CHAPTER  FIVE

                         THE  PATRISTIC  EUCHARIST
            and  the  VESTIGES  of  the  PRIMITIVE  EUCHARIST:
                   THE  LITURGIES  OF  ADDAI  AND  MARI
                         and of   ST.  HIPPOLYTUS


The setting down in a written form of the liturgical payers in both
Judaism and Christianity is a relatively late phenomenon.   In both
cases, it came about only after it was felt that tradition was in
danger of being changed as long as it was not cast in forms that
were set even to their last details.  Because of the reaction the
heresies brought about, they were a particularly important factor in
this evolution. This is indeed the reason why we see Christian texts
of this type becoming common only until after the great crisis of
Arianism, i.e., after the second half of the fourth century.

           THE  CONSTITUTION  OF  THE  TRADITIONAL 
FORMULARIES
                            OF  THE  EUCHARIST


Still, a document like the Apostolic Tradition  of St. Hippolytus
gives evidence that typical models had begun to be composed
before that date.  But the same document shows evidence that it
was as examples to guide the celebrants rather than ne varietur
formulas that they were first proposed.  Inversely, for a long time
after the appearance and the generalization of relatively set
formularies, variation on their basic themes managed to continue
almost to our own day.  In the Roman Liturgy itself, as
conservative as it seems to be, the composition of variable
Eucharistic Prefaces practically never ceased.  For as long as it
continued to remain alive the Mozarabic Liturgy experienced this
plasticity with all the parts of the Eucharist.  The Eastern Liturgies,
for their part, particularly among the Copts, the Ethiopians and the
Maronites, continued up the end of the Middle Ages to work out
more or less new formulas.

     It is true, however, that the great development of the Eucharistic
formularies coincides with the high point of the Patristic Period,
which extends approximately from the middle of the fourth century
to the middle of the sixth, or from the Cappadocian Fathers to St.
Gregory the Great.  Since the liturgical manuscripts were destined
for liturgical use and were then destroyed or scrapped once they
were no longer used, we have but very few precious fragments
from an earlier age.  On the other hand, since the compositions of
this period came to dominate and to be accepted, we are
overwhelmed by the abundance of texts it has produced.  We may
say that it was at this time that the Eucharist found its classic
expression.  We should not be sorry that a rather strong
discouragement of improvisation soon set in.  For, we must admit
the following centuries produced little else but more or less
successful variations on the themes which at that time were
beginning to be defined and take shaped.  Or else they were lost
from sight and men very quickly became sidetracked in prattle and
fancy.  When what we shall call for simplicity's sake the Middle
Ages did not hold to the Patristic texts, the Eucharistic Prayer was
in perpetual danger of being debased or fragmented.

     On the other hand, when we look at what this great age
produced, we are struck by its vigor and its richness.  But at first
sight at least, we are also disconcerted by the variety of forms.
Certain constant factors can be observed.  but the multiplicity of the
forms which surround them is such that we have difficulty in
classifying these documents and even more so when it comes to
making up their genealogy.   Still, a consensus has been gradually
established among comparative liturgists connecting this vast
proliferation with five great principal centers, or better, with five
areas of composition and initial diffusion.  Three are situated in the
East and two in the West. We may therefore say roughly that there
are five basic schemas for the Eucharist Prayer which are still found
today in the most venerable texts that have remained is use.  Going
from East to West, they are the East Syrian, the West Syrian, the
Alexandrian, the Roman and the Gallican-Mozarabic types.

     We must not disguise the fact that there is some
oversimplification in this commonly accepted division.  For
example, we have to admit that the so-called West Syrian type has
more or less affected both the East Syrian and the Alexandrian, in
paretically all their formulas which are available to us directly. 
Moreover, upon closer examination, the West Syrian type itself has
two profoundly different varieties that may be connected with
Antioch and Jerusalem respectively.

     In the West, similarly, the Roman type is accompanied by a
whole series of secondary types like that of Lyon and especially the
Milanses (wish is called Ambrosian).  It is very hard to determine
whether they are Gallicanized Roman types or rather preserved
arachic Roman forms.  It is so difficult that some people have come
to maintain that the Roman type in the beginning was not clearly
distinct amidst a tangle of local forms.  All of these would be more
or less analogous to the forms we call Gallican or Mozarabic. The
latter would have simply continued to evolve elsewhere, while the
others would have been statically fixed in Rome.

     It is certain, in any case, that we must allow for unexpected
exportations and local metamorphoses that are not always easy to
explain.  It is not in Byzantium that we can best discover the
characteristics of the ancient Byzantine Rite, but rather in remote
Armenia, despite the original and particularly proliferous overlays
that they underwent. In the capital itself  there were influences,
particularly from Palestine, which did a great deal to alter and even
abolish ancient local customs. Similarly, it is not in Cappadocia, nor
in neighboring Syria, nor even in Constantinople, but only Egypt
that we find the Eucharist of  St. Basil in what seems to be its
original form.

     In addition to these more or less global interchanges, there are
some erratic elements, and it is still harder to explain just how they
could have ended up where we find them.  To give just one
example, how does it happen that in the middle of the Ambrosian
Canon we come up against a phrase that seem to have come
straight out a West Syrian Anaphora?

     In all of these interchanges two facts are so obvious that people
have been too often tempted to explain all the apparent
assimilations by them.  It is the imperialism of Rome and that of
Byzantium.  Contrary to what many modern scholars would tend to
imagine, as a result of a romantic notion of Orthodox liberalism, (or
anarchy) and Roman authoritarianism, Byzantine imperialism,
particularly is what interest us, it seems to have been much more
systematic (and more rigorous) than the imperialism of Rome.  For
a long time, the Roman Liturgy spread rather by a whole process of
spontaneous lendings, or desired (or encouraged) adoption on the
part of the secular authorities, than by any effort from pontifical
authority.  People have been bewildered for so long by a St.
Gregory the Great's liberalism on this point when he advises St.
Augustine of Canterbury in a letter to shape a Liturgy for the
Anglo-Saxons that would be adapted and borrowed from whatever
sources seems best to him, that they have tried to think that the
letter was counterfeit. Today, everyone is practically agreed on its
authenticity.  It is true that a few examples of the contrary attitude
are found, such as a particularly narrow and acrimonious letter of
Pope Innocent to Decentius of Gubbio. But this is much more an
indication of the personal temperament on the part of the Roman
See at that time.  In fact, ancient ecclesiastical Rome seems for a
long time to have remained indifferent to the spread of its own
liturgical tradition.  And it subsequently showed itself very
receptive to the traditions, Gallican and others, that came to it  with
editions of its own books that had been copiously interpolated by
the "barbarians" for their own us.  We have to wait for Gregory VII
for this political outlook, or rather its absence, to be modified. 
Actually, in a few years, this Pope was to effect the almost
complete annihilation of the Mozarabic rite in Spain.  Yet, it must
not be forgotten that the Mozarabic Rite had been dogmatically
discredited by the support that adoptionist theology thought it
could find there.  Then, too, the Spanish Kings who were more or
less under the influence of the Clumiac monks, had already
precipitated the more or less spontaneous movement that led to this
substitution.

     Byzantium, on the contrary, form the fifth century pursued a
politic of pure and simple suppression of the local traditions and
their replacement by the so-called Byzantine Liturgy, which actually
was merely the special form that the West Syrian Liturgy come to
take in the new Rome on the Bosphorus.  The defections that
followed, which were blamed on the Nestorian or Monophysite
heresies, seem today to have rather been reactions of cultural
nationalism, exacerbated by the imperial desire for unification at any
price.  The absolutism which it was to reach in the twelfth century
was expressed undisguisedly in a famous opinion of the great
canonist Theodore Balsamon.  The Orthodox Alexandrian Patriarch
at the time asked him what should be thought of and done with the
Liturgy of  St. James and this high authority answered him that
there were no other Orthodox Liturgies except those said to be of
John Chrysostom and St. Basil, and of course, in the form in which
they were known and practiced in the imperial city.  The response is
all the more characteristic since Balasmon himself was originally
from Antioch, yet the idea, incontestable in itself, never seems to
have touched him that the Liturgies of  New Rome were merely
sub-produces of the Liturgy of his native province.

     Nor must we forget that the victories of these two imperialism
proved many times to be merely Pyrrhic.  We have already said
enough about the evolution of the Roman Liturgy and the very
beginnings of the Byzantine Liturgy for it to be easily understood. 
If the so-called Roman Liturgy was finally imposed on the whole of
the West, it was under a composite form in which the only thing
Roman remaining is a certain framework and certain formulas. 
These were fairly well swallowed up by an onrush of foreign
formulas and submerged by a whole veneer of rites, vestments and 
chants that had nothing Roman about them.  Similarly, the
Byzantine Liturgy, which was born not in Byzantium but at
Antioch, and which had been remodeled at Antioch or elsewhere
before it was transported to Byzantium, was to receive there first a
considerable monastic overlay coming from Jerusalem, and more
precisely form the Laura of  St. Sabbas.  The Stoudios monastery in
the capital was the home of this genuine remodeling, at least  the
main one.  Nor were these allogenic elements the last that the city
of the basileis would continue to receive, before re-exporting them
under the imperial seal together with what remained of its most
ancient features.

     These few reminders were doubtless necessary so that we might
have no illusions about the distinctness or the autonomy of the five
great types of the Eucharistic Liturgy that are generally
acknowledged.  Actually they are merely families which in many
ways are interrelated and which in any case still remain part of one
and the same race.

     Independently from the later interbreeding which may have been
able more or less to obliterate the original differences among the
types enumerated, it seem that we have to acknowledge certain
original points of kinship.  But once more they defy the most rooted
prejudices.  We have become accustomed to see Christendom as
having been divided for a long time into two blocs, the East
centering around Byzantium and the West around Rome.  That a
large part of this division is artificial is particularly, if not uniquely,
evident in the realm of Liturgy.  Actually, the West  Syrian Liturgy
(i.e., in this case, the Liturgy of Antioch) seems more directly
related to the Gallican an Mozarabic Liturgies than to is neighbors
in the East, if we keep to what seems most basic.  And, still more
clearly, the Roman and Alexandrian Liturgies seem to be very close
cousins, if not sisters.  In other words, if we wish to trace a line of
demarcation between the different paths of liturgical tradition, and
especially the tradition of the Eucharist, among the different models
of prayer which first formed along these paths, this line cannot be
vertical.  It does not know the customary sectioning off of East
from West.  It tends to reveal another division which cuts in two
both the East and West.

     Let us hasten to add that the fact is undoubtedly so little in
conformity with our mental habits that many scholars still find it
repugnant to accept it completely.  They cannot deny either the
surprising analogies or the common differences for they are patent.
But they would like to explain them by more or less late influences
rather than by some community of origin.  This is particularly the
case with regard to Rites from what we may call the Far West (the
Gallican and the Mozarabic), compared to West Syria. Many
people admit that the analogies are secondary and not original.  We
shall see further on a few reason that seem to militate against such
an opinion.  It remains tenable, however, in view of the relatively
late date of all our detailed documents on the Rites of the Far West. 
On the other hand, it becomes much more difficult to uphold the
thesis of later influences in order to explain the analogies between
Rome and Alexandria.  Actually it is clear that the more ancient the
texts to which we can go back, and which are certain witness of a
local usage, the more striking are the analogies.

     Whatever the case in the text as they are presented to us, and
whatever way we may wish to account for them the analogies are
there.  They are mainly structural, but there are also frequently
analogies even more striking (which does not necessary mean more
convincing) in the detail of the formulas.


             THE  WEST  SYRIAN  AND 
GALLICAN-MOZARABIC  TYPES

To begin with the West Syrian Rite, whose structure seems to be of
very special clarity, we have successively:
     1) The first part of an act of thanksgiving, leading to the hymn
which we call the Sanctus.
     2) The second part of the thanksgiving, leading to the narrative
of the Eucharistic  institution.
     3) A prayer of a special but practically universal type which is
called the "anamnesis",  and which seems to be a resuming and an
amplification of the words: "Do this in memory    (or as a 
memorial) of Me."
     4) Another prayer of a very definite type, but which actually is 
scarcely found in its    fullness elsewhere but in the West Syrian
Rite and the Rites inf luenced by it: the    "Epiclesis", i.e., an
invocation petitioning the descent of  the Holy Spirit to consecrate
the bread and wine and to make them the Body and Blood of the
Lord, and, secondarily, a  petition that God accept the sacrifice
offered and that He communicate His grace to the  participants.
     5) A series of detailed intercession for all the needs of the
Church and the world, and of     commemoration of Saints.
     6) A final doxology in a Trinitarian form.

     Let us add, as a characteristic proper to the West Syrian Rite
that it  (1) is dominated by the Divine Person of the Father and is
more or less purely an act of thanksgiving for creation, while (2) it
is dominated by the Son and  gives thanks for the redemption; (3)
(4), and to a certain extent it (5) introduces the Spirit and develops
the theme of the sanctification of the Church and the whole
universe, in a clearly eschatological perspective.

     All of this can be found again, in the same order, in at least a
certain number of Gallican and Mozarabic formularies, with the
exception of (5) which is never present.  But the content of the
different parts in the Far West is often much more nebulous in its
details, and it is not rare for it to wander more or less complete
from this schema, although there is always first an initial act of
thanksgiving ending with the Sanctus, secondly its renewal, in a
form more or less explicit ending with the Words of Institution,
thirdly a continuation in which we must admit that the anamnesis
and the Epiclesis are often intermingled and more often tapered
down or even watered down completely into almost any kind of
prayer whatsoever, and fourthly a doxology which is generally
stunted.


                    THE  ALEXANDRIAN  AND  ROMAN  TYPES

     If we go on to Rome, we have a very different order and, after
the simplicity and harmony of the foregoing, it may seem
disconcerting.  We have first of all (1) which is also an act of
thanksgiving leading to the Sanctus, but here redemption and
creation are mingled (most often creation is little more than merely
mentioned); (2) first prayer recalled the sacrifice; (3) a first series of
intercessions for the living and commemoration of the Saints: (4) a
prayer - in two distinct but connected formulas - petitioning for the
acceptance of the sacrifice together with a formal invocation for the
consecration of the Eucharistic oblations, (5) the Words of
Institution, (6) an anamnesis which is rather similar to the West
Syrian, although more solemn, (7) a last invocation - at present also
two joint prayers- that the sacrifice offered be accepted, and more
precisely, today, that it have in us its whole effect of grace; (8) a
new intercession which is first for the departed and then again for
the living, combined with a new commemoration of the Saints, and
(9) the final doxology.

     At Alexandria, especially if we refer to the most ancient
documents, we find analogous order, except that all the
intercessions were grouped together at the beginning as well as the
commemorations, and that this whole section together with the
prayer that precedes it in the Roman Rite is placed even before the
Sanctus.  We therefore have the following order:
     1) initial act of thanksgiving:
     2) first prayer recalling the sacrifice:
     3) copious intercession and commemorations ending with a
prayer for the acceptance of the sacrifice.
     4) resumption of the thanksgiving, leading to the Sanctus;
     5) an new prayer petitioning for the consecration of the
oblations;
     6) the Words of Institution;
     7) the anamnesis;
     8) a last invocation that the sacrifice offered be accepted, and
more precisely that it have its effects of grace in us, and
     9) the final doxology.
     
