Mystagogical Lecture I
FIRST LECTURE ON THE MYSTERIES
The First Part of the Baptismal Ceremony (The Rites of the Outer Chamber:
Renunciation of Satan, Profession of Faith) With a Lesson from Peter's First Catholic Epistle,
Beginning, "Be sober, be watchful," to the End1 By the same Cyril and Bishop John (I) It has long been my wish, true-born and long-desired children of the Church, to discourse to you upon these spiritual, heavenly mysteries. On the principle, however, that seeing is believing, I delayed until the present occasion, calculating that after what you saw on that night I should find you a readier audience now when I am to be your guide to the brighter and more fragrant2 meadows of this second Eden. In particular, you are now capable of understanding the diviner mysteries of divine, life-giving baptism. The time being now come to spread for you the board of more perfect instruction, let me explain the significance of what was done for youa on that evening of your Baptism.
(2) First you entered the antechamber of the baptistery and faced towards the west. On the command to stretch out your hand, you renounced Satan as though he were there in person.
1 1 Peter 5.SfI'.
2 Note the comparatives. The imagery continues and develops that of the exordium of the Procatechesis, which is a point in favour of identity of authorship. For further paradisal imagery d. Procat. 16; Myst. 1.4
(end), 9; 2.2 (end). Christians, therefore, live in the East, the fiends (the "opposite Powers") in the West.
3 Here I follow a neat emendation suggested by Touttee, and my translation agrees with Piedagnel's-though not with his text!
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This moment, you should know, is prefigured in ancient history. When that tyrannous and cruel despot, Pharaoh, was oppressing the noble, free-spirited Hebrew nation, God sent
Moses to deliver them from the hard slavery imposed upon them by the Egyptians. The doorposts were anointed with the blood of a lamb that the destroyer might pass over the houses signed with the blood; so the Jews were miraculously liberated. After their liberation the enemy gave chase, and, on seeing the sea part miraculously before them, still continued in hot pursuit, only to be instantaneously overwhelmed and engulfed in the Red Sea.
(3) Pass, pray, from the old to the new, from the figure to the reality. There Moses sent by God to Egypt; here Christ sent from the Father into the world. Moses' mission was to lead out from Egypt a persecuted people; Christ's, to rescue all the people of the world who were under the tyranny of sin. There the blood of a lamb was the charm against the destroyer; here, the blood of the unspotted Lamb, Jesus
Christ, is appointed your inviolable sanctuary against demons.
Pharaoh pursued that people of old right into the sea; this outrageous spirit, the impudent author of all evil, followed you, each one, up to the very verge of the saving streams. That other tyrant is engulfed and drowned in the Red Sea; this one is destroyed in the saving water.4
4 Baptism is the new Exodus; sometimes (e.g., in the Odes of Solomon) it is the crossing of Jordan and the entry into the Promised Land that is prominent. John 1.17 ("The Law ... ") represents Christ as the new Moses, and from as early as the Epistle of Barnabas the Church is represented by Christian writers as the true Israel. For baptism and the Red Sea, cf. 1 Cor. 10.1, 2 on which cf. Origen, In Exod., Hom. 5.5 (GCS, Origen, 6.190), where the baptizand escapes
(like the stag) by entering the water, in which the Egyptians then drown. Cf. In Lib. Iesu Nave, Hom. 26.2 (GCS, Orig., 7.459), where
Israel's travels in the desert symbolize the baptismal renunciation, and the emergence from the Red Sea represents the baptismal grace; also
Ephraem Syrus, Hymni in Fest. Epiph. 1.6 (Lamy, 1.7): "Israel passed over the sea and was unbelieving; the Gentiles, plunged in the baptismal waters, believed and received the Holy Spirit." D. Daube
(The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism 106-140) says that a convert to Judaism in N.T. times, regenerated by proselyte baptism, was
MYSTAGOGICAL LECTURE I
(4)' You are told, however, to address him as personally present, and with arm outstretched to say: "I renounce you,
Satan."5 Allow me to explain the reason of your facing west, for you should know it. Because the west is the region of visible darkness,6 Satan, who is himself darkness, has his empire in darkness-that is the significance of your looking steadily towards the west while you renounce that gloomy
Prince of night.
