On the ritual side of the Sacrament of Anointing

Trial lecture given in 1887, Sept. 9 days for students of the M.D. Academy, in the presence of members of the Academic Council The church observance, known in our country under the name of consecration of oil, or rather anointing of oil, in the Greek missal is called: εὐζελαίου, ἐπταπαπάδιον and others. Although none of these names fully corresponds to the Slavic one, the second one comes closer to it: τάξις τοῦ εὐχελαίου, the order of prayers over oil. The basis of this following is the ancient, pre-Christian use of oil as a medicinal remedy, with which the symbolic meaning of oil was also combined, which served as a sign of mercy and leniency, an expression of divine mercy towards the suffering. It is unnecessary to provide here evidence in favor of the use of oil, quite common in pagan antiquity, as a mystical means of healing; It is enough in this case to note that some passages of Holy Scripture 2, and even more the testimony of the Talmud and the rabbis, leave no doubt that anointing the sick with oil was in great use among the Jews and was even allowed on the Sabbath. Probably bearing in mind the practice of their time, and perhaps not without the personal instructions of the Lord, the apostles, during their first appearance at the sermon, “anointed many sick people with oil and healed them” 3 . Without a doubt, on the basis of a similar rite practiced in the Jewish synagogue, the Apostle James instructs Jewish Christians to “call the elders of the church to the sick person so that they pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord” 4 . Having adopted a ready-made ritual form for Christian sacramental healing, the apostle also mentioned prayer. The latter constitutes the first liturgical basis of the rite, which subsequently grew into a whole complex system. We do not know the apostolic prayer for the consecration of oil, although we can judge about it, as well as in general about the content and character of the initial eucheleic prayers, in part by that very small prayer over oil, which is found in the Apostolic Constitutions (VIII, 29) and in which the celebrant prays “that the Lord will grant the oil the power to restore health, heal illnesses, repel demons and all the enemy’s machinations.” A continuation of the ancient Christian eucheleic prayers and more or less their faithful echo can be the later healing prayers, some of which are prescribed against a certain type of illness, for example, fever, headache, eye disease, others have a more general content and are directed against the devil, who was and is considered the culprit of various diseases and obsessions. In the current large missal, there are three or four prayers of this kind left over the sick; in the ancient Slavic missals they formed a special, rather significant group, in which there are also prayers of apocryphal content, close to folk conspiracies, with an admixture of superstitious ideas of that time. As an example of these latter, I will cite two prayers over the “sick head” from one handwritten missal of the 16th–17th centuries. “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Lord have mercy, Lord help the head and half the head. On the main (probably frontal) place the Lord will be crucified and take the disease to the head. As if you were walking on Mount Sinai, you found an open coffin, a virgin lying in it, and said to her: Why are you lying, why are you lying? Lord, my head hurts, and the Lord put his hand on it and said to her: I say to you, the head hurts, not even half the head. In the name of the Father the Lord was crucified, the Lord suffered, and is risen: Lord, remember me always, now and ever.”5 Another prayer of the same content: “Christ our true God, who laid an honest and life-giving cross on Adam’s head. Adam, do not hurt either his head, or his eyes, or the non-Jew, so let the servant of God not hurt either his head, or his eyes, or the non-Jew, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” 6. Beginning with the simplest form (healing prayers), the consecration of oil was likely to develop little by little; due to the lack of positive data, however, it is not possible to follow the process of these layers and over the space of several centuries one has to be content with fragmentary indications. Gohar, in his euchology, among other things, writes that he saw two euchele prayers in one ancient manuscript; one with the inscription of the name of John Chrysostom, the other with the name of Basil the Great 7. The existence of prayers with designated inscriptions is important; it indicates the participation in the organization of the succession in question of two great Fathers of the Church, “who, according to St. Sophrony, prayers and offerings, and full observance of the sacred services." Unfortunately, it is not clear from the inscriptions what the work of the said persons consisted of in organizing the rite of consecration of oil; whether in reviewing existing prayers and selecting the best ones from them, and those most appropriate to the nature and goals of this sacred rite, or in compiling completely new prayer books. From VIII–IX tables. the history of the ritual side of the sacrament of anointing becomes more definite; Around this time, the rites in the Greek East acquired approximately the form in which it is known in our current breviary. From this time, a euchology remarkable for its antiquity has come down to us, on behalf of its owner it received the name Barberinov; Between other sequences, it also contains “the order of how to perform St. oil for the sick, calling the seven elders in the evening" 8 . We will talk about the composition of the rite of consecration of oil according to this liturgical monument a little lower, and now we will only note that the most essential and, presumably, the most ancient part in it is made up of seven prayers and, without a doubt, the main one, beginning with the words: “Holy Father, Physician of souls and bodies”... Who was the compiler of these prayers? - is unknown either from the inscriptions above them or from other sources; only the creator of the canon left information about himself in an acrostic, according to to which his troparia are located and which reads: εὐχὴ ἐλαίου ψαλμὸς Αρσενίου. However, the acrostic is not carried out on all stanzas of the canon and some are out of touch with it. We think that they fell out over time and were replaced by others of later origin. Who was this Arseny? Allacy and Arcudius, papist writers of the 17th century. It is believed that this was Bishop Arsenius of Monemvasia, who lived in the 15th century. and was in union with Rome, but this canon, as I have already said, is of early origin, and therefore the assumption of Goar, who attributes it to Arsenius the monk who lived at the end of the 9th century, is much more reliable. and was a contemporary of Patriarch Ignatius and Emperor Basil the Macedonian 9. In the X–XIII centuries. our service probably had a short composition, was known under the name of “service for the sick,” and in this simplest form it consisted of several troparions, an apostle, a gospel and two or three prayers related to this case. In its later, established form, the rite we are considering is known from breviaries of the 14th–17th centuries and represents several editions that differ in the content and structure of individual parts, as well as in the grouping of the same rites 10 . I dwelled here on two of them, as the most characteristic, far from corresponding to the sequence of our breviary. The shortest version is as follows; the usual beginning, several petitionary and penitential troparia, an apostle from the conciliar letter of James, which mentions the calling of elders to the sick, the gospel about the healing of the paralytic at the sheep's font, then the final prayer over the head of the sick person: “Holy Father, Physician of souls and bodies...”, then the priest anoints the patient with the words: “The blessing of the Lord God Our Savior for the healing of soul and body...” The anointing is followed by a second prayer. “O gracious Lord, our merciful God...”, in which the priest prays to the Lord that through the laying on of His sinful hand, healing will be communicated by His mercy to the sick. The service ends with a special litany and a prayer of dismissal: “Much-merciful Master, Lord Jesus Christ...” 11. As we can see, here the entire ritual is designed not for seven priests, but for one performer. A more detailed entry is provided by the Greek missal of the 14th century. Joanna Cantacuzene. The Blessing of Anointing is performed according to it by seven priests and begins with three antiphons with intermediate litanies and the song “Only Begotten Son”, followed by the entrance, which of course presupposes the Blessing of Anointing at the church, and not in the house, with the singing of the verse: “Come, let us worship...”, with the exclamation of the priest: “For holy art thou our God...” and the trisagion. The reading of the Apostle and the Gospel, and the liteteny: “We all recit with all our souls...” serve as a transition to the consecration of oil itself and constitute the first of seven sections of this service. In each of these sections there is an apostle, a gospel and two prayers, and each time the anointing is performed by one of the priests. There is no canon or troparia; Blessing of oil ends with vacation. The presentation of the sequence just presented, in our opinion, is not without interest. With its beginning, it involuntarily resembles the liturgy - a circumstance that gives the researcher reason to assume that once upon a time the consecration of oil, like other sacraments, was closely connected with the liturgy and that its beginning, according to the breviary of John Cantacuzene, is nothing more than a not entirely successful chipping away from a once complete and completely completed succession. The Barberinov euchology we mentioned, as well as some other Old Slavonic handwritten missals, confirm this guess. They present the rites of the sacrament in question in a very complex form and set out parts of it that are not at all in the current printed rite of consecration of oil. The full composition of this service was presented here by analogy with Vespers and Matins, to which the blessing of oil itself with its prayers joined as a special additional part, or better to say, it formed the grain around which the named services were layered and grouped. The full service of εὐχελαίου, judging by these data, began in the evening and included those parts from which Vespers and Matins or παννυχίς were and are composed: namely, the stichera on “I cried to the Lord,” the canon, laudatory. An indication of this composition of the preliminary part of the consecration of oil has been preserved in the current missal, where after the canon it is noted: “if it is evening, there is dismissal; If there is a service,” then a table is prepared for the lamp with oil... and the service continues. The continuation of the consecration of oil was the celebration of the liturgy for the sick the next day, with antiphons and prayers, readings from the Apostle and the Gospel, and also some petitions at the litanies were prepared for the nature of the main sequence. The rite of εὐχελαίου itself was performed after the liturgy and was accompanied by seven prayers with the same number of apostles and gospels, sequentially performed by each of the seven priests. The whole sequence ended