Specifically: after the Elevation of the chalice, what does the celebrant do with his hands and arms as he goes on to the Unde et memores ... ?
According to our present S Pius V Missal, his hands should be extended in front of his chest, palm facing palm. Just as he holds them normally during prayers. (During Mass Practice at Seminary in the mid-sixties, I recall the humorous suggestion being made that the priest was keeping the Sacerdotal Power bouncing back and forth between his two hands ... only during the Hanc igitur did he bring their combined power to bear upon the Elements.)
But in old English Rite of Sarum it was different ... and also in the Dominican Rite and the Carmelite Rite and every other Rite I've specifically inspected, even the non-Roman Ambrosian Rite. Even the Romanised/Jansenised 1846 [is that the version you use?] Rite of Lyons ...
In all of these, he extended his arms in the form of a Cross, thus imitating the Crucified Lord who stretched out his arms for our Salvation upon the Cross. (There is probably a hint in the S Pius V Ritus Servandus that the Priest is not to do this: 'ante pectus'.)
I have no idea when this custom arose ... does any reader? (One can easily guess why.)
And today I am interested particularly in the corresponding question: why was the Rite of S Pius V keen to exclude it, when it seemed so (nearly?) universal?
Very tentatively, all I can think of is this: the Pian rubricists were very anxious to ensure that any fragments of the Most Holy which might have adhered to the fingers of the celebrant should not fall to the ground. (This, of course, is why he is bidden to keep thumb and index fingers conjoined ... and very properly so, too.)
Did it worry people that, with the arms fully extended, fragments might fall which, naturally, would not fall safely on to the Corporal?
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English Recusant gentry welcoming the new Seminary priests aftr 1577 must initially have found the New Rite of S Pius V quite strange in its omission of this practice. Moreover, its many genuflexions must also have struck worshippers as strange, since Sarum lacked them.
At least, they are absent from the printed versions of the Sarum Rite. Perhaps they happened in everyday practice, you suggest ... But I think not, because in his 1549 rubric forbidding the Elevation, Cranmer did not think it necessary to forbid the genuflexions (nor did Ridley in his paranoidally comprehensive Visitation Articles of 1550)!
By one of history's delicious paradoxes, the introduction of kneeling before the Consecrated Elements seems to have entered English worship in the Order of Communion of 1548, added to Sarum by Thomas Cranmer, in which the priest kneels for the Humble Access (ditto in 1549). Bishop Stephen Gardener, I seem to recall, alluded to this polemically, and Cranmer responded in 1552 by transferring the Humble Access to before the Institution Narrative.
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The Dominicans do not extend their hands straight out - the rubric specifies "extendat brachia plus solito, mediocriter tamen".
I seem to remember some joke about the Blackfriars' halfway gesture as savouring of a Jansenistic perspective!
I think (the volume is in the library, and I'm watching Grand Designs in the lounge room) that Parsch believed the custom to have spread from Milan.
Well, the modern hosts don't seem to crumble so easily.
I don't know if that was the case in mid-Italy several centuries ago.
The way the altar breads were baked may have something to do with it.
AvB.
The practice becomes widespread across Northern Europe, and is taken up by various religious orders, so presumably it was normative. The fives crosses (✠) following Unde et memores were understood as representing the Five Wounds of Christ, so I'd guess at some point point between AD 800, when the crosses come in, and the time of St Bernard, Doctor Mellifluus.
Well Father, I see that Thomas Becon condemns these genuflexions at the consecration, so perhaps they were an accepted part of the rite.
From The Displaying of the Popish Mass by Thomas Becon
After the aforesaid words, spoken in hocker-mocker, ye breathe and blow and shake your head over the chalice; and then ye kneel down, Lift up your hands, and honour it, like most abominable idolaters. After that ye stand up again, like pretty fellows and well appointed, and taking the chalice in your hands, ye hold it up with heave and howe above your heathenish heads, that the people also may worship it and be fellow idolaters with you, and fall into the like danger of everlasting dam- nation. This done, ye set the chalice down again upon the altar, and ye cover it with your corporass-cloth for catching of cold. Then once again kneel ye down, and up again, like dive-doppels ', and kiss the altar, and spread your arms abroad, as though ye would embrace some she-saint.
I'm wondering if the outstretched arms of the celebrant would have in any way interfered with the Solemn Mass activities of the deacon or sub-deacon in the newer ceremonial of Pius. Apparently they did not interfere in the older/other ceremonials.
Another thought,do we know anything of the texture of hosts during this time period?
There is one source that antedates the Rites of the religious Orders, and that is the “Micrologus de ecclesiasticis observationibus”, an explanation of the liturgy of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, written between 1085 and 1086, perhaps by Bernold of Constance, a monk of the abbey of St. Blasien (d. 1100). This states:"Sacerdos per totum canonem in expansione manuum non tam mentis devotionem, quam Christi extensionem in cruce designat".
Thank you, E sapelion, for introducing me, in my advanced years, to Master Becon, another putrid, blasphemous and tendentious so called 'Reformer', the spawn of Satan, cowardly recanter and author of vile, unreadable tomes long forgotten (I hope). He did very well under Elizabeth. A pity that good Queen Mary never managed to give him his own personalised bonfire. I was a convert to Catholicism a very long time ago, but I wonder how I managed to stay C of E for so long when people like this wretch were incumbents of the stolen churches of our land.
