Menologia and synaxaria

by Christian Högel Suddansk Universitet, Denmark

1. Menologion and synaxarion: titles and place in the liturgy; ' calendars and ordering principles 2. The Jahressamlungen and the pre-metaphrastic menologia (and the problems concerning this term) 3. The single-volume, "authorized menologion" of Niketas the Paphlagonian 4. The synaxarion of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos and its later stages 5. The Metaphrastic Menologion, and later reworkings 6. Illuminated synaxaria and menologia, the "imperial menologia” 7. Later developments; copying, rewriting, reading and owning menologia

Hagiographical texts, i.e. saints’ lives, accounts of martyrdom etc. were written from the early days of Christianity in several languages. Translations and other processes secured a rich exchange of saints, narrative and iconographical features, festive and liturgical performativity. One central Byzantine/Greek feature is that unlike the Latin West, no specific procedures for the canonization of saints ever developed. Instead, de facto recognition resulted from being included in calendars, pictorial programmes, and liturgical collections. The control that central institutions had in composing such seems to have weighed much stronger than condemnation of specific texts or saints, of which we have only few examples.

The Byzantine world developed a number of book types that would facilitate liturgical celebration and reading. The manuscript evidence before the eighth century is very scarce and hardly allows any reliable conclusions as to origins or general practice. Surviving manuscripts yield surprisingly little information on producers, owners and users. (as compared to similar material from e.g. the Georgian, Armenian, and Syriac world). The most important agents in the transformations of these hagiographical liturgical texts and manuscripts are, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the imperial court. The most important moments of imperial intervention were the compositions of the Synaxarion at the order of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos (945-59) and of the Metaphrastic Menologion at the behest, it seems, of Basil II (976-1025).

Hagiographical texts are commonly subdivided into (sub)genres like vitae/lives, martyria/martyr accounts, enkomia (praises intended for a specific occasion), abbreviated versions (often found in synaxaria and other collections that gave only brief presentations of the saints), as well as metaphrasis (in plural metaphraseis), which denotes rewritten versions. Rewriting of hagiographical texts took up a very large part of Byzantine , and was from the ninth century onwards singled out in manuscript titles and elsewhere as such. Rewriting could stem from various aims, but is consistently justified by Byzantine authors as a way of securing the saints’ praise in the language and style they deserved.

Already in the earliest – often fragmentary – evidence, the majority of hagiographical texts are found in ordered collections. Most collections would organize texts were according to the church calendar on fixed days, i.e. according to the dates of the saints, but often in combination with texts and feasts that went according to the movable calendar. Yet there were also single or multiple hagiographical texts in miscellaneous manuscripts, in single-authored volumes, and in collections of saints from a given geographical area, or of female saints. The most important manuscripts for the transmission of Greek-Byzantine hagiographical texts are those organized according to liturgical needs. Surviving manuscripts of these present us with a number of types, some of which had specific Byzantine names; others have been classified only later and primarily by the great scholar of Byzantine hagiographical manuscripts Albert Ehrhard (1862-1940).

Very common in the early period (eighth-tenth centuries) are the ‘year collections’ (Jahressammlungen, in the terminology of Ehrhard). These were small collections (presumably for small institutions) that would contain all the hagiographical texts needed for both the movable and the fixed church calendar, either in one or two volumes. The Panegyriken and Homiliarien (again using Ehrhard’s terms) contain texts only for the movable church calendar, whereas the menologion (a true Byzantine term) would offer texts only for the fixed calendar. These menologia would give hagiographical texts in full and for the whole year in either one, three, four or up to twelve volumes (the latter giving rise to the name meno-logion, the ‘month collection’).

All these collections seem to have been composed and developed solely through the wishes and needs of the individual leader of religious institutions or producer of manuscript. The fluctuations in dates of saints are restricted, but the inclusion of this and the exclusion of that led to an enormous variety in the actual content of these liturgical, hagiographical collections. Also the text versions – whether authored or anonymous – differ widely, and until the composition of the Synaxarion and Metaphrastic menologion it seems hard to detect two manuscripts actually offering exactly the same saint and texts. Theodore Stoudites (759-826) refers in a letter to the liturgical books “ordered into twelve volumes”, thereby clearly indicating to a menologion set. We also know the provenance of a few volumes to specific monasteries. At the beginning of the tenth century Niketas the Paphlagonian seems to have composed two manuscripts containing his own hagiographical writings, one with lives of the apostles and possibly connected to his teaching at the Church of the Holy Apostles, another containing various hagiographical texts on martyrs, confessors, and apostles ordered in the liturgical sequence. This volume thus offers the only pre-Metaphrastic example of a single-authored menologion (in this case a one-volume menologion). The connections of Niketas the Paphlagonian to Leo VI and the imperial court were at that time close.

Equally imperial were the working conditions of Evaristos,who composed an early version of the Synaxarion the complete description and text for the service of the under the commission of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos. The synaxarion found a more permanent form in the late tenth century, though it is unclear under whose initiative this was. But from this point on emperors and their employees are clearly the instigators of change in Byzantine liturgical collections..The origins of the Metaphrastic menologion are somewhat shrouded.. The composer Symeon Metaphrastes who was employed under Basil II (976-1025) as logothetes tou dromou, a high political post, at some point lost favour at court. He may therefore not have seen through the final version of his menologion that was to experience such a great success in the Byzantine world. Surviving Metaphrastic volumes, especially from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, run into hundreds, and soon abbreviated, extended, and mixed versions of his menogion were produced (the ‘verkürtzte’, ‘erweiterte’, and ‘vermischte Metaphrast’ in Ehrhard’s terminology). Most manuscripts follow very closely the ten-volume structure of the Metaphrastic menologion

The eleventh century saw high production of illuminated liturgical manuscripts. The production of these and other Metaphrastic menologia points to the existence of one central, perhaps imperially supported scriptorium in Constantinople. Some of the illuminators of these were also involved in the production of the lavishly illuminated of Basil II, which is actually a Synaxarion. Similarly illuminated are the surviving volumes of two sets of illuminated menologia, offering abridged menologia texts, in some cases produced on the basis of Metaphrastic texts. On the basis of the acrostics of dedication poems in these volumes (yielding ΜΙΧΑΗΛΠ), it was suggested already by Ehrhard that the commissioner was the emperor Michael IV (the Paphlagonian).

Hagiography continued to be written, liturgical manuscripts were produced especially in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in enormous quantities, and some new persons still attained sainthood in these centuries and beyond. But much of the political and to some extent also the literary energy seems to have gone out of the field (and possibly moved over into other fields of intellectual activity). The name of Symeon Metaphrastes secured for his volumes a stable transmission, but many commissioners (or producers) of liturgical manuscripts still felt free to intervene into the contents and text versions of these manuscripts, and many late manuscripts even offer what seems to be quite faithful copies of what must – at least from the outset – have been pre-Metaphrastic volumes. Given the high production, the freedom to intervene, and the many lost intermediary volumes, the tracing of the transmission is, to say the least, extremely difficult.