Library › Latin: Early Christian Writings › Orationes in Missa Sancti Fidelis
This brief liturgical text gives the prayers for Mass on the feast of Saint Fidelis, martyr. It contains the collect, the secret prayer over the offerings and the postcommunion for one Mass, followed by a second set, “alia missa,” for the vigil. The prayers ask that the patronage of the blessed martyr Fidelis may protect the frailty of the faithful by his merits and prayers, that he may make the sacrifice acceptable, and that his intercession may defend those who have received the sacrament. The text is about 120 words long.
Proper prayers of this kind were composed for the feasts of local saints in the style of the Roman sacramentaries, with their short balanced clauses and formal endings. These prayers belong with the passion and the sung Mass texts for Fidelis of Como edited together, and show how the saint was honoured in the liturgy. Their date is uncertain. Their brevity makes them a convenient introduction to the language of Latin liturgical prayer.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from the Mirabile Digital Library of SISMEL and the Fondazione Ezio Franceschini, Florence (edition: Licciardello, Pierluigi, Corpus 24, Mirabile Digital Library (Corpus Corporum), Firenze 2012), through Corpus Corporum (University of Zurich). Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.