Из истории песнопения, поучения и обряда, как основных элементов христианского богослужения

To survey the mass of liturgical forms, now known in the form of complete, integral church services, to get acquainted with their primitive appearance, to trace further complexity and development - this is the task and the main questions in the history of Christian worship. But the very concept of history necessarily implies the assumption of worship as something fluid, changing, transitional. This, of course, begs the question about the common constant principle underlying the various church services and observances, about the constant content that unites and connects these diverse, multi-temporal forms of cult, giving them unity and stability. Finding such a beginning is not difficult. In whatever era history depicts the fate and composition of worship, it everywhere notices three main elements that constituted and still constitute its content: it has never been without prayer, the expression of which was the word and singing, without preaching or teaching, and, finally, without ritual or liturgical action, in the strict sense of the word. These three constituent elements of the cult correspond to the lyrical, didactic and dramatic elements in the field of poetry and find their corresponding expression in singing, verbal speech and action, as lyricism, didacticism and drama. The relative position of these elements within the cult, or parts of the ritual, was not always the same: at one time one side prevailed, at another - the other, and, generally speaking, they were never balanced quantitatively. But, despite this, they all constituted the necessary content of the divine service, a kind of conditio sine qua non of its existence. Due to the particularly close relationship to the prayerful state of man, as a guide and exponent of his subjective life, the lyrical part at all times was deeply included in the area of ​​worship and in the practice of the early Christian Church constituted the most outstanding side. The next place was occupied by the sermon, in modern terms, or διδαχή (teaching), ὁμιλία (conversation) and κατήχησις, according to the terminology of the ancient Church; but the religious and edifying element was not then introduced into the narrow framework of the preaching word and did not occupy a strictly defined position in the composition of the service. “When you come together,” says the Apostle Paul about the prayer meetings of Corinthian Christians, “let each of you have a psalm (i.e., a spiritual song) and a teaching (i.e., a word of instruction) with which he can address the assembly (ψαλμὸν ἔχει, διδαχήν ἔχει).” The predominance of these two elements in the composition of ancient Christian worship gave it that characteristic feature that is expressed in the dominance of the word over the action and the internal spiritual principle over the external ritual. As a result, the ritual part, by which we mean the symbolic actions of the cult, with the exception of the simplest ones, such as various types of prayer signs: kneeling, laying on of hands (blessing), the act of communion - this part occupied a secondary place in it and at first had the significance of the external setting of prayer. Already from this initial basis it developed to the level of a later ritual with broad symbolism; for example: the need for means of lighting leads to the current use of lamps and candles, the removal of the Gospel is transformed into a small entrance, the transfer of gifts to the throne - into a great one. Let us now trace the fate and historical significance of each of these three basic elements of worship. Let's start with the lyrical. Chapter I. Hymns in the Early Christian Church Hymns in the early Christian Church. The connection between ancient Christian hymnography and the liturgical poetry of Judaism. The most ancient chants of an apocryphal nature. Authentic works of early Christian hymnography and the most ancient hymns. Development of heretical hymnography and establishment of supervision over the hymnographic activities of private individuals. The most ancient Christian chants that received liturgical use: morning and evening hymns and the song of Simeon the God-Receiver. Two directions in ancient Christian hymnography. The history of church hymns, or Christian hymnology, begins from the very first pages of the history of the Christian Church. The less developed the cult, the more room a person’s personal feeling finds in it, the brighter the subjective mood appears in it, and this is best expressed in a song. In home life Christians sang psalms; in the church, that is, in general meetings, they said prayers and sang hymns, singing either alternately, antiphonally, or all together, in choir. The Jewish Christians imitated the practice of the synagogue and the singing of the temple; Converted pagans sang hymns and songs in honor of Christ, the martyrs, and thus composed spiritual songs modeled on their religious poetry. From these two sources Christian chants were formed. To prove this position, it would be unnecessary to refer to the most ancient biblical evidence and cite those passages from the New Testament that contain indications of singing as one of the essential aspects of the early Christian prayer meetings. There are so many of these instructions, starting with the classic expression of the Gospel about Christ and the apostles after the Last Supper: “having sung,” that it is enough to take only the more typical and outstanding ones. “If any of you is happy, let him sing,” - this is the apostle’s remark regarding the use of singing in ordinary everyday circumstances. And here is another, broader one, embracing the main types of church lyrics: “Be filled with the Spirit, speaking in psalms, songs and spiritual songs, singing in grace in your hearts to the Lord.” This passage, in relation to early Christian hymnography, can be called classical, and therefore from the earliest times it attracted the attention of liturgists and interpreters. If the words: psalm, singing and spiritual song are not synonymous expressions without a definite meaning, but make a real difference in the general concept of song, then a more suitable explanation of this verse will be the following, 49 accepted by a large number of interpreters. “In psalms” (ἐν ψαλμαῖς) means that kind of chant that is contained in the Old Testament Psalter; “in singing” (ὕμνοις) refers to all other songs and praises borrowed from biblical books; “in spiritual songs” (ἐν ᾠδαῖς πνευματικαῖς) are works of church lyrics compiled by Christians themselves, and not borrowed from the Old Testament scriptures. This last type of chant, which refers to the original works of Christian lyric poetry, probably included the hymn, or carmen, which Christians, according to the report of Pliny of Bithynia to the Emperor Trajan, sang during their nightly meetings, glorifying Christ as God in it. It is not only probable, but certainly, that the hymns which, according to Tertullian, were freely improvised by participants in agape, or love suppers, during common prayers, belonged to the same category. Justin Martyr also mentions them when he says that believers serve Christ by sending Him διὰ λόγου πόμπας καὶ ὕμνους. There is no doubt that early Christian hymnography was of a mixed nature and borrowed many liturgical and hymn formulas from the liturgical practice of Judaism and from the works of Jewish poetry. We are not talking about the Psalms of David, which at all times had such extensive liturgical use, and in the ancient Church were the overwhelming element of hymn; but there is a whole series of short formulas, sanctified by long liturgical use and associated with the folk and synagogue practice of Judaism, for example: amen, alleluia, hosanna. Along with these brief formulas, prayer exclamations of their own Christian origin appeared and came into use, which later became part of extensive church songs, although retaining their former aphoristic form. These are the small and great doxologies, the appeal: “Lord, have mercy,” and others. Finally, for the study of the most ancient examples of church lyrics, the Apocalypse serves as an important source. This entire book is a sublime, religious-historical drama, and its main tone, as well as possible, corresponds to the bloody struggle that was then playing out between Christianity and paganism, and in which, according to the image of the seer, the heavenly world in the person of its representatives took part. This motif of the Apocalypse gives wide scope to the development of lyrical content and marks it, together with the psalms and prophecies, with the spirit of sublime religious poetry. In terms of hymnography, this monument represents a remarkable wealth of lyric forms; we find here solemn exclamations and doxologies, for example: “holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who is and is and who is to come” (Rev. 4:8), “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever and ever” (Rev. 5:13); those gathered around the throne of the Lamb cry out with a great voice: “Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev.7:10). In addition to brief hymn formulas, we also find here examples of entire solemn chants. Such, for example, is the new song that the twenty-four elders sang before the Lamb (Rev. 5:9-10). But those who defeated the apocalyptic beast are on the crystal sea, with harps in their hands, singing the song of Moses, the servant of God, to their sounds. The title of this song and the musical setting of this solemn scene show that the image of the biblical Old Testament lyric was presented to the writer, and its motive remains strictly adhered to, because this song addresses God Almighty and is imbued with the spirit of Jewish poetry: “Great and wonderful are Your works, O Lord God Almighty! righteous and true are Your ways, King of saints! Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify Your name? for You alone are holy. All nations will come and worship before You, for Your judgments have been revealed” (Rev. 15:3-4). It is known from the Gospel that after the Last Supper, the Savior and his disciples went to the Mount of Olives. “And having sung (ὑμνήσαντες),” says Mark and Matthew, “she went out into the Mount of Olives” (Mark 14:26, Matthew 26:30). The ancient Christians were extremely partial to the question of the content of this notorious hymn and tried to reproduce it in the form of a special song composed by Christ for this occasion. But this, of course, was a vain attempt, which could not be crowned with success because no reliable information remained before them about the content of the post-Easter song, and then the very assumption about some special hymn of Christ belongs to the unfounded guesses of the school. The subject of the singing of Christ with the apostles were probably those hallelujah psalms, part of which was pronounced during the Easter supper, and the other part was sung after it. However, there were sects that considered this hymn famous and gave it in various versions. This is the form in which this hymn is conveyed in the acts of the 7th Ecumenical Council in the words of one of the apostles: “Shortly before His betrayal into the hands of the lawless Jews, slaves of the wicked serpent, Christ gathered us and said: “Before I am betrayed, let us sing a song to the Father and move on.” He placed us in a circle around Him, forcing us to hold hands, and Himself, standing in the middle, said: “Amen” - this word will be your answer to My words (ἀμνὴν ὑπακούετε μοι)” and then began singing a hymn with the following words: “Glory to Thee, Father,” and all of us, gathered around, answered: “Amen”; “Glory to You, Word and Grace” - “Amen”; “Glory to Thee, Spirit” - “Amen”; “Glory to Thee, Holy One, glory to Thee,” - “Amen”; “We praise You, Father, and give thanks,” “Amen”; “Giving thanks to You, I say: I want to be saved and I want to save” - “Amen”; “I want to be resolved and resolved,” “Amen”; “I hunger and want to be food for others,” “Amen.” We interrupt at this point the presentation of this pseudo-Christian hymn, supposedly sung after the Last Supper. Its origin is apocryphal, and long before the 2nd Council of Nicaea, Blessed Augustine knew about its use in the Priscillian sect and cited its text, however, in a slightly different form than it is given in the acts of the 7th Ecumenical Council. This hymn is significant for us both in its content, which closely borders on the works of Gnostic lyric poetry, and even more because it gives indications of the method used in the ancient Church for performing church hymns in the assembly of believers. This is the so-called hypophonic method, which consisted in the fact that the elected singer or sometimes the head of the meeting pronounced the hymn in parts, in sections or verses, and those present responded with some short refrain or formula, repeating it with each verse. This in ancient church language was called: ὑπακούειν, ὑποφωνεῖν. This is how hymns were performed in the classical theater, divided between the luminary and the choir; this was the case in the religious meetings of the Essenes; This is how it was, finally, in Christian assemblies. To further clarify the matter, I will cite Eusebius’ review of the Essenes, where he describes the order of religious meetings of the therapists, in the words of Philo of Alexandria: “They indulge in both contemplative life and the singing of songs and hymns composed in various meters.” Talking about their meetings for prayer, he says the following: “Then one of them (from those gathered) stands up (ὁ ἀναστάς) and sings a song (ὕμνον) to God, either a new one, composed by him, or some previously composed, ancient one. After him, the others do the same in order and gracefully, amid the general attention of the listeners and silence, interrupted only when it is necessary to sing the final words (ἀκροτελεύτια) and choruses (ἐφύμνια). Then everyone raises their voices: men and wives” 50. The famous work of Methodius of Patara was written in this vein: “The Feast of the Virgins,” which in its content is an imitation of Plato’s “Feast.” This work presents the praise of virginity in a brilliant dramatic picture. In the luxurious garden of Arete, or virtue, watered by a spring of living water, ten virgins conduct a conversation on the merits of virgin life, and alternately pronounce enthusiastic speeches in praise of virginity. Speeches follow one after another in orderly order and are interrupted by short response exclamations or refrains. Finally, they gather in a circle, and one of the maidens, Thekla, standing in the middle of the choir, pronounces a psalm (ψαλμόν), or a long song consisting of 24 stanzas, the stanzas of which are arranged in alphabetical order and are each accompanied by one common refrain. This refrain is called by Methodius ὑπακοή and is pronounced each time by a whole choir of virgins. Here is the chorus: “For You I keep myself pure and, holding a burning lamp, I go out to meet You, the Bridegroom.” Moving from these works of a mixed apocryphal nature to the genuine works of early Christian hymnography, we must first of all notice that their number is very limited, and history has preserved to us only a few names of hymns from this ancient era. To explain this fact, several considerations can be given, indicated by the conditions of that time. It is difficult to imagine that in an era when the divine service was just being put together, and only the main and essential parts were precisely formulated, when it was expressed as a free elevation of the prayerful spirit to heaven, that at that time hymns and chants for one or another part of the divine service were written down and, so to speak, sanctioned. The cult in statu nascenti could not have such stability. And generally speaking, the number of hymns of the ancient Christian period could not be significant, especially in comparison with the range of liturgical songs of later times, when the liturgical service itself developed and took on a stable form. It is known that the first Christians especially used the psalms of David, which for the first time replaced independent works of church lyrics, and the inspiration of the first Christians found food and satisfaction in other forms of creativity, such as visions, prophecies and revelations. In addition to the canon of the Eucharist, which was pronounced in words of prayers expressed independently, in addition to the prayers and litanies that took place in other services, the most ancient news about the service presents us with psalms and biblical songs, together with readings from the Old and New Testaments, as the predominant side of the service, and the songs of Christian works adjoin them as an additional part, and from them they take their content. Further, we have every right to assume that from this poor area of ​​lyric poetry many works perished without a trace for us, and if they survived, they were included in later prayers and successions under the names of various church writers, and more often in the works of anonymous people. So, for example, a whole collection of such archaic hymns in the work of Justin Martyr: Ψάλτης has not reached us, and some of them were destroyed by pagans and heretics and replaced by new ones. They were gradually withdrawn from use due to their lack of dogmatic certainty and because they did not fit the conditions and structure of the later liturgical order. Finally, the very method of origin of the early Christian chants was not conducive to their recording, and at the same time to their preservation. They did not come from persons vested with the authority to do so; they did not undergo, as we say today, censorship, but were a matter of personal inspiration and the free expression of the religious feelings of the first believers. They were composed not for liturgical purposes, but under the influence of free inspiration. Just as everyone who possessed the gift of edification and felt the power of the calling had the right to preach then, so composing spiritual songs was not taken away from anyone. Therefore, in many cases it was impossible to determine the name of the author. Who was their compiler is a question as inapplicable and unhistorical in relation to many of them as the question about the compiler of this or that folk song, this or that poetic legend. We know that the martyrs, going to suffer, sang hymns to the glory of God and with prayer on their lips died for Christ; We know that during love meals many such improvised songs came from the lips of those present; but not one of them has reached us with obvious signs of its origin, not one of them has been preserved with the name of its author, and from the most ancient experiments of this kind only those hymns have come down that took a certain place in the composition of the day's services and were timed to coincide with morning and evening meetings for prayer. But, however, even from the few remaining monuments of early Christian lyric poetry, it will be possible to form an approximate idea of ​​its character and the wide application it was destined to receive in church practice. Let us list the works of more famous church writers from this ancient period of its history. History has preserved only fragmentary information about the activities of some of them, but from some others we also have samples of their works. Among these latter, the first place should belong to Clement of Alexandria, with whose name the song in honor of the Savior Christ “Ὓμνος τοῦ Σωτῆρος Χριστοῦ” is known, probably composed by him around the year 190. He concludes his essay “Παιδαγωγός” (Mentor) with the following words: “Since the Mentor (by Whom is meant Christ) brought us into the church (εἰς τὴν εκκλησίαν ἡμᾶς καταστήσας), having offered us his teaching and instructive word, it will be fitting for us to pay Him a tribute of just gratitude with a grateful song.” These words are followed by a hymn. It is presented in ancient Greek poetic form, in the style of the so-called Orphic songs, and is divided into several stanzas containing a whole series of images and attitudes towards Christ. This hymn has been published many times, both in the original and in numerous translations or, better said, interlinear transcriptions. Even if the latter do not satisfy the requirements of elegant speech and modern language, and perhaps even taste, they should still be given preference over free variations on the theme of Clement’s Hymn, in which there can be no talk of the worldview and spirit of this original monument of ancient Christian lyricism. The best translation of this hymn will be its commentary, and presented in the form of an interlinear transcription it leaves the impression of such an original construction and such original ideas to which neither our ear nor our usual way of understanding is accustomed. However, I will try to convey it as close to the original as possible. The hymn consists mostly of appeals to Christ in the form of proclamations, and the exclamatory form in the form of the vocative case predominates in it. Bridle of unbroken foals (tamer of untrained horses), The wing of birds flying along straight paths, Reliable feeding of children (νηπίων, but others read: νηῶν - ships), Gather Your innocent children To glorify Sviatoslav and not falsely (sincerely) sing Through the kindly lips of You, the leader of the children, Christ! King of saints, omnipotent Word of the highest Father, The leader of wisdom, the unchanging support of the suffering, Mortal Savior Jesus, Shepherd, Plowman, Helm, Bridle, The heavenly wing of the all-holy flock, Catcher of mortals being saved From the sea of wickedness, the immaculate fish, Catching from the enemy wave for a blissful (sweet) life! Walk, Shepherd, before the verbal sheep! Go, Holy One, King of innocent children! The feet of Christ are the way to heaven. Eternal Word, endless age, Unflickering light, Source of mercy, Rule of virtue, holy life God's singers, Christ Jesus! Milk from heaven, from sweet breasts Virgin of grace, Thy wisdom, effluent, We, small children, with tender lips Breastfed by the spiritual mother, Filled with moist breath, Pure praises, sincere hymns To King Christ as a holy reward We sing the teachings for life, We simply sing the Youth of the Sovereign. We, the choir of the world, children of Christ, Wise people, let us sing together to the God of peace! In the original, this hymn is written rhythmically and loses a lot in translation because it is difficult to convey the poetic play of some expressions with their corresponding equivalent terms. Even if this hymn does not belong to Clement himself 51 and, as some argue, was written under the influence of ancient lyricism and in the spirit of the mystical theosophy of the Gnostics, this does not in the least prevent us from recognizing it as the work of a very ancient pen and the most original monument of ancient Christian lyricism. The freshness of feeling that this hymn breathes as a whole, this solemn animation that permeates its entire content, these references to childhood and youth perfectly correspond to the first times of the Christian community, which, although born only yesterday, already possessed the strength of spiritual and moral forces, that energy of faith, before which the anger and persecution of the enemies of Christianity were powerless. Further, in this example of early Christian lyricism we see the same system of images and forms that we became familiar with even earlier, speaking about the symbolic language of ancient Christian art. Just as there the favorite type of Christ was the symbolic representation of a shepherd and a fisherman, so in this hymn Christ is portrayed as the Shepherd of the spiritual flock, the Catcher of spiritual fish, which He extracts from the abyss for a blessed life. In a word, this hymn can serve as an explanatory text for the early Christian symbolism of Christ and a living commentary on artistic representations in catacomb art. As for the content of this hymn, it falls into three parts: the first contains an appeal to Christ as the Leader (teacher) of the children, so that He Himself gathers them to praise Himself; in the second - as the Shepherd and King of saints, so that He would lead and direct his flock to the good; finally, as to the eternal Word, showing the way to heaven. All of this is a call to sing and praise Him as the God of peace. In each of these parts there is a special appeal and a special prayer, or petition. The most difficult to understand are the first appeals to Christ, where He is called the Bridle, the Wing and the Helm, or the Rudder, in relation to unbridled horses, to straight, firmly flying birds and a ship. The first two comparisons, one by one, are taken from Plato's Phaedrus, where we are talking about a charioteer who controls a pair of horses, of which one, a good breed, obeys the movements of the ruler, and the other, lazy and rebellious, does not obey either the whip or prodding. And his wing and feathers are a symbol of the soul striving for heaven. But it is easier to explain these comparisons from Clement’s own ideas, who several times uses the image of an unbridled horse to represent a person who has not yet been brought to Christ, who is not established in the right faith and life. The appeal to Christ as a fisherman is self-evident from the symbolism of the fish in the monuments of ancient Christian art, and the representation of the spiritual food that Christ gives as the Word, under the name of breastfeeding, is a poetic image, very well known and in this case very convenient, since we are talking about children led by a teacher and in need of the lightest food. The name of Christians as the choir of the world (χορὸς εἰρήνης) means a meeting for prayer and praise, since the Hellenic choir in the theater was precisely a meeting of singers. Whether or not this hymn was in church use is difficult to decide, since we do not have any positive basis for one or another decision in ancient evidence. But, probably, it was one of those hymns of which, according to Caius, a Roman presbyter and contemporary of Justin Martyr, many were written by the faithful in the form of psalms and songs in which the Word of God, Christ, is theologically sung (Euseb.V, p. 28). Nepos, Bishop of Pentapolis, according to Dionysius of Alexandria, was known both for his love of Scripture and for his works of church lyricism, which Dionysius calls psalmody (ψαλμῳδία), and with which Christians of his time consoled themselves (Euseb.VII, 24). Athenogenes, Bishop of Sebastia, according to Basil the Great, going to martyrdom, uttered some kind of song in which he sang the Divinity of the Holy Spirit. But this song has not reached us, and there is no reason to see it in the current hymn: “Quiet Light.” In some lists it is called the work of the martyr Athenogenes, in others - of the Patriarch Sophronius (in many it is inscribed: Ὕμνος τοῦ λυχνικοῦ). But neither one nor the other designation can be called historically correct, and as for the assimilation of it by the holy martyr Athenogenes, this conclusion came from the misunderstood words of Basil the Great, in which he talks about the song: “Quiet Light.” It is very likely that it was already used in his time at the evening service, and the following words from his treatise on the Holy Spirit refer to it. “Our fathers,” wrote Basil the Great, “did not want to accept the grace of the evening light in silence, but immediately as it came, they offered thanks. Although we cannot say for certain who was the creator of these sayings (ρημάτων, we can translate: prayers, hymns, exclamations) of luminary thanksgiving, however, the people repeat the ancient voice, and no one has yet imagined that blasphemy is being uttered when they say: “We sing to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Perhaps these words were taken from some other song unknown to us, but their literal coincidence with the words of the evening hymn “Quiet Light” forces us to attribute them to the latter. Then Basil the Great speaks of the hymn of Athenogenes the Martyr, which contains the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and thus highlights the latter from what he said about the doxology of the Most Holy Trinity during the evening service. Here are his own words: “If anyone knew the song (ὕμνον) of Athenogenes, which he, hastening to the highest action that is accomplished through fire (the martyr was burned at the stake), left those present as a sweet (dying) greeting (testament), he would know what thought the martyrs also had about the Holy Spirit.” It is impossible without stretching to bring together or identify these two separate passages in the work of Basil the Great and attribute the latter to the song: “Quiet Light.” It is difficult to say for sure what the opinion about the origin of this song from Saint Sophronius of Jerusalem is based on, but with this inscription it is read in some Greek service books. In any case, it is earlier than Sophronius, since it is already read in the most ancient, Alexandrian Codex of the Bible (IV century, i.e. close to the time of the martyr Athenogenes) and is mentioned by the named patriarch in the description of Vespers, which he and his companion, Abba John, listened to in one Sinai monastery. Was it not this news that was the reason for the imaginary authorship of Saint Sophronius, and was it not through a misunderstanding that the narrator was renamed the compiler? There is only no doubt that the evening hymn: “Quiet Light,” still used among us, should be classified as one of the most ancient church hymns. In addition to the testimony of Basil the Great, its content and tone speak for this. It is possible to assume, not without plausibility, that this hymn received its origin and, in part, its content in relation to the custom of the ancient Greeks, who (according to Varro), when bringing the first lighted candle into the room, greeted its appearance with the words: Φως ἀγαϑόν, good light (or as the Italians say in a similar case: Felicissima sera!). Christians slightly changed this conventional everyday saying and, sending out gratitude at the onset of evening light, began their hymn with the words: Φῶς ἱλαρόν, thus raising thought from material light to spiritual divine Light, the incarnate Word of God. Regardless of its deep, early Christian antiquity, this chant helps the researcher to restore some details of the evening service and its position within the daytime hours. Simultaneously with these works of church lyrics coming out of the Orthodox community, many hymns appeared among heretical sects, the use of which, not limited to the boundaries of one or another heterodox party, was often propagated in Orthodox society. We find it necessary to note this branch of heretical hymnography, both because it was widely developed and very much competed with the hymnical works of the Orthodox Church, and even more so for its influence on this latter and for the impact it had on the fate and course of hymnography in general. Origen preserved several stanzas of one Orphic song, interrupted (after each stanza) by an exclamation or refrain: (Contr.Cels.VI, 31). In the Philosophumena there are several similar verses attributed to the Naassenes. Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian talk about the psalms of Valentine, about the spells of Mark. Finally, the hymns of Basilides, Bardesan, Harmonius and others are known by name or in fragments. In them, under a tempting mystical form, the usually vague religious theories of the Gnostics are propagated. But, looking more closely at their meaning and construction, you involuntarily notice the general similarities between them and the hymn of Clement of Alexandria that we cited 52. Representatives of various sects and teachings understood very early what power lies in this kind of folk liturgical works and what a powerful means they represent for influencing the masses. That is why they not only composed, but also tried to spread their hymns as far as possible. As can be seen, the Church at the same time tried to protect its rights from the invasion of these alien elements and limit the acceptance of certain chants into its practice under certain conditions. The following fact exposes this state of affairs. In the middle of the 3rd century, Paul of Samosata abolished the use of songs (ψαλμῶν) in the churches of his district in honor of Jesus Christ, citing the fact that they were of recent origin and composed by incompetent people, and in return he appointed them to sing panegyrics to himself (Euseb.V, 30). Most researchers explain the action of Pavel Samosatsky with his desire to eliminate hymns of Orthodox content from liturgical practice and introduce new ones in order to promote his teaching. It is impossible not to recognize the validity of such an explanation and not to be suspicious of the motive put forward by Eusebius: to compose panegyrics and introduce them into church use - this, in any case, constitutes an impossible phenomenon. In Eusebius’s story, on the contrary, one should pay attention to the pretext that Paul of Samosatsky wanted to use in order to launch his works. With this pretext, he used the imaginary or real novelty of the hymns he disliked, and on this basis he imposed his veto on them. In the recent news of their origin there was something dangerous, which was treated with distrust. It was within his rights as a bishop to justify his course of action, and this shows that the church authorities at that time were already picky about the works of church hymnography and allowed only samples that were approved and stood the test of time in the practice of the Church. Probably, church discipline was forced to resort to this measure due to the abuses of the sectarian pen and attempts at heretical propaganda. However, we do not have further information about the severity and conditions of this censorship from church practice in the first three centuries, but in the 4th and subsequent centuries this principle already came into full force and found a place in church legislation. This can be confirmed by the 59th canon of the Council of Laodicea, which prohibits the use of independent psalms and apocryphal books in the church. That by the name of self-composed (ἰδιωτικοί ψαλμοι) psalms one should understand psalms, hymns and, in general, chants that came from the pen of private individuals and were not introduced into general church use, there can be no doubt about this; but, very likely, under the same rubric of illegal hymnographic experiments were also meant works of a heretical pen with shades of worldly unrecognized teaching. This distrust of the church authorities towards personal initiative in the matter of hymnography should have had an unfavorable effect on its very development, narrowing its boundaries and diverting from these activities those forces that could usefully devote themselves to this matter 53. To become acquainted with authentic works of ancient Christian hymnography that had a positive liturgical purpose and use, the Apostolic Constitutions serve as an important source. In this collection of canonical-liturgical and moral decrees of the ancient Church, along with the order of daily services and successions for various occasions, there are, among other things, several prayers and chants used during divine services. Of the latter, read here: the morning hymn or great doxology (ὕμνος ἑωϑινός, προσευχὴ ἑωϑινή): “Glory to God in the highest,” ending with the words: “For You are the only Holy One, You are the One Lord Jesus Christ in the glory of God the Father, Amen,” the evening hymn (ὕμνος ἑσπερινός): “Praise is due to you, singing is due to you” and “Now you let go” - the song of Simeon. We know the morning hymn in many copies, of which the oldest should be considered its presentation in the Apostolic Constitutions, in the Alexandrian Codex of the Bible, where it is placed at the end of the psalms (IV-V centuries), and in the translation of Hilary of Poitiers, a Western writer of the 5th century, who had close church relations with the East and distributed works of Greek hymnography in translation in the West. John Chrysostom mentions it as a morning song. All these lists convey the Great Doxology very close to its present presentation in our liturgical books and differ in differences in words. More different is the text of the Decrees, in which this hymn is addressed to the face of God the Father, and the Son of God is presented in the features of a being subordinate to Him, in accordance with semi-Arian terminology and with the dogmatics of the monarchians. For example: “...we bow down for the sake of the Great Bishop (i.e. Christ) to Thee, the existing God, the One Unborn, the One Unapproachable, great ones for the sake of Thy glory.” Instead of: “Lord, only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, and holy soul, Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father..., take away the sins of the world,” it reads: “Lord God, Father of Christ, the spotless Lamb, who takes away the sins of the world.” Instead of: “Sit at the right hand of the Father,” in accordance with the appeal of this song to God the Father, it reads: “Sit on the cherubim.” Thus, in the Apostolic Constitutions the great doxology is read much shorter than ours and a good half of it is missing; Only the Alexandrian Codex records its continuation, beginning with the words: “I will bless you every day,” and ending with the words: “Blessed are you, O Lord God of our fathers, and praised and glorified is your name forever, Amen.” The ending of this hymn, very close to the present one, is also read in the Codex of Alexandria. Further in the Apostolic Constitutions the evening hymn is written down, which I will quote literally, since none of the evening songs now fully correspond to it: “Praise the Lord, servants! Praise the name of the Lord! We praise Thee, we glorify Thee, we bless Thee Great ones for Thy glory. Praise is due to you, song is due to you (ὕμνος), To you is the glory due to God and the Father through the Son in Holy Spirit forever and ever, Amen." Then the song of the righteous Simeon is read: “Now you let go,” apparently sung at the end of Vespers. In addition, some of the prayers recorded in the Apostolic Constitutions, in their liturgical content and presentation, were very convenient for use as chants and can be classified as early Christian hymnography. We are not talking about the fact that in the Apostolic Constitutions there is an indication of the use of church songs during worship, which by itself speaks for their actual existence as liturgical material. From the content and composition of these ancient examples of liturgical chant, one can draw the conclusion that they are closely related to Jewish psalmody and borrow entire verses and the most prosodic construction from here. The selection of suitable material and the compilation of proper Christian chants on its basis - this is how the hymnographic activity of the ancient Church was expressed in its application to worship. This direction is the immediate reason why these hymns were not separated from the psalms in the records themselves. Thus, the evening and morning hymns in the Alexandrian Codex of the Bible are placed as an addition to the Psalter, immediately following the 150th Psalm, and the book of Job follows them, that is, the usual order of biblical books continues. Another department of church lyricism, exemplified by the hymn of Clement of Alexandria, the song: “Quiet Light”, the song of the virgins in the work of Methodius of Patara: “The Feast of the Virgins” and the hymnographic experiments of heretics, represents a new direction, parallel to Christian hymnography, which takes as its source the works of Greek lyric poetry and paves the way for various forms of church chant, which we will talk about ahead. These latter are in connection with musical performance according to the modes, or modes, and paths of Hellenic music, in compliance with stichometric rules. A strong impetus to their development was given by the hymnography of the heretics. A struggle ensues between these two directions, and each of them finds supporters. Strict monastic communities stand on the basis of ancient psalmody; the secular churches, with their special tasks regarding aesthetic education, develop its other side, and in the end the struggle is resolved in favor of this latter type of lyricism. Its representatives, starting from the 4th century, are a fairly large number of church writers, known by name, but even more anonymous hymnographers, and many works of church hymnography in different forms and under different names. In order not to get lost in this mass of names and forms, we will not follow the movement of church lyrics from century to century, according to the order of hymn writers, and list what was done by one or the other, but we will consider hymnographic material in its main typical forms and explain the origin and meaning of the more famous types of church lyrics. At the same time, it goes without saying that the main figures will also have to perform in the field of church or, more strictly speaking, liturgical chant. This review will be made even easier if we precede it with a few necessary guiding remarks about the original type of church hymnography and about the general law that formed the basis of its various forms. Chapter II. Basic forms of church chants and their origin The main forms of church chants and their origin. Tropari. Song-making activity of Roman Sladkopevets. Kontakia and ikos: their ancient appearance and later fate. Stichera, hypakoi. Canon as the most complete and complete hymnographic form; the relationship between the irmos, or songs of the canon, and the troparia. Hymnographers - writers of canons: John of Damascus, Cosmas of Mayum, Studites, writers of Minor Greece. Akathist. Collections of church chants: stichirari, kondakari, Menaion, Octoechos, etc. Hymnographic activities of secular persons and court Byzantine hymnography. Hymnography of the Eastern Church in the XI-XIV centuries: its shortcomings and general reasons for its decline. We said that psalmody formed the main and predominant part in the structure of the early Christian service; the psalms were pronounced verse by verse, either by all those present at once, or alternately, one side after the other, by verse, or, finally, in this way: the singer pronounced the beginning of the verse, and those present finished the rest of it and thus performed the whole psalm. Sometimes such a refrain was some conventionally accepted verse from the psalm itself, for example: “As His mercy endures forever,” alleluia, doxology. This type of singing in technical language, as already noted above, was denoted by the word: ὑπακούειν, ὑπηχεῖν (to eavesdrop, to sing along) and had a strong influence on the emergence and further development of hymnography. This refrain, or hypnotic rhyme, was sometimes composed freely, composed, to put it in today's terms. It was this that served as the starting point for a whole series of hymnographic forms known as: troparion, kontakion, hypakoia, stichera, antiphons, and then developed into a more complex form of the canon. The basis for the technical construction of all these types of chants is their alternation with well-known stanzas, or sections, from psalms and other biblical songs. At first, these stanzas appeared as an additional part, as an appendage to psalmody, but then they stood out as independent parts, expanded in volume and acquired independent meaning, pushing into the background the psalmody to which they originally belonged. But even now, despite the changed structure of the service, this original attitude makes itself felt in the names with which these songs remained in church use, and in the close connection that to this day some troparia and stichera continue to maintain with well-known sections and verses from the psalms. Another characteristic feature of these works is their performance according to a well-known melody, different from the verse or measured pronunciation of the Psalter, in relation to examples of ancient music. This aspect of the matter, of course, could not be revealed immediately and everywhere, as a necessary feature: at first, the hypnotic verses were performed, of course, according to the melody of the Psalter itself, but with further development they separated from the psalter melody and adopted a troparal melody, modeled on the modes or tropes of Hellenic music. These two features serve as the basis for the classification of church chants and for explaining the names with which they appear in the most ancient historical news and in later liturgical books. But since the technical language, ancient Greek and early Christian, was half forgotten in the Middle Ages and received a local ritual Byzantine coloring, then these names themselves became obscure, and some received a completely incorrect explanation from medieval liturgists, and this made the matter even more obscure. Let us try to restore the meaning of this ancient Christian terminology and give an idea of ​​the origin and original structure of the chants included in our liturgical books under these ancient technical names. In the history of Theodore the Reader and in Kedrin, under the year 464, Anthima and Timocles are mentioned, who are called compilers of troparions (οἱ τῶν τροπαρίων ποηταί) 54 . In the same way, Procopius says about Justinian that he composed the song: “Only Begotten Son,” which is also called a troparion. These are the first creators of troparions; but what kind of chant is this? What does this name itself mean? From the song: “Only Begotten Son” no conclusion can be drawn about the special construction of this type of hymn: there are a lot of similar short stanzas of lyrical content in the stichera, in the songs of the canon and other types of hymnography. The troparions of St. Auxentius, the founder of a monastery near Chalcedon (VI century) 55 are also known. These troparia are a series of short songs ending with a chorus. From this we can conclude that these songs were performed by two parties, one of which pronounced the text, and the other - the chorus. Now troparions are short chants in honor of the celebrated event or saint (ἀπολυτίκιον) and the songs of the canon that follow the irmos. The name “troparion” itself provides more evidence for the conclusion. Τροπάριον is a diminutive form of τρόπος, which in the technical musical language of the ancient Greeks and later Byzantine writers meant the same thing as ἦχος - voice, that is, the mode or structure of singing 56. The later explanation of Zoiara comes to the same conclusion, but does not start from the word τρόπος, which in his time had already been forgotten and moved into the realm of book language, but from τρέπω - I turn, and not from the troparia in general, but from the troparia of the canon, which, according to Balsamon’s explanation, are called troparia because τρέπονται, because they turn, obey, and are commensurate in singing with the composition and motive of the main melody of the irmos. The explanation of Paisius Ligaridas, that τροπάριον comes from τροπαῖον and means a solemn song in honor of a saint or holiday, is correct only in the sense that it comes from a word that has the same root as the one being explained, but does not capture the essence of the matter. This name served as a generic sign and was applied to a whole wide class of church songs, performed singly, modeled on the modes of classical music. In this very technical meaning, the word τροπάριον is found in the story about the adventures in Alexandria of a Nigerian monk, who first became acquainted here, in the cathedral church there, with troparions, which the monks of Mount Nitria did not use 57 . This meaning of the troparion was more or less successfully visualized and clarified by Western liturgical writers, but none of them went further in this regard than Cardinal Pitra, who recognized the troparion as the starting point of all church hymnography and from it led the history of the latter. It is very likely that the troparion at first appeared only as a small introductory verse, enlivening the monotonous reading of the Psalter, then turned into a more or less rounded form of a stanza (or couplet) and, finally, took the form of the current troparion in the canon. With the introduction of troparions, antiphonal singing itself changed. Previously, verses served as refrains to a psalm - from this psalm itself or taken from other psalms; Now the performance of the psalms begins to be supplemented with special introductory verses, songs and stanzas, which alternate with the main text and diversify its content. The most ancient material of the Psalter and Book of Hours in the form of psalms and biblical songs gradually takes on this new element and is developed into antiphons, powers, stichera, canons and other hymnographic forms based on the law of alternation of two sides in singing. According to Patriarch Sophrony, therefore, in the 7th century, every morning and evening service began with the singing of psalms, combining with them songs of new grace, that is, special Christian hymns, and the troparion: “Only Begotten Son,” in his own words, served as a refrain to the second liturgical antiphon. The same thing happened with the troparia in the West. There, by order of Pope Hadrian, it became customary to add special songs - cantica - to the psalms with which the liturgy began, or to the introitus, which the Romans call festive hymns, and the Franks call tropes (Franci tropos appellant). But, without a doubt, the name tropus, as a general and generic name, did not exclude the most diverse nomenclature of them in practice 58. In the 5th century, the troparion received a more solemn form and a new name - kontakion - under the pen of Roman the Sweet Singer. He was from the Syrian city of Emessa, in Verita he was a singer at the local church, and from here he arrived in Constantinople and served at the Blachernae church. The synaxar says that while correcting his position, he was often subjected to ridicule from his comrades for his quiet and inept singing. On the eve of the Nativity of Christ, at the end of the service, he fell before the icon of the Mother of God, asking for help, and, tired of prayer, fell asleep. Then the Mother of God appeared to him, handed him a scroll and imparted the gift of singing. “The creator of kontakia, the wonderful Roman,” wrote Mark of Ephesus, “received this gift from the Mother of God, who appeared to him in a dream and presented him with a scroll (τόμον) of paper with the command to eat; Having done this, he immediately stood up (this was on Christmas Day), climbed onto the pulpit and began to sing: “Virgin today.” After that, he composed other kontakia and ikos, which were also performed in the church in his time.” The kontakion has a special structure and received its name completely by accident. Κοντάκιον means a scroll, a bundle of glassine sometimes written on both sides, on which, among other things, prayers and church hymns were written, which, standing on the pulpit, they unrolled and on which they read or sang what was written. “From that scroll (i.e., given to Roman by the Mother of God), his songs,” notes Mark of Ephesus, “are called kontakia. Τόμος means kontakion.” However, the kontakion “Virgin today” constitutes only an excerpt or a separate stanza from the entire poem of St. Romanus on the day of the Nativity of Christ. In its entire composition, it contains 24 stanzas, troparion or kontakion - whatever you call it. The first of them stands out of connection (technically) with the other 23, arranged in an acrostic style, in the order of the letters of the following verse: “Τοῦ ταπεινοὗ Ρωμανοῦ αἶνος (praise of the humble Romanus).” This initial stanza, standing outside the acrostic, is precisely the kontakion: “Virgin today”; the remaining 23 are adjacent to it in their content and present a religious and poetic picture in which the event of the Nativity of Christ is depicted. These 23 stanzas are called ikos. Each of them ends with the exclamation common to all of them: “The Young Child is the Eternal God,” which gives Roman’s kontakia the form of hymns and brings them closer to the famous poem Patarsky’s Melody “The Feast of the Virgins.” Thus, the ikos have the closest relationship to the main kontakion, reveal its main idea and end with a common refrain. Only they are presented in a more complete and rounded form. “He (i.e., St. Roman), wrote the same Mark of Ephesus, “composed the ikos. They, together with the kontakia peta, were previously in some of those beautiful chambers (οἴκοις), where the sacred man used to spend his nights in vigil; That’s where they got their name.” But the explanation is far-fetched: after all, Saint Romanus, of course, also sang kontakion there; why did they stick with this technical name? We note, first of all, that in the complete collections of St. Romanus' kontakia, or kontakari, they always present a whole series of songs or stanzas written on the same theme and ending with the same refrain as the kontakion at the head of them. At the present time, when the technical terminology of ancient Greek and Byzantine music and rhetoric has already been completely forgotten, and commentators have not left any positive explanations on this matter, it is not possible to achieve an exact definition of the meaning of the word οἶκος and it is possible to approach it only approximately. Οἶκος, as you know, means home. Among Syriac writers, the word Beth (house) refers to a stanza or hymn of a certain size, built according to the metric system. Hence: domus natalis means “a song in honor of the Nativity of Christ,” domus lugentium means “a mournful or funeral hymn,” and domum aedificare means “to compose or compose songs.” In the Armenian canons (sharakan, snaraknots, ed. Emin), the word “tun”, or “house” in Russian, refers to the troparia of the canon. Roman Sladkopevets was an extremely prolific writer, and the number of his hymnographic works with the name of kondaks and ikoses, according to Vasiliev’s minology, extended over a thousand; Agapius the monk says the same about the number of kontakia he compiled. (In the Synodal Kontakara with the name of Roman there are 268, and the total number is 425). To get acquainted with the kontakia and ikos of the Roman, with their technical side, the most ancient collections of these chants serve as a very important tool. Thus, the Moscow Synodal Library contains a Greek collection of kontakia of the 12th-13th centuries, and the Typographical Library contains a collection of kontakia according to the month, under the name “kondakar”, in an ancient Slavic translation of the 11th-12th centuries. From these manuscripts it is possible to form an earlier idea about the oldest type of these church songs and about the fate they experienced in church practice. The Greek kontakary contains the kontakia and ikos not only of Roman the Sweet Singer, but also of other later hymnographers: Theodore the Studite, Cosmas of Mayum, George and others. Their names are read in acrostics or initial kondakar stanzas. The kontakia and ikos are arranged here according to the month and go from September to the end of August, then their second section begins, located according to the Triodion and starting from the week of the publican and the Pharisee. Kondakar compositions are placed in the synodal collection or in full form according to the acrostic: τοῦ ταπεινοὗ Ρωμανοῦ ἔπος, αἶνος, or something else like that, or in an abbreviated form, sometimes reaching one, two or three stanzas. Sometimes an acrostic is not maintained - more or less stanzas are dropped from it. Obviously, the complete work is fragmented, and part of it has been lost. Everywhere in this collection, a kontakary piece begins with a kontakion, and it is followed by a greater or lesser number of ikos, with the last words of the kontakion repeated at the end of each of them. These final words served as a chorus, which was sung by the choir and closed the unanimous performance of the singer or psalt. This combination of kontakia in one composition represents a complex hymn form, perhaps the earliest of all and, in any case, earlier than the current canon. The ancient canons of the Armenian Church, published by Emin under the name Sharakan, indicate that in its most ancient structure the canon followed the same kondakar pattern. Thus, in Sharakan we have a canon on John the Baptist, compiled by Moses of Khoren, an Armenian historian of the 5th century. This canon consists of eight sections, three stanzas each, and each of them ends with some common refrain. Kondakari, in this most ancient of their systems, are now forgotten and have fallen out of church use. Of the entire kontakary compositions, only small fragments remain in current use, taken out of the whole system and included in the canon and other liturgical collections. The typographical kontakary of the 12th century already indicates this significant reduction in kontakary material, starting from the 10th century, and its gradual displacement by other songs and successions. Instead of 24-stanza works, we see that here, in the order of the month and Triodion, only one kontakion and one ikos are written for each day. As an exception, sometimes two ikoses come across, but such cases are isolated. The memory of the original structure and singing performance of kontakara works has been preserved only in the fact that in typographical kontakara the ikos is usually followed by a short chorus, consisting of a repetition of the final words of the kontakion. This chorus is preceded by the word: “People,” which shows that it was sung by the whole congregation. And now in some monasteries the ikos according to the 6th song of the canon is read by the canonarch, and its end is sung. For the performance of kontakia there was a special melody, more ancient than the current vocal melody (according to the system of eight voices), and with a special