History of The Roman Canon - Before St. Gregory I (to 590)

Before St. Gregory I (to 590)

Gregory himself thought that the Canon had been composed by "a certain scholasticus", and Pope Benedict XIV discussed whether he meant some person so named or merely "a certain learned man". Gregory himself is credited with adding a phrase to the Canon. The Canon that he left represents in fact the last stage of a development that amounted to a "complete recasting", in which "the Eucharistic prayer was fundamentally changed and recast."

A distinction must be made between the prayers of the Canon itself and the order in which they are now found. The prayers, or at least some of them, can be traced back to a very early date from occasional references in letters of the Church Fathers: the prayers beginning Te igitur, Memento Domine and Quam oblationem were already in use, even if not with quite the same wording as now, by the year 400; the Communicantes, the Hanc igitur, and the post-consecration Memento etiam and Nobis quoque were added in the 5th century.