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When the Gospel was preached in Rome it was among Greek-speaking people that converts were first made. Most of the names mentioned by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans are Greek. The Greek language had in the early years of the Empire become a means of communication along the Mediterranean coasts. It was the language of commerce. The people who spoke it had come to form a large part of the population of the cities. In Africa Greek inscriptions are very common, and Latin inscriptions are to be found written in Greek characters. In Rome it was the fashion to write in the language of Homer, Thucydides, and Demosthenes. Suetonius, Aelian, and Marcus Aurelius, all true Latins, wrote books in Greek.
The Christian Church in Rome in the first ages was essentially Greek. This is clearly shown by the names of the bishops of Rome; of the first twelve ten had Greek names. It is the same with the early martyrs. Clement, Hermas, and Justin wrote in Greek, the last for Roman Christians, and, as late as the third century, Hippolytus. Not until well on in that century does Latin begin to predominate.
It is also certain that the liturgy in the West was in Greek. One form has been preserved by Victorinus (p. 52). When Polycarp went to Rome in 155, he seems to have celebrated in the congregation in his own tongue. [For further evidence see Fortescue, The Mass, 127. E] And it was not only in Rome that this was so. We know that there were considerable Greek colonies on the coasts of Gaul and Spain. When the Churches of Lyons and Vienne wrote their celebrated letter about the martyrdoms they wrote to Rome in the Greek language.
It is in Africa that the Western Church seems first to have acquired a Latin character. Tertullian wrote in Latin, and, while he generally uses the Greek Bible, he seems to have had a Latin translation. It would appear also that Africa was the first to have a Latin liturgy, though the early Western liturgy is shrouded in mystery. When it emerges in the sixth century it has been so much recast that only in general structure does it resemble the Eastern rites, and in particular the Anaphora is in so disjointed a form that it is difficult to recognize the relation of the various parts. It is possible that this process was already beginning in the time of Hippolytus, and that his Apostolic Tradition was a protest against the tendencies which ended in this result.
The Oriental type of liturgy was preserved longer in the Churches of Spain, Gaul, and Lombardy; but in all these regions the Roman Canon replaced the ancient Anaphora in time. The divergence which took place between the East and the West in liturgical matters was due to a number of causes, of which the substitution of Latin for Greek, leading to mutual ignorance of one another's rites, and the fact that the Western Empire decayed much earlier than the Eastern, are perhaps the chief. When eventually the Carolingian Empire restored to the West a central political authority the change had been completed.
The Bishop of Rome was, without any rival, the Patriarch of the whole West from the beginning until the Reformation took place in the sixteenth century. Then the great body of Protestant Reformers left the Catholic Church, and only in a few places did the reforming Churches retain their succession with the primitive Church; these were the Churches of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Sweden.
It would be valuable if we could determine when Latin definitely took the place of Greek in the official language of the Roman Church. There is some reason to believe that Greek held its own officially and liturgically some time after the people of the Church had ceased to be preponderantly Greek-speaking. The epitaphs of the Popes, with the exception of that of Cornelius, were in Greek up to the end of the third century; but Latin must have been the common speech of most of the members of the Church before that.
We can see traces of the use of the vernacular during the second and third centuries. Somewhere about AD 150, the heretic Marcion arrived in Rome, and he probably died before 165. During this time he showed the greatest activity in converting Christians to his beliefs and his sect. From Tertullian we can gather that he had translated the Pauline Epistles into Latin, for where Tertullian ordinarily uses one text, when refuting Marcion he quotes St. Paul in a different text, and sometimes even explains the unfamiliar word, which must be that used by Marcion. For example, Tertullian quotes Gal. iv. 22 thus: 'There are two covenants (testamenta) or two manifestations (ostensiones), as we find it interpreted, one on Mount Sinai, etc.' Here the form known to him is testamenta ; that used by Marcion ostensiones. [Adv. Marcionem, v. 4. Further examples are given' by G. Bardy, Irenikon, xiv (Mar. - Apr. 1937), 122.] This implies that Marcion wrote for the Roman people in Latin; in Africa also there was at least a Latin version of the New Testament current among the Catholics, as indeed must have been the case. We also begin to see in the third century Latin used in semi-official documents. About 250 Novatian wrote in the name of the clergy of Rome a letter to St. Cyprian in Latin, and a little later the Pope Cornelius did the same. [Cypr. Ep. 30, 49.]
