| THE CATHEDRAL OR SUNG OFFICE The Cathedral Office or Rite represents the type of services and liturgical traditions which from ancient times were practiced in the parochial or secular churches. These rites are called Cathedral, because the bishop " s church was considered the center of all liturgical life. Consequently, the liturgical practices of the cathedral churches permeated the parishes. In time, the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia at Constantinople would emerge as the single most significant Church edifice in the East. As Robert Taft has noted, " . . . in no liturgical tradition has one edifice played such a decisive role as Justinian " s Hagia Sophia ... where the Byzantine rite was molded and celebrated, and where the vision of its meaning, enacted elsewhere on a smaller stage, was determined and kept alive. " [ 31 ] The Cathedral Office at Constantinople, known also as the Sung or Secular Service, was regulated by the Typikon of the Great Church.[ 32 ] It was called by that name, because Hagia Sophia itself was known as the Great Church. The Cathedral Office had four services for the daily cycle: Vespers, Pannychis, Orthros and Trithekte. The structure, order and number of services differed from the Monastic Office. While elaborate and imposing, the Cathedral Office lacked the large body of hymnody contained in the revised Monastic Office. By comparison it had become the more staid of the two. For this and other reasons, it finally fell into disuse. However, as we have noted above, various elements of the Cathedral Office had already passed into the monastic Typikon. From the fifteenth century until 1838 all Orthodox Churches, whether parish or monastic, followed the same basic Typikon of St. Savas. Typikon of the Great Church of Christ By the beginning of the nineteenth century it had become obvious that the monastic typikon could not be sustained in parish usage. Already, numerous abbreviations and omissions were taking place. The Ecumenical Patriarchate, in an effort to forestall further arbitrary changes as well as to sanction existing practices and traditions, took an enormous first step towards revising the typikon and accommodating it to parish usage. |
| Although the Roman Catholic Church initially resisted this and insisted on the authority of the Latin Vulgate, Roman Catholic scholarship in the latter half of the twentieth century has tended to follow the Reformers. Christians of the Orthodox tradition (whether Greek, Russian. Romanian or other strands) stick to the 14 Some scholars are coming to appreciate the value of the Septuagint as a witness to the original Hebrew. In the case of Genesis 1–11 , ser. Ronald S. Hendel. The Text of Genesis 1–11 : Textual Studies and Critical Edition (New York Oxford University Press, 1998). 15 See again for Genesis, C.T.R. Hayward, Jerom " s Hebrew Questions on Genesis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). traditional notion of the Septuagint or translations of it as the Christian Old Testament, and they are shored up in this position by the enormous importance of the liturgical texts that are soaked in allusions to and quotations from the Greek text of the Septuagint. In the West, Orthodox Christians are a minority, but it is worth noting that recently a few scholars have called for a return to the original Christian tradition, according to which the Christian Old Testament is the Septuagint. 16 The legend of the Septuagint. For the Fathers, this tradition was virtually unquestioned. Furthermore, it was enhanced by the widely accepted tradition of the way in which the Septuagint had been translated. According to a legend, first witnessed in the Letter of Aristeas, probably written in the second century B.C., the Septuagint was a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, commissioned by the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus (287–247 B.C.) for his library in Alexandria. The Jewish high priest Eleazar was approached and selected seventy-two scholars, six from each of the tribes of Israel, who traveled to Alexandria and there finished their translation in seventy-two days. 17 Later versions of the legend exist, for instance that recorded by the Christian bishop of Lyons in the later second century, Irenaeus. According to his version the translators numbered seventy and were required each to produce individual translations of the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures, which were miraculously found to be identical. 18 Such stories of its miraculous translation naturally enhanced the authority of the Septuagint (the title derived from the number of the translators) among Greek-speaking Jews, especially in Alexandria, and then among Christians. |
| But the content of such editions shows that the printers strove to hold fast to the old forms. Texts of church books had come apart, Kiev and Lvov were distributing their new editions, but the lesser printshops all throughout that century continued to print the old texts, based on the manuscript books. In the euchologia, liturgicans, horologia and triodia of the local editions of the western borderlands, we find all or almost all of the characteristic peculiarities of the Old Believer books. This betokens the fact that the tradition was preserved, that it was cherished, that the new peculiarities in the liturgical books were not so readily accepted. Tradition was the mainstay of Orthodoxy. Later, when, under pressure from the governmental apparatus the Unia began to rule, it officially copied the books of the Moghilian model, only with corresponding alterations and additions peculiarly Uniate. But the parish clergy and the people, having nominally