The Liturgical Commentaries
Description
This volume contains an edition and facing English translation of Explanation of the Divine Temple and "On the Sacred Liturgy," the two commentaries on the pontifical (hierarchal) Byzantine Divine Liturgy by St. Symeon of Thessalonika (?1429). This edition is based on MS Zagora 23, which contains extensive corrections and additions apparently added to the text by the author himself. The book opens with a historical and theological foreword on liturgical commentaries and mystagogy by Archimandrite Robert Taft. The introduction surveys the life and career of St. Symeon, analyzes the structure and theology of the commentaries, and concludes with an account of technical and editorial questions. The index includes references to names, places, and topics in Symeon's text and in the introduction and traces key terms in the commentaries in both Greek and English.
Reviews
With this book Fr. Steven Hawkes-Teeples, sj, Professor of Byzantine Liturgy at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, fills a gaping hole in the scholarly literature associated with the overlapping academic fields of Byzantine Studies, Medieval Studies, Orthodox Theology, and Oriental Liturgiology. The present volume represents the first translation into any modern western academic language of both commentaries of St. Symeon of Thessalonika (d. 1429) on the Byzantine Divine Liturgy or Eucharist. Such neglect is surprising, for St. Symeon is an author of the first importance. As the last and most prolific Orthodox liturgical theologian of the Byzantine era, who lived at the point when the Byzantine Empire was moving toward its demise before the Ottoman onslaught, he crowns and closes his era. - Robert F. Taft