The Explanation of the Liturgy

St. Nicholas Cabasilas’s A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy (Greek Hermeneia tes theias leitourgias; in the standard French edition Explication de la Divine Liturgie) is the classic Byzantine mystagogy of the Eucharist, a continuous exposition of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom from the preparation of the gifts to communion. Standing in the line of liturgical commentary that runs from Maximus the Confessor and the Ecclesiastical History attributed to Germanus of Constantinople, Cabasilas reads the whole rite as a unified symbolic representation of the economy of salvation — the life of Christ from Incarnation to Ascension portrayed in the liturgy — while insisting throughout that the rite does not merely depict but truly effects the sanctification of those who share in it. This file describes the work, its method, its structure, and its later influence and transmission.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (lay theologian; the sacramental life)

What the Work Is

Cabasilas’s Commentary on the Divine Liturgy is a short, continuous prose exposition of the Eucharistic liturgy as celebrated in the Byzantine rite, composed in the middle decades of the fourteenth century by a layman who had made the action of the Mysteries the centre of his theological work (Hussey and McNulty 1960, introduction; Bornert 1966). It is the companion of his larger treatise The Life in Christ: where that work expounds the inner sacramental life of the Christian through baptism, chrismation, and the Eucharist, the Commentary takes the public, corporate act of the Liturgy itself and walks through it from beginning to end, explaining at each point both what is signified and what is effected (Hussey and McNulty 1960; see The Sacramental Life). The two books together form the heart of his legacy, and it is on them that his standing as a classic Orthodox theologian of the Mysteries rests (see The Works and Their Transmission).

The Greek title is Hermeneia tes theias leitourgias — literally an “interpretation” or “explanation” of the divine liturgy — and the work is now most often cited from the modern critical edition of Sévérien Salaville, whose French rendering, Explication de la Divine Liturgie, gave the book the title by which it is widely known in Western scholarship (Salaville, SC 4 bis, 1967). In its received form the Commentary runs to some fifty-three chapters of varying length, the chapter divisions providing the standard means of internal reference (Hussey and McNulty 1960; Salaville, SC 4 bis, 1967). It was written in Greek for an audience already familiar with the liturgy from the inside — clergy and educated laity who needed not a description of the rite but an account of its meaning (Bornert 1966; Wybrew 1989).

The Line of Byzantine Liturgical Commentary

Cabasilas did not invent the genre in which he wrote; he brought it to a kind of maturity. The Byzantine tradition of liturgical mystagogy — the systematic interpretation of the rite of the Eucharist — had a long history before him, traced in detail in René Bornert’s standard study of the commentaries from the seventh to the fifteenth century (Bornert, Les commentaires byzantins de la Divine Liturgie du VIIe au XVe siècle, 1966). Two earlier works in particular stand behind Cabasilas. The first is the Mystagogia of St Maximus the Confessor (early seventh century), which reads the liturgy as an image of the cosmos, of the Church, and of the soul’s ascent to God, and which set the contemplative, symbolic key in which Byzantine commentary would be written (Bornert 1966; on Maximus see St. Maximus the Confessor). The second is the Ecclesiastical History and Mystical Contemplation (the Historia ecclesiastica) traditionally attributed to St Germanus of Constantinople (eighth century), the most widely copied of all the Byzantine commentaries, which fixed for centuries the dominant pattern of reading the actions of the liturgy as a representation of the events of Christ’s earthly life — the prothesis as the Nativity, the Little Entrance as the Lord’s coming forth to preach, and so on (Bornert 1966; Taft 1992; Wybrew 1989).

Cabasilas inherited both strands — the contemplative-cosmic mystagogy of Maximus and the historical-representational mystagogy of Germanus — and worked them into a single coherent reading (Bornert 1966; Taft). His achievement, in Bornert’s assessment, was to take a genre weighed down with multiplied allegory and to discipline it: he kept the representation of the economy of salvation but subordinated it to a clear theological purpose, so that the Commentary reads not as a catalogue of symbols but as a sustained argument about what the Eucharist is and does (Bornert 1966; Hussey and McNulty 1960). For this reason his work, with the slightly later commentary of St Symeon of Thessaloniki, is generally regarded as the high point and effective conclusion of the classical Byzantine mystagogical tradition (Bornert 1966; Wybrew 1989).

Cabasilas’s Distinctive Method: Symbol That Effects

The governing idea of the Commentary is stated near its opening and returned to throughout: the celebration of the Eucharist has, Cabasilas says, a double character. On the one hand the whole rite is a representation — the actions, words, and movements of the liturgy together set before the worshipper the entire economy of salvation, the work of Christ from his Incarnation through his ministry, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension (Cabasilas, Commentary 1; Hussey and McNulty 1960). On the other hand the rite is not only a representation but an effective action: through it the gifts are sanctified and consecrated, and the faithful who receive them are themselves sanctified (Cabasilas, Commentary 1; Hussey and McNulty 1960; Bobrinskoy). These two — the signifying and the sanctifying — are held together throughout.

It is this insistence that distinguishes Cabasilas from a merely allegorical mystagogy. Earlier commentary could read the liturgy almost wholly as a sacred drama, a pictorial recollection of the Gospel; Cabasilas takes over that representational reading but refuses to let it become the whole story (Bornert 1966; Hussey and McNulty 1960). For him the liturgy portrays the life of Christ precisely because it is the means by which the fruit of that life — the sanctification won by Christ — is conveyed to the communicant (Cabasilas, Commentary 1, 16; Hussey and McNulty 1960). The symbolism is not decorative but instrumental: the rite shows forth the work of Christ in the act of applying that work to us, and the representation of the Saviour’s economy is ordered to the one purpose of the sanctification of the faithful (Cabasilas, Commentary 1, 38; Hussey and McNulty 1960; Bobrinskoy).

This double reading allows Cabasilas to give a coherent account of why the liturgy is shaped as it is. The successive moments of the rite recall successive moments of the economy not as an arbitrary code but because the worshipper is being led, in the very order of the service, through the whole work of redemption and brought to its consummation in communion (Cabasilas, Commentary 16, 37; Hussey and McNulty 1960). The contemplation of Christ’s life that the symbolism invites is itself part of how the rite sanctifies, for to recall the Lord’s saving acts with faith and love is already to be drawn toward him (Cabasilas, Commentary 1; Hussey and McNulty 1960). The mystagogy and the sacramental realism are thus a single movement, and Cabasilas’s lasting contribution to Orthodox liturgical theology lies in holding them together (Bobrinskoy; Wybrew 1989; see Liturgy as the Work of Christ).

The Order of the Liturgy

The Commentary follows the order of the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, taking up its parts in sequence, and its structure is therefore the structure of the rite itself (Hussey and McNulty 1960; Salaville, SC 4 bis, 1967). Cabasilas begins with the prothesis or proskomide, the preparation of the bread and wine at the table of offering before the public service begins. He explains the cutting of the Lamb from the prosphora and the words and gestures that accompany it, reading the preparation of the gifts in the light of the prophecy of the suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, which is recited at this point, so that the rite of preparation already sets the offering under the sign of Christ’s sacrifice (Cabasilas, Commentary 3–11; Hussey and McNulty 1960; Wybrew 1989). He is careful to note that the bread, though set apart and signed, is at this stage still bread: it is offered and dedicated but not yet consecrated, a point that bears directly on his later treatment of the moment of consecration (Cabasilas, Commentary 3; Hussey and McNulty 1960; see Liturgy as the Work of Christ).

He then moves through the Liturgy of the Word — the opening blessing and the litanies, the antiphons, the Little Entrance with the Gospel book, the Trisagion, and the readings from the Apostle and the Gospel — explaining the psalmody and prayers as the gradual leading of the assembly into the presence of God and the proclamation of the Gospel as the coming-forth of Christ to teach (Cabasilas, Commentary 12–22; Hussey and McNulty 1960; Bornert 1966). From there the exposition passes to the Great Entrance, the solemn transfer of the still-unconsecrated gifts from the table of preparation to the altar, which Cabasilas interprets within the representational scheme while again insisting on what the gifts at this moment are and are not (Cabasilas, Commentary 24–26; Hussey and McNulty 1960; Wybrew 1989).

The centre of the work is its treatment of the anaphora, the great Eucharistic prayer. Here Cabasilas expounds the thanksgiving, the commemoration of the Last Supper and the words of institution, and above all the epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit upon the gifts, which he treats as the point at which the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ (Cabasilas, Commentary 27–30; Hussey and McNulty 1960; Salaville, SC 4 bis, 1967). This is the most famous and most discussed section of the Commentary, and his positive theology of the consecration and his measured reasoning about the epiclesis are treated in their own file (see Liturgy as the Work of Christ). After the consecration the Commentary continues through the prayers of intercession that follow the anaphora — the commemoration of the saints, and especially of the Theotokos, and of the living and the dead — explaining how the whole Church is gathered into the one offering (Cabasilas, Commentary 33–34, 49; Hussey and McNulty 1960). The work concludes with the rites of communion — the Lord’s Prayer, the elevation and fraction, and the reception of the holy Gifts by clergy and people — which Cabasilas presents as the goal toward which the entire liturgy has moved, the union of the faithful with Christ in his Body and Blood (Cabasilas, Commentary 36–44; Hussey and McNulty 1960; Bobrinskoy). The exposition ends with reflection on the fruits of communion and a final thanksgiving (Cabasilas, Commentary 50–53; Hussey and McNulty 1960; on the broader rite see The Divine Liturgy).

Theological Character and Sobriety

Across this whole structure the Commentary keeps a notably restrained and sober temper. Cabasilas resists the tendency, present in some of the earlier mystagogy, to multiply symbolic meanings for every detail of the rite; where he allegorizes he does so with discipline and always returns to the central matter — the sanctification effected in the Eucharist (Bornert 1966; Hussey and McNulty 1960). His prose is clear and warm rather than technical, and the work is addressed to the heart as much as to the understanding: its purpose is to bring the reader to a more conscious and grateful participation in the Mysteries he already celebrates (Hussey and McNulty 1960; Wybrew 1989). In this it is of a piece with The Life in Christ, the two works sharing a single vision of the Christian life as life in and through the Mysteries (see Union with Christ; Grace and the Sacraments).

The Commentary also belongs unmistakably to its age. Cabasilas wrote in the generation that had seen the hesychast controversy settled in favour of St Gregory Palamas, and his theology of the Eucharist as the real communication of the sanctifying grace of Christ stands in harmony with the Palamite teaching on the participability of God through his uncreated energies, even though the Commentary itself is not a technical work of the controversy (Bobrinskoy; Russell 2019; see The Hesychast Synthesis). What the reader meets is not a treatise of the schools but a layman’s sustained meditation on the action of the liturgy, grounded in the Fathers and ordered to the one end of communion with Christ.

Influence and Transmission

The later influence of the Commentary has been enormous. Within the Byzantine and post-Byzantine Orthodox world it became, with the works in the Germanus tradition, one of the standard interpretations of the liturgy, copied and read for centuries (Bornert 1966; Wybrew 1989). Its reach extended beyond the Greek East: portions of Cabasilas’s Eucharistic teaching, and especially his account of the consecration and the epiclesis, were drawn into the controversies between East and West over the moment of consecration, and his Commentary was cited in those discussions from the fifteenth century onward, including in the orbit of the Council of Florence and in the confessional debates that followed (Bornert 1966; Taft; see The Eucharist and the Latins). A Latin translation made the work available to Western theologians, and it figured in early modern Catholic and Protestant discussion of the Eucharistic liturgy (Bornert 1966; Hussey and McNulty 1960).

In the modern period the Commentary has had a second life. The twentieth-century liturgical revival, both in the Orthodox Church and beyond it, returned to Cabasilas as one of its principal patristic and Byzantine sources, valuing precisely his refusal to separate the symbolic meaning of the liturgy from its sanctifying reality (Bobrinskoy; Wybrew 1989; see The Modern Rediscovery). The textual foundation for this revival was laid by the critical edition of Sévérien Salaville, first published in the series Sources Chrétiennes and reissued in a revised second edition prepared with René Bornert, Jean Gouillard, and Pierre Périchon, which remains the standard scholarly text (Salaville, Explication de la Divine Liturgie, SC 4 bis, 2nd ed., 1967). The English translation of J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty, published by SPCK in 1960 with an introduction situating the work in its tradition, made the Commentary widely accessible in the English-speaking world and is the version by which its chapters are most commonly cited in English study (Hussey and McNulty, A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, 1960). Through these editions and translations Cabasilas’s exposition of the liturgy continues to be read wherever Orthodox sacramental theology is studied (Bornert 1966; Bobrinskoy; see The Works and Their Transmission).

References

Cabasilas, Nicholas. A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy. Trans. J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty. London: SPCK, 1960. (English translation with introduction; cited by chapter; the double character of the liturgy as representation and sanctification at chapter 1; the prothesis at chapters 3–11; the Liturgy of the Word at chapters 12–22; the Great Entrance at chapters 24–26; the anaphora and epiclesis at chapters 27–30; the intercessions at chapters 33–34; communion at chapters 36–44; the concluding chapters 50–53.)
Salaville, Sévérien, ed. and trans. Explication de la Divine Liturgie. 2nd ed., revised by René Bornert, Jean Gouillard, and Pierre Périchon. Sources Chrétiennes 4 bis. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1967. (The standard critical edition of the Greek text with French translation and notes.)
Bornert, René. Les commentaires byzantins de la Divine Liturgie du VIIe au XVe siècle. Archives de l’Orient chrétien 9. Paris: Institut Français d’Études Byzantines, 1966. (The standard history of the Byzantine liturgical commentaries, from Maximus and Germanus to Cabasilas and Symeon of Thessaloniki; Cabasilas’s place in and disciplining of the tradition.)
Taft, Robert F. The Byzantine Rite: A Short History. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992. (On the development of the Byzantine liturgy and its mystagogical interpretation, including the Germanus tradition.)
Wybrew, Hugh. The Orthodox Liturgy: The Development of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite. London: SPCK, 1989. (On the history of the rite and the commentary tradition; the place of Cabasilas’s Commentary.)
Bobrinskoy, Boris. The Mystery of the Church: A Course in Orthodox Dogmatic Theology and related studies on Cabasilas’s sacramental theology. (On Cabasilas’s holding-together of symbol and sanctifying reality.)
Russell, Norman. Gregory Palamas and the Making of Palamism in the Modern Age. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019. (On the Palamite context of fourteenth-century theology, including Cabasilas.)