Biblical and Parabiblical Women in Late Antique Christian Liturgy an Eclectic Overview*
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Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 96/3 (2020) 537-562. doi: 10.2143/ETL.96.3.3288590 © 2020 by Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses. All rights reserved. Biblical and Parabiblical Women in Late Antique Christian Liturgy An Eclectic Overview* Harald BUCHINGER Universität Regensburg In Christian liturgy, saints appear in three prominent places. Firstly, feasts of the sanctoral cycle of annual celebrations are dedicated exclu- sively to the veneration of particular figures. Originally, such cults are strictly focused on the date of the death (understood and addressed as a “birthday” into heavenly life) and fixed to the place of martyrdom or burial; only secondarily does the exchange of sanctoral commemorations become a medium for networking between different communities and regions1. Secondly, lists of saints are commemorated in the intercessions of Eucharistic prayers, that is, a structural component in which the univer- sal communion of those partaking in the Eucharist comes to be developed. While these saints come from both the Bible and – much more importantly – from Christian history, a third function is reserved for biblical charac- ters: paradigms from the Bible are invoked in certain prayers either as examples of God’s salvific activity or as role models for those for whose benefit the prayer is spoken. For pragmatic reasons, the following survey is limited to the liturgy of late antique Jerusalem, the “mother of all churches”2, and to the Byzantine and Roman liturgies as those which have become the dominant rites of Eastern and Western Christianity. * The conference in March 2019 in Be᾿en Sheva῾ and the research for this paper were funded by the DFG-Centre for Advanced Studies “Beyond Canon” (FOR 2770) at the University of Regensburg. My sincere thanks are due to Christopher Sprecher, DFG- Research Training Group “Pre-Modern Metropolitanism” (GRK 2337), for a careful revi- sion of the English text and to Prof. Dr. Gabriel Radle, University of Notre Dame, IN, and Humboldt Fellow at the University of Regensburg, for helpful hints on the Byzantine and Palestinian marriage liturgy. 1. H. AUF DER MAUR, Feste und Gedenktage der Heiligen, in ID. – P. HARNONCOURT, Feiern im Rhythmus der Zeit II/1: Der Kalender / Feste und Gedenktage der Heiligen (Gottesdienst der Kirche, 6/1), Regensburg, Pustet, 1994, 65-357, is still the authoritative manual on the topic. 2. Synodal letter from Constantinople (382 CE), quoted in Theodoret, HE 5,9,17 (GCS. NF 5, p. 294 PARMENTIER – 3HANSEN); anaphora attributed to St James: B.-Ch. MERCIER, La liturgie de saint Jacques: Édition critique du texte grec avec traduction latine (PO, 126 = 26/2), Turnhout, Brepols, 1997 [= Paris, 1946], p. 206 [92], l. 27. 538 H. BUCHINGER I. FEMALE SAINTS FROM THE BIBLE IN THE SANCTORAL CYCLE While the commemoration of local martyrs is documented since the second half of the second century CE and lists are attested in the period of the great persecution under Emperor Decius in the middle of the third3, more comprehensive calendars appear only after the Constantinian turn in various places4. The so-called Martyrologium (or Breviarium) syriacum of 411 CE, a rendition of a fourth-century Greek compilation integrating prominent biblical characters such as the protomartyr Stephen in Jerusalem (even before the invention of his relics in 415 CE!), the apostles John and James in the same place, and the chief leaders of the apostles, Paul and Simon Kepha in Rome5, does not contain a single female figure from the Bible. 1. Jerusalem The oldest surviving strictly liturgical source for a cycle of sanctoral celebrations comes from late antique Jerusalem6. The so-called “Armenian Lectionary” – in fact a combination of a kind of synaxarium, a calendar of celebrations with indications of dates and stations, together with a lectionary of readings given in full – documents a developed system of sanctoral celebrations in the period after 417 CE; the only female saint therein comes from the Bible and is “Mary the Theotokos”7. It has been hypothesised that her celebration on 15 August – a date which later was to become the feast of her Dormition – at the third milestone on the way to Bethlehem may have originally represented an old tradition of the birth of Jesus at that very place (and not in Bethlehem as in the canonical accounts of Matthew 2 and Luke 2) according to the apocryphal tradition recorded by the Protevangelium Jacobi 17f.8. Be that as it may, the introduction of 3. AUF DER MAUR, Feste (n. 1), pp. 92f., with reference to the Martyrium Polycarpi and Cyprian of Carthage’s Ep. 12,2. 4. Ibid., p. 103. The Depositio martyrum of Furius Dionysius Philocalus (354 CE, prob- ably going back to 336 CE) contains six female names (ibid., p. 137); Peter and Paul are the only – albeit male – biblical figures. 5. F. NAU (ed.), Martyrologues et ménologes orientaux I-XIII: Un martyrologe et douze ménologes syriaques (PO, 46 = 10/1), Turnhout, Brepols, 1974 [= Paris, 1912], p. 11. 6. H. BUCHINGER, Das Jerusalemer Sanctorale: Zu Stand und Aufgaben der Forschung, in M. BARNARD – P. POST – E. ROSE (eds.), A Cloud of Witnesses: The Cult of Saints in Past and Present (Liturgia Condenda, 18), Leuven, Peeters, 2005, 97-128. 7. A. RENOUX (ed.), Le codex arménien Jérusalem 121. II: Édition comparée du texte et de deux autres manuscrits. Introduction, textes, traduction et notes (PO, 36/2 = 168), Turnhout, Brepols, 1971, p. 354 [216], #64. 8. FC 18, pp. 124-126 SCHNEIDER; cf. S. VERHELST, Le 15 août, le 9 av et le Kathisme, in Questions Liturgiques / Studies in Liturgy 82 (2001) 161-191; R. AVNER, The Initial Tradition of the Theotokos at the Kathisma: Earliest Celebrations and the Calendar, in L. BRUBAKER – M.B. CUNNINGHAM (eds.), The Cult of the Mother of God in Byzantium: (PARA)BIBLICAL WOMEN IN LATE ANTIQUE CHRISTIAN LITURGY 539 a properly Marian feast fits with the surge in reflection on and piety towards the mother of Christ, which was also fuelled by her solemn definition as Theotokos at the third ecumenical council at Ephesus in 431 CE9. A number of Georgian manuscripts illustrate the development of the stational system and the calendar in subsequent centuries10. A veritable paradigm-shift is to be observed: by the beginning of the seventh cen- tury, almost every day of the year had been outfitted with a sanctoral celebration in a complex interplay between the differentiation of the sacred topography of the Holy City and the development of the stational liturgy. While the sanctoral calendar is systematically filled with male figures from the Old Testament such as patriarchs or prophets who tend to be commemorated personally, either on their own or in little clusters, the respective women or matriarchs are almost totally neglected. Only Rachel’s tomb is the focus of any interest: depositions of relics are men- tioned on 20 February and 18 July11; and although this monument as such was already known to the anonymous pilgrim from Bordeaux in the early 330s12, one wonders whether such striking prominence was not induced by the reference to Rachel in Matt 2,18 on the occasion of the massacre of the Holy Innocents, the gospel of the commemoration on 18 July (when, Texts and Images, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2011, 9-29; EAD., Presbeia Theotokou, Presbeia mētros: Reconsidering the Origins of the Feast and the Cult of the Theotokos at the Kathisma, on the Road to Bethlehem, in L.M. PELTOMAA – A. KÜLZER – P. ALLEN (eds.), Presbeia Theotokou: The Intercessory Role of Mary across Times and Places in Byzantium (4th-9th Century) (Denkschriften. Ö sterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philoso- phisch-Historische Klasse, 481 = Verö ffentlichungen zur Byzanzforschung, 39), Wien, Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2015, 41-48; S.J. SHOEMAKER, Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2016, pp. 181-185. 9. SHOEMAKER, Mary (n. 8), collects the material documenting the early roots of Marian piety and demonstrates that the council of Ephesus was more a catalyst than an initial trig- ger of liturgical developments. The recent dispute about the terminus ante quem of the Armenian Lectionary, however, may once more push the time-frame of explicitly Marian cult in Jerusalem a little upward; cf. H. MÉNDEZ, Revising the Date of the Armenian Lectionary of Jerusalem, in JECS 29 (2021) [forthcoming]. 10. Cf. H. BUCHINGER, Liturgy and Topography in Late Antique Jerusalem, in K. HEYDEN – M. LISSEK (eds.), Jerusalem (Civitatum Orbis Mediterranei Studia), Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2020 [forthcoming]. Much of the substance of the “Georgian Lectionary” may go back to the period before the Persian raid (614 CE) and the Arab conquest (636/637 CE); the latest clearly datable commemoration is that of Bishop Sophronius († 638 CE?) on 11 March: M. TARCHNISCHVILI, Le grand lectionnaire de l’Église de Jérusalem (Ve-VIIIe siè- cle) (CSCO, 188f. = CSCO.I, 9f.; CSCO, 204f. = CSCO.I, 13f.), Louvain, CSCO, 1959- 1960, 253 (vol. 1, pp. 42/39; here and in the following, the first page number refers to the edition, the second to the translation). Although all extant manuscripts are medieval, the fuller order of the Paris manuscript (P) is generally considered to attest a later stage of development than the one from Latal (L). 11. Georgian Lectionary 230 (vol. 1, pp. 40/37 TARCHNISCHVILI, with reference to the common of saints); 1096-1101 (vol. 2, pp. 24/22 TARCHNISCHVILI). 12. Itin. Burd. 598,5 (CCSL 175, pp. 19f. GEYER – CUNTZ). 540 H. BUCHINGER however, also Gen 48,1-7 is provided as a reading, along with Gen 35,9- 20 according to the Paris manuscript)13. From the New Testament, the prophetess Anna, mentioned in Luke 2,36-38, is celebrated in the Paris manuscript on 1 February, the day before the feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, according to the relatively late principle of concomitant feasts for secondary figures of major feasts14.