Understanding our Faith

Mass in Middle Ages

The heading for this week’s Understanding our Faith article is ridiculous!  It is impossible, in one page, to give any sort of accurate idea of the liturgy of the Mass throughout so long a period.  So, let’s just note a few particular characteristics of this long age.

The liturgy became very priest-centred, that is the people became more and more mere spectators of the Mass which was seen as the priest’s business, rather than everyone’s.

Going to communion was a rarity for the people.  So rarely did it happen that the Fourth General Council of the Lateran in 1215 insisted that all should go to communion at least once a year at Easter.  This ‘Easter Duty’ lasted right up into the first half of the twentieth century.  Confession was most often attached to this annual communion.

Devotion to the Eucharist outside of Mass arose – quite possible as a substitute means of contact with the Eucharist given that people were not receiving communion.  So, in the late 12th and early 13th century, the Eucharist was reserved in a tabernacle in the church rather than in the Sacristy where it was kept previously only for taking communion to the sick and the dying.  Devotions like Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and prayer before the Blessed Sacrament also arose at this time. 

Having Masses said for particular intentions and especially for the dead became a dominant form of the celebration of Mass.  In monasteries and other religious houses, most monks became priests over the course of the Middle Ages in order to cope with the number of these Masses, which the monasteries also depended on for their support.

In the Middle Ages, there were several different ways in which Mass was celebrated.  Each way normally fell back on the inherited customs of the important cities of Europe.  All of these different rites or usages used the Roman Canon, the First Eucharistic Prayer in our Missals today.  But many of the other rites differed from each other in different places.  Cities like Paris, Lyon, Milan all had their own published Missals.  These rites were trimmed back a little at the Council of Trent but many of them lasted right up into the 19th century and some continue today such as the Milanese or Ambrosian Rite in Milan and its surrounding area. 

There were inherited treasures among these rites but there were also aberrations which the Council of Trent and the Roman decrees following it sought to deal with, as we will see in next week’s article.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin