On the reasons and time for replacing the public reading of liturgical prayers with a secret one

Currently, all the prayers of the liturgy, except for the prayer behind the pulpit, are read by the clergy secretly (μυστικῶς) from the people. Instead of integral prayers, the latter hears only so-called exclamations, that is, the endings of prayers containing the glorification of the Holy Trinity, mostly in the form of the conclusion of the causal period 1, or short extracts, fragmentary phrases from the middle of them 2, between which there is no visible connection and it is not easy to restore it for someone who is not familiar with the content of the prayers and has never had a missal in their hands. In this regard, the liturgical practice of the first three or four centuries represented a completely opposite phenomenon: there, the public, public pronunciation of prayers was assumed by itself, and was a kind of conditio sine qua non of the liturgical service itself. To prove this idea, let us first of all refer to the well-known passage of Justin’s Apology (chapters 65–67), in which, on behalf of the believers of his time, the latter wrote: “At the end of the prayers (for ourselves and the newly baptized), we greet each other with a kiss. Then bread and a cup of water and wine are brought to the primate of the brethren, and he, taking it, sends up praise and glory to the Father of all in the name of the Son and the Holy Spirit and gives thanks in detail for the fact that He has honored us with this. After he has performed prayers and thanksgiving (τὰς εὐχὰς καὶ τὴν εὐχαριστίαν), all the people present shout (ἐπευφημεῖ), saying: “Amen. Amen” in Hebrew language, it means “Let there be” 3.” That the people confirmed the prayers and thanksgivings pronounced out loud by the primate is confirmed by one passage from the letter of Dionysius of Alexandria to the Roman Bishop Sixtus, cited in the church history of Eusebius (Book VII, Chapter 9; Russian translation, pp. 406–407). “I do not dare,” wrote the first to the second about one of those baptized by heretics, but who was in long-standing communion with the church, “to again prepare (for baptism) the one who listened to the thanksgivings and, together with the others, said “Amen” (εὐχαριστίας γὰρ ἐπακούσαντα καὶ συνεπιφθεγξάμενον τὸ ἀμήν), and stood before the meal, and extended his hands to receive St. food"... In one of the oldest liturgical lists - the Alexandrian Liudolfov, after the words “Worthy and Righteous” about the fate of those praying in the liturgical canon, it is even directly noted: “Then they say (dicunt) the Eucharistic prayer, following the preceding bishop (episcopum praeeuntem sequendo 4). In the mentioned monument, the prayers are short and verbatim: repeating them was not difficult and did not require a long time. But, with the increase in the composition of the liturgy, which reached a significant size in the 3rd–4th centuries, reading all the prayers out loud would take too much time, and the attention of the listeners was now not as focused as it was before. For them, it was necessary to replace this hearing with singing and shorten the course of the service, allowing the priest to read prayers secretly, while the deacon and the worshipers conducted parallel parts of the service. The current symmetrical arrangement of the litanies and the duration of the singing of certain church songs, while the clergyman secretly reads the prayers prescribed in the missal, are adapted to the number, volume and order of the prayers themselves and, obviously, were formed under the influence of current practice. The church charter commands the deacon in his proclamations to be consistent with the actions of the priest at the altar. A remarkable rule regarding this has been preserved in some ancient Greek and Slavic ditaxes of the Chrysostom liturgy. At the end of the litany, after the petition “Intercede, save, have mercy,” it is noted: “When he speaks, the deacon looks to the priest, and suddenly he knows that he has finished his prayer, and he says: “Wisdom” 5.” The disciplina arcana remained not without influence on the replacement of the public reading of liturgical prayers with secret ones. Its main motive - the non-disclosure of the mysteries of faith and worship before those not initiated into the mysteries in different eras of the church was understood and applied differently to one or another member of the Christian community. When the establishment of the catechumenate began to decline in the church, this system received a new form and found a new application. Because of this, a strict division was now made between the performer of the sacraments and the people, between the clergy and ordinary members of the church. The first to acquire the highest knowledge, special illumination by the Holy Spirit, in general the highest degree of spiritual understanding, and therefore they were given an incomparably greater participation in the sacraments of faith; the remaining members, as not initiated into the highest mysteries, were largely deprived of this participation, limited