2.

Reconciling Cyril and Egeria on

the Catechetical Process in

Fourth-Century Jerusalem
by Maxwell E. Johnson
The relationship of the pre-Baptismal. Catecbeses (hereaft~r, ~Cs) ar;d the Procatecbesis of Cyril ofJerusalem to the ,,":ltness of the.PeregrmatlO E,gen.ae has long
been a subject of controversy, speculatlOn, and conjecture, resultms- m the most
divergent and tentative conclusions. amopg scholars..One of the maJo~ proble?;s
in these fourth-century Jerusalem hturg1cal sour~es 1S ~ow to reconc1le Egen~ s
description of an eight-week Lent (c. 381- 384), ll:cludmg seven yveeks of dally
catechetical instru~tion.for the competf!Tltes focussmg on .both Scnpture and the
Creed2, wit~ Cynl's e1s-hteen (or nmeteen) pre-baptlsmal lectures fo: t~e
pbotizomenol (c. 348) wh1ch seem to focus on t~e Je~s,alem Creed a~ope. Th1~
problem is further cornplicated by the fact that m Cynl s BCs the tradItIO symboit
takes place at the end of the fifth lecture3, but, according to Egeria, it happens
only 'after five week's teaching',4 following which the bishop begins to lecture
through the Creed article by article.
ATTEMPTS AT R E S O L U T I O N .

One of the first attempts at reconciling: the wi~ness of Cyril with that of Egena
was made by F. Cabrol m 1895. S According to h1m, BCs 6-18 ar~ clearly an artlcl~
by-article exposition of the Creed and are, as such, to be ~sslgne~ to w~eks .SlX
and seven of Egeria's description of the Lenten ca~echetlcal p~nod. L1kew1se,
Cabrol assigned the!,rocatecbesis to t~e first Sunday m Lent, but mterpreted ~Cs
1-4 as simply belongmg somewhere m the first five weeks of Lent, dl!nn.gwh1~h,
as Egeria reports, the .bishop :goes throu.gh the whole B1ble, beg~nnmg ,,":lth
Genesis, and first relatlng the hteral meanmg of each p~ssage, then mterpretlng
its spiritual meaning'.6 Thus BCs 1-4, on. Cabro~'s V1ew, belong to a. large;
collection of pre-baptismallectures on the B1ble wh1ch, for the most part, 1S lost.
Peregrinatio 46.1-4. The Latin text used here is that of He!ene Petre,~the:ie: Journal de
voyage (Sources chretiennes 21, Paris, 1948) and the English translatIOn IS that ofjohn
Wilkinson, Egeria's Travels, London, 1971.
2 The Greek text of the BCs remains that of J-P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca, (PG), vo!. 33. I
have used the English translation of Leo P. McCauley and A. A. Stephenson, The
Works ofSaint Cyril ofJerusalem (Washington, 1969-1970).
3 BC 5.12.
4 Peregrinatio 46.3.
. . .
..
.
.
5 F. Cabrol, Les Eglises de ftrusalem: La d,sclplme et la ltturgte au I~ slccle (Pans, 1895), pp.l43-

While not specifically assigning BC 5 anywhere, Cabrol proposed the following distribution of Cyril's lectures over Egeria's sixth and seventh Lenten
weeks. I
Week Six
VVeek Seven
BC 6-Monday
BC 12-Monday
BC 7-Tuesday
BC 13-Tuesday
BC 8-Wednesday
BC 14-Wednesday
BC 9-Thursday
BC IS-Thursday
BC 10-Friday
BC 16-Friday
BC 11-Saturday
BC 17-Saturday
BC 18-Palm Sunday
Such a schema is verylroblematic and was regarded as such in at least two
places by Cabrol himsel . While noting that Egeria indicates that no lectures
were given on Saturdays, nonetheless, he assigned both BC 11 and BC 17 to
Saturdays. In so doing he offered, as an explanation, that there had either been a
change m practice between the time of Cyril and Egeria, or that the absence of
Saturday instruction applied only to the first five weeks. 2 Such conjectures may
be unnecessary, however, for it is not clear that Saturday instruction is ruled out
by Egeria in the first place. All that she does say is that Saturdays and Sundays in
the eight-week Lent (other than Holy Saturday) were not fast days.3 Cabrol's
assigning of BC 11 and BC 17 to Saturdays, therefore, need not be a
problem.
The second place where Cabrol saw a difficulty was in his assignment of BC 14
to a Wednesday. This particular lecture was probably given on a Monday, as
therein Cyril refers to a sermon he had delivered 'yesterday, on the Lord's day'.4
Again, Cabrol dismissed this by claiming that a change in practice had taken
pface in the time between Cyril and Egeria and that his schema did not claim to
be absolute. s
Cabrol's schema was further called into question in a 1954 article by A. A.
Stephenson. 6 Stephenson raised three other problems in addition to those
already noted by Cabrol, namely: (1) that BCs 11 and 12 were, on the basis of
internal evidence, probably delivered on successive days; (2) that BC 18 could
not have been delivered on Palm Sunday but, owing to its apparent reference to
the fasts and vigils of Good Friday in 18.17, belonged to Holy Saturday; and (3)

159.
6
7

Peregrinatio 46.2.
Cabrol, op. cit., p.l56.

18 Essays in Early Eastern Initiation

Ibid., p.l57.
Ibid., pp.158-159.
3 Peregrinatio 27.1.
4 BC 14.24. On the interpretation of this lecture see page 29 and the Excursus below, pp.29I

5
6

30.
Cabrol, op. cit., p.l59.
A. A. Stephenson, 'The Lenten Catechetical Syllabus in Fourth Century Jerusalem' in
Theological Studies 15 (1954) pp.l03-116.

Reconciling Cyril and Egeria on the Catechetical Process in Fourth-Century Jerusalem

19

that BCs 1-4 which refer to baptism and the forgiveness of sins belong to CyriI's
exposition of the Creed itself.!
From this basis Stephenson developed his own hypothesis. By comparing
Cyril's lectures, the evidence of the fifth-century Armenian Lectionary (hereafter,
AL), and the writings of St. Jerome with the witness of Egeria, Stephenson
claimed that the Jerusalem Lenten 'syllabus' was the Creed alone and not
Egeria's two-fold cycle. He also concluded that CyriI's eighteen lectures were in
and of themselves a complete course of instruction on the Creed. In Jerome's
Contra Ioannem of A.D. 396 399 (written against Cyril's successor, John, whom
Jerome suspected of Origenism) Stephenson found evidence that at this time
the content of Jerusalem baptismal catechesis was still the Creed. Jerome says
that John had summarized in a single sermon the entire contents of this teaching, namely, 'the doctrine of the Holy Trinity'.2 Further evidence for this
Stephenson found in theAL in which nineteen biblical readings are provided for
Lenten catechetical instruction. These nineteen readings correspond to the
readings included in Cyril's eighteen BCs (with the nineteenth reading included
in BC 18).3
Stephenson argued, therefore, that it was simply impossible to correlate Cyril
with Egeria and that the weight of evidence led to the conclusion that Egeria's
description of a two-fold Lenten syllabus of Scripture and Creed was an error.
This error, he claimed, arose from the fact that Egeria did not know Greek and
had to depend upon an interpreter for her information-an interpreter whom
she misunderstood!
'It seems possible that ... her informants, in speaking of "Scripture, the
ressurection, and faith" as well as of "the symbol," were making so many
attempts to describe the unchanged syllabus of the Catecheses,i.e., the Creed;
and that what they really told her was that the Creed was delivered, not after
the fifth week, but-what would have been very surprising to a Westernerearly in Lent, at the end of the fifth lecture, as in the Catecheses.'4
Stephenson's conclusion is simply too speculative to warrant uncritical
acceptance. While he was probably correct in viewing the BCs as a complete
so~rce o~ instruction on the Creed, his conclusion regarding Egeria's lack of profiCIency in Greek-though possible-finds no explicit supporting evidence.
Furthermore, his claim that the Jerusalem syllabus was only the Creed in the time
of Egeria's visit also presupposes not only that she misunderstood the time when
the traditio symboli took place but that she also erred regarding the content of
daily catechesis. 5
Ibid., p.l06. In BC 18.22 (not 18.17 as Stephenson says) Cyril writes: 'The Creed which we
repeat contains in order the following: "And in one Baptism of repentance unto the
remission of sins; and in one Holy Catholic Church; and in the resurrection of the
flesh; and in life everlasting." Of Baptism and repentance we have spoken in earlier
lectures .. .'
2 Ibid., pp.ll0-112.
3 For the Armenian Lectionary see A. Renoux, Le Codex armenien Jerusalem 121 II (Turnhout,
1971), pp.233-237. All references in this essay are to Ms. J.
4 Stephenson, op. cit., p.l16.
5 Stephenson, op. cit., p.l16.
1

20 Essays in Early Eastern Initiation

Another attempt at reconciling these sources was made by William Telfer in

the introduction to his abridged edition of Cyril's work.! Assuming on the basis
of the nineteen readings assigned in theAL that BC 18 is actually a combination
of two lectures, Telfer ended up with a total of twenty catecheticallectures for
Lent. Assuming also, like Stephenson, that these lectures (as a complete
collection) alone provided the course of instruction for the Jerusalem
catechumens, he suggested th~t throughout the forty days of.Lent (i.e., t.he eightweek period of five fast days in each week) lectures were given both in Greek
and, for the less Hellenized simpliciores, in Palestinian Aramaic, alternating on
various, though not necessarily successive, days. Such an approach, he argued,
would have given the photizomenoi time to assimilate the difficult content of the
instruction.
At first sight Te1fer's approach seems to provide a brilliant solution to the
problem. He did precisely what Stephenson did not do in attempting to
demonstrate how Cyril's lectures could have been distributed over an eightweek cycle of daily catechesis described by Egeria. And, although !elfer do~s not
refer to this, it is also true that Egeria herself refers to the necessity of an interpreter for those who speak only Syriac or Latin. 2
A second look, however, reveals that his conclusions are rather questionable
for at least two reasons. First of all, Egeria's reference to interpreters is to an 'onthe-spot' activity and not an indication of separate gatherings or separate lectures. There is, thus, no basis whatsoever for assuming a Lenten course of twenty
lectures in Greek alternating with an additional twenty in Palestinian Aramaic or
Syriac. Secondly, and this is more problematic, there is no evidence that Lent
(including Holy Week) in the time of Cyril was eight weeks long with five fast
days in each week. It is well known that Egeria is the first and only witness to
refer to an eight-week Jerusalem Lent. Nevertheless, Telfer assumed (without
even referring to Egeria) that an eight-week Lent was the traditional Jerusalem
pattern. But, if one does assume that this was the case, then any attempt to make
a correlation with Egeria's own description becomes impossible because it
would mean that during her visit there would have to have been lectures
delivered during Great Week-even after the redditio symboli-:-and Eg.eria
explicitly says that there were no lectures then on account of the time reqmred
for the Holy Week liturgies. 3
It may well be that pre-baptismal instruction in the time of Cyril did continue
throughout 'Holy Week'. Yet, the idea of an eight-week Lent in Cyril-so
necessary for Telfer's hypothesis-is simply unfounded. The most recent
scholarship on the development of Lent, in fact, claims that it was a six-week
period in the time of Cyril, including the week that was to become Holy Week. 4
Upon closer analysis, therefore, Telfer's approach and conclusions offer very
little assistance in resolving the apparent discrepancies between these sources.
Telfer, CyrilofJerusalem and Nemesius ofErnesa (London, 1955), pp.34-35.
Peregrinatio 47.3 -4.
3 Ibid., 46.4-6.
4 See Thomas J. Talley, The Origins ofthe Liturgical Year (Pueblo, New York, 1986), pp.168174.
1

Reconciling Cyril and Egeria on the Catechetical Process in Fourth-Century Jerusalem 21

In his recent work on the stational character of liturgy in Jerusalem, Rome, and
Constantinople, John Daldovin offers what appears to be a more reasonable
solution.! Noting that the AL has special stationalliturgies on fifteen days during
its six-week Lent (excluding Holy Week), Baldovin adds to these the six Sundays
of Lent, resulting in a total of twenty-one days which have some kind ofliturgical
gathering over and above the regular daily cycle. According to him, this leaves
nineteen days, which is, conveniently, the precise number of .catechetical
readings provided by the AL and parallel to the BCs of Cynl (with the
nineteenth reading included in BC 18). From this he concludes that the lectures
given to the photizoneboi were delivered on the non-stational days during the
Jerusalem Lent. He assigns them as follows:
1st Week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday; 2nd Week: Saturday; 3rd
Week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday; 4th Week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday; 5th Week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday;
and 6th Week: Monday and Tuesday.!
While in this schema BC 14 (where Cyril refers to 'yesterday, on the Lord's day')
is placed on a Monday, BCs 6-8 and 10-12 (in which Cyril makes reference to
'yesterday's lecture')! are separated in each case by an intervening Wednesday.
This separation Baldovin defends by claiming that 'what can be translated as
"yesterday's lecture" from Greek can also mean "the previous lecture"-a
common enough practice in classroom rhetoric',!
Baldovin's approach to the BCs is based, to a large extent, upon A. Renoux's
conclusions concerning the Mystagogical Catecheses, the series of post-baptismal
lectures delivered during Easter Week in Jerusalem. While both Cyril S and
Egeria6 indicate that during Easter Week mystagogia was to take place daily in the
great Church ofthe Anastasis, the fact remains that there are only five Mystagogical Catecheses attributed to Cyril, only five days (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday,
Saturday, and Sunday) in Egeria on which such an assembly could be held in the
great Basilica7, and only four such days (Monday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday)
assigned to this purpose in theAL. 8 This apparent reduction from seven to five to
four lectures was explained by Renoux on the basis of the evolving stational
pattern in the liturgy ofJerusalem. 9 According to him, the reduction from seven

! John Baldovin, The Urban Character ofChristian Worship: The Origins, Development, and
MeaningofStational Liturgy (Orienralia Christiana Analecra 228, Rome, 1987), pp.9093.
2 Ibid., p.93.
3 See BCs 7.1, 8.1, ILl, and 12.4.
4 Baldovin, op. cit., p.n.
S BC.l8.33. For the Mystagogical Catecheses attributed to Cyril see F. 1. Cross, St. Cyrilof
Jerusalem's Lectures on the Christian Sacraments, (London, 1951).
6 Peregrinatio 46.6 and 47.1-2.
72 Ibid., 39.2.
8 Renoux, op. cit., pp.327-331.
9 A Renoux, 'Les catecheses mysragogiques dans l'organisation liturgique Hierosolymitaine du IVe et du Ve siecle' in Le Museon 78 (1965) pp.355-359.

22 Essays in Early Eastern Initiation

to five came about because of th~ addition of st~tionalli~urgieson Wednesday at

the Eleo~a (on the ~ount of Olives) and <,)0 Fnday at ZlOn, a shift already complete~ pno,r to Egena.. F~rthermore, he claims that the reduction from five to the
four lIsted 10 the AL simIlarly came about because of the addition of a station at
the Martyrium of St. Stephen on Tuesday of that same week. Baldovin concludes, therefore, that 'given the relation between stations and lectures during
the octave of the Pascha, it seems logical to suggest that a similar balance must
have held for the catecheses during Lent'.!
Such a conclusion may indeed be logical, but it is certainly not without its
pro~lems. Firs~ of all, while Baldovin is correct in noting that there are fifteen
statlonal days 10 the AL, he makes an error in his further calculations. The six
Lenten Sundays plus the fifteen stational days total twenty-one days, but in a sixweek period of seven days each this results in not nineteen but twenty-one days
left over! Two days are, thus, left unaccounted for in his proposed schema. 2
Secondly, ~e have n~ knowle?ge of the .extent of. t~e stational pattern in the
Jerusalem lIturgy dunng the tlme of Cyn!. Baldovm s proposal for the assign~ent of th~ BCs, therefore, may. possibly be accurate for the early fifth century
(I.e., at the tlme ofthe AL), but thls does not necessarily mean that such is the case
for Egeria c. 381 or for Cyril in the late 34Os. Also, it is quite a shift in his schema
to move from Egeria's claim of daily catechesis to, for example, only one lecture
during the second week of Lent and that, presumably, on a Saturday.
Finally, Renoux's conclusions regarding the Mystagogical Catecheses are themselves not beyond question. While the shift from five to four due to the addition
of the Stephen station is understandable, the supposed prior shift from seven to
five because of the addition of Wednesday and Fnday stations is not as
convincing. Wednesdays and Fridays themselves may belong to an even older
Jerusalem liturgical tradition. In her description of the daily services held during
Lent, Egeria says of Wednesdays and Fridays that'at three o'clock they assemble
1
2

Baldovin, op. cit., p.96.

In a recent conversation John Baldovin has challenged my calculations by arguing that
the Saturday ofthe sixth week of Lent is not to be included in the counting because, as
'Lazarus Saturday', it, along with Palm Sunday, formed an independent liturgical
'season' between Lent and Great Week in Jerusalem. (On Lazarus Saturday and Palm
Sunday see Talley, op. cit. pp.l76-183.) According to Baldovin, therefore, because Lent
in the AL ended on Friday of the sixth week, there are twenty, not twenty-one, days
remaining. Furthermore, by subtracting the Procatechesis from these twenty days, the
end result is nineteen. Howeverm this assumes that the Procatechesis (which is not even
mentioned in the AL) was given on a day independent from those included in his
schema! For, in arriving at the twenty-one days separate from the nineteen catechetical days, he has already counted the six Lenten Sundays. But the only day when the
Procatechesis could have been delivered in his schema is the first Sunday in Lent
because acatecheticallecture is assigned to Monday ofthe first week. Therefore, while
it may be that 'Lazarus Saturday' accounts for one of the remaining two days in his
schema, unless it can be shown that the Procatechesis is to be assigned to its own day
mdependent from a Sunday, catechetical, or srational day, there remains at least one
day left unaccounted for in his calculations.

Reconciling Cyril and Egeria on the Catechetical Process in Fourth-Century Jerusalem 23

on Sion, because all through the year they regularly assemble on Sion at three
Wednesdays and Fridays'.' And Paul Bradshaw writes that 'since Sion
was the ancient centre of the Jerusalem church, we may conjecture that the serVIces held there were of long standing .. .'2 Therefore, granted that in Egeria the
servic~s of the Easter octave are held in the morning and that the Wednesday
gathenng is at the Eleona ra.ther than Sion, the fact that Mystagogia could not
take place on these two days may be highly significant. That is, the absence of
mystagogia and the presence ofliturgical gatherings elsewhere on these two days
may, in fact.' simply indicate the continuing presence of the structure of the
anCIent Chnstian week at Jerusalem originally centred at Sion itself. In other
~ords, ~here are o~ly five Myst~gogical Catecheses because such lost-baptismal
InstructIOn never dId take place In Jerusalem on Wednesday an Friday during
Easter week.
Furth~r confirmation of this may be provided by the AL itself. For, ifthe Tuesday statlon at the Martynum of Stephen as well as the Wednesday and Friday
stations were all new additions, one would expect the four lectures provided for
in the ~L to be assigned to Monday, Tl:ntrsday. Saturday, and Sunday. Yet, they
are assIgned to Monday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with the station at Sion
now on Wednesday and that of the Mount of Olives on Thursday.3 In
relationship to Egeria's description, what is new in the AL is not only the
pr~sence of t.he Tue~day station but the rather odd juggling of the Mount of
Olives and SIOn statlon~ and the presence of the second mystagogical lecture
'Before Golg<;>tha' on. Fnday. In the AL, then, one sees not only the addition of
one new statlon dunng the Easter octave but (as a result of it?) the entire reshaping of that week.
F~r these reasons ~aldovin's approach. should be treated with some degree of
cautl.on. It may certaInly be that the statIOnal pattern of Jerusalem liturgy does
prov~de.a partial an~wer to the problem, but the details of his answer are not fully
convIncIng. They SImply do not correlate or reconcile the BCs of Cyril with the
witness of Egeria (a witness Baldovin suspects may simply be a description of 'an
experiment that did not last').4
0' clock on

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION

According to Mario F. Lages, a three-week period of Lenten preparation of

catechumens existed at Jerusalem prior to the end of the third century, and
Cyril's BCs were still following tOe pattern of this three-week catechetical
period. S Lages arrives at this conclusion, first of all, from a structural analysis of

the AL. He notes that, while the nineteen readings for instruction are inserted
therein at the beg~nning of ~ent, there is, nonetheless, no indication as to when
they are to be delivered dunni? the L~nten seaso~. Furthermore, ~hese readings
are Inserted as a complete UnIt, haVIng both a tltle and conclUSIOn separating
them from what precedes and what follows.' From this Lages argues that they
constituted an independent libel/us which pre-dated the AL itself.2
Secondly, he claims that the Psalms distributed on the Wednesdays and
Fridays during the ALs six-week Lent3 were originally two independent units or
series of psalmody divided into two three-week periods. Of these two periods
the one immediately prior to Easter contains the older layer of tradition. During
these three weeks, a consecutive use of psalms is to be noted, beginning with Ps.
82(83) on the Wednesday of the fourth week of Lent and concluding with Ps.
87(88) on the Friday of the sixth week. Although the AL assigns Ps. 21 (22) to
Good Friday, yet in the Georgian Lectionary (hereafter, GL)4 another witness to
the Jerusalem tradition, Ps. 87(88) is itself assigned to that day and, because this
is so, Lages sees here the presence of the older Lenten pattern. The order of
psalmody preserved in the last three weeks of Lent in the AL and confirmed by
the GL, therefore, is a witness to the primitive stage of an earlier three-week Lent
at Jerusalem. s
Thirdly, Lages assigns the nineteen readings in the AL to the fourth, fifth, and
sixth weeks of Lent and claims that, prior to the development of Holy Week,
they would have concluded on Good Friday. Again he finds confirmation of this
in the GL where the Lenten readings are to begin on Monday of the fifth week of
Lent, that is, exactly nineteen days before baptism on Holy Saturday. In spite of
the fact that this catethetical penod would no longer be functional in the time of
the GL, nonetheless, it preserves this 'tradition'.6
Finally, Lages cornpares the contents of the BCs with the introductory rubric in
the Canon of Baptism of the Armenian Liturgy from the ninth- or Tenth-century
manuscript. This rubric reads in part:
The Canon of Baptism when they make a Christian. Before which it is not
right to admit him into church. But he shall have hands laid on beforehand,
three weeks or more before the baptism, in time sufficient for him to learn
from the Wardapet [Instructor] both the faith and the baptism of the
Church.'7
This rubric goes on to specify the contents of the Wardapet's teaching as being
primarily the Creed (with the notable exception of anything explicit about the

Peregrinatio 27.5.
2 Paul F. Bradshaw, Dai~y Prayer in tbe Earry Cburcb (London, 1981), p.91.
3 Renoux, Le Codex, 11, pp.311-323 and 327-329.
4 Baldovin, op. cit., n.3 7, p.n.
5 M. F. Lages, 'Etapes de l'evolution de careme a Jerusalem avant le Ve siecle. Essai
d'analyse strucrurale' in Revue des Etudes Armmiennes 6, (1969), pp.67-1 02; and idem.,
'The Hierosolymitain Origin of the Catechetical Rites in the Armenian Liturgy' in
Didaskalia I, (1971), pp.233-250.

See Renoux, Le Codex, 1I, pp.233 and 237.

Lages, 'Etapes', p.72.
3 See Renoux, Le Codex, 1I, pp.239-255.
4 Michael Tarschnischvili, Le grand lectiomlaire de I'Eglise de /trusalem, 1 (Louvain, 1959),
pp.68-79.
5 Lages, 'Etapes', pp.82-83 and 98-98.
6 Ibid., pp.98-100; and Tarschnischvili, p.68, where the following rubric is printed: 'Tertia
hora incipiunt legere lectiones instruentes catechumenos ad portas ecclesiae'.
7 E. C. Whitaker, Documents oftbe Baptismal Liturgy (SPCK, London, 2nd edn., 1970), p.60.

24 Essays in Early Eastern Initiation

Reconciling Cyril and Egeria on the Catechetical Process in Fourt/rCentury Jerusalem 25

Holy Spirit or the Church). Noting the general similarities in content but differences in order between this rubric and the BCs, Lages asserts that the rubric is
primitive and that it antedates the BCs which are themselves a further development and adaptation of it. Because of the close relationship between them, as
well as the rubric's specification of three weeks of instruction, he proposes that
the nineteen lectures would have been given during the three weeks prior to Easter baptism, and concludes that the rubric itself is of Jerusalem origin.!
In presenting this hypothesis of the third-century three-week Jerusalem Lent,
Lages depends on the parallel evidence supplied by Roman liturgical materials.!
This evidence has most recently been discussed by Thomas Talley.! In his fifthcentury Historia ecclesiastica Socrates writes that it is the custom of the people of
Rome to 'fast for three successive weeks before Easter', and, while he was wrong
for the fifth century, Talley notes a curious parallel to this in the later Gelasian
Sacramentary. In the Celasianum are provided masses pro scrutiniis for the third,
fourth, and fifth Sundays of Lent which, he suggests, probably reflect an earlier
tradition of public scrutinies for the catechumnens. Similarly, he refers to the
tradition which assigned the titles Mediana to the fourth week of Lent and
Dominica in mediana to the fifth Sunday. Such titles, he argues, make sense only
if the Lenten fast consisted of the three weeks preceding Holy Week. Finally,
while admitting the Socrates' evidence is only a possible explantion of the final
period of baptismal preparation at Rome, Talley concludes that:
'... in the third century, Pascha is appearing as the preferred time for
baptism in many parts of the Church, and the final preparation of candidates is a concern of the period just preceding the great festival. That
preparation for baptism is antecedent at Rome to any extended period of
ascetical preparation for the festival itself. That being the case, we can say
that the masses pro scrutiniis on the third, fourth, and fifth Sundays in the

Lages, 'Etapes', p.100, and idem., 'The Hierosolymitain Origin', pp.248-249. It is important to note, however, that portions of Lages' work, especially his claim of Jerusalem
origins for this Armenian rubric, have been called into question by Gabriele WinkIer
in her authoritative work, Das Am2eniscbe Initiationsrituale (Orientalia Christiana
Analecta 217, Rome, 1982), pp.3 38-370, and especially n.186, p.369, WinkIer's
criticism is two-fold. First ofall, as there were other churches in which an earlier threeweek Lenten period was once customary, his conclusions on the hypothetical
relationship between Jerusalem and Armenia appear as too narrow and one-sided.
Secondly, and more importantly, Lages looks only at this introductory rubric of the
Armenian baptismal rite instead of studying Armenian catechetical preparation as a
whole. This is problematic because the contents of instruction specified in the rubric
as well as the contents of Cyril's BCs 'belong to the universal contents of faith' and, as
such, do not represent a unique parallel between Jerusalem and Armenia at all. Winkler's criticisms, nevertheless, do not necessarily call into question Lages' treatment of
the Jerusalem pattern.
2 Lages, 'Etapes', pp.69-70.
3 Talley, op. cit., pp.165-167.
1

26 Essays in Early Eastern Initiation

Galasian Sacramentary point to the older core of preparation for paschal

baptism.'!
Although not an exact parallel, this Roman evidence lends some support and
credibility to Lages' approach:
.
. .
Further support may be in~Irectly proVIded bY'YI1ham Telfer. '.I'elfer note? that
nowhere in the BCs does Cynl refer either to the NIcene homoouslOs or to Arius by
name. For a mid-fourth-century 'orthodox' document this is rat~er odd, and he
concluded from this that the BCs actually reflect an older pre-NIcene Jerusalem
faith tradition. 2 If Telfer is correct in this conclusion, then the general arrangement
and contents of Cyril's BCs are adhering to ~ pattern set in that same period of the
late third or early fourth century for which Lages argues a thre~-week Lent.
Furthennore, both the AL and the CL, in preservmg the catecheucal readmgs,
therefore, are themselves later witnesses to what would have been an early and
well-ingrained Jerusalem tradition..
.
.
Lages' hypothesis that the BCs of Cynl were delIVered dunng the final three
weeks of Lent has a great deal to offer toward the reconciliation of the apparent
discrepancies between Cyril and Egeria. Assuming, with both. Stephe.nson and
Telfer, that the eighteen BCs3 of Cyril are a complete course of m~trucuon of t~e
Creed, I would propose that during an eight-week Lent, as descnbed by Egena,
they were given as follows:
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

VVeek Five

VVeek Six

BC 1
BC 2
BC 3
BC 4
BC 5
BC 6

BC
BC
BC
BC
BC
BC

7
8

9
10

Week Seven
BC
BC
BC
BC
BC
BC

13
14

15
16
17
18

11
12
1 Ibid., p.167. Lages also notes a parallel between the Roman dominicamediana and the 'Feast
of the middle of Easter Lent' in the fourth-century Armeman Canons of St. Sahak (see
'The Hierosolymitain Origin', n.10, pp.235-236). It is also possible, but extremely
speculative, that a similar case can be made for a three-week ~nal preparation I? fourthcentury North Africa. In Sernum 58, m the con~ext of the delIvery of the Lord s Prayer,
Augustine refers to the return of the Creed which had Just taken place. In so domg he
says that in a week's time the Lord's Prayer would have to be returned as well, and that
those who had not made a good return of the Creed still had time to learn it before
public recitation at baptism. Added to this is a sermon on the Creed by Quodvultdeus of
Carthage in which he refers to what could only have been an enrolment?fcatechumens
on the previous night. (The relevant portions ofthese sermons are cited m WhItaker, op.
cit., pp.103, 107). By joining these two witnesses one ml8"ht reasonably cor;lecture t~at
there is here a three-week pattern of baptismal preparation WIth .the tradItIO SJ,mbolt In
week one, the redditio symboli and the delivery ofthe Lord's Prayer In week two~ Its return
in the third week, and the final profession of faith in the context of baptism Itself.
2 Telfer, op. cit., pp.61-63.
3 I say eighteen simply because this is the n~mber of BCs preserved. However, I am well aware
of the theory which suggests the Cynl was runnmg out of time near th~ end of Lent (see
BC 18.32) and so compressed BC 18 and BC 19 into one. ef. Lages, 'Etapes', pp.98-99,
and Telfer, p.34.

Reconciling Cyril and Egeria on the Catechetical Process in Fourth-Century Jerusalem 27

While admittedly speculative, there is much to commend this schema as a

reasonable hypothesis. First of all, it takes both the BCs' and Egeria's description
of 'daily catechesis' at face value without pre-supposing an error or lack of
language proficiency on Egeria's part. Secondly, it preserves the sequence of BCs
10-12 as well as BCs 7-8. Thirdly, it places BC 18 (in which Cyril again repeats the
Creed for the p~otizomenoi)1 on the day befOre Palm Sunday and palm Sunday
could have easIly been the day on which the redditio synboli took place. But,
finally, and most Importantly, it places BC 5 with its traditio symboli at the end of
the fifth week of Lent and so agrees with Egeria's description that the Creed was
delivered only 'after five week's teaching'.1 Because of this, there does need not
to be any discrepancy whatsoever between Cyril and Egeria at this point. What
Cyril describes as taking place at the end of the fifth lecture (which would have
been at the end of the first week in an earlier three-week Lent) takes place in
Egeria at the end of the fifth lecture on the Creed near the close of what is now
the fifth week of instruction. It is to this same period of instruction, in fact, that
the CL refers by placing its rubric concerning baptismal instruction on the Monday of the fifth week of the seven-week Lent, that is, nineteen days before Holy
Saturday baptism ~ts~If.1 A,:d, by assigning a lecture to each of these days, except
for the Sundays, It IS precIsely my proposed schema of eighteen lectures that
would resul~ (though here, of course, instruction would continue throughout
Holy Week Itself). In other words, what has changed between the writing of the
BCs and Egeria's visit is the development of Holy Week and the length of Lent,
not the contents of Lenten teaching during the last three 'traditional' weeks.
Two problems, however, might be raised by this schema. First of all, while it
does support Egeria's description of daily catechesis, it does so for only three of
se:,en weeks. Secondly, BC 14 is placed on a Tuesday even though internal
eVIdence ('yesterday, on the Lord's day') tends to suggest that it was delivered on
a Monday. The first problem is easily solved by assuming with Talley (and Egeria
herself) that.t~e remai~ingwe~ks were filled with daily instruction in the Bible. 4
Whether this instructIOn continued long after her visit or was an experiment
(Baldovin) which was later discontinued when the Jerusalem Lent shifted from
eig~t to seve~ ;veek:' is impossible ~o ~ay. ~et ther~ is really no good reason not to
belIeve Egena s claIm that such bIblIcal instruction did once take place.
The second problem is not as easily dismissed. Ifone assumes with theAL that
there were actually nineteen rather than eighteen lectures, one could, of course,
1
2

BC 18.21.
Peregrinatio 463.

3See above, n.6 on p.25. It should be noted that in the GL the catechetical readings are in a
different order than in CyriI and the AL, and are assigned only to Monday through
Friday of Lenten weeks .five an~ six. Saturdays, Sundays, and holy Week are, therefore,
excluded from the perIod of mstructlOn. The GL obviouslt reflects a later stage of
development. Yet the poin~ is that by preserving a tradition of beginning catechetical
preparatIOn for Easter baptIsm on the fifth Monday of Lent, theei!;hteen (but not nineteen) BCs of Cyril would neatly fit this structure.
4 Talley, lip. cit., p.176.

