. Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance. it was customary nearly everywhere, in the Westas well as in the East, after having sung the praises of God, to put upprayers for the reigning sovereign and the leading potentates of thecivilised world. For instance, when St. Athanasius cried out in thepresence of the faithful, assembled in the splendid basilica of the Csesars,Let us pray for the safety of the very pious Emperor Constantine, thewhole assembly answered with one resounding voice, Christe, auxiliareConstantio ! ( Help Constantine, 0 Christ! ) L
. Military and religious life in the Middle Ages and at the period of the Renaissance. it was customary nearly everywhere, in the Westas well as in the East, after having sung the praises of God, to put upprayers for the reigning sovereign and the leading potentates of thecivilised world. For instance, when St. Athanasius cried out in thepresence of the faithful, assembled in the splendid basilica of the Csesars,Let us pray for the safety of the very pious Emperor Constantine, thewhole assembly answered with one resounding voice, Christe, auxiliareConstantio ! ( Help Constantine, 0 Christ! ) LITURGY AND CEREMONIES. 207 The preceding examples, and many others that it would be easy to gatherfrom the history of early Christianity, prove that in the fourth century, inFrance, in Italy, in Spain, as well as in the churches of the East and of Africa,Christian worshippers were accustomed to recite either aloud or in a low tone,a set form of prayers, to chant, or rather slowly to intone psalms, and to singhymns. Did not St. Pacome order his monks to recite twice a day a psalmody. Fig. 173.—Painting symbolical of the Catacombs of Rome: Jesus Christ, represented as Orpheus,fascinating with the sound of his lyre the wild and domestic animals, as also the trees, whichare bending towards him to listen—Fresco of the First or Second Century, from the Cemeteryof Domitilla. which was composed of psalms interspersed with prayers? Did not St. Hilaryof Poictiers lay the foundations of the Gallican liturgy, as St. Ambrose didthose of the Lombard liturgy, at the time that St. Chrysostom and revised the liturgies of the Eastern and African Churches ? It was generally the custom to follow the precepts of the so-calledApostolical Constitutions, a primitive work that was supposed to date fromthe second century. These Constitutions ordered the psalms to be recited to 208 LITURGY AND CEREMONIES. the congregation in the morning, at the third, the sixth, and the ninth hoursof the
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