ALEXANDRIAN LITURGY

The Alexandrian liturgical family, parent of all other Egyptian liturgies, is said to have come from St. Mark the Evangelist. Before the Council of Chalcedon (541), the liturgical rite of Alexandria, Greek-speaking capital of the Egyptian church and cultural center of the Eastern Roman Empire, was the liturgy of St. Mark in Greek. In the aftermath of Chalcedon, the Chalcedonian Christians (Melkites) opted gradually for the Byzantine liturgical rite, while the Non-Chalcedonians (Copts and Ethiopians) modified forms of the Alexandrian liturgy in their own languages, Coptic and Ge'ez. Constantinople's subsequent importance among the Orthodox Christians of the East caused the Byzantine liturgy to intrude upon and finally displace the Alexandrian liturgy among the Melkites. Since the 12th century, the original liturgy of St. Mark in Greek, commonly identified with the original Alexandrian rite, has fallen into disuse. By distilling the layers of Coptic and Byzantine accretions, one can reconstruct an approximation of the original Alexandrian liturgical rite. Earliest known documents include the socalled Strasbourg Papyrus (Gr. 254), a 4th century papyrus containing fragments of what many scholars believe to be the earliest recession of the Anaphora of St. Mark, the Dêr-Balyzeh Papyrus (6th–7th century), and an 11th-century manuscript of the Euchologion of Serapion of Thmuis (d. 362).

Bibliography: a. hÄnggi and i. pahl, Prex Eucharistica (Freibourg 1968). r. c. d. jasper and g. j. cuming, Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed, 3rd edition (New York 1987). g. j. cuming, "Thmuis Revisited: Another Look at the Prayers of Bishop Sarapion," Theological Studies, 41 (1980) 568–575. g. j. cuming, "The Anaphora of St. Mark: A Study in Development," Le Muséon, 95 (1982) 115–129. b. d. spinks, "A Complete Anaphora? A Note on Strasbourg Gr. 254," Heythrop Journal, 25 (1984) 51–55.

[e. e. finn/eds.]