What was it that each of you said, standing there? "I renounce you, Satan, you wicked and .cruel tyrant; I no longer"
(you said in effect) "fear your power. For Christ broke that power by sharing flesh and blood with me, planning through thought of as passing through the experience of ancient Israel (Exodus, etc.). And 1 Cor. 10.1·2 shows that the baptism of the desert generation of Israelites was a model for Christian baptism also.
5 For the renunciation of Satan d. 1 Thess. 1.9·10: " ... how you turned from Idols to be the servants of the living and true God, and to wait expectantly .. , the deliverer from the terrors of judgment to come."
6 The Light·Darkness antithesis, so common in the Bible from Gen. 1 to the Apoc., perhaps originated in Babylonia or Persia. In Gnosticism it has an intellectual, in Christianity an ethical slant, though implying also a (non radical or at least optimistic) cosmic dualism. Darkness is evil and falsehood, irrationality and unreality. Darkness reigned for three hours during the Crucifixion, but then Christ rose like the Sun on the first day of the week. The ethical dualism of Zoroastrianism taught a cosmic conflict between Ormuzd, god of light and good, and Ahriman, god of darkness and evil. The Fourth Gospel uses similar imagery and the War Scroll from Qumran speaks of the war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness. The opening chapters of the Didache (A.D. ca. 110?) speak of the Two Ways, of Life and Death, while the corresponding closing chapters of (the Alexandrian?) Pseudo·Barnabas speak of the Two Ways of Light and Darkness. Both derive from .an earlier, probably, pre· Christian Jewish moral catechism. Inevitably there is some overlap between religions in their symbolism and ethical teaching. The Jerusalem word for Baptism was "enlightenment" and the candidates were "those being enlight· ened" (photizomenoi); we know from the Peregrinatio of Aetheria that the Jerusalem Church of the Resurrection, where the candidates were initiated, was brilliantly illuminated by a thousand lamps on Holy Saturday night.
The West as Satan's abode: Porphyry (The Nymphs' Cave in the Odyssey 29) connects mortal and servile beings with the north, semidivine beings with the south, gods with the east and demons with the west. Proclus (Comm. in Platonis Timaeum 24D) places the hylic demons in the west, "since the west, as the Egyptians said, is the place of the lowest demons." .
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their assumption to break, by His death, the power of Death, to save me from subjection to perpetual bondage.7 I renounce you, crafty scoundrel of a serpent; I renounce you, traitor, perpetrator of every crime, who inspired our first parents to revolt. I renounce you, Satan, agent and abettor of all wickedness."
(5) Then in a second phrase you are taught to say, "and all your works." All sin is "the works of Satan"; and sin, too, you must renounce, since he who has escaped from a tyrant has also cast off the tyrant's livery. Sin in all its forms, then, is included in the works of the Devil. Only let me tell you this: all your words, particularly those spoken at that awful hour, are recorded in the book of God. Whenever, therefore, you are caught in conduct contrary to your profession, you will be tried as a renegade. Renounce, then, the works of Satan, that is, every irrationalS deed and thought.
(6) Next you say, "and all his pomp."9 The pomp of the Devil is the craze for the theatre, the horse races in the circus, the wild-beast hunts, and all such vanity, from which the saint prays to God to be delivered in the words, "Turn away mine eyes that they may not behold vanity."lo Avoid an addiction to the theatre, with its spectacle of the licentiousness, the lewd and unseemly antics of actors and the frantic dancing of degenerates. Not for you, either, the folly of those who, to gratify their miserable appetite, expose themselves to wild beasts in the combats in the amphitheatre. They pamper their belly at the cost of becoming themselves, in the event, food for the maw of savage beasts; of these gladiators it is fair to say that in the service of the belly which is their God they
7 Cf. Reb. 2.14-15.
8 Para logon: J. Bouvet and Piedagnel prefer: "contrary to your baptismal promise."
9 This phrase is not found in all, even later, liturgies. The ApTrad (21.9) has simply: "I renounce thee, Satan, and all thy service and all thy works."
10 Ps. 118.37.
MYSTAGOGICAL LECTURE I
court death in the arena.u Shun also the bedlam of the races, a spectacle in which souls as well as riders come to grief. All these follies are the pomp of the Devil.
