Download PDF | Hans-Joachim Schulz - The Byzantine Liturgy _ Symbolic Structure and Faith Expression-Pueblo Pub. Co. (1986).
319 Pages
Foreword
As a teacher of eastern liturgy I welcome with great satisfaction this English translation of Die byzantinische Liturgie, the work of my friend and colleague Hans-Joachim Schulz. Few books on Byzantine liturgy have aroused in me pangs of jealousy. This is one of them. No better explanation exists of the symbolic structure of Byzantine Divine Liturgy and its meaning to those who created it.
Since the appearance of the first edition in 1964, the isolation in which Schulz’s book then found itself has been ended definitively by a series of major scholarly studies on the Byzantine eucharistic liturgy: its manuscripts, setting, history, and commentaries. The work of G. Wagner on the Chrysostom anaphora, of J. Mateos and myself on the historical development, of R. Bornert on the commentaries, of A. Jacob on the manuscript tradition, and of F. van de Paverd on the Chrysostom documents, comprises the new material for Part Two of the present English edition.
Apart from new liturgical studies, much has happened in the world of pastoral liturgy and ecumenism since the Second Vatican Council closed shortly after the appearance of the first edition. The Byzantine liturgical tradition still mirrors the dogmatic heritage of the first millenium, and it is in such a mirror that many later developments will have to be reexamined. For the East, “Orthodoxy” also means “‘right-worshiping,” a concept akin to the Latin adage “ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi.
Father Schulz is one of the major Catholic contributors to an ecumenical dialogue that takes liturgy as its point of departure, a starting point congenial to both Orthodox and Catholic communions, as is evidenced by the decision to begin the new Orthodox-Catholic dialogue with a discussion of the sacramental life of the two churches.
Of course there is more than one way to start with liturgy. Some approach eastern liturgy with scholarly background and method, yet fail to comprehend or appreciate the spirit of that worship, the elusive ethos of the Christian East. For others, the opposite is true.
Although they may have imbibed the tradition with their mother’s milk, inadequacies in historical knowledge and the inability to be scientifically critical or even objective vitiate much of their work. H.-J. Schulz is an exception on both counts. Not only are his scholarly credentials impeccable; he has also penetrated to the heart of the mystery.
Perhaps more than in any other tradition, Byzantine liturgy equals more than the sum of it component parts, says much more than what its texts affirm. It has a Symbolgestalt, an Erscheinungsbild, to use Schulz’s felicitous terms. This symbolic form goes beyond the verbal or the notional to create a transcendent vision characteristic of the Byzantine spiritual world. There is no better guide to this vision than Schulz. He is easily the best interpreter of Byzantine liturgical theology writing today.
Schulz explains not only this symbolic form. The evolution of both the structure and its interpretation in response to the cultural and spiritual forces of each age is also traced with historical vision and spiritual insight, through a profoundly knowledgeable and sympathetic—that is, truly ecumenical—unfolding of the teaching of the major Byzantine liturgical commentators: Maximus Confessor, Germanus, the Protheoria, Nicholas Cabasilas, Symeon of Thessalonica.
We have become accustomed to treating medieval liturgical commentaries with a certain disdain, as mere fanciful allegory. Schulz does us the great service of rehabilitating this literary genre, a revisionist view later confirmed by René Bornert’s superb study of the Byzantine commentaries. As Schulz shows, one must not be put off by the seeming similarity of method between the Byzantine liturgical commentaries and medieval Latin mass-allegories.
In the Byzantine liturgy the very evolution of the rite is linked inseparably to a symbolic method of interpretation that, although perhaps not always felicitous, is in no way extrinsic to the structure and meaning of the rites, as are the Latin allegories from Amalar on. Furthermore, these Byzantine commentaries are still a living part of eastern liturgical theology and cannot be ignored, although they must of course be complemented by a genetic understanding of the rites based on contemporary historical scholarship.
Also noteworthy is the role Schulz assigns to the church building, and especially to the developing iconographic program of the Middle Byzantine church as a source of Byzantine liturgical theology. In no tradition is liturgical space so integral to the liturgical experience as in the Byzantine, and in no tradition has liturgical iconography had such influence.
The struggle with iconoclasm (726-843) was a watershed for the development of Byzantine thought in the period after the golden age of Justinian. Schulz’s mastery of all this material and its precise place within the broader context of Byzantine liturgical history and theology is apparent in this synthesis of the interplay between liturgical development and the unfolding of dogma, and between liturgical development and liturgical understanding.
Important for contemporary eucharistic understanding are the subtle shifts Schulz indicates as liturgical sign moves from symbolism to representation. The importance of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicea II), the ““Council of Orthodoxy” against the iconoclasts in 787, is rightly highlighted, along with the influence of a representational understanding of the liturgy on iconodule theology during the second phase of iconoclasm (815-843). All this is necessary to grasp the relation between Byzantine icon theology and liturgical understanding.
Schulz is also aware of the defects in the Byzantine viewpoint. An excessively realistic representational view of the liturgy spilled over into the crude historicism of medieval eucharistic piety in East as well as West, contrary to what is sometimes thought. While the West was having its bleeding hosts and other eucharistic wonders, the East had its visions of the infant Jesus bleeding on the discos as sacrificial lamb. Schulz’s serene ecumenical objectivity permits him to put the finger on this and other less laudable aspects of the Byzantine liturgical outlook without laying himself open to the charge of bias.
This is an excellent book, one I recommend warmly to all who seek a thorough, profound, and nuanced discussion of the growth and meaning of the Byzantine Divine Liturgy within the total context of Byzantine cultural history. It is indeed a Liturgie in der byzantinischen Geistesgeschichte, to paraphase the title of A. Mayer’s fascinating series of essays that attempted to do something analogous for the West.
Robert Taft, S.J. Ordinary Professor of Eastern Liturgy Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome
First Preface
The encounter with the churches of the East has entered a new phase since the pontificate of John XXIII. A correspondingly greater theological effort will have to be made in the future to render accessible the tradition of the eastern churches. In the process, the study of the Christian East, which has at times been regarded as the preserve of a few specialists, will have to be brought into fruitful communication with the other theological disciplines.
This is especially true of relations between liturgical science and the systematic study of the eastern churches. As a matter of fact, in its very beginnings the liturgical renewal went hand in hand with a growing openness to the Christian East. Recall Dom Lambert Beauduin, who not only started the liturgical movement but also became the first prior of the newly founded ecumenical monastery at Amay-sur-Meuse (later at Chevetogne), or of Dom Odo Casel, whose mystery-presence theory, which so closely resembles the Byzantine understanding of the liturgy, was the source of important stimuli for sacramental theology and liturgical science. J. A. Jungmann devoted his inaugural dissertation on the place of Christ in liturgical prayer to a study of the special theological character of the earlier eastern liturgical texts,! and in so doing pointed the way for the investigation of the eastern liturgies.
The work presented here is an attempt to advance a step further along this path. Until now there has been no comprehensive description of the Byzantine eucharistic celebration from the early days of the Byzantine patriarchate down to the standardization of this liturgy in the fourteenth century. The ground-breaking works of P. de Meester? and J. M. Hanssens? have indeed shed light on the origins of most of the liturgical texts and manuscripts, but they have not considered the historico-theological background in which these developments took place. Above all, little attention has been paid until now to the evidence that iconography and the explanations of the liturgy provide for the history of the Byzantine liturgy.
The primary purpose of the present book is to show therefore for each period in the history of Byzantine thought the reciprocal relaticns between the development of liturgical forms, the statements made in ecclesiastical art, and the interpretative approach taken in commentaries on the liturgy.
For the liturgy of their times the liturgical commentaries are usually as informative in their differing symbolical interpretations as they are in their mention of liturgical details. The similarity between the motifs in these interpretations and those found in the Latin allegories of the mass (which are now, fortunately, a thing of the past) should not lead us to put the two phenomena on the same level. In the eastern liturgies the liturgical development as such is inseparable from the method of symbolical interpretation.
Thus, such characteristic parts of the Byzantine liturgy as the prothesis, the two entrances, the addition of hot water (Zeon) to the Precious Blood after the commingling of the species, and many other practices as well, can be understood in their historically developed form only in the light of their symbolic interpretation, in which the very essence of the eucharistic celebration finds expression. The expressive power of these rites, moreover, must be evaluated in terms of the theology of icons. The doctrine of images itself was legitimized by the Seventh Ecumenical Council, although the characteristic Byzantine form of this doctrine was not defined formally.
The liturgy as it developed down to the fourteenth century is still the focal point of the piety of the eastern church. Even in the construction of churches the effort is still made to be faithful to the ancient prototypes.
And in writings on the liturgy and in catechisms, the interpretation of the liturgy that is represented by Nicolas CabaSilas (d. after 1363) and Symeon of Thessalonica (d. 1429) is followed even today.* Consequently the inclusion of church architecture, iconography, and the interpretation of the liturgy in my study is not a matter of purely historical interest. These areas, too, help us to encounter the churches of the East as living realities. At the same time, however, the course of liturgical development also emerges more clearly, and the necessity of a genetic explanation of the liturgy becomes the more evident. Such an explanation will doubtless win out even in the East; it is a presupposition for a future liturgical renewal such as no church can avoid.
The present work was accepted as an inaugural dissertation by the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Minster in Decem-ber, 1963. I thank the Reverend Professors of the Faculty for this acceptance, and in particular Professor E. J. Lengeling, who played a decisive part in the dissertation from the outset and also wrote the verdict of the experts. My studies were made possible by a doctoral stipend from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. I wish to express my gratitude for this grant.
Since the book was expected to be of interest outside scholarly circles, the editors and publishers encouraged its publication in the Sophia series—an invitation that was indeed welcome to me.
Hans-Joachim Schulz Miinster March 1964.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق