CANON
259
CANON
in our preface or in any of the other rites. Thalhofer
(Kath. Liturgik, II, 199) tries to explain the "igitur"
by a very forced connexion of ideas with the Sanctus.
Gihr (Das heilige Messopfer, 550) hardly considers
the difficulty, and is content with a vague allusion to
the close connexion between Preface and Canon.
Other difficulties are the reduplications between the
ideas of the "Hanc igitur" and the "Nobis quoque
peccatoribus". Various allusions to older forms of
the Canon increase the number of these difficulties.
Dr. Drews has suggested as the solution the following
theory. He thinks that the Canon, while consisting
of much the same prayers, was originally arranged in
a different order, namely, in the same way as the
Syrian Anaphora which it so closely resembles, and
that in the fifth century, shortly before it became
stereotyped in the time of St. Gregory the Great, its
order was partly reversed, so as to make it correspond
more to the Alexandrine Rite (Zur Entstehungs-
geschichte des Kanons in der romischen Messe). The
original order suggested by him is this: —
(1) "Quam oblationem . . . ."; (2) "Qui pridie quam pateretur ...."; (3) "Unde et memores" (Anamnesis); (4) "Supplices te rogamus" (Epikle- sis); (5) "Te igitur"; (6) " Commemoratio Vivo- rum"; (7) "Communicantes"; (8) "Commemoratio Defunctorum", the last three forming the Interces- sion.
The reasons for this suggestion are, first that in this way the logical connexion is much clearer, as well as the resemblance to the Syrian Anaphora. As in Syria, the great prayer of Intercession, with the diptychs for living and dead and the memory of the saints, would all come together after the Consecra- tion. Moreover, the igitur would then refer natu- rally to the ideas of the "Supplices te rogamus" just before it. The "Quam oblationem" would form the short link between the Sanctus and the words of In- stitution, as in both Eastern rites, and would fill the place occupied by an exactly similar prayer in Ser- apion's Prayer Book (13). Moreover, the Greek translation of the Roman Canon called the "Liturgy of St.' Peter", edited by William de Linden. Bishop of Ghent, in 1589 from a Rossano MS. (anil published by Swainson in "The Greek Liturgies", Cambridge, 1884, 191-203) contains some variations that point in this direction. For instance, it gives a version of our "Supplices te rogamus", and then goes on: " Aloud. First remember, O Lord, the Archbishop. He then commemorates the living. And to us sin- ners", etc. This puts the Intercession after the "Supplices" prayer, and exactly corresponds to the order suggested above. Lastly, in 1557 Matthias Darius published an "Ordo Missa?" (printed in Mar- true. "De antiquis eccl. ritibus", 1763, I, 176 sqq.) in which there are still traces of the old order of the prayers. It begins with the "Unde et memores" and the "Epiklesis; then come the "Te igitur", prayer for t lie pope, "Memento Domine famulorum famu- larumque tuarum", and eventually "Nobis quoque peccatoribus", in short, the whole Intercession after i In- ( ionsecration. But this reconstruction would not leave the text entirely unchanged. The prayer " Hanc igitur" has some difficulties. The Greek ver- sion (Swainson, 197) adds a rubric before it: "Here he names the dead". What can the "Hanc igitur" have to do with the dead? Yet the Antiochene Lit- urgy, in which several parallel passages to our Canon have already been noticed, has a parallel to the sec- ond half of this prayer too, and that parallel occurs in its coiniiieuioration of the dead. There, following a prayer that the dead may rest "in the land of the living, in thy kingdom ... in the bosom of Abra- ham, Isaac and Jacob", etc., is found this continua- tion: " And keep for us in peace, < » Lord, a Christian, well-pleasing and sinless end to our lives, gathering us under the feet of thy Elect , when Thou wiliest and
as Thou wiliest, only without shame and offence;
through thy only begotten Son our Lord and God and
Saviour, Jesus Christ." (Brightman, 57.) We no-
tice here the reference to the elect (in electorum tu-
orum grege), the prayer that we may be kept "in
peace" [in tua pace disponas], the allusion to the
"end of our lives" (diesque nostras) and the unusual
" Per Christum Dominum nostrum " , making a break
in the middle of the Eucharistic prayer. The Syrian
form with its plain reference to death ("the end of
our lives") seems more clearly to be a continuation
of a prayer for the faithful departed. But in the
Roman form too is found such a reference in the
words about hell (ab sterna damnatione) and heaven
(in electorum tuorum grege). Drews then proposes
to divide the "Hanc igitur" into two separate parts.
The second half, beginning at the words " diesque nos-
tros", would have originally been the end of the
Commemoration of the Dead and would form a re-
duplication of the "Nobis quoque peccatoribus",
where the same idea occurs ("partem aliquam et so-
cietatem donare digneris cum tuis Sanctis Apostolis
et Martyribus" being an echo of "in electorum tu-
orum iubeas grege numerari"). This second half,
then, would belong to the Intercession after the Con-
secration, and would originally fall together with the
" Nobis quoque ". In any case, even in the present ar-
rangement of the Canon the "Nobis quoque" follow-
ing the "Commemoratio pro defunctis" shows that at
Rome as in other liturgies the idea of adding a prayer
for ourselves, that we too may find a peaceful and
blessed death followed by a share in the company of
the saints, after our prayer for the faithful departed
was accepted as natural.
The first half of the "Hanc igitur" must now be accounted for down to "placatus accipias". This first half is a reduplication of the prayer "Quam ob- lationem". Both contain exactly the same idea — that God may graciously accept our offering. "Hanc oblationem" and "Quam oblationem" differ only in the relative construction of the second form. We know that the relative construction is not the original one. In the "De Sacramentis", to which reference has several times been made, the "Quam oblationem" occurs as an absolute sentence: "Fac nobis hanc ob- lationem adscriptam, rationabilem accept abilemque, quod est figura corporis et sanguinis Domini nostri Iesu Christ i" (IV, v). We also know that the "Ig- itur" in "Hanc igitur" is not original. The parallel passages in Serapion and St. Mark's Liturgy have simply ravr-qv t7jk dixrlav (Drews, 16). Moreover, the place and object of this prayer have varied very much. It has been applied to all sorts of purposes, and it is significant that it occurs specially often in connexion with the dead (Ebner, Miss. Rom., 412). This would be a natural result, if we suppose it to be a compilation of two separate parts, both of which have lost their natural place in the Canon. Drews i !n ii proposes to supply the first words of the " Quam oblationem" that we have put in the first place of his reconstructed Canon (see above), by the first half of the "Hanc igitur". so that (leaving out the igitur) the Canon would once have begun: "Hanc obla- tionem scrvil utis nostrae, sedet cunctx familiae tuae, qu;rsumus Domine, ut placatus accipias ut in omnibus benedictam, adscriptam, ratam, rationabilemque facere digneris, ut nobis corpus et sanguis fiat dilec- tissinii filii tui Domini nostri [esu Christ i" (Drews, 30), and so on, according to the order suggested above. One word, vt, has been added to this compila- tion, to connect our "Hanc igitur" with the continu- ation of "Quam oblationem". This word is vouched for by the Greek version, which has tua here (Swain- son, 1 '. > 7 i . Drews further notes that such a change in the arrangement of the Canon is not inconceivable Popes have modified its order on other occasions. Joannes Diaconus, the biographer of St. Gregory I,