When the Greek liturgy was replaced in Rome by one in Latin we do not know but there are signs of it late in the fourth century. A book, usually printed with the works of St. Augustine, the Quaestiones Veteris et Novae Testamenti, which dates itself 300 years after the destruction of Jerusalem (i.e. c. AD370) says:
But Christ is the representative (vicarius) and bishop (antistes), and therefore he is called 'priest' (sacerdos). In the same way also the Holy Ghost sent like a bishop, is called 'priest of the most high God', not High Priest (summus sacerdos) as our people presume to do in the oblation.' [Quaestiones, qu. 109. P.L. xxxv. 2329. It is now believed to be the work of Isaac of Armenia.]
This passage has a double interest. It shows that the Roman Mass already had in its 'Oblation' the passage about Melchizedek: 'which thy high priest Melchizedek offered to thee'; but also that it had been drawn from a Greek original which evidently ran τὴν προσφορὰν Μελχισεδὲκ τοῦ ἱερέως σοῦ τοῦ ὑψίστου. The word hypsistou has been wrongly taken to qualify hiereos instead of sou, an error to which the author of Quaestiones naturally objects. The Epistle to the Hebrews calls Melchizedek ἀρχιερεύς, which might possibly have been the source of 'summus sacerdos'; but it is unlikely, as pontifex is the usual word, and Heb.vii.1 quotes the word from Genesis.
Another reference of about the same date also seems to show that the Greek liturgy was not yet obsolete. Caius Marius Victorinus, a recent convert to Christianity, speaks (c. 365) of the Mass thus: 'The prayer of Oblation prays in the same sense to him (Christ): σῶσονπεριούσιον λαὸν ζηλωτὴν καλῶν ἐργων, referring to Tit. ii. 14. In another passage he comments on the adjective, and gives the passage from the Oblation in Latin, translating periousion laon by populum circa substantiam, which he goes on to explain as equivalent to circa vitam consistentem populum; 'As it is said in the Oblation : Munda tibi populum circumvitalem, aemulatorem bonorum operum, circa tuam substantiam venientem.' [Adv. Arium, i. 30.]
This suggests that the Mass was at this time used in both the Greek and Latin versions. The words quoted are not in any Latin text of the Canon at present known. Tit. ii. 14 is quoted in the liturgy of St. Basil in the Anaphora in the words: κτησάμενος ἡμᾶς ἐαυτῷ λαὸν περιούσιον [Brightm. p. 326, 26.] and in the Prayers of the Faithful of the Nestorian, [I.c. 264, 3.] but neither of these explains this passage.
We may thus place the substitution of the older Greek liturgy in Rome by a Latin rite somewhere about the end of the fourth century. It was probably a process that took a long time, and the Latin form must have been in use long before that. The evidence just quoted, slender though it is, also implies that the Latin was an adaptation of the Greek, though perhaps a very free adaptation. But when we next get any information of the Roman Mass it has already assumed much of the character of the modern Latin rite, and there is an entirely different rationale from the Eastern rites and from the form of Hippolytus. In those, and almost certainly in the early Roman liturgy, the text, so far as it was fixed at all, did not vary from day to day, except in the lections and perhaps the psalms; while in the Western form, as it finally took shape, many parts varied with the season and the occasion, and in its extreme form, that in use in Spain, the variable portion was considerably longer than what was fixed, which was little more than a framework. [See Appendix B, p. 306.] The development of variables should be dated from about the latter half of the fourth century.
Beside this difference a great change had taken place in the anaphora. That of Hippolytus follows an orderly sequence of thought: thanksgiving for the goodness and mercies of God, a statement of the Incarnation and Passion, the account of the Institution of the Sacrament, a solemn remembrance of the events to which it witnessed, an offering of the gifts with a prayer that the Holy Spirit (or at least God) should come and sanctify them. The later Roman Canon has some of these elements, but in no intelligible order, and it presents every appearance of dislocation.
At this point it will be well to give for reference the various parts of the completed Canon under their opening words. The full text will appear in its proper place in the Commentary (see Index).
