medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I realized I have on my shelf a source to clarify the date and quotation questions and that I was incorrect on several points.
The Didache was discovered in 1873, published 1883.
The first part (rules for Christian behavior) is quoted in the Epistle of Barnabas ch. 18-20 . Both parts or the second part alone (a "manual of Church order/sacramental/liturgical practice) were take up into the Apostolic Constitutions (4th century), as well as in the Syriac Didascalia. These are later manuals of church order/sacramental actions along the same lines as the Didache but expanded in form. There was a 3rd c. Latin translation, known in at least one 11thc manusc ript, published by J.Schlecht, _Doctrina XII Apostolorum_ (Frieburg, 1900). There are Coiptic, Arabic, Georgian, and Ethiopic versions as well.
Its transmission was very much deeper and broader in the Eastern Mediterranean than in the Latin West. This makes perfect sense because it seems to have originated in Syria and belongs to the liturgical world of the Christian East rather than the Latin West; but that it was translated in the 3rd century into Latin would be significant--it claims to be apostolic in origin, so interest in the West is certainly understandable. Others can correct me, but I don't think it played a major role in Western liturgical development--the West had its own liturgical traditions and in this sense I think my initial comments about not giving it too much authority as a general liturgical source can stand. In other words, I cannot understand why prayers from it were taken up into the Roman Rite in the post-Vatican II revisions--it seems to me that Greek, Coptic, Syrian, Roman rites have their own integrity and long history of development. Importing from this difficult-to-pigeonhole early Syriac text into the modern Roman Rite makes little sense to me.
Others will have to speak to any wider medieval use of the Latin translation, but I would expect that it would have been used in the context of the vita apostolica movements, as a witness of apostolic teaching more than apostolic liturgy. As a liturgical/sacramentary source, I don't think it was really "known" in the medieval West--but those whose expertise is medieval liturgy can correct me.
Dennis Martin
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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
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