Liturgy in the first centuries of Christianity

How was the liturgy, or better yet, the Eucharist celebrated during the time of the apostles? The initial beginning and seed of liturgical practice was the establishment of the New Testament supper by Christ. How the Lord Himself established and celebrated the Eucharist - the first three evangelists give us a general answer to this. From them we learn that “on the first day of unleavened bread, on which the Passover lamb was to be slain, the disciples came to Jesus and said to Him, “Where do you want to eat the Passover?” We'll go and cook. And Jesus sent Peter and Jonah and said to them: Go into the city, and a man will meet you with a pitcher of water; follow him and say to the owner of the house into which he enters: The Teacher says to you: Where is the room in which I can eat the Passover with My disciples? And he will show you an upper room (ἀνώγεον) large, furnished, ready: prepare there. They went into the city and found as he had told them, and prepared the Passover. When evening came, He came and lay down with the twelve apostles. And as they reclined, Jesus said to them, “I have greatly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” For I tell you that I will no longer eat it until it is completed in the kingdom of God. And, taking the cup and giving thanks, he said: take it and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And taking bread and blessing (ε ὐ λουγη ́ σας), he broke it and, distributing it to the disciples, said: Take, eat: this is My body. And, taking the cup and giving thanks (ε ὐ χαριοτη ́ σας), he gave it to them and said: drink from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Luke 22:7–20; Mark 14:12–18, 22–24; Matt. 26:17–21, 23, 26–88). The above story not only depicts the setting of Christ’s celebration of the Old Testament Easter supper, not only clearly names both types of the New Testament sacrament, but also contains an indication of the external method of their consecration. The words: both blessing and giving thanks signify the act of prayer that preceded the breaking of the bread and the distribution of the cup. Unfortunately, the evangelists kept silent about exactly how he blessed, what kind of grateful prayer the Savior said over the bread and wine; from their narrative one can only see that Jesus Christ performed the New Testament Easter or the sacrament of the Eucharist after the Old Testament Easter rite and in connection with it. Therefore, the rituals and prayers of the Old Testament Easter constituted, as it were, an introduction to the Eucharist and, very likely, served as a model according to which the canon of the Eucharist was developed. According to the law, the owner of the house or the eldest member of the family who celebrated the Passover (that is, crushed the Passover lamb, distributed it to those present at the supper and told the story of the establishment of the latter), said a whole series of psalms, from the 113th to the 118th, and this constituted the so-called hallel, or prayer of praise and thanksgiving. During the first and second bowls, the first two psalms were read, representing the greatness and power of Jehovah, which was expressed in delivering the Jews from slavery. Before the 2nd bowl, the father of the family, in response to his son’s question, why this night is different from all nights, explained according to Ex. 12:26 the purpose and meaning of the supper, recalled the deliverance of the Jews from slavery in Egypt 1. When the third cup was consumed, the remaining psalms were recited from 115 to 118, which express gratitude to Jehovah for help and salvation in misfortune, and contain a song of thanksgiving to the Messiah for delivering Him from death. Having said the words of the last psalm: blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord (Ps. 117:26), the owner of the house took the fourth cup of wine and said a prayer over it (ε ὐ λογι ́ αν), in which on behalf of his family he glorified and thanked God for the gifts of His goodness in approximately the following expressions: Blessed art thou, Lord our God, King of the world, who brings forth bread from the earth, or: Blessed art thou, Lord, who created vine branch; then he drank from the cup himself, and so did the other participants in the supper. To the described rites of the Jewish Passover, Christ added the rite of the New Testament Eucharist. This addition consisted of blessing the bread and the cup with prayers, probably similar to those above, and then breaking the first and presenting the latter to the apostles with the utterance of certain words of establishment of the sacrament. Breaking bread means precisely dividing it for communion: the ancients did not cut bread, like us, but broke it into pieces with their hands, and therefore, before the dough was put in the oven, they cut it to make it easier to break later. The apostles and the first believers, when celebrating the Eucharist, in its main features undoubtedly followed the model according to which it was celebrated by Christ Himself. This is indicated by the clear connection in which the ap. Paul in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 11:23–29) the Eucharist with the Last Supper of Christ. “I,” he says, “received from the Lord Himself what I also conveyed to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread and, giving thanks (ε ὐ χαριοτη ́ σας), broke it and said: take, eat, this is My body, broken for you (κ λω ́ μενον) ; do this in remembrance of Me. He also took the cup after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, whenever you drink, in remembrance of Me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes. Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Cor. 11:23–29) The parallel drawn by the Apostle between the Eucharist of the Corinthian Christians and the last supper of Christ is based not only on the internal connection between both, but also on their similarity on the outside - in the very method of execution. The apostle summarizes both of these aspects of the relationship in a few words elsewhere in the same first letter to the Corinthians and brings them to the blessing of the cup and the breaking of bread: “The cup of blessing which we bless is not a sharing of the blood of Christ? Is not the bread that we break a communion of the body of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10:16) True, in the quotation just given, the apostle denotes the action on the bread of the Eucharist with the words: bread, we break it, without adding: we bless, as if no prayer of consecration was said over the bread of the Eucharist, and all practice regarding this type of sacrament was limited only to breaking and distributing; but here, as in the second chapter of Acts (Acts 2:42,46), refraction is brought into view as a characteristic, visible act, which gives a concrete feature for representing the actions on the bread. That the expression: we break it does not exclude the act of blessing; this is reliably revealed from the words of the apostle himself, who, conveying the history of the institution of the New Testament sacrament, said, as we have seen, about Christ: “he took the bread and, having given thanks, broke it... also the cup after supper” (Luke 22:17,19; Mark 14:22–23; Matt.26:26–27). Consequently, here the apostle’s actions on both types of Eucharist seem to be the same. So, the blessing of the bread and the cup with prayers, and then the breaking of the former and the distribution of the latter with the utterance, in remembrance of Christ, of the establishing words of the sacrament, given by the Apostle Paul as sacramental, this is the main content of the apostolic liturgy. It can be assumed that the first believers, following the example of Christ, celebrating the Eucharist, also pronounced the hallel as part of those psalms that were read at Easter by the Jews; but over time, in fact, the use of gallel had to cease. Its messianic content, its tone, borrowed from Jewish ideas, did not reconcile with the main act of the liturgy, as a New Testament institution, reminiscent of Christ and His suffering. The thanksgiving prayer of the Christian Eucharist, in which, just like in the Old Testament hallel, the greatness of God is glorified and gratitude is expressed for the works of providence and salvation, received Christian content very early. But as regards the external type of this prayer, or the present liturgical canon with its three parts, it has retained a fairly close resemblance to its Jewish prototype. The agapes or love feasts give us a new feature to characterize the apostolic liturgy. This was the name in the early Christian church for public meals, to which all members of a certain community gathered, and for the preparation of which more sufficient Christians made a certain contribution in kind, that is, they brought household products necessary for the table. Part of these offerings, consisting of bread and wine, was usually set aside for the celebration of the Eucharist, and the rest, becoming common property, was used jointly by those present at the supper - noble and simple people, rich and poor. What relation did this characteristic phenomenon of the social life of the first Christians have to the early Christian Eucharist? To resolve this issue, the most important evidence is the passage from the Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 11:20–34), where St. Paul, in describing the disturbances in the Corinthian community during the love feasts, warns the troublemakers and restores respect for this sacred institution. From the words of the apostle and from other New Testament books and early Christian sources, it is undoubtedly clear that in the first days of the church the Eucharist was combined with the suppers of love and formed one integral act with them. Only thanks to the close connection with the Eucharist could the agapes receive the name of the Lord's Supper (Κυριακὸν εῖπνον: 1 Cor. 11:20). As for the position of the Eucharist in the supper of love, then, as some expressions of the Apostle Paul suggest, it took place after the agape and constituted their conclusion, that is, the communion of the body and blood of Christ followed the end of the supper, and not vice versa. To understand the possibility of such a custom, one must keep in mind that Christ also performed the sacrament of the Eucharist after the end of the Easter supper, and His example could without a doubt give full swing to this practice. The Eucharist was celebrated then under the living, direct impression of the Gospel Supper of Christ. Following this example, the leading Christians offered thanksgiving, broke bread and received communion after supper. It should be noted, however, that there is disagreement among researchers regarding this issue, based mainly on the dissimilarity between early Christian practice and later rules about the time of the Eucharist. But from the apostle’s denunciation of the Corinthian riots, it is clearly seen that in Corinth the Eucharist was celebrated, in the words of the blessed one. Augustine (Ep. 118 ad. San. pp. 6 and 7), post coenam sive convivium, that the Christians there ate and drank before receiving the sacrament. The abuse that arose in Corinth was that some of the participants in the common meal, having brought their share for the common cause, continued to consider themselves its owners and thus, in the very principle, violated the purpose of this institution. They came precisely to the tables earlier than others, took from what was prepared, what and as much as they could, as a result of which some were hungry, others were full, and yet it is known that the Eucharist was celebrated in the general presence, in the assembly of all believers. It may be said that such an order of things is an abuse, condemned by the Apostle himself, and therefore there is no reason to consider the conclusion that follows from this to be the norm of apostolic practice. But this objection could be strong only if it had a basis for itself in the very text of the apostolic speech. But this cannot be said: it turns out that the apostle himself encourages this abuse when he says: “And if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home,” obviously, before supper, “so that you do not gather together for condemnation.” So, the apostle, in order to prevent disorder, which some Corinthians allowed themselves to do by receiving the Eucharist after eating, advises such persons to come to the meeting after eating at home. Consequently, there were no obstacles to accepting the sacrament. Subsequent church practice retained traces of this custom in that until the 6th century in Carthage and other places in Africa there was a custom of receiving communion on Maundy Thursday evening, after eating, and this custom was motivated by imitation of Christ and the apostles. At the third Council of Carthage in 397. a special rule was drawn up (50th), which legalized such a custom for African churches and was subsequently canceled by the decrees of the Trullo Council. But the Trullo Council, in canon 29, abolishes this custom, not because it considers it indecent to receive the Eucharist after eating, but because accepting the Eucharist sooner or later violates the strictness of the pre-Easter fast. In Carthage, in the time of Cyprian, there was a small sect of the Hydroparasts, who were distinguished by the fact that they celebrated the Eucharist with water alone; at least they did this at their morning meetings, and in the evenings they celebrated the Eucharist, drinking wine diluted with water. The Idroparasts justified themselves by the fact that, although they drank only water in the mornings, they combined it with wine during evening meals. Their evening meetings were thus dedicated to the Eucharist. What is Cyprian doing? Does he refute the sectarians from the point of view of time by pointing out that they choose an illegal time for the legal Eucharist, namely the evening? No. Without blaming the choice of time, he only notices the inconvenience for celebrating the Eucharist in the evening, that the whole people, the whole brotherhood cannot be called to these meetings, and therefore the power of the legal sacrament does not become clear to everyone. From the continuation of Cyprian's polemic with the Hydroparasts, it is clear, however, that in his time the usual time for the Eucharist was not the evening, but the morning. Socrates in his history (V, 22; cf. Sozomena T.I. VII, 19) notes the following curious fact: among the Egyptian Christians who lived in the neighborhood of the Alexandrians, and among the inhabitants of Thebaid, there was in his time the custom of celebrating the Eucharist on Saturday evenings and partaking of the mysteries at the end of the meal with a wide variety of dishes. Although Socrates recognizes this custom as an exception to the general rule, one cannot help but see in it an echo of early Christian practice, which, however, in the 4th century was already replaced almost everywhere by the custom of taking communion on an empty stomach, in the morning, without eating. This was the case in the era of the Apostolic Decrees and in the time of Chrysostom. “They say,” the latter wrote in refutation of one of the slander of his enemies: “that I gave communion to several people after they ate. If I did this, then may Christ expel me from His kingdom” 2. This means that under Chrysostom, communion after eating was already considered a sin, and, therefore, the apostolic custom of preceding the Eucharist with suppers of love, with a few exceptions, had fallen out of use by that time. Some scholars attribute the separation of agape from the Eucharist to the edict of Emperor Trajan against secret societies. It seems to me that historical criticism does not have the right to associate this fact with a specific chronological term and from it lead to a new period in the history of the liturgy. This separation, prepared by the conditions of the time, the abuses in the practice of agape and the revelation of the doctrine of the Eucharist as a sacrifice, could not occur simultaneously in all parts of the Christian world; the connection between agapes and the Eucharist weakened gradually, as the ritual side of the liturgy was developed, and agapes themselves turned into a philanthropic institution, alien to any liturgical lining. So, we found that the first Christian Eucharist was the conclusion of the supper of love and consisted of the breaking of bread and the blessing of the cup, that is, the consecration of both types of sacrament through special prayer. From the very beginning, this simple liturgical act was complicated by certain additions from the customs of the Jewish synagogue and from those rituals with which Christians connected their meetings for common prayer, and in which they expressed their piety. These additional parts, not being specifically liturgical actions in themselves, constituted the setting of the Eucharist. These include: prayers - προσευχα (Acts 2:42), reading the Old Testament and then the New Testament books, singing the sacred. song (ψαλμός,ὕμνος, ὡδή) and teaching or preaching (διδαχή). That prayer, without which no divine service is unthinkable, was part of the first Christian Eucharist, this is made clear by the Writer when he says about the first believers that “they constantly remained in the teaching of the apostles, in fellowship and the breaking of bread and in prayers.” Although there are no direct and clear indications in the New Testament books about the reading of the Holy Scriptures at the apostolic liturgy, it is so natural, so consistent with the example of the Old Testament church, whose worship necessarily included the reading of the law and the prophets, that there is no reason to not allow or challenge it. That psalmody was also part of the early Christian Eucharist, we are assured of this by the example of the Savior Himself, Who, after the New Testament Last Supper, went with the disciples to the Mount of Olives, singing, and the words of the Apostle: “When you come together, each of you has a psalm (1 Cor. 14:26), or also: “Teach and admonish one another.” psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, singing in grace to the Lord in your hearts (Col. 3:16; cf. Eph. 5:19). Especially preaching or teaching was given a wide place in the apostolic liturgy. In confirmation of this, it is enough to recall the fourteenth chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians, in which the apostle urges the latter to make proper use in public Christian meetings of the various gifts that the leading Christians possessed, so that the gift of tongues, and prophecy, and teaching would serve for the reasonable edification of those present, and not lead to disorder during meetings, as sometimes happened in Corinth. From what has just been said about the composition of the ritual actions that took place during the celebration of the Eucharist of the Apostolic period, it is easy to see that the content of the latter included those main, essential parts from which the liturgy of our time is composed, with the significant difference, however, that in the current rite of the liturgy, the parts that make it up follow one after another in a well-known, once forever strictly defined order and represent a rounded whole, falling into three main sections - the preparation of gifts or proskomedia, the liturgy of the catechumens and the act of the Eucharist itself or the liturgy of the faithful. Of course, neither such a strict order nor such names existed during the apostolic period, when the proskomedia did not contain anything liturgical, but consisted, according to the remark of Clement of Rome, only of one simple act of offering gifts (προσφοραί), when all those present were allowed to participate in the Eucharist, and, therefore, there could not be a liturgy of catechumens; but we repeat: what now constitutes the main content of these liturgical parts was concentrated in essential features, in embryo, in the apostolic liturgy. The