CHAPTER  THREE

                           THE  CLASSICAL  FORM
                      of  the  BYZANTINE  EUCHARIST:

                       THE  EAST  SYRIAN  SURVIVALS
                          of  INTERMEDIARY  TYPES


Despite its universal popularity for a time in the East, the Liturgy of
St. James was to be rather rapidly supplanted by related liturgies. 
They seem to be only reductions and reworkings, if not of this
Liturgy itself, at least of analogous liturgies about which the 8th
Book of the Apostolic Constitutions can give us some idea.  They
are liturgies attributed respectively to St. John Chyrsostom and St.
Basil.   Both were adopted by the great Church of constantinople,
and under its soon to be dominant influence, they replaced the
Liturgy of St. James, practically everywhere and, in Egypt, the
Liturgy of St. Mark as well.

     The Liturgy named after St. John Chrysostom seems at first to
have been simply the Liturgy used by him at Antioch while he was
exercising his priestly and then episcopal ministry there.  It is
possible that he brought it with him to Constantinople, from where
it was to radiate out over the whole Greek speaking world.  It does
not seem that he was its author, but only its reviser.  This revision is
visible on account of a number of formulas bearing the trace of his
own personal theological concerns.  It is possible that along with
these additions, he also made a few abbreviations.  What leads to
think so is the existence of a Liturgy which is preserved today in
Syriac, both by the Syrian  Jacobites and Uniates and by the
Maronites, under the name "Liturgy of the Twelve Apostles".  This
seem to come from a Greek text that is anterior to the Liturgy
named after St. John Chrysostom, in which the additions that bear
his mark are not present, although on the other hand, we find a few,
certainly very ancient, formulas which have disappeared from the
text attributed to this Saint.

            THE  ANTIOCHIAN  LITURGY  OF  THE  TWELVE 
APOSTLES

This Liturgy of the twelve Apostles allows to make a connection
with the text of a short Liturgy of Antioch, which undeniably
related to the text attributed to St. James, but which on several
points is closer to the Liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions.

     Here, first, is the part leading up to the Sanctus:

        The love of God the Father, the grace of the Only-Begotten
Son and the communication   of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

     --- And with your spirit.
     Let us lift up our hearts.
     --- We have (lifted them up) to the Lord.
     Let us give thanks to the Lord.
     ---It is meet and right.
        It     is meet and right to worship Thee and to glorify The e, fo
r Thou art the true God,   together with thy Only-Begotten Son and
the Holy Spirit.    Thou hast brought us into  being out of nothing,
Thou hast lifted us up from th e Fall , and Thou hast not stopped
until Thou hast raised us up even into Heaven that we might obtain
the Kingdom that is to come.  For all this we thank Thee, Thy
Only-Begotten son and the Holy spirit.  Before and about thee
stand the many-eyed Cherubim, and the six-winged Seraphim. 
They glorify and praise, together with all the other heavenly
powers, with one unceasing voice, and, in unceasing hymns they
proclaim and sing: Holy, Holy, Holy the Lord Sabaoth.  Heaven
and earth are filled with thy glory.  Hosanna in the highest.  Blessed
be He who comes and who will come in the Name of the Lord our
God.  Hosanna in the highest.

     This part seems to be a short form of a text analogous to that of 
St. James, although here the central mention of the heavenly
Jerusalem is replaced by that of the heavenly and eschatological
Kingdom.  Actually, we may wonder whether this text is an
abbreviation of St. James, or whether it is not rather as short form
of an analogous but earlier text, which must have taken on some
local characteristics at Jerusalem.  What follows, as we shall see,
reinforces that impression.

     Let us go on to the second part as far as the anamnesis:

        Thou   art Holy and All-Holy, together with Thy Onl y-B egot
ten Son an d the Holy Spirit.   Thou art Holy and All-Holy in the
majesty of Thy  g lory.  Thou  hast so loved the world     that Thou
gavest Thy Only-Begotten Son that  whoever  believe s in Him may
not perish but have eternal Life, (Thy Son) who has come and who,
having fulfilled the whole economy instituted for us, on the night
He was betrayed took bread into His Holy and spotless hands, and,
having raised them to Heaven, blessed it, sanctified it and broke it;
then He gave it to His disciples and Apostles, saying: Take, eat of
this all of you, this is My Body, broken and given for you and for
many, for the remission of sins and life everlasting.  Likewise, for
the cup, having supped He mixed wine and water, gave thanks,
blessed it, sanctified it and, after tasting it, gave it to His disciples
and Apostles, saying: Take, drink of this all of you, this is the Blood
of the New Covenant, shed for you and for many, and distributed
for the remission of sins and life everlasting.  Do this as a memorial
of Me.  As often as you eat this bread and drink this up you will
announce My death and proclaim My resurrection until I come.
     (The people answer:)  Thy death, Lord!  We proclaim Thy
resurrection and we await Thy     return.
     (Th      e celebrant continues:) Being mindful, Lord, of Th y s
aving command and of the     whole economy instituted for us: Thy
Cross, thy resu rrection from the dead on the third   day, Thy
Ascension into Heaven, Thy sitting at  the right hand of the majesty
of the Father, Thy parousia when thou will come in glory to judge
the living and the dead and render to each according to his works,
with compassion, Thy Church and Thy flock beseech Thee, and
through Thee and with Thee, beseech the Father, saying: have
mercy on Me.  (The people repeat: Have mercy on us.)  And we
also, Lord, who have received Thy grace, we give Thee thanks for
everything and for all.

     (The people: We praise Thee.)

     What is most noticeable about this part is that as in the Eucharist
of  St. James it focused upon the recalling of the merciful love that
has saved us.  But here as in the later texts this recall takes the form
of a quotation, in the second person, from the Gospel according to
St. John (3:16). And in this line of tradition this recall from now on
absorbs the whole act of thanksgiving for the redemption. 
Immediately afterwards, through only one connecting phrase, we
pass to the institution narrative. The anamnesis is brought about
through the same amplification of Pauline origin of "Do this as a
memorial of Me" that we found in St. James, although put in the
first person, on the lips of Christ.  The anamnesis, also as in this
other Liturgy, is directed toward the Epiclesis through an
invocation of the divine mercy.  But here we see a peculiarity that
seems to be very ancient.  As in the Eucharist of Addai and Mari,
the anamnesis is addressed not to the Father, but to the Son. 
Perhaps more striking is the fact that no explicitly sacrificial formula
has yet appeared.

     Let us now proceed to the Epiclesis and the prayers that follow
it:

     (The Deacon says:) In silence and with fear!
     
      (The celebrant continues:) We beg Thee, Lord Almighty and
God of the power s, prost rate    before Thee, to send Thy Spirit
upon the offerings which are presented  and to ma nifest    to us
that this bread is the Holy Body of our Lord Jesus C hrist, th is cup
the Blood of this same Jesus Christ, our Lord, so that all who taste
of it may obtain life and resurrection, the forgiveness of sins,
healing of soul and body, the illumination of the Spirit and
assurance before the awesome tribunal of  Thy Christ.  Let none
among Thy people, Lord, go astray, but make us worthy to serve
Thee in tranquility, to remain in Thy service all the days of our life,
to enjoy heavenly, immortal and Life-Giving Mysteries, through
Thy grace, Thy mercy and compassion, now and ever and world
without end.  (People: Amen.)

         We offer Thee, Lord Almighty, this spiritual sacrifice for all
men, for Thy Cat holic    Church, for the Bishops who dispense the
word of  truth, for my unworthiness,  for pries ts      and deacons,
for all believers of the country , for all th e faithful people, for
seasonable weather and the fruits of the earth, for our brothers in
the faith who are in tribulation, for those who have brought these
offerings, for those who are named in the holy Churches ... To each
grant the help he needs.  To our fathers and brothers who have died
in the True Faith, grant the divine glory on the day of judgment;
enter not into contestation with them, for no living being is guiltless
before Thee: only one was found without sin upon earth, Thy Only-
Begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the great purifier of our race,
through whom we hope to find mercy and forgiveness of sins, for
us and for them.

     (The people answer:) Forgive, bolt out our sins.  We are mindful
above  all of the holy    Mother of God, Mary Ever Virgin, of the
holy Apostles, the martyrs  shining forth with     victory, and of all
the Saints who have been pleasing t o Thee.  Through their prayer
and their intercession, preserve us from evil, and let Thy mercy be
upon us, in this world and in the world to come, that we may
glorify Thy blessed Name, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.

     The people conclude:) As it was always and world without end.

     Once again we find ourselves here in the presence of arachic
details.  The terms "offering" and "sacrifice" each appear only once,
the first in the Epiclesis and the second at the beginning of the
intercessions.  The descent of the Spirit is asked, not as in St.
James, so that He will make the elements the Body and Blood of
Christ, but, as in the Apostolic Constitutions, that He manifest that
they are so, by producing in the participants all the effects of the
Mystery.   Instead of directly introducing the prayers that follow
(and which are remarkably precise) the Epiclesis has also retained
its own conclusion.

           FROM  THE  LITURGY  OF  THE TWELVE APOSTLES 
TO  THE
                    LITURGY  OF  ST.  JOHN  CHYRSOSTOM

     The comparison of the text with the one which is today
widespread under the name of St. John Chrysostom is most
interesting.  Note that the first formula of the dialogue with the
exception of a few minute differences was taken literally from the
Pauline text, which seems to be a first indication of a theological
concern to return to the letter of the Scripture quotes, rather than
an archaism.  We shall see a much more striking manifestation of
this in the whole Eucharist of St. Basil and other analogous
Liturgies.

     Leaving that aside, here is the form that the first part of the
Eucharistic Prayer has taken:

        I     t is meet and right to  hymn Thee, to give thanks to T h
ee, to worship Thee in every    place of Thy sovereign ty: for thou
art God, ineffa ble,  inconceivable, invisible,      incomprehensible,
who  at ever and for ever the  sam e, Thou and Thy Only-Begotten
Son and Thy Holy Spirit; Thou hast brought us to being out of
nothing, Thou hast lifted us up from the Fall, and Thou hast not
stopped until Thou hast raised us up even into Heaven that we
might obtain the Kingdom that is to come.  For all this we thank
Thee, Thy Only-Begotten Son and Thy Holy Spirit,  for all Thy
benefits we know and for those we do not know, for those manifest
and those hidden; we give Thee thanks also for this service which
we beseech Thee to accept from our hands, although thousands of
Archangels attend thee and tens of thousands of Angels, the
Cherubim and the six-winged, many eyed, Seraphim, soaring,
flying, proclaiming, crying out and saying: Holy, Holy,  Holy, Lord
Sabaoth; Heaven and earth are filled with Thy glory; Hosanna in the
highest; blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord,
Hosanna in the highest.

     It is clear that the preceding Syriac text translates a Greek text
that is practically identical with the one we have just translated,
with the exception of the sense of adjectives we have italicized in
the beginning and the other expansion toward the end, where we
made particularly the rather curious introduction of a sacrificial
formula at this junction.  We shall return to this point.

               Together with them, we also, Mas ter of Power and  lover
o f men, proclaim and say:  Thou art Holy and All-Holy, as well as
Thy Only-Beg otten Son and  Thy Holy Spirit;    Thou art Holy and
All-Holy and filled with majesty i s Thy glory, T hou who hast so
loved the world that Thou gave Thy Only-Begotten Son that
whoever believes in Him may not perish but have everlasting life,
the One who has come and who, having accomplished this whole
economy instituted for us, on the night He handed Himself over,
took bread in His Holy, pure, and spotless hands, gave thanks,
blessed it, broke it and gave it to His holy disciples and Apostles,
saying: Take, eat, this is My Body for you, likewise also the cup,
after having supped, saying: Drink of this all of you, this is My
blood of the New Covenant shed for you and for many for the
remission of sins  (the people answer: Amen).

       Being mindful then of this His saving command, and of
everything that has happened      for our sakes, the Cross, the
burial, the resurrection on the third day, the return to Heaven,     
the sitting at (Thy) right hand, the second and gloriou s parousia,
offering to Thee what is Thine out of what is Thine, in all and for all
...

        (The people answer:) .. We hymn Thee, we bless Thee, we
give thanks to Thee, Lord,     and we beseech Thee, our God. 

     Note here again that with the disappearance of the transition
from the first to the second Person of the Trinity in the address of
the prayer, there is the substitution of a sacrificial formula (close to
those found at Rome and at Alexandria) for the simple invocation
of the divine mercy.  It is, moreover, a perfect expression of the
original sense of the memorial. But what is extraordinary, and what
constitutes a unique fact in Liturgical History, the anamnesis no
longer depends on the phrase of Christ: "Do this as a memorial of
Me."  While this sentence in the Syriac Liturgy of the Twelve
Apostles as in  St. James is expanded and specified through the
influence of St. Paul's words (1 Cor. 11:16) already quoted in the
Liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions, here it has completely
disappeared.

        Agai  n we offer Thee this spiritual and unbloody worship  
and we call upon Thee, pray    thee, beseech Thee to send Thy Holy
Spirit upo n us and upon these gifts presented, and    to make this
bread the precious Body of Thy Ch rist, changing it by Thy Holy
Spirit (Amen), and what is in this cup the precious Blood of Thy
Christ, changing it by Thy Holy Spirit (Amen), so that they may be
for those who partake of them for the  temperance of the soul, the
remission of sins, the communication of Thy Holy spirit, the
remission of sins, the communication of Thy Holy Spirit, the
fullness of the Kingdom, free access to Thee, and not for judgment
or condemnation.

        Again, we offer Thee this spiritual worship for the Fathers,
Patriarchs ,  the Prophets, the  Apostles, the Preachers, the
Evangelists, the Martyrs, the Con fess ions, the continent who     
have gone to rest in the Faith and every righteous m an 
accomplished in the Faith, above all the all-holy, pure, all-glorious
and blessed one, our Lady, the Mother of God and Every-Virgin
Mary, St. John the Fore-runner and Baptist, and the holy Apostles
worthy of all praise, and St. N. whom we commemorate, and all the
Saints, through whose prayers protect us, O God.  Be mindful also
of all those who sleep in the hope of the resurrection of eternal life,
and give them rest where the light of Thy countenance radiates.

       We call upon Thee also, Lord, to be mindful of every orthodox
episcopate that dispenses      the word of Thy truth, of the whole
Presbytey, of the Diaconate in Christ and every  sacred order.
           
       Again, we offer Thee this spiritual worship for the inhabited
earth,  for the Holy,      Catholic and Apostolic Church, for those
who spend their lives in pu rity and holiness, for     those who are
upon the mountains, in caves and the  holes in t he ground, for the
most faithful king, for the Christ-loving queen, for their whole
palace and army; grant them, Lord, a peaceable kingdom, that in
the quietude we may lead a calm and tranquil life in all godliness
and holiness.  Be mindful, Lord, of the city in which we live and of
every city and town, as well as of those who dwell therein in faith.

         Above all, be mindful, Lord, of our Archbishop N.

        Be mindful, Lord, of those who travel by sea, who are on a
voyage, who are sick or     mained or captive and of their salvation.

              Be mindful, Lord, of those who bring fruit and do good in
Thy holy Churches, and  who are mindful of the poor, and send
down upon us Thy mercies, and grant us, with one    mouth and
one heart, to glorify and to hymn Thy most precious and majestic
Name, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and
always, world without end.  Amen.

     Here the Epiclesis begins with a third sacrificial formula absent
from the Syriac Aanaphora, which seems to be taken from the
anamnesis of  St. James.  Like the Epiclesis of this latter, it asks not
only that the spirit manifest that the bread and wine are the Body
and Blood of Christ, but that He make them this Body and Blood. 
For the first time we see this supplementary specification
introduced: "changing them by Thy Holy Spirit".  This constitutes
the first introduction in a Eucharistic Prayer of a technical
theological formula.  It is also found in the text of  St. Basil  that
has become classic.

     Again, as in S. James, the Epiclesis is extended through the
intercessions, without losing its continuity, until it finally ends at the
doxology of the Divine Name.

     The additions which we have italicized at the beginning pose
several problems.

     The series of adjectives emphasizing the divine transcendence
concords too precisely with the concerns of St. John Chrysostom in
his De incognoscibilitate Dei for it not to have come from his pen. 
We must not see in it, as too many modern commentators on this
tract have imagined, an influence of the pagan mysteries or of the
Neo-Platonism so much as a very live reaction, begun by the
Cappadocians, against the Anomean Arians, like Eunomius, who
claimed that they could reduce the Divine Essence to an adequate
concept.  It is the same biblical concern that may have given rise to
the invisible benefits of God, and the reintroduction of a more
extensive mention of the Angelic beings.

     As for the sacrificial formula added before the Sanctus, it has no
traditional antecedent in this precise position.  In its substance it
might come either from Hippolytus or a tradition which he himself
had found.


              THE  LITURGY  OF  ST.  BASIL,  ITS 
COMPOSITION
              AND  THE  DIFFERENT  STAGES  OF  ITS 
EVOLUTION

Used side by side today in the Byzantine world or in areas
influenced by Byzantium, there is another Anaphora, which is
undoubtedly later than that of the Twelve Apostles, but certainly
anterior to the reworking of it that we have just studied.  It is the
one attributed to St. Basil of Caesarea.

     When its present text is compared to various earlier states which
we can point out through an ancient Syriac version, an Armenian
version, undoubtedly from the fifth century, and finally the
composition still older than all of these other documents which has
been preserved for us in Egypt, it poses a delicate critical problem. 
Anton Baumstark, thinks that the Egyptian text must be the text of
an ancient Cappadocian Anaphora that St. Basil may later have
remodeled, and which would subsequently have been further
developed.  For our part, we are inclined to think this form, which
is the oldest one available to us, was already the result of a very
personal synthesis which St. Basil himself may have expanded
somewhat later and which after his time would have been further
completed, without being substantially altered.

     Whatever the case, the Anaphora bearing his name was brought
at an early date into Egypt (perhaps by himself on trip that he made
there), and must soon after, undoubtedly under a longer form, have
been transported to Constantinople, probably by a bishop who was
originally from Cappadocia and who could very well have been a
friend of Gregory of Nazianzum.  It is certain that it was established
there a long time before the other Anaphora attributed to St. John
Chrysostom.  It was from there that it must have spread throughout
the East, before being gradually supplanted by the latter.

     It is likely that St. Basil's Eucharist, like that of the Twelve
Apostles, was originally a condensation of a more copious text,
which seems however to have been closer to the 8th Book of the
Apostolic Constitutions that to that of St. James.  As was the case
with the Twelve Apostles, this short formula in its turn underwent a
process of amplification, which was to end up in the form that is
used today in the Byzantine Liturgy. but, form its brief form
through its successive amplifications, it seems to have responded to
a conscious plan to produce a Eucharist that was as biblical as
possible in its composition.  The Eucharist of the 8th Book of the
Apostolic Constitutions and even more the Liturgy of  St. James
had already incorporated into their texts many a biblical citation. 
But it seems that St. Basil was the first composer of a Christian
Eucharistic Prayer to seek to use only literally biblical formulas in it. 
We could not find better confirmation of an only apparently
paradoxical law suggested by Baumstark: when a liturgical text
reproduces textually biblical formulas, it is a sign not of antiquity,
but of a late reworking.

     It is a fact that all the ancient liturgical texts, to the extent that
they are still contemporary, if not to the composition at least to the
canonization of the texts of the New Testament, manifest no
tendency to restrict themselves to their wording, not even to
occasional citations.  It is with the first great West Syrian liturgies,
admitting their relatively late date, that the first attempt was made
to make use of the biblical texts word for word.  But we must go to
St. Basil. whose impassioned attachment to a thorough study of the
Bible, inspired by Origen, is known, in order to find a Eucharist
which is nothing but a biblical patchwork.

     Exercises of this type, which we are, perhaps correctly, tempted
to see as tiresome diversions of barbaric childishness, were the
delight of the literati of the age.  After composing Gospel narratives
in the form of Homeric or Virgilian centones, once the Greek Bible
came in turn to be imposed as the first literary monument of a
Hellenized Christianity, people set about reciprocally creating new
texts by making use of the same procedure in formulas taken from
the inspired writings.  Despite the peculiarity artificial character that
such a method of composition risked giving  St. Basil's  Eucharist,
his familiarity with Scripture together with the synthetic power of
his thought, since he went not merely to the wording but to the
themes themselves, made his text one of the most beautiful
Eucharistic formularies of tradition.  As with St. James, its
Trinitarian schema is impeccable, but the abundance of biblical
material used so cleverly gives him more genuine adaptability than
we might have expected.  The result is a magnificent litany of all the
titles and all the attributions of the Divine Persons in the Bible,
beneath which we can see Origen's great vision, corrected by St.
Anathansius and his successors of the "economy" of salvation.

     We shall give this text in its complete form, which has been in
use for a long time in the Byzantine Rite, but we shall put in italics
the formulas added to St. Basil's text, as Dom Enbergding thinks he
can reconstruct it, and on the other hand in small capitals the
original state that the Egyptian formulas show us.

         Thou who  art,  Master, Lord , God, Almighty Adorable Fa th
er, how meet and right      it  is in the majesty  of  Thy holin ess to
prai se Thee, to h ymn Thee,  to bl ess Thee, to     worship Thee, 
to give thanks t o thee, t o glorify  thee, th ou who alone art             
   really god, and to offer to Thee with a contrite heart and a
humbled mind this our reasonable worship, for it is Thee who have
given us to known Thy truth.  And who is worthy to praise Thy
wonders, to make all Thy praises heard?  Master of all things, Lord
of Heaven, of earth and of every creature visible and invisible, thou
who art seated upon a throne of glory and who plumb the depths,
without beginning, invisible, incomprehensible, indescribable,
immutable.  the father of our lord jesus christ, of the great God and
Savior or our hope, who is the Image of Thy goodness, the imprint
equal to its model, who shows Thee in Himself, Thou the Father,
living Word, true God before the worlds, Wisdom, Life,
Sanctification, Power, true Light, through whom the Holy Spirit
was manifested, the Spirit of Truth. the gift of sonship, the pledge
of our future inheritance, the source of sanctification, through
which every rational and spiritual creature is made capable of
rendering Thee worship and gives Thee eternal glorification, for all
things are in Thy service.  for it is thou who art praised by the
angels, the archangels, the thrones, the dominations, the
principalities, the authorities. the powers, and the many-eyed
cherubim; the seraphim are around thee, each having six wings,
with two the feet, and with two they fly, they cry out to one
another with mouths that do not tire, in doxologies which are never
silent, singing, proclaiming, crying out the victory hymn and saying:
holy, holy, holy, lord sabaoth  heaven and earth are filled with thy
glory. hosanna in the highest, blessed (be) he who comes in the
name of the lord.  hosanna in the highest. 

         To gether  with these bles sed powers, Ma ster, love r of men,
we a lso, sinners, cry out  and      we say: how hol y and all-ho ly
art t hou, and t here is no limit to the maj esty  of Thy  holiness, 
and  (Thou art) holy i n all Thy wo rks, for Tho u hast disposed all
things for us in righteousness and true judgment.  having made man,
in taking dust from the earth, and having honored him with Thy
image, thou had place him in the garden of delight in promising him
immortality of life and the enjoyment of the eternal good things in
the observation of Thy commands.  but when he disobeyed thee,
Thou, the true God who created him, and he was led astray by the
deception of the serpent and died in his own transgressions, Thou
cast him out in Thy justice, O God, from the paradise in this world
and Thou caused him to return to earth from which he was taken,
arranging for him the salvation (which was to come) of the
resurrection in Thy Christ Himself; For Thou did not reject forever
thy work, which Thou had made, in thy goodness, and Thou have
not forgotten the world of Thy hands, but Thou hast visited it in
manifold ways through the bosom of Thy mercy, Thou hast sent
him (the) Prophets, Thou hast worked wonders through Thy Saints
who were pleasing to Thee in all generations, Thou hast spoken to
us through the mouth of thy servants the prophets, announcing to
us beforeh and the salvation to come, Thou hast given the Law to
help us, established the Angels to preserve us.  but when the
fullness of time came, thou spoke to us through thy son himself,
through whom Thou hast also created the ages, He who is the
splendor of Thy glory and the form of Thy substance, bearing all
things by the word of Thy power, did not look upon equality with
thee, God and Father, as a plunder, but, being God before the ages,
He was seen upon the earth, and He lived among men, and having
taken flesh from holy virgin, He                    emptied Himself,
taking the form of a servant, conforming Himself, to the body of
our lowliness in order to confirm us to the image of His glory.  For,
since by man came sin into the world, and by sin death, it pleased
Thy Only-Begotten Son, who is in Thy bosom, God and Father,
born of a woman, the holy Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary,
born under the Law, to condemn sin in His flesh, so that we who
died in Adam may be brought to life in Him, Thy Christ.  Having
lived as a citizen of this world, giving the ordinances of salvation,
turning us away from the waywardness of idols, He introduced us
into the knowledge of the, the true God and the Father, having
acquired us from himself as a people which is his own, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, having purified us by water and sanctified
us by the holy spirit, he gave himself over in exchange to death, in
which we have been held, sold by sin, and he descended into hell
through the cross, in order to fill all things with Himself (or to
accomplish all things by Himself), He loosed the bonds of death,
and, having risen on the third day, and having opened to the flesh
the path of the resurrection from the dead, since it was not possible
that the dispenser of life would be dominated by corruption, He
became the first fruits of those who sleep, the first-born from
among the dead, in order to have the primacy in all things, and,
ascending into heaven, he sits at the right hand of thy majesty in the
highest, he who will render to each one according to his works.

                        m oreover, he has l e ft us as a me morial of his  
saving passion,  what we h ave    presented to T h ee in  accordance
with  Hi s ow n orders.  For, when   he went off  to his  volun tary,
repr oachless and li feg i ving death, on the  night He was betrayed
for the life of the world, taking bread into his holy and spotless
hands, and having  presented it thee, he broke it and gave it to his
disciples and apostles, saying: take, eat, this is my body, broken for
you for the remission of sins.  likewise, taking also the cup of the
fruit of the vine, having mingled it, have given thanks, he blessed it,
sanctified it and gave it to his holy disciples and apostles, saying:
drink of this cup, you announce my death and you proclaim my
resurrection.  therefore, master, we also, mindful of his saving
sufferings, of His life-giving Cross, of His burial for three days, of
his resurrection from the dead, of his return to heaven, of his sitting
at thy right hand, god and father, and of his glorious and awesome
second coming offering to thee what is thy own from what is thy
own, in all and for all, on account of  this all-holy master, we also,
sinners, thy unworthy servants, whom Thou hast made worthy to
serve at Thy holy Altar, not on account of our justifications, for we
have done nothing good on earth, but on account of Thy mercies
and Thy compassion, that Thou hast shed abundantly upon us, we
are bold to approach Thy holy Altar, and, bringing forth the
symbols of the holy Body and Blood of thy Christ, we beseech thee,
and we call upon Thee, O Holy of Holies, through the benevolence
of thy goodness, to cause thy holy spirit to come upon us and upon
these gifts which we present to thee, that ne may bless them,
sanctify them and present to us (in) this bread the precious body of
our lord, god and savior jesus christ, and (in) this cup the precious
blood of our lord, god and savior jesus christ, shed for the life of
the world, changing them by Thy Holy Spirit.  and all of the world,
changing them by Thy Holy Spirit.  and all of us, who partake of
the one bread and the (one) Cup, unite us with one another in the
fellowship in the one spirit, and cause that no one of us will partake
in the holy Body and Blood of Thy Christ for judgment and
condemnation, but that we might find mercy and grace with all the
saints that have been pleasing to thee in the ages, the ancestors, the
Fathers, the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Apostles, the heralds, the
Evangelists, the martyrs, the confessors, the doctors and every
righteous spirit accomplished in the faith.

     If we observe the variations in typography which we have used,
it can be immediately seen that the later additions to the last text of
St. Basil are of little importance.  They are merely a few rhetorical
amplifications, short explanatory formulas, or an extension of the
biblical citations.  We have not given here, as we did not in the case
of the Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom, the later additions to the
Epiclesis.  But it should be noted that the clause "changing them by
thy Spirit", which we have reproduced, seems already to be an
interpolation (undoubtedly borrowed from the preceding text),
which in our text does violence to the grammar.

     If, inversely, we look at the oldest from of the text, it strikes us
by its sobriety (especially noticeable in the part preceding the
Sanctus), but also by the biblical richness that its schema already
has.  The whole drama of sin and redemption is summed up in the
alienation of man brought about by sin, and marked by death, and,
thanks to the "exchange" to which Christ consents, in the
reconstitution of mankind into a people which is His own and which
finds life again through its being brought together. Baptism is thus
recalled in connection with the redemptive work of the Spirit who
is mentioned as the one who in the sacramental mystery
communicates to us the effect of what was fulfilled in Christ
Himself.  In its elementary form the Epiclesis again introduces the
Spirit as the one who, by "presenting" us with the very Body and
Blood of Christ under the "antitypes of bread and wine, unites us to
one another in one Spirit (the Egyptian text specified: "in one body
and in one Spirit").

     Such a remarkable continuity of development as this, which is
already biblical and particularly Pauline, is in no way toned down by
the amplifications made by St. Basil.  The anthology of biblical
citation that he grafts onto it merely gives increased stress to each
of the Divine Persons.  The result is a Eucharist which is no less
expressly Trinitarian than St. James', but which escapes from the
much too logical over-simplification of the latter: Father-creation,
Son-redemption, Spirit-sanctification.   Quite the contrary: St.
Basil's chief amplification is introduced from the very first part, the
thanksgiving for creation, in a way that shows how, at the
beginning of all things, the Father and the Son with the Holy Spirit
are inseparably united even in their distinction.  Bringing together
the Epistle to the Hebrews, the prologue of St. John and the great
christological texts of St. Paul, the Son is praised as the living
image of the Father, the Word in whom he expresses Himself
entirely, the life-giving Wisdom which sanctifies and illuminates us. 
Through Him, following the teaching of the two great
complementary texts on the Spirit in Romans and Galatians, the
Holy Spirit comes to us and realizes in us this sanctification whose
fruit is our entering into a share in the Son's own sonship.  Hence
this glorification of the Father in which, from now on, we can take
part as an anticipated inauguration in the Spirit of the eternal life of
which Christ constitutes the promise.

     After the Sanctus, the thanksgiving for the redemption is
nurtured by a vision of the "economy" of salvation, dominated by
the text of Philippians on the Son's "emptying" of Himself as the
compensator for Adam's unbridled covetousness, and of Galatians,
on the Son subjecting Himself to the limitations and the constraints
of sinful humanity in order to liberate us.  The transition is made
from one to the other through the evocation, taken from the Epistle
to the Romans, of Christ accepting death in order to free us from
sin, just as Adam, in consenting to sin had enshrouded us in death.

     The amplifications before this point that bear on the evocation
of the Old Testament all focus upon preparing us for the vision of
faith of this opposition between sin-death, and life-redemption in
the depiction where Jesus appears as the Second Adam, repairing
the sin and the wrong-doing of the first.  It will also be noted, in the
same perspective, how in each of the two parts of the thanksgiving,
St. Basil has connected the theme of "knowledge" and the Light of
truth which beings us this knowledge in Christ, with the theme that
was first exclusively directed toward created and restored life.  This
is a remarkable attestation of the fact that he did not augment the
text on which he was working simply to develop it, but was
concerned with restoring it to the fullness of the original Eucharist. 
We shall see further on other evidences of the incontestable
existence of this concern of his.

     If we go on to the anamnesis, we notice that it has retained all of
its original strength, as in the pseudo-Clementine Liturgy both in its
developed form and in the oldest form of our text.  Contrary to the
Liturgy of  St. James, where the institution narrative was detached
from it in order to be placed in its chronological position in the
thanksgiving for the redemption, here, as in the 8th Book of the
Apostolic Constitutions (and the Anaphora of Serapion) the
narrative is not only still bound to the anamnesis, but enclosed
within it.  Notice the restraint in the sacrificial expressions.  The
later developments of  St. Basil only further underline the fact that
we are bringing forth or "proposing" to God simply what He
Himself "presents" to us through Christ.  We would offer nothing
of ourselves to be re-presented to God, but only what Christ
Himself has first "presented" to Him and enjoins us to replace
before Him: the "memorial" of His saving Passion.

     This leads us to specify the meaning of commemoratio
(commemoration) which our text first uses in recalling the action of
Christ at the Last Supper, and then again in the Epiclesis (which is
closely connected with anamnesis to the point of being merely its
climax) to express what we are expecting from the coming of the
Spirit. The same word used in both cases well shows the
consecratory significance attached to it.  "Do this as a memorial of
Me": undoubtedly a better technical expression would be "make ye
My anamnesis"  to indicate the true meaning of the original.  There
is no precise English equivalent of anamensis; "commemoration",
"remembrance", "memorial" or "memory" have a connotation of
something which is mentally remembered without the thing itself
being present in any other way, whereas in the Scriptures anamensis
(and its verbal form) means "recalling" or "remembrance" or
"representing" before God as past event in that it is operative in its
effects here and now (Cf. Heb. 10:3-4, etc.).  It is in this way that
Christ's redemptive death, which we now "propose" to the Father,
will not be symbolic words  empty of content but the expression of
the mysterious but real and efficacious presence of what they
express.  Moreover, the consecration of the bread and wine, in this
light, is not isolated from our own consecration whereby the Spirit
will make us one Body in Christ.  But reciprocally, this ultimate
fulfillment of the Eucharist in us is based on the conviction that the
power of  the Spirit of Christ assures its permanent content to the
memorial which He established once and for all for the Church
which has faith in the word of the Savior.   After this, there is
hardly any need to underline how intimate the connection in this
Epiclesis is between the acceptance of the sacrificial memorial, the
consecration of the oblations and the effects of our participation:
making us all the Body of Christ in its fullness.

     There is scarcely any other example in an elaborate liturgical
text, of such a perfect fusion between the theological developments
of the end of the fourth century and a vision of the Eucharist that is
so completely faithful to the original substance and unity of its
content.  Thus, far from being a simple mosaic of artificially
connected biblical texts, this composition is merely an explication 
of the most primitive core of the Eucharist by means of the
connections that it controls and organizes.  Far from becoming
emancipated from the primary movement of the divine Word,
speculation remains here so profoundly and completely rooted in it
that it naturally exposes its most varied expressions.  It reassembles
them then not in an artificial order but in one which clearly shows
their underlying connections.

     The very full intercessions which, in turn, is closely linked with
the final words of the Epiclesis is hardly less deserving of our
attention.  The Epiclesis terminated with the invocation of all the
Saints, into whose fellowship the Eucharist bring us.  The priest
them continues:

        ... espec ially the all-holy, spotless, pre-eminently blessed, our
glorious Lady and Mother  of God and Ever-Virgin Mary, St. John
the Prophet, forerunner and Baptist, the holy  Apostles worthy of
all praise, Saint ... whose memory we celebrate, and all the Saints;
through their prayers deign to protect us, O God.

         Again remember all those who have gone to sleep before (us)
in the hope of  t he     resurrection of eternal life; for the salvation,
the protection, the forgive ness of  sins of the     servant of God ...
(Memento of the living); for the rest,  the remission of the soul of
Thy servant ...; in a place of light, from where pain and groaning
have fled, grant his rest, O our God (Memento of the dead), grant
them rest where the light of Thy countenance shines;  we beseech
Thee further, Lord, to be mindful of Thy Holy Catholic and
Apostolic Church, from one end of the inhabited earth to the to her,
grant her peace, to her whom Thou hast acquired for Thyself
through the precious Blood of Thy Christ, and strengthen through
this Holy House until the end of the ages.
      
        Remember, Lord those who have brought Thee these gifts,
those from whom, by  whom, and in whose intention they were
brought: 

        Remember, Lord, those who bear fruit and who accomplish
good w ords in Thy holy     Churches by remembering the poor;
grant them in exchange Thy heavenly riches and    gifts; grant them
in return for the things of the earth, heavenly things, for temporal
things, eternal things, for corruptible things, the incorruptible;
remember, Lord, those who are  in deserts, on mountains, in
sepulchers and in the holes in the earth.

