THE VARIABLE HYMNS: TROPARIA AND KONTAKIA

T he cantors then intone the hymns of the day : troparion, kontakion, and sometimes the theotokion. 1

On ordinary Sundays, one of the eight series of resurrectional troparia, kontakia, etc., is sung, in one of the eight proper modes, or tones. The present text is that of the first series, sung in the first mode or tone :

Tropan"on : Though the stone was sealed by the Jews, and soldiers guarded your most pure body, you did rise on the third day, 0 Saviour, granting life to the world. For this reason the heavenly Powers cried out to you, 0 Giver of Life : glory to your resurrection, 0 Christ, glory to your Kingdom. Glory to your providence, 0 only Lover of man­kind.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and always, and for ever and ever. Amen.

Kontakion : As God, you did rise from the tomb in glory and did restore the world to life with yourself, and the human race sings praises to you as God. And death has vanished. Adam exults, 0 Master. Eve, now delivered from her bonds, rejoices, crying : " You, 0 Christ, are the one who gives resurrection to all. "

Troparia and kontakia may be proper to any of the following :

1. The patron of the church, the Lord, the Blessed Mother, or one or several saints.

2. The day of the week, Every day of the week commemorates a different mystery or saint: Sunday, the Resurrection; Monday, the angels; Tuesday, St. John the Baptist; Wednesday, the Holy Mother

1 The proper Slavonic terms for these hymns are tropar, kondak, and bohoro­dychen; however, their Greek names are better known.

of God and the holy cross; Thursday, the Apostles and St. Nicholas; Friday, the holy cross; Saturday, all the saints and the dead.

3. The saint of the day. The Byzantine Church dedicates each day of the year to a particular saint or mystery.

4. The dead; while the troparia and kontakia for the dead do not vary with the day of the week, the Epistle and Gospel readings do.

5. A special intention; besides the general intention "for every kind of petition, " there are propers for some of the more frequent intentions, e.g., in time of war, for peace, in time of storms, for abundant crops, etc.

Several sets of propers must often be combined. For example, if a major feast falls on a Sunday, the Sunday propers are said with those of the given feast. Precise regulations concerning the order of precedence (and therefore the resultant combinations) for the different classes of feasts, etc., are carefully set down in the Ustav or Typikon (a book comparable to the Ordo). These regulations are far too detailed to be included here. We are giving merely certain general norms which govern the order of the troparia and the kontakia:

a. The troparia come before the kontakia. If there is a theotokion, it is the last.

b. Troparia in honor of our Lord come before those commemo­rating the Blessed Virgin; those of the Blessed Virgin, before those of the saints, etc.

c. Kontakia will generally follow the same order as the troparia (b) but with many more exceptions.

Most eparchies (dioceses) issue a yearly ustav ( ordo), so that the parish priest and cantors will know just what troparia and kontakia are to be used on any given day, and what is their order of precedence.

The troparia and kontakia are essentially hymns. The origin and idea of Christian hymnody, especially in the East, point more to Hebrew than to Gentile sources. The inspired hymnal of the Old Testament, known as the Psalter, was taken over by the infant Church both as Sacred Writ and as a hymnal. 2

• The Lord used it in prayer, made quotations from it, and explained it to his followers (cf. Matt. 5:4; 7:23; 21:16, 42; 26:30; 27:46; Luke 24:44; etc.). The Apostles followed this example (cf. Acts 1:20; 2:25-28, 30, 34; 4:u, 25; etc.).

