Monitum (ad Liturgiam S. Clementis Romani)

THE LITURGY OF SAINT CLEMENT OF ROME.

(Renaudot, Liturgiarum Orientalium Collectio, 2nd edn, Frankfurt, 1847, quarto, vol. II, p. 186.)

NOTICE.

Besides this one, no other Liturgy ascribed to Clement is found among the Orientals in manuscript codices, which might indeed seem surprising, since in the Clementine Constitutions its form exists entire, described in Book VIII. But although several versions and epitomes of those Constitutions, which the Syrians and Arabs are accustomed to call the Dascalia, a shortening of the name Didascalia, are found in the Arabic Collections of Canons, they have only fragments of that last book; and that book is not extant in the very ancient Syriac version of the Florentine codex. Nor among the Greeks, from whom the Syrians and others received the Apostolic Constitutions, is there any record of a Liturgy attributed to Clement, evidently because in no celebrated Church, one that could give law or example to others, was a singular form of rites and prayers drawn from the Clementines in use. The reason why the Jacobites composed this one and attributed it to Clement would be sought in vain, unless it was the dignity that they tried to procure for this office from the name of an apostolic man, whose memory they inserted several times in their diptychs, as also in the Confession which the Medicean Pontifical orders to be read out to priests about to be ordained; and several of whose testimonies they bring forward in support of their opinion in the Collectanea, of which we have often spoken. It is not printed in the Chaldaean Missal, nor do Gabriel Sionita in his letter to Nihusius or Abraham Echellensis in his notes on Hebed-Jesu mention it, and few codices represent it. The version has been made from a Colbert codex of good repute, 3921.

To prove that this Liturgy is not a work of Clement of Rome, there is no need of many words, since it has not even a slight mark of such antiquity, but not a few of a more recent age, among which the chief appears to be that style degenerating from primitive simplicity, and a truly Asiatic heap of synonyms, epithets, and metaphors, through which the Orientals suppose that the highest summit of elegance is reached. This is also proved by the addition of several words in the form of consecrating the bread and the chalice, as in the first, "which is immolated for many faithful," and in the second, "My blood which confirms the covenant of My death": which formulas are more like recent ones than ancient Greek and Syriac ones, the sense of which comes closer to the simplicity of the Gospel words. In the invocation of the Holy Spirit this is to be observed, that the prayer which follows the words of Christ is, contrary to the custom of other liturgies, prolix beyond measure, so that there is a much greater interval altogether between those words and the invocation. Yet no interlocution of the deacon occurs as in later Greek liturgies, for the Oriental Churches are unacquainted with those additions used by the Greeks.