Shape of the Liturgy, The
Dom Gregory Dix
Number of quotes: 19
Book ID: 272 Page: 2/3
Section: 2A6
In considering the primitive history of the eucharist we have to keep in mind continually the circumstances of a church life whose conditions were profoundly different from our own. The New Testament documents, in sharp contrast with the fulness of Old Testament directions for worship, contain no instructions as to the form of the eucharistic rite, or detailed accounts of its celebration, beyond the brief notices of its institution. There are a number of N.T. allusions to its existence, and S. Paul regulates certain points in connection with it for the Corinthians. But such information as the N.T. offers is theological or disciplinary rather than liturgical, i.e. it deals with the meaning and effects of the rite and the spirit in which it is to be performed, rather than the actual way in which it is to be performed, which the N.T. everywhere takes for granted.
Quote ID: 6836
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 272 Page: 48
Section: 2A2
The last supper of our Lord with His disciples is the source of the liturgical eucharist, but not the model for its performance. The New Testament accounts of that supper as they stand in the received text preinaugurated. Our Lord (1) took bread; (2) ‘gave thanks’ over it; (3) broke it; (4) distributed it, saying certain words. Later He (5) took a cup; (6) ‘gave thanks’ over that; (7) handed it to His disciples, saying certain words. {1} We are so accustomed to the liturgical shape of the eucharist as we know it that we do not instantly appreciate the fact that it is not based in practice on this ‘seven-action scheme’ but on a somewhat drastic modification of it.
Quote ID: 6837
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 272 Page: 58
Section: 2A2
What our Lord did at the last supper, then, was not to establish any new rite. He attached to the two corporate acts which were sure to be done when His disciples met in the future—the only two things which He could be sure they would do together regularly in any case—a quite new meaning, which had a special connection with His own impending death (exactly what, we need not now enquire).
Quote ID: 6838
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 272 Page: 303
Section: 2A4
It is one thing to have knowledge of the course of liturgical history—of when this custom was introduced and where, of how such-and-such a prayer was given a new turn and by whom. It is quite another and a more difficult thing to understand the real motive forces which often underlie such changes.
Quote ID: 6840
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 272 Page: 394
Section: 4B
The century which had opened with the fury of Diocletian reaffirming the strength of the empire closes with the hymns of Prudentius, the last authentic poet of classical literature—at once ‘the Virgil and the Horace of the christian’, as so fastidious a scholar and critic as Bentley called him.
Quote ID: 6841
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 272 Page: 397
Section: 2A2
One result of the fourth century transformation of the eucharist into a fully public act is a certain elaboration of ceremony in its performance.----
The introit-chant, which covered the processional entrance of the clergy, seems to be the only item in the outline of the rite which was introduced for purely ceremonial reasons.
Quote ID: 6842
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 272 Page: 398
Section: 2E1
What one may call ‘official costume for public acts’ both in the case of magistrates and priests had been common in classical Greece and usual all over the Near East for many centuries before the christian era.
Quote ID: 6844
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 272 Page: 399
Section: 2E1,3C
It is therefore not surprising to find that the earliest mention of a special liturgical garment for use at christian worship comes from the Near East, and specifically from Jerusalem. We learn incidentally from Theodoret that c. a.d. 330 Constantine had presented to his new cathedral church at Jerusalem as part of its furnishing a ‘sacred robe’ (hieran stolēn) of gold tissue to be worn by the bishop when presiding at the solemn baptisms of the paschal vigil. {1}
Quote ID: 6845
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 272 Page: 400
Section: 2E1
These are in essentials the pontificals of a mediaeval bishop. But Cyprian is wearing them simply as the ordinary lay gentlemen’s dress of the day.
Quote ID: 6846
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 272 Page: 402
Section: 2E1
The Maniple. Just as the pallium and stole derive from the secular ‘scarf of office’, so the vestment known as the maniple (fanon, sudarium) derives directly from the mappula, a sort of large handkerchief which formed part of the ceremonial dress of consuls and other magistrates, carried in the hand or laid across the arm.
