The Liturgical Books Interlock

The hymns of the Orthodox Church reach the worshipper through the interlocking of several liturgical books, combined day by day: the Octoechos of the eight tones, the Menaion of the fixed calendar, the Triodion of the Lenten spring, and the Pentekostarion of the Paschal season, meshed together on the frame of the Horologion. This file describes the books and how they combine to produce the actual services.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Byzantine hymnography)

Two Cycles, Several Books

The hymnody of the Byzantine rite is organized around two great cycles that run simultaneously and are combined each day. The fixed cycle follows the calendar date — 25 December is always the Nativity, 6 January always Theophany — and its hymnody lives in the Menaion. The movable cycle follows the date of Pascha, which shifts each year, and governs the whole penitential and Paschal season and the ordinary Sundays; its hymnody lives in the Octoechos, the Triodion, and the Pentekostarion. Every service is a combination of what these books appoint for the given day — the fixed commemoration meshed with the movable season and the current tone — assembled according to the rules of the Typikon (the book of rubrics) on the frame supplied by the Horologion (the book of the fixed daily offices and their unchanging parts) and the Psalter (Wellesz, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1961; Taft, The Byzantine Rite: A Short History, Liturgical Press, 1992). The service a worshipper hears is thus never from a single book but is a layered composite, and learning to worship in the Byzantine rite is in large part learning how the books interlock.

The Octoechos

The Octoechos (the “Book of Eight Tones”; Slavonic Osmoglasnik, in its fuller form the Paraklitiki) supplies the changing hymnody of the ordinary weeks — the weeks outside the great fixed and movable feasts — arranged in the eight-tone rotation, one tone per week, changing weekly, so that the whole cycle runs in eight weeks and begins again (treated fully in The Octoechos and the Eight Tones). Within each tone the book is arranged by the days of the week, each day carrying its own commemorative theme — Sunday the Resurrection, Monday the angels, Tuesday the Forerunner, Wednesday and Friday the Cross, Thursday the Apostles and St. Nicholas, Saturday the departed and all saints. The Octoechos is the baseline hymnody of the year: when no great feast or fasting season overrides it, the Sunday and weekday services draw their resurrectional and ferial hymns from it, in the current tone.

The Menaion

The Menaion (Greek Mēnaion, “of the month”; Slavonic Mineya) is the book of the fixed calendar — the twelve monthly volumes (one per month, September through August) that supply the proper hymnody for every saint’s day and fixed feast of the year, at its calendar date (Wellesz, 1961). It is by far the largest of the hymnographic books, because it must furnish hymns for every day: the canons of the saints (many of them the work of Joseph the Hymnographer; see The Studite Hymnographers), the festal stichera and troparia of the great fixed feasts, the theotokia. On any given day the Menaion’s proper hymnody for that date’s saint or feast is combined with the Octoechos (or, in the appropriate season, the Triodion or Pentekostarion). The Festal Menaion is the selection of the great feasts drawn from the twelve volumes; the General Menaion supplies common offices for categories of saint (a martyr, a hierarch, a monastic) where the full proper is lacking (see The Twelve Great Feasts for the festal cycle the Menaion serves).

The Triodion

The Triodion (the Lenten Triodion; Greek Triōdion) supplies the hymnody of the pre-Lenten and Lenten season — from the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, through the pre-Lenten Sundays, and across the whole of Great Lent to Great and Holy Saturday (see The Studite Hymnographers, on its Studite formation). Its name comes from its characteristic three-ode canons (triōdia) sung on the Lenten weekdays. During the Lenten season the Triodion’s hymnody largely governs the services, overriding much of the Octoechos, though the two are still combined according to the Typikon’s rules, and the Menaion’s fixed commemorations continue to be woven in. The Triodion carries the year’s most concentrated penitential hymnody: the Great Canon of St. Andrew (see Andrew of Crete and the Great Canon), the Akathist on the Fifth Saturday (see Akathist Saturday and the Genre), and the great hymnody of Holy Week — including the Hymn of Kassiani on Holy Wednesday (see Kassia the Hymnographer).

The Pentekostarion

The Pentekostarion (the “Flowery Triodion”; Greek Pentēkostarion) takes up where the Triodion ends and supplies the hymnody of the Paschal season — from Pascha itself through Bright Week, the Sundays after Pascha, the Ascension, and Pentecost, to the Sunday of All Saints that closes the season (Wellesz, 1961; and see St. John of Damascus: The Paschal Canon). Its centrepiece is the Paschal canon of St. John of Damascus, “The day of Resurrection,” repeated in whole or in part through the fifty days. During the Paschal season the Pentekostarion governs the services as the Triodion governs Lent, again combined with the fixed commemorations of the Menaion. After the Sunday of All Saints the movable cycle returns to the Octoechos, and the ordinary eight-tone rotation resumes for the rest of the year until the next pre-Lenten season.

How a Day Is Assembled

The practical result is that the hymnody of any given service is a layered assembly. Take an ordinary weekday in, say, the Nativity fast: the Horologion supplies the fixed frame of the office and the Psalter the psalmody; the Octoechos supplies the ferial hymns in the current tone; the Menaion supplies the proper hymns of the day’s saint; and the Typikon rules how these are combined — which stichera are sung, in what order, how many of each, and how the “Glory… Both now” and the theotokia fall. On a Sunday in Lent, the Triodion is added and largely takes precedence; in the Paschal season, the Pentekostarion. The Irmologion supplies the model irmoi for the canons; the Apostolos and Evangelion the readings. No single book contains a whole service; the service exists only in the combination, performed anew each day according to the Typikon’s rules.

This interlocking is what makes Orthodox worship at once endlessly various and deeply ordered. Every day is different, because the combination of fixed date, movable season, and current tone is different; yet the structure is constant, and the same layered method assembles the service in a village chapel and a great cathedral alike. The many hymnographers of the earlier sections — Romanos, Andrew, John of Damascus, Cosmas, Kassia, Joseph — reach the worshipper not as individual authors but through these books, their work absorbed into the anonymous, interlocking common song of the Church (see Hymnography within Holy Tradition). To understand the books is to understand how the whole vast corpus of Orthodox hymnody becomes, day by day, a single act of prayer.

See Also

References

  • Wellesz, Egon. A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961. (The liturgical books and their hymnographic contents.)
  • Taft, Robert F. The Byzantine Rite: A Short History. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992. (The structure of the offices and the combination of the cycles.)
  • The Lenten Triodion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware (Faber, 1978); The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware (Faber, 1969); The Pentekostarion and The Octoechos, standard English service texts (Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston). (The four books.)