According to Quo primum, S Pius V mandated that rites more than 200 years old should continue to be used unless the Bishop and the unanimous Chapter agreed to their replacement. In England, of course, these canonical measures were never able to be taken. Arguably, the Sarum Missal is still licit.
I wonder if, in Recusant Literature, there is any evidence of how the Catholic Squirearchy reacted to the replacement of the 'Sarum rite' by the Missal of S Pius V.
Here follows a repetition of a 2014 blogpost, with much of the extremely interesting thread which it elicited. Perhaps, five years later, there may be things to add. So off we go ...
Of course, we all know that the difference between those two 'rites' is very slight. But that is the judgement of bookish people like us, considering principally text. As Adrian Fortescue put it, Sarum and the rest "are merely the Roman rite with quite unimportant local variations. They can indeed hardly be called derived rites; if one may take a parallel from philology one may describe them best as dialects of the Roman rite ... To distinguish the Roman, Sarum, and Mozarabic liturgies on the same plane is like classifying English, Yorkshire dialect, and French as three languages." Thoroughly true. But they do look rather different.
One has to admit that we cannot be absolutely sure what the Sarum use did look like in, say, 1570 or 1580. Sometimes usage may leave rubric somewhat behind. But, taking the texts as printed, I give one example:
When the priest had consecrated the Host, he did not genuflect. He 'inclined himself' ... one edition says that he adored It by bowing his head ... then elevated It by lifting It for the people to see. He did not 'adore' or 'incline' again, but went on to consecrate the Chalice. After that, he did not make any act of reverence, but lifted the Chalice 'as far as his chest OR over his head'. He then stretched out his arms 'in modum crucis' for the first part of the Unde et memores.
I would have thought that the Tridentine ceremonial, familiar to us, would have seemed rather strange to those brought up on Sarum. And one could make the same point from the beginning of Mass to the end.
Fortescue (pp 202-3 fn 4) tells how Dr Lawrence Webb arrived from Rome at Douay in December 1576 and taught the young men how to do the new rite. He cites Records of the English Catholics under the Penal Laws, London, 1878, p118. Does anybody have that to hand? Are then any suggestive details?
Anybody have any actual evidence about how the laity reacted? Is there any bibliographical evidence about the survival of Sarum or the introduction of S Pius V? And Fortescue had been told, but had been unable to verify the claim, that some priests brought Sarum back into use in the happy reign of our late Sovereign Lord King James II. Anybody know anything?
Documentary evidence is very slight, I'm afraid. Like Fortescue, I have only hearsay evidence for any of it. Hearsay says that Sarum was to have been used at St Edmunds, and in Westminster Cathedral, but neither I nor Fr Schofield, Westminster Archivist, have managed to find anything written down. In the library of the Oxford Oratory is a missal used (if my memory serves me rightly) during later recusant times; there you can find the propers for English saints lifted wholesale from the Sanctoral of the Sarum Missal and just slightly adapted for the Roman Use.
ReplyDeleteI have read somewhere that at the restoration of the English hierarchy (1850) Rome offered the Sarum rite but Wiseman refused. Can this, with any reasons, be confirmed?
ReplyDeletePage 118 of what may be the 1878 publication to which you refer is available here -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mocavo.com/The-First-and-Second-Diaries-of-the-English-College-Douay-and-an-Appendix-of-the-Unpublished-Documents/286550/234
A passage relating to Dr Lawrence Webb occurs in the paragraph commencing "Igitur".
It's online via Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=pEFDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA118#v=onepage&q&f=false
ReplyDeleteDr Fortescue has not taken Dr Routh's advice. p 118 of Knox, 'Records..' concerns April 1577. December 1576 is on page 113, but has nothing to say about the matter under discussion.
ReplyDeleteAccording to "English Prayer Books" by Stanley Morison, page 141, the "Ordo baptizandi aliaque sacramenta administrandi...." authorized by King James II in 1686 was similar to the previous Jesuit manuals which contained some ceremonies from Roman sources and some from Sarum sources. Said Ordo is available for sale on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/baptizandi-sacramenta-administrandi-ecclesiastica-peragendi/dp/124083313X/), so perhaps someone with more Latin than I could confirm that.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Father, for asking this important question. Here is the one farthing that I am able to contribute:
ReplyDeleteWilliam Byrd would have known the Sarum Use in his youth; some of his earliest compositions were written in the 1550s to adorn its ceremonies. A notable example is the setting of Psalm 113 which he wrote, in collaboration with Sheppard and Mundy, for the procession (lacking in the Tridentine books) during Vespers on Easter Sunday.
Later in his life - from about 1590 onwards - Byrd wrote a great deal of liturgical music, first his three Masses and then the great Gradualia project. His Masses, which set the complete text of the Mass ordinary, betray a post-Tridentine attitude to liturgical correctness quite unknown to earlier English composers, and the propers set in the Gradualia are those of the Roman Gradual, which he seems to have known in a Venetian printing.
So we see that during the course of Elizabeth's reign Byrd became accustomed to the Tridentine liturgy; presumably by his later years the Sarum Use was celebrated much less frequently in the recusant circles in which he moved, and he adapted his compositional practice accordingly.
https://archive.org/stream/firstseconddiari00engl#page/118/mode/1up
ReplyDeleteThe text from the Records of the English Catholics can be found at the link above.
From the old Catholic Encyclopedia:
ReplyDelete"After Elizabeth's accession no more Missals were published, but a little book entitled "Missale parvum pro Sacerdotibus in Anglia, Scotia, et Ibernia itinerantibus" was printed two or three times towards the beginning of the seventeenth century for the use of missionary priests. Its size allowed it to be carried about easily without attracting observation, and as it contained relatively few Masses, only those for the Sundays and the principal feasts, it recalled in a measure the "libelli Missae" of the Anglo-Saxon and Irish missionaries nine centuries earlier. Even at this date the peculiarities of the Sarum Rite were not retained and the Canon and Masses of this "Missale parvum" were all Roman with the exception of one special Mass of the Holy Name of Jesus which is described in the 1616 edition as "taken from the Missal according to the Use of Sarum"."
Here's an interesting tidbit that passed down via family oral tradition and made it into John Charles Cox's "Three Centuries of Derbyshire Annals" (1890, vol. 1, pg. 311):
ReplyDeletehttp://books.google.com/books?id=AoBNAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA311&dq=%22Three+centuries+of+Derbyshire+annals%22+sarum&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fwsNU6jmOq2_sQTqpoCQCA&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA
"Early the next morning [Dec 5th, 1745] Mass was celebrated at the marble altar of All Saints', it is said by a French priest, and from the same sources whence we procured the information in our last paragraph, we learn that much dissatisfaction was caused to a few Derbyshire recusants who were present because the Mass was celebrated after the Roman use (unknown save to those who were versed in Continental rites) and not after the modified Sarum use then in vogue amongst the Romanists of England."
Is this a vague tradition manipulated to suit the height of a ritualist/Sarum craze? Or does it genuinely reflect Sarum's survival into the mid 1700s?
Doubtless there are tidbits like this scattered all over obscure books and newspapers just dying to be collated by some intrepid researcher.
I have found that if one were to use Google Books to investigate "Records of the English Catholics under the Penal Laws", one would find a free reprint of the first volume of that book to be available.
ReplyDeleteAlso, like the rumors of the demise of the author, Mark Twain, during his lifetime, I think that rumors of the demise of the Sarum Rite, or of Sarum Chant, are greatly exaggerated. If one were to investigate the Wikipedia article on Sarum Chant, one would find a wealth of websites with the Chant and its Rite readily available.
Here is the relevant text from Records of the English Catholics Under the Penal Laws, which is an extract from the seminary's diary. Under the entry for April 23rd, 1577, one finds:
ReplyDelete"Igitur spatio quinque mensium ex nostris theologis facti sunt sacerdotes 20. Atque hi omnes sacrum quotidie secundum ordinem Romani missalis a Pio V. editi celebrant, ritus ejusdem missalis accurate et diligenter edocti a venerabile presbytero D. Laurentio Webb, qui ipse Romæ aliquando existens, omnem ejus ordinis rationem et ceremoniam probe et ad amussim didicit."
Pastor in Valle: I have read the serialized history of the music at St Edmund's College, Ware [published in The Edmundian magazine] and there is no indication that anything Sarum was ever used. An article expresses regret at changes in the office mandated by Pius X. Otherwise the perpetual theme is the constant disagreement between chant purists and those who wanted florid composed music in the Mass. It all seemed to change depending on who was in charge of music.
ReplyDeleteA study of surviving Sarum Missals might be fruitful here. I have in my collection a Missale Cenomanense (Le Mans) dated to 1494, which has been repaired with leaves from a later edition. These repairs and iterpolations, along with the state of the early 19th century binding complete with velum book markers indicate that this medieval book was clearly still being used right up into the 19th century. Therefore, if a Sarum missal were found to have the type of later (17th 18th century) manuscript additions that would relate to calendars etc, it might indicate their continued or at least revived use.
ReplyDeleteFor what its worth, the Gregorian Institute of Canada has prepared excellent editions of the Sarum books, containing all the rubrics and chants. These can be freely accessed at http://sarum-chant.ca/
ReplyDeleteAs far as church law goes, what permissions needed to perform the Sarum rite, since it was arguably never abrogated, just forgotten? Is it just a matter of finding a friendly bishop?
According to Rosemary Hill's biography of A W N Pugin, when his wife Louisa was received into the Catholic Church, it was at a Sarum rite High Mass, celebrated by Dr Daniel Rock in the chapel of Alton Towers (God's Architect, p211, reference to Edinburgh Catholic Magazine, June 1839 p499). Also, on page 264 she says of 1842 "When Pugin was at Oscott for Easter he observed that Wiseman was using the Sarum rite ..."
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure that those English Catholics brought up on the Sarum would necessarily have found the Roman rite strange as the Roman rite was used by the Franciscans in England during the period when the Sarum was the dominant rite in the country.
ReplyDeleteFather, an August 2016 MA Dissertation entitled "SARUM USE AND DISUSE: A STUDY IN SOCIAL AND LITURGICAL HISTORY" and available online here: https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=dayton1470048407&disposition=inline answers some of your questions.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that in the smaller private chapels the Sarum was maintained throughout the recusant period. With the reintroduction of the episcopacy, there was much discussion with Pugin and Willson who were friends siding with Sarum. They lost the argument and Willson was consecrated bishop of Tasmania, which he and Pugin proceeded to make Sarum. Willson must have been a good negotiator because the condition of his consecration wasv that he be an Archbishop directly under Rome and that his successors all be archbishops. Fr. Michael St Bride Hermitage, Scotland
ReplyDeleteE Sapelion – Dr Rock would no doubt have PREFERRED to celebrate a Sarum use mass. In a private chapel he might have done so with the permission of the owner. But I wonder if he really did. Or if he obeyed his bishop and celebrated the straight Roman missal while wearing mudguards on his lace alb. (Pictures exist).
ReplyDeleteClaudio Salvucci has made two posts which should be read together – I suspect the documentary evidence of the missale parvum provides the right answer. Straight Roman rite with some survivals. Next, Apart from the general aspiration, Oh to have been in Derby during the ’45 (in order to have taken “Mr Williams” outside and given him a good going over – not killed; just given a good going over – before he was able to lie to the Regent’s Council...), we can’t be sure what was done. Probably just something unexpected.
-Anglicans used to have conniptions if the new vicar raised the collection plate to the wrong height after evensong – the RIGHT height being of course, whatever the old vicar had done.
As the Sarum use was always an accent of the Roman rite, so what happened after its demise was probably a slighter English accent on the new Roman use brought from the continent. Where else were the clergy trained? What other rite did they know? Unless they were Dominicans...
I believe the point about Byrd’s output made by Christopher is conclusive. You can use all his later music for the current Roman rite. If you want particular Sarum, you have to go to Tallis and work backwards.
The Look of the thing – This is probably crucial:
The ambassador of I think it was Charles V reported back to the emperor that Good Queen Mary was crowned with all the ceremonies of the old rite. Wrong! Poor queen Mary was crowned with the bastardised nonsense devised by the heretic cranmer for her little brother. But they fleshed it out with some decent music and costumes: so it looked ok from a distance. I have forgotten if there was actually mass. Would have to assume not. Yep; memory stirs, the exact mirror image problem happened for Ann Boleyn’s illegitimate daughter: They were all obeying the laws made by crown and parliament to regulate the Christian Church...
You would think that GQM would simply have got the monks to get out the Henry Bradshaw Society’s edition of the Westminster Missal. Ah, well, hmm...
PseudonymousposterJohn - how would one tell? Dr Rock must have used Sarum ceremonial, Pugin would have detected any deviations. What prayers the celebrant says at High Mass is largely unheard by any third party. But more importantly, is there evidence of a ban on Sarum operating in 1839?
ReplyDeleteYes, on further reflection I agree that Pugin would have known what he was talking about. Furthermore In 1839 especially there would have been no possible ban on the use of Sarum. I appreciate also your points in the later post about the legality. No problem. Even today.
ReplyDeleteThe only caveat I have is what he and they then meant by the Sarum rite. We have covered the dress, adding apparels to the alb etc., (I noted pictures exist - but not online and my own copies are in boxes) but as you note, the rite and the ceremonial are also different things.
The text used could have been anything, a specially published altar missal would not have been necessary, and the insertions and deviations from Roman form of the then current missal could have been added manually - so COULD have been according to the Sarum missal. (IF anyone has seen Dr Rock's liturgical books, it would be nice to hear..)
But I wondered if a nineteenth century priest would really have omitted for instance the genuflections by then usual. And I was also wondering about the known unknowns - I have read comment in the past - and I think this may have been from our blog host himself - that stated certain things about the exact performance of the Sarum use remain obscure; including the time of making the chalice. This is from memory. I made the lazy assumption of,
At the gradual when there is music, and before mass when there is not. But I believe scholars are not certain. There was known to be variation.
So all in all, I think the answer is again, yes, that Dr Rock could have done what they intended to be a Sarum rite mass, on a private occasion in a private chapel. But I assumed any gaps in knowledge would be supplied by the usual Roman practice. But at that date, there were fewer occasions that were not private, while later in the nineteenth century it would probably have been unthinkable in ordinary parish use. Except for the orders whose rites maintain these features.