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 GALLICAN

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GALLICAN

Gallican Rite, The. — This subject will be treated under the following six heads: I. History and Origin; II. MSS. and Other Sources; III. The Liturgical Year; IV. The Divine Office; V. The Mass; VI. The Occasional Services.

I. History and Origin. — The name GaUicaji Rile is given to the rite which prevailed in Gaul from the earliest times of which we have any information until about the middle or end of the eighth century. There is no information before the fifth century and very little then ; and throughout the whole period there was, to judge by existing documents and descriptions, so much diversity that, though the general outlines of the rite were of the same pattern, the name must not be taken to imply more than a very moderate amount of homogeneity. The Rite of Spain, fairly widely used from the fifth century to the end of the eleventh, and still lingering on as an archsological survival in chapels at Toledo and Salamanca, was so nearly allied to the Gallican Rite that the term Hispano Gallican is often applied to the two. But this Spanish Moza- rabic Rite has, like the allied Celtic, enough of an inde- pendent history to require separate treatment, so that, though it will be necessary to allude to both by way of illustration, this article will be devoted primarily to the rite once used in what is now France. Of the origin of the Gallican Rite there are three principal theories, between two of which the controversy is not yet settled. These may be termed (1) the Ephesine, (2) the Ambrosian, and (3) the Roman theories.

(1) The first has been already mentioned under Ambrosian Rite and Celtic Rite. This theory, which was first put forward by Sir W. Palmer in his "Origines Liturgicse", was once very popular among Anglicans. According to it the Gallican Rite was re- ferred to an original brought to Lyons from Ephesus by St. Pothinus and St. Irenaeus, who had received it through St. Polycarp from St. John the Divine. The idea originated partly in a statement in the eighth- century tract in Cott. MS. Nero A. II in the British Museum, which refers the Gallican Divine Office (Cur- sus Gallorum) to such an origin, and partly in a state- ment of Colman at the Synod of Whitby (664) respect- ing the Johannine origin of the Celtic Easter. The Cottonian tract is of little or no historical value; Colman's notion was disproved at the time by St. Wilfrid ; and the Ephesine theory has now been given up by all serious liturgiologists. Mgr Duchesne, in his "Origines du culte chrdtien", has finally disposed of the possibility of so complicated a rite as the Gallican having so early an origin as the second century.

(2) The second theory is that which Duchesne puts forward in the place of the Ephesine. He holds that Milan, not Lyons, was the principal centre of Gallican development. He lays great stress on the incontestable importance of Milan and the Church of Milan in the late fourth century, and conjectures that a liturgy of Oriental origin, introduced perhaps by the Cappadocian Auxentius, Bishop of Milan from 355 to 374, spread from that centre to Gaul, Spain, and Britain. He points out that "the Gallican Liturgy, in the features which distinguish it from the Roman, betrays all the characteristics of the Eastern liturgies," and that "some of its formularies are to be found word for word in the Greek texts which were in use in the churches of the Syro-Byzantine Rite either in the fourth century or somewhat later", and infers from this that "the Gallican Liturgy is an Oriental liturgy, introduced into the West towards the middle of the fourth century". He does not, however, note that in certain other important peculiarities the Ciallican Liturgy agrees with the Roman where the latter differs from the Oriental. Controverting the third or Roman theory of origin, he lays .some stress upon the fact that Pope St. Innocent I (416) in his letter to Decentius of Gubbio spoke of usages which Mgr Duchesne recognizes as Gallican (e. g. the position of

the Diptychs and the Pax), as "foreign importations" and did not recognize in them the ancient usage of his own tJhurch, and he thinks it hard to explain why the African Church should have accepted the Roman reforms, while St. Ambrose, himself a Roman, refused them. He assumes that the Ambrosian Rite is not really Roman, but Gallican, much Romanized at a later period, and that the CSubbio variations of which St. Innocent complained were borrowed from Milan. (3) The third theory is perhaps rather complicated to state without danger of misrepresentation, and has not been so definitely stated as the other two by any one writer. It is held in parts by Probst, Father Lucas, the Milanese liturgiologists, and many others whose opinion is of weight. In order to state it clearly it will be necessary to point out first certain details in which all the Latin or Western rites agree with one another in differing from the Eastern, and in this we speak only of the Mass, which is of far more impor- tance than either the Divine Office or the occasional services in determining origins. The Eastern Eucha- ristic offices of whatever rite are marked by the in- variability of the priest's part. There are, it is true, alternative anaphoras which are used either nd libitum, as in the Syro-Jacobite Rite, or on certain days, as in Byzantine and East Syrian, but they are complete in themselves and do not contain passages appro- priate to the day. The lections of course vary with the day in all rites, and varying antiphons, troparia, etc., are sung by the choir; but the priest's part re- mains fixed. In the Western rites, whether Hispano- Gallican, Ambrosian, or Roman, a very large propor- tion of the priest's part varies according to the day, and, as will be seen by the analysis of its Mass in this article, these variations are so numerous in the Galli- can Rite that the fixed part even of the Prayer of Consecration is strangely little. Certain of the varying prayers of the Hispano-Gallican Rite have a tendency to fall into couples, a Bidding Prayer, or invitation to pray, sometimes of considerable length and often partaking of the nature of a homily, addressed to the congregation, and a collect embodying the suggestions of the Bidding Prayer, addressed to God. These Bidding Prayers have survived in the Roman Rite of to-day in the Good Friday intercessory prayers, and they occur in a form borrowed later from the Gallican, in the ordination services, but in general the invitation to prayer is reduced to its lowest terms in the word Oremus. Another Western peculiarity is in the form of the recital of the Institution. The principal East- ern liturgies follow St. Paul's words in I Cor., xi, 23- 25, and date the Institution by the betrayal, iv rj vvktI, 3 rapeSldoTo (in the night in which He was be- trayed), and of the less important anaphoras, most either use the same expression or paraphrase it. The Western liturgies date from the Passion, Qui pridie quam pateretur, for which, though of course the fact is found there, there is no verbal Scriptural warrant. The Mozarabic of to-day uses the Pauline words, and no Gallican Recital of the Institution remains in full; but in both the prayer that follows is called (vrith alternative nomenclature in the Gallican) Post- Pridie and the catchwords "Qui pridie" come at the end of the Post-Sanctus in the Gallican Masses, so that it is clear that this form existed in both. These variations from the Eastern usages are of an early date, and it is inferred from them, and from other considerations more historical than liturgical, that a liturgy with these peculiarities was the common prop- erty of Gaul, Spain, and Italy. Whether, as is most likely, it originated in Rome and spread thence to the countries under direct Roman influence, or whether it originated elsewhere and was adopted by Rome, there is no means of knowing. The adoption must have happened when liturgies were in rather a fluid state. 'The Galileans may have carried to an extreme the changes begun at Rome, and may have retained