396 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
of God, stir him to outbursts of ecstatic adoration. But of the narrow ness, the want of proportion, the predominance of one quality over another, which commonly goes with an intensity of religious feeling or of moral purpose, he showed no trace. He felt none of that scorn of the world about him which drove the nobler souls of his day to monastery or hermitage. Vexed as he was by sickness and constant pain, not only did his temper take no touch of asceticism, but a rare geniality, a pe culiar elasticity and mobility of nature, gave color and charm to his
life Little by little men came to recognize in Aelfred a ruler of
higher and nobler stamp than the world had seen. Never had it seen a king who lived only for the good of his people .... ' I desire,' said the king, ' to leave to the men that come after me a remembrance of me in good works.' His aim has been more than fulfilled .... While every other name of those earlier times has all but faded from the recollection of Englishmen, that of Aelfred remains familiar to every English child."
CHAPTER X.
WORSHIP AND CEREMONIES.
Comp. vol. III. ch. VII. (374 sqq.), and NEANDER III. 123-140; 425-
455 (Boston ed.)-
§ 92. The Mass.
Comp. vol. III. $ 96-101 (p. 502 sqq.) and the liturgical Lit. there quoted ; also the works on Christian and Ecclesiastical Antiquities, e. y. SIEGEL III. 361-411.
THE public worship centered in the celebration of the mass, as an actual, though unbloody, repetition of the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of the world. In this respect the Eastern and Western churches are fully agreed to this day. They sur round this ordinance with all the solemnity of a mysterious symbolism. They differ only in minor details.
Pope Gregory I. improved the Latin liturgy, and gave it that shape which it substantially retains in the Roman church.1 He was filled with the idea that the eucharist embodies the reconciliation of heaven and earth, of eternity and time, and is fraught with spiritual benefit for the living and the pious dead in one unbroken communion. When the priest offers the unbloody sacrifice to God, the heavens are opened, the angels are present, and the visible and invisible worlds united.2
1 See the Ordo Hfisscc Romanrr Grcgorianus, compared with the OrcJo Gelasiunus, Ambrosianus, Gallicamis, Mozarabicus, etc., in Daniel's Codex Liturg. vol. I. 3-168.
2 Dialog. 1. IV. c. 58 (in Migne's ed. III. 425 sq.) : " Qtti» fideUum habere dubium possit, in ipsa immolation is hora ad sacerdotis vocem ccelos aperiri, in illo Jesu Christi mysterio angelorum choros adesse, summit ima sociari, terrena ccelesti' busjungi, unumque ex visibilibus atque invisibilibus fieri f"
398 FOUKTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
Gregory introduced masses for the dead,1 in connection with the doctrine of purgatory which he developed and popularized. They were based upon the older custom of praying for the de parted, and were intended to alleviate and abridge the penal sufferings of those who died in the Catholic faith, but in need of purification from remaining infirmities. Very few Catholics are supposed to be prepared for heaven ; and hence such masses were often ordered beforehand by the dying, or provided by friends.2 They furnished a large income to priests. The Oriental church has no clearly defined doctrine of purgatory, but likewise holds that the departed are benefited by prayers of the living, " especially such as are offered in union with the oblation of the bloodless sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, and by works of mercy done in faith for their memory." 3
The high estimate of the efficacy of the sacrament led also to the abuse of solitary masses, where the priest celebrates without attendants.4 This destroys the original character of the insti tution as a feast of communion with the Redeemer and the redeemed. Several synods in the age of Charlemagne protested against the practice. The Synod of Mainz in 813 decreed: " No presbyter, as it seems to us, can sing masses alone rightly,
1 Missce pro Defunctis, Todtenmessen, Seelenmessen. Different from them are the Missce de Sanctis, celebrated on the anniversaries of the saints, and to their honor, though the sacrifice is always offered to God.
2 Even popes, though addressed by the title " Holiness," while living, have to pass through purgatory, and need the prayers of the faithful. On the marble sarcophagus of Pius IX., who reigned longer than any of his prede cessors, and proclaimed his own infallibility in the Vatican Council (1870), are the words : " Orate pro eo" Prayers and masses are said only for the dead in purgatory, not for the saints in heaven who do not need them, nor for the damned in hell who would not profit by them.
3 Quoted from the Longer Catechism of the Eastern Church (Schaff, Creeds II. 504). The Greeks have in their ritual special strophes or antiphones for the departed, called vempuaifj-a. Mone, Lat. Hymnen des Mittelalters, II. 400, gives some specimens from John of Damascus and others. He says, that the Greeks have more hymns for the departed than the Latins, but that the Latins have older hymni pro defunctis, beginning with Prudentius.
4 Missoe solitaries or privates.