“Fisher’s own scholarship is a sterling example of the value of getting back to the sources. There is no question that liturgy has been vastly improved today because we have had better contact with its sources. We understand from them how and why people prayed at different times in history, which ceremonies carried over, which were abandoned, and perhaps which should have been abandoned but were not. The field of liturgical history has been extremely helpful in our recent revisions of the rites of Christian initiation.”
Gerard Austin, OP
Rice School for Pastoral Ministry

This reissue of J.D.C. Fisher’s classic work introduces the reader to primary sources that led the author to the theory of disintegration of the primitive Rite of Initiation. His material is covered geographically according to liturgical areas:

• Rome from John the Deacon and the Gelasian Sacramentary to the 12th century

• Milan and Northern Italy from Ambrose to the Ordo of Beroldus

• Gaul and Germany from the 7th–12th century

• Spain from Isidore of Seville to the Mozarabic Liber Ordinum

This work remains required reading for study of the history and theology of Christian initiation.

This title is part of the Hillenbrand Books imprint, classics series.

J.D.C. Fisher was born in 1909. He spent his whole life working as a parish priest as the vicar of St. John the Bptist in Hove, Sussex, England, while pursuing scholarly research and writing in his spare time. He is the author of one other Hillenbrand edition: Christian Initiation: Confirmation Then and Now. He contributed to The Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (Macmillan, 1972) and The Study of Liturgy (Oxford University Press, 1978). Canon Fisher died in 1996.

Paperback, 6 x 9, 226 pages.