merely place a nineteenth lecture on the Saturday of the seventh week with the
result that BC 14 would then fall on the Monday of that week. Yet this is no solution at all, because one then runs out of days at the beginning of the fifth week.
Another solution to this problem has been implicitly suggested by Baldovin's
separation of the supposedly sequential BCs 6-8 and 10-12 on the basis of a
rhetorical use of 'yesterday'.1While 'yesterday' is, perhaps, the best translation of
the Greek adverb echthes or chthes, the word can also have the general meaning of
'the past as a whole'.2 The phrase, therefore, can be translated as 'in the past
Lord's day', or even, 'formerly, on the Lord's day'. If this is so, then this lecture
need not of necessity be assigned to a Monday at all but can be placed on a Tuesday, as in my schema.
Thus, although at the time of Egeria's visit to Jerusalem there appears to have
been a seven-week process of pre-baptismal instruction, in the context of an
eight-week Lent, including more than just the Creed, it is at least plausible that
the earlier (third-century?) Jerusalem tradition was a three-week cycle of
catechumenal preparation, focusing primarily on the Creed itself. This threeweek credal syllabus seems to underlie Cyril's eighteen BCs and to recur as the
final phase of preparation in Egeria. It is also reflected in the later AL and CL, as
well as in the opening rubric of the Armenian baptismal rite, and may have
parallels with the early development of Lenten preparation in the Roman
tradition. Cyril's BCs and Egeria s description are, therefore, in this way reconciled. Both are witnesses to what is, essentially, the same Jerusalem liturgical
pattern of catechesis in slightly different historical contexts.
EXCURSUS ON BAPTISMAL CATECHESIS 14
BC 14 is extremely interesting in that the specific reference in the sentence discussed above is to a sermon on the Ascension of Christ into heaven. Cyril
says:
'The sequence of the Creed would naturally lead me on to speak of the
Ascension; but God's grace has so disposed it that you heard most fully
about it, according to the measure of my weakness, yesterday, on the Lord's
day; for the course of the lessons in church, by the ordination of divine
grace, comprised the narrative of our Saviour's Ascension into heaven.'3
this means that Cyril preached on the Ascension of Christ on a Lenten Sunday,
and in itself this is not so surprising. He was, after all, lecturing on the Creed.
What is surprising, however, is that he is not referring to catechesis but to the
lessons read at the previous Sunday'S liturgy and to his own sermon on those
lessons. In other words, Cyril is saying that since the liturgical readings and his sermon had already dealt with the Ascension on Sunday, he did not need to deal
with it now in the context of catechesis.
1
2

28 Essays in Ear?v Eastern Initiation

See above, p.22.

Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon ofthe New Testament and Other Ear(v Christian Literature, trans. and adapted by W. F. Arndt and F. W. Gingrich (4th Edition, Chicago,
1971), p331.
BC 14.24.

Reconciling Cyril and Egeria on the Catechetical Process in Fourth-Century Jerusalem 29

A simple solution might appear to be to consult the AL or the GL to determine

both what the readings were and to what Sunday of Lent they were assigned; but
the AL does not list the readings for the Lenten Sundays and no reference to
comparable readings is found in GL. This is actually not unexpected, since, by the
time of both lectionaries, the Ascension was well established on the fortieth day of
Easter. Thus, we have no supporting lectionary evidence for this simply because
we have no lectionaries which include the Lenten Sundays in the time of CyriL 1
We do know, however, that the Old Testament reading forthis Sunday was from 2
Kings 2.1-22 (the Ascension of Elij ah) because Cyril refers to it in 14.25, but the
only place in the surviving lectionaries where this reading is assigned is in the
Easter Vigil.2 Cyril also refers in 14.24 to Psalms 46(47), 23 (24), and 67(68), and
the first two of these are assigned to the Feast of the Ascension itself.3
The scholarly literature on the development of the Feast of the Ascension has,
to my knowledge, either glossed over or completely ignored this intriguing
reference in CyriL Talley, for example, notes that the contents of this lecture deal
with the resurrection and ascension but he makes no reference to it in his treatment of the development of the feast itself. 4 Robert Cabie, in his work on the
development of Pentecost, does refer to it, but dismisses it simply as a part of
catechetical instruction. In so doing, he quotes the Greek text of Cyril in a footnote but apparently misses the reference to the 'assigned readings'.s Similarly,
Sebastia Janeras notes that the reference to the Ascension is 'very interesting', but
his concern is more with the difficulty of knowing on which Sunday of Lent this
would have been delivered than with the contents themselves. 6
Cyril's reference, however, is clear. On a Lenten Sunday both the 'lectionary'
readings and his sermon dealt with the Ascension of Christ into heaven. This
'Ascension Sunday', it seems, even interrupted the flow of his catecheticallectures. For, it is only towards the end of BC 14 where he says that it would now be
natural to continue his exposition of the Creed with the Ascension. Even if Cyril
himself chose those Sunday readings for catechetical purposes-though his
reference to the 'providence of God' suggests that he did not-the fact remains
that the Ascension still received a Sunday focus in the Jerusalem of his day.
Whether or not this reference might shed any light whatsoever on the early
development of the Feast of the Ascension itself is difficult to say. Nevertheless,
further study of this rather curious and often ignored statement is certainly
warranted.7
Cf. Telfer, op. cit., pJ 7.
See Renoux, Le Codex, n, pJ05.
3 Ibid., p.339.
,
4 Talley, op. cit., pp.!76 and 66-70,
S Robert Cahie, La Pentecote: L'tvolution de la Cinquantine pascale au COlm des cingpremiers si~
ele (Tournai, 1965), p.144.
6 Sebastia ]aneras, 'Sobre el cide de predicacio de les antigues catecquesis baptismals' in
Revista Catalana de Teologia 1 (1976), p.163-164.
7 It has co:ne to my attenti?n that]ohn Baldovin is in the process ofwork~ng on this velY
question In relationship to the lectIOnary of tenth-century ConstantInople and will
publish the results of his study soon.
1

30 Essays in Ear[y Eastern Initiation