Fourth Century Anaphoral Construction Techniques 9781607243533, 1607243539

Citation preview

Fourth Century Anaphoral Construction Techniques

Gorgias Liturgical Studies

61

This series is intended to provide a venue for studies about liturgies as well as books containing various liturgies. Making liturgical studies available to those who wish to learn more about their own worship and practice or about the traditions of other religious groups, this series includes works on service music, the daily offices, services for special occasions, and the sacraments.

Fourth Century Anaphoral Construction Techniques

John Fenwick

1 gorgias press 2010

Gorgias Press LLC, 180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2010 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2010

1

ISBN 978-1-60724-353-3

ISSN 1937-3252

Published first in the U.K. by Grove Books, 1986.

Printed in the United States of America

Fourth Century Anaphoral Construction Techniques by

John Fenwick Lecturer

in Christian

Worship,

Trinity College,

Bristol

CONTENTS

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Foreword Introduction St. Basil and the origins of the Anaphoras bearing his name The Origins of the Anaphora of St. James The Basiline Methodology—An Example The James Methodology—An Example The Anaphora of St. Basil—Some Conclusions The Anaphora of St. James—Some Conclusions Postscript

Page 3 4 6 11 17 26 31 33 37

Copyright John Fenwick 1986 DEDICATION To my friends in the Orthodox and MarThoma Churches among whom I have experienced these liturgies, not as objects of analysis, but as vehicles of living worship. I would also like to thank Professor Stuart Hall and Dr. Geoffrey Cuming, who very helpfully supervised my doctoral research which lies behind this Liturgical Study. It was Geoffrey Cuming who originally suggested the hypothesis to me. John Fenwick THE COVER PICTURE is a photograph of an Icon of St. Basil, against a background of the relevant liturgical texts. ABBREVIATIONS Basil: Ur-Basil: E-Basil: ES-Basil: ft-Basil: Arm-Basil: Sy-Basil: Byz-Basil: Jas: Ur-Jas: Sy-Jas: Gr-Jas: AC: AT: MC:

General term for forms of anaphora attributed to St. Basil. The form of anaphora presumed to lie behind all the existing forms of the anaphora attributed to St. Basil. The shorter form of the Basil anaphora, found only in MS derived from Egypt. The Sahidic (and earliest) version of E-Basil. The original form of the longer version of Basil. The Armenian derivative from H-Basil. The Syriac derivative from H-Basil. The Byzantine derivative from il-Basil. General term for forms of anaphora attributed to St. James. The term usually refers to material common to the Greek and Syriac recensions. The form of anaphora presumed to lie behind all the existing forms of Jas. The Syriac version of the Jas anaphora. The Greek version of the Jas anaphora. Apostolic Apostolic

Constitutions. Tradition (of H i p p o l y t u s ) .

Mystagogical Catecheses (of Cyril of Jerusalem)

FOREWORD The composition of anaphoras has been an important feature of twentieth century Christianity (or at least of parts of it). Indeed, the assertion is sometimes made that more Eucharistic Prayers have been written in this century then in all the previous history of the Church. Whatever the truth of that particular claim, it seems certain that one has to go back to the fourth and fifth centuries to find a parallel period of creativity, at least as far as the anaphora is concerned. This is the period when most of the classic' liturgies assumed their basic forms which were to survive essentially intact, despite various later modifications and accretions. For the liturgist there is, however, one great difference between our present century and the fourth: the modern anaphoras are accompanied by a whole range of material revealing the factors which determined their final form. Early drafts. Revision Committee Minutes, correspondence, the reminiscences of individuals, doctrinal lobbying and influential books all provide a wealth of sources from which it is possible to identify the motives and influences behind a particular text. Nothing on the same scale exists for the fourth century. In most cases the identity of an anaphora's creator cannot be established, let alone the conditions which caused him (or was it them?) to create one text and not another. Yet the fourth century is not totally devoid of clues and the aim of the research which lies behind this booklet was to try and piece together, in the case of two anaphoras, the processes by which they were created and to try and identify something of the motivation which lay behind the way in which the material was used. The original record of the investigation comprises some hundred thousand words and a large amount of detailed textual analysis. It has simply not been possible to reproduce in a work of this scale anything but a few examples of the evidence on which the conclusions are based. Readers wishing to check the details for themselves are referred to the original thesis. It is nevertheless hoped that the arguments and conclusions presented here will stand in their own right and will merit some assessment as an attempt to lift the veil on the work of the fourth century liturgists.

1

J . R. K. Fenwick, 'An Investigation into the Common Origin of the Anaphoras of the Liturgies of S t Basil and St. James", (Ph.D. Thesis, University of London, 1985). The text of the thesis has been accepted for publishing by the Pontifical Institute for Oriental Studies in the series Orientalia Christiana Ana/ecta in two or three years time. 3

1. INTRODUCTION Until the present century, the study of the development of the eucharist was haunted by the testimony of Proclus, Bishop of Constantinople from 434 to 446, to whom was credited a treatise in which the author explained that the earliest apostolic liturgies had been very long but were deliberately abridged in later centuries in orderto retain the participation of less fervent generations of Christians. Thus, said the treatise, the Liturgy of St. James, being the work of the Lord's brother himself, was of considerable length. In later centuries, however, first St. Basil and then St. John Chrysostom had produced abridged versions.1 Thus, the shorter a Liturgy, the younger it was likely to be. Within the past fifty years, however, the ghost of Proclus has been finally laid. Not only has the Jesuit scholar F. J. Leroy put forward an impressive case to show that the passage attributed to Proclus is in fact the work of the sixteenth century forger Constantin Paleocappa2, but in 1931 Dom Hieronymus Engberding of the Benedictine monastery at Coesfeld published a highly detailed textual study which demonstrated conclusively that the earlier sections at least of the anaphora of the Liturgy of St. Basil showed a clear development from a shorter to a longer form.* In the half century that has elapsed since, no scholar has seriously challenged Engberding's findings. Extremely important though Engberding's study is, it remains incomplete, covering only the Preface to Post-Sanctus of the anaphora. In the 1960s Engberding himself published a series of articles on the Intercessions, though with far less conclusive results. He never extended his investigations to the Institution Narrative, Anamnesis/Oblation, or Epiclesis. Nor has Engberding's method of study been followed up in the way in which it merits. His methodology for discovering the original form of a text and for exploring the stages by which liturgical change took place has never been applied on equivalent scale to other anaphoras. The investigations on which this Study is based was an attempt to go some small way towards correcting that omission. The specific area under examination was the anaphoras of the Liturgies of St. Basil and St. James (referred to as Basil and Jas hereafter). These two anaphoras exhibit sufficient common structure and wording to make a degree of inter1 2

3

4

Migne, Patrologia Graeca. 65. 8 4 9 B - 8 5 2 B . F. J. Leroy, 'Procus, " D e Traditio Divinae Missae": un faux de C. Paleocappa', in Orientals Christiana Periodica, 2 8 (1962) 2 8 8 - 9 9 . H. Engberding, Das eucharistische Hochgebet der Basiieiosiiturgie: Textgeschichtlich Untersuchungen und kritische Ausgabe, Theologie der christlichen Ostens 1, (Munster, 1931). (Referred t o hereafter as Hochgebet). 'Das anaphorische Furbittgebet der byzantinischen Chrysostomusliturgie' in Oriens Christianus, 4 5 (1961) 20-9, 4 6 (1963) 3 3 - 6 0 ; Das anaphorische Furbittgebet der Basiliusliturgie' in OC, 47 (1 963) 16-52, 4 9 (1965) 18-37; Das anaphorische Furbittgebet der grieschischen Markusliturgie' in OCP, 3 0 (1964) 3 9 8 - 4 4 6 ; Das anaphorische Furbittgebet der syrischen Basiliusliturgie' in OC, 5 0 (1966) 13-18; 'Das anaphorische Furbittgebet der alteren armenischen Basiliusliturgie' in OC, 51 (1967) 2 9 - 5 0 . 4

INTRODUCTION

relatedness highly likely. The precise nature of this dependence has never been satisfactorily unravelled, some scholars claiming that Basil has borrowed from Jas, while others believe that it is J a s w h i c h has derived material from Basil. The research from w h i c h findings are reported here was conducted by exploring a third possibility, namely that the similarities between Basil and J a s are not due in any substantial way to the influence one upon the other of the developed forms in w h i c h we now know them (though some minor degree of influence at this stage is not unlikely) but rather t o the fact that each represents an independent reworking of a c o m m o n original, an original w h i c h is preserved most faithfully in the Egyptian version of the anaphora of St. Basil (E-Basil).1 Such a relationship, if proved, would throw interesting light on the use of existing sources by redactors of fourth century anaphoras. This hypothesis was suggested to the present writer by Dr. Geoffrey Cuming. Something very similar to it, however, had been suggested nearly forty years before by Gregory Dix. Writing in The Shape of the Liturgy 2 about the Preface and Post-Sanctus, Dix made a comment w h i c h could be applied to the whole of the anaphora: T h e r e is a relationship between S. James . . . and the equivalent parts of the Liturgy of S. Basil, w h i c h is not close enough to describe as " b o r r o w i n g " on either side but w h i c h is nevertheless unmistakeable in places. It might well be accounted for by their being independent versions of the same c o m m o n original'. 3 Dix, as Kenneth Stevenson points out in his study Gregory Dix—25 Years On 4, seems t o have been unaware of Engberding's work on the evolution of Basil. Had he had that demonstration of the processes of liturgical change in front of him, he might well have been able to explore more thoroughly his hunch' about J a s and Basil. As it was, nobody took up what looks to be another of Dix's inspired guesses.

1

2

3 4

The primitive state of the Basitine anaphora is preserved most clearly in a recently discovered Sahidic MS. See J. Doresse and E. Lanne, Un témoin archaïque de la liturgie copte de s. Basile, (Louvain, 1960). G. Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, (London, 1945). Shape, p.204. K. W. Stevenson, Gregory Dix—25 Years On (Grove Liturgical Study 10, Nottingham, 1977), p.36. 5

2. ST. BASIL A N D THE ORIGINS OF THE A N A P H O R A S BEARING HIS N A M E St. Basil was born of Christian parents in Caesarea in the province of Cappadocia about the year 329. 1 In the years between 348 and 356 he visited Constantinople, Athens and Egypt before returning to Caesarea where he was baptized and commenced an ascetic life. He seems to have been ordained presbyter in 362, and became Bishop of Caesarea in the autumn of 370, a position which he held for over eight years until his death of 1 January 379. During his lifetime St. Basil was the author of a large number of works of various kinds, the majority dating from the years of his episcopate. 2 Like the other two Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, and like St. John Chrysostom, Basil of Caesarea has been an immensely formative figure in the life and theology of much of Eastern Christianity. Many of his works have been translated into a number of languages (a process which began in his own lifetime) and disseminated far and wide. Significant manuscripts exist in Syriac, Latin, Armenian, Coptic, Arabic, Georgian and Slavonic. In each of these languages, as well as in the original Greek, one or more liturgies are attributed to St. Basil. Witnesses to a liturgy attributed to St. Basil The association of a liturgy with the name of St. Basil can be traced back, on external evidence alone, with certainty to the sixth century and probably to the fifth. Some of the major witnesses are: (1) Leontius of Byzantium, writing ca. 546 3 , records that at the time of Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. 428) the Church of Constantinople used the Liturgy of St. Basil and that of the Apostles. 4 (2) A quotation from a liturgy bearing the name of the saint is found in or around the year 520 in a letterfrom the monks of Scythia to some African bishops in exile in Sardinia. 5 (3) A further reference to the content of a Liturgy of St. Basil is found in Canon 32 of the Council 'inTrullo' of 692. The Council, in condemning the Armenian Church for using undiluted wine in the Eucharist, refers to the text of the liturgies of St. James and St. Basil as requiring water to be mixed with the wine. 6 (4) In the Barberini Codex of the late eighth century, the Liturgy of St. Basil is the only one mentioned by name; the others (John Chrysostom and the Pre-Sanctified) are anonymous. This, together with the fact that it is placed first in the sequence, points strongly to the greater age and primacy of use of the Basiline liturgy. 7 1

