medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Preface (8)
I had a look at Gregory Dix, "The Shape of the Liturgy" to see what he
says about the Preface, and whom should I bump into but our old friend,
Sarapion, Bishop of Thmuis - remember him? He was one of the nicest of
guis, and, it seems, wrote a prayer of remarkable suis. It begins:
"It is meet and right to praise, to hymn, to glorify Thee, O uncreated
Father of the Only-begotten Jesus Christ. We praise Thee, O uncreated
God, Who art unsearchable, ineffable, incomprehensible by any created
substance. We praise Thee who art known of Thy Son the Only-begotten,
who through him art spoken and interpreted and made known to every
created being. We praise Thee who knowest the Son and revealest to the
saints the doctrines concerning HIm: who art known of Thy begotten Word
and art brought to the sight and understanding of the saints . . ."
Dix believes the prayer, in its original form, belongs to the third
century, but was substantially re-written in the fourth. The paragraph
quoted seems to go out of its way to repudiate the teaching of Arius
that the Son does not know the essence of the Father and is a creature.
This, says Dix, makes it clear that that it has been re-written, or
perhaps added bodily before the second paragraph, during the second
quarter of the forth century, when the Arian controversy was at its
height. Now Sarapion was Bishop of Thmuis from before AD 339 to some
date between AD 353 and 360, and was moreover a pal of Athanasius,
Bishop of Alexandria, the arch-enemy of Arius. Perhaps he re-wrote the
Eucharistic prayer current in his church to weigh in on the Catholic
side of the controversy raging during his episcopate.
Bill.
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