LOL! O.K., you asked for it! From The Catholic Encyclopedia and including a bit on the tonsure:
The Celtic Rite
This subject will be treated under the following seven heads:
I. History and Origin;
II. Manuscript Sources;
III. The Divine Office;
IV. The Mass;
V. the Baptismal Service;
VI. The Visitation, Unction, and Communion of the Sick;
VII. The Consecration of Churches;
VIII. Hymns.
I. HISTORY AND ORIGIN
The term "Celtic Rite" is generally, but rather indefinitely, applied to the various rites in use in Great Britain, Ireland, perhaps in Brittany, and sporadically in Northern Spain, and in the monasteries which resulted from the Irish missions of St. Columbanus in France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, at a time when rites other than the then existing rite of Rome were used, wholly or partially, in those places. The term must not be taken to imply any necessary homogeneity, for the evidence such as it is, is in favour of considerable diversity. This evidence is very scanty and fragmentary, and much of what has been written about it has been largely the result of conjectures based upon very insecure foundations, and has been influenced by controversial motives.
The beginning of the period is vague. There is no evidence before the fifth century and very little even then. The extreme end of it may be taken as 1172, when the Synod of Cashel finally adopted the Anglo-Roman Rite. The existence of a different rite in Britain and Ireland has been used to prove that the Christianity of these islands had an origin independent of Rome, though, even if it were true, it is not easy to see how that should prove anything more than the fact itself. In reality the existence of a Celtic Rite has no bearings, one way or the other, on the Anglo-Roman controversy. In the period before the eighth century diversity of rites was the rule rather than the exception. Rome, though when its advice was asked it might naturally recommend its own way of doing things, did not then make the smallest attempt to force uniformity on any local church. With a very complete unity of faith, and at times a considerable amount of intercourse between different parts of the Western Church, there existed great diversity of practice in things in which diversity, as St. Gregory's answer to St. Augustine seems to imply, was not considered to matter very much. Gradually, no doubt, the influence of important centres, such as Rome itself on one side, and Toledo on another, tended to lessen the diversity and to draw divergent Churches together into larger liturgical districts, so that by the time of the final fusion, which happened in the Charlemagne period, the Roman Rite with its Ambrosian variant, the Romanized Celtic Rite, and the Hispano-Gallican Rite, now represented by the Mozarabic survival, were practically all that were left, but we must beware of antedating this classification. The essential unity of the Roman Empire was such that whether Christianity came to Britain from Rome, from Gaul, or from the East in the first instance, the fact would have no bearings on the origin and spread of the liturgical customs, which certainly developed at a later period than its first introduction. In the fourth century we find an apparently organized British Church, with bishops who represent it at the Council of Arles in 314, and certainly at Rimini in 359. This Church was evidently in close communication with the Church in Gaul, as may be inferred from the dedication to St. Martin of the two churches at Withern and at Canterbury, and from the mission of Victridius of Rouen in 396, and those of Sts. Germanus and Lupus in 429, and Sts. Germanus and Severus in 447, directed against that heresy of Pelagius which had its origin in Britain. It is not unreasonable to suppose that at the period when liturgies were beginning to be differentiated more or less by districts and provinces the liturgy of the Church of Britain should resemble that of the neighbouring Church of Gaul, and it is possible to infer from St. Augustine's question to St. Gregory, concerning the different customs of Masses observed in Rome and in Gaul, that he found Gallican customs prevailing in Britain. But St. Augustine may only be referring to the use of Queen Bertha's Frankish chaplain, Bishop Luidhard, at Canterbury, and there is no evidence one way or the other as to what liturgy was in use among the Romanized Britons themselves.
The passage attributed to Gidas (Haddan and Stubbs, I, 112), "Britones toti mundo contrarii, moribus Romanis inimici, non solum in misa sed in tonsura etiam", is probably of the seventh century. Yet upon this frail foundation of conjecture an elaborate theory has been built and still remains almost an article of faith with so large and important a school of Anglican controversialists that it is impossible to ignore its existence, though it has been given up by all serious liturgiologists. This theory (for which see also AMBROSIAN LITURGY AND RITE) is to the effect that St. Irenaeus, the disciple of St. Polycarp, who was the disciple of St. John the Divine, brought the Rite of Ephesus to Provence, whence it spread through Gaul and to Britain. This so-called "Ephesine" Rite (a term often used as synonymous with "Hispano-Gallican"), say the supporters of the theory, was the foundation of the Sarum Rite, and from this it derived a belief that the Church of England had an origin independent of Rome. It is hardly necessary to assert here that the Sarum Rite is merely a local variety of the Roman, and that the influence of the Gallican Rite upon it is no greater than upon any other Roman variety, so that the deductions, which have recently been reasserted with great certainty by the Bishop of Chichester in his "Story of the English Prayerbook", are quite unwarranted by the facts. But on examination it will be seen that the Ephesine origin of the Gallican Rite rests only upon the assertion of an eighth-century Irish writer (in Cott. MS. Nero A. II in the British Museum), who, by the way, derives the Celtic Rite, as far as the Divine Office is concerned, from Alexandria, and on a statement by Colman at the Synod of Whitby, in 664, respecting the origin of the Celtic Easter, which, as St. Wilfrid pointed out at the time, was certainly incorrect. The theory seems to have been first put forward in modern times by Sir William Palmer in his "Origines Liturgicae", on the authority of the said Irish writer, and has found its way into many Anglican textbooks. Yet the only points of difference between the British Church of St. Augustine's time and the Roman of which we can be certain are: (1) The rule of keeping Easter; (2) the tonsure; (3) some differences in the manner of baptizing.
