Church celebrations on the days of great holidays in the Orthodox East. Part 1

With Russian pilgrims in the Holy Land and on Mount Athos. Sketches, notes, observations and impressions with 63 drawings and plans. The Orthodox East - the cradle of Christianity and the torch of Orthodoxy - cannot yet be considered studied with due completeness in its entirety. The divine service of the Orthodox East, which served as a model and original for the practice of our Russian Church, thanks to the always inherent element of living, uninterrupted creative development, and hence the amazing diversity in general and in parts, belongs to those areas of scientific knowledge that have generally received very little attention from representatives of science and even from our pious educated pilgrims, who often traveled to the Holy Land and to the Holy Land. Mount Athos for the purpose of prayer. Meanwhile, hardly anyone will deny that both in life and in literature, requests for this kind of works of human thought exist, and the need for them is vividly recognized by everyone who wants to understand for themselves in its entirety the entire church life of the modern Orthodox East and its extremely curious liturgical practice. Only in the light of this kind of writings will pious people begin to treat our modern worship more consciously, learn to give it its proper value and receive that high aesthetic pleasure that is inherent in it by nature. Our modern worship on the days of great holidays and especially during exceptional weeks of the church year, such as Holy Week, with all its deep interest, due to the abundance of the dramatic element in rituals and the high poetic edification of church hymns, being divorced from those holy places where the events remembered by the Church took place, cannot, however, differ in such a force of impression on those praying, as divine services or church celebrations on the same days at the very places of events, in view of the holy relics and venerable places glorified by the Church. On the tops of the biblical majestic mountains, in the depths of mysterious caves significant in the history of our house-building, on the banks of sacred rivers and lakes, under the quiet rustling of the foliage of the centuries-old Dubrava, etc., our wonderful poetic church chants receive their very clear and definite meaning. Here, the dead book word is associated with a natural need for energetic, living movement, and a complex religious ceremony, in the form of a church litany, is a necessary addition to the worship performed at the site of the glorified event. Hence, it is quite understandable in modern worship in the Orthodox East on the days of great holidays, completely unknown in our practice, complex rituals and litanies and completely new church chants, along with chants that are well known from our liturgical books. In this harmonious combination of old and new, inspired poetic chant in a church service book with a natural living movement to the glorified place, with the carrying out of holy relics during the service for worship or even showing off holy relics to the praying people, in order to make a deeper impression, it is not easy for an educated person to understand, but our commoner pilgrim will undoubtedly be confused, will miss a lot from attention and, despite all his sincere desire, he will not understand much of what is happening before his eyes. These essays and notes therefore have in mind mainly our Russian pilgrims from the people, in order, as far as possible, to understand for them all the features of modern worship on the days of great holidays, both in holy places in Palestine and in St. Mount Athos. In view of the fact that, according to the custom accepted in the East since ancient times, solemn services on holidays are performed by the patriarch and his numerous clergy at the sites of the events themselves, and therefore, on the part of our pilgrims to the Holy Land, who want to see them with their own eyes, require massive and sometimes distant movements throughout Palestine, in these essays we show them how these worship caravans are compiled for traveling on holidays, what kind of terrain they encounter on the way, historically important, which of our pilgrims take away pleasant impressions from these journeys and which sometimes undergo hardships and hardships, etc. In a word, our essays and notes are in some way a Companion or Guide for Orthodox Russian pilgrims visiting the venerable places of the Holy Land on the days of the great feasts of the Lord, the Mother of God and especially revered saints in the East and the Russian people. Since divine services at the holy, venerable places of the Orthodox East are performed in Greek and with features that significantly distinguish them from our modern divine services, not only on special days, but also on ordinary ones, then for the understanding of modern Eastern divine services by our pilgrims, in our essays we note all the most important features of the morning and evening divine services on Sundays and in the rites of the liturgies performed by the patriarch or bishops and ordinary priests. Those that have survived so far on St. Mount Athos, not only in name, but also in practice, all-night vigils, continuing continuously throughout the night, from evening to morning, for up to 12 hours or more in a row, make it necessary to present the features of this rite, now forgotten throughout the entire Orthodox East, including the monastery of St. Savva the Sanctified, in which this rite was developed and widely practiced in ancient times, and has changed beyond recognition and in our modern practice. With the help of these essays and notes, it is now possible to significantly revive the lessons on liturgics for the teacher of this subject in a theological seminary, the lessons of sacred history and manuals for the study of church charter for the teacher of these subjects in theological schools, and, finally, for the law teacher in our gymnasiums, since they provide very interesting liturgical, historical, topographical, everyday information, etc. These essays are, finally, very useful material for non-liturgical public readings. When compiling the essays and notes offered to readers, in addition to direct personal observation, the author took into account all pilgrimage literature, both ancient and modern, Russian and foreign. We can safely say that there is no special literature within the limits of the tasks and scope outlined by the author, and such essays as arch. Leonida (Kavelin): “Lent in St. city of Jerusalem" M. 1864, P-ni (Archimandrite Antonin Kapustin) "Easter in Jerusalem" 1867 (Kherson. Eparch. Ved. 1867, No. 12), "Feast of the Nativity of Christ in Bethlehem" (Church Chronicle. 1866, No. 9 and No. 10), "January 6 on the Jordan" (Kherson. Diocese. Ved. 1867, No. 5), “Blessing of Water in the Church of the Resurrection” (Kherson. Diocese. Ved. 1869, No. 5), “Patriarchal service in Jerusalem” (Church. Let. 1867, No. 30), Holy Sepulcher “Οί σύγχρονοι τελεται της έχκλησίας 'Ιεροσολύμων" (Νέα Σιών, τ. α', 1904 ετ. σελ. 87–96, 164–168, 274–282, 385–393) and notes in the Greek newspapers 'Αρμονία, Αμάλθεια and Νεολόγος are used by the author with deep gratitude and full attention. The author, an eyewitness to most of the church celebrations he described on the days of the great holidays, was lucky enough to supplement his observations with positive documentary data, borrowed by him from rare phylladies or brochures, published mostly in patriarchal printing houses and not particularly widely distributed among the public. In this case, the following brochures and books provided him with an indispensable service: 1) γεννήσεως ακολουθιών. Έν 'Ιεροσολύμοις 1886 ετ. 2) Θεοτόκον καί αειπάρθενου Μαρίας. Έν Ιεροσολύμοις 1885 ετ. 3) ?? θρόνω τών Ιεροσολύμων. Έν 'Ιεροσολύμοις 1885 ετ. 4) Διά- ταξις περί του αγίου μύρου. Έν Κωνσταντινουπόλει 1890 ετ. 5) άόελφοθέου καί πρώτου ιεράρχου τώ> 'Ιεροσολύμων. Έν Ιεροσολύμοις 1861 ετ. 6) Ή θεία λειτουργία του άγίου ένδοξου αποστόλου Ιακώβου τοϋ άόελφοθέου1 και πρώτου ιεράρχου τών 'Ιεροσολύμων, έκδοθεΤσα μετά διατάξεως και σημειώσεων ύπο Διονυσίου Λάτα, αρχιεπισκόπου Ζακύνθου. Έν Ζακύνθω 1886 ετ. η) '0 Σιωνί- της ύμνοδός. Έν 'Ιεροσολύμοις 1883 ετ. 8) 'Ιερατικόν, έκ- δοθέν εις χρήσιν τών ιερέων έγκρίσει τής τοδ Χρίστου Με- -γάλης Εκκλησίας. Έν Κωνσταντινουπόλει 1895 ετ. and 9) Τυπικόν κατά τήν τάςιν τής τοϋ Χρίστου Μεγάλης Εκκλησίας. Έν Κωνσταντινουπόλει 1888 ετ. In cases where the indicated sources and manuals did not provide an answer to the questions of interest to the author, and when the described church celebrations were not or even could not for any reason be the subject of his personal direct observations, the author, for the sake of completeness of the essays and liveliness of the story, with the inclusion of everyday genre paintings, turned to the official reports of the archive of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society and entered into correspondence with persons, on duty or on special sympathies to those who have long lived in the Orthodox East and had the opportunity on the spot to thoroughly study the features of the festive celebrations and the participation in them of both our pilgrims and the native Christians. In this regard, the duty of justice requires us to express here deep gratitude to our obligatory correspondents: the head of the Spiritual Mission in Jerusalem, Archimandrite Leonid, the late hieromonk of the Russian Panteleimon Monastery on Athos O. Min (a great expert on modern worship on Mount Athos), inspector of the Galilean schools of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society P.I. Ryazhsky and manager of the Russian farmsteads of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society in Jerusalem N. G. Mikhailov. The last two correspondents kindly provided us with several new photographs of the sights of Palestine and pictures from the life of our pilgrims. Thanks to these individuals and the very rich collection of photographs existing in the library of the Palestine Society, we were able to so abundantly illustrate our real work. Pro domo sua. Starting to publish these essays and notes about church celebrations on the days of great holidays in the Orthodox East and standing already at the turn of the second quarter of his career and thirty years of literary activity, the author quite often was transported in thought to the time of his carefree early youth, when the first germs of love and deep interest in Orthodox worship and in visiting its holy places by the now elderly were firmly planted in his soul parents. From his father, the author learned for the first time to sing intelligently to God in church (Psalm 47:8) and to love the splendor and beauty of church services, and under the watchful eye of his mother, he made his first out-of-school pilgrimage (on the ninth Friday near Tsaritsyn, Saratov province) and prayed with her for almost four summer months at the Life-Giving Sepulcher of the Lord in 1898. The rare happiness that fell to his lot, by the will of the all-good Providence, to see his father, an eighty-year old man, and his mother, seventy-six years old, still alive, prompts the author to think, in an abundance of grateful feelings for everything received from the creators of his existence, to devote his real modest work to them, as a weak sign of filial ardent love and boundless devotion. You might be interested in: