From readings on church archeology and liturgics (history of liturgy, interpretation of liturgy, history of chant)

The second part of the book is devoted to liturgics; there are no such omissions as in the first part. All sections of this part of the course were read by the author without illustrations, and for all of them original notes dating back to no later than the middle of 1895-1896 have been preserved; the only exception is the last section, unfinished by writing and editing, written hastily by the author in the last year of his life. None of the sections of Part 2 was published during the author's lifetime; only an explanation of the rites of the liturgy was given a place in the dissertation: “Cathedral Officials and the peculiarities of the service according to them.” For the rest, we refer the reader to the preface and introduction of part 1. This publication is posthumous: it was started after the death of the author and was completed in the absence of any instructions from him. The late author taught a course on church archeology and liturgics at the Moscow Theological Academy for almost 25 years (1887–1911), and the further time went, the more definite his intention was to develop his course into a manual for students, but a sudden early death prevented this intention from being realized. Bearing in mind the real poverty of Russian church-archaeological and liturgical literature in general accessible guides and, at the same time, knowing for certain that the scientific views and teaching methods of the late professor were based on the points of view and traditions established by his famous predecessor in the department I. D. Mansvetov, the publisher-son, in agreement with the advice of persons close to the author, considered it possible to take the liberty of collecting everything in one publication, which, whether in the form of articles printed by the author himself or in the form of handwritten sketches, was an integral part of the course he taught. As is natural when carrying out a posthumous edition, I had to encounter numerous difficulties, I had to put up with many shortcomings, which were not always possible to eliminate in the absence of the author. The publisher was well aware that many of the articles included in this book, for example, “From the History of Russian Painting,” the author did not consider it possible to publish in the 2nd edition without alterations, that he was going to process the entire course more carefully, believing that this would require a considerable period of time. Many of the entries are too old (1885–1896) to be out of date in some of the details; others, on the contrary, were written hastily, in the very last year of life, some of them were not completed in presentation, they were never even read in the audience and were not checked, such as, for example, the last sections in both parts. The book is missing many large sections of the course that were read, but for which the author’s handwritten notes have not been preserved: such, for example, is the section on architecture, usually read by the author from illustrations or with a light lantern, and therefore probably not written down by him; only the so-called tickets have been preserved here - short student notes, sometimes corrected, however, by the author himself; A complete selection of them also has not survived, and it did not seem convenient to print them. Due to the work on parts of the course at different times, here and there, when treating related issues, the book will contain repetitions or even, perhaps, some inconsistency of judgments on the same issue. Towards the end of his teaching career, the late author generally presented his course more freely, not sticking to his old notes and, at the same time, not correcting them. By releasing the book under such circumstances, with the indicated gaps and shortcomings, the blame for which cannot in any way be placed on the author, who never gave his consent to anyone to publish the book in the proposed form, the publisher refrained from any editorial work on the text of the “Readings”, not having any special training for this and not being able to entrust this work to any of the specialists. All his work amounted only to stylistic corrections, to establishing the correct reading of this or that passage, presented in several versions, to eliminating obvious oversights and inaccuracies, and, finally, to dividing the “Readings” into chapters. All previously printed articles from the course have now been reprinted in their entirety and without changes, and therefore the reader may encounter several pages in the book that were usually, or perhaps never, read in front of an audience. The late author was strict and extremely scrupulous not only about printed word, but also about any public word; he categorically declared the need to edit the course. May he forgive us if, having published the book in the form offered to the reader, we acted against his wishes and did not comply with the conditions that he recognized as necessary! Our justification lies in his unexpected death and in his strict thought, which gives us hope that everything essential in the Readings is presented as it should be, and that errors and omissions can only be in minor details. We hope that a supportive reader will not blame the author, and people who value his good scientific name will not complain about the publisher. The first part of the book, devoted to church archaeology, with the exception of the almost entirely missing section on architecture, was composed partly of articles that, arising from the course, were published by the author himself; This includes the articles: “Places of prayer meetings of Christians of the 1st-3rd centuries”, “On the attitude of Christians of the first three centuries to art”, “Images of Jesus Christ”, “On images of the Mother of God”, “From the history of images of the cross and the sign of the cross”, “On the Greek icon painting original”, “From the history of ancient Russian icon painting”. The remaining chapters and sections of the first part were published for the first time only after the death of the author for this edition. Having begun publication almost six years ago, the publisher cherished the idea of ​​providing the book with illustrations and putting a cheap price on it. Now, publishing a book in the circumstances of wartime and the terrible high cost, we involuntarily have to abandon both ideas. The publisher recalls with deep gratitude the benevolent hospitality that was provided to some departments of the course by the editors of the Theological Messenger, and the moral support and very valuable advice that was never refused by some of his colleagues close to the late author. The relationship of liturgics to the science of church antiquities. Subject and method of liturgics. A note on the progress of its scientific development. Brief information about the most important sources for the history of worship. From the definition of the subject of church archeology that I gave in the introductory readings, one can understand the essential importance of the liturgical part in the scope of the science of church antiquities and its completely direct, or, I will say, necessary relationship to the tasks of the latter. Getting to the presentation of the liturgical department, I would now like to more precisely define this relationship and explain the right of ritual content to careful treatment in our course, especially in view of the strange view that has been expressed recently by some leaders of our even theological school, that liturgics is something accidentally imposed on archeology and has little in common with it, that the introduction of the liturgical part into the content of our science is explained by an alleged concession to the former clerical view, the traditional setting of our department and pedagogical misunderstandings. At the same time, they refer to the production of church archeology in the Western school and to its processing here in a form close to the history of Christian art. But in the West, especially in Protestant circles, many theological sciences have been erased, which in our country have the right of citizenship and generally recognized dignity. Liturgics, as a doctrine of worship, of course, does not have solid ground there, and the religious rite, existing almost from yesterday, has lost touch with the ancient Christian rite and, indeed, has little in common with archeology; but with us the matter is different: our current church rite is, however, a somewhat updated liturgical form that has changed in some of its details over time; but, on the whole, it still breathes the archaism of hoary antiquity, which in many cases has now become incomprehensible. It is not true, then, that Western science of Christian antiquities does not know liturgics. Not to mention the previous courses of church archeology, issued from the pen of strict Protestant scholars, where a wide place was given to research on the ancient Christian hours of prayer, on matins, vespers and liturgy, on the celebration of the sacraments and on holidays, not to mention these works, and in the newest works of this kind, historical and liturgical information is introduced quite widely and, in any case, is recognized as essential in the scope of science Christian antiquities. We will not talk about such special and relatively old liturgical works as Kliphoth’s “Liturgische Abhandlungen”, Probst’s “Sacramentary”; Let's take one of the very recent taxonomists of the science of church antiquities, Professor Krause. His excursion “On the tasks and scope of church archeology,” despite the compiler’s obvious attraction to monumental material, gives the history of church rite a very prominent place. The science of Christian antiquities, or archeology, according to Krause, is a comprehensive study and presentation of Christian life during the period of Greco-Roman culture (i.e. until the VI-VII centuries), until the time of German influence. Outlining the main departments of this science, he puts in the first place the antiquities relating to church government and law, in the second place - the antiquities of the cult; and this is the same department that in ancient times was assigned in archeology under the name antiquitates religiosae, or liturgicae. As if to justify his view, our author, in the excellent archaeological dictionary he published, “Real-Encyklopädie der christlichen Alterthümer,” explained quite a few purely liturgical terms, introduced many words from the Greek liturgical language, and in this respect left his predecessors far behind. Antiquitates liturgicae, strictly speaking, have almost more rights to treatment in church archeology than all other antiquitates. Removing them would be tantamount to removing ethnography from the scope of general archeology; but material monuments of everyday life and art stand in such close connection with the needs of people’s life and its deep-rooted rituals and beliefs that only in them and in connection with them do they receive their historical significance. Separate the church from what happens in it, forget the images that are associated with its individual parts, stand in connection with its structure, and you will get some kind of skeleton, some kind of anatomical mass without life and voice. To understand the purpose and relationship of these parts, you need to see their work, that is, vital, physiological functions. We don’t even need to be embarrassed by the Western-accepted limitation of church archeology to the first 6th-7th centuries. Classical culture in the East lived and asserted itself much longer than it did in the West; The connection between the ancient rite and the later never ceased here: the ancient Christian rite was changed in one way or another, reworked, like everything that lives a historical life, took on new forms and complications, discarded details that did not meet the new religious needs that arose, but, despite this, it always remained faithful to the ancient Christian basis and served as its exponent. But when we talk about liturgics as one of the most meaningful departments of our course, we do not mean interpretative church doctrine, not the study of the status quo of our worship from liturgical books, to which our school liturgics has long limited its curiosity. I refer to our thin guides on this part, to the voluminous volume of the once classic book on liturgics “The New Tablet”, an interpretation of Simeon of Thessalonica, in order to give an idea of ​​​​this one-sided formulation of the science of church worship. I am far from thinking that a thorough acquaintance with our liturgical books is unnecessary or unnecessary. This would be pedagogical nonsense. But everything has its time: what I will read and how to read it is possible only on the assumption that our listeners are already familiar with the material of the church service, have a clear understanding of its course, the peculiarities of liturgical terminology, and are well acquainted with the contents of individual liturgical books. What we mean by liturgics will consist not in setting out the status quo of our church service, not in explaining its meaning according to the well-known methods of school exegesis, but in determining the historical foundations of worship, in the historical explanation of its forms, or genesis. This, in my opinion, should consist of a conscious attitude towards church ritual and its scientific representation. Only under this indispensable condition can there be a strict discussion of the science of church worship. Let us admit that the need for it is comparatively very poorly developed in our country, and the very idea of ​​such a science was questioned not so long ago and gave rise to an unflattering image of those experiments that were presented under this name in our school literature. This doubt is a matter of misunderstanding, and it will dissipate by itself when in the current structure of the church service and in its ritual details we deal with historical material, we see not a random set of rituals, but a consistently developed system, in the processing of which the best church forces took part as organizers of the ritual, compilers of individual services and their interpretations. We tend to treat these latter one-sidedly and, in any case, underestimate their historical significance. Interpreters of divine services - mystics with their allegorical methods of explaining rituals - are considered by some to be moralists and respected for the moralizing direction of their reasoning, others are almost ignored for the artificiality of exegetical techniques, and still others are overestimated, considering them almost the alpha and omega of liturgical wisdom. The previous presentations of liturgics were especially guilty of this last quality. Neither one, nor the other, nor the third is wrong. The fact is that interpreters, scholastics, and mystics, regardless of their direction, deal with the factual side of the church service and start from its contemporary details and, thus, provide the historian of the ritual with positive liturgical material. You just need to use them skillfully. This time. Then, similar historical material lies in their interpretations. Mystical and allegorical explanations are not fiction, pure fiction of divergent imagination. If not everywhere and always, then in many cases there is an internal connection between the interpretation and the interpreted, from which only other interpretations can be explained, which at first glance seem completely abstract and, perhaps, not entirely interpretable. By pondering the interpretation, studying it in the light of factual understanding, you discover this connection much more often than you might think, and you involuntarily change your view of the meaning of these quasi-artificial interpretations. Mystical interpreters had in mind a positive church ritual, only they interpreted it in the spirit of the time and expressed their view of it in a form where the relationship between a fact and its meaning had a conventional meaning and was expressed in the mystical language accepted at that time. It is not enough to break the shell, under the shell of which the ritual content is hidden; you need to take a closer look at this shell and study its features. In contrast to the monuments of Christian art, Christian worship began to attract attention very early. At that time, when the monuments of church art were completely unknown, entire works were already being compiled about divine services, collections of liturgical material and more or less detailed records of individual services were being published. However, the ancient writers were primarily concerned with the exegetical part of the service, explaining the meaning of ritual forms, remaining aloof from any historical tasks. As a result of this, the literature of the ancient period is limited to almost only works of a liturgical-exegetical nature and does not represent anything important in relation to Christian worship and for understanding its history. But, despite the one-sidedness of its direction, the literature of this period is of particular importance to us because it introduces us to the very beginnings of Christian worship, to the formation, development and establishment of the most important forms of Christian rite. This period continues until the time of iconoclasm and, in turn, falls into two large sections. The first, during the first three centuries, represents only the first foundations and embryos of liturgical forms, hidden under the cover of secret home worship. The second, from the 4th century to the iconoclasm, embraces an era of lively work regarding worship: it develops and becomes more complex, acquires a more definite character in the sense of well-known church services and rites, and becomes open and public. On the general basis of early Christian worship, special liturgical forms took shape in the eastern and western half of the Christian world, and the Latin rite little by little deviated from the rite of the Eastern Church. From the 8th century onwards, roughly speaking, the detailed side of church succession begins to be established, and they take shape in the form they exist in the current Rule. From this time on, the processing of the Church Rules began, and many hymnographic works entered church use. Since the Reformation, the scientific development of liturgics began: monuments of liturgical writing were collected, published and commented on. In the first period we do not find independent works related to the field of worship; this period provides only isolated indications of certain aspects of church cult and raw material for research. It was a time when the young Christian society was not yet able to take an objective view of the ongoing process of formation of liturgical forms, when it lived in this process and from itself, like a web, weaved the thread of this religious network. Painstaking study, of course, from each of the writers of the Apostolic Age and from the apologists will find an indication of one or another aspect of the liturgical order, but more important for our purpose in this regard are several names and several works of a liturgical nature. Such, for example, is the liturgical information from Clement of Rome, Justin, Irenaeus and Tertullian, and a whole series of very important data from the works of John Chrysostom, worthily appreciated by science. In his teachings, he borrowed a lot of edifying features from the rituals of the liturgy, church prayers and introduced his listeners to the meaning of the liturgical actions performed before them, especially the most important part of the liturgy. More complete and systematically arranged liturgical sources of this period include the Apostolic Constitutions, which in Books II, V, VII and especially VIII present a collection of sequences and prayers related to the composition of the Missal and Breviary, and in other places give an outline of daily services and, most importantly, a detailed presentation of the then liturgy (in Book VIII). Unfortunately, there are no positive indications of the time of origin of this collection. But in the present case, without going into details, we will only note that, according to the conclusion of the most serious researchers of this monument, the first seven books date back to the 3rd century, and the 8th to the 4th. The first records of liturgies date back to the same time, that is, to the 4th century. They have not reached us, but a number of interpretive liturgical works have survived, most of which relate to the explanation of the liturgy. This series of liturgical writers, most of whom extend beyond the period we have noted, belongs to him only by two names: Cyril of Jerusalem and the so-called Dionysius the Areopagite. Cyril of Jerusalem, as a catechist, explained the teachings of the faith and the rites of worship to persons preparing for baptism and the newly enlightened; He was the first to expound the Creed in 17 teachings, and the last, as full members of the Christian Church, was to expound the rites of the sacraments, which remained closed to the uninitiated. In these last teachings, the so-called “secret words,” numbering five, the Jerusalem catechist explained to his listeners the rites of Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist. Explaining the content of the latter, he presented a brief rite of the liturgy of his Church, and this constitutes the content of the fifth secrecy word. As for Dionysius the Areopagite, his essay “On the Church Hierarchy” has a special liturgical content and presents a presentation and explanation of the rites included in Baptism, Consecration of the world, initiation into church degrees, monastic tonsure and burial. Unfortunately, the exact determination of the time of origin of both this and other works known with the name of Dionysius is a controversial issue, which is resolved in different ways. But, despite all attempts to defend the belonging of the “church hierarchy” to the period of the apostolic men, very large difficulties and obvious liturgical anachronisms remain ineradicable. The lack of news about the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite before the 6th century leads to the same conclusion. Regardless of its actual merit, the literature we are considering is very important from an exegetical point of view and represents an example of two schools, one of which held an allegorical understanding of the rite, and the other had in mind its immediate historical meaning and can be called literal. To the first belongs Dionysius the Areopagite and the series of interpreters that follows him, such as: Maximus the Confessor, Simeon of Thessaloniki and Nicholas Cabasilas; to the second - Cyril of Jerusalem and partly John Chrysostom. In the middle between these directions stand the interpreters of the 6th-8th centuries: Sophronius and Germanus. Chronologically, they follow each other in the following order: Cyril of Jerusalem, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, Patriarch Germanus, the Syrian interpreter James of Edessa and Chosroes the Great, Theodore Andides, Simeon of Thessalonica, Nicholas Cabasilas (half of the 14th century) and Mark of Ephesus, a famous figure in the Council of Florence. The interpretation of the service presupposes that the ritual is already strong and established; the interpretation relies on the rite not only as a liturgical act performed in a certain way, but explains it as already written down, therefore, performed in a given positive form. This circumstance naturally draws our attention to a new and most important type of liturgical material that serves as a fundamental remnant of the history of worship - we mean the written presentation of the services and rituals themselves, or the so-called liturgical books. The liturgy was the first to undergo such processing and appeared in the records in the part that in ancient times was called ἀναφορά, and now - the canon of the Eucharist and the liturgy of the faithful. Next, the rituals of the sacraments and prayers were recorded regarding private life events that needed church consecration. From the Apostolic Decrees and the writings on the “church hierarchy”, as well as from Cyril of Jerusalem, it is clear that all these rituals were performed in a monotonous form and were similar to each other even in presentation. Other services: Vespers, Matins, initially consisted of the performance of well-known psalms, to which prayers were added, and therefore were closely related to the Psalter and did not require special presentation. The first liturgical books are the Breviary and the Service Book - together called Euchologius in Greek. The VIII book of the Apostolic Constitutions can serve as its oldest example, and in the 7th century the existence of the Euchologion was already mentioned as a collection of well-known prayers and sequences of the breviary circle. At the same time, the Gospel, the Apostle and the Psalter with selected songs from the Bible appeared as liturgical books. These books initially contained one text of the Bible; then this text began to be marked in relation to use during the service, and only then, on the basis of these markings, the service Gospels and the Apostles appeared, where the readings were arranged in the order of the church year and began to be accompanied by liturgical remarks. The Psalter was the first to undergo this complication - biblical songs began to be added to it. These songs served as the basis for the canons, and the latter appear from the 8th century, and under the pen of Damascus the solid foundations of Octoechos are laid. Collections of church songs found a place in kontakari, that is, collections of kontakia, stichirary and Octoechos. The written Charter appeared in monasteries and initially determined only the most general grounds for individual services; its details developed along with the development of worship and the appearance of separate liturgical books. Time has not preserved to us not only the original, but also the most ancient liturgical books, and the now known handwritten materials of this kind do not go back further than the 8th-9th centuries, and even those are extremely rare. This material is scattered across various book depositories, both foreign and our domestic; Many of these libraries have already been described, while others are still awaiting their bibliography. Of the separate collections of services and sequences of the Greek Church, both ancient and subsequent, several should be named, and they most of all have the right to study every student of liturgics. These collections are: 1) Apostolic Constitutions; 2) “Collection of Ancient Liturgies” in the edition of Renaudotus and an even more complete, but extremely expensive – Asseman’s “Codex liturgicus”; 3) The sequences of the Greek Service Book and Breviary are combined in the major edition of the Western scientist Gohar “Euchologion sive rituale graecorum”; good explanations of the corresponding rituals are also given; 4) Liturgical songs, canons and various kinds of observances performed both in the Eastern and Roman Catholic Churches are collected by Daniel in his “Thesaurus hymnologicus ecclesiae universae”; the last volume of this edition contains the hymns and sermons of the Eastern Church - Carmina ecclesiae Graecae; 5) The main source is the printed edition of our liturgical books, for the scientific use of which it is necessary to compare them both with Greek editions and with the text of liturgical books found in manuscripts. You might be interested in: