medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
I might also add the Italo-Albanian rite which is canonically
recognized as western but not Roman. There are differences. Priests
marry, for example. They continue in a few villages in Sicily and
southern Italy. They are the descendants of Albanians who fled the
Turks in the fifteenth century.
On May 26, 2004, at 7:00 AM, Thomas Izbicki wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
>
> One minor comment: there are limited local survivals of the Ambrosian
> Rite (Milan) & the Mozarabic Rite (Spain). I attended a Mozarabic mass
> in Salamanca in 1976.
> Tom Izbicki
>
> Thomas Izbicki
> Collection Development Coordinator
> Eisenhower Library
> Johns Hopkins
> Baltimore, MD 21218
> (410)516-7173
> fax (410)516-8399
>
>>>> [log in to unmask] 5/26/2004 9:32:13 AM >>>
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
>
> The clause "one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic" comes from the ancient
> reeds, common to both the "Apostles' Creed" (presumed to be close to
> an
> ancient creed used at Rome) and to the Nicene Creed, thus indicating
> that it was widely shared.
>
> "Roman" in "Roman Catholic" refers to those Catholics who follow the
> Roman rite, liturgically. "Catholic," for those who are not
> Protestant
> or Orthodox, refers to Christians in communion with bishops who are in
> communion with the bishop of Rome, but not all such Christians follow
> the Roman rite. Twenty-one other rites are followed by bishops/people
> in communion with the bishop of Rome. In most of the major families
> of
> liturgical rites (Coptic/Alexandrian; Armenian, Antiochene, which
> includes the Mesopotamian area--Assyrian/Chaldean and as far east as
> the
> Syro-Malabar rite in India; Greek/Constantinople which extends, of
> course into the Balkans and the Ukraine, Slovakia etc.--I"m sure I've
> left something out here) some groups under some bishops are in
> fellowship with the bishop of Rome and some are not (some of these
> latter are Orthodox Churches who accepted Chalcedon and some are
> non-Chalcedonian eastern groups--but Orthodox, non-Chalcedonian, and
> Eastern Catholic--that is, Rome-connected--all follow non-Roman
> liturgical rites of the various familes listed above). To some degree
> the Chalcedonian/non-Chalcedonian schism has been overcome in recent
> decades.
>
> These major families of rites (Antiochene/Syrian, Armenian,
> Alexandrian/Coptic, Constantinopolitan/Greek/Byzantine, Roman) reflect
> the major patriarchates of the ancient church (Alexandria, Antioch,
> Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem. The last one is missing, reflecting
> the events in Palestine after the Muslim conquest (those who know
> liturgy better than I, please correct me--but today liturgy in
> Palestine
> and Jerusalem follows the various non-Jerusalem rites--Palestinian
> Christians have basically been absorbed into the Aramaic-derived
> cousin-liturgy of Antioch, plus the various imports reflecting the
> interest of all the major rites in the holy places?) And one major
> liturgical family, the Armenian, does not reflect one of the big five
> ancient patriarchates but does go back to the first fully
> Christianized
> kingdom, very early in Christian history.
>
> Now, please note that four of the five ancient patriarchates are in
> the
> eastern Mediterranean and only one in the western Mediterranean. This
> has tremendous consequences for today's confusion over Roman
> Catholic/Catholic. For reasons too complicated to explain here,
> Christianity in Western and Northern Europe ended up following the
> Roman
> rite--there was no other patriarchate. There were other rites (MIlan,
> Spain, Gaul, Britain) but no second patriarchate. The other rites
> were
> suppressed (some people think this was a terrible travesty of Roman
> imperialism, others, myself included, see this as one aspect of the
> struggle to maintain unity in the western Church in the face of
> nationalism that took a different form than in the east: in the east,
> most of the Orthodox churches and including the center, Byzantium,
> ended
> up under foreign dominance at precisely the time that the western
> nationalities were becoming pwerful nation states (late Middle Ages,
> early modern era). The commonly shared liturgy emanating from
> Constantinople served to unite, despite national/ethnic differences,
> in
> the face of foreign rule. In the west, The same purpose lay behind
> the increasing insistence on liturgical uniformity in the West, but
> because the nation-states did break break of the political empires and
> tried, sometimes succeeding, to establish national churches not in
> fellowship with the bishop of Rome, modifying the liturgy to create a
> Roman-rite derived but theologically distinct (schismatic, if not
> heretical, from the Catholic standpoint) liturgies. To counter this,
> the Roman rite became highly standardized to the point that even the
> gestures were the same whereever the Roman rite was celebrated--in the
> reforms instituted after the Council of Trent.
>
> Because the Western European Christians rather than Eastern or
> Near-Eastern Christians (who had their hands full surviving under
> Ottoman rule) spread Christianity together with their colonial empires
> in the early modern and modern eras to the Americas and south and east
> Asia, the Roman rite, not the Armenian or Antiochene or Alexandrian
> rite
> spread around the world. (There are a few exceptions---Alaska, the
> Syrian rite spreading to India and to central Asia, but for the most
> part this either took place very early [Syro-Malabar] or did not
> survive
> to any great degreei nto the modern era (Central Asia, Chinese
> so-called
> "Nestorians", but exceptions that, I think, prove my very generalized
> "rule.")
>
> THis is a very long way of getting to my main point: today, 90 or 95 %
> of the bishops and their people who are in fellowship with the bishop
> of
> Rome, hence, 90-95% of the Catholics, are also _Roman_ Catholic, that
> is, bishop-of-Rome Christians who follow the Roman rite, now
> vernacularized and to some degree turned into a distinct
> American/Canadian/English or a distinct Italian or German rite because
> of all the options and modifications authorized by national
> conferences
> of bishops in various Roman-rite countries. But five or ten percent
> of
> all the Catholics in the world are non-Roman rite bishop-of-Rome
> Christians. The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not refer to
> the
> whole bundle of them as "Roman Catholics"--it's not the Catechism of
> the
> Roman Catholic Church but of "the Catholic Church" even though what
> demarcates the Catholic Church in this usage (and in the Vatican II
> documents) is communion with the bishop of Rome.
>
> Those Christians who believe that the bishop of Rome in one way or
> another has gone off the reservation and hence are not in fellowship
> with him (Protestants, whose worship to some degree derives from the
> Roman rite, though apart from Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists and
> some
> Presbyterians one the derivation is not very visible anymore;
> "Eastern"
> Orthodox, the non-bishop-of-Rome Christians in the Near East etc.)
> find
> the claiming of "Catholic" for bishop-of-Rome Christians alone to be a
> bit presumptious and wrong-headed. But that's another way of saying,
> Christians are divided into three main groups for the last 1000 years
> and do not agree about exactly what holds them together, what makes
> for
> universality/Catholicness.
>
> But from the very early centuries, multiple rites existed without
> destroying catholicty and presumably Christians could overcome the
> schisms, lack of full communion, without adopting one of the five or
> so
> ancient rites as the sole liturgical rite.
>
> I realize that much of the above pertains to contemporary matters, but
> I
> think it could be immensely helpful to medievalists to have a general
> overview of the ancient patriarchates and their rites (with
> subfamilies--e.g., the Ambrosian, Gallican, Mozarabic within the West)
> and some sense of how these did or did not spread. For instance, to
> understand the Carolingian situation vis-a-vis the spread of the
> Byzantine rite under Cyril and Methodius in the 9thc and the
> middle-role
> played by the bishop of Rome, caught between the pressure of the
> Carolingians and their client princes on the eastern frontier of the
> "empire" on the one hand and the patriarch in Constantinople on the
> other hand, could be helpful. The growth of nationalism and
> vernacular
> culture in Western Europe from the 12thc onward, the struggle between
> popes and emperors and then between kings and popes (France, England),
> leading eventually to the national/city-state Protestant churches in
> England, Scandinavia, parts of Germany etc. by the 17thc --all this
> can
> be better understood against the backdrop of the major families of
> liturgical rites and the "accident" of history that all of the Latin
> West (Italy, Gaul, Spain, Britain) had only one patriarchal see from
> the
> beginnings of Christianity in the West (what if Carthage had developed
> into a second patrarchate???? how might history have been different?
> partly this reflects the difference in the way the Roman empire grew
> in
> the East and in the west, the survival of distinct ethnicities and
> nationalities in the East, with a Roman overlay, compared to the more
> thorough Romanization of Italy, Gaul, Spain--s. Italy being an
> exception), that Christianization to the north and east of the old
> boundaries of the Roman Empire--Netherlands, Germany, Poland,
> Scandinavia proceeeded either directly from Rome or via
> missionary-monks
> who came from Britain in the 700s after the Roman-Celtic rite matters
> had been resolved in the 600s. Of course, Poland,. later Lithuania,
> and
> Scandinavia were then evangelized by missionary monks either from
> England or from the England-converted German areas; the same pattern
> then repeats itself with the Christianization of the Americas etc.
>
> But now I have exhausted everyone's patience. Corrections are
> invited.
>
> Dennis Martin
>
>>>> [log in to unmask] 05/25/04 11:12 PM >>>
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
>
> "We believe in one holy, Catholic and apostolic Church..." No "Roman"
> in
> sight. Since I don't use a missal, I'm not even sure if "Catholic" is
> capitalized. In fact, the word "Catholic" itself has been increasingly
> supplanted by "Christian," or so it seems at times. And "Mass" has
> been
> replaced by "Eucharist," except among Catholics of a certain age.
> MG
>
>
>
>
>
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Gary Macy, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Theology and Religious Studies
Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Latino/a Catholicism
University of San Diego
5998 Alcalá Park
San Diego, CA 92110
619-260-4053
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