The Lord's Supper In The Eastern Churches

Although the Eastern churches divided in the fifth century between those that accepted the Christological formula of Chalcedon (Eastern Orthodox churches) and those that rejected it (non-Chalcedonian Eastern churches, particularly the Nestorians and Monophysites), the regional liturgies that had developed before Chalcedon continued to be used by Christians on both sides of this ecclesial divide. The following paragraphs classify and interrelate the Syrian, Byzantine, Armenian, and Alexandrian traditions.

Eastern Liturgies after Constantine In the post-Constantinian period, the eucharistic liturgy in the East underwent a process of standardization, the result of a complex dynamic of cultural, theological, and political factors. With the consolidation of ecclesiastical power under the major urban centers of Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constantinople came the consolidation and further assimilation of local liturgical uses to those of the urban centers. As the various local uses either survived or died out, the major liturgical traditions were formed. These traditions, in their turn, influenced the liturgical practices of other areas. As regards the eucharistic liturgy, the developments of this period consisted of the filling-in of what have been termed the soft points of the eucharistic ordo—the places where in the early liturgies there was only unaccompanied action, e.g., the entrance of the clergy into the church; the kiss of peace and the transfer of the eucharistic gifts; and the fraction, Communion, and Dismissal rites. These points of unaccompanied action in the pre-Constantinian eucharistic rites were in this period covered over with liturgical chant and prayer. These liturgical units of action covered with chant and prayer eventually disintegrated, leaving behind the liturgical flotsam and jetsam found in today's Eastern eucharistic liturgies. In this process of growth of liturgical units, those elements of greatest antiquity often were eliminated in favor of more recent elements: For example, while the act of Communion in the Byzantine rite seems at one time to have been covered by an antiphonal psalm, today only the antiphon of that psalm remains (the koinonikon). Unfortunately, much of the history of the eucharistic liturgies of each Eastern liturgical tradition remains unknown. Paucity of texts and, where texts are available, lack of reliable critical editions make any satisfactory reconstruction of a general history of the Eucharist in the East impossible. This article has more modest aims: (1) to outline the liturgical traditions of the East and some of the circumstances of their evolution; (2) to outline briefly some of the major factors in the development of the Eucharist in the East; and (3) to give a thumbnail sketch of the major sources for and points in the history of the eucharistic liturgies of each Eastern liturgical tradition, as far as these factors are known. The Liturgical Traditions In 395 the Roman Empire was divided into Eastern and Western halves, the consolidation of a process begun in 293 with the partition of the Empire into four prefectures. The Eastern half of the Empire contained four cities which were to become the centers of the Eastern patriarchates: Antioch, center of the civil diocese of the Orient; Alexandria, center of the civil diocese of Egypt; Constantinople and Jerusalem, raised to the level of patriarchal seat in 381 and 451, respectively. During the fourth and fifth centuries, the liturgical usages of the cities, towns and villages surrounding these ecclesiastical centers unified more and more around the usages of the patriarchates. Some liturgical traditions, however, developed partially or entirely outside the jurisdiction of the Roman Empire. The Chaldean, or East Syrian eucharistic rite developed primarily within the Persian Empire, and the Armenian rite grew up against the backdrop of constant power struggles between the two superpowers of late antiquity, the Roman and Persian Empires. The result of this process of liturgical unification is the group of four basic Eastern liturgical traditions known today: (1) Syrian (East Syrian, West Syrian, and Maronite); (2) Byzantine; (3) Armenian; and (4) Alexandrian (Coptic and Ethiopian). The eucharistic liturgies of the East are today celebrated by both Orthodox and Catholic churches (with the sole exception of the Maronite rite, which is celebrated only by Eastern rite Catholics). These liturgies are celebrated in a wide variety of languages, both classical and modern: from Greek, Syriac, Coptic, Slavonic, and Armenian to Arabic, various modern European languages, Chinese, Japanese, Malayalam, various Siberian and North American Indian languages, and English. While originally these rites were restricted to specific geographical locales, they are now found worldwide, the result both of missionary activity and of the Eastern Christian diaspora. Influences Upon Development of the Traditions One could list many influences upon the development of the liturgical traditions of the East and, hence, their eucharistic liturgies. We list six here: (1) the great dogmatic controversies of the early church, particularly the councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451)—the acceptance or rejection of those decisions eventually determined the ecclesiastical divisions and practices of the various Eastern churches; (2) monasticism in its many forms existing in late antiquity—liturgical practices often traveled via monks, who were always on the go, traveling the length and breadth of the inhabited world; (3) pilgrimage to the holy city of Jerusalem—pilgrims often brought back to their native lands hagiopolite practices; (4) geography—either facilitated or hindered the spread of missionary activity and lines of commerce and communication; (5) the Roman and Persian Empires—either against or for which many different churches acted and reacted. (In addition, the influence of the Byzantine Empire eventually caused the abandonment of native eucharistic rites in favor of the Byzantine rite); (6) individuals—whose work often helped along the evolution or establishment of liturgical practices, e.g., Basil the Great, Iso'yabh III, or Gregory the Illuminator, to name three. The Eucharistic Liturgies We shall now turn to the individual rites themselves, in the following order: Syrian (East Syrian, West Syrian, and Maronite); Byzantine; Armenian; and Alexandrian (Coptic and Ethiopian). The treatment of the Syrian and Alexandrian traditions is preceded by a brief introduction. The Syrian Tradition On the basis of investigations into the East Syrian (or Chaldean), West Syrian, and Maronite eucharistic and baptismal liturgies, the Jesuit liturgist William Macomber has posited the existence of three, possibly four, liturgical traditions in Greater Syria and Persia at the beginning of the fifth century, centered upon Antioch, Jerusalem, and Edessa, with a possible fourth tradition existing in the Persian church. Reaction to the councils of Ephesus in 431 and Chalcedon in 451 set in motion the process of liturgical isolation and fusion which led to the eucharistic liturgies of the East Syrian, West Syrian, and Maronite rites, as we shall see below. East Syrian The Chaldean rite of today, used by members of the church of the East (often erroneously called Nestorians) and by Eastern rite Catholics in India, Iraq, and the United States, is one development of the ancient rite of Edessa, a city located on the eastern frontier between the Roman and Persian Empires. Edessa was the center of Syriac-speaking Christian culture and had been evangelized by the end of the second century at the latest. The form of Christianity which developed in Edessa was of a truly Semitic idiom, and the eucharistic liturgy which emerged from Edessa likewise bore the marks of its Judeo-Christian ancestry. The Chaldean eucharistic rite was the first to be standardized, a process which began in the fifth century and ended in the seventh or eighth century. The Council of Ephesus in 431 condemned the teaching of Patriarch Nestorius of Constantinople, and began the process of the Persian church's ecclesiastical separation, formalized at the Synod of Beth Lapat in 484. Thus, the eucharistic liturgy of the church of the East developed without substantial influence from outside liturgical practices. The Chaldean tradition is rich in liturgical commentaries. The model for all Chaldean commentators is the liturgical commentary of Theodor of Mopsuestia. Although he did not comment upon the Chaldean eucharistic service, per se, his method of interpreting each liturgical action in terms of the events of Christ's life was to be paradigmatic for later Chaldean liturgical commentary. Some important figures are Narsai, Gabriel bar Liphah Quatrayer (615–616), and an anonymous commentator of the mid-to-late ninth century. Later commentaries on the eucharistic service do not add anything new to these earlier works. The first reference to the rite occurs in the canons of the first general synod of the church in Persia, held at Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 410. There, the bishops