1Just as liturgy transmits dogmatic and doctrinal teachings and beliefs, in a similar manner liturgy can express the ecclesiological status of a given Church and be the most conspicuous expression of autocephaly among Orthodox Churches. Apart from the consecration of myron1 or the use of certain liturgical vestments or objects during hierarchal liturgies,2 the ways of commemorating the hierarchy during liturgical services can also be an immediate indication of a Church’s jurisdictional and canonical status as autocephalous. By commemorating a certain bishop, archbishop, metropolitan, or patriarch, the clergy express not only their prayer for their bishop’s good work and well-being (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:25, Hebrews 13:17, 1 Timothy 2:1-3), but they also indicate their own ecclesial status and canonical jurisdiction.3 In the same way, not commemorating a particular bishop can be an attempt to express a different jurisdictional status.

2My goal here is not to deal with the «diptychs» as they have often been discussed in the last century – namely, the order of precedence in either the «conciliar diptychs» or the «ecclesial Orthodox diptychs», as Grigorios Papathomas refers to them, of the autocephalous Orthodox Churches.4 Rather, this paper focuses on how the autocephalous status of a Church affects the commemoration of the hierarchy within a specific Church, and what this says about ecclesiology. An investigation of the practice of liturgical commemorations of the hierarchy during the Divine Liturgy in Greek and Slavonic liturgical books shows that their historical development passed from the authentic practice of the priest and deacon commemorating the bishop of their local Church in earlier liturgical manuscripts, to a more developed commemoration of hierarchal structures in liturgical books from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries onwards. In this later form, the commemoration of the head of an autocephalous Church was no longer reserved exclusively for bishops, but was passed down to all liturgical commemorations, including those made by priests and deacons.

3I will begin with a brief presentation of the ways of commemorating the hierarchy in the earliest Greek and Slavonic sources, and then move on to the historical contexts in which the commemorations were modified in Church Slavonic sources from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy in the seventeenth century to present-day Russia and Ukraine, with the hope that these examples can be useful in comparisons with contemporaneous Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbian, and other liturgical practices.5 Hopefully this will serve as an aid to historians studying autocephaly who wish to navigate relevant liturgical sources for their own study.

Commemoration of the Hierarchy within the Divine Liturgy

4In order to understand how the hierarchy was commemorated, let us turn to liturgical books and to the text of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, as it is celebrated in the Byzantine Rite today.6 There are currently a maximum of six points during which the hierarchy could be commemorated, namely:

1. the Prothesis Rite, during which the dead and the living, including the hierarchy, are commemorated privately by the priest;7
2. the Great Litany/Litany of Peace (ἡ μεγάλη ἐκτενή, τὰ εἰρηνικά/вели́каѧ [ми́рнаѧ] е҄ктенїѧ̀) sung by the deacon;8
3. the Great Praises (ἡ φήμη/вели́каѧ похвала̀), sung by the deacon during the Divine Liturgy celebrated by a bishop;9
4. the Triple Litany/Litany of Fervent Supplication, after the Gospel reading;
5. the Great Entrance (μεγάλη εἴσοδος/вели́кий вхо́дъ), during which the Gifts are transferred from the Prothesis to the Altar;10
6. and the Diptychs of the Living (τὰ δίπτυχα τῶν ζώντων), following the Diptychs of the Dead at the end of the Anaphora, which the bishop, priest, and deacon say.11

5These six points depend on the particular liturgical tradition.12

Litanies

6Although today the Great Litany or Litany of Peace – a series of petitions to God for peace in the world, the wellbeing of God’s Churches, and for particular concerns of individuals and the community – is the first point in the Divine Liturgy where the hierarchy is audibly commemorated, the full text of this Litany is only known at this point of the Divine Liturgy after the eleventh century.13 The fourteenth-century Patriarchal Diataxis of Deacon Demetrios Gemistos (d. ca. 1397) and other contemporaneous liturgical books give the standard petition for the hierarch:14

7The fragmentary Slavonic fourteenth-century manuscript Sinaiticus slav. 39/N, edited by Nina Glibetić, gives the same petition:15

8In current Greek liturgical books, this same, sober petition for only one hierarch is most common, with no distinction made between a liturgy presided over by a bishop or priest.16 Sinaiticus gr. 1020, a twelfth- or thirteenth-century scroll with the full Diataxis of the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, gives a generic petition in the Great Litany:17

9This generic commemoration was a sign of a church’s stauropegial status, namely one that is directly subordinated to the patriarch; such churches were not required to commemorate the local bishop.18 Nevertheless, the patriarch’s jurisdiction over such a monastery or other foundation was not apparent in the liturgical commemoration, if this monastery or foundation was outside his own diocese or within the diocese of another bishop, since the patriarch’s name was not explicitly mentioned but a generic commemoration was used instead.

10Today, such a litany is also found in other services of the Liturgy of the Hours, such as Vespers and Orthros, and during the celebration of Sacramental Rites, such as Baptism or Marriage.19

Great Praises

11The acclamations/exclamations for the hierarch before the Trisagion were borrowed from the Byzantine imperial court ritual and located at this point in the Divine Liturgy because this was once the beginning of the service, when the patriarch processed into the church. The acclamations are known by various names in Greek, the most common being ἡ φήμη, although the terms εὐφήμησις, μακαρισμοί, πολυχρόνιον, and τῶν βασιλικῶν ὀνόματων εὐφημία are also found; in Church Slavonic the most common term is вели́каѧ похвала̀.20 Although there are some cases where the acclamations were included in a presbyteral liturgy,21 the full text of the acclamations is generally rare in liturgical manuscripts and books, since they often refer to the acclamations simply by their title (ἡ φήμη),22 or give only the phrase εἰς πολλὰ ἔτη or πολλὰ τὰ ἔτη.23 A version of the acclamations is found in the twelfth-century Southern Italian manuscript Vaticanus gr. 1554, in the Synodikon commemorations of living rulers and hierarchy, including the emperor, the patriarch, the metropolitan, bishop, and civil authorities.24 The full text given in modern Greek editions is as follows:25

12This acclamation is intoned by the deacon and then repeated by the chanters when a bishop presides at the Divine Liturgy.

Great Entrance

13The commemoration during the Great Entrance at the mid-point of the Cheroubikon is mentioned no earlier than the fourteenth century and consisted simply in the phrase:26

14In current Greek presbyteral liturgies, the commemoration here remains rather sober, although it has developed to include the hierarchy in most Slavic traditions.

Anaphoral Diptychs

15Strictly speaking, the Diptychs of the Dead and of the Living at the end of the Anaphora, or Eucharistic Prayer, of the Divine Liturgy are the only liturgical text that is properly called a «Diptych». This is the most ancient point of the Divine Liturgy where the Church hierarchy would be commemorated, and to which most canonical literature refers when discussing commemorations.27 This is also the primary point during which the various heads of autocephalous Churches would commemorate one another and the structure in which they do so has been copied and replicated at the Great Entrance and at the Acclamations/Great Praises.

16The earliest extant Greek liturgical manuscript of the Byzantine Rite, the eighth-century Euchologion codex Vaticanus Barberinus gr. 336, gives a brief commemoration of the hierarchy in the Anaphoral Diptychs of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (f. 34^r), to be said by the presiding priest:28

17A fuller text is found in the tenth-century Euchologion codex Petropolitanus RNB gr. 226 in the Liturgies of St. Basil the Great (f. 1^r) and St. John Chrysostom (f. 26^r):29

18Here it is worth noting that, in the commemoration of a single hierarch, the prayer expresses a certain degree of synodality and collaboration, since the service of the bishop or archbishop is to the «Churches» rather than to a single «Church». Among the earliest Slavonic manuscripts of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom on Mount Sinai, Sinaiticus slav. 38/N and Sinaiticus slav. 40/O from the fourteenth century have virtually the same commemoration:30

19Again, the liturgical scroll Sinaiticus gr. 1020 gives a generic commemoration that does not foresee the commemoration of the hierarchy by name:31

20Along with the presbyteral commemoration, the deacon also commemorated the dead and the living, intoning the phrase καὶ πάντων καὶ πασῶν («And all men and women»/ «And each and all») at the end of each series of Diptychs.32 Generally the liturgical books simply give the rubric «and the deacon commemorates the living, as he wishes», without any text or further instructions on how to do so. A notable exception is found in Patmiacus gr. 725, which, according to Alexej Dmitrievskij, gives the following text:33