(1) The Easter Question
The Britons adhered to the old Roman cycle of 84 years instead of the newer cycle of 19 years. They counted the third week of the moon, on the Sunday of which Easter must fall, from the 14th to the 20th instead of from the 15th to the 21st as the vernal equinox. Until 457, when the 532-year cycle of Victorius of Aquitaine was adopted at Rome, Britain agreed with Rome in its differing from Alexandria and the East. In 525 Rome altered its rule again to the 19-years cycle of Dionysius Exiguus, to conform to the Eastern usage, and from that time until the change of style in 1582 Rome and the East agreed in their rule of Easter, and even now calculate by the same rule, though the fact that the Greek 21st of March is only an imaginary vernal equinox, thirteen days later than the real one, makes the actual Greek Easter generally fall on a different day from the Roman. Yet it is still argued (e.g. in Archbishop Nuttall's Catechism; s.p.c.k., 1907) that the Easter difference proves the Eastern origin of the British Church. If it proves anything it is the exact opposite. Colman at the Synod of Whitby evidently had some vague memory of the long extinct Quartodeciman controversy in his mind when he claimed an Ephesian origin for his Easter, and St. Wilfrid rightly pointed out that the essence of the Quartodeciman rule was that Easter might be kept on any day of the week, whereas the Celts kept theirs on Sunday only. St. Aldhelm, in his letter to King Geruntius of Cornwall, seems to charge the Cornish with Quartodecimanism, but he also mistook the point of that controversy. The Easter question was eventually settled at various times in different parts of the Celtic Church. The following dates are derived from Haddan and Stubbs: South Ireland, 626-8; North Ireland, 692; Northumbria (converted by Celtic missions), 664; East Devon and Somerset, the Celts under Wessex, 705; the Picts, 710; Iona, 716-8; Straathclyde, 721; North Wales, 768; South Wales, 777. Cornwall held out the longest of any, perhaps even, in parts, to the time of Bishop Aedwulf of Crediton (909).
(2) The form of the tonsure
The Britons were accustomed to shave the whole head in front of a line drawn from ear to ear, instead of using the coronal tonsure of the Romans. This, though there is no real evidence that it was the practice of the Druids, was nicknamed tonsura magorum. (Magus was accepted as equivalent to druid, and to this day the Magoi of Matthew 2, are druidhean in the Scottish Gaelic Bible.) Later, the Roman party jeered at it as the tonsura Simonis Magi, in contradistinction to their "tonsure of St. Peter". This is mentioned in the passage attributed wrongly, to Gildas (Haddan and Stubbs, I, 113).
(3) Some unspecified difference in the manner of baptizing
It has been conjectured, on no real evidence, that the British Church resembled the Spanish in baptizing with a single immersion. But this form had been allowed by Rome in the case of Spain. It would seem however, from a letter from Pope Zacharias to St. Boniface (1 May, 748, Haddan and Stubbs, III, 51), that an unnamed English synod had forbidden any bapism except in the name of the Trinity, and had declared that whoever omits the Name of any Person of the Trinity does not truly baptize. Spelman and Wilkins put this synod at London in the time of St. Augustine, 603. Mansi makes its date the first year of Theodore of Tarsus, 668. It would seem by this that it was the formula that was at fault, and certainly in the time of Theodore the possibility of priests, presumably Celtic, having been invalidly baptized was considered. "Si quis presbiter ordinatus deprehendit se non esse baptizatus, baptizetur et ordinetur iterum et omnes quos prius baptizavit baptizentur", says the "Poenitentiale Theodori" (Lib. II, cap. iii, 13), and in cap ix of the same book, after ordering the reordination of those ordained by Scottish and British bishops, "qui in Pascha et tonsua catholici non sunt", and the asperging of churches consecrated by them, Theodore adds: "Et qui ex horum similiter gente vel quicunque de baptismo suo dubitaverit, baptizetur".