call for a standardization of the eucharistic rite of the Western rite used by bishops Marutha (of Martyropolis in the Roman Empire) and Isaac (of Seleucia). It is a strong possibility that this Western rite is that of Edessa. In the sixth century, Catholicos Mar Aba I (540–552) added the anaphoras of Theodor of Mopsuestia and Nestorius to the eucharistic liturgy, translating them from the Greek. Catholicos Iso'yabh III (650–659) was largely responsible for the final standardization of the Chaldean rite through his editions of the Taksa (the euchology for priests), the Hudra (the antiphonary for Sundays), and his commentary on the ceremonies of the office, eucharistic liturgy, and other liturgical rites. Iso'yabh may have eliminated the institution narrative from the anaphora of Addai and Mari, which he is said to have shortened. He may also have eliminated other eucharistic prayers from the Taksa. Missionaries of the church of the East spread through Central Asia to India and China by the seventh century. When the Portuguese arrived in South India in the sixteenth century, they found Christians there using the Chaldean rite. The remainder of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the unification of these Malabar Christians with the see of Rome and their splintering into a variety of churches, some using the liturgical forms provided by the Portuguese, others placing themselves under the jurisdiction of the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch (and, hence, using the Liturgy of St. James, now known as the Malankara rite), and yet others returning to the Catholicos of the church of the East. Today, the majority of Malabar Christians are Eastern-rite Catholics, and their eucharistic liturgy has been restored following the Second Vatican Council. Chaldean-rite Catholics in Iraq and the United States have also had their rite revised, but more conservatively than the Malabar rite. Finally, the Liturgy of Addai and Mari continues to be used by a very small remnant of the church of the East in Iraq, Iran, and the United States. West Syrian Reaction to the Council of Chalcedon cut across all three liturgical traditions of fifth-century Syria. For at least a century after the council, both Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians continued to celebrate the Eucharist according to the rite of their region. Chalcedonians were found in the cities of southern Syria and maritime Syria as well as Palestine. Eventually, these primarily Greek-speaking groups gave up the Liturgy of St. James for the Byzantine rite. These groups are termed Melkites, from the Syriac malka or Arabic malek meaning "?king,?" for of course the Byzantine emperor adhered to the Christological definition of Chalcedon and attempted to require adherence to Chalcedon in all areas under Byzantine control or influence. The non-Chalcedonians, or Monophysites, were found in the Aramaic-speaking population from northern Syria to Mesopotamia. The liturgy celebrated by these non-Chalcedonian groups became what is today known as the West Syrian or Jacobite liturgy (from the name of the organizer of the Monophysite church, the Syrian monk Jacob Baradai, who died in 578). The West Syrian tradition has a very large number of anaphoras (scholars count anywhere from seventy to one hundred), not all of which are in use today. The eucharistic liturgy is not entirely of West Syrian origin; it is a mixture of Greek elements from the eucharistic rites of Jerusalem (its anaphoral structure) and Antioch (the basic framework of the liturgy), which was soon translated into Syriac, and Edessa (metrical hymns). The Jacobites continued to borrow from Maronite and Byzantine sources in subsequent centuries. The principal commentators upon the Jacobite eucharistic rite are: Jacob of Edessa (640–708), in his letter to Thomas the Presbyter; Moses bar Kepha (813–903); George of the Arabs (724); and Dionysius bar Salibi (d. 1171). Maronite It was once thought that the Maronite eucharistic rite was simply a branch of the West Syrian rite, because it shares much in common with the Liturgy of St. James. However, it is now believed that Aramaic-speaking Chalcedonians in Syria, especially in Lebanon and the Orontes Valley, were able to preserve a form of the ancient eucharistic rite of Edessa, as the features of the Maronite eucharistic liturgy which are most characteristically Maronite are not held in common with St. James, but rather with the Chaldean eucharistic rite. This ancient Edessene rite, however, has been overlaid through the centuries with borrowings from the Jacobite and Latin eucharistic rites. For example, the Maronite rite today includes anaphoras ascribed to some of the champions of the Monophysite cause, such as Philoxenus of Mabboug and Dionysius bar Salibi, to name two. Other Jacobite borrowings seem to be the sedro-form of prayer, and a preparatory part of the rite which seems to have been borrowed in the late fifteenth century or early sixteenth century, when a Maronite was elected Monophysite Patriarch of Antioch. Contact with the crusaders produced union with the see of Rome in 1182, although the firm union was not established until the sixteenth century. From the twelfth century, Latinisms began to be introduced into the Maronite Mass, culminating in the Latinization under Patriarch Rizzi in the seventeenth century. Subsequent centuries have seen the restoration of the old form of the Maronite rite. The Byzantine Tradition The eucharistic liturgy of the Great Church of Constantinople is the most widespread Eastern rite in existence today. It is impossible to give any more than a cursory glance over the rich history of the eucharistic liturgies of this tradition: St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom and the Liturgy of the Presanctified. Thanks to the work of the Jesuit liturgists Juan Mateos and Robert Taft, the history of this rite is one of the most well known. The first mention of a rite of Constantinople is during the period of Chrysostom's episcopate (397–404). It seems that the eucharistic liturgy at that time basically followed the liturgy of Antioch. It seems that the earliest liturgical influences upon the eucharistic rite of Constantinople were Antiochene and Cappadocian, since many of the city's early bishops came from those two areas. The first commentary on the Byzantine eucharistic service is the Mystagogia of St. Maximus the Confessor, written between about 628–630. The next two witnesses to the eucharistic liturgy are the Historia Ecclesiastica of Patriarch St. Germanus of Constantinople (d. c. 730), and the Barberini Codex gr 336, which dates from about 800. What these three sources show is that during the seventh to the ninth centuries the Byzantine eucharistic liturgy underwent considerable growth and evolution, precisely at the so-called soft points of the rite: the preparation of the gifts was removed from a point just before the great entrance to completely before the entire liturgy, and a service of three antiphons, derived from the stational liturgy of the city, grew up immediately before the liturgy of the Word. During that time, more ancient elements in the service were either eliminated or moved in favor of the newer elements: The Old Testament reading vanished, as did the prayers over the penitents and the psalmodic elements of the service. The Byzantine eucharistic rite reached its definitive synthesis in the tenth century, as witnessed by the tenth-century Typicon of the Great Church. The service underwent subsequent monastic influence, most notably in the form of the beginning and end to the service, taken from the Palestinian monastic office in force in Constantinople from the fall of the city in 1204. By the fourteenth century, the eucharistic rite had received the form it has today. The Armenian Tradition Armenia was evangelized simultaneously from Caesarea in Cappadocia in the West, and Edessa in the South. While the East Syrian influence perdured primarily in the calendar, the Cappadocian eucharistic liturgy formed the basis for the nascent Armenian eucharistic liturgy. At the beginning of the fifth century, the anaphora of St. Basil the Great was translated into Armenian; this anaphora was later erroneously ascribed to Gregory the Illuminator, the apostle to Armenia, who had received his training in Cappadocia. Toward the end of the fifth century, four other Caesarean anaphoras were translated from Greek into Armenian: Catholicos Sahak, Gregory of Nazianzus, Cyril, and Athanasius. Further Byzantine influence on the Armenian eucharistic rite took place from the seventh century, in spite of Armenian attempts to prevent it. The reason for this continuing Byzantinization can perhaps be attributed to the presence of strong groups within the Armenian hierarchy and monastic ranks whose theological views approximated those of the Byzantines. Sometime after the tenth century, the Liturgy of St. Basil was translated again into Armenian. But with the tenth-century ascendancy of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom over the Liturgy of St. Basil in Constantinople, the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom was adopted by the Armenians, as well as the Liturgy of the Presanctified. The time of the Crusades saw contact between Armenians and Latins, whom the Armenians welcomed. From the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, some Latin features entered the Armenian service. Both Chosroes the Great (c. 950) and St. Nerses of Lambron (d. 1198) wrote commentaries on the Armenian eucharistic liturgy. The eucharistic service in use today is that of St. Athanasius. The Alexandrian Tradition Two Egypts existed side by side in late antiquity: Lower Egypt, whose center was the great city of Alexandria, the center of Hellenic, philosophical Christianity; and Upper Egypt, the cradle of monasticism and the Coptic-speaking populace of the countryside, the center of a popular Christianity based upon wisdom sayings, asceticism, and ritual. After the Council of Chalcedon (451), the city of Alexandria remained in Chalcedonian hands, while the center of non-Chalcedonian power shifted to the monasteries. One monastery in particular became a powerful center of Monophysite Coptic Christianity: the Monastery of St. Macarius in Wadi al-Natrun, in Scetis near the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt. The patriarchal seat in Alexandria was occupied by both Chaldeconian and non-Chalcedonian patriarchs after Chalcedon. Coptic The Greek Liturgy of St. Mark appears to have been used by Melkites in Egypt until the twelfth century when, under Byzantine influence, they adopted the Byzantine eucharistic service (as did Melkites in Syria and Palestine). However, among Monophysites the Liturgy of St. Mark was translated into Coptic and underwent further influence from Coptic monastic practice and Syrian liturgical practice, which came via the Syrian Jacobite monks who made their homes in Egypt, as well as the general ecclesiastical intercourse between Syrian and Egyptian Jacobites. The first Coptic dialect used by the Egyptian Christians was Sahidic, which attained its classical form at the White Monastery in Upper Egypt, during the reign of Abbot Shenoute (c. 383–451). However, as the Monastery of St. Macarius gained more prominence as a fortress of non-Chalcedonian Christianity following Chalcedon, the Bohairic Coptic dialect used there began slowly to supplant the earlier Sahidic texts. Eventually, Bohairic became the only Coptic dialect used in worship. Today's eucharistic rite is essentially that of Scetis. In the twelfth century, Patriarch Gabriel II Ibn Turayk (1131–1145) decreed that all local versions of the eucharistic prayer be suppressed, and that only three anaphoras be used throughout the entire Coptic church: St. Mark (also known as St. Cyril), St. Basil, and St. Gregory. In the fifteenth century, Patriarch Gabriel V composed his Liturgical Order (1411), still in use today. This work, along with The Lamp of Darkness of Abu al-Barakat (fourteenth century), are two of the most important commentaries on the Coptic eucharistic liturgy. Ethiopian The historic date of the Christianization of Ethiopia is 340. It appears that Coptic and Syrian missionaries penetrated into the country, and that by the fifth century monasticism had been established in Ethiopia. At the time of Chalcedon, the Ethiopians sided with the Monophysites. About the same time, the famous Nine Saints are said to have arrived in Ethiopia, beginning the work of translating Coptic, Greek and Syriac literature into Ge'ez, the classical form of the Ethiopian tongue. The head of the Ethiopian church, the abuna, was a Coptic monk chosen and sent from Egypt. In 1948, this relationship with the Coptic church was changed when the Ethiopian church was allowed a native abuna, consecrated in 1959. The history of the Ethiopian eucharistic service is almost completely unknown, as it is perhaps the least-studied eucharistic liturgy of any in the East. Scholars have identified at least twenty different Ethiopian anaphoras of Syrian, Alexandrian, and Ethiopian origin—one of the most intriguing being the Anaphora of Our Lady. Given the strong ties between the Coptic church and the Ethiopian church, one can posit a strong Coptic influence upon the structure and content of the Ethiopian eucharistic service. Observers have also noted in the practices of this church the presence of elements seeming to originate in Judaism. However, given the great gaps in our knowledge of Ethiopian history (especially from 650 to 1270), reconstruction of the history of any of the Ethiopian eucharistic liturgy will be difficult at best. Clearly, the Ethiopian eucharistic liturgy presents a fascinating field of study for future scholars of liturgy.