In his three books about the most holy sacrifice of the Mass, Pope Benedict XIV writes (Book 2, Chapter 4, Number 5): „Quarto, […] Consultius vero estimat Ecclesia, si ad eum modum, quo nunc utimur, Collectae recitaretur, ne veteri retenenda consuetudine orandi passis extensisque brachiis, inconcinnis & ridiculis figuris aperiretur locus. Etiam Tertullianus lib. de Oratione cap. 13 morem improbat orandi elevatis incondite manibus: Cum modestia & humilitate &c. ne ipsis quidem manibus sublimius elatis, sed temperate ac probe elatis.“
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=2-9EAAAAYAAJ&pg=GBS.PA84
Tertullian is alleged to have said, "See how these Christians love one another."
I ask myself, 'Scribe', if the following is the language of love or the language of hatred:
"… another putrid, blasphemous and tendentious so called 'Reformer', the spawn of Satan, cowardly recanter… A pity that good Queen Mary never managed to give him his own personalised bonfire [which I take to be an expression of regret that the object of this invective was not burnt to death]."
Terry Loane
I've consulted Urquhart, and it appears that with canonical digits joined,the Sarum priest's arms are extended straight/full-length, as opposed to "mediocriter", in the nanner of the Dominicans. U. gets this idea from a comparative study of tbe Sarum and Praemonstratensian rubrics.
AvB.
Apologies - what I had thought was Parsch, wasn't him, nor Jungmann, but A. A. King quoting Bonniwell.
Telling the truth, Terry Loane, even when uncomfortable, is an act of charity. Heresy is a contravention of the first and greatest commandment. Formal, pertinacious heretics may rightly be described as "putrid". And deliberate contraventions of the first commandment axiomatically deserve capital punishment. This is the language of the administration of justice.
AvB.
I'm grateful to E Sapelion for pointing me towards Thomas Becon. I had heard of him, but never until last night had I read his spiteful diatribe against the Mass. Golly: he doesn't hold back! As Fr Hunwicke knows, I have always held to an instinct that genuflection would have been introduced to Sarum by the 16th Century, and I think that Becon clinches it. I see in Becon that the same genuflections were made before and after elevating the Host also. Our problem has been that the liturgical texts had acquired a value in their own rite, and no doubt nobody cared to update them; however, this was apparently not always how the rite was actually celebrated; one learned one's craft from another priest who taught the younger celebrant how to interpret these rubrics. Even the 1962 Missal requires considerable input from books such as Fortescue and O'Connell in order to celebrate it well.
Becon has several nuggets which are of interest to me, and which are not represented in the Missal. If one wished to discount the evidence of Becon, one might argue that he was simply describing the rites as they had been updated in the reign of Mary, during which time the text was composed; however, even if we were to consider this a reason to discount his description, we know that he spent Mary's reign in Marburg, and indeed other elements in his account (such as the hanging pyx) were being discouraged in Mary's reign in favour of fixed tabernacles. He shows no knowledge of this at all, therefore we may presume that he is basing his account on his memory of English liturgy pre-Edward VI, that which, presumably, he served as a boy.
Dear Terry, I was attempting to match the scurrilous tone of so many of these 'reformers' in their writings. Nothing personal. And remember that in those days both sides cheerfully despatched one another by fire, rope, sword, etc. Autres temps, autres moeurs.
I think you are onto something. In a Dominican Rite High Mass, the deacon and subdeacon stand behind the celebrant.
I recall a High Mass in Melbourne at which the celebrant was a very slight short thin fellow, whilst the subdeacon and deacon were both tall and frankly enormous.
Each time the three ministers of the Mass lined up before the centre of the altar when the priest turned to the people and sang Dominus vobiscum, only the extremities of his slightly outstretched arms could be glimpsed to either side of the prodigious be-dalmatic'd and be-tunicled clergy between him and the congregation.
This curious sight was unintentionally rather amusing.
Well, if churches were properly constructed, you'd be likely to see even less on account of the presence of a rood-screen. Anyway, one "hears" mass, not "sees" it.
AvB
Thank you, "Albrecht von Brandenburg" and "Scribe", for your responses to my comment. My advice to you both - indeed my advice to everyone, including myself - is to hate the sin and (to try as best one can) to love the sinner. I am told that this has been the Christian approach, at least since the time of St. Augustine. But I for one find it difficult to adopt this noble attitude.
I have been wondering over the last few days, "Scribe", if your apparent moral endorsement of the notion of "autres temps, autres moeurs" is compatible with Fr. Hunwicke's condemnation on 18 May of accepting/adopting the Zeitgeist.
Terry Loane
Terry Loane,
Do you not understand that the adminstration of criminal justice is compatible with Our Lord's injunction to love our neighbour?
AvB
Thank you, "Albrecht von Brandenburg", for your concern about my understanding of the relationship between Christian charity and the administration of criminal justice. I can put your mind at rest: I certainly do understand the circumstances in which these are compatible and the circumstances in which they are not.
It is, of course, reassuring to learn of your commitment to love your neighbours, even the ones you think of as "putrid".
Terry Loane
Even as Our Lord loved the pharisees He characterised as a "brood of vipers" (Matt XII:34). Or does Our Lord fail your test of charity??
AvB
I think I detect a degree of harmony and accord, "Albrecht von Brandenburg":-) I have accepted (as is clear from my previous message) that you are committed to loving one's neighbours, including those who happen to be putrid vipers; and it appears (on the basis of qui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debuit ac potuit) that you have accepted that I understand the difference between charity and the application of the law. That's good. It is always pleasing when a degree of agreement is reached as a conversation is brought to an end – which I hereby do.
Terry Loane
Even so.
AvB.
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