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LITURGICAL DIPTYCHS
The liturgical use of diptychs offers considerable interest. In the early Christian ages it was customary to write on diptychs the names of those, living or dead, who were considered as members of the Church a signal evidence of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. Hence the terms "diptychs of the living" and "diptychs of the dead." Such liturgical diptychs varied in shape and dimension. Their use (sacrae tabulae, matriculae, libri vivorum et mortuorum) is attested in the writings of St. Cyprian (third century) and by the history of St. John Chrysostom (fourth century), nor did they disappear from the churches until the twelfth century in the West and the fourteenth century in the East.
In the ecclesiastical life of antiquity these liturgical diptychs served various purposes. It is probable that the names of the baptized were written on diptychs, which were thus a kind of baptismal register. The "diptychs of the living" would include the names of the pope, bishops, and illustrious persons, both lay and ecclesiastical, of the benefactors of a church, and of those who offered the Holy Sacrifice. To these names were sometimes added those of the Blessed Virgin, of martyrs, and of other saints. From such diptychs came the first ecclesiastical calendars and the martyrologies. The "diptychs of the dead" would include the names of persons otherwise qualified for inscription on the diptychs of the living, e.g. the bishops of the community (also other bishops), moreover priests and laymen who had died in the odour of sanctity.
It is to this kind of diptychs that the later necrologies owe their origin. Occasionally special diptychs were made to contain only the names of a series of bishops; in this way arose at an early date the episcopal lists or catalogues of occupants of sees. Whatever their immediate purpose the liturgical diptychs admitted only the names of persons in communion with the Church; the names of heretics and of excommunicated members were never inserted. Exclusion from these lists was a grave ecclesiastical penalty; the highest dignity, episcopal or imperial, would not avail to save the offender from its infliction. The content of the diptychs was read out, either from the ambo (q. v.) or from the altar by a priest or a deacon. In this respect a variety of customs obtained in different churches and at different periods, sometimes the diptychs were simply laid on the altar during Mass, and when read publicly, such reading did not always occur at the same stage of the Mass.
The order of which traces are now seen in the Roman Canon of the Mass was the fixed usage of the Roman Church as early as the fifth century. In that venerable document a long passage after the Sanctus corresponding to the ancient recitation of the diptychs of the living; it contains, as is well known, mention of those for whom the Mass is offered, of the pope, of the bishop of the diocese, of the Blessed Virgin, and of several saints. At Easter and at Pentecost the Hanc igitur furnished a proper occasion to mention the names of the newly baptized, now mentioned only as a body. Finally the recitation of the "diptychs of the dead" is still recalled by the Memento which for the consecration.
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