Roman Canon, Supra quae: what does "sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam" refer to?

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Here is the text of the Supra quae in the Roman Canon:
Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris:
et accepta habere, sicuti accepta habere dignatus es
munera pueri tui iusti Abel,
et sacrificium Patriarchae nostri Abrahae,
et quod tibi obtulit summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech,
sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam.
Commentaries on the Roman Canon are divided on what the phrase “sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam” refers to: either a) the Eucharistic elements, or b) the sacrifice of Melchisedech. The commentator sometimes bases his opinion on the Latin grammar:

Supra quae (accusative pronoun, plural neuter)
munera pueri (accusative noun, plural neuter)
sacrificium Patriarchae (accusative noun, singular neuter)
quod tibi obtulit (accusative pronoun, singular neuter)
sanctum sacrificium (accusative noun, singular neuter)
immaculatam hostiam (accusative noun, singular feminine)

Does the quae agree grammatically with the sacrificium and hostiam? If not, what would need to be different?

Does the quod agree grammatically with the sacrificium and hostiam? If not, what would need to be different?

It seems to me that quod, being singular, agrees with the sacrificium and hostiam, which are both singular nouns and are referring to one and the same thing. Is this the reason the two nouns are said not to agree with the plural pronoun quae?

What if the quae is referring back to something else, something in the Unde et memores prayer?
Unde et memores, Domine,
nos servi tui, sed et plebs tua sancta,
eiusdem Christi, Filii tui, Domini nostri,
tam beatae passionis,
necnon et ab inferis resurrectionis,
sed et in caelos gloriosae ascensionis:
offerimus praeclarae maiestati tuae de tuis donis ac datis
hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam,
Panem sanctum vitae aeternae et Calicem salutis perpetuae.
The quae could refer back to one of the nouns in the bolded section above. However, hostiam, panem, and calicem are all singular nouns, the first being feminine, the second and third being masculine; only donis and datis are plural nouns.

So… what is the plural pronoun quae in the Supra quae referring to?

If it’s referring to the nouns panem and calicem, shouldn’t quae be quos (plural masculine) instead? Or is it referring to all three of the preceding singular nouns, in which case a neuter is reasonable? Is it referring back to the nouns donis and datis? (Unlikely, in my opinion)

Thoughts? Opinions? Cold hard facts?
 
My advice is to report yourself and have this moved to the L&S section, where it will get more traffic. There, Mark is bound to see it, and I’m sure he will give it a shot. Unfortunately, I am not quite versed enough in Latin to take a stab at the minutiae.
 
Every commentary I have ever seen says that these words refer to Melchisedech’s sacrifice and not the oblations on the altar. That is why in the EF, there are no crosses over the oblations at this point, whereas other similar portions of the texts include crossings.
 
I cannot imagine what could persuade a thinking person that it is the sacrifice of Melchisedech to which reference is being made. Why on earth would we pick this moment to ask God to deign to look with a serene and kindly countenance on Melchisedech’s offering from the Old Testament? The ship has sailed on that one, my friends.

The answer is readily derived by remembering (1) that the Canon is a spoken prayer said with a series of accompanying gestures and actions, and (2) that the gender agreement of Latin relative pronouns does not require thinking about what the gender of an unstated antecedent would have been had it been stated, nor looking a mile away for the “technical” antecedent, as though you were doing a schoolboy exercise.

As to (1), then, we can observe that just before he says “Supra,” he has made four signs of the cross over the elements, and is holding his hands extended. He also just finished talking about the bread and chalice, and we know that relative pronouns typically refer to something mentioned previously (which puts the “ante” in our word “antecedent”). As to (2), the matter is not so simple (or rather, so difficult) as hunting down some word which agrees in case, number, and gender, and declaring it therefore to be the antecedent. So Cicero (De Natura Deorum) could write “Sin terra, mare etiam, quem Neptunum esse dicebas,” where, as you see, the pronoun by a sort of attraction winds up agreeing in gender with Neptunus and not mare; and again (In Pisonem), “iusta gloria, qui est fructus verae virtutis honestissimus.” But then, not always. It’s a bit of a stylistic thing. There are few hard and fast absolutes about pronoun agreement.

Thus “quae,” a neuter plural, makes sense in referring to the elements on the altar, because (1) there are more than one of them (“Over which [things]”), and (2) there is no nearby gendered grammatical antecedent for them to be naturally attracted to. The “things” that are meant – and the reason why the priest does not have to say “supra haec” – are the panem sanctum and and calicem salutis about which he was speaking moments ago. I know that the intervening rubric and the big dropped capital make it look like the “Supra quae” is practically a new chapter and so the pronoun could not conceivably refer to something from the Unde et memores, but in reality it is read continuously. It says, “The holy bread of eternal life, and the chalice of eternal salvation. Upon which deign to gaze with a serene and kindly countenance, and to hold acceptable, as you deigned to hold acceptable the gifts . . . .”

I would love to read the best possible defense of interpreting “quae” as referring to the sacrifice of Melchisedech. Genius.
 
I should point out also, it is worth comparing the prayer as it stands in the present Roman Canon to ancient Ambrosian and Mozarabic forms of the Eucharistic prayer. See, e.g., here. You’ll notice there is no question of our asking God to receive or look kindly on the sacrifice of Melchisedech, which I assume they would have considered as absurd in 400 AD as I do now.
 