     It is fitting to add that neither at Rome in he text which has
come down to us nor at Alexandria in the most ancient forms of the
texts known to us, is there any trace of a special attribution of the
major sections of the Anaphora to the three Divine Persons in
particular, as referred to in turn.  It is particular only in the formulas
that are visibly influenced by West Syria that we find in Egypt a
special invocation of the descent of the Holy Spirit, either in the
second or in the third prayer.  Between these two in Alexandria as
in Rome the whole content of the Syrian Epiclesis seems at first
sight to have been scattered.  In other words, the "Epiclesis" as it is
ordinarily understood seems to be no more primitive in Alexandria
than in Rome, where it seems simply to be lacking.  Or, if you
prefer, at Alexandria as in Rome, there are not one but at least two
Epiclesis (if we take the word in its broad sense), one before and
one after the Words of Institution, not to mention what could be
called a pre-Epiclesis which comes well before the Institution.  But
none of these prayers, at Rome until recently nor, its seems, at
Alexandria in the beginning, implores the intervention of the Holy
Spirit.

                 THE  SURVIVAL  OF  A  MORE  ANCIENT  TYPE
            IN  THE  EAST  SYRIAN  TRADITION:  ADDAI  AND 
MARI

Before seeking to unravel this apparent tangle, despite the partial
analogies which may suggest an initial path for the investigations to
follow, it worthwhile to proceed to the fifth type of the Patristic
Eucharist, that of East Syria.  Until now we have left it aside
because it obviously refuses to be classed with either of the two
preceding groups.  From its general framework, at least at first
sight, it would rather connect with the other Syrian type, but not
from its plan which differs on a capital point: the intercessions and
commemorations, all grouped together in one whole as in West
Syria, instead of following the Epiclesis, are inserted in a manner
that is found nowhere else, between the Anamnesis and the
Epiclesis.  We have then the plan that we first gave, except that (4)
and (5) are inverted:
     1) the first act of thanksgiving leading to the Sanctus;
     2) the second thanksgiving leading to the Words of Institution;
     3) the Anamnesis;
     4) intercessions and commemorations;
     the Epiclesis, and 
     6) the final doxology.

     Yet, when we examine the most ancient example of this schema,
for the so-called Eucharist of the Apostles, or of Addai and Mari, it
is immediately evident that the schema in question is artificial. It
was obtained and furthermore very imperfectly, only  by the
addition of elements that are visibly from different times, at the
price of splitting up a prayer or a series of prayers that are more
ancient.  But, undoubtedly by reason of its great age, the original
text of these prayers was practically entirely respected.  We may
say that their artificially separated extremities always tend to
reconnect over and above the adventitious elements.  It is enough
to leave out these latter for us to see a prayer arise which in
undeniably continuous.  And everything leads us to believe that this
prayer is the most ancient Christian Eucharistic composition to
which we can have access today.  It represents a model that is quite
different from the prayers of the Patristic period.  On the other
hand, although all these expressions are Christian, it is still modeled
after the pattern of the Jewish prayers for the last cup of the meal.

     Let us first see how the primitive Anaphora, encased in the
Liturgy of Addai and Mari, evidently suggests its presence out of
the hybrid composition which bear this name today in the 
liturgical books of the Nestorians, the Catholic Chaldeans and of all
those influenced by them, In Malabar and elsewhere.

     The following is the text of the Nestorian Liturgy given in
Brightman and arranged in accordance with the order of Dom
Botte:

     1.  Worthy of praise from every mouth and of confes sion form
every tongue and of     worship and exaltation from every creature
is the adorable and glorious Name of Thy  glorious Trinity, o Father
and Son and Holy Ghost, who didst create the world by Thy grace
and its inhabiters by Thy mercifulness and didst save mankind by
Thy compassion and give great grace unto mortals.

     11 .  Thy Majesty, o my Lord, thousand thousands of tho se on 
high bow down and   worship and ten thousand times ten thousand
holy Angels and  hosts of spiritual beings,    ministers of fire and
spirit, praise Thy Name with holy Ch erubim and spiritual Seraphim
offering worship to Thy sovereignty, shouting and praising without
ceasing and crying one to another and saying: "Holy, Holy, Holy
Lord God of Hosts, Heaven and earth are full of His praises and of
the nature of His being and of the excellency of His glorious
splendor. Hosanna in the highest and Hosanna to the son of David. 
Blessed be He that cometh in the Name of the Lord, Hosanna in the
Highest."

     111.   (And with these heavenly hosts), we give thanks to Th ee, 
o my Lord, even we Thy     servants weak and fail and miserable,
for that Thou hast   given us great grace past   recompense in that
Thou didst put on our manhood that  Thou mightest quicken it by
Thy Godhead, and hast exalted our low estate and restored our fall
and raised our mortality and forgiven our trespasses and justified
our sinfulness and enlightened our knowledge and, o our Lord and
our God, hast condemned our enemies and granted victory to the
weakness of our fail nature in the overflowing mercies of Thy
grace.  And for all Thine helps and graces towards us let us raise to
Thee praise and honor and confession and worship now and ever
and world without end.  Amen.

     IV.  O Lord God of Hosts, accept this offerings for all the Holy
Catholi c Church and for  all the just and righteous fathers who
have been well pleasing in Thy  sight and for all the    Prophets and
the Apostles and for all the Martyrs an d Confess ors and for the
mourners and distressed and for all the needy and tormented and
for all the sick and afflicted and for all the departed who have been
severed and have gone forth from amongst us and for this people
that looketh for the awaiteth Thy mercies and for my frailty and
misery and poverty.

      V. Do thou, o my Lord, in Thy many and unspeakable mercies
make a good and      acceptable memorial for all the just and
righteous fathers who have been well pleasing    in Thy sight, in the
commemoration of the Body and Blood of Thy Christ which we
offer no Thy pure holy Altar as Thou hast taught us, and grant us
Thy tranqui lity and Thy peace all the days of the world.

     VI.  Y ea, o our Lord and our God, grant us Thy tranquil ity and
Thy peace all the days     of the world that all the inhabitants of the
earth may know Thee that Thou art the only   true God the Father
and that Thou hast sent our Lord Jesus Christ Thy Son and Thy
beloved.  And He our Lord and our God came and in His life giving
Gospel taught us all purity and holiness ...

     VII.  (Be mi ndful) of the Prophets and the Apostles and
Martyrs and the Confessors and    the bishops and the doctors and
the presbyters and the deacons and all the children of the     Holy
Catholic Church, even them that have been signed with the living
Sign of Holy Baptism.

     VIII.   And we also, o my Lord, Thy weak and frail and misera
ble servants who are     gathered together in Thy Name, both stand
before Thee at this ti me and have received the  example which is
from Thee delivered unto us, rejoicing and praising and exalting and
commemorating and celebrating this great and fearful and holy and
life giving and divine Mystery of the passion and the death and the
burial and the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

     IX.  And m ay Thee come, o my Lord, Thine Holy Spirit and
rest  upon this offering of  Thy servants and bless it and hollow it
that it may be to us, o my Lord, for the pardon   of offenses and the
remission of sins and for the great hope of resurrection from the
dead and for new life in the Kingdom of Heaven with all those who
have been well pleasing in Thy sight.

     X. And f or all this great and marvelous dispensation  towards
us we will give Thee thanks  and praise Thee without ceasing Thy
Church redeemed by the precious Blood of Thy     Christ, with
unclosed mouths and open faces, lifting Thy praise and honor and
confession and worship to Thy living and holy and life giving Name
now and ever and world without end.   Amen.

     The Anglican liturgist E.C. Ratcliff, who devoted to this text
one of the most profound studies, emphasizes from the first the
absence of the Words of Institution.  Would this not have been a
unique example of the survival of a type of primitive Eucharistic
Prayer where these words did not enter in, any more than they are
found in the Didache?  Moreover, the whole of paragraph 11, with
the Sanctus and the first words of paragraph 111 (they are
furthermore not to be found in the Maronite Anphora of  St. Peter,
which is called charar and which incorporates a good part of our
text), interrupts the sequence of development.  On the other hand, it
regains its continuity if we connect paragraph 111 with paragraph
1.  The same should be said of paragraph 1X, which can be looked
upon as an Epiclesis (at least in the broad sense: let us note that if it
requests the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the oblation, it does
not explicitly petition for the consecration of the bread and wine
into the Body and Blood of Christ).

     If it is kept, the beginning of paragraph X is left hanging in mid
air.  But once it is suppressed, we see that this paragraph X is
connect directly with the end of paragraph V111, which constitutes
the Anamnesis.

     The result is that the Sanctus and what is connected with it, on
the one hand, and the Epiclesis on the other, seem to have to be
looked upon as later insertions.

     The same thing seems to be true of paragraphs 1V to V11.  Not
only do the intercessions here appear in a form that, according to all
the parallels we have, seems out of place, even if we add to it the
words which appear to be missing that have been placed in
brackets: "Be mindful".

     Once we have made these eliminations, we find ourselves with a
rather well formed payer in three paragraphs.  God is extolled 1) for
His work of creation, 2) for His redemptive work accomplished in
Christ and 3) the memorial of this redemption is presented to Him,
on which basis glory is given to Him.

     Dom Botte, however, wrote two articles in which he brought to
bear a series of remarks on this reconstruction and which should
not be overlooked.

     He is full in agreement with Ratcliff in eliminating all of
paragraph 11, including the Sanctus.

     But he doubts that the absence of the Words of Institution is
original.   His objection rests on the fact that the beginning of the
Anamnesis (paragraph V111): "And we also, o my Lord, Thy weak
and frail and miserable servants who are gathered together in thy
Name ..." still remains up in the air after the eliminations suggested
by Ratcliff as before.  These words seem to require a foregoing
sentence, but this phrase is no more the conclusion of 111 than it is
the final words of V11.

     But these same Nestorians who still use the Anaphora of Addai
and Mari have two others which they attribute to Nestorius and
Theodore of Mopsuestia, respectively.  Now the latter Anaphora,
especially, contains an Anamnesis that presents close analogies with
that of Addai and Mari (and the same is true of the intercessions
which, today at any rate, are found in both Anaphoras in obviously
related forms).  But the Anaphora of Theodore does have the
Words of Institution in a rather peculiar text that must be quoted:

        ... And He, together with His Apostles, on the night He was
betrayed,  celebrated this  great, awesome, holy and divine Mystery
(in Syriac: rozo): taking b read, He blessed it,   and broke it, gave it
to His disciples and said: This is  My B ody which is broken form
you in remission of sins.  Likewise the cup: He gave thanks and
gave it to them and said: This is My Blood of the New Testament,
which is shed for many in remission of sins.  Take them all of you,
eat of the bread and drink of this cup and do this whenever you are
gathered together in memory of Me.

     If we connect this text with the Anamnesis of addai and Mari, its
first words: "And we also ... who are gathered together in Thy
Name ..." appear to be a direct echo of the conclusion of the Words
of Institution given under a form similar to that which was set down
by Theodore of Mopsuestia.  This impression is re-enforced when
we see this other phrase a bit further on, in the Anamnesis
"celebrating this great and fearful and holy and life giving and divine
Mystery."  This seems another echo of the same narrative, this time
of its first sentence. the coincidence becomes irresistible when we
note further, still following Dom Botte, that the ancient
commentators on the Syrian Liturgy had knowledge of a
formulation of the words of Institution which ended not, as with
Theodore, with: "whenever you are gathered together in memory of
Me," but rather with: "whenever you are gathered together in My
Name," which follows the formula of the Anamnesis of Addai and
Mari exactly.

     We must admit that this demonstration seems to be so clear that
it comes close to being irrefutable.  In fact, many years have gone
by since Dom Botte presented it and no one has risked refuting it. 
Undoubtedly it will be asked if the Words of Institution were
originally in our text, just how could they have subsequently
disappeared?  Dom Botte rightly answered that the liturgical
manuscripts where these words do not appear are legion, even in
cases where there is not the least doubt, if only according to the
commentators of the period, about their compulsory presence in the
celebration.  This is actually the case in the West, with all the texts
of the Gallican Liturgy, with all the earliest texts of the Mozarabic
Liturgy, and in the East with many Syriac manuscripts, particularly
among the Maronites.  We should simply suppose that every
celebrant knew the customary formula in a given Rite by heart.

     Let us go on to the Epiclesis.  Without denying the soundness of
Ratcliff's remark that its introduction breaks an obvious connection
between the end of V111 and the beginning of X, Dom Botte points
out rightly that it too is no less arachic and that the parallelisms of
its structure furthermore attest to the fact that it was composed
directly in Syriac and cannot be a later translation of some Greek
original.  We would like to point out that if one suppresses entirely
1X one eliminates from the original an element that is found in the
Jewish meal prayers, precisely between the Anamnesis in the
strictest sense (the mention of the memorial) and the final
doxology.  This is the purpose for which the memorial is presented
to God, that He bring about the ultimate fulfillment of His People
of the magnalia commemorated.  But this is exactly what we have if
we simply fop the beginning of 1X, i.e., the express invocation of
the Spirit.

     We then have a text in which the theme development is exactly
the same as the corresponding part of the meal berakoth:

        ... commemorating and celebrating this great and fearful and h
oly and life giving and  divine Mystery of the passion and the death
and the burial and the resurrection of our    Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ for the pardon of offenses  and the remission of sins and for
new life in the Kingdom of Heaven with all those who have been
well pleasing in Thy sight.

     In this case, far from being interrupted by the invocation of the
Spirit, the thought of the memorial continues to underlie the whole
end of the phrase.  Since the eschatological hope is therefore
directly connected with the passion and glorification of the Savior,
paragraph X no longer gives the impression of being disconnected:
"this dispensation" is perfectly applicable to the whole of the
foregoing prayer.

     At the same time, this answers Dom Botte's last objection to
Ratcliff: that the absence of any element of intercession in an
ancient Anaphora would be something quite singular and hard to
explain.  But once the conclusion of 1X is restored to the original
text, there is no longer any room for including the intercessions. 
We shall speak again about this point when we come to the
developments of the fourth century Eucharist, in order to
acknowledge furthermore, once again following Dom Botte, the
relative antiquity of this same element as it is presented in the
present state of our Anaphora.

     One final remark should be made before we propose the
reconstruction of the primitive text at which we are aiming.  At the
beginning of paragraph 1, "the adorable and glorious Name of Thy
glorious Trinity, o Father and Son and Holy Ghost ..." seem to be
an insertion that could scarcely be earlier than the end of the fourth
century.  This expression "Name of the Trinity" is furthermore
bereft of meaning.  The parallelism with the conclusion of
paragraph X lets us suppose that the original text, at the beginning
as well as at the end, mentioned simply: "Thy adorable and glorious
Name, which created the world by Thy grace, etc."  Once we have
made this last elimination, the beginning and the end of the prayer
become fully consonant.  They furnish, it seems, one more example
of the use familiar to early Christians of the expression: "the Divine
Name" to designate the person of Jesus.  The transition immediately
afterwards of the Eucharistic Prayer, to a direct invocation of Jesus
is now much better understood.

     We can now attempt to present a reconstruction of the original
form of the Eucharistic Prayer of Addai and Mari. We shall italicize
the Words of Institution, whose presence after Dom Botte's
demonstration seems to be required, even though the exact form
remain a matter of conjecture:

     1.   Worthy of praise from every mouth and of confession from
every tongue and of     worship and exaltation from every creature
is the adorable and glorious Name who     created the world by His
grace and its inhabiters by His mercifulness and saved mankind by
His compassion and gave great grace to us mortals.

        2.  We give thanks to Thee, o my Lord, even we T hy se
rvants weak and frail and  miserable, for Thou hast given us great
grace past rec omp ense in that Thou didst put on   our manhood
that Thou mightest quicken it by Thy Go dhead and hast exalted
our low estate and restored our fall and raised our mortality and
forgiven our trespasses and justified our sinfulness and enlightened
our knowledge and, o our Lord and our God, hast condemned our
enemies and granted victory to the weakness of our fail nature in
the overflowing mercies of Thy grace.  And for all Thine helps and
graces toward us let us raise to Thee praise and honor and
confession and worship now and ever and world without end. 
Amen.

     3.  Our Lord Jesus Chris t, together with His  Apostles o n the
night   He was betrayed,  celebrated this great, a wesome, holy and
divin e Myster y: taking  br ead, He blessed it, and      broke it, 
gave it to His disciples and  said:  This is My  Bod y  which is
broken for you for the remission of sins.  Likewise the cup: He gave
thanks and gave it to them and said: This is My Blood of the New
Testament which is shed for many for the remission of sins. Take
them all of you, eat of  this bread and drink of this cup, and do this
whenever you are gathered together in My Name.  And we also, o
my Lord, Thy weak and frail and miserable servants who are
gathered together in Thy Name, both stand before Thee at this time
and have received the example which is from thee delivered unto
us, rejoicing and praising and exalting and commemorating and
celebrating this great and fearful and holy and life giving and divine
Mystery of the passion and the death and the burial and the
resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for the pardon of
offenses and the remission of sins and for the great hope of
resurrection from the dead and for new life in the Kingdom of
Heaven with all those who have been well pleasing in Thy sight. 
And for all this great and marvelous dispensation (Syriac:
indabranutha) towards us we will give Thee thanks and praise Thee
without ceasing in Thy Church redeemed by the precious Blood of
Thy Christ, with unclosed mouths and open faces, lifting up praise
and honor and confession and worship to Thy living and holy and
life giving Name now and ever and world without end.  Amen.

     Restored in this way to what must have approximately been its
original form, this prayer appears obviously with a character that is
still fully Semitic.  It bears no trace of theological developments,
even those prior to Arianism, which were to come about in the
Christianity of the Hellenized churches.  The way in which it is
dominated by the notions associated with the Divine Name,
identified, it seems, with Christ, and the idea of "dispensation" or
"economy," that is, the plan which found its fulfillment in Christ,
bring us to what Fr. Danielou has described as Jewish-Christian
theology, which barely survived the missionary development in
Hellenistic areas.

     The way in which the transition from Father to the Son is made
in several instances in connection with this notion of the Divine
Name, is one more evidence of a very undeveloped theology, such
as is reflected in the discourses and the prayers in the Acts of the
Apostles.

     The redundancies we observe, and the accumulation of
synonyms called for by parallelism, are characteristic traits of
Jewish prayer.  Evidence of the themes of Jewish prayer is striking
throughout.  The first two paragraphs which are still two distinct
prayers, treat successively, in praise, of creation, preservation and
then redemption.  In the second paragraph the mention of
"knowledge" corresponds to the Jewish mention of the Torah. 
Similarly, in the third prayer, as we have proposed to reconstruct it,
the presentation of the "memorial" by the faithful recalls in God the
inseparable remembrance of the Messiah and themselves.  They
await His ultimate fulfillment in them of that is the object of the
memorial, exactly as in the Jewish prayer.  And in the same way this
supplication returns to praise in the final doxology.

     Very primitive also seem to be this translation of the memorial
by the "typos," the "example" as we have translated it following
Barumstark and Dom Botte.  But we could equally well say the
"sacrament," for, given by God and handed down by tradition, it
evidently communicates to us the "Mystery" of  Christ which we
"praise, exalt, commemorate and celebrate" (the last word itself
could be translated perhaps more exactly by "accomplish"). 

     But the most primitive trait of this Eucharist Prayer is the fact
that we do not yet find it any technically sacrificial formula.  There
is no mention of either sacrifice or offering.  On the other hands it is
clear that the notion of "memorial" which is the core of the Chritus
passus and its "Sacrament" which He has given us, retains all the
pregnant significance, so typically Jewish, which Jeremias has
pointed out.   Through this "memorial" we can call upon God to
have the fulfillment of His wonder works in us, just as the
memorial, in that it was given by God, preserves their permanent
actuality for us.  In this way the Eucharistic memorial appears as
the equivalent of the sacrifice, taken in the most exalted sense that
the Old Testament had evolved, in what is evidently the paramount
Christian Sacrament.  We must therefore expect to see arise in the
Anamnesis, as we shall soon point out, the first explicitly sacrificial
formulas of the Eucharist.  They will be nothing other than the
translation of all that the Jewish memorial implied into a more
immediately accessible prayer most especially, their explication will
go hand in hand with a more and more formal expression of the fact
that the Eucharistic celebration is, on the other hand, sacrificial only
in so far as it unites us to the Cross of Christ on which it impressed
this character in the beginning. 

     In this regard it is fitting to shed light on the connection between
the Anamnesis and the Institution narrative.  In the Eucharist of
Addai and Mari, if Dom Botte is right as we already see this
narrative incorporated in the Eucharistic Prayer and through its
conclusion giving rise to the formulation of the Anamnesis. Dom
Botte himself does not hesitate to posit as a principle: "no
Anamnesis without the Institution Narrative."  We should rather be
inclined to say: "no Institution Narrative without the Anamnesis." 
Actually, we have seen and can now verify that the Christian
Anamnesis has it pre-history and primary source in the "memorial"
formulated in the first part of the third of the final berakoth for the
Jewish holy day meals.  But it is clear that this "memorial" in the
Jewish prayers was not directly attached to any narratives of this
kind. And, as the formals of the Didache seem to demonstrate, that
the origin of the Christian Eucharist, it was not to be found either,
at least at this place.  Yet this should not surprise us, for it does not
seem that Jesus Himself sought to incorporate what we call the
Words of Eucharistic Institution into the berakoth themselves which
He must have left unchanged.  Still it does seem that Jeremias was
right in explaining the divergences of detail in the Institution
accounts that the New Testament handed down to us by the fact
that these were already different local liturgical formulations.  But
in the beginning, while the Eucharist was still inseparable from the
whole of a complete community meal, it seems that they must have
been recited during the meal, as was the haggadah of Passover and
as an explanation of it. When the Eucharist became detached from
the meal, the initial blessing of the bread become confused with the
first of the three berakoth over the final cup, since both had the
same object: a blessing for food, giving rise to a more general
blessing for the creation and preservation of life.  At this time, we
think the new haggadah of the renewed sacred meal was
incorporated in the Eucharistic Prayer. It came quite naturally to be
attached to the words of the Anamnesis in the third blessing, both
because it furnished a justification for it and because the words"
"Do this as a memorial of Me" were directly called forth by the
formulation of this memorial in this part of the prayer.  For this fact,
we can find twofold evidence in liturgical tradition.  Even where the
whole Eucharistic Prayer was being organized and redistributed,
many examples subsisted where the Last Supper narrative was not
incorporated into the detailed recall, in the praise for the
redemption, of the mirabilia of Christ, but was returned to, after the
mention of His death and glorification, as the starting point of the
Anamnesis.  And, elsewhere, particularly in Egypt, it is not before
the Anamnesis properly so called begins, but within it that the
narrative appears.  This is also what may explain the fact, at first
sight so disconcerting, that there is a Eucharistic Liturgy (that of St.
John Chyrsostom) where the words "Do this, etc.," have simply
disappeared from the narrative.  This is a case where we can  verify
that there is no need to recite a rubric once it is in operation.

                RESURGENCE  OF  THE  ARCHAIC  TYPE  IN 
THE
                 APOSTOLIC  TRADITION  OF  ST.  HIPPOLYTUS

     The evidence given by the Liturgy of Addai and Mari of a
primitive type of Eucharist, directly and exclusively modeled on the
Jewish meal prayers, is corroborated by a whole group of other
texts.  Not one of them seems as ancient.  But they are all witnesses
to the subsistence, which lasted for a more or less long time
depending on the place, of a Eucharistic Prayer whose schema was
worked out in a period when the Eucharist was celebrated in a
community meal, without any direct connection with the service of
readings and prayers either of the Synagogue or the primitive
Church.

     The most interesting of these texts is the Eucharistic Prayer
which the document generally known as the Apostolic Tradition,
attributed to St. Hippolytus, advises a newly consecrated bishop to
use.

     The problems posed by this document and its author are
extraordinarily involved and particularly thorny.  Here we shall
merely speak about what is necessary for an intelligent reading of
the text that concerns us, and shall reserve for later an account of
its latter influence and especially its connection with the properly
Roman Liturgical tradition.

     In regard tot his text and its interpretation if one does not wish
to fall into vicious reasoning, arising from unconscious question
begging, then one has to start by making a distinction between
questions that are brought up in its regard.  However
interconnected they may be, and all the more because they are, it is
important not to confuse them. The first is the establishment of the
text, either of the whole document, or - and this is our principal
concern here - simply of the Eucharistic Prayer found in it.  We
have only translations of this text which must have been composed
in Greek and they are all incorporated in other documents in which
it is not always easily to distinguish what is a quote and what an
adaption.  

     The second question is that of the title.  A curious thing is that
most, not to say all, modern commentators seem to forget that the
title itself is a conjecture that depends upon the answer given to the
third question.

     This concerns the author of the text. Here again, every one
agrees that it concerns a certain Hippolytus and tradition on this
point is sufficiently unanimous to obviate any doubt.  But we have
hardly progressed beyond this point, since neither the ancient
scholars nor those of our own day agrees as to who this Hippolytus
was and, more especially, what body of works should be attributed
to him.

     Finally, should this question itself be resolved indisputably, there
would remain a last question which is perhaps the most important
of all: to what extent are we dealing with a personal work, to what
extent does it reflect a particular local tradition, and which tradition
was it?

     Let us attempt, if not to answer each of these questions, at least
to disentangle the chief elements of a solution which we have at
hand.

     Let us first see how our text can be re-established.  Its first
appearance is in H. Tattam's London edition of 1848 of a collection
in Boharic-Coptic, which unluckily he called The Apostolical
Constitutions.  In reality, it was simply a particularly interesting
example from the canonical collection of the Patriarchate of
Alexandria, called Sinodos.  Only the third part had any relation to
the collection called the Apostolic Constitutions, and it reproduced
in an abridged venison the prayers of the 8th Book. The second part
contained an analogous but different document that was still
unknown.  It was called the Constitution of the Egyptian Church. 
D.B. von Haneberg published in 1870 an Arabic text of the latter at
Munich, under the title Canones S. Hippolyti arabice e codicbus
romanis.  This was to be found again in a new text, this time in
Sahidic-Coptic of the Alexandrian Sinodos, published by P. de
Lagarde in 1878, then in Arabic and Ethiopic texts, published by G.
Hormer in 1904.  In the meanwhile, Msgr. I. Rahmani in 1899 had
published at Mainz a Syriac text, a translation of a Greek original
that had been lost, the Testamentum Domini nostri Jesu Christi, in
which fragments of the same document (and particularly of its
Eucharistic Prayer) were to be found. they were sometimes
reproduced literally and sometimes were the object of prolific
personal developments.

     Finally in 1900, E. Hauler published a Latin palimpsest text,
deciphered from a manuscript from Verona of the Setentiae of
Isodore of Seville.  Among other ancient canonical collections, this
palimpsest reproduction a Latin version of this same text of which
Boharic, Sahidic, Arabic nd Ethiopic versions were already known
in the different editions of the Alexandrian Sinodos.  But we must
point out that this new example of the text, which is more valuable
than all the other since the manuscript itself goes back to the fifth
century, has a title that is completely obliterated and illegible today.

     This brings us to our second question: the original title of the
collection, which up to this point has been generally called the
Collection of the Egyptian Church simply because it was first
discovered in various versions of the Alexandrian Sinodos.  There
are two studies, one by E. Schwartz, published in 1910 and the
other by Dom  R. H. Connolly in 1916 which have convinced
modern scholars that it was in fact the Apostolic Traditions, this
title figured in a list of works reproduced on the pedestal of an
anonymous statue found in Rome in the sixteenth century. After
having remained in the Lateran Museum or a longtime, it has been
installed today at the foot of the stairway leading to the Vatican
Library.

     This identification is made probable by the fact that prologue of
the composition in question (a prologue which is to be found both
in Latin and Ethiopian versions, and which has a parallel in the 8th
Book of the Apostolic Constitutions) makes the statement that the
author, after having spoken of charisms, is now about to explain the
tradition (although he himself does not specify the Apostolic
tradition).  Now since this title on the pedestal of the statue follows
immediately with the mention of a work the coincidence is
obviously striking.  It can be demonstrated completely once we
admit that the anonymous person represented by the statue is the
Hippolytus to whom our text is attributed in the Arabic version of
the Sinodos.

     On the other hand, this last point was generally admitted until
quite recently, both because the statue had been discovered on the
via Tiburtina at a place where a martyr by this name had been
buried and honored, and because it was thought that this would
enable the establishment of a connection between various other
works that have come down to us under this same name Hippolytus
and one or other of the titles figuring on the pedestal.

     But even when we have reached this point, we must admit that
there are still some difficulties.  Eusebius, who attributes seven
works to Hippolytus and in particular an Easter computation which
could correspond to the one mentioned on the pedestal of the
statue, merely knows that he was a bishop does not know of what
place. Though St. Jerome enlarges Eusebius' list in his De Viris
Illustribus, and makes particular mention of a commentary on the
Psalms and a treatise on the resurrection, both of which could
correspond to two other titles on the state, he knows nothing more,
except that, according to the content of another work he attributes
to him, Hippolytus would have spoken once in the presence of
Origen. Elsewhere, in a letter to Pope Damasus, he calls him a
martyr. Theodoretus, who quotes Hippolytus several times, calls
him also bishop and martyr, but without an further qualification.
But none of these authors seems to think he was a Roman.

     From the end of the fifth century, some of those who still
mention Hippolytus to attribute a definite locality to him. 
Unfortunately they do not agree.  There is very little to be gotten
from what Gelasius says (that he would have been bishop of
Arabia) since this probably resulted from too hasty a reading of
Eusebius, hence a misconception).  Form this time on, others speak
of him as bishop of Rome, while still others attribute the See of
Porto to him (which, however, seems not to have existed before a
much later date).  On the other hand, Photius who makes him a
disciple of Irenaeus always refrains from attributing any localization
to him.

     In the nineteenth century, the discovery of the Philosophoumena
(or Elenchos), attributed to Hippolytus first by Jacobi, and others,
and finally by the fine scholar Harnack, brought with it a recasting
of all the hypotheses on Hippolytus.  In accordance with the
content of this text he would have been a Roman priest in
difficulties with Pope Zephyrinus, and for some time an antipope
against Callixtus, Zephyrinus' successor.   He is supposed to have
been reconciled with Pontianus, the second successor of Callixtus,
before their common martyrdom, since despite everything he was to
come to be listed among the martyrs venerated at Rome.

     Hippolytus holds as the sole lawful customs, some which are
different from those he sees in Rome (and elsewhere), customs
which he knew from another less evolved area, from which he must
have originated. He was attempting to make these customs
obligatory in his present home under the guise of a restoration. 
How many Romans at this period in particular, how many Roman
Christians and even ecclesiastics were "Roman" only by adoption?
There is reason to believe that Hippolytus belonged to this latter
category.  If we are able to pinpoint his origin  we must opt for a
localization of Hippolytus' as well being in Syria.  His class
prejudices, his penitential rigorism, his theology everywhere reeking
of Sabellianism, to which must be added his systematic suspicion of
the philosophers, are traits that set him apart from Alexandria and
connect him with Syria, especially with its most Semitic elements. 
Now it is precisely in Syria that the most archaic Christian forms
were to survive the longest, as the Liturgy of Addai and Mari has
already shown.

     Even if we adopt what is still merely an hypothesis, we need to
conclude that Hippolytus in Rome would have attempted to
acclimatize a completely foreign Liturgy.  Wherever Christianity
was introduced in the first generation of Christians, and more
particularly through the local Jewish communities, a Liturgy of this
type must have existed, and even after a century or more it could
not have been completely lost from memory. We shall see that in
fact both in Italy and elsewhere more than one other trace is to be
found.  But it is permissible to believe that Hippolytus, on this point
as on the others, must have collided with the Roman authorities in
following a policy of deliberate archaism which was above all the
product of backward provincialism.  His Liturgy is no mere
survival, like that of Addai and Mari.  We shall see that it betrays
the artificiality of its pretensions to being original. But it is still
likely that these pretensions themselves were nurtured by a
provincialism which focused on a part that it still retained without
any longer being able to keep it intact.  Hippolytus seems to from
such a background, as were many provincials and the Syrians above
all.

     This long introduction was hard to avoid.  Perhaps it may help
us to read Hippolytus' Eucharist without imposing upon it an aspect
it does not possess.  It probably tells us very little about what had
become of the Eucharistic Liturgy at Rome and even elsewhere in
the middle of the third century.  It shows us what this Liturgy may
have remained in a few remote areas and that it was still possible to
attempt restoring and maintaining elsewhere forms that were in the
process of disappearing.  Once more, we shall make use of Dom
Botte's translation (and in this case his preliminary reconstruction)
of the text:

     Let the deacon present the oblation (to the bishop) and let him
while laying his hands         upon it with the whole presbyterium,
say in giving thanks:
     The Lord be with you.
     And lt all say:
     And with Thy Spirit.
     - Lift up your hearts.
     We lift them up to the Lord.
     - let us give thanks to the Lord.
     It is right and just.
     And then let him continue in this way:

     We  give Thee thanks, O God, through Th y beloved Ch ild (pu
erm) Jesus Christ, whom     Thou  hast sent us in the last times (as) 
Savior , rede emer and the messenger (Angelum)    of Thy plan;
who is Thy inseparable Word, throu gh whom T hou hast created
all things and whom, in Thy good pleasure, Thou hast sent down
from Heaven into the womb of a Virgin and who, having been
conceived, became flesh and was shown to be Thy Son, born of the
Holy Spirit and the Virgin.  It is He who, fulfilling Thy will and
acquiring for Thee a holy people, stretched out His hands while He
was suffering that He might free from suffering those who have
trusted in Thee.  While He was being betrayed to His voluntary
suffering, in order to destroy death and break the chains of the
devil, tread Hell underfoot, bring forth the righteous into light, set
the guiding principle (terminum) and manifest the resurrection,
taking bread, He gave thanks to Thee and said: Take, eat; this is
My Body which is broken for you.

     Likewise the cup, saying: This is My Blood, which is shed for
you.  When you do this,     do it in memory of Me.

     Wherefore we, being mindful of His death and His resurrection,
offer Thee this bread and  this cup, giving thanks to Thee that Thou
deemed us worthy to stand before Thee and to    serve Thee as
priests.

     And we beseech Thee to send Thy Holy Spirit upon the oblation
of Holy Chur  ch. And    in bringing (them) together, grant to all
those who partake o f Thy Holy (Mysteries) (to   partake of them)
in order that they might be filled with the Holy Spirit, and for the
strengthening of (their faith) in truth; that we may praise Thee and
glorify Thee through Thy Child Jesus Christ, through whom be to
Thee glory and honor with the Holy Spirit in the Holy Church, now
and for ever.  Amen.

     This text has practically no correspondence in wording with the
Eucharist of Addai and Mari, but the analogy of their structure and
the commonness of their themes are considerably more striking in
their common adhesion to the Jewish schema of the table prayers. 
There is the same transition from the act of thanksgiving for
creation to thanksgiving for the redemption, and the same notion of
the Anamnesis as a recalling of the memorial given by God, to
beseech Him for the final gathering together of His chosen in the
Church for the purpose of His glorification.  In the paragraph
preceding the Anamnesis and the Institution Narrative introducing
it, we note the insistent presence of the themes of the formation of
the People of God and the Covenant (terminum), keynotes of the
development of the Jewish prayer.

     On the other hand, if the Institution Narrative is undoubtedly
part of the text here, the Sanctus and its appendages together with
the intercession and commemorations that developed are still
absent.

     Again we must point out the theological archaisms, particularly
in christology, which bring us back not only to Judeo-Christian
theology, with Christ considered as the "Angel", but to the
discourses in Acts with the expression puer that is twice attributed
to Him.

     In the text we have given there is an Epiclesis: "we beseech
Thee to send Thy Holy Spirit upon the oblation of Holy Church." 
It is striking that it agrees almost exactly with the one inserted into
the Eucharist of Addai and Mari.  Like the latter, it is most
rudimentary, in the sense that it does not request the acceptance of
the sacrifice, nor even its consecration through the transformation
of the oblations.  Here again, it is directly the gathering together of
the people into the Church that is envisioned.

     But here again we may wonder if this Epiclesis formula
belonged to the original text.  Dom Gregory Dix, in his edition of
the Apostolic Tradition put in doubt. He first al all pointed out the
incoherence of the Latin text at this place, which appears to betray
an awkward remodeling.  In addition, he suggests that the original
text might well have been the one reproduced by the Testamentum
Domini. It does indeed mention the Holy Spirit but it could not be
called an Epiclesis even in taking the word in its broadest sense, for
his coming into the Sacrament (or upon it) is not sought.  Let us
quote this formula in Rahmani's Latin translation: Da dinde, Deus,
ut tibi uniantur omnes, qui participando accpiunt ex sacris
(mysteriis) tuis, ut spirtu Sancto repleantur ad confirmationem fidei
in veritate ...

     In English, this can read:

     Therefore grant, O God, that all may be united to Thee who
receive of Thy Holy 
     (Mysteries) by partaking of them, that they may be filled with
the Holy Spirit, for
     the strengthening of their faith in truth ....

     Richardson brought up a few minor difficulties in regard to the
idea that his text could have lent itself to the final transformation,
attested to by both the Latin and Ethiopian versions. But above all
Dom Botte, who had at first maintained that even if the form given
by the Testamentum Domini was original, it would be no less the
equivalent of an epiclesis  (which, again, seems to be a misuse of
the term), revised his opinion and thought that he had found a trace
of the Apostolic Tradition's Epiclesis not in this final sentence of the
prayer of the Testamentum, but in a previous formula.  At first
sight, we must admit that it offers nothing resembling an Epiclesis. 
But we must follow Dom Botte step by step in a demonstrative
proof that is perhaps the master-work of this most discerning
scholar's genius.
     
     Dom Botte, who is an orientalist of stature, gives this translation
from the Syriac:

        We offer Thee this thanksgiving, eternal Trinity: Lord Jesus
Christ, Lord Father before     whom every creature trembles and
draws back, Lord Holy Spirit, obtain for us this food    of  Thy 
holiness,  so that it may not turn to our jud gement,  nor  to our
shame or our condemnation, but to the healing and the consolation
of our own spirit.

     Let us point out that the feminine of the verb is explained by the
invoking of the Trinity.  Dom Botte corrects to "food of Thy
holiness" to Thy Holy Food."  But probably, it would be best to
understand it as "the food of Thy sanctification."  This is the
translation specialist in Syriac, who are accustomed to the daily use
of this language in their own Liturgy translate it.  That aside, the
principle that a text should be corrected only when it appears
necessary to do so should keep us from modifying a sufficiently
coherent formula.  This is a typical example of those apologists
which were introduced at a very early date into the Syrian liturgies
before making their entrance into the medieval liturgies in the West. 
Unless we submit the text to a reworking that it does not seem to
require, it does not seem possible to us that any sort of Epiclesis
can be produced from this text.  We must conclude that the author
of the Testamentum, who would certainly not have suppressed it
had he found in it St. Hippolytus, actually did not find it there.  And
this comes down to say that the Epiclesis in the Apostolic
Tradition, just as in the Eucharist of Addai and Mari, is probably
not original.  The striking similarity between the formula found in
most of the texts of Hippolytus's Liturgy that have come down to
us and what figures in all of the Addai and Mari texts would incline
us to believe that this was an Epiclesis formula popular for some
time in the East.  It is certainly a very archaic formula, since once
again it does not ask for the consecration of the oblations, nor even
the mere accepting of the sacrifice, but only a descent of the Spirit,
in and through the Sacrament,which must have for its purpose the
sanctification of those partaking, and more particularly, their
fulfillment in the unity of the Body of Christ that is the Church.

     The text of the Testamentum which, as we think Dom Gregory
Dix was right in preserving as a vestige of Hippolytus' original text,
enables us to understand how the Epiclesis of the Spirit was
introduced at this place in the Eucharistic Liturgies of the East.  Let
us recall the formula that it gives at the conclusion of the lengthy
development, in the form of an apology that it adds to the
Anamnesis:

        Da deinde, Deus, ut tibi uniature omnes, qui participandro
accipiunt ex sacris    (mysteriis) tuis, ut Spiitu sncto repleantur ad
confirmationem fidei in veitate, ut tribuant   tibi semper doxologiam
et Filio tuo dilecto Jesu Christo,  per quem tibi gloria et imperium
cum Spiritu scanto in aseculum saeculorum.

     We may admit here that the composer of the Testamentum,
separating from its beginning, added the invocation (Deus),
modified the word order, substituted a passive (unitur), for the
active which is presupposed by the Verona Latin translation in
unum congregans, confirmed by the Ethiopian.  On all these points,
Richardson is probably right.

     The text that this translator had before him must then have been
something very close to the following:

        ... gathering them together, grant to all those who partake of
Thy Holy Mysteries for  the fullness of the Holy Spirit, for the
strengthening of the faith in truth, that they may    praise and glorify
Thee through thy Child Jesus Chri st, through whom to Thee be
glory and honor with the Holy Spirit, in the Holy Church, now and
for ever.  Amen.

     Dom Botte points out that in the text as given to us by the
Verona palimpsest and confirmed by the Ethiopian version, this
mention of the Spirit whom the communicants are to receive in
fullness is explained, and can only be explained as a  consequence
of the previous invocation of the same Spirit.  Agreeing with Dom
Adian Kavanagh, we should rather think the contrary.   How did it
happen that there was an insertion, after the Anamnesis, or more
exactly within its conclusion and before the return to praise in the
final doxology, of an invocation of the Spirit which had no
precedent either in the Jewish prayers or in the most ancient
Christian Eucharistic Prayers, as is proved in any case by the
original text of Addai and Mari?  This seems to have developed in
two stages. the mention of the Holy Spirit here was brought about
by the idea of the gathering of all together in the Body of Christ in
its fullness, and by their unanimity in the glorification of the Church
brought about in unity, and the consecration of mankind to the
glory of the Father through the Son are actually two inseparable
parts of the work of the Spirit in primitive Christian pneumatology:
He is the seal of unity in the Body of Christ,  and He is the "Spirit
of glory," the one who glorifies the Son and thereby perfects His
own glorification of the Father.  Sooner or later, at the conclusion
of the Christian Anamnesis, at the precise point where it was
leading to the doxology, the mention of the Spirit had to be made. 
It is this mention that we see  appear for the first time, it seem to
us, beneath the original text of Hippolytus,  as the author of the
Testamentum Domini  must have read it.  Somewhat later, at the
time when theology became concerned with specifying the role of
the Spirit, it would be natural that His coming would be sought
more expressly at the point where mention of Him had already been
introduced.  But, at this first stage of an Epiclesis properly
so-called, it is also natural that the aim of the petition be only to
produce the fruit of their communion in the communicants.  This is
exactly what we find in the Epiclesis that was certainly at an early
date, introduced into the Liturgy of Addai and Mari and Hippolytus
as well.

     Let us not that He is still not asked to consecrate the Eucharist
by having its sacrifice accepted; it is even less a question of the
transformation of the oblations.  He is asked to come "in the
oblation."  This formula is most valuable, for by associating the
Spirit and the "oblation" for the first time, it prepares the way for
these further developments.

     This brings us to a vocabulary trait that betrays a primary
doctrinal development whereby the text of the Apostolic Tradition, 
even in its first and unretouched form, is clearly shown to be latter
than that of Addai and Mari. And this is a first instance, and, with
the exception of the Epiclesis which to us seem to be an addition, of
technically sacrificial terms into a text of the Eucharistic Prayer. 
Let us recall what the text of the Anamnesis of Hippolytus actually
says:

     Wherefore we, being mindful of His death, and His resurrection,
offer Thee this bread and this cup, giving thanks to Thee in that
Thou deemed us worthy to stand before Thee and to serve Thee as
priests.

     In the Anamnesis Addai nd Mari we did not yet find anything
similar.  Nevertheless it was clear there that the Anamnesis
expressed the whole and specifically Semitic content, of the Jewish
"memorial": a pledge given by God of His saying action that we can
re-present to Him with the assurance that our prayer for the
accomplishment in us of this action will be heard since this pledge
also signifies for us its permanent actuality. For Judaism
contemporary with the beginnings of Christianity, in the
communities bound together by the Messianic expectation, this
turned the meal berakah once again, not only as an equivalent of a
sacrifice but also into the sacrifice itself in all its purity.  That is
what a Christian community which was still Semitic, like that of the
Anaphora of Addai and Mari, could continue to express in the same
terminology.  But, when we pass over to Greek  speaking
Christians, an Anaphora of this type had to make clear that the
"remembrance" we make of Christ in the Eucharist is not simply a
subjective, psychological recall but above all a representation to
God of His own gift.  In this case, it was inevitable that sacrificial
expressions make their appearance, and it is at this point the
Eucharist that they were to arise in order to interpret the content of
the Jewish "memorial" in a Hellenize Anamnesis.

     After the term "oblation: in the Anamnesis itself - a kind of
"unveiling" of its deepest meaning - it was not long before other
terms associated with this meaning make their own entrance into
the Liturgy.  In particular, people became aware that to celebrate
the Eucharist was to fulfill the paramount priestly ministry.  But,
just as the Eucharistic sacrifice whose substance is found in the
"Memorial" of God's own blessings which He places in our hands
so that we may re-present that memorial to Him, appears as the
pre-eminent gift of God,  so this priestly character of the action in
which His people re-present it to Him is but the effect consecration
to God which itself is His supreme grace.  Therefore the people
add: we give thanks ultimately and above all, for having been made
this priestly people that can "give thanks" in fullness.  This is what
the Fathers of the period, like Justin in his Contra Typhonem, never
tired explaining: the Jews said that they had realized their vocation
as a priest-people by filling their existence with the traditional
berakah, but in fact it is the Christian alone who can respond fully
to such a vocation through the Eucharist of Christ Jesus.

     But here, it seems we have already taken one further step. 
Without excluding a reference in these words, to the whole People
of God celebrating the Eucharist together, it does seem that we
must see in them more specific allusion to the ministry of the one
pronouncing the Eucharistic Prayer, in the name of all, but by virtue
of a mission, a special consecration coming from the Head of the
Whole Body.  In other words, in this prayer which - we must not
forget  - is suggested to a newly consecrated bishop for the
Eucharist he is celebrating at the conclusion of his consecration, "to
serve Thee as a priest" applies undoubtedly, once again not in an
exclusive but an eminent sense, to the interior of the "Body," and
for the whole "Body" to one presiding over the Eucharist, who is
evidently the representative of the "Head" in the midst of  His
People.

     There is one other characteristic in Hippolytus; Eucharist that
sets it off from Addai and Mari, despite their close parallelism.  At
first sight this difference may appear purely literary.  But, in fact, it
portends a change in the Eucharist which was to turn out to be
more substantial than the appearance of sacrificial terminology. 
This latter merely transposed already present realities in a different
manner of expression, since these realities already continued the
meaning which terminology merely made more explicit.  As Dom
Botte pointed out, the Eucharist of Addai and Mari is basically
semitic, in that it is obvious that its wording is not a translation
from Greek into Semitic idiom.  There is a constant play of
parallelisms of which we find no equivalent in the text proposed by
the Apostolic Tradition.  This is not all.  The Eucharist of Addai
and Mari remains based on the Jewish meal berakoth, to the point
that like them it is still composed not of one but three prayers, each
having its own conclusion (the second is even punctuated by a first
Amen).  On the other hand, Hippolytus' Eucharist as faithful as it is
in following the plan of Addai and Mari, with the development of
the themes which already followed one another in the berakoth of
the Jewish meals, now form only one continuous prayer.  We shall
soon have to return at length to his characteristic, and contrary to
what most Christian liturgists still imagine, it does not attest to its
primitive character.  Far form it, it actually manifests its relatively
late origin.  Addai and Mari is an archaic formula of indisputable
authenticity.  On the other hand, the Apostolic Tradition is the
work of an archizer.  It cannot be doubted that Hippolytus knew
full well everything that was to be included - and that alone - in a
primitive Eucharist, and what order these elements were to follow. 
But this doest not mean that he could go on formulating it as the
Apostles would have done, even though he zealously claims to
follow them quite simply because his customary language, and with
it his way of writing and even of thinking, were no longer those of a
Semitic but rather of a citizen of the Hellenistic empire. The fine
unity in the unfolding of his prayer would undoubtedly not have
been possible it he did not have as a basis an organic progression
that was already represented in the ancient models which he wanted
to retain.  But this does not go so far as to be expressed in the
logical and rhetorical unity of his composition, except as a result of
a formal and conceptual ideal which primitive Christianity, as long
as it remained Semitic, did not know.  His Eucharist is no longer a
series of Jewish berakoth following one upon the other, but rather
one Hellenistic periodic sentence that fuses them into a continuous
whole.  As is illustrated by comparison with the Liturgy of Addai
and Mari, between what he wished to produce and what he in fact
came up with, there is undoubtedly the same difference as between
an authentic piece of Louis XIV furniture and a good imitation by a
master reproduction craftsman.  At first sight, they are the same. 
But examine them more closely and we spot the glue and the nails
that ought not to be there.

     Moreover, we may add that his hand all the more betrays him
since he interlarded his combination with deliberate archaisms. 
With him they are so deliberate precisely because we can recognize
them at first sight.  For, by introducing them at every turn, he
cannot retain from intermingling his own elaborate style.  Like the
first Christians he affects calling Christ the Child or the Servant of
the Father, the Messenger, or more precisely the "Angel" of His
will.  As we shall also see further on, this a survival of very old
Judeo-Christian christology that can be found in other texts.  But at
the same time, in a way that is proper to his own theology, and
much more thought through than that of the first Christians, he
stresses Christ's freedom in handing Himself over to death.  And, if
the usage of the image of Christ extending His arms (on the Cross),
as if to draw us to Him, is a reference also to an old apocalyptic
image that may be anterior to St. Paul, it merely forms a frame for
the elaborate systematization of his thought.

     Before leaving Hippolytus, we must observe the form in which
he gives us the introductory dialogue to the Christian Eucharist. 
This is certainly the oldest evidence we have of it since the Liturgy
of Addai and Mari has come down to us merely with a dialogue that
is common to the Syriac Anaphoras, and it does not seem as
primitive.  The salutation: "The Lord be with you. - and with your
spirit," although we have no evidence of it in the forms of the
Jewish Liturgy that we know, can be scarcely anything but Semitic
in origin.  In Greek it must already have had the rather bizarre and
enigmatic effect it produces on people today.  The invitation:
Sursum Corda - Habenus ad Dominum, which is also Semitic (since
"heart" had only a physiological meaning for the Greeks and Latins)
seem to be a properly Christian creation, stressing, as the symbolic
orientation substituted in the prayer directed toward the Jerusalem
Sanctuary.  Both the transcendent and the eschatological character
of the Christian Eucharistic Prayer.  It is directed toward the
heavenly Jerusalem which is actually the future Jerusalem.  But the
last exchange: Gratias agamus Domino - Dignum et justum est is
textually the Jewish formula that precedes the three berakoth at the
end of the meal.  We must be even more specific and emphasize
that it is the formula that was to be used for a meal of less than ten
people, that ia a group which did not form the minimum required
for Synagogue worship.  Is this not an indication of the fact that
Hippolytus sought to reduce a Christian Eucharist, which
practically everywhere in his time has emerged from its primitive
framework, to the forms it had when it brought together in a meal
proper to them, a handful of Jewish Christians, who had first had
their service of reading and prayers with the other Jews in the
Synagogue?  This goes along with the fact that he systematically
ignores the direct connection between a service of this type, which
for a long time had been customary for the Christians of his time,
and the Eucharist.  The evidence given us by Justin assures us
moreover that this connection was already a current fact one
century earlier.  Nothing imaginable depicts what is factitious and
fantastic in Hippolytus' archaism.  He in no way describes for us the
Liturgy of his time either at Rome or elsewhere.  He attempted
desperately to resurrect the Liturgy of the past insofar as he was
capable of doing so, even though at the time of his writing there
were probably merely rare survivals in more or less remote areas.

             THE  TRANSFORMATION  OF  THE  ANAMNESIS 
AND  THE
                         BIRTH  OF  THE  EPICLESIS

Addai and Mari through its indisputable archaism and Hippolytus
by his intentional archaism give us two convergent examples of
what the Christian Eucharistic Prayer must have been in its very
first stage, - all the more remarkable for their convergence since
they come from such different sources.  Not only is it a prayer still
wholly modeled on the Jewish prayers whose content and order it
respects integrally, but it is a prayer modeled exclusively on the
final meal berakoth.  With Addai and Mari their separation remains.
With Hippolytus, it has disappeared, but the themes remain in their
original position (although the first thanksgiving, for creation,
already shows a tendency to the be reduced to one for redemption
under the pressure of the Christian developments of the second.) 
Of course, neither one has the Sanctus, nor any mention of Angels
and their cult, any more than we can find any development of the
theme of divine light and divine knowledge, or the long
intercessions and commemorations of the "Saints."  All these
themes appeared only when the Eucharist had become joined with
the service of prayers that mention them came to be combined or
blended with the prayers proceeding from the meal berakoth. 

     Still, it would be wrong to conclude the that the ancient
Eucharistic was nothing more than pure praise of the creator and
the redeemer. Through its third paragraph, proceeding from the
third and last berakoth of the Jewish meals, this Eucharist in
primitive form already makes the transition form praise to prayer by
recalling the "memorial" of the mirabilia Dei.  It does so within the
logic itself of this "memorial": that the wonder-works of God,
re-presented before Him, have their whole eschatological fulfillment
in us, that is to day: that we all achieve the perfect unity of the
definitive People of  God in the whole Christ, Head and members
perfectly united.  In this way, just as with the third Jewish berakah,
the prayer, originating in praise, could return to praise in the final
doxology: that God be glorified by Christ in His whole Body, the
Church, animated by His Spirit.

     From this, we see what twofold development was to follow,
which this study has allowed us to grasp in its nascent state.

     On the one hand, the necessity to translate, or to "targumize",
for the "Greeks" the pregnant sense of the Jewish "memorial"
would lead in the Anamnesis itself to explicitly sacrificial formulas:
the "oblation" which the Anamnesis of Hippolytus is the first to
mention.  This oblation is nothing but the re-presentation to God of
the pledge of salvation that He has given to His People in the
"memorial."  It acts as a basis for the prayer that the "Mystery" of
Christ, which is the soul of this memorial, may have its fulfillment in
us.  This comes down to our consecration as a People of  Priests,
dedicated to the sole praise of the Father, through the Son, in the
power of the Spirit.

     Hence in addition, we have the second development, not so
much in the heart of the  Anamnesis as at its conclusion, the one
which was to end up in what we call the Epiclesis.  This being
gathered together in Christ, in His Body, in order to form the
Church, on the part of all His People and their consecration to the
glory of  God, was for Christians the work of the Spirit.  An
extension of the prayer's conclusion, including the mention of the
Spirit, was therefore quite natural at this point.  In what we should
come to consider the original form of the Eucharist of Hippolytus,
still visible beneath the conclusion of the Testamentum in our
opinion, it seems that we witnessed the appearance of this notion in
this context and for this reason.

     It is easy them to understand that at a time when it was thought
necessary to stress the equal divinity and personality of the Spirit, in
the second half of the fourth century, and probably, as we shall see,
in Syria, there developed what at first was merely a subordinate
clause making up the first Epiclesis: an express invocation of the
descent of the Spirit, today, upon the Eucharistic celebration,
parallel to the invocation of the Son in the Incarnation in order that
its effect might be fulfilled in us.  Hence the precise form of this
original Epiclesis, as we find it both in the remodeling of Addai and
Mari and in what seems also to be a remodeling of Hippolytus: the
Spirit's coming is not yet invoked to consecrate the sacrifice (even
though it is in immediate proximity to the first sacrificial formulas
that He is invoked); nor is He invoked to transform the oblations,
but to cause our celebration of the Eucharist to produce its fruit in
us: the completion of the Church in unity in order to glory for ever
the Father, through the Son, in (or with) the Spirit.  At this first
stage, the Epiclesis inevitably betrays its late character, either
because of the simple break in continuity that it causes, as in the
case of Addai and Mari, or by the redundant effect it produces, as
in the case of Hippolytus where it is added to another and probably
earlier mention of the Spirit without yet managing to absorb it.

                   OTHER  EVIDENCES  OF  THE  SAME  TYPE

     We have a few indications, it seems, of a survival of this
primitive type of Eucharist at least up to the fourth and perhaps up
to the fifth century in local liturgies: without the Sanctus and what
accompanies it, and doubtless also without the intercessions and
commemorations that nevertheless are found everywhere at this
period.  The first in a text cited in favor of his own ideas by an
Arian of the West.  He must have found it in a liturgical compilation
of Northern Italy at the end of the fourth or the beginning of the
fifth century, for Cardinal Mai found this example in a Milanese
manuscript.

     Here is the text which unfortunately is incomplete, but which
does seem to lead us to an Anamnesis in which the Institution
Narrative seems on the verge of appearing in the midst of sacrificial
terms which apply directly to the "thanksgiving":

        It is right and just, equitable and just, that we give Thee th an
ks for all things, Lord,    Holy Father, Almighty and everlasting
God, who (by the li  ght) of Thy incomparable    goodness have
deigned to shine in the darkness, in send  ing us Jesus Christ as the
Savior of our souls, who in humbling Himself for our salvation gave
Himself up to death, that by giving us the immortality which Adam
had lost, He might make us His heirs and His sons.  We cannot
worthily give thanks to Thy great mercy nor praise Thee with such
goodness, but we pray Thee, out of Thy great and compassionate
love, to accept this sacrifice that we offer Thee, as we stand before
Thy divine love, through Jesus Christ, our Lord and our God,
though whom we pray and beseech ... 

     This is certainly an interesting formula both for the arachism of
its schema and for the details of its words with are very close to the
style of the Roman Canon.  And it undoubtedly
permits us to form some idea of the really arachic forms of the
Roman Liturgy or related liturgies, better than by having a
questionable recourse to Hipploytus.

     More recently, a fragment of another Anaphora, attributed to St.
Epiphnius, has been rediscovered which shows these same
peculiarities: the absence of the Sanctus and of the mention of the
cult of Angels, the absence of any commemoration of the Saints and
of any intercession.  This is one more evidence of the survival up to
the same era, and now in the Greek world, of Eucharists that
developed after the pattern that we find both in the Liturgy of
Addai and Mari and under the surface of Hippolytus' Liturgy.  As
rare as they are, these valuable relics would be enough to assure us,
if any doubt could remain, that our reconstruction of the primitive
formula of Addai and Mari is not in any way imaginary, just as
Hipolytus' archaism, as false as it might be, was still not illusory.

     Still, the fact, is that once we are faced with set texts of  widely
attested usage, a usage that has been retained more or less in its
entirety up to our own day, they come from models that are quite
different from those we have been treating.  and, whatever the
differences they show among themselves, these different models
which we have schematized at the beginning of this chapter, all
present the same series of additional elements, in addition  to those
that were already present in the type of the Eucharist that we may
look upon as primitive, despite some variations which can be
observed in their arrangement.  It is to these other types, the only
ones which were to survive in Catholic and Orthodox tradition, that
we must now address ourselves.  The first question that will
obviously arise in their regard will be to explain how they so
quickly and universally came to be substituted for the ancient type
that we know now merely through a few traces.







































                               CHAPTER  SIX

                 THE  ALEXANDRIAN  AND  ROMAN 
EUCHARISTS


     The Canon of the roman Mass made its appearance with St.
Gregory the Great in the sixth century practically as it is to be
found in the Latin Tridentine Missal, with the exception of a few
secondary details that are used in the Western Rite of the Holy
Orthodox Church (American Jurisdiction).  This Canon shows a
structure quite different from Hippolytus' Eucharist nd a treatment
of its subject that is no less different. Again, as in the case of the
Liturgy of Addai and Mari, we are confronted not with a
continuous prayer, but with a series of connected prayers.  Not one
of its expressions shows any recognizable kinship with any formula
from Hippolytus.  

