ЛЕКСИКО-ГРАММАТИЧЕСКИЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ НЕМЕЦКИХ КАТОЛИЧЕСКИХ МОЛИТВ В ДНИ ПАМЯТИ УЧИТЕЛЕЙ ЦЕРКВИ

Introduction

The prayer, as a special genre and type of text, has traditionally been an object of investigation in theology (liturgical, pastoral, and moral). In 1970s in Germany, a series of studies investigate the prayer within the framework of theology and religious studies [6, p. 109-110], [9, p. 243-245]. Beginning from 1980s linguistic studies start investigating the prayer as a linguistic, cultural, poetic and hymnographic compositional phenomenon [7], [11], [13] and as a speech act (Schaeffler 1989). As a rule, these studies views the prayer as an element of liturgical cycle and one of its main components [1, p. 801-802]. Another approach is to investigate the prayer as a type of religious text and examine its possible transformations [5, p. 87-150], [12], [14]. Detailed investigation on different types and kinds of prayers is a current issue for Germanic studies and it is awaiting for its complex description.

The objectives of the present paper are: (1) to describe social cultural specificities of German Сatholic priestly prayers on the Feasts of Doctors of the Church during the Liturgy of the Hours and (2) to list and analyze their lexical grammatical and compositional characteristics.

Structural specificity of the oration

Prayers belong to Euchologionian liturgical texts.Most often, the pleading prayer, as a special type of prayer, is opposed to the prayer of praise and the prayer of gratitude. Meanwhile, some scholars believe this opposition has limitations because, for example, the Lord’s Prayer is a confessional prayer but it also contains praising and pleading intentions [2, p. 31-40].  Priestly prayers (orations) have a very structure. These prayers are pronounced to finish a certain part of the service, for example, the reading from the Gospel. They can also be pronounced as a final blessing to finish the service. The oration begins with the greetings to the congregation and an invitation to pray. Most often, the prayer itself begins with addressing God the Father but sometimes it begins with addressing God the Son. The final part begins with the pleading where the name of Jesus Christ, the Medium in the prayer is mentioned: Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum. While in the Eastern liturgies orations are wordy and solemn in style, the Roman orations are brief, plain, and precise both in a form and the content. Stylistically they are marked by antitheses and use phrase structures with an accurate meter.

The present study

The material for the present study is 20 priestly prayers from the Book of Hours of Roman Catholic church for the German dioceses (Die Feier des Stundengebetes für die katholischen Bistümer des deutschen Sprachgebietes [4, p. 737-981]). The texts of orations pronounced during the Liturgy of the Hours axhibit strict rules of composition and structure. All the selected prayers belong to one thematic group – they are pronounces during the Liturgy of Hours on the Feasts of Doctors of the Church (doctor ecclesiae).

In the prayer the indicative addressing, Gott, that often goes without any attributes, it is detached to the relative predication that characterizes God the Father expressing praise and gratitude and introducing the basis for the further pleading. The pleading, in its turn, can sometimes be divided into the pleading itself (epiclesis) and the predication, which formulates the expected consequences of the pleading (anamnesis). The conclusion, in Roman tradition, does not have an elevated style to praise God but, nevertheless, it fulfills the praising function.

Table 1 – Example of composition of oration

The initial addressing to God aims at expressing categories of personalization and appellation that are domineering in perception of God as a personality. Attitude to God is expressed by the addressing with high metaphors, absolutely ameliorative estimation that has several lexical grammatical models: 1) noun: Gott; 2) personal pronoun: Du; 3) noun with attribute in agreement: heiliger Gott; 4) noun with apposition (sometimes using addressing pronoun in 2nd person, singular): Gott, du Hirt deines Volkes; 5) noun with subordinate relative clause: Gott, du Stärke aller, die auf dich vertrauen.

From the models above, the most frequent models are: noun with attribute in agreement and noun with apposition. Attributes often contain epithets that are important for their theological meaning. In Biblical tradition, they also function as euphemistic epithets for the tabooed name of God: ewiger, heiliger, gütiger Gott. Briefness and limited variability of the addressing can be explained by the fact that the priestly prayers under analysis are pronounced during the Hours and not in the liturgy and they are designed for everyday services.

The structural base for the anamnesis is various. Meanwhile, the composition these prayers imposes its own strict rules for predications because the prayer is short. The predication of the analyzed prayers can be:

1) a simple extended sentence: du hast deine Kirche durch die fromme Gelehrsamkeit des heiligen Beda erleuchtet;

2) a complex sentence with subordinate clause: durch deine Gnade ist der heilige Bischof Cyrill von Alexandrien unerschrocken eingetreten für den Glauben, daß Maria deinen ewigen Sohn geboren hat;

3) the predication containing two independent sentences: wir begehen den Gedächtnistag des heiligen Diakons Ephräm. Erfüllt vom Heiligen Geist, hat er in Hymnen und Liedern deine Größe besungen.

Linguistically the preference is given to the structures enumerated above. There are no simple non-extended sentences. The pleading and the predication of the addresser are closely connected in meaning.

The content of the predication of the addresser is not homogeneous. It may contain facts from the Holy story, allusions to them and references to special merits of the Saint and his impact in dogmatic teaching: durch deine Gnade ist der heilige Bischof Cyrill von Alexandrien unerschrocken eingetreten für den Glauben, daß Maria deinen ewigen Sohn geboren hast; it may express dogmatic points: auch wir bekennen sie als wahre Gottesmutter; it may represent the religious experience of the believers: du bist deinem Volk gnädig; it may anticipate the anamnesis and explain why it is possible to plea to God for certain things: du schenkst der Kirche zu allen Zeiten Menschen, die durch ihren Glauben und ihre Liebe ein Vorbild sind.

Among the stylistic devices the strongest preference lies on metaphors, epithets, metonymies and syntactic parallelism. Usage of these tropes and figures, on the one hand, is aimed at making the text figurative and, consequently, more expressive. On the other hand, it fulfills an important architectonic function – ensures a precise structure of the prayer [3, p. 188]. Some scholars believe that stylistic specificity of the texts of prayers also fulfills another very important function – to sound indirectly in expressing believers’ desire for salvation [8 p. 112].

The epiclesis contains one or several pleadings and it is intended to fulfill one of the main functions of a prayer – pleading. The analyzed pleading parts of priestly prayers are marked by stylistic diversity. Thematic representation of most of the pleading fragments means to explicitly express the main norms and values of the religious life. Almost all the prayers contain pleadings connected to supermoral (defining a person’s behavior towards God) and moral (defining a person’s behavior towards other people) values. The fact that there are no pleadings containing utilitarian values can be explained by the specificity of communicative situation when the priest pleads to God for things that are important for the whole church that is understood as the congregation of the believers. Moreover, this prayer is pronounced in a public worship, not in a private one. This defines its thematic specificity.

Structural semantic specificity of the pleading will be characterized by:

1) the usage of the imperative in 2nd person, singular: Öffne auch unser Herz für dein Wort, damit wir darin die Quelle des Lebens finden; Belehre uns durch sein Wort und ermutige uns durch sein Vorbild;

2) The multicomponent structure of a pleading – as a rule, epiclesis has 1-2 pleadings, that are closely connected;

- if epiclesis has only one pleading, it will contain several subordinate clauses: Gib uns ein Herz, das dich in allem und über alles liebt, damit wir den Reichtum deiner Verheißungen erlangen, der alles übersteigt, was wir ersehnen;

- if the sentence is not overloaded with subordinate clauses, it will have the complex construction with zu-phrase: Gib uns die Kraft dieses Gebot treu zu befolgen, damit wir das ewige Leben erlangen;

3) The absence of simple sentences in the epiclesis and the subordinate clauses of purpose with conjunctions daß and damit: Erleuchte auch uns durch deinen Geist, damit wir unsere Aufgaben erkennen und sie in deiner Kraft erfüllen.

Among the 20 prayers analyzed for the study, there is only one instance when a pleading is not expressed by the imperative but by the optative. The optative structure shows that the speaker is sure that God would fulfill what the pleading is asking for. The usage of the optative is a distinctive grammatical specificity on many texts belonging to the religious style.

As a rule, all the components of a pleading will be included in one sentence. Meanwhile, cases of division of the components of a pleading between separate sentences are also possible, for example: Pflanze in unser Herz die Liebe zu deinem Namen ein. Binde uns immer mehr an dich, damit in uns wächst, was gut und heilig ist. Wache über uns und erhalte, was du gewirkt hast.

The pleading can be expressed by different verbs but half of the prayers use the verb geben: Gib uns … It is interesting that this verb introduces only one pleading in the prayer and, as a rule, this pleading contains several subordinate clauses. It is also worth mentioning that most of the pleadings are aimed at receiving certain qualities, conditions or things from God. As a rule, believers either do not have these qualities, conditions or things, or what they have is not enough (gib uns …, erwecke …, lehre …, stärke …).

In the prayers of this group there are no pleadings to God for salvation from sinful states, immoral qualities, etc. or for restriction from getting into these states (nimm … weg, schütze uns von …, erhalte). This is typical for the liturgical texts in general, especially to the texts of the Liturgy of Hours. The final part of priestly prayers (conclusion, doxology) is homogeneous and is most often expressed by the words Darum bitten wir durch Jesus Christus.

Discussion

The detailed analysis of priestly prayers from the Book of Hours pronounced during the German Catholic service shows the specificity of this text, which, in particular, is expressed by its strict composition structure (the addressing – the predication of the addressing – the pleading – the conclusion). The addressing to God is marked by absolute ameliorative estimation of the addresser and is limited to several lexical grammatical models. Other parts of orations also follow established models but, at the same time, their content is marked by variability. Their content can contain intertextual references (for example, to the facts from the Holy Story), express dogmatic fundamentals and represent religious experience of the believers. The texts of prayers also contain certain degree of lexical and grammatical variability. Among the most salient stylistic devices, we should name the usage of syntactic parallelism that insures clarity and rhythm of the verse.

Conclusions

Comparative analyses of content-structural characteristics of prayers of different ordinances of the German Catholic service and the analyses of prayers of different confessional belongings would allow (1) singling out typical characteristics of the prayer as a type of text and (2) stating socio cultural specificity of the prayer in Christian discourse in the German tradition and culture.