The Syrian Orthodox tradition has more than eighty-four known anaphoras, though these were never collected in one manuscript or liturgical book. The various collections represent the use of monasteries and their environs in certain places at certain times, and it is probable that some of these anaphoras had only a limited shelf life. Some are centos made up from cannibalising others, and some exist under more than one name. Although some of these have critical editions in the Anaphorae Syriacae series, that project has ceased, leaving many of these prayers with no critical texts. At least for the anaphora named after St Dionysius the Areopagite, Vidalis has now filled this lacuna.

Vidalis bases his text on several manuscripts, notably British Library, ms Add. 17,128 which is dated to the tenth or eleventh century, though he also uses late medieval and early modern manuscripts from both the Syrian Orthodox and the Maronite traditions. He makes reference to a manuscript of the Syrian Orthodox tradition in India, which he labels ‘Kerala’, by which it is assumed he means the Pampakuda 80, but he gives no indication that had access to and used this manuscript. From the manuscripts he consulted, he provides a base text with variant readings, and a French translation. A detailed analysis takes up the majority of this study.

Vidalis takes the earliest manuscripts to represent the anaphora as a sixth-century work, which was subsequently expanded in the post-sanctus, in the epiclesis and the intercessions. (The expansions can be seen by English-speakers in the two different texts provided by John Parker and the Pampakuda 80 text in the collection published by Baby Varghese.) The intercessions are full of variables in most Eastern traditions, and so this is in no way extraordinary. The other expansions and different readings invite exploration of the works of Pseudo-Dionysius as well as the intra- and extra-Christological debates of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries.

In the pre-anaphoral prayers with the Pax, Vidalis shows how the author has drawn directly on the Ecclesiastical hierarchy and on the Epistle to the Ephesians. In the anaphora text, he notes the influence of the angelology of the anaphora of St James, and he examines in some detail the reference to the incarnation being from the Virgin’s blood. This expression is found in the liturgical commentaries of Moses Bar Kepha and Dionysius Bar Salibi, but Vidalis sees its origins in the intra-miaphysite argument between Severus of Antioch and Julian of Halicarnassus over the impassibility of Christ’s body. Vidalis also provides an extended debate over the addition of the word ‘believe’ to the words of Institution of Christ – ‘and believe this is my body’. Vidalis traces this to a difference and conflict between the Antiochene and Alexandrian schools, and he discusses the terminology of Theodore of Mopsuestia and its influence in the Church of the East. He contrasts the more ‘realist’ eucharistic teaching of Cyril of Alexandria, reiterated in the liturgical commentary of Moses Bar Kepha, with a particular passage in Babai the Great’s Book of union. It is quite true that in the passage from Babai which Vidalis cites, Babai speaks of ‘types’, but so did Ephem. Babai does discuss both the bread and wine in relation to Christology, and says we do not break his natural body which is in heaven. However, Vidalis has taken this out of the wider context. Much earlier Babai had asserted that the Holy Spirit descends and makes the bread one body of Christ who is present in every particle. Vidalis might have more usefully discussed here the difference in exegesis of the conception in St Luke’s Gospel, where for East Syrians the power of the most high is a synonym for the Holy Spirit, but for the miaphysites, the power is the Logos. The East Syrians believed that the resurrection was the analogy of the eucharistic presence, whereas the miaphysites, following Cyril of Alexandria, took the incarnation as the better analogy.

The publication of a critical text of this anaphora is extremely useful. What is strange is that a number of existing studies which might have helped the author are not referenced. In discussing the variants in the opening dialogue to the anaphora, Vidalis cites the 1950 work of Bouman, but there is no mention or use of Robert Taft’s much more recent work on this liturgical unit. Although Anaphorae Syriacae is referenced, there is no mention of the critical text of Syriac Basil by Erich Renhart (2019), that of Philoxenus of Mabbug by Roger-Youssif Akhrass (2016), or Ephrem Ishac’s work on the anaphora of Jacob of Edessa (2013). There is also no reference to the many articles and books and to the Syrian Orthodox anaphoras by Baby Varghese, or to his two publications of the Syriac and English text of over forty, including that of St Dionysius the Areopagite. This reviewer’s own essays are also passed over, as indeed are many pertinent essays by Sebastian Brock.

Vidalis’s view is that the anaphora of St Dioynisus the Areopagite dates from the sixth century, and it shows evidence of an underlying Greek anaphora. However, since the consecration of a separate hierarchy dates from the early sixth century, it is hard to see any of the anaphoras other than St James and Twelve Apostles as being this early, and no known Greek counterpart is known. It seems more likely to this reviewer that this anaphora is seventh-century at its earliest, and possibly later, It may be that the compiler drew on the works of Pseudo-Dionysius, but it may be that it was composed for his feast day, just as seems to have been the case with the three anaphoras named after Philoxenus. Vidalis, to be fair, concludes with tentative observations, but his discussion of the different manuscript readings ignores the work of Archim Budde and Juliette Day who have stressed that local orality played an important part in liturgical development, and differences do not necessarily mean a chronological evolution but may just as equally represent co-existing local uses and customs. With these caveats, Vidalis has provided a very important contribution to anaphoral study in this ecclesial tradition.