The Mass of Passion Saturday

My heartfelt thanks to Mr Gerhard Eger of Canticum Salomonis for his help in researching this article.

The Saturday before Palm Sunday was originally one of the so-called aliturgical days of the Roman Lent, on which no Mass was celebrated, the others being the Saturday after Ash Wednesday, and the six Thursdays between Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday. When this custom was changed for the Thursdays by Pope St Gregory II (715-31), the respect for the musical tradition codified by his sainted predecessor and namesake was such that it was deemed better not to add new pieces to the established repertoire. This is why the Masses of these days have no proper chant parts, borrowing their introits, graduals, offertories and communions from other masses. (There is one exception, on the Thursday of Passion week.)

However, the two formerly aliturgical Saturdays already have Masses in the Old Gelasian Sacramentary, the oldest of its kind for the Roman Rite, the contents of which predate Gregory II. Evidently this change was made before his time, but we do not know by whom. This is also why the missing chant parts for these Masses were supplied in a different fashion, by simply repeating those of the previous day.

The Communio of both Passion Friday and Saturday (Ps. 26, 12): “Ne tradíderis me, Dómine, in ánimas persequentium me, quoniam insurrexérunt in me testes iníqui, et mentíta est iníquitas sibi. (Give me not up, o Lord, to the souls of them that persecute me, for unjust witnesses have risen up against me, and iniquity hath lied for itself.)”

A number of lectionaries of the mid-8th century, and the earliest versions of the Gregorian Sacramentary about 30 years later, mark this day with the rubric “elemosina datur – alms are given.” Within the first half of the 9th century, the liturgical writer Amalarius of Metz reports (De eccl. offic. I, 9) that in both the sacramentary and antiphonary, (his term for the book we now call the gradual), the rubric reads “Dominus papa elemosinam dat. – The lord pope gives alms.”

Later medieval commentators on the liturgy took it for granted that this meant that the pope personally distributed alms to the poor, and in this they are followed by modern writers such as Dom Guéranger and the Bl. Ildephonse Schuster. The former writes in The Liturgical Year that “(t)he Pope presided at this distribution, which was no doubt made ample enough to last the whole of the coming week, when, on account of the long ceremonies, it would scarcely be possible to attend to individual cases of poverty. The liturgists of the Middle Ages allude to the beautiful appropriateness of the Roman Pontiff’s distributing alms with his own hand to the poor, on this day, the same on which Mary Magdalene embalmed with her perfumes the feet of Jesus.” Schuster, on the other hand, says that it was done “in imitation of the Saviour who, on the occasion of the Pasch, was wont to entrust Judas with the duty of giving alms to the poor.” (The Sacramentary, vol. 2, p. 168, citing John 13, 29)

The Mass of Passion Saturday, with the rubric “Sabbato ad Sanctum Petrum, quando elemosina datur – Saturday at St Peter’s, when the alms are given”; in the Echternach Sacramentary, ca. 895 A.D.  

However, none of the ancient Ordines Romani, the documents which explain how the liturgy was celebrated in Rome, give any details about how this was done, or why, or at what scale. (A fortiori, we cannot say what connection, if any, the custom may have had to the formerly aliturgical quality of the day.) I make bold, therefore, to offer an alternative explanation.

The oldest text of the Gregorian Sacramentary notes the station for this day “at St Peter’s, when alms are given,” but there is another tradition, attested in various lectionaries, which marks the day as follows: “Sabbato datur fermentum in consistorio Lateranensi – On Saturday, the fermentum is given in the hall (lit. ‘place of assembly’) at the Lateran.” (As noted by Theodor Klauser (1894-1984) Das römische Capitulare evangeliorum, p. 69; 1935) This refers to the custom by which hosts (or pieces of them) consecrated by the pope were sent to the main churches in Rome, and used when the priest performed the fraction rite at Mass, as a symbol of communion between the bishop and his clergy. There do not, however, appear to be any liturgical sources that note both the distribution of the fermentum to the clergy, and of alms to the poor, even though they took place on the same day.

A reconstruction of the Lateran complex as it stood in the Middle Ages; the hall where five of the ecumenical councils were held is in the structure in the middle with five small apses sticking out the side. The complex was rebuilt many times over the centuries, and it is difficult to say where exactly the “consistorium” mentioned above was. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Guéranger and Schuster simply take it for granted that the popes did both, but offer no explanation as to how they fit them both into the day, even as Schuster explicitly says that it was supposed to be a day of rest before the lengthy ceremonies of Holy Week. Much less do they explain how the pope and his court fit in the trip from the Lateran to St Peter’s on the opposite side of Rome, and back again. Well before them, the scholars of the Congregation of St Maur, in their commentary on the first Ordo Romanus, admit their perplexity over this discrepancy (PL 78, 887A), while perhaps offering the clue that explains it.

As they note, the famous collection of papal biographies known as the Liber Pontificalis says that Pope Zachary (741-52) “established that on many days, expenses for food, which even now are called ‘elymosina’, be brought from the venerable residence of the patriarch (‘de … patriarchio’, i.e. the Lateran) by the (papal) cellarers to the poor and pilgrims who stayed at St Peter’s, and given out to them, and further established that the same distribution of ‘elymosina’ of food be made to all the needy and infirm throughout all the regions of the city of Rome.” (The author makes a particular note of the word “elymosina”, which has many variant spellings, because it comes from Greek; it is the origin of the English word “alms” and its derivatives.)

While this passage says that the pope distributed alms to all the poor, it singles out St Peter’s basilica as a particularly important center of this work. And indeed, there were several pilgrim hospices in the neighborhood of the Vatican. Many such institutions, not just those in Rome, also took care of the needy in their cities, especially in the winter, when fewer pilgrims traveled, leaving more space within the buildings, and the poor were liable to suffer more. (This is why the Latin word “hospitium – a place to welcome guests” evolved into the English word “hospital.”)

The church of the Holy Spirit “in Sassia”, in the Borgo region near St Peter’s basilica. The nickname “in Sassia” derives from a hospice for Saxon pilgrims established here by the English king Ine of Wessex in 727, one of many such institutions in the area. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by gaspa, CC BY 2.0; incorrectly labeled as a photo of the nearby church of Santa Maria in Traspontina.)

More importantly, it says that the pope frequently sent alms from the Lateran to St Peter’s, not that he personally brought them there or distributed them. So perhaps we should understand that the special Paschal distribution of alms on the Saturday before Palm Sunday was likewise made “by the pope” in the moral sense, but not in the sense that he personally handed them out.

This would explain several things. The distribution would have been made at St Peter’s because it was already an important center of the Roman Church’s charitable activities. This would also be a sign that the alms came from the pope acting as the vicar of the Apostle, much as we still refer to the charitable collection taken each year around the feast of Ss Peter and Paul as “Peter’s pence”, not “Leo’s pence” or “Benedict’s pence.” And perhaps the later form of the rubric, which uses the term “dominus papa – the lord pope”, refers to the pope’s position as the civil ruler of Rome, first de facto, later de jure, a position which was consolidated precisely in the era when the rubric appears, in the days of Pope St Adrian and Charlemagne.

More importantly, if the pope did not personally distribute alms to the poor, but only did so in a figurative sense, it would explain how he could personally distribute the fermentum to the clergy, a much less taxing activity on a day that was supposed to be an opportunity for rest. And it would also perhaps explain why the aliturgical quality of the day was abolished so soon, if it was felt to be more convenient (and safer) to have a Mass at the Lateran, rather than to consecrate hosts for the fermentum at the station Mass of Passion Friday, and then carry them back to the Lateran.

As texts were supplied for the Masses of the formerly aliturgical days, there are inevitably found some variants from one place to another. The most common epistle for the new Mass of Passion Saturday is the one found in the Missal of St Pius V and its late medieval predecessors, Jeremiah 18, 18-23, the appropriateness of which is obvious. This is already attested in the lectionary of Murbach ca. 750 A.D.

“Come, and let us invent devices against the just man, … let us strike him with the tongue, and let us give no heed to all his words. Give heed to me, o Lord, and hear the voice of my adversaries. … Remember that I have stood in thy sight, to speak good for them, and to turn away thy indignation from them. … thou, O Lord, knowest all their counsel against me unto death.”

Christ the Man of Sorrows between the prophets David and Jeremiah, ca. 1495-1500, by the Spanish painter Diego de la Cruz.

By the 9th century, the so-called lectionary of Alcuin gives the passage from the prophet Zachariah (9, 9-16) which St Matthew cites (21, 5) in the Gospel which is read at the blessing of the palms. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Sion; shout for joy, o daughter of Jerusalem. Behold thy King will come to thee, the just and savior: he is poor, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.” This carries on through the Middle Ages in a small number of places, sometimes cut down to just the first three or four verses, but in some places, it was read at the blessing of the Palms instead of the more common reading from Exodus.

The Gospel of Holy Monday was originally John 12, 1-36. In Rome, this reading was later divided into two, with the first ending at verse 9. The second part, verses 10-36, was then used to supply the Gospel reading for Passion Saturday, which includes the plotting of the priests to kill Lazarus (10-11), the events of Palm Sunday (12-19), and Philip and Andrew bringing some gentiles to Christ (20-23). It therefore sets the tone of the day as a kind of vigil of Palm Sunday, while the Apostles’ introduction of the gentiles to Christ is read one week before the baptismal ceremonies of Holy Saturday, at which the successors of the Apostles fulfill the great Commission, to “teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28, 19)

This was, however, very much a minority tradition in the Middle Ages; the Usuarium catalog of medieval liturgical books shows it in only 5% of documented Uses. The most common reading, attested in just under 55% of cases, is John 6, 54-72 (alias 53-71).

“Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.” This first verse and those that come immediately after it, from the passage known as the Eucharistic Discourse, would perhaps have been chosen to encourage acceptance of the once-novel practice of celebrating Mass on this formally aliturgical day. Then, when many of the disciples abandon the Lord, “Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Will you also go away?’ And Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.’ … Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve; and one of you is a devil?’ Now he meant Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon: for this same was about to betray him…” This of course foreshadows Christ’s betrayal by Judas, and abandonment by the disciples, which are read at the Mass of Palm Sunday in the Passion of St Matthew.

The readings of Passion Saturday, Jeremiah 18, 18-23, and John 6, 54-72, in a Sarum Missal printed ca, 1500.

There is yet another Gospel for this day, which was read in about one-third of the medieval Uses of the Roman Rite, the whole of John chapter 17. This is the last part of Our Lord’s discourse at the Last Supper, the prayer which He makes to the Father before undergoing His Passion; in the liturgy, it serves as a prelude to the first reading of the Passion the next day.

This passage supplies the antiphons for the Benedictus (verse 5) and Magnificat (verse 25) for this day in the Divine Office, even though the Roman Missal does not read this Gospel. However it came about, this custom is very ancient, and indeed, these antiphons are consistently found also in Uses that read the Gospel from John 6 at Mass.