Thanks to the ‘historicism theory’ of Gregory Dix in particular, the liturgical development of the days of Holy Week has often been explained as the result of post-Nicene preoccupation with Jerusalem, whose ‘liturgically minded bishop’, Cyril, was fixated on the liturgical commemoration of historical holy events at the very holy places where they once occurred.1 From Jerusalem as a pilgrimage centre, then, these commemorations spread to the rest of the Church and tended to shape the way this week was celebrated elsewhere.
In fact, however, as early as the pre-Nicene Didascalia Apostolorum, the chronology of this week had already been assimilated to events in Jesus’ last week. As Taft and Baldovin have demonstrated for Jerusalem,2 the situation cannot be explained adequately as a simple interpretive shift from a pre-Nicene eschatological orientation to a fourth-century historical one. ‘Eschatology’ and ‘history’ are not mutually exclusive. Post-Nicene liturgical trends were evolutionary, not revolutionary, and were not suddenly instituted by individual influential figures (like Cyril) in response to the changed situation of the Church in the post-Constantinian world.3
Nonetheless, it is not surprising to find that it was at Jerusalem that specific liturgical rites commemorating the individual events assigned to the last week of Jesus’ life in the Gospels first emerged and were subsequently imitated, at least partially, in other regions of the ancient world, as pilgrims participated in them and carried news of them home. We have already described in Chapter 7 the fourth-century liturgical embellishments of the triduum at Jerusalem, and so all that remains to do here is to set out the similar developments in the earlier part of the week.
The celebrations began on the preceding Saturday. According to Egeria,4 on this day the usual Saturday Lenten services took place in the morning, except that they were held on Sion and not at the Anastasis as in previous weeks, but in the afternoon there was a visit to Bethany ending at the Lazarium, the tomb of Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead (John 11). According to Talley, the liturgical commemoration of the raising of Lazarus at Jerusalem had suffered a turbulent history, going through at least four stages: (1) an original commemoration that took place on the fifth day of the Epiphany octave; (2) by the time of Egeria, a duplication of this on the Saturday before Holy Week, where there was a ‘dramatic reenactment’ of the raising of Lazarus, followed by a station at the Lazarium, during which John 11.55—12.11 was read; (3) by the early fifth century only the station with this reading, the ‘dramatic reenactment’ having been discontinued; (4) from the mid fifth century onwards, the disappearance of the commemoration during the Epiphany octave. This, he concluded, revealed that the Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday commemorations were not native to Jerusalem, but had been imported from elsewhere.5
Recently, however, Russo has challenged this reconstruction. He points out that what Egeria actually describes is not a ‘dramatic reenactment of the raising of Lazarus’ at all but a re-enactment of Mary’s meeting with Jesus as he approached Bethany prior to the raising of Lazarus (John 11.29), and that is why this element took place not at the Lazarium itself but at another church a half-mile away from the Lazarium – a church presumably built on the site to mark the precise location of the encounter – and why Egeria describes the reading as ‘about Lazarus’ sister Mary meeting the Lord’. Nor was the second station at the Lazarium apparently a commemoration of the raising of Lazarus, but of the visit by Jesus to Bethany that had taken place ‘six days before the Passover’, as the reading was John 11.55—12.11. Because, however, the New Testament reading from 1 Thessalonians 4 and the psalms appointed for the day in the fifth-century Armenian Lectionary are identical to those for the post-Epiphany observance and evidently concerned with the theme of resurrection, Russo proposes that the development had been in the opposite direction from that suggested by Talley: the Saturday before Palm Sunday had been the original indigenous occasion for the commemoration of the raising of Lazarus established early in the fourth century, but that by the time of Egeria this commemoration had been duplicated in the post-Epiphany period, resulting in the related Gospel reading on the Saturday being excised and replaced with that concerning the subsequent visit of Jesus to Bethany, where Mary anointed his feet. By the early fifth century the commemoration of the meeting with Mary before the raising of Lazarus disappeared, and by the middle of the century the New Testament reading had also been replaced, while the Epiphany-octave commemoration too had been dropped, and John 11.1–46 was read instead on 7 September, a new commemoration of Lazarus altogether.6
In contrast to this, Palm Sunday seems not to present us with any critical difficulties. Once again according to Egeria, the Sunday services took place as normal in the morning, but in the afternoon the community gathered at the church on the Mount of Olives for a service of the word, followed by another at the Imbomon (the place from which Jesus was believed to have ascended), both composed of readings and psalms ‘suitable to the place and the day’, the second ending with the Matthean account of the entry into Jerusalem, after which they all processed down to the city carrying branches of palm or olive and singing psalms and the antiphon, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’. The day then ended with the usual Sunday evening service in the Anastasis.7
Similar celebrations of these two days are attested for other places in the East by the end of the fourth century and have seemingly been imitated from these Jerusalem originals. John Chrysostom refers to the observance of both days in a homily, although scholars have been uncertain whether this was delivered at Antioch or at Constantinople. What does seem clear from the homily, however, is that the Palm Sunday celebration did not yet include an actual procession with palms as at Jerusalem.8 By contrast, however, Lazarus Saturday remained unknown in the West,9 and Palm Sunday was slow to be adopted, the earliest reference to the name not occurring until around the year 600 in Spain and Gaul, and it is more than a century later before we have evidence of the blessing and carrying of branches of palm and other trees on that day. At Rome, on the other hand, it was known instead as Passion Sunday and involved the reading of the account of the Passion in Matthew’s Gospel in preparation for the coming triduum, and it is not until the end of the eleventh century that we have a sure reference to the addition of a palm procession to the liturgy of the day there.10
From Monday to Wednesday the services at Jerusalem were as they had been throughout Lent, but with the addition of an extra afternoon service every day beginning at the ninth hour and lasting for four hours, during which Egeria says there were suitable readings. There was also an additional late evening service on Tuesday on the Mount of Olives, where there was a cave in which Jesus was believed to have taught his disciples, and where the bishop now read Matthew 24.1—26.2. On Wednesday a similar late evening service took place in the Anastasis, where a presbyter read the continuation of Matthew (26.3–16), the account of Judas agreeing to betray Jesus.11
Thursday, as might be expected, involved rather more activity. In addition to the usual weekday services, there was a celebration of the Eucharist in the Martyrium at the ninth hour, and then a second celebration ‘Behind the Cross’, at which Egeria notes that everyone received communion, and she says that this was the only day in the year when such a rite occurred in that location.12 Why there should have been two eucharistic celebrations on this day is not immediately obvious, especially as neither of them took place where the Last Supper was believed to have occurred. It was only in the fifth century that a third celebration was added on Sion for this purpose.13 Pierre Jounel proposed that the first was the Eucharist that ended the Lenten fast and the second commemorated the institution of the Eucharist,14 while Talley suggested that the two may have been intended for two quite different pilgrim communities that were following different chronologies of Holy Week,15 but this is simply speculation. Augustine at the end of the fourth century certainly knew of the existence in some places of two celebrations on this day, one in the morning and the other in the evening, but it is impossible to say from this limited evidence whether the custom had been derived from Jerusalem or not. His own preference was for there to be only one celebration, before the customary meal at the ninth hour, so that communion could still be received fasting.16
All this did not complete the day’s observance at Jerusalem, however. After returning home for a meal, the worshippers went once again to the cave on the Mount of Olives, where they kept a vigil of psalms and readings until about 11 p.m., when there was read Jesus’ discourse in John 13.16—18.1, believed to have been given in that very spot. At midnight they went to the Imobomon for a further service of readings and psalms, and at cockcrow they moved on to a church believed to be the site where Jesus prayed during that night and Matthew 26.31–56 was read. Afterwards they continued on to Gethsemane for ‘a reading from the Gospel about the Lord’s arrest’, and on into the city as dawn was breaking, ending at the Cross, where the account of Jesus before Pilate was read (John 18.28—19.16). The bishop then sent them home with words of encouragement for a short rest before the Good Friday observances began, though Egeria records that those with energy made an additional station on Sion ‘to pray at the column where the Lord was scourged’.17
Although this long stational vigil was obviously intended to commemorate significant points in the Passion narrative in the very places where they were believed to have happened, it is to be noted that no attempt was made to replicate every detail of the story. The procession through the city did not seek to imitate exactly the route taken by Jesus, with detours to the house of Caiaphas or Pilate, and there was no dramatic re-enactment of the events leading up to the crucifixion. It conforms, therefore, more to a liturgical style that Kenneth Stevenson many years ago labelled as ‘rememorative’, in which biblical events were celebrated but not directly re-enacted.18 The visits to places and the readings helped to remind worshippers of the story and to bring it alive for them, but did not try to reproduce every detail in the manner that later medieval Passion plays would do, or the later observance of Palm Sunday, when a live donkey or a wooden reproduction of one would be brought into the scene. The primary element governing the choice of what to include and what to leave out on this route, however, and indeed for the special services in the rest of the week, seems to have been not the mention of them in the Gospel accounts so much as the prior existence on the pilgrim trail of specific places that were already associated with those particular events. In other words, it was geography, rather than history, that shaped the initial development of Holy Week rites.
–––––––––––––––––––––
1 Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London: Dacre 1945), pp. 348–53.
2 Robert Taft, ‘Historicism Revisited’ in Robert Taft, Beyond East and West: Problems in Liturgical Understanding (2nd edn, Rome: Edizioni Orientala Christiana 1997); John Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, OCA 228 (Rome: Pontifical Oriental Institute 1987), pp. 90–3.
3 See Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship (2nd edn, London: SPCK/New York: Oxford University Press 2002), pp. 65–7.
4 Egeria, Itinerarium 29.2–6.
5 Thomas J. Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year (New York: Pueblo 1986; 2nd edn, Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 1991), pp. 181–2.
6 Nicholas Russo, ‘The Origins of Lent’ (PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame 2009), pp. 230–54.
7 Egeria, Itinerarium 30–1.
8 John Chrysostom, Expositiones in Ps. 145. See Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, pp. 186–7; Mark M. Morozowich, ‘A Palm Sunday Procession in the Byzantine Tradition? A Study of the Jerusalem and Constantinopolitan Evidence’, OCP 75 (2009), pp. 359–83.
9 The reference to the ‘Saturday of Lazarus’ in the later Ambrosian Rite (see DBL, pp. 187, 201) is to the last day of the week in which the Sunday Gospel had been the raising of Lazarus, and not to a day on which any special commemoration of the event was made.
10 See Pierre Jounel, ‘The Year’ in A.-G. Martimort et al. (eds), The Church at Prayer 4 (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press 1986), pp. 70–1.
11 Egeria, Itinerarium 32–4.
12 Egeria, Itinerarium 35.1–2.
13 See Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, p. 87.
14 Jounel, ‘The Year’, p. 48.
15 Talley, The Origins of the Liturgical Year, pp. 44–5.
16 Augustine, Ep. 54.4–7. See also Mark Morozowich, ‘Holy Thursday in Jerusalem and Constantinople: The Liturgical Celebrations from the Fourth to the Fourteenth Centuries’ (PhD dissertation, Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome 2002).
17 Egeria, Itinerarium 35.2–37.1.
18 See Kenneth Stevenson, Jerusalem Revisited. The Liturgical Meaning of Holy Week (Washington, DC: The Pastoral Press 1988), pp. 9f.