The Question of the Traditional Mass in Pope Leo XIV’s Pontificate

A guest article by the Canon of Shaftesbury, who serves as a canonist in a major archdiocese.

We find ourselves in the early days of Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate, and there are reasons for cautious optimism. Several signs suggest that the Holy Father wishes to address some of the more pressing challenges inherited from his predecessor.

Among these is the thorny question of access to the Traditional Latin Mass (what was once called the Extraordinary Form or Tridentine Mass) and the restrictions imposed by Traditiones Custodes.

I approach this question with the disposition we ought to have toward any successor of Peter: giving the benefit of the doubt, assuming good faith, and trusting in his pastoral intentions. Thus far, I do not detect in Pope Leo XIV any ill will toward those attached to the Traditional Mass. Yet good intentions alone do not guarantee wise policy, and two proposals currently being discussed as potential ‘solutions’ to the current impasse give me serious pause. Both, I would argue, fail to address the underlying problems and may even compound them.

The Ordinariate Proposal: A Gilded Cage

The first proposal involves creating some form of personal ordinariate to oversee communities attached to the Traditional Mass. This has a certain administrative logic to it: provide a dedicated structure, remove these communities from the direct oversight of potentially hostile diocesan bishops, and create a stable canonical framework for their existence.

But this apparent solution conceals a fundamental problem: it would create a liturgical ghetto. The genius of Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum was precisely that it refused this ghettoization. Pope Benedict recognized the Traditional Mass not as some exotic rite requiring special permissions and separate hierarchical structures, but as part of the Roman Rite itself: never abrogated, always legitimate, and available as a right to the faithful and to priests. The ordinary-extraordinary form distinction was meant to emphasize continuity, not division. It acknowledged that the Church prays in two forms of the same rite, both equally Roman, both equally Catholic.

An ordinariate structure, by contrast, would effectively declare: ‘This Mass is so problematic, so divisive, so other, that it cannot exist within normal diocesan structures.’ It would enshrine in canon law the very separation that Pope Benedict sought to overcome. Worse still, it would do nothing to address the problem of hostile bishops. In fact, it might embolden them. A bishop who has shown himself ungenerous—or outright antagonistic—toward the faithful attached to the Traditional Mass would simply have his prejudices validated: ‘See, these people and their liturgy are so different they need their own separate structure. They don’t really belong here.’

The faithful would be protected, perhaps, but at the cost of being formally marginalized. This is not a solution; it is an institutionalized retreat.

The “Reform of the Reform”: Necessary but Insufficient

The second proposal focuses on improving celebrations of the Novus Ordo; what is often called the ‘reform of the reform.’ Proponents argue that if the Ordinary Form were celebrated with greater reverence, solemnity, and attention to the sacred, many of the concerns driving people toward the Traditional Mass would dissipate.

This is not entirely wrong. Much of what ails Catholic liturgy today stems not from the Novus Ordo itself in its official form, but from the liberties, innovations, and abuses that have become routine in its celebration. A more reverent Novus Ordo: celebrated ad orientem, with Gregorian chant, in Latin where appropriate, with careful attention to rubrics, etc. This would undoubtedly be a vast improvement over what many Catholics experience on a typical Sunday.

But this approach, while laudable, does not go far enough. It treats the problem as primarily one of implementation when there are also questions of structure and theology embedded in the rite itself.

The Novus Ordo was not the product of organic liturgical development but of committee design. This is not a polemical claim but a historical fact. The post-Vatican II liturgical reform, whatever its intentions, created a rite that was substantially different from what preceded it; not through the gradual, Spirit-guided evolution that characterized liturgical development for centuries, but through deliberate committee construction in a remarkably short period of time.

Pope Benedict XVI himself was deeply aware of this problem. In his writings both as Cardinal Ratzinger and as Pope, he expressed concerns about the rupture in liturgical continuity and the dangers of treating the liturgy as something we construct rather than something we receive. His whole project in Summorum Pontificum was, in part, to restore that sense of organic continuity.

More troubling still is the way the Novus Ordo, in its typical celebration, places the priest at the center of the liturgical action. The structure of the rite, particularly when celebrated versus populum, tends to make the priest’s personality, choices, and even charisma central to the experience. The priest becomes, whether he wishes it or not, a kind of performer. The liturgy becomes, to a troubling degree, his creation.

This is not to say that priests celebrating the Novus Ordo are acting in bad faith or that Christ cannot be encountered there; of course He can and is. But the structure of the rite makes the centrality of Christ dependent on the priest’s willingness and ability to efface himself, to suppress his own personality, to resist the temptation to innovate or ‘personalize’ the liturgy.

In the Traditional Mass, by contrast, the priest’s personality is structurally suppressed. Facing the same direction as the people, following a more fixed and detailed rubrical structure, praying large portions of the Mass quietly, the priest becomes almost anonymous; a mediator rather than a protagonist. Christ is at the center not because the priest is particularly holy or particularly skilled, but because the structure of the rite itself directs all attention away from the priest and toward the altar, toward the sacrifice, toward the Lord.

It is no accident that so many churches built or renovated in the Novus Ordo era look like stadiums or auditoriums rather than sacred spaces. If the liturgy is fundamentally about what the priest does, about the community’s celebration, about active participation understood primarily as external activity, then the architectural logic follows: create a space where everyone can see the action, where the priest is visible and audible to all, where the focus is on the human gathering rather than on the divine presence.

A more reverent celebration of the Novus Ordo can mitigate some of these problems, but it cannot fully overcome them without structural changes so substantial that we would be, in effect, creating a different rite.

The Pastoral Ends

The real solution is not complicated, though it requires courage and perhaps a willingness to disappoint certain constituencies who have grown attached to the restrictions of Traditiones Custodes. The solution is to return to the dispensation of Summorum Pontificum. Pope Benedict’s motu proprio was wise precisely because it addressed all the problems that the current proposals fail to solve:

1. It dealt with hostile bishops. By establishing that priests have a right to celebrate the Traditional Mass without needing episcopal permission, and that faithful have a right to request it, Pope Benedict removed the question from the realm of episcopal whim and placed it on firmer canonical ground. A bishop could not simply forbid what the universal law of the Church permitted.

2. It refused ghettoization. By insisting on the ordinary-extraordinary form distinction, Pope Benedict kept the Traditional Mass within the normal life of dioceses and parishes. It was not an exotic import requiring special structures, but part of the Church’s living tradition.

3. It respected the freedom of the faithful. Pope Benedict understood that the faithful have a right (not merely a privilege) to access the Church’s liturgical heritage. The liturgy is not the property of bishops or popes to manipulate at will, but a sacred trust handed down through generations.

4. It created space for mutual enrichment. Pope Benedict hoped that the two forms of the Roman Rite would enrich each other: that the reverence and sacral character of the old would influence the new, while the new rite would encourage Catholics to engage actively with the liturgy, to better understand the texts, and to participate vocally in their appointed parts. These devotional habits, once cultivated, naturally enhance one’s experience of the traditional rite as well. But for this enrichment to work, it requires proximity, not separation.

Conclusion

Pope Leo XIV faces a difficult situation, and I do not envy him the task of navigating these troubled liturgical waters. But the path forward should not require novel structures or half-measures. Pope Benedict XVI, in his wisdom, already showed us the way. Summorum Pontificum was not perfect (no merely human legislation ever is) but it was fundamentally sound in its principles and generous in its pastoral vision.

What is needed now is not innovation but restoration: restoration of the freedom Pope Benedict granted, restoration of trust in the faithful, restoration of confidence that the Church is big enough to hold both forms of her Roman liturgical tradition without one threatening the other.

The Traditional Mass is not a problem to be managed or a crisis to be solved. It is a gift to be received, a treasure to be preserved, and a heritage to be passed on. The sooner we return to treating it as such, the sooner we can move past these exhausting controversies and return to the real work of the Church: the sanctification of souls and the worship of Almighty God.

Some Calendar Notes for Mid-July

In the Missal and Breviary of St Pius V, July 13th is the feast of Pope St Anacletus, which was carried over from the pre-Tridentine editions. The 14th is that of St Bonaventure, who died in 1274, while attending the Second Council of Lyon, and was canonized in 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84), his fellow Minister General of the Franciscan Order. His feast was originally kept by the Franciscans on the second Sunday of July, but in the Tridentine books, it was fixed to July 14th. The Acta Sanctorum gives an account of the uncertainty about the proper date of his death, but it is now generally agreed from the earliest accounts that he actually died on the 15th.

The Lying-in-State of St Bonaventure, by Francisco de Zurbarán, 1629

The Holy Roman Emperor St Henry II died on July 13, 1024, and was canonized by Blessed Pope Eugenius III in 1146. The see of Bamberg, Germany, which he founded, and in whose cathedral he is buried, traditionally kept his feast on the day of his death. He was added to the Roman Calendar in 1631 on the same day, as a commemoration on the feast of St Anacletus. When he was given his own feast in 1668, it was assigned to July 15, then the first free day after that of his death.

St Camillus de Lellis died on July 14, 1614. By the time he was canonized in 1746, Our Lady of Mt Carmel had been assigned to July 16th, and St Alexius (whose very existence is rather doubtful) to the 17th. He was therefore placed on the 18th, and the Saints previously kept on that day, an early Roman martyr named Symphorosa and her 7 sons, reduced to a commemoration.

Pope Anacletus is now recognized to be the same person as Pope Cletus, who shares his feast with Pope Marcellinus on April 26th. For this reason, a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites issued on February 14, 1961, ordered the July 13th feast to be completely removed from the calendar. Although the current Roman calendar therefore has July 13th as a feria with no feast at all, and St Alexius as a commemoration, Bonaventure, Henry and Camillus all remain effectively displaced by Anacletus. They were reordered in the post-Conciliar calendar, so that each would be kept on the day of his “birth into heaven,” with St Henry on the 13th, St Camillus on the 14th, and St Bonaventure on the 15th. St Alexius has been completely removed.

An illustration from a 1501 Breviary according to the Use of Bamberg; St Henry and his wife, St Cunegond, holding the cathedral of Bamberg, which they founded in 1002, together with the See itself.

As I have written before, there have always been Saints’ feasts which were kept on different days in different places, and the divergence between the temporal cycles of the Roman Rite and the post-Conciliar Rite is far more significant than the differences in the two calendars of Saints. The principle that a Saint’s feast should be assigned to his death day is a very ancient one, but has never been the sole criterion for choosing a day. A very prominent recent example is Pope St John Paul II, who died on April 2, 2005; since that date often occurs in Holy Week or Easter Week, his feast day is kept on October 22, the date of his inauguration as pope. Nevertheless, we have here in July an occasion where the two calendars might easily be reconciled with no harm done.

A Byzantine Hymn in the Ambrosian Rite

In the Ambrosian Rite, the Third Sunday after Epiphany presents a nice example, one among many, of a text borrowed from the Byzantine liturgy. The Ambrosian corpus of Mass antiphons is much smaller than the Roman one, and many pieces are used on several Sundays over the course of the liturgical year. These are arranged in the antiphonary in a Common of Sundays, and sung in rotation. On the Sundays after the octave of Epiphany, however, an exception is made for the Transitorium, the equivalent of the Roman Communion, of which there are proper ones used only in that period, with particularly beautiful texts.

On the Third Sunday, the transitorium is a Latin translation of a hymn sung on Christmas in the Byzantine Rite, composed by St Andrew of Crete, who was born in the mid-7th century; the year of his death is variously given as 712, 726 or 740. This is the first of a series of “stichera”, as they are called, texts sung between verses of the Laudate Psalms (148-149-150) towards the end of the longest (by far!) of the canonical Hours, Orthros.

Laetamini justi, caeli exultate, jucundate montes, Christo genito; Virgo sedebat, Cherubim imitans, in gremio portans Dei Verbum incarnatum. Pastores stellam mirantur; Magi Domino munera offerunt; Angeli Salvatorem adorantes clamant: Incomprehensibilis Domine, gloria tibi! – Rejoice, ye just; exsult, ye heavens, be glad, ye mountains, at the birth of Christ. The Virgo sat, imitating the Cherubim, bearing in Her lap the Word of God Incarnate. The shepherds wonder at the star, the Magi offer their gifts to the Lord; the Angels, worshipping the Savior cry out, ‘O incomprehensible Lord, glory to Thee!’ (Video by Antonio Maria Abate; cantor Andrea di Martino)

The Greek original, which does not include the phrase “the shepherds wonder at the star” found in the Latin version.

In the following video of the All-Night Vigil of Christmas at the Sretensky Monastery in Moscow this year, the Church Slavonic version of this hymn begins at 19:00. (On the Julian calendar, Christmas is currently celebrated on the Gregorian date of January 7th. - Due to whatever scheduling mix-up, the camera was not turned until Orthros was about half-way over, so most of the vigil is missing here.)

This transitorium is also used on the fifth Sunday after Epiphany, which is very rarely celebrated, and also at the Mass of any feria occurring in the weeks following these Sundays. (As in the Roman Rite, the Ambrosian calendar of Saints is very full in January and the beginning of February, so this doesn’t happen very often.)

The texts of the other transitoria of the season after Epiphany are also very beautiful.

II after Epiphany Mysterium magnum factum est in Babylonia, ut caminus extingueretur. tribus pueris exsultatnibus, dicentibus, “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.” – A great mystery happened in Babylon, that the furnace should be extinguished, as the three children rejoiced, saying “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”

IV after Epiphany Te laudamus, Domine omnipotens, qui sedes super Cherubim, et Seraphim, quem benedicunt Angeli, Archangeli, et laudant Prophetæ, et Apostoli. Te laudamus, Domine, orando, qui venisti peccata solvendo. Te deprecamur magnum Redemptorem, quem Pater misit ovium Pastorem. Tu es Christus Dominus Salvator, qui de Maria Virgine es natus. Hunc sacrosanctum Calicem sumentes, ab omni culpa libera nos semper. – We praise Thee, Lord Almighty, who sittest upon the Cherubim and Seraphim, whom the Angels and Archangels bless, and the Prophets and Apostles praise. We praise Thee, o Lord, in our prayer, who came to destroy (our) sins. We beseech the great Redeemer, whom the Faher sent as the shepherd of the sheep. Thou are Christ the Lord, the Savior, who wast born of the Virgin Mary. As we received this most holy Chalice, deliver us always from every sin.

The Mass of the “Sixth Sunday after Epiphany” is always said on the Sunday before Septuagesima, and the transitorium reflects the beginning of the passage to the penitential season of Fore-Lent.

VI after Epiphany Convertimini filii hominum, dum habetis tempus, dicit Dominus, et ego scribam nomina vestra in libro Patris mei, qui est in caelis. – Be converted, ye sons of men, while ye have time, saith the Lord, and I will write your names in the book of My Father who is in heaven.

As always, thanks to Nicola de’ Grandi, who provided part of the material for this post.

Some Calendar Notes for Mid-July

In the Missal and Breviary of St Pius V, July 13th is the feast of Pope St Anacletus, which was carried over from the pre-Tridentine editions. The 14th is that of St Bonaventure, who died in 1274, while attending the Second Council of Lyon, and was canonized in 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84), his fellow Minister General of the Franciscan Order. His feast was originally kept by the Franciscans on the second Sunday of July, but in the Tridentine books, it was fixed to July 14th. The Acta Sanctorum gives an account of the uncertainty about the proper date of his death, but it is now generally agreed from the earliest accounts that he actually died on the 15th.

