Eastern liturgies and anglican divines 1510–1662

Abstract

It would be difficult to form an accurate estimate of the extent to which the eastern liturgies were known in the west before the invention of printing. At the time of the council of Florence, the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom was celebrated at Ferrara and at Venice; and someone brought with him what is now the earliest extant manuscript of that liturgy, and left it behind in Florence. In the debates, however, the western delegates professed to have no knowledge of the rite. After the fall of Constantinople, Greek scholars and manuscripts reached the west in much greater numbers than before. In England an important step forward was taken about the year 1510, when Erasmus gave John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, a copy of St Chrysostom in Greek, with a Latin translation made by himself.