These two volumes in the Eastern Christian Studies series each contain the proceedings from conferences: volume xvii from a conference held in Hernen Castle in the Netherlands in 2008; volume xviii, selected papers from the Third International Conference of the Society of Oriental Liturgy, held at Volos in Greece in 2010. The former is concerned with developments in late- and post-Byzantine liturgical chant; the latter with an enormous range of issues involved in the study of oriental liturgy.

The studies on liturgical chant look at the development of Byzantine chant from the late Middle Ages onwards. In studying Byzantine and late Byzantine music, as with any music of the past, we cannot be sure what it sounded like, even if we have musical notation. Some scholars posit a radical discontinuity during the Ottoman period; others assume greater continuity. The studies gathered here bear on these issues, and many others. Several general topics emerge: one concerns the links between different developments in late Byzantium, especially the parallel developments of hesychasm and the elaborate chant that is found on the Holy Mountain, both in the fourteenth century. Older scholarship was puzzled: hesychastic prayer and elaborate chanting seemed contradictory. It seems increasingly likely that what might seem to us a contradiction did not seem so to fourteenth-century Athonite monks. Several studies here bear on this issue: in one case, as is inevitable in studies that are effectively multi-disciplinary, some later research has been neglected. Kujumdzieva seems unaware of Sinkewicz's not-that-recent edition of Theoleptos's Monastic discourses (1992), with its long introduction, which demonstrates, among other things, that Gregory Palamas cannot have been an actual disciple of Theoleptos (it is chronologically impossible), though he may have read his works. Another general topic concerns the nature of the continuity in the tradition of chant in the transition from late Byzantine to Ottoman. An important aspect of this is the handing of the tradition to emerging Romania: Iorga's Byzance après Byzance. This is discussed by Gheorghiţă. Other aspects of this transition, arguing for continuity, are discussed by Giannopoulos. Another aspect of the continuation of tradition, the way in which composers of liturgical chant borrowed from one another, is discussed by several of the contributors. The way in which the tradition was handed down, in quite practical terms – how were people initiated into the tradition of Byzantine chant through what is called the Papadike – is the subject of the long opening paper by Maria Alexandru and Christian Troelsgård.

The volume on liturgies is of more general interest (or requires less specialised knowledge to appreciate it). There is a wide range of articles: Alexopoulos on what seems an early precursor of what became in the Byzantine rite in effect offices of preparation and thanksgiving for Holy Communion; a couple of articles on concelebration in different traditions (Fritsch on the Ethiopian tradition, Taft on the modern Greek Orthodox tradition); recent decisions from the Œcumenical Patriarch over celebrating the Liturgy of the Presanctified during Lent (Nassis). Frøyshov discusses the Sunday Vigil as it took place in Jerusalem in the first millennium: the article here establishes the nature of the service; part ii, which is to appear elsewhere, will discuss its influence in neighbouring liturgical traditions. Another fascinating article discusses the link between martyrdom and the development of the anaphora, focusing in particular on St Polycarp's prayer as he is martyred (Johnson). Panagou discusses John Boswell's ideas about the rite of Adelfopoiia (Brother-making): he finds them wanting. Alas, he is unaware that his case had already been made, trenchantly, by the late Archimandrite Ephrem Lash (but in a somewhat obscure place: Sourozh lix [Feb. 1995], 50–5), and could not be aware of Claudia Rapp's just published Brother-making in late antiquity and Byzantium (2016), which likewise challenges the ‘Boswell thesis’. Two papers raise issues that are still current. Peter Galadza discusses the problems involved in producing a translation of the ‘Septuagint’ psalter for liturgical use and surveys ten attempts, from Lazarus Moore's still much used, though eccentric, version (1966) to that included in the Orthodox Study Bible (2008). It should be required reading for anyone attempting to make a translation of the Psalter for (Orthodox) liturgical use. Galadza cites Father Ephrem Lash quite frequently. It is a pity that Fr Ephrem's own translation, on which he had worked for years, beginning with the fixed Psalms in the offices, and gradually including the rest, was still incomplete at his death. Another topic of contemporary interest is the question of the translation of liturgical texts into Modern Greek: an issue addressed by Koumarianos. It is a serious question, and little progress is being made on it. Koumarianos sees the issue in terms of personal initiative versus synodical institutionalism, the latter thwarting the former. Koumarianos is clearly passionate about the question, which has maybe clouded his vision. The basic case for such translation is quite clear: as Fr Ephrem put it, mutatis mutandis, when asked why he devoted so much effort to translating the Byzantine liturgical texts into English: ‘Because not all the old ladies in my parish know classical Greek’. Koumarianos demolishes effectively the arguments used against translation, save for one, that he does not mention: that, uniquely in the case of Greek, these are the original texts, which is presumably the fundamental reason why people (even those who do not understand them: popular religion is often quite conservative) are so attached to them. Having admitted the necessity of translation, there arises another question that Koumarianos does not raise. Why stop at translation? Why not re-write in modern Greek? This is no longer a theoretical issue, for in 2012 (admittedly, later than the conference in Volos), an anonymous layman (whose identity is an open secret), who had earlier published re-written services for marriage and burial of the departed in Byzantine Greek, published a proposed text of the divine liturgy (and also of baptism) in modern demotic Greek. These are not translations, but newly composed services expressing different aspects than those contained in the traditional rites. That also could have been part of Koumarianos's remit.

If nothing else, these two collections of studies demonstrate that study of the Eastern liturgies is alive, and not confined to antiquarian discussion.