Origins
The Roman Catholic Church responded to the breaking away of European Protestants by engaging in its own reform, the so-called Counter Reformation. Following the Council of Trent, (1545–1563), which adopted the Tridentine Mass as the standard for Roman Catholic worship, the Latin Mass remained substantially unchanged for four hundred years.
Meanwhile, the churches of the Reformation (Anglican, Lutheran, Calvinist, and others) altered their liturgies more or less radically: the language of the people was used at mass. Deliberately distancing themselves from "Roman" practices, these churches became “Churches of the Word” – of Scripture and preaching – breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church's focus on sacraments. The practice of the remembrance of the Last Supper and Christ's Crucifixion on Calvary became more infrequent and was supplemented in many churches by the service of Morning and Evening Prayer. In some Lutheran traditions, the Mass was stripped of some of its character, such as replacing the Canon of the Mass with the Words of Institution ("This is my Body... this is my Blood"). Common practice was to make the service of the day (the ante-communion) into a preaching service.
The first stirrings of interest in liturgical scholarship (and thence liturgical change) within the Roman Catholic Church arose in 1832, when the French Benedictine abbey at Solesmes was refounded under Dom Prosper Guéranger. For a long time, Benedictines were the pioneers in restoring Roman liturgy to its medieval form. At first Guéranger and his contemporaries focused on studying and recovering authentic Gregorian Chant and the liturgical forms of the Middle Ages, which were held to be the ideals. Other scholars such as Cabrol and Batiffol also contributed to the investigation of the origins and history of the liturgy, but practical application of this learning was lacking.
The 19th century saw the increased availability of patristic texts and the discovery of new ones. Jacques Paul Migne published editions of various early theological texts in two massive compilations: Patrologia Latina and Patrologia Graeca. In addition, the Didache, one of the earliest manuals of Christian morals and practice, was found in 1875 in a library in Constantinople, and the Apostolic Tradition, attributed to the 3rd-century Roman theologian Hippolytus, was published in 1900. This latter was a Church Orders containing the full text of a Eucharistic liturgy; it was to prove highly influential.
Pope Pius X, elected in 1903, encouraged such reforms. In the same year he issued a motu proprio on church music, inviting the faithful to participate actively in the liturgy, which he saw as a source for the renewal of Christian spirituality. He called for more frequent communion of the faithful, the young in particular. Subsequently he was concerned with the revision of the Breviary. Pius's engagement would prove to be the necessary spark.
Read more about this topic: Liturgical Movement
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