Alexander Schmemann

3. The Age Of The Ecumenical Councils (50 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 46

On the other hand, the permanent link with the court, the constant presence of the emperor at the liturgy, and the imperial concept of the Church of St. Sophia inevitably carried weight. The tradition of Constantinople came to include elements of court ritual which expressed the theocratic concept of imperial authority and made everything surrounding the emperor “divine.”

Finally, through Constantine, the influence of liturgical customs in Jerusalem was very perceptible. In the fourth century Jerusalem was a center of general interest; majestic churches were built there, pilgrims came from all over the world, and there, in the Holy Land, steeped in memories of the earthly life of the Savior, the services became increasingly dramatic.
This is well demonstrated in the diary of Etheria, a pilgrim from Gaul who visited the Holy Land at the end of the fourth century and left a detailed description of its Church customs.

Thus the liturgical pattern that gradually formed in the capital was naturally a synthesis of various traditions and influences. Its basic features were formed in the seventh century, when the see of Constantinople was elevated permanently to the central position in the whole Orthodox Church of the East. Once formed, it not only influenced the other “local” traditions but soon became the only form of divine service for the whole Eastern Orthodox Church. Thus the Byzantine liturgy in its dual form, that of Chrysostom and of Basil the Great, gradually squeezed out the ancient Alexandrian liturgy known by the name of St. Mark, as well as the Antiochene liturgy of St. James, brother of the Lord. This triumph of the Byzantine rite applied not only to the Eucharist but to the whole cycle of divine services. The “Byzantine rite” in the end became the only rite of the Orthodox Church.

Late Byzantium furnishes the definitive system of services. In the seventh century, the basic tone of liturgical creativeness may already be sensed. It was founded, of course, upon Holy Scripture. The language of the Bible became and remained the language of the Church, and this not only because it was permeated with religion and full of rich images, or corresponded strikingly to religious feelings in all their variety. The faith and experience of the Church are inseparable from the Scriptures, which are its source. Everything the Church believes and by which it lives took place “according to the Scriptures” (“For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures: . . .” (I Cor. 15:3-4). But this “according to the Scriptures” means much more than fulfillment of prophecies and predictions; it means first of all the inner link between what Christ did and what the Scripture relates — aside from this link neither Scripture nor the meaning of Christ’s acts can be understood. The unfolding and deepening reflection of this link is precisely the content of the Christian service, of Church poetry, and even of the rite itself.

 

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