19 XII 2024: Daniel Galadza (Pontificio Istituto Orientale), Piecing together Greek liturgy from Jerusalem after Late Antiquity

From Late Antiquity, liturgy in Jerusalem served as a model for the way Christians prayed throughout the Mediterranean world. Fourth-century pilgrim accounts describe worship at Jerusalem’s holy places and its networks of “stational liturgy” throughout the holy days of the year. Subsequent monastic vitae and edifying tales tell us about liturgy in the monasteries in and around the Holy City and throughout the Judean Desert, all the way to the monasteries of Sinai. Although manuscripts reflecting the liturgical practices of Jerusalem in Armenian and Georgian translation from the fifth century onward are extant, the original Greek texts were lost due to the ravages of time. Nevertheless, a corpus of Greek manuscripts originating in Jerusalem, Sinai, and environs from the ninth century has survived in the collection of the Library of the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai, reflecting the distinct traditions of Jerusalem. Some contain sacramental rites, or occasional prayers for agricultural blessings or life-cycle rituals (i.e. Sinai Greek New Finds MG 53). Others are homiletic texts (i.e. Sinai Greek 491 and 492), lectionaries of the scriptures (i.e. Sinai Greek New Finds MG 8 and Greek 210), or hymnals (i.e. Sinai Greek New Finds MG 5 and 56). Many transmit Greek texts with Arabic marginal notes, pointing to a multilingual social and liturgical environment. Most are fragmentary or unique, requiring the assistance of codicology and palaeography to better understand the provenance of what has been preserved and the possible content of what is missing. Together, they constitute the books necessary to perform the liturgical rites of the Christian communities around Jerusalem in the ninth century, distinct from the later Byzantine tradition that would become dominant throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. This paper examines the corpus of these Greek liturgical manuscripts to better understand their content and to explain how they were used, offering insights from liturgical studies for historians, archaeologists, and scholars of Late Antiquity into aspects of the prayer, devotion, and daily life of Christians in the Holy Land and Sinai immediately after Late Antiquity.