Museo Diocesano exhibition

1300-2020 MISSALS IN VENETO'S DOMAIN

Koinè Special opening: Sunday 25th October 7.45pm - 9.00pm

In continuity and ideal opening of the City with the themes of study and analysis proposed by Koinè Ricerca 2020, the Museo Diocesano of Vicenza organises an interesting Exhibition during the days of the fair.

For the first three centuries of Christianity, written formularies didn’t exist and priests used to celebrate the Eucharist formulating their own prayers with creativity.

Not all of them were able to elaborate worships suitable for the celebrations, and that’s the reason why from the IVth century it became essential to write down the prayers.

We can find the first prayers written for the celebration of the Eucharistic and the other sacraments, in the ancient Sacramentari, together with the books of the songs (the Graduale) and the volumes that described all the liturgical actions (the Ordines).

The fusion of all these books in a unique one represented a fundamental passage, since it gave life to the so called “plenary” Missal: this tome gathered all the elements necessary to celebrate the Mass and elected the priest as the only possible celebrant.

The most-known and the most spreaded one, was the plenary Missal that was used by the Roman Curia during the XIIIth century.

The first printed version of the Roman Missal was published in Milan in 1474 and it is considered as the ancestor of all the Missals that will be reunited in the roman edition of 1570. Even from the beginning it was widespread across Christianity, thus facilitating the increase of the number of editions as well as the number of inaccuracies and mistakes.

The Fathers of the Council of Trento were aware of this difficult situation and decided to provide a new edition of the Missal that was published in 1570 and became the only one officially accpeted in Catholic Church. Between the Council of Trento and the Second Vatican Council, the reprinting of the Missal have been various: among them the “typical” editions were printed in 1604, with Clemente VIII, in 1634, with Urbano VIII, in 1884, with Leone XIII, in 1920 with Benedetto XV and in 1962 with Giovanni XXIII.

The 4th of December 1963, with the approval of the Sacrosanctum Concilium, the reform of the Missal and of the other Liturgical Books started. The first results appeared in 1970 when, exactly four centuries after the version re-edited following the criteria of the Council of Trento, the Missal of the Second Vatican Council was published by the authority of Paolo VI.

The first Italian translation of the Roman Missal was printed in 1973, whereas the second came out only ten years later, in 1983, with the text that we’re still using today, awaiting for a new translation.

Free entrance.