21Aleksej Dmitrievskij uses this commemoration of the Patriarch of Moscow to date the manuscript to the seventeenth century, as opposed to Sakkeliou’s dating to the fifteenth century – when the Moscow Patriarchate had not yet been established.34 Today, such a detailed commemoration is hard to find in modern printed liturgical books, but the Simonopetra edition of the Greek Diakonikon gives an example of the diaconal Diptychs for patriarchal liturgies.35

Particular Exceptions

22Although the practice described thus far was standard in liturgical manuscripts from the eighth to seventeenth centuries, it is always possible to find exceptions. Sinaiticus gr. 1040, a fourteenth-century liturgical book for a deacon most likely copied and used on Mount Sinai, includes the patriarch of Jerusalem, and then the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch, as well as the archbishop of Sinai, in the Diptychs of the Living (f. 9^r–10^r) for a liturgy presided over by a priest (ἱερεύς) and not a bishop.36 Whether this method of commemorating the hierarchy was particular to the liturgical tradition of Jerusalem, which was known for its expanded Diptychs in the Liturgy of St. James,37 or a response to the difficult political situation in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt after the Muslim conquests of the Eastern Patriarchates in close proximity to non-Chalcedonians,38 is unclear.

23The fifteenth-century liturgical Diptychs from the Euchologion manuscript Patmiacus gr. 703 provide another exception to the standard practice of commemorating only the local bishop in the Diptychs. Although the actual liturgical text follows the standard practices described above, the margins of the manuscript include the names of Pope Paul II (Pietro Barbo) (Ἔτι δεόμεθα ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἁγιωτάτου πατρὸς ἡμῶν Παύλου πάπα), Patriarch Bessarion (Ἔτι δεόμεθα ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἁγιωτάτου πατριάρχου Βησσαρίωνος), and Archbishop Hieronymus (Ἱερώνυμος, most likely Girolamo Lando), to be commemorated among the living, written in by a later hand.39

24In general, names for commemorations could be added later to manuscripts, or separate books or other writing material could be used to record the changing names to be commemorated. For example, apart from parchment or paper, ostraca were also used to record names.40 Liturgical manuscripts sometimes give indications that a papyrus or lose parchment folio was used by the clergy as a supplement to Euchologia in the performance of liturgical rites. For example, Vaticanus Barberinus gr. 336 indicates that the bishop reads the ordination prayer from a separate papyrus page.41 On the folios of the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts in Cryptensis Γ.β. ΙΙΙ (gr. 113), two marginal notes prescribe the Diptychs of the Living and of the Dead to be read; due to the absence of any text, it can safely be presumed that the list of names was preserved elsewhere.42 Some manuscripts even left an empty space on the folio after the Diptychs so that additional names could be written in.43

Development of Commemorations among the Slavs in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy

25The liturgical tradition described thus far was the common practice of the Byzantine Rite, as witnessed in Greek and early Slavonic manuscripts mentioned above and even in early printed books, such as the Služebnik of 1508 from Târgoviște.44 Developments and changes to the liturgical tradition took place over time and in response to changing ecclesial contexts. This was particularly the case among East Slavic Orthodox Churches that found themselves either under the authority of foreign religious rule or competing with other ecclesiastical jurisdictions.45 It was in present-day Russia and Ukraine where a so-called «pyramidal structure» of commemorations developed, namely that each priest and deacon commemorated the whole hierarchy of their Church, from the patriarch or pope at the top, all the way down to their local bishop, as opposed to the original practice, where the priest commemorated his own bishop, the bishop commemorated his patriarch, and the patriarch commemorated the whole college of bishops or heads of other local Churches.

