It was well known that on the decisions of the sub-committee of the congregation hung the fate of Church music.

For some while it seemed as though music might be altogether expelled from the rites of the Catholic Ecclesia.

And it soon became matter of history that Palestrina had won the cause of his art, had maintained it in its eminent position in the ritual of Rome, and at the same time had opened a new period in the development of modern music by the production of his Mass called the _Mass of Pope Marcellus_ at this critical moment.

These things were true; and when the peril had been overpassed, and the actual circumstances of the salvation and revolution of Church music had been forgotten, the memory of the crisis and the title of the victorious Mass remained to form a mythus.

The story ran that the good Pope Marcellus, who occupied the Holy See for only twenty-two days, in the year 1555, determined on the abolition of all music but Plain Song in the Church; hearing of which resolve, Palestrina besought him to suspend his decree until he had himself produced and presented a Mass conformable to ecclesiastical propriety.