some bread-or in other accounts(1) bread and wine, which were changed into flesh and blood; and that they were thereupon struck dead to a man. Pope Innocent III. lends no credence to this legend, but more reasonably explains that it arose from the rule, instead of the rule having originated in the miracle. (2) We meet with a very striking instance of the prevalence of this feeling something like a hundred years later than the date of our MS. John Buschk, a Canon regular, and Prior of the Monastery at Sulta, was delegated to visit and reform monasteries both of men and women of different orders; and was very much mixed up with, if not in some sort at the head of the Brethren of Common Life. (3) Writing about the year 1470, he describes his having, when only "a simple brother, called a black friar to account for having preached at Zutphen that laymen ought not to have books in Dutch" (Teutonicales). In his very life-like account of his discussion with the Prior of the Dominican Convent, to which the friar belonged, he tells us that when he objected that laymen had mass-books and even the canon in Dutch (Etiam cum canone in Teutonico), he answered that he did not allow this, and that he had himself burnt the canon when he found some nuns with it in Dutch, but that this was no argument against all, learned and unlearned alike, having and reading books for the amendment of their lives and arousing their devout feelings. (4) In the next century "Pope Pius V. forbade the use of vernacular translations of the office of the blessed Virgin; "(5) but the most stringent exertion of the papal authority was reserved for the seventeenth century. As early as 1587 the whole missal was translated into French, and published by command of the Cardinals of Lorraine and of Guise, who were successively Archbishops of Rheims; and several other editions followed, the Latin being either on the opposite page or in parallel columns— one by Archbishop de Harlay, of Rouen, which in 1650 was approved by the Assembly of the Clergy of France. But in 1661 Pope Alexander VII. issued a bull, at the instance, as was supposed, of Cardinal Mazarin, in which he sets forth that he had (1) See Gemma Animæ, Lib. I, c. ciii. Cf. [Pseudo-]Alcuin, De Divinis Officiis, Ed. Froben., p. 502. (2) De Sacro Altaris Mysterio, Lib. III, c. i. (3) The Fratres Vita Communis took no vows, but lived according to the Augustinian rule. They flourished in the Netherlands and the neighbouring parts of Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, occupying themselves, amongst other good works, in copying religious books, especially in the mother tongue, and were among the first to establish printing-presses in their brother-houses. (4) Buschii de Reformatione Monasteriorum, Lib. II, c. xvii, Leibnitz ; Scriptores Brunsvic., II, 927. See as to Nuns of Syon, ante, p. 186. (5) Maskell, M. R., II, p. liv. heard with great sorrow that certain sons of perdition, to the ruin of souls and in despite of the practice of the Church, had reached such a height of madness as to turn the Latin missal into French, and had dared to print and retail it without regard to state or sex, "and had thus endeavoured to cast down and trample the majesty of the most sacred rite embodied in the Latin words, and by their rash attempt expose to the vulgar the dignity of the holy mysteries." He thereupon declares his abhorrence and detestation of this novelty, and for ever condemns, disallows, and interdicts any missal in French by whomsoever written, or by whomsoever hereafter to be written; forbids the printing, reading, or possession under penalty of excommunication, and requires the surrender of all copies to the ordinary or the inquisitor, in order to their being burnt.(1) (1) I give the bull at length, as, curiously enough, neither De Vert, nor Le Brun, nor, so far as I have observed, any other of the French ritualists refer to it. It is of course in the subsequent editions of the Bullarium, and I notice an abstract in Pittoni's Constitutiones Pontificia, Venet., 1740, I, 314, No. 925. "Alexander Papa VII. A Ad futuram rei memoriam. d aures nostras ingenti cum animi nostri mærore pervenit, quod in Regno Galliæ, quidam perditionis filii in perniciem animarum novitatibus studentes, et Ecclesiasticas Sanctiones ac praxim contemnentes, ad eam nuper vesaniam pervenerint, ut Missale Romanum Latino idiomate longo tot sæculorum usu in Ecclesia probato conscriptum ad Gallicam vulgarem linguam convertere, sicque conversum typis evulgare, et ad cujusvis Ordinis, et sexus personas transmittere ausi fuerint, et ita Sacrosancti Ritus majestatem Latinis vocibus comprehensam dejicere, et proterere, ac Sacrorum mysteriorum dignitatem vulgo exponere temerario conatu tentaverint. § 1. Nos, quibus licet immeritis Vineæ Domini Sabaoth a Christo Salvatore nostro plantatæ, ejusque pretioso Sanguine irrigatæ, cura demandata est, ut spinarum hujusmodi, quibus illa obrueretur, obviemus incremento, earumque quantum in Deo possumus, radices succidamus, quemadmodum novitatem istam perpetui Ecclesiæ decoris deformatricem, inobedientiæ, temeritatis, audaciæ, seditionis, schismatis, aliorumque plurium malorum facile productricem abhorremus, et detestamur. § 2. Ita Missale prædictum Gallico idiomate a quocumque conscriptum, vel in posterum alias quomodolibet conscribendum et evulgandum Motu proprio, et ex certa scientia, ac matura deliberatione nostris, perpetuo damnamus, reprobamus, et interdicimus, ac pro damnato, reprobato, et interdicto haberi volumus, ejusque impressionem, lectionem et retentionem universis, et singulis utriusque sexus Christi fidelibus cujuscumque gradus, ordinis, conditionis, dignitatis, honoris, et præeminentiæ, licet de illis specialis, et individua mentio habenda foret existant, sub pœna excommunicationis latæ sententiæ ipso jure incurrendæ perpetuo prohibemus. § 3. Mandantes quod statim quicumque illud habuerint, vel in futurum quandocumque habebunt, realiter, et cum effectu exhibeant, et tradant locorum Ordinariis, vel Inquisitoribus, qui nulla interposita mora exemplaria igne comburant, et comburi faciant, in contrarium facientibus, non obstantibus quibuscumque. Datum Romæ apud S. Mariam Majorem sub Annulo Piscatoris, die 12 This vehement denunciation appears to have been ignored almost from the first. Translations of the ordinary of the mass and the missal were published with the authority of archbishops and bishops; and at the time of the revocation of the edict of Nantes distributed “by thousands" among the Nouveaux convertis. In 1851 the Congregation of Rites forbid "the translating, printing, or publishing of the ordinary of the mass in the vulgar tongue; "(1) and this decision appears to have been more respected by the French clergy of the present day than the Pope's bull was by their Gallican predecessors. I find that in 1860 a translation of the missal was published by the Abbé Alix, with the approbation of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, with the following notice: "Le tradacteur s'est conformé à la défence de la Congrégation des rites en ne traduisant pas le canon de la messe; " and in several recent missals for the laity which I have had an opportunity of examining, I observe that other devotions are inserted sans phrase in place of the translation of the canon. APPENDIX V. This piece is from Cotton, Titus, A. xxvi, in the British Museum, a paper MS. of about 1470, Mr Brock copied it for the Society, and I read the proof with the manuscript. It is one of the many productions of that most copious poetaster, Dan John Lydgate, the monk of Bury. The scribe has added the title Merita Missa at the end, but it must not be confounded with the Vertue of the Masse (ante, p. 163), nor with the Virtutes Missarum (ante, p. 367) of the same author, from which extracts have been given in the notes. I here insert a fourth piece by Lydgate, being a Venus-Mass, or parody of the Mass addressed to Cupid, "the mighty god of love," which is complete to the end of the epistle. It is taken from MS. Fairfax, 16, in the Bodleian, (2) and Mr G. Parker has read the proof Janu. 1661, Pontificatus Nostri Anno sexto.”—Bullarium Romanum, Luxemburgi, 1727, VI, 138. (1) Dictionnaire des Décrets, Migne, 1860, c. 1232, "Traduction." Here see also a less explicit answer as to the "abus général et invétéré, que les fideles aient entre les mains en latin et en français, non seulement l'Ecriture sainte et surtout le Nouveau Testament, mais encore l'ordinaire même de la messe littéralement traduit." (2) This MS. also contains poems by Chaucer, Occleve, &c., and is aatea "Anno 1450." On the first leaf is written : "I bought this Att Gloucester 8 Sept. 1651. ffairfax intending to exchange it for a better booke. Note y Joseph Holland hath another of these manuscripts." with the manuscript. It is very curious as an illustration of the tone of feeling, which could sanction such dealing with holy things, and all the more curious when we remember it was the work of one who had taken the vows of a Benedictine, (1) and, as we gather from other pieces of his, was himself in priest's orders-nor is his choosing the subject less worthy of remark if, as may not be improbable, he borrowed from an Italian original.(2) The several parts are indicated by rubrics in the manuscript, and I have added references to the corresponding places in the ordinary of the Mass. [fol. 314] Introibo. (Ante, p. 90, 1. 12.) W yth all myñ Hool Herte entere Confiteor. (Ante, p. 90, 1. 25.) Touchynge the grete tendyrnesse By exaumple of hem / I myghte lere (1) See a somewhat similar travesty by Lyndesay, ante, p. 319. (2) There are hardly any poetic themes which the old monk has not handled, though whether in every case he has adorned them may well admit of question. Among his Minor Poems (Percy Society, p. 220) Mr Halliwell gives a "Lovers Complaint" in the person of a love-lorn maiden, beginning: "Allas! I woful creature Lyveng betwene hope and drede, How myght I the woe endure, In tendrenesse of wommanheede ?" To folowe the wey / of ther seruyse ¶ Misereatur. (Ante, p. 92, l. 1.) By god of louys Ordynaunce Officium. (Ante, p. 92, 1. 33.) In honour of the god Cupide [fol. 3146] [fol. 15] |