Articolo Di Taft PDF

Robert F. Taft, S.J.
ANTON BAUMSTARKES COMPARATIVE LITURGY

REVISITED*
I. Introduction
We have become accustomed to considering comparative liturgy

and its "laws" as "Baumstark’s, but we should note from the start that
*Abbreviations:
BAS = The Liturgy of St. Basil, in the Byzantine Greek redaction unless otherwise
specified.
Baumstark, Werden = Vom geschichtlichen Werden der Liturgie (Ecclesia orans 10, Frei-
burg/B. 1923).
Bradshaw, Origins = Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins o f Christian Worship.
Sources and Methods for the Study of the Early Liturgy (New York/Oxford 1992); cf.
my review in The Catholic Historical Review 80 (1994) 556-558.
CHR = The Byzantine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
CL = A. Baumstark, Comparative Liturgy, revised by Bernard Botte, O.S.B., English
edition by F. L. Cross from the 3rd French edition of Liturgie comparée, Cheveto-
gne 1953 (Westminster Md. 1958).
Engberding, EasileiosUturgie = H. Engberding, Das eucharistische Hochgehet der Basi-
leiosliturgie. Textgeschichtliche Untersuchungen und kritische Ausgabe (Theologie
des christlichen Ostens 1, Münster 1931).
Fenwick, Anaphoras = J. R. K. Fenwick, The Anaphoras of St Basil and St James. An
Investigation into their Common Origin (OCA 240, Rome 1992).
Hamm, Einsetzungsberichte = F. Hamm, Die liturgischen Einsetzungsberichte im Sinne
der vergleichenden Liturgieforschung untersucht (LQF 23, Münster 1928).
Mateos, Célébration ~ J. Mateos, La célébration de la parole dans la liturgie byzantine
(OCA 191, Rome 1971).
Taft, “Anaphora" = R. F. Taft, “John Chrysostom and the Byzantine Anaphora that
Bears his Name,” in Paul F. Bradshaw (ed.), Essays on Early Eastern Eucharist
Prayers (Collegeville 1997) 195-226.
Taft, “Authenticity” .= id., “The Authenticity of the Chrysostom Anaphora Revisited.
Determining the Authorship of Liturgical Texts by Computer," OCP 56 (1990) 5-51,
reprinted, with corrections, in id.. Liturgy in Byzantium chapter III.
Taft, Beyond East and West = id.. Beyond East and West. Problems in Liturgical Under-
standing. Second revised and enlarged edition (Rome 1997).
Taft, The Byzantine Rite = id., The Byzantine Rite. A Short History (American Essays in
Liturgy, Collegeville 1993).
Taft, “Comparative Liturgy" = id., “Comparative Liturgy Fifty Years after Anton Baum-
stark (d. 1948): A Reply to Recent Critics," Worship 73 (1999) 521-540.
Taft, Great Entrance = id.. The Great Entrance. A History o f the Transfer o f Gifts and
Other Preanaphoral Rites of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (OCA 200, Rome
19782).
192 ROBERT F. TAFT, S J .
neither the expression "comparative liturgy" nor all of its so-called

"laws” originated with him. Nineteenth-century Anglican liturgical
scholar John Mason Neale (1818-1866) seems to have coined both the
English word "liturgiology” for the scientific study of liturgy, and the
expression "comparative liturgy."3 And several of the "laws" Baum-
stark ultimately incorporated into his systematic exposition of method
were derived from others, as he himself cheerfully admits.
But regardless of its pedigree, Baumstark is the one who popular-
ized and gave theoretical formulation to the method of Vergleichen-
deliturgiewissenschaft2 that has proven not only useful but indispen-
sable for the history of liturgy. That the solution to some problems in
liturgical history and interpretation is simply impossible except
Taft, "Liturgiewissenschaft'' = id., "Über die Liturgiewissenschaft heute," ThQ 177

(1997)243-255.
Taft, Liturgy in Byzantium = id.. Liturgy in Byzantium and Beyond (Variorum Collected
Studies Series CS493, Aldershot 1995).
Taft, "Marcian" = id., "Byzantine Liturgical Evidence in the Life o f St. Marcian the
Œconomos: Concélébration and the Preanaphoral Rites," OCP 48 (1982) 159-170.
Taft, "Pontifical Liturgy" = id., "The Pontifical Liturgy of the Great Church according
to a Twelfth-Century Diataxis in Codex British Museum Add. 34060,” I: OCP 45
(1979) 279-307, II: 46 (1980) 89-124 = id.. Liturgy in Byzantium chapter II.
Taft, Precommunion = id., A History of the Liturgy o f St. John Chrysostoni, vol V: The
Precommunion Rites (OCA 261, Rome 2000).
ThG = Theologie und Glaube.
West, Baumstark’s Comparative Liturgy = F. S. West, Anton BaumstarU's Comparative
Liturgy in its Intellectual Context (Ann Arbor, University Microfilms International
1988).
West, The Comparative Liturgy o f Baumstark = id.. The Comparative Liturgy o f Anton
Baumstark (Alcuin Club & GROW Liturgical Studies 31, Bramcote 1995).
Winkler, "Anaphoren" I-II = G. Winkler, "Zur Erforschung orientalischer Anaphoren in
liturgievergleichender Sicht, I: Anmerkungen zur Oratio post Sanctus und Anam-
nese bis Epiklese," OCP 63 (1997) 363-420; II: "I: Das Formelgut der Oratio post
Sanctus und Anamnese sowie Interzessionen und die Taufbekenntnisse," in these
Acta.
Winkler, Initiationsrituale = eadem, Das armenische Initiationsrituale. Entwicklungs-
geschichtliche und liturgievergleichende Untersuchung der Quellen des 3. bis 10. Jahr-
hunderts (OCA 217, Rome 1982).
Winlder-Meßner, "Überlegungen" = eadem and R. Meßner, "Überlegungen zu den me-
thodischen und wissenschaftstheoretischen Grundlagen der Liturgiewissenschaft,"
ThQ 178 (1998)229-243.
1J. M. Neale, Essays on Liturgiology and Church History (London 1863) 123-24; C.
W. Dugmore, Ecclesiastical History, No Soft Option (London 1959) 15; cited in M. D.
Stringer, "Style against Structure: The Legacy of John Mason Neale for Liturgical
Scholarship," Studia Liturgica 21 (1997) 235-245, here 235, 242.
2 Esp. in Baumstark, Werden and CL.
ANTON BAUMSTARK'S COMPARATIVE LITURGY REVISITED 193
through the methods of comparative liturgy has time and again been
demonstrated beyond cavil.
Note, however, the distinction made above between method (which
is a way of proceeding), and its theoretical formulation or methodol-
ogy (which is a reflection on the principles of the latter). In defending
the method of comparative liturgy I do not thereby embrace all of
Baumstarkes animadversions with respect to it, nor every concrete
application he drew from it. We have passed beyond Baumstark, who
died half a century ago, just as our disciples will pass beyond us. The
issue is not whether eveiy single one of Baumstark’s principles, and
every use he made of them must be judged 100% correct, but what is
lasting in the heritage he bequeathed us?
In my view, Baumstark's work remains seminal, and his place in
the history of liturgiology assured, regardless of how often he was
right or wrong in this or that nuance or detail. This is a paradox
Baumstark shares with many pathbreaking thinkers of the past. Of
Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574), the Cinquecento historian of Italian art,
Francis Haskell wrote that "after more than four hundred years of
controversy, and the detection in his work of inaccuracies and bias,
deceit, ignorance, and intellectual carelessness, it still remains almost
impossible ... not to think of Italian painting, sculpture, and architec-
ture developing along the lines he laid out."3 Similarly, apropos of
Dutch historian Johan Huizinga's (1872-1945) The Waning o f the
Middle Ages, Haskell remarks: "The adjective 'great’ is attached to
Huizinga’s name as a matter of course, and yet scarcely a single mod-
ern scholar accepts either the methodology ... or the conclusions on
which his reputation is based.”4
So always getting all the facts right is not everything, not even in
the natural sciences, as Stephen Jay Gould remarks apropos of Dar-
win:
For those who still cherish the myth that fact alone drives any good
theory, I must point out that Darwin, at his key moment of insight ... was
quite wrong in his example... Fact and theory interact in wondrously
complex, and often mutually reinforcing, ways. Theories unsupported by
fact are empty ... but we cannot even know where to look without some
theory to test. As Darwin wrote in my favorite quotation: “How can any-
3 F. Haskell, "Ah! Sweet History of Life,” N e w York R ev iew o f B o o ks (April 4, 1996)

32.
4 Ibid. 34.
194 ROBERT F. TAFT, S.J.
one not see tha t all observation m ust be for or against som e view if it is to
be of any service?"5
That is why Brian Spinks could call Dom Gregory Dix (1901-1952)
"the Charles Darwin of liturgical studies: all his evidence is out of
date, and much of it is wrong, but the inspired guesses continue to be
useful in explaining the newer evidence."6 It is also why Eamon Duffy
could accuse another giant, Josef Andreas Jungmann, S.J. (1899-
1975), of disastrous assumptions without in any way detracting from
the fact that Jungmann must rightly go down in history as one of the
great liturgical scholars of all time.7 The issue is not was Baumstark
or Dix or Jungmann always right, but what can we derive from their
insights?
What we derive from them, I think, is a way of working and
thinking that remains valid to the present day. Among liturgiologists,
Anton Baumstark was one of the first to reflect methodologically and
critically on how he worked,8 and we must follow him along the same
path. Only via the endless process of sifting and resifting our herme-
neutical presuppositions through the sieve of shared critical reflection
can we sharpen the tools of our craft, refine its methods, and engage
in fruitful dialogue within the profession.9
5 S. J. Gould, "Why Darwin?” jVew York Review ofBoolts (April 4, 1956) 11-12.
6 JTS 44 (1993) 715. On Dix, see now the new biography: Simon Bailey, A Tactful
God. Gregory Dix. Priest, Monk and Scholar (Herefordshire/ Harrisburg, Pa. 1995).
7 E. Duffy, "The Stripping of the Altars and the Liturgy: Some Reflections on a
Modem Dilemma," Antiphon: Publication of the Society for Catholic Liturgy vol. 1, no. 1
(Spring 1996) 2-3; id., "The Stripping of the Altars and the Modem Liturgy," Antiphon:
Publication of the Society for Catholic Liturgy voi. 2, no. 3 (Winter 1997) 3-12.
8 Something very few students of Christian liturgy, apart from those writing in
German, have had the courage to attempt (at least in print) even today. See, however.
West, Anton Baumstark’s Comparative Liturgy, id.. The Comparative Liturgy o f Baum-
stark', Bradshaw, Origins (esp. 56-57 on Baumstark); Fenwick, Anaphoras 61-62, 133,
79, 227, 309. In this matter of methodological reflection the Jewish liturgiologists, far
fewer in number, are way ahead of us. See J. Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud: Forms
and Patterns (Studia Judaica 9, Berlin 1977); L. A. Hoffman, Beyond the Text: A Holistic
Approach to Liturgy (Bloomington 1987); id.. The Canonization of the Synagogue Service
(Studies in Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity 4, Notre Dame 1979); R. S. Sarason,
"On the Use of Method in the Modem Study of Jewish Liturgy,” in W. S. Green (ed.),
Approaches to Ancient Judaism: Theory and Practice (Brown Judaic Studies 1, Missoula
1978) 97-172; and cf. West, Anton Baumstark's Comparative Liturgy 389-92,
9 It might even defuse some of the banal and infantile tensions and emotional po-
lemics that arise among its practitioners when one has the effrontery to suggest that
there is more than one way of approaching the study of liturgy, and that perhaps the
In this paper I would like to further this sifting via my own reflec-
tions on what I consider permanently useful in Baumstark's methodo-
logical principles, where I believe they can be nuanced or corrected,
and where they can be built upon and added to. Since I shall be
reflecting chiefly on how Baumstark has inspired my own work, my
remarks will be limited, personal, and subjective, and many, though
not all, of my examples will be drawn from my own work.
But before addressing Baumstark's method, let me dispense with
some preliminaries. Although I consider myself in deep debt to
Baumstark and his immediate followers, my main interest is neither
Baumstark himself nor the place of his œuvre in the Geistesgeschichte
of our times. What interests me is the history of liturgy and how best
to study it. Though I claim to trace the distant origins of my own
method to Baumstark, I have no interest in arguing to what extent
that is true, nor to what extent Baumstark was right or wrong in this
or that detail, nor where he got his ideas, nor how faithful or untrue
to them he was, nor, indeed, whether I have been faithful to his meth-
ods, or have modified them in essential ways, or even changed them
beyond recognition. I leave to others to analyze, if they wish, my
methods and their debt to Baumstark. I have found very interesting
Fritz West's analysis of my methodology.10 But I am not a very intro-
spective scholar. For me what counts is getting the job done. How or
how well I do so, is a judgment I am happy to leave to present and
future peers. As an unrepentant American pragmatist born and bred,
my sole concern is what works. My thesis is that comparative liturgy
as I and others still employ it not only works, but works in situations
where nothing else works to solve the problems at hand. Time and
again one encounters problems in liturgical history intractable to
anything but textual and/or structural analysis in the context of the
comparative method of historico-liturgical reconstruction. So I shall
defend the validity of Baumstark's comparative liturgiology and try to
justify why I continue to consider it not just useful, but indispensable.
pastoral approach is not the only one, or even the most significant one. Cf. Taft,
"Liturgiewissenschaft," 243-49; Winlder-Meßner, "Überlegungen," 229-30, 235-43.
10 West, Anton Baumstark's Comparative Liturgy 393-400; id.. The Comparative Lit-
urgy o f Baumstark 38-42.
II. Comparative Liturgy and its “Laws"
Liturgy, in Baumstark's words, is a living activity which can "never

