Partial list of Christian liturgies (past and present)
- Roman Catholic church (churches in communion with the Holy See)
Frequent liturgical practice
Most Protestant Christian denominations, while often following a fixed "order of worship," do not adhere to a liturgy in the strict sense of the word.
Eastern Orthodox churches call the liturgy in which the Eucharist is celebrated and served the Divine Liturgy. This is generally comparable to the Roman Catholic Mass, although in practice they are quite different. This can also refer to the detailed rubrics for this ceremony; two of the best known are the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great .
Matins refers to prayers generally said in the morning, without the Eucharist. Vespers refers to prayers generally said in the evening, without the Eucharist. Great Vespers is an extended vespers service used on the eve of a major Feast day, or on the evening before the Eucharist will be celebrated.
A liturgy can also refer to the public burdens assigned to the wealthy in ancient Athens, such as outfitting warships, holding banquets and training choruses. See noblesse oblige.
History of the Liturgy
This section will describe the evolution of the liturgical celebration known as the Mass by Roman Catholics and called the Divine Liturgy by many groups of Orthodox Christians.
Initially, it is theorized that the Apostles obeyed the command "do this in memory of me", said during the Last Supper, and performed the liturgy in the houses of Christians. Besides mimicking the action of Jesus, using the bread and wine, and saying his words (known as the words of the institution), the rest of the ritual seems to have been more or less improvised. Early on though it seems that it incorporated many elements of a Jewish synagogue service, including singing of hymns and reading from the Bible (untill the 4th century when the church established a Biblical canon, all manner of things were read during the liturgy, including papal encyclicals from Pope St. Clement). Through an unknown process, many elements of these liturgies began to be fixed, and a book called the Apostolic Constitutions, from the fourth century, shows an outline for the liturgy which is incorporated almost all Western and Eastern rites. This includes the use of the prayer known as the Sanctus, which is prefaced by a long introduction; it also includes a fairly fixed series of prayers leading up to the consecration.
Vestments worn by the Bishops and Priests at this point were simply the clothes of the lay person. Later as fashions changed the styles for the clergy remained the same and were embellished. The liturgy was almost assuredly sung in most places. Many places divided the congregation into male and female with a curtain separating them. At this point both Western and Eastern churches adopted the use of curtains to mask the clergy on the altar at certain points, this de-evolved into the rood screen and altar rail in the western liturgies, and evolved into the iconostasis in many eastern liturgies, while still being used in the Armenian liturgy.
The language used in most of the liturgies was Greek. Later a Pope from Africa, where Latin was the vernacular, convinced the Roman church to use Latin instead. As Christianity spread to different nations around the Mediterranean, several distinct traditions developed, each with a different liturgical language: the Alexandrine Tradition (Coptic), Syriac Tradition (Syriac), Byzantine Tradition (Greek), Armenian Tradition (Armenian), and the Latin Tradition (Latin). These basic traditions gave rise to several distinct rites. The Coptic and Ethiopic rites came from the Alexandrine Tradition; The Chaldean, Malabar, Syraic, Malankar, and Maronite rites developed from the Syriac Tradition; the Greek and Slav variants of the Byzantine liturgy emerged from the Byzantine Tradition; the Armenian rite developed from the Armenian Tradition; and the Roman, Ambrosian, and Mozarabic rites came from the Latin Tradition.
The litugy of the western church was heavily affected by the decisions to allow the Priests to say the mass separate from the bishops (usually almost every public liturgy was celebrated by the bishop, as Christianity spread out of the major urban centers this became more difficult). Thus much of the western rite involved paring down the ceremony to apply to a priest. This did not occur as much in the eastern churches.
Leading up to the time of the Great schism, the rites of the western and eastern churches began to diverge. The eastern was heavily influenced by the use of the iconostasis, a large wall with doors in front of the altar, while the western church was seen as assimilating many of the pious practices of the pagans it had converted in northern Europe.
Before the council of Trent, the western liturgy was very affected by local cultures and trends. In particular, the French had a large influence over many developments in the liturgy, so much so that it could be called a different rite, the Gallican Rite . Priests and Bishops were known to improvise and extend prayers, have long periods of silence, and other innovations. The Council of Trent called for a standardized western rite and created a system for printing missals which would have to be used by every congregation unless their rite was at least 200 years old. In the West, these rites included the Dominican, the Ambrosian rite, and the Mozarabic rite.
Things common to all rites
There are many common elements found in all western and eastern rites:
Remnants of a division between the first half of the liturgy, open for both Church members and those wanting to learn about the church, and the second half, only open to believers.
(please list more)
Catholic sacraments
External links
Liturgy Archive
