The Interpretation of the Epiclesis from the Acta Graeca of the Council of Florence (1439) and Its Impact on the Editio Princeps of the Liturgies of St. John Chrysosotom and St. Basil the Great: Nicholas Cabasilas Reinterpreted

Studia Liturgica. 2024. Vol. 54. No. 2. P. 176–206.

Mikhail Bernatsky

In this article we demonstrate that the interpretation of the epiclesis of the Byzantine liturgy, contained in the so-called “descriptive” part of the Acta graeca of the Florence Council (1439), is a reinterpretation of Nicholas Cabasilas's anti-Latin argumentation, presented in his “An Explanation of the Divine Liturgy.” This reinterpretation had as its source the explanation of the epiclesis in the Thomistic spirit offered in the debate by a Dominican cardinal Juan de Torquemada and recorded in the Acta Latina. Further we hypothesize that this new interpretation became the basis of a new method of Catholic proselytism in the following centuries and impacted the editio princeps of the texts of the Liturgies of St. John and St. Basil in 1526, on which subsequent editions of the Venetian euchologies depend. In that edition, we believe, the specific interpolations, which were previously seldom encountered in the early manuscripts in different contexts, have been made to form a correct “intention” of the celebrant according to the sacramentology of the Catholic Church. We are sure that the results of our study could become a paradigm for reconsidering, for instance, the causes and content of the disputes on the moment of consecration that have taken place since the sixteenth century.

Keywords: thomism, Byzantine theology, liturgical studies, revision of the liturgical books, Greek manuscripts, Byzantine liturgy, sacramentology, council of Ferrara-Florence, printed liturgical books, Nicholas Cabasilas