The West Syrian Rite, also known as the Syrian Rite or the Syro-Antiochene Rite, is a Christian liturgical rite chiefly practiced in the Syriac Orthodox Church and churches related to or descended from it. It is part of the liturgical family known as the Antiochene Rite, which originated in the Patriarchate of Antioch. The rite was largely an adaptation of the old Greek liturgy of Antioch into Syriac, the language more common in the Syrian countryside. Into this framework a great number of other anaphoras have been adapted.
The rite is practiced in the Syriac Orthodox Church, an Oriental Orthodox body; the Syriac Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See; and to a great extent in the Maronite Church, another Eastern Catholic body. A regional variant, the Malankara Rite, developed in the Malankara Church of India, and is still practiced in its descendant churches.
Versions of the West Syrian Rite are currently used by
§ Some Oriental Orthodox bodies including:
§ Syriac Orthodox Church
§ Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Church
§ Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church
§ Malabar Independent Syrian Church
§ Some Eastern Catholic bodies including:
§ Syriac Catholic Church
§ Maronite Church
§ Syro-Malankara Catholic Church
The catalogue of liturgies in the British Museum has adopted the usual Catholic nomenclature:
§ Chaldean Rite: That of the East Syrian Catholics and Assyrian christians
§ Syro Chaldean rite (Malabar Rite): South Indian Catholics(Syro malabar) andschismatics
The tradition — resting on the legend of Abgar and of his correspondence with Christ, which has been shown to be apocryphal — is to the effect that St. Thomas the Apostle, on his way to India, established Christianity in Mesopotamia, Assyria, and Persia, and left Adaeus (or Thaddeus), "one of the Seventy", and Maris in charge. To these the normal liturgy is attributed, but it is said to have been revised by the Patriarch Yeshuyab III in about 650.
After the First Council of Ephesus (431), the Church of Seleucia-Ctesiphon,refused to accept the condemnation of Nestorius. As part of the Nestorian Schism, the Church of Seleucia-Ctesiphon cut itself off from the Catholic Church. In 498 the Catholicos assumed the title of "Patriarch of the East", and for many centuries this most successful missionary church continued to spread throughout Persia, Tartary, Mongolia, China, and India, developing on lines of its own, very little influenced by the rest of Christendom.
At the end of the fourteenth century the conquests of Tamerlane all but destroyed this flourishing Church at one blow, reduced it to a few small communities in Persia, Turkey in Asia, Cyprus, South India, and the Island of Socotra. The Malabarese Church divided into Uniate Catholics and Schismatics in 1599; the former community deserted the pure East Syriac rite for a Latinized Roman Catholic version, while the latter deserted their ancient rite for Miaphysitism and adopting the West Syrian Rite about fifty years later.
The Eucharistic service
There are three Anaphorae; that of Apostles (Sts. Adaeus and Maris), that of Nestorius, and that of Theodore the Interpreter. The first is the normal form, and from it the Malabar revision was derived. The second is used by the Chaldeans and Nestorians on the Epiphany and the feasts of St. John the Baptist and of the Greek Doctors, both of which occur in Epiphany-tide on the Wednesday of the Fast of the Ninevites, and on Maundy Thursday. The third is used by the same (except when the second is ordered) from Advent Sunday to Palm Sunday. The same pro-anaphoral part serves for all three. Three other Anaphorae are mentioned by Ebedyeshu (metropolitan of Nisibis, 1298) in his catalogue, those of Barsuma, Narses, and Diodore of Tarsus; but they are not known now.
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