PROTHESIS

In the Orthodox liturgical usage, the word ‘prothesis’ refers to a place of offering, a small table or counter in an enclosure (beside the alter in the sanctuary), on which the prosphora (the bread) and the wine are prepared for later offering in the Liturgy. The wine is poured in the cup; and the bread is cut according to the specifications prescribed by the church hierarchs and carefully placed on a disk or diskos, as pictured in the diagram, to be brought later to the altar in a procession called “The Great Entrance,” which some Orthodox churches still practice. The Elements carried by the deacon or priest exit through the northern door of the iconostasis, move through the nave, enter into the sanctuary (as received by the bishop, if presiding), and reaches the altar, upon which they are laid on an cloth icon called antimension (that has the bishop’s signature, by which the priest is authorized to perform the Eucharistic rite) for the later Eucharist celebration during the latter phase of the Divine Liturgy called Anaphora (ἀναφορά, rising of a sign).

The word ‘prothesis’ (πρόθεσις) means ‘the loaves laid before,’ ‘shew-bread’ as in LXX 1 King 21.6(7) (“the loaves of the presentation… the loaves of the presence…”). Prothesis also means: ‘a placing in public.’ ‘laying it out,’ ‘public notice,’ ‘statement of a case.’ (Lampe defines it, among others, as ‘table of shewbread,’ ‘setting forth of eucharistic offering,’ ‘offertory,’ ‘eucharistic elements as set forth’). As such, it is closely associated with προτίθημι, meaning “to place before, to propose, to set before oneself, hand over for burial, set up, institute, fix, set, setting before oneself; lay out (a dead body), let (it) lie in state.” St Germanus uses the word in reference to Christ’s sacrifice at the Eucharist: “Christ sacrifices [ζωοθυτούμενος] His flesh and blood and offers [προέθηκε] it to the faithful as food for eternal life” (Ecclesiastical History and Mystical Contemplation,” paragraph 4 in P. Meyers, 1984: 59). I will come back to this quotation shortly.

Even though the ritual acts the priest performs in the Proskomidi is highly symbolic (connecting Christ’s physical crucifixion to the work of salvation: “As a sheep led to the slaughter….;” “Sacrificed is the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world, for the life of the world and its salvation…”), the rite is invisible from the nave, as it takes place behind the iconostasis— or in skeuophylakion (treasury) (“the small rotunda…, a separate edifice adjacent to the church, located just off the northeast corner of Hagia Sophia” (Taft, 1980/1981: 49))—and mostly performed by the priest alone.

The relatively late institution of the Proskomidi (which occurs only at the prothesis) made what was otherwise a simple preparatory exercise to evolve into a full-blown rite prescribed to be performed before the Divine Liturgy begins. (According to Taft, at the time of St Germanus (d. 730) the proskomidi in Hagia Sophia was not fully ritualized as it is now. 1980/1981: 49.) Since the prothesis is not (the place of) the actual offering/sacrifice (προσφέρειν), the Eucharist on the altar; and as the bread and wine have not yet been consecrated as the Body and Blood of Christ; the Proskomidi only prepares and anticipates what is to come: the actual Eucharistic sacrifice. As such the Proskomidi proceeds inside the sanctuary on the northern corner, while prayers (psalms) are recited by the choir or cantor. In a coptic Orthodox churches, however, I observed the Proskomidi being incorporated into the early part of the Divine Liturgy itself, performed in the ambo, visible to everyone from the nave.

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St Ambrose (d. 397), to my knowledge, is the first to interpret the Eucharist bread as the ‘daily bread’ (τὸν ἂρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον) sought in the Lord’s Prayer (“Christ, then, feeds His Church with these sacraments, by means of which the substance of the soul is strengthened” (On the Mysteries, Ch 9, par. 55; Ambros, 2016; επιούσιος means ‘sufficient for the day’; thus the coinage in the Lord’s Prayer means ‘the necessary, daily, and sufficiently sustaining bread.’). In the same vein St Germanus (d. 730) says, as already quoted: “Christ sacrifices [ζωοθυτούμενος] His flesh and blood and offers [προέθηκε] it to the faithful as food for eternal life” (P. Meyers, 1984: 59). Both Ambrose and Germanus probably had in mind John 6.51: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” This is probably the origin of the idea of the Eucharist as a heavenly banquet.

After all, Jesus instituted the Eucharistic rite as a paschal meal, in which the deliverance of Israelites from the angel of Death and—by extension—from Egypt is remembered (Exod 12). In the same way, our deliverance from the power of death by the blood of Christ and by His Resurrection (“conquering death by death”) is to be remembered (Lk 22.19, 1 Cor 11.24-25).

(The Hebrew word pesah, translated as πάσχα, means ‘protection,’ as in Exod 12.27, Isaiah 31.5; see Milgrom, 1991: 1081. ‘Passover’ is a word invented by William Tyndale. The word ‘banquet,’ first recorded in 1450-1500, originated from Italian banchetto, meaning ‘table.’)

Christ’s blood protects us from death; His Body is laid on the table as sacrifice. The primary meaning of ‘setting a table’ (prothesis) is to offer the animal’s flesh to God in sacrifice, as in προσφέρειν, ‘to bring to,’ ‘present,’ ‘offer,’ ‘set food before one.’ The idea of ‘bringing forth’ is the essence of sacrifice, not eating (in a banquet). Jesus offers his Body as heavenly manna to (1) demonstrate his act of offering in sacrifice, as in Jn 3.16 and not as in a feast to be celebrated and enjoyed as if in a banquet. Jesus’ metaphor of eating (Jn 6.51) refers to the idea of union rather than eating in a banquet—the idea of union that is emphasized in the Eucharist, the union between God/Christ/the Holy Spirit and us, not so much the union among us, as Augustine emphasized (Sermon 272, 1993: 300-301).

(‘To celebrate’ (τελετουργέω) the Eucharist does not mean to enjoy it as if in a banquet or party. It means ‘to complete’ it. To complicate the matter, however, τελετή, means: “rite esp. initiation in the mysteries; a festival accompanied by mystic rites; a priesthood or sacred office.”  To these, Lampe adds: “initiation of sacramental rites.”)

(Augustine’s Sermon 272: “Remember: bread doesn’t come from a single grain, but from many. When you received exorcism, you were ‘ground,’ When you were baptized, you were ‘leavened.’ When you received the fire of the Holy Spirit, you were ‘baked.’ […] In the visible object of bread, many grains are gathered into one just as the faithful .. form ‘a single heart and mind in God’ [Acts 4.32]. […] This is the image chosen by Christ our Lord to show how, at his own table, the mystery of our unity and peace is solemnly consecrated.” Augustine hardly uses the word ‘symbol’ but prefers to use ‘image.’ As result, his notion of sacrament cannot be associated with the Syriac notion of symbol (raza) but with the Platonic notion of ‘image’ or ‘representation.’ In Platonic sense, a sacrament would represent or point to a deeper reality of God and His work that cannot be represented, visually or intellectually. The idea of unity, as Augustine says, is visually expressed in the Eucharistic bread, as the wine is. In contrast, in Syriac notion of symbol, as in Neo-Platonists such as Dionysius the Areopagite, the reality/mystery is contained in the visible symbol, which is what a sacrament is supposed to be. Although Augustine, too, has the stronger (Syriac) sense of sacrament/symbol (for example, he says somewhere, I am informed, that “Christ is sacrament”), he more often than not resorts to the Platonic sense of sacrament as a sign, representing the unrepresented reality. For example, unity that Augustine speaks of in the Eucharistic bread is not present in the same sense that Christ is present in it. Bread illustrates the unity but cannot be said to be the unity, as Christ is. Such an allegorization of symbols/sacraments, however, is seen to be in play in St Germanus, for example. Such a development of “incarnational realism” (Taft) is one of the consequences of iconoclassism. Taft, 1980/1981: 55, 59; P. Meyer, 1984: 50.)

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The Eucharist is less of a banquet than it is a sacrifice. It in fact closely resembles the Levitical sacrifice, which is also depicted in Hebrews as Christ’s eternal sacrifice performed in the order of Melchizedek. The Levitical sacrifice involves the movement of bring the offering(s) from the outer altar, through the altar of incense in the shrine, and finally to the holy of holies where the ark is laid. See Milgrom’s Figure 1.

Back to Proskomidi.

According to Robert F. Taft, S.J.