In 1921, Anton Baumstark delivered two lectures on the development of the Roman Rite to a gathering at the Abbey of Maria Laach. Abbot Ildefons Herwegen offered to publish those lectures, but Baumstark decided to write a book on the topic instead, which was published two years later as On the Historical Development of the Liturgy. It would be another sixteen years before he produced Comparative Liturgy, for which he is better known. Together the two books lay out Baumstark's liturgical methodology. Comparative Liturgy presents his method; On the Historical Development of the Liturgy offers his model. For nearly a century, On the Historical Development of the Liturgy has been valued by specialists in the field of liturgical studies, both for its description of comparative liturgy and for the portrayal of patterns Baumstark discerns in liturgical development. Also significant are the hypotheses Baumstark proposes and the evidence he brings to bear on problems in liturgical history. In this annotated edition, Fritz West provides the first English translation of this work by Anton Baumstark.

Monasticism, in all of its variations, was a feature of almost every landscape in the medieval West. So ubiquitous were religious women and men throughout the Middle Ages that all medievalists encounter monasticism in their intellectual worlds. While there is enormous interest in medieval monasticism among Anglophone scholars, language is often a barrier to accessing some of the most important and groundbreaking research emerging from Europe. The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West offers a comprehensive treatment of medieval monasticism, from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. The essays, specially commissioned for this volume and written by an international team of scholars, with contributors from Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, cover a range of topics and themes and represent the most up-to-date discoveries on this topic.

Stories of the torture and execution of beautiful Christian women first appeared in late antiquity and proliferated during the early Middle Ages. A thousand years later, virgin martyrs were still the most popular female saints. Their legends, in countless retellings through the centuries, preserved a standard plot—the heroine resists a pagan suitor, endures cruelties inflicted by her rejected lover or outraged family, works miracles, and dies for Christ. That sequence was embellished by incidents emblematic of the specific saint: Juliana's battle with the devil, Barbara's immurement in the tower, Katherine's encounter with spiked wheels. Karen A. Winstead examines this seemingly static story form and discovers subtle shifts in the representation of the virgin martyrs, as their legends were adapted for changing audiences in late medieval England.

Volume I consists of three parts: Preliminary Notions," "Historical Overview of the Liturgy," and "Liturgical Sources." Articles and their contributors include "A Definition of Liturgy," by Anscar J. Chupungco, OSB; "Liturgical Families in the East," by Ephrem Carr, OSB; "Liturgical Families in the West," by Gabriel Ramis; "Bible and Liturgy," by Renato De Zan; "Liturgy and the Fathers," by Basil Studer, OSB; "Liturgy and Ecumenism," by Patrick Lyons, OSB; "History of the Liturgy Until the Fourth Century," by Anscar J. Chupungco, OSB; "History of the Eastern Liturgies," by Manel Nin, OSB; "History of the Roman Liturgy Until the Fifteenth Century," by Anscar J. Chupungco, OSB; "History of the Roman Liturgy from the Sixteenth Until the Twentieth Centuries," by Keith F. Pecklers, SJ; "History of the Liturgies in the Non-Roman West," by Jordi Pinell I Pons, OSB; "Liturgical Documents of the First Four Centuries," by Basil Studer, OSB; "Byzantine Liturgical Books," by Elena Velkova Velkovska; "Other Liturgical Books in the East," by Manel Nin, OSB; "Liturgical Books of the Roman Rite," by Cassian Folsom, OSB; "Liturgical Books of the Non-Roman West," by Gabriel Ramis; "Liturgical Textual Criticism," by Renato De Zan; "Criticism and Interpretation of Liturgical Texts," by Renato De Zan; "Translation of Liturgical Texts," by Anscar J. Chupungco, OSB; and "Liturgical Law," by Frederick R. McManus. More than forty authors from Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, and Eastern and Western Europe have contributed to the Handbook. Many are professors and graduates of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute in Rome. Each author, while drawing material from liturgical tradition and from ancient, medieval, and modern sources, writes also from a particular research and personal interest in a subject. Although diverse in style, the authors collectively express a spirit of fidelity to the Church, to its doctrine and tradition, and to its mission. The result is a cohesive view of the meaning, purpose, and celebration of Christian worship.

How great the differences between the Last Supper celebrated by Jesus and a pontifical High Mass at St. Peter's in Rome! And also, between the early baptisms by immersion described in the Acts of the Apostles and the baptisms of newborns in our parishes today. Why such a change in the celebration of the Christian mystery? Why the recent reforms, often misunderstood? In History of the Liturgy, Marcel Metzger answers such questions and offers an understanding of this evolution through a carefully documented historical survey. The essential forms of the liturgy were fixed very early according to the tradition received from the apostles. But the place given to biblical readings, teaching, singing, and ritual has varied in the course of the centuries. In History of the Liturgy, Metzger describes the most important phases of these changes. In describing the first millennium, he focuses on liturgy's essentials common to the Eastern and Western Churches. In describing the second millennium, he explains the deviations of the Western Churches which called for the effort of reform and renewal begun by Vatican II. Metzger studies the development of the liturgical institutions and distinguishes liturgy's five main stages that correspond to the situations of the Churches in ancient, medieval, and modern societies. He begins by focusing on the apostolic period, roughly the first century of our era, until the death of the apostles. He follows by studying the period of minorities and semi-clan destiny until the beginning of the fourth century. He then focuses on the Peace of the Church," which grants public status to the churches in the Empire, fosters their growth, and organizes the collaboration between Empire and Church. The work concludes by studying the stability, rigidity, renewals, and reforms of the Roman liturgy, from the end of the Middle Ages to Vatican II. This clear and accurate survey of the history of liturgy is designed to awaken readers' interest, on a solid yet introductory level, in the realities that have made and still make up the Church's liturgical life: assemblies, Eucharist, baptism, reconciliation, dally praise, the Church's calendar, and its architecture. In History of the Liturgy, Metzger stresses that if history is the teacher of life, the eyes of Christian faith allow us to recognize in it as well the mysterious presence of God, who, through the Spirit, guides his people. And this happens, above all, in the liturgy. "