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Alexander Schmemann
4. Byzantium (22 pages)
From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox ChurchPage 21
A Vital Liturgy.
Most important for the Church was the liturgical work that marked these centuries. First come the names of St. John of Damascus and St. Theodore of Studios. In Church tradition John is considered the composer of the Octoechos, the collection of hymns divided into eight tones or melodies. An immense number of contributions are ascribed to him, not all correctly. His liturgical poetry is very remarkable in form and content, and its influence was decisive for the writing of Byzantine hymns.
Characteristic features are the Damascene’s effort to fix the service in a definite pattern, and the almost complete dependence of his theological themes on the tradition of the Fathers. The Byzantine service, as already observed, is a blend of the dogmatic achievements of the preceding period in liturgical form. It is almost entirely adorned with the colors of the Trinity and of Christology.The same sense of completion and fixedness may be remarked in the liturgical activity of the center at Studios, headed by St.
Theodore. This produced the Triodion, the hymns and orders of service for the periods of Great Lent and Easter. Here the Typicon, or service manual, was gradually put together in an effort to fix the services more and more securely. Each Byzantine generation would only have to fill in the empty places in the pattern.The liturgical heritage of Byzantium is so immense that we cannot expect it to contain only masterpieces. There were a great many rhetorical exercises, repetitions, and imitations. As a whole it was a magnificent structure, with much of surpassing beauty and profundity of thought. In the Typicon itself — or rather the Typica, since there were a great number of them — if one can decode their secret language, a whole philosophy of Christian life emerges, and very fine, well-thought-out Christian concepts. We need only point to the luminous beauty of the Easter service, the abundance of liturgical cycles, those for Christmas, Lent, and the feasts of Mary, or to the theological profundity of the Triodion or the Octoechos (the book of liturgy for the variations in service during the rest of the year).
For centuries these liturgical riches were to be the main source of knowledge and religious life and inspiration in the Orthodox world, and in the darkest ages, when traditions were broken and education became rare, people in the Church would rediscover again and again the spirit of universal, all-embracing, and inexhaustibly profound Orthodoxy in its golden age. All spiritual culture, all theological erudition of a Byzantine or of a citizen of Holy Russia, was acquired in the Church and in the living experience of the divine service. There were no seminaries, academies, or theological faculties; but devout monks and Christians drank the living waters of divine knowledge from hymnology. During the all-night vigil services, matins, and vespers, to the sounds of the ancient chants, there developed a reverence that was strong and unshakable, and an Orthodox outlook that was expressed in life and action and did not remain only a misty philosophical theory. These treasures were gathered in the churches, and men and women, experiencing them reverently, arranged their pattern and way of life accordingly.
Cf. Books for getting closer to Orthodox Christianity ||| Orthodox Images of the Christ ||| Byzantium : The Alternative History of Europe ||| Greek Orthodoxy - From Apostolic Times to the Present Day ||| A History of the Byzantine Empire ||| Videos about Byzantium and Orthodoxy ||| Aspects of Byzantium in Modern Popular Music ||| 3 Posts on the Fall of Byzantium ||| Greek Literature / The New Testament
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Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/schmemann-orthodoxy-4-byzantium.asp?pg=21