         Remember, Lord, those (who live) in virginity, godliness,
ascetici sm and who pa ss     their lives in holiness; remember, Lord,
our most venerable and most fa ithful kings, whom      Thou hast
deemed worthy to reign upon earth; crown  them with  truth and
benevolence; extend Thy shadow over their heads on the day of
battle; strengthen their arm exalt their right hand; strengthen their
rule; submit to them the barbaric nations who want war; grant them
a profound and immutable peace; tell their hearts good things for
Thy Church and all Thy people, so that in the serenity they will
provide us that we may live a peaceable, tranquil life, in all
godliness and holiness. 

        Remember, Lord, every principality and authority, our
brothers who are in the palace   and all the army, preserve the good
in their goodness, and make the wicked good through   Thy
goodness;

        Remember, Lord, the people about us, and th ose who are
absent for  a  just cause, have   mercy on them and on us. according
to the multitude of Thy me rc y: fill their barns with   all good
things, preserve their marriages in peace and  con cord , bring up
their children, instruct their youth, strengthen their old people, give
courage to those who are failing, bring together the scattered, bring
back the wayward, and unite them to Thy Holy Catholic and
Apostolic Church; deliver those who are afflicted by unclean spirits;
sail with those who are at sea; accompany those who travel on land;
take care of widows; protect orphans; free the captives; heal the
sick; remember, O God, all those who are under judgment, in exile,
in any tribulations or need, or in trial, and all those who have need
of  Thy great compassion, and those who love us, those who hate
us and those who have asked us in our unworthiness to pray for
them; and all Thy people, be mindful,          Lord our God, and
pour down on the richness of Thy mercy, granting to all what they
ask (of Thee) for their salvation.  And those whom we have not
remembered, out of ignorance, forgetfulness, or because of their
multitude, do Thou remember them, O God, who know the stature
and visage of each, who know each one from his mother's womb. 
For Thou, Lord, are the help of the helpless, the hope of the
hopeless, the savior of the afflicted, the port of those at sea, the
physician of the sick;  be all for all, Thou who know each one, his
request, his household, and his need.  Deliver, Lord this city and
every city and town from want, from famine, from earthquakes,
from shipwrecks, from fire, from the sword, from foreign invasion,
from civil war;

        In the first place, remember, Lord, our archbishop ...: grant to
Thy Holy Churches that     (they may dwell) in peace, safety, honor,
health, longevity, ministering faithfully the   word of Thy truth;

        Remember, Lord, every bishopric of the Orthodox, ministering
faithfully, the word of   Thy truth;

        Remember me also, Lord, in my unworthiness according to
the multitude of Thy      mercies; forgive me every voluntary
transgression, and do not take away on account of     my sin the
grace of thy Holy Spirit form these gifts presented;

        Remember, Lord, the Presbytery, the Diaconate in Christ, and
every sacred order, and   do not confound any of us who stand
about Thy Holy Altar.

        Look upon us in thy goodness, Lord, manifest Thyself to us in
the richne  ss of Thy      mercies; grant us seasonable weather and
fruitful seasons; give us sh o wers upon the earth      that they may
bear fruit; bless the crown of the year  with  thy goodness; cause
schisms in the Churches to cease; put and end to the attacks of the
Gentiles; seedily bring to halt the rise of heresy by the power of thy
Holy Spirit; receive us all into thy Kingdom, consecrating us as
sons of light and sons of the day; grant us Thy own peace and Thy
own love. Lord, our God, for Thou hast made us a gift of
everything, and give us one mouth and one heart to glorify and to
hymn Thy Name of incomparable majesty, of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit, now and always, and forever and ever.

      Less emotional and more temperate than the intercession in the
Liturgy of  St. James, this intercession is assuredly one of the most
beautiful and most harmonious formulas of this type bequeathed to
us by Christian antiquity.  Once again, we must point out how
extremely close it is to the most ancient wording of Christian
prayer, with expression that are still very near to the Jewish prayer
itself.  It is not only every petition's direct connection with the
memorial through the formula "Remember" that attests to this.  The
unfolding of the prayer itself assembles the whole content of the
Eighteen Blessing more precisely than any other previously cited
Christian formulary.  And what is more, it follows the progression
of these prayers more closely than any other text.  Especially
noteworthy is the fact that the commemorations of the Saints, and
first of those of the Old Testament (the Virgin, the Baptist and the
Apostles appearing as the end of the Old Testament line),
constitutes the basis of the whole prayer, as in the Jewish Tefillah. 
Note in this regard that the mention of the faithful departed
continues the invocation of the Saints without interruption (a
noteworthy sign of archaism).  The final return of the prayer to the
celebrants of the Eucharist, together with the consecutive summary
of the intentions of this celebration is not less interesting.  While in
West Syrian Liturgy's systematic reassembling of the elements of
the eucharist everything that came from the Jewish Abodah and
Tefillah "blessings" generally tended to become absorbed in the
synthetic Epiclesis, here we find the original content in its original
position.

     These last peculiarities of the Eucharist of St. Basil confirm the
impression that in re-working the West Syrian Eucharist he had the
conscious intention of resorting to it many original elements which
were already tending to disappear in the pseudo-Clementine and
which the working out of the new synthesis in the Liturgy of St.
James completely obliterated. it seems undeniable that in composing
his own formulary he had before him some particularly archaic
models like the author of the Apostolic Constitutions.  But he
seems to have taken still greater care than the latter in his respect
for its original deign.  We may even wonder if he did not go directly
to the Jewish formularies.  With such a disciple of Orgine's
exegesis, recourse to the Judaica as well as the biblical texts, as
exceptional as this might appear in his time, would not be unlikely. 
No re-formulation of the Christian Eucharist that is as late as this
one, seems to be so precisely informed about its origins or so
careful in preserving their spirit even to the letter.


        SYRIAN  SURVIVAL  IN  THE  LONG  FORM  OF 
ADDAI  AND  MARI

These remarks on the deliberate archaisms of the Eucharist of St.
Basil, and particularly of the commemorations and intercessions,
urge us to return to the East Syrian liturgical tradition, about which
we have already spoken in relation to the Eucharist of Addai and
Mari.  It is preserved for us today by the Nestorians, (this Church in
the United States and in Great Britain is known as the Church of
the East), as well as the Chaldeans in union with Rome and the
Indian Church (also Roman Catholic) called Syro-Malabar.  These
three Churches still use the Eucharist named after the Seventy sent
by our Lord ( Luke 10:1 - the sent Apostles), Addai and Mari, but,
as we have seen, under the a latterly developed form, which as
nonetheless preserved its oldest elements in tact. The Nesotrians
use two other texts in addition, attributed respectively to Nestorius
and Theodore of Mospuestia.  These latter two, and especially the
first one, show the unquestionable influence of the evolved forms of
West Syria.  But they show more than one peculiarity indicating the
persistence and resurgence, after the separation from Eastern Syria,
of a prior Semitic tradition that no Hellenization was able to
destroy.  A significant detail of this fact is the place that the
Epiclesis still retains: not before but after the final intercessions. 
The East Syrians did adopt the synthetic Epiclesis of Antioch and
Jerusalem, in its combination of the prayer for the acceptance of the
sacrifice, and, consequently the consecration of the oblations, with
the prayer that the celebration of the Eucharistic memorial have it
total effect in us.  But it seems that they could not accept the
violence done to the old prayer coming from the Tefillah in
transferring the petition for the acceptance of the sacrifices and the
prayers of the People of God from the end to the beginning of the
supplications.  Other peculiarities which are also Semitic survived in
the Liturgy of Nestorius.

     The first one concerns introductory dialogue.  In this tradition,
at the beginning, there is always the formula taken from 2
Corinthians, but the biblical order of the Divine Persons, and their
original attributions (grace to Christ, to the Father) are never
modified.  Similarly, thereafter, it is always the "hearts" which are
invited to be lifted up to God.  But the third clause of the dialogue
in Eastern Syria ia always given in a form having no equivalent in
any other tradition.  For the initial "Let us give thanks ..." there is
always substituted the expression "The oblation (qorban) if offered
... ."  This formula is even used with the Eucharist of Addai and
Mari which either in its developed or original form did not include
any technically sacrificial expression apart from that.  It seems that
here we are touching upon a very ancient testimonial of the
sacrificial sense given to the "Eucharist" from the time when it was
simply expressed in the terminology of the synagogue prayers.

     Another equivalency of this type, which is hardly less
interesting, in the frequent use by these liturgies of the word rozo
(Syria equivalent of "Mystery").  We have already seen this in the
text of Addai and Mari.  It use in the text of Theodore is still more
striking.  The anamnesis, instead of taking up the word
"memorial"at the conclusion of the Eucharistic narrative, substitutes
in both texts the expression "we celebrate the Mystery ... , whereby
salvation has come to all our race" Theodore specifies.   But further
on, in part of the anamnesis that with him becomes specifically
sacrificial, Theodore repeats it in a very revealing phrase:

        We offer  in the Presence of Thy glorious Trinity, with a contr
ite heart and humbled    spirit, this living and holy sacrifice which is
the Myste ry of the Lamb of God who takes  away the sins of the
world, praying and beseeching in Thy Presence that it be pleasing
(to thee) Lord, adorable Godhead, and that there be accepted by
Thy mercy this pure and holy oblation whereby Thou hast been
appeased and reconciled, for the sins of the world.

     The end of the text itself  becomes fully meaningful when linked
with what the act of thanksgiving for redemption said somewhat
earlier about the Cross.

        .     .. God, Only-Begotten Son, the Word, even t hou gh He
was t he image o f God, did not     look upon equality with God as
extortion,  but He emptied Hims elf an d took on the     likeness of
a slave, He came down from Hea ven, and put on ou r man hood, a
mortal body and a rational, intelligent, immortal soul, from the Holy
Virgin, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and thereby He perfected
and fulfilled all that great and wonderful economy which had been
prepared by Thy foreknowledge form before the creation of the
world.  Thou hast Thyself accomplished this, therefore, in these
latter says, through Thy Only-Begotten Son, Our Lord, Jesus
Christ, in whom dwell corporally all the fullness of the Godhead;
He is also the Head of the Church and the First-Born from among
the dead, and He is the fulfillment of all things which have all been
fulfilled through Him.  He, through the eternal Spirit, offered
Himself to God as a spotless offering and sanctified us by the
oblation of His Body accomplished once and for all, and He has a
pacified by the Blood of His Cross what is in Heaven and what is
on earth, He who was handed over for our sins and who rose for
our justification ...

     Then follows the institution narrative which we have already
cited in discussing its original presence in the Eucharist of Addai
and Mari.

     The closeness of these texts of thanksgiving and of the
anamnesis of Theodore shows with perfect clarity that the
"Mystery" in this tradition, is the sacramental Presence of the
oblation accomplished once upon the Cross, according to the
expression of the Epistle to the Hebrews.  However, this Presence
in the Mystery of the unique oblation is so real that the liturgical
Mystery, a sacrifice which in turn is ultimately re-identified with the
oblation of the cross.  We could not wish for any clearer evidence
of the fact that the sacramental Mystery of the Eucharist, for
Theodore and his ambience, is the precise equivalent of the Jewish
memorial, conceived as containing that which it evokes, and applied
to the Cross of the Savior.


           THE  EAST  SYRIAN  SURVIVAL  OF 
INTERMEDIARY  TYPES

We shall not cite the Eucharist of Theodore at any more length,
except to specify that the Epiclesis here, like those of St. James and
St. John Chrysostom, makes a formal petition that the spirit "make"
the bread and wine ("by the power of Thy Name", he specifies) the
Body and Blood of Christ.  With this exception, through its
abundant recourse to biblical formulas, as can be realized from what
has been given of its text, it is very close to St. Basil's Eucharist. 
The central role that it also gives to the text of Philippians 2 would
make us inclined to think that it was directly inspired by it.  But the
accumulation of citations (not always so well founded) and a
certain redundancy of language, despite some particularly felicitous
formulas, places it, we would say, slightly lower in the same class of
composition which must have included many others.  That of
Nestorius is another and somewhat later example of the
hypertrophy and decomposition which were soon to be threatening
Eucharists of too didactic a theology, and a biblicalism whose
excess betrays its artificiality.

     On the other hand, the Eucharist of Addai and Mari, which we
already quoted in the entirety of its long recession, but only in order
to extract from it the most arachic elements, must now again hold
our attention in the state in which it is presented to us today.

     The text does not enter into the evolved schema that East Syria
itself came to accept from West Syria, if only in maintaining the
Epiclesis, even a synthetically developed one, as the conclusion of
the Christian Tefillah. Like its anamnesis, its intercessions and
commemorations present many analogies with those found in the
text attributed to Theodore.  But, on first sight, the order in which
this latter series of prayers develops in Theodore, similar to what is
found in the Eucharists of the 8th book of the Apostolic
Constitutions or St. James, seems for some incomprehensible
reason to have been up set in the Liturgy of Addai and Mari. 
However, while admitting that here as in the other parts of the
developed text there may have been some clumsy reworking it is
unthinkable that the apparently more logical order of Theodore
could have been systematically destroyed to end up with this result. 
The mere comparison of the long text of Addai and Mari with the
older kernel that it contains has already shown us the extreme
conservatism that did in fact dominate its development.  We saw
how once the Epiclesis was introduced, despite the hiatus it
produced in the anamnesis, carried with it no modification of the
continuity.  It is very probable that the adjunction of the
intercessions, as well as of the Sanctus, came about under
analogous conditions.  If we return to the Liturgy that is still in use,
this is how it may be summed up.  The first part, the thanksgiving
for creation, has substituted the formula found in the Liturgy of the
Eucharistic meal for that which must originally have been connected
wit the Sanctus in the Liturgy of the service of reading and prayers.
the same is true for the thanksgiving for the redemption which
follows, and which, evidently, must have originally
been directly connected to the preceding.  After this a genuine
pre-Epiclesis like the one we have seen in the Rites of Rome and
Egypt, but one which remains especially close to the first "blessing"
of the Tefillah, since it is still basically a commemoration of the
Fathers in the Faith (the martyrs were merely united with the
Prophets).  Next we have a prayer for safety and peace, followed by
another for the conversation of non-believers.  Then a prayer for
the hierarchy, which in the written text leads abruptly to the
anamnesis, although it must have been connected to it by the
intermediary of a narrative of the Eucharistic institution which was
very similar to the one retained in the Eucharist of Theodore. 
There is no need to repeat here was we have already explained and
just recalled with regard to the development of the Epiclesis out of
the anamnesis while still remaining within it.

     The first remark we must make is that here with St. Basil we
find an order which is singularly close to that of the Tefillah.  The
commemoration of the Saints is at the beginning, and it is
associated with the first evocation of the Eucharistic sacrifice which
in more evolved texts, like the Roman Te igitur, has taken place. 
Security and peace lead to the expansion of the "knowledge" of
God, and the whole terminates in a prayer for the sacred ministry
which in this text, as at the end of the intercession of St. Basil, is
equivalent of the prayer for the recommendation of sacrifices of
Israel in the Tefillah, and which to that extent corresponds to the
first epiclesis of Rome and Alexandria.  After that, we can
understand that if the final Epiclesis, calls upon the Holy Spirit it
does not do so in order to obtain the acceptance of the sacrifice but
simply the Celebration may have its whole effect in us. 

     Starting with what we have called the pre-Epiclesis, this plan
then is almost exactly the same as the basic plan of the Roman
Canon.  But it is somewhat more archaic, first of all because it has
left the commemoration of the Saints before (and not after) the
intercession for the living.   Further, instead of the whole
thanksgiving being at the beginning, before the Sanctus, here, as in
the Jewish prayers, it remains framed by an act of thanksgiving for
creation alone which precedes it, and a thanksgiving for the
redemption alone following it.

     In other words the developed form of the Anaphora of Addai
and Mari gives evidence of the prior existence in Syria as at Rome
and in Egypt, of a Eucharist in which people still limited themselves
to a continuous recitation of the Christian forms of the Qedusah
and the blessing which framed it, then the Tefillah, and ultimately
the prayers proper to the sacred meal, with only a few elementary
adjustments.  Actually, the only adjustment consists here in the
replacement of the "blessing" for creation in the synagogue service,
which focuses on light, by the meal "blessing" focusing on life, and
similarly, the blessing for the Torah by that of the Covenant.  After
the equivalent of the Tefillah this only left the equivalent of the
Jewish prayer for the "memorial" and its effect in those who
celebrate it.

     We can add that this order, insofar as it differs from that of
Alexandria, certainly gives evidence of the influence in Christian
Syria of the Palestinian synagogual order, in which the Qedushah
retained its original place before the Tefillah.  Once again, it is the
same influence which even in Rome must have determine the
arrangement.   We can say that we have palatable proof  here of the
fact that the synthetic order of the West Syrian Liturgies, starting
with the pseudo-Clementine Liturgy, is in Syria itself where it made
its appearance, the result of a remodeling.  The neighboring
schemas of the Roman, Alexandrian or arachic (if not original)
Syrian Eucharist are only local variants of an order which must
have been universal from the moment that the service of readings
and prayers and the Eucharistic meal were joined together.  The
original form of Addai and Mari, evidencing a state of affairs where
this connection was still unknown, bring us even further back.  But,
reciprocally, the Hellenizing logic and rhetoric of the West Syrian
order are incontestably later.


                GENEALOGY  AND  GENESIS  OF  THE 
EPICLESIS

     The conclusion of this chapter, which has permitted us to see the
West Syrian Eucharist attain its form which was to become
classical, and at the same time to verify its genesis, by the
comparison with evidence from an earlier period in East Syria, will
furnish us with a recapitulatory study of the development of the
Epiclesis.  We now have all the data, and we have seen it attain the
final stage of its development with the Eucharists of  St. John
Chrysostom and St. Basil.

     If  by Epiclesis we understand an explicit invocation of the Holy
Spirit, taking place immediately after the anamnesis, or at any even
in the last of the Eucharistic Prayer, its first appearance is, in
practically identical terms, that which we find in the Liturgy of
Addai and Mari, and that of the Apostolic Tradition.  With Addai
and Mari, it seems incontestable that it does not belong to the
original text.  But is probably the most ancient re-working that can
be detected in it. It seems indeed that the Spirit, and His descent
upon the oblation, at this stage, are related neither to the heavenly
acceptance of the sacrifice nor even less to the consecration of the
bread and wine, making them the Body and Blood of the Savior. 
The spirit is called upon at this place, simply because the petition is
being made, as it was in the Jewish prayers, that the celebration of
the "memorial" lead efficaciously to the building of the future
Jerusalem in its definitive unity, and at the same time to the ultimate
glorification of God.    This unity, which for christians will be that
of the Body" of Christ attaining its fullness in the Church, and this
glorification of the Father by the "whole' Christ, for them also are
the work of the Spirit.  His mention came quite naturally to be
made at this point, sooner or later.  And, when attention was called
to His divinity on account of the theological controversies of the
second half of the fourth century, it would be quite natural that He
would not only be mentioned here but formally invoked.

     Does this allow us to assert that this first and nonconsecratory
form of the Epiclesis already existed in Syria, in other words that it
appeared in Syria before spreading elsewhere?  We should be
tempted to think so, although it still remains somewhat in a state of
conjecture.  The corroborative evidence of Rome and what seems
to be the most ancient state of the Egyptian texts, incline us to think
that neither at Rome nor Alexandria and its vicinity was anything
like this known before the end of the fourth century.  It is a
supposition completely bereft of serious grounds of this type, which
would than have disappeared for some unfathomable reasons
without leaving a trance.  In Egypt we see this Epiclesis of the
Spirit being introduced progressively, it seems, after a period of
experimentation.  Either it figures in a place other than its normal
and certainly original one, or else it is addressed at first not to the
Spirit but to the Word, and by one of the theologians most smitten
by the divinity of the Holy Spirit.  It seems that the other
borrowings which apparently went along with it when it was
ultimately accepted would only come from Syria.  It is undoubtedly
in Syria that the Epiclesis of Addai and Mari was composed (and
more precisely, in Syriac).  Finally, once again, it would be very
possible that St. Hipoplytus himself  was of Syrian origin.  The
general archaism of his Trinitarian theology as well as his liturgical
tastes, his penitential rigorism, his class consciousness which was
almost as foreign to the questionable society of Alexandria as to the
old Roman customs, are so many convergent probabilities.  But we
cannot say anything further.

     On the other hand, there is nothing peculiarly Syrian about the
prayer for the acceptance of the sacrifice, which developed into a
formal petition for the consecration of the oblations, before it was
combined with the Epiclesis of the Holy Spirit, coming from the
anamnesis, and which originally did not have this as its object.  It
came actually not from the "memorial" developed in the third part
of the berakah after the meal, but from the Abodah prayer which
was the conclusion of the Jewish Tefillah. It is therefore in its
normal place where we still find in the Roman Canon. where  it first
appeared in the Egyptian Liturgy, and where it was to remain in the
East Syrian Liturgy: at the end of the intercessions and
commemorations.  In relation to the institution narrative, its original
place is before and not after this narrative.  It is only the theological
synthesis worked out conjointly in West Syria along with a breaking
up and a systematic reassembling of the ancient Eucharist Prayers
that was to lead this other prayers  fusion with the Epiclesis of the
Holy Spirit at the end of the anamnesis.  From this moment on, the
Epiclesis made a threefold petition: the acceptance of the sacrifice
(explicitly identified with the presentation to God of the memorial
of the Savior), and the consecutive consecration of the bread and
wine as the Body and Blood of Christ, and finally (which alone is
original), that this descent of the Spirit, uniting us all in the Body of
Christ which is the Church, permit us all in this unity to glorify the
Father eternally.

     This synthesis is unquestionably Syrian, and more precisely West
Syrian.  We can see the central (although latest) element take on
progressively greater prominence.  The pseudo-Clementine
Anaphora is still limited to petitioning that the Spirit manifest that
the bread and wine are the Body and the Blood Christ in making us
fully associated with Him and His redemption.  That of  St. James,
which St. John Chrysostom was to follow, was more specific in
asking that the Spirit make the bread and wine the Body and Blood
of Christ, and it is possible that it was the same Chyrsotom who
added: "changing them by Thy Spirit", although the addition may
very well be later.

     































                              CHAPTER  FOUR 

                 THE  GALLICAN  AND  MOZARABIC 
EUCHARIST


There is one last step in the Liturgical tradition in the creative
period which remains for us to study: that is the Gallican Liturgy
and the Mozarabic, with which we may connect the Celtic liturgies
and the fragments of non-Roman Italic Liturgies that have come
down to us. The kinship between the Syrian East and what can be
called the Extreme West is manifest in the Eucharistic Prayer, but it
extends to many other elements, not only in their respective
liturgies, but in their whole Christian outlook.


               THE  GALLICAN  AND  MOZARABIC  EUCHARIST
AND
                ITS  KINSHIP  WITH  THE WEST  SYRIAN  TYPE

Down to our own day the arrangement of the places of worship, in
Gual and in Spain, for example has remained basically foreign to
Roman customs.  Even when the Roman Liturgy had spread into
these areas, it did not modify it, at least up to the Renaissance (and
in Spain until much later).  The Western Church, like the Syrian
Church, places the Altar in the conch of the Apse, turned to the
East.  A second center of the celebration is constituted by the
Ambo, placed toward the center of the building, and near it are the
seats where the minsters take their places for the service of reading
preceding the Eucharistic meal, and not in some sanctuary,
inaccessible to the people beyond the Altar.

     The same was true for the vestment and insignia worn by the
ministers, such as the episcopal omophorion, the tan crozier, the
very ample chasuble worn only by the priests, the dalmatic and the
orarion of the deacon, and even the paterissa used by prelates
outside the Church.  They are peculiarities which subsisted for a
more or less long period of time in the extreme West even after the
introduction of the Roman books, and some of them even reached
faraway Rome.

     All of this comes from the Syrian East, along with the taste for a
ritual and a sacred art laden with symbolism, and encroaching
ecclesiastical poetry, nor to speak of Celtic monasticism, which
were all things that Christian Rome persisted in ignoring up to well
after the Patristic Age.

