Liturgy

Liturgy (Low Lat. liturgia; Gr. λεῖτος, public, and ἔργον, work; λειτουργός, a public servant), in the technical language of the Christian Church, the order for the celebration and administration of the Eucharist. In Eastern Christendom the Greek word λειτουργία is used in this sense exclusively. But in English-speaking countries the word “liturgy” has come to be used in a more popular sense to denote any or all of the various services of the Church, whether contained in separate volumes or bound up together in the form of a Book of Common Prayer. In this article the liturgy is treated in the former and stricter sense. (For the ancient Athenian λειτουργίαι, as forms of taxation, see Finance.)

In order to understand terms and references it will be convenient to give the tabular form the chief component parts of a liturgy, selecting the Liturgy of Rome as characteristic of Western, and that of Constantinople as characteristic of Eastern, Christendom; at the same time appending an explanation of some of the technical words which must be employed in enumerating those parts.

There are six main families or groups of liturgies, four of them being of Eastern and two of them of Western origin and use. They are known either by the names of the apostles with whom they are traditionally connected, or by the names of the countries or cities in which they have been or are still in use.

Group I. The Syrian Rite (St James).—The principal liturgies to be enumerated under this group are the Clementine liturgy, so called from being found in the eighth book of the Apostolic Constitutions, which claim in their title, though erroneously, to have been compiled by St Clement, the 1st-century bishop of Rome; the Greek liturgy of St James; the Syriac liturgy of St James. Sixty-four more liturgies of this group have existed, the majority being still in existence. Their titles are given in F. E. Brightman’s Liturgies, Eastern and Western (1896), pp. lviii.-lxi.

Group II. The Egyptian Rite (St Mark).—This group includes the Greek liturgies of St Mark, St Basil and St Gregory, and the Coptic liturgies of St Basil, St Gregory, St Cyril or St Mark; together with certain less known liturgies the titles of which are enumerated by Brightman (op. cit. pp. lxxiii. lxxiv.). The liturgy of the Ethiopian church ordinances and the liturgy of the Abyssinian Jacobites, known as that of the Apostles, fall under this group.

Group III. The Persian Rite (SS. Adaeus and Maris).—This Nestorian rite is represented by the liturgy which bears the names of SS. Adaeus and Maris together with two others named after Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius. This group has sometimes been called “East-Syrian.” The titles of three more of its now lost liturgies have been preserved, namely those of Narses, Barsumas and Diodorus of Tarsus. The liturgy of the Christians of St Thomas, on the Malabar coast of India, formerly belonged to this group, but it was almost completely assimilated to the Roman liturgy by Portuguese Jesuits at the synod of Diamper in 1599.

Group IV. The Byzantine Rite.—The Greek liturgies of St Chrysostom, St Basil and St Gregory Dialogus, or The Presanctified, also extant in other languages, are the living representatives of this rite. The Greek liturgy of St Peter is classified under this group, but it is merely the Roman canon of the Mass &c., inserted in a Byzantine framework, and seems to have been used at one time by some Greek communities in Italy. To this group also belongs the Armenian liturgy, of which ten different forms have existed in addition to the liturgy now in general use named after St Athanasius.

We now come to the two western groups of liturgies, which more nearly concern the Latin-speaking nations of Europe, and which, therefore, must be treated of more fully.

Group V. The Hispano-Gallican Rite (St John).—This group of Latin liturgies, which once prevailed very widely in Western Europe, has been almost universally superseded by the liturgy of the Church of Rome. Where it survives, it has been more or less assimilated to the Roman pattern. It prevailed once throughout Spain, France, northern Italy, Great Britain and Ireland. The term “Ephesine” has been applied to this group or family of liturgies, chiefly by English liturgiologists, and the names of St John and of Ephesus, his place of residence, have been pressed into service in support of a theory of Ephesine origin, which, however, lacks proof and may now be regarded as a discarded hypothesis. Other theories represent the Gallican to be a survival of the original Roman liturgy, or as an importation into Western Europe from the east through a Milanese channel. The latter is Duchesne’s theory (Christian Worship, London, 1904, 2nd ed., p. 94).

We proceed now to give a more detailed account of the chief liturgies of this group.

1. The Mozarabic Liturgy.—This was the national liturgy of the Spanish church till the close of the 11th century, when the Roman liturgy was forced upon it. Its use, however, lingered on, till in the 16th century Cardinal Jimenes, anxious to prevent its becoming quite obsolete, had its books restored and printed, and founded a college of priests at Toledo to perpetuate its use. It survives now only in several churches in Toledo and in a chapel at Salamanca, and even there not without certain Roman modifications of its original text and ritual.

2. Gallican Liturgy.—This was the ancient and national liturgy of the church in France till the commencement of the 9th century, when it was suppressed by order of Charlemagne, who directed the Roman missal to be everywhere substituted in its place. All traces of it seemed for some time to have been lost until three Gallican sacramentaries were discovered and published by Thomasius in 1680 under the titles of Missale Gothicum, Missale Gallicum and Missale Francorum, and a fourth was discovered and published by Mabillon in 1687 under the title of Missale Gallicanum. Fragmentary discoveries have been made since. Mone discovered fragments of eleven Gallican masses and published them at Carlsruhe in 1850. Other fragments from the library at St Gall have been published by Bunsen (Analecta Ante-Nicaena, iii. 263-266), and from the Ambrosian library at Milan by Cardinal Mai (Scriptt. Vet. Vat. Coll. iii. 2. 247). A single page was discovered in Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, published in Zeitschrift für Kath. Theologie, vi. 370.

3. Ambrosian Liturgy.—Considerable variety of opinion has existed among liturgical writers as to the proper classification of the “Ambrosian” or “Milanese” liturgy. If we are to accept it in its present form and to make the present position of the great intercession for quick and dead the test of its genus, then we must classify it as “Petrine” and consider it as a branch of the Roman family. If, on the other hand, we consider the important variations from the Roman liturgy which yet exist, and the traces of still more marked variation which confront us in the older printed and MS. copies of the Ambrosian rite, we shall detect in it an original member of the Hispano-Gallican group of liturgies, which for centuries underwent a gradual but ever-increasing assimilation to Rome. We know this as a matter of history, as well as a matter of inference from changes in the text itself. Charlemagne adopted the same policy towards the Milanese as towards the Gallican church. He carried off all the Ambrosian church books which he could obtain, with the view of substituting Roman books in their place, but the completion of his intentions failed, partly through the attachment of the Lombards to their own rites, partly through the intercession of a Gallican bishop named Eugenius (Mabillon, Mus. Ital. tom. i. Pars. ii. p. 106). It has been asserted by Joseph Vicecomes that this is an originally independent liturgy drawn up by St Barnabas, who first preached the Gospel at Milan (De Missae Rit. 1 capp. xi. xii.), and this tradition is preserved in the title and proper preface for St Barnabas Day in the Ambrosian missal (Pamelius, Liturgicon, i. 385, 386), but it has never been proved.

4. Celtic Liturgy.—We postpone the consideration of this liturgy till after we have treated of the next main group.

VI. The Roman Rite (St Peter).—There is only one liturgy to be enumerated under this group, viz. the present liturgy of the Church of Rome, which, though originally local in character and circumscribed in use, has come to be nearly co-extensive with the Roman Catholic Church, sometimes superseding earlier national liturgies, as in Gaul and Spain, sometimes incorporating more or less of the ancient ritual of a country into itself and producing from such incorporation a sub-class of distinct Uses, as in England, France and elsewhere. Even these subordinate Uses have for the most part become, or are rapidly becoming, obsolete.

The date, origin and early history of the Roman liturgy are obscure. The first Christians at Rome were a Greek-speaking community, and their liturgy must have been Greek, and is possibly represented in the so-called Clementine liturgy. But the date when such a state of things ceased, when and by whom the present Latin liturgy was composed, whether it is an original composition, or, as its structure seems to imply, a survival of some intermediate form of liturgy—all these are questions which are waiting for solution.

