Christian liturgy
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[edit] Partial list of Christian liturgical rites (past and present)
Catholic church (churches in communion with the Pope):
- Western (Latin) tradition
- Roman Rite, whose historical forms are usually classified as follows
- Pre-Tridentine Mass (the various pre-1570 forms)
- Tridentine Mass (1570-1970, still in restricted use)
- Mass of Paul VI (the post-1970 form)
- Anglican Use (restricted to formerly Anglican congregations)
- Ambrosian Rite (in Milan, Italy and neighbouring areas)
- Aquileian Rite (defunct: northeastern Italy)
- Durham Rite (defunct: Durham, England)
- Gallican Rite (defunct: 'Gaul' i.e. France)
- Mozarabic Rite (in Toledo and Salamanca, Spain)
- Celtic Rite (defunct: British Isles)
- Sarum Rite (defunct: England)
- Catholic Order Rites (generally defunct)
- Roman Rite, whose historical forms are usually classified as follows
- Eastern liturgical rites
- Alexandrian liturgical tradition
- Antiochian (Antiochene or West-Syrian) liturgical tradition
- Maronite Rite
- Syrian Rite
- Syro-Malankara Rite
- Armenian Rite
- Chaldean or East Syrian liturgical tradition:
- Byzantine (Constantinopolitan) liturgical tradition (very uniform except in language)
See also:Roman Catholic calendar of saints
Eastern Orthodox Church: Byzantine Rite, using the following Eucharistic liturgies:
Assyrian Church of the East: East Syrian Rite
Some Anglican Churches
Some Lutheran churches
Some Methodist or Wesleyan traditions
[edit] Frequent liturgical practice
Most Protestant Christian denominations, while often following a fixed "order of worship", do not adhere to a liturgy in the strict sense of the word.
Eastern Orthodox churches call the liturgy in which the Eucharist is celebrated and served the Divine Liturgy. This is generally comparable to the Roman Catholic Mass, although in practice they are quite different. This can also refer to the detailed rubrics for this ceremony; two of the best known are the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great.
Matins refers to prayers generally said in the morning, without the Eucharist. Vespers refers to prayers generally said in the evening, without the Eucharist. Matins and Vespers are the two main prayer times of Christian Churches, these two prayer times now being called morning and evening prayer more commonly. These two offices in the Roman Catholic church were part of a more extensive collection of prayer hours. This larger collection was called the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours. The Divine Office consisted of eight parts, Matins (sometimes called Vigils), Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. These "Hours" usually corresponded to certain times of the day. When said in the monasteries Matins was generally said before dawn, or sometimes over the course of a night, Lauds was said at the end of Matins, generally at the break of day. Prime at 6 AM, Terce at 9AM, Sext at noon, None at 3PM, Vespers at the rising of the Vespers or Evening Star (usually at around 6PM), and Compline was said at the end of the day, generally right before bed time. Great Vespers as it is termed in the Eastern Orthodox Church, is an extended vespers service used on the eve of a major Feast day, or on the evening before the Eucharist will be celebrated. In Anglican churches, the offices were combined into two offices: Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, the latter of which is known as Evensong when it is sung. In more recent years, the Anglicans have added the offices of Noonday and Compline to Morning and Evening Prayer as part of the Book of Common Prayer. There is also a full Anglican Breviary, containing 8 full offices, but that is not part of the official liturgies of the Anglican Church.
A liturgy can also refer to the public burdens assigned to the wealthy in ancient Athens, such as outfitting warships, holding banquets and training choruses. See noblesse oblige.
Some Reformed Protestant liturgies include additional translation of the sermons such as drama skits and the Children's message.
[edit] History of the Liturgy
This section will describe the evolution of the liturgical celebration known as the Mass by Roman Catholics, which is similar to Anglican Holy Eucharist, and called the Divine Liturgy by many groups of Orthodox Christians.
Initially, it is theorized that the Apostles obeyed the command "do this in memory of me", said during the Last Supper, and performed the liturgy in the houses of Christians. Besides mimicking the action of Jesus, using the bread and wine, and saying his words (known as the words of the institution), the rest of the ritual seems to have been more or less improvised. Early on though it seems that it incorporated many elements of a Jewish synagogue service, including singing of hymns and reading from the Bible (until the 4th century when the church established a Biblical canon, all manner of things were read during the liturgy, including papal encyclicals from Pope St. Clement). Through an unknown process, many elements of these liturgies began to be fixed, and a book called the Apostolic Constitutions, from the fourth century, shows an outline for the liturgy which is incorporated almost all Western and Eastern rites. This includes the use of the prayer known as the Sanctus, which is prefaced by a long introduction; it also includes a fairly fixed series of prayers leading up to the consecration.
Vestments worn by the Bishops and Priests at this point were simply the clothes of the lay person. Later as fashions changed the styles for the clergy remained the same and were embellished. The liturgy was almost assuredly sung in most places. Many places divided the congregation into male and female with a curtain separating them. At this point both Western and Eastern churches adopted the use of curtains to mask the clergy on the altar at certain points, this de-evolved into the rood screen and altar rails in the western liturgies, and evolved into the iconostasis in many eastern liturgies, while still being used in the Armenian liturgy.
The language used in most of the liturgies was Greek. Later a Pope from Africa, where Latin was the vernacular, convinced the Roman church to use Latin instead. As Christianity spread to different nations around the Mediterranean, several distinct traditions developed, each with a different liturgical language: the Alexandrine Tradition (Coptic), Syriac Tradition (Syriac), Byzantine Tradition (Greek), Armenian Tradition (Armenian), and the Latin Tradition (Latin). These basic traditions gave rise to several distinct rites. The Coptic and Ethiopic rites came from the Alexandrine Tradition; The Chaldean, Malabar, Syriac, Malankar, and Maronite rites developed from the Syriac Tradition; the Greek and Slav variants of the Byzantine liturgy emerged from the Byzantine Tradition; the Armenian rite developed from the Armenian Tradition; and the Roman, Ambrosian, and Mozarabic rites came from the Latin Tradition.
The liturgy of the western church was heavily affected by the decisions to allow the Priests to say the mass separate from the bishops (usually almost every public liturgy was celebrated by the bishop, as Christianity spread out of the major urban centers this became more difficult). Thus much of the western rite involved paring down the ceremony to apply to a priest. This did not occur as much in the eastern churches.
Leading up to the time of the Great schism, the rites of the western and eastern churches began to diverge. The eastern was heavily influenced by the use of the iconostasis, a large wall with doors in front of the altar, while the western church was seen as assimilating many of the pious practices of the pagans it had converted in northern Europe.
Before the council of Trent, the western liturgy was very affected by local cultures and trends. In particular, the French had a large influence over many developments in the liturgy, so much so that it could be called a different rite, the Gallican Rite. Priests and Bishops were known to improvise and extend prayers, have long periods of silence, and other innovations. The Council of Trent called for a standardized western rite and created a system for printing missals which would have to be used by every congregation unless their rite was at least 200 years old. In the West, these rites included the Dominican, the Ambrosian rite, and the Mozarabic rite.
[edit] Liturgical science
[edit] Rubrics
The most obvious and necessary study for ecclesiastical persons is that of the laws that regulate the performance of liturgical functions. From this point of view liturgical study is a branch of canon law. The rules for the celebration of the Holy Mysteries, administration of sacraments, etc., are part of the positive law of the Church, just as much as the laws about benefices, church property, or fasting, and oblige those whom they concern under pain of sin. As it is therefore the duty of persons in Holy orders to know them, they are studied in all colleges and seminaries as part of the training of future priests, and candidates are examined in them before ordination. Because of its special nature and complication liturgical science in this sense is generally treated apart from the rest of canon law and is joined to similar practical matters (such as preaching, visiting the sick, etc.) to make up the science of pastoral theology. The sources from which it is learned are primarily the rubrics of the liturgical books (the Missal, Breviary, and Ritual). There are also treatises which explain and arrange these rubrics, adding to them from later decrees of the S. Congregation of Rites. Of these Martinucci has not yet been displaced as the most complete and authoritative, Baldeschi has long been a favourite and has been translated into English, De Herdt is a good standard book, quite sound and clear as far as it goes but incomplete, Le Vavasseur is perhaps the most practical for general purposes.
[edit] History
The development of the various rites, their spread and mutual influence, the origin of each ceremony, etc., form a part of church history whose importance is becoming more and more realized. For practical purposes all a priest need know are the present rules that affect the services he has to perform, as in general the present laws of the Church are all we have to obey. But just as the student of history needs to know the decrees of former synods, even if abrogated since, as he studies the history of earlier times and remote provinces of the Church, because it is from these that he must build up his conception of her continuous life, so the liturgical student will not be content with knowing only what affects him now, but is prompted to examine the past to inquire into the origin of our present rite and study other rites too as expressions of the life of the Church in other lands. The history of the liturgies that deeply affect the life of Christians in many ways, that are the foundation of many other objects of study (architecture, art, music, etc.) is no inconsiderable element of church history. In a sense this study is comparatively new and not yet sufficiently organized though to some extent it has always accompanied the practical study of liturgy. The great mediæval liturgists were not content with describing the rites of their own time. They suggested historical reasons for the various ceremonies and contrasted other practices with those of their own Churches. Benedict XIV's treatise on the Mass discusses the origin of each element of the Latin liturgy. This and other books of seventeenth and eighteenth-century liturgiologists are still standard works. So also in lectures and works on liturgy in our first sense it has always been the custom to add historical notes on the origin of the ceremonies and prayers.
But the interest in the history of liturgy for its own sake and the systematic study of early documents is a comparatively new thing. In this science England led the way and still takes the foremost place. It followed the Oxford Movement as part of the revived interest in the early Church among Anglicans. W. Palmer (Origines liturgicæ) and J. M. Neale in his various works are among those who gave the first impulse to this movement. The Catholic Daniel Rock ("Hierurgia" and "The Church of our Fathers") further advanced it. It has now a large school of followers. F.C. Brightman's edition of "Eastern Liturgies" is the standard one used everywhere. The monumental editions of the "Gelasian Sacramentary" by H.A. Wilson and the "Leonine Sacramentary " by C. L. Feltoe, the various essays and discussions by E. Bishop, C. Atchley, and many others keep up the English standard.
In France Dom Guéranger (L'année liturgique) and his school of Benedictines opened a new epoch. Mgr Duchesne supplied a long-felt want with his "Origines du suite chrétien", Dom Cabral and Dom Leclereq ("Mon. eccl. lit.", etc., especially the monumental "Dict. d'arch. chrét. et de liturgie") have advanced to the first place among modern authorities on historical liturgy.
From Germany we have the works of H. Daniel (Codex lit. eccl. universæ), Probst, Thalhofer, Gihr, and a school of living students (Drews, Rietschel, Baumstark, Buchwald, Rauschen).
In Italy good work is done by Semeria, Bonaccorsi, and others.
[edit] Dogmatic value
The dogmatic and apologetic value of liturgical science is a very important consideration to the theologian. It must, of course, be used reasonably. No Church intends to commit herself officially to every statement and implication contained in her official books, any more than she is committed to everything said by her Fathers. For instance, the Collect for St. Juliana Falconieri (19 June) in the Roman Rite refers to the story of her miraculous communion before her death, told at length in the sixth lesson of her Office, but the truth of that story is not part of the Catholic Faith. Liturgies give us arguments from tradition even more valuable than those from the Fathers, for these statements have been made by thousands of priests day after day for centuries. A consensus of liturgies is, therefore, both in space and time a greater witness of agreement than a consensus of Fathers, for as a general principle it is obvious that people in their prayers say only what they believe. This is the meaning of the well known axiom: Lex orandi lex credendi. The prayers for the dead, the passages in which God is asked to accept this Sacrifice, the statements of the Real Presence in the oldest liturgies are unimpeachable witnesses of the Faith of the early Church as to these points. The Bull of Pius IX on the Immaculate Conception ("Ineffabilis Deus", 8 December, 1854) contains a classical example of this argument from liturgy.
Indeed there are few articles of faith that cannot be established or at least confirmed from liturgies. The Byzantine Office for St. Peter and St. Paul (29 June) contains plain statements about Roman primacy. (Of course, the Churches in communion with Rome understand these statements differently from the way in which they are understood by those in communion with Constantinople or Antioch/Alexandria.) The study of liturgy from this point of view is part of dogmatic theology. Especially dogmatic theologians have given much attention to it. Christian Pesch, S.J., in his "Prælectiones theologiæ dogmaticæ" (9 vols., Freiburg i. Br.) quotes the liturgical texts for the theses as part of the argument from tradition. There are then these three aspects under which liturgiology should be considered by a Catholic theologian, as an element of canon law, church history, and dogmatic theology. The history of its study would take long to tell. There have been liturgiologists through all the centuries of Christian theology. Briefly the state of this science at various periods is this:
Liturgiologists in the Ante-Nicene period, such as Justin Martyr, composed or wrote down descriptions of ceremonies performed, but made no examination of the sources of rites. In the fourth and fifth centuries the scientific study of the subject began. St. Ambrose's "Liber de Mysteriis" (P. L., XVI, 405-26) the anonymous (pseudo-Ambrose) "De Sacramentis" (P. L., XVI, 435-82), various treatises by St. Jerome (e. g., "Contra Vigilantium" in P. L., XXIII, 354-367) and St. Augustine, St. Cyril of Jerusalem's "Catechetical Instructions" (P. L., XXXIII, 331-1154) and the famous "Peregrinatio Silvæ" (in the "Corpus script. eccl. Latin. of Vienna: "Itinera hierosolymitana", 35-101) represent in various degrees the beginning of an examination of liturgical texts. From the sixth to the eighth centuries we have valuable texts (the Sacramentaries and Ordines) and a liturgical treatise of St. Isidore of Seville ("De eccl. officiis" in P. L., LXXXIII). The Carlovingian revival of the eighth and ninth centuries began the long line of medieval liturgiologists. Alcuin (P. L., C-CI), Amalarius of Metz (P. L., XCIX, CV), Agobard (P. L., CIV), Florus of Lyon (P. L., CXlX, 15-72), Rabanus Maurus (P. L., CVII-CXII), and Walafrid Strabo (P. L., CXIV, 916--66) form at this time a galaxy of liturgical scholars of the first importance. In the eleventh century Berno of Constance ("Micrologus" in P. L., CLI, 974-1022), in the twelfth Rupert of Deutz ("De divinis officiis" in P. L., CLXX, 9-334), Honorius of Autun ("Gemma animæ" and "De Sacramentis" in P. L., CLXXII), John Beleth ("Rationale div. offic." in P. L., CCII, 9-166), and Beroldus of Milan (ed. Magistretti, Milan, 1894) carry on the tradition.
In the thirteenth century see DURANDUS) is the most famous of all the William Durandus of Mende ("Rationale div. medieval liturgiologists. There is then a break till the sixteenth century. The discussions of the Reformation period called people's attention again to liturgies, either as defenses of the old Faith or as sources for the compilation of reformed services.
From this time editions of the old rites were made for students, with commentaries. J. Clichtove ("Elucidatorium eccl.", Paris, 1516) and J. Cochlæus ("Speculum ant. devotionis", Mainz, 1549) were the first editors of this kind. Claude de Sainctes, Bishop of Evreux, published a similar collection ("Liturgiæ sive missæ ss. Patrum", Antwerp, 1562). Pamelius's " Liturgies. latin." (Cologne, 157 1) is a valuable edition of Roman, Milanese, and Mozarabic texts. Melchior Hittorp published a collection of old commentaries on the liturgy ("De Cath. eccl. div. offic. " Cologne, 1568) which was re-edited in Bigne's "Bibl. vet. Patrum.", X (Paris, 1610). The seventeenth century opened a great period. B. Gavanti ("Thesaurus sacr. rituum", re-edited by Merati, Rome, 1736-8) and H. Menard, O.S.B. ("Sacramentarium Gregorianum" in P. L., LXXVIII) began a new line of liturgiologists. J. Goar, O.P. ("Euchologion", Paris, 1647), and Leo Allatius in his various dissertations did great things for the study of Eastern rites. The Oratorian J. Morin ("Comm. hist. de disciplina in admin. Sac. Poen." Paris 1651, and "Comm. de sacris eccl. ordinationibus", Paris, 1655). Cardinal John Bons ("Rerum lit. libri duo", Rome, 1671), Cardinal Tommasi ("Codices sacramentorum", Rome, 1680; "Antiqui libri missarum ", Rome, 1691), J. Mabillon, O.S.B. ("Musæum Italicum" Paris 1687-9), E. Martène, O.S.B. (" De ant. eccl. ritibus; Antwerp, 1736-8), represent the highest point of liturgical study. Dom Claude de Vert wrote a series of treatises on liturgical matters. In the eighteenth century the most important names are: Benedict XIV ("De SS. Sacrificio Missæ", republished at Mainz, 1879), E. Renaudot ("Lit. orient. collectio ", Paris, 1716), the four Assemani, Maronites ("Kalendaria eccl. universæ", Rome, 1755; "Codex lit. eccl. universæ", Rome, 1749-66, etc.) Muratori ("Liturgia romana vetus", Venice, 1748). So we come to the revival of the nineteenth century, Dom Guéranger and the modern authors already mentioned.
[edit] Commonalities
There are common elements found in all liturgical churches which predate the Protestant Reformation. These include:
- The Invocation
- Confession
- Absolution
- Introit, Psalm, Hymn
- Kyrie & Gloria
- Salutation
- Collect
- Liturgical Readings
- Alleluia Verse and other responses
- Scripture readings, culminating in a reading from one of the Gospels.
- The Creed
- The Prayers
- The Lord's Prayer
- Commemoration of the Saints and prayers for the faithful departed.
- Intercessory prayers for the church and its leadership, and often, for earthly rulers.
- Incense
- Offering
- A division between the first half of the liturgy, open to both Church members and those wanting to learn about the church, and the second half, the celebration of the Eucharist proper, open only to baptized believers in good standing with the church.
- Communion
- Sanctus prayer as part of the anaphora.
- A three-fold dialogue between priest and people at the beginning of the anaphora or eucharistic prayer.
- An anaphora, eucharistic prayer, "great thanksgiving," canon or "hallowing", said by the priest in the name of all present, in order to consecrate the bread and wine as the Body and Blood of Christ.
- With one exception, that of Addai and Mari, all of the extant anaphoras incorporate some form of Jesus' words over the bread and wine at the Last Supper: "This is my body" over the bread and, over the wine, "This is my blood."
- A prayer to God the Father, usually invoking the Holy Spirit, asking that the bread and wine become, or be manifested as, the body and blood of Christ.
- Expressions within the anaphora which indicate that sacrifice is being offered in remembrance of Jesus.
- A section of the anaphora which asks that those who receive communion may be blessed thereby, and often, that they may be preserved in the faith until the end of their lives.
- The Peace
- Agnus Dei
- Benediction
[edit] External links
- Liturgy Archive
- Liturgy (Catholic Encyclopedia)
- Liturgy website Contemporary liturgy - theory, history, practiceda:Liturgi
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