Christmas-day. The _Introit_
for the Purification is borrowed from the Eighth Sunday after Trinity.

The compositions either in the Sanctorale or the Temporale of the Mass
that can be definitely dated as introduced after the death of St. Gregory
are very few, and may perhaps have been borrowed, with the Festivals
themselves, from outside by the Roman Church.

It is a reasonable conclusion to draw, then, that the addition of these
portions in the seventh century shows at least a great diminution of
musical productive power, and that the bulk of the Antiphoner of the Mass
must have been composed before this date. This inference is supported by
the conclusion which M. Gevaert draws from his examination of the
Antiphons of Divine Service (_La Melopee Antique_, _p._ 175), viz., that
the Golden Age for compositions of this class was the period 540-600. The
natural deduction from this is that the main settlement of the Antiphoner
of the Mass fell within the same period.

Still it may not have been wholly due to a cessation of musical activity
that new music for the Mass gradually ceased to be written in the course
of the seventh century, for a certain amount of music still continued to
be written for the Hour Services. It may have been due to a feeling that
the book was a closed and settled one after a final and authoritative
revision such as St. Gregory's is traditionally held to have been, and
that it was presumptuous to add to it. But whichever view is taken of
this, the Gregorian tradition is equally supported.

A further support to the claims of Gregory I. as against Gregory II. is
to be found in an examination of the Communions of the Masses of Lent.
These form a series taken from the Psalms in numerical order, I. to
XXVI., with the exception of five for which have been substituted texts
taken from the Gospel. The Thursdays in Lent, however, form an exception
to this scheme; they are interpolations breaking the order of it. Now we
know that they were added by Gregory II.; therefore the original scheme
of the Masses of Lent, at least, was drawn up before the time of Gregory
II. Of the twenty-four pieces contained in the masses for the first six
Thursdays in Lent, twenty-one appear in the Sundays after Trinity. It
seems certain that the Thursdays in Lent must have borrowed from the
Sundays after Trinity, and not _vice versa_; this is supported by the
fact that the Graduals and Offertories of the Thursdays in Lent are all