In 1921, Anton Baumstark delivered two lectures on the
development of the Roman Rite to a gathering at the Abbey of
Maria Laach. Abbot Ildefons Herwegen offered to publish those
lectures, but Baumstark decided to write a book on the topic
instead, which was published two years later as On the Historical
Development of the Liturgy. It would be another sixteen years before
he produced Comparative Liturgy, for which he is better known.
Together the two books lay out Baumstark's liturgical methodology.
Comparative Liturgy presents his method; On the Historical
Development of the Liturgy offers his model.
For nearly a century, On the Historical Development of the Liturgy
has been valued by specialists in the field of liturgical studies, both
for its description of comparative liturgy and for the portrayal
of patterns Baumstark discerns in liturgical development. Also
significant are the hypotheses Baumstark proposes and the evidence
he brings to bear on problems in liturgical history. In this annotated
edition, Fritz West provides the first English translation of this work by Anton Baumstark.
