One of the areas in which scholars have tried to fit together the extant evidence so as to create as far as possible a single, unified picture of a liturgical practice is that of baptismal anointing in early Christianity. Yet closer analysis suggests that this is far from having been the case. It is not just a question of whether it took place before or after the water bath or in both positions. As we shall see, there appears to be no consensus about any aspect of the matter, be it ritual form or interpretation.
The first three centuries
First, we need to acknowledge that among the earliest sources are some which make no explicit reference to any anointing at all in connection with baptism. Two of these in particular – the Didache and the description by Justin Martyr1 – seem to exclude the possibility that anointing was actually practised but simply not mentioned, even though desperate attempts have been made by some to find hidden allusions to the practice in the respective texts.2 In neither case does there seem to be any reason for the author to have omitted to mention such a significant part of the rite if indeed it had existed.
Second, our principal source for early Syrian practices, the Acts of Thomas, describes a variety of different forms of initiation rite. In the Syriac version of the text there are two instances that refer to an anointing of the head alone, associate this with the Messiah, and have no blessing prayer (chapters 25–27 and 132–33) and two that refer to the anointing of both the head and the whole body, focus on the theme of healing, and include a prayer for the blessing of the oil (chapters 121 and 156–58), as well as one (chapters 49–50) in which water alone is mentioned. In addition, in the Greek version of the text, there is no reference even to water in two cases: chapters 27–29 speak only of oil, and chapters 49–50 only of the ‘seal’ (σφραγίς, translated as rushma, ‘sign’, in the Syriac). While it has sometimes been argued that this word here refers to the rite as a whole, both anointing and immersion, its more usual import in the Syrian tradition is simply to denote anointing.3
Attempts have been made to harmonize at least some of these variant practices, most notably by Gabriele Winkler, who argued that the references to anointing of the head alone and those that included both head and body reflected two successive stages in the evolution of the ritual.4 Ruth Meyers suggested alternatively that as explicit mention of the anointing of the body occurred only when female candidates were involved (who required the services of a woman to perform the action), in the other instances the body-anointing may have been presumed without necessitating detailed description, with the oil perhaps simply being allowed to run down from the head over the body or the apostle Thomas himself performing the service.5 It is true that the only other extant reference to a distinction between head and body anointing from this period also occurs in the context of instructions as what to do in the case of female baptizands in the Didascalia Apostolorum, but it needs to be noted that here the anointing of the head is not specifically associated with the Messiah, as in the Acts of Thomas, but with the way that ‘as of old priests and kings were anointed in Israel’.6 Thus, the differences not only in what was done but how it was interpreted make it seem more likely that all these represent different parallel traditions that were known in the area rather than a single line of development. To complete the survey of the East, we should note that Origen was also familiar with a baptismal anointing of the body at Caesarea, to which he seems to attach an apotropaic function, as he likens it to the smearing of the doorposts and lintels of the houses in Exodus 12.6–7, and so it too probably came before the immersion.7
In contrast to the Syrian witnesses, the earliest Western evidence for baptismal anointing refers to the action taking place after the immersion in water and not before. Tertullian in North Africa, writing around the beginning of the third century, describes an anointing of the head alone, which he compares to ‘the ancient practice by which, ever since Aaron was anointed by Moses, there was a custom of anointing them for priesthood with oil out of a horn’.8 In spite of the different position in the rite which this anointing occupies, the similarity in the justification given for it to that in the Didascalia might be thought to point to a common root reaching back to primitive times. On the other hand, it could just be that both were quarrying the same Scriptures to explain a practice the original meaning of which had been lost. Cyprian, writing in the same region half a century later, also mentions a post-baptismal anointing (without specifying whether it was the head or the whole body), but says that its purpose was so that the newly baptized person ‘may be the anointed of God and have in him the grace of Christ’,9 while Hippolytus at the same period in his Commentary on Daniel (1.16.3) appears to associate the power of the Holy Spirit, ‘with which, like perfume, believers are anointed after the bath’, with oil,10 in contrast to the North African writers who associate the Spirit with a laying on of hands.
