In Defence of the Mass. Muratori, Protestants, and the Catholic Liturgy

The chapter focuses on the history and meaning of a little-known work by Lodovico Antonio Muratori, the “Liturgia Romana vetus” (1748), which has often embarrassed the scholars because of its strong anti-Protestant content. Muratori, in fact, draws inspiration from the edition of three ancient sacramentaries to defend the Catholic doctrine on the Eucharist and the Mass, refuting the objections of the Protestants (mainly those of the Anglican scholar Joseph Bingham) using the textual “proofs” provided by the sacramentaries themselves. By reconstructing the editorial history of the work and its content, the chapter intends to show how the “Liturgia Romana vetus” is not an exception in the context of Muratori’s production, but it is fully consistent with his other works of that period. In particular, it represents a further expression, on a more polemical level, of that same pastoral concern for the liturgy of the Mass and the Eucharist that animates the “Della regolata divozion de’ cristiani”, a book completed only a few months before Muratori began working on the “Liturgia Romana vetus”. The analysis of this work also allows us to clarify the relationship between Muratori and the Protestant world, marked by great tolerance in terms of intellectual debates and a certain flexibility in disciplinary matters, but nonetheless inflexible in the integral defence of Catholic doctrine.