No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Origin of the Anaphora of the Liturgy of St. Basil
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011
Extract
Dr. G. A. Michell has argued that the kind of Eucharistic Prayer presupposed in the letter of Firmilian to Cyprian, about a prophetess who arrogated to herself the functions of the ordained ministry, was an invocation, or naming, of the Trinity, ending with the Sanctus; that this was, therefore, the kind of Eucharistic Prayer which was used at Caesarea in Firmilian's time; and that it survives in the first part of the Anaphora of the Liturgy of St. Basil, ending with the Sanctus. If this is true, it follows that all the rest of the prayer has been added, after the original ending. The question arises, whether it is an original composition, or whether it is borrowed from another church. This essay will try to answer that question, in the light of an attempt to recover the original structure of this part of the prayer.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1961
References
page 1 note 1 J.T.S. New Series, v (October 1954), 215–20.
page 1 note 2 F. E. Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western, i, Oxford 1896 (hereafter cited as LEW.), 330, I. 12. I understand that the following suggestion is Professor E. C. Ratcliff's: I owe it immediately to the Rev. A. H. Couratin.
page 1 note 3 Ratdiff, E. C., ‘The Sanctus and the Pattern of the Early Anaphora’, J.E.H., i (1950), 29–36, 125–34Google Scholar.
page 2 note 1 Cyril, Cat. Myst., v. 11–18.
page 2 note 2 For convenience, I use the name of a person, in single inverted commas, to signify the rite which goes by his name.
page 2 note 3 LEW., 522, II. 14–40. It is difficult to agree with the late DrSrawley, J. H. (The Early History of the Liturgy, 2nd ed., Cambridge 1947, 108Google Scholar) that such verbal resemblances, as νμον ἔδωκεν εἰς βοθειαν, γγλους πςεν εἰς φυλακν … προφτας πστειλεν, prove no more than the currency of certain ideas. I regret that I have had no access to the monograph of Engberding, Dom H. (Das eucharistiche Hochgebet der Basiliusliturgie, Münster 1931)Google Scholar in which he argues that the ‘Basil’ prayer, at least as far as the Institution Narrative, is a remoulding by St. Basil himself of an older prayer, whose text can be reconstructed.
page 2 note 4 Cyril, Cat. Myst., v. 7.
page 3 note 1 Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, 204.
page 3 note 2 De Spiritu Sancto, xxvii, 66.
page 3 note 3 LEW., 526, n. 13; Srawley, loc. cit.
page 3 note 4 De Baptismo, i. 3, § 2; LEW., 523, II. 1–6.
page 3 note 5 LEW., 327, II. 27–328 I. 20.
page 4 note 1 The relation of the Roman institution narrative to these texts is demonstrated by E. C. Ratcliff, ‘The Institution Narrative of the Roman Canon Missae: its Beginnings and Early Background’, in Kurt Aland and F. L. Cross (edd.), Studia Patristica, Berlin 1957, ii. 64–82.
page 5 note 1 Cyril, Cat. Myst., iv. i. I do not think that this relationship affects the question of whether there was an Institution Narrative in St. Cyril's rite. The principles of form criticism suggest that institution narratives began in catechetical tradition, before the N.T. was written. (It cannot be assumed that they were used liturgically in the first century). The variety of local catechetical narratives would not diminish when the N.T. was published: indeed, it might increase, by people misquoting the N.T. from memory. If liturgical narratives developed independently of the Gospels, we should expect catechetical ones to do so too. Cyril's crisp narrative, with its exact parallelism between the two halves, is an admirable piece of catechesis, made for committing to memory. If this was the narrative most familiar to Jerusalem Christians, it would be the natural one for them to incorporate, eventually, into their liturgy.
page 6 note 1 J.E.H., ix (1958), 1–7.
page 7 note 1 Ignatius, Magnesians, vii. There is a catena of patristic passages on this subject in de la Taille, M., The Mystery of Faith, E.T., London 1941, i. 216–27Google Scholar. Also Westcott, B. F., The Epistle to the Hebrews, London 1889, 453–61Google Scholar.
