- The first Gospel: why is there an additional Gospel reading?
Because the Blessing of Palms before the Holy Week liturgies were reformed in 1955
originally looked like a sort of truncated Mass without the Consecration or Communion (the actual blessing was in their place). It even had its own proper prayers and readings, of which the Gospel is but a remnant; i.e. the service was a good chunk of the Mass of the Catechumens (aka the Liturgy of the Word), and a very small sliver of the Mass of the Faithful (aka the Liturgy of the Eucharist).
- The long Gospel: why are there multiple lectors and why does the community participate in it?
Not exactly an answer, but a little historical background:
The reading or chanting of the Passion in Palm Sunday is one of the distinct elements of this Sunday’s Liturgy and is of very ancient pedigree. Already in the 5th century, Pope St. Leo the Great already focuses on the Passion in his sermons for the Sunday before Easter, and in one of these he indicates that the Gospel account was heard on this day (as well as on Holy Wednesday).
The origin of the division of the recitation of the Passion among different speakers is really obscure. By the 8th century, we could already find manuscripts where Jesus’ words are distinguished by special markings in the margin, though it seems at first this division was achieved only symbolically by having a single deacon chant the text in two or three different pitches and/or volumes. Starting from the Middle Ages, the Passion was chanted in a manner designed to bring out the contrasts between the different characters of the story: Jesus’ lines were chanted ‘slowly’ (
tarde), in a low and solemn manner; the narrator’s were sung more ‘quickly’ (
celeriter) than that, in a normal tempo; the other dialogues were ‘high’ (
sursum), with pronounced agitation.
The mid 13th-century bishop
Guillaume Durand (aka Durandus) of Mende speaks of such a division of voices without any explicit mention of different chanters: he writes that Christ’s lines are to be performed in “
a soft way”, while that of “
the most impious Jews” are to be sung “
vociferously and with a hoarse voice” (reflecting the anti-Semitic attitudes prevalent at the time following the failure of the Second Crusade). We could find the earliest explicit reference to the Passion being distributed amongst three different cantors in the Dominican
gros Livre (dated 1254), originally from Paris.
A Sarum Gradual originally written for use in Salisbury (Sarum), England at the end of the same century, actually has
five different roles: one is the priest chanting
Dominus vobiscum (omitted in the Roman Passions), then the narrator, then Jesus, then the rest, then Jesus on the cross. In Rome though, the use of a single deacon was apparently still the norm by the 15th and 16th century; a Roman missal published in 1530 makes reference to chanting the Passion in three different voices, but does not specify the number of singers. We get the first references to a division of the Passion among different cantors in Roman liturgical documents starting from the 17th century, for both the first edition of the
Caeremoniale Episcoporum (1600) and an early decree of the Congregation of Sacred Rites dating from July of 1612 speak of
cantoribus in the plural. Since then, the standard custom in the Roman Rite was for the Passion narrative to be chanted by three or two deacons (or as an alternative, priests vested as deacons): one sings Jesus’ (
Christus) lines in a deep bass voice, the narrator’s (
Chronista) lines were sung by another in a tenor voice, and yet another chanted all the other parts (
Synagoga) in a high contralto voice. The Chronista traditionally stood in the middle, with the Synagoga on his left and the Christus on the right. If the three deacons were not present, then the celebrant must take on the part of Christus.
(Where do we get these names, by the way? In the Middle Ages, people wrote the letters
T (for
tarde),
C (for
celeriter), and
S (for
sursum) into the text as a rubrical aid to denote how to sing a particular line. Soon, however, the
T was interpreted as a cross, and the two other letters adopted different meanings: C for
Chronista and S for
Synagoga.)
