The Akathist and the Hymns of the Theotokos

Orthodox worship carries its Mariology chiefly in song. This file surveys the great Marian hymns — the Akathist Hymn with its salutations and its “Champion Leader” proem, the Axion Estin of the Divine Liturgy, the Great and Small Paraklesis of the Dormition fast, and the Theotokia and Dogmatika woven through the daily offices — and pins their authorship and origin traditions to what the sources actually attest.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Church’s teaching about the Mother of God lives less in its treatises than in its liturgical poetry. Long before the schoolmen systematized Mariology, the faithful were singing it: the dogma of Ephesus, the perpetual virginity, the paradox of the creature who contained the Creator, all set to melody and repeated until they became the reflex of prayer. To describe Orthodox Marian hymnography is therefore to describe how the doctrine of the Theotokos is actually held by the praying Church.

The Akathist Hymn

The Akathist Hymn (Ἀκάθιστος Ὕμνος) takes its name from the manner of its singing: a-kathistos means “not-sitting,” the hymn during which the congregation stands throughout as a mark of honor. It is the pre-eminent Marian hymn of the Byzantine rite and the archetype from which every later “akathist” is copied.

Its structure is exact. The hymn proper consists of twenty-four stanzas arranged as an alphabetic acrostic: the stanzas open in succession with the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet, from Α (Ἄγγελος πρωτοστάτης, “A leading angel”) to Ω. They alternate in two kinds. Thirteen are short kontakia, each closing with the acclamation “Alleluia.” Twelve are longer oikoi (“houses,” strophes), each carrying twelve salutations — the chairetismoi — that all begin with “Χαῖρε,” “Rejoice” (or “Hail”), and each oikos closes with the refrain “Χαῖρε, Νύμφη ἀνύμφευτε,” “Rejoice, Bride unwedded” (Egon Wellesz, “The Akathistos: A Study in Byzantine Hymnography,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 9/10 [1956], 141–174; text and translation also in The Lenten Triodion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware [London: Faber, 1978], 422–437). The salutation “Χαῖρε” deliberately echoes the archangel Gabriel’s greeting at the Annunciation, “Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη” (Luke 1:28): the whole hymn is an unfolding of that single word, the angelic greeting expanded into a litany of paradoxes praising the Virgin as the instrument of the Incarnation. The first twelve stanzas narrate the events of the infancy (Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, the Magi, the Presentation); the second twelve are dogmatic and doxological, meditating on the mystery of God made man.

Prefixed to the hymn is the celebrated proem or kontakion, “Τῇ ὑπερμάχῳ στρατηγῷ” — “To thee, the Champion Leader” (or “To thee, the Defender-General”), in which “thy city,” delivered from peril, offers hymns of thanksgiving and victory to the Theotokos and calls her “unconquerable in power.” The Synaxarion appointed for the Saturday of the Akathist ties this proem to the deliverance of Constantinople from the Avar-Persian siege of 626, when, with the Emperor Heraclius on campaign, Patriarch Sergius I is said to have borne the icon of the Theotokos in procession about the walls and the city was saved (Synaxarion of the Saturday of the Akathist, in The Lenten Triodion, 447–452; for the siege itself see the Chronicon Paschale and George of Pisidia’s Bellum Avaricum). Later deliverances of the city (the Arab sieges of 674–678 and 717–718) were subsequently associated with the same thanksgiving in the Byzantine memory. The proem is thus a corporate act of gratitude: the hymn to the Virgin became the city’s song of victory.

The authorship of the Akathist is genuinely unsettled. [Disputed: authorship — the hymn is traditionally ascribed to St. Romanos the Melodist (6th c.), whose kontakion form the Akathist follows; but the "Champion Leader" proem is tied to the 626 siege under Patriarch Sergius, and various scholars attribute the hymn (or its proem) to Romanos, to Patriarch Sergius himself, to Germanus of Constantinople, or to George of Pisidia, while others leave it anonymous. There is no consensus.] The most influential modern study, Leena Mari Peltomaa’s The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn (Leiden: Brill, 2001), argues on doctrinal grounds that the hymn proper is considerably older than the 626 proem — that its Mariology reflects the theology of the Council of Ephesus (431) and points to a composition in the first half of the fifth century, with the “Champion Leader” kontakion added later as a thanksgiving for the siege (Peltomaa, The Image of the Virgin Mary, esp. 21–48, 113–114, 214). On this reading the proem and the hymn are two distinct compositions of different dates joined in the liturgy — which explains why the question of “authorship” resists a single answer.

Liturgically the Akathist belongs to Great Lent. It is chanted in four sections on the first four Fridays of Lent at the service of the Salutations (Χαιρετισμοί, sung at Small Compline), and in its entirety on the fifth Saturday of Lent, the “Saturday of the Akathist” (The Lenten Triodion, 422–423, 447). No other Marian hymn holds so fixed a place in the calendar or has been so widely imitated: the many later akathists of Orthodox, and especially Russian, piety all descend from this one model.

“It is truly meet” (Axion Estin)

Within the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the hymn to the Theotokos sung after the consecration, as the deacon censes and the faithful commemorate her, is the “Ἄξιόν ἐστιν” — “It is truly meet to bless thee, the Theotokos, ever-blessed and most pure and the Mother of our God.” This opening sentence is joined to an older and more exalted verse, the Megalynarion (“magnification”): “More honorable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim, who without corruption gavest birth to God the Word, the very Theotokos, thee do we magnify” (Τὴν τιμιωτέραν τῶν Χερουβείμ…). This second half is drawn from the hymnography of St. Cosmas of Maiuma (8th c.), where it serves as the refrain to the ninth ode of the canon, and it circulated as a magnification of the Virgin before being attached to the Axion estin incipit. On the great feasts the Axion estin is replaced by the festal irmos of the ninth ode (the “Zadostoinik” of the Slavonic books).

The tradition attaching to the first sentence is Athonite. [Apocryphal: the tradition — not attested in the early sources — holds that the "It is truly meet" verse was revealed by the Archangel Gabriel, appearing in the form of a monk, to a cell near Karyes on Mount Athos around 980; he is said to have sung the "Axion estin" before the "More honorable than the Cherubim," writing the words on a stone that softened under his hand, and to have declared that the Angels sing it thus. The icon before which this occurred, called "Axion Estin" ("It Is Truly Meet"), is enshrined in the Protaton church at Karyes and is among the most venerated icons of the Holy Mountain.] The account is transmitted in Athonite tradition and the icon’s own history rather than in contemporary documents, and it is reported here as pious tradition, not as datable fact. What is not in doubt is the antiquity and centrality of the hymn itself: the Axion estin is sung at nearly every celebration of the Chrysostom Liturgy and is among the most familiar of all Orthodox chants.

The Paraklesis (Supplicatory Canon)

For times of affliction, sickness, and sorrow the Church has the Paraklesis, the Supplicatory Canon to the Theotokos — a canon of intercession whose troparia are punctuated by the refrain “Ὑπεραγία Θεοτόκε, σῶσον ἡμᾶς,” “Most Holy Theotokos, save us.” There are two such canons. The Small Paraklesis (Μικρὸς Παρακλητικὸς Κανών) is traditionally ascribed to Theosteriktos the Monk (9th c.), though some manuscripts and service books name Theophanes; the Great Paraklesis (Μέγας Παρακλητικὸς Κανών) is traditionally attributed to the Emperor Theodore II Doukas Laskaris of Nicaea (13th c.) (see the Menaion/Horologion rubrics; on the attributions, The Service of the Small Paraklesis to the Most Holy Theotokos, trans. N. M. Vaporis [Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press], introduction). [Disputed: the ascriptions of both canons rest on service-book rubric and manuscript tradition rather than on the authors' own testimony; the Small Paraklesis is variously credited to Theosteriktos or to Theophanes.] Both are appointed especially for the Dormition fast (1–14 August), sung on alternating evenings in preparation for the feast of the Falling Asleep, and either may be served at any time of need. The Paraklesis is one of the warmest expressions of Orthodox Marian devotion — a personal, pleading address to the Mother of God as the refuge of the distressed.

Theotokia and the Dogmatika

Beyond these set-piece hymns, the Mother of God is woven through the fabric of every service. A Theotokion (pl. Theotokia) is a troparion or sticheron addressed to the Theotokos, appointed at the “Both now and ever…” (Καὶ νῦν) that follows the “Glory to the Father…” (Δόξα) throughout the daily offices, so that hymnody to the Trinity is answered, again and again, by hymnody to the Virgin through whom the Son took flesh. The most weighty of these are the Dogmatika (Dogmatika Theotokia): the theotokia appointed at “Lord, I have cried” at Great Vespers on Saturday evening across the eight tones of the Octoechos, so called because they set forth the dogma of the Incarnation — the union of the two natures in the one Christ born of the Virgin — and so teach in song what the Council of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) defined in prose. In them the Church sings the very content of its Christology: that she “without corruption gavest birth to God the Word,” that the Uncontainable was contained in her womb, that she is truly Theotokos and not merely mother of a man. The core of the Octoechos, including its dogmatic theotokia, is traditionally ascribed to St. John of Damascus, though scholars regard the received collection as a composite that grew after him. [Disputed: the attribution of the Octoechos to John of Damascus is traditional; modern scholarship treats the eight-tone cycle as a layered compilation only partly his.]

The great hymnographers of the Theotokos span the golden age of Byzantine liturgical poetry. St. Romanos the Melodist (6th c.) perfected the kontakion, the form the Akathist follows. St. John of Damascus and his foster-brother St. Cosmas of Maiuma (both 8th c.) shaped the canon and composed festal hymnody for the Marian feasts — the “More honorable than the Cherubim” belongs to Cosmas. St. Joseph the Hymnographer (9th c.), the most prolific of all, composed vast numbers of canons and theotokia that fill the daily books. Through their work the veneration of the Mother of God became not an occasional devotion but the continual undertone of Orthodox prayer.

References

Peltomaa, Leena Mari. The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn. The Medieval Mediterranean 35. Leiden: Brill, 2001.
Wellesz, Egon. “The Akathistos: A Study in Byzantine Hymnography.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 9/10 (1956): 141–174.
Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware, trans. The Lenten Triodion. London: Faber & Faber, 1978 (Akathist text, Synaxarion of the Saturday of the Akathist).
Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware, trans. The Festal Menaion. London: Faber & Faber, 1969 (festal hymnography and magnifications).
Vaporis, N. M., trans. The Service of the Small Paraklesis to the Most Holy Theotokos. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press (introduction on authorship).
Chronicon Paschale and George of Pisidia, Bellum Avaricum (contemporary witnesses to the 626 siege).
Cunningham, Mary B. Wider than Heaven: Eighth-Century Homilies on the Mother of God. Popular Patristics Series 35. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008 (John of Damascus, Cosmas, and the Marian feasts).