The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark

by John William Burgon

(c) In another of his Homilies, Chrysostom explains with considerable emphasis the reason why the Book of the Acts was read publicly in Church during the interval between Easter and Pentecost; remarking, that it had been the [pg 200] liturgical arrangement of a yet earlier age.[354]—After such an announcement, it becomes a very striking circumstance that Augustine also (A.D. 412) should be found to bear witness to the prevalence of the same liturgical arrangement in the African Church.[355] In the old Gallican Lectionary, as might have been expected, the same rule is recognisable. It ought to be needless to add that the same arrangement is observed universally to prevail in the Lectionaries both of the East and of the West to the present hour; although the fact must have been lost sight of by the individuals who recently, under pretence of “making some advantageous alterations” in our Lectionary, have constructed an entirely new one,—vicious in principle and liable to the gravest objections throughout,—whereby this link also which bound the Church of England to the practice of Primitive Christendom, has been unhappily broken; this note of Catholicity also has been effaced.[356]

(d) The purely arbitrary arrangement, (as Mr. Scrivener phrases it), by which the Book of Genesis, instead of the Gospel, is appointed to be read[357] on the week days of Lent, is discovered to have been fully recognised in the time of Chrysostom. Accordingly, the two series of Homilies on the Book of Genesis which that Father preached, he preached in Lent.[358]

(e) It will be seen in the next chapter that it was from a very remote period the practice of the Eastern Church to introduce into the lesson for Thursday in Holy-week, S. Luke's account (ch. xxii. 43, 44) of our Lord's “Agony and bloody Sweat,” immediately after S. Matth. xxvi. 39. That is, no doubt, the reason why Chrysostom,—who has been suspected, (I think unreasonably,) of employing an Evangelistarium instead of a copy of the Gospels in the preparation of his Homilies, is observed to quote those same two verses in that very place in his Homily on S. Matthew;[359] which shews that the Lectionary system of the Eastern Church in this respect is at least as old as the ivth century.

(f) The same two verses used to be left out on the Tuesday after Sexagesima (τῇ γ᾽ τῆς τυροφάγου) for which day S. Luke xxii. 39-xxiii. 1, is the appointed lection. And this explains why Cyril (A.D. 425) in his Homilies on S. Luke, passes them by in silence.[360]

But we can carry back the witness to the Lectionary practice of omitting these verses, at least a hundred years; for [pg 202] Cod. B, (evidently for that same reason,) also omits them, as was stated above, in p. [79]. They are wanting also in the Thebaic version, which is of the iiird century.

(g) It will be found suggested in the next chapter (page [218]) that the piercing of our Lord's side, (S. John xix. 34),—thrust into Codd. B and א immediately after S. Matth. xxvii. 49,—is probably indebted for its place in those two MSS. to the Eastern Lectionary practice. If this suggestion be well founded, a fresh proof is obtained that the Lectionary of the East was fully established in the beginning of the ivth century. But see [Appendix (H)].

(h) It is a remarkable note of the antiquity of that Oriental Lectionary system with which we are acquainted, that S. Matthew's account of the Passion (ch. xxvii. 1-61,) should be there appointed to be read alone on the evening of Good Friday. Chrysostom clearly alludes to this practice;[361] which Augustine expressly states was also the practice in his own day.[362] Traces of the same method are discoverable in the old Gallican Lectionary.[363]

(i) Epiphanius, (or the namesake of his who was the author of a well-known Homily on Palm Sunday,) remarks that “yesterday” had been read the history of the rising of Lazarus.[364] Now S. John xi. 1-45 is the lection for the antecedent Sabbath, in all the Lectionaries.

(k) In conclusion, I may be allowed so far to anticipate what will be found fully established in the next chapter, as to point out here that since in countless places the text of our oldest Evangelia as well as the readings of the primitive Fathers exhibit unmistakable traces of the corrupting influence of the Lectionary practice, that very fact becomes irrefragable evidence of the antiquity of the Lectionary which is the occasion of it. Not only must it be more [pg 203] ancient than Cod. B or Cod. א, (which are referred to the beginning of the ivth century), but it must be older than Origen in the iiird century, or the Vetus Itala and the Syriac in the iind. And thus it is demonstrated, (1st) That fixed Lessons were read in the Churches of the East in the immediately post-Apostolic age; and (2ndly) That, wherever we are able to test it, the Lectionary of that remote period corresponded with the Lectionary which has come down to us in documents of the vith and viith century, and was in fact constructed in precisely the same way.

I am content in fact to dismiss the preceding instances with this general remark:—that a System which is found to have been fully recognised throughout the East and throughout the West in the beginning of the fourth century, must of necessity have been established very long before. It is as when we read of three British Bishops attending the Council at Arles, A.D. 314. The Church (we say) which could send out those three Bishops must have been fully organized at a greatly antecedent period.