offering of bread and wine by the faithful for the agape and Eucharist provided content for the subsequent proskomedia; prayers, readings and sermons served as the material from which the liturgy of the catechumens was subsequently formed; prayers of thanksgiving and blessing are in accordance with the current Eucharistic canon or liturgy of the faithful. The question arises: how was the scheme of the apostolic liturgy outlined by us preserved in church practice? How then did the latter develop, in what way and manner was its subsequent rather complex content composed and developed? This question is very important and should be placed at the forefront of a further review of liturgical forms and their gradual complication. In the content of the early Christian liturgy, two sides should be distinguished - constant, stable, and variable, flowing. The first included the essential features of liturgical practice, without which the celebration of the Eucharist could not do - these are: offering, blessing and use of gifts. Other parts of the apostolic liturgy, being less essential and not even necessary in its celebration, should also be considered permanent, because they became part of the liturgy in a ready-made, established form. This category included prayers, doxologies, appeals and appeals, which passed into Christian worship in ready-made formulas, partly from Jewish practice, partly from Christ Himself and the apostles. The constant elements of apostolic worship should include, for example, the words of establishing the sacrament of the Eucharist and the sacramental words of baptism, invariably repeated according to the commandment of Christ; appeals: Peace to all, the Lord be with you, Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and friend.; invocations: amen, alleluia, hosanna; holy, holy, holy; glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; the Lord's Prayer, the blessing formula used by the Old Testament priests 3 and, finally, reading or singing the psalms of David can also be included here. All these unchanging formulas, among the variously changing liturgical material, became fixed centers, constant units, around which further grouping of the liturgical material was carried out, and to which the moving or variable parts of the liturgy were assigned. The latter, on the contrary, did not have a strictly defined form, were compiled freely and varied greatly in church practice. In the primary church there were special conditions that promoted this free, creative activity in the field of worship. The main ones were the internal fullness of extraordinary spiritual gifts and the free organization of the early Christian community - two qualities that found a place and recognition in the apostolic age. Both of these phenomena were in the closest, organic connection with each other due to the law of religious Christian life, according to which “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (1 Cor. 3:17). The prayer of Christians was precisely the action of the same Spirit. “We don’t know what we should pray for, but the Holy Spirit Himself speaks for us with unspeakable groanings. Ap. Paul, in his account of the miraculous gifts of the Corinthian Christians, provides us with striking evidence to confirm what he said. From it we see what freedom the Corinthian believers had in the matter of prayer, church preaching and explanation of scripture, each coming to the public meeting with his own psalm and his own edifying word. In other places and under other conditions, this freedom extended to other aspects of worship and also contributed to its content. Like the Essenes, who sang hymns during their meetings, and their leader sometimes freely composed the latter himself, so Christians, during the celebration of Agape and the Eucharist, sang songs, either previously known or newly composed by them ex impoviso. The more famous and suitable of these chants were made common property and passed into liturgical practice. In this way, it must be assumed, the carmen was compiled, which Christians, according to Pliny, sent in their nightly meetings to Christ as God; Common prayers probably belonged to the same category - εὐχαὶ κοινοί, which, according to the testimony of Justin, were said by Christians together with the leader before the celebration of the Eucharist. The latter’s activity in the administration of the liturgy, in the compilation and organization of its additional, variable parts, was even broader. The primate had the right to celebrate the Eucharist, προσφέρειν τὰ δῶρα, as Clement of Rome puts it; without him no one could perform a single sacred rite. “Without a bishop,” Ignatius the God-Bearer wrote in his letter to the Smirnians, “it is not permissible to baptize or celebrate the supper of love.” As the celebrant and representative of the community, the primate, at his personal discretion, determined the choice, number and order of readings and chants, and, according to his own inspiration and skill, taught and expounded the prayers of the Eucharist. All additional parts of the liturgy and its most important act bore in their particulars and details traces of his personal participation and activity and therefore allowed many modifications and turns in the presentation, depending on the state of mind and prayerful mood of the performer of the sacrament. In the monuments of ancient Christian writing we find many indications of the instability of the constituent parts of the liturgy and the existence in the primal church of free creativity in the performance of worship in general and the liturgy in particular. Let us present the most ancient and characteristic of them. Clement of Rome, having said that “the bishop is given his own sacred rites, the priests are assigned their place, the Levites have their services, but the layman is bound by worldly rules,” notes (albeit with insufficient clarity): “let each of the brethren in his own order give thanks (ε ὐχ αριοτει ́ τω) to God, being in a good conscience, not transgressing the appointed canon of His liturgy, honestly.” The author of Διδαχὴτῶν δώδεκα ἀποστόλων, having presented, as it were, exemplary examples of Eucharistic prayers over the cup and bread, concludes with an interesting addition: “let the prophets give thanks (ε ὐ χαριοτε ῖ ν) as they want." Justin Martyr said about the liturgy of his time that the monuments of the apostles and the writings of the prophets were read on it as much as possible (με ́ χρις ἐ γχωρε ῖ); that the primate offered prayers and thanksgiving (over the bread and the cup of water and wine) for as long as possible - ὅ ση δυ ́ ναμις α ὐ τ ῷ. Irenaeus, talking about one deceiver Mark, expresses himself as follows: “dissolving wine with water for the Eucharist and saying long prayers (ἐ π ὶ πλ ́ ε ῖ ον ἐ κτει ́ νων τ ὸ ν λ ό γον τ ῆ ς ἐ πικλη ́ σεως), he did what appeared crimson paint in a vessel.” Of course, Mark, by the duration of his prayer, imitated the already existing church practice (collaborative expression of Justin: καὶ εὐχαριοτίαν ἐπὶ πολὺ ποιεῖται). Gregory the Theologian talks about how his father, being unable to go to church due to illness, celebrated the Eucharist at home, in the presence of the people, how he said as few prayers as possible, how after the words of consecration he again lay down on his bed and blessed the people. Epiphanius of Cyprus wrote at one time to John of Jerusalem that he prayed for him at the liturgy in different expressions, depending on the connection of the speech. Without citing other data to prove the existence in the early Christian Church of significant freedom in the performance of divine services, we will only note that from that time we have also received samples of prayers marked by the rather bright stamp of the free creativity of the liturgist. It is enough to cite here as an example the recently revealed prayers of Serapion, Bishop of Tmuit (the first half of the 4th century), relating to the composition of public and private worship and reflecting, according to the publisher, a deep, subtle theological mind, and a remarkable knowledge of the word of God, and the genuine eloquence of the saint. In view of this indisputable fact of the free attitude of the ancient Christian primate to the performance of divine services, one can ask how far this freedom extended in the presentation of the order of the liturgy, was it unconditional, or was the free improvisation of the liturgist constrained by any positive framework? Although we do not have definite and direct historical evidence to resolve this issue, as far as we can judge, from the surviving indirect indications and the general arrangement of the liturgy in the ancient Christian era, the position of the celebrant was limited by many, many conditions. First of all, we must remember that the main content, the scheme of the Eucharist was established in the very first time of the church in Jerusalem, from where, together with Christianity, it spread to other places. And this is the reason why Justin in Palestine, Tertullian in Africa and the Apostolic Constitutions in Syria all present the rites of the Eucharist in the same way, and the content of its prayers is identical. Having been firmly established from the very beginning of Christianity, the apostolic scheme of the Eucharist has always remained unchanged and formed the basis for all subsequent movements of the liturgy. True, modifications were allowed from time to time in the development of the primitive scheme of the liturgy, but the scheme itself remained essentially inviolable, and the church, without exaggeration, one can say, at all times celebrated the Eucharist in the same way as the apostles and Christ Himself performed it. The historical study of liturgical forms from written sources, despite the many different editions or recordings of the liturgy, very much speaks in favor of one common basis for all of them, in favor of one type, which, if not with strictly historical right, then with a fairly clear conventional meaning, we call the type of apostolic liturgy. Without allowing the continuity of the liturgy in its basis from the apostles, it will be impossible to explain to oneself the striking similarity of all Christian liturgies in essential features, despite the numerous differences in details. If we assume that each local church built its liturgy freely, according to the will of its primate, then the question arises, how could that obvious similarity between them occur, about which one of the new researchers of liturgy (Bunsen) noted that it extends not only to one essential in the liturgy, but also to unimportant parts, that it enters deeply into their spirit and puts on them a special genetic imprint, similar to that worn by members of the same family, species of the same genus, organisms of the same structure. The early, strict and monotonous establishment of the basic liturgical structure contained the limitation of the arbitrariness of the primate; in the apostolic scheme of the liturgy, the latter had a ready-made frame into which he placed the corresponding content, but since the main parts of the liturgy and the general meaning of its prayers were already determined, the free participation of the primate was limited, at most, to the presentation of the content, its formal side. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that the early Christian liturgy, having neither our proskomedia nor the liturgy of catechumens, consisted mainly of prayers of praise and thanksgiving that preceded and accompanied the consecration of the Eucharistic gifts. The very brevity and simplicity of the liturgy facilitated and made it quite possible and completely safe for the primate to have a free attitude towards its celebration. In addition, the remembrance at the liturgy of the establishment of the sacrament of the Eucharist by Christ placed the primate on solid historical ground and provided ready-made material, ready-made formulas from the Gospel. Under such conditions, the prayers of the Eucharist were not written down for a long time. Tertullian, speaking about the rituals of his time during the celebration of the Eucharist and other sacraments, noted that they are not set out anywhere in scripture, but are preserved by tradition, custom and faith (traditio-autrix, consuetudo-conservatrix: De cor. Milit. p. 3. Bingh. V, 135). “Which of the saints,” asks St. Basil the Great, in his essay on the Holy Spirit (Sarah 27), “left us in writing the words of invocation by which the bread in the Eucharist and the cup of blessing are consecrated? We are not content with what the apostle and the gospel remember, but both before and after we pronounce other words that we have received from unwritten tradition as having power for the sacrament.” With these words, Basil the Great does not want to say that in his time even the most important prayers of the liturgy were not written down, but that neither the apostles nor their immediate successors set out in writing the prayers of the Eucharist, that the latter were borrowed and kept by oral tradition. In this latter way, the apostolic basis of the liturgy was preserved in the church - that specific canon or rite of the liturgy the non-crime and inviolability of which Clement of Rome warned the Corinthian Christians; The tradition of the liturgy also contained the main limitation on the arbitrariness of the primate in its celebration. Liturgical freedom was directly dependent on the fullness of extraordinary spiritual gifts and the free organization of the early Christian community, and therefore, as long as the institution of so-called charismatic teachers existed in the church, it could not cease; but very early this venerable institution began to deteriorate. Simultaneously with its decline, a period of activity of a correctly and precisely organized hierarchy should have begun, and aspirations should have appeared to limit the liturgical freedom of the primates. These attempts began very early, almost from the end of the first century. From the second half of the second century, namely, in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, we have a clear example of the formulation of the Eucharistic prayers. The subsequent regulation of Christian worship in general and liturgy in particular occurred gradually. Numerous liturgical records or editions have remained forever as monuments to this early and slow work of private leaders in the Christian Church to reduce liturgical norms to unity. In this desire for unification, the metropolitan churches were to receive leadership. The liturgy of the metropolitan city or the main one in the diocese receives precedence over others, is written down and in this form becomes obligatory for use. In the Apostolic Constitutions we find a liturgical record with a detailed presentation of the prayers and rites of the canon of the Eucharist, and this liturgy is presented in the name and, as it were, through the mouth of the Apostle in order to give its presentation, so to speak, canonical sanction. “I, James, say this” or: “I, Peter, Paul, make such and such a decree” - this is the usual formula with which canonical and liturgical prescriptions begin in the Apostolic Constitutions. This desire to establish ready-made liturgical forms is seen even more clearly in the following remark, which is made regarding the prayers of consecration of the world and prayers of thanks for communion set forth here (lib. VII, p. 27; Russian translation, p. 224): “If someone comes to you and offers thanks in this way, accept him as a disciple of Christ; If he proclaims a teaching other than that which Christ delivered to you through us, do not allow him to give thanks; for such a one insults God rather than glorifies Him” (Sn. Διδαχή p. XII. 1). From these words it is clear that there could have been other formulas for prayers of thanksgiving, that the latter were practiced differently in different places; but the canonical model and, so to speak, touchstone of the true confession of Christ should have been, in the opinion of the compiler, the formula he wrote down in this document. From the above remark it is also easy to see that the main reason for the regulation of worship, for the establishment of liturgical formulas, was the fear on the part of heretics, who introduced their religious views into church prayers and propagated them in this way. The church authorities, wishing to preserve in unchanging purity the apostolic tradition and the example of the first divinely inspired performers of worship, gradually establish supervision over new works that were part of liturgical practice, and direct their control especially in the direction where this subjective liturgical element could coexist more conveniently and easily. We mean private, home meetings for prayer. In this disciplinary spirit, some of the decrees of the Councils of Carthage and Laodicea were drawn up. In the 23rd rule of the III Council of Carthage in 397, it is directly prescribed that prayers copied from other sources (aliunde) should not be put into use except with the approval of people more knowledgeable. This means that at that time there were different lists of prayers, and the choice of them for liturgical use was often guided by personal considerations. “Let the prayers approved at the council, both initial and final, and the prayers of laying on of hands be performed,” prescribes Rule 116 of the Council of Carthage in 407, but let no others be offered.” St. Augustine in his time complained bitterly about the proliferation of liturgical prayers and the lack of unity and strict order in the composition of church hymns. The Milevite Council of 416 speaks out even more decisively against this state of affairs. He insists that only prayers (preces), petitions (orationes) and exclamations (praefationes) approved at the council be used everywhere... so that through ignorance nothing alien to faith will enter. The rules of the Council of Laodicea contain a whole series of instructions regarding the ninth hour, vespers, the pronunciation of psalms, the use of only known liturgical books and hymns, and the general ordering of worship, and its 19th rule even sets out the scheme of the liturgy. Thus, the boundaries of the liturgical freedom of the primates were gradually narrowed, and at the same time the letter of the liturgy was preserved, and its practical assimilation was carried out through memorizing the main prayers from memory. Given the lack of manuscripts, given the various circumstances in which the administration of the liturgy was faced in the first centuries, it was quite natural that the canon of the Eucharist and the prayers of consecration were recited by heart. In Luga Spiritual it is told about one deacon who, having bought prosphora for the service, on the way to his monastery read the prayers of the liturgy over them silently and handed them over to the steward. When the priest began to serve at these prosphoras the following Sunday, he read the prayer of consecration several times, but for some reason the Holy Spirit, contrary to custom, was not visible. The gifts turned out to have already been consecrated on the road by a deacon who knew the prayers of the Eucharist by heart. There is also a story about children who, having fun, built an altar, placed prosphora on it and read the prayers of the liturgical canon, which they obviously knew by heart. The consecration of the gifts took place, and the children were punished. We have outlined the general scheme of the liturgy of the apostolic period and shown that it formed the basis of all its subsequent forms, being preserved unchanged by tradition. Let us confirm the considerations we have expressed with action, and for this we will trace the history of the liturgy on the basis of data presented by church and pagan writers of the first three centuries, that is, the immediate post-apostolic time. On this path we first of all encounter the testimony of Pliny the Younger, ruler of Bithynia, belonging to the very first years of the second century. This testimony came from the pen of a pagan famous for his intelligence and honesty, is presented in the form of an official report from the Roman governor to the Emperor Trajan, and briefly depicts Christian meetings for prayer from the words of several apostates and two deaconesses forced by torture to confess. For our purpose, the following passage from Pliny’s letter is of particular significance: “they asserted,” Pliny says of the Christians who gave their testimony: “that their whole guilt or error consists in the fact that they are in the habit of meeting on a certain day (stato die) before sunrise (ante lucem), alternately offering up among themselves a song to Christ as God, and by an oath obliging themselves not to commit any crime, but not to commit no theft, no robbery, no adultery; do not break fidelity, do not refuse the pledge if it were required. After this was accomplished, they usually dispersed and gathered again to eat food, which was ordinary, however, and innocent; but they stopped doing this last thing as a result of my edict, by which I, on your orders, prohibited secret meetings.” – Of course, in the above words we cannot look for a detailed depiction of Christian prayer meetings and, moreover, from a Christian point of view. As a Roman proconsul, Pliny only conducted an inquiry into whether the accusations leveled against Christians were really fair, and informed the emperor about the result of his interrogation, explaining briefly, from the point of view of Roman judicial practice and his religious concepts. This explains the expressions he used: carmenque Christo quasi Deo dicere secum invicem and seque sacramento orbstringere, both borrowed from the conventional Roman legal language. – From this testimony of Pliny, we learn first of all that the prayer meetings of Bithynian Christians took place stato die. This expression has a double meaning: general, by which one should mean a specific, appointed, appointed day, and a special meaning of a holiday day, since in the Roman calendar such days were called dies stati, dies festi. But, in one sense or another, we will accept this expression, it will correspond very well to Sunday. This day, preferably over others, was appointed for general prayer meetings of Christians and distinguished their religious cult from those dates on which Roman holidays fell. On Sunday, more crowded, solemn meetings were held, connected with the Eucharist, which was not a general rule regarding other days of the week. – Further, judging by the instructions of Plinyev’s letter, on this day the Christians had two different meetings in time and nature: one early in the morning, before the sun rose, for general chants and prayers, the other later for a public meal. When it is said that the meeting of the first kind took place before sunrise (ante lucem), which is why Tertullian calls these meetings antelucani coetus, then the choice of this time should not be explained from the mere fear of Christians before the pagans. We know that their nightly meetings did not hide from the gaze of the latter, but that these secret meetings even especially aroused the suspicion of the Roman authorities and could not ensure peace for Christians; and besides, from the testimony selected by Pliny, it is clear that this custom has been maintained among Christians for a long time and existed at a time when persecution had not yet begun, and Christians did not tolerate oppression from the pagans. Zemler’s explanation that Christians devoted night time to worship because they were awaiting the coming of Christ, precisely at this time, on the basis of the words of St. Peter: “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night” (2 Peter 3:10). It is more likely and more expedient to explain the origin of the custom of gathering for prayers on Sunday ante lucem from the very idea of ​​Sunday, from the memory of Christ, who rose from the tomb early in the morning, as Cyprian points out when he says: nos autem resurrectionem Domini mane celebramus (Epist. 63). This last consideration throws some light on what happened during the morning meetings of the early Christians. Pliny says that on them Christians alternately sang a hymn in honor of Christ as God. The expression carmen should not be understood in the precise sense of any particular hymn or song; on the contrary, paying attention to the use of this word by the Romans, one must agree that it means every solemn saying, prayer, greeting, and, thus, in this place is identical with the concepts of doxology, prayer and song in honor of Christ. This appeal to Christ could not have been more natural and fitting at that moment when those gathered remembered the event of the resurrection. This prayer was followed by a didactic part. This is indicated by the further words of Pliny’s report that Christians during their meetings give a mutual obligation to evade known vices and crimes. In Pliny's story, the matter seems to be presented in such a way that these obligations did not involve any liturgical act or sermon, but in order to understand the true meaning of Pliny's report, one must abstract for a moment from the judicial form of its presentation and enter into the very spirit of the testimony, recorded only with legal accuracy. The point is this: when Christians, under torture and threats, were asked about the nature of their pseudo-social gatherings, they asked questions completely in the spirit of Roman judicial practice; as members of a gang or an anti-government corporation, they were asked the question: by what obligation are they bound to each other - quo sacramento obstricti sunt, what is the essence of their political and social convictions? The defendants, without going beyond the limits of the question proposed to them, answered that during their meetings they convince each other and mutually vow to abstain from certain vices and crimes that do not agree with the spirit of Christian morality. There are no solid reasons to think that this testimony dealt generally with the moral convictions of Christians in their ordinary daily life, and to deny that it refers to the practice of their prayer meetings. The act of unsophisticated early Christian preaching revolved precisely on these simple rules of moral life, and they very naturally were the topic of Christian edification during their liturgical meetings. This ended the first part of the morning and the second, later part began. Pliny characterizes this second part of the service with the following words: “after that they usually disperse and then gather again to eat food, ordinary, however, and innocent” (ad capiendum cibum, promiscuum tamen et innoxium). There is no data to determine the exact time of this second meeting, and it is not important. It is enough for us that these words contain a direct reference to Christian love suppers and the celebration of the Eucharist associated with them; they formed a separate part from the earlier night service. From this we can conclude that in Bithynia at the beginning of the 2nd century, agapes were still associated with the Eucharist. And if Pliny expresses himself very briefly about this part, mentioning only the common meal, this does not mean that the purpose of the secondary later meetings of the Christians there is limited to it alone. For Pliny, as an official, the very fact of meetings was important, especially for common meals, which were considered dangerous from the point of view of the then political system, as a social institution. Moreover, Pliny had only the briefest information on this matter, which he heard from Christians subjected to interrogation, and without any doubt they were expressed as briefly as possible, in general terms, which was required by both disciplina arcani and fears for their coreligionists. The epithets: cibus promiscuous et innoxius - food mixed and harmless, relate to the purpose of his inquiry and indicate that these were products collected by pooling, which did not have anything unnatural in themselves, which, as is known, the pagans accused Christians of, saying that they ate their own children. Pliny notes that, due to the emperor's edict against secret societies, Christians from that time ceased to gather for their public meals. Of course, there can be no talk of the complete destruction of this institution and, moreover, at such an early time; still less can one think of stopping Christian meetings for the celebration of the Eucharist. But it can be assumed that the order of the imperial governor had an influence on the composition of the then liturgy and gave a new impetus to the separation of agape from the Eucharist. Thus, one of the parts that had hitherto been part of the liturgy now faded into the background and acquired independent significance. The celebration of the Eucharist was connected directly with the preliminary, didactic part. The liturgy of the time of Justin the Martyr, therefore, in the first half of the 2nd century, was already organized according to this model and separated from the agape, or, at least, the suppers of love constituted an institution independent of it, which Justin does not mention in connection with the liturgy. II. The composition of the liturgy in the 2nd and early 3rd centuries based on the testimony of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and others. Development and isolation of the first part of the liturgy in the 2nd–4th centuries. influenced by the practice of the church regarding the catechumens and in connection with the disciplina arcani. Isolation and complication of prayers for the living and the dead of the Eucharistic part or liturgy of the faithful Justinovo's description, despite its brevity, gives us a lively, visual outline of the main rites of the liturgy of that time and outlines the general course of its parts. The inconvenience in using this source is that the named Christian apologist speaks about the liturgy twice and on two occasions: the first time - in connection with the rite of baptism of catechumens, and the second time - describing the prayer meetings of Christians on the day of the sun or on Sundays. These news go almost without interruption in chapters 65–67 of the apology and mutually complement each other. To get acquainted with the composition of the liturgy of that time, they are very important, and therefore we will present them in full to make it more convenient to follow the progress of the components of the liturgy of that time. Let's start with the second message, which talks about Sunday meetings. “On the so-called day of the sun we have a gathering in one place of all those living in cities and villages; at the same time, the memorial records of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as much as time permits. Then, when the reader stops reading, the primate gives instructions and admonitions through words to imitate the good things he has heard. After that we all stand up and say our prayers.” We will outline the further movement of the rite according to the news that is read above, in the 65th chapter, and concerns the liturgy of the newly baptized. Here the prayers before the canon of the Eucharist, in relation to this case, are called general prayers for oneself and for the enlightened. “After the one who has believed and given his consent to baptism has been washed in this way, we lead him to the so-called brothers in their assembly in order to diligently perform common prayers both for ourselves and for the enlightened one and for all others everywhere, so that we, having learned the truth, may appear in deeds as good citizens and doers of the commandments, in order to receive eternal salvation...” “At the end of the prayers, we greet each other kissing. Then bread and a cup of water and wine are brought to the leader of the brothers. He, having taken this, 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 (ἐπὶ πολὺ) for the fact that He has vouchsafed this to us. After the primate has performed prayers and thanksgiving (εὐχαριστίαν), all the people present answer: Amen. After the thanksgiving of the primate and the proclamation of all the people, the so-called deacons give each of those present to partake of the bread over which thanksgiving was made, and wine, and water, and take them home to those who were not present.” A closer analysis of the passage cited shows that the divine service described by Justin consisted of two parts, united in one liturgical act: the first, before prayer over the gifts brought, constitutes a liturgical act preparatory to the performance and reception of the sacrament (the general part, the liturgy of the catechumens); the second concludes the performance of the sacrament itself with its acceptance. Agapes were excluded from the general composition of the liturgy and represented a separate part. Having finished the description of the Sunday liturgy, Justin adds; “... people who are sufficient and willing, each according to his own free will, give what they can, and what is collected is kept by the primate, and he has care for orphans and widows, for everyone in need due to illness or for another reason, for those in prison, for strangers who have come from afar, in general he cares for everyone in need.” The liturgy of Justin's time began with readings from the Bible, with passages chosen from both the Old and New Testaments. The division between the books of the Old and New Testaments, and the latter into the apostle and the gospel, was established very early and is known from Ignatius the God-Bearer, who said: resort to the evangelists as to the flesh of Christ, to the apostles as to the elders and favorites of the prophets. Justin has the New Testament, or the gospel, of course under the name: ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν αποστόλων, as Justin himself in another place of his apology directly calls ἀ πομνημονε ύ ματα gospel; The writings of the Old Testament are designated by him with the expression: συγγράμματα τῶν προφητῶν. In Justin we find the earliest clear evidence of a reader (ὁἀ ναγινώσκων), who is distinct from the primate or performer of the sacrament and who, when beginning the reading, according to Cyprian, taught peace. The volume and order of reading were not strictly defined. Justin's expression: “the scriptures are read as much as possible - μέχρις ἐ γχωρε ῖ” does not contain the idea of special sections of scripture, or pericopes, as some think, but rather suggests the opposite idea, that is, that the amount and choice of reading were determined by the conditions of place and time and the personal considerations of the primate. The reading was followed by a sermon, which was delivered by a bishop or presbyter - a person different from the reader. The content of the sermon was borrowed from the passages of the Bible read and had a practical teaching character. Preaching in the time of Justin became closely connected with Scripture, attached to it, like modern sermons or conversations to the text. among the Bithynian Christians and between the preaching of Justin's time it becomes very sensitive. As soon as the sermon ended, those present stood up - which means that the sermon and the entire previous section could be listened to while sitting - stood up and said prayers (εὐχ ὰ ς πέμπομεν). These prayers stood in close relation to the preceding readings and teachings and contained general petitions for all those in need of divine help, and then private prayers for certain members of the church, for the government, for enemies, etc. The peculiarity of these prayers was that they were pronounced standing and by all those present, in contrast to other priestly prayers, pronounced alone by the primate on behalf of the congregation. About the first he says: χοινὰς εὐχὰς ποιησόμενοι and ἀνιστάμεθα κοινῆ πάντες καὶ εὐχὰς πέμπομεν, and about the latter it is expressed: καὶ οῦτος (ὁ προεστώς) αἶνον καὶ δόξαν ἀναπέμπει... καὶ εὐχὰς ὁμοίως καὶ εὐχαριστίας ἀναπέμπει. Here is the prototype of our litanies, where the common prayer of the church members is expressed in the proclamations of one chosen person, and the choir answers him by singing: Lord have mercy. However, whether this early Christian common prayer was public or performed by everyone secretly is not clear from Justin’s words; but, obviously, the ideal of this prayer was given in the following words of Ignatius the God-Bearer: “may you have μία προσευχή, μία δέησις, εἶς νοῦς, μία ἐλπίς” (Magnes. C, 7). In this practice, as ancient as it is expedient, the preeminent church expressed its view of worship as a common cause for all those present, as a communal act in the strict sense of the word. Common prayer - κοινὴ εὐχὴ - constituted the transition from the first to the second part of the liturgy. The latter, corresponding to our liturgy of the faithful, in turn falls into two sections: preparatory and consummatory, or Eucharistic in the proper sense. The preparatory, according to the image of Justin Martyr, began with those present in the church kissing each other as signs of love and mutual communication in the Lord. This meaning of the kiss of peace in the liturgy was justified by the fact that only the faithful could participate in the celebration of the Eucharist, a close circle of people who, in the words of Justin, believed and were convinced that everything we preached was true, were reborn into a spiritual life and live in accordance with Christ’s teaching. Consequently, this participation was denied to those who, although they were baptized, held false teachings and lived in a non-Christian way. This symbolic action was followed by the offering and preparation of the gifts over which the Eucharist was to be celebrated, that is, bread and wine. Justin does not say directly where, from what sources, the named substances were obtained; he only notices that at a certain time, following the kiss of peace, bread and a cup of water and wine were brought to the primate of the brethren (ἄρτος καὶ ποτήριον ὕδατος καὶ κράματος). But from the 67th chapter of the apology, there is no doubt that these were voluntary offerings from members of the community, part of which, which turned out to be unnecessary for the Eucharist, was used to meet the needs of poor brethren, feeding orphans, helping strangers, and in general for the cause of Christian charity, and was at the disposal of the bishop. Due to this origin from voluntary offerings, the gifts of the Eucharist are called by Justin (προσφορά), which name has remained to this day in liturgical terminology. But it should be noted that in addition to this original meaning, (προσφορά) and (προσφέρειν) were also used in the meaning of the very offering of gifts, their consecration, as in Clement of Rome. In Justin Martyr we also find a historical indication of the antiquity of the church custom of combining the wine of the Eucharist with water. The Christian apologist does not explain the origin and meaning of this custom, but presents it as an existing fact, distinguishing it, however, from a similar rite that took place in the pagan mysteries, namely in the cult of Mithra. Clement of Alexandria also mentions combining wine with water, and this practice itself was known in everyday life at that time. After the brought gifts were prepared for the sacrament, their consecration, or the Eucharistic act itself, began. The actor in the administration of this part is, according to Justin, the primate of the brethren - προεστώς, as the body and representative of the community. He says his prayers out loud; those gathered listen to them and imprint his prayer words with an affirmative cry: let it be. Justin, apparently, pays great attention to this participation of those present, and therefore attaches great importance to it when he mentions it twice, outlining the composition of the present part of the liturgy. Justin everywhere, however, recognizes the special rights of the liturgist as a performer of the sacraments, everywhere he speaks of the primate as a special person, as the sender of the divine service; but this sender is not separated from him from the living environment of the faithful and does not stand at the head of their official representative, but as one of them, as a representative in the full and high sense of the word, not separated from the environment he represents, with which he forms a single, organic whole. This idea, contrary to the Jewish levitate, is developed by Justin in the following deeply meaningful sense: just as Jesus Christ is called a priest by the prophets, so we also constitute a true priestly race, as God Himself testifies, saying that acceptable sacrifices will be offered to Him from all nations. But God does not accept sacrifices from anyone other than from His priests. Thus, the sacrifices offered by Christians with the prayer of thanksgiving for the bread and cup are pleasing to Him. This idea of ​​a universal priesthood was subsequently developed with particular force by Tertullian at a time when the hierarchical system was increasingly taking possession of liturgical rights, completely pushing aside the community. “We,” he says, “are true worshipers and true priests; We, praying in spirit, offer a verbal sacrifice to God. Aren't laymen priests? The difference between the clergy and the people was established by the church hierarchy - you make the sacrifice yourself and baptize, and therefore you are your own priest 4 . Tertullian's thoughts are as follows: Christ is the supreme high priest - sacerdos catholicus; in relation to Him, every bishop and presbyter is a local priest - Iocalis sacerdos; members of the community are also sacerdotes. The community, composed of priests, makes sacrifices through its authorized priest to the supreme pontiff in the form of prayers, gifts and worship. But let us return from these extreme judgments to Justin’s description of the liturgy. Before the gifts and offerings chosen for the sacrament, the primate sent prayers of thanksgiving and glorification to the Father of all in the name of the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is just a diagram, a brief outline of what the primate did during the celebration of the Eucharist, and therefore we remain completely in the dark about the details of the content, number and composition of these important prayers. From the words of Justin we can draw only a few conclusions about the purpose, nature and external form of the Eucharistic prayers. We pay attention to three points: to whom were these prayers addressed, what kind of prayers they were and how they were pronounced. – Justin gives a direct answer to the first question, saying that the leader offered his prayers to God the Father. This is because during the Eucharist Christ is presented as the sacrifice, as the slain lamb, as the representative of humanity redeemed by Him, as the performer of the sacrifice and the bishop. Therefore, it is not to Him, as a living participant in this mysterious act, that prayers are sent through the primate, but in His name to God the Father. – As for the type of these prayers, they were laudatory and grateful, just as Christ, when celebrating the Eucharist, gave praise and gave thanks, and as their content is set out in the current liturgy, where the prayers of the canon appear with the same character. Without complicating our review with extracts related to the explanation of this subject, I will only say that from the parallel passages of Justin’s apology and from his other writings we have every right to draw the following conclusion. The prayer of thanksgiving and doxology contained the glorification of God for the benefits of creation, of which the very gifts of the Eucharist served as a visible sign, and for the benefits of redemption. “We thank God for the creation of the world and for deliverance from corruption and slavery to the devil,” says Justin in another place in his apology. These prayers of praise and gratitude also included a prayer for the consecration of gifts. And that it existed in the time of Justin, and that, consequently, the very act of sanctification (consecratio) existed, is evident from his following words: “... Just as Jesus Christ, our Savior, who was incarnate according to the word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so, according to our teaching, this Eucharistic food, from which our blood and flesh are nourished through transformation, becomes the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus through the word of prayer, by him devotee - δ ι΄ ε ὐ χ ῆ ς λο ́ γου το ῦ πα ρ΄ α ὐ το ῦ ". Further, from the fact that Justin closely connects the Eucharist with the memory of the Last Supper and with the words of the establishment of the sacrament, it is clear that consecration consisted of in the remembrance of the initial establishment of the sacrament and in the pronunciation of the establishing words of Christ, Justin cites these words to confirm that the bread and wine, after thanksgiving has been made over them, become the body and blood of Christ, having said at the supper: this is my body, this is my blood, gives us to understand this by deed. In addition to the words of establishing the sacrament, the last prayers also included the invocation of the Holy Spirit or ἐπίκλησις, that is, that part of the canon through which consecration is accomplished. Justin does not directly speak about the epiklisis, but Irenaeus presents this prayer as a necessary and essential part. – The third question concerns the form of the prayers of the Eucharist and the way they are pronounced. In addition to the fact that the prayers of the liturgy in the ancient church were read aloud and concluded with the response words of the congregation, it is important for us to add that Justin makes that the primate sends out prayers and thanksgiving as much as he can - ὄση δύναμις αὐτῷ. We have already explained the meaning of this expression in relation to the way of presenting the liturgy of the ancient church, speaking about the freedom of the primate in performing divine services. Let us only note that a similar image of expression is found not only in Justin, but also in Irenaeus, his contemporary, and thus shows the identity of the then church practice in this last respect. In order to have a clearer and more complete understanding of this most important part of the early Christian liturgy, I will cite and analyze several relevant passages from Irenaeus. His teaching about the Eucharist reached significant completeness and development, which it does not have either in Justin or in other church writers closest to him. But, staying on a theoretical basis, Irenaeus sometimes touched on the liturgical practice of his time, and in this respect he is a complement and explainer of Justin. Starting from the view of the Eucharist as a gift brought by the zeal of believers, denoting it with the words δῶρον, προσφορά, Irenaeus also calls the very act of celebrating the liturgy with this name - προσφέρειν. The expression προσφορά or oblatio means to him the same as Eucharist or liturgy, and therefore he says: Et hane oblationem ecclesia sola puram offert (προσφέρει) Fabricatori, offerens Ei cum gratiarum actione ex creatura Ejus - from His own creation. These words contain a summary of Irenaeus’ teaching on the Eucharist. Oblatio, as a material offering, as the material side of the sacrament, is composed of the products of nature, ex creature Ejus, or, as elsewhere he calls these offerings the firstfruits of creation - primitiae creaturarum. The very method of offering or liturgical act in Irenaeus is conveyed by the words: offerens Ei (Deo) cum gratiarum actione. What does this thanksgiving consist of - gratiarum actio or eucharistia, and how is it expressed in the liturgy? The answer to this is given by an excerpt from the writings of Irenaeus, found and published by Pfaff. This is what is read in this passage: “we bring to God the bread and the cup of blessing εὐλογίας εὐχαριστοῦντες αὐτῷ) thanking Him for the fact that He commanded the earth to grow these fruits for food for us, and from them collected an offering (καὶ ἐνταῦθα τὴν προσφορὰν τελέσαντες) we call upon St. Spirit (ἐκκαλοῦμεν τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον), so that He would reveal this sacrifice and this bread as the body of Christ, and the cup as the blood of Christ (ὅπως ἀποφήνῃ τὴν θυσίαν ταύτην καὶ τὸν ἄρτον σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ τὸ ποτήριον τὸ αἶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ), so that those who partake of these images (τούτων τῶν ἀντιτύπων) receive remission of sins and eternal life. By making these offerings in remembrance of the Lord (ἐν τῇ ἀναμνήσει τοῦ Κυρίου), we serve Him spiritually.”... So, the object of thanksgiving in view of the bread and wine brought was, according to Irenaeus, the gifts of God’s providence, the representative of which was the material offerings themselves. The prayer of thanksgiving was followed by the invocation of the Holy Spirit for the consecration of gifts - ἔκκλησις, λόγος τῆς ἐκκλήσεως, as Irenaeus himself calls this act. The purpose of this invocation of St. the father indicates quite clearly: it consisted in what is now called the transubstantiation of gifts - bread into the body, and wine or cup into the blood of Christ. Irenaeus expresses this idea of ​​transubstantiation even more clearly when in another place he says: τοῦ θεοῦ οὐκέτι κοινὸς ἄρτος ἐστίν, ἀλλ’ εὐχαριστία ἐκ δύω πραγμάτων ἐπιγείον καὶ οὐρανίου; οὕτως καὶ σώματα ἡμῶν μεταλαμβάνοντα τῆς εὐχαριστίας μηκέτι φθαρτά, τῆν ἐλπίδα τῆς ἀναστάσεως ἔχοντα. The offering of gifts is performed, according to Irenaeus, in remembrance of the Lord. This short expression can be explained in the sense of remembrance of the gifts of grace and redemption performed by the Lord, or even more particularly - in the sense of remembrance of the Last Supper, after which the Lord said: do this in remembrance of Me. In Irenaeus’ testimony about the celebration of the Eucharist there is one word that has now acquired a technical meaning, but is not entirely clear in its meaning, namely, the expression τὰ ἀντίτυπα in relation to the gifts of the Eucharist, or, as it is translated in our missal, instead-figurative. This word is used in a liturgical meaning for the first time in Irenaeus, and then several times in the Apostle. Resolutions. Ἀντίτυπον in the New Testament language is used in the meaning of a prototype, snapshot, reflection of a thing; in this sense, the old covenant is called in relation to the new ἀντίτυπον. The Apostolic Constitutions say that Jesus Christ, during the Last Supper, gave us αῖματος (1. V. p. 14). The Eucharist or liturgy offered in memory of the dead is called here: ἀντίτυπον τοῦ βασιλείου σώματος Χριστοῦ (VI, 30). Consequently, the gifts of the Eucharist are called ἀντίτυπα not only before transubstantiation, but generally as symbols, as images of the body and blood of Christ. The final part of the liturgy, according to Justin and Irenaeus, was communion, that is, the distribution of consecrated gifts to those present (διάδοσις - distribution; μετάληψις or κοινωνία - communion). We know little about this part of Justin. He says that this distribution was carried out through the mediation of deacons and was accepted, of course, by analogy with the agapes, where the deacons took a direct ministerial part by their very appointment to be ministers at meals. But we know that in the apostolic age agapes were united with the Eucharist, and therefore it is very natural that with their separation from the liturgy, the official appointment of deacons found a corresponding application in the service of the Eucharist. Communion was taught under both types; those present received each of the types separately from the deacon, and those absent received St. the gifts were delivered to the home through the deacon. This means that all believers without exception participated. This circumstance was a characteristic feature of the ancient Christian Eucharist. In Apost. In the decrees, the priest, by the way, prays “for those who are absent for a blessed reason”; they were also taught communion. From the remains of the gifts brought, offerings were made for the benefit of the poor, to help widows and orphans. This is the practice of agape, separated from the Eucharist as a liturgical act. After analyzing the liturgy, according to its depictions in Justin and Irenaeus, let us take a look at the path it has traversed and note the main features of worship in this immediate, post-apostolic period. Without going beyond what we have stated, we will have the right to draw the following conclusions on this score: The worship of the times of Justin retains in full force the features of its apostolic origin and keeps its early Christian character intact. It is closely connected with the life of the Christian community, comes out of its immediate requirements and constitutes its essential and necessary ingredient. The entire life of the first believers was a sacrifice to God and service to Him; public worship constituted the highest and perfect manifestation of this ideal: it took its forces from living reality and in turn influenced it. This interaction is seen in the close connection of the Eucharist with the offerings of the community; it is further evident from the general participation of all believers in this service and in the reception of St. gifts by all, even those who are absent. So to speak, the Eucharist constituted a celebration of the entire community and at the same time continued to preserve the simplicity, clarity and spirituality of its form. Even now, as in the apostolic age, it is expressed in words from beginning to end; from beginning to end it is a living, publicly accessible speech, audible to all. The symbol still remains in the background, the external ritual setting is only faintly revealed in the image of Justin Martyr. But at the same time, the liturgy begins to be formulated and take on greater and greater certainty: its parts acquire stability, are isolated and preserved in a certain scheme, which, however, leaves for the celebrant of the sacrament a certain amount of freedom and independence. Here is this essay, this diagram of the liturgy according to Justin and Irenaeus: general part: it includes the reading of scripture, sermon and general prayer; special, Eucharistic part: fraternal kissing of those present, offering of gifts to the altar, Eucharistic prayer addressed to God the Father, pronounced by the primate on behalf of the community. This prayer is one of gratitude for the works of creation and redemption and is combined with the remembrance of the establishment of the sacrament, with a prayer for the sending of the Holy Spirit for the consecration of gifts and the sanctification of those who receive them. Presentation of the Eucharist to those present. The time of Justin Martyr represents a very significant time in the history of the liturgy: it has already taken an important step on this path of formulation and stands on the eve of the appearance of liturgical records. The path traversed by the liturgy and its composition in the middle of the second century already shows signs of this new course of affairs, this fate that was inevitably and soon to befall Christian worship. We will not follow the development of the composition of the ancient Christian liturgy according to the instructions of church writers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries: Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen and others. The material that we could extract from their writings on the issue that interests us concerns very many, but minor details of the liturgy and makes it possible to trace step by step the growth of its forms both in the general and in the Eucharistic part. But even with the most careful study of the matter, we could, based on these data, reproduce only the mechanical growth of the liturgy and indicate that such and such a detail was first indicated by a famous writer, another by another, and in this way collect material scattered over the space of two centuries and in different parts of the then Christian world. As for the complete presentation of the liturgy of that time, it would have gained little, and we would have moved forward only a few steps compared to Justin’s outlined scheme. In addition, this aspect of the matter is so well handled in the best German and even Russian studies on the history of the early Christian liturgy that anyone without any difficulty, turning to these sources, will learn the details of the matter and will find in them collected and critically illuminated factual information on the history of the liturgy of the first three centuries. We will note and clarify here only the main points in which the movement of the liturgy during this time was expressed, and those conditions that influenced its further processing. From Justin Martyr and other sources of the 2nd century. It turns out that the liturgy of that time consisted of two parts: the general, which is not quite successfully called didactic or hemolytic, and the Eucharistic. The first relates to the composition of the liturgy in an external way and has no internal affinity with it. Both in composition and purpose, this service is homogeneous with many other liturgical forms and was developed from those daily prayer meetings, which were then divided into special daily hours of prayer under the name: Matins, Hours and Vespers. In fact: the reading and singing of psalms, the reading of the Apostle and the Gospel, general prayers for people and their needs - all this is such service material that does not constitute anything typical and belongs to every service without distinction. The first part of the liturgy remains with this character to this day. Its isolation and complication at the end of the 2nd and in the third centuries occurred under the influence of church discipline regarding the catechumens, that is, persons prepared to accept Christianity, and in connection with the disciplina arcani or the doctrine of the non-disclosure of the secrets of faith and cult to the uninitiated. Persons who wished to accept Christianity were not subject to special preparation under the apostles and in general in the early days of the church: confession of faith in Christ as the Messiah and Redeemer, and a sincere declaration of their desire to accept the Christian faith were considered sufficient conditions for receiving baptism. The examples of the eunuch of the Queen of Ethiopia and the conversion of thousands of people after the apostolic sermon clearly show that at first there was no special, much less lengthy, preparation. But circumstances soon changed; Already at the beginning of the second century, a special preparation of such persons for the adoption of Christianity began, and an entire disciplinary system, an entire institution of catechumens, arose. Under Justin, there was already a rather complex procedure for preparing such persons, as can be seen from his following words: “those who believe and are convinced that the teaching we preach is true, and make a promise to live according to this teaching, we teach to fast and pray and ask God for forgiveness of sins, praying and fasting with them.” Persons who went through this preliminary path of preparation were called catechumens - κατηχούμενοι and over time they were divided into several classes, according to the degree of their religious and moral development and greater or lesser spiritual maturity. In accordance with this routine, their mutual attitude and attitude towards modern, full-fledged members of the Christian community or the faithful changed. In the third century, this routine was already established, this division of the catechumens into classes, and in the monuments of the literature of that time there are indications of the existence of the first, lower class of catechumens, the so-called listeners (audientes, auditores, ἀ κρωαται ́), and the second category of catechumens - γονυκλίνοντες, kneeling. But the final and strict development of the catechumenate belongs to the fourth century, when the canonical division between