The Liturgy of Saint James

The Divine Liturgy of St. James is the mother-rite of the Jerusalem-Antiochene (West Syrian) family of eucharistic services, traditionally ascribed to James the Brother of the Lord as first bishop of Jerusalem. It is famous above all for the prayer “Let all mortal flesh keep silence,” and it survives in both a Greek and a Syriac recension, the latter remaining to this day the principal anaphora of the Syriac Orthodox and Maronite churches. This file describes the liturgy’s structure and content, its distinctive features, and its preservation; the question of its antiquity and revival is taken up in the companion study.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The West Syrian or Antiochene-Jerusalem Type

The Divine Liturgy of St. James is the head of the West Syrian (also called Antiochene or Syro-Byzantine) family of liturgies — the eucharistic tradition rooted in the church of Jerusalem and the great see of Antioch, as distinct from the East Syrian (Persian) and the Alexandrian (Egyptian) families. It is in this rite that the characteristic Antiochene shape of the eucharistic prayer is most fully displayed: a continuous anaphora that moves from the opening dialogue and thanksgiving for creation, through the Sanctus, into a recital of redemption, the words of institution, the anamnesis and epiklesis (the invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts), and a long series of intercessions (Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western, vol. 1, 1896; on the eucharist itself, see The Eucharist). The Byzantine Liturgies of St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom are themselves later members of this same Antiochene family, refinements of the pattern that St. James preserves in its older and more expansive form.

The rite belongs to Jerusalem in a peculiarly intimate way. Its prayers name the holy city as “the mother of all the churches,” and its intercessions remember Zion and the holy places with a concreteness that betrays its origin in the church that James governed (Brightman 1896; on that church see The Mother Church and The Throne of Jerusalem). It is the liturgy of the city of the Resurrection.

The Anaphora of St. James

At the heart of the liturgy stands the anaphora, the great eucharistic prayer. It opens with the familiar dialogue — “Let us lift up our hearts” — and a thanksgiving for the whole work of creation and providence before rising to the Sanctus: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Sabaoth” (The Divine Liturgy of James, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 7, 1886). There follow the words of institution — “Take, eat: this is my body… Drink ye all of it: this is my blood” — the anamnesis of the death and resurrection, and then the epiklesis, in which the priest invokes the Holy Spirit upon the people and upon the gifts, “that He may make this bread the holy body of Thy Christ, and this cup the precious blood of Thy Christ” (ANF vol. 7; Brightman 1896).

The anaphora then opens into its great river of intercession — for the churches, the clergy, the city and its people, the sick and the travelling, and the departed, with a commemoration of the Theotokos and all the saints — a breadth of supplication characteristic of the Antiochene type and far longer than the corresponding prayers of the later Byzantine rite (Brightman 1896; Jasper and Cuming, Prayers of the Eucharist, 3rd ed., 1987).

“Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence”

The single most celebrated feature of the Liturgy of St. James is its proper Cherubic hymn, sung at the Great Entrance, when the gifts are brought to the altar. In the Byzantine rite the Great Entrance is accompanied by the ordinary Cherubic hymn; but the Liturgy of St. James carries its own, drawn from the rite itself:

“Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and stand with fear and trembling, and meditate nothing earthly within itself: for the King of kings and Lord of lords cometh forth to be sacrificed, and to be given for food to the faithful” (The Divine Liturgy of James, ANF vol. 7, 1886).

This is the source of the well-known English Communion hymn “Let all mortal flesh keep silence,” which Gerard Moultrie versified in 1864 for the collection Lyra Eucharistica, drawing directly on the prayer of the Liturgy of St. James. Within the liturgy itself the words mark the awe of the moment when the gifts approach the altar to be consecrated — the King of kings coming forth “to be sacrificed” — and they express the eucharistic reverence that the whole rite embodies (on the eucharistic theology, see The Eucharist).

The Litanies and the Communion of the Faithful

Surrounding the anaphora is the apparatus of a developed eucharistic service: the litanies of the deacon, the readings, the kiss of peace, the creed, and the rites of communion. The Liturgy of St. James is notable for the prominence and number of its diaconal litanies, in which the deacon bids the people to prayer and the assembly answers “Lord, have mercy” (Brightman 1896). At the communion of the faithful the priest gives the holy gifts with words proper to the rite, and the liturgy concludes with a thanksgiving and dismissal. The whole shows the full ordo of the Jerusalem church as it stood when the text reached its developed form — more elaborate than the abbreviated Byzantine liturgies that succeeded it (Brightman 1896; on the Orthodox service generally, see The Divine Liturgy).

Preservation in Greek and Syriac

The Liturgy of St. James survives in two principal recensions. The Greek form, known to the Byzantine and Orthodox world, was edited and printed in the West from the sixteenth century onward and critically presented by F. E. Brightman in Liturgies Eastern and Western (Oxford, 1896), the standard scholarly collation; an English translation appears in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 7, as “The Divine Liturgy of James” (1886). The Syriac form is the corresponding West Syrian rite, and it is no museum-piece but a living liturgy: it is the principal anaphora of the Syriac Orthodox Church and, in its own recension, of the Maronite Church, used continuously to the present day (Brightman 1896; Jasper and Cuming 1987). The two recensions are witnesses to a common Jerusalem-Antiochene original.

The Greek manuscript witnesses are medieval, but they preserve a rite whose core is much older; the relationship between the surviving manuscripts and the original Jerusalem liturgy is taken up in the companion file (see The Oldest Liturgy).

The Question of Authorship

Tradition ascribes the Liturgy of St. James to James the Brother of the Lord as first bishop of Jerusalem — the title of the rite itself makes the claim, and it was understood in the East from an early date that the apostle who governed the mother church had given it its eucharistic order (see James the Just). In the fifth century Proclus of Constantinople, in the treatise De traditione divinae missae, names James among the authors of the Church’s liturgy, alongside Basil and Chrysostom — though it should be noted that this ascription, and indeed the authenticity of the treatise attributed to Proclus, is itself debated and the work is regarded by many scholars as later or spurious.

[Disputed: the authorship of the Liturgy of St. James. Tradition ascribes its core to James the Lord's brother as bishop of Jerusalem (the title of the rite; the ascription named in Proclus of Constantinople, *De traditione divinae missae* — an attribution that is itself debated and the treatise possibly spurious). Critical liturgical scholarship (Brightman, *Liturgies Eastern and Western*, 1896; Cuming; Bradshaw) holds that the developed text as it survives is fourth-century Jerusalem: it presupposes the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, the Trisagion, and the fully developed intercessions, none of which can derive from the apostolic age. On this view the liturgy is built upon an older Jerusalem eucharistic core but reached its extant form in the fourth century — so that it is "of St. James" by the tradition and Jerusalem-provenance of its church rather than by literal apostolic authorship.]

The Orthodox reception of the rite does not hang on the critical question. The liturgy is “of St. James” because it is the liturgy of the church of James, the eucharistic worship of Jerusalem handed down under the name of its first bishop, and it is venerated and used as such (on the broader question of how the Fathers’ names attach to their works, see The Church Fathers).

See Also

References

  • Brightman, F. E. Liturgies Eastern and Western, Being the Texts Original or Translated of the Principal Liturgies of the Church. Vol. 1: Eastern Liturgies. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896. (Critical collation of the Greek and Syriac Liturgy of St. James; the anaphora, epiklesis, litanies, and intercessions; the Jerusalem provenance.)
  • The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 7. Ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1886. (English translation, “The Divine Liturgy of James”; the Sanctus, words of institution, epiklesis, and “Let all mortal flesh keep silence.”)
  • Jasper, R. C. D., and G. J. Cuming. Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed. 3rd ed. New York: Pueblo, 1987. (Text, translation, and analysis of the anaphora of St. James within the early eucharistic prayers; the dating of its developed form.)
  • Proclus of Constantinople (attrib.). De traditione divinae missae. (The ascription of liturgies to James, Basil, and Chrysostom — an attribution, and a treatise, of disputed authenticity.)
  • Moultrie, Gerard. “Let all mortal flesh keep silence.” In Lyra Eucharistica, ed. Orby Shipley. London, 1864. (The English hymn versified from the Cherubic prayer of the Liturgy of St. James.)