I. |
Sursum Corda. |
|
II. |
Preface (variable). |
|
III. |
Sanctus, Hosanna, and Benedictus. |
|
IV. |
Te igitur, |
|
(a) |
a commendation of the offerings. |
|
(b) |
a prayer for the Church. |
|
V. |
Memento Domine, a Commemoration of the living. |
|
VI. |
Communicantes (variable), a Commemoration of the Saints. |
|
VII. |
Hanc igitur (variable), an Oblation and prayer for salvation. |
|
VIII. |
Quam oblationem, a prayer for the blessing and changing of the elements. |
|
IX. |
Qui pridie, the account of the Institution. |
|
X. |
Unde et memores, |
|
(a) |
the memorial of the Passion, or Anamnesis. |
|
(b) |
the Oblation. |
|
XI. |
Supra quae, a prayer for the acceptance of the Oblation, as the Old Testament sacrifices were accepted. |
|
. |
Supplices te rogamus, |
|
(a) |
that the sacrifice may be accepted at the heavenly altar. |
|
(b) |
that the communicants may be filled with grace. |
|
I. |
Memento etiam, the commemoration of the departed. |
|
XIV. |
Nobis quoque peccatoribus, for fellowship with the Saints. |
|
XV. |
Per quern, a Blessing and Doxology. |
It will be seen that of these Apostolic Tradition had: I, II (fixed), IX, X, XV, and also (b) as part of an Invocation of the Holy Ghost.
We first meet forms that show a close affinity to this Canon in a tract De Sacramentis, whose authorship is unknown. It has been thought to be by St. Ambrose, amongst whose works it has been traditionally included. It contains much of the contents of another little work, De, Mysteriis, which probably was written by St. Ambrose; but there are some differences in style and interpretation, and it is difficult to understand why a writer like St. Ambrose should repeat so much of his own language. The writer expressly states his desire to follow the Roman Church in everything, though he adds 'yet we too are not without discernment, and what other places have done well to retain, we do well to maintain' [iii. i. 5.]. Here he is referring to the practice of foot-washing, which he tells us was not in use in the Roman Church, but which he defends as a command from the Lord. Such an excuse for divergence from the Roman Church would not hold good in the matter of the liturgy, so I think we are bound to conclude that he believes that the liturgy he records is that of Rome.
It is usually held that this document comes from the fifth century, and preferably from the early part of that century; but some scholars have placed it in the sixth and even the seventh centuries [Atchley. J.T.S. Apr. 1929 (xxx. 281); Frere, The Anaphora, 129-32.]. The grounds on which this late date has been adopted are chiefly indications of more developed sacramental conceptions, but also the character of the liturgy, and especially the absence of an Invocation. These considerations seem to me to be outweighed by internal evidence of a less subjective nature pointing to a date not very much later than Ambrose. The writer gives us no more than the formula of consecration: 'Wilt thou know that it is consecrated by heavenly words? Hear what the words are.' The following is the portion of the Mass that this book has preserved:
a. |
Make for us this oblation, |
b. |
Who, the day before he suffered, |
c. |
Therefore having in remembrance his most glorious passion and resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven, |
d. |
We offer to thee this spotless victim, |
e. |
And we beg and pray that thou wouldst receive this oblation |
f. |
As thou didst vouchsafe to receive the gifts of thy righteous servant Abel, |
When we compare this with the corresponding part of Apostolic Tradition we see two important changes. First another Oblation has come in before the Institution (a above), and then there is no Invocation of the Holy Ghost, but instead we have e and/, which give the idea that the offerings are to be conveyed to the heavenly altar for acceptance. For the rest the language is very much altered, while the ideas remain the same.
This gives us VIII, IX, X, (in part) and XI (in part).
About the same time as De Sacramentis, or a little before, if we are to date that book as above, important information is given by Pope Innocent (401-17), in a letter written by him to Decentius, Bishop of Gubbio, a town of Umbria near Perugia. Decentius had asked Innocent to advise him on certain matters, and the letter is his reply. Two of these questions will be mentioned later on, but there is one passage which is important for the history of the Canon. It runs thus:
Now about reciting the names before the priest says the prayer (preces or prex, the text is uncertain), and commends in his own prayer (sua oratione) the oblation of those whose names should be recited. Your own sagacity tells you how superfluous it is to insert the names of the persons before you are making the offering to God, though of course he knows everything. The oblations therefore ought to be commended first, and then the names of those whose they are should be mentioned, so that they may be named within the sacred mysteries, and not among the things we place before, so that by the mysteries themselves we may open the way for the prayers to come (ut ipsis mysteriis viam futuris precibus aperiamus).
This refers to the practice of naming in the Mass those who made offerings of bread and wine, and perhaps of other gifts also. Most scholars take it to mean that the Gallican rite was in use at Gubbio. In that liturgy the offerers were mentioned during the reciting of the Diptychs which preceded the Canon. Innocent, according to them, is objecting to this, and urging that the Roman custom of reciting the names within the Canon should be adopted. This interpretation has, however, some considerable difficulties, and the passage must be carefully examined.
There are evidently two things in the practice of Gubbio to which Innocent objects: first that the names of those who offer are mentioned before the offerings are made, so that it is not clear to those who hear why they are mentioned (though God knows), and secondly that they are not mentioned 'within the mysteries', but in 'the things we place before'. The ordinary interpretation would paraphrase the passage somewhat like this: 'With you the names are mentioned before the Canon and before the priest's own prayer of commendation of the offerings, but the offerings should be commended first and then the names mentioned, so that they may be named within the Canon.' According to this, the prayer of commendation is Te igitur (IV); the names would be in Memento Domine (V), and prex would have its usual meaning of 'Canon'. So far this is satisfactory. The word 'superfluous' is a difficulty in any case. Schuster supposes that the practice at Gubbio involved a double praying for those who made the offerings, [The Sacramentary, i. 266.] but that is not what Innocent says is superfluous. It is the fact that the names are mentioned before the commendation that he calls by that name. It is clear that the word 'superfluous' is not quite the word Innocent wanted, and that he means it is out of place to mention names before the prayer which explains why they are mentioned.
But the explanation given above is unsatisfactory. In the first place Innocent's words do not describe the
Gallican use, which is untouched by his chief criticism. [Dom Cagin and Dom Morin hold that Rome had
originally a Gallican type of liturgy, and that Innocent had the Diptychs before the Canon. The latter opinion does not involve
the former, which is probably unsound.]
In that rite we have quite regularl
The Gubbian practice is therefore not the Gallican use, but apparently a local peculiarity.
Moreover, Gubbio was only a little
more than a hundred miles from Rome on the wall of the Tiber basin, and, though it had relations with Ravenna, it is very
improbable that it would have had true Gallican features in its liturgy. Its custom in this matter must be a divergence from Rome
which has been noticed by Decentius. It is even possible that it was preserving an older Roman tradition.
The important question, however, is what the Roman use was. It is very difficult on the ordinary interpretation to give any meaning to the last subordinate sentence of the passage quoted. If 'mysteries' is restricted to the Qui pridie, the 'prayers to come' are the last part of the Canon; but how can the position of the names, which in any case come before the Qui pridie, affect the relation of these two parts? If, on the other hand, it means the whole Canon, how does their inclusion in the Canon open the way for the 'prayers to come', i.e. the Communion prayers?
Dom Connolly avoids this difficulty by a new translation of the last clause [J.T.S. xx (Apr. 1919), 215 ff.]. He would take 'futuris', not with 'precibus', but with 'mysteriis', thus reading 'that by the prayers we may open up the way for the mysteries themselves which are yet to follow'. If ut is taken as consecutive, the most natural interpretation, this does not much improve matters; but if, as Connolly prefers, the clause is taken to give a reason for 'placing some things before' this removes the objection. His suggestion has received the approval of Dr. Armitage Robinson and Dom Wilmart, so it is with hesitation that I have preferred the usual rendering. It seems to me that futuris must go with precibus, and that the ut clause must be a reason for the position of the names and not for the 'things placed before'.
Battifol has suggested the reading oblationibus for mysteriis, but this is not necessary. He is probably right in saying that Tobscurite tient uniquement au mot mysteriis [Lerins sur la messe (1927), p. 219, n.1.]. That word is always assumed to mean the Canon, but I would suggest that Innocent uses it in a wider sense for the whole of the 'Mass of the Faithful'. The Dismissal of the Catechumens was still in force, as De Sacramentis shows, and Innocent himself says of the mysteries, 'quia aperire non debeo'. Innocent's phrase 'ante confecta mysteria' (p. 166), implying that the Gubbian Kiss of Peace was within instead of after the mysteria, supports this view.
On this interpretation Innocent is not speaking of the Canon at all, except when he mentions 'the prayers to come'. He too, like the Gallican and Mozarabic Churches, and some, if not all, of those in the East that mention the offerers by name, is accustomed to the reading of the Diptychs of the living before the Canon. In Gubbio the practice is to read the names at an earlier stage, before the Dismissal of the Catechumens. There are Eastern parallels to this, as in the Syrian Jacobite and Coptic Offertory prayers, and those who believe that the Roman liturgy was influenced from Egypt through Ravenna might find in this a trace of the passage from Ravenna to Rome.
However this may be. Innocent objects to this mention of names that is unrelated to the act of offering, and wishes it to be placed after the Offertory. I would therefore paraphrase thus: 'Now about reciting the names before the priest says the prayers [of the faithful] and commends in his own prayer [i.e. the Secret] the oblation of those whose names ought to be mentioned . . . the Secret should be said first, and then the names, so that they may be mentioned within the Mass of the Faithful, and not as with you in the Mass of the Catechumens, and thus the most sacred part of the rite (futuris precibus) may be prepared for by that portion of the service which is reserved for the faithful.' The reading of the names before the dismissals is looked upon as something inconsistent with the reserve with which the mysteries should be treated.
The objection to this interpretation would be that the words prex and mysteria had already become technical terms for the Canon, but it is doubtful whether this is so.
With this passage of Innocent we may associate two others of a little later date.
BONIFACE I, writing to the Emperor Honorius, c. 420, says:
Behold among the very mysteries, among their prayers,
the Christian people beseech with pleading voices for your prosperity.
[Ep. vii.]
CELESTINE I (422-32), in a letter to Theodosius II:
They (the faithful) commend your Empire to our God
throughout all the Churches
when the sacrifices have been offered (oblatis sacrificiis).
[Ep. xi. 1.]
If mysteria, sacrificia, and preces are at this period always to be identified with the Canon, these passages support the theory that the Diptychs of the living were already within the Canon. But the last passage would make it almost necessary to hold that they came towards the end, in the position they hold in the Byzantine rite. There is, however, no evidence that they were ever in that position at Rome. It is more natural to take them as used in a wider sense of the Mass of the Faithful. The Secrets are full of this kind of language, as for example 'Sacrificiis Domine placatus oblatis opem tuam ... impende'. Battifol says, 'In the language of the Secrets the sacrifice is the offering which the faithful have brought' [Lerins sur la messe, p. 164.], as in that for the seventh Sunday after Pentecost:
Accept the sacrifice from thy servants who are devoted to thee, and sanctify them with such a blessing as the offerings of Abel, that what they have severally offered to the honour of thy majesty may promote the salvation of all.
Dom Connolly takes the words of Boniface 'inter ipsa mysteria' as including the Prayers of the Faithful, though he says that 'Innocent certainly employs mysteria to describe the Canon', on the ground that he is expressly dealing with the different parts of the Mass, and he says that Celestine's 'oblatis sacrificiis' cannot be pressed to mean 'after the consecration' [J.T.S. xxi (Apr. 1920), 228.]. But mysteria adequately describes that part of the Mass which we call 'the Mass of the Faithful'.
A great deal of space has been given to this question because on the interpretation of Innocent's words depends the view we are to hold as to the time when the sections IV to VII became part of the Canon. On the usual view V and something at least corresponding to IV must have been there in the third century; if it is as I suggest, then the commemoration of the living was before the Canon until, at the earliest, the middle of the fifth century.
About the year 530 a compilation was made of the records of the doings of the Popes, chiefly their works of building, of collecting and burying the bodies of the martyrs, and notices of their own places of burial. From time to time up to the ninth century continuations of this work were added; then the work, which had become more biographical, was abandoned for memoirs of a more literary style. There are many manuscripts of this work, which Mommsen and Duchesne have collected and edited in modern times.