(7) The food, also, which is sometimes hung up in pagan temples and at festivals-meat, bread, and so forth-since it is defiled by the invocation of abominable demons, may be included in "the pomp of the Devil." For as the bread and wine of the Eucharist before the holy invocation of the adorable Trinity were ordinary bread and wine, while after the invocation the bread becomes the Body of Christ, and the wine his Blood, so these foods of the pomp of Satan, though of their own nature ordinary food, become profane through the invocation of evil spirits.12
(8) After this you say, "and all your service." The service of the Devil is prayer in the temples of idols, the honoring of lifeless images, the lighting of lamps or the burning of incense by springs or streams; there have been cases of persons who, deceived by dreams or by evil spirits, have gone to this length in the hope of being rewarded by the cure of even bodily
11 ApTrad, ch. 16, lists among the trades and professions forbidden to Christians, idolatry, the circus and the amphitheatre. While Cyril emphasizes gluttony as the motive of the gladiator or bestiarius, the attractiveness of such professions is otherwise explained by S. Dill
(Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, 2d ed. [London 1905. reprinted 1925] 238-244). The "stars" of this dangerous and glamorous profession commanded salaries comparable to those of a successful footballer or bull-fighter in modem times. While they were fed like fighting cocks, they were subject to harsh discipline. What is the explanation of Cyril's emphasis? A sentence in Tert. Apol. 42 suggests the possibility that the bestiarii sometimes were banqueted before the combat. Botte, cited by Piedagnel. suggests that Cyril misunderstood an obsolete prohibition. I assume, against Piedagnel, that kynegesion, like venatio, can, and here does. mean. not "hunting." but "combats with wild beasts" in the arena. Circus shows were denounced by Hippolytus and Tertullian (Apol. 38-42 passim; Spec. 10 [theatre].
16-17). They were connected with the worship of the pagan gods of Greece and Rome and, on festivals, were inaugnrated by a religious procession (pomPe). When Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina in 135, he included a theatre; there were theatrical performances in Jerusalem in Cyril's time (Sozomen. Hist_ eccl. 4.25.3-4).
12 CfCat. 3.3; Myst. 3.3; I Cor. 10.20. For the omission. in some versions of ApTrad, of one or other forbidden crafts as they became irrelevant. see ApTrad, p. 25. n. 10.
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ailments. Have nothing to do with these practices. The observation of birds, divination, omens, charms and amulets, magic and similar chicanery-all such practices are the cult of the Devil. Shun them. For if you should succumb to such practices after renouncing Satan and transferring your allegiance to Christ,13 you will find the usurper14 more cruel than ever.
For if formerly, treating you as a familiar, he abated the rigors of your slavery, now he will be furiously exasperated against you. So you will lose Christ and taste Satan's tyranny.
Have you not heard the old story which recounts the fate of Lot and his daughters? Was not Lot himself saved together with his daughters after gaining the mountain, while his wife was turned into a pillar of salt,15 a monumental warning and a memorial of her wicked choice (her looking back)'? So be on your guard: do not turn back to "what is behind,"16 first
"putting your hand to the p10W"17 and then "turning back" to the bitter savor of the things of this world. No; flee to the mountain, to Jesus Christ, the "stone hewn without hands"18 that has filled the world.
(9) When you renounce Satan, trampling underfoot every covenant with him, then you annul that ancient "league with Hell,"19 and God's paradise opens before you, that Eden, planted in the east, from which for his transgression our first father was banished. Symbolic of this is your facing about from the west to the east, the place of light. It was at this point that 13 Cf. (besides baptism itself) the turning to the east and the declaratory
Creed in ch. 9. A fourth-century (T) version of the ApTrad. lOa. interpolates. after the Renunciation and first Unction. a declaration of adherence to the Blessed Trinity. The K text (ca. 500) interpolates. slightly later (lla), a more elaborate form.
14 At baptism rebels and traitors return to their true allegiance.
15 Clement of Rome (I Clem. 11.2) speaks of this pillar of salt "standing to this day" (A.D. ca. 97). Josephus (Antiq. 1.203) had seen it. This
(Sodom) area abounds in pillars of salt. and medieval and later travellers (or their guides) have delighted to identify one or another with the pillar.
