Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/364

 CONSTANTINOPLE

814

CONSTANTINOPLE

of public penance, so in St. Chrysostom's Liturgy this prayer is left out. Then came a prayer for the faith- ful (baptized) and the di.smissal of the catechumens. St. Chrysostoin mentions a new ritual for the Offer- tory: the choir accompanied the bishop and formed a solemn procession to bring the bread and wine from the prothesis to the altar (Hom. xxxvi, in I C'or., vi, P. G., LXI, 'S13). Nevertheless the present cere- monies and the Cherubic Chant that accompany the Great Entrance are a later development (Brightman, op. cit., 530). The Iviss of Peace apparently preceded the Offertory in Chrysostom's time (Brightman, op. cit., 522, Probst, op. cit., 208). The Eucharistic prayer began, as everywhere, with the dialogue: " Lift up your hearts" etc. This prayer, which is clearly an abbreviated form of that in the Basilian Rite, is cer- tainly authentically of St. Chrysostom. It is appar- ently chiefly in reference to it that Proklos says that he has shortened the older rite. The Sanctus was sung by the people as now. The ceremonies per- formed by the deacon at the words of Institution are a later addition. Probst thinks that the original Epiklesis of St. Chrysostom ended at the words " Send thy Holy Spirit down on us and on these gifts spread before us" (Brightman, op. cit., 386), and that the continuation (especially the disconnected interrup- tion: God be merciful to me a simier, now inserted into the Epiklesis; Maltzew, "Die [Liturgien" etc., Berlin, 1894, p. 88) are a later addition (op. cit., 414). The Intercession followed at once, beginning with a mem- ory of the saints. The praver for the dead came before that for the living (ibid., 216-415). The Eu- charistic prayer ended with a doxology to which the people ans .'ered, Amen; and tlien the bishop greeted them with the text, "The mercy of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ be with all of you" (Tit., ii, 13), to which they answered: " .\nd with thy spirit", as usual. The Lord's Prayer followed, introduced by a short litany spoken by the deacon and followed by the well-known doxology: "For thine is the kingdom" etc. This ending was added to the Our Father in the Codex of the New Testament used by St. Chrysostom (cf. Hom. xix in P. G., LVII, 282). Another greeting (Peace to all) with its answer in1;roduced the manual acts, first an Elevation with the words "Holy things for the holy" etc., the Breaking of Bread and the Communion under both kinds. In Chrysostom's time it seems that people received either kind separately, drinking from the chalice. A short prayer of thanks- giving ended the Liturgy. That is the rite as we see it in the saint's homilies (cf. Probst., op. cit., 156-202, 202-22G). It is true that most of these homilies were preached at Antioch (387-397) before he went to Con- stantinople. It would seem, then, that the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom was in great part that of his time at Antioch, and that he introduced it at the capital when he became patriarch. We have seen from Peter the Deacon that St. Basil's Rite was used by "nearly the whole East". There is, then, no difficulty in suppos- ing that it had penetrated to Antioch and was already abridged there into the " Liturgy of Chrysostom" be- fore that saint brought this abridged form to Constan- tinople.

It was this Chrysostom Liturgy that gradually be- came the common Eucharistic service of Constanti- nople, and that spread throughout the Orthodox world, as the city that had adopted it became more and more the acknowledged IicmkI of Eastern Christen- dom. It did not completely displace the older rite of St. Basil, but reducetl its use to a verj- few days in the year on which it is still said (see below, under II). Meanwhile the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom itself under- went further modification. The oldest form of it now extant is in the same manuscript of the Barberini Library that contains St. Basil's Liturgy. In this the elaborate rite of the Proskomide has not yet been added, but it has already received additions since the

time of the saint whose name it bears. The Trisagiou (Holy God, Holy Strong One, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us) at the Little Entrance is s.id to have been revealed to Proklos of Constantinople (434- 47, St. John Dam., De Fide Orth., Ill, 10); this .Proba- bly gives the date of its insertion into the Litr.rjy. The Cherubikon that accompanies the Great Entrance was apparently added by Justin II (565-78, Bright- man, op. cit., 532), and the Creed that follows, just before the beginning of the Anaphora, is also ascrijed to him (Joannis Biclarensis Chronicon, P. L., LXXII, 863). Since the Barberini Eucholugion (ninth cent.) the Preparation of the Offerings (irpotrK-iuSij) at tl'.e credence-table (called prothesis) gradually developed into the elaborate rite that now accompanies it. Brightman (op. cit., 539-552) gives a series of docu- ments from which the evolution of this rite may be traced from the ninth to the si.xteenth century.

These are the two Liturgies of Constant! lople, the older one of St. Basil, now said on only a fw days, .and the later shortened one of St. Chrysostom that is in common use. There remains the third, the Liturgy of the Presanctified {tS>v TTpori~tiaiTixivav). This service, that in the Latin Church now occurs only on Good Friday, was at one time used on the aliturgical days of Lent everjT\here (see Aliturgical Days and Du- chesne, Origines, 222, 238). This is still the practice of the Eastern Churches. The Paschal Chronicle (see CHnoNicoN P.\sohale) of the year 645 (P. G., XCII) mentions the Presanctified Liturgy, and the fifty- second canon of the Second Trullan Council (692) orders: " On all days of the fast of forty days, except Saturdays and Sundays and the day of the Holy Annunciation, the Liturgy of the Pre:anctified shall be celebrated." The essence of this Liturgy is simply that the Blessed Sacrament that has been consecrated on the preceding Sunday, and is reserved in the taber- nacle (apToipipiov) under both kinds, is taken out and distributed as Communion. It is now always cele- brated at the end of Vespers (icirepii'6s), which form its first part. The lessons are read as usual, and the litanies sung; the catechumens are di;missed, and then, the whole Anaphora being naturally omitted, Communion is given; the blessing and dismiss; ,1 fol- low. A great part of the rite is simply taken frc i the corresponding parts of St. Chrj'sostom's Liturgy. The present form, then, is a comparatively late one that su]iposes the normal Liturgies of Constantinople. It has been attributed to various persons — St. James, St. Peter, St. Basil, St. Germanos I of Constantinople (715-30), and so on (Brightman, op. cit., p. xciii). But in the service books it is now officially ascribed to St. Gregory Dialogos (Pope Gregory I). It is impos- sible to say how this certainly mistaken ascription began. The Greek legend is that, when he was apocrisiarius at Constantinople (578), seeing that the Greeks had no fixed rite for this Communion-serWce, he composed this one for them.

The origin of the Divine Office and of the rites for sacraments and sacramentals in the Byzantine Church is more difficult to trace. Here too we have now the result of a long and gradvial development; and the starting-point of that development is certainly the use of .\ntioch. But there are no names that stand out aa clearly as do those of St. Basil and St. Chrj-sostom in the historj' of the Liturgy. We may perhaps find the trace of a similar action on their part in the case of the Office. The new W'ay of singing psalms introduced by St. Basil (Ep. cvii, see above) woukl in the first place affect the canonical Hours. It was the manner of singing psalms antiphonally, that is alternately by two choirs, to which we are accustomed, ihat had al- ready been introduced at Antioch in the time of the Patriarch Leontios (Leontius, 344-57; Theixloret, H. E., II, xxiv). We find one or two other allusions to reforms in various rites among the works of St. Clirys- ostom; thus he desires people to accompany funerals