Rite of Jerusalem

In Brief

Jerusalem had its own liturgy once — Hagiopolite, "of the Holy City" — and its anaphora was St James's own: the Liturgy of St James the Brother of the Lord, first bishop of Jerusalem. It was a stational rite, a liturgy that walked: processions joining the holy places, the Sepulchre above all, each station a church raised over a spot the tradition ascribes to the life of Christ or the Virgin.¹

Between the seventh and the thirteenth centuries the Church of Jerusalem gave it up. The liturgies of St John Chrysostom and St Basil the Great — the Constantinopolitan rite — displaced the local St James, and the replacement was effectively complete in the twelfth century. This entry is about a rite that is not living: what replaced it is the Byzantine rite the Patriarchate prays today.¹

The story comes to us through Daniel Galadza's Liturgy and Byzantinization in Jerusalem (Oxford, 2018), as reported by Valentina Covaci's review — the book itself was not held for this entry, and every claim drawn from it says so.^1,2

The Shape of the Liturgy

First the map. The Hagiopolite liturgy's first shape is a procession: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as the cathedral, Sion — by tradition the place of the Cenacle and of the Dormition of the Virgin — the Mount of Olives, each joined to the next by the clergy and people walking and singing. Egeria, the fourth-century pilgrim, already found the services bilingual. Under Muslim rule the public processions were officially banned, though Palm Sunday was occasionally kept; under the Latins the new Crusader church, dedicated in 1145, gathered the Passion stations under one roof and the Greek clergy ceased to lead the processions.¹

Then the books. The anaphora is St James's in its Jerusalem form: the dialogue, the preface and the Sanctus, the institution narrative, the anamnesis — and then, in the rite's famous order, the intercessions for the living and the departed first, and the epiclesis after them: "Send down upon us and upon these gifts thy Holy Spirit." The Old Testament lections, read customarily in the Hagiopolite liturgy where Constantinople would not read them, are its famous loss: by the thirteenth century they disappear from the Byzantinized books as well.^1,5

The calendar is the rite's other barometer. Jerusalem kept the Nativity on the Theophany, 6 January, until Justinian's decree of 560 moved it to 25 December — the emperor read the January date as a manifestation of the Miaphysitism Chalcedon had condemned, and the feast became a confession of the two natures. Jerusalem never commemorated the Seventh Council at Nicaea in 787: the capital's iconoclasm had never taken hold there, so there was no restoration to commemorate — until the fourteenth century, when the Byzantinized manuscripts include it.¹

The shape of the Jerusalem liturgy

1. The stational gathering
   The rite's first shape is a map: each station a church raised over a spot the tradition ascribes to the life of Christ or the Virgin — the Holy Sepulchre above all — liturgically joined through processions. Egeria, the fourth-century pilgrim, already found the services bilingual.¹
2. The lessons, with the Old Testament
   Scriptural lections taken from the Old Testament were read customarily in the Hagiopolite liturgy of St James — Constantinople, with few exceptions, did not read the Old Testament liturgically. The Old Testament readings disappear from the Byzantinized liturgy of Jerusalem by the thirteenth century.¹
3. Trisagion and Gospel
   The entrance, the Trisagion, the epistle and the Gospel — the Mass of the Catechumens in its Jerusalem dress, bilingual since Egeria's day.^1,5
4. The kiss of peace and the Creed
   The peace, and the Creed — in Brightman's Greek St James the faith of Nicaea-Constantinople confessed before the anaphora begins.⁵
5. The anaphora of St James
   The dialogue, the preface and the Sanctus, the institution narrative, the anamnesis — and then, in the rite's famous order, the intercessions for the living and the departed first, and the epiclesis after them: 'Send down upon us and upon these gifts thy Holy Spirit.' The people's Amen answers each movement.^1,5
6. The fraction, the Lord's Prayer, the communion
   The fraction and the commingling; the Lord's Prayer; the elevation — 'Holy things for the holy' — and the communion of the faithful, with the thanksgiving after.⁵

What makes it distinctive

• A stational rite: the liturgy is a procession between the holy places — the Sepulchre, Sion, the Mount of Olives — not a service that stays in one church.¹
• The epiclesis after the intercessions: the Jerusalem anaphora's famous structural trait.⁵
• Old Testament lessons, lost to Byzantinization by the thirteenth century.¹
• Not a living rite: the Constantinopolitan liturgies of St John Chrysostom and St Basil the Great displaced it, the replacement effectively complete in the twelfth century.¹

History

The rite's history is the history of a loyalty. In 451 Chalcedon split Eastern Christendom, and the Melkites of Palestine and Syria — malkaya, "royal, imperial," the emperor's party — were almost alone in the region in accepting the council. In Byzantium the emperor was deemed the guardian of Orthodoxy; keeping his allegiance and remaining in communion with the Great Church guaranteed a community's Orthodoxy.¹

In 638 the Arab armies took the Holy Land, and Palestine was split from the body of the empire. Paradoxically, Galadza argues, the conquest increased Jerusalem's allegiance to the emperor and its reverence for the liturgy of Hagia Sophia: cut off from the capital, the local Church kept its Orthodoxy by the capital's books. The adoption of the Constantinopolitan rite was gradual — at times, the review reports, all three liturgies were being celebrated in the territory of the Patriarchate — and it was locally effected, not simply imposed. "Observing the liturgy of Constantinople could have been seen as a sign of Orthodoxy."¹

The twelfth century ended it. From 1099 to 1187 the Latin Kingdom replaced the Orthodox clergy at the Holy Sepulchre with Augustinian canons — then readmitted the Greek clergy, and admitted the Armenians, Syrians and Copts to celebrate in the church alongside the Latins. But the Greek books were already Constantinople's. By the thirteenth century the Old Testament lections were gone, and the Hagiopolite rite survived only in the manuscripts — and in the daughter rites that had carried St James's anaphora abroad.¹

Milestones

1. 4th centuryEgeria's pilgrimage journal witnesses the stational liturgy of Jerusalem: processions between the holy places, the services already bilingual¹
2. 451Chalcedon: the breaking point of Eastern Christendom; the Melkites of Palestine and Syria — 'royal, imperial', the emperor's party — accept the council almost alone in the region¹
3. 560Justinian's decree: the Jerusalem Church moves the Nativity from the Theophany (6 January) to 25 December, Constantinople's date — the feast as a confession of the two natures¹
4. 638The Arab conquest: Palestine is split from the body of the empire; paradoxically, allegiance to the emperor and reverence for the liturgy of Hagia Sophia increase, and the gradual Byzantinization begins¹
5. 1099–1187The Latin Kingdom: the Orthodox clergy are replaced at the Holy Sepulchre by Augustinian canons, then readmitted; the Crusader church dedicated in 1145 gathers the Passion stations under one roof¹
6. 12th centuryThe Constantinopolitan rite effectively replaces the liturgy of St James in the Patriarchate of Jerusalem; the Old Testament lections disappear by the thirteenth¹
7. 1896Brightman's Liturgies Eastern and Western I prints the Greek Liturgy of St James — the rite's great monument in print⁵

Texts & Books

The rite's great monument in print is Brightman's Liturgies Eastern and Western I (1896): the Greek Liturgy of St James, the anaphora in its Jerusalem form. The lectionary — the book Galadza uses as a barometer of the change — survives in Armenian, in Renoux's edition of codex Jerusalem 121, and in Georgian; the Armenian witness was catalogued for this entry, not opened.^4,5

For the history, the entry rests on Covaci's full review of Galadza's Liturgy and Byzantinization in Jerusalem (Oxford University Press, 2018, 464 pages) — the book itself not held, the review read in full. It is the clearest short account in English of what Byzantinization was: not a decree but a six-century drift, registered in calendar and lectionary.^1,2

Family & Relations

The rite's family is its heirs. The West Syriac Churches still pray St James's anaphora — the Syrian St James that Brightman prints beside the Greek is Jerusalem's daughter, carried to Antioch and to India, and it is the ordinary anaphora of the West Syriac rite today. The Byzantine rite is the heir by replacement: the Constantinopolitan liturgy the Patriarchate adopted, which the Patriarchate of Jerusalem still prays.^1,5

The Armenians kept their own witness to the old Jerusalem books: the lectionary in Armenian translation, a reminder that the Hagiopolite tradition was once the mother of more than one daughter.⁴

Compare with

• West Syriac Rite: the living heir: the West Syriac Churches still pray St James's anaphora, which Jerusalem gave up for the Byzantine liturgy^1,5
• Byzantine Rite: the rite that replaced it: the Constantinopolitan liturgy the Patriarchate of Jerusalem adopted between the seventh and thirteenth centuries¹

Disputed Questions

Go Deeper

Two things this entry does not do. It does not describe the rite as living: the Byzantinization was effectively complete in the twelfth century, and the present worship of the Patriarchate is the Byzantine rite — which is the point. And it does not lean on the old secondary literature: the early-twentieth-century accounts use terminology the scholarship has left behind, and they are not cited here.¹

What remains is the method. Galadza's "comparative liturgy" reads the calendar and the lectionary as barometers of change — local saints and feast days, Old Testament readings kept or dropped — and finds in them the record of a Church that, having lost the empire, kept the emperor's liturgy as the sign of its Orthodoxy. The stational liturgy did not vanish altogether: the review notes it is preserved in the stational liturgies the other Christian communities of Jerusalem still conduct at the Holy Sepulchre. The Hagiopolite rite itself belongs to the manuscripts now.¹

Sources

1. ScholarshipCovaci, Valentina, “Byzantine Worship in Captivity”, The Marginalia Review of Books. LinkVerified 2026-09-20 · read in full: review of Galadza 2018 — Hagiopolite = the church of the Holy City; gradual adoption of the Constantinopolitan rite (7th–13th centuries) replacing the local St James liturgy, ending in the twelfth century; Old Testament lections lost by the thirteenth; stational liturgy and its disruption under Muslim rule and the Latin Kingdom; Justinian's 560 decree moving Jerusalem's Nativity feast from 6 January to 25 December
2. ScholarshipGaladza, Daniel, “Liturgy and Byzantinization in Jerusalem”, Oxford University Press, 2018, 464. LinkVerified 2026-09-20 · not held; known through Covaci's review: 'Byzantinization' = the Hagiopolite Church's adoption of the Constantinopolitan rite between the seventh and thirteenth centuries, to the detriment of the local liturgy of St James
3. Magisterial / canonicalCode of Canons of the Eastern Churches, Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1990, can. 28 §2. LinkVerified 2026-09-12 · URL repointed 18 Sep 2026 to the Latin text on vatican.va (part 1; cann. 656–657 are in part 2, codex-can-eccl-orient-2), because the caedm.ca English extract (616A) carries cc. 27–38 only; cann. 28, 40 §1, 656, 657 read there in the Latin, 18 Sep 2026. English translation: cann. 27–28 read in the caedm.ca PDF; cann. 671, 697, 707, 710, 713 read in the IntraText English edition; can. 881 §1 in IntraText, 2026-09-14
4. ScholarshipRenoux, Athanase (Charles), “Le codex arménien Jérusalem 121; Le lectionnaire de Jérusalem en Arménie”, Patrologia Orientalis 35/1 (1969); 36/2 (1970); Brepols 1989.Verified 2026-09-20 · Catalogued (citation): Findikyan's NCE bibliography for the PO volumes; Open Library for the 1989 lectionary. Not opened
5. Primary textBrightman, F. E., Liturgies Eastern and Western, vol. 1: Eastern Liturgies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896. LinkVerified 2026-09-12 · archive.org full text; pp. lxxxiii, lxxxv, lxxxviii–lxxxix checked; order locators spot-checked 13 Sep 2026 (pp. 362, 377–378, 393, 394; glossary s.v. Zeon, Cancelli, Ektene). Checked 19 Sep 2026 for the Ge'ez entry: Preface p. xiii, the Ethiopic translations are the Rev. C. J. Ball's ('the Rev. C. J. Ball for the Ethiopic (including the collation of the British Museum manuscripts)'); p. lxiii, the Egyptian rite; pp. lxxii-lxxiii, the Rome printing of 1548 ('Testamentum novum.. Missale') and the Lord's anaphora there; pp. 194-244, the Ethiopic Liturgy of the Apostles from BM Or. 545 (1670-75); p. 232, 'THIS bread… IS MY BODY' (a rubric between) and 'DRINK… THIS CUP'