Anaphora of Addai and Mari

In Brief

The Anaphora of Addai and Mari is the oldest Eucharistic prayer in ordinary use, the thanksgiving of the East Syriac tradition prayed by Assyrian, Chaldean and Syro-Malabar Christians. Its name joins the evangelists of Edessa, though the oldest manuscripts call it simply the Apostles' anaphora.¹ The ancient text has no coherent institution narrative: the 1890 Urmia Takhsa prints none, and both the 1893 translators and Brightman bracket wording supplied from reported practice.^2,3; @Brightman1896: p. 285] Yet Rome has judged the prayer valid: the 2001 Guidelines find the institution words constitutive and therefore indispensable, present in a dispersed euchological way.⁴

The Shape of the Liturgy

Part by Part

Authorship & Date

Addai and Mari are the apostles of Edessa, or near enough that the tradition has never doubted it. Addai, the disciple of Thomas, preached in Edessa; Mari, his disciple, carried the gospel further east. The anaphora that bears their names is the prayer of the church they founded, and the oldest witness, the Mar Esha'ya Hudra of the tenth or eleventh century, already knows it as the apostles' prayer.¹

No one supposes the two men sat down and wrote it. Liturgical prayers do not work like that. They grow, they are revised, they are shortened and lengthened by generations of use. Macomber's work on the Hudra showed a seventh-century revision ascribed to the catholicos Isho'yahb III, which means the text the tenth century prayed had already been reworked.¹ The entry keeps the apostolic names as the tradition's title for its oldest prayer, and it does not turn the title into a history.

Witnesses & Editions

The critical witness is the Mar Esha'ya Hudra, tenth or eleventh century, edited by William Macomber in 1966 in Orientalia Christiana Periodica. It is the oldest known text of the anaphora, and everything argued about the prayer starts from it.¹

The printed witness is the Urmia Takhsa of 1890, the Syriac missal printed by the Lazarists at Urmia, which gives the anaphora as the East Syriac Church prayed it, without an institution narrative.² The English reader meets it in two nineteenth-century translations: Brightman's, pages 247 to 305 of his first volume, and the interleaved translation made at Urmia in 1893 by Maclean and Browne for the SPCK.^3,5

The magisterial witness is Rome's. The 2001 Guidelines of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, dated 20 July 2001, address the anaphora's validity and the admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean and Assyrian churches.⁴ They come with an accompanying explanatory note, a separate document, which treats the anaphora's shape and the limits of the historical question.⁶ The entry keeps the two distinct, as Rome issued them.

Theology & Spirit

The prayer opens with the Pauline greeting, "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ", and the thanksgiving dialogue, and then the preface every East Syriac Christian knows: "worthy of praise from every mouth and of confession from every tongue is the adorable and glorious name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit".⁵ It is praise of the Trinity for creation, for mercy, for the whole economy of salvation, and it moves through the Sanctus, "holy, holy, holy", into thanksgiving with the heavenly hosts.⁵

Then the memorial. The anaphora remembers Christ's work and offers the gifts, and it invokes the Holy Spirit: "may thy Holy Spirit come, O Lord, and rest upon this offering".⁵ Let the old claim die here: the anaphora has an epiclesis. It asks the Spirit to come on the offering, to bless and hallow it for the communicants. Whatever else is disputed about this prayer, the invocation is in the text.

The institution words are where Rome found them: constitutive and therefore indispensable, present in a dispersed euchological way.⁴ They are not gathered into the supper narrative the West expects, but they are there, in the thanksgiving's praise of Christ's work, doing the work the Eucharist requires. The entry does not say the prayer consecrates as a vague whole. It says what Rome said: the words are there, indispensable, dispersed.

After the epiclesis come the intercessions, the commemorations of the Church, the living and the departed, and the doxology closes the prayer with glory to the Trinity.⁵ In the Assyrian tradition this is the anaphora from Palm Sunday through the rest of the year, the ordinary thanksgiving of the East Syriac Eucharist.¹

Relations

Sharar is the sibling. The Maronite Anaphora of Sharar and Addai and Mari share a common Edessan origin; Macomber, Engberding and others hold the Maronite form the more archaic, and Raes concluded for a common source of the two rather than one derived from the other.⁷ It is not the Maronite version of Addai and Mari, and the 2001 Guidelines, which concern the East Syriac prayer, are not applied to it.

Theodore is the second of the set. The so-called Anaphora of Theodore follows Addai and Mari in the East Syriac books, longer and more expansive, reusing the older prayer's epiclesis vocabulary for its own invocation.³ Where Addai and Mari is terse, Theodore is ample; the family resemblance is in the structure, the dialogue, the Sanctus, the shape of the thanksgiving.

Nestorius is the third. The so-called Anaphora of Nestorius completes the East Syriac trio, the most expansive of the three, traditionally ascribed to the patriarch of Constantinople.³ The three stand together in the Takhsa as the Eucharistic prayers of the tradition, Addai and Mari first and oldest.

• Anaphora of ShararcompanionA common Edessan origin, not one derived from the other; Macomber and others hold Sharar's Maronite form the more archaic. The 2001 Guidelines concern Addai and Mari only.⁷
• Anaphora of Theodore of MopsuestiacompanionThe second East Syriac anaphora; Theodore's longer prayer reuses the epiclesis vocabulary of Addai and Mari.³
• Anaphora of NestoriuscompanionThe third East Syriac anaphora, traditionally ascribed to Nestorius; the three form the East Syriac set.³

Disputed Questions

How can it be valid without an institution narrative? Rome's answer is the one the entry gives, because it is the only answer that matters. The words of the institution are constitutive and therefore indispensable; in this anaphora they are present in a dispersed euchological way.⁴ The accompanying explanatory note, a separate document, adds that the historical question, whether a narrative was lost or never there, cannot be settled with absolute certainty.⁶ The entry keeps the Guidelines and the note distinct.