the different classes of catechumens was determined, and their very terminology was established. The preparation of the catechumens consisted of theoretical instructions and moral and practical education. The first were taught in private homes and mainly in catechetical schools; Meetings of Christians for prayer began to serve as a place for the second with all convenience; Catechumens also began to be admitted to these meetings, with certain restrictions. Not to mention other church meetings, the general part of the liturgy was also opened for them, as a result of which it took the form of a rounded whole, which had a special composition and was designed for the presence of persons who did not have the rights of full members of the Christian community, and thanks to this purpose it subsequently received the name of the liturgy of the catechumens. When this practice first came into force, that is, the division of both the liturgy and other morning and evening services into two parts, of which one was open to the participation of the catechumens and other partial members of the church, and the other was assigned exclusively to the faithful (fideles) and constituted a closed, sacramental service; whether it is contemporary with the beginning of Christianity itself or formed subsequently, after the time of Justin, as some say, is a dark and difficult question to solve due to the lack of solid historical data. The first earlier news of the admission of the catechumens to worship together with the faithful is found in Clement of Alexandria, who died in 210, and therefore the practice noted by him belongs to the end of the second century, that is, to a time slightly later than the apology of Justinian. From the words of Clement it is clear that in the church of his time special places were assigned (μονὴ) for presbyters and gnostics, i.e. persons of the highest spiritual maturity, for the faithful or brethren and for the catechumens, and if this is so, then there is no doubt that these latter took place in general meetings of Christians for prayer and, moreover, separately from others. Unfortunately, Clement says nothing about whether the whole service could be heard by κατηχούμενοι or only part. Tertullian, who survived Clement by ten years (†220), has two passages relevant to our question. In his Apologetics, he touches on the same accusations against Christians that Justin and other apologists had to deal with, but he always passes over the celebration of Christian sacraments in silence and refutes the accusations leveled against Christians by the very impossibility for pagans to know what Christian sacred rites consist of and what is done there. He draws a parallel between the Christian sacraments and the pagan mysteries, noting that both there and here those present are bound by a vow of silence, and that prying eyes cannot penetrate this sacred fence of secrecy. But the same Tertullian has a completely different approach to the matter when he sets out in detail and in detail the procedure for performing agape. This means that these latter, despite their liturgical character, were not kept secret and were not profaned by popularity. Another even more valuable testimony of Tertullian on the same subject is found in his work de praescriptionibus adversus haereticos, where he, among other things, polemicizes with Marcian. From this polemic it is clear that heretics considered the exclusion of catechumens from participating in divine services on an equal basis with the faithful as a violation of the simplicity of ancient apostolic practice, and called the strict discipline of the Orthodox an empty and vain invention. Exposing the weakness of discipline allowed by heretics, he says: “It is impossible to find out from them who is faithful and who is a catechumen; they all come equally (pariter adeunt) to the sanctuaries, listen equally (pariter audiunt), pray equally. Even if the pagans had come, they would have thrown the beads as to dogs and swine, even if they were counterfeit beads, like theirs. All of them are puffed up with pride, all have a claim to knowledge; the catechumens consider themselves perfect before they receive instruction in the truths of the faith. Their ordination is announced prematurely, without due diligence: today their bishop is one who yesterday was alien to the faith; today is a deacon who was yesterday a reader; today a presbyter who was not long ago a simple layman.” From the evidence given for our question, it follows with complete certainty that in the time of Tertullian, therefore at the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century, the church was guided by well-known restrictive rules regarding the admission of catechumens to worship and laid a solid foundation for the separation of one - the general part of the liturgy from the other - the special, sacramental one. In this form, that is, in relation to the catechumens, the first part of the liturgy has already been formed in the Apostolic Constitutions and ends with their release from the church after liturgy, prayer and blessing from the bishop. Consistently, in a certain order, one category of catechumens leaves the meeting after another, namely: the catechumens (κατηχούμενοι), the possessed (ἐνεργούμενοι), those preparing for enlightenment (φωτιζόμενοι) and the repentant (οἱ ἐν τῇ μετανοίᾳ). After they had left, the deacon exclaimed: “Let no one enter from the weak,” and the Eucharist began with a prayer for the faithful and the offering of gifts. This educational motive of the church in relation to the catechumens was not limited to one liturgy, but was also maintained as part of other services, Matins and Vespers. So in the Apostolic Constitutions they also end with the dismissal of the catechumens and prayer for the faithful. According to Dionysius the Areopagite, the catechumens could not be present during the entire continuation of the burial rite, much less participate in the performance of the sacraments, as can be seen from the secret teachings of Cyril of Jerusalem. Disciplina arcani constitutes the theoretical basis of this order and comes from the position that only a perfect, full-fledged member of Christian society has the legal capacity to assimilate the fullness of church teaching and church ritual. Only the disciplina arcani captured the matter deeper and wider than the institution of the catechumens, and extended not only to them, but also among full-fledged Christians or fideles distinguished hierarchical persons from the laity, appropriating the former the highest degree in relation to teaching and worship. We are not talking about externals or pagans, who also constituted the object of the disciplinae arcani. Thanks to these two conditions and, accordingly, to the separation of the liturgy of the catechumens, the Eucharistic part or the liturgy of the faithful became more and more isolated in the 2nd–3rd centuries. As a special whole, as a liturgy sensu ipsissimo, it is written separately under the name ἀναφορά and begins with a series of introductory exclamations, which in the ancient church language are known under the name praefatio. These are the priest’s current exclamations: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ”... etc. The composition of this second, Eucharistic part of the liturgy remains almost the same as before, under Justin. The offering of gifts, their consecration through the prayer of thanksgiving with the remembrance of the establishment of the sacrament, the invocation of the Holy Spirit and communion - this is the main content of the liturgy of the faithful and the course of its parts. Only towards the end of the 2nd and especially in the third century, under the influence of the more and more revealed teaching about the Eucharist as a propitiatory sacrifice, a very characteristic addition was added to this basic content in the form of supplicatory prayers for the living and the dead. The doctrine of the Eucharist as a sacrifice did not soon reach the revelation with which it appeared among church writers of the 4th–5th centuries. and in the current dogma, but several preparatory steps have passed. Turning to the most ancient testimonies (for example, Justin and Irenaeus), we must say that the word θυσία, in application to the Eucharist, was used not in the sense of the propitiatory sacrifice made by Christ, and not in the sense of a symbolic repetition in the liturgy of what actually happened on Golgotha ​​5. Justin and Irenaeus look at the sacrificial meaning of the Eucharist from a more material, objective side; they consider it a sacrifice to God, meaning those gifts and offerings that are offered and consecrated on the altar during the liturgy. They called the Eucharist a sacrifice in the closest immediate sense in relation to believers, in the same sense as the very gifts or voluntary offerings of believers for worship over which it was performed, just as the prayers of Christians and some actions of piety and asceticism, for example, alms, fasting and religious exercises in general, were recognized as a sacrifice. In contrast to this immediate idea, the later view of the Eucharist as a sacrifice is applied, so to speak, to man by the results of the latter, and the object of this sacrifice is Christ, as a symbolic lamb, as the sacrifice of Calvary. As proof of the gradual understanding and disclosure of this idea, we will cite and compare the relevant passages from the prayer for the dead as presented in different liturgical lists. In one of the oldest and shortest of them, the so-called Ludolf List (named after the publisher), attributed by Bunsen to the middle of the 2nd century, the prayer for the consecration of the gifts reads as follows: “Remembering His death and resurrection, we offer You this bread and this cup in gratitude for the fact that You have deigned us to stand before You and serve You as priests, and we humbly pray to send down Your Spirit Holy on these gifts of Your church, so that those who partake of them may receive sanctification and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Here, as you can see, there is no mention of the propitiatory, sacrificial meaning of the gifts of the Eucharist: they are not called here a sacrifice, but gifts of thanksgiving on the part of the church, as in Irenaeus primitiae creaturarum and oblatio. But in the liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions, the same prayer is read somewhat differently: “send down Your Holy Spirit on this sacrifice, which testifies to the suffering of the Lord Jesus, and show this bread with the body of Your Christ, and the wine with Your blood.” In Cyril of Jerusalem, the idea of ​​sacrifice in his outline of the liturgy is carried out even more clearly and decisively and directly in connection with its propitiatory meaning; “We offer,” he says, “Christ who was slain for our sins and call the Eucharistic service a propitiatory sacrifice.” The commemoration of the living and the dead in the liturgy is in close connection with this teaching and develops in parallel with the movement of this latter. With the offering of gifts to the altar, as a personal sacrifice, a prayer for the bearers was combined, and their names in one form or another were pronounced during the consecration of the gifts, when the church, in the words of Cyprian, commemorationem faciebat - commemorated them (Cf. Const. VIII p. 13, paragraph 1). At first, these gifts were brought according to personal zeal by each of the church members only personally for himself and on his own behalf. Then they began to attach special intercessory significance to them and used them as a means of entrusting themselves to the prayers of the church. Thus, the newlyweds, according to Tertullian, made offerings for the Eucharist in order to gain the right to pray to the church during the consecration of gifts, and by participating in the communion of the mysteries to gain confirmation or seal (obsignationem) of their marriage union. The further development of this practice was already expressed in the fact that they began to make offerings and seek prayers from the church, not only for themselves and on their own behalf, but also for others, and as if a special type of such offerings were offerings for the martyrs and in general for the dead - oblationes pro martyrribus et defunctis 6. Tertullian points out, as a generally accepted custom of his time, that wives prayed for their dead husbands, asking for their resting place and participation in the future resurrection, and in their memory they annually brought a gift on the day of their death 7 . From this practice, common at that time, Tertullian borrows, among other things, an incentive for the women of his time to abstain from a second marriage, imagining to them how inconvenient it would be for them to pray for two spouses at once and to be the wife of two husbands in the future resurrection 8 . And how strongly this custom was developed at that time, that is, the custom of commemoration, is evident from the fact that Tertullian and Cyprian use the expressions: oblationes pro defunctis facere, offerre sacrificia, pro quibusdam commemorationes celabrare, used as well-known and in a specific sense. A special type of these memorial prayers were offerings for confessors and martyrs. The early Christian Church highly revered these fighters for the faith, and from the very first times, from the time of the martyrdom of Ignatius and Polycarp, the foundation had already been laid for annual church meetings in honor of them. But at first it was far from what it was later: oblationes pro martyribus, offerings for them. These were simply days of remembering the martyrs on the day of their death; their goal was religious and moral: to repay the debt of gratitude to these valiant members of the church, to awaken the energy of the living and to glorify God for the exploits of the confessors 9 . This is precisely the thought expressed by the witnesses to the martyrdom of Polycarp of Smyrna in response to the accusation of the pagans that they idolize the remains of the martyrs and worship them as gods. A new feature that emerged in this relationship in the 3rd – 4th centuries is that sacrifices are made for the martyrs, special prayers are composed, and the living ask intercessory prayers from them. “Note the days in which they died,” says Cyprian about the confessors: “so that you may commemorate them on the days of remembrance of the martyrs. Let our offerings and sacrifices be made in their honor” (Epist. 34). This attitude towards the martyrs was then transferred to all the dead. Just as the church distinguished the days of the death of martyrs with special meetings, so members of the family, relatives and friends, gathered for commemorations on the day of death of their relatives and performed anniversarias celebritates. Oblationes were offered for both; both were entrusted to the prayers of the church 10. The difference in these relations was at first quantitative, but not qualitative. It is a sin to pray for a martyr - this formula, stated by Augustine, did not exist then, and the distinction between perfect and imperfect members of the church had not yet developed into the concept of saints and sinners, those who prayed and those in need of intercession. If the church, represented by its members, on the days of annual remembrance of the martyrs, thanked and glorified God, marvelous in the organs of His power (i.e. thanked God for the exploits of the martyrs in faith), on the other hand, this included the thought of the common imperfection of every mortal and the possibility of increasing heavenly bliss for the martyrs, although they were, according to the belief of the church of that time, in refrigerio, that is, in a state of initial bliss. This advantage of martyrdom - martyrii praerogativa - was expressed by Hermas, according to whom, the place on the right side of the seat of the mysterious old woman belonged to those who pleased God and suffered for His name. Then this view was expressed with all force by Tertullian and Cyprian, of whom the first called martyrdom the key to paradise - clavis paradisi. As for the other dead, the offerings for them were a propitiatory sacrifice for their sins and intercession for them on the part of the church. In connection with the disclosure of the doctrine of the Eucharist as a sacrifice indicated by us, there was an increase in the canon of the liturgy with prayers for the living and the dead. In this, so to speak, indifferent tone, prayers for the dead are stated in earlier records of liturgies. So, for example, in the Alexandrian (published by John a s. Andrea) list of Origen’s time we read: “we bring to You the fathers and brothers who died in the faith of Christ, rest their souls, O Lord our God, remember from the ages the forefathers, fathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors, bishops, saints, righteous and every spirit (πνεύματος), who presented himself in faith, and those of whom we commemorate today "... Then we talk about the bearers of gifts for the Eucharist. Prayer for the dead is set out in similar expressions in the Apostolic Constitutions. A clear echo of such a statement of the matter is also heard in the prayer of the current liturgy of Chrysostom, where it reads: “We also offer You this verbal (λογικήν) service for all the forefathers, fathers, etc. who have previously departed, and for every righteous spirit perfected in faith... Then we offer it especially for the Most Holy Theotokos.... for Saint John the Baptist and other saints." Exactly the same as in the most ancient liturgies, but with a characteristic addition: “visit us with their prayers - ἐπίσκεψαι - us, O God,” - an addition that is not present in the parallel passages of the ancient liturgies. The absence of this increase is understandable: the ancient church extended the saving effect of Christ’s sacrifice to everyone, before which personal dignity seemed to fade away and saints and non-saints, perfect and ordinary members of the church were equated. The addition: “through their prayers” expresses a turn to the current church view and highlights the intercessory significance of the saints. This idea is clearly conveyed by Cyril of Jerusalem in one of his secret teachings, when explaining the liturgy; but, as can be seen, at that time it had not yet become universal. This can be seen from the answer of Epiphanius of Cyprus to the question put to him: why are both saints and imperfect members of the church commemorated during the Eucharist, apparently without any distinction? They would not have asked him this question if the difference had been evident in the form of an addition: “through their own prayers”; He would not have given such an answer: “the church does this, wanting to present only Christ alone as sinless.” 11 In this case, it would have been much more convenient for him to refer to the additional words of the prayer about calling upon the saints as our intercessors before God, and the issue that he had to reckon with would have been resolved more clearly and simply. In its main features, the liturgy of the 3rd century, the time of Tertullian and his contemporary era, retained the same form in which it is depicted by Justin; it distinguishes the same two main parts - didactic and eucharistic, only these parts are in a more developed form and more sharply isolated than before. The first consisted of reading Old and New Testament scriptures and preaching. As for the method and choice of reading, in this respect this period (until the half of the 3rd century) represents an oscillation between the former free Iectio continua and reading according to beginnings and divisions. According to the division of the church year, this swing also leans in favor of the latter system or lectio selecta. Origen assigns readings from the book of Job for days of fasting and for Holy Week. The reading was followed by a sermon; after the sermon there is a special prayer, which we know about from Justin only from a brief remark: “then we get up and pray.” But in the sources of this era, the content of this prayer is set out in detail: it embraced the entire Christian world with all its needs, had a petitionary character and corresponded in its content to the petitions in our litanies preceding the Cherubic song 12. In general, Tertullian summarizes the composition of this preliminary part in the following expressions: Scripturae leguntur, psalmi canuntur, advocationes proferentur, petitiones delegantur (De anima p. IX). The prayer, which included petitions for the catechumens and various types of penitents, ended the first part of the liturgy, which now took the form of a separate part, the liturgy of the catechumens, aimed at their religious consciousness. The second part also became a separate department, accessible only to certain believers, and was finally formed in the last quarter of the 2nd century under the influence of the disciplina arcani and the institution of catechumens. The celebration of the Eucharist was preceded by two introductory actions - the kissing of the world and the bringing of gifts for consecration. After the osculum pacis, as before, there was the offering of gifts - προσφορά, in Tertullian and Cyprian - oblatio, offertorium, the bringing of voluntary offerings on the part of the community to the altar (an act designated by Tertullian with the expression ascendere ad altare), and the selection of substances from them for the celebration of the Eucharist. In the liturgical language of that time, it should be noted, the word oblatio was taken in a double sense: both in the sense of material offerings for the sacrament and charitable purposes, and in the sense of the commission and consecration of gifts in the sacrament of the Eucharist; eg. in Tertullian: oblationem panis celebrare, or in Cyprian: offerre pro illis. Cyprian, however, makes a stricter distinction between sacrificium and oblatio. The very celebration of the Eucharist, that is, the consecration of the gifts, was preceded by a prayer of gratitude and opened by arousing the attention of the believers with the words of the priest: “we have sorrow in our hearts” - sursum corda, to which the people answered: “Imams to the Lord” - habemus ad Dominum, to show, as Cyprian notes, that you should not think about anything else but God. In later liturgical language, these preliminary exclamations of the priest are called praefatio, ἀναφορά, and probably embraced the same main exclamations that are now heard in our liturgies. Praefatio was one of the first liturgical formulas established in the ancient church and reaching our time. At least in the Apostolic Constitutions we meet all these exclamations in full; as now, the canon of the Eucharist begins with them. The praefatio was followed by a series of prayers over the gifts brought. The first of them, immediately following the words of the priest: “We thank the Lord,” had a grateful and laudatory content and concluded thanksgiving to God for the gifts of His providence and grace, the representatives of which were the material gifts brought. This idea of the gifts of the Eucharist, as the firstfruits of creation - primitiae creaturarum in the era we are considering, has as its representative Clement Alexander, and Origen, of whom the latter was especially clearly expressed in the sense of Irenaeus, when, for example, he said the following: “we bring Him the firstfruits - ἀπαρχάς - just as we send up prayers to Him, having a great The bishop who passed through heaven - I. Christ.” This prayer continued with thanksgiving to God for the gifts of His grace, ending with a recollection of the history of the economy, and the words of the establishment of the sacrament, the so-called formula ἀναμνήσεως, were pronounced. This was followed by invocatio or ἐπίκλησις, that is, the invocation of the Holy Spirit for the sanctification of the gifts and the sanctification of those who receive them. This whole set of acts of prayer, taken in parts, is presented by Cyprian in the following words: he says of a certain woman, who was in an ecstatic state, that she dared in moments of ecstasy to parody the sacred acts of the liturgy, namely, with the sacred invocation (invocatione sacra) to consecrate bread, celebrate the Eucharist and offer sacrifice to God in the words of ordinary narrative (solitae praedicationis). It seems there is no need to prove that here by solita praedicatio we mean the remembrance of the establishment of the sacrament of the Eucharist, the suffering of the Lord, and the utterance of the words of establishment or ἀναμνήσις, and by sacra ivocatio we mean nothing more than the invocation of the Holy Spirit for the consecration of gifts. Within these limits lay the composition of the canon of the Eucharist in the previous period; but from the 3rd century. under the influence of a more developed view of the Eucharist as a sacrifice and propitiatory service, petitions for the living and the dead are added to these basic prayers. In addition to prayers for the departed, the prayer “Our Father” and, probably, prayers of repentance on behalf of the congregation were said. Then the priest exclaimed: “Holy to holies,” and communion began, in which, in the age of Tertullian and Cyprian, everyone without exception took part. The end of the liturgy consisted of the blessing of the people and the dismissal of the congregation. III. The emergence of liturgical records; dividing them into groups. Liturgies of the Egyptian-Alexandrian branch and the Syrian-Palestinian; the liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions and the liturgy known with the name of the Apostle James We have brought the presentation of the liturgy up to the 4th century and explained the main additions that came to it in the 3rd century. There is no need to follow its further development solely according to the instructions of church writers of the 4th and subsequent centuries. From this time there are already complete records of liturgies belonging to different church regions, representing (records) in a more complete and complete form what we would have to collect and, moreover, with significant gaps from the patristic literature of that time. Therefore, we will now move on to the study of the liturgy according to its most ancient records and will follow its content and development according to these new sources. With the formation of independent centers of church life, the liturgy begins to be localized, that is, confined to certain localities of the Christian world, or, better to say, to its known administrative centers, and here it is subjected to detailed processing, accepting new additions and changes. Here we have a period of strict disciplinary work on its content, very important in its tasks and very rich in its historical consequences. At this time, the liturgies of local communities began to submit to the influence of the church system of the main region or metropolitan cities, and the first liturgical records appeared. But, unfortunately, history has not precisely marked the first pages of this period. The first records of liturgies remained in the shadows and were not illuminated by modern sources, so it still remains unresolved when exactly the first experiments of this kind appeared, in what form and in what area. A centuries-long interval separates us from this era, so researchers have to reconstruct this work based on monuments of later times, which experienced many extraneous influences, as a result of which the original, authentic basis of the liturgies was lost in the mass of later details and lost its primitive appearance. Currently we have a lot of such records. All of them represent more or less significant differences in presentation, differ in the details of the ritual, appear under different names of famous persons of the church world and were used in different localities both in the east and in the west. We will deal with Eastern liturgies. All their existing records are usually divided according to the place of their origin and use into two main groups or branches: Egyptian-Alexandrian and Syrian-Palestinian: adjacent to the latter, as a special type, is the group of liturgies of the Church of Constantinople - Asia Minor and Byzantine. The first group embraces the liturgies in use in the Patriarchate of Alexandria, and contains three types of records: Greek, Coptic and Arabic. The ancient population of Egypt was composed of two elements: the newcomer Greek - more educated, who stayed in Alexandria and used the language of their cultural nation; Another ethnographic element was represented by the natives who spoke their local dialect. At first, both languages ​​had equal rights in liturgical practice, but then Alexandria, as a metropolitan city, gained predominance, and Greek became the official church language, in which the liturgy itself was expounded. Until that time, it was either entirely read for the natives in Coptic, or, copied in Greek, translated into the native language in the parts and prayers that were the most important and required a conscious attitude towards oneself. This phenomenon constitutes a fairly common device, which was used to apply the official liturgical language to local needs, and is known under the name of erminia or explanation. After Dioscorus, being the Patriarch of Alexandria, formed an opposition against the Orthodox side after the Council of Chalcedon and supported the Monophysites, the Copts - as the Egyptian Monophysites now began to be called - began to push back the Greeks, installed their own patriarch, persecuted the Greek priests and expelled the Greek language from liturgical use, replacing it with the native Coptic. Even further, the Copts, in opposition to the government, were transferred to the Arabs, who introduced their own language to them. As a result of these conditions, records of the liturgies of the Egyptian-Alexandrian branch have reached us in Greek, Coptic and Arabic. All of them in the main parts are very similar to each other, but at the same time they all bear traces of later additions and changes, so that the question of the prototype of these liturgical records becomes extremely difficult - just like the solution to the question of the mutual relationship of the Coptic liturgies to the Greek. Historical criticism tends to conclude that the basic record for all of them was some Greek original from which a translation was made into Coptic and Arabic, and not vice versa. Has such an ancient record of the Alexandrian liturgy been preserved to us that could serve as a point of departure and support for reviewing and evaluating the lists of this liturgical branch that have reached us, and serve as their primary basis? We do not know this fundamental principle, and there are no strong and indisputable grounds to associate it with one or another of the surviving lists. Of the numerous lists of liturgies of the Egyptian-Alexandrian branch, only four are of particular importance in science, of which one is Greek and three are Coptic. The first list is the so-called liturgy of St. Apostle and Evangelist Mark, who became famous in the scientific world since 1583, when the Parisian canon John a.s. Andrea found it in Southern Italy, namely, in Calabria, in the Odigitrievsky Monastery, and published it in Paris. In this 10th-century codex, three Coptic liturgies were also found with the names: Basil V., Gregory of Nazianzen and Cyril of Alexandria. The latest Coptic liturgical record bears significant similarities to the so-called Greek Gospel liturgy. Brand. Then, at the end of the 17th century, a certain Ludolf (in 1691) discovered (in Coptic or Ethiopic, the code of the Apostolic Constitutions), translated it into Latin and published in his work: Historia aethiopica, a very short text of the Gospel liturgy. Mark, which in comparatively recent times was accepted by Bunsen as the oldest known text of the liturgy, and which he made the basis of critical considerations when compared with other more complete records. With the publication of the lists we named, in fact, the question of the origin of the Greek liturgy arose in the world - a question that has now become more specialized and concerns the genesis of the liturgies of the Egyptian-Alexandrian branch, its most ancient, primitive recording. Not considering, together with Bunsen, the Ludolf list as a model of the oldest edition of the apostolic liturgy, we fully share the scientist’s opinion that this list can serve as the basis for reviewing and evaluating other liturgical lists of the Egyptian-Alexandrian branch. Let us therefore take a closer look at the Liudolf list of liturgies and compare it with the later liturgies of the named family. Like all ancient liturgies, the list under consideration begins with the praefatio, that is, the proclamation of the priest after those present have greeted each other with the kiss of peace. The priest says: The Lord is with you all. People: and with your spirit. Priest: lift up your hearts. People: they are before the Lord our God. Priest: We thank the Lord. People: with dignity and righteousness. Then follows the Eucharistic Prayer, preceded by the following remark: “Then those present say the Eucharistic Prayer, following the words of the bishop.” Here is this prayer, very short in scope, very simple in content and quite applicable to the spirit of the early Christian church: “We thank you, Lord, through your beloved Son Jesus Christ, whom in the last days you have sent to us as Savior and Redeemer and the Angel of your counsel. He is the Word, which is from You, and through Whom You made everything according to Your will. You sent Him from heaven into the womb of the Virgin. He became flesh, and was carried in Her womb, and appeared as Your Son, that He might fulfill Your will and perfect Your people, stretching out His hands on the cross. He suffered in order to free the suffering who trust in You. He was betrayed according to His will, that He might destroy death, loose the bonds of Satan, trample hell underfoot, bring the saints with Him, and reveal the resurrection.” Then follows a recollection of Christ’s celebration of the Last Supper, and the words of establishment are given, and one cannot help but notice that there seems to be some break between the prayer we have set forth and the following words. Here is their literal reading: “So, having received the bread, he gave thanks and said: Take, eat... do this in remembrance of Me.” (Are the words missing: holy...?) This is the second prayer of the canon of the Eucharist. The third, immediately following this, concludes with the invocation of the Holy Spirit and doxology and corresponds to our prayer for the consecration of gifts. Here is the text of this latter: “So, remembering His death and resurrection, we offer this bread and cup, thanking You for making us worthy to stand before You and perform this priestly service before You - ut sacerdotio tibi fungamur 13 and earnestly pray: send down Your Holy Spirit to offer this church - super oblationes hujus ecclesiae.” These words contain an indication of the voluntary gifts of Christians to this church. There are no further words containing a prayer for the application of gifts, but it simply says: “grant to those who accept these gifts sanctification, filling with the Holy Spirit, confirmation in faith and truth.” Then a short doxology is given, to which the people respond: “As it was, so it is, and will be for all generations, forever and ever; Amen." Following this prayer, the following, let us add, very interesting and characteristic lines are read in the Ludolf edition. Here they are: “About the offering of oil. Whoever brings oil during the Eucharist (then) says thanksgiving over it in the same way as over bread and wine.” It is known that oil was also considered among the permissible items of church offerings; it was used to prepare the world and for other liturgical needs, and over it, apparently, a special prayer was said, and, judging by the meaning of the words given, this prayer was said during the Eucharist and, apparently, by the offerings themselves (a fact from which the great participation of the community in the performance of the divine service is very clearly revealed). Another addition is even more important; it says: “and whoever does not use these words (i.e., the indicated formula for the consecration of gifts) can give thanks according to his strength, using other expressions.” A remarkable fact in confirmation of the original freedom in the presentation of the prayer of the Eucharist - a freedom that undoubtedly had a wider application to other prayers. After the words of consecration and invocation of the Holy Spirit, the priest said a short prayer “for the uncondemned acceptance of the Holy Spirit.” secrets." The deacon exclaimed: pray. The priest said another prayer similar to the previous one. Then, after the deacon’s exclamation: bow your heads, you who stand! a new prayer follows over those who bow their heads. Deacon: let us be attentive (respiciamus), or: let us raise our eyes ad orientem. Priest: Holy of Holies; people: there is one holy Father, one holy Son, one holy Holy Spirit. Then the communion itself occurs, during which a hymn of praise (attolunt hymnum laudis) is sung - it is not known what the content is. How the communion was carried out is not said, but the whole matter is limited to a brief remark: “and the people come, receiving the medicine, which forgives the sins of their souls.” Communion is followed by two short prayers: one of thanksgiving, the other of absolution. In conclusion, the priest says: The Lord is with you all. The people answer: and with your spirit. Priest: depart in peace. Thus ends the Eucharist. – This is the formula of the liturgy, preserved in one of its oldest editions, attributed by Bunsen to the half of the 2nd century. If we compare its contents with what we know about the composition of the canon of the Eucharist from Justin, then it fits this scheme perfectly. The absence of external decorations, simplicity and uncomplicatedness speak in favor of its antiquity. Further, it is dominated by the concept of the Eucharist as gifts and offerings to the church, nothing is said about the prayers of the saints for us, there are no epithets: Θεοτόκος, ὁμοούσιος and others developed in the theological literature of later times. Those present take direct part in the performance of the sacrament. All this makes us see in the brief edition of the Liudolf Liturgy a very ancient document, and therefore very important for conclusions about the structure of the early Christian liturgy. Having such strong assurance of its authenticity and antiquity, we already acquire some point of support for evaluating other lists or editions of the liturgies of the Alexandrian branch and gain some opportunity, through comparison with this document, to restore their approximately original, authentic appearance. Regarding the composition of the other lists of the liturgy of the Alexandrian family, it should be noted that they belong to the time when the first part of the liturgy was already formed so much that it could be written down in sequential order and was furnished with some ritual details, such as: the preparation of the priest for the celebration of the liturgy, the preparation of the altar for the proskomedia, the prayer of incense, prayers before the reading of the Apostle and the Gospel, prayers for the small entrance and many others. This significant expansion of the first part of the liturgy to ἀναφορά in other liturgical lists of the Alexandrian family makes it clear that we are dealing with later records, although formed on an ancient basis, but set out with additions from the 6th–7th centuries. If we take for evaluation the recording of the liturgy of Mark according to the Calabrian list and compare it with the considered Liudolf list, we will see that it sharply reveals two different-time features, there are two parallel currents, artificially combined in one later recording. Here one notices elements of the liturgical structure of the times of Justin and features of later liturgical and historical ideas, which found expression mainly in the first general part of the liturgy. This is because the first part was established and written down later than the ἀναφορά, or canon of the Eucharist. But the prayers of the second part did not remain free from additions by a later hand. Let us present several such parallels in order to see in what and how the combined, eclectic nature of the record was expressed here, what was preserved in it from ancient times and what came up and was introduced under the influence of new liturgical and historical conditions. Here, for example, is the prayer for the living and the dead in the canon of the Eucharist. It bears traces of deep antiquity and reads literally like this: “Rest, O Lord our God, the souls of the fathers and brothers who have fallen asleep in the faith of Christ, remembering from the ages (that is, from the very beginning of the world) the departed forefathers, fathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, confessors, bishops, saints (ὁσίων), the righteous and every soul who presented himself in the faith Christ's; remember also those whom we now commemorate and honor them with the kingdom of heaven''. This prayer serves as an echo of that early Christian view, which, in view of the redemptive sacrifice of Christ, extending to everyone without exception, seemed to smooth out the difference between perfect and imperfect members of the church: remembering both before the gifts of the Eucharist, the ancient church asked both for the same peace of soul and expressed the desire for heavenly bliss. In addition to general historical grounds confirming the deep antiquity of the prayer that interests us, we find that it almost literally repeats the expressions of Tertullian and Origen, not to mention the fact that it conveys their spirit. “Often,” says, for example, the latter in one of his conversations (Homil. XVI in Hieremiam p. 14), “we say in prayer: God Almighty, give us a part with the prophets, grant us a part with the apostles.” Without speaking about other rites and proclamations that are of ancient Christian origin and included by tradition in all known liturgies, we will now turn our attention to those parts and component rites that indicate the eclectic nature of our record and encourage us to attribute its present edition to the 6th–7th centuries. First of all, it should be noted that the liturgy of Mark according to the Calabrian list represents the first part of the liturgy already developed in great detail. The latter begins with the exclamation of the priest: peace to all, to which the people answer: and to your spirit. Deacon: pray; people: Lord have mercy, three times. These formulas do not yet contain anything incongruous, and, in all likelihood, this is how, or almost this way, the liturgy began in ancient times, as can be seen from the words of Chrysostom; but then the priest reads a prayer in which he mentions the holy catholic and apostolic church - a formula developed from later teaching about the church and alien to early Christian times. In the final words of the prayer, praise is sent to the only begotten Son with the most holy, good and life-giving Spirit. But who does not understand that this formula already bears traces of the developed dogmatic teaching about the third hypostasis of the Holy Trinity, and this could not have been earlier than the 4th century. The second prayer of the liturgy is petitionary for the king; in it the king is already implied to be Christian, because in it the church prays to the Lord to grant him victories for the glory of His holy name. The third prayer, preceded by the deacon’s exclamation: pray, concludes a petition for the most blessed bishop and pope (i.e. the Patriarch of Alexandria, who received this name, according to Balsamon, not earlier than Cyril Alexander), bishops, presbyters, deacons, subdeacons, readers, singers and monastics. In this enumeration, which indicates a developed system of hierarchy and the existence of a full complement of clergy ordinis minoris, one cannot help but see a later growth that appeared no earlier than the 4th century. After the fourth prayer it is sung: Only Begotten Son - a song, the composition of which is attributed to the emperor. Justinian. Then the song: Holy God, the Cherubic song, which appeared in the time of Justin the Younger (565 - 578), and the great entrance - all these are undoubted traces of later origin. The Missa fidelium, or Liturgy of the Faithful, is preceded by the kiss of peace and two prayers by the priest relating to this act. This is εὐχὴ ἀσπασμοῦ and the prayer of offer. Pointing to the ancient custom of offering gifts over which it was pronounced, this prayer now refers to gifts previously prepared; consequently, this act was replaced by proskomedia. The praefatio is followed by the ἀναφορά, or canon of the Eucharist. Its construction is common to all ancient liturgies; Only regarding prayers for the living and the dead, it should be noted that in the liturgy of St. Mark, they precede consecration, whereas in the liturgies of the Antiochian branch, for example, in the liturgy of St. James, and in our Chrysostom they follow the very sanctification. The additions to this part, more prominent, are as follows: after the prayer for the powers that be in the spirit of the ancient Christian concept, another petition for the same follows, and this petition is expressed in the following words: “preserve in peace the kingdom of your servant, our Orthodox and Christ-loving king.” The remembrance of the most holy, most pure, most blessed, glorious... Mother of God... is commemorated in such expressions as indicate the clearly stated teaching about the most holy Virgin against Nestorius 14. In the prayer of invoking the Holy Spirit for the consecration of bread and wine, the appeal to the Holy Spirit bears traces of a clearly developed teaching about Him against Macedonius and is presented in expressions borrowed from the creed and the paternal teaching about the Holy Spirit. He is called the Lord, the Life-Giving, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, who spoke in the law through the prophets, consubstantial with the Father and proceeding from Him. Communion of St. gifts are given to the priest and those serving with him alone, and nothing is said about the communion of the laity. A liar is mentioned; Therefore, they did not receive the sacrament from the chalice, but in the modern way. Let us add to this the peculiarity that some of the prayers are assigned to be read by the priest secretly - μυστικῶς; further, that the end of all prayers in general and some of the most important exclamations are prescribed to be pronounced εκφώνως, clara voce, in the hearing of all and especially strongly. These are already sure signs of subsequent church practice, which leaves the priest alone to perform gifts and excludes those present from participating in his prayers. As for the Coptic liturgies, they do not represent significant differences from the type of Greek liturgy of St. that we have outlined. Mark, and if they differ, then in the same way as different lists of the same liturgical branch. Coptic liturgies retained a genetic connection with the Greek liturgical type in retaining the proclamation and formulas of the Greek, for example: εἰς προσευχήν, Κύριε ἐλέησον, εἰρήνη πᾶσιν and friend. All these expressions were obviously so familiar and understandable to the Copts due to long-standing use in church practice that they entered their national liturgy without translation and remained among prayers and exclamations in the native language. But what significantly distinguishes Coptic records from Greek ones are additions in the spirit of Monophysite teaching, directed against the definitions of the Council of Chalcedon. These additions impart a religious, sectarian character to the Coptic liturgies and a special polemical imprint. Let us note the following about these additions. They are included in the so-called confession - ὁμολογία, confesio, that is, in the prayer that is read by the priest before communion, and in which, explaining his sins, he confesses his faith in the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. Initially, this confession was very brief: the one receiving the gifts uttered the words: body of Christ, blood of Christ, and used the gifts. Then this confession expanded and turned into an entire prayer. It was in this prayer that the Copts introduced their confession of faith, which was especially convenient because the doctrine of the true body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist was associated with the doctrine of the incarnation, and this dogma, as is known, was a controversial subject between Monophysites and Orthodox. The formula of the confession is contained in the following words: I believe that this is the true flesh, which Christ borrowed from the Most Holy Virgin. and made it one with His divinity, not through fusion or confusion or change: I believe that Your divinity was never separated from humanity, not even for a single moment. This dogmatic formula is obviously composed in the sense of Monophysitism and, so to speak, is immortalized in the liturgy. This teaching is expounded in even more detail and with greater certainty in the prayer of breaking bread before the consecration of gifts; it says: not cognizable in two natures, but one Lord, one being, one will, one nature of God the Word incarnate. All these are formulas over which, in the era of Christological disputes, there was a heated struggle between the Orthodox and sectarians, and which partly found application in the field of our church hymnography. This religious sign can distinguish Orthodox liturgies from Coptic and heretical ones. We now turn to a review of the Syrian-Palestinian branch of liturgies, which have survived to us partly in Greek, partly in Syriac. All these liturgies bear clear traces of later origin, spoiled by later insertions, from which it is very difficult to isolate their most ancient basis, the original text 15. This damage is especially sensitive because for the analysis of the liturgical forms of the Syrian-Palestinian branch we do not have such a record, brief and primitive, as the list published by Liudolf gives us for the liturgies of the Egyptian-Alexandrian family. Before we get acquainted with the famous monuments of the Syrian-Palestinian liturgical type, we will make a few general preliminary remarks. Church tradition has connected the liturgies of the Syrian-Palestinian branch with the name of St. James, the brother of the Lord, and, of course, because the activity of this apostle was concentrated in Jerusalem and Palestine, which the apostle. James was considered the first bishop of Jerusalem: but this name was then destined to compete with another more famous in church practice, namely, with the name of Ignatius of Antioch. According to ancient tradition, this latter established, by divine inspiration, the order of the liturgy in his church and introduced antiphonal singing. And, indeed, alternating psalmody has been a characteristic feature of the Antiochian ritual since its most ancient forms. The first introduction of the Trisagion also belongs to Antioch, and from here this doxology passed into the Alexandrian liturgy and spread throughout Asia Minor and Byzantium. All this information about the liturgical role of the Antiochian Church is significantly supported by written evidence of that time: but more about that later, and now we will list the main sources in which this liturgical branch has been preserved to us. The number of liturgies in this branch is very significant, and most of them are in use or preserved in the records of the Syrian Jacobite sectarians and owe their fame to the learned Syrian publishers Abraham of Ehellen and Asseman, who are joined by a whole group of lesser-known liturgists - publishers. The number of these liturgies, according to Abraham of Ehellen, extends to over fifty; of these, more than thirty are listed by him. Renaudotus, in his edition: Liturgiarum orientalium collectio, in the second volume, placed up to forty Syrian liturgies under different titles; but he placed them without any system and, while providing comments on the details, did not make a complete critical assessment. In the Roman editions, falsification was allowed, especially in the transmission of the words of the establishment of the sacrament and in the prayer of invoking the Holy Spirit. The changes were made in the spirit of Roman dogma and pursued religious goals. I will not list the entire multitude of monuments of the Syrian-Palestinian liturgy, but will focus on those of them that can serve as the oldest material for the study of this liturgical type and represent it in its most developed form. At the head of these monuments should be placed the famous description of the liturgy of the Jerusalem Church, made by Cyril of Jerusalem in his fifth occult teaching. This description, for which we have a precise chronological criterion, should constitute, as it were, an introduction to the historical study of the Syriac-Antiochene liturgy and serve as the main stone for the critical analysis of this latter branch. Cyril of Jerusalem, like Justin, represents only a general outline of the liturgy of his day. Without going into a detailed presentation of its content, without setting out prayers and rituals in extenso, he only conveys them in a sequential order and general outline. The Jerusalem catechet begins with the second part of the liturgy and reaches communion. The deacon, having given water for washing to the bishop and the presbyters surrounding the throne, exclaims: embrace, receive and kiss each other (this is osculum pacis). Then follows the praefatio, beginning with the exclamation of the priest: grief of the heart, to which those present respond: imams to the Lord (remember that the praefatio of Cyprian also begins with the same exclamation). Priest: We thank the Lord, and receives a short answer to this: it is worthy and righteous to eat. As for the next prayer of thanks, pronounced by the priest, Cyril of Jerusalem gives an indication of its content when he says: “after that we remember the sky, the earth and the sea, the sun, the moon and the stars, about all rational and irrational, visible and invisible creatures; we remember the angels, archangels, powers, dominions, authorities, cherubim, seraphim, who stand around the throne of God, fly and say: holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” To understand the meaning of this brief designation of the content of the first prayer of thanksgiving, we must take it in connection with other works of the Antiochian liturgy, and then we will see that these expressions are justified by the latter. In the liturgies of St. James and the Apostolic Constitutions, the corresponding prayer consists of the names of various kinds of creatures, earthly and heavenly, glorifying the Lord, and this enumeration is presented in almost the same order and ends with the same seraphic hymn that we hear in the teaching of Cyril of Jerusalem. Then, according to the latter, there followed the invocation of the Holy Spirit, “may he make bread the body of Christ, and wine the blood of Christ” 16 . Then, says Cyril of Jerusalem, we pray to God for the peace of the churches, for the well-being of the world, for kings, warriors (other objects of prayer related to living members of the church are listed); “Then we remember those who have died before: firstly, the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, so that through their prayers and intercession God may accept our prayer.” This is the formula for remembrance (μνημονευ ́ ομεν) of the saints. Then we pray and offer for (ὑ πε ́ ρ) the departed fathers, bishops, and in general for all those who have previously died, in the conviction that there will be great benefit to the souls for whom we offer prayer at the time when the holy and terrible sacrifice is presented.” Then the Lord's Prayer was read. The priest exclaimed: holy, holy; the people responded with the same hymn as in our liturgy: One is holy, etc. “Then,” continues Cyril of Jerusalem, “you hear a singer who, with divine psalmody, invites you to receive the Holy One.” secrets and says: taste and see that the Lord is good.” Here is the sacrament verse and its antiquity. The following describes in detail the method of communion. Communion was followed by a prayer of thanks, at which Cyril of Jerusalem ends his presentation of the rite of the liturgy. Another document for getting acquainted with the composition and features of the ancient liturgy of the Syrian Church is the interpretation of the liturgy, compiled by James, Bishop of Edessa, in the middle of the 7th century. James of Edessa is one of the most prolific writers of his time, called interpres et commentator librorum in the Syriac chronicle of Dionysius, an excellent expert in the Syriac language, for which he compiled a grammar, compiler of one of the chronicles of his time, translator of the liturgy from Greek into Syriac and interpreter of liturgical rites. He is known in the history of liturgy mainly for his letter ad Thomam presbyterum de ritu missae Syrorum, placed in the first volume of Asseman's Bibliothecae orientalis, in which he gives a concise but intelligently composed outline of the liturgy of his time and his region, and makes historical remarks about the peculiarities of the Alexandrian and Antiochene branch of the liturgies. In this liturgy (i.e., James of Edes) we find formed all the main parts of our present liturgy and most of the prayers that make up its present content. However, the first part, as can be seen from the explanations of our author, has not yet had time to be completely established; according to James of Edessa, the liturgy began with readings from the Old and New Testaments, followed by three prayers, corresponding to the three classes of persons who did not have the right to listen to the entire liturgy, namely, prayers for those listening, the possessed and the repentant, and the deacons, as if having in mind the actual representatives of these three classes, sent out from the church: ite audientes, abite energumeni, abite poenitentes. “But this custom,” adds James of Edessa, “has already fallen into disuse; if the deacons mention these persons, it is from the memory of an ancient custom.” Then the deacon exclaimed: lock the doors - claudantur januae, and the Liturgy of the faithful began. It was headed by the confession of faith in the words of the Nicene Creed, introduced into the practice of the Antiochian Church by Peter Fullo, the Monophysite patriarch, in the 6th century. Then three prayers of the faithful were said, each of which subsequently received its own special name: the first began to be called the prayer of peace (oratio osculi pacis), the second - the prayer of laying on of hands and the third - the prayer at the opening of the antimension. At the end of these prayers, the deacon exclaimed: στ ῶ μεν καλ ῶ ς. The priest, teaching the blessing to the people, pronounced the praefatio in full form, in expressions similar to our Liturgy of Basil the Great. and Chrysostom. Then the very canon of the Eucharist began with a prayer for the sending of the Holy Spirit (the act of breaking bread and raising it - elevatio), followed by the commemoration of the living and the dead - commemorationes. Then followed communion with confession and prayer of thanksgiving. As for the second part of the liturgy, without giving its entire outline based on the image of Jacob of Edessa, we will only make a remark regarding the difference in time of commemoration of the living and the dead. “Those living in the capital (i.e. Constantinople), also in the Greek regions,” the commentator tells us, “keep the same custom with us, namely: first they consecrate the Eucharist and then perform commemoration; but the Alexandrians act differently, who first commemorate (commemorationem faciunt), and then celebrate the Eucharist.” The liturgy included in the Apostolic Constitutions and the liturgy of St. belong to the same Antiochene branch of liturgy. Jacob. The first is especially important as one of the oldest complete records of the liturgy; the latter - because of the special respect it enjoyed in the East, and because of the disputes that it aroused in the scientific world. – As for the liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions, it has come down to us in two records: short and lengthy; the first is set out in the second book of this collection, the last in the eighth. A comparison of both entries with each other convinces us that there is the closest genetic connection between them, and that the last, widespread entry of the VIIIth book of the Constitutionum is built entirely according to the plan of the short edition. Both there and here, the first part of the liturgy has a moving, variable composition and is presented in a general summary outline. Both the second and the last book of the Decrees speak of the exit of the catechumens from the church, but with the difference that in the last book this ritual is described with many details that indicate the later origin of the ritual itself. Let's make several such comparisons. Thus, in the second book, regarding the named rite, it is briefly noted: “after that, after the exit of the catechumens and repentants, we pray”... The lengthy edition says that the deacon, standing on an elevated place, exclaimed: ne quis audientium, ne quis infidelium... In previous readings we showed that in the times of Tertullian and Cyprian the liturgy was divided into two parts: one for the catechumens, another for some faithful. The second book of the Decrees, together with the liturgy, took place in the time closest to this era, and therefore mentions the catechumens briefly. Book VIII, which has a later origin, not only mentions the exit of the catechumens from the church, but lists their very classes, presents in detail the order of the exit of the catechumens, and sets out the very prayers pronounced at the same time by the bishop and the entire community in the person of the deacon. Here are listed four classes of persons unworthy to participate with the faithful in the celebration of the Eucharist: catechumens, demoniacs, those preparing for baptism and penitents: - Created under the same and strict conditions, the disciplina e arcani is a short and lengthy record of the liturgy of the second and eighth books of the Apostle. The decrees give instructions to protect the doors of the church from the uninitiated and the unfaithful and equally call the faithful to common prayer in the words of the deacon: ῶ μεν ). But again, in Book II of the Constitutions the content of this prayer of the faithful is not set forth, while in Book VIII a whole series of petitions is given, from which the consolidated, eclectic nature of the extensive liturgy of the Constitutionum is revealed, combining elements of ancient church practice with later additions. The first include, for example, petitions for those who brought sacrifices and firstfruits to the Lord our God, for those in the mines, in exile, in custody and in chains for the name of the Lord. The second type includes petitions for the holy catholic and apostolic church, for the local diocese, for readers, singers and exorcists. The offering of gifts to the altar is also furnished with some details, indicating the widespread development of the ritual setting of this act, and, consequently, the conditions of later church practice. The deacons bring gifts to the bishop, we read here, on the altar; the elders stand on the right and left sides, like disciples standing before the teacher; two deacons on the sides blow over St. gifts of ripids, or fans made of thin fabric (bird feathers), driving away midges and insects. The bishop is dressed in light, shiny clothes, stands in front of the throne and places the sign of the cross on his forehead and pronounces the lengthy prayers of the canon of the Eucharist. As for the canon of the Eucharist, it contains the same main parts that we found in the monuments of previous times and reproduced on the basis of the testimonies of Tertullian and Cyprian, so that the liturgy of the last book of the Apostolic Constitutions, considered from this side, has behind it the signs of venerable antiquity and very clearly reveals its ancient Christian basis. This consideration is further confirmed by internal features contained in the very content of the monument in question. There are many ideas here borrowed from the area of ​​the early Christian worldview, for example: the frequent use of the word δ ῶ ρον, δ ῶ ρα in the sense of Eucharistic offerings. The gifts of the Eucharist are spoken of in the following expressions: “we bring You this bread and this cup” (vm. θυσ ί αν). Next, thanks are given to God for the fact that He has deigned us to stand before His altar and serve Him as a priest, a concept akin to the idea of ​​a universal priesthood. The faithful pray, “may the Lord honor them to be participants in the suffering of the martyrs.” Finally, the most unsettled theological terminology, the features of the monarchian (semi-Arian) view of the face of Jesus Christ as a ministering instrument of God the Father - all this can serve as proof of the ancient origin of our liturgy, as regards its main general type. But at the same time, this common basis, this early Christian element in our liturgy is obscured by details and additions borrowed from later church practice, by rhetorical amplification. Because of this, the liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions, insignificant in its composition and content, in its presentation represents perhaps the most extensive liturgical record of all known to us, despite the fact that it covers only the content of the canon of the Eucharist and does not have a proskomedia and many prayers of the liturgy of catechumens. The compiler of this record, apparently, was strongly influenced by some simple ancient Christian scheme of the liturgy and, on the basis of it, compiled his own extremely lengthy presentation of the liturgical order. To understand how far this amplification extends in the record we are considering, it is enough to take for consideration the prayer of thanksgiving after the words: “Worthy and righteous” and compare its content with the same prayers in the modern liturgies of the Alexandrian and Roman churches. In this respect, the liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions leaves far behind the compared examples and represents a brilliant experience of this system of amplification. For this purpose, let us trace the content of the prayer we named. In response to the people’s exclamation: “It is worthy and righteous to thank the Lord,” the priest calculates the motives that guide a person in performing this act of gratitude. But before moving on to the main idea of ​​the prayer, its compiler stops at calculating the various traits or properties of God and puts into his speech many dogmatic maxims that clarify the idea of ​​​​God. Here, for example, are some of these epithets: beginningless, eternal knowledge, unborn father, incomprehensible wisdom, etc. Then calculating the objects of God’s benefits that prompt man to gratitude, he stops at the very first acts of Divine activity - the creation of the world, and since this work was accomplished through the Son, the special properties of the Son are depicted as the person of the Divine, and His relationship to the Father. It further speaks of the creation through the Son of the angelic ranks and various objects of the kingdom of nature. The enumeration of these items is extremely detailed, dry and presents some kind of nomenclature in places. Then the prayer moves on to the creation of man and describes in detail the very act of creation, the composition of man, his mental and physical perfections; depicts paradise, the fall of the first people, the history of the family and descendants of Adam; narrates the main events from the life of the patriarchs, the fate of the people of God in Egypt and the blessings during the exodus from there. Having then pointed out the praise of God by various angelic ranks, the compiler of the prayer moves on to the history of redemption, and presents Christ, although the only begotten Son of God, born before all ages, but in the features of a subordinate, inferior, official person (ministrantis) 17 and without those defining features in which the relationship of the Son to the Father is depicted in the sense of the definition of the Council of Nicaea and the fathers of the 4th century. This view, similar to the semi-Arian one, represents the still undeveloped doctrine of the face of Christ and constitutes one of the signs of the early origin of our edition of the liturgy. Outlining in general terms the history of the earthly life of the Savior, the prayer dwells on its last events, after the establishment of the sacrament of the Eucharist, and in a relatively shorter and closer to our present canon of the Eucharist sets out the formula for invoking the Holy Spirit and prayer for the living and dead members of the Church of Christ. From this analysis it is also easy to see that the general content of the prayer of thanksgiving after the praefatio in the liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions is identical with other liturgies, which itself points to one common historical basis on which the content of the Eucharistic prayers is located. We will not be mistaken if we say that, like the liturgy of St. Mark constitutes the development of the ancient liturgical type of the Alexandrian Church according to an edition close to the list of Ludolf, just as the liturgy set out in the VIII book of the Constitutions is an expanded, widespread edition of the Apostolic liturgy, distinguished by such a verbose, such a drawn-out and rhetorical presentation of the prayers of the canon of the Eucharist, that there is even a doubt whether the liturgy of the Apostles was used Decrees in practice and was it not an artificial amplification of a ready-made liturgical theme? “We could have put an end to the Syrian-Palestinian liturgy here, if among its numerous lists there had not turned out to be a liturgy that is very important in relation to the one now used among us,” we mean that name. Liturgy of St. Jacob. The legend about the origin of the Jerusalem liturgy from St. James has been going on since a very long time and was first stated by Epiphanius and the Patriarch of Constantinople Proclus, one of the closest successors of Chrysostom. Epiphanius, having said that the apostles were preachers of the gospel throughout the universe, adds that they were also the institutes of the sacraments, together with James, bishop of Jerusalem. Proclus is among the compilers of the liturgy, or, better to say, at their head he puts the name of the ap. James, to whom was entrusted the administration of the Church of Jerusalem. Further, the Trullo Council mentions him as the compiler of the liturgy in canon 32. The Council denounces the Armenians, who did not combine wine with water in the Eucharist, with the authority of the Apostle James and Basil the Great, who ordered this to be done in a mysterious sacred rite, which they committed in writing. We are not talking about evidence from later times, which comes from the news we have mentioned and is compiled in the sense of the true origin of this liturgy from St. Jacob. The basis of this tradition is the completely historically correct idea that the Jerusalem Church had its own early local liturgy, which was based on an apostolic basis; and since ap. James was the first bishop of Jerusalem, it was naturally associated with his name as the compiler. If there may be a basis for such a conclusion in some original recording of the Jerusalem liturgy, a recording that reproduced the authentic rite of that time and is now lost, unfortunately, this cannot be said about the liturgy of St. Jacob, now known by his name. In this form, it is undoubtedly of later origin, bears traces of obvious anachronisms and is furnished with such details that could only appear in an era of significant ritual maturity. Remarkable in it is the absence of Hebraisms, which undoubtedly should have taken place in the presentation of liturgical prayers for Jewish Christians. Even admitting the very early establishment of the Greek liturgical language, even recognizing its undoubted superiority over other languages ​​in the presentation of the liturgy, we still have to agree that the presentation of the Liturgy of James dates back to the time when traces of the original purpose of this liturgy for Jewish Christians had already disappeared, and the Greek language had become dominant. Signs of its local use have been preserved in a different way and make themselves felt in some indications, so to speak, topographical. Thus, it contains references to Jerusalem and its leaders. In accordance with the earthly, the heavenly Jerusalem is called to praise God. In the prayer for the consecration of the gifts, the priest prays “for Your holy places, which You have glorified by the Theophany of Your Christ, and for Holy Zion, the mother of all churches.” In another prayer, the priest asks God to remember the teachers of the faith who preached the word of truth, beginning with James, prince of bishops, apostle and martyr. Among the saints, John the Baptist and the First Martyr Stephen are placed in first place. These instructions, having survived entire centuries, remained living witnesses of the Jerusalem genealogy of the liturgy we are considering and date its use to the Palestinian countries. What can we say about the current composition of this liturgy? It has survived to us in several lists and represents two entries: short and lengthy. The first was preserved in the Syriac language and was used by the Syrians who did not know Greek; the second is known in Greek lists, of which the earliest are considered to be the Messinian list, found in Sicily, and the Rossansky list, taken from Calabria, from the south of Italy. This shows that they were in use here among the southern Italian Greeks. The Messinian list dates back to the end of the 10th century, and the Rossansky list to the 12th century. In this complete edition, the liturgy of James is presented in such detail that it is removed by many centuries from the apostolic period and transferred to the area of ​​​​widely developed church rite. Such a basis for doubting the authenticity may perhaps seem weak, specifically regarding the liturgy of St. Jacob, since it is known that in the 4th century it had already reached such vast proportions that it prompted Basil the Great to begin reducing it. But it is not the completeness of the presentation, as such, that in this case can serve as a sign of inauthenticity, but the presence of such parts of the rite that could not belong to the immediate post-apostolic time. The prayers at the liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions are very long and wordy, their presentation takes up a lot of space, but this does not prevent us from recognizing the liturgy of the VIII book of the Constitutions as a monument of the late 3rd or early 4th century. But something else will have to be said when we analyze the composition of the Greek liturgies of St. James according to the lists we have named and let’s get acquainted with its contents from the text itself. The first prayers mark the priest's progress from the threshold of the church to the throne and indicate the different stages of this path, judging by the inscriptions above the prayers, or, at least, their unfortunate accumulation. It was completely in the order of things to open the liturgy with the prayer of the priest for himself, but for a long time we have not known these prayers in the liturgical records, and even with such a complete doxology, which could not have appeared before the 2nd Ecumenical Council: “Blessed are You with Your holy and good and life-giving and consubstantial Spirit.” In the prayer of incense, that is, at the beginning of the incense, over the brought incense, it is said about Christ that He is a two-natural coal that touched the lips of the prophet, and thus two natures are distinguished in Him. According to ancient liturgies, the liturgy opens with the prayers of first the people and the priest entering the church, and then the latter into the altar, to the throne. But why is there an exchange of good wishes between the priest and the deacon, reminiscent of the current conciliar service and, obviously, taken from some late missal. Next is the hymn: The Only Begotten Son, the Trisagion with the prayer relating to him, the Cherubic hymn and not a word about the catechumens, as if they never existed. After the transfer of St. gifts to the throne again prayers for uncondemned standing before the throne; after the consecration of the gifts, it is indicated how and in what order the priest crushes the lamb and places it in the chalice; communion is performed through a spoon; transfer of residues to skevophilacium; and all this ends with a prayer of repentance from the missal. – Even in a brief entry, where many later additions are eliminated and the presentation of the entire first part is omitted, upon closer examination there are later growths and traces of later church language: for example, Presv. The Virgin is called Θετο ́ κος, the Holy Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and the Son; contains a prayer for faithful kings and Christians who created monasteries in all countries of the world. The Jewish Passover Supper was a real dinner. Did this influence the combination of the Eucharist with agapes and its celebration in the evening? Letter III to Bishop. Kyriacou, - Letters to Zlat, in Russian. lane St. Petersburg. 1866, p. 154. Sn. Russian lane creativity Zlat. St. Petersburg. D. A. III, 453, 447. “They tell me: you baptized after food and drink. If I did this, let me be anathema!” See Post. Apostle book 2, ch. 57; Russian lane p. 92. God. West. Du exhort. cast c VII; De orat. c. 28. Klim. Alex, doctrine of the Euchar., as a sacrifice: Strom. Chapter IV 25. V ch. 10. See Caprian's letters 34, 37, pp. 28, 77. De corona. Milit. P. 3. Admonished. To the whole. Ch. 11. De monog. 10 p.m. De exhort. Cast, II c. Eusebius T.I. vol. 1. book. IV, ch. 15, p. 198. St. Petersburg. 1858. On commemoration, see Experiments in the writings of educators. M. Spirit. Academy. M. 1822 pp. 13, 16. From whom the church did not accept gifts, see Vitrinsk. Memorial III part V, 180–3.203. Sylvester's Experience of Dogma. theologian vol. V. p. 303; ed. 2. K. 1897. Dionysus. Ar. about reading dipt. with him prin. 253–4. Collection other lit. vern. I. 188. For the words of this prayer, see F. Smirnov, page 182. In these words one cannot fail to notice traces of the ancient Christian view of the universal priesthood. Prayer: It is worthy to eat as truly - its first half of the 10th century. second half – 8th century. To get to the fundamental principle of the liturgies of the Syriac-Palestinian branch, in the absence of a positive criterion, is just as difficult as to get to the fundamental principle of the liturgies of the Egyptian-Alexandrian family, and to engage in trimming and shortening the remaining lists according to the recipe of Bunsen’s comparative liturgical criticism will hardly be a rewarding and useful task. It is, of course, not difficult to identify later layers of the kind indicated (in the Calabrian sp. liturgy of Mark), but to achieve through such reduction to a scientific fundamental principle is a very incorrect and subjective path, and therefore we have to limit ourselves to pointing out outstanding examples of this liturgical branch and its most ancient representatives For whatever the Spirit touches is sanctified and transformed. About the Holy Spirit is expressed in the same sense. See the bishop's prayer over the catechumens bowing their heads. You might be interested in: