What is "canon of the mass"

Ordinary \Or"di*na*ry\, n.; pl. Ordinaries (-r[i^]z).

1. (Law)

   1. (Roman Law) An officer who has original jurisdiction in his own right, and not by deputation.

   2. (Eng. Law) One who has immediate jurisdiction in matters ecclesiastical; an ecclesiastical judge; also, a deputy of the bishop, or a clergyman appointed to perform divine service for condemned criminals and assist in preparing them for death.

   3. (Am. Law) A judicial officer, having generally the powers of a judge of probate or a surrogate.

2. The mass; the common run. [Obs.]

   I see no more in you than in the ordinary Of nature's salework.
   --Shak.

3. That which is so common, or continued, as to be considered a settled establishment or institution. [R.]

   Spain had no other wars save those which were grown into an ordinary.
   --Bacon.

4. Anything which is in ordinary or common use.

   Water buckets, wagons, cart wheels, plow socks, and other ordinaries.
   --Sir W. Scott.

5. A dining room or eating house where a meal is prepared for all comers, at a fixed price for the meal, in distinction from one where each dish is separately charged; a table d'h[^o]te; hence, also, the meal furnished at such a dining room.
   --Shak.

   All the odd words they have picked up in a coffeehouse, or a gaming ordinary, are produced as flowers of style.
   --Swift.

   He exacted a tribute for licenses to hawkers and peddlers and to ordinaries.
   --Bancroft.

6. (Her.) A charge or bearing of simple form, one of nine or ten which are in constant use. The bend, chevron, chief, cross, fesse, pale, and saltire are uniformly admitted as ordinaries. Some authorities include bar, bend sinister, pile, and others. See Subordinary. In ordinary.

   1. In actual and constant service; statedly attending and serving; as, a physician or chaplain in ordinary. An ambassador in ordinary is one constantly resident at a foreign court.

   2. (Naut.) Out of commission and laid up; -- said of a naval vessel.

      Ordinary of the Mass (R. C. Ch.), the part of the Mass which is the same every day; -- called also the canon of the Mass.

Canon of the Mass ( Latin: Canon Missæ, Canon Actionis) is the name given in the Roman Missal, from the first typical edition of Pope Pius V in 1570 to that of Pope John XXIII in 1962, to the part of the Mass of the Roman Rite that begins after the Sanctus with the words Te igitur. All editions preceding that of 1962 place the indication "Canon Missae" at the head of each page from that point until the end of the Mass; that of 1962 does so only until the page preceding the Pater Noster and places the heading "Ordo Missae" on the following pages.

Before 1962 there were divergent opinions about the point where the Canon of the Mass ended. Some considered that it ended where indicated in the 1962 Roman Missal, others where indicated in the earlier editions from 1570 onwards (the end of Mass), others at the conclusion of the Embolism (Libera nos...) that expands on the final "Sed libera nos a malo" petition of the Pater Noster.

The editions of the Roman Missal issued since 1970 use the term "Roman Canon" of the first of its four Eucharistic Prayers, and place the words "Prex Eucharistica" before the dialogue that precedes the Preface, and the new heading "Ritus communionis" before the introduction to the Pater Noster.

For detailed information on the history of the Roman Canon of the Mass, see the article ‘Canon of the Mass’ in the Catholic Encyclopedia, from which the rest of this article has been transcribed.