Greek, Slavic, and Other Recensions

There is no single Synodikon: some forty Greek manuscripts fall into three principal recensions, and the text was translated into Georgian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Russian, each version developing further. This file sets out what the textual scholarship establishes about those families, and is explicit about the limits of what this collection can verify.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Three Greek Recensions

Gouillard’s critical edition grouped the roughly forty Greek manuscripts into three principal recensions, designated M, C, and P — Macedonian, Comnenian, and Palaiologan, after the dynasties under which each family’s characteristic state of the text was reached. Within each recension he distinguished further subdivisions, determined by three criteria: how far the personal acclamations run chronologically, what stage of doctrinal development the copy reflects, and whether the exemplar was made for use in the capital or in a provincial church (Jean Gouillard, “Le Synodikon de l’Orthodoxie: édition et commentaire,” Travaux et Mémoires 2 [1967]: 1–316, as reported in Anna-Maria Totomanova, “The Synodikon of Orthodoxy in Medieval Bulgaria,” Studia Ceranea 7 [2017]: 169–227, at 170, and in Frederick Lauritzen, “The Layers of Composition of the Synodikon of Alexius Studites,” Studia Ceranea 7 [2017]: 121–128, at 121).

The dating criterion is elegantly simple. Since a name can be added to the acclamations only after its bearer’s death, the last commemorated emperor or patriarch dates the copy’s exemplar. A manuscript whose imperial list ends with Romanos III (d. 1034) belongs to a different world from one that commemorates John Kantakouzenos (d. 1383).

This collection has not consulted Gouillard’s edition directly. Every statement in this file about the recensions rests on the scholars who have used it, and where their reports do not answer a question, this file says so rather than inventing an answer.

A Caution about Gouillard’s Text

Two limitations of the 1967 edition are now recognized in the scholarship, and both matter for anyone tempted to treat any printed Synodikon as the Synodikon.

It is a composite. Lauritzen observes that “the difficulty of employing Gouillard’s text is that it is fundamentally a composite edition of numerous versions including variants originating from local churches” — indispensable as a conspectus of the whole tradition, but not a transcript of any single state of the text (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 121–122).

It placed some material oddly. Lauritzen notes that Gouillard included the anathemas against John Italos within “Synodikon M,” although they were issued under Alexios I Komnenos and not under the Macedonian dynasty, and that these anathemas appear in three manuscripts that do not reflect the earlier version of the text; he also notes that Gouillard did not register that six early manuscripts contain a stable text datable to the patriarchate of Alexios Studites (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 121–122).

The correction of these points has produced a new critical edition of the earliest stable Greek state — the Synodikon of Alexios Studites (1025–1043) — printed, together with the Georgian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Russian versions, in The Great Councils of the Orthodox Churches: From Constantinople 861 to Moscow 2000, ed. Alberto Melloni, vol. I (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016).

The Neglected London Manuscript

One further Greek witness deserves separate mention because it is the basis of the best English translation of the primitive form. London, British Library, Additional MS 28816, written in 1110 or 1111 by a monk Andrew of the monastery of Oleni in the Morea, carries the Synodikon at the end of a manuscript of the Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypse, under the somewhat misleading title “Definition [Horos] of the 7th Holy Synod.” It is written in red and black with ekphonetic notation throughout, gives special prominence to the names of St. Symeon Stylites and St. Theodore the Studite, and contains an acclamation — “God will give their kingdom peace. Heavenly King, protect those on earth!” — that appears to be peculiar to it. 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).

Comparison of this witness with the received printed text is instructive, and it is the comparison this collection has used throughout. The London form has the preamble, the seven blessings, the great “As the Prophets saw…” confession, the acclamations of the confessors, the iconoclast anathemas, the named iconoclasts, “To all the heretics: Anathema!”, the short icon clauses, and the imperial and patriarchal commemorations — and nothing else. It has no Italos chapters, no anti-Bogomil material, no twelfth-century Christological chapters, no Palamite block, and no roster of ancient Christological heresiarchs. The received text of the Triodion has all of these.

The Slavic and Georgian Versions

Lauritzen’s most consequential finding for the non-Greek tradition is that the Synodikon of Alexios Studites — not any earlier state — “is the text from which originate the translations into Georgian, Bulgarian, Serbian and Russian” (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 127, citing the critical editions in The Great Councils, vol. I: Synodicum Georgicum, ed. B. Martin-Hisard, 397–425; Synodicum Bulgaricum 1211, ed. A.-M. Totomanova, 426–468; Synodicum Serbicum, ed. T. Subotin-Golubović, 469–476; Synodicum Russicum, ed. K. A. Maksimovič, 477–518).

Boril’s Synodikon (Bulgaria, 1211)

The Synodikon was first translated into Slavonic in Bulgaria by order of Tsar Boril (1207–1218), who convoked a synod against the Bogomils in the capital, Tărnovo, on 11 February 1211; the Bulgarian version is accordingly known as Boril’s Synodikon (Totomanova, “The Synodikon of Orthodoxy in Medieval Bulgaria,” 2017, 169). Totomanova establishes that the first Bulgarian translation “draws on the Comnenian redaction of the Constantinople version of the Synodikon (C — according to the classification of Gouillard),” while noting that the extant text “does not agree completely with any of the known representatives of this redaction” (Totomanova, 2017, 170).

Boril’s Synodikon is not merely a translation. It was compiled for the occasion of the council, revised under Ivan Asen II, and supplemented in the late fourteenth century in the time of Patriarch Euthymius; it incorporates Bulgarian material — a chronographer’s narrative of the rise of Bogomilism and of the council itself, and lists of Bulgarian rulers and hierarchs — and it influenced the Serbian and Russian redactions in turn (Totomanova, “The Synodikon of Orthodoxy in Medieval Bulgaria,” 2017, in the sections on the commemorative part and on the Tărnovo synod; and the summary description in the UNESCO Memory of the World register entry for Boril’s Synodicon). It is a document of state as much as of doctrine, and its interest for historians of medieval Balkan heresy is very great.

Totomanova further shows that the later Bulgarian tradition is layered: the Palaiologan version of the Synodikon circulated in two orthographic recensions, those of Resava and of Tărnovo, and one surviving Bulgarian witness (Drinov’s copy) is “a rather mechanical compilation” of a newer translation with Boril’s older one, so that the same anathema can appear twice in a single manuscript in two different redactions (Totomanova, “The Synodikon of Orthodoxy in Medieval Bulgaria,” 2017, in the article’s discussion of Drinov’s copy and of the Palaiologan version’s two orthographic recensions).

Georgian, Serbian, Russian

The Georgian, Serbian, and Russian versions are edited in the same Brepols volume, and this collection has not been able to examine any of the three. What can be reported is only that they exist as distinct critical texts descending from the eleventh-century Greek state (Lauritzen, “Layers of Composition,” 2017, 127 nn. 17–20). Any claim about their specific contents — which anathemas they carry, which local names they commemorate, how far they were altered in use — would require consulting the editions themselves, and is not made here.

The Russian tradition in particular is known to have developed its own material over the centuries, including anathemas on figures of Russian political and religious history. This collection can confirm neither the specific contents nor the dates of the revisions from the sources available to it, and therefore reports the general fact without detail. [Disputed: popular accounts of the Russian Chin Pravoslaviya (“Rite of Orthodoxy”) describe successive eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revisions that removed personal names; this collection has not been able to verify these accounts against the critical edition (Synodicum Russicum, ed. K. A. Maksimovič, in The Great Councils, vol. I, 477–518) or against Russian synodal legislation, and so does not repeat their specifics.]

One well-documented Russian development in the neighbouring canonical territory can be stated: the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1971 annulled the anathemas that the Great Moscow Council of 1666–67 had laid on the old rites and on those who kept them, declaring them “as though they had not been” — an act of the highest relevance to any discussion of how anathemas can be lifted (see The Sobriety of the Fathers).