The so-called Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus introduces further complications to the picture of variant practices. Here there is both a pre-baptismal anointing by a presbyter with what is described as ‘the oil of exorcism’ following the candidate’s renunciation of evil, and two post-baptismal anointings with ‘the oil of thanksgiving’, the first apparently of the whole body by a presbyter, the second of the head by the bishop. The first post-baptismal anointing is accompanied with the words, ‘I anoint you with holy oil in the name of Jesus Christ’, and the second with a Trinitarian formula, but no other specific interpretation of the meaning of either unction is given. In our commentary on this work, my colleagues and I argued that this is a composite text made up of different strata, and that the pre-baptismal unction and the first post-baptismal one both belong to a different, and probably later, layer than the specifically episcopal actions in this rite. At the same time we also raised the possibility that the anointing with oil by the bishop was itself a subsequent insertion into a post-baptismal sequence of episcopal actions that had formerly consisted simply of a prayer with imposition of hands, the making of the sign of the cross, and the exchange of a kiss – a sequence that may have some parallel in the rites known to Cyprian in North Africa.11 If our reconstruction is correct, then all references to anointing may not have entered this text until around the beginning of the fourth century, as the oldest witness to it is the Canons of Hippolytus, thought to have been composed around 330. Even so, it would still be the earliest explicit testimony to a pre-baptismal anointing linked to exorcism, and to a full-body anointing in what seems to be in other ways a Western source.
What then can we make of this ante-Nicene evidence? The answer seems to be, ‘not much’. Although nearly all our sources treat anointing as being a normal constituent element within the baptismal rite, they fail to show any agreement on either its position (before or after the immersion), its form (head or body or both), or above all its meaning – messianic/christic, priestly, grace/Spirit-filled, or what? This lack of consistency makes tracing its origin largely an impossibility. Moreover, when we move on to the somewhat more plentiful sources from the fourth century, the picture is still one with no greater agreement.
Pre-baptismal anointing in fourth-century Antioch
John Chrysostom seems to have known at Antioch in the late fourth century both a head- and a body-anointing before baptism. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, in one of his baptismal homilies (c.388) he refers to the renunciation and confession of faith taking place on Friday, the day before the baptism proper.12 He states that an anointing of the forehead with the sign of the cross and a Trinitarian formula ‘immediately’ followed, and views this anointing as primarily being protective against the devil, although he also remarks that the chrism used is ‘a mixture of olive oil and unguent; the unguent is for the bride, the oil is for the athlete’. He then goes on to mention very briefly an anointing of all the limbs, with which ‘you will be secure and able to hold the serpent in check; you will suffer no harm’.13 Oddly, this appears to happen before the robe is removed for the immersion in water, and equally oddly there is no clear indication of the point in this sequence when the preliminary assembly ended and the baptismal rite itself began. However, in another baptismal homily (c.390), while he is not specific about when the preliminary rites occurred, he does make a clearer separation between the two anointings, stating that the second, specifically of the whole body, took place ‘at the appointed hour of the night’ and followed the removal of clothing. Here, in addition to the protective motif, he also states that ‘the bishop anoints you as athletes of Christ before leading you into the spiritual arena’, but this somewhat strangely in relation to the anointing of the forehead rather than more naturally that of the whole body, which again is dealt with rather briefly: this second unction is to ‘armour all your limbs and make them invulnerable to any weapons the Enemy may hurl’.14
A similar double pre-baptismal anointing is described by Theodore of Mopsuestia, but in this instance both of them take place within the baptismal rite, and the first is interpreted primarily as receiving the identification mark of a sheep/soldier of Christ and the second as symbolizing the garment of immortality that will be received through baptism.15 However, they are separated from one another by the ceremonial imposition of a linen cloth (called an orarium) on the candidate’s forehead. As Ruth Meyers has remarked, it seems peculiar to place an orarium on the baptizand’s head only to remove it immediately for the full-body anointing, and she suggests if the orarium had originally concluded a separate rite of renunciation, confession of faith, and first anointing, its position would no longer seem awkward (in later rites it is moved to a post-baptismal location to solve this problem).16
In the case of Chrysostom, and apparently of Theodore of Mopsuestia too, it seems that an earlier combined head and body anointing has become divided,17 with the head anointing attracted backwards to form a dramatic conclusion to the preliminary rite of renunciation and profession of faith. This is suggested not only by Chrysostom’s apparent vagueness with regard to where one ended and the other began but also by his explanation of the meaning of the first anointing, which would make more natural sense if it were in relation to a whole head and body unction rather than of the forehead alone, and which leaves him with nothing much to say about the second anointing, of the whole body. It is also supported by evidence from other rites that are thought to derive from that of Antioch, where the head and body anointings are still united in the baptismal rite itself. Thus, the fifth-century rite of Constantinople, where the renunciation and confession of faith continued to constitute a separate rite on Good Friday, as had been the case in Chrysostom’s Antioch, has no anointing of the head there, but instead a simple imposition of the hand and blessing by the patriarch concludes it.18 Pseudo-Dionysius also describes the profession of faith as being followed by an imposition of hands, with the anointing of the head and body both taking place after the candidate has been unclothed: the bishop ‘begins the anointing with the threefold sealing, and for the rest assigns the man to the priests for the anointing of his whole body’, while he begins the consecration of the baptismal water.19 It appears, therefore, that Chrysostom’s experimental repositioning of the anointing of the head was not one that lasted.
Pre-baptismal anointing in later Syrian practice
In support of the above contention, it is to be noted that some later Syrian liturgical texts continue to mark an earlier division between the preliminary rites, which include the renunciation and profession of faith, and the baptismal rite proper, and in every instance locate all anointings in the second part. However, nearly all the extant texts speak of two separate pre-baptismal anointings, one coming before the consecration of the water and the other after.20 Although there is some variation, the first anointing is usually of the forehead alone, while the second involves the anointing of the head by the priest and of the rest of the body by deacons. In the earliest manuscripts of the rite, the formula accompanying the first of these speaks of the ‘oil of gladness’21 which will make the candidate ‘worthy of the adoption of rebirth’, while a preceding prayer asks for the gift of the Holy Spirit. The formula accompanying the second refers both to protection against the devil and to grafting into the good olive tree of the Church, an apparent allusion to Romans 11.22
Sebastian Brock has suggested that, as in the case of Chrysostom, this double unction is also the result of the duplication of a single anointing, which came about because, he alleges, its original position varied, in some cases preceding the consecration of the water, in others following it, and because it was already a twofold action, the priest anointing the head, the deacons the rest of the body.23 This explanation, however, fails to take seriously the fact that the anointing of the head is repeated in the second unction (Brock simply remarks that the anointing of the body ‘was unlikely to be kept alone’) and the fact that Pseudo-Dionysius and other Syrian commentators refer only to a single anointing, before the consecration of the water, as well as the fact that the Byzantine and East Syrian rites too only know of a single pre-baptismal anointing.24 Brock does point out, however, that the theme of grafting in Romans 11 is quite unknown in connection with baptism in any Antiochene writer of the first five centuries, but because it is found in the Jerusalem Mystagogical Catecheses in connection with the pre-baptismal anointing, he postulates that ‘when the post-baptismal anointing was introduced from Jerusalem into the Antiochene rite, there came with it the Jerusalem formula for the pre-baptismal anointing as well’.25
This suggestion may, however, be taken further. Could it have been that not just the formula but the whole head and body anointing itself was imported from Jerusalem into the Syrian rite at the same time as the post-baptismal unction, and placed immediately before the immersion, as it had been at Jerusalem? If this hypothesis is correct, it would mean that previously the rite into which it was inserted had only had one anointing, of the head alone, which took place before the consecration of the water. Yet this contrasts both with the custom known to Chrysostom and with the single head and body anointing recorded in Pseudo-Dionysius and also found in East Syrian and Byzantine practice. On the other hand, it is in continuity with what we have proposed was the earlier varied tradition of this region, where some communities knew an anointing of the head and body associated with healing while others had just an anointing of the head alone associated with the Messiah. It is to be noted that the prayer preceding the anointing of the head in these Syrian liturgical texts continues to make reference to the gift of the Spirit. Furthermore, there are a small number of Syrian sources that do make mention of a pre-baptismal anointing of the head alone, which may be remnants of this earlier tradition. Brock mentions several liturgical texts, including one tenth-century manuscript in particular (BM Add. 14493, ff. 165–70), where an anointing of the head alone occurs, although the accompanying formula has obviously been influenced by rites where there was also an anointing of the head and body.26 He also published a translation of a Syrian baptismal commentary, the oldest recension of which mentions only a pre-baptismal anointing of the head and which he dated to the early fifth century.27 Brock believes that these all reflect the older practice stemming from Tagrit over against the Antiochene tradition recorded in Chrysostom.