16 Phil. 3.13.
17 Cf. Luke 9.62.
18 Cf. Dan. 2.45.
19 Cf. Isa. 28.15.
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you were told to say: "I believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit, and in one Baptism of repentance."20
But these subjects have been treated at large, as God's grace allowed, in the previous discourses.
(10) In the security, then, of this formula of faith, "be sober." For "our adversary, the devil," in the words just read,
"as a roaring lion, goes about seeking whom he may devour."21
Yet if in former times Death was mighty and devoured, now, in the time of the holy laver of regeneration, "the Lord God hath wiped away all tears from every face."22 No more shall you mourn, now that you have "put off the old man,"23 but you shall ever keep high festival, clad in Jesus Christ as in a garment of salvation.
(11) That was what was done in the outer chamber. When we enter, God willing, in the succeeding discourses on the mysteries, into the Holy of Holies, we shall receive the key to the rites performed there. Now to God,24 with the Son and the Holy Spirit, be glory, power and majesty forever and ever. Amen.
20 Quite likely Cyril summarizes here, and the candidates recited the whole of the Jerusalem creed. The closely parallel passage in ApCo
7.41 suggests that, turning to the east after the renunciation (apotas· somai), the candidates prefaced the Creed with a "consociation"
(syntassomai) with Christ. See note 13 above.
21 1 Peter 5.8, 9.
22 Cf. Isa. 25.8 and Apoc. 7.17.
23 Cf. Eph. 4.22.
24 The use of the word "God" as a designation of the Father is, in a document of this date, rather striking: archaic? traditionalist? Ori· genist?
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PREFATORY REMARK TO THE SECOND AND THIRD
LECTURES ON THE MYSTERIES
The B Theory and the C Theory Mystagogical Lectures 2 and 3 are relevant to an important continuing debate about the relative importance of Baptism and Confirmation, and especially about the answer to the question, "In which sacrament is the Holy Spirit given?" For convenience I shall refer to the theory which exalts Baptism (the theory to which I provisionally subscribe) as the B theory, and to the other as the C (Chrism or Confirmation) theory. The B theory holds that the Spirit, being inseparable from other graces incontestably given in Baptism (dying and rising with Christ, regeneration, adoptive sonship, sanctifying grace, new creation), is Himself given in Baptism.
Thus (as the Lenten Lectures hold) Baptism is the sacrament of the Death and Resurrection of the Lord and also corresponds to Pentecost, the primal creation of the Church through the Spirit; so Peter after Pentecost says (Acts 2.38): "Be baptized ... and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit"; d. John 3.5. On this view
Confirmation, whether by imposition of hands or by chrismation (anointing), though primitive, is a subsidiary rite; it rounded off the rite (though sometimes it preceded Baptism) and gave a high sacramental grace (of variable interpretation) but was not strictly essential. The bishop's role is safeguarded in this theory by the fact that the whole initiation rite is under his control and direction.
The C theory holds that Pentecost corresponds to Confirmation (Chrism) and that it is in Chrism that the Spirit is given. Among the texts to which it appeals are Acts 8.14-17 (Peter and John in Samaria), 19.5, and the problematic 1 John 2.20, 27 ("You have an anointing, chrisma . .. "). It holds that quite often in the New
Testament "baptism" refers not simply to water-baptism but to a larger rite of which this was only a part. It interprets the "born again of water and the Spirit" of John 3.3-5 as referring to two baptisms, water-baptism and baptism of Spirit by chrismation. Similarly in the Gospel narratives of Our Lord's baptism by John it finds two successive events (the exemplars of Baptism and Confirmation) instead of the dualism of a single event in which one element (the Dove and the Voice) is but the visibilization1 of the spiritual grace conferred in the other (the baptism in Jordan). Emphasizing that "Christ" means "anointed," it holds that Chrism christens.
While in the notes to Mystagogical Lectures 2 and 3 I have occasionally criticized the theological assumptions and implications of the C theory, I nowhere discuss the earlier evidence, on which the answer to the question depends.
1 lowe this useful term "visibilization" to the Revd G. G. Harrop (Hamilton, Ontario).