St. Francis “saved” the old Latin Mass

“The whole of humanity fears, the whole universe trembles and heaven exults,

when on the altar, in the hand of the priest, there is Christ, the Son of the living God.

O wonderful favor! O sublime humility,

that the Lord of the universe, God and Son of God,

so humbles himself as to hide himself for our salvation, under the low form of bread.”

 - St. Francis of Assisi

St. Francis of Assisi “saved”  the old Mass:

In 1223 Saint Francis of Assisi, because of his desire to model his religious life with his followers after Our Lord and His Apostles, instructed his friars to adopt the form of the Mass that was believed to be used by St. Peter himself. St. Francis petitioned Pope Innocent III to adopt this ancient Rite of the Roman Church for his Order of Friars Minor.

St. Francis has been called the “savior” of this older form of the Mass which had fallen into obscurity by that time and was used by the Pope only on the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter (February 22nd). We have come to know this form of the Mass in recent decades as the “Traditional Latin Mass”, now officially referred to as; The Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

For many centuries before the time of St. Francis the Gallican Rite was the commonly used liturgical form of the Mass in the West. The Rule of St. Francis obliges that all clerics perform their duties according to the “Ordo of the Roman Church”, a precise 13th Century liturgical phrase for the Ancient Roman Rite.

Only three known copies of the liturgical books of the ancient Roman Rite were still in existence in 1215, one of which was falling to pieces. Pope Innocent III granted St. Francis’ request and gave him one of the three good surviving copies of the Sacramentum, Lectionary, Rituale and other books.

St. Francis founded his new Order as traveling preachers or “mendicants”. In order to make their traveling apostolate easier the Franciscans later combined the books necessary to celebrate Mass into one volume, that single volume was first published in 1245 and called the Missale Regulare. Pope Innocent IV attempted to reform the liturgy of the Roman Church by introducing this Missal into the Diocese of Rome in the same year, a reform which was widely unpopular with the Roman clergy until 1265 A.D.

Pope Nicholas III was a close collaborator with the superior of the Franciscan Order, St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. Pope Nicholas III, having heard from St. Bonaventure how well received the Missale Regulare of the Franciscan Order was throughout all parts of Europe, decided to take up once again the failed liturgical renewal of Innocent IV by re-establishing the Ancient Roman Rite as the proper Rite of the Diocese of Rome.

This Missale Regulare of 1245, was adopted with very minor alterations for the Diocese of Rome in 1265, and was republished in 1465 as the curial missal. It was this same Missale Regulare that Pope St. Pius V, by his Bull “Missale Romanum” of 1570 established as the official Missal for the Latin Rite. The liturgical decrees of the Ecumenical Council of Trent along with the invention of the printing press almost universalized the reintroduction of this older form of the Mass.

The Bull Missale Romanum granted all Roman Rite priests the perpetual privilege of celebrating the Roman Rite of the Mass according to this Missal.  The continued force of this privilege was confirmed by a commission of Cardinals in 1984 during the pontificate of Blessed John Paul II, reaffirmed and widened by Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical “Summorum Pontificum” on July 7, 2007.

The Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite is profoundly part of the history and charism of the poor man of Assisi and his Order of Friars Minor.

For more on Franciscan history with the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite:

• Fr. Stephan J. P. Van Dijk, The Ordinal of the Roman Church, (Fribourg, 1975), esp. pp. XVI-LXIII  and Msgr. Pierre Batifol, History of the Roman Breviary, (Longmans, Green & Co., New York, 1912), pp. 160-64.
• P.-M. Gy, “L’Unification liturgique de l’occident et la liturgie de la Curie romaine,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 59 (1975) 601-612. Not in UIL.
• Stephen J. P. van Dijk, ed., Sources of the Modern Roman Liturgy: The Ordinals by Haymo of Faversham and Related Documents (1243-1307), 2 vols. (Leiden, 1963). 264.027 C28S STX. “The documents selected represent a revision of the court liturgy … made by and for members of the Order of Friars Minor …”
• Stephen J. P. van Dijk and J. Hazelden Walker, The Origins of the Modern Roman Liturgy. The liturgy of the Papal Court and the Franciscan Order in the Thirteenth Century (Westminster, MD, 1960). 264.02 V28O STX.
• Stephen J. P. van Dijk, The Ordinal of the Papal Court from Innocent III to Boniface VIII and Related Documents(Fribourg, 1975). 264.02 C285O STX.
• Marc Dykmans, Le cérémonial papal de la fin du Moyen Age à la Renaissance (Rome, 1977). 264.02 D9912C STX.
• Bernhard Schimmelpfennig, Die Zeremonienbücher der römischen Kurie im Mittelalter (Tübingen, 1973). 264.02 SCH3Z STX.
• Arsène Le Carou, L’office divin chez les Frères Mineurs aus XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1928). 264.02 L49O STX.
• Franciscus-M. Guerrini, ed., Ordinarium juxta ritum sacri ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum (Rome, 1921). Not in UIL.