Derek Krueger - The Recasting of the Divine Liturgy as a Penitential Rite in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries

Published in 565, Novella 137 of the Corpus Iuris Civilis, demanded that the anaphora of the Divine Liturgy be recited aloud, “so that the souls of those who listen may be moved to greater compunction and raise up glorification to the Lord God.”  Robert Taft notes that Law 137 is the “only Late-Antique source…to show any concern that the people hear, understand, and interiorize the anaphoral prayers,” but in fact the law codified early Byzantine clerics’ expectations about how liturgies effected the formation of self-regard among the laity. The rise of a theory that the eucharistic prayers of the early Byzantine liturgy cued a penitential response roughly coincided with the adoption of a form of the Liturgy of Basil  in Constantinople and persisted even as the anaphora of this liturgy came increasingly to be recited silently over the course of the sixth and seventh centuries.  This paper surveys additional evidence indicating that sixth- and seventh-century Greek authors expected the Eucharistic liturgy to cultivate compunction.   The works of Romanos the Melodist not only prompt penitential responses to the stories of the lectionary; they also prepare congregants’ dispositions for the Eucharist on the following morning. The introduction of new hymns—including “At Your Mystical Feast”—to liturgies for Holy Week show clerical interest in shaping the experience of the sacrament by identification with saveable sinners.  And the Hexaermeron of Anastasios of Sinai in the last decades of the seventh century speculated that there would be no need for the Divine Liturgy in the world to come: “This will be a day free of servitude, when sacrifice and liturgical service for our sins are no longer offered to God” (7.7.2).  Indeed, the Divine Liturgy was only necessary under conditions of sin and corruption.