of Ceremonies
The End of Persecution
The Gallican Rite
The Origins of the Roman Rite and its Liturgical Books
The Canon of the Mass Dates from the 4th Century
The Reform of St. Gregory the Great
Eastern and Gallican Additions to the Roman Rite
A Sacred Heritage Since the 6th Century
The Protestant Break with Liturgical Tradition
The Development of the Low Mass
The Medieval Uses and the Importance of Printing
The Reform of Pope St. Pius V
Not a New Mass
The Antiquity and Beauty of the Roman Missal
Revisions after 1570
Our Ancient Liturgical Heritage
The Papal Bull Quo Primum
The Catholic Sanctuary
Introduction
AUTHOR'S NOTE This booklet is in large part a compilation of material from Father Adrian Fortescue's classic work, The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy [London: Longmans, 1912]. Although certain notable passages are referenced, my debt to this great priest and scholar actually goes far beyond these. I hope hereby to bring to today's readers some of the fruits of Father Fortescue's book, once out of print and now published anew by Preserving Christian Publications. I hope also, in the near future, to publish an extensive compilation of Father Fortescue's writings on the Mass. -----Michael Davies THE first source for the history of the Mass is obviously the account of the Last Supper in the New Testament. It was because Our Lord told us to do what He had done, in memory of Him, that Christian liturgies exist. No matter in which respects there are differences in the various Eucharistic liturgies they all obey His command to do "this," namely what He Himself had done. A definite pattern for the celebration of the Eucharist had developed within decades of the death of Our Lord, a pattern which was carried on well past the conclusion of the 1st century, and which can still be discerned clearly in the finalized Roman Mass of 1570. The Early Catholic Liturgy The earliest and most detailed account of the Eucharist is found in St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, which, of course, predates the Gospels, and was written in Ephesus between 52-55 A.D. Scholars agree that the Consecration formula used by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians, Chapter 11, quotes verbatim from a stylized formula already in use in the Apostolic liturgy. St. Paul's account reads:
Our knowledge of the liturgy increases considerably in the 2nd century, and special reference must be made to the testimony of a pagan Roman-----the younger Pliny [C. Plinius Caecilius, c. 62-113], at that time Governor of Bithynia [modern Northwest Turkey]. About the years 111-113 he writes to his master, the Emperor Trajan, to ask how he is to treat Christians. He describes what he has learned about them from Christians who had apostatized under torture. Referring to his apostate informers, he writes with satisfaction: "All have worshiped your image and the statues of the gods and have cursed Christ." Then he recounts what the apostates revealed about Christian worship: The status dies is certainly Sunday. There are, according to Pliny, two meetings, the early one, in which they sing their hymn, and a later one, when they eat food-----the Agape or Eucharist. The oath to do no wrong is probably a confusion of Pliny's mind. He would have taken it for granted that these secret meetings must involve some kind of conspirator's oath; whereas, the only obligation of which his informers could tell him was not to do wrong. Pliny's letter does not add much to our knowledge of the early liturgy, but it is worth quoting for the picture it gives, one of the first mentions of Christianity by a pagan, of the Christians meeting before daybreak and singing their hymn "to Christ as a god." The early Christians assembled for Divine worship in the house of one of their number which possessed a large dining room, a coenaculum, as the Vulgate puts it. This was because, as a persecuted minority, they could erect no public buildings. Our knowledge of the details of the liturgy increases from the earliest Fathers and with each succeeding century. There is a gradual and natural development. The prayers and formulas, and eventually the ceremonial actions, develop into set forms. There are varying arrangements of subsidiary parts and greater insistence on certain elements in different places will produce different liturgies, but all go back eventually to the biblical pattern. The Roman Mass is a liturgical form that we find first, not in the laws of some medieval pope, but in the Epistles, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Gospels. http://www.catholictradition.org/Eucharist/mass-history.htm |