Confession, Acclamation, Anathema: The Shape of the Text

The Synodikon moves in three motions — a homiletic and dogmatic confession, a roll of acclamations answered “Eternal memory!”, and a roll of condemnations answered “Anathema!” — framed by imperial and patriarchal commemorations and closed by a prayer. This file walks the structure in order, quoting the text, and marks where the received printed form differs from the primitive Constantinopolitan witness.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Six Sections

Analysis of the earliest recoverable stable Greek text finds the Synodikon constituted of six sections: (1) introduction, (2) blessings, (3) saints, (4) anathemas, (5) emperors, (6) patriarchs (Frederick Lauritzen, “The Layers of Composition of the Synodikon of Alexius Studites,” Studia Ceranea 7 [2017]: 121–128, at 122). This is not a modern imposition; the received text of the Triodion runs in the same order, with the accumulated later chapters lodged inside section 4 and additional imperial and patriarchal names inside sections 5 and 6.

(1) The Introduction: A Feast of Dedication

The Synodikon opens not with doctrine but with a homily. Its first sentence announces the occasion: “We have received from the Church of God, that upon this day we owe yearly thanksgiving to God along with an exposition of the dogmas of piety and the overturning of the impieties of evil” (Synodikon, received text of the Triodion, preamble; the parallel in the primitive form runs “A yearly thanksgiving is due to God on account of that day when we recovered the Church of God, with the demonstration of the dogmas of true religion and the overthrowing of the blasphemies of wickedness” — Synodikon, trans. Andrew Louth, ed. to London, British Library, Additional MS 28816 by Archimandrite Ephrem [Lash]).

What follows is a chain of Scripture. Isaiah’s “Be consecrated to God, ye islands” (Isaiah 41:1) is read of the churches of the nations, and “churches” is glossed as not the buildings but “the congregation of the pious.” St. Paul’s “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4) and “new creation in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17) supply the theme of renewal. John 10:22 — “the consecration was in Jerusalem, and it was winter” — is read as prophetic of the Church’s own winter of iconoclasm, and Psalm 73:17 (LXX) supplies the answering spring. The persecution is measured: “after a short thirty years of harassment,” which fixes the reference to the second iconoclasm of 815–842 (Synodikon, preamble, received text; the same in the Louth/Lash translation).

The preamble closes with the image that governs everything after it. As Israel after the desert set up a pillar of great stones to be written on, so the Church resolves “to inscribe on the hearts of our brethren, as on a pillar constructed of large fitted stones smoothed for the reception of inscriptions, both the blessings which are due to those who keep the law, and also the curses under which transgressors put themselves. Wherefore we say thus:” (Synodikon, received text, end of the preamble). Everything that follows is the inscription on that stele.

(2) The Blessings: Seven Dogmatic Ascriptions

In BL Add. 28816 these are numbered 1–7 in the manuscript’s margin (editorial note by Archimandrite Ephrem to the Louth translation). They are the dogmatic heart of the document, and each is answered “May their memory be eternal!” Their content, in order:

Those who confess the incarnate presence of God the Word “by word, by mouth, in the heart and the mind, by writing and in icons.”
Those who acknowledge in Christ one hypostasis with different essences, ascribing to that one hypostasis both created and uncreated, visible and invisible, passible and impassible, circumscribed and uncircumscribed — uncreatedness to the divine essence, circumscription and the rest to the human nature — “and affirm all this both in word and in images.”
Those who preach the words of the Gospel in writing and its deeds in forms, joining proclamation and icon in one testimony.
Those who know that as the eyes of the beholders are sanctified by the sacred icons, so the mind is led to the knowledge of God — as it is also by consecrated churches, sacred vessels, and holy treasures.
Those who know that the rod, the tablets, the ark, the lamp, the table, and the altar prefigured the All-holy Virgin, and that she did not become these things: since she remained a virgin after giving birth to God, she is to be depicted as she is rather than only foreshadowed in types.
Those who accept the prophetic visions as God Himself gave them shape, and who, “strengthened by the written and unwritten tradition of the Apostles, continuing to the Fathers,” therefore express holy things in images.
Those who set Moses’ “you heard the sound of words, but you saw no likeness” (Deuteronomy 4:12, 15) beside “that which was from the beginning… which we have seen with our eyes, and which our hands have touched” (1 John 1:1) and “we ate with him and drank with him” after the Resurrection (cf. Acts 10:41), and who therefore distinguish the Law from grace and depict and venerate what has been seen and touched.

(Synodikon, blessings 1–7, Louth/Lash translation of BL Add. 28816, with the Scripture references as supplied there; the same seven in the received text of the Triodion.)

The doctrinal logic is Chalcedonian throughout and is worth naming: the icon is defensible because in Christ the one hypostasis genuinely possesses a circumscribable human nature. Ascription 2 is, in effect, the Definition of Chalcedon applied to the question of the image (see Christology; Chalcedon 451; The Theology of the Image).

The blessings culminate in two celebrated passages. The first is the “as… so” formula: “As the Prophets saw, as the Apostles taught, as the Church has received, as the Teachers express in dogma, as the inhabited world understands together with them, as grace illumines, as the truth makes clear, as error has been banished, as wisdom makes bold to declare, as Christ has assured, so we think, so we speak, so we preach, honouring Christ our true God, and his Saints… worshipping and revering the One as God and Lord, and honouring them because of their common Lord… and making to them relative veneration.” The second is the acclamation itself: “This is the faith of the Apostles; this is the faith of the Fathers; this is the faith of the Orthodox; this faith makes fast the inhabited world.” (Synodikon, Louth/Lash translation; the received text renders the second “This is the Faith of the apostles, this is the Faith of the fathers, this is the Faith of the Orthodox, this Faith hath established the whole world.”)

The phrase “relative veneration” (schetikē proskynēsis) carries the whole doctrine of Nicaea II in two words: honor paid to the image passes to the prototype, and worship in the strict sense belongs to God alone (see Nicaea II (787)).

(3) The Saints: “Eternal Memory”

Then the roll of the champions, introduced: “We now take occasion to acclaim fraternally and with filial affection the preachers of piety unto the glory and honor of godliness, for which they struggled, and, we say…” (received text). First the four iconophile patriarchs — Germanus, Tarasius, Nicephorus, and Methodius — then Ignatius, Photius, Stephen, Antony, and Nicholas; then confessor archbishops, metropolitans, and abbots, with St. Theodore the Studite acclaimed alone, and, in the received text, St. Stephen the New and the Branded confessors Theodore and Theophanes (Synodikon, saints section, received text and Louth/Lash translation; identifications of the individual figures in Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 122–123).

Two anathemas are embedded in this section, and their placement is telling: “All that was written or spoken against the holy Patriarchs Germanus, Tarasius, Nicephorus, and Methodius, Ignatius, Photios, Nicephorus, Anthony and Nicholas, Anathema”; and “All that was innovated and enacted, or that after this shall be enacted, outside of Church tradition and the teaching and institution of the holy and ever-memorable fathers, Anathema” (received text). Both are drawn from the Tome of Union of 920 and therefore entered the Synodikon after 925 (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 122, 126–127, printing the Greek from Nicholas Mystikos, Tome of Union, ed. L. G. Westerink, CFHB 20 [Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1981], 70).

The forward-looking clause — “or that after this shall be enacted” — is the single most consequential sentence in the Synodikon for its modern use, and is discussed in What Is Actually Proclaimed Today.

(4) The Anathemas

The turn is marked by a sentence of great restraint, which no fair account of the Synodikon should omit: “These acclamations, like blessings of fathers, are inherited by us, their sons, who zealously emulate their piety; but likewise do the curses seize upon those parricides and disdainers of the Master’s commandments. Wherefore, we in unison, since we constitute the plenitude of piety, lay upon the impious the curse which they have put upon themselves” (Synodikon, received text; the Louth/Lash translation: “we, as the community of piety, publicly inflict on them the curse which they have brought on themselves”).

That formula — the curse which they have brought upon themselves — is the Synodikon’s own theology of anathema, and Section 08 of this collection is essentially a commentary on it. The Church is not represented as imposing a doom but as publishing a self-exclusion.

Then come the condemnations: first the iconoclast anathemas by content, then iconoclast heresiarchs by name, then — in the received text — the accumulated later chapters (Italos, Nilos, the Bogomils, Eustratios and Leo of Chalcedon, Soterichos and his associates, Constantine of Corfu, John Irenikos, Barlaam and Akindynos), then a second block of icon-related anathemas, the general “To all the heretics, Anathema,” and the roster of Christological heresiarchs. These are the subject of Sections 04, 05, and 06.

(5) and (6) Emperors and Patriarchs

The Synodikon closes with commemorations. In the primitive form these are brief: acclamations “Many years to the Basileis!”; “Michael, our orthodox Basileus, and Theodora, his holy mother”; a list of deceased emperors “who have all changed the earthly kingdom for the heavenly one”; a list of Augustae; then the patriarchs (Synodikon, Louth/Lash translation of BL Add. 28816). In the received Triodion text the same lists have grown enormously, running down through the Palaiologan emperors — Michael, Andronikos, John Kantakouzenos “who by the divine and angelic Habit was renamed Ioasaph” — and through scores of patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and metropolitans (received text, emperors and patriarchs sections).

These lists are the clearest index of a copy’s date: since a name can only be added after its bearer’s death, the point at which the personal acclamations stop dates the recension. Gouillard used precisely this criterion to subdivide his three recensions (Gouillard, “Le Synodikon de l’Orthodoxie: édition et commentaire,” Travaux et Mémoires 2 [1967], as summarized in Anna-Maria Totomanova, “The Synodikon of Orthodoxy in Medieval Bulgaria,” Studia Ceranea 7 [2017]: 169–227, at 170).

The Closing Prayer

The Synodikon does not end on an anathema. It ends with a petition: that by the contests and teachings of these champions “we may be guided and strengthened,” and shown to be “imitators of their inspired way of life until the end, by the pities and grace of the great and first high-priest Christ, our true God; at the intercessions of our most-glorious Lady, Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary, of the god-like Angels and all the Saints. Amen” (Synodikon, closing prayer, Louth/Lash translation; substantially identical in the received text).

Whoever wishes to characterize the Synodikon fairly must reckon with its last sentence as well as its harshest. The document’s own final word is a prayer for imitation.

References

Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Trans. Andrew Louth, edited to London, British Library, Additional MS 28816 by Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash), with Scripture references and editorial note.
Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Received Greek text as printed in the Triodion; English translation circulated from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston.
Lauritzen, Frederick. “The Layers of Composition of the Synodikon of Alexius Studites.” Studia Ceranea 7 (2017): 121–128. (The six-section structure; identification of the acclaimed confessors; the 920 provenance of the two embedded anathemas.)
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.
Totomanova, Anna-Maria. “The Synodikon of Orthodoxy in Medieval Bulgaria.” Studia Ceranea 7 (2017): 169–227. (Gouillard’s recensions and the dating criterion of the personal acclamations.)
Gouillard, Jean. “Le Synodikon de l’Orthodoxie: édition et commentaire.” Travaux et Mémoires 2 (1967): 1–316. (Cited at second hand; not consulted directly.)