Quote ID: 6847
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 272 Page: 403
Section: 2E1
The Camelaucum or Tiara. It is the same story with other vestments that originated before the middle ages. The Papal tiara, for instance, is derived from the camelaucum or phrygia, a ‘cap of state’ worn by the emperors and very high officials in the fourth century. The statue of Constantine on his triumphal arch at Rome is wearing one. A version of the same headgear was worn by the doge of Venice and other Italo-Greek potentates.
Quote ID: 6848
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 272 Page: 403
Section: 2E1
The Campagi or Shoes. The special liturgical shoes and stockings of Western bishops also originated as a secular ornament, worn outside church as well as at the liturgy. As far back as the early days of the Roman republic consuls and triumphing generals were distinguished by high-laced shoes of a particular form and a bright red colour; and patricians were distinguished from plebeians by a particular form of black shoe.
Quote ID: 6849
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 272 Page: 404
Section: 2E1
These are the only ecclesiastical vestments worn in christendom before c. a.d. 800. {2} In their adoption there is evidence of a definite policy pursued everywhere during the fourth and fifth centuries, viz., that the liturgy should be celebrated always in the garments of everyday life.----
What turned this clothing into a special liturgical vesture was mere conservatism. When the dress of the layman finally changed in the sixth and seventh centuries to the new barbarian fashions, the clergy as the last representatives of the old civilised tradition retained the old civilised costume.
Quote ID: 6850
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 272 Page: 405
Section: 2E1
The case is, however, quite different with the vestments which developed later, the Mitre, Cope and Gloves, and the choir dress of Surplice, etc. These mediaeval vestments were of deliberate clerical invention, and were meant in their ecclesiastical form to be worn only at the liturgy, and as clerical marks of distinction from the remainder of the worshippers.
Quote ID: 6851
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 272 Page: 409
Section: 4B,2E1
This review of the history of vestments, though sketchy, is sufficient to establish two main points:I. That in the fourth century, as before, the ‘domestic’ character of early christian worship asserted itself even after the transference of the eucharist to the basilicas sufficiently to prevent the adoption anywhere of special ceremonial robes, such as were a usual part of the apparatus of the pagan mysteries.
Quote ID: 6852
Time Periods: 4567
Book ID: 272 Page: 411
Section: 2A4
But there is nothing in the papal procession at this date corresponding to the later Western processional cross at the head of the procession, or to the special Papal cross. These both seem to owe their origin at Rome to a suggestion which that lover of ceremony for its own sake, the Frankish emperor Charlemagne, made to Pope Leo III in a.d. 800.
Quote ID: 6853
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 272 Page: 417
Section: 2A3
Eusebius describes the candles burning on golden stands around stands around the bier at the funeral of Constantine in a.d. 337 {2} and S. Gregory of Nyssa describing his own sister’s funeral in a.d. 370 tells how deacons and subdeacons two abreast bearing lighted candles escorted the body in procession from the house. {3} The custom was universal both in the East and the West, and continues so to this day.Here (at last) is something in catholic custom which is certainly of pagan origin. Both the bier-lights (which have never died out at state funerals in post-Reformation England) and the Western chapelle ardente, and the panikhida have all a common origin in very ancient pre-christian pagan observance.
[Footnote 2] Vita Constantini, iv. 66.
Quote ID: 6854
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 272 Page: 421
Section: 2A3,2E1
Lights as Votive Offerings. The burning of votive candles as well as other lights (and incense) at the tombs of ‘heroes’ and before the statues of the gods was a general practice in mediterranean paganism, and was not unknown in pre-christian judaism at ‘the tombs of the prophets’. The introduction of this form of popular devotion at the tombs of christian martyrs even before the end of the pre-Nicene period seems to be witnessed to by a canon (34) of the Spanish Council of Elvira c. a.d. 300 forbidding it (though this interpretation of the canon is not quite certain). The council’s prohibition certainly did not end the practice, even in Spain.
Quote ID: 6855
Time Periods: 234
Book ID: 272 Page: 432
Section: 2A2
The deliberate invention of symbolic gestures and actions and ceremonies in the liturgy to express and evoke adoration, purity of intention and so forth, is something which begins, as we have seen, in the fourth century with the transformation of the eucharist into a public worship.
Quote ID: 6857
Time Periods: 4
End of quotes