Canon of the Mass

Some considered that it ended where indicated in the 1962 Roman Missal,[b] others where indicated in the earlier editions from 1570 onwards (the end of Mass), others at the conclusion of the Embolism (Libera nos...) that expands on the final "Sed libera nos a malo" petition of the Pater Noster.

The editions of the Roman Missal issued since 1970, which contain three other newly composed Eucharistic prayers, names it as the "Roman Canon" and places it as the first[c] of its four Eucharistic prayers, and place the words "Prex Eucharistica" before the dialogue that precedes the Preface[d] and the new heading "Ritus communionis" before the introduction to the Pater Noster.

"[8] It has been suggested that the 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).

Introduced in Rome as everywhere by the little dialogue "Sursum corda" and so on, it begins with the words "Vere dignum et iustum est".

Until about the ninth century, it stood towards the end of the sacramentary, among the "Missae quotidianae" and after the Proper Masses (so in the Gelasian book).

[6] The use of Latin as a liturgical language seems to have occurred first in the Roman province of Africa, corresponding approximately to present-day Tunisia, where knowledge of Greek was not as widespread as in Rome.

[17]"The Roman Canon is not in its primitive form" but has many "awkward transitions" that show that it is "evidently an abbreviated and transposed version of a more ancient eucharistic prayer".

Since 1474 it was printed in paragraphs, marked with initial letters and divided by rubrics (so that some pre-Vatican II missal users took it to be a set of discrete prayers).

[20][21] 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.

[6] Pope Pius V's imposition of the Roman Missal in 1570 restrained any tendency to vary the text of the Canon.

According to one source, in 1604 Pope Clement VIII, as well as modifying some of the rubrics, altered the text of the Canon by excluding a mention of the king.

The historian of liturgy Adrian Fortescue wrote that, after the Bible, the Canon of the Mass was what received the most elaborate mystical explanations.

By the time they began the Canon was unquestioned as the most sacred rite of the Church and, with no regard for its historical development, they conceived mystic and allegorical reasons for its divisions, expressions, rites, just as it stood – even for its initial letter T.[6] These interpretations inevitably disagreed among themselves and contradicted each other, dividing the Canon where they liked – as far as possible by a holy number, such as 3, 7 or 12 – and then linked each of these divisions to some epoch of our Lord's life, or to one of the Gifts of the Holy Ghost, or – if the divisions made are 8 – to one of the Beatitudes.

[6] Some of the principal authors of such interpretations were William Durandus, Bishop of Mende (whose work is important as an account of the prayers and ceremonies of the thirteenth century), Benedict XIV and Cardinal John Bona.

Benedict XIV and many others divide the Canon itself into four sets of threefold prayers:[6] Fortescue remarked that 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.