Messe und Herrenmahl: Eine Studie zur Geschichte der Liturgie

PREFACE

When I had completed my studies on Peter and Paul in Rome eleven years ago, the engagement with liturgical problems that they occasioned made an equally comprehensive, charming, and rewarding task clear to me. The varied and meticulous treatment of the problem of mutual influences between different liturgies had, as was clearly recognizable and repeatedly confirmed by the frequently divergent solutions, generally not led to convincing results. The reason for this lay in the overly narrow restriction of the field of view: it was clear that a comparison systematically evaluating the entire liturgical material of the East and West would have to steer the view from accidental details toward the underlying great connections, thereby pointing the way to a real solution. But even more could be hoped for. Should it turn out—and this lay within the realm of the probable—that the abundance of liturgical images could be traced back to a few ancient archetypes, the possibility would arise to pursue the roots of these oldest forms further and, through comparison with literary testimonies, to penetrate to the liturgical custom of the apostolic age and the Jerusalem community of disciples. Perhaps it would be possible in this way, from the liturgical side, to shed new light on the much-disputed problem of the origin and meaning of the Lord's Supper original: "Abendmahl".

I set to work with these intentions and hopes. It soon became apparent that the difficulties