Volume 1

A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood.

Date:
[between 1890 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A dictionary of Christian antiquities : being a continuation of the 'Dictionary of the Bible' / edited by William Smith and Samuel Cheetham ; illustrated by engravings on wood. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1020/1096 (page 1000)
    and of a penitential charactei’, containing invo- cations to the Holy Trinity and to the saints, in which the people respond to each clause of the priest by the repetition of a short and expressive formula. Litanies date from the earliest times of settled forms of Christian worship. Originally they were confined to the liturgy, properly so called; but in course of time, as forms of public prayer developed themselves, they are more frequently found apart from the liturgy, and appropriated to occasions of more than ordinarily earnest and penitential supplication, and specially associated with processions, during which they were re- peated. Hence the procession itself was often called litania. The word is sometimes spelt “letania,” and some have drawn a distinction between the two forms, and argued that letania means a day appointed for special rejoicing. “ Laetum ac festivum diem significat.”* The words are, however, generally, and probably always, used as synonyms.'^ The earliest and simplest form of Litany is the Kyrie Eleison, repeated three,® six,^ twelve,® forty,^ or more times. Mabillon (^Coinm. in Ord. Horn. i. 2, p. 34-) describes a procession in which the people chanted alternately three hundred times Kyrie Elei^on, Christe Eleison; and the Capitulary of Charlemagne (vi. c. 197) directs that during the funeral office, if the people do not know the Psalms, the men should repeat Kyrie Eleison and the women Christe Eleison while they were being chanted. The expression has been thought by some to have been suggested by a sentence of Arrian (^Comment, de Epicteti Disput. ii. c. 7), “Calling upon God we beg of Him Kipte iKerjaov.” It occui’s however with slight variations in the Old Testament, and was in use in the Christian church before the date of the sentence just quoted. It has been used in the ecclesiastical offices of all nations, and from the earliest times. It is found in the liturgies of St. James, of St. Mark, and of the Greek Fathers, as well as in those of the Armenians, Syrians, and other Oriental Christians, whose rites are among the oldest extant, and who repeat it in the ver- nacular. There is some uncertainty by whom it was introduced into the Latin Church. The chief writers on Ritual k attribute the introduction to Gregory the Great. But the custom appears to have been in use before his time, as the 5th canon** of the 2nd council of Vaison, in the time » V. Pappenbrock, Acta Sanct. Jun. 28, in S. Leon, ii., where he gives his reasons. b Augusti (Chris. Arch. 10. 33) says, “Aber dieser willkUrlich gemaihte Unterschied scheint nur aufeinem Wortspiele zu beruhen. ® In the daily offices, possitn. d As in th» litanies alter Terce on certain days, in the Ambrosian use. e As alter the hymn at Lauds, and in Lent at the end of Vespers in the same use, and in Vespers of the Greek church. I As in the daily night and day hours of the Greek church. g e. g. Micrologus, Amalarins. b There is some confusion in the canons of the two councils of Vaison (Vasio, in Gallia Narbonensis) ; the first was in the time of Leo the Great, aj). 442. of Felix IV. (al. III.), a.d. 529, seems to shew, which speaks of the Kyrie Eleison as being then established in all the provinces of the East and of Italy, and directs it to be used in the churches of Gaul; and Gregory himself (lib. 7, Ep. d4), in answ'er to some who spoke of him as wishing to introduce the rites of the church of Constan- tinople into that of Rome, says : “ We neither have hitherto said, nor do we now say, Kyrie Eleison, as it is said by the Greeks ” [nos neque diximus, neque dicimus, &c.], and then he points out the double distinction: (1) that with the Greeks the whole congregation say it together, whereas with the Romans the clergy and people say it alternately; and (2) that the Roman use is to repeat Christe Eleison as often as Kyrie Eleison has been said, which the Greeks never do.* The words were always said by the Latin church in Greek, for which practice different symbolical reason§ have been given. St. August. (Ep. 178) compares it with the use of the Greek Homoo’ision, and remarks that as by the word Homoousion the unity of substance of the Trinity is confessed by all believers, so by that other, Kyrie Eleison, the nature of the One God is invoked by all Romans and barbarian. The words were said after the Introit, but originally the number of repetitions was not prescribed, but Kyrie Eleison was repeated by the choir until the presiding prelate directed it to be changed into Christe Eleison: “ Schola vero, ffnita Antiphonia, ponit Kyrie Eleison, Prior vero scholae custodit ad Pontificem ut ei annuat si vult mutare*' numerum Letaniae* ” (Ordo Rom. V. num. 6). It appears that in the 9th century the number of repetitions was prescribed (v. Amalarius, de Div. Off. iii. cap. 6), and by the 12th century at latest was established at nine, i.e. Kyrie Eleison (thrice), Christe Eleison (thrice), Kyrie Eleison (thrice). At this number it has since remained. Various symbolical reasons have been assigned for this number, on which it is not necessiiry to dwell. In the Ambrosian rite Kyrie Eleison is said thrice after the Gloria in Ereelsis, thrice after the Gospel, and thrice at the end of the mass. It has been questioned to whom the invocation is to be considered as addressed. When the form Kyrie Eleiso'n alone is used, the prevailing opinion appears to be that it is addressed to the second person in the blessed Trinity, and AnasLisius Si- naiticus* ((7oMfe/n/). in Hexaerneron. lib. vii. cont.), referring to Dionysius the Areopagite,“ says that God the Word was properly called Lord (Do- minus, Kvpios), after and with reference to the Incarnation, and the dominion which He there- upon received. “ He is called Lord [Dominus, nempe Kuptos] because He has the Lordship [ex eo quod /cupjcuei]. Rightly, therefore, and fittingly and suitably, when God the Word in His advent to man took flesh and was seen upon earth, was He also called Lord. For previously He was called God (Beds), as being the overseer (dewpyTTjs) of the world.” i In the Ambrosian rite the invocation Christe Eleison is very rarely found, and only in borrowed forms, k Otherwise called “mutare Litaniani. 1 i.e. in alteram formulam, sc. Christe Eleison. i«“ Vid. Biblioth. Max. Patrum, vol. xiv. . “ Jb. vol. ii.