What Really Happened to the Sequences?

Since today is the feast of Pope St Pius V, who promulgated the so-called Tridentine editions of the Roman Missal and Breviary, it seems like a good day to address a persistent misunderstanding about his liturgical reform, one which I have seen repeated in many different places. The idea that St Pius V abolished the majority of sequences from the Mass is incorrect. His reform of the Missal changed nothing about the sequences per se.

The Easter sequence Victimae Paschali Laudes, one of the oldest and most widely used in the genre.

The Missal of St Pius V is a very conservative adaptation of a very conservative tradition, which was known in the Middle Ages as the Missal according to the custom (or “Use”) of the Roman Curia. This tradition had always been very slow to adopt anything new, and its Missal had very few sequences to begin with. In its pre-Tridentine editions, there are the same four found in the Missal of St Pius V, on Easter, Pentecost, and Corpus Christi, and at the Requiem Mass. (The Stabat Mater came in later when the feast of the Seven Sorrows was added to the general calendar.)

As the wise Fr Hunwicke has pointed out many times, it was never St Pius’ intention to abolish non-Roman Uses of the Roman Rite tout court. He did give permission for individual ecclesiastical institutions to take on the Roman version of the liturgical books, while at the same time giving veto power over such a change to every member of every chapter. It is also true that as generally happens, this led to some unintended consequences, and one might legitimately question whether such consequences were all for the best. Nevertheless, what really happened to the sequences specifically is that as see after see and order after order passed over to the use of the Roman books, they also thereby passed over to a Missal which only had four sequences, derived from a tradition that had never had any more than four. Exceptions were permitted, but they were rare, and many of those who kept their proper medieval Uses (e.g. the Premonstratensians) Romanized them, and in many cases dropped the sequences as part of that process.

A page of a Premonstratensian Missal printed in 1578, with a sequence for the feast of the Epiphany; in the next edition, this sequence is missing.

While it is true, therefore, that the sequences largely disappeared as an unintended result of St Pius V’s reform, he did not abolish any sequences at all. He promulgated a Missal that had very few of them, and as this Missal was adopted by others, they thereby adopted a tradition that had very few of them.

There are a few other points that bear remembering in this regard.

1. The Missal of the Roman Curia and that of St Pius V are by no means unusual in having such a limited repertoire of sequences, and we must not imagine that by dint of this reform, a glorious and universally beloved tradition was casually abolished as a thing of no value for no reason.

If one compares medieval Missals, one immediately finds a remarkable degree of uniformity in the older features of the Mass; the Introit of the First Sunday of Advent is always Ad te levavi, on the Second Sunday Populus Sion etc. There are far more variants of the order in which texts appear than in the texts themselves.

On the other hand, the corpus of sequences, which emerged rather later, varied enormously in text, length and especially in quality. To the mind of the Tridentine period, which is very much the mind of the Italian Renaissance, this argued that they were not as important a feature of the tradition as the other parts which the Church had so carefully preserved. (Of course, it can hardly be denied, and I have no concern to deny, that many people will not pass up a chance to shorten the liturgy by cutting what they deem to be “inessential.”)

But even in the period when they were most widely used, there were still plenty of churches that had very few of them, or none at all. As a feature of the Roman Mass, they were almost completely absent from the Use of the Mass followed by the Pope himself, and consequently by the Franciscans, who followed that Use. The Cistercians and Carthusians, with their characteristic austerity, never had them at all, not even for Easter.

The Mass of Easter Sunday in a Cistercian Missal printed in 1486, without the Victimae Paschali. 

2. Given the rapid success of the Reformation at the beginning, Catholics of the 16th century were genuinely running scared; regardless of whether we think they over-reacted or not (there is a case to be made either way), there really was a pervasive sense that the best way to strengthen the Church was to rally around the Papacy as the bedrock of the Faith. To many people, that meant doing the liturgy as it was done by the Papacy; in a way, the adoption of the Roman liturgical books is a tribute to the persistence of the belief in the principle of “Lex orandi, lex credendi.”

3. There is a very important difference between the reforms of St Pius V and those that came in the 20th century, which we really ought not to lose sight of. Because they did not damage the structure of the liturgy, and they did not make the liturgy the personal plaything of the celebrant and his chosen collaborators, the former were in theory not difficult to reverse. Let us suppose that at some point, a general clamor were to emerge to revive sequences. All one would have to do is publish a book with a collection of them, and declare their use restored ad libitum. I have actually perused a book published by a German musicologist ca. 1965, that weirdly optimistic period when people still thought that the upcoming liturgical reform was going to lead to a revival of all the good things in the Catholic liturgical tradition that had been, so to speak, asleep. It provides a generous selection of sequences for a good number of the major feasts: a perfectly doable reform. The reforms of the 20th century, on the other hand, impinged on the actual structure of the liturgy in a way that is much harder to undo.

The tomb and monument of Pope St Pius V in the basilica of St Mary Major in Rome. 

The Prayers at the Foot of the Altar and the Last Gospel: A Case-Study in Pius V’s Conservatism

I remember hearing years ago a double claim: first, that Psalm 42 was recited en route from the sacristy to the altar as a private act of preparation and that the Last Gospel was recited on the way back to the sacristy as a private act of thanksgiving; and second, that it was Pope Pius V who first put them into the Roman missal in the place they now occupy. I dutifully repeated this opinion in the Q&A after a lecture in St. Louis. A religious brother who happened to be there wrote to me afterwards with a polite correction, and I thought it would be beneficial to share with readers what he shared with me—especially in these days, when people who should know better often attribute fantastical acts of originality to Pius V.

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You said that the Last Gospel and Prayers at the Foot were devotional prior to Pius V’s reform, and that they were recited while walking to and from the sacristy. I thought you might be interested to see some images from pre-Trent Roman Missals that in fact prescribe the current practice in their rubrics.

1474 is thought to be the year of the first printed edition of the Missale Romanum. The Henry Bradshaw Society published in 1899 a critical edition of a 1474 Missale Romanum from Milan. While the Last Gospel is not mentioned in the Ordinary, here are the prayers at the foot of the altar:

Missale Romanum 1474 (1899 critical edition)

A Missale Romanum printed in Venice in 1501, three years before Pius V was born, contains two rubrical sections: an introduction at the front and an Ordinarium Misse in the middle of the tome. This Missal includes both the Prayers at the Foot of the altar and the Last Gospel described in precisely the format we are accustomed to for those ceremonies in the TLM today. Since it doesn’t have internal page numbers, I have included text searches that will lead to the right pages online (the scan may also be downloaded for free). There are:

- Front section includes Prayers at the Foot: “stans ante infimum gradum altaris” (search: letificat iyuentutem)
- Ordinarium includes Prayers at the Foot “cum intrat ad altare” (search: facerdos cũ itrat)
- Front section describes Last Gospel “ad cornu evangelii” (search: Initium fancti euangely)
- Ordinarium does not mention a Last Gospel after the Placeat (search: tibi laf qua fancta)

1501 Missale Romanum (Venice)

One can find many Missals from this time period that omit the Last Gospel. I have not found any yet that omit the Prayers at the Foot, which are very consistent across the board, at least for the Roman rite. I also haven’t found any that direct that either of those be said while in transit. So, in the Roman usage, by the printed age, if ever that was the practice, walking and talking was no longer a thing.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

The 450th Anniversary of Quo Primum

Just a brief note that today is the 450th anniversary of the Missal of St Pius V; the bull Quo primum by which it was promulgated was issued on July 14th, 1570. Te Deum laudamus...

The frontispiece of a Roman Missal “restored by decree of the Most Sacred Council of Trent, and pubished by order of Pope Pius V”, printed at Cologne, Germany, in 1573. (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Res/4 Liturg. 432 m.)

What Would the Canonization of Paul VI Mean for the Liturgy and Liturgical Reform?

Many of our readers, I am sure, have seen reports to the effect that Pope Paul VI may be canonized in the coming year. It does not appear that these reports have been officially confirmed. I do not propose to say anything here about whether this would be per se appropriate or opportune; if readers wish to comment, I ask them to address only the question of what this would mean for the future prospects of the liturgy and liturgical reform.

As far as I am concerned, the short answer is: absolutely nothing.

The canonization of a Saint does not change the facts of his earthly life. It does not rectify the mistakes he may have made, whether knowingly or unknowingly. It does not change his failures into successes, whether they came about through his fault or that of others. When St Joseph Calasanz died in 1648, the religious order he had founded, the Piarists, was to all intents and purposes destroyed. Ten years after Calasanz was canonized, another religious founder, St Alphonse Liguori was tricked by a close friend and early collaborator into signing a document which badly compromised the Redemptorist Order, and he was openly reproved by his confreres for having destroyed it. (The life of St Joseph Calasanz was one of his favorite books for spiritual reading in his later years.) These are historical facts which were not in the least bit altered by their later canonization and the later restoration of their orders.

Likewise, there have been and still are many Catholic historians who believe that St Pius V’s excommunication of Queen Elizabeth I of England, and his decree releasing her subjects from obedience to her, was a significant error in judgment; they are not bad or disloyal Catholics for holding such an opinion. There are of course others who hold exactly the opposite opinion, and they are not good and loyal Catholics merely for the fact of holding such an opinion.

I mention St Pius V particularly because he also, of course, gave the Church a significant reform of the liturgy. If Paul VI is indeed canonized, it will surely be argued that his liturgical reform must be held in the same veneration shown to that of St Pius V in the post-Tridentine period. This will be a false comparison on every level, and should be flatly rejected as such. The Pius V reform is significant precisely because it was deliberately conceived as a very conservative reform in the proper sense of the term, a reform that sought to conserve the authentic tradition of Catholic worship, and change only what it was felt to be absolutely necessary to change. The Paul VI reform is significant for exactly the opposite reason, because it introduced more changes into the liturgy and more rapidly than had ever happened before in the Church’s history.

The reform of the liturgical books begun by St Pius V and continued by his successors was one of the great successes of the Counter Reformation, and one from which the Church unquestionably drew many spiritual benefits. This does not change the fact that, unwittingly, it also set in motion a process by which the other Uses of the Roman Rite were gradually Romanized, and many valuable things (such as nearly the entire corpus of Sequences) were effectively lost. Many liturgical writers have regretted such losses, and whether one agrees with them or not, they have not been bad Catholics for doing so. The same applies to the reform of the Breviary by St Pius X; and likewise, many Catholics hold Pope Pius XII in the highest regard for a variety of good reasons, while disliking the Holy Week reform which he promulgated.

All of this is to say, the intrinsic merits or demerits of the post-Conciliar reform, and its status as a success or a failure, will not change in any way, shape or form if Pope Paul VI is indeed canonized. No one can honestly say otherwise, and no one has the right to criticize, attack, silence or call for the silencing of other Catholics if they contest that reform. If that reform went beyond the spirit and the letter of what Vatican II asked for in Sacrosanctum Concilium, as its own creators openly bragged that it did; if it was based on bad scholarship and a significant degree of basic incompetence, leading to the many changes now known to be mistakes; if it failed utterly to bring about the flourishing of liturgical piety that the Fathers of Vatican II desired, none of these things will change if Paul VI is canonized. Just as the canonizations of Pius V and X, and the future canonization of XII, did not place their liturgical reforms beyond question or debate, the canonization of Paul VI will not put anything about his reform beyond debate, and no one has any right to say otherwise.

In Honor of Saint Pius V

Pope St. Pius V's vision of the Christians' victory at Lepanto

“O God, who for the overthrow of the enemies of Thy Church and for the restoration of divine worship didst vouchsafe to choose blessed Pius as supreme Pontiff: grant that we may be defended by his patronage and so cleave to Thy service, that overcoming all the wiles of our enemies, we may rejoice in perpetual peace. Through our Lord. Amen.” (translation of the Collect for May 5, Missale Romanum 1962)

Today we offer to God our thanks for the life, work, sanctity, and intercession of this great reformer, Antonio Ghislieri (1504–1572), Vicar of Christ from January 8, 1566 to his death on May 1, 1572. Saint Pius V faithfully preserved Tradition and guided the Barque of Peter in tempestuous times. He it was who consolidated the Roman Rite at a time when a coherent, trustworthy, and eminently ancient rite was desperately needed for unity of worship (not to mention unity of doctrine) across Europe.

The Missal of Pius V, in its later editions that affect us more directly, has taught us some of the most fundamental lessons of our lives as Catholics. Through the sacred liturgy, we hallow the name of God, our Father, giving worship and thanks to Him; we pray that His kingdom come and His will be done on earth, in our souls, our families, our nations, as in heaven; we beg that the bread of eternal life be given to us, as well as the bread of earthly goods according to our daily needs; we ask humbly that our sins be forgiven even as we ask for the grace to forgive those who have sinned against us; we implore God to strengthen us in our trials and deliver us from evil.

In an address to the Plenary Assembly of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments on September 21, 2001, Pope John Paul II had this to say about the Missale Romanum promulgated by his predecessor in 1570:

The People of God need to see priests and deacons behave in a way that is full of reverence and dignity, in order to help them to penetrate invisible things without unnecessary words or explanations. In the Roman Missal of Saint Pius V, as in several Eastern liturgies, there are very beautiful prayers through which the priest expresses the most profound sense of humility and reverence before the Sacred Mysteries: they reveal the very substance of the Liturgy.

A fact that will no doubt be of interest to readers of NLM (if they don't already know it): prior to Pius V there had been only four Latin Fathers recognized as Doctors of the Church—Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, and Ambrose. In 1567, Pope Pius V elevated St. Thomas Aquinas as the fifth Doctor, and in 1568, added the four Eastern Fathers St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory Nazianzus, and St. Athanasius.

Saint Pius V, pray for us.

A small edition of the Missale Romanum from 1587