semiography, or system of musical notes. In the typographical manuscript, kontakia are written first in ordinary writing, and then in extended form, in relation to singing, with special marks or musical notes, which have not yet been deciphered and which, in contrast to ordinary hook signs, are called kontakary banner. The akathist, which originated from them, is most suitable for the ancient kontakary works in its structure, and therefore can best serve for us as an example of this hymn form in its original form. What is an akathist in terms of its external structure? This is a combination of ikos and kontakia, composed on the same topic and arranged in alphabetical order. Like the complete kontakary works of the Roman, consisting of 24 stanzas, our akathist (of the Mother of God) also consists of 24 sections, some of which end: “Rejoice”, and others: “Alleluia” (of 12 kontakia and 12 ikos, which alternate with each other and begin each with a new letter in alphabetical order). In ancient times, these stanzas were called ikos, and only the first song, standing outside the acrostic or alphabet, was called a kontakion. This kontakion is the well-known song: “To the chosen governor.” The division of the akathist into kontakia and ikos is based on the different structure of these stanzas and appeared in later times. To what time does the stichera originate, and what kind of church chants are they? According to the generally accepted opinion, this branch of hymnography is the earliest representative of the Patriarch of Constantinople Anatoly (half of the 5th century). The basis for this opinion is the inscription of the Sunday stichera of the Octoechos: Ἀνατολικά, that is, the works of Anatoly, but in our Slavic Octoechos this designation is translated by the word: “eastern,” that is, stichera. There is no reason to consider Anatoly of Constantinople as the writer of our “eastern” stichera, because the name of this writer is nowhere connected with the epithet of the Patriarch. Moreover, this assumption leads in some cases to anachronisms. Thus, the stichera are inscribed with the name of Anatoly: John the Merciful († 620), the martyr Arethas, who suffered under Justinian, and Saint Auxentius († 470), while Patriarch Anatoly died back in 458. It is much more likely to assume that under this name hides some later Anatolius and, perhaps, a Studian hymnographer of this name, whom Fabricius mentions in the list of Greek medieval hymnographers. Anatoly Studiysky lived in the 9th century and, by virtue of his very belonging to the famous monastery, which had a strong influence on the processing of church services, had all the means and preparation for this kind of activity. One cannot ignore the fact that Octoechos, where the Anatolian stichera on “I cried to the Lord” found their place, received his education under the pen of John of Damascus. There is another explanation for this name ἀνατολικά, belonging to the Right Reverend Porfiry (Uspensky). During his scientific travels around Athos, he found in one of the local monasteries (Esphigmene) a very ancient Greek manuscript, similar in composition to our irmologist. He dates this irmologist to the 12th century. It contains nine- and eight-song canons of various church writers, and some of these sequences are called ανατολικά, but in such a curious combination that becomes impossible when explaining this word, in the sense of the successions or works of the Anatolievs; for example: Ἀκολουϑία Γεωργίου ἀνατολική, that is, the Anatolian succession of George; ἀκολουϑία Θεοδώρου ἀνατολική. By George here it is most likely to mean George Pisida, a deacon of the Great Church, who lived under Heraclius at the beginning of the 7th century, and who made literary fame for himself with iambic verses; he is even credited by some with composing an akathist. Or this George is George Sicelliot, or Sicilian, the famous hymnographer of the 7th century. Ἀκολουϑία Θεοδώρου, perhaps, means the work of Theodore Syceot, also of the 7th century. Above some it reads: Ἀκολουϑία σιναϊτική. Thus, these and other church sequences can be and are called ἀνατολικά, because they first appeared in the Anatolian Churches, were local products of that region and were performed in the local chant. With such an explanation, the Slavic translation itself: “eastern stichera” will be very close and will correspond to the truth. The most ancient stichera are known with the names of Theodore Sikeot, Sophronius of Jerusalem, Andrew of Crete, Patriarch Herman (8th century). Perhaps in liturgical books there are stichera of more ancient origin, but they remain in the Menaions without the name of the authors, and therefore the time of their appearance cannot be strictly determined. Now a few words about the name and structure of stichera as a special kind of hymnographic works. The word stichera, according to etymological production, means any church song set out in verse or measured speech, and in this broad sense can be applied to the troparion, kontakion and irmos. The dismemberment of their external structure was the reason for this name and brought them closer to the rhymed Old Testament books, for example, the Psalter, Proverbs, which were also called stichera. Compiled in imitation of these latter and performed in connection with them, the stichera in the later Church Rules closely adhered to verses from biblical books and began to alternate with them, constituting, as it were, a continuation of biblical verses. This technical relationship of our stichera to the text of biblical books is clearly visible, by the way, from the fact that to this day they are combined with selected verses from the psalms and, according to the nature of these latter, they are called stichera: I cried to the Lord, praiseworthy, or, in an even more general sense, verse (this is how the Greek is translated ἀπὸ στίχου), that is, connected with verses from psalm, in relation to the content of the holiday. However, stichera in the form of special songs began to be combined with verses from psalms already in later times, but before this did not happen, and the verses of these psalms were pronounced one after another with a special refrain common to the entire psalm. So, for example, for “Lord I cried” the chorus was: “Hear me, Lord”; for others: “Savior, have mercy on me”, “Save us, Lord”, “Alleluia” and others. With the name of the Patriarch of Constantinople Anthimus, the schedule of psalms is known, which indicates with what refrain each of them was pronounced. Currently, we sing Psalm 140 at Vespers or “I have cried to the Lord” in the ancient way, with the refrain: “Hear me, Lord,” but this addition is not in the text of the psalm itself. These short refrains were replaced by stichera, and instead of them we now sing whole, freely composed stanzas, alternating with selected verses of the psalms. The expression of the present Charter or Menaion: “let us put verses 6, 8 or 10” is a remnant of the former, ancient Christian order. It is more difficult to determine the time of origin of ὑπακοή. This name is borrowed from the way certain hymns are performed in church and is found in the terminology of Greek theater and secular music in general. Ὑπακούειν in ancient technical language meant “to sing along,” that is, to finish the last words of a hymn or aria with a choir representative or singer. The short choruses (ἀκροστοίχια) of the choir, which closed the single singing of the psalm, were called ὑπακοή. We have already talked about the technical structure of these hypnotic hymns and the method of their performance, analyzing the composition of the “Feast of the Virgins” by Methodius of Patara and the content of the apocryphal hymn sung by Christ after the Last Supper. In current church hymnography, the original meaning of ὑπακοή is lost, and this name is explained either from the correspondence and special technical dependence of the members of the hymn, or from the special attention or obedience that was required during the liturgical performance of this type of chant. Let's move on to the analysis of the canon. This type of church hymn represents the most complete and complete hymnographic form, which appeared as a result of the long preliminary path traversed by church hymnography, and in its structure belongs to the category of kontakia, stichera and other hymnographic examples of lyric poetry. The word “canon” in church language has several meanings, which all stem from one common basic idea expressed by this name, namely: κανών means a rule, a cord, a ruler for the alignment and correct placement of parts of an architectural whole or any object at all 59; hence the canon is the norm of activity, in the sense of canonical decrees; in the liturgical sense, a canon is a known example of a service or charter (regula, τύπος), and, even more specifically, a canon is a certain number of prayers, psalms and songs that make up the monastic rule. As a well-known hymnographic form, the liturgical canon is nothing more than a processing and complication of that part of the ancient matins, which consisted of the performance of biblical songs, and is closely related to their staging and performance in church succession. After the versification of psalms at Matins, as exemplified by the present-day Six Psalms and Kathismas, in ancient times there followed the performance of biblical songs in greater or lesser numbers. These songs, as forming an indispensable part of the morning service, stood out from the contents of certain biblical books and were recorded separately, along with other songs of the daily service, at the end of the Psalter and in the codes of the Bible, and even further, when the Psalter appeared as a special liturgical book, they joined it and served as the basis for the later service Psalter, the so-called Psalter followed. The number of these songs was not and has not always been the same, and they are often listed in a different order than is customary now. So, for example, in the Alexandrian Codex of the Bible they are listed as 13 and are recorded separately here: the song of the Mother of God, Simeon the God-Receiver, the prayers of Zechariah, the father of the Forerunner, and Manasseh, the king of Judah, now read at Great Compline. In what number and order these songs are located in the current Book of Hours, I will not say, assuming this is well known, but I must say that their liturgical use began from very ancient times, and therefore the basis of the current canon was laid in primitive liturgical practice. Only there these basic biblical songs were pronounced verse by verse, and each of them was accompanied by some kind of chorus taken from the content of this song; Subsequently, instead of psalter or biblical refrains, special verses or stanzas began to be pronounced, which were then developed into the form of troparions for each song of the canon. That this was precisely the ancient basis of the canon, and that this very name canon (κανών) was applied to that part of the service where biblical songs were set, can be confirmed by the following story, characterizing church practice in the East in the 5th-6th centuries. I mean the liturgically very important news about Abbot Paul (5th century), whom the Persian attack on Cappadocia forced him to flee to Egypt, where he settled among the Nitrian monks. Having looked closely at the liturgical orders there, he noticed one difference that caught his eye and made him complain about the strict rules of the monk with whom he was assigned to live in the same cell; namely, Abba Paul complained that this elder did not allow him to sing the canons or sing the troparions according to the voices. Of course, it is out of the question that the canon spoken of here was a succession similar to the present hymnographic form known by that name. It is most likely to assume that here we are talking about the basic material from which its current parts were formed, namely the biblical songs that gave the content to the nine irmos of the canon. In the 7th century, strict monastic communities still continued this primitive method of poetry and kept the canon consisting of biblical songs alone, without additional troparions or intermediate stanzas. Patriarch Sophrony, conveying the details of Sunday Matins among the Sinai monks, says this about the part of it where we have a canon: “Rising, we began to sing songs (τὰς ᾠδάς) without troparions and neither on the 3rd nor on the 6th song did we make inter-songs (μεσῳδία).” But it is clear that the performance of the canon in its original form at that time was no longer in use everywhere and began to be replaced by a more complete form, because Sophrony, a witness to the Sinai service, expresses surprise to the abbot of the monastery why they sing the canon without troparia. Thus, the canon, as a well-known form of hymnography, long prevented the appearance of processed singing canons of Damascus. The third and sixth cantos, apparently, underwent this addition earlier than the others and were complicated by the introduction of troparia under the name μεσῳδία. A further complication or development (with the use of these songs, which served as the reason for compiling the canon) was that special stanzas began to be composed from the main biblical songs and set to notes. These stanzas later received a leading position in the canon in the form of irmos. The most ancient canon was nothing more than a paraphrase of the main biblical songs, or, better to say, such a performance of them, when their well-known sections alternated with some typical verse taken from their content. Then they began to compose special poems in relation to this topic. The 1st, 7th, 8th and 9th songs were especially convenient for such a performance, because the final verses were easily distinguished from themselves, for example: “Gloriously is he glorified” (for the 1st), “Sing and exalt Him forever” (for the 7th), “Blessed art thou, O Lord God of our Father.” This is why canons are sometimes called stichera. An echo of this ancient practice was preserved in the later charter and can still be heard in the Lenten performance of the canon along with the verses of biblical songs. “At the end of the 50th Psalm,” it says here, “the housekeeper begins to sing the songs of Moses, and they are sung on both sides.” Thus, in the place where the canon is performed, we have biblical songs here. What is the connection, what is the relationship between the initial songs, or irmos of the canon, compiled according to the model of the latter, and the troparions attached to them? First of all, the relationship is internal, logical and, then, external, formal. The internal thing is that the troparia of each of the 9th or 8th parts of the canon correspond in content to their irmos (ᾠδὴ εἰρμός) and are adapted to it in the arrangement of thoughts; their content is connected with the content of their main irmos. The formal relationship lies in the technical structure of the troparia and their prosodic construction, determined by the composition of the irmos. This last circumstance is indicated by the very names of the irmos. “Irmos (from εἴρω - necto, εἰρμός - series tractus), - says Zonara in his interpretation of the canons of Damascus, - received its name from the fact that it imparts the order to the troparia of the canon and the tone of their singing, for the troparia of the canons are measured in accordance with the melody of the irmos, taking the same technical form as the irmos have. Otherwise, the irmos gives the tone and melody to the troparions and determines their execution according to its own model.” This dependence of the troparion on its governing irmos explains, in part, the name itself: “troparion.” Coming from τρέπω (I turn), it designates a song that turns, obeys and is modeled after another, which serves as the norm for its construction and performance. “The troparia in the canons,” continues Zonara, “got their name from the fact that they rotate and are performed according to the model of the irmos, and the singers, when singing them, conform to the rhythm and tone of the irmos.” Now, when the troparions of the canon are read, and only irmos are sung, the rule of compliance when singing troparions with irmos is not observed, and it is difficult to practically clarify the relationship between the troparion and the irmos. But before, when the canon was sung as a whole, just as the Easter canon is now sung, this prosodic and singing relationship not only became clear, but was also required by the rules of euphony and the conditions for the singing performance of the canon. Now this relationship is easy to determine by observing the construction of individual stanzas of the canon. Paying attention to the way the troparions are constructed in the original, we are clearly convinced that the troparia in their volume fully correspond to the irmos, that they contain the same number of lines, often end with the same verses as the irmos and contain the same number of syllables. It is easy to verify this latter by taking any irmos, counting the number of syllables in it and comparing its quantitative volume with the volume of the troparions subordinate to it. This shows that for the compilation of canons there was a certain norm or pattern, which was once and for all determined, and which the compilers of the canons strictly followed. From this strict formality in the distribution of the component parts of the canon, its very name was formed: κανών - rule, sample, in which sense liturgical interpreters explain this term. Zonara says: “These songs are given the name of canons because they have a certain size and consist of 9 songs, without going beyond this number.” The compiler of the canon first selected the main songs, or irmos, and to each of them added, in addition, several troparia, in accordance with the irmos in relation to their prosodic composition. The compiler's work was made even easier by the fact that he could take the irmos ready-made from the canons of the previous time. These irmos had already been set to music and served as a model for the composition and performance of the troparions subordinate to them. The well-known nature of such irmos as indicators of singing and their extensive liturgical use was the reason why they are sometimes not fully cited in the canons, but usually only their first words are indicated. This unchanging technical design of the canons provided one general mechanical method for all cases, which was formulated and clarified by the Alexandrian grammarian Theodosius as follows: “Whoever wants to compose a canon,” he says, “must first determine the size of the irmos, then select troparia for it that would consist of the same number of syllables and have the same tune.” This mechanicalness of the technique, which constrained the free productivity of the Christian hymnographer, should have had a bad effect on the fate of this hymn industry and gave access to church use to weak works, devoid of poetic and oratorical talent. Paying all attention to prosodic and technical conditions, we often forgot about the content of the canon, about the dignity of its thoughts. Subsequently, additional parts were added to the canon, such as: sedalna after the third canto, ikos and kontakion after the sixth. History has not preserved news about the first hymnographers, writers of canons; their activity, merging with the works of the compilers of troparions, kontakia and stichera, as well-known additions to the text of the service psalms, did not stand out sharply and was not noted in the history of church rite. The compilers of complete song canons, John of Damascus and Cosmas of Mayum, already mark the era of the final organization of this type of work and stand at the end of the long path traversed by this branch of singing. Rising from them higher, we meet the name of Andrei of Crete as the creator of the great canon 60; but since he wrote at a time when there were no irmos of Damascus, he probably used special songs that he accepted as irmos and composed his stanzas or troparia based on them. That he could have been their compiler without waiting for Damascus, of course, there is nothing not only impossible, but also difficult. The names of George of Pisidia, Theodore Sikeot, Patriarch Sophronius, known from the ancient Esphigmenian irmologist, His Eminence Porphyry, show that the figures in the canon were earlier than Andrew of Crete, and that the complication of biblical songs with troparions took place in the 7th century and even earlier. The most ancient samples, with the advent of new, more processed ones, began to give way to these latter ones, to be remade and replenished, so that over time they lost their original form and became known under the names of later compilers. The most famous figures in the field of this type of hymnography were John of Damascus and Cosmas of Mayum, two peers and brothers-in-arms, connected by close friendship and love for hymnographic activity. They were, par excellence, the creators of the canons, and especially to the first of them the church service owes many exemplary works of this kind. Together with their students and successors: Savva the Younger, Babyla, Aristobulus, Stefan Svyatogradets, Sergius, Theophanes and Theodore the Inscribed (γραπτοί), they formed a special group of hymn-writers who belonged to Jerusalem, who stood in particularly close connection with the Lavra of St. Sava of Palestine and had an important influence on the structure and processing of the Jerusalem branch of the charter. This group is known as the Jerusalem or Savvaites. John of Damascus was the pupil of a Christian redeemed from captivity, the Sicilian Greek Cosmas, and from him he received his education at the court of the Damascus caliph, where his father held an important position. An orator and dialectician at the same time, an eloquent defender of icon veneration and the author of the scholastic system of the “Accurate Exposition of the Orthodox Faith,” John of Damascus acquired the fame of a hymn-writer and corrector of the Rule with his liturgical works. The compiler of the canon devotes the following verses to him, expressing his high importance as a hymnographer and corrector of church services: “What shall we call you, saint? Is it John the theologian or the sweet hymnist? Is it the shepherd who carries the harp, or the shepherd's harp? You delight both hearing and thought, you make church meetings joyful; The ends of the earth were adorned with your honey-melting songs.” “You decorated,” another stichera says, “the Church of Christ with your chants, you sweetly sang of divine objects. By the action of the Spirit you struck your harp harmoniously and sonorously, like David, and by singing divine songs on it, you attracted everyone to you.” After the well-known accusation of treason, following the denunciation of his ill-wishers, John of Damascus retired to the Lavra of St. Sava. This Lavra, founded in the 5th century by Sava the Sanctified, was of great importance in the history of church rites, since from it came one of the two main editions of the Typica - Palestine, while the other, Constantinople, belongs to the Studian monastery, located near Constantinople. In the Lavra of Savvina, John of Damascus became acquainted with the strict order of church services, determined by the Typical. He had before his eyes Syrian and Armenian monks, conducting services in their own language and using their own church hymns. This gave impetus to his liturgical activity, which placed him at the head, as we have already noted, of an entire school of hymns. His activity in this field was very extensive. “He took,” let’s say in the words of his biographer, “the prophetic harp and David’s harp and set new hymns to his voice. With his melodies he drowned out the song of Moses and the chorus of Mariamne; he silenced the profane melodies of Orpheus and replaced them with spiritual hymns. He gathered around Jerusalem, as around a common mother, adjacent Churches, like virgins playing the harp.” John of Damascus wrote in various types of church lyrics: he compiled troparia, stichera, antiphons, canons, many of which are known in the Menaions under the name John the Monk, and the fruit of this extensive activity is the Octoechos or Exposition of Sunday services, arranged according to the eight voices of the church melody. Up to 64 Sunday canons with the name of Damascus are known. As the compiler of the Octoechos, Damascene is a remarkable personality in the history of church singing, and his works on this topic give him a high and honorable place among the liturgical figures of the Eastern Church. He not only composed chants for the evening and morning services on Sundays in eight voices, but also set them to music, that is, he established a certain way of singing them. With his Octoechos, Damascene made a significant change in the composition of the divine service, and the introduction of his Octoechos was bound to inevitably affect the Jerusalem Typica itself. Therefore, he had to revise and edit the Jerusalem Charter again, introducing new provisions into it and defining their relationship to the previous ones. However, Octoechos in its current composition is not the work of John of Damascus, but is the work of many church writers who lived after John of Damascus. Assuming the composition of the Octoechos is known, I will only note that in it each voice contains the evening and morning services of Saturday Vespers. But of the Sunday stichera, some belong to Anatoly, others to Paul, the Trinity canons to Mitrofan, and other troparia and stichera to the emperors Leo and Constantine the Porphyrogenitus. Our Slavic Octoechos, which contains the sequences for all days of the week, is called by the Greeks Paracliticus, and its services for the days of the week, arranged in the order of octagons, were compiled not by Damascus, but by Joseph the Songwriter and Theophanes. Due to this eclectic, composite character, in some of our handwritten legends, not our Octoechos, but Irmologius is attributed to Saint John of Damascus, while the composition of the Octoechos is attributed to Joseph and Theophanes. A famous contemporary of Damascus and no less remarkable figure in the field of church hymnography was Cosmas of Maium, bishop of the Palestinian city of Mayum, located near Gaza, who received the same education as Damascus and also spent some time in the monastery of St. Sava, this hotbed of monasticism of that time and the nursery from which many church leaders of that time emerged. Being in close relations with Damascene even after he was elected Bishop of Mayum, Cosmas lived by the spiritual interests of his friend and devoted all his activities to composing church hymns and supplementing church services. “Speaking of Cosmas, I mean the lyre,” says one scholiast in his epigram dedicated to the name of Cosmas. Cosmas, like Damascene, was the creator of the canons. The Greek service for the day of this saint lists the main subjects of the hymnographic activity of the Bishop of Mayum, but it far from exhausts it; what he did in this regard, just as the canons now known with his name do not cover the full number of church works compiled by him. He compiled canons for the week of Vaiy and the Dormition of the Mother of God, the second canon for the Nativity of Christ and the Exaltation, the three canons for the first four days of Holy Week, the canon for Maundy Thursday and Holy Saturday (which was later supplemented by the works of the nun Cassia and is now known with her name). It is known about Cosmas of Mayum that, having composed the canon of the Cross, he once came to Antioch and, unrecognized, stood during the singing of his canon in the church. But the singers did not sing in the tune that they should have and that was assigned by the compiler of the canon himself. Kosma noticed this, but the singers did not believe it. Then Cosmas announced that he himself was the creator of the canon, and for final conviction he composed another ninth canto with his own acrostic. Since the church services for the feasts of the Mother of God were now receiving more and more completeness, Saint Damascene wrote dogmatics, or theotokos, for eight voices, canons for the cross and theotokos for the morning service in all voices. In the same way, Cosmas composed many hymns in honor of the Mother of God, and, by the way, he owns such a commonly used song in honor of her: “The most honorable cherub,” which makes up the irmos of the 9th song of the canon for Maundy Thursday. Nicephorus Callistus, speaking about this creation of Cosmas of Mayum, adds that the Mother of God, appearing to him with a cheerful face, expressed her approval with the following words: “Your songs are pleasant to Me, but this one is more pleasant than others; Those who sing spiritual songs are pleasing to Me, but I am closest to those who glorify Me with these words.” This pious legend has a complete analogy in the life of Damascus, to whom the Mother of God also expressed her approval for singing songs in her honor. But tradition has forgotten that