Tertullian

Historical and Theological Perspectives on the Baptismal Font

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The placement and appearance of the baptismal font has been the subject of many debates throughout the history of the church. This article traces many of these discussions and offers suggestions for current practice.

Questions about the scale and location, the symbolism and importance, of the baptismal font, indeed about the relationship of baptismal washing to initiation, are crucial to our generation. The issues are so complicated, however, that some parishes are refusing to decide about the location of fonts and are building churches without them. Many other churches have abandoned permanent fonts in favor of stainless steel basins, plastic bassinets, or glass punch bowls.

The contemporary practice seems to be repeating that of the middle decades of the sixteenth century when reformers abandoned the abuses and popery of Rome in order to create places and rites that would focus on fundamentals: the assembly gathered around the candidate. The reformers set aside all else—no salt, no blowing in the ears, no oil, no candle, no clothing, and sometimes, as with the Anabaptists, no water at all—hoping to find the fundamental meaning of this sacrament, which all agreed was given by mandate of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The search is an emotional one. We argue about the font because we know that as baptism captures our identity, so it becomes a symbol of our struggle for the church’s survival in this age. Not only is this notion appropriate but also it is in keeping with the history of baptism. No place has been so layered with meaning, so laden with iconography, as the place of baptism. No archaeological remains have been more consistently in evidence than the font. Even when the church’s worship took place in private Roman houses, the baptisteries were clearly set apart. No table, no reading stand, no presidential chair, no plate, no cup, no cross survives that period. But the font was already rich in iconography.

Patristic Sources

We will better understand the place of the font in contemporary church architecture if we begin with a review of the primary sources, the Patristic literature concerning the baptismal washing, especially the baptismal literature dating from the second century. This information exists in three forms: Christian apologetics, ritual descriptions and texts, and homilies or catecheses.

We often operate with two assumptions about the first centuries of the church: first, that the various churches throughout the empire held the same beliefs and celebrated the sacraments in the same way; and second, that the era was primitive and therefore theologically undeveloped. Both assumptions are false. Churches in the first four centuries witnessed active research in biblical and philosophical sources. There were theological debates between Christians and political and religious discussions among Christians and Gnostics and others. There were theological and practical differences between the East and West—even in the way they kept their calendars. All of these factors yielded a rich matrix for baptism.

The word baptism comes from the Greek baptizein, meaning “to dip repeatedly.” The sacrament that we refer to as baptism was at first called “enlightenment,” as we read in the writings of Justin (c. 160). Baptism was called enlightenment because it bestows the fire of the indwelling Word, the pillar of light, Christ, who scattered the darkness and spread the light of truth. It was also understood as initiation, a term for the process of becoming a member of the community. If one considers the process as initiation, then the act of baptizing, though meaningful in itself, is part of a broader constellation of rites.

Although the word baptistery does not occur until 350 in the writings of Cyril of Jerusalem (Mystagogical Catechesis I), archaeology has shown us that baptisteries existed as early as 235, for example, at the Roman house church in Dura-Europos. To consider these sources as evidence of universal practice, however, would be a mistake. That a wide variety of practices continued long after fonts were in use suggests, perhaps, that neither the place of a font nor its specific qualities are as important as the water and the action of washing.

The Didache, written in the early second century, represents Syrian practice. It is concerned with the qualities necessary for the water; namely, that it be cold (or at least not hot) running water. Practically speaking, these requirements eliminate the cistern in favor of either a fountain or a bath with living water. Justin, writing from Rome in 160, says that there must be enough water at baptism so that one can be washed. Hippolytus, also writing from Rome in 215, requires that the water be pure and flowing.

Tertullian, writing from North Africa after 195, approaches the matter more boldly, by saying that all water is made sacred by invoking God. For him, the waters of baptism become the waters of creation, pure and aboriginal. The Acts of Judas Thomas, written in Edessa, now Turkey, describes the baptism of Gundaphorus at a Roman bathhouse in the third century. (The bathhouse was closed for preparation seven days before the baptism.) The same source describes the baptism of Mygdonia at a fountain. Finally, the History of John, Son of Zebedee, written in 350 in Caesarea, has the most elaborate architectural setting for the act of washing. The baptism of Tyrannus takes place in the theater at Ephesus in a specially constructed cistern 22 inches deep.

The earliest literature does not conclude absolutely that a font is needed. Water is water, and almost any water is appropriate. But how does the water get its meaning? If fountains, amphitheaters, and Roman baths are all acceptable, is there anything in Patristic literature that makes water a symbol all to itself? Is it a sacred object?

Blessing the Water

If specific legislation required the use of fonts, then perhaps we could say that water is, in and of itself, a sacred object. There is no such text, however, and yet the water is meaningful. Its identity comes from two sources that are deeply interdependent: texts of blessing and theological descriptions of washing. And we know that once a blessing is proclaimed, no earthly matter may pollute it. It is simply pure.

