I. What is a Typicon?

The term “typicon” comes from the Greek τυπικόν. This word, in turn, is based on the common word τύπος, meaning a “shape, a form, a pattern, a model” (see the entry in Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon), i.e., a work which presents the basic form and establishes a standard.  There are two kinds of typicons: (1) a foundation charter which, in a straightforward and clear manner, outlines the rule of a monastic community; and (2) the rule book which guides the form and construction of a liturgical service, particularly the proper texts to be used when navigating confluences in the changeable and unchangeable portions of the Church year.  (The latter is akin to the Ordo of the Roman rite).  Foundation charters are straightforward and clear.{1}  This article is concerned with the latter: liturgical typicons.

Due to the richness of the Byzantine hymnography used in the liturgy, the Byzantine Typicon is much larger than the Roman Ordo.   “Typicon,” means a “shape” or a “form,” specifically a “prescribed form” or “the form of a document or text.” In its most restricted meaning, it can even mean a rite of the Church, as Basil the Great uses the word in reference to St. Gregory the Wonderworker of Neocaesarea: “There has not been added a single practice, word, or sacramental rite (typos) to those he established for his church.”{2}  Very simply, therefore, the typicon gives us the form of the worship services of the Church.  Typicons, however, do not provide the performative structure of services (i.e.,the rubrics or “red letter” guidelines for the celebrants and ministers). Rather, it gives the arrangement of the liturgical hymns for the use by cantors, psalmists, and lectors. 

The typicon is a liturgical book that regulates and harmonizes the other books containing texts for worship.  Since the typicon is necessary in the Byzantine Church due to the interplay of various cycles of feasts and proper liturgical texts and the complexity of Byzantine liturgical structure, it is called “the eye of the Church.”   This name was given to it by the monk Athanasius Vysotsky, who resided in the Monastery of the Mother of God Peribleptos in Constantinople in the year 1401.{3}  The typicon provides organization for this structure, an organization that is needed because of the fact that the date of Pascha (Easter) changes each year.  This fact causes the great bodies of liturgical texts—the movable cycle consisting of the Lenten Triodion and Pentecostarion, and the Octoechos (Book of the Eight Tones cycling throughout the liturgical year)—to shift in contrast to the immovable cycle found in the twelve volumes of the Menaion (which detail the liturgical texts for the static yearly cycle).  These various texts reflect the large body of hymnography that the Byzantine Church has fashioned for each day of the year in an effort to cultivate a tradition of “singing the Gospel” daily (Petras, 3).

Typicons are not unique to the Byzantine Church.  Other eastern Churches have their own unique typicons. Likewise, as already noted, the Roman Church, which has a much simpler structure of worship, has what is called an Ordo, which gives the prescriptions to be followed for services: prayers and hymns, Gospel sequences that are to be used, which readings from Scripture or from the fathers are to be read, etc.   The complexity of the Byzantine Church’s liturgy necessitates increased attention to organization.

The typicon regulates the choice of hymns and readings for the various services of the Byzantine Church, the office of Vespers (evening prayer), Matins (Orthros, or “the morning office”) and the Divine Liturgy (in the Western tradition, “the Mass”).  It also lends organization to the minor services—(Prime, Terce, Sext, and None) and the offices of Compline (found in two forms, Great Compline and Small Compline) and the Mesonycticon (the Midnight Office).  The typicon regulates only the propers and Commons in the liturgical books themselves, the bulk of which are utilized in the office of Vespers and Matins and, to a lesser degree, in the Divine Liturgy and minor offices. 

Liturgical books are also regulated by the typicon. These include the Liturgicon (Slav, Služebnik), containing the texts of the Divine Liturgies of St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great and the Presanctified Divine Liturgy and the Euchologion (Slav, Molitvennik) or Horologion (Slav, Časoslov), which gives the commons for Vespers, Matins, and the Hours.  The Euchologion can be more extensive and can also contain the Divine Liturgies. 

The scriptural readings are contained in the Apostol (the writings of the Apostles’ letters and the Acts of the Apostles), the Prophetologion (Slav, parimijnik), containing the Old Testament pericopes read in Vespers, and the Evangelion (the book of the four Gospels).   The Prophetologion is not common in the contemporary Church, and the Old Testament readings are found in the more general books of the propers (described below).  The Evangelion, the Gospel Book, is the most revered and is usually elaborately and more expensively bound, having a function in the actual celebration of the Liturgy, since it is often presented to the faithful for veneration.  The Apostol also contains the common and proper texts used by cantors in the Divine Liturgy.

