Final answer:
In the early Church, before the Roman Missal, prayers were conducted using scrolls, oral tradition, or other forms of written material. The clergy relied on memorization and communal repetition, and the early traditions were more varied and not yet standardized.
Step-by-step explanation:
In the days of the early Church, prayers during the Mass were not said from a Roman Missal as is done today. Instead, clergy would rely on various methods to conduct liturgical services. For instance, in the absence of standardized texts like the Roman Missal, clergy used scrolls or other early forms of written material. Scrolls would often display prayers spoken in the Divine Liturgy and were a practical tool for the clergy to follow the liturgical rites. Furthermore, the practice of lining out hymns and prayers was common, where a preacher or deacon would speak lines of a prayer or hymn, and the congregation would repeat them back, a technique particularly useful when books were not widely available or literacy rates were low. This oral tradition played a significant role in worship and the transmission of liturgical prayers before the creation and adoption of the Roman Missal.
Early Christian worship did not involve animal sacrifices or emperor worship but was rather centered around prayer, communal gatherings, and initiation practices such as baptism. Prayers were possibly composed, memorized, or adapted from various texts available to the clergy, like the 'divine books' in Egyptian religious practices, although they would not have used the Roman Missal explicitly at this time.