Mark, this is not about asking God to look kindly upon the sacrifice of Melchisedech (or Abel or Abraham). It’s clear that the prayer is asking God to look kindly upon OUR sacrifice, AS He looked favorably upon these other sacrifices. The question is whether the prayer is saying “God, look favorably upon our sacrifice (as you looked upon Abel’s sacrifice, Abraham’s sacrifice, and Melchisedech’s sacrifice), which is a holy sacrifice, an immaculate victim” or whether it’s saying “God, look favorably upon our sacrifice (as you looked upon Abel’s sacrifice, Abraham’s sacrifice, and Melchisedech’s sacrifice which was a holy sacrifice, an immaculate victim).”

So, here’s the commentary breakdown:

Refers to Melchisedek
  • Older commentators frequently understood this addition as an attribute of the Christian sacrifice …] but the purport of the words demands rather a connection with the sacrifice of Melc. (Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite I:230)
  • The addition sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam, ascribed to Leo the Great, grammatically cannot be conceived as in apposition with Supra quae and be referred to the Eucharistic Sacrifice; it belongs to quod obtulit summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech. (Gihr, The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass 696)
  • Grammatically they must refer to Melchisedech’s sacrifice. (Catholic Encyclopedia, “Canon of the Mass”)
  • The words sanctum sacrificium [grammatically] must refer to Melchisedech’s sacrifice. (The Wisdom of Adrian Fortescue 362)
  • [The words] describe the sacrifice of Melchisedech, emphasizing its relation to the Eucharist: “a holy sacrifice and a spotless victim.” [Liber Pontificalis 1:239] (Mazza, The Eucharistic Prayers of the Roman Rite 80)
  • Added in reference to Melchizedek’s sacrifice by Saint Leo the Great in opposition to the Manicheans, who claimed that wine was evil. (Walsh, In Memory of Me 129)
Refers to Christ, the Eucharist
  • Refer to the oblation of the Holy Eucharist mentioned at the beginning of the prayer; not to the sacrifices of the patriarchs, which are introduced in the way of parenthesis. (Shea, The Glories of the Catholic Church)
  • It is His Son, is ‘a holy sacrifice, an unblemished victim.’ (It seems more reasonable to apply the words …] to the Host than to Melchisedech’s offering, as the Latin grammatically allows and as is done in some translations.) (Williamson, The Great Prayer 105)
  • Such then is the real sense: et accepta habere sanctum Sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam. (Gueranger, Explanation of the Prayers and Ceremonies of Holy Mass)
  • The last words of the prayer—“a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim”—are an addition made by Leo I, according to the Liber pontificalis, to counteract the Manichaean teaching that the taking of wine in the Eucharist was a sinful act. (Parsch, The Liturgy of the Mass 243)
 
Meh, that’s what I get for posting without my coffee (was out of filters). I just read the title of the thread wrong and wend on from there. In my partial defense, you are asking a series of not-entirely-related question, which I think are best treated in about the reverse of the order in which they were posed.

:compcoff:

That now being said, with regard to the questions at the end of your OP, I remain convinced that quae refers to the bread and chalice which were mentioned previously in the Unde et memores, and that the reason it is neuter is because the subject is being thought of as “things” and there is no strongly gendered relation to act upon this word. The rule is that a relative pronoun which refers to two or more antecedents at once will generally be masculine if the antecedents are living beings not all female, and neuter if they are lifeless things. See Allen & Greenough §§ 287(3), 305(a). That is why it is not quos.

In the line about Melchisedech, there is no need for quod to agree with anything at all. It means “what, that which,” and the fact that the item in question may or may not turn out to be gendered is not strong enough to draw the pronoun itself into a gender. If, again, it were a living person that was meant, then it would have a gender and we would translate it as “[the one] whom” (one might imagine “Quem tibi obtulit Abraham, filium suum Isaac”), but in referring to a lifeless object, a pronoun used in this fashion will fall into the neuter.

That holds whether the “sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam” is supposed to be a followup to explain what it was that Melchisedech brought, or whether it is a semi-standalone phrase which relates back to the quae.

Now we reach your main question: to what is that last phrase referring? I agree with your first group of experts inasmuch as they say that it is grammatically consistent with being an elaboration on the quod, and thus an explanation of what Melchisedech brought. No argument there. But it is also consistent with being a summing-up phrase intended to refer to the Eucharistic elements. Let’s see what happens if we strip out the whole analogy digression altogether:
Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris: et accepta habere, . . . sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam."
The final phrase is in the accusative because it is an object of “habere”: “and [deign] to hold them [to be] acceptable, [to hold them to be] a holy sacrifice, an immaculate victim.” This is a perfectly admissible grammatical result as well. There is of course no need whatsoever to relate the final phrase syntactically to quae at all in terms of number of gender. In sum, the phrase stands in a grammatically ambiguous aspect. I agree with Parsch and the other experts of your second group that it is best taken, minding the history and context of the Eucharistic prayer, as referring to the Eucharistic elements, but this cannot be proven mechanically from the Latin itself.
 
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