BYZANTINE RITE

BYZANTINE RITE. According to the use beginning in the Roman Catholic Church (q.v.), “rite” signifies both a form of Christian worship and the accompanying matrix of theology and spirituality (qq.v.) that the worship expresses and out of which it has grown. Thus “Byzantine rite” means the liturgy of Byzantium, more specifically as celebrated at the “Great Church” of Constantinople (qq.v.), and includes other elements, as the liturgist Fr. Robert Taft has rightly observed, such as architecture, iconography (qq.v.), etc. The Constantinopolitan liturgy was itself a fusion of different worship traditions in the ancient church, in particular those of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Cappadocia (qq.v.).

In place by the 9th c. and in virtually its present form by 1400, the liturgy of the Great Church had also become by this time the one and unique mode of worship in the Orthodox Church. Although local use may differ in minor degrees from country to country, region to region, or even from village to village, it is fundamentally the same texts, the same exterior and interior arrangement of the church building, and the same piety (q.v.), which reigns in Orthodoxy from the Adriatic coast to the Aleutian islands. It is accurate to say that the primary difference between “national” Orthodox churches today is merely the language of worship, and not its form or content. The Byzantine rite has thus served as the single greatest factor ensuring the unity of the Orthodox Church, in a way perhaps analogous to what used to prevail in the Anglican communion with respect to the old Book of Common Prayer. While generally characterized as sumptuous in its use of art, incense, and poetry, the frequent perception that this is the most static of the great Christian “rites” is a misconception-in fact, the opposite is nearer the truth. Of all ancient liturgies, the Byzantine has perhaps been the most fluid, in a state of continuous change since its beginnings in Constantinople and marked by at least two great shifts-in the 9th c. and 14th c.-during its growth in the Byzantine era (q.v.) alone.