26The explanation for this change begins in the period after the Council of Florence. Although Diptychs do not appear to have been an important issue during the council, there was some discussion among Greek clergy in Italy and Crete after the council about whom they should commemorate.46 Despite prescriptions in a few liturgical manuscripts from the fifteenth century to commemorate the pope in the Diptychs,47 nevertheless, the editio princeps of the Hieratikon containing the Divine Liturgy in Greek by Demetrios Doukas, published in Rome in 1526 with the special privilege of Pope Clement VII, does not indicate the commemoration of the Pope of Rome, and only indicates the commemoration of one bishop, in keeping with the traditional practice.48

27Moving north and east, the liturgical books from the Kievan Metropolia provide certain novelties. The 1639 Služebnik of Metropolitan Peter Moghila, also maintained the original practice of priests and deacons commemorating only the local hierarch, but gave explanatory rubrics for how the clergy should commemorate the hierarch if he is a metropolitan or a bishop, or if the church where they are celebrating has stauropegial status. Thus, a certain level of flexibility, along with explanatory notes, was introduced into the liturgical books in order to respond to the particular situation of the specific church where the book was being used.49

28Uniate liturgical books from the same region followed the authentic order of commemorations until the end of the seventeenth century, since the 1596 Union of Brest between the Kievan Metropolia and Rome did not establish any requirements for Uniate clergy to commemorate the pope.50 Despite growing concerns in Rome that Uniate priests were not commemorating the pope in every liturgical service, the traditional practice of commemorating the local bishop was retained until the Synod of Zamość in 1720, which first required the Pope of Rome to be commemorated in every liturgical service and by all clergy – not just by the metropolitan.51 Despite this order, the pope was commemorated only at the Prothesis, the Great Entrance, and the Diptychs, but not during the Litanies. This practice continued until the 1930s in Greco-Catholic books printed in Lviv.52 It was only under the «Ultramontanist» influence of Cyril Korolevsky in the twentieth century that all the clergy of the Greco-Catholic Churches were forced to commemorate the Pope of Rome at all six points of the Divine Liturgy, as well as at every litany in all liturgical services.53

29The situation in Muscovy after the sixteenth-century creation of the Moscow Patriarchate was somewhat different. Despite the supposed reliance upon Greek liturgical books in an attempt to return to what the Russian Church believed to be authentic liturgical practices, the books resulting from the liturgical reform initiated by Patriarch Nikon consistently include the name of the Patriarch of Moscow before the commemoration of the local bishop, even in presbyteral liturgies. The practice of commemorating the patriarch is already attested in the Muscovite printed Služebnik of 1602, although no further titles of the patriarch are given.54 This is a departure from contemporaneous manuscripts, which, despite the creation of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1589, still mention only an archbishop, showing how printed books made it possible to transmit a uniform practice and introduce innovations to liturgical practice – something that was more difficult with manuscripts.55 By the time of the 1655 Moscow Služebnik, the Diptychs of the Living include the name of the Patriarch of Moscow, as well as the local metropolitan and the priest offering the Gifts in the Divine Liturgy, establishing the «pyramidal» form of commemorations:56

30During the Synodal period and after the abolishment of the Patriarchate by Tsar Peter the Great in 1721, it was, naturally, impossible to commemorate a patriarch, and so the newly-created Holy Synod (Свѧтѣ́шїй Прави́тельствующїй Сѷно́дъ) was commemorated in the place of the Patriarch.57

31With the restoration of the Patriarchate of Moscow at the council of 1917–1918,58 the name of the patriarch was once more commemorated, along with the other Eastern Patriarchs, in the solemn and dramatic «Great Praises» and Diptychs proclaimed by the protodeacon and choirs during the Divine Liturgy.59 The text is found in books of the Moscow Patriarchate, including a complete list of the heads of autocephalous Churches – one which includes different autocephalous Churches and in a different order from that of the Ecumenical Patriarchate:60

32Not only did the commemoration of the patriarch become possible; it was prescribed for all the clergy of the Moscow Patriarchate to commemorate the patriarch at every service and in every church.61 Those Russian Orthodox Churches that were not in communion with the Patriarchate of Moscow, such as the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), found other solutions to the commemoration of the hierarchy, at times inventing new forms for use. For example, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia commemorated the hierarchy thus:62

33Fortunately, disputes over jurisdiction have not always led to schism, even if the resulting practices of commemoration have diverged from established tradition. Within the «new territories» of the Church of Greece, a quite unusual practice existed in recent years, where the clergy commemorated the heads of two distinct, autocephalous – in the modern sense of the term – Churches: the Patriarch of Constantinople, under whose jurisdiction the northern part of Greece falls, and the Archbishop of Athens, within whose country the «new territories» find themselves.63 A similar situation existed in 1946 at New Valaamo Monastery in Finland, when the monks were uncertain about their ecclesiastical jurisdiction in post-war Finland and commemorated both the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Patriarch of Moscow.64

Canonical Basis for Commemorating the Hierarchy

34Following this general overview of the liturgical practice, it is necessary to see how the liturgical books conform to canonical regulations concerning the commemoration of the hierarchy. Although earlier canons discuss the role of the bishop and order in the diocese, canon 14 of the First-Second Council of Constantinople in 861 is the clearest to obligate the clergy to commemorate their bishop within the Divine Liturgy and to prescribe penalties for failing to do so:

If any Bishop, on the allegation that charges of crime lie against his own Metropolitan, shall secede or apostatize from him before a conciliar or synodal verdict has been issued against him, and shall abstain from communion with him, and fail to mention his name, in accordance with consuetude, in the course of the divine mystagogy (i.e., liturgical celebration of the Eucharistic mystery), the holy Council has decreed that he shall be deposed from office, if merely by seceding from his own Metropolitan he shall create a schism. For everyone ought to know his own bounds, and neither ought a presbyter treat his own bishop scornfully or contemptuously, nor ought a bishop to treat his own Metropolitan so.65

35This canon, and the preceding canon from the same council, was intended to maintain Church unity and shows the importance of liturgical commemoration as a visible sign of this unity. Other, similar situations and their consequences are described elsewhere in the canonical corpus.66 The Apostolic Constitutions express the rationale for the system of commemorations with a more theological explanation:

The bishops of each nation should know who is first among them and consider him as their head and not do anything of importance without his agreement. Each one should occupy himself only with that which concerns his district and the dependent territories. But he should not do anything without the agreement of all, for in this way is there concord and God may be glorified through Christ in the Holy Spirit.67

36How this was implemented in reality depended on the canonical regulation of each local Church, as is evident in some twentieth-century examples.

37The Greek Archdiocese of America provides one of the clearest examples of regulating the authentic practice of episcopal commemorations in the twentieth century. Between 1923 and 2003, the Greek Archdiocese of America approved four different charters, each one including regulations on the commemoration of the hierarchy and preserving the authentic tradition. In 1923 and 1927 the paragraph explained the basic procedure:

Article IX. Order of Commemoration. In the mysteries and the services, priests and deacons shall commemorate their Canonical Bishop, the Bishops shall commemorate the Archbishop and the Archbishop the Ecumenical Patriarch.68

38In 1977, a modification was introduced, raising the status of the Archbishop of New York:

Article IX. Order of Commemoration. During sacraments and ceremonies, priests and deacons commemorate the Archbishop and their bishop, the bishops commemorate the Archbishop, and the Archbishop commemorates the Ecumenical Patriarch.69

39Yet again, in 2003, the Charter of the Greek Archdiocese revised its statutes concerning commemorations, returning to the practice closer to that before 1977:70

Article 7.8. [Each bishop, now raised to Metropolitan, has the right] to have his pheme (Bishop’s anthem) canonically chanted during the Divine Liturgy. His pheme, however, shall not include hypertimia (supreme honor) and exarchia (exarchy).
Article 8. Order of Commemoration. During Divine Worship, the Sacraments and the Sacred Services, Priests and Deacons commemorate their canonical Hierarch. The Archbishop and the Metropolitan commemorate the name of the Ecumenical Patriarch at the liturgical exclamation of the ‘en protois mnestheti…’ (‘first of all remember Lord…’). The Auxiliary Bishops commemorate the name of their respective hierarch. At the Great Entrance of the Divine Liturgy, after the commemoration of their Archbishop and Patriarch, the Metropolitans also commemorate their Archbishop in America.71

40Despite the slight modifications to the practice of commemorating the hierarchy, the general principle remained the same: each member of the clergy commemorates only their immediate superior.

