THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
AGENDA, a-jen'da.
The Term; its Equivalents Before the Reformation (§ 1). Lutheran Changes in Roman Catholic Agenda (§ 2). Decline of Lutheran Agenda in Eighteenth Century (§ 3). The Agenda in the Reformed Church (§ 4). Revival of Agenda by Frederick William III. (§ 5). The Agenda in the Modern Lutheran Church (§ 6). American Liturgies (§ 7).
The name Agenda (" Things to be Done "; Germ. Agende or Kirchenagende) is given, particularly in the Lutheran Church, to the official books dealing with the forms and ceremonies of divine service. It occurs twice in the ninth canon of the Second Synod of Carthage (390; Bruns, Canones, i., Berlin, 1839, p. 121), and in a letter of Innocent I. (d. 417; MPL, xx. 552). The name was frequently employed in a more specific sense, as agenda missarum, for the celebration of the mass; agenda diei, for the office of the day; agenda mortuorum, for the service for the dead; agenda matutina, and agenda vespertina, for morning and evening prayers. As the designation of a book of liturgical formulas it is stated by Ducange to have been used by Johannes de Janua, but in the only published work of Johannes (c. 1287) the name does not occur. There is no doubt, however, that with the development of the ritual of the Church the classification of liturgical formulas for the use of the parochial clergy became common. Such books of procedure i. The were known by various names; e.g., Term; manuale, obsequiale, benedietionale, riits Equiv- tuale, and agenda. The last title was alents Be- given especially to the church books of fore the Ref- particular dioceses wherein the genormation. eral ritual of the Church was supplemented by ceremonial features of local origin, as the agenda for Magdeburg of 1497, or the Liber agendarum secundum ritum ecclesice et diocesis Sleswicensis of 1512. The use of the term in the Roman Catholic Church, however, practically ceases with the Reformation, though a few instances occur in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the Evangelical Churches, on the contrary, with the title Kirchenbuch, it speedily came to be the accepted designation for authoritative books of ritual. In the early days of the Reformation the agenda not infrequently constituted part of the Kirchenordnung or general church constitutions of a state (see Church Order); but in the course of time the separation of the formulas of worship from the legal and administrative codes of the Church was effected.
The earliest attempts at a reformation of the Roman ritual were naturally concerned with the mass. The innovations consisted of the omission of certain parts of the Roman ceremonial and the substitution of German for Latin, instances of the use of the vernacular in the celebration of the mass occurring as early as 1521-22. In 1523 2. Lutheran Luther published his Latin mass, revised Changes in in accordance with evangelical doc- Roman trine; and three years later he gave to Catholic the world his Deutsche Messe und Ord- Agenda. nung des Gottesdiensts, the use of which, however, was not made obligatory. In the same year appeared his " Book of Baptism," in 1529 probably his "Book of Marriage," and dur-
ing the years 1535-37 the formula for the ordination of ministers. In the Kirchenordnungen of the time orders of worship occur, as in Thomas Munzer's Deutzsch kirchen am-pt, of 1523, and the Landesordnung of the duchy of Prussia in 1525. From this time to the end of the sixteenth century the Protestant states of Germany were busied with the task of remodeling their ecclesiastical systems and formularies of worship, the work being carried on by the great theologians of the age . The church constitutions and agenda of this period may be divided into three classes: (1) those following closely the Lutheran model; (2) those in which the ideas of the Swiss Reformation were predominant; and (3) those which retained appreciable elements of the Roman ritual. Of the first type the earliest examples are the constitutions drawn up by Bugenhagen for Brunswick, 1528; Hamburg, 1529; Lubeck, 1531; Pomerania, 1535; Denmark, 1537; Sleswick-Holstein, 1542; and Hildesheim, 1544. Justus Jonas formulated the church laws of Wittenberg (in part), 1533; of the duchy of Saxony (where the name " agenda " is first adopted), 1539; and of Halle, 1541. Hanover received its laws from Urbanus Rhegius in 1536; Brandenburg-Nuremberg, from Osiander and Brenz in 1533; and Mecklenburg, from Riebling, Aurifaber, and Melanchthon in 1540 and 1552. Among the states which adopted constitutions of the Reformed type were Hesse and Nassau, between 1527 and 1576; more closely, Wurttemberg, 1536; the Palatinate, 1554; and Baden, 1556. In the socalled " Cologne Reformation," drawn up largely by Butzer and Melanchthon and introduced by Archbishop Hermann in 1543, the agenda of Saxony, Brandenburg-Nuremberg, and Cassel served as models. The Roman ritual was retained to some extent in the church ordinances of the electorate of Brandenburg, 1540; Pfalzneuburg, 1543; and Austria, 1571. Of this type, too, were the ordinances drawn up by Melanchthon, Bugenhagen, Major, and others, for the electorate of Saxony in 1549; but these never went into effect, giving place in 1580 to a constitution Lutheran in character.
The Thirty Years' war exercised a disastrous influence on the entire ecclesiastical system of Germany, and particularly on church discipline. The work of restoration, however, was begun almost immediately after the cessation of hostilities, but so great was the moral degradation in which the mass of the people was plunged, so low was the standard of education and general intelligence, that in the formulation of new ecclesiastical laws the governments, of necessity, assumed a far larger share of authority over the affairs of the Church than they had possessed before the war. This increased power of the government was apparent not only in a closer supervision over the ecclesiastical administration, but also in the enforcement of a stricter adherence to the formulated modes of worship. Of the agenda promulgated after the war, the most important were those of Mecklenburg, 1650; Saxony and Westphalia, 1651; Brunswick-Luneburg, 1657; Hesse, 1657; and Halle, 1660.
The eighteenth century witnessed a marked decline in the importance of the official liturgies in the religious life of the nation — a loss of influ-