Based on Father Adrian Fortescue's famous work The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy, the little book gives a compact history of the Roman Rite of the Mass from the Last Supper to the Traditional Mass ("Tridentine Mass") as it is said today. Michael Davies - the foremost author in English on the changes in the Catholic liturgy - explains the origin of Low Mass, of Sacramentaries, of the Gallican and various other Western Rites, etc. He highlights the reforms of Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604) and Pope St. Pius V (1566-1572), showing how neither "reform" produced a "new" liturgy; rather the liturgical texts were always treated with the upmost reverence, and revisions were always minor. Michael Davies points out that "the very idea of composing a new order of Mass was and is totally alien to the whole Catholic ethos" and that "The Catholic tradition has been to hold fast to what has been handed down and to loOk upon any novelty with the utmost suspicion." Yet this unbroken Catholic tradition was breached in 1970 when the Roman Missal was subjected to radical revision.

The reader will come away from this book with a totally new appreciation for the "Tridentine Mass" as being our sacred and life-giving liturgical heritage - passed down to us from Christian antiquity and intended to be passed on to all Catholic generations yet to come!

• Gradual Development of Ceremonies
• The End of Persecution
• The Gallican Rite
• The Origins of the Roman Rite and its Liturgical Books
• The Canon of the Mass Dates from the 4th Century
• The Reform of St. Gregory the Great
• Eastern and Gallican Additions to the Roman Rite
• A Sacred Heritage Since the 6th Century
• The Reform of Pope St. Pius V
• Not a New Mass
• Revisions after 1570
• Our Ancient Liturgical Heritage

Last modified 27th October, 1997, by David Joyce.