LITURGICAL BOOKS
LITURGICAL BOOKS. To celebrate the liturgy (q.v.) of the Orthodox Church requires a library of liturgical books. Orthodoxy has no equivalent to the Roman Catholic missal or the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. The library begins with the books of Holy Scripture (q.v.), which are not, except in recent centuries, gathered in one volume, but are instead divided according to their function in the Church’s worship. The Evangelion, Gospel Book, rests on the altar. In the cleros, or cantor’s area, are kept the Apostolos, the other New Testament books (save for Revelation, never read at worship), and the Psalterion (psalter). Texts from the Old Testament, the paroimiai-selections chosen for particular feasts-are printed in the Menaia and the books of the Easter cycle, i.e., the Triodion and Pentecostarion.
It may be easiest, in listing the other specifically liturgical books, to begin with the divisions of Orthodox worship: the daily, weekly, monthly, and paschal cycles. The Book of the Hours (Horologion, in Church Slavic Chasoslov) provides the outline and fixed or unchanging parts of the daily offices: Midnight prayer (mesonyktikon), Matins (orthros), first, third, sixth, ninth hours and the Typika, Vespers (hes-perinos), and Compline (apodeipnon). The Book of Eight Tones (Octoechos [q.v.]) contains the hymns appointed for each day of the week according to an eight-week cycle of melodies, e.g., Monday of the First Tone, Thursday of the Seventh, etc. The twelve Books of the Months (Menaia) cover each day of the twelve months with the hymns appointed for the saints celebrated that day, or for the different fixed feasts (q.v.) of the year, e.g., Christmas (always on 25 December), Theophany, etc. Two special books are used, in addition to those above, for the paschal cycle, whose dates are not fixed due to Easter’s dependence on the lunar calendar. These are the Book of the Three Odes (Triodion), used for the three Sundays prior to Lent (q.v.) through Saturday of Holy Week, and the Pentecostarion for the period from Easter Sunday through the Sunday following Pentecost.
We may also include at this point the twelve volumes (for each month of the year) of the Synaxarion, or collection of saints’ (q.v.) lives, together with the additional two volumes of hagiography (q.v.) for the days of the paschal cycle. Readings from the Lives are appointed for daily Matins. Governing all these books, the guide to their assembly for a particular service, is the Typicon. In the Orthodox Church, two typica are presently in use, the older typicon of Mar Sabba (also called the Jerusalem typicon) which is used in the Slav Churches, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and Mt. Athos (qq.v.), and the Typicon of the Great Church, i.e., Constantinople (q.v.), used by the Greek, Arabic, and Romanian Churches.
The Eucharist (q.v.) and the other sacraments have their own books. The first is traditionally printed in several different books, each appropriate to a different function or rank: the Archieratikon, or bishop’s missal, the Ieratikon (Slav. Sluzhebnik) for the priest, the Diakonikon for the deacon, and the Horologion for the reader or cantor. The other sacraments (q.v.), together with particular services of blessing, are contained in the Great Euchologion (Slavic Trebnik, or Book of Needs). Even such a library is not complete. New services, such as those composed for newly canonized saints, or for saints newly given a service, or new compositions such as variations on the Acathistus Hymn (new Akafisti being especially popular among the Russians), are continuously being added. Thus, while an absolutely complete library of Orthodox liturgical books is theoretically possible, it is not likely that such a collection exists in any one place.