Prayers behind the Ambon.

Abstract

One of the characteristics of the Byzantine liturgy is the last prayer called “The Prayer Behind the Ambo”. According to the Venetian edition of the Liturgikon, it is recited by the faithful in front of the pulpit or the ambo (hence the name), or before the icon of Christ on the iconostasis according to the Jerusalem edition. This prayer is a remnant of an old ceremony where the priest came out to bless the faithful by the laying on of hands, which is still practised during the priest’s first mass in the Roman Catholic Church. The prayer continues being recited also by the newly ordained priests in the Orthodox Church. In the 10th century Codex Porphyrios there are 28 such prayers. Of the 162 manuscripts described by A. Dmitriyevsky only eight contain them, with one manuscript coming from the sixteenth-seventeenth century, which shows that these prayers were also used in later times, but not everywhere and not in the same range. Currently, there is a tendency to restore the prayers recited before the pulpit because of their didactic nature, closely associated with a particular holiday. These prayers have been restored in the Greek Church and in various U.S. jurisdictions. The article is accompanied by a translation of current prayers behind the ambo, as well as other prayers of this type, intended for various holidays and days of the liturgical year.