Gallican Rite
The Gallican Rite is a historical form of Christian liturgy and other ritual practices in Western Christianity. It is not a single liturgical rite but rather several Latin liturgical rites that developed within the Latin Church, which comprised the majority use of most of Western Christianity for the greater part of the 1st millennium AD. The rites first developed in the early centuries as the Syriac-Greek rites of Jerusalem and Antioch and were first translated into Latin in various parts of the Western Roman Empire Praetorian prefecture of Gaul. By the 5th century, it was well established in the Roman civil diocese of Gaul, which had a few early centers of Christianity in the south. Ireland is also known to have had a form of this Gallican Liturgy mixed with Celtic customs.
History and origin
The Gallican Rite was used from before the 5th century, and likely prior to the Diocletian reform in AD 293 Roman Gaul, until the middle or end of the 8th century. There is no information before the 5th century and very little then; and throughout the whole period there was, to judge by existing documents and descriptions, so much diversity that, though the general outlines of the rite were of the same pattern, the name must not be taken to imply more than a very moderate amount of homogeneity. The Rite of Iberia was used from the 5th century in Roman provinces within the Roman civil diocese of Hispania to the end of the 11th century, and lingered as an archaeological survival in chapels at Toledo and Salamanca. It was so nearly allied to the Gallican Rite that the term Hispano-Gallican is often applied to the two. But the Iberian Mozarabic Rite has, like the allied Celtic Rite, enough of an independent history to require separate treatment, so that though it will be necessary to allude to both by way of illustration, this article will be devoted primarily to the rite once used in what is now France. Of the origin of the Gallican Rite there are three principal theories, between two of which the controversy is not yet settled. These theories may be termed: the Ephesine, the Ambrosian, and the Roman.Ephesine theory
The Ephesine theory, first put forward by William Palmer in Origines Liturgicae, was once very popular among Anglican scholars. According to it the Gallican Rite went back to one brought to Lyon from Ephesus by St. Pothinus and Irenaeus, who had received it through Polycarp from John of Patmos. The idea originated partly in a statement in the 8th-century tract in a manuscript, which refers the Service of the Gauls to such an origin, and partly in a statement of Colmán of Lindisfarne at the Synod of Whitby respecting the Johannine origin of the Quartodeciman Easter. This theory "may be dismissed as practically disproved," according to Henry Jenner, in Catholic Encyclopedia.Ambrosian theory
The second theory is that which Louis Duchesne puts forward in place of the Ephesine. He holds that Milan, not Lugdunum, was the principal centre of Gallican development. He lays great stress on the incontestable importance of Mediolanum as the capital of the Western Roman Empire from 286 to 402 and of the Church of Milan in the late 4th century, and conjectures that a liturgy of Oriental origin, introduced perhaps by Auxentius the Arian bishop of Milan from 355 to 374, spread from the capital city, Mediolanum, to the Roman provinces in Gaul, Hispania, and Britannia. Duchesne points out that "the Gallican Liturgy in the features which distinguish it from the Roman, betrays all the characteristics of the Eastern Orthodox liturgies," and that "some of its formularies are to be found word for word in the Greek Orthodox texts which were in use in the Churches of the Syro-Byzantine Rite either in the fourth century or somewhat later," and infers from this that, "the Gallican Liturgy is an Oriental liturgy, introduced into the West towards the middle of the fourth century." Duchesne does not, however, note that in certain other important peculiarities the Gallican Liturgy agrees with the Roman where the latter differs from the Oriental. Controverting the third or Roman theory of origin, he stresses that Pope Innocent I in a letter to Decentius, bishop of Gubbio, spoke of usages which Duchesne recognizes as Gallican as "foreign importations" and did not recognize in them the ancient usage of his own Church, and he thinks it hard to explain why the African Church should have accepted the Roman reforms, while Ambrose himself a Roman, refused them. He assumes that the Ambrosian Rite is not really Roman, but Gallican, much Romanized at a later period, and that the Gubbio variations of which Innocent I complained were borrowed from Milan.Roman theory
The third theory is perhaps rather complicated to state without danger of misrepresentation, and has not been so definitely stated as the other two by any one writer. It is held in part by Milanese liturgists and by many others whose opinion is of weight. In order to state it clearly it will be necessary to point out first certain details in which all the Latin liturgical rites agree with one another in differing from the Eastern, and in this we speak only of the Mass, which is of far more importance than either the canonical hours or the occasional services in determining origins.Invariability of the Priest's part
The Eastern Eucharists of whatever rite are marked by the invariability of the priest's part. There are, it is true, alternative anaphoras which are used either ad libitum, as in the Syro-Jacobite Rite, or on certain days, as in Byzantine and East Syrian, but they are complete in themselves and do not contain passages appropriate to the day. The lections of course vary with the day in all rites, and varying antiphons, troparia, etc., are sung by the choir; but the priest's part remains fixed.In the Western rites – whether Hispano-Gallican, Ambrosian, or Roman – a very large proportion of the priest's part varies according to the day, and these variations are so numerous in the Gallican Rite that the fixed part, even of the Prayer of the Consecration, is strangely little. Certain varying prayers of the Hispano-Gallican Rite have a tendency to fall into couples, a Bidding Prayer, or invitation to pray, sometimes of considerable length and often partaking of the nature of a homily, addressed to the congregation, and a collect embodying the suggestions of the Bidding Prayer, addressed to God. These Bidding Prayers have survived in the Roman Rite in the Good Friday intercessory prayers, and they occur in a form borrowed later from the Gallican in the ordination services, but in general the invitation to prayer is reduced to its lowest terms in the word Oremus.
The Institution
Another Western peculiarity is in the form of the Words of Institution. The principal Eastern liturgies follow Paul the Apostle's words in the First Epistle to the Corinthians and date the Institution by the betrayal, and of the less important anaphoras, most either use the same expression or paraphrase it. The Western liturgies date from the Passion, Qui pridie quam pateretur, for which, though of course the fact is found there, there is no verbal Scriptural warrant. The Mozarabic of today uses the Pauline words, and no Gallican Recital of the Institution remains in full; but in both the prayer that follows is called post-Pridie and the catchwords "Qui pridie" come at the end of the post-Sanctus in the Gallican Masses, so that it is clear that this form existed in both.These variations from the Eastern usages are of an early date, and it is inferred from them, and from other considerations more historical than liturgical, that a liturgy with these peculiarities was the common property of Gaul, Hispania, and Italy. Whether, as is most likely, it originated in Rome and spread thence to the countries under direct Roman influence, or whether it originated elsewhere and was adopted by Rome, there is no means of knowing. The adoption must have happened when liturgies were in rather a fluid state. The Gallicans may have carried to an extreme the changes begun at Rome, and may have retained some archaic features which had been later dropped by Rome. During the 4th century – it has been conjectured that it was in the papacy of Pope Damasus I – liturgical reforms were made at Rome: the position of the Great Intercession and of the Pax were altered, the latter perhaps because the form of the dismissal of the catechumens was disused, and the distinction between the first part, the Mass of the Catechumens, and second part, the Mass of the Faithful, was no longer needed, and therefore the want was felt of a position with some meaning to it for the sign of Christian unity. The long and diffuse prayers were made into the short and crisp collects of the Roman type. It was then that the variable post-Sanctus and post-Pridie were altered into a fixed Canon of a type similar to the Roman Canon of today, though perhaps this Canon began with the clause which now reads "Quam oblationem", but according to the pseudo-Ambrosian tract De Sacramentis once read "Fac nobis hanc oblationem". This may have been introduced by a short, variable post-Sanctus. This reform, possibly through the influence of Ambrose, was adopted at Milan, but not in Gaul and Hispania. At a still later period, during the 5th and 6th centuries, changes were again made at Rome, principally attributed to Pope Leo I, Pope Gelasius I, and Pope Gregory I; these three popes are the eponyms of three varying sacramentaries. These later reforms were not adopted at Milan which retained the books of the first reform, which are now known as Ambrosian.