One of the works of Father Cyril Korolevsky that are of key importance for the Catholic of the modern age. This book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the history of the liturgical development in the East. The second with liturgy and language in the West. Finally, the third part talks about the special cases of the Malabar and Ethiopian churches with regards to their liturgy, sacred languages, and latinizations.
Some might expect that the book alone touches on few points regarding linguistics and liturgy, but Fr. Cyril goes beyond that. In his nearly 200 pages, father touches on few points. The Assyrian-Ephesus schism, the Chalcedonian schism, the Photian Schism, St Cyril, and St Methodius, the Great Schism, Trent, and the reformation, and more.
Part I:
Part one focused on the use of vernacular among the Eastern churches and how the Russian church in eventuality ended adopting the Ecclesial Slavonic tongue for the matter of worship. Something to keep in mind is that the book was printed in 1957, and thus, Father references on the Eastern block are notorious when speaking of modern issues. Father begins to address how the Apostles rather than using the liturgical language of the Jews, which was Hebrew, chose to use the common tongue of Aramaic. Among the churches, the common tongue was only used. This was a reason that among the Romans of modern Italy, Greek was used more commonly than Latin.
Different matters were reached, such as the set up of the Hungarian Greek Catholic Church and how Rome dealt with this matter. Further, the controversy that St Cyril and Methodius brought as to the use of a new language outside the three "chosen" ones (Hebrew, Latin, and Greek). With the birth of Ecclesiastical Slavonic, which at the time was no more than a new vernacular tongue, came through Pope John VIII the edification of the vernacular as a favorable way to celebrate the liturgy. As Churches grew, empires disappeared, other languages such as Ge'ez, Arabic, etc became the liturgical languages of the East.
Part II:
Part two deals especially with the matter of linguistics in the West. The Church's original liturgies in the West were those in the common tongue of the region which was Greek. Among the earliest forms of the liturgy, it exists the Liturgy of St Peter and the Liturgy of St Pope Clement I.
In this Part, Father Cyril touches on the matter of the events leading to the mission among St Cyril and St Methodius and the occurrences of politics that ultimately led to the destruction of the region due to political wars. Ultimately, Father also lightly touches on the Photian schism, the events afterward the death of Pope John VIII and so.
In an important matter, Father Cyril touches on how the Latin rite was in certain periods celebrated among other languages such as Uighur Turkish, Classical Chinese, Armenian, Persian, Church Slavonic, and Georgian. Father then touches that Trent did not prohibit the use of Latin, rather, many bishops were in favour of such. Rather, they chose to stay with Latin, since Latin was an international language among scholars. Father, pointing out the works of Canon AG Martimort in edition No. 11 of Maison-Dieu series that it just did not appear expedient to the Fathers of Trent to translate the mass into the vernacular at that point yet.
Part III:
The shortest of the parts that deals with the history of Malabar and the Ethiopian church. It talks ultimately about the Jesuits pushing latinizations among the Malabar and Ethiopians. The shortest of all sections points out how the birth of the Jacobites came along their distaste for the political evils carried by the Portuguese, and that the majority of priests remained loyal to Rome and the Chaldean Katholikos which had also come into communion with Rome. Finally, he mentions the failure of the Ethiopian mission, but how Rome learned from this about the errors of latinizations.
My Thoughts and the Conclusion on the book:
Not a single Catholic in the 21st century should be able to speak about liturgical languages without first reading this book. While a short summary of nearly 1900s years of Christian history on the liturgy, Father does a great job compiling these works for the common Catholic. He not only demonstrates that the vernacular tongue rightfully belongs in the liturgy, but that such practice is part of orthopraxis. Ultimately, I leave you with this quote of Father Cyril:
"The Liturgy is the Church's true common prayer, and it is meant for everybody, not the clergy alone. The people can take part in it to the full only if they understand it: and not everybody can afford to buy a bilingual Missal, or has the ability and education necessary for the proper use of it."
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