4. The Egyptian Rite.
Here exactly the same development took place. The original rite of the Church of Egypt is the Liturgy of St. Mark. The manuscripts that exist of it are much later than those of the Syrian Liturgy, and show it only after the Monophysite schism and after both Melkites and Copts have added to and otherwise modified it. But by noticing what is common to all the liturgies that grew out of it, one can form a fairly clear idea of the original service of about the 4th century, before the divisions came. That liturgy follows in general the same construction as the Syrian one. The chief difference is this. All liturgies have a great supplication for people of every class, living and dead, together with a Memory of the Saints by name. Our Roman rite has now for some reason got its Memory of Saints and Supplication divided; some of it comes before and the rest after the Consecration ("Te igitur, Memento vivorum, Communicantes"; then the Consecration; then "Memento defunctorum, Nobis quoque peccatoribus," with a second list of Saints).[1]
The Syrian rite has it all after the Consecration; but in Egypt it all came before, between the "Vere dignum et iustum est" and the Sanctus, in the middle of what we should call the Preface;[2] so their Preface is much longer and their Consecration comes at a much later point in the Mass than in Syria or at Rome. For the rest, the Liturgy of St. Mark (which, of course, was really no more composed by him than the Syrian one by St. James) is divided into the Mass of the Catechumens and the Mass of the Faithful, has an Epiklesis, the words of Institution said aloud and communion under both kinds, just
- ↑ The order in which our Canon now stands is a great problem. Cf. P. Drews: Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Kanons in der römischen Messe (Tübingen, 1902). He connects it with the Syrian Liturgy and thinks it was turned right round and the second half put first in the time of Gelasius I (492–496).
- ↑ It must be remembered that, although our missals now have the words "Canon Missæ" printed after the Preface, from the beginning of the Preface to the end of the "Libera nos, quæsumus, Domine," is all one long prayer, the Eucharistic prayer, of which then the Preface is a part.
