Liturgical Books of The Roman Rite - Earliest Roman Liturgical Books

Earliest Roman Liturgical Books

In the Roman Rite the first complete books known are the Sacramentaries. A Sacramentary is not the same thing as a Missal. It is the book for the priest celebrating Mass. It contains all and only the prayers that he says. At that time he did not repeat at the altar the parts that were chanted by the ministers or choir, as became the custom in the period of the Tridentine Mass Thus Sacramentaries contain no Readings, Introits, Graduals, Communion Antiphons and the like, but only the Collects, the Eucharistic Prayer with its Prefaces, all that is strictly the priest's part at Mass. On the other hand they provide for occasions other than Mass, with prayers for use at ordinations and at the consecration of a church and altar, and many exorcisms, blessings, and consecrations that were later inserted in the Roman Pontifical and the Roman Ritual. Many Sacramentaries now extant are more or less fragmentary, and do not contain all of these elements.

Another name for the Sacramentary (in Latin Sacramentarium) was Liber Sacramentorum (Book of Sacraments), but "Sacrament" in this case means the Mass.

At the same time as the Sacramentaries, books for the readers and choir were being arranged. Gradually the Comes or Liber Comicus, a book that indicated the texts of the Bible to be read developed into the Evangelarium (Gospel Book) and Lectionarium (Lectionary). The homilies of Fathers to be read were collected in Homilaria, the Acts of the martyrs, read on their feasts, in Martyrologia. The book of Psalms was written separately for singing, then arranged in the order in which the psalms were sung in the Psalterium (Psalter). The parts of the Mass sung by the choir (Introit, Gradual, Offertory, Communion) were arranged in the Liber Antiphonarius or Gradualis (Antiphonary or Gradual), while the Antiphons and Responsories in the Office formed the Liber Responsalis (Responsory Book) or Antiphonarius Officii (Antiphonary of the Office), as distinct from the Antiphonarius Missae (Antiphonary of the Mass). Hymns (in our sense) were introduced into the Roman Rite about the fifth or sixth century. Those of the Mass were written in the Gradual, those of the Divine Office at first in the Psalter or Antiphonary. But there were also separate collections of hymns, called Hymnaria, and Libri Sequentiales or Troponarii containing the sequences and additions (farcing) to the Kyrie and Gloria, etc. Other services, the Sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Marriage, Extreme Unction), the Visitation of the Sick, the Burial Service, all manner of blessings, were written in a very loose collection of little books, predecessors of the Roman Ritual, called by such names as Liber Agendorum, Agenda, Manuale, Benedictionale, Pastorale, Sacerdotale, Rituale.

Finally there remained the rubrics, the directions not about what to say but what to do. This matter would be one of the latest to be written down. Long after the more or less complicated prayers had to be written and read, tradition would still be a sufficient guide for the actions. The books of prayers (Sacramentaries, Antiphonaries, etc.) contained a few words of direction for the most important and salient things to be done - elementary rubrics. For instance the Gregorian Sacramentary tells priests (as distinct from bishops) not to say the Gloria except on Easter Day; the celebrant chants the preface excelsa voce (in a loud voice), and so on. In time, however, the growing elaborateness of the papal functions, the more complicated ceremonial of the Roman Court, made it necessary to draw up rules of what custom and etiquette demanded. These rules are contained in the "Ordines" - precursors of the Cæremoniale Episcoporum. The first of them was probably drawn up about the year 770 in the reign of Pope Stephen III (768-72), but is founded on a similar "Ordo" of the time of Pope Gregory I (590-604). The "Ordines" contain no prayers, except that, where necessary, the first words are given to indicate what is meant. They supplement the Sacramentary and choir-books with careful directions about the ritual.