Andrew of Crete and the Great Canon

The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is the longest canon in the Byzantine tradition and the supreme penitential hymn of the Orthodox Church — some two hundred and fifty troparia across nine odes in which the soul is summoned to address itself and to measure its life against the whole sweep of Scripture, from Adam in Eden to the Thief on the Cross. This file treats the Great Canon as a work; St. Andrew’s biography is deferred to his own collection.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Byzantine hymnography)

The Poet and the Work

St. Andrew of Crete (c. 660 – 740), archbishop of Gortyna in Crete, was one of the three great hymnographers of the Mar Saba milieu — with St. Cosmas of Maiuma and St. John of Damascus — who brought the canon to its classical form (his life from Damascus through Jerusalem and Constantinople to Crete is treated in St. Andrew of Crete). He is generally credited with a decisive role in the very development of the canon as a genre, and his supreme achievement is the Great Canon (ho Megas Kanōn) — a work so singular that it stands apart even from the rest of his festal hymnography (see St. Andrew of Crete: The Kanon Form). This file treats that work.

The Longest Canon

The Great Canon is so called for its sheer length and scope. Where an ordinary canon offers a handful of troparia under each ode, the Great Canon piles them up: the standard reckoning is of about 250 troparia across its odes, a count given by the service books and the modern editions alike (The Lenten Triodion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware, Faber, 1978; Krueger, Liturgical Subjects, Penn Press, 2014). [Disputed: the precise number of troparia varies between recensions and printed editions — “about 250” is the standard approximation, but counts ranging from roughly 210 to 260 are met depending on whether the later interpolated troparia (to St. Mary of Egypt and to St. Andrew himself) and the heirmoi are included (Krueger, Liturgical Subjects, p. 132 and notes; Great Canon, OrthodoxWiki).] The Canon is therefore cited by ode and troparion rather than by any single global count.

Structurally the Great Canon is built, like every canon, on the nine biblical odes (see The Troparion, Kontakion, Canon). Almost uniquely among canons in regular use, it retains the second ode — the somber canticle of Moses from Deuteronomy 32, normally omitted for its penitential severity — precisely because that severity suits the Canon’s purpose (Great Canon, OrthodoxWiki; and see St. Andrew of Crete: The Canon of Repentance). The opening heirmos, from the Song of Moses at the Red Sea, confesses the mercy on which the penitent will throw himself before a single sin is named: “He is my Helper and Protector, and has become my salvation. This is my God and I will glorify Him” (Great Canon, Ode 1, heirmos, from Exodus 15:2; trans. Mary and Ware). The grammar of the Canon is thus self-accusation undertaken from within an already-confessed salvation: the soul dares to look at its sins because it has first looked at its Saviour.

The Soul Addressing Itself

The defining feature of the Great Canon is its mode of address. It is not, for the most part, a hymn about repentance; it is repentance enacted — the soul turning upon itself and speaking to itself in the second person. The keynote, struck in the first troparion and recurring as a refrain, is the cry “Have mercy upon me, O God, have mercy upon me” (eleēson me, ho Theos, eleēson me); the Canon opens, “Whence shall I begin to lament the deeds of my wretched life? What first-fruit shall I offer, O Christ, in this my lamentation?” (Great Canon, Ode 1, troparion 1; trans. Mary and Ware). The soul is summoned by name — “Come, wretched soul, with thy flesh, confess to the Creator of all” — rebuked, and exhorted to rise, in the celebrated kontakion sung within the Canon: “My soul, O my soul, rise up! Why art thou sleeping? The end draws near” (Great Canon, kontakion; trans. Mary and Ware). The grammatical achievement is theological: by making the worshipper speak to his own soul, the Canon turns each singer into both accuser and accused, so that the liturgy does not describe repentance but performs it in the first person (Krueger, Liturgical Subjects, ch. 5; and see St. Andrew of Crete: The Soul Addressing Itself).

The Sweep of Scripture from Adam to the Gospel

The Canon’s method is biblical typology turned inward. Andrew marches the singer through the entire span of Scripture, presenting figure after figure — first the fallen, as warnings; then the righteous, as reproaches; then the penitent, as hope — and at each one bidding the soul see itself. The progression follows the order of the Bible: from the Fall through the Patriarchs (Odes 1–3, from Genesis — Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the Flood, Abraham, Lot); through the Exodus and the Law (Moses, the golden calf); the Judges and the Kings (David’s sin and repentance held up as the pattern of penitence; Solomon, Elijah); the Prophets (Jonah, the Ninevites, the Three Children); and finally, with the eighth and ninth odes, into the Gospel — the publican, the prodigal, the harlot who washed the Lord’s feet, the Good Thief, and the direct turning to Christ Himself (Great Canon, Odes 1–9; trans. Mary and Ware; and see St. Andrew of Crete: The Canon of Repentance). The structure is a deliberate movement from Adam to Christ, from the first sin to the open arms of the Cross — the whole economy of salvation made into an examination of conscience. The wicked are set before the soul that it may fear; the righteous, that it may be ashamed; the penitent, that it may hope.

The crossing into the New Testament in the eighth and ninth odes changes the spiritual weather. For eight odes the soul has been measured against the failures and the law; now the figures of mercy received come forward, and Christ appears no longer chiefly as the Judge before whom the soul trembles but as the Physician to whom it flees. This is why the Canon, for all its severity, ends not in despair but in supplication and hope: “Do not require of me fruits worthy of repentance, for my strength has failed within me; grant me a contrite heart and poverty of spirit” (Great Canon, Ode 9, troparion; trans. Mary and Ware). The Canon does not leave the soul condemned; it leaves it kneeling, contrite, and pointed toward the Cross.

Mary of Egypt and Andrew Himself

Like every canon, the Great Canon closes each ode with verses to the Holy Trinity (triadika) and to the Mother of God (theotokia), resolving the relentless self-accusation into doxology and appeal to the Theotokos (The Lenten Triodion). In its received liturgical form it also carries, interspersed among Andrew’s own troparia, verses to St. Mary of Egypt — the supreme example of the repentance the Canon preaches — and a set of troparia to St. Andrew himself, added by later tradition; these account for part of the variation in the troparion count and are why the Canon is bound, in the services, to the reading of St. Mary’s Life (see St. Andrew of Crete: Its Place in Lent).

Its Place in Lent

The Great Canon has a fixed and weighty liturgical home in Great Lent. It is sung in two ways: divided into four portions chanted at Great Compline on the first four evenings of the first week of Lent (Clean Week, Monday through Thursday), and then in its entirety at Matins of Thursday of the fifth week of Lent — “the Great Canon” or “the Standing of St. Mary of Egypt,” at which the whole Canon and the Life of St. Mary of Egypt are read together (The Lenten Triodion; and see St. Andrew of Crete: Its Place in Lent). Sung slowly across the long Lenten evenings, its cumulative effect is unlike anything else in the Church’s poetry: the sustained, scripturally saturated turning of a soul back toward God. The very excess of it — dozens of troparia where another canon would have three — is the point: repentance, the Canon implies, is not a single act but an inexhaustible one. It is for this that the Church has called it, simply, the Great Canon.

See Also

References

  • The Lenten Triodion. Trans. Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1978. (The Great Canon in English; the Clean Week distribution and the full Thursday text; cited by ode and troparion.)
  • The Great Canon, trans. Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash). anastasis.org.uk. (Online English translation, cited by ode and troparion.)
  • Krueger, Derek. Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014, esp. ch. 5. (The first-person self-address; the troparion count; the biblical sweep.)
  • Great Canon. OrthodoxWiki (orthodoxwiki.org/Great_Canon). (Structure; the retained second ode; ~250 troparia; the Mary of Egypt and Andrew troparia; cross-checked against the Triodion and Krueger.)
  • Scripture: Genesis 3–19; Deuteronomy 32; Exodus; 1–2 Samuel; 1–2 Kings; Jonah; Daniel 3; the Gospels — the books of the Canon’s typological gallery.