Going Public: Catholic Calls for the Abolition of the Private Mass in the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

The so-called ‘private Mass’ was a celebration of the Eucharist at which communicants other than the priest were neither expected nor required. As Luther saw, the private Mass formed the mainstay of a vast complex of ritual, personnel, buildings and financial transactions associated with the late mediaeval cult of the dead. The Protestant critique of the private Mass concentrated on its doctrinal foundations: the view that the Mass was an applicable sacrifice and on the doctrine of Purgatory. Their Catholic counterparts tended to respond by defending the same foundations, and paid less attention to the question of whether the late mediaeval ‘multiplication of Masses’ was a legitimate expression of the Catholic tradition. This article examines the works of the humanist Catholic writers who called for the abolition of the private Mass, but continued to defend the idea that the benefits of the Mass could be ‘applied’ to the living and the faithful departed. The attempt at a mediating position, taken by Gerhard Lorich, Beatus Rhenanus, Georg Witzel and Georg Cassander, was relegated to the margins of Catholic orthodoxy by the Council of Trent. However, their writing sheds light on the range of doctrinal possibilities that existed on the eve of an era of confessionalization.