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Prayer

The Sacrament

Liturgy and Spirituality

Prayer Liturgy, and Renewal

The Byzantine Rite Becomes Imperial

The Icon: Sacrament of the Kingdom

The Evolution of the Byzantine "Divine Liturgy"

Holy Communion and the Coronavirus : Faith, Fear, and Fame in a Pandemic

The Byzantine Rite Becomes Imperial

Robert F. Taft, The Byzantine Rite, A short History, ed. American Essays in Liturgy, Minnesota 1992, pp. 28-41

Apart from its civil importance as the new capital and the preaching of Chrysostom, early Constantinople was known for little either culturally or ecclesiastically. It produced almost no literature of any importance, it was not a great intellectual or monastic center, and it was not the cradle of saints and martyrs. Furthermore, its homiletic and theological production was slim. The one exception was the notable interlude at the end of the fourth century during the episcopates of Gregory Nazianzen (379-381) and John Chrysostom (398-404) -but even their theology was Cappadocian or Antiochene and not Constantinopolitan. In none of these respects could Constantinople hold a candle to the great eastern ecclesiastical centers Alexandria and Antioch (1). Yet its civil attributes-its sheer size, monumental architecture, and imperial court life-were legendary. Soon Constantinople would also become known for the splendors of its ritual, both imperial and ecclesiastical.

 

The Golden Age of Justinian and Beyond

By the sixth century, especially under the influence of Justinian I (527-565) who constructed the new Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine Rite became "imperial." Its eucharistic service in particular acquired greater ritual splendor and theological explicitation, especially as a result of the christological controversies. It accomplished this, in part, through the addition of new feasts, the creed (511), and several new chants such as the Trisagion (ca 438-439), the Monogenes (535-536), and the Cheroubikon (573-574) (2). More significant for the development of the liturgy than these chants, however, were the processions they were meant to accompany. Indeed, except for an occasional reference to the dedication of a church (3) or to night vigils(4), the sources in this epoch tell us almost nothing about Constantinopolitan liturgical services other than the eucharist and stational processions.

 

Inside Out: City as Church

I have already insisted on the singular unity in the Byzantine synthesis of the liturgy and its architectural/iconographic setting. But things were not always that way. The church as building, house of prayer, gathering place of the Christian assembly- ho kyriakos oikos rather than he ekklesia -became a significant reality in the rite of Constantinople only with the construction of Justinian's Hagia Sophia, dedicated on 27 December 53 7. Before that, Byzantine sources are remarkably reticent in attributing any symbolic significance to the church building (5). As Cyril Mango points out in his anthology of Byzantine texts dealing with art and architecture:

The "anagogical argument" (namely, that images serve to elevate our minds to immaterial realities), an argument derived from neo-Platonism, via the pseudo-Dionysian writings, does, in fact, appear from time to time, but it is the exception rather than the rule (6).

There was little of symbolic or theological import attached to the Byzantine church building before Hagia Sophia. In fact, there was nothing distinctively "Byzantine" about pre-Justinianic churches in the capital. Most Byzantine liturgical description before Justinian-indeed, much of it in the entire period anterior to Iconoclasm (726-843)-simply ignored the church building. It dealt, rather, with what took place outside the church in the stational processions and services along the principal, porticoes streets (little more than alleys by modern standards) of Constantine 's city.

 

Stational Liturgy (7)

From the new monumental center, southwest of the Acropolis and containing both the Constantinian Great Church (360) and the Imperial Palace, ran the city's four main arteries. Two of them ran along the coast of the peninsula, on the Golden Horn to the north and on the Propontis to the south. More important liturgically was the Mese, the traditional central cardo, which started as one at the Chalke Gate of the palace and ran past the Milion and through the Forum of Constantine to the Forum Tauri, where it divided. One branch headed southwest, threading the Fora Bovis and Arcadii and passing the Monastery of Stoudios (early fifth century) to exit the Theodosian Walls (413) at the Golden Gate and join the Via Egnatiana to Old Rome. The other arm branched north past the Holy Apostles Basilica to the Charisian Gate. Much of the liturgical activity that the Byzantines of the time thought important enough to record took place along these arteries and in their fora. This liturgical activity was fostered by the sheltering colonnades of these thoroughfares: the mid-fifth century Notitia urbis claims that there were fully fifty-two porticoes in the city (8).

Disasters and heresies-both of which plagued the early Christian history of this city, if not in equal proportions then at least with equally portentous liturgical results-provided the main occasions for these outdoor services. Between 404 and 960 Constantinople was rocked by eighteen earthquakes (9). Such earthquakes, as well as droughts or the fallout from volcanic eruptions, and man-made threats like the Avar siege of 626 or that of the Russes in 860 (10), would bring the populace into the streets to plead for salvation. And when granted, as it always was, the anniversary of this grace would be commemorated yearly in liturgical processions. Baldovin documents these occasions in detail, from the well-known myth of the heavenly origins of the Trisagion during the lite following the earthquake of 25 September 437 to the end of the millennium. He concludes, "Clearly, liturgical supplications and processions were the usual response to unusual danger in the liturgy of Constantinople, even well into the ninth century" (11).

Heresies were fewer, perhaps, but equally ominous. Arianism's multitudinous variants bled into the disputes over the Holy Spirit, and then gave way to Nestorianism and the far more subtle yet tenacious Monophysite christologies. Such theological disputes were the impetus behind many outdoor services in this emerging stational liturgy. Further, if less dramatic, occasions for such services were provided by church dedications, the transfer of relics (12), and funerals (especially imperial). Later, with the developing calendar of memorials, one must include the cycle of synaxis celebrations in a determined church on set days.

The first evidence for this emerging stational liturgy appeared during the Arian ascendancy, when the beleaguered Gregory Nazianzen -Orthodox bishop of the capital from 379 to 381-attacked the pomp of church feasts and heaped scorn upon "the processions of the Greeks," which was an obvious reference to the Arians at that time (13). The new emperor, Theodosius I (379-395), restored the churches to the Orthodox in 380, and by the time John Chrysostom took charge of the see in February 398, the Orthodox had regained the upper hand. But the Arian threat was not yet dissipated. According to Socrates (d. after 439), Chrysostom embarked on a vigorous policy of competitive stations to offset the still popular services of the Arians:

The Arians... held their assemblies outside the city. So each week, whenever there was a feast-I mean Saturday and Sunday-on which it was customary to hold a synaxis in the churches, they congregated in public squares within the city gates and sang antiphonally odes composed in accord with the Arian belief. And this they did during the greater part of the night. In the morning, chanting the same antiphons, they processed through the center of the city and went outside the gates of the city to their place of assembly.... John [ Chrysostom ], concerned lest some of the more simple faithful be drawn away from the Church by such odes, set up some of his own people in opposition to them, so that they too, by devoting themselves to nocturnal hymnody, might obscure the effect of the Arians and confirm his own faithful in the profession of their own faith (14). Chrysostom's flock took up his initiative with gusto, bearing in procession silver crosses illumined with lighted tapers designed by the saint himself and paid for by the Empress Eudoxia (400-404). The torch lights of such processions along the coast turned the Propontis, according to Chrysostom, into a river of fire (15).

Evidently the custom caught on, for Sozomen informs us that the processions continued even after the emperor put a stop to the Arian stations-thus, removing the original reason for the Orthodox counter-practice. Maybe the real reason why these popular outdoor services were maintained is to be found in Chrysostom's frequent complaints that Christian liturgy was not always the winner in its competition with the Hippodrome or circus for the people's attention (16). Palladius refers to Chrysostom's nightly processions (nychterinai litaneiai), adding that some of the clergy, who preferred sleeping at night to watching and praying, were not enamored of their bishop's initiative (17).

What began as a scrimmage with the Arians (and later the Monophysites) for control of the streets in the religious struggle for the soul of Byzantium (18), thus perdured as a ploy in the less dramatic but longer-lasting competition with the blandishments of worldly entertainment for the attention of the urban populace of Late Antiquity. John of Ephesus (d. after 585) was a Monophysite Syriac church historian who was in Constantinople at the time of Justinian's predecessor (Justin I, 518-527). He describes in his Church History how the citizens and foreign visitors in the capital flocked to watch the entrance of the imperial retinue into church (19), in the same way that crowds still gather in Rome for every appearance of the pope at some city church.

