The Anamneses and Institution Narrative in the Liturgy of Apostolic Constitutions Book VIII

Abstract

More than one comprehensive theory of liturgical history has made much of the difference between the eucharistic prayer in the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus and that described in the Catecheses of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. The former consists of a thanksgiving for creation and redemption through Christ, leading to an institution narrative, and followed by an anamnesis and an epiclesis, in which, however, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the oblation is asked for, not to convert it, but to join the Church in one. The latter consists of a ‘preface’ (which is not a thanksgiving, although the opening dialogue suggests that it will be) and sanctus, followed at once by a fully consecratory epiclesis, and intercessions. It is true that scholars of former generations thought that the prayer described by St. Cyril was, in fact, a fully developed prayer of the Syro-Byzantine type, and that St. Cyril only commented on certain paragraphs of it. It was natural to think so when it was believed that the liturgy of Apostolic Constitutions VIII, which contains the oldest known prayer of this type, was the work of St. Clement of Rome and a true description of apostolic practice; but it will hardly do to-day, when we know that Apostolic Constitutions was written several years later than St. Cyril's Catecheses. Besides, St. Cyril describes the prayer in considerable verbal detail, a procedure which is not easy to reconcile with the omission of whole paragraphs. Nor will it do to say that he comments upon the institution narrative elsewhere; he could scarcely explain the Eucharist to catechumens without doing so, but that hardly explains how, after mentioning and explaining the various choirs of angels who sing the sanctus, he could pass over the thanksgiving for creation and redemption, institution narrative, and anamnesis without a word, and expect an audience of people who were new to Christian worship to be able to follow the prayer as a result. And it would be a strange coincidence if the parts omitted by St. Cyril were just those which are in the Apostolic Tradition.