Folia Theologica 17. (2006)

Uwe Michael Lang: Early Christian Latin as a Liturgical Language

EARLY CHRISTIAN LATIN AS A LITURGICAL LANGUAGE 139

The most important source for the history of the Roman Canon is Ambrose of Milan. In his De sacramentis, a series of catecheses for the newly baptised that was held around 390, he quotes extensively from the Eucharistic prayer used at that time in Milan. The passages quoted are earlier forms of the prayers Quam oblationem, Qui pridie, Unde et memores, Supra quae, and Supplices te rogamus. Elsewhere in De sacramentis, Ambrose emphasises that he desires to follow the use of the Roman Church in everything; for this reason, we can safely assume that the same Eucharistic prayer he quotes was also used in Rome.33 There also is evidence for the Roman Canon in the

the use of Latin, but not without having deeply considered the problems attached to the use of a liturgical language nor without having put in a plea for the rights of a foreign sacral language’.

33 Ambrose, De sacramentis 111,1,5: ecclesia Romana ... cuius typum in omnibus sequimur et formam ... In omnibus cupio sequi ecclesiam Romanam. When he explains the baptismal ceremonies in Milan, he pays particular attention to the main point where he differs from Roman usage, that is, in the washing of the feet of the candidates. Liturgical scholars have tended to emphasise the disparate nature of the Roman Canon and have used the methods of higher criticism to explain the origin and development of its prayers. With a view to such hypothetical reconstructions (including his own), Anton Baumstark published a remarkable retraction: ‘So scheint mir denn heute, wenn man nur an dem Natürlichsten festhält, den römischen Messkanon als einen nächsten Verwandten ägyptischer Texte des eucharistischen Hochgebets und insbesondere seiner stadtalexandrinischen Form zu begreifen, tatsächlich keine Veranlassung gegeben, ihn weiterhin noch zum geduldigen Objekt irgendwelchen tiefer in sein Gefüge eingreifender kritischer Künste zu machen. ... Ein ehrwürdiges Erbstück so hohen Altertums, nicht das Ergebnis einer zum Abschluss erst durch Gregor den Grossen gebrachten Entwicklung gewaltsamer Textveränderungen, ist im wesentlichen der Kanon noch des heutigen römischen Meßbuchs, ein Erbstück, das, abgesehen von der Einfügung des Memento der Verstorbenen und der Heiligenliste des Nobis quoque bezw. dem allmählichen Ausbau derjenigen des Communicantes nur die Erweiterungen um wenige Worte erfuhr, über die der Liber Pontificalis ausdrücklich und gewissenhaft Buch geführt hat’; A. BAUMSTARK, ‘Das “Problem“ des römischen Messkanons, eine Retractatio auf geistesgeschichtlichem Hintergrund’, in Ephemerides liturgicae 53 (1939), pp. 204-243, at pp. 242-243. Baumstark even considers it possible that the Latin(!) text of the Canon was introduced in Rome as early as in the pontificate of Cornelius, that is, in the middle of the third century. However, it would seem very unlikely that a Latin Eucharistic prayer was introduced that early in the Roman liturgy, as observed by C. MOHRMANN, ‘Quelques observations sur l’évolution stylistique du Canon de la Messe romain’, Tome III, pp. 227-244 (Originally published in: Vigiliae Christianae 11 (1957), pp. 11-36), pp. 230-231. Mohrmann agrees with Baumstark and Callewaert that the Canon, in its definitive form, is distinctively Roman.