The Lay Folks Mass Book Part 7
The Lay Folks Mass Book Part 7
The Offertory
Welcome to new subscribers! If this is your first time reading the Lay Folks Mass Book, notes are at the end of this post.
After the creed, we have the offertory.
To make this easier to follow, I have chopped it up into sections, prefaced with the appropriate parts of the Mass so you can recognise where we are.
At this point the priest offers the bread and wine and says some prayers. For those only familiar with the new Mass, the offertory prayers in the new Mass are completely different to the prayers in the old Mass but the sequence of events is the same. Once the chalice has been offered, the actions referred to in the text are:
The priest then bows and says the prayer “In spiritu humilitatis”, which is almost the same in the new Mass
in the old Mass, the priest then says this prayer to the Holy Spirit: “Come, O almighty and eternal God, the Sanctifier, and bless this Sacrifice prepared for the glory of thy holy name” (this is not in the new Mass)
After that, fast at hande
comes the time of offrande; [offering]
offer or leave, whether thou lyst, [wish]
how thou should pray, I would thou wyst. [know]
And while thou stand-es, I rede thou say,
as is written, God to pay.
Jesu that was in Bethlem born,
and three kings come thee beforn, [before]
they offered gold, incense and myrrh,
and thou forsook [refused] none of them there,
but wissed [showed] them well all three
home again to their country.
Right so our offerings that we offer,
and our praises that we proffer,
thou take, Lord, to thy loving,
and be our help in all thing,
that all perils be fore-done,
our good desire thou grant us sone; [some]
of all our misdeeds thou us amend,
in all our need us succour send.
In terms of the offertory in parishes at the time this text was written, it was not normal for bread and wine to be brought up but they would already be provided by the altar. Instead, the people gave money offerings (though not compulsory as indicated in the text) and the verse suggests they would bring them forward at this point.
I have never connected the offerings of the three kings with the offertory of the Mass before, this is quite surprising to me. But on thinking about it, their offerings of precious things to the King are very much what we do today; we give our money and our hearts to God at the offertory. God does not refuse whatever we bring with a devout heart, and so, at the same time as making our offering, we ask for his help and forgiveness.
The next step is the priest washing his hands.
Say paternoster right upstanding
all the time the priest is washing,
till after washing the priest will lout [bow]
to the altar and sithen [after that] turn about.
It’s not clear whether the “paternoster” referred to here is one Pater Noster (Our Father) prayer or is referring to multiple prayers on paternoster beads. I suppose it doesn’t matter much, but it’s important to note the difference is not always clear.
In the old mass, at this point the priest kisses the altar (bows) and then turns to the people (because he is facing the east) with the words “Orate, fratres” (Pray, brethren). In the new mass the priest is already facing towards the people and so just says “Pray, brethren”.
Then he asks with stille steven [quiet voice]
all mans prayers to God of heaven.
Take good keep unto the priest,
when he turns, knock on thy breast,
and think then for thy sin
thou art not worthy to pray for him. (i.e. the priest)
But when thou prays, God looks on thy will,
if it be good, he forgives the ill. [evil]
For-thee with hope in his mercy,
answer the priest with this in high. (i.e aloud)
The holy ghost in the light,
and send his grace into the right,
to rule thy heart and thy speaking
to God’s worship and his loving.
The text here prescribes extra things which the lay person should do when the priest turns round for the Orate Fratres. “Knock on thy breast” (as in mea culpa) is apparently an English custom which was carried on by Cranmer’s book of Common Prayer after the Reformation for a while at least.
The people are then to pray for the priest and then give the response “in high” (aloud). What response is it? In the old mass we have:
May the Lord receive the Sacrifice from thy hands, to the praise and glory of his name, to our benefit, and that of all his holy church.
In the new mass the words are almost the same. However, in neither Mass is there a mention of the Holy Spirit, which there is in this 14th century text.
In the Sarum Missal (the common rite in England at the time the text was written) we have this prayer instead of the one above:
Spiritus Sancti gratia illuminet cor tuum et labia tua, et accipiat Dominus digne hoc sacrificium laudis de manibus tuis pro peccatis et offensionibus nostris.
May the grace of the Holy Spirit illumine your heart and your lips, and may the Lord accept as worthy this sacrifice of praise from your hands for our sins and offences (my own quick translation).
It looks like the Lay Folks Mass Book is referring to the Sarum missal prayer as it mentions the Holy Spirit and “light”.
I really like this Sarum prayer; it balances the earlier prayer when the priest asks for the Holy Spirit to come down and bless the offerings. Now the congregation ask the Holy Spirit to bless the priest. In one 19th century church I have visited, they have a model of a dove, representing the Holy Spirit, hanging over the sanctuary, which seems appropriate for this point in the Mass.
One of the things the church seems to have forgotten a bit in recent years is the invocation of the Holy Spirit on a regular basis, but in the medieval period this was a normal thing, and frequently portrayed in art as well.
We haven’t finished this text yet but what strikes me so far is the number of times the congregation are instructed to pray for the priest. We really don’t do this enough these days, and reading this book has already increased the frequency of my prayers for priests, especially during Mass.
This is an excerpt from The Lay Folks Mass Book, a verse poem from the 14th/15th century, originally written in Middle English.
Each Sunday I post a short excerpt, transcribed into modern English for ease of reading, and harmonised from the 4 surviving versions which are in different dialects and with some variations in text.
Notes on the transcription: like German, the letter “e” on the end of words is often pronounced. In general, modern English has dropped all these so in transcribing it I have generally followed modern English which means that in most cases the rhyme and meter work. But occasionally, I have put letters in square brackets where required for the verse, or sometimes separated the endings with a hyphen to indicate that they should be pronounced as a separate syllable.
Most of the words have a modern English equivalent which is very similar, but where that doesn’t happen I have put the meaning in [ ].
One important word: the term for Mass in middle English is Messe, with the “e” pronounced, as in German. I have generally written it as Mess for the sake of the rhyming.
The text used is the one published by Thomas Frederick Simmons in 1879 and reprinted in 1968.
Holy Spirit fireworks