As the Patristic age developed, references to a blessing of the water became more numerous. Neither the Didache nor Justin mentioned a blessing over the water. Hippolytus referred to such a prayer, but he did not describe it. Finally, Tertullian (in North Africa, c. 195) called it an invocation of God that brings the spirit upon the waters. Thus, the act of washing is the spirit washing, and the waters become the waters of creation.

Texts of blessing begin to appear about 350, in Serapion and Ambrose, for example, but also in the Syrian text of the History of John, Son of Zebedee. In the Syrian text, the scene is set in the large amphitheater in Ephesus, with the priests of Diana deserting the white marble temple for a newfound Christian faith. As the sun sets, they step forward, cutting a line across the open edge of the theater. John, the presbyter, calls down the Spirit of God on the improvised font, saying:

Glory to you, Father, Son, and Spirit of holiness, forever. Amen. Lord God Almighty, let your Spirit of holiness come and rest upon the oil and upon the water. Let these people be bathed and purified from uncleanliness; let them receive the Spirit of holiness through baptism. Yes, Lord, sanctify this water with your voice, which resounded over the Jordan and pointed out our Lord Jesus, saying, “This is my beloved Son.” Yea, I beseech you, Lord, manifest yourself here before the assembly who have believed in you.

After these words, fire blazed over the oil, and John took the priests of Artemis and washed them clean, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Then bread and wine were brought forward.

This text opens many horizons for us. Its focus is not on the water and the oil per se, but on the effects of the acts of washing and anointing. Nevertheless, it is the water and the oil that is made, that is, identified. Moreover, the whole washing is public, which is not the case in our other sources; and finally, the washing relates to the ritual actions before and after it, especially to the Eucharist that follows the washing.

The basic meaning of the baptismal water in the History of John is that of a bath of purification and a gift of holiness. This view of redemption is as appropriate for the city of Ephesus as it was for the apostle Paul. The primary biblical type is the baptism of repentance and faith given by John at the Jordan.

This is not, however, the only identity given to the water in the Patristic sources. Theodore of Mopsuestia, speaking for the Church of Antioch in the fifth century, describes the blessing as an invitation to the spirit to give the water power of conceiving and becoming the womb of sacramental birth. This is a typical Johannine creation image and the second major interpretation of the act of washing: to be baptized is to be made new in the waters of rebirth.

We think of Adam, like Christ, asleep in the garden that God has made. In his sleep, Eve is begotten as bride and newborn, a child fed by Adam’s flesh and blood. Together, Adam and Eve are companions just as Christ and the church begotten in Christ’s flesh and blood are companions. This image describes a new beginning, gentle and fresh. It is the opening of one’s eyes to new creation and seeing the hand of God still smeared with the earth from which we came.

Creation, destruction, and new creation, sin, and death, forgiveness and resurrection, converge on the cross and death, burial and resurrection of the new Adam, Jesus Christ. These two approaches to the water are a convergence of Pauline soteriology and Johannine eschatology. Together, they describe the soul of the water.

The Act of Washing

After the blessing texts come descriptions of the act of washing. They are remarkably similar in the writings of Cyril, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and Theodore. After the catechumenate, the season of Lent and election, scrutinies and exorcisms, the rite at the font takes place. First, those to be baptized stand in an outer darkened chamber, symbolizing renunciation of the past. They face the west, the night, sin and death, and Satan; and they disavow them. They undress, and their whole bodies are anointed with rich oil.

Second, they are led gleaming to the pool and in the shimmering light of lamps, confess the faith and are led into the font step by step. There, guided by the hand of the deaconess or deacon, they are plunged into the dark cold waters and emerge three times. This is accompanied by a formula of baptism. They are then led out of the pool, anointed, touched, kissed, and fed.

What happens in this baptismal act is precisely what the prayer over the water invoked: a candidate is changed into Christ the crucified one and the new Adam. He or she is born again or transubstantiated.

Although the washing and anointing were pivotal points in the initiation process, they were not absolute. If death should come before the water, the catechumen or elect was still buried as a Christian. Further, to die as a witness to Christ replaced the baptismal washing absolutely, for martyrs are washed clean in the blood of the Lamb.

These texts for the blessing of water and the description of the rite were soon translated into architectural forms and images that we must now explore.

The Iconography of Fonts

Fonts in the East and the West had three similarities: they were essentially shallow baths, built for adults, and located in special rooms. In fact the Constantinian church plan was an assembly of rooms set aside for a variety of purposes.

The size of the fonts varied greatly. The smallest was 96 centimeters wide by 1 meter and 61 centimeters long; the largest, located at St. John Lateran, was 8 meters wide (approximately 25 feet across). The general depths were between 50 and 65 centimeters, about 24 inches. One font in Greece, however, was a full meter deep. No font seems to have been deep enough for total submersion, which means that the act of washing was an immersion.

The basic character of the fonts as baptismal baths is the primary and anthropological iconography of the font. The bath signifies a ritual place of washing, not because one is soiled but because one descends into the font having one identity and ascends from it with another. This datum is transcultural and archetypal; it is just as true of Qumran, the Ganges River, and the Taurobolion of Methra.

There is also a basic religious iconography associated with the decoration of fonts, which is what makes them Christian places of washing. The iconography of the fonts corresponds to the known prayers of blessing and popular homilies. Those prayers and homilies explored the passages concerned with water in the Hebrew Bible and applied them as parallels to the Jesus event. The recurring images are primarily concerned with creation, redemption, and purification.

Images of Creation

In general, the creation typology is prevalent in the Eastern church, which celebrated initiation at Epiphany. Redemption typology was preferred in Roman circles. The West celebrated initiation at the Paschal vigil or Pentecost. Purification typology is found in the East and the West, in Orthodox and Arian churches.

The creation typology makes baptism an act of returning to the origins of the earth. Because the font is the place of new creation, images of Christ’s incarnation are the demarcation point. Creation is glorified in the event and evil overcome. The new creation imagery is drawn from nature. Some of the specific images are taken from the Psalms, but other biblical sources are also apparent. Among these images are peacocks (as symbols of eternity); deer (slaying snakes and slaking their thirst); fruit trees, as in the Garden of Eden; the four rivers of Eden; Adam and Eve; stars (as a symbol of creation and of the covenant with Abraham); birds; and a baldachin or apse to symbolize the vault of heaven.

The creation typology prefers the circular font as a sign of new creation and birth, thus also affirming the long tradition of the circle as the symbol of fullness.

These creation images are found on many tombs, such as the Galla Placidia in Ravenna. Many churches also have a similar iconography.

Images of Redemption

The redemption typology takes its imagery from the cross of Christ and his entombment. The shapes of the fonts are often quadrilateral or even cruciform. Three steps lead into the font and three out of it so that the neophyte’s descent into the water parallels the three days Jesus spent in the tomb. Cardinal Danielou describes the descent into the font as a seven-step process. Three steps are taken in the name of the Trinity, and three represent the time in the tomb. The seventh step, the step out of the font, is the Sabbath rest God took at the completion of creation.

The deluge, Noah and the Ark, the dove, and the eight survivors of the flood also contribute to the redemption imagery. The number eight plays an important part: not only were there eight survivors for the new world, but also it was the eighth day, the day after the Sabbath, that Jesus chose to inaugurate the new era. This eschatology is clearly found in the eight-sided fonts in Hagia Sophia and St. John Lateran. The symbolism of eight sides also relates to the creation typology.

The six-sided font is also an image of redemption, for it represents the sixth day, the day of Jesus’ death, and the day God created man and woman. Further redemption images are the harrowing of hell, the crossing of the Red Sea, the slaying of the leviathan, the apocalyptic image of the throne, and the glorified cross.

Each image suggests a new era begotten in the waters of death and ushering in the last days. All that is evil has been overcome in the triumph of the cross. Satan flees, and all the heavenly hosts fill the sky with hosannas, for the Lord is risen and the people are set free as in the great Exodus.

Images of Purification

The third source of icons associated with baptism celebrates a purification typology. This imagery, crossing all architectural settings, is focused primarily on John’s baptism of Christ in the Jordan, a baptism of repentance and faith. To this scene are added the purification of Joshua coming through the Jordan as he enters the chosen land and Elijah who passes through the waters of Jordan before he is taken up in the fiery chariot. We also see this symbolism in the purification of Naaman, the leper, who is washed clean in the Jordan. At Ravenna there are two primary fonts with the Jordan scene, the Arian baptistery, and the Orthodox baptistery.

Guidelines for Our Practice

The architectural decoration of ancient fonts is an explicit iconography; it places the fonts within an intelligible framework. We must do more, however, than simply repeat the three sets of images. We must also try to retrieve the primary symbols. Thus, the baptismal bath is much more significant to us than the slaying of the leviathan. As authentic as the multiple images of creation, redemption, and purification are, they should be subordinate to the anthropological images of the bath and descent into the font. This is what the ancient church really cared about, the essential meaning of the font.

With one eye on the authenticity of the ancient experience and another on today’s needs, we can draw out a few basic guidelines for our efforts to revitalize our baptismal practice.

First, it is the act of washing, not just water, that carries meaning. We have tended to theologize symbols rather than experience them, in part because we accepted the Patristic era’s typology, but not its anthropology. The Patristic period was marked by the process of doing rather than the static realism that makes objects sacred apart from the rites that give them birth and sustain them. The act of washing, not water as pure symbol, is the bearer of meaning.

Second, we should look upon the washing as a public action focused on the individual. When the Roman church started celebrating baptism privately, the font became a symbolic “door to the sacraments” rather than a place of ritual action. The sixteenth-century reformers abandoned the locked basin at the entry in favor of simple bowls placed on or near the altar, thus permitting the presence of the assembly as a witness to God’s grace. So if we begin to look at the place of baptismal washing as a place of dynamic ritual and assembly, we will be appropriating the valid insights of the reformers.

Third, the act of washing should be seen in a wider constellation of rites, especially anointing and Eucharist. With the initiation rites of 1969 and 1972 dealing with the baptism of infants and adults, the Roman liturgy has once again placed baptism in its broadest ritual context. This emphasis on process and a wider constellation of rites comprising the sacrament of initiation stems from a Patristic theology that sees the bath as a generous gift of God. This could mean a balance between works and grace, or between process and gift.

Fourth, the shape, depth, and iconography of the font should support a basic theological understanding, namely that the act of washing is based on the full adult experience. When infants became the primary candidates for baptism, architecture responded to the practice and began to raise the fonts from the basins that sat on the floor to containers on pedestals because they were more convenient. In the Patristic literature, fonts are places of water that can be entered, places in which the adult’s coming to faith is the paradigm. Respecting this insight will call for dramatic changes in the architectural setting for baptism. Fonts will become baptismal pools rather than pieces of furniture.

Fifth, and finally, we must consider the location of the font. As I mentioned earlier, the Patristic period developed fonts in specially designed rooms. Today the location of the font is necessarily in a place of assembly, to accommodate our new awareness of the community’s role. We must look, therefore, for a public place. The two locations most frequently used are the sanctuary and the entry. I feel, however, that neither of these is the best solution to the problem.

If ritual is something to engage in and not simply to watch, we have a principle for locating the font apart from the sanctuary as it is presently conceived. Further, if the endpoint of worship is the Table, we have a principle for maintaining the stational character of the Patristic period. While this may not imply a separate room, it does require a separation. As for the second image of the baptismal font as “the door to the sacraments,” a font in the entry tends to eliminate totally the public character of the washing. Unless the entry allows for total community assembly, we have a symbol without a function. It is clear that we need deeper experiences of community ritual to reveal to us the best location for baptism “in the midst” of the assembly.

The Patristic evidence has silhouetted the wrong turns we have made in the past; it challenges us to probe the issue of the font as symbol of our identity. Most of all it calls us to move our focus from status symbols to process within community. The whole process of initiation is an interaction between individuals coming to the assembly and the assembly’s dialogue with these persons. The font and all the other symbols—words, gestures, objects, places—serve that holy process through which God comes to life in our love for one another.

The Preaching of Augustine (354–430)

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Augustine represents the preaching of the Latin church, a style that may be traced from Tertullian through Cyprian to Ambrose, Augustine’s spiritual father, and mentor. The Latin style of preaching shows an acquaintance with classical literature, Latin rhetoric, and symbolism.

Augustine addresses the matter of homiletics in the fourth book of De Doctrina Christiana. He basically argues that the sermon should be an exposition of the text. Concerning approach, he urges the speaker to appeal to the intellect, feeling, and will (to teach, delight, and influence). He mentions three styles of preaching—the restrained, the moderate, and the grand. He advises against the grandiose style, however, because audiences will not tolerate it. Augustine makes a strong case for a restrained style in which the form of the sermon reflects the content.

Augustine has written works of very high literary merit, apart from his theological and homiletical writings. His Confessions form one of the most unique and strangely impressive works in all literature—one of the books that everybody ought by all means to read. His City of God has been called a “prose epic” and is a combination of history, philosophy, and poetry that has a power and a charm all its own. His work on Christian Teaching is the first treatise on sacred rhetoric and homiletics.

Augustine’s Sermons

But if we had nothing else from Augustine than his sermons, of which some 360 remain that are reckoned genuine, we should recognize him as a great preacher, as a richly gifted man, and should feel ourselves powerfully attracted and impressed by his genius, his mighty will, his passionate heart, and deeply earnest piety.

Augustine favored allegorizing, like every other great preacher of the age except Chrysostom. But his sermons are full of power. He carefully explains his text and repeats many times, in different ways, its substantial meaning. He deals much in dramatic question and answers, and in apostrophe; also in digression, the use of familiar phrases, and direct address to particular classes of persons present, using in general great and notable freedom. Yet freedom must be controlled, as in Augustine it commonly is controlled by sound judgment, right feeling, and good taste.

The chief peculiarity of Augustine’s style is his fondness for and skill in producing pithy phrases. In the terse and vigorous Latin, these often have great power. The capacity for throwing off such phrases is mainly natural, but may be indefinitely cultivated. And it is a great element of power, especially in addressing the masses, if one can, after stating some truth, condense it into a single keen phrase that will penetrate the hearer’s mind and stick.

Lay Preaching in the Early Church

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Evidence collected about the early church suggests that most of the preaching in hamlets, villages, and rural areas was done by uneducated but devout lay people. The apostolic preaching, as well as the writings of the apostolic fathers of the second century that have been preserved, stand as exceptions to this overall trend.

Informal Preaching

For the greater part of the period from a.d. 30 to 230, after the close of the events in the New Testament, we know very little of Christian preaching. The reasons for this almost entire lack of sermons remaining from the first two centuries are several, the chief one being this: The preaching of the time was, in general, quite informal. The preacher did not make logous, discourses, but only omilias, homilies, that is conversations, talks. Even in the fourth century, there was still retained, by some out-of-the-way congregations, the practice of asking the preacher many questions and answering questions asked by him, so as to make the homily to some extent a conversation. And in this period it was always a mere familiar talk, which of course might rise into dignity and swell into passion, but only in an informal way. The general feeling appears also to have been that dependence on the promised blessing of the Paraclete forbade elaborate preparation of discourses. And this feeling would prevent many from writing out their discourses after they were spoken.

Lay Preaching as the Rule

But we must by no means imagine that there was but little preaching during the first two centuries because no sermons remain. In fact, preaching was then very general, almost universal, among the Christians. Lay preaching was not an exception, it was the rule. Like the first disciples, the Christians still went everywhere preaching the Word. The notion that the Christian minister corresponded to the Old Testament priest had not yet gained the ascendency. We find Irenaeus and Tertullian insisting that all Christians are priests. We learn from Eusebius (History VI.19) that Origen, before he was ordained a presbyter, went to Palestine and was invited by the bishops of Caesarea and Jerusalem to “expound the sacred Scriptures publicly in the church.” The bishop of Alexandria, who was an enemy to Origen, condemned this, declaring it unheard of “that laymen should deliver discourses in the presence of the bishop.” But the bishop of Jerusalem pronounced that notion, a great mistake, appealing to various examples. It was still common in some regions to invite laypersons who could edify the church, to do so; this even when the sacerdotal feeling was growing strong.

In these first centuries, then, almost all the Christians preached. Thus, preaching was informal, and therefore unrecorded. Even of the presbyters at that time, few were educated or had much leisure for study. And, when some able and scholarly man became a Christian, however, he might occupy himself with profound studies and the preparation of elaborate works, as did Justin or Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus or Tertullian, when he stood up to preach, he would lay his studies aside and speak impromptu, with the greatest simplicity.

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.

Worship in the Second and Third Centuries

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Worship during the second and third centuries continued to follow the course set by New Testament liturgical traditions. Consequently, the discussion of worship during this period centered on the significance of baptism and of the Eucharist, understood in its full content of the service of Word and of the Lord’s table.

Evidence in the “Apostolic Fathers”

The works designated “Apostolic Fathers” also contain allusions to the significance of baptism and Eucharist in the same period as that of the New Testament.

Of these, two are Italian in provenance. “The First Letter of Clement to the Corinthians” (1 Clement) is a formal letter from the Roman church, to be dated after the Domitian persecution at Rome in a.d. 96, supporting the authority of the leadership of the Corinthian church against certain detractors. The letter probably has the baptized in view when it speaks of the duties of those who bear “the name” of Christ (58:1–2). But it certainly has the eucharistic community in view when it elaborates the Pauline theme of the various functions of the members of the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12–31) with a complicated analogy between the responsibilities of the high priest, Levites, and people in offering the sacrifices of the Old Covenant and the functions of the apostolically appointed leaders and members of the church (1 Clement 42–44). Moreover, the lyric blessing prayer for the unity of the church, with which the letter draws to a close (59:3–64:1), is a free adaptation of the structure of Jewish blessing prayers with which we may assume Clement was familiar from eucharistic use.

Closely related to 1 Clement, both in time and place, are the apocalyptic visions of the Shepherd of Hermas, which exhort the leaders of the church to oversight of the baptized (Visions IX, 7–10) and take baptism as the mandate for repentance and the cultivation of purity (Mandates III, 1–7) in seeming qualification of Hebrews 6:1–8.

Of Asian provenance are the letters of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, written to the churches he expected to visit on his way to martyrdom at Rome in the reign of the Emperor Trajan (d. a.d. 117). In warning against “docetic” teaching of a proto-Gnostic sort, which denies the incarnation of the Word, Ignatius asserts the importance of the eucharistic gathering of the baptized with the bishop, elaborating Johannine themes (cf. 1 John 2:18–25; 5:6–12) to show its importance as exhibiting the faith that “there is only one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup to unite us in his blood” (Epistle to the Philadelphians 4; cf. Epistle to the Ephesians 13:1; Smyrneans 7:1, etc.).

Also of Asian provenance is the Martyrdom of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna (d. a.d. 156), himself numbered liturgically among the “Quartodecimans” who observed the Passover on the Jewish date 14 Nisan (see the discussion of Justin, below). This work, which contains evidence of later elaboration of various sorts, nonetheless preserves a blessing prayer attributed to Polycarp at the time of his death (ch. 14), which may well reflect his normal eucharistic blessing prayer but is here adapted to giving thanks for his being worthy of death and asking that he be accepted as a “pleasing sacrifice.” Like the blessing prayer of 1 Clement 59:3–64:1, it is evidence of the free Christian use of the form of Jewish blessing prayers.

The Didachē

Among other writings, “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” (Didachē) was long unrecognized in an adapted version incorporated in the late fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions, but is now known through the late nineteenth-century discovery of an independent manuscript. This is an unusual second-century Greek compilation and editing of early Aramaic materials from Syria-Palestine (a minority view says Egypt) perhaps as early as the late first century. In its present second-century form, Didachē brings together moral instruction, the “two ways” document (1–6), directions “about baptism” (7), fasting and prayer (8), and “about the Eucharist”: blessings to be said over wine and bread before the meal and a connected set of blessings to be said afterward (9–10). Directions follow covering the right of visiting prophets to give thanks and the need to appoint bishops and deacons (11–15), together with an exhortation to observe the Sunday Eucharist (14).

As a second-century document, Didachē follows an outline roughly similar to that found in Justin and Hippolytus (see below), in which a pre-baptismal catechesis precedes a description of paschal baptism and Eucharist, and is followed by a reference to the Sunday Eucharist and other matters. It is, for this reason, sometimes called an early “church order.” The particular circumstances that impelled its effort to conform earlier materials to newly emerging norms of practice, however, are not clear.

As to these early materials, interest naturally centers on the blessings to be said before and after meals, unquestionably Christian adaptations of the Jewish Sabbath and festival meal blessings. The order of wine and bread, and the lack of reference to the Last Supper “tradition,” still cause some skepticism regarding them. But plain words of the text, as well as the paschal context in which they have been set in conjunction with baptism, make it likely that they are eucharistic blessings, and even that the connected series after the meal, Christian adaptations of the Jewish blessings over the final “cup of blessing,” supply us with the long-needed clue as to the structure of prayers into which the blessings over the eucharistic bread and wine were set together when it became normal to gather for the Eucharist apart from an actual meal.

Justin Martyr

From the mid-second century to the end of the period of persecutions, we have an increasing body of liturgical evidence in the form of actual descriptions of liturgical practices, as well as of other writings with liturgical implications. The former, Justin Martyr’s First Apology and Hippolytus’ Apostolic Tradition, require special attention, though at least a selection of the latter must be noticed.

Justin’s First Apology, the work of a teacher of the Greek-speaking Roman church (d. a.d. 167), is easily neglected where it is assumed that liturgical writings will be of the sort with which we are familiar. As a general explanation and defense of Christianity for a pagan readership, it concludes with a description of Christian meetings for baptism and Eucharist (61–67) designed to allay suspicions of ghastly secret ceremonies to which their private character gave rise. Consequently, the description seems incomplete from our perspective. Despite its generality, however, this description follows precisely the pattern, not of Justin’s making, wherein details of paschal baptism and Eucharist (“how we dedicated ourselves to God when we were made new through Christ,” 61) are followed by a reference to the Sunday Eucharist (“on the day called ‘of the sun,’ there is a meeting in one place,” 67). Indeed, this pattern, roughly that already encountered in the present Didachē, doubtless reflects the practice of the Roman church once the Passover had come to be celebrated on a Lord’s Day following the Jewish feast, as was the case by the time of the visit of Polycarp of Smyrna to Pope Anicetus in a.d. 155 (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History IV, 14).

Moreover, Justin’s description is by no means lacking in specific detail. The paschal description assumes pre-baptismal catechesis, fasting, and prayer before a threefold washing “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (cf. Matt. 28:19), after which the newly baptized join the Eucharist for common prayers and the kiss of peace (61, 65). The elaborate interpretation of this new birth and remission of sins, with the use of the term illumination (cf. Heb. 6:4) and exposition of the divine triad (62–64) is likely catechetical in origin.

Justin’s appended description of the Eucharist (65), repeated briefly in his treatment of its weekly use (67), exhibits the sequence of “taking, blessing over, breaking (here omitted), and distribution” as it had evolved when detached from an actual meal, with a unified oral-formal blessing prayer and assenting Amen. His interpretation of the rite as a “memorial” commanded by Jesus (cf. 1 Cor. 11:23–26), participation in the body and blood of Christ, and the pure sacrifice of the New Covenant (66, cf. Dialogue with Trypho 41, 70, 117) likely reflects the themes expected to inform the blessing prayer. But the treatment of the Sunday Eucharist adds a reference to preliminary readings from the Jewish Scriptures and the “memoirs of the apostles,” followed by a homily, before the common prayers and kiss of peace, and thus provides our earliest evidence of such a Christian adaptation of the synagogue service in connection with the Sunday Eucharist.

Irenaeus

Unavoidable among theological writers of liturgical significance is Irenaeus of Lyons (d. a.d. 190?), a native of Asia Minor, correspondent of members of the Roman church, presbyter, and bishop of the Greek-speaking community at Lyons. His “Detection and Refutation of Falsely So-called Knowledge” (Adversus Haereses, or Against Heresies) is at once a response to Valentinian, Marcionite, and Gnostic teachings and a compendious presentation of Christian belief of far-reaching influence. His brief Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching is a catechetical digest of its main themes.

Irenaeus’ liturgical value is at once seen in his main contention that his opponents rely on a false interpretation (hypothesis) of the Scriptures different from the apostolic tradition (paradosis) communicated by the bishops at baptism (Against Heresies I.8.1, 9.1, 4, cf. III.2.2, 3.3). This tradition is “what we believe” about the one God and Father, the one Word incarnate in the flesh, and the Spirit which communicates new life in Christ to believers (I.10.1, cf. I.3.6, 22; II.28.1–3). Not only does Irenaeus refer here to the baptismal catechetical instruction with which he is familiar and which would eventually take shape in baptismal confessions of faith (creeds), but his whole work is, in genre, an expanded form of such instruction.

Irenaeus’ treatments of baptism and Eucharist assemble and develop now traditional interpretations, particularly those of baptismal rebirth (I.21.1; II.22.4; III.17.1) for the remission of sins (III.12.7) and the gift of righteousness and incorruption (III.17.2), and of the Eucharist as the prophecies’ pure sacrifice of the last days (IV.17.5), the oblation commanded by the Lord (IV.18.1), in which the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ after “the invocation of God” (IV.18.5). In his own view, the baptismal and eucharistic use of water, bread, and wine as means of participation in Christ show the goodness and usefulness of the physical creation (III.17.2; IV.18.2, 4–6; V.2.2–3) in contrast to the views of his opponents, who theoretically equate matter and evil, yet inconsistently continue the use of water, bread, and wine. (IV.18.5).

The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus

It is hard to overestimate the importance of the identification (by E. Schwartz [1910] and R. H. Connolly [1916]) of a Coptic document, discovered in 1848 and called “an Egyptian Church Order,” as the Apostolic Tradition listed among the writings of Hippolytus of Rome (d. a.d. 236). Now pieced together, on this basis, from a hitherto unidentified Latin manuscript, from Greek excerpts included in the later fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions, and from other sources, this work is now generally regarded as that of Hippolytus, an Irenaean theologian, presbyter of the Roman church, opponent of the bishops Zephyrinus (d. 217) and Callistus (d. 233), and schismatic bishop. As such, it purports to describe the proper conduct of the rites of the Roman church in Hippolytus’ time. While still not a liturgical book, it is an invaluable discussion of Roman liturgical practice.

The Apostolic Tradition follows the outline already familiar from Justin. Here, however, an extensive section on ordinations (2–15) precedes that on paschal baptism and Eucharist and includes a detailed description of the Eucharist of the newly ordained bishop. In consequence, the paschal section (16–23) treats baptism in detail but adds only brief notes on the Eucharist that follows it, while the Sunday Eucharist is omitted in the interest of a scattering of directions on other matters, including the continuation of communal meals whose non-eucharistic character is insisted on (25–26).

The Roman provenance of the Apostolic Tradition is evident from its broad structural similarities to Justin, and its use in the paschal baptism of interrogations accompanying the three washings (“Do you believe … ? I believe … ”) that employ much of the language of the Roman baptismal confession later attested by the letter of Marcellus of Ancyra to Pope Julius I in a.d. 340 (Epiphanius, Panarion 72) and by Rufinus of Aquileia’s early fifth-century Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed.

An uncertain number of features of the Apostolic Tradition, however, may be Hippolytus’ own adaptations or proposals. His rigorist position on the restoration of apostates in persecution is evident in the care with which he insists catechumens be selected (16), in his acceptance of the “baptism of blood” as an alternative to baptism in water (19), and possibly in the dramatic positioning of the baptismal interrogations. The careful descriptions of the functions of bishop, presbyters, and deacons in the ordination prayers (3, 8, 9) may also owe something to his own views, as may the unified language of his episcopal eucharistic prayer or anaphora (4), the theological stress on the independent existence of the Word in its opening thanks for the work of God, and in the appearance of an oblation of the “memorial” and invocation of the Spirit following the “institution narrative.” In this latter respect, its similarities with later Eastern eucharistic prayers rather than the later Roman canon have often been noticed. But there is no reason why a Roman prayer should not have had parallels with contemporary Asian types (cf. Martyrdom of Polycarp, 14), and we are not clear as to the limits of improvisation acceptable at the time.

Some Other Evidence

Only a selection of other materials from the third century can be noticed here, and then only for its correspondence with the types of evidence thus far encountered.

Didascalia. From Syria, perhaps quite early in the third century, comes the “Catholic Teaching of the Twelve Apostles and Holy Disciples of Our Savior” (Didascalia), now reconstructed by conflating a Syrian translation with Greek excerpts incorporated in the later fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions. Though often described as a “church order,” this work does not follow the structure that we have in the present Didachē, Justin, or Apostolic Tradition, but is a “disorderly” collection of material on various matters of belief and morals. Its liturgical interest lies in its provision, in connection with the comments on the pastoral responsibilities of the bishop, of prayer forms for the reconciliation of the excommunicate (6–7), its brief reference to the bishop’s liturgical functions (9), and its assortment of graphic details concerning the physical arrangement and appropriate conduct of the sorts of people who might gather at the eucharistic meetings (15).

Tertullian. Other contemporary liturgical evidence is found in the two major Latin writers of the period. Of these, Tertullian (d. a.d. 220) is the earlier and more comprehensive, a presbyter (?) of the church of Carthage, appropriator of Irenaeus and contemporary of Hippolytus, who came to accept the claims of the Montanist martyrs to a special possession of the gifts of the Spirit. By contrast, Cyprian (d. a.d. 258), bishop of Carthage, though a devoted reader of Tertullian, supported the authority of bishops to restore apostates to communion, and opposed the claims of the “confessors,” who had been prepared to die in persecution, to special powers of forgiveness.

Tertullian’s treatise On Baptism (De Baptismo), the only work on the subject in our period, might be the exception to our rule that liturgical matters are not subjects of treatment in themselves, were it not essentially an anti-Gnostic tract, concerned to defend (cf. Irenaeus) the regenerative power of water, the primordial source of life, when the Spirit is invoked upon it, the triune name employed, and the Spirit given through anointing and laying on of hands (2–8). In pursuing this subject, Tertullian provides details of baptismal practice not otherwise found in Justin or even Hippolytus (e.g., baptism at Pentecost and at the paschal feast), as well as, with the challenge of persecution in view, endorsing (16) the “baptism of blood” (see Hippolytus) and discouraging (18) the apparently hitherto common practice of baptizing infants (i.e., “households”).

Tertullian’s On Prayer (De Oratione) is perhaps more topical, though in arguing the superiority of Christian to Jewish prayer it provides the earliest commentary on the Lord’s Prayer (2–9), incidentally taking “daily bread” to refer to the Eucharist—“daily” referring to the “perpetuity” and “indivisibility” of our membership in the body of Christ (6). Once again, the treatise supplies details otherwise lacking, in this case of practices of corporate and private prayer, such as comments on kneeling and standing with hands extended (orans), the exchange of the kiss of peace and the reception of the Communion, and the prohibition of kneeling at the paschal feast and Pentecost.

More at large, Tertullian develops themes of Irenaeus to the point that the body is washed and fed in baptism and Eucharist so that both body and soul may be saved (cf. De Resurectione Carnis, 8), and introduces his own subsequently influential interpretation of the eucharistic sacrifice as a service or duty assigned as means of rendering satisfaction to God (On Prayer, 19).

Cyprian. Cyprian’s extensive debt to Tertullian includes an underlying assumption regarding the purity of the church, which leads, in his case, to insistence on the importance of eucharistic communion with the bishop rather than of such extraordinary spiritual gifts as Tertullian had come to value in the Montanist’s (On the Unity of the Church, 5–6, 8, 23). Thus he rejected (perhaps recalling Tertullian, On Baptism, 15) the baptism performed by the schismatic bishops who followed Novatian in condemning, in part on the basis of Hebrews 6:4–8, his willingness to allow the restoration of apostates to Communion (Epistles 69–74).

In this badly so-called “rebaptism” controversy, Cyprian was opposed by the Roman bishop Stephen, who supported the reception of the schismatically baptized. Cyprian, in his stress on unity with the bishop as the guarantee of the purity of the church, inadvertently laid the foundation for the later Donatist schism, which originated in refusal of Communion with any bishops who had committed apostasy in persecution. For our purposes, this controversy is a further indication, here provided in characteristically Latin form, of the significance of baptism and Eucharist as defining true Christian identity.