Colyba

In the Greek liturgy, a colyba, or colybus, was an offering of grains, and boiled pulse, made in honor of the saints, and for the sake of the dead. Balsamon, P. Goar, Leo Allatius, and others, have written on the subject of colybas. The substance of their statements follows.

The Greeks boil a quantity of wheat, and lay it in little heaps on a plate; adding beaten peas, nuts cut small, and grape-stones, which they divide into several compartments, separate from each other by leaves of parsley.

They have a particular formula for the benediction of the colybas; wherein, praying that the children of Babylon may be fed with pulse, and that they may be in better plight than other people, they desire a divine blessing on those fruits, and those who eat them.

Balsamon refers the institution of that ceremony to Athanasius of Alexandria, but the Greek Synaxarium to the time of Julian the Apostate.

Many of the Latin divines having spoken injuriously of this ceremony, Gabriel Archbishop of Philadelphia, has written a discourse in its vindication; wherein he endeavors to show that the design of the colyba is only to represent the resurrection of the dead, and to confirm the faithful in the belief thereof. The colybae, he says, are symbols of a general resurrection; and the several ingredients added to the wheat, signify so many different virtues.