In books - both fiction and nonfiction - that deal with the era of Henry VIII/Elizabeth I often speak about nobles and their church-going habits. It’s not at all uncommon for the more pious to be noted as attending mass 8 or even as much as 12 times a day - Queen Katherine, for example, and also Queen Mary, and sometimes Henry VIII himself.
A modern Catholic mass lasts about an hour. If they were attending 8 masses a day, I don’t see how they do anything else, especially considering the elaborate dress and other rituals that they did every day.
So, what gives? It seems obvious that the masses were not as long as modern masses, but nobody every mentions that. And, just to clarify, I’m talking the Catholic masses. Nobody ever mentions the Protestants spending hours every day praying.
That’s not the Mass; that’s the “ordinary” of the Mass – i.e., the unchanging parts which can be sung by a choir, hence what composers compose for.
You can reduce it by omitting any entrance rite, all music, the Creed (required only at the primary weekly Mass and on major feasts), some readings. The intercessory prayers can be skipped if you use a Mass canon that includes intercession (as all masses ‘with intention’ do). The Confiteor can be omitted if all present have been shriven. That cuts you down to the Collect of the Day, one brief reading, offering the elements to God for use in the Mass (this is the heart of the Offertory, though taking up a collection and the choir anthem generally overshadow it), and the Canon of the Mass (Prayer of Consecration), with at least priest communing from the elements. That’s not to say anyone would favor such a ‘stripped’ Mass – just identifying the bare essentials. Even with a few non-essentials left in, it could be knocked off in 20 minutes or so.
One of the things Martin Luther commented upon with disapproval of his trip to Rome was that the Roman priests were regularly saying seven masses in the time it took him to say one.
If it’s a *missa lecta *or ‘low’ mass (i.e. all prayers are read, rather than sung), then a weekday mass in English nowadays wouldn’t go for more than 15-20 minutes, as **Polycarp **notes. I often go to weekday masses at one of the churches here in the city on my way home from work. Mass starts at 5.30pm and I never have any trouble getting to the station several blocks away for a 6.00pm train home.
Masses in the traditional Latin Roman rite (similar to, but not exactly the same as the Sarum rite that was the norm in Henry VIII’s court) take about the same length of time on a weekday if they’re not sung, there’s no sermon, and there are few communicants.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City has mass every 30 minutes on weekdays and holy days, some of which are notated as music masses. I’ve often wondered how they pull this off, but the only time I’ve been there was on a weekday afternoon when there was no mass taking place. Otherwise, I would’ve made a point to attend a quick mass there.
Even on Sunday, there are back-to-back masses at 7, 8 and 9 am. That seems like a tight schedule for a Sunday Mass, even with no music at the two earlier masses. At 10:15, there’s a mass with a choir, which seems to allow for a lot more time, and maybe lunch afterward for the celebrant.
One point to realise is that the Tudor kings and queens attended Mass in two different ways. There was the regular cycle of services in the Chapel Royal on Sundays and the major feast days. These involved a public procession to the chapel and a full-scale Mass of considerable length. But on such days the members of the Royal Family would normally attend only one of those services.
The alternative was for the king or the queen to attend services in their private chapel (their ‘closet’) within their private apartments. Far less is known about those services, but the usual assumption is that Henry VIII attended one Mass there each day and that the services were far shorter.
But it is known that when attending the public services in the Chapel Royal, Henry didn’t just sit listening. There are cases when he is known to have spent the time dictating letters and he may also have read. This was made easier by the fact that, except when taking part directly in the service, he was sitting in an enclosed gallery out of sight of the congregation below. It is also possible that he took the same attitude towards the services in his private chapel.