In our first issue, we considered the work of Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich. Zwingli brought much needed reform to the Church in Zurich. He produced in the German language two services based on medieval vernacular orders for preaching and for lay communion. In doing this he rejected in total the mass. The effect was to sever the liturgical unity of word and sacrament that had been characteristic of Christian worship since at least the time of Justin Martyr (mid 2nd Century). Yet even this was a massive improvement over the medieval situation where the people rarely heard a sermon and only communed once a year. Regular expositional preaching and quarterly communion was a great improvement in the spiritual life of the church in Zurich.
In this issue we turn our attention from Switzerland to Southern Germany, and in particular, the city of Strasbourg. One of the early reformers there was Diebold Schwarz. Schwarz’ contribution to the reform of the church was the translation and adaptation of the Latin mass in 1524. This predated both Zwingli’s German language services (1525) and Luther’s Deutsche Messe (1524). Luther’s liturgy was also a translation and adaptation of the Latin mass. In fact, almost all of the liturgies produced during the initial Reformation were either translations and adaptations of the Latin mass or adaptations of vernacular preaching and communion orders on the model of Zwingli.
A typical Presbyterian service as we know it today would take three more centuries to be developed. A required liturgy was characteristic of Reformed services until after the Westminster Assembly. Hymns would not begin to replace psalmody until the days of Isaac Watts (18th Century). A return to the public recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed would not occur until the latter half of the 19th Century. From a history of liturgy perspective, a traditional Presbyterian service is really not that traditional. But to return to the 16th Century, the reform in Strasbourg took a very different approach to the liturgy than Zwingli had taken in Zurich.
When Schwarz set about the work of translating the mass into German, the evangelicals controlled only a chapel in the Cathedral, not the main service. The result was that Schwarz translated and revised the medieval low mass, not the high mass. The high mass was the direct medieval descendent of the ancient Roman liturgy. It was a Lord’s Day liturgy designed to be performed by a bishop assisted by priests, deacons and a choir. The low mass was a simplification of this complex liturgy to allow it to be performed by a priest assisted only by a deacon. This was required by the multiplication of Masses that marked the official piety of the medieval western Christianity. The Catholic Church of the eastern half of the Roman empire never allowed such a multiplication of eucharistic services and so never developed a shortened, simplified divine liturgy. In Orthodoxy the Eucharist is celebrated only on Lord’s Day and only one Eucharist is celebrated in any one location. In the West, Masses were said daily or even more frequently. Most of time the form of the mass was the low form. The low mass was essentially a spoken mass that did not require a choir to chant prescribed responses. This would have significant consequences for Reformed approaches to worship as we shall see later. We may note in passing that Luther’s Deutsche Messe was derived from the high or sung mass.
Schwarz’ initial effort did not initially involve a restoration of preaching to the order of the service. The low mass still contained the lectionary structure to support a sermon, but the actual act of preaching had disappeared. Schwarz’ service was only a translation and theological purification of the mass. But Schwarz’ work would undergo a series of refinements and improvements at the hands of Martin Bucer. Bucer’s revisions restored the sermon among other matters. The result was a significant restoration of the liturgical tradition of the ancient Church, namely the union of the liturgy of the word with the liturgy of the supper. This marked the first major difference between Zurich and Strasbourg. In the name of reform, Zwingli severed the tie between preaching and the supper. The liturgy of supper became a separate and occasional liturgy. The liturgy of the sermon became the regular Lord’s Day service of the people of God. In Strasbourg, the Lord’s Day service was a unified liturgy of sermon and supper as it had been in the ancient Church. At first the supper was celebrated each Lord’s Day in all the churches. By the time Calvin sojourned in Strasbourg (1538-1541), the practice would be for the supper to be celebrated weekly in the Cathedral church and monthly in the parish churches. The reason for the shift to monthly celebration (except at the Cathedral) was probably due to the reluctance of the people to partake on a weekly basis when the medieval custom was annual. We will never know how this would have been resolved because Strasbourg reverted to Roman Catholic control as a result of the military victory of Charles V over the Protestant princes. By 1549 Bucer was no longer in Strasbourg but at Cambridge in England. However, the liturgical work of Schwarz and Bucer would have effects beyond Strasbourg and Cambridge.
John Calvin served as pastor of the French speaking congregation in Strasbourg during his exile from Geneva. While engaged in this labor he translated and adapted the German Strasbourg liturgy for the use of his French speaking congregation. After his return to Geneva, he edited and revised his French Strasbourg liturgy for use in Geneva. The Geneva liturgy (derived from the German Strasbourg liturgy which in turn was derived from the Latin low mass) significantly influenced the liturgy of the French Reformed Churches as one would expect. However, it also deeply influenced the Church of Scotland. Just as Calvin served as pastor in Strasbourg during his exile from Geneva, so John Knox served as pastor of the English refugees in Geneva during his exile from Britain in the reign of Mary. Knox produced a liturgy based on Geneva, the Forme of Prayers, that eventually became the official liturgy of the Church of Scotland. In the same era, others translated the Geneva liturgy into English and Latin where it played a role in the controversies over the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. The Strasbourg-Geneva liturgical lineage is very important in the development of Reformed worship both on the continent and in the British Isles. In future issues we will consider the features of the Strasbourg-Geneva family of liturgies.
Dr. Jack Kinneer