Trained in classical and oriental philology, Anton Baumstark (1872–1948) was prodigious as a scholar studying the literature, art, and liturgy of the whole church—Oriental, Eastern, and Western. Comparative liturgy, his method for studying the historical development of the liturgy as an organism, has had a lasting influence, notably on the liturgical study of the Christian East. Fritz West, a liturgical scholar ordained in the United Church of Christ, has written numerous articles on liturgical methodology, the three-year lectionary, and worship in his Reformed tradition. He has published two books, The Comparative Liturgy of Anton Baumstark and Scripture and Memory: The Ecumenical Hermeneutic of the Three-Year Lectionaries.
Fritz West, himself a methodological master of comparative
liturgical study, has provided all of us with a great service in
the publication of his excellent translation of Anton Baumstark's
work. Together with Baumstark’s classic Comparative Liturgy, which
set the methodological agenda for most of contemporary
historical-liturgical study, English scholars and students now have
another significant Baumstark work on method at their disposal. Not
to be overlooked are the fine contextual introduction by West and
the preface by the great Eastern liturgiologist in the Baumstark
school, Fr. Robert Taft, SJ. This book demonstrates beyond a shadow
of a doubt that Baumstark's foundational methods of
Liturgiewissenschaft, also known as ‘comparative liturgy,’ have a
bright future indeed if we are to say anything at all about the
history of liturgy. Thank you for doing this, Fritz.Maxwell E.
Johnson University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN
Anton Baumstark is a monumental figure of liturgical scholarship of
the twentieth century. This English translation by Fritz West of
[On the Historical Development of the Liturgy] … proves that he
still demands serious attention…. West has rendered Baumstark’s
difficult and infelicitous German writing style into readable and,
in many cases, elegant English prose. West, an ordained minister of
the United Church of Christ, makes his own extraordinary
contribution to liturgical research in this translation and
annotation of Baumstark’s early work. He is to be congratulated for
his accomplishment.L. Edward Phillips, Worship
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