The development of liturgical books: From freedom to formula and books of the Roman Rite

The Mandate of Jesus at the Last Supper, do this in memory of me , initiated a ritual action in the Christian community that was able to be continued because they were the inheritors of many generations of a family practice which did not rely on books or texts. They just did it. Even today, the oldest extant text of a Passover celebration dates from the ninth century AD. That means nearly two thousand years of old traditions happened before rituals and texts were prescribed by written texts. The received tradition was the empowering drive to continue the family practice. Pastoral Liturgy is published by the University of Notre Dame Australia, School of Philosophy and Theology, Fremantle