The Liturgies Compared
The Liturgies Compared
SermonIndex
c. AD 50 – 1900
Twenty-five early liturgies and church orders compared part by part, with the words of each part quoted.
What the Comparison Shows
One skeleton in every rite
Fourteen of the 15 fully prepared texts in the tables have readings, prayers for the church, the kiss of peace, the offering of the gifts, a preface of thanksgiving, an anamnesis (“remembering therefore…”), intercessions, communion and a thanksgiving after it. The fifteenth, the Apostolic Tradition, gives only the offering, the thanksgiving and the communion, so it has none of the readings, intercessions or closing thanks. Fourteen of the 15 print the words of Christ over the bread and cup (all but Addai and Mari), and 14 print the opening dialogue (“Lift up your hearts”) in full. The shape of the Lord’s Supper that Justin describes about AD 155 is still the shape of every liturgy here.
The earliest full prayer already has the core
If the Apostolic Tradition is as early as it is usually dated, the heart of the later liturgies was there by about AD 215: the opening dialogue, a thanksgiving for Christ, the words over the bread and cup, the remembrance, the offering, the prayer for the Spirit and a Trinitarian doxology with the people’s Amen. What it lacks is what the East added in the next two centuries: the Sanctus, the intercessions, the Lord’s Prayer and the creed. Its column in the tables shows exactly this.
Where the intercessions fall marks the family
There are four arrangements. Before the Sanctus, inside the preface: Mark, the Coptic liturgy of Cyril, the Ethiopic anaphora, and the Gallican Missale Gothicum. After the epiclesis : Apostolic Constitutions 8, James, the Syriac James, Basil, Chrysostom, the Armenian liturgy and Serapion. After the institution but before the epiclesis : Addai and Mari, Nestorius and the Malabar liturgy. Between the Sanctus and the institution : the Roman Canon (Gelasian, Gregorian) and the Ambrosian liturgy of Milan. The Apostolic Tradition has no intercessions inside its prayer at all.
The epiclesis moves, and asks for different things
In most Eastern texts a prayer asking for the Holy Spirit on the bread and cup comes after the institution. Mark and the Coptic liturgy have two: “Fill this sacrifice with thy blessing” before the institution and a Spirit-epiclesis after the anamnesis. Serapion asks that God’s “holy Word” come upon the bread and cup. In the Roman Canon the nearest thing, “Quam oblationem”, comes before the institution and asks that the offering become the body and blood, without naming the Spirit. The Testament of Our Lord prays for the Spirit only for the communicants, not for the gifts. The earliest full prayer, in the Apostolic Tradition, asks the Spirit on the offerings after the oblation, in the same sentence as the prayer that the communicants be filled with the Spirit.
The institution narrative is not everywhere
Addai and Mari, the oldest East Syriac anaphora, has none in its oldest form; Brightman prints it only in square brackets as an optional insertion. Cyril of Jerusalem gives no narrative in his lecture on the Eucharist (he takes it from Paul in the lecture before). Justin explains Christ’s words as the church’s teaching, not as part of the prayer. In the Missale Gothicum only the opening words (“ipse enim pridie quam pateretur”) survive, because the manuscript omits the canon. The Didache has none at all, and its prayers are thanksgivings over the cup and the bread.
The Sanctus is nearly universal
Every anaphora with a full text has it except the Apostolic Tradition (about AD 215) and the Testament of Our Lord, a fifth-century church order that reworks it. James and the East Syriac anaphoras add “Blessed is he that cometh”; Apostolic Constitutions 8 has the Sanctus alone. Some of the texts the tables reaches only through a cue (“saying, Holy, holy, holy…”), as the Coptic page and the Gallican and Gregorian books do.
The kiss of peace and the Creed travel
In every Eastern liturgy here the kiss of peace comes before the anaphora, as in Justin and the Apostolic Tradition. In the Roman books it comes after the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ambrosian rite has it both before the canon and after the fraction. The Creed is missing from the oldest witnesses (Justin, the Apostolic Tradition, Serapion, Apostolic Constitutions 8, the Roman Canon books) but stands before the anaphora in the Byzantine, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopic, Alexandrian and Ambrosian texts.
The families show up in the numbers
When the tables is turned into a score for how alike each pair is, the closest pairs are the ones scholars group together: Basil and Chrysostom (100, they share most of their text); the Armenian liturgy with the Byzantine pair (96, which fits its borrowing from Constantinople); Gelasian and Gregorian (94); Addai and Mari, Nestorius and Malabar (89–91); and the Alexandrian trio of Mark, the Coptic Cyril and the Ethiopic (86–87). It is a rough measure, but it is computed from the quotations you can read above it.
What the chart cannot show
Short sacramentaries print only the priest’s prayers, and some books print rubrics instead of the sermon, so “not covered” is not the same as “not done”. The texts we have are medieval copies of older liturgies, in translations of different dates. The Apostolic Tradition is a special case: its Greek is lost, Easton’s English is a composite of the Latin, Sahidic, Arabic and Ethiopic versions, and scholars dispute whether it is one man’s work from about 215, so a single clause in it is less sure than the same clause in a later liturgy. The Strasbourg papyrus and other fragments are not yet in the tables; when their pages go online they will be added.
How the Comparison Was Made
Each of the 25 texts was read on its own page in this series and each of the 28 parts of the service was marked one of four ways: in the text, only hinted or optional, not in the text (the text is complete enough that the part would show, and it was searched for), or not covered by that source (a description by an observer, a book of presidential prayers, an anaphora without the service around it). Where a part is in the text, the words are quoted and a script checked, word for word, that the quotation really occurs in the cited row of the page. The marks were prepared with the help of artificial intelligence, under our direction, and the quotations were then checked by machine. The judgement of what counts as “hinted” or as the equivalent of an epiclesis is a judgement, and a liturgist may well disagree; if you do, please tell us and we will correct the tables. The columns in Where they differ and the resemblance table are computed from the order lists and the marks, with no further judgement. The resemblance score is half the share of comparable parts on which two texts agree and half the share of their shared parts that come in the same order.
The English on the pages is by different translators (Neale, Brightman, Hapgood, Wordsworth, Gibson, Cooper and Maclean, Atchley and others); the Latin pages carry our own plain glosses. Greek and other original-language columns are OCR and are not quoted here; they are not printed here.
The Twenty-Five Texts
The texts compared, from the earliest to the latest. “Complete” means that the text gives the whole service; “partial” means a description or a single prayer.
The Didache (chs. 9–10, 14)
Earliest witnesses. c. AD 50–120. Completeness: partial. English: Lake 1912 (with a modern English version); Greek: Lake edition
Justin Martyr, First Apology (chs. 65–67)
Earliest witnesses. c. AD 155. Completeness: description. English: Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1 (1885); Greek: Rauschen edition, 1911
The Apostolic Tradition (Hippolytus, §§4, 21–23)
Earliest witnesses. c. AD 215. Completeness: full. English: Burton Scott Easton, 1934 (composite from Latin, Sahidic, Arabic and Ethiopic); no original-language text on the page
East Syriac liturgy of Addai and Mari (Brightman's full order)
Church of the East. Church of the East; text as in Brightman (Liturgies Eastern and Western, 1896). Completeness: full. English: Brightman's translation of the Church of the East order (Urmi/Malabar-type text), as on this page
Anaphora of Addai and Mari
Church of the East. Attributed to the 3rd century or earlier; present text later. Completeness: partial. English: older public-domain translation of the East Syriac rite, as on this page
Serapion of Thmuis, Prayer-Book (Anaphora and Sunday prayers)
Alexandria. c. AD 340–350. Completeness: partial. English: John Wordsworth, 1899 (older translation, OCR text); no Greek on the page
Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses (Lecture 23, with 22)
Earliest witnesses. c. AD 350 (date debated). Completeness: description. English: older public-domain translation (Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers); no Greek on the page
Liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions, Book 8 (Clementine)
Jerusalem and Antioch. c. AD 375–380 (Syria). Completeness: full. English: older public-domain translation (Ante-Nicene Fathers); Greek: Brightman 1896, OCR, not proofread
Ambrose of Milan, On the Mysteries (chs. 8–9, Eucharist)
The Latin West. c. AD 390. Completeness: description. English: older public-domain translation; no Latin on the page
The Divine Liturgy of St James (Jerusalem)
Jerusalem and Antioch. c. AD 400 (Jerusalem; Greek text 4th–5th c. core). Completeness: full. English: older public-domain translation (Ante-Nicene Fathers); Greek: Brightman 1896, OCR, not proofread; the two columns follow different recensions
The Divine Liturgy of St Mark (Alexandria)
Alexandria. c. AD 400–450 (Alexandria; later Greek text). Completeness: full. English: older public-domain translation (Ante-Nicene Fathers); Greek: Brightman 1896, OCR, not proofread; the two columns follow different recensions
Divine Liturgy of St Basil (Hapgood, Orthodox use)
Constantinople. 4th c. (modern Orthodox text of Basil). Completeness: full. This is the modern Orthodox text of the Liturgy of St Basil in Isabel Hapgood's 1906 English (Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church); it differs in small ways from the 4th–9th century text. Basil's own prayers are taken where Hapgood gives them as alternatives to Chrysostom; common text elsewhere.
Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (Neale)
Constantinople. 4th–9th c. (Byzantine text c. AD 800). Completeness: full. English: J. M. Neale, The Liturgies of S. Mark, S. James, S. Clement, S. Chrysostom, S. Basil (1859); Greek text on the same page
Coptic Liturgy of St Cyril / St Mark (Brightman)
Alexandria. Alexandrian anaphora, 4th–5th c.; Coptic text of the Middle Ages. Completeness: full. English: F. E. Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western, vol. 1 (1896), the Coptic Liturgy of St Cyril (St Mark)
The Testament of Our Lord (Book I, Church Order and Anaphora)
Earliest witnesses. 5th century (Syria). Completeness: full. English: Cooper and Maclean, 1902 (older translation, OCR text); no Greek on the page
East Syriac Liturgy of Nestorius (Badger)
Church of the East. Named for Nestorius (d. c. AD 451); Syriac text of the 5th–6th century, later redacted. Completeness: full. English: G. P. Badger, The Nestorians and their Rituals (1852), from the Syriac
Leonine (Verona) Sacramentary
The Latin West. 6th century. Completeness: partial. Latin text: C. L. Feltoe, Sacramentarium Leonianum, 1896 (OCR)
West Syriac (Jacobite) Liturgy of St James (Brightman)
Jerusalem and Antioch. West Syriac; anaphora of the 4th–5th century, text 1182 and later. Completeness: full. English: F. E. Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western (1896), compiled from the Syriac text of 1572, Malabar manuscripts and BM MS of 1182
The Liturgy of Malabar (Neale)
Church of the East. East Syriac rite of the Thomas Christians (text translated 1859). Completeness: full. English: J. M. Neale, The Liturgies of S. Mark, S. James, S. Clement, S. Chrysostom, S. Basil, and the Church of Malabar (1859)
Roman Canon in the Gelasian Sacramentary
The Latin West. 7th century. Completeness: partial. Latin text: H. A. Wilson, The Gelasian Sacramentary, 1894 (OCR)
Armenian Liturgy (Brightman)
Armenian. 5th c. core, Byzantine borrowings 11th–13th c.. Completeness: full. English: F. E. Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western, vol. 1 (1896), The Armenian Liturgy
Gallican Mass (Missale Gothicum)
The Latin West. c. AD 690-700 (Frankish Gaul). Completeness: partial. Latin: H. M. Bannister, Missale Gothicum (Henry Bradshaw Society, 1917), OCR text
The Ethiopic Liturgy: Anaphora of the Apostles (Brightman)
Ethiopic. Medieval translation of an ancient (Egyptian) rite. Completeness: full. English: F. E. Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and Western, vol. 1 (1896), from a manuscript of 1670-75
The Ambrosian Mass of Milan: Ordinary and Canon (Atchley)
The Latin West. 4th century onward (Milan). Completeness: full. English: E. G. C. F. Atchley, 1909
Roman Canon in the Gregorian Sacramentary (Hadrianum)
The Latin West. late 8th century. Completeness: partial. Latin text: H. A. Wilson, The Gregorian Sacramentary under Charles the Great, 1915 (OCR)