medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I was in a hurry before my ISP threw me off the net. By "oral hand missal" I meant that presumably those who were illiterate in Latin but wanted to know what was being said in the Mass could have asked those who understood Latin. Sigrid Undset has several characters in her _Kristen Lavransdatter_ series do this--they know exactly what is going on in the Mass and even in some of the daily Office in this way, often by means of a lay person who had spent time in a monastery as a child or youth. How accurate her portrayal is and how widespread this might have been, I don't know.
John Mirk (Mirc) wrote a paraphrase cum explanation of the Mass for lay people, in English, in the 14thc, if memory serves me correctly. Others will know this better than I. Presumably similar written vernacular missals for lay usage existed in other languages. Again, how widespread they were and who used them and how is a complex question. Perhaps other listmembers would wish to add to what I've written here. My point was simply that it surely depended to a great degree on how much one wanted to know what was being said--with some effort, one could be informed. That's about the same situation as obtained in early modern and modern Catholicism, I would suggest. Incidentally, I would bet that if you did a careful study of those attending vernacular Masses today to see just how many are paying attention and know the texts and can summarize them, the results would be disappointingly low, perhaps not much better than for pre-Vatican II or medieval Mass goers. The texts of the ordinary probably are familiar to most who attend regularly today, because they are repeated from week to week (though even there, with multiple options for the Eucharistic prayer, my guess is that fewercontemporary parishioners could give an account of what was said even in the ordinary than would have been the case when the Mass was in Latin and the minority who did pay attention followed an invariable Eucharistic Canon and ordinary). I would be very surprised if more than a handful in a parish today have any idea what the propers were for the day.
That is all speculation, but I think it actually could help us think differently than we are accustomed to thinking about lay participation in liturgy during the Middle Ages. If someone were actually to do some studies (perhaps they have already been done), we'd have an even better foil against which to ask questions about medieval practice.
Dennis Martin
>>> [log in to unmask] 02/09/02 09:07 AM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Dennis Martin,
This was a fascinating post. Could you clarify "oral
'hand missal'" and tell me who was John Mirk?
Thanks,
MG
How much of a parallel to this was
> there in the Middle Ages, for those who cared, in
> the form of oral "hand missals" and then, of course,
> later John Mirk's missal and its equivalents? We'll
> never be able to say for sure, but the above are
> some of the complexities that would have to be taken
> into consideration.
>
> Dennis Martin
>
>
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