De feriis in Roman-Canonical Legal Tradition (original) (raw)
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Studia Liturgica 40, 2010
The Societas Liturgica already devoted one Congress to the theme “Liturgical Time” at the 1981 meeting in Paris. Some of those papers have in the meantime become classics. Two years later (1983) saw the appearance of the first volume of the German Handbook of Liturgical Studies, Gottesdienst der Kirche, which stands, strictly speaking, as the last overall presentation of the Feiern im Rhythmus der Zeit (Celebrations in the Rhythm of Time) to come from the pen of a single author. While Hansjörg Auf der Maur in his work reduced the classical state of research down to a theological overview whose thoroughness, despite all its needs for amplification and correction, remains irreplaceable, the year 1986 saw the first edition of Thomas J. Talley’s monograph on The Origins of the Liturgical Year, a milestone of innovative research. He not only asked many new questions and opened up perspectives for the construction of far-reaching hypotheses, but also gave unexpected answers that have themselves been handed on as textbook knowledge. Accumulating research continues to make it clear where open desiderata lie. Thus, even after these epochal works, the theme, as a necessarily selective overview of a vast field of specialized works of the last generations will show, was anything but exhausted. All kinds of feasts have since been worked on monographically. To be mentioned in this connection are also unpublished theses from Roman institutions like the Pontificio Istituto Liturgico and the Pontificio Istituto Orientale, to say nothing of the documentation of congresses that have been held on the triduum sacrum or Holy Week. Of high relevance for the formative phase of the church year are dissertations on individual patristic authors or, where bodies of source material from related areas are preserved, dissertations on whole regions like Cappadocia, North Italy and, above all, Jerusalem. Larger contributions to lexicons, which at times achieve more than just a summary of previous research, make the results accessible. In some languages there have also been some overall presentations directed to a wider reading public. However, in contrast to this impressive progress in individual questions, we find that in the past few decades not much has been produced in the way of comprehensive syntheses. For example, the Italian-English Scientia Liturgica / Handbook of Liturgical Studies, although designed with an ecumenical breadth hitherto not yet achieved in comparable works, remains somewhat summary in details; and its bibliographies are at times quite meager. The best that we do have, the extensive collection of essays edited by Maxwell Johnson entitled Between Memory and Hope: Readings on the Liturgical Year, offers a somewhat comprehensive orientation to the state of recent research. What is there presented in at times masterful clarity need not be repeated here. In this situation, what I present here cannot, of course, offer anything like a full heortology, even in nuce. I will rather attempt, in a quite subjective selection, to characterize some significant tendencies in recent research, address epochal results, and list open desiderata. Part One will present the new evaluation of well-known and much-discussed sources on the origin of some feasts. Part Two will sketch out which hitherto neglected witnesses to the origin and development of the feasts deserve more attention in the future, and what the questions are that could come from doing so. Part Three takes as its starting point the patristic evidence on the fundamental-liturgical meta-level, and offers reflections on liturgical hermeneutics.