Antiochene Rite - Recent Times

Recent Times

The Oriental Orthodox in Syria and Palestine still use the Syriac Liturgy of St. James, as do also the Syrian Catholics. The Orthodox of the two Patriarchates, Antioch and Jerusalem, have forsaken their own use for many centuries. Like most Christians in communion with Constantinople, they have adopted the Byzantine Rite (with the exception of the small number in canonical jurisdictions who use reconstructed Western liturgies). This is one result of the extreme centralization towards Constantinople that followed the Arab conquests of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. The Melchite Patriarchs of those countries, who had already lost nearly all their flocks through the Monophysite heresy, became the merest shadows and eventually even left their sees to be ornaments of the courts at Constantinople. It was during that time, before the rise of the new national churches, that the Byzantine Patriarch developed into something very like a pope over the whole Orthodox world. And he succeeded in foisting the liturgy, calendar, and practices of his own patriarchate on the much older and more venerable sees of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. It is not possible to say exactly when the older uses were forsaken for that of Byzantium. Theodore Balsamon says that by the end of the twelfth century the Church of Jerusalem followed the Byzantine Rite. By that time Antioch had also doubtless followed suit. There are, however, two small exceptions. In the island of Zakynthos and in Jerusalem itself the Greek Liturgy of St. James was used on one day each year, 23 October, the feast of St. James the "brother of God". It is still so used at Zakynthos, and in 1886 Dionysios Latas, Metropolitan of Zakynthos, published an edition of it for practical purposes. At Jerusalem even this remnant of the old use had disappeared. But in 1900 Lord Damianos, the Orthodox Patriarch, revived it for one day in the year, not 23 October but 31 December. It was first celebrated again in 1900 (on 30 December as an exception) in the church of the Theological College of the Holy Cross. Lord Epiphanios, Archbishop of the River Jordan, celebrated, assisted by a number of concelebrating priests. The edition of Latas was used, but the Archimandrite Chrysostomos Papadopoulos has been commissioned to prepare another and more correct edition (Echos d'Orient, IV, 247, 248).

• Note finally that the Maronites use the Syrian St. James with a few very slight modifications, and that the Nestorian, Byzantine and Armenian Liturgies are derived from that of Antioch.