the word Mass, which would connect it with the special formula
of dismissal still preserved in the Roman liturgy—Ite, missa est—once
generally accepted, is now disputed. It is pointed out that
the word missa long continued to be applied to any church
service, and more particularly to the lections (see Du Cange for
numerous examples), and it is held that such services received
their name of missal from the solemn form of dismissal with which
it was customary to conclude them; thus, in the 4th century
Pilgrimage of Etheria (Silvia) the word missa is used indiscriminately
of the Eucharist, other services, and the ceremony
of dismissal. F. Kattenbusch (Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklop.
s. “Messe”) ingeniously, but with little evidence, suggests that
the word may have had a double origin and meaning: (1) in
the sense of dimissio, “dismissal”; (2) in that of commissio,
“commission,” “official duty,” i.e. the exact Latin equivalent of
the Greek λειτουργία (see Liturgy), and hence the conflicting
use of the term. It is, however, far more probable that it was a
general term that gradually became crystallized as applying to
that service in which the dismissal represented a more solemn
function. In the narrower sense of “Mass” it is first found in
St Ambrose (Ep. 20, 4, ed. Ballerini): “Missam facere coepi.
Dum offero. . . ” which evidently identifies the missa with the
sacrifice. It continued, however, to be used loosely, though its tendency
to become proper only to the principal Christian service
is clear from a passage in the 12th homily of Caesarius, bishop
of Arles (d. 542): “If you will diligently attend, you will recognize
that missae are not celebrated when the divine readings
are recited in the church, but when gifts are offered and the Body
and Blood of the Lord are consecrated.” The complete service
(missa ad integrum), the bishop goes on to say, cannot be had at
home by reading and prayer, but only in the house of God,
where, besides the Eucharist, “the divine word is preached and
the blessing is given to the people.”
Whatever its origin, the word Mass had by the time of the Reformation been long applied only to the Eucharist; and, though in itself a perfectly colourless term, and used as such during the earlier stages of the 16th century controversies concerning the Eucharist, it soon became identified with that sacrificial aspect of the sacrament of the altar which it was the chief object of the Reformers to overthrow. In England, so late as the first Prayer-book of Edward VI., it remained one of the official designations of the Eucharist, which is there described as “The Supper of the Lorde and holy Communion, commonly called the Masse.” This, however, like the service itself, represented a compromise which the more extreme reformers would not tolerate, and in the second Prayer-book, together with such language in the canon as might imply the doctrine of transubstantiation and of the sacrifice, the word Mass also disappears. That this abolition of the word Mass, as implying the offering of Christ’s Body and Blood by the priest for the living and the dead was deliberate is clear from the language of those who were chiefly responsible for the change. Bishops Ridley and Latimer, the two most conspicuous champions of “the new religion,” denounced “the Mass” with unmeasured violence; Latimer said of “Mistress Missa” that “the devil hath brought her in again”; Ridley said: “I do not take the Mass as it is at this day for the communion of the Church, but for a popish device,” &c. (Works, ed. Parker Soc., pp. 121, 120), and again: “In the stead of the Lord’s holy table they give the people, with much solemn disguising, a thing which they call their mass; but in deed and in truth it is a very masking and mockery of the true Supper of the Lord, or rather I may call it a crafty juggling, whereby these false thieves and jugglers have bewitched the minds of the simple people . . . unto pernicious idolatory” (ib. p. 409). This language is reflected in the 31st of the Articles of Religion of the Church of England: “Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, in which it was commonly said that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain and guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits.” Clearly the word Mass had ceased to be a colourless term generally applicable to the eucharistic service; it was, in fact, not only proscribed officially, but in the common language of English people it passed entirely out of use except in the sense in which it is defined in Johnson’s Dictionary, i.e. that of the “Service of the Romish Church at the celebration of the Eucharist.” In connexion with the Catholic reaction in the Church of England, which had its origin in the “Oxford Movement” of the 19th century, efforts have been made by some of the clergy to reintroduce the term “Mass” for the Holy Communion in the English Church.
See Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. “Missa”; F. Kattenbusch in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (ed. 1903), s.v. “Messe, dogmengeschichtlich”; for the facts as to the use of the word “Mass” at the time of the Reformation see the article by J. H. Round in the Nineteenth Century for May 1897. (W. A. P.)
Mass, in Music: 1. Polyphonic Masses.—The composition of musical settings of the Mass plays a part in the history of music which is of special importance up to and including the 16th century. As an art-form the musical Mass is governed to a peculiar degree by the structure of its text. It so happens that the supremely important parts of the Mass are those which have the smallest number of words, namely the Kyrie, important as being the opening prayer; the Sanctus and Benedictus, embodying the central acts and ideas of the service; and the Agnus Dei, the prayer with which it concludes. The 16th-century methods were specially fitted for highly developed music when words were few and embodied ideas of such important emotional significance or finality that they could be constantly repeated without losing force. Now the texts of the Gloria and Credo were more voluminous than any others which 16th-century composers attempted to handle in a continuous scheme. The practical limits of the church service made it impossible to break them up by setting each clause to a separate movement, a method by which 16th-century music composers contrived to set psalms and other long texts to compositions lasting an hour or longer. Accordingly, Palestrina and his great contemporaries and predecessors treated the Gloria and Credo in a style midway in polyphonic organization and rhythmic breadth between that of the elaborate motet (adopted in the Sanctus) and the homophonic reciting style of the Litany. The various ways in which this special style could be modified by the scale of the work, and contrasted with the broader and more elaborate parts, gave the Mass (even in its merely technical aspects) a range which made it to the 16th-century composer what the symphony is to the great instrumental classics. Moreover, as being inseparably associated with the highest act of worship, it inspired composers in direct proportion to their piety and depth of mind. Of course there were many false methods of attacking the art-problem, and many other relationships, true and false, between the complexity of the settings of the various parts of the Mass and of motets. The story of the action of the council of Trent on the subject of corruption of church music is told elsewhere (see Music and Palestrina); and it has been recently paralleled by a decree of Pope Pius X., which has restored the 16th-century polyphonic Mass to a permanent place in the Roman Catholic Church music.
2. Instrumental Masses in the Neapolitan Form.—The next definite stage in the musical history of the Mass was attained by the Neapolitan composers who were first to reach musical coherence after the monodic revolution at the beginning of the 17th century. The fruit of their efforts came to maturity in the Masses of Mozart and Haydn. By this time the resources of music were such that the long and varied text of the Gloria and Credo inevitably either overbalanced the scheme or met with an obviously perfunctory treatment. It is almost impossible, without asceticism of a radically inartistic kind, to treat with the resources of instrumental music and free harmony such passages as that from the Crucifixus to the Resurrexit, without an emotional contrast which inevitably throws any natural treatment of the Sanctus into the background, and makes the Agnus Dei an inadequate conclusion to the musical scheme. So unfavourable were the conditions of 18th-century music for the formation of a good ecclesiastical style that only a very small proportion of Mozart’s and Haydn’s Mass music may be said to represent their ideas of religious music at all. The best features of their Masses are those that combine faithfulness to the Neapolitan forms with a contrapuntal richness such as no Neapolitan
