Springtime of the Liturgy: Liturgical Texts of the First Four Centuries

Rating:
Summary: Go back to the early Christian worship...
Review: The Springtime of The Liturgy, by Lucien Deiss, is essentially a collection of early Christian liturgical and worship texts. The work is important in that it gives us a glimpse of early Christian worship and prayer. The content is surprising at times (for instance the Didascalia suggests the bishop give up his place for a poor person if there is no room for the poor person in the congregation), enigmatic (Christians prayed facing East), and familiar (the basic structure of the ancient prayers are still around in today's common liturgies). I read this text with great excitement as I learned many new things about Eucharistic Theology, Confirmation, Baptism, and the offices of Bishop, presbyter, and deacon (and deaconesses). The texts speak for themselves, but Deiss adds helpful introductions and footnotes. The chapters are arranged as follows and contains excerpts from various ancient writings:

1. Sources of Jewish Prayer (Jewish underpinnings of our Liturgy)
2. Institution of the Eucharist (New Testament Eucharistic Texts)
3. Doxologies, Blessings, And Hymns of the New Testament
4. The Didache (A very early Church manual, 100 AD)
5. Clement of Rome (earliest Roman Eucharistic prayer, 95 AD)
6. Witness of St. Justin (Probably the clearest insight into early Christian worship, 150 AD)
7. Melito (His work gives us valuable insight into Jewish Christianity)
8. Clement of Alexandria (200 AD)
9. Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus (a valuable, primitive church manual)
10. The Anaphora of Addai and Mari (perhaps the oldest Eucharistic prayer we have)
11. Didascalia of the Apostles (An early 3rd century Syrian Text)
12. Euchology of Serapion (collection of 30 prayers from the 4th century)
13.Strasbourg Papyrus (4th century "Liturgy of St. Mark")
14. Apostolic Constitutions (extensive liturgical book of the 4th century)
15. Euchology of Der Balyzeh (prayers from the 4th-5th centuries)
16. Klasmata (various fragments)
17. Catecheses of Cyril of Jerusalem (catechism information on the Eucharist, Baptism, etc, by a leader in Jerusalem's Church)

For students of liturgy, scholars, priests/ministers, and historians, this work is very important. The age it covers is truly the springtime of the liturgy, when Church worship was young and not fully developed, but beautiful and mysterious nonetheless.