Johnson, Max, Reconciling Cyril and Egeria on the Catechetical Process in Fourth CenturyJerusalem

7/26/2019 Johnson, Max, Reconciling Cyril and Egeria on the Catechetical Process in Fourth CenturyJerusalem

1/7

2.

Reconciling Cyril and Egeria on

the Catechetical Process in

Fourth-Century Jerusalem

by

Maxwell E Johnson

The relationship of the pre Baptismal Catecbeses ( h e r e a f t ~ r , ~ C s ar;d the Pro

catecbesis of Cyril of Jerusalem to the

,, :ltness

of the.PeregrmatlO E,gen.ae has long

been a subject of controversy, speculatlOn, and conjecture, resultms- m the most

divergent and tentative conclusions.amopg scholars

..

One

of

the

m a J o ~

proble?;s

in these fourth-century Jerusalem hturg1cal s o u r ~ e s to reconc1le

E g e n ~

s

description of an eight-week Lent c

381-

3

84),

ll:cludmg seven

yveeks

of dally

catechetical

i n s t r u ~ t i o n . f o r

the competf Tltes focussmg on .both Scnpture and the

Creed2, w i t ~ Cynl s e1s-hteen (or nmeteen) pre-baptlsmal lectures fo:

pbotizomenol c 348) wh1ch seem to focus on t ~ e J e ~ s , a l e m Creed a ~ o p e . T h 1 ~

problem is further cornplicated by the fact that mCynl s

BCs

the tradItIO symboit

takes place at the end

of

the fifth lecture3, but, according to Egeria, it happens

only after five week s teaching ,4 following which the bishop begins to lecture

through the Creed article by article.

ATTEMPTS

AT

R SOLUTION

. .

One of the first attempts at reconciling: the w i ~ n e s s of Cyril with that of Egena

was made byF. Cabrolm 1895.S Accordingto h1m, BCs 6-18 clearlyan a r t l c l ~ -

by-article exposition

of

the Creed and are, as such, to be ~ s s l g n e ~

to

w ~ e k s

lX

and seven

of

Egeria s description of the Lenten

c a ~ e c h e t l c a l p ~ n o d L1kew1se,

Cabrol assigned

the ,rocatecbesis to

first Sunday m Lent,

but

mterpreted

1-4as simply belongmgsomewhere m the first fiveweeks

Lent, d l n n . g w h 1 ~ h ,

as

Egeria reports, the .bishop :goes throu.gh the whole B1ble, b e g ~ n n m g ,, :lth

Genesis, and first relatlngthe hteral meanmg

of

each p ~ s s a g e , then mterpretlng

its spiritual meaning .6 Thus

BCs

1-4,

on

C a b r o ~ s V1ew, belong to a. large;

collection of pre-baptismallectures on the B1ble wh1ch, forthe mostpart, lost.

I

Peregrinatio

46.1-4. The Latin text used here is that

of

He ene P e t r e , ~ t h e : i e : Journal de

voyage

(Sources chretiennes 21, Paris, 1948) and the English translatIOn

IS

that ofjohn

Wilkinson, Egeria s Travels, London, 1971.

2 The Greek text

of

the

BCs

remains that

of

J-P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca, (PG), vo . 33. I

have used the English translation

of

Leo P. McCauley and

A.

A. Stephenson,

The

Works Saint Cyril Jerusalem (Washington, 1969-1970).

3

BC 5 2

4 Peregrinatio 46.3. . . .

. .

5 F. Cabrol, Les

Eglises

de ftrusalem: d,sclplme etla ltturgte au

slccle

(Pans, 1895),pp. l43-

159.

6

Peregrinatio 46.2.

7 Cabrol, op. cit., p.l56.

18

Essays in Early

Eastern

Initiation

While not specifically assigning

BC

5 anywhere, Cabrol proposed the follow

ing distribution of Cyril s lectures over Egeria s sixth and seventh Lenten

weeks. I

Week Six

VVeek

Seven

BC

6 Monday

BC 12 Monday

BC 7 Tuesday

BC

13 Tuesday

BC

8 Wednesday

BC 14 Wednesday

BC 9 Thursday BC

IS Thursday

BC 10 Friday BC 16 Friday

BC

11 Saturday

BC 17

Saturday

BC 8

Palm Sunday

Such a schema is verylroblematic and was regarded as such in at least two

places by Cabrol himsel . While noting that Egeria indicates that no lectures

were given on Saturdays, nonetheless, he assigned both BC 11 and

BC

17 to

Saturdays. In so doinghe offered, as an explanation,that there hadeitherbeen a

change m practice between the time

of

Cyril and Egeria, or that the absence

of

Saturday instruction applied only to the firstfive weeks.

2

Such conjectures may

be unnecessary, however, for it

is

not clear that Saturday instruction

is

ruled

out

byEgeria in the first place.All that she does say is that Saturdays and Sundays in

the eight-week Lent (other than Holy Saturday) were not fast

days.3

Cabrol s

assigning of

BC

11 and

BC

17 to Saturdays, therefore, need not be a

problem.

The second placewhereCabrol sawa difficulty was in his assignment

of

BC 14

to a Wednesday. This particular lecture was probably given on a Monday,

as

therein Cyril refers to a sermon he had delivered yesterday, on the Lord s day .4

Again, Cabrol dismissed this by claiming that a change in practice had taken

pface in the time between Cyril and Egeria and that his schemadid not claim

to

be absolute.

s

Cabrol s schema was further called into question in a 1954 article by

Stephenson.

6

Stephenson raised three other problems in addit ion

to

those

already noted by Cabrol, namely: (1) that BCs 11 and

12

were, on the basis of

internal evidence, probably delivered on successive days;

(2)

that BC 18 could

not have been delivered on Palm Sundaybut, owing to its apparent reference to

the fasts and vigils

of

Good Fridayin 18.17, belonged to HolySaturday; and

(3)

I Ibid.,

p.l57.

2 Ibid., pp.158-159.

3

Peregrinatio 27 1

4

BC 14.24. On theinterpretation of thislecture seepage

29

and the Excursus below, pp.29

30.

5 Cabrol,

op. cit.,

p.l59.

6 A.

A.

Stephenson, The Lenten Catechetical Syllabus in Fourth CenturyJerusalem in

Theological

Studies

15

(1954) pp.l03-116.

ReconcilingCyril and Egeria on the

Catechetical

Process in

Fourth-Century

Jerusalem 19


2/7

that BCs 1-4 which referto baptism and the forgiveness of sins belong to CyriI's

exposition

of

the Creed itself.

From this basis Stephenson developed his own hypothesis.

By

comparing

Cyril's lectures, the evidenceof the fifth-centuryArmenian

Lectionary

(hereafter,

AL and the writings of St. Jerome with the witness of Egeria, Stephenson

claimed that the Jerusalem Lenten 'syllabus' was the Creed alone and not

Egeria's two-fold cycle.

He

also concluded

that

CyriI's eighteen lectureswere in

and of themselves a complete course of instruction on the Creed. In Jerome's

Contra

Ioannem of A.D. 396399 (written against Cyril's successor,John, whom

Jerome suspected

of

Origenism) Stephenson found evidence that at this time

the content

of

Jerusalem baptismal catechesis was still the Creed. Jerome says

that

John had summarized in a single sermon the entire contents

of

this teach

ing, namely, ' the doctrine of the Holy Trinity'.2 Further evidence for this

Stephensonfoundin theAL inwhich nineteen biblical readings are provided for

Lenten catechetical instruction. These nineteen readings correspond to the

readings included in Cyril's eighteen

BCs

(with the nineteenth reading included

in

BC 18 3

Stephenson argued, therefore, that

it

was simplyimpossible to correlate Cyril

with Egeria and that the weight

of

evidence led to the conclusion that Egeria's

description of a two-fold Lenten syllabus of Scripture and Creed was an error.

This error, he claimed, arose from the fact that Egeria did not know Greek and

had to depend

upon

an interpreterfor her

information an

interpreter whom

she misunderstood

t

seems possible

that .. .

her informants, in speaking

of

Scripture, the

ressurection, and faith as well as of the symbol, were making so many

attempts to describe the unchanged syllabus

of

the

Catecheses,i.e.,

the Creed;

and thatwhat they reallytold herwas that the Creed was delivered, notafter

the fifth week, but what would have been verysurprising to a

Westerner-

early in Lent,

at

the end of the fifth

lecture,

as i n the Catecheses. 4

Stephenson's conclusion is simply too speculative to warrant uncritical

acceptance. While he was probably correct in viewing the

BCs

as a complete

s o ~ r e

instruction on the Creed, his conclusion regardingEgeria's lack

of

pro

fiCIency in

Greek though possible finds

no explicit supporting evidence.

Furthermore, his claim that the Jerusalemsyllabuswas only the Creedin thetime

of Egeria's visitalso presupposes notonlythat she misunderstood thetime when

the traditio symboli took place butthat she also erred regarding the content of

daily catechesis.

5

1 Ibid., p.l06. In

BC

18.22 n ot 18.17

as

Stephenson says) Cyril writes: The Creed which we

repeat contains

in

order

the

following:

And in one Baptism

of repentance unto

the

remission of

sins;

and in one Holy Catholic Church; and in the resurrection of the

flesh;

and

in life everlasting.

Of

Baptism

and repentance

we have

spoken

in

earlier

lectures .. .

2

Ibid.,

pp.ll0-112.

3

For

the

Armenian

Lectionary seeA. Renoux,

Le

Codex armenien Jerusalem 121 II (Turnhout,

1971), pp.233-237.

All

references in this essay are to Ms.

4

Stephenson,

p cit.,

p.l16.

5

Stephenson, p cit., p.l16.

20 Essays in

Early

Eastern Initiation

Another attempt at reconciling these sources was made by William Telfer in

the introduction to his abridged edition of Cyril's work. Assuming

on

the basis

of the nineteen readings assigned in theAL that

BC

18 is actuallya combination

of two lectures, Telferended up with a total of twenty catecheticallectures for

Lent. Assuming also, like Stephenson,

that

these lectures

(as

a complete

collection) alone provided the course of instruction for the Jerusalem

catechumens, he suggested

t h ~ t

throughoutthe forty daysof.Lent (i.e., t.he eight

week period

of

five fast days in each week) lectures were given both in Greek

and, for the less Hellenized

simpliciores,

in Palestinian Aramaic, alternating

on

various, though

not

necessarily successive, days. Such an approach, he argued,

would have given the

photizomenoi

time to assimilatethe difficult content

of

the

instruction.

At first sight Te1fer s approach seems to provide a brill iant solution to the

problem. He

did precisely what Stephenson did

not

do in attempt ing

to

demonstrate

how

Cyril's lectures could have been distributed over an eight

week cycle

of

daily catechesis described byEgeria.And, although

elfer no t

refer to this, it is also true that Egeria herself refers to the necessityof an inter

preter for those

who

speak only Syriac

or

Latin.

2

A second look, however, reveals that his conclusions are rather questionable

for at least two reasons. First

of

all, Egeria's reference to interpreters

is

toan 'on

the-spot' activity and

no t

an indication

of

separate gatherings or separate lec

tures. There

is,

thus, no basis whatsoeverfor assuming a Lenten course

of

twenty

lectures in Greekalternatingwith an additional twentyin PalestinianAramaicor

Syriac. Secondly, and this

is

more problematic, there

is

no evidence that Lent

(including Holy Week) in the time

of

Cyril was eight weeks long with five fast

days in each week. is well known that Egeria is the first and only witness to

refer to an eight-week Jerusalem Lent. Nevertheless, Telfer assumed (without

even referring to Egeria) that an eight-weekLent was the traditional Jerusalem

pattern. But, ifone does assume that thiswas the case, thenany attemptto make

a correlation with Egeria's own description becomes impossible because it

would mean that during her visi t there would have to have been lectures

delivered during Great

Week even

after

the

redditio

symboli-:-and

Eg.eria

explicitly says

that

there were no lectures then on account

of

the time reqmred

for the Holy Week liturgies.

It may well be that pre-baptismal instruction in the time

of

Cyril did continue

throughout 'Holy Week'.

Yet,

the idea

of

an eight-week Lent in

Cyril so

necessary for Telfer's

hypothesis is

simply unfounded. The most recent

scholarship on the development

of

Lent, in fact, claims that

it

was a six-week

period in the time of Cyril, including theweekthat was to become HolyWeek.

4

Upon closer analysis, therefore, Telfer's approach and conclusions offer very

little assistance in resolving the apparent discrepancies between these sources.

1 Telfer,

CyrilofJerusalem and

Nemesius Ernes

a

(London, 1955), pp.34-35.

2 Peregrinatio 47.3-4.

3

Ibid.,

46.4-6.

4 See

Thomas

Talley, The

Origins

the Liturgical Year (Pueblo, New York, 1986), pp.168

174.

Reconciling Cyril and Egeria on the

Catechetical

Process in

Fourth-Century Jerusalem 21


3/7

In hisrecent workon the stational characterof liturgyin Jerusalem, Rome,

and

Constantinople, John Daldovin offers what appears to be a more reasonable

solution. Noting that theAL hasspecialstationalliturgieson fifteen days during

its six-weekLent (excluding Holy Week), Baldovin adds to these the six Sundays

of Lent, resultingin a total of twenty-one dayswhich have some kind ofliturgical

gathering over and above the regular daily cycle. According to him, this leaves

nineteen days, which is, conveniently, the precise numbe r o f .catechetical

readings provided by the AL

and

parallel

to

the BCs

of

Cynl (with the

nineteenth reading included in BC 18). From this he concludes that

the

lectures

given t o t he

photizoneboi

were delivered on the non-stational days during the

Jerusalem Lent. He assigns

them

as follows:

1stWeek: Monday,Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday;

2nd

Week: Saturday; 3rd

Week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday;

4th

Week: Monday, Tues

day, Thursday, Saturday; 5th Week: Monday Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday;

and

6th

Week:

Monday

and

Tuesday.

While in this schema

BC

14(where Cyril refers to 'yesterday,

on

the Lord's day')

is placed

on

a Monday,

BCs

6-8 and 10-12 (in which Cyril makes reference to

'yesterday's lecture') are separated in each case by an intervening Wednesday.

This separation Baldovin defends by claiming that what can be translated

as

yesterday's lecture from

Greek

can also mean the previous lecture -a

common

enough practice in classroom rhetoric',

Baldovin's approach

to

the BCs is based, to a large extent, upon

Renoux's

conclusions concerning the

Mystagogical

Catecheses the series

of

post-baptismal

lectures delivered during Easter Week in Jerusalem. While both Cyril

S

and

Egeria

6

indicate that duringEaster

Week

mystagogia was

to

take place daily in

the

great Church of the Anastasis, the factremains that there are onlyfive

Mystagogi

cal Catecheses attributed to Cyril, only five days (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday,

Saturday, and Sunday) in Egeriaon which such an assemblycould be held in the

great Basilica

7

and onlyfour such days (Monday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday)

assignedto this purposein

theAL.

8 This

apparent

reductionfrom seven to five to

four lectures was explained by Renoux

on

the basis

of the

evolving stational

pattern in the liturgyof Jerusalem.

9

According to him,

the

reductionfrom seven

John Baldovin, The Urban Character Christian Worship: The Origins Development

and

MeaningofStational

Liturgy (Orienralia Christiana

Analecra 228, Rome, 1987),

pp.90

93.

2

Ibid.

p.93.

3

See

BCs

7.1,

8.1,

ILl,

and

12.4.

4 Baldovin, op.

cit.

p.n.

S

BC.l8.33. For

the Mystagogical Catecheses attributed

to

Cyril see F. 1. Cross, St.

Cyrilof

Jerusalem s

Lectures

on

the Christian Sacraments

(London,

1951).

6

Peregrinatio

46.6 and 47.1-2.

72 Ibid.

39.2.

8 Renoux, op. cit. pp.327-331.

9 A

Renoux,

Les catecheses mysragogiques dans l'organisation liturgique Hier

osolymitaine du IVe et du

Ve siecle

in

Le Museon 78 (1965) pp.355-359.

