The Structure of the Akathist and the Chairetismoi

The architecture of the Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos: a complete kontakion of a prooimion and twenty-four oikoi built on a double alphabetic acrostic, alternating long and short strophes with two refrains, its long strophes unfolding chains of chairetismoi — salutations beginning “Rejoice.” This file treats what is not in dispute about the hymn: its exact form, its narrative and dogmatic halves, and the «Τῇ ὑπερμάχῳ» prooimion tied to the deliverance of Constantinople in 626.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Byzantine hymnography)

“Not Sitting”: The Name and the Stature

The Akathist Hymn (Greek Akáthistos Hýmnos) takes its name from the manner of its singing: a-káthistos means “not-sitting,” the hymn during which the whole congregation stands throughout, a posture of vigilant reverence sustained through the entire length of the twenty-four oikoi (Wellesz, “The Akathistos: A Study in Byzantine Hymnography,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 9/10 [1956]: 141–174; orthodoxwiki.org, “Akathist”). It is the pre-eminent Marian hymn of the Byzantine rite and the archetype from which every later “akathist” is copied (see Akathist Saturday and the Genre). Whatever the disputes over who wrote it and when (treated in The Authorship Question), its form is exact and its stature undisputed: it is the one full kontakion still sung in its entirety in the living rite, when every other kontakion of the classical age survives only as a truncated stump (Metropolitan Cantor Institute, “Kontakia,” mci.archpitt.org: “The Akathist Hymn represents the sole complete kontakion still sung in Byzantine liturgy”; and see St. Romanos: Kontakion and Akathist).

A Kontakion in Form

The Akathist is, before all else, a kontakion in form. It has the kontakion’s two-part architecture: an introductory prooimion (or koukoulion) followed by a series of metrically related oikoi (“houses,” strophes), each ending in a refrain and all built on a shared melodic-rhythmic design (Wellesz, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1961; and see The Troparion, Kontakion, Canon). On this structural level the Akathist sits squarely inside the genre St. Romanos the Melodist shaped — the sung verse-sermon performed by a soloist with the people answering the refrain (see The Kontakion and Romanos). Its twenty-four oikoi and its refrain-structure are a textbook instance of the classical kontakion, which is exactly why it can be at once called “a kontakion” and doubted as Romanos’s own work.

The Double Alphabetic Acrostic

The hymn’s governing device is a double alphabetic acrostic: its twenty-four oikoi open, in turn, with the successive letters of the Greek alphabet, from alpha to omega — the first oikos beginning Ἄγγελος πρωτοστάτης (“A leading angel…”) and the last beginning Ὦ πανύμνητε Μῆτερ (“O all-praised Mother…”) (Wellesz, DOP 9/10 [1956]; Peltomaa, The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn, Brill, 2001, ch. 1). The alphabet from A to Ω is itself a figure of totality — a praise that spans, letter by letter, the whole compass of speech — and it governs the order of the entire hymn. The number twenty-four is not incidental: it is the number of the letters of the Greek alphabet, so the hymn’s length is dictated by its acrostic. The alphabetic acrostic is a known device of the kontakarion, and the Akathist chooses this most formal of the genre’s options (see St. Romanos: Kontakion and Akathist).

Long and Short Oikoi, Two Refrains

Across the alphabetic frame the oikoi alternate by length and refrain. The twelve odd-numbered, long oikoi each unfold a chain of chairetismoi and close with the refrain Χαῖρε, Νύμφη ἀνύμφευτε — “Rejoice, Bride unwedded”; the twelve even-numbered, short oikoi carry no salutations and close instead with the single word Ἀλληλούϊα, “Alleluia” (Peltomaa, 2001; Wellesz, 1956; and see St. Romanos: Kontakion and Akathist). Long and short thus alternate in strict succession, so that a swelling strophe of praise is answered each time by a brief strophe of doxology — a measured systole and diastole running the length of the hymn. This alternation of two refrains is one of the features that distinguishes the Akathist from the authenticated corpus of Romanos, whose kontakia use a single refrain repeated unchanged at the close of every oikos — a formal fact that bears on the authorship debate (see The Authorship Question).

