Anaphora of St Athanasius (Armenian)

In Brief

The Anaphora of St Athanasius is the ordinary Eucharistic prayer of the Armenian Church, the thanksgiving the Badarak prays Sunday by Sunday. The manuscripts entitle it "of S. Athanasius", though Brightman judges only the anaphora properly bears the title; the ascription is traditional, not a demonstrated authorship.¹ In Brightman's English the prayer runs pp. 412-457: dialogue, preface, Sanctus, institution, anamnesis, epiclesis, intercessions in the classic Antiochene order.¹ The historic missal knows other anaphoras (Basil, Sahak, James) for particular occasions, but Athanasius is the normal one.²

The Shape of the Liturgy

Part by Part

Authorship & Date

No one claims to know who composed this prayer, and the entry invents no author. Athanasius of Alexandria died in 373, and the anaphora that bears his name belongs to a later liturgical world, the world of the developed Armenian Badarak. The title is what the manuscripts say, and what the manuscripts say is "of S. Athanasius".¹

This is how the Christian East names its prayers. An anaphora takes the name of an apostle or a father not as a signature but as a claim of belonging: this is the prayer of the church that honors Athanasius, the prayer his name protects. The critical work on the question is Feulner's, a full edition with translation and liturgical commentary published at Rome in 2001, running to more than five hundred pages.³ The entry does not go beyond the tradition. It calls the prayer the Anaphora of St Athanasius because that is its name, and it does not say Athanasius wrote it, because that is not known.

Witnesses & Editions

The English reader meets the anaphora in Brightman. His Liturgies Eastern and Western prints the Armenian text in English translation across pages 412 to 457, the whole thanksgiving from the opening dialogue to the closing doxology.¹ It is a nineteenth-century translation, and it reads like one, but it remains the public-domain doorway into the prayer, and the shape strip above follows its order.

The scholar meets it in Feulner. Die armenische Athanasius-Anaphora, published in the Pontifical Oriental Institute's Anaphorae Orientales series in 2001, gives the critical edition, a German translation and a liturgy-comparing commentary in twenty pages of front matter and five hundred thirty-six pages of text.³ It is the standard edition, and the entry's account of the prayer's structure is answerable to it.

The Armenian context comes from Findikyan's encyclopedia article on the Armenian liturgy, which sorts the anaphoras of the tradition and identifies Athanasius as the ordinary.² The living witness is the Badarak itself, prayed in Armenian parishes from Etchmiadzin to Los Angeles, where the preface still opens with the words the entry prints in Armenian above: it is truly proper and right.

Theology & Spirit

The prayer is a thanksgiving, and it thanks in the classic Antiochene order. The dialogue opens it, the preface praises the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit for creation and for salvation, and the pre-Sanctus lifts the praise toward the angels. Then the Sanctus: holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts, heaven and earth full of glory.¹

The post-Sanctus gives thanks for God's works through Christ, from the making of the world to the incarnation, and the institution tells the supper: the bread taken, blessed, broken and given as Christ's body, the cup as his blood of the new covenant.¹ The anamnesis remembers Christ's death, resurrection and ascension and offers the gifts, and the epiclesis asks the Father to send the Holy Spirit on the offering and on the communicants, to make the bread and wine the body and blood of Christ.¹

Then the intercessions: the saints, the living, the departed, the whole Church remembered before God, and the doxology closes the prayer with glory to the Trinity.¹ There is nothing in this order to surprise a reader of Chrysostom or Basil. The Armenian anaphora is of their family, and its theology is their theology: creation praised, redemption remembered, the Spirit invoked, the Church gathered into the thanksgiving.

What is Armenian about it is the voice. The preface opening, "it is truly proper and right", carries the particular music of the Armenian Badarak, the same phrase the deacon and people have sung for centuries. The prayer is long, as Eastern anaphoras are long, and it is full, as if unwilling to leave any mercy of God unthanked. But its structure is the common inheritance, and a Byzantine Christian hearing it would recognize every movement.

Relations

Basil in the Byzantine books is the companion. The Armenian tradition keeps its own anaphora of St Basil for particular occasions, and the Byzantine Basil stands beside the Armenian Athanasius as the other great thanksgiving of the Eastern family.² Both are long, both are doctrinally rich, both follow the dialogue, Sanctus, institution, anamnesis, epiclesis, intercessions order that defines the Antiochene type.