22

Essays

in Early Eastern

Initiation

to five came aboutbecause

of

addition of

s t ~ t i o n l l i ~ u r g i e s

on Wednesday

at

the

E l e o ~ a (on the ~ o u t of Olives) and < 0

Fnday

at ZlOn, a shift already com

p l e t e ~

pno,r to Egena

F ~ r t h e r m o r e

he claims

that

the reduction from five tothe

four lIsted

theAL simIlarly came

about

because

of

the addition of a station at

the Martyrium of St. Stephen on Tuesday of that same week. Baldovin con

cludes, therefore, that 'given the relation between stations and lectures during

the octave

of

the Pascha, it seems logical to suggest that a similarbalance

must

have held for the catecheses during Lent' .

Such a conclusion may indeed be logical,

but

it is certainly

not

without its

p r o ~ l e m s i r s ~ of all, while Baldovin

is

correct in noting that there are fifteen

statlonal days the AL he makes an error in his further calculations. The six

LentenSundays plusthe fifteen stational days total twenty-one days, bu t in a six

week period of seven days each this results in not nineteen

bu t

twenty-one days

left over Two days are, thus, left unaccounted for in his proposed schema.

Secondly, have knowle?ge

of

the .extent of. stational pattern in

the

Jerusalem lIturgy dunng

the

tlme

of

Cyn . Baldovm s proposal for the assign

of BCs therefore, may. possibly be accurate for

the

early fifth century

(I.e., atthe tlme oftheAL

bu t

thls does not necessarily mean that such is the case

for Egeria 381 or for Cyril in the late 34Os.Also, it is quitea shiftin his schema

to

move from Egeria's claim of daily catechesis to, for example, only one lecture

during the second week of Lent

and

that, presumably, on a Saturday.

Finally, Renoux's conclusions regarding

the

Mystagogical Catecheses are them

selves no t beyond question. While the shiftfrom five to four due to the addition

of

the Stephen station is understandable,

the

supposed prior shift from seven

to

five because o f th e addition of Wednesday

and Fnday

stations is not as

convincing. Wednesdays and Fridays themselves may belong to an even older

Jerusalem liturgical tradition. Inher description of

the

dailyservices held during

Lent, Egeria says

of

Wednesdays and Fridays that at three o'clock they assemble

1

Baldovin, op.

cit. p.96.

2 In a recent conversation John Baldovin has challenged my calculations by arguing that

theSaturdayofthe

sixth

weekofLent

is

not

to

be included in the countingbecause, as

Lazarus Saturday',

it,

along with Palm Sunday, formed

an

independent liturgical

'season' between

Lent

and Great

Week

in Jerusalem.

(On Lazarus

Saturday and

Palm

Sunday see Talley, op.

cit.

pp.l7

6-183.)

According to Baldovin, therefore, because Lent

in the

AL

ended

on

Fridayof the sixth

week,

there are twenty not twenty-one,

days

remaining. Furthermore, by subtracting the

Procatechesis

from these twenty days, the

end result is

nineteen.

Howeverm this assumes thatthe

Procatechesis (which is

not even

mentioned in the

AL

was given on a day

independent from

those included in his

schema For, in arrivingat the twenty-one days separate

from

the nineteen catecheti

cal

days,

he has already counted the six Lenten Sundays. But the only day when the

Procatechesis

could

have

been delivered in

his

schema

is

the first Sunday in Lent

because acatecheticallecture is assigned to Mondayofthe first week.Therefore,while

it may be that Lazarus Saturday' accounts

for

one of the remaining two day s in h is

schema, unless it can be shown that the

Procatechesis

is to be assigned to its own day

mdependent from a Sunday, catechetical, or srational day, there remains at least one

day left unaccounted for in his calculations.

Reconciling

Cyril

and

Egeria on the Catechetical

Process

in

Fourth-Century

Jerusalem 23


4/7

on Sion, because all through the year they regularly assemble on Sion at three

clock on Wednesdays and Fridays . And Paul Bradshawwrites that since Sion

was the ancient centre of theJerusalem church, we mayconjecture that the ser

VIces

held there were of longstanding

. 2

Therefore, granted that in Egeria the

s e r v i c ~ s of the Easter octave are h eld in the m orning and

that

the Wednesday

gathenng is at the Eleon a ra.ther than Sion, the fact that

Mystagogia

could not

take place on these two days may be highly significant.

That

is, the absence

of

mystagogia

and the presenceofliturgicalgatherings elsewhere on these two days

may, in fact. simply indicate the continuing presence of the structure of the

anCIent Chnstian week at Jerusalem originally centred at Sion itself. other

~ o r d s ~ h e r e are o ~ l y five M y s t ~ g o g i c a l Catecheses because such

lost baptismal

InstructIOn never dId take place In Jerusalem on Wednesdayan Friday during

Easter week.

F u r t h ~ r

confirmation

this may be provided bythe

AL

itself. For,

if

the Tues

d ay statlon at the Martynum of Stephen as well as the Wednesday and Friday

stations were all new additions, onewould expect the fourlectures provided for

in th e

to be assigned to Monday, Tl:ntrsday. Saturday, and Sunday.

Yet,

they

are assIgned to Monday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with the station at Sion

now on Wednesday and that of the Mount o f Olives on Thursday.3

relationship to Egeria s description, what

is

new in t he AL

is

not o nly the

p r ~ s e n c e of t.he

T u e ~ d a y

station but the rather odd juggling of the Mount of

Olives and

SIOn s t t o n ~

and the presence of the second mystagogical lecture

Before

Golgtha

on. Fnday.

the AL, then, one sees not only the addition

of

one new statlon dunng the Easter octave bu t a s a r es ul tof it?) the entire re

shaping of that week.

these reasons

~ a l d o v i n s

approach.should be treated with some degree

of

cautl.on. may certaInly be that the statIOnal pattern of Jerusalem liturgy does

p r o v ~ d e . a partial a n ~ w e r to the problem,

bu t

the details

of

his answerare not fully

convIncIng. They SImply do no t correlate or reconcile the BCs of Cyril with the

witness of Egeria a witness Baldovin suspects may simply be a description of an

experiment that did not last ).4

THE

DEVELOPMENT OF

AN ALTERNATIVE

SOLUTION

According to Mario F. Lages, a three-week period of Lenten preparation of

catechumens existed at Jerusalem prior to the

end

of the third century,

and

Cyril s BCs were still following tOe pattern of this three-week catechetical

period. S Lages arrives at this conclusion, first

of

all, from a structural analysis of

1

Peregrinatio

27.5.

2

Paul F.

Bradshaw,

D a i ~ y

Prayer

in

tbe Earry

Cburcb

London, 1981),

p.91.

3 Renoux,

Le Codex,

pp.311-323 and 327-329.

4

Baldovin,

op. cit n.3 7,

p n

5 M. F. Lages, Etapes de l evolution d e c ar em e a Jerusalem avant le

Ve

siecle. Essai

d analyse strucrurale in

Revue des

Etudes

Armmiennes

6,

1969),

pp.67 1 02; and idem.,

The Hierosolymitain Origin of the Catechetical Rites in the Armenian Liturgy in

Didaskalia I, 1971), pp.233-250.

Essays

in

Early Eastern

Initiation

the L He notes that, while the nineteen readings for instruction are inserted

therein at the b e g ~ n n i n g

of

~ e n t there is, nonetheless, no indication as to when

they are to be delivered dunni? the L ~ n t e n s e a s o ~ . Furthermore, ~ h e s e readings

are Inserted as a complete UnIt, haVIng b ot h a tl tle a nd conclUSIOn separating

them from what precedes and what follows. From this Lages argues that they

constituted an independent libel/us which pre-dated the AL itself.2

Secondly, he claims that the Psalms distributed on the Wed nesd ay s and

Fridays during the ALs six-week Lent

3

were originally two independent units or

series of psalmody divided into two three-week periods.

Of

these two periods

the one immediately priorto Eastercontains the olderlayer

of

tradition. During

these three weeks, a consecutive use of psalms is to be noted, beginningwith Ps.

82 83) on the Wednesday of the fourth week of Lent and concluding with Ps.

87 88)

on

the Friday of the sixth week. Although the

AL

assigns Ps. 21 22)

to

Good

Friday, yetin the

Georgian

Lectionary

hereafter,

GL 4

another witness

to

the Jerusalem tradition,

Ps.

87 88)

is

itselfassigned to that dayand, because this

is so, Lages sees here the presence of the o ld er Len ten p attern . The o rd er of

psalmody preserved in the last three weeks of Lent in theAL and confirmed by

the GL, therefore,

is

a witness to the primitivestage of an earlierthree-week Lent

at Jerusalem.

s

Thirdly, Lages assigns the nineteen readings in the

to the fourth, fifth, and

sixth weeks

of

Len t and claims that, p rior to the d ev elop ment

of

Holy Week,

theywould haveconcluded

on Good

Friday. Again he finds confirmationof this

inthe GL where the Lenten readings are to begin on Mondayof thefifth week of

Lent,

that

is, exactlynineteen days before baptism on HolySaturday.

spite of

the fact that this catethetical penod would no longerbe functional in the time of

the

GL,

nonetheless, it preserves this tradition .6

Finally, Lages cornpares the contents

of

the BCs withthe introductoryrubric in

the Canonof

Baptism

of

the Armenian Liturgyfrom the ninth-

or

Tenth-century

manuscript. This rubric reads in part:

Th e

Canon

of

Baptismwhen they make a Christian. Before which it

is

not

right to admithim into church. Buthe shall have hands laid on beforehand,

three weeks or more before the baptism, in time sufficientfor him to learn

fro m the Wardapet [In stru ctor] b oth

the

fa ith a nd t he ba pt is m

of

the

Church. 7

This rubric goes on to specify the contents of the Wardapet s teaching

as

being

primarily the Creed with the notable exception of anything explicit about the

1 See Renoux,

Codex,

I pp.233 and 237.

2 Lages, Etapes , p.72.

3 See Renoux, Le

Codex,

I

pp.239-255.

4 Michael Tarschnischvili, Le grand lectiomlaire de I Eglise de

/trusalem,

1 Louvain,

1959),

pp.68-79.

5

Lages, Etapes , pp.82-83 and 98-98.

6 Ibid., pp.98-100; and Tarschnischvili, p.68, where the following rubric is printed:

Tertia

hora incipiunt

legere

lectiones instruentes catechu

men

os

ad

portas

ecclesiae .

7

E C. Whitaker, Documents oftbe Baptismal Liturgy

SPCK,

London, 2nd edn.,

1970), p.60.

Reconciling Cyril

and

Egeria on

the

Catechetical

Process

in Fourt/rCentury

Jerusalem 25


5/7

Holy Spirit

or

the Church). Noting the general similarities in content but dif

ferences in order between this rubric an d

the BCs

Lages asserts

thatthe

rubric is

primitive and that

it

antedates the

BCs

which are themselves a further develop

ment

and

adaptation of it. Because of

the

close relationship between them as

well as the rubric s specification of three weeks of instruction, he proposes

that

the nineteen

lectures

would

have been given

duringthe three

weeks prior to Eas

ter

baptism, and concludes that the rubric itself is of Jerusalem origin.

In presenting this hypothesis of th e third century three weekJerusalem Lent,

Lages depends

on

the parallel evidence supplied by Roman liturgicalmaterials.

This evidence has most recently

been

discussed

by

Thomas Talley.

In

his fifth

century

Historia ecclesiastica Socrates writes that

it

is

the custom

of the people of

Rome to fast for three successive weeks before Easter , and, while he was

wrong

for

the

fifth century, Talley notes a curious parallel to this in

the

later Gelasian

Sacramentary.

In the

Celasianum

are

provided

masses

pro

scrutiniis

forthe third

fourth, and fifth Sundays

of

Lent which, he suggests, probably reflect an earlier

tradition of public scrutinies

for

the

catechumnens.

Similarly, he refers to the

tradition which assigned the titles Mediana to the fourth week of Lent an d

ominica in mediana

to

the fifth Sunday. Such titles, he argues, make sense

only

i f the

Lenten fast consisted of the

three

weeks preceding Holy Week. Finally,

while admitting

the

Socrates evidence is only a possible explantion of

the

final

period of baptismal preparation at Rome Talley concludes that:

in

the thi rd century, Pascha is appearing as

the

preferred t ime for

baptism

i n m an y

parts of

the

Church and

the

final preparation of can

d idat es is a concern of the period just preceding

the

great festival. That

preparation for baptism is

antecedent

a t Rome to any extended per iod of

ascetical preparation

for the

festival itself. That being the case,

we

can say

that the masses pro scrutiniis o n t he third, fourth, and fifth Sundays in the

1

Lages,

Etapes ,

p.100,

and

idem.

The Hierosolymitain Origin , pp.248-249.

tis

import

ant to note, however, that portions of Lages work, especially his claim of Jerusalem

origins for this Armenian rubric, have been called into question byGabriele WinkIer

in her authoritative work,

Das

Am2eniscbe Initiationsrituale (Orientalia Christiana

Analecta

217,

Rome, 1982 ), pp.3 38-370, and especially n.186, p.369, WinkIer s

criticism is two-fold. First ofall, as there were other churchesin which an earlierthree

week Lenten period

was once customary, his conclusions on the hypothetical

relationship between Jerusalem and Armenia appear

as

too narrow and one-sided.

Secondly, and more importantly, Lages looks only at this introductory rubric of the

Armenian baptismal rite instead of studying Armenian catechetical preparation as a

whole. This is problematic because the contents of instruction specified in the rubric

as

well

as

the contents of Cyril s

BCs

belong to the universal contents of faith and, as

such, do not representa unique parallel betweenJerusalem and Armeniaa t all. Wink

ler s criticisms, nevertheless, do not necessarily call into question Lages treatment of

the Jerusalem pattern.

2 Lages, Etapes , pp.69-70.

3 Talley, op. cit. pp.165-167.

26

Essays in

Early Eastern

nitiation

Galasian Sacramentary

point

to

the

older core of preparation for paschal

baptism.

Although no t an exact parallel, this Roman evidence lends some support and

credibility to Lages approach: . . .

Furthersupport may be i n ~ r e c t l y proVIded bY YI1ham Telfer.

.I elfer note?

that

nowhere in the BCs does Cynl refer either to the NIcene homoouslOs or to Arius by

name. For a mid-fourth-century orthodox document this is r t ~ e r odd, and he

concluded from this that

the BCs

actually reflect an older pre-NIcene Jerusalem

faith tradition.

If Telfer is correct in this conclusion, then thegeneral arrangement

and contents ofCyril s

BCs

are adhering

to

pattern set in

that

same period

of

the

late third or early fourth century fo r whi ch Lages argues a t h r e ~ w e e k Lent.

Furthennore,

both

the

and

the

L in preservmg the catecheucal readmgs,

therefore, are themselves later witnesses to

what would

have been an ear ly and

well-ingrainedJerusalem t r d i t i on . .

Lages hypothesis that the BCs

of

Cynl were delIVered dunng the final three

weeks

of

Lent has a great deal

to

offer toward the reconciliation

of

the apparent

discrepancies between Cyril and Egeria. Assuming, with both. Stephe.nson and

Telfer,

that the

eighteen BCs3 of Cyril are a complete course of m ~ t r u c u o n of

Creed, I would propose that during an eight-week Lent, as descnbed by Egena,

they

were given as follows:

VVeek

Five

VVeek Six Week

Seven

Sunday

Monday BC 1 BC 7 BC

13

Tuesday BC 2 BC 8 BC 14

Wednesday BC 3

BC

9 BC 15

Thursday BC

BC

BC 16

Friday

BC

5

BC

11 BC 17

Saturday BC

6 BC 12 BC

18

1

Ibid. p.167. Lages also notes a parallelbetween theRoman dominicamediana and the Feast

of the middle ofEaster Lent in the fourth-century Armeman Canons of St. Sahak (see

The Hierosolymitain Origin ,

n.10,

pp.235-236). It

is

also possible, but extremely

speculative, that a similar

case

can

be

made fora three-week preparation I? fourth

century NorthAfrica. In

Sernum 58,

m the c o n ~ e x t of the delIvery of the Lord s Prayer,

Augustine refers to the return of the Creed which had Just taken place. In so domg he

says that in aweek s time the Lord s Prayerwould have

to

be returned as well, and that

those who had not made a good return of the Creed still had time

to

learn it before

public recitation at baptism.Added

to

this is a sermon on theCreed by Quodvultdeus of

Carthage in which he refers towhatcouldonly have been an enrolment?fcatechu mens

on the previousnight. (The relevant portions ofthese sermons

are

cited mWhItaker, op

cit.

pp.103,

107). By

joining these two witnesses one

ml8 ht

reasonably cor;lecture

there is here a three-week pattern of baptismal preparation WIth .the tradItIO

SJ mbolt

week one, theredditio symboli and thedeliveryo fthe Lord s Prayer

week t w o ~

Its

return

in the third week, and the final profession of faith in the context of baptism Itself.

2

Telfer, op. cit pp.61-63.

3 I say eighteen simplybecause this is the

n ~ m b e r

of

BCs

preserved. However, I am well

aware

of the theorywhich suggests the Cynl was runnmgout oftime near end of Lent (see

BC

18.32) and

so

compressed BC 18 and

BC

19 into one. ef. Lages, Etapes ,

pp.98-99,

and Telfer, p.34.

Reconciling Cyril

and

Egeria on

the Catechetical

Process in Fourth Century Jerusalem 27


6/7

While admittedly speculative, there is much

to

commend this schema as a

reasonable hypothesis. First of all, it takes both the BCs and Egeria s description

of

daily catechesis at face value without pre-supposing an error

or

lack

of

language proficiency on Egeria s part. Secondly, it preserves the sequence of BCs

10-12

as

well as BCs 7-8. Thirdly, it places

BC 18

inwhich Cyril again repeats the

Creed for the p ~ o t i z o m e n o i on the day befOre Palm Sunday and palm Sunday

could have easIly been the day on which the redditio synboli took place. But,

finally, and mostImportantly, it places BC 5with its traditio symboli

at

the end of

the fifth

week

of Lent and so agreeswith Egeria s description thatthe Creed was

delivered only after five week s teaching .1 Because of this, there does need not

to be any discrepancy whatsoever between Cyril and Egeria

at

this point.

What

Cyril describes as taking place at the end of the fifth lecture which would have

been

at

t he e nd

of

the first week in an earlier three-week L ent) takes place in

Egeria at the

end

of

the fifth lecture

on

the Creed near the close

of

what

is

now

the fifth week of instruction.

is

to this s am e period of instruction, in fact, that

the

CL

refers by placingits rubric concerningbaptismal instruction

on

theMon

day of the fifth week

of

the seven-week Lent, that

is,

nineteen days before Holy

Saturdaybaptism

~ t s ~ I f

A,:d, byassigninga lecture to each of these days, except

for the Sundays, It precIsely my proposed schema of eighteen lectures

that

would r e s u l ~ though here, of course, instruction would continue throughout

Holy WeekItself). In other words, what has changed between the writing

of

the

BCs

and Egeria s visit is the developmentof Holy Week and the length of Lent,

not the contents of Lenten teaching during the last three traditional weeks.

Two problems, however, might be raised by this schema. First of all, while it

does support Egeria s description of daily catechesis, it does so for only three of

se:,en weeks. Secondly, BC 14 is placed on a T uesday even though internal

eVIdence yesterday, on the Lord s day ) tends to suggest that it was delivered on

a Monday.The first problem is easilysolved by assumingwith Talley and Egeria

herself) t h a t t ~ e r e m a i ~ i n g w e ~ k s were filled with daily instruction in the Bible.

4

Whether

this instructIOn continued long after her visit

or

was an experiment

Baldovin) which was later discontinuedwhen the Jerusalem Lentshifted from

e i g ~ t

to

s e v e ~

;veek:

is

impossible

~ a y t h e r ~

is

really no good reason

not

to

belIeve Egena s claIm that such bIblIcal instruction did once take place.

The second problem is

not

as easilydismissed. f one assumeswith theAL that

there were actually nineteen rather than eighteen lectures, one could, of course,

1 BC 18.21.

Peregrinatio

463

3See above, n.6

on

p.25. It should be noted that in the GL the catechetical

readings

are in a

different order

than

in CyriI and the L and are assigned only

to

Monday through

Friday

of

Lenten

weeks .five six. Saturdays,

Sundays,

and

holy

Week are, therefore,

excluded from the perIod of mstructlOn.

The GL

obviouslt reflects a later stage of

development. Yet the

p o i n ~

is that

by

preserving a tradition of beginning catechetical

preparatIOn for

Easter baptIsm

on

the

fifth Mondayof Lent,

theei ;hteen

butnotnine-

teen BCs

of Cyril

would

neatly fit

this

structure. C

4 Talley, l p cit., p.176.

28 Essays in Ear?v Eastern Initiation

merely place a nineteenth lecture on the Saturdayof the seventh weekwith the

result that BC 14 would then fall on the Monday of that week. Yet this is no solu

tion at

all,

because one

then

runs

out of

days at the beginning of the fifthweek.

Another solution

to

this problem has been implicitly suggested by Baldovin s

separation of the supposedly sequential

BCs

6-8 and 10-12 on the basis

of

a

rhetorical use of yesterday .1While yesterday

is,

perhaps, the best translationof

the Greekadverb echthes or chthes, theword can also have thegeneral meaningof

the pas tas a whole .2 The phrase, therefore, can be translated

as

i n t he past

Lord s day ,

or

even, formerly, on the Lord s day .

f

this is so, then this lecture

need not of necessity be assigned to a Monday at all but can be placed on a Tues

day, as in m y s chem a.

Thus, although at the time of Egeria s visit to Jerusalem there appears to have

been a seven-week process of pre-baptismal instruction, in the context

of

an

eight-week Lent, including more than just the Creed, it

is

at least plausible that

the earlier third-century?) J erus alem tradition was a three-week cycle of

catechumenal preparation, focusing primarily on the Creed itself. This three

week credal syllabus seems

to

underlie Cyril s eighteen

BCs

and to recur as the

final phase of preparation in Egeria. is also reflected in the later and

L

as

well as in the opening rubric of the Armenian baptismal rite, and may have

parallels with the early development of L en te n p re pa ra ti on i n t he R om an

tradition. Cyril s BCs and Egeria s description are, therefore, in this way recon

ciled. Both are witnesses to what

is, essentially, the same Jerusalem liturgical

pattern of catechesis in slightly different historical contexts.

EXCURSUS ON BAPTISMAL CATECHESIS 14

BC

14 is

extremely interesting in

that

the specific reference in the sentence dis

cussed above

is

to a sermon on the Ascension of Chris t into heaven. Cyril

says:

The sequenceof the Creed would naturally lead m e on

to

speak of the

Ascension;

but

God s grace has so dis posed it that you heard m ost fully

about it, according to the measure of myweakness, yesterday, on the Lord s

day; for the cours e

of

the les sons in church, by the ordination

of

divine

grace, comprised the narrative of

our

Saviour s Ascension into heaven. 3

this means that Cyril preached on the Ascension

of

Christ on a Lenten Sunday,

and in its elfthis

is not

so surprising.

e

was, after all, lecturing on the Creed.

What

is

surprising, however, is t ha t h e is

not

referring to catechesis

but

to t he

lessons read at the previous Sunday S liturgy and to his o wn s er mo n

on those

lessons. In otherwords,Cyril

is

saying

that

since the liturgical readingsand hisser

m on had already dealt with the Ascension on S unday, he did not need to deal

with i t now in the context of catechesis.

1

See

above,

p.22.

2 Wal terBauer, Greek-EnglishLexicon

the

New TestamentandOtherEar(v Christian Litera

ture,

trans. and

adapted by W. F. Arndt and

F.

W. Gingrich

4th

Edition,

Chicago,

1971 , p33

3 BC 14.24.

Reconciling Cyril

and

Egeria

on the CatecheticalProcess in

Fourth-Century

Jerusalem

29


7/7

A simple solution might appear

to

be to consult the L or the

to determine

both what the readings were and to what Sunday of Lent theywere assigned; but

the L does not list the readings for the Lenten Sundays and no reference to

comparable readings is found in GL. This is actually not unexpected, since, by the

time ofboth lectionaries, theAscension was wellestablished on the fortieth dayof

Easter. Thus, we have no supporting lectionary evidence for this simply because

we have no lectionaries which include the Lenten Sundays in the time of CyriL

We do know, however, that theOldTestament reading forth is Sundaywas from 2

Kings 2.1-22 (the Ascension of Elij ah) because Cyril refers to it in

14.25,

but the

only place in the surviving lectionaries where this reading is assigned is in the

Easter

Vigil.2

Cyril also refers in 14.24 to Psalms 46(47), 23 24 , and 67(68), and

the first two of these are assigned to the Feast of the Ascension itself.3

The scholarly literature on the development of the Feast of the Ascension has,

to my knowledge, either glossed over or completely ignored this intriguing

reference in

CyriL

Talley, for example, notes

that

the contents of this lecture deal

with the resurrection and ascension but he makes no reference to it in his treat

ment of the development of the feast itself.

4

Robert Cabie, in his work on the

development of Pentecost, does refer to it, but dismisses

it

simply as a part of

catechetical instruction. In so doing, he quotes the Greek text of Cyril in a foot

note but apparently misses the reference to the assigned readings .s Similarly,

SebastiaJaneras notes that the reference

to

the Ascension

is

very interesting , but

his concern is morewith the difficulty of knowing on which Sunday of Lent this

would have been delivered than with the contents themselves.

Cyril s reference, however, is clear.

On

a Lenten Sunday both the lectionary

readings and his sermon dealt with the Ascension

of

Christ into heaven. This

Ascension Sunday , it seems, even

interrupted

the flow of his catecheticallec

tures. For, it

is

only towards the end of BC 14where he says that it would now be

natural to continue his exposition of the Creed with the Ascension. Even ifCyril

himself chose those Sunday readings for catechetical purposes though his

reference to the providence of

God

suggests that he did not t he fact remains

that the Ascension still received a unday focus in the Jerusalem of his day.

Whether

or not this reference might shed any light whatsoever

on

the early

development of the Feast of the Ascension itself is difficult to say. Nevertheless,

further study of this rather curious an d often ignored statement is certainly

warranted.7

1

Cf.

Telfer,

op.

cit. p J 7.

2

See Renoux,

Le

Codex pJ05.

3 Ibid. p.339. ,

4

Talley,

op.

cit. pp. 76 and 66-70,

S Robert Cahie,

La

Pentecote:

L tvolution de

la

Cinquantine

pascale au

Olm s

cingpremiers

ele (Tournai, 1965), p.144.

6 Sebastia ]aneras, Sobre el cide de predicacio de les antigues catecquesis baptismals in

Revista Catalana

de

Teologia 1 (1976), p.163-164.

7

It has co:ne

to

my attenti?n

that]ohn

Baldovin

is

in the process

o w o r k ~ n

on this

velY

question

In

relationship

to

the lectIOnary

of

tenth-century ConstantInople and will

publish the results of his study soon.

30

Essays in Ear[y Eastern nitiation

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