Since Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate, there has been a general upsurge in the literature concerning historical approaches toward a reconstruction of the liturgy and its specific embodiment within the Roman Mass that aims for historiographical accuracy. The late Pope Benedict XVI and his comments on the theological features of the liturgy significantly influenced this novel direction in a historiographical appropriation of the celebration of Mass. Most recently, Uwe Michael Lang’s The Roman Mass: From Early Christian Origins to Tridentine Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022) has provided a detailed synthesis of how the Roman rite of the liturgy developed from its origins in Late Antiquity to the decree that the council fathers at Trent established in 1562 and which had formally recognized the sacrificial character of the Mass and emphasized the doctrine of the Eucharist as well as the importance of its celebration in respect to the broader spectrum of human salvation as debated throughout the sixteenth century.

Lang’s most recent study, A Short History of the Roman Mass, suitably complements the further development of the Roman rite of the liturgical celebration of the Eucharist by demonstrating how liturgical life was conditioned by dynamic alterations and processes of renewal that are still ongoing in the present transition from Francis I’s to Leo XIV’s pontificate. It should, therefore, be noted beforehand that Lang’s comprehensive overview was published almost a year before Pope Francis I’s death on Easter Monday (April 21, 2025). The broad historiographical range of centuries that Lang’s overview considers provides an appropriate account of how the development of the Roman Mass needs to be reconsidered in both historiographical and theological terms. Lang’s Short History offers a comprehensive story of how the Roman Mass developed various forms and shapes throughout its history, ultimately demonstrating in a distilled and precise manner the paradox of how changelessness is achieved through constant alterations. This larger picture of the Roman liturgy that Father Lang concisely describes in his Short History is complemented by glimpses into those persons and events that shaped the history of the Mass. The liturgy is therefore not just a product that emerged from the writings of popes, theologians, and other scribes. Moreover, it represents a unified mirror whose focal points are established through an organic development of institutions and cultures embedded within the kaleidoscopic development of Christianity.

Father Lang’s A Short History of the Roman Mass recaptures these sublime features of the liturgy and its Roman shape that have started to be recovered by the late Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) and his monumental contributions to a “hermeneutical” understanding of how the Roman rite of celebrating Mass developed a continuity through the centuries that was also emphasized in Benedict XVI’s annual Christmas message delivered to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005. Uwe Michael Lang’s comprehensive overview, which might have also carried the title of a “General Introduction to the Historical Shape of the Roman Mass,” proposes a fundamental rethinking of how the Roman rite concerning the celebration of the Eucharist developed throughout its history a particular morphology that had already been substantially formalized in Late Antiquity, but which received a considerable standardization of its Latin liturgical tradition through the Council of Trent in the middle of sixteenth century. The stability created with the Roman Missal of 1570 would last until the Second Vatican Council in the twentieth century, when a considerable program of renewal was gradually coupled with an “organic” understanding of the Mass as Ratzinger would later clarify it in his seminal writings on the liturgy. Father Lang’s brief overview of the developments of the Roman Mass comprises twenty chapters describing how the Roman rite of celebrating the liturgy was progressively shaped. These chapters could be summarized and divided into four major consecutive parts that start with a general overview about the origins of the Mass in the veneration of the Eucharist in Early Christianity, followed by a formative period that also witnessed an extensive production of liturgical books, and which was especially promoted by the increasing significance of the first religious orders, specifically the Benedictines, the Franciscans and Dominicans, that influenced monastic life and the relationship between emperors and popes. One of the strengths of Father Lang’s Short History is its awareness of a critical historical reflection, especially when it comes to presenting the development of the liturgy throughout the Middle Ages: Instead of arguing within an unfunctional narrative of decay and decline, Lang remarkably succeeds in withdrawing from a popular, and largely unfair depiction of the Middle Ages, by proposing to observe the development of the liturgy through the binoculars that shaped Medieval culture significantly, vernacular prayer and preaching (91–96). In this constellation, the Medieval development of the Mass appears to have already established a significant cultural anchorage of the liturgy in the tradition of the historical development of institutionalized Christianity through the papacy and the Roman Curia that the Tridentine Council would then fully exploit by instituting a novelty in the form of celebration of the “High Mass” (Missa solemnis). The Second Vatican Council and its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum concilium) finally paved the road toward implementing processes of renewal that were compatible with the organic evolution of the liturgy in its Roman tradition.

Uwe Michael Lang’s A Short History of the Roman Mass offers a valuable novelty not only for scholars of theology but also for historians working on topics that touch upon the features addressed in Father Lang’s overview. Within the field of liturgical studies specifically, A Short History of the Roman Mass will considerably amplify the scholarship provided by various handbooks and companions, most prominently among those being the five-volume Handbook for Liturgical Studies (ed. Anscar J. Chupungco. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997–2000), which Father Lang’s other works impressively outdate. Lang’s Short History considerably advances our theological perceptions regarding the historical and cultural significance of the Roman liturgy as an organic form of celebrating the sacrament of the Eucharist. Father Lang’s Short History might also provide us with a glimpse into a future sequel to his 2014 Roman Mass that would certainly expand our perception of the historical currents that fashioned and still determine the shape of a Roman legacy of the liturgy.