Early And Medieval Rituals And Theologies of Baptism: From the New Testament to the Council of Trent

Liturgy, Worship and Society

by Bryan D. Spinks

Bryan Spinks summarizes the understandings of baptism in the New Testament and the development of baptismal reflection and liturgical rites throughout Syrian, Egyptian, Roman and African regions. He focuses particularly on the Homilies of Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Theodore and Ambrose, the post-nicene rites and commentaries and the impact of medieval theologies of baptism and Augustinian theology with reference to Western understanding.

Genres: Medieval

190 pages, Hardcover

First published July 31, 2006

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm reading this as background for a Hiberno-Latin treatise on baptism that I am editing. The early baptismal rites at the Easter vigil are so dramatic, and the preparation for them so thorough. How much we have lost today with our perfunctory, individual performance of an ancient rite! Irish rites were somewhat different--perhaps single immersion, like the Visigoths, no oil (perhaps no access to it), but still full of symbolism. The chapters on New Testament understanding of baptism and the pre-Nicene practices are especially powerful and informative. Author spends a lot of time on when and whether oil was administered, and what such administration meant. An important topic, but after a while, the old eyes glaze over. Excellent end-of-chapter summaries about each Christian group's understanding of the meaning of baptism. The discussions of the baptismal rituals of the Syriac church, one of the oldest Christian church bodies, are poignant to me since this church is being decimated by ISIS in Syria and soon will no longer exist, leaving only its immensely rich collection of digitized books in Minnesota (the originals may already have been destroyed), its liturgies, literature, and traditions--all so important to the early Irish church, which somehow had access to its texts--, and the account in Acts that Paul, on his conversion in Damascus, recovered in a house on a street called Straight, a street that still exists, but also, perhaps, not for much longer.