RITES
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RITES
they are studied in all colleges and seminaries as part
of the training of future priests, and candidates are
examined in them before ordination. Because of
its special nature and complication liturgical science
in this sense is generally treated apart from the rest
of canon law and is joined to similar practical matters
(such as preaching, visiting the sick, etc.) to makeup
the science of pastoral theology. The sources from
which it is learned are primarily the rubrics of the
liturgical books (the Missal, Breviary, and Ritual).
There are also treatises which explain and arrange
these rubrics, adding to them from later decrees of the
S. Congregation of Rites. Of these Martinucci has
not yet been displaced as the most complete and au-
thoritative, Baldeschi has long been a favourite and
has been translated into English, De Herdt is a good
standard book, quite sound and clear as far as it goes
but incomplete, Le Vavasseur is perhaps the most
practical for general purposes.
B. History. — The development of the various rites, their spread and mutual influence, the origin of each ceremony, etc., form a part of church history whose importance is becoming more and more realized. For practical purposes all a priest need know are the present rules that affect the services he has to perform, as in general the present laws of the Church are all we have to obey. But just as the student of history needs to know the decrees of former synods, even if abrogated since, as he studies the history of earlier times and remote provinces of the Church, because it is from these that he must build up his conception of her continuous life, so the liturgical student will not be content with knowing only what affects him now, but is prompted to examine the past, to inquire into the origin of our present rite and study other rites too as expressions of the life of the Church in other lands. The history of the liturgies that deeply affect the life of Christians in many ways, that are the foundation af many other objects of study (architecture, art, music, etc.) is no inconsiderable element of church history. In a sense this study is com|)aratively new and not yet sufficiently organ- ized, though to some extent it has always accompanied the practical study of liturgy. The great mediaeval liturgists were not content with describing the rites of their own time. They suggested historical reasons for the various ceremonies and contrasted other prac- tices with those of their own Churches. Benedict XIV's treatise on the Mass discusses the origin of each element of the Latin liturgy. This and other books of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century liturgiologists are still standard works. So also in lectures and works on liturgy in our first sense it has always been the custom to add historical notes on the origin of the ceremonies and prayers.
But the interest in the history of liturgy for its own sake and the systematic study of early documents is a comparatively new thing. In this science England led the way and still takes the foremost place. It followed the Oxford Movement as part of the revived interest in the early Church among Anglicans. W. Palmer (Origines liturgicaj) and J. M. Neale in his various works are among those who gave the first impulse to this movement. The Catholic Daniel Rock ("Hierurgia" and "The Church of our Fathers") further advanced it. It has now a large school of followers. F. C. Brightman's edition of "Eastern Liturgies" is the standard one used everywhere. The monumental editions of the "Gelasian Sacra- mentary" by H. A. Wilson and the "Leonine Sacra- mentary" by C. L. Feltoe, the various essays and dis- cussions by E. Bishop, C. Atchley, and many others keep up the English standard. In France Dom Gu^ranger (L'ann^e liturgique) and his school of Benedictines opened a new epoch. Mgr Duchesne supplied a long-felt want with his "Origines du culte Chretien", Dom Cabrol and Dom Leclercq ("Mon.
eccl. lit.", etc., especially the monumental "Diet,
d'arch. chret. et de liturgie") have advanced to the
first place among modern authorities on historical
liturgy. From Germany we have the works of H.
Daniel (Codex lit. eccl. universae), Probst, ThaUiofer,
Gihr, and a school of living students (Drews, Riet-
schel, Baumstark, Buchwald, Rauschen). In Italy good
work is being done by Semeria, Bonaccorsi, and others.
Nevertheless the study of liturgy hardly yet takes the
place it deserves in the education of church students.
Besides the practical instruction that forms a part
of pastoral theology, lectures on liturgical history
would form a valuable element of the course of church
history. As part of such a course other rites would be
considered and compared. There is a fund of deeper
understanding of the Roman Rite to be drawn from
its comparison with others, Galilean or Eastern. Such
instruction in liturgiology should include some notion
of ecclesiology in general, the history and comparison
of church planning and architecture, of vestments and
church music. The root of all these things in different
countries is the liturgies they serve and adorn.
Dogmatic Value. — The dogmatic and apologetic value of liturgical science is a very important con- sideration to the theologian. It must, of course, be used reasonably. No Church intends to commit her- self officially to every statement and implication con- tained in her official books, any more than she is committed to everything said by her Fathers. For instance, the Collect for St. Juliana Falconieri (19 June) in the Roman Rite refers to the story of her miraculous communion before her death, told at length in the sixth lesson of her Office, but the truth of that story is not part of the Catholic Faith. Lit- urgies give us arguments from tradition even more valuable than those from the Fathers, for these state- ments have been made by thousands of priests day after day for centuries. A consensus of liturgies is, therefore, both in space and time a greater witness of agreement than a consensus of Fathers, for as a gen- eral principle it is obvious that people in their prayers say only what they believe. This is the meaning of the well-known axiom: Lex orandi lex credendi. The prayers for the dead, the passages in which God is asked to accept this Sacrifice, the statements of the Real Presence in the oldest liturgies are unimpeach- able witnesses of the Faith of the early Church as to these points. The Bull of Pius IX on the Immaculate Conception (" Ineffabilis Deus", 8 Dec, 1854) con- tains a classical example of this argument from liturgy. Indeed there are few articles of faith that cannot be established or at least confirmed from liturgies. The Byzantine Office for St. Peter and St. Paul (29 June) contains plain statements about Roman primacy. The study of liturgy from this point of view is part of dogmatic theology. Of late years especially dogmatic theologians have given much attention to it. Chris- tian Pesch, S.J., in his " Praelectiones theologiae dog- maticae" (9 vols., Freiburg i. Br.) quotes the liturgical texts for the theses as part of the argument from tra- dition. There are then these three aspects under which liturgiology should be considered by a Catholic theologian, as an element of canon law, church history, and dogmatic theology. The history of its study would take long to tell. There have been liturgiol- ogists through all the centuries of Christian theology. Briefly the state of this science at various periods is this:
Liturgiologists in the Ante-Nicene period, such as Justin Martyr, composed or wrote down descriptions of ceremonies performed, but made no examination of the sources of rites. In the fourth and fifth centuries the scientific study of the subject began. St. Am- brose's "Liber de Mysteriis" (P. L., XVI, 405-26), the anonymous (pseudo- Ambrose) " De Sacramentis " (P. L., XVI, 435-82), various treatises by St. Jerome (e. g., "Contra Vigilantium" in P. L., XXIII, 354-
