To n. 366. - Appendix IX. Historical-Liturgical Matters Concerning Holy Communion

I. Concerning the rite of Holy Communion. From the beginning one must distinguish Communion in a church (domestic or public) and Communion made at home, outside any sacred rite at which persons were assisting.

1. In a church. In the first centuries the faithful joined their Communion with the Communion of the celebrant. The rite of the fourth century (of which several parts are more ancient) is described thus in book 8 of the Apostolic Constitutions (ed. Funk, 1905, I, 512, 518) and in the fifth mystagogical catechesis of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. The celebrant or deacon says: "Holy things for the holy"; the people respond: "One Holy, one Lord, Jesus Christ." The bishop communicates himself. Then those who are to communicate approach, the clerics in hierarchical order, and the faithful. The minister places the host in the right hand of the communicant, under which the left is placed. He pronounces these words only: "The Body of Christ." Then the deacon presents the chalice, saying: "The Blood of Christ, the chalice of life." To each formula the communicant responds: "Amen." During Communion, Psalm 33 is sung, "I will bless the Lord at all times," in which is read: "Taste and see that the Lord is sweet."

In Gaul, from various councils of the seventh century, we gather that the usage was that women received the sacred host in a linen cloth. From the ninth century the usage of communicating oneself becomes rare.

Until the Middle Ages, one who was to communicate received the Eucharist standing.

Around the seventh or eighth century, for drinking the sacred Blood, they began to use the tube which even now, in the solemn papal Mass, the deacon and subdeacon use.

In place of the formula "The Body of Christ," already in the three preceding centuries, especially in the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, optative formulas occur, similar to that which is used today in the Roman rite.

At the beginning, for example with St. Justin, the deacon distributed Communion under both species; then from the fourth century, only the chalice.

Communion outside Mass had the Mendicant Orders as its chief authors, lest the faithful be detained longer in church. Hence there was introduced the proper rite of administering Holy Communion, which chiefly imitated the method of ministering Viaticum at the close of the Middle Ages.

To infants Communion was given under the species of wine alone.

Then the custom of dipping the consecrated bread into consecrated wine, and of mixing a little consecrated wine with a great quantity of unconsecrated wine, prepared, with the fear of profanation also acceding, the suppression of the chalice in the Roman rite for non-celebrants. Already in the thirteenth century the usage of Communion under the species of bread alone had become general. Finally, Communion at home under both species was forbidden to Latin non-celebrants by the Council of Constance (1415) against the Hussites.

2. Communion outside the church. In the age of Tertullian (Ad uxorem, book 1, c. 5) and St. Cyprian, the faithful consumed at home the consecrated species of bread which they had brought with them from the church. This usage was chiefly that of monks, and in the East it remained up to the ninth century. Communion was carried to the sick under the species of bread. Eusebius narrates for us a very ancient fact (Hist. eccl., book 6, c. 44) concerning Dionysius of Alexandria (d. 264-265), who ordered that a boy carry to the dying Serapion a particle of the host to be consumed with a little water.

To carry Communion to the absent was per se the office of the deacon. But during persecutions, laymen themselves carried Holy Communion to confessors. For a long time thereafter (ninth, tenth, eleventh centuries), laymen were able to carry Communion to those dangerously ill. This was also permitted in the twelfth century by the Council of London in a case of necessity (Mansi, XXI, p. 511).

Concerning penitents themselves the First Council of Nicaea (325) established, according to a law which it calls ancient, that in the crisis of death they should not be deprived of the last and most necessary Viaticum.

From the fourth to the eighth century the Church had several times to resist the custom of communicating the dead.

II. The subject of Communion. 1. From the beginning it was required that a man be baptized and without sin (Didache, c. 9, 14; St. Justin, Apol., c. 66). From at least the fourth century he had to be fasting (Canons of Hippolytus 150, 151, 205; cf. Leclercq, Monumenta ecclesiae liturgica, nn. 2682, 2683, 2727, etc.).

Little children, in the first age of the Church, were by no means excluded from the sacred table (cf. St. Cyprian, De lapsis, c. 25, P. L., 4, 484). Communion was for a long time customarily administered to them immediately after Baptism and Confirmation. Nor did this custom wholly vanish, except after the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) prescribed Paschal Communion for only those faithful who had attained the age of discretion. Then the Council of Trent, in chapter 4 and canon 4, denied the necessity of Communion for infants. Finally, on August 8, 1910, by a decree of the S. C. of the Sacraments, the age of first Communion was more defined.

III. The frequency of Communion. In the first centuries the faithful were accustomed both to assist together at the sacred rite and to communicate. But Mass was not celebrated daily; yet they were also refreshed at home by the sacred banquet.

The usage of daily Communion is shown especially in the African and Egyptian Church at that time. This usage gained greater force in the fourth century, though not in such a way that bishops and faithful were wholly of one mind on the matter. Already from the fourth century complaints began to be made about diminished fervor. Soon most of the faithful communicated only on the more principal feasts. And moved by a certain kind of reverence, the monks of the Middle Ages rarely used the sacred banquet. Several councils, for example the Council of Agde (506), required that at least three times in the year (at the Nativity of the Lord, at Easter, and at Pentecost) one approach the sacred table. The Fourth Lateran Council was content with one annual Communion.

From the sixteenth century, by the authority of the Council of Trent and the pious efforts of St. Charles Borromeo, St. Francis de Sales, and religious orders, such as the Society of Jesus, a more frequent usage was restored; its laws and conditions, after the Jansenist plague was overcome, Pius X authentically defined in the decree Sacra Tridentina.

IV. Feast, Procession, Exposition, Prayer of Forty Hours.

1. The feast at Liege, after the revelations of St. Juliana of Cornillon, instituted in the year 1246, became universal by the decree of Urban IV, after the miracle of Bolsena. St. Thomas can be called the redactor of the most pious Bull Transiturus.

2. The first solemn processions were celebrated not long after the feast was instituted. They were already being held at Cologne before the year 1279. Concerning these, the first general Bull, Ineffabili, was given in the year 1429 by Martin V.

3. In the year 1304, the Ordinary of Strasbourg declared that it was lawful that, at first vespers, Matins, and the Mass of Corpus Christi, the Most Holy Sacrament be placed on the altar. Soon the usage of exposition was propagated and had to be constrained within prudent limits.

4. Already before the sixteenth century there existed an adoration of Forty Hours before the sepulcher of Christ, in which the Redeemer was thought to have remained for forty hours. The custom, transferred from the sepulcher to the Most Holy Sacrament, was approved by Paul III in the year 1539. Clement XI composed its ceremonial in the year 1705.

E. de M., A. I.