2

3 4 5 6 7

For a f u l l r e v i e w of the life a n d w r i t i n g s of St. Basil see P. J. F e d w i c k , A C h r o n o l o g y of the Life a n d W o r k s of Basil of Caesarea' in idem (ed), Basil of Caesarea: Christian, Humanist, Ascetic, ( T o r o n t o , 1 9 8 1 ) , 1, p p . 3 - 1 9 . (Referred t o as B a s i l . ) . Basil, 1, p p . X I X - X X X I . See also t h e c a t e g o r i e s u s e d by S. V. R u d b e r g " M a n u s c r i p t s a n d E d i t i o n s of t h e W o r k s of Basil of Caesarea' in Basil, 1, p p . 4 9 - 6 5 . Basil, 2, p p . 4 3 9 - 5 1 2 . M i g n e , PG, 8 6 . 1 3 6 8 C . M i g n e , PL, 6 5 . 4 4 9 . Canon 32. S. Salaville, An Introduction to the Study of Eastern Liturgies ( L o n d o n , 1 9 3 8 ) .

6

ST. B A S I L A N D THE O R I G I N S OF T H E A N A P H O R A S B E A R I N G HIS N A M E

St. Basil and Liturgical Composition Given the very strong evidence that a specific liturgy was, at the very least, closely associated w i t h St. Basil, if not actually composed or amended by him, is there any evidence that St. Basil himself had a particular liturgical interest? The clearest direct external evidence comes from the famous Funeral Oration on St. Basil by his friend Gregory Nazianzus. 1 Gregory was unable to be present at Basil's funeral and the address was delivered some time later, perhaps on the first anniversary of the saint's death. There is some evidence that the text we now possess is more lengthy and elaborate than that w h i c h Gregory actually delivered, but there is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the factual information w h i c h it contains. During the course of his oration, Gregory lists some of the tokens of Basil's care for and protection of the church: '. . . his boldness towards the governors . . . the decisions of disputes; his support of the needy . . . the support of the poor; the entertainment of strangers; the care of maidens; legislation written and unwritten for the monastic life; arrangements of prayers [euchon diataxeis]; adornments of the sanctuary; and other ways in w h i c h the true man of God, working for his God, w o u l d benefit the people . . ,' 2 'Euchon diataxeis' was thus clearly an identifiable part of St. Basil's activities as a Christian leader, and one that Gregory seems to assume would, like the others in the list, be common knowledge to his hearers. The translation 'arrangements' does not perhaps convey the full w e i g h t of 'diataxeis' w h i c h carries the additional implication of'instructions' or 'directions'. Gregory may well have chosen a rather imprecise w o r d because he wanted a phrase that w o u l d embrace both Basil's composition of public prayers and his advice concerning private prayer. But does 'euchon diataxeis' allow the possibility that a late fourth century bishop could modify an existing eucharistic prayer or even compose a new one? A generation ago the Roman Catholic liturgist S. Salaville, was doubtful: What then was the character of the liturgical work of St. Basil for example, or of St. J o h n Chrysostom in the Greek Church? Did they compose in their entirety the forms of prayers attributed to them? Assuredly not. These great doctors simply made a selection of those w h i c h were in liturgical use, and of w h i c h the text was becoming more and more stable. Possibly they may have altered or clarified certain expressions, but they made no essential change in what was in use before their time'.-' Salaville's restricting of the possibilities for liturgical creativity to 'making a selection' or'clarifying certain expressions' is almost certainly too severe for the fourth century. Seven years before Salaville's Introduction 1

2 3

G r e g o r y o f N a z i a n u s , Funeral Oration on the Great St. Basil, Bishop of C a e s a r e a in Cappadocia ( O r a t i o n 4 3 ) . ET in H. W a c e a n d P. S c h a f f (eds), A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2, 7, (Oxford, 1 8 9 4 ) , p p . 3 9 5 - 4 2 2 . Orat. 43.34.NPNF, pp.406-7. Salaville, op. cit. p . 6 0 .

FOURTH CENTURY ANAPHORAL CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES

to the Study of Eastern Liturgies was published, Engberding's Hochgebet had shown that a more creative role had been undertaken by the Redactor who had expanded E-Basil. Nor does Salaville make allowance for the conversion of the anaphora of Cyril of Jerusalem's Mystagogical Catecheses V(MC. V) into that of the Liturgy of St. James. It is true that, a century later, liturgical formulae appear to have become essentially fixed: Justinian's novella 137 of 565 A.D. requires candidates for the episcopate to learn the Proskomide and to recite it in the presence of the consecrating bishop, which appears to rule out the possibility of individual composition of at least that section of the rite: but the fourth century situation was amost certainly more fluid, as this study will confirm. Massey Shepherd, indeed, points out that regulations for the adoption of fixed liturgical formularies, for diocesan and provincial use, are unknown before the later years of the fourth century.'1 R. P. C. Hanson draws attention to the fact that certain conventions had been in existence at least since the time of Origen, within which the bishop was expected to remain.2 Hanson suggests that these conventions had probably held throughout the period when free composition of the anaphora was the norm, and suggests that they included mention of creation, redemption, resurrection, ascension, the Words of Institution and a fixed doxology. 3 This freedom of composition increasingly gave way to the use of set forms from the third century (as the Apostolic Tradition (AT) suggests) and Cuming sums up the prevailing conclusion: 'a fourth century bishop had really little freedom of action and his contribution must in practice have consisted of relatively short passages slotted into an existing framework'. 4 St. Basil himself casts some light on the situation in his famous passage in De Spiritu Sancto, written about 373: 'Which of the saints has left us in writing the words of the invocation at the manifestation of the bread of thanksgiving and the cup of blessing? For we are not confined to those things which the apostle or the gospel record, but both before and after we say things which have a great importance for the mystery—things from the unwritten teaching.' 5 Basil was aware that no precise wording for the anaphora had been left by the apostles. He must also have discovered in the course of his travels from Greece to Egypt that the Eucharistic Prayer was not the same in every place. It is therefore quite likely that he felt himself at liberty, once he became a bishop (if not before), at the very least to amplify the type of anaphora used by his predecessors and perhaps to compose his own, so long as it adhered to the pattern inherited from unwritten tradition. 1

Shepherd, T h e Formation and I nfluence of the Antiochene Liturgy' in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 7 5, (1961) p.25. R. P. C. Hanson, T h e Liberty of the Bishop to Improvise Prayer in the Eucharist' in VigiHae Christianae, 15 (1961) pp.1 73-6; G. J. Cuming, 'Pseudonymity and Authenticity, with particular reference to the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom', in Studia Patristica, 15, 1, (1984) pp.532-8. 3 op. cit. p. 176. * Cuming, op. cit. p.537. 5 De Spiritu Sancto, 27, 66. 1

8

ST. BASIL AND THE ORIGINS OF THE ANAPHORAS BEARING HIS NAME The Basiline A n a p h o r a s

The immense task of identifying and comparing over four hundred MSS of the Liturgy of St. Basil was undertaken by Engberding, whose findings, as stated above, were published in 1931. His results may be summarized as follows: (a) The anaphora attributed to St. Basil is found in two different forms: a longer version, as currently in use in the Orthodox Church; and a shorter form, used by the modern Coptic Church, which lacks some of the material found in the longer form. (b) The relationship between the two is not, as previously supposed, that the shorter is an abbreviation of the longer, but that the shorter is the original text which has been amplified to produce the longer.1 (c) The amplifications are for the most part theological enrichment and Scriptural citations. 2 (d) Detailed examination of the various versions of the longer text reveals that while they form a distinct unit over against the shorter anaphora, they are themselves capable of being divided into distinguishable groups: an Old Armenian recension (Arm-Basil), a Syriac recension (Sy-Basil) and the 'Byzantine' recension (ByzBasil). The two former groups are represented by a relatively small number of witnesses, while the Byzantine form is attested to by many M S S and in several languages. 3 (e) On textual grounds the Syriac and Byzantine versions form a superior unit to the Old Armenian. 4 (f)

T h e r e l a t i o n s h i p b e t w e e n Arm-Basil, Sy-Basil a n d Byz-Basil is

explained by their being independent derivatives of a common amplified original, which Engberding designated H-Basil. In the fifty or more years that have elapsed since the publication of Hochgebet, Engberding's main conclusions have won general acceptance. He was not the first to challenge the received' theory that the classic liturgies were abbreviations of their originals, but no-one before Engberding had undertaken such a highly detailed linguistic analysis of so many versions of an anaphora. His work rightly remains a classic of its kind. Nevertheless, fundamental though Engberding's 1931 study was, it is open to a very important criticism: it covers less than half the Basiline 1 2 3

4

Hochqebet, p.LXXVI. ¡bid., P.LXXVf. pp.LVII-LXXIX. (The text of Sy-Basil used here is from I. E. Rahmani, Missa/e Syriacum iuxta ritum ecclesiae apostolicae Antiochienae Syrorum, (Sharfeh, 1922) pp.172196. This text was very kindly translated for me by Dr. Sebastian Brock of Oxford University. Arm-Basil is taken from the French translation of the Lyons MS no. 17 given in A. Renoux, 'L'anaphore armenienne de Saint Gregoire rilluminateur' in B. Botte et. al„ Eucharisties (¡'Orient et d'Occident, (Paris, Editions du Cerf, 1970) pp.83-108. The text used to supply Byz-Basil is Brightman's edition of Codex Barberini III.55, as reproduced in A. Hanggi and I. Pahl, Prex Eucharistica (Fribourg, 1968). p.LXXI. 9

FOURTH CENTURY ANAPHORAL CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES

anaphora. Only the Preface, Pre-Sanctus, Sanctus, and Post-Sanctus are treated. This inadequacy is revealed immediately one turns to the question to which Engberding briefly addressed himself and w h i c h others have raised subsequently: Of w h i c h of the versions of the anaphora preserved to us is St. Basil himself the author? In fact the question is usually expressed more precisely: Of w h i c h of the two versions is St. Basil the author? However, as the present writers's research reveals, the later sections of the anaphora (and particularly the Intercessions) show radical structural differences between the four recensions; differences so great as to reveal that there may in fact be four basic forms of the Basiline anaphora and not two. Not only does this complicate the search for the saint's own text, but it reveals some new ways in w h i c h fourth century liturgical redactors felt able to use their material. Engberding himself (assuming there to be only two basic forms; E - B a s i l and H - B a s i l ) believed that only the longer form was the saint's handiwork, as the scriptural amplifications w h i c h it contained seemed to illustrate St. Basil's stress on the necessity for the praise of God to be fed by the Scriptures. 1 Despite the confidence of his conclusions, which, as Cuming observes, 'have been well-nigh universally accepted' 2 ,Engberding had in fact done very little critical comparison between the 'Basiline' additions to the Egyptian recension and the works of the saint himself. This omission was corrected, at leat in part, by t w o studies undertaken in the last twenty-five years w h i c h have explored in detail verbal similarities between St. Basil's writings and the anaphoras bearing his name. The first of these is Bernard Capelle's Les Liturgies 'Basilierines' et Saint Basile, annexed to Doresses and Lanne's edition of the Sahidic fragment of the anaphora in 1960. 3 He is able to present an impressive array of phrases from the writings of the saint parallel to many of the expansions in the H anaphora. Capelle, however, only extended his study as far as Engberding had done, to the sentence preceding the Narrative of Institution. A work w h i c h went some way towards correcting this omission was published in 1969 by Boris Bobrinskoy. 4 His study continued Capelle's comparison as far as the Epiclesis and, less fully, the Intercessions. In these sections, too, he is able to show a substantial measure of accord w i t h the saint's theological emphases and vocabulary. Bobrinskoy's work is marred slightly by the fact that he makes his comparisons directly between E - B a s i l and i l - B a s i l , without taking into account the witness of S y - B a s i l . Despite such criticisms, it remains true that Engberding, Capelle and Bobrinskoy together present an impressive, and perhaps conclusive, case for believing that St. Basil himself was the source of much of the material that distnguishes the anaphora of ft-Basil from that of E-Basil. 1 2

3 4

p.LXXXV. See Hochgebet, Cuming, 'Pseudonymity', p.534. op. cit. pp.45-74. B. Bobrinskoy, Liturgie et ecclesiologie trinitaire de Saint Basile' in Verbum Caro, 23 (1969) 1-32. 10

3. THE ORIGINS OF THE A N A P H O R A OF ST. J A M E S The Liturgy of St. James, the brother of the Lord, has long excited the admiration of students of liturgy. Anglican scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries believed it (together with Apostolic Constitutions (AC)) to be genuinely apostolic.* In 1920 E. C. Ratcliff described it as of'great beauty' and commended it as a model forthe worship of the Anglican Church in India. 2 A generation later Louis Bouyer expressed profound admiration for it and hailed it as the most accomplished literary monument of the whole of liturgical literature'. 3 In its hey-day (perhaps the fifth to seventh centuries) the Liturgy of St. James was the predominant rite in the patriarchates of both Jerusalem and Antioch, before being eventually eclipsed, at least among Greekspeaking Christians, by the Liturgy of St. Basil, which was itself to be largely displaced by the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Among the Greeks its use seems to have dwindled to a single annual use on the island of Zante, but the present century has seen it revived at Jerusalem and elsewhere. 4 For the Syriac-speaking Monophysites, however, the Liturgy of St. James became their liturgy par excellence, and was to become the model of many other Syrian liturgies. Despite such pre-eminence, the origins of the Liturgy of St. James, and especially of its anaphora, have remained something of a mystery. There is not sufficient material,' wrote Ratcliff in 1920, 'for us to arrive at any complete history of the Rite of St. James'. 5 Bouyer can only speak in general terms of a 'redistribution of material which would conform it to the development of Greek thought and language, through an analysis of each idea in its parts in order to reconstitute the whole in which particular and partial ideas would become synthesized of themselves into one general idea' 6 Bouyer says little about the specific details of the way in which the shape and content of the text were constructed. Attested History of the Liturgy of St. James There are two important items of early evidences: (1) The first mention of a liturgy attributed to St. James is in Canon 32 of the Council in Trullo' where, as described above, it is quoted along with the Liturgy of St. Basil as witnessing to the mixed chalice. 1

2

3 4 5 6

G. J. Cuming, A History of Anglican Liturgy, (London, 1982, 2nd edition) p.139ff., illustrates the interest in Jas among Non-Jurors and shows that it was incorporated into their liturgical revisions and experimentations at least up to the middle of the eighteenth century. E. C. Ratcliff, 'The Eucharistic Office and the Liturgy of St. James' in J. C. Winslow et. al.. The Eucharist in India: A Plea for a Distinctive Liturgy for the Indian Church, with a suggested form (London, 1920), p.20. Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer, (Notre Dame, 1968), p.269. The present writer was present at its celebration in the Church of the Holy Wisdom, Thessalonica, on St. James' Day, 1975. op. cit. p.49. Bouyer, op. cit. p.249. 11

FOURTH C E N T U R Y A N A P H O R A L C O N S T R U C T I O N T E C H N I Q U E S

(2)

The pre-eminence of the same two liturgies is confirmed by a letter of the Emperor Charles the Bald written about 860 which names St. James as the rite of Jerusalem and St. Basil as the rite of Constantinople. 1

From then on the existence of 'The Liturgy of St. James the Brother of the Lord' can be traced down to the present day. A Late Rite? It is generally if not universally accepted that the anaphora of Jas, whether considered in its Greek (Gr-Jas) or Syriac (Sy-Jas) form, is not a single, primitive construction: it is too long, too carefully constructed, too theologically and biblically precise. As Bouyer put it, its logical unity and developed trinitarian schema are all irrefutable signs not only of a late dating, but of a well thought-out structure, that remodelled the traditional materials with hardly believable daring'. 2 A more sober assessment (addressed in the first instance to Gr-Jas, but applicable to both versions) is recorded by Martimort: T h e Greek anaphora of St. James has come down to us in a late text containing elements foreign to its primitive state.' 3 While such an assessment is undoubtedly essentially correct, it must not be allowed to rule out the possbility of a fourth or fifth century date for Jas. As has frequently been pointed out, the terminus ad quem for the creation of the rite is the Monophysite divide which split the Syrian Church in the years following the Council of Chalcedon: 'The fact that the Jacobites have preserved it in Syriac as their fundamental liturgy proves that it was already consecrated by long use at the time when these communities took their r i s e — t h a t is to say, about the middle of the sixth century.' 4 A C o n f l a t e d Rite? Given the general agreement that the anaphora of J a s as we now have it represents a carefully composed and constructed reworking of earlier eucharistic traditions, is it possible to discern what these might have been? Bouyer is cautious in approaching this question: 'The stylization and fusion of the original elements is such that more than one of them has become unrecognizable'. 5 Such apparent pessimism is not wholly supported by the text of the anaphora itself, it has long been recognized that at least two types of material are identifiable: (a) sections which are similar or identical in wording to the anaphora described in Book Five of the Mystagogical Catecheses, (b) sections which are not found in the Cyrilline description 6 , but which bear similarities to other anaphoras of the Antiochene family. 1 2 3 4

5 6

PL, 7 2 . 9 9 f . op. cit. p . 2 4 6 . A. G. M a r t i m o n t , Introduction to the Liturgy, ( N e w York, 1 9 6 8 ) p . 1 5 . L Duchesne, Christian Worship: its origins and evolution, ( L o n d o n , SPCK, 1 9 3 1 ) , p.67-8. Bouyer, op. cit. p . 2 6 8 . T h r o u g h o u t t h i s w o r k t h e w o r d s Cyril' a n d 'Cyrilline' w i l l be u s e d as c o n v e n i e n t t e r m s of reference, w i t h o u t p r e j u d i c e as t o t h e a c t u a l i d e n t i t y of t h e M y s t a g o g u e . 12

THE ORIGINS OF THE ANAPHORA OF ST. JAMES

Dix devoted a considerable amount of space to J a s and set out the Cyrilline anaphora and that of J a s in parallel columns, underlining in the latter material bearing a significant similarity to the text of the former, and then proceeded to comment on the sections of the prayer. 1 He had no difficulty in concluding that, 'One general inference which seems to impose itself from this brief survey is that the fourth century Jerusalem rite was fused with the fourth century rite of Antioch to produce the "patriarchal" rite of Antioch (the present S. James) rather by way of addition to the Antiochene local tradition than by way of substitution for it. Considerable fragments of the supposedly "lost" old rite of Antioch are to be found embedded in the present text of S. James'. 2 Subsequent writers have generally concurred with this view and the present general consensus on the origin of the anaphora of J a s is . . . it seems probable that it is the result of conflating the earlier liturgies of Antioch and Jerusalem, perhaps about the year 400.' 3 Having noted this agreement, it is now necessary to look more closely at the two elements which make up J a s — t h e Cyrilline and the Antioche n e — a n d see whether anything further can be said about them. The Cyrilline Material Much has been written about the eucharist described in the document which has come down to us as the Mystagogical Catecheses of Cyril of Jerusalem, and only a brief summary can be given here. . . . (a) A u t h o r s h i p a n d date Considerable doubt has been expressed by a number of scholars concerning the Cyrilline authorship of MC. However, the identity of the author and the precise dating of the material are not of crucial importance for the purpose of this study: the conflation hypothesis presented here would still stand whether MC were a record of discourses given in 348, the mid 360s, or the early 380s. . . . ( b ) The S h a p e of t h e A n a p h o r a The next area of debate relates to whether or not the description in MC. V does in fact accurately represent the anaphora in use in the Jerusalem Church. Doubts have been raised on this issue by the fact that the Eucharistic Prayer in question would appear to have the structure: Dialogue Praise for Creation (Preface) Sanctus Epiclesis Intercessions The omission of any material on redemption, and of an Institution Narrative or an Anamnesis has proved problematic, lacking parallel as it does with the accepted' Antiochene pattern. Various attempts have been made to prove that the anaphora described by Cyril did have at least some of the missing Antiochene features. Attention has focused particularly on trying to locate an Institution Narrative. One fairly widespread suggestion is 1 2 3

Shape, p p . 1 8 8 - 2 0 7 . ibid., p.206. R. C. D. Jasper and G. J. Cuming (eds.). Prayers of the Eucharist: (London, 1 980, 2 n d edition), p.60. 13

Early and

Reformed

F O U R T H CENTURY A N A P H O R A L C O N S T R U C T I O N T E C H N I Q U E S

that Cyril merely left out any m e n t i o n of the Institution Narrative because he had already discussed it in t h e p r e c e d i n g Lecture (MC./Vj. Such a position does not explain w h y he should have dealt w i t h it out of sequence w h e n elsewhere he is at pains t o c o m m e n t on t h i n g s as t h e neophytes s a w and heard them. George Kretschmar argues that Cyril's a t t i t u d e s of awe and fear t o w a r d s the eucharist make it likely that part of the anaphora w a s already recited silently and that all t h e material f r o m the Sanctus t o t h e Epiclesis w a s thus inaudible t o the w o r s h i p p e r s . 1 A s the A m e r i c a n scholar Emmanuel Cutrone points out, even it this w e r e t h e case, it w o u l d be i n c o n s i s t e n t w i t h Cyril's m e t h o d of t e a c h i n g for him not t o have made s o m e allusion to the fact. 'Everywhere else Cyril is at great pains t o explain each t h i n g t h a t happened. He discusses each phrase of the dialogue, he enumerates all the intercessions, he analyses each s e c t i o n of t h e Our Father, and he describes each gesture used at c o m m u n i o n . This concern for detail is so great that it is hard t o i m a g i n e t h a t Cyril w o u l d not have m e n t i o n e d a silent part of the anaphora. Since he does not m e n t i o n either Silence or the W o r d s of Institution, it seems safe to c o n c l u d e that they w e r e not there'. 2 This c o n c l u s i o n is c o m i n g to be more w i d e l y a c c e p t e d and for t h e present it seems reasonable to c o n c l u d e that the anaphora in use in Catecheses w e r e delivered J e r u s a l e m at the t i m e t h a t the Mystagogical c o n s i s t e d of the elements. Dialogue Praise f o r Creation Sanctus Epiclesis Intercessions N o t h i n g else may be safely d e d u c e d f r o m the evidence. On t h e contrary, as Cutrone has argued in his i m p o r t a n t paper already c i t e d , 1 the very shape of t h e MC sequence of lectures may have been d e t e r m i n e d by the absence of such material. The author of t h e series, argues Cutrone, believes the key t o sacramental efficacy t o be in the i d e n t i f i c a t i o n of t h e believer w i t h Christ. Such a re-enacted identification, w h i c h Cutrone describes as ' e i k o n - m i m e s i s ' , is already present in the i n i t i a t i o n rite structure and c o n t e n t , but it is lacking in the eucharist. Cutrone's a r g u m e n t is w o r t h q u o t i n g at length: 'Cyril w a n t s t o explain Eucharist in a Christocentric manner. He w o u l d like to interpret t h e Eucharistic ritual in t h e same w a y t h a t he interpreted the baptismal ritual: the ritual is the p o i n t at w h i c h t h e n e o p h y t e is made o n e w i t h the central saving activity of Christ. Since the anaphora does not make d i r e c t and p o i n t e d references t o Christ, and since t h e M y s t a g o g u e feels that he is unable t o introduce any n e w e l e m e n t s into the ritual, he must do the next best 1

2

3

G. K r e t s c h m a r , ' D i e f r i i h e G e s c h i c h t e der J e r u s a l e m e r Liturgie' in Jarbuch fur Liturgie and Hymnologie, 2, ( 1 9 5 6 - 7 ) , 3 0 - 3 3 . E. J. C u t r o n e , 'Cyril's M y s t a g o g i c a l C a t e c h e s e s a n d t h e E v o l u t i o n of t h e J e r u s a l e m A n a p h o r a ' in OCP, 4 4 ( 1 9 7 8 ) p . 5 8 . ibid., p p . 5 2 - 6 4 .

14

THE ORIGINS OF THE ANAPHORA OF ST. JAMES

thing. He offers his interpretation of the Eucharist before he discusses the liturgy. In Mystagogical Catechesis IV, Cyril, using the framework of his 'eikon-mimesis' methodology, naturally turns to the Last Supper and the Words of Institution as an interpretation of the Eucharistic m e a l . . . Thus the whole of this lecture explains how the neophytes are made one with Christ in Communion. By contrast the commentaries found in Mystagogical Catechesis V are terse and without a great deal of perspective.' 1 Cutrone is quite right: remove the Post-Sanctus redemption material. Institution Narrative, and Anamnesis, from Jas, and there is very little reference to Christ left. Cutrone has thus enabled us to identify a very strong motive for wishing to supply such Christological material, one which may well have prompted the conflation with the Antiochene material. It is to a consideration of this latter that we now turn. The Antiochene Material In his conclusion already cited, Dix confidently asserted that considerable fragments of the supposedly "lost" old rite of Antioch are to be found embedded in the present text of S. James'. 2 Dix, however, did not attempt to isolate and reconstruct the fragments. In fact, given the importance for liturgical study of such material with a strong claim to represent the primitive Antiochene anaphora, it is amazing that no systematic attempt appears to have been made. What, then, are we looking for in a search for the Antiochene source which has contributed to the synthesis now known as Jas? At the very least we require an anaphora which is capable of supplying the Post-Sanctus, Institution Narrative, and Anamnesis, which are lacking in Cyril. A comparison of Jas with Cyril suggests that the Antiochene source has also contributed a substantial amount of Intercession material. It does not of course follow that the Redactor of Jas necessarily obtained all these elements from the same source. It was presumably open to him to pick and choose appropriate sections from a number of contemporary anaphoras. The likelihood, however, would seem to be against this. In view of his desire to adapt the old Jerusalem anaphora to the 'accepted' and Christologically fuller Antiochene shape, it is reasonable to suppose that the Redactor of Jas, rather than extracting material from a number of anaphoras, chose one in order to provide both material for his missing sections and an overall framework. The fact that he had such a framework in mind is confirmed by the way in which he uses the new material in his conflated anaphora—he places them in exactly the positions that 'the best Antiochene models' required that they should occupy, rather than place them at the end, split them up, or otherwise create a new sequence. At the same time, the Redactor does not appear to have wanted to jettison the ancient material which he had inherited. Not only did he no doubt respect its antiquity, language and theological perspectives, but in addition, since he was eventually intending to use his new anaphora at 1 2

ibid. p.62f. Shape, p.206. 15

FOURTH CENTURY ANAPHORAL CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES

public worship in Jerusalem, it was important that it contained sufficient of the familiar traditional phraseology to ensure its rapid acceptance by the Jerusalemite clergy and people.^ Simply to have imported a completely new anaphora would not have sufficed. A synthesis was needed. This suggests then, that we are looking for an anaphora of structure analogous to that of Jas. Furthermore, its original content is likely to have been preserved most clearly in those sections which do not have an equivalent in the Cyrilline anaphora, for where both anaphoras possessed a particular section, it would seem natural to expect the Redactor to prefer the Cyrilline material to the new. Space simply does not permit any discussion of the various theoretically possible contenders for the source of the Antiochene material in Jas. The reader of this present study must simply take it on trust that it seems incontestable that the clearest single source of influence (other than Cyril) is the shorter form of the anaphora of St. Basil. To demonstrate this it is worth setting out the conclusions of Dix and Lietzmann on various parts of the anaphora of Jas2: Pre-Sanctus Here the dependence on Ba. can be proved almost everywhere by the language' (Leitzamann, p.116).p ost _s a nctus ' . . . probably we are dealing with an excerpt from Ba. that has a distinctive mode of expression for certain details . . . (Leitzmann, p.116). There is a relationship between S. James... and the equivalent parts of the liturgy of S. Basil, which is not close enough to describe as "borrowing" on either side but which is nevertheless unmistakeable in places. It might well be accounted for their by their being independent versions of the same original tradition' (Dix, p.204). Institution Narrative '. . . the text of the liturgy of James must be judged to be a parallel to the liturgy of Basil: both are only variants of one and the same form..." (Lietzmann, p.27). Anamnesis 'We may therefore assume that the oldest form of the liturgy of James was a form akin to A.C. which was later revised under the influence of Ba.' (Leitzmann, p.44). Institution Narrative and Anamnesis ' . . . this relationship is different to above... the texts of S. James and S. Basil are identical, except for the most trifling verbal changes. One rite has directly borrowed off the other, and it appears to be S. James which is dependent on S. Basil' (Dix, p.204). It therefore seems fair to maintain that the fact of Basiline influence on Jas is widely accepted by liturgical scholars and has not been seriously challenged. However, neither Lietzmann nor Dix, nor any after them, have sought to unravel more closely the manner in which this evident influence came about. 1 2

