explanations of the Mass, that the prayer was called the Collect because the priest “collected” the petitions of the faithful, we can only regard such an interpretation as silly and unhistorical; the same could be said equally well of all, or, at any rate, of most of the prayers of the Mass. The term _sacramentum_ or _sacramenta_ served also not unfrequently as a name for the Mass,[842] and so gave rise to the name _sacramentarium_, generally given to the missal in ancient times. In addition to these names, _oblatio_ and _sacrificio_ were especially employed as having the advantage of adequately expressing the essential character of the rite. The former was the particular favourite of Tertullian, the founder of Latin ecclesiastical terminology, and afterwards of St Cyprian, but it may be said to belong to all writers and to all periods.[843] St Augustine, who had already propounded a formal theory of the sacrifice of the Mass, shows a preference for _sacrificium_.[844] When we turn to the word _missa_, we must not treat it as a participle, even in the _Ite missa est_, for there is nothing with which the feminine participle can agree, and so it must be a substantive. In order to explain the meaning of this substantive, and to show how it acquired its position as the technical term for the most sacred act of the Church’s worship, requires an excursus dealing with the matter from the point of view of etymology, patrology, and liturology. As regards the etymology of the word, attempts have been made from time to time to derive _missa_ from the Hebrew, (‎‏מסּה‎‏ Deut., xvi. 10), in the belief the name must be as old as the thing it signifies, an attempt abandoned as absurd at the present day.[845] A better idea was that of the mediæval liturgists who explained the word as equivalent to _transmissio_ in the sense of the offering up and presentation of the oblation before God. But fortunately there is one man, thoroughly conversant at first hand with primitive usages and terminology, who has left us an explanation of the word and of the origin of its application to the sacrifice of the altar. Bishop Avitus, of Vienne († 518), flourished at the period between the ages of antiquity and the mediæval period, and is, therefore, a reliable witness in this matter. He was asked by his sovereign, King Gundobad of Burgundy, what was the meaning of the word _missa_, and replied that _missam facere_ was the same as _dimittere_, and was used by the Romans at both audiences in the royal palace and sittings of the law courts to intimate to the assembly that the audience or session was at an end and that they were free to depart; it was used in the same way in the churches. Avitus[846] himself uses _missa_ simply for divine service.