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The tropologion in its historical transmission
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 June 2025
Abstract
The tropologion is considered the earliest known extant chant book that has preserved layers of Jerusalem hymnography and liturgy from the fifth or sixth century and was in use until about the twelfth century. Recent study has shown its very wide dissemination: in Byzantium it was known as a tropologion, in Syria as a tropligin and in Armenia as a šaraknoc. Arguments are given that the book was probably known in Bulgaria in the Glagolitic alphabet. Three issues are studied for the purpose of revealing the entire history of this book: the content of the repertory, its arrangement and the liturgical calendar. Their study unquestionably confirms the earlier stage of the compilation of the book, possibly in Jerusalem or its outlying region, and it outlines its uninterrupted development of the book from Jerusalem to the Studios monastery and beyond in different languages. In all probability, John of Damascus rearranged this book, editing the yearly and weekly cycles for the liturgical purposes of his time and arranging the Resurrection repertory for eight consecutive Sundays and for the Common Offices in a consecutive modal order. This rearranged book might be the tropologion we know from its version in the Georgian iadgari, the Syriac tropligin and the Armenian šaraknoc: it contains chants presented in a single succession for the fixed and movable feasts and, at the end of the book, the cycles arranged in the eight modes. The latter cycles constitute the earliest known oktoechos as a chapter of a book.
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- © Svetlana Kujumdzieva, 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press
Footnotes
A version of this article was presented at the International Musicological Society Congress, 22–26 August 2022, Athens, Greece on the session ‘Translation, Transformation, and Mediation in Christian Music of the Eastern Mediterranean Region’.
References
1 See, for instance, Kenneth Clark, Checklist of Manuscripts in the St. Catherine’s Monastery Mount Sinai (Washington, DC, 1952). The Sinai manuscripts 556, 579, 607 and 784 bear the title ‘tropologion’ but Clark defines them as other types of books.
2 Eight extant iadgari manuscripts from the tenth or eleventh century in Georgian are already well known – seven are from the library of ‘St Catherine’s’ monastery in Sinai and one from Tbilisi: Sinai 18, 20, 26, 34, 40, 41, 53, and Tbilisi H-2123. The Georgian liturgical books are considered translations of the early Greek liturgical books, which did not come down to us.
3 The copies are from the ninth century onwards, see William Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum Acquired since the Year 1838, vol. 1 (London, 1870), 280–92. See notes on manuscripts London, BL, Add. 14,504, 14,505, 14,698, etc.; Husmann, Heinrich, ‘Die syrischen Handschriften des Sinai-Klosters, Herkunft und Schreiber’, Ostkirchlichen Studien, 24 (1975), 281–308 Google Scholar.
4 Winkler, Gabriele, ‘Die armenische Ritus: Bestandsaufnahme und neue Erkentnisse sowie eine kürzere Notizen zur Liturgie der Georgier’, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 251 (1996), 265–98Google Scholar; idem, ‘Das theologische Formelgut über den Schöpfer, das ὁμοούσιος, die Inkarnation und Menschwordung in den georgischen Troparien des Iadgari im Spiegel der christlich-orientalischen Quellen’, Oriens Christianus, 84 (2000), 117–78; idem, ‘Anhang zur Untersuchung: “Über die Entwicklungsgeschichte des armenischen Symboliums” und seine Bedeutung für die Wirkungsgeschichte der antiochenischen Synoden von 324–325 und 341–345,’ Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 271 (2004), 107–59.
5 About them, see Glibetić, Nina, ‘A New Eleventh-Century Glagolitic Fragment from St Catherine’s Monastery: The Midnight Prayer of Early Slavic Monks in the Sinai’, Археографски прилози, 37 (2015), 11–49 Google Scholar; Eвгений Верещагин, Ильина книга. Древнейший славянский богослужебный сборник. Факсимильное воспроизведение рукописи. Билинеарно-спатическое издание источника с филолого-богословским комментарием. Подг. Евгений М. Верещагин (Москва, 2006).
6 On this point, see Jeffery, Peter, ‘The Sunday Office of Seventh-Century Jerusalem in the Georgian Chant Books (Iadgari): A Preliminary Report’, Studia Liturgica, 21 (1991), 52–75 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 I am following the three issues that Peter Jeffery has observed studying the Georgian Iadgari. See ibid.
8 They contain troparia, stichera, kanons, hypakoi, prokeimena and makarismoi. Some of the troparia are found in the iadgari and in the three earliest sources for the liturgy in Jerusalem: the Diary of the French or Spanish pilgrim Egeria, known also as Etheria and Sylvia, which describes the cathedral liturgy at the Anastasis Church in Jerusalem between 381 and 384. For more on Egeria, see James McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge, 1987), 111; Frank Senn, Christian Liturgy (Minneapolis, 1997), 114; Aelred Cody, ‘The Early History of the Oktoechos in Syria’, in East of Byzantium: Syria and Armenia in the Formative Period, ed. Nina Garsoian, Thomas Mathews and Robert Thomson (Washington, DC, 1982), 89–113, at 109; Paul Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, 2nd edn (New York, 2002), 185; John Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 228 (Rome, 1987), 64; idem, Liturgy in Ancient Jerusalem (Nottingham, 1989), 42. Common troparia are found in the Armenian Lectionary, which also describes the cathedral liturgy of Jerusalem, but in its state from the beginning of the fifth century: it was translated from Greek into Armenian between 415 and 439. For more on Armenian Lectionary, see Helmut Leeb, Die Gesänge im Gemeindegottesdienst von Jerusalem, Wiener Beiträge zur Theologie, B. 28 (Vienna, 1970), 31; Gabriel Bertonière, The Historical Development of the Easter Vigil and Related Services in the Greek Church, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 193 (Rome, 1972), 8; Gabriele Winkler, Die armenische Ritus: Bestandsaufnahme und neue Erkentnisse sowie eine kürzere Notizen zur Liturgie der Georgier, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 251 (Rome, 1996), 265–98; Peter Jeffery, ‘The Earliest Chant Repertories Recovered: The Georgian Witnesses to Jerusalem Chant’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 47 (1994), 1–39, at 9; and idem: ‘The Lost Chant Tradition of Early Christian Jerusalem: Some Possible Melodic Survivals in the Byzantine and Latin Chant Repertories’, Early Music History, 11 (1992), 151–90, at 157. Common troparia are also found in the iadgari and in the Georgian Lectionary, which transmits the liturgy of Jerusalem between the fifth and eighth centuries. For more on the Georgian Lectionary, see Leeb, Die Gesänge im Gemeindegottesdienst; Gabriel Bertonière, The Historical Development of the Easter Vigil and Related Services in the Greek Church, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 193 (Rome, 1972); Baldovin, Liturgy, 43; idem, ‘Urban Character’, 47; Jeffery, ‘The Lost Chant Tradition’, 157; Mая Момина, ‘О произхождении греческой триоди’, Палестинский сборник, 28 (1986), 112–21.
9 Stig S. R. Frøyshov, ‘Greek Hymnody’, in The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, ed. John Richard Watson and Emma Hornby (Norwich, 2013).
10 Eлена П. Метревели, Цаца А. Чанкиева and Лили М. Хевсуриани, Древнейший иадгари (Тбилиси, 1980); Wade, Andrew, ‘The Oldest Iadgari: The Jerusalem Tropologion, V–VIII Century’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 50 (1984), 451–6Google Scholar; Jeffery, ‘The Sunday Office’.
11 This old calendar goes back before 560. It is well known that after this year, Emperor Justinian I reorganised the calendar: the Annunciation was separated from Christmas and placed on 25 March. Thus, the iadgari, as Peter Jeffery pointed out, represents a ‘mixed’ practice: the Annunciation is placed along with Christmas but its celebration is prescribed for 25 March. See Peter Jeffery, ‘The Earliest Oktoechoi: The Role of Jerusalem and Palestine in the Beginning of Modal Ordering’, in The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths and Bridges East and West: In Honor of Kenneth Levy, ed. Peter Jeffery (Cambridge, 2001), 147–211; idem, ‘The Sunday Office’. I have noticed the same structure in the papyrus Vienna, Die Papyrussammlung, Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, Vindob. Gr. 26.120 from the sixth or seventh century, where the Annunciation is given before Christmas, see Christian Troelsgård, ‘Chant Papyri and the New Jerusalem Tropologion – Some Early Documents on the Formation of the Orthodox Chant Repertories’, paper presented at the International Society of Orthodox Church Music conference in Joensuu, Finland, 2011.
12 Robert Taft finds the systematisation of the menaion with hymnography for every day of the year in manuscripts from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. See Robert Taft, ‘Menaion’, in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium 2 (New York, 1991), 1338. See also his study ‘Mount Athos: A Late Chapter in the History of the Byzantine Rite’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 42 (1988), 179–94.
13 The designation triodion is read in the earliest Sinai Greek manuscripts from the Library of the Sinai Monastery ‘St Catherine’, 734–735 and 736, with such a repertory from the eleventh century. The initial rubric in manuscript 736 from 1027/28 reads that the works of Joseph and Theodore Studites are gathered together in the book.
14 One of the earliest designations of oktoechos in the Sinai manuscripts is revealed in manuscript Sinai 795 from the end of the twelfth century.
15 See his articles on these books in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed. Alexander Kazhdan, 3 vols. (New York, 1991).
16 Guiseppe Assemani believed that manuscript Rome, Vatican Apostolic Library, Syriac 94 dating from 1010 to 1030 was the ‘Oktoechos of Severos’. See Guiseppe Assemani, Bibliotheca orientalis Clementino-Vaticana (Rome, 1719), 487, 613. Anton Baumstark believed that the ‘Oktoechos of Severos’ was manuscript London, BL, Add. 17,134 from 675 and its later copies. See Anton Baumstark, ‘Festbrevier und Kirchenjahr der syrischen Jakobiten’, in Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Altertums, B. 3, 3-5 (Padernborn, 1910), 45–6. The same was argued by Jules Jeannin and Julien Puyade, ‘L’Oktoechos syrien’, Orientalia Christiana, 3 (1913), 82–104; Eric Werner, The Sacred Bridge, 1 (London, 1959) and 2 (New York, 1984); Egon Wellesz, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography (Oxford, 1962); Gerda Wolfram, ‘Severus of Antioch’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, vol. 23 (London, 2001), 176–7.
17 Cody, ‘The Early History’; Miloš Velimirović, ‘Christian Chant in Syria, Armenia, Egypt, and Ethiopia’, in The New Oxford History of Music, ed. Richard Crocker and David Hiley, vol. 2 (New York, 1990), 6; and Jeffery, ‘The Earliest Oktoechoi’.
18 See manuscript London, BL, Add. 17,134 in Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts, 330–9.
19 Baumstark, ‘Festbrevier und Kirchenjahr’.
20 See Charles Atkinson, The Critical Nexus: Tone-System, Mode, and Notation in Early Medieval Music (New York, 2009), 93.
21 See also Cody, ‘The Early History’. See manuscripts London, BL, Add. 14,514, 14,713, 14,714, etc. in Wright, Catalogue.
22 Cf. Charles Renoux, Jerusalem dans le Caucase: Anton Baumstark verifie, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 265 (Rome, 2001), 305–21.
23 For more on this, see Svetlana Kujumdzieva, The Hymnographic Book of Tropologion: Sources, Liturgy and Chant Repertory (London, 2018).