The Two Liturgies and Their Authors

The two “full” Eucharistic liturgies of the Byzantine rite bear the names of St. Basil the Great and St. John Chrysostom. This file examines the historical relationship of their anaphoras and asks, from both sides, what “of Basil” and “of Chrysostom” mean — distinguishing the relatively well-grounded attribution of the longer Basil anaphora to Basil himself from the looser association of the Chrysostom Liturgy with the Antiochene tradition, and setting the traditional attributions beside the source-critical account without collapsing either.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Two Liturgies, One Structure

The Liturgies of St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom share a single outward structure: the same enarxis, the same entrances, the same order of anaphora — dialogue, thanksgiving, Sanctus, institution narrative, anamnesis, epiclesis, intercessions — and the same communion rite. They differ chiefly in the length and wording of the priestly prayers, above all the great anaphora, which in Basil is a long and richly theological recital of salvation history and in Chrysostom is far more compact (Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy, SVS Press, 1990, ch. 8; Taft, The Byzantine Rite, Liturgical Press, 1992). Both belong to the Antiochene / West-Syrian anaphoral family (see from the Upper Room to the Byzantine rite). Historically the Liturgy of Basil was the more prominent in Constantinople in the earlier period; only gradually did the shorter Chrysostom become the everyday Liturgy, with Basil reserved to its present ten occasions (Taft, The Byzantine Rite, 1992, ch. 4).

The Anaphora of St. Basil

Of the two attributions, that to St. Basil the Great (c. 330–379; see St. Basil the Great) rests on the firmer ground. There exist two related anaphoras under Basil’s name: a shorter Egyptian Basil, preserved in Sahidic and Greek and generally regarded as the earlier form, and the longer Byzantine Basil now used in the Orthodox Church. The most influential modern study, John Fenwick’s comparative investigation, concludes that the longer Byzantine anaphora is best explained as Basil’s own expansion of the shorter, earlier core — that is, that St. Basil really did take an existing Cappadocian/Egyptian-type anaphora and enrich it with the dense scriptural and doctrinal theology characteristic of his writings (Fenwick, The Anaphoras of St Basil and St James, Pont. Or. Inst., 1992). This coheres with an early external witness: St. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen), Basil’s friend, refers to Basil’s ordering of prayers (Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 43, the funeral oration for Basil), and the tradition connecting Basil with a reworking of the liturgy of Caesarea is ancient. On this account the phrase “the Liturgy of St. Basil” carries real historical content: the theological substance of its anaphora may genuinely be Basil’s, even though the surrounding liturgical formulary (entrances, litanies, ceremonial) is the later Byzantine synthesis and not his composition (Fenwick, 1992; Taft, The Byzantine Rite, 1992).

The Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom

The attribution to St. John Chrysostom (c. 349–407; see St. John Chrysostom) is looser. The scholarly mainstream holds that the anaphora of the Chrysostom Liturgy derives from the older Antiochene Anaphora of the Twelve Apostles, a West-Syrian prayer to which the Byzantine Chrysostom anaphora is closely related, and that Chrysostom — a presbyter of Antioch before becoming archbishop of Constantinople in 398 — may have brought and adapted this Antiochene anaphora to the capital, perhaps lightly revising it (Taft, The Byzantine Rite, 1992; Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy, 1990, ch. 8). Some scholars have argued for identifiable Chrysostomic touches in the anaphora’s wording; the connection to Chrysostom’s own preaching has been urged and questioned in turn. What is not claimed by serious scholarship is that Chrysostom sat down and composed the entire Liturgy that bears his name: the developed rite — its enarxis, entrances, and ceremonial — is the product of centuries of Constantinopolitan development after his death (Taft, The Byzantine Rite, 1992, chs. 3–5). The hub essay states the consensus concisely: the attribution “reflects the tradition that he gave the liturgy its definitive form, though the text has undergone subsequent development” (Orthodoxy: The Divine Liturgy).

What the Attributions Mean: Both Sides

The Orthodox reader is right to want to know whether the names are true. Per METHODOLOGY §3.5, the honest course is to pin the claim to what the evidence bears and to report the traditional and the source-critical accounts side by side.

[Disputed: whether the Byzantine liturgies are the compositions of the saints whose names they bear. (a) The traditional/ecclesial view receives the liturgies as those of Basil and Chrysostom, a reception embodied in the liturgical books (which name the author of the liturgy being served in the commemorations of the proskomedia and in the ninth ode) and in the calendar. On this view the Church’s naming is not a modern authorship claim but a genuine ascription of the liturgy’s spiritual and theological substance to these Fathers, guaranteed by the Church’s own tradition rather than by manuscript stemmatics. (b) The source-critical/historical view, now standard in liturgiology, holds that all historic liturgies grew by communal development and that the anaphoras’ relation to their namesakes must be argued from the texts. On that method the cases differ sharply: the longer Basil anaphora has a strong claim to be Basil’s own expansion of an earlier core (Fenwick, The Anaphoras of St Basil and St James, 1992), so the attribution has real substance; the Chrysostom anaphora derives from the Antiochene Anaphora of the Twelve Apostles, with Chrysostom’s personal contribution probable but harder to isolate, and the full liturgical formulary a later Constantinopolitan achievement (Taft, The Byzantine Rite, 1992; Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy, 1990). Both views agree that the ceremonial liturgies as served today are the Byzantine synthesis, not the personal work of either fourth-century saint; they differ on how much weight to place on the ecclesial ascription of the anaphoral cores. This collection reports both and adjudicates neither, noting only that the Basil attribution is the better documented of the two.]

Why the Difference Matters

The distinction is not a debunking of tradition but a refinement of it. It means, on the one hand, that when the Church serves the Liturgy of St. Basil on the Sundays of Lent and the great feasts, it very likely prays, in substance, the theology of Basil himself — one of the reasons the Basil anaphora is prized as among the noblest doctrinal texts of the Church (Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy, 1990, ch. 8; Fenwick, 1992). It means, on the other hand, that the Liturgy of Chrysostom, for all that it bears the name of the golden-mouthed preacher of the Eucharist, reaches us above all as the fruit of the whole Antiochene and Constantinopolitan tradition that Chrysostom served and shaped, rather than as a single author’s book. Either way, the liturgies are “of” Basil and Chrysostom in the deepest sense the Church intends: they carry forward the faith these Fathers taught and the worship they offered, handed on and refined by the Body of Christ across the centuries (Taft, The Byzantine Rite, 1992; see the two liturgies within the wider history).

See Also

References

  • Fenwick, John R. K. The Anaphoras of St Basil and St James: An Investigation into their Common Origin. Orientalia Christiana Analecta 240. Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute, 1992. (The Egyptian and Byzantine Basil; Basil’s expansion of an earlier core.)
  • Taft, Robert F. The Byzantine Rite: A Short History. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992. (The Chrysostom anaphora and the Anaphora of the Twelve Apostles; the displacement of Basil by Chrysostom; the developed ceremonial as later synthesis.)
  • Wybrew, Hugh. The Orthodox Liturgy: The Development of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite. Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1990. (The comparison of the two anaphoras; the Antiochene background.)
  • Gregory of Nazianzus. Oration 43 (Funeral Oration on St. Basil the Great). Trans. NPNF, Second Series, vol. 7. (Basil’s ordering of prayers.)
  • Scripture and liturgical texts: the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great and the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (euchologion; Eng. in Hapgood, Service Book).