Een andere transfiguratie?
Abstract
A different mode of the transfiguration? This study calls attention to a remarkable liturgical formula in some Irish documents. The formula (10th, 11th century?) has been analyzed by M. McNamara, The inverted eucharistie formula Conversio Corporis Christi in panem et Sanguinis in vinum: the exegetical and liturgical background in irish usage, Proceedings Royal Irish Acad. vol.87c (1987) 573-593. Besides 'conversio' we find also the terms 'transformatio' and 'transfiguratio'. My first intention is to examine McNamara’s method. He counts some fifteen earlier (mostly liturgical) manuscripts from the continent, which contain the same formula. His summing up, however, seems to be delusive. It turns out to be only two texts, a collect of a so-called Mone-Mass (prayers for the Mass, discovered by F. Mone), and a prayer for the ordination of a presbyter which prove to be the locus of this formula. The other liturgical books simply copy the formula. The interpretation of the texts, moreover, in the visigothic books is uncertain. The genealogy of the formula narrows the dossier of McNamara’s study considerably. Nevertheless the formula deserves our attention. It could point out that the evolution of the western eucharistic theology towards the doctrine of the transsubstantiation could be described as one sided or even contingent. Further I try to describe the foreland of the formula. The so called eucharistic transfiguration, given in some Irish and continental sources, is defined by a descending movement ('katabasis', comp. the earliest form of the epiklesis to the Logos, that he may come), which is also at the base of the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, chapter 6 (see w.31-35; 38; 51; 55; 58). Tertullian in his comment on the Lord’s Prayer uses Jo.6,33 in this way: 'The bread is the Word of God, who came down from heaven’. This katabasis I found also in the Syriac explanation of the incarnation with the metaphor: 'to clothe with body'. The eucharistic transfiguration contains, properly speaking, the same metaphor: 'to clothe with bread'. In his christology Cyrill of Alexandria emphazises that the Logos, who became flesh, in this similar way becomes (transfigures his body in) bread. He joins the katabasis of the Logos in the incarnation and the one in the eucharist (esp. in his work 'On the incarnation of the Monogenès’: S.Chrét.97, ed. by G. Durand). Finally I draw attention to the ’icontheology’ of John of Damascus. According to John an icon can only be ’eidos’ and ’morfè’ of the ’Urbild’ on the condition that God in his mercy firstly sends his Son to mankind as the icon of his glory. Without Christ’s incarnation (katabasis) human or even cosmic ’iconicity’ fails. The transsubstantiation of bread and wine in the body and blood of the risen God-man presupposes the transfiguration of his body and blood into bread and wine. For the katabasis of God to men precedes the anabasis of men to God.