...be paralyzed into the rigour of an immobile dead formalism." By
its very nature, liturgy is "subject... to a process of continuous evolu-
tion.” The vocation of the historian of liturgy is "to investigate and
describe the origins and variations of the changing forms of this en-
during substance of eternal value” that is "the living heart of the
Church” (CL 1-2). This means the study of the evidence. And since the
evidence presents similarities and differences, its study is compara-
tive. If there were no differences, there would be identity, and nothing
to compare or explain. If there were no similarities, there would be no
basis for a comparative method to begin with.11
But what Baumstark called the "laws” of comparative liturgy are
not prior to nor a surrogate for the facts of liturgical history, as some
of his critics seem to imagine. Furthermore, though "an empirical
science," "Comparative liturgy is not concerned simply with the de-
termination of facts" (CL 15), but with explaining them.
[Comparative liturgy] seeks to disengage from the multitude of ascer-

tained facts certain laws which in turn will guide it in its further re-
searches. In our modem intellectual life the idea of science ... is bound up
with the establishment of laws of some kind of evolution... The laws of li-
turgical evolution must therefore be discovered by comparing one fact
with another. Once recognized, these laws will serve as norms for the ex-
planation of new facts which the sources will disclose (CL 15).
That last phrase is the best definition of the “laws" of comparative

liturgy: they are norms that serve to explain new facts which the
sources disclose.
What are these "laws”? Alas, clarity was not Baumstark's forte, and
it is not always clear when he is speaking about different “laws," or
about facets of the same "law," with the result that later commenta-
tors differ widely in numbering his “laws" of liturgical development.12
11 Those who would complain that this is to reduce to text what is p e r se a living
action, seem to forget that texts, be they liturgical, historical, or literary, and the ar-
cheological remains of buildings, furnishings, and artifacts, are all of the distant litur-
gical past that remains to us.
12 E. Lanne, Liturgia com pa rata (Pontificio Istituto Liturgico Anselmiano, Rome
1969) 6-25, lists three; Fenwick, A nap horas 61-62, lists five; West, B a u m s ta r k ’s C o m -
p a ra tive L itu rgy 283ff, gives two observable "patterns” of liturgical development —
Laws 1-2 in my list below (the second of which B. himself, CL 59, calls a "law”) —- and
ANTON BAUMSTARKES COMPARATIVE LITURGY REVISITED 197
The problem derives, at least in part, from the fact that Baumstark
himself seems to have thought in terms of two separate sets of laws.
The first category comprises "those capable of throwing light on the
history of the great units in Liturgy" (CL 52), by which he seems to
mean liturgical rites or traditions in their entirety (the Roman rite, the
Byzantine rite...). In this first category he lists "the two laws which
determine liturgical evolution ... the Law of Organic Development" and
"the second law of liturgical evolution, viz. that primitive conditions
are maintained with greater tenacity in the more sacred seasons of the
Liturgical Year" (CL 23, 27). The second category of laws are those
that "illuminate the very diverse elements of which these units are
compacted. These elements are of two sorts: texts and liturgical ac-
tions” (CL 52). But despite the seemingly all-inclusive scope of that
last statement, this second category, in Baumstark’s exposition, is
chiefly concerned with "prose euchological texts ... to determine the
laws which govern their evolution..." (CL 59).
To obviate any confusion, I shall impose my own order on the
methodological reflections scattered throughout Baumstark’s writ-
ings. This is important because too often one gets the impression that
some of Baumstark’s critics have read only his Liturgie comparée,
more easily accessible in French and English, without digging into his
untranslated German works — though one must admit that Baum-
stark’s overly convoluted and opaque pre-modem German style can
make for some very heavy reading.13 Baumstark’s principles, both
those that were original to him and those first developed by his im-
mediate disciples Engberding and Hamm, cover three distinct areas
of liturgical history: [1] general principles concerning the evolution of
liturgy and liturgical "rites” in the sense of liturgical families or tradi-
tions (the Roman rite, the Byzantine rite...); and [2] two categories of
particular laws regarding the evolution of (a) liturgical texts and/or (b)
the evolution of liturgical structures14 and actions and their subse-
quent symbolization. Grouped in these categories and reordered
accordingly, the “laws" of Baumstark and his students can be refor-
mulated as follows:
six laws (ibid. 291), two of which (Laws 3-4 in my list) West rightly attributes to Hamm
and one to Engberding (my Law 5).
13 West, Baumstark's Comparative Liturgy 179-80, cites some of the at times exas-
perated critiques to which B's writing style was subjected.
14 I use “structure” in the conventional sense, without necessarily implying all the
nuances Baumstark gave to the concept of liturgical structures: see West, The Com-
parative Liturgy o f Anton Baumstark 33ff.
198 ROBERT F. TAFT, S. J.
1. General Principles
1. The evolution of liturgical rites moves from diversity to uniformity,
not vice-versa. By this, Baumstark means that as time goes on, diverse
local usages in a single area of liturgical diffusion solidify into a rela-
tively homogeneous liturgical family or “rite," so that we have fewer
diverse liturgical usages now than in the past. But this overall evolu-
tion is countered by a retrograde movement. For as individual rites
evolve toward ever greater internal unity, they also tend to diversify
from one another by taking on local coloration through continued
adaptation to the concrete circumstances of time and place (CL 15-
19).15
2. “Liturgical development proceeds from simplicity to increasing en-
richment” (CL 59), a law demonstrated by Engberding.16 Here too, as
Engberding showed, the growth to excessive complexity can later pro-
voke retrograde developments of abbreviation (cf. CL 15, 19-23, 59).
3. The development o f the liturgy is but a series o f individual devel-
opments. The history of the liturgy consists not in one progressive
unilinear growth of entire rituals as homogeneous single units, but via
distinct developments of their individual components. Baumstark
enuntiated this important principle — "Die Entwicklung der Liturgie
nur aus Sonderentwicklungen besteht" — in an earlier monograph,17
but neglected it in Comparative Liturgy. From this “law” follows the
important corollary “that all human knowledge remains piecework
(Daß alles Menschenwissen Stückwerk bleibt),” and our knowledge of
the history of a liturgical ritual advances not in broad sweeps, but
only via the patient examination of its component parts.18
15 And earlier, Baumstark, Werden 29-36

16 In Engberding, Basileiosliturgie 29, cf. also lxxix-vii; and id., "Neues Licht über
die Geschichte des Textes der ägyptischen Markusliturgie," OC 40 (1956) 40-68, here
46 note 32,
17 I have lost the exact reference to this adage, but it is clearly from Baumstark,
and I recall it in its exact German formulation.
18 Baumstark, Werden 131-36 (the citation is from p. 131). In this context the re-
marks of Helmut Leeb, Die Gesänge im Gemeindegottesdienst von Jerusalem (vom 5. bis
8. Jahrhundert) (Wiener Beiträge zur Theologie 28, Vienna 1970) 21, are apposite:
"Von der liturgiegeschichtlichen Forschung unserer Zeit wird verlangt, daß sie eindeu-
tig gesicherte Ergebnisse vorlegen kann. Sichere Tatsachen sollen in den Ergebnissen
von den Hypothesen streng geschieden werden; Bei den verfeinerten Forschungs-
methoden der heutigen Liturgiewissenschaft, mit Berücksichtigung von Spezial- und
Detailfragen, wird eine weitschweifende Arbeit eines einzelnen über ein großes Gebiet
immer problematischer und unmöglicher. Zu wenig gesicherte Behauptungen müssen
aufgestellt und zu viele Hypothesen gewagt werden, weil eben ein einzelner die Auf-
ANTON BAUMSTARK S COMPARATIVE LITURGY REVISITED 199
2. Particular Laws
а. Texts:
4. “The older a text is, the less it is influenced by the Bible” (CL 59),
i.e., pace the 16th-century Reformers, a literal dependence on Scrip-
ture generally signals more recent liturgical texts. This principle, too,
is derived from the work of Hamm19 and Engberding.20 The classic
instance is the Institution Narrative, which earlier anaphoras never
cite verbatim from one of its New Testament redactions, as Hamm
has shown.21
5. “The more recent a text is the more symmetrical it is” (CL 59).
Stylistic smoothness usually betrays a later composition or an earlier
one subjected to later polishing, a principle derived from Hamm’s
study of the Institution Narrative.22 This tendency to symmetry is
anterior to the later influence of the biblical text (Law 4), for in some
cases an earlier symmetry, itself a later development according to Law
5, is destroyed in a still later period by the growing influence of
biblical language on liturgical texts: "for there are many cases where
symmetry which is itself clearly secondary has been destroyed in turn
by the ever increasing influence of Biblical language" (CL 59).
б. “The later it is, the more liturgical prose becomes charged with doc-
trinal elements”(CL 60-61), a “law” first formulated and demonstrated
by Engberding,23 as Baumstark himself asserts (CL 60).
7. “Later liturgical prose develops in the direction of an increasingly
oratorical form and becomes more and more governed by rhetoric” (CL
61-70). This stylistic "law" is verified at least with respect to Greek
texts: the CHR anaphora is a classic paradigm of the rules of classical
rhetoric, as Daniel Sheerin has shown.24
Spaltung der Wissenschaften nicht mehr überschauen kann. Der Universalliturgiker,

wie zum Beispiel Anton Baumstark, ... wird heute immer seltener."
19 Hamm, Einsetzungsberichte 33.
20 Engberding, Basileiosliturgie xxiv, Ixxii, lxxv-vi, 33-34, 39-40, 42-50, 53, 56.
21 Hamm, Einsetzungsbenchte.
22 Ibid.
23 Engberding, Basileiosliturgie xxiii-v, Ixxii-vü, 25-57 passim, esp. 33-34, 39-40, 42,
45, 48-50, 53, 56.
24 See below at note 40.
b. Structures, Actions, and their Symbolization:

8. In the twofold antithetical process o f enrichment and pruning
enuntiated in Law 2, newer elements may coexist for a time with older
ones before ultimately supplanting them. When this happens, it is usu-
ally the most primitive and traditional elements that give way before the
assault of the new. Baumstark formulated this as his first general "law
of organic development” (CL 23-27) "of the great units in Liturgy” (CL
52), but in fact it has to do more with single liturgical units within
individual ritual ordos like baptism, eucharist, etc.
9. The law o f the preservation of older usages in the more solemn li-
turgical seasons (CL 27-30), first formulated by Adrian Fortescue as
early as 1912,25 and given substance by Baumstark in an article so
entitled,26 affirms that more solemn liturgical seasons tend to main-
tain older liturgical usages which may have given way at other times
under the assault of the new described above in Law 8.
10. The law of the later symbolization o f originally utilitarian liturgi-
cal actions. Baumstark called this "a new general law,” which he for-
mulated as follows: "Certain actions which are purely utilitarian by
nature may receive a symbolic meaning either from their function in
the Liturgy as such or from factors in the liturgical texts which ac-
company them” (CL 130).
III. Evaluating Baumstark's “Laws"
In evaluating the principles of Baumstark and his followers, we

must have the fairness and courtesy to observe the first hermeneutical
principle we insist upon when exegeting any text: we must read it, in
25 A. Fortescue, The Mass: A Study o f the Roman Liturgy (New York 1912; London/
NY/Toronto 1930) 270, referring to "... the constant tendency of the greatest days to
keep older arrangements.” Cf. West, The Comparative Liturgy o f Anton Baumstark 27.
26 "Das Gesetz der Erhaltung des Alten in liturgisch hochwertiger Zeit," Jahrbuch
für Liturgiewissenschaft 7 (1927) 1-23. In CL 27 Baumstark expresses it thus: "primitive
conditions are maintained with greater tenacity in the more sacred seasons of the
Liturgical Year.” On this theme, see also V. Fiala, "Das liturgische Gesetz der Juxtapo-
sition des neuen zum alten und seine Bedeutung für di Liturgiereform,” ALW 13
(1971) 26-35; M. Klöckener, "Die Auswirkungen des 'Baumstarksche Gesetzes' auf die
Liturgiereform des II. Vaticanum dargestellt anhand des Triduum Paschale," in E. von
Severus (ed.), Ecclesia lacensis. Beiträge aus Anlaß der Wiederbesiedlung der Abtei Maria
Laach durch Benediktiner aus Bauron vor 100 Jahren am 25. November 1892 und der
Gründung des Klosters durch Pfalzgraf Heinrich II. von Laach vor 900 Jahren 1093
(Beiträge zur Geschichte des alten Mönchtums und des Benediktinerordens, Supple-
mentband 6, Münster 1991) 371-402,
context. Permit me to comment on the above stated “laws" from that

