The Byzantine Rite Today

The liturgy that developed in Constantinople between the fourth and fourteenth centuries is still celebrated, in substantially the form it reached by about 1400, by somewhere in the region of 260 million Orthodox Christians and several million Eastern Catholics, in perhaps thirty languages, on every continent.

It is the largest living remnant of Byzantine civilisation, and it is not a museum exhibit: it is the ordinary Sunday practice of a very large number of people who have never given the Byzantine Empire a thought.

What the Rite Consists Of

The Byzantine rite, described in detail in Byzantine liturgy, comprises:

• The Divine Liturgy — the eucharist, normally in the form attributed to John Chrysostom, with the longer Liturgy of St Basil on ten occasions a year and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts on Lenten weekdays
• The daily office — vespers, compline, midnight office, matins and the hours
• The sacraments — baptism by triple immersion with chrismation and communion given immediately, including to infants; marriage by crowning; confession; ordination; anointing
• The calendar — the twelve great feasts, the four fasting seasons and the paschal cycle described in the Byzantine church calendar
• The music — unaccompanied vocal chant in eight modes
• The iconography — the iconostasis and the fixed programme of images

The Eastern Orthodox Churches

Fourteen or fifteen autocephalous churches, in communion with one another, recognising the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople as first in honour without jurisdiction over the others:

Church	Approximate faithful
Russian	100 million+
Romanian	16–18 million
Greek (Church of Greece)	9–10 million
Serbian	8 million
Bulgarian	6 million
Georgian	3.5 million
Ecumenical Patriarchate (incl. diaspora)	several million
Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem	1–4 million each
Poland, Albania, Czech Lands, Cyprus	smaller

The autocephalous model — national churches, self-governing, in communion — is Byzantine in origin, and so are its characteristic problems. The dispute over the status of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which produced a breach between Moscow and Constantinople in 2018, turns on precisely the questions of jurisdiction and precedence that Byzantine councils argued about, using arguments the Byzantines would recognise.

The Eastern Catholic Churches

Several churches use the Byzantine rite while being in full communion with Rome. They arose mostly through unions negotiated between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The largest is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (around 4–5 million), originating in the Union of Brest of 1596. Others include the Ruthenian, Romanian, Melkite Greek Catholic (in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt), Slovak, Hungarian and Italo-Albanian churches.

They keep the Byzantine liturgy, the married parish clergy, the iconostasis and the calendar, while accepting papal primacy. Their existence has been a source of friction with the Orthodox for four centuries — the term “Uniate,” used pejoratively, marks the dispute — and the Catholic Church has formally abandoned the promotion of such unions as a model for reunification.

Languages

The rite has been translated continuously since the ninth century, and the willingness to do so is one of the distinguishing features of the Byzantine tradition, as the Byzantine legacy in the Balkans explains.

It is celebrated today in Greek, Church Slavonic, Romanian, Arabic, Georgian, Albanian, Finnish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Swahili, Amharic, Spanish, French, German and English, among others.

The English-language situation is itself interesting: multiple competing translations exist, some in deliberately archaic register and some in contemporary English, and the argument between them is a live one in the Orthodox diaspora.

The Diaspora

Emigration from Greece, Russia, the Balkans and the Middle East since the nineteenth century has established Orthodox communities throughout western Europe, the Americas and Australia.

The organisational result is canonically untidy: several jurisdictions, each answering to a different mother church, frequently operating in the same city. Multiple bishops in one place violates the ancient canons and has been the subject of inconclusive discussion for a century. It is also, in practice, how Orthodoxy exists in most of the western world.

There is also a steady flow of converts, some of them attracted precisely by the antiquity and stability of the rite. Whole parishes of former Anglicans and Evangelicals have been received in Britain and the United States.

Continuity and Change

How much has actually changed since 1453?

Very little in the text. The Liturgy of St John Chrysostom celebrated this Sunday is substantially the text of the fourteenth-century manuscripts.

A good deal in performance. The chant was reformed in 1814 and shows Ottoman-era influence; Russian church music adopted western harmony in the eighteenth century and sounds nothing like Byzantine chant; the iconostasis grew from a low screen into a solid wall; the duration of services has been shortened almost everywhere.

