The Emergence of the Baptismal Anointing

• Applicant: Predrag Bukovec, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Roman Catholic Theology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 450790525

Baptism with water has been practiced from the beginnings of Christianity - the writings of the New Testament widely attest this form of initiation liturgy. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, theological aspects of baptism were ritualized and motivated the appearance of further distinct liturgical acts. One of them is anointing with oil or chrism, a ritual which spread rapidly and was introduced in the entire Christianity by and by. The origins of the baptismal anointing are still a desideratum in liturgiology and will be the main focus of the this project.The objectives of the project are focussed on (a) the reconstruction of the leading factors and motives which stimulated the emergence of baptismal anointings, and (b) the development of pre- and postbaptismal anointings in 2C-4C Christianity (period of oral transmission). Due to the fact that liturgical evidence is sparse in the Christianity of the first three centuries, all references and allusions in Christian literature have to be collected and analyzed in order to reconstruct the contexts of the emergence of baptismal anointing. The historical, liturgical-theological and comparative approach will put into focus both the internal dynamics among the pluralistic liturgies of early Christian communities (e.g. allusions to anointing metaphors in the Old and New Testament, the liturgical realisation of the title Christ “Anointed one”, and the increasing liturgical importance of the Holy Spirit in Christian initiation) as well as the external analogies in the social environment of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The multiplication of unctions can be seen as a further differentiation of initiational aspects.The diversity in Early Christianity and the plurality and orality of their liturgical practices became more and more relevant in Liturgical Studies in the recent debate. Christian sources from the contexts of epigraphy, the so-called Gnosis and the apocrypha will be analyzed for the first time in this regard in order to fill the gaps which the spare evidence of the so-called proto-orthodox texts has left.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants