lect, would be
repeated at the beginning of Mass at the station itself. Later writers
find other meanings for the name. Innocent III. says that in this prayer
the priest collects all the prayers of the faithful" (_De Sacr. Altar.
Mystic_. ii., 2). See also Benedict XIV. (_De SS. Missae Sacr_. ii.,
5,--Dr. A. Fortescue, _Cath. Encyl_., art. "collect").

_Antiquity of collects_. No one can say with certainty who the
composers of the collects were. All admit the antiquity of these
compositions. In the fourth century certain collects were believed to
come from apostolic times; indeed, the collects read in the Mass on Good
Friday, for Gentiles, Jews, heretics, schismatics, catechumens and
infidels bear intrinsic notes of their antiquity. Other liturgical
collects show that they were composed in the days of persecution. Others
show their ages by their accurate expression of Catholic doctrine
against, and their supplications for, heretics, Manicheans, Sabbelians,
Arians, Pelagians and Nestorians. St, Jerome in his Life of St. Hilarion
(291-371) writes, "Sacras Scriptures memoriter tenens, post orationes et
psalmos quasi Deo praesente recitabat." It is said that St. Gelasius (d.
496), St. Ambrose (d. 397), St, Gregory the Great (d. 604) composed
collects and corrected existing ones. The authorship and the period of
composition of many of the Breviary collects are matters of doubt and
difficulty. Even the date of the introduction of collects into the
Divine Office is doubtful. In the early Christian Church there seems to
have been one and only one prayer, the _Pater Noster_, in liturgical
use. St. Benedict laid it down in his rule that there should be none
other. It is generally held by students of liturgy that the collects
were originally used in Mass only and were introduced into the Office at
a time much later than their introduction into the Mass books.

In the Masses for Holy Week we see the collects in their oldest existing
form. The rite of the Mass has been shortened at all other seasons, and
there remains now only the greeting, _Oremus_, and the collect itself.
The _Oremus_ did not refer immediately to the collect, but rather to the
silent prayer that went before it. This also explains the shortness of
the older collects. They are not the prayer itself, but its conclusion.
One short sentence summed up the petitions of the people. It is only
since the original meaning of the collect has been forgotten that it has
become