Liturgical Changes to the Roman Rite-Part 5
The sacramentaries reached a high degree of organization, and they were spread to the entire West by monks and missionaries, or when requested by local courts(13). Because of the high regard for the Roman Church as being founded by Peter, as well as general discontent with the Gallican liturgy because of its many variations, a process of amalgamation of Roman and Gallo-Frankish liturgies began starting around the 7th century(14). This period of time first saw the rise of books containing the rubrics of the mass (up until this point liturgical books contained texts, but no instructions). The most important of these was the Romano-German Pontifical written in 950 by Benedictines of the Abbey of St. Alban in Mainz. In the second half of the tenth century, the Romano-German Pontifical reached Rome, where it was eagerly adopted due to the dearth of liturgical manuscripts. The Old Roman liturgy in this way returned to Rome in Gallo-Frankish form, and after this it began to spread to other parts of the West, displacing native rites such as the Mozarabic, and the Celtic(15). It is worth noting that the Church in modern times has recognized the importance and equal dignity of different rites, as we read in the document Orientalum Ecclesarium wrote, regarding the Church’s Eastern rites, or in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy(16).
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