Was the narrative ever there? The 1890 Takhsa prints none.² The 1893 translators bracket one as supplied from practice.³] Brightman brackets one on page 285.⁵ A 1978 permission to insert an institution narrative is sometimes cited in older literature; the entry does not present it as current. Royel reports its repeal by the Assyrian Synod in January 2010. The question of the original text remains where the explanatory note left it: not settleable with absolute certainty.

Who may receive? The 2001 Guidelines make provisions for Eucharistic admission, and they concern the Chaldean and Assyrian faithful exclusively: the churches in dialogue, the Christians of the East Syriac tradition.⁴ The entry does not extend them to Christians generally. What Rome gave to these two churches, it gave to them.

Go Deeper

Two things repay attention. The first is the bracket. On page 285 Brightman prints institution words in brackets, and on page 23 of the 1893 translation Maclean and Browne do the same.^3,5] The bracket is the whole argument in miniature: the words are not in the book, but the practice supplied them, and the editors could not leave them out. The 2001 Guidelines resolved the bracket by finding the words elsewhere, dispersed through the thanksgiving, constitutive and indispensable all the same.⁴

The second is the epiclesis. "May thy Holy Spirit come, O Lord, and rest upon this offering."⁵ The older handbooks said this prayer had no invocation, and the older handbooks were wrong. The Spirit is asked to come, and the asking is the epiclesis. Whatever the prayer lacks, it does not lack this. In the end the anaphora of Addai and Mari is what it has always been: the apostles' thanksgiving, short, dense, ancient, prayed from Palm Sunday to the year's end, the words of institution hidden in it like leaven, doing their work whether the eye finds them gathered or not.

On Domus Dei

• The East Syriac Rite

Recommended reading

• Macomber, William F., “The Oldest Known Text of the Anaphora of the Apostles Addai and Mari”, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 1966.The oldest known text (Mar Esha'ya Hudra, tenth/eleventh century): the critical starting point.
• Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Guidelines for admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, Rome, 2001.The 20 July 2001 Guidelines: the institution words as constitutive and indispensable, present in a dispersed euchological way; the Eucharistic admission provisions. Read online
• Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Explanatory note to the 2001 Guidelines on Addai and Mari and admission to the Eucharist, Rome, 2001.The accompanying note, distinct from the Guidelines: the shape of the anaphora and the limits of the historical question.
• Brightman, F. E., Liturgies Eastern and Western, vol. 1: Eastern Liturgies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896.The public-domain English (pp. 247-305), with the bracketed institution wording on p. 285. Read online

Sources

1. ScholarshipMacomber, William F., “The Oldest Known Text of the Anaphora of the Apostles Addai and Mari”, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 1966, the Mar Esha'ya Hudra; Orientalia Christiana Periodica 1966; the use.Verified 2026-09-19 · read: the seventh-century revision of Addai and Mari ascribed to Isho'yahb III (the 'II' on p. 348 is corrected on p. 349); the Mar Esha'ya Hudra is the oldest known witness of the anaphora
2. Primary textLazarists of Urmia (ed.), Takhsa d-Quddasha: the Order of the Holy Qurbana, Urmia, 1890, the Addai and Mari text.Verified 2026-09-19 · the 1890 Urmia printing read in Syriac: its text of Addai and Mari prints no institution narrative; the narrative exists in the examined copy only as a separately printed leaf of unknown printer and date bound in at that point
3. Primary textMaclean, Arthur John; Browne, William Henry (tr.), Interleaved English translation of the Urmia Takhsa, Urmia, 1893, p. [23; the Addai and Mari text; the Theodore text; the Nestorius text; p. [23].Verified 2026-09-19 · the interleaved English translation dated July 1893: the institution narrative is bracketed on p. [23] as material absent from the printed Takhsa; the bema in the 1890s Urmia usage is the narrow space between the sanctuary wall and a parallel low wall; the whole order read
4. Magisterial / canonicalPontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Guidelines for admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, Rome, 2001, 20 July 2001. LinkVerified 2026-09-20 · the Guidelines read in full on the Council's own site: Rome, 20 July 2001; the institution words are 'not in a coherent narrative way and ad litteram, but rather in a dispersed euchological way, that is, integrated in successive prayers of thanksgiving, praise and intercession'; guidelines 1-4, the whole applying exclusively to Chaldean and Assyrian faithful
5. Primary textBrightman, F. E., Liturgies Eastern and Western, vol. 1: Eastern Liturgies, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896, pp. 247-305; Guidelines2001AddaiMari: the institution words; pp. 247-305; p. 285; pp. 247-305 (the text as printed). 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'
6. Magisterial / canonicalPontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Explanatory note to the 2001 Guidelines on Addai and Mari and admission to the Eucharist, Rome, 2001, 2001.Verified 2026-09-19 · the explanatory note read in full and kept distinct from the Guidelines themselves: it treats the anaphora's shape and states the Holy Leaven is renewed by the local bishop, who distributes it to the parishes of his diocese
7. ReferenceBeggiani, Seely (Chorbishop), “The Holy Mystery of Offering (Qorbono), Part One”, Eparchy of Saint Maron of Brooklyn (reprinted with permission), appendix p. 69. LinkVerified 2026-09-18 · read in full (undated page): 'The Anaphora of the Apostles (also known as III Peter and by the Syriac word Sharrar), which the Maronite Church shares in common with the Church of Edessa, is the oldest Anaphora in the Catholic Church, and is still found in adapted form as the Anaphora of the Signing of the Chalice on Good Friday'; the Syriac term 'refers to the idea of offering', the Arabic to 'making holy'