Table of Liturgies

We are now able to draw up a table of all the real liturgies used throughout the Christian world. The various Protestant Prayerbooks, Agendæ, Communion-services, and so on, have of course no place in this scheme, because they all break away altogether from the continuity of liturgical development; they are merely compilations of random selections from any of the old rites imbedded in new structures made by various Reformers.

In the First Three Centuries: --

A fluid rite founded on the account of the Last Supper, combined with a Christianized synagogue service showing, however, a certain uniformity of type and gradually crystallizing into set forms. Of this type we have perhaps a specimen in the Liturgy of the second and eighth books of the "Apostolic Constitutions".

Since the Fourth Century: --

The original indetermined rite forms into the four great liturgies from which all others are derived These liturgies are:

I. ANTIOCH.

• Pure in the "Apostolic Constitutions" (in Greek).
• Modified at Jerusalem in the Liturgy of St. James.
  • The Greek St. James, used once a year by the Orthodox at Zacynthus and Jerusalem.
  • The Syriac St. James, used by the Jacobites and Syrian Uniats.
  • The Maronite Rite, used in Syriac.
• The Chaldean Rite, used by Nestorians and Chaldean Uniats (in Syriac).
  • The Malabar Rite, used by Uniats and Schismatics in India (in Syriac).
• The Byzantine Rite, used by the Orthodox and Byzantine Uniats in various languages.
• The Armenian Rite, used by Gregorians and Uniats (in Armenian).

II. ALEXANDRIA.

• The Greek Liturgy of St. Mark, no longer used.
  • The Coptic Liturgies, used by Uniat and schismatical Copts.
• The Ethiopic Liturgies, used by the Church of Abyssinia.

III. ROME.

• The original Roman Rite, not now used.
• The African Rite, no longer used.
• The Roman Rite with Gallican additions used (in Latin) by nearly all the Latin Church.
• Various later modifications of this rite used in the Middle Ages, now (with a few exceptions) abolished.

IV. THE GALLICAN RITE.

• Used once all over North-Western Europe and in Spain (in Latin).
• The Ambrosian Rite at Milan.
• The Mozarabic Rite, used at Toledo and Salamanca.

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CABROL AND LECLERCQ, Monumenta Ecclesiæ Liturgica. I, Reliquiæ Liturgicæ Vetustissimæ (Paris, 1900-2); BRIGHTMAN, Liturgies Eastern and Western, I. Eastern Liturgies (Oxford, 1896); DANIEL, Codex Liturgicus Ecclesiæ universæ (4 vols., Leipzig, 1847-53); RAUSCHEN, Florilegium Patristicum, VII. Monumenta eucharistica et liturgica vetustissima (Bonn, 1909); FUNK, Patres Apostolici (2 vols., Tübingen, 1901), and Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum (Paderborn, 1905), the quotations in this article are made from these editions; PROBST, Liturgie der drei ersten christl. Jahrh. (Tübingen, 1870); IDEM, Liturgie des vierten Jahr. u. deren Reform (Münster, 1893); DREWS, Untersuchungen über die sogenannte clementin. Liturgie (Tübingen, 1906); DUCHESNE, Origines du Cuite chrét. (Paris, 1898); RAUSCHEN, Eucharistie und Buss-sakrament in den ersten sechs Jahrh. der Kirche (Freiburg, 1908); CABROL, Les Origines liturgiques (Paris, 1906); IDEM, Introduction aux Etudes liturgiques (Paris, 1907). For further bibliography see articles on each liturgy. For liturgical languages, as well as liturgical science, treating of the regulation, history, and dogmatic value of the Liturgy, see RITES.

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The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IX
Nihil Obstat. Remy Lafort, Censor
Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York