Finally, the propers themselves are found in four books: the Octoechos, which contains the texts according to the movable, eight-week tonal cycle, with texts for each day of the week; the Triodion, which contains the texts for movable feasts in the penitential period from the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee (the tenth Sunday before Easter); the Pentecostarion, which contains the texts for movable feasts during the festal period from Pascha (Easter) to the Sunday of All Saints (the Sunday after Pentecost); and the Menaion for immovable feasts, usually arranged in twelve volumes, one for each month of the year.

The most important liturgical book for the celebration of the divine office is the psalter.  Much of the hymnody is from the psalter, but the fixed selections needed for the divine office are found mostly in the various service books for each office.  The psalter, however, is necessary for the continuous reading of the psalms, a practice that is monastic in origin.  In Egypt, the monks read twenty-four psalms a day, twelve in the morning and twelve in the evening.  Later this was formalized, and thus the entire psalter was read once a week (and twice during the Great Fast).  The Byzantine Liturgy follows the Septuagint (Greek) version of the Psalms, which is at least as ancient as the received Hebrew text of today.  The Byzantine psalter is divided into twenty sections, called kathismata (singular, kathisma).  They also include Biblical canticles sung in Matins, eight drawn from the Old Testament, and two from the New Testament, joined together at the end of the psalter in the Ninth Ode.  The kathismata are read at the office according to an assigned order.  When the psalter is read outside the services, each kathisma ends with the Trisagion Prayers, a series of troparia (hymn verses), and a psalm prayer.  There are a variety of systems for dividing the psalms. For instance, Hilary of Poitiers arranged the psalter in three books of fifty psalms each, while Gregory of Nyssa arranged them in five books (Getcha, 17).  The Asmaticos Office, which we will describe below, had seventy-four antiphons, six fixed, and sixty-eight in continuous reading.  The present system (Palestinian in origin) divides the psalter into twenty kathismata. 

The repertoire of ecclesiastical hymns is very large in the Byzantine Liturgy, spanning more than twenty volumes.  In these volumes, there are overlapping feasts. This is because movable feasts (which depend on the date of Pascha) sometimes coincide with fixed feasts.  The typicon governs the complicated relationships between the texts drawn from both these sources.  The source of this complexity stems from the development of the Divine Office in the Byzantine tradition.  The nineteenth-century Russian liturgiologist Ivan Dmitrievich Mansvetov claimed that the typicon must have been the last of the Church books to be arranged since it presumed the existence of the other liturgical books.  Strictly speaking, however, this is not true, as typicons can be found from the tenth century onward.  One can begin to arrange Church books before some of them have even been written. However, the present typicon must have come after the Octoechos, Triodion, Pentecostarion and Menaion.  As Mansvetov observes:

The <em>ordo</em> of the Church, as a systematic indicator (or regulator) of the development of the offices of the daily cycle, of the <em>Triodion</em>, and of the <em>Menologion</em>, is one of the latest of the church books, and it was constituted at the moment when these three cycles were formed, and when each of these entered and attained their definite form… The complete Typicon  appeared as a result of those difficulties which manifested themselves in practice in the celebration of the offices according to the different liturgical books, and in the cases of the structure of the daily office with the content of the <em>Triodion</em> and the <em>Menaion</em>. (Cited from <em>Tserkovnyj Ustav</em> [Moscow, 1885] in Getcha, 44)

Thus, typicons do not appear until the end of the first millennium.  There were liturgical orders before this time, but they were much simpler, variable, and local, and most of their data has been lost. 

The history of the development of rites is one of centralization due to the consolidation of diversity.  The Typicon of the Byzantine Church is centered on the city of Constantinople, one of the greatest cities in the Christian world, and its magnificent cathedral, the Great Church of Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), which became the model for liturgies in the peripheries of the empire.  At the same time, however, the formation of the Byzantine rite is really a story of two cities: Constantinople and Jerusalem, the holy city where our Lord lived and taught.  The liturgical worship of Jerusalem influenced all areas of Christendom, especially the Eastern Roman Empire, because of the pilgrimages which took place there.  In this development, the lay rites of Constantinople governed the development of the eucharistic Liturgies.  The Church of Jerusalem remained loyal to the Empire after the Council of Chalcedon and eventually adopted the Divine Liturgy of the Great Church.  At the same time, Jerusalem dominated the monastic rites through the monastery of St. Sabbas, located in Bethlehem.  While Jerusalem embraced the Eucharistic worship forms of the capital, the Byzantine Church accepted the Divine Office (“The Divine Praises”) of the Jerusalem monastery.  These fused into the Byzantine rite, which is the liturgical worship governed by the typicon.  This is the fusion of three families of typicons: those of the Great Church, and Studite Typicons, and Sabbaite Typicons (see Getcha, 40–52).

Miguel Arranz divides the history of the typicon into three periods: 1) the formation of the daily cycle; 2) the formation of the Paschal and Sunday cycle; and 3) the formation of the monthly cycle and of complete typicons (Arranz, “Les grandes étapes de la liturgie byzantine: Palestine—Byzance —Russie.  Essai d’aperçu historique”). The first period lasted until the time of iconoclasm, a traumatic event in Byzantine history that led to the decline of the akoimetoi (sleepless) monasteries, where the monks prayed all day in shifts.  After the period of iconoclasm, this sung office could not be restored.  During this first period, there were two traditions for the celebration of the Liturgy: the lay and monastic offices.  The liturgy of the public churches was characterized by fixed psalmody, numerous hymns, and much movement, processions, entrances, blessings, and incensations which endowed the services with a sense of glory and solemnity.  Monastic services were much simpler, rejecting all pomp and music.  As one monk, Abba Pambo, lamented:

Monks have not come into this desert to place themselves before God in pride and presumption, to sing melodic songs and make rhythmic tunes, to shake their hands and stamp their feet.  Our duty is to pray to God in holy fear and trembling, with tears and sighing, with devotion and vigilance, with modesty and a humble voice.  See, I tell you, my son, the days will come when Christians will destroy the books of the holy Evangelists, the holy Apostles and the inspired prophets, and they will rip up the Holy Scriptures and compose troparia in their place. (Apophthegmata Patrum cited in Quasten, Music and Worship in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, 95)

His prediction would be partly fulfilled in the second period (formation of the Paschal and Sunday cycles).  Though Scripture was not abandoned, the urban monks did introduce troparia and other sung pieces into their Divine Office.  Scripture did partly disappear, particularly under the weight of the many troparia written for the Canons of Scriptural odes.  The second period was also characterized by a great flowering of hymns.  The Gospel came to be expressed in music with the stichera as the basis for the traditional Church year.  Each day acquired a body of these poetic hymns to tell the story of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, of the Savior, and of his saints.  There were two centers of hymnography: the monastery of St. Sabbas in Palestine, where St. Andrew of Crete (+ 720), St. John of Damascus (+ 780), and St. Cosmas of Maium (+ 787) wrote; and the Studite Monastery in Constantinople, represented especially by St. Theodore (the Studite) and his brother Joseph, the Metropolitan of Thessalonica (Arranz, 53–4).  The Octoechos is attributed to St. John of Damascus, though it was probably completed after his death (Arranz, 54).  It did not reach its complete form until the twelfth century.  The Triodion (both Lenten and Paschal) was attributed to these brothers.  Though they did not write the entire Triodion, they were responsible for many of its hymns (Arranz 55).  The present triodions are actually a compilation of the three basic types: the Jerusalem, Constantinopolitan, and Studite Triodions.

By the third period, the development of a complete Menaion (monthly cycle) made the formulation of a book like the typicon necessary.  Constantinople’s public Office was represented by the Typicon of the Great Church, which described both the movable cycle and the immovable cycle of feasts as celebrated in Hagia Sophia in the tenth century (see Mateos, Le Typicon de la Grande Église).  The descriptions are succinct, and already the process of combining the two cycles had begun, as may be seen in the rubrics for combining Annunciation (March 25) with Holy Week and Bright Week  (Mateos, vol. 1, 256–259, 115v-116r). The monks did not return to the akoimetic office predating the Iconoclast controversies but, instead, took the office of the St. Sabbas Monastery and combined it with the cathedral office of the Great Church, the forerunner of our present Divine Office.  As Robert Taft observes:

This new Studite synthesis of Constantinople and hagiopolite usages adds to the more sober, desert prayer of Palestine a ritual solemnity to give it what Arranz calls “a strong Byzantine coloration, a certain taste for the cathedral traditions, an importance assigned to chant to the detriment of the psalter, etc.” (Arranz, “Les prières presbytérales des matines byzantines, II: Les manuscrits,” 85), all of which would become permanent characteristics of the Byzantine hours. (Taft, “Mount Athos: A Late Chapter in the History of the Byzantine Rite,” 182)

Early forerunners of the typicon include: the Canonarion (found in Sin. gr. 150), a list of readings from the New Testament for the Divine Liturgy; the Hypotyposis, a monastic typicon for the Stoudios; and the Diatyposis, which depends on the Studite Hypotyposis and was written by St. Athanasius of Athos, the founder of the Lavra on Mt. Athos, for his monks (Arranz 59-60, cf. Taft 183). Complete typicons would follow soon, in the form which Arranz defines as “a canonarion or list of Bible pericopes, a synaxarion or calendar of the twelve months, [and] the rubrics of ceremonies and special offices” (Arranz, 63; Petras, 4–5).

Therefore, there emerged three types of typicons: 1) the Cathedral Typicons of the Great Church, 2) Studite Typicons, and 3) Sabbas Typicons.

II. Typicons of the Great Church. 

This kind of typicon originates in Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), the Great Church of Constantinople.  In reality, it also regulated the liturgical life of all the secular churches of the city of Constantinople.  The earliest is found in ms. Patmos 266 from the ninth and tenth centuries (see the text in Aleksi Dmitrievsky, Opisanije, vol. 1, 1–152). It consisted of a true synaxarion, the list of commemorations of saints, the readings assigned to days, and some indications of the hymnography (Parenti, Storia regionale del rito bizantino, vol. 1, 244).  The premier example of this typicon is certainly the Typicon of the Great Church, edited in 1962 and 1963 by Juan Mateos, the liturgy professor at the Pontifical Oriental Institute.  This manuscript contains a fuller description of the propers of the offices, the hymns, and readings (as celebrated in Constantinople), along with some rubrics.  It contains the office of the fixed feasts from September 1 to August 31, and of the movable feasts, along with two appendices on the office of September 1 and the Pannychis (night vigils) of Great Lent.  Following the Latin occupation of Constantinople in the thirteenth century, the asmaticos (“sung”) office of Vespers, Matins, and Hours was replaced by the Jerusalem office of St. Sabbas.  This had been prepared for by the monastic Studite office in the city, which resembled the Sabbas office (explained below).  The Divine Liturgy remained in the secular form.  The contemporaries of these works did not call them “typicons” but, instead, “synaxarions.”  (The word “typicon” was applied to them by modern liturgiologists because they perform the same function in the liturgy as the monastic typicons [Getcha, 41]. In the present office, a “synaxarion” is a versicle and a haghiography about the commemorated saint.)  It is usually read after Ode 6 in the Canon at Matins. They presume an order of the services that differed in the secular and monastic churches. They were later fused into one order of offices for both monasteries and parish churches.  The “parish” or “cathedral” office in Constantinople was called the asmatikē akolouthia, (the “sung office”). This name was given to it by Symeon of Thessalonica, who said that “nothing is said which is not intoned, except the prayers of the priest and the petitions of the deacon” (Getcha, 45, citing PG 155, col. 624).

It is not clear when the asmaticos office first appeared. Indeed, according to Mansvetov, “we don’t know the asmaticos office in its original form” (Getcha, 46n1). Be that as it may, we can reconstruct the office at least from its classical period.   Symeon of Thessalonica provides the most complete description of this office, but this was at the end of its history when the Turks took Thessalonica in 1430.{4}

As an example, consider the text for Holy Thursday of the Holy Cross from a tenth century source:

The adoration of the Holy Lance which pierced the life-giving side of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.  It takes place after sunrise until the sixth hour, in the Great Church.  At Psalm 50, troparion in tone 4, “Today the King of life is handed over to the Jews to be crucified…” (Mateos, vol. 2, 71 [226v]).  After Orthros [Matins], the patriarch descends and during the adoration of the Holy Lance says the troparion in tone 3, “We worship the lance which pierced the side…” And at the antiphons, the same troparion is said: “We worship the lance…” After the entrance of Terce-Sext, the psalmists say, from the ambon, the troparion in tone 3, “You who have suffered for the human race… ” The first prokeimenon verse is Psalm 82 in Tone 1, “Let them know that your name…” followed by the versicle: “O God, who shall become like you…” The reading is from the prophecy of Jeremiah: “Lord, teach me and I shall know…,” ending with, “In his land.”  The second prokeimenon is Psalm 75 in plagal tone 4, “Make vows and fulfill them…” followed by the versicle, “God is known in Judea…” [This is followed by the washing of feet, Vespers, and the Divine Liturgy.]

III. Studite Typicons

The Studite Typicons were intended for the monasteries of Constantinople.  They were arranged by Theodore the Studite at the beginning of the ninth century, during his liturgical reform around the time of the iconoclastic controversies.  Theodore the Studite introduced to Constantinople the texts taken from the Palestinian monasteries when many of these monks fled to Greece after the Arab invasions of the seventh century.  The offices of Palestine were held in high respect because they originated in the Holy Land, although St. Theodore adapted them for use in his Constantinople monastery. Fr. Miguel Arranz explains:

Theodore the Studite, in taking charge of the Stoudion monastery in Constantinople, after the iconoclastic crisis, did not restore the office of the ancient “wakers”, the <em>acemeti</em>, but introduced the office known to him, that of the Saint Sabbas monastery near Jerusalem.  All of the monastic tradition of the Byzantine West (Athos, Georgia, Russia, Southern Italy) followed the usages and customs of the Studites, however well aware that they were linking themselves to the traditions of the Saint Sabbas lavra, which itself owed much to the most ancient church of the world, the Anastasis or the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. (cited in Getcha, 43n80)

An early example is the Hypotyposis from 843. Additionally, Parenti provides a description and list of early Studite Typicons (Parenti, 199–200).  The premier edition of the Studite Typicon is the Typicon of the Patriarch Alexis the Studite (1025–1043) (see Ms. Novgorod-St. Sophia 1136), which he composed for the Monastery of the Dormition (a monastery he founded).  It was originally in Greek (in the eleventh century) but now exists  only in Church Slavonic translations (see Petras, The Typicon of the Patriarch Alexis: the Studite: Novgorod-St. Sophia 1136 and Pentkovsky, Tipikon patriarkha Aleksiia Studita v Vizantii i na Rusi).  It was probably this Typicon of Alexis which was brought into Russia by Theodosius in 1051, used for the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev, and became the model typicon for Russia from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries.

As an example, we present the text for Holy Thursday Matins:

On Holy and Great Thursday at Matins, Alleluia, tone 8, and in place of the triadica, “When the glorious disciples,” thrice, and there are sung two kathismata, and after the first kathisma, the hypakoe of the day, tone 2, “Who would not weep, Judas,” after the second, troparion, tone 3, “You were struck [on the face] for the sake of mankind,” and on this day there is read the homily of Chrysostom on the mystical supper [and] the betrayal of Judas, which begins, “It is necessary to speak.” One canon, by Cosmas, tone 6, is sung, “The hewing of that which could not,”  and the verses are sung four times, and the irmosi twice, but the third, fifth and ninth irmosi four times. After the third ode, the sidalen of the triodion, as after the sixth ode, the proper kontakion of this day is sung many times, omoion, “Seeking what is on high,” “[The traitor] takes bread in his hands.” The exapostolarion, tone 8, “I see your bridal chamber,” [and] three stichera after “Praise the Lord,” tone 6 idiomelon “Judas the transgressor, O Lord,” “Judas, the deceitful traitor,” “Judas, servant and deceiver," Glory, Now and ever, another idiomelon tone 5, “Instructing your disciples in the Mystery, O Lord.” The First Hour, with psalmody, is sung together with Matins, and the other Hours at their proper times, all with the singing of the psalter. (Petras, <em>Typicon</em>, 14r-15v, 72–73) 

The Studite Typicon is referred to as “monastic.”  However, that does not mean that the services as described are completely monastic, for by this time, in the Byzantine tradition, monastic and parochial elements were fused into the same service.  This service retained certain monastic elements such as the continuous reading of psalmody.  Also to be noted is the fact that the Studite Typicons were often hand-copied manuscripts since they were in use long before the invention of printing.  In practice, typicons varied from monastery to monastery.  In Constantinople, the Studite Typicons were discontinued after the occupation of the city by the Latins from 1204 to 1261, after which the Roman rite was imposed on the Byzantine Church for a number of decades.  It would have been very difficult to restore the elaborate Cathedral office, and so the Typicon of St. Sabbas became the rule.  The Sabbas Typicon was also used in the Studite monastery, which was reopened in 1293 (Parenti, 294–296 and 300). The Studite Typicon, which had been imported into Rus by Theodosius, was replaced by the Sabbaite Typicon in the reform of Metropolitan Cyprian Tsamblak of Kiev (1381–1382 and 1390–1406), whom Arranz has called the “liturgical Metropolitan” (see Parenti, 291 and Getcha, La reforme liturgique du metropolite Cyprien de Kiev). The Sabbaite Typicon spread throughout Russia through the action of Metropolitan Cyprian, the author of a liturgical reform that standardized the monastic and parochial offices in Russia (Getcha, The Typicon Decoded, 45–46).{5}

IV. Sabbas Typicons 

The origin of the Sabbas Typicons can be traced to the Monastery of St. Sabbas in the Cedron Valley near Jerusalem, whose most notable member was St. John of Damascus (Getcha, 44–46 and Parenti 270–292).  According to tradition, it was founded in 532 by St. Sabbas the Consecrated, whose major feast day on the Byzantine calendar is December 5. The monastery was destroyed by the Arabs but restored by the Patriarch St. Sophronius.  St. John Damascene was a monk of this monastery.   There are no early examples of Sabbas Typicon.  The oldest surviving manuscript is Sinai gr. 1094 from the twelfth to thirteenth centuries (Getcha, 44 and Parenti, Sinai gr. 1096, p. 279)

The Sabbas Typicon is the present typicon of the Byzantine Church. It was imported into Constantinople by St. Theodore the Studite, who modified it for the Studite monasteries and added many new texts.  These new liturgical texts were then reimported into the Sabbas Typicon, which, however, retained its order of services.   Then, in a second wave, the Sabbas Typicon of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries was reimported into Constantinople and eventually replaced the Studite Typicon completely.  Robert Taft refers to its normative introduction into the Byzantine Church in the thirteenth century as the “Neo-Sabbaite synthesis” (Parenti, 273 and Taft, The Byzantine Rite: A Short History).  St. Sava of Serbia introduced the Sabbas Typicon into Serbia, and from there it influenced the Typicon of the Vergetis Monastery on Mt. Athos, which was established in 1048.

Getcha (The Typicon Decoded, 45) catalogues the main differences between the Studite and Sabbaite Typicons.  In the Studite Typicon, there is no Agrypnia (Vigil), no Small Vespers, and no Great Doxology. In this typicon, Studite hymnography and saints predominate and there are no Hours on Sunday and Feast days. There is less stichology from the Psalter, and the Presanctified Divine Liturgy is celebrated daily.  In the Sabbaite Typicon there are Vigils (Agrypnia), Small Vespers, and the Great Doxology is chanted on Feasts. Like the Studite Typicon, Palestinian hymnography and saints predominate, and Hours are read on Sundays and feast days. In contrast, however, there is more stichology from the Psalter, and the Presanctified Divine Liturgy is celebrated on Wednesday and Friday.  Additionally, the offices are longer and include the Marcan Chapters.

As we have seen, the Studite and Sabbaite Typicons have much in common, and there is definite inter-play between the two.  The Sabbaite Typicon spread throughout the Byzantine world by the end of the fourteenth century, through the Diataxis of Philotheus, Patriarch of Constantinople, although, as Arranz notes, he merely confirmed and completed a process that had already been in action for centuries (Getcha, 46).  Thus, the Sabbas Typicon became the regulator of the Byzantine Divine Praises (i.e., the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours). 

In his liturgical commentaries, Symeon of Thessalonica rarely touches on historical questions, but he does give a resume of the spread of the Sabbas Typicon:

In these monasteries and in almost all the churches, they follow the order of the Typicon of Jerusalem, of the Monastery of St. Sabbas, because it is carried out by a single person, since it was composed for monks.  This <em>diataxis</em> is very necessary and patristic.  It is indeed our divine Father Sabbas, who recorded it after receiving it from the Saints Euthymius and Theoktistos, they who received it from their predecessors and from Chariton the Confessor. This diatyposis of St. Sabbas, which, as we have learned, disappeared after the destruction of the site by the barbarians, was restored with great care by our father among the saints, Sophronius, Patriarch of the Holy City and again after him our divine father theologian John Damascene renewed it and transmitted it in written form.”  With cautions, these are basic underlying facts to the transmission of the Sabbaite Typicon. (Getcha 46, citing PG 155, 556D)

The first Greek printing of the Sabbas Typicon was done in Venice in 1545 and the first one in Russian in 1610 with reprintings in 1633 and 1634.  The Slavonic textus receptus is the Slavonic edition of 1682 (Getcha 46). The Slavonic Typicon has changed little since the seventeenth century.  The Russian liturgy became very conservative after the harsh reaction to the reforms of Nikon in the mid-seventeenth century.  Changes, when they do occur, do not occur as formal changes but as shortenings and abbreviations for pastoral reasons, particularly in the case of Matins. 

I have quoted several passages from Mansvetov’s study, though there have been many studies of the typicon.  These include Skaballanovich’s monumental study in the early twentieth century, Tolkovyj Typicon (Typicon Commentary), as well as Nikolsky’s Ustav and Bulgakov’s Nastolnaja Kniga.  These are the fruit of a flowering of liturgical studies in Russia at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The present Sabbaite Typicon, as promulgated by the 1904 Holy Synod of the Russian Church, is known as the “Marcan Chapters.”  These “chapters,” found as an appendix in the typicon, give the detailed rules of what to do with the union of the movable and immovable cycles of the office.    They were written by Mark, a priest of Constantinople, who later became the bishop of Otranto in Southern Italy (ninth and tenth centuries), and they were subsequently appended to the Sabbaite Typicon (Getcha 44–45).

Here is an example of the Marcan Chapters for Holy Thursday:

At the eighth hour the paraecclesiarch strikes [the semantron], and there is the gathering in the church.  With the blessing of the priest, we begin vespers without stichoslovia: Heavenly King: Trisagion: Lord, have mercy, 12 [times].  Come, let us bow: three times. And the psalm: Bless the Lord, O my soul: and the Great Ektenija.  O Lord, I have cried, we sing in tone 2.  The priest then or the deacon censes: and finishing, he does the proskomedia [prothesis, rite of preparation]. We do 10 stichs, and we sing the stichera, the samohlasen (idiomelon) of the day, Tone 2: “It assembles in haste..,” repeating them. Glory, Now and ever.  Then, “The generation of vipers.” Entrance with the Gospel Book.  “Tranquil Light….”  Prokeimenon of the Paremia, and three readings of the day. Then the Small Ektenija. After this  the Trisagion. Prokeimenon of the Epistle, Tone 7, “The rulers of the people take counsel together, against the Lord and against his Christ…”. Versicle, “Why did the nations rage…”  Epistle to the Corinthians (Section 149, “I received from the Lord…”). Alleluia, Tone 6, “Blessed is the one who understands…” Versicle, “My enemy spoke evil against me…” Versicle, “Who ate my bread, dealt craftily with me…”  Gospel from Matthew (Section 107, “You know that after two days is the Passover…”). And after this, the order of the divine liturgy of Basil the Great.  Instead of the Cherubic Hymn, we sing in tone 6, “Your mystical supper…,” three times, the choirs alternating.  At the end, then, alleluia, three times.  Instead of “It is proper,” we sing the irmos, “The hospitality of the Lord,” then in place of the Communion Hymn, we sing the same troparion, “Your mystical supper…” We sing it many times until the brothers have received the divine mysteries, and then alleluia, three times.  And, instead of “May [our mouths] be filled,” we sing the same troparion and alleluia.  Then we go to [our] table, and we eat cooked [food] with oil. And we drink wine, rather than dry food, because alleluia is sung.

The paragraph following this section then compares the fasting rules of the Sabbas Typicon with the Studite Typicons, showing that the distinction between the two was clearly understood at that time.  Though the Marcan Chapters are obviously for monastic communities, they are the received typicon for both monastic and secular communities in the Slav churches.  Nonetheless, those intended for parochial use may be modified and mitigated as needed.

