Sarum Rite

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Priest gives blessing during an Anglican re-enactment of the Sarum Mass in the early 20th c. at the parish church of St. Cyprian, Clarence Gate in London
Priest gives blessing during an Anglican re-enactment of the Sarum Mass in the early 20th c. at the parish church of St. Cyprian, Clarence Gate in London

The Sarum Rite, more properly called the Use of Sarum, is a variant of the Roman Rite used before the English Reformation, and elsewhere the British Isles. It was originally the local Use of the Cathedral and Diocese of Salisbury in the west of England, but became prevalent among the various local uses in the British Isles, particularly in southern England. After Henry VIII's break with the Roman Catholic Church, it became the only sanctioned use throughout his kingdom, until the introduction of Protestant liturgies in English during the reign of his son, Edward VI. The Use of Sarum, though, was revived during the reign of Queen Mary I and continued to be used by Recusant clergy for a time thereafter, before being replaced by the Tridentine usage.

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[edit] History

In 1078, William of Normandy, appointed St. Osmund, a Norman nobleman, as bishop of Salisbury (the modern name of the city known in Latin as "Sarum"). As bishop, St. Osmund initiated some revisions to the extant Celtic-Anglo-Saxon rite and the local adaptations of the Roman Rite, drawing on both Norman and Anglo-Saxon traditions.

19th century liturgists theorized, the liturgical usage of Rouen in northern France served as an inspiration for the creation of the Sarum liturgical books. Because the Normans deposed the Anglo-Saxon episcopate, replacing them with Norman bishops, of which St. Osmund was one, the similarities between the Use of Rouen and that of Sarum, it caused some to suspect the Normans also imposed their French liturgical books as well.

"This conjecture approaches certainty when it is found that the Use of Rouen and that of Sarum were almost identical in the 11th century. A curious and interesting illustration of this will be found in an extract of a Rouen manuscript missal, assumed to be 650 years old... The Rouen Pontifical, of about 1007 A.D., quoted in the same work, shows a like affinity of that of Sarum and Exeter in later days."[1]

The revisions during St. Osmund's episcopate resulted in the compilation of a new Missal, Breviary, and other liturgical manuals, which came to be used throughout southern England, Wales, and parts of Ireland.

Some dioceses issued their own missals, inspired by the Sarum Use, but with their own particular prayers and ceremonies. Some of these are so different that they have been identified as effectively distinct uses, such as those of Hereford, York, Bangor, and Aberdeen. Other missals (such as those of Lincoln or Westminster Abbey) were more evidently based on the Sarum Use and varied only in details.

Liturgical historians believe the Sarum rite had a distinct influence upon other usages of the Roman rite outside England, such as the Nidaros rite in Norway and the Braga rite in Portugal.

The Sarum rite was the first Liturgy sanctioned by the newly separated Church of England in the 1530s, and was reintroduced to England under Queen Mary, but was abandoned as the Anglican Church turned decisively to the use of the Book of Common Prayer in the liturgy. The Sarum use survived among Catholic recusants until the mid sixteenth century, being gradually replaced by the 'Tridentine' use. A brief resurgence of interest in the nineteenth century did not lead to a revival.

[edit] Revival

Many of the practices of the Sarum Use - though not the full liturgy itself - were revived in England in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as part of the Anglo-Catholic movement - the Oxford movement - in the Church of England. Anglo-Catholics wanted to find a traditional formal liturgy that was characteristically 'English' rather than 'Roman', and they took advantage of the 'Ornaments Rubric' of 1559 which directed that English churches were to be furnished as they had been at the start of Edward VI's reign, which is to say, in Sarum fashion with a few concessions to Protestant practice. However, there was a tendency to read back Victorian centralizing tendencies into mediaeval texts, and so a rather rubrical spirit was applied to liturgical discoveries. It was asserted, for instance, that Sarum had a well-developed series of colours of vestments for different feasts. Indeed, there may have been tendencies to use a particular colour for a particular feast (red, for instance, was used on Sundays, as in the Ambrosian rite), but most churches were simply too poor to have several sets of vestments, and so used what they had. There was considerable variation from diocese to diocese, or even church to church, in the details of the rubrics: the place where the Epistle was sung, for instance, varied enormously; from a lectern at the altar, from a lectern in the quire, at or even on the rood screen.

Chief among the proponents of Sarum customs was the Rev. Percy Dearmer, who put these into practice at his parish of St. Mary's, Primrose Hill, in London, and explained them at length in The Parson's Handbook, which ran through several editions. The rite was retained in use into the twentieth century in some Anglican monastic institutions.

The Sarum Mass has occasionally been celebrated within the Roman Catholic Church. It had been suggested for the opening of Westminster Cathedral in 1903, but the idea was rejected.

It was celebrated most recently on April 1, 2000, when the Most Reverend Mario Joseph Conti, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow celebrated the Sarum Mass in the University of Aberdeen's King's College Chapel, to commemorate the quincentenary of the pre-Reformation founding of the chapel by William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen.

Another notable, Roman Catholic usage of the Sarum Mass occurred on the Feast of Candelmas at Merton College in Oxford, England in 1997.

The Sarum Use also is used by Western rite members of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, and in particular by Saint Petroc Monastery and its missions [2].

[edit] Sarum ritual

A priest stands before the altar during a Sarum-rite Mass.
A priest stands before the altar during a Sarum-rite Mass.

The Sarum liturgy is very sumptuous when performed fully. This is actually a characteristic of classical Roman liturgy; in Rome itself the rite had been pared down to what became its Tridentine form, but outside Rome, dioceses derived their liturgies from the older, fuller, form, which only gave way to the Roman Curial Mass slowly during the Counter-Reformation.

The Mass of Sundays and great feasts was a splendid affair. There were up to four sacred ministers: priest, deacon, subdeacon and acolyte. It was customary to visit in procession all the altars of the church and cense them, ending at the great rood screen, where antiphons and collects would be sung. Finally here at the screen would be read the Bidding Prayers, prayers in the vernacular directing the people to pray for various intentions. The procession then went to vest for Mass. This vesting would usually have taken place at the altar where Mass was to be celebrated; vestries and sacristies are a modern invention on the whole (except in the greatest churches).

The prayers of the Mass have several differences from the Roman use, which it would take too much space to list, though some of them are very beautiful, as for instance the priest's preparation prayers for Holy Communion. The ceremonies differ also: the offering of the bread and wine was made by one act; after the Elevation the celebrant stood arms outstretched in the form of a cross; the Particle was put into the chalice after the Agnus Dei. The Sarum rite formally named the Sundays after Trinity, not after Pentecost (as in the Roman Use), though in fact the numbers worked out the same, as the Roman use reckons from the octave day of Pentecost, which is Trinity Sunday. Communion under one kind was followed by a 'rinse' of unconsecrated wine. The Last Gospel (the first chapter of St John's Gospel) was read while the priest made his way back to the sacristy.[3] The chant is also a little different. Two candles on the altar were customary, though others were placed around it and on the rood screen. The Sarum missal suggests that the genuflection is not used, a low bow being customary, but it is not impossible that by the sixteenth century it had been introduced.

The Sarum Use was the original basis of the Communion Service, Lectionary, and collects in the liturgy of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. This is most evident in its sequence of Major Propers for the Sundays in Advent, which vary considerably from those used in the Roman Tridentine Rite. It also inspired the counting of Sundays after Trinity rather than Pentecost. One may also take note of the Marriage Rite and the Sarum custom of "plighting troths", though this can also be found in the Roman Rite as used by Roman Catholics in England until the 1970s.

Priest receives incense during a Sarum Mass.
Priest receives incense during a Sarum Mass.

[edit] External links

[edit] The Sarum Mass

[edit] The Sarum Breviary and Antiphonale

[edit] Media

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