The Chairetismoi

The chairetismoi are the Akathist’s signature and the engine of its devotional power. In each long oikos the salutations accumulate in paired, rhyming, antithetical lines, each beginning Χαῖρε (“Rejoice,” or “Hail”), twelve couplets to a stanza, addressed to the Theotokos: “Rejoice, height hard to climb for the thoughts of men; Rejoice, depth hard to scan even for the eyes of angels”; “Rejoice, for thou art the throne of the King; Rejoice, for thou bearest the Bearer of all” — and dozens more (Lash, “The Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God,” orthochristian.com/45826.html; Peltomaa, 2001, giving the Greek with parallel translation). The salutation Χαῖρε deliberately echoes the Archangel Gabriel’s greeting at the Annunciation — Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη, “Rejoice, full of grace” (Luke 1:28) — so that the whole hymn is an unfolding of that single angelic word into a litany of paradoxes praising the Virgin as the instrument of the Incarnation (Peltomaa, 2001; and see St. the Theotokos: The Akathist and the Hymns). The chairetismoi praise the Theotokos through a torrent of Old Testament types and christological paradoxes — she is the ladder Jacob saw, the bridge leading from earth to heaven, the ark gilded by the Spirit, the living temple, the fiery throne — each figure a facet of the one mystery, that the creature contained the Creator.

The Narrative and Dogmatic Halves

The twenty-four oikoi are organized into two great halves of twelve, and further into four thematic sections of six oikoi each (Peltomaa, 2001; Wellesz, 1961). The first twelve form a narrative or historical cycle that follows the Incarnation in the order of the Gospel: the Annunciation, the Visitation and Mary’s wonder, the doubt and reassurance of Joseph, the Nativity and the adoration of the shepherds, the journey of the Magi, and the Presentation in the Temple (with the flight into Egypt) — the events of the infancy narratives set to song. The second twelve form a dogmatic or theological cycle that leaves the narrative to contemplate the mystery itself: the renewal of creation in Christ, the inadequacy of human eloquence before the mystery, the Virgin as living temple and wall and refuge of the world, and the closing plea for mercy (Peltomaa, 2001). The hymn thus moves from the events of salvation to their meaning, from history to dogma, with the Theotokos as the constant centre of both halves — an architecture that is more symmetrical and contemplative than Romanos’s habitual forward homiletic drive.

The «Τῇ ὑπερμάχῳ» Prooimion and the Siege of 626

Prefixed to the hymn is the celebrated proem, the kontakion «Τῇ ὑπερμάχῳ στρατηγῷ» — “To thee, the Champion Leader” (or “the Defender-General”), in which “thy city,” delivered from peril, offers hymns of thanksgiving and victory to the Theotokos and hails her as “unconquerable in power” (Lash, orthochristian.com/45826.html; The Lenten Triodion, trans. Mother Mary and Ware, Faber, 1978). 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 away 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; later deliverances of the city (the Arab sieges of 674–678 and 717–718) were associated with the same thanksgiving in the Byzantine memory (Synaxarion of the Saturday of the Akathist, in The Lenten Triodion; for the siege itself, the Chronicon Paschale and George of Pisidia’s Bellum Avaricum). The proem is thus a corporate act of gratitude — the hymn to the Virgin become the city’s song of victory.

A crucial clarification, developed fully in The Authorship Question, belongs already here: the martial «Τῇ ὑπερμάχῳ» is not the hymn’s original prooimion. It is widely held to have been composed and prefixed after the 626 siege, in thanksgiving for the deliverance, replacing or standing before an earlier, non-martial proem — so that the prologue and the body of the hymn are two distinct compositions, of different dates, joined in the liturgy (Peltomaa, 2001; Wikipedia, “Akathist,” on the prologue addressing Mary as the City’s defender). This is why “who wrote the Akathist?” is really at least two questions — who composed the twenty-four oikoi, and who added the «Τῇ ὑπερμάχῳ» prologue — and why the exact and undisputed form set out in this file is the necessary ground for the disputed authorship treated in the next.

References

Wellesz, Egon. “The Akathistos: A Study in Byzantine Hymnography.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 9/10 (1956): 141–174; and A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961. (Structure, acrostic, refrains, the standing performance.)
Peltomaa, Leena Mari. The Image of the Virgin Mary in the Akathistos Hymn. The Medieval Mediterranean 35. Leiden: Brill, 2001. (The twenty-four oikoi; the alphabetic acrostic; the narrative and dogmatic halves; the chairetismoi; the prologue as a later addition.)
Lash, Ephrem (Archimandrite). “The Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God.” orthochristian.com/45826.html. (Translation; the chairetismoi; the 626 vigil.)
The Lenten Triodion. Trans. Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1978. (Text; the «Τῇ ὑπερμάχῳ» proem; the Synaxarion of the Saturday of the Akathist.)
Chronicon Paschale and George of Pisidia, Bellum Avaricum (contemporary witnesses to the 626 siege).
“Akathist.” Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akathist) and OrthodoxWiki (orthodoxwiki.org/Akathist). (The two refrains; the long and short oikoi; “not sitting”; the prologue and 626.)
Scripture: Luke 1:28 (Gabriel’s Chaíre, the root of the chairetismoi).