Thus it may be seen that, with these exceptions, and excepting also one statement by Gildas (to the effect that certain lessons, differing from those of any known rite, were read at ordinations), and a possible allusion by him to the anointing of hands at ordination, we have no information about the rites of the British Church. They may have been Gallican but they may just as well have been Roman in type, or if the Christianity of Britain preceded the construction of definite liturgies, they may have been indigenous, with or without foreign influences. The Britons were quite capable of composing their own liturgy on that nucleus which was common to all Christendom; but we do not know whether they did so or not.
One part of Britain, indeed, derived a great part of its Christianity from post-Patrician Irish missions. St. Ia and her companions, and St. Piran, St. Sennen, St. Petrock, and the rest of the Irish saints who came to Cornwall in the late fifth and early sixth centuries found there, at any rate in the West, a population which had perhaps relapsed into Paganism under the Pagan King Teudar. When these saints introduced, or reintroduced, Christianity, they probably brought with them whatever rites they were accustomed to, and Cornwall certainly had its own separate ecclesiastical quarrel with Wessex in the days of St. Aldhelm, which, as appears by a statement in Leofric's Missal, was still going on in the early tenth century, though the details of it are not specified.
The rites of the Irish Church stand on firmer ground, though even there the information is scanty. There were Christians in Ireland before St. Patrick, but we have no information as to how they worshipped, and their existence is ignored by the "Catalogus Sanctorum Hiberniae", attributed to the seventy-century Tirechan. This interesting document, which, though its dates need not be accepted too exactly, is worthy of general credit, divides the saints of Ireland into three orders, each of which orders is stated to have lasted during the reigns of four kings, the three orders covering, between them, a period of about 225 years, from the coming of St. Patrick in 440, in the reign of Laoghaire MacNeil, to the reign of Blathmac and Diarmait, sons of Aodh Slane, in 665. Symmetry is attained by omitting about six intervening reigns, but the outside dates of each period are clear enough, and the liturgiological value of the document consists in the statements, very probably true in the main, respecting the customs of the saints of these orders as to the Masses and celebrationes, i.e. the Divine Office, and the Easter and tonsure questions. (Celebratio -- "Divine Office"; Irish, Celebrad. Dr. MacCarthy in his edition of the Stowe Missal gives several instances of this use of the word.) the first order was in the time of St. Patrick. They were all bishops, 350 in number, founders of churches. They had one Head, Christ; one leader, Patrick; one Mass, and one tonsure from ear to ear, and they celebrated one Easter "quarta decima luna post aequinoctium vernale". All these bishops were sprung from the Romans, the French (i.e. the Gauls), the Britons, and the Scots. Their period is given from the reign of Laoghaire to that of Tuathal Moelgarbh (c. 440-544). The second order were a few bishops and many priests, 300 in number. They had one head, Christ, they celebrated different Masses and "diversas regulas", they had one Easter, the fourteenth of the moon after the equinox, and one tonsure from ear to ear. The received a Mass from the Britons, David, Gilla (Gildas), and Docus (Cadoc). It may be noted that the "Vita Gildae" tells how King Ainmerech sent for Gildas to restore ecclesiastical order in his kingdom "quia paene catholicam fidem inipsa insula omnes reliquerant". The second order lasted from the end of the reign of Tuathal to that of Aodh MacAinmerech (c. 544-99). The third order were priests and a few bishops, 100 in number, "qui in locis desertis habitabant et oleribus et aqua et eleemosynis vivebant, propria devitabant", evidently hermits and monks. They had different Masses, different rules, and different tonsures, "alii enim habebant coronam, alii caesariem", and celebrated different Easters, some on the fourteenth, some on the sixteenth, of the moon, "cum duris intentionibus" -- which perhaps means "obstinately". These lasted from the reign of Aeda Allain (Aodh Slaine) to that of his two sons (Blathmac and Diarmait, c. 599-665). The meaning seems to be that the first order celebrated a form of Mass introduced by St. Patrick, the second and third orders used partly that Mass and partly one of British origin, and in the case of the third order Roman modifications were also introduced. Though we have no direct evidence one way or the other, it would seem probable that St. Patrick, who was the pupil of St. Germanus of Auxerre and St. Honoratus of Lerins, brought with him a Mass of the Gallican type, and it is clear that the British Mass introduced by Sts. David, Gildas, and Cadoc differed from it, though to what extent we have no means of knowing. The "unam celebrationem" of the first order and the "diversas regulas" of the second and third probably both refer to the Divine Office, and we may take the authority of the eighth-century tract in Cott. MS. Nero A. II for what it is worth in its not improbable statement that St. Germanus taught the "Cursus Scottorum" to St. Patrick, who certainly was under his instruction for some time. The working of the "Catalogus" seems to imply that the first and second orders were Quartodecimans, but this is clearly not the meaning, or on the same argument the third order must have been partly Sextodecimans -- if there were such things -- and moreover we have the already mentioned statement of St. Wilfred, the opponent of the Celtic Easter, at the Synod of Whitby, that such was not the case. Tirechan can only mean what we know from other sources: that the fourteenth day of the moon was the earliest day on which Easter could fall, not that it was kept on that day, Sunday or weekday. It was the same ambiguity of expression which misled Colman in 664 and St. Aldhelm in 704. The first and second orders used the Celtic tonsure, and it seems that the Roman coronal tonsure came partly into use during the period of the third order. After that we have an obscure period, during which the Roman Easter which had been accepted in South Ireland in 626-28, became universal, being accepted by North Ireland in 692, and it seems probable that a Mass on the model of the Carlsruhe and Piacenza fragments and the Stowe and Bobbio Missals, that is to say a Roman Canon with some features of a non-Roman type came into general use. But it was not until the twelfth century that the separate Irish Rite, which, according to Gilbert, Bishop of Limerick (1106-390), was in use in nearly all Ireland, was abolished. St. Malachy, bishop of Armagh (1134-48), began the campaign against it, and at the Synod of Cashel, in 1127, a Roman Rite "juxta quod Anglicana observat Ecclesia" was finally substituted.
