The Church and the Barbarians Part 13

The code of Justinian forbade the marriage of a G.o.dchild and G.o.dparent, because "nothing can so much call out fatherly affection and the just prohibition of marriage as a bond of this kind, by means of which, through the action of G.o.d, their souls are united to one another."

This led to the growth of as elaborate a scheme of spiritual relations.h.i.+ps as that which already hedged round among many tribes the eligibility for marriage among persons even remotely akin to one another. In the East, as in the West, baptism was most frequently conferred at the time of the great Christian festivals, Christmas (as in the case of Chlodowech), Epiphany, and especially Easter; and Easter Eve became, later {178} on, especially consecrated to the sacred rite.

In the East baptism was often postponed till the infant was two years old; and everywhere there was for long a tendency even among Christian parents to hold back children from the laver of regeneration for fear of the consequences of post-baptismal sin. It was thus that a name was often given, and a child received into the Church, some weeks or even months before the baptism took place. The Greek Syntagma of the seventh century contains interesting information as to the baptism of heretics. It is ordered that Sabellians, Montanists, Manichaeans, Valentianists and such like shall be baptized just as pagans are, after instruction and examination in the faith, and, after insufflation, by triple immersion.

[Sidenote: Confirmation.]

Throughout these centuries baptism was not separated from Confirmation, except in the case of some converts from heresy. The two rites were regarded as parts of the same sacrament, or at least the former was not considered complete without the latter. The sacramental life of the individual in fact was to begin with his entrance into the Church and never to be intermitted. Even infants were present throughout the celebration of the sacred mysteries and partook of the Communion, a custom which was only abandoned in the West because of the difficulty of frequent giving of Confirmation and the consequent delay of that rite till later years.

[Sidenote: The Holy Communion.]

Baptism and Confirmation was the gate by which the Christian was admitted to the Sacrament of the Lord's Body and Blood. The celebration of that Sacrament was the chief act of the Church's wors.h.i.+p every Sunday and holy day, and in {179} Spain, Africa, Antioch, daily, in Rome every day except Friday and Sat.u.r.day, in Alexandria except on Thursday and Friday: indeed by the end of the sixth century it seems probable that in most parts of the Church a daily celebration was usual. From the seventh century the ma.s.s of the presanctified, when the priest communicated from elements previously consecrated, is found in use on certain days, and in the East throughout except on Sat.u.r.days and Sundays. [Sidenote: Frequent Communion.] It seems clear that at least up to the sixth century it was usual for all who were confirmed to communicate whenever they were present, unless they were under penance; but the custom of noncommunicating attendance was growing up.

In the East a spiritual writer said, "it is not rare or frequent communion which matters, but to make a good communion with a prepared conscience"; while in the West Bede's letter to Archbishop Egbert of York supplies an excellent ill.u.s.tration of custom. [Sidenote: Bede.]

The people are to be told, he advises, "how salutary it is for all cla.s.ses of Christians to partic.i.p.ate daily in the body and blood of our Lord, as you know well is done by Christ's Church throughout Italy, Gaul, Africa, Greece, and all the countries of the East. Now, this kind of religion and heavenly devotion, through the neglect of our teachers, has been so long discontinued among almost all the laity of our province, that those who seem to be most religious among them communicate in the holy mysteries only on the Day of our Lord's birth, the Epiphany, and Easter, whilst there are innumerable boys and girls, of innocent and chaste life, as well as young men and women, old men and old women, who without any scruple {180} or debate are able to communicate in the holy mysteries on every Lord's Day, nay, on all the birthdays of the holy Apostles and martyrs, as you have yourself seen done in the holy Roman and Apostolic Church." It would seem from this that frequent communion was inculcated by the first missionaries to England in the sixth century. Bede tells also how in his day two Anglian priests went on a mission to the heathen Saxons, and, while waiting for the decision of the "satrap," "devoted themselves to prayer and psalm-singing, and daily offered to G.o.d the sacrifice of the Saving Victim, having with them sacred vessels and a hallowed table to serve as an altar."

[Sidenote: Fasting Communion.]

The Sacrament was received in both kinds and fasting, and the priest was forbidden to celebrate after taking any food; some exception to this rule may be inferred from a canon of the Second Council of Macon in 585 enforcing it, and the ecclesiastical historian Socrates (whose History extends from 306 to 439) states that some in Egypt did not receive "as the custom is among Christians," but after a meal. The presence of the Lord in the Eucharist was recognised and adored.

[Sidenote: The doctrine of the Sacrifice.] S. Anastasius of Sinai, probably of the sixth century, writes: "After the bloodless sacrifice has been consecrated, the priest lifts up the bread of life, and shows it to all." The Eucharist is continually spoken of as the holy Sacrifice, the offering of the Saving Victim, the Celestial Oblation; and it was offered, as the writings of Gregory the Great show, in special intercession for the dead as well as the living. From the beginning of the fifth century it seems to have been, at least occasionally, {181} reserved in church as well as sent to the sick in their own houses.

[Sidenote: The Roman ma.s.s.]

During the fifth and sixth centuries it would seem that the Roman ma.s.s, the rite which has slowly superseded the local forms of service in most parts of Europe, was undergoing the modifications which brought it to the stereotyped form it now has. The severe, terse, practical nature of the liturgy, in words, ritual, ceremonial, which is so characteristic of the Roman nature, was being altered by the admixture of other elements. This was especially the case, it is said, in France and Germany, during the ninth century. Earlier changes had been made by Gregory the Great, partly from Eastern sources. [Sidenote: The fifth century.] At the middle of the fifth century the rite, in words and action alike, was a simple one. The choir sang an introit, the priest a collect, epistle and gospel were read, and a psalm was sung: the gifts were offered, the prayer or "preface" of the day was followed by the Sanctus, as in the East, and then came the Canon or actual Consecration. After this was the Lord's Prayer, communion of priests, clergy and people, a psalm and a collect and the end. The ceremonial was equally simple, and was connected almost exclusively with the entrance of the celebrant and his ministers, at which incense was used, and with the reading of the gospel, where also lights and incense were prominent. All else was simple and of dignified reticence. "Mystery never flourished in the clear Roman atmosphere, and symbolism was no product of the Roman religious mind. Christian symbolism is not of pure Roman birth, not a native product of the {182} Roman spirit." [1]

This reticent character is most clearly found in the Gregorian missal, which has been believed to represent the period of Gregory the Great.

More probably the a.s.sertion of John the Deacon that Gregory revised the Gelasian Sacramentary is an error, and what is called the Gregorian Sacramentary is simply the book which was sent by Pope Hadrian I. to Charles I. between 784 and 791. But that S. Gregory did make certain alterations is certain. They were three in the Liturgy, two in the ceremonial of the ma.s.s. The Alleluia was ordered to be more frequently chanted than before; and we find it used outside the Easter season almost immediately after this by S. Augustine in England. He added words to the "Hanc igitur" in the Canon of the ma.s.s, praying for peace and inclusion in the number of the elect. He inserted the Lord's Prayer immediately after the Canon. He also forbade the deacons to sing any of the ma.s.s except the gospel and the subdeacons to wear chasubles at the altar.

[Sidenote: The eighth century.]

It is thought that the great change, which made the Roman ma.s.s into the elaborate rite it became, is due to the influence, at the end of the eighth century, of Charles the Great, who with the determination of a ruler and the interest of a liturgiologist made one rite to be observed throughout his dominions, but enriched the Gregorian book with details and ceremonies derived from uses already common in France. The study of liturgies became common in the ninth century, and in Gaul additions were made to the book sent by Pope Hadrian {183} to Charles the Great, which were finally accepted throughout the greater part of Italy, the Ambrosian rite in the province of Milan remaining different throughout the changes.

It is natural that English readers should desire to know more particularly of the first English Christian wors.h.i.+p. How did the Church's wors.h.i.+p first begin in our own land?

[Sidenote: The rites of the Western isles.]

No doubt the Christians who received conversion during the Roman occupation of Britain, and those of Ireland who were won by the preaching of S. Patrick, wors.h.i.+pped according to the same rite as the churches of Spain or the churches of Gaul, following that use which survived in Spain generally till the eleventh century and in Gaul till the ninth. Gildas, who wrote during the stress of the conquest of the Christian Brythons by the heathen English, mentions one custom which undoubtedly was Gallican, and which is preserved in the Gelasian Sacramentary and the _Missale Francorum_, the one a Roman collection which contains Gallican uses, the other a Gallican rite. It is that of anointing the hands of priests, and perhaps deacons, in ordination, and the custom was kept up after the conversion of the English, at least in some parts of England in the tenth and eleventh centuries. But the influence of the British Church was slight. It is of more interest to us to know what was the first wors.h.i.+p offered in this land by those who were to convert our own forefathers.

Bede tells us how first Augustine prayed when he came before the heathen king of Kent. Some days after their landing Aethelbert received the monks from {184} Rome. [Sidenote: S. Augustine in Kent.]

They had tarried, it seems probable, under the walls of the old Roman fortress of Richborough. They had waited, in prayer and patience, for the beginning of their Mission. It was on prayer that they still depended when they were summoned before the king. On a ridge of rocks overlooking the sea sat Aethelbert and his gesiths, and watched the band of some forty men draw near. Slowly they came, and the strange sound of the Church's music was wafted to the ears of the heathen company as they drew near. Before them was borne a tall silver cross, and a banner which displayed the pictured image of the Saviour Lord,

The Cross preceding Him who floats in air, The pictured Saviour.

S. Gregory, the great pope who had sent the mission, who had himself long dwelt at the court of the emperors in Constantinople, had learnt the value of _icons_, of sacred pictures, as texts for an appeal, or as stimulants to devotion. Those who cannot read, he said, should be taught by pictures, but pictures are valuable only because they point to Him whom we adore as incarnate, crucified, sitting at the right hand of G.o.d. As they came, they sang, and Bede says: "they sang litanies, entreating the Lord for their own salvation and that of those for whom and to whom they came." The litany ended when they came to the king, and then Augustine preached the word. He declared, says an old English writer of later days, "how the merciful Saviour with His own sufferings redeemed their guilty world, and opened an entrance into the kingdom of heaven to all faithful men."

The king bade them deliver their message, and they {185} sat--for it was no formal sermon, but rather, as we should say, a meditation on the things of G.o.d--and "preached the word of life to him and all his gesiths who were present." Bede tells us the answer of the grave thoughtful Aethelbert--"They are certainly beautiful words and promises that you bring; but because they are new and unproved, I cannot give my a.s.sent to them and give up those things which I with all the English race have so long observed. But since you are strangers and have come a long way, so that--as I think I can see clearly--you might impart to us that which you believe to be true and most good, I do not wish you any harm, but rather will treat you kindly and see that you have all you need, and we will not hinder you from bringing over to the faith of your own religion all of our people that you can win." And so he gave them lodging in his own city, the metropolis, as Bede, as it were by prophecy, calls it, of Canterbury. [Sidenote: The litanies.] Towards Canterbury they went, still with litany and procession, and thus, Bede tells us, it is said they sang--still carrying the holy cross and the picture of the great King, our Lord Jesus Christ.--

"We beseech Thee, O Lord, according to all Thy mercy, that Thy wrath and Thine anger may be turned away from this city, and from Thy holy house; for we have sinned. Alleluia."

A tradition that lasted down to Bede's own day thus handed down their words. There is great interest in this picture of Christian wors.h.i.+p in the heathen land, our own, that was to be won for Christ. It ill.u.s.trates the wors.h.i.+p of the land the missionaries came from, as well as serves as a pattern for the wors.h.i.+p which the {186} English, under Augustine's guidance, should follow. What was this litany? Litanies at Rome were regulated by S. Gregory himself, and he was very likely only revising and setting in order a form of service already well known. But this very litany S. Augustine and his companions had most likely heard during their pa.s.sage through Gaul. There the Rogation litanies had been over a hundred years in use; and these words form part of a Rogation litany used long after in Vienne, through which doubtless Augustine travelled. Thus the missionaries were using a part of the Gallican service-books, and not of the Roman; and the legation procession, which lasted so long in England, which still lingers in some places in the form of "beating the bounds," and which in late years has been here and there revived among us, comes to us with Augustine from Gaul, and not from Rome, where it was not yet in use.

"Alleluia!" too, a strange ending to a penitential litany in modern ears, was the close of Gallican litanies at Rogationtide, as later in Christian England itself, and its use outside the Easter season was especially authorised by Gregory the Great. And if Augustine's own first public prayers were Gallican, so most probably was the use of the chapel of the Kentish Queen Bercta, who was daughter of the West Frankish king, and who had with her a Frankish bishop, Liudhard. But his own use would be the Roman, just as his own manner of chanting, long preserved at Canterbury, was after the manner of the Romans. And thus, with the strong sense of unity natural to a man trained in the school of the great Gregory, Augustine was startled at the contrast of customs when it came to him in practical guise. Why, {187} the faith being one, are there the different customs of different churches, and one manner of ma.s.ses in the holy Roman church, another in that of the Gauls? So he asked the great teacher who had sent him. A wise answer came from the wise pope, disclaiming all peculiar authority or special sanct.i.ty for the use of Rome. "Things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of things." "Select, then," he advises, "from many churches, whatever you have found in Gaul, or in Rome, or in any other church, that is good; make a rite for the new church of the English, such as you think pious and best."

[Sidenote: English uses.]

All this, when Augustine's position is remembered, will be seen to show how far Rome then was from arrogating to herself any strange supremacy such as later days have brought. The first primate of the English was allowed freedom to make an English rite. But, on the other hand, we have no evidence that he did so. He preferred, we have every reason to believe, the Roman rite, with only here and there a few changes or additions. The Council of Clovesho, presided over by Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 747, followed in his steps, taking in regard to rites "the model which we have in writing from the Roman Church." But none the less later English service-books show very considerable Gallican influence. Celtic missionaries, and the connection four centuries later with Gaul and Burgundy, left traces in the way in which the service was performed; and England, up to the Reformation, like all other countries indeed, had some distinct customs of its own. Throughout the long history of conversion which spreads over the whole island, it is noteworthy {188} that preaching and the singing of litanies, as at the first coming of Augustine, are conspicuous in the methods of the saints who won England to Christ.

[Sidenote: The Eucharist in the sixth century.]

What then was the service of the Holy Communion, as S. Augustine celebrated it, and our English forefathers first came to know it? If, as we suppose, it was the Roman, it would proceed thus. First an antiphon, which came to be called an introit, or psalm of entrance, with a verse having special reference to the lesson of the day or season, was sung, as the priest, wearing a long white surplice or alb and a chasuble (the robe worn alike by lay and by clerical officials), entered with two deacons, wearing probably similar garments. In the Gallican rite, as in the eastern, there followed the singing of the "Trisagion": and in both Gallican and Roman the "Kyrie Eleeson," as in our own office to-day, though we now add to it a special prayer for grace to keep the Commandments. Then in the Roman rite was sung the "Gloria in Excelsis," while in the Gallican the "Benedictus" took its place. This was introductory. Now came the collect, the prayer when all the people were gathered together. Then the Lesson from the Old Testament, the Epistle, and the Gospel. Between the Old Testament Lesson and the Epistle was sung the "Gradual," a psalm sung from the steps of the ambo or pulpit, but gradually the use of Rome was followed all over Europe, and the Old Testament reading was omitted altogether.

After the Epistle was sung "Alleluia" or the psalm called the Tract.

Then the Gospel was sung, introduced with special solemnity. The deacon mounted the pulpit, seven candles being carried before him, and the choir {189} chanting "Glory be to Thee, O Lord." After the deacon had read the Gospel, a sermon was generally preached, but the Creed was at this time not said. A short common prayer followed (in the Gallican rite a litany), and then the ma.s.s of the catechumens was over, and those who were unbaptized or unworthy to remain at that time for the consecration departed from the church, a custom which has survived in England under changed conditions.

Then, when the faithful only remained, the offertory was sung, and the bread and wine and water were offered (the ceremonial was different and much longer in the Gallican rite, and included the kiss of peace). S.

Augustine, if he followed the Roman use, would offer the bread and wine himself, with the laity a.s.sisting: the Gallican use was to prepare the elements beforehand, and now bring them into church in procession. The priest then washed his hands and said privately a collect, while in the Gallican rite he read from the diptychs, or tablets of the church, the names of those departed who were to be especially commemorated.

Then followed the prayer called the Preface, and the singing of "Holy, Holy, Holy." After this, in the Gallican rite, came a special prayer, and then, as still in the Mozarabic, followed the recital of our Lord's inst.i.tution of the Sacrament, as in the English Prayer-book now; but the Roman rite had also prayers for the Church, for the living and dead, and both united in the prayer (called _paraklesis_) that the elements might receive consecration from G.o.d, which was the consecration itself until much later. Then the dead and living were again prayed for, and the fruits of the earth were dedicated by prayer.

{190}

The Lord's Prayer, by the order of S. Gregory himself, concluded this part of the service, which came to be known as the Canon, the invariable part of the Ma.s.s. In the Roman rite the kiss of peace followed, the faithful kissing each other according to the ancient custom. Then the priest broke the bread, and said the Lord's Prayer alone till the last clause. Then he placed a piece of the bread in the cup, and received the Sacrament himself, afterwards giving it in one kind to the clergy and laity, while the deacon followed with the chalice. Before the Communion it was a custom taken from Gaul, which lasted in England up to the Reformation, that the Bishop, if present, should bless the people. A hymn was sung during the communion of the people; the ancient "Draw nigh and take the Body of the Lord" remains still to us from a Celtic source for use at this time. The service ended with a "Let us pray" and collect after Communion, closely followed by the second of the alternative post-communion prayers now in our English office. Immediately after this prayer the deacon said "Ite, missa est" ("Go: it is the dismissal").

In the English services to-day, while much is changed, and the language is our own, we can still trace very much that has been used continuously since the day when S. Augustine first said the whole office of the Church on British soil.

Much more might be said; but this may suffice to ill.u.s.trate the interest and importance which belong to sacraments and liturgical rites in the ages of which we speak.

[1] Edmund Bishop, "The Genesis of the Roman Rite," in _Essays on Ceremonial_, 1904.

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CHAPTER XVII

THE END OF THE DARK AGE

[Sidenote: The end of the age.]

As we draw to the close of the long period which, through the conversion of the barbarian races and the growth of a central power in the Church at Rome, so profoundly influenced the future of the world, we are met by some outstanding facts which mark an epoch of crisis and of reformation. They are--the widening breach in matters religious, as earlier in matters political, between East and West; the influences which served to strengthen the theory of the papal monarchy even at the time of its greatest practical weakness; and the strength of the Empire under the Saxon Ottos as a power to unite Western Europe and to reform the Western Church.

[Sidenote: The papacy of Nicolas I., 858-67.]

Nicolas, who was elected in 858, was a great pope. He a.s.serted the moral force of Christianity in a way in which his predecessors very frequently followed him, by vindicating the indissolubility of the marriage tie. Chlothochar, King of Lotharingia, separated from his wife Theudberga, bringing against her foul charges, which a council of clergy at Aachen accepted. Nicolas intervened: again and again he endeavoured to control the Frankish clergy and rescind the divorce; but it was {192} only in 863 by a council at Rome, where the archbishops of Cologne and Trier were present, that he was able to proceed to extremities. He excommunicated those two prelates, and deposed them with all those who had a.s.sisted them: he warned Hincmar of Rheims of what he had done. The emperor Louis, Chlothochar's brother, marched on Rome and captured the city; but there, through illness it appears, he completely submitted to the pope. Nicolas enforced his decision on the Frankish king, the Frankish bishops, on Hincmar, the great archbishop of Rheims himself. In a letter he developed the theory that the Empire owed its confirmation to the authority of the Apostolic See, and that the sword was conferred on the emperor by the pope, the vicar of S.

Peter. Truly it was said of this pope by one who wrote a century after his death, "Since the days of Gregory to our own sat no prelate on the throne of S. Peter to be compared to Nicolas. He tamed kings and tyrants and ruled the world like a monarch: to holy bishops he was mild and gentle: to the wicked and unconverted a terror; so that truly may we say that in him arose a new Elijah."

Of equal though different importance was the action of the papacy in regard to the East. What is known as the Photian schism is the divergence between the churches of Constantinople and Rome, which became critical during the pontificate of Nicolas I.

[Sidenote: The Photian schism.]

Photius, a man of great learning and experience, a scholar and theologian of the familiar Greek type, was elected Patriarch of Constantinople on Christmas Day, 857. At the time when Michael III.