to their own special area of ​​​​prayer. As soon as this division was carried out, it was natural that the lot of the celebrant fell to many and, moreover, the most important prayers, which he was obliged to read secretly from the people, as they alone were accessible to him in content. “The Divine Hierarch,” in the words of Dionysius the Areopagite, “although he benevolently brings down to those subordinate to him his unique sacred command, using the variety of sacred symbols, but immediately, as elusive and unstoppable for (things) lower, without any change in himself, he returns to his superior service 6.” This is the general and best expression of that system, which, having established a distinction between the hierarchy and ordinary believers in relation to the rights of worship and understanding of ritual, closed the priest and bishop in the circle of services and prayers available to them alone, and left the laity to be content with very little of the very much that they had previously heard and seen during the liturgy. It seems to us that another circumstance also influenced the formation of this closedness of the liturgical rite. In ancient times, in the first three or four centuries, if possible, all believers partook of the Holy Mysteries together with the clergyman and, due to the custom of offerings, participated more closely in the celebration of the liturgy than Christians of subsequent times, when the custom of offerings gradually began to fall out of use, and the laity began to take communion less and less often. How easy it is to imagine the consequences that the replacement of public prayers with secret ones had on the very structure of the liturgical service, which after that broke up from an integral liturgical act into two parallel parts: one given to the people, the other celebrated at the altar by the priest; It is just as difficult to indicate exactly the chronological limit from which the ancient Christian practice of the nationwide utterance of liturgical prayers began to be supplanted, and when it finally gave way to the secret reading of the latter. There is reason to assert that this change occurred approximately in the fifth century, although it began somewhat earlier, as can be guessed from the 19th canon of the Council of Laodicea, which prescribes that after the catechumens and penitents leave the church, “to perform three prayers of the faithful: one, that is, the first, in silence (διὰ σιωπῆς), the second and third with an exclamation (διὰ προσφωνήσεως) fulfill.” There are two kinds of data available for consideration on this issue; some still point to the continuation of the ancient custom, while others talk about its displacement by the new order of things. In one of his conversations, St. John Chrysostom left us tangible evidence that in his time the liturgy continued to retain its former, completely open character and the public reading of the Eucharistic prayers was commonplace. “There are cases in which the priest,” argues St. father - is no different from the subordinate, for example, when the terrible Mysteries must be received... And in prayers, as everyone can see, the people help a lot, for both for the possessed and for the penitents common prayers are performed by the priest and the people. And prayers of thanksgiving are also common, for not just the priest brings thanksgiving, but also to the whole people; for having first received an answer from the people and then agreement that it was done worthy and righteously, the priest begins thanksgiving. And what is surprising if the people cry out along with the priest when he lifts up these sacred songs together with the cherubim themselves and the powers on high. Nevertheless, I said this so that each of the subordinates would be sober, so that we would know that we are all one body and differ from one another as much as member from member, and so that we do not entrust everything to the priests alone, but also take care of the whole church, as a body common to all of us 7.” Chrysostom reproduces in these words the liturgical practice of his time, which had not yet had time to deviate from the liturgical models of early Christian antiquity. The 137th novel by the Emperor takes us to new conditions of church discipline. Justinian (†565), already indicating a significant change in the ancient custom of the public reading of liturgical prayers, which was so firmly held even in the time of Chrysostom. “We command,” it says, “that all bishops and presbyters not secretly (non in secreto) make the divine offering and attend the holy. baptismal prayer, but in such a voice that would be well heard by the faithful people (sed cum ea voce, quae a fidelissimo populo exaudiatur), so that the souls of those who hear would come from it to greater reverence, praise and blessing...” But the imperial decree, even if it was sealed by the authority of the Apostle (1 Cor. 14:16-17; Rom. 10:10), could not change, to correct matters and maintain the movement that has begun in the field of worship. The new practice, while not yet universal, nevertheless took deep