In Scotland there is very little information. The intercourse with Ireland was considerable, and the few details that can be gathered from such sources as Adamnan's Life of St. Columba and the various relics of the Scoto-Northumbrian Church point to a general similarity with Ireland in the earlier period. Of the rite of the monastic order of the Culdees (C‚li D‚ or Goillidhe-D‚, servants of God, or possibly Cultores Dei) very little is known, but they certainly had a rite of their own, which may have been similar to the Irish. The Roman Easter and tonsure were adopted by the Picts in 710, and at Iona in 716-18, and much later, in about 1080, St. Margaret of Scotland, wife of King Malcolm III, wishing to reform the Scottish church in a Roman direction, discovered and abolished certain peculiar customs of which Theodoric, her chaplain and biographer, tells us less than we could wish. It seems that the Scots did not begin Lent on Ash Wednesday, but on the Monday following. This is still the Ambrosian practice. They refused to communicate on Easter Day, and the arguments on the subject make it seem as if the laity never communicated at all. In some places they celebrated Mass "contra totius Ecclesiae consuetudinem, nescio quo ritu barbaro". The last statement may be read in connection with that in the Register of St. Andrew's (drawn up 1144-53), "Keledei in angulo quodam ecclesiae, quae modica nimis est, suum officum more suo celebrant". How much difference there may have been cannot be judged from these expressions. Scotland may have retained a primitive Celtic Rite, or it may have used the greatly Romanized Stowe or Bobbio Mass. The one fragment of a Scottish Rite, the Office of the Communion of the Sick, in the Book of Deer, probably eleventh century, is certainly non-Roman in type, and agrees with those in the extant Irish books.
In 590 St. Columbanus and his companions invaded the Continent and established monasteries throughout France, South Germany, Switzerland, and North Italy, of which the best known were Luxeuil, Bobbio, St. Galen, and Ratisbon. It is from the Rule of St. Columbanus that we know something of a Celtic Divine Office. These Irish missionaries, with their very strict rule, were not altogether popular among the lax Gallican clergy, who tried to get them discouraged. At a council at Macon, in 623, certain charges brought by one Agrestius were considered. Among them is the following: "In summƒ quod a caeterorum ritu ac norma desciscerent et sacra mysteria sollemnia orationum et collectarum multiplici varietate celebrarent". There has been more than one interpretation of this phrase, some holding, with Pope Benedict XIV, that it refers to the use of many collects before the Epistle, instead of the one collect of the then Roman Missal, others that it implies a multiplicity of variables in the whole Mass, analogous to that existing in the Hispano-Gallican Rite. The Columbanian monasteries gradually drifted into the Benedictine Order.
The ultimate origin of the various prayers, etc., found in the fragments of the Celtic Rite in the books of private devotion, such as the Book of Cerne, Harl. MS. 7635, and MS. Reg. 2. A. xx, which are either Irish or have been composed under Irish influence, is still under discussion. The Turin Fragment and the Bangor Antiphoner (See BANGOR, ANTIPHONARY OF) contain for the most part pieces that are either not found elsewhere or are only found in other Irish books. The Book of Cerne is very eclectic, and pieces therein can also be traced the Gelasian, Gregorian, Gallican, and Spanish origins, and the Stowe Missal has pieces which are found not only in the Bobbio Missal, but also in the Gelasian, Gregorian, Gallican, Spanish, and even Ambrosian books. The general conclusion seems to be that, while the Irish were not above borrowing from other Western nations, they originated a good deal themselves, much of which eventually passed into that composite rite which is now known as Roman. This seems to be a rough statement of the opinion of Mr. Edmund Bishop, who is the soundest English authority on the subject, which involves the much larger question of the origin and development of all the Western rites. |
