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Download Download Akropolis 3 (2019) 109-128 Elena Ene D-Vasilescu* The ‘Gospel of freedom’ or a Letter of warning? The use of Paul’s Epis- tle to the Galatians in the Byzantine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom Abstract: The article remarks on the earliest sources containing the Liturgy of St. John Chrysos- tom and introduces commentaries concerning it. It also presents the moments of the liturgical year in which the Letter to the Galatians is read. The novelty the material brings to the field of Byzantine Studies is the fact that it conceives this Pauline text as being a manifest concerning human freedom. 1. Introduction Within the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (ca. 349 – 407)1 practiced in Byzantium and currently in the Orthodox Church, the Epistle to the Galatians is read on important Christian feasts and on days dedicated to particular saints. A few of these celebrations fall on the same day every year and other vary, depend- ing on the date of Easter (which, as we know, changes annually). The scholarship still needs to cover the reception of Pauline theology in the Liturgy of John Chrysostom (as well as in that of Basil the Great/of Caesarea). In this particular paper I only propose a survey of possible future topics within this area; further research could delve into the profundities on the comparison proposed above. Some personal thoughts on the most frequently read excerpts from the letter to the Galatians as they occur in the Byzantine Liturgy will be introduced. These are Gal. 5:22-6:2 and 3: 24-4: 3, and those read at Easter (Gal. 3: 13-14), and Christmas (4: 4-7). The fragment Gal 4: 22-27, where there is a clear distinction between the Church and the Synagogue, will also be commented * Wolfson College & Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxfordd ([email protected]) 1 John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, was educated by Libanius. The information regarding his teacher is from Cameron, “Education and literary culture”, 668-669. Libanius was also the teacher of Theo- dore of Mopsuestia ll (of Antioch, d. c. 350 – c. 428); see Chrysostom, ad Th. Laps. Ii. 110 Elena Ene D-Vasilescu upon; this is the text recited on the 25th July, which is the day that marks the Dor- mition of St. Anne. We shall elaborate at some length on all those, and only intro- duce in passing other occasions when Paul’s message to the Christian inhabitants of Galatia is mentioned in the Eucharistic service (it is evoked thirty five times). I will firstly present the most known bibliographical resources concerning St. Paul’s text and then the historical-theological framework in which it was written. 2. Sources regarding the Eucharistic service The earliest manuscript of John Chrysostom’s Liturgy is the ninth-century codex Vaticanus graecus 2282; its rubrics were translated in English by Frank Edward Brightman within the book he edited, Liturgies, Eastern and Western.2 He also rendered the Armenian Liturgy of the Byzantine Rite in its entirety, as well as other similar Church services. According to Alexander Schmemann, the Liturgy had reached full form in the twelfth century.3 Before the liturgies of St. Basil and of St. John were composed (in the fourth century), in Jerusalem and the Syriac speaking areas, that of St. James was practiced/celebrated – as is still the case today in some areas of the Middle East – especially in Syria; the performing of St. Mark’s liturgy is still the norm in Egypt.4 Robert F. Taft affirms that the structure of the Eucharist service became complete in the time of Philotheus I of Constantinople, b. 1300.5 One should not see the last two mentioned dates in contradiction since, despite the actuality of a typicon6, small variations existed and still exists today within both Eastern (‘the Byzantine’)7 and Western Litur- 2 Brightman (ed. end trans.), Liturgies, Eastern and Western. 3 Schmemann, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy, 199. See also Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology. The most recent edition of the Liturgy in English isThe Divine Liturgy of our Father among the saints John Chrysostom. This book has been edited and translated by a committee appointed by the Ecumen- ical Patriarch Bartholomew I and Archbishop Gregorios of Thyateira and Great Britain (in Greek and En- glish). See also Field (ed.), Interpretatio omnium epistolarum Paulinarum. This has been translated in English as Commentary of S. John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople on the Epistle of S. Paul the Apostle to the Galatians. Among the newest publications referring to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, see Edwards (ed.), An- cient Christian Commentary on Scripture. 4 Lester, “The Liturgy of St. James”, 96-115. 5 Taft, The Liturgy of the Great Church, 45-46 [45-75]. On this see also Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy, 445; Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood, 1990, 38; Bouyer, Eucharist, 136. 6 The typicon consists in a set of “definite regulations according to an order or rite established once and for all;” that is the collection of rules and prescriptions – or ‘rubrics. Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 33. 7 About Byzantine Liturgy especially Schmemann wrote in his Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 35-41, and The ‘Gospel of freedom’ or a Letter of warning? The use of Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians in the Byzantine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom 111 gy8, as well as between these two geographically determined types of Eucharis- tic services. Also according to Alexander Schmemann, “the development of the Rule of worship was completed in Byzantium; [this was] a Rule which makes of it a system permitting almost no progress or change. The Byzantine typicons and euchologia of the thirteenth and fourteenth century differ hardly at all from our own missals and rule-books […] The modern Orthodox Church is –from the point of view of history – the Church of Byzantium, which has survived the Byzantine Empire by five hundred years.”9 But perhaps that statement should be relativized to a certain extent since the Byzantine/Greek, Romanian, Bulgarian Orthodox typicon is the slightly modified Typicon of the Monastery of Studios in Constantinople, and the Slavonic one is closer to that of St Sabas’s Monas- tery in Jerusalem.10 Widely used editions of Chrysostom’s works are available in Greek, Latin, English, and French. The Greek edition was edited by Sir Henry Savile (eight volumes, Eton, 1613); the most complete Greek and Latin edition was edited by Bernard de Montfaucon (thirteen volumes, Paris, 1718–38, republished in 1834-40, and reprinted in Migne (ed.), Patrologia Graeca, volumes 47- 64. Here I have used information from the latter. An English translation of St. John Chrysostom’s works exists in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.11 A selection of his writings has been published more recently in the original with facing French translation in Sources Chrétiennes12 and also one in English.13 The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy; also Taft, The Byzantine Rite: A Short History, and Taft (ed.), The Christian East. See also Healey (ed.), The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, 268-269, and Wybrew, The Orthodox Liturgy: the development of the Eucharistic liturgy in the Byzantine rite, and Wybrew, The Or- thodox Liturgy. 8 About the Eucharistic service in the West, see Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy and Taft,The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West. See more about Dix’s work in Jones (ed.), The Sacramental Life. 9 Schmemann, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy, 199. 10 Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 35. 11 John Chrysostom, NPNF1, 1907. See also John Chrysostom, Commentary of S. John Chrysostom, Archbish- op of Constantinople on the Epistle of S. Paul the Apostle to the Galatians. 12 John Chrysostom, “La Divine liturgie de saint Jean Chrysostome”, (in the original with facing French transs- lation). 13 John Chrysostom, The Divine Liturgy of our Father among the saints John Chrysostom. 112 Elena Ene D-Vasilescu 3. Paul in Galatia Before indicating how Paul’s epistle is deployed in the Byzantine Liturgy, we should remark that, after founding churches in Galatia,14 the Apostle had to leave the area in order to carry out other missionary assignments. On his return some heretics and conservative [strict law observing] recipients of the letter pro- tested against one of the letters he sent to them – that which we discuss in this article and was called the ‘Gospel of freedom’.15 Fig. 2a. The Ancient Galatia Fig. 2b. Antioch, where John was born. 14 Ancient Galatia (in Greek, Γαλατία) was an area in the highlands of central Anatolia (Ankara, Çorum, Yozgat Province) in modern Turkey. Galatia was named for the immigrant Gauls from Thrace, who settled here and became its ruling caste in the third century BC, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC (The Gauls/Celts were invited to participate in a Bithynian civil war in 278 bc). The territory was called “Gallia” because the Roman writers called these people Galli/ Gauls/Galatae/Galatians. They attacked the neighbouring Hellenistic states, but the Seleucid king Antiochus I defeated them at the so-called Elephant Battle (275 bc). After that they had to join the Seleucids against Rome (winter 190-189 BC). That brought upon them a Roman punitive expedition (189 BC) from which they never recovered. Passing successively un- der the rule of Pergamum and Pontus, Galatia became a Roman protectorate (85 BC) ruled by puppet kings. Though originally possessing a strong cultural identity, by the second century ad the Galatians had become absorbed into the Hellenistic civilization of Anatolia.
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