Liturgy of Saint James

Its date of composition is still disputed, but most authorities propose a fourth-century date for the known form, because the anaphora seems to have been developed from an ancient Egyptian form of the Basilean anaphoric family united with the anaphora described in The Catechisms of St. Cyril of Jerusalem.[3]

The earliest manuscript is the ninth-century codex, Vaticanus graecus 2282, which had been in liturgical use at Damascus, in the diocese of Antioch.

The only critical edition is the one published by Dom B.-Charles Mercier in the Patrologia Orientalis, vol. 26 (1950).

Rubrics

The bishop elevates the chalice while the deacon fans the Gifts with the ripidion.

The Liturgy of St. James is commonly celebrated on the Feast of Saint James (July 25) and the first Sunday after Christmas, and then almost exclusively celebrated on a daily basis in Jerusalem, in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Liturgy of Saint James is long, taking some hours to complete in full. The recitation of the Divine Liturgy is performed according to the worship rubrics of a particular Rite, with specific parts chanted by the presider, the lectors, the choir, and the congregated faithful, at certain times in unison. Like other compositions in the Byzantine tradition, the Divine Liturgy of St. James as celebrated in Greek forms the basis of the English transcription. In its Syriac form, the Liturgy is still used in the Syriac and Indian Churches - Catholic and Orthodox - both in a Syriac translation and in Malayalam and English.

During the Offertory, the partiture calls for a Cherubic Hymn chanted by readers as the priest brings the gifts to be consecrated onto the altar. In the Latin Catholic Church, this composition became popular as a separate hymn of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, known in English as Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.

The hymnographers of the early Church composed both the words of the sung prayers and the tones of the musical scale to be sung in a single codex for a particular community. The annotation was recorded in close correspondence to the text (for sample codices, see those[4] collated by the North American Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. Anthony in Arizona) with neumes indicating the melodic tones and their duration used before the adoption of the Western system of staff and scales became established in medieval times. In those communities that worship in Syriac the neumes are mirror images of those used by the authocthonous Greek and Slavic Orthodox Churches and written and read right to left in accordance with the Syriac script of the prayer texts.

The English Hymnal features the 1906 Ralph Vaughan Williams arrangement of the English verses of the Cherubic hymn of the Offertory chant (see above) to the melody of the French folk tune Picardy. The hymn known as Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence is also popular in the Roman Catholic Latin rite as an alternative to the spoken communion antiphon.

• Anaphora (liturgy)

• L. H. Dalmais, Eastern Liturgies (1960)
• Eric Segelberg,Έὺχῂ τοῦ Θυμιάματος. Towards the history of a prayer in the Liturgy of St. James." In: Έὑχαριστῄριον, Τιμητικὸς τὁμος ἐπί τή 45ετηρίδι έπιστημόικης δράσεως καἰ τῇ 35ετηρίδι τακτικῆς καθηγεσἱας Α. Σ. Άλιβιζάτου. Athens 1958, reprinted in Segelberg, Gnostica - Mandaica Liturgica."" (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Historia Religionum 11.) Uppsala 1990.
• Thomas F. Coffey and Maryjane Dunn, The Sermons & Liturgy of Saint James: Book I of the Liber Sancti Jacobi (2021)

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Divine Liturgy of Saint James

• The Divine Liturgies Music Project Byzantine music in English for the Liturgy of St. James
• Catholic Encyclopedia: "Liturgy of Jerusalem"
• Liturgy of St. James in Ante-Nicene Fathers
• Anaphora of St James, online Syriac Orthodox Resources at The Catholic University of America