Chrysostom is the parallel ordinary. Where the Byzantine Church prays Chrysostom on most Sundays, the Armenian Church prays Athanasius; each is the prayer a tradition reaches for when it is not reaching for something special.¹ The comparison is not of texts but of place: the ordinary thanksgiving, the prayer that forms a church's Eucharistic imagination by sheer repetition.

• Anaphora of St Basil (Byzantine)companionA fellow living Eastern anaphora of the Byzantine-Antiochene sphere; the Armenian books also preserve an anaphora of St Basil for particular occasions.²
• Anaphora of St John ChrysostomcompanionThe Byzantine ordinary beside which the Armenian Athanasius stands as the Armenian ordinary; both are thanksgivings of the Antiochene family.¹

Disputed Questions

Did Athanasius write it? The manuscripts say the liturgy is "of S. Athanasius", and Brightman records the title while judging that only the anaphora properly bears it.¹ Beyond that the entry does not go. The ascription is traditional, the authorship undemonstrated, and Feulner's critical edition is where the question belongs.³

Which anaphora is the Armenian ordinary? Findikyan is clear: Athanasius is the normal Eucharistic prayer, with Basil, Sahak and James for particular occasions.² The entry follows him. There is no dispute here among the sources read, only the ordinary fact of a church with one prayer for Sundays and others for feasts.

How old is it? The sources read do not establish a date. The prayer belongs to the historic Armenian missal, it is the ordinary of the tradition, and that is what can be said. The entry does not supply a century the scholarship has not given it.

Go Deeper

Two things repay attention. The first is the title itself. Brightman's note, that the manuscripts entitle the whole liturgy "of S. Athanasius" though only the anaphora properly bears the title, tells us how these books were made.¹ The anaphora came first, or mattered most, and its name spread to cover the rite around it. The prayer lent its patron to the liturgy.

The second is the preface opening. "It is truly proper and right" is among the oldest sentences in Christian worship, the Armenian form of the Latin vere dignum and the Greek axios kai dikaion. To hear it in Armenian, in the Badarak, is to hear how a church makes the universal its own: the same thanksgiving, the same order, the same Sanctus, but in the language and music of Armenia. The anaphora of St Athanasius is not a different prayer from the family's. It is the family's prayer, prayed in Armenian, under the name of the father who defended the divinity of Christ.

On Domus Dei

• The Armenian Rite

Recommended reading

• Brightman, F. E., Liturgies Eastern and Western, vol. 1: Eastern Liturgies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896.The public-domain English of the anaphora (pp. 412-457) and the note on the Athanasius title (p. xcix). Read online
• Findikyan, Michael Daniel, “Armenian Liturgy”, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed..The encyclopedia article on the Armenian liturgy: the anaphoras and which is the ordinary. Read online
• Feulner, Hans-Jürgen, “Die armenische Athanasius-Anaphora: Kritische Edition, Übersetzung und liturgievergleichender Kommentar”, Anaphorae Orientales 1 = Anaphorae Armeniacae 1, Rome: PIO, 2001.The critical edition, translation and liturgical commentary (PIO, 2001, xx + 536 pp.); the scholarly starting point, in German.

Sources

1. Primary textBrightman, F. E., Liturgies Eastern and Western, vol. 1: Eastern Liturgies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896, p. xcix; pp. 412-457. 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'
2. ScholarshipFindikyan, Michael Daniel, “Armenian Liturgy”, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., the anaphoras section. LinkVerified 2026-09-20 · Full article read 19 Sep 2026 via encyclopedia.com (bibliography cites works to 2000, so 2nd ed.): the key layering source — Syriac/Cappadocian base, Jerusalem lectionary and year, Byzantine overlay apex 'early in the second millennium', Latin beginning and end integrated 'with great discretion'; unmixed chalice and azymes native; one anaphora 'since at least the tenth century'; figures c. 6,000,000 and 344,000 (c. 2000–2003)
3. ScholarshipFeulner, Hans-Jürgen, “Die armenische Athanasius-Anaphora: Kritische Edition, Übersetzung und liturgievergleichender Kommentar”, Anaphorae Orientales 1 = Anaphorae Armeniacae 1, Rome: PIO, 2001, catalogue record.Verified 2026-09-20 · Catalogued (citation): PIO catalogue (xx + 536 pp.); the critical edition of the anaphora in use. Not opened