After a few more prayers, the priest and deacon go to the diakonikon, the doors are again shut, and they take off their vestments. They make a short thanksgiving, and the liturgy is over.[1] The Byzantine Liturgy takes two or three hours to celebrate. It is undoubtedly a very splendid and majestic service, and the prayers (the Preface especially) often reach a very high point of emotional poetry. Is it Latin prejudice that makes one think our shorter Mass, at the open altar, with its absence of all emotionalism, its simple ceremonies, and sternly reticent prayers, more dignified?[2]
6. Other Rites; the Sacraments.
The Divine Office in the Byzantine Church is a very compli-
cated thing. There is no Breviary, so the different parts have
to be read from the various books described above (p. 401).
It is also enormously long. To sing the whole office for one
day is said to take about eight hours. The merest outline of
this office will be enough here. Like the Western hours it
consists essentially of psalm-singing. The psalter is divided
into twenty parts ((
Greek characters)), containing from four to eight
psalms each,[3] and it is sung right through in a week. The
office also contains collects, prayers, litanies and an immense
variety of hymns and antiphons, such as the Heirmos ((Greek characters)),
which is a hymn having a tune of its own, the Troparion
((Greek characters)), which is sung to the tune of its heirmos, the Kontakion
((Greek characters)), a short hymn about the feast of the day, the Oikos
((Greek characters)), which is joined to the Troparion to develop the ideas
3 The numbers exactly in Nilles: Kalendarium, I. liv.
- ↑ That is only an outline of the service. All the time prayers, hymns, and antiphons are being said and sung, of which the text will be found in Brightman.
- ↑ The Orthodox have no provision for Low Mass. Where there is no deacon the priest has to supply the deacon's part and manage as best he can. But, as they only celebrate on Sundays and feast-days, they have less need for any service like our Low Mass. The Uniates have provided for it though. The Greek College at Rome has a number of little manuscript books containing a ritual for the liturgy when there are only a priest and a server. In 1893 I was allowed to copy this book, and I have served "low" Uniate liturgies from it. But the whole thing is much less defined than our Low Mass. For the liturgy see Kattenbusch: Confessionskunde, i. pp. 491-498.
- ↑ 3
