On the Historical Development of the Liturgy by Anton Baumstark (review)

227 Book Reviews Anton Baumstark On the Historical Development of the Liturgy Translated and annotated by Fritz West Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2011 312 pp. Paperback $34.95 The appearance in English in 1958 of the influential work Comparative Liturgy by the lay German liturgical historian Anton Baumstark (originally published in French in the 1930s), rendered the methodology it advocated and the “laws of liturgical evolution” it delineated fundamental reference points in the study of liturgical history. Yet it has been another half century before his 1923 German work On the Historical Development of the Liturgy has been translated. Whatever else may be said, that Baumstark’s earlier work is now available in English is itself a significant advance for liturgical scholarship. But there is indeed much more to say. Firstly, we need to note Baumstark ’s intention to contribute to the (then) nascent twentieth century Liturgical Movement by underlining the “religious benefits” to be gained “from a historical engagement with the liturgy” (40). His critical method —comparative liturgical history, examining the breadth of Christian liturgy, Eastern and Western—was not a scholarly end in itself; rather it was placed “in the service of our ultimate goal: to awaken and further an appreciation for the growth of that mighty tree in whose shadow the Catholic community using Latin as its liturgical language gathers to unite in celebrating liturgical worship according to the Roman Rite” (49). To this end Baumstark offers a survey of liturgical history from its origins in seventeen brief chapters notable for their density and breadth. Such ambition is breathtaking, and as Fritz West observes, a work written some ninety years ago inevitably “makes use of dated historiographical concepts and tools” (33). Much has happened in liturgical scholarship since 1923, and West does all he can to mitigate this limitation by way of extensive bibliographical, biographical and other notation throughout. Given that, the second notable feature of this book is its wealth of liturgical history. A student of the liturgy will find here both detail and a perspective that is informative, clearly translated and appropriately annotated. His survey, organized according to sequential themes under which comparisons are made (the influence of Hellenism, the issue of liturgical language, the impact of personal piety, etc.), illustrates the many and varied influences on the development of the liturgy throughout history. As Comparative Liturgy made clear, Baumstark regards the liturgy as an “organism” and describes its development as “organic,” tending from earlier diversity to later uniformity: 228 Antiphon 16.3 (2012) The liturgy is the product of development, but not like anything human will could ever create arbitrarily, in conscious pursuit of its chosen ends. The liturgy is like the language we speak, the life forms around us, or the earth’s surface that is the stage upon which these earth forms play out their existence. (44) Baumstark is clear that the Roman liturgy is a liturgy among others (as is a language)—a point necessary to make at his time of writing—but he is also clear that liturgies, like languages, have an integrity of their own. This third feature—his articulation of the organic nature of the liturgy and its objectivity—is most important. It is also topical: here this old book enters into the heart of the contemporary liturgical debate about the continuity or rupture of the liturgical reform of the second half of the twentieth century, which Baumstark (†1948) did not live to see. For there are those who assert, against the thesis of the present reviewer amongst others and in an attempt to find justification for liturgical discontinuity following the Second Vatican Council, that liturgical history evidences abundant precedent of radical liturgical reform, of rupture with that which came before (See J. Baldovin, “Sacrosanctum Concilium and the Reform of the Liturgy: Forty-Five Years Later,” Studia Liturgica 39:2, 145). Baumstark certainly describes the ongoing development of the liturgy and identifies many of the key influences upon that development, be they persons or cultural or political factors. While his scholarship rightly dismisses an immobilist stance towards the reform of the living organism that is the liturgy, it also maintains the liturgy’s objectivity , something which renders it beyond...