februar 2016

Jeg har nå lest ferdig den ganske berømte The Shape of the Liturgy, av Dom Gregory Dix, og er faktisk ikke så veldig fornøyd med boka.

Jeg syntes faktisk han var ganske preget av det man kaller arkeologisme, som pave Pius XII fordømte på 50-tallet, men som en del liturger likevel var og er påvirket av. F.eks. tenker Dix seg at på 100- og 200-tallet – da han mener at ordets gudstjeneste (synaxi) og eukaristien ble feiret separat – kunne søndagens eukaristi tidlig om morgenen var kanskje ikke mer enn 20 minutter, og være et nokså typisk måltidsfellesskap (selv om offertanken også var med). Preken (og bibellesninger) skulle altså holdes på et annet tidspunkt, men det har jeg nok litt vanskelig for å se for meg. Dix mener også at alterets posisjon fram til ca 700 var at biskopen/presten var vendt mot folket (men han skriver litt om dette emnet).

I det hele tatt er Dix nesten bare opptatt av det som skjedde fra til år 600 – selv om han skriver litt om forandringene rundt år 800 (med Karl den store) og enda mindre om utviklingen senere i middelalderen – og det han skriver om de første århundrene i øst og vest virker ganske spekulativt.

En ganske grundig anmeldelse av boka skriver bl.a.:

… Later scholarship has considered Dix to be near the mark but not always on it. For example, Dix argued that the Eucharistic Prayer grew out of a solemn three-part Jewish prayer, the Birkat ha-Mazon, or blessing after a meal, and, in particular, out of its second paragraph of “thanksgivings.” More recent liturgical scholarship has sought its origin in all three paragraphs of this ancient prayer, which, however, did not harden into prescribed forms among the Jews until the end of the first Christian millennium. This makes it difficult to reconstruct more than an outline of the original prayer. At best, it can be summarized as blessing-thanksgiving-supplication, and modern scholarship has criticized Dix for assuming, in a Jewish prayer context, the equivalence of blessing (Hebrew, berakah) and thanksgiving (Hebrew, yadah).

Dix also assumed, following late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German scholarship, that in the early Church the celebrant of the Eucharistic liturgy faced the congregation over the altar. The popularity of his book did a great deal to foster that practice among Anglicans and certain “catholicizing” clergy and congregations among Protestants such as Lutherans and Methodists.

It may have had a similar effect on Roman Catholics in laying the groundwork for the “reversal of the altars” that swept like a tidal wave over the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church from 1965 onwards. But this was more likely due to the influence of German and French liturgical institutes (most of whose “experts” were “popularizers” of liturgical scholarship rather than scholars themselves). Also, the view that “facing the people” was the “primitive practice” had been enshrined in the English-speaking world in The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913, and had come to be regarded as historical fact.

However, this view is now acknowledged to be mistaken by most contemporary liturgical scholars: The universal early Christian practice of facing east for prayer applied also, and especially, during the celebration of the Eucharist. ….

…. Some have marveled at how much he was able to do by way of digestion, assimilation, and “regurgitation” under highly adverse conditions, even if at some haste. So his scholarship has been characterized as brilliant but at the same time “erratic” or even “slipshod.”

Les hele denne anmeldelsen her.

Jeg er nå i gang men en kjent «murstein» (750 sider), nemlig The Shape of the Liturgy, av Dom Gregory Dix – utgitt i 1945, men i ny utgave (med ny innledning) fra 2005. Amazon skriver om boka:

Dom Gregory Dix’s classic account of the development of the Eucharist rite continues to be the definitive and authoritative work on the subject. He presents his massive scholarship in lively and non technical language for all who wish to understand their worship in terms of the framework from which it has evolved. He demonstrates the creative force of Christianity over the centuries through liturgy and the societies it has moulded. His great work has for nearly fifty years regularly been quoted for its devotional as well as its historical value, and has regularly attracted new readers. In this book for the first time, critical studies in the learned periodicals of many countries have been carefully sifted and the results arranged to give a clear picture of the development of the Eucharistic rite.

Her er innholdsfortegelsen:

Introduction. The Purpose of this Essay
I. The Liturgy and the Eucharistic Action
II. The Performance of the Liturgy
III. the Classical Shape of the Liturgy – I
IV. Eucharist and Lord’s Supper
V. The Classical Shape of the Liturgy – II
VI. The Pre-Nicene Background of the Liturgy
VII. The Eucharistic Prayer
VIII. Behind the Local Traditions
IX. The Meaning of the Eucharist
X. The Theology of Consecration
XI. The Sanctification of Time
XII. The Development of Ceremonial
XIII. The Completion of the Shape of the Liturgy
XIV. Variable Prayers at the Eucharist
XV. The Mediaeval Development
XVI. The Reformation and the Anglican Liturgy
XVII. ‘Throughout All Ages, World Without End’
Index

Jeg har nå lest ferdig denne boka, som forfatteren, Richard W. Pfaff, i forordet skriver kanskje heller burde ha blit kalt The Liturgical Books of Medieval England, eller enda bedre (men for langt) The Liturgy in Medieval England: An Essay on the History of Medieval England as seen through Liturgical Sources.

Boka handlet nok for mye om utallige manuskripter etter min smak, og enkelte av detaljene må jeg innrømme jeg leste ganske raskt. Boka (som er på 575 sider) er delvis historisk, delvis går den gjennom liturgiene til de ulike religiøse ordenene i England, og mot slutten også de ulike regionale liturgiene, som Sarum (Salisbury), York, Hereford, Lincoln og et par til. Sarum er den mest kjente liturgien/ messerordningen, som etter hvert kom til å dominere det meste av England.

Fra en annen kilde kan vi lese om rubrikkene i Susrum-messen (i tillegg skriver Pfaff også en del om forskjellige tekster og helgenkalendere i de ulike tradisjonene):

The following are the more noticeable variants of the Use of Sarum from the developed Roman Rite:

At Mass, as in the Dominican Use, the Sarum priest began by saying a verse of the psalm «Confitemini,» with a shortened Confiteor followed by the verse «Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.» Nevertheless, at Salisbury every celebrant was bound to have recited the whole psalm «Judica me Deus» in the sacristy before coming to the foot of the altar. The prayer «Aufer a nobis» was said, but not that which now follows it, in lieu of which the priest simply made the sign of the cross and proceeded to read the Officium, or as we call it, the Introit.

From the Kyrie to the Offertory the deviations from our actual usage are slight, though on festival days this section of the sacred rite was often enormously lengthened by varied and prolix sequences. Like the Dominican and other contemporaneous Uses, that of Sarum supposes the previous preparation of the chalice (put by the Sarum Missal between the Epistle and Gospel) and thereby materially abbreviates the Offertory ceremonial.

According to an archaic usage, still familiar to ourselves from the Roman Good-Friday Rite, the prayer «In spiritu humilitatis» followed in place of preceding the washing of the priest’s hands and the psalm «Lavabo» was omitted. To the «Orate Fratres» (at Sarum, «Orate Fratres et Sorores») no audible response was made.

From the Preface onward through the Canon, the Sarum Mass was word for word and gesture by gesture that of our own Missals, except that a profound inclination of head and shoulders took the place of the modern genuflection and that during the first prayer after the Elevation the celebrant stood with arms stretched out in the form of a cross. As in France and generally in Northern and Western Europe the Benediction given at the breaking of the Sacred Host was not curtailed to the mere pronouncing of the words «Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum» but, more particularly when a bishop officiated, was very solemnly given with a formula varying according to the festival.

The prayers before the priest’s Communion were other than those with which we are familiar. The kiss of peace was given as with us but there was no «Domine non sum dignus.» The words pronounced by the celebrant at the moment of his own Communion are striking and seem peculiar to the Sarum Missal. They may therefore be fittingly quoted: «Hail for evermore, Thou most holy Flesh of Christ; sweet to me before and beyond all things beside. To me a sinner may the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ be the Way and the Life.» The Communion and Postcommunion followed as now. But no Blessing was given, and the beginning of the Gospel of St. John was recited by the priest on his way from the sanctuary to the sacristy.

Jeg leste i dag ferdig booka A Tactful God av by Simon Bailey, og den beskriver livet og det liturgiske arbeidet til Dom Gregory Dix, den kjente anglikanske (anglo-katolske) liturgieksperten. (Jeg har hans svært kjente bok, The Shape of the Liturgy med meg på dette studieoppholdet, og skal lese (i alle fall deler av) de 750 sidene om ikke lenge.)

Amazon skriver bl.a. følgende om boka:

Dom Gregory Dix is perhaps the most influential liturgical historian of the 20th century. To quote the jacket, «The publication of the Shape of the Liturgy proved a watershed in English speaking liturgical writing. Whilst it was the culmination of the scholarship and spirituality of the Anglican monk-writer Dom Gregory Dix, it was only the best example of a wide and important output. Drawing on original correspondence and notebooks, Simon Bailey provides a balanced assessment of Dix the monk, scholar and pastor, and charts his involvement with the papist Anglo-Catholicism of the interwar years…»

If you have any interest in liturgical studies, this book will prove an fun footnote to one of the leaders in the field.

Og HER er en grundig omtale av boka.