Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/114

 96 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. catechumens "competent" for the divine and life- giving baptism {O^Cov koX ^woTrotov jSaTrrio-fuxTOs) ; ^ and just before the rite is performed they are formally exorcised to purify their souls from evil,^ whereupon, in answer, they with equal solemnity " renounce the devil and all his works." As to the baptismal water, says Cyril, just as meats, simple in their nature, are polluted (fjL€fiov<Tfji€va) by the invocation of idols, so the simple water, by invocation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, acquires a power of holiness (SvvafxLv ay loTTjTos:). The magic-mystery lies in the novel property imparted to water through a human act. So much for the element of magic-mystery in the rite of Baptism. The far mightier tale of how Chris- tian worship came to be summed up in the mystical sacrifice of the Eucharist need not be entered on. With Ignatius, in the early part of the second cen- tury, the bread and wine have become (ftdpixaKov tt^avao-ias,^ the drug of immortality; with Cyril of Jerusalem, the seeming bread is not bread, but the body of Christ, the wine is not wine, but the blood of Christ.* This transformation of Christ's commemo- rative supper, this ceaseless priest-wrought reincarna- tion of our blessed Lord, is the supreme instance of the development of the magic-mystery element in the Christian Church. It is clear that the development of the magic-mys- tery in Baptism and the Eucharist was related in many ways to the confusion of the symbol with the 1 Cyril, Mystagogica, I, 1. 2 See Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 40.
 * Epistle to Ephesians, xxi.
 * Mystagogica, IV, 9.