since 1960, most Western Churches have produced a mixture of revised, alternative and experimental eucharistic liturgies, with one or more eucharistic prayers. It is an impossible task to examine all these prayers (in the past twenty-five years more eucharistic prayers have been composed than in the whole previous history of the Church!). Some of these new prayers have been composed without using the sanctus, and this fact will be considered in the final chapter. In most new prayers, however, the sanctus finds a place. This chapter examines a selection from various traditions to see how it has been utilised, especially in those prayers where it has been given an unusual context.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RITE

Dated 20 March 1970, the Congregation for Divine Worship published the new Roman Missal together with an introduction, the Institutio Generalis. Whereas the Missal of Pius V of 1570 had conserved only the single Roman canon missae, and limited the number of proper prefaces, the Missal of Paul VI, while giving a slight revision of the canon, provided three new eucharistic prayers entitled Eucharistic Prayer II, III and IV respectively; these new prayers had been published in 1968. Eucharistic Prayer II was based upon the anaphora of Apostolic Tradition; III, according to Bouyer, was based upon the Mozarabic and Gallican sources, though Wegman and Mazza feel that its structure is that of the Roman canon, with Antiochene and Alexandrine influence; and IV was modelled upon the Coptic version of St Basil and, more loosely, on West Syrian forms.