West Syriac Rite
Eastern Christian liturgical rite
The West Syriac Rite, also called the Syriac-Antiochian Rite and the West Syrian Rite, is an Eastern Christian liturgical rite that employs the Divine Liturgy of Saint James in the West Syriac dialect. It is practiced in the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syriac Catholic Church and the Malankara churches of India. The Maronite Church also uses the rite but in a very distinct way. It is one of two main liturgical rites of Syriac Christianity, the other being the East Syriac Rite. It originated in the ancient Patriarchate of Antioch. It has more anaphora than any other rite.
Although the West Syriac liturgical tradition had always included many texts translated from Greek, this new influx of materials of Greek origin led to the emergence of two slightly different Syriac Orthodox traditions, that of Antioch, incorporating these new elements, and that of Tikrit, which did not incorporate it. It was essentially the Tikrit rite that was introduced into South India in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Usage
Versions of the West Syriac Rite are currently used by multiple different ecclesiastical bodies
Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the Holy See of Rome:
Syriac Catholic Church based in Lebanon.
Maronite Church, sometimes identified with a particularly distinct use of the rite, based in Lebanon.
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This entry incorporates text from “West Syriac Rite” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.