             IS  ST. HIPPOLYTUS  A  WITNESS  OF  THE 
ORIGINS
OF  THE  ROMAN  LITURGY


Upon the mere examination of Hippolytus' personality and his work
in general, we have already mentioned the positive reason we have
for doubting that he represented true Roman tradition even if he
was a member of the Roman clergy.  But, if we come to compare
his Eucharist with everything else that we know for sure about the
Roman Eucharist after him, it becomes not simply questionable,
but, it must be said, quite unlikely that the Liturgy of Hippolytus
could have engendered the Roman Liturgy, even after all the
debasements that one might wish to imagine ar removed.  Granting
the total absence of any community in structure, treatment or
details of expression, to speak of a dislocation produced by the
introduction of alien material into the original model would be
plainly insufficient.  The Roman Canon, since St. Gregory the Great
in any case, is certainly the Roman Liturgy prior to Vatican 11.  If
the Roman Liturgy two and a half or three centuries earlier, was
that of Hippolytus, it must then be said that the same is true for the
Roman Liturgy as for Jack's knife; it is always the same knife, even
though handle and blade had both been changed in turn.  It is not
one or multiple modifications that would have intervened between
the two, it is the total substitution of one text for another.

     When, how and why did this substitution take place?  We have
no information about this at all.  Once we accept that Hippolytus
represents the Roman Eucharist in the middle of the third century
we should have to accept the fact, but without being able either able
to situate it or to explain it.  That we should allow for such a
mutation, which neither any thing or any person seems to have
recorded in any way, and this in a Church which of all Churches
was quite singular for its conservatism, is, let us admit it, so difficult
that makes the supposition very doubtful that Hippolytus may be
giving us a description of the third century Roman Liturgy.  On the
other hand, as we have seen the intrinsic reasons that are present
for so thinking - we mean those that can result form a knowledge of
his work and personality - are so flimsy, not to say non-existent,
that it seems that this alone ought to be enough to dispel the
curious illusion to which the majority of modern scholars have
succumbed. To explain the evolution that might have produced the
Canon of the Roman Mass of St. Gregory the Great with
Hippolytus; Liturgy as a starting point, is to set a task for ourselves
that has no chance of success.  Without sufficient reason, even
without any probability of success we should be committing
ourselves to an impossible route.  By continuing to follow this
course, we will be fated to end up with the idea that the Canon of
the Roman Mass is inexplicable, unjustifiable and unacceptable,
merely because we have wished at all costs to impose upon it an
explanation that does not stand up.

     But this is not all.  As unlikely as the total mutation and not
merely a more or less profound alteration may be a priori, which
would have had to take place in the Roman Liturgy for the
transition from St. Hippolytus to St. Gregory the Great, we cannot
take refuge behind the two and half or three centuries that separate
them and imagine a slow decomposition and then a recomposition
which at any event would remain imaginary in the absence of any
precise historical evidence.  Although we have no complete text of
the Canon before St. Gregory the Great, we do have some
references as to what it was some time before. precisely in the
second half of the fourth century.  The De Sacramentis, which is
generally acknowledged today as the work of  St. Ambrose Bishop
of Milan, does contain a series of allusions to the Eucharist which
he used.  For the whole central part, they even give an express and
more or less literal quote. This cross-check that a happy chance
allows to make, assures us that in any case, just before the
Institution Narrative, and just after the Anamnesis, formulas were
to be found that must have been the same as in the times of St.
Gregory the Great, if not word for word, at least very close to it. 
Moreover, even at this time, as series of intercessions followed the
initial praise.  This suffices to state that St. Ambrose was already
familiar with a Canon whose whole development practically
coincides with that of  St. Gregory the Great, while there is nothing
other than this last text in what he tells us that could be connected
with St. Hippolytus.

     We would therefore not be dealing with a slow break up, but
rather with a cataclysm that came about within the space of hardly a
century, substituting on Eucharist for another.

     Just one theory which has at time been maintained would allow
to explain the matter.  The Canon we call the Latin-Roman today
would have to be not Roman at all, but Ambrosian or, in any case,
Milanese, and the prestige of the great bishop would have had to
induce Rome to scrap its own Rite and adopt his in its stead.  The
matter seems to involve such a tremendous step that it becomes
unlikely. We must add that it would go directly counter to what we
know with greatest certainty about the relationships between the
Liturgy of Milan and that of Rome at the time of Ambrose.  For a
long time it seem impossible to attribute the De Sacramentis to him
because the De Mysteriis (which is unquestionably his work)
supposes a Liturgy different from the De Sacramentis for baptism. 
And the Liturgy of the De Sacramentis is opposed to the other Rite
explicitly described as being the Roman Rite,  since then, a careful
examination of the thought and style of the two writings, like the
one made by Dom Botte in particular, has convinced practically
everyone that they can have only one and the same author. We are
thus obliged to accept the conclusion that between the composition
of the De Sacramentis and that of the De Mysteriis, Milan had 
adopted the Liturgy of Rome on some points where it differed from
it.  In other words, what happened must have been exactly the
opposite form the preceding supposition: it is not Rome that in
Ambrose's time tended to take on the Milanese Liturgy (in those
areas where they still differed) but Milan which tended to take on
the Roman Liturgy.

     We should therefore do better to abandon all these hypotheses
and simply give up any idea of dislocation, dismemberment and
metamorphosis of the Roman Eucharist.  We should give up the
groundless idea that is at the basis of all of these notions.  If
Hipploytus can give us some information about certain
characteristics of an archaic Eucharist, which at his time must
already have long disappeared from Rome, and doubtless from
many other places, we must still not look to him for the origin of
the Roman Eucharist, at least as we have it since the time of St.
Gregory the Great and in its very advanced formulation at the time
of  St. Ambrose.

               THE  ALEXANDRIAN  LITURGY AND  THE 
PRESENCE
              OF  THE  INTERCESSIONS IN THE  FIRST  PART 
OF
                                 EUCHARIST

Must we therefore give up any idea of understanding the genesis of
the Roman Canon?  Certainly not.  If Hippolytus cannot be of any
help to us, and risks waylaying us we still have other evidence,
some of which goes back before the time of Ambrose, of a Rite
related to the Roman Rite as we know it, and whose evolution is
somewhat better known to us.  There is every reason for thinking
that it would be more profitable to follow this other track.  The Rite
we are speaking of  at the moment is that of Egypt, and more
particularly of the archbishopric of Alexandria.  Once again, the
analogies of content, structure and even similarities of expression
are manifold between the solidly attested forms of the Roman
Eucharist and those of the Alexandrian Liturgy.  If we consequently
wish to bring together all the element capable of shedding light on
the genesis of the Roman Gregorian-Latin Eucharist, it is in relation
to the Alexandrian Eucharist that is fitting to study it.  Here, we are
on solid ground.  And, instead of the principle of explanation
multiplying insoluble problems and rendering ultimately inexplicable
the evolution which we must try to outline, with its final result
before our eyes, bringing the to together will shed a great deal of
light.  This will contribute, as we shall see, toward making perfectly
comprehensible what too many people are set on claiming to be
absurd.

     It is quite true, however, that on first sight the Alexandrian Rite
even more than the Roman Rite gives us a Eucharist whose
complexity could pass for incoherence.  When compared to its
neighbor, the West Syrian Rite, which at a very early date
influenced it to the point finally of practically substituting itself for
it, the Alexandrian Rite seems like the Roman to present exactly

the same elements, but in a curiously disparate order.  But we need
not pursue the comparison for too a long time before we see that it
would be getting us again off the track if we were to wish to
explain the Alexandrian Eucharist from the starting point of a West
Syrian Eucharist where everything would have been disorderly
scattered around.  As we shall see, the order of the West Syrian
Eucharist, as admirable as it is, is obviously an order that was
intentional, systematic and obtained by a procedure of elaborate
rhetoric.  And furthermore, it was conceived within the framework
of a Trinitarian theology that was itself very evolved.  It is this
order that was evidently introduced later into the elements that we
have the good fortune to find in the Alexandrian Eucharist in an
earlier, if not original state.  We can understand quite well what
processes and principles worked towards the transformation, made
form a state of the Eucharist like the one that subsisted for a long
time in Egypt to the one which was later established in West Syria,
before imposing itself on Egypt herself.  We absolutely do not
understand how one could have conceived the idea of
dismembering the Syrian order, if it were actually original (and once
again, it seems impossible for it to have been) in order to arrive at
the Egyptian order.  And precisely, in Egypt herself, we can
observe the transition taking place in the opposite order.

     Ultimately, we have to start with the Alexandrian Liturgy, in
order to connect it up with the Roman Liturgy, if we wish to have
some success in discovering these new types of Eucharistic Liturgy
in the nascent state, and definitively established in tradition, even
though their beginning are most probably quite prior to that date.

     In the Greek Liturgy, called the Liturgy of St. Mark, which had
long been classical in Alexandria (the Coptic Liturgy of  St. Cyril is
hardly more than a translation of it,) the Eucharist follows a plan
which we have already outlined and which we shall now recall:

     1) initial thanksgiving
     2) a first prayer evoking the sacrifice (we shall call it the
pre-Epiclesis);
     3) copious intercessions and commemorations, concluding with
a prayer for the   acceptance of the sacrifice (the starting point of
the first Epiclesis);
     4) resumption of the thanksgiving leading to the Sanctus;
     5) a new prayer beseeching with great insistence the acceptance
of the sacrifice, along   with a formal invocation for the
consecration of the elements (the first Epiclesis in this     Rite):
     6) the Institution Narrative;
     7) the Anamnesis:
     8) the last invocation for the offered, sacrifice to be accepted
and more precisely for it     to have in us its effects of grace (second
Epiclesis), and
     9) the final doxology.

     The section from 6 through 9 obviously corresponds to the
whole conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer as it was from the
beginning, and hardly poses any new problems for us.  It is the
origin of the structure of section 1-5 which must now occupy our
attention.

     Let us first point out that the introductory dialogue is the same
as in the Eucharist of Hippolytus, with the one exception that
instead of "the Lord be with you," we have "The Lord be with all"
at the beginning.

     After that, 1) develops an act of thanksgiving which is
interrupted by the following prayers and commemorations, but it is
taken up again in 4) and ends in the Sanctus.  This thanksgiving
makes a transition form the creation theme to that of the
redemption, with which we are now familiar.  Man is made in God's
image, then falls.  He is raised up by the redemptive Incarnation of
Christ, given Wisdom and light, and is at the center of these
perspectives, which is very Alexandrian, an extension into
Christianity of the Wisdom train-of-thought which we have
observed in the Jewish payers of the 7th Book of the Apostolic
Constitutions. When the thanksgiving is resumed, it concentrates on
the Divine Name, in accordance with another theme with which we
are already familiar.  It is glorified above all "powers" in the present
world and in the world to come.  This leads to the evocation of the
Angelic cult and the Sanctus.

     Here is St. Mark's text as given in Brightman:

          It is truly right and just, holy and proper, and helpful for t he 
salvation of our souls,  that praise Thee, Thou who art Master,
Lord, God, Almighty  Fat her, and hymn Thee, give    Thee thanks
and tell of Thy great deeds, night and day ,  with untiring mouths,
lips that do no keep silent, hearts that are not mute, Thou who hast
made Heaven and what is found in Heaven, the earth and what is
upon the earth, the seas, the springs, the rivers, the pools and all
that is found therein, Thou who hast made man after Thy own
image and likeness and who gave to him the enjoyment of Paradise. 
But when he committed the transgression, Thou did not despise
him but in Thy goodness Thou called him back through the Law,
Thou instructed him through the Prophets, Thou refor       med him
and renewed him through  this awesome, life-giving and heavenly
Mystery, and all (this) Thou hast done through Thy Wisdom, the
true Light, Thy only-begotten Son, our Lord, God and Savior Jesus
Christ, through whom, with Him and the Holy Spirit, giving thanks
to Thee, we offer to Thee this reasonable and unbloodly worship, (a
worship) offered to  Thee, Lord, by all the nations from the rising
of the sun to the going down thereof, from North to South, for
great is Thy Name among all the nations and in every place incense
is offered to Thy Holy Name and a pure sacrifice, as an immolation
and an oblation ...

        . .. For Thou art the one who is above ever principalit y, au
thority, power and      domination, and above every name, not only
in this w orld but als o in the world to come:  a thousand thousands
ad ten thousand myriads of Holy A ngels and armies of Archangels
assist Thee, Thy two very  venerable living creatures attend Thee,
as well as the many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim,
who with two wings cover their faces, with two wings their feet
and with two others fly, and cry out to each other with untiring
mouths and with divine hymns that are never silent, sing, exclaim,
glorify, cry out the victory hymn and the Trisagion, saying to Thy
supereminent glory: Holy, holy, holy, Lord Sabaoth, Heaven and
earth are full of Thy holy glory.

     Once again this text is particularly close to the Jewish prayers of
the 7th Book of the Apostolic Constitutions through its Wisdom
references, although its "logical" humanism is very characteristic of
Alexandrian Christianity, just as the emphasis on the waters, the
springs, the rivers and pools, in the evocation of creation, is
typically Egyptian.  But is primary origin is unquestionable: it is a
Christian remodeling of the Synagogue Berakoth associated with
the Sanctus.  It will be seen that the Qedushah here is given without
the verse from Ezekiel, blessing the Divine Presence in the place of
His dwelling.  Doubtless this omission is a result of the fact that the
Christians who used this prayer still understood that it was a
question of a blessing for the Divine Presence in the Jerusalem
Sanctuary, which now was no longer relevant.  Later they
substituted another benediction in its place, signifying that for them
the Shekinah is now in the manhood of the Savior.

     Also very interesting, and typical of the Christianity of the
Patristic period, is the reference to the "pure sacrifice" offered to
God in all places among the nations.  As we have already pointed
out, this citation to Malachi 1, after St. Justin, was invoked by the
Rabbis as applying to the berakoth of the Jews of the diaspora
rising up to God.  But against this interpretation the same text sets
off the Christians' own: this "pure sacrifice" offered among all the
nations is rather the Christian Eucharist.

     Let us go on to the intercessions and commemorations.  These
texts, in all Eastern liturgies, always had the tendency to develop
progressively, and even to expand considerably. But in the present
case of the Liturgy of St. Mark, as we shall see momentarily, we
have proof that the text of its Eucharist, even if it too underwent
progressive amplifications, remains substantially faithful in this
section to its very ancient schema.

     Between the two invocations of the Divine Name which place
the supplication within the act of thanksgiving, we find successively
prayers for the Church in general, for peace in Heaven and in this
life, for the healing of all ills, death and sin, for Christians away
from home, for rain, good weather, a fruitful earth, and for the
authorities.  There is then a commemoration of the dead, in which
the Saints and all the faithful who have died are an object of one
prayer (an indication of great antiquity), to which, at the end, the
living are associated, so that all together might have their "part and
inheritance with the Saints."

     At this point the diptychs are introduced, i.e., the list of names
of those whom the people wished especially to commemorate.

     Then comes a recommendation of the offerings and an
invocation for the acceptance of the sacrifice, which leads to a
series of particularized invocations of those offering, or those in
whose intention the offering is made: first the bishops and priests
and the whole clergy, the Christian city, finally a petition against the
enemies of the Church.  Ultimately, after a sort of general
recapitulation of all the objects of intercession that were
enumerated, there is a return to the act of thanksgiving through the
repeated invocation of the Divine Name.

     Let us note here that the prayer that follows the Sanctus merely
resumes the theme of the recommendation of the sacrifice, to ask
again, and more formally, that God Himself consecrate it.  Thus, we
may say, just as the totality of the intercessions is enclosed within
the thanksgiving, so the conclusion of the thanksgiving, together
with the Sanctus, is in turn enclosed within the final petition for the
acceptance of the Eucharistic sacrifice.  A first evocation of this in
the initial act of thanksgiving introduced the intercessions.

     If we now recall the content and the order of the blessing in the
Tefillah, we shall be astonished to see that the themes of the prayer
correspond exactly, taking into account some inevitable
transpositions.  Only their order is somewhat though not completely
changed.

     In the Tefillah, the first blessing evoked the holy deeds of the
"fathers" of the People of God and their expectations of a
redeemer.  Then the second gave thanks for life, its preservation
and the resurrection.  The third blessed the Divine Name.  With the
evocation of the definitive worship offered today, because of the
Redeemer, returning to us the gifts lost through sin, and then the
blessing of the Divine Name, something of this seems indeed to
have passed over into the end of the first part of our thanksgiving.

     Then came the beseeching blessings of the Tefillah prayed
successively for penance,  forgiveness, redemption, healing, rain
and good weather bringing peace and prosperity, the liberation of
captives and people who have been dispersed, the authorities,
against the minim, for the faithful, and finally for the eschatological
construction of the holy city and the coming of the Messiah.

     After this came the Tefillah and Abodah blessings, beseeching
the hearing of prayers and the acceptance of the sacrifices of Israel.

     Finally, the Hodah blessing praised the Divine Name again,
while the Birkat ha-kohanim recapitulated the themes of
intercessions.

     The correspondence between the themes is striking, and there is
a conspicuous analogy, if not in the whole succession of the
development, at least in its framework, between an evocation of the
worship given to God by the faithful people (in the expectation, and
now as a result of the coming of the Redeemer) and a final
supplication for the acceptance of the prayers and the sacrifices of
the people.   There is in both series of prayers also the invocation of
the Divine Name which opens and closes the intercessions and
commemorations. 

     But the similarity becomes even closer if we do not base our
comparison on the formula of the Shemoneh Esreh which ultimately
came to be imposed upon the Synagogue service (although it was in
a more fluid state at the time of the beginning of Christianity), but
rather on the special formula of the Tefillah that we found in the 7th
Book of the Apostolic Constitutions, where it already bears the
marks of its use by Christians, and which we have every reason to
believe is also Alexandrian.
     
     Here, as in the Liturgy of St. Mark, not only the Qedushah but
also the blessings preceding its first recitation before the Shema,
came to be inserted in the middle of the Tefillah. Similarly, this
formula initiates a process of attraction, before the whole of the
Qedushah, in the content of the prayers that follow in what has
become the classical Tefillah.  The 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th are
thus incorporated into the third: the blessing of the Name. 
Likewise, this Alexandrian Tefillah brought together the 14th, 15th,
16th and 17th blessings (for the building of Jerusalem, the coming
of the Messiah, the acceptance of the prayers and sacrifices of
Israel) into one great final invocation.  Moreover it introduced into
this final supplication a list of the sacrifices of the past which had
been accepted by God.  We have the same thing in the Eucharist of
St. Mark, and the two righteous men of the Old Testament who are
mentioned are Abel and Abraham who were also at the head of the
list in the prayer given by the Apostolic Constitutions.

     This analysis, it seems, from now on allows us to conclude that
the universal presence of the Sanctus and the thanksgiving
preceding it, and of the detailed intercessions and commemorations
of the Saints in the set texts of the Eucharist that appear from the
fourth century on comes from the now customary conjunction of
the service of readings and prayers with the Eucharistic meal.  In
the first of these services, all these elements of the synagogue
service remained, although, obviously, in an evolved state.  When
this service was joined with the Eucharistic meal, these prayers
which concluded it, as in the Jewish usage, were combined with the
Eucharistic Prayer of the sacred meal into one whole.  Their
character, which in the etymological sense of the word was already
"Eucharistic," made this fusion completely natural.  It is likewise
natural that it was to give rise to certain unavoidable compressions,
form the fact that both included the same elements of thanksgiving
for the creation and redemption, and of prayer for the
accomplishment of the great deeds of God which were the object of
the berakah-eucharistia.

     It remains for this study now to see what became of the
elements of the Eucharistic Prayer proper to the sacred meal in the
Alexandrian Liturgy.

     But, before we do so, it is fitting to give a few archaic examples
of the Egyptian Eucharist. They will assure us of the substantial
antiquity of the schema of the intercessions and commemorations
preserved in the latest forms of the Liturgy of St. Mark.  And will
allow us also to distinguish in its final part the ancient forms from
the evolved forms that the textus receptus gives us.

          THE  DER  BALIZEH  ANAPHORA  AND  THE 
ANDRIEU-COLLOMP
                   PAPYRUS:  THE  ANAPHORA  OF  SERAPION

The Der Balizeh Anaphora which has come down to us through a
sixth century papyrus is unfortunately incomplete.  The text begins
with the end of the intercessions, and it has a gap at least 16 lines at
the end of the Anamnesis and at the beginning of the Epiclesis that
follows it. But another papyrus, from the fourth century, published
by Andrieu and Collomp, does give us the beginning a Anaphora of
the same type, which, when brought together with the preceding
text, allows us to verify the continuity of the Alexandrian tradition
for this first part.

     Here first is this latter text, in which it is clear that the very first
words are missing:

         (It is meet and right ...) to bless Thee night and day ...
(Thanks ) to T hee Who hast  made Heaven and earth and all
therein, the earth and all that i s on the ea rth, the seas and    rivers
and all that in them; to The Who didst make m an to T hy image
and likeness; and hat created all things in Thy wisdom, Thy true
Light, Thy Son our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, through whom
unto Thee and with Whom together with the Holy Spirit we give
thanks and offer this reasonable sacrifice, this bloodless worship,
which all peoples offer to Thee form the rising of the sun even to its
going down, form the North even to the South, because great is
Thy Name among all nations and in every place incense is offered to
Thy Holy Name and a pure sacrifice and oblation.

         We beg and beseech Thee, remember Thy Holy, One,
Catholic Church, all Thy people      and all Thy flocks.  Give peace
which is from Heaven to all our hearts, but give to us as      well
peace even of this life.  (Watch over) the king of  the earth; and
(see to it that he entertains thoughts) which are peaceful toward us
and toward Thy Holy Name ...

     With the exception of a few abbreviations all of this agrees
practically word for word with the text of St. Mark that has become
classic.  Again we must not conclude from these differences that
they suppose later amplifications, for several of the more developed
formulas of St. Mark follow the text of the Jewish berakah before
the Qedushah more closely.

     And here now is the fragment of the Der Balizeh Anaphora.  It
is obvious that it reproduces a formula of the same type, starting
form the last petition against unbelievers and for the faithful.

         ... Those who hate Thee.  May Thy  blessing be upon Thy
people who do Thy will.  Raise up those who fall, bring back the
wayward to the right path, strengthen those who   lack courage.

         For Thou art above every principality, authority, power and d
omination, and above     every     name, not only in this world but in
the world to come.  T he thousands of the holy    Angels and the
innumerable hosts of Archangels atte nd The e, as well as the
many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim, who with two
wings cover their face, with two wings their feet, and with two
others fly: all proclaim in every place that Thou art Holy.  With all
those who acclaim Thee, receive our offering of today while we
repeat: Holy, holy, holy, Lord Sabaoth; Heaven and earth are full of
Thy glory.

         Fil l us as well with Thy glory, and deign to send Thy Holy S
pirit  upon these offerings     which Thou hast created, and make
this bread the Body of  our Lord and Savior Jesus   Christ and the
cup the Blood of the New Covenant of our  same Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ.  And as this bread which was once dispersed upon the
heights, the hills and in the valleys, was brought together as to
make but One Body, as also this wine, which gushed forth from the
holy vine of David, and this water, which came from the spotless
Lamb mixed together, have become but one Mystery, so also bring
together the Catholic Church of Jesus Christ.

          For our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night in which He was
betrayed, took bre ad into His      Holy hands, gave thanks, blessed
it, sanctified it, broke it and gave it  to His disciples and  Apostles,
saying: Take, and all of you eat of it: this  is My Body, given for
you for the remission of sins.  Likewise, after the meal, He took the
cup and gave thanks, drank of it, gave it to them, saying: Take, and
all of you drink of it; This is My Blood, shed for you, for the
remission of sins.  As often as you eat of this bread and drink of this
cup, you announced My death, you proclaim My resurrection, you
make remembrance of Me.

The people:

        We announce Thy death, we proclaim Thy resurrection, and
we pray.  

        ... to us, Thy servants, grant the power of Thy Holy Spirit, the
strengthening and     increasing of our faith, the hope, of the
everlasting life to come, through our Lord Jesus      Christ, with
whom to Thee, Father, be the glory, with the Holy Spirit, for ever. 
Amen.

     The gap here obviously puts historians of the Liturgy in the
position of Tantualus' torture. Did we have here have a second
Epiclesis addressed to the Spirit, following the Anamnesis, and,
supposing that were the case, what did it petition Him to
accomplish?  Or did we on the other hand, as in what seemed to us
to have been the original state of the text of Hippolytus, have here
merely a prayer for the union of Christians in order to build up the
Body of Christ?  Including the mention of the spirit as the seal of
this unity?  Undoubtedly we shall never be able to answer these
questions, unless by a happy chance we uncover a second
manuscript in the sands of Egypt, and this time a complete text of
the same prayer.  While we await this unlikely stroke of good luck,
we still may have some possibility of conjecturing a still older form
of the Egyptian Epiclesis, or rather Epicleses.  The most interesting
indication we have in this regard is furnished for us by a mid-fourth
century document. It is the euchologium of Serapion of Thumis, the
bishop who was a friend and correspondent of St. Athanasius.  The
commentators on the Eucharistic Prayer it contains rightly
emphasize all that is so evidently personal in the composition of this
prayer.  We find in it a curious mixture of Johannine imagery,
tending towards a kind of harmless Gnosticism and a vaguely
mystagogical philosophical jargon which was already present in
Clement of Alexandria in the preceding century, and which
flourished very much in the following century with Synesius of
Cyrene.  The result was that themes essential to the traditional
Eucharist have more or less vanished into thin air.  Yet, the schema
of the Alexandrian Eucharist is found everywhere, even if it is often
no more than a trace.  And, as we shall see, it is not so certain that
all of Serapion's peculiarities are merely a reflection of his own
theological or rhetorical fancy.

         It is meet and needful to praise, Thee, to hymn Thee, to
glorify Thee, uncreated Father    of the only-begotten Son, Jesus
Christ.

          We praise Thee, O God, uncreated, inscrutable, ineffable,
incomprehensible to all    created nature.

         We  praise Thee, Thee who art known by the only -begotten
Son, Thee who through    Him are announced, interpreted and
known by created na ture.  We praise Thee, Thee who     know the
Son and reveal to the Saints the glories that concern Him, Thee
who art known by the Logos whom Thou hast begotten, Thee who
are revealed to the Saints. We praise Thee, invisible Father,
choregos (i.e., possessor and dispenser) of immortality.  Thou art
the source of life, the source of light, the source of all grace and
truth.

         Friend to men, friend to the poor, kind to all,  Thou draw all
to Thee by the coming  of Thy beloved Son.


         We beseech Thee, make living men out of us.  Give us the
Spirit of light that we may  know Thee, Thee the true one, and Him
who Thou hast sent, Jesus Christ.  Give us the      Holy Spirit, that
we can tell and recount Thy unspeakable Mysteries.

         Let the Lord Jesus, together with the Holy Spirit, speak in us:
let Him celebrate Thee     through us.  For Thou art above every
principality, authority, power and domination,      above every
name, not only in this world in the world to come.

         A  thousand thousands and ten thousand myriads of Angels ,
Archangels, Thrones,    Dominations, Principalities, Powers attend
Thee especiall y the two most venerable six-    winged Seraphim
who with two wings veil their faces, with two their feet, and who
fly with the other two; they sing of Thy holiness; receive our
acclamation with theirs when we say: Holy, holy, holy, Lord
Sabaoth, Heaven and earth are full of Thy wonderful glory.

         Lord of the powers, fill this sacrifice with Thy mighty
participation.  For to Thee do     we offer this living sacrifice, this
unbloody oblation.  To Thee do we offer this bread, a     figure of
the Body of Thy only-begotten Son.

         This bread is the figure of the Holy Body, because the lord
Jesus, on the night He was     betrayed, took bread, broke it and
gave it to His disciples saying: Take and eat of it all     of you: This
is My Body broken for you for the forgiveness of sins.

         Wherefore we, celebrating the memorial of His death, offer
this bread and we pray:    through this sacrifice, be propitious to us
all, be propitious to us, O God of truth.

          And like this bread which once was scattered over the hills
and brought together as   one, do Thou also bring together Thy
Holy Church, from every race, from every land,  from every city,
from every town, from every house and make her the one, living
and Catholic Church.

          And we offer this cup, a figure of the Blood, because the
Lord Jesus Christ, having  taken a cup after the meal, said to His
disciples: Take, drink, this is the New Covenant,      this is My
blood, shed for you for the remission of si ns.  Wherefore we offer
this cup, a figure of the Blood.

         God of t ruth, may Thy holy Logos come upon this bread,
that  th e bread may become      the Body of the Logos, and upon
this cup, that the cup may b ecome the Blood of truth.     And cause
all those who partake to receive the remedy of l ife, for the healing
of every infirmity, for the strengthening of all progress and every
virtue, and not for their  condemnation, O God of truth, nor for
their shame or their abashment.  We have called upon Thee, Thou
the Uncreated One, through the only-begotten Son, in the Holy
Spirit.   May this people receive loving-kindness, and be found
worthy of progress.  May the Angels attending the people crush the
Evil One and build up the Church.
        We beseech Thee also for them that rest whom we
commemorate.

     Here the names are recalled.

         Hallow these souls for Thou knowest them all.  Hallow all
them that sleep in the Lord.

         Number them among Thy holy Powers.  Grant them a place
and dwelling in Thy  Kingdom.

        Receive also the thanksgiving of the people.  Bless these who
have brought the    oblations and the eucharists.

        Grant health, wholeness, joy and every progress of soul and
body to all this people,   through Thy only-begotten Son, Jesus
Christ, in the Holy Spirit, as He was, is and shall  be from age to
age, world without end.  Amen.

     The absorption of almost the whole prayer in knowledge and life
can be attributed to the Alexandrian or rather the Clementine
philosophism of Serapion, although these were also biblical themes
that were already central to the Jewish berakoth, and the
development he gives them is quite Johannine.  More characteristic
of this 'gnosis," however orthodox it basically is, is perhaps the
disappearance, f the :logical" worship and the unbloody oblation. 
Their mention at the end of the first part of the thanksgiving seems
to be traditional in Egypt.  Moreover we find them again in
Serapion after the Sanctus, but without the first recommendation of
the oblation, which customarily comes at the end of the enclosed
intercession.  Undoubtedly, in his mind "to tell and recount Thy
unspeakable Mysteries" (obviously, in the Eucharistic Prayer) was a
sufficient equivalent of it.

     Yet should we believe that the reduction of the whole prayer of
intercession to the one paragraph asking or life and knowledge, the
first apparent curious note of this Eucharist, also come from
theology that is peculiar to its author?  This is perhaps true as far as
the formulation that he gives it is concerned.  But we shall see
shortly that we have good reason to suppose that he might have
thought himself authorized, by a tradition with which he was
familiar, to condense in this way the intercessions of the beginning
into one prayer.

     What can we say then of the peculiarities of the two Epicleses,
the one that precedes the Institution Narrative and the one that
follows?  In a moment we shall see, by going back to the Anaphora
of St. Mark that this twofold Epiclesis is a characteristic trait of
Alexandrian tradition.  But, in the Der Balizeh text, the first one
already sought the transformation of the oblations into the Body
and Blood, and sought it through a descent of the Spirit. Once
again the fragmentary character of the text perhaps allows us in this
text also, on account of the length of the lacuna, to suppose a
second Epiclesis, but it does not allow us to guess its content. 
Whatever the case, neither Serapion's first Epiclesis not the second
contains any mention of the Spirit, and it is in second alone that the
transformation is sought (only it is through a descent of the Logos
that it is expected).

     Must we also attribute this last peculiarity to Serapion's fancy? 
This is what a number of commentators tell us, but it is quite
unlikely.  In the first place, just from a reading of his text, it is
obvious that he tends everywhere to introduce the Holy Spirit.  His
prayer, even though it is relatively short, mentions Him four times
in places where no other known Eucharistic Liturgy does.  If in the
middle of the fourth century in Egypt such a tradition has existed, it
would therefore be very strange for him to have removed it in place
where tradition would have placed it.  But if we take into account
what we know on the other hand about Serapion's personality, this
becomes high unlikely.  With the exception of this euchologium,
what we actually know with the greatest certainty about him is that
he was concerned with fighting the Arians, or Arianizers, who
questioned the divinity of the Holy Spirit.  It is precisely to answer
his request on this point that Athanasius composed the doctrinal
letters he addressed to him.  How then could Serapion have made
such a mistake, directly opposed to his own concerns, that is
attributed to him?  If there already existed in the tradition of the
Eucharist a prayer beseeching the Spirit to bring about the
consecration, he would have been the last one to remodel it in order
to attribute to the Logos alone this properly divine intervention!

     All that we can suppose is that the Alexandrian Epicleses of his
time did not mention any Divine Person in particular (we shall soon
see that this is not unlikely), and it is he who had the idea to
attribute at least one of them to the Logos (an idea, as we shall see,
which may have come also to others besides).

     Another peculiarity of Serapion's Eucharist is in what follows
this last Epiclesis: the mention of the Angels, the remembrance of
the departed, and a last development of a prayer for the offerers and
the whole People of God.  This again we shall soon find elsewhere,
and there is every reason to think that Serapion is not its originator.

     But the most important peculiarity of his text is that the
Institution Narrative does not precede the Anamnesis, but overlaps
it.  We find in the Ethiopian Liturgy and elsewhere other examples
of this peculiarity that seems so curious to us.  In any case, it
manifests the closeness of the bond that antiquity felt existed
between the Anamnesis and the introduction of the narrative in the
Eucharistic Prayer itself.  We may wonder if such an arrangement is
not also ancient, indeed perhaps more ancient than what finally
prevailed and which comes down to coordinating the Narrative with
the Anamnesis, while still keeping them distinct.

     A final peculiarity of this Eucharist must be pointed out: like the
Liturgy of Addai and Mari, and like the great Jewish prayers which
are the source of our Christian prayers. It is not truly one prayer,
but a series of short prayers, connected by their sense, but
completely separate in their composition. This will furthermore
remain true, at least, to a certain extent, even with the latest forms
of the Egyptian Eucharist.  But it is of singular interest to observe
this fact from the pen of a writer like Serapion who was obviously
molded from a background of Hellenic culture.  If, despite this, he
held himself to a form of composition that is so obviously Semitic,
we must really believe that the models of the Eucharist which are
considered to be normal at this time, at least where he lived,
remained completely faithful to this pattern.

     Let us add something more which is not only relevant to
Serapion but also the Der Balizeh Anaphora, which it does not
seem to have influenced: the use that both make of the Didache
formulas though in different places.  People have sometimes wished
to conclude from this that the Didache was of Egyptian origin.  This
is completely unlikely: never would an Egyptian have had the idea
to speak of  bread "scattered over the hills," which, on the other
hand, would be very understandable from the lips a Palestinian or a
Syrian.  This is so true that the composer of the Der Balizeh
manuscript thought he had to add valleys to the mention of hills!

     On the other hand, we might ask whether, like Serapion, this
author had first hand familiarity with the text of the prayer of the
Didache.  The use made of it leads one to think that it resulted from
remodeling found in the 7th Book of the Apostolic Constitutions,
causing the prayer for the first cup to be placed after the bread, and
introducing it thereby into a synthetic Eucharist which supposed
that the ritual meal was already separated from the real meal.

     After what we have learned from the most arachic forms of the
Egyptian Eucharist, we can finally arrive at the stage where we
have the last part of the Eucharist in what has become the classical
text of  St. Mark.

           ANAMNESIS  AND  EPICLESIS  IN  THE  EGYPTIAN 
LITURGY


     What we call the first Epiclesis follows the Sanctus.  Its
connection with it is found in all the examples of the Egyptian
tradition: the resumption of the idea of fullness, taken from the last
words of the Sanctus in this tradition: "Heaven and earth are full of
Thy glory."  The presence of this connecting link gives an indication
that there was a cut-off at this point. Actually, as we have already
said, the Epiclesis is already begun before the intention for which
the sacrifice is offered, in the first formula of it recommendation to
God:

         Accept,  O God, the sacrifices of those who offer (their)
offerings, (their) eucharist      upon Thy Altar, which is holy,
heavenly and spiritual in the heights of Heaven, through   the
Archangelical Liturgy, of those who have offered much or little, in 
secret or publicly, of those who would wish      (to offer) but have
nothing to offer, the offerings of today, as thou hast accepted the
gifts of the righteous Abel, the sacrifice of our father Abraham, the
incense of  Zachary, the alms of Cornelius and the two groats of the
widow, accept their eucharists also, and render to them, in
exchange for corruptible (realities) those that are incorruptible, for
earthly (realities) those that are heavenly, for temporal (realities)
those that are everlasting ...

     This is obviously the idea of this exchange which leads to a
prayer for the transformation of the gifts, and this is why the
presence of this idea in the Der Balizeh Anaphora as in another text
which we shall soon be treating, is found in the second part of this
first Epiclesis and must be actually in its original place.  In the text
of  St. Mark, however, this petition was put back after the
Anamnesis, in the second Epiclesis.  We may wonder if this
transfer, and perhaps also the attribution to the Holy Spirit of the
requested transformation, are not the first signs of a West Syrian
influence on the Liturgy of Alexandria.  It is true that Serapion is
already a witness to this transposition, even though he does not
know an Epiclesis calling for the descent of the Spirit.  But the use
he makes of the Didache shows that he is nonetheless influenced by
the Syrian formularies.

     The present first Epiclesis of  St. Mark does not mention the 
Holy Spirit, but this seems to be a result of the ideas of fullness, and
it is not the transformation of the oblations but the accomplishment
of the sacrifice that is expected of Him:

          Heaven and earth, truly, are full of Thy Holy glory through
the epiphany of ou r Lord,       God and Savior Jesus Christ: fill
also, O God this sacrifice with the bles sing that comes       from
Thee through the visitation of Thy all-Holy S pirit .  For our Lord
and God and great king Jesus, the Christ, on the night that He
delivered Himself over on account of our sins, and suffered death
for us all in the flesh, being at table with His holy disciples and
Apostles, having taken bread into His Holy, pure and spotless
hands, and rasing His eyes to Heaven to Thee, His Father, our God,
and the God of all things, giving thanks, blessed (it), sanctifying it
and breaking it, distributed it among His holy and blessed disciples
and Apostles, saying: "Take, eat, this is My Body broken for you
and distributed to you for the remission of sins (the people answer:
Amen).

         Likewise, having taken the cup after having supped, and
having mixed  wine and water   in it, raising His eyes to Thee, His
Father, our God and the God of all  things, giving    thanks, blessed
it, sanctifying it, filling with the Holy  Spirit He gave it to His holy
and blessed disciples and Apostles, saying: Drink of it all of you,
This is My Blood, of the New Covenant, shed for you and for many
and distributed to you for the remission of sins (the people answer:
Amen).

         Do this as a memorial of Me, for as often as you eat of this
bread and drink of this  cup, you announce My death and you
proclaim My resurrection and My ascension until   I come.

         Mas ter, Lord, Almighty One, heave nly King, announcing 
the  death of Thy only-     begotten Son, our God and Savior Jesus
Christ, and proclai min g His blessed resurrection   from the dead
on the third day, as well as His ascensio n into  Heaven and His
sitting at Thy right hand, God the Father, and waiting His second,
awesome and dread parousia, in which He will come to judge the
living and the dead in justice, and render to each according to his
works - spare us, Lord our God! - , we have presented what comes
from Thy own gifts before Thee, and we pray and beseech Thee
(God) friend of men and good, send from Thy Holy height, from
the place where Thy dwelling is established, from Thy indescribable
bosom, the Paraclete Himself, the Spirit of truth, the Lord, the
Life-giver, who has spoken through the Prophets and the Apostles,
who is everywhere present and fills all things, who, of Himself and   
          not as a servant, shows sanctification to whom He will
according to Thy good pleasure, who is simple by nature, manifold
in His activity, the source of divine gifts, who is consubstantial with
Thee, who proceeds from Thee, who shares the throne of Thy Rule
with our God and Savior Jesus Christ; look upon us and send upon
these loaves and these cups Thy Holy Spirit, that He might sanctify
them and perfect them since He is the Almighty God and that He
might make this bread the Body (Amen of the people) and this cup
the Blood of the New Covenant, of our Lord and God and Savior
and great king Jesus Christ Himself, that they might be for us who
are partakers (a source of) faith, watchfulness, healing, prudence,
sanctification, renewal of soul, body and spirit, for the
communication of the blessed eternal and incorruptible life, for the
glorification of Thy all-Holy Name, for the remission of sins, that in
all this and in all Thy Name, which is all-Holy, precious and
glorified, Thou may be glorified, praised with hymns and sanctified,
together with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, as it was, is and will
be from generation to generation, and world without end. Amen.

     This text which is obviously overworked in its last part,
seemingly cannot be earlier than the Council of Constantinople in
380 nor later than that of Chalcedon in 450, since the Monophysite
Copts translated it practically as it stand in their Liturgy of St.
Cyril, while its Litany of the titles of the Holy Spirit is obviously in
great part borrowed from the Constantinopolitan Creed.

     Yet, as developed as it is, the Epiclesis is still closely attached to
the Anamnesis,and even incorporated into its final part.  But we
may speculate that it developed from a  formula that was very close
to this, since the transformation was sought earlier:

          We have presented what come from Thy own gifts be fore
Thee and we pray and   beseech Thee (God) friend of men and
good, look upon us and send upon these loaves   and these cups
Thy Holy Spirit, that they may be for us who are partakers (a
source of) faith and of renewal of soul, body and spirit, for the
communication of eternal life and the glorification Thy Holy Name,
etc.

     Later we shall be wondering whether we cannot go back to an
earlier state of this Epiclesis. For the moment, let be content with
observing that the Anamnesis that leads to this Epiclesis now
includes, after the resurrection, not only the ascension but the
parousia itself, a remarkable explanation of the vividly felt unity of
the Mystery "commemorated," whose accomplishment will be
sought, not as an after thought, but as the simple manifestation of
the virtualities of the death and resurrection of Christ.

     Very remarkable too is this formula for the presentation of the
sacrifice: "we have presented what comes from Thy own gifts
before Thee."  More less word for word, it will be kept by all the
liturgies of the East.  We could not better describe how the
"memorial" is sacrificial: as the gift that God Himself has made to
us of the pledge of His saving Mystery, so that we might re-present
it to Him in the thanksgiving, thus surrender ourselves to the whole
permanent effect of this Mystery, being predisposed to its own
accomplishment, in the glory of God.

     For the first time, we find here the phrase: "Do this as a
memorial of Me," developed in the words of St. Paul, but placed on
Christ's lips, and furnished with a development that we should like
to stress:

        ... As often as you eat this bread and drink of this cup, you
announce My death, 
     and you proclaim My resurrection and My ascension, until I
come.

     This will also be found elsewhere in the East, and we my think,
as we shall soon establish, that it is again from Syria that this
formula, like the preceding one, passed into Egypt.

     The influence of the Pauline Institution Narrative, another
characteristic common to the whole East, is very clear in the
narrative reproduced in the Eucharist of  St. Mark.  But, as in all
the classic Liturgies, three factors in its evolution can be observed:
a tendency to accentuate the parallelism between what is said over
the bread and over the cup, a tendency to harmonize the four New
Testament narratives, and finally a tendency to accompany the
description of the actions of Christ with adjectives and other
formulas expressing devotion ("raising His eyes to Thee His Father
...," "... in His holy, pure and spotless hands", etc.)

     But the great question facing us is how people came to
introduce into the prayer coming from the berakah Abodah for the
acceptance of sacrifices of Israel, a mention of the transformation of
the oblations into the Body and Blood of Christ, absent from all the
most ancient liturgies.

     Let us repeat that this petition seems called for in the formulas
of  St. Mark, or at least prepared for, by the end of the first part of
the prayer for the recommendation of the sacrifice, which
introduces the ideas of an exchange between the material, heavenly,
earthly, eternal gifts which we expect from God.  But this merely
takes the problem one step back, for there was nothing  in the
Jewish prayers that was directed toward that idea.  We should be
tempted to think that in order to understand its appearance at this
point, we must look for a first consolidation of the prayers derived
from the berakoth  before the Shemah, which were already
combined with those derived from the Tefillah, and now with those
coming from the berakoth at the end of the meal.  It might have
seemed admissible to retain a general and detailed intercession at
the beginning of the Eucharist and at the end of a shorter
supplication that was more immediately focused upon the building
up of the Body of Christ, and idea that underlies all the petitions at
the beginning.  But the repetition of a blessing for creation and then
for redemption, a short distance away, the first time centering on
life and "knowledge" and the second on life and the Covenant, must
have very soon seemed to be an unendurable doublet.

     Moreover, The Jewish prayers themselves, and particularly
those of the Didache, already tended to mingle the themes of life
and knowledge, just as the Covenant was concertized in the Torah. 
Quite naturally then, and especially under the influence of a
theology strongly inspired by the Fourth Gospel, as we see in the
case of Serapion, a transposition to the first part of thanksgiving
was made of the theme of life side by side with the theme of the
light of truth.  They fused together into one evocation of the
redemption, combining our deliverance from the ignorance of
idolatry and our liberation form death.  But in this case, what would
be substituted for the double blessing which, in the still autonomous
sacred meal, immediately preceded the Anamnesis?  A connection
was needed between the whole last part of the prayers taken from
the Tefillah on God's acceptance of our prayers and sacrifices and
the evocation of the memorial.  This connection, as a  comparison
of the first Alexandrian Epiclesis with the Abodah prayer shows,
gives us, it seems, an indication of how it come to be established. 
The Abodah prayer concluded with an invocation of the manifest
return to the Shekinah to Zion.  Likewise, the first Egyptian
Epiclesis asks that the glory of God fill us (Der Balizeh), or that His
mighty participation (Serapion) or His blessing and His visitation
(classic St. Mark) fill our sacrifice.  It is therefore this petition for
the return of the Shekinah, which for primitive Christians is always
in the risen Christ, that must have elicited the final request for the
consecration of the oblations into the Body and Blood of Christ.