Canon of the Mass (Latin: Canon Missæ, Canon Actionis) is the name used in the Roman Missal of the Tridentine period for the part of the Mass that began after the Sanctus with the words Te igitur. The Rubricae generales Missalis, XII, 6, stating: "After the Preface the Canon of the Mass begins inaudibly", confirmed this starting point. From there until the end of the Mass, each page of the Missal was headed "Canon Missae". However, some considered that it ended with the doxology before the Pater Noster (... omnis honor et gloria, per omnia sæcula sæculorum. Amen.). As support for this opinion, they cited the Ritus servandus in celebratione Missae, which, after the two sections, "VIII - Of the Canon of the Mass to the Consecration" and "IX - Of the Canon from the Consecration to the Lord's Prayer", headed the next section: "X - Of the Lord's Prayer and other parts to completion of the Communion". Others held that the Canon of the Mass included the Lord's Prayer with its introduction (Praeceptis salutaribus ...) and its embolism (Libera nos ...), but not the later parts of the Mass.

The term "Canon of the Mass" was thus used for a part of the Mass that excluded the initial part of the Anaphora (the initial dialogue and the Preface) but included, according to some interpretations, a part that followed the Anaphora or Eucharistic Prayer.

The present Roman Missal of 2002 (Mass of Paul VI) uses the term "Roman Canon" of the first of its four Eucharist Prayers, and leaves no doubt about the extent of the Eucharistic Prayer or Anaphora part of the Mass, placing the words "Eucharistic Prayer" before the dialogue that precedes the Preface, and putting the new heading "Rite of Communion" before the introduction to the Lord's Prayer.

For detailed information on the history of the Roman Canon of the Mass, see the article Canon of the Mass in the Catholic Encyclopedia, from which the rest of this article has been transcribed.

Name and place of the Canon

One can only conjecture the original reason for the use of the term Canon. Walafrid Strabo says: "This action is called the Canon because it is the lawful and regular confection of the Sacrament" (De reb. eccl., xxii); Benedict XIV says: "Canon is the same word as rule, the Church uses this name to mean that the Canon of the Mass is the firm rule according to which the Sacrifice of the New Testament is to be celebrated" (De SS. Missæ Sacr., Lib. II, xii). It has been suggested that our present Canon was a compromise between the older Greek Anaphoras and variable Latin Eucharistic prayers formerly used in Rome, and that it was ordered in the fourth century, possibly by Pope Damasus I (366-84). The name Canon would then mean a fixed standard to which all must henceforth conform, as opposed to the different and changeable prayers used before (E. Burbridge in Atchley, "Ordo Rom. Primus", 96). In any case it is noticeable that whereas the lessons, collects and Preface of the Mass constantly vary, the Canon is almost unchangeable in every Mass. Another name for the Canon is Actio. Agere, like the Greek dran, is often used as meaning to sacrifice. Leo I, in writing to Dioscorus of Alexandria, uses the expression "in qua [sc. basilica] agitur", meaning "in which Mass is said". Other names are Legitimum, Prex, Agenda, Regula, Secretum Missæ.

The whole Canon is essentially one long prayer, the Eucharistic prayer that the Eastern Churches call the Anaphora. And the Preface is part of this prayer. Introduced in Rome as everywhere by the little dialogue "Sursum corda" and so on, it begins with the words "Vere dignum et justum est". Interrupted for a moment by the people, who take up the angels' words: "Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus", etc., the priest goes on with the same prayer, obviously joining the next part to the beginning by the word igitur. It is not then surprising that we find in the oldest sacramentary that contains a Canon, the Gelasian, the heading "Incipit Canon Actionis" placed before the Sursum Corda; so that the preface was then still looked upon as part of the Canon.

However, by the seventh century or so the Canon was considered as beginning with the secret prayers after the Sanctus (Ord. Rom. I: "When they have finished the Sanctus the pontiff rises alone and enters into the Canon", ed. Atchley, 138). The point at which it may be considered as ending was equally uncertain at one time. There has never been any sort of point or indication in the text of the Missal to close the period begun by the heading "Canon Missæ", so that from looking at the text we should conclude that the Canon goes on to the end of the Mass. Even as late as Pope Benedict XIV there were "those who think that the Lord's Prayer makes up part of the Canon" (De SS. Miss Sacr., ed. cit., 228). On the other hand the "Ordo Rom. I" (ed. cit. infra, p. 138) implies that it ends before the Pater Noster.

The two views are reconciled by the distinction between the "Canon Consecrationis" and the "Canon Communionis" that occurs constantly in the Middle Ages (Gihr, Das heilige Messopfer, 540). The "Canon Communionis" then would begin with the Pater Noster and go on to the end of the people's Communion. The Post-Communion to the Blessing, or now to the end of the last Gospel, forms the last division of the Mass, the thanksgiving and dismissal. It must then be added that in modern times by Canon we mean only the "Canon Consecrationis".

The Canon, together with the rest of the "Ordo Missæ", is now printed in the middle of the Missal, between the propers for Holy Saturday and Easter Day. Till about the ninth century it stood towards the end of the sacramentary, among the "Missæ quotidianæ" and after the Proper Masses (so in the Gelasian book). Thence it moved to the very beginning. From the eleventh century it was constantly placed in the middle, where it is now, and since the use of complete Missals "according to the use of the Roman Curia" (from the thirteenth century) that has been its place invariably. It is the part of the book that is used far more than any other, so it is obviously convenient that it should occur where a book lies open best -- in the middle. No doubt a symbolic reason, the connection between the Eucharistic Sacrifice and the mysteries of Holy Week, helped to make this place seem the most suitable one. The same reason of practical use that gave it this place led to the common custom of printing the Canon on vellum, even when the rest of the Missal was on paper -- vellum stands wear much better than paper.

History of the Canon

For more details on this topic, see History of the Roman Canon.

Little is known of the liturgical formulas of the Church of Rome before the second century. In the First Apology of Justin Martyr (circa 165) an early outline of the liturgy is found, including a celebration of the Eucharist (thanksgiving) with an Anaphora, with the final Amen, that was of what would now be classified as Eastern type and that was celebrated in Greek.

Latin's use as a liturgical language seems to have occurred first in Africa (the Roman province corresponding approximately to present-day Tunisia, where knowledge of Greek was not as widespread as in Rome. On the basis of the uncertain attribution to him of a treatise found among the writings of Saint Cyprian, it is sometimes said that Pope Victor I (190-202) may have been the first Pope to write in Latin. A further supposition leads some to say he was the first Pope to use Latin in the liturgy. The burial inscriptions of the Popes suggest that the change of language for the papal Mass was somewhat later: the inscriptions begin to be in Latin with that of Cornelius (d. 253). But Latin may have been used in the liturgy for some groups in Rome earlier than that, just as, to judge from a quotation in Greek from a Roman oratio oblationis of 360, other groups will have continued to use Greek even later in that cosmopolitan city. (See volume I, page 65 of the original text of Josef Jungmann's work that has been translated into English as "The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development".)

Some of the prayers of the present Roman Canon can be traced to the Eastern Liturgy of St. James. Several of the prayers were in use before 400 in almost exactly their present form. Others (the Communicantes, the Hanc igitur, and the post-consecration Memento etiam and Nobis quoque) were added during the following century (see Jungmann, page 71, and Hermanus A. P. Schmidt, Introduction in Liturgiam Occidentalem, page 352).

After the time of Pope Gregory I (590-604), who made at least one change in the text, the Canon remained largely unchanged in Rome. Not so elsewhere. The 11th-century Missal of Robert of Jumièges, [1] Archbishop of Canterbury, interpolates the names of Saint Gertrude, Saint Gregory, Saint Ethraelda and other English saints in the Communicantes. The Missale Drummondiense inserts the names of Saint Patrick and Saint Gregory the Great. And in several Medieval French Missals the Canon contained the names of Saint Martin and Saint Hilary.

Pope Pius V's imposition of the Roman Missal in 1570 restrained any tendency to vary the text of the Canon. Pope Clement VIII altered the Canon slightly in 1604,[2] but from then on, although other parts of the Missal were modified from time to time, the Canon remained quite unchanged until Pope John XXIII's insertion of a mention of Saint Joseph immediately after that of the Virgin Mary.

Mystical interpretations

It is obvious that in the great days of mystic theology, so venerable and sacred a text as the Canon of the Mass should have received elaborate mystical explanations. Indeed, after the Bible it was chiefly to the Canon that these pious writers turned their attention. Equally obvious is it that such interpretations never have any sort of regard to the historical development of the text. By the time they began the Canon had reigned unquestioned and unchanged for centuries, as the expression of the most sacred rite of the Church. The interpreters simply took this holy text as it stood, and conceived mystic and allegorical reasons for its divisions, expressions, rites, even -- as has been seen -- for the letter T, with which in their time it began.

No one who is accustomed to the subtle conceptions of medieval mysticism will be surprised to see that these interpretations all disagree among themselves and contradict each other in every point. The system leads to such contradictions inevitably. You divide the Canon where you like, trying, of course, as far as possible to divide by a holy number -- three, or seven, or twelve -- and you then try somehow to show that each of these divisions corresponds to some epoch of our Lord's life, or to one of the Gifts of the Holy Ghost, or -- if you can make eight divisions somewhere -- to one of the Beatitudes. The arrangements are extremely ingenious. Indeed, perhaps the strongest impression one receives from such mystical divisions and explanations is how extraordinarily well their inventors do it.

Nor does the utterly artificial nature of the whole proceeding prevent many of the interpretations from being quite edifying, often very poetic and beautiful. To give even a slight account of the endless varieties of these mystic commentaries would take up very much space. Various examples will be found in the books quoted below.

William Durandus, Bishop of Mende, in his Rationale divinorum officiorum, set the classic example of these interpretations. His work is important as an account of the prayers and ceremonies of the thirteenth century. Very many theologians followed in his footsteps. Perhaps Benedict XIV and Cardinal Bona are the most important. Gihr has collected all the chief mystical explanations in his book on the Mass. A favourite idea is that the Ordinary to the Sanctus, with its lessons, represents Christ's public life and teaching; the Canon is a type of the Passion and death. Hence it is said in silence. Christ taught plainly, but did not open his mouth when he was accused and suffered.

From Durandus comes the idea of dividing the Mass according to the four kinds of prayer mentioned in I Tim., ii, 1. It is an Obsecratio (supplication) to the Secret, an Oratio (prayer) to the Pater Noster, a Postulatio (intercession) to the Communion, and a Gratiarum Actio (thanksgiving) to the end. Benedict XIV and many others divide the Canon into four sets of threefold prayers:

• "Te igitur", "Memento vivorum", "Communicantes";
• "Hanc igitur", "Quam oblationem", "Qui pridie";
• "Unde et memores", "Supra quæ", "Supplices te rogamus";
• "Memento defunctorum", "Nobis quoque", "Per quem hæc omnia".

This gives the mystic numbers four, three, and twelve. So again each separate expression finds a mystic meaning. Why do we say "rogamus ac petimus" in the "Te igitur"? "Rogamus" shows humility, "petimus" confidence (Odo Cameracensis; "Exp. in Can. Missæ", dist. iii). Why do we distinguish "hæc dona" and "hæc munera"? "Dona" because God gives them to us, "munera" because we offer them back to Him (Gihr, 552, n. 5). Why is there no Amen after the "Nobis quoque peccatoribus"? Because the angels say it at that place (Albertus Magnus, "Summa de off. Missæ", III, c. ix). "Per ipsum et cum ipso et in ipso est tibi . . . omnis honor et gloria" signifies in its triple form that our Lord suffered three kinds of indignities in His Passion -- in His body, soul, and honour (Ben. XIV, 227).

See also the explanations of the twenty-five crosses made by the priest in the Canon suggested by various commentators (Gihr, 550). Historically, when these prayers were first composed, such reduplications and repetitions were really made for the sake of the rhythm which we observe in all liturgical texts. The medieval explanations are interesting as showing with what reverence people studied the text of the Canon and how, when every one had forgotten the original reasons for its forms, they still kept the conviction that the Mass is full of venerable mysteries and that all its clauses mean more than common expressions. And in this conviction the sometimes naive medieval interpreters were eminently right.

See also

• Text and rubrics of the Roman Canon
• History of the Roman Canon
• Mass
• Pre-Tridentine Mass
• Tridentine Mass
• Mass of Paul VI

References

• Fortescue, Adrian (1908). Canon of the Mass. the Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company. Further references are available here.

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