23 the Altar—While Singing the Cherubikon (Fig. 3).65 the Opening
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the altar—while singing the Cherubikon (Fig. 3).65 The opening words of this hymn declared, “We who mystically represent the cherubim…sing the thrice-holy hymn,” and the liturgist Symeon of Thessaloniki explained, “The deacons [come] one after another who have the order of the angels…carrying over their head the sacred great veil which has the depiction of Jesus naked and dead.”66 Thus the central panel of the Thessaloniki Epitaphios shows seraphim, cherubim, and thrones singing “Holy, Holy, Holy” while two angel-deacons wave rhipidia.67 To remove the epitaphios from the Host further collapsed the boundary between the physical rites of the church and the angelic liturgy in the presence of the risen Christ, because this action signified the Resurrection on account of the associations between cloth, Christ’s flesh, and the Temple veil. Byzantine Christmas hymns centered on the Gloria, the angelic doxology of Luke’s Nativity story. Angels performed this hymn on the frescoed vaults of the Holy Apostles Church in Thessaloniki (ca. 1315-9) and the Dochiariou Monastery of Mount Athos (1568), both of which bear inscriptions stating that the angels sing.68 In addition, there were a few angelic aspects of the Akathistos. The Trisagion was often sung as its prelude. A scene related to its finale, the Triumph of Orthodoxy icon (ca. 1400), shows the famous Hodegetria icon of the Virgin and Child—which was considered to be 65 Slobodon Ćurčić, “Late Byzantine Loca Sancta? Some Questions Regarding the Form and Function of Epitaphioi,” in The Twilight of Byzantium, ed. Ćurčić and Doula Mouriki (Princeton, 1991): 251-61. 66 Symeon of Thessaloniki, “Explanation of the Divine Temple,” in The Liturgical Commentaries, ed. and trans. by Steven Hawkes-Teeples (Toronto, 2011). The Cherubikon is translated in Taft 1975: 54-5. 67 Woodfin 2012: 125. Two sources were the Diataxis of Gemistos the Deacon (ca. 1380) and On the Divine Liturgy by Symeon of Thessaloniki: PG 155, 288. 68 Gerstel 2015: 143. 23.