Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/395

 LORD'S PRATSE

356

LOBD'8 PRJLTSE

Granada, and SevillCi but nono of them is now con- sidered of specially hi^h merit.

I^'rancibco Cako, his eon and pupil, b. at Seville in 1627; d. at Madrid in 1667; he entered the studio of Alonzo Cano in Madrid, and considerably surpassed his father in ability and slcill. His most important works are those representing scenes from the life of Our Lady, which adorn the chapel of St. Isidore in St. An« drew's church in Madrid; but his largest work refers to the indulgence of the Portiuncula and the jubilee of its grant. It was painted for the Franciscan convent at Segovia, and contains the portraits of the donor of the picture and of his wife, Seiior and Scfiora de Contreras. Both father and son are spoken of in Palomino's work with high praise on account of their devotion to their faith and the serious way in which they made use of their artistic abilities.

PAiX)ifiNO DE Cabtro y Veij^sco, El Musfo Pictorico y Bacala ^Madrid, 1715): Maxwell. Annala of the Artists of Spain (Lon- aon, 1848); Qi-illiet, Dictiunnaire des Printrca Espagnola (Paris, 1816); Huakd, Vie Complete des Pcintres Espagnola (Paris, 1839). .

George Charles Williamson.

Lord's Prayer. — ^Although the Latin t^rm oratio dominica is of early date, the phrase "Lord's Praver" does not seem to liave been generally familiar in Eng- land before the Reformation. During the Middle Ages the " Our Father" was always said m Latin, even by the uneducated. Hence it was then most com- monly known as the Pater noster. The name * ' Lord's prayer" attaches to it not because Jesus Christ used the prayer Himself (for to ask forgiveness of sin would have implied the acknowledgment of guilt) but because He taugnt it to His disciples. Many points of interest are suggested by the history and employment of the Our Father. With regard to the English text now in use among Catholics, we may note that this is derived not from the Rheims Testament but from a version im- posed upon England in the reign of Henrv VIII, and employed in the 1549 and 1552 editions of the " Book of Common Prayer ". From this our present Catholic text differs only in two very slight particulars: " Wiich art" has been modernized into who art", and "in earth" into "on earth". The version itself, which accords pretty closely with the translation in Tyndale's New Testament, no doubt owed its general acceptance to an ordinance of 1541 according to which "his Grace perceiving now the great diversity of the translations (of the Pater noster etc.) hath willed them all to be taken up, and instead of them hath caused an uniform translation of the said Pater noster, Ave, Creed, etc., to be set forth, willing all his loving subjects to learn and use the same and straitly commanding all parsons, vicars and curates to read and teach the same to their parishioners". As a result the version in question became universally familiar to the nation, and though the Rheims Testament, in 1581, and King James's translators, in 1611, provided somewhat different ren- derings of Matt., vi, 9-13, the older form was retained for their prayers lx)th by Protestants and Catholics alike.

As for the prayer itself the version in St. Luke, xi, 2-4, given by Christ in answer to the request of His disciples, differs in some minor details from the form which St. Matthew (vi, 9-15) introduces in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, but there is clearly no reason why these two occa^^ions should be regarded as identical. It would ]xi almost inevitable that if Christ had taught this prayer to His disciples He should have repeated it more than once. It seems probable, from the form in which the Our Father appears in the was that whicn the Church adopted from the beginning for liturgical purposes. Again, no great importance can be attached to the resemblances which have been traced between the petitions of the Lord's prayer and those found in prayers of Jewish origin which were
 * 'Didache" (a. v.), that the version in St. Matthew

current about the time of Christ. (See on this Golts, " Dm Gebet", 40-41, and Chase, " Lord's Prayer ", 3L) There is certainly no reason for treating the Christian formula as a plagiarism, for in the first place the rs- semblances are but partial and, secondly we have no satisfactory evidence that the Jewish prayers were really anterior in date.

Upon the interpretation of the Lord's Prayer, much has Deen written, despite the fact that it is so plainly simple, natural, and spontaneous, and as sucm pre- eminently adapted for popular use. In the quasH official ''Catechismus ad parochos", drawn up in 1564 in accordance with the decrees of the Council of Trent, an eIal)orate commentary upon the Lord's Prayer is

Srovidcd which forms the basis of the analysis of the ^ur Father found in all Catholic catechisms. Many points worthy of notice are there emphasized, as, for example, the fact that the words " On earth as it is in Heaven" should Ixj understood to qualify, not only the petition "Thy will be done", but also the two preced- ing, "hallowed be Thy name" and "Thy Kingdom come". The meaning of this last petition is idso very fully dealt with. The most conspicuous difficulty in the original text of the Our Father conoems the inter- pretation of the words d/^rot hruiOaws, which in ac- cordance with the Vidgate in St. Luke we translate "our daily bread", St. Jerome, by a strange incon- sistency, changed the pre-existing word qut^ianwn into supersubstantialem in St. Matthew but left qtu)H- dianum in St. Luke. The opinion of modern scholars upon the point is sufficiently indicated by the fact that the Revised Version stul prints "daily" in the text, but suggests in the margin " our bread for the coming day", while the American Committee wished to add "our needful bread". Lastly may be noted the generally received opinion that the rendering of the last clause should be " deliver us from, ihe evil one", a change which justifies the use of "but" in stead of "and" and practically converts the two last clauses into one and the same petition. The doxology " for Thine is the Kingdom", etc., which appears in the Greek textiis recepUis and has been adopted in the later editions of the " Book of Common Prayer", is un- doubtedlv an interpolation.

In the liturgy of the Church the Our Father holds a very conspicuous place. Some commentators have erroneously supposed, from a passage in the writings of St. Gregory the Great (Ep., ix, 12), that that doc- tor believed that the bread and wine of the Eucharist were consecrated in Apostolic times by the recitation of the Our Father alone. But while this is probably not the true meaning of the passage, St. Jerome as- serted (Adv. Pelag., iii, 15) tnat "our Ix)rd Himaelf taught His disciples that daily in the Sacrifice of His Body they should make bold to say *Our Father' 4c." St. Gregory gave the Pater its present place in the Roman Mass immediately after the Canon and before the fraction, and it was of old the custom that all the congregation should make answer in the words '*Scd lil)era nos a nialo". In the Greek Liturgies a reader recites the Our Father aloud while the priest and the people repeat it silently. Again in the ritual of bap- tism the recitation of the Our Father has Jrom the earliest times been a conspicuous feature, and in the Divine Office it recurs repeatedly besides being recited both at the l^eginning and the end.

In many monastic rules, it was enjoined that the lav brothers, who knew no Latin, instead of the Divine office should say the Lord's Prayer a certain number of times (often amounting to more than a hundred) per diem. To count these repetitions they made use of pebbles or l:)eads strung upon a cord, and this appara* tus was commonly known as a "pater-noster", a name which it retained even when such a string of beads was used to count, not Our Fathers, but Hail Marys in reciting Our Lady's Psalter, or in other words in say* ing the rosary.