The further supplement: et omnibus orthodoxis atque catholicae et apostolicae fidei cultoribus, is also first found outside Rome, in Gallic territory,26 and this at a surprisingly early date.27
Who are meant by the orthodoxi? The word could designate simply those who were sound and solid in doctrine, the Catholic Christians.28 The same meaning is conveyed by the complementary phrase, catholicae et apostolicae fidei cultores, a phrase appended in confirmity with a stylistic law of the canon which prefers twin-type expressions. The only difference is that the latter phrase designates in the first place those who esteem the Catholic and apostolic faith and who consciously profess it.30 The first-named cultores fidei are obviously, then, the shepherds of the Church, the bishops. A confirmatory argument to show that they, and not simply the faithful, are meant by the double expression, is found in the construction una cum, which would otherwise be meaningless; may God, we say, protect the Church (which is composed of the faithful as a unit), along with the pope and all those who, as faithful pastors, have a part in her governance.31
But in more recent times, when the tautology that arose in connection with Ecclesia tua was no longer sensed, the expression was taken to refer to all the faithful; it was opposed as superfluous, for example, by Micrologus, adducing the rather poor argument, among others, that the Memento followed.32
________________________________________________________________________________________
[Footnotes to this excerpt:]
26Bishop, Liturgica historica, 82.
27In the Bobbio Missal (about 700) the entire addition has the following form: una cum devotissimo famulo tuo ill. papa nostra sedis apostolicae et antistite nostro et omnibus orthodoxis atque catholicae fidei cultoribus. Lowe, The Bobbio Missal (HBS, 58), n. 11; Muratori, II, 777. Cf. also the study of B. Capelle, "Et omnibus orthodoxis atque catholicae fidei cultoribus," Miscellanea hist. Alb. de Mayer, I (Louvain, 1946), 137-150. Capelle advocates the assumption that the supplement belonged to the original text of the canon, but that it was deleted by Gregory the Great. See Eph. liturg., 61 (1947), 281 f.
28Orthodoxus in opposition to haereticus, e.g., in Jerome, Ep., 17, 2.
29The expression was current in the 5th century. Gelasius, Ep., 43 (Thiel, 472); the pope designates himself minister catholicae et apostolicae fidei.
30Cyprian, Ep., 67, 6 (CSEL, 3, 740, 1.11): fidei cultor ac defensor veritatis (regarding a bishop). There is an undertone of conscious pride in the inscription Quis tantas Christo venerandas condidit aedes, Si quaeris: cultor Pammachius fidei, at the entrance to the Basilica of John and Paul. Here the expression certainly does not designate a bishop.--Brinktrine, Die hl. Messe, 176, refers to the parallel cultor Dei, II Macc. 1:19; John 9:31. He therefore clings to the interpretation of this phrase as referring to all the faithful.--A. Mauretanian inscription of the 3rd century designates the Christian as cultor verbi; C. M. Kaufmann, Handbuch der altchristlichen Epigraphik (Freiburg, 1917), 127.
31Cf. Capelle, loc. cit., who stresses the tautology that would otherwise ensue. Moreover, concerning the names of bishops of leading metropolises must have been customary in the 5th century in Rome as well as elsewhere; this is obviously to be deduced from a writing of Leo the Great to the Patriarch of Constantinople,, Ep., 80, 3 (PL, 54, 914f.). Cf. Kennedy, The Saints, 24; Duchesne, Christian Worship, 179f. In the 11th century there are again reports regarding attempts to introduce the practice; see Martene, 1, 4, 8 (I, 403E). The Missa Illyrica, which belongs to this period, seems to have so construed our formula, when it gives its version: et pro omnibus orthodoxis atque catholicae fidei cultoribus, pontificibus et abbatibus, gubernatoribus et rectoribus Ecclesiae sanctae Dei, et pro omni populo sancto Dei: Martene, 1, 4, IV (I, 513 C).
32Bernold of Constance, Micrologus, c. 13 (PL, 151, 985). Bernold's reasoning is not pertinent, because in the Memento the prayer is said only for the offerants and those present, whereas we are considering prayers for the faithful of the whole Church in general; thus also H. Menard, PL, 78, 275B--The Sacramentarium Rosianum (10th cent.; ed. Brinktrine [Freiburg, 1930], p. 74) has the specific addition omnium videlicet catholicorum joined to famularumque tuarum.
[from Joseph Jungmann, S.J., The Mass of the Roman Rite, II (1955), 156-157.]
top