     How could these traditions have gone from one end of the
Mediterranean to the other?   We do not know, for we know
practically nothing about the origins of Western Christianity. 
During the Middle Ages the Romans often stated that the
evangelization of the Celts was owed to them as well as that of
their successive Germanic conquerors, and they, at times are no less
categorical.  But the former did so in order to impose their own
customs and the latter to defend theirs.  There is nothing to be
gained from the legends which are arguments ad hominem, without
foundation in known historical facts.  In reality, the Syrian
merchants who furrowed all the seas, once they had become
Christian were most probably the first bearers of their faith even to
lands which were considered to be remote.  At any event, it is
certain that as soon as Christian communities appeared to be
established, their heritage seemed to be chiefly Syrian.  The Liturgy
of the Gauls, who had remained Celtic or variously Germanized,
gives the clearest but not the sole evidence of this.

     Through the Stowe Missal we know only scraps of the properly
Celtic Liturgies, in particular for the Eucharist. They present a
hodge-podge of uses and texts from various origins, which is very
characteristic of a people who loved nothing better than to move
about practically everywhere.  But the primary material is still the
same as we find in the Gallican or Mozarabic Liturgies.  Actually,
these latter two do not, properly speaking, represent two Liturgies
but one, which as long as it was extant was characterized by an
incessant proliferation of variable formularies based on a traditional
schema.  The Gallican or Mozarabic books are little more than
different local collections of formularies of this kind.  Beyond that,
they differ only on relatively insignificant details.  As for the plan of
the great Eucharistic Prayer, their accord is practically compete in
the variability of the formularies which are as unlimited in one place
as in the other. Moreover, it is not rare that we find all or part of
one and the same formulary both in the Gallican and Mozarabic
books.

     This Liturgy, which we may call Gallicano-Hispanic, along with
its Celtic or Italic relatives, was pledged to disappear practically
entirely at least at first sight, a short time after the end of the
Patristic period.  In England, at the Synod of Whitby. the old Celtic
Christianity capitulated before the imperialism of the new
Christians, recruited by the Roman mission of St. Augustine of
Canterbury (despite the very liberal prescriptions given to him by
St. Gregory the Great).  In Gaul, Charlemagne's retention at playing
Roman Emperor inspired him with the idea of replacing on his
authority the local liturgical tradition with that of Rome, which had
already won out over all of Northern Italy.  In Spain, finally, the
unfortunate affair of Elipand of Seville's adoptionism, taking
support from the liturgical books of Visigothic Spain, compromised
the Liturgy which we call Mozarabic in the eyes of the Holy See. 
An energetic Pope like Gregory VII sufficed, with the help of the
s[reading of his old Cluniac confreres throughout the peninsula, to
do away with it practically in one fell swoop.  At the time of the
Renaissance, a Cardinal and a bright light of Christian humanism,
Gimenez de Cisneros, succeed in saving and consolidating what
was left of it.  But, preserved for us as it was, more as an
archaeological curiosity than anything else, the effective celebration
of this Liturgy was reduced to practically nothing after the last
Spanish revolution.  Despite the fact that it represents the antique
worship tradition of the whole Christian West, it only subsists today
as a hasty celebration executed by a few clerics in an obscure chapel
in the Cathedral of Toledo.  We must congratulate the efforts of the
Benedictines of San Domingo de Silos for having studied and
edited the ancient Mozarabic texts, and occasionally, for having
resurrected their content in celebrations, exceptional for their rarity
as much as for their solemnity.  But up till now their efforts have
been able to do little more than prolong the existence of a moribund
phantom.

     There is, however, another side to this sad story.  When
Charlemagne and his successor had obtained the Roman books,
new editions of them were made for the new Germanic Empire. 
Those charged with this task could not resign themselves to seeing
the demise of traditional treasures of which their masters would
have thought very little.  The results were books that were Roman
in theory but in fact were stuffed with Gallican elements.  Through
a curious turn of events, these books came back to Rome at a time
when she no longer shone either for her critical faculties or her
creative genius, and they were apparently received without
difficulty.  The consequence is that the Liturgy which would
become known as the Tridentine which was called Roman was in
reality merely a Roman frame, laden with foreign elements, and
actually at least fifty percent of its prayer and rites being Gallican. 
Along with a certain number of orations, the chief element that
remained Roman was the Canon, with the exception of Prefaces
like that of the Trinity, not to mention more recent ones which were
generally Gallican (Mozarabic) even though they were more or less
reworked.

     But, with the modern or ancient Mozarabic books, a series of 
Gallican books allows us all the same, at least on paper, to evoke
the ancient Eucharistic Prayers of our Fathers.  They are the
Missale Callicanum vetus, the Bobbio Missal, the Masses published
in the last century by Mone, to which must be added certain Celtic
books, like the Stowe Missal.   Nor can we forget the elements that
have survived in the modern Ambrosian Missal, particularly on
Maundy Thursday and Easter Even.  Once again, all of these are a
disconcerting abundance of texts.  In these relatively late
documents that have come down to us, not only do we find
Eucharists for all the Sundays and holy Masses, but interchangeable
formulas for the same day or the same Mass are manifold.  It seems
that we have here a treasury, exceptionally set down in writing, of
liturgical improvisations within a given framework, which continued
as long as this remained a living Liturgy.

     Its Eucharistic Anaphora is made up of five distinct prayers, only
two of which remained more or less invariable.  The first,
corresponding to the Roman Preface, is called illatio in the Spanish
books, and in the Gallican books immolatio or constestatio.  The
Sanctus follows and it seems to have generally retained the Greek
formulas in the midst of the Latin.  The Sanctus is followed by a
prayer called the post-Sanctus,which is linked up with it by the
same connective as in Syria: the use of the word "holy".  As in
many liturgical manuscripts of  both East and West, the words of
institution are not present in the properly Gallican books, except by
recalling a few key words.  After this art comes a final prayer called
post-pride in the Mozarabic books and post-secreto or
post-mysterium in the Gallican ones.

     The diversity that we encounter under these different headings is
such that in going through these books we risk getting the first
impression that every schema of a well constructed or simply
consistent Eucharistic Prayer has been dissolved in the hazards of
an unbridled improvisation.  Particularly, although not exclusively,
the Mozarabic books are teeming with formularies in which we
become lost in a wave of words, and wonder just what they can still
have to do with the Eucharist.   Some of them in their profuseness
can rival the 8th book of the Apostolic Constitutions.  But too
often the disorder in thought is in extreme contrast here with the
composition of  the West Syrian authors, which, on the contrary, is
perhaps too studied.  The influence of St. Augustine makes itself
particularly felt in many of these texts. the authors stole not only his
thoughts and expressions, but even whole pages. at  a time, the very
incongruous character of one or another of these prayers could be
explained by the fact that they were erroneously placed under a
heading to which they did not correspond in fact.  But, more
generally, we must not hesitate to acknowledge, with Walter Frere, 
that we are face to face here with a very real danger.  The ministers
are given a faculty of improvisation at a moment when a tradition is
no longer lived consciously enough.

     Yet it is not to say that the texts that are fully in conformity with
the tradition we have seen develop in the Syrian East are not legion,
since many are undoubtedly most ancient although some may have
been the product of a relatively late period.  On the other hand,
despite commentators, like Walter Free or Eugraphe Kovalesky, it
is not certain that all the texts which depart form the Canon we
have seen develop in West Syria toward the end of the fourth
century are late aberrations.  There may be some, and, as we shall
point out, there indeed most probably are some which give evidence
of a prior state where the tradition of Syrian origin was not yet
molded into the form in which it was ultimately to be enclosed at
Antioch and its environs.

     In any event, the dating of these prayers is extremely difficult. 
The Gallican manuscripts give us texts recopied in the eighth, even
the seventh century, and which can even be earlier when we see not
influence yet of Roman texts.  The oldest Mozarabic manuscripts
do not go back further than the tenth century.   But, once again,
neither the date of a manuscript, nor even that of a collection, 
suffices to decide the age of a liturgical prayer that is found there
for the first time.

     The influence of two brothers, St. Leander and St. Isidore who
succeeded one another as bishop of Seville in the seventh century,
seems discernable in the organization and expansion of the
Mozarabic Liturgy.  But whatever they may have put on their own
into the texts that have come down to us is scarcely determinable.
Moreover, we must admit that the analysis of the Eucharistic
celebration undertaken by St. Isidore in his De Officiis is such that
it leaves us in the dark about what he still understood of the
tradition that he contributed to propagating.  He divided the whole
Mass into seven prayers, but what he tells us about the fifth and
sixth (which seem to correspond to the Anaphora) is neither very
clear nor very convincing. the fifth, which he already calls illatio,
brings about the "sanctification of the oblation" according to him,
and the sixth, the "conformatio sacramenti" which is the result of
the "sanctification of the Spirit".  At first sight, we should be
tempted to believe that the fifth is therefore only the present-day
illatio (with the Sanctus), while the sixth would cover everything
from the post-sanctus to the conclusion.  Or else, in his
terminology, would the conformatio sacramenti be only the
post-pridie, with his illatio designating everything that leads up to
the institution narrative? In the absence of any citation of a text
whatsoever, it is impossible for us to decide.  Even if the
conformatio sacramenti is just the post-pridie, it is perhaps
premature to conclude, as Walter Frere does unhesitatingly, that
this text, according to Isidore, must be an equivalent of the fully
developed Syrian Epiclesis, simply because he sees there a
"sanctification" of the Holy Spirit.  The repeated use of the word
sanctificatio leaves no doubt about the meaning that should be
given to it.   Despite these uncertainties, there is true evidence that
we can find formularies which are very close in their development
to the last Eastern Eucharists that we have studied, both in the
Gallican and Mozarabic books.  Take for example the third of the
Sunday Masses from the Missale Gothicum.  Its immolatio is
composed in this way:

        It    is meet and right, truly equitable and right, O  i neffable
incomprehensible, and     everlasting God, that we always give Thee
thank s,  we whom Thou dost not cease to     sustain (fovere) by
Thy great mercy.  Who, then, c o uld worthily praise Thy power,
Thou whose divinity may not be looked upon by mortal eyes, and
whose boundlessness may not be expressed in words?  It is enough
that we love Thee as the Father,, that we venerate Thee as the
Lord, that we receive Thee as the Creator, that we embrace Thee as
the Redeemer.  Grant, Almighty Master, that we may come up to
Thee along this narrow road which Thou hast prescribed for us,
whereby we may arrive at eternal blessedness; let us not be held
back by an obstacle; but let the course of our progress lead to the
eternity of salvation, through Christ our Lord, through whom the
Angels, etc.

The post-mysterium concludes:

        Great is this gift of mercy whereby we have been instructed to 
celebrate the sacrifices     of our redemption, as our Lord Jesus
Christ offered them u pon earth, He through whom,     Almighty
Father, we beseech Thee to look with favor  upon these gifts placed
upon Thy Altar and cover them all with the shadow of the Holy
Spirit of Thy Son, that we may obtain from what we have received
of Thy blessing, the glory of eternity, through Jesus Christ, etc.

     We can even point out post-pridies or post-mysteriums in the
Gallican or Mozarabic books in which the verbal similarity with the
Epiclesis developed in West Syria is still more striking.  Take this
prayer from a Mozarabic Mass for the Feast of St. Christina, which
is found practically word for word in the Missale Gothicum for the
Feast of the Chair of St. Peter:

              Therefore, keeping these commandments, we off er these
holy gifts (munera) of our  salvation, beseeching Thee, most
merciful and Almig hty God, to deign to pour out Thy      Holy 
Spirit upon these offerings (solemnia) that they might become for
us a lawful Eucharist, in Thy Name, that of Thy Son and that of
Thy Spirit, blessed in the  transformation into the Body and Blood
of this same Jesus Christ, our Lord, (Thy) Only-Begotten Son, for
us who eat of it unto eternal life and the Kingdom without end.

     If such expressions were more frequent, they would be enough
to make the Syrian origin of these liturgies inconsistable.  But those
like Dom Gregory Dix who question it wish to see in the prayers of
this type only evidence of a late Syrian influence.  But a twofold
objection is opposed to this theory.  In the first place, we hardly see
any other possible trace of a late Eastern influence on the Gallican
or Spanish authors.  The developments of Greek theology after St.
Augustine's time seem to be unknown to them.  On the other hand,
if Eastern Patristic texts had been able to make the journey from
East to West throughout the whole of the Middle Ages (although
this movement was scarcely felt before the Carolingian times, and
especially before the twelfth century), there is no trace of any
transmission of liturgical texts at this same period.  Moreover, who
in Spain or Gaul, between the fifth and ninth centuries, would have
been capable to reading and translating them?

     It would have been necessary then for a priest or a bishop from
Syria to have come to the West, and one who would have been
capable of adapting the formulas he knew.  But we know of no
other case of this kind than that of Eusebius, bishop of Milan from
451 to 465 or 466.  Actually coming from Syria, Eusebius could
ahve introduced into the Milanese Liturgy certain sections, such as
the charactertistic development "Do this as a memorial of Me",
which reproduces word for word the text of the Liturgy of St.
James.  Still, in the absence of any historical evidence, there is
nothing that allows to attribute to other hypothetical runaways
everything that we find to be apparently Syrian in the Gallican and
Mozarabic collections.

     On the other hand, positive indications lead us to think that
formulas like those we have just qouted belong to their most anient
elements.  In fact, they appear so markedly archaic at an early date
that people did not dear to see them without some remodeling that
betrays the prior state ofthe text, nor to resolve to eliminate them. 
It is for this reason that we find a Gallican post-mysterium for
Christmas Eve in a manuscript fragment preserved in the Library of
Caius College at Cambridge, where the expression eucharistia
legitma was evidently substituted for veum corpus. Actually, the
clumsy corrector omitted the removal of verum sanguis, which
could only have corresponded to it, with the result that we have this
bizarre phrase: "that, through the Mystery of Thy operation, they
(the gifts) become for us a lawful Eucharist and the very Blood of
Thy Son ..."

     In many other cases, transformation of this kind may have been
made, although since they were done more dextrously they have left
no trace.  To admit it, it is enough to compare what St. Isidore tells
us: the conformation scaramenti comes about through the
sanctification of the Spirit, whatever be the precise meaning he
gives to these words, together with what the pseudo-Isidore will
say a few centuries later.  He was familiar only with the later theory
of a consecration by the words of the institution narrative alone.  It
is understandable that once one had reached that stage, the ancient
formulas may have been corrected as we have just seen, since it is
most unlikely that formulas of this type could have been introduced
at that time.

     Inversely, we should not rush to the conclusion, with Walter
Frere, that besides some twenty five prayers from the Toldeo
Sacramentary and their hardly more numerous Gallican equivalents,
contain an Epiclesis in which the Holy Spirit is invoke more or less
exactly in the sense of the developed Syrian exegesis, all the other
formulas for this part of the Eucharist are either late or reworked.  
Many may be, but there are many others which may be just as
archaic or even more so.  In the first place, the Spirit is at times
simply invoked, as in the Apostolic Tradition or the Liturgy of
Addai and Mari, that He may produce in the participants the fruit of
the Eucharist.  This is the case in the Sunday Liturgy of the Missale
Gothicum that we have quoted and in Mone's sixth Mass.  At other
times, He is called upon simply to make the Eucharist "lawful"
without any other specification.  Let us note in this regard that the
frequency of this expression in our collections, even if it may have
been introduced at a later date here and there to replace other
expressions which had become troublesome for the theology that
was being taught, makes unlikely the supposition that it was not a
part of their most ancient wording.  It is, furthermore, a formula in
the most archaic Christian Latin, already evidenced in St. Cyprian
(in the sense of a Eucharist fully conforming to the place of its
institution by Christ).

     But there are still other cases where the transformation of the
oblations is indeed asked for formally, but without being attributed
to the Holy Spirit.  Expressions such as "the descent of the fullness
of divine majesty", or the "descent of the blessing", or the divine
"power" are used.  But there are also cases in which the
transformation is expected expressly from a descent of the Word. 
One striking example is given by the post-pridie of the 3rd ferial
day post Vigesima of the Toledo Sacramentary.

        Send down Thy Word from Heaven, Lord, through whom our
sins will be taken away    and our offerings sanctified.

     Finally, invocations of the Angels are not rare either, even if we
leave aside the texts which may have undergone an influence of the
Roman Canon.  No influence of this type seems to be discernable in
the post-pridie for the Feasts of Ct. Cecily on the 22nd of
November or of St. Eugenia on the 16th of  September.  A
particularly curious text of the Ascension invokes the Spirit as the
Angel of the sacrifice who appeared to Manoah, the father of
Samson.

     Most of these formulas cannot be explained except as archaisms. 
From them we get the impression of a state of affairs that
reproduces what such prayers might have been in Syria and
elsewhere on the eve or at the beginning of the movement toward
the systematization and rearrangement of the Eucharistic Liturgy
that came about at Antioch toward the end of the fourth century.
The final invocation that follows form the anamnesis remains
basically a prayer that the mystery commemorated have its whole
effect on those celebrating it.  Moreover it tends to become fixed as
an invocation of the Spirit, yet without the invocation of  the Word,
the heavenly spirits, or the simple blessing of God being able to be
fully excluded.  It tends also to attract the petition for the
acceptance of the sacrifice offered, and to specify it in an explicit
request for the transformation of the oblations.  But all of this
remains in a state of flux and it is only rather by way of exception
that we find the type of formulations which became definitive in
Western Syria.

     Under these conditions, it seems that we are forced to conclude
that the Gallicano-Hispanic Liturgy represents a transplantation in
the West of the Syrian Liturgy which must have acquired its
autonomy at the precise moment when the latter was entering into
its final phase of systematic reorganization, but before it arrived at
its final stabilization. In other words, the primary layer of the
Liturgy of the extreme West, as it has come down to us particularly
in the Gallican and Mozarabic books, must correspond
approximately to the middle of the fourth century.  Must we stress
the fact that the work of St. Hilary of Poitiers, who represents the
last phase of a Western theology fully related to Eastern
developments, is from this period precisely?

     This is corroborated by the fact that there is no dearth of
Gallican or Mozarabic post-sanctus where we can recognize some
traces, and even more than traces, of the original presence of the
consecratory Epiclesis, and more especially of the Epiclesis for the
acceptance of the sacrifice, before the words of institution.  Of
course, here again, we do not include those post-sanctus where a
direct influence of the Roman Liturgy makes itself felt, like those of
the Rogation Mass or of the fifth Sunday Mass of the Missale
Gothicum. But the post-sanctus from the same collection for the
feast of St. Maurice betrays no influence of this type.  It ask that
"Our Lord and God sanctify these species (speciem istam) in order
to consecrate them through the inspiration of (His) grace and add
to the human blessing, the fullness of Divine favor."  The same is
found in the post-sanctus for Easter even:

        At     Thy command, Lord, all things created, in Heaven and
on  earth, in the sea and all   the abysses. The Patriarchs, the
Prophets, the Apostles, the  Martyrs, the confessors and  all the
Saints give Thee thanks.  Doing likewise, we a lso beseech Thee to
accept with favor these spiritual offerings, these pure oblations.  We
beseech Thee to bless this sacrifice with Thy blessing and to pour
down the dew of Thy Holy Spirit, so that it may be for all a lawful
Eucharist, through Christ, our Lord, who on the night before He
suffered, etc. ...

We have the same thing on Easter Day:

        ... Sanctify the sacrifices which thou hast instituted, not
because our merits invite Thee  to do so, but because we sanctify
them through Thy example, so that once everything has   been done
fittingly, death will know that it is van quished and life that is has
been revivified (revocalam), by our Savior coming back from Hell
...

     It is hard not to believe that prayers such as these, in this
position, are evidence of a time when, even in Syria, it was still at
this point that the recommendation of the sacrifice was traditionally
made.

     But we also find, as we must admit, particularly in the
Mozarabic books which are of a later date, many prayers which are
either very brief (as is the case with numerous post-sanctus and a
certain number of post-pridies or post-mysteriums), or on the other
hand, more or less prolix, in which there is no mention of the
sacrifice whatsoever, nor any invocation (consecratory or not), not
even any anamnesis.  It is evident that many of them are late
compositions, from an age where the original themes, and even at
times those which are most essential to the Eucharist, had dropped
from sight.  But there are also some (particularly among those
assigned to the most ancient Feasts) where these disconcerting
inadequacies are side by side with formulas that seem to be from an
early period.  Their irregularity must be accounted for by the
omissions and the non-sequiturs to which improvisation at any time
is exposed.

     Among these is this post-mysterium for the Epiphany (which
passed almost as it stands from the Missale Gothicum into the
Gallicanized Roman Missal, where it became a "secreta").

        Lord, we beseech Thee, look favorably upon these sacrifices
which are placed before    Thee, where it is no longer gold,
frankincense or myrrh that is offered, but what these   gifts
manifested is offered, sacrificed and received ...

     Here, the one idea of the sacrifice has absorbed the anamnesis
and reduced the Epiclesis to a very general invocation.  But the
sacrificial theme in turn can vanish into thin air, with the whole
content of the anamnesis, to say nothing of the Epiclesis in prayers
whose composition still does not seem to be recent.  This is the
case with the second Sunday Mass of the Missale Gothicum where
the post-sanctus is reduced to these words:

        Truly holy, truly in the highest, the Lord our God, the Son, the
King of Israel, who on     the night before He suffered ...

and the post-secreta is no less laconic:

        Through Him, God, Almighty Father, we beseech Thee, just
as we retain the obedience    of the Holy Mystery, may its heavenly
power work in us to protect us, through Christ,     our Lord ...

     One last gap must be especially pointed out, for it became
universal in the late Mozarabic use: the Eucharist, instead of ending
with a return to the thanksgiving in the final doxology, concluded
with the last blessing of the gifts alone, which is also found at the
end of the Roman Canon, but which has always simply introduced
the doxology itself.


               FROM  IMPROVISATION  TO  IMPOSED 
FORMULARIES
                  THE  PROBLEM  OF  THE  LITURGICAL  YEAR


These incongruities which seem to us to be the price paid for a
liturgical improvisation left too long, and undoubtedly much too
late, to the hazards of its ancient freedom, lead us to return for the
time to this problem.  We can do so, now that we have before our
eyes such patent evidence not only of the indefinite variety but also
the almost limitless confusion to which they were to lead.

     Dom Gregory Dix is one the rare authors concerned with this
problem.  But the view of it that he proposes does not seem to be
very satisfying.  According to him, improvisation, particularly for
the Eucharistic Prayer, remained the quasi-universal rule up to the
pivotal period  between the fourth and fifth centuries.  At that time,
practically everywhere simultaneously in both West and East, the
formulas became fixed.  But in the West, a new proliferation almost
immediately did away with this newly acquired state.  In addition,,
this was no long merely a return to improvisation, but the
composition of new formularies, which from the outset were fixed
in writing but in such a way as to be adapted to the different feasts
and seasons of the liturgical year.  Thus in the East, we observed
two successive phases: improvisation, fixation, while in the West,
three: improvisation, fixation, and a new variety, no longer
produced this time by the freedom of improvisation, but by the
desire to sort out the formularies in accordance with the liturgical
seasons.

     In fact the documents give quite a different impression. 
Improvisation itself, much before the fifth century and even before
the fourth, soon made room for written texts, in the first place for
the use of the writers themselves.  Then, once they were put in
circulation, they were used by those who were apparently less fitted
in this kind of composition.  Furthermore, this use, as we have seen,
went for a long time side by side with successive reworkings. 
When the authority, particularly as a reaction against the Arian
heresy and its extensions, was concerned with supplying safe texts,
most of the time it limited itself, it seems, to canonizing
composition which already tended if not to impose themselves at
least to be generalized.  This was due to the prestige of their
authors (true or supposed), and undoubtedly even more to their
intrinsic interest.  but, despite many repeated prescriptions of
individual prelates or councils, the acceptance of collections
composed this way and imposed in theory, as they stood, succeeded
only at a very late date and only partially in winning out.  The
repetition of the prescriptions itself in this sense is an admission of
the remodeling, the combining and the additions which for a very
long time continued to be practiced.  The Byzantine East, despite
its Caesaro-papism, never succeeded on its own in imposing
everywhere the two formularies, of St. John Chrysostom and St.
Basil, that it claimed to canonize exclusively.  It never even came to
fix the text definitively.  The East that had escaped Byzantium and
became Nestorian or Monophysite ceased making up new
formularies for itself only when Islam progressively stifled Christian
culture.  Where this strangulation did not happen, as in Ethiopia, or
with the Marionites, the creation of new formularies continued all
throughout the Middle Ages.

     In the West, Rome and the Churches under her influence, very
soon adopted a fixed form for the great part of the elements of the
Eucharistic Prayer that followed the Sanctus.  Still, for the
Communicantes and the Hanc igitur, the fixation was very late and
never complete.  The first part, the thanksgiving properly so-called,
is not set even in the Tridentine (or old Latin Mass).  Elsewhere, as
long as the local rites survived, they never experienced anything of
this sort.  It is admittedly characteristic of the West that this
multiplicity of formulas, preserved for a long time, came down to us
in a framework which more profoundly than elsewhere pressed
upon it the mark of the liturgical year.  But this comes first of all
from the fact that the creation of new formulas continued there until
after the time when the liturgical year became diversified.  To the
extent that, in the East as well (as is the case particularly in
Ethiopia), improvisation, or at least the making of new
compositions, was preserved concurrently with a stronger
diversification of the ecclesiastical seasons, the results of the first
also reflected the evolution of the second.

     But even in the West, we must not rush to the conclusion that
everything will ultimately be connected with a given day was
composed precisely for that purpose.  What we see from the outset
in the oldest collections, is a classification of interchangeable
formulas which tends to be set up in view of their possible
appropriateness for one day rather than another.  But, in a number
of cases, there reaming a considerable portion that is arbitrary.  This
is demonstrated quite well from one collection to another where we
see the same texts receiving quite different locations.  It seems that
it is only very progressively that the transition was made from the
attribution assigned after the fact to more or less universal formulas
(with or without revising them) to the deliberate composition of
formulas with a particular objective, determined either by the
liturgical year or by some votive office.  We have already shown
how the oldest Prefaces that have been retained in the Roman Latin
Missal, such as for  Easter, Christmas or Epiphany, could at first
have been used generally, and could still be interchanged today
without much difficulty.  For a stronger reason, the example of
Secrets or Post- communions which have no specific motifs that
would assign them to one Mass rather than another are
innumerable.  In fact, all of these prayers have been so often
changed from one Mass to another that it is at times very hard to
tell for what Mass they were composed in the beginning, and even
whether they ever did have any definitive objective.

     The same phenomena is more evident in the Gallican or
Mozarabic books.  Not only were there Sunday or ferial
interchanging Masses that never had any specific attributions, but
we may estimate that a good half of those that did were not
composed with that object in view, while a number of others can be
applied specifically, but rather as a result of a fortuitous coincidence
than by preconceived design.

     The post-secreta of the Christmas Mass of the Missale
Gothicum seems to fit into this last category.

        We believe, Lord, in Thy coming (adventum), and we recall
Thy Passion.  Thy Body  wast broken for the forgiveness of our
sins, Thy Blood shed as the price of our      redemption ...

     It is in all likelihood the presence of the word adventum which
caused this prayer to be placed where it was.  But it seems unlikely
that it was in fact composed for Christmas.  Many pieces, even
placed under the heading of a great feast day with a very
characteristic theme, do not even have such a pretext to justify their
presence here as opposed to anywhere else.  It is enough to quote
the post- mysterium from the same collection for the Assumption of
the Virgin.  It  obviously has nothing to do either with this mystery
or even with Mary:

        Let t here descend, Lord, upon these sacrifices, the spirit 
Paraclete, the co-eternal   cooperator of  Thy blessing, that the
oblation we present to Thee, form the fruit of the  earth which
belongs to Thee, through a new heavenly exchange, may return to
us once it has been sanctified.   May this fruit changed into Thy
Body, the cup into Thy Blood which we have offered for our sins
become a merit for us;  grant this, Almighty God ...

     When we become aware of these facts, this question of
improvisation and the authoritarian fixing of the liturgical formulas,
especially the Eucharistic formulas, appears in a new light. In the
first place, it is not the introduction of a profusely ramified liturgical
year that always preserved a certain variability of the formularies in
the West.  It is on the contrary the persistence of an improvisation
that was more or less supervised, and more or less held in check by
the authorities, that gave rise little by little to a conforming of the
formulas of the Eucharistic Prayer to the detailed plan of this year,
which in great part, actually, was artificial and post factum.  If, on
the other hand, the Byzantine East itself was able more or less
successfully to impose the exclusive use of two formularies only,
and Rome, one formula, but only for one part of the Eucharist, it is
first of all because they had come upon a few examples of such
excellent compositions that the authority had only to support, and
at the most press for, a spontaneous movement toward unification. 
In the Extreme West, as in Ethiopia or among the Syrians who had
escaped from the Byzantine orbit, the continuance of improvisation
to such a late date was the result of the multiplicity of passable
formularies (although not one bore the authority of a great name,
nor stood out because of any exceptional merit, at least in so far as
there was no attempt at centralization on the part of any imperial or
pontifical authority).  If Rome herself, up to our own day, has
allowed a multiplicity and even a continued multiplication at least of
the Prefaces in the Eucharist, it is quite simply because there was
never a text that had enough fullness or authority to be imposed. 
There was only a variety of texts, which lent themselves rather to
the complementary of their alternation than to the exclusive
predominance of one or other of them.

     There  still remains for us to shed some light upon a question
that is inevitably posed by the Gallican and Mozarabic
Sacramentaries.  Many are the Masses where certain parts are
lacking.  We find, for example, an immolatio or an illatio, without a
post-sanctus or a post-mysterium, and even without either of these. 
In this case, what was the celebrant to do?  Three hypotheses are
possible.  Either he chose at his pleasure something neutral enough
from another collection, or he again improvised in order to fill out
what was lacking, or else he had recourse to some hypothetical all-
purpose prayer: a formulary which was able to fill up any of the
gaps in the proper.  The only possible foundation for this last
supposition is the Missale omnium offerentium.  But his exists only
in very late manuscripts, and the Missa Omnimoda of the Liber
Ordinum of Silos, which comes close to it does not seem, itself, to
be prior to the eleventh century.  It is from this Missale that
Gimenez de Cisneros got the fixed formulas of the Sanctus and the
words of institution (still lacking in the ancient books) in order to
print them in his Missale Mixtum of 1500.  But the formula of the
Last Supper narrative begins with In qua nocte tradbatur, despite
the fact that the prayers that follow in the Hispanic tradition are
always called post-pridie.  The hypothesis of an influence form the
Eastern liturgies that could still have been felt in the eleventh
century seem questionable.  This exception form the of usage seems
to give evidence quite simply that still at this time the freedom of
improvisation in Spain was sufficiently alive for the composer of a
Mass to think that he was right in using the Pauline formula rather
than the formula from the Synoptics, even despite local custom.  If
this was the case, we should be led a fortiori to think that the
ministers of the Mozarabic Rite, as long as it remained alive, were
as free to improvise in all of the non-fixed parts in a given Mass as
they were to have recourse to the formulas of another Mass.


               THE  ORATIO FIDELIUM  AND  THE 
INTERCESSIONS
                              OF  THE  CANON


But there still remains one other general problem which the
examination of the Gallican and Mozarabic liturgies allows us to
clarify.  It is that of the connection between the prayers
accompanying the Offertory which have in the Latin tradition the
title orationes (or oratio) fidelium and the intercession and
commemorations of the Anaphora.  The liturgists who, in general,
are ignorant of Jewish tradition, and more or less fascinated by the
Apostolic Tradition, tend to explain the presence of such prayers in
the Canon as a late doublet of the oratio fidelium.  Yet there is a
general fact that ought to put them on guard against this
hypothesis: that is that the unquestionable doublets, in all the
liturgies of a more or less recent vintage, that we may observe
between the prayers of the Canon and those of the Offertory, rather
interpret the tendency to anticipate the themes of the Eucharist
from the point of the Offertory, than to bring into the Eucharist
properly so called something that was originally to be found
between the readings and this point.  However, on first sight, the
evolved Gallican and Mozarabic Liturgies in which these
invocations and intercessions are absent from the Eucharist, would
seem to justify the hypothesis in question.  Here again, however,
there are pieces which include these intercessions and
commemorations, as Baumstark has already observed, and which
cannot be completely explained by an influence of the Roman
Canon.  They lead us rather to suppose a more ancient stage which
would have only left a few survivors behind.

     The solution of this problem can only be reached through a
more careful examination of the oration fidelium itself.  Its
complete study would require a whole book, so we shall limit
ourselves here to an outline of it, to the extent that it is necessary
for our purpose.  In the Eastern liturgies, that oratio fidelium was
always clad in the form of an ektenia, that is a succession of prayers
proclaimed by the Deacon to which the people responded with a
stereotyped formula (generally Kyrie eleison).  We find the same
thing in the Ambrosian Masses for Lent, and it seems that it was
also in this form that it was ultimately practiced by our liturgies of
the Extreme West.

     But the Roman Liturgy seems indeed to have preserved for us
an older form.  This is the orationes sollemnes that was recited in
the Latin Mass on Good Friday.  Up to the end of the Middle Ages,
they were also present in the Mass of  Spy Wednesday.  Scholars
have established this was  the ancient form of the oratio fidelium in
every Roman Mass.  After each mention (in the Tridentine by the
priest, but which in the beginning must have been recited by the
Deacon after the priest's oremus), there is a moment of silent prayer
on the part of all the faithful who remain on their knees.  After this
period of silence, the subdeacon gives the sign to arise and the
celebrant concludes with a  summary in the form of a Collect, which
must have been the essential kernel of the prayer of the
congregation on the theme that had previously been indicated.

     This is already enough to indicate that the oratio fidelium must
be interpreted strictly.  This is the prayer of the faithful in the sense
that it is a prayer which the faithful are invited to make on their
own in their own words.  The intervention of the Deacon before the
prayer, or on the part of the priest after the prayer has no other aim
but to give them guidance and in no way to substitute for them.

     But it seems that the Liturgy of Baptism of adults allows us to
go back to a stage that is still earlier than that of the oratio fidelium. 
At each to the scrutinies to which the catechumens are submitted,
they are invited to pray.  They are then on their knees and pray in
silence for a moment.   The celebrant invites them subsequently
to"complete: their prayer.  They rise and add the Amen without the
minister pronouncing any formula.

     This leads us to suppose that in the beginning thee was merely
the invitation to a silent and personal prayer, without the
concluding Collect, and indeed possibly without any initial
admonition rather than the general invitation to prayer.

     If now we were to connect all this up with the Jewish Liturgy,
we can only recall the ancient practice, still preserved today in the
Synagogue, of preceding the recitation of the Eighteen Blessing of
the Tefillah, solemnly sung by the celebrant, with a silent recitation
on the part of each person present.  But, from the Rabbis
themselves we know that in the beginning each individual instead of
reciting the Tefillah on his own account, limited himself to praying
freely in silence in the prayer of the shaliach sibbur.

      We find the exactly what seems initially to have been the
relationship between the oratio fidelium and the prayers of the
minister, chanted in connection with the Sanctus and the
thanksgivings connected with it.  It is therefore from the minister's
recitation of the great prayer (which at first was the conclusion of
the service of readings, before it became the beginning of the
Eucharistic Prayer) that the later formulations of the oration
fidelium derive.  They are an anticipation of the sacerdotal and
public prayer in a prayer which each participant made primarily on
his and in silence.  Concern for giving this prayer some direction
created this doublet, before the silent prayer, framed by the
deacon's admonition and the priest's oration, became dwarfed
beside these two additional clerical formulas.

     The conclusion seems unavoidable: if the restoration of the
oratio fidelium is most desirable, it is not enough merely to add
diaconal or sacerdotal prayers to the Offertory in restoring it; the
personal prayer that constituted it must be recreated, and these two
formulas, which in themselves are secondary, must have no purpose
than to elicit it.  Under the vain illusion of restoring the Eucharist to
its primitive state, it would be all the more absurd were we to
deprive it of a sacerdotal prayer which is in its original place in
order to transport it to a position which it had only secondarily
through a simple pedagogical doublet.  This will remain deprived of
its original meaning as long as it takes the place of the real prayer of
the faithful: a personal and silent prayer, which it was meant to
inspire.








































  





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