Byzantine Influence in the Roman Rite

Appendix X of Liturgy of the Roman Rite, by Archdale A. King, Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, WI, 1957, pp. 444-451.

(Note: This text is referring to the traditional [a.k.a., “Extraordinary” or “Tridentine”] Roman Rite, and not the post-Vatican II Novus Ordo Missae and General Roman Calendar.)

 

 

‘Right down to the 8th century, even in some measure down to the 11th,’ says Dix, ‘Rome is not, properly speaking, a truly “Western” church… Rome is not only the heart of Western christendom, but the meeting point of East and West. And its liturgy reflects the fact.’ [1] The West borrowed extensively from the East, although what Rome took over from Constantinople or Syria it remodelled to its own mind. [2]

Byzantine influence shows itself to a marked extent in the mosaics of the basilicas and churches of Rome. To give a few examples: the ultimate source of the background of the two female figures in the apse mosaic of S. Pudentiana (384–9) is to be found in the architecture-scapes of Pompeian and Alexandrine wall-painting. [3] The tall and elongated figures in the manner characteristic of Byzantium are found in the conches of niches in the outer wall of S. Constanza, dating in all probability from the 5th century at a time when the building became a baptistery. The mosaics of the triumphal arch in S. Maria Maggiore were set up by Pope Sixtus III (432–40) to commemorate the council of Ephesus (431). A fully developed Byzantine style is seen in the apse mosaics of SS. Cosmas and Damian (526–30), where Christ is shown in the centre before a background of flame-coloured clouds, with figures on either side. The Christ is bearded, the costumes are treated in the Byzantine manner, and the heads and faces show that elongation which was later to become characteristic, first of Byzantine art, and then of the paintings of El Greco. [4]

In the 7th and 8th centuries Byzantine art and culture flourished in Rome, at a time when a number of Orientals were raised to the Chair of Peter, and refugees from the persecution of the Iconoclasts found an oasis of peace on the banks of the Tiber. No less than nine of the Popes were either Greeks or Syrians between the years 606 and 752; their patronage was lavish, employing craftsmen from the Greek world, who by figural mosaics stressed a disapproval of the heretical attitude of the Byzantine rulers. [5] The mosaics of the period are of extreme interest iconographically, many of which can be fairly exactly dated. The figure of St. Agnes, which takes the place of precedence in the apse of her basilica in the Via Nomentana dates from the decade 628–38, depicting the virgin martyr clad in the robes of a Byzantine empress. Again in the same century, in the oratory of S. Venantius at the Lateran, we see saints vested as Byzantine dignitaries. A survival of the greatest importance is to be found in the frescoes in the ruined basilica of S. Maria Antiqua in the Forum, although unfortunately they are in a bad state of preservation, and seem to be rapidly deteriorating. The saints appear in Eastern vesture. A third layer of paintings, completely in accord with Byzantine tradition, are found in the central apse, which was decorated by Pope John VII (705–7). ‘These frescoes and mosaics,’ says Arnott Hamilton, ‘…indicate the influence which the art and culture of the East exercised upon Rome throughout the 7th and early 8th centuries, an influence so profound that, for a considerable period of time, the art of the Western city was to a very great extent the art of Byzantium transplanted to Italian soil.’ [6] The existence of this church had been forgotten for centuries, and it was only rediscovered in 1900, when the church of S. Maria Liberatrice, which stood above it, was taken down. In the Marian year of 1954, Mass, in both the Roman and Byzantine rites, was said in the ruins of the basilica for the first time for a thousand years.

The theme of the glorification of the Virgin that we find in the church of S. Maria in Domnica (817–24) was probably chosen to emphasise the importance of the Marial cultus in the face of iconoclasm. The most truly Byzantine of all is the decoration in the chapel of St. Zeno, known also as the Orto del Paradiso, erected by Pope Paschal I in 822 to receive the bodies of St. Zeno and companions.

Byzantine art was nowhere more brilliantly illustrated in the 5th and 6th centuries than in Ravenna, a city of unique importance in the West. After 402 it became the seat of the emperor Honorius, his sister Galla Placidia, and her son Valentinian. Ravenna was occupied by Theodoric, king of the Goths, in 493, who ruled as deputy of the Byzantine emperor until his death in 526. The city was taken in 540 by Belisarius, the general of Justinian, and until the 8th century Ravenna was the residence of the exarch, the representative of the Byzantine emperor in Italy. A number of basilicas of the period have survived, although somewhat over restored. The mosaics, which are perhaps the chief glory of the churches, may be divided into two main groups, the one where classical feeling was uppermost, the other where the Byzantine style had already developed and become prominent. Thus in San Vitale the Christ in the apse is the youthful beardless figure of classical art, whereas the portrait groups of Justinian and Theodora are completely Byzantinised, and owe a greater debt to the East than to the Roman heritage. [7] The Ravenna mosaics were executed at three distinct periods: Galla Placidia (388–450), Theodoric (493–526) and Justinian (527–65). ‘In the third period,’ says Mr. Rice, ‘an art which is more truly Byzantine had emerged, and San Vitale is an essentially Byzantine church with an essentially Byzantine mosaic decoration inside it.’ [8] The concentration of the mosaics on the Eucharist have been thought to anticipate Byzantine church decoration of the 10th century. [9] Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, erected by Theodoric to serve as an Arian cathedral, has preserved its 6th-century nave, adorned with mosaics which belong partly to the Arian and partly to the Catholic period. [10]

The apse mosaic of Sant’Apollinare in Classe (535–49) shows an allegorical representation of the Transfiguration, the symbolism of which belongs to the Semitic world, and it probably came to Italy from Syria along with the Christian faith. [11]

The figure of Christ (c. 500) in the apse mosaic of the chapel of S. Aquilino in the church of S. Lorenzo at Milan is of a very antique character; whereas the mosaics of San Vittore in Ciel d’Oro in the same city are more Oriental in type.

For three hundred years Sicily formed a part of the Byzantine Empire, and at least three of the buildings erected by the 12th-century Norman kings show to what extent they were beholden to the Greeks, despite the intermixture of Arab and Norman elements. The cathedral church of Cefalù is of Western character, but the earlier mosaics on the curved walls of the apse, dating from around 1148, were probably done by Greeks who had been brought from Byzantium at the request of the Norman rulers. The dates at which mosaics were set up in Sicily can to some extent be correlated with the periods at which the Sicilian and the Byzantine rulers were on good terms. [12] The decoration of La Martorana (S. Maria dell’Ammiraglio) at Palermo, on the other hand, is uniform in style and date; the work was done around 1151, and it is likely that Greek craftsmen from Cefalù passed on to the Martorana when their work in the apse at the former place was completed. Here the arrangement is more truly Byzantine, for the church is an Eastern rather than a Western building, with the Pantocrator occupying his usual position in the dome. The church would have been one of the finest examples of Byzantine art, if the choir had not been redecorated in the Rococo style. [13] Greeks, in about the year 1143, were responsible for the best mosaic-work in the Palatine chapel in the royal palace at Palermo. Monte Cassino, at the end of the 11th century, seems to have been considerably influenced by Byzantine art, and the basilica of S. Angelo in Formis near Capua, founded by Abbot Desiderius (later Pope Victor III) in 1058, retains frescoes of this school over the nave arches and a Pantokrator, accompanied by the founder, angels and St. Benedict, in the apse. The most perfect specimen of Byzantine art in Western Europe, dating in its present form from the middle of the 12th century, is probably the basilica of St. Mark in Venice. The 12th-century domed churches of Aquitaine are classified as Byzantine buildings, and their use of a dome is thought to have been inspired by its presence in the church of St. Front at Périgueux. [14] The plan of the Carolingian church at Germigny-des-Prés (early 9th century) near Orleans has a plan which is reminiscent of the quatrefoiled square of Armenia. It may well be, as Strzygowski suggests, ultimately traced to Armenian influence. [15]

The wonderful carved (Biblical scenes) ivory altar frontal (paliotto), dating from the end of the 9th century, which is to be met with in the museum of the cathedral church of Salerno, although a local work, is based on earlier Byzantine originals.

The extant 6th-century basilica of S. Maria delle Grazie at Grado seems to have been originally furnished with a prothesis [16] and a diakonikon, [17] one on either side of the sanctuary, as we find today in churches of the Byzantine rite.

Eastern sanctuaries, each with its corresponding church on the shores of the Bosphorus, sprang up by the 5th century in the neighbourhood of the Forum or Palatine in Rome. The city became, as St. Jerome (ob. 420) says, both a ‘Jerusalem’ and a ‘Constantinople’: Roma facta est Hierosolyma: Roma facta est Constantinopolis.

The dramatic character of the liturgical functions in Holy Week at Jerusalem at the end of the 4th century, as described by the Spanish pilgrim Etheria, was reproduced in Rome. [18] The Lateran basilica of St. Saviour took the place of the Anastasis; while S. Croce, since it enshrined a relic of the true Cross, came to be known as Hierusalem. St. Helena (ob. c. 330), in her construction of the Holy Cross basilica, may well have intended to reproduce the sanctuary of Golgotha (Martyrium), with its double chapel, ante crucem et post crucem.

‘All these foundations in Rome’, said Ildefonso Schuster, ‘could not but exercise a strong influence on the liturgy of the Apostolic See, and they contributed to the preservation of that international, or rather Catholic, character, in the widest sense of the word, which has always distinguished the Papal Court, and does so still to this day.’ [19]

The liturgical year, also, has been profoundly influenced by the East. The Neapolitan Kalendarium Marmoreum of the time of Tiberius, bishop of Naples (821–42), gives an idea of how ‘Byzantinised’ was the South of Italy. [20]

The influence of Constantinople may be seen in an inscription of the time of Pope Paul I (757–67) in the church of S. Silvestro in Capite in Rome. Here we have a list of the anniversaries of the saints whose relics the Pope enshrined in the church, but, although they were all Roman saints, the enumeration has been made according to the Byzantine calendar.

The Christmas cycle, says Baumstark, is farced with almost verbal reminiscences of Greek liturgical poetry. [21] The commemoration of St. Anastasia, the martyr of Sirmium, at the second Mass of Christmas comes to us through the introduction of her cultus by the Greeks into the Court church at the foot of the Palatine hill, which had been already known to them as Titulus Anastasiae from the name of the founder. ‘We will not be far wrong,’ says Fr. Kennedy, ‘in placing the development of the cult of Anastasia at Rome precisely in that period from 536 to 568 when the city was under the domination of Belisarius and Narses, and in all probability it was during this period that the name of our saint found its way into the Canon of the Mass.’ [22] Here on Christmas morning, as a kind of interlude between the Midnight Mass at St. Mary Major and the true Christmas Mass at St. Peter’s, was celebrated a Mass of St. Anastasia, in imitation of all that took place at Constantinople, which had not yet accepted 25 December as the feast of the Nativity. The three Christmas Masses are attested for the first time by St. Gregory (590–604). [23]

Baumstark suggests that a repetition of the Eucharist on the feast of the Nativity originated in Jerusalem. [24]

If S. Croce served as a replica of Jerusalem in Rome, we find also Bethlehem in the Liberian basilica of St. Mary Major, in which Pope Sixtus III (432–40) established an imitation of the crib. The feast of 25 December appears to have been introduced at Rome under Pope Julius I (336–52) as a solemnity of the Nicene dogma (ὁμοούσιος), from whence it passed to the East, but, as Baumstark says, it is to the Orient that we of the West owe all that belongs to its poetic lyricism. [25]

A solemnity of the Epiphany is said to have found its earliest attestation in the Gnostic milieu of Basilides at Alexandria.[26]

In the week preceding the Lenten fast, before the time of Gregory II (715–31), we find the celebration of Mass in Rome restricted to Wednesday and Friday, and there is still no Mass for the Saturday before Invocabit Sunday in the exemplar of the Gregorian sacramentary sent to Charlemagne, which is an obvious imitation of Byzantine usage. [27]

The triumph of the Cross, which is commemorated on mid-Lent Sunday (Laetare) in the Sessorian basilica (S. Croce in Gerusalemme), is a further borrowing from Byzantium.

It was long the custom on the Wednesday following Laetare, at the baptismal scrutinies in St. Paul outside the Walls, for an acolyte to recite the creed in Greek, a practice which survived Byzantine influence in Rome by many years.

There is no trace of the blessing and procession of palms at Rome until their introduction from the Carolingian liturgy, but they are derived from 4th-century Jerusalem.

The majestic rites of Good Friday are a Palestinian heritage which Rome adopted from Byzantium. The original Roman synaxis was no more than a modest feria privilegiata, not unlike the office of the preceding Wednesday: a Mass of the catechumens with three lessons. The Adoration of the Cross, which is simple enough in most of the Ordines Romani, has taken on a more solemn form under the influence of the Greek milieu, which was formerly vigorous in southern and central Italy. [28] The Einsiedeln MS. of the Roman Ordo follows Byzantine custom in directing the Pope to carry the censer in the procession on Good Friday from the Lateran to S. Croce. [29] At the same time, a deacon held a relic of the Cross behind the back of the Pontiff: post dorsum domini apostolici. This is considered to have been a representation of the Via Crucis, with the Pope in the place of our Lord, and the deacon in that of Simon of Cyrene. [30] A variation of the theme is found in a Typikon of Jerusalem, but here the relic was carried by the patriarch, bound to his shoulders; while the archdeacon made a show of dragging the prelate by force (σύρει αὐτόν), in acting the part of one of the executioners. [31] Still today in the Ambrosian rite, the archbishop walks in the procession of the cross swinging a censer.

The recitation of the trisagion on Good Friday was probably derived from Jerusalem by reason of the clause ‘who was crucified for us’, coming from a milieu which had not yet been troubled as to the orthodoxy of the phrase in this setting.

The chant Crucem tuam adoramus is a partial translation of the tropary in the Byzantine Paschal liturgy, so expressive of the joy and triumph which the Cross brought into the world: Ἀνάστασιν χριστοῦ θεασάμενοι.

The ‘Byzantinisation’ of the Roman liturgy for Good Friday would seem to have been the work of the Oriental Popes in the 6th–7th century.

The solemn lighting of the Jewish sabbatical lamp is recalled in the rite of Holy Saturday, in which the triumph of the risen Christ is expressed by the Easter candle.

There was no blessing of the candle at Rome in the 9th century, [32] and the practice seems to have come from South Italy, a district steeped in Christian Hellenism, from whence come the most ancient Exsultet rolls. A suspicion of the utilitarian character of the candle is discernible in the following passage: ut cereus iste… ad noctis hujus caliginem destruendam indeficiens perseveret.

The proclamation of the doctrine of the Divine Maternity of the Blessed Virgin at the council of Ephesus (431) resulted in an impetus to the Marial cultus.

The feasts of the Annunciation, Assumption, Nativity and Conception owe their diffusion throughout the Church to Constantinople.

The Annunciation was introduced at Rome by Leo II (681–3): a Sicilian with a rich Greek culture.

The feast of the Assumption owes its existence to Theodore I (642–9), who came from the clergy of Jerusalem.

The Nativity was first observed by Sergius I (687–701): the son of an Antiochene merchant resident in Palermo.

The Conception, a much more recent feast, was celebrated in the East on 9 December: Σύλληψις τῆς ἁγίας Ἄννης.

The torchlight processions on the solemnities of the Mother of God appear to have originated at Antioch. St. John Chrysostom (ob. 407) brought them to the shores of the Bosphorus, and three centuries later we find them introduced at Rome by Sergius I (687–701).

The feast of the Purification, which, like the Annunciation, was originally a feast of our Lord, was observed in Jerusalem with a solemn procession as early as the end of the 4th century, although there is no mention of candles. [33] The Ὑπαπαντή or Presentation, as it was called, was, however, celebrated with lights in the following century, a usage which Cyril of Scythopolis ascribes to a Roman lady of the name of Ikelia. It was thus a Christian practice borrowed from Jerusalem that was introduced at Rome, not an imitation of the pagan Lupercalia. The chant Adorna thalamum tuum is a translation of a Greek tropary which seems to come from Cosmas the Hagiopolite.

Other borrowings from the Byzantine liturgy include the alleluiatic verse in the third Mass of Christmas: Dies sanctificatus illuxit nobis, and the introit for the feasts of St. Agatha and All Saints: Gaudeamus omnes in Domino.

The introduction of the Agnus Dei by Sergius I (687–701) to serve as the chant of the fraction may have been inspired by the Byzantine liturgy, in which the priest at this time is directed to say: ‘The lamb of God is broken and distributed: the broken and not severed, the ever eaten and never consumed, but sanctifying the partakers’.

‘Rome,’ says Dom Ildefonso Schuster, ‘has borrowed from the East, the region whence we receive light, whether in the order of nature or in that of grace. By this wise eclecticism the Apostolic See has given the world a further proof of her truly cosmopolitan character, which enabling her to expand beyond her seven hills and her classical pomoerium has caused her to adopt all that is good and beautiful wherever she finds it; without needing to shut herself up within a barrier of narrow and repellant nationalism, as so many lesser Churches have done.’ [34]

Eastern contacts, however, were weakened by the share of the Pope in the re-establishment of a Western emperor in the person of Charlemagne (800); while a fatal division between East and West resulted from the schism of Michael Caerularius (1054), and the misconduct and general tactlessness of the Crusaders.

 

FOOTNOTES [numbering combined]

1. Dix, op. cit., chap. XIV, p. 543.

2. Ibid.

3. D. T. Rice, Byzantine Art (London, 1954), chap. V, p. 84.

4. Ibid., pp. 85–6.

5. Eleven Greeks and six Syrians have occupied the Chair of Peter. Greeks: Evaristus (97–105); Telesphorus (125–36); Hyginus (136–40); Anterus (235–6); Sixtus II (257–8); Eusebius (309); Zosimus (417–8); Theodore I (642–9); John VI (701–5); John VII (705–7); Zachary (741–52). Syrians: Anicetus (155–66); John V (685–6); Sergius I (687–701); Sisinnius (708); Constantine (708–15); Gregory III (731–41).

6. Arnott Hamilton, Byzantine Architecture and Decoration (London, 1933), chap. III, p. 45.

7. Rice, op. cit., chap. V, p. 83.

8. Ibid., p. 88.

9. The mosaics in the choir possibly date from about 527–35; while those in the apse may be a little later: from 547.

10. In 1955 the church was considered liable to collapse, and was closed pending restoration.

11. Rice, op. cit., chap. V, pp. 88–9.

12. Ibid., p. 98.

13. Rice, op. cit., pp. 98–9.

14. Arnott Hamilton, op. cit., chap. X, p. 149.

15. Ibid., pp. 151–2.

16. The prothesis is used in the Byzantine rite for the preparation of the bread and wine.

17. The diakonikon answers to our sacristy.

18. Ethérie: Journal de Voyage, edit. Hélène Pétré (Paris, 1948), pp. 219–41.

19. Schuster, The Sacramentary, vol. III (London, 1927), chap. I, p. ii.

20.The calendar gives a long series of patriarchs of Constantinople, ending with Paul II (ob. 820).

21. Baumstark, Liturgie Comparée (Chevetogne, 1953), chap. VI, i, p. 110.

22. Kennedy, Saints of the Canon of the Mass (Vatican City, 1938), part II, chap. III, p. 185.

23. Greg., Hom. in Evang., lib. I, Hom. VIII.

24. Baumstark, op. cit., chap. IX, i, p. 171.

25. Ibid., p. 180.

26. Ibid., p. 169.

27. Ibid., chap. X, 2, p. 220.

28. Ibid., chap. VIII, 2, p. 158.

29. Ibid., pp. 158–9. Duchesne, op. cit., append. 2, p. 482.

30. Baumstark, ibid.

31. Ibid.

32. The symbolism of the paschal candle was not ignored by Rome, and, in a letter to St. Boniface, Pope Zachary (741–52) recalls the urban usage.

33. Peregrinatio Etheriae; Ethérie, Journal de Voyage, edit. H. Pétré (Paris, 1948), pp. 206, 207.

34. Schuster, The Sacramentary, vol. III, introd., chap. I, pp. 13–14.