If one looks at an old Roman hand missal, one will find the Mass divided into two parts, “the Mass of the Catechumens” and “the Mass of the Faithful.” Like most people, I had supposed this was an ancient division. However, Lynne C. Boughton, in her fascinating article “An Imagined Past: Initiation, Liturgical Secrecy, and ‘Mass of the Catechumens’” (Antiphon 25.2 [2021]: 161–210), believes that this terminology was invented rather later.
Boughton quotes a Catholic Encyclopedia article of 1908 in which the author, Thomas Scannell, writes: “Catechumens when present at Mass were not dismissed with the inquirers, but were detained while a special prayer was recited over them. They then also withdrew before the Mass of the Faithful began.” She suggests that the language became popularized through Dom Fernand Cabrol in the 1920s, based on Cabrol’s interpretation of the disciplina arcani:
Boughton quotes a Catholic Encyclopedia article of 1908 in which the author, Thomas Scannell, writes: “Catechumens when present at Mass were not dismissed with the inquirers, but were detained while a special prayer was recited over them. They then also withdrew before the Mass of the Faithful began.” She suggests that the language became popularized through Dom Fernand Cabrol in the 1920s, based on Cabrol’s interpretation of the disciplina arcani:
Hand-missals provided for congregations into the early part of the twentieth century corresponded to altar missals in not indicating a “Mass of the Catechumens / Mass of the Faithful” distinction. But in 1921, a hand-missal edited by the liturgical movement specialist Fernand Cabrol contained labels that divided the Ordo missae into a “Mass of the Catechumens” and a “Mass of the Faithful.” Cabrol’s introduction to the hand-missal explains that the labels indicate that catechumens were “only allowed to assist at this first part of the Mass and were obliged to withdraw after the Gospel.” Although some hand-missals that were produced as late as 1950 did not insert labels that implied a division in the Ordo missae, the presence of such became standard in these books for the laity—but not in books for altar use—in the decade preceding the Second Vatican Council.The remainder of her article then questions the historical assumptions on which the division was made. But my question is: When and where did this division originate? What are its origins?
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| A 1941 publication |
Picking up volume 10 of Dom Guéranger’s The Liturgical Year, the English version of which was first published in 1879, I see he writes on page 39:
The Priest and the people should now have their hearts ready: it is time to prepare the offering itself. And it is here that we come to the second part of the holy Mass; it is called the Oblation, and immediately follows that which was named the Mass of the Catechumens, on account of its being formerly the only part at which the candidates for Baptism had a right to be present.Dom Guéranger speaks as if it’s a well-known fact, not something he’s daringly introducing. And this is over forty years earlier than Cabrol’s 1921 missal cited by Broughton.
So, my first question is: What is the earliest evidence any reader has come across for the Mass being divided explicitly into these two parts?
The plot thickens: I have noticed that Byzantine publications also divide the Divine Liturgy into “Liturgy of the Catechumens” and “Liturgy of the Faithful,” and I am trying to figure out how far back that goes. One hypothesis would be that it was picked up from Western writers and applied to the Eastern rite, but it could also work the other way around.
I asked a biritual priest for his opinion and he replied:
“In Greek liturgical books, one distinction is ancient: ‘Pre-anaphora.’ But the evidence I can see points to the formal division of Byzantine service books under those exact headings being a later, imposed editorial convention, not a Byzantine manuscript habit. In the Greek tradition, older witnesses seem to prefer categories like proanaphora rather than ‘Liturgy of the Catechumens.’ In the Slavonic printed tradition (not my area of expertise) but discussed by Taft et al., explicit headings such as ‘Литургия оглашенных’ (Liturgy of the Catechumens) are attested at least by the 1617 Sluzhebnik, and continue in later editions (the interesting question here is whether or not Cabrol had access to French/Slavic versions of these books—from Russian emigres in post-Revolutionary France?). The formal division of Byzantine liturgical texts into “Liturgy of the Catechumens” and “Liturgy of the Faithful” appears to be modern editorial imposition. That is to say: the rite historically had a ritual seam at the anaphora, but the titles themselves may be largely a modern scholarly fiction when projected backward.”
Now, if a book in Russian in 1617 has “Liturgy of the Catechumens,” then could Guéranger have gotten this term from the Slavic tradition and imposed it on the Roman Rite? Perhaps “Liturgy/Mass of the Faithful” was a later imposition, something invented for the sake of parallelism and a clear division?
As a provisional hypothesis, one might say that the source of calling the first part of the liturgy “catechumenal” is due to the litany of the catechumens terminating before they are thrown out of “the doors” by the subdeacons at Hagia Sophia, and thus, the second part becomes, by default, the liturgy “of the faithful.” St. Augustine complains at one point that there are too many catechumens to bless individually so he will bless them all at once, which indicates the origin of the oratio super populum. The litany of the catechumens ended in a common dismissal prior to the anaphora, as likely attested in North Africa, Rome, and Constantinople.
In any case, I would very much welcome input from readers on these questions.