page 7 note 2 Hagiga 12b, cited by Barrett, C. K. in Davies, W. D. and Daube, D. (edd.), The Background of the N. T. and its Eschatology, Cambridge 1956, 374Google Scholar. The altar is in the fourth heaven, and the archangel Michael ministers at it. On the principle that Christian borrowings from Judaism are likely to be early, before relations became bad, this passage is surely a strong argument for the antiquity of the Roman Canon Missae.
page 7 note 3 Rev. viii. 3, xiv. 18, and perhaps Heb. xiii. 10.
page 7 note 4 See Chrysostom, In Heb. Hom., xiv. 1–2, xvii. 3.
page 7 note 5 J.T.S., xxxix (1934), 141 ff.
page 7 note 6 So Ratcliff, E. C. in Kirk, K. E. (ed.), The Study of Theology, London 1939, 424Google Scholar.
page 8 note 1 Ignatius, loc. cit.; 1 Clement, 36; Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., iv. 18. 6. M. de la Taille (loc. cit.) cites a number of relevant passages from Origen.
page 8 note 2 J.E.H., loc. cit.
page 8 note 3 Torrance, T. F., Royal Priesthood, Edinburgh 1955, 16Google Scholar.
page 8 note 4 The origin and history of the paragraphs which now follow are discussed in Jungmann, J. A., The Mass of the Roman Rite, E.T. New York 1955, ii. 237–59Google Scholar; Bishop, E., Liturgica Historica, Oxford 1918, 96–103Google Scholar; Kennedy, V. L., The Saints of the Canon of the Mass, Rome 1938Google Scholar. The latter part of Supplices te is a prayer for the communicants, raising the question whether this is another case where such a prayer has displaced the original doxology, and whether that was the Sanctus.
page 8 note 5 LEW., 287, I. 22; see E. C. Ratcliff, in J.T.S., xxx (1929), 23 ff.
page 9 note 1 The Shape of the Liturgy, 181.
page 10 note 1 Text in J.T.S., loc. cit., and Dix, op. cit., 178 ff. (‘Addai and Mari’); LEW., 324, II. 5–327, I. 19 (‘Basil’).
page 11 note 1 Mingana, A. (ed.), Woodbrooke Studies, Cambridge 1933, vi. 96Google Scholar ff.
page 11 note 2 J.T.S., loc. cit.
page 11 note 3 Mingana, op. cit., 100.
page 11 note 4 Ibid.
page 11 note 5 Ibid., 102 f.; LEW., 326, II. 30–327, I. 15.
page 11 note 6 Mingana, op. cit., 103.
page 11 note 7 LEW., 329, I. 32.
page 11 note 8 Ibid., 21, I. 7.
page 12 note 1 Ibid., 330, II. 12 ff.
page 12 note 2 LEW., Appendix L, 511 ff.; R. H. Connolly, Oriens Christianus, N.S., xii-xiv (1922–4), 99 ff. Writing in Central Africa, I have had no access to this article.
page 12 note 3 LEW., 513, II. 15–17.
page 12 note 4 Ibid., II. 18 ff.
page 12 note 5 Ibid., 515, II. 27–35.
page 12 note 6 Ad eos qui scandalizantur, 8; LEW., 479, II. 22 ff.
page 12 note 7 LEW., 325, II. 10 ff.
page 12 note 8 So E C. Ratcliff, J.T.S., loc. cit.; Dix, op. cit., 177.
page 12 note 9 Ramsay, W. M., The Church in the Roman Empire before A.D. 170, London 1893, 10Google Scholar.
page 13 note 1 LEW., 51, II. 26, 479, II. 46 ff.
page 13 note 2 Ibid., 327, II. 19, 23.
page 13 note 3 Ibid., 20, II. 13–15.
page 13 note 4 J.E.H., loc. cit.
page 13 note 5 So Dix, op. cit., 176, n. 1.