Folia Theologica 17. (2006)
Uwe Michael Lang: Early Christian Latin as a Liturgical Language
EARLY CHRISTIAN LATIN AS A LITURGICAL LANGUAGE 149 the core of the Roman Rite until the Missal of 1962.56 There are relatively few clausulae in the Roman Canon; Geoffrey Willis identified 22 rhythmical endings in it. This does not appear to be much in such a long prayer; nonetheless, forming of clausulae was one of the characteristics of the development of the Canon from the time of Ambrose to the time of Gregory. In central parts of the Canon, there are seven clausulae, and only one in the corresponding text cited by Ambrose. These indications suggest that the Canon is older than the collects and that it was revised not too long after it is attested for the first time in Ambrose around the year 390. On your handout there is a list of the rhythmical endings in the Canon according to Willis.57 There are examples of the 'even' cursus planus, with the accent on the second and the fifth syllables from the end: 'őrbe terrárum', 'placátus accipias', 'pácé disponas'. There are examples of the 'slow' cursus tardus, with the accent on the third and the sixth syllables from the end: 'damnatione nos éripï, 'salútis perpetuae'. There are examples of the 'fast' cursus velox, with the accent is on the second and seventh syllables from the end: 'gloriosae ascensionis', 'grátia repleámur'. In the prayer Supplices te rogamus, I have adde the clausula 'sánguinem sumpserimus', as suggested by Dr Zoltán Rihmer, who has done extensive research on rhetoric in late antiquity. He argues that according to late ancient grammarians the stress would have been on the second syllable from the end, not on the third, according to the Renaissance humanists that formed our 56 M. G. HAESSLY, Rhetoric in the Sunday Collects of the Roman Missal: with Introduction, Text, Commentary and Translation, Cleveland: Ursuline College for Women, 1938, pp. 7-9. 57 WILLIS, A History of Early Roman Liturgy, pp. 33-34. My discussion of rhythmic clausulae is somewhat simplified, because I do not take into account the quantity of syllables, on which classical metre and rhetoric are based. For the purposes of this paper, I assume that the ictus of a line coincides with the stressed accent of a word. By the end of the fourth century, the quantitative distinction was no longer use in spoken language; the accentuated syllable, which used to indicate a raising of pitch in the voice, became tonal, that is, it became a forceful stress of the accentuated syllable, as in modern languages. Thus, a new sort of rhythmical versification based on the number of syllables and the placing of accents began to appear.