with a prayer, during which the gospel was placed on the head of the sick person; the presbyters also laid their hands on the sick person and all together said this prayer, following in an undertone the words of the leading priest. In conclusion, one of the prayers was read over the confessors, because in ancient times the blessing of oil over the sick was combined with confession and resolution of their sins. The close connection with individual church services, mainly with the liturgy, which leaves a distinctive feature of the now presented sequence of consecration of oil, becomes even more tangible, so to speak, in other editions of the Euchelean rite, known to us from the practice of Eastern sectarians. According to one of these observances, the consecration of oil is performed without fail in church; the rite, like ours, is performed by seven priests and consists of seven sections with special readings from the apostle and the gospel, and two prayers. One of these prayers is one of petition for the sick, and this theme varies with different motives in each of the seven sections; but the content of the other prayer is very varied and consists of petitions: for the peace of the church and the welfare of its members, starting with the government, for the goodness of the air, for the liberation of the people from enemies and all hostile attacks, for those who brought gifts and for those who help the church with their offerings, for the cessation of idolatry, for the catechumens and their introduction into the bosom of the church, for dead and living brothers. These prayers of the priest are each time preceded by the deacon addressing those present so that they pray for this and that. After the seventh exclamation and the seventh prayer, the sick person comes up and receives the anointing. The question arises: how could such a multitude and, at the same time, such diverse petitions be included in the composition of a service that has its own special content and what is common between them? These petitions were brought here from a large prayer for the church, its members and needs, read by the priest at the liturgy after the consecration of the Gifts, and they were brought in because the consecration of the oil for anointing the sick was performed precisely at this time, in the significant part of the service, after the consecration of the Gifts, and so certain parts of the liturgical prayer began to be performed interspersed with special prayers of consecration of oil. It is very likely that this rite was previously included and recorded in the very composition of the liturgy, and when it was separated, it took with it that specially liturgical material to which it was tied by its position. In conclusion of the sequence of consecration of oil that we have now outlined, I consider it necessary to add that the latter was performed in the church even when the seriously ill person was not present there. In this case, the consecration of oil was nothing more than a prayer for the sick person before the Gifts of the Eucharist, while the sick person underwent the very rite of anointing with oil at home, where the serving priests came with the oil consecrated at the liturgy. In our current breviary, the rite in question has a more compressed form and is outside of any connection with the liturgy. After a brief overview of some editions of the sequence that occupies us, it is natural to ask: which of them belong to its later processing and which should be recognized as the original? We think that the oldest form of this acoluthia should be considered either a short service for the sick or the system of εὐχελαίου that was formed in connection with the liturgy. It may seem strange how a service designed for the sick was so complete and carried out in several sessions with significant interruptions. But in order for this bewilderment to lose its power, it is necessary to renounce the current practice, when the consecration of oil in most cases is performed on the dangerously ill and, of course, is performed hastily. Previously, this sacrament was used by people who were so in control of their physical powers that they could come to church and listen to the full sequence here. This is the reason why even in modern breviaries, not to mention the ancient ones, the remark is made that this service is performed over the sick in church or at home, why, next to expressions about a difficult patient, there are also such: “one who wants to receive unction approaches the priests, receives a blessing from them, makes a certain number bows." This is obviously not about a dying person, and in the very content of the prayers there is no indication that the object of the sacrament was a seriously and hopelessly ill person. In the Greek Church, although this sacrament was performed on the sick, it did not have the meaning of extremae unctionis or parting words for the dying. Simeon of Thessalonica once said that the Latins, “thanks to their innovations, distorted the true meaning of this sacrament and began to perform it not on the sick, but on the dying” 12. However, the more impartial of Western writers are inclined to think that initially, even in the Western Church, this adherence did not have the exceptional character that it later acquired and refer to the sacramentary known with the name of Pope Gregory, sacramentarium Gregorianum 13. The expression ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ can be explained from the custom of medieval and modern Greeks to bring their sick to church in the hope of healing, especially where there were miraculous icons or relics. The sick were placed in the church vestibule in the choir or in special buildings built at the church especially for the sick, where they remained for several periods of time and underwent church rituals. With regard to such patients, without a doubt, it was completely convenient to perform the Blessing of Anointing with the canon, liturgy, and a whole series of preparatory and final rites. Finally, we must take into account the following characteristic circumstance that took place in the practice of the Greek Church. The Blessing of Anointing was often performed there not on the sick, but on the healthy. Simeon of Thessalonica says that in his time, some of the pious people performed the sacrament of the consecration of oil on themselves while still alive, as a propitiation for themselves and for the sake of the final remission of sins... You can perform the consecration of the oil, he says in another place, at all times on the same person, and not just once, because it is said: “confess each other’s sins” - obviously at all times, and not just once, and “pray for each other, that you may be healed,” not just once, but constantly, because we fall constantly 14. In this case, anointing had the meaning of an act of repentance and served as an expression of the forgiveness of sins. Obviously, here there is a memory of the time when the resolution of the confessor’s sins was combined with anointing and the oil was used as a symbol of forgiveness. As such an action, it could have the meaning of a means of preventing diseases of the body, and therefore useful for everyone at all times. Most often it was celebrated on Maundy Thursday, that significant liturgical day when the reunification of penitents with the church and many other special rites took place, such as. preparation of the world, in monasteries the washing of the feet of the abbots of the chosen brethren, the washing of meals and relics, the preparation of spare gifts, the blessing of a new fire and, finally, the consecration of oil for anointing the sick and those possessed by demons, as a supply for the whole year. Benedictio olei was no doubt performed on this day by analogy with the sanctification of the world and in remembrance of the oil of the sinner who anointed the feet of the Savior; At the same time, anointing was performed on everyone present in the church. In some Russian monasteries, for example. in the local monastery, this significant rite is still performed; but with special solemnity and splendor it was celebrated in the old days under the patriarchs in the Moscow Assumption Cathedral 15. Closely related to the described ritual of the sacrament of the consecration of oil is the custom, maintained in some Greek monasteries, of performing the sacrament of consecration of the oil over all the brethren on Lazarus Saturday. According to the description found in the charter of Empress Irina, in the monastery founded by her, this ritual was performed in this way: seven priests came on this day to the monastery cemetery and performed ἐπταπαπάδιον in the church there; from here one of them went to the monastery itself, because the cemetery was separated from it by a fence. Having said a prayer here over the oil in front of the assembled nuns, he anointed each of them in turn and then immediately left. This curious rite, as you see, was performed in a cemetery and can serve as a transition for us to a new form of the sacrament of anointing, which had an application to burial rites. – As far as we know, the late manuscript descriptors of the Moscow Synodal Library were the first to draw attention to this aspect of the matter. Describing one of the local breviaries, they stopped at its special article under the title: “the rite for the consecration of oil by a deceased monk and a Beltsy” 16.). This article records the same service as in the Blessing of Oil, only it is applied here to a person who has already died. Here the seven apostles, seven gospels and the same number of prayers are also read as in the rite of blessing of oil, but only all these readings and prayers are of a funeral nature. They ended either by anointing the deceased or by simply pouring oil from a lamp onto him; although this article itself does not say anything about such anointing, it was undoubtedly performed, as can be seen from other places where this rite is spoken of, which constituted a special solemn type of burial and was originally used in monasteries for monks. In some places in the canon of consecration of oil it is directly stated that the deceased was a monk. Afterwards, this ritual began to be celebrated over the Balti people. The custom of anointing the deceased with oil has, in our opinion, primarily a historical basis and originates from the funeral practice of eastern peoples, which in this case was used by Christians. There, as is known, the body of the deceased was anointed with aromas and fragrant ointments, and then wrapped in linen or a shroud. In this form, the body was buried or left in caves and artificially carved coffins. Tertullian, Dionysius of Alexandria, Dionysius the Areopagite and other Christian writers speak of this custom as being widespread among Christians, and the latter even clarifies its inner meaning, seeing in this ritual an expression of the idea that the deceased, having, as it were, worthily completed the feat of earthly life, left the earthly field as a fighter and worker. The explanation is taken, apparently, from the custom according to which fighters and gladiators, entering the arena, anointed themselves with oil for the convenience of fighting. Later interpreters, in explaining the rite, go even further and draw an analogy between the rites of baptism and burial, and just as there, they say, a neophyte entering into the environment of Christianity is first spiritually washed in the font, and then anointed with myrrh, so here the body of the deceased is first washed with clean water, and then with blessed oil. From this simplest ritual form, which was completely retained in the present rite of burial, a more complex and artificial one developed, which was complicated by the rites of the sacrament of anointing and received the form of a special service or succession. It is unknown how it came together and by whom it was compiled; but that this ritual is of considerable antiquity is evident partly from what we said on the basis of the charter of Empress Irene. There, the blessing of oil was celebrated in the monastery cemetery and, therefore, was closely related to the funeral service. In the first half of the 13th century. Nicephorus II, Patriarch of Constantinople, discusses the consecration of oil over the dead, referring to supporters of this custom; then we find this rite in handwritten missals of the 14th–15th centuries. and finally Simeon of Thessaloniki makes several comments about him. He says that in his time oil was poured on the dead brethren from the church lamp and this was considered a necessary condition for monastic burial, and on the laity, according to him, dust or ashes were poured from the censer and then the body was buried. But it also happened that pious people, having performed the sacrament of consecration of oil on themselves while alive, asked to save the remains of this oil and when they died, they were anointed with the last, consigning them to the earth... “However, some perform the sacrament of consecration of anointing directly over the deceased, which some of the bishops prohibit, since this is not taught in Scripture, while others do not, because it is performed for the benefit of the soul. For my part, I tried as much as I could to investigate the matter and found that it was commendable to do it and those who wished to do it should not be hindered; however, Thessalonica concludes, this is not the oil that was betrayed by the Savior and the Apostles..., for St. There is one oil, and not much, and its sacred rite is one and one of the seven sacraments...” 17. We do not know what data our liturgist had for such an unexpected conclusion, just as we remain in the dark about the research that he undertook; but in any case, then this custom of performing the blessing of oil on the dead was in full force and constituted an addition to the ordinary rites of monastic burial. In Venetian publications, the sequence of blessing of oil over the dead is printed with the name of the Athens Metropolitan Nicholas; Apparently, this latter was not very discriminating in accepting legendary tales and combined in his following such naive apocryphal motives that gave Allatius a reason to reproach our liturgical books for various kinds of superstitious inventions and absurdities. Now the consecration of oil is no longer effective over the dead, and this rite itself has faded into the realm of history, as one of the forms of the rite that has already disappeared from practice, however, its main elements did not perish altogether, but became part of the priestly burial. The fact is that this latter was built on the basis of the sevenfold number, which predominates in the consecration of oil and, in addition, preserved the very ritual of sevenfold anointing. However, in the current printed breviary and in Gohar’s euchology, this seven-fold motif is not maintained, but in handwritten breviaries it has been happily preserved and serves as an expression of a practice that was silent, but once in force. The symbolism of the ancient rite makes itself felt in some monuments of our ancient liturgical writing, and for example. what is read in one of the Slavic handwritten breviaries of our academic library in the rite of priestly burial: “and the priest came alone to chrism (the deceased), as if he had been newly baptized, entering at the tomb, he received an olive vessel and poured a cross on it (each one), one from the priests, until all seven priests were completed” 18. However, the fate of this ritual in its pure form was, in any case, short-lived. In practice, the application of unction to the deceased was not without difficulty; How can one apply directly to the deceased a ritual performed on living persons, even if they are sick? It was this misunderstanding, in connection with a misunderstanding of the meaning of the ritual between the common people and, together with some unsuccessful successions that arose in this case, that probably caused the prohibition to perform the sacrament of anointing of the dead; an echo of it is the rule of our Helmsman, which says: “let us not dare to perform the blessing of oil on the dead” 19. See Augustine Denkvürdigkeiten aus d. Christl. Archaolog. V. IX, r. 467. Isa.1:6; Jer.8:22; Luke 10:34, etc. Pkn. req. M. D. Ak., V 85, l. 199. More detailed information about the development of the rite of consecration of anointing in the studies: P. Odintsova, “The order of public and private worship in ancient Russia until the 16th century,” A. L. Katansky, “Essay on the history of the ritual side of the sacrament of consecration of anointing” (Christian Reading, 1880, No. 7, 8), A. A. Dmitrievsky, “Divine services in the Russian Church for the first five centuries” (Right. Sobes. 1883, III) and his “Divine service in the Russian Church in the 16th century.” RKP. Trebnik M.D.A., No. 85, l. 212, rev. – 249. Works by bl. Simeon Archbishop of Thessalonica, p. 365. See about this Ancient. Russian. Vivliof., vol. IX. Treod. and in Art. N. F. Krasnoseltseva in Orthodox. Sob., 1887, No. 5. Description Synod. rk. department, III, part 1, no. 74, l. 112 rev. Works by bl. Simeon, pp. 368–69. RKP. req. M.D.A., No. 183, ch. 75. Nomokan. at worldly required 1639, l. 41, pr. 161. You might be interested in: