This 'qui uiuis' is in striking contrast with the 'per' and 'per dominum' of the reprints; as also is that in the re-written Oratio on fol. 8. It is hard to believe that so necessary an ending as ours can have been wilfully replaced by even the most retrograde scribe that ever lived in critic's fancy. Nor need we conjure up such people. The eleventh of our typical instances, and the frequent occurrence of the inaccuracy in the Verona book, justify the belief that 'per' had been imported direct from the prae-Gregorian repertory into Gregory's first text of his Sacramentary, both here and in the previous instance just cited from the Mass for the Third Sunday in Advent.

But, more interesting by far than these is the difference between the 'actione' of the Corpus MS. and the 'prauitate' of other copies. And here let me remark in passing that this case need not necessarily be an exception to any general rule of equivalent textual substitution; for the vowels of the second and fourth syllables of the uncial PRAVITATE may very well have been enclavées in the preceding consonants, thus reducing the word to the dimensions of an average vocable of seven letters. But, however this may be, the question that now concerns us is, If either of the competing words be a Gregorian substitute for the other, which of the two is it?

Now, nothing would seem to be more proper to St Gregory than the use of 'actio' in the sense of 'life' or 'conduct'; as when he says in the second chapter (§ 5) of the Preface to the 'Moralia' 'ex uita gentilium redarguitur uita sub lege positorum, atque ex actione saecularium confunditur actio religiosorum'; and again (XXXI. liv.), 'Qui tanta de tua actione locutus es, cur, audita sanctorum uita, siluisti?'

The phrase, too, 'actio nostra' is proper to St Gregory; as where he says, 'Leue quippe uidebitur quod iniuria percutimur dum in actione nostra conspicimus quia peius est quod mereremur,' and 'totam se [intentio nostra] in soliditate aeternitatis figat, ne si extra fundamentum actionis nostrae fabrica ponatur terra dehiscente soluatur1.' But, on the other hand, I cannot in the whole course of the Moralia' find an instance of 'prauitas nostra.'

Of course, it does not follow hence that such a phrase as 'prauitas nostra' was impossible to St Gregory; indeed, he has allowed it to pass on one occasion into the missal (see fol. 31, lin. 11), and seems to have made it his own (see fol. 50 v., lin. 14) on another. But it may well be that he saw that in it which warned him to exercise some caution in his use, or in his adoption, of it.

1 Migne, LXXVI. 545 C, 466 A.

Even as developed and elucidated by the antiphonary, neither of the two masses to which reference has just been made as containing 'prauitas nostra' has a distinctly penitential and self-afflictive character. Hope and confidence are their key-note. There is nothing in them to oblige, or even to invite, the assumption that in the Secreta 'Haec munera...et uincula nostrae prauitatis absoluant et tuae nobis misericordiae dona concilient' the words 'uincula nostrae prauitatis' are to be understood of grievous actual sin rather than of that frailty and proneness to evil, exemption from which cannot be claimed by the best of men, though, but for it, there would be no actual sin. But, on the other hand, the mass for the Saturday in the winter ember-week speaks in unmistakeable terms of 'peccati iugum,' of 'actionis propriae culpa,' of 'flamma uitiorum'; and, in the phrase 'qui iuste pro peccatis nostris affligimur,' distinctly avers that our sins provoke the accurately gauged punishment with which we are visited in our afflictions. The 'actio nostra' of the Corpus MS. is thus in exact harmony with this 'actionis propriae culpa'; and its 'ex nostra actione affligimur' with this 'pro peccatis nostris affligimur.' But no such harmony can be discerned between expressions like 'nostra prauitas' or 'ex nostra prauitate affligimur' and the two phrases just quoted, unless or until we shall understand by 'prauitas' actual sin as distinguished from proneness to evil.

Now, there cannot be the shadow of a doubt that there was a praeGregorian use of 'prauitas' in the sense of actual, as distinguished from original, sin; for the Verona book (XXIX. xv.) has 'Quaesumus, omnipotens Deus, ne multitudinem nostrae prauitatis attendas, sed a peccatis abstrahe...uoluntates.' But there is no reason to believe that St Gregory attached that meaning to the word, to the exclusion of every other meaning; and the account I would suggest of the 'actione' under consideration is, that he made it take the place of 'prauitate' in order thus to elucidate the truth that we are punished for our evil conduct, and that actual sin is visited in the afflictions that befal the regenerate.