Liber Pontificalis is of great importance for the history of the Church of Rome, but from its method of compilation its notices are of unequal value. Those of the earliest times cannot be relied on, but from the end of the fourth century they must be taken into consideration, and from the sixth century they are contemporary. There are a number of valuable statements which throw light on the development of the liturgy. It is only necessary here to mention those which lie between the papacies of Leo the Great and Gregory II. They are as follows:
1. LEO(440-60). 'He ordered that within the actio of the sacrifice the words "sanctum sacrificium &c." should be added.' These are the last words of the Supra quae (XI), and come immediately after the final words quoted in De Sacramentis. Supplices te rogamus, which in De Sacr. preceded this portion, now follows. We have no indication whether this was so in Leo's time.
2. HILARY(461-8). 'He established sacred vessels (ministeria) in the city of Rome which were to pass round the established stations.'
If this is correct, and there is no reason to doubt it, the attribution of the establishment of the Stational Churches, at which the whole Church of Rome met on stated days for Mass with the Pope, to St. Gregory, as is customary, following John the Deacon, [Vita S. Greg. ii. 18.] puts them too late.
3. GELASIUS(492-6). 'He made prayers and prefaces of the sacraments in a restrained style.' This is the first statement of the use of variable parts of the Mass, but they must have gone back beyond this to Leo, and possibly to Damasus (366-84).
4. SYMMACHUS(498-514). 'He ordered that every Sunday and Feast of theMartyrs the hymn "Gloria in excelsis" should be said.'
5. GREGORYI (590-604). 'He added to the text of the Canon the words "diesque nostros in tua pace disponas, S-c." This is also recorded by Bede (d. 735) [Historia Ecclesiastics ii. 1: 'tria verba maximae perfectionis plena superadjecit; Diesque, &c.']. It is the first mention of Hanc igitur (VII) and shows that its framework had been for some time fixed.
6. BONIFACEIV (608-15). 'He acquired from Phocas the temple which is called Pantheon, which he made into the Church of the blessed ever-Virgin Mary and all the Martyrs.'
7. SERGIUS(687-701).
(a) He ordered that the Cross 'should be kissed and adored on the day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross'.
(b) 'That at the time of the fraction of our Lord's body "Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis" should be said by the clergy and people.'
(c) 'On the days of the Annunciation of our Lord, of the Dormitio and Nativity of the holy Mother of God, ever-Virgin Mary, and
that of the holy Simeon, which the Greeks call "Ypapanti", the people should go in procession from the Church of
St. Hadrian to Santa Maria Maggiore.'
8. GREGORYII (715-31). 'He instituted that on the Thursdays in Lent Masses should be celebrated in Church, which had not been done before.'
It is interesting to notice that the chants of these new Masses of Gregory II were none of them new; it would appear that the arrangement of St. Gregory was looked upon as sacrosanct.
There are also in Liber Pontificalis a number of statements about the dedication of Churches to recently canonized Saints, which might help to fix the date of their being furnished with proper Masses, but they do not concern us here.
Two other notices of the changes taking place during this period should be mentioned.
POPE VIGILIUS(537-55), in a letter to Justinian, quotes the words from Te igitur (IV) 'pro ecclesia quam adunare, regere, custodire digneris'.1
ST. GREGORY (590-604):
But we say the Lord's Prayer immediately after the Canon (precem),
because it was the custom of the Apostles to consecrate the Host with the prayer of oblation only.
(ad ipsam solummodo orationem oblationis hostiam consecrarent; this may also mean 'consecrate the host of the oblation by that prayer alone')
And it seemed to me very improper that we should say over the oblation
a prayer which some man of learning (scholasticus) had composed,
and that we should not say over his body and blood
that which has been handed down as our redeemer's own composition.
[Ep. ix. 26.]
This is a very difficult passage.
Four interpretations have been put forward.
It is difficult to decide between (1) and (4), and I think the difficulties of (3) are overwhelming, (1) certainly gives by far the best sense, and after all we do not know that Gregory may not have had some good reason to suppose that the Lord's Prayer was the primitive Consecration, though if so he was mistaken. The difficulty of scholasticus does not seem to be serious; even the Apostles were only ordinary persons compared with our Lord. (4) does not read so easily, and uses oratio in two senses, but overcomes the historical difficulty. The chief stumbling-block may be reduced by connecting 'because' closely with 'immediately after' (mox post). 'We put it next to the prex because we must retain the custom of the Apostles, who consecrated by the prex, but it must have the next place, for it would be wrong to use a prayer made by his followers and not to use his own.'
On either of these two interpretations Gregory says that he introduced the Lord's Prayer into the Canon.
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