Four more brief (ish) posts inspired by Going to Church in Medieval England, published in late August by Yale University Press. It seems to be out of stock everywhere, I’m going to assume, not because it hit the NYTimes Bestseller list (it didn’t) but because its original moderate print run sold out and since almost all books are printed in China now, that old supply-chain situation has stopped the flow of a new print run.
Well, you can always get an e-book (blah) if you’re really interested.
(For new readers – I’m not opposed to e-books. I read them often, I publish them. So does my son! But for non-fiction of this sort, I need a physical copy. My powers of retention are poor enough. I need the physical signals and memories associated with a physical book to remember anything at all – and I find it much easier to flip back and forth and cross reference with a real book.)
First, the Sunday Loaf. Orme doesn’t call it this, but this helpful blog post does. I’ll come back to this in a moment.
Why highlight this?
Because Catholics these days are talking a lot about receiving Communion: who, when and why. And why not. I’ve touched on it in several blog posts.
The point I’ve tried to make is the reception of Communion, historically, has been an action reserved for the fully initiated and properly disposed. Of course, the definition of “properly disposed” does change (a bit), but in general, it’s a constant. Go here for more.
But that doesn’t mean that those who were not receiving Communion were not seen as part of the Church (unless they’d been excommunicated, of course) or were not expected to be present. Very importantly, despite the laity’s infrequent reception of Communion during this time, organic signs of unity and belonging and yes, even the nourishment provided by the Body of Christ, both in particular in general – developed.
Orme first:
As soon as Mass had finished, the priest proceeded to read the first chapter of the Gospel of John, In principio (‘In the beginning was the Word’), a text believed to have protective power. This was followed by the bringing up of a loaf of bread, also known as the ‘cake’, sometimes accompanied by a candle or a payment of a penny or so. Each household was expected to take a turn in providing the loaf, and the failure of some families to comply led to occasional complaints at visitations of churches.The priest prayed in Latin that God might bless the bread as he blessed the five loaves in the desert, so that all who tasted it might receive health of body and soul. Holy water was then sprinkled on the bread, after which it was cut and distributed. Social rank was again an issue here. Daniel of Beccles, writing in about 1200, thought that the noblest person in church should receive the bread first, and Piers Plowman features a woman who objected to her neighbour preceding her. At Holy Trinity Coventry in 1462 one of the church’s two deacons was responsible for cutting the bread ‘according to every man’s degree’. He then carried it round to the people on the north side of the nave while his colleague presumably did so on the other side. At All Saints Bristol it was given out on a bread-board ‘by the holy-water stock’, presumably the stoup by the church door and therefore as people left the building. A further custom at a church in Durham was to give a slice to the following person on the rota, as a reminder of their duty next Sunday. As with the aspersions, a text in English came to be spoken or sung to the congregation to explain the symbolism of the action. Latimer recommended it in Worcester diocese in the late 1530s, and it was current at Doncaster in the following decade:
Of Christ’s body this is a token
Which on the cross for our sins was broken,
Wherefore of his death if ye will be partakers,
Of vice and sin you must be forsakers.
The verse makes clear that the holy bread was a symbol of Christ’s body: a substitute for the communion that the congregation received only on Easter Day. Receiving the holy bread was followed by leaving the church and, according to one writer, sprinkling oneself and crossing one’s forehead at the holy-water stoup by the door. In some places the parish clerk (or boys under his supervision) took holy water out of the church itself and visited parishion ers nearby, aspersing their houses and perhaps their midday dinner.
Considering that mass in itself gave little scope for popular participation, the additions that have been outlined went some way towards reaching out to congregations. From a ceremonial point of view they received aspersions, the pax, the sight of the consecrated elements, and the holy bread. In terms of communication they gained information about the forthcoming calendar and news in the form of banns, episcopal pronouncements, and excommunications. Lastly the bidding prayers, although they gave due respect to the Church and the lay authorities, made an attempt to embrace the concerns of ordinary people: peace, the fertility of the land, and the remembrance and commending of the dead.
If you are familiar at all with Eastern Catholic or Orthodox liturgies, this practice is familiar to you as well. It is obviously ancient, and this is a good blog post drawing connections across various traditions, including France, where it was called pain benit.
Quoted in the blog post above, but actually from the old Catholic Encylopedia:
Later, when the faithful no longer furnished the altar-bread, a custom arose of bringing bread to the church for the special purpose of having it blessed and distributed among those present as token of mutual love and union, and this custom still exists in the Western Church, especially in France. This blessed bread was called panis benedictus, panis lustratus, panis lustralis, and is now known in France as pain bénit. It differs from the eugloia mentioned above, because it is not a part of the oblation from which the particle to be consecrated in the Mass is selected, but rather is common bread which receives a special benediction. In many places it is the custom for each family in turn to present the bread on Sundays and feast days, while in other places only the wealthier families furnish it. Generally the bread is presented with some solemnity at the Offertory of the parochial Mass, and the priest blesses it before the Oblation of the Host and Chalice, but different customs exist in different dioceses. The prayer ordinarily used for the blessing is the first or second: benedictio panis printed in the Roman missal and ritual. The faithful were exhorted to partake of it in the church, but frequently it was carried home. This blessed bread is a sacramental, which should excite Christians to practice especially the virtues of charity, and unity of spirit, and which brings blessings to those who partake of it with due devotion. The Priest, when blessing it, prays that those who eat it may receive health both of soul and body: “ut omnes ex eo gustantes inde corporis et animae percipant sanitatem”; “ut sit omnibus sumentibus salus mentis et corporis”.
After Mass, everyone who has something – either purchased that day or from home – brings it up to the front for a blessing (It’s like what I’ve seen at the Hispanic community’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Masses in Birmingham – everyone brings up their religious objects, no matter how big, at the end for blessing.)
What was thought-provoking to me was that while, as is normally the case, perhaps ten percent of the congregation received Communion, almost everyone had a sacramental to be blessed and take home. I need to think about it more and work it out, but the dynamic seems to be that Mass is the locus of blessing, the presence of Jesus. From the Mass, we can take the sacred back into the world, into our homes.
Those of us who are frequent Communion-receivers frame that dynamic in terms of the presence of Christ within us in Eucharist – but those who don’t receive the Eucharist frequently still find a way. A powerful way, it seems to me.
“Full and active participation” was the rallying cry of post-Conciliar liturgical reform. Would that the reformers had looked to history to understand the ways in which the laity had been, indeed, found ways to participate deeply in the liturgical action, and not waved them all away in the belief that moving in liturgical lockstep and all reciting the same words and the same time was the only way to understand “full and active participation.”
Charlotte was Both 