Where can I find some material to read on the history of the Divine Liturgy? How it came to be, what necessitated the versions written by St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom, etc.?

Or you guys can share info as well

Try:

The Byzantine Liturgy by Hans-Joachim Schulz (English Edition with Introduction and Review by Fr. Robert F. Taft, SJ), Pueblo Publishing Company (New York) 1986, ISBN 0-916134-72-5.

This is the best one-volume English overview of the development of the Byzantine Divine Liturgy, both accurate and accessible to the non-expert. Then, when you have nothing else to do, you can begin to tackle Taft's multi-volume history, which really is the last word.

A quick search at amazon shows that book is near hard to find these days.

Any other suggestions?

I don't have the broad knowledge that many others here have, so I don't know a lot about what's out there, but I learned a lot from "The Orthodox Liturgy: The Development of the Eucharistic Liturgy in the Byzantine Rite" by Hugh Wybrew, which we read as part of the Liturgical Theology course in the St Stephen's Program. It's readily available online.

I've read the Wybrew book, but it's a bit dated. See if you can get Schulz from the local university library, either directly or on inter-library loan.

Also very good is Taft's Through Their Own Eyes: Liturgy as the Byzantines Saw It, which provides first hand accounts of liturgy during the heyday of the Byzantine Empire. You'll never complain about disorderly congregations again.

Many and I mean many moons ago, I remember reading a book by a Catholic priest ( a UGC priest )Father Casimir Kucharek
about the history of the development of the Divine Liturgy. I looked for my old copy but it can not be found amongst my unorganized library. I remember that it was called " The Byzantine Slav Liturgy of St. John Chyrsostom.

Try this site for any information.
http://tiberriver.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/home.viewItem/sku/57823

Good luck

Unworthy Kolya

It was many moons ago for me as well but from what I remember, Fr. Casimir's book was pretty good. That was the book that was used at the University of Scranton for the class on Byzantine Liturgy (Undergrad).

What about Introduction to Liturgical Theology by Fr. Alexander Schmemann? I almost finished it.

I will see whats available in my area.

Whats sad here is that the bookstores carry mostly secular titles. The religious section is very limited. And the Catholic bookstores are 99% Roman Catholic. Last time I was at a Catholic Bookstore here in my area, the only Eastern book they have is from an Orthodox, forgot if priest or bishop, talking about Pope John Paul II's Orientale Lumen.

Father Robert Taft did a small one volume history of the Byzantine Liturgy. It's quite good, but it's so brief and dense that you have to be quite knowledgeable about Eastern Roman history and liturgical history to really get it.

Eastern Christian Publications/Orientale Lumen TV has a CD/DVD set of Father Robert lecturing on liturgical history and one on liturgical theology. I've yet to listen to mine sets, but I presume it summarizes much of his work and it should be very good. His book Liturgy: Model of Prayer from the same source is also very good, though not really history.

I also highly recommend his book "Liturgy of the Hours East and West" - an easily read overview of the topic.

Moving to specialist literature, there's always the already alluded to multivolume set by Taft. Dr. Alexander Lingas' dissertation on the music of Sunday Orthros in the 1400s also has a fair amount of information on the evolution of Orthros - but it's a dissertation not light reading.

(did you know that Sunday Orthros in Hagia Sophia mandated the *singing* of Psalm 118 in its entirety? This alone must have taken at least 45 minutes. The only place I've even seen it intoned these days are at monasteries)

Markos

Sorry folks, when I meant "forget that Vatican II ever happened" - i meant that if it bothers you, forget it. lol

If it doesn't - fine.

Why I mentioned it is because a lot of Catholics, especially traditionalists, seem to complain about it.

Im not bothered either way.

I don't know very many Roman Catholics who object to Vatican II, and the "traditionalists" whose arguments extend beyond the nature of the Roman liturgical reforms are very few indeed.

At the risk of stating the obvious, I think your Vatican II comment confused a lot of us, so thank you for clarifying it.

As to your question (Why not remain Catholic?), I feel the same way. Conversely, I don't really understand why so many Orthodox feel the need to convert to Catholicism.



Yes, it's really sad that so many people feel that way. But I would just like to point out that there are also many Orthodox who feel that way about Catholics.