roots and had strong voices for itself. Both are proven by the story of John Moschus in his Spiritual Meadow, close in time to the given order of the emperor. Justinian. “Since in some places,” it is said here, “the priests were in the habit of reading prayers aloud, the children who stood in the sacred assemblies very close to them, in front of the sanctuary, heard the words and remembered them.” In their childish amusement, they decided to repeat the prayers and actions of the liturgical service, appointing one from among them as a priest, two as deacons, jokingly laying bread on a stone and pouring wine into an earthen vessel. But when everything was done according to church custom, before the bread was crushed, fire came down from heaven and consumed the entire offering, so that not a trace remained of the stone or the offering 8 . One might think that the real legend, about which the reading of the Eucharistic prayers in public at the end of the 6th - beginning of the 7th century. took place only in some places, conveyed by the author of the Spiritual Meadow partly in the interests of the custom of secret prayers that was increasingly becoming part of the force, since in this example of the profanation of the Eucharistic mystery by children, it perfectly emphasized the undesirable consequences of the previous practice. By the time of the Constantinople Patr. Herman (715–732), the secret reading of prayers became a universal rule. Of all the liturgical prayers, only the one behind the pulpit was then pronounced aloud and thereby stood out from the number of others, constituting an exception to the general rule. According to Patriarch Herman, it served as a substitute for what was hidden from the people in the secret prayers of the priest, and, as it were, resolved the fair bewilderments and requests of those who did not find sufficient grounds for reading prayers in secret. “Since some of those standing outside the altar often become perplexed, arguing among themselves and saying: what is the purpose, thought and power of quietly read (ὐποψιθυριζομένων) prayers, and want to get some idea about this, that is why the divine fathers wrote (the prayer behind the pulpit), as if shortening everything that was asked for (continued liturgy) and thus communicate to those who wish the concept of fringed dress 9.” Traces of the ancient practice of reading prayers publicly, despite its long-standing cessation, can still be felt in exclamations, the general plan of the church service, and in some small and apparently random features. So, for example, in our liturgy, the litanies preceding the Cherubic Song end with the deacon’s invocation: “Wisdom.” This expression, according to its use in liturgical practice, ancient and modern, always occurs where it comes to arousing the attention of listeners to some important action or reading. But at this point, neither in ancient nor in modern liturgies, anything other than prayers is found. In our opinion, the appeal: “Wisdom” aroused the attention of listeners to the prayers for the faithful that followed the litanies. Now that the latter are read secretly and only exclamations are heard from them, the original meaning of addressing those present in the church with the words: “Wisdom” is completely lost. The further use of the plural in the presentation of the content of liturgical prayers is nothing other than a trace of the previous participation of the people in their utterance, just as the remnant of the ancient Christian popular singing is the performance by the clergy, celebrants, and in some places by the people themselves of the entrance: Come, let us worship or the quiet Light for the bishop, archimandrite and even the simple priestly service? For example: For Your power is Yours. For You are a good and loving God, For You are due all glory, For You are holy, Our God, And they, too, glorify You with us, For under Your power, With the generosity of Your only begotten Son; Always, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Something like this: Singing the song of victory, Take it, go, Drink from it all. Yours from Yours brings to You, Fairly about the Most Holy... Swainson, The Greek Liturgies, 207–208; n. Collection ancient lit. in Russian lane issue 1, pp. 40–42. Ludolfi Ad suam historiam Aethiopicam Commentarius, pag. 324; Bunsen, Hippolytus und Seine Zeit, B. H. S. 444; n. Collection lit. in Russian lane issue III, p. 8. Goara Εὐχολόγ. r. 91; Krasnoseltseva N.F. Mater. for history lit. pp. 58–59. Scriptures of St. fathers and teachers of the church, related. to interpretations. divine service vol. I, p. 75. Demon. 18 by 2 last. Corinth., Russian. lane pp. 237–238. M. 1851; n. Demon. 21 on Acts, Russian. lane p. 390. St. Petersburg. 1856. Meadow spirit. Ch. 194, Russian lane pp. 215–217. M. 1848. St. Herman, Patr. Constant., Consistent presentation of the church. services and rituals: Minya Patrolog. t. 98, r. 452; Russian translation in writings, vol. I, p. 425; Wed Tolkov. Theodore of Andida in Art. N.F. Krasnoseltseva: Right. Sob. 1884, part I, p. 413. You might be interested in: