The washing of the hands after the offertory is prescribed in all the English uses, and the Mozarabic and other western (1) liturgies, except the Ambrosian, in which however the celebrant, before the Qui pridie (ante, p. 106, 1. 27), “ Accedit ad cornu epistolæ, ubi stans, ministro aquam fundente, lavat manus.”(2) The York rubric in this place, as usual, is less full than others. The priest either went to the piscina, or to the "altars end," where he was served" with basin, ewer, and towell." P. 24, B. 263. wasshing. See wasshande in the line above, an example of the distinction between the participle present and the verbal substantive, which we have lost, and which evidently was not familiar to the scribe of Text E. B. 263-4. . po preste wil loute pe auter & sithen turne about. See the Vernon MS., p. 143, II. 533–542, and the York rubric, Becon, whose more offensive ribaldry I omit,(3) gives a fuller account of this and the next ceremony at the Orate: "After ye have washed your hands, ye return again to the altar, holding your hands before you . . . . and bowing yourselves.. ye turn .... ye make a cross upon the altar and kiss it. . . ., and then . . . . yourselves, looking down to the people and saying: Orate pro me, fratres et sorores;(4) O pray for me, ye brethren and sistern;' when many times there is nobody in the church but the boy that helpeth you to say mass; and so making solemn courtesy ye return again to your accustomed pattering."(5) B. 264. with stille steuen. It will be seen that in the York Order of Mass (ante, p. 100, 1. 19) there is no mention of the "still voice." The Durham and Hereford uses in this resembled the York, and the rubric of the Sherborne Missal is simply "Sacerdos conuertit ad populum." In the printed editions of the Sarum use we have "tacita voce," but no doubt this change from singing or intoning (saying), was the universal practice in this country, and, as explained by the old ritualists, was intended to signify the spirit of humility in which the priest asked the prayers of the people. Durandus here (1) Also in this place according to the Syro-Jacobite rite. Ienaudot, IL, 11. (2) Rubrica Generales, Mediolani, 1849, § 19. Gerbert, Disquisitiones, I, 330, mentions other peculiarities in German and French uses. See also Voyages Liturgiques, 56. Voyage Litteraire, II, 111. (3) See note, p. 220. (4) Displaying of the Popish Mass, Works, Camb., 1844, III, 365-6. (5) "Sorores" does not occur in the old Monastic uses, nor in the present Roman Missal, but it retained its place in the Paris Missal until 1615, and the Metz Missal until 1642. There are other and significant variations in the forms of different uses and at different periods. See the York form, ante, p. 100, 1. 20. says voce aliquantulum elata,(1) ut oratio omnium auxilietur ei, quasi non præsumens quod solus possit tantum officium exequi: "(2) and the rubrics of Continental uses for the "still voice" are sometimes varied by directions expressly pointing to this humble attitude of the mind; in that of Verdun, “humiliter dicere debet;"(3) Bayeux, "dimissa et humili voce."(4) In a very early printed Benedictine Missal we have "humili capitis inclinatione;" and in an early MS. Missal for the diocese of St Pol de Léon there is the following rubric: "Hic sacerdos vertat se ad populum, dicendo submissa voce, manibusque junctis ante vultum neminem respiciendo." (5) The existing rubric of the Roman Missal directs the priest to say the two words orate fratres in a voice somewhat louder (i. e. than the preceding prayer which he had said secreto), voce non nihil elata," and to say the remaining words of the address secretly.(6) P. 24. B. 267. Take gode kepe. Take good heed, pay close attention to. This phrase so exactly corresponds to the French prendre garde, that we might have taken it for a bald rendering of the French original, except that we find it in the Story of Genesis and Exodus, which is some fifty years older than the date I assume for the translation of our text: "of godes bode he nam gode kepe" (1. 939). Whether it came from the French or no we find the phrase was very general in the fourteenth century: "Herbes and trese, þat þou sees spryng, And take gude keep what pai forth bring." Hampole, P. C. 646-7. "If pou leue nedful besynes of actyf lyfe and be rekles, and take na kepe of thi werldly gudes."-Hampole, English Prose Treatises (Perry), p. 15. "Takest thou no kepe that my sister hath lefte me aloone to serue."—Wyclif, Lu. x, 40. " ¶ & tak kep, for from hennes-forthward." Chaucer's Astrolabe, Skeat, p. 4, 1. 2. "And or that Arcyte may take keep."-C. T. 2690. (1) This is illustrated by the rubric of the Præmonstratensian Missal of the xiith century, "Mediocriter, ut possit audiri." Le Brun. IV, 246. (2) Rationale, 4, xxxii, 3. (3) Mart., I, 213. (4) Ed, 1501-Le Brun. IV, 241. (5) Mart., I, 239. (6) Ritus Celeb. Missam, VII, 7. The Mozarabic rite differs from other western uses in requiring the priest to sing the Orate, as follows: " Adjuvate me fratres in orationibus et orate pro me ad Deum." The musical intonation is given in the Missal, p. 224. "They ben so bare, I take no kepe I yeve not of her harme a bene!" Romaunt of Rose, Chaucer's Works, Morris, VI, 197, 1. 6463-6. The same phrase occurs again in our text, 1. 305, and in both these places it is used very much as the póoxwμer of the deacon in the Greek liturgy,(1) though it would be too far-fetched to class this amongst the survivals of the Ephesine rite in Gaul which may be traced in Dan Jeremy's treatise, and in the practice of the Gallican and Anglican churches. P. 24, B. 268. Knoc on pi brest. The celebrant was directed to do this by the rubrics of all the English uses except York, at the prayer in the canon (ante, p. 110, 1. 9) “ Nobis quoque ; as does the Roman Missal, as also at the mention of sins in thought, word, and deed —“percutit sibi pectus ter"—in the confession (Ctr. the York use, ante, p. 90, 1. 27); at the Agnus Dei (ante, p. 112, 1. 21); and before he receives the communion. Hampole specifies this practice, which of course was suggested by the publican in the parable smiting upon his breast, as one of "ten thynges sere pat veniel syns fordus here. knocking of brest of man þat es meke, Last enoyntyng gyven to be seke.”—P. C. 3400-8. At the reformation it was provided by the Book of Common Prayer, 1549, that "As touching kneeling, crossing, holding up of hands, knocking upon the breast, and other gestures, they may be used or left as every man's devotion serveth, without blame." B. 270. noght worth to pray for hymm. There is a marked absence in Dan Jeremy of the tone of sacerdotal arrogance, which was common among his contemporaries; and what is here said does not necessarily imply any assumption of moral superiority, but may rather have been intended to enforce the humility which both the downcast mien of the priest and the smiting on the breast of the layman were intended not only to express, but also to suggest. Cf. the collect for 12th Sunday after Triuity-a very happy rendering of the Latin original : "Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy. . . . giving (1) Пρóoxwμer is one of the calls of the deacon to the people which the Syriac liturgies retain in the original Greek, or in characters intended to represent it, just as Kyrie Eleison was retained in the west.-See Renaudot, II, 20; Howard, Christians of St Thomas, 219(d). It appears as "Proschume" in the Armenian Liturgy of the Mechitarist (Uniate) monks.-Liturgia Armena transportata in Italiano, Venezia, 1826, p. 39. It occurs several times in the so-called Liturgy of St Chrysostom, and the use of it in the liturgy is referred in this father, Hom. xix, in Act. Apost., Ed. Ben. I, 159 E, 160 A. us those good things which we are not worthy to ask but through the merits and mediation," &c. "Effunde super nos misericordiam tuam ut... adjicias quæ oratio non præsumit, Per," &c. From among the many that might be collected, I add one other similar plea of unworthiness from the Alexandrian liturgy of St Gregory, where the priest (o iɛpɛùç λéyɛɩ), in a litany after the consecration, but before the communion, prays for himself and other clergy" That Thou wouldest accept us, who by Thy grace have been called to this ministry to Thee (πρὸς τὴν σὴν κεκλημévove diakovíav), unworthy though we be. The people say, Lord have mercy."(1) P. 24, B. 274. Answere po prest with þis in hie (à haute, à haute voix), with a loud voice.(2) Elsewhere consequential changes in our MSS. enable us to trace changes in the manner of conducting the service; but this rubric for the people to answer aloud to the Orate or the "Obsecratio ad populum” is of additional interest as an indication of the date of the original treatise. (3) In the later texts C and F it has been omitted, so as not to clash with the altered practice of the people, and the confused reading of text E may not improbably be accounted for by supposing that the writer was not acquainted with a custom which at the first had been universal in the East and West.(4) (1) Renaudot, Liturg. Orient., 1716, I, 111. (2) "be angell answerd him in hy."-Holy Rood, Morris, p. 69, 1. 277. “þan seyd be aungel to hym an hy."-Bonaventura's Meditations, Cowper, 1. 397. (3) My position throughout is that the original French of our text was adapted to the Rouen use. I do not know how far the reader may follow the argument in a subsequent note, that the answer in the next line had survived from the Rouen use of the twelfth century,-and through the ante-Caroline Gallican church from the Ephesine rite,--but inasmuch as the answer of the people in the Rouen Missal of the middle of the thirteenth century is rubricated "clerici respondeant" (Mart. I, 229), it follows that our author in directing the people to answer aloud, if he did adapt his treatise to the existing use of Rouen, must have written before the date of this manuscript, though it does not follow that the change from populus to clerici may not have been made earlier, more especially as in gradual and local changes of custom, as this was, the change of rubrics follows, rather than causes them. (4) This rite of the priests' asking the prayers of the people at the offertory -though most accordant with the spirit of our English prayer-book—was not retained in 1549, when the old service books of the Church of England were revised and translated into the mother tongue,-partly, it may be, because the answer of the people had come to be in dumb show,-and still more, in all probability, because from an objection to the Sarum answer which was then prescribed for the laity in both provinces (see p. 264), and which the greater number of the revisers must have themselves used in Henry's time. Although it still preserved the older phraseology "sacrificium laudis," nevertheless, in the form printed in all the editions, it referred to the propitiatory view of the mass as an offering for sin-"pro peccatis et offensionibus"—which it was the declared object of the reformers to reject. 66 It may be said that the rubrics of the Eastern rite, as now used, do not assign this answer to the people. But that, by itself, is no proof that the people did not join at the first, for as a rule the rubrics refer only to the officiating clergy, and the people are not uniformly specified except in cases where, as in the Ectene, they respond to the deacon; and I think it will be admitted that the two examples, which I now bring forward, go very far to prove that, whatever later practice may have been, the original rule of Eastern Churches was that the people should answer with the deacon. The first is from the Liturgy of the Christians of St Thomas, as it was expurgated" by Archbishop Menezes in accordance with the acts of the synod of Diamper, (1) where in the most unlikely of all unlikely places-I find a rubric at this place, "Illi respondent cum diacono ; and it is not conceivable that these native Indian Christians should have practiced this rite, unless they had received it at the first with their liturgy; and still more inconceivable that the Portuguese Archbishop should have established it amongst them, when it was obsolete in the Church of Rome, and at the very time when he was forcing Roman peculiarities(2) upon them instead of primitive customs-a course, upon which a distinguished prelate of his own communion, the learned Renaudot, has remarked with not undeserved severity. My other example is from the Liturgy of St Chrysostom according to the use of the Greek monks in the Basilian monasteries in Sicily and the lower parts of Italy. In this the priest calls upon "those on the right and left" (the circumstantes of the Latin rubrics), and they answer (kai avтoì áñокρívоvra) in the words of the angel from the Greek of St Luke (i, 35), to which I shall again refer in the next note. In the West there is no difficulty in finding evidence as to the people's part in the writings of the earlier ritualists and the rubrics of different uses. For example, Amalarius speaks of their singing the answer; (3) and we find it rubricated Responsio (1) Raulin, Hist. Eccles. Malabarica, Romæ, 1745, p. 309. Both the rubric and the answer of the people appear to have been wanting in the MSS. used by Mr Howard for his translations in The Christians of St Thomas and their Liturgies, 1864, see p. 220. So also in Hough, Christianity in India, IV, 633, and Renaudot, II, 20. (2) See before, p. 208. (3) De Ecclesiasticis Officiis, iii, c. 19. Cf. "Acclamans autem populus orare debet ita."-Walden, Doctrinale, IV, c. 35. In the Capitular of Otto or Hetto, Bishop of Basle (811–836), we find it laid down that not only clerks and nuns should learn the answers to the priest, but also that the whole of the laity should answer together with them: "Tertio, intimandum est ut ad salutationes sacerdotales congruæ salutationes discantur, ubi non solum clerici, et Deo dicatæ, sacerdotali responsionem offerant, sed omnis plebs devota consona voce."-Hettonis Capitulare, iii. Patrolog., Migne, CV, 763. See also the council, quoted from Cassander, ante, p. 200. |