Calendar. Most Orthodox churches adopted the revised Julian calendar for fixed feasts in the 1920s; several did not, and the “Old Calendarist” division persists.

Practice. Frequent communion, now normal, was not: for centuries most Orthodox laypeople communed a few times a year.

Why It Survives

The Byzantine rite outlived the empire, four centuries of Ottoman rule, seventy years of Soviet persecution, and the dispersal of its populations across the world.

The likeliest explanation is structural. It was never the property of a state or a single language; it was translated wherever it went; it was maintained by monasteries as much as by hierarchies; and it required nothing to function except a priest, a book, bread, wine, and a room. Those are portable requirements, and they have proved more durable than the empire that assembled them.

Attending a Liturgy

For a reader who wants to encounter the tradition directly rather than read about it, a short practical account may be more useful than further history.

Duration. The Divine Liturgy runs roughly ninety minutes to two hours; matins beforehand adds an hour or more. Vigils on great feasts run considerably longer, and on Athos an all-night vigil can last eight hours or more.

Standing. There are traditionally no pews. Most Greek and Slavic churches in the diaspora now have seating, but standing remains the norm in monasteries and in much of the Orthodox world, and people move about, light candles and venerate icons during the service.

Arrival and departure. Byzantine practice does not expect the congregation to arrive and leave together. People come during matins or the early liturgy, and this is not considered rude.

Language. Varies by parish. Many diaspora churches use a mixture of the traditional language and the local one.

Communion. Given to Orthodox Christians who have prepared by fasting and confession, in both kinds together from a spoon. Visitors are not expected to receive, but blessed bread (antidoron) is distributed to everyone at the end.

Icons. Venerated by bowing and kissing; a visitor is under no obligation.

Dress. Modest; in traditional parishes women often cover their heads, and in monasteries this is generally expected.

The most useful advice is to attend a vigil on the eve of a great feast rather than a Sunday morning, if the choice is available. The vigil is longer, less crowded, and closer to the monastic form the whole rite descends from.

The Disputes Worth Knowing

Orthodox jurisdictional quarrels are a permanent feature and are usually reported in western media without their background. Three matter.

Ukraine. In 2018–2019 the Ecumenical Patriarchate granted autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which Moscow — which had administered Ukrainian Orthodoxy since the seventeenth century — rejected. Moscow broke communion with Constantinople and with the churches that recognised the new body. The dispute turns on the ancient question of who may grant autocephaly and on the interpretation of a 1686 document, and it has divided world Orthodoxy more seriously than anything since the calendar.

The diaspora. The canons say one bishop per city. The reality is several, each answering to a different mother church. Every attempt to rationalise this in the last century has failed, because it would require churches to surrender jurisdiction over their emigrant communities.

Primacy. What the Ecumenical Patriarch’s “first among equals” position actually entitles him to do is contested — whether it is a primacy of honour only, or carries rights of appeal and initiative. Constantinople and Moscow take different views, and the argument has an obvious structural resemblance to the older one with Rome, which is not lost on anyone involved.

The Numbers, With Caveats

Membership figures for Orthodox churches should be treated carefully, and it is worth saying why.

Most are based on national census religious affiliation or on baptism records, not on practice. Russia’s figure of 100 million-plus reflects surveys in which respondents identify as Orthodox; regular attendance is estimated in the single-digit percentages of that. Greek figures similarly reflect cultural identification.

By contrast, some diaspora communities and convert-heavy parishes have attendance rates far above their nominal membership.

The total of around 220–260 million usually quoted for Eastern Orthodoxy is therefore a measure of identification rather than of observance — which is not to dismiss it, since identification is itself a historical fact of some importance, but it should not be read as 260 million people standing through a two-hour liturgy on any given Sunday.

What is measurable, and more to the point for this site’s purposes, is that the rite described in Byzantine liturgy is celebrated somewhere in the world every day, in a form its fourteenth-century compilers would recognise immediately.

• Byzantine Liturgy — the rite itself
• The Ecumenical Patriarchate — the senior see
• Byzantine Legacy in Russia — the largest Orthodox church
• The Byzantine Legacy in the Balkans — the translation principle
• Byzantine Chant Today — the music in practice
• Orthodox Canon Law — the governing rules
• The Byzantine Church Calendar — feasts and fasts today