The Society of Oriental Liturgy was founded by the late Professor Robert Taft sj, both to encourage and to showcase liturgical study of the Eastern rites which so frequently get an ‘also ran’ treatment in liturgical studies. This collection of papers is from the delayed (by COVID) meeting in Thessaloniki in 2022, with two papers from the 2016 congress held in Etchmiadzin, Armenia. SOL congesses do not usually have a theme so as not to constrain scholarship, and so hoping to avoid the more generic papers which frequently result in liturgical associations which select a theme. This volume is entitled Logike Latreia, inspired by Romans xii, and also in honour of a former liturgy professor at Thessaloniki whose book was so titled.
The SOL congresses always include a presidential paper, and the Dutch scholar, Gerard Rouwhorst, chose to re-visit Anton Baumstark’s comparative liturgy approach, and to evaluate it for Eastern liturgical studies. Rouwhorst skilfully discusses the strengths and weaknesses of this method, and while acknowledging the value of other methods, commends this as still important for assessing the development of Eastern texts and their intertextuality. In order to dispel the idea that Eastern liturgies are all ‘historic’, Stefanos Alexopoulas examines the origins of the ‘Office of Doxology for March 25’, a newer office which celebrates the Greek Revolution and war of independence, and showing how choosing the date of the feast of the annunciation was no accident, but deliberately picks up the themes of deliverance, redemption and deliverance associated with the biblical feast. A very detailed paper on the early Slav Horologion by Alexandr Andreev distinguishes between Chasovnik and Chasoslovets, where in the latter the daily cursus begins with Matins (actually, the ‘Order at Cock-Crow before Matins’) rather than with Vespers. Drawing on the work of fellow SOL member Stig Frøyshov, he posits two early translations of the Byzantine Horologion, the Chasovnik translated in Bulgaria in the early tenth century and the Chasoslovets translated in Constantinople in the second half of the eleventh, which are flanked by a ninth-century translation based on earlier Cyrillo-Methodian prototypes attested in Glagolitic sources, and a mid fourteenth-century translation of the neo-Sabaite Horologion. Theodora Antonopoulou explores non-mainstream uses of sermons in Byzantium, and Mary Farag discusses the reception of Pachomius and Theophilus in hagiographical and homiletic texts. Using modern technology for assisting study, the digital edition of the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary is presented by Dilianus Atanassova and Lina Elhage-Menschingand and modern research methods are used by Martin Lüstraeten to highlight the eucharistic prayer of Testamentum Domini in Arabic translation. Arsenius Mikhail, who is one of the outstanding younger scholars of the Coptic liturgy, discusses a typology of Bohairic Coptic Euchologia, drawing on digital data which makes research easier. Emmanuel Fritsch is a leading authority on Ethiopian liturgy and presents a brilliant examination of the introduction of ‘send the grace of the Holy Spirit upon us’ at the fraction in this tradition. Fritsch traces its origin to the conclusion of the anaphora of Testamentum Domini which Ethiopia adopted, noting that its present use at the fraction deploys the epiclesis practically as well as prophetically, reaching out what Jesus did at the Last Supper: ‘It manifests the sacrificial gift of himself that the incarnate Son of God does throughout all his life on earth, reaching out to each person present in the assembly, until he comes.’ A fascinating and intricate essay on the structure of calendars in Greek Tetraevangelia is contributed by Marie-Ève Greiger in which she discusses a wide variety of Greek manuscripts from the tenth and eleventh centuries, and Hugo Ménez carefully examines Jewish feasts in the Jerusalem calendar, challenging ideas that these feasts were carried over from the Jewish Christian community and arguing that they were consciously adopted by the fourth- and fifth-century Jerusalem Church. Marcel Metzger re-visits the reception of the ‘Apostolic Tradition’ documents. The importance of Greek hymnography in constructing a liturgical narrative is emphasised by Damaskinos of Xenephontos, appealing to the fact that liturgical texts were and are for performance. Armenian studies are represented by Charles Renoux who discusses the Jerusalem Lectionary and that of Albania; and Daniel Findikyan discusses the architectural Gawit (a type of quadrangular ante-chamber constructed on the western façade of monastic churches originating in the twelfth century), arguing that this feature was originally to house tombs but was later used as a liturgical space to house the faithful during closed-door liturgies.
In conclusion, these essays are a reminder that much work is being done in Eastern liturgies, with many younger scholars using all modern digital resources to deepen our knowledge of these important traditions.