The testimony of the fourth-century Syrian Apostolic Constitutions with regard to pre-baptismal anointing is somewhat ambiguous. Book 7 speaks only of one such anointing, which apparently follows the confession of faith and precedes the consecration of the water, and is associated with the Holy Spirit (7.42; see also 7.22). It might be thought that this unction was applied to the head alone but the text does not make that clear. On the other hand, in Book 3 the baptismal instructions of the third-century Didascalia with its head and body anointing have been preserved and reworked in a somewhat confusing manner which seems to speak of two anointings of the head, one by a deacon and the other by the bishop, as well as the anointing of the body.28
Nevertheless, taken as a whole, the evidence from this region suggests that the early variety of practice to which the ante-Nicene sources point continued to have an influence in later centuries. On the one hand, Chrysostom and Pseudo-Dionysius in particular bear witness to the persistence in Antioch for some time of a head and body anointing that was understood primarily as protective against the power of evil. On the other hand, later Syrian sources appear to indicate the existence elsewhere in the region of an original anointing of the head alone linked to the Holy Spirit, which only later under the influence of Jerusalem had been supplemented with a head and body anointing that referred to the themes of grafting-in and protection. The association of the Holy Spirit with the baptismal water that is made in Chrysostom’s rite is usually said to be the result of a transfer from an earlier association with the pre-baptismal anointing. Yet if that rite traces its parentage back to a tradition of whole-body anointing that was concerned with healing rather than to a head anointing which was associated with the Messiah or his Spirit, it may not be so much a matter of development as of continuing fidelity to that particular older understanding.
Jerusalem
According to the author of the Mystagogical Catecheses (whether Cyril or someone else), the practice in Jerusalem was for exorcized oil to be applied to the candidates’ whole body immediately prior to their going into the water, which he interprets as making them ‘sharers in Jesus Christ, who is the cultivated olive tree. For you have been separated from the wild olive tree and grafted on to the cultivated olive tree, and given a share in the richness of the true olive.’ The exorcized oil also ‘drives away every trace of the enemy’s power’ and is able ‘to pursue all the invisible powers of the wicked one out of our persons’.29 A post-baptismal unction of the forehead, ears, nostrils, and chest by which the Holy Spirit was imparted is also described, and an explanation given for the choice of the parts of the body involved: the forehead, ‘so that you might lose the shame which Adam, the first transgressor everywhere bore with him, and so that you might “with unveiled face behold the glory of the Lord”’; the ears, ‘that you might acquire ears which will hear those divine mysteries of which Isaiah said: “The Lord has given me an ear to hear with”’; the nostrils, ‘so that after receiving the divine chrism you might say: “We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved”’; and the chest, ‘so that “having put on the breast-plate of righteousness, you might stand against the wiles of the devil”’.30 As Juliette Day has observed, none of these explanations is explicitly Christological or pneumatological.31 This suggests the possibility that their combination with the bestowal of the Spirit may be a secondary development.
While both these anointings, before and after baptism, were subsequently copied in Syria and beyond, as indicated above, they differ markedly from what we know of contemporary practice in the region. Other Syrian rites of the time do not view the pre-baptismal unction as primarily exorcistic, nor do they employ exorcized oil for the purpose. Neither Chrysostom nor the East Syrian rites are familiar with a post-baptismal anointing at all, and while Theodore of Mopsuestia does apparently speak of a post-baptismal ‘sealing’ that seems to have included the use of oil and was related to the gift of the Holy Spirit, this was of the forehead alone.32 Similarly, there are references in the Apostolic Constitutions to a post-baptismal anointing with chrism by the bishop, but it too is simply described as a ‘seal’ (the Holy Spirit here still being associated with the pre-baptismal unction) and there is no hint of it being applied to the organs of sense.33
Whence, then, might the Jerusalem practices have been derived? Both Geoffrey Cuming and Bryan Spinks many years ago suggested the possibility of Egyptian influence on the Jerusalem initiation rites,34 and recently Juliette Day has cautiously supported the idea that the source of the Jerusalem pre-baptismal anointing in particular may have been Egypt, although she is somewhat more sceptical about the post-baptismal unction being derived from there as well.35 Therefore it is to Egypt that we now turn.