perspective.
Law 1
Regarding the evolution of liturgical families or "rites,” Baumstark
formulated "Law 1" in direct response to the theory of the “diversifica-
tion of rites" once propagated by Ferdinand Probst (1816-1899) of
Tübingen.27 According to Probst, the extant rites of East and West
evolved from a single primitive apostolic liturgical tradition,28 what
Baumstark calls "die Einheit einer textlich fixierten apostolischen
Drliturgie"29 In his attempt to counteract this naive view, Baumstark
oversimplifies the formation of liturgical rites or families: Lanne calls
Law 1 “a bit hasty (un po’ rapida)" especially for the pre-Nicene pe-
riod.30 But the basic insight as Baumstark intended it remains valid:
our present rites or liturgical families are the result of a process of
synthesis, unification, and survival of the fittest. Today there is one
Egyptian or Coptic rite where there were once throughout Egypt a
multiplicity of variant local usages. And the Byzantine rite, which
spread to Asia Minor with the expansion of the patriarchate of Con-
stantinople, by the 10/11th century had replaced or absorbed what
was once a plethora of local usages in that area too.31 That, basically,
is what Baumstark meant by his First Law, though the process was
more complex than his formulation would seem to allow.
Law 2
Law 2, the rule of sobriety versus richness in the evolution of li-
turgical texts. Baumstark also formulated in response to a particular
problem, this time in the history of the anaphora. In Baumstark’s day
the current myth, propagated in a text of Ps.-Proclus of Constantino-
27 That Baumstark had Probst in mind from the start is clear from Baumstark,
Werden 29ff, though he does not refer to Probst's work directly when discussing the
issue later, in CL 15ff.
28 Esp. F. Probst, Liturgie der ersten drei christlichen Jahrhunderte (Tübingen 1870);
id., Sakramente und Sakramentalien in den drei ersten christlichen Jarkrhunderten (Tü-
bingen 1872); id., Liturgie des vierten Jahrhunderts und deren Reform (Münster 1893).
29 Baumstark, Werden 33.
30 Lanne, Liturgia comparata (note 12 above) 6.
31 On this development see Taft, The Byzantine Rite 56-57 and the further refer-
ences there on p. 64 note 31.
ple, Tractatus de traditione Divinae Missae,32 held that St. Basil the
Great had abbreviated the presumably age-old apostolic Liturgy of St.
James to form BAS, and that St. John Chrysostom, in turn, had ab-
breviated BAS to produce CHR.33 Still more acute for Baumstark was
the acrimonious debate in Germany about CHR and its relation to the
so-called Anaphora of Nestorius. Originally, Baumstark had argued
that the Nestorius Anaphora was prior, and CHR its abbreviation.
Baumstark formulated Law 2 after Engberding had demonstrated
with respect to BAS that the opposite was true.34 All this is of course
old-hat to us, but it was by no means so in Baumstark's day, when
these disputes were still raging.
Of course when applying such Redaktions- and/or Formgeschichte
to liturgical texts one must be very careful to keep straight exactly
what it is one is talking about. In recent seminal work on Jewish
liturgy, Joseph Heinemann (1915-1977) and his followers have argued
that the Jewish-origins argument has been pushed too far, especially
by those seeking the Urform of the anaphora.35 But one must avoid
exaggerating in the other direction. Heinemann’s legitimate strictures
against seeking by text- comparative methods the Urtext of an oral
tradition are in no way applicable to a textual tradition with an exist-
ing set of clearly related documents, like the CHR anaphora and the
Syriac Anaphora of the Apostles. In the latter case the methods of
32 PG 65:849B-852B.
33 The definitive study is F. J. Leroy, “Proclus, 'de traditione Missae': un faux de C.
Palaeocappa,” OCP 28 (1962) 288-299.
34 On this issue and the scholarly literature relative to it, both old and new, see G.
Wagner, Der Ursprung der Chrysostomusliturgie (LQF 59, Münster 1973) 63-72; and
earlier, J.-M. Hanssens, Institutiones Uturgicae de ritibus orientalibus II-III (Rome 1930,
1932) III, §1544. For the debate between Baumstark and his opponents see, in
chronological order: A. Baumstark, Liturgia romana e liturgia dell'Esarcato (Rome
1904) 61; id., "Die Chrysostomos liturgie und die syrische Liturgie des Nestorios,"
XPYCOCTOMIKA, Studi e ricerche intorno a S. Giovanni Crisostomo, a cura del comita-
to per il XV0 centenario della sua morte, 407-1907 (Rome 1908) 771-857; id.. Die kon-
stantinopolitanische Meßliturgie vor dem IX. Jahrhundert. Übersichtliche Zusammenstel-
lung des wichtigsten Quellenmaterials (Kleine Texte 35, Bonn 1909); id., "Zur Urge-
schichte der Chrysostomosliturgie,” ThG 5 (1913) 299-313. B's theory was fiercly
attacked by Th, Schermann in his Introduction to R. Storf, Die griechischen Liturgien
(Bibliothek der Kirchenväter 5, Kempten-München 1912) 199-200; id., “Zur Herkunft
der Anaphora der Chrysostomusliturgie,” ThG 5 (1913) 392-393; B. replied in "Zur
Herkunft der Anaphora der Chrysostomusliturgie,” ThG 5 (1913) 394-395; id., Ge-
schichte der syrischen Literatur mit Ausschluß der christlich-palästinensischen Texte
(Bonn 1922) 119-20, B. finally changed his mind, under the influence of Engberding,
in Comparative Liturgy 55; cf. the review by Lietzmann in OC 28 (1931) 114.
35 See note 8 above.
comparative textual analysis is fully justified and, indeed, indispen-

sable.
Law 3
Research has verified time and again what Law 3 asserts: neither
texts nor structures evolve — at least not always nor necessarily —
homogeneously as integral units. Larger textual unities like the
anaphora can comprise several subunits — Praise, Sanctus, Narration
of the Economy of Salvation, Institution Narrative, Command to
Repeat, Anamnesis, Oblation, Epiclesis, Intercessions, Diptychs —
each of which can have its own Form- and Redaktionsgeschichte
independent of the rest.36
36 See, for instance, the following studies on the development of individual anaph-
ora! text-units, to mention only a few in alphabetical order by author: Engberding,
Basileiosliturgie and his numerous other studies in OC; Hamm, Einsetzungsberichte; R.
Ledogar, Acknowledgement. Praise-Verbs in the Early Greek Anaphora (Rome 1968);
Taft, "Authenticity”; id., A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, vol IV: The
Diptychs (OCA 238, Rome 1991); id., "The Interpolation of the Sanctus into the Anaph-
ora: When and Where? A Review of the Dossier” I: OCP 57 (1991) 281-308, II: OCP 58
(1992) 82-121 = id.. Liturgy in Byzantium chapter IX; id., "Reconstituting the Oblation
of the Chrysostom Anaphora: An Exercise in Comparative Liturgy," OCP 59 (1993)
387-402; id., “The Oblation and Hymn of the Chrysostom Anaphora. Its Text and
Antecedents," in: Miscellanea di studi in onore di P. Marco Fetta per il LXX compleanno,
vol. IV = Bolletino della Badia Greca di Grottaferrata n.s. 46 (1992) [published 1994]
319-345; id., "Some Structural Problems in the Syriac Anaphora of the Apostles I," in A
Festschrift for Dr. Sebastian P. Brock. ARAM Periodical 5:1-2 (1993 published 1996)
505-520; id., “Anaphora"; G. Winkler, "Die Interzessionen der Chiysostomusanaphora
in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung,” I: OCP 36 (1970) 301-336, IT. OCP 37 (1971)
333-383; eadem, "Einige Randbemerkungen zu den Interzessionen in Antiochien und
Konstantinopel im 4. Jahrhundert,” OKS 20 (1971) 55-61; eadem, "Nochmals zu den
Anfängen der Epiklese und des Sanctus im eucharistischen Hochgebet," ThQ 174
(1994) 214-231; eadem, "Weitere Beobachtungen zur frühen Epiklese (den Doxologien
und dem Sanctus). Über die Bedeutung der Apokryphen für die Erforschung der Ent-
wicklung der Riten,” OC 80 (1996) 177-200; eadem, “Observations in Connection with
the Early Form of the Epiklesis,” in: Le Sacrement de l'Initiation. Origines et Prospective
(= Patrimoine Syriaque. Actes du Colloque 3, Amelias 1996) 66-80; eadem, "Ein Bei-
spiel liturgievergleichender Untersuchung: Philologische und strukturelle Anmerkun-
gen zur Erforschung der Anamnese in den westlichen und östlichen Riten," ThQ 177
(1997) 293-305; eadem, "Armenian Anaphoras and Creeds: A Brief Overview of Work
in Progress,” in: R. F. Taft (ed.). The Armenian Christian Tradition. Scholarly Sympo-
sium in Honor of the Visit to the Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome, of his Holiness
Karekin I, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, Dec. 12, 1996 (OCA
254, Rome 1997) 41-55; and above all her latest exemplary study, a classical model of
the methods of comparative textual analysis, "Anaphoren" I-II. See also her strictures
concerning misuse of the method in her important review of Fenwick, Anaphoras, in
OC 78 (1994) 269-277.
204 ROBERT F. TAFT, S X
The same is true of individual structural units: they can have a life
of their own, often independent of what is developing (or not develop-
ing) in the rest of the ritual. Here too, we must nuance Baumstark,
however. His comparative method, he says, begins by
studying the structure of the liturgical units, all of some considerable ex-
tent, and known severally as ÔKohouïHa in Greek, as tesmestä in Syriac, and
as ordo in Latin. These structures, both in their fully developed forms and
at every given stage in their evolution, are very often the result of a highly
complex process. To show the tendencies which govern their growth, to
separate the primitive strata from more recent ones, to reconstitute them
in their often completely unrecognizable primitive forms, is the task of the
historian of Comparative Liturgy (CL 31).
So by “liturgical unit" Baumstark seems to mean here a complete

ritual — the ritual of baptism, the marriage ritual... That at least is the
clear meaning of the technical terms he uses: ÙKOhou&ia, tesmestä,
ordo.
More recent research has shown, however, that it is the individual
components of such rituals to which Law 3 is best applied.37 As time
goes on and liturgies expand, new elements overburden the liturgical
ordo (Law 8), provoking the breakdown or collapse of older liturgical
units, which either disappear entirely or are reduced to their débris. A
structural analysis of these independent liturgical units (Law 3), on
the basis of an examination of earlier liturgies in the historical
sources, can assist in identifying and reconstituting the pristine forms
to which the extant débris once belonged. A classic instance is the
Byzantine communion psalmody, as I have already shown.38
Laws 4-7
Laws 4-7 concerning the evolution of texts, along with Law 2,
which also concerns textual development, are verified already by the
37 See e.g., Taft, Beyond East and West chapters 10-11; Winkler, Initiationsrituale;
eadem, "The Original Meaning of the Prebaptismal Anointing and its Implications: A
Study of the Armenian, Syriac, and Greek Terminology,” Worship 52 (1978) 24-45.
38 Taft, Precommunion chapter VI; id., Beyond East and West 226-31; id., "Recon-
structing the History of the Byzantine Communion Ritual: Principles, Methods,
Results," Ecclesia orans 11 (1994) 355-357; id., “The Origins and Development of the
Byzantine Communion Psalmody" I, Studi sull'Oriente cristiano 1 (1997) 108-134; II, 2
(1998) 53-87; id., "The Pontifical Liturgy” II, 119-22 = id.. Liturgy in Byzantium II, 119-
22 .
ANTON BAUMSTARK^ COMPARATIVE LITURGY REVISITED 205
end of the 4th century. CHR, for instance, a clear development from
the greater simplicity of its Urtext, the so-called Anaphora of the
Apostles,39 is not only a highly refined Greek anaphoral composition
in strict accord with the laws of classical rhetoric, as Daniel Sheerin
has shown in his superb rhetorical analysis of the text.40 It is also
heavily freighted with doctrinal additions that are the fruit of anti-
Arianism/Eunomianism, as I have shown.41 Engberding and Winkler
have shown similar processes at work in the evolution of BAS and
other oriental anaphoras.42
Law 6 is particularly valuable for dating texts ante quem non, since
certain doctrinal emphases did not enter the anaphora until they had
become an issue in the life of the Church.43 As for Laws 4-5 and 7
concerning symmetry, style, and scriptural literalism, they are espe-
cially useful in dating shifting redactions of the same basic text. CHR
mss, for instance, often show in parallel passages an exchange of
epithets that is clearly attributable to the sort of move toward symme-
try Law 5 describes. The prayer following the Our Father in CHR, a
clone of the CHR epiclesis, is a clear example of this, as I show in my
book on the precommunion of CHR,44 But these principles simply
formulate what anyone who has ever studied the evolution of liturgi-
cal texts across the ms tradition will have already observed.
39 Taft, "Authenticity" = id., Liturgy in Byzantium and Beyond chapter III; Taft,
"Anaphora," esp. 224-26.
40 D. J. Sheerin, "The Anaphora of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom: Stylistic
Notes," in D. Jasper & R. C. D. Jasper (eds.). Language and the Worship of the Church
(New York 1990) 44-81; cf. R. F. Taft, "The Byzantine Anaphora of St. John Chrysos-
tom," to appear in Prex eucharistica III: Studia (Spicilegium Friburgense, Fribourg);
id., "Anaphora," 224-26.
41 Taft, "Authenticity," 27-51 = id., Liturgy in Byzantium chapter III, 27-51; id.,
"Anaphora," 210-17.
42 Engberding, Basileiosliturgie; Winkler, "Anaphoren" I-II. Symmetry is noted in
Armenian texts from the 6th c. on, according to G. Winkler.
43 E.g., the "apophatic credo" of CHR: Taft, "Authenticity," 27-38 = id.. Liturgy in
Byzantium chapter III, 27-38; id., "Anaphora," 213-17; the trinitarian confession of
CHR: E. Lanne, "Gli incìsi trinitari nell'anafora di San Giovanni Crisostomo e nelle
anafore imparentate," in E. Carr, S. Parenti, A.-A. Thiermeyer, Elena Velkovska (eds.),
EvAóyrìfia. Studies in Honor of Robert Taft, S J (Studia Anselmiana 110 = Analecta
Liturgica 17, Rome 1993) 269-283.
44 Taft, Precommunion 104-5; id., "The Fruits of Communion in the Anaphora of
St, John Chrysostom,” in: I. Scicolone (ed.). Psallendum. Miscellanea di studi in onore
del Prof Lordi Pinell i Pons, O.S.B. (Analecta Liturgica 15 = Studia Anselmiana 105,
Rome 1992) 275-302.
Law 8
Highly useful to the historian are also Baumstark’s Laws 8-10 con-
ceming structures. Law 8 states that when the continual addition of
new elements to a liturgical service eventually overloads the structure
so that something has to give, it is almost always the older, more
traditional elements, hitherto coexisting with the innovations, that are
suppressed in favor of the latter.45 This law, too, is verified in numer-
ous examples. In the Byzantine Liturgy of the Word, for instance, as
the opening rites of the eucharistie liturgy expand, the service thus
filled out appears overburdened, and must be cut back. The Great
Synapte or opening litany was the original Litany of the Faithful im-
mediately preceding the transfer of gifts or Great Entrance. Eventu-
ally it came to be chanted also at the beginning of the service — at
that time the Trisagion — and still later, when the Enarxis was pre-
fixed to that earlier beginning, it was added before this new beginning
too. Then, step by step, it was suppressed first in its original place
before the Great Entrance, then at the Trisagion, to be retained only
in its most recent and least traditional epiphany, where we still find it
today.46 In the same service, one of the first liturgical elements to be
suppressed is the first Scripture reading — the prophecy or Old Tes-
tament lection — despite the fact that Scripture reading is what the
Liturgy of the Word is presumably all about!47 The Odes of the Canon
of Byzantine Orthros or Matins is another classic instance: the prolif-
eration of later ecclesiastical poetry accompanying the original Bibli-
cal Canticles leads to the complete suppression of the original Canti-
cles except in Lent, while the later poetry is preserved.48
Law 9
As for Law 9 concerning the tendency of more solemn liturgical
seasons like Lent to preserve older usages that have disappeared
elsewhere, it concerns chiefly liturgical structures and usages.49 We
just saw it exemplified in the Canon of Byzantine Orthros during
Lent, and my own research and that of others has verified in so many
45 See Taft, B eyond E a s t an d W est 204-5.

46 Mateos, C élébration 29-31; Taft, B eyon d E a s t a n d W est 209-10.
47 Mateos, Célébration 130-33; Taft, B eyond E a st a n d W est 217.
48 R. F. Taft, The L iturgy o f the H ou rs in E a s t a n d West. The O rigins o f the D ivin e Of-
fic e a n d its M eaning fo r Today (Collegeville 19932) 277-83.
49 I resume in this section some examples from Taft, "Comparative Liturgy."
other ways the legitimacy of this principle that I consider it an unas-

sailable interpretative tool, pace recent criticisms, which I have dealt
with elsewhere.50 The phenomena one can adduce to illustrate Baum-
stark's “law" are legion: the “Prophecy" or Old Testament lesson re-
tained in the Byzantine eucharist on Holy Thursday, Holy Saturday,
and festive vigils long after it had disappeared elsewhere;51 the reten-
tion on major feasts like Christmas and Theophany of the pristine
structure of the Byzantine Introit antiphon long after it had broken
down on ordinary days under pressure from the multiplication of
troparia;52 keeping BAS as the Sunday eucharist throughout Lent,
despite the fact that CHR has replaced it on all other Sundays of the
year;53 etc.
Furthermore, my own work on the history of the Byzantine tradi-
tion has extended this principle beyond liturgical seasons to certain
more solemn and/or less frequently celebrated liturgical sendees, like
the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts or the pontifical eucharist. The
Liturgy of the Presanctified has preserved the original incensation
prior to the transfer of gifts, and the Great Entrance chant uninter-
rupted by commemorations.54 As for the pontifical rite, it has kept so
many usages once found in the ordinary eucharist that it is a veritable
museum piece. Among ancient usages no longer extant elsewhere, the
pontifical eucharist retains at the Introit the bishop's entrance during
the Third Antiphon, the original incensation at the bishop's entrance
into the sanctuary, and elements of the old antiphonal psalmody at
50 See Martin Stringer, "Liturgy and Anthropology: The History of a Relationship,”

Worship 63 (1989) 503-521, esp. 505ff; Peter Knowles, OP, "A Renaissance in the Study
of Byzantine Liturgy,” Worship 68 (1994) 232-241; and my response to them in Taft,
"Comparative Liturgy.”
51 Mateos, Célébration 130-33; id.. Le Typicon de la Grande Église. Ms. Sainte-Croix
n° 40, X e siècle. Introductions, texte critique, traduction et notes, 2 vols. (OCA 165-166,
Rome 1962-1963) I, 152, 178; II, 74, 86.
52 Mateos, Célébration 49-56; cf. also the festive antiphons in any standard edition
of the Byzantine "Apostle” lectionary.
53 Taft, The Byzantine Rite 55. S. Parenti, “La «vittoria» nella Chiesa di Costantino-
poli della Liturgia di Crisostomo sulla Liturgia di Basilio,” to appear in Prex eucharisti-
ca III; Studia (Spicilegium Friburgense, Fribourg), suggests this takeover by CHR
should be attributed to the move toward daily eucharist in Byzantine monasticism
under Studile influence, part of the liturgical reform following the definitive victory
over Iconoclasm in 843, On that reform see also Taft, The Byzantine Rite 52ff; and,
most recently, Th. Pott, La réforme liturgique byzantine. Étude du phénomène de
I evolution non-spontanée de la liturgie byzantine (BELS 104, Rome 2000) 99-129.
54 See Taft, Great Entrance 78ff, 158-59.
208 ROBERT F. TAFT, S J ,
the Trisagion;55 in the preanaphoral rites it has preserved the Lavabo

at the Great Entrance56 and the Orate fratres dialogue between the
présider and the concelebrating presbyters;57 in the anaphora it main-
tains remnants of the diaconal diptychs;58 at communion, the clergy
still receive from the hand of the présider instead of serving them-
selves;59 all of which — every single one of them — are usages that
once pertained to the ordinary presbyteral rite.60 They disappeared
there long ago, but remain in the pontifical rite because of the phe-
nomenon Law 9 describes.
The same, mutatis mutandis, is verified at the celebration of the
liturgy when the emperor was in solemn public attendance. The em-
peror continued to exchange the kiss of peace long after it had
dropped out of use among the laity,61 and the imperial communion
rite retained older features like receiving both species separately and
in the hand, rather in the later fashion of lay-communion, via intinc-
tion, with the use of the communion spoon,62 so much so that accord-
ing to the Syriac chronicles reporting an incident in Edessa in 733>
this once general manner of communicating was now considered a
sign of imperial rank,63
55 Taft, "Pontifical liturgy" I, 284-90, II, 106-15 = id,. Liturgy in Byzantium II, 284-
90,111, 106-15.
56 Taft, Great Entrance 165-70, 175-77; id., "Marcian," 161, 164, 166-68.
57 Taft, Great Entrance 291-306; id., "Pontifical Liturgy" I, 296-97; II, 117 = id.. Lit-
urgy in Byzantium II, 296-97, III, 117.
58 Taft, Diptychs 146 and passim throughout.
59 Taft, Beyond East and West ch. 7; id., "Marcian," 161, 164-66,
60 In addition to the studies cited in notes 55-59, I review some disputed issues of
the pontifical rite in R. F. Taft, "Quaestiones disputatae. The Skeuophylakion of Hagia
Sophia and the Entrances of the Liturgy Revisited," Part I, OC 81 (1997) 1-35; Part II,
OC82 (1998) 53-87.
61 Taft, Great Entrance 396; G. Majeska, "The Emperor in His Church: Imperial
Ritual in the Church of St. Sophia," in H. Maguire (ed.), Byzantine Court Culture from
829 to 1204 (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection/
Harvard University Press 1997) 1-11, here 7-8.
62 See R. F. Taft, "Byzantine Communion Spoons: A Review of the Evidence," DOP
50 (1996) 209-238, here 231; and much more fully in id., "The Byzantine Imperial
Communion Ritual,” to appear Pamela Armstrong (ed.), Ritual and Art: Essays for
Christopher Walter (London: The Pindar Press); id., “The Emperor's Communion,"
EXCURSUS to chapter I of id., A History of the Liturgy o f St. John Chrysostom, vol. VI::
The Communion, Thanlcsgiving, and Dismissal (OCA, Rome, in preparation); also
Majeska, "The Emperor" (previous note), 4, 8.
63 The incident concerned pretender Tiberius, actually an imposter called Beser
(or Besher) attempting to pass himself off as son of the emperor. Chronique de Michel
le syrien, patriarche jacobite d’Antioche (1166-1199), trans. J.-B. Chabot, vol. 2 (Paris
ANTON BAUMSTARK S.COMPARATIVE LITURGY REVISITED 209
Law 10
Finally, Law 10 has been verified so often in liturgical history as to
render it almost banal, even if some of Baumstark's examples in Com-
parative Liturgy need to be corrected or nuanced as a result of more
recent research.64 Baumstark shows, rightly, how simple liturgical
actions give rise, at a later stage, to the creation of liturgical prayers
to "explain" them (CL 136): offertory rites like the Byzantine Prothesis
are a classic instance.
He might have added that rites once of practical import can ac-
quire symbolic meaning to justify their continued existence in re-
duced form once they have lost their practical utility. The Byzantine
Minor and Major Introits or "Little Entrance” and “Great Entrance,”
once real entrance processions into the church from outside, are
paradigmatic of this.65
Such redundant liturgical units that have collapsed and/or no
longer serve their original purpose, find a new rationale for their con-
tinued existence via a process of symbolization. The Byzantine Little
Entrance is the perfect paradigm. Once the original introit procession
into church at the beginning of the liturgy, it has been reduced to a
Gospel procession within the nave, said to symbolize Christ coming to
us in His Word.66 These later superimposed symbolic meanings, once
1901) 504: "Lorsqu'il entra à Edesse, il eut l'audace de pénétrer dans le sanctuaire et
de prendre la communion de ses mains sur la table de vie, selon le coutume de l'empe-
reur des Romains"; J.-B. Chabot (ed.), Anonymi auctoris chronicon ad annum Christi
J234 pertinens, §165: text (CSCO 81 = Scr. Syri 36, series 3a, tome 14, Paris 1920) 311-
12; version (CSCO 109 = Scr. Syri 56, series 3a, tome 14, Paris 1937) 242-43: "The im-
poster dared to enter the sanctuary and received the oblation from the altar according
to the custom of the emperor of the Romans.” Both sources are cited in G. Dagron,
Empereur et prêtre. Étude sur le «césaropapisme» byzantin (Bibliothèque des histoires,
Paris 1996) 126. For the latter reference I am indebted to Prof. Boris Uspenskij. The
pretender Beser was well known to the chronicles: see Theophanes (tea. 818), Chrono-
graphia, ed. de Boor (Leipzig 1883-1885) II, 402, 405, 414, 438 = The Chronicle o f Theo-
phanes Confessor, Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284-813. Translated with an
Introduction and Commentary by Cyril Mango and Roger Scott, with the assistance of
Geoffrey Greatrex (Oxford 1997) 555-56, 559, 575, 605-6.
64 For instance, his view that the Prothesis evolved from the shift to before the lit-
urgy of a preparation of the gifts once found just before the anaphora (CL 131), on
which see Taft, Great Entrance, chapters I and VII.
65 Taft, The Byzantine Rite 30-35, 72-73.
66 On this development see Mateos, Célébration chapter III; Taft, The Byzantine Rite
32-35, 72-73; id., Beyond East and West 212ff; id., "Liturgy and Eucharist. I. East,” ch.
18 in Jill Raitt (ed.), Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation = voi, 17
of World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest (New York 1987)
415-426, here 416ff.
210 ROBERT F. TAFT, S .J.
firmly in place, may then ricochet, exerting a secondary, retroinflu-

ence on liturgical development, leading ultimately to the creation or
interpolation of additional liturgical formulas that explain and extend
the symbolism further.67 The interpretation of the Byzantine Great
Entrance or transfer of gifts and their deposition on the altar before
the anaphora as the funeral cortège and burial of Christ furnishes an
obvious example of this dialectic.68 Hence I would extend Baumstark's
principle with a new formulation, the first "new law" in the next
section.
IV. Adding to Baumstark’s Laws
Anyone engaged in this craft could enhance and nuance and add to
Baumstark's observations on how liturgies tend to behave, as did
Baumstark's students Hamm and Engberding, and as I have done
above apropos of Law 9. Here are a few additions from my own obser-
vations of these behavioral patterns. These additional "laws" of mine,
which, for convenience of reference, I number continuously with the
ten “laws” of Baumstark listed above, cannot be divided conveniently
into "laws” concerning texts and those concerning structures, since
my observations show that many textual “laws” can be applied also to
liturgical structures.
11. The law of the collapse and symbolization o f the redundant. This
is no more than a refinement and application of Baumstark's Law 10.
The innate conservatism of ritual leads to the continued survival of
liturgical units long after they have ceased to fulfill the purpose for
which they were originally meant. These units tend not to be sup-
pressed but simply collapse, preserving only the débris of their pris-
tine shape. The Byzantine Trisagion, originally a processional anti-
phon before the liturgy in which the psalmody has disappeared leav-
ing only the beginning and end of the original unit,69 or the Byzantine
koinonikon, also originally psalmody to cover the distribution of
67 See Taft, The Byzantine Rite 74-75.

68 On this symbolism, see R. F. Taft, “The Liturgy of the Great Church: An Initial
Synthesis of Structure and Interpretation on the Eve of Iconoclasm,” DOP 34/35 (1980-
81) 45-75, here 53ff = id., Liturgy in Byzantium chapter I, 53ff; id., Great Entrance,
Index p. 467, under "Great Entrance, symbolism: cortège and burial of Christ."
69 Mateos, Célébration chapter IV, esp. pp. 112-18; Taft, "The Pontifical Liturgy" II,
111-14 = id., Liturgy in Byzantium II, 111-14; id.. Beyond East and West 215-16
communion of which only the respond remains,70 are obvious exam-

ples.
12. Doctrinal development often betrays an individual hand. The
case of St. Basils influence on BAS is generally accepted,71 and I have
shown the same for CHR and the saint whose name it bears.72
13. The “Argumentum ex silentio” caveat is inoperative with respect
to the presence or absence o f entire prayers in a liturgical formulary.
Though it is an old saw that the argument from silence is dicey, my
experience in dealing with Byzantine liturgical texts, at least, shows
that this caveat cannot be applied to euchological texts in their en-
tirety. By that I mean euchological units as a whole (the Prothesis
Prayer, the Prayer of Inclination, the Prayer of Elevation, etc.), not to
expressions or variant readings within these formulae. Byzantine
eucharistie formularies will omit prayers only in mss of the ancient
redaction of CHR where the prayer, one of the later additions com-
mon to the formularies of both CHR and BAS, has already been given
in BAS. Otherwise if the prayer had been part of the formulary at that
time, it would have been included in the text. The same is not true,
however, for diakonika, short formulas, or rubrics regulating ritual
actions.73
14. The law of “Angleichung” is verified beyond texts. Hamm’s “law”
concerning the homogenizing of texts via the exchange of epithets, a
process verified not only in the Institution Narrative but wherever one
has related texts,74 is also operative with respect to complete liturgical
formularies and to ritual actions. Engberding, for instance, has shown
the process of “Angleichung" between the CHR and BAS formular-
70 See the references in note 38 above.

71 B, Capelle, "Les liturgies 'basiliennes' et Saint Basile," in J. Dorasse, E. Lanne,
Un témoin archaïque de la liturgie copte de S. Basile (Bibliothèque du Musêon 47, Lou-
vain 1960) 45-74; M. J. Lubatchiwskyj, "Des heiligen Basilius liturgischer Kampf gegen
den Arianismus. Ein Beitrag zur Textgeschichte der Basiliusliturgie," Zeitschrift für
katholische Theologie 66 (1942) 20-38; A. Raes, "L'authenticité de la liturgie byzantine
de saint Basile," REB 16 (1958)158-161.
72 Taft, “Authenticity," esp. 27-51 = id.. Liturgy in Byzantium chapter III, esp. 27-51.
73 On this question see Taft, "Communion Ritual” (note 38 above) 370.
74 E.g., the CHR Epiclesis and prayer following the anaphora; see Taft, Precom-
munion 103-113; id,, The Fruits of Communion in the Anaphora of St, John
Chrysostom," in: I. Scicolone (ed.), Psallendum. Miscellanea di studi in onore del Prof.
Jordi Pinell i Pons, O.S.B. (Analecta Liturgica 15 = Studia Anselmiana 105, Rome 1992)
275-302.
ies.75 And I have shown the same to be true of the several incensations
of the Byzantine eucharistie liturgy. Each incensation originally had a
precise purpose indicated by the object to be incensed: the evangeliary
before the Gospel, the altar and gifts at their deposition before the
anaphora... But all the major incensations eventually expand to in-
clude eveiything that is incensed during any one of them76 — except
in PRES, which has preferred to follow a stronger "law" in this re-
gard.77
15. The “lectio difficilior praeferenda’ principle applies not just to
variant readings but to entire liturgical texts and units. The well-known
rule in the critical editing of texts that the lectio difficilior is to be
preferred, can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to euchological formulae
in their entirely. The basis for this rule is quite simple: were the lectio
difficilior not the original reading, no one would have thought to in-
terpolate it. The classic application of this principle to complete
euchological text-units can be seen in the Prayer of Inclination before
communion in CHR. This text is problematic because it is a prayer of
dismissal, not a prayer of preparation for communion.78 But that,
precisely, argues for considering it the original prayer at this point in
CHR. Had there once been another more suitable one at its place in
the precommunion, it is hard to imagine why anyone would have
replaced it with the present problematic text.
Altogether too often the historian of the liturgy might be tempted
to dismiss problematic structures and formulas that will not fit into
existing heuristic frameworks. I refrain from calling them "precon-
ceived frameworks," since they are not preconceived, but derive from
what the study of historical sources demonstrate to be a more or less
common tradition — e.g., the Sursum corda in the preanaphoral dia-
logue.79 To be startled by something else at the beginning of the
anaphora is not prejudice but “postjudice.” It is not unreasonable to
expect the expected. That does not mean, however, that the unusual
can simply be dismissed as an aberration without further ado. The
75 H. Engberding, “Die Angleichung der byzantinischen Chiysostomusliturgie an

die byzantinische Basiliusliturgie," OKS 13 (1964) 105-122,
76 Mateos, Célébration 137-39; Taft, Great E n tran ce chapter IV, esp. 154ff.
77 See above at note 54,
78 Taft, P recom m u nio n 163-97; id., "The Inclination Prayer before Communion in
the Byzantine Liturgy of St, John Chrysostom," Ecclesia o ran s 3 (1986) 29-60.
79 See R. F, Taft, "The Dialogue before the Anaphora in the Byzantine Eucharistic
Liturgy. II: The S u r s u m corda,” OCP 54 (1988) 47-77.
fact that we have not yet come up with an adequate explanation for
the location of the intercessions at the beginning of the Eucharist in-
stead of at the end of the Liturgy of the Word in Apostolic Constitu-
tions II, 57:5-21 is our problem, not that of the witness.80 The same is
true of the several witnesses in Byzantine sources which place the
descent of the Holy Spirit on the gifts in the eucharist at the elevation
and Sancta sanctis just before communion.81 Much as one might like
to, the serious scholar cannot just ignore these things or explain them
away. When they cannot be accomodated within our existing interpre-
tative framework, it may be the framework, not the facts, which must
cede.
Here too, however, as with any hermeneutical rule-of-thumb, one
must avoid universalizing beyond measure, and in some cases the
facts will indicate aberrant usages that cannot be considered norma-
tive. This is especially true in prayers borrowed from another liturgi-
cal tradition, which are often used in bizarre ways that hardly can be
judged original. A classic instance would be the initial prayers of the
liturgy in the Georgian version of the Liturgy of St. James according
to the ancient recension in Graz Georgian 4 (AD 985).82
16. Liturgies evolve at their “soft points." I have been able to nuance
Baumstark's view of how liturgies grow, showing that new liturgical
growth generally occurs at what I have dubbed the “soft points” of
existing liturgical structures, those places ripe for growth, such as the
beginning and end of liturgical services, or at their structural seams,
especially places where in the primitive liturgy there was an action
without words: the introit, the transfer of gifts, the communion. Al-
most everywhere one sees these actions come to be covered by a
80 Metzger I, 312-21; cf. Table I in Taft, Great Entrance 48-49.

81 See R, F. Taft, "The Precommunion Elevation of the Byzantine Divine Liturgy,”
OOP 62 (1996) 15-52, here 28-29, 34-39; id., "The Contribution of Eastern Liturgy to
the Understanding of Christian Worship," AOWCI LOGOS 37 (1996) 291-93. Note,
however, that my reference on p. 292 to Elias of Crete is mistaken. Elias does cite with
approval the Responses of Nicholas III, but does not mention explicitly the latter’s ref-
erence to the descent of the Spirit at the precommunion elevation. Since these two ar-
ticles were published I have come across further texts in support of the same theory,
which I have integrated into my treatment of the issue in Taft, Precommunion chap-
ter V.
82 J. Jedlidka, "Das Prager Fragment der altgeorgischen Jakobusliturgie," Archiv
orientâlni 29 (1961) 193-94; cf. Taft, Great Entrance 261-62.
chant — usually antiphonal psalmody — and concluded with an ora-

tion or collect.83
17. The law of emphasis by duplication. One clearly observable way
in which these "soft points" get filled in is via a process of emphasis
by duplication, whereby the eucharistie formulary grows backwards
and forwards through the prefixing and appending of secondary for-
mulas that repeat what is already expressed perfectly well in the body
of the anaphora itself. The Proskomide Prayer and the Prayer before
the Our Father in CHR are clear examples of this. We see this process
mirrored especially in the latter prayer, an obvious clone of the Epi-
clesis.84
18. The law of the paradox of the periphery. To the paradoxical na-
ture of Baumstark's "laws," some of which, as Bradshaw pointed out,
can work both ways, I would like to add a new paradox from my own
obervation of how liturgies evolve. Local churches of the periphery,
far from the home-center of liturgical diffusion, tend to hold onto
older liturgical practices long after they have been abandoned by the
Mother Church. The continued existence of older uses in Rus',85 a
conservatism that provoked the Old Ritualist schism in the Russian
Church in the 17th century when Patriarch Nikon enforced adapta-
tion of the Russian liturgy to the more recent Greek Orthodox usages,
is the classical paradigm.86 At the same time, paradoxically, one can
find in the Slavonic liturgical books — even in the Old Believer mss —
instances of Slavic liturgical creativity not found in the Greek
sources.87 Even more striking is the case of Southern Italy, where the
Greek monasteries in this region of the Byzantine periphery never
received the Neo-Sabaitic reform of the Divine Office into the monas-
tic Typika of Magna Graecia, preferring to preserve their older Studite
83 See Taft, Beyond East and West chapter 11, esp. pp. 204-5. This “law" has been
applied and developed in the doctoral dissertation of my student Gregor Hanke OSB,
Vesper und Orthros des Kathedralritus der Hagia Sophia zu Konstantinopel Struktur-
analyse und Entwicklungsgeschichte unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Psalmodie
(Theologische Hochschule Sankt-Georgen, Frankfurt am Main, in preparation),
chapter 2; "Die Methodologie der Arbeit im Kontext des Forschungsstandes zum
Asmatikos."
84 See Taft, Precommunion 103-111.
85 See Taft, Great Entrance 10, 82, 88, 152, 207, 214, 416-17, 421-22.
86 For the history of this reform, see Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual, and Reform,
the Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the 17th Century (Crestwood, NY 1991).
87 Examples in Taft, Great Entrance 77-78, 172-73, 177, 254-56, 392-95; id., "A Prop-
er Offertory Chant for Easter in some Slavonic Manuscripts," OCP 36 (1970) 437-448.
tradition. They also continued to celebrate the eucharist according to

the pre-Philothean tradition long after Philotheus Kokkinos' diataxis
had spread throughout the rest of the Orthodox world.88 But, para-
doxically, in the same region this conservatism was thrown to the
winds in the creative adaptation of the liturgy to usages imported
from the Middle East, beginning with the 7/8th century influx of
monks into S. Italy from those areas.89
88 On this history see Taft, The Byzantine Rite, esp. chapter 7.

89 On the immigration of Grecophone "Meikites" into Italy from the Middle-East,
and its influence on the Latin and Greek monasticism in S. Italy, see, inter alia, S.
Borsari, “Le migrazioni dall’Oriente in Italia nel VII secolo," La parola del passato 6,
fase. 17 (1951) 133-138; F. Burgarella, “La Chiesa greca in Calabria in età bizantina,"
in: Testimonianze cristiane antiche ed altomedievali nella Sibaritide. Atti del Convegno
nazionale tenuto a Corigliano-Rossano, Vi 1-12 marzo 1978 (Vetera Christianorum.
Scavi e ricerche 3, Bari 1980) 99-116; G. Cavallo, "La produzione di manoscritti greci
in Occidente tra età tardoantico e alto medioevo. Note e ipotesi," Scrittura e civiltà 1
(1977) 129-131; G. Engels, "La liturgia nella «diocesi grecanica» di Reggio," estratto a
Calabria bizantina. Testimonianze d’arte e strutture di territori (Soveria Mannelli 1993)
235-247; J. Irigoin, "L'Italie méridionale et la tradition des textes antiques," JOB 18
(1969) 37-55; A. Jacob, "L'evoluzione dei libri liturgici bizantini in Calabria e in Sicilia
daH'VIII al XVI secolo, con particolare riguardo ai riti eucaristici," in Calabria
bizantina. Vita religiosa e strutture amministativie. Atti del primo e secondo incontro di
Studi bizantini (Reggio Calabria 1974) 47-69, here 50ff; K. Lake, “The Greek Monaster-
ies of South Italy," JTS 4 (1903) 345-368, 517-542; 5 (1904) 22-41, 189-202; L. R.
Ménager, "La byzantìnisation réligieuse de l’Italie méridionale (IX-XII6 siècles) et la
politique monastique des Normands d’Italie," RHE 53 (1958) 747-774, 54 (1959) 5-40;
L. Townsend White, Latin Monasticism in Norman Sicily (The Medieval Academy of
America Monograph no. 13, Cambridge, Mass. 1938); V, von Falkenhausen, Il mona-
cheSimo greco in Sicilia," in: La Sicilia rupestre nel contesto delle civiltà mediterranee.
Atti del sesto Convegno di studio sulla civiltà rupestre medioevale nel Mezzogiorno d ’Italia
(Gaìatina 1986) 159-174, esp. 144 (I owe some of these references to S. Parenti). One
must not, however, exaggerate the depopulation of Middle-Eastern monasteries under
the Arabs. Theophanes (t ca. 818), Chronographia for AD 812-813 (ed. de Boor, Leipzig
1883-1885,1, 499 = Mango-Scott [note 63 above] 683), would give the impression that
monastic life in Palestine had been destroyed by that time. This is totally untrue, as
Sydney H. Griffith has shown in several studies on the continuation of Christian
monastic culture under the Arabs: "Stephan of Ramlah and the Christian Kerygma in
Arabic in Ninth-Century Palestine,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985) 23-45;
id., "A Ninth Century Summa Theologiae Arabica," in Khalil Samir (ed.), Actes du Deu-
xième Congrès Internationale d'Études Arabes Chrétiennes (Oosterhesselen, septembre
1984) (OCA 226, Rome 1986) 123-141; id., "Greek into Arabie: Life and Letters in the
Monasteries of Palestine in the 9th Century. The Example of the Summa Theologiae
Arabica," Byz 56 (1986) 117-138 (I am grateful to Prof. Griffith for providing me with a
prepublication copy of this paper); id., "The Monks of Palestine and the Growth of
Christian Literature in Arabic," The Muslim World 78 (1988) 1-28 — the latter two
articles are reprinted in id., Arabic Christianity in the Monasteries of Ninth-Century
Palestine (Variorum Collected Studies Series CS380, Aldershot 1992);'id., "From
Aramaic to Arabic: The Languages of the Monasteries of Palestine in the Byzantine
and Early Islamic Periods,” DOP 51 (1997) 11-33; id., “What has Constantinople to do
216 ROBERT F. TAFT, S, J,
We have here another seemingly self-contradictory rule of thumb,

one which for that reason might at first glance seem less than helpful
in interpreting data. But again, that is not at all true. For periphery
innovations not found in the mother-tradition are always obvious
(though whence they derive may be less so). Furthermore, these
innovations almost never concern structural elements of the early
shape of the liturgy, whereas the holdouts of older practices almost
always do, thereby helping both to explain their origin and to confirm
what we know or might suspect from other sources.
*
* k
But to all of these “laws" one must add another, overriding princi-
ple, one that Baumstark clearly stated, but he could have spared him-
self considerable criticism had he included it among his “laws." I
mean “The rule forbidding the historian of Comparative Liturgy to
accept any preconceived ideas... Preconceived notions must be ex-
cluded" (CL 8). This is one of Baumstark’s fundamental principles: no
theory or “law" takes precedence over the gathering and analysis of
concrete textual and historical evidence. The "laws” are but an aid to
explaining those data via comparative analysis, as Baumstark himself
states unambiguously:
This method ... is of necessity an empirical one; for it is only by setting

out from exact results and precise observations that right conclusions will
be reached. The scrupulous establishment of the factual data underlying
the problems should precede every attempt at explanation (CL 3).90
Hypotheses must cede to facts, not vice-versa. This is the answer, I

think, to Bradshaw’s objection that since some of Baumstark’s basic
laws (Laws 1, 2, 5, in my numbering above) clearly admit "develop-
ment ... in either direction," to uniformity or greater local variety, to
prolixity or abbreviation, this "robs his classification of any predictive
power. We cannot judge a liturgical phenomenon ‘primitive' just
with Jerusalem? Palestine in the Ninth Century: Byzantine Orthodoxy in the World of
Islam," in Leslie Brubaker (ed.), Byzantium in the Ninth Century: Dead or Alive? Papers
from the Thirtieth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Birmingham, March 1996
(Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies Publications 5, Aldershot/Brookfield
USA/Singapore/Sydney 1998) 181-194.
90 Cf. also CL 15 cited above at the beginning of section II; Engberding, Basilios-
liturgie xxiv-v.
ANTON BAU MST ARK'S COMPARATIVE LITURGY REVISITED 217
because it exhibits variety, nor ‘late just because it exhibits prolixity,

since each of these may in fact be an instance of the alleged 'retro-
grade movement'.”91
But the hermeneutical principles of the Baumstark school are not
designed to "predict” anything. On the contrary, they derive from
research rather than preceding it. They summarize the observations
of scholars like Baumstark and Engberding who spent a liftime
steeped in the liturgical sources, examining how liturgies behave.
They are conclusions, not a priori laws, even if these principles, once
formulated, can then serve as an interpretative framework to assist in
analyzing, understanding, and reconstituting the liturgical texts and
structures served up by the past. Comparative liturgy seeks to discern
common patterns in what concrete data show to have actually hap-
pened. And it does so in order to formulate hypotheses to fill in gaps
in the historical evidence and thereby present the history of liturgical
development, insofar as possible, as a relatively coherent whole. Is the
longer redaction of Byzantine BAS an expansion of a shorter UrBAS
to which Egyptian BAS, shorter than Byzantine BAS, is closest? Or
are the shorter BAS texts a later abbreviation of the longer redaction?
Engberding demonstrated the first alternative — but not on the basis
of any aprioris. He did so only after lining up all the numerous BAS
redactions, then subjecting them to a rigorous philological and text-
critical comparative analysis of this redactional and theological
expansion.92 The same method applied to other anaphoras has led to
equally positive results.93
Such analysis confirms the fact that in the evolution of texts, as
distinct from structures, the more usual direction for the evolution to
take is from simplicity to greater prolixity at least in demonstrably
early texts.94 Whatever the reason, it is a fact that Late-Antique Chris-
91 Bradshaw, Origins 59.

92 Engberding, Basileiosliturgie-, now also Winkler, “Anaphoren” I, 365-381, 402-10
for those parts of BAS not investigated by Engberding; also eadem, "Anaphoren" II (in
these Acta).
93 E.g:, A. Baumstark, "Denkmäler altarmenischer Meßliturgie. 3. Die armenische
Rezension der Jakobusliturgie," OC n.s. 7-8 (1918) 1-32 (cf. now Winkler, "Anaphoren"
I 382-84); H. Engberding, "Die syrische Anaphora der zwölf Apostel und ihre Parallel-
texte einander gegenüberstellt und mit neuen Untersuchungen zur Urgeschichte der
Chrysostomosliturgie begleitet,” OC 34 = ser. 3 voi. 12 (1938) 213-247; Taft, “Authen-
ticity" = id., Liturgy in Byzantium chapter III; id., "Anaphora," 208ff; Winkler, ‘'Ana-
phoren" I-II.
94 Aidan Nichols OP, Looking at the Liturgy. A Critical View o f its Contemporary
Form (San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1996) 59-60, furnishes a classic instance of the
tians were more likely to expand texts than to abbreviate them. So it is

not at all illegitimate for Baumstark to conclude that the opposite
tendency, towards abbreviation, is a "secondary” one. Nor is it gratui-
tous, when faced with longer and shorter redactions of a text, to
proceed from the working hypothesis that the shorter is older than the
longer. Of course one cannot stop there. Such a working hypothesis
must be weighed and tested and challenged in every possible way
before one can deem it a conclusion.
None of this is guesswork derived from anyone's "laws.” It is true
because it is seen to be so on the basis of the historical evidence and
the liturgical mss.95 That, of course, is the rub in the application of
any heuristic structure. Hermeutical principles can get one started,
but they are certainly not the end of the process. Everything has to be
checked against the evidence. One does not, on the basis of Baum-
stark's Law 9, just conclude automatically that whatever is unusual is
older. When faced with all the peculiarities of the Byzantine pontifical
eucharist, Baumstark's observation serves only as a plausible first
working hypothesis to be verified against the documentary evidence.
For in fact, not every peculiarity of the pontifical rite is an older us-
age, as I have shown with respect to the custom of the bishop reciting
the Prothesis Prayer just before the Great Entrance. This is a perfect
example of how Baumstark's "laws" can be misapplied. The peculiar
structure of the Prothesis in the pontifical eucharist96 had been seized
on as a remnant of what was presumed to be the original Byzantine
“offertory" rite just before the transfer of gifts. This erroneous con-
clusion has influenced, in turn, the rubrics of the Roman edition of
the Greek Hieratikon,97 both the Vulgate (i.e., Muscovite)98 and
Ruthenian99 redactions of the Roman edition of the Slavonic Sluzeb-
nik, as well as the 1973 Roman edition of the Slavonic Archiera-
misuse of this principle. Baumstark was not expressing a preference or making a value
judgment in favor of simplicity vs complexity in liturgy, and was certainly not making
a plaidoyer to justify simplifying the liturgy à la Vatican II, but simply describing
(rightly, I might add) how liturgies evolve. But failure to understand what Baumstark
was all about and how his principles were meant to be used seems to have become en-
demic to the field in these our times.
95 See, for instance, the studies cited above in notes 51-63.
96 French trans, with full rubrics and explanatory notes in Denis Guillaume, G rand
E uch ologe et A rchìér atikon (Parma 1992) 614-16.
97 Rome 1950, p. 106.
98 Rome 1942, p. 202.
99 Rome 1942, p. 193.
tikon,100 followed, most recently, by the new 1994 Greek Orthodox

edition of the Greek Archieratikon101 — a minor liturgical reform
based on a mistaken reading of the evidence, probably under the
influence of Cyril Korolevskij.102 This is one clear instance in which
Baumstark's rule backfired, as I have already shown elsewhere.103
V. Evaluating the Comparative Method
So Baumstark’s "laws” are heuristic principles, not infallible apti-

oris to be followed blindly but aids in formulating hypotheses for the
interpretation of data. That, at least, was the teaching imparted in
what I have called the “Mateos School" of eastern liturgy at the Pon-
tifical Oriental Institute.104 I coined this appellation to describe the
way of studying liturgy taught and exemplified by Juan Mateos, and
carried on and further elaborated and formulated by his students like
myself and Gabriele Winkler. Mateos himself did no methodological
writing, bequeathed us no formulation of his method nor any system-
atic reflections on it. And in later years he shifted to an analysis of
liturgy adapted from the methods of structuralism, as reflected in his
100 Rome 1973, pp. 18-19, 65.

101 Apostolike Diakonia edition (Athens 1994) 19. This is a change from the older
Greek Orthodox editions (Constantinople 1820, pp. 1, 11; Athens 1902, pp. 3, 15),
which retain the Prothesis Prayer at the beginning of the liturgy, as do the Slavonic
editions of the Cinovnik (= archieratikon) — e.g., Moscow 1798; Warsaw 1944, Moscow
1982.
102 On Korolevskij, see E. Tisserant, "Father Cyril Korolevsky. A Biographical
Note,” in Cyril Korolevsky, Metropolitan Andrew (1865-1944), translated and revised by
Serge Keleher (Lviv 1993) 17-36; G. Croce, La Badia Greca di Grottaferrata e la rivista
“Roma e l’Oriente.” Cattolicesimo e Ortodossìa fra unionismo ed ecumenismo (1799-
1923), 2 vols. (Vatican City 1990) II, 32-54, 283-296, and the further references there in
33-35 note 71. A strong headed stormy petrel and extraordinarily erudite autodidact,
Jean François Charon (1878-1959), who was bom in Caen, France, and later adopted
the name Cyril Korolevskij, was an influential member of the Vatican Commission
established in 1936 for the redaction of the excellent Roman editions of the Eastern
Catholic liturgical books (Tisserant pp. 31, 35). His view on the putative “offertory” of
the pontifical liturgy can be found in C. Charon, Les saintes et divines liturgies de nos
saints pères Jean Chrysostome, Basile le grand et Grégoire le grand (Liturgie des Présancti-
fiés) en usage dans l'Église grecque catholique orientale (Beyrouth/Paris 1904) 171-72,
183; cf. Taft. Great Entrance 266, notes 41, 43.
103 Taft, Great Entrance 265-70 and eh. VII passim.
104 Cf. G. Winkler, "The Achievements of the Oriental Institute in the Study of
Oriental Liturgiology," in R. F. Taft, J. L. Dugan (eds.) It 75° Anniversario del Pontificio
Istituto Orientale. Atti delle celebrazioni giubilari, 15-17 ottobre 1992 (OCA 244, Rome
1994) 115-141.
220 ROBERT F. TAFT, S. J.
later teaching, and in the one study he directed during this phase.105
But in his earlier work, Mateos taught us at once to recognize our
debt to Baumstark while maintaining a certain critical distance from
Baumstark’s approach. Whereas Baumstark was more theoretical,
Mateos, more phenomenological, was never wedded to any theory. It
was always the text and the historical evidence that controlled his
research and its conclusions.
As West has brilliantly shown, Baumstark elaborated his method
of explanation, within a pseudo-scientific philosophical framework
very much in vogue at the time, but which has long since been dis-
carded. In Baumstark's day such exploitation of the sciences as the
basis for explaining even cultural phenomena was in the air. It is in
precisely these terms that Van Austin Harvey describes the philo-
sophical debate among historians concerning the reliability of histori-
cal explanation. Some would maintain that the credence owed to an
explanation is directly proportionate to how much the historical ex-
planation approximates scientific explanations, the hallmark of which
is the subsumption of a particular statement under a law.106 This point
of view has been subjected to trenchant criticism from those histori-
ographers who would deny any relevance to the scientific model. For
them, the historian does not use "laws" even implicitly. History is
unique, they would hold, and explanation-models, while perhaps
useful for prediction in science, are irrelevant for history, which has
to do with the actions of free human beings, the reasons for which are
found within the actors themselves and not in "laws” extrinsic to
them.107
Baumstark, a creature of his times like the rest of us, formulated
his methodological principles within the cultural ambience he knew.
What has been discredited is not Baumstark's basic insights so much
as the intellectual framework within which he attempted to locate it.
But all that has been well dissected by West, and does not need re-
peating here.
105 A. Mouhanna, Les rites de l'in itiatio n d a n s l ’É glise m a ro nite (OCA 212, Rome
1978). See Winkler’s review in OC 65 (1981) 227-28.
106 V. A. Harvey, The H istorian a n d the Believer. A C o n fron tation betw een the m o d -
e m h is to ria n ’s p rin ciples o f ju d g m e n t a n d the C h ristia n ’s w ill to believe (New York 1966)
45ff.
107 Ib id . 45-46.
In the last analysis, scholars like Edmund Bishop (1846-1917)108

and Gregory Dix and Baumstark and Juan Mateos advanced our
knowledge because they did not just collect facts; they explained
them.109 Were one to ask, "why this mania for interpreting the facts?
Why not just lay out the raw data as is?", one can only reply that the
question is naive in the extreme. Uninterpreted data say nothing to
the uninitiated.110 To content oneself with just editing or describing
what is in the sources is to renounce all attempt at writing history.
History means perceiving relationships, pointing out connections and
causes, hazarding hypotheses, drawing conclusions — in a word,
explaining. Unless the sources are explained, their editing does not
advance our knowledge of history one whit. Knowledge is not the
accumulation of data, not even new data, but the perception of rela-
tionships in the data, the creation of hypothetical frameworks to
explain new data, or to explain in new ways the old.
For the sources alone do not tell us how they got the way they are,
nor do later ones tell us why they are not the same as earlier ones. An
examination of the sources gives rise not to answers but to questions,
and questions cannot be answered by a mere description of what gave
rise to them in the first place. The problems of liturgical history are
not invented by the historian. They arise from the appearance of
changes in the sources themselves, be they additions, omissions, or
aberrations that constitute a departure from previously established
patterns. The only way these problems can be solved, if only hypo-
thetically, is by sifting and analyzing, classifying and — yes — com-
paring, liturgical texts and units within and across the traditions. Only
thus can one divine the direction in which things seem to be moving,
chart their trajectory, and hypothesize how the gaps in the evidence
might be filled in, just as the detective tries, to reconstruct a crime
from its few remaining clues. For the historian, there is no other way.
Since we can have no direct access to the past, our knowledge of it is
inevitably, unavoidably inferential, based on what Harvey called the
"residue of life that remains long after life itself has run its course —
108 See the superb academic biography of Nigel Abercrombie, The Life a n d W ork o f
(London 1959). Baumstark himself (W erden 88) considered Bishop the
E d m u n d B isho p
greatest historian of the liturgy in modem times, and fully shared Bishop's insight on
the innate conservatism of the Roman liturgy (ibid. 97).
109 Apropos of Baumstark, see the remarks of Dorn Bernard Botte OSB in his 1953
"Forward to the Third Edition” of CL vii-viii.
110 I resume here some ideas from Taft, D iptychs xxx.
the spent oil lamp, the rusted weapon, the faded document, the muti-
lated coin, the mouldering ruin.”111
So the laws first formulated by Baumstark and Hamm and Eng-
berding, and resumed and classified by Baumstark in Vom geschichtli-
chen Werden der Liturgie, Liturgie comparée, and numerous other
writings on particular problems in liturgical history and textual or
structural analysis, are not blind shots in the dark, nor a substitute for
research. On the contrary, they stand at the end of a long process of
research, analysis, synthesis, and subsequest conclusions. Only then
do they become presumptions, a way of proceeding from the known
to the unknown which is at the basis of all human reasoning. How the
evidence shows liturgies have usually behaved, permits one to formu-
late hypotheses for reconstituting the evolution of liturgy on the sup-
position that other liturgies might have behaved in the same way in
cases where the evidence to prove it is lacking. All of the human sci-
ences like history, sociology, political science, criminology depend on
comparative studies and the generalizations that emerge from them.
To pretend that the exception vitiates the rule is simply ridiculous. It
vitiates misuse of the rule, of course, but that is another matter en-
tirely. Generalizations based on observation, analysis, and compari-
son are so fundamental to all humanistic studies that to challenge
them is simply absurd. Just imagine what would happen to Art
History if comparison were to be banished! I hold the same for Litur-
giewissenschaft.
VI. Are Baumstark’s “Laws”Laws?
A fair amount of ink has been spilled over Baumstark's use of the
term “the laws of liturgical evolution" to describe what he meant
when he claimed that the comparative study of liturgies uses
methods similar to those employed in comparative linguistics and com-

parative biology... It is only its subject-matter which belongs to Theology.
But the students treatment of it does not differ in principle from the com-
parative procedure in use in the exact sciences... (CL 3).112
111 Harvey, The Historian and the Believer (note 106 above), 69.
112 See also, but more nuanced, in Baumstark, Werden 2-6. Hamm, Einsetzungs-
berichte 93, also spoke of “laws” ("Entwicklungsgesetze), whereas Engberding, Basi-
leiosliurgie xxiii-iv, referred to "allgemeine textkritische Regeln,” and "für die liturgie-
This, doubtless, says more than Baumstark should have, especially

in an era when one still believed in the complete objectivity of the
scientific method as applied to the natural sciences. It says much
more than one might wish to say today, after Gadamer and company
have long laid to rest the myth of absolute scientific objectivity.
But if we wish to be contemporary about hermeneutics, we cannot
deny Baumstark the courtesy of treating his work within the context
of the literary form he was using. His famous Liturgie comparée (1940)
was, after all, a series of public lectures, an oral genre in which ex-
cessive nuancing and qualification only leave the audience befuddled.
Furthermore, these lectures were "originally put together at short
notice," as F. L. Cross notes (CL v), and delivered not in a university
lecture hall, but in a monastery, in a foreign language. Baumstark
himself, in his "Introduction” to the published version of his lectures,
describes them as “a preliminary account" of his method, “addressed
to a limited circle of hearers," and he eschews any attempt to present
"a systematic introduction to the topic" (CL xiii-xiv). The fact that his
1940 esquisse is still echoing around the world sixty-one years later is
a tribute to the nerve he touched.
Baumstark, like any good public speaker, uses homely examples
and draws his picture in broad, strokes. Even if he used words like
"laws" and drew parallels from natural evolution, is it really fair to
assert that he "failed to recognize the essential difference between
nature and culture,"113 failed to recognize that liturgy, a cultural phe-
nomenon transmitted socially and subject to the vagaries of the hu-
man will, cannot be treated like natural phenomena? If we must avoid
a literalist reading of liturgical sources out of context, let us not refuse
Baumstark the same courtesy. Baumstark was perfectly aware, and
states so explicitly and often, that liturgy is an historical reality in
continual evolution under the pressure of external, historico-cultural
changes that result not from the forces of nature, but from the work
of humans operating with a free will. His continued use of terms like
"milieu," "character,” "temper," "style,” "culture," “rhetoric,” "sponta-
neity,” "infiltration,” “influence," "contacts," “attraction," “political
considerations,” "spiritual power," "crisis, "movement" (CL 2ff), show
clearly enough that Baumstark knew liturgies developed in ways not
geschichtliche Forschung allgemein anerkannte Regeln” — which, in fact, amount to

the same thing.
113 Bradshaw, O rigins 57.
224 ROBERT F. TAFT, S.JT.
true of the living organisms which are the material object of biology.
His other writings make this even more obvious.114
Admittedly, Baumstark could have saved himself considerable grief
had he limited his metaphor to comparative philology or linguistics.
But it is a complete distortion of his thought to seize out of context
his metaphors of the natural sciences and biology as indicating that
he confused the laws of nature with the flow of history. This is clear
enough from Baumstark’s assertion that
... Historical facts ought never to be absent from the mind of the historian
of Liturgy. Further, Comparative Liturgy should always be on guard
against preconceived ideas and above all against theories constructed (in
the way dear to theologians) in the interests of a system (CL 7; cf. 8).
This abhorrence of preconceived ideas of the sort common to the

manual theology of the day, when one began with the conclusion and
then marshalled the arguments that agreed with it, may be the reason
for Baumstark's insistence that Comparative Liturgy is a science. For
he continues, “This maxim follows from the place we assign to Com-
parative Liturgy in the totality of the sciences,” then goes on to ex-
plain what he means by the example of the Anaphora of Addai and
Mari and another Mesopotamian anaphoral fragment, which lack the
Words of Institution. For Baumstark, such phenomena are facts to be
taken at face value, and not to be explained (or explained away) in
function of what some Church teaches about the place of the Verba
Domini in the eucharistie consecration (CL 7-8).
So Baumstark's "laws” are such only in the metaphorical sense,
and one might wish he had said so more clearly. As Bradshaw rightly
notes, these "laws" are no more than "observable tendencies"115 in the
growth of liturgies. As such, they furnish handy “rules of thumb” help-
ful in the formulation of initial working hypotheses for the analysis of
liturgical data. But I think there has been far too much palaver
concerning Baumstark's utilizing the term “laws” for his principles of
liturgical development, and altogether too literal a construction of his
attempt to draw parallels between the methods of comparative liturgy
and those of the natural sciences. Remember Baumstark's own state-
ment that "In its method .. . the Comparative Study of Liturgy approxi-
mates to that of the natural sciences” (CL 3, emphasis added).
114 Cf. Baumstark, Werden 2-6.

115 Bradshaw, Origins 62.
The parallel Baumstark stressed most, that of comparative linguis-

tics,116 is far more apposite, and in my view a valid one. "The first task
in the Comparative Study of the liturgical texts is of a purely phi-
lological kind," he insisted. “We must begin by finding out their his-
tory and as far possible reconstructing their primitive state on a criti-
cal basis" (CL 52).117 Despite the fact that both liturgies and languages
are obviously products not of the laws of nature but of free human
beings, one can still extract principles of development from observing
how they commonly behave. In languages, labials, dentals, and liq-
uids tend to shift according to clearly identifiable patterns. "T”s be-
come "d"s, "p”s become “b"s — or vice-versa. The fact that such shifts
do not occur in all cases in no way makes the "law" useless in linguis-
tics any more than exceptions vitiate Baumstarkes "laws” of compara-
tive liturgy. The rule that in Italian the Latin "bs" between two vowels
becomes “ss" — observare becomes osservare, obsessio becomes osses-
sione, absorbere becomes assorbire, absurdum becomes assurdo, is not
at all rendered useless by exceptions like obsoletum, which remains
obsoleto.
I believe the same is true not only of liturgy but of any historico-
culturai phenomenon. The fact that English is full of Norman French
words, and Romanian of Slavic words, does not make English any
more a Romance language, nor Romanian any less a one. Not to
understand that is to miss what is basic to all scientific classification.
Of course there are exceptions to any rule, o f course paradigms and
patterns are generalizations imposed on reality rather than the reality
itself. Of course the Slavic words in Romanian demand an explanation
before we can securely label that tongue “Romance.” But Romance it
is, just as surely as English is not. To deny the possibility of generali-
zation, comparison, extrapolation, is to deny the possibility of writing
history.
In the same way, when I wrote that a living liturgy, like a living
language, “cannot be reduced to sociology or anthropology, it cannot
be invented or created, it simply is,"1181 was not implying that liturgy
and language are the same, nor did I mean to deny that they are both
human creations that change because men and women change them.
I was affirming, rather, that this growth and change can follow "laws"
of their own that are just not always subject to freewill command.
116 CL 15; Werden 5.

117 See also Hamm, Einsetzungsberichte 93.
118 Taft, "The Contribution of Eastern Liturgy"' (note 81 above), 287.
Liturgy changes just as French and English change. But they do not
change just because someone chooses to change them. The process is
far more subtle and unique, and follows, willy-nilly, its own laws and
rhythms.119
VI. Beyond Comparative Liturgy
When all is said and done, what is important is what works. As no

less a liturgical scholar than Dorn Bernard Botte affirmed in his
Foreword to Comparative Liturgy, "A method is to be judged by its
results. The method here employed has proved its competence...” (CL
viii). In my view none of the criticism advanced against Baumstark's
method has shaken this affirmation.
But beyond questions of method there are far more fundamental
issues underlying the “culture wars” now afflicing our discipline.
Beneath the technical issues of method/methodology lurks a far more
fundamental issue concerning the very nature and purpose of the
academic study of liturgy. This debate is especially acute in Germany
today, as budgetary constraints signal ever more stringent funding for
theological faculties. The threatened or already enacted1“Aufhebung”
or “Abstufung,” one after another, of chairs of Liturgiewissenschaft in
Catholic Theology Faculties in Germany, where the work pioneered
by Baumstark has continued, must be of interest not just to the Ger-
man liturgical establishment but to the whole scholarly world. How
the German Catholic bishops could possibly have acquiesced in this is
a separate chapter all by itself, beyond my competence (and far be-
yond my understanding).120 So by way of conclusion, I wish to
broaden my discussion beyond the narrow technical issues of method
to include what I consider the larger horizon into which the historical
study of liturgy fits.
119 Ibid. 288.

120 But the debate on the decline of Liturgiewissenschaft in German-speaking
countries is much older than these recent problems: “Es ist ... eindeutig festzustellen,
daß die Liturgiewissenschaft in eine tiefe Krise geraten ist...": A. Häußling, ALw 24
(1982) 6; see also A. Gerhards, Birgit Osterholt-Koots, "Kommentar zur »Standorts-
bestimmung der Liturgiewissenschaft«/’ Liturgisches Jahrbuch 42 (1992) 122-138, esp.
123; Winkler-Meßner, "Überlegungen," 230, 235-43.
Why History?
If the purpose of liturgy is to glorify God while sanctifying the glo-
ri fiers, the purpose of the study of liturgy, like that of all study, is
understanding. Understanding involves the search for meaning, and
in any reality we did not invent yesterday, this meaning can be ascer-
tained only via an investigations of its origins and evolution, as well
as how its meaning has been explained across the trajectory of its
history. That is why in my writings and in the courses I teach, I con-
tinue, at the risk of being repetitious, to describe my aim as "The
historical development of X, Y, or Z and its meaning for today." For
my understanding of what Christian liturgy is, and what it means for
today, proceeds from the premise that liturgy is an objective reality
whose meaning is located in the data of Christian tradition. So amid
the contemporary search for "relevance” in liturgy and everything else,
I continue to maintain, obstinately and against all odds, that there is
nothing so relevant as knowledge, nothing so irrelevant as ignorance.
The only reliable way to understand and critique ■ — and, where
needed, reform — the present manifestation of any ecclesio-cultural
phenomenon is to see what it once was and how it got to be the way it
is. One can do this only by studying its origins and evolution — in a
word, its history, which of course includes its shape and uses today.
Anything else is just make-believe, as Thomas J. Talley has well said:
Our current discussions of pastoral praxis, theological meaning, and of

much more rest finally in the assumption that we know what we are talk-
ing about; and to know what we are talking about demands knowing
much more than can be generated by a mere creativity operating upon
data drawn only from the experience of itself.121
English literature is not what we imagine it to be or what we wish

it were. It is what it is. And we find that out not by asking ourselves
how we feel about it, or by imagining what we would like it to be, but
by reading it. The same is true of liturgy. It is an objective, existing
reality. To know what it is one must study it, and that can only mean
studying it in its several historical manifestations, past and present.
Of course one is free to dislike what it is or has been, and hope to
invent something else to take its place. That is not studying Christian
liturgy, however, but imagining it, and the serious study of liturgy,
123 "Foreword” to Taft, Beyond East and West Î1. See also Taft, "Liturgiewissen-
schaft.''
like any other cultural phenomenon, must be based not on fantasy or

dream-fulfillment, but on data.
This is not to suggest that liturgy cannot change, or, when it does,
that people are not the ones who change it. It does suggest that when
one changes something, it might be helpful to understand first what it
is one is changing. For beyond the desire for change lies the twofold
presumption [1] that all is not right with things as they are, and [2]
that the proposed changes will be an improvement. If so, it might be
useful to provide for these value-judgements a basis more substantial
than the personal velleities of the uninformed or the latest invention
of the pop-liturgists. In my view, at least part of such a substantial
basis is to be found in Christian tradition, and that means studying
history. Any other method leaves one the victim of the latest cliché.
The contemporary pastoral-liturgical scene has had enough of people
busily engaged in the application of that which they do not possess.
The study of Liturgy: Practical, Historical, or Theoretical?

But I am not so naive as to think there is in our discipline any con-
sensus regarding the above-expressed or any other approach to the
study of liturgy.122 For some, it goes without saying (which generally
signals something one is expected to accept unexamined, on the basis
of rhetoric alone) that the study of liturgy is a practical discipline,
part of pastoral or "praktische Theologie" and homiletics. But for
many liturgical scholars, the presumption that liturgical studies is just
or even principally a practical discipline, is no more inevitable and
natural than it is that a university professor of Byzantine Art should
be teaching students how to paint icons. The problem arises from the
very scope of the discipline: liturgy, like art or music, is by its very
nature shared by performers and theorists.
It is my own personal conviction that these tensions are inevitable
in so encompassing a field as liturgical studies. Nowadays almost all
academic disciplines are so complex and variegated, so overlapping,
so swift in their cloning and mutations, that the only significant place
where synthesis occurs is in the head of the individual practitioner.
This brings us back to the question of methodology. From what I have
said already, it should be obvious that the study of liturgy is not just
history. But of course it has an historical dimension because like
122 pui]er discussion of these issues in Taft, "Liturgiewissenschaft," from which I

resume some of the following reflections.
everything else on the face of the earth, liturgy has a history. And this
history is studied not in order to recover the past (which is impossi-
ble), much less to recreate it (which would be fatuous), but simply in
order to render liturgy as we find it intelligible, for the present can be
fully understood only as part of a larger whole. In brief, to study an
authentic tradition, one has first to recover whatever of it may have
been washed away by the tides of time. More important, history is
essential to the formation of a “moving point of view," a sense of
relativity, of seeing the present as always in dynamic tension between
past and future, and not as a static “given." Only in this way one can
avoid the all-too-common deception of the young, who tend to con-
sider every latest shift in modem consciousness as some great break-
through of the human spirit imperceptible to their benighted fore-
bears.
So I am uncomfortable with the notion that any aspect of theology
is not also ex natura sua "practical theology," insofar as any religious
values must ex professo affect life, than which there is surely nothing
more “practical.” I hold the historico-critical comparative study of
liturgy to be an approach of proven results not just historically but
also pastorally; an approach, I am convinced, that is at the basis of
much of the real progress we have made in understanding and re-
forming liturgy in modern times. Other disciplines such as sociology
and cultural anthropology, pastoral theology and spirituality, have of
course made their contributions, too. But they have built on the pa-
tient uncovering of all possible options in the tradition turned up by
digging through the layers of our past.123
123 The recovery of the meaning of Sunday we owe to studies like Willy Rordorf,
Der S o n ntag : G eschichte der R u h e- u n d G ottesdiensttages im ältesten C h r iste n tu m (Ab-
handlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments 43, Zürich 1962). The
Vatican II reform of the Roman Mass owes an enormous debt to Josef Jungmann's The
M ass o f th e R o m a n Rite. M iss a r u m sollem nia, 2 vols. (New York 1951, 1955) -— on
Jungmann see Z e itsc hrift fü r katho lisc he Theologie 111 (1989) Heft 3: Z u m 100. Ge-
b urtstag J o s e f A nd reas Ju n g m a n n SJ. The universally acclaimed RCIA or Rite of Chris-
tian Initiation for Adults — Ordo in itia tio n is C hristianae a d u lto ru m of January 6, 1972:
see R. Kaczynski (ed.). E n c h irid io n d o c u m e n to r u m istau ratio nis liturgicae I (1 963-1973)
(Turin 1976) document no. 154, §§2639-2800; International Commission on English in
the Liturgy, D o c u m e n ts o n the L iturgy 1963-1979. Conciliar, Papal, a n d C u rial Texts,
(Collegeville 1982) document no. 30 §§2328-2488 — and the recovery of the centrality
of Baptism in a Latin Catholicism hitherto mired in eucharistie overemphasis, have
been rendered possible by what historical scholarship has taught us about catechesis
and initiation in the early sources as a process, not a rite. Furthermore, the distinction
between monastic and cathedral offices, so fruitful for understanding the Liturgy of
the Hours as the prayer of all God's people and not just something for monks; the
Liturgical Scholarship and Ecumenism

Nor can we neglect the enormous impact of all this philological
text-critical and historical liturgical research on ecumenical progress
in our century. Our growing ecumenical agreement as to the meaning
of eucharist as oblation or sacrifice124 is but one example. As for work-
in-progress, the Chaldean Catholic Church and its Orthodox counter-
part, the Assyrian Church of the East, are actively engaged in a most
fruitful and fast-moving ecumenical dialogue. One of the outstanding
issues is whether the Catholic Church can accept the validity of the
ancient Anaphora of Addai and Mari, which does not include the Cena
Domìni narrative with the Words of Institution. Does anyone think for
an instant that the question could even be raised were it not for the
results of decades of recent comparative studies of the anaphora in
general by our colleagues like Talley, Mazza, Giraudo;125 and of Addai
tenuous existence in the early layers of some traditions of chrismation-confirmation;

the recomposition of the sacraments of Christian Initiation into one process in our
understanding if not yet in all our rituals; the rediscovery of the role of women in the
life of the Early Church, and of the place of feminine metaphor in its thought — are
all, every single one of them, beholden in some way to the work of historical investiga-
tion into the roots of our heritage. The list is by no means exhaustive, and the process
is still ongoing. Fuller details in Taft, "Liturgiewissenschaft.’'
124 On the distinction, see Winkler, "Anaphoren" I, 383-89, 397-98, 419-20; also
eadem, "Anaphoren" III: "Der Hinweis auf «die Gaben» bzw. «das Opfer» bei der
Epiklese," in Q uaestiones D isp u tatae (in press).
125 T. J. Talley, "From Berakah to Eucharistia: A Reopening Question," W o rship 50
(1976) 115-137 = “De la berakah a l'Eucharistie. Une question a réexaminer," La
M a ison -D ieu 125 (1976) 11-39 = "Von der Berakah zur Eucharistia: Das eucharistische
Hochgebet der alten Kirche in neuere Forschung, Ergebnisse und Fragen," L itu rg i-
sches J a h rb u ch 26 (1976) 93-115 = "Het eucharistisch gebed in de jonge kerk in het he-
dendaags wetenschappelijk onderzoek: Resultaat en bedenkingen," T ijd sch rift vo o r
Liturgie 60 (1976) 119-136 = "Fra Berakah til Eukaristi: Et sporgsmal, der nu tages op
pa ny,” L u m e n : K atolsk teologisk T idsskrift 19.1, nr. 55 (1976) 1-27 = “From Berakah to
Eucharistia: a Reopening Question,” in R. Kevin Seasoltz (ed.). L ivin g Bread, Saxnng
Cup: Rea dings on the E ucharist, (Collegeville 1982) 80-101; id,, "The Eucharistic Prayer
of the Ancient Church According to Recent Research; Results and Reflections,” S tu d ia
L iturgica (1976) 138-158, reprinted in Everett Ferguson (ed.). S tu d ies in E arly C hristi-
anity, voi. 15 (Hamden, Connecticut 1993); id., "The Eucharistic Prayer: Directions for
Development," W orship 51 (1977) 316-325; id., "The Eucharistic Prayer: Tradition and
Development," in K. Stevenson (ed.). L iturgy R esh aped (London 1982) 48-62; id., “The
Literary Structure of the Eucharistic Prayer," W o rship 58 (1984) 404-420;.id.. Review
of Enrico Mazza, The E uch ar istic Prayers o f the R o m a n R ite, in The L iv in g C h urch 195.5
(August 2, 1987) 5-11; id., "Structures des anaphores anciennes et modernes,” La
M aison-D ieu 191 (1992) 15-43; id.. Review of Enrico Mazza, L 'anafora eucaristica : stu d i
su lle orìgini, in W orship 61 (1993) 375-377; id,, Review of Fenwick, A na phoras, in W or-
ship 67 (1993) 480-481; id.,"The Creation Theme in Eucharistic Prayer," in R.
McMichael, (ed.), C reation a n d Liturgy: S tu d ie s in H o n o r o f H. B oo ne Porter (Washing-
and Mari in particular, with its clone the Maronite Anaphora sanar,
including critical editions of both texts?126 The days have long passed
when Catholics or Orthodox could dismiss such thorny issues a priori,
from outside the historical continuum, as if sacramental theology
were an astronaut-science floating tranquilly in outer space, inde-
pendent of the mudane realities of liturgical history. Does any serious
thinker wish to continue fighting over whether the Words of Institu-
tion or the consecratoiy Spirit-Epiclesis are the "moment" or “form of
consecration" when it is more than probable that at least some of the
earliest eucharistie prayers had neither?127
This does not mean that history provides us models for imitation.
The church and its reformers can never be guided by a retrospective
ideology. The past is always instructive but never normative. What its
study, like all study, should provide is understanding, an understand-
ing that challenges myths and frees us from the tyranny not just of
ton, D.C. 1993} 13-27; id., "Word and Sacrament in the Primitive Eucharist," in
EvAoytjfta (note 43 above) 497-510; id., "Eucharistic Prayers, Past, Present and Future,"
in David Holeton (ed.). R evising the E ucha rist: G ro undw ork fo r the A n g lican C o m -
m u n io n (Alcuin/GROW Liturgical Study 27, Bramcote, Notts. 1994) 6-19; id., "The
Structure of the Eucharistic Prayer," in Ruth A. Meyers (ed.), A Prayer B o o k fo r the
2 1 st C entury (Prayer Book Studies 3, New York 1996) 76-101; E. Mazza, Le odierne
preghiere eucaristiche. 1 / Str uttura, Teologia , Fonti. 2 / Testi e d o c u m e n ti editi e in ed iti
(Bologna 19912) = The E uc ha ristic Prayers o f the R o m a n Rite, trans. M. J. O'Connell
(New York 1986); id., L'anafora eucaristica. S tu d i sulle origini, (BELS 62, Rome 1992);
id., "L'origine giudaica della preghiera eucaristica," review of C. Giraudo, La s tr u t-
tu r a ... in R iv ista L iturgica 69 (1982) 906-912; C. Giraudo, La stru ttu ra letteraria della
preghiera eucaristica. Saggio sulla genesi letteraria d i un a form a. Toda vete ro testa m en -
taria, beralca giuaica, a nafora cristiana (Analecta Biblica 92, Rome 1981); id., E u ca ris tia
p er la Chiesa. Prospettive teologiche sull'euca ristia a partire dalla “lex or a n d i” (Aloisiana
22, Rome/Brescia 1989); id., “Le récit de l'institution dans la prière eucharistique a-t-il
des antécédents: Quelques aperçus sur la prière liturgique et la dynamique de son em-
bolisme," N ou velle revue théologique 106 (1990) 513-536; id., "Vers un traité de l'Eucha-
ristie à la fois ancien et nouveau. La théologie de l'Eucharistie à l'école de la «lex
orandi»," ibid. 112 (1990) 870-887; id., Preghiere eucaristiche p e r la Chiesa di oggi: rifles-
sio n i in m argine a l c o m m en to del c anon e svizzero-ro m an o (Aloisiana 23, Rome/Brescia
1993); cf. esp. Excursus I, pp. 177-96, where the author discusses the differences be-
tween his views and Mazza’s.
126 Addai and Mari: W, F. Macomber, “The Oldest Known Text of the Anaphora of
the Apostles Addai and Mari," OCP 32 (1966) 335-371; A. Gelston, The E u c h a ristic
Prayer o f A dda i a n d M ari (Oxford 1992); Sarrar: J.-M. Sauget (ed.). A nap h o ra S. Petri
A po sto li Tertia (Anaphorae Syriacae IL3, Rome 1973) 272-329.
127 On this question, see R. F. Taft, "The Epiclesis Question in the Light of the Or-
thodox and Catholic Lex orandi Traditions,” in: Bradley Nassif (ed.), N e w P erspectives
on H istorical Theology. E ssays in M em ory o f J o h n M e ye n d o rff (Grand Rapids, Michigan/
Cambridge, UK 1996) 210-237; id., "Ecumenical Scholarship and the Catholic-Ortho-
dox Epiclesis Dispute," OKS 45 (1996) 201-226.
any one frozen slice of the past, but also from the tyranny of the latest
cliché, so that we can move ahead to solutions suitable for today in
faithful freedom, faithful to living tradition that is always indebted to
but free of the past.
This is why I am opposed to overdoing the distinction between the
“practical" and the “historical" or “theoretical” dimensions of any
theological discipline, and especially of liturgy, for in my view they
are inseparable: origins, meaning, practice go hand in hand. The ul-
timate purpose of any study of liturgy is threefold: [1] understanding,
[2] based on knowledge, [3] with a view to application.128 What the
liturgical scholar must above all facilitate is the second, which is prior
to the other two in execution if not in importance. For understanding
what any aspect of Christian liturgy — indeed Christian anything —
means, and hence means for today; and therefore how it must be
understood, celebrated, preached on the pastoral level; proceeds from
the premise that Christian liturgy is an objective reality whose mean-
ing is located not in what we think or feel or imagine or would like it
to be, but in the data of Christian tradition. The only way to know that
is to study its manifestations across time. That is what we call history.
Pontificio Istituto Orientale Robert F. Taft, S.J.

Piazza S. Maria Maggiore 7
00185 Rome, Italy
128 Taft, "Liturgiewissenschaft," 246-49.

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Robert F. Taft, S.J.

ANTON BAUMSTARKES COMPARATIVE LITURGY

We have become accustomed to considering comparative liturgy

neither the expression "comparative liturgy" nor all of its so-called

Taft, "Liturgiewissenschaft'' = id., "Über die Liturgiewissenschaft heute," ThQ 177

3 F. Haskell, "Ah! Sweet History of Life,” N e w York R ev iew o f B o o ks (April 4, 1996)

II. Comparative Liturgy and its “Laws"

Liturgy, in Baumstark's words, is a living activity which can "never

[Comparative liturgy] seeks to disengage from the multitude of ascer-

That last phrase is the best definition of the “laws" of comparative

15 And earlier, Baumstark, Werden 29-36

Spaltung der Wissenschaften nicht mehr überschauen kann. Der Universalliturgiker,

b. Structures, Actions, and their Symbolization:

III. Evaluating Baumstark's “Laws"

In evaluating the principles of Baumstark and his followers, we

context. Permit me to comment on the above stated “laws" from that

comparative textual analysis is fully justified and, indeed, indispen-

So by “liturgical unit" Baumstark seems to mean here a complete

45 See Taft, B eyond E a s t an d W est 204-5.

other ways the legitimacy of this principle that I consider it an unas-

50 See Martin Stringer, "Liturgy and Anthropology: The History of a Relationship,”

the Trisagion;55 in the preanaphoral rites it has preserved the Lavabo

firmly in place, may then ricochet, exerting a secondary, retroinflu-

IV. Adding to Baumstark’s Laws

67 See Taft, The Byzantine Rite 74-75.

communion of which only the respond remains,70 are obvious exam-

70 See the references in note 38 above.

75 H. Engberding, “Die Angleichung der byzantinischen Chiysostomusliturgie an

80 Metzger I, 312-21; cf. Table I in Taft, Great Entrance 48-49.

chant — usually antiphonal psalmody — and concluded with an ora-

tradition. They also continued to celebrate the eucharist according to

88 On this history see Taft, The Byzantine Rite, esp. chapter 7.

We have here another seemingly self-contradictory rule of thumb,

This method ... is of necessity an empirical one; for it is only by setting

Hypotheses must cede to facts, not vice-versa. This is the answer, I

because it exhibits variety, nor ‘late just because it exhibits prolixity,

91 Bradshaw, Origins 59.

tians were more likely to expand texts than to abbreviate them. So it is

tikon,100 followed, most recently, by the new 1994 Greek Orthodox

V. Evaluating the Comparative Method

So Baumstark’s "laws” are heuristic principles, not infallible apti-

100 Rome 1973, pp. 18-19, 65.

In the last analysis, scholars like Edmund Bishop (1846-1917)108

VI. Are Baumstark’s “Laws”Laws?

methods similar to those employed in comparative linguistics and com-

This, doubtless, says more than Baumstark should have, especially

geschichtliche Forschung allgemein anerkannte Regeln” — which, in fact, amount to

This abhorrence of preconceived ideas of the sort common to the

114 Cf. Baumstark, Werden 2-6.

The parallel Baumstark stressed most, that of comparative linguis-

116 CL 15; Werden 5.

VI. Beyond Comparative Liturgy

When all is said and done, what is important is what works. As no

119 Ibid. 288.

Our current discussions of pastoral praxis, theological meaning, and of

English literature is not what we imagine it to be or what we wish

like any other cultural phenomenon, must be based not on fantasy or

The study of Liturgy: Practical, Historical, or Theoretical?

122 pui]er discussion of these issues in Taft, "Liturgiewissenschaft," from which I

Liturgical Scholarship and Ecumenism

tenuous existence in the early layers of some traditions of chrismation-confirmation;

Pontificio Istituto Orientale Robert F. Taft, S.J.

128 Taft, "Liturgiewissenschaft," 246-49.