Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Categories
- All Categories 13.8K
- General Category 10.9K
- General Announcements 184
- Faith Issues 3.4K
- Coptic Orthodox Church 2.5K
- Personal Issues 1.4K
- Prayer Requests 423
- Random Issues 1.8K
- Introductions 294
- Non-Orthodox Inquiries 232
- Youth Corner 606
- Hymns 2.5K
- Hymns Discussion 2.5K
- Technicial Difficulties 368
- Technical Topics 368
Original Rite of Raising of Incense
Hello,
I was recently listening to a talk by Abouna Athanasius El-Maqari and he was saying how the daily office of Vespers and Matins was prayed in Church with raising of incense by the priest (and this included what we have separated out of it in the Agpeya and their respective praises). I am wondering what exactly was the outline of the original Coptic Rite?
For example for Vespers:
Was it thanksgiving, verses of the cymbals, psalm 50 and other psalms (including Ni-ethnos and fourth hoos), psali and theotokia and conclusion, gospel of compline/Vespers and their respective troparia, and then litany of the departed, graciously accord O Lord, Trisagion, Doxologies, Intro & Creed, Litany of God have mercy (With Kyrie Eleison), Litany of the Gospel, Gospel of the Day, the three major litanies and then Absolution?
Just wanted to know how off my guess here is to the original outline, and whether it is possible to revive this outline back into the Church,
Thanks.
Comments
By Fr Robert Taft, S.J. in "The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West:The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today" 2nd Revised Edition (Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1993) 252-256
i . The Monastic Horologion
The present Coptic Horologion has eight hours: morning prayer, terce, sext, none, eleventh hour (vespers), and compline, plus two hours that are apparently later additions: the "Prayer of the Veil," and a midnight hour comprising three nocturns. Both of these additional hours repeat psalmody already distributed throughout the other six hours. The Prayer of the Veil, a doubling of compline, appears first in Abu'l-Barakat ibn Kabar around 1320, exists only in Arabic sources (a sure sign of its late origin), and is composed of elements from the other hours. It is used only in monasteries.
With the exception of these two later additions, the structure of all these hours is the same:
Fixed initial prayers
Twelve psalms (ideally)
Gospel lesson
Troparia (poetic refrains)
Kyrie eleison (41 or 50 times)
Trisagion
Our Father
Dismissal Prayer of Absolution
Final Prayer
Variety among the hours is minimal. Morning prayer has the Great Doxology (Gloria in excelsis), as one would expect, and the creed. Other hours also have certain minor peculiarities, but the basic structure is the same. So apart from the later addition of seven further psalms to the original twelve at morning prayer, and some variety in the final prayers, this is the structure of all the traditional hours from morning prayer to compline.
The refrains or troparia are a later addition of Palestinian origin, and if we prescind from them we see an office that is almost pure Cassian.
ii. Cathedral Remnants
But in addition to this monastic psalmody we find other services, the Offering of Incense morning and evening, and the threefold Psalmodia of the night, the morning, and the evening, which contain elements apparently of cathedral provenance.
The Offering of Incense is as follows, with the variable or proper parts in italics:
Fixed introductory prayers
Invitatory
Praise of Mary
Supplications to the saints
Prayer of Incense
Incensation of the altar, with short intercessions
Great Intercession
Incensation
Trisagion
Our Father
Praise of Mary
Doxologies (poetic refrains)
Creed
Incensation with prayers
Blessing with candles and cross
Solemn Kyrie eleison (litany)
(OT lessons and litanies at Morning Offering of Incense on certain fast days)
Prayer of the Gospel
Psalm verse
Alleluia
Gospel lesson
Incensation and short intercessions
Prayer of Absolution to the Son
(Reading of the synaxary at Morning Offering of Incense)
Veneration of cross and gospel
Final blessing
This office contains what seems to be the debris of older cathedral services.
Even more significant in this regard is the so-called Psalmodia, which refers not to biblical psalmody but the sung office, a term akin to the Greek asmatikos or old sung cathedral office of Hagia Sophia in Byzantine parlance. This Psalmodia has never been subjected to thorough scholarly analysis, and poses numerous problems, but the cathedral elements in its structure are particularly evident in the Psalmodia of the Evening and in the Psalmodia of the Night. The former is rarely celebrated today, but when done it comes between compline (and the Prayer of the Veil in monasteries) and the Evening Offering of Incense. It has the following elements (the variable proper parts are italicized):
Psalmodia of the Evening:
Fixed initial prayers
Ps 116
Hos (ode) 4: Pss. 148-150 with alleluia
Psali (poetic refrains) of season or feast and day
Theotokia (Marian hymns) of the day
Lobsh (crown) of the Theotokia
Hymn from the Difnar (antiphonary)
Conclusion of the Theotokia
The much longer Psalmodia of the Night, sung between nocturns and the morning office, comprises:
Psalmodia of the Night:
Fixed initial prayers
Invitatory versicles (chiefly psalmic)
(Resurrectional praises on Sundays and in Paschaltide)
Hos (ode)
1) Ex 15:1-21 with Psali (poetic commentary on the ode)
2) Ps 135 with Psali
3) Dan 3:52-88 with Psali of the paschal mystery and Psali of the ode (on the three youths in the furnace)
Litany of the saints
Doxologies of the feast or day
Hos (ode) 4) Pss 148-150 with alleluia after each verse
Psali of the feast or day
Theotokia
Lobsch (crown) of the Theotokia
Hymn of the day from the Difnar (antiphonary), with its Tarh (response)
Conclusion of the Theotokia
Creed
Concluding litany
Sanctus
Our Father
Dismissal Prayer of Absolution
The Psalmodia of the Morning, which follows the morning office of the Horologion, is made up of only a couple of poetic pieces and can hardly be called an office at all. The Psalmodia of the Evening and of the Night seem to be the remnants, in the first case, of cathedral lauds, and in the second, of lauds again, this time preceded by elements of the old Sunday Resurrection Vigil as reconstructed by Mateos.
As for cathedral vespers in the Egyptian tradition, evidence of it can still be found in Ethiopian vespers, which is of Egyptian provenance at least in part; Winkler has identified the residue of an old cathedral vespers in the Coptic Evening Offering of Incense; and Ugo Zanetti has recently found in a fourteenth-century manuscript at the Monastery of St. Macarius in the Wadi an-Natrun a Byzantine-type cathedral evensong or "Prayer of the Eleventh Hour according to the Use of Cairo." Other manuscripts at St. Macarius have the psalter distributed in the Byzantine manner, including the invitatory Ps 103 and the select vesperal psalms of Byzantine Sabaitic cathedral vespers: Pss 140, 141, 129, 116.
1. Prayer of Thanksgiving
This order seems strikingly similar to the Bright Saturday order that is still used today.
Would this work for a similar outline for Vespers?
oujai khan ebshois
I bring this up because I know of a church that does not pray matins prior to liturgy. That is not exactly breaking the rules though is it?
In fact Agpeya before the Liturgy is a recent addition as well from last century.
Often Liturgy began straight with the Offertory (while singers chanted Alleluia Phai Pe Pi).
You are right that this Abul-Barakat's Matins/Vespers description is strikingly similar to Bright Saturday. There are also services throughout the year in which Psalm 50 comes right after the Verses of the Cymbals (Laqqans, and so forth), surely a sign of an older practice in which Horologion psalms were prayed.
Details aside, I think you are mostly correct in your reconstruction, although I don't think all of these elements were part of any one rite, for example verses of cymbals (in my understanding) replaced the psalms and other praise elements. Fr. Athanasius analyzes this development in his book step by step, but of course all this is tentative. Also, in my article, I stress the source of any given information because I don't want to give the impression that vespers was practiced this way everywhere in our church up to a certain point. All we know is that Abul-Barakat describes vespers as such. For all we know, this may have been a very local practice in Al-Muallaqa church at his time, or even an ideal representation of what this priest thought should be done...the possibilities are endless, especially without a lot of other supportive evidence.
oujai khan ebshois