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Gregory introduced masses for the dead,' in connection with the doctrine of purgatory which he developed and popularized. They were based upon the older custom of praying for the departed, and were intended to alleviate and abridge the penal sufferings of those who died in the Catholic faith, but in need of purification from remaining infirmities. Very few Catholics are supposed to be prepared for heaven; and hence such masses were often ordered beforehand by the dying, or provided by friends.2 They furnished a large income to priests. The Oriental church has no clearly defined doctrine of purgatory, but likewise holds that the departed are benefited by prayers of the living, "especially such as are offered in union with the oblation of the bloodless sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, and by works of mercy done in faith for their memory.'

993

The high estimate of the efficacy of the sacrament led also to the abuse of solitary masses, where the priest celebrates without attendants. This destroys the original character of the institution as a feast of communion with the Redeemer and the redeemed. Several synods in the age of Charlemagne protested against the practice. The Synod of Mainz in 813 decreed: "No presbyter, as it seems to us, can sing masses alone rightly,

1 Missæ pro Defunctis, Todtenmessen, Seelenmessen. Different from them are the Missa de Sanctis, celebrated on the anniversaries of the saints, and to their honor, though the sacrifice is always offered to God.

2 Even popes, though addressed by the title "Holiness," while living, have to pass through purgatory, and need the prayers of the faithful. On the marble sarcophagus of Pius IX., who reigned longer than any of his predecessors, and proclaimed his own infallibility in the Vatican Council (1870), are the words: "Orate pro eo." Prayers and masses are said only for the dead in purgatory, not for the saints in heaven who do not need them, nor for the damned in hell who would not profit by them.

3 Quoted from the Longer Catechism of the Eastern Church (Schaff, Creeds II. 504). The Greeks have in their ritual special strophes or antiphones for the departed, called veкpwoiμa. Mone, Lat. Hymnen des Mittelalters, II. 400, gives some specimens from John of Damascus and others. He says, that the Greeks have more hymns for the departed than the Latins, but that the Latins have older hymni pro defunctis, beginning with Prudentius.

• Missa solitaria or privatæ.

for how will he say sursum corda! or Dominus vobiscum! when there is no one with him?" A reformatory Synod of Paris, 829, prohibits these masses, and calls them a "reprehensible practice," which has crept in "partly through neglect, partly through avarice.”1

The mysterious character of the eucharist was changed into the miraculous and even the magical with the spread of the belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation. But the doctrine was contested in two controversies before it triumphed in the eleventh century.

2

The language of the mass was Greek in the Eastern, Latin in the Western church. The Latin was an unknown tongue to the barbarian races of Europe. It gradually went out of use among the descendants of the Romans, and gave place to the Romanic languages. But the papal church, sacrificing the interests of the people to the priesthood, and rational or spiritual worship to external unity, retained the Latin language in the celebration of the mass to this day, as the sacred language of the church. The Council of Trent went so far as to put even the uninspired Latin Vulgate practically on an equality with the inspired Hebrew and Greek Scriptures.*

§ 93. The Sermon.

As the chief part of divine service was unintelligible to the people, it was all the more important to supplement it by

1 Can. 48. Mansi XIV. 529 sqq. Hefele IV. 64.

2 See the next chapter, on Theological Controversies. 3 Comp. λoyik λarpɛía, Rom. 12: 1.

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4 Sess. IV. (April 8, 1546): Sacrosancta Synodus . ... statuit et declarat, ut hæc ipsa vetus et vulgata editio, quæ longo tot saeculorum usu in ipsa ecclesia probata est, in publicis lectionibus, disputationibus, prædicationibus et expositionibus pro authentica habeatur; et ut nemo illam rejicere quovis prætextu audeat vel præsumat." The Council made provision for an authoritative revision of the Vulgate (April 8, 1546); but when the edition of Pope Sixtus V. appeared in 1589 and was enjoined upon the church "by the fullness of apostolic power," it was found to be so full of errors and blunders that it had to be cancelled, and a new edition prepared under Clement VIII. in 1592, which remains the Roman standard edition to this day.

preaching and catechetical instruction in the vernacular tongues. But this is the weak spot in the church of the middle ages.1

Pope Gregory I. preached occasionally with great earnestness, but few popes followed his example. It was the duty of bishops to preach, but they often neglected it. The Council of Clovesho, near London, which met in 747 under Cuthbert, archbishop of Canterbury, for the reformation of abuses, decreed that the bishops should annually visit their parishes, instruct and exhort the abbots and monks, and that all presbyters should be able to explain the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the mass, and the office of baptism to the people in the vernacular.2 A Synod of Tours, held in the year 813, and a Synod of Mainz, held under Rabanus Maurus in 847, decreed that every bishop should have a collection of homilies and translate them clearly "in rusticam Romanam linguam aut Theotiscam, i. e. into French (Romance) or German," "in order that all may understand them."3

The great majority of priests were too ignorant to prepare a sermon, and barely understood the Latin liturgical forms. A Synod of Aix, 802, prescribed that they should learn the Athanasian and Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer with exposition, the Sacramentarium or canon of the mass, the formula of exorcism, the commendatio anima, the Penitential, the Calendar and the Roman cantus; they should learn to understand the homilies for Sundays and holy days as models of preaching, and read the pastoral theology of Pope Gregory. This was the sum and substance of clerical learning. The study of the

1 As it is to-day in strictly Roman Catholic countries; with this difference, that what was excusable in a period of heathen and semi-heathen ignorance and superstition, is inexcusable in an age of advanced civilization furnished with all kinds of educational institutions and facilities.

2 See the acts of this council in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Eccles. Doc. III. 360-376, and the letter of Boniface to Cuthbert, giving an account of a similar council in Germany, and recommending measures of reform in the English church, p. 376-382.

3 A similar canon was passed by other councils. See Hefele III. 758, 764, and IV. 89, 111, 126, 197, 513, 582; Mansi XIV. 82 sqq.

4 Hefele, III. 745.

Greek Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures was out of the question, and there was hardly a Western bishop or pope in the middle ages who was able to study the divine oracles in the original.

The best, therefore, that the priests and deacons, and even most of the bishops could do was to read the sermons of the fathers. Augustin had given this advice to those who were not skilled in composition. It became a recognized practice in France and England. Hence the collection of homilies, called Homiliaria, for the Gospels and Epistles of Sundays and holy days. They are mostly patristic compilations. Bede's collection, called Homilia de Tempore, contains thirty-three homilies for the summer, fifteen for the winter, twenty-two for Lent, besides sermons on saints' days. Charlemagne commissioned Paulus Diaconus or Paul Warnefrid (a monk of Monte Cassino and one of his chaplains, the historian of the Lombards, and writer of poems on saints) to prepare a Homiliarium (or Omiliarius) about A. D. 780, and recommended it for adoption in the churches of France. It follows the order of Sundays and festivals, is based on the text of the Vulgate, and continued in use more or less for several centuries.1 Other collections were made in later times, and even the Reformed church of England under Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth found it necessary to provide ignorant clergymen with two Books of Homilies adapted to the doctrines of the Reformation.

In this connection we must allude again to the poetic reproductions of the Bible history, namely, the divine epos of Cadmon, the Northumbrian monk (680), the Saxon "Heliand" (Heiland, i. e. Saviour, about 880), and the "Christ" or Gospel Harmony of Otfrid (a pupil of Rabanus Maurus, about 870). These works were effective popular sermons on the history of

1 F. Dahn, Des Paulus Diaconus Leben und Schriften, 1876; and Mon. Germ. Scriptores rerum Langobardicarum et Italicarum sæc VI.-IX. 1878, p. 45-187, ed. by L. Bethmann and G. Waitz; Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen, 4th ed. 1877, I. 134-140.

redemption, and are at the same time the most valuable remains of the Anglo-Saxon and old high German dialects of the Teutonic language.1

It was, however, not till the Reformation of the sixteenth century that the sermon and the didactic element were restored and fully recognized in their dignity and importance as regular and essential parts of public worship. I say, worship, for to expound the oracles of God, and devoutly to listen to such exposition is or ought to be worship both on the part of the preacher and on the part of the hearer, as well as praying and singing.

§ 94. Church Poetry. Greek Hymns and Hymnists.

See the Lit. in vol. III. ? 113 (p. 575 sq.) and ? 114 (p. 578), and add the following:

Cardinal PITRA: Hymnographie de l'église grecque. Rome 1867. By the

same: Analecta Sacra Spicilegio Solesmensi parata, T. I. Par. 1876. WILHELM CHRIST et M. PARANIKAS: Anthologia Græca carminum Christianorum. Lips. 1871. CXLIV and 268 pages. The Greek text with learned Prolegomena in Latin. Christ was aided by Paranikas, a member of the Greek church. Comp. CHRIST: Beiträge zur kirchlichen Literatur der Byzantiner. München 1870.

J. L. JACOBI (Prof. of Church Hist. in Halle): Zur Geschichte des griechischen Kirchenliedes (a review of Pitra's Analecta), in Brieger's "Zeitschrift für Kirchengesch.," vol. V. Heft 2, p. 177–250 (Gotha 1881).

For a small selection of Greek hymns in the original see the third volume of DANIEL's Thesaurus Hymnologicus (1855), and BASSLER'S Auswahl altchristlicher Lieder (1858), p. 153–166.

For English versions see especially J. M. NEALE: Hymns of the Eastern Church (Lond. 1862, third ed. 1866, 159 pages; new ed. 1876, in larger print, 250 pages); also SCHAFF: Christ in Song (1869), which gives versions of 14 Greek (and 73 Latin) hymns. German translations in BASSLER, l. c. p. 3-25.

[Syrian Hymnology. To the lit. mentioned vol. III. 580 add: GUST. BICKELL: S. Ephremi Syri Carmina Nisibena, additis prolegomenis et supplemento lexicorum syriacorum edidit, vertit, explicavit. Lips.] 1 See above, p. 41, 105, 106. The paraphrase of Cædmon, the first Christian poet of England, is edited or discussed by Thorpe, Bouterweck, Grein, Wright, Ettmüller, Sandrar, Morley, Ten Brink, etc. (see lit. in Schaff-Herzog sub Cadmon); the Saxon Heliand and Otfrid's Krist by Sievers, Rettberg, Vilmar, Lechler, Graff, Kelle, Michelsen, etc. (see Herzog3 IV. 428-435).

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