The experience of modern liturgical revision confirms the wisdom of this! Page numbers refer to the edition of Shape already cited and to H. Lietzmann, Mass and Lord's Supper, ET D. Reeve, (Leiden, Brill, 1953-79). 16

4. B ASI LINE M E T H O D O L O G Y — A N E X A M P L E The purpose of this chapter is to use merely one section of the a n a p h o r a — t h e E p i c l e s i s — t o illustrate the ways in w h i c h the Basiline versions of the anaphora differ from one another, and to draw attention to the particular ways in which the texts have been handled by their Redactors. Almost any section of the anaphora could have been c h o s e n — t h e Epiclesis simply provides a relatively short discrete passage. Whatever the ultimate origins of the Epiclesis in the development of the eucharist, the presence of such a petition in a liturgy ascribed to St. Basil poses no problems: it is, indeed, the only section w h i c h w e know w i t h any certainty t h a t t h e saint's anaphora possessed, being referred to in the famous passage from De Spiritu Sancto already q u o t e d : ' . . . the words of at the manifestation of the bread of the invocation [epicleseos] thanksgiving . . .' Moreover, Gregory of Nyssa in his Funeral Oration on his brother refers to Basil calling d o w n heavenly fire (which is specifically equated w i t h the Holy Spirit) on the Sacrifice. 1 Turning to the texts themselves (see Table 1 overleaf), it will be immediately obvious that the Epiclesis of ES-Basil is brief and falls into two sections: (a) a request for the Spirit to come on the worshippers and on the gifts that the latter may be sanctified and shown to be holy of holies (1.28-38) (b) a request for worthy reception, resulting in sanctification of soul and body, uniting of the worshippers and their acceptance w i t h the saints (1.62-88). As Botte and Spinks have pointed out 2 , such an Epiclesis bears marks of considerable antiquity. It is brief and lacks any precise definition of the Spirit's effect on the elements. Spinks believes that the use of elthein (1.28) is a primitive feature: it is found in the address to Christ in Revelation 22.20, and in the eucharistic Epiclesis in t h e / i c t e of Thomas, the Sharar 3 , Addai and Mari, Theodore, and Nestorius. The concept of the Father sending the Spirit at the request of the worshippers seems to be a later one. Moreover, whereas later liturgies tend to play d o w n or ignore the Spirit's effects on the worshippers (concentrating exclusively on the transformation of the gifts), ES-Basil seems to preserve a genuine twofold Epiclesis w h i c h seeks t w o acts of sanctification: (a) (b) 1

2

3

the sanctification [ ' h a g a i s a i ' — 1 . 3 4 ] of the gifts the sanctification [' eis hagiasmon'—1.69] of the worshippers' souls and bodies.

In Laudem Fratris Basi/ii [PG, 4 6 . 8 0 5 ) . S e e E. G. C. F. A t c h l e y , On the Epiclesis of the Eucharistic Liturgy and in the Consecration of the Font, A l c u i n Club C o l l e c t i o n 3 1 , ( L o n d o n , 1 9 3 5 ) p p . 5 8 - 6 3 f o r r e f e r e n c e s t o t h e ' l i t u r g i c a l ' w o r k of t h e Holy Spirit in t h e C a p p a d o c i a n Fathers. B. Botte, L ' e p i c l e s e d a n s les l i t u r g i e s s y r i e n n e s o r i e n t a l e s ' in Sacris Erudiri ( 1 9 5 4 ) p p . 4 8 - 7 2 ; B. D. S p i n k s , 'The C o n s e c r a t o r y Epiclesis in t h e A n a p h o r a of St. J a m e s ' in Studia Litúrgica 11.1 ( 1 9 7 6 ) p p . 1 9 - 3 8 . For an E n g l i s h e d i t i o n of t h e Sharar see G r o v e Liturgical S t u d y no. 2 4 , B. D. S p i n k s (ed), Addai and Mari—The Anaphora of the Apostles (Nottingham, 1980). 17

FOURTH CENTURY A N A P H O R A L CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES

TABLE 1 EPICLESIS: E-Basil 1 2

Km

3 4 5 6 7 8 9

nutiï o'i a'uapTuiXoi xa'i «vaÇioi Ka\ ot TaXaiffupoi

Basil

Sy - B a s i l

Arm-Basil

Sco'ucflo oou o 4co( fiuuv TOT this reason

C'est pourquoi

we too your iapoveriehed and useless servants having been Bade worthy to becoae ainisters of the holy aysteries and of the sufferings of Christ

nous aussi riiserables que tu a rendus dignes du service de ta saintete

10 11

not on account of our right- non a cause de notre Justeousness ice

12 13

for we have done nothing good on earth but on account of your

car nous n'avons rien fait de bien sua terre »ais en raison de ta Bla-

15 16 17

Bercy and coBpasslon which you have richly shed on us do we have the confidence

ericorde et de ta coapassion que tu a versées sur ma nous osons approcher

18 19 20 21 22

to approach your holy altar de ta table isoaculee et sainte and having placed the anti- et y placer la figure types of the Body and Blood du Corps et du Sang of your Christ de ton Christ

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

»ai npooHuvoûucv oc

we worship you and supplicate you

cÙ6okiç ttk onç ¿YaGoTnTOç cX«eiv t o itucûua "ou t o ôyiov cv'nuâç Koi

in the goodwill of your grece de ta bienveillance that your Holy Spirit Bay envoie ton Esprit Saint cOBe upon us and sur nous et

31 32

ciA là npokciucva 6