The word lfi«A~, "psalm," used by the Septuagint as a generic designation and its derivative verb lfi~11:w were accepted by the first Christians as referring to both hymns and psalms. The Septua­gint used the word <j>8~, " ode," or " song," in the same sense, and so did the first Christians. In the New Testament, for example, the evangelists (Matt. 26:30; Mark 14:26) write of l'.lµv~<ra.n11:t.;, "singing a hymn," at the end of the Last Supper (probably referring to the Hal/el, composed of psalms). St. Paul and Silas did the same, Gµvouv -rov 011:6v, in their prison at Philippi (Acts 16:25). St. Paul likewise recommended singing ~v lfit.V.µoit.; xa.l Gµvott.; xa.t <j>8a.~ m11:uµa.-rtxa.it.;, in " psalms and hymns and spiritual songs " in his letter to the Ephesians (5:19). Here obviously it was the singing not only of psalms properly speaking, but also of other compositions of sacred music. In writing to the Corinthians (I Cor. 14:26), St. Paul also says that each of them has· his own psalm (lxa.O"t'ot.; lfl«Aµov ~J.eL). In the very beginning, Christian hymns tended to be modeled on familiar Jewish patterns. 8 As the number of Gentile converts increased, Christianity came into close contact with pagan culture, and new types of hymns modeled on Hellenistic poetry began to appear. The practice of singing hymns (or psalms?) in Bithynian churches at the beginning of the second century is known from the famous letter of Pliny to Tra;an. 4

Philo's account of new hymns composed by the first-century Egyptian ascetics is quote« by Eusebius : " ..• they also compose songs and hymns to God in every variety of meter and melody, though they divide them, of course, into measures of more than common solemnity. 5 Whether these ascetics, the Therapeutae, were Christians or not is irrelevant. The important thing is that Eusebius considered Philo's account an allusion to Christian prac­tice, to " the first heralds of the Gospel and the customs handed down from the beginning by the Apostles. " •

• E.g., the first-century " Odes of Solomon, " discovered in 1909, are a collection of Syriac hymns reminiscent of their Hebrew protoeypes, the Psalter, the Sapiential Books, and Isaiah. Cf. R. Harris and A. Mingana, The Odes and Psalms of Solomon ( 1920), II, 59.

• Pliny, Ep. ad Trajanum, X, 96 (see Kirch, Bnchiridion fontium hist. eccl. [Sth edit., Freiburg, 1941]).

1 Ea/. hist., II, 17, 13 (PG 13, 78 C [Series graeca]). •Ibid., II, 17, 24 (PG 13, 8o A [Series graecaD.

In describing the agape of his day, Tertullian tells us that each man was invited to come forward and sing to God's praise, using either a scriptural text or one of his own composition. 7 In the third century, Origen states : " For we sing hymns to the Most High alone, and his only-begotten ... and we praise his only-begotten Son." 8

In the first two centuries, the Church favored the free composition of hymns and sacred song as an element of worship consonant with the spirit of the times. Early in the third century, however, original compositions were discouraged, because of the introduction of he­retical ideas and also because of the danger of their taking a pre­ponderant place in corporate spiritual life. The danger of heresy was especially menacing from the Gnostic camp. Hymns composed by such authors as Basilides, V alentinus, Bardesanes, and other Gnostics although inconsistent with Christian dogma, became extremely popular, and most effective as a means of propagating heretical beliefs. In the last half of the fourth century, the Church became definitely hostile to the private composition of sacred song in its Liturgy. About A.D. 363, for example, the Council ofLaodicea forbade the singing of private (l8tcu't'txo6<;;) " psalms " in churches and admitted only " the book of the hundred and fifty psalms. " 9

Apparently, the habit of expressing private religious feeling in hymns died hard, for in 563 the Council of Braga renewed the prohibition. 10

If a hymn were not based on some scriptural passage, it was excluded from liturgical use.

After the third century biblical psalms were used with increasing frequency, as the antiphonal technique came to be developed (see above, p. 367). Both the Latin and the Byzantine Rites have pre­served some instance of antiphonal psalmody : the former, in the recitation of Psalm 94, V enite exsultemus, at the Office of Matins on Epiphany; 11 the latter, at the antiphons of the Divine Liturgy, at

7 Tertullian, Apol., chap. 39 (PL I, 468) : "ut quisque de Sacris Scripturis vel proprio ingenio porest. "

• Origen, Contra Ce/sum, VIII, 67 (ANF, IV, 665). • Can. 59, Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, Vol. II

(Florence, 1759), 574 C. u Can. 12, Mansi, op. cit., Vol. IX, 778 C-D. 11 We may also cite the example of the canticle Nunc dimiuis alternating with

its antiphon Lumen ad revelationem gentium on February 2, during the distribution of the candles.