Kosma Mayumsky borrowed the initial words of his song from the works of Ephraim the Syrian, who calls the Mother of God in one hymn: “The most honorable cherub and without comparison of all the ranks of heaven 61. The second group of songwriters of the 8th-10th centuries adjoins the Constantinople Studian monastery and has as its representative the famous abbot of this monastery, Theodore the Studite (760–826†). In this group we find the names of Joseph of Thessalonica, brother of Theodore the Studite, Joseph the hymnographer, one of the most prolific hymnographers, Nicholas, Clement and Simeon Studites. This also includes a number of lesser-known songwriters, of whom later writers speak with praise, and their names are read at the head of various successions. Liturgical activity in the Studite monastery, generally speaking, was in great use and was the occupation of the more bookish monks. The biographer of Theodore the Studite says that many of them, preferring the activity of the mind to the exploits of external piety, composed teachings and other works of religious and moral content, which served as a worthy monument to their activities. Others were engaged in church songs, melodies and psalms. And since it is known from experience that there is great benefit for those present in the church when the entire church is organized harmoniously (harmoniously) and orderly, they turned this wonderful activity to their benefit and to the benefit of others. The level of theological education in the Studite community, generally speaking, was very high, and this monastery, in its most flourishing time, attracted the best forces from all over the then empire. Its extensive library served as a warehouse for works on various branches of church literature. The monks were engaged not only in obedience, but in their leisure time reading books from the monastery repository. The Studii monastery was in close relations with the most remarkable monasteries of the East, and its practice was considered exemplary. Thanks to this circumstance, the canons and stichera that came from the pen of his representatives soon acquired general church significance and were accepted for use. The works of the Holy City residents traveled to Constantinople and Asia Minor along exactly the same route. The most ancient Charters, Triodion and Menaion show that this exchange took place very lively, and the works of the distant East, Syria and Jerusalem were included in the content of the Studio Charters and Menaions with the names of the first compilers. These foreign works, however, sometimes collided with local ones, and then the matter was not without hesitation and struggle. The following incident, which is described in the life of Theodore the Studite, can serve as proof. In Sardinia there lived one of the admirers of Saint Theodore, who had special respect for his church songs and used them at morning prayer, and especially respected his triode canons. But then several monks came to him at a crossroads from Sicily, who used the canons and songs of George, the Sicilian hymnographer of the 7th century. They find many shortcomings in Theodore’s works, among other things, stylistically, and manage to have such an effect on the gullible monk that he leans towards their side and abandons the studio canons. Then, in a night vision, the Monk Theodore appears to him and inflicts sensitive punishment with several blows of his staff - and the shaken trust was restored. It is not the content of this story that interests us, but its thought. Southern Italy and Sicily had their own local school of chanters; but, despite this, the works of studio hymnographers soon penetrate here, collide with the works of local canon writers and ultimately prevail over them. The third center, from where a number of hymn writers emerged, enriching liturgical literature with works of their own pen, was Southern Italy and Sicily. Here, in Calabria, was the famous Crypto-Ferrat monastery, in which lived Greek monks who maintained links in rituals and confession of faith with Orthodox Greece. Calabria and Apulia, due to their religious and ethnographic system, were called Minor Greece in the Middle Ages, and the popes tried in vain to Latinize this small corner, which firmly maintained connections with Byzantium. How strong the Greek influence was here can be seen, by the way, from the fact that, according to legend, St. Nicholas himself appointed to transfer his relics from the Lycian World to the Calabrian city of Bar. Archimandrite Marcellus in the 16th century found up to 50 Greek monasteries here, many of which were in complete decline. The Greek rite was ousted from here at the end of the 17th century, but to this day many Greek liturgical manuscripts remain in the libraries there, and, by the way, an ancient Greek Gospel with miniatures from the 6th-7th centuries was found here. Several names are associated with Southern Italy and Sicily, which occupy not the least place in the fate of the Greek Church Rule and in the field of hymnography. The so-called “Markov chapters” of our Charter are well known. Mark, the compiler of these chapters, was the Bishop of Otranto (in Slavic pronunciation, Idrunta) and is also known as a complement to the canon for Holy Saturday. Of the southern Italian hymnographers, the names of George of Sicilian, or Siceliot of the 7th century, Bartholomew and Nile of Rossan and several monks of the famous Crypto-Ferrata monastery should be mentioned. From here came a special edition of the Charter, the so-called South Italian one. The local hymnographers were in lively and constant relations with the Greek East and, in particular, with the Studite monastery, and therefore their songwriting activity did not diverge from the general direction of hymnography of the Eastern Church and was of considerable importance for it. Close connections with the East did not prevent, however, some of the Greco-Italian hymn writers from devoting their works to Western saints; Nilus of Rossan, for example, compiled the canon of Benedict of Nursia. Of the later compilers of the canon, the more notable and prolific figures were John of Euchaitis (11th century) and Philotheus of Constantinople (14th century); but there is little original in their works. What was done by Patriarch Philotheus in terms of canons and prayers, the same thing fell to the lot of his contemporary Patriarchs Isidore and Callistus in terms of the akathist. This type of work, as we have already seen, is closely related to kontakia and is nothing more than their further development and processing. George Pisida, a writer of the 7th century, or, as others say, his contemporary Patriarch Sergius, laid the foundation for this type of church creativity, which was then forgotten for several centuries and appeared with renewed vigor already in the 13th-14th centuries under the pen of secular and ecclesiastical writers. Having exhausted all possible motives in the field of canons, we now turned to this new source, but here the same story repeated itself as with the writing of canons. The dominance of form took precedence over content, and this dominance was revealed all the more easily because the technical structure of the akathist with its 12-fold repetition: “Rejoice” fettered even more the scope of thought of the compiler and tied it to the petty requirements of a hackneyed structure. Patriarch Isidore wrote several such akathists, and of them especially stands out “for the life-giving burial of Christ” and “in the name of Christ as the high priest.” Both of these akathists were previously in use and read in the canons, but then they were banned, because the poetic play of thoughts in these works, not having support in the content of reliable sources, draws material from the apocrypha and various legends and resorts to the most refined form of teaching. At first, the akathists were placed in the canons, after the sixth song of the canon, when they were usually read at Matins, but then they began to be separated from the canons and included in special collections, the so-called akathists. Following the example of the Greek Church, akathists began to be written in our country, applying the same standard that was accepted in the East, and even adhered to the same formula that was given in the exemplary akathist to the Theotokos. But this resulted in many oddities and misunderstandings. To the same later series of church hymns belong the so-called μακαρισμοί, or blessings, which are nothing more than a burial sequence 62 applied to the saints and sent on the days of their memory. Makarisms were composed of a combination of short chants, praises (τά ἐγκώμια), with the verses of Psalm 117: “Blessed are the blameless,” which has long been the basis of the funeral rite. In this way, makarisms were formed for the burial of the Savior, the Most Holy Theotokos and various saints. Subsequently, makarisms were partly replaced by the so-called magnifications (μεγαλυνάρια), also a relatively late type of church chant. All this complex liturgical material was gradually collected, organized and entered into collections. The peculiarity of this classification was that the ancient Greek liturgical collections contained homogeneous hymnographic works in more or less complete composition, depending on the time of the meeting. This is how the following appeared: stichirari - collections of stichera for Sundays, holidays and on the days of the most famous saints, kondakari - collections of kontakia with ikoses; tropologies - initially embracing all types of church songs, performed singly according to voices, and then containing troparia and songs of canons, sometimes set to notes; kekragaria - containing stichera on “I cried to the Lord”; Irmology is a collection of basic songs for holiday canons. In a more processed form and applied to official purposes, they were part of the corresponding liturgical books, most of which remain in church use to this day. The oldest Greek manuscripts of similar content do not go back earlier than the 10th century. Regarding the more ancient works of hymnography, it must be said that they were supplanted by the liturgical works of Studite and Jerusalem figures of the 8th-9th centuries; the collections themselves, which had existed until that time, having lost their practical significance, were lost and destroyed; and the new order of service, created thanks to these new works, was brought into the system not before this lively liturgical productivity subsided, and the material developed as a result became part of the then Rule and merged with its structure. Unfortunately, the process of this work on organizing the accumulated material is covered too poorly for us to draw positive conclusions on this score. The statutes do not go back earlier than the 10th century and acquaint us with the state of the ritual in which it was already in the era of assimilation. The statutes tell us every now and then about the Menaion, Triodion and Octoechos. These three books, or, better to say, three separate systems of service, the Charter tries to combine and create on the basis of them a general scheme for the administration of special services. But in what composition these books were originally known, how large the hymnographic material of that time was, the most ancient Typics do not indicate. The work on regulating the service material included in our liturgical books can be represented in the following terms. The first collections were euchologies, that is, a collection of prayers and rituals related to the liturgy and sacraments; Then psalms and biblical songs appeared in the records, in relation to worship. We have these latter in the earliest codices, which served as the basis of our Books of Hours or subsequent Psalms. Here and there, collections of stichera, kontakia and other chants appeared, but these collections have not reached us, and we know about them only from hints and later indications. The Triodion also belongs to the oldest collections of hymns, because the triodic order of service developed very early and in this order the teachings of Theodore the Studite were already arranged, and the most ancient Gospels were readings for the whole year. The monthly Menaions were formed no earlier than the 10th century, because they included most of the material belonging to the pen of the 9th century hymnals. In the 11th century, the Menaion was revised by John the Euchaite and, therefore, put the final edition on them. The foundations of the Octoechos were, of course, laid much earlier than Damascus, and the writers of the stichera are known among the figures of the 6th-7th centuries, but the complete Octoechos or Paracliticus was already formed under the pen of Joseph the Songwriter and Theophanes the Inscribed, whose names are inscribed on the complete Octoechos in ancient manuscripts. Here is a brief overview of church lyricism in the East during the brilliant period of its development from the 8th to the 10th centuries, and here are the most remarkable figures in the field of hymnography. We have traced the three main forms in which the movement of church singing in the East was contained, namely: a short poem or stanza, which closed the singing of psalms - this is the starting point for all further forms of church lyrics; further the same stanza appears in a more developed and rounded form under different names: troparion, kontakion, stichera and other forms of church chant; the third complete form is the canon, where the placement of stanzas and their mutual relationship follows a strictly technical system and obeys the melody of the main irmos. This lively activity in the field of hymnography, caused by the direction of public taste of that time and developing simultaneously with the development and putting in order of church services, embraced all layers of the then society, and not only bishops and monks, but also persons of secular status who possessed the gift of speech and church education devoted their energies to it. Studying lyric poetry was completely in the spirit of that time: philosophy and rhetoric were the two branches in which the education of a well-placed Byzantine was then concentrated, and the study of the ancient classics led him to the idea of ​​trying his hand at this literary field. Churchliness suggested to such lovers of muses its traditional plots, which were interpreted on the basis of ready-made favorite examples of the then refined, primly rhetorical poetry. We have already seen what kind of lively hymnographic activity took place in the monasteries. This activity was supported and shared by the Byzantine emperors. Thus, Patriarch Herman and Kedrin also speak about Justinian as the composer of the song now used in the liturgy: “The Only Begotten Son,” and the latter adds to this the detail that Justinian handed over his work for performance in the St. Sophia Church. The more educated of the Byzantine kings, encouraging the works of contemporary poets, exercised their strength in the field of church lyric poetry - just as they wrote and delivered teachings in church. Emperor Theophilus, the last of the iconoclasts, was especially distinguished in this way. He was a passionate lover of singing and often filled the position of regent himself, standing at the head of the singers in the church and conducting the choir. Pleased with the performance, he gave the singers money and encouraged their activities in every possible way. According to Kedrin, he was not only a good singer, but he himself composed songs for church use, among which the stichera for the week of Vai, beginning with the words: Ἑξέλϑετε ἔϑην, is still known under his name. But this is not all (see also “De cerimoniis aulæ Byzantinæ”, p. 123) that came from his pen, and historians mention many hymns of his composition. Even more famous in this family are Leo the Wise and his famous successor and son Konstantin Porfirorodny - both of them combined with a high education for that time a love of art and literary taste. The first belongs to the so-called morning Gospel stichera (ἑωϑινὰ ψαλλόμενα κατὰ κυριακήν), numbering 11, according to the number of Sunday Gospels, and the well-known stichera for the feast of Pentecost: “Come, people, to the three-component Deity Let's bow"; and the latter wrote the same number of Sunday exapostilaries. Both are still used at Sunday matins. Even women did not lag behind the general trend and made their contribution to the field of church lyrics. Thus, Empress Eudokia, the wife of Theodosius the Younger, was known for her poems and devoted her poetic talent to expounding in verse the history of the martyrs. But the works of only one woman, the nun Cassia (9th century), were awarded ecclesiastical use. He was a remarkable person in his intelligence and character, in his social status. Byzantine historians mention it: Theophanes, Zonara and others. The latter, by the way, tells an incident in which Cassia, having left a prominent secular position, doomed herself to a solitary life. Beautiful, well-educated and well-mannered, Cassia was among several girls who were presented to Theophilus’s court for him to choose a bride from among them. When Theophilus examined them, holding a golden apple in his hand, which he was supposed to give to his chosen one, he approached Cassia and said: “Everything evil came from the wife.” Cassia did not like this remark, and she answered: “All the best came from my wife.” The king was embarrassed by these words and, moving away from Cassia, gave the apple to Theodora the Paphlagonian. Disappointed in her hopes and offended by her preference, Cassia left the world, built a monastery, took monastic vows there, and devoted her talents to composing canons, stichera, and church songs in general. She owns five irmos in the canon on Holy Saturday, several stichera in the service on the Nativity of Christ, on Wednesday of Holy Week, on the Day of the Forerunner, and several others, inscribed in our Triodion with the words: “Creation of Lady Cassia.” The later writer Theodore Prodromus notes that Cassia wrote in the canon for Holy Saturday not only five irmos, but also the troparia related to them, but that later the compilers of the services, revising this work, found it indecent to leave in church use a canon written by a woman, therefore Mark of Otranto replaced the troparia with new ones of his own composition, leaving only the irmos of Cassia. It remains for us to consider another type of medieval Greek lyric poetry, which was close to church works in its content and even closer in its motives and execution. We mean those festive hymns with which the emperor was greeted and seen off during his appearances in church on major holidays and at various court ceremonies. Some of these songs of praise (anthologies) were borrowed from church hymnography, from those service books from which the festive service was performed, but almost the majority were compiled especially for this occasion and came from the pens of court speakers and poets. Writing laudatory speeches, composing welcoming odes and epigrams was generally in the spirit of Byzantine poetry, and it is not surprising that they were inspired by it with particular force when it came to the magnificent ceremonies of the court, and the persons involved in poetry were in the service and support of the emperor. We do not know the names of these poets and songwriters and rhetoricians, but they probably belonged to that large galaxy of masters of this work who left a significant contribution to the Byzantine anthology and were as much lovers of art by vocation as its workers ex professo. A large class of these festive and welcoming court hymns is known under the name of the royal ones - βασιλίκια ἄσματα, or τροπάρια. Like church songs, they were called dismissal and pre-initial, in size and construction - iambs, troparions, and in execution - hymns and antiphons. Singing in the ancient world was generally more developed than now, and, like music, was a necessary accessory to royal holidays and dinners, and folk games. Therefore, when the king invited him to a meal, and there were a lot of such days in the Byzantine ritual, the court singers performed panegyrics in honor of the king and called his person in iambic compositions specially for this occasion. But when the patriarch and the clergy were invited to the table, then this singing was performed by church domestics and songs of church content were chosen to sing. Without dwelling much on this type of Byzantine lyric poetry, I will only point out a significant collection of these semi-ecclesiastical and semi-secular plays in the ritual book of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, where both the very details of their performance and the main ceremonies in which they took place are described. Let us give several examples of these lyrics, mixed in character and content. For example, the festival of grape picking is celebrated. The king and his retinue go to Gierium, a country palace; he is accompanied by the patriarch. Dressed in a phelonion and omophorion, he sanctifies the vines and the first wine made from them. The emperor distributes bunches of grapes to those present, while the court singers, divided into two choirs, sing the following, composed according to all the rules of the then rhetoric of the 1st tone: “From the meadow of knowledge of God, gathering the flowers of wisdom. Let the sacred assembly of venerable patricians crown their heads (that is, cover them with wreaths), like a house of mental fragrance, receiving consolation from grace. You, immortal (ἀϑάνατος), King of all, grant to the world to celebrate this holiday as often as possible in the glory of the royal majesty of our divinely crowned and anointed king.” Having received a monetary gift and chanted another hymn of the same content, the congregation disperses (“De cerimoniis aulæ Byzantinæ”, p. 48). Sometimes these hymns were sung by the people and the leader, or, in our opinion, the canonarch. At the head of the choir, he pronounced a well-known troparion verse by verse, and the people responded to each verse with some exclamation or formula containing praise and goodwill for the emperor. More often, these plays were performed by a whole choir of singers at different stages of the imperial path to the church (these singers were special detachments from the green and blue circus parties). It should also be added that these anthologies were set to voices, like church songs, that their content was consistent with the celebrated church event of the day on which ceremonial exits took place, but in their conclusion, and sometimes in the general structure, they certainly contained a greeting to the king and a prayer for his prosperity. It was this last feature that distinguished βασιλίκια τροπάρια from troparions and songs of special church content in general. Byzantium of the Middle Ages had an extensive collection of works of this kind of lyric poetry, and, moreover, written down separately; but time has deprived us of this branch of poetry, and we can get acquainted with it only from examples that are far from completely preserved in the code of the Byzantine ritualist; but to judge it, these samples are enough. Judging by the analogy, the remaining works did not represent anything special and were distinguished by their ostentatious character. The period of independent development of church lyrics in the East ended in the ninth-tenth centuries, and its main motives were exhausted. At this time, the most important forms of church service had time to be worked out and formed, and a full month of calendars had developed with a firmly established circle of holidays and remembrances. Theophan the Inscribed and Joseph the Songwriter († 883) compiled canons for the saints for a whole year, and for some days for two or more. In connection with this order of the church year and the compilation of complete services for each day of the month, the main work of the hymnographers was completed. Full monthly Menaia appeared, whereas previously there were only holiday ones. From the 11th century we already have lists of Greek and Slavic service Menaions both in foreign and in our Moscow handwritten collections. Before Joseph the Songwriter, there were only up to 200 canons for the days of holidays and saints; but how must this number increase when he alone amounted to more than 220! The time for lively, one might say, feverish activity in this field has passed with these great liturgical workers, and the further fate of church hymnography in the East represents a weak and slow movement in the direction set by the hymn writers of the 8th-10th centuries. Hymnographers of the 11th-16th centuries, poor in their own productivity, live on the legends of the past and limit themselves to compilations. John Zonara, a famous canonist, writes an interpretation of the Sunday canons of Damascus and explains the technical terminology developed in the liturgical writing of that time. Subsequently, Theodore Prodromus acted in the same field of interpretation, compiling an interpretation of the canons of the great holidays written by Damascus and Cosmas of Mayum. His work was revised and supplemented by Gregory of Corinth. Of the hymnographers of this period, one could name a fairly large number of names, and there were quite a few people who left their works in church use. But these were already weak experiments; their place is in the Church Charter, and not in the area of ​​lyric poetry of that time; they are important for the statistics of hymnography, but not for characterizing its direction. More prominent representatives were John of Euchaitis, Patriarch Philotheus of Constantinople, and the little-known collector of church hymns, monk Theodulus. Further mention should be made of Nikephoros Xanthopulus, compiler of the synaxarion, and, finally, from the 16th century, Nicholas Malax of the Peloponnese; What remained from him were small hymnographic works, known from handwritten Menaions and printed Venetian editions. From this dark time in the history of Byzantine education and political life, several names of μελουργῶν μαῖστόρων have come down to us, known in the history of music, but not lyrics. Little-known Greek, Bulgarian, Turkish and some kind of mixed barbarian names, standing at the head of various ποίημα, ἀκολυϑία, κεκραγάρια, are worthy representatives of this era of deep decline of the Greek spirit and Greek life. John Kukuzel, Manuel Chrysaphi, Khaliburius, Sgouropoulos, Tsankopoulos - these are the names that supplemented the index of ancient melodies and hymnographers for this dark period of church life. It must be added to this that the hymnographers of the time in question were constrained in their works by purely external, formal requirements, which imposed on them the heavy duty of composing a certain number of songs according to a known model and legal duration. This especially needs to be said about the technical construction of the canon, the structure of the irmos and the troparions subordinate to them; and therefore the canons almost to a greater extent revealed the weaknesses of their style that we indicated 63. With such an attitude to the matter, it was difficult to expect living lyrical motifs from the works that came from the pens of church hymnals of the period under review, and often prose, dry prose stood out very sharply through the refined rhythmic and rhetorical form of the stanzas and songs of the canon. It is also impossible to demand lyrical animation, liveliness and variety in the main motive of this or that canon; chants, when they were written for every significant holiday according to the same model, were written, finally, too drawn out, partly to satisfy the accepted templates, partly at the whim of the compilers themselves. It is difficult not to dry up the source of shallow poetic talent when one draws too much from it, it is difficult not to go into dry prose when the poor content of the chant is deliberately stretched into many troparia, completely mechanically interconnected. Especially those hymn writers who arranged a series of songs, troparions of the canon and, in general, following in order the letters of the alphabet or a pre-taken verse, fell into this slavish, anti-artistic attitude. The acrostic form in itself is already an anti-poetic form and ties thought to the petty conditions of external artificiality, but when this form is chosen for complex plays with important content, it is always associated with harm to the poetic word, turns it into petty prose and concentrates all the attention of the compiler on decoration. In liturgical successions this form occurs very often, unfortunately, and was a particularly favored and accepted form in Byzantine lyric poetry of the medieval period. In our Slavic translation, this technically musical side of the works of Byzantine church lyric poetry is almost completely lost, and we no longer have the opportunity to understand the distinctive features of the original and hear in the current canon and stichera speech without any meter