LITURGY 709
the commemoration of the living being placed just before, and the commemoration of the departed just alter, the words of institution; (b) the absence of the Epiklesis or Invocation of the Holy Spirit; (c) the position of the Pax or "Kiss of Peace" after the consecration and just before the communion, whereas in other liturgies it occurs at a much earlier point in the service.
Liturgies of the British Islands.
Period I. The Celtic Church. – Until recently almost nothing was known of the character of the liturgical service of the vast Celtic Church which existed in these islands before the Anglo-Saxon conquest, and which continued to exist in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall for very considerable though varying periods of time after that event. But recently a good deal of light has been thrown on the subject, partly by the publication of the few genuine works of SS. Patrick, Columba, Columbanus, and other Celtic saints; partly by the discovery of liturgical remains in the Scottish Book of Deer, and in the Irish Books of Dimma and Mulling and the Stowe Missal; partly by the publication of mediæval Irish compilations such as the Leabhar Breac, Liber Hymnorum, etc., which contain ecclesiastical calendars, legends, treatises, &c., of considerable but very varying antiquity. The evidence collected from these sources is sufficient to prove that the liturgy of the Celtic Church was of the Ephesine type. In central England the churches, together with their books and everything else belonging to them, were destroyed by heathen invaders from Jutland, Schleswig, and Holstein at the close of the 5th century; but the Celtic Church in the remoter parts of England, as well as in the neighbouring kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland, retained its liturgical independence for many centuries afterward.
An examination of its few extant service books and fragments of service books yields the following evidence of the Ephesine origin and character of the Celtic liturgy: – (a) The presence of whole collects and anthems which occur in the Galilean and Mozarabic but not in the Roman liturgy; (b) various formula; of thanks giving after communion; (c) frequent addresses to the people in the form of Gallican Præfationes; (d) the Gallican form of consecration prayer, being a variable Post-Sanctus leading up to the words of institution; (c) the complicated rite of fraction as described in an Irish tract at the end of the Stowe missal finds its only counterpart in the elaborate ceremonial of the Mozarabic Church; (f) the presence of the Gallican ceremonial of Pedilavium or "Washing of Feet" in the earliest Irish baptismal office. For a further description of these and of other features which seem to be peculiar to the Celtic liturgy the reader is referred to Warren's Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church, 1881.
Period II. The Anglo-Saxon Church. – We find ourselves here on firmer ground, and can speak with certainty as to the nature of the liturgy of the English Church after the beginning of the 7th century. Information is drawn from the liturgical allusions in the extant canons of numerous councils, from the voluminous writings of Bede, Alcuin, and many other ecclesiastical authors of the Anglo-Saxon period, and above all from a very considerable number of service books written in England before the Norman Conquest. Three of these books are manuscript missals of more or less completeness, and, as none of them have yet been published, their names are appended: – (1) the Leofric missal, a composite 10th to 11th century MS., presented to the cathedral of Exeter by Leofric, the first bishop of that see (1046-1072), now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford; (2) the missal of Robert of Jumièges, archbishop of Canterbury (1051-52), executed probably at Winchester, and presented by Archbishop Robert to his old monastery of Jumièges in the neighbourhood of Rouen, in the public library of which town it now lies; (3) the Red Book of Derby, an incomplete missal of the second half of the 11th century, now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
A perusal of these volumes proves, what we should have expected a priori, that the Roman liturgy was in use in the Anglo-Saxon Church. This was, no doubt, the case from the very first. That church owed its foundation to the forethought of a Roman pontiff, and the energy of a band of missionaries, headed by St Augustine, who came directly from Rome, and who brought, as we are expressly assured by Bede, their liturgical codices with them from their native country (Hist. Ec., ii. 28). Accordingly, when we speak of an Anglo-Saxon missal, we mean a Roman missal only exhibiting one or more of the following features which differentiate it from an Italian missal of the same century.
(a) Rubrics, and other entries of a miscellaneous character, written in the vernacular language of the country; (b) the commemoration of national or local saints in the calendar, in the canon of the mass, and in the litanies which occur on Easter eve, and in the baptismal offices; (c) the presence of a few special masses in honour of these national saints, together with a certain number of collects of a necessarily local character, for the rulers of the country, for its natural produce, &c.; (d) the addition of certain peculiarities of liturgical structure and arrangement interpolated into the purely Roman service from an extraneous source. There are two noteworthy examples of this in Anglo-Saxon service books. Every Sunday and festival, and almost every votive mass, has its proper preface, although the number of such prefaces in the Gregorian sacramentary of the same period had been reduced to eight. There were a large but not quite an equal number of triple episcopal benedictions to be pronounced by the bishop after the Lord's Prayer and before the communion. This custom must either have been perpetuated from the old Celtic liturgy, or directly derived from a Gallican source.
Period III. Anglo-Norman Church. – The influx of numerous foreigners, especially from Normandy and Lorraine, which preceded, accompanied, and followed the Conquest, and the occupation by them of the highest posts in church as well as state, had a distinct effect on the liturgy of the English Church. These foreign ecclesiastics brought over with them a preference for and a habit of using certain features of the Gallican liturgy and ritual, which they succeeded in incorporating into the service books of the Church of England. One of these prelates named Osmund, a Norman count, earl of Dorset, chancellor of England, and bishop of Salisbury, 1078-99, undertook the revision of the English service books, and the missal which he produced in 1085, which we know as the Sarum Missal, or the Missal according to the Use of Sarum, practically became the liturgy of the English Church. It was not only received in the province of Canterbury, but was largely adopted beyond those limits in Ireland in the 12th, and in various Scottish dioceses in the 12th and 13th centuries.
It would be outside the scope of a general article like the present to tabulate the numerous and frequently minute deferences between a mediæval Sarum and the earlier Anglo-Saxon or contemporaneous Roman liturgy. They lie mainly in differences of collects and lections, variations of ritual on Candlemas, Ash Wednesday, and throughout Holy Week, the introduction into the canon of the mass of certain clauses and usages of Ephesine character or origin, the wording of rubrics in the subjunctive or imperative tense, the peculiar "Preces in Prostratione," the procession of Corpus Christi on Palm Sunday, the forms of ejection and reconciliation of penitents, &c. The varying episcopal benedictions as used in the Anglo-Saxon Church were retained, but the numerous proper prefaces were discarded, the number being reduced to ten.
Besides the famous and far-spreading use of Sarum, other uses, more local and less known, grew up in various English dioceses. In virtue of a recognized diocesan independence, bishops were able to regulate or alter their ritual, and to add special masses or commemorations for use within the limits of their jurisdiction. The better known and the more distinctive of these uses were those of York and Hereford, but we also find traces of, or allusions to, the uses of Bangor, Lichfield, Lincoln, Ripon, St Asaph, St Paul's, Wells, and Winchester.
Other Service Books. – The Eucharistic service was contained in the volume called the MISSAL (q.v.), as the ordinary choir offices were contained in the volume known as the BREVIARY (q.v.). But besides these two volumes there were a large number of other ser vice books. Mr Maskell has enumerated and described ninety-one such volumes in the use of the Western Church only. It must be understood, however, that many of these ninety-one names are synonyms (Mon. Rit. Eccles. Anglic., 1846, vol. i. p. cxciv.). The
