The Horologion and the Psalter

Two books supply the fixed skeleton of the daily office. The Horologion (Book of Hours) contains the invariable framework of each service — the opening prayers, the fixed psalms, the litanies, the standard hymns — with marked “slots” into which the changeable propers are inserted. The liturgical Psalter supplies the psalmody: the 150 psalms divided into kathismata and stases, with the Nine Odes appended. This file explains how these two books provide the unchanging bones onto which the rest of the office is hung.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Fixed Skeleton

Every Orthodox service has two kinds of content: parts that never change, the same at that point in the service every single day, and parts that change with the day, the feast, and the season. The two books treated here — the Horologion and the liturgical Psalter — between them supply almost all of the unchanging material, the fixed skeleton onto which the changeable propers (from the Octoechos, Triodion, Pentecostarion, and Menaion; see The Octoechos, Triodion, Menaion, and the Typikon) are grafted. Grasping this division is the key to the whole mechanics of the office: the Horologion and Psalter give you the frame, and the frame has labelled openings where you insert the day’s proper texts.

The Horologion

The Horologion (Greek Hōrologion, “book of the hours”; Slavonic Chasoslov) is the fundamental service book of the daily cycle — the book that contains the fixed order (the “ordinary”) of the non-Eucharistic services. It provides the invariable text and rubrical framework of the Midnight Office, Matins, the First, Third, Sixth, and Ninth Hours, the Typika, Vespers, and Compline (both Great and Small) (Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, 2nd ed., 1993, on the Horologion as the core book of the Palestinian monastic office; and see The Sabaite, Studite, and Neo-Sabaite Synthesis).

For each service the Horologion supplies the parts that do not change:

  • the opening blessing and the introductory prayers (the Trisagion prayers, “O come, let us worship”);
  • the fixed psalms proper to each service — Psalm 103 at Vespers, the Six Psalms at Matins, the three psalms of each Hour, the psalms of Compline (though these are also in the Psalter, the Horologion prints them in place so the officiant need not turn back and forth);
  • the standard hymns that recur daily — “O Gladsome Light” at Vespers, the Song of Simeon, the daily troparia;
  • the litanies and their responses, and the dismissals.

At the points where changeable material belongs, the Horologion leaves a marked slot — a rubric such as “here the troparion of the day” or “the kathisma appointed” or “the stichera from the Octoechos or Menaion” — which directs the officiant to the appropriate propers book. The Horologion is thus a kind of master template: complete in its fixed parts, and cross-referenced at its variable ones. Because it holds the skeleton of every daily service, the Horologion is, historically, the book of the monastic office — the volume whose earliest surviving witnesses (ninth-century Palestinian manuscripts such as Sinai Greek 863) anchor the study of the office’s origins (see Cathedral and Monastic Office).

Alongside the fixed order the Horologion usually also prints a body of frequently needed material for convenience: the troparia and kontakia of the moveable and immoveable feasts, the daily troparia of the week, the Nine Odes, selected canons and akathists, the paschal hours, prayers before and after Communion, and calendrical tables. The exact contents vary from edition to edition (the Great Horologion of the Greek use, the Slavonic Chasoslov, and English editions such as the Jordanville and Holy Transfiguration Horologia differ in their appendices), but the core — the fixed order of the daily services — is constant.

The Liturgical Psalter

The second book of the skeleton is the Psalter in its liturgical form. This is not simply the Book of Psalms as it stands in a Bible, but the Psalter arranged for the office: the 150 psalms (plus the supernumerary Psalm 151) divided into the twenty kathismata, each kathisma subdivided into three stases with the doxology and the fixed prayers between them, and the Nine Biblical Odes appended after the psalms (see The Kathismata, Psalm 151, and the Nine Odes). Orthodox liturgical Psalters print, at each kathisma, the interstitial texts — “Glory… Both now… Alleluia (thrice),” “Lord, have mercy (thrice),” and the appointed troparia and prayers — so that the Psalter can be prayed straight through as a service, whether in choir or in the cell.

In the assembling of a service, the Psalter supplies the continuous psalmody — the kathismata read at Vespers and Matins according to the weekly distribution — while the Horologion supplies the select fixed psalms of each service. The Typikon specifies which kathisma or kathismata fall at Vespers and Matins on a given day, and the reader takes them from the Psalter (see Reading the Whole Psalter and the Cell Rule). The liturgical Psalter is therefore both a service book and a book of private prayer: the same volume that a choir uses for the kathismata of Matins is the one a monk uses for his cell rule and the one read over the departed (see The Psalter for the Departed and the Slavonic Psalter).

How the Skeleton Receives the Propers

The relationship of these two books to the rest of the office library can be stated simply. The Horologion and Psalter give the fixed frame — the same order, the same fixed psalms, the same standard hymns, the same continuous kathismata every day. The propers books (Octoechos, Triodion, Pentecostarion, Menaion) supply the variable texts that fill the frame’s marked slots according to the day of the week, the tone of the week, the calendar date, and the movable season. The Typikon is the rulebook that tells the officiant, for any given day, which slots to fill from which book and how to combine them when several coincide. A complete Matins on a saint’s day, for instance, is the fixed order from the Horologion, plus the appointed kathismata from the Psalter, plus the tone’s resurrectional or weekday material from the Octoechos, plus the saint’s stichera and canon from the day’s Menaion — all interleaved as the Typikon directs (see The Octoechos, Triodion, Menaion, and the Typikon). The genius of the system is its economy: two books of fixed material and a handful of propers books can generate every one of the thousands of distinct services in the Church’s year.

See Also

References

  • Taft, Robert F. The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West. 2nd rev. ed. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1993.
  • The Horologion (Book of Hours). Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery; The Great Horologion, Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1997; and the Greek Hōrologion to Mega.
  • The Psalter According to the Seventy. Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1974; rev. ed.
  • A Psalter for Prayer. Trans. David James. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2011.
  • Getcha, Job. The Typikon Decoded: An Explanation of Byzantine Liturgical Practice. Trans. Paul Meyendorff. Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012.