MASS, CHANTS AND TEXTS
. The Mass (Latin missa) was the term commonly used in the Middle Ages to designate
the eucharistic sacrifice that is the principal religious service of Christianity. The service
has its origins in the Last Supper of Jesus Christ, described in the three Synoptic Gospels.
The term appears as early as the 4th century (St. Ambrose, missam facere).
The most basic division within the Mass is that between its first part, the Fore-Mass or
Liturgy of the Word, and the sacrificial rite proper that follows. For the early church,
these are called the Mass of the Catechumens and the Mass of the Faithful, since the
Catechumens, those undergoing instruction before baptism, were dismissed before the
onset of the sacred mysteries. The Fore-Mass consisted at first only of an initial greeting
from the presiding priest or bishop, readings from Scripture, a discourse (homily or
sermon) on the readings, and concluding prayers. This is obviously a service of
instruction, altogether appropriate for Catechumens. There were three readings rather
than the medieval two: an Old Testament reading, one from an Epistle or the Acts of the
Apostles, and one from the Gospels. There were no chants until the later 4th century,
when a psalm, the apparent ancestor of the medieval Gradual, came to be a regular
feature of the Fore-Mass. Its verses were chanted by the lector and answered by a
congregational refrain. A second psalm, the Alleluia psalm, came by the early 5th century
to be sung in the church at Jerusalem after the Gradual psalm, as prelude to the Gospel; it
was not taken up immediately in the West.
After the dismissal of the Catechumens, the eucharistic rite began with the “prayers of
the faithful.” Next, the elements of bread and wine were brought in, and the presiding
priest said the eucharistic prayer over them. The medieval Latin version of the prayer is
present already in the De sacramentis of St. Ambrose of Milan (d. 397). Present also in
the 4th century was the chanting of the Sanctus and the Lord’s Prayer, which formed the
high points of a dialogue between celebrant and faithful, sung in all probability to the
same simple tones employed in the Middle Ages (see Levy). During the distribution of
the eucharist, a communion psalm was sung, generally Psalm 33 (34), with its Verse 8 as
congregational refrain: “Taste and see that the Lord is sweet.”
Western liturgical sources from the late 5th to early 8th century are sparse, but with
the document Ordo romanus I we have a highly detailed description of the papal Mass
from ca. 700. Ordo romanus I is one of the earliest of many ordines romani, all existing
exclusively in Frankish manuscripts, that not only describe the papal Mass but show how
it was imitated and adapted throughout the Carolingian realm in the late 8th and early 9th
centuries. The medieval Mass, outlined here in Table 1, is virtually complete in the papal
Mass of Ordo romanus I.
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