accepted the Union, were all the more strongly drawn to the old forms, and have partially carried these old forms up to our times. This is why not so long ago one could hear, and perhaps still can hear, in Carpathian churches such characteristic expressions as “by death He tread upon death” instead of “trampled down” in the paschal troparion, and “highly favored” instead of “full of Grace” in the troparion “Virgin Theotokos, rejoice” – chants which hearken back to the old hook-notation chants, unison recitative, et al. This is why, even on returning to Orthodoxy, these people often express the desire to preserve their local ritual and textual peculiarities. Which side was right in this conflict of two currents within the Orthodox Church – the old or the new? Who is to blame? No one is to blame. The normal process of history is guilty – the process which inexorably accumulated for several centuries a certain sum of differences in comparison to the original form of the divine services. Geographical distance and political borders were guilty, as, of course, was the difference of language, thanks to which the liturgical services in various countries received their own nuances and distinctions. |
| Some argued, on the basis of this trinitarian glorification, that the administrative structure of the Church on the regional level also reflects (or should reflect) the communion between the divine Persons of the Trinity. The text of the canon, however, does not in fact permit such a comparison: rather, it is the ‘consent’, or harmony, that reigns between the three Hypostases of the Trinity which is cited here as an example which the bishops on the regional level should follow. With regard to the trinitarian glorification itself, it is similar to many such glorifications that conclude canonical, dogmatic and liturgical texts, and was certainly not meant to draw any direct comparison between the Hypostases of the Holy Trinity and the ranks in church order. In the fifteenth century the great monastic reformer, St Sergius of Radonezh, dedicated his monastery to the Holy Trinity, using the communion of the three divine Hypostases as a model of unity and concord for his monastic brotherhood. One of Sergius’s disciples, St Andrew Roublev, painted a famous icon which became a classic example of the iconographic incarnation of an important moral and theological notion. Unlike most others, this one does not refer to any liturgical commemoration. It follows the traditional pattern known from early antiquity (notably from the fifth-century Ravenna mosaics), according to which the three strangers that appeared to Abraham symbolized the Holy Trinity. The strangers are presented in the form of angels, of whom one is always in the middle. In earlier iconography, the angel sitting in the middle was usually identified with God the Son, while the other two persons on the icon were interpreted as angels who accompany him. In Roublev’s icon the central figure is also most likely to be identified with God the Son, but the other two figures seem to represent the other two Persons of the Trinity. Contemporary scholarship differs in its interpretation of the middle figure: some tend to identify it with the Father, on the assumption that the First Person of the Trinity should occupy central place in the composition. |
| I believe this statement has shown a very essential arbitrariness, which can be seen today in this sphere; that is to say, marking is made quite arbitrarily. Even the works included in the school syllabus are marked 16+. That is, the school syllabus includes a literary work but a schoolchild cannot buy this literary work in a bookshop because he or she turns out to be too young to read a book marked 16+. In case of sacred texts, it seems to me in general that the sacred texts of traditional religions, even if abridged, should be included in the school syllabus, including that on literature. Gracheva: I would like to raise this issue: Archbishop Chrysostom of Cyprus made a liturgical mention of the head of the schismatic church in Ukraine. The mass media immediately began to speak that the Church of Cyprus will be the next after the Churches of Alexandria and Greece to recognize officially the legitimacy of the OCU. Will the Moscow Patriarchate react to it in any way? Metropolitan Hilarion: We will discuss this situation at the Synod and make a synodal decision. I would like to stress that the Archbishop of Cyprus did it without notifying in due time the Synod of his own Church but contrary to the Synod’s recommendations. The Archbishop was in a hurry (evidently under pressure) and made the unilateral decision that he would mention the head of the Ukrainian schismatics during the Divine Liturgy. It has aroused a negative reaction in the Church of Cyprus. One of the metropolitans present at the liturgy stood up and left. Three more left together with him. Altogether four hierarchs of the Church of Cyprus signed on a statement strictly condemning Archbishop Chrysostomos’ action and expressed their categorical disagreement with the liturgical mention of the head of the Ukrainian schismatic and with the decision of the Patriarch of Constantinople to grant the so-called ‘tomos of autocephaly’; to the so-called ‘Orthodox Church of Ukraine’. Gracheva: Your Eminence, this week the mass media has widely quoted the Pope of Rome who gave an interview for a documentary speaking in support of the legalization of same-sex unions. The Vatican has already tried to justify this action by saying that his statement was translated rather incorrectly and it was misunderstood altogether. Have you heard this statement of the head of the Roman Catholic Church? Can it be understood in two ways? What do you think about it? |
| Immediately, we see another pitfall for the unprepared reader: biblical names like “Galileans,” “Parthians,” “Medes,” “Elamites,” “Phrygia,” and “Pamphylia.” These names are guaranteed to catch the unprepared reader off guard, and could lead to remarkable mispronunciations or misreadings, such as saying “Galatians” or “Galicians” instead of “Galileans.” The difficulty of biblical names notwithstanding, this text is remarkably easy to read and understand (unlike the text from Romans) because of its narrative quality. It is a story—events flow in a normal temporal sequence; this sort of text is much easier to speak and understand than a complex theological argument. The Epistles are composed primarily of the latter type of discourse, and thus the reader is wise to study them carefully before beginning to chant the lesson during the Liturgy. It is not without warrant that in the prayer for tonsuring a reader, the bishop exhorts the new reader to “peruse the Scriptures daily.” It is a liturgical way of saying, “Read it before you read it!” 2. Create a chant strategy Once the reader has studied the text and obtained some sense of what it says, the next step of preparation is developing a strategy for chanting the text. In common church parlance, we say that the reader “reads” the epistle, yet what we actually do in the Liturgy is profoundly different from, for example, reading a child a bedtime story. In most traditions, the scriptural text is intoned recto tono with an occasional one- or two-step variation. Put another way, the scriptural text is sung to a very simple melody that stays on the same note most of the time, and occasionally rises or falls one or two full steps. The complexity of this chant can vary considerably, with some liturgical traditions employing highly melodic chant melodies and cadences. It is often asserted, even in some written instructions to church readers, that the reason the Scripture readings are chanted (as opposed to being read in a speaking voice) is so that the reader does not have the opportunity to impose distracting inflections on the scriptural text. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Contemporary Orthodox Theology ARISTOTLE PAPANIKOLAOU The fall of Constantinople in 1453 silenced a long and vibrant intellectual tradition within Orthodox Christianity. It would take nearly 400 years before a revival occurred in 19th-century Russia, which then saw the emergence of an intellectual tradition that was rooted in the Orthodox theological and liturgical tradition, but that also sought to engage modern philosophical currents streaming into Russia, especially German idealism. From this particular trajectory emerged what is referred to as the Russian school. The best-known and most influential scholar of the Russian school is Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov (1853–1900), considered to be the father of Russian Sophiology. Two ideas were central to Solovyov’s thought: the humanity of God (bogochelovechestvo) and Sophia. Solovyov’s concept of the humanity of God is related to the Orthodox dogmatic principle of the divine-human union in Christ. Solovyov, however, was far from a dogmatician. His philosophy attempts to express the Orthodox principle of the divine-human union in Christ in critical engagement with the categories of German idealism. The humanity of God forms the basis for Solovyov’s attempt to conceptualize a God who is both transcendent of and immanent to creation. Solovyov expresses this particular understanding of the God-world relation with the concept of Sophia, and by so doing gives birth to the Sophiological tradition of the Russian school. God is Sophia, which means that God eternally relates to creation, and creation itself (that is, created Sophia) is a movement of reconciliation towards divine Sophia. More than any other contemporary Orthodox theologian, Solovyov attempted to develop the implications of divine-human communion for a political theology and for a theology of culture. Although the thought of the Russian school bears the stamp of Solovyov’s Sophiology up until the 1917 Revolution, it was Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov (1871–1944) who advanced the most sophisticated development of Solovyov’s thought. Bulgakov was more conversant than Solovyov with the eastern patristic tradition, and his Sophiology is expressed explicitly in the idiom of the traditional theological dogmas and categories of the Orthodox tradition. The most developed form of Bulgakov’s Sophiology appears in his dogmatic trilogy On Divine Humanity (O bogochelovechestve, 1933–45), the first English translation of which would only appear nearly sixty years later. |
| Between the extreme eremitism of Antony of Egypt and the absolute and organized cenobitism of Pachomius, there was a whole scale of intermediary forms of monastic life practiced everywhere in Eastern Christendom and gradually spreading to the West. Between the hermitsalso frequently called «hesychasts " and the cenobites there was often competition and, at times, conflict; but the entire Eastern monastic movement remained united in its basic «other-worldliness» and in the conviction that prayer, whatever its form, was the fundamental and permanent content of monastic life. Some monastic centerssuch as the monastery of Studiosmay have been relatively «activist,» developing social work, learning, manuscript copying, and other practical concerns; but, even then, the liturgical cycle of the monastic office remained the absolute center of the community« " s life and, generally, comprised at least half of the monk» " s daily schedule. As a whole, the monastic community taught the Byzantines how to pray. The cenobites developed a liturgical system (which was gradually adopted by the whole Church until today the Eastern Church knows no ordo but the monastic one), while the hesychasts created a tradition of personal prayer and continuous contemplation. In both cases, prayer was understood as a way to reach the goal of Christian life as such: participation in God, theosis through communion with the deified humanity of Christ in the Holy Spirit. The cenobites generally emphasized the sacramental or liturgical nature of this communion, while the hesychasts taught that experience was to be reached through personal effort. In post-iconoclastic Byzantium, the two traditions generally interpenetrated to a greater extent, and we find, for example, that the prophet of personal mysticism, Symeon the New Theologian, spent most of his life in cenobitic communities located in the city of Constantinople. Since theologically and spiritually there was no opposition between the hermits and the cenobites, it is, therefore, possible to speak of a single monastic theology. |
| The Orthodox take their account of the Church from two sources. The first of these is the divine Eucharist, the liturgical experience that all Christians share. The second is the experience of the Christian life and the ascetic tradition of the Church, Roman Catholic and Protestant ecclesiology seems to be informed primarily by the issue of mission. When an Orthodox Christian says that he is going to Church, he does not mean that he is going to hear the gospel of Christ being preached as though for the first time. He means that he is going to worship God in the community of the faithful and particularly to participate in the divine Eucharist. The Church is identified basically by its participation in the worship of God. However, under the influence of those contemporary Christian movements and organisations that emphasise mission and preaching, a more individual piety has come to affect Orthodox understanding of the liturgy. Some of the clergy promote preaching over worship, to the neglect of the Eucharist, which fundamentally changes the orientation of the Church. Many clergy now read, rather than chant, the gospel in the divine liturgy, in the belief that this makes it more accessible to the laity. The enthusiasm for access and mission has undermined our understanding of the liturgy as participation in the mystery of communion with God. In Orthodox theology, the Church is not constituted by the task of evangelisation or mission, that is, by its desire to make its faith comprehensible to outsiders. The divine liturgy does not attempt to explain the faith: though there are many accounts of the faith, none of them is central to the life of the Church. At the centre, is the eucharistic worship, and here the only explicit articulation of the faith is the creed, which we share with all other Churches and denominations. At the very beginning of the Church’s history, there was worship and the divine Eucharist. In the New Testament and early Fathers, such a Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Saint Irenaeus of Lyons and Justin Martyr, we see the origin of the Church in the celebration of the holy Eucharist. Therefore, it is primarily the divine liturgy that gives the Orthodox tradition its distinctive view of the Church. Monasticism represents another account of the Church. I will examine these two approaches to the identity of the Church, the eucharistic and liturgical on one hand, and the ascetic and monastic on the other, in order to pick out some theological principles. |
| 22 The Pentekostarion covers an eight-week period beginning with Pascha and ending with the Sunday of All Saints, which occurs one week after Pentecost, whence it gets its name. 23 The word κατανυκτικς means " to prick the heart. " In devotional language it means to cause repentance, by opening the heart of sinners to the mercy, love and joy of God, Who brings salvation and sanctifies life. 24 The method by which the beginning of the day is reckoned appears to have had a significant impact on the formation of the observances of Great Week. Two such methods co-exist in the liturgical tradition of the Orthodox Church. One is of Judaic origin, while the other is Roman-Byzantine. According to the former, the day is reckoned from one sunset to the next. According to the latter, the day begins at midnight. It could be argued that the Roman-Byzantine method, which was incorporated into the laws of the Empire, became the dominant of the two methods. Accordingly, evening observances that once began the liturgical day (according to the Judaic practice), were seen more and more as celebrations of anticipation rather than part of the feast itself. As such, the evening observances of the great feasts acquired the characteristics of a vigil. In the Constantinopolitan tradition these vesperal services were called aapa4ovA - paramone. The paramone consisted of solemn vespers with Scripture lessons. Sometimes, as in the case of Pascha, Christmas and Theophany, the paramone concluded with a Eucharist. Once the evening celebrations were no longer considered as the beginning of a particular festival, it became easier to dislodge them from their original setting. For a discussion on the subject of the method by which the beginning of the day is reckoned, see A. Calivas, “ ρχ τς Νυχθημρου κα Λατρεα τς κκλησας, in ναφορ ες Μνμην Μητροπολτου Σρδεων Μαξμου 3 (Geneva, 1989) pp. 93-105. For a discussion on Cathedral Vigils and a description of the paramone, see R. Taft, Liturgy of the Hours, pp. 165-190 and especially p. 173. |
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