The same, however, is not true for the Greek Typicon.  Both derive from the Sabbas Typicon. However, the Greeks have been less reluctant to make changes.   As noted, the typicon of the Slav churches has not undergone any significant changes since the edition of 1682.  The Slavs were inherently more conservative than the Greeks. However, in 1834, the Greek state revolted against the Ottoman Empire and won its independence.  This became the occasion for many changes in its liturgical life, including changes to the Greek Typicon in 1838. Nonetheless, this process was not undertaken by the Greek Church itself, but by the Ecumenical Patriarch, still under Ottoman domination.

The evolution of the Greek Typicon was described in detail by Alkiviadis Calivas, professor of Liturgy at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox seminary in Brookline, Massachusetts (see Calivas, Aspects of Orthodox Worship, 89–98).  In an effort to prepare a typicon that was adapted for use in parish churches, the Ecumenical Patriarch authorized the publication of a new typicon in 1838, prepared and edited by Konstantinos the Protopsaltis (precentor) under the title The Ecclesiastical Typicon According to the Style of the Great Church of Christ.  The Typicon was further revised in 1868 and then, after further study, the edition of the Typicon of the Great Church of Christ by the Protopsaltis Georgios Violakis was published in 1888.   As Calivas notes, “the Typicon of 1888 modified the Vespers and Orthros, abbreviated the burial service, abolished the all-night vigil for Sundays and major feast days, and sanctioned several new rituals for the services of Holy Week and Pascha.”  This typicon was accepted by Greek Churches and other Churches influenced by them.

V. Particular Typicons

The normative typicons of the contemporary Byzantine Churches are the Sabbas Typicon for the Slav Churches and the Typicon of the Great Church, a pastoral adaptation of the Sabbas Typicon for the Greek Church.  At the same time, there are various adaptations made by individual Churches for either ecclesiastical or pastoral reasons.  These are too numerous to enumerate, but three Byzantine Catholic Typicons should be noted.   In the Ruthenian-Ukrainian Church, there is the typicon compiled by Fr. Isidore Dolnitsky and published in Lviv in 1899. The purpose of this typicon was to codify the modifications made by the Synod of Lviv in 1891 in an effort to define the particular Catholic Ruthenian rite as differentiated from the Russian Church.  It is fundamentally the Sabbas typicon with certain Hellenizations and Latinizations. It also incorporates authentic local customs to assure its Ruthenian identification.  Another version specifically for the Subcarpathian Church was completed by Alexander Mikita and was published in Užhorod in 1901.  Neither of these have been translated into English.

The normative typicon for the Melkite Church, which mainly follows the Greek tradition, is Father Abel Courtier’s three-volume Cours de liturgie grecque-melkite (1912).  Father Courtier based his work on previous authoritative sources, such as: the Arabic Euchologion of Bishop Hawaweeny, the Euchologion of Goar, highly recommended by Pope Benedict XIV (1647); the Typicon of Jerusalem, written by St. Sabbas in the fifth century; the Liturgikon of Patriarch Athanasios IV Dabbas of Antioch in 1701; and the Melkite Liturgikon published by the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in 1839. An edition of the Melkite Typicon in Greek and Arabic was printed in Vienna in 1862; and, from the presses of St. John of Choueir, a small liturgikon came in 1843. It was the Euchologia of Constantinople, Athens, Rome and Venice.

Additionally, there have been many commentaries on the typicon.  Most notable are those by Constantine Nikolsky, published in St. Petersburg in 1900, and by Sergius Bulgakov (not the later famous theologian, but an earlier liturgist), published in Kharkov in 1900 and later translated into English by the late Archpriest Eugene Tarris (see bibliography).  The Russian Church outside Russia is much more interested in rubrics than other Churches, and thus is able to provide helpful manuals on the typicon.  Most important of these is The Order of Divine Services by Peter Fekula and Matthew Williams, published by the St. John of Kronstadt Press in 1997.  It is a somewhat abridged description of the services as found in the typicon.  This has been supplemented by a third volume dealing with services of the Menaion, excluding feasts that fall in the Triodion and Pentecostarion.  (At the time of the writing of this entry, the second volume is forthcoming.)  The same press also publishes an English translation of A Manual of the Orthodox Church’s Divine Services by the Archpriest Dmitry Sokolof (1832–1915), one of the classic commentaries on the typicon. Finally, another typicon handbook by the Orthodox Church in America, An Abridged Typicon by Feodor S. Kovalchuk, contains much practical advice.