THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
To this service the Christians added a Liturgy of Christ in the Holy Communion; and a Liturgy of the Holy Ghost in the short-lived enthusiasm of the speaking with tongues, and a Liturgy of God the Father in the agape, or love-feast, 2. Develop- which assembled the faithful as the ment of the family of God to the enjoyment of his Christian blessings. (See Agape; Eucharist; Service. Lord's Supper). The synagogue service grew into the homiletical introduction to the Holy Communion, called the Missa Catechumenorum, with the reading of passages from the Epistles and the Gospels, followed by a sermon. It affected also the daily prayers. These daily devotions, which came to be called the Divine Office, had their beginning in the observance of hours of prayer. Two such hours were suggested by the natural instincts of the religious life: the morning, at cock-crowing, called matins; the evening, at candle-lighting, called vespers. These were at first observed in private or as times for family worship; but presently they were kept in the consecrated quiet of the church, people coming in at these seasons and saying their prayers, each person by himself. Gradually, other seasons of devotion began to be observed. First, the vigil, which in its original form was a night of prayer before Easter, and then came to precede ordinary Sundays, and then to be a time of spiritual preparation for saints' days. On these occasions the morning prayer was in two parts, one in the night, called matins or nocturns; the other at dawn, called lauds. Then, to meet the eagerness for the privilege of prayer, three hours were kept in the day: the third hour, nine o'clock, called terce, remembering the disciples on the Day of Pentecost; the sixth hour, twelve o'clock, called sext, remembering St. Peter on the housetop; the ninth hour, called none, remembering how Peter and John went into the temple at the hour of prayer. Thus there were six times for daily prayer : matins, lauds, terce, sext, none, and vespers. The next step was to make these individual devotions public and congregational, and to have them led by the clergy. Of course, for busy people, such a continual exercise of prayer was impossible. For them, as is common to-day, the daily devotions were for the most part the private prayers which they said at the cock-crow and at the candle-lighting. The faithful who went to church six times a day were mainly ascetics, whose chief interest and occupation in life was the act of prayer. Presently, these devout persons were gathered into groups and societies, and disappeared from sight in monasteries. There they added to the six daily services two more: Prime, as the prayers before the daily chapter meeting, and Compline, before going to bed. Thus the cycle was completed. It had never had much place in the experience of the ordinary layman. It was understood to be intended for the clergy and for the members of religious orders.
The heart of the daily services was the book of psalms. To recite or sing these psalms was the purpose for which the faithful met at the appointed hours. The psalter was arranged to be gone over in a week. To the psalms were added Scripture
readings, and a few prayers, with versicles and responses. The Latin Church introduced hymns in meter, and lengthened lauds and vespers with commemorations of the saints. And the saints 3. Medieval in rapidly increasing numbers, claimed Elabora- their rights in the services, having tions. lessons and prayers appropriate to their virtues. And the Little Office of the Virgin paralleled all the eight services with an order of its own. These enrichments came to their fulness in the thirteenth century. They made it necessary to use a~ great number of books in the conduct of the service : the psalter, the antiphonal the hymnal, the Bible, the collect book, the processional; and for direction, the consuetudinary, the ordinal, and the directorium. With the rise of the Franciscans in the thirteenth century, and the free movement of persons committed to the life of religion, it became necessary to bring this liturgical library into some condensed, compact and portable form, and the Breviary (q.v.) was the result. The order for the Holy Communion had been similarly enriched and was correspondingly simplified in the Missal (see Mass).
As the era of the Protestant Reformation came on, the need of further liturgical revision was felt by many, and steps in that direction were taken both with and without ecclesiastical authority. Thus in 1535, Cardinal Quignon at the 4. After request of Pope Clement VII. underthe Refor- took are vision of the breviary. Clemmation. ent died before the completion of this work, and it was dedicated to Pope Paul III., who formally permitted the secular clergy to substitute it for the breviary unreformed. Quignon altered some things and some he added; he removed some legends from the lectionary; he arranged to have the Bible read at length and not, as had come to be the usage, in detached fragments; he arranged the psalter so as to be read in course and not interrupted by substituting special psalms. Also he took out two-thirds of the saints' days and all the offices of the Virgin, and omitted a great number of versicles, responses, invitationes, and antiphons. In a second edition, however, he restored the antiphons by request of the theological faculty of Paris. This was the authorized breviary of the Western Church until it was superseded in 1568 by the present book, made by a commission of the Council of Trent. In 1543, Archbishop Herman of Cologne (see Herman op Wied) published a directory of public worship, in sympathy with the Reformation. This was composed at his request by Butzer and Melanchthon, on the basis of a form compiled by Luther, called the Nuremberg Liturgy. The book contained forms of prayer and a litany, with directions for the administration of the sacraments, and for other services, with many explanations. One of its characteristic features was the addressing of exhortations to the people. This book was disallowed by the Church, and the archbishop was expelled. These two liturgical revisions were in the hands of Archbishop Cranmer during the preparation of the English Book of Common Prayer, and he made great use of both. For the history of this work see Common Prayer, Book of.