6,7,8th century old roman rite

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Dave_in_Dallas

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Is NO mass in some respects a return to Old Roman Rite mass of 6,7,8th centuries?
Is there an English translation of this liturgy?
Are there any chant recordings of music from that time period?
 
My pastor (a former professor of History) said the NO mass was indeed a gentle “redirection” that brought parts of the mass back to how it was before the middle ages. A lot of things changed in the middle ages for the church (due to abuses, superstition, whathaveyou). He went in to specifics in his lecture, but I don’t remember them all! :confused:

One was communion in the hand though. He said in the dark ages people used to more commonly take the consecrated host home to nail to the door of their house (to keep evil spirits and bad luck away) or take it in to battle with them. To stop this, they forbade receiving in the hand, only in the mouth. Once these superstition practices we no longer common, they brought it back.
 
Dave_in_Dallas said:
Is NO mass in some respects a return to Old Roman Rite mass of 6,7,8th centuries?
Is there an English translation of this liturgy?
Are there any chant recordings of music from that time period?
Click to expand...
After the sixth century, barbarians pretty much occupied what we know as Britain. If there is any old Anglo-Saxon translation, it certainly wouldn’t be very recognizable to us today. A later Old English Pater Noster is as follows:

Fæder ure,
ðu ðe eart on heofenum,
si ðin nama gehalgod;
to-becume ðin rice;
geweorþe ðin willa on eorðan swa swa on heofenum.
Urne ge dæghwamlican hlaf syle us to-deag,
and forgyf us ure gyltas
swa swa we forgifaþ urum gyltendum,
ane ne gelæde ðu us on costnunge, ac alys us of yfle.
Amen.
 
There was an excellent thread a while back entitled [thread=507000]The Old Liturgy of Rome[/thread] that might be of interest.
 
Recordings? I doubt it as until about the 10th century plainchant was passed on orally. The earliest manuscripts date from around the 10th century. This would be the antiphonale of Laon, and is one of the sources of Solesmes restoration of Gregorian chant late in the 19th century. However, we can’t be certain that the Solesmes method (or any other for that matter) sounds exactly as the free-form neumes of the 10th century were interpreted.

Some old hymns go back still further to the Ambrosian period, especially for the Divine Office. I can think of two hymns for Holy Week, Vexilla Regis and Pange Lingua (about the Cross, not the Eucharist, the latter Pange Lingua was an adaptation by St. Thomas Aquinas). Those go back to 6th century, and were composed by Venantius Fortunatus.

If you look at the current Graduale Romanum, in the Kyriale the approximate time of composition of each Mass setting for the ordinary is given. Most are 10th to 12th century.

Keep in mind too that there were various rites back then; until Trent there were the Old Roman, Gallican, Ambrosian, Mozarabic, Old Sarum rites, just off the top of my head. Each had their own distinctive chant forms.

The evolution of the Mass is a pretty complex topic, I am sure plenty of doctoral dissertations were written about this topic!

Here’s an interesting timeline, placed in the context of other historical events:

Timeline
 
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