Egypt
The fourth-century Canons of Hippolytus retains a pre-baptismal anointing with the oil of exorcism immediately after the renunciation and before the confession of faith, as was the case in the so-called Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus. Whether this is simply fidelity to its principal source or reflects actual practice in Egypt cannot be determined, although in the later Coptic rite there is an anointing of the chest, arms, heart, and hands immediately after the renunciation and profession of faith.36 However, in the Canons of Hippolytus some changes are made to the post-baptismal prescriptions of the Apostolic Tradition, which therefore do seem to point to what was actually done in the place from which this text originated, even though a post-baptismal unction may not yet have been part of the practice of the patriarchal see at Alexandria. The presbyter is directed to sign the forehead, mouth, and chest of the newly baptized, in addition to anointing all the body, head, and face, while using a Trinitarian formula rather than the Christic one in the Apostolic Tradition. The second post-baptismal anointing from that source is reduced to a simple signing of the forehead with oil (and in one manuscript even this reference is replaced with ‘the sign of charity’) without any formula being specified.37 The mid-fourth-century Sacramentary of Sarapion also contains two prayers for use over oils for what are clearly intended for pre- and post-baptismal unction, the former emphasizing healing and protection and the latter (over chrism) the gift of the Holy Spirit and the power of the sealing.38
One unique fourth-century parallel between the Canons of Hippolytus and the Jerusalem rite is the use of exorcized oil for the pre-baptismal anointing. The two also share in common a post-baptismal unction in which various parts of the body are anointed – but not precisely the same parts, and in the Canons it is not explicitly associated with the Holy Spirit. These resemblances alone are insufficient to demonstrate a direct relationship, but they do imply that both have emerged from a similar world or have been influenced by a common source. Juliette Day speculates that the link might have been some version of the Apostolic Tradition that was circulating in Egypt and West Syria, and that might also have been responsible for the introduction of the post-baptismal anointing in the Apostolic Constitutions.39 However, as will be pointed out in our conclusions, the truth seems likely to have been rather more complicated than that.
The West
References to baptismal anointing in the West are very sparse during the fourth century. The only place where a pre-baptismal anointing is clearly attested is at Milan. In his treatise De sacramentis Ambrose describes it as taking place immediately after the entry into the baptistery and prior to the renunciation – a different position from any we have encountered so far. It was apparently of the whole body, performed by a deacon and a presbyter, and Ambrose likens it to an athlete being prepared for a wrestling match.40 It does not appear to have been thought particularly significant theologically as it is given only brief and superficial treatment here by Ambrose and not mentioned at all in his De mysteriis. Could it have been a recent import in imitation of practice elsewhere? After the immersion, Ambrose describes an anointing with chrism by the bishop ‘to eternal life’, performed over the head because ‘the faculties of the wise man are situated in his head’.41 This is followed by the washing of the feet of the newly baptized and then something called ‘the spiritual seal’ connected to the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit, but it is not at all clear what ritual action was involved in this besides prayer by the bishop.42 For Rome, we have to wait until the end of the century to encounter firm evidence for the practice of anointing with exorcized oil in preparation for baptism, although nothing is said about its use in the baptismal rite proper,43 and to 416 for our first reference (outside the Apostolic Tradition and its derivatives) to a double post-baptismal anointing, the first being performed by presbyters and the second by the bishop, and this latter being understood as conveying the Holy Spirit.44
Conclusion
The variety that we asserted characterized the roots of baptismal anointing in the Christian tradition clearly persists in the fourth century onward. Both the anointing of the head and the anointing of the whole body before baptism continue to be visible in the developing Eastern rites, even though explanations for them gradually change. Pre-baptismal anointing seems to have been slower to emerge in the West, and the use for that purpose of exorcized oil both at Rome and in Jerusalem does encourage the thought that the influence of the Apostolic Tradition, or of the source behind that part of its initiation material, may have contributed to that particular development as well as to the ultimate appearance of a second post-baptismal anointing in the Roman tradition. With regard to post-baptismal anointing, it is not simply a matter of migration from West to East as pre-baptismal anointing may have been exported from East to West, though that may well be part of the story. The appearance in both Egypt and Jerusalem of anointing of parts of the body – but not the same parts, and neither of them including the eyes and mouth as in later Eastern traditions – suggests influence from elsewhere. Although Alistair Logan’s attempts to find early evidence for the existence of a post-baptismal anointing in Syria will for the most part not stand up to close scrutiny, his claim that there existed a Gnostic initiation ritual involving both water and the anointing of the five senses seems to have more merit,45 and the practice may have percolated from there into more mainstream Christian usage.46 In short, there appear to have been at least three main distinct strands in the emergence of post-baptismal anointing in the East: (1) the addition in some places of a post-baptismal unction, generally of the head, not directly related to the gift of the Spirit but commonly understood as ‘sealing’ in some way; (2) the addition in others of an alternative form of such anointing, involving the senses and/or other parts of the body, possibly derived from Christian Gnostic circles; and (3) the subsequent imposition on both of these patterns of a pneumatological understanding of the action.
We will probably never possess enough evidence to make more definitive statements about how and why baptismal anointing spread and changed, but what we do know does certainly support Bryan Spinks’s caution about assuming that there was only a single line of development in any one region,47 and especially so in Egypt and Syria. All this should discourage us from claiming in relation to modern practice that there is only one correct location in the rite for baptismal anointing and only one proper interpretation of that ceremony.
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1 Didache 7; Justin Martyr, First Apology 61 (DBL, pp. 2–3).
2 In the case of the Didache by reference to a prayer found only in the Coptic version of the text, which might, or might not, be about oil: see the review of the evidence in Nieder-wimmer, The Didache: A Commentary, pp. 165–7; to which should be added: A. H. B. Logan, ‘Post-baptismal Chrismation in Syria: The Evidence of Ignatius, the Didache and the Apostolic Constitutions’, Journal of Theological Studies 49 (1998), pp. 92–108; J. Ysebaert, ‘The So-called Coptic Ointment Prayer of Didache 10,8 Once More’, Vigiliae Christianae 56 (2002), pp. 1–10; and Huub van de Sandt, ‘The Egyptian Background of the “Ointment” Prayer in the Eucharistic Rite of the Didache (10.8)’, in Anthony Hilhorst and George H. van Kooten (eds), The Wisdom of Egypt (Brill, Leiden 2005), pp. 227–45. In the case of Justin Martyr, an older generation of scholars tried to read between the lines and discern allusions to confirmation there: see the works referred to in Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, p. 160, n. 65.
3 See further Susan E. Myers, ‘Initiation by Anointing in Early Syriac-Speaking Christianity’, Studia Liturgica 31 (2001), pp. 150–70. For ET of all the relevant texts, see DBL, pp. 15–21.
4 Gabriele Winkler, ‘The Original Meaning of the Prebaptismal Anointing and its Implications’, Worship 52 (1978), pp. 24–45 = Johnson (ed.), Living Water, Sealing Spirit, pp. 58–81.
5 Meyers, ‘The Structure of the Syrian Baptismal Rite’, p. 41.
6 Didascalia 16; ET from Brock and Vasey, The Liturgical Portions of the Didascalia, p. 22 = DBL, p. 14.
7 Origen, Peri Pascha 1.73–6.
8 Tertullian, De baptismo 7 (DBL, p. 9).
9 Cyprian, Epistula 70 (DBL, p. 13).
10 Gustave Bardy and Maurice Lefèvre, Hippolyte: Commentaire sur Daniel, Sources chrétiennes 14 (Éditions du Cerf, Paris 1947), p. 100. On the disputed provenance of this work, see Cerrato, Hippolytus between East and West.
11 See Bradshaw, Johnson, and Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary, pp. 127–33.
13 Baptismal Instructions 11.19–27; ET from Harkins, St John Chrysostom: Baptismal Instructions, pp. 166–8.
14 Baptismal Instructions 2.22–4; ET from AIR, pp. 160–1 = DBL, pp. 45–6.
15 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Baptismal Homilies 2.17–20; 3.8 (AIR, pp. 177–9, 184–5 = DBL, pp. 48–9).
16 Meyers, ‘The Structure of the Syrian Baptismal Rite’, p. 37.
17 A suggestion made earlier by Finn, The Liturgy of Baptism in the Baptismal Instructions of St John Chrysostom, p. 119.
18 DBL, pp. 109–13.
19 Pseudo-Dionysius, De ecclesiastica hierarchia 2.2.6–7 (DBL, p. 61).
20 See Brock, ‘Studies in the Early History of the Syrian Orthodox Baptismal Liturgy’, pp. 23–4.
21 This expression, found in Isaiah 61.3, Psalm 45.7, and Hebrews 1.9, is also used of the baptismal oil both by Apostolic Constitutions 2.32.3 and by Chrysostom but without any clear indication that it was employed in a liturgical formula as such: see Harkins, St John Chrysostom: Baptismal Instructions, p. 58.
22 Brock, ‘Studies in the Early History of the Syrian Orthodox Baptismal Liturgy’, pp. 29–30, 32.
23 Ibid., pp. 36–7.
24 See DBL, pp. 61, 68–9, 122.
25 Brock, ‘Studies in the Early History of the Syrian Orthodox Baptismal Liturgy’, p. 39.
26 Ibid., pp. 21, 30 (especially n. 2), and 39.
27 Sebastian Brock, ‘Some Early Syrian Baptismal Commentaries’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 46 (1980), pp. 20–61.
28 DBL, pp. 36–8.
29 Mystagogical Catecheses 2.3 (AIR, p. 77).
30 Ibid., 3.4 (AIR, pp. 83–4).
31 Day, The Baptismal Liturgy of Jerusalem, p. 111.
32 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Baptismal Homilies 3.27 (AIR, pp. 198–9; see also ibid., n. 65, for discussion of those questioning the authenticity of the reference to oil here).
33 Apostolic Constitutions 3.16–17; 7.22, 44 (DBL, pp. 36–9).
34 Geoffrey J. Cuming, ‘Egyptian Elements in the Jerusalem Liturgy’, Journal of Theological Studies 25 (1974), pp. 117–24, here at p. 123; Bryan D. Spinks, ‘The Jerusalem Liturgy of the Catecheses Mystagogicae: Syrian or Egyptian?’, Studia Patristica 18 (1989), pp. 391–5.
35 Day, The Baptismal Liturgy of Jerusalem, pp. 74–7, 116–19.
36 See DBL, p. 136.
37 Ibid., pp. 130–2.
38 Prayers 15, 16 (DBL, pp. 126–7).
39 Day, The Baptismal Liturgy of Jerusalem, pp. 119, 138.
40 Ambrose, De sacramentis 1.4 (AIR, pp. 101–2 = DBL, p. 178).
41 This quotation is adapted by Ambrose from Ecclesiastes 2.14.
42 Ambrose, De sacramentis 2.24; 3.1–10 (AIR, pp. 119–25). This account is paralleled in De mysteriis 6.29–30, 41–2. For discussion of the nature of the spiritual seal, see Pamela Jackson, ‘The Meaning of “Spirituale Signaculum” in the Mystagogy of Ambrose of Milan’, Ecclesia Orans 7 (1990), pp. 77–94; Johnson, The Rites of Christian Initiation, pp. 171–5.
43 Canones ad Gallos, canon 8 (DBL, p. 205).
44 Letter of Innocent I to Decentius (DBL, p. 206).
45 Logan, ‘Post-baptismal Chrismation in Syria’; idem, ‘The Mystery of the Five Seals: Gnostic Initiation Reconsidered’, Vigiliae Christianae 51 (1997), pp. 188–206.
46 See Acts of Thomas 5, where the apostle after a meal signs his forehead, nostrils, ears, and chest with oil, apparently in preparation for a wedding.
47 See, for example, his essay, ‘Sarapion of Thmuis and Baptismal Practice in Early Christian Egypt: The Need for a Judicious Reassessment’, Worship (1998), pp. 255–70, here at p. 259: ‘this diversity may not be limited to between regions; different practices could well have existed within a region’.