Canon LII.
On
all days of the holy fast of
Lent, except on the Sabbath, the Lord’s day and the holy day of
the Annunciation, the Liturgy of the Presanctified is to be said.
Notes.
Ancient Epitome of Canon
LII.
Throughout the whole of Lent except upon the
Lord’s day, the Sabbath, and upon the day of the Annunciation,
the presanctified gifts shall be offered.
Balsamon.
We do not call the service of the Presanctified the
unbloody sacrifice, but the offering of the previously offered, and of
the perfected sacrifice, and of the completed priestly act.
Van Espen.
The Greeks therefore confess that the bread once offered
and consecrated, is not to be consecrated anew on another day; but a
new offering is made of what was before consecrated and
presanctified: just as in the Latin Church the consecrated or
presanctified bread of Maundy Thursday is offered on Good Friday.
The Patriarch Michael of Constantinople is quoted by Leo
Allatius as saying that “none of the mystic consecratory prayers
are said over the presanctified gifts, but the priest only recites the
prayer that he may be a worthy communicant.”
Some among the later Greeks have been of opinion that
the unconsecrated wine was consecrated by the commixture with the
consecrated bread, and (without any words of consecration) was
transmuted into the sacred blood,
374
and with
this seems to agree the already quoted Michael, Patriarch of
Constantinople, who is cited by Leo Allatius in his treatise on the
rite of the presanctified. “The presanctified is put into
the mystic chalice, and so the wine which was then in it, is changed
into the holy blood of the Lord.” And with this agrees
Simeon, Archbishop of Thessalonica, in his answer to Gabriel of
Pentapolis, when he writes: “In the mass of the
Presanctified no consecration of what is in the chalice is made by the
invocation of the Holy Spirit and of his sign, but by the participation
and union of the life-giving bread, which is truly the body of
Christ.”
From this opinion, which was held by some of the Greeks,
it gradually became the practice at Constantinople not to dip the bread
in the Sacred Blood, as Michael the patriarch of this very church
testifies. But in the ordinary Euchologion of the Greeks it is
expressly set forth that the presanctified bread before it is reserved,
should be dipped in the sacred blood, and for this a rite is
provided.
Leo Allatius’s
Dissertatio de Missa
Præsanctificatorum
should be read; an outline of the service
as found in the
Euchologion
, and as reprinted by Renaudotius is
as follows.
First of all vespers is said. After some lessons
and prayers, including the “Great Ectenia” and that for the
Catechumens, these are dismissed.
After the Catechumens have departed there follows the
Ectenia of the Faithful. After which, “Now the heavenly
Powers invisibly minister with us; for, behold, the King of Glory is
borne in. Behold the mystic sacrifice having been perfected is
borne aloft by angels.
“Let us draw near with faith and love, that we may
become partakers of life eternal. Alleluia, Alleluia,
Alleluia.
“
Deacon
. Let us accomplish our
evening prayer to the Lord.
“For the precious and presanctified gifts that are
offered, let us pray to the Lord. “That our man-loving God,
etc.” as in the
ordinary
liturgy past the Lord’s prayer, and down to the
Sancta
Sanctis
, which reads as follows:
Priest
. Holy things presanctified for holy
persons.
Choir
. One holy, one Lord Jesus Christ, to
the Glory of God the Father—Amen.
Then the Communion Hymn and the Communion, and the rest
as in the ordinary liturgy, except “this whole evening,” is
said for “this whole day,” and another prayer is provided
in the room of that beginning “Lord, who blessest them,
etc.”
375
It is curious to note that on Good Friday, the only day
on which the Mass of the Presanctified is celebrated in the West, its
use has died out in the East, and now it is used “on the
Wednesdays and Fridays of the first six weeks of the Great
Quadragesima, on the Thursday of the fifth week, and on the Monday,
Tuesday, and Wednesday of Holy Passion Week. It may also be said,
excepting on Saturdays and Sundays, and on the Festival of the
Annunciation, on other days during the Fast, to wit, on those of
festivals and their Vigils, and on the Commemoration of the Dedication
of the Church.”
Symeon, who was bishop of Thessalonica, and flourished
in the early part of the
XV
th
Century, complains of the general neglect of the Mass of the
Presanctified on Good Friday in his time, and says that his church was
the only one in the Exarchate that then retained it. He ascribes
the disuse to the example of the Church of Jerusalem. See the
matter treated at length in his
Quæstiones
, lv.–lix.
Migne’s
Pat. Græc
.
Cf
. J. M. Neale
Essays on Liturgiology
, p.
109.
374
Gerbert makes it
quite evident that from about 850 until 1200, that is from Amalarius
until Durand, the same view was held in the West.
Vide
Gerbertus.
Vetus Liturgia Allomanica,
p. 855
et.
seqq
.
375
The English reader
is referred to G. V. Shann,
Euchology
, and
The Book of
Needs,
for excellent translations of the Greek offices; J. M.
Neale’s
Introduction to the History of the Holy Orthodox
Eastern Church
will, of course, be consulted.