These Constantinopolitan stational services left an indelible stamp on the Divine Liturgy and other rites of the Great Church (20). Entrances, processions, and accessions came to characterize all Byzantine liturgy. The enduring symbolism of these rites is demonstrated by their central place in the works of classic liturgical commentators, beginning with Maximus Confessor (ca. 630) (21). They could still be the subject of a brief treatise as late as Constantinopolitan Patriarch Gennadios II Scholarios, leader of the Orthodox at the Council of Florence in 1438-1439 (22).

 

Stational Impact on the Early Constantinopolitan Church

These outdoor processions had to end somewhere, and that somewhere was usually a church. The results were predictable. This processional activity was directly responsible for the characteristic shape of the early Constantinopolitan church, with numerous entrances on all four sides (23). The major entrances were in the west façade (24), which was preceded by an atrium or courtyard enclosed by a square portico. Processions would pause in the atrium-to await the completion of the introit courtesies of the hierarchs and dignitaries in the narthex, and the recitation of the Introit Prayer before the Royal Doors leading into the nave-before flooding into the nave with the dignitaries. Inside the church, the longitudinal axis between entrance and apse was emphasized, and the processions were guided to the sanctuary by floor markings (25) and the walled pathway of the solea, that funnelled the clergy and imperial entourage around the ambo and up to the gates of the templon or chancel that enclosed the sanctuary.

In this instance, form follows function: the liturgical arrangement of the Justinianic church building appears to have been dictated by the stational character of the urban rite. Its requirements were multiple:

1. a place for the people to gather while awaiting this solemn entrance, since-unlike in Old Rome-the people did not enter the church beforehand to welcome the arrival of the introit procession: hence the large west atrium;

2. an outbuilding, for the same reason, where the people could offer their gifts before the basilica was "opened liturgically" with the Introit Prayer and solemn entrance of the clergy and the imperial party: hence the emergence of the skeuophylakion rotunda, a separate building outside the church (26);

3. Since in the Constantinopolitan Introit (unlike the Introit of Old Rome) the clergy and people entered the church together, the need to provide easy and rapid access to the nave and galleries from outside: hence, the monumental doorways, not only in the west facade but on all four sides of the church, and multiple outside entrances to the gallery stairwells;

4. a sheltered place for the patriarch and his escort, a) to await and greet the emperor before the Introit on days when the imperial party participated in the liturgy publicly; b) to await the arrival of the stational procession on days when the dignitaries did not take part in the stations; c) to say the Introit Prayer before the Royal Doors or principal west entrance into the nave; and d) at other services, to perform the rites that preceded the patriarch's solemn entrance into the church: hence the monumental narthex (27) .

A further peculiarity of the Constantinopolitan arrangement was the elevated synthronon and cathedra in the apse. This came about not because of the stations, but so that the bishop could be seen while preaching from the throne: another fundamental element in the liturgy of this period (28). Other characteristics-such as the chancel and ambo, and the enclosed solea walkway connecting them (29)-are not peculiar to Byzantium and are found, mutatis mutandis, in Late Antique church arrangements in Rome, Syria, and Mesopotamia. The galleries and their use remain a separate problem, but they, too, are found elsewhere and cannot be considered proper only to Constantinople and its liturgy (30). What was peculiar to Constantinople in these arrangements was required by the urban cathedral rite: the liturgical disposition of the preStudite Constantinopolitan monastic church remains to be discovered.

 

The Importance of the Entrances

Lest one think I am attributing too much importance to the processional Introit, let the sources themselves speak of the lengths to which the Byzantines would go to formalize and stylize this major feature of church life in old Constantinople. For this, one must turn to imperial ceremonial. By the time of Justinian, Constantinopolitan imperial corteges were so impressive that they had become a topos for regal splendor. Leontius the presbyter, a popular preacher in the capital around 552-565, used them regularly as a homiletic foil to the humility of the Heavenly King (31). It is little wonder that the participation of the emperor gave a special "imperial" tone to liturgical services.

