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Prosper Guéranger O.S.B. (1805-1875) and the Struggle for Liturgical Unity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Peter Raedts
Peter Raedts*
Affiliation:
University of Nijmegen
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Extract

One of the strongest weapons in the armoury of the Roman Catholic Church has always been its impressive sense of historical continuity. Apologists, such as Bishop Bossuet (1627-1704), liked to tease their Protestant adversaries with the question of where in the world their Church had been before Luther and Calvin. The question shows how important the time between ancient Christianity and the Reformation had become in Catholic apologetics since the sixteenth century. Where the Protestants had to admit that a gap of more than a thousand years separated the early Christian communities from the churches of the Reformation, Catholics could proudly point to the fact that in their Church an unbroken line of succession linked the present hierarchy to Christ and the apostles. This continuity seemed the best proof that other churches were human constructs, whereas the Catholic Church continued the mission of Christ and his disciples. In this argument the Middle Ages were essential, but not a time to dwell upon. It was not until the nineteenth century that in the Catholic Church the Middle Ages began to mean far more than proof of the Church’s unbroken continuity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 35: Continuity and Change in Christian Worship , 1999 , pp. 333 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1999

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References

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11 Originally the Institutions appeared in 3 vols, published in 1840, 1841, and 1851.1 use the 2nd unaltered edn, published in 4 vols (Paris, 1878-85).

12 So for example Gough, Paris and Rome, p. 122.

13 Guéranger, Institutions, 1, pp. lxix-lxx, lxxv.

14 Ibid., 1, p. 200: ‘La liturgie romaine seule est vierge de toute erreur, comme l’Église qui la promulgue.’

15 Ibid., 1, pp. 399-400.

16 Ibid., 1, pp. 30, 33, 36.

17 Ibid., 1, p. 34.

18 Guéranger, Institutions, 1, pp. 154-66.

19 Ibid., I, p. 235.

20 Ibid., 1, p. 243.

21 Ibid., 1, p. 237.

22 Ibid., 1, p. 233.

23 Ibid., 1, pp. 268-70, 278.

24 Guéranger, Institutions, 1, pp. 320, 346-7.

25 Ibid., 1, pp. 391, 396.

26 Ibid., i, pp. I, 99.

27 Ibid., 1, pp. 4-5: ‘Et, comme l’Église est une société, non d’esprits, mais d’hommes, créatures composées d’âme et de corps, qui traduisent toute vérité sous des images et des signes, portant eux-mêmes dans leur corps une forme ineffable de leur âme; dans l’Église, disons-nous, ce céleste ensemble de confession, de prière et de louange, parlé dans un langage sacré, module sur un rhythmc surnaturel, se produit aussi par les signes extérieurs, rites et cérémonies, qui sont le corps de la liturgie.’

28 Ibid., 1, p. 397.

29 Ibid., 1, p. 4.

30 Ibid., 1, pp. 358-68.

31 Ibid., 1, p. 379.

32 Guéranger, Institutions 1, pp. 347-8.

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