The Original Core of the Text

No manuscript preserves the Synodikon exactly as it was first chanted; what can be recovered is an original nucleus, isolable by the fact that later additions commemorate people who were still alive in 843. This file sets out what modern textual scholarship can and cannot establish about that nucleus — and states honestly where the evidence runs out.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Problem Stated

The Synodikon is a living text. It grew for five centuries, and it grew by insertion — new names among the acclaimed, new chapters among the anathemas — so that no surviving copy is a photograph of the first recital. Gouillard’s critical edition, the indispensable starting point, is by its own method a composite edition drawn from numerous versions including variants of local provenance; that is precisely what makes it invaluable for the whole tradition and awkward for the specific question “what did they chant in 843?” (Frederick Lauritzen, “The Layers of Composition of the Synodikon of Alexius Studites,” Studia Ceranea 7 [2017]: 121–128, at 121–122, on the composite character of Gouillard’s text; Jean Gouillard, “Le Synodikon de l’Orthodoxie: édition et commentaire,” Travaux et Mémoires 2 [1967]: 1–316).

Two more recent developments have improved the position. The first is the recognition of London, British Library, Additional MS 28816, written in 1110 or 1111 by a monk Andrew of the monastery of Oleni in the Morea; Gouillard judged it “certainly one of the best witnesses to the primitive and purely Constantinopolitan form of the Synodikon,” but it was unknown to him when he prepared the edition and has consequently been neglected (editorial note by Archimandrite Ephrem [Lash] to the translation of Andrew Louth, edited to that manuscript, on the Anastasis site). The second is the critical edition of the earliest stable Greek text, the Synodikon of Alexios Studites, reflecting the document as it stood under that patriarch between roughly 1034 and 1043 — a text with few variants across its six earliest manuscripts, and the ancestor of all the Slavic and Georgian versions (Frederick Lauritzen, ed., Synodikon of Alexios Studites (1025–1043), in The Great Councils of the Orthodox Churches: From Constantinople 861 to Moscow 2000, ed. Alberto Melloni, vol. I [Turnhout: Brepols, 2016], 375–394; Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 122, 127).

Working backwards from that eleventh-century stable text, Lauritzen isolates the strata by a simple and rigorous criterion: a clause commemorating a man who died after 843 cannot have stood in the text of 843.

What Belongs to the Nucleus

On that method the following are assigned, with the caveat “possibly original,” to the text of 843/844:

  • the introduction — the homiletic preamble built out of Isaiah 41:1, Romans 6:4, 2 Corinthians 5:17, John 10:22, and the Psalms, framing the day as a feast of dedication after a “winter” of impiety;
  • the blessings — the seven numbered dogmatic ascriptions on the icon and the Incarnation, each answered “Eternal memory,” culminating in the great “As the Prophets saw, as the Apostles taught…” and “This is the faith of the Apostles…”;
  • the first part of the saints section, including the four iconophile patriarchs Germanus, Tarasius, Nicephorus, and Methodius;
  • the introduction to the anathemas and the body of the iconoclast anathemas proper;
  • the opening imperial invocations and the prayer for Michael III and Theodora;
  • the list of patriarchs of Constantinople as it stood in 843

(Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 126, giving the schedule of strata; the section numbering there is Lauritzen’s own, keyed to his edition, and is not reproduced as clause-numbers here.)

Lauritzen adds that sections one and two — introduction and blessings — carry biblical quotations and theological references tied to the icon question and “are difficult to date,” with the possibility that this part “was not altered after 844” (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 122). The dogmatic heart of the Synodikon, in other words, is very probably the oldest thing in it.

What Does Not

The same method removes a good deal. Among the earliest post-843 accretions:

  • After 845, the enlargement of the saints’ list to include Theophylact of Nicomedia (d. 846), Nicholas of Stoudios (d. 868), St. Ioannikios (d. 846), Hilarion of Dalmatou (d. 845), and St. Symeon Stylites of Lesbos (d. 844) — an addition reflecting the interest of the Constantinopolitan monasteries of Dalmatou and Stoudios in claiming a place in the restoration (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 123, 126).
  • After 870, a further set of anathemas which Gouillard identified in his apparatus as drawn from the acts of the council of 869–870, and which concern specifically the iconoclasts of the first iconoclasm (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 124, 126).
  • After 925, the acclamation of the patriarchs Ignatius, Photius, Stephen, Antony, and Nicholas — the list cannot antedate the death of Nicholas I Mystikos in 925 — together with the sweeping anathema on innovation, which is taken from the Tome of Union of 920 (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 122, 126–127; the Greek of the borrowed clauses is printed at 127 n.16 from Nicholas Mystikos, Tome of Union, ed. L. G. Westerink, Nicholas I, Patriarch of Constantinople: Miscellaneous Writings, CFHB 20 [Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1981], 70).
  • Between about 1010 and 1043, the anathemas against all heretics, all Jacobites, and all Nestorians, and a long series directed against a dualist sect — material fitting the concerns of Patriarch Alexios Studites, who repeatedly acted against the Jacobite community, and reflecting Constantinople’s growing awareness of Balkan and Anatolian dualism after Euthymius of Akmonia wrote at the Peribleptos monastery under Romanos III (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 124, 126–127).

Lauritzen’s conclusion is that there are at least five layers in the eleventh-century text alone — the original and four modifications — and that they cannot be conflated, because each reflects a distinct interest: monastic self-promotion, first-iconoclasm polemic, the integration of the tetragamy settlement, and the anti-dualist campaign (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 126–127).

A Contested Older View

Until recently a different picture prevailed. In 1980 Cyril Mango claimed that the text of the Synodikon had not changed between 843 and 1082, when the anathemas against John Italos were added — a claim resting on Gouillard’s subdivision into recensions M, C, and P, and one that Lauritzen shows to be untenable, both because Gouillard placed the Italos anathemas (issued under Alexios I Komnenos, not under the Macedonians) inside “Synodikon M,” and because the six earliest manuscripts contain a stable text of the Alexios Studites period that Mango’s account does not accommodate (Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome [London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980], 102; Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 121–122). [Disputed: Mango (1980) held the text essentially unchanged from 843 to 1082; Lauritzen (2017), on the basis of the new critical edition, identifies four pre-1082 phases of modification. This collection follows Lauritzen, whose argument rests on manuscript evidence unavailable to Mango, while noting that the older view is still widely repeated.]

Lauritzen likewise dissents in part from Gouillard, who posited a single early tenth-century revision: the first three phases cannot be compressed, since they pursue different aims (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 126–127).

An Eleventh-Century Quarrel That Proves the Point

One anecdote is worth reporting because it shows contemporaries treating the Synodikon exactly as a growing text. John Skylitzes records that Patriarch Michael Keroularios, at odds with Michael Mermentoulos, abbot of Stoudios, removed the name of St. Theodore the Studite while reading the Synodikon in church. Mermentoulos went to the emperor; by imperial order the Synodikon was read again — on the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman — and this time the patriarch himself rose and cried out the name of the great Theodore “with a loud and clear voice,” and the monks’ revolt subsided (John Skylitzes, Synopsis Historiarum 9.7, ed. Ioannes Thurn [Berlin–New York: De Gruyter, 1973], 433–434, translated and discussed in Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 123–124).

Lauritzen’s comment is the historically important one: the patriarch evidently thought he had authority to remove what he considered an addition — which tells us that by 1043/44 people knew perfectly well that the Synodikon contained additions, and argued about them (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 124). Whatever Keroularios’ motives, the episode establishes that the text of the 1040s “most usual” form included Theodore’s name, and that the Synodikon was already a site of contest over what belonged in it.

What Cannot Be Recovered

Three honest negatives close this file.

The exact wording of 843 is unrecoverable. The prefatory note to the standard English translation of the received text says flatly that “it is probably impossible to reconstruct the original text exactly” (prefatory note to the Synodikon, English translation circulated from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston; the same judgment is made in Archimandrite Ephrem’s note to the Louth translation of BL Add. 28816).

The authorship of the nucleus is not established. Popular Orthodox sources routinely attribute the composition to Patriarch Methodius, and a later editing to Patriarch Sergius II around the year 1000; neither attribution is confirmed by the textual scholarship consulted for this collection, and both are reported here as tradition rather than as demonstrated fact [Disputed: the Methodius and Sergius attributions circulate widely in Orthodox catechetical literature; Lauritzen’s stratigraphy speaks of an “original text of 844” and of datable phases of modification without assigning authorship (“Layers of Composition,” 2017, 122, 126)].

Whether the very first recital in 843 used a written text at all is not known to this collection. The internal evidence of the preamble points to composition for the first anniversary (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 122); what was said on the day of the procession itself, the sources consulted here do not say.

These are the limits, and they are stated rather than papered over. What is secure is the Church’s act: in 843 the icons came back, and from 844 the Church has annually chanted a charter of that restoration whose dogmatic core — the ascriptions on the Incarnation and the image — is very probably the oldest layer in the document.

See Also

References

  • Lauritzen, Frederick. “The Layers of Composition of the Synodikon of Alexius Studites.” Studia Ceranea 7 (2017): 121–128.
  • Lauritzen, Frederick, ed. Synodikon of Alexios Studites (1025–1043). In The Great Councils of the Orthodox Churches: From Constantinople 861 to Moscow 2000, ed. Alberto Melloni, vol. I, 375–394. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016 (CC.COGD 4.1).
  • Gouillard, Jean. “Le Synodikon de l’Orthodoxie: édition et commentaire.” Travaux et Mémoires 2 (1967): 1–316. (Cited here at second hand through Lauritzen 2017 and the editorial note to the Louth/Lash translation; not consulted directly.)
  • Mango, Cyril. Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980. P. 102. (The older view of an unchanged text 843–1082.)
  • Nicholas Mystikos. Tome of Union (920). In Nicholas I, Patriarch of Constantinople: Miscellaneous Writings, ed. L. G. Westerink. CFHB 20. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1981. P. 70. (The source of the anathema on innovation.)
  • John Skylitzes. Synopsis Historiarum 9.7. Ed. Ioannes Thurn. Berlin–New York: De Gruyter, 1973. Pp. 433–434. (The Keroularios–Mermentoulos episode.)
  • Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Trans. Andrew Louth, edited to London, British Library, Additional MS 28816 by Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash), with editorial note.
  • Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Received Greek text of the Triodion; English translation circulated from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, with prefatory note.