Documents of the baptismal liturgy

270 Pages·1970·10.429 MB·English

by  Edward Charles Whitaker

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n.·
DOCUMENTS
OF THE
BAPTISMAL LITURGY
E. C. WHITAKER-:
Vicar of Kirkby Ireleth
Honorary Canon of Carlisle ~.
LONDON
S·P·C·K
1970
F r 'm'p.um -, • "U "eM» 11 ert ') U"t t·
First published in 1960
Second edition revised and supplemelllfd 1970
by S.P.c.K.
Holy Trinity Churcl.
Marylebone Road
London N. W.I
Made and printed in Greal Britain by
Hollen Street Press Ltd., Slough, Bucks.
© E.C. Whitaker, 1960, 1970
Originally published as Alcuin Club Collections No. 42
SBN 281 02478 2
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PRUVO,
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Contents
vii
POIlEWOIlD
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS IX
CIlOSS IlEFEIlENCBS Xl
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
The Sacrament of Christian Initiation xiii
I. THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH
The Didache 1
The First Arclogy ofJ ustin Martyr 1
T~osto"c Tradition of Hippolytus 2
Te "an 7
C rian 10
A~ostolorum
DTlascalia I2
The Acts 0 Judas Thomas 13
The Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxcna 19
2. SYRIA
The History ofJ ohn the Son of Zebedee 21
St Cyril ofJ erusalem 23
The Apostolic Constitutions 30
St John Cbrysostom 3S
The Pilgrimage ofEtheria 41
Theodore of Mopsuestia 44
Narsai so
Dionysius the Areopagite S6
James of Edessa S8
{
3. THE ARMENIAN RITE 61
4. THE BYZANTINE RITE 69
A· v
S. EGYPT
The Sacramentary of Sarapion 83
Timothy, Bishop of Alexandria 86
The Canons of Hippolytus 87
The Coptic Rite gI
6. AFRICA
St Augustine ofH ippo
99
The Rite ofC arthage 106
7. SPAIN
St Isidore of Seville 109
St Hildephonsus of Toledo
III
The Liber OrJinum lIS
8. MILAN
St Ainbrose 127
The Ambrosian Manual 133
Beroldus 147
g. ROME
The Leonine Sacramentary IS3
John the Deacon IS4
10. GALLICAN DOCUMENTS
The Missale Gothicum Ijg
The Letters of St Germanus of Paris 164
II. HYBRID DOCUMENTS
The Gelasian Sacramentary 1.66
The OrJo Romanus Xl Ig6
The Bobbio Missal
204
The Stowe Missal ZI3
12. LOCAL COUNCILS IN THE WEST ZZZ
13. THE SARUM RITE 231
GLOSSARY Zj4
vi
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Foreword
The opportunity of preparing a second edition of this book has enabled
me to improve the original in a number of ways. The omission of
Cyprian was a serious mistake which I can now make good. It has been
possible to enlarge some other sections of the book, notably those on
Tertullian and St John Chrysostom, and to make slight improvements
to the introductions to some of the documents. The addition of the
Sarum rite should help to make the volume more useful to students.
An attempt to improve the pedestrian quality of much of my translation
would have been too large a task, but a number of the more serious
errors of translation in the first edition have been corrected in this, and
I ~an only hope that none are left. .
I am grateful to CanonJ. D. C. Fisher for the opportunity to make
use of his translation of the Sarum rite. This has been reproduced as it
stands in his book Christian Initiation: Baptism in the Medieval West.
Finally, I am glad of this occasion to set on record my gratitude to
Canon Bernard Wigan for much help and advice in this and other
matters over the many years since we were students together.
E. C. WHITAKER
Vll
Acknowledgements
Translations have been borrowed from the following sources with the kind
permission of their publishers.
PUBLISHED BY S.P.C.K.
The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, ed. Dom. Gregory Dix.
The Lectures of St Cyril ofJ erusalem, ed. F. L. Cross.
, 'I
The Pilgrimage of Etheria, ed. M. L. McClure and C. L. Feltoe. , '
Bishop Sarapion's Prayer Book, ed. J. Wordsworth.
Coptic Offices, ed. R. M. Woolley.
St Ambrose on the Sacraments and on the Mysteries, ed. J. H. Srawley.
Tertullian's Homily on Baptism, ed. E. Evans. ,
Christian Initiation: Baptism in the Medieval West, by J. D. C. Fisher. r i
PUBLISHED BY THE CLARENDON PRESS, OXFORD
Didascalia Apostolorum, ed. R. H. Connolly.
Rituale Armenorum, ed. F. C. Conybeare and A. J. Maclean.
The Apocryphal New Testament, ed. M. R. James.
PUBLISHED BY THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Liturgical Homilies of Narsai, ed. R. H. Connolly.
PUBLISHED BY W. HEFFER AND SON, LTD, CAMBRIDGB
Woodbrooke Studies, by A. Mingana.
PUBLISHED BY PARKER AND SON, OXFORD
The Works of ~onysjus the Areopagite, trans. J. Parker.
PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. LTD
St John Chrysostom: Baptismal Instructions, ed. P. W. Harkins.
ix
, i
,
"
1
~ross-~~erences
Liturgical formularies which are common to certain Latin documents _
are noted by a system of marginal cross-references, to which the key is
as follows:
LO The Liber Ordinum.
A The Ambrosian Manual.
G The Gelasian Sacramentary.
B The Bobbio Missal.
S The Stowe Missal.
o
The Ordo Romanus XI.
Goth The Missale Gothicum.
Xl
Introductory Essay
THE SACRAMENT OF
CHRISTIAN INITIATION
Tertullian first in his Treatise concerning Baptism, and then Hippolytw
in The Apostolic Tradition, provide the two earliest full accounts which
we possess of Christian initiation. Since The Apostolic Tradition is a
quasi-liturgical document, it is no matter for surprise if the information
which it supplies is fuller and more detailed than what we gain from
Tertullian's treatise; even so the two documents reveal a rather
different procedure in the ordering of the sacrament. According to
each of them the renunciation of Satan is a preliminary, but in
Tertullian's account it is performed in the water, whereas it took place
before entering the water in that of Hippolytus. When the candidate
entered the water, he was questioned in the triple interrogation on the
faith out of which the Apostles' Creed was later to grow, and to each
question he answered: I believe. After each response the deacon laid his
hand on the candidate's head and baptized him in the water. We note
