Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/734

 710 L I T U K G Y list might be increased, but it will be possible here only to name and describe a few of the more important of them. (1) Agenda = Eituale. (2) TheA/itiphonary contained the antiphons sung at the canonical hours, and certain other minor portions of the service. (3) The Benedictional contained those triple episcopal benedictions previously described as used on Sundays and the chief festivals throughout the year. (4) The Collectarium contained the collects for the season, together with a few other parts of the day offices. It was an inchoate Breviary. (5) The Epistolarium con tained the epistles, and (6) the Evangclistarium the gospels for the year. (7) The Gradual contained the introit, gradual, sequences, and the other portions of the communion service which at high mass were sung by the choir. (8) The Legenda contained the lections read at matins and at other times, and may be taken as a generic term to include the Homiliarium, Martyrology, Passional, and other volumes. (9) The Manual was the term usually employed in England to denote the Rituale. (10) The Pontifical contained the order of ordination, consecration, and such other rites as could, ordinarily, only be performed by the bishop. (11) The Eituxle or Ritual comprised the occasional offices for baptism, marriage, burial, and those other offices which it ordinarily fell to the lot of the parish priest to execute. To these we must add a book which was not strictly a church office book, but a handy book for the use of the laity, and which was in very popular use, and often very highly embellished in the 14th to 16th century, the Book of the Hours, or Horx Beatse Marise Virginia. It contained portions of the canonical hours, litanies, the penitential psalms, and other devotions of a miscellaneous and private character. The Eastern Church, too, possessed and still possesses numerous and voluminous office books, of which the chief are the following: The Euchologion, containing the liturgy itself with the remaining sacramental offices bound up in the same volume ; the Horoloyion, containing the unvarying portion of the Breviary, the Mcnaza being equivalent to a complete Breviary; the Menologion, or martyrology; the Octoechus and Paradeticc, containing Troparia, and answering to the Western Antiphonary ; the Pcntecostarion, containing the ser vices from Easter Day to All Saints Sunday, as the Triodion con tained those from Septuagesima Sunday to Easter eve. The Typi- cum was a general book of rubrics corresponding to the Ordinale or the Pie of Western Christendom. PERIOD IV. The Reformed Church. The liturgy of the English Church passed through a more marked phase of change in the 16th century than during any of those periods which we have briefly described. The desire for some reform, and the sense of its necessity, which had been manifesting itself in various ways for more than a century and a half, culminated in the reign of Edward VI., and caused the appearance, with the full sanction of church and state, of the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. which was published on March 7, 1549, and came into general use on the feast of Whitsunday, June 9, 1549. Without attempting to enumerate particular points, we will sum marize the general features which marked this change, and will exhibit the gains of such a reform, which, from an Anglican point of view, constitute its complete justification. (a) Simplification in the number and character of books required for divine service. The Prayer Book is a compendium of most of the volumes which have been recently named and described. Its ! matins and evensong are a compilation from the Breviary ; the ! office of Holy Communion, with the collects, epistles, and gospels, is a translation and adaptation of the missal ; the occasional offices represent the ritual or manual, and the offices of confirmation and of ordination are taken, with modifications, from the pontifical. (6) The removal from the service of a vast quantity of legendary matter which was read in the form of lections, and which was objec tionable partly because it was unhistorical, partly because it was ludicrous and almost profane. As an instance of unhistorical matter, we quote a passage from the fourth lection for the festival of St Silvester, December 31, bishop of Rome, 314-335 : - In which office of the priesthood he (Silvester) distinguished himself above the rest of the clergy.-nml afterwards succeeded Melchiades on the papal throne in nftor ho f no i, r, ~f fi -^i -.-. to be built in every province of the Roman empire after the fashion of the Christians, and that he should do away with the Images f vain deities and institute the worship of the true God. Constantino, therefore Silvestei r b v whomreco^ilzi &quot;] 11 ^ ma. (le . dni g ent search for and summoned This lection retains its position in the present Roman Breviary although its unhistoncal character can be abundantly proved and is generally acknowledged. The Breviary in fact is still, and was even more so then, full of legends which once passed for but have long since been abandoned as history. As examples of the ludicrous we quote the first lection for the festival of St Fcelanus from the Aberdeen Breviary of 1509, fol. xxvi., and the eighth lection for the festival of St Serf from the same Breviary (July 2, fol. xvi. ) : &quot; He (Fcelanus) was born, as it was foretold of him, with a stone in his mouth, on account of which he was so despised by his father that he was ordered immediately after his birth to be thrown into a neighbouring pond and drowned. In this pond he was miraculously nourished by angels for a whole year. But after the lapse of a year he was found by Bishop Ibarus, to whom a divine revela tion of the fact had been given, playing among the angels. He was taken out of the pond safe and sound, was baptized, and afterwards became distinguished in sacred literature.&quot; &quot;A certain robber carried off one day a sheep which used to live and feed in the house of St Serf, and killed it and ate it. Diligent inquiry was made for the thief but without success. At length suspicion fell on the robber, and he hastened into St Serf s presence, prepared to deny the accusation with an oath. He swore a big oath that he was innocent of the charge laid against him, when, wonderful to relate (a fact which would not be believed on merely human testimony), the sheep which had lately been eaten began to baa in the stomach of the robber. Whereupon in confusion the man fell prostrate to the ground, and humbly asked for pardon, and the saint prayed for him.&quot; There was also a quantity of objectionable matter introduced by a process of adaptation, or sometimes, as it was technically termed, by a process of farsing, into the older prayers. The Gloria in Excelsis in the Sarum Missal is printed thus (Burntisland edit., 1861, p. 586) the farsed words are represented by italics : &quot;Qui tollis peccata mundi, suscipe deprecatiouem nostram, ad Maries, gloriam. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris, miserere nobis. Quoniam tu solus sanctus, Mariam sanctificans. Tu solus Dominus, Mariam gubernans. Tu solus altissimus, Mariam coronans, Jesu Christe, cum Sancto Spiritu in gloria Dei Patris. Amen. &quot; (c) For the first time, so far as can be ascertained, in the history of the English Church, the vernacular tongue was employed. (d) The numerous litanies to and invocations of the saints, especially of the Virgin Mary, were expunged. (e) There was a very great extension of the portion of Holy Scrip ture read in divine service, partly by the excision of non-Scriptural matter, partly by the lengthening of lessons which sometimes con sisted only of one or two verses, so &quot;that many times there was more business to find out what should be read than to read it when it was found out. &quot; (/) There was a general simplification of the services, by the re duction of the number of saints days, by the cutting away of anthems, invitatories, and responds, by the compression of the seven canonical hours into the two daily services of matins and evensong, &c. ((/) The various offices for the dead were abolished, and numerous prayers which involved a belief in the mediaeval idea of the penal flames of purgatory made way for the present burial office and the commemoration of the departed in the Eucharistic service. The first reformed Prayer Book of 1549 remained in use till 1552, when by Act of Uniformity passed on April 6 it was ordered that a further reformed Prayer Book should come into general use on the feast of All Saints (November 1) following. This second Prayer Book, commonly spoken of as the Second Prayer Book of King Edward the VI., marks the furthest point in the Puritan direction which was ever reached by the liturgy of the Church of England. An idea of its character maybe gained by mentioning some of the features retained in the first and discarded in the Second Prayer Book, and some of the features added in the Second but absent from the First Prayer Book. In the former class are (a) the sign of the cross used in conse cration, confirmation, marriage, and visitation of the sick ; (b) the use of exorcism, chrisom, and chrism in baptism ; (c) unction of the sick ; (d) certain prayers for the dead, and a special Eucharist for funerals ; (e) the mention of vestments with albs and tunics for Eucharistic use, and of the pastoral staff and cope for bishops ; (/) the ceremonies of crossing and knocking on the breast left optional ; (g) the invocation of the Holy Ghost before consecration ; (h) the mixed chalice ; (i) directions to communicants to receive the consecrated bread in their mouths, and for reservation for the sick. In the latter class are (a) the addition of the Scriptural sentences, exhortation, confession, and absolution before morning and evening prayer ; (b) the addition of the Jubilate, Cantate, and Deus Misereatur as alternative canticles; (c) the words &quot;com monly called the mass&quot; omitted from the title of Holy Communion ; (d) the words &quot;militant here on earth&quot; added to the title of the prayer for the whole state of Christ s Church ; (e) the decalogue introduced at the commencement of the communion service ; (f) the second clause in the formula of sacramental distribution was substituted for the first, the two being subsequently combined in 1559. These are merely samples out of many more points which might be named.