and rhythm. Only in some cases, for example, in the akathist and troparia of the canon, do we have the opportunity to notice the sequence of verses and stanzas of the original text. Many of these hymnographic works appear pale, and not because of the reason indicated and just clarified by us, not only due to the darkness or incomprehensibility of their translation, although accurate, but standing much lower than the original in stylistic terms; Both are, of course, true to a large extent; the pallor of the content and monotony of many of our canons and liturgical songs in general are explained by the nature and content of the originals themselves, determined by the properties of the latter. There are no words that many of the church hymnographers possessed a certain degree of poetic talent and had a warm heart, which was reflected in their sincere, sometimes deeply inspired works. But some of the representatives and even the best representatives of Greek church lyricism were sometimes too busy with the dry abstractions of dogmatism and scholasticism to always maintain the freshness and spontaneity of their religious feeling and not introduce the same dry rational element into the content of church hymns. Let us point out, as an example, the theological-scholastic direction in at least some of the works of St. John of Damascus, whose works are so well known in our school theological literature. This theologian, who wrote dialectics, and the refutation of heresies, and a scholastic system of dogma in places, devoted himself to the profession of a Christian hymn writer, which, apparently, was so inconsistent with the special type of his occupation. We do not want to say by this that the hymns of John of Damascus are devoid of poetic talent: among his canons and stichera there are those that are marked by deep religious animation and warmth of feeling, others achieve rare poetic imagery and artistic drama; These include some of the stichera of his funeral canon. But he has many, and perhaps much more, in which rhetorical imagery partially replaces true animation and dialectical-figurative treatment absorbs the main concerns of the compiler. In our holiday canons, as you know, there are extremely obscure irmos. We usually explain their darkness, I repeat, by shortcomings and imperfections of the Slavic translation. Without denying the validity of this explanation, we cannot help but say that the same irmos are, in our opinion, little intelligible in the Greek original, and therefore cannot have much clarity even in the best translation. It is difficult, of course, to convey in translation, preserving all the beauties of the original, exemplary works of art, especially poetic creations of folk fantasy; but it is perhaps even more difficult to convey in a clear, precise and close to the original language exquisite rhetorical passages in which the meaning of this or that passage is often based on a witty play of concepts, on unspoken allusions or hints and artificial oppositions, where the dialectical comparison of subtle dogmatic concepts and exquisitely refined examples replace the absence of a direct heartfelt attitude to the matter. In the field of Byzantine church hymnography, justice requires that there are many works that are mediocre and downright weak, completely poor in content and devoid of artistic merit. Chapter III. About church singing and music About church singing and music. Three types of singing in the ancient Church: solitary, antiphonal and general; restriction of people's participation in singing. The nature of singing in the ancient Church. Osmoglasie. Musical signs. Singing in the Western Church; her musical styles and schools. Instrumental performance of church hymns and the attitude of the ancient Church to it. How were hymns or chants performed in the ancient Christian Church during worship? From the very concept of a hymn as a chant, it is clear that its performance was performed through singing or vocal music. This connection between the hymn and singing is clearly indicated by Blessed Augustine when he notes about the first that he assumes the following three conditions: a) it must be a song of praise, b) a song for the glory of God, and c) it must certainly be a song, that is, performed through singing 64 . All these conditions took place in the liturgical practice of the ancient Christian Church. We have to pay attention to the implementation of the last of them and become more familiar with the method of musical and vocal performance of church chants during the service. According to the degree of participation of performers in the ancient Church, there were three types of singing: 1) single, 2) antiphonal, or variable, and 3) general. It is only possible to trace and accurately determine the meaning of each of these three singing elements in the composition of ancient singing. Single singing in its pure form was rarely practiced; it either merged with the antiphonal during the performance of a melody, which was then picked up by the whole assembly, or it was adjacent to the chanting reading of psalms, the Gospel, the Apostle, the Scriptures in general, and this latter, reading or uttering in recitative, was something between reading and singing 65 . Antiphonal or alternating singing was based on the general technique of alternating performers; it was based on the division of singing between two performing parties: between the singer, or the leader of the singing, and the people, between the psalt and the choir, or between two separate choirs. The performance itself consisted in the fact that the melody performed by one choir was repeated without any change in its composition by the other. In modern terms, this was singing in the choirs and involved dividing the performers, and sometimes all those present, into two parts, or sides, one of which was at times made up of men, the other of women. The East, mainly Syria and Antioch, is considered the birthplace of antiphonal singing. But long before the adoption of this type of singing in the Christian world, it was already known in the practice of Greek theater, where the performance of a stanza alternately by two choirs of singers was called στροφή and ἀντιστροφή. Philo says about the therapists that during their meetings for prayer they formed two choirs: one of men, the other of women, and sang hymns to the glory of God - sometimes all together unanimously, sometimes separately, alternately, accompanying their singing with gestures. Although church tradition traces the beginning of antiphonal singing to the times of Ignatius the God-Bearer, who, according to the testimony of Socrates, being transferred to the sphere of the celestials, heard there how angelic faces alternately sang the Trisagion hymn, but since this news first comes through Socrates, who lived in the 4th century, its chronological reliability can only be assessed from the point of view of that time. The precedent for this legend is found in the book of the prophet Isaiah, which speaks of the same alternating, antiphonal singing of angels who called out to each other a song of praise: “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts,” and, therefore, the custom of the Antiochian Church already had its basis in the Old Testament example. The essence of Socrates' legend can be reduced to the simple historical conclusion that it was in the Syrian Church that this type of singing first appeared and was adopted; here it was associated with the name of the famous representative of the ancient Syrian Church, Ignatius the God-Bearer, and from here in the 4th century it spread far beyond its borders and became known in the West. Positive evidence of the use of this type of singing in the Church simultaneously concerns both the East and the West and belongs to the 4th century. Blessed Theodoret says the following about the beginning of antiphonal singing: when the Bishop of Antioch Leontius changed Orthodoxy and began to sing a small doxology in Arian, then two presbyters, Flavian and Diodorus, broke off communication with their bishop and began to gather with the Orthodox in churches and sing the psalms of David antiphonally. They were the first, says the historian, dividing the choir into two halves, and began to sing the psalms of David alternately, and this began from Antioch. In the West, it was introduced by Ambrose of Milan and, as historical evidence clearly shows, it was borrowed by the latter from the East. Contemporaries liked this singing so much that the heretics themselves used it to attract people to their churches when performing their hymns. This was the case with the Arians in Constantinople under John Chrysostom, and so it was in the Church of Milan under Ambrose 66. A special type or technique of antiphonal singing (in its pure, so to speak, form) was hypophonic singing. It consisted in the fact that the singer, in a measured and euphonious voice, began and performed the psalm, and the people participated in singing with him, repeating the last words of well-known verses of the psalm or hymn, or accompanying each individual verse with one verse or chorus. In ancient church language this was called: ὑποφωνειν, ὑπακούειν, succinere - to sing along. The oldest indication of this type of singing is preserved in the Apostolic Constitutions (II, 57, Russian translation, p. 90), which says that after the reader has performed two readings from the Old Testament at the liturgy of the catechumens, “let someone else (selected psalt) sing the songs of David, and let the people sing along the last words of the verses (ὑποψάλλεται ἀκροστοίχια).” Dionysius the Areopagite speaks of a similar performance of the psalms by the primate and the clergy present at the altar. Epiphonic singing came close to this method of singing psalms and hymns, when people added some kind of refrain or formula to well-known stanzas or verses of the hymn. Such refrains were in the ancient church: “Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” “Amen,” “For His mercy endures forever” (Athanasius) and others. Traces of epiphonic singing have been preserved very clearly in present-day church practice in the choruses of antiphons, in prokeemnas and in the performance of psalms. The third type of singing was common singing, performed by everyone present in the church. Everyone sang together, everyone who could and knew how to sing took part in the singing. This method of performing church hymns (and prayers) was especially common in the early Christian era, serving as an expression of the close moral and religious connection that united members of the Christian community. The testimony of Pliny in a letter to Emperor Trajan about the nightly meetings of Christians, the testimony of Tertullian about the method of performing agape in the early Christian world, and the observations of the most ancient liturgical records do not leave any doubt on this score. This practice continued in full force during the time of John Chrysostom. “Once upon a time,” he says, “believers came together and sang together; We do the same now... Men and women, elders and youths differ only in gender and age, but not in singing, because the spirit, controlling the voice of each, creates one common melody from all of them.” But this system of singing did not last long, and could not survive due to disciplinary conditions that changed the structure of church-liturgical relations. The first symptom of its fall was the establishment of a special class of singers, or psalters 67 . We must, however, distinguish these latter from the psalts of the early Christian era, which were called ὑποβολεῖς, φωνασκοί, monitores, præcentores, which were, in fact, the founders of singing, singers, canonarchs and served as its representatives or luminaries in the hypophonic system. Tertullian considered the very existence of such præcentores (regents) an anti-Christian custom, perhaps because they were taken from the practice of the Greek theater, where a prominent role was played by the luminaries of the choir or singers, who gave the tone and composition of the melody. But in addition, Tertullian saw in their duties an encroachment on the freedom of prayer. The prayer of a Christian, according to him, is determined by the disposition of his heart; it is free because it is not prompted by others, but is aroused and develops by itself in the mysterious depths of the soul. Knowing the main motive of the often harsh and eccentric judgments of Tertullian, who in word and deed tried to resurrect the simplicity and purity of early Christian practice in the Church of his time, which was already beginning to regulate the free forms of ancient Christian cult, it is easy to understand that Tertullian was armed here against restrictions on the rights of the community in the matter of prayer and expression of their religious beliefs. But over time, the singers received a stronger official position and little by little pushed the people away from participating in singing, concentrating this responsibility in a closed circle of persons specially appointed to perform singing and receiving authority to do so through initiation. In this sense, the 17th rule of the Council of Laodicea was drawn up regarding singers, which legitimizes that except for singers who are members of the clergy, have the right to ascend to the pulpit and wear a phelonets, no one else can sing in church. Here, obviously, we are talking about a special class of singers with a different purpose than the psalts or monitors of the ancient Christian church, although, according to Balsamon’s explanation, this rule supposedly only gave the singers control over the singing, but did not prohibit the people from singing along. We do not want to say that by this rule the participation of the people in singing should be stopped everywhere and absolutely; it continued here and there, but occurred as a sporadic phenomenon. So says Isidore of Spain. The reduction or limitation of popular participation in singing was caused by many reasons. The order of worship became more and more complicated over time, church works relied on notes and were performed according to the model of a well-known melody, which required preliminary study and skill in singing. Church discipline began to find it impermissible for women to participate in singing, and Cyril of Jerusalem spoke of it as one that is more suitable for the stage and contains effeminate motives. Isidore Pelusiot also stood on his side, who expressed the same idea more fully and motivated it more thoroughly. As a result of all these conditions, the people could participate in singing, pronouncing only small formulas known to them by skill and, moreover, the simplest chant, but as for the performance of longer, recorded liturgical songs, this was accessible only to connoisseurs of singing and literate people. And we see that in the 4th century singing schools began to emerge, and at large churches numerous singing choirs were formed, under the direction of domestics, or experts in singing and music. During the time of Theodosius the Great, a special singing school already existed in Constantinople, from which singing teachers emerged. One of these teachers taught the singers of St. John Chrysostom. At large churches there were entire choirs of singers, and in the St. Sophia Cathedral, according to the staff of Emperor Justinian, there were supposed to be 25 singers, with whom 100 individual readers shared this position. In monasteries, where most of the monks were literate, and the illiterate were obliged to memorize the Psalter and the most common church songs, the entire brotherhood, thanks to this, could participate in singing in the ancient Christian way. Melodically, the singing of the ancient Church bore little resemblance to that which we hear today. Only the lightest modulations of the voice were used there, so this singing can rather be called recitative or melodious speaking than melodic singing with a developed vocalization system. This especially needs to be noted about the performance of psalms during worship. St. Augustine says that in the church of his time “the psalms were pronounced in such an even voice and with such weak modulations (tam modico flexu) that they were more akin to speaking than to singing,” and Isidore of Seville directly states that in the early Church psalmody was performed in such a way that it was more like sonorous pronunciation than singing in the strict sense of the word. With this manner of singing, it is self-evident that great skill was not required from the singers: monotony itself protected against disharmony, and the absence of a melodic element made the participation of weak and poorly processed voices tolerable. This method of singing performance was applied to all those cases when a more complete, intelligible and separate reading was required, so to speak, chanting. This is how the Apostle and the Gospel read it, which has been partially preserved to this day. Manuscripts have come down to us in which the readings of the biblical text, the Apostle and the Gospel are set, as it were, to notes, and the raising and lowering of the voice is indicated by special singing signs. The separation of the Apostle and the Gospel, made by Deacon Euphalius in the 5th century, had, among other things, the goal of simplifying their reading in church and convenience when performing chanting. More freedom and artificiality were allowed in the singing of hymns. The folk singing of the Greeks, with its developed technique, could and did have a strong influence on the singing melody of ancient Christian hymn works. The strict Doric mode was especially convenient for such a purpose, which the Greeks spoke of with particular respect, and which found connoisseurs in the history of church singing. We will not outline the technical side of ancient singing and characterize various tunes, especially loved by the ancient Greeks. We will only note that the primal Church generally adhered to the rule that gentle melodic singing has too much of an effect on the sensory impression and can thus distract the mind from the content of hymns and prayers, and therefore it could assimilate the melodies of the ancient Greeks only with a limitation and strict selection of suitable musical elements. She treated the musical, gentle and aesthetic style of singing with distrust and condemned it as unworthy. The famous Pavel Samosatsky was distinguished by a special passion for the brilliant atmosphere of worship, loved drama in delivering sermons, demanded that those present applaud him and, by the way, composed a choir of women who served as singers during his services. Paul's accusers found in all these actions his traces of innovation and deviation from the strict laws of ancient church practice. But music has always been a powerful means of influencing the human heart and constituted one of the most powerful motives for arousing religious feelings. This circumstance, unfortunately, for a long time not recognized by the rigoristic view of the ancient ascetics, was brought to light and put to work by the heretics, who took advantage of the melodic tunes of their hymns to attract people to their meetings and to better disseminate their teachings. We have already mentioned the Aryan processions, accompanied by antiphonal singing of male and female choirs. But the Syrian Gnostic Bardesan and his disciple Harmonius distinguished themselves even more in this field. They wrote many hymns in which they expressed their teaching in rhythmic language and set these hymns to music. Ephraim the Syrian, according to his biographer, saw that the Vardesan sect was strengthening thanks to the beautiful melodies of Vardesan’s hymns, and that with them he poured destructive poison into the hearts of those who listened to his songs. And so Ephraim decided to do in his church the same thing that his opponents tried with such success: he, for his part, wrote Orthodox hymns and organized a choir of women. By singing these hymns, they kept the people in the church with their pleasant singing. The impetus given by the ingenuity of the heretics soon became a general rule and found justification in the ecclesiastical circumstances of that time. It was, of course, completely in the order of things to pay attention to the organization of church singing at a time when the Church was so concerned about expanding its cult and strengthening its liturgical appearance. And, indeed, its best representatives, striving to cleanse church singing from secular motives, spectacular and whimsical modulations, at the same time tried to give it a certain degree of musical processing, technical completeness, and, for their part, cared a lot about establishing a certain law for liturgical singing. The East, the birthplace of Greek art, famous for its love of music and singing, also developed a system of church singing, which, later adopted in the West, has been preserved in the liturgical use of the Eastern Church to this day. The fundamental law of the singing melody of the Greek Church is osmoharmony. Its implementation in practice, its liturgical application and the subordination of various melodies of church music to this law constitute the merit of the East and are closely associated with the name of St. John of Damascus. We do not intend to go into consideration of the technical side of the osmoglas system, since this would lead us far into the theory and history of music, but we will limit ourselves to only the general observation that the eight voices of church singing are nothing more than eight different ways of vocal performance of church hymns. Each of these vocal performances is based on a certain sequence of musical tones and, thus, is subject to a certain theoretical law, that is, each voice rotates in the area of ​​​​certain sounds peculiar to it, or, better said, is based on their peculiar combination. Of these tones, some are called dominant, that is, the most repeated, others are called initial and final, judging by their position. Let us add that these voices (ἦχος) were based on modes or tunes used by the Greeks and known as Doric, Phrygian, Lydian and Mixolydian. The first four voices, or tunes, were called straight, or high, and were designated in order: first, second, third, fourth, ἦχος πρῶτος, etc. The remaining four are closely related to the melody of these main tunes and were called side tunes, πλάγιοι. They, as they say in the singing language, are akin, musically corresponding to the four main voices, and therefore were designated in the monuments of ancient liturgical writing: the fifth - as a secondary voice of the first, the 6th - a secondary voice of the second, the 7th - a secondary voice of the third, or heavy (βαρύς), the 8th - a secondary voice of the fourth. This musical construction of the voice according to the system of Greek folk singing first occurred, developed and took shape in the East. Thus, Anatoly of Constantinople writes his stichera in eight voices, Romanus the Sweet Singer composes his kontakia in no more and no less than eight voices, Jacob of Edessa sets his hymns in the week of Vai to the same number of tunes. Osmoglasie was thus already known in the 6th century; but there is no indication that these technical rules of consonant church melody were then elevated to a definite law and theory. In this last respect, church singing in the East owed much to St. John of Damascus. Damascene, distinguished by his special systematicity in his verbal works, set out the ancient osmoglanie of the Eastern Church in a strict musical system and thus compiled a theory for the practice of church singing. This significance of John of Damascus in the history of church singing is indicated by the general tradition of the Eastern Church, in full accordance with which is the major work of John of Damascus - the Octoechos, or the arrangement of Sunday church services on the basis of this ancient singing law. John of Damascus, with his Octoechos, rendered that important service to church singing in that he gave it completeness and stability, and thereby protected the church melody from the arbitrariness and profanation of the singers. By limiting the singing melody to eight voices or individual tunes and subordinating to this system the entire variety of church hymns, he thereby established the solid foundations of their singing performance and preserved for subsequent times the strict motives of ancient church singing. It is impossible to say how much the main original melodies laid down by Damascene have been preserved in our current musical Octoechos, because not only the musical osmoglasik of the latter, but also the musical provisions of the time closest to it have not been preserved to us. But that modern church singing is based on an ancient melody, this proves the connection of the current osmoglasnik with its original and the path of historical tradition. Since Octoechos was intended for singing use and was supposed to serve as an indication of the melody for all voices, then, without a doubt, his melodies were set to notes and indicated by certain musical signs. What were these signs? Today's musical notes have a rather later origin. The ancients did not know such signs, but used a more complex and varied semiography. The Greeks used the letters of their alphabet for this purpose; they were placed above the text and served as chanting indicators. When musical technique became more complex, the area of ​​tones itself expanded, and the requirements for rhythm or cadence in performance increased, then the system of signs itself turned out to be insufficient, and they tried to expand it, giving the letters of the alphabet different positions: they wrote them abbreviated, straight, sideways, elongated, and in other ways. To save time when copying notes, they subsequently began to resort to abbreviated cursive representation of musical signs, which is why they lost their original graphic form and became known as neumas or hooks, which later replaced the completely alphabetical system of musical semiography. As its further development, there is a new way of depicting a melody through musical linear signs, which by their position between the lines indicate the height or quality of the tone, and by their appearance indicate its duration and determine the rhythm or cadence of the musical melody. The church singing of the Western Church is based on the same musical law as the singing of the Eastern Church, brought into a strict system by John of Damascus. It stood in close connection with the history of singing in the East and was borrowed from the Greeks, like church hymnography. Ambrose of Milan introduced in his church the use of four main tunes or modes: Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and Mixolydian, and based on them he built the singing melody of church hymns in his church. But Ambrosian singing soon underwent distortions in church practice, lost its simplicity and purity, so that by the time of Gregory the Great (VI-VII centuries) there was already an urgent need to improve church singing, and Gregory worked a lot in this field and gained liturgical fame in the West. To the four voices, or modes, of Ambrosian singing, he added four more, and thus, in the Western Church, osmoglasia was introduced on the model of the Eastern. It cannot be said that the method introduced by Gregory was distinguished by sonority and pleasantness. His cantus planus (smooth melody) was aimed at limiting new and refined motives of secular singing and consisted of a combination of tones that were more or less monophonic and of the same duration, without any vocal contortions or rises. This singing was, in its own way, a musical recitation, unison singing. Many of the later historians of church music rebelled against the so-called Gregorian chant, finding it dry, lifeless, alien to any exciting motives. And it really was like that musically. To ensure the fate of the system of church singing he introduced, Gregory founded a large school near Rome, where children of poor parents studied music and singing. They received their maintenance here from church funds, and the more successful of them reached the highest hierarchical degrees. The school founded by Gregory was very famous in its time and attracted numerous students from different countries. Others were built on its model in smaller cities, and Western missionaries spread Gregorian chant in Germany and Britain. The direction given to church singing by Pope Gregory seemed to be the best way to protect the strict church style of singing from any changes and mixing it with alien motives of secular music; but in reality this did not happen. Canonical singing, introduced by Gregory, despite its rigor and monotony, the absence of modulations, was so difficult to study and perform that the most hardworking and capable students of his school could barely master the rules of this singing at the age of ten. The technical side of Gregorian chant was extremely intricate, and the musical signs (neumas) were distinguished by such diversity in arrangement and conventionality in their meaning that it took a long and persistent study of the matter, a long-term habit, to be able to make out these small, peculiar figures with which the scores of the so-called Gregorian chant were dotted. The immediate consequence of this difficulty was that the people could not take part in church singing and only in the final ones: amen, Κύριε ἐλέησον, etc. p., raised his voice. The people had neither the leisure nor the means to learn this cunning art; experienced teachers were hard to come by; Until the 13th century, organs did not yet have a good design, and therefore could not serve the purposes of musical education. And so the former strict motives, due to insufficiently diligent study of them, began to fall into oblivion, many variants appeared, and the strict style diversified to the point that the cantus firmus turned into the discantus, or that living motive that prevailed in popular use and little by little replaced unison singing. By the end of the 15th century, the figurative nature of church singing in the West had become so strong that it inspired great fears in the fathers of the Council of Trent about the direction of church music. These fears might have led to the same unmelodic and dry motives of church singing that were once introduced by the so-called Gregorian school, if at that time Italy did not have a great musical talent in the person of the composer Palestrina, who can be considered the father of the new music school (born 1524, Palestrin after the city of Præneste). Palestrina, even before the strict definition of the Council of Trent regarding the then church singing and music, was already known for his spiritual cantatas, which were often performed in church and made a deep impression on listeners. They remembered Palestrina and his motives and decided to postpone the last judgment about the new church music until Palestrina wrote a test composition and set the Latin Mass to music. It was required that the musical work of this maestro, with the deep religious nature of its motives, be free from secular frivolity, be publicly accessible and satisfy the feeling of piety. Palestrina's experiment was a brilliant success. He wrote music for three masses (for 6 voices), and one of them, performed in the presence of Pope Pius IV, earned universal approval and was received with delight. After listening to the brilliant composition, the pope exclaimed: “Here, in earthly Jerusalem, John (Johann - that was Palestrina’s name) gives us an anticipation of the sweetness of a new song, which the apostle once heard in spiritual delight in heavenly Jerusalem.” The strictly ecclesiastical works of Palestrina and his closest students were a repetition of the strict motives of Gregorian chant, as a result of which they remained for a long time in the church practice of Rome, and to this day his classical transcriptions, such as: Stabat mater dolorosa, are performed in the Sistine Chapel. But regardless of the strictly ecclesiastical style, music was formed under the influence of Palestrina, which gave content and life to operatic music. The reason for the development of this new musical style was the general fascination of educated people of that time with the ideas of classical antiquity. In the house of one of these lovers of ancient art, the Florentine Count Giovanni Bardi, from time to time a society of artists and scientists gathered, among whom was Galileo, the father of the famous astronomer. Once the conversation turned to Greek art and stopped at music. It goes without saying that when assessing the artistic merits of this latter, they spoke out in her favor most ardently and wished her success in the musical world of modern times. In response to the question what is the peculiarity of ancient music and its advantage over the newest, Galileo, one of the experts on ancient art, wrote a dialogue in which, believing the perfection of ancient music to be in unison, he reproached the newest compositions for the excessive variety of tones and diversity of musical content. He pointed to the recitation and recitative of ancient Greek tragedy as the best means of musical performance. Strange as it may seem, this return to the manner of ancient Gregorian singing, and especially in the field of secular music, was nevertheless followed, and soon experiments in new musical compositions appeared in the taste of ancient Greek music. In this way, for the first time, the idyllic operetta “Daphne” was written, which was performed in the palace of the then famous Greekophile and philanthropist of Korea and earned everyone’s surprise. In 1600, Kakuini wrote his first opera, Eurydice. Both of these plays, musically, were nothing more than an imitation of the strict manner of ancient church singing, but with an admixture of suitable motives from the field of ancient Greek music in its strict style. These plays took the first step towards the creation of operatic music and laid the foundation for a new musical method, which, having existed for two and a half centuries, developed the musical style that we admire in the best classical plays of modern music. Of course, based on the latest findings, it is difficult to judge the basic principles of the movement, and who would have thought that the ancestor of our latest spectacular music was the unison motif of Gregorian chant, the strictly ecclesiastical musical style in which psalms and spiritual hymns were sung by Christians of the primal Church? Of course, secular opera music could not stop at unison; it could not exist without calling on harmonic sound combination for help, without breaking out of the shackles of this oppressive musical monotony. In the application of this element to the music of modern times, the famous creator of classical music Sebastian Bach († 1754) and his compatriot Handel († 1759), contemporaries and natives of Germany, gained great fame. The latter is especially famous for his oratorios, a new musical form which, having originated in Italy, found its final development and systematic treatment in Germany under the hand of the famous Handel. What kind of musical type is an oratorio? Even much earlier than the era in question, dramatic performances of religious content, the so-called mysteries, began to be given in monasteries, and in general all the dramatic poetry of the ancient era had a purely religious character. These religious dramas begin in the earliest medieval era and arise from the ruins of the ancient theater, influenced by its legends. Thus, in the monasteries of the times of Charlemagne, the monks were engaged in composing dramatic plays, imitating the ancient Latin classics. This religious opera, the main parts of which were accompanied by musical accompaniment, caused by sympathy for the examples of Greco-Roman drama, was a brilliant success and, in the best possible way, suited the taste of the time when in Italy and Germany poetic creativity tried its hand at religious subjects, and the Christian epic of the 15th and subsequent centuries was imbued with a classical religious character. It is enough to pay attention to Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, to Klopstock’s “Messiad”, and Milton’s “Paradise Lost” in order to judge the elements that were part of the literary and artistic works of this time, and to understand their close connection with the oratorios of Haydn, many classical plays of Beethoven and Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. Of course, these and similar plays were for the most part above the musical development of the common people, but they were used as an accompaniment to drama and stage performances, to which the majority always felt a special attraction. On holidays, especially when the theater was closed, these spiritual dramas perfectly replaced stage performances of secular content and became increasingly famous. They formed a middle, half-church, half-theatrical style and provided the necessary elements for the development of new operatic music. Let us now say a few words about the instrumental performance of church hymns, about how the ancient Church treated it. In the era contemporary with the beginning of the Christian Church, there were two methods of performance: purely voice, vocal, and voice performance, accompanied by instrumental music. The cult of the ancient world used both of these methods to the same extent, and anyone who knows with what ceremonies and under what conditions the games and religious holidays of the ancient Greeks took place will well understand the participation of the instrumental-musical element in the cult practice of the ancient world. Jewish worship was also accompanied by music. The ancient Christian Church, which expressed strong doubts against sculpture and, in part, painting, looked even more suspiciously at the use of music in worship. Church teachers said that in the Old Testament church it was allowed to accompany singing by playing musical instruments out of condescension towards the carelessness, cowardice and spiritual weakness of the Jews, and that God wanted with this permission to arouse their sensual mind to more lively and energetic activity. In the Apostolic Constitutions, instrumental playing directly refers to subjects prohibited for every Christian, and it is forbidden to teach the sacrament of Baptism to players on the violin, harp and lyre. Thus, the performance of lyrical works was vocal. “We use one organ - the word,” said Tertullian, “with the word, and not with the psalter, trumpet, tympanum and flute, we honor God.” The organ of human speech, in its physical structure, is indeed one of the most perfect instruments. Although the human voice far from covers the space of all acts performed by a string instrument, on the whole it is capable of forming polyphonic harmony with the richest and most elegant harmonies. In addition, the human voice expresses the inner state of the soul more naturally, more vividly and, so to speak, more subjectively and serves as a conductor of its movements. Because of these advantages, vocal performance or singing was generally accepted in the ancient Church. Only at the beginning of the Middle Ages, and only in the West, did instrumental music come into church use, and organs appeared in churches. According to the annalists, the first organ known in the West was received by Pepin as a gift from the Greek emperor Constantine Copronymus and was, in all likelihood, a household instrument such as those used in Constantinople. Based on the model of another large organ sent from Byzantium to Charlemagne, the latter ordered the same one to be built for the Aachen Church, and since then the organs have been distributed throughout Western churches; They have become especially famous since the 13th-14th centuries, when the technical side of this instrument received significant improvements. By the time of the Council of Trent, the use of organs in church practice had already become so rooted and was so popular that its members, speaking about church discipline, did not say anything against the organ, but canonically, so to speak, sanctified its use, while at the same time prohibiting the use of any other instruments in the church. This shows that, in addition to the organ, there were other musical instruments that served as an accompaniment to singing. But this variety of instrumental music is a matter much later than the use of the organ in church practice. Thomas Aquinas once said that the church does not allow musical instruments, such as the zither and psalter, so as not to appear to be Judaizing; but later this rule was changed. Along with the spread of figurative music, which allowed polyphonic parts, exquisite modulations and the most whimsical melodic motifs, and, partly, under the influence of operatic music, based on the same church motifs, musical accompaniment received a more complex production, and, in addition to the organ, singing was accompanied by violins, trumpets and timpani. The design of the organ itself has changed to adapt to this condition. In the 15th century, mechanical parts began to be attached to the organ, performing various kinds of imitative sounds. Angels appeared with trumpets, blew them and beat kettledrums; the rooster, flapping its wings, crowed; the birds filled the air with their cries and chirps. Even to this day in the West, during ceremonial services, a whole orchestra of wind and string instruments participates in performing the melody. In the Greek Church, instrumental music never had a place in worship; but this provision is not absolute, and there were cases when instrumental music was permitted. Thus, from Kodin we can conclude that during solemn ceremonies, such as the coronation of the emperor, and also during royal exits, the singing of the choir was accompanied by the accompaniment of instrumental music. It is also known from Byzantine writers that after the many years proclaimed to the king on Christmas Day before the end of the liturgy, the same thing was repeated by various kinds of musical instruments: resonantibus organis, puae varia sunt, or: organa satis multo prostrepunt, or: organis qenuo ad modicum tempus resonantibus. But these cases are not exceptional and, it seems, took place only in court churches and at home ceremonies of the Byzantine court, but instrumental singing did not enter into general church practice. Chapter IV. Teaching in Apostolic Times Teaching in Apostolic Times. The position of preaching during the period of its liturgical prosperity; testimonies of Pliny the Younger, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Apostolic Constitutions. Initial freedom of teacher speech and its gradual restriction. The decline of preaching in the Eastern and Western Churches. The position of preaching among Protestants. The second component in the system of ancient Christian worship was the sermon, or the didactic element. The current position of this part in the liturgy and other services is far from corresponding to the position it previously occupied. And it cannot be said that this flourishing time of preaching belonged to one primitive era of the newly emerging Christian cult, that it constituted a fleeting phenomenon, created by exceptional conditions of the time and quickly disappeared from practice. Church preaching, organically merging with the entire structure of the ancient liturgy and worship in general, occupied an honorable place in it during the 4th-5th centuries and went through several periods in its development. The Apostolic period represents the first page from the history of Christian preaching, when it still stood at the level of inspired word and served as an expression of the religious-ecstatic state of the first members of the Christian community, when it had not yet separated from prophecy, was expressed in the gift of speaking in tongues and, in order to become an instrument of edification and teaching, had to submit to the gift of speaking in tongues, that is, calmly rational exegesis. To characterize the sermon for this period of its history, I will draw your attention to the fourteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, in which the Apostle Paul depicts the widespread use of the gift of speaking in tongues (γλωσσολαλία) and the gift of prophecy for the religious edification of the Christian community in Corinth. From its contents it is clear that during public meetings among Corinthian Christians the right of mutual edification was granted to each of those present at the service and was a matter of free inspiration for each member of the community. Obeying the power of religious excitement, members of the early Christian community enjoyed the broadest right of free speech. Without embarrassment or limitation, they could deliver their animated speeches in a general meeting and, in moments of animation, they did not stop at their form and expressions, and apparently did not particularly care about being understandable to their listeners. Without taking up arms against the very custom, which reserved for each member of the community the right to preach in a public meeting, without denying the very principle by which such a wide application of preaching to public worship was allowed, the Apostle of Languages ​​tries only to limit the disorder and disorder that occurred as a result of the abuse of this right. Following a surge of inspiration, members of the Corinthian community did not know and did not take turns when speaking, interrupting each other, expressing themselves in that incomprehensible mystical language that happens to be the lot of people obsessed with religious delight, understandable to them, but little intelligible to others. This enthusiastic speech had as much a didactic as a lyrical character, because it was an expression of that immediate religious inspiration that took possession of all the forces and aspirations of the soul and brought the speaker into a state of religious excitement. The totality of those rights or liturgical actions that belonged to each member of the church, the apostle denotes in the words: “What then is it, brethren? Whenever you come together, let each of you have a psalm, have a teaching, have a tongue, have a revelation, have a story: let all things be for building up” (1 Cor. 14:26). The Apostle dwells in particular detail on the right of teaching, which belonged to members of Christian assemblies, and clarifies those requirements under which this right can bring benefit and edification to others, namely: when speaking in tongues will be accompanied by prophecy, that is, an explanation of what was said in a language understandable to all. So, conversation or preaching in the early Christian church constituted the most essential, if not the main part of their religious meetings, was not associated with a certain hierarchical degree and was not a privilege of a certain church rank, and therefore received the form of a free conversation between members of the community - an interview that, like any living speech, took on the most diverse forms and in the language of the apostle and the first Christian writers received the name διαλέγεσϑαι and ὁμιλεῖν – conversation, conversation. But, it goes without saying, this ideal freedom of speech, which members of the Puritan and Quaker communities and some of our homegrown sects vainly want to resurrect in their religious meetings, could not last long in church and liturgical practice and very early began to be subject to restrictions and restrictions. Already in the time of the apostles, the right to teach in the church was taken away from women, and even in the Corinthian community it was given preferentially to persons who possessed the gift of prophecy or the gift of explaining these enthusiastic and obscure speeches in a clear and intelligible word. Over time, with changing church-liturgical relations, the original freedom of preaching was placed in less favorable conditions, as a result of which the latter little by little began to lose its former independent position and be pushed into the background. Among these conditions, the predominance of disciplinary principles in the structure of the church life of the Christian community, which had an unfavorable effect on the fate of preaching, should be placed in first place; further - the weakening of the prophetic gifts that abounded in the Corinthian Church, and, finally, the strengthening of false teachings that threatened the integrity and unity of the church. Due to all these circumstances, teaching, to which the Apostle Paul acquired preferential significance among other spiritual gifts, not only did not maintain its previous position in subsequent history, but became more and more embarrassed in its application, losing the character of a live conversation among members of the community and taking on the appearance of a church sermon. This is how the first period of its history passed. It stands alone and has a very peculiar terminology, the original features of which were already significantly modified in its next period, which we will call the period of liturgical prosperity of preaching. The boundaries of this period are much wider, the features are more stable and persist for 4–5 centuries. The sermon of this period is closely connected with church ritual, is included in the system of worship and occupies a strictly defined place in it. It is precisely in this state that the post-apostolic sermon is depicted in the written monuments of that era. We understand liturgical passages from Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Cyprian, the Apostolic Constitutions and others. First place among these testimonies should be given to the famous report of Pliny the Younger about the Bithynian Christians. This is the oldest of the written monuments of the period we are considering and also reflects to a large extent the conditions in which the preaching of the Corinthian community took place. Pliny reported to Trajan that the Christians whom he interrogated at the trial, gathering for worship before dawn, first sang hymns to the glory of Christ and then took an oath and convinced each other not to violate various Christian duties. This was the nature of early Christian preaching, if one can apply this already rather artificial term, created by later church practice, to the mutual edification of Christians in faith and morals. In Justin Martyr, in his brief description of the liturgy of his time, the sermon refers to the content of the first, preliminary part of the service, the liturgy of the catechumens, or the homiletical part. “On the day of the sun we have a general meeting, to which those living in cities and villages come together. Here the memorial records of the apostles (ἀπομνημονεύματα τῶν ἀποστόλων) and the Scriptures of the prophets are read. Then, when the reader has finished reading, the primate makes an exhortation to imitate the excellent examples set forth in the reading. Then everyone stands up and offers common prayers.” Tertullian, describing the visions of one ecstatic woman from the Montanist sect, says that the images that were presented to her in the vision were borrowed from the content of the church service. She saw: prout scripturae leguntur, aut psalmi cantantur, aut advocationes proferuntur. The last expression advocationes, relating to preaching, is characteristic in that it depicts preaching in a state of conversation, conversation, which can be expressed by the corresponding Greek words: λαλεῖν, όμιλεῖσϑαι. The Apostolic Decrees indicate the time and setting for delivering a sermon in relation to the order of the entire service. “After reading the Gospel, the presbyters exhort, each in order, and not all together, and after everyone the bishop speaks, as the ruler and organizer of the meeting” (Const.II, 57; cfr VIII, 6). The consequence of this liturgical position of the sermon was that it was closely linked to the biblical readings that preceded it. Now the subject of the sermon was no longer entirely dependent on the free choice of the preacher, an example of which we saw in the Corinthian community, where everyone spoke about what his own disposition led him to, but was determined by this or that passage from the passage of Scripture read, this or that page from the prophetic readings. The free attitude to the work of preaching, as can be seen from here, was already constrained. And this last circumstance led to a new condition that gave the sermon the appearance of a church interview. When the sermon began to be preached on the text from the daily reading, what happened was that the sermon took on the form of a coherent logical treatise, became a well-known rhetorical form and received an exegetical direction. This feature already appears quite clearly in the above passage from Justin Martyr. According to him, the sermon was delivered by the primate and consisted of an exhortation, the content of which was borrowed from the passage of the apostle or the Gospel read, and therefore was closely related to the composition of the then divine service. Now, although the active participation of the church community in the latter was recognized, the personality of the primate, in whose hands the administration of worship was concentrated, nevertheless stands out from the general structure. It was natural to grant this same person special rights as a teacher in the general meeting. The presbyters, or elders, were also the main leaders of the community, its governing bodies, and representatives of the authorities. It was natural for these latter to appear as teachers of the community, to take on the mission of preachers, which was partly indicated to them in the Apostolic Epistles. Under the influence of all these conditions, preaching becomes part of the official duties of members of the hierarchy. Thus, Justin Martyr, describing the order of worship of his time, directly says that after reading the Scriptures, it was the primate who addressed the community with a word of exhortation. In the Apostolic Constitutions, in the presentation of the rite of the liturgy, it also directly states: presbyters teach the people. But we consider it necessary to note that the right of teaching in the church departed from the people little by little and, as a memory of the original freedom of teaching speech, it remained for a long time later with the laity in the field of catechesis. We cannot indicate a specific chronological point from which preaching would be concentrated exclusively in the hands of the clergy. The strength of previous traditions, the memory of freedom of preaching in the early Christian community, struggled for a long time with the new principle. And this is the reason why in the same Apostolic Constitutions, from which we cited a passage in favor of the teaching rights of the hierarchy, this right is also recognized for members of the community by virtue of the law that everyone is under the influence of the Spirit of God, and therefore everyone is capable of the work of preaching. “I, Paul, command,” it says here, “even if he is a layman, but skilled in the word, let him teach, for we are all taught from God” (VIII.32). There is a well-known example of Origen, who taught while still a layman. Consequently, in the 2nd-3rd centuries, preaching was not yet the absolute property of the clergy alone, but sometimes considered the laity as its representatives. But this practice was already the exception rather than the rule, and the church fathers of that time directly pointed out the freedom of preaching among sectarians as a strange phenomenon, contrary to the generally accepted church practice of their time. When, for example, Montanism came forward with its principle of free preaching and free prophetic inspiration, with the doctrine of the universal priesthood of Christians, this doctrine, it is true, captivated the ardent minds of enthusiasts with its broad task, but it was already faced with the opposite direction and had to give way to it, not existing for long. Even if Tertullian cannot be called a lone figure in this field, his activities left only a very weak trace and were classified by the church as heretical attacks. The next period in the history of preaching, embracing the significant era of Christianity (IV-V centuries), in relation to preaching was marked, so to speak, by the development of formalism, the introduction of oratorical sophistication into the sermon, and its introduction to the path of oratory. Of course, the named centuries, with which the glorious names are associated: John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, two Gregori and other famous church speakers, were an era of brilliant development of preaching and are marked by striking features in the history of homiletics; but one has only to take a closer look at the position of the sermon at that time in the composition of the divine service and compare this position with the one it occupied before in order to understand that its place had long been occupied by the ritual side, on which the entire interest of the divine service was now concentrated, and the broad development of which was more to the taste of the then Christian society than teaching from the church pulpit. By this time, as is known, a certain order of the liturgy had already been drawn up, its symbolism had reached significant development and gradually gained victory over the didactic and lyrical elements, so that later church practice looked at church ritual symbolism itself as a source of teaching, completely replacing oral preaching from the church pulpit. The sermon became, so to speak, an additional part of the divine service, a kind of liturgical luxury, and was not part of the essential conditions of the cult 68. There were, however, attempts to raise the importance of church preaching and to introduce a didactic element into the divine service itself on a larger scale, but these attempts were too weak to improve the situation caused by the historical course of affairs. Not being able to change the very foundation from which the decline of preaching inevitably arose, these attempts used purely mechanical means and, of course, led to nothing. For example, bishops were obliged not only to preach themselves, but also to prepare for preaching those who were appointed to serve in the clergy. Persons of such high theological education as Cyril of Alexandria and Salvian, presbyter of Marseilles, wrote sermons for inexperienced clergy and forced them to memorize and pronounce them during services, and it should be noted that this strange measure found approval among the remarkable church representatives of that time. Augustine, for example, considered preaching other people’s sermons a very good thing and found that in this way inexperienced preachers could develop preaching talents, their influence would prevent divisions and religious disagreements, and everyone would adhere to one pure teaching of the faith. To support preaching, they made deacons obligated to preach, decided to subject those entering the clergy to strict tests in order to accept those who were knowledgeable and teaching, and published collections of sermons for church use, but all was in vain. An institution that had renounced its historical roots and lost its original soil was bound to inevitably fall, despite the artificial supports with which they wanted to support it. The Reformation found church preaching in this state. The reformers took a more practical view of the matter and, wanting to ensure the success of the sermon, set about reforming the worship service. To clarify the matter, it would, of course, be necessary to present an outline of the liturgy of that time in the East and West and from its composition to clarify those conditions that adversely affected the development of church preaching, but, not wanting to repeat ourselves, this time we will limit ourselves to only a general observation that in the composition of the liturgy of that time, external liturgical symbolism was the predominant element. That is why the Reformation in relation to the cult raised the question: what should there be - liturgy with all its ritual accessories or sermons? And she decided this issue in favor of the latter. The history of the Lutheran liturgy represents precisely a gradual process of shortening the liturgy in order to give more space to preaching, and most of the deviations of Protestants from the ancient order of the Mass were caused by this consideration. “Why,” asked the supporters of the new system of worship, “the reading of the Gospel in the altar, when it is read at the pulpit before the sermon?” And reading the Gospel was abandoned. Why read the Apostle when content for teaching is not borrowed from it? And the Apostle was also eliminated. Why confess sins after the sermon if there are no people preparing for communion? This part of the liturgy was also eliminated. The same fate befell other parts of the latter. The further and final development of this Protestant principle belongs to Calvin and his followers, who, even further than Luther, renounced the composition of the Roman Mass and wanted to raise the service to the ideal of early Christian simplicity and limited it to the following aspects: psalmody, prayers, reading a passage from the Gospel, which serves as an introduction to the sermon; then the sermon itself and closing prayers and hymns. The sermon, thus, became the focus of the liturgy: everything else was intended either to serve as preparation for it, or as its addition, as a means of enhancing the impression of it. The Eucharistic part was completely eliminated and took a modest place only on certain holidays, when there were communicants. Zealous defenders of this practice, in their justification, referred to the fact that there is no reason to expect regular weekly preparation of Christians for communion, and that for this reason it would be more expedient to make a concession in favor of the sermon than to reduce it in view of one possibility. The Calvinists considered it completely unnecessary to arrange the Eucharistic offering for serving pastors alone, as the Greek and Roman Churches allow. The distinction between the altar and the pulpit was destroyed, or, better said, the latter pushed aside the altar and became the central point of the Protestant church. Small Protestant communities that emerged from the beginnings of Calvinism went even further and, trying to get closer to the ideal of early Christian homiletical practice, went into such exaggerations and one-sidedness that they revealed in the organization of their cult more deliberateness and arbitrariness than a reasonable historical requirement. Here everything was left to the subjectivity and individuality of the preacher. The prayer he said, the biblical text he used to compose his sermon, and the sermon he delivered were all left to the free choice of the preacher and depended on his arbitrariness. The religious freedom of Protestantism, of course, greatly facilitated the installation and implementation of this principle in church practice. Where the main dogmas are clearly distinguished from the secondary ones and ritual features do not restrict freedom of conscience, there is, of course, less danger of offending religious beliefs with free speech than where religious control imposes heavy restrictions on the free speech of the preacher. In the young Christian community, where such regulation did not yet exist, the freedom of the preacher was much less constrained, and his inspired word found broad rights and full security. Chapter V. The Dramatic Element in Christian Worship The dramatic element in Christian worship. External actions that accompanied the prayer of the first Christians, according to the testimony of Tertullian: washing of hands before prayer, raising of hands, removal of outer clothing (penulae), sitting and some body movements during prayer. Kiss of peace. Headdresses for men and women during common prayer. The symbolic and ritual side of the liturgy; interpretation of Nicholas Cabasilas. Church drama in the Middle Ages. Groswitha's comedies. Ludi paschales et passionales and their further development. We have traced the development of lyrical and didactic elements in Christian worship and found out the external forms in which they were embodied. It remains for us to trace the fate of the third element, which we called dramatic or symbolic-ritual. This external, so to speak, material side, which served as the embodiment of a religious idea, just like early Christian art of a symbolic nature, has its own special internal meaning, which is associated with lyrics and didactics. The participation of this symbolic element in early Christian worship was, as we have already noted, very insignificant, but nevertheless it was, and we will not be mistaken if we take as its primary form those external actions that accompanied the prayer of the first Christians. Prayer was the focus of the religious life of early Christian society and an essential element of liturgical meetings. Therefore, it became the center to which the further development of churchism was attached and from which it departed. We have already become partially familiar with the image of a praying Christian from the monumental remains of ancient Christian painting; Let's supplement it with historical evidence. The same Tertullian, who represented the ideal of prayer in complete freedom from external conventional forms and said that a Christian prays from the heart, without needing outside guidance, at the same time complained bitterly about the development of external piety among Christians of his time, about the spread of purely mechanical methods that they followed when praying, forgetting about the internal requirements of faith. Let us convey Tertullian’s thoughts in his own words: he is one of those writers whose words, imbued with the living power of conviction, have an extraordinary characteristic that is not easily conveyed in translation or transcription, but is capable of introducing in the most beautiful way into the conditions and spirit of the era depicted. “Where do they find the basis for washing their hands before prayer,” asks Tertullian, “who are not in the least afraid of doing it with an unclean spirit?” And he himself answers: “With this action they want to express the idea that spiritual purity is also needed for the hands, that is, that the hands raised to God must be clean from all untruth, murder, theft, in a word, from those vices that have their basis in the spirit and are only committed with the help of the hands. But this is what true purity consists of, and not in that superstitious custom according to which many, when starting to pray, take water and, forgetting about the internal cleansing of themselves, wash their whole body. When I began to inquire into the basis of this custom and asked about it from the people who follow it, I received the answer that this was done in remembrance of the tradition of the Lord.” Explaining this expression, some interpreters think to find in Tertullian’s words an indication of Baptism, which was performed through immersion and symbolically pointed to the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. But this guess has no basis, and the connection of speech in this passage from Tertullian, on the contrary, clearly shows that the matter is not about surrendering oneself to Christ in the sacrament of Baptism, but about the betrayal of Christ by Judas, which gave Pilate a reason to wash his hands before the people as a sign that he recognizes Christ as innocent. The following words of Tertullian speak in favor of this understanding: “We worship the Lord, and do not betray Him, and therefore we must abhor that which reminds us of the act of the traitor, and we wash our hands not as a sign of this remembrance, but to show the purity of our hearts.” A zealot for inner purity of heart, imbued with high respect for the dignity of a Christian who has been purified and redeemed by Christ, Tertullian continues: “In any case, the hands that we once washed with our whole body in Christ should be clean enough” (a reference to Baptism), that is, there is no need to bother about frequent washing of the hands before prayer for those on whom this symbolic washing has been solemnly performed in the sacrament of Baptism, and if already once the one who was baptized was washed, why repeat this symbolic action? Having then said that the sons of Israel, although they strictly observed the law of external washing, remained, nevertheless, forever stained with the blood of the prophets they killed, and with the Blood of the Savior, Tertullian continues: “Therefore, having inherited the wicked conscience of their fathers, their descendants do not dare to raise their hands to the Lord, lest they hear reproof from Isaiah and arouse the wrath of the Lord. We, Christians, not only raise our hands, but also spread (expandimus) them, confessing Christ in our prayer and depicting His suffering.” From these words of Tertullian it is clear that the leading Christians prayed, raising their hands to heaven. As for this prayer symbol, it should be noted that it is of pre-Christian origin and was used by the Jews and Greco-Romans. “Christians pray with their eyes uplifted, their arms outstretched because they are innocent, their heads open because they have nothing to be ashamed of; They pray without a reminder, for their prayer comes from the heart.” Monumental evidence to support Tertullian's words is found in ancient monuments that reproduce images of Christians praying. In the frescoes of the catacombs and on sarcophagi, as well as in many other monuments, there are often images of men and women with raised hands and in a position of prayer. This prayer sign received an even higher, purely Christian meaning in the horizontal extension of the arms, in which the figure of the praying person represents a cross. With this figure in mind, Tertullian makes the remark that Christians in their prayers express the suffering of the Lord. “Having mentioned one empty custom,” he notes, pointing to the ablution of Christians during prayer, “we will not tire of mentioning other customs that would deserve absolute condemnation if they were not based on the authority of Jesus Christ and the apostles... But, in fact, these customs do not relate to religion, but are the fruit of superstition. They are fictitious, arbitrary, and therefore must be eliminated, as akin to paganism. This includes, for example, the custom of praying by putting aside one’s outer clothing (penulis depositis), as pagans do when starting to depict images of their gods. If this were a necessary accessory to prayer, then the apostles would have put this requirement among the conditions and spoken out in its favor, if we do not include here, as some think, the testimony of Paul, who left his penulam with Carpus in Troas. You say that God will not hear the prayers of those who are dressed in penula (outer clothing - casula), but He heard the prayer of the three youths who were thrown into the Babylonian cave in outer clothing and headbands? What is this strange custom that Tertullian is rebelling against? Its origin and meaning are quite difficult to find - especially since Tertullian only speaks about it in a tone-deaf tone, calling it an imitation of pagan practice. The following consideration may shed some light on this dark fact from the history of the religious practice of the early Christians. Penula was the outerwear of the Greeks and Romans; it served as a cloak, which was worn over other clothes and protected from rain and bad weather in damp and cold seasons. Penula was not indoor clothing and was used for walking outdoors. Naturally, therefore, it was removed in places of public gatherings and, perhaps, it was considered indecent to remain in it, as in a traveling suit, when they came to pray and make a sacrifice. On this basis, by imitation of the pagans, the Christian custom could have been formed, against which Tertullian armed himself. In addition, the design of the penula itself was not convenient for prayer exercises, because it was designed without sleeves and covered the body on all sides, having one hole for the head. “I do not find,” Tertullian further notes, “any reason for the habit of some to sit during prayer, that is, to pray while sitting; for the passage from the book of Hermas “The Shepherd”, which is referred to, and in which Hermas says: “When I prayed and sank down on the bed,” is not a rule of prayer, but depicts only the order of actions in Hermas’ story, and not that it would be impossible to pray, as soon as there is no bed or seat nearby. Therefore, it would be completely contrary to Scripture if anyone decided to sit on chairs or on a bench during prayer. (This is Tertullian's irony). It is known, moreover, that pagans do this when they pray before their idols. This custom should be all the more reprehensible because it belongs to the practice of paganism. And according to the pagans themselves, it is considered indecent to sit in the presence and in the face of a respected and noble person. How much more indecent and reprehensible is it to sit in the presence of the living God when the Angel of prayer stands before us. By doing this, we seem to reproach God for the fact that prayer has tired us.” To explain the origin of this custom of sitting in the early Christian church, we must remember that our ancestors by faith prayed with greater animation and enthusiasm than we do, allowed themselves various kinds of exalted movements and, being in an excited state, naturally soon got tired and sat down or lay down in powerlessness. “We raise our heads,” testifies Clement of Alexandria, “and raise our hands to the sky, and move our legs at the end of the prayer offerings, obeying the power of the spirit that draws us to the higher world.” This excitement of feeling among the first Christians during prayer is evident, among other things, from the fact that they often prayed out loud and, moreover, so loudly that they seduced those present and drowned out the words of church prayer. Against these sharp manifestations of religious feeling, Tertullian arms himself as follows: “Our prayer reaches God more quickly when it is done in modesty and humility. The arms themselves should not be raised very high. The very tone of voice during prayer should be restrained. Do you really need especially strong lungs (arteriis) in order to be heard in prayer? But God does not look at the voice, but at the heart. Even the God of the Pythian Oracle says: “I understand the deaf and hear even those who do not speak.” So, what do those who say their prayers with a loud voice achieve? Nothing except that they drown out with their voice the prayer of others standing with them, and prevent them from raising their minds to God.” “Our prayer can be pleasing to God only then,” says Tertullian, “when we pray with modesty and humility, when we do not raise our hands too high, but raise them a little and moderately, as becomes the pious. And our eyes should not be raised with insolence and confidence, because the publican was justified because he not only prayed with humble words, but also with a humble face and downcast eyes.” Both during the time of Tertullian and subsequently, these abuses continued to exist as before. Cyprian and John Chrysostom strongly rebelled against harsh expressions of religious feeling, and the latter found in such behavior traces of theatrical drama, completely inappropriate during prayer. “Unhappy and poor,” he says in one of his teachings, “you should listen with fear and trembling to the angelic praise, bring a humble confession of your sins before the Lord, but you bring into your prayer the manners of theater actors and dancers, when you constantly spread your arms, knock your feet and jump, twirl with your whole body? And you are not afraid to let yourself down, you do not want to understand that the Lord is invisibly present in the church and tests your heart, that the angels stand before the Lord’s table with fear. But you are far from such thoughts, your heart is darkened by what you see and hear in the theater, and you even bring into church what is happening there.” 69 “A very strange custom has become established,” continues Tertullian, “according to which those who fast during common prayer in a meeting of the brethren deny these latter the kiss of love, which is the seal and completion of the prayer. But when, if not during prayer, is this pledge of peace and love most needed for our brothers, when this peace ascends to heaven with our prayers, and we all have a special need for mutual assistance and reinforcement by the power of love and unanimity?” From Tertullian, as well as other writers, we learn that Christians were in the habit of giving each other the kiss of peace at the conclusion of public prayer. But the application of this symbol was actually much broader and extended to various aspects of church practice. And in pre-Christian antiquity, the kiss served as a symbol of trust, peace, friendship and love; was used with this meaning in the civil life of the pagan and Jewish world and, especially in the East, in the country of symbolism and fiery imagination, found wide application. In the early Christian community, it received a religious meaning and began to be used during the celebration of the Eucharist, Baptism, marriage, initiations, burial, when the last kiss was given to the deceased as a sign of ongoing spiritual communication and love for the deceased. John Chrysostom, during whom this custom was still in full force, explains its meaning this way: “What is the holy kiss? - asks John Chrysostom regarding the famous passage from the Apostle, - this means that our kiss should be alien to all pretense and hypocrisy and not like the treacherous kiss of Judas. We give a kiss as an incitement to mutual love, to show that we love each other, like brothers, like fathers of their children, and these of their parents, and even more, because there love is based on nature, but here it is imbued with grace.” Eastern liturgies have special prayers pronounced by the priest at this time, the content of which is in close connection with this liturgical act and clarifies the spiritual meaning of this rite. After reciting the prayers and the Creed according to the edition of the liturgy, as it is set out in the Apostolic Constitutions, the bishop addressed the people with the following goodwill: “May the peace of the Lord be with you all!” The people responded to this: “And with your spirit!” The deacon then exclaimed in a loud voice: “Kiss one another with the holy kiss.” Then, at a sign from the deacon, the clergy, in accordance with their rank, kissed the bishop, and the laity kissed each other, men with men, and women with women. And this division of the sexes has always been strictly supported by the Church, which was greatly facilitated by the spatial division of the sexes itself. Prohibiting kisses between men and women, the ancient Christian Church also knew a restriction regarding this custom, to which the strict defender of the osculi pacis Tertullian gives his consent: “On the day of Easter, when the duty of religion imposes on us a general and, as it were, public fast, we refrain from kissing, because we have no need then (on Good Friday?) to hide our fasting, which on this day has a generally binding force.” Among other symbolic actions associated with the state of prayer, in the practice of the ancient Church, the custom of praying with an open head deserves attention and explanation. This requirement, obligatory for every man who begins to pray, is based on the apostolic rule, which obliges men to pray with their heads open, and women with their heads covered. In relation to men, the practice of Christianity was completely different from the practice of paganism and Judaism, because in ancient times both Jews and pagans stood at prayer with their heads covered. Today's Jews, although in general, in this respect, follow the custom of the West and take off their head covering, but a strict Jew will never allow himself to completely bare his head and, following the ancient custom, always leaves a small cap on himself. Pagan priests also stood before the altar and altar with their heads covered, and the Roman citizen, making a sacrifice, covered his head with a toga. This custom served as a symbolic expression of reverence for the deity, which a mortal did not dare even look at in the consciousness of his unworthiness. Here the same thing was repeated that happened in ordinary civil life in the relationship of a slave to his master, just as hitherto an inhabitant of the East falls to the ground and covers his face with his hands when he meets his master. Thus, Moses and Elijah covered their faces when they saw God appear to them. The seraphim, as told in the vision of the prophet Isaiah, covered their faces with wings in view of the greatness of the glory of Jehovah. True, a headband, or cover, was given to Roman slaves when they were set free, as well as to gladiators upon their release as a sign of freedom and independence, but they, however, did not wear these head covers and walked with their heads open. That is why Caesar, asking the Senate for permission to wear the laurel wreath presented to him by the citizens on his head, was guided not by the impulse of ambition, but by the desire to hide the bald spot with which his head was covered. It is also known about Emperor Hadrian that he made his 17-year journey through various countries of his empire with his head uncovered. Contrary to the Jewish-pagan custom, a Christian, according to the commandment of the Apostle, must appear in the temple with his head uncovered; not with slavish fear, but with a sense of freedom granted by the Redemption, with the consciousness of his sonship, he must appear before God, according to the meaning of the apostolic canon. As for the woman, according to the rules of Eastern etiquette and the requirements of local morality, she could appear in the meeting only with a veil over her face. The bride was brought to her groom in this costume. How strictly a woman was observed to comply with this condition is evident from the fact that a certain Sulpicius Gall divorced his wife when he learned that she allowed herself to appear in the meeting with her face uncovered. Only in Greece did girls enjoy the advantage of walking with their heads uncovered and without a veil over their faces before marriage, and in this form they allowed themselves to appear at general meetings of Christians in Corinth. The apostle found this custom indecent and demanded that girls, like married women, participate in divine services with their heads covered. This custom was supposed to serve as an expression of the wife’s submission to her husband and, at the same time, to protect those present from the temptation of female beauty and the woman herself from distraction. A woman, says the apostle, must have and wear on her head a symbol of authority (her husband over her), in the form of a veil, for the Angels 70 (1 Cor. 11:10). The Church observed this apostolic rule with all strictness in ancient times. After girls, by virtue of the right granted to them by pagan antiquity, began to come to church with their heads uncovered or, as Tertullian puts it, began to allow themselves not only to freely look at everyone, but also to expose themselves, a strict moralist came up with a special essay about the fact that girls should wear a veil over their faces. In this work, among other arguments, he tries to put into practice the current view of antiquity on the veil as belonging to a betrothed girl, because, according to his concept, Christian girls through Baptism are betrothed to Christ as their groom. The use of the monastic veil along with hair cutting is based on this idea. Both rites serve as a symbol of the betrothed woman’s fidelity to her husband and the tonsured man to his vow. Having lost her hair, her best adornment, a woman becomes, as it were, dishonored in the eyes of the world, loses one of the advantages of her sex, and is thereby encouraged to cleave more and more closely to her heavenly Bridegroom. Over time, this ancient church rule began to fall into oblivion, especially among women in the northern countries of Europe, but in the South and East, where ancient classical traditions have not yet completely disappeared, it is still maintained. In general, only one feature remains from the ancient church practice: women come to church with their heads covered, while it is considered obligatory for men to bare their heads when entering the church. At present in the West, with the exception of the Quakers, who wear hats at their meetings, all existing Christian sects stand in church with their heads uncovered, and only the sick and very old people, for fear of catching a cold, use small caps and bandages for covering. Currently, caps, which previously constituted one of the accessories of the pastoral ornate in the Catholic Church, have begun to fall out of use. If even now there are many spiritual people who with the most scrupulous precision remove it from their heads, pronouncing the angelic doxology, “Our Father,” the name of Christ and the Mother of God, so that all gestures in the sermon are limited to putting on and taking off the cap, but others, for fear of forgetting about this rule in the moment of preaching animation, preach with an open head. A diametrically opposite explanation for the custom of ancient Christian practice we are considering is offered by the famous archaeologist Augusti. He also proceeds from the idea that Christianity, by making it obligatory for a man to pray with an open head, established a new principle, different from Judaism and paganism, but in the development of his thought he deviates into the area of ​​witty historical exegesis. He says that in the East, as in the classical world, the headband served as a symbol of freedom and independence. By virtue of this interpretation, a Christian appears before his Lord as a slave before his master, with his head open. But Christianity, having elevated the importance of a woman, provided her with rights and advantages in liturgical meetings that she was deprived of in the pre-Christian world, and acquired for her the rights of a man, and as an expression of this right, the freedom to cover her head. From this point of view, he explains the words of the apostle: “A woman should have on her head a sign of authority for the sake of the angels.” This rule, he says, is in perfect agreement with the way of thinking of the apostle, who says that Christianity destroyed the difference between man and woman and equalized them in the idea of ​​​​Christian dignity, and therefore during worship the woman had to retain the symbol of the advantage that the man had previously enjoyed and which he is now deprived of when the time has come for new moral and social relations, and the man had to cede his historical right to the woman. But it is easy to understand that this entire interpretation rests on the arbitrary assumption that ἐξουσία or the power that women should have had on their heads, according to the commandment of the Apostle, means, in fact, their power, the right over the husband, and not the power, the right of the latter, and that, therefore, in this apostolic rule the same ancient idea is repeated, according to which a woman was considered lower than a man and owed him submission and obedience as a being subservient. Of course, a considerable share of participation in the application of this rule to Christian practice had moral motives, which caused the separation of men from women during liturgical meetings, and strict supervision of the behavior of both through deacons and deaconesses. The symbolic-ritual element, insignificant in the original Christian worship, over time took a very prominent place in it and was expressed in a number of sacred rites that make up the content and atmosphere of each church service. We should now trace the development of this symbolic-ritual side of worship and show its gradual growth and significance in its overall system. But a detailed exposition of this question would lead us into the field of individual church services and would prompt us to fragmentary explanations of such details as constitute the outstanding features of the liturgical structure of each of them. Let us limit ourselves to considering only the liturgy from this symbolic-ritual side. Our current composition is not a random selection of liturgical acts, but a whole dramatic picture in which a well-known religious-historical idea is revealed under various ritual forms, and its various moments are told in the actions performed by the performers of the service. Of course, the whole system of rituals that make up the content of our liturgy did not suddenly develop in this sense, and the rituals within it did not initially appear with such internal meaning; but as soon as theological exegesis touched the church cult, as soon as its external environment began to be adapted to known dogmatic and historical ideas, the liturgy appeared with the character of a religious drama, and its most important aspects were explained in this sense. We say: explanation, because the church interpretation of the liturgy has clarified its composition from this side, and the liturgical interpreters have the greatest merit in this regard. In the interpretations of Eastern liturgists, the dramatic character of the liturgy was exposed in the brightest light, and to be convinced of this, it is enough to pay attention to the interpretation techniques of John the Faster, Sophronius with Herman, Simeon of Thessaloniki and Nicholas Cabasilas. According to the latter, the liturgy constitutes a symbolic reproduction of the coming to earth of the Savior with the circumstances that preceded and followed; it is, as it were, a religious-historical drama, the focus of which is the celebration of the Eucharist, which marks the suffering and death of the God-man. In Kavasila, as in other eastern interpreters, this thought serves as a thread that connects the private acts of this mystical drama and gives them a special, significant meaning. Following this guiding thread, according to her instructions, he also clarifies the idea of ​​liturgy as a religious-historical drama. We will follow it in the order of the rites of the bishop's service, which is richer in symbolic details, and first of all we will note that the setting of the liturgy also fully corresponds to the meaning of the sacred rites being performed and represents the scene and details on which and during which the remembered history itself took place. The altar ledge is the Bethlehem cave, the place of the Nativity of Christ, or the burial cave; the throne is the Tomb of Christ; bars between the altar and the church - the fence of the Tomb; Pulpit - a stone rolled away from the entrance of a burial cave. The first act of the liturgical service and, as it were, an introduction to it, is the proskomedia, or the bringing of gifts. After the preliminary rites of vestment, these gifts are offered to God, just as Christ, doomed to be the Redemptive Sacrifice of the world, even before suffering, gave Himself up in an act of obedience to the will of the Heavenly Father. Then follow prayers for grace and the coming of the Kingdom of God, in which the entire church community takes part, hearing in the psalms and hymns of the Old Testament cycle the preparation and completion of the plan of Divine economy. At the head of this singing part are the psalms of David, as a response to prophetic songs about the coming Kingdom of the Messiah. The birth of the Savior, Bethlehem and Nazareth, the Magi with their gifts, the guiding star on the path to the Divine Infant, the sermon of the Forerunner - this whole story with its details also finds justification and correspondence in the details of the proskomedia rite and the first part of the liturgy. The Gospel is brought out. Greeted by the choir of presbyters and deacons, in the scent of censer, the bishop appears as the person depicting Christ at the moment of His appearance to the world with a sermon and accompanied by the apostles. Since the Divinity, with the coming of Christ in the flesh, revealed itself completely and completely, and the mystery of the knowledge of God was revealed in all its fullness and greatness, the solemn singing of the Trisagion is heard, in which heaven, earth, the altar, and the church take part. The reading of the Apostle and the Gospel complements this symbolism with a new feature of a living, visual explanation. The second part of our liturgy is imbued even more with this dramatic character, and its symbolic setting brings out this religious-historical principle even more clearly. Now the sacred rite is performed in a close circle of true Christians, full members of the church, while alien and not yet united elements in the form of infidels and catechumens are removed from participation in the mysteries of the blessed Kingdom and still remain outside it. In the procession of the Great Entrance, the Savior's way of the cross to Golgotha is symbolized, and then, without observing a strict chronological sequence, but in almost all the main vicissitudes, episodes pass before us from an extensive picture of the last days of the Savior's earthly life: the Last Supper, suffering, position in the Tomb, the memory of Joseph and Nicodemus with the funeral setting in the form of an antimension, smoking incense, covering gifts with air, crushing Lamb and in other details. Finally, the royal doors open: the touching story of the Way of the Cross and the death of the Savior has passed; it ends with the solemn act of the Resurrection in the rite of the first appearance of the Holy Gifts to the people, and then the moment of the Ascension itself is symbolized as the final act of the earthly life of Christ, as the last member of this historical organism (τοῦ σώματος ἱστορίας), in the words of Nicholas Kavasila. Let us limit ourselves to these explanations, without going into other details of the liturgical symbolism developed by our exegetes, and without mentioning some rites of an undoubtedly dramatic nature, such as the ceremonies: the procession on a donkey, the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday, the removal of the Shroud on Good Friday, the raising of the Cross and many others. However, in the field of liturgy, the dramatic element was only half developed: the connection between the ritual and the historical phenomenon depicted through it remained unclear to the direct eye and needed the aid of symbolic exegesis to be revealed. There was no complete dramatic clarity here. Religious drama, in the proper sense of the word, developed around the liturgy, in special rituals of a stage nature, which were ludi paschales et passionales. Having received wider development and a more complex setting, they precisely appeared with the character of a real religious drama, in the form of the so-called mysteries. In the history of medieval cult and literature, this type of work occupies a very prominent place. They provide excellent material for characterizing the church-aesthetic views of that time and clarify for us the initial history of modern theater. Modern dramatic art in Europe arose on the soil of the Church and developed in connection with the history of church cult. The classical theater fell under the ruins of the ancient world, and the invasion of the barbarians completed its sad fate in the West; only the Church, in its worship, extended a helping hand to him in some way. A remarkable representative of church drama in the earliest period of its development in the West was the nun of the Gandersheim monastery Grosvita, a very educated and well-read person of that time. Gandersheim Monastery, in turn, played a prominent role in the history of Western European enlightenment in the 10th century and, as Gervinus notes, represented an intelligent oasis among the deserts of North German barbarism. Grosvita was the abbess of this monastery in the last half of the 10th century. Her literary activity (as her position itself indicates) belonged to the field of religious poetry, but what is especially remarkable is that this abbess not only had great knowledge of the Bible and apocryphal literature, but was well acquainted with the Roman classics and poets: Horace, Virgil, Terence and Seneca, whom she imitated in her works. Among the works of her prolific pen, her dramatic works, the so-called comedies, deserve special interest for our purpose. This name, as is known, in medieval literature had a broader meaning and embraced works of both a dramatic nature and from the field of epic, such as Dante’s famous Divinam comoediam. Grosvita imitated classical authors in her dramas; She learned from them the style, design and general external form for her works, but as for the content and spirit, here she stood on Christian soil and borrowed material for her comedies from biblical history and church legends. Contrary to Terence, who brought to the stage types of frivolous women of his time, Grosvita in her dramas depicted examples of a woman’s moral heroism and the triumph of her ethical rules over the charms and temptations of the world. She pursued moralizing goals and gave her sisters in the monastery light and pleasant reading, from which they could learn a lot, especially the more educated among them, who also read Roman comedians. But Grosvita’s works remained out of stage use, serving only as a model on the basis of which extensive religious drama developed in the West in the 13th-14th centuries; What is especially important is that dramatic works joined church services and, under the name of mysteries, played such a prominent role in the history of the theater. This spiritual drama degenerated from the so-called Easter passion games (ludi paschalis, ludi passionales), and these latter were of liturgical origin. They belong to the number of very ancient church customs and have not lost all their meaning to this day. In the Western Church, during services on the week of Vai, on Good Friday and on the day of the Resurrection, it was customary to read from the Gospel the story of the suffering and Resurrection of Christ, and the words of Christ, the apostles, Herod, Pilate and others were sung by individuals 71. Where there were many clergy, this dramatic performance was performed by clerics, with one pronouncing the words of Christ, another the speeches of the apostles, and the third setting out the very course of action in the words of the Gospel. In case of a lack of clergy, lay people took part in the performance. From this simple singing performance during worship of various episodes of gospel history, a spiritual drama subsequently developed, which already included many elements of a stage performance, namely: the transfer of the very actions, the grouping of persons and the imitation of the setting, or scenery, of the later theater. Having separated from the divine service, spiritual drama subsequently continued to maintain its connection with the Church and was performed only in the church, with the participation of the clergy and lower church clergy. Very soon the circle of dramatic subjects expanded, and the most important, most accessible biblical episodes became the subject of these church dramatic performances. Thus, they presented the story of the Nativity of Christ, the worship of the Magi, events from the life of the Virgin Mary and the saints. They especially liked to dramatize the moment of the suffering of the Mother of God at the Cross. These are the so-called Lamentationes Mariae, examples of which are also preserved in Greek liturgical songs. Initially, all these plots were performed in Latin, but then, when the laity were allowed to perform, and the drama gradually moved away from the mass, they began to use the folk language, and it began to include spiritual songs that had not church, but popular use. Thus, its situation became more complicated and its contents were replenished. Having a church and religious purpose, pursuing educational and religious goals, helping to visually familiarize the masses with church and gospel history, spiritual drama was a surrogate for the cult and acted in the same field as it. But over time, its direction changed, and the mysteries took a dangerous road, as a result of which the very attitude of the church towards them changed. Already from the 13th century, voices began to be heard against this false direction of the drama, and Pope Gregory forbade their performance in church, and the clergy to participate in their performance. From Gregory's decree it is clear that these ludi theatrales contained a lot of immodest things, they used monstrous masks, and the clergy took part in such performances that profaned the Church itself. From then on, spiritual performances from the church moved to squares and open places, the clergy ceased to participate in them and limited themselves to supervising their production and performance. On the days of major holidays, the personnel of actors chosen for the performance, led by the people who called, went in a solemn procession to the square where the stage was set up. The herald announced the content of the play, the names of the characters, and then the performance itself began. At the end of it, a suitable instruction was given for the occasion, and the spectators returned to the church in the same order and were present at the service. As for the technical side of these performances, it differed from the setting of ancient and modern drama as much as the content of medieval spiritual drama itself. Ancient and modern drama have one central point in the life of the hero, to which all the others are attached, like its details and setting. In medieval drama, on the contrary, we see a whole series of pictures and scenes replacing one another, as parts of a complex story, the threads of which converge towards the end as a denouement. With such complex content, a lot of performers were required; in one and the same action there were a lot of characters, all of them acted and spoke at once. In monasteries, this goal was satisfied by the monastic corporation itself, as well as by the students of monastic schools, but, of course, it was not always and not everywhere possible to get by with the help of these home remedies, and it was necessary to turn to the assistance of outsiders. Since at that time there were no good machines and they did not know how to change the scenery for each action, and yet it was necessary to present a whole series of scenes in different settings, the stage was divided into several sections or partitions, placing them side by side or one in front of the other; when a new action began, the characters moved from one compartment to another, and the drama went on non-stop. It should be noted, finally, that all roles, without exception, were performed by men; the participation of women was considered a profanation of the religious plot and their roles were replaced by boys. Medieval Western literature gave us a significant number of dramatic experiences intended for stage performance. The oldest and most processed work of this kind is Ludus paschalis de adventu et interitu antichristi (owned by the 12th century German monk Wernger). This drama, performed in the presence of Frederick Barbarossa, was distinguished by a wide staging, bringing many faces to the stage and containing various allusions to the contemporary state of the papacy, monastic corporations and political phenomena of the time. Further known are the dramas about the wise and foolish virgins, about the coming of the three kings, “The Lamentation of Mary” and many others. To introduce you to the composition and content of these dramas, I will briefly convey the composition and stage production of one of the most famous dramas of that time, “The Ascension of Mary.” According to the custom of those times in plays of this kind, the drama begins with a brief summary of its contents or a prologue, which was pronounced by the praecursor, or herald, aloud to the assembled people. Then came the execution. The drama consists of five acts, each of which is divided into several scenes, or phenomena. There are three of them in the first act: confession of faith by the apostles, the baptism of the pagans by the apostles; Act 2: "The Death of Mary", contains eight scenes: message from Archangel Gabriel, return of Archangel Gabriel, apostles at the deathbed of the Virgin Mary, third act: “The Burial of Mary”, consists of 4 scenes: obstacle from the Jews, Act four: “The Assumption of Mary”, of three scenes: the second dispersion of the apostles; fifth act: "Destruction of Jerusalem", of seven scenes: address of Emperor Titus, his embassy to the apostles, his dislike for the Jews, From this presentation it can be seen that the drama contains five groups of characters, corresponding to five acts. These individuals remained inactive and were simply extras until their turn. Each act was preceded by the exclamation of the herald: Silete. The group of actors did not come out in order of acts, but they all came out at once, arranged according to the importance of the persons they represented, namely: Christ, Mary, the apostles, Jews and pagans. The Violator director showed each group its place and directed the entire course of the drama. But, being more successful, this explanation cannot have any claim to full scientific validity. Its weak side is that the expressions: ψαλμός, ὕμνος, ᾠδή do not have this specific meaning and are used indifferently in the earliest works, and therefore the explanation based on their philological meaning is devoid of solid support. Anthol. graeca, p. XVI; conf. Pitra, 32. For the number of hymns in Clement of Alexandria, see Hagnack, 360. Let us give an excerpt from one Orphic hymn: “I greet the uniform (μονότροπον) king, the bonds of ignorance, the unforeseen oblivion, the primal power guarded by the Spirit of providence and wisdom, and from here I emerge pure, becoming a participant in the light of the Son and the Father. May grace be with me, may the Father be too!* (See above). On the attitude of church authorities to hymns and restrictions on their use, see one of the rules of the Council of Toledo; see Martene: De ritibus It is known that they lived during the time of the Council of Chalcedon, but who they were and what kind of troparia they composed, and what kind of church hymns they were, the historians we named do not explain. The biographer of St. Auxentius says that people from Constantinople and its environs came to him in droves for teaching and prayer. Auxentius urged his listeners not to go to theaters and not to listen to pagan songs indecent for Christians, and meanwhile he himself introduced extremely pleasant and useful troparia (τροπάρια) into his night services or vigils, and forced them to be performed in a simpler and more modest way than according to the modes of secular music of that time. Having said the first troparion several times, they followed it sequentially, in a row, at the command of the saint, with the second, third, etc. Here is a sample of these troparia given in his life: “The poor and the needy praise You, Lord: glory to the Father, glory to the Son, glory to the Holy Spirit, who spoke through the prophets. The armies of heaven sing praises, and we on earth praise Him: Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord, heaven and earth are full of Your glory!” or: “Creator of everything! You said and we live, you commanded and we were created, you set a limit and it will not pass away. Our Savior! We thank You,” and others like that. Τρόπος – image, method, manner, measure, musical size. The young monk, a student of Abba Pamva, was supposed to live for several days in Alexandria, where he arrived from his monastery on behalf of the abbot to sell fraternal handicrafts. Here he had the opportunity to attend services in St. Mark's Church. What he saw and heard here seemed to him completely new in comparison with how the service was conducted in the monastery where he lived. Returning to the latter, he found the psalmody of the verses monotonous, the reading tiresome, the choir monotonous and soporific. “We do not sing either troparions or canons, as is the custom there,” he said. Abba soon noticed a change in the soul of the young monk and, when he learned about the reason for it, he strictly forbade his novice to go to worldly churches and deviate from the liturgical order accepted by the ancient fathers. “Woe to us, children, this is what the Abba said: “Behold, the days have come when the monks will leave the solid food of the Spirit and will be carried away by voices and artificial singing. When we stand before God, we should stand before Him with deep tenderness, and not be arrogant. The monks did not go out into the desert to sing melodic songs, observe musical meters and tunes, spread their arms and stamp their feet.” To explain this remark of Abba Pamva, we must remember that among the ancient Greeks, the choir director conducted various movements of his right hand, clenching his fingers, raising and lowering his hands. The regent usually stood on a raised platform among the singers in view of the whole orchestra, and therefore was called μεσοχόρος, κορυφαῖος. He sometimes gave time with his feet and, so that the sound of his rhythmic beats could be heard more clearly, sometimes had iron heels and soles. This story, the simplicity of which already vouches for historical accuracy, shows that in Alexandria the external course of the divine service was distinguished by a more lively and dramatic character than the service of the Egyptian monks of the same time. The singing here was more musical and elaborate. The strictness of the ancient order was weakened more and more as the church came face to face with the returns and demands of a society brought up under the influence of a pagan cult. Another example of a similar property. When the Persians in the 5th century. devastated Cappadocia, Abba Paul fled first to Constantinople, then to Alexandria, and finally found refuge with the Nitrian monks in the cell of an old anchorite. After some time, the abba comes to the abbot of the monastery and tells him that he cannot live in the same cell with his former brother. When asked by the abbot about the reason for such a statement, the Cappadocian monk replied that the Abba, with whom he still lived, followed some special rules regarding monastic life and the singing of psalms. What is especially intolerable, Abba Paul complained, is that he prohibits the singing of canons and troparions, which is a generally accepted custom. “Brother,” the abbot answered him, return to your cell and live with the elder if you want the salvation of your soul,” and then explained to him the reason for the dryness and rigorism that the newly arrived monk did not like in the practice of the old anchorite. This explanation has a special meaning for us. As for the singing of troparions and canons and chanting according to voices (ἤχους μελίζειν), that is, the use of musical modulations during the performance of hymns, they are only appropriate for lay priests and in parish worship. This is good for attracting people to the churches, but for monks who live far from worldly worries, such a thing is not only useless, but also downright harmful. For just as a fisherman catches fish with a rod and a worm, so the devil, with the bait of troparions and gentle singing, plunges a monk into the abyss of vanity and human wisdom; leads him to pleasure and even adultery. In truth, the abbot concludes his speech, a monk, if he wants to be saved, must avoid all modulations in singing. Distracting for a moment from the monastic views and practice of anchorites, we note that this rigorism is nothing more than a protest against the gentle dramatic secular motives that over time began to enter into church practice, especially in the churches of populous cities, where the taste and morals of the population were already educated aesthetically. This is how a secular service was formed, which met these last requirements, and a monastic service, which was distinguished by greater severity, dry, monotonous, which was based on psalmody. In our liturgical books the troparion is often called ἀπορυτίκιον – “dismissal” and because it ended Vespers and the people were dismissed (ἀπολύω) from the church. Καὶ τοῖς ὕμνοις τὸ τοῦ κανόνος ἐξείληπται ὄνομα ὅτι ὡρισμένον καὶ τετυπομένον τὸ μέτρον τοῦτο ἐστίν ἐν ἔννεα ὠδαῖς, συντελούμενον καὶ ταύτας μὴ ὑπερβαίνον. (Zonara). On the meaning of the word κανών in Christ. LXV. The Great Canon, as it is now known, already bears traces of later processing; in its original form, the poem of Andrew of Crete was nothing more than a series of troparia or stichera, but there were no irmos in it, and they were compiled subsequently. It was then that the work of Andrei Kritsky, having received the technical form of a canon, could rightfully adopt this name for itself (Eminence Philaret Review of Song Singers, p. 183). Sn. live Nile of Calabria by Philaret Review of hymns, 295. See about them in my “Special. personal Services", page 128 approx. It is known that each irmos is modeled after one or another biblical song and is nothing more than a more or less successful variation on a given theme. It is easy to judge what the position of a poet is, who is forced to write on previously prepared topics, who is offered not only the general content for his work, but also the plan itself, from which he cannot evade. Si sit hymnus, habeat haec tria: et laudem, et Dei, et canticum. Svid. y Mind. 14–16 pp., Clif. II, 239. On antiphonal singing at Qliphoth II, 34–40, III, 209. On the participation of the people in reading and singing II, 290. See about singer. at Razumovsk. Part I, page 30. The Greek and Latin liturgies focus their main interest on the development of their last, Eucharistic part; they gravitate towards the sacramental act, leaving a place for the sermon after the reading of the Apostle and the Gospel, or even relegating it to the end of the liturgy. Justifying the unenviable position of the sermon in the Catholic world, which is inconsistent with its original purpose as part of the divine service, Mosheim resorts to the following kind of sophistical reasoning: “If we carefully examine the matter, we will have to agree that the sermon does not constitute an essential part of Christian worship. It represents the ingredient of the cult, which arose out of need and for the special considerations of its compilers. The actual service of worship consists of believers coming together, praying, glorifying God and testifying that they believe and confess the Lord. This was the case in many early Christian communities. And our public services (that is, Catholic ones) are remnants of the previous practice, when public teachings were not spoken. Later, special circumstances were the reason why the sermon began to be part of the divine service.” Most scholars derive the custom of jumping and dancing during prayer from pagan mysteries, for example, bacchanalia. But isn’t the explanation of this custom from Jewish practice closer to the truth? Buxtorfius says that when the verse was chanted: “Holy, Holy, Holy,” the Jews jumped three times in imitation of the angels. In connection with this explanation, it becomes clear why John Chrysostom timed his denunciation to the behavior of Christians during the singing of the Seraphim's doxology. Obviously, the ancient custom continued to be preserved under John Chrysostom (Epiphanius speaks about horse racing among the Gnostics). The Jews had the custom of jumping three steps forward when reciting one verse of their morning prayers... A hint of angels who were once captivated by the beauty of the daughters of men and led them to criminal love? A curious example of such an ancient Easter mystery is given to us by Herbert in his publication “Monumenta veteris Liturgiæ Allemanniæ”. You might be interested in: