The Roman Rite is the
manner of celebrating the Holy Sacrifice, administering Sacraments,
reciting the Divine Office, and performing other ecclesiastical
functions (blessings, all kinds of Sacramentals, etc.) as used in the
city and Diocese of Rome.
The Roman Rite is the most
wide-spread in Christendom. That it has advantages possessed by no
other -- the most archaic antiquity, unequalled dignity, beauty, and
the practical convenience of being comparatively short in its services
-- will not be denied by any one whoknows it and the other ancient
liturgies. But it was not the consideration of these advantages that
led to its extensive use; it was the exalted position of the see that
used it. The Roman Rite was adopted throughout the West because the
local bishops, sometimes kings or emperors, felt that they could not do
better than use the rite of the chief bishop of all, at Rome. And this
imitation of Roman liturgical practice brought about in the West the
application of the principle (long admitted in the East) that rite
should follow patriarchate.
Apart from his universal
primacy, the pope had always been unquestioned Patriarch of the West.
It was then the right and normal thing that the West should use his
liturgy. The irregular and anomalous incident of liturgical history is
not that the Roman Rite has been used, practically exclusively, in the
West since about the tenth or eleventh century, but that before that
there were other rites in the pope's patriarchate. Not the
disappearance but the existence and long toleration of the Gallican and
Spanish rites is the difficulty.
Like all others, the Roman
Rite bears clear marks of its local origin. Wherever it may be used, it
is still Roman in the local sense, obviously composed for use in Rome.
Our Missal marks the Roman stations, contains the Roman saints in the
Canon, honours with special solemnity the Roman martyrs and popes. Our
feasts are constantly anniversaries of local Roman events, of the
dedication of Roman churches (All Saints, St. Michael, S. Maria ad
Nives, etc.). The Collect for Sts. Peter and Paul (29 June) supposes
that it is said at Rome (the Church which "received the beginnings of
her Faith" from these saints is that of Rome), and so on continually.
This is quite right and fitting; it agrees with all liturgical history.
No rite has ever been composed consciously for general use. In the East
there are still stronger examples of the same thing. The Orthodox all
over the world use a rite full of local allusions to the city of
Constantinople.
The Roman Rite evolved out
of the (presumed) universal, but quite fluid, rite of the first three
centuries during the (liturgically) almost unknown time from the fourth
to the sixth. In the sixth we have it fully developed in the Leonine,
later in the Gelasian, Sacramentaries. How and exactly when the
specificallyRoman qualities were formed during that time will, no
doubt, always be a matter of conjecture. At first its use was very
restrained. It was followed only in the Roman province. North Italy was
Gallican, the South, Byzantine, but Africa was always closely akin to
Rome liturgically.
From the eighth century
gradually the Roman usage began its career of conquest in the West. By
the twelfth century at latest it was used wherever Latin obtained,
having displaced all others except at Milan and in retreating parts of
Spain. That has been its position ever since. As the rite of the Latin
Church it is used exclusively in the Latin Patriarchate, with three
small exceptions at Milan, Toledo, and in the still Byzantine churches
of Southern Italy, Sicily, and Corsica.
During the Middle Ages it
developed into a vast number of derived rites, differing from the pure
form only in unimportant details and in exuberant additions. Most of
these were abolished by the decree of Pius V in 1570. Meanwhile, the
Roman Rite had itself been affected by, and had received additions
from, the Gallican and Spanish uses it displaced. The Roman Rite is now
used by every one who is subject to the pope's patriarchal jurisdiction
(with the three exceptions noted above); that is, it is used in Western
Europe, including Poland, in all countries colonized from Western
Europe: America, Australia, etc., by Western (Latin) missionaries all
over the world, including the Eastern lands where other Catholic rites
also obtain.
No one may change his rite
without a legal authorization, which is not easily obtained. So the
Western priest in Syria, Egypt, and so on uses his own Roman Rite, just
as at home. On the same principle Catholics of Eastern rites in Western
Europe, America, etc., keep their rites; so that rites now cross each
other wherever such people live together. The language of the Roman
Rite is Latin everywhere except that in some churches along the Western
Adriatic coast it is said in Slavonic and on rare occasions in Greek at
Rome (see RITES). In derived forms the Roman Rite is used in some few
dioceses (Lyons) and by several religious orders (Benedictines,
Carthusians, Carmelites, Dominicans). In these their fundamentally
Roman character is expressed by a compound name. They are the "Ritus
Romano-Lugdunensis", "Romano-monasticus", and so on.
Written by Adrian Fortescue. Transcribed by Catharine Lamb. Dedicated to the memory of my mother, Ruth F. Hansen
The Catholic Encyclopedia,
Volume XIII. Published 1912. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Nihil
Obstat, February 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, D.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John
Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