The Roman liturgy seems to have been introduced into England in the 7th, into France in the 9th and into Spain in the 11th century, though no doubt it was known in both France and Spain to some extent before these dates. In France certain features of the service and certain points in the ritual of the ancient national liturgy became interwoven with its text and formed those many varying medieval Gallican Uses which are associated with the names of different French sees.

The chief distinguishing characteristics of the Roman rite are these: (a) the position of the great intercession for quick and dead within the canon, the commemoration of the living being placed just before and the commemoration of the departed just after the words of institution; (b) the absence of an “Epiklesis” or invocation of the Holy Ghost upon the elements; (c) the position of the “Pax” or “Kiss of Peace after the consecration” and before the communion, whereas in other liturgies it occurs at a much earlier point in the service.

Liturgies of the British Islands.

Period I. The Celtic Church.—Until recently almost nothing was known of the character of the liturgical service of the Celtic church which existed in these islands before the Anglo-Saxon Conquest, and continued to exist in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall for considerable though varying periods of time after that event. But in recent times a good deal of light has been thrown on the subject, partly by the publication or republication of the few genuine works of Patrick, Columba, Columbanus, Adamnan and other Celtic saints; partly by the discovery of liturgical remains in the Scottish Book of Deer and in the Irish Books of Dimma and Mulling and the Stowe Missal, &c.; partly by the publication of medieval Irish compilations, such as the Lebar Brecc, Liber Hymnorum, Martyrology of Oengus, &c., which contain ecclesiastical kalendars, legends, treatises, &c., of considerable but very varying antiquity. The evidence collected from these sources is sufficient to prove that the liturgy of the Celtic church was of the Gallican type. In central England the churches, with everything belonging to them, were destroyed by the heathen invaders at the close of the 5th century; but the Celtic church in the remoter parts of England, as well as in the neighbouring kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland, retained its independence for centuries afterwards.

An examination of its few extant service-books and fragments of service-books yields the following evidence of the Gallican origin and character of the Celtic liturgy: (a) the presence of collects and anthems which occur in the Gallican or Mozarabic but not in the Roman liturgy; (b) various formulae of thanksgiving after communion; (c) frequent biddings or addresses to the people in the form of Gallican Praefationes; (d) the Gallican form of consecration, being a prayer called “Post-Sanctus” leading up to the words of institution; (e) the complicated rite of “fraction” or “the breaking of bread,” as described in the Irish treatise at the end of the Stowe Missal, finds its only counterpart in the elaborate ceremonial of the Mozarabic church; (f) the presence of the Gallican ceremonial of Pedilavium or “Washing of feet” in the earliest Irish baptismal office.

Period II. The Anglo-Saxon Church.—We find ourselves here on firmer ground, and can speak with certainty as to the nature of the liturgy of the English church after the beginning of the 7th century. Information is drawn from liturgical allusions in the extant canons of numerous councils, from the voluminous writings of Bede, Alcuin and many other ecclesiastical authors of the Anglo-Saxon period, and above all from a considerable number of service-books written in England before the Norman Conquest. Three of these books are missals of more or less completeness: (1) the Leofric Missal, a composite 10th- to 11th-century MS. presented to the cathedral of Exeter by Leofric, the first bishop of that see (1046-1072), now in the Bodleian library at Oxford; edited by F. E. Warren (Oxford, 1883); (2) the missal of Robert of Jumièges, archbishop of Canterbury (1051-1052), written probably at Winchester and presented by Archbishop Robert to his old monastery of Jumièges in the neighbourhood of Rouen, in the public library of which it now lies; edited by H. A. Wilson (London, 1896); (3) the Red Book of Derby, a MS. missal of the second half of the 11th century, now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

A perusal of these volumes proves what we should have expected a priori, that the Roman liturgy was in use in the Anglo-Saxon church. This was the case from the very first. That church owed its foundation to a Roman pontiff, and to Roman missionaries, who brought, as we are told by Bede, their native liturgical codices with them (Hist. Eccles. lib. ii. cap. 28). Accordingly, when we speak of an Anglo-Saxon missal, we mean a Roman missal only exhibiting one or more of the following features, which would differentiate it from an Italian missal of the same century. (a) Rubrics and other entries of a miscellaneous character written in the vernacular language of the country. (b) The commemoration of national or local saints in the kalendar, in the canon of the mass and in the litanies which occur for use on Easter Even and in the baptismal offices. (c) The presence of a few special masses in honour of those local saints, together with a certain number of collects of a necessarily local character, for the rulers of the country, for its natural produce, &c. (d) The addition of certain peculiarities of liturgical structure and arrangement interpolated into the otherwise purely Roman service from an extraneous source. There are two noteworthy examples of this in Anglo-Saxon service-books. Every Sunday and festival and almost every votive mass has its proper preface, although the number of such prefaces in the Gregorian sacramentary of the same period had been reduced to eight. There was a large but not quite equal number of triple episcopal benedictions to be pronounced by the bishop after the Lord’s Prayer and before the communion. This custom must either have been perpetuated from the old Celtic liturgy or directly derived from a Gallican source.

Period III. Anglo-Norman Church.—The influx of numerous foreigners, especially from Normandy and Lorraine, which preceded, accompanied and followed the Conquest, and the occupation by them of the highest posts in church as well as state had a distinct effect on the liturgy of the English church. These foreign ecclesiastics brought over with them a preference for and a habit of using certain features of the Gallican liturgy and ritual, which they succeeded in incorporating into the service-books of the church of England. One of the Norman prelates, Osmund, count of Séez, earl of Dorset, chancellor of England, and bishop of Salisbury (1078-1099), is credited with having undertaken the revision of the English service-books; and the missal which we know as the Sarum Missal, or the Missal according to the Use of Sarum, practically became the liturgy of the English church. It was not only received into use in the province of Canterbury, but was largely adopted beyond those limits—in Ireland in the 12th and in various Scottish dioceses in the 12th and 13th centuries.

It would be beyond our scope here to give a complete list of the numerous and frequently minute differences between a medieval Sarum and the earlier Anglo-Saxon or contemporaneous Roman liturgy. They lie mainly in differences of collects and lections, variations of ritual on Candlemass, Ash Wednesday and throughout Holy Week; the introduction into the canon of the mass of certain clauses and usages of Gallican character or origin; the wording of rubrics in the subjunctive or imperative tense; the peculiar “Preces in prostratione”; the procession of Corpus Christi on Palm Sunday; the forms of ejection and reconciliation of penitents, &c. The varying episcopal benedictions as used in the Anglo-Saxon church were retained, but the numerous proper prefaces were discarded, the number being reduced to ten.

Besides the famous and far-spreading Use of Sarum, other Uses, more local and less known, grew up in various English dioceses. In virtue of a recognized diocesan independence, bishops were able to regulate or alter their ritual, and to add special masses or commemorations for use within the limits of their jurisdiction. The better known and the more distinctive of these Uses were those of York and Hereford, but we also find traces of or allusions to the Uses of Bangor, Lichfield, Lincoln, Ripon, St Asaph, St Paul’s, Wells and Winchester.

Period IV. The Reformed Church.—The Anglican liturgy of Reformation and post-Reformation times is described under the heading of Prayer, Book of Common, but a brief description may be added here of the liturgies of other reformed churches.

The Liturgy of the Scottish Episcopal Church.—This liturgy in nearly its present form was compiled by Scottish bishops in 1636 and imposed—or, to speak more accurately, attempted to be imposed—upon the Scottish people by the royal authority of Charles I. in 1637. The prelates chiefly concerned in it were Spottiswood, bishop of Glasgow; Maxwell, bishop of Ross; Wedderburn, bishop of Dunblane; and Forbes, bishop of Edinburgh. Their work was approved and revised by certain members of the English episcopate, especially Laud, archbishop of Canterbury; Juxon, bishop of London; and Wren, bishop of Ely. This liturgy has met with varied fortune and has passed through several editions. The present Scottish office dates from 1764. It is now used as an alternative form with the English communion office in the Scottish Episcopal Church.

The general arrangements of its parts approximates more closely to that of the first book of Edward VI. than to the present Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Among its noteworthy features are (a) the retention in its integrity and in its primitive position after the words of institution of the invocation of the Holy Spirit. That invocation runs thus: “And we most humbly beseech thee, O merciful Father, to hear us and of thy almighty goodness vouchsafe to bless and sanctify with thy word and Holy Spirit these thy gifts and creatures of bread and wine that they may become the body and blood of thy most dearly beloved Son” (edit. 1764). This kind of petition thus placed is found in the Eastern but not in the Roman or Anglican liturgies. (b) The reservation of the sacrament is permitted, by traditional usage, for the purpose of communicating the absent or the sick. (c) The minimum number of communicants is fixed at one or two instead of three or four.

American Liturgy.—The Prayer Book of “the Protestant Episcopal Church” in America was adopted by the general convention of the American church in 1789. It is substantially the same as the English Book of Common Prayer, but among important variations we may name the following: (a) The arrangement and wording of the order for Holy Communion rather resembles that of the Scottish than that of the English liturgy, especially in the position of the oblation and invocation immediately after the words of institution. (b) The Magnificat, Nunc dimittis and greater part of Benedictus were disused; but these were reinstated among the changes made in the Prayer Book in 1892. (c) Ten selections of Psalms are appointed for use as alternatives for the Psalms of the day. (d) Gloria in excelsis is allowed as a substitute for Gloria Patri at the end of the Psalms at morning and evening prayer. In addition to these there are many more both important and unimportant variations from the English Book of Common Prayer.

The Irish Prayer Book.—The Prayer Book in use in the Irish portion of the United Church of England and Ireland was the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, but after the disestablishment of the Irish church several changes were introduced into it by a synod held at Dublin in 1870. These changes included such important points as: (a) the excision of all lessons from the Apocrypha, (b) of the rubric ordering the recitation of the Athanasian Creed, (c) of the rubric ordering the vestments of the second year of Edward VI., (d) of the form of absolution in the office for the visitation of the sick, (e) the addition to the Catechism of a question and answer bringing out more clearly the spiritual character of the real presence.

The Presbyterian Church.—The Presbyterian churches of Scotland at present possess no liturgy properly so called. Certain general rules for the conduct of divine service are contained in the “Directory for the Public Worship of God” agreed upon by the assembly of divines at Westminster, with the assistance of commissioners from the Church of Scotland, approved and established by an act of the general assembly, and by an act of parliament, both in 1645. In 1554 John Knox had drawn up an order of liturgy closely modelled on the Genevan pattern for the use of the English congregation to which he was then ministering at Frankfort. On his return to Scotland this form of liturgy was adopted by an act of the general assembly in 1560 and became the established form of worship in the Presbyterian church until the year 1645, when the Directory of Public Worship took its place. Herein regulations are laid down for the conduct of public worship, for the reading of Scripture and for extempore prayer before and after the sermon, and in the administration of the sacrament of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, for the solemnization of marriage, visitation of the sick and burial of the dead, for the observance of days of public fasting and public thanksgiving, together with a form of ordination and a directory for family worship. In all these cases, though the general terms of the prayer are frequently indicated, the wording of it is left to the discretion of the minister, with these exceptions: At the act of baptism this formula must be used—“I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”; and for the Lord’s Supper these forms are suggested, but with liberty to the minister to use “other the like, used by Christ or his apostles upon this occasion”—“According to the holy institution, command, and example of our blessed Saviour, Jesus Christ, I take this bread, and having given thanks, break it, and give it unto you. Take ye, eat ye; this is the body of Christ which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of him.” And again “According to the institution, command and example of our Lord Jesus Christ, I take this cup and give it unto you; this cup is the New Testament in the blood of Christ, which is shed for the remission of the sins of many; drink ye all of it.”

There is also an unvarying form of words directed to be used before the minister by the man to the woman, and by the woman to the man in the case of the solemnization of matrimony. The form of words on all other occasions, including ordination, is left to the discretion of the officiating minister or of the presbytery.