Forms: 3–6 collecte, 4–6 colect, 5– collect. Also (in sense 3) 5 collete, colet, 5–6 colett(e, 6 collette, collet. [In sense 3, a. F. collecte (= Pr. collecta, Sp. colecta, It. colletta), ad. L. collecta sb., a gathering together, (1) in Classical Lat. a collection of money or taxes, (2) in late L. (Jerome) an assembly or meeting, (3) in med.L. in the liturgical sense (which was the first in English): f. collectus pa. pple. of colligĕre to gather together, COLLECT. (The formation is parallel to that of Romanic sbs. in -ata, -ada, -ée.) In OF. it had the semi-popular form coleite (later coloite) whence ME. collete, as well as the learned collecte, adapted from the L. collecta, familiar in ecclesiastical use. Senses 1 and 2 were prob. directly from Latin, but they were merely extensions of the earlier use of collecte as representing L. collecta in sense 3. Sense 4 is a later adaptation of the Latin.]
† 1. The action of collecting; a collection (of money). Obs.
1389. Wyclif, 1 Cor. xvi. 1. Of the collectis, or gaderingis of moneye [Vulg. de collectis], that ben maad.
1401. Pol. Poems (1859), II. 88. So dide Poul and other disciples, and lyvede of colectis made generali bi chirchis.
1430. Lydg., Chron. Troy, IV. xxxiv. That the collecte made be anone.
1560–78. Bk. Discipl. Ch. Scot. (1621), 46. We have thought good for building and upholding of the places, a generall collect be made.
b. Rendering of med.L. collecta in sense of ‘fee collected or jointly contributed.’
1831. Sir W. Hamilton, Discuss. (1853), 407. The regents were entitled to exact from their auditors a certain regulated fee (pastus, collecta)…. Salaries were sometimes given to certain Graduates, on consideration of their delivery of ordinary lectures without collect.
† 2. A meeting, assembly; esp. for worship. Obs.
1382. Wyclif, Neh. viii. 18. Thei maden solempnete seuene daȝes, and in the eiȝthe a colect [Vulg. collectam], after the custum.
1725. trans. Dupin’s Eccl. Hist. 17th C., I. V. 99. He remarks that the word Collect signifies commonly the Assembly of the Faithful.
1728. H. Herbert, trans. Fleury’s Eccl. Hist., I. 528. He asked him if he had assisted at the Collect, i. e. the assembly.
3. Liturgical. A name given to ‘a comparatively short prayer, more or less condensed in form, and aiming at a single point, or at two points closely connected with each other,’ one or more of which, according to the occasion and season, have been used in the public worship of the Western Church from an early date. Applied particularly to the prayer, which varies with the day, week, or octave, said before the Epistle in the Mass or Eucharistic service, and in the Anglican service also in Morning and Evening Prayer, called for distinction the Collect of the day.
As to the origin and history of the term, we are indebted mainly to the Rev. F. E. Warren, M.A., for the following notes: the Gregorian Sacramentary (ed. Muratori, 22, 28, 116) has in one place oratio ad collectam, and twice simply collecta (to which also the first is shortened in later copies), as the title of a prayer said at one of the appointed stations where the people collected in order to proceed together to the church where mass was said. Here the meaning was ‘a prayer for (or at) the collection or gathering.’ But of even earlier date is the use, in the Gallican liturgies, of collectio, passing later into collecta, as a title of prayers, especially those of the mass, in which the sense was evidently the collecting or summing up in a prayer of the thought sketched out in the Rogatio or bidding, or suggested by the capitula for the day. It was from this source that the term, as a more or less general equivalent for oratio, passed into the mediæval French and English missals and breviaries (see Paris Brev. 1836, Rubricæ Generales xii; Rituale Dunelmensis (Surtees Soc.), passim; Sarum Breviary (ed. 1882), Index, Sarum Missal (Burntisl. 1861) 3; Hereford Missal p. xxxv; York Missal (Surtees), I. 169, etc.), and thence, again, into the Book of Common Prayer, where it is the title of such prayers as were taken directly from the Breviary or other Service-books of the Sarum use, and of new compositions of the same type. Neither collecta nor collectio occurs as a title, or in a rubric, in the Roman Missal or Breviary, or in any authorized Roman Service-books; but the term is popularly applied, at least in France and England, to ‘the prayer in the Mass, after the Gloria and before the Epistle’ (see Catholic Dict., s.v.; also Littré).
It does not appear that there was any original connection between the Roman and Gallican uses of collecta here mentioned; but from an early period etymologizing writers tried to connect them, so as to derive the collect from both at once: see the Micrologus (c. 1100) iii., of Gallican authorship, Joh. Bekethus Divin. Offic. Explicatio (a. 1200) xxxvii., Durandus Rationale Div. Off. (a. 1300) IV. xv. § 13; see also Dict. of Christian Antiq. s.v., and Canon Bright ‘On the Collects’ in the Prayer-Book Commentary (S. P. C. K.).
a. 1225. Ancr. R., 20. To þe collecte of euerich tide, & to þe Letanie.
14[?]. St. Gregory’s Trental, 220, in Pol. Rel. & L. Poems (1866), 91. Þe preste moste say in his masse … Þe colette þat fyrst y of tolde.
1454. E. E. Wills (1882), 133. xij mark for to syng for me with a special Colett.
1526. Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W., 1531), 259 b. Whan he sayth the Collettes.
a. 1530. Myrr. our Ladye, 134. Yt is also called a Collecte that is as moche to saye a gatherynge togyther, for before thys prayer ye … gather you in onhed to pray in the person of holy chirche.
1549. (Mar.) Bk. Com. Prayer, Order read. Scriptures. The Collect, Epistle, and Gospell, appoynted for the Sundaie.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Collect … more particularly, it is the Priests prayer in the Mass, so called because it collects and gathers together the supplications of the multitude, speaking them all with one voice; and because it is a collection and sum of the Epistle and Gospel for the day.
1672. Comber, Comp. Temple, i. § 20 (R.). I may add … my own conjecture, that these prayers have been named collects from their being used so near the time of making the collection before the Holy Communion.
1710. C. Wheatley, Illustr. Bk. Com. Prayer (1794), 145. The second Collect, for Peace … word for word, translated out of the Sacramentary of St. Gregory.
1856. Mrs. Browning, Aur. Leigh, I. 392. I learnt the collects and the catechism.
187[?]. Bright, in Prayer-bk. Comm., 85. Some prayers which are essentially Collects, such as ‘O God, whose nature’ … are not so named in the rubrics.
† 4. concr. That which is collected; a collection, gathering. Obs.
1651. Jer. Taylor, Holy Dying, i. § 2 (1727), 15. That Collect of Tuscan Hieroglyphicks.
1681. W. Robertson, Phraseol. Gen. (1693), 343. Collects or gatherings out of others works, eclecta.
1847. Medwin, Life Shelley, I. 14. The Saturday’s meal, a sort of pie, a collect from the plates during the week.
