Daily Liturgical Prayer

Tracing the origins of daily prayer from the New Testament and Patristic period, through the Reformation and Renaissance to the present, this book examines the development of daily rites across a broad range of traditions including: Pre-Crusader Constantinopolitan, East and West Syrian, Coptic and Ethiopian, non-Roman and Roman Western. Structure, texts and ceremonial are examined, and contemporary scholarship surveyed. Concluding with a critique of the present tenor of liturgical revision, Gregory Woolfenden raises key questions for current liturgical change, suggests to whom these questions should be addressed, and proposes that the daily office might be the springboard for an authentic baptismal spirituality. The author explores how prayer and poetic texts indicate that the thrust of the ancient offices was a movement from night to morning - from death to resurrection. Contents: Preface; Introduction and survey of research; From evening to morning: biblical and patristic symbolism; The church orders; A brief summary of historical developments and geographical locations; From Jerusalem and the Palestinian monastic traditions to modern orthodoxy; The Jerusalem pattern of prayer in Cappadocia and Armenia; Vespers and matins in pre-crusades Constantinople and later developments; The East Syrian/Chaldean tradition; The West Syrian and Maronite traditions; The daily prayer of the Coptic and Ethiopian churches; The Roman and Benedictine offices; The old Spanish offices; The Ambrosian and other non-Roman western traditions; The shape and theology of the office; Bibliography; Indexes.