The Lying-in-State of St Bonaventure, by Francisco de Zurbarán, 1629

The Holy Roman Emperor St Henry II died on July 13, 1024, and was canonized by Blessed Pope Eugenius III in 1146. The see of Bamberg, Germany, which he founded, and in whose cathedral he is buried, traditionally kept his feast on the day of his death. He was added to the Roman Calendar in 1631 on the same day, as a commemoration on the feast of St Anacletus. When he was given his own feast in 1668, it was assigned to July 15, then the first free day after that of his death.

St Camillus de Lellis died on July 14, 1614. By the time he was canonized in 1746, Our Lady of Mt Carmel had been assigned to July 16th, and St Alexius (whose very existence is rather doubtful) to the 17th. He was therefore placed on the 18th, and the Saints previously kept on that day, an early Roman martyr named Symphorosa and her 7 sons, reduced to a commemoration.

Pope Anacletus is now recognized to be the same person as Pope Cletus, who shares his feast with Pope Marcellinus on April 26th. For this reason, a decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites issued on February 14, 1961, ordered the July 13th feast to be completely removed from the calendar. Although the current EF calendar therefore has July 13th as a feria with no feast at all, and St Alexius as a commemoration, Bonaventure, Henry and Camillus all remain effectively displaced by Anacletus. They were reordered in the OF Calendar, so that each would be kept on the day of his “birth into heaven,” with St Henry on the 13th, St Camillus on the 14th, and St Bonaventure on the 15th. St Alexius has been completely removed.

An illustration from a 1501 Breviary according to the Use of Bamberg; St Henry and his wife, St Cunegond, holding the cathedral of Bamberg, which they founded in 1002, together with the See itself.

As I have written before, there have always been Saints’ feasts which were kept on different days in different places, and the divergence between the temporal cycles of the EF and OF is far more significant than the differences in the two calendars of Saints. The principle that a Saint’s feast should be assigned to his death day is a very ancient one, but has never been the sole criterion for choosing a day. A very prominent recent example is Pope St John Paul II, who died on April 2, 2005; since that date often occurs in Holy Week or Easter Week, his feast day is kept on October 22, the date of his inauguration. Nevertheless, we have here in July an occasion where the two calendars might easily be reconciled with no harm done, when and if the time comes to thaw the EF Calendar.

The New Prefaces of the EF Mass, Part 7: The Preface of the Dedication of a Church

The first article in this series contains a history of the preface as a feature of the Roman Mass to which the reader may find it useful to refer.

The final preface of the seven recently permitted for optional use in the Mass of the Extraordinary Form, that for the Dedication of a Church, is one of the group originally composed for the neo-Gallican use of Paris and promulgated by the reform of Abp. Charles de Ventimille in 1738. As noted previously, when the neo-Gallican Uses were gradually suppressed over the course of the 19th century, some of their features were retained by being incorporated into the French supplements “for certain places” in the Roman liturgical books, this preface among them.

His Excellency Fabian Bruskewitz, then bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska (emeritus since 2012), draws the Latin and Greek alphabets on the floor of the chapel of the FSSP seminary of Our Lady of Guadalupe during its dedication in 2010.

VD: Qui hanc oratiónis domum, quam aedificávimus, bonórum omnium largítor inhábitas, et Ecclesiam, quam ipse fundasti, incessábili operatióne sanctíficas. Haec est enim vere domus oratiónis, visibílibus aedificiis adumbráta, templum habitatiónis gloriae tuae, sedes incommutábilis veritátis, sanctuarium aeternae caritátis. Haec est arca, quae nos a mundi ereptos diluvio, in portum salútis indúcit. Haec est dilecta et única sponsa, quam acquisívit Christus sánguine suo, quam vivíficat Spíritu suo, cuius in sinu renáti per gratiam tuam, lacte verbi páscimur, pane vitae roborámur, misericordiae tuae subsidiis confovémur. Haec fidéliter in terris, sponso adiuvante, mílitat, et perénniter in caelis, ipso coronante, triumphat. Et ídeo…

Who being the giver of all good things, dwellest in this house of prayer which we have built, and sanctifiest the Church, which Thou didst found Thyself, with unceasing work. For this is truly the house of prayer, represented by visible buildings, the temple wherein dwelleth Thy glory, the seat of unchanging truth, the sanctuary of eternal charity. This is the ark, which rescueth us from the flood of the world, and bringeth us unto the port of salvation. This is the beloved and only spouse, which Christ got with His own blood, even she whom he quickeneth with His Spirit, in whose bosom we, being reborn through Thy grace, are fed with the milk of the word, strengthened with the bread of life, and fostered with the aid of Thy mercy. Faithful doth she strive upon the earth with the help of Her Spouse, and triumpheth forever in heaven as He crowns Her. And therefore...

It is not difficult to see why this particular preface was not taken into the post-Conciliar Missal. The “negative” image of the world as a flood, and of the Church as an ark which delivers us from it, hardly fits in with the naive optimism about the modern world so much in vogue in the 1960s. In passing, we may note that the story of Noah’s ark and the flood was deleted from the Easter vigil in 1955, and not restored in the post-Conciliar reform. (It is read on two days in the sixth week of Ordinary time, year 1.) Likewise, the words “we renounced ... the world, which is the enemy of God”, originally included in the renewal of baptismal promises added to the vigil in 1955, were deleted in 1969. Expressions like “unchanging truth”, “only Spouse”, “strive” (“militat”, as in “the Church militant”), and above all “triumph”, clash mightily with the much-vaunted “Spirit of Vatican II”, even that Spirit that killeth, where the letter giveth life. I remember a pastor of mine, who had lived and suffered through the very worst of the post-Conciliar crazy days, once saying, “Back in the ’70s, the very worst sin you could commit was to triumph over something, and you could get away with almost anything if you could label its opposite ‘triumphalism!’ ”

The New Prefaces of the EF Mass, Part 6: The Preface of All Saints and Patron Saints

The first article in this series contains a history of the preface as a feature of the Roman Mass to which the reader may find it useful to refer.

Of the seven prefaces recently made optional in the Missal of the Extraordinary Form, four come from the post-Conciliar reform (those of the Angels, St John the Baptist, the martyrs, and the wedding Mass), and three were originally composed for the 1738 neo-Gallican revision of the Missal of Paris (those of the Blessed Sacrament, of All Saints and Patron Saints, and the Dedication of a Church). When the neo-Gallican Uses were gradually suppressed over the course of the 19th century, some of their features were retained by being incorporated into the French supplements “for certain places” in the Roman liturgical books, these latter three prefaces among them. The recent decree Quo magis gives universal permission for their use whenever the appropriate Mass is celebrated in the Extraordinary Form. Here then is the preface of All Saints and Patron Saints; in this case, I include the full text of the doxology, which is slightly different from the normal form.

The Mass of All Saints day in a Parisian Missal from the end of the 15th century: Bibliothèque Mazarine, Ms 412; folio 352r (image cropped).

“VD: Qui glorificáris in concilio Sanctórum, et eórum coronando mérita, corónas dona tua: qui nobis in eórum praebes et conversatióne exemplum, et communióne consortium, et intercessióne subsidium: ut tantam habentes impósitam nubem testium, per patientiam currámus ad propósitum nobis certámen, et cum eis percipiámus immarcescíbilem gloriae corónam. Per Iesum Christum Dóminum nostrum, cuius sánguine ministrátur nobis intróitus in aeternum regnum. Per quem maiestátem tuam trementes adórant Angeli, et omnes Spirítuum caelestium chori socia exsultatióne concélebrant. Cum quibus et nostras voces, ut admitti iubeas, deprecámur, súpplici confessióne dicentes:

Truly it is worthy... everlasting God: Who art glorified in the council of the Saints, and by crowning their merits, crownest (also) Thy gifts. Who in their manner of life givest us an example, a share in their communion, and help in their intercession; so that ‘we also, having so great a cloud of witnesses over our head, may run by patience to the fight proposed to us, (Hebrews 12, 1), and with them ‘receive a never fading crown of glory.’ (1 Peter 5, 4). Through Jesus Christ our Lord, by whose blood ‘an entrance is ministered to us into the everlasting kingdom.’ (2 Peter 1, 11) Through Whom the Angels adore Thy majesty in trembling, and all the choirs of the heavenly spirits with shared rejoicing praise. And we pray that Thou may command our voices to be brought in among them, saying with humble confession:”

With several changes, all of them typically pointless and inexplicable, this preface was then incorporated into the Novus Ordo. (This strikes me as the work of a very pedantic Latinist who learned too well the “rule” that the verb always goes at the end. “Largiris” in place of “praebes” is particularly inept, and the removal of the preposition “in” from the second relative clause makes a mess of the words “communióne consortium”)

VD: Qui in Sanctórum concilio celebráris, et eórum coronando mérita, tua dona corónas: qui nobis eórum conversatióne largiris exemplum, et communióne consortium, et intercessióne subsidium: ut tantis testibus confirmáti, ad propósitum certámen curramus invicti, et immarcescíbilem cum eis corónam gloriae consequámur: per Christum Dóminum nostrum Et ídeo cum Angelis et Archángelis, cumque multíplici congregatióne Sanctórum, hymnum laudis tibi cánimus, sine fine dicéntes:

My translation: Truly it is worthy... everlasting God: Who art celebrated in the council of the Saints, and by crowning their merits, crownest (also) Thy gifts. Who by their manner of life dost grant us an example, by their communion a share (in?), and help by their intercession; so that strengthened by such great witnesses, we may run unconquered to the fight proposed, and with them obtain a never-fading crown of glory: through Christ our Lord. And therefore with the Angels and Archangels, and with the manifold congregation of the Saints, we sing to Thee the hymn of praise, saying without end”

The new English liturgical translation: It is truly right... For you are praised in the company of your Saints and, in crowning their merits, you crown your own gifts. By their way of life you offer us an example, by communion with them you give us companionship, by their intercession, sure support, so that, encouraged by so great a cloud of witnesses, we may run as victors in the race before us and win with them the imperishable crown of glory, through Christ our Lord. And so, with the Angels and Archangels, and with the great multitude of the Saints, we sing the hymn of your praise, as without end we acclaim:

Dom Prosper Guéranger (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Our friends at Canticum Salomonis recently published this excerpt from the Institutions Liturgiques of Dom Prosper Guéranger (vol. 2, cap. 19; p. 321), the great enemy of the neo-Gallican liturgical reform, who was largely responsible for convincing the French bishops to adopt the use of the Roman liturgical books.

“Why, then, were the prefaces of Advent, the Dedication, All Saints, and even St Denis not taken from the ancient sacramentaries? Why commission the composition of entirely new ones from doctors of the Sorbonne, whose style, so prolix, so bloated, is so far from the refined cadences of St Leo and St Gelasius?

Why, above all, was a heretic like Dr Laurent-François Boursier, expelled from the Sorbonne in 1720 for having written against the Council of Embrun, given the honor of composing such sacred prayers? To this man the Church of Paris owes the Preface of All Saints, also sung on patronal feasts. In this Preface, Boursier tells God that, by crowning the merits of the saints, He crowns his own gifts: “eorum coronando merita, coronas dona tua”: a very Catholic expression in one sense, and a very Jansenist one in another. [1]

As a liturgical historian, we would be remiss if we did not mention that Boursier died on 17 February 1749 in the parish of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, without having retracted his Appeal [2]. The curé of this parish, although an opponent of the Appeal, nevertheless administered the Sacraments to Boursier, and the Archbishop of Beaumont therefore exiled him to Senlis for his act of schism. And yet Boursier’s Preface continued, and continues, to be sung!”

It is certainly fair to ask why these prefaces were not just restored directly from the ancient sacramentaries, although Guéranger, ever the Romantic, seems to take it for granted that the Popes personally composed the liturgical books named for them. (In point of fact, the terms “Leonine” and “Gelasian” sacramentaries are inventions, and rather fanciful ones at that, of scholars who lived more than a millennium after the Popes in question, and the Leonine Sacramentary is not a sacramentary at all.) The answer to his question lies in the text itself, which the reader will have noticed contains three almost direct Biblical quotations. One of the most basic ideological conceits of the neo-Gallican reform was to replace as many of the Church’s own liturgical compositions as possible with artlessly selected verses of Scripture, and very few of the ancient prefaces fit with this conceit.

Folio 160v of the Echternach Sacramentary, 895AD; the secret and preface of All Saints day are the first two texts at the top of the page. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 9433)

By point of comparison, here is the preface for the feast of All Saints found in many Gregorian sacramentaries from the mid-9th century on; it is still used in the traditional Ambrosian Mass to this day. [3]

VD: Clementiam tuam suppliciter obsecrantes, ut cum exultantibus sanctis in caelestibus regni cubilibus gaudia nostra subiungas. Et quos virtutis imitatione non possumus sequi, debitae venerationis contingamus affectu. Per Christum…

Truly it is worthy … humbly beseeching Thy clemency, that Thou may unite our joys with the Saints as they exult in the heavenly resting places of the kingdom. And may we reach in the affection of the veneration due to them, whom we cannot follow in the imitation of virtue. Through Christ…

[1] Boursier based this expression on two lines of St Prosper of Aquitaine’s Carmen de Ingratis, a Jansenist favorite in the controversies over the doctrine of grace. “Quae dare vis, tribuis, servans largita, creansque / De meritis merita, et cumulans tua dona coronis. – What you wish to give, you grant, preserving what is (already) bestowed, and from merits creating (other) merits, and heaping your gifts with crowns.”

[2] “Appeal” here refers to the actions of several French Jansenists, who launched an appeal against against the 1711 bull of Pope Clement XI Unigenitus by which the movement was originally condemned, and another of 1718, Pastoralis officii, which condemned the first appeal, seeking to have the whole matter remanded to the judgment of an ecumenical council. Appeals of this sort were condemned as heretical by Pope Pius II in 1460 in the bull Execrabilis.

[3] In Dom Edmond Moeller’s Corpus Praefationum, a more or less definitive catalog of historical prefaces (Brepols, 1981), the first ten sources in which it is attested are referred to Dom Jean Deshusses OSB’s book “Les Messes d’Alcuin”, which seeks to identify the liturgical compositions directly attributable to Alcuin of York.

The New Prefaces of the EF Mass, Part 5: The Preface of the Blessed Sacrament

Yesterday, we finished off the new optional prefaces for the EF Mass which come from the OF (for the Angels, St John the Baptist, the martyrs, and the wedding Mass), so today we begin the prefaces that originated with the neo-Gallican liturgical reform. Hitherto, these have been included in the appendix of some editions of the Missal “for certain places”; with the promulgation of the decree Quo magis on March 25 of this year, they may now be used everywhere, although their use is not obligatory.

As noted earlier in this series, the preface of the Roman Mass was originally highly variable, but at the end of the 11th century, their number was reduced to ten, plus the common preface, and with a few exceptions, this remained the general custom for the rest of the Middle Ages and into the Tridentine period. When the neo-Gallican liturgical reform movement began in the later 17th century, it did not at first change this custom, but in the second revision of the Missal of Paris, promulgated by Abp Charles de Ventimille in 1738, new prefaces were added for Advent, Holy Thursday (also said at votive Masses of the Sacrament), Corpus Christi, All Saints (also said on the feasts of Patron Saints), Saints Denys and Companions, and for Masses of the Dead. Earlier today, our friends at Canticum Salomonis published a translation of the relevant section of Abp de Ventimille’s pastoral letter of March 11, 1738, announcing his new edition of the Missal.

Charles de Ventimille (1655-1746), archbishop of Paris from 1729 until his death. Portait made in 1731 by Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659-1743). Public domain image from Wikiedia Commons.

“The same reason [viz. that minds might be elevated to God, and helped to enkindle the holy fire of faith, hope, and charity] has led us to add certain Prefaces when proper ones were lacking, to wit for Advent and certain greater solemnities of the year, namely Corpus Christi, the Dedication, All Saints, and others. Thus we have tried, as much as possible, to draw near to the ancient custom of the Roman Church, where almost every Mass was assigned its own Preface, as is still the case today in the churches that use the Ambrosian Rite.”

This change was then widely imitated in the rest of France, usually by copying the Parisian prefaces, but also by composing new ones. When the neo-Gallican Uses were gradually suppressed over the course of the 19th century, some of their features were retained by being incorporated into the French supplements “for certain places” in the Roman liturgical books, these prefaces among them. The new decree Quo magis gives universal permission to use those of the Blessed Sacrament, of All Saints and Patron Saints, and the Dedication of a Church. Here then is the preface of the Blessed Sacrament.

“VD: per Christum Dóminum nostrum. Qui, remótis carnalium victimárum inánibus umbris, Corpus et Sánguinem suum nobis in sacrificium commendávit: ut in omni loco offerátur nómini tuo, quae tibi sola complácuit, oblatio munda. In hoc ígitur inscrutábilis sapientiae, et immensae caritátis mysterio, idipsum quod semel in Cruce perfécit, non cessat mirabíliter operári, ipse ófferens, ipse et oblatio. Et nos, unam secum hostiam effectos, ad sacrum invítat convivium, in quo ipse cibus noster súmitur, recólitur memoria Passiónis eius, mens implétur grátia, et futúrae gloriae nobis pignus datur. Et ídeo...”

Since this preface was not adopted into the Novus Ordo, there is no official English version of it; here is my own very literal English rendering.

“Truly it is worthy... through Christ our Lord. Who, the vain shadows of carnal sacrifices being removed, entrusted to us His Body and Blood as a sacrifice; that in every place there may be offered to Thy name that pure sacrifice that alone hath pleased Thee. Therefore, in this mystery of unsearchable wisdom and boundless charity, that very thing which He completed once in the Cross ceaseth not wondrously to have effect, He himself being the one who offers and the offering. And He inviteth us, who are made one victim with Him, to the sacred banquet, in which He himself is received as our food, the memory of His passion is recalled, the mind is filled with grace, and the pledge of future glory is given to us. And therefore with the angels and archangels ...”

The words “that in every place there may be offered to Thy name that pure sacrifice” are taken in part from the Prophet Malachi 1, 11, a text which was already understood to be a reference to the Eucharistic sacrifice by St Justin Martyr in the mid-2nd century. In the Missal of Abp de Ventimille, they are also used as the Introit of the proper Mass for the Octave of Corpus Christi.

The antiphon O sacrum convivium in a hand-written antiphonary of the Use of Paris, 1650-1725, before the revision of Abd de Ventimille. Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Musique, RES-2293.

The words “the sacred banquet, in which He himself is received as our food, the memory of His passion is recalled, the mind is filled with grace, and the pledge of future glory is given to us” are taken from the traditional Magnificat antiphon of Second Vespers of Corpus Christi. This may be an example of the infighting which so often takes place when different parts of a liturgical reform are done by different committees. Like all properly modern-minded reformers, the Neo-Gallicans were painfully obsessed with making the liturgy “more Scriptural”, which is to say, replacing the Church’s own poetry with artlessly selected Biblical quotations. In 1736, Abp de Ventimille had promulgated a new breviary for his diocese, in which St Thomas’ Office of Corpus Christi, universally recognized as one of the finest ever composed, was almost completely rewritten; the result is inferior to the original in every respect. It seems likely that the author of the new preface of the Sacrament decided to incorporate this citation of St Thomas in protest against this act of vandalism.

The New Prefaces of the EF Mass, Part 4: The Preface of the Nuptial Mass

Of the seven prefaces recently made optional for use in the EF Mass, four come from the OF Missal; of these four, that of the nuptial Mass is certainly the easiest to describe. By whatever miracle, the subcommittee that worked on the prefaces deemed it to be “bearable and free of defects”, and simply added it to the Missal as it was found in the ancient sources without any meaningful alteration or censorship, and without centonizing it with other texts. This preface has a very ancient pedigree indeed; it is first attested in the oldest version of the Gelasian Sacramentary (Vat. Lat. Reg. 316, ca. 750AD), and is then found in several other manuscripts of the Gelasian and Gregorian sacramentaries. These latter run from the later 8th to early 9th century forward; in Dom Edmond Moeller’s Corpus Praefationum, a more or less definitive catalog of historical prefaces (Brepols, 1981), the latest sources in which it is attested are of the 12th century. In the Ambrosian Rite, which never simplified the corpus of prefaces as the Roman Rite did, it remained in continual use and is still in the EF to this day.

Folio 221v of the Gellone Sacramentary, ca. 780 AD. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 12048.) The preface in question begins with the stylized VD which is the next to last decorative letter on the left side of the page.

VD: Qui fóedera nuptiárum blando concordiæ iugo et insolúbili pacis vínculo nexuisti, ut multiplicandis adoptiónum filiis sanctórum connubiórum fecúnditas pudíca servíret. Tua enim, Dómine, providentia, tuáque gratia ineffabílibus modis utrumque dispensas, ut, quod generatio ad mundi produxit ornátum, regeneratio ad Ecclesiae perdúcat augmentum: Per Christum Dóminum nostrum.

My literal translation: It is truly worthy… Who didst join the covenant of marriage in the pleasant yoke of harmony and the unbreakable bond of peace, so that the chaste fertility of holy matrimony may serve to increase the children of adoption. For by Thy providence and Thy grace, O Lord, Thou dost arrange two things in wondrous ways, that, what the birth of children brings to ornament of the world, rebirth (i.e. in Baptism) brings forth to the increase of the Church. Through Christ our Lord etc.”

There is one minor discrepancy from the historical text, which reads “Tua enim, Dómine, providentia, túaque gratia … dispensat”, with the nouns “providentia” and “gratia” in the nominative, the subjects of the verb “dispensat”, hence, “Thy providence and Thy grace … arrange…” In the OF text, the nouns have been changed to the ablative, and the verb to the second person, hence, “by Thy providence and Thy grace … Thou dost arrange …”

The new English liturgical translation: It is truly right… For you have forged the covenant of marriage as a sweet yoke of harmony and an unbreakable bond of peace, so that the chaste and fruitful love of holy Matrimony may serve to increase the children you adopt as your own. By your providence and grace, O Lord, you accomplish the wonder of this twofold design: that, while the birth of children brings beauty to the world, their rebirth in Baptism gives increase to the Church, through Christ our Lord.

The New Prefaces of the EF Mass, Part 3: The Preface of the Martyrs

We continue our examination of the prefaces which have recently been made optional in the Mass of the Extraordinary Form. See the first article for a brief history of the preface as a feature of the Mass, and explanations of the procedure by which the corpus of them was broadened in the post-Conciliar reform.

The third new preface is that of the Martyrs, which in the OF is the first of two generic prefaces that may be chosen ad libitum for that category of Saints. Like those of the Angels and St John the Baptist, it is based on one found in the very first source of the Roman Rite, the so-called Leonine Sacramentary.

The preface in question, “VD: Quoniam martyrorum beatorum”, converted to the singular (“martyris beati”) and assigned to the feast of St Sebastian (here misspelled as “Sabastian”) in the Gellone Sacramentary, ca. 780 AD. Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 12048.

As noted previously in this series, this document, which is preserved in a single manuscript in the library of the cathedral chapter of Verona, is not actually a sacramentary, the ancient predecessor of the missal, which contains only the priest’s parts of the Mass, namely, the prayers, prefaces and Canon. It is rather a privately made collection of the texts of a large number of “libelli missarum”, small booklets which contained the prayers and prefaces of Masses for specific occasions. The collection was certainly made in Rome itself, since it contains numerous specific references to the city; it is generally dated to the mid-6th century. Its traditional name “Leonine”, in reference to Pope St Leo I, is no more than a fancy of its discoverer, Fr Giuseppe Bianchini (1704-64), a canon of Verona who later joined the Roman Oratory, and in his time, a well-respected scholar of Christian antiquity.

The manuscript is quite damaged, and begins with the sixth of a group of 43 different Masses for several martyrs, which are numbered in the manuscript itself. The preface chosen as the basis of the new preface for the Novus Ordo is that of the 32nd among these. It also appears with a few variations on July 10th in the sixth of seven Masses for the very ancient feast of a group of Roman martyrs known as the Seven Brothers, the sons of the martyr Felicity, whose feast, like that of their mother, has been suppressed on the new calendar. The differences between the two versions are noted in bold.

VD: quorum martyrum beatorum pro confessione tui nominis venerabilis sanguis effusus, sicut tua mirabilia manifestat, qui perficis in infirmitate virtutem, ita nostris et studiis dat profectum, et fragilitatibus prestat auxilium. Per.

VD: quoniam martyrum beatorum pro confessione nominis tui venerabilis sanguis effusus simul et tua mirabilia manifestat, quo perficis in infirmitate uirtutem, et nostris studiis dat profectum, et infirmis aput te prestat auxilium: (July 10)

Truly it is worthy… the venerable blood of whose blessed martyrs, being shed for the confession of Thy name, just as it manifests Thy wonders, who dost perfect virtue in weakness, so also giveth increase to our devotion, and granteth aid to our weaknesses.

Truly it is worthy… since the venerable blood of the blessed martyrs, being shed for the confession of Thy name, doth at once manifest Thy wonders, by which (fact) Thou dost perfect virtue in weakness (infirmitate), and giveth increase to our devotion, and granteth aid to those who are weak before Thee. (July 10)

Note the words “perficis in infirmitate virtutem – who/Thou dost perfect virtue in weakness”, a citation of 2 Corinthians 12, 9; they also appear in a Leonine preface for the feast of St Cecilia. In the Roman Rite, this is the last verse of the epistle of Sexagesima Sunday, in which St Paul defends his work as an Apostle by recalling the sufferings he has undergone to spread the Gospel.

St Paul, ca. 1330, by the Sienese painter Lippo Memmi (1291-1356); now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

After the Leonine sacramentary, this preface also appears in some early Roman sacramentaries; it remains in the Extraordinary form of the Ambrosian Mass to this day on the feast of St Sebastian. In the post-Conciliar reform, it has been modified as follows.

VD. Quóniam beáti mártyris N. pro confessióne nóminis tui, ad imitatiónem Christi, sanguis effúsus tua mirabília maniféstat, quibus pérficis in fragilitáte virtútem, et vires infírmas ad testimónium róboras.

My literal translation: Truly it is worthy… since the blood of the blessed martyr N., being shed for the confession of Thy name unto the imitation of Christ manifesteth Thy wonders, by which Thou dost perfect virtue in weakness (fragilitate), and strengthen weak powers unto witness (i.e. in order that they may bear witness).

Among the subcommittees that worked on various specific aspects of the reform, only one, that which did the hymns of the Divine Office under the direction of Dom Anselmo Lentini OSB, published an account of not just what it did, but why it did it. It is difficult to see, therefore, why any of the changes made to the original version were felt to be necessary, particularly the elimination of the word “venerable”, and the alteration of the Biblical citation in Latin; the latter might be explained by a desire to avoid using “infirmitate” and “infirmas” so close to each other.

Once again, the Biblical and Patristic citations purportedly related to this preface given by Johnson and Ward in their work “The Prefaces of the Roman Missal: A Source Compendium with Concordance and Indices” are vague and of no particular interest. They somehow fail to include the Biblical text which is explicitly cited, either of the occurrences of the words “sanguis effusus” in the Gospels (Matthew 23, 35 and the parallel text in Luke 11, 50), or any of the references to the blood of the Saints in the Apocalypse.

Folio 113r of the Saint-Sever Apocalypse, a mid-11th century manuscript which contains inter alia the Commentary on the Apocalypse of St Beatus of Liébana (ca. 730-800). This page represents the words of Apocalypse 6, 9-11, “I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long, O Lord (holy and true) dost thou not judge and revenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?’ And white robes were given to every one of them one; and it was said to them, that they should rest for a little time, till their fellow servants, and their brethren, who are to be slain, even as they, should be filled up.” The golden T in the upper right corner of the picture is the altar (labelled ‘ara aurea - the golden altar’) and the birds beneath it are labelled ‘the souls of the slain.’ In the lower part, the caption reads ‘to these were given white stoles.’ (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des manuscrits. Latin 8878)

The new English liturgical translation: For the blood of your blessed Martyr N., poured out like Christ’s to glorify your name, shows forth your marvelous works, by which in our weakness you perfect your power and on the feeble bestow strength to bear you witness.

In the Novus Ordo, many new doxologies were invented for the new prefaces, but in this case, this will not be used in the EF. Here is the conclusion for the preface in the OF.

Et ídeo, cum caelórum virtútibus, in terris te iúgiter praedicámus, maiestáti tuae sine fine clamantes: Sanctus...

My literal translation: And therefore, with the powers of the heavens, we proclaim Thee unceasingly on earth, crying out to Thy majesty without end: Holy…

The new English liturgical translation: And so, with the powers of heaven, we worship you constantly on earth, and before your majesty without end we acclaim: Holy…

The New Prefaces of the EF Mass, Part 2: The Preface of St John the Baptist

This is the second article in a series on the prefaces which have recently been made optional for use in the Mass of the Extraordinary Form. The first part of the previous article outlines the history of the preface as a feature of the Roman Mass. In it, I explained that when the post-Conciliar reformers decided to broaden the corpus of prefaces, the texts were not taken from ancient sources of the Roman Rite, or from the Ambrosian Rite, which had always maintained a much greater variety of them. It was determined that such texts were unsuitable for modern use, and indeed, “unbearable”, and therefore, new ones were created by various devices. The preface examined in the first article, that of the Angels, is substantially the same as one attested in the very oldest liturgical source of the Roman Rite, the so-called Leonine Sacramentary, with some changes of wording and the omission (for no discernible reason) of one clause.

The preface for the feasts of St John the Baptist, on the other hand, is essentially a new composition, broadly inspired by an historical text. In their book “The Prefaces of the Roman Missal. A Source Compendium with Concordance and Indices,” Fr Anthony Ward, S.M. and Dom Cuthbert Johnson, O.S.B., give six different ancient prefaces as its source; however, this is quite misleading. The first of these, also from the Leonine Sacramentary, provides no more than a single verb and the putative inspiration for a single prepositional phrase. The fifth, a preface for the feast of a martyr, is cited as the source for the “Et ideo” clause which concludes a huge number of prefaces, and might therefore just as well have been omitted. The sixth is not cited as the source of a single word of the new preface, but rather as a text which “seems at some points to have given generic inspiration for adaptation of the texts (listed) above.”

Folio 172r of the Sacramentary of Rodrad, 853AD, with the preface for the Nativity of St John the Baptist “VD. Et in die festivitatis”. This section of the manuscript is a collection of prefaces added to the original sacramentary, which were not integrated into the texts of the Masses to which they belonged; for this reason, the text above it is not another part of the same Mass, but a preface for the vigil, and that below is a preface for the feast of Ss John and Paul. Rodrad is the name of the priest who made this manuscript for Hilmerad, bishop of Amiens, who had ordained him to the priesthood. (Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 12050)

The second and third of their sources are in fact the same text, first as it appears in the Leonine Sacramentary in the mid-6th century, and then in a supplement added to the Gregorian Sacramentary in the 9th century, with just four additional words. This was included, without its final section, in the 1771 neo-Gallican Missal of Lyon, which is Ward and Johnson’s fourth source. A slightly different recension provides the first half of the Ambrosian preface for the Nativity of St John the Baptist, as attested in the oldest sacramentaries of that rite; this was still being used at the time of the reform, and is still in use to this day in the Ambrosian Extraordinary Form. Here is the version from the Gregorian Sacramentary; the words in italics are the ones not in the Leonine.

“VD: Et in die festivitatis hodiernae, qua beatus Joannes exortus est, tuam magnificentiam collaudare. Qui vocem matris Domini nondum editus sensit, et adhuc clausus utero, adventum salutis humanae prophetica exultatione significavit. Qui et genetricis sterilitatem conceptus abstersit, et patris linguam natus absolvit, solusque omnium prophetarum Redemptorem mundi, quem praenuntiavit, ostendit. Et ut sacrae purificationis effectum aquarum natura conciperet, sanctificandis Iordanis fluentis ipsum baptismatis lavit auctorem.

A triptych of the Baptism of Christ, 1387, by the Florentine painter Nicolò di Pietro Gerini (active from 1366, died ca. 1415), with Ss Peter and Paul; in the predella, stories from the life of the Baptist (the annunciation to Zachariah, the birth, and the beheading) flanked by St Romuald (right), founder of the Camaldolese Order, and his spiritual father Marinus (left). Originally commissioned for the Camaldolese church in Florence, Santa Maria degli Angeli; now in the National Gallery in London.

Truly it is worthy… and on this day of festivity, on which the blessed John was born, (lit. ‘arose, appeared, came forth.’), to praise Thy magnificence. Who sensed the voice of the Lord’s Mother when he had not yet been brought forth, and while still enclosed in the womb, and made known the coming of mankind’s salvation with prophet rejoicing. Who in his conception wiped away the sterility of his mother, in his birth, set loose the tongue of his father, and alone of all the prophets, showed the Redeemer of the world whom he who foretold. And, so that the nature of water might receive the effect of sacred purification, he washed the very Author of baptism with the streams of the Jordan that were thus to be sanctified.”

Ward and Johnson’s book is purely documentary, and therefore, although it shows by comparison what was changed, it doesn’t explain why any specific change was made. We are therefore left to guess at the motives of the post-Conciliar reformers where they are not obvious, and in this case, it is difficult to see why they felt they couldn’t just leave such an ancient text alone when adding it to the Missal. The final clause, which does not depend directly on any prior source, was made necessary by the absolutely bizarre decision to have one preface serve for both the birth of St John and his Beheading, the latter now renamed as his “Passion” in deference to the delicate sensibilities of Modern Man™. (This name is found, along with a great many other things, in ancient manuscripts.) This is the result of their work.

“VD… per Christum Dóminum nostrum. In cuius Praecursóre beáto Ioanne tuam magnificentiam collaudámus, quem inter natos mulíerum honóre praecipuo consecrasti. Qui cum nascendo multa gaudia praestitisset, et nondum éditus exsultasset ad humánae salútis adventum, ipse solus omnium prophetárum Agnum redemptiónis ostendit. Sed et sanctificandis etiam aquae fluentis ipsum baptísmatis lavit auctórem, et méruit fuso sánguine supremum illi testimonium exhibére.

The Beheading of St John the Baptist, ca. 1635, by the Neapolitan painter Massimo Stanzione (1585-1656), now in the Prado Museum in Madrid. 

My literal translation: It is truly right … through Christ our Lord. In whose Precursor, the blessed John, we praise Thy magnificence, even him whom Thou didst consecrate with particular honor among those born of women. Who, when he had brought man joys in his birth, and though not yet born, had rejoiced at the coming of mankind’s salvation, did alone of all the prophets point out the Lamb of redemption. But also he washed the very author of Baptism with the streams of water that were thus to be sanctified, and merited to bear Him the supreme witness by the shedding of his blood.

The new English liturgical translation: It is truly right … through Christ our Lord. In his Precursor, Saint John the Baptist, we praise your great glory, for you consecrated him for a single honor among those born of women. His birth brought great rejoicing; even in the womb, he leapt for joy at the coming of human salvation. He alone of all the prophets pointed out the Lamb of redemption. And to make holy the flowing waters he baptized the very author of Baptism and was privileged to bear him the supreme witness by the shedding of his blood.”

The words underlined in my translation are taken more or less from the preface in the Gregorian Sacramentary. Ward and Johnson cite the words “among those born of women” to a completely different preface in another Mass of St John in the Leonine Sacramentary; the modern version conforms the original reading “among the sons of men” to the Biblical text (Matt. 11, 11). The same preface is also given as the source of the single Latin word “consecrasti – Thou didst consecrate”, but (as they note without explanation) this is actually an editorial correction of the defective Leonine text made by Dom Leo Mohlberg OSB in his critical edition.

The preface which Ward and Johnson say “seems at some points to have given generic inspiration for adaptation of the texts above” is actually for the Decapitation of the Baptist, and attested in all the same manuscripts of the Gregorian Sacramentary as the preface “Et in die festivitatis” given above. No part of the clause about the Beheading at the end of the modern preface corresponds to anything in it, but phrases like “by the shedding of (his) blood” occur in many liturgical texts of every sort and period.

In the Novus Ordo, many new doxologies were invented for the new prefaces, but in this case, this will not be used in the EF. Here is the conclusion for the preface in the OF.

Et ídeo, cum caelórum virtútibus, in terris te iúgiter praedicámus, maiestáti tuae sine fine clamantes: Sanctus...

My literal translation: And therefore, with the powers of the heavens, we proclaim Thee unceasingly on earth, crying out to Thy majesty without end: Holy…

The new English liturgical translation: And so, with the powers of heaven, we worship you constantly on earth, and before your majesty without end we acclaim: Holy…

As was also the case with the preface of the Angels, the putative Biblical and Patristic sources which Ward and Johnson give for these liturgical texts are too generic to bother mentioning.

The New Prefaces of the EF Mass, Part 1: The Preface of the Angels

As I am sure all of our readers know, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith recently promulgated seven new prefaces for optional use in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. Three of these originated with the French neo-Gallican reforms of the 18th century, while four others came from the Ordinary Form. A reader suggested it might be useful to know something more about these, and so I today begin a new series which will explain each one of them in turn, starting with the ones taken from the OF.

Folio 21r of the Echternach Sacramentary, 895AD, with a stylized V and D joined together as an abbreviation of the first two words of the opening formula of the Preface, “Vere dignum.” This form of abbreviation would remain common even into the mid-16th century, in the printed Missals of the last generation of liturgical books before the Tridentine reform. (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, Latin 9433; image cropped.)

Some of this information will be summarized from a study by Fr Anthony Ward, S.M. and Dom Cuthbert Johnson, O.S.B., “The Prefaces of the Roman Missal. A Source Compendium with Concordance and Indices.” This useful book gives the full text of each preface of the Ordinary Form in Latin, followed, where applicable, by the text of the ancient source from which it was taken, the parallel text in the Ambrosian Rite (explanation below), Biblical and Patristic parallels, and the official translations in various languages. Since it was published in 1989, the English translation then in use has, of course, been replaced by a new one, and I therefore leave it for the dead to bury.

The preface of the Roman Mass was originally highly variable, as attested in many ancient sacramentaries, and although the corpus of them is not uniform from one manuscript to another, there were a good many which were in general use. The Corpus Christianorum series published by Brepols includes a five volume catalog of them, with close to 1700 entries. At the end of the 11th century, however, their number was reduced to ten, plus the common preface, and with a few exceptions, this remained the general custom for the rest of the Middle Ages and into the Tridentine period.

When the neo-Gallican liturgical reform movement began in the later 17th century, it did not at first touch the traditional corpus of prefaces; this was first done in the 1738 revision of the Missal of Paris, which included new prefaces for Advent, Holy Thursday (also said at votive Masses of the Sacrament), Corpus Christi, All Saints (also said on the feasts of Patron Saints), Saints Denys and Companions, and for Masses of the Dead. This was then widely imitated in the rest of France, usually by copying the Parisian prefaces, but also by composing new ones. (I have a Missal printed in France in the late 19th century, with the supplement of the diocese of Versailles, which contains a special preface for the feast of St Louis IX.)

The preface for the dead in the 1738 Missal of Paris.

The neo-Gallican Uses were gradually suppressed over the course of the 19th century, but some of their features were retained by being incorporated into the French supplements “for certain places” in the Roman liturgical books. Among these, the prefaces were certainly the most prominent, and are almost always found in an appendix in Missals printed for use in France and Belgium. This in turn led to a general rediscovery, as it were, of the preface as a more variable feature of the Mass, starting in 1919, when Pope Benedict XV added the 1738 Parisian Preface for the Dead to the Roman Rite for general and mandatory use, along with one for St Joseph, the first such additions in more than eight centuries. In the years that followed, some religious orders followed suit; the Dominicans, for example, added a new preface for St Dominic to their Missal in 1921. The trend was then given an even greater push by Pope Pius XI’s two major additions to the Missal, the feast of Christ the King (1925), and the upgrade of the feast of the Sacred Heart (1928), both of which included their own newly composed prefaces.

Oddly enough, Sacrosanctum Concilium says nothing whatsoever about further expansion of the corpus of prefaces, or indeed about the preface at all. Early on, however, the post-Conciliar reformers decided that the explicit call to expand the corpus of Scriptural readings in paragraph 51 would be applied also to other features of the Mass, a decision which is far more objectionable on procedural grounds than as a matter of liturgical principle. This was also motivated in part by a widespread and persistent misunderstanding that the Ambrosian liturgy, which never changed the custom of having a different preface for almost every Mass, is an archaic form of the Roman liturgy, and therefore, in order to “restore (the latter) to the pristine norm of the holy fathers”, one had to remodel it on Ambrosian lines as much as possible. (The addition of a third reading to the Masses of Sundays and solemnities in the post-Conciliar lectionary is also a mutilated form of an Ambrosian custom.)

One might imagine that once such a procedure had been decided on, the corpus of prefaces would be expanded by adopting those of the Ambrosian Missal, or of the ancient Roman sacramentaries. However, it was not the procedure of the post-Conciliar reformers to take anything from the sources they were putatively imitating as they actually found it in those sources, and the prefaces are no exception. As explained by Dom Antoine Dumas O.S.B. in an article published in Ephemerides Liturgicae in 1971, a selection was made, based on ancient sources, but a selection nevertheless, since Vatican II “defined the liturgical reform first of all as a response to pastoral needs.” (He does not mention that Vatican II was completely silent on the specific topic of the prefaces.) Since the texts of this “venerable tradition” (!) had to be both “translatable into modern languages, and adapted to the modern mentality”, very few of them could be retained in their entirety, according to Dom Antoine. They required “numerous cuts, and a patient work of centonization,” (composing new texts out of fragments of various old texts); otherwise, “reproduced in their original form, they would be unbearable, if not defective. (insupportables, sinon fautifs.)”

The post-Conciliar preface for the Angels strays very little from its source text, which is found in the so-called Leonine Sacramentary on the dedication of the basilica of St Michael the Archangel on September 29th, and was evidently judged to be mostly bearable and free of defects.

VD: Et in Archángelis Angelisque tuis tua praeconia non tacére, quia ad excellentiam tuam recurrit et gloriam, quod angélica creatúra tibi probábilis honorétur: et, cum illa sit amplo decóre digníssima, et tu quam sis immensus et super omnia praeferendus osténderis.

Dante’s vision of God amid the angelic hierarchies, from Gustave Doré’s illustrations of the Divine Comedy, 1861. (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons.)

My (almost) literal translation: It is truly right… almighty and eternal God, and to not keep silent Thy praises in Thy Archangels and Angels. For it redounds to Thy perfection and glory that the angelic creation, which is pleasing to Thee, be honored; and since it is most worthy of great honor, Thou art shown (thereby) to be measurelessly exalted above all things.

The new English liturgical translation: It is truly right and just … almighty and eternal God, and to praise you without end in your Archangels and Angels. For the honor we pay the angelic creatures in whom you delight redounds to your own surpassing glory, and by their great dignity and splendor you show how infinitely great you are, to be exalted above all things.

In the Novus Ordo, a great many new doxologies were invented for the new prefaces, but these will not be used in the EF, except in the case of this one.

“Per Christum, Dominum nostrum. Per quem multitúdo Angelórum tuam célebrat maiestátem, quibus adorantes in exsultatióne coniúngimur, una cum eis laudis voce clamantes:”

My literal translation: through Christ our Lord. Through whom the multitude of Angels celebrates Thy majesty; to whom we are joined, adoring in exultation, crying out with them with one voice:

The new English liturgical translation: through Christ our Lord. Through him the multitude of Angels extols your majesty, and we are united with them in exultant adoration, as with one voice of praise we acclaim:

Here is the original version of the preface found in the Leonine Sacramentary; the texts in bold are omitted or changed in the Novus Ordo.

VD: multóque magis in Archángelis Angelisque tuis tua praeconia non tacére, quia ad excellentiam tuam recurrit et gloriam quod angélica creatúra, quae a conditióne sui tuis subjecta servitiis probábilis éxstitit, honorátur: et, cum illa sit digna venerári, et tu quam sis immensus et super omnia praeferendus osténderis.

It is truly right… almighty and eternal God, and much more to not keep silent Thy praises in Thy Archangels and Angels. For it redounds to Thy perfection and glory that the angelic creation, which, being subject in its very condition (or ‘nature’), to Thy service, is pleasing to Thee, is honored, and since it is worthy of veneration, Thou art shown thereby to be measurelessly exalted above all things.

The Biblical and Patristic texts listed by Ward and Johnson have no more than a few glancing similarities to this text, and are of no interest.

The Leonine Sacramentary, by the way, is not actually a sacramentary, the ancient predecessor of the missal, which contains only the priest’s parts of the Mass, namely, the prayers, prefaces and Canon, and it has nothing to do with Pope St Leo I. It is rather a privately made collection of the texts of a large number of “libelli missarum”, small booklets which contained the prayers and prefaces of Masses for specific occasions. These elements often varied from church to church even within the same city; the “Leonine” collection is a wildly irregular gathering of them, and has, for example, twenty-eight different Mass formulae for Ss Peter and Paul, fourteen for St Lawrence, and eight for Ss John and Paul. The collection was certainly made in Rome itself, since it contains numerous specific references to the city. It is generally dated to the mid-6th century; there is only one manuscript of it, which for many centuries has been in the library of the cathedral chapter of Verona.