Vespers of Epiphany (Psalms 66 and 92), at Vespers of Christmas (Psalms 86 and 92), on Holy Saturday during the Liturgy of St. Basil "combined with Vespers" in " Bless ye all the works of the Lord" ( Benedidte omm."a opera Domini Domino), etc. ia In the Latin Rite, the antiphon was reduced to the first and last lines of a psalm. In the Byzantine Rite, these refrains gradually expanded into a complete stanza or troparion. Since, however, the constant repetition of a long and invariable text would prove monotonous, hymnographers prepared a series of different textual stanzas, to be sung according to the melody of the first stanza, the hirmos. These troparia were composed by monks and clergy well versed in theological orthodoxy. A complete series of such stanzas (now called an Ode in the Byzantine Rite) entwined around the psalm or canticle like an ivy-vine around a trellis. Rome adopted this practice in some instances, e.g., in the recitation of the scriptural Canticles Benedictus and Magnificat whenever the ancient rubric Rodie antiphonamus appears. 13 The Byzantine Office has many examples.

The next step in the evolution was to drop most of the psalm, and to retain only enough of the original text to correspond with the troparia or stanzas. Finally, these few remains of the biblical canticles disappeared completely and were replaced by new, short and invariable stikhoi. In this way, the poetical canon (see below, p. 396 f.), now independent of the scriptural canticles, became one of the predominant features of the Byzantine Office, since it was introduced into almost every liturgical function, including those in which the canticles had never been recited •.

Some of the evolution can be traced to second-century Syria, at which time Bardesanes, and his son Harmonius, wrote hymns em­bodying Gnostic doctrines and set them to agreeable melodies which became eXtremely popular. St. Ephraem, fearing that some of the faithful might be misled, composed many hymns in the Syriac language, principally in tetrasyllabic, pentasyllabic, and heptasyllabic

19 Other examples may be found in the Byzantine Office, but they do not concern the Psalms.

13 The Antiphonary of St. Corneille of Compiegne also has an example of this for Holy Saturday in a series of antiphons to the Magnificat drawn from Matt. 28:1-7, which is similar to the Diatessaron of Tatian. Cf. A. Baumstark, Tatia­nismen im romischen Antiplumar, in O.C., Series 3, V (1930). pp. 16)-174-

meters, divided into stanzas of four, twelve, sixteen, or twenty lines, thus imitating Bardesanes while teaching orthodox theology. 14

Many of his hymns still exist and may be identified with Byzantine kontakia, especially as interpreted by the great melodist of the later fifth century, Romanos the Melode. The ancient Syriac tradition of the Madrase and of the Soghite (of which St. Eph.raem is the peerless master) is continued in Romanos and his followers.

Characteristic of Syriac hymns is the ephymnium : in a five-line stanza, the fifth line generally had a complete meaning-prayer, invocation, doxology, etc. It could be sung either by the full choir or by a separate section of it. Such a " fifth line " was called an ephymm'um. As subject-matter for these hymns, Ephraem used major Christian truths concerning death, judgment, resurrection, etc., which he exposed in simple and tender language. 15

About the time of Eph.raem, or somewhat later, other hymno­graphers composed Greek hymns more or less along classical lines­anapaestic, Ionic, iambic, hexametric and pentametric, etc., with the anacreontic as a favorite. This represented an attempt by educated Christians to preserve the Greek civilization in the Church. The better known authors include Methodius, Bishop of Olympus (ex. A.D. 3n); Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais in Cyrenaica (A.D. 420); Gregory Nazianzen, Patriarch of Constantinople (A.D. 380-381). Other hymns of the same kind were written in later centuries. So­phronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, (seventh century) wrote at least seven anacreontic hymns, and John Dama.scene-better known for his writings in a different school (the Melodoi}-authored several lengthy compositions in trimeter iambic.

The short prayer-hymns written in poetic verse and inserted after each verse of a psalm were called troparia. As early as the fifth century, they were composed in strophic form and became much longer than their prototypes. These then were sung between the last three, four, five, or six verses of a psalm. Even today we have a similar arrangement in the Byzantine Canonical Office at Vespers

"Sozomen, Hist. eccles., 3, 6 (PG 25, 1223-1224 [Series graeca]) • .. Theodoret says that the hymns of Ephraem were sweet and profitable,

adding much to the brightness of the commemorations of martyrS in the Syrian Church.

and Matins of even the most ordinary Sundays. 18 One of the earliest and most revealing reports on the troparia and their position in the Canonical Hours of the Eastern Church dates from the sixth century : the description of a visit by Abbots John and Sophronius to Nilus, Abbot of Mount Sinai. 17 Arriving at the hour of Sunday Vespers, Abbot Nilus began with the Doxology, Psalm I (Max&pLoc;) and Psalm 140 (K6pi£, h:expoc~oc ), but without singing the custom­ary troparia (xwptc; 't'wv 't'po7tocplwv); then he went on to the prayer "0 gladsome Light" (<l>wc; lAixp6v) and" Deign, 0 Lord, to keep us this evening without sin" (Kix't'ix~(waov, KopLe, ev 't'TI ea7tepix); he concluded the service with Simeon's prayer. After a meal, Matins was recited, part of which consisted in the nine Odes, but again without troparia. Likewise, for Lauds they recited Psalms 148, 149, and 150 but without troparia. If John and Sophronius were not scandalized, they were certainly astonished by these omissions, for they asked Nilus why he did not follow the practice of the" Catholic and Apostolic Church. " Nilus tried to convince them that he did. It is evident, however, that the liturgical Office at Mount Sinai followed, not the general practice of the Eastem Church, but the rule of the fourth-and fifth-century solitaries.

The first authors of troparia in the Byzantine Church to be men­tioned by name are Anthimus the Poet and Timocles the Mono­physite, who had a large following in Constantinople about the middle of the fifth century. 18 None of their compositions has sur­vived. The introduction of the " All-night Vigils" into the Byzan­tine Liturgy is attributed to Anthimus. 19 The only troparia from fifth-century Byzantine hymnography to have come down to us seem to be those of Auxentius, preserved in his Vita. so They are inspired by Hebrew poetry in both form and style. 21

11 At Vespers, cf. K. Nikolsky, Posobie k i11:ucheniu Ustava Bogosluzhenia pravos­lavnoi tserkvy (St. Petersburg, 1907), pp. 197-205, 218-224; for Matins, ibid., pp. 323 f.

17 Cf. I. B. Pitta,, Juris ecclesiastici Graeci historia et monumenta (Paris, 1868), ii. 220, and Christ-Paranikas, Anrhologia graeca carminum christianorum (Leipzig, 1871), pp. xxx-xxxn.

18 Cedrenus, Compendium historiarum, l, 612 (C.S.H.B.). 11 Theodore the Lector, Excerpta ex eccl. hist. (PG 86, 173-175). so Vita S. Auxentii (PG n4, x412). 11 This is pointed out by T. M. Wehofer, "Untersuchungen zum Lied des

Romanos auf die Wiederkunft des Herm, " Sitzungsber. d. Ak. d. Wiss. in Wien,

What is more pertinent to our study is the use to which these troparia were put by Auxentius. From his Vita, we learn that he would teach pilgrims troparia composed of two or three phrases. All would chant them together, sometimes for hours. Then they would sing the " Song of the Three Holy Children, " Auxentius -singing the first hemistich of each troparion and the people responding with the second, and so forth. The Vita also tells us that these troparia consisted in a short prayer, that they were interspersed in his sermons, and that he taught the people to sing them in their proper order (xcx.T<l T&.~tv).

By far the most famous schools of Greek hymnology, however, were that of the original Melodoz'.-Anastasius, Kyriakos, and most of all, Romanos-extending from the sixth to the seventh centuries, and that of the later Melodoi, beginning with the eighth-century iconoclastic controversies and extending over later centuries. Some elements of earlier date were incorporated into the compositions of these two schools.

The original school of Romanos-of which Anatolius, Patriarch of Constantinople was a fifth-century precursor-produced dramatic and animated hymns; those of the later school consisted mainly in the graver, more solemn chant still found in Byzantine service books. 22

The foremost contribution of the first school of Melodoi to Byzan­tine hymnography was the developement of a new poetical form of hymn, the kontakion, 28 consisting in eighteen, thirty, or even more strUcturally similar stanzas, generally less dependent upon scriptures than earlier Byzantine hymns. Each stanza, also called a troparion,

Phil.-Hist. Kl., div, Part s (1907), pp. 11-15. In publishing the hymn, Wehofer accordingly has the form showing the correspondence of stanzas 2, 6, and 7 as .antistrophes to 1, 4, and 5. The third stanza has two verses which are of equal length but are not antistrophic •

.. Most of the hymns of the Romanos school, contained in the various Trapologia, went out of use before the tenth century. A few of these, or parts of them, are still extant in MS. form in the libraries of Moscow, Rome, and Turin.

'"Not to be confused with the lwntakion of later hymnography, a liturgical term still in use to designate the troparion at the end of the sixth Ode in a Canon .and constructed according to a hirmos differing from that of the Ode itself (see below, p. 397).

varied from three to thirteen lines. '' Since the rise of the konrakion is linked to the name of Romanos, we may assume that it was used in the Byzantine Liturgy some time during the first decades of the sixth century, n although the name kontakion first occurs only in ninth century writings. aa

Scholars such as C. Emereau, Baumstark, and P. Maas, as well as H. Grimme and W. Meyer before them, have ably defended the hypothesis of the kontakion's Syrian origin, that is, that its essential features derive from the main forms of fourth- and fifth-century Syriac poetry, viz., Memrd, MddrdU and Soghttl. 21 Byzantine tradition and hagiographers, however, consider Romanos as the inventor of the kontakion; in fact, no kontakia earlier than his time have ever been discovered in Byzantine liturgical manuscripts. Some elements of the kontakion may have originated in Syriac liturgical poetry, but Romanos adapted them to the spirit of Byzantine hymn­ody and introduced them into the Constantinopolitan Liturgy. This is all the more probable since he was of Syrian origin. 28

" Such troparia were composed according to strict rules and were built on the pattern of a model stanza, the hirmos, either specially composed for it or a hirmos already used for another kontakion. Other terms commonly used and associated with the kontakion are the prooemium, which is a shon troparion metrically and melodically independent of the kontakion; the ephymnium, which is a refrain linking the prooemium and kontakion. All the stanzas end with this refrain and with the musical mode, or ikhos. Usually the choir or people would sing the refrain and a soloist would sing the kontakia.

•• The Vita of Romanos, contained in the Menologion of Emperor Basil II (Cod. Vat., 1613). states that he lived during the time of Emperor Anastasius. There were two emperors of that name, Anastasius I (491-518) and Anast.aSius II (713-716); it has now been established that Romanos lived during the days of Anastasius I. Papadopoulos-Kerameus proved this in 1905 from a MS. containing the life of St. Artemius, which mentioned that the hymns of Romanos were sung during the time of Heraclius, i.e., A.D. 610-641. P. Maas also came to the same conclusion from a study of references within the hymns themselves to events of the sixth century (cf. P. Maas," Die Cbronologie der Hymnen des Romanus," in B.Z., 1906, pp. l-44).

"" Cf. E. Mioni, Romano il Melode (Turin, 1937), p. ro. 11 Cf. C. Emereau, Saint Ephrem le Syrien (Paris, 1919),pp. 97 ff.; A. Baumstark,

"Festbrevier u. Kirchenjahr der syrischen Jakobiten," Studien z. Geschichte u. Kultur des Altertums, iii (1910); P. Maas, "Das Kontakion,"' B.Z. (1910), pp. 290 ff.; H. Grimme," Der Strophhenbau in den Gedichten Ephraems des Syrers," Collect. Friburg., ii (Fribourg, 1893); W. Meyer," Anfang u. Ursprung der lat. u. griech. rythm. Dichtung, " Abhandlungen der bayrischen Akademie der Wissen­schaften, philos.-philol. Classe, XVII, 2 (1884), pp. 267-450.

•• Romanos was a Jew, born at Emesa on the Orontes, who became a deacon at Berytus in northern Phoenicia before he went to Constantinople.

The last half of the seventh century marks the beginning of the third period of Byzantine hymnography, the later school of the Melodoi. Ushered in by such giants of hymn-writing as Andrew of Crete, 29 John Damascene, and his foster-brother Cosmas of Jerusa­lem, 30 the period did much to establish the system of hymnody used today in the Byzantine Church. Some of the better-known hymno­graphers of this period are : Joseph of Thessalonica and bis brother, the famous Hegumen Theodore; Theophanes (759-c. 842) and Theodorus (called the" Branded Ones"); St. Methodius, Patriarch of Constantinople tt 846); Joseph of the Studium Ct 883); Metro­pbanes Ct c. 910); the emperors Leo VI (886-912) and Constantine Porpbyrogenetus (913-959); the nun Kasia (or Icasia, mentioned by Gibbon), who probably also wrote the music for the compositions of Byzantius, Georgius, and Cyprianus; and last but not least, John Mauropus, Metropolitan of Euchaita. Also, many important com­positions were written by unknown, unheralded monks at the great monasteries of the Studium in Constantinople and St. Sabbas in Palestine.

The chief contribution of this later school of the Melodoi is the Canon and its introduction into the Orrhros or Morning Office. 81

Basically, the Canon consists of nine Odes or songs, 32 each of which

11 Bom at Damascus, c. A.D. 6oo, Andrew of Crete is credited with the invention of the Canon, the new, complex poetical form for which the period is known. His most famous work is the peintential masterpiece, the " Great Canon " of mid­Lent week. He died as the Bishop of Crete, c. A.D. 740.

'" The compositions of John Damascene and Cosmas of Jerusalem are considered matchless (cf. G. Papadopoulos, l:uµ[joM.l e:l:; -rljv lcnop!av -rijc;; n:ap'7)µtv exxA7)0"!.Gta't\X7jc;; µoucnxtjc;; [Athens, 1890], pp. 154-162). Damacene's Canon for Easter Day, called the " Queen of Canons, " is the most famous.

" The importance of hymnody, especially that of the Canons, in the various services of the Byzantine Church is incalculable. The wealth of material available in Byzantine liturgical books alone is breathtaking. Hymnody, according to Neale, who made a partial study of it, includes about four-fifths of all the material {about 5,000 pages) in the liturgical books of the Byzantine Church. The history of the individual Canons and Odes (hymns) must be dealt with separately-a vast field of research for an inquiring scholar.

aa The second Ode in the Canon is suppressed. Originally, the second Ode was modeled on the canticle" Hear, 0 ye heavens"' (Deut. 32:1-43), but, because of its mournful character, it was used only in Lent. AB a result, later Canons (destined for the ecclesiastical year omside of Lent) were composed without the second One.

is made up of several similar troparia or stanzas. 38 The first tro­

parion of each Ode, called the hirmos, sets the style and regulates the following troparia or stanzas in regard to syllabic measure, the periodic series of accents, the rhythms, etc.; thus, each suceeding troparion of the same Ode contains not only the same number of verses but also the same number of syllables in each verse with the accents on either the same or equivalent syllables. Depending on their position in the Ode, and the position of the Ode in the Canon, other troparia are called by different names-kontakion, ikhos, katabasia, etc. 34 Regardless of their name, they are all troparia.

Some of these troparia were taken from the Divine Office and incorporated as variables into the Divine Liturgy. The original position of the troparia and kontakia, therefore, was not in the Divine Liturgy but in the Divine Office, especially in the highly complex system, the Canon. This is important for ascertaining the dates of the various compositions. If we read in some authors that the troparia, kontakia, etc., are a later addition to the Divine Liturgy, and in others, that these same troparia and kontakia were written by authors dating back to the fifth and sixth centuries, we may begin to doubt the veracity of such sources unless we remember that these hymns, when originally written, were intended for use in the cano­nical hours and only later were incorporated into the Divine Liturgy. What is more, if the composition of a given troparion or kontakion

11 Originally, each Ode consisted of six to nine stanzas (troparia) but after the introduction of a number of additional monosttophic stanzas, only three to each Ode were generally used in the service. All nine Odes were modeled on the pattern of the Nine Scriptural Canticles.

"I.e., the (I) kontakion is merely a ttoparion found at the end of the sixth Ode (but is built upon a hirnws differing from that of the Ode);

(2) ikhos is the stanza following a kontakion at the end of the sixth Ode (struc­turally, it is almost the same as the kontakion ex~-ept for its greater length);

(3) the katabasia is merely the term used for the hirmos that is repeated at the end of the Ode (it gets its name from the fact that two groups of singers descend c-T(l~(vooot] from their seats and sing it together in the center of the choir);

(4) kathisma is a troparion sung while the congregation remains seated; (S) theotokion is the name given to a troparion in honor of the Mother of God

(and follows each Ode of a Canon); this same name is used for the whole ninth Ode of the Canon (because the whole Ode is dedicated to the Blessed Mother);

(6) staurotheotokion is a ttoparion in honor of the Blessed Mother at the cross; (7) hypakoe is a troparion sung after the third Ode of the Canon (originally the

term was used only for the troparion after Psaln:i n8 of the Morning Office).

has been traditionally attributed to the pen of, say, John Dam.ascene or even Gregory Nazianzen, such an affirmation is probably true, although proof has been obscured or even completely lost. The troparia and kontakia were introduced into the Divine Liturgy probably to instruct the faithful and to urge them to imitate the virtues of Christ, his Mother, or the saint whose excellence is described.

These Byzantine hymns, especially those of the later Melodoi school, did as much in molding the dogmatic theology of the Byzan­tine Church as they did in "fixing" its system of hymnody. With their polished language, economy of words, poetic and literary form, some of them are not only literary gems but excellent expressions of religious feeling. The later Melodoi were no mere poets dreaming of impossibly beautiful seas : they were, pre-eminently, theologians expressing dogmatic truth in poetic form. In the Canons, the mood is often exultant and eschatological, but the dogmatic content is superbly expressed. The technique of repeating the same ideas in varied ways tends to produce in the listeners a religious mood intensified by both the solemn ritual and the visual richness of the many icons found in every Byzantine church.

These liturgical chants came to the Slavs from Byzantium. They were brought by the Greek monks who Christianized them. Though the system itself and the traditional Greek patterns were preserved, 35

the Slavs soon began to adapt the music of the Greek Church to their own requirements or composed their own tunes. Church music and hymnody became a prominent feature of Ukrainian and Russian life. Until the revolution of 1917' singing was the medium through which the Ukrainian and Russian peoples learned the cate­chism, Holy Scripture, and mystical theology. Many of these traditional chants, whose words were translated from Greek into Slavonic (the old vernacular of the Slavs), acquired in the translation a dramatic, colorful freshness that is strikingly beautiful .

.. In the Slav Church, the sy11tem is the same as far as the general structure of the Canon is concerned; whether the Slav translators managed to fulfill all the original rules governing the structure of the Ode (syllabic measure, periodic series of accents, rhythm of its component troparia, etc.) is another question.