And, indeed, a comparison of the passages in which 'affligimur' occurs only serves to confirm the conjecture that (1) 'actione' is the later reading of the two, and that (2) it was made to take the place of 'prauitate' for some such reason as I have intimated :—

fol. 9 v., lin. 10: 'pro peccatis nostris affligimur,'

fol. 28 v., lin. 10: 'ex merito nostrae actionis affligimur,'
fol. 34 v., lin. 9: 'nostris excessibus affligimur.'

And, certainly, the conjecture is supported by the evidence of the 'Moralia.' That treatise not only proves, as I have said, that 'actio nostra' was a Gregorian phrase, but that in the vocabulary of the pontiff 'prauitas' was a word the meaning of which was in many instances to be determined only by the context'. Thus, in one passage we find him tracing prauitas to the nethermost hell; whilst in another he, by a transferred assignation, detects it in the angelic hosts of heaven:- Sed quia Eliu de prauitate singulorum protulit, illico ad ipsum prauitatis auctorem, per quem unumquodque malum oboritur, mentis oculus deflectit' (XXVII. xxv.); 'Prauitas ergo et in angelis reperitur dum ipsos quoque qui ueritatem nuntiant nonnunquam subreptio uitae fallacis grauat' (V. xxxviii.). Sometimes he employs the word in a strictly philosophical sense, as the mere correlative opposite of rectitudo or aequitas; sometimes as the compendium of a wicked life :— 'Sunt nonnulla uitia quae ostendunt in se rectitudinis speciem, sed ex prauitatis prodeunt infirmitate' (XXXII. xxii.); 'iniquus dicitur qui prauitate operis ab aequitate discordat' (XVIII. vi.); ' semper praua agere et tamen, ne opinionem prauitatis habeant, formidolose custodire' (XX. xv.). In one place he speaks of the prauitas of the elect as a sort of natural necessity; in another, of the prauitas of the wicked as a thing for torrents of tears and tempests of contrition:-'Transitorio autem uerbere affligantur electi, ut a prauitate flagella corrigant quos paterna pietas ad haereditatem seruat' (XXI. iv.); 'Quasi enim quidam turbo tempestatis est concitatus spiritus maeroris. Nam dum peccatum quisque quod fecit intelligit, dum prauitatis suae nequitiam subtiliter pensat, ...omnem in se tranquillitatem cordis penitentiae turbine deuastat' (IV. xix.). There is also a passage in which, after saying that 'tunc cor fiduciam in oratione accipit cum sibi uitae prauitas nulla contradicit,' he almost immediately asks, 'Cuius enim cor in hac corruptibili carne consistens in sinistra cogitatione non labitur?...Et tamen haec ipsa praua cogitare peccatum est'; and then distinguishes between 'praua cogitare' or 'peruersa cogitatio,' which he defines as 'peccare' and 'deesse rectitudini'-distinguishes, I say, between 'praua cogitare' and

1 The references for 'prauitas' in Migne are LXXV. 631 D, 632 D, 641 A, 641 C, 648 A, 654 D, 719 B, 895 D, 981 D, 1034 C, 1069 C, 1070 B, 1114 C, 1132 A, 1150 B, 1151 C, 1158 B; LXXVI. 12 D, 36 A, 40 C, 43 A, 43 D, 46 C, 57 A, 115 A, 116 A, 116 C, 153 A, 159 C, 161 C, 164 C, 165 C, 167 C, 167 D, 169 C, 170 B, 193 B, 249 A, 251 D, 337 C, 392 A, 427 D, 471 B, 472 B, 641 A, 662 A, 662 B, 714 C, 764 B.

The references for actio' are LXXV. 519 A, 587 B, 591 A, 618 A, 621 D, 647 D, 720 B, 833 C, 935 C, D; LXXVI. 49 A, 61 A, 73 C, 111 A, 113 C, 118 B, 152 C, 156 C, 157 A, 157 C, 466 A, 484 B, 545 C, 578 B, 579 D, 628 B, 771 A, 1010 A, 1292 C.

'peruersum opus' by classing the latter among the 'peccata quae a iustis uitari possunt,' and the former among the 'nonnulla quae etiam a iustis uitari non possunt.'

But this is not all. In a passage just now quoted (Transitorio autem' &c.) the reader will have perceived an antithesis between prauitas and haereditas. There is another (IV. xi.), in which St Gregory seems by prauitas to understand original sin itself, or the state of nature:'Aurora quippe ecclesia dicitur, quae a peccatorum suorum tenebris ad lucem iustitiae permutatur-quae prauitatis pristinae tenebras deserit, et sese in noui luminis fulgorem conuertit.'

On the whole, then, we are justified in saying that the 'prauitate' in the prayer before us was, from its liability to misinterpretation, the very sort of word which we might expect an authoritative reviser like St Gregory to replace by an explicit and unmistakeable substitute such as 'actione.' A better could not have been chosen; witness the following from the sixth of the second book of the Homiliae in Ezechielem ':'Finem non habent flagella caelestis iustitiae, quia nec inter flagella correctae sunt actionis culpae.'

On perusing the introductory prayers of this mass in the PioClementine, or any other edition of the Missal prior to our own, the reader will observe that, with the sole exception of the 'Deus qui tribus pueris,' they make explicit reference to the expected coming of the Saviour at the feast of the Nativity; and it is hard to believe that, if that particular prayer had in this particular place ever been made to include such reference, the addition would have been allowed to disappear. But, on the other hand, such addition might fairly be looked for, if anywhere, in a book claiming to exhibit the text of a late recension. Such a book is ours: and in our book is found the sort of amplification that was needed to bring the 'Deus qui tribus pueris' into harmony with the other prayers of the group to which it belongs. Our book alone, at fol. 9 v., lin. 13, introduces the clause 'adueniente filio tuo domino nostro' into the apodosis of the sentence.

I think, nevertheless, that this ablative clause and also the reading, at line 18, of 'deus' instead of 'domine deus,' are instances of technical, as distinguished from literary or theological, change; and therefore, beg leave to postpone their further consideration to another chapter. They are notes of a fresh transcription; not merely proofs of a later redaction.

But, on the seventeenth line of the verso of fol. 9, we have a preferable reading, independent of and, as I should suppose, antecedent to the

transcription to which allusion has just been made. I refer to our 'commercia,' as against 'mysteria,' in the Secreta Aecclesiae tuae domine munera sanctifica, et concede ut per haec ueneranda commercia pane caelesti refici mereamur, per.' The like change of 'mysteria' into 'commercia' has been suggested, by a hand not as yet identified, in the following prayer of the Verona book (IX.),—' Exaudi nos Deus salutaris noster, quia per haec sacrosancta mysteria (commercia) in totius ecclesiae confidimus corpore faciendum quod eius praecessit in capite.' One would suppose that, in one case as in the other, 'commercia' must be the later, 'mysteria' the earlier, of the two readings; for 'commercia' is so appropriate in a Secreta which, like the present, embodies the idea of a sacred transaction between worshippers and Worshipped as to make it hard to believe that any one would think of dislodging it in favour of a less suitable substitute like 'mysteria.' This idea of a sacred transaction is developed and expressed with both brevity and clearness in another of the Verona prayers (VIII. xxiii.),—' Exercentes Domine gloriosa commercia offerimus quae dedisti ut te ipsum mereamur accipere. Per'; but with far less of theological accuracy and point than in this of ours1.

The 'homo unigenitus refulsit deus' at fol. 11 v., lin. 18, and the 'protomartyre' in the re-written Postcommunion on fol. 13, have, as compared with 'genitus' and 'martyre,' the same quality of superiority which would seem to denote a painstaking recension. It may be well to suggest that 'unigenitus refulsit Deus' has the support of a wellknown variant of a passage in St John's Gospel (I. 18)-'unigenitus Deus qui est in sinu Patris.'

Our Oratio in the mass 'De Sancta Maria,' at fol. 15, lin. 2, is— 'Deus qui salutis aeternae beatae Mariae uirginitate faecunda humano generi praemia praestitisti, praesta quaesumus ut' &c. The alliteration 'praemia praestitisti praesta' is very striking; so, too, is the parallelism of 'praestitisti' said of a blessing in the past and 'praesta' said of a blessing in the future. I should be disinclined, therefore, to attribute 'praesta' to an error in transcription; nor can I think the rival 'tribue' a clerical error, for it is the reading of all the texts hitherto printed. If,

1 The references for commercia' and 'commercium' are LV. 29 C, 37 B, 68 C, 77 A, 148 A, 149 A. For 'ueneranda commercia' in our book see ff. 11 (13), 47 V. (15), 78 v. (9).

Compare also the 'Grata tibi sint Domine munera' and the 'Conseruent nos quaesumus Domine munera tua' in the Secreta and Postcommunion, respectively, of one and the same Mass in Ménard (LXXVIII. 192 D, 193 A).

M. R.

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