Pre-Tridentine Mass

Following the Council of Trent's desire for standardization, Pope Pius V, with his bull Quo primum, made the Roman Missal obligatory throughout the Latin Church, except for those places and congregations whose distinct rites could demonstrate an antiquity of two hundred years or more.

In the 1500s, the Pre-Tridentine Roman Rite became the basis for the Evangelical-Lutheran Rite of the Mass.

Development

Earliest accounts

A surviving account of the celebration of the Eucharist or the Mass in Rome is that of Saint Justin Martyr (died c. 165), in chapter 67 of his First Apology:

On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons.

In chapter 65, Justin Martyr says that the kiss of peace was given before the bread and the wine mixed with water were brought to "the president of the brethren". The initial liturgical language used was Greek, before approximately the year 190 under Pope Victor I, when the Church in Rome changed from Greek to Latin, except in particular for the Hebrew word "Amen", whose meaning Justin explains in Greek (γένοιτο), saying that by it "all the people present express their assent" when the president of the brethren "has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings".

According to some scholars, the early Christian liturgy was a continuation of the liturgy of contemporary Jewish synagogues (as distinct from the temple liturgy): Catholic historian Louis Duschesne commented "the only permanent element, on the whole, which Christianity added to the liturgy of the synagogue was [...] the sacred meal instituted by Jesus Christ as a perpetual commemoration of himself." This tradition included unaccompanied psalms, cantillation (half-way between recitation and singing), and chant. According to Catholic historian Mark Kirby "By the fourth century, the fully sung liturgy, with its roots in Semitic chant, had become normative in both East and West. According to Orthodox historian Alexander Schmemann every word pronounced in church had a "singing quality": the "entire service, which was thought of in all its parts as a singing of praise to God." This sung liturgy was held to be an imitation of, participation in, and foretaste of the divine liturgy. Congregations could sing responses to versicles, antiphons and hymns.

Early changes

It is unclear when the language of the celebration finished changing from Greek to Latin. Pope Victor I (190–202) may have been the first to use Latin in the liturgy in Rome. Others think Latin was finally adopted nearly a century later. The change was probably gradual, with both languages being used for a while.

With regard to the Roman Canon of the Mass, the prayers beginning Te igitur, Memento Domine and Quam oblationem were already in use, even if not with quite the same wording as now, by the year 400; the Communicantes, the Hanc igitur, and the post-consecration Memento etiam and Nobis quoque were added in the fifth century.

Jerome heard the long, melismatic sung Alleluia in Bethlehem and it was gradually introduced in the Western liturgy. The Agnus Dei chant seems to have been instituted by Pope Sergius I (687–701), and the Credo chant sporadically from 800 AD.

Early Middle Ages

Before the pontificate of Pope Gregory I (590–604), the Roman Mass rite underwent many changes, including a "complete recasting of the Canon" (a term that in this context means the Anaphora or Eucharistic Prayer). At the time of Gregory I, regional customisation of liturgies were encouraged in missionary areas: according to Bede Gregory instructed Augustine of Canterbury to select "any customs in the Roman or the Gaulish Church or any other Church which may be more pleasing to Almighty God", and to teach them to the church of the English.

In Gaul, the Merovingian period (~500–750) has been called "the experimental age of liturgy," with the propers constructed freely: according to historian Yitzhak Hen "each bishop, abbot or priest was free to choose the prayers he found suitable." Cross-pollination and recycling of liturgical prayers was common, as priests and bishops took sacramentaries (manuscripts of liturgical prayers) between regions, and new prayers were composed.

In the eighth century the Merovingian dynasty had been replaced by the Carolingians in Frankish Gaul. In the late eighth century, Pepin the Short ordered the Roman chant be used throughout his domains. However, some elements of the preceding Gallican rites were fused with it north of the Alps, and the resulting mixed rite was introduced into Rome under the influence of the emperors who succeeded Charlemagne. Gallican influence is responsible for the introduction into the Roman rite of dramatic and symbolic ceremonies such as the blessing of candles, ashes, palms, and much of the Holy Week ritual. The chant style that mixed Gallican and old Roman chant styles became known as Gregorian chant.

During the Carolingian period, the language diverged with Latin going back to its classical forms and the vernacular recognized as separate tongues. Consequently, the Council of Tours (813) mandated that sermons be given in the Romance or Teutonic vernacular.

The chants and musical settings of the Mass were divided into:

• the parts that do not change during the year (the Ordinary: the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei), and;
• the parts that belonged to the particular day and occasion (the Proper): Introit, Gradual, Alleluia, Offertory, Communion.

The major difference between the various rites or uses was not the basic structure or components of the ordinary parts of the liturgy, but of different arrangements, selection and allocation of prayers on different days, as well as mention of regionally-popular saints, and different rubrics.

Late Middle Ages

Towards the end of the first millennium, organ, previously a secular instrument, was introduced as did more complicated singing of components of the Mass by choirs. Important liturgies might be preceded, followed or interrupted by elaborate processions with songs, dramatic rituals involving props, and acted plays or tableau, with the laity trained to understand the symbolism. In several locations, the story of the Three Magi would be enacted by three costumed men who would follow a star through the church, search at various locations, until finding the altar, while singing the Gospel alternatively and polyphonically.

The recitation of the Credo (Nicene Creed) after the Gospel is attributed to the influence of Emperor Henry II. Gallican influence explains the practice of incensing persons, introduced in the 11th or 12th century; "before that time incense was burned only during processions (the entrance and Gospel procession)".