41The change in commemoration observed in the Nikonian period in Slavonic liturgical books can be confirmed in the contemporary canonical legislation of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to the Statutes of the Moscow Patriarchate, the name of the Patriarch of Moscow is to be commemorated at all liturgical services in every church of the Russian Orthodox Church with the following formula:72

42The insistence upon this formula suggests universal and immediate jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Moscow throughout the Russian Orthodox Church.

43The intuition that this is an imitation of papal primacy and Latin influence, requiring the commemoration of the highest ecclesiastical authority in every church, proves to be true, despite the absence of any such canonical stipulation in contemporary Roman Catholic canon law, where the practice of commemorating the hierarchy is simply assumed and failure to do so falls under general penalties for clergy not following liturgical prescriptions.73 From the promulgation of the Roman Missal of Pope Pius V in 1570 until the Second Vatican Council, the commemoration of the Pope of Rome within the Roman Canon was in the prayer of the anaphora Te igitur…una cum famulo, where papa nostro originally meant the local bishop, until it was specified that this referred to the Pope of Rome and the name of the local bishop was added afterwards, with the phrase et antistite nostro.74

44However, admonitions to commemorate the church hierarchy do exist in Eastern Catholic canon law, as presented in the Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium (CCEO), where the clergy are required to commemorate the Pope of Rome:

CCEO can. 91: The patriarch must be commemorated in the Divine Liturgy and in the divine praises after the Roman Pontiff by all the bishops and other clerics according to the prescriptions of the liturgical books.
CCEO can. 92 §2: The patriarch must make a commemoration of the Roman Pontiff as a sign of full communion with him in the Divine Liturgy and divine praises according to the prescriptions of the liturgical books and to see that it is done faithfully by all the bishops and other clerics of the Church over which he presides.75

45The public commemoration of the Pope of Rome is seen as an «expression of loyalty, obedience, and respect to the successor of Peter.»76 This same practice also applies to Churches presided over by a major archbishop (CCEO can. 152)77 or metropolitan,78 where the wording is virtually identical to that of a Patriarchal Church. Failure to mention the eparchial bishop bears the grave penalty of potentially being excommunicated, since intentional failure to commemorate the necessary hierarch is not only an omission of prayer for one’s spiritual authority, but also a negation of communion with, and subordination to, that authority, which can cause «scandal of the Christian faithful».79

46An exception to this rule among Byzantine Rite Catholics would be the Greco-Catholic Melkites, who follow the authentic tradition: each priest or deacon commemorates his own local bishop, the bishop commemorates the patriarch, and so on. The one exception to this practice among the Melkites is the commemoration of the Pope of Rome by every priest at every Divine Liturgy, but only once, at the Diptychs.80

47Unlike the stipulations in Russian Orthodox and Eastern Catholic canon law, the Great and Holy Council’s document on «Autonomy and the Means by Which it is Proclaimed» states the following:

Par. 1b: «…The Primate of the autonomous Church commemorates and is canonically related to the primate of the autocephalous Church.»
Par. 3a: «The Primate of the autonomous Church only commemorates the name of the primate of the autocephalous Church.»
Par. 3b: «The name of the Primate of the autonomous Church is not entered into the Diptychs.»81

48Although these stipulations seem to conform with the authentic practice of liturgical commemorations, it is not clear what implications they have for the commemorations made at the Divine Liturgy presided over by a priest.

Concluding remarks

49Based on the above outline of sources and canonical literature, one can make the following concluding summary:

1. The most ancient form of commemorating the hierarchy in the Diptychs and in the various other points of the Divine Liturgy, as evidenced by the earliest liturgical manuscripts of the Byzantine Rite, is still followed today by the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
2. A «pyramidal form» of commemorating the hierarchy developed, whereby all the clergy, including priests and deacons, commemorated the supreme head of their respective Church. This form of commemoration was adopted by the Moscow Patriarchate and by the Eastern Catholic Churches from the seventeenth century onward.
3. While the origins and idea of the «pyramidal form» can be traced to the influence of the Roman Catholic Church after the Council of Florence, the actual practice of commemorating the supreme head of a local Church by all clergy originates in Moscow.
4. Originally intended as a prayer for the head of the Church, the commemoration of the hierarchy in the Divine Liturgy became a proclamation of that hierarch’s jurisdiction and autocephaly, and came to be expressed and performed in a particularly theatrical and solemn way – even a «status symbol» or a political sign.82

50Although these questions may generally be considered of historical relevance or of a secondary nature in certain ecclesiastical contexts, in Ukraine today Diptychs are a matter of both ecclesiastical and political relevance.83 The Ukrainian Orthodox Church that is part of the Moscow Patriarchate has been in a delicate position: it follows the statutes of the Moscow Patriarchate but the necessity of commemorating the Patriarch of Moscow in parishes of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) has been raised by members of the Church; some clergy have refrained from commemorating the patriarch, appealing to the «authentic» practice of commemorating the hierarchy. The current head of the Church, Metropolitan Onufrij (Berezovs’kyj) of Kyiv, has stated that omitting the name of the Patriarch of Moscow is permitted because of «oikonomia» and because such is also the practice of other Orthodox Churches.84 This, however, raises a further question: if Ukraine is recognized as neither autocephalous nor fully autonomous by Moscow, how can clergy in Ukraine not commemorate the name of the Patriarch of Moscow without disregarding the statutes of their Church?85 Some liturgical books published by Ukrainian Orthodox scholars, although not officially sanctioned by Church authorities, attempt to avoid jurisdictional divides by omitting the name of the Patriarch of Moscow, but nevertheless prescribe the commemoration of the first hierarch of the local Church to the priest and deacon.86

51An example of the Diptychs as a «status symbol» could be witnessed during the liturgical services presided by Patriarch Filaret (Denysenko), the head of the Kyivan Patriarchate, which from 1992 until 11 October 2018 was unrecognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and considered uncanonical by World Orthodoxy. Patriarch Filaret commemorated the heads of all autocephalous Orthodox Churches unilaterally, as a kind of symbol of his authority for his own flock – even if none of the patriarchs he commemorated recognized him or his Church as autocephalous, let alone canonical.87 Despite the resolution to the status of the uncanonical Orthodox Churches in Ukraine,88 commemorating the heads of global Orthodox Churches with whom one was officially not in communion seemed not only premature, but also irrational. Regardless, the average faithful likely interpret such commemorations of ecclesiastical hierarchs from across the globe to be a sign of a Church’s international network and its status among the communion of Orthodox Churches as an equal member. The commemoration’s original purpose – as a prayer for the leaders of Christians in other Churches – seems secondary here.

52Is the current liturgical expression of autocephaly acceptable from the view of ecclesiology? As John Erickson has written: «From the nineteenth century onward, autocephaly typically has been understood as radical independence analogous to that which the modern sovereign state enjoys», falling heavily under the influence of «nationalism, statism, and other extra-ecclesial forces.»89 But the «ecclesiological significance» of this independence has generally been discredited, because it fails to see the realization of the Church of God at the local level.90 While declaring or suppressing autocephaly has depended on political or historical factors, the liturgical commemoration of the hierarchy should not depend on such questions, since liturgical order can be independent of factors external to the life of the Church. An «outsider» Roman Catholic perspective on autocephaly by Joseph Famerée has pointed to the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium quoting St. Ignatius of Antioch’s letters, as a means of understanding the importance of the local Church: since the «bishop is to be considered as the high priest of his flock, from whom the life in Christ of his faithful is in some way derived and dependent…all should hold in great esteem the liturgical life of the diocese centered around the bishop, especially in his cathedral church” where “the pre-eminent manifestation of the Church consists in the…participation of all God’s holy people in these liturgical celebrations…in the same eucharist, in a single prayer, at one altar, at which there presides the bishop surrounded by his college of priests and by his ministers.»91

53Such statements on the nature of the Church and the Church’s local character around the bishop are contradicted by the practice of commemoration of the hierarchy in most Russian and Ukrainian Churches today – both Orthodox and Catholic. Whether an examination of the historical development of liturgical commemorations and their canonical regulation inspire any reflection on, and potential restoration of, the traditional liturgical practice – so that the liturgical practice can effectively reflect and express the Church’s ecclesiology92 – depends on the hierarchy itself and the decisions of a future Church Council. What is clear from the liturgical sources is that a change occurred over the course of history, one that is still awaiting a theological and ecclesiological explanation.