Constantinople

Worship in the Byzantine Churches

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The churches in the Byzantine tradition are those with an historic relationship to the church of Constantinople (originally Byzantium); they are familiar to North Americans as the Orthodox churches (among them the Greek and Russian). The Byzantine rite is complex and proceeds as two interwoven liturgies, one conducted with the congregation and the other performed by the celebrants behind the icon screen (iconostasis) that separates the altar from the rest of the church. The dominant theme of this liturgical tradition is the presence of Christ, both in his incarnation and in his heavenly ministry.

The family of churches that follow the Byzantine rite is comprised of three groups: those directly linked to the see of Constantinople; those historically evangelized from the church of Constantinople, particularly Russia and the Slavic countries; and the contemporary national churches (e.g., the Orthodox Church in America, with links to the church of Moscow) which likewise claim the title Orthodox. Catholic Byzantine churches (in union with Rome) include Melkites, Ukrainians, Russian Catholics, and Ruthenians. Apart from very slight differences, both Orthodox and Catholics follow essentially the same liturgical rites. For the Eucharist three ritual forms are used: most commonly that attributed to St. John Chrysostom, occasionally that attributed to St. Basil of Caesarea (Cappadocia), and on some days during Lent a liturgy of the pre-sanctified gifts attributed to Gregory the Great. The liturgical texts cited here are from The Byzantine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (New York: Fordham University Russian Center, 1955).

The Liturgy

The Byzantine liturgy is a complex ritual form that evolved in several stages from the sixth to the fourteenth centuries. Structurally it has the form of two interwoven liturgies, that which is prayed in the sanctuary (holy of holies) by the bishop and priest concelebrants, with the assistance of the deacon, and that conducted by the deacon with the assembly in front of the icon screen. A third layer of prayers consists of private prayers of the priest who prays in support of the action of the deacon and the assembly. The icon screen, and indeed the iconic display throughout the church, are integral to the liturgical act. They provide a visual focus for contemplative prayer which itself is aided by the abundant mantra-style litanies which form the heart of the liturgical act of deacon and assembly. In some churches, a deacon is not regularly employed, though this obscures the structure and flow of the liturgy itself. The liturgy is an evolution of the West Syrian Antiochene tradition.

Introductory Rites. Two elaborate rites introduce the Byzantine liturgy: the proskomidia (preparation of gifts) and a collection of litanies, hymns, and prayers that are remnants of a liturgical office. The proskomidia is conducted by the priest and his assistants at a small table in the sanctuary; the three litanies are introduced and concluded by the priest and led by the deacon, with the assembly or the choir providing the antiphons and hymns.

The primary focus of the proskomidia is the round loaf of leavened bread bearing the letters IC XC NIKA (“Jesus Christ conquers”). The center square is cut and placed on the paten to represent Christ. From the rest, particles are cut and arranged in rows to honor Mary, the angels, the apostles, and the saints, and to commemorate the living and the dead. A particle is added for the priest himself. This whole represents the church: Christ, the Lamb, at the center gathering the church in heaven and the church on earth into one. The gifts are covered (the bread covered with the asterisk or “star of Bethlehem”), offered, and reverenced with incense. The sanctuary, the icon screen, the church, and the assembly are honored with incense as well.

The second introductory rite begins with the public prayer. It is introduced by the priest (“Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and always and forever and ever”) and consists of a long litany, with a prayer and antiphon, and two shorter litanies, also with prayer and antiphon. The hymn of the incarnation (“O only-begotten Son and Word of God … ”) is sung after the second antiphon.

The Liturgy of the Word. The liturgy of the Word once began with the entrance of the bishop. This is now the “Little Entrance,” with the gospel book representing Christ carried in solemn procession (“O come, let us worship and bow down to Christ. Save us, O Son of God, risen from the dead, save us who sing to You Alleluia”). Two seasonal hymns, the troparion and the kontakion, and the trisagion (the thrice-holy) precede the Scripture readings. After the Epistle and Gospel, the prayer of intercession (the insistent litany) and prayer for and dismissal of the catechumens bring the liturgy of the Word to a close.

Pre-anaphora. The pre-anaphora begins with a prayer of access to the altar (“We thank You, O Lord, Almighty God, for having allowed us to stand here now before Your holy altar … ”). This leads to the litany prayer of the faithful and the transfer of the gifts. Known as the “Great Entrance,” the transfer of the gifts is made in solemn procession while the choir sings the Cherubic Hymn (“Let us who here mystically represent the Cherubim in singing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-giving Trinity, now lay aside every earthly care so that we may welcome the King of the universe who comes escorted by invisible armies of angels”). The hymn is stopped halfway through so that the commemorations of the day may be announced. The gifts are placed on the altar and incensed, the priest prays the offering while the deacon and assembly sing the litany of the offering.

Anaphora. The greeting of peace and the creed precede the eucharistic prayer proper. This latter, though more elaborate, follows the standard West Syrian structure: narrative of thanksgiving, including the “Holy, Holy, Holy,” and narrative of institution; anamnēsis (“Remembering … we offer”); epiklēsis for consecration (“ … and make this bread the precious body of your Christ, and that which is in this chalice the precious blood of your Christ, having changed them by the Holy Spirit”); the commemorations and the final doxology.

The preparation for Communion consists of a litany of supplication, the Lord’s Prayer, a blessing of the assembly, the presentation of the Eucharist to the people (“Holy things for the Holy”), and a prayer of personal faith (“I believe, Lord, and profess that you are in truth the Christ … ”). Communion is distributed with a spoon or, in some churches where wafers are used, by intinction.

Concluding Prayers. The liturgy concludes with a thanksgiving, dismissal, and blessing. There are additional prayers as well, and frequently the Eucharist is immediately followed by one of the liturgical hours or other prayers. The liturgy thus concludes slowly and in stages.

Theology and Spirit

The theology and spirit of the Byzantine liturgy are as complex as its ritual form. Indeed the two evolved together, with perhaps a greater influence on each other than in any other liturgical tradition. It does have a single, strong theme: the presence of Christ. This presence, however, has many forms and many manifestations. It is at one and the same time the presence of Christ in the liturgical action and the presence of the liturgical assembly with Christ to the heavenly liturgy which is eternally enacted. The liturgical forms reveal this presence; so too does the iconic design of the liturgical space in which the liturgy unfolds.

Some sense of the evolution of this liturgy is required to understand its complex theology and spirit. Hans-Joachim Schulz (The Byzantine Liturgy [New York: Pueblo Publishing Co., 1986]) traces its successive stages from the time of John Chrysostom (a.d. 344–407) and Theodore of Mopsuestia to its fourteenth-century codification.

Chrysostom spoke of the liturgy as mystery, whereby heavenly realities are made manifest in human form. Theodore focused on the individual rites as imaging different aspects of the saving work of Christ (e.g., gifts on altar representing Christ in the tomb; epiklēsis as the resurrection). Special attention was given to Christ as “high priest” understood less in terms of “interceding” and more as “seated at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.”

This theological (mystagogical) reading of the liturgical actions took a turn to the spiritual in Dionysius the Areopagite (sixth century), who “became the model for later Byzantine explicators” (Schulz, 25). Liturgical forms do indeed mediate salvation but they do so by unveiling a spiritual process that unfolds in a higher sphere. It is the reverse of Theodore’s stress on the actual liturgical forms making “present” Christ’s saving work.

Under Maximus the Confessor (d. a.d. 662) the church structure itself became “liturgical.” With the Hagia Sophia [in Constantinople] set as norm, the church building was envisioned as an image of the cosmos: two spheres, the earthly (the nave) and the heavenly (the sanctuary), not separated by, but bridged by the iconostasis. After the iconoclast controversy (eighth century) and the vindication of reverence to icons (Nicea II, a.d. 787), decoration of the icon screen and the church itself became part of the liturgical act. Schulz says of this middle Byzantine development:

In this decorative use of images, the Byzantine church structure shows itself to be what it had to be according to Dionysius’ vision of the world and what Maximus actually saw it as being: a copy of the cosmos that comprises heaven and earth, a cosmos ordered to Christ and filled with a cosmic liturgy. By reason of the images that adorn it the church itself henceforth becomes a liturgy, as it were, because it depicts the liturgico-sacramental presence of Christ, the angels, and the saints, and by depicting it shares in bringing it about. The iconography of the church also shows it to be the place in which the mysteries of the life of Christ are made present (p. 51).

The Byzantine liturgy exhibits this dual focus. The life-of-Jesus symbolism gives shape to the proskomidia which is interpreted as the birth, infancy and hidden life of Christ. It shows itself as the gifts are placed on the altar (“The venerable Joseph took down from the cross your immaculate body, and wrapping it in a clean shroud with sweet spices, he carefully laid it in a new grave”) and at the epiklēsis (“O Lord, who sent your most Holy Spirit upon your apostles at the third hour, do not, O gracious One, take him away from us, but renew us who pray to you”). The heavenly liturgy symbolism is expressed in the Great Entrance, with its Cherubic Hymn, and the prayer at the Little Entrance (“O holy God, who rests among the saints, whose praises are sung by the Seraphim with the hymn of the trisagion, who are glorified by the cherubim and adored by all the powers of heaven”). Both are integral to the iconic design of the liturgical space where, on the one hand, the Christos Pantokrator [visual portrayal of Christ Almighty], set majestically in the dome, looks down over all, and, on the other hand, the biblical events of Jesus’ life are set out in rich, visual display.

In several places, the Byzantine liturgy reveals itself as a public statement of Christian doctrine. The “Hymn of the Incarnation” (“O only-begotten Son and Word of God, though You are immortal, You condescended for our salvation to take flesh from the holy mother of God and ever-virgin Mary”) was introduced in the sixth century as a proclamation of the orthodox faith against the Nestorians. The wording of the epiklēsis (“ … having changed them by your Holy Spirit”) is a clear affirmation of the role of the Spirit as consecrator of the bread and wine, in contrast to the Western belief that it is Jesus’ own words, rather than the epiklēsis, that effect the consecration.

The liturgy conducted, mostly in silent prayer, by the bishop and priest concelebrants in the sanctuary is, by and large, the West Syrian liturgy. This liturgy is hidden from the assembly in silence, and occasionally by a drawn veil. The priest and his actions are part of the visual iconic display. The deacon is the primary link between these actions and the assembly, assisting the priest, announcing what is taking place, and leading the assembly in an appropriate litany prayer (e.g., during the offering: “For the precious gifts that are offered, let us pray to the Lord”). The experience of the assembly is not shaped by the intrinsic meaning of the various liturgical actions, but rather, as an aesthetico-religious contemplative experience, by the sensual environment composed of music, iconography, incense, and the various bodily movements (bows, signing oneself with the cross, kissing of icons, etc.) that are assigned to them. By entering into the assembly, they enter into a cosmos ruled by God and filled with mystery and are transported to that realm where the heavenly liturgy is eternally unfolding.

Worship During the Fourth and Fifth Centuries

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The fundamental pattern of early Christian worship continued to develop through the fourth and fifth centuries. However, “families” of liturgical practice began to emerge, and styles of worship varied from one Christian region to the other. By this time, one can begin to speak of “Eastern” and “Western” characteristics of Christian liturgy.

With the end of the persecutions and the beginning of the period in which Christianity became the public cultus of the Roman imperial government, the number and variety of liturgical sources multiply, though they still reflect the oral-formal tradition continued in these new circumstances.

It has been common to speak of this period as witnessing the emergency of “families of rites,” results of the growing influence on local practices of the great sees [areas governed by prominent bishops] of the time. It would perhaps be truer to say that our evidence, still scattered and incomplete, suggests a more specific process of consolidation, at least in the East.

Evidence for Eastern Liturgy

The Apostolic Constitutions, coming from Antioch in the late fourth century, are the central body of evidence. Long available, it has been recognized only recently for the compilation of the diverse materials it is. It opens with directions for various aspects of the Christian life (I–VI) containing excerpts of Didascalia, incorporates the blessing prayers of Didachē partially reorganized into a contemporary eucharistic structure (VII, 25–26), and includes a version of the ordination section of the Apostolic Tradition (VIII, 1–5). If Apostolic Constitutions is still a “church order” based on the sort of structure of description found in Didachē, Justin, and the Apostolic Tradition, it has been stretched out of shape by the diverse materials accommodated within it, perhaps in an effort to organize the variety of practices in use in the region of the Syrian capital.

Central to the Apostolic Constitutions, however, are elaborate directions and prayers for baptism (VII, 39–45) and Eucharist (VII, 6–15), generally thought to reflect the practices of the church of Antioch itself. Distinctive features of baptism include a unified taking of the confession of faith separate from the washing itself and a subsequent episcopal anointing with the invocation of the Spirit. Those of the Eucharist includes the dismissal of catechumens and litanic prayers of the faithful led by deacons, and an elaborate anaphora similar in shape to that reflected in the Apostolic Tradition, but including extended Preface and Sanctus and introducing diaconal prayers for the living and dead before the concluding doxology.

Less well known from this period is the recently discovered east Syrian evidence of the use in the church of Edessa of the Anaphora of Addai and Mari, notable for retaining early Jewish Christian blessing forms reminiscent of the type found in Didachē, but set within a structure roughly similar to that elaborated in Apostolic Constitutions. From Egypt as well, light has been shed on the background of the Alexandrian Liturgy of St. Mark by the late nineteenth-century discovery of the “prayer book” (euchologion) of Serapion (d. 360?), bishop of Thmuis and correspondent of Athanasius. This collection may have been preserved because of the intrinsic interest of its prayers at the Scripture readings, homily, dismissal of the catechumens, and common prayers before the Eucharist (1–12) and at the baptismal (19–25) and ordination (26–38) rites. But it also preserves an anaphora different in shape from Apostolic Constitutions and of undoubted Egyptian pedigree (cf. the Der Balizeh and Strasbourg fragments), in which Preface and Sanctus are followed by invocations over the oblation before and after the institution narrative.

For the East in general, however, similarities between the Apostolic Constitutions and the later rite of Constantinople suggest that its central sections contain a version of the rites eventually adopted in the new imperial capital. With additions of its own, notably its use of the anaphora attributed to John Chrysostom (d. 407) and occasionally replaced by those of Basil of Caesarea (d. 379) and the Jerusalem Liturgy of St. James, these latter rites eventually commended themselves widely where imperial influence extended in the East.

Egeria’s Diary of a Pilgrimage, the account of a journey of a Gallo-Hispanic religious woman through Asia Minor, Palestine, and Egypt at the turn of the fifth century, offers graphic descriptions of liturgical life, including the paschal rites at Jerusalem and its environs.

Evidence for Western Liturgy

Comparable Western evidence is restricted to much later books, all showing effects of the promotion of the Roman rites under the Frankish auspices of Pepin IV and Charlemagne in the eighth and ninth centuries. The peculiar features of the north Italian Ambrosian Missal, the Gallo-Hispanic Missale Gothicum and Missale Bobbiense, and the Gallo-Irish Stowe Missal, many of which may reflect the appropriation of Eastern practices throughout Italy, must be studied in the light of such writings as those of Ambrose of Milan (d. 396) and Isidore of Seville (d. 636). Evidence of the rites of Latin Africa, before the Vandal conquest of the fifth and the Justinian reconquest of the sixth century, is entirely in the form of allusions in such writings as those of Augustine (d. 421).

Of the Roman rites themselves, after the fourth-century introduction of Latin as the liturgical language, such evidence as we have comes from similarly later books, though it is here possible to identify the oldest form of the Roman eucharistic prayer or canon, wrongly attributed to Gelasius I (d. 496), and early seasonal materials that may partly derive from the time of Leo I (d. 461), before encountering the work attributed to Gregory I (d. 604), whose name is traditionally attached to the rites adopted by the Frankish liturgical reformers. Apart from a certain restraint in the adoption of Eastern practices, and the formulation of a eucharistic canon different in structure from that of the Apostolic Tradition but perhaps not entirely without contemporary parallels (cf. Ambrose, De Sacramentis), we may think of the earliest Latin rites of the Roman church as similar to those that preceded them.

Instructional and Homiletical Material

Of unique significance for this period are the bodies of catechetical and homiletic material, which are themselves liturgical in character as well as in contents, which reflect the newly public position of the church, and provide a wealth of detail about liturgical practice.

While we have references to catechetical instruction before baptism in Justin and the Apostolic Tradition, and in Tertullian, Origen (d. 254?), and other earlier writers, it is from the fourth century onward that we have evidence of two types of formal episcopal addresses: the first delivered at and after the formal acceptance of candidates for the paschal baptism, devoted to the exposition of the teachings of the baptismal confession of faith, and occasionally the Lord’s Prayer; the second consisting of post-baptismal (“mystagogical”) addresses devoted to the meaning of baptism and Eucharist for those who had now participated in them.

Of such addresses, we have a series, not always complete or given in the same years, by Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem (d. 386), Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428), and John Chrysostom (d. 407), the last as presbyter of Antioch. We also have two post-baptismal catecheses of Ambrose of Milan, De Mysteriis, and (now widely accepted) De Sacramentis. Among other evidence, Augustine, De Catechizandis Rudibus, provides advice and a model narration to a Carthaginian deacon charged with the initial address to those seeking admission as catechumens, while his De Fide et Symbolo purports to be based on his catechetical instructions as presbyter of Hippo. Maximus the Confessor’s (d. 663) Mystogogia is a mystical interpretation of the Constantinopolitan eucharistic liturgy of his time, and an important source for its instruction.

Such earlier homilies as survive include that of Melito, bishop of Sardis (d. 190), On the Passover, and the great collections of the scriptural homilies of Origen. From the fourth century onward, however, comes a profusion of homilies too great to be enumerated, including series by Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 390), Gregory of Nyssa (d. 395), John Chrysostom, and Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444), as well as of Ambrose, Augustine, Leo I, and Gregory I. With respect to all of these, it can only be noticed in general that the public liturgical assemblies of this period allowed and even required new forms of homiletic address, having in view non-Christians as well as Christians, and larger physical spaces than had before been the case. Several writings of the period, most notably Chrysostom, On Priesthood, but also Gregory of Nazianzus, On His Flight, and even Ambrose, On the Duties of Ministers, are of interest as addressing or reflecting the challenge of preaching in these circumstances.

Such catechetical lectures and homilies were, in this period as distinct from ours, regarded as integral parts of the liturgy itself rather than as attachments or additions to it. Initially taken down in shorthand in the course of delivery, they often reflect another stage in the appropriation of classical styles of public oratory for Christian purposes.

Later Theological Issues

Liturgical theology in this period turns on the theological significance of liturgical practice. Thus, both Athanasius (Ad Serapion I.14, 30) and the “homoisousian” [holding that the Son is “of like substance,” rather than of “the same substance,” with the Father] Basil of Ancyra (Epiphanius, Panarion 73.3) argue for their different ways of stating the equality of the persons of the Godhead against the Arians on the ground that Father, Son, and Spirit are together at work in baptism, while the enhanced specificity of the invocation (epiklēsis) of the Spirit on the oblation in the various forms of anaphora in the Constantinopolitan rite emphasizes what seemed the orthodox Trinitarian implications of earlier liturgical prayers. While the Carolingian theologians Ratramnus and Radbertus developed their several views of the relation of the body and blood of Christ to the eucharistic bread and wine with references to a variety of early Christian writers, it is doubtful if the latter would have understood the terms of the debate, prone as they were to proceed by reference to the theology inherent in liturgical language rather than to raise questions on the basis of it.

Conclusion

The erosion of the oral-formal tradition of liturgical practice is not easily traced in our sources themselves. The consolidation of rites in the East may well have impelled a new concern for precision in liturgical language, though the ninth-century Constantinopolitan euchologion (Barberini manuscript) is the first surviving document to appear to assume the actual use of liturgical books. For the West, it may be assumed that inroads upon the classical tradition required the use of such books at a much earlier date, perhaps particularly in Spain and Gaul; though the late date of our actual sources, which generally assume their use, makes it hard to say when this occurred. It is only in Carolingian ivory book covers that liturgical books appear on altars in tandem with books of the Gospels, though these may reflect a practice long-familiar at the time.

The issue here is not a small one. Much that is central to the character of early liturgical practice hinged on the continuation of the oral-formal tradition and was obscured when the cultural decline of the later centuries necessitated its abandonment. At that point, whenever and by what stages it occurred, different notions of the nature of Christian liturgical gatherings began to make their influence felt.

Chrysostom, John

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John Chrysostom (c. 347-407) was born in Syria. He studied rhetoric under the famed teacher Libanius. After his mother’s death, he entered a monastery near Antioch in 373 and remained there until about 381. That year he was named deacon of Antioch, a position he held for five years. In 386 he became the chief preacher in the city, due primarily to his great oratorical skills (Chrysostom means “golden mouthed”). In 398 he was named archbishop of Constantinople. Here he condemned the immorality of Queen Eudoxia which led to his banishment. He continued to care for the spiritual lives of the church through correspondence and contact with friends. He died in exile. His commentaries on the Bible along with his faithfulness during persecution made him a leading figure in the early church.