Private prayers for the priest to say before Communion were another novelty to Rome. From the 9th century, the Ordo Missae texts — which appeared as part of missals as well as priestly handbooks or prayer books — flourished in variety and content, particularly in the Frankish Kingdom and along the Rhine. Going beyond earlier types of liturgical writing, they incorporated ritual instructions and private prayers for the celebrant to recite as an aid to the devout offering of sacrifice. These private prayers distinctively included prayers directly addressed to Christ and direct invocations of the Holy Trinity (such as during the Offertory) — Gallican responses against Arianism among Germanic peoples. The prayers also reflected a Frankish tendency to verbalise non-verbal gestures. By the reign of Gregory VII, such Rhenish elements had become integral to the rite of the Pope and the Papal Curia, at the same time that the Roman Church began encouraging liturgical unity across Western Christendom. These prayers varied considerably until standardized by Pope Pius V in 1570. The rites had some differences in the prayers on the boundaries of the Mass: Pre-Tridentine prayers said mostly in the sacristy or during the procession to the altar as part of the priest's preparation were formalized in the 1570 missal of Pope Pius V as the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar; prayers that followed the Ite missa est changed or changed position (for example, in the 1570 edition, the Canticle of the Three Young Men and Psalm 150 in Pius V's edition the priest was to say while leaving the altar were later omitted).

The historical record of liturgical practice, especially for smaller churches, is highly incomplete in much of Europe: historian Matthew Cheung Salisbury estimates that only 1 in 1,000 English liturgical manuscripts survived the iconoclastic English Reformation, with similar destruction at the French Revolution.

Renaissance and Reformation

Between 1478 and 1501, the bishops of 52 dioceses, including the primates of France, Castile, England, the Holy Roman Empire and Poland each independently published, in print, official liturgical texts for their diocese, because of the extent of parish and monastery variation.

From 1474 until Pope Pius V's 1570 text, there were at least 14 different printed editions that purported to present the text of the Mass as celebrated in Rome, rather than elsewhere, and which therefore were published under the title of "Roman Missal" (Latin: Missale romanum.) These were produced in Milan, Venice, Paris and Lyon. Even these show variations. Local Missals, such as the Parisian Missal, of which at least 16 printed editions appeared between 1481 and 1738, showed more important differences. The Milanese Roman Missal of 1474, which reproduces the Papal Chapel missal of the late 1200s, "hardly differs at all" from the initial Tridentine missal promulgated in 1570, apart from local feasts.

In the 1500s, the Pre-Tridentine Roman Rite became the basis for the Western Evangelical-Lutheran Rite of the Mass. With respect to its similarity with the Tridentine Rite, Jesuit priest Rune P. Thuringer, writing in 1965, noted that "The eucharistic liturgy of the state Church of Sweden, which is Lutheran, is closer in many respects to the rite of the Roman Mass than that of any other Protestant church."

Other rites

With the exception of the relatively few places where no form of the Roman Rite had ever been adopted, the core Canon of the Mass remained generally uniform, but the prayers in the Ordo Missae, and still more the Proprium Sanctorum and the Proprium de Tempore, varied widely.

Even areas that had accepted the Roman Rite had introduced changes and additions. As a result, every ecclesiastical province and almost every diocese had its local use.

Languages

In most Christian countries, the language used for celebrating pre-Tridentine Masses was Latin, which had become the language of the Roman liturgy in the late 4th century. (As Latin receded, non-liturgical sections, such as sermons for the general populace and bidding prayers were typically preached in the vernacular, and included translations of the readings.)

However, there have been exceptions:

• In Dalmatia and parts of Istria in Croatia, the Roman Rite liturgy was celebrated in Old Church Slavonic from the time of Cyril and Methodius, and authorization for use of this language was extended to some other Slavic regions between 1886 and 1935.
• In the 14th century, Dominican missionaries converted a monastery near Qrna, Armenia to Catholicism, and translated the liturgical books of the Dominican Rite, a variant of the Roman Rite, into Armenian for the community's use. The monks were deterred from becoming members of the Dominican Order itself by the severe fasting requirements of the Dominican Constitutions, as well as the prohibition on owning any land other than that on which the monastery stood, and therefore became the Order of the United Friars of St. Gregory the Illuminator, a new order confirmed by Pope Innocent VI in 1356 whose Constitutions were similar to the Dominicans' except for these two laws. This order established monasteries over a vast amount of territory in Greater and Lesser Armenia, Persia, and Georgia, using the Dominican Rite in Armenian until the end of the order's existence in 1794.
• On February 25, 1398, Pope Boniface IX also authorized Maximus Chrysoberges to found a monastery in Greece where Mass would be celebrated in Greek according to the Dominican Rite, and Manuel Chrysoloras translated the Dominican missal into Greek in pursuance of the plan, but nothing further is known of this undertaking.

At various times there were calls for the prayers of the Mass to be in the vernacular, such as by Erasmus.

There may have sometimes been more flexibility in other liturgies than the Mass: in the mid-1400s, when the Congregation of Windesheim moved to the Rule of St Augustine, the fairly new convent Jerusalem in Venray was granted by their bishop to say the new liturgy in the vernacular, until they had mastered the Latin.

Legacy

The pre-Tridentine Mass survived post-Trent in some Anglican and Lutheran areas with some local modification from the basic Roman rite until the time when worship switched to the vernacular. Dates of switching to the vernacular, in whole or in part, varied widely by location. In some Lutheran areas this took three hundred years, as choral liturgies were sung by schoolchildren who were learning Latin.