The public worship centered in the celebration of the mass as an actual, though unbloody,
repetition of the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world. In this respect the Eastern and Western
churches are fully agreed to this day. They surround this ordinance with all the solemnity of a
mysterious symbolism. They differ only in minor details.
Pope Gregory I. improved the Latin liturgy, and gave it that shape which it substantially
retains in the Roman church.^421 He was filled with the idea that the eucharist embodies the
reconciliation of heaven and earth, of eternity and time, and is fraught with spiritual benefit for the
living and the pious dead in one unbroken communion. When the priest offers the unbloody sacrifice
to God, the heavens are opened, the angel are present, and the visible and invisible worlds united.^422
Gregory introduced masses for the dead,^423 in connection with the doctrine of purgatory
which he developed and popularized. They were based upon the older custom of praying for the
departed, and were intended to alleviate and abridge the penal sufferings of those who died in the
Catholic faith, but in need of purification from remaining infirmities. Very few Catholics are
supposed to be prepared for heaven; and hence such masses were often ordered beforehand by the
dying, or provided by friends.^424 They furnished a large income to priests. The Oriental church has
no clearly defined doctrine of purgatory, but likewise holds that the departed are benefited by
prayers of the living, "especially such as are offered in union with the oblation of the bloodless
sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, and by works of mercy done in faith for their memory."^425
The high estimate of the efficacy of the sacrament led also to the abuse of solitary masses,
where the priest celebrates without attendants.^426 This destroys the original character of the institution
as a feast of communion with the Redeemer and the redeemed. Several synods in the age of
Charlemagne protested against the practice. The Synod of Mainz in 813 decreed: "No presbyter,
as it seems to us, can sing masses alone rightly, for how will he say sursum corda! or Dominus
vobiscum! when there is no one with him?" A reformatory Synod of Paris, 829, prohibits these
masses, and calls them a "reprehensible practice," which has crept in "partly through neglect, partly
through avarice."^427
(^421) See the Ordo Missae Romanae Gregorianus, compared with the Ordo Gelasianus, Ambrosianus, Gallicanus,
Mozarabicus, etc., in Daniel’s Codex Liturg. vol. I. 3-168.
(^422) Dialog. 1. IV. c. 58 (in Migne’s ed. III. 425 sq.): "Quis fidelium habere dubium possit, in ipsa immolationis hora ad
sacerdotis vocem coelis aperiri, in illo jesu Christi mysteria angelorum choros adesse, summis ima sociari, terrena coelestibus
jungi, unumque ex visibilibus atque invisibilibus fieri?"
(^423) Misae pro Defunctis, Todtenmessen, Seelenmessen. Different from them are the Missae de Sanctis, celebrated on the
anniversaries of the saints, and to their honor, though the sacrifice is always offered to God.
(^424) Even popes, though addressed by the title "Holiness," while living, have to pass through purgatory, and need the
prayers of the faithful. On the marble sarcophagus of Pius IX., who reigned longer than any of his predecessors, and proclaimed
his own infallibility in the Vatican Council (1870), are the words: "Orate pro eo." Prayers and masses are said only for the dead
in purgatory, not for the saints in heaven who do not need them, nor for the damned in hell who would not profit by them.
(^425) Quoted from the Longer Catechism of the Eastern Church (Schaff, Creeds II. 504). The Greeks have in their ritual
special strophes or antiphones for the departed, calledνεκρώσιμα. Mone, Lat. Hymnen des Mittel alters, II. 400, gives some
specimens from John of Damascus and others. He says, that the Greeks have more hymns for the departed than the Latins, but
that the Latins have older hymni pro defunctis, beginning with Prudentius.
(^426) Missae solitariae or privatae.
(^427) Can. 48. Mansi XIV. 529 sqq. Hefele IV. 64.