that no form of words is provided other than the credal interrogation
and its responses. This was to be the way in the Western Church for
some years. The formula which is familiar to us today was only intro
duced into the West from the Syrian Church gradually over the
centuries. Until then the interrogation and its responses may properly
1
be described as the baptismal formula of the Western Church, and by
its close integration with the baptismal washing it was made clear that
his faith is the most important characteristic of the Christian, and that
his faith assumes concrete form in baptism.
-I See The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol. XVI (1965) pp. 1-12, article,
E. C. Whitaker, "The History of the Baptismal Formula"; also The Church
Quarterly Review (1960), article, E. C. Whitaker, "The Baptismal Formula in
the Syrian Rite", pp. 346-52.
xiii
xiv INTRODUCTORY ESSAY
It is necessary now to take careful note of what happened when the
candidates came up from the baptismal water.
I. While still wet and unclothed they were anointed "with holy oil in
the Name ofJ esus Christ".
2. Once dried and dressed they were ready to appear before the bishop
and the congregation of the faithful.
3. The bishop laid his hand on them and said a prayer. We may infer
both from the length of this prayer and its contents that this laying on of
the hand was not performed on each candidate separately but over all
of them together with the hand extended over them as the prayer
was said.
4. Each candidate then appeared individually before the bishop, who
poured oil on his head or forehead (Hippolytus is not specific), laid his
hand in the oil, and said: I anoint thee with holy oil in God the Father
Almighty and Christ Jesus and the Holy Ghost.
s.
The bishop sealed each candidate individually, that is to say he made
the sign of the cross on his forehead, most probably in the oil.
Tertullian's account of the matter is not so precise and perhaps not
quite the same. We may gather from his description that the candidate's
whole body was anointed when he rose from the water, he then
dressed and appeared before the bishop who laid his hands upon his
head in the form of a cross, either in oil specially poured out or in what
remained from the previous anointing.
In each of these accounts we may discern three separate actions
following the baptismal washing: they are the imposition of the hand,
the anointing, and the sign of the cross. J. Ysebaert has persuasively
argued that these should not be regarded as three distinct rites but as
I
one "complicated liturgical act". He points to the high probability that
the baptismal bath was normally and naturally followed by an
anointing of the body. Dr L. L. Mitchell has set out some of the evi- -
dence from which we learn that oil was commonly associated with the
bath in the pagan ~d secular world of ancient times, just as naturally as
soap is today.2 There is evidence in the Bible that it was not different in
the Jewish world) Ysebaert shows also that from New Testament
I J. Ysebaert, Greek Baptismal Terminology (Nijrnegen 1962), pp. 264, 289£
2 L. L. Mitchell, Baptismal Anointing (London 1966), pp. 25£
3 Ruth 3.3 ; Exod. 40.I2f;Judith 10.3; Susannah V.17; Lukq.38; Matt. 6.17.
THE SACRAMENT OF CHRISTIAN INITIATION xv
times a formal anointing was frequently associated with an imposition
of hands and vice versa. It would not therefore be surprising if from the
beginning Christian baptism was accompanied by an anointing with
which an imposition of the hand might readily be associated; and we
should expect to find that the sign of the cross soon made its way into
the complex in one way or another. The effect ofYsebaert's argument
is thus to show that if there is a difference in detail between the practice
described by Tertullian and that advocated by Hippolytus; if some
later documents appear to connect the gift of the Spirit with the
imposition of the hand, and others with the anointing; ifs ome areas have
retained only one post-baptismal anointing although others have two;
then the differences arise from differences in the way in which one basic
and complex act has developed and disintegrated in response to
circumstances.
The Church in the East developed its institutions in a milieu quite
different from the Hellenized West, and this fact applies in full measure
to the rite,u)[Christian,initiatio1!:' Although historians are accustomed
to write of east Syrian and west Syrian rites, the basic rite of initiation
which underlies both is attested by the documents of the Syrian rite,
some of them ante-Nicene, which are set out below. We have had
occasion already to refer to one notable difference between East and
West as it concerns the baptismal formula. The formula which is
universally used throughout the Church today, and which seems to be
attested in St Matthew's Gospel {28. 19), was used from .. the 6.rst itl
Syria in a variety of similar forms, and only by degrees replaced the
interrogation on the faith which, as we have seen, provided the
Western Church with its baptismal formula in the earlier centuries.
This difference is not unimportant in itself and accounts for some of the
differences in the way in which the Eastern and Western rites developed.
More important still is the absence in the Syrian rite of any post
baptismal anointing. Basically the rite consisted of an an,ointing. the
baptismal washing. and the celebration of the;EuchaAst. The evidence
of all the early documents of the Syrian rite is that nothing intervened
between the baptismal washing and the celebration of the Eucharist.
It is not certain that a post-baptismal anointing or imposition of the
hand is attested by Theodore of MopsuestiaI (p.so). And when a
post-baptismal anointing does appear in the Syrian documents. as in
I See L. L. Mitchell, op.cit., P.41; ~lso article, Dom B. Botte, uLe Bapteme
dans l'Eglise Syrienne", p. 144 (L'Orient Syrien, vol. 1 (19S6)].