The imperial ritual, both ecclesiastical and secular, is described in fragmentary fashion by numerous sources. Especially important are the ex professo ceremonial books of the imperial court, such as the De cerimoniis aulae Byzantinae or Book of Ceremonies compiled from earlier sources by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (913-920, 945-959) (32), and the mid fourteenth century De officiis or Office Book of Pseudo- Codinus (33). The emperor's progress to the church for the liturgy as detailed in the Book of Ceremonies was a stational procession in microcosm, in which the cortege moved from designated spot to designated spot, with a set ritual order for each stop along the route. The force with which this struck the onlooker is obvious from the description of Harun ibn Yahya, an Arab prisoner held hostage at the court of Basil I (867-886) in the last quarter of the ninth century. His fantastic description of the imperial progress from palace to church, with an entourage of over 55,000 imperial officials, illustrates the impact of this solemn accession (34). Things seemed to have changed little in the succeeding centuries if we are to believe the Russian pilgrim Ignatius of Smolensk who was present at the crowning of Manuel II Paleologus (third from the last of the Byzantine emperors, 1391-1425) in Hagia Sophia on 11 February 13 92. According to Ignatius' equally exaggerated account, "The imperial procession was very slow-paced, so that three hours [were consumed going] from the main doors to the chamber" (35).

 

Outside In: Church Building as Cosmos

In fact, things had changed and changed considerably. From the time of Justinian I, Byzantine liturgical description and commentary became more and more concerned with what took place inside the church, with the church itself, and with its symbolic meaning. The Justinianic era introduced changes not only in church arrangement but also in perception. Previously, commentators on churches in the capital remarked on their great beauty, and waxed eloquently on what would eventually become a topos : the startling effect created by the light flooding in from the windows. They even referred to the domed roof as the heavens (36). 6 With Hagia Sophia and its liturgy, the perspective changed. In no liturgical tradition has one edifice played so seminal a role as Justinian's Hagia Sophia. Both the shape of the Byzantine Rite and the vision of its meaning-enacted on a smaller scale in later buildings-were determined in this cathedral church. What was most new about this building, far more than its startling architecture, was the vision created by its marvelous interior. This vision was to have a formative influence on the spirit of the ritual Hagia Sophia was built to house.

A Christian church is not a temple. Originally the community, and not some material shrine, was the dwelling of God's presence (37). In time it became customary to see the church building as a symbol of the mysteries it housed. Not until Justinian, however, did Constantinople have a vessel worthy to reflect this reality. With Hagia Sophia the domus ecclesiae became the New Temple and Justinian surpassed Solomon, as the legend has him exclaim on the occasion of its dedication in 537 (38).

The Byzantines did not invent the notion of the church as a Platonic image of the cosmos, reaching from God's throne upon the Cherubim to the lower realm where human life is enacted (39). Hagia Sophia, however, gave a completely new expression to this concept. The awesome splendors of its vastness and the sparkling brilliance of its light led observers to exclaim with remarkable consistency that here, indeed, was heaven on earth, the heavenly sanctuary, a second firmament, image of the cosmos, and throne of the very glory of God (40). As with all great buildings, the structure itself-not its decoration-created this impression. The original decoration of Hagia Sophia was minimal (41). Only later would much smaller structures of a poorer age require the explicitation of this symbolism representatively, in mosaic and fresco, in accord with the more literal spirit of the post-iconoclastic age.

 

The Cosmic Liturgy

Long before such explication in mosaic and fresco, the cosmic symbolism was embedded in the liturgical texts of the epoch. Let us return to the Introit. The procession has arrived, the liturgy is about to begin. The patriarch is in the narthex, where he has greeted the emperor; both are awaiting the signal to enter the church. From their chamber beneath the great ambo, the psalmists intone the Ho Monogenes troparion (42), traditional refrain of the Introit Psalm ( LXX Ps 94:l-6a).

At this signal, the patriarch goes before the Royal Doors to say the Introit Prayer: the opening collect of the Divine Liturgy in the two traditional Constantinopolitan formularies of St. Basil and St. Chrysostom. To the patriarch-his gaze into the nave framed by the open doors and interior western buttresses, his view encompassing the central axis of ambo, solea, and sanctuary, brilliantly bathed in the rays of the sun as it streamed through the windows in the conch of the apse (43)-the words of the prayer must certainly have seemed fulfilled, evoking the vision of the heavenly sanctuary resplendent to the East, as if before his very eyes:

O Lord and Master, our God, who in heaven has established the orders and armies of angels and archangels to minister unto your majesty, grant that the holy angels may enter with us, and with us serve and glorify your goodness... (44)

This typology-in which the earthly church is seen to image the heavenly sanctuary where the God of heaven dwells, and the earthly liturgy is a " concelebration " in the worship which the Heavenly Lamb and the angelic choirs offer before the throne of God-was the first level of Byzantine liturgical interpretation, reflected in such fifth-sixth century liturgical additions as this Introit Prayer and the Cheroubikon (a.d. 573-74) (45). Such liturgical interpretation was systematized in the Mystagogy of Maximus Confessor ca. 630 (46).

On the eve of Iconoclasm, therefore, a certain synthesis of liturgy and mystagogy had already emerged. In the next period this system would undergo developments radical enough to be called changes, but in sufficient continuity with what preceded to be deemed evolution, not revolution.


NOTES

1. Beck, " Constantinople " (previous chap., note 1) esp. 31-35.

2. See my entries under these titles in ODB ; for the Creed and Cheroubikon, see Taft, Great Entrance chs. 2 and 11. The Trisagion first appeared in Constantinopolitan processional rogations in 438-439, but became a permanent element of the eucharistic liturgy only at the beginning of the 6th century.

3. John Malalas (ca. 490-570's), contemporary of Justinian, Chronographia 18, ed. L. Dindorf, loannis Malalae Chronographia, CSHB (Bonn 1831) 495.9-16 = PG 97:716; Theophanes Confessor (ca. 760-817), Chronographia 18, ed. C. de Boor, Theophanis Chronographia, 2 vols. (Leipzig 1883-1885) I, 238.18-24 = PG 108:520; cf. Taft, Great Entrance 110 (where I identify Malalas with John III Scholasticus, patriarch of Constantinople from 565-577, an identification now rejected by Byzantine historians; see B. Baldwin, " Malalas, John," in ODB 2:1275).

4. As in Justinian's ruling of 528 ordering all the clergy in each church to chant nocturns ( nykterina ) daily, and not just matins and vespers; Justinian, Code I, iii, 42:24 (10), P. Kriiger, Corpus iuris civilis, vol. 2 (Berlin 1900) 28; cf. Taft, Hours 186 and ch. 9 passim.

5. This is borne out by a perusal of the relevant Byzantine texts in Mango, Art.

6. Ibid., xiv.

7. On this concept and its development in Late Antiquity, the basic study is Baldovin.

8. Ibid., 171.

9. Ibid., 171.

10. Ibid., 189.

11. Ibid., 186-189.

12. For an early instance, see the procession described in the Vita of St. Marcian, in R. Taft, "Byzantine Liturgical Evidence in the Life of St. Marcian the Oeconomos : Concelebration and the Preanaphoral Rites," OCP 48 (1982) 159-170.

13. Oratio 38, 5-6, PG 36:316; Baldovin 181.

14. Socrates, Church History VI, 8 = PG 67:688-9. Cf. Sozomen (ca. 439-450), Church History VIII, 8, ed. J. Bidez, GCS 50 ( Berlin 1960) 360-361 = PG 67:1536.

15. E.g. Horn, dicta postauam reliquiae martyrum ... 2, CPG 4441.1 = PG 63:470, describing a transfer of martyr's relics to the suburb of Drypia on the Via Egnatia, 13.5 km west of the city, towards the end of his first year in Constantinople: Baldovin 183. Cf. Chrysostom, De S. Hieromartyre Phoca, PG 50:699, which Baldovin (183) cites.

16. Horn, dicta postquam reliquiae martyrum ... 1, PG 63:461; Horn, adv. eos qui non adfuerant 1, CPG 4441.4 = PG 63:477; Horn, in Mud: ' Pater meus usque modo operatur ' 1, CPG 4441.10 = PG 63:511.

17. Palladios, Dialogue on the Life of St. John Chrysostom V, 147-150 = Palladios, Dialogue sur la vie de Jean Chrysostome I, ed. A.-M. Malingrey, P. Leclercq, Sources chretiennes 341 (Paris 1988) 124.

18. Baldovin 18 4-186. As Baldovin (186) points out, the attempt of Emperor Anastasius to gain control of the processions ca. 496, as reported by Theodore Lector, underscored their political and civil importance: Theodoros Anagnostes, Kirchengeschichte , ed. G. C. Hansen, GCS 54, 2nd ed. ( Berlin 1971) no. 468, p. 134.

19. Church History III.3, Iohannis Ephesini, Historiae ecclesiasticae pars tertia, ed. F. W. Brooks, Corpus scriptorum Christianorum orientalium 105-106: Scriptores Syri 54-55 (Paris/ Louvain 1935-1936) text 138, versio 102.

20. See Mateos, Celebration; Taft, Beyond East and West ch. 11; Mathews chs. 4-7; Baldovin ch. 6.

21. See Taft, " Liturgy."

22. Peri ton hieron eisodon ("On the Sacred Entrances"), in L. Petit, X. A. Siderides, M. Jugie ( eds.), Oeuvres completes de Gennade Scholarius, Tome III : Oeuvres polemiques, questions théologiques, écrits apologetiques (Paris 1930) 196-99.

23. Hagia Sophia, for example, has fifty-six doors on the ground floor: nineteen of them leading into the nave and six of them at the main processional entrance area in the narthex. On all questions of church planning in the early churches of Constantinople, see Mathews.

24. See the work of Strube, cited below in note 30.

25. On floor markings and their ceremonial use, see G. P. Majeska, "Notes on the Archeology of St. Sophia of Constantinople : The Green Marble Bands on the Floor," DOP 32 (1978) 299-308; P. Schreiner, " Omphalion und Rota Porphyretica. Zum Kaiserzeremoniell in Konstantinopel und Rom," in S. Dufrenne (ed.), Byzance et les Slaves. Mélanges Ivan Dujcev ( Paris 1979) 401-410. They are mentioned in 1200 by the Russian pilgrim Anthony of Novgorod, Xr. M. Loparev (ed.), Kniga palomchik. Skazanie mest svjatyx vo Tsaregrade Antonija Novgorod- skago v 1200 godu, Pravoslavnyj Palestiniskij Sbornik, vypusk 51, vol. 17.3 (St. Petersburg 1899) 78, 81; French trans, in Mme. B. de Khitrowo, Itinéraires russes en Orient (Geneva 1889) 95, 99.26. See Mathews, esp. 155-162,178. George P. Majeska of the University of Maryland is working on a new study on the skeuophylakion, incorporating the latest archaeological and literary findings. I am grateful to Professor Majeska for providing me with a copy of the initial draft of this excellent study.

27. The perdurance of the narthex and, in some cases, the esonarthex (in the Justinianic period-surely not afterward), cannot be ascribed to the catechumenate, which was largely nonexistent probably during the 6th, certainly by the 7th century.

28. See my article "Sermon" in ODB 3:1880-81.

29. This enclosed walkway served to keep the sanctuary area free for liturgical use and to facilitate the comings and goings of the lectors and others from the sanctuary to the ambo.

30. I discuss this question in my review of Ch. Strube, Die westliche Eingangsseite der Kirchen von Konstantinopel in justinianischer Zeit, OCP 42 (1976) 296-303. See also, T. F. Mathews ' review in Byzantinische Zeitschrift 70 (1977) 385.

31. Horn. 2.141-162; 3/3a. 18-29, 61-96; 22.127- 142, C. Datema, P. Allen ( eds.), Leontii Presbyteri Constantinopolitani Homiliae, Corpus Christianorum, series Graeca 17 ( Turnhout 1987) 90-91, 150-153, 156-159, 385-386; English trans., by the same authors, Leontius Presbyter of Constantinople, Fourteen Homilies, Byzantina Australiensia 9 (Brisbane 1991) 44, 51-53, 175.

32. Vogt, texte I-II.

33. Ps.-Kodinos, Traite des offices, ed. J. Verpeaux ( Paris 1966).

34. A. A. Vasiliev, " Harun-ibn-Yahya and his Description of Constantinople," Seminarium Kondakovianum 5 (1932) 158-159. These awesome imperial entrances have been studied at length by D. Th. Beljaev, " Ezhednevnye priemy vizantijskix tsarej i prazdnichnye vyxody ix v xram Sv. Sofii v IX-XI vv.," Zapiski Imperatorskago Russkago arxeologicheskago obshchestva, n.s. 6 (1893) i -xlvii, 1-309; esp. chs. 4-5; id., " Bogomol'nye vyxody vizantijskix tsarej v gorodskie i prigorod-nye xramy Konstantinopolja," Zapiski klassicheskago otdelenija Imperatorskago Russkago arxeologicheskago obshchestva 4 (1906) 1-189.

35. G. P. Majeska, Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 19 (Washington 1984), text 106-107; commentary 423-424. The "chamber" ( chertog ) was the metatorion or imperial loge in the nave of Hagia Sophia where the emperor attended services; cf. Mathews 96, 133-134; Vogt, commentaire I, 61; J.-P. Papadopoulos, "Le mutatorium des eglises byzantines," in Memorial L. Petit, Archives de l'Orient Chr é tien 1 ( Bucharest 1948) 366-372.

36. For example, Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 18, 39, PG 35:1037; Mango, Art 26.

37. Mk 14:58; Jn 2:21; 1 Cor 3:16, 6:19; 2 Cor 6:16; 1 Pet 2:5; Eph 2:19-22; cf. Y. M.-J. Congar, The Mystery of the Temple (Westminster, Md. 1962) ch. 8.

38. See the 8-9th c. account in Anonymi Narratio de aedificatione templi S. Sophiae 27, ed. Th. Preger, Scriptores originum Constantinopolitana -rum, BSGRT (Leipzig 1901, reprint 1989) 105.

39. Though first systematized for Byzantium ca. 630 by Maximus Confessor (d. 660) in his Mystagogy (1-5, PG 91:664-84 = Maximus Confessor, Selected Writings, The Classics of Western Spirituality [N.Y./Mahwah, N.J./Toronto 1985] 186-195), the notion of temple as microcosm is a commonplace of human religiosity. Cf. M. Eliade, Images and Symbols. Studies in Religious Symbolism (N.Y. 1969) ch. 1; idem, The Myth of the Eternal Return ( London 1955) ch. 1; idem, The Sacred and the Profane (N.Y. 1959) ch. 1. It is apparently first applied to the Christian church building in a 6th c. poem on the cathedral of Edessa : H. Goussen (ed.), " Uber eine ' Sugitha ' auf die Kathedrale von Edessa," Le Museon 38 (1925) 117-36 (trans. Mango, Art 57-60); cf. A. Grabar, "Le temoignage d'une hymne syriaque sur l'architecture de la cathédrale d'Edesse au VI e siècle et sur la symbolique de l'édifice chrétien," CA 2 (1948) 41-67.

40. E.g., Procopius, De aedificiis I, i.61, ed. H. B. Dewing and G. Downey, Procopius VII, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass. 1954) 26 = Mango, Art 76; Adammanus (ca. 705), De locis sanctis libri tres. Itinera Hierosolymitana saec. Ill-VIII, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiastico -rum Latinorum 38:28; Germanus I (ca. 730), Historia ecclesiastica 1 and 4, P. Meyendorff, Germanus 56-59; Michael Psellus (11th c), Oratio 35, Michael Psellus, Oratoria minora, ed. A. R. Littlewood, BSGRT (Leipzig 1985) 131-132 = PG 122:912; Nicetas Choniata (1206), Historia 4, ed. I. Bekker, CSHB (Bonn 1835) 782.

41. Its present decorative program dates from ca. 866-913, after the defeat of Iconoclasm: Mango, Materials 93-4.

42. See my article " Monogenes, Ho" in ODB 2:1397.

43. There is a photograph of this exact view in Kahler, illustr. 23; cf. the description, ibid. 28ff.

44. LEW 312.15-30 (left col.). This is the original Constantinopolitan Introit Prayer. The text, given loc. cit. (right col.) with the Chrysostom Liturgy, is an Italo -Greek peculiarity unknown in the Constantinopolitan redactions of the euchology : Jacob, "Tradition," 109-38; cf. Taft, Great Entrance xxxi-ii, 128-9.

45. On this chant, see Taft, Great Entrance 53-118.

46. See note 39 above.

 

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