[Catholic Caucus] The Ancient Mass in “House Churches” Was Not as Informal as Many Think

Archdiocese of Washington ^ | 03-26-19 | Mark Rothe

[Salvation]

Posted on March 26, 2019March 26, 2019 by Mark Rothe

The Ancient Mass in “House Churches” Was Not as Informal as Many Think

The Catholic Faith was illegal in the Roman Empire prior to 313 A.D., when the Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan permitting it to flourish publicly. Prior to that time, Church buildings as we know them today were rare – Mass was usually celebrated in houses.

These “houses” were usually rather sizable, with a central courtyard or large room that permitted something a little more formal than Mass around the dining room table. I remember being taught (incorrectly) that these early Masses were informal, celebrated facing the people, and had a relaxed, communal atmosphere. In fact, the people didn’t just sit around a table or on the floor in circle – not at all. They sat or stood formally, with everyone faced in one direction: east.

The drawing above shows the layout of an ancient house church (more often called a Domus Dei (House of God)), based on an excavated 3rd century house church in Dura-Europos (located in what is now Syria).Baptistry at Dura Europos

The assembly room is on the left, and a priest or bishop is depicted conducting a liturgy (facing east) at an altar against the east wall. A baptistry is on the right, and a deacon is shown guarding the entrance. The lonely-looking deacon in the back of the assembly hall is there to “preserve good order,” as you will read below.

What is remarkable about these early liturgies is how formal they were despite the less-than-ideal circumstances. The following text is from the Didiscalia, a document written in about 250 A.D. Among other things, it gives rather elaborate details about the celebration of the early Catholic Mass in these “house liturgies.” I have included an excerpt below (in bold italics); my comments are shown in red text.

Now, in your gatherings, in the holy Church, convene yourselves modestly in places of the brethren, as you will, in a manner pleasing and ordered with care.

These “house liturgies” were not informal; good order and careful attention to detail were essential.

Let the place of the priests be separated in a part of the house that faces east.

Even in these early house Masses, the sanctuary (where the clergy ministered) was distinct from where the laity gathered. People were not all just clustered around a dining room table.

In the midst of them is placed the bishop’s chair, and with him let the priests be seated. Likewise, and in another section let the lay men be seated facing east. For thus it is proper: that the priests sit with the bishop in a part of the house to the east and after them the lay men and the lay women,

Everyone faced east, laity and clergy. Notice that men and women sat in separate sections, which was the tradition in many churches until relatively recently (the last 150 years or so).

and when you stand to pray, the ecclesial leaders rise first, and after them the lay men, and again, then the women. Now, you ought to face to east to pray for, as you know, scripture has it, Give praise to God who ascends above the highest heavens to the east.

Again, note that Mass was not celebrated facing the people, as some suppose of the early Church. Everyone faced in the same direction: east. The text cites Scripture as the reason for this: God is to the east, the origin of the light.

Now, of the deacons, one always stands by the Eucharistic oblations and the others stand outside the door watching those who enter,

Remember that this was a time of persecution; the early Christians were careful to allow only baptized and bona fide members to enter the sacred mysteries. Only the baptized were permitted to enter the Sacred Liturgy. This was called the disciplina arcanis (discipline of the secret), and deacons guarded the door to maintain it.

and afterwards, when you offer let them together minister in the church.

Once the door was locked and the Mass began, it would seem that the deacons took their place in the sanctuary, with one remaining outside it to maintain “good order” among the laity.

And if there is one to be found who is not sitting in his place let the deacon who is within, rebuke him, and make him to rise and sit in his fitting place … also, in the church the young ones ought to sit separately, if there is a place, if not let them stand. Those of more advanced age should sit separately; the boys should sit separately or their fathers and mothers should take them and stand; and let the young girls sit separately, if there is really not a place, let them stand behind the women; let the young who are married and have little children stand separately, the older women and widows should sit separately.

This may seem a bit complicated, but the upshot is that seating was by sex and age. Note that those with young children were to stand in a separate area (the cry rooms of the day!).

And a deacon should see that each one who enters gets to his place, and that none of these sits in an inappropriate place. Likewise, the deacon ought to see that there are none who whisper or sleep or laugh or nod off.

The early Christians did such things? Say it isn’t so! Today, ushers preserve “good order.”

For in the Church it is necessary to have discipline, sober vigilance, and attentive ear to the Word of the Lord.

Well, that is clear and to the point – and the advice is still needed. It is also a fitting way to end today’s post.

[Salvation]

That would make an excellent new thread.

[morphing libertarian]

The use of local language in spreading the gospel is essential regardless of the rest of the things we both don’t like bout V-2. Are you advocating going to the outback and saying mass in Latin to convert aborigines? One example of how ridiculous your criticism of this one narrow point is because you condemn any thing V-2 is illogical and unworkable.

[ebb tide]

How do you think the conversion of the Americas occured?

[Mrs. Don-o]

My point is that the preaching was in their native language, but the written Scriptures could not be in their native languages, because

• their native languages did not exist in written form, for the most part, until the Renaissance or later, and
• even if they did, it was not possible to print and distribute in those languages because it was prohibitively expensive until the invention of mass-produced metal alloy (lead-tin) movable type and oil-based inks, which were not put together until the genius of Johannes Gutenberg.

THIS CHANGED EVERYTHING, made mass communications possible, engendered the first-ever writing in many of the European vernacular languages and permanently altered the structure of society.

This change was not a denominational thing. Gutenberg was a Catholic German printing Bibles 75 years before the beginning of the Reformation.

So the idea that the Mass was in Latin because the priests wanted to keep poor people ignorant, is bogus and ahistorical. An interesting book to read on this is "The Stripping of the Altars," by Eamon Duffy. showing the vitality, literacy, and creative engagement of 15th century Catholic life in England.

[morphing libertarian]

LOL by force.

The spanish must have been effective preaching the wording latin. I think Montezuma went to the seminary in Madrid to learn it.

Present evidence the spanish said mass in latin and not spanish or indian languages with an indian intrerpreter or stop making crap up.

You area a pentecost denier admit it and cleanse yourself. And stop spinning and hypothesizing?

You are lazy and therefore take wild guesses. You are devoid of any history background or even common sense on how you would approach people and convert them, Your entire point belies centuries of the mission experience in a Africa and asia. and abut spain you are flat out wrong. Please remove your self from this discourse so the serious amounts us can proceed. here is something you didn’t take 5 minutes to ask your search engine. Before you apologize and walk away humbled, consider how dangerous not would be to be outnumbered in a land across the ocean and not learn the local language to make sure THEY are not plotting to kill you in your sleep.

FROM WIKI The European colonizers and their successor states had widely varying attitudes towards Native American languages. In Brazil, friars learned and promoted the Tupi language.[6] In many Latin American colonies, Spanish missionaries often learned local languages and culture in order to preach to the natives in their own tongue and relate the Christian message to their indigenous religions. In the British American colonies, John Eliot of the Massachusetts Bay Colony translated the Bible into the Massachusett language, also called Wampanoag, or Natick (1661–1663; he published the first Bible printed in North America, the Eliot Indian Bible.

[morphing libertarian]

awaiting your historical proof of a negative. Thank you for your time.

[ebb tide]

You area a pentecost denier admit it and cleanse yourself. And stop spinning and hypothesizing?

For you edification, the missionaries to the early Americas were primarily either French or Spanish; Latin was not their conversant language.

But both the French and the Spanish missionary priests offered their Masses in Latin, as did they in their homelands.

It is well known these missionaries learned the native tongue of the the people in order to evangelize them. And many of them suffered martyrdom for their efforts. They did not attempt to evangelize in Latin.

I am not a Pentecost denier; but you appear to be a reality denier; another "blessing" of Vatican II.

[morphing libertarian]

Thanx for making my point about no latin mass.

Bets wishes

[ebb tide]

Thanx for making my point about no latin mass.

You must have misread my post. Read it again.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Not sure what negative you want me to prove: that most European vernacular languages did not exist in written form, as literary languages, before the Early Renaissance, or that the wide availability of books was not economically or culturally available before the printing press.

Or is it some other negative you wanted me to prove?

Awaiting your clarification.

[morphing libertarian]

If I read your original ,post correctly you had two points: the impact of printing, which we agree on, was one.

But the second point was response to me about oppressing the poor and illiterate and putting things in languages they could not understand in the absence of education. Note: I was describing europe pre-printing.

To not acknowledge the bad quality of life for surfs and soldiers and their plight and how theywere seen by the aristocracy and kings, prices, orgs and cardinals and bishops is to deny the reality of their lives. And the right of succession, disease, and war held out little hope. Those populations are easy to control and at least manage. Work hard they ere told and be rewarded afterwards.

There are good histories of europe that describe life from Rome to the world wars. I am out of school decades so there might even be more. But to maintain wealth and power many rulers oppressed their subjects. If you explain things, put them in the common vernacular people will be educated and revolt or question. Can’t maintain your position with an uppity populace. It is a well accepted fact that all changed with universities, guilds and apprenticeship programs, printing and exploration.

Best wishes.

[morphing libertarian]

KINGS PRTINCES LORDS AND CLERGY

[GreyFriar]

Thank you for posting this article on 4th Century Christian “House Churches.”

[zot]

Thanks for the ping. The drawing looks more like a church than a house church.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"But the second point was response to me about oppressing the poor and illiterate and putting things in languages they could not understand in the absence of education. Note: I was describing europe pre-printing."

Note: if you are describing most people not having books, and most books not being in their mother-tongue, you are indeed describing Europe pre-printing. This is the inescapable reality of a place and time whose most conscientious people, with infinite painstaking effort, produced books by hand-copying or at best by woodblock print.

But once you are talking about "oppressing the poor and illiterate, and putting these things in language they could not understand," you have left the objective facts of pre-print societies and ventured into the field of cynical assumptions, simply imputing the vilest of motives and leaving it at that.

Motives may be good, bad, or middling'; but whatever the motive, ALL people will do only what it is physically possible for them to do. You can't have the social characteristics of a print-rich society without print.

(And it goes deeper than that, cf. Marshall McLuhan.)

But in the 1400 years between Pentecost and the Printing Press,, the Christian Church in the West (a.k.a. the Catholic Church, as an institution) preached in the spoken vernacular (any of hundreds of European dialects) and wrote in the universal written language, Latin, as did everybody else. That includes Frankish chieftains arguing with the Celts over captives, commercial travelers from the Low Countries carrying bills of sale to Florence, or Jews on the Rhine telling stone-mason masters in Carrara how they wanted their marble cut.

The purpose was not to keep poor people ignorant, but to make their communication intelligible to the most people by using the only written language anyone knew.

And ... "keeping" poor people ignorant? Who faced off the Huns and Vikings and guarded the written Gospels with their blood?

Who sang the Pslams in the streets and precessions in the public square, and then illustrated them for all in glass and rood-screens and stone for the sake of those who had no books?

Who dug Europe out of ignorance by providing the one lighted path through the Dark Ages?

Workshops full of monks and nuns, writing and distributing writing -- and they were the sons and daughters of the fisher-folk of Iona and the linen-dyers of Siena. Draining swamps, building schools and cultivating medicinals wherever they went, praying for the rich and the poor and following the same Lord from Jerusalem to Ultima Thule and back.

These are our progenitors, yours and mine both, our spiritual and intellectual forebears. Honor your father and your mother.

[morphing libertarian]

That’s not what I was saying. I was saying they were held down by the aristocrats and the power of the church the strongest force in Europe for centuries. Not having books or education highly contributed as well as the power of the armies and sherriffs who worked for the upper class.

I am burned out, not that didn’t enjoy our discourse, but i recommend you read about the lives of europeans 400-177 AD.

Bets wishes.

.

[Mrs. Don-o]

"I am burned out, not that didn’t enjoy our discourse, but i recommend you read about the lives of europeans 400-177 AD."

I cheerfully accept your sincere good will and recommend you exactly the same.

[morphing libertarian]

already studied as my major. Thanx anyway. If you have a book showing the great treatment of serfs, soldiers, and the poor throughout those centuries , that can counter what I read in 3 years of college and since, glad to see it.

[Mrs. Don-o]

You just changed the goalposts.

I was writing about the prevalence of writing in the only liturgical,literary and scientific language that existed in the West: Latin. I maintained that it was not motivated by the desire to oppress the poor, but the desire to communicate widely and intelligibly.

Now you're challenging me to show "the great treatment of serfs, soldiers, and the poor throughout those centuries," as if that was my thesis.

However, the lot of the poor depended on the crops, the tariffs, and the competence and goodwill of the leaders, then as now; and they did better at the hands of the just, and worse under the unjust. The just were more likely to be observing Christian Gospel norms, and the unjust never heard of such norms, or were ignoring them. Then as now. And these norms are what they and we hear every time we go to Mass.

A good indicator of the lot of the poor of medieval Christendom as contrasted to the poor of, say, the Golden Age of Egypt, or classical Greece or Rome,or medieval Islam is that the hundreds of monumental buildings of the Age of Cathedrals in Europe were the first in the history of the world to be built by paid artisans: that is to say, free men, not slave labor.

I suppose a stone-cutter's lot is never quite comfy. However, note that the stone-cutters who built the storage-cities of Ramses, the Parthenon or the Alhambra were slaves; the stone-cutters of Carrara were skilled craftsmen who received signed, enforceable contracts and were paid in metal currency, as you can read in records still extant.

Is that the history you read?

[Buckeye McFrog]

Latin replaced Greek in the Western empire because Latin was the language of the common people in the West.

so....saying Mass in a language the locals actually understand is NOT a new idea.