The liturgical forms and traditions developed in Hagia Sophia, known as the "Great Church," exercised a decisive influence on the development of the liturgy throughout the Christian East. Although Hagia Sophia served as the cathedral of the "ecumenical" patriarch, who exercised primacy in the Orthodox world, there was no deliberate or administrative effort to impose its liturgical practices as the only acceptable ones. However, the prestige of the imperial capital as a political, religious and intellectual center, and of the "Great Church" itself, was sufficient to assure its overwhelming influence.
The baptismal rite in Byzantium remained essentially the same from the earliest centuries of Christianity. Performed through triple full immersion, in the name of the Holy Trinity, it represents the mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ in which the new Christian is participating. It is immediately followed by anointment with "holy chrism" (myron), which corresponds to the Western confirmation. A priest normally performs this "chrismation," although the chrism had to be blessed by a bishop. Since baptism and confirmation are bestowed simultaneously, newly baptized children are immediately admitted to eucharistic communion.
While the baptismal rite preserves its relatively primitive forms, in the eucharistic liturgy, which involves the participation of numerous clergy, of big crowds of people, and at Hagia Sophia of the imperial court, ceremonial embellishments and symbolic accretions are much more numerous. The central part of the mystery, the eucharistic liturgy, however, largely preserves the wording and the character of a third century Christian Eucharist. The short liturgy developed by St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) has become the most usual eucharistic form in the Byzantine church. On ten specific festal occasions a much longer and elaborate eucharistic liturgy, edited by St. Basil the Great of Caesarea (d. 379) was also in use.
Eucharistic liturgy has always been a very solemn and festal celebration. Except in monasteries they celebrate it only on Sundays and feast days. No practice of low or private Masses ever developed. During Lent, except on Saturdays and Sundays, the celebration of Eucharist is forbidden and replaced by a vesperal rite of Communion with reserved sacrament, known as the Liturgy of the Presanctified.
The Byzantines use ordinary leavened bread in the Eucharist and strongly criticize the Latin and Armenian practice of using unleavened bread (azyes). They refer to the literal meaning of the New Testament accounts of the Last Supper, where the word artos (leavened bread) is used. Another point of contention with the Latins is the consecratory invocation of the Holy Spirit upon bread and wine (epiclesis). In the Byzantine and other Eastern eucharistic liturgies, the epiclesis follows the words of institution ("This is my body...," "This is my blood...") and crowns the consecratory prayer, whereas in the medieval Roman rite it is absent. Thus, in the Latin church the words of institution alone are considered as the consecratory formula. Of course controversies on the moment of consecration occur often at encounters between Latin and Greek churchmen.
There is neither a clear distinction between sacraments and sacramentals nor a formal and definitive number of sacraments. Thus a list might include any in a list, including: baptism, Eucharist, chrismation, orders, monastic tonsure, burial, marriage, anointing of the sick, penance, the blessing of water on Epiphany day.
The practices of large city churches shaped the overall liturgical ordo of the Byzantine church on one hand (the "cathedral rite" so to speak), and on the other hand by the monasteries. Overall, the cathedral ordo gave little time to scriptural readings and psalmody, but encourages hymnography and developed the "dramatic" character of the liturgical ceremony. Designed for large audiences, it encourages devices to attract the attention of mass congregations. They conceive the liturgy as a symbolic reflection on earth of unchangeable divine realities.
The monastic community practices a system of worship divided into autonomous units and distributed throughout the day and night: vespers, compline (apodeinon), midnight prayer (mesonyktikon), matins (orthros), and the canonical hours (first, third sixth, and ninth). Ideally, monks pray without casing: at the Constantinopolitan monastery of the "Non-Sleepers," the chanting of the Divine Office never stops, with monks taking shifts in the choir. Monastic worship, as distinct from the cathedra rite, originally was based on psalmody and Scripture readings. Though in the last few centuries the monks have embraced, and enriched, hymnography.
A full integration of the secular and monastic liturgies is developing at Jerusalem but will not become popular in the Empire until the end of the Latin occupatio of Constantinople (1204-1261). The new liturgical synthesis includes much of the hymnography elaborately combined - in each liturgical unit, and in each of the daily, weekly and yearly cycles - with the monastic ordo, accepting monastic spirituality as the general liturgical pattern.
The Christian liturgical year has traditionally been composed of cycles - daily, weekly and yearly - that was largely borrowed from the Jewish tradition and established connections between human life and the mysteries of the Christian faith. In Byzantium all these cycles remain centered upon the resurrection of Christ, which since the first days of Christianity has been celebrated on the day after the Jewish Sabbath - that is, Sunday, the focus of the weekly cycle - and on Easter, the Christian Passover (Greek: Pascha). After some debate the First Council of Nicea fixed the date of Easter (325) on the Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox.
The centrality of the Resurrection in the liturgy reflects a paschal understanding of the Christian faith, as a "passing over" from death to life, from the "old Adam" to the "new Adam." This passage occurs because Christ himself passed from death to life - the liturgy is commemorating this event, which happened in the past - and because each mortal person freely appropriates this divine gift, joining the New Israel on the way to the promised land, following the Messiah. This human aspect of the paschal mystery always remains incomplete, because human ascetical efforts are always imperfect, but it is always based on a vision of the victory already won by Christ and an anticipation of the kingdom that is to come both as triumph and as judgment.
In each of its individual units and its cycles, the Byzantine liturgy uses not only theological concepts to formulate the mystery but also the means that in a sense are more adequate to the purpose: poetry, music, pictures and colors. Also, each day and night, and each changing season, serves as occasions for - and as pointers at - the passage involving God and man, life and death, and joy and sorrow.
They structure the daily cycle around an unchangeable pattern made up of scriptural texts, primarily the Psalter. Monastic in character and style, they embellish this basic structure with hymnography that changes according to the days and seasons. The service of vespers, which begins the liturgical day, is composed on Old Testament texts evoking the "old creation," still in need of salvation (Psalm 104) and the helplessness of "fallen" humanity (Psalms 140, 141, 129, 116). However, it also includes an ancient hymn exalting light (Ph s hilaron) and ended with the Canticle of Simeon (Luke 2:29 - 32), proclaiming the coming of the messianic age. Matin also alternates the themes of necessary repentance and hope. Celebrated before daybreak, it is a solemn meeting of darkness with sunlight, used as a symbol of the coming of Christ. Also based on Psalms, matins included other pieces of Old Testament poetry, such as the paschal canticles of Moses (Exod. 15:1-18; Deut. 32:1-43) and of the Three Youths in Babylon (Dan. 3:26-56, 66-88), culminating in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), the benedictus (Luke 1:68-79), the Psalms of lauds (148, 149, 150), and, at daybreak, the doxology.
The feast of Easter is preceded by Holy Week and six weeks of Lent. The hymns proper to this period are contained in a special liturgical book, the triodion. Easter is followed by fifty days of celebration, the period between Easter and Pentecost. After Pentecost, a cycle of eight weeks repeats itself until the beginning of Lent the following year. The hymns of each week uses a particular musical mode (echos).
Thus, every day of the year is marked by liturgical characteristics or forms connected with the central celebration of Easter. However, in addition to and in combnation with these forms, there are proper offices for each day of the calendar eyar, that is, feasts celebrating events in the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary, the commemoration of individual saints or of other events of Christian signifiance.
Of all the Christian medieval traditions, that of the Byzantine's is the richest in hymnographic legacy. Poetically and theologically the Byzantine hymns constitute an immense literary corpus that often serves as an effective substitute for both school and pulpit. The Byzantine neumes, or musical signs, are a complete and complex musical language (which has not been deciphered today). Byzantine hymnoraphers combined theological, poetic and musical skills in the composition of these hymns. These hymns are similar to - though richer and more complex - Western Gregorian chant.
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Last modified: Mon Dec 14, 1998