The 1583 Appendix

Some printed and online presentations of the Synodikon append a document headed “From the Council of 1583,” containing anathemas on the Filioque, on communion under one kind, on azymes, on purgatory, on papal primacy and indulgences, and on the “newly-invented Paschalion and the New Menologion of the atheist astronomers of the Pope,” subscribed by Jeremias II of Constantinople, Silvester of Alexandria, and Sophronius of Jerusalem and dated 20 November 1583 (appended to the Synodikon in the English translation circulated from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston).

Two things must be said. This is an appendix, not part of the Synodikon proper: it has its own heading, its own subscription, and a legal form (“let him be anathema”) different from the Synodikon’s liturgical form. And its authenticity is contested: the so-called Sigillion of 1583 against the Gregorian calendar has been the subject of long dispute among Orthodox scholars and polemicists, some treating it as a genuine act of the 1583 council and others as a later composition. [Disputed: the authenticity and the exact text of the 1583 Sigillion are contested in the literature on the calendar question; this collection reports the document’s circulation as an appendix to the Synodikon and does not pronounce on its genuineness, which would require examining the patriarchal archives.] That the Council of Constantinople of 1583 did reject the Gregorian calendar is not in dispute; the wording and status of the document circulated under its name is.

What This Section Establishes

Three conclusions, stated plainly.

There is no single “the Synodikon.” There is a family of texts with a common core, three principal Greek recensions, and at least four distinct translation traditions, each developing further. Any statement of the form “the Synodikon says X” needs, strictly, a recension attached.

The core is stable and the periphery is not. The preamble, the seven blessings, the great confession, the acclamation of the iconophile confessors, and the iconoclast anathemas are present in every witness this collection has seen. Everything else varies.

The scholarship required to go further exists and has not been used here. Gouillard 1967 and the six critical editions in The Great Councils, vol. I (2016) would answer most of the questions this file has had to leave open. They are named so that a reader can go where this collection has not.

References

Gouillard, Jean. “Le Synodikon de l’Orthodoxie: édition et commentaire.” Travaux et Mémoires 2 (1967): 1–316. (The recensions M, C, P and their subdivisions. Not consulted directly for this collection; used through Totomanova 2017 and Lauritzen 2017.)
Lauritzen, Frederick. “The Layers of Composition of the Synodikon of Alexius Studites.” Studia Ceranea 7 (2017): 121–128. (The composite character of Gouillard’s text; the placement of the Italos anathemas; the derivation of the Georgian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Russian versions from the Alexios Studites state.)
Totomanova, Anna-Maria. “The Synodikon of Orthodoxy in Medieval Bulgaria.” Studia Ceranea 7 (2017): 169–227. (Boril’s Synodikon; its derivation from recension C; the Tărnovo synod of 11 February 1211; the later Bulgarian redactions and the Resava/Tărnovo orthographic recensions.)
The Great Councils of the Orthodox Churches: From Constantinople 861 to Moscow 2000, ed. Alberto Melloni. Vol. I. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016 (CC.COGD 4.1). Containing: Synodikon of Alexios Studites (1025–1043), ed. F. Lauritzen, 375–394; Synodicum Georgicum, ed. B. Martin-Hisard, 397–425; Synodicum Bulgaricum 1211, ed. A.-M. Totomanova, 426–468; Synodicum Serbicum, ed. T. Subotin-Golubović, 469–476; Synodicum Russicum, ed. K. A. Maksimovič, 477–518.
Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Trans. Andrew Louth, edited to London, British Library, Additional MS 28816 by Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash), with the editorial note describing the manuscript.
Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Received Greek text as printed in the Triodion; English translation circulated from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, with the appended “From the Council of 1583.”
UNESCO Memory of the World register, entry for